Hey Look: I’m A Terrorist!

And so are you and you and you and… So are over a million (yes that was million) other Americans, from farmers to fast food employees, according to our august President of the United States.

That’s the news according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as reported by Bretbart.com today. It’s really nice to know that such known terrorists such as Senator Ted Kennedy and Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela are being watch by the highly trained and well qualified staff of the Bush Administration’s Department of Homeland Security.

I fee so much safer now! (Mandela was finally removed from the list by an act of Congress.)

It also makes me feel just so much more secure to know that all those dead bodies on the list won’t be coming after me because they’re now being watched by Homeland Security too. And even if they wanted off the list, the loyal Americans that maintain the terrorist watch list wouldn’t let them get off! According to the ACLU, any government law enforcement agency can put you on the list, but only an act of Congress can get you off of it.

So never fear: That long dead third cousin twice removed that hated your guts will no longer be allowed to deceive the American people — or at least the American government! Never again will they be allowed to rise from their grave to attend those secret terrorist rallies with Ronald McDonald in Twinky Hall SD. After a long and tireless search, that long dead cousin has finally been exposed!

Now… Don’t you feel safer?

The Weird Vacation: Away!

Okay. I have to confess, I hadn’t realized it until I was there, in camp, sitting around the camp fire, too exhausted to even want to get up and go to bed, listening to East fork Creek babble by: I’d been on the battle field of life for two straight years — and much of the time I’d been on the front lines.

I also hadn’t realized, until I was sitting there, just how much had happened. Never, never, had I been tasked to spend so much time out “in the world” without rest, without time to retreat and reflect. Never, never, had I been pushed so hard to remove all those partitions that we create in our lives to prevent us from making any real progress in our personal evolution.

You know: The “personal life” and the “romantic life” and the “professional (or work) life” and the “private life” and so on. All those charming little compartments that we sagely think we’re using to understand ourselves. But that, like religions, soon become important for their own sake, rather than being the tools they’re supposed to be.

Well, in the true fashion of the wierd it was time for them to go, and so go they did.

Until finally there was only me… Just me… Sitting by the fire in a little camp ground in the mountains. Not the “I’m on vacation” me — though that was very true. Not the “I’m on a spiritual retreat” me, though that too was true.

No, there was just — me.