Oh, “union”, right. Thank goodness the word “union” in American English doesn’t imply anything relating to “unity”. It couldn’t possibly, or else GW’s speech last night would have had to have been called the State of the Conglomeration of Much Divided and Confused Folks speech. That even has a nice ring to it.

I didn’t catch all of the speech, just the last half-hour (the Iraqi stuff), and about an hour of the immediate commentary last night. I have also been listening to NPR for the past 3 hours. Good stuff. NPR, I mean, not the speech.

I’m going to reserve judgement on our Keebler-Elf-look-alike president’s rhetorical style, but I have to say, for a man that is supposed to be convincing Americans that “yes, a war is necessary” (and I personally am not so idealistic to think there is always another solution than war), he didn’t have a lot of hard facts. Well, not enough, maybe. We will have few allies (if any) if we jump the gun on this, as Bush seems to be straining at the bit to do (who’s holding the leash, you think?), and the crucial support of France (who has U.N. vetoing power) is very much in absence. I know, and GW (I think) knows that the Americans that remain unconvinced at this point want proof. Proof. That simple. They want evidence from the U.N. inspectors that Hussein is a very bad guy who’s out to get us. That’s not so bad; let’s not send our buddies and sons and daughters out to die/kill without good proof. My question: how much proof does it take? How many documents are enough? How many bombs and anthrax containers? How many hoops do you want to make our C average president jump through to prove that Hussein is out to get us? People keep regurgitating that they want “hard evidence that Hussein is even considering planning an offensive”. Uh, do you want the inspectors to look under his bed and find his diary, or should we send over Miss Cleo for a little telepathic reading? There are no certainties. None. Ever. You can’t prove anyone is currently thinking anything to the extent that some of these people want it proved. Especially in a government where one man seems to be running the show. It’s not even a committee decision! It’s all in Hussein’s sick little head. And the decision to go to war is in (generally speaking) our sick little president’s head.

Currently, I am neither for nor against the war. I’m not a punk for taking a backseat on this, I just want to watch how it unfolds without laying down some concrete opinion on the way this should go. Hell, I just turned 18 and am not yet registered to vote, so why should I have a say in GW’s policies? Hell, I didn’t vote for him.

I taught a class of teachers today. It was a two-hour course for these technology renewal credits that everyone seems to need. The first course, a tester course, was basic HTML. I went through what a tag is, how they come in pairs, all the way through font sizing, picture inserting, listing, etc.

It was an interesting experience. I have about four more courses to teach (each with different topics), and I will probably be nervous before every one of them, but it wasn’t a bad experience at all. There were some talkers, namely a certain freshman ELP and AP U.S. Gov’t teacher, another ELP teacher that gets stuck with the dregs of Harding’s freshmen, and the photography instructor. I won’t name names.

I dislike public speaking in any situation, as I go hoarse rapidly and lose my train of thought easily, but I’m hoping this (and the next) course will prepare me for my IB English Oral Commentary in about 2 weeks, and my IB French Oral. But at least I knew of what I spake. (I like that word, “spake”.)

Next course: February 4, Web Design 2 (tables, forms, and some CSS), taught with by buddy Michael.

I was kidding. Really. Sit back down.

I talked to my mother today (who is still out of town). Not only has her cell phone mysteriously developed a case of leaking battery acid, but she doesn’t quite know when she’s coming back. Uh, hey? Not to be totally selfish and deny my mother-deary the (dubious) pleasure of her family’s company, but… she has no idea when she’s coming back. Dad and I are going to run out of food soon (him way before me, because he’s a lazy bum that won’t cook) and Dad can’t do his own laundry either. But the fact that she doesn’t know when she’s getting back….

So I am stuck with just my father indefinitely (we hardly see each other anyway)… What if she doesn’t come back? And that is slightly less than half a joke. Dear Gawd, somebody put me out of my misery…

Now that I have converted the CommentWorks to use CDOSYS and have tweaked my site stats app to disregard my IP address (which is pretty much static anyway, as I’m on a small network), I am ready to start my homework. *grin*

If anyone is interested in the code for CommentWorks, visit the BlogWorks site (see the link on the right). If anyone is interested in the CDOSYS code that replaces the JMail code, visit http://www.marksite.tk/.