Illegitimate Sun

Not much to tell from this weekend, I spent a lot of time writing. I’ve yet to settle on a style for this latest piece and its bugging me. I think I’ve hit on viable idea for a book that has a market; yet all my rough drafts are rambling. I may need to go to shorter, episodic chapters to contain information without it piling up. We’ll see.

Saw Ed again. Ed ran again. See Ed run.

At lunch today, I ran into another Ed. He’s a regular at the nearby Starbucks. I guess I am as well. He introduced me to a Barrett, a cute blond with whom he goes to grad school. She’s got a dry wit that caught me off guard, but I enjoyed it immensely.

Anchovy pizza was last night’s entree. I whipped up a marinara sauce and threw it, a jar of anchovies, and massive amounts of cheese on a Boboli. Being my first anchovy pizza ever, I think I overdid the anchovy part of it. The pizza turned out incredibly salty and I only finished half of it. Using the whole jar may have been my mistake. I’ll have to experiment.

Forgot to mention, I got an awful haircut this weekend. I blame Bush Jr. and his constant war/sports coverage. Clearly the hairdresser was thinking of the military, because I came out from under the scissors looking like the least scariest jarhead ever.

All Roads Lead to Rome

Over Easter Weekend, I’ll be spending my days in Rome. The Holy See, Trevi Fountain, the Colosseum and Pantheon, the Spanish Steps, real espresso and pizza - needless to say, I’m looking forward to it.

All I need now is a Vespa.

Here’s where I’ll be staying - Hotel Romae. $25-28 a night and its located in the near the Termini, the main train station in Rome. Not a bad find for a Midwestern kid surfing the net; I’m getting good at this type of travel. I should write a book. Hmmmm…

Don’t tell the Madre that I’m travelling. She gets worried when I hop on a plane.

On a serious note, it appears that American forces are finally taking casualties outside of friendly fire and the ubiquitous helicopter crashes. In all of these cases, my sympathies go out to the families of the fallen. I’m curious to see how the media handles these casualties. Right now, they seem to be frothing with righteous indignation that anyone would ‘harm our boys.’

In the same media, I’ve yet to see figures on Iraqi casualties in either their armed forces or civilians. Indignation only survives in one-sided ingnorance.

Well, it’s started. One of the interesting parts of the BBC’s broadcast last night was that this target was in a residential neighborhood. So much for reducing civilian casualties. State-sponsored murder, it’s not just for Texas anymore, boys n’ girls!

Seriously, I believed the threat of war was necessary to spur on inspections. The reasons for war were never enough to justify the upcoming loss of life on both sides. Even more important, none of the Bush camp’s arguments were unique to Iraq. They could be applied to most of the Third World dictators and we are not invading them.

South Africa was under U.N. sanctions for 30 years without being invaded. True, the country underwent unimaginable horrors, but its reforms were initiated from within. Cuba has been under U.S. sanctions for over 40 years. To argue that a decade of sanctions is too long a period for Iraq is to ignore the previous histories of international action.

In summary, I worry that our leaders have forced the population of Iraq and our solders to be placed in a situation that could have been avoided. People will die on both sides needlessly, for goals that could have been obtained through other means.

On the plus side, I learned how to make a pesto sauce last night. Now I just need a steady supply of pine nuts.