Bam Bam - Don't Do That.

President Bam Bam doesn't throw tantrums anymore.
He understands them too well, so well in fact that he has gone beyond throwing the toys out of the pram, and is now patient to the point of throwing nanny off a cliff.

But only when he is big enough.
And he's getting bigger.

Last week, he witnessed with some satisfaction, the tantrums he thought the American People were throwing.
They didn't faze him, because he wrote the book on tantrums, and thought he knew it all.
He is now the big kid, and he feels oddly validated by the outrage of America, because he can't see the difference between genuine outrage and his own feelings of entitlment; with a tight-mouthed sullenness, he thinks he's only doing to America what America did to him when it didn't listen to his demands over the years.

Bam Bam is getting revenge, and it is this feeling of validation which steadies both the ship and its crew, as they sail America into the shoals.

This mystery, the mystery of his brass-faced confidence, is the spell of oddity which held so many people under its spell.
His detachment is his charisma, and his insanity.

What A Difference A Gesture Makes.

Like a Marine with his rifle, like a Seer looking for an omen; when I was in Hell, I'd look around my ravaged surroundings and see my router, showing four, blue lights of health.

They would tell me that the world was still there, and still might care, that it was still within reach.

Those four blue lights led to a feeling, a kind of desperate hope; hope that somebody, somewhere, might still be able to care, even to trade for me, so that I could be delivered from the jaws of evil.

Sitting down in my new home tonight, with Stolen Prayer by Alice Cooper playing in my ears, and my third Small Beer, cold and refreshing, the four blue lights caught my eye.

Just for a moment the memory came back, the desperation.

It's less than a month.
But soon even the flashbacks will disappear.

The Human spirit is indomitable.