~ to the iraqis who are whining about the top-down approach for determining your nation’s flag and wondering if your ‘council’ has nothing better to do: there is a democracy in the state of georgia, and – when they are through trying to prevent two men from getting married – the gov’t there finds time to churn out a new flag almost every two years. so, if wasteful activities of a deafened assembly are hallmarks of democracy, then you are closer than we all might think.

to the iraqis who are whining about the design: the two stripes for your rivers are much more clever than the stripes on the recently served georgian flag, which don’t mean anything but that the designer had seen them on another flag. on the other hand, we don’t think it was too clever to base the rest of the iraqi flag on religion, separatists, and the israeli model.

~ we knew that the issue of not shying away from the consequences of war was put more plainly than we could put it. sixty (60) years ago, when printing the first image of american troops who died in the pacific, life magazine pointed out, regarding the challenge to the soldier, if he “had the guts to take it, then we ought to have the guts to look at it.”

~ major media peddlers seem to be telling us that the death of an american solider who turned down millions of football dollars to join the army is somehow more poignant or heartbreaking than the death of hundreds of men and women who were forced to join because of dearth of other economic options. we say that it is not.

~ regarding the pentagon vs. the memory hole [w]: if you are going to be ‘brave’ enough to send americans to their deaths, you should be brave enough to face their images when their remains are returned home.

~ a coffee bean and tea leaf can be seen in the latest ‘spider-man 2’ trailer. there are no coffee bean and tea leaf establishments in new york city.

~ congratulations to the angry red planet for taking our 10,000th digital photo. here’s to another 3 years.

~ after cursory research, we have determined that the .cbr/.cbz format is superior to .pdf for the purposes of digitally archiving comic books. .cbr/.cbz files are simpler to create, there are free software options available, and they are less cumbersome to view.

Update: How to create a cbr/cbz file.

~ judging from the trailer [w] released today, spider-man will have more screen time in ‘spider-man 2’ than he received in the previous movie. it also appears that they are still using los angeles for some of the street web swinging scenes; maybe sam raimi does not know that eucalyptus trees don’t grow in manhattan? nevertheless, ‘the amazing spider-man’ would have been a better title for the 2nd movie than the one chosen.

~ cat lovers, acquire a ‘pill plunger’ today; if you ever need to medicate your cat, it will save you hours and one (1) index finger.

~ dr. condoleeza rice must have said fifty (50) times that the administration didn’t know the ‘time, or place, when or where’ of the 2001 terrorist attacks. we can assume that everyone already is aware of this; since the attacks were allowed to happen, we must hope that the administration didn’t know about them in advance. however, given this yammering excuse for their past failure, the listener or critic can presume that administration will only take steps to prevent a future catastrophe if the perpetrators provide a complete spreadsheet of the logistics for their future actions.
why are these suits whining that the u.s. citizenry can not expect them to do their jobs unless the enemy, aka those who ‘hate freedom’, takes out an ad in the washington post, along with the marriage and funeral announcements, that declares when they will strike, so the government will have a chance to respond? dr. rice’s crew’s job is not to complain that they don’t know anything; their job is to know these things.
the fundamental question should be, ‘why were you unaware of this threat?’; the answer should not be an angry, ‘because we were unaware of this threat!!’.
yet, we thought that regular americans were crybabies.

also unsettling is today’s allusion to the notion that there are big problems down the road if iran pursues a course of nuclear capability. now, iran is a sovereign nation, albeit one with a corrupt regime, so why is it our business if they choose to build a nuclear arsenal, considering that france and china have their own? the answer given is that iran supports hamas and hizbollah. however, these groups are israel’s concern; in fact, hamas even mentioned recently that they have no plans to target americans. the only bone these guys might have to pick with us is that the u.s. supports israel’s illegal occupation of the west bank.
it wasn’t mentioned in so many words, but israel’s violations of international law are being transmuted into our problems and possible war with a nuclear-powered, fundamentalist iran. all this is in spite of the angry red planet’s boycott of tropical source chocolate.

if any readers want to contribute to the collection for this week’s $689 veterinarian bill; we accept paypal.

~ everyone in the angry red office has been sick over the past two weeks; some of us want to eat but can’t, and others can eat but won’t. in the meantime, we have scrawled a few notes:

— we predict it is more likely that ‘outlaw cleric’ al-sadr will be killed, along with many americans and iraqis, than arrested.

— the local protest over the iraq war would draw more participants if there had been some u.s. flags instead of, or at least in addition to, palestinian flags behind which american participants were expected to march. or if the black panthers spent more time talking about bush (2004) and less time ranting about allende (1973).

— whilst investigating the percentage of local ‘artists’ at the dogwood festival, we noticed two (2) cups with markings that indicated that they contained 64oz. of cola. more surprising than the discovery that the 12″ tall cups were not an attempt at art was the discovery that each 64oz. of cola was intended to be consumed by one (1) human.

— it looks like we will rearrange our favourite spider-man cover list when ‘spectacular #14’ comes out. [+]

— ‘vetted’ is replacing ‘on the ground’ as the media’s latest annoying platitude. [+]

— too few people in this country are aware of the importance of keeping line of secularism from becoming thin.

~ unless he plans on shooting a bunch of 12 year old kids, are we to assume that when paul bremer promises ‘punishment’ for the culprits who mutilate corpses in fallujah, he is exhibiting a gruesome understanding of april fool’s day?