I have sent critical (but not raving) e-mails to the White House. I have opposed W.'s Washington Creeps on Salon.

I inquired recently via the www about visiting Cuba. (I did not go there. I went to Belize instead.)

My wife and my friends tell me that "They" will put me on the No Fly List. They warn that hard-eyed little guys will knock on my door, and take me to Cuba by force.

But it has not happened. I breeze through Customs & Immigration. So far, so good. Maybe the Washington Creeps want us to believe that they have all-seeing, all-nasty eyes. And maybe it is a bluff, like Saddam hoping Iran would believe he had an A-bomb.

So far, so good.

But if timbuktom quits posting on Salon.com for several weeks, please check with Gitmo.com, just in case.

...If Rove was acknowleging that the Iraq invasion was a disaster for us.

Would he jest in this manner? Is he maybe acting like a human being here? It seems unlikely, but ????

What sort of expression did he have on his face when he said it?

Usually, when a kid writes nasty stuff, the writing is disorganized. It usually lacks specifics and form and flow. And when the kid is being a smartass, you know, because that tone comes through. You can give the kid a bad mark, and explain, and teach the kid. Then you can judge by how the kid reacts.

And you find yourself yawning most of the time, because you have read the same pitiful stuff many times before.

This Virginia Tech kid's teachers appear to be pretty experienced. They knew he was not in any of the usual categories of nasty kids.

The university should have listened to the teachers, and should have taken a firmer stance. When the kid refused to go into the mental hospital, they should have refused to let him back into the school.

Note, however, that they had to replace the Oval Office rug: Monica's blue dress did not absorb all of the stuff. Some of it went onto the Oval Office rug.

Dear Future Historians:

This discussion is NOT a satire or a parody. We early 21st-century CE Americans really ARE in the grip of irrational leaders.

They are at least as ignorant and comical as we portray them here. We are NOT exaggerating.

They also are extremely dangerous. They seem to be getting stronger. We are doing what we can to oppose them. So far, they are winning.

It is nuts, to the point of incomprehensible. I created an account for George Boosch, and made a post warning against the hidden Soviet WMDs in Finland. Probably won't make it into print.

But, please look at the site. (Glenn provided a link.) Try to read the intro. It is cuckoo. Does not even have rational phrases.

Wonderful points in this article, and apparently in this book, are:

1. The Epic of the Middle East is connected and involved with "Western" Epic;

2. Epic comes to us from the time and the mindset of the transition from myth to history.

If I ever get out from under, I will spend my time in Greece, in the Peloponnesos, looking for Linear B clay tablets which tell some of the story of The Iliad, written down long before The Iliad was written in Greek letters.

We already have Linear B tablets containing the name Achilles, from Pylos, a place-name to conjure with.

If I ever find such tablets, I bet they will include Gilgamesh-type scenes right along with our familiar Achilles scenes. Pelops himself, that sneaky, debatable ancestor-king of the guys who sailed to Troy, was from the Middle East.

This article is profound, spiritual. Please, though, distil it down to three or four paragraphs. Please do this so that I can send it to my family members who still fall for W.Bush.

Gary, you are on the right track. This article is the sort of thing which actually might convince somebody from the other side. Still, please try to distil it. Please try to make it short enough that everybody will read through the whole thing.

At least General George W. (sic - I know) Custer died with his troopers. Our new General George W. Bush is alive and dangerous. He will head for Paraguay, apparently, when his term ends.

Gary K. - Please write shorter, more frequent articles covering the same groud. This is brilliant, but it is too long to keep a right-winger's attention.

We are past the time of the Federalist Papers. We need snappy four-paragraph stuff now.

1. W.Bush's religion actually is some sort of Methodist/Baptist/Texan. These guys actually officially hate Calvinists, but they act even worse than the Calvinists.

2. Please do not condemn the American descendants of the Calvinists, the mainstream Presbyterians and Reformed. Go to their churches and join in their service to humanity.

3. Please stay away from the hyphenated-Presbyterian denominations (e.g. Orthodox Presbyterian) and hyphenated-Reformed (e.g. Christian Reformed) denominations. These churches have the maximum, explosive mixture of Calvinism, Insanity, and Hypocrisy.

They are on the right, god-awful track with Cwisstohfah killing J.T. Everybody needs to end up in hell. Zero sympathetic characters allowed, except maybe Meadow.

They are making a point of showing how stupid all of the characters are, how unable to be happy.

Two big questions:

1. Will the cold Russian Special Forces Guy return?

2. Will Tony find out about Dr. Melfi's rape?

Finally: The Sulfuric Acid seemed preposterous. Was that ripped from today's headlines, or was it just a dumb script idea?

Kudos to Posters Sandra M, LogicGuru, and Swanee!

And cheers to whoever it was who suggsted that the whole Middle Eastern Terrorist Thing might be a snare to trap Tony, and to the poster who mentioned Vito Junior.

We only have four episodes left. Many great ideas in this thread, but not enough episodes to play them out. Everybody gonna die! Die soon!