Elena the Hun

Oh, man, I got an awesome ficathon prompt. I'm glad I signed up.

So, I watched the first three seasons of Bleach in, like, a week over the break. I have many thoughts - and squees! - just ready to come bursting out, but mostly, I should say I have once again fallen in love with a crack OTP - so typical, right? Right. Anyway, a fic snippet that will one day be expanded into a proper fic (for wtf27, perhaps?). Also, I have decided that Star Wars doesn't have enough crossovers, so I am solemnly vowing to cross-over any anime I love with Star Wars, just to expand the diversity. Here is the first one...


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Yeah, it's disjointed, but I wrote it in 20 minutes in the middle of the night. Expansion and clean-up forthcoming.

OK, virusq  tagged me with this, like, a month ago - I'M SORRY VQ, I JUST FORGOT! - so I decided I should actually do it.  It states "Comment on this post. I will randomly give you a letter. Think of 5 fictional characters and post their names and your comments on these characters in your LJ."  I got the letter I, so, without further ado:

Iella Wessiri:  A Star Wars expanded universe character.  NR Intelligence agent, former CorSec agent with Corran Horn, and Wedge Antilles' wife.  She's a Stackpole character, but I never really liked her until Allston got his hands on her.  Seriously, Starfighters of Adumar is still my favorite book - intrigue!  drama!  jokes!  war! - how can you resist it?  Iella is pretty kick-ass in all the succeeding books, mostly because Allston is the only author who ever writes her, and Allston is made of awesome.

Invisible Woman:  OK, that's not her real name, but it counts, doesn't it?  As someone whose childhood was inundated by old superhero cartoons, the invisible woman was just cool.  No, not the Jessica Alba version...

Icchan-san: the crazy mad scientist/father figure in Angelic Layer.  One of the running jokes is that he's a pedophile (which is a really common joke in anime, for some reason), but he's actually in love with the 12-year-old protagonist's mother, and he looks out for kid as best he can.  In a show that is notable for the lack of male role-models, he's the only one in there. 

Ikrit - the wise Jedi Master/fake pet from the Junior Jedi Knights.  He was this hermit/ascetic/mystic being who looked like a dog-cat.  Or something, I don't know.  The point is, he, Tahiri, and Anakin were the three lasting characters from that series that moved into the wider EU world.  Of the three, Anakin was killed off midway through the NJO in a what felt like a gratuitious slap at the fans, Tahiri spent the next three book cycles getting progressively crazier, ending as a this failed Sith Apprentice only redeemed by her ex-boyfriend's cousin, and Ikrit - well, he died in the middle of the NJO too - but in this awesome suicide run that allowed all his students to escape the murderous fanatics bent on killing them.

At this point, I was fairly desperate, so I cheated and went by last name instead, giving me Ysanne Isard.  A classic villain from the Bantam run of books, she showed up in some way, shape, and form in over a dozen of them, I think.  Ambitious as hell and crazy as a fox, she was a rear-guard action of the Empire.  On her watch, Coruscant was lost to the Rebels, Thyferra abandoned it's neutral status in the war, and everything pretty much went to hell.  Thrawn, she was not.  On the other hand, she was very very good at causing fear and terror - she used everything from bio-weapons, scorched earth policy, and brainwashed suicide cells to spread terror among her enemies and allies.  As a leader, she was pants - but as an enemy, she was awesome.  The later enemies of the Del Rey era don't measure up - the Yuuzhan Vong were too crude, the Killik were ridiculously overplayed, and the one mastermind, Lumiya, was killed barely half-way through the last series, unmooring the plot and leading to some increasingly bizarre character actions.  But if I ever want to read some awesome evil laughter and some terrifying plot to destroy the Rebellion that might actually work, I can always go back to Stackpole's Rogue Squadron series of books.

And...I'm finished!  Yay!

And we can all move past the horrors of the past two years of campaigning, thank god.

More to the point, we have chosen a new president.  Granted, it's not the guy I voted for, but hey, that's life.  Congratulations to Senator Obama, I hope you govern wisely and well.  I expect I'll spend at least the next four years in the opposition - but hey, Democrats have been in the opposition for the last eight years, and it didn't kill them.  I think I'll enjoy it.  So, without further adieu, I present "Five Reasons to be Happy the Guy I Didn't Vote for Won":

1.       1.  The next time someone starts talking about the innate structural racism of American society, I will be able to just go out to a newsstand and point to a picture somewhere on the front page and say “O RLY?”  This makes me happy because a) it really is cool and b) it will finally shut up all those annoying people who talk about the innate racism of Americans.  And if they keep talking about it, I will use said newspaper to hit them in the face.  Seriously, this should make Ward Connerly very, very happy. 

