Memorial

I listened to George Bush propagandize last night on the radio. I listened in fits and starts. I would put down the dish I was washing, storm into the living room and switch the damn thing off, muttering, "s'all fucking bullshit--fantasy land..." A few minutes later I would re-enter the room quietly and switch it back on. I thought that perhaps he might glib something out about something or another domestic. He tricked me. Never happened.

I imagine that there are men today with tidy hair thinking back fondly on the patriotic words of their commander in chief, wondering what more they can do besides just keep an eye on those swarthy suspects around town and that there are women today who secretly got off last night while their husbands slept, thinking of ole W explaining the national security emergency that requires that he put it in her "behind" while the Secret Service looks on. She feels better this morning. She's quite chipper. She's looking forward to church on Sunday.

Meanwhile, this morning, I'm wondering how I might build a huge statue or memorial to all the arms and legs lost in Iraq, in bronze. There will be this wonderful pile of bronze arms, legs, feet hands and fingers with quite rough detachment points, and inscribed underneath, the words:

"Your Country Will Really Try, We Swear, To Fund The VA Hospitals You Will Desparately Need For The Next Forty Years Or So. And We Promise Not To Stare."

This Morning

I have a garden out back of the apartment. It's fairly sizable. We are getting too many squash, which is in the nature of squash, nature's over-achiever, sucking up every last drop with tremendous roots to give love to the gardener, at the expense of all else; other vegetables. It's tempting to give them too little room when space is at a premium. They enjoy having room, and they will take what they need, passive aggressively, or perhaps as the martyr, as it is not for themselves that they expand and expand but for you, the one who provided the cramped living quarters.

I walked out there this morning and discovered that I had left the sprinkler pulsed over night. I guess I turned it on at about 6:30 PM and it is now one minute to seven in the morning. There is water everywhere. My neighbors will not want to walk out of their back doors, which they don't do anyway. There are three grown man living together in one apartment. They come home from whatever it is that they do as individuals and then climb into a collective personality and yell at the television. They never transverse more ground than is necessary to get from the car to the apartment or from the apartment to the car. I know them only by their shouts.

The other neighbor is a dumpy belly dancer. She won't be concerned about the water since she is out of town for eight weeks teaching belly dancing at a youth camp to youths. There will be boys there. I can imagine that they have known now for weeks that there will be a belly dancer at their camp experience this summer and that they began masturbating the very evening on which they first heard the news to whatever concept of BELLY DANCER they are able to conjure up. When Alicia the dumpy belly dancer introduces herself dumpily (for her dumpiness is easily 65% personality) the boys in the group will cry inwardly and profoundly. That night as they all try and masturbate without shaking the bunk too violently they will uniformly come to terms with the disparity between the fantasy belly dancer and the dumpy belly dancer and the fantasy belly dancer will take on just enough characteristic of the real one that the masturbation may continue, but continue more interestingly with fleshed out scenarios and the occasional subplot.

With all this water I expect the over abundance of yellow squash and zucchini to continue.