Harrumph File #054 02.06.2011_If We Sprinkle A Little Radioactive Fire Across The Middle East Do You Think Anyone Would Really Care?

Cairo? Tunis? Damascus?  Who really cares????

     Oh, c’mon.  We all know it’s gonna happen sooner or later anyway, so why wait?  What is another 10, 20, or 50 years gonna get us, world peace?  Yeah, right.  Oh, and while you’re waiting for that, Mr. and Mrs. Naïve, why don’t you just take your environmentally-sensitive, made-from-recycled-materials, non-emissions flying car for a spin around the block?  Get real; we’re “this close” to some bearded, raggedy-assed clown setting off the entire Middle East on a new chapter in the book of radioactivity.  Why wait for events to unfold just to react to them?  Let’s be proactive and start the bombing ourselves.  I don’t want to endure yet another decade of news that consists of nothing but worldwide riots surrounded by endless commercials telling me that just 15¢ a day can save the life of another doe-eyed puppy who’s been beaten or neglected.  You know, there’s only so many sad puppy faces you can see in one lifetime and I think we’ve all seen our fill.

     Besides, the people who live in the Middle East don’t respect their own land, so why should we?  You know, it wasn’t some covert CIA spy or Special Forces A-team that broke into the Cairo museum, busting up the displays and kicking the heads off of a couple of mummies, it was the locals.  The U.S. Army didn’t loot Baghdad after destroying it, it was the locals.  It wasn’t the U.S. Air Force that lowered the elevation of Afghan mountaintops by several hundred feet, it was… ok, so maybe that was the U.S. Air Force… but that’s just plain cool.

     Also, have you seen the news footage coming out of Cairo?  Their army is equipped with M-1 tanks… and camels.  Camels?  Really?  Nowadays?  Have you ever seen a camel up close?  I’m not talking about some jolly, dancing, laughing camel that you might see in “Aladdin.”  I’m talking about real camels.  Smelly camels.  Drooling camels.  When you get right down to it, they actually look like a sickly south Peruvian hairless yak with cancer.  To get them to move you hit ‘em on the ass with a stick, yell “hut, hut, hut” and hold on for dear life.  You don’t really control where they go either.  Did you see that one guy riding a camel into the crowd of protestors?  He’s hitting the damn thing with a stick and the camel is just stomping the hell out of anyone in his way like a berserk elephant.  There’s no control there, just chaos.

     It’s almost like we’re watching another Lucas nightmare unfold before our very eyes.  I mean, why would Obi-Wan Kenobi ride a giant lizard into combat instead of a cool x-wing motorcycle or something?  He travels 18 billion miles on a super-sophisticated spaceship equipped with the latest laser cannons, nano-wave holographic communications, and the very best vacuum-sealed space toilets… to ride a giant, smelly lizard into combat against a droid army.  WTF?  And sure, a lightsaber is cool, but you’ve got to be right next to a guy to lop his head off; a blaster can mess your day up from 100 parsecs away.* And don’t tell me that Jedi can deflect blaster shots with lightsaber blades.  Yeah, I’ve seen it too, but wouldn’t it be easier to just give Jedi trainees a week on the blaster range instead of years training with a lightsaber to hit a tiny blob of a fastball that if you strike out swinging will tear your arm off?  Hmmm… point & shoot or swing away & lose an arm… go figure.

     So, here are some good things that would come out of my plan to radioactify the Middle East.

     Glass products will fall to their lowest price in 40 years.  You know, there’s a lot of sand (or as I like to call it – “pre-glass”) throughout north Africa & Arabia just waiting to glassify.  Conservatives will be happy because prices will be lower & lefty Berkeleyites will be happy because they’ll be able to buy new & interesting hand-blown glassware that’ll give a nice “glow” to any hippy commune or college professor’s office.

     The ChiComs are in Africa.  Maybe our bombs will get some of them.  That’s what you call a win-win.

     If we overshoot and drop a few megatons in downtown Hanoi; well, I won’t lose any sleep over it.

     Oil?  Well, we can get as much as we want by digging a diagonal well.  I saw that on a BP commercial.  Or, maybe we can just drill straight through the Earth from our side.  All you’d need is a really long drill bit.  Heck, they’ve probably got one on sale at Home Depot this week (but, just try to get someone to help you load it.  All of a sudden all the associates have a bad back or are on the phone.)

     So, I say let’s load up those bomb bays now & we’ll be off to the races!  Hut, hut, harrumph…

*  Not to scale.  However, it is used here as a measurement of distance, not time, Han Solo.