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Fuck waterboarding-who needs it? You wanna torture terrorists and tyrants we catch in whatever corner we uncover?

Play some American music.

Some REAL American music.

You plant an angry Arab member of Al-Qaeda into a steel chair, tie him down with chains and braces, surround him with twenty-five-foot-high mega Marshall amps and crank up the tunes?

Grand fucking slam, pal.

But you can't play what they always play-heavy metal, hip-hop, Van Halen.

That shit doesn't work-it's exactly what they've been trained to expect.

You gotta hit them with the really hard stuff.

And when I say hard I mean REALLY hardcore:

Clay Aiken.

Hannah Montana.

Celine Dion-in English AND French.

You play that shit for a couple of days-he'll be begging to be waterboarded.

All the info we're looking for will fumble right out of his mouth.

Seventy-two virgins may be what he has in mind-but if Celine hits those high notes long enough? He'll give that dream up as soon as his ears stop bleeding.

The things that make this country great are staring us right in the red, white and blue face, folks-the biggest, the baddest, the best.

The biggest bombs, morons, racists, drunks, hypocrites, fools and assholes.

The baddest movies, music, sitcoms, reality shows, taste, food, fads and educational system.

The best-what?

Laid plans?

Intentions?

Potential?

We got those. No one gives more in charitable dollars, time or prayer than we do. No one has more promise or hope or faith in a better future. All the parts for a bigger, better equation are there. We just gotta figure out the math.

Maybe we can get the South Koreans to lend us a hand.

Scientists have ready research that says if everyone used up resources at the rate Americans do on a daily basis, we would need four more earths in order to survive.

Which means one thing and one thing only:

We gotta kill everyone else on this planet and we gotta do it right fucking now.

Or-we take a good, long look in the mirror and realize most of us can't even physically leave the house because we're too fat or high or freaked out or foolish or a dangerous combination thereof.

Somewhere in between those two possible responses lies the real answer.

Me?

I say we just get the religious right to pray our way onto the extra earths.

Or just ask George Bush Jr. to mention it to Satan the next time they talk. Because unlike most ex-presidents, who travel the one planet we already have getting paid to preach peace and prosperity and friendly co-existence-this guy's gonna have a whole lotta time on his hands.

CHAPTER 20 - Someone Tell My Mom that Cell Phones Cause Cancer

So I decided to wrap up my book by having one more conversation with my mother.

She seems to be a beacon of common sense and working-class creativity, her main interests in life born of the pure family values the Republican Right is always nattering on about-kids, God and country-even though she has voted as a Democrat in every single election since she came to America.

Her sister-my Aunt Margaret-had died a few weeks back, a mere four days after her husband of fifty-something years, my Uncle Connie. It was one of those rare forms of love you don't see anymore-like a baseball player who plays for the same team his entire career-Uncle Connie and Aunt Margaret raise their kids and oversee their grandkids and grow old and get ill together and then when one dies the other can't wait to get to heaven and join the spouse up there in the ever-after. Connie was buried with his beloved Red Sox cap and Margaret with her favorite emerald-green tea mug.

I stood in my mom's driveway the morning of Aunt Margaret's funeral as we waved at the funeral home limo which was picking up Margaret's kids-she had lived a block or so from my mom-to make sure they knew Ma was ready to roll. Then-something strange happened.

My mom's purse rang. 2

Thinking it must be MY cell, I reached into my pocket just as Ma reached into her bag and produced a cell phone-flipping it open to say:

Okay, Sheila.