I'm Baaaaaaaaack!

This marks the first post to this blog in more than a year. A great deal has happened in my life over the past seventeen months. Looking back over the contents of this blog since I wrote in 2003(!?!):

Tuesday, June 24, 2003
Hello! Welcome to my world! Rather than send e-mail to my friends (and foes), I decided to enter the 21st century and publish a Web Log (Blog). Visit daily. Youneverknow. NS

If this is (fair & balanced) chagrin, so be it. In the meantime, read a great 9/11 meditation by John Kelso, redneck columnist that resonates with me. The at-large status of bin Laden is one of the great crimes of the 21^st century. (Some would lump this blog with great crimes of the current century.) In addition, Kelso gives props to one of the best books on Al-Qaeda: Lawrence Wright's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Looming Tower. Kelso is not the only person to have (fair & balanced) mixed emotions on 9/11 and immediately after.

[x Austin Fishwrap]
Is Osama looking for chicks?
By John Kelso
Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Just in time for the sixth anniversary of 9/11, Osama bin Laden has a new tape out in which he sports a new look.

It appears he's dyed his beard black, presumably to make himself look younger. Why? Maybe he's dating. Like they say on the TV ads, "No Play for Mr. Gray."

Yes, I realize today is a somber occasion, but if we can't get a few laughs out of this bozo, what else can we get out of him?

"A couple of his wives have gone home, so he may be looking around," said Larry Wright of Austin, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book on al Qaeda, "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11." You should read it. Wright is considered perhaps this country's leading expert on the terrorist organization.

"What I can't figure out is how they got all of that Grecian Formula on the back of that donkey," said my friend Scott Wilson, who is not an expert on world affairs but has a keen eye for detail. Wilson observed that maybe the beard dye job came after fashion advice from bin Laden's appearance on "Queer Eye for the Terrorist Guy." Then again, maybe it was that stint on "Extremist Makeover."

"He's dyed his beard before," Wright said. "He's pretty vain. There were times when he would have photographers in, and he would take a look at their digital photos and he'd say, 'Let's take another one. My neck looks too thick.' So he's very conscious of his image."

OK, so let's quit with the hair jokes and get serious for a moment. It infuriates me that it's been six years now and the U.S. government still hasn't caught this son of a (supply your own noun). Six years and the guy is still on the loose, sending out taped messages. His look may have changed, but the level of garbage hasn't. There are so many problems that this country should be working on that really matter: educating our kids, overpopulation, the polar ice caps melting — you name it. And what do we have to waste our time on? A guy who wants to kill us all telling us everything will be just fine if we see things his way.

And his way is to kill innocent men, women and children. That's one collection plate I'm not sticking any change in, podnah.

It was six years ago today, on a Tuesday morning just like this one, when I walked into the newsroom to see one of the World Trade Center's towers with an airplane sticking out of it. Isn't it time we rounded this guy up? With all of the technology we've got going for us, how hard could it be? Especially now that he's got that beard by Shinola. Start posting CIA agents outside nail salons. First it's the dye job, next it's a manicure and a foot massage.

So if I try to laugh in times like these, excuse me, because it sure beats the heck out of crying.

John Kelso's column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Contact him at 445-3606 (phone) or jkelso@statesman.com (e-mail).

Copyright © 2007 by The Austin American-Statesman

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