Animal Farm

Orwell was right. The Animal Farm is trying to steal our souls. 

First it was the Avian flu.  Started by those devious chickens, passed onto like-minded migratory birds, the Avian Flu became the (mu)cause celebre of the CDC just a few years ago, spreading fear and a minor panic from China to Turkey. Every bird was suspect. People were killing chickens and foregoing the spicy Kung Pao. It almost got to the point where a bird dropping a load on the car was considered a death sentence, paint be damned.  

Now were are faced with another assault from the animal kingdom. This time it's the Swine Flu. Someone got a little to close to the little piggies down on the farm in Mexico (a suspected US owned company, no less) and now the world is in an uproar.  Pretty soon we'll be laying off the other white meat (Britany Spears) and be forced to start stewing the house pets. 

Hopefully, the collective wisdom of Science will get us out of this jam. 

If not, I'm moving to the sticks, someplace with a sordid history where people fear to tread, visitors are few and far between and the medical care is superb. 

I'm headin' to Neverland Ranch. 

Cryin Shame

YOU MAKE THE CALL!

Is he:

A. Bawling

B. Hurling

C. "Balling" 

D: Making another million in book sales 

C: (Write-in Answer)________

Slow Ride, Take It Easy

Check out this sweet custom grill I saw near my place the other day.

You can only appreciate it on the close-up.

I haven't seen that much chrome on a mid-90s Ford since. . .well. . .I don't know when.  

There is something downright majestic about it, isn't there? Words fail me. I stand in awe. 

Where Do We Go From Here?

Should I be concerned about this?

Or this?

Or am I just being paranoid?

(Far be it for me to criticise the all-knowing Constitutional Law Professor who currently heads our government, but I find this particular branding of leadership rather frightening.)   

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You know, I for one have never really been able to differentiate between  a Communist, Fascist, or any other -ist form of government.  Why?  I don't know. Maybe it's because I was too busy fantasizing about Molly Doak in my eighth grade government class, or maybe it's because each form of government has the propensity to devolve into a state where some arrogant shithead is telling you how to live your life---you know, for the greater good and all of that. 

Who knows. 

But I do know that New Winds are blowing upon this great land of ours. Can't you feel it, the seductive siren song to make America what it should be instead of what it is? I sure do. And in a BIG way. From clamoring commentators in the media to the weekend morons blathering on the internets, it seems there are millions who insist on ramming every naive tenant of a skewed ideology down our throats. 

And that's just fans of Chuck Norris. 

But even now they are being drowned out by the more "liberal" among us. There is such a din and cry from everyone to follow the august mantle of divine leadership that it feels like America is deteriorating into some kind of third-rate Bolshevik luncheon.   

Of course, we needn't worry too much about these developments: our anti-communist and anti-fascist muscles are the most politically developed of any modern power, and we can rest assured any hints to traditional revolutions will be immediately sniffed out by Wolf Blitzer in The Situation Room. 

No, what greets us will be a uniquely homegrown American amalgam, something that incorporates the more subtle strictures of both. To what do I refer? The Demagogue.

I use the classical definition of the term  here, as someone who leads the demos or armed populace of the city. That's right, the demagogue used physical power to influence and sway the politics of the city for his particular faction: charismatic leadership as arbiter of social change. 

 Of course, in our modern times we do not have an physically armed class ready to push through its particular agenda, but there are those who are just as dangerous---those armed with "superior knowledge," the technocrats, the lawyers, and those "in the know" about civil society---who will do everything in their power to see to it that America becomes everything she has to become. 

I, for one, just wish the colorful propaganda posters were a little more original.