Last night my housemates both concocted emergency plans with their folks in case of, well, emergency. Now that we've actually started dropping the bombs, everyone's guessing that it's only a matter of time before some kind of holy hell is dropped on us. My mom was worried when I talked to her on the phone. Being in Boston, I'm apparently much closer to the "danger zone" than I was in Santa Cruz (the only reason one would attack Santa Cruz would be a strong hatred of patchouli stink), but I politely scoffed at my mom's concern, and told her I didn't think there was really much of anythng to worry about.

So I was pretty surprised when one of my housemates told me her family's emergency plan was to meet at the family farm in Texas. I mean, I was thinking emergency plan of the duck and cover variety, not Stephen's King's The Stand variety. Suddenly I'm having mental pictures of travelling across a country of burnt rubble, searching for any other form of human life. Am I naive in thinking that's really not bloody likely?

Alright, so maybe a lot of people would say I'm naive as hell, and that that naivete is what makes Americans so stupid, provincial, and hated by pretty much everyone in the world. (And don't think that because some nations are 'supporting' us in this war means they don't hate our stinking guts. They're just smart enough to know that if they don't have a lot of global clout, they should keep their hatred to themselves.) But am I the only one who thinks our Department of Homeland Security protection measures are a fucking joke? I mean really. A color-coded alert level chart seems more suited to Sesame Street than to domestic security. Duct tape and plastic sheeting? I want to know how shifting a bunch of bureaucratic departments around in Washington to create a big new department with a pathetic sounding name is going to protect anyone.

I said it a year and a half ago, and I'm going to say it again. The only way we can prevent terrorism against us is to stop terrorizing other people. We still have yet to take a good, long look at our foreign policy, and our history of international interference. Maybe, just maybe, talking to people about their grievances, and about our own, instead of running around like a bunch of belligerant 14 year old boys, would be a much more efficient and intelligent first step in the "war on terror." But I suppose that would require intelligent people in charge of this country, and god forbid we allow that to happen.

Oy vey.

There's only one good thing that can come of this - maybe people will start to realize that Bushie is a moron, and we'll get a new and improved president in 2 years. Although I'm not sure that would really make much of a difference.