I LEAVE YOU FOR THE WEEKEND WITH HOMAGE Que Sera Sera remains my lighthearted destination of choice, because Sarah B. hits home runs without using a lot of transitions. There were two today, first her homage to Target department stores:

I wish I was in a serious committed relationship with Target, because everytime I go, they've gotten better. I feel kind of bad, because I go in there without brushing my hair and maybe I'm in a rush or a bad mood, but Target never lets me down. If anything, Target is constantly improving and surprising me. I might think Target is at the top of its game and just can't get any better because these shoes don't look cheap and this lamp is great and affordable and oh yeah I needed dryer sheets, and then Target goes and pulls out all the stops with fabulous new shower curtains and stationery and watches. If they opened an apartment section, I'd totally move in with Target, and I'm not even that kind of girl.

Or maybe Andy Warhol is right, and we all really do get 15 minutes of fame, but it happens in Japan and you never even knew about it. There could have been a wave of little plastic electronic toys or schoolgirls' underwear in vending machines or crazy flash videos ALL FEATURING YOU, and you were just sitting there in America, crying in your car on the way home from work and eating your Healthy Choice dinner and watching Judging Amy and not getting laid, totally oblivious to the brief frenzy you created overseas.

THE MINISTRY ACCORDING TO JOURGENSEN Aggressive rockers beware. Ministry -- "the high priests of industrial rock" -- has returned, and Al Jourgensen is apparently louder than ever.

TAKE IT OFF, POP STAR I'm sure I've mentioned that Canada's New Pornographers' second CD came out this week on Matador Records. Did I mention that everyone loves it?

If there was ever a question that Vancouver's New Pornographers had a deft handle on pop hooks, it was erased when the band was joined onstage in 2001 by former Kinks frontman Ray Davies. The fact that he chose to perform a song, ''Starstruck,'' that had never been played with his former band speaks volumes to the New Pornographers' abilities. And their sophomore effort, ''Electric Version,'' roots them more firmly in the pop pantheon.

IRAQI GUIDE TO GETTING ALONG If there's one thing we can all be sure of it's that Iraqis will spend a lot of time in the next several years being angry at something -- the U.S., their neighbors, the Baath Party, the Kurds, the Shiites. There's no shortage of groups to be pissed at. But Slate's David Plotz has some ideas to keep the cauldron from a full boil.

Hatred is deep. It's ornery. It resists rhetoric, education, antibiotics. No one who's not smoking something really expects Iraq to cure its resentments and ease into California-like tolerance. But even if Iraqis aren't going to love each other, you can discourage them from killing each other. Iraq will almost certainly experiment with the various traditional methods for minimizing tensions: Federalism will defuse conflict by granting self-government to ethnically homogenous regions. Proportional representation could guarantee every identity group a voice in national political affairs.

RATTLED BY THE RUSH Recently, I tried to figure out why I actually like the WB show Gilmore Girls. Slate tells me: I'm attracted by the high-speed, overly-clever banter. And also the camerwork.

Sound syrupy? It's not. Because it's fast. Dialogue coaches were hired when the show premiered to help Graham and Bledel with elocution so they wouldn't miss words in their Morklike spiels. Gilmore Girls also eschews stagnant, sentimental camerawork, especially close-ups on trembling lips and teary eyes. Instead, Sherman-Palladino shoots doubles, triples, even crowds—shots of more than one person. This seemingly simple choice, too rarely made in Hollywood, adds interest to a show while making it considerably harder to produce. If one actor misses a line in a conversation, producers can't later record pick-up sound and run it under the image of the listening actor; they have to get the line right, in that very take, with both—or all—actors present. Or go to another take. (Sherman-Palladino regularly shoots a dozen.)

SALAM IS BACK I posted the other day about the return of Salam Pax's "Where Is Raed?" web log. Apparently, he's back to regular posting, which gives some insight into the life of an Iraqi in Baghdad.

I have made a very un-salam decision today. I let Raed talk me into going along with him on his next two day trip to the south. I am a bit of a coward; I am not dealing too well with all the bad things around me in Baghdad. I move thru the city with a wince. And what he has been telling me about his trip last week made me just want to crawl deeper into my cocoon. So what is Raed up to? Raed has been working for the last two weeks with a small outfit that is calling itself Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict [CIVIC], they think about the acronyms before the name, don’t they? They are a very small team of volunteers and almost-volunteers (I mean they are getting paid much less than their effort deserves) who are going around residential districts that have seen military action with these forms and trying to get as much information as they can about civilian deaths and injuries. They are also collecting hospital records in order to come to an estimation of the number of civilian casualties. Until now they have around 5000 injuries and deaths in Baghdad and they are starting to form teams in other Iraqi cities. This is what he wants to drag me into. We will go to Karbala, Samaweh, Naseriyah then basrah. And back thru Kut. These names should be familiar they have been thru quite a bit during the war. Raed has already been to these places, with the exception of Kut, and has put together teams there.

PLEASED TO MEET YOU, WON'T YOU FORGET MY NAME Kiss Machine is asking its readers to complete a brief form to introduce yourself for an upcoming feature in the self-described "conga line of arts and culture."

