trying to grok

HOW DO YOU SAY "ELITIST" IN CAMBODIAN?

Since my husband is the smartest man I know (go on, Erin, tell 'em what a genius he is), I have been seething today about what John Kerry said. I kept trying to think of something ba-zing to pimpslap him with, but other than a list of all the soldiers I know and how smart they are, I wasn't coming up with anything. Turns out I don't need to, because others have done the job for me. Head over to Michelle Malkin's to watch Kerry look like an elitist douche and then read all the hatemail that's pouring in.

And what Kerry said -- “You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.” -- ain't exactly the most eloquent sentence I've ever heard. Good thing he spent top-dollar on that prissy degree of his.

ELEPHANT

I started this blog as a way to talk about poltics and issues without having to talk to anyone from my Real Life. At that time in my life, I didn't have any friends who think like I do, and I wanted somewhere to vent. Because I would never dream of venting this stuff in public.

So today when I read The Elephant in the Room, I could completely relate.

Judith says that it's usually Democrats who shun Republican friendships, but I have found myself as the shunner before. I have a few friends with whom I can have rational and polite discussions about the war or politics, but I have more than enough experience with those people who Make Pronouncements:

Another thing [Democrats] do which Kornblat doesn't give an example of, but which we all have experienced: They always start political conversations. None of us do. We have learned that no one wants to argue issues on their merits, that the room gets very quiet and unfriendly, that people start screaming at you, or rant the most loopy beliefs and conspiracy theories. We just assume that is not a topic anyone can treat in a dispassionate manner.

But they always provoke political conversations. Well, not conversations, which would be enjoyable and enlightening. They make pronouncements. And look around the room to see if anyone not only doesn't agree, but doesn't agree enthusiastically. As a friend deep in the closet in the theater world put it, you can't just sit quietly and wait for the topic to change. No, you are suspect if you do not vocally endorse the official opinion of the group. You thought you were in a project meeting or a coffee klatch or a dinner party, and all of a sudden it has turned into the Communist Youth League Self-Criticism Session.

There are only so many times I can stomach pronouncements like "Whew, won't it be better when Kerry is president?" or "So can you believe this crap that Bush is pulling?" And it's not easy to be friends with someone who walks into work, slams a copy of Fahrenheit 911 on my desk and says, "You need to watch this so maybe you'll think twice about voting for Bush." And so I end up distancing myself from those people. It's fine to have a friend who's a Democrat, but it's a drag to have a friend who says you're no better than Mohammad Atta. Or a friend who can't even muster up any sympathy that your husband is at war because "well, you started it." Or someone who says your friend with the gaping hole in his torso from an RPG is has been brainwashed into fighting for lies. I don't have much use for people like that in my life.

What's funny is that now the scales have tipped in my life. I don't blog massive rants like I did three years ago because I have more people in my Real Life to talk to about this stuff. And this weekend was unlike anything I've ever experienced: being with a group of people who are even bigger rightwing nutjobs than I am! I spent most of the weekend with my jaw on the floor, and I came home squealing to my husband about all the stuff people had said. It was fun, it was fun to not have to tiptoe around to avoid offending someone. And the lone Democrat in the room got some gentle ribbing and jokes tossed his way, but we all got along marvelously. Common ground and all.

So I can't say I've never shunned, but I certainly am capable of being friends with Democrats. No seriously, I am. I just prefer people who join me in a pretend throw up when I say the name Christiane Amanpour.

BLESSED

The SpouseBUZZ conference was a success this weekend. I got to meet my fellow bloggers and we had a great connect with the wives at Fort Hood. If you're interested in our discussion, I liveblogged the panels here and here. But one of the most touching things of the weekend happened when I left Texas.

I sat down on my flight home next to a man on a cell phone, whom I initially assumed would be a quiet businessman. But when he hung up, he asked me what I was doing in Texas. And there's this feeling you get in the two seconds after you mention that you're a part of the military, a hold-your-breath feeling where you wait for the person's reaction. It was going to be a long flight, and I didn't want to deal with anything unpleasant. But this situation couldn't have been better.

I was sitting next to George Pearsons, the pastor at Eagle Mountain International Church. He was extremely interested in learning what military families go through. He asked me many questions about what military spouses experience and what we think about various political issues and current events. We talked nonstop for two and a half hours. He told me about a program they have at their church that supports families of military servicemembers called Troops 91, named after Psalm 91. I told him about SpouseBUZZ and encouraged him to let his parishoners know about our website if they're looking for a place to connect while their loved one is deployed.

