11 May 2010
 
Into the Cloud


(Lufthansa B747-400 (D-ABTB), originally uploaded by jonsey737.)

I think they are really going to kill Jack. Everyone else is getting killed, some by Jack himself. So I presume last night’s episode is getting to the end of the television show “24,” which has run the distance of the War on Terror so far.
 
We are getting to a new phase in that, what with American immigrants getting into the car-bombing thing. It strikes me that the SUV-borne fizzle was as much a rehearsal as an actual attack, sort of a dry run with a second-string player who actually cared about surviving. We may have dodged one bullet only to help refine the path of the next one.
 
“24” was a remarkable show, taken as a body of work. I remember watching in mild disbelief when they ran a story line about an African American president of the United States, and clucked in sympathy as the writers got it wrong about Hillary Clinton being the first woman to sit in the Oval Office.
 
Jack has evolved this season. He used to be a hard case, doing the sort of brutal interrogations but showing the emotional stress that goes along with the moral dilemma of torture. Is the greater good- stopping a monstrous act of terror- worth the diminution of one’s humanity?
 
As one with a professional association with the blow-up and break-things business, you probably suspect how I come out in that equation, but I no longer completely trust my instincts. I may be getting soft in my dotage.
 
For purposes of the current story line, I am relieved that Jack has given it up and gone with his instincts. He apologized after he shot a cop, chosing a shot to the foot rather than the torso after the Russians murdered his lover, has just gone purely over to the Dark Side and is killing dirt-bag in his path. Of course, he will have to pay for this course of action, and the Russians responsible for it all will, too.
 
I am sad that they have to use the Russians as the bad guys. It seems so passé somwhow. I rather liked the ones I met in their vast sprawling homeland, and there is a lot to be said of the Slavic soul. I guess their mobsters are the last people it is OK to hate. The ones in the show are all white males, after all.
 
It is too bad. Everyone needs a bad guy to hate. Almost all the real Nazis are gone, and the ones that are not are wizened and old. That is unfortunate for story-lines that need cartoon villains in the current age. They were people it was perfectly all right to hate, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Now I am bound for their former capital to have a good time.
 
I turned off the cable box around bedtime, still agitated about the raw and unapologetic violence. I wondered about the cloud of volcanic ash that is drifting toward Portugal. I think the Luftwaffe flight- damn, Lufthansa, is going to be routed far enough north to not worry about it.
 
I didn’t lose any sleep over it, but did get up early to print the boarding passes and the hotel information. I looked at the seat map of the Boeing and saw that I am on the inner aisle and the B-747 is nearly full of other optimists.
 
My sources on the ground tell me I am bound for the heart of the Turkish District, filled with “guest workers” who are loathed by their hosts. Ossies and Osties, I hear, and there is apparently a difference. The former is the term for the former residents of the DDR, while the latter is the disparaging term for the Turks.
 
Or maybe it is the other way around. Jack would just call Chloe at CTC and have an automatic translation algorithm downloaded to his cell phone- he did something like that earlier this season to disguise himself as a German arms dealer- but my sources tell me to just speak English.
 
I thrashed around in he safety and security of my own bed, aware it was the last night under my own eiderdown. Into the cloud again this afternoon, a night in an airline seat, and then into a sea of Germans and undigested Turks.
 
You won’t have a story tomorrow, though I will be living one, and I hope to catch you up with a jaunty Gutentag on Wednesday. It is only 24 hours away.
 
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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