Is anyone polite anymore? Is anyone honest anymore? What doom will befall the world when we all close ourselves off from outsiders and sit in isolation, letting only a frightened media in on the TV or PC in through the locked doors from time to time? Do we all want to be millionaires? Survivors? Jackasses? Does anyone truly believe in what they are fighting for? Is anyone fighting for anything worthwhile, anything unselfish, anything that can't be given a ten-second soundbite and summed up like the plot to a trashy novel, all steam and heat and nothingness? I confess to being a culprit as well, I confess to being alone, does the world have a place for the best and brightest to bring reason and intelligence into the debate? Would it overload the majority mind to consider the alternatives? When did egotism become fashionable, when did self-centeredness become as sacrosanct as ancient theories of the earth being the center of the known universe? When did we start to disassociate ourselves from our selves?

Enough is enough already. I am declaring myself President of the Untied States of Amerika.

Icicle chips in my head, windows glazed over like the coating on a krispy kreme; sweet and bitter cold melts my mind; I am suspected of having a heart it's the same as the frozen layer of a pond, fish trapped in ice, physical memory wrapped in muscle tissue; the brain stem has sprouted a new leaf, ready to unfold if the neurotransmissions are right, powered by the sun and the wind and the water-wheel flow of blood churning over it, powering the soul.

Fine. Let Bush be the next president. If history repeats itself, he is destined to live in fear of an assassination attempt. Since 1840, every president elected in a year ending in "0" has died in office, with the narrow exception of Reagan, who almost died. Most have died at the hands of an assassin. Not that I relish the idea of a President Cheney, but I suspect that being the wizened political veteran that he is, Cheney would do less damage to the office than Bush.

Actually, what they should do is just call it a tie, and let Bush and Gore settle the issue with a duel at twenty paces. (It's not as if a President has never engaged in a duel; our 7th Prez, Andrew Jackson, actually killed a man in a duel over his wife's honor). They don't have to use real guns; give them paint guns or something. And run the loser out of town; maybe like out of some campy Western; strap him backwards on a horse and whip the horse, get him running at a full gallop (poll) right out of town.

Well, it would be better than letting the lawyers settle the issue. Let the courts settle it, and we lose all sense of dignity; at least a duel evokes some lost vision of honor.

I wish I could do this with some consistency. Not that my life depends on a daily outpouring of whatever scraps of thought I can dump onto this blog, but still... Just writing a little bit every day is a good exercise, it keeps the mind sharp, I think.