For the interested among you, I've written a column for The Parkersburg Sentinel. I'm hoping this will become a regular gig. I've kept the journal/blog thing going for six or seven years, so surely I can come up with something each week. *fingers crossed* This one isn't nearly as severe as my "Who's Gayle?" rant.

There's an intelligence problem, but it's not at the CIA

By TERRY L. ESTEP

Dick Cheney and George W. Bush are again saying there are longstanding ties between al-Qaida's terror network and Iraq.

Wow. Talk about old dogs and new tricks.

I guess I can't blame them for doing their best to legitimize our invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship by trying to hype that connection. It doesn't seem to matter to them there has been no credible evidence of such a link. They bent over backward to imply Iraq was in bed with al-Qaida before finally backpedaling.

[ Continue to Column... ]

The entrance to my apartment building has a buzzer box beside the door. There are two lines of buttons numbered one through six. The red line of buttons has "A" under it. The black line of buttons has "B" under it. Twelve apartments. A1, B1, A2, B2, etc. You want in, you buzz your friend's place. They come down and let you in. It's not rocket science.

Most of the buttons have no markings other than the letter-number combo. I tell my friends I live in 3B, but I also put a label beside my apartment's button which says "Estep" in large, friendly block letters.

Now answer this question: If you're looking for your friend and your friend's name isn't Estep, WHY IN BLUE FUCK ARE YOU PRESSING MY BUTTON? Do you have any idea how annoying it is for me to clomp down the fucking stairs and open the door so you can look at me with that slack-jawed yokel look while you waft the rich smells of pork rinds and Juicy Fruit at me and ask "Is Gayle home?"

GAYLE? WHO THE FUCK IS GAYLE?

I threw on clothes for THIS? Fuck you.

I know apartment numbers aren't always easy to remember. You think you have it lodged in your skull and thoughts of NASCAR or Alan Jackson or Pamela Anderson's tits drive it out by the time you get to your friend's house. That's fair. That's fine. But simple process of elimination says your friend DOESN'T LIVE IN THE APARTMENT MARKED "ESTEP." You should be ignoring that button from the start. It clearly will not help you. This isn't a puzzle where the letters have been scrambled for your amusement.

And I know the laws of chance haven't been suspended to create an anomalous building where all the occupants are named "Estep" because there also are buttons marked "Cox" and "Hupp." If your friend's last name isn't "Estep," "Cox" or "Hupp," you have a 1-in-9 chance you'll get the right apartment on the first unlabeled button you press. Hell, pretend you're in Vegas and hit 'em all. Maybe you'll win the jackpot and some stripper will give you a lapdance. The sane ones only put the labels on the buttons so you'd leave us alone. We want our friends to find us, not you!

I bet your lips move when you read, don't they? Fess up! We may as well have a conversation about how you were terrified of reading because your third-grade teacher used to take down your pants and molest you in the cloak room. I mean, as long as we have this time together. I may as well add "Therapist" to the unwanted job title of "Information Desk," as long as we're here.

And you know what? I'm not letting you inside. Not just because it's against the rules of the building, but because I don't trust you to find your way back out. I don't want to be responsible when you wander from door to door, knocking and asking startled tenants about Gayle.

You'd probably drift downstairs with the other ignorant fucks who couldn't understand the labeling concept and create a colony in the laundry room. Then I'd have to walk through your little town when I want to wash clothes, and I'd start blaming Gayle for my missing socks. Six years later, I'll be a raving drunk who wears a tinfoil hat and wanders the streets warning people about Gayle. The police will pick me up, put me in a detox unit, and nobody will understand that it's all your fault.

Are you the source of the CIA's faulty intelligence on Iraq? Let me guess, the soldiers sent you in first when they nabbed Saddam. You asked him if Gayle was in the hole, and he was too stunned at your stupidity to pull a gun. That's how they got him without a fight, wasn't it?

It's no wonder other industrialized nations are kicking our asses in every academic subject. We're churning out illiterate mouthbreathers who can't even read a label written at a second-grade level.

I swear to God, the next asshole who buzzes my door and isn't looking for me is going to get shot in the head. I'll buy a gun special for this. I'll tell him Gayle's home, invite him in, let him follow me and then turn around and fire right under the chin so he can bounce back down the stairs while spraying blood in every direction. How would that grab your dumb ass, you nimrod?

