SOMEBODY'S IN TROUBLE Once Iraq gets sent to its room without desert, you'd better believe that Israel and Turkey won't be far behind. Foreign Policy in Focus has a long list of U.N. Security Council resolution violators posted on their site, none of which I imagine we'll be threatening to invade in the near future.

KATE'S LOOPY You lose your job, you lose your center. Kate's been chatty in an unfocused way lately, but I enjoyed a line she tossed out yesterday about having a crush on a dead writer: "If you like women, I recommend Jane Austen highly. Her brain in so sexy you want to set the house on fire."

PEACE OUT The Nobel Committee announced this morning that the Nobel Peace Prize is being awarded to former President Jimmy Carter, which makes me happy. Carter was a bit of a well-intentioned dolt as President, but in the 22 years he's been out of the maws of Washington, Carter has done amazing things around the world for peace, democracy, voter rights, human rights, and he's been a major driver in Habitat for Humanity, which has made a difference for thousands of lower income Americans. You can find more information about Carter here.

GOLDEN YEARS It was just 25 years ago that the Washington Post launched a novel idea in newspapering -- the weekly entertainment guide. Here's what the world looked like back then: "Twenty-five years ago, the Corcoran Gallery of Art didn't have air conditioning. After a visit to its retrospective of the paintings of Kenneth Nolan, grand old man of the Washington Color School, you might have stopped off at Dart Beer to pick up a six-pack of Piels, Natty Boh or, if you were hoity-toity, Tuborg. The word "microbrew" didn't exist and blaxploitation wasn't yet ironic. Moviegoers were booing Lee Van Cleef in "Mean Frank and Crazy Tony" and musical theater aficionados were driving home from the Kennedy Center humming the songs to "A Chorus Line." In a world where bottled water was still a novelty, Perrier was exotic and ethnic food meant moo goo gai pan. A BIC turntable went for $62.77 at Luskins, and, if you were into Top 40, it might have been spinning "Dancing Queen" by Abba." The intro is followed by 25 things that have changed in the world of weekends. By far the best is the whole "boy meets girl" schtick.

TO ASK OR NOT TO ASK If there's one thing the Bush White House has going for it, it's the ability to dodge and weave around virtually every issue. It's possibly the one aspect of the administration's personality that creates the most ill-will. Case in point: Yesterday, after months of discussion, a bipartisan group from Congress was set to announce the creation of an independent team to investigate the events leading up to and following September 11, 2001. The White House stepped away from the agreement at the last minute, raising fears that the probe would be delayed, or worse, scuttled. Unfortunately, this sort of activity is not limited to investigative probes -- it's part-and-parcel of the Bush psychology.

MIDDLE EASTERN MOOD SWINGS The mood in Kuwait has shifted from warm to something just below neutral in the past decade. The shift was not so gradual however -- events in Palestine and pending events in Iraq have done much to tweak low-level public opinion. While countries like Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait remain staunch allies of the American government, the subtle decline of goodwill is something worth paying attention to.

PYRAMID PUZZLERS The biggest shame about my visit to the Great Pyramids is that we spent more time trying to dodge snowglobe vendors than actually looking at the Pyramids. But, truth be told, I enjoyed the tri-lingual banter of French, German and Arabic that resulted from our attempt to not be swindled as the Americans that we were. But if I had known there was a passage that could take my soul to the Afterlife deep within the Great Pyramid of Khufu, I might have paid more attention.

TRAMPOLINE PEOPLE I tossed this info to my puppeteer friend a few weeks ago, and am excited that she followed up and is going to be presenting something (a lecture of the geometry of pie, by current accounts) at the Durham event in November. I'll be there just to be a good sport.

PREACHING TO THE CONVERTED Here's a sliver of Judith's recent post at calamondin.com about how hard it is to win an argument with her brain: "Brain: La la la. Wasn't today fun? Me: Yes. But it's 1:00 am and we're going to sleep now. Brain: Wasn't today fun? Let's think about it some more, ok? Me: No. We're going to sleep so we can get up and go to work in the morning. Brain: Ok, but first we should just think about everything we can possibly think about." I've switched to scotch in the evenings.

MAKE A BOOK I mentioned this last week. Or maybe I mentioned it the week before last. Well, Salon gives you the skinny on the Internet Bookmobile, which zips around the country printing copyright-free books and giving them away. What a nutty idea.

