It was pointed out to me that while I may enjoy writing political/current evetn rants you folks, (judging from the comments that get left behind) seem to enjoy my other posts alot more. So whiel the situation the Georgia (the country not the state) is a bit intriguing to me I will leave it be for the moment and write of something else.

I briefly mentioned that the dog had eaten my TV antennae. This comment has elicited a few comments of it’s own and a question or two so I thought I would expand on it. Since the recent demise of Beadle I have two dogs residing at my house. There is DD; she is MY dog. I have had her for about 7 years. (with some shared custody with my parents, my sister, and Stephalapogous at various times when the Army sent me away from home. She is a Pit Bull Labrador mix. She is large, black, and intimidating as hell to those who don’t know her, those that do know her know that there is a greater likelihood of her beating you to death with her tail than ever biting you. She definitely inherited the Lab personality. Then there is the other dog, Zoe. Zoe was a stray who showed up at the house last year while Stephalapogous was renting my place. Stepha is congenitally unable to turn away an animal that looks sad. Zoe moved in. Zoe is white, has some form of Shepard and maybe some collie in her. Who knows? She is a grade A mutt.



Now when the temp gets hot as it always does in the summer here DD becomes the great digger. It is cooler in the earth so she digs in to stay cool. In one of her dig
ging she managed to open a way under the house. In so doing she peeled away the siding blocking and moved in to dig a hole directly under one of the AC ducts. When I came home she was happily ensconced there enjoying the cool. Zoe will also dig but that is not her great failing. NO, she is immensely curious about every thing and, not having hands, she uses her mouth to explore strange new things, things that move, or things that she steps on. This result in her eating a variety of things around the yard including but not limited to hoses, a wind mill, water pumps in the goldfish pong (how she did this without electrocuting herself is a great mystery since she chewed through the power cord too), sprinklers, a couple of clams out of the goldfish pool, and a variety of other things. Needless to say, once she got under the house what does she find but this strange cables running all over the place. She promptly explores them by tugging and pulling on them and OH JOY!, they move. She grabs and pulls. In so doing she rips the antennae cable out of the back of the TV and down through the floor the pulls on it until she manages to break it off. Luckily it broke where it ran under something or she probably would have pulled the antennae down. (Yes, for those who are just noticing this I did say antennae. I have no cable or satellite TV, just the big old antennae at the side of the house. The previous owners had had satellite set up for multiple receivers in the house. She found the main cable for that and ripped it out of the place too. So when I returned, there was a huge mass of cable in the front yard with Zoe happily chewing on it, and DD as previously stated planted under the house.

Now that I have told you that, I will expand and tell you this. Without TV reception I have been DVDing a lot. I just recently finished watching the first two seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I was a big fan of this program when it was on. To the point of actually getting a satellite connection primarily so I could watch it. (Well, it and the novellas on Univison, but that is another story) I was certainly not part of the target audience for the program but had really enjoyed the movie (although I disliked the ending) and quite liked the writing of the program. The second season of Buffy was, IMNSHO, probably the best of all of them. Spike was great, they had good plots, it has too much of the teen girl Angst that so many fans loved, Angel went evil which improved his personality and his posture immensely and then he got killed, and Spike makes a great speech on why he doesn’t want the world to end. (dog racing, Manchester United, and billions of “happy meals with legs”)
As I think of this program I am rather surprised that there wasn’t more controversy as things went along. I mean look, you had a variety of teachers in “inappropriate” relationships with students. (Not including the Giles/Buffy and the gang thing.) You had an adult male, Angel, having a sexual relationship with a minor child, Buffy, which is, as we all know, rape because no one under the age of 18 can EVER consent to sex with an adult. Later you have a heterosexual character changing into a homosexual character. (Don’t give me any of that “Willow was always a lesbian she just didn’t know it crap. She was way to enthusiastically heterosexual with OZ to be confused and wondering.) (She was also a much more interesting character when she was straight, although that might have something to do with the personality less lump they paired her with) The program was a veritable cornucopia of forbidden themes. And all done as a teen fantasy/adventure/romance show. Damn that Josh Whedon is a good writer!

