Tuesday, June 01, 2004
Reflections on Eggplant
How can something that looks so gross taste so good?
Why do they play such sad music in Penn Station? It's like Yo Yo Ma does funeral-muzak.
I am so glad that I have never had to stand on an Amtrak train -- Eighty bucks to stand for two hours -- no way, Jose.
Yeah Derek Jeter had a nice week, but I'm not cutting him any slack just yet. He's in the bottom five (that's right, bottom five, as in worst five) in OPS in the AL. Jorge Posada is third best.
9 innings of stickball. 18 innings of softball. I can see that I still have a left arm, but I can't really feel it or move it so well.
As far as I can tell absolutely nothing newsworthy happened this weekend. It's like the world knew that nobody would be watching anyway. Makes you wonder. Today, however, the Iraqi Governing Council ceases to exist. In 29 days there will be the official hand-over of full "sovereignty" to an Iraqi government. Now I was a philosophy major, so I am fluent in meaningless terminology that had no grounding in fact whatsoever, but sovereignty takes the cake for meaningless verbiage. How a "nation" can magically sovereign when they never really wanted to be in the first place is a mystery to me. No sovereign nation I know of would allow another nation's army to occupy it. Okay, you say what of Germany and South Korea. I say, well, they not only want us there, but they realize, especially in SK's case, that they NEED us there. Presumably that is why the Bush administration lamely put out the throwaway line that if the Iraq (the sovereign Iraq govt, that is) asked us to leave, we would. I'd like to see how that one would play out ... duly elected Arab nationalist government of Iraq tells US to leave immediately? Perhaps we would have to "liberate" Iraq again, this time from Islamic extremists.
My point is call a spade a spade. We occupy Iraq. We run it. While we may be benign conquerors, we are conquerors all the same. Maybe if we as a nation could look ourselves in the mirror and admit what we are, an Empire that exerts its power as we wish, then we could more realistically prepare for all contingencies. By the way, I have no problem with the US throwing its weight around as a general matter. I have problems with this war not because I give two shits about Saddam or even Iraq for that matter, but because it is diverting valuable resources and attention from the real war on terror, as well as more troublesome rogue states -- No. Korea and Iran.
Now I'll just step down from my soapbox.
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Why do they play such sad music in Penn Station? It's like Yo Yo Ma does funeral-muzak.
I am so glad that I have never had to stand on an Amtrak train -- Eighty bucks to stand for two hours -- no way, Jose.
Yeah Derek Jeter had a nice week, but I'm not cutting him any slack just yet. He's in the bottom five (that's right, bottom five, as in worst five) in OPS in the AL. Jorge Posada is third best.
9 innings of stickball. 18 innings of softball. I can see that I still have a left arm, but I can't really feel it or move it so well.
As far as I can tell absolutely nothing newsworthy happened this weekend. It's like the world knew that nobody would be watching anyway. Makes you wonder. Today, however, the Iraqi Governing Council ceases to exist. In 29 days there will be the official hand-over of full "sovereignty" to an Iraqi government. Now I was a philosophy major, so I am fluent in meaningless terminology that had no grounding in fact whatsoever, but sovereignty takes the cake for meaningless verbiage. How a "nation" can magically sovereign when they never really wanted to be in the first place is a mystery to me. No sovereign nation I know of would allow another nation's army to occupy it. Okay, you say what of Germany and South Korea. I say, well, they not only want us there, but they realize, especially in SK's case, that they NEED us there. Presumably that is why the Bush administration lamely put out the throwaway line that if the Iraq (the sovereign Iraq govt, that is) asked us to leave, we would. I'd like to see how that one would play out ... duly elected Arab nationalist government of Iraq tells US to leave immediately? Perhaps we would have to "liberate" Iraq again, this time from Islamic extremists.
My point is call a spade a spade. We occupy Iraq. We run it. While we may be benign conquerors, we are conquerors all the same. Maybe if we as a nation could look ourselves in the mirror and admit what we are, an Empire that exerts its power as we wish, then we could more realistically prepare for all contingencies. By the way, I have no problem with the US throwing its weight around as a general matter. I have problems with this war not because I give two shits about Saddam or even Iraq for that matter, but because it is diverting valuable resources and attention from the real war on terror, as well as more troublesome rogue states -- No. Korea and Iran.
Now I'll just step down from my soapbox.
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