SETTLING THE DEBATE An impossibility, settling the debate on the issue of Iraq. But the debate opened in full force this week, and if you were fortunate enough to listen to any significant amount of live coverage you should be impressed with the quality of debate in our Congress (even if you have heartburn over the content of it). I somehow managed to walk into the last ten minutes of Senator Byrd's comments today -- what a kick-ass speaker the old coot is. This Post editorial opens with words about the debates, but delves deeper into the issue: "In the end, much of the criticism can be understood as unease with the Bush administration's approach rather than disagreement with its assessment of Saddam Hussein. The White House's backward march from war talk to the United Nations, its initial reluctance to seek congressional approval for war, its shifting rationales -- these inspired early doubts." Unfortunately, for some, those doubts remain, thanks to the Bush team.

VIKING KITTENS I started to post this, then I stopped, and then I decided that it was just too stupidly amusing to pass up. Set to Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song," you need to at least sit through the first scene change. (Warning: This is a bandwidth monster. Modems beware.)

HOLY SHOWGIRLS, BATMAN Gah. Batman on Broadway? Is Xena far-off? Oh, wait. She did a musical already.

JAWAAB NIHAA'I? It's quickly become one of the most watched television shows in the Arab World, thanks to it's handsome host and... well... apparently Arabs like bad television as much as Americans. "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" launched its Arab language spin-off a few months ago and it has soared to the top of the ratings charts. But popularity can't erase some cultural boundaries: Host George Qerdahi, a suave man from Lebanon, "sometimes seems thrown by Moroccans, whose dialect is notoriously difficult for other Arabs to understand. "We all have a problem understanding each other's dialects when we speak
purely in local dialect," said Qerdahi."

ALTMUSLIM.COM alt.muslim is an excellent source for news, information and opinion of interest to Muslim Americans, and hopefully many others. Miles and miles of well-written content.

ISHTA Egypt's Al-Ahram takes the pulse of "cool" in Cairo. It sounds like the young mods that I saw sprinkled about the city in '99 have blossomed into something that would blend right into a suburban Cleveland streetscape. Of course, I didn't spend much time in Heliopolis, or at the TGIF on the Nile, so they might have been there all along with their hip-huggers and purple hair.

EASY IRAQ UPDATES Strategic Forecasting maintains a daily summary of activity related to Iraq -- from meetings of foreign ministers to troop movements to public pronouncements. It's an easy way to stay current without reading 357 newspapers.

TURN LEFT HERE In their new book, "The Emerging Democratic Majority," John Judis of The New Republic and Ruy Teixiera of the Century Foundation argue that the national trend in politics is towards a more liberal/Democratic populace. The script follows the one used by a young Kevin Phillips more than 30 years ago -- Phillips' analysis of demographics and voting patterns predicted a Republican national majority (one that held the White House for 21 of the past 33 years). Judis and Teixiera see: "the [current] shift as bound up with changes that America has undergone in the past 30 years, 'from an industrial to a post-industrial society, from a white Protestant to a multi-ethnic, religiously diverse society...and from a society of geographically distinct city, suburb and country to one of large, sweeping post-industrial metropolises.'" That'd be a nice change.

GO TO MAASS Peter Maass shows up to his weblog only periodically, so I find few reasons to link to him often. But there are two posts of interest currently up -- one points readers to slate.com for what Maass calls a real ongoing debate about Iraq that grapples with both sides of a sticky issue, while the second are some excerpts from Granta's translations of Milosevic's jailer in Belgrade.

GEEK LOVE An amusing, enticing or disturbing look at the growing market for sci fi eroticism, which isn't all that new an idea. (Come on, what was the "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" if it wasn't sci fi eroticism?) But now there's xxxspacegirls.com and faeriefantasies.com -- among others -- filling gaps we never even suspected existed. The webmistress of the latter site got the idea, "coming home from a Renaissance Faire, when I realized that everybody there would totally buy this genre of porn. There are all these guys who fantasize about fucking elves from Dungeons & Dragons." Apparently, there are other guys who fantasize about the dragons.

MAN SAVES ART Bob Massey now has a website explaining his pending opera/storytelling event. It's called "The Nitrate Hymnal," it was commissioned by the Washington Performing Arts Society, and it premieres in January. Bob is one of my heroes. I can't wait to see this production.

