Brain surgery only option

Imagine a tiny room occupied by a pissed-off wolverine, a psychotic badger, a grizzly bear… Imagine a tiny room occupied by a pissed-off wolverine, a psychotic badger, a grizzly bear that vomits liquid magma, someone jack-hammering and my brain, and you can begin to imagine what I go through. I’m talking about these terrible migraines that I have had for the last five years that usually hit me, with unrelenting fury, a few times a month.

When they creep up on me in class, it’s all I can do not to start beating on my neighbor with my fists; twice I couldn’t resist and two of my classmates ended up in the hospital. Of course, I footed the bills, but unless their new Owen Wilson noses land them comparable cinematic success, I doubt they’ll stop being upset at me. I don’t care too much though, because those guys I punched deserved it, so I am told.

The listlessness I feel in the migraine’s wake combines with a constant, dull, throbbing pain in between headaches with a result of many missed classes and more poor decisions. Basically, these headaches are ruining my future and need to be dealt with. There was this experimental pain killer that I could have taken a year ago, which the doctors tell me might have worked, but I decided not to try it because the pills were pink and my disease has progressed to the point were they are no longer effective.

Anyway, I visited the doctors and got some weird tests. I need surgery on my brain and I am ecstatic. No, really. This is my usual dose of sarcasm. I cannot wait to get my head sliced open and the parts that torture me removed. Of course, this surgery will leave me with a shaved head, which would be embarrassing enough were the scars I will receive not supposed to be so hideous.

In exchange for being turned into a revolting wreck I will be mostly pain free – they’re sticking a knife in my brain and I imagine the pains of healing will be a continuous ordeal, to say the least. Despite my ruggedly handsome and attractive face being turned into a horrifying collection of scars and ugliness, I remain jubilant and in a celebratory mood.

This glee might seem misplaced, seeing as the brain surgery is dangerous and in the aftermath I’ll only be considered sexy by people with very disturbing fetishes, but I assure you, it’s completely not the opposite emotion of what I should be feeling.

Perhaps if I use a metaphor it will be come clear. Picture, in your pain-free skulls, two senior staffers in the executive branch and the leaders of both legislative bodies of the United States are being indicted for serious crimes; the people who run our government may be put in jail, some for crimes usually committed by drug dealers. Why shouldn’t I, as a member of the opposition, party hardy?

Tom Delay, Bill Frist, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby might all be imprisoned before I graduate. It’s a happy time, right? I mean, these guys are responsible for removing consumer-protection and health regulations as well as other horrible legislation that targets the middle and lower classes to the benefit of the rich. These guys are responsible for continually using racist and homophobic rhetoric to divide America. These guys all seem to be guilty of serious crimes from conspiracy to money laundering. All of them deserve to be locked in a hole and forgotten.

And the Democrats seem to be preparing for a celebration. But just like my impending dissection, this is not the time to be drunk, sitting bare-assed on the company’s copier making Christmas cards.

We should not be celebrating; we should be embarrassed. Not only because as an opposition party we have become all but neutered over the last five years, but because the top echelons of our country’s governmental offices are being held by presumptive criminals. And as citizens, we should all be mortified because it is our complicity and/or laziness that have put them there.

Our government has been nothing but an embarrassment for the last five years, from before Sept. 11, 2001, the aftermath of the war in Iraq, tax cuts for the wealthy during the war to our incompetence in handling crisis created by hurricane Katrina. And the people in power are now being indicted for committing crimes.

The icing on the humiliation cake, of course, is that Democrats remain delighted despite a campaign history that shows they aren’t competent enough to transform all of this political capital into an electoral victory. So the healing that should begin with Democratic control of the legislature after the mid-term elections in 2006 will instead most likely continue the humiliating status quo and render our country into a disfigured mess with no credibility and no future. Where’s my noisemaker?

Arun has tricked you into reading another political column; send your complaints and jeering to arunbutcher@gmail.com.