Monday, July 3, 2006

Back from the Provinces

El Jefe and SWMBO spent the weekend in the provinces, away from 24-hour cable news, the internet and similar such things. Drove back into Ciudad El Jefe early this morning and tried to get caught up before work.
Yes, the Supreme Court is still in cloud-cuckoo land. The New York Times is still disgusting.
The Mexican elections, probably the most important thing for the US going on in the world this weekend -- look to be a mess, but just possibly Americans and Mexicans have dodged a bullet, as Felipe Calderon is slightly ahead. Probably we will not have a definitive outcome for weeks.
Over in Gaza, a band of Palestinian terrorists are still taking out their impotence, unimportance and bitterness over the complete failure of Palestinian nationalism on a 19-year old nobody corporal.
As Charles Krauthammer correctly observes: Gaza is freed, but Gaza wages war. The Israelis left Gaza to its own devices, but in return they got missiles, and cross-border raids. What are the Israelis supposed to do ? The Israelis are more tolerant than I would be in their place. Quite rightly, the Israelis are refusing to negotiate, but God be with Corporal Gilad Shalit, because nobody else is.
North Korea, poster child of failed states, says, AP reports, that it would respond to a US pre-emptive strike with an "annihilating strike and a nuclear war." Nobody cares enough about North Korea for a pre-emptive strike, which is probably what really bothers Wacko Nutjob Dear Leader Kim-Jong-Il. Idiot. Dear Nutjob Leader, if we ever "pre-emptive strike" your little piss-pot country, it will be unlivable for the next 10,000 years or so, and maybe you can plot retaliatory strikes on the cockroaches you'll meet in Hell.
I am presently reading, inter alia, Robert Ferrigno's Prayers for the Assassin, a gift from friend T. Definitely a fascinating, if creepy book, about a not-so-distant future, following a nuclear attack by Muslim terrorists, who successfully framed the Israelis - where America, part of it anyway, has gone Islamic. More believable than I thought it would be, and I will write a full review when done.
Despite the blood-pressure-raising nature of the novel's premise, it does have its difficult to imagine, if not downright comical, aspects: such as San Francisco being characterized as "Sharia City" where the new regime's authorities have executions of gay people every Friday at the civic center. Lots of similar touches convince the reader that he's not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
In a New York Minute
Everything can change
In a New York Minute
Things can get pretty strange
In a New York Minute
Everything can change
In a New York Minute
New York Minute (the Eagles)
Yeah, I know, the book sounds stupid to us, and I'm laughing, for the moment, too. . .but read the book. Life is so weird. Like the song says, in a New York minute, everything can change. . .
Once upon a time, no doubt Marie Thérèse Louise de Savoie-Carignan, Princesse de Lamballe, never in her wildest dreams imagined that anything in the world could or would disrupt her ordered, tranqail, happy life in Paris. . .if you had told this rich, well-connected and supremely worldly (yet harmless) woman in 1787 that just five years later she would be taken out of her Paris townhouse, gang-raped and beheaded by a scumbag mob and part of her mutilated body carried around Paris on a pike, and her whole world destroyed -- you'd have been locked up as a lunatic.

3 comments:

Indigo Red said...

That's it ... "Prayers for the Assassin"! I've been trying to remember that title for several weeks now. Thank you.

Isn't it comforting to return from a long news break to find that absolutely nothing has changed in your absence? And people say we live in a fast-paced world. HA!

Happy Liberty, El Jefe.

El Jefe Maximo said...

You're right Red. Extending your analysis, as one of my engineering pals used to say, I guess nothing ever really changes in the news. It's always wars, riots, tumult; spiced by occasional new fashions and restaurants that are the old ones recycled.

The winners exalt, and the losers complain, and the stars stay in their courses; with all of us at the center of our own, to us, dreadfully serious and interesting subplots, all the while hoping that the never-changing news never touches us.

Mike's America said...

In the midst of all the swirls of political controversy, allow me to wish you a very enjoyable and safe Independence Day.

Remember: "Light fuse and get away." And a variant I learned the hard way: do not cock your arm back to throw. I can still hear the ringing in my ears.