2.      2.  Nancy Pelosi will finally have to stop whining about those evil House Republicans.  She’s got a majority in the House and she still can’t get anything done, but with a Democrat in the White House, at least she won’t be able to blame it on the veto.

3.       3.  As an economist, I look forward to any new administration – especially one which talks about the New Deal approvingly.  I, too, hope to do as well as Amity Schaels.

4.      4.   I think being in the loyal opposition will be quite fun.  Schadenfreude is a very satisfying emotion, don't let anyone tell you differently.  For example, next time somone says "political money is bad", I can point to our president as an example - although really, has that ever been in doubt?  I never liked McCain-Feingold, and I think Obama's fundraising is proof that people vote with their dollars.  Why restrict that?

5.       5.  On a more serious note, Barack Obama can’t be as bad as Jimmy Carter.  No one could be as bad as Jimmy Carter... 

Anyway, enjoy the rest of the night, guys.  I can't party because I can't drink - but what the hell.  I'll get the seniors to buy me a beer...

EDIT:  I feel I should make a note of this, since I didn't, and it's important.  This is the 44th time America has changed government peacefully.  It's a record that most of the world can't boast of - so enjoy, guys.  America truly is a great country.

EDIT 2:  OK, yes, I forgot 1860.  Sue me, it's still a great record.

Well, another Yom Kippur come and gone.  Actually, the second year I haven't gone to services.  I feel a bit bad about this, especially since I have a pretty good idea where the synagogues are in this town, but you couldn't get me on a bus for love or money at this point, considering a girl was sexually assaulted at my bus stop last week.  Still, the spirit of the holiday holds true: forgive and be forgiven.  Something I usually have to remind myself of, to be honest, but I'll keep trying.  Maybe one year it will finally stick altogether.

Finished my last mid-term today.  Feel very, very exhausted - not tired, just burnt-out.  I took the exam, and then I just went back to the dorm and slept for awhile, and then indulged in ceiling-watching - which I'm going to regret, I know, because I have a seminar presentation and a really hard math homework due in two days, and I haven't started on anything.  

I don't know.  It's only been six weeks.  I have to keep reminding myself that I have 10 more to go before break, which can't be good.  On the other hand, I have registration soon.  I'll only be taking a measly 12 or 13 hours next semester, which makes me sort of uncomfortable, because I usually try to take at least 15, but I heard so many horror stories about ECO 420K that I decided to go easy for once.  On the other hand, I only have another 12 or 13 actual classes to go before I graduate, I think.  I'm a bit peeved that my school only awards Bachelors of Arts in Economics - I might have to get a supplementary degree in whatever I specialize in to get a little more work.  *wry grin*  I doubt finance will be a good career choice for the next few years, however...

On the other hand: attended the Longhorn Open, a fencing competition at school.  I went by to volunteer on Sunday - geez, it was busy.  Very, very busy.  Lots of guys (and a few girls) and fencing gear, many of whom looked much younger than me, and lots of judges/referees/directors wearing suits.  You could tell who the volunteers were because we were the only ones wearing jeans.  I got to see the saber direct elimination rounds, which was very, very fast.  It was interesting, because it seems like when someone starts dominating in fencing, it's very hard to turn it around.  Saw the epee pools, which were a little harder to figure out - although it might have been because it was the novice category, so everyone wasn't as good compared to the more advanced saber category.  Still, interesting, although a lot more cautious than sabre.  A lot more sizing up.

So, super-busy weekend!   ...super-busy with studying, that is.  I have a Korean presentation on Wednesday (in English, however, so I just have to bone up on the particulars of traditional Korean music), my first Accounting exam on Thursday night, and I totally forgot about my math assignment.  Also, I haven't finished reading Gabrieli's Arab Historians of the Crusades, which is very interesting, but very, very long.  On the other hand, I have a paper topic for my history class ("changing attitudes toward the Holy Land throughout the Crusades, using Benjamin of Tudela's Itinerary as a source"). 

