I am absolutely appalled by what I just experienced. I'm watching "Meet the Press" and Russert's got former Sec. of State Lawrence Eagleburger and Sen. Fred Thompson debating the issue of war with Iraq, two important men who reflect and have a real impact on actual foreign policy, when suddenly the broadcast is interrupted by a National Weather Service Emergency Alert telling me there's a flash flood warning (it's raining lightly outside here), and I can still barely hear a muffled Meet the Press in the background but in the foreground--in the foreground, obscuring all else, IS AN ADVERTISEMENT! SOME WEIGHT LOSS ADVERTISEMENT IS ATTACKING ME THROUGH THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM WHILE MEET THE FRIGGING PRESS IS DISCUSSING THE WORLD'S MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE! Apparently I'm so fat that I need to concentrate on that instead of the FUTURE OF MANKIND!

I pray that those weight loss guys somehow hacked the alerts system because the alternative is just too insane to bear. How long can it be before DF Wallace's vision of a future with subsidized time comes true and we start writing "Year of the Trial Sized Dove Bar" on our utility bills and rent checks?

I was too lazy to do any real work today, so I uploaded some junk here: my current Tritisms list, and some critiques of current science fiction television programs (since some maniac keeps emailing me episodes of all of them).

Tuvalu is the world's second smallest nation, occupying an island chain in the South Pacific with a land area of 10 miles and a population of 8000 people. Surrounded by calm turquoise seas and deep blue skies, its palm-fringed beaches, glimmering coral reefs, and beautiful placid lagoons receive less than 1000 tourists a year due its remoteness and lack of commercial development.

Before the late 1990s, Tuvalu constituted its GDP largely through the sale of postage stamps. But then, by a stroke of luck their Polynesian ancestors could never have comprehended, they were assigned the internet domain extension (root-zone) .tv, which for reasons still not entirely clear to them, happened to be a very important abbreviation for Westerners. The Tuvaluans suddenly became the caretakers and brokers of a diamond mine none of them could see or quite grasp, and their fortunes rose well into the fluffy clouds above their perplexed heads.

But now, through another system of events that seems to have nothing to do with them beyond its impact, their little coral atoll may be disappearing. Rising just 13 feet above sea level, Tuvalu will be the first to encounter the effects of Global Warming, and may soon cease to exist. An entire nation and an entire culture wiped out by environmental neglect. A pristine paradise submerged by the cruel waters of the ocean all around it.

This terrible tragedy looms on the horizon for all of us, this terrible loss and this terrible blow to the world. For when Tuvalu disappears, what will become of all those web-sites registered to .tv domains? When Tuvalu disappears, so will its root-zone; and all those domain registrations will simply vanish from the Earth, stranding millions of web-sites in a ghastly void. Oh Tuvalu, oh humanity!

Something must be done to prevent this calamity. Persuade your country to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Support Tuvalu in its lawsuit against the United States and Australia for condemning them to a watery death. Rich countries must be held accountable for this (and all their evidence of volcanic activity in Micronesia is just meant to hide the truth). With enough money, Tuvalu may be able to buy a new island, a taller one, and a new home for its root-zone. Save the .tv domain extension! Our future web-sites depend upon it.

I can't stop chuckling (yes, chuckling) over the image of all the sour-faced Tuvaluans, angrily slogging their way around their soggy island, cursing Detroit factories and LA motorists for Global Warming. At what point do you throw in the saturated towel, I wonder, and accept that your strip of coral has become submerged? When there's an inch of water under you? A foot? When everywhere there's a splashing? When do you decide that the sea has won, pack your wife and kids into the boat, and make for Fiji?

The Venetians still diligently lay out elevated planks for sidewalks when the Grand Canal overflows, and hike around like toddlers set by their parents on banquet tables. I suppose the Tuvaluans could do something similar, raise their buildings onto stilts, weave rope bridges to cross between them, erect great public platforms on which to congregate. They could be like elves then, or ewoks. That might attract a few more tourists down there. But stuff would still float away, and it would probably be difficult to grow much food. Good fishing though. From the living room.

