If you get caught beating the shit out of alleged terror suspects in various places throughout the world and you get called on it and you’re the President of the United States, what do you do? Well, you pass a law to make it okay. While you’re at it, make it okay to hold alleged terror suspects indefinitely, without legal counsel. Then, go ahead and make it illegal for alleged terror suspects to challenge their situation in court. Then, be sure to allow prosecutors to use any testimony received while the alleged terror suspect is getting the shit beat out of them — because all information gleaned while being physically coerced is 100% true and never fabricated to make the pain stop… if the Inquisition taught us anything it taught us that physical abuse is merely a useful tool for extracting truth. Now, for the coup de grace, wrap it all up in a tight little package in memoriam to the victims of the September 11th attacks.

“The bill I sign today helps secure this country and it sends a clear message: This nation is patient and decent and fair and we will never back down from threats to our freedom.”

If you’re passing a law making it allowable to beat information out of people, don’t play the “decent and fair” card.

“You f*@king bleeding heart, liberal bastard! That’s more decency than these terrorists showed the victims of 9/11!”

It sure is. I’m glad that our standard is at least as good as terrorists that want us dead. Note that those were “terrorists” that did that. They aren’t alleged, they aren’t assumed. I’d cheerfully sling a slug through their brainpans myself if they were placed in front of me. Bleeding heart I am not.

Let’s take an extreme case and apply this new law, since extremes are so fun and used by both “sides” equally well. Let’s say there’s a village somewhere. Let’s say we think that one person in that village is a terrorist. It would be difficult to determine which of the people in the village is a terrorist. With this fine new law, now we don’t have to. We can just round them all up, stick them in Gitmo and make with the slappy-slappy until one of them — or, likely, more than one — fesses up. This is no different from what we’ve already done in, for instance, Afghanistan, but now it’s completely legal and good and righteous. No gray area, we’ve decreed that it’s our right as a sovereign nation to “protect” ourselves in this way. America, fuck yeah!

Please. If there is a God in heaven, let him provide some viable alternative in some fashion come election day.

First post in 2 months and I come off sounding like Keith Olbermann. (Aside: since when did this sportscaster become some kind of hopped up liberal newsguy?) There’s simply been a confluence of events culminating with that bill passing that had to come flying out, so I guess if that’s what it takes to unplug the orifice, so be it.

Let’s start this again. Hey! How’s it been going? I’m doing fine, thanks for asking.

So, I mentioned before that I decided to pick up hockey. I know you all figured that would last about 2 weeks before I got a groin pull and gave up. Hah! Okay, so I got a groin pull. But I most certainly did not give up. I finished the class and decided to do some stick & pucks at a nearby rink at lunch a few times a week: by the grace of a particularly benevolent god, there is a rink within 5 minutes of my workplace that runs stick & pucks every weekday lunchtime. It became immediately obvious that the rental skates provided by this rink were suitable for many things — door stops, paper weights, reef-forming solids — but “skating” was not one of them. The damned blades were roughly convex, holding edges that are only edges by virtue of being on the side of something and not actually, you know, sharp. I felt like an idiot on the ice, barely able to stand much less turn or diddle with the puck.

So I was left with only one recourse. Buy my own skates! Luckily the skate place was having a sale and the guy that works there frequents a forum I frequent and gave me a nice deal on them. I’ve been adding to the equipment collection slowly but surely — shin pads, gloves, elbow pads — and I have a few more items to go before I’m completely outfitted, but I can get out there and do light scrimmages as it stands.

I’m getting better every time I got out which is a nice feeling. The scrimmages show me what I need to work on and I work on them. I can start, stop, turn, cross-over forwards and backwards. I can basically do everything on the skates now, it’s just a matter of practicing until I can do it well. Puckhandling and such is coming along, though I haven’t been focusing on it quite as much as my skating. I figure a good basis in skating is fundamental to everything else.

Expect to see me as a walk-on for the Hurricanes soon… just with a wildly divergent definition of “soon.” And “Hurricanes” too, I guess.

A thought occurs to me as sit rather uncomfortably slumped in a modestly padded chair at gate 31 in JFK airport: has there ever in history been an American Airlines flight that has arrived on-time? This is not an idle thought. It’s one that has been careening around my skull for the past 3 hours as I bide my wasted time alternately wandering the cheerless terminal and disconsolately reading the book I purchased — book 2 of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series which ordinarily would be dandy but there’s a perfectly good spare book packed in my suitcase because I consciously put it there not 2 hours before thinking that the book I was currently reading would last me to Canada — during the first of said wanderings.

