Pete's Log: ranting? quando?

Entry #1235, (Life in General)
(posted when I was 23 years old.)
I think my current level of understanding of how the world works can be well represented by the level of amusement I take in reading this headline: "Guantanamo Captives Told to Behave."

It's 5:30 in the morning, and I have been awake for 12 hours. So it seems appropriate that I start making dinner now. Yummy jambalaya with fake sausage. While I wait for dinner to finish, I figure I'll pester the world with my silly views on nothing in particular.

OK, actually, it's time to think unhappy things for a bit. I came across this story a couple days ago, and it's been plaguing my thoughts since. A 25-year old woman in Dallas, under the influence of alcohol and ecstasy, hit a homeless man as she was driving home. The man smashed threw her windshield and became stuck there. She drove home with the man in her windshield, parked the car in her garage, and left it there. Over the next several days, the man slowly died of blood loss and shock. The woman checked on him several times during the course of those days, even apologized to him. But she did not help him, despite his pleas. After he died, she dumped his body in a park. Autopsy results showed that he had no serious injuries and would probably have lived if he had received medical attention. She's been charged with murder, but her lawyer is arguing that murder is too serious a charge, that she should only be charged with failure to stop and render aid. It seems to me that locking up an injured person in your garage so that nobody else can help is more than just failure to render aid. Yuck. I'm so saddened by this. I hate that people are capable of this. Is there any less depressing news out there? I must move on.

I'm not quite sure about what to make of a headline about the economy recovering being followed by a headline that Bush is going to sign an economy stimulus bill. Greenspan says the economy should be ok without such a bill. But government debt is a good thing! I mean, I'm no expert on such matters and don't know nearly enough facts to decide one way or the other.

One amusing excerpt from the article about Bush signing the stimulus bill: "... during his weekly radio address, which will be broadcast live for the first time since Bush took office more than 13 months ago, ..." what?

Hey, does anyone even know where Zimbabwe is? They're having elections there, apparently for the first time in a while. The line at one voting station stretched for more than a mile. Ah, to be that dedicated to democracy. It's amazing what we take for granted.

And what's the deal with the Swiss joining the UN?

I added some tabasco to my jambalaya. It's spicyriffic.

Oh, and apparently Bush has told the Defense Department to prepare to use nuclear weapons "on a contingency basis" against at least seven countries. I'm not sure what that really means, but it scares me.

And it seems that pictures of Chinese politicians yawning are somewhat popular among the crowd that email yahoo news items to people.

I'm pretty sure I was a better person before I did a google search for the phrase "braces fetish" .... and no, I don't have one myself.

I'll be driving to Dallas sometime soon. Mamie and I are going to spend part of spring break visiting Annie. It should be fun. It's a 1000 mile drive, so I'm hoping to somehow trick my body into not being nocturnal sometime before I leave. We'll see how that goes.

portalofevil.com is my friend. The nsync popup ad that has been haunting me today is not.

I'm gonna stop now, because I've already said too much. Except one last thing: "w3rd"