The Greenleaf Files becomes Official

Hellfire is nigh as reality comes to rape us all. I'm ready to go, but are you prepared to die? Tell your children that entropy has come to leave them orphaned and lost. Your lives are wet dreams, lost in an instant and gone forever. Hell is here and earth is ablaze, the cost of living is damnation. We know no purity but the unblemished torment we were born into. Chill out, humor is forthcoming. I'm a pathological wise ass.

I expect Hell, so anything would be a welcome surprise. I languish here and there, leaving the best of me on earth and the true malfeasance to incinerate where it belongs. It's true resting place is among the venom I can't help live but espouse. With my essence and intellect, I delightfully spread the message I was meant to spread. It is one of venom and a poetry of sorts. Enjoy the rampage, such is all we have left.

“Greenleaf” is a distinguished family middle name. The “master fulminator” is one honorific. An older nom de plume is the “Mad Cashier.” Call me “Joe” or anything within reason, lest I find where you live.

He're's to “The Greenleaf Files.” This blog supplants the 33 article “Mad Cashier,” which still very much exists, but it's time to move on ... as if anybody gives a good goddamn or a wild mother fuck. I never asked what the fuck you cared about, I just write the shit because I damn well please. I digress.

This is “The Greenleaf Files.” Enjoy and rest assured that the majority of my articles are not dominated by suicidal ideation. Hopefully, you're just as tired of the pussy/moron shit the Internet has to offer as I am and would enjoy the strident, antisocial sarcasm Greenleaf has to offer. No? Then forinicate yourself, asswipe.

Your Pointless Life Sucks: An Orgy of Booze and Acrimony

Escape is the universal fantasy, but we can't always be shitfaced. We'll make it out when it's time to burn in Hell. The good times are gone, today is worthless, and the future is an illusion. Get serious, faith is for suckers and optimism is just annoying. Survival is driven by instinct rather than logic. Oh well, just take the punishment and wait for death.

Tour the desolation on every street, the living who are better off dead. We languish through a pointless existence seeking surges of dopamine, maybe that's all our lives amount to. Get wasted and bang a random whore; perhaps you've discovered the meaning of life. Why should it have to mean a damn thing?

Deep nights spent in solitude are the only hope. I leave the common asswipes and blights of humanity that rule the outside world to go screw themselves and kill each other. Lucky them. By knowing nothing, they know something the gifted do not. It is the low lives who live the high life.

At work, I glared at my dullard coworkers with a contempt born of annoyance. Their vacant expressions are as sickening as their undignified demeanor. What's your excuse, motherfucker? With primitive linguistic skills, they speak as if children and never express a thought, blind to the depths of their idiocy. Dumb fuck jobs are ideal for them—somebody's got to do it.

What's my goddamn excuse? People used to say I'd win a Pulitzer. Instead, I'm bagging groceries the same as those illiterates. Most minds are wasted; the rest are dormant. The talent dominates my mind all day, thoughts and feelings flow as I stand stonefaced and silent. Work is painfully simple, yet seemingly harder for me than the dolts.

Fuck it up, and a blessing can be a twisting knife. A life wasted and lost is worse than one lived and never found. They just want to have fun and I want a way out.

Whatever consciousness brings, the power of my grocer's cheapest white wine compels me. Whether swinging bars and bats or carpet bombing my liver, I never feel more alive than when I vandalize. It is dopamine that sustains the thinking man's soul, temperance is for the dolts who believe in the opportunities tomorrow may bring. Hedonists are no different from health nuts and quitters; we're all desperate to live. Suckers.

As thought and dopamine ravage consciousness every which way, cerebral debauchery reminds me why I insist on living. At least I maybe have some sort of valid excuse. Liquid love enriches me with soothing euphoria, the first smile I've had all day. Cigarettes breathe life into me, yet I curse the creators of fire safes with all due hatred. Old school heterosexual music blasting my weakened eardrums completes the ritual.

Thoughts, ideas, and groups of words hit hard. Many are bleak and some are intoxicating, most lead to something larger. Whether it's humming in the background or screaming in my face, it follows me everywhere. It will sing my requiem.

