Whispering Wind

With most of India already swooning over him, Shah Rukh Khan has added me to the list. Does anyone else like bollywood?

I recently discovered that one can buy their college textbooks online. For one thing, I don't know why so many people do not. Money is really tight right now and buying them online will help me save quite a bit. There is one small catch, and it worries me a bit. 98% of what's available is one edition behind what my school says I should have. Is this just a marketing ploy to get me to spend more money, or will this actually make my books unusable in class as they have different formats? The University website directs me to ask each individual professor what they prefer. How do I contact professors in the summer and expect to hear from them in a reasonable amount of time? Should I even wait until the first day when supplies will be limited and prices high?

New layout. Any thoughts?

I woke up this morning to no water. As I flushed the toilet after doing my morning business, it didn't fill back up again. I looked outside at the laundromat that is in the center of my U-shaped apartment complex and saw at least 6 men all hammering away on some pipes. It came back on shortly after. Then the community adviser came around with a memo saying that we have a boil order until further notice. Sure puts a kink in my day to have to boil water for anything.

But do I really have ground to complain? We in the developed world don't realize how lucky we are to have clean water on demand. And hot water too! I still have water. I just have to boil it. I can't imagine what it would be like not to have it at all, or to have to travel long distances for it. I'm feeling hungry for noodles. I figure boiling the noodles takes care of boiling the water....right?

 

I watched the news today, I hadn't in a long time. So much is happening around our world! Britain is getting the worst floods in 60 years (if we don't do something about global warming now, they will get much worse), President Bush had polyps removed from his colon, there's a bird in Scotland that walks in a seaside shop and steals the same potato chips everyday, and an Ethiopian man killed 4 family members and then himself.

My favorite was the story about the seagull. They caught him on tape, affectionately known as "Sam", and he seems a very intelligent bird. There are several versions of it on YouTube if you're interested. The story that made me stop for a second and think was the one about President Bush. You see, for the operation he had to be put under sedation, and for those couple of hours Dick Cheney was in charge of the country. Now of course nothing happened in those hours and the President was back in charge by lunchtime, but it still made me think. What if something had happened?

Also, the operation was performed at Camp David. Which made me wonder. I know nothing about Camp David. And yet presidents seem to be there very often and apparently can have surgical procedures done there. What is this facility? What is it used/originally intended for?

After doing some research I found out that Camp David serves as the Presidential Retreat. Originally it was for Roosevelt. Roosevelt was accustomed to seeking relief from hot Washington summers and relaxing on weekends aboard the presidential yacht Potomac. In 1942, the Secret Service became concerned about the President's use of Potomac. WWII had brought U-boats of the German War Navy to U.S. coastal waters in the Atlantic. Roosevelt's health was also a concern. The muggy climate of the Washington area was considered detrimental to his health, affecting his sinuses. A new retreat within a 100 mile radius of the capital with cool mountain air was sought. It is a private, secluded place for recreation, contemplation, rest, and relaxation. Many historical events have occurred at the Presidential Retreat; the planning of the Normandy Invasion, discussions of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Vietnam War discussions, and many other meetings with foreign dignitaries and guests. It is a place where Presidents can relax, unwind, or entertain distinguished guests in an informal setting. Furthermore, Camp David has, on numerous accounts, served as a place of safety and security for the President.

Nearby, located underneath 650 acres in the hills near the Pennsylvania/Maryland border, Raven Rock, AKA "Site R", reportedly had a full-time staff of 350 for much of the Cold War. Officially now called the Alternate Joint Communications Center, the bunker went on-line in 1954. Representatives of all the military departments and the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the federal government were reportedly located here as a contingency against a wipe out of the command structure in the event of a nuclear war. The site has 700,000 square feet of interior space, and enough room for 3,000 people. Dick Cheney is said to have stayed here after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack.

Interesting, huh?

 

Tired.

I have to work in 6 hours yet I cannot bring myself to sleep.

I own 1 item in my closet that was made in the US. One. That's not including a couple that say made in some islands* and have USA in parentheses. And I know very well that the people who work in those factories, the ones who made these clothes that I was so excited to find at such a cheap price, are probably being paid less a day than what I paid for the shirt. And I am a bit disgusted by it. Not a bit, actually. A lot.

I want to change. I want to be better than the everyday person who doesn't realize that they're contributing to a system that essentially enslaves most of the poorer parts of our world. But where in this age of WalMarts (the absolute devil of it all) and big box stores do I find American made clothing (or anything else, for that matter) that is fashionable? And that I can afford on my shoestring budget?

*Saying the Mariana Islands are the United States is contemptible and a symptom of a habit I've seen this government exhibit time and again. When things are convenient for profit, lines of state and laws ages old are bent to suit the influential. Just as quickly are these rules re tightened to maintain control over the poor. The masses. Us. What happened to WE THE PEOPLE?

 

It was the future. There had been some global catastrophe, whatever it was there were no big politicians in charge anymore. It was the network of local police. All citizens were free to roam and try to gather resources. I was in Peoria. Nowhere did it look bombed or like the buildings were in ruins. You could still get gas in the gas stations, except that there was no one working so it was basically free. I did get the sense that things on the outside were not entirely safe, and many of our movements needed to be at night when other things couldn't see us.