So, I started seeing a new doctor at Brackenridge Professional.  Considering how crappy the witch doctors at UHS are, I actually decided to use my insurance and go to a real doctor to figure out why I have near constant headaches and headcolds.  Last semester was awful, and I'm tired of being "that sick girl", as I've been for that last three years.  So, I've been keeping a health journal noting the medicines I take, the amount of sleep I get, what I eat, and the kinds of headaches and sinus pressure I get throughout the day, and I showed it to my awesome new doctor - and he actually has an idea of what's wrong with me: sinus inflammation, aka rhinitus.  So, now I'm taking a nasal steroid spray in addition to my allergy medication, and we'll see if it works.  I've actually taken this spray before, but my doctor at the time also prescribed two other new medications at the same time - she was practicing the "kitchen sink" method on me.  So, I have no idea if this will work, but it's better than the "oh, you probably have asthma - oops, no you don't!" or "oh, it's just a headcold - suck it up!" methods of diagnosis.

Also, something to amuse everyone while the economy either gets better or worse:  Computer (commercial) Wars!

( Jerry Seinfeld?! )

Activity-based accounting - as devilish as it seems?   I think so.  Going to bed, pretty sure the homework I just finished is totally wrong.

Have a lot more respect for fanon!accounting-Naruto now.

Hmm.  I'm changing all of my political posts over to my new site at wordpress for the simple fact that this journal was originally a fan/personal journal, and I don't think anyone friended me because of my absolutely scintillating views on foreign policy.  Additionally, I'm entering AFF's College Blogger Contest and I thought I should make a fresh start, since it's essentially a conservative/libertarian entry, and I'm well aware that most people on my flist are liberals.  I didn't friend people for their political thoughts - and since a lot of them friended me back, I don't want to be a churlish friend and spam their flist with stuff they don't care about.  So, I'll still be using this as a personal journal, but all the political stuff (national, local, and metaphysical) is migrating to my other website.  *shrugs*  Hope that's cool with everyone - *amused*  although I don't really expect someone to pop up in the comments and say "no, stop, I really want to hear your opinion on the possibility of Iran gaining nuclear weapons!"

So, I'm not going to post much on national politics until the election is over, for the simple fact that it seems to be getting pretty heated on livejournal right now, and if I wanted drama, I'd go crash a SDS meeting.  Same thing for the market meltdown.  I seem to be alone in thinking that this crisis in investment banking is the product on bad regulation and politics, rather than the free market, and I don't really want to get the usual "Democrats caused this, those commies!" or "Republicans caused this, those plutocrats!"  because guess what?  They both caused it.  Congress totally deserves it's pathetically low approval rating, and "throw the bums out!" is an excellent rallying cry.  Additionally, after listening to both John "Regulation" McCain and Barack "Nationalize" Obama, I understand why my parents voted for Ross Perot in '92... 

On more local issues...Austin is actually pleasant now, although god knows how long this will last.  I've been walking around downtown for the last couple of weeks, and this is the only time I can recall since I moved here that I don't see the ridiculous numbers of beggars and hoboes in the streets.  They've always been here, since the very first time I visited Austin, and in fact, they were a big reason I was so dubious about attending UT.  For some reason, though - they're gone.  No more roughs with nasty dogs, no more crazy people harrassing you for money, no more having to worry about going out after dark - This is the first time I've actually felt that I don't need to carry pepper spray.  The only thing I can think of - the police are cleaning up the streets because ACL is this week, and it's a prime money maker for the city.  Making sure the city is safe and non-hostile is in the city's interest right now - although god forbid we do it the rest of the time, because those poor homeless people are more important than, say, those students who have to constantly worry about getting mugged. 

Of course, it could always be worse.  I was complaining to my dad, and he said that I should be thankful - Austin in the 2000's isn't nearly as bad as NYC in the 1970's, back when he went to school.  Steven Malanga had an interesting article in City Journal about the whole thing - read it if you're interested in that sort of quality life sort of thing.    I admit, I'm seriously thinking of transferring my voter registration from Bexar County to Travis County, just so I can vote in local elections here.  I vote in local elections in Bexar, but I only live there three months out of twelve - I care a lot more about Austin politics in some ways.  *shrugs*  I don't know. 

Anyway, I have my first Calculus exam tonight, so wish me luck.  Hopefully, all the studying I've done will pay off....

OK, first things first:  HAPPY (belated) BIRTHDAY, dayadhvam_triad</lj>!

