18 January 2009

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Every news report I read or listen to talks about the “war” in Gaza. I have a semantic complaint here, which is that this is not a war.
“War” is when two groups of people fight and kill each other. In Gaza, what’s happening is that a bunch of people have been crammed into a tiny strip of land, defenseless. They’ve been surrounded by a 25-foot-high wall so they can’t escape. And now a much more numerous and powerful group of people outside the wall has started killing them indiscriminately. Meanwhile, the Israeli Defense Minister threatens a “shoah” against the Palestinians. “Shoah” is the Hebrew for “holocaust,” a word I don’t imagine the Israelis use lightly.
There are a lot of ugly words for what’s happening right now in Gaza. “Murder” is one. “Extermination” is another. “War,” though, that one doesn’t fit.

04 January 2009

Ghost Story

It was a dark and stormy night. Well, it was kinda drizzling. Sure was dark, though.
I had been out at Mama’s and was driving home down the river road. It was quiet and deserted, no streetlights nor other cars, nothing but my highbeams and what little moonlight gets through the clouds, reflecting off the Ohio River. I wasn’t driving so fast as I usually do, ‘cause the roads were a bit slick, but regardless of conditions there’s a limit to how slow I’m gonna drive through there, alone on the road with Rosie and Social Distortion’s “When the Angels Sing”:

love and death don't mean a thing
'til the angels sing

Suddenly, coming ‘round a big turn just before the railroad tracks, a spectre appeared before me. It took the shape of a man bundled up tight in dark clothes, riding on a motorbike of some kind. The bike had no headlights, no reflectors, and was traveling right down the middle of the road. Brights and all, I didn’t see him ‘til we were thirty or forty feet apart, and even then it was more an impression of movement rather than me really seeing anything. I braked and swerved over to the right far as I could without going swimming, and the apparition passed within a few feet. Didn’t even glance at me as he went by, like he was in a different world, and when I looked in my mirror he was invisible again.
I’ve never heard any legends about the Ghost Biker of Route Two, but I’m gonna look into it, see if there’s maybe some sort of tragic history there that I don’t know about. I’m paranoid when I drive, seeing threats everywhere, and I don’t believe anyone could get that close to me without me seeing him unless he sprang from under the cold ground or materialized from the wet, heavy air. I don’t know how it could be possible.
I do know this, though: if he wasn’t a ghost when I saw him tonight, he’s gonna be one soon.