Right before we landed, he said he wanted to do something special for my family. He gave me a donation on behalf of his church, saying that we should use this money to go to dinner or do something to cherish our precious time together. He said he wanted to give me this money "to bless my family." I couldn't believe how much money he wanted me to take! He wouldn't let me refuse, and we parted ways a little better for having met each other.

As I drove home from the airport, I thought about this money and I realized something: my family is already blessed enough. My husband said the exact same thing when I showed him the money and told him the story. So I hope Pastor Pearsons doesn't mind if I use his church's money to bless some people who probably need it more than we do.

I'm going to donate this money from Eagle Mountain International Church to two organizations that have a connection to SpouseBUZZ. I'll send half to Sew Much Comfort, an organization that makes adaptive clothing for wounded troops. And I'll send the other half to Project Valour-IT, an organization that provides voice-activated laptops to troops whose wounds prevent them from communicating via computer with their loved ones.

Pastor Pearsons blessed me with his money, but what he really blessed me with was his kindness. He was a wonderful listener, a concerned American, and a man who is genuinely interested in understanding how we spouses cope with life in the military. I was blessed to have been in Seat 19E yesterday.

(This post is cross-posted at SpouseBUZZ.)

UGH

I'm sorry, but I don't see any reason it would ever be appropriate to ask a soldier in an interview "You ever worry one day your number's gonna come up?" What kind of question is that from a journalist? If you want to get to that issue, could you at least ask it in a less crass way? And then to follow up with whether or not they think their wives are screwing around on them. Sweet merciful crap. What is wrong with people?

VIDEO

Watch this video on the good news from Iraq. It reminds me of why we could still use Tim behind a keyboard.

BYE

I'm leaving for Texas in a few minutes. Unfortunately, tonight is the military ball, which my husband is emceeing; I'm quite sad to miss this. As I said goodbye to my husband, I reminded him to have fun but stay out of trouble. He reminded me that those two things are mutually exclusive at a military ball...

LUMPED TOGETHER

I just heard about these Active Duty servicemembers who are speaking out against the war. Whatever, that's their business. But I do take issue with one thing the ringleader, SGT Liam Madden, says:

The goal is to have 2,000 names on the Appeal for Redress list when the messages are delivered to members of Congress in January.

"I think that's easily attainable," he said. "There's a seed of dissent in the military against this policy, and a core of people who are acting."

He doesn't believe many military personnel are politically opposed to the war, he said. But, he said, he believes a continuing cycle of redeployment has worn the patience of the troops.

"As far as widespread disapproval of the occupation of Iraq, I know no one likes being deployed over and over again and being away from their families for months at a time," Madden said.

Because of that, "I'm pretty sure there's a base of support" for the appeal to Congress, he said.

I'm not sure I really like the idea that he plans to get more signatures just because people don't want to deploy. If someone honestly thinks that we shouldn't be in Iraq, then he should sign this petition. But someone who just doesn't want to do his job (i.e. deploy where the military says to) shouldn't be lumped in the same category. Most soldiers and marines are growing weary from on-a-year-off-a-year, but they aren't the same as those who are anti-war.

One thing I found humorous was the quote from Madden's mother:

The clashing philosophies expressed by antiwar activists and the administration on Wednesday may ring familiar for Madden, who found himself in friendly debates with his mother, a supporter of using force against tyranny.

"We were direct opposites for a long time," said Oona Madden, a former restaurant owner in Bellows Falls. "I did support the war and still do to some extent. I don't buy into everything Liam tells me, but I support what he's doing -- as long as he covers his butt."

It's not too often you find an anti-war marine with a pro-war mama!

BITTERSWEET

I don't clean up my blog email inbox very often, so I have lots of old emails spanning my blogging career. But just now I found one tucked away in a folder that was from three years ago this weekend. One that starts...

Interesting post. I am retired AF, former helicopter crew chief/flightmechanic/gunner who got an engineering degree then returned to the flightline as an aircraft maintenance officer.

My first contact with Bunker.

I feel his absence all the time. It's bittersweet for me to travel to Texas this weekend, because we had planned to someday meet. I know that if he were still alive, I would've gotten to meet him this weekend.

I'll still go meet him someday, just not the way I pictured it.

BAD TIMING

Darned Cardinals and their darned seven-game NLCS series and their darned rain delays. Now I've got a major dilemma on my hands.

This weekend I'll be at the SpouseBUZZ conference at Fort Hood. I'm very excited about participating in this panel, and I know it will be fun to meet fellow bloggers and hear their stories. But I also know that half my mind will be focused on the darned World Series.