YOUR $29 DOLLAR TAX CUT The bottom 80% of American tax-payers will get a whopping $29.50 as a result of Bush's dividend tax cut, while the top 1% will net an additional $11,483.00 is ready spending money, according to a chart released by Henry Waxman's office. Even better, Bill Gates would make out with millions! I always knew President Bush was the populist, man-of-the-people sort.

A new report released by Rep. Waxman shows that while President Bush's plan to eliminate personal income tax on dividends would have little impact on the average American, the three top executives at "Fortune 100" corporations would share an estimated tax savings of nearly $120 million each year. More than 20 top executives would each receive annual tax savings of over $1 million.

A NEW DECK OF CARDS John Warner, who is not Virginia's senior Senator but does teach at Virginia Tech University, put his own deck of cards together after the U.S. forces issued their Iraqi Most Wanted deck.

Card: Jack of Ass Name: Professor Jack Wealthington Overall rank: 32 Date of offense: Fall semester, 1990 Nature of offense: Killed (temporarily) enjoyment of literature/offended fashion Description of offense: While sleeping off hangover during class, required each student to ‘count’ the number of references to eyes in The Great Gatsby. Also, actually wore sports coat with elbow patches.

A DIGITAL OASIS David Ignatius makes a bold call for the heads of three of America's most successful technology companies to fill an information void in Iraq and help create a new Iraqi economy built on the backbone of networked systems.

WHEN HEROES PASS Walter Sisulu died this week, leaving a void of quiet moral leadership in South Africa. Sisulu spent his life fighting for freedom and equality, battling apartheid, hoping for a future where his children would know justice. And when that time came, he was a quiet victor.

His death Monday, at 90, takes yet another icon, yet another of the aging Mandela contemporaries. After the death of Govan Mbeki two years ago at the age of 91, Sisulu's passing leaves Mandela, 84, as the sole survivor of the trio of men, those courageous co-conspirators and political convicts, who outlived apartheid and became the elder statesmen of the new South Africa.

Sisulu held no title, beyond that of hero -- and an unassuming one at that, with his approachable, easy manner and quick smile. Though he was ill much of the time, he and his wife were frequent fixtures on South Africa's political and social scene. To see him, as I did frequently while based in South Africa in the 1990s, was to recall how far the nation had come; to realize how long its struggle had lasted.

Sisulu's life spanned it all. He was born in 1912, just after the end of British colonial rule but at the very start of joint British-Afrikaner collusion on anti-African policies. He worked in the deadly gold mines and as a "kitchen boy" before embarking on a political and business career.

And much of that life was in tandem with his famed comrade, Mandela. The two had been close for decades, almost as alter egos.

"His absence has carved a void," Mandela said in a statement after Sisulu's death. "A part of me is gone."

So close were Mandela and Sisulu that the former rarely made important personal or political decisions without consulting the latter. The fact -- if not the substance -- of those consultations was so well known that the South African Mail & Guardian weekly newspaper affectionately lampooned them in a weekly column titled "Dear Walter." In it, an eerily realistic but alas fictitious Mandela penned hilariously tedious public letters to Sisulu on all manner of governmental minutiae and the political gossip of the day.

If heroes are borne of struggle and perseverence, Walter Sisulu earned the title many times over.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF AFRICA If you frequently think of Africa as a continent of chaos and tragedy, a land without hope, a failed cluster of nations, then this compelling series of photos is for you. It truly is an amazing land, and filled with dynamic culture.

THE SLOW ROAD TO CONFUSION AVENUE It's no wonder Iraqis are frustrated -- a decade of sanctions was followed by a month of bombing and conflict, which has been further compounded by a month of low-level anarchy. There is no clean water, electricity remains unreliable and many people are out of work. And it's no wonder the American teams on the ground are overwhelmed -- for the above reasons and many more. But you have to ask where the game book is. Did the Bush administration planning teams who have anticipated this moment for months -- if not years -- honestly believe that hey wouldn't have to figure out how to repair and restart utilities, demine fields, collect weapons, reconstitute police and hospital and educational systems? Was there even a plan?

Sabih Azzawe is a retired police officer in Baghdad:

Azzawe, 58, who used to investigate homicides, counsels patience. We need to find a way to let Garner and his people know that we want to help him, that we support democracy, he says. We need a leader, another retired officer says, someone to give us orders. In a spontaneous voice vote and show of hands, the protesters decide to elect Azzawe, even though he's not a military man.

Azzawe says he's been trying to meet Garner and other U.S. officials for weeks. He kept telling every American soldier he could find that he had "important information" to bring to the military, but got mired in a bureaucratic maze.

Come to my neighborhood in Dora, he says, and you'll see this evidence for yourself. "I found missiles there."

So this evening, he guides a Washington Post reporter and a photographer through a dust-blown residential section of town whose most distinctive features include huge, undeveloped lots whirling with trash and a sprawling Christian seminary founded by Chaldeans. Partially hidden behind a wall near the seminary's dormitory are five white missiles, about 30 feet long, still on their mobile launchers. The line of missiles stretches more than a hundred yards.

Locals identify them as armed surface-to-air missiles. They say they've seen other SAMs and Al Samoud missiles, and even more war machinery, stockpiled inside the seminary's now vacant dormitory.