Then, the police decide that for safety, women and children under 12 need to be rounded up so the women can take care of the children who were orphaned and beginning to roam around aimlessly. They sequestered them to hospitals in Peoria, but in other places they put them in jails, as it is rural and there is no other secure place. Then men were to be rounded up and placed elsewhere. My dream never really went into what happened to the men.

For some reason, when I was rounded up in a strange warehouse building, (I had made it my home and hiding place) I convinced the police that they needed a liason (and that was my official title) to communicate orders to the people they rounded up. I had special talents that let me be an asset. I could speak many languages. (Although I never did in the dream). The police gave me papers to carry with me when I traveled to other areas so they wouldn't round me up, and I went in Peoria to the hospitals, which looked very run down, like an old flea market building with scummy carpet falling off the stairs and old floors with no beds. People lie on the floor with blankets in rows. Everyone pretty much has a cold or the flu, but they feel happy knowing that the seriousness does not go beyond that.

I have a white coat on and carry a tray of medicines up the stairs. As I do so the iodine falls over into the gauze and makes a mess. But when I get to where the people are, there are hundreds of gauze sheets on the floor soaked with blood, and I walk past a woman who is straining in a type of potty chair while two nurses hold gauze under her. People are given various floors depending on what was their health state. I give a speech that what the police were doing was essentially putting them in concentration camps, and that everyone must keep up their spirits and work together to make this place a home. That this was their situation and they needed to make the best of it. The women must keep themselves busy with reading and making new friends, and the children I encourage to explore and play games with each other. I then oversee a doctor (woman of course) diagnose a woman as being pregnant, which was exciting. Then another woman was having a baby. The baby was black, and as it comes it out it is covered with poo, which it was putting in its mouth and eating. I felt a bit repulsed by this, but while they clean it up, I explain to the people watching that it was something called meconium, and entirely normal. They seem wowed.

I am walking down a Peoria street and run into an old black lady in a pink prom dress that's not zipped up all the way. She trips and falls at my feet and I warn her and the other girls traveling with her that they need to hide because they will be rounded up. Then I wonder if I should tell the police so they can get them. I know I do have that power to rat out the few left that are hiding. The everyday people still trust me. I decide not to give up their wherabouts.

I find myself in rural Illinois, near Peru. I am trying to find family members to warn before the police come and take them to the county jail. (While I am working for the police, I often find myself secretly trying to help those they are hunting). I come upon a house of a bunch of girls I know, who quickly pretend to be innocently right in the middle of swimming in their pool. I go to warn them, but as I walk in the door the police pull up in the driveway. Too late. The girls are pushed into a van. I ask the cops if they were informed of my position in Peoria and hand them my papers. They are amazed and let me ride in the black SUV they are driving. There is one female cop and a very good looking male one. I have a video iPod for some reason and ask the cop if he likes Family Guy while I play an episode, then I check the weather. There is a storm coming.

As we drive to the jail I see women cussing them out and giving them the finger on the side of the road. I tell them how I am shocked to see these women so combative, while the ones in Peoria are docile when we round them up. The male cop is surprised. As we pass the van pulls up and she is handcuffed and pulled inside. We go to a diner where the waitress serves us and there are cops everywhere, but the food is free, as though they are just giving it away because it doesn't matter anymore. The waitress and cooks seem nervous and scared. The guy cop has cereal and another man sitting across from us had a weird, curly looking kind of cereal. I ask the good looking cop in half-disgust if that's for him. He laughs and says no and begins to hit on me big time as I'm sitting next to him. I play along.

I find myself with the female cop back in Peoria on my second visit to the hospital, only this time the cop seems visably apprehensive about going inside and hands me a gun with a light in the end. We walk into the darkened lower floors (everyone is up top) and sweep the lights around as we make our way to the stairs. She mumbles something about unrest and the fact that they want to kill us now. I cock my gun and keep my finger on the trigger, ready to shoot anything that pops out at us.

We make it to the upper floors and see misery. Everywhere there are moaning people. They've run out of medicine,and now are just trying to keep the healthy ones alive and waiting for the sick to die. I ask the cop where I should put my gun and she says while she's put hers against the wall, it might be a better idea to keep mine in hand. My grip tightens on it. An aide showes us the window where they throw out the dead bodies to the sidewalk, and where the garbage truck comes and gets them. A streak of blood and rot is left in the pavement where they have been dragged. I watch a line of people make their way to a fat black woman in a chair who looks them over. There is a little person who walks away after being examined. She has some strange braces on her legs. I tell her in a friendly voice to stretch out every day, and try to smile. She gives me a shy grin and walks away.


I wonder what kind of disaster happened. I have a strange feeling that the disaster hadn't happened yet. Like a asteroid that everyone knew was coming, as though everyone was just going about daily life but also waiting to die. There were a lot of inconsistencies, like how they kept infrastructure working like water treatment and garbage trucks. Were the men doing these things as a sort of slave labor? What about the woman waitress? Why was she not rounded up? What about all the elderly women in the hospitals? What did they do without their many medicines? Any thoughts anyone else has about my dream would be welcome.