As some of my friends have had the dubious honor of witnessing, I've been engaging in nausiatingly saccharine public behavior with this really lovely woman lately. Just to warn you, I don't think this is going to let up any time soon. She writes me this in an email, "i'm smiling like a kid who just got her first big wheel and am at the top of a big hill!" I dance a little jig in my living room. We're talking about artistic collaboration and traveling around together. Heady talk, unconscious and honest, the naggling bounds of doubt strain, snapping free as the protective armor of urbanity crashes useless to the floor. I'm becoming a softie.

Also, humor! The onion has done it again: Everyone. Must. Read. This. They really are america's finest news source.

I have some actual work to do today -- anyone who knows of good research about customer relations for life insurance using 800-numbeers and/or the internet, contact me -- so I'm just going to give y'all a few tasty links to chew on.

In the world of comics, Garry Trudeau has taken off the gloves, his last two comics are pretty openly critical of what's going on now. The rest of the "town hall" site is pretty cool too. Tom Tomorrow is always fresh, as is Ted Ralls, but Ward Sutton still hits the hardest.

Now for some paranoia-inducing off-beat sources of news. The site aeronautics.ru carries translations of russian websites that purportedly contain leaks from various intel sources over there. Debkafile stokes the engines of fear from Israel. Al Jazeera is still off the web thanks to a continuted DoS attack. If you're just looking for some up-to-the-minute coverage without putting on your tinfoil hat, I suggest the agonist. For a more political angle, read the comments on daily kos. If you're in need of a reprive, keep up with McDonald's smashing news at IsThatLegal.

And finally, your daily peek into the pro-war mindset: "If history—especially that of the Cold War—teaches us anything, it's that peace (if we take peace to simply mean "the absence of armed conflict") and justice have an annoying tendency of being mutually exclusive." That's right folks, war is justice.

Been noodling on the "protesting is tratorous" meme for a while today. While the exercising of rights is hardly un-American, I've been looking for the communicable reasoning behind my intuative comment to a women at last weekend's march that I'm doing this because I love my country.

RonK, from Seatte (the original), who I've been reading in the comments of Daily Kos has a piece of the action: because we need to convince the world that this is not the real USA. This isn't the whole story. There's the bit about standing up for what you believe in, creating your own reality, taking meaningful action to be an active participant in your own existence, but this is a critical element. The world must know that what is going on now is an abbaration, so that when we bench Team Bush and bring some sanity back to the White House, we'll have a leg to stand on international credibility-wise. Protest. Do it for the future.

I've been trading a few emails with Luke over the past day or two. He's on Spring Break now, and doing some fine extracurricular sociological studies on the war polls. We've been discussing protest tactics and the utility of Civilization II as a tool for educating world leaders. I pointed out that it teaches some important lessons about power and the peskyness of partisan and fanatic millitary units. Luke responds that going to war as a democracy without the UN wonder of the world is usually political suicide, and perhaps the game needs re-designing given recent events. I say wait and see.

I'm also making plans to sublet the spare room in his apartment for much of the summer. Hopefully Peter and I will be landing a fairly hectic bit of consulting work, which would keep me busy and give me the necessary bank to make that a reality. Not counting any chickens yet, though.

I've also been doing some phone-tag with "The Girth". He's in touch with our USAF-enlisted man JD, who's alive and well in some undisclosed middle-eastern location. Thinking about him, I'm glad he ran up all that credit card debt. See, when JD enlisted a couple years ago, it looked like he was going to be on the forward intelligence/special forces kind of track. But it turns out he has bad credit, which apparently makes you a security liability, which means he's flying in cargo aircraft, which means he's a lot less likely to end up full of holes, which is good news from where I'm standing.

Spent last night in stitches with Sasha. That woman cracks me up something fierce.

Finally, Mark made noises which would suggest he'd be returning from Equador in the next month as well. Perhaps a grand reunion at Ren Fayre is in the cards? I can only hope so.