NEW YORK IN FOCUS A great photo essay on New York, presented by The Morning News and The Cross Atlantic Report.

THE LIFE OF BRIAN The Idler introduces a new section, designed to encourage its readers-cum-contributors to look at life through the lense of happiness and bliss.

We are introducing a new web project. It is based on a wonderful piece of Chinese writing called Chin’s Thirty Three Happy Moments. Chin Shengt’an was a 17th century playwright who once found himself stranded with a friend in a temple for ten days because of a rainstorm. While thus secluded, the pair compiled a list of the truly happy moments in life. The wonderful thing about Chin’s Happy Moments is their lack of piety. Material pleasures are not rejected in favour of loftier ones.

ALTERNATIVE AFRICA The Mail & Guardian's fantastic phooto section, Through the Lens, takes a gander at the annual Miss Gay Soweto beauty pageant.

A MUST-READ HART TO HEART This interview with Gary Hart, in which he announces he is not a candidate for President in 2004, succinctly captures three important things: 1) the problem with the Bush administration, 2) the problem with the Democratic field and 3) the ideas that matter in 2004.

1) The President: Bush is still "inexperienced" as the chief executive, having pushed ineffective tax cuts that have failed to kick-start the economy. Bush is hiding a "stealth agenda" of radical federal cutbacks from the American people. In evaluating Bush on three key leadership areas, Hart gave the president nearly failing grades on his stewardship of the economy and as a head of state but relatively high marks as commander-in-chief, based on successes in Afghanistan and Iraq... If Bush were truly a strong president, he wouldn't need to spend the $200 million his supporters plan to raise for the 2004 election. The popular president is vulnerable if an experienced Democrat proposes new economic policies rather than simply defending the welfare safety net.

2) The Democrats: But the Democrats offer little opposition, he added. While Bush and aides such as Paul Wolfowitz foment a revolution in U.S. foreign relations, "where's Joe Biden?" Hart asked, referring to the U.S. senator from Delaware who is a self-professed expert on international policy... Some Democrats are running as "crypto-Republicans," he said, instead of providing their own ideas. "We have become reactionary liberals, holding on to the gains of the past," he said.

3) The Ideas: The president should lead Americans in a campaign for energy independence, using higher gas mileage requirements and alternative fuels to help extricate the need for Middle East oil from foreign policy... Consumers max out their credit cards to prop up the American economy, a trend that can't be sustained. The United States needs to move away from constantly growing material consumption as its all-encompassing goal by using the tax code to encourage savings... Terrorists will strike U.S. soil again, and domestic security is woefully unprepared to prevent it or respond to it... Americans can't go it alone in foreign policy, and need to rebuild international allies and regional coalitions to handle problems such as North Korea's nuclear weapons or a new Palestinian state.

If an effective Democratic message must include bitter medicine - you're spending too much, we can't save the world alone - then how does a 2004 candidate get people to swallow it, Hart was asked. "You explain it. You explain it again," he said. "I've made a career out of talking up to people. The American people are not stupid."

TECHNOLOGY DOES SOMETHING USEFUL The flexible, electronic book. Sassy!

For some people, nothing can replace the joy of cracking the spine of a new book or spreading the Sunday paper across the breakfast table. But researchers hope to one day replace traditional ink and paper with electronic displays that bend and fold like paper, yet can also be erased and reused again and again. A report published today in the journal Nature moves scientists one step closer to electronic newspapers and wearable computer screens. It describes a flexible electronic ink display just three times the width of a human hair that can be viewed from almost any angle.

The new display is comprised of a thin-film transistor (TFT) array, which can impart both positive and negative charges to different areas of its surface, and an electricity-conducting layer of clear fluid. Within this layer are millions of tiny capsules of black and white pigments that respond to charge. Thus, a negative voltage on the TFT causes white particles to move to the surface while a positive one moves black particles to the top to create the appearance of print. Yu Chen and his colleagues at E Ink Corporation report that the display can be bent 20 times and rolled into a cylinder with a diameter of 4 millimeters without compromising its performance.

I GUESS THEY CALL THEM OUR SALAD DAYS Take former Richmond alt.tunester Andrew Beaujon and mix heartily with a large dose of Dischord Records. The result? As close to a perfect take on the music and ethos that shaped my life as any you're likely to find.

Andrew's been writing for Spin Magazine for quite some time now, and recently tackled the 20th anniversary of D.C.'s legendary Dischord Records, home to such stand-out, critically essential (and relatively unknown) bands as Rites of Spring, Minor Threat, Gray Matter, Fugazi, Smart Went Crazy, Jawbox, Q and Not U... the list is long. Dischord made its mark by building a veritable treasure trove of music -- all local bands from the Washington, D.C., scene -- and by playing fair with the bands and the fans: CDs run about $10 and the label and bands split the profits 50-50.

But with Dischord, the message always mattered. And no voice was louder on the punk rock preacher circuit than label founder Ian MacKaye's.

