My Mind is a Monday Mush
Last night, as I tossed and turned, my mind swirled with a heap of weekend experiences that had to be filed away in that peculiar method unique to the human brain, i.e. dreams. Top among my nocturnal musings was a last ditch attempt by the sports area of my brain (called the athletica oblongata) to try and salvage the Twins' vanquished season. I awoke at 4 a.m. following a dream that replayed last night's ninth inning, an inning when, in my dream, the Twins rallied to win 25 to 13. "Nay," said my waking mind as I wiped away a fresh collection of eye boogers. "The Twins lost last night. They did not rally. Go back to bed and dream of scantily clad women, or the Comedy Central movie Porn N Chicken. By the way, I laughed heartily during Porn N Chicken, but only because I'm a guy a short attention span and a soft spot for low grade porn jokes.
And even as I contemplated such mundane things as the Twins and Porn N Chicken, the rest of the world was still digesting the latest round of terrorist activity, namely, an al Queda attack on a nightclub on the Indonesian island of Bali and a second round of shots fired at U.S. troops in Kuwait. These are both incredible victories for al Queda because, well, um, er, because. . . because. . . give me a second, it will come to me. . . because al Queda really gets off on coordinating meaningless attacks that result in death.
I guess I wasn't too surprised to hear of an attack in Indonesia. After all, that area has been vehemently denying terrorist activity, despite strong evidence to the contrary, since the U.S. started pointing fingers after 9/11. In addition to being a hotbed of terrorist activity, Indonesia is also a paradise that attracts Western interests. And everyone knows that Western interests and terrorist activity go together like Sonny and Cher or Dick Cheney and a Culver's Butter Burger. Suddenly, Indonesia is re-evaluating its stance that it not a haven for terrorists. The deaths of nearly 200 people and the threat of losing a lucrative tourism lifeline will do that to a country.
It's the shooting attacks in Kuwait that I find more ominous. Here's a country that was steamrolled by Iraq 11 years ago, its population raped, tortured and killed, its national wealth spirited away to Iraq, its oil wells torched. It should have nothing but gratitude to the U.N. and the U.S. for pulling its ass out of the fire. And yet, American forces are being shot at in Kuwait.
How do you reason with people who are totally incapable of reasonable thinking? How do you even begin to understand a cause that believes blowing up revelers streaming from a nightclub somehow constitutes a victory? For me, these people aren't terrifying because of their wanton acts of destruction. I'm more terrified that people can actually be conditioned to believe what they believe, and to reconcile those beliefs despite a world of common sense fluttering right before their eyes.
I don't know. Maybe I'm just upset that I'm at work on a Monday morning. Perhaps something more humorous will come creeping its way into my mind later today.
Posted by Ryan at October 14, 2002 10:26 AM
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