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May 9, 2004
Welcome to our first blog session. Forgive me for bandwagoning, but since everyone else seems to be blogging, so I thought I should too. (Yes, Mom, if every blogger jumped off the Empire State Building, I'd probably do it too. I always cave in to peer pressure.)
Wow, I haven't had so much response on a column in a long time. So many folks out there wrote about April's Outsourcing? Outstanding! column...and you either loved it's satire, or thought I was a prejudiced elitist racist (and any other -ist you can think of) making fun of foreigners. For the record, it's a jab at the outsourcers who try to skim a few extra bucks in profit. Call me crazy, but it's tough to explain to someone his firing will improve the economy enough to make his unemployment check go farther.
My apologies for those of you who didn't get our last couple of updates; we had a little computer trouble two months ago, and we lost several columns and the entire mailing list. (If you lived within a 500-mile radius of me, you probably heard me shouting at my computer. Sorry about all that swearing.)
We just reached our 90th permanent subscriber! Okay, it's not exactly Time Magazine numbers, but it makes me happy anyway. Thanks to everyone who continues to read and enjoy THESE DAYS. It's good when disturbed people like myself find people who think the same way.
October 15, 2004
Wow, how did we get to mid-October already? The year just seemed to whiz by, although the heavy sedation might've had something to do with that. Like the adage says, "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." Or at least something like that.
I must give both my sincere thank-you's and the humblest I'm-sorry's to all those subscribers who have been asking what's been going on lately. The truth was, between the birth of my son in January, several writing assignments, and reviving my musical career in several areas, as well as some boring personal stuff this summer, something had to go...for a little while anyway. I could never abandon These Days, though, I miss it too much. (That, and my better half says I get cranky if I don't have an epistlary outburst on a regular basis.)
Now that my son actually sleeps more than 45 minutes a clip, and the other chaos in my life is a little less, well, chaotic, we should be back in business-as-unusual 'round here, starting this month. Thanks for your patience, and keep those cards and letters coming.
November 5, 2004 (post election day)
Good Lord, what happened?
It wasn't a dream, right? I keep thinking I might've beamed into some alternate Bizarro World universe, and Rod Serling is narrating in a corner somewhere. Rod, if you're there...show's over, okay? Come on out and let's get back to reality. Rod...?
The rest of the world has got to be looking at us and thinking we've all gone insane. I can see the headlines now: "Millions of Americans Did WHAT?" For our number of international These Days readers, my apologies. We were a little confused. Maybe we were thinking about the conclusion of Survivor or something and absent-mindedly threw the wrong switch. We'll try to pay attention in the future.
I try to keep as nonpartisan as possible, both personally and here in These Days Land, because Heaven knows both major parties have enough screwups, goofballs, and just plain evil people to give plenty of ammo for pot shots (which is why I voted Column C four years ago...yeah, I know, so shoot me). But I would've figured that people would've rallied enough troops to send W packing. Heck, a Hollywood filmmaker gets a multimillion-dollar budget to make a two-hour hour hate letter about the guy to point out how bad he's screwed up, and we still let him keep his job?
How can our current -- and now recurring -- president still have this much support? WTC safe from terrorists? Wrong. WMDs in Iraq? Wrong. Huge tax rebates will boost the economy? Wrong. Health care? Wrong. Number of troops needed to keep the peace in Iraq? Wrong. "Mission Accomplished." Wrong. The Iraqi people will welcome our forces? Wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong.
And I can't imagine the best we can offer up as competition is JFK, mark II, (aka Fred Gwynne with Bill Clinton's hairstylist) whose platform seems to boil down to "Bad president! Down boy! Bad!" Heck, I could've done that. Come to think of it, I just did last paragraph.
We Americans should remember the These Days Presidential Election Theory: "Picking a president is like picking the family dog. They're all the same dumb animal, you just pick the one that'll leave the smallest mess when it's done its business." I get the sinking feeling we're going to need to change the carpets four years from now.
July 15, 2005
Later this month, Congress will debate about extending the "sunset" provisions of the infamous US PATRIOT Act, the post-9/11 knee-jerk legislation that was supposed to help capture terrorists but has given nightmares to every civil-liberties supporter because of several notorious pieces of the Act that hedge citizens' freedoms in the name of protection. (How exactly those freedoms are "protected" if they're taken away is one more question this Administration feels is unnecessary to answer.)
President Bush came out in favor of making permanent the sunset provisions due to expire December 31, saying, "calling them 'sunset' provisions is appropriate, because if we allow them to go away, it will leave law enforcement officials in the dark." (Get it? Sunset? Dark? I guess that's the cleverest bit of wordplay one can expect from a C-student.)
Anyway, the point I'm taking forever to arrive at is that maybe we should look at other ways to tighten up security. Border patrols would be a good start; here's an example why.
The Associated Press reported that on April 25, a man showed up at a U.S.-Canadian border crossing in Maine. He was carrying a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles and a chain saw apparently stained with blood. U.S. customs agents confiscated the weapons and fingerprinted him...and then let him enter the U.S.
Twenty-four hours later, in Minto, New Brunswick, the man's neighbors were found decapitated and stabbed to death. The man became a suspect because he had a history of violence with his neighbors. He was arrested April 27 in Massachusetts, when police saw him wandering down a highway in a sweat shirt with red and brown stains.
On the same day he crossed the border, he failed to appear in a Canadian court to answer to charges of assault and death threats against his neighbors.
So answer me this: why is our government worried about full access to the life history, phone records, and library lists of someone reads the Koran and political literature, but armed guards give free pass to a guy with (allegedly) blood-stained clothing, weapons, AND an arrest record in a neighbor nation? I guess boxcutters and poketknives are bad, bloody chainsaws are okay with us.
LEGAL STUFF: All content copyright © 1996-2006 Daniel O'Leary. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication, publication, or distribution.
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