Memories of grandeur are a demon and each new day is an obstacle. The same old torments come back for what's left and consume like Mad Cow. Reality is a merciless bitch and probably frigid. Life trudges on into Hell, the only law we abide by is the one of Entropy. We're side by side languishing in the gutter of life on earth. Survival is success as we pursue solace like crack whores after rocks. Humans live and die for a simple high.

Reality will have your ass whether you realize it or not. Follow the clues and eschew pleasant lies. Take a cold look at a miserable world and realize that all our lives are wasted. I'll be pissing it all away at a shit job while supporting my habits. Have fun with your punk ass social standing and your “I'm a spoiled bastard living in a dreamworld” fun money, high-rolling cocksuckers. We'll see each other in Hell as equals, or maybe you'll burn in the Nazi war criminal section. Looks like we all wasted a lifetime.

Life sucks and so does everybody who stopped reading by the first paragraph. The rampage continues, as does my daily shouting of obscenities. Simple pleasures keep me going. What's your reason for getting out of bed, the lunch and dinner Big Macs? Chew yourself into a motorized wheelchair, Jabba. As I survey throngs of humanity and a world gone to Hell, I wonder what happened to the promise of nuclear holocaust. No worries, earth will be euthanized sooner rather than later. I want to go face and pants down so the agents of our downfall can kiss my crazy white ass.

Pipes Supplant Cigarettes

Carcinogens of love burn in my bowl of joy. From a hobby to a reminder of a dead family patriarch, pipe smoking is many things to many people. Cigarettes are despised, yet aromatic pipe blends never fail to charm. Many times, bystanders just toss a glance of mockery or assume the pipe merely serves as an attention getter.

For smokers who know, it's not about winning the approval of non-smokers and certainly not a fashion statement. It's really about the love for the leaf, and a cigar just won't do. Cigarettes assailed my lungs, and then pipes won my heart.

Switching from cigarettes to pipes is nothing new. After buying my first pipe in 2001, I was told my father did the same in the '70s. Him and probably most fail at this; I did a few times until my recent success. Pipes are never to be inhaled; also most blends are too strong for the human lung. As smoking goes, cigarettes are pretty lame, but superior at nicotine delivery, filling the lungs with satisfaction.

Pipe tobacco offers nicotine of course, but only that which is absorbed through the mouth lining. The pipes' true advantage is the smoking experience, not mere addiction.

Common smokers apologize for smoking, smoke "light" cigarettes, and see little else in their habit but feeding a drug addiction. Mostly outdoors, I'm sure. This is one reason why living alone is a must. If you lower yourself to "ultra lights," you may as well quit and suck on toothpicks.

They probably started as part of adolescent rebellion or some such asininity. If this is their idea of smoking, they should just give up. Common smokers have already - at least politically and socially. I have no regrets or apologies. I love the leaf dearly and avidly.

Pipe tobacco is now my poison of joy and for the most popular reason. I live at the poverty line, and giving up cigarettes was my only way out of the hole. Pipe smoking, my favorite smoke, costs me less than 75 cents a day compared to roughly $6.70 on cigarettes. The latter figure is also my hourly wage. I might as well have been swilling Vicodin.

Even before Texas' latest tax hike, it became clear that a heavy smoking habit was unrealistic even for a full-time worker having no dependents, a car, or cable TV. After cigarettes and bills, I only had $80 a month for food, my cat's needs and everything else. Cutting down probably wouldn't help, while any less than 30 a day is just enough to piss me off.

Pulmonary love was dead to me; I no longer needed it. I retired my special chrome cigarette lighter and consulted my pipe rack, a pristine beauty I scored at a thrift store for $2. Prince Albert Crimp Cut is the all-day smoke I crave every day. It's been around since 1907 and the reasons are clear. The stuff burns well and tastes like pipe tobacco should; this is the real deal. At $3 a pouch, money is no object. At present, that is.

I just "Googled" the Prince's illustrious name. Oh, my God. Against all remaining decency in the not actually free world, the blend's image has been unspeakably defiled by present-day vulgarians. Formerly known as a dear piece of Americana, "Prince Albert" is now slang for some goddamn male genital piercing! Damn the purveyors and partakers straight to Hell just so I can watch them burn.

Obviously, "male piercing" is an oxymoron. Jewelry is great; I wear a men's ring and a men's bracelet, but there is no damned piercing that a man should wear. Paying to have your penis mutilated only proves you are disturbed in addition to tragically stupid. Put on a dress and go die somewhere, dolt-ass loser.