Of course, that's not as bad as my friend from college, who had a wedding to attend last Saturday. She spent most of the reception with her face pressed against the reception hall window, trying to see the TV in the bar across the street! She says it should be illegal for people to get married during the World Series or March Madness.

I'd love for the Cardinals to just go ahead and win the thing, but I can't stand the thought of them winning the World Series while I'm 1000 miles away from my favorite Cards fan.

Anyway, if you're in the Fort Hood area and would like to say hi, I'll be at the SpouseBUZZ conference on Saturday. Should be a fun time. And let's pray for torrents of rain so the rest of the series gets postponed until next week.

CHAIN OF THOUGHTS

I was thinking more this morning about my post from yesterday. CaliValleyGirl and I may have grown up in wildly different zip codes, but I can't think of any values she and I don't have in common. Conversely, I know of several lefties who lived their whole lives in rural Missouri. I guess I'm no closer to figuring out what makes us embrace the politics we do.

And then thinking of California made me think of Tupac. Which made me think of my absolute favorite Dave Chappelle skit, one that makes me laugh even harder than Rick James. Maybe it's because I once dated a guy who was really into Tupac conspiracy theories. Yeah, I know, leave me alone.

FISHBOWL

CaliValleyGirl is back in L.A. after living nine years in Germany. And she just took a trip to another planet: Alabama. You must go read her post before you keep reading mine. Go on, git.

I went to college in rural Missouri, population 17,000. Interestingly enough, we had a pretty big foreign exchange community. And I had this exact conversation with a French exchange student. He was dismayed that our town in Missouri never showed any foreign films in the local movie theater, because the locals would benefit from learning about other countries. Our local movie theater had three screens. Three. I tried to explain to him that his idea was not a very sound business move for a rural movie theater, but he insisted that everyone in France is educated about the United States, so we should educate ourselves about France.

I asked him why he didn't study abroad in Finland. He got a little puzzled and said that he didn't really know anything about Finland. Well, don't they have a culture that's worth learning about? Why wasn't he interested in learning about Finland? If he wants rural Missourians to learn all about France, then shouldn't he spend some time learning about Finland? Of course it's a silly juxtaposition, but it made the point that Finland is out of his experience. Learning about Finland might be interesting in and of itself, but it does nothing to really affect his daily life or his future. He was in the US to learn English in order to hopefully get ahead in the business world. What would it help him to learn about Finland, or a rural Missourian to see a French film? Not much in a practical sense.

Everyone wants others to know about and respect his culture. It's his, right? So it must be worth learning about! But "middle America" -- Jesusland, Flyover Country, Red States, or whatever you want to call us -- are really out of the average Californian or New Yorker's experience. I can't really fault them for not knowing about us, any more than I can fault a Frenchie for not knowing about Finland, but we do make up a big freakin' chunk of the country.

I have never been to California or NYC. (Before my mom interjects, I disclose that I went to NYC as an infant, but that hardly counts for my point here.) All I know about L.A. and New York comes from TV, the same way Europeans learn about the US. The disconnect is that my entire US experience, the America that I know, comes from living in Oklahoma, Texas, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, and South Carolina. That's the US I know, and it's quite different from CaliValleyGirl's US (living in Hawaii and California).

I'm happy she visited my version of the US. I'd like to visit her version someday too. I think it can help us establish common ground, which would be good for all 300 billion of us.

ON TO GAME 4

Woohoo, the voodoo doll worked!
Go Cards!

WHY VOTING MATTERS

Bleak House: Republicans deserve to lose, but what happens if Democrats win?

First, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has promised that election of a Democratic House would insure "a rollback of the [Bush] tax cuts." Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, who would be chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, would make sure no tax cut extension bill would ever get to the floor. He voted against the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts and the bill that later extended the tax cuts until 2010 (as did all but seven of the 205 Democratic House members). In September Mr. Rangel said that he "cannot think of one" Bush tax cut he would agree to renew.

Investors Business Daily recently pointed out that since the Bush tax cuts took effect in 2003, "the economy has added $1.26 trillion in real output, $14.4 trillion in net wealth and 5.8 million new jobs." But that progress doesn't seem to matter to the liberals, whose primary goal is to raise income tax rates. "Taxing the rich" will be the leading economic argument of a 2007 Democratic House, and a rollback tax bill of some kind will reach the floor.

