Helping Make History

Back in the year 2,000 my cousin Max kept telling me I had to get email. “Why?” I answered. “I have nothing to say to anyone in the world.” That turns out not to be true. I’ve been blogging since 2006, and it has been as much fun as a naked nude orgy.

After the corporate weasels tore out a significant portion of my entrails in 2005, Max gave me a part-time job putting up stories at GoNOMAD.com, which had just emerged from his basement to a little office by the graveyard in South Deerfield, Massachusetts.

Over time, it has evolved into a full-time job, a dream job, really, posting stories by old pros and amateurs and first timers. I love the pros, don’t get me wrong. They make my job easy. But giving someone the chance to get published for the first time? Priceless.

When the opportunity to go to Iran first came up, naturally Max decided to jump on it. He loves showing people how to have fun in unlikely destinations, not just Greenland and Colombia, but Arkansas and Milwaukee. We’re an alternative travel website, after all.

But this Iran trip, I had a really strong feeling about. We were on the brink of war with them, remember? Bombing them was supposed to solve something. Do you believe that? We have to be careful, of course. Bush and Cheney are still in office and they are both vile abominable people, who will unquestionably do all the harm they can to the peace of the world.

All that aside, it’s clear that Iran is taking serious steps to establish people-to-people contact with the U.S. Thankfully, we do not have a president who sings songs about bombing them. The people of Iran, like the people of the U.S., want peace.

They have a belligerent moron for a president; actually he is a figurehead who has far less power than the president of our country. Can we blame them for that? We’ve gotten rid of our pustule of putrescence. They may well get rid of theirs.

It seems now that the real powers in Iran want to encourage tourism, and tourism obliterates prejudice and promotes international understanding, and Iran has so much to offer. It’s a truly heartening international development and GoNOMAD is in the vanguard. Way to go, Max.