Freaks obsessively strive to make a statement and always in the most moronic way possible. You didn't need any piercing; we already knew you were an ass clown. These worthless, degenerate wads of gutter-trash would film a filth fetish orgy on the American flag just to act cute and piss off your mother.

I digress. I couldn't live without mentioning that. Now the healing can begin.

Quitting cigarettes took a bizarre turn. At work in the produce department, I craved the old surge of nicotine. Not wanting to cripple my transition to pipes, I opted for dip rather than smokes. I've always thought of smokeless tobacco as vomitous to witness and only for disgusting losers.

This occurred to me as I spat brown into trashcans in the produce backroom. This became my workplace norm for the week; working front end affords no opportunity to spit putrescence all day. Actually, the "straight" variety is tasty - in a mouthful of poisonous saliva sort of way.

By my second week of dip experimentation, I was dipping at home. By this time, I was looking forward to trying chewing tobacco, thinking this would provide a more intimate relationship with my poison. Sucking on straight, long cut at my computer, I was feeling pretty good. Smokeless gives an even stronger nicotine fix.

A spit that should have been just like any other was "oh, damn!" red with my blood. I spat even more blood into the sink, cleaned up, and swore off smokeless. I'm thankful something saved me from myself, because that was most repulsive and just plain wrong.

The Prince and I are happy together along with my rack of straight brairs. I carry a pipe all day and keep lighting up with my specially ordered solid brass Zippo pipe lighter. Whether I'm taken by cancer or natural causes, smoking is my favorite indulgence and I'm keeping it for life. It's great to finally be at peace with the right smoke for me. It'll be damn fine to spend that extra $50 a week - on booze, of course.

Pipe smoking is at least worth a try. You've got Internet access, so I recommend researching before smoking. Maybe you're one of those lost souls who should try quitting - again. Whatever your smoking preference, keep it burnin'.

Civilization's Weather Obsession: Please Shut Up

Texas is just a warmer version of Hell. I burn in the Nazi war criminal section. In a region where the weather changes continuously, one might expect that people would tire of talking about petty cold and heat. Sadly, weather trumps war, impending global depression, and all manner of human suffering on planet entropy. Ultimately, people just need to talk about nothing for no actual reason and to dissect the obvious. I work with the general public; I get to hear all about it.

I've never understood the popular obsession with the weather. Aside from sports, weather is the most trivial segment in any newscast, yet Americans just can't live without an update. Many disbelieve meteorologists' projections and listen to them anyway.

I've also never found any good reason to follow the weather. I ride a bicycle to work and go shopping on foot. I should know the importance of weather conditions more than most drivers. Who in reality ever holds a picnic? Nobody ventures to parks unless it is to do "cardio" in the gayest outfit possible or to attack said joggers. Clearly, America is placing quite a value on what amounts to chump change.

North Texas has been stricken with what passes as a heat wave this time of year. Customers blither with joy over the sunny pestilence and expect me to join in on "praise and worship." Warm weather, excellent. Perhaps we'll see putrid man feet spreading over those damned flip-flops John Q. Dirtbag treasures so. Already we see the cotton vulgarity that is the T-shirt littering the streets of Dallas like used condoms and syringes.

I rant because they rejoice. How intolerable of them.

Is nobody bothered by that sickening sweat? How about the insect plagues enabled by warm weather? Inexplicably, some people look forward to the heat of the year. By the same token, squalor abounds and many filth-enrobed hands will never feel the lather of those bars they were forbidden to embrace.

Scantily clad women often don't elicit thoughts of a tactile sampling. All the wrong bodies are showing too damn much. Shake what the Arches gave ya'. There you have it, a walking cautionary tale akin to waving lung disease photos at us tobacco fiends. Emphysema is looking like a real winner.

The concept of dressing for the season always struck me as ridiculous. This would mean leaving half of the wardrobe you went into debt for lying dormant at all times. I own no short sleeves, only dress shirts and the obligatory wife beaters. My solution is to wear exactly the same type outfit every day and keep a trench coat for winter. Besides, the popular idea of summer clothes burns tastefulness at the stake.

