It's February, are we finally back to business as usual yet? Looks like the Olympics are proceeding, and oh boy, we're finally going to get that dose of Arnold Action that went unreleased last fall. What was it called, Congenital Defect or something? No matter, I'm just glad we're back to normal because I'd hate to see anything interfere with the fertility rites this month.

That's what St. Valentine's Day originally was, you know, the Roman feast of Lupercalia, held each year on the Ides of February. As far as Saint Valentine himself, well there may have been as many as three different Saint Valentines. The one we recognize most was martyred back in the Fourth Century for defying an Imperial edict not to marry people, or so the legend goes. Toward the end of the Fifth Century Pope Gelasius I named the day before the Ides, February 14th, as St. Valentine's Day. It had nothing to do with a preemptive strike against that dirty old fertility festival, of course. After all, the Roman demigod Cupid was allowed to hang around Valentinian celebrations and he still symbolizes Love for us today. I guess Gelato, sorry Gelasius, did that to keep the newly converted pagans happy. It's a holiday about Love. All that business with candy and greeting cards came much later.

Love is a wonderful thing; don't wait for Valentines Day to express it. Back in my less verbal thumping days, I used to think that your love should be so obvious that you didn't need to say "I love you" all the time. WRONG. Keep saying it. And don't forget "Love means never having to say you're sorry." DOUBLE WRONG! If you have a lover, especially if you are living with them, keep saying "I'm sorry," too. Even if you really don't think you did anything bad.

Actually Love is one of the things I like most about Christianity. Its theology talks about Love more than most any other religion, as long as it's the Divine- to-Human variety. Strangely it frowns on the mechanics of Human-to-Human love. At least being non-violent and caring toward one another are strong Christian themes; there's still a lot of heart there. And speaking of hearts, just where did that red "heart" shape come into the history of Valentine's Day? It's pretty geometric, unlike the real shape of the heart, with veins and arteries all over it. Actually if you drew a diagram of the four chambers of the heart it would look less like the traditional heart shape and more like a pretzel.

Hmm, pretzels, there was something about pretzels in the news recently, what was it? Oh yeah, it was about Dubya, who almost fulfilled the Zero Year Curse by choking on one. That would've been a hell of a way to go down in history! Imagine what the tour guides in Arlington Cemetery would've been saying decades from now. "Here lies The President Who Beat The Depression And Hitler. Here lies The President Who Freed The Slaves And Kept Our Nation Together. And over there is The President Who Died Choking On A Pretzel."

As comedian Will Durst likes to say, "You can't make up stuff like this!" Even President Ford could watch TV and chew pretzels, he just couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time. My favorite quote in all this was the Reuters headline that read, "Bush's Choking Episode Shows Chewing Is Important." Wow, we're only two weeks into 2002 and already we have the News Flash Of The Year! Sheesh, even an insect knows that chewing is important.

So, this session of football watching, was this Dubya's way of trying to act normally in the Age of Terror? And where was the Secret Service when this was going down? Does Dubya shoo them away so he can pig out in his shorts like a Real Texan? Where was our anti-pretzel system when we needed it? Was Dick Cheney the target of a guided pretzel too? He disappeared right about the same time Enron went into a tailspin. Where has he been the last few weeks anyway, on a long bender, weeping over their bankruptcy? Or just conferring with lawyers on how "private" all his meetings with Enron were?

Now that I think about it, this all sounds like a schoolboy's attempt at cover up. Just like Ralphie in Jean Shepard's A Christmas Story when he crunched his glasses. He couldn't risk losing his new BB gun so quickly made up a fib about an icicle knocking off his glasses, remember? Cue the tears and hyperventilate a little: "Mom, I was just watching the Cowboys game on TV and then this pretzel was too hard and I couldn't bite it and it got struck in my throat and couldn't breathe and then I fell down and that's when I broke my campaign promises. Waaaa-aa-aa!" There there, Georgie, it's not important. We didn't like those old promises anyway, did we? Wipe away those tears and we'll go make up some new things to say for the Congressional campaign.

What really happened? Has Dubya made up a lie to cover up something even more embarassing? Maybe he had a case of beer with those pretzels and got so snookered he tripped over the James K. Polk Memorial Ottoman or something. But what could strike such fear into the heart of our Resident that would he fall off the wagon like that? Nothing scares him, not even Al Qaida targeting the White House with an airliner! And he has no secret dealings with Enron to cover up like the rest of his Cabinet. And the rest of his party. And the rest of Washington. Nope, there's no connection to that at all. It couldn't be the recent suicide of a former Enron executive either. I mean, that WAS a suicide wasn't it? Falling down drunk, never! Let's just say he, ahh, ummmm, choked on a pretzel, that's it!

You gotta laugh, but I'm sure we would have never heard of this at all if Dubya hadn't scraped his cheek. And more than that...

I can't write any more. This is too easy.

