I essentially gave up posting about political topics more than a year ago, but occasionally something comes up that I feel I have to mention.
The NYT reports today:
The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a contract worth up to $385 million for building temporary immigration detention centers to Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary that has been criticized for overcharging the Pentagon for its work in Iraq.
Mark Frauenfelder over at BoingBoing summarizes my feelings on this matter perfectly:
Call me paranoid, but seeing "Halliburton," "Homeland Security," and "detention centers" in the same article doesn't make me feel safe at all.
I fairly frequently receive those questionnaires from friends via email. You know the ones: What is your favorite food, where were you born, are you a night owl, which testicle hangs lower?
Well today in my inbox was another one, only this one came from my uncle, which shocked me. I'd expect him to react in a similar way to those as I do, delete them and then secretly curse the friend that sent it. So I was intrigued that he'd filled it out, and more so that he included me on the list of recipients. As I went through, I noticed that I was his answer to 2 questions: Who do you least expect to send this back? and Who are you most curious about their responses to this questionnaire?
The dubious grammar of the second question aside, I decided I had to respond to it.
I wanted to share two things from that with this blog:
First, my answer to the least favorite foods question:
I’d like to criminalize sweet potato cultivation in the continental US; I’ve come to think most donuts are nasty; I’ve tried a croissant and it reminded me of stale flaky bread; I’d love for someone to explain to me why pork chops are special. But special distain is reserved for Ener-G gluten free white rice bread (untoasted). It was the first gluten free bread I remember getting. You had to order it mail. There were years when it was the only alternative to baking your own gluten-free bread. It is so dry that it actually sucks moisture out of the surrounding air. You could pack things with it instead of those little pouches of toxic moisture reducing crystals. They should deploy it to flood areas. I tried it again recently and all this came rushing back to me. It turned into a sort of pasty goo when you chewed it. Those adults in my life when I was a kid who were able to taste it and then smile as they said, “It’s almost like real bread,” were amazing actors. And saints for eating it along with me.
And second I really wanted to sneak in the above testicle question, or something similar, to see if anything noticed (I figured I'd skip that since there was family on the dist list).
The next one I get from a friend is going back out with some additional questions slipped in the middle. Any one else have some ideas? I also came up with "Ever had a hooker?" "Circumcised?" and something obscene in the place of "Diamonds or Pearls?"
It’s astounding. I can actually feel myself getting older in this meeting. Life is slipping out of my body, seeping slowly into the uncomfortable wine-colored chair.
I cleared out the 500 or so items from my email inbox. I wrote some emails (which will be sent when I reconnect). I updated a document. I’ve been sitting here so long that I’m able to witness plate tectonics in action. I swear I saw the ground move outside. I’m expecting a mountain range to develop outside of Baltimore over the next million-odd years (or perhaps by the end of this same meeting next week). And now I’m typing out this post.
This meeting made me less interesting. It sapped some creativity from my soul. I will meet someone in twenty years and he or she will walk away from me thinking, “Jesus Christ, that guy, what a freakin’ drag. Talk about boring.” And it will be because of this meeting. This post has undoubtedly suffered significantly, it must read like the musings of a dry log in the desert. Actually, a dry log in the desert would likely have a slightly more to say, and it would definitely be more compelling.
I had to bite my nails during this meeting. Not because I was stressed, but because they have grown since this meeting started; like a dead person’s fingernails.
I can no longer sit still, although in this particular case, even the normally amusing image of me squirming through a meeting is dry and soul-sucking.
There is no good way to end this post. Like this meeting it can only continue on and on and on. Aimlessly. But not aimlessly in the carefree sense of the word. Aimless with no goal, no end in site and no hope of attaining any sense of closure.