Morning rant

Three days of seeing the same stupid flyers on the way to work and I have got to blow off some steam. Some Congresscritter is holding an upcoming talk on "the truth about our failed Middle East policy". It's grandly titled "DARE TO SPEAK OUT!"

By all means, air your criticisms of our actions in the Middle East. It's not only your right as an American citizen, but also your duty. But, please, don't flatter yourself that doing so makes you "daring". Right now, I'm reading about Chinese dissidents, such as the Tian'anmen Square activists. Now that takes some fucking balls, telling off the Chinese Communist Party when you know they maintain a gulag system with as many as 20 million inmates. Lambasting the Republican Party? Not so much. For Chrissakes, Paul Bremer has begun publicly condemning the administration's miscalculations and misstakes in Iraq. What are his chances of 14 years' solitary confinement without chance for appeal?

Liberal flinch: It could happen to you!

I bought stamps the other day. There's a "postal store" right across the street from my PCP's office and I had a few minutes, so I popped in to get some first-class stamps. I could easily have used the vending machine to purchase a book, but (a) I hate the handfuls of change it gives out and (b) they tend to offer only one or two boring designs. Besides, the line was very short, so I figured I might as well see what cool commerative stamps were available. On a previous trip, I'd gotten a sheet of "snakes and things" (in the words of the employee who dispensed them). There's something trivially satisfying about affixing a gila monster stamp to your mortgage payment.

Either the black woman at the counter misunderstood me when I said, "I'd like to buy some first-class stamps. What designs do you have?" or she couldn't be bothered. In any case, she simply reached behind her, grabbed a sheet, and said, "$7.40". All I could tell about the design was that it featured an African-American mother in sort of a madonna-and-child pose with a diapered baby. I wanted to say, "What else have you got?" but I stopped myself. What would the woman think? That black people weren't good enough to be on my stamps? So I just bought the sheet and left.

They aren't bad stamps, but they sure the hell ain't as cool as snakes and lizards and other things that go bump in the night. On the other hand, I suppose it's high time my utilities and credit card companies had their consciousness raised about sickle cell anemia.