This morning Heidi and I were exercising on these odd, gazelle-like machines at the local sweat factory. Fortunately, they have placed teevees up at the front of the room so we never have to go without our regular diet of media. And the sweaty can tune their headphone enabled radios to specific frequencies to listen to the broadcast while in the facility. Of course, these days the teevees are all tuned to news stations with complete war coverage.

The familiar night-vision green dominated all three teevees this morning. Since I don’t have a headphone enabled radio, I was forced to make up my own reports to go along with the images of fluorescent destruction.

The images looked exactly like the ones we saw more than a decade ago. Perhaps they are the same ones. How would I know any different? Seeing how I don’t claim to know a damned speck of truth about this whole war, why should I feel any more informed by the same distant images provided in unison by every teevee station?

As my gazelle-like machine edged up my heart rate, I considered how it is with people in power. No amount of protesting dissuades them from their cause. Both George and Saddam are convinced of their cause and their rights to defend their cause. At least I’m guessing they are. Could be that George quivers in fear at night and Saddam wets the bed. More to the point, people in power are only persuaded by power. Not the kind of peace and love flower power that lights candles, but the big bombs and bigger wallets that light up the sky with burning skin. It’s all a matter of energy folks. Fossil fuels and nuclear reactions simply contain more energy than 300,000 people in face paint.

Am I saying that protesting is pointless? No sir. That’s not it. Protesting is entirely relevant and can have an effect. I’m just asking in what form protesting is most effective. Let’s say that rather than actors and musicians speaking out, Bill Gates scheduled a private meeting with George Bush and explained how he felt that war without a real threat would jeopardize the global image of the United States, thereby hurting sales of the next three editions of Windows and limiting the contributions that Bill could make to George’s 2004 reelection campaign. Would George back off? Perhaps if enough of the Bill Gates’s did the same such thing, let’s say 50 of the richest people around. Could 50 personal meetings with the president have a larger effect than the 300,000 people all over the world begging for peace? I think we know the answer to this. It’s all a matter of power.

On Sunday, Mark is taking me to see Stephen Hawking at the Mondavi Center in Davis, California. I have to admit that I’m pretty geeked out about it.

I’m hoping to meet Professor Hawking and speak with him about the nature of floating foam. Once I enlighten him to the physics of foam, I am sure he will quit trying to find a theory of everything and work full time on the theory of my internet writing. I can already see his next book jacket….

Mark sent me that picture, so I can’t take credit. I’m the one growing out of the back of Professor Hawking’s chair.

Click the link below and read with me today.

Where is Raed?

And now to our war room, where floating foam correspondents are standing by, holding hands and pitching sharpened pencils into the acoustic ceiling tiles…

What do we do now? Shall I adopt an opinion and start making signs to support it? I’m a little out of sorts about the whole thing.

In January of 1991 I was playing billiards at a recreation room near my dorm at Texas A & M University. I believe I was having a pretty decent game when the camera crews arrived. What better place to gauge popular opinion than in the recreation room of a major university! The producer scouted the room. While jarheads are not uncommon to the university, the recreation room was overwhelmingly filled with ROTC men. The lone goof in the room, I had already taken inventory of my appearance and how it might suddenly provoke these boys into a frenzy of anti-punkness. But I was with a girl which chemically altered their normal hatred into a mild form of bigotry, one whose primary components are sneers and leers.

The camera crew finished their survey, the producer’s head stopped swiveling and I knew I was the one she wanted. From across the crowded recreation room she saw that my hair was slightly long, that my clothes were slightly punk, that my attitude was slightly different than the other bruisers in the room. She mistook my appearance for a well informed opinion of dissent and while I travel mainly on the peaceful side of ambiguous wars, I was star struck by the camera and unable to even state my name.

Here I am in 2003, still star struck, wondering what I know and what I think I know about the war that will start today. Perhaps it was reading MacArthur’s Second Front or my general distrust of everything that happens outside of my skull that has led me to my current frame of mind. When I consider war in Iraq I feel like I’m chewing on pudding. Maybe someday all of this will make sense, and we will know what really happened in our quest to de-Saddam the country of Iraq. Someday we will have numerous books written by both sides, someday when we are too old to comprehend it or too dead to care.

That’s all from the war room. Back to your regularly scheduled internet.

Remember how security was an important theme in the story I’m working on? Well, it still is. But so is absurdity. In fact, at one point I stressed the importance of absurdity to the Woodland 4 by telling them that if I had my way, I’d have guys humping turtles in the film.

Chris made the picture above based on my description of the logo for Guardian Security Systems. I sent it out to the four because I thought it pretty much nailed what I was trying to convey in the outline for the script.

Mark thought it needed a little tweaking.

Good night. Sleep tight little turtles.