Let Slip the Running Dogs of Metaphor

I like my mixed metaphors shaken, not stirred. So as I swim the Yangtze River of my thoughts until that mighty torrent meets the Mississippi of...of...reality? No, reality is really the Gulf Stream -- a warm current surrounded by an ocean of cold water. The cold water could easily short circuit that warm current, causing sparks to fly. That is the way of reality. For it is the Gulf Stream.

But enough about reality which is the Gulf Stream. The Mississippi River is actually my...my dream! Wait. Let's see. No, my dream: she is the fertile and curvaceous and mighty and fecund Amazon! Of course the Amazon is not really a "she" but more of an androgynous-ly, hermaphroditic-ly, not so easy to tell-ly exactly what-ly -- mm. Ah.

It comes to me. The dreamy, north flowing Nile meets my rising, east flowing Yangtze (with its source in the Himalayas). Strong and yet gentle my Yangtze is! The Amazon, she is obsession; she is not dream. I should never have brought h-er-im up. This has nothing to do with nearly naked Amazonian wild, ah, things -- no way, no shape, no form, no whips, no leather, wait! OK, depending on the shape and the form and the type of leather bikini there might be a whip -- no! No whips! That's an entirely different metaphor and not a good one. Uh. Mm. It's off topic, too.

Where was I before my thoughts got Shanghaied? Right. I was in China, a complex accumulation of metaphors for -- I forget. But I actually wasn't there. I was at the

Belmont Club » Thinking about China

Mark Helprin at the Claremont Institute points out two obvious things. The first is the rise of China, not only as an economic power but also as a technological and industrial power. The second is the apparent lack of any US strategy to come to terms with that fact. The combination of the two can lead to disastrous effects.

Good thing I've learned to stop worrying and love the Obama. I'm already busy planning my next vacation from history. I think I’ll watch “Seven Years in Tibet” seven times, with US being the Tibetans.

The future is as real to me as any movie. The entire Chinese army is on the march and the Democrats in Congress respond by all going “AUMMMM” at the same time, doing their best Buddhist Monk. They smile to say "ah," they pucker their lips for an open mouth "oo," and then they swallow the mmm! It's the new politics and it sure sounds different from the old.

You see, we have traded our big honkin' Hummers for the much smaller "Aumm-ers." We were told this would be good for the planet, though which planet was not specified. And the Aummer is a better vehicle for family oriented vacations from history. It is hands (and arms) down the best for a short ride on a smooth, straight road.

The Aummer don't have a huge, jack booted footprint like the Hummer. It don't go around kicking down doors. It issues polite invitations to teas with replies requested but not really expected (unless, of course, it is a subpoena to a Capitalist Running Dog Republican). In point of fact, the Aummer don't got no foot print at all: it got a "tiny little ballet slipper worn by an out of shape marine" print. And he's standing on his tip-toes in the mud, so call it a three toed slipper print -- that soon becomes the "neck deep in a quagmire that we should have avoided in the first place" print. Did I say it was a print? The tutus will arrive in the next budget cycle and are labeled "body amour." It is believed no one will shoot a Marine in a tutu. There is little evidence that it has ever happened and that is considered much evidence that it won't.

At first the sight of marines wearing slippers and walking around on their tip-toes while neck deep in a quagmire was a pleasing one. It was thought this would keep them out of trouble.

Until our new "Aummer National Subcompact," which by this time had completely replaced the Hummer, hit a really rough patch of road. In fact, it turned into no road at all: a wilderness where not even the GPS worked. It was major war -- sans metaphor, sans simile, sans reason! Sans iambic pentameter! Curiously, it did have rhyme. But you had to cheat, as in Britney Spears singing "the ho's a hoe." Which is a metaphor but it wasn't planned.

By going "Aummm" all together our Aummer Congress tries to create a Harmonic Convergence to keep away all the Harms (and Hellfires) that War brings. But being politicians instead of Monks, they are all Aumm-ing in different keys, while assuming they're in the same.

Some screech so loud and hit notes so high it is an "antiwar dog whistle" -- which will call all the dogs of war to the homeland. You see, they had heard in one of their speeches that the Republicans had let these dogs slip, and they think maybe the dogs hurt themselves when they slipped. "How callous," they told the Republicans, "You let slip the dogs of war and don't even know what they slipped on! Was it the icy White House steps?" So they want the dogs of war to visit our Vets. They think our Vets can take care of them, and it will give the vets, like, meaning. Of course every dog will have his day in court (and a tort lawyer).

'Cept the dogs of war don't want to visit our vets and won't get in the travel cages, the ones the lawyers warned them about (and the BBC, too). Instead, we all have to join them on the mid-winter wilderness trails where they will howl beyond the flicker of the campfire. We've all returned to a state of nature, which is good. Or is it? What if we cannot make it back to the climate controlled wilderness lodge? Or maybe it's been hit by hellfires (not the metaphor, the missile).

But I got ahead of myself. At the start of this "National Lampoon's Vacation from History," Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (now called The Hope and Unity Choir Director) does look lovely and ageless in her saffron robes. An artist and cyber Billionaire from her home district commissions a sculpture of her on the capital steps. It is known as "The Reclining Speaker who Hath already Spoke-eth." The marble woman is at peace with the world though the world wars with her. The work is inspired by the laid-back lady's direction of the Aumming Congress during the looming crisis. In that sculpture you can almost see her peaceful dream and the dream is the Blue Nile -- so deep in blue it is indigo. View this Sculpture from certain angles and the lady looks like she has just been run over by a tour bus.

So as Asia teeters and the Congress titters and we gets the jitters, we will find the answer to that ageless question: “What if they throw a war and only one side shows up?” True, we could ask the Tibetans, but who will believe that bunch of losers?

I'm using "Tibetans" here as a metaphor, of course. And that vacation from history? It ends at the apocalypse, the ultimate thrill ride.

Oh. And the Mississippi River? She is the imagination. I think. Wait...