Woody Cavenaugh

I was going to write about Roch Smith Jr's blog about a show on public access TV that recommended killing all homosexuals. While I am against the killing of all of anything, I have to defend the right of the wack job to say rediculous things on public access TV. Were it not for public access how would we ever find out about nut case groups like NAMBLA, The Holy Conception Unit, and The Greensboro Grasshoppers? Ewww...Ball sports! My opinion is its better to shine the flashlight on the cockroaches than pretend the infestation doesn't exist. Knowledge, forwarning, there's a famous quote out there with those two words in it but it escapes me right now.

However that has been preempted by something similar but worse.
This was brought to my attention this morning. It is just one more in a growing list of news article where a kid's imagination makes him a terrorist. I am so enraged by this for a very simple reason. When I was a small child in the early years of elementary school they hadn't quite figured out that I was dyslexic yet. What they knew was that I was frustrated often and subject to bouts of violent mindless rage. I was taught to deal with the frustration of being intelligent and yet still unable to read or create letters with any success at all. I was taught to deal with it by sitting down, focusing my anger into words on paper. The words might not be ledgable to anyone including me but the rage went somewhere safe. When I finished writing what I felt, I simply and symbolically, tore the page or pages up, balled them up real tight and threw them in the trash. This worked wonders. No more anger, no more rage, no more tantrums leading to spankings leading to more rage tantrums and spankings. The circle was broken and I could then focus on the real problem of translating everything I saw into english so I could read it. One day children who were being children thought they could torment me further by secretly removing one of my tyrades from the trash carefully flatting it out, reassembling it, and taping it back together turning in their handywork into my teacher. My teacher was an idiot, and even then I understood the importance of forgiving idiots for their idiocy. My parents were called in for another important conference. The principal might have even been involved but quickly it was determined that I had not done anything wrong, the teacher was an idiot, and certain children needed to be taught not to play in the trash can. I am pretty sure that the reason I blog has a great deal to do with the lessons of my childhood.

Flash back over. Today I am as mad as hell. More and more I am seeing normal well adjusted children being hauled away in handcuffs for being terrorist on account of words on paper. How did that rhyme go? Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. The worst part is they aren't even reading what is being written and why. They just see a word here or a sentence there and decide that the child is a danger to free, Bush loving Americans everywhere. Danger my ass. The real danger is the child who never expresses themselves. The child who keeps everything, love, hate, rage, curiosity and imagination bottled up. The bottle always breaks. And you know what happens when the bottle breaks? When the bottle breaks you get to see a smiling happy reporter interviewing a shocked citizen who always says, "...seemed like such a nice person. I never dreamed they could do something so horrible." How many times have you heard that said to the smug reporter? I suppose it hasn't occured to anyone yet why you hear that so often. If it had school kids wouldn't be hauled off in handcuffs for short fiction. The worst part of this is I know that for every kid hauled off in handcuffs someone somewhere is smiling about it.

If you still think that these kids are being hauled off for good reason, If you still think that people should be locked up as terrorist for thoughts and words, then I feel it is my duty as a citizen to report others for the exact same offence. The first is a man named James Patterson. James Patterson writes about seriel killings boldly and publically. He's a seriel killer go get him and lock him up and throw away the key because you are not safe. If you don't lock James Patterson up then James Patterson is going to come to your house kill you and all your loved ones. While you are at it, send a swat team to the home of the terrorist named Tom Clancy. Tom Clancy writes plots about killing the president and other horrendous acts of terrorism against these United States. If you don't arrest him right this minute you are aiding terrorism and need to be arrested too. I am a good and patrotic citizen of this great nation and I am doing my duty by reporting everyone who would even so much as write about doing America wrong.