SNAPSHOTS FROM A WORLD GONE WRONG
* South African diamonds on white-girl fingers. They live happily ever after.
* Feathers and bird bones in a dice cup. Shake it close to your ear and hear the echo chirp. Roll snake eyes.
* Tattered flags hang limp over a blown-out democracy.
* A plastic Jesus. A magnetic St. Christopher.
* Full-grown men paid six million dollars to chase balls on a green field. My dog does for free.
* Empty picnic tables in a once bustling park, slashed up with graffiti.
* Grants and stipends for the technologically adept–a crystal ball for the future.
* An all-volunteer army — a legalized street gang.
* Guns don’t kill people, people do, so why give them guns? The right to bear arms. Minute Men mutation.
* Thirty people shot dead here, fifty over there. Just another day in a Baghdad market.
* Sex is mindless. So is violence. A self-appointed inquisition to determine how much of it we can bear up under on the silver screen. The rating game.
* Our leaders are but mistrusted servants. They do not govern.
* “We’re finished, the world is coming to an end,” Kurt Vonnegut said lovingly, and it made people feel good.