"Is there anyone here who doesn't know what straight edge is?" Not a single hand goes up. It's a rainy evening this past September, and MacKaye is at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville to address a theater full of students. Most of the attendees are clean-cut suburban youngsters who reverently identify each D.C.-area band on the mix tape the organizer plays before tonight's program. With the patient tone of someone who's been lecturing crowds for years, MacKaye starts at the beginning, explaining that he'd been distraught by the way his friends had embraced drug use in the late '70s and how he had articulated that message through his first three bands, especially Minor Threat. "We had a song called 'Out of Step,'" he says. "The lyrics went: 'Don't smoke / Don't drink / Don't fuck / At least I can fucking think.'" He called the advantage abstinence gave him the "straight edge." "I never imagined I'd still be discussing that song 21 years later," he says. "I've often wondered how Lou Reed feels about writing 'Heroin.'"

But a funny thing happened on the way to the lecture circuit: Minor Threat's think-for-yourself message--along with their songwriting chops, which made them a benchmark for all hardcore punk since--sounded a chord with thousands of kids, many of whom felt kinship with songs like "Filler" and "Screaming at a Wall." They were "out of step with the world," and they'd just found an articulate spokesman, even if he was something of a loudmouth...

Throughout the '80s, MacKaye was one of punk's most unique voices. His short-lived pre-Fugazi band, Embrace, is credited with expanding hardcore's expressive palette, unwittingly inventing emo. ("We don't use that word," MacKaye says quickly.) And by tapping the brakes on Minor Threat's high-speed squall, the post-hardcore Fugazi became one of the most popular alternative-rock groups of the '90s, though their business principles--generally saying "no" to anything they couldn't control--usually got more attention than their music, an innovative fusion of hardcore punk, dub reggae, and confessional rock...

The lyrics of "Straight Edge" claimed that he was just like everybody else, except that he didn't like to get high. But the first part of that message never really caught on. MacKaye has been viewed as a humorless punk-rock Savonarola ever since. "I hate how everyone forgets how much of [punk] was about joy and funniness," says Jenny Toomey, whose former record label, Simple Machines, was modeled after Dischord; she now directs a foundation that lobbies Congress on behalf of musicians and music consumers...

Yet Dischord's reputation as a grim monastery endures, though that often has more to do with MacKaye's combative public persona than with the music on the label. "In D.C., there was a feeling that you could do it yourself," says Dave Grohl, whose pre-Nirvana band Scream recorded for Dischord. "It seemed like everyone inspired everyone else to make a difference. In places like New York or Los Angeles, the music scene was overwhelming or intimidating. D.C. was encouraging. Everyone felt confident that any effort he or she made was worthy."

TURNING FICTIONS INTO FACTS Novelist Diana Abu-Jaber wonders at the lack of conversation, of curiosity, of inquiry that drove Americans in recent months as we waged an offensive war alternately linked to terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, regional stability, morality and regime change. At the heart of her opinion piece are questions of fear and nervousness -- What is it about dialogue that frightens people?

In an op-ed piece in October, I urged readers to be courageous and direct in expressing their feelings and questions about Iraq. I was inundated with e-mails from people telling me about their fear of doing just that. Over and over people spoke of their fear of being labeled un-American, unpatriotic or, more recently, of being accused of not supporting the troops. This is not the sign of a free society.

This fearfulness strikes me as pernicious, because variety, complexity, even contradiction are signs of strength -- in a person, in a family and certainly in a nation. Now we are presented not only with our own private fears but with the shrinking of our own media. If the world is ever going to close the fatal cracks opening up between nations and peoples, it's crucial that we start questioning the omnipotence of our mainstream media, for all of us to ask for more searching queries about the true effectiveness of war and occupation, and to demand -- of our media, our writers, our scholars and leaders -- a narrative of Iraq and the United States that is more than a small sliver of the true story.

THERE'S RAED Since last fall, a growing number of people followed events in Baghdad as seen through the eyes of Salam Pax, whose identity was frequently in question -- was he really an architect living in Baghdad, or a CIA plant or just some smart kid in Brooklyn? Salam's web log ceased on March 24, as the bombing in Baghdad entered its second week. He returned yesterday.

It's harder to actually read from the bottom up, but that's the best way to absorb events as described by Salam. Either way, his lengthy summary of the past six weeks is one of the few firsthand views of Iraq you're likely to find. Here's how it ends as he discusses taxi drivers:

Besides asking for outrageous fares (you can’t blame them gas prices have gone up 10 times, if you can get it) but they start grumbling and mumbling and at a point they would say something like “well it wasn’t like the mess it is now when we had saddam”. This is usually my cue for going into rage-mode. We Iraqis seem to have very short memories, or we simply block the bad times out. I ask them how long it took for us to get the electricity back again after he last war? 2 years until things got to what they are now, after 2 months of war. I ask them how was the water? Bad. Gas for car? None existent. Work? Lots of sitting in street tea shops. And how did everything get back? Hussain Kamel used to literally beat and whip people to do the impossible task of rebuilding. Then the question that would shut them up, so, dear Mr. Taxi driver would you like to have your saddam back? Aren’t we just really glad that we can now at least have hope for a new Iraq? Or are we Iraqis just a bunch of impatient fools who do nothing better than grumble and whine? Patience, you have waited for 35 years for days like these so get to working instead of whining.

