Books Lying Open
• Patricia Cornwall, Portrait of a Killer

The excuse, this time, is that a new girl has appeared on the distant horizon (literally, she's overseas) and she hopped on ICQ last night round 9:30, and we talked pretty much non-stop until I went to bed 5 hours later.  I did work on my D2 column some at the same time, but didn't finish that one, and didn't even begin this update, though you wouldn't think it would take me all that long to babble on about something, and then frickin' post some news items, now would you?  Etc.

However she did try to soothe my fragile psyche after the "god I'm ugly in these pictures" episode yesterday, by telling me that she thought I was good looking.  Twice. But you know how girls lie to get what they want.  However since she doesn't appear to want, I could be wrong.  We got into joking about weird clothing and what the other should wear on our date (not that there is a date planned) and she said, "chain mail." and waxed hungrily about Russell Crowe at the start of Gladiator.

And as a typical male, I am quite easily humored, so by this point I'm actually half-convinced that maybe some girls might think I'm cute, all evidence to the contrary.  So I sent the URL to another woman, one I've known for years who is near my mother's age and isn't going to try and humor me about anything.

Pity it was just over ICQ, so she couldn't have actually kicked me in the balls as well, eh?

I also got this mail yesterday from Angelus:

Flux, It's not much. But you look hellva better than most webmasters I see/know :) Just thought i'd mail in since it's the first time I saw your pictures. As for how well you look? No comments from my side ;) Then again I'm no Brad Pitt or George Clooney either. =)

I shall go sit in the corner now.  And eat worms.

¤ Detailed, informative, and rather pessimistic analysis of the likelihood of US invasion success in Iraq.  Most people (myself included) have sort of automatically bought into the Bush Administration's "Just another quick little knock over job; Gulf War II." and haven't even considered the possibility that it might not be quick or easy.

Then there's the bloody part of the conflict -- door-to-door urban warfare. Air power is next to useless in these conditions, where $30 million helicopter gunships suddenly become vulnerable to $200 RPGs (rocket propelled grenades). Remember that missile barrage that was supposed to break Iraqi morale? Well, it turned each city into rubble giving snipers myriad ambush points. The Russians found this out the hard way in Grozny.

Urban warfare is the great equalizer. There is little technology can do at this point -- it's M-16 vs. AK-47. And the defender always has a massive advantage -- it can make use of prepared defensive positions, it can funnel invading armies into ambush zones, it can move freely throughout the city via sewers and obscure back alleys. It can fire from rooftops, building windows, the ground floor and underground providing a multi-dimensional killing zone.

Will the US prevail? Probably. But at what cost? Saddam will undoubtedly escape (as did OBL and Mullah Omar), and the US will face a costly occupation facing a newly energized and radicalized guerilla opposition. Far from eradicating the al Qaeda network -- our most immediate and dangerous enemy today -- we will be helping drive the Iraqi people (the most secular in the Muslim world) into the arms of militant radicals. The US will be multiplying rather than eradicating its terrorist enemies.

But hey, we'll get a lot of oil, so it's all good.  Right?

¤ A story that you know will get the anti-violent video game types going.  And perhaps with good reason.

They got high and played video games during the day, the young men later told police. Their favorite was one called "Grand Theft Auto III," in which players win points for committing violent crimes.

When darkness fell, they told investigators, they did it for real on the streets of Oakland.

They called themselves the "Nut Cases" and roamed the city in an old Buick, looking for targets at random, police say -- robbing dozens and killing five people in the largest single crime wave last year as Oakland reeled from its highest homicide toll since 1997.

"I've never seen anything like it before," Dunakin said. "They just started admitting to all kinds of robberies, too. They were totally nonchalant. They acted totally desensitized."

¤ "Free Mitnick!"  Then hack his ass!

The world's best-known computer hacker suffered the indignity of having someone break into his new security consulting company's Web site. But Kevin Mitnick shrugged it off as "quite amusing," not serious enough for him to call the FBI.

Mitnick said Monday that the hackers apparently exploited separate flaws in Internet server software from Microsoft Corp. The person responsible for the company's Web site failed to apply the repairing patches available from Microsoft, Mitnick said.

"I haven't had any time to play webmaster, but it looks like I'll have to look into it," Mitnick wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "Actually, it's quite amusing. All the hackers out there figure if they can hack Kevin Mitnick's site, they're the king of the hill."

