The Sideways World

Seems like nobody in Washington see the Sideways World. They have too many old maps hanging around in war rooms. It's time to take the maps down.

People keep thinking the USA has borders, that cute little top part by Maine, that luscious string of beads in Florida ending in Key West, that California slice of cantaloupe, sexy and sweet and even funny Alaska -- a craggy faced old miner about ten times the size of any other country in the world, the skipping stones of the Hawaiian Islands tossed like black lava rocks into the Pacific Ocean, this is all nice in geography class, a big old map taped up on a big old wall, but it has nothing to do with what's really going on. Nothing.

America doesn't have those borders anymore. Did you notice?

Didn't anyone notice we all went sideways and when I talk to Denise in LA and Doc in Santa Barbara and Cheyenne in SF and Chris in Boulder and Jeneane in Atlanta and David in Boston and Gary and Euan, both Scots in the UK and Brian and JP and Jack, all Brits in the UK and Niek in Holland and Jean-Yves in France an Golby in South Africa and other friends in Germany and Japan and China and New Zealand and Australia and yes, the MIDDLE EAST that I'm making a new world with new borders? I've already made a new world with NO borders. I've made a Sideways World thanks to the Net. I'm living in a Sideways World.

And would someone please ask me, like George Bush and his friends, WHY THE FUCK I'D LIKE TO KILL ALL MY FRIENDS IN MY SIDEWAYS WORLD? That's the last thing I want to do. I'm a mom. I want my friends to have fun and eat and grow up and make more kids. I'm not really wanting to nuke them into non-existence.

So when they ask me to think I live in the USA and there are borders here and I should say, "Yeah, sure, let's kill those STRANGERS in that pink country and that green country and that orange country, up there on the map, let's not actually sit down and LISTEN TO THEM." they have it all wrong. I don't see those borders anymore. I just want to talk to those folks. I might find out there are a lot of other mothers living there trying to make dinner for their kids. And when you're just trying to make dinner for your kids, don't you deserve NOT to be annihilated? Call me crazy.