September 11 will always be a fugue of images now, its subject the airliner flying into Building 2, its countersubject a myriad collage of videos and photos cast up like scenes reflected from broken glass left by its aftereffects. It is a day for which words will always remain inadequate, somehow typified by its labeling as a simple date; despite numerous attempts to assign epithets like Black Tuesday or Dark September, there is no means of naming it adequately, no name that doesn't seem a platitude. This is a phenomenon due in part to exhaustive media coverage, to swarms of camcorders and cameras, to a sometimes desperate attempt to somehow assign it a closed meaning. But it is also due to the unreal clarity of these visions, how graphic and vivid they are, how nightmarish and caustic. Images in themselves can never provide meaning; they can only inspire more images. And so today was filled by them, some new, most old, all conveying more confusion than information.
*
I'm watching a ceremony from New York where a parade of World Leaders passes through a new Eternal Flame monument set up in Battery Park to receive a candle lit from the flame, handed them by Gov. Bloomberg. So many have passed through, and their motions so mechanical and with such little variance in the confined space (in order to accommodate many camera angles presumably) that it's easy to imagine its some process of mass production, some machine conveyance of World Leaders passing through in order to distribute Eternal Flames across the world. What dread army is this? From what heart of darkness do they emerge?
*
In Afghanistan stands Geraldo Rivera, who seems to have left his heart in Tora Bora. He's there tonight pontificating on Osamabad's lost glorious kingdom (as well as Geraldo's own propped glory), attempting to sound casual as he speaks words he must have spent hours composing, both mournful and hopeful, sad and full of pride. Soon the story is over, the camera gone away, and we can only imagine Geraldo still standing there, casting his tired gaze over the demolished hillside with eyes like Ozymandias'.
*
Alarming is the footage from Britain of the crowd of Muslims demonstrating there (emphasis on the root word) in praise of 9/11, their slogans hung up on walls and barriers, proclaiming: "Islam: The Future of Britain", and "Islam Will Take Over the World", many with those tablecloths over their heads that are both so disturbing and amusing at once. If they wish to inspire our anger, to further defame their religion, to help identify themselves as our adversaries, then their publicity is successful. I respect an open and honest foe, one who does not pretend friendship in order to gain access to my back or my airliner. I appreciate any intelligence on where to aim my guns.
*
Mostly there are the faces: of the television news commentators, reporters, correspondents, producers, analysts passing words across the bottoms of a billion television screens; of the politicians, entourages, first and second ladies, pretenders and hopefuls and candidates otherwise, all queuing for a spot in the speech-mill; of the fanatics, dictators, warlords, brainwashed masses, children wearing bombs, women beaten by sticks and rocks thrown by madmen in the name of God; of the impoverished, meager poor and hungry, swept surrounded all their lives by events beyond their capacity to affect; of the soldiers, generals, support groups, field agents, all protected only by equipment and one other in a godforsaken wasteland tended by cruelty and desperation, working the shifts of rough men required by peace and justice; of the firefighters and police shrouded in the gritty fallout of 3000 lives and a million tons of debris; of the endless parade of mourning families, husbands and wives without the other, children in an instant orphaned and alone.

Two hundred and twenty six years ago this month, General Sir William Howe invaded Manhattan, having driven General Washington from Long Island the month before. Washington evacuated his army across the Hudson, while Howe, who liked his comforts, occupied the city (staying for seven bitter years) instead of maintaining the pursuit. This proved one of the greatest military blunders in history.

It was shortly after this terrible defeat, mired in mud, under rain and without shelter, surrounded by the moans of the dying and despairing remnants of the young Continental Army (down mainly by attrition from 10,000 men to 2000 dedicated soldiers), Thomas Paine took his quill and wrote the following on a drum head:

THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.
--December 23, 1776

The next night, on Christmas Eve, General Washington ordered Paine's essay read to the troops (to one of whom I am honored to connect my own lineage). Then he gambled everything by crossing the Delaware River in a desperate attack, routing the vile Hessians in the Battle of Trenton. He returned his army to Pennsylvania, then crossed back again to another victory in the Battle of Princeton. Afterwards, an additional 8,000 soldiers returned or enlisted to the cause of American independence. It was the first turning point of the war.

If you or a companion should become infested by nano-bots, a quick computer virus should take care of the problem, or lacking the necessary laptop computer and html skills, perhaps a blood transfusion (although this has never been attempted).

Tritism #29: Big Ominous Machine: Protag had better learn to both use and destroy that Big Ominous Machine he finds, especially if it glows or if the people around it behave oddly (see Lotus Eaters). (The Tritisms List.)

Yesterday, I rode in a subway car in which all the advertising spots had been updated. On one side they were all public service ads offering support to people still suffering from psychological or emotional trauma related to 9/11, with confessional personal anecdotes from people unable to get their lives back together and soothing slogans about caring and living and recovery. On the other side of the car, all the ads were for Budweiser.

As is self-evident, the ancient ways are best. Return me therefore to ancient Babylon! Great Hammurabi, Giver of Laws, yield unto me the wisdom to make right this world aflame with villainy! Provide me with the Code of Laws so that I may count myself the wiser hence.

Of the laws there are many, but the first of them is this:

If any one ensnare another, putting a ban upon him, but he can not prove it, then he that ensnared him shall be put to death.

Off with yon head, yon falsifier, yon ensnarer, yon placer of bans! Of the means of ascertaining your guilt and innocence in these matters of law, and of the judgments that shall fall upon ye, great Hammurabi spake thus:

If any one bring an accusation against a man, and the accused go to the river and leap into the river, if he sink in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house. But if the river prove that the accused is not guilty, and he escape unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put to death, while he who leaped into the river shall take possession of the house that had belonged to his accuser.

