ZOMBIE DREAMS by Peter Nolan Smith

Four springs ago Brock Dundee hired my driving services for a road trip across the Midwest. The Scottish filmmaker was seeking out the statues of a dying Irish sculptor in Middle America. His plan was to video the works and then film the the artist seeing his works for the last time.

My boss at the diamond exchange wasn’t happy with my taking off two weeks.

“He’s paying me $1000 a week.” I had been asking for a raise for the last year.

“Have a good trip.” Manny had a good head for numbers. He was saving my salary and fought off another attempt for an increase in my salary.

“Sei Gesund.” I wished the eighty year-old well in Yiddish. His only other language was almost dead.

A week later Brock and I flew to Chicago and hired a car at O’Hare. The Scot didn’t know how to drive, but he unfolded a map to plot out a route on the Interstates.

“No fucking interstates.” I ripped the map off his lap and threw it in the backseat.

“Aren’t the interstates faster?” Brock wanted to visit five statues in St. Louis, Kansas City, Des Moines, and Minneapolis and we had eight days to cover six big states.

“Only if you’re heading to shopping mall.” I-80 was rammed with SUVs and long-haul trucks. I pointed out a state trooper cruising in the opposite direction. “We want to stay far away from them.”

“Aren’t there speed traps on the back roads?” Brock’s vision of rural America had been formed by the movies DELIVERANCE and EASY RIDER.

“The cops go where the money is and that’s the interstates.” I turned off I-80 at exit for Peoria and turned to Brock. “Welcome to The Fly-Over.”

“Fly-Over?” The Scot was unfamiliar with the American term.

“This is the land you fly over from New York to LA.” The square states of the Midwest are mostly flat corn fields. They offer little for New Yorkers, Californians, and Europeans.

“I get it.” Brock relaxed in his seat. He had chosen me for my ability to take the least obvious course of action for the next week we avoided the Interstates like a plague.

Our path wandered along a flooded Illinois River down the broad Mississippi across the spring farmland of Missouri into the terra incognita of Iowa.
Sometimes my Scottish friend and I didn’t have any human contact for hours. The straight roads were devoid of cars. Everyone was on the Interstate heading to a WalMart.

South of Des Moines I remarked to Brock, “Not many people living out here.”
“No reason for anyone to live out here.” The small towns were empty and the big cities looked, as if they had been hit by a neutron bomb.

“Young people move out as soon as they finish high school.” The farmboys treated their boredom with crystal meth. They hid well of of sight.

“Leaving only the dead and the dying.”

“Like we were in a zombie movie.” It was almost as if the real world had been replaced by scenes from MAD MAX II and I accelerated to 100 mph. We hadn’t seen any police cars in days.

“I haven’t seen any zombies.” Brock scanned the bare expanse of fields on either side of the road.

“They would starve out here.” Zombies liked cities, because fat people were slower than them. “I once had a horrible dream about zombies.”

“Really?” Brock took out his camera and shot a minute of the passing void. This trip was as much about us as the sculptor.

“It was 1975. I was 23 at the time. I had caught a Trois Estellas bus from Monterrey, Mexico to Texas.” I hadn’t thought about that bus in ages. driving the car must have resurrected that memory from the grave. “It was a long ride and I was reading a book by HP Lovecraft. THE TERROR AT INNSMOUTH. The bus stopped in a small town. I ate a taco. It tasted a little funny and that night I fell sick with food poisoning. I checked into a small hotel at the border. The Mexican side was cheaper. I lay on the bed with a fever. I read my book and fell asleep. Sometime in the night I dreamed I was being chased through a garden by slow-moving zombies.”

“I hate the way zombies moved fast in RESIDENT EVIL.” My Scottish friend was a horror film buff and he turned to camera to me. A nod was the signal to start my monologue.

“Slow zombies are classic, but there were too many of turtle dead in my dream.” I had told his story a thousand times. It was like reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. “They cut off my escape and I ran to a gazebo. Old screens to keep out mosquitoes covered the windows. I locked the flimsy door. The zombies huddled around the gazebo. Their breath smelled of rotting flesh. They scrapped at the screen with long yellow fingernails. Their teeth ground in anticipation of sinking into my flesh, then a voice deeper than a six-foot grave said, “Tell us the secret of human life.”

