Black Holes: No One Dies Alone

"Saddam Hussein's execution comes at the end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops." W

How Does One Death End the Turmoil of Others?

It is as if a trio of black holes opens in the earth to swallow each, single soul, and the vast expanse of light and life in their influence is sucked in by their gravity. Now I stand over these hungry, dark funnels, holding on to the pieces of myself being stretched by the heavy pull of a dead Entertainer, a dead Ex-president and a dead Dictator.

In the universe of the Entertainer, there is joy in the loss because even those who slide into the gravity of his void hear his music echo all the way down. When he was laid out in a famous Harlem theatre, the Apollo, it seemed impossible that his repose was not just an act, that he would not just leap out of the box, the house lights go down and the kliegs light the stage as he shook off his slumber, and he would assure us that he feels good. We knew that he would.

Meanwhile, the strained, expanding funerary experience of the Ex-president kept growing to suck us in, like a sad reality show, even if we didn't want it to. Politics may know how to throw a party, but they really know how to throw a funeral. In all the platitudes of the week-long cortege, the one that sticks in my mind is my wife's. "He was the last, least scary Republican president," she said from the slick footing on the edge of the black hole where we stood before we too were sucked in by coverage that lasted almost as long as the man's term as president.

Finally, a quagmire has quickly become a black hole deeper into which we are drawn by the death of the Dictator. As if the field of black holes begun by the deaths of more than 3,000 American service men and women, and astronomical numbers of Iraqis and Afghans killed in the last five years wasn't enough, their universes have now converged to suck in the Dictator's noosed carcass like a snake eating a watermelon.

The problem is, though, that the black hole is even bigger than before, and unfortunately, it is poised to swallow even more bloody fodder the White House now proposes to feed it. We can only hope that Feeder-W (Fiddle-gee-doo) and Feeder-DC (Fiddle-dee-cee) stand so close to the edge as to succumb to the gravity in a pit of their own design.

And because of the expanded gravity created by the Dictator's death, Fiddle-gee-doo's claim that it marks the end of a terrible year unfortunately means it is the beginning of a worse one.

So you best secure all your values. Fiddle-gee-doo and Fiddle-dee-cee are claiming no responsibility for any loss or damage to your values due to the dark vortexes while your ass is parked in their country.