It's funny because he was a big time h4x0r, but more so because his firm is a security consultant, and they can't even get up to date patches on their server?  And they're running MS, of all things.

¤ Amusing article about US lawmakers trying to drum up support for a boycott on French wine.  Fortunately there's no shortage of American whine, as the following quotes prove.

Some members of Congress are suggesting the United States impose trade sanctions on France and withdraw U.S. troops from Germany to retaliate for opposition to U.S. policies on Iraq, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert has told associates he would like to target bottled French mineral water and wine, the paper said.

"France and Germany are losing credibility by the day and they are, I think, losing status in the world," the Post quoted House Majority Leader Tom DeLay as saying. "They are walking a fine line that is very dangerous."

I realize the guy is just grandstanding and proving that whole "refuge of a scoundrel is patriotism", but can he really be this ignorant of world affairs?  Around the world, no one supports of Iraq Attack, other than Great Britain (and that's far from unified, it's just that Blair has been very steadfast) and a few countries in the area of Iraq that we're busily buying support from with additional arms sales and hundreds of millions in "aid packages", AKA bribes.  If there were a vote in the UN for/against the Iraq Attack, it would be something like 150 to 2.  And no, I have no idea if there are 152 countries world wide.  Let's just say there were a lot of abstentions.

The point being, if there's a boycott organized, the US, the world's largest trading nation and the one with the world's largest trade deficit, is not the one that's likely to come out on top.

But talking about that isn't going to win votes from ignorant voters back home, now is it?

What's best are the low prices and obscene glut of merchandise. You can buy virtually anything, so long as you want a lot of it.  Cartons of cigarettes, 24 packs of candy bars, cases of soda, 20 lbs bags of potatoes, 5 pound bags of grapes, 12 packs of baked croissants or muffins or four loaves of bread, or 36 tortillas or 12 cans of corn or 3 lbs bags of chips, and so on.  They also have every sort of consumer electronic, big screens, computers, printers, digicams, and all you need to go with them; 24 and 36 packs of batteries, 6 and 8 packs of blank tapes.  Movies and DVDs and CDs and books, but only the new best sellers.  No selection of anything even the tiniest bit unusual or unconventional. There are clothes by the ton, but all jeans and t-shirts and socks and underwear and mass-produced cheap leather jackets.  Nothing designer, nothing classy, all very functional and low brow.

If you want quality stuff, or anything by a non-major brand, you are out of luck. Go to a boutique, and be prepared to pay for the luxury. Twelve pounds of three types of rigatoni and and a 6 pack of Ragu?  Got it.  Bag of gourmet tomato and basil noodles with garlic pesto sauce?  Be serious.

This is what's best about America; the colossal glut of products, almost everything you could want, so long as you aren't too discerning, in one place, in huge sizes. Of course you can get anything else you want with about a 10 mile drive to any one of a thousand smaller individual stores, and any regular supermarket will carry hundreds of things that Price Club does not and virtually everything that they do, albeit in smaller sizes.  In America, you can have anything you want, if you can afford it, and most of the time it's quite inexpensive.

What's worst is the bovine state that we, as consumers, have been reduced to by the ease of our lives.

Even in San Diego, California, a state that is, generally speaking, one of the most fit and health conscious in the US, most of the people at Price Club are fat.  Obese, bloated, waddling along with their weekly shopping cart stuffed full of more sugar and sweets than they need to eat in the next five years.  There is this slow motion, listless wandering speed that most people there seem to adopt, and an amazing obliviousness to anything around them.  About every other aisle has some uniformed woman with a mini oven or microwave, and lots of tiny portions of some prepared food.  Bites of beef lasagna, or fish sticks, or ice cream, or chicken enchiladas, or chili, or dill pickles, or breadsticks, or whatever.  Always some product that's for sale, and by giving you a tiny bite they hope to entice you to buy the 8 pound frozen box of it in the display to their left.

The fact that samples are being given out isn't a bad thing.  The fact that almost everyone bellies up to get a thimble full of it, usually leaving their heavily-laden cart to block the entire aisle, is what drives me nuts.  I never take any of the samples, as a matter of pride.  Like I'm some starving animal, reduced to snapping at anything edible that might trip across my path?  That and I don't know what the hell's in it, or if they dropped it or what.