“The secret of human life?” Brock like interrupting my spiel. He felt the breaks gave me time to collect my thoughts.

“I didn’t know what the secret of human life was and there was no stalling the zombies either. When they’re hungry, they’re hungry. They broke through the screens. I shut my eyes expecting the worse.” I usually stopped here to check, if I hadn’t lost my audience.

“You’re not supposed to die in dreams.” Brock was listening to every word. He picked up the map. We were coming to a turning.

"Freud said everything was driven by pleasure or death. Death in dreams was a way of understanding your personal sexual repression levels or you hated yourself, which wasn’t the case, since I was 23.” I put on the left-turn signal. The intersection didn't even have a name.

“Freud’s full of Oepidal shit. I’ve seen photos of his mother. She wasn’t worth killing his father for, of course Jung had a different take on death in a dream.

“Screw both of them.” My story had no place for dead psychiatrists. That territory was reserved for Woody Allen. “I tried to wake up, but couldn’t and I heard the voice say, “Tell us the secret of human life and I’ll let you live for another minute.”

“So what happened?” Brock was expecting a horrible demise.

“I realized the secret of human life was that no matter how bad the 61st second would be I still wanted the next 60. The urge to live.”

“And did you tell them to secret?”

“No, I woke up and foiled their attempt to destroy Mankind."

"A hero."

"It's not everyone who saves humanity in their sleep." It had seemed so real, but my flesh bore no teeth marks. " So I’m not really scared of zombies.”

“No?” Brock said that word, as if he wasn’t convinced about their status as myth.

“Zombies exist only in movies and video games. Not all of them bad. You ever see SHAUN OF THE DEAD?”

“That’s not a real zombie movie.” Brock was a traditionalist as was to be expected from a Scot.

I agreed that the British flick wasn't scary, but it was funny and after my dream I like funny zombies better than scary ones. We drove west toward Kansas City. They supposedly had some pretty women their according to Wilbur Harrison’s hit song from 1959.

A pretty girl had to be more fun than a zombie.

Culiacan, Mexico 1975

In the winter of 1975 I rode a train south from Mexcali. The journey was slow on the sun-warped rails. Our stops included towns without names as well as bigger cities.

Hermosillo-Guaymas-Los Mochis.

I got off in Culiacan at dawn and hitchhiked to Matzatlan. Route 15 ran through the Sonoran Desert. The temperature rose with each hour. Winter was very hot in Mexico.

Matzatlan lay on the Pacific. After a few days of hanging on the beach, I took a bus a short distance to Teacupan, a small village on mangrove estuary. I traversed the town and bought three tacos and six beers. I found an abandoned hotel on the beach. The sheltered ruins echoed the waves crashing on the sand. I pulled out my transistor radio and listened to Mexican rock, watching the stars cross the evening sky to a destination before the dawn. After the fourth beer my eyes closed for the night and the universe tugged my soul not to the cosmos, but oblivion. It does give a good sleep.

The next day was Sunday. Families came for a break from the heat. The women cooked food, the men drank beer, the children played in the waves. They paid no mind to a lone gringo.

I went for a swim. The water was rough. I was a good swimmer. A young child was caught in a riptide. His mother screamed from shore. I was chest deep and snatched the boy from Neptune‘s grasp.

Ashore the locals toasted my heroics.

“It was nada.” Only stepped a few feet.

Not to them. I had saved a life. They invited me to eat and drink with them. Later I played soccer and fucked up my knee. They left at sunset. I drank my last beer and watched the sun drop into the Pacific.

Never lonely just alone.

Foto by Jocko Weyland

Bring on the Revolution - 2011

Last week I went out to eat with my nephews and their parents at a Mexican restaurant on Okochobee Boulevard in West Palm Beach. The conversation gravitated to sports; baseball for Trey, golf for Reese, and basketball for their father and me. Their mother was happy to be left in peace. After dinner we stepped into a warm Florida night. There was no one in the parking lot.