Second, President Bush will not be able to re-energize his effort for individually owned Social Security accounts, for "preventing the privatization of social security" is in the Democratic National Committee's "6-Point Plan for 2006." Democrats don't trust people to own or invest their own retirement funds--better to let a wise government do that, for as socialist Noam Chomsky says, "putting people in charge of their own assets breaks down the solidarity that comes from doing something together." And since Congress gets to spend Social Security tax receipts that aren't needed to pay benefits, letting people invest their payments in their own retirement accounts would be a costly revenue reduction that the new, bigger-spending Congress won't allow to happen.

Via Instapundit. Yikes. Read the remaining points. Double yikes.

JUJU

Well, I didn't make it to the store or the post office or anything else I was going to do yesterday, but I did finish knitting a Detroit voodoo doll all in one day.

Heh. Go Cardinals!

SAD

I wrote before about how much I love the stained glass window in the chapel on our old post. Now, according to my old neighbor, they're getting rid of it and designing a new one. I hope they keep the old one intact and put it somewhere else. For whatever reason, that window touches my heart in a way I can't describe.

PUPDATE

I was asked for a pupdate, which is something I will always oblige. So here the stinker is, cute as can be, snuggled up with his squeeky toy. And it's a good thing he's cute, because yesterday he ate through the apartment mini-blinds like they were made of ham.

UP YOUR BUTT, JOBU

My goal for today is to whip out one of these in a Detroit uniform, in time for tomorrow night's game. Heh.

ABOVE MY PAY GRADE

Yesterday I posted food for thought. Today I post the other side of the argument:
If we had known then...
If We Knew Then...

You wanna know what I think? I think I'm not smart enough to know.

I too thought of the idea of hindsight when I read Goldberg's article. Tactical mistakes were made during the Civil War and WWII, yet we look back on those two as wild successes. I just don't know how time will look back on Iraq. Someday when all of this is a short paragraph in a high school history textbook, what will that paragraph say?

I don't have all the answers to the War on Terror. I rely on my husband, who's been in two of the three Axis of Evil countries, to give me his informed opinion. I trust our government has far more information than I could ever have about the situation. And I go with my gut and hope that in the end my gut was right.

That doesn't mean I don't have doubts. I constantly refer to the Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States. I think that has a major bearing on whether democracy can work in the Middle East. Reading LGF does nothing to bolster my confidence. But despite my doubts, I still think that Saddam Hussein had to go.

I've just been feeling lately that I shouldn't talk above my pay grade. And isn't that mostly what blogging is? I don't have any delightful insight that you people need to read. Sure, I have an opinion on the CNN sniper video and Ted Kennedy offering to help the Soviets. But my opinion is nothing you can't read at Blackfive or Cold Fury, respectively. I think the New York Times is crap for their recent whoopsie, I think it's ridiculous to assume there's institutionalized racism at Cracker Barrel, and I think we need to have a serious investigation into Dirt-gate.

But what do I know anyway...

LIFE IMITATES ART

Woah. It's a real-life John Doe! I wonder if this guy knows how many dimples there are in a golf ball...

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

A thread worth reading:
Iraq Was a Worthy Mistake
Ace's response to Goldberg
The comments are worth a glance too.

HEH

I just want to be a jerk for a minute and point something out.

Go Cardinals!

UPDATE:

Tigers in three? Not so much.

RED, WHITE & AWESOME

Today rivals our 4th of July for Americanness. We voted (absentee), went to the State Fair and ate our weight in okra and deep fried Snickers, and now we're drinking beer and watching the World Series. Take that, Mellencamp: this is our country.

LINK

John Hawkins has a great interview with Larry Elder on race, health care, free trade, and blogging.

BREATHE OUT

Whew, my heart can't handle being a baseball fan. I thought for a while that it might be my duty-Judy to be a Tigers fan next week, but now the Tigers can eat it.
All hail Yadier Molina.

And my sleep cycle can't handle Eastern time zone. Look at me, up until midnight. I'm so off schedule from all these late night games that Charlie and I slept until 0945 this morning. I haven't slept that late since college.

And I sure can't sleep right now; I have to wait for all those butterflies to calm down.

HEH

Iowahawk makes an appeal to Conservative America. I got such a kick out of this paragraph that I can't stop giggling. Republican stereotypes crack me up.

Despite what you may have heard on Fox News, we Democrats know what issues are on the minds of heartland conservatives like you. We know that your number one concern of is the safety of your children -- whether they are plucking their banjos on the back porch, speaking tongues to snakes at Jesus Camp, or torching crosses at your local Nascar racing contest. We also know that the number one threat to your children's safety is the scourge of international homo-ism. That's why we at the DNC have created "The Contract With American Hillbillies," a new multipoint investigation program to identify and root out conservative stealth homoism before it threatens you or your precious little inbreeds.

