The headlines these days... madness and carelessness and arrogance and an over-abundance of self-obsessed nutjobs.

People and countries so alienated and marginalized that the attention they crave can only be captured with threats and deviousness and hatred and stockpiling.

I can't imagine that this will turn out alright. There's too much of the stuff out there, more than we can even comprehend (most of it parked right next door in the U.S.) waiting for accidents or the wrong hands or a moment of indulgent rage.

The majority of adults become parents. We go through this universally human journey together, millions of individuals feeding their babies, laughing at the first fart, spinning with joy at every giggle. How is it that we don't we have the preciousness and fragility of life burned onto our brains and hearts? How is it that the most fundamentally shared life experiences don't guide our actions?

I see the latest Al-Qaeda video on the news (for the love of Christ, WHY do they keep broadcasting these guys?) and hear hysterical war declarations from North Korea (before I lunge for the radio's off-button quicker than an ostrich on fire). And strangely, I don't feel anger. I feel pity.

Dysfunction makes people do dangerous and hateful things. Anyone with such a twisted heart... they can't have had a happy life, with love and adventure and education and family and free will and friendships. Am I wrong to make that assumption? Maybe. But it's the only logic I can understand.

I’d like to take Kim Jong-il for a ride on the Scrambler at a Bill Lynch fair. I’d like to have him at Milford House for a weekend, knock him out of bed at 5:30 AM for a sunrise canoe paddle through the rapids at Gang Run and then for a mile-high stack of pancakes and hot tea at the lodge. He should smell the air in the fall, in Nova Scotia. Earthy and salty and sweet-smokey.

I’d like to bring Osama to our farmer's market, show him my son bopping to the fiddles. I’d like to bring him to the Lunenburg Folk Music Festival, give him a greasy bag of fish & chips just in time for the finale under the mainstage tent. Fill them and their like up to the brim despite themselves. Bombard them with hospitality and beauty in ordinariness.

Likewise, I’d like to send George W. off on an indefinite tree-planting stint in Northern Ontario. Hard work and a mouthful of blackflies to wipe that smug, shit-eating grin off his face. Then I’d turn American so I could vote for Barack Obama. Right after I get my first tan and win a million bucks and figure out how to time-travel.

Fellow infidels: what would you do for a weekend with the Mortal Enemy?