all seemed so peaceful at a quarter to 2am from one of the drawbridges in the loop...it was a damp but warm night, and it felt good to be outside without hat and scarf and still not be shivering to death...i love walking around the loop when it's quiet and mostly deserted...there were a few workers fixing stuff here and there, a few people walking from union station...a security guard staring out the window in the bank building...but for the most part, it was me and my city...



last night, i went to penny's noodles & to the eternals show @ the hideout w/ mj...we talked a lot about the war, about dissension, about protests, about blind uninformed misguided patriotism...it was depressing...mj told me about an interview w/ newt gingrich in which he was asked his opinion on the 1000+ protestors who were arrested in san francisco and other cities...he said something to the effect that if a small minority of the population was causing trouble for their beliefs, they should be arrested...



i just don't understand why people get so threatened by dissension...we are a nation founded upon revolution...our right to dissent is something so many of us take for granted...bush says we're fighting this war to free the iraqis and the world of this evil a.k.a. saddam hussein...well, what good is it if they and we are freed from this man if we are still slave to a groupthink, follow the crowd, keep up w/ the joneses mentality even here in the united states where we are supposedly free from physical, intellectual, and religious oppression? do those people who accuse the antiwar demonstrators of being unpatriotic unamerican thugs realize that these very demonstrators are probably being truer to real american principles than those who are just going along w/ the war?



and again, i'm not saying don't support our troops or point fingers at them or anything like that...they're doing the duty they signed up for, and god be w/ 'em...and w/ all the other soldiers, american, british, iraqi and otherwise...i don't envy them their current situations...



and i am not any less guilty than the next person...how easily i have taken my freedoms for granted...how lazy i've become and only attended to my own immediate comforts and cares...i've cheapened freedom to the freedom of lifestyle and economic choices...there's so much more to real freedom than whether to shop at trader joes or whole foods or whether to go see cursive or the eternals or whether to drink pbr or rolling rock...we as americans have more access to freedom than most people in the world dream of, and yet i bet there are those who have lived all their lives under tyranny who know better the meaning and value of freedom than we do...the u.s. may think that it's freeing the iraqis from a tyrant, but will we recognize that there is a more insidious tyrant out on the loose here in our own country? the tyrant of intellectual, social, philosophical and spiritual lethargy and apathy...the tyrant that makes us not care...the tyrant that makes us immobile...the tyrant that makes us not think for ourselves...how do we fight a war against this tyrant?



alright...savor some freedom y'all and think about something other than what to eat for lunch...



last night mj & i listened to my bloody valentine's loveless...

some reading for the interested--



there will be absolutely no dissension by stanley i. kutler



just war--or a just war by jimmy carter (from whom my dad took his english name when we moved to the states...i love jimmy carter)

my friend who will go unnamed at this time but whose initials are T.L and whose legal initials are A.L accidentally called my cell phone at 2:37am from some noisy establishment and proceeded to keep the phone on unbeknownst to him/her despite my yelling his/her name into the phone...considering i was expecting a call from rt about this time, i was a tad disappointed...



so here i am awake at 3:18 am...oh, wait...there's rt...brb...



ok, i'm back...



i wasn't going to discuss iraq, but...i've been like reading about this whole bombing iraq thing, and i don't really know all the details or anything, and i don't want to oversimplify, but it just feels like let's say the big bad wolf lives in sherwood forest, and that for the good of sherwood forest and its residents and those surrounding sherwood forest and all the counties in the known world everywhere, we've given him (the big bad wolf) 48 hours to come out with his paws up or else...and when the 48 hours are up, we of acme county (which is 30 counties away from sherwood county but we're the biggest and baddest county in all of christendom) set fire to the whole fucking forest despite the protests of sherwood and its surrounding counties...



ok. i understand that saddam may not be comparable to the big bad wolf whose only crimes have been mauling and eating innocent local chickens and grannies, but still...i'm trying to make a point here...i believe that war agains iraq is wrong...i'm not saying don't pray for our soldiers blah blah blah...shit, pray for ALL the soldiers everywhere...the iraqis probably need more prayer than our soldiers do considering what we're capable of doing to them...



