The Meat of the Matter

Cleveland Steamers

Warning! Disgusting story forthcoming! This was imparted to me from Dread of "The Ronkainen Project". I recommended he post a blog about this but he has higher sensibilities than me. Having no taste and even less scruples, I publish it for you here. Dread saw this first hand. I'll tell it to you quick: 1. Big guy named "Bear" sits at bar drinking. He's a regular. Nicest guy on earth. Everyone likes Bear. He's *really* big, though. 2. New guy comes into bar. Not as big as Bear. Very drunk. Huge asshole. 3. New guy starts up with Bear with the "What the fuck are you looking at, fucker!?" 4. New guy challenges Bear to a fight. 5. Bear stands up. 6. Bear punches new guy. 7. New guy falls down. 8. Bear unbuckles his own pants, drops his drawers, and squats over new guy, who is now unconscious. 9. No one intervenes. 10. Bear takes a dump on new guy's chest. 11. Bear pulls his pants back up, pays his tab, leaves. Dread later learned that what Bear gave the new guy is called a "Cleveland Steamer." (I guess it's cold enough in Cleveland for such a contribution to literally "steam". I wouldn't know as I've never let one loose in freezing cold weather. Still, the name is catchy.) Now ... after you wash your hands ... you can listen to the rest of the story. When Dread imparted this story to me, he and I were (as usual) discussing our differences over the situation in Iraq. While Dread and I don't agree on this subject, I will compliment his ability to find an apt metaphor. He recounted this story, and told me that the United States was giving Iraq a "Cleveland Steamer." We're letting the world know that if you fuck with the U.S., not only will you pay, you will be *really really* sorry for fucking with us. The real motivation is to avoid the original fucking-with, and everyone stays happy. I could go into a few reasons why I don't agree with Dread, but at least his argument was cogent. Crude, yes. But cogent also. This metaphor has given me no small amount of enjoyment these past few months. And then this week it suddenly hit me, like one of those V-8 moments. The insurgents in Iraq are giving *us* a Cleveland Steamer. In fact, I think they have more of a stomach for it than we do--and they're better at it because they've been doing it longer. They probably have a different name for it, though, like "Baghdad Bomb" or a "Fetid Fallujah". I wonder how much we still have to learn about who we are dealing with here ...