Looking at the colorful mural on the wall, I said, “Mexico 1968.”

“What about it?” AK’s slender and ever-beautiful wife responded with interest. We were more friends than before. I was good to her kids and nothing earns trust from a mother faster than treating their spawn well. My clan was far away in Thailand.

“Summer Olympics was held in Mexico City.”

“More like the Autumn Olympics. For some reason they were in October.”

“Summer or fall didn’t matter after Bob Beamon set a world record in the high jump at the altitude of 6000 feet. Rightfully never an asterisk for that jump." My individual best had been in my senior year. 1970. 19'6".

“He broke the previous record by a foot and a half.” AK joined in the telling. He was my age. 1968 was our youth.

“The world was on fire. Only the week before hundreds of students had been shot by the Mexican army and the streets of America were on fire after the assassination of Martin Luther King.”

“Could we talk about something else?” AK and I went back over thirty years to 1973. He was no born-again conservative, but the right-wing Storm Front had their headquarter meetings not far from here, White people in Florida tend to be whiter than most whites elsewhere in the USA and my talk was incendiary to white people, but the parking lot was empty.

“Let him talk.” AK’s blonde wife taught music at a private school. The curriculum was restrained by religion. She appreciated my loose tongue. ”

“Other places were in revolt too. Viet-Nam, Paris, Prague.”

I sang the first stanza of the Rolling Stones’ STREET FIGHTING MAN.

“Everywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy, cause summer’s here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy.”

AK rolled his eyes. He was more into R&B than rock, having played in the Authentics, a Boston funk band, to pay for his tuition at Berkeley School of Music. On our cross-country trip in 1974 AK had taught me how to play the kazoo.

"No one at the Olympics protested the death of hundreds of Mexican students. The army was in the streets. The olympic committee banned any protests by the athletes. The best runner in the world was Tommie Smith, 220 and 440 champion. A black man."

“From California.” AK was a sports nut too. Knicks versus my Celtics. We had played countless one-on-ones on the playgrounds of Boston and New York. He dominated the first twenty years. I outlasted his knees during the 90s, although now neither of us were in good shape.

“Tommie Smith set a world record in the 220.

“Time 19.83 seconds.” AK was showing off sports knowledge to his sons.

My best time in the 440 was 54.8 seconds. About thirty yrds behind Tommie Smit's best.

"At the medal ceremony Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the bronze winner, lifted their fists during THE STAR-SPANGLED banner to protest the mistreatment of blacks in America.”

My best friend in school is black.” Reese was named after the Dodgers' Pee Wee Reese.

“And what he say in class the other day.” AK was a Brooklyn boy at heart.

“That his father had been killed in Iraq. His father was a soldier.” Reese was eleven. Old enough to understand that death meant death. His younger brother believed in Santa Claus. I wished that I did too.

“Probably a good man as was the silver-medal winner from Australia.”

“Peter Norman wore an American “civil rights” badge as support to them on the podium.” AK remembered the incident better than me. “The Olympic Committee banned Smith and Carlos from the Village and Norman was dropped from the 1972 team.”

“The good are always good at the moment of their best.”

I explained the myth of the rights of man. My nephews were fast studies and loyal nephews. We were two miles from The Breakers Hotel. I told them a story that I had heard three years ago.

“The beachfront hotel had been a world-class destination for over a century. The railroad tycoon Henry Flagler completed construction on his resort for the rich in 1896. That night Flagler held a BBQ for the laborers on the golf course. While they feasted on ribs and chicken, Flagler ordered his goons to burn out the workers’ bungalows, thus insuring that no poor people will ever live on the barrier island.”

‘Is that a true story?” My oldest nephew asked his father. We had been friends for almost forty years. The West Palm Beach school teacher shrugged with suspicion.

“True as far as I know.” My source had lived in Palm Beach since her childhood, but was no historian. “But that wasn’t right either. That’s why we protest against the evil in man.”

“Your uncle tells a good story.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Interesting if true. That’s you.”

My nephews and I posed before the Mexican mural with raised fists. Their mother took the photo. We said good night. It had been great to see AK and his family. The last time had been in the summer of 2008. Things were better now.

