White Space

Don’t be mad at me, for saying it, but I want snow for Christmas. I don’t care if it doesn’t snow again, but on Christmas day I like the white.

Honestly, I wouldn’t mind a light coating year round. It covers up a multitude of sins: fills in the places on the shutters where the paint has cracked and peeled; evens out the lumps in the lawn; covers over the un-raked leaves; makes our undulating driveway look like something out of a poem by Frost.

Even squirrels look good in the snow: their tracks are intriguing, mysterious, nothing like the little beasts themselves.

All tracks in the snow, whether from cars or people, deer or dogs, seem to suggest something better passed this way.

Even the rain dripping off the telephone lines, criss-crossing our driveway, leaves tracks in the snow.

And just a light coating of snow softens the world in so many other ways.
Cars crunch by, a bit louder perhaps but sounding very similar to the sound the snow makes when you are rolling up the first scoops of a snowman.

The harsh sounds that we normally make when we speak to one another, just seem to come out of your mouth and lie there, at your feet, when there’s snow.

Even the shape of the world is changed, after just an hour of two of steady snowfall.

One car looks just like another.
Mailboxes wear hats.
The leaves in the gutter look like Frosted Flakes.
Our Weber grill looks like a poached egg waiting for a spoon.

It makes you want to explore areas that, just an hour or two before, you couldn’t be bothered to look at as you passed.

It makes you want to visit friends, who though they live right up the street, you haven’t seen in months. Arriving at someone’s doorstep in the snow, makes you feel as if you are as bright and capricious as the weather.

Some friends are snow friends, aren’t they? There are some people that you can’t imagine visiting, surprising, in the snow. But there are others who seem to be waiting for just such as occasion.

Dan and Sally are just such friends. Friends I always wait too long to see. The last time I visited them was, when the Tiki torches were lit, I think? Or was it the Halloween I dressed up as the ‘Undecided Voter’: that was spooky!

I bet it will snow when they read this column.

Maybe I should just leave the rest of this column blank: leave a little white space.
Maybe if you are quiet, and wait, and watch, this column will begin to fill up with white.
It will be indiscernible at first, filling the margins that are already blank, but then beginning to cover up the words, line by line, paragraph by paragraph, until all that remains showing is the first line: “Don’t be mad at me for saying it, but I want snow for Christmas. I don’t care if it doesn’t snow again, but on Christmas day I like..

Pillar Fight

Georgie is at it again: I suppose we should be happy that at least he's come out of his hole, even if its only so that he could tell us how hard he's been working.

And what has he been working on - why Victory in Iraq, don't you know: a detailed (as far as he will go at least), three-pronged strategy for defeating the terrorists, re-building the country, and spreading democracy. Kind of like a series of fertilizer treatments, to kill the crab grass, encourage the good grass to grow, and make the lawn nice and green so it fits in with the neighbor's lawns.

The 38 page report that they distributed today, concludes with several pages of what they call "The Strategic Pillars":

The first pillar is "Defeat the Terrorists and Neutralize the Insurgency", which even I think is an improvement on their previous strategy of attracting terrorists and ignoring the insurgency. Of course they just kind of ignore their past mistakes, and hope no one notices. "Heck," their spokesmen say, "this has been the plan all along. Honest!".

The second pillar is "Transition Iraq to Security Self-Reliance", which is a hoot: kind of like saying, 'transition the junkie to a drug-free mobile home park'. Easier said than done. And what happened to those hordes of well wishers that were going to greet our troops like Jesus on his way into Jerusalem? And you know how that turned out.

The third pillar is "Help Iraqis Form a National Compact for Democratic Government", which is awkwardly put, but I think means that we are going to lead the horse to water, and then make him drink, as soon that is, as we get the water running again, and the oil, and electricity. Once the lights stay on, Democracy is a cinch.

Pillar Five is "Help Iraq Strengthen its Economy", which is something I think we should have thought of before we bombed the crap out of every major city in Iraq. But hey, its kind of what the new owners of a sports franchise would do after paying the big bucks for the team: raise ticket prices, knock down the old stadium, and build a new one with taxpayers money, being sure to add plenty of sky boxes for rich sponsors. Right now they're negotiating with a major corporation for naming rights: not for a stadium, for the whole country. They were all set to go with Enronia, but that pillar of society had its own problems.

Pillar Six is "Help Iraq Strengthen the Rule of Law and Promote Civil Rights" and after they're sure that this pillar is up, they're going to try and do the same here in America. It's going to be difficult though, what with the way George has been dissing the Geneva Convention, arguing for the right to torture prisoners, laughing at the world court, hiding prisoners all around the world and letting the local Taliban screw with everybody.

And then on the same day that they offer up Pillar Seven -"Increase International Support for Iraq", it's revealed they've been paying millions to a contractor who pays Iraqi journalists to slip in propaganda pieces into Iraqi newspapers. Oh well, at least they're trying. And anyway, after Abu Ghraib and the discovery of the secret torture prisons run by our favorite Iraqis, I don't think they are really serious, or care, about their reputations.

And this was always, the report insists, part of their master plan all along. Even that 'Mission Accomplished" banner and George posing in San Diego harbor, were part of their brilliant plan for victory in Iraq.

"You see I was pretendin," George seems to be saying, winking and grinnin, and squinting at the teleprompter. "I was pretendin we had already won, to fool the terrorists in to thinkin they had already lost, to lull them into a false sense of security, so we could sneak up on em and hit them with this big plan here, and these pillars.."

"And lord knows in a pillar fight -at least the kind like me and Condi have down in Crawford after the misses is asleep, the guy with the biggest pillar wins every time.