FAILING CIVICS

Saw this on MSNBC today: A new study finds that even top undergraduates are woefully ignorant of history and civic government

I can't say I'm surprised at all. My college GPA was a 3.92 and I missed a couple on the sample test. Embarrassing. And my college did a pretty good job of forcing us to take a variety of courses. Still, even with all those requirements I never had to take economics, statistics, or anything like geography. I think we do a disservice to students by filling their schedules with stuff like "Environmental Global Warming" or "Gender and the Law". I took a class on serial killers, so now I know more than the average person about Ted Bundy but cringed when I got asked a question about the Revolutionary War. That's sad, but I have no one to blame but myself. I just wasn't mature enough from age 18 to 22 to take anything that wasn't fun. Fat lot of good my Russian literature and Japanese classes have done me since.

By the way, I've been looking for a good US history book because I think I could really use a refresher. Anyone out there have any suggestions?

SHEESH

Good thing we didn't bet on black.

THAT AIN'T MY COUNTRY

They've been beating us over the head with that new Chevy commercial during the postseason, and my husband hates it too. He flies off the handle every time it's on. He's mad that someone would proudly boil the US down to Hurricane Katrina and Vietnam protesters. I'll have to point out this quote from Slate: "I wonder if they could squeeze in the Rodney King beating and the Abu Ghraib photos, too."

There was a much better commercial on AFN that tried for the same concept. I have been looking online for 15 minutes but can't find any trace of it. Those of you in USAREUR will remember the Navy Reserves commercial that laid out things worth fighting for: hot dogs, Route 66, baseball, etc. This Chevy commercial really misses that mark.

FIELD

All alone for a week; husband's out in the field. Heh, the field, for Finance. They sit around and pretend to pay people.

ONLY IN AN ARMY FAMILY

I've got a story that might freak you out -- it's certainly a bit more intense than what you'll find in "Humor in Uniform" -- but someone somewhere out there will understand this story and think it's funny.

I ordered some photos online from our digital camera before I realized I forgot to order one that I wanted. I decided to take the one photo to Walmart with me and just print it off of that Kodak machine. So I grabbed my husband's thumb drive and saved the photo. Piece of cake, right? Well, those photo machines work by searching the thumb drive for all photo files. So there I am at the store and the Kodak machine is asking me which photo I want. It's afternoon on a Sunday, so the Walmart is swarming with people, and I'm about to have a heart attack.

Because, you see, I had saved it to my husband's thumb drive from Iraq.

So there I was in Walmart, on the very big, very public Kodak machine, frantically scrolling through photos of dead insurgents trying to find the stinkin' picture of our dog.

Could've died of embarrassment.

[Disclaimer: Before anyone gets too freaked out by this story, I must point out that these weren't "trophy photos." One of my husband's tasks in Iraq was to document anything that happened to his platoon while they were out on patrol. He had to take these photos back to battalion so they could cross-reference them against high-value targets and known troublemakers.]

GOOD LINK

I started feeling antsy and came in to check blogs. I found a great post on the supposed 654,965 dead Iraqis over at Annika's. And I was so engrossed in reading it that I missed Suppan's homerun. Dangit.

BLAH

Lileks has a good bleat today and a link to an article called "Imagine Earth Without People". Take a deep breath and dive in. Now, I'm no biologist, but you know what else earth probably wouldn't have if it didn't have people? Pandas.

SHORT BUT SWEET

Found: a den Beste post

GOOD MEMORY

Wow, Victor remembered something that I completely forgot: I posted my birthday in a comments section three months ago. It was in reference to a poem he posted that I really liked and that's appropriate for me today...

Eighteen years old, October eleventh

Drunk for the first time in her life,
she tossed her head in a horsey laugh
and that new opal gift sailed off her sore earlobe,
in a graceful parabola,
pinged twice on the stone porch floor,
and rolled off to hide behind the rose bushes.

click to keep reading

Thanks, Victor, for having such a good memory and remembering to swing by here today. Some of my best friends didn't even remember it's my birthday!

Man, I love the blogosphere.

SAD

I actually watched Rolie Polie Olie a few times in the mornings in Germany, simply because I knew Lileks liked it. It wasn't a bad show, as far as kids' stuff is concerned, and that's saying a lot because I didn't even have a kid sitting next to me while I watched it. Too bad my future kids won't get to see it.

