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2004-04-19 - 3:56 p.m.

last night/this morning, i had a dream i was chatting with president bush. i was making him some coffee in my french press. we were talking about foreign policy.

he said, 'i just don't understand why, given the choice, that the people of the middle east would choose the black-garbed terror of the extinguishers over the purple robes of capitalism and democracy. don't they want stability? freedom?'

'extinguishers? do you mean extortionists?'

'yeah, that.'

'with all due respect, george, i think you're thinking about it wrong. you are setting up a false dichotomy.'

'a false what?'

'dichotomy. it's not an either/or choice, but you have set it up that way. have you spent much time in the middle east?'

'no, not at all.'

'well, i did my foreign study in tel aviv. and i quickly came to the conclusion that what might seem to make sense stateside doesn't always parse in the heat and the dust on the ground.'

'you? you went to israel? they must have thought you were a spy.'

'yeah, probably! i was studying a bunch of foreign languages, and i was the only non-jew on my program. highly suspicious.'

i poured the coffee. a bunch of earnest-seeming people came in to tell me that the copier upstairs wasn't working. i patiently explained to them that i knew it wasn't working, and that it hadn't worked since the dean campaign had moved out. they insisted i come and take a look at it, see if there was anything i could do.

the toner cartridge was f*cked and i could tell there was no way to fix it. i told the earnest woman in charge that we'd already had a repairman out to look at it, and he couldn't fix it either, and we were planning to junk the thing. this seemed to reassure them, they acknowleged that i had done everything i could to address the problem.

i could see through a downstairs window several people using a copier, copying all kinds of things. i suggested they use the downstairs copier, but they seemed reluctant to cross george's path.