A dream

I had a dream. A line like that is enough to get the few friends with whom I share dreams to perk up and pay attention or run like fools. My dreams tend to be a bit on the bizarre side.

But prehaps you ask, why is he telling us about dreams instead of some informative rant? Well, because I haven't finished researching Chechnya, the Israelis haven't invaded Lebanon, and nothing new has happened today in Iraq. (thus far at least) and I haven't cooked yet so no new recipe. Although I did make Blueberry Icecream the other day. It was good.

This particular dream isn’t beyond the pale but it was really quite interesting. This one involved something like a TV show featuring the equivalent of Victorian Gentleman Adventurers demonstrating how to float down a crocodile infested river wearing life vests while defending themselves with high power bolt action rifles. There was discussion of the proper way to aim and when to fire at the approaching crocodiles. I have no idea if the theory would be sound as I really haven’t done a whole lot of in depth research into crocodiles. I know they prefer to lie in wait and grab creatures when they venture into the water. In the dream the “narrator” explains, while floating in a river, that if you find yourself in this position that you should try and stay in the fastest roughest part of the river. He says that while this increases your chance of drowning the crocodiles tend to avoid it for the calmer parts of the river. The biggest threat will come when you are trying to get out of the river. While floating in the river you should try and stay as high up as you can so as to able to see oncoming crocodiles. He says not to worry about crocs approaching from deep under water because there is nothing you can do about them. They will eat you or not but probably not, because they tend not to attack from beneath, (This I doubt in practical crocodilian avoidance.) but from just beneath the surface. When you see one approaching you, you fire at the oncoming pressure wave to disrupt and then kill the attacking croc. In the dream there was a great deal of action and shooting from very awkward angles while floating in fast moving water. The weapons used were bolt action clip fed gun of extremely heavy caliber. Elephant gun type stuff. Despite the Victorian Gentleman motif all of the weapons and equipment were very modern. Interestingly enough, despite the almost game show approach to things the “narrator” expressed the opinion that anyone who did this deliberately or for fun was insane.
It was, all things considered a very interesting dream. Very action filled with lots stuff going on. The detail was impressive. Think “Shark Week” on Animal Planet with crocodiles and you sitting in the hot seat. Well maybe a pretty cold seat considering you are floating in a raging river shooting a attacking crocs that will eat you if you miss or fail to reload in time. Not the most bizarre dream I’ve had by a long shot but rather fun.

Turn about, turn about

Now here is an interesting bit of news. Sunni leaders that a year ago were demanding the US pull it's forces out of Iraq are now asking that more US forces be sent to the country. this may sound like a good thing and prehaps in the long run it will be but it is really a sign of the chaos caused by the Shiite militas that are running amok and killing Sunni Arabs. Tariq al-Hashemi, a hard line Sunni who is also one of Irtaqs vice presidents a year ago demanded the US leave at once. Now he says “I don’t want the Americans to say bye-bye. Tomorrow, if they were to leave the country, there would be a security vacuum, and that would lead inevitably to civil war."

In Adhamiya, a neighborhood in Baghdad where Sunni insurgents once battled the American forces in the streets the following announcement was made over the loud speakers of the Mosque when an American convoy rolled into the area, “The American Army is coming with the Iraqi Army — do not shoot! They are here to help you.” Who would have thought it?

The US is stepping up it's efforts against the Shiite militias, which is vital as no country can be secure when there are private political armies in the streets, and making inroads with the Sunni inurgents. These are good things.

Now if we here can just resist the leftwing push to wash our hands of the issue maybe something can be accomplished. We certainly won't do anything usefull by pulling out and even those who oppose us in Iraq realize that now.

Back

Well, I'm back and there is so much to write about I am almost boggled.
First, for those who care, I didn't get "stomped like a bug" at the fencing nationals. I certainly didn't stomp either though. I finished nicely in the middle of the pack with plenty of room for improvement.