I know I'm super late, but I figure, it's the thought that counts, right?  Anyway, you're a whole year older and (more importantly), you're at university!  I hope you enjoy your first semester and your classes (roommate/extracurriculars/cafeteria food) are awesome!  Have fun!  *leans over*  remember to use the sanitary gel...

For everyone else...well, geez.  I've been at school three weeks now, and my schedule has pretty much settled down into half-week on, half-week off.  That is, Monday through Friday morning, I spend in class, at fencing, at Krav Maga, etc, etc, and on Friday morning until Sunday night, I study, do all my errands, study, clean, study, and catch up on all my sleep. Uh, emphasis on the studying...  This is going to be one of those long, hard, slogging semesters, where I continually chant "delayed rewards!  delayed rewards!" and remind myself that if all goes well, I take Microeconomic Theory next semester. 

Calculus is calculus.  It's a four-hour class, I'm spending around 12 hours on the homework and corrections to the homework, and I have an exam in a little less than ten days.  I need to pass this, so, god willing, I will.  Like last year, Korean is the class where I love the subject matter, love doing my best to become fluent, but dislike my classmates intensely.  Additionally, I'm not studying enough on this, and I need too, because I'm tired of getting those looks from my teacher and classmates over my sad, pathetic excuse for vocabulary.  Accounting isn't that bad.  Fencing is still awesome.  My history teacher seems to be a relic from the Dark Ages herself, since she keeps giving the white board an uncertain, skeptical look.  You can all but hear her thinking 'you can write on one of these contraptions?'  Additionaly, Schlomo Eidelburg's Jews and the Crusades is every bit as depressing and gory as I thought.  Pretty much every page is about Christians killing Jews, or proud Jewish mothers and fathers killing their children before committing suicide themselves, lest their progeny be defiled and converted. Actually, the most shocking thing for me was the incredible disdain and disgust the Jews had for the Christians - not just as their murderers, but as "worshippers of a putrefying corpse".  Sort of interesting, since nowadays we're all 'of course we worship the same God!  now, let's hold an interfaith workshop!'  Of course, I really don't think anybody believes that - I don't, anyway - but no one would ever actually say that out loud.  In American, Christians don't tell Jews that their theology is old and out-dated, and Jews don't tell Christians that we think their theology is just plain weird, what with God having a physical son and coming back to life and hey, can anyone explain that holy ghost thing? 

OK, that was a little mean, but that's the point - no one will ever say this, ever.  Tolerance (and the first amendment) are truly wondrous things.  This is for the best, because as I learned in my philosophy class last year, no one ever agrees when it comes to religion.  Life would be a lot duller and more frustrating if we spent all our time arguing about religion, and let's face it - arguing about politics is tiring enough.

Hmm.  What else did I do this weekend.  Oh, yes, I bought new sneakers at the big local running story, runtex.  Apparently, my last pair of sneakers was too small and didn't have the right amount of arch support - giving me the strange feeling of sliding around in my shoes at the same time they were going numb.  So, my new shoes were ridiculously expensive, but they seem to fit a lot better - so next time, I will remember: get high arch support. 

Thankfully, it looks like the models were wrong.  Instead of the predicted surge of 20+ feet, the surge from Ike was only abour 10-15 feet high, depending on the location.  That's pretty bad, of course, but not catastrophic.  Widespread death is not being reported, and clean-up is beginning on Galveston and in Houston.  There seems to have been massive material damage, especially in Houston, but Ike was not the city-killer it was portrayed as.  Flooding will be a problem as the day goes on, and the National Hurricane Center is worried about tornadoes in east Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas, but Ike doesn't seem to be a repeat of Carla, which spawned over 20 of them.  San Antonio probably won't get any sustained rain (sorry, kehn_shorah ) and I doubt it will rain here in Austin - which I'm thankful for, btw.  It looks like Ike will just pass Dallas, giving people up there a lot of rain but not much else - although, considering how large the Dallas metroplex area is, they might not even get that.  Still, even though Ike wasn't as bad as feared, it was bad enough.  Power has been cut in the Galveston and Houston areas, and it looks like sections of downtown Houston are impassable due to shattered glass and other debris.  On the other hand, it wasn't anything as bad as Carla or the Galveston Hurricane of 1900.  It looks like Galveston and Houston really missed a bullet...

