Now that the Academy Awards are over, it is time to tally up my score ... on the big awards:

Best Supporting Actor Chris Cooper (Yup.)
Best Supporting Actress Catherine Zeta-Jones (Yup.)
Best Actor Adrian Brody (I picked Daniel Day-Lewis, but I was glad Brody won.)
Best Actress Nicole Kidman (Yup.)
Best Director Roman Polanski (I picked Pedro Almodovar, and I was disappointed that at Polanski didn't come pick up the award -- now that would have been entertaining.)
Best Picture Chicago (Yup.)

Four for six, not bad. Overall I think I got 17 out of 24, which is pretty good -- I think about 71 percent. Yay for me.

Sigh.

America's president is such a hypocrite ... I'm certainly smelling the stench of oil for the first time in quite a while. I'm moving to Canada.

***

President Bush, in a solemn White House address to the nation on Monday night, had given Mr. Hussein and his two sons 48 hours - until 8 p.m. Washington time on Wednesday - to leave Iraq for exile or face a United States-led military invasion.

But both Mr. Hussein and his eldest son, Uday, brusquely turned down the suggestion today.

``The proposal should be that Bush leaves office in America, he and his family,'' Uday Hussein said today. Americans, he added, ``should not imagine that they will have a safe spot inside the land of Iraq or outside it.''

***

If Mr. Hussein failed to leave, President Bush warned on Monday night, the United States-led coalition was prepared to wage war ``at a time of our choosing.'' Even if Mr. Hussein fled, United States officials said, American troops would enter Iraq to ensure stability while a new government was formed and humanitarian needs were tended to.

***

Canada, one of the closest United States allies, ended months of uncertainty by making clear that it would not join in a war lacking United Nations authorization.

Spain, which stood firmly alongside the United States and Britain in the diplomatic effort to win United Nations authorization, will not send troops, though it will provide a medical support ship, and later humanitarian and reconstruction aid for Iraq. More than 80 percent of Spaniards oppose war, opinion polls show.

In Copenhagen, an antiwar protester doused Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen with red paint, meant to symbolize blood, shortly before the Danish leader announced that the country would send a submarine, a corvette and elite troops. The Danish parliament narrowly approved the deployment.


U.S. Poised to Strike After Hussein Rejects Ultimatum

What kind of idiot says "Don't destroy your oil wells" before saying "Don't use weapons of mass destruction"?!

How is that supposed to convince people that the government is justified in overriding the objections of THE REST OF THE WORLD and claiming all peaceful and diplomatic efforts to resolve this conflict are exhausted?

Yes, Saddam Hussein and his sons are atrocious men who have done abominable things. He's a heinous dictator who has been known to kill his own people. But honestly, there are worse dictators in the world (believe it or not) and bigger threats to this country. (North Korea, for example, fits both criteria.) While Saddam should be removed from power, the impetus for this should come from his own people first of all, and second, if he is to be removed through outside pressure, what's the problem with it just remaining pressure and not force?

Personally, I wonder why the government feels the need to focus on a threat of yesterday when there are so many threats of today that they'd be far more justified in pursuing. And I'm sorry, but no matter how much warning you give and no matter how "smart" your weapons are, you can't save lives through military attacks. And no matter how often you tell people you're killing them for their own good, they're never going to believe you.

What kind of country is this?!

The United States makes me sick. When the rest of the Western world has finally moved beyond the days of imperialism and waving big sticks, like a child, America insists on making up for its lack of prowess. When all the world seeks peace, the United States spits on the promises it made to the world after World War II. Whatever happened to phrases like "the war to end all wars" and "never again," things we heard after those great conflicts? Where are the lessons of Vietnam? Are our memories so short?

What kind of nation seeks "peace" by declaring war? Is political clout worth destroying more innocent lives than we lost on September 11? How much is an Iraqi or other Asian's life worth when compared to an American's now?

Moreover, why doesn't the rest of the world have any backbone? There are millions -- billions more people in the world who oppose this war, far more than the relative handful in the United States. Even a majority of the U.S. population -- and the last number I read was 58 percent, and that appeared to be gathered by casting a very wide net by using a very open question -- that would only be less than 160 million people, likely not much greater than the religious minority in India, the next most populous nation in the world. And while yes, America has nuclear weapons, so do a great number of other countries, and honestly, you don't need all that many to destroy the world. Other countries need to stop acting scared of the United States and start looking to each other for help. What's to stop the collective power of more than five billion people from ousting America from the United Nations and from the world scene? The United States only has as much power as it's given through other countries' -- like Britain -- governmental cooperation. If the United States were isolated, it would have to give up its position on the world stage. It's time that "America says so" stopped meaning "right," and that can only happen when the world shows a united face and stands up to this kind of bullying.

"Are weapons of mass destruction a needle that you can conceal in a head cover or in the scarf of an old woman that (U.N. weapons) inspectors cannot find?'' Saddam asked.

"There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,'' he added, joking: "Well, give us time and the necessary means and we will produce any weapon they want and then we will invite them to come and destroy them.''

