Posted 6:27 PM by Marco (0) comments

I used to think that an editor had a great job. Now, I am not so sure.

Posted 6:26 PM by Marco (0) comments

Do not tell me I do not understand the French. After all, I just learned that I could still read French.

Posted 3:07 PM by Marco (0) comments

Jacques Chirac said Friday that France would not go along with a new United Nations resolution allowing the United States and Britain to administer postwar Iraq. Charles Krauthammer wondered why bother asking, especially asking Chirac.

Posted 1:16 PM by Marco (0) comments

I will concede that we have a surplus of physicians when I can actually get an appointment on time. But not today. Still, I should calm down and be grateful that my cold has run its course without a chest infection and that the roof of my mouth is badly burned (I could have told my doctor that), but not infected and healing normally.

Posted 1:15 PM by Marco (0) comments

OK, now I'm REALLY steamed. Because we wasted the entire winter at the UN, the scheduled television broadcast of the Johns Hopkins-Virginia men's lacrosse game on WMAR TV2 in Baltimore on Saturday night (March 22, 2003) has been cancelled due to the war in Iraq. Officials at WMAR made the decision to cancel the broadcast based on intelligence reports surrounding the invasion and the anticipated progress of American troops in their march to Baghdad. Bad enough they won't broadcast the game, but now they will not move the game back to its proper (pre-television) early afternoon face-off time. How many more sacrifices can the long-suffering American public take?

Posted 3:18 PM by Marco (0) comments

It has started, but this time without my brother. He writes that the "Navy says I'm too old and senior." While the Navy may have to do without my brother, the country should be grateful that it will be doing without Walter Cronkite.

Posted 6:32 PM by Marco (0) comments

Q: What is the Iraqi military motto?
A: I came, I saw, Iran.
Not that I can really blame them for surrendering early and deserting en masse. And, of course, this explains the French affinity for the Iraqis.

Posted 1:54 PM by Marco (0) comments

Is Europe against us? Not all of Europe.

Posted 1:53 PM by Marco (0) comments

Are the bulk of my frequent flyer miles really safe? Would pilots jeopardise an entire airline over their pension? Tune in between now and March 31. The New York Times is optimistic, but the Washington Post seems less sanguine. And one of my smaller stashes of miles is also threatened.

Posted 1:51 PM by Marco (0) comments

It is starting to look like my fortune might be correct, but I am not cancelling my appointment yet.

Posted 6:33 PM by Marco (0) comments

I like Andrew Sullivan's summary of Blair's speech. From that summary (the complete transcript was a bit long), maybe we could have just had it piped in from Commons, and saved the expense of redundant speechwriting.

Posted 5:18 PM by Marco (0) comments

My cold is turning into an ugly cough. At the suggestion of my inamorata, I made an appointment with my doctor for Friday, but I hope I will not need to keep it. After all, my fortune today read, "You will soon feel better than ever before." Hoping it was true; I went through a fair number of mints on the phone this afternoon.

Posted 12:17 PM by Marco (0) comments

Even Bill Clinton is a hawk, so long as he can support Tony Blair. He writes, "Without a credible threat of force, Saddam will not disarm". And why Saddam's sons also? Maybe because one operated a People Shredder?

Posted 6:32 PM by Marco (0) comments

The president will give the speech of his life tonight. This famous anti-war poem illustrates the horror of poison gas warfare and the despair it caused, leading the post WWI generation to try appeasement. So is preventive war against a user of poison gas justified? Discuss amongst yourselves. While discussing, consider a less important disagreement. The Columbia Guide to Standard American English opines, "These two [preventive and preventative] are synonyms, and each is Standard" and while Tiscali generally concurs, the two may be distinguished, as "preventative is often applied to an actual object, especially in noun form, while preventive is mostly reserved for an abstract concept, and remains an adjective."

Posted 2:44 PM by Marco (0) comments

Friday night, my inamorata and I went out for fish at Primavera Pizza Kitchen. Saturday was a perfect day to do errands outside, so we picked up lamps, curtain rings, and gardening supplies before yanking the winter cabbages in preparation for Sunday, when we planted a bag of daffodil bulbs, a few primroses, and a flat of pansies (most in our new window boxes, some in the beds in front of the house, and a few in the whiskey barrel), spread grass seed and fertilizer, as my cold peaked. But I can hope it is a cold and not allergies.

Posted 2:43 PM by Marco (0) comments

Good thing there were no e-savers to Syracuse this weekend. We might have been forced to endure the Blue Jays blowing an 8-2 lead en route to a 15-14 loss in the Carrier Dome.

Posted 2:29 PM by Marco (0) comments

Happy St. Patrick's Day. Count on the BBC to give us some original documents instead of green beer.