For those of you who live in Texas, you already know Ike is making landfall in the next few hours, and it's already pretty bad.  Galveston has reportedly lost power - so have parts of Houston and the Woodlands.  Landfall is projected at around 3 this morning, so it's only going to get worse.  Weather.com has a pretty good summary of what may happen over the next day.  Weather Nerd and Alan Sullivan have been covering it since it began; Houblog  and John Little in Houston and Melissa Clouthier in The Woodlands are live-blogging it as long as they have power - which might not be for much longer, considering the reports that are coming in.  Although Ike is only a strong Category 2/weak Category 3 in terms of wind, what's really dangerous about it is it's massive size and the truly enormous storm surge that it's bringing with it.  It's hitting Galveston pretty much head-on with a projected surge of 20+ feet - one which might go very far inland, considering the geography of the Texas coast.  Various sources have said at least 20,000 people are left on Galveston (City?  Island?  County?).  Either way, that's bad news, because the storm wall around Galveston is only 17 feet high.  I'm hoping the estimate of 500,000 unevacuated people along the Texas coast is wrong - Austin has been getting evacuees pretty much all day, but I know anecdote isn't a very good reason. 

Even if you're not on the Gulf Coast, be careful.  People are comparing this to Carla or the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900, and I don't know about Dallas, but every time a bad storm comes through, San Antonio floods like crazy.  For myself, I'm staying in the dorms - I've never seen Austin in a really bad storm, so I don't know how good the drainage systems work.  Additionally, there is a great risk for tornadoes all throughout Texas as Ike moves north.  If you have a little extra money, think about donating to the Red Cross - if we're lucky, Ike will be like Carla, with a lot of damage but not many deaths; if we're really lucky, this is all horribly overblown and we'll all laugh about it later. 

And on the obligatory geo-political end: Gas is going to be very pricey for the next couple weeks, at least.  20% of it goes through Houston refineries, all of which have been shut down.   Even if Ike is not as bad as expected, it will take at least a week to set them back up.

Well, I'm going to sleep now.  We won't know how bad it is until the morning.

I had an awesome day.  Perhaps that sounds a little over-the-top, but that's what it feels like... 

First:  I'M A JUNIOR!  I got credit for the two exams I took last Friday, which gave me the hours to attain upper-division status.  I've gotten rid of two prerequisites I didn't want to take, and I can now take a lot of department classes open only to upperclassmen.  "History of the Crusades", here I come!

Secondly:  I'm not really great at Korean, but I can improve.  I can only understand about half of what the teacher says, but if I ask, she'll explain new words, and I can generally remember them.  I'm trying to be optimistic, because I have another semester after this one, and I have to improve.  Hopefully, studying will pay off.

Third:  I started taking Krav Maga self-defense.  They never caught the guy who did all those armed robberies last April, and I'm tired of feeling paranoid every time I walk around the campus.  The instructors were really nice, and we went over the right way to punch someone, kicking, and how to break a chokehold.  I'm a small woman, thus, I must reach up higher to break the hold.  Also, always protect the neck and face.  It was pretty cool, even if the gym was hard to find.

Fourth:  I RAN A MILE IN 9 MINUTES.  OK, maybe that doesn't sound very impressive to you, but even before I had my leg surgery, I wasn't able to do this.  When I was sixteen, and had been doing PT for JROTC every other day for about two years, I was only able to run a mile in ten and half minutes - I thought I was just terminally slow.  Last year, when I was doing physical therapy, I couldn't even run half a mile w/o stopping.  So, I'm super excited.  I've done better than I've ever done before, and I haven't even been training regularly.  I was so happy - the surgery and the physical therapy were so worth it.

Not going to watch the convention - I have a lot of math homework to do, and my first accounting class is tomorrow at 8.  Night!

Fucking livejournal. Messes up my damn formatting all the time.

Anyway, getting off political stuff and getting back to the original reason I started this journal, four years ago, fanfiction. I haven't wanted to write in a year or so - more like 18 months, considering my primary fandom went off the deep end and - let's face it - college took up most of my tme. But I was suddenly inspired after all the crap today to return to petty escapism, so I present the first Naruto fic I ever thought of, and the first Naruto fic I've ever publicly posted. Enjoy it!

Title: and this is how you grow
Fandom: Naruto
Characters: Kakashi, Rin
Summary: Of all the people Kakashi has ever loved, Rin is the only one he's ever told. That's probably because she isn't dead.

