Our Europe travel plans have been changed, again

Due to the coming war, of course. Again, it's on the return leg, and this time we're stuck in Detroit, not Minneapolis. Oddly, when I first found out that our nonstop leg from Amsterdam to Seattle was going to have a stop in Minneapolis, I wasn't too upset. "Minneapolis," I thought, "A lot worse places to stay over." Detroit, I swear to God, was the first U.S. city on my "worst places" masterlist. One good thing, it's close to Canada.

Meanwhile, as I plan to hopefully make it to Paris in less than five weeks, I have this going for me. I do not want to spend my birthday in the City of Light apologizing for my fucking lawmakers. I'm tempted to practice "Je suis Canadien" (I am Canadian), but I don't want to add "liar" to the current French psychological profile of Americans. We’ve given ourselves enough bad press already.

It's embarrassing, and I know I'll have a lot of explaining to do when I get there (The French are ravenous when it comes to politics, and I'm told I'll be peppered with questions about Bush and Iraq and, in a polite phrasing, just what the hell are we thinking, anyway). And, of course, they'll be right. Just because France has a difference of opinion and won't be swayed by some lunatic war machine doesn't mean we should start calling them names, but that won't stop some lawmaker looking to exchange centuries of friendship for cheap points. Maybe these same lawmakers need to remember that waving how "we helped them back in World War II" in France's collective face it isn't the most mature thing to do, especially since the whole notion of the French as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" is not only factually false, but diminishes the spirit of every French person who fought with Napoleon, against Kaiser Wilheim and died storming the Bastille.

Oh, and I won't even get into the little tidbit that if it wasn't for the French, the United States would still be a subject to the Crown of England. Heck, they even gave us a neat little statue that sits today in New York Harbor. Maybe you've heard of it?

If I were France, I'd start calling French Fries "Freedom Fries," too...just so I could change the name to something like "Deep-Fried Asshole Sticks." But the French aren't like that. They got art, culture, fashion, history, architecture, passion, literature and a certain je ne sais quoi coming out in a steady stream. They have universal health care, free schools, a nifty transportation system and a zillion cafes. They don't need us. They have the rest of "Old Europe" to hang with, and frankly I'm envious of all that rationality going on these days across the pond.

This whole childish "neener-neener" name changing from Congress makes me think of the planet Krikkit from Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker" series. In case you never got through the novels, Krikkit was a planet that committed crimes against the universe so brutal that it was locked away, permanently phased out of time from the rest of the universe, the inhabitants left to themselves because they're such a pain in the ass.

Maybe that's where I'm getting this dreadful feeling from. As I watch my flight plans shift in little bits, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. The United States is sealed from the outside by the rest of the world, and the ones who still have a sense of international friendship and limitless horizons are stuck with the insane asylum inmates who honestly believe war is peace and chaos will bring stability.

My friend Cori, who bravely tried to talk to me while I was in a rolling rage over the possibility of more flight problems, suggested that going to France right now would be the ultimate protest, spending hard-earned dollars on the country some narrow-minded twits find so easy to hate.

At the very least, this whole ordeal has sent me back to trying to conjugate new sentences. I hope I have this right.

Bush n'est pas mon president.

Today's Word: System

From One Word

I'd like to think that you can be random, be surprising to those around you, but in fact, it's merely part of a larger body that you can't influence. You can make ripples, but you can't crash the whole thing. It'll find a way around you.