And lo the one man able to tread water became the king among them, for each in turn he wronged until challenged, then jumped in the river and laughed, spitting jets of water from between his lips even as his accuser suffered the loss of his house and of his head.

If any one take a male or female slave of the court, or a male or female slave of a freed man, outside the city gates, he shall be put to death.

How much trouble have we with the coveting of our male and female slaves, we freed slaves of the court? It is time the sword be put to those of such eager takings. But what of when our houses burn, and the firemen steal all our Ginger Snaps whilst about our rescue?

If fire break out in a house, and some one who comes to put it out cast his eye upon the property of the owner of the house, and take the property of the master of the house, he shall be thrown into that self-same fire.

At last some resolution to this timeless trouble! But what of these so-called sisters of gods that harry us while at table seemingly without end or modesty, begging trade of their bodies for our coin? Hammurabi has given us his guidance here too, for:

If a "sister of a god" open a tavern, or enter a tavern to drink, then shall this woman be burned to death.

At last! Who has not long missed the public burnings of the sisters of gods? But as with prostitutes, will it be for wives? How might great Hammurabi, Giver of the Code of Laws, decide the fate of the vile adulteress?

If a man's wife be surprised with another man, both shall be tied and thrown into the water, but the husband may pardon his wife and the king his slaves.

If a man violate the wife (betrothed or child-wife) of another man, who has never known a man, and still lives in her father's house, and sleep with her and be surprised, this man shall be put to death, but the wife is blameless.

If the "finger is pointed" at a man's wife about another man, but she is not caught sleeping with the other man, she shall jump into the river for her husband.

Yes, such is the necessity of honor. I see my slaves and women shall be well protected under the Code of Laws. And lo:

If a man is taken prisoner in war, and there is a sustenance in his house, but his wife leave house and court, and go to another house: because this wife did not keep her court, and went to another house, she shall be judicially condemned and thrown into the water.

Ha ha! Charade you are! Dear John letter my ass!

If a man take a wife and she give this man a maid-servant as wife and she bear him children, and then this maid assume equality with the wife: because she has borne him children her master shall not sell her for money, but he may keep her as a slave, reckoning her among the maid-servants.

If she have not borne him children, then her mistress may sell her for money.

A just world we shall finally establish, oh Great Hammurabi! I praise thee. But now I tire of the Laws, for from these several I have gained enough wisdom for some years. One day I shall return to them, and discover among them more ancient ways superior to our own, and learn anew how better to live life aright, and how the world should truly be.

On TV: Companies, corporations, and government agencies use Apple computers.

In Reality: Companies, corporations, and government agencies do not use Apple computers.

On TV: International terrorists are from Russia, Germany, or Ireland.

In Reality: International terrorists are not from those places.

My analyst, Dr. U. Jones, has tried to convince me that my problems are all my own, that the "imaginary people" are just my clumsy meat brain's attempt to assign blame and agency to forces beyond my immediate control, a personification of my problems. They're not real, he would say. I'm making things up. They're the product of a sick mind. The result of low volumes of pharmaceuticals in my blood.

But what if you're wrong, I asked him today, what if it's all true? What if there really are tiny women living in my computer who parade around on the monitor screen and take off their clothes? What then, Dr. Jones, what then?

Masochism, Dr. Jones insisted, is the reversal of a violent instinct upon one's self, since it is really a form of sadism toward the ego. The exhibitionist shares in both the shock and the perceived enjoyment of his or her exposure, which is compelled by a desire to look at one's own body as much as it is to display it to another. The masochist, it follows, shares in the enjoyment of the assault upon his or her self.

Mozart was 35 when he died, was the only response I could manage.

Inappropriate Standing Ovations. Some people and certain kinds of audiences seem willing to stand for even the most mediocre performance.

Death of Meaning #6: Qualification of absolute adjectives, as in "the most mediocre performance" (see above).

My computer has caught a virus: it now provides housing for a large collection of beautiful three-inch tall women (wearing little tennis outfits, slinky evening gowns, elaborate period costumes) who march onto the screen at regular intervals (about every thirty minutes as far as I can tell), and perform strip-teases that can last anywhere from several seconds to a full minute. Sometimes there are two of them, and they perform acts their mothers could never have anticipated needing to warn them against. It can be quite startling when they appear, and very disruptive. My coworkers seem offended.

I just found this among my files, dated April 16 of this year. The idea never panned out, but you'll see why, and you won't blame me, I think. It was still a pretty good idea:

I'll call this a "duography", because it will simultaneously be an autobiography and the biography of a randomly chosen other person. The two lives, mine and the other, will merge and blend and contrast and collide. I heard about this guy on the radio today who did this exact thing using Benjamin Franklin, and I was really disappointed because he had stolen my idea, even though he had come up with it first. I would have used Benjamin Franklin too.

