This Friday is the 13th. If you’re feeling unlucky, consider this: At least you’re not in fucking Iraq. Sure, here in Merka you stand the chance of breaking a mirror or having a black cat cross your path, but being in Iraq is like breaking a mirror and having a black cat cross your path … and then having them both shoved up your ass with a sand-based lubricant. Sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it – especially if the cat has just been sprayed with a garden hose, but either one is preferable to having an IED go off under your hummer. You can bet the average IED packs more explosive power than several gross of black cats – certainly wet ones. That alone (even if you get a stiffy over things like sandstorms, goat kebab, and nation building) makes the ‘Raq one damned unlucky place to be. Of course, it could be worse. You could have the misfortune of being a secret prisoner of the land of the free, duct taped to a chair in some squalid, makeshift dungeon in Afghanistan, fabricating false accusations about your Arab homies back in Detroit to keep the black ops boys from jump-starting your testicles. In contrast, being holed up in a FEMA trailer for 23 months while your vacant house rots, and government contractors stall for more cash seems a lot like winning the lottery, doesn’t it? Luck is such a relative thing. Some people – stuck-up Europeans for example – would claim that Americans are unlucky to live in a country governed by a corrupt or at least criminally inept administration, but luck had nothing to do with it. America voted for the dark side because the dark side blew in its ear and gave it a reach-around right before it began its dirty, painful business. Scary? Yes. Unlucky? Not so much. Unlucky is something that’s out of your control. Something like, say, snakes on a plane. If you find yourself on a plane with 450 deadly snakes, you’re either: A) unlucky, or B) a terror suspect being rendered by the CIA. If you’re the latter, you’re still the former, and if you’re lucky enough to sit on your ass and make jokes about it, you’re an American – at least for the time being. Might as well enjoy freedom while it lasts, eh? This Friday the 13th you can do just that at the Alamo Drafthouse when Mr. Sinus takes on last summer’s blockbuster Snakes on a Plane. Laugh while you can.
This article appears in October 13 • 2006.
