Here comes Mike again… and he looks like he’s had the once-over from a pretty competent repair crew.  Wonder what THAT’S all about.  But we’ll go into that later.  I was originally going to have him come out of the bay head-first, until I realized that back in Chapter 3, I made the mistake of sending him into the hangar head-first.  So, instead, I’m treating you to a Mike’s Ass View, a rarely-seen side of America’s Favorite Sapient Superheavy Tank, right here.

Here in New England, it’s been a wild and hairy week, with a bizarre action movie-style finish.  I live quite close to Boston, and so it was with some uneasiness that I watched the entire criminal situation up there play out.  I have to admit that it feels, recently, as though people in the Northeastern U.S.A. are starting to go radically off the rails in a very unfunny way, and the answer people seem to have to it is more repression, more laws, more violence.  I don’t get it.  I don’t understand how “not killing people” became such a difficult thing to do.  I don’t understand how “passing the toughest laws in the country” became a thing to be proud of.  I don’t understand how declaring that you aren’t giving a criminal suspect the benefit of his constitutional rights became something meritorious, or at the very least, acceptable.  I don’t understand any of it.  The conversion of conscience our world desperately needs is just not happening, and it doesn’t seem to be getting much closer.

Before he died, my dad told me, I think prophetically, that God was going to send my country a great test, and that we may not be up to the task it sets before us.  I sometimes wonder whether this is it, or if there’s something even worse yet to come.  All I can say is that so far, we haven’t been up to the task, and we all need to start shaping up, and stop killing each other.  This is just crazy.

Anyhow, I’m off to another week in paradise.  Next weekend, I’m going to be occupied at the wedding, actually that of my oldest friend; we’ve known each other for over twenty-five years.  In the midst of the chaos and violence of this week, it will be a welcome relief, and a hopeful moment amidst so much bizarre and pointless tragedy.  I’ll see about getting a page done for next time, but if I don’t you’ll know where I am.  Until next week, then… well, just be safe, be happy and be kind to each other.  God bless.