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So, first three days of school.  Gah.  Tiring.  So, going through the rundown of the three classes I actually went to...  Well, Korean is going to totally suck in a hilarious sort of way, because my Korean teacher only speaks Korean.  Hahahaha, did I mention I forgot most of my non-school-related vocabulary?  No?  Yeah, you see my problem.  Only the other hand...I remembered grammar-rules!  Looking on the bright-side, here...  Calculus...is calculus.  I mean, it's all stuff I've done before, but with an added part to it, but the TA is a first-year TA who obviously takes the view that 'oh hey, this is really easy, I think i'll just skip right to the answer and not explain the process!'.   Ick.  And I have to recover all my high school trig knowledge. 

FENCING IS AWESOME SO FAR.

And I got into the next accounting class and am currently in a history class that I am planning to drop for a harder history class.  Sorry, "History of the Scientific Revolution", but "History of the Crusades" beat you in the coolness dept.

Today I actually did stuff, like take credit-by-exam, so my reaction to McCain's VP pick is sort of muted.  I generally don't care too much about the VP spot, because, Dick Cheney aside, it's not a very important position.  Generally it's used as a regional shore-up - you know, weak on Northern voters?  Pick a guy from Maine as your VP!  But the reaction to Palin on the conservative blogs has been explosive - this is the most enthusiastic I've seen them for McCain.  Contrast this to Obama picking Biden - the reaction was a lot less...happy.  I don't think Biden is a bad pick, but he definitely didn't energize the base the way Palin did.  It's good for McCain, too, because while Palin holds down the base (she's good fiscally and socially), he can revert back to the moderate middle like he wants to. 

Good choice, tactically.  I mean, I was already going to vote for McCain, but I can see why he chose her instead of Romney or Pawlenty or Jindal.  Honestly, though?  I thought for sure he was going to pick Lieberman...

 So, I've been back at school for less than two days, and I've already managed to get in trouble.

Namely, I got hit by a car.

GODDAMIT.  

No, I didn't get hurt.  I was crossing one of the minor intersections on 24th, and the chick whose car I was crossing in front of decided to make a turn WHILE I WAS IN FRONT OF HER.  I guess I'm lucky the guy in the passenger seat was paying more attention than she was, because he got her to stop about two or three seconds after she started, but not BEFORE SHE HIT ME.  Luckily, I wasn't hurt too badly - I have a new, disgusting, bleeding cut on my leg, but a band-aid takes care of that - but still, what the hell, lady?  *is furious*  SHE WAS TALKING ON HER FUCKING CELL PHONE!  God, I hate that!  

And I was so relieved I hadn't been pushed out into oncoming traffic - where, let's face it, I would have been roadkill, considering the amount of traffic on the road - that I just yelled my head off at her and didn't get her name and number.  

So now my bike is broken because of her, and I can't even get her to pay for the damage.

FUCK!

Well, I'm still at the beach.  I was supposed to leave yesterday, but my brother kicked up an enormous temper tantrum and was just so incredibly unpleasant, we sent him home instead, and I stayed because my mother can't pack up the pop-up all by herself.  So I'm pretty annoyed at my terribly obnoxious brother.  I'm also worried because my computer's wireless sections has totally blown, so I've got to get a new motherboard - before I go back to school.  This worries me because I had a lot of important internships bookmarked on the computer, and it's a pain in the ass to re-do them from memory.  *sighs*  Add in all the going back to school stuff, and trying to re-do all my classes...  I just feel sorta stressed.

*sighs*  I hate moving.  I mean, I like going to new places, but the actual packing up and moving is always very stressful.  And I'm worried about various health problems, and my computer, and god, my credit by exam tests are coming up...*sighs again*.   

On the real news front: Russia invaded Geogia - proof yet again that Russia is a problem that we're going to have to deal with.  Kudos to John McCain for noticing that way back when Putin took over and Chechnya exploded. Brzenzinski compares the whole situation to Germany destroying Czechoslovakia to get the Sudetenland, or Russia conquering Finland in the '30s.   Reading the various blogs, some of whom are pro-military aid, I find myself thinking - yes, we could do it.  Georgia isn't Afghanistan or Iraq; it actually has a legitimate government that needs our help.  But let's face it - we've been in a two-front war for over six years.  How likely is military aid in this political climate?

So, I leave the internet behind for less than a week, and RUSSIA INVADES GEORGIA!  

Gah.  This always happens when I go to the beach...