We're burning Catcher In The Rye today...

I'm always asked how someone from Hawaii could ever end up in the midwest. Honolulu to Milwaukee is not a normal migration, I'm told. I don't get why not. There's cheese and beer and the Packers and...cheese and...snow...pretty snow. you can pee in the snow. When you're drunk. With nowhere else to pee. I swear officer.

So anyway, as beautiful as it is, Oahu is a really small island in the middle of a really big ocean. It's literally as big as an...ocean. In every direction.

When a hurricane or a tsunami or a tidal wave hit we would evacuate to...higher land. There were a couple of options for higher land: (1) head toward the closest mountain or (2) take three steps away from the ocean (which, now that I think about it, is the same thing as #1...you're either heading toward the mountain or away from the mountain, as my mom would say). Both #1 and #2 offer exactly the same amount of protection from impending natural disasters.

So, I've moved from Honolulu to Champaign-Urbana to Chicago to Milwaukee. I'm slowly migrating north. Like a really confused swallow. Which I don't.

I think I can finally give a proper explanation: I'm trying to get as far away from the Mason-Dixon line as possible. Those folks in Green Bay have got something going for them. Not the accent. That's just wrong. But, they are as far from the crazies known as Southerners as could be without being Canadian. Which come to think of it, isn't such a bad thing anymore. The joke's on us Americans apparently.

I know that G.W.Bush has ushered in a new era of, as Bill Maher put it, "a promise not to overthink shit," but I mean...come on already. Our president and Congress and certain state governments (which, again, I'm trying to move as far away from as I can) have espoused the notion that it's just as possible, realistically speaking, that God created the universe as the whole Big Bang/Evolution nonsense.

There's the whole post-a-tablet-of-the-Ten-Commandments thing outside of southern courthouses. Which of course leaves one to wonder what to think when looking at said tablet and reading "Thou shalt not worship idols." "That's powerful stupid." Yes, Bill Maher, it is.

There's a, you know, Attorney General who couldn't stand to see liberty's private parts. I'm guessing that's some indication of the whole "the right to privacy lies in the penumbra of rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights." Again, overthinking shit. I know. I'm sorry G.W.

There's a whole goal to do away with pornography, starting with redefining "I'll know it when I see it" to "shit I wouldn't want people to know I do." Wonderful. I guess the War On Terror didn't poll well enough in the red states. I never thought I'd fight for porn, but, you know...if it pisses off the Religious Wrongs, I'm all about it.

There's the whole WMD, then biological warfare rationales for the war in Iraq. Then the Saddam-Hussein-tortures-people. So we invade using what, I would imagine to a 13-year old with a pistol on a camel, looks like a WMD and torture people until they tell us what we want to hear. Then they die. And we take pictures of it.

And then, I found this article that just topped the sugarless, low-carb, low-calorie cake.

"(Prussian Blue) considered the Olsen Twins of the White Nationalist Movement"

Of course nothing should be surprising anymore. The last election was skinned and stripped and boiled down to two choices.: "Bush doesn't want boys kissing each other" vs "Kerry wants to make all boys kiss each other all the time." Thomas Jefferson, an opponent of boys kissing I would imagine, turned over and spit in his grave. So much for Jefferson's whole: "the purpose of education is to develop citizens who will become responsible voters."

Why would I move from Honolulu to Milwaukee? The Mason-Dixon line is moving farther north and I'm trying to ease my transition to being Canadian.