CAPITALISM DOESN'T HAVE TO = STOOPID Slate's David Plotz lays out some interesting ideas to help kick-start (and maintain) Iraq's economy. The sad thing is that all of these ideas have been tested and proven their merit. They just don't feel real good to the Captains of Industry who are guiding all of us to a brighter, better tomorrow. Yeah, that's a little cynicism. Anyway, Plotz suggests seven ideas, including:

1. Microcredit. Pioneered in Bangladesh during the '80s, microcredit has become a global cause célèbre in the past five years (see: Hillary Clinton). Microcredit operations—usually subsidized by governments or NGOs—extend tiny loans, sometimes less than $25, to the poor to help them start small businesses, improve their farms, and fund education. (These are loans that regular banks won't make, because the administrative costs are too high.) Microcredit is the most dramatic way to encourage entrepreneurship among the poorest. In the best cases, it has harvested repayment rates of 98 percent and recorded genuine improvements in living standards. (Some microcredit enterprises are even profitable.) Microcredit operations have particularly benefited women, who receive lots of loans.

2. Hernando de Soto. The Peruvian author of The Mystery of Capital is perhaps the world's trendiest economist, a genius of property rights... De Soto's key insight, formulated in the mid-'80s and refined since, is that the failure to acknowledge the property rights of the developing world's poor shuts them out of the economy and cripples capitalism. Successful nations make it easy to establish property rights. Those property rights, in turn, fuel the mortgage and credit market that is the foundation of small business and economic growth. Poor people, de Soto says, have plenty of capital in the form of houses and unregistered businesses, but they can't "unlock" that capital because the legal system won't acknowledge their property rights. For example, many of the world's poor own houses on land that they can't get formal title to: As a result, they can't borrow against their houses, so they lack the capital to start businesses. De Soto has worked to simplify property rights, making it much easier for people to secure title to things they effectively own and to register businesses legally. In Peru, de Soto and his think tank have pushed to cut paperwork and costs for registering land and businesses. As a result, they claim, 6.3 million poor Peruvians now have title to their land, increasing their income by $3.2 billion. The time it takes to register a business has dropped from 300 days to one; 380,000 businesses have been legalized, and 560,000 legal new jobs have been created.

FRIENDS SHOULDN'T LET FRIENDS WRITE COLUMNS When my friend Tanya escaped (read: returned) to the West Coast six years ago, little did I know that the little insights into her life I gained across the workplace cubicle would gain momentum. Blame it on her columns -- first for the newspaper in the tiny town of Pullman, Washington, and currently for a paper in Davis, California. And why wouldn't I want to know about her newfound devotion to ABBA? After all, I had to live through the Quadratic Traingle of her loving "Friends," "Melrose Place," "Beverly Hills 90120" and the band The Sundays for an entire year.

When I was in high school, I had an insane crush on Adam and the Ants. For the uninformed among you, they were a new wave band in the 1980's. Memorable hits include, umm, well, there weren't any. They were a well-deserved flash-in-the-pan.

However, at 16, this fact escaped me. In fact, the first concert I ever attended was Adam and the Ants at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. Wow, I was speechless.

The editor of our high school newspaper had an insane crush on ME and asked if I would like to write a review of the concert. I'm embarrassed to say I used the words "greatest band in the history of the world" more than once and truly believed they would attain supergroup status.

That review taught me a lot about the proper use of superlatives and exclamation points - what I've learned is there aren't enough in the universe to describe my newest obsession - ABBA!

ICELLANDIC DREAM DATES I just really like Bara's site. Wander around a while. Get your hands dirty.

WHEN CULTURES COLLIDE Punk rock. Puppets. It's like chocolate and peanut butter, almost.

Hellcat Pictures announced the release of Live Freaky! Die Freaky! an animated/puppetry film set in 3069, where, because of war and environmental catastrophe (and possibly a monumental cliche), the earth is a post-apocalyptic wasteland where its inhabitants struggle to survive, until, in the epitome of bad taste, mass murdering sven gali Charles Manson returns from the dead to save the world.

THE TRUTH AIN'T NOTHIN' BUT THE TRUTH AIN'T NOTHIN' The Memory Hole is dedicated to keeping journalism honest. Yes, yes, I know. The little voice in your head just rang out, "Impossible! Even Mr. Magical can't blow a bubble with a lollipop!"

SEE YA, B In two weeks, my Tuesday nights will be a little more free and my heart a little emptier.

A DIFFERENT TAKE ON THE NEWS Jihad Unspun's worldview seems pretty basic -- on one side of their homepage you will find links to "Mainstream News," and on the other are links to "Uncensored News." It's an interesting place to meander if you want to look at world events through a different lense.

HOMECOMING Kanan Makiya returned to southern Iraq last month for the first time in more than three decades, and found more -- and less -- than he had hoped to discover. Some of what he found was encouraging -- Iraqis and returning exiles had similar objectives, and the first gathering of Iraqis in Nassiriyah was full of optimism. Much was discouraging -- the marshes thought to be home to the Garden of Eden were drained, children begged on the streets for water and food, disorder ruled.

Disorder. Chaos. A lack of authority. The result of a liberated country running headlong into American bureaucracy.