This is how I'll get the random other random person, this is what I'll do, I love doing stuff like this: I'll submit a search to Google, and it will retrieve some names for me, and the first name I see listed in the results will be the name of the person I'll use. This approach doesn't suck at all, because it has so much I can use to entertain myself--I'm so excited. It has that necessary random element, that spark of chaos predicated upon social influence that shapes character in one's life, and so it will shape the character of this duography.

It's 10:30 pm on a Tuesday, I'm sitting in boxer shorts and a tee shirt, the air conditioner is running because it's unseasonably hot outside, Jane is getting married again to a person who isn't me again, my father is turning his swimming pool into a fish pond, and nobody ever returns my emails.

The question is, what search phrase do I submit to Google in order to get my random Other back from it? Since Google ranks its results by counting the number of links to a particular URL, it really returns a rank based upon popularity, and that's not really random at all. But worse, whatever name I find will be determined much more by the phrase I use to seed the search with. The only way I can limit this factor is to use the first phrase that popped into my mind when I came up with this idea, and this phrase was: "The Great American". This is actually pretty convenient: the use of a definite article should return some pretty strong names, names with lots of information about them that I can look up and do research on; the use of the word "American" will ensure that the person has some things in common with me, even if it's just their nation, and so I will be able to easily compare and contrast myself with them; and the adjective, well, what's the point of a biography about a mediocre person?

But I just realized, what if it's Benjamin Franklin? In that case I will be writing a duography similar to the one written by the guy I heard on the radio today. Benjamin Franklin would be perfect otherwise, of course. He and I share many things, such as having lived in both Philadelphia and Boston, and he's one of the few people in history I truly admire.

I'd better get it over with and do the search now. I'm drinking freshly brewed coffee purchased from Starbucks, smoking unfiltered Lucky Strike cigarettes because I'm a big coughing loser, and wondering what name Google will return to me when I seed it with the phrase "The Great American". I just opened my internet browser, and just for the sake of trying, I search on the phrase "". Google returned a blank page of zero results. Okay, I'll run the search now, why not?

The Great American. I copied and then pasted that phrase into Google's search box. This is so exciting, the anticipation is killing me. I clicked on the search button and I can see the first couple of letters of search results in the browser under my text editor. I'm scared to look now. I'd like to delay this as long as possible, since I'm committed to seeing this out and it would really suck to see a name like Michael Jackson there by some fluke, or the same of some guy I never heard of. I've decided that if Google lists several names in the first result, I'll pick the first name listed. Likewise, if there is only one name in all the results, then I'll choose that one. So there's a great chance the name could really be anything at all, given the chaotic and unpredictable nature of the internet. But wait, I just realized I didn't surround the name in quotes. In that case Google would be forced to return only those documents that actually contain that phrase, rather document with those particular words located somewhere in them. I may have just retrieved the roster of the Great Falls All American Football Team.

It's too late now, though, I can't start over. Is it too late now? Surely it must be too late. I cannot make any compromise here; once I start making concessions to mistakes, all is lost. I will accept the consequences of my potential blunder and use whatever name I find there, even if it is Quarterback Dale Schmidt. I dread having to locate information on him, though, if it really is Quarterback Dale Schmidt; I'll probably have to travel to all the way to wherever Great Falls is and interview him or something. That would really suck.

The anticipation is too much now, it's killing me, I have to look, I'm going to go look now, so hold on....

Oh my God. I can't believe this. Better see for yourself; here's the results I got back:

Great American Speeches
Visit Your Local Station, PBS Home, Search, Programs
A to Z, TV Schedules, shopPBS, Station Finder. ...

Description: Great political orations of the past century in the United States, for students of speech and American...
Category: Society>History>ByRegion>NorthAmerica>UnitedStates
www.pbs.org/greatspeeches/ - 9k - 16 Apr 2002 - Cached - Similar pages

Great American Speeches: Speech Archives
... link. Additional background stories and audio and video links will be added as each
episode of Great American Speeches airs on PBS over the next five weeks. ...

www.pbs.org/greatspeeches/timeline/ - 101k - Cached - Similar pages
[ More results from www.pbs.org ]

CountryStars.com - It's Country On The Web! Country Music
... GAC! Don't miss Willie Nelson on GAC's "Behind The Scenes"! Enjoy an interview with
Willie & exclusive performance of his new song, "The Great Divide"... more. ...

Description: Network airing country music videos. Includes a playlist, news and artist biographies.
Category: Arts>Music>Styles>Country
www.countrystars.com/ - 40k - Cached - Similar pages

Yes. It turns out the Great American is none other than Willie Nelson. Yes. Well... so be it.