Even God Rested on the Seventh Day

• What I'm Watching/Listening To/Reading:
• I just can not get the song "...And Justice For All" out of my head. "Justice" is arguably Metallica's most underrated album. Sporting mostly eight-to-ten-minute power ballads (before Whitesnake and company made power ballads mainstream and delightfully lame) including Metallica's greatest song, "One", you have to really like metal to engross yourself and find the surprisingly political messages. Find another song, period, based on a Dalton Trumbo book.
• Some discussion at work over the song "Crank That" by Soulja Boy. Really popular among the kids, apparently. Look up some of the lyrics at Urban Dictionary and you might fear greatly for the kids.
• Saw Nick Hornby has a new book out. Who knows who reads this, but it goes without saying really -- if you haven't read (and I mean read, not seen the movie) High Fidelity, make it the next book you read. No piece of writing has ever captured exactly how a guy thinks with more accuracy. Just a tip for the ladies...
• My one night home all week and I've been able to spend it watching "Hardball" and "Countdown". The 7PM-9PM block on MSNBC is a haven for all of us centrist liberals out there.
• If for no better reason, I hope the Tribe advances so they keep playing that "Cleveland Rocks" song by the Presidents of the USA. I've always loved that one.
  
• Random Thoughts/Links:
• The Russians and Iranians are working against the U.S., Transformers is the big release today, and there's a Bush in the White House. Radical.
  
• Sometimes, when I'm writing my rant and using questions to move it along, I feel like Carrie Bradshaw as the questions show up on the screen (there's a bit of a lag between the typing and the appearance of letters in this program sometimes).
  
• So apparently, some generals in Iraq feel that our armed forces have made such progress against Al-Qaeda that we should declare victory. Didn't that happen 1,628 days ago?
• Read that last link. I'm sick to my stomach right now.
• Dick Cheney and Barack Obama are related. You can't choose your family.
  
• Daily Rant:
• Ok, so I have a solution for the Iran and Russia problems. Here's what we do. The government in Iraq loves us, right? After all, we got them their jobs. So we fund them and give them weapons so they can fight Iran. And maybe we should secretly encourage the Chechens to keep the Russians off-guard. I mean, it has to work out well in the end, right? We give them money, they're our BFFs. Fool-proof. Ok, maybe not "fool"-proof, but 1% competent-proof. The more I think about it -- and I try not to, if I can help it -- I wonder if it wasn't 9/11 that changed my view of the country and world for good, but the aftermath. Am I damaged goods? Nothing inside me says no.