I just landed back in New York. I cannot describe the feeling of pleasure I get when I get back to nyc. You feel so blessed to come back and realize that you live here. what a joy. anyway, You ever notice that there are people who are into golf? I mean, they're really into it. like, they like it. On the plane today I noticed an older couple watching golf on the TV in front of them. a hundred channels and they are watching golf. For me golf is boring enough to play, let alone watch other people play it on a TV. Couldn’t imagine. I would love to get in the mind of people like that and see what's going on. find out what makes them tick.

[o.k. check this out, as fate would have it, I am sitting in my favorite little smoke shop on fiftieth and lex in a big old leather chair just happy to be back in the city; in a few minutes we will begin shooting for the TV show trailer, and so I'm just chilling and typing here and this special comes on TV explaining how the US open is so cool because its this championship where anyone can qualify to play in it. even regular joes like you and me and that's what makes it so special. That in fact this one guy who's is this total blue collar worker qualified this year and couldn’t afford to go so he put himself up on eBay for a sponsorship and a north Carolina health care company got the high bid and gave him $7600 to pay for his travel and lodging and other expenses. The most he ever made playing golf. Now that's a cool story. I'm not sold on golf necessarily but I appreciate it a lot more now. goes to show, information is the key. The more we learn about something the more we can get into it. I'm telling you, I think sometimes that God is just really focusing attention on me right now, as if sometimes he just lowers his hands down and lifts me up and places me into situations as if to show me things... I can’t say I mind so much.]
 
Today Tree called me. which is rare. He never calls any of us anymore. Weird because I was just writing about him. right? the invisible hand. anyway, he didn't call to chat. He called because it turns out a good friend of ours from high school died over in Iraq. Dan Binster. Everyone called him Binky back then. when I first heard the news I was angry and sad. I felt for his family, but my initial reaction was ‘well it serves him right. he knew what he was getting himself into. what the hell was he doing over there killing people anyway? I mean, you go invade a foreign country, yeah there's a risk that you're going to get killed. And here we are mourning for the 1600 Americans who have died and here they’ve killed more than 100,000 iraqis so far....’ I warned Tree that I wasn't the one who was going to be sympathetic about this situation. I said bro I'm not the one to call about this. you know how I feel about America invading Iraq or any other country that isn't attacking us. now I thought Tree was going to be pissed at me for saying this. but he wasn't. he said he agreed with me but found it hard because these guys have their president coming on TV all the time telling them that invading Iraq is the right thing to do and that they're helping to free the Iraqi people and save the Americans. We both just sat there talking about how fucked the whole thing is and now one of our friends is dead because of this. and how many more American guys are injured or wounded in some horrible way? fucking bastard government. And now its home for us. a good guy right from our own little private high school. From this forward on in the concept we call life here on earth this guy will exist no more. he is dead. He is a memory. And he was killed because he was invading another country because the president of this country told him to go there and do it. and now he's dead. And his family and friends will forever suffer and miss him and wonder the hell happened to Binky. And in the meantime tomorrow bush and his war monger administration will wake up and eat their breakfast, tell a few jokes, maybe even play a few rounds of golf. They’ll give a few speeches to the press about how we must keep going and complete our mission, whatever the hell that is, I think the whole fucking country at this point is wondering about that one. and day by day thousands more Iraqi people will die and hundreds more Americans will die. There will be a Binky from every town in America dead before this thing is through and bush and his administration and their families will be just fine because they aren't over there fighting. Nope. They’ll be just fine.



Tree tells me that he just learned that we are currently spending one billion dollars a week on this invasion of Iraq. I had just heard the same thing last night from those republican congressmen that are now coming out to say that they too want us out of Iraq. I typed it into my calculator. It looks like this: 1,000,000,000. I had never typed in a billion dollars, but that's what it looks like. Holy shit I yell. Dude that's fucking ridiculous. I calculated it. that's 148,000,000 (million) dollars per day bro. calculated a bit more... that's six million dollars per hour. every fucking hour that you and me and everyone else is living and breathing this president is spending six million of our tax dollars on this invasion of Iraq. Hey man, I say, next time someone tells you that we need to raise money for public schools because half of them can’t even afford libraries or auditoriums or after school programs, lets fuckign remember that we can though afford to spend six million dollars an hour on Iraq. These fucking bastards. How the hell did America get so fucked up? a hundred and forty eight million dollars a day for the Iraq but we can’t afford health care in America for Americans? A billion dollars we spend on Iraq but we are being told that we cannot afford to feed and house the homeless and crazies of our society. We can’t afford health care for all of us? we can’t afford to have kick ass public schools so we can breed and raise smart well adjusted children who aren't going to later turn into criminals and clog our prison systems and so we can stay competitive in the world market place. but we can afford to spend to spend 6 billion dollars a day to destroy and then rebuild Iraq?
I'm telling you, say what you will about republicans who voted for this band of murderers and thieves and how we need to respect them and tolerate them, but they have led us down into a real fucking barrel of shit. I'll tell you something else. if these hillbillies feel so good about so much money being spent on this invasion of Iraq let THEIR tax dollars go to pay for it. and let us in the blue states use that same amount of money to do what we need to do to help our own people right here in our own country. can you imagine what we could do with 148 million dollars per day in this country to help each other and build a kickass society? Frankly I feel that we need to do the same thing the southern states did when they wanted to abolish slavery. We need to start seceeeding from the union. I know it sounds crazy but let these red states have their invasions of all these countries they're so fucking scared of. And let us take our hard earned money and spend it right here at home to better ourselves. The best revenge is success. and that's what we should be concerning ourselves with now. becoming more competitive in the world marketplace and more successful as a people. again, let the red states have their wars and spend all their money on them if they want to, but don't coming to us asking us for handouts so you bomb other countries when you can’t even afford health care or good schools or keep the jobs in your states. Enough said.