Red Dawn

They named the capture Saddam mission Operation Red Dawn. Um, the name is taken. Way to sound ridiculous to a generation of Americans who were of silly action-movie watching age in 1984.

Saddam Coverage

We caught Saddam today. He was hiding in a hole near a farm, a literal hole, and I've read alternately that he had a pistol or a couple of AK-47s down there with him. The news coverage today seems to be too focused today on one part of the story, though: that Saddam went down without a fight. I heard Dan Rather call him a "coward", I heard that part of the story repeatedly stressed on CNN and ABC. Maybe I watched too much news today, but I couldn't help but think that that spin on the capture made all of our "independent" news outlets seem like PR fronts for the government. Your leader cared more for his skin than for your cause, they seemed to be telling the Middle East. He wasn't even a good enough Moslem to welcome his own martyrdom, so relax with the insurgencies and give us a chance. I realize that Saddam's lack of resistance was one of the sole "known" facts of the story in its initial few hours, but I can't get away from the fact that it was overstressed. A much more fascinating story is the face-to-face between Saddam and Iraqis on the governing council, but that received oodles less coverage. More fascinating to speculate about was the intelligence that got us to Saddam's little hole; but no, descriptions of his cowardice, something difficult at best to judge from such distance, dominated the day.

Public Radio Today, Media Magnate Tomorrow

My friend Matt, a burgeoning sportswriter, is going to be on NPR for something he wrote (scroll down to 11/21/03). Congrats. Cool to see him figuring out what he wants to do and doing it.

New Almost-Obsessions

1. Friendster. I spent all day browsing through my network of 10,000 friends of friends. I'm not looking for anyone to date. I don't want any new buddies to play polo with or start a band, so I'm not sure what I do. But I sort of want to look at it now. Add me as your friend, please. For some reason, I'm counting on it.

2. Poker. I resisted for years, but I finally consented to a casino Hold 'Em lesson over Thanksgiving, and the online floodgates are open. I'm up $38, which pretty much means I'm a superstar ready to quit my job and start to dominate the professional online poker scene.

Why can't my friends get me hooked on something that gets me in better shape or makes the world a better place? I should stop now, and go outside, but it's 9 degrees out and I think I'll just play a few hands.

Referral

This search is how one Reader got to this site. "Slutty teens with fingernails"???? Man alive.

Thanksgiving Travel

Observations from on the road between Ann Arbor and Chicago on the Sunday after Thanksgiving:

• A man, alone in his SUV and stuck in traffic, reading by his dome light at the wheel. It was a big textbook-looking thing.


• A chemical plant, lit up top to bottom. Steaming, glistening smokestacks, lined with bright lights every ten feet all the way up. It looked like science fiction.


• A Radiohead concert on the radio that, in cahoots with a rest-stop Diet Coke, saved me from falling asleep at the wheel and drifiting side-to-side too much in my lane.


• A Subaru with new tires is so much less scary to drive than a Subaru with six-year-old tires. Now maybe I should see about that recall notice from a couple of years back.