Dave's Fiction Warehouse

W as invading Iraq a good idea? If somebody takes more than two seconds to answer with a simple uppercase "NO," you have to wonder about their grasp of reality. You really have to wonder if that person should run for president. But there's Jeb Bush, parsing and equivocating and trying to make it sound like supporting one's troubled brother matters more than correctly identifying the nation's biggest foreign policy debacle since Vietnam.  I don't get this. Jeb Bush seemed to be the only GOP presidential candidate who had not arrived by clown car, the only one even remotely electable, and yet he refuses to acknowledge the obvious: We screwed up big time. (Well, not "we," per se, but it does involve a W.) It's a mistake that keeps on corroding the country in myriad ways.  I don't know; maybe it just hasn't hurt the Bush family personally. Jeb says the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein. Maybe so, if some Jeffersonian figure had ...

I hate flying. I hate the airline industry. I specifically hate USAirways.  I don't hate the employees of USAirways, just the company itself. It is the epitome of all that has gone wrong with American capitalism. It is a company that systematically degrades the quality of its product while constantly increasing the cost for it. It is a company that treats customers the same way it treats their luggage.  The company is posting record profits -- up about 90 percent after merging with American Airlines in 2013. That's a function of two things: reduced competition on more than 1,600 routes, and dramatically lower fuel costs. The guy who runs USAirways/American makes about $20 million a year. You'd think windfall profits might allow slight improvements in customer service. If you do think that, you should get your head out of your ass.  On a recent flight out to Vegas, and then back a week later, I experienced what has become the depressing standard in U.S. air travel: every ...

I 'm happy Pope Francis was named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year.” As popes go, he’s not bad. It says something about the Vatican that when somebody who works there actually walks the walk in regard to Christianity, it’s quite amazing and newsworthy. So: Good job, Frank. But don’t get all prideful, because look at your competition: Ted Cruz? Are you kidding me? Bashir Assad? I know, Time always qualifies its annual award by saying it’s all about influence — good or bad — as opposed to making the world a better place. But still. When the name of the award is “Person of the Year,” it always sounds like an honor. And it always seems like smarmy equivocation to short-list people who are, arguably, nothing more than headline-whores and amoral assholes. It’s worth noting that Time‘s annual honor was called “Man of the Year” until 1999. Women were not considered very influential until that date. Oops. Sorry, Maggie! Sorry, Indira! Past winners include Hitler, Stalin, Khrushchev and K...

Give us a kiss. W e all have our guilty pleasures, and mine at the moment is " The Strain ," the TV adaptation of the books by Guillermo del Toro. It's all about vampires taking over New York City. It's like "The Walking Dead," except, you know, with vampires. And an evil presence orchestrating the whole thing. You can see why it's a guilty pleasure. But bear with me. These aren't the glamorous, simpering vampires we've become used to through certain young-adult novels. Yes, they feast on human blood, but they lurch around like zombies and attack via a snake-like appendage that erupts from the mouth, like a frog nailing a fly. Much more efficient than fangs. The appendage is a two-way conduit: while delivering blood to the vampire, it delivers the little white parasitic worms that eventually turn the victim into yet another vampire.  Disgusting, yes. And a refreshing departure from the canon. Vampires are supposed to elicit horror, as opposed to ...

S arah Palin has come out of seclusion to demand that President Obama be impeached .  Obama should take some comfort from that, since Palin's support on any issue, historically, has been a pretty sure sign that the opposite will happen.  Part of me wants to believe that Palin's "blistering op-ed" on Breitbart was written  by someone else, since she rarely communicates in complete sentences. But her lede (journalism lingo there) makes me think she wrote at least this much: "Enough is enough of the years of abuse from this president. His unsecured border crisis is the last straw that makes the battered wife say, 'no mas.'" Here we have three distinct metaphors in one sentence: the overburdened camel, the abusive husband, and welterweight boxer Roberto Duran. A hat trick! Too bad it won't all fit on a bumper sticker. She also includes herself among "we average Americans" and derides the president's "friendly wealthy bipartisan eli...