ALMOST THERE

Finally the countdown to 30 can begin; today I'm officially only one year away.

ANTI-WAR

Bunker used to wake up at the crack of dawn, so he was almost always the first person to read my posts and comment on them. He was always very encouraging in my quest to grok, and I wish he were here today to help me grapple with this post.

For you see, I just finished reading Flyboys.

I agree with nearly every review I've read that Bradley was a bit clumsy in trying to make the US and Japan equals in barbarity. At least I know I'm not the only one who ruffled at the fact that the first chapter of the book lays out America's "government policy of ethnic cleansing." But in his attempt to be fair and balanced with the war in the Pacific, Bradley did manage to do one thing: make me feel utterly and completely anti-war.

I cried myself to sleep every night I was reading this book. Bradley managed to bring the horrors of war to life in a way I've never quite experienced. Maybe it was the cannibalism that put me over the top. Maybe it was Jimmy Dye's white scarf. Maybe it was the fact that I personally think we're currently fighting an enemy that's more ruthless than the Japanese. But something in this book hit me in the gut, and I can't stop thinking about it.

My husband warned me about writing a post wherein I call myself anti-war. But I said that, if a blog named Trying to Grok isn't a place where I can be honest about my thoughts, then what's the point of writing on it? And so I confess that I see myself as anti-war. Except that anti-war doesn't really mean what the plain-faced words would seem.

I don't mean anti-war in the Sheryl Crow's Sequined T-Shirt way that most people mean when they call themselves anti-war. Most of those people actually mean anti-Bush. And I certainly haven't lost all my brain cells and begun to think that there actually ever could be a world without war either. I know there's no such thing as NO WAR, regardless of how many bumper stickers are printed.

But when you read about POWs having their heads chopped off and then being eaten by the enemy, when you read about the napalm that fell on Tokyo, when you read about the absolutely ghastly things that went on in the Pacific, you all of a sudden can grok a sentence you've heard over and over but never really gave much thought.

War is hell.

JARHEAD

We haven't seen the movie Jarhead in our household, but we do gleefully work the phrase "I hear their bombs and I'm afraid" into conversation as often as we can. I've had zero interest in seeing the movie, until I read this review at Cold Fury. If you've already seen the movie, definitely go over and read both the review and the comments.

Oh, and how ridiculous was it when I saw a soldier on Law and Order call another soldier a "jarhead"? Sheesh, google could've helped them avoid that bonehead script gaff.

CHRISTMAS PRESENT

I don't know if my friend from Sweden still checks in on my blog anymore, but if you do, don't look! The rest of you can check out the extended entry...

I'm too excited about my latest knitting project to wait until after Christmas to post a photo. Right before the World Cup this year, I found that German yarn shops were carrying sock yarns in different national colors. My friend from Sweden has been living and working in Germany for the past few years, and I figure there's nothing that makes you want to connect with your home country like living abroad! Thus I thought she needed some socks to show off her Swedeness. I designed some socks with the Swedish Lesser Coat of Arms on the heels, modeled here by my mama.

I am so excited at how they turned out, and I can't wait to send them to her. But thank goodness Sweden has a simple coat of arms!

FOOD NETWORK RULES

Is it just me, or is TV going a bit too far with snarky social commentary? I was watching Cold Case the other day, and one of the suspects was a former crackhead who'd turned his life around. So Scotty snidely quips, "Yeah, you overcame drugs and had a stint in the Guard; you could be president." Hardy har har. Shut up and solve the damn mystery. It's no wonder I find myself spending more and more time on the Food Network.

Speaking of which, look who I nearly had a heart attack to meet today...

HEH

The Princess of Jordan came to watch my husband's combative training at PT this morning. Isn't that the most random thing you've ever heard?

LINK

Absolutely horrifying:
Is There Blood On His Hands? The Case Against Kofi Annan

And absolutely mindboggling:
At Gitmo, detainees get La-Z-Boys, pastries

QUESTION

Go read this post by Hud, because I have a question about it...

If the global warming crowd is denounced as anti-capitalists who want to retard American hegemony, and the non-global warming crowd is denounced as selfish jerks who are ruining the planet, and any and all research being done is funded by someone who has an agenda either way, how on earth can we actually figure out what's going on? How can science be divorced from agenda? Isn't that the whole point of science in the first place? If both sides of the debate are accusing the other of being biased and bought, how can we ever know the truth?

Or can we ever know the truth about what the earth will be like centuries from now?