Friday, November 05, 2004

 
"The Jersey Devil Made Me Do It!"
Or: Guard Issues 'Duck and Cover' Story"

I shouldn't even try to compete with what the output of what may be hundreds of man hours spent by writers for Leno, Letterman et al on the New Jersey National Guard("Sleep Well Tonight; The National Guard is Awake!")attack on the Little Egg Harbour Township Intermediate School. One trusts they'll do better than musing whether or not schools will welcome back prayer or "duck and cover" drills. Or cite Clinton's precedent of firing cruise missiles into a building, empty except for midnight munchies pail Baathist* janitors, to send a message that it's not nice to try to assasinate former U.S. Presidents as a set up for something like,
"And we thought that Education Secretary Rod Paige was kidding when he called the NEA a 'terrorist organization.'"
And perhaps the "Weekly World News" following up a Knight Ridders observation that, "In 1999, a practice bomb that fell outside the range sparked a fire that burned more than 11,000 acres in the Pine Barrens, N.J.," will break the news that a primary mission of the Jersey Guard is to use aerial thermal imaging to target the "Pine Barrens Jersey Devil."
True(if unexciting)Story: Several years ago my two brothers and I were tooling around the Nevadan desert when a radar/laser detector sounded an alarm. Given that our speed was about oh, about 5 mph, and we were far from any paved road, we piled out and looked about, seeing only what looked like a military jet in the not cloudy all day skies. Maybe it was just a coincidence involving a detector's "false positive," but it was all right with us jackrabbit killin' patriots if we had been "painted" for practice. And no, we didn't risk legal, if not immediate, punishment for sending .223 and .308 rounds skyward in the manner of an Iraqi or Aghan "wedding party."
Seriously, one hopes even though New Jersey went 53 to 46 for Kerry, that Garden Staters, many of whom "live like Episcopalians"(some of them just might *be* Episcopalians)won't agitate "like Puerto Ricans" for the closing of the bombing range.**

*this led, not quite logically, to a Google search for "Iraqi Minister of Tourism" and thence to the happy discovery of *no* hits for "Bed and Baathist."

**-taking the old line about Jewish voting patterns, of course. -should note that mine yiddisher frau's relatives have been entirely civil to me lately and one even said, "Congratulations!" (without gagging)the day after the election.