~ we’ve made the history of atlanta available in the right column.

~ we would like to hear from our visitors in mumbai, contact us today!

~ the only thing more annoying than blogs is hearing the unschooled refer to a site that is not a blog as a ‘blog’!

~ happy free comic book day! [w]

~ some terms to add to our list of words whose sudden prevalence is annoying: snarky

~ like the rest of the world, we at the angry red planet don’t talk about africa very often, but as the media is falling over themselves to be the first to say that everyone but them has been ignoring the crisis in the sudan, we have noticed a couple of absurd statements, both in the bbc:…

“One is the pressure from right-wing Christian groups in the US, who have taken up the cause of their fellow Christians in Sudan.

Their nagging – on the issues of slavery and the forcible imposition of Sharia law – helped get sanctions imposed on Sudan in 1997.”

‘nagging’. we know that the british media is expected to appeal to its audience by being testy and salacious, but to refer to warnings of slavery and violent religious laws as ‘nagging’ might be one of the reasons why many of their american cousins think they are full of shit.

…and the washington post:

“We should avoid the situations where we allow member states to hide behind the secretary general, use him as an alibi for their own inaction,” Annan told the Addis Tribune in Addis Ababa, the capital of neighboring Ethiopia.

in the midst of his whining – referring to himself in the third person – that people are calling him out for presiding over a second failure to act against ethnic cleansing, is kofi annan suggesting that ‘member states’ of the united nations should stop calling him lazy and start taking their own actions in sudan? is not this anathema to the purpose of the united nations? is not this type of unilateral action what he and everyone else – apart from the americans’ british cousins – bitched about when the united states decided to invade iraq?

~ according to be new england journal of medicine, one in six of servicemen/women returning from iraq are suffering from psychological damage. only 20% of these people are seeking help. between these guys walking the streets, housewives in fort bragg being killed, and the return of soldiers who are easily coerced into torturing prisoners, it might be safer to move to tikrit for the summer.

~ happy anniversary to our national motto: “bring ’em on!”

~ the amazing era of jrjr. has ended; he is already missed!

~ here is a million dollar idea for google or some capable programmers out there: let us have a site that scans every piece of reporting and journalism and editorial in order to track the increased appearance of certain words, namely words that appear in over 10,000 articles each month after not appearing in a total ten articles over the past five years. here are some to get you started: vetted, parsed, wonk.

~ from cnn:

“Shortly after his disappearance, Hassoun’s family was notified he was missing, but there was no public announcement, the Pentagon official said, because the military did not want to signal insurgents that a Marine might be out in the countryside unprotected.”

…or the military was hoping that he already had been killed quietly and anonymously somewhere, so that he wouldn’t show up on television with a bunch of insurgents behind him who are threatening to cut off his head, thereby presenting the american public with more unpleasantries on the eve of the ‘reign’ of freedom in iraq.

~ few things could interest us less than the prospect of a televised trial for saddam hussein. watching a rerun of the 1978 superbowl would probably have a bigger surprise of an ending.

~ we are mystified by that ‘let freedom reign!’ tag that gwb left on condi rice’s note. is he deliberately being cynical, or is he truly that naive? does he believe that americans have been duped into thinking that there is participatory democracy in iraq, or are his handlers still letting gwb believe it himself? strange!

~ like any liberal who wants to preempt the accusations of a lack of patriotism, we have tried to follow the advice of ‘hate the war, honor the warriors’, or similar homily, that is usually displayed somewhere along the line of the peace marches. we understood that the economic conditions which some men and women face make a job in the military unfortunately seem to be a reasonable option. we understood that the job, while unpleasant, was a necessary feature of the nation. we understood that the injustice of the war that they fight is not always clear to those who place their faith in an administration rather than a nation.

waking to a photograph of west virginian woman in a u.s. uniform holding a naked prisoner on a leash has completely cleansed us of this seemingly dichotomous policy. taking a look at the policy that we follow for the police [+, that is to say, all things being equal, we harbor distrust and animosity towards all officers, until evidence to the contrary arises. henceforth, we shall have unswerving skepticism and contempt for anyone at every level and job of the military; rather than giving any one the benefit of the doubt, it is best to assume the worst, until it is proven to be otherwise by individual cases.

whereas we previously might have nodded approvingly to the banner, ‘support our troops; bring them home’, we now demand that the first phrase be excised from the slogan.

~ 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.

~ anyone wishing to fund a six (6) month project of research into the amount of time that transpires between uses of the phrase ‘on the ground’ on national public radio should contact the angry red planet. if ‘arab is the new black’, then ‘on the ground’ is the new ‘kalashnikov’.

~ congratulations to lenny bruce. fuck!

~ as our readers are aware, this is not a blog. nonetheless, we are implementing a ‘comment’ system, if for no other reason than to firmly establish that no one is interested in reading or responding to our routine news missives.

~ put these people on the list:

the persons who write ‘wrap my head around…’ in the daily npr script.

anyone who claims a food or beverage to be the ‘nectar of the gods’.

for that matter, anyone who thinks that wit is nurtured – rather than diminished – by repetition.

~ we know that it is hip for americans of all political persuasions to reduce their vocabulary to the tiniest sound bites when discussing current topics: wto, g8, 6+1, r2k, or fcb. not only does it sadden us to see all the opportunities offered by our language limited to virtual icons; thin descriptions are bound to lead only to thin investigations. while we would not be the ones to argue that these short terms do not meet the requirements of making much better logos for websites and magazine covers, seeing the attacks made at new york’s world trade center – ‘wtc’, kids – attacks reduced to 9-11 or 911 still makes those of us at the angry red planet sick. wtf.

~ annoying phrases: ‘bleeding edge’, ‘teach-in’, and hearing terrorist attacks referred to as ‘911’ and/or ‘nine-eleven’.

~ one tie to the west coast has been cut by the angry red planet upon the discovery of a trader joe’s accessible from manhattan via the lirr. stockpiles of ‘vitality’ and ‘rice-um’ were acquired.