Nature's everyday trivialities get more airtime than hyped up hurricanes, but reality scoffs at the obsession. We spend the bulk of our time indoors where centuries of innovation provide the comforts we call necessities. Few lives are claimed by the daunting sojourn from office to air-conditioned car. Sure it was hot, but there's little whining at the bus stop. Seemingly, those with the greatest luxuries bitch the most about their discomforts.

I've made three-mile walks under Texas heat. I didn't whine because it didn't seem worth lamenting. The pain and purple hands dealt by wintry winds, rain soaked clothes, and even the miseries of summer I loathe are soon dismissed. Dwelling on the uncontrollable makes it unbearable; it must therefore become irrelevant.

We resign ourselves to seasonal discomforts and keep moving. I'm referring to Dallas, Texas - not any region home to hockey fans or the French-speaking. In your locale, you just might be screwed.

If conversing must be a nervous habit, perhaps we could talk about what we may actually be able to control. If that's insurmountable, we could at least exchange real viewpoints and observations. If none of these options are suitable, then everybody shut the Hell up, because we have no reason to speak. I'm damn tired of listening.

How many people did they discuss the weather with before accosting me? Afterwards? Either weather conditions so captivate the forefront of their consciousness or they just favor the popular excuse for interrupting a bystander's train of thought.

Show me someone who was actually thinking of the sky's hue and I'll show you a bag of liquorice with greater intellect. If they weren't senselessly blithering, a worthwhile thought might have made it out alive. Only God knows how many brainchildren were aborted.

Solitude: The Ultimate Valentine

Lust, love, and America's most insipid cultural ritual. On this day of fake and gushing hearts, I fight through nausea and celebrate sensibility. It's Valentine's Day and I'm alone as always. At work, I bagged Valentine's gifts for those who have someone special to cherish and screw. I eagerly rode home to a meager apartment and the black cat I share my life with. No friends, no phone calls; just deafening rock and cheap booze. Women are only a vague memory, but I know they are of little use. My psyche needs the satisfaction of being alone.

Entanglements, or “relationships,” are a matter of course in the outside world. From the youngest age, we are programmed to seek the opposite sex. Strikingly, prepubescent children display this behavior. We are also hard-wired to wed and reproduce. While marriage and family is essential to civilization, it serves little or no purpose for an under-reported number of adults. People want entanglements like children want cars — the kids have nowhere to go.

All seductive ladies are the same and nobody is special. Many women are attractive, but none irresistible. Aside from that lady on The X-Files, I've never had a crush. Eye candy is sweet, but not inspiring. Socializing is an interruption, my desire is beautiful thought and a peaceful life in my own world. Self-centeredness is secondary, it's really about the brain that chose me.

As a child, I decided to remain alone for life. I had then, as I do now, a love affair with solitude. I never had much drive to socialize. Even today, there seems to be little association in my mind between seeing a hot chick and actually speaking to her. I never think of this and soon disregard her presence. Talk? Why? About what? As a cashier, I was often counseled for not conversing with customers.

“Talk to the customers,” they said. That instruction cannot be defined and is therefore meaningless. Besides, small talk is annoyingly pointless and must have been instituted by stupid bastards. Talking about the weather is for the vapid and initiating such conversation is intellectually demeaning. I don't follow the weather, it fails to interest me.

Singleness is more than a bare ring finger. Singles typically define their personal lives by socializing with the opposite sex. Odd behavior such as “clubbing” and “bar hopping” seems to thrill them. Ya' know, it only takes one bar to get you wasted. Rapid-fire some rotgut, nancy boy. I can't really comprehend dating, but it's obviously a waste of time. Just get a hobby and save IQ points. If this is your leisure, the opposite sex influences your life such that you may as well be married. You are headed down that road anyway, misguided wretch.

I experimented with the night life in my early twenties. Dancing baffles me and I'd rather pace. Clubs are too damned loud and the music is trash. Such places are obscenely crowded. Just because I enjoyed exchanging gropes with that skank doesn't mean I want the freakishly dressed throng defiling my personal space. I don't even want to look at them. I felt so violated. For socializing in general, I comprehend little and enjoy less. Frivolity time with whatever sex you adore is delectable, but not worth the hassle.

