The King of Stupid

No, this is not a blog about politics. It is a blog about what happened to me on Friday night.

See, I have trouble going to sleep on Friday nights. My brain says, "Hey, you've got tomorrow off, you can sleep in" even though there is no sleeping in when you have a toddler. Nonetheless, I end up doing silly things like staying up until 1 AM or later.

This Friday (actually Saturday, 1 AM) I decided that, since I wasn't sleeping, I should start prepping for Polaris 21, where I thought I was scheduled to do my first public reading of Small Magics and teach two stage combat workshops on July 14 and 15.

Note I said "I thought."

I open my email and discover what everyone who is reading this and follows conventions already knows. Polaris 21 is actually July 6 to 8. I've missed the opening party, one of the panels I was supposed to be on, and I am completely unprepared.

Crap!

I end up awake until 3:30 AM pulling together stuff for the convention, then 4:30 trying to calm down enough to get to sleep. My assistant is not available this weekend, my weapons for the course are not ready, and I have to create promotional materials for Small Magics on the fly using what little office supply type stuff I have around the house.

Did I mention CRAP!!!!?

My next post, I'll tell you how it all went.

America in Iraq: To What End?

"I see, as in a map, the end of all."
-QUEEN ELIZABETH, from Richard III, II, iv

Rolling Stone Magazine has put together a panel of experts to talk about the war in Iraq.

And if they are right, the outcome is going to be grim.

By the way, the people on this panel are not a group of granola chewing hippy liberals, as the American right likes to portray everyone who opposes their opinion. Rather, they are:

Zbigniew Brzezinski: National security adviser to
President Carter

Richard Clarke: Counterterrorism czar from 1992 to
2003

Nir Rosen: Author of In the Belly of the Green Bird, about
Iraq’s spiral into civil war, speaking from Cairo, where he has been
interviewing Iraqi refugees

Gen. Tony McPeak (retired): Member of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff during the Gulf War

Bob Graham: Former chair, Senate Intelligence
Committee

Chas Freeman: Ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf
War; president of the Middle East Policy Council

Paul Pillar: Former lead counterterrorism analyst for the
CIA

Michael Scheuer: Former chief of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden
unit; author of Imperial Hubris

Juan Cole: Professor of modern Middle East history at the
University of Michigan

Now, given the credentials of these people, what do you think the chances are of the administration listening to them?

Yeah, I think that, too.

H/T to Chet, who got it from Dymaxion World. And the quote that's on his page makes it onto mine, because it sums up the whole mess:

This is a dark chapter in our history. Whatever else happens, our country's
international standing has been frittered away by people who don't have the
foggiest understanding of how the hell the world works. America has been
conducting an experiment for the past six years, trying to validate the
proposition that it really doesn't make any difference who you elect president.
Now we know the result of that experiment [laughs]. If a guy is stupid, it makes
a big difference.-- Gen. Tony McPeak (retired), Member of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff during the Gulf War