alien ideas

today i got i got inducted into a newish international honor society founded in longbeach, california, in 1986. phi beta delta. i can't help but think that at stanford or harvard, the induction experience would be different than the one i had in the heart of the motor city. i imagine no crying baby in the back. no stuttering introductions. waaaay better lighting in the auditormium.

then again, why kick a gift horse in the teeth?

i found out from our main speaker jack kaye, associate provost (and a slew of other posts) at wayne state university, that only 25-40 percent of american lawmakers (that's everybody in the legislative branch of our government) holds passports. and that fewer than 15 percent of american people have traveled outside the united states.

p e o p l e : you can reach out and touch another country from california and from michigan! what is going on here?! and our president can barely speak english--and he jokes about it. a n d he gets laughs for the jokes.

i feel like fred sanford when esther walks in: devastated by ugliness. elizabeth, i'm comin' to join ya, honey.

and we're the "leaders" of the world economy. bah. yes yes, money talks. but aparently, it doesn't have to walk... far.

and while jack continued, he mentioned that according to some official statistic-taking body, 93 percent of the american public believes that international education is important and approximately 75 percent of these same people believe university-level international education is necessary....

hm. i just wanna know where do we americans get this international idea if in actuality it's alien even to our own civic leaders. (maybe they confuse living on the moon with living overseas.)

of course! that's it! maybe.... shhhhhhhhhh... we got it (the idea of "international") from our resident aliens--you know, the ones who get up and cross those mental and geographic borders.