Staying home alone all night is a winner. My partying entails music and drinking like every party, but with the undesirable element of human contact removed. I also hate parties, they're dull and idiotic. The good life really isn't about partying at all. The brain is a playground. Thought is a great indulgence, best enjoyed without human interruption. Pursuing interests and satisfying whims with nobody else's whims to get in the way is the essence of singleness. Interests become causes and careers of far greater importance than some chick you found somewhere.

Getting laid would be a great idea. However, women are real people, too. Lest we forget, they have all those annoying thoughts and opinions they feel compelled to express. This isn't chauvinism — I find men equally annoying. I can seldom afford to get drunk at a bar, nor am I able to be personable while sober. The last time I tried to pick up a chick, it got insufferable. She spoke and expected me to respond as if I actually cared. How presumptuous. I totally lost interest after 45 seconds.

Sex is the root of much distraction and destruction. Life is too short and sweet. Well-endowed cerebrum haranguing me as always, I once considered formal celibacy. Genius personified Nikola Tesla chose celibacy to focus all his energy on science. Isaac Newton never had sex. Like Tesla, I wanted to think of bigger things. I already do. Remove the urge to socialize and the hormonal impulses are nothing. Constant thought which is largely involuntary completes the package. Celibacy is a bit formal, but I'm a contented bachelor.

I hope your Valentine's Day was great ... as you tolerated someone special. Maybe the empty apartment didn't greet you with the warmth it gave me. For me, it was just another day and another good time. Being alone often doesn't mean loneliness. It can be quite natural and rewarding. Many fear loneliness and err on the side of caution ... or botched the birth control job.

Surrounded by spouses and parents, I wonder how they manage or find time to enjoy themselves. My good fortune is humbling, but I'm proud to be living my only childhood dream. I'm settled down and being true to my love.

Neo-Illiteracy

R U illiterate? Sure, our educational system sucks, but school is a mere half measure. The greatest threat to modern literacy is the 21st century itself. Technological advancement has exacerbated age-old dumbness, as the lowest common denominator writhes in glee.

Essentially, we learn all the English we need in elementary school. That's right, not even indolent dropouts like me have an excuse. We all have a responsibility to grow intellectually rather than let our minds shrivel up and die.

When the Hell did Dickens or Hemingway ever write in pigdin English? As a conscientious literary mind, I gasped in horror upon cracking the “LOL” code. Freshly evolved gray matter reverts to ooze. Mark Twain wants to see us all in Hell. There are neither “Xs” nor “Os” in “hugs and kisses.” Both forms of human contact are too much to bear, yet not enough to get me there. How does an intellectual pig write, “go die somewhere.”

E-mailing forged barren frontiers. Reading a friend's e-mail can be like finding him with a corpse and shovel. Bewildered like a kitten in snowfall, dimmer wits use their keyboards like preschoolers drool on finger paint. To their credit, the little tikes are more likely to wash their hands after licking. Cruel imagery. Why do I nauseate myself?

I suppose some people thought the term “spell check” a chat room come-on. For decency's sake, this basic word processing function was made with their cerebral desolation in mind. It's also for stoned writers - so I've heard. Commas are a myth and periods are obsolete, as the only punctuation to be found are streams of exclamation points. Damn you, dullard scum! That's an exclamation point in its proper place and one is all it takes.

Although a star reporter as a college freshman, I kept failing English 101. Terms like “participle” and “gerund” are meaningless. I don't even know what a damned predicate is, nor do I care. Education is overrated and college English is no different than that of grade school. A fifth grade education is all we need to write a proper e-mail. Intellectual growth and rejecting popular sloth is the key.

Knowing how to write wins supporters and opens doors simply because most people lack that ability. During my practice as a student entrepreneur, a dolt I affectionately addressed as “Hooked on Phonics” was my biggest buyer of college essays. No deadline was impossible and no fee too low as I laid it down for nimrods who found it easier to pay than think. That's true sloth.

We use money and technology when brainpower trumps them both. Thought is bypassed with acronyms and teenage girl-esque slang. Even a dog's bark is a language. Is alpha grunting the next hot fashion?

If letter writing is indeed a lost art, true literacy will succumb to the domino effect. Skillfully writing an e-mail is an utterly basic way to make a good impression and even distinguish yourself. Yeah, this is my good impression; in person I just seem pissed and insane.

