Japandamonium!!!

OY, didn't get almost anything good done today. Time is getting tighter, and I'm not getting more productive. I am really stressed about this Bob Dylan paper, partly because I'm utterly intimidated by the material, partly because I'm not sure how to structure my approach to it; ayyyyyy, this will be very difficult I fear, and I think that my product may not be very good. Oh well, plenty of fish in the sea, and plenty of them that I'm supposed to catch before the month is up; I will have to just grin and bear it if this one's undersized.

The most fun thing ever in the world today was after dinner (which was a tremendous and sumptous feast of pasta and meat, with new ingenious ideas from me. simmered some cut up zucchini in olive oil, garlic, and ground pepper, and took them out to put to the side; kneaded paprika, parsley, salt, pepper, and lots of cut up chili peppers into a lot of ground beef; onions and more pepper into the olive oil to change color, adding more chilis at intervals (so the strong flavor gets into each stage of the cooking, and gets refreshed instead of steaming off); added meat, stirred in onions and chilis; added more spices, some Thyme (but not too much - I mean, who has any Thyme to spare these days?), oregano, pinch of basil, more parsley; brown meat with onions and chilis, add zucchini again, pour on base sauce from a jar (I know, lame, but it's cost effective for us); and voila! Pasta Sauce! It was splendid and filling, and all the right kinds of gentle spicy, and we ate like kings.). So after our kingly feast, during cleanup, i had packed all the leftover sauce and pasta into our tupperware, and still had handfulls of pasta leftover that wouldn't fit. So I started throwing them at John. We didn't get into a pasta war, instead, he stood there washing dishes with his head turned to the side and facing me, as I threw piece after piece of curly fuculli at his open mouth, and missed every single time. We must have been at it for a half an hour, first chuckling, then giggling, and finally laughing so hard I damn near had an athsma attack. It must have been sixty pieces of pasta, all missed. I hit him in the eye enough times that he thought I was aiming for it. Pasta got stuck to his neck and the back, the BACK mind you, of his shirt. Pasta on the forehead, in the dishes he was washing, in his collar, in his nose, on the wall behind him, and all all over the floor. And the whole time, John, implacable and unperterbed, letting me have try after failed laughing try, with his mouth gaping wide open. Highsterical.

Advising our pigheaded political leaders, those men dragging us heavily towards doom as surely as a weighted chain will haul a drowning man to the Locker, Sir Winston says: "Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."