Free Republic

I am a walking time bomb. Like millions, I live deep deep deep in the digital storm, aswim in the electronic morass, irrevocable and irreversible and never to return to the ways of old because, as everyone knows, once you step foot into the rushing miasma of Net commerce and e-communication, you are imprinted onto the digital Void pretty much forever. The Net, it washes over your life in a tidal wave of logins and passwords and cookies and AutoFill forms and account summaries and credit card numbers and semisecure Web sites, each promising on a stack of ridiculously defective...

<p>Friendly sex shops. Peet's. Dog parks. Stellar restaurants. Superlative tattoo artists. Fabulous weather. Unparalleled natural beauty. Organic foods. Fewer SUVs, more Priuses. Mission burritos. An overwhelming anti-Schwarzenegger sentiment. Sushi. Bush never visits.</p> <p>There are things that make you happy to live in San Francisco, truly grateful, along with plenty of things that make you hyper-aware that you live in the country's most progressive open-minded convoluted messed-up liberal bubble, for both good and ill.</p>

<p>Oh great, so here you are, two full years later.</p> <p>Two full years after the 9/11 maelstrom and two years during which the term "hero" has been molested and slapped around and "patriotism" has been smashed and reconfigured into some mutant shellacked Maria Shriver-like perma-saluting mannequin, a conservative plastic surgeon's wet dream, all fake smiles and bleached teeth and Botoxed worry lines and pumped-up, silicone-enhanced flag-waving bravado you no longer relate to in the slightest.</p>

<p>Oh yes, there will be strippers. There will be skankiness. There might very well be illegal substances some of which are totally organic to the natural macrobiotic world and some of which most definitely are not and all of which make John Ashcroft scowl and pule and seethe with quiet jealousy.</p>