Our great language is found everywhere, yet competent usage eludes so many. Slang is used whenever possible: I prefer old-fashioned profanity. Books are available at supermarkets, yet only tabloids are sold. Many Americans subscribe to Christianity, yet are unaware the book of Proverbs calls them “a fool.”

Before cable TV and the Internet, it was either dull TV shows or a good book. I read most of the classics; read them again, ran out of books, and resorted to encyclopedias. Yes, I'm a scholar of useless information, but you have to give a damn about Shakespeare to be on Jeopardy!

Five minutes later, every youth is plugged into one idiot box or another and engaged in techno-mindless activity whenever possible. A new variant of illiteracy is poised to pervert the way we use language and intellectually maim our country's future. What a Hell-bound future it is.

How can one have any genuine train of thought when playing with a goddamn cell phone at all times? I write down more thoughts than I blurt out as if it were urgent business or the meaning of life. I've got a cell phone, but I can't figure out text messaging for some reason. Oh, yeah, that's because I'm fully literate. I've read more cogent statements on bathroom walls than on cell phones. Convenience store owners use less broken English.

Future generations are pretty much screwed regardless, and adults' minds are just as easily influenced. Whether scholars or nimrods, we became literate by practice. Practice can also have degenerative effects on the mind.

Writing ability and intellectual growth itself is a lifelong process. Articles of mine that were hailed in college I now see as preschool finger paintings. My developmental milestones since then have been my sweetest moments. Nothing would please me more than to see my mind grow further.

America is fine with becoming fat; shall we grow dumber as well?

American Democracy: Suicide by Representative

America is the new Russia. As weekend patriots backed up freeways and blew off their hands in remembrance of the rockets' red glare, they should have been reminded of the black haze in lower Manhattan. The fallout of September 11 is the fall of the United States. Why revere the desecrated flag of a vanquished nation?

Just like oppressive Russia and Commie-ass China, our "land of the free" is listed as an endemic surveillance society by civil liberties organizations worldwide. Given a disaster on American soil or a tidy false flag operation, our president has full legal authority to unilaterally transform the 50 states into a police state. By "police state" I of course mean a nation ruled by a dictator and raped by martial law as dissidents are whisked away to concentration camps. Executive orders are a bitch, just like our impotent Congress.

Without Congressional oversight, George W. Bush is whoring for a burgeoning conspiracy to form a borderless trinational government with Canada and Mexico by 2010, complete with a unified currency. Barack Obama and John McCain support the plot. Anyway, let's all wallow in complacency and find out the hard way; I hear compulsory biometric identification is way cool.

These and other velvet gloved bitch slaps were dealt under the pretext of saving us from terrorism. Enjoy the security.

Freedom doesn't come free. Is the price to be paid solely by members of the armed forces, or will average citizens ante up? Who will bother to vote in November, or has the democratic process become irrelevant and our ballots a punch line to the ruling class? These byproducts of capitalism hate our rights and have declared war on the American people. The elite among our elected officials are silver-spooned treasoners. Those who undermine the Constitution have been glorified at rallies by patriotic Americans. Half measures are the offspring of cowardice and sloth — voting itself just won't do.

Neither will CNN. I gather that a great many Americans wouldn't know what much of this article refers to. Dismissing it all as conspiracy theory born of psychosis would feel soothing. The feel good approach is the American way. Conspiracy, yes; but all fact. In the 21st century, a conspiracy theorist need only point out the blatantly obvious. This and much more is readily available from reference websites, credible sources and independent journalists. If they seem insane, go to the source and take note of our fearless leader's executive orders. At this website, you can even subscribe to an online newsletter. If you want the real news and have a Google account, I highly recommend using Google alerts.

It is actually quite easy to spot the morons and wack jobs among us bloggers. They are borderline illiterate and use phrases like "dastardly deeds." Although references to 1984 get old fast and George Orwell was clearly an optimist, they are typically not indicative of a rebel without credibility.

Clearly, you have Internet access. What do you know about: NSPD-51, FEMA camps, the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act of 2006, the Protect America Act, Oliver North's REX-84, RFID, and the Real ID Act? These are the complete foundation of an American dictatorship, and all are undisputed fact. That's right, think of Stalin and the Schutzstaffel.

