I'm Back!
Wow. It's been like ten months since I last posted.
To make up for it, here's some trenchant commentary I wrote for Usenet a few days ago. World leaders, pay attention! I speak truth! And you're supposed to, you know, be on your toes when people do that. (However, world leaders -- please refrain from noticing that Usenet is still around. Technoweenie shut-ins such as myself need an outlet where we can post irresponsible trash without personal repercussions).
"Israeli tanks turn screw on besieged Gaza Strip"
Israel widened its assault on the Gaza Strip last night by shelling the north of the territory and dropping leaflets warning residents of a pending attack by tanks and troops, as the government seized on a crisis over an abducted soldier to take on Palestinian armed groups. It also held more than 1 million ordinary Palestinians responsible for 19-year-old Corporal Gilad Shilat's continued capture and promised "extreme action" to secure his release.
What do you get if you dilute an Israeli soldier to one part per million?
A Palestinian solution!
It's homeopathic medicine!
One principle of homeopathy is that "like cures like". Therefore, if you're a Palestinian who's down with a bad case of Israel, the best cure is to take an Israeli, dissolve in water (or alcohol if water is not available), make multiple dilutions, then pass it around. Make sure there's enough for everyone.
This explains Israel's haste in going after one million Palestinians. They have to act quickly if they want to recover a workable portion of poor Shilat's component molecules, before they pass through all the Gaza residents' kidneys.
If they can rebuild him, though, it will be worth it. He will be a soldier with the strength of 600,000 refugees.
As a bonus, here's something I've been thinking about. As usual, it has to do with the end of the world.
When civilization collapses and electronic communications are all wiped out, the only way future archaeologists will be able to gain insight into how we communicated with one another is through hardcopy publications. This, of course, means technical manuals.
Such manuals are a priceless Rosetta Stone because they display the same message in multiple languages. Not only will this allow the seven-lobed land sloths that succeed the human race to crack many of our dead languages -- it will also clue the sloths in to our long-vanished values. Since technical manuals were written in multiple languages, the messages they contain must have been of broad importance to many peoples and cultures.
It will become clear that the wisdom the human race most needed and desired to see was the word "Troubleshooting" followed by useless gibberish.
Okay. There's your world news, all taken care of.
On the home front, a few things have happened:
Family visited: check.
Sister married to worthy suitor of twelve years: check.
Neat pictures of marriage snapped by photographer friend I hadn't seen in a long time: check.
New suit purchased for wedding ceremony (and to accommodate my creeping waistline): check.
No healthy food ingested that would help this too, too solid waistline to thaw, melt and resolve itself into a dew: check.
Tenth anniversary of celibacy celebrated: not quite check. The anniversary is either tomorrow or the next day. I haven't quite made it, but something tells me it will be smooth sailing.
And believe me -- I will be doing my best to think of it as an accomplishment. Judging by Clinton's second term, I got out of that sex racket just in time.
One problem with this weblog (or outlet for unchallenged screeds, or whatever it is) is that it's in bad, bad need of an overhaul. But my web skills are current as of 1999. I don't view this as a failing on my part. After all, I learned HTML and layout once. Now, evidently, I need to learn it all over again. HTML tables have become the Shaun Cassidy feathered hair of online communication, and CSS is the new Vin Diesel. But instead of feeling challenged by the prospect of going bald, I am frantically annoyed.
This puts the future of "Same Day, Different Rat" in a potentially tragic light. But...eh, who knows. So tune in again and see if it's another ten months until my next post!