Thomas suggested I have a good weekend, then asked me if I was in fact having a weekend. I thought, "What? Of course I am! Saturday, Sunday — weekend right?" But I think that's not what he meant. So these are the reasons I currently have no life (strongest reasons first):

1. TerraForm -- the next version
   
2. NZ Tramper
   
3. Needing to learn Macromedia Flash urgently
   
4. TerraForm -- the rich Internet application version (i.e. the version after the next one).
   
5. War and being driven to blog it
   
6. Needing to learn the basics of Java
   
7. That damn travelogue project that'll never make any money
   
8. The incipient forum app
   
9. HumanLives.net which is still just a dream, yet to become a nightmare
   
10. Compulsive list making.
    
11. Probably don't want one/wouldn't know what to do with it anyway.

I just posted this on another weblog.

You know it's all about finding your voice. Most people never find it. I'm pretty sure the first entries in my weblog were rather lame, and I was like 30 or something. But if the price is some weeks or years of "uninteresting" blogging then it's well worth it. We live in a society where almost everybody can read. It would be nice if everybody could Write. All you need to do is talk about what's important to You. Nobody else matters. The youngest of us know that instinctively. That's tremendously interesting as it's so different from my generation, the lost in space x generation.

The roundabout I cycle around every day on the way to work (before the mint sauce factory) seems to be finding its voice. For the last week it has pronounced "NO TO WAR" in four directions. It appears to be shedding its diplomacy, stridently announcing this morning: "FUCK THE USA" with the S replaced with a Swastika in case the message isn't clear. Clumsy, and perhaps not a good way to open a dialogue, but it's good to see the instruments of traffic management finding their voices. I wonder if it was inspired by LA Story. There's never been a better time to say something. Anything.

"F___ Saddam. We're taking him out." Those were the words of President George W. Bush, who had poked his head into the office of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. It was March 2002, and Rice was meeting with three U.S. Senators, discussing how to deal with Iraq through the United Nations, or perhaps in a coalition with America's Middle East allies. Bush wasn't interested.

Oddly enough, you can count on The Onion to come through in times of crisis. You have to wade through a sea of appalling advertising, but it's worth it.

"Any casualty that occurs, any death that occurs, is a direct result of Saddam Hussein's policies," a spokeswoman for the United States Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, told journalists.

The statement came after reports that a US missile strike on Baghdad had killed 15 civilians and wounded many others in the Sha'ab market district.

...that one zucchini is actually a zucchino?

"Fog" is beginning to be the watchword of this war, with the lines between fact and propaganda being blurred on a daily basis.

Wee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us; soe that if wee shall deale falsely with our god in this worke wee have undertaken and soe cause him to withdrawe his present help from us, wee shall be made a story and a byword through the world, wee shall open the mouthes of enemies to speake evill of the wayes of god and all professours for Gods sake; wee shall shame the faces of many of gods worthy servants, and cause theire prayers to be turned into Cursses upon us till wee be consumed out of the good land whether wee are going. — John Winthrop, 1630

Well, America, the eyes of all people are indeed upon you, and you should be ashamed.

Stealing a link from Nicola:

"I've been all the way through this desert from Basra to here and I ain't seen one shopping mall or fast food restaurant," he said. "These people got nothing. Even in a little town like ours of twenty five hundred people you got a McDonald's at one end and a Hardee's at the other."

You know I'd love to live in a city with no shopping malls or McDonald's-style fast food restaurants. These elements represent the homogenisation of the Western marketplace, and it's we the consumers who lose. I remember walking into a mall in Palmerston North a few years ago and experiencing déjà vu, thinking it was a mall in Christchurch. Effectively, it was.

Staff Sergeant Larry Simmons, a Floridian from a marine reconnaissance unit in a foxhole overlooking the bridge, was not impressed by what he saw. "You learn about the Euphrates in geography class, and you get here and you think: 'This is the Euphrates? Looks like a muddy creek to me'."

The sheer arrogance of this remark is astounding. A marine wouldn't understand that the importance of a river is not dependent on its scenic grandeur. There is also the simple geographical fact that if you walk upstream long enough, any grand river becomes merely a trickle. Some cultures regard these places as sacred.

The marines are aggrieved: aggrieved that the Iraqis aren't more grateful, aggrieved that the Iraqis are shooting at them.

Apparently somebody told the marines, "We're going to invade a sovereign nation, attempt to assassinate its leader, and kill some civilians. All this without being invited. The locals will love us!"

The Fat Duck's science of food

"We went through a period of spraying the foie gras with liquid nitrogen to keep the outside cool while it was in the oven."

Noah

"Our sanctions caused the death of 500,000 Iraqi children. Haven't we already waged war?"

images | text

Shock and awe

rapid dominance, overwhelming force, massive bombardment, the stategic principles of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, decapitation attacks: it's all connected, it's all here. Read it.

"We don't want Americans here. This is Iraq."

"It wasn't even a fair fight. I don't know why they don't just surrender," said Colonel Mark Hildenbrand, commander of the 937th Engineer Group. "When you're playing soccer at home, 3-2 is a fair score, but here it's more like 119-0."

"We don't want them to get too comfortable with us giving them food and water because we just have enough to support ourselves," said Lance Corporal Claude Taplette, 19, as the mother and daughter gazed across at him. "We're doing them enough of a favour fighting a war."

Thomas introduced me to this word today — just casually dropped it in email conversation. It's a German word that means something like the expression "forcing one's hand" but in English it seems to be only used in chess. Great word, must try to use it.

The Spanish have the demonstrative adjectives este, ese, and aquel (roughly translating as this, that, and that over there. English only really has this and that. At least so we are told. But let's not forget that glorious word, yonder. "Go climb yonder mountain." I've been trying to convince Thomas to use it for well over a year now. But really I should use it more myself. It's just too ridiculous.

Or visit www.moveon.org/musiciansunited and scroll to the bottom of the page for the more complete list.

"He who decides that all peaceful means that international law offers us are exhausted, assumes a great responsibility, in front of God, his conscience and history," — Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls (Wednesday)

I know worldwide opinions are divided, but here in New Zealand I don't know a single person who supports this war, even my parents who have different opinions on almost everything. It's this simple: The waging of aggressive war is a crime under international law.

Each of us is responsible for everything and to every human being

[Link 1] | [Link 2]

Walked up it on Saturday. Fantastic views somewhere behind 360° of cloudscape. It's obviously not a regularly used track, quite vague. On the way back down I lost it (the track that is) in the forest about ten minutes from the end and blundered out into the car park just 20 metres to the east of the track end. That evening in the Maruia Springs hot pools I met two others (the only two others) that had walked it that day, and they'd done the same thing at around the same point. There must be a deceptive bend in there somewhere.

As the US and UK appear set to pursue war in Iraq without a second UN resolution, Matthew Happold explains whether this course of action would be legal. [The Guardian]

More from those sad, pathetic, fucked up Americans

Show the flag and pass the ketchup was the order of the day in House cafeterias Tuesday. Lawmakers struck a lunchtime blow against the French and put "freedom fries" on the menu.

The name changes follow similar actions by restaurants around the country protesting French opposition to the administration's Iraq war plans.

But House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said at a news conference that applying legislative sanctions to France was not necessary. "I don't think we have to retaliate against France. They've isolated themselves pretty well," he said.

Perhaps France have read the UN charter (this is the preamble):

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

AND FOR THESE ENDS to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,

HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS