Atomictumor

I know everybody important’s already talked about it, and that I should keep my fool mouth shut, but how the hell is a report indicating that the war in Iraq is actually increasing terrorism a suprise?

Anybody suprised by this news, or even amazed by this news, needs to just stop paying attention. Thank you, your services are no longer required in this republic.  Take your consolatory purple kool aid and line up outside the door.
Its obvious that the war on terror involving Iraq is dumb.  Its not working.  If, as a 9 yr old boy, I grew up in a country overrun by another country for reasons unknown, hearing all the worst news possible about the situation, it wouldn’t take much for me to start thinking about picking up a gun too, and spend the next 20 years or so trying to kill as many people as possible.  Hell, its just like that movie Red Dawn, just without communists.  And a 500 yr old cultural history of warfare.

So whats next?  How do you get people who have nothing to lose to stop trying to kill you?

Well, there are two choices.  Appease them, or ethnically cleanse them.  You can’t sign a “Treaty of Versailles” with unorganized factions of guerrila fighters.

Historically speaking, these kinds of conflicts are resolved by smiting the town, killing the men, and selling the women into slavery.  At least that’s what Alexander found useful at Thebes, and they sure shut up.

Thing is, we’ve had an Enlightenment and about a century or two of humanistic learning that separates us from those people.  Doing that would be barbaric, and I think a large part of the population are not interested in murdering innocents, no matter how many of our innocents get murdered.

So, the logical answer, as I see it, is to appease them.  Convince that to the guys in power, tho…

An award-winning art teacher in Texas by the name of Sydney McGee was recently fired because some kids on a school-sponsored field trip saw a nekkid statue.

Ms. McGee had worked as an art teacher for 28 years. She was such an excellent art teacher at the Fisher Elementary School that parents moved there just so their children could be involved in her arts program.

In April she took 89 5th-graders to an art museum in Dallas, a field trip not only approved but encouraged by the school’s principal.

Apparently when the kids got home, some of them told their parents about the statue and feathers got ruffled.  Even though parents had to give written consent for their children to attend the field trip, even though the principal approved it, it’s the teacher’s fault that the children are too fragile to see some boobs or a penis.

It’s a damn shame.

I had a dream last night.

I was over at a really nice, big house somewhere in Oak Ridge.  I was either dropping or picking up my eldest.  The woman of the house was one of those perfect types: well-coiffed, well-dressed, baking some sort of cake, sipping on a latte and generally being of a snooty nature.

After I’d been there a while, she said that she thought I was finally ready to be brought into the Oak Ridge fold.  I was ecstatic!  Yay!  I’m finally good enough for Oak Ridgers!

AT and I came over the next day and there were a ton of other couples, all similar to the original perfect housewife.  It was our debutante ball, apparently.  We were paraded around, from rich couple to rich couple and introduced.  I think at one point I made a toast to Oak Ridge with my coffee mug.

Someone asked me if I had a Cadillac, what color would I pick?  The choices were cream, brown, pink and seafoam green.  I went with the green.  That was the wrong answer.  Then AT said some things that ought not be said in front of people that snobby, and we were told to leave.

*Sigh*  We’ll never fit in…

Willie Nelson was busted for a pound of pot and some magic mushrooms after a cop smelled marijuana during a routine traffic stop of Nelson’s tour bus.

There’s a joke in there somewhere, but it’s too damn early.

Yes, Scott West is going down, because he took the hippie mentality of his shops to a unrealistic extent, or maybe because he didn’t have enough of a leash on his situation. I usually tend to look down my nose at Knoxville doings, but I have a hard time thinking that Scott West and family are hardened criminals. By the same token, they knew what they were doing…

Yesterday ol’ Scott dropped a guilty plea, as expected, and, with any luck, will catch a “safety valve” sentence of 87 to 108 months in prison. Does the punishment fit the crime?
What they were doing, to me, was a victimless crime, which are the dumbest kind of all. Agreed, its illegal, but dammit, when are things going to change about ol’ Marijuana? Isn’t it time that the aging children of the sixties start acting to their former principles (and experiences), pull a Canada, and start moving towards decriminalizing the stuff? Its not dangerous, and people who tell you it is
a) are lying - or
b) are uninformed
I mean, geez, if Tennessee can tax it, how the hell isn’t that sanctioning it?

Anyway, the Wests got too big. They don’t seem to have intended any harm, and theres been no evidence that they pulled any Scarface tactics along the way, so slap that wrist and let ‘em go. They took that money and pumped it right into the community. Knoxville needs all the damn visionaries they can get, and UT probably needs all of the West product that it can get.