Later that night I went online to find out the truth about the Breakers.

It wasn’t there.

Then again the truth is yet to be told.

Bring on the revolution.

The youth is with us and we are coming for your children.

Chili Chili Bang Bang

Several years ago the City of London was thrown into a panic by a eye-searing cloud. Police swept the streets for the potential terrorist only to discover a Thai chef preparing his monthly supply of chilly sauce “nam prik pao”.>

Firefighters in bio-hazard suits removed the cooking pot to the protests of the chef.

"I was making a spicy dip with extra-hot chillies that are deliberately burnt. To us, it smells like burnt chilli and it is slightly unusual. I can understand why people who weren't Thai would not know what it was. But it doesn't smell like chemicals. I'm a bit confused."

Anyone driving a motorcycle by a Thai foodstand on Pattaya's Soi Buakhao has been subjected to chili peppers' choking fumes, however Thais regard the acrid aroma with the same delight Westerners hold for burning BBQ flesh.

I'm partial to chilis having been initiated into their benefits through Mexican food in 1970. The Phoenix Room on Commonwealth Avenue was the only Mexican restaurant in Boston. The one-armed Mexican chef prided herself in her blinding chili sauce and rightfully so because Mexico was the source of the chili pepper.

Thais refuse to believe their signature spice was farang, for peppers have been discovered in 13th century graves in Europe and Christopher Columbus introduced the Mexican chili to the 'civilized' world, so that 'Capsicum frutescens' spread along the trading routes into Asia, as people recognized its nutritional values as well as its propensity to accelerated the heart rate and facilitate the release of the body's natural painkilling chemical, endorphin.

Thois Londoners in Soho were not so receptive and neither are most farangs in Thailand, who regard chilis as a poison, especially when they exit from the other end of the digestive system.

Me I eat them regularly and can handle most everything in Thailand, except those chicken feet in the Chinese soup.

Yech!

Run for your lives.

Ying Gai La-wang.

Culiacan, Mexico 1975

In the winter of 1975 I rode a train south from Mexcali. The journey was slow on the sun-warped rails. Our stops included towns without names as well as bigger cities.

Hermosillo-Guaymas-Los Mochis.

I got off in Culiacan at dawn.

The coastal city lay on the Gulf of Cortez. The temperature rose with each hour. I had not come to Mexico to be here and took a bus a short distance to Teacupan, a small village on mangrove estuary. I traverse the town and bought three tacos and six beers. I found an abandoned hotel on the beach. The sheltered ruins echoed the waves crashing on the sand. I pulled out my transistor radio and listened to Mexican rock, watching the stars cross the evening sky to a destination before the dawn. After the fourth beer my eyes closed for the night and the universe tugged my soul not to the cosmos, but oblivion. It does give a good sleep.

The next day was Sunday. Families came for a break from the heat. The women cooked food, the men drank beer, the children played in the waves. They paid no mind to a lone gringo.

I went for a swim. The water was rough. I was a good swimmer. A young child was caught in a riptide. His mother screamed from shore. I was chest deep and snatched the boy from Neptune‘s grasp.

Ashore the locals toasted my heroics.

“It was nada.” Only stepped a few feet.

Not to them. I had saved a life. They invited me to eat and drink with them. I played soccer and fucked up my knee. They left at sunset. I drank my last beer and watched the sun drop into the Pacific.

Never lonely just alone.

Foto by Jocko Weyland

The Wall Of Trump The Great

The Great Wall of China was built to defend the Middle Kingdom from barbarian incursions and control border trade. Both the Mongols and Manchus breached the barrier to establish foreign empires.

Last year the Chinese film industry released THE GREAT WALL.

The enemy were lizard beasts.

They were stopped by a gwai-lo Western warrior.

And the Great Wall.

Millions of illegal aliens have flooded the USA.

ICE or the immigration gestapo have been overwhelmed by the numbers. White people are scared of losing their status in the USA.

Very scared.

Donald Trump capitalized on their fears and during the 2016 presidential election vowed to build a wall along the Mexican border paid for by Mexico.

