so, i’ve been hearing a lot about all this guerilla-style warfare being waged in Iraq. Many telepundits seem to derile this style of fighting. I agree with them that it’s unconventional, and, well, dirty. But you know how we won the American Revolution? The same way. People wearing civilian clothing with mis-matched weapons “running-and-gunning”. Yup. And I’m sure that if *we* were invaded that we’d act much the same. I know that I’d have a foxhole in my front yard defending my three cats and Kelly (the invasion would no-doubt be caused by some horrible breakdown of diplomacy, or from Peter Arnett and Jane Fonda’s Revolutionary Militant Party). (Just joking Peter!!).

Now having said that, I don’t condone what the Iraqi regime has done in its past or what it may do in the future. Some people seem to think that war has to be “fair” or has to be fought with “rules”. Well, you know what? There have been plenty of battles lost to that kind of thinking. It’s funny to even begin to think that war — by itself a chaotic breakdown of normal human relationships — could possibly foster anything BUT chaos.

Oh well, just some thoughts I’ve been having. I leave you with a cleverly sad GIF animation from Artamnesia via the b3ta board.

oh man, do i have a bunch of new galleries.

To start things off, we have a couple of shots from mother-in-law Andy’s Birthday.

Next up, we have Kelly in a Lighted Tree (waiting for our table outside Ramsi’s) and the subsequent Jessica Slack 22nd Birthday Dinner gallery.

Finally, we have some photos (and some cool panoramas) from the Papa Johns 10 Miler — Kelly’s second-ever road race. Where did she place in the rankings? Too early to tell. However, she ranks #1 in my heart ;) (awww…)

we had a salesperson leave for another opportunity on Thursday, which prompted the client that he and I have been working with to get a little spooked. amidst their “are you all going under?” fears, they mentioned that “we really like working with ben, and would hate to see him go” (paraphrased). it’s nice to be loved :)

I hacked up camE, a handy and small webcam app for Linux a while back, and finally put the finishing touches on it tonight. Considering camE is written in C, I’m pretty happy I made it work! Najati helped me out quite a bit, tho’ I’m pretty sure he really just wanted another person that knows C/C++ so that they may enjoy the genius that is Citrus :)

Anyway, you can snag my patch here. Note well that my “home” webcam is now fully functioning in the manner that I would like it to…

In other news, I put MPy3‘s new code into CVS @ Sourceforge. This was prompted solely by Paul Jennings submission of a huge patchola (which is in the CVS) that cleans up MPy3 quite a bit. Word to your mother, Paul.

Rolling Stone just published their 5-star review of the White Stripes‘ Elephant. This review was penned by David Fricke, the same guy who gave Nirvana’s In Utero 4.5 stars (I think the Rolling Stone site has a misprint there — I distinctly remember 4 1/2 stars).

Now, I could lapse into total goofy gushing praise for Elephant, but I won’t. One way or another, you’ll hear about it. ROCK ROCK ROCK.

I must say, b3ta has truly elevated the art of the animated GIF to a new level. (as evidenced by our sidebar there). b3ta’s board is essentially a photoshopping free-for-all without all the crap that Fark attracts. The folks on the board are genuinely appreciative of good work… and by “good work”, I of course mean cute photoshops of kittens and sheep. Heh.

btw — a “woo” and subsequent “yay” to Quelabra for his Decepticon anim

I made a post about The Black Keys a while back, and I went to see them at the Southgate House in Cinci with Sleater Kinney back in February. So, if you’ve either read the blog or know me, then you’ve probably heard me crowing about them. The Black Keys are vehement about sticking to their roots and keeping it real for as long as they can (so much so that they turned down big-label offers to stick with the ultra-indie-blues Fat Possum Records). Part of this is soliciting help from their fans to create flyers and such for their shows. Well, I cranked out a couple today just for shizzles. Wanna see ‘em?

Flyer 1
Flyer 2
Flyer 3

The talented and (assumed) lovely webmaster Denise Grollmus called them “rad!”, and that made me giggle. Thanks Denise!

CNN is certainly setting the bar on use of 48-pixel font sizes pretty high these days. With headlines like
DECAPITATION ATTACK
and
WAVE OF STEEL,
how could you not feel like starting a metal band? Watch out — here comes
COLLATERAL DAMAGE

From Gary in Japan:

(09:39:22) gary: have you been to CNN.com?
(09:39:43) ben: yup
(09:40:08) gary: DECAPITATION ATTACK
(09:40:18) gary: thats my new greeting
(09:40:25) gary: hi, how are you?
(09:40:30) gary: DECAPITATION ATTACK

A group of us, celebrating a one Jessica Slack‘s 22nd year on this earth, were interviewed by an AP reporter whilst at the Outlook Bar last night. Hunter sent me a link to an AP report mentioning Louisville, but none of us were quoted.

A small excerpt from Get Your War On:

–snip–
Someday, when I’m driving through a reconstructed, democratic Baghdad in my Freedom Car, I will pause and ask, Did the U.S. Government say one true thing in justifying Operation < insert tought-ass name the we will soon learn here >?

And I will have to admit, it did indeed!

–snip–

By the way, the name of this action is “Operation Desert Fox“. Yeah. Operation Rommel is in full effect.

One last note — I’m a big fan of Bendepedent (who is a regular poster at Killoggs). Anyway, that NBC/WAR image is his. Want more? Check out his original post, and give the boy his props. NFL, Nike, and Texaco are not spared, either.

img src

i guess i got everything i expected out of tonight’s speech by President Bush. i got the same thing i’ve been hearing for the last 6 or so months. few, if any hard facts flying in the face of credible reports from UN inspectors. Now, thanks to this threat of war, the UN inspectors have been instructed to leave Iraq (as well as the UN Food-for-Oil folks).

Congresspeople on both sides of the aisle are kicking in support for our troops — and why shouldn’t they? The troops do vote, after all. I say we support our troops better by trying to get them the hell out of there, and not dying because of a squandered non-attempt at diplomacy.

Krikey. We’ve pushed away a good number of allies (in the UN and otherwise) that would have helped us with Iraq after we steam-roll over them. Our economy is flagging, talk of more tax-cuts are on the way, and this war and subsequent “re-stabilization” [attempt] is going to cost us a pretty, pretty penny that we just don’t have.

What the hell happens long-term? That’s what I’m truly worried about. I could care less if I have to shiver my way through a SEVERE terror alert, but if my children and children’s children have to live through international isolation and hatred… that is something I just can’t stand for. That’s all speculation, for sure! I don’t know whats going to happen… but I know that we aren’t appeasing anyone like Hitler. I know that North Korea and possibly Iran are far more feasible nuclear threats. I know that weapons inspections were continuing at an accelerated pace (albeit through increased military pressure). How will this all play out? I can’t say, but from my meager information, I don’t think that attacking Iraq is going to stop a terrorist from gaining WMDs and attacking America. War is not solved with war.