I look down on the tub-o-guts who are so greedily gobbling up 2 or 3 sample cups of whatever glorified dog food they have to offer, and the fact that the people doing it are just so entirely oblivious to the rest of the world drives me nuts. It's like a case study in why there are traffic accidents.  Someone gets distracted and stops in the middle of the road, or goes too slowly while looking to the side, and gets in the way of others or side swipes someone.

"Look, you fat sack of crap.  If you are such a greedy pig that you can't wait to get home to stuff your chipmunk-cheeked face with the free roadkill in a cup, at least pull your goddamned cart to the side of the aisle way.  You are not the only person on earth, and it's entirely possible that the rest of us don't lack for anything else to do, or a sense of urgency to get to doing it, and therefore aren't so eager to stand behind you while you stupidly block the way."

Insert appropriate profanity and exclamation points.

Every time I am at Price Club, I find myself looking around at the weakness and sloth and helplessness, and wondering how long any of these butterballs would survive if they had to run for their lives, or fight for them, god help us all. First of all, they would have no idea that a threat was coming until it was right on top of them, so wrapped up are they in their own garbage-shopping/baby scolding/free sample consuming/cell phone yapping little worlds.  They can't even keep from walking out right in front of other people with their moving carts; what hope would they have with actual attackers?  And even if they did have to fight, could they?  Would they?  I see nothing but sheep and victims.  I would imagine that a talented pick pocket could clear $500 an hour at Price Club, and never have any risk of being caught.  The only difficulty is that all of these guys are so fat that their wallet is stuffed into the back pocket of their jeans like a slice of butter in a biscuit.

The beauty of America is that none of this matters, since odds are that none of them will ever actually need to do anything to defend themselves or fight for their lives.  Society protects them from interpersonal assaults or unpleasantness, the police and courts and laws maintain the society, and the mercenary armed forces protects the country.

Yes, I'm saying that the modern American troops are basically mercenaries.  Yes, they are Americans, we're not hiring Prussians or Mexicans to fight for us.  At least not yet. But the people who staff the US armed forces are young and poor and of a different social stratus than most of the rest of the country.  Most are lower class, or lower middle class, few have a good education pre-signing up, and once they are serving they are kept apart from the rest of society much of the time, and a lot of their interaction with society is the sleazier aspects; whores and bars and low income military housing.  It's not the same as some vicious band of Magyars, paid to protect an Italian prince's fiefdom in the 1600s, but it's not a whole lot different.  There's certainly no chance of a draft of all adult males, and if there were, it would be pretty pathetic.

It's not as if we want to return to the olden days of villages having to band together to fight off invading bandits, women and men and children armed with pitchforks and kitchen knives, fighting for their lives. And it's a damn good thing we don't need to.  For about the first time in world history, virtually anyone who has even a modicum of money can gorge themselves and live in a comfortable dwelling, while having enough leisure time to devote it to nothing, and an easy enough job that they don't need to rest all the time just to be able to perform it again the next day. This makes for a very soft society, and even what few vestigial survival instincts we retain are atrophied by the ease and child proofing of modern life.

People constantly get themselves killed stepping off a curb into traffic without looking, or trip over a hole and break their ankle since they weren't paying attention.  All the legal onus is on the other person or business.  Stores should be sure there aren't any wet spots or someone will fall.  Attractions have to be totally safe so some idiot won't get their hand stuck in a hole.  Parking lots can't have a hole or someone will step in it.  There's never any since of, "Well, I guess you'll pay attention next time." when someone stupidly injures themselves.  It's always the fault of someone else, never the idiot in question.  This has been taken to about the most ridiculous extreme by making it illegal for bars to sell a drink to a person who is drunk, since the drunk might stagger off and crash their car.  You wonder how long it will be until stores aren't allowed to sell anyone anything heavy, since after all, they might hurt their back trying to pick it up, or drop it on their foot, or god knows what else.

And not all of this is a bad thing; lots of products are unsafe and the only way they are made safe is by lawsuits forcing their manufacturers to improve the design.  If you buy something and are using it properly and it explodes and blinds you, then obviously that is the fault of the product maker.

But if you send some stupid trouble-maker kid to the office, and he instead runs out and swings around a bar and falls on his idiot head, there is no way he deserves anything other than scorn and derision, as well as detention.  Certainly not $840,000. And yes, that's in Oz, not the US, but almost all of the above rant applies equally to all of Western Civilization.

Unfortunately.

(More on this "soldiers are mercenaries" topic in tomorrow's blog.)

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