A Journal of Humor and Verbal Anarchy

 

rewards

The US Occupation Forces in Iraq just raised the bounty on Saddam Hussein to $25 Million.

You can make more in a single day by picking up a Lotto ticket at A-Plus. Why go to Iraq to dodge bullets, duck Shi-ites and, possibly end up floating face down in the Tigris and Euphrates? Moeover, after 9/11, who cares about earning frequent flyer miles just to get to Iraq.

Better to stay home and look for runaway Boxers in the Danby woods. A girl named Susan Benz just paid someone $1,000 for information leading up to the retrieval of her pet Boxer. She must have been related to Mercedes Benz.

Sorry. Bad joke. That's a lot of money to spend tracking down a pooch. Maybe Saddam Hussein is hiding in the Danby woods. Ezra wonders if there'll ever be a bounty on his head. Would the Chamber of Commerce, Common Council or Civilian Conservation Corps fork out a $1,000 for the arrest and capture of the Curl-less Curmudgeon? Now you know. Ez is experiencing significant hair loss. Look for the balding guy wearing a Blogger parka who resembles a cross between Ted Kzyzinscki andWayne Dyer, That's it, no more clues.

If they found the Unabomber, they'll probably find Saddam Hussein. Money talks.
You can live in a cabin in Montana, never sign up for an e mail account or for AOL, never own a credit card or register an SUV at Motor Vehichles, hide away and spend your days writing manifestos on an old Remington typewriter, but eventually you'll have to go to the Post Office to buy postage to send your letter bombs. That's when they'll nail you. Or else a member of your family will turn you in. Which, in Saddam's case, won't be likely since the whole family seems to have been posing for the Wanted poster. Hey, it'll be a disgruntled Republican Guard or someone who turns him in. With $25 mil, you can buy a second hand presidential palace in Iraq complete with gold plated faucets and an underground bunker. You can enter politics. That's just about what it costs to buy a congressional seat in California these days.

Ez grew up watching Wanted Dead or Alive. You remember, Steve McQueen played the bounty hunter who walked around with the sawed off Winchester fitted in a special quick draw hip holster. The television writers had to come up with something different, something gimmicky. Matt Dillon (who never existed even though they named an actor after him) carried a hand gun with a 30 inch barrel, took him 3 minutes to clear his holster which never seemed to matter because it was the bad guys who always ended up dead in the dust. Paladin, the dandified cavalier cowboy of the Old West handed out calling cards engraved with a chess piece. Bat Masterson sported a cane, wore a derby. You had to create something totally new and different if you wanted your product to stand out from the crowd. Madison Avenue meets the Pecos Kid. It's a cartoon graveyard up there on Boot Hill.

Now we have Most Wanted playing cards for the Iraqi leadership. Shoot outs in the streets of Baghdad. The prez talking like Wyatt Earp. You have 24 hours to get out of town. $25 million rewards for guys who look like B-actors with big black sinister moustaches.

Iraq is an extension of the American West. New worlds to conquer. It's all being done for our benefit back home. To boost ratings, sell more American flags, allow us to tank up our gas guzzling SUV's, to feel good about ourselves again. Just in time for July 4th.

July 4th. 1776. All the white Virginia slaveholding planters got together to sign the Declaration of Independence. The day after, they started killing Indians.

That's how Ithaca got started. Congress started handing out free land in upstate New York to Revolutionary War veterans. If they could wipe out those pesty natives who happened to have got here first. Rewards.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:56 AM