ARCHIVES - 1996 to FOREVER Nilknarf News:

I did have a fairly relaxing day, fraught, of course, with the inevitable difficulty of mailing checks to the government. For the last ten years, I've filed my taxes really early, because the governments have owed me money. Not this year, though.

Tours of duty in Iraq are extended. Poor planning on someone's part, and it wasn't me, and I didn't vote for the sonovabitch, either. More and more people are agreeing with me on the fact that we shouldn't have been there in the first place, but what to do now?

If we pull out, we will look like fools, and weak ones at that. The terrorists will declare a victory, and the rest of the world will breathe a sigh of relief.

And then... then we can rid our country of fools, at least in the higher echelons, through fair elections, perhaps even monitored by the UN.

And protect our borders and our citizens.

And then we can rebuild America, back to the standards that we know we are capable of. Truly leaving no child behind, even if it means that the rich old oil men can only afford two Rolls-Royces instead of three. Feedng, clothing and sheltering those who are hungry and helpless and homeless and giving hope to the hopeless.

Yeah, we could do all of that. All we have to do is remove greed from politics.

Yeah, yeah, dream on, dummy Doug.

Anyway, I didn't get up until 10:00, and then I just hung around the house mostly, doing not much of anything. Karen went to Drew's school, it was grandmother's day, and Karen had a lot of fun, she said. It was a beautiful day, and warm and windy. We had guys working on the deck and the gutters today, and they're gonna do the ground work for the shop tomorrow. I'm starting to get excited about that!

I haven't shaved for the last three days, and I'm looking pretty scraggly, I am. The hair is still salt-n-pepper, and I don't really like the feeling of hair on my head and face, so it's going to all come off again tonight. It was just a thought, anyway, although Karen would like it better if I did have hair, even the sparse amount that I can grow. But I still think that hair is a socially-acceptable vanity, but a vanity nonetheless.

Is shaving your head and face a vanity? I don't really think so, but on this matter I might be wrong. But I don't think so. And it's not sour grapes, either. And again, I could be wrong. I don't really know, deep down, that if I were genetically inclined to have a full head of hair, what I would think. It's kinda like trying to imagine being black... you will never, truly know what that's like if you're white, and there's no way that you can fully understand. Or being dead, yeah, you can imagine all you want, but you'll never know until you die. And then, of course, you'll never know. But you can guess all you want to, hell, it's free, and this is still kinda America. Not to slight my international readers, of course, they have all of the freedoms granted to them by their own governments, I'm sure.

Enough simple philosophy, I'm gonna take a shower and shave and go to bed, back to work tomorrow.