My Recent Activities, but only the minutia

For those of you that are fortunate enough to not have the chance to spend time with me on a regular basis, I thought I'd fill everybody in on what is going on in my life...but only the highly trivial stuff. Enjoy, but don't look for any hidden meaning.

I was in Detroit for a long weekend for the 4th, and that means that we allegedly would cross the state line to Indiana, where we would allegedly purchase fireworks that would be "illegal" in Michigan, and then allegedly set them off over the lake while actually drinking tequila. Last year, we had a friendly fire incident due to which we made two important changes in the way the show is managed; first, spent fireworks were to be placed into the bonfire for disposal only on highly rare occasions and second, in perhaps the greatest piece of irony I have witnessed to date, my brother was named safety officer. This year's show had the biggest explosions we have had so far, but they seemed to go off a little close to the ground. It is a fact that a firework with a 50-foot explosive radius gets your attention when it goes off 10 feet above the ground.

Also in Detroit, I hit what I claim to be the greatest golf shot I have ever played. The setup - Lying 2, 195 yards out, 15 feet in the left rough on a par 5, with a tree between me and the green. Similar to a pitch over a trap to a narrow green, this is a shot i just don't have in my bag (the play that one with a 7-iron and some type of bump-and-run bc I can't hit a 60 degree). Anyway, I take a 5-iron, planning to close the face, knock it 100 yards up on to the fairway and have a good shot at the green in 4 (which isn't bad given my double bogey handicap). Needless to say, I catch all of it, and it's a seeing eye grounder around the tip of the tree branch, but with a slight draw that rolls 10 feet from the hole. And, contrary to popular belief, I am able to sink a tricky putt for birdie.

A lot of people wonder why Americans don't like soccer; for me it's all the diving. Now, you see some of it in the NBA too, but at least there you have a somewhat unwritten rule that if you dive you are 10% less likely to be on the right side of the charge/block equation. Maybe I just have an overly American sense of honour and justice, but when 12 guys per game get carried off in a stretcher, only to jump right off and back on the field, it slows down the game worse than a mid-inning lefty/righty pitching change, and just twists the blade a bit too. And the refs don't seem to care. I'd like to see the italian soccer team play a game of football or hockey just because i think they deserve to see what real contact sports are like. on another note, congratulations italian soccer fans - but remember that the US would have beaten the eventual world cup champions of Juventus hadn't paid off the refs.

Just finished reading Cobra II (an operational-level history of the planning and fighting of the Iraq War). As i'm sure you know, I have some issues with the ideology of some of the people in our government, but what really gets to me is the general incompetence. Just one point the book makes that I want to emphasize; when you use trumped up or carefully selected intelligence to sell a war to your public, that's partially the public's fault for being so gullible. But when you give that same faulty intelligence (flowers and candy?) to the troops on the ground, and some of them are KIA because of it, you have no right to be running a country. It's borderline criminal what happened - I recommend the book although it's a touch dry. In related news, at barnes and noble I saw a book approximately titled "has the israel lobby become too powerful"; interesting topic, but my answer is "well, that depends on who you consider to be the israel lobby". The most powerful group lobbying the current Waffen SS kommander is the evangelicals. My understanding of their theory (and please comment if I am wrong...) is something like "jews being in charge of the holy land is a prerequisite of the coming of the coming of the christian messiah. said event will lead to the brutal murder and eternal damnation of all jews, both the afformentioned ones running israel as well as the diaspora".

Personally, I don't consider anybody with this view to be part of the Israel lobby - the means DO NOT justify the ends.

[editor's note - these people don't know what the diaspora is, but i don't know what term they would use in its place]