DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> DC Viking: May 2006

Thursday, May 04, 2006

You find heroes in the strangest places

By now, any blog that has any interest at all in politics has written about Stephen Colbert's incendiary speech at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. The response has been pretty much as you would expect. Most lefties are saying that it was an amazing moment of cultural importance. Most on the right are focusing on the fact that they did not consider him to be funny. I think I've made my political views pretty clear recently, so I don't feel the need to go into why I think Colbert was on the mark with his criticism of the president. I’ll say this, it takes a certain amount of testiculr fortitude to stand a few feet from the most powerful man on the face of the earth and tell him you think he’s running the country into the ground.

The most important lesson in this is that a comedian was forced to take this kind of stand. This incident has received so much attention from non-traditional media sources because there is a large segment of the population that feels that the press are not doing their jobs. Main stream media shouldn’t be an attack dog for the party not in power, but they must serve the interests of the public by questioning our elected officials. If our elected officials are not forthright, then the press must become aggressive in the search for truth. This is not about political affiliation. The timidity of the press under this administration sets a bad precedent for the next president, which is likely to be a democrat. A republic does not function properly if its citizens are not well informed, and like it or not, we rely on the press for that information.

I’ve added a link to a blog devoted to thanking Colbert, and it’s worth a look, regardless of what you think of his personal politics. Real patriotism is about questioning the people that are running our country, and it’s worthwhile to thank someone that had the guts to do so.

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posted by DC Viking at 11:30 AM 2 people of discerning taste are saying

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Zen, aquatics, and a fate worse than death

I love working out at the pool on Saturday. No work related stress to burn off. No need to feel rushed. It’s just me and the water, I jump in and everything disappears. External stimulus is reduced to the sound of my arms hitting the water and the occasional bubble going past my ear as I exhale. All I can see is the black line down the center of my lane. As I cross into the area of the pool under the skylight, the world is all blinding light and reflection. When I cross back into the shade it’s cool and calm. I perform a well executed flip turn and head back up the pool again, turn and come back, turn and return. After a while my brain starts to shut down non-essential functions. I stop counting the laps. I become a perfect swimming machine. There is no past. There is no goal. All my faculties are devoted to perfecting my movement through the water and unnecessary thought ends.

On the rare occasions that I reach this Nirvana-like state; when I’m not thinking about what I’m going to have for dinner or if I have work to finish, it can take me a moment to acclimate myself when I’m done swimming. So imagine my surprise and alarm as I finished my workout one Saturday morning to the sound ‘Achy Breaky Heart’. I stood panting at the end of the pool, confused, as the warble of Billy Ray Cyrus echoed weirdly around the swimming pool.

What’s happening? Where am I? Who am I? Have I crossed over? Oh God. I’m dead. And if 90s contemporary country is playing in the afterlife… I must be in Hell. Crap. I knew I shouldn’t have eaten my roommate’s last slice of pizza. That was the final straw and now I’m stuck listening to this for the rest of eternity. I’ll bet they’re going to play Brooks and Dunn next. I hate the ‘Boot Scootin’ Boogie’.

And then I glance very slowly to my right. There, in all their spandex glory, are 15 large aged women with buoyant foam tubes wrapped around their gargantuan waists. They are bobbing back and forth in the water, two lanes over from me. These monstrous women wave their arms back and forth to the beat of this satanic music. A slightly older, slightly slimmer, woman is pacing back and forth on the deck next to the pool, shouting directions at them. “Feel the burn! Work harder ladies!” OhdearGodinheavenIaminhell. It’s all I can do to stifle the screams bubbling up in my burning lungs. Oh no, the leader sees me. There are only two plastic lane dividers between me and the pack of “Whopper Demons”. Any minute now they are going to tear across the pool, beat me senseless with those foam tubes, and chew the tasty, exercised, flesh from my body while flames shoot from their eyes. NoooooOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Someone splashing the wall in the lane behind me snaps me out of it. Slowly, reality creeps back in. It’s only a water aerobics class. The music has changed to Lionel Ritchie. They’re not going to devour my delicious flesh. I’m not dead. These women are just doing as I am, getting some exercise. But they do it to Billy Ray Cyrus.

They exercise to ‘Achy Breaky Heart.’

And that’s when I realize that there are places worse than hell.

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posted by DC Viking at 10:07 AM 2 people of discerning taste are saying