Good idea, right?

Our neighbor's ex-President offered one gesture to # 45.

The rest of Mexico feels the same way.

So who will pay for the Trump Wall?

Americans, despite Trump's claims to force Mexico to later settle the cost of the $38 billion construction.

So far nothing has been built.

Just the same old wall as before serving to keep America safe.

Out in the middle of nowhere.

Or even more in the middle of somewhere.

Hundreds of firms are vying for the contract.

Here are some of the designs.

Wie der Berlin Wall.

A wall five times the height of # 45.

Or just say you're building a wall and charge the Mexicans for it.

The great con.

Keeping America great.

Dirty Donald Trump Sanchez

The Dirty Sanchez is a mythical legend about the sexual aftermath of anal sex.

It's all a joke, but on Wednesday GOP presidential hopeful flew in his private jet to Mexico City at the invitation of Mexican President Peña Nieto. Both men needed political boosts. The New York billionaire trails Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate, despite the intense distrust many Americans feel for the ex-First Lady. Enrique Peña Nieto is also troubled by scandal and murderous violence from the drug cartels, leaving him with a wretched 23% approval rating. The two men met at the National Palace in hopes of gaining traction from the encounter. They spoke about migration and trade.

The two politicians shook hands and wished each other 'via con dios'.

Trump jetted north of the border.

He told reporters that neither man had mentioned 'the Wall' or who will pay for it, although at a rally Donald Trump once more shouted to his followers that Mexico will pay for the coast-to-coast Wall.

$32 billion US, despite only 38% of voters supporting the Wall.

Trump still feels the pull of Mexico in this election.

It's his one big thing.

Along with the deportation of 11 million illegal aliens on the first day of his presidency.

With what army?

The Mexican Army?

What an idiot.

But then this is America, the land of the freaked.

Anything is possible with idiots at the controls.

EL TOPO

I've been working with Mexicans at the metal shop for the last year and a half. As always I try to improve my language skills and I help them with English. The other week I gave Oscar, who has prevented my fingers from getting ripped off my lathes or pierced by drill presses, the movie EL TOPO by Alejandro Jodorowsky. I explained the surrealistic story line of a mad gunfighter or pistelero loco. Oscar had walked across the Sonoran Desert for three days. He finished his water within 24 hours. "On the third day I thought I was going to die, but I said, "I am not going to die here." I walked another day to the pick-up. Everyone was happy, because they figured me for dead. So I know surrealism, but you know what an el topi is." "A gopher." "Si, pero tam bien caca." "Shit." "Yes, because when you take a shit in Mexico, we say, "Se me sale le topi." Because the shit is like a gopher sticking his head out of a hole." "No way." "Si." We had a good laugh and Oscar took the film home. He never watched it, but we still laugh about 'el topo'. Mexicans have a good sense of humor.

No Se Olvide L'Alamo

On March 6, 1836 thousands of Mexican troops under General Santa Ana stormed the Texas stronghold of the Alamo. None of the defenders were shown mercy and to this day Texans rally to the cry 'Remember the Alamo'.

On Monday Governor Rick Perry announced the mobilization of the National Guard to conduct air and ground operations to help the police and border guards stem the tens of thousands of illegal aliens swarming over the border.

“Drug cartels, human traffickers and individual criminals are exploiting this tragedy for their own criminal opportunities,” Mr. Perry said, adding, “I will not stand idly by while our citizens are under assault, and little children from Central America are detained in squalor.”

I work construction in New York. The large percentage of workers are Mexican or Irish or European. There are few Americans, because once the labor unions were smashed by the GOP, jobs were given to anyone other than Americans to prevent the re-establishment of organized labor.

My friend Oscar crossed the Mojave Desert for three days.

He had two bottles of water.

They were gone the first day.

"I thought I was going to die."

Oscar is not a criminal, simply a man looking for work, but I'm not living on the Rio Grande, so I understand the Texas governor's need to control the border, however the Texas border is 1200 miles long. He is deploying 1000 National Guardsmen. If they work 8 hour shifts, that means 1 National Guardsman for three miles of border, where the temperature runs in the high 90s, but the Guard is used to deserts, having spent almost ten years in Iraq. At least there won't be any IEDs.