FUCK!

Okay, I feel better now. Carry on.

I was happy to see Audible had made President Clinton's BookExpo America speech available as a free download from their site. I watched it live on CSPAN and enjoyed it very much, wishing the man were still in office (even though I didn't vote for him either time).

They also have "unabridged selections" from Chuck Palahniuk's Stranger than Fiction, which is a tempting purchase. $15 isn't bad, and to have the author reading the "Testicle Festival" bit would be worth it.

On a darker note, I was saddened to see Charleston Daily Mail columnist L.T. Anderson died last week. I always enjoyed reading his stuff.

Ellen Goodman's latest column tackles the way cellphone users obliviously broadcast personal information to everyone.

In just the past few weeks, there was the woman who got on the train in Boston with a shaky relationship -- "I did not leave my things at your place on purpose" -- and got off in New York with no relationship. There was the father in Cincinnati whose son's SAT scores -- 540 in math, 480 in English -- were audibly not what he hoped for. There was the doctor in the grocery store discussing a CAT scan of a patient in Milwaukee. How do you spell adenocarcinoma?

I can relate. I was at 7-11 the other day and heard a guy walking down the aisles, yakking away on his cellphone. "No, I ain't fucking Mathilda. She's just messing with you, babe. I wouldn't have nothing to do with that skank."

I'll probably get a cellphone when I start driving, because I really would like to have one for roadside emergencies, but that's the only reason I'd get one. I don't want a cellphone because I don't want that ever-present tether. If I'm not home, you can leave a message on my machine and I'll get back to you when I feel like it. I don't need to discuss personal business in the cereal aisle.

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From The Onion...

Mugger Can't Believe Crap Victim Has On MP3 Player
BOSTON -- Following the successful mugging of a jogger in Franklin Park, petty criminal Derek Mesker announced Monday that he cannot believe the shit he's found on his victim's Philips 20GB MP3 player. "3 Doors Down? Maroon 5!" Mesker said, scrolling through the songs. "The new Counting Crows?! Man, I'm glad I pistol-whipped that motherfuck." Mesker added that the first thing he did was toss the device's "gay-ass" teal neoprene case.

I just read at DVD File that Anchor Bay will be releasing a four-disc collector's edition of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead in September.

So, what are you gonna get? How about the film's theatrical cut, a new extended cut and the European "Zombie" Cut (each gets their own disc), presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 and DTS 5.1 surround tracks on the theatrical cut, Dolby 5.1 and 2.0 for the Euro cut, and Dolby mono only for the extended version, plus audio commentary with Romero, his wife Chris, makeup legend Tom Savini and moderator Perry Martin on the theatrical cut, producer Richard P. Rubinstein and Martin on the extended cut, and stars David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger and Gaylen Ross on the Euro cut. Disc Four features the new 75-minute "The Dead Will Walk" documentary (featuring interviews with all of the above plus Claudio and Dario Argento, Pat and Tony Buba, Zilla Clinton, Michael Gornick, Claudio Simonetti and more), the original "Document of the Dead" documentary by Roy Frumkes, on-set home movie footage and a Monroeville Mall tour hosted by Romero. Other extras include five still galleries with domestic and international advertising, poster, lobby card and marketing materials, filmographies, a comic book preview, a Monroeville TV commercial, and theatrical trailers, TV and radio spots from around the world. Retail for this puppy will be $49.95.

It's... just... so beautiful... Should've sent... a poet...

When I bought my new computer, I had to look at what I could afford vs. what I would want. With money no object, I would've chosen a gaming rig capable of playing Half Life 2 (if the damned game ever comes out) without breaking a sweat. I wasn't sure what my new computer would be capable of, but I've been downloading game demos to get an idea.

Call of Duty plays great, so I think I'm okay. It seems like World War 2 dominates first-person shooters, and this game seems like the best of the lot so far. The full version is on my "to buy" list. I don't play many games on the PC, but this is one I want.

In other news, my television died last night. It's been ailing for a month, rolling the picture to unintelligible levels until it's had a chance to warm up a bit. It finally started doing it in the middle of a show, and the power button stopped working. It served me faithfully for at least seven years. I have to make do with my computer's TV tuner and my ancient little black-and-white Zenith until payday rolls around.