Dear Dirty America

CAR WRECK SERIES: PRELUDE – GOOD TO BE IN THE BODY SCANNER BUSINESS


I’m sitting here extra early waiting for my flight out of this treacherous cardboard city where money and vomit flow almost as smoothly into and out of everybody who dares touch with the soles of their cheap faux designer shoes the hallowed pavement of the Jungle. I’ll be landing in Fargo, North Dakota, where the white settlers have, more or less, a stronghold against the remaining tribes of rogue Indians.

I’ve been in a whirlwind since Memorial Day weekend. Nasty, sudden car wreck. Long hours walking in the sun. Mild concussion. Severe dizziness. One hundred phone calls to insurance agents, adjustors, a wild doctor, and family members. Then, last weekend, I had an interview with TV star Drew Roy for a men’s magazine. We talked about aliens, Steven Spielberg, and imagining disastrous global calamity. Now I’m here, in the middle of the most dangerous morning hours in Los Angeles, sitting in an airport that will be under construction for the rest of civilization.

If those opening paragraphs are psychologically or syntactically muddy, it’s because I’ve had another rousing shot of radiation by the TSA body scanners — and let me tell you that’s one hell of a business to be in. Selling body scanners. All you need to do is set up a goofy underwear bomber plot, and if your name is Michael Chertoff, you already have the scanners in large warehouses waiting to be sold to airports all across the nation and the world.

First, as always, you need that terrorist threat. Then, the money gets flowing — away from the majority of taxpayers, and mostly into the already-stuffed coffers of Wall Street and one hell of an expansive, overreaching Federal Government.

The airport, this morning, is rather quiet. It’s dreadfully early, and my brain is still swimming from that powerful radiation soak. But, I was cleared. I’m all good to fly, this time. But next time, they won’t trust me. It’s always good for only one flight, and then you’re back on the suspicious list again.

Every American is suspicious. Except the people who let 9/11 happen on their watch. No, they aren’t to be blamed or hustled about about the goddamned thing. Not their fault. In fact, Dick Cheney and George Bush say nobody knows how to keep the country safe like they do. I never understood it, but then again, I’ve never been brilliant. Especially with simplicity.

As I’ve mentioned, I had a strange set of days after Memorial Day weekend. On the start of that memorable weekend stretch, an 88-year old prescription pill addled freak blew a red light and tore into the front of my car. Luckily, her vehicle didn’t hit my driver’s side door — it was a foot in front of me — otherwise I wouldn’t be typing this now. I’d probably still be hovering around the scene of the accident waiting for a taxi to take me home. I would be an invisible ghost, so nobody in Los Angeles would see me to tell me I’m not living any longer, and I can just drift off to the next realm. Not that any driver in this city would have time to deliver that message anyway, even if my ghost was visible to the common eyeball.

I’ve written a rather sappy account of the whole ordeal, but only recently published it on DDA. It’s weird to talk about your own car accident, especially when there are US predator drones in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia that destroy entire villages and apartment complexes of people, just because one suspected man with terrorist sympathies lives in a basement in that area. But hey man, tragedies are relative.

So, my car got ruined, I could’ve been killed, but I wasn’t. I just lost my favorite vehicle. Nothing to be torn up about, considering the other injustices of the world. And, speaking of sadness, America still hasn’t quite gotten over its loss of Dick Clark.

I’ll wrap this up because my plane is boarding. Barack Obama was in town yesterday evening, and he snarled up traffic like only a fascist could. I mean that. One man with the testicles to allow an entire city of 4 million peasants get bungled up in their cars for hours because his Highness needs to go to an LBGT gala, and then a fancy dinner to raise another $15 million or so?

In my perceived world, a president shuts up and doesn’t talk until he’s told to by the general public. And he only addresses us through his aides and chief members, but never, ever does a president talk to his or her people directly. That’s fascism. No one person represents a country.

Either way, there’s glory in this. President Obama and his Secret Service boys came rolling into LAX this morning, and they pushed to the front of the line. The president was fleeing LA after he’d lost his mind in a complete emotional breakdown. Most of us were shocked to see a president going through regular security lines. The TSA swarmed. When Mr Obama refused the body scanners, he was forced to strip down and get patted by a pair of white-gloved hands. The TSA agent, I can assure you, was thorough.

No pictures were allowed, but I snapped one just in time.

The president wears colorful shorts, and he also takes care to keep his stomach trim.

Mr Obama was caught in his web of ultra-security and anti-terrorism tyranny tactics. He kept asserting that he was the president, but the plump woman with stiff braids of hair coiled onto the top of her head told him that’s great, but if he won’t cooperate, he’ll have to sit in the detention cell until the marshals show up. This is not surprising coming from the TSA. Once you hire a bunch of thugs to weed out criminals, you eventually have to deal with the thugs. Speaking of thugs, the TSA earlier this spring detained the Senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul, for a few hours. He’s a senator. They dug through his orifices anyway.

It’s the American Way, these days, and it’s an ugly game. But it’s the only game…. It’s good to be in the body scanner business.

Stay tuned for more as I trek across America.

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