So, the FEMA camp theories have been debunked? Debunkers are after every cabal, including the Holocaust. I refer you to the YouTube report recorded at a FEMA camp and encourage you to fit a Google search into your day and draw your own conclusions. Our logic is that theorists are morons and debunkers must be right, yet denying the Holocaust — which I do not — is considered tantamount to blasphemy. Ignorance abounds, everybody has an agenda, and the truth is often difficult to accept.

What's more troubling than concentration camps is how we may arrive there. National Security Presidential Directive 51, an executive order, gives the executive branch supreme authority in deciding what constitutes a national emergency and when the emergency ends. Sounds trite and harmless, but prepare to wet yourself. In the event of such an incident, whether it be another massive hurricane, demonstration or "terrorist attack," martial law may be declared by the president with nothing more than a signature from the attorney general. Under martial law, the Constitution would be suspended and FEMA would assume control of the government.

Such a coup was engineered by Iran-Contra conspirator Lt. Col. Oliver North in Readiness Exercise 1984, code named "REX-84." Under this contingency plan, those deemed a threat to the government would be taken to FEMA camps. The list of potential detainees dates back to J. Edgar Hoover's "security index" in 1950. Hoover told the White House that in the event of an emergency, those on the list would be detained. The list, which includes writers and scholars, was allegedly maintained and updated until the '80s, when it was turned over to FEMA.

Paranoid Hoover suspected thousands of being pinkos and dangerous radicals. According to one ostensibly credible source I know of, some 8 million American names are currently listed in a master database referred to as Main Core. Numerous sources state that approximately 800 FEMA camps nationwide stand ready to detain these citizens. Nevertheless, the exact figures remain unknown and little is known about Main Core — including the database's true name or if it actually exists. Other such lists, however, we all know of. In post September 11 America, technologically advanced, ruled by lawlessness, and under surveillance, all bets are off.

Under martial law, the legislative and judicial branches would have no actual power, making the executive branch the only authority. Just as detailed in REX-84, military commanders would assume control of state and local governments. In this event, the president-turned-dictator has every right to cancel the elections.

Imagine Bush's delight as he's mocked as a buffoon on comedy shows. If he did take the short bus to Air Force One, he'd be too harmeless to rape the nation and get away with high treason. By a majority vote, we're the retards.

The John Warner National Defense Act of 2006 made the illegal perfectly okay, allowing the US military to be deployed on American soil in the event of a "natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack, or incident." Incident? Seems like they'll find any excuse. This was passed in 2006, when the nation seemed safe again and "terrorism" was little more than a word thrown around by government officials.

I merely pretended to know what I was talking about when I decribed NSPD-51. In reality, none of us know how far it's gone. Congressman Peter DeFazio, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee sought access to "classified annexes" in NSPD-51. DeFazio and the chairman of that committee were abruptly denied access.

"I just can't believe they're going to deny a member of Congress the right of reviewing how they plan to conduct the government of the United States after a significant terrorist attack. Maybe the people who think there's a conspiracy out there are right," DeFazio said. This poetic declaration was made just before he bowed to the beast and encouraged us to trust our government. Accountability is obsolete and corruption is accepted, yet we should have faith.

If this is news to you, you're what's wrong with America. Perhaps you heard the theories, maybe you dismissed them with a snicker. That was my reaction — then I did some reading. Why should we bother? This could never happen; a decade ago we must have thought the Twin Towers invincible. Screw it, let's hunt for money and sex, watch TV, and let the nation we take for granted go straight to Hell.

By law, this great country could be transformed into a police state literally overnight with the presidential election canceled. Our sellout mass media remains silent as typical Americans are reveling in couch time rather than protesting. Obviously, we deserve absolute subjugation and have done less than nothing to make us worthy of enjoying Constitutional rights. So long as this remains the case, patriotism and Independence Day will remain a national joke in the eyes of pragmatism.

Lowlife Bush is not the true culprit and only a delusional person could think Obama or McCain will save our asses. No government in whatever utopia would volunteer to relinquish the powers of a police state.

The real problem isn't gas prices or even the war. I'm an unskilled laborer, not some scholarly, lily-handed prick with a thesaurus under his pillow. Perhaps America can still be saved, or whatever. Her fate will not be determined by the powers that be, but by commoners like you and me. Let's try not to screw ourselves over.