We're Goin' to Jersey?

but I just ate some, by accident. They were chopped up into little bits and snuck into my Paradise Bakery cinnamon Swirl bread. And now I'm feeling a tad under the weather. If things don't improve soon, I might need someone to stab me with an EpiPen.

I wonder if I can skype 911....

First off, I'd like to issue an apology: I am sorry about the way the italics run into whatever comes after them. I really am. I don't know why it does it. It is really interfering with Employee #8's whole episodic post thing, which I'm kinda diggin', and it upsets me as much as I'm sure it upsets you. If I could fix it, I would. I guess just trying to space a few extra spaces after any italics might do the trick, but who can stop to think about that kind of thing? Especially after italics. No dice Blogger.com; you can't break our fluidity like that. Anyway, yea. I just wanted to apologize, because (and this is the crux the matter, the part that she'll never get and the reason why just couldn't ever work out) when it comes right down to it, it doesn't matter if it's my fault--I'm still sorry about it.

For today's lesson, I'd like to step back from geo-political disaster and take a look at the very personal disaster of being the sucker. More specifically, being the sucker onstage. We've all seen this "sucker on stage." We see him on stage--Othello, who just can't sack up and trust Desdemona. We see him in real life--the friend who just can't sack up and make a play at the ball when it's as good as tee'd up for him. And we see her on the tube--when Lauren, despite Miss Sarcastro's judicious reprimands (speaking of Castro, am I alone in being a touch melancholy at the thought of Cuba being Fidel's no more?) heads off to spend the summer with that ass-hat Jason character who--as every other beating heart in America can see clear as day--is a loser and a half.

The question for the day, then, is why do they do it? Why, when everyone watching can see that Igor is a manipulative man-servant and that sometimes all a guy's gotta do to get on first is take a fucking swing, and that the only reason Lauren should stay in SoCal with Jasshole is...well...nothing, then why can't these seemingly normal, seemingly bright folks see it themselves?

The answer comes in the guise of a street game.

In Paris, and again in Venice, and again in Krakow, I have seen men play a game on the street with passers-by. The man lays down a small felt mat, and on it, he places three small cardboard boxes, with one side open, open side down. Beneath one of these boxes, he hides a small plastic soccer ball. In his left hand is a handful of 50's. His right is free. Crouches--as he always does--never letting the boxes, the ball, the felt, or the money far from his touch.

eins...zwei...drei...
one...two...three...
where is the ball?
where is the ball?

As he repeats his bi-lingual chorus, his fingers fly--as do the fingers of most street-gamesmen. The ball sails from one box to another, then to another. It is quick, very quick. But not so quick that you can't keep track of it. If you concentrate, and can keep a good view, you can follow it's path, and when he stops, where is the ball? you know. Or, you think you know. At the beginning, you're not sure, so you stand around and wait for someone to step up and, with a 50 of his own, say, "Yes, I know where the ball is, it is there-" You watch the new player--you watch as he takes out his wallet, finds his 50, hands it to the gamesman, and then flips up the box which he, and you, knows conceals the ball. Empty. He is crushed. You are impressed. But, with cocky arrogance, the gamesman is ready to continue. Now, only 2 boxes left, still where is the ball?. The chances are good now. Unfortunately, you don't have a clue. For all you know, the ball is in his hand, with the 50's, or under his shoe. But then, someone boldly steps up, hands the man a 50 and lifts a box. Ball. 2 50's back into the hand of the man who just gave up one. He's rich. And so easy.

Now you are intrigued. You could see it in the man's eyes, he really knew. Not like you and the first schmuck knew. He knew the trick. So you watch more. And before too long, discouraged that you are always in agreement with the first player who strides up and takes out his 50 and always proven wrong by the ball and the boxes, you dedicate yourself more fully to the task. You stop caring about the guy coming up to lose his 50--he clearly doesn't know the trick anyway--and all of a sudden, you are an all-star. You know where it is every time. And yet somehow, the guy playing never does. He is always wrong. You watch him shuffle the ball. eins...zwei...drei... you watch him stop, where is the ball? and you watch him then, after he stops, shuffle the ball once more, clear as day, right before everyone's eyes, just moving it from one box from the other, as if he were doing nothing more secretive than passing the butter-dish. And yet, incomprehensibly, the loser of the game--the one who steps up to give away his 50, never seems to see this. Each time, he chooses the box that hid the ball before this final, obvious, switch. The crowd knows, you know. You all grown in collective agony each time a poor sole reaches for the box you know is wrong. Yes, every now and then, someone gets it right. But more often than not, the center of this sorry spectacle walks away 50 Euro the poorer, and is, without question, the sucker on stage to everyone around.