WHY I LOVE DOTTERING OLD MEN I love me a good filibuster, and Senator Robert Byrd is gearing up for a good one, it seems. He made an excellent speech on October 3 about conflict with Iraq, or at least it reads well. And that holds true whether you think he's an old fool or a wise statesman. I tend to think they are part-and-parcel of the same thing. He excerpted a telling letter from Abraham Lincoln, who wrote: ""The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood." It's even worse when Presidents place themselves there.

I'D GET CABLE JUST TO WATCH THIS From an Associated Press story late last week: "BAGHDAD, Iraq -- An Iraqi vice president offered an unusual suggestion Thursday for solving the U.S.-Iraq standoff: Presidents Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush should fight a duel to settle their differences and spare their people the ravages of war... (Vice President Taha Yassin) Ramadan made his remarks without giving any outward sign he was joking, although reporters who were present detected a note of irony in his voice. "

GIVE PEACE A CHUCKLE The Boondocks is currently in a winning streak with its two editorial takes on the Iraq debate and on the Jesse Jackson vs. "The Barbershop" fiasco. "And so Mr. 'President,'" writes Huey, "there are many reasons to avoid war... Third, to repair the long and intimate friendship your father had with Saddam Hussein during the Iran/Iraq war..."

PAST PLUPERFECT The National Security Archives at George Washington University are a treasure trove of archival documents on some of the most gripping, or absurd, events of the last century. Their "September 11 Source Books" provide a glimpse into many of the origins of the United States' current situation -- from the role we played in the de-evolution of Afghanistan in the 1970s to the role of Special Forces in the hunt for bin Laden. There's also a fascinating investigative look at the largest recorded modern outbreak of anthrax -- an accidental release in 1979 at Sverdlovsk, Siberia.

LIFE DURING WARTIME "Yaser Esam Hamdi, who is probably a U.S. citizen, has been imprisoned in this country for 187 days without access to a lawyer and with no charges filed against him. Jose Padilla, also a citizen, has been held for 122 days." So begins an editorial in Monday's Washington Post. As these cases slowly make their way through the appeals courts, the Post argues -- rightly -- that American citizens, regardless of their actions, should be afforded consistent rights, especially rights that are openly adjudicated. In fact, it is in the best interest of both the public and the government that open, fair trials be the standard in cases tied to terrorism and conflict. "The value of the adversarial process is already on display in the case of the alleged terrorist cell operating in Lackawanna, N.Y., where the government has had to back off of one potentially damaging piece of evidence, and defense lawyers have begun attacking the government's evidence more generally. Such sparring refines and augments confidence in the factual basis for detention."

GETTING THE WORLD IN YOUR EAR CANALS Three CDs that are spending a lot of time entertaining me on long drives are passionate blends of techno, rock and assorted Middle Eastern and North African traditional rhythms, and yet the music of Rachid Taha, Cheb Mami and Natachi Atlas are each richly unique. BBC Radio hosted its first Awards for World Music this year, and the companion website offers plenty of unique listening fodder from around the world.

JERRY WILLIAMS UNMASKED Yah, if only. Jerry is a local producer I work with, as well as a friend who somehow manages to see a half dozen movies a week. I was hoping this brief interview in the Times-Dispatch would dish some dirt on him, but I guess I'll settle for his highbrow take on video production.

GET THEE THY ROOTS The Virginia Library has been delving into the roots of old-time Virginia music this past year, and a timely new release gives depth and sound to the homegrown sounds of the music that filtered from Virginia's nooks and hollows in the days before the stock market crashed and the Great Depression of 1929 sucker-punched the music industry. "Virginia Roots: The 1929 Richmond Sessions" is a two-CD set compiled by former punk rocker Ron Curry who apparently was able to shake the goo of shlock-rockers GWAR from his boots to rediscover the original American mongrel music.

THE GIFT OF TRAVEL, FATHERS, SONS Better than a well-crafted tale is a well-crafted tale that glimmers with heart and awareness, which is how I see Michael Powell's piece on his long-delayed return to Asia with his 14-year-old son. A reflection on growing up, on letting go, on blinking to clear the muddle and chaos from your eyes in order to see the saffron and flowers -- all of these things, and more.