here's something of note, a blogger from an iraqi in baghdad...



and if you normally get your news from yahoo or some other mainstream source, try these other sites that you're not gonna find on yahoo:



http://www.commondreams.org (common dreams news center)

http://www.alternet.org, a project of the independent media institute

http://www.villagevoice.com

http://www.indymedia.org

http://www.motherjones.com/



yes, i realize they're all pretty liberal...i make no apology...read the stuff you get on yahoo and then read this stuff and make your own decisions.



how about some iraqi sources?



http://www.uruklink.net/iraqdaily/

http://www.uruklink.net/iraqnews/eindex.htm



if that's not enough, try this list...it's pretty comprehensive...



i'm going back to bed...there are some folks in the world who don't have the luxury of such an opportunity...



yesterday i listened to the cure's greatest hits and bill mallonee's locket full of moonlight and beatnik filmstars' laid back and english...

would you believe i woke up at 6am again? this time it was to call rt in germany...goodness gracious...i can't tell you what a relief it is to be able to finally get a hold of that boy...and now i must sleep because i'm getting up at 3am or whenever rt calls me germany time when he wakes up, which could be as early as 2am...



and i don't even want to discuss iraq right now...

it is 6 am and i have been rudely awakened by a car alarm...not my own, thank goodness, although i have to admit i ran to the window just to make sure it wasn't my red hottie that was creating 20 bucktown enemies with every obnoxious honk...nope, my red hottie would've let out a most sirenic whirl had her alarm been tripped...it was a rather interesting discovery, however, that there WAS an alarm that could actually get me out of bed at 5:54 am...



ok...can somebody please tell me what the hell the POSTAL POLICE do all day? i mean, is this like along the lines of the CTA police? i've just never seen one of these vehicles, and from the looks of that bumper, they've either been around for a while or someone's a really bad driver.



oh, i just remembered that i didn't blog as to my whereabouts on sunday...that gorgious day that it was in the 70s in the chicagoland area, right? well, that's cuz i spent the entire frickin' day in bed, thank you very much...i woke up after that joan of arc concert w/ a killer hangover which makes absolutely no sense considering i had had one shot of jack daniels w/ mj @ a bar/cafe down the street from the fireside bowl and then a rolling rock later @ the show (which by the way went until 2am...since when does the fireside, chicago's only all-ages club have a 2am liquor license? and since when are we allowed to take one beer out of the bar into the music room?? have i only been going to the kiddie shows all this time??and why in the world would a band play AFTER joan of arc???)...i understand that i am a lightweight, but josh had always taught me in my liquid studies "beer before liquor, never sicker; liquor before beer, never fear..." which is why i try to start my night w/ a shot of something, yukon jack or blackhaus preferred...so what did i do wrong??? i had a superliner running through the middle of my head all day long sunday, and a siphon in my gut apparently...i didn't even have any food in my stomach to throw up and i puked up water all day long, which meant i couldn't keep any drugs down, which meant my headache didn't go away which meant i kept puking which meant i couldn't keep any food down which meant i couldn't take any drugs which meant my headache didn't go away which meant....you get the picture...that's how the most beautiful day so far in chicago snuck by me as i lay in bed, miserable as a drenched cat...



by 7pm, after the sun had set, i was finally able to keep down 3 bites of an english muffin, which i decided was enough to take some pain killers, and then i went back to sleep before i had the chance to puke again...by the time i woke up at 8:30pm, i was well enough to get out of bed, make a bowl of popcorn and watch office space for the first time, which ws enough to put a smile on my face...although it's probably not the best movie to see on a sunday night before you're expected at work on a monday morning...i ended up lollygagging like crazy monday morning..."i think i'd like some fresh fruit and cottage cheese...let's slice some fresh pineapple and fresh honeydew..." and before you know it, it's already 10am and i haven't even started my engine....



and in light of our president's little speech yesterday, i believe it's time to relink the following which will explain all...or not...god bless the solar system...