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March 21, 2002 alert Tom Ridge, the Head-Knocker of Homeland Security, has come up with an ingenious plan for insuring our safety and domestic tranquility.  I refer, of course, to the color-coding of our "alert" stages.  For example, green alert means there is nothing to worry about and you are free to act like an American teenager drunk on apple wine.  Red alert, on the other hand, signifies you are likely sitting in an airplane directly across the aisle from a swarthy, nervous guy who, with no baggage, booked a one-way flight and is now attempting to light his shoe with a Zippo.  Anyway, I think it is such a fine plan I have adapted it to my personal life. When I am on green alert, I have awakened refreshed from four solid hours of frequently interrupted sleep without any new blemishes, scales, or discolorations.  I am allowed a soupçon of Serotonin with which to notice nature's beauty and realize that, on the whole, things could be a lot worse.  A yellow alert is ordered when I hear a local television anchorman report a murder-suicide and segue that story to the weatherman who "runs with it" and forecasts beautiful weekend weather, after which the anchorman chuckles and credits the weatherman with "giving us" this lovely weather as if the meteorologist were God Almighty instead of some limp-dick who couldn't hack it managing produce at the Piggly-Wiggly.  I declare an orange alert when, on my drive to the movie theater, I am stuck behind a gun-racked, extended-cab pickup truck whose driver throws out the window the garbage from his Wendy's double-meat, Old-Fashioned Hamburger Combo meal with Biggie fries.  I remain on orange alert when, having paid an arm-and-a-leg for a movie ticket, popcorn, and Coke, I take a seat in the near-empty theater only to have a family of mutant rednecks sit behind me and carry on loudly as though, one and all, they are afflicted with both Tourette and Irritable Bowel syndromes. I am on red alert every night I go to bed knowing I'll have to wake up in the morning.

©  2002 by the beastmaster