I walked off my flight from Raleigh, a flight that lifted off roughly two hours late, about 20 minutes before my scheduled departure time on my connecting flight to Montreal. By some odd happenstance that surely stands right up there with spontaneously growing a third limb from my left tit in terms of likelihood, my arrival gate was located some 30 yards from my departure gate. Praise Holy Jesus, I won’t have to make an ignominious run through the terminal railing at the flight gods to hold the plane!

No one’s at the gate. The fuck? I walk over to the nearest gate and inquire mildly about my flight.

“The door is closed.”

No shit. “I see that, but the plane is right there,” I point somewhat needlessly at the plane we can both see though the window, “and the walkway is still connected and it’s 20 minutes before the flight.”

“Let me check,” says the harried agent of fell powers. She disdainfully taps on the keyboard of whatever decrepit system they utilize to casually ruin lives (or at least evenings). “They’ve already closed the door,” she repeats somewhat exasperatedly.

The gate door slams open as a bulimic flight attendant or whatever the acceptable term is for those who disdainfully serve water and now delightedly demand payment for snacks on flights. She’s moving quick and seems ill at ease. You can tell she’s relatively new to the whole “fleecing the airways” gig and the agent is helping her draft powerful enchantments and scrolls to further torment the unwitting passengers.

“Sir, you’ll have to go upstairs and reschedule at the desk,” dismissively.

How… surprising. There’s a perfectly good plane sitting on the tarmac not 30 feet from where I’m now standing, its door open, its pilots getting liquored up and breaking out the anal toys for the boring parts at cruising altitude, I am holding a confirmed ticket and boarding pass on the flight but I am apparently unable to join the ranks of the worthy and soon-to-be airborne.

I need a drink. Possibly several.

Smell tends to solidify memories more than any other sense. Everyone has a certain smell that will, without exception, immediately spark a memory as solid as bedrock, bringing it up in startling clarity. There’s a certain cologne that I used to wear that, upon smelling it on someone in passing, I am engulfed in nostalgia for my younger years. The glorious aroma of pies slowly cooking in the oven evokes sappy, weepy memories of my grandmother and great aunt cooking tirelessly in their tiny kitchen in Louisiana. A particular pizza smell will remind me of a rather special trip with my then-girlfriend, now-wife in a small hotel.

Smell can also be nauseating, irritating, and unwelcome. A recent visit to New York introduced me to an entire category of smells that alternately entices and disgusts. I recall in particular passing a hefty collection of garbage that reeked in a way that sincerely could have knocked a slight person over followed almost instantaneously by the most delightful bakery smell that came close to dragging me directly into the place through the closest line which would have necessitated me passing through ordinarily solid surfaces like brick and glass. It would have been worth it.

Were I to be held at gunpoint by angry Canadians and compelled to characterize the overall smell of Montreal — or if I’m bored in my hotel killing time before my short sleep before a very early flight — I’d have to say: smoke. Similarly, were you to inform me that upon birth every child is alloted a carton of smokes to warm up on I would be physically unable to show surprise. Everyone smokes here. Every single person. Almost. Well, it seems so. During my lunch breaks and night wanderings around the city there seem to be entire blocks where I can hardly draw untainted breath. People huddle outside every door and within each available outside nook around every building, puffing malevolently and shuffling about trying to keep warm. Their first considered act upon exiting a building, before such trivialities as getting out of the way of other pedestrians and making sure they’re not about to be crushed by traffic, is to light up and suck.

I dream of the days of mere refuse and rot.

Montreal is fiercely protective of its good name, that much is certain. No more than 2 hours after I wrote that last post, lamenting the less than pleasing stench suffusing its streets, it frankly got me good.

I mentioned I was hitting the sack early as I had an early flight to catch. I followed that up by going to bed at 8:15. Bliss, I might get somewhere around 7 hours of sleep! Luxury!

“BOOM!,” yanking me directly into the land of the waking.

“Wha?,” I said rather distinctly, glancing at the clock. 10:30PM.

“Boom, foosh, BOOM!”

“Oh you simply must be shitting me.”

No, Montreal wasn’t shitting me. Montreal was teaching me that you cross it only after hard reflection. Unlike other cities that hold their fireworks shows at ordinary, reasonable times like dusk or just after, Montreal saves it as a wondrous surprise for early sleepers.

Won’t work, Montreal. You still smell like an ashtray.