Peggy Noonan needs to calm the hell down.

A few weeks ago, I saw Peggy Noonan on 'The Daily Show' promoting her new book Patriotic Grace.

She spoke very well on the show and that, combined with the fact that she was a huge contributor to 'The West Wing', led me to pick up Patriotic Grace and give it the ol' read through.

I will start by saying that Peggy Noonan can write, and write incredibly well. I got the same feeling reading the introduction and first chapter as I did twelve years ago when I first watched President Thomas J. Whitmore deliver his goose-bump inducing speech against aliens.

After that first chapter though, things took a hard right turn. From that point on, Peggy would not shut up about how sure she is that there will be another terrorist attack on American soil. She goes on to write that it will be ten times bigger than 9/11 and that it's going to happen in either Washington D.C. or New York.

Goddammit Peggy, I live in New York.

Going in, I thought that the book would be about how we need to unite as a nation and help out our fellow Americans. And it is, she very much encourages us to put aside partisanship and unite, however she implies that this will be most needed right after New York is wiped off the map with a suitcase nuke.

I imagine if I lived anywhere else in the country, aside from D.C. which is also toast, I would have greatly enjoyed this book and viewed it as a beacon of hope. However I don't live anywhere else and because Peggy Noonan couldn't calm the hell down I now am forced to come to terms with my own mortality.

Goddammit.

-nicholas

Fireplaces

So I currently live in my grandparent's old home in Queens. They've both passed and I live there with my two friends, Grant and Craig. It's a thirty minute train ride from Manhattan, which can be rough on late nights but the upside is that I get to live there for free.
Hence why I am still unemployed.
The house is friggin' huge and filled to the brim with all of my grandparents' old things. I'm constantly finding old letters, photographs, and strategically hidden liquor bottles throughout the house.
This is both cool and weird at the same time.
Tonight, as New York is beginning to get a wee bit chilly in the evenings, I decided to make a fire in the fireplace, snuggle up with a frozen pizza, and watch 'The West Wing.'
While arranging logs and doing my best to remember boyscout training, I happened across a trapdoor buried under about an inch or two of ash.
That's right...a motherfucking trapdoor...beneath the fireplace.
There's treasure behind trapdoors. Immediately I thought of how much chocolate milk could be bought with treasure.
I flipped it open with the poker and peered inside but I couldn't see anything due to an awkward angle. I moved to fetch a mirror and a flashlight, but before I did, I thought about other things that lie behind trapdoors.
Secrets. There are horrible horrible secrets behind trapdoors.
People can react in two different ways when faced with these situations. They can put on their courage cap, crack their courage whip, and plunge into the unknown with a thirst for the truth.
Or they can shut the trapdoor, cover it back up with ash, and snuggle up with a warm blanket of ignorance.
I chose the latter.
"But Nick", you cry. "There might be treasure!"
Sure there could be treasure.
There could also be a hidden snuff film.
I've seen '8 mm', I know how things go down once a snuff tape is found.
No thank you.
Also, it's worth all the treasure in the world not to have to see my grandparents' freaky-deaky death porn.

-nicholas

p.s. Grant just read this and explained that the trapdoor is there to dispose of ashes. I'm still not going to look down it, because that doesn't mean there won't be decomposing bodies.