Control Room

I just watched this movie and I was totally floored. We just sat around for an hour afterwards and argued about the war and the media and our society and everything else, because the movie made us all feel so enraged and so frustrated.

Where do we go with this anger? How can we stop a war? Can we even? Do people matter?

The most profound line in a thouroughly profound movie was from a man in a coffee shop just before the invasion. He says he doesn't give a shit about Saddam, but that he knows better than to think that Saddam was the reason for the trouble. "If five Iraqis are still alive after it is all over, Saddam will be one of them." It looks as if his preminition is coming true.

A report came out recently that says that over 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died from the war so far. And over 1,00 American troops have died, and about 10,000 are wounded. The war has no signs of ending in any conceivable near future. We sink deeper every day. And we feed ourselves bullshit lies to rationalize the absurdity of the whole thing every day.

Al Jazeera tries to report the war fairly, while at the same time recognizing their responsibility to be the only voice of outrage. Their punishment, an attack from American troops just prior to the invasion of Baghdad that killed an Al Jazeera correspondant. The American explanation? That they were being attacked by Al Jazeera. I'm serious. I'm not making this up.

Iraq is a defining point in history. The world can never be the same again. Surely theirs won't, and when a generation of young men and women return to America after having been a part of this absurd act of inhumanity, ours will be forever changed as well.

There still to this day exists no justification for the war, no explanation for the administration's unilateral invasion, no admonition of mistake, no rationalization for our continued occupation officially from our administration. Yet we continue to support the occupation. Why?

I could go on and on, I'll spare you. You already should know this anyway. Just go see Control Room, and see it with someone you love.

John Kerry is Not Running for Office

George Bush hasn't attended a single funeral for a soldier that has died in Iraq.

preparation: the key to winning

Team Silver Wins It
If you read my blog, you must know me well enough to know that my obsession is a strange game we play in Arkansas every December called Midnight Madness.

We stole the idea for the game from some super-smart west coasters who have made a subculture out of it for the better part of the last twenty years.

We've been thinking about the game for the entire year, ever since the last one wrapped up. But now is the time to start really preparing.

I firmly believe that the most prepared team will win this year. That would have been true last year, too, if the more prepared team didn't give up in the home stretch.

This website I've linked to shows Team Silver's preparations for the NIT game in 2000 in new york city.