Yeah, this is about right.

So we've now moved that much closer to the endgame for me, when Tony Blair admits one way or another as to the status of WMD.

Also, I realized I fucked up earlier this week. The head guy in Iraq is Paul Bremer, not Brenner.

Speaking of Tony, has anyone else noticed that he looks different as of late? He seems thinner and younger. Not really thin in a good way, though, more of a "not eating well" type of thin. You know what? I think they replaced him with a robot.

"The desire of the neighborhood has always been for a Starbucks." Jesus Christ, Ted, how fucking lame, suburban, and white can you get?

Meanwhile, this guy's kids are probably not asleep, and instead busy finding where all the kitchen knives and handguns are in the house.

Offensive, dangerous, and exploitative? Aren't those the tenets upon which Vegas was founded?

More opinion on this whole Iraq mess.

Also, this is the first time in awhile where I've seen references to us being told before the war that the occupation would last only a couple of months. I know we heard how quick and easy it was going to be over and over again, but now I have more perspective. A couple of months, even half a for occupation is preposterous if we're planning on doing a decent job (which I'm not convinced that we are). You know, after WWII, we occupied Japan for seven years, and even after '52, we still had a strong military presence over there (actually, we still have a strong presence there). I don't know how long Germany was occupied, but I'll bet it was more than 60 days.

I don't see how the Hawks could possibly pull out of Iraq before a reasonably stable government gets set up. The whole purpose, like I've said before, was to remove Saddam and install a pro-US government. If we leave too soon, there's an even greater risk of things degenerating back into dictatorship and/or theocracy. And I said "greater" risk, because even if we do put in the hours, there will always be a risk of return to the old ways. Things tend to be kind of fucked up like that in the Middle East. So, let's face it. We're going to be in Iraq for a long time. Not like we didn't know this, but I don't know if we've accepted it.

God damn it, economics is nothing but a buch of bullshit.

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

Hey, somebody call Bud Selig and tell him the Japanese have already come up with a better solution for getting people interested in baseball.

Speaking of post-combat Iraq...

One thing I keep getting sick of hearing is that we're in the post-combat phase in Iraq, especially after some high-ranking Army guy even said "we're still at war" several weeks back.

Also, the Democrats have no business criticizing anyone for a lack of "coherent" policy. The Democrats really should be going after the Administration for all this shit, I mean really going after them, but the best we get is the occasional opportunistic attack from John Kerry. They shouldn't be complaining about an incoherent policy, they should be complaining about an incomplete policy. I still feel like the Administration was like "Remove Saddam first, deal with everything else later". And of course, we'll get to "everything else" at some point, because undoubtedly, America's promises have no expiration date.

Why the fuck aren't the Democrats bringing shit like this up? Well, maybe it's because I'm wrong. But I'm still fully convinced that our current foreign policy was hammered out years ago, pre-September 11th, when our outlook was much different. I know I've said this a million times, but the Project for a New American Century group decided years ago on everything that's happening today. Do you think a Democratic congressman has ever brought up PNAC? You would think that someone would have to have done so, but I still don't know why a bigger deal hasn't yet been made of it. And yes, I know I'm oversimplifying things, and there's a lot more to the picture than PNAC, but come on. If someone explained to the American people how the Administration started with a premise like regime change in Iraq and worked backwards from there, I think that even with all the morons out there, some people might start to catch on.

While we're talking about the "incomplete" policy, why the hell is it so incomplete? I've said time and time again that even though I don't like Bush and his neocon cabal, I know that they, save Bush himself, are all smart fucking people. If they're so fucking smart, you'd think that they would have a better plan in place for putting Humpty Dumpty back together. Clearly, the idea isn't just regime change, but regime replacement. Namely, replacement with a pro-US democracy. Maybe I'm just impatient, since it has only been a couple of months since we went "post-combat," and this kind of thing is going to take time no matter what. But you can't help but think that things weren't fully thought through when Gen. Jay Garner was replaced as head of reconstruction by civilian Paul Bremer just a few days after taking the reigns. And of course, you can't have too much hope at this point, since our most recent (mis)adventure in reconstruction, Afghanistan, isn't exactly being hailed as a resounding success.

