As if Things Weren't Bad Enough…

• DECEMBER 29, 2008, 1:54 P.M. ET

As if Things Weren't Bad Enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S.

The Goodbye Windows

Roberto raced across the station house to the glass windows facing the platform. He climbed onto the wooden bench set against the windows and pressed his wind burned face to the glass. The warmth of his breath formed a small circle of fog on the cold window.

"Roberto!"


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The Rothchilds

The Rothchilds

Excerpt from “A Good Death”

“Moving Image Blog”

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James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own
By James Saft

CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) - Yes, Virginia, the banking crisis will one day end, but what comes after promises to be even more arduous.

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Biscuit Clock

Just one of the many photographs in my Picasa Gallery.

Spider In The Morning

There was a spider in the morning hanging in wait, on a web, in wait for prey to come to it.

Review: The Day The Earth Stood Still Remake

The Day The Earth Stood Still

Really, why bother with a remake of a great film without expanding on its original theme. The original was about extraterrestrials enlisted with the safety of the galaxy fearing the space bound Earthlings encroachment upon what we are told is a peaceful galaxy. We already do that to each other here on Earth but we're not space bound anymore so what do the space police have to fear from us now? Nothing. Which is why this movie is pointless. Sure they may have taken note of how we abuse ourselves but we're not exporting that anywhere. We're a pimple not a virus. Unless we decide to head for the stars again, and that I'm sure won't happen any time soon, we could be left to kill ourselves. A good angle might've been a sequel. However, perhaps a version that reveals a secret escape by the elite from our planet without telling the rest of us. Aliens arrive to reveal the truth and all hell breaks loose. the aliens don't want the elite to travel into space spreading their disease throughout the galaxy.

A One World

One could imagine the world under a New World Order, a dark place, the populace under the grip & control of a ruling class that cares nothing for those of us on main street, a world first imagined in George Orwell's "1984". But would it be? Should it be? Will it be? Perhaps not. Not to support or approve the idea of a single world government, I could just as easily imagine the world being far more stable than it is at this moment. What is the benefit of repression when a populace might be better controlled through acquiescence achieved through complacency, appeasing the populace, keeping everybody happy. A populace kept happy would in the majority find no reason to complain. Why fix what's not broke. You might even blog your misery over complacency, but the complacent may never listen. This state of affairs already seems exist and our addiction to media content from a seemingly bottomless distribution model is more powerful than any drug or form of repression.

War

War never really ends, does it?

We imagine, hope that when the shooting, the bombing, the dying ends that the war has ended with it.

No.

War is not so much a physical activity, but a conceptual task that represents so many different things to so many whether you have participated or not. All of it dependent on why and who has participated.

He remembers why he went; patriotism, to serve his country, a devotion he could not explain but felt in his heart, butterflies churning in his stomach, not of fear but of anxiety that he should be part of something.

Another, drawn in by non-participant warmongers and patriots, was convinced that, though you may hate it, it was his duty, patriotic or otherwise.

Yet another had been running away and hoping the commercials were right, though it may mean going to war, that in the end when he returns home, everything would be right because he would have something proud to stand on.

A Child Screaming In the Halls

Nevertheless, the fighting continued within them, the bombs, the rockets, the gunfire, the flamethrower, screaming everywhere. A child’s screams echo in the hallways and he can’t imagine anything else but a child shell shocked from war. He runs up the stairs to the apartment door from where the child is screaming. Pressing his ear to the door, he listens, unsure of what to do. Why is the child screaming? This goes on for several nights. The child’s mother confronts him outside on the stoop where she berates him for stalking them. Her husband is serving now. She sees our hero as weak; a coward, for not handling himself better. A real man knows why he goes to war. War is as horrible as anyone can imagine but there is no reason for a man not to act like a man.

Paranoid of a Small Dog

All he could think of was shooting, someone, something, anything. He held the .45 in his right hand pointed down at the dog. The dog looked up at him, sniffing then licking the cold barrel, whimpering a query as to what it was that he held. The dog had missed him so much in his absence that whenever possible it followed him about the house, sat beside him waiting to be comforted; and he did. But the he couldn’t help but feel the dog was stalking him. Wherever he looked, the tiny dog was there, its face innocent in its need for comfort, and satisfaction; but wasn’t there always more? All sense of trust and empathy had been left behind on the battlefield. The war hasn’t really ended for him. He imagines that only his own death can end the war for him.

The war won’t ever end for me will it, perhaps when I have died.

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