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I've always been ambivalently negative on the war, but now I'm leaning even further towards the negative. Here's the thing; we really needed to express that we are against the regime, not the country of Iraq, but something in the reports of the fighting makes it sound like people there are fighting for their country. Like if someone invaded us (and we didn't have the military options we clearly do) and it was all up to bands of 2nd-amendmenteers and militias. Kind of like "Wolverines" in Red Dawn or something. I'm not sure if that's at all accurate, but that's the sense I get.

(And I think our hopes for internal uprisings were a little premature, especially given how we left the Kurds and Shi'a out to dry after the last war there...if anything, they're going to play wait and see, especially considering how thin-on-the-ground our forces must be in the places we kind of zoomed past.)

Obviously, we don't mount operations of this scale for humanitarian reasons alone. So all that's left is a hope that despite all appearances to the contrary, this really is advancing our medium and long term interests, that this team of advisors who have wanted us to get after Saddam for all these decades really know what they're talking about.

You know, our expectations for our military have really been amazing. In how many wars in history have the deaths of ten soldiers been so newsworthy? It's like we were holding out hope for it being completely bloodless on our side. (And it's notable how we hear so little about military casualties on the other side. Are they so firmly in the camp of "bad guys" that we just don't care, is it a big secret, are we worried about bad publicity?)

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Quote of the Moment

I suspect [the war] will not have a large negative effect [on the Adult Video business] since the sentence 'This war has me not wanting to look at naked women' has never been uttered.'

From this Adult Video News piece Will War Be Good or Bad for Business? (link doesn't have any explicit images, unless you buy into that "war is the last obscenity"/"battle footage is the new pornography" line of thinking, in which case you should know that there's a photo of a military helicopter there.)

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Diet Food of the Moment
I'm always on the lookout for tasty convenient food, and cheap is a big plus. (I'm trying to keep my weekly petty cash spending to $50, including meals and random purchases to small for the credit card.) So, now that it's warmer it makes sense to walk 2 or 3 blocks down to Wendy's, where they have 99 cent Side Salads, Garden (Lettuce, Tomato, Carrot, Onion, Cherry Tomatoes) and Caesar (Lettuce, Parmesian Cheese, and some crumbled bacon). I think that nutritionally they're not too bad, especially because I'm learning to like 'em without dressing. (I think it's too easy to view salad as just a funky conduit for tasty dressing. Vegetables have their own flavor, even the ones you get at Wendy's.) I mean, I know bacon's never too great for you, but it's a pretty small amount. Also, for reasons I don't clearly understand, I kind of enjoying eating them at my desk as a finger food, though that part's optional.

To get to the Wendy's from where I work is kind of odd, you walk through some really rundown streets with apartment buildings, and there's a lot of trash on the ground. Before I started working here I didn't realize Salem was urban, not just witch and pirate themed tourist traps.

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Link of the Moment
Flash-based lessons in learning English.