Eventually, as it always does, the truth reveals itself. You figure out it's almost stupid-simplicity--it's surprisingly stinging irony. The final switch, the one like the butter-dish, the one everyone sees but the one for whom it counts, is well-timed. In the few seconds that the anxious new gambler rummages through his pocket, or billfold, or even just his hand, for his crisp clean 50 which he is so sure will earn him another, he completely misses the critical-yet-obvious movement that ends up costing him his wager along with his winnings. Simple as that. Keep your eye on the ball. Seems obvious in a game of "keep your eye on the ball" doesn't it? Well, the sucker on stage doesn't do this. Because when it comes time for the sucker on stage to make his move, he gets distracted. He gets distracted by what he already has, and by what he already thinks, and just shuts down. He stops thinking about what's really going, he stops making the super-slick and super-smooth moves that got him there in the first place, and she stops thinking about the great things she can get when she get's sidetracked by the mediocre things she's already got. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, but hear ye this, sucker on stage:

If your bird is in your hand, THEN YOU DON'T FUCKING NEED TO LOOK AT IT.



Class dismissed.

I, and, I would guess, most of my countrymen, as well as those countrymen from most modern nations accross the globe, have become--or perhaps always were--effectively and efficiently numb to the violence in Iraq. The daily headlines of carbombs and suicides and hostages is little more than news-clutter in my newspaper, ranking just above the obits page and just below the stock quotes. What's more, as a self-professed educated "deep-thinker" whose campaign for "two-sided consideration" is predominately a one-sided campaign for the underdog of any given day, these stories and number scrolling past on the death-toll shock-ticker have essentially no bearing on my little-thought-out and increasingly-wide-spread liberal philosophy that the problem isn't them, its us, and that the answer isn't stopping their violence, it's stopping our international Tom-foolery. (Even if that isn't the 10-cent summary of your politics--and in all honestly, I'd certainly like to think it's not mine--there are a hell of a lot of Bush-bashing, sandal-wearing, upper-middle class "educated" folks out there that would get caught within the range of that political buckshot, myself included.)

Then, I saw this. And in an instant (even if only for an instant) my pascifist framework was blown away and the underdog (or I suppose could make the argument that, temporarily, there was simply a new underdog) was the target of all my blame. I wanted to rain down upon those shithead Sunni bleacher-bombing motherfuckers with the power and fury of my God--a $420 billion dollar yearly supply of cruise missles and tomcats and F-16's and steath this and stealth that and apache's and nighthawks and aircraft carriers and destroyers and mother-fucking nuclear submarines and nuclear missles anti-air missles and anti-ground missles and anti-missle missles and spec ops troups and seals and snipers and gruntmen with big motherfucking guns and small tanks and big tanks and tanks that do 40-0 in 0 ft and make blowing the shit out of tree's the funnest fucking thing you've ever fucking done and I don't want to stop until every single arab ass-hole who even looks like might want to go blow up a bunch of soccer-playing kids is fucking dead dead dead.

I know this is probably counter-productive. I know it is unrealistic. I know that I can't possibly kill the people who did this without killing hundreds, even thousands of people who didn't, and I know that the emotions it brings about in me are both racist and militant--two of the principal things I am trying to combat. But the funny thing is, I'm not kidding. If only for a moment, and if only in a part of me that sits way deep down and yet will never, and should never, be completed covered-up, I really do want this. If given a gun, and the two men who ran ducked out from under those bleachers with their gym bags left to put an end to the second half, of course I could kill them. I would want to, and I would revel in it.

And afterwords, after the blood clotted and ran cold and after mine stopped boiling and returned to tepid, I would realize that someone got what they wanted. Someone wanted a reaction. Certainly the Times wanted a reaction--God knows they needed something besides the mundane killings and the routine kidnappings to attract reader attention. But they obviously weren't alone. People don't blow up soccer-playing kids out of spite. Yes, crimes like that may be hate-motivated, but even hate-crimes, really are just calls for attention. This one was a politically-motivated, relgiously-driven, calculated effort to attract attention and elicit a response. And ultimately, it worked. They got a response from me; and they probably got one from thousands, maybe millions of other people like me around the world. And why? Because it was kids. Because it was soccer. Because they were so innocent and the killers so ruthless. And why were the killers so ruthless? I guess it just turned out that, when they killed policemen and soldiers and took shop-owers captive and occasionally blew up a fruit-stand, people just didn't seem to even notice.

So where am I now? Where now, does my blame fall? I guess the same place it fell before--on us, for being callous, and immune, and numb. And my sympathy?....with the devil.