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Great.

CNN.com - Captors of Fox journalists set 72-hour deadline - Aug 24, 2006

As a reasonable man, I deplore the taking of hostages for any purpose. In the spirit of compromise, however, I am willing to allow exceptions.

CNN.com: Zimbabwean money changeover

Damn! I’ve got several Zimbabwean dollars/shekels/drachma lying about the house, left over from long ago. Guess I’ll have to book a flight.

You know how sometimes a picture, all by itself, can exude creepiness and the sinister? Like a picture of Stalin laughing, or a picture of Hitler with his arms flailing about his head? Yeah.

I’m reading a top “worst tech products of all time” thing on pcworld.com…it’s not important why…and it reminds me, again, of how out-of-touch with peripheral crap I can get. Which is of course a good thing, I like to think, but disconcerting all the same. It’s mostly disconcerting because the article is obviously intended for a target audience that cares about such things, and I like to think that I *do* care about computer evolution. I like to think I *am* the target audience. I’ve owned several several computers in my life, have done the homework that’s necessary to acquire several several computers, and have learned the idiosyncracies of all those computers over months and years of happy interaction and berserk fury when bad things happen.

But I’m not really the target audience. Apparently I don’t have the necessary staying power. For instance, with this ‘top bad products’ article, I find myself agreeing with some of the entries, like pricelinegroceries and the PCjr. I remember those debacles. For other entries, though, I have not the slightest memory of debacle or fiasco. In fact, if it weren’t for this article, I would assume these companies from Yore are still doing business with someone, somewhere. The example is ‘dBASE.’ Yes, I’ve heard of it in the last few decades. It occupies an odd spot in my head devoted to business…devoted to business that I couldn’t care less about. My brain long ago decided there was a program called ‘dBASE’ that some businessmen used for obscure fiscal reasons; it decided that it would never be called upon to be an advisor to a person of that type, therefore it had no further use for that knowledge or that word, therefore it would be filed away permanently. Now I find that dBASE is synonymous with ‘fiasco.’ Not only that, I find out that that is common knowledge; common enough for the offending company’s name to place highly in a ‘worst of’ list.

So I’m not really the intended audience here. And you may or may not know of this fiasco, and know that dBASE’s place in this list is well-deserved. That’s not my point, really. My point is that no matter how clever you are, you can’t pay attention to everything. You can’t even pay attention to the things you pay attention to; something huge will always slip by.

Strooth!

The first day of the year I see Orion is a good one. Usually it doesn’t happen until October or November, but as I’m getting up before the crack of dawn, it happened earlier this year. Went out with the dog to get the paper, turned back to the house, and there it was, right next to the chimney!

I can imagine how unnerving the wars are for people who watch television. They unnerve me from my little be-newsprinted cocoon here on the coast. If I had to contend with tv news as well, I believe I’d have to start work on a bomb shelter.

I’ve seen television 3 or 4 times in the past month, since Iraq became second banana in War coverage. Each time, a talking head of one sort or another tried to frighten the piss out of me. Somber tones, explosions, dire warnings, then commercials.

How is it possible that people who actually use the tv—most everybody—can function with all that going on? I simply couldn’t function. It would always be a Sunday evening in November for me, that dead feeling when the mind tries to recalculate the odds of the Saints making the playoffs after yet another Sunday afternoon fiasco. That hopeless feeling. That bitter pretend.

I use the sports metaphor because that’s exactly what it is, a metaphor for war. Or a substitute. Even better. Yes. We pound on the Dallas Cowboys vicariously instead of pounding on the real heads of real people. But you know that. Maybe if the Arabs and Israelis had really kick-ass soccer teams, they wouldn’t need to beat each other stupid. Maybe.

There IS always hope, you know. Good things can happen. But you’d be hard-pressed to find good news, or even the portent or possibility of good news, on television. That’s flawed, and a disservice to us.

There is always hope, and the world keeps rolling along, and most of us keep rolling along with it.

And they can do anything they want to, too.

CNN.com - Head of U.S. command: Iraq civil war possible - Aug 3, 2006

Clinton also criticized Rumsfeld for underestimating the Taliban, when he said in late 2002 that the group no longer existed in Afghanistan. The Taliban, which harbored Osama bin Laden, has since resurfaced with a vengeance.The defense secretary responded to Clinton. “Are there setbacks? Yes. Are there things that people can’t anticipate? Yes. Does the enemy have a brain and continue to make adjustments on the ground requiring our forces to make adjustments? You bet,” he said.

“Is that going to continue to be the case? I think so. Is this problem going to get solved in the near term about this long struggle against violent extremism? No, I don’t believe it is.”

What’s the deal with Fuckhead answering his own questions? “Do I believe you’re all complete morons incapable of seeing my crude manipulation of interviews so I don’t answer questions I have no answer for? Of course. Even though I do it over and over and over and over again? You’d better believe it.”