A theme that my mind routinely re-visits is that of mankind as builders, the curious satisfaction we derive from physical labor. Of course it's not just physical labor that satisfies us, it's physical labor with a purpose. It's the goal, the vision, that makes all the difference. To dig a hole only to fill it back in is the punitive drudgery of penitentiaries, but to dig a hole for a building's foundation is a source of honor and pride. The current US Poet Laureate, Donald Hall, wrote:

Work, love, build a house and die. But build a house.

(I think if I had written that I would have used the word home instead of house, but that's probably why he's Poet Laureate and I'm just a goober with a computer.) I believe Hall sees, as I do, that the sense of accomplishment in building, the pride of constructing something new is an essential part of the human experience. It's interesting too, that the pride is never completely fulfilling and invariably fades with time. We build. And we rest. But then we build again. Often building things we don't even need (witness urban sprawl) or want. So it appears that though the goal is important and necessary, the real satisfaction lies somewhere in the building itself. There's something genetic, or more likely evolutionary, at work here. Donald Hall also wrote:

Contentment is work so engrossing that you do not know you are working.

That contentment is where my mind has been dwelling lately. Fresh off my mediocre success at constructing a violin, I'm now spending all my spare time building something else I don't need; a very fancy birdhouse. Check it out.



And no, I don't play a lick. Maybe I'll take a lesson when I finish this thing. At least building it keeps me out of the taverns.

As an aside, I went library-ing today looking for Donald Hall's book of poems on the early death of his wife from leukemia called Without, but I didn't have any luck. I did find his book of non-fiction prose on the same subject titled The Best Day the Worst Day. One chapter was enough to give even a hairy-chested manly man like myself the sniffles.

I've been sort of re-living my recent little ride while doing maintenance on my scoot. It helps divert my mind away from the extreme desire to ride up to Milwaukee and kill every single Harley-Davidson engineer. It's just maddening (and there's no way it's accidental) that every task, even the simplest, requires about a dozen different tools. SAE and metric sockets and wrenches, SAE and metric Allen wrenches, regular screwdrivers and Torx drivers. The only thing certain is that every bolt or nut or fastener will require another trip to the tool box. As I was saying, it helps to think about something else while working on the bike instead of dwelling on the frustrations. So as I've been tearing the skin off my knuckles and cursing like the ex-sailor that I am, I've also been reflecting on the trip and the general re-booting of the spirit it provided me. To say it was a pretty good trip overall is like saying the sex I had yesterday afternoon was pretty good. There's really no such thing as bad sex, is there? As a good friend of mine always says, the worst I ever had was wonderful. It's pretty much the same with motorcycle trips. As long as you keep the shiny side up, you've had a good ride. I'm posting the stats on this one and looking forward to the next.

1700 - miles ridden
4 - states visited
3 - close encounters with cages and not coincidentally
4007 - number of people seen driving poorly because they were talking on a fucking cell phone...ARRGHH!
3 - old friends visited
2 - wicked hangovers suffered
50 - dollars lost playing poker
3 - days before my ass stopped hurting
41 - percent of Americans who believe "Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was directly involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001,” according to a new Newsweek poll. The number is up 5 points from Sept. 2004.

I threw that last one in there because it just fucking blows me away. 41% and rising. Sometimes I have to laugh to keep my own sanity. Is it just me or is something seriously wrong with our country when going on half of it's citizens don't have a clue what's going on?

On the bright side though, Pearl is good for another 5000 miles, so I'll be contemplating the problem with my knees in the breeze.

Tomorrow morning I'm hopping on the bike and taking off for a few days. I've been making a mental list of things I want to try to fit into the saddlebags. There's precious little room after essentials like extra clothes, rain gear and a tent. For my reading pleasure I'm bringing along a little paperback I picked up a while back called What We Believe But Cannot Prove: Today's Leading Thinkers On Science In The Age Of Uncertainty. I'm sure it's a thriller. The title alone has got me going off on my own little thought exercise.

I believe (but cannot prove) that al Qaida was really just what they looked like. A few hundred nut-job religious zealots bwahaha-ing in the desert about their grandiose plans of ruling the world. I believe 9/11 was essentially a Hail Mary pass that a complacent America wasn't bothering to defend against. I believe al Qaida as an organization was rendered all but irrelevant within months after 9/11 by our invasion of Afghanistan and the seizing and freezing of their assets world-wide. I believe that the entire War on Terra from that point on has been nothing but a sham. I believe this because it is the only explanation I've been able to come up with for some of the most glaring inconsistencies of dubya's prosecution of that war.

I believe our government figured out right away (or already knew) that there really wasn't much of an enemy to pursue in Afghanistan. They dropped some monstrous fucking bombs in the desert which I'm sure made some impressive holes in the ground and they rounded up all the remaining religious kooks they could find and shipped them to Gitmo, but then what? They basically just classified Gitmo and everybody there as double super top secret and forgot about them. Why? Why no high-publicity trials for the worst offenders? It seems odd for a preznit that likes to boast about protecting Amurka. I believe the answer is very simple. I believe that the only truly dangerous people held at Gitmo will turn out to be so very obviously insane that the idea of a public trial for them is ludicrous.

I believe this lack of a coherent and powerful enemy led our government to it's current policy of what it calls preemption. All the Axis of Evil and WMDs and "you're either with us or against us" bullshit is really just camouflage for a create-your-own-enemies program designed to project American military strength abroad.

I believe this explains why we've not seen any serious attempts at subsequent attacks in this country. It's not that our government is capturing the bad guys and not telling us. They trumpet every arrest they do make. Remember the half-dozen homeless doofuses in Miami who were led to believe they could take out the Sears Tower? Or the Fort Dix dumbasses? Or the more recent New York guys who thought bombs travel down pipes. I believe it also explains our government's distinct lack of haste in beefing up security at our nation's ports and other sites like chemical plants, nuclear plants, dams and reservoirs.

I believe, in reality, our Terrorist Threat Level forecast color is Clear ... with occasional scattered mythology-based craziness.

One of the excuses I heard the Dems use last week to justify caving in to the preznit's demands for funding to continue the Great Iraq Debacle was that they were somehow sending the preznit a message that this was the beginning of the end of the occupation. Dubya has responded like a boxer throwing a cheap shot after the bell.

WASHINGTON, May 30 (Reuters) - President George W. Bush would like to see a lengthy U.S. troop presence in Iraq like the one in South Korea to provide stability but not in a frontline combat role, the White House said on Wednesday.

The United States has had thousands of U.S. troops in South Korea to guard against a North Korean invasion for 50 years.

Pow! When are these sniveling Democrats going to get tired of getting their asses handed to them like that? It's pitiful.

Now the preznit has decidered that 50 years and counting of border guard duty pretending it is vitally important to maintain a tiny democratic pimple on the ass of Asia looks like a good example to follow. Within days the right-wing noise machine will have made it common knowledge that it has obviously been our plan all along to become a long-term benevolent protector keeping the communist terrorist hordes at bay. See, we'll have to stay for the Iraqis own good. They just can't get their security situation resolved on their own. It's a shame, but it's really their own fault.

Of course it's all bullshit designed to let dubya kick the whole situation down the road a little farther. And by the time events on the ground show the world that holding off an external, non-agressive enemy is really nothing like battling an internal enemy that's constantly blowing shit up, the C-plus Augustus will have moved on to the next Big Idea, leaving the Dems still jawboning in his wake. Like I said, pitiful.