In Iraq, the world's most powerful military crushed the hated rule of a despot. When U.S. Marines reached Baghdad, Iraqis cheered. Barely two weeks later, however, what Iraqis see before them is a foreign army that has de facto control over their country but has not facilitated the reconstitution of basic order. There is a naïve belief stalking some corridors of power in Washington today that, since the United States has liberated Iraq, it can now stand aside and let flowers bloom. This, supposedly, is democracy. Iraqis have no idea what to make of this bizarre conception. And, as confusion and disorder grow, creating a power vacuum, some of the most dangerous and illiberal groups in Iraq are amassing power.

HERE COMES THE BRIDE Sarah Hatter punished herself by attending a wedding shower for a cousin, only to be cornered by an elderly woman who planted seeds of doubt in poor Sarah's noggin. What's an attractive, unwed, young woman to do in times of despair? Why, use philosophical tools to prove the old hag to be chockful of stuff and nonsense, of course!

THE POWER OF PEANUT BUTTER Ah, my friendly little expatriate web logger at My Blue House reminds us of the power of the food we left behind. When a friend was living in Switzerland during her late high school years, her mother would make special trips to Belgium or some other God-forsaken dot on the European map just to buy Kraft macaroni and cheese. By the case, no doubt.

However, a casual walk through the market at La Croix Rousse yesterday rendered a surprise - a gem so entirely out of place I spied it from about 2 feet away - a small stand selling products I have trouble finding in France: shredded wheat, oatmeal cookies, ovaltine, peanut butter, and (best of all) cranberry juice. "Look! Cranberry juice!" I whispered loudly to my husband. The man at the stand heard me, and spoke to me in English. A Brit! At a stand right around the corner from my house, selling things I crave at least once a week but can't find here. He's in the Beaujolais, but takes orders through his website, and is at the open market in La Croix Rousse every Saturday. God bless his peanut butter selling heart.

DUDE, THE HOBBIT'S ARE TEARING THE WORLD APART McSweeney's cracks me up with their fictional take on audio commentary between Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky on The Fellowship of the Rings, and how the hobbits with their damnable pipe weed are the real cause of the War of the Rings.

Zinn: You view the conflict as being primarily about pipe-weed, do you not?

Chomsky: Well, what we see here, in Hobbiton, farmers tilling crops. The thing to remember is that the crop they are tilling is, in fact, pipe-weed, an addictive drug transported and sold throughout Middle Earth for great profit.

Zinn: This is absolutely established in the books. Pipe-weed is something all the Hobbits abuse. Gandalf is smoking it constantly. You are correct when you point out that Middle Earth depends on pipe-weed in some crucial sense, but I think you may be overstating its importance. Clearly the war is not based only on the Shire's pipe-weed. Rohan and Gondor's unceasing hunger for war is a larger culprit, I would say.

Chomsky: But without the pipe-weed, Middle Earth would fall apart. Saruman is trying to break up Gandalf's pipe-weed ring. He's trying to divert it.

Zinn: Well, you know, it would be manifestly difficult to believe in magic rings unless everyone was high on pipe-weed. So it is in Gandalf's interest to keep Middle Earth hooked.

Chomsky: How do you think these wizards build gigantic towers and mighty fortresses? Where do they get the money? Keep in mind that I do not especially regard anyone, Saruman included, as an agent for progressivism. But obviously the pipe-weed operation that exists is the dominant influence in Middle Earth. It's not some ludicrous magical ring.

Zinn: You've mentioned in the past the various flavors of pipe-weed that Hobbits have cultivated: Gold Leaf, Old Toby, etc.

Chomsky: Nothing better illustrates the sophistication of the smuggling ring than the fact that there are different brand names associated with the pipe-weed. Ah, here we have Gandalf smoking a pipe in his wagon — the first of many clues that link us to the hidden undercurrents of power.

Zinn: Gandalf is deeply implicated. That's true. And of course the ring lore begins with him. He's the one who leaks this news of the supposed evil ring.

TOO SEXY FOR THE BAY The San Francisco Bay Guardian names the sexiest people in the Bay area. If you didn't get selected, it's because you live in Minnesota.

The San Francisco Bay Area is one of the sexiest places we know, and one of the crazy, beautiful things about sex appeal is that everyone's definition is different. So, as you can imagine, narrowing this list down was a challenge. We thought about all the dreamy people in our community whose actions have inspired us, the performers who have brought us to our knees, the poets whose words have slayed us, and all the other folks who have made our jaws drop. And now, after weeks of hand-wringing, hearts pounding, and heated discussion, we bring you the 10 sexiest people we've seen all year.

POETRY WILL NEVER DIE Thank you, Boing Boing, for leading me to Rob's Amazing Poetry Generator, which takes a webpage and generates a poem from it. Without further ado, here is the poem of Buttermilk & Molasses, as generated by Rob's code:

Buttermilk if all Africa written
on Saturday Night Mercado at 4:dozen out of
money from Edward Hirsch and the
thinking presidential and the New tools. MoveOn.
org
formed as evidenced by Michael Lewis
is important moment and if
all parties focused on UP his
older brother Orion. fought briefly
and endure
Bob Shrum trying to play
the Washington Social
Club rocks Richmond Saturday Howard Dean
showed that damn
chattering class whining about
their faces.
Local rebellion

ONE GIRL'S WAR World War Two had Anne Franks, and the seige of Sarajevo had Zlata Filipovic -- young girls whose diaries chronicled their fears and hopes during wartime. The CSMonitor gives us the words of 14-year-old Amal, who lives in Baghdad with her eight siblings, as she records her thoughts as war approaches, arrives and finally begins to fade from her life. It begins on Monday, March 17:

"In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate." My name is Amal. I have a happy family of nine: Three brothers Ali, Mohamed and Mahmoud (3rd grade )... and sisters Fatima (16 years), Zeinab (9th grade), and twins Duha and Hibba (5th grade).