Now, on to other things, Shamil Basayev is dead. Hearing this earlier in the week actually caused me do do a small happy dance while driving my car. I normally don't celebrate the death of a person but I'll make an exception in his case. Rarely in modern history has there been a man more deserving of being blown into small pieces. For those who don't know, Basayev was the planner of the Moscow opera house raid, the Beslan school raid, and many other equally heinous activities. This inspires me to start work on my long promised post on Chechnya.

The Israelis are gearing up for what looks like it could be an invasion of southern Lebanon (again). This is in response to a couple of hostage takings and, more to the point a rocket attack on Haifa, the largest port and the third largest city in Israel. The Israeli army is not about to sit and let Hezbollah launch rockets at major civilian centers. Since they will be condemned by the world for any action against this group in Lebanon they may as well go all out. There is a pretty good chance that tanks will roll into Lebanon within the week. I hope I am wrong. Lebanon is pretty much screwed in this. They don't want to fight Israel but they can't control Hezbollah which has a larger army than Lebanon does. So the Lebanese are going to get caught under the hammer. This is why you never want to let people keep private armies in your country.

Speaking of private armies, the various Iraqi militia forces are still busily trying to kill each other while trying to get the US to train their fighters by having them join the Iraqi army. ALL of the militias in Iraq need to be disarmed. Forcibly if needed. This will never happen though because it would require a major upswing in troop levels and casualties. Since the press would see that not as a needed step in the stabilization of the country but as a horrid upswing in violence showing the we are "losing the war" they would howl louder for immediate pull outs. I fear that we are going to give in to that pressure soon (relatively and leave a hell of a mess behind us. The American people are weak. We have no staying power for anything that requires hard sacrifice. I'm glad we were made of sterner stuff back in the 1940s. The fact that we have lost 2500+ soldiers in three years of war is not a terrible tragedy. It is in fact a demonstration f how effective our military is. Those losses are MINISCULE for what were are doing.

Oxford Mississippi

Well, I have been away for a few days. I went over to Mississippi to help my brother move into a new house. He bought a nice one. After the heavy lifting was done we wandered about doing a little sight seeing. We saw the Tupelo Buffalo Park, which was interesting as far as the buffalo go. They also have a small tourist zoo type thing that would send my sister the biologist and former zoo worked into apoplectic fits. Rather old fashioned. At least the cages were fairly large and clean. The animals looked like they were well cared for. I did enjoy the story told by the guide of why the monkey in the cage next to the cougar only had 1 arm. (Actually, she had he only had three arms which seemed pretty exotic to me till I realized she just meant three limbs.) It seems when they first put the cougar cage in next to the monkey’s cage the monkey could reach through the chain link and touch the cougar. It seems the cougar got tired of this and had a monkey arm snack. Now the boundary is plexiglassed up.
Another sight (which will date me fairly well) was the Tallahatchie Bridge.

Yes the same one that Billy Joe McAlister jumped off in that strange old song by Bobbie Gentry. (If this doesn’t ring any bells for you feel free to Google the bridge or the name and you will soon be in the know.)
Oxford Mississippi where my brother lives is an interesting old town. It is a combination of old south and new economy that seem to be rather uneasily mixing. It is a major retirement center and has one of the highest concentrations of lawyers in the country. It is 0f course also a college town. They have condos downtown that cost between 500K and a Million each and are occupied five or six weekends a year during home football games. I wonder if they need house sitters during the rest of they year????

It is now the fourth of July, three years ago today I was running a 10k road race around the perimeter of Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan. On the one hand it doesn't seem at all like three years. On the other hand it seems like it was another lifetime.

The fencing National Championships are going on this week in Atlanta so I am off to do some coaching and to fence in one event. (In which I expect to get crushed like a bug)
I’ll be back next week.
Expect a recipe, it has been too long since I have done any blog cooking…….