I went to visit my sister this weekend for her 30th birthday. She had no idea I was coming, and I went straight from the airport to the location where they were having the birthday party. I walked in about 15 minutes after the start of the party, just behind two other friends of hers. I stood behind while she greeted them, then she looked to see who was next through the door. She froze for a few seconds while her mind tried to process the impossibility of my appearence, then, of course, she hugged me. I had a great time that night, but surprising her was definitely the highlight, and really was the entire reason for the trip. I love frequent flyer miles!

Saturday night we went to a Polaroid exhibit at an art gallery. Ironically at least half the pictures on display were not polaroids, plus there was a very pretentious live exhibit of two naked people partly wrapped in gauze and talcum powder rubbing each other and a vacuum. I was not impressed.

Just read an interesting point in an article on townhall.com regarding the uproar over limiting the Iraq reconstruction contracts to coalition members. The point the guy made was that Democrats are decrying the limitations and the fact that France and Russia and Germany are cut out, but aren't Democrats supposed to be the party of the working man? So why are they telling Bush they want all these potential jobs to go to other countries? On the one hand they bitch about how corporate America is sending jobs overseas because they can pay less, and then they bash Bush for trying to keep Iraq contracts in the family. A bit hypocritical, don't you think?

Several liberal and democratic party types have said they felt "sorry" for Saddam after seeing him poked and prodded like a cow on television follwoing his capture. Too bad they didn't feel sorry for all the people he poked and prodded to death in torturous pain over his years in power. I'm really not surprised at this attitude coming from this segment of society. When I first saw the video I predicted this exact reaction, and wondered if perhaps it was a mistake to show such footage. More thought led to the realization that this is the exact kind of footage that needed to be shown because of one specific group, the Iraqi people. If I had been oppressed for nigh on 30 years by a man, and he is taken out of power, it would take something like a video of him being treated in this manner to convince me that he really is gone, never to return to a position of power over me. The fact is, our liberal citizens and politicians, the Vatican, the government of France, none of them matter at this point. The only groups that should be considered are the Iraqis, and the soldiers that are over there helping to create a new country.

Georgia Tech Basketball: A Love Letter

I love Georgia Tech basketball. From the first game I ever watched, the Yellow Jackets tipoff in the 1990 NCAA Tournament, to the last, at Phillips Arena, my faith has never faltered. There were years of frustration and years of reward. Kenny left early after cementing himself in my mind as the best college basketball player ever. Forrest shot his threes to win games in waning seconds, and then fell off the face of the earth after graduating. Stephon came and went, and only showed up to the class we were in together once. Kevin Morris tried to take over and failed, leading to Tony Akins, the man few thought could carry the load. Cremins left and came back and left again, and along came Paul, who I dearly pray will remain to his retirement. We won a lot of games we shouldn't have, and lost even more that we should have won. Now we're #5 with a bullet, the best team we've had since Lethal Weapon III, maybe even better, and I look forward to the ACC season with the fervor of a three year old waiting for Christmas morning to come.

My new theory on religion:
Some evil dudes were sitting around discussing how they can cause the most people to be murdered. "I know, let's write a book detailing the origins of a fake religion, pass it off as a real religion, and watch the adherents kill half the population of the known world." And that's exactly what happened. Then, a millenium or so later, someone decided to do the same thing, but this time they called it the Koran.

Go to google, type in "french military victories" and click on the "I'm feeling Lucky" button. Prepare to laugh.

Now Bush is being criticized for not allowing non-coalition members to bid on contracts for the rebuilding of Iraq. France, Germany, and Russia are upset. Somehow I'm not surprised. What is funny is how hypocritical they are in their protest. They are only upset that they are not included, and care not at all about the rest of the countries that were not in the coalition. Nary a word was said in protest of Israel being excluded, which does not surprise me considering these countries' obvious bias against the Jewish state. Nor did they seem upset that, say, Canada is not included. I look at the whole affair from a different point of view. As opposed to the idea of excluding certain countries, look at it as rewarding the countries that helped us. It only makes sense. The countries that joined the coalition spent money and spilled blood for Iraq. They should be the first considered for the monetary rewards in rebuilding the country. After all, it's our $87 billion, why should we give any of it to countries' that refused to help us when we asked?

There is a big international conference going on right now in which a bunch of countries, under the auspices (sic?) of the UN are discussing the future of the internet and how the UN should be in charge. This is the same conference that invited a contingent from Iran, where they censor the heck out of anything on the internet. Funny thing is, no one invited the US. Guess who invented the internet, guess who invented most of the widely used applications of the internet, guess who allows the internet to be a largely free and ungoverned online society? If you guessed the U.S., you're right. The UN. however, wants control, and so they're getting everyone else in the world together to put pressure on the US to give it up. One of the many things discussed at the conference was the idea of making rich, developed countries pay to bring the internet to poor countries. It pissed me off. What should happen is the internet should continue the way it is now, and if the rest of the world doesn't like it, they can invent something themselves. Oh wait, they can't because all their people are either poor or unwilling to work because their governments pay for everything. Abit of exagerration, but the thought of putting the UN in charge of anything, much less something wonderful the way it is like the internet, really disturbs me. Next thing you know they'll be telling me I can't write anti-terrorism rants on my blog because some people might be offended. I know one thing. They can't take over the internet unless the U.S. hands over the keys, so write your congressmen and tell them that you want the internet to stay out fo the hands of any international bodies and that it should remain the open, uncontrolled enterprise it is.

If the UN had been in charge of the internet way back when, we probably wouldn't have the graphical interface (world wide web), we wouldn't have wonderful things like EBay or Amazon, because everything would have been regulated by the UN, and that usually means anything that might be profitable to anyone is a bad thing.

Taking my cue from the recently signed Geneva Accords, the peace treaty signed by private citizens of their respective governments without any authority granted by those governments, I have just completed negotiations on a historic peace treaty in which the Republic of China is to pay me $4 billion per year in return for sending them light arms. These arms will include, and be limited to, waterguns. Negotiating for the Chinese was skilled diplomat Ben Skott. The treaty will be ratified later this afternoon.

I could, literally, do this treaty and it would have as much meaning as the Geneva Accords. It makes me sick that Colin Powell flew over to Geneva for this signing. He had no business giving any credence to a treaty regarding Israel that Israel had nothing to do with.

Just to beat a dying horse, anyone see some of the "journalists" talking about Bush's secret trip to Iraq? You have one editor of a presitgious, and widely regarded as a liberally-biased, newspaper saying that the rest of the press should have been let on to the trip by the White House because of course the press can keep a secret when it has legitimate security reasons. Then you have an editor of another presitigous and widely considered to be a liberally biased journal saying that he's upset that the press that was in on the deal didn't somehow leak word to the rest of the press. So one guy is saying they can keep a secret, the other guy is saying that he would not have kept the secret. And these people wonder why there is so much distrust of the mainstream media.