I am very proud of my mother, because she is a great person, she works and works, and brings us food because my father died ... in 1996 in a car accident. We don't want war on Iraq, the country of civilization and prophets. War is torment. Mother is crying because of her fear for us. War takes away the people we love.

We prepare by filling water buckets in case there is no water or electricity. Duha and Hibba pray God Almighty that there will be no war. At 8:30, my mother made bread. Bakeries close during the war.

THE LONG ROAD TO NOWHERE The road map to peace -- a series of actions laid out by the U.S., the European Union, the U.N. and Russia designed to put Israel and the Palestinians back on a path toward settlement -- is important because it exists, not because of its content. At its heart, the road map is laden with steps both sides will be reluctant or politically unable to take, and is filled with enough loopholes, escape hatches and caveats that it is impossible to confuse it with the Oslo Accords -- the closest the region has come to a real settlement.

Given that, why is the road map important? It is important, as Gareth Evans and Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group note, because even with its flaws, it provides a mechanism to change the troubled dynamic in the region. Both sides are exhausted and numb after two-plus years of bombings and attacks, and both sides are beginning to question themselves. Again. More important, perhaps, is the fact that the Palestinian people are beginning to question the strategies of their leadership, and the personalities that make up that leadership.

To make an impact, the Quartet that put the road map forward needs to create momentum. There is no room for quibbling or haggling in this round, and the U.S. has a responsibility to keep all parties focused on the goal -- a secure Israel, a cessation of settlement construction, and a Palestinian state.

The utility of the road map lies in its existence, not its content. The Quartet should concentrate on immediate steps to transform the reality on the ground, keep the parties focused on the ultimate objective of a final status agreement by 2005, avoid protracted negotiations over the contours of a provisional Palestinian state or the definition of an Israeli settlement freeze, and leave domestic Palestinian decisions to the Palestinians themselves. It is this approach that will set the stage for the next diplomatic phase. With that momentum established, Israelis and Palestinians can thank the road map for services rendered, set it aside and move directly to the task of achieving a just and lasting peace.

ENVIRONMENTAL RECOVERY IN IRAQ The U.S. Agency for International Development believes it is possible to restore up to 25% of the marshes in southern Iraq, which were drained in the 1990s as part of Saddam Hussein's efforts to crush a local rebellion.

The Iraqi marshes between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were home to a unique culture and complex ecosystem that lasted thousands of years. The wetlands were largely drained by Saddam to punish the population for supporting a Shi'ite uprising against his rule that erupted after the 1991 Gulf War.

Nearly 300,000 Marsh Arabs, also known as Ma'adan, were bombed, rounded up by troops, killed or forced to march out of the wetlands. Many others disappeared while the marshes that sustained them turned into a salt-encrusted wasteland. Now, fewer than 20,000 remain.

A report released by the United Nations Environment Program in 2001 found only 7 percent of the once-extensive marshlands remained. UNEP described the deliberate destruction as one of the worst environmental disasters in history, ranking it with the desiccation of the Aral Sea and the deforestation of the Amazon rain forests.

THE BUZZ IN VANCOUVER It would be patently unfair to pigeonhole The New Pornographers as Neko Case's new band, because it isn't. Still, the fact that the sultry Canadian alt-country crooner is the chantreuse behind this new Canadian pop superband does matter. The New Pornographers' second CD comes out tomorrow, and it's on everyone's "must get list.

NO MOVIE ADS I've been pleased to see three movies in recent weeks virtually devoid of annoying commercials. Perhaps I have the folks at NoMovieAds.com to thank. And the people who complain to theatre management. And recent news coverage of the practice of drowning a film audience with 20 minutes of crap before the feature even begins.

'THE GOOD THIEF' IS JUST THAT It's not a great film, but Neil Jordan's "The Good Thief" has just enough slur, jazz and camera trickery to keep an audience''s attention. If they can get past Nick Nolte's almost intelligible dialogue. Jordan has taken an old French noir flick and brought it into the late 20th century with stylish cuts, edgy framing, good pacing and a diverse soundtrack (which includes Rachid Taha). Nolte holds the film together, barely, as a drug addict, gambler and thief, but the real star of the film is the camera.

VETTING THE DEMOCRATS Here's the scary rub (as evidenced by William Saletan's take on Saturday's Democratic candidate debate in South Carolina) -- Joe Lieberman may prove to be the most electable candidate the Dems are offering next season. First, let's take the non-contenders off the table. That would be Moseley-Braun, Kucinich and Sharpton. On Saturday, Howard Dean showed his mean streak and John Kerry didn't break any hearts as they scrapped with each other. Gephardt played defense. Graham is just too brainy (and utterly consumed by the dangers of terrorism) -- smart, paranoid people don't cut it in American politics. John Edwards will get crushed for being such a boy toy. Which leaves Lieberman, who is a hawkish, centrist, moralist candidate. Not exactly my cup of joe. The Democrats are doing what they do best as they prepare for 2004 -- they are showing exactly how they plan to re-elect George Bush.

