I feel so vile. I think maybe it’s food poisoning…but I guess it could be a stomach flu…either way…bleh! It’s so hard to keep a toddler amused when you’re spending the vast majority of your time wishing you were dead…

In other news, the Henry Rollins show was incredible. Much funnier than I expected it to be…and damn, that man is aging well. The only suckage was the fact that Deb and I stood in the rain for almost 2 hours waiting for the venue to get it’s act together. I was so wet that my waterproofed, biker jacket actually got soaked all the way through. Now to figure out how to recondition my 20 year old jacket…as mink oil doesn’t seem to be doing it. Time to call the motorcycle shop and ask them what I should do. Surely bikers get wet all the time.

In world news, Israel’s ambassador to Sweden is acting like an asshat, which of course, Sharon and the rest of the Likud support. Of course, Sharon knows a thing or two about floating in a pool of blood himself.

For a point of reference, I don’t accept the characterization of the piece as “glorifying the murder of 17 people” — it’s about the woman Hanadi Jaradat, and the sea of blood that the Palestinians and Israelis find themselves creating. Who was Hanadi Jaradat? Jaradat was a 29 year old lawyer from Jenin. She had lost a lot to the Israelis and the intifada–eight years earlier, the distant cousin whom she was to marry and whom she loved was killed in an encounter with Israeli security forces before they could marry. Her cousin, Salah, and brother, Fadi were shot down in cold blood on the night of June 12 at the family home in front of her eyes and those of the cousin’s pregnant wife and two year old son. Fadi, initially wounded, was taken by soldiers and shot again to make sure he was dead. When the family got the body back to bury it, Hanadi reported to Al-Arab Al-Yum that her brother had been shot in every part of his body. Her brother’s wedding would have happened three days later, on June 16, to eighteen year old Abir. After Fadi died, Hanadi became the breadwinner for the family because her father was ill with cancer and could no longer work. The only thing that had improved his health was Fadi’s upcoming wedding. With Fadi’s death, her father was left a broken man. She said: “If our nation cannot realize its dream and the goals of the victims, and live in freedom and dignity, then let the whole world be erased.” (originally published in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz Ticking Bomb)

Of course, after the Israeli ambassador’s little temper tantrum, other Israeli’s broke into the museum and pushed the museum director down the stairs. Because, if someone doesn’t immediately agree with you and give you everything you want, apparently the Israeli’s have the right to “punish” those people.

I get the art. I don’t much care for it, but I don’t much care for most current art. But, I’m tired of people who use religion as an excuse for bad/immoral behavior and I’m tired of these bloody lunatics purporting to speak for the rest of the Semites. As long as these loose cannons are applauded for acting like spoiled brats, people will point to them as justification for continued discrimination/fear/hatred of the race as a whole. Were it my country, and I the undisputed monarch…I would ask the ambassador to leave, or ask for him to be withdrawn, and give Israel a chance to replace him with a diplomat.