But wait a second.

100,000 US troops tried to stem the insurgents from crossing the Iraqi border, which has a length of 1500 miles. Result = failure, because idiots like Rick Perry and George W Bush don't understand math.

My friend Al Harlow took acceptance to my comment, "Perry is an idiot...because he wants to defend our border?? At least he's attempting to do something..

No, he's an idiot to pretend that 1000 national guard troops who spent 10 years going back and forth to Iraq will fix this situation. The numbers do not add up to anything other than a window dressing. Most effective would be changing the name of Dallas to Tijuana and Houston to Guatemala City.

Plus the ratio of frontline troops to support i.e. tooth to tail is 1 to 3 or 1 soldier for every ten miles of border.

So Rick Rerry is still dumber than a stump in those glasses.

Al Harlow argued, "I'm sure he doesn't mean the guardsmen will be holding hands to span the border....they will use more troops to beef up patrols in between outposts...Mr. Obummer needs to send a Division of troops, (10 to 30,000) and take the border security seriously."

The Mexicans take the border seriously.

I know, because Oscar almost died there.

Y Oscar es me amigo.

CHINGADO

There is something fucked up in the world. Iraq is fucked up, Afghanistan is fucked up, but Mexico is chingado. Seven murdered men were found in a park in Michoacan. Their corpses sat in plastic chairs. Each head was hooded, but red stains told the tale in Uruapan. "Warning! This will happen to thieves, kidnappers, sex offenders and extortionists" was posted on their chests. Summary executions are fucked up, but only one group of people write like this. And in America those people like donuts. Chingado!

No I Wouldn't MILA KUNIS

This afternoon my co-workers and I delivered ten bronze planters to the penthouse apartment of a .0001% billionaire. The live-in super explained that the owner of the ultra-luxe duplex come to New York for football games played by his NFL team. Over forty workers were busy readying this palace for his weekend arrival. After Oskar and I humped the weighty planters across the terrace to their designated plots, we admired the vista of a misty Central Park with the sun struggling to burn off the clouds. "It's lunch time." Oskar tapped his watch. "Let's go." The elevator shut from 12-1 and neither of us wanted to be trapped in someone else's paradise for an hour without food. The super rode us down the freight elevator and we beat the meter maid to our pick-up. Oskar got behind the wheel and headed over to the Queensboro bridge. The foundry was in Greenpoint. "I like the girls in Manhattan." Oskar had been in NYC for fourteen years. His home town was Mexico City DF. His wife came from Colonia Maza, which neighbored his native Colonia Felipe Pescador. "You think they are beautiful?" I scanned the streets and sidewalks for a mujera bella. "There are thousands everywhere you turn." "Veridad?" I saw none and thought about how an actress Mila Kunis had been chosen sexiest woman in the world. She did nothing for me. Oskar pointed out a score of women on the way to the bridge. None of them met my approval. "Maybe you like boys?" "Vete ala verga." It was a harsh reaction, but the Mexicans are super macho. "I'm no maricon. I just don't like these women. They look like they haven't had sex in twenty years. Back in the 70s I stayed in Matzalan. On the first floor was a cantina, the second was a pool room, and the third was a bordello or a beso negro." "You know these words?" Oskar was making nice. He knew my reputation. "In the whorehouse was the most beautiful girl, but she only had one hand. She lost the other in a car accident. The pimps called her One-hand. Her real name was Maria. She came up to my room every night for two weeks. She eyes shone in the moonlight like pearls and her skin was smooth as a shaved peach." I hadn't thoguht about her for a long time. "She was better-looking than any of these dried-up putas of the Upper East Side." She had held my body like I was the son of Nanahuatl, who had escaped sacrifice to become the Aztec sun. "How long ago was that?" Oskar turned onto the bridge. There was very little traffic. "1975." She had smelled of other men until we showered together. "I was ten." "It was a good year." For Matzalan girls who lived up the stair with all that perfumed hair and it came undone, when I was 23. I opened the window and we cross the East River high in the sky. Oh, Maria, I miss you so.