You already know I don't trust Bush. What can I say about the Pretzel Episode that's really meaningful? No matter how likable he may be in person, how high his popularity, or pitiful his scraped cheek, it doesn't affect my opinion. I still see him as a tool of the greedheads. I kind of pity him having to live under the glare of publicity though, especially with so many humor-mongers like me pointing out his every shortcoming and hooting cat calls. I admit I've combined suds, starch, salt and shorts together with an afternoon of football too. What a strange life it must be at the top, to have so many watching your every move, to have to tread so lightly.

I'm sure Bush doesn't care what I think. (Rusty who?) He just takes comfort in his poll numbers, which is certainly understandable. Everybody thinks he's done such a great job in Afghanistan, but what exactly has George himself done to deserve this level of popularity? Not the soldiers and sailors, not the police and firemen, GEORGE. Would the prosecution of the war have been any different if Al Gore were up there? Probably even Ralph Nader would be waging this war, but in a nice, ecological way (bows and arrows?). Bush's answer is to get all confrontational with terrorists, of course. It would take some pretty twisted pretzel logic not to deal with the immediate threat, but what about the root causes of terror, George? Are we going to rebuild Afghanistan properly this time instead of leaving them to another band of thugs?

Actually I can't find much to complain about in the way Dubya's run his War On Terra, sorry, Terror. Maybe that's because we got very little news that wasn't filtered by the military first. This has to be the most thoroughly controlled war reporting in decades, maybe ever. Well pardon me for asking unpatriotic questions, but I remember how slowly it came out that the bombing wasn't all that accurate in Desert Storm. Sure we saw clips of a few smart bomb hits that were aired a thousand times, but most ordnance was dumb bombs which had the usual low accuracy of past wars. So, isn't it fair to ask how precise all those new generation bombs were in this campaign? When are we going to find out how many casualties there were, both civilian and combatant in Afghanistan? Exactly how many people were killed with our tax money? We're spending about a billion a month there, did we get our money's worth? And whatever happened to Bin Laden? How long will it be before our forces admit he escaped the dragnet?

Oh well, the Taliban is gone, Afghanistan has a new government and the shooting has died down a lot. And we're losing interest fast. Maybe America is saying, "I'm going to go play with my toys again. Call me when we have some cool military action on TV again, like when we go to bomb Iraq, OK?" It almost seems like we're going back to the August, 2001 mindset, setting ourselves up for another rude awakening. You know Yahweh/God/Allah likes to mix it up. Maybe he's pissed because we're still more interested in earthy Lupercalian debauchery instead of idealistic Valentinian love and working on new punishments right now. No, I don't expect more planes crashed into buildings by Al Qaida, but there are many ways to attack an open society like ours. It's like the injunction given to Noah after the Flood, "No more water, but a fire next time." The next time could be a lot worse than 911.

But you can't live in fear all the time. There's bound to be some backsliding into normalcy.

At least Dubya's pretzel-fall mark was all healed in time for his State of the Union speech. But his nice complexion wasn't enough to make his delivery Emmy- award quality and the applause lines were all pretty predictable. The only new idea in it was to encourage people to give 4000 hours of service to the community during their lives. That's great, really, but that's still not leading. As President he commands the greatest tool for good works in the world, but instead he's telling us to do good works on our own time. It doesn't sound like he's going to roll up his sleeves with us. I guess he's too busy trying to make the deficit bigger with huge tax cuts and increases in military spending. And speaking of the economy, where is the surplus? A year ago we were projecting $4 trillion extra by 2008, now we're talking about another $2 trillion in red ink. Perversely, I find myself wishing that the economy will stay bad through November. Just so he and his handlers won't gain any more power. Even though it's rough for my family and me right now. Do I feel that way just out of spite? Perhaps.

Or maybe the economy is doing better already. With Enron, Global Crossing and KMart all bankrupt, we can't fall any further, right? Certainly it's a sign of good times when people can get paid for writing news flashes about the importance of chewing. You know, that's what I need, a job where I can be paid to write lofty sounding headlines. Or maybe I can become an epitaph writer at Arlington. How's this sound? "Here lies The President Who Was Impeached Over A Blow Job During the Festival Of Lupercalia." Sheer poetry!

I'm going to go back into the Closet right now to see what the job boards have for epitaph writers. What's this here, a heart-shaped box with a Cupid on it? Oh my, it's full of chocolate covered pretzels! I wonder who my secret Valentine is? Well whoever it is, you shouldn't have, but I'm touched. Anyway, thanks for reading, I love you all and I'm sorry if I pissed off any Bush people out there. Until next month the Closet is closed.

(C) 2002 - Rusty Pipes

Official Disclaimer: We Cosmik Debris editors were nowhere NEAR Washington DC that day! We were at the movies watching a.. watc.. WHAT TRAIL OF PRETZEL CRUMBS?!? Aw, come on! That's BULL#$&#!!! It led where?! ... Okay, we're not saying another word without our lawyers. (But it was RUSTY!!)