Hussein Warns of World War if U.S. Strikes

Hurray!!! My computer works again!

I am two pages away from having completed my last major paper for the quarter. Notice it is about 5 a.m. I am dead tired. Despite not going into work once yet this week in order to devote all of my time to reading the book for this paper that I had put off until finishing the last paper, I still didn't get a full eight hours of sleep each day. I've been up until at least 5 a.m. almost every night this week, and I've been waking myself up around noon. Not terrible, but not conducive to not falling asleep in front of a very slow novel. (A 498-page slow novel, by the way.)

Anyway, it's almost over (I hope). I don't know when I'm supposed to turn in this paper tomorrow, but I plan to hand it in whenever I can get into Kresge Hall in the morning. At least I think it goes to Kresge, as that's where her office is. God knows.

In other news, I won my election for Residential College Board Vice President of Public Affairs. (Yes, I can hear you groaning.) I think it's the first contested election I have ever won. Every other leadership position I've had I've gotten through either being appointed or uncontested. (Sort of like how I ended up being the secretary -- I think -- of the Forensics Club but almost never heard about it because I never went to the pre-school day meetings.) At the very least, this news is affirming to me.

"The day after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on America, the French newspaper Le Monde proclaimed, 'We are all Americans!' " [Sen. Robert C. Byrd] said. "Eighteen months later, the United States and France are hurling insults at each other, and the French are leading the opposition to the war against Iraq. In country after country, the United States has seen the outpouring of compassion and support that followed Sept. 11 dissolve into anger and resentment at this administration's heavy-handed attempts to railroad the world into supporting a questionable war with Iraq."

Never thought I'd ever respect a politician quite so much before Robert Byrd decided not to run for reelection.

More freedom-fried insanity.

Vive la ... freedom?

Good God, I live in such a sad, sad nation. Who put these spoiled (not to mention ignorant) kids in charge?

One class down. I just finished my Newswriting final. Although it was a good class, I'm glad to have the six hours a week of labs behind me. Honestly, why can't we have a credit-hour system here so that I could take only three classes in quarters like this one but still earn appropriate credit for my work?

My next task is to revise my blank verse poem. Hopefully I will accomplish this well before it gets to the "I'm going to have to skip work tomorrow" point. I'm rather behind in hours, and while I know I can put in plenty during finals week, I'd like to spread them out. Tomorrow, I want to get up early enough to turn in my poem and get the book I'm writing a paper on out of the library for me to read at work. (Sorry, Matt -- I'll work on my articles sometime before Spring Break.)

By the way, I did finish both my paper and my profile. Now, all I have left is studying for my final on Monday evening, revising my poem due Tuesday, reading a book and writing a paper on it by Friday, and writing a final essay for Thursday.

Whatever happened to Reading Week being a time to relax!?

The changed the name of my browser from Chimera to Camino. I do not like this.

Ahh!

Today I woke up a bit before 7 a.m. to ready myself for the big interview with Alderman Kent. It went okay except for that whole being tired part. After that, I was on my feet until about 4 p.m. I nearly fell asleep at the dinner table. I got back, set my computer to update itself, and soon fell asleep.

When I woke up, my computer was dead.

Well, it was near death, anyway. The screen had gone blue, and it showed no signs of changing. It wasn't until six hours (and two attempts at clean installs) later that I finally got it to work again. It's now better in some ways (faster! the annoying script menu's dead!) but worse in others (all of my preferences need to be reset).

Of course, the upshot of all of this is that I didn't start my alderman profile until about 3 a.m. To paraphrase:

The computer is frustrating, I cry and weep,
But I have final due dates to keep,
And 900 words to go before I sleep,
And 900 words to go before I sleep.

The Axis of Just as Evil.

I am so tired of my classes. I am sick of them all. I need something new, and I don't know where to find it. Scholarship can go take a long walk off a short pier.

Ow, my head hurts. Not in that extremely painful kind of way, but in that dull achy kind of way, like how you feel right after waking up if you've been sleeping in an odd position. Which I was, of course. But it hasn't gone away, and I think it won't until I get some sleep. I'm loathe to stay up any longer tonight, but I have a lot to get done and if I don't do it now, who knows when I'll get around to it.

Tonight Scott and I used the pasta pots for the second time, and this time we tried out the locking lid on the smaller one. We heated up some oil in it, then cooked a pound of ground chuck. Then, locking the lid, Scott dumped all the grease down the drain. It was pretty nifty. Unfortunately, we found after marveling at this phenomenon that we could not UNlock the locking lid. We almost twisted the handle off trying. I think we'd locked it a bit too tightly, and turning the handle just seemed to loosen the screw holding it on. We ended up sticking the whole thing in the fridge to cool off, hoping it might contract, and short of that, hoping we could then at least touch the lid. Eventually I managed to get the lid off by sticking a knife between and using it like a bottle opener.

However, despite our difficulties, we produced a delicious meal of angel hair pasta with spicy meat sauce and garlic bread. Mmm ... aren't you jealous?

Program failed. Will try again later.

Trying to make an application now.