If this blog were a Jeopardy category, it would be potpourri. As you can imagine, the political headlines this morning got my blood pumping as I walked downhill towards the Commuter Southbound bus stop. Said the journal "Bush pledged there will be no withdrawal from Iraq absent victory." One big thing about goals is that you have to have a metric to help you assess whether or not you've met them. According to the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq the definition of long-term victory in Iraq is "An Iraq that has defeated the terrorists and neutralized the insurgency." How do you measure defeating terrorists? Even the language is poor; "the terrorists"? What terrorists? Registered ones? The ones we currently know about? I'm no expert on this sort of thing but I highly doubt that there's like an "al Qaeda al night long" facebook group that we can hit up for names. Plus, in my mind defeating the terrorists is a catch-22...the capture or death of the last one will create innumerable new enemies of democracy. So, we are still basically languishing in a stay the course strategy with no attainable or foreseeable exit strategy. Awesome.
I also wanted to rant supreme on business (and I mean hard-core, business-school business) jargon. If I hear somebody describe the next step in a plan as actions "going forward" or discussing who "can talk to that" point, I will vomit. Probably on myself. Who talks like that? Don't be corporate drones, people! I think we just take ourselves a little too seriously "at the end of the day."
Next up: Michigan hoops! "Ha ha ha that's rich," you are probably thinking. "U of M hasn't participated in basketball since Chris Webber broke three major rules of that peach-basket game in one ill-fated play back in the nineties." NNNnnnnn sorry. Circle gets the square. I trekked down to a free game at Crisler Arena last night to watch the Wolverines face off against the Hurricanes (the only other nine letter mascot ending in 'ne' as far as I know) of Miami in the Big Ten / ACC Challenge. It was kind of crazy, because we kinda smacked them up. For serious! I think I might have to go watch some more games now because Big Blue is kinda fun to watch - they hustle and take charges and hit the O-glass and even had a pair of two-handed monster jams out of the half-court set.
Finally, today, a bit of irony. The spellchecker feature (OK, I'll just admit that I didn't know how to spell 'innumerable') on blogger.com doesn't recognize the word 'blog.' While you are pondering that, ponder this: tots are delicious.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005