My head sounds like that

Hi.

I was going to comment on the whole Dating Game o' Death the U.S. is playing with Iraq and North Korea, but I said screw it. You want news, try some of the links on the left. After reading up on all the news and opinion surrounding the Weapons O' Mass Destruction teeter-totter of bipolar policy Team Bush is pursuing (Iraq = no weapons, so attack!; N. Korea = either has or will have nukes soon, so let's just chat, m'kay?), one more knucklehead with a blog isn't going to make the ridiculousness any clearer or bring sanity to the table. Let's just face it: We're gonna bomb Iraq, kill a lot of innocent people to get at oil, and let North Korea get away with a dangerous precedent of announcing the ownership of nukes in order to create a mini-Cold War of a hostile nation pointing a nuclear bomb to the head of a neighboring ally of the U.S. in exchange for what...I dunno, food, cash, a date with Angelina Jolie? Frankly, North Korea needs to be dealt with swiftly if only to send a signal that nuclear blackmail isn't to work on the West, although I dread the words I just wrote since you could make that "signal" brutal military strikes. But something needs to be done, because if North Korea gets some sweet deal out of it and terrorist groups see the blackmail working, expect the nuke to be hidden in a major U.S. city soon, "24" style, and the ransom to be something Dr. Evil could only dream of.

Oh, poopers. I did just rant about North Korea and Iraq when I said I wasn't going to. *sigh*

Just give a guy a blog and look what he does.

Anyway, spent the night (besides bubbling something about world affairs) beating "Halo" on my new Xbox. While my wife and I were visiting her folks for Christmas, her dad got me (er, Santa got me) an Xbox to match the one my father-in-law picked up for his retirement about a year ago. Lucky thing I got one though considering FIL introduced me to the visual addiction that is "Halo," a first-person shooter (it's your point-of-view as you play) where you fight to survive as everything around you tries to kill you...just like real life. Well, sorta. Except you’re a cyborg on an alien biosphere shaped like a ring slugging it out with aliens of different models who want to drill you a new USB port.

As a veteran of shooting games, I wasn't expecting to be impressed. Typical shooting games go like this: Introduction, weak bad guys, ramp up to better guns, fight tougher aliens, battle a mini-boss (tough), repeat until you face the final boss (very tough), win the game.

Been there, killed that.

But "Halo" was playing a masterpiece of a landscape painting, listening to a lush and wild World Pop sound, and touching fine silk at once. It was obscene how easy the controls were and how everything in the game world reacted to you. The aliens schemed for the best way to get you, including waiting around corners to ambush you. A couple times, some beastie would catch me looking and I would drop like a sack of ham.

I played "Halo." I played a lot of "Halo" at my in-laws. If you would quantify the amount of game play in some sort of body mass index, I played morbidly obese amounts of "Halo."

But now, I slaughtered all the baddies and back on Earth, my new mission is scouting out places to visit in Paris when wifey and I go at the end of April, courtesy of a brand spankin' new Rick Steves book. Through some wonderful cosmic accident, the fates decided I'm spending my 31st birthday in the City of Lights. Honest. My wife and I were planning our calendar and I noticed we would be smack in the middle of the Paris part of our journeys on my birthday. To quote Jean-Paul Sartre (a quite famous French philosopher), "I'm so friggin’ stoked."

Well, Jean-Paul would have added a lot about bleakness and the futility of man's existence, but you get the gist.

In other news, I'm 95% better. My cold is on its way out. My body's forces earlier yesterday gained control of my ear canals, unclogging them as part of the "Bjork via headphones on high volume" offensive. I dunno about you, but Bjork, when loud, could be used to dissuade soccer hooligans. When mixed with DayQuil, it'll clear you out like it's a bran muffin for your aural cavities.

Today, the troops liberated my left sinus with stiff resistance ongoing in the right. Reports of heavy fighting hint it may last until Friday evening. Troops, our hearts and prayers are with you as you embark on this great crusade.

Oh yeah, signed up for another French class starting in 12 days, which means "French Word of the Day" will be back, dragged kicking and screaming from its sabbatical on the Left Bank.

As Sartre would have said, "About frigging time."

Well, he would have been more ominous, but you get the drift.

P.S. How rude of me...I almost forgot to mention that New Year's Eve, despite the war in my body, went very well. Had some friends over, ate some exquisite Indian food, and (something fitting with Seattle) experienced a nice, low-key night kicking 2002 out the door and wishing that 2003 would be a better, more peaceful trip around the sun.