When I was 15 years old, I placed an ad looking for pen-pals in a magazine called "Star Hits".  It was the US spin-off a magazine called "Smash Hits" and was basically a way for fey American teenagers like myself to score glossy photos and frothy interviews of Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Cure, Depeche Mode, the Smiths, and so on and so forth, up to and including Duran Duran and Culture Club.  For some reason my ad was absurdly successful.  The magazine hit the stands between Thanksgiving and Christmas and for the next five months, I got anywhere from 20 to 50 cards and letters a day every single day.  I would get home from school and there would just be a pile of mail in the middle of my bed, often decorated with skulls, black hearts, bloody-looking smears of candle-wax, crucifixes.  You know the drill.  Goth mail.  I feel fairly certain that the postman began to hate me with a passion and vigor.

Anyway, one friend I made through all of this was a girl named Justine.  She lived in southern Maryland and was 19 when we started writing back and forth.  She was hilarious, a little shy, sweet, and very, very smart.  We stayed in touch for a couple of years and when she was 22, she went to EMT school and became a paramedic in Washington, DC.  After she had been on the job for a few months, she called me one Saturday morning and said, "I don't think I can do this anymore."

"What?  Why?" I said.

"Last night I almost got hurt real bad," she said, "We were responding to what we thought was a heroin overdose, but the guy turned out to be on angel dust."

"Shit.  What happened?"

"I was standing outside the apartment door about to knock when the guy came through the door at me.  It was like the wood just...vaporized.  My partner ducked and rolled, but because of the angle of the hallway, I was stuck in this little cul-de-sac.  He cornered me and told me he was going to kill me.  Well," she paused and I could hear her take a drag off her cigarette and let it out, "He told me he was going to rip my arms and legs off and then kill me.  But he also seemed to think I was somebody else."

"Oh, my god.  What the fuck?  What happened?"

"The cops shot him," she said, "But they shot him like ten times.  Ten times, and he just wouldn't go down!  He just kept screaming at me, and he never took his eyes off of me.  The bullets smashed into his body, but it was like he didn't even feel it.  I watched him die."

"Jesus, Justine!  Are you hurt?"

"I got some scratches from bits of wood from the wall that flew around when the cops were shooting, but no, he never managed to get hold of me.  He kept grabbing at me and once or twice he almost got a firm hold on me, but he was all slippery from sweat.  I dunno.  It all happened so fast.  I just remember the cops shouting at me to cover my face before they started shooting and then there was blood and screaming and...oh, Jesus.  I just don't know if I can do this job anymore."

Over time, she got her confidence back and last I heard of her, she was still driving an ambulance five nights a week and teaching new paramedics, which she was thinking about taking on full time.  But the reason I bring this up is because the president is starting to remind me of that dust-head that almost killed my friend.  He's out of control, impervious to everything that anyone can throw into his path to try and stop him.  He's like a mindless, war-hungry zombie.  Even as the War in Iraq becomes more and more of a snowballing disaster, the freak is launching random (and apparently unsuccessful) air-strikes in Somalia, engaging in acts of aggression against Iranian personnel, and rattling the sabers at Syria.  Even that atrocious dunderhead Chris Matthews knows that we're going to war with Iran.  Now it's only a matter of getting the formal announcement, I guess.

What will it take to stop him?  

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists are advancing the "Doomsday Clock" this week. 

The symbolic clock, maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, currently is set at seven minutes to midnight, with midnight marking global catastrophe.

The group did not say in which direction the hands would move. But in a news release previewing an event next Wednesday, they said the change was based on "worsening nuclear, climate threats" to the world.

"The major new step reflects growing concerns about a 'Second Nuclear Age' marked by grave threats, including: nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea, unsecured nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere, the continuing 'launch-ready' status of 2,000 of the 25,000 nuclear weapons held by the U.S. and Russia, escalating terrorism, and new pressure from climate change for expanded civilian nuclear power that could increase proliferation risks," the release reads.

I used to have nightmares about the Doomsday Clock.  Back during the nuke-happy Reagan years it was something that I was acutely aware of, the fact that the world was constantly poised for instantaneous destruction, that at any minute hell could be unleashed on earth a thousand times over.  But sometime during the Clinton years when we were at peace, I stopped thinking about that clock.  It seemed like the world might well be on the path to greater peace and understanding.  Now I see how quickly all of that can be reversed.  The clock is back.  And they're moving it up.

UPDATE: This post has been linked by an aggregate of English language blogs from Iran.  I just wanted to welcome our new readers and assure you that there are Americans working and praying tirelessly for peace.  The majority of people in this country do not support the current administration nor its destructive policies in the Middle East.  We are doing everything we can to stop the killing and to recover our government from the hands of religious extremists and we pray that you are, too.  God bless you, godspeed, and good luck.