Shoot Shoot Shoot

GOP VP wannabe Sara Palin coined the campaign phrase 'drill, drill, drill' to highlight her belief that America's woes could be solved by drilling for oil yesterday, today, and tomorrow with the frozen Bering Sea targeted for immediate exploitation. Her supporters picked up the chant without realizing that commodity speculation by investment banks and Wall Street investors were the main cause for $4/gallon gas. There is no shortage and calmer minds ignored the 'drill drill drill' mantra, however Joe the Plumber, another relic of the 2008 election, appeared at an Arizona fund-raiser to tell the audience, "For years I've said, you know, put a damn fence on the border going to Mexico and start shooting. I'm running for Congress and that should be a bad thing to say. But you know what, it's how I feel ¦I want my borders protected, I'm very very adamant about that."

The following morning the Ohio candidate for Congress showed up at another rally and reiterated his statement by saying, "I'm running for Congress. How many congressmen or people running for Congress have you heard, put a fence up and start shooting? None? Well you heard it here first. Put troops on the border and start shooting, I bet that solves our immigration problem real quick."

Shoot shoot shoot certainly trumps drill drill drill, although Joe Wurzelbacher refused to confirm in which direction the troops were supposed to shoot; north, south, east or west, but given Americans' complete ignorance of geography any direction will do as long as the bullets start flying and his supporters get the message.

Guns are good. Shooting them is better. Killing is the best.

Of course Joe the Plumber announced to the Phoenix News Times that he was joking.

Their poll says that nearly 90% think that he was serious as Charles Whitman.

Joe also blamed gun control for the Holocaust.

But that wasn't a joke.

GOP GOP GOP hah hah hah.

1968 Olympic Moment

In 1968 I ran the 440 and 220 for my high school. My best times of 54 seconds and 28 seconds weren't even close to my hero Tommie Smith and I dreamed that one day I might get below 50 seconds in the 440 and 26 in the 220. Tommie Smith ran a blistering 200 meter race in Mexico City to break the world record with a time of 19.83 seconds. Australia's Peter Norman came in second with the USA's John Carlos winning the bronze. At the medal ceremony the three medal winners stood on the podium. At the first bars of the national anthem Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised gloved fists to protest the treatment of blacks in America and Peter Norman wore an Olympic Project for Human Rights badges to criticize White Australia. The trio left the stadium to boos and Tommie Smith said afterward, "If I win, I am American, not a black American. But if I did something bad, then they would say I am a Negro. We are black and we are proud of being black. Black America will understand what we did tonight." Tommie Smith is my hero to this day and that moment sticks in my mind as strongly as the Tank man in Beijing. Smith and Carlos were casket bearers at Norman's funeral. There were three that day and one day we will be free. The painting is by Tristam of Paris' Steaming Musselemn. He is my hero too.

MIstaken Identity

Mexico's war on drugs has claimed over 55,000 lives in the past six years of President Calderon's rule. The police and army have been corrupted by traffickers shipping cocaine and marijuana to the USA. Last week officials claimed to have arrested the son of a notorious drug lord. The DEA were quick to congratulate the successful capture and the news media crowed about yet another turning point in the war on drugs only to later discover that the arrestee was a car salesman with no connection to the Sinoloa drug cartel. Thankfully he doesn't seem to have been beaten into admitting that he was who the drug officials wanted him to me, but someone may have already been paid $5 million for the information leading to this fake arrest. Opps. President Obama remains firmly committed to battling the drug lords of America down to the last joint sold in a medical marijuana store, but Uruguay has decided to sell marijuana from state stores to curtail the rise in murders between drug gangs. The government seeks to register all reefer smokers, but if marijuana is legal, then it should be legal to grow it for self-use. Costa Rica and Guatemala are also considered the decriminalization of drugs. Police are in favor of the legislation. The Church is worried about the souls of pot smokers. The Senate will have to decide on the controversial measure in the months to come. Hopefully they will come out for full legalization. The War of Drugs has been lost. It's time for someone to admit 'mission unaccomplished'.