Well, crew-
The shows at The Arlington Drafthouse in VA were great! Thanks you all for coming out and thanks to you all for the cookies, brownies, cat toys, dreidel-shaped chocolate-covered marshmallows, Oreo Truffles, coffee, art and the Kenneth Tynan book. I’m glad it was my cheat day and I hope I don’t get diabetes. At least when I’m obese I'll have more time to read because I won’t be moving around as much.
I really didn’t have time to do anything in DC while I was there. I was put up right across the street from the Pentagon. There is something in me, some paronoia, some old radical wiring that gets activated in DC. When I saw the Pentagon from the hotel I thought, ‘Wow, that’s close. I better watch my thoughts.’ My THOUGHTS! What the fuck? There was some part of me that believed for a second that there was someone in a room, in the Pentagon, culling thoughts out of the air and out of the brains of people within a few mile radius of the world’s largest subverted pentagram. I was amazed at myself. They can't do that. Can they? Aren’t they more concerned with monitoring the emails of everyone around the world for trigger words like BOMB, TERRORIST, EXPLODE and PRESIDENT.
I was a little embarrassed when someone from the audience asked me to comment on the 3rd amendment. In that moment I did not know why they would bring that up and, quite frankly, I did not know what the third amendment was. It’s the one about letting soldiers stay at your house only during war time. The National Defense Authorization Act passed in the senate while I was there. So, I had to do some research. Apparently, from the spin I gleaned, it declares the United States a sort of perpetual battleground/war. This could usurp the amendment’s power to protect us from a police state and all that comes with it. The idea behind the act is to allow the military to deny suspected terrorists a lawyer, due process or any civil rights whenever they deem necessary. I can't pretend to understand the language or the particulars but as a recovering knee-jerk liberal the problem with these slippery slope measures, at least in design, is how the label of ‘Terrorist’ will evolve in the future. Will it one day grow to include a comic using the words BOMB, TERRORIST, EXPLODE and PRESIDENT in an email as a satirical statement and example of how such legislation and fears could backfire.
Please let me know if a member of the military visits you in response to this email. Sorry to drag you into it. Sometimes you really have to fight the good fight to preserve liberty and freedom.
If you are actually experiencing any fear in this moment, isn’t that a problem?
On the show this week: On Monday I talk to Anthony Bourdain about food, drugs, truth and travel while sitting in a hotel in Brooklyn. On Thursday my neighbor and author Jillian Lauren talks about being a member of a harem and her new novel. Good stuff. Hope I am not renditioned to Burbank.
BTW. The signed Coop poster is now available in the merch section at wtfpod.com. They are numbered and there are only 75 of them. So get them while you can.
Love,
Maron
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