Why must so many things turn into an unnecessary adventure? I decided to treat myself to a sandwich at The Way today instead of just having a Code Red and a bag of pretzels. Then, I make the mistake of paying with my check card. As the cash register lady is ringing me up, I hear her make an aside to one of her coworkers that she punched the wrong button. So, I make sure to pay extra special attention to the receipt I'm about to sign, and lo and behold, it lists my total as $53.77, not the $5.37 it's supposed to be. Naturally, this woman doesn't know how to fix it, so manager guy shows up to recitfy the situation. He says the easiest thing to do is just refund me the difference, and he proceeds to do so. But then he fucks up, and ends up charging me an extra $48. So then he goes on to do another refund, which he finally gets right. So the end result is that I have three receipts in my wallet, the last of which is a refund of nearly $100 for a $6 sandwich.

You know what really sucks? They didn't even offer me any stamps.

All the while this is going on, all I can hear is Carlin yelling at me. "Get some fucking cash together!" You know what the sad part is, other than the fact that I'm not even supposed to be here today? I had plenty of cash, but went for the bank card instead to keep from breaking a whole dollar over that $.37. So, for me today, new rule: no more paying for inexpensive items with a credit card. I'm holding up the goddamn line. I should probably also institute a new rule of no paying for expensive items with a credit card, too, since I most likely won't have a job around this time next month.

Which Colossal Death Robot Are You? Also be sure and check out their other tests, like Which Genocidal Maniac Are You?

Yeah, exactly.

Man, is Windows the biggest fucking piece of shit ever. When I'm doing a Win98 install, it does a 'routine' system check. As part of this check, it randomly decides whether or not it's going to do a surface scan which takes, on average, 3 years to complete. Today, my number came up, and it decided that it was going to do a surface scan. As a bonus, it found a bunch of errors. I suppose that's good, even though I never trust Windows when it says it's found something wrong, and I don't really trust its 'fix' for the problems it finds. But, you have to do it, or it won't let the installation continue.

This drive I have at work is apparently all fucked up, and its found a bunch of bad areas. Can I just tell it to just fix every problem it encounters, without asking me to confirm? No, of course not. It wants me to confirm every fucking time. So I'm sitting here with the 'enter' key on one of my work computers TAPED DOWN to avoid this manual intervention. I have a fucking degree in computer engineering, and this is what I'm reduced to.

I think it's been a little while since America woke up to homosexuality. The problem is, there are a lot of ignorant assholes who aren't morning people. Still, we're making progress.

Good riddance.

I don't even know what to say about Pat Robertson anymore, other than the fact that he needs to die.

Better late than never, I suppose. But why is it that the head of the CIA had to take the fall for this to make this a big issue? We've known that the African uranium claims were bullshit for months. We really need to get our bullshit-exposed-to-people-pissed-about-exposed-bullshit turnaround times decreased. Well, either way, maybe this will get more people questioning why the hell we started this stupid fucking war in the first place.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - we should just execute sex criminals.

Seriously, why is there a statute of limitations on sex crimes? I think the limit should be about as long as the lasting effects of the crime. Since sex crimes ruin people's lives, no limit on the statute sounds fine to me. Yeah, I'm sure you can argue that lots of crimes can screw you up for a long time. But this country does a good enough job traumatizing people sexually who have never been assaulted, so I think my line of reasoning is justified.

I could have told you this. In fact, I probably have.

Don't forget, this Monday, the 14th, it's time to go apeshit - it's Bastille Day.

Don't people have anything better to do with their lives? Yes, that was a rhetorical question. Sure, this is a shitty double standard, but by and large, beer drinkers are a lower class of drinker than wine drinkers. Not always, naturally, but how often do you find a frat party huddled around one of those big boxes of wine as opposed to a beer keg? Plus, the only people who ever really get hammered on wine are women, and, let's face it, that's something we like to see.