I'll take potpourri for 600, Alex

There's entirely too much going on in the world right now to write an individual post on each one, so I'm just going to give a brief summary of my feelings on various current events. If you'd like me to elaborate on any of them, just let me know and I'll see what I can do.

- War in the Middle East: Israel shouldn't agree to a ceasefire until Hezbullah's ass has been sufficiently kicked. There's been far too many 'ceasefires' in the Middle East that have turned out to be little more than breathers for militant groups to reorganize and more effectively attack later on. It's time to change the status quo. And for what it's worth, no, I don't think it's the end of the world.

- Heat wave: It's hot. That sucks. But honestly, it doesn't seem that bad to me. Growing up in Georgia, it certainly wasn't unusual to have triple digit days in August. Hell, that was when we had band camp. But it does highlight the shortcomings of our energy situation. We really need to work on that.

- Me| Gibson's "fucking Jew" rant: I'm not as upset about this as most people seem to be. Any time I hear anything anti-Semitic, or any other kind of racism for that matter, I just chalk it up to stupidity and move on. I don't feel the urge to boycott his movies or anything like that. I never saw P@ssion of the Chris+, but not because I don't like Me| Gibson. Just not my kind of movie. In a way, I feel like I can't be too mad at him. If I had a Holocaust-denying father, I'd probably say some questionable things about the Jews when I was drunk, too. That said, he sounded like an absolutely bigoted moron and deserves to be as embarrassed as he is. He also deserves whatever happens to his career, at least on the individual level. I'm not much up for organized boycotts, but if people make the individual choice not to see his movies or whatever, he deserves it.

- Fide| Cas+ro: Apparently the Cuban dictator needed to have some surgery and deemed it necessary to relinquish, at least temporarily, power to his younger brother. First of all, I hope the scalpel was rusty and that the doctor didn't know what he was doing. That said, some people think he's already dead. I can kinda see their argument. There's so much celebration going on that if he was in as good of shape as he claims to be, he would be on television crapping all over everyone's good time. So I dunno. It's hard to say. If he is dead and his brother takes over, I don't think it will be very long before communism falls in Cuba. I know his brother is supposedly more radical and all that, but I just think the anti-communist elements in Cuba would be so emboldened by Cas+ro's death that they would overwhelm the regime before it could get its grip back. But that's just my opinion.

- The mid-term elections: The Democrats have a huge opportunity to make big gains in congress, but in typical Democrat fashion, they're blowing it. Case in point, the primary race in Connecticut. If Joe Lieberm@n loses his primary race to anti-war extremist Ned Lemon+, the Democrats can pretty much give up on the idea of winning back congress. However, it looks like Cynthi@ McKinney might lose her primary as well (please oh please) so maybe they're getting a clue. Though somehow I doubt it.

- The new Geic0 commercials: Burt B@charach's is the only one that's tolerable. Litt|e Richard and Ch@ro make me want to throw things at the TV. Bring back the lizard. He was funny.