THE OL' RICHMOND MEET-AND-GREET Here's what I like about the Orange Door Gallery: it's spacious, it has a bar, it has some nice windows, it isn't all fancy-pants. Thank you, Heide Trepanier.

THERE IS NO BATHWATER Thomas Friedman has adopted the sort of conciliatory approach in his columns on Iraq that the subject deserves. He begins his latest by noting that he hears two things from his readers. The conservatives want to turn victory in Iraq into an excuse for knocking a few more heads around the globe, while his more liberal readers can't wait for Iraq to blow up in Bush's face.

But as one group wants to drop the hot potato of a destablized Iraq and the other wants the potato to burn the hands of those who hold it, Friedman rightly points out that there are 23 million people relying on us to get this one right. And the failure -- or inability -- of Democrats to step forward and participate in making our administration of this country successful is tragic. And wrong.

We have not fully liberated Iraq yet — we have created the conditions for its liberation. That is still hugely significant. But the feelings of Iraqis right now are a jumble of liberation, hope and gratitude, mixed with anxiety, humiliation, fear of lawlessness, fear of one another, grief for sons killed in the war and suspicion of America. Conservatives, though, are so intent on proving George Bush right and liberals wrong — so the Bush team can drive its radical right agenda at home — they have rushed to impose a single liberation story line on this much more complex reality. Eastern Europe was liberated when the wall came down, because the civil society and democratic roots were already there to fill the void. In Iraq, that order and self-governing civil society will have to be created from scratch. I believe that with enough effort, it can be done, and if it is done, Iraq will be liberated. If it isn't done, Iraq will be a mess.

One senses, though, that liberals so detest Mr. Bush that they refuse to acknowledge the simple good that has come from ending Saddam's tyranny — good for Iraqis and good for America, because it will inhibit other terrorist-supporting regimes. Have no doubt about that. If Democrats' whole analysis of this war is determined by whether or not it helps Mr. Bush, then they are never going to play the role they must play — constructive critics of how we rebuild Iraq.

This is such an important moment in U.S. foreign policy. How people view American power is at stake in the outcome in Iraq, and Democrats can't be missing in action. They have to help shape this moment, and not leave it to the Bush Pentagon. But it won't happen if Democrats are sulking in a corner, just trying to point to everything that is going wrong in Iraq, and not offering their ideas for making it better.

THERE ARE NO HANDBASKETS IN HELL You've been handed one of Jack Chick's pamphlets somewhere over the course of your lifetime. It's impossible that you haven't. You know the kind -- They're usually printed in black-and-white. They're smaller than a billfold. And by the time you finish reading one, you're convinced that the world is doomed, you are doomed or all of your drug-addicted friends are doomed. And by doomed, I mean going to Hell.

The format is inviting—so small, so handy, mostly pictures. The first panel immediately plunges you into the action, as a paramedic huddles over Bobby, a teen who just overdosed on speed (we know this because the paramedic tells the crowd"HE OVERDOSED ON SPEED!"). "Wow! What a drag!" thinks one bystander. An elderly man preaches the gospel to a kid and is mocked and beaten by a man in a leisure suit. The bully drives off with the kid; their car is immediately hit by a speeding train. "YAAAAAA!" they scream. In the next panel they're in the Inferno.

The experience of reading a Chick tract can seem disarmingly familiar. In many ways the stories adhere to the standard rules and visual language of comic books: When people are angry or stressed, huge beads of sweat shoot off their foreheads. Bad men say things like "@#$%!"; exclamation points are everywhere. Characters, with their side parts, bell-bottoms, and stilted language, have the stuck-in-time quality of Archie comics. But behind the reader-friendly style is a disturbing, hateful message: There are demons hiding everywhere. There are devil worshipers in the federal government and gay men plotting to taint the nation's blood supply with AIDS. The pope is an agent of Satan. So is your next-door neighbor.

With more than 500 million copies of his 142 books in print, including translations in more than 100 languages, Chick is the world's most published living author.

SHE'S A FLIGHT RISK I stumbled across this web log a few weeks ago and decided to keep an eye on it. It was curious, but confusing. The background of the author's story was vague until I restumbled across the site on the Agonist's web log; he was reporting a bit on it and recently received a "cease and desist" letter from the author's parent's lawyers. Perplexed yet?

...she's a flight risk." begins, "On March 2, 2003 at 4:12 pm, I disappeared. My name is isabella v., but it's not. I'm twentysomething and I am an international fugitive." It seems Isabella hit the trail with a load of money from her parents, and they hit her trail with a team of lawyers and investigators. It's worth reading from the beginning if you have the time.

DOWN UNDER Infiltration is an online zine that details the underground (and overground) explorations of people who just enjoy poking around places they shouldn't be. The latest involves crawling around the underbelly of Union Station (which seems to be in Canada). Reminds me of my own foray into Richmond's drainage system years ago. Ugh.