Chauncey DeVega says: May you live in interesting times

Today, we are inaugurating a new feature entitled, the "we are respectable negroes news roundup". Each week, one of us respectable negroes will offer a unique interpretation of the weekly news. Since I am held up in a hotel, and have a modest surplus of time, I get to go first.

This week there is something in the air that gives me, us, real concern regarding our nation's stability, long term prosperity, and frankly, speaks volumes to our collective sanity (or lack thereof).

Perhaps, it is because I am in D.C. Maybe I am experiencing a "Tyler Durden" moment because I am off my meds? Quite possibly, it could be that I am picking up on our body politic's collective exhaustion at the thought of 1.6 trillion dollars being flushed down the shitter on a wasted, unnecessary military adventure which has left us weaker rather than stronger. Who knows? maybe it is just hanging out in D.C. and seeing all these homeless brothers and sisters, many of whom got to play G.I. Joe and G.I. Jane and were conveniently forgotten and abandoned when they came home--damaged and broken people who are an unpleasant reminder that these military escapades have a very real, and very human, cost.

In other news, this week's news events included:

1. Chaos in a nuclear armed Pakistan. This is a nightmare scenario. In the worst case scenario, Musharraf's clique is deposed and we could lose a crucial ally against Al-Queda and The Taliban. Or in the worst, worst, Freddy Krueger is coming to get you scenario, we would see Pakistan's nuclear weapons come under the control of folks who would like nothing more than to Fedex a warhead to NYC. By the way, there is no reasonable or viable scenario for securing those nukes. Where is Chuck Norris and Delta Force when we need them?;

2. Indian Women are "renting" their wombs to rich Europeans and Americans. I don't need to describe how many levels of twisted this is;

3. I won't go for the obvious and mention how delightfully cute the 8 limbed Indian child is, or speculate about what these increasingly common birth defects reveal about the state of the environment and how polluted it is. Nor, will I mention this story about the disturbingly high levels of industrial toxins in the average American's body;

4. In Nigeria, researchers released findings about a region of that country which I affectionately refer to as, "The Land of Magical Yams". Here, everyone is a twin, it must be those magical yams. Hmmmm...that sounds like the beginnings of a folk melody, any takers?;

5. Researchers have announced that they have successfully cloned monkeys. In other news, researchers have experimented with fusing animal and human DNA, as well as cloning organs for human transplant. Oh yeah, with the mapping of the human genome there has been serious discussion regarding the viability/inevitability of biological weapons which can target specific ethnic and racial subgroups. I am not a fan of too much unnecessary rising action in my fiction. Nor, am I a fan of too much teasing in my erotic life (which explains why I don't generally like lap dances, let me rephrase, I like lap dances at Spearmint Rhino, but I don't like paying for lap dances anywhere else). So, can we please just get around to the big reveal that scientists have been cloning humans for decades.

6. The dollar has sunk to such lows that Jay-Z is flashing Euros in his videos. Likewise, the supermodel Giselle, an exemplar of financial wisdom and acumen, is divesting herself of American dollars. By the way, America now rank's 15th in average worker income.

These events, and many others I didn't list, hint at a future that resembles Soylent Green or Omega Man (excluding his politics and his present state of decrepitude, Charlton Heston was the man back in the day). Prudently, I am going to dust off my Aldous Huxley, Ayn Rand, and George Orwell just to get a refresher on what may be coming.

In lieu of that heavy reading, I will wait for "Mr. Happy Rapper's" take on Richard Matheson's prescient apocalyptic vision:

And yes, I will checking out Southland Tales as well:

And no, I won't have be writing any movie reviews because my girl Zora would stick me with that rusty shiv she carries if I squatted on her turf....