zucchinis and world peace

I looked at my Webstats report to see how many visits I'm getting these days. It's sort of weird how visits to my site spike. The spikes don't seem to be related to anything except for a huge one in 1999 due to Kathleen's love of The Backstreet Boys which forced me to upgrade my server subscription. When she went off to college she took her fan site down and said she never wanted to see it again – she was so sick of it. Six years later I am still getting "Document Not Found" reports for a photo of AJ.

One of the "not found" documents that is routinely reported missing is my story of a group blind date I went on in July of 2004. The page keeps turning up as not found even though it is here. I cracked myself up today reading about turning my pickle into a zucchini. I totally forgot I wrote that. Then I clicked on a Google ad for a book about Viggo Mortensen (one of the men I am not dating). Looks like a good book; a bit fanzine and a bit about the actual man.

I'm a cheapskate. I tend to get my Viggo (and some other) news from Perceval. I just learned an impeachment of Bush is afoot. I guess my intuitions about him were correct. I hadn't noticed that Viggo is such a rabid – what is it? – left winger. Here's a quote from his website.

"English Only" and/or English as the one and only official language of the United States are concepts that are unrealistic, undesirable, prejudicial, wasteful, and totally irrelevant. They serve only as politically expedient public relations tools for many of our cynical legislators and supposed leaders. Business as usual these days, in other words. Distraction, disunity, deceit, and dismemberment of democracy continue to reap dividends for the ruling elite and further damage our society.
v.m.

Me, I believe in English. This is America. We speak English here. I also speak German fluently and a bit of Arabic. I've lived in Germany (6 years), Saudi Arabia (2 years), England (18 months) and had an extended stay in Cyprus (6 weeks). So I have some experience with other cultures. Still, this is America and if a person wishes to stay here permanently they should speak the local language. After all, when I was in other countries I was at least polite enough to speak as much of their language as I could.

In Saudi Arabia they prefer Arabic. To stop English from taking over there are rules about Arabic being the preferred language. It has to appear first on any signs and in any publications, especially government ones (which can have no English version at all). I agree with that.

I hope for a united world. A peaceful and free world where we can all cohabit cooperatively with understanding and interactive regard. To facilitate that we need a common language. I really don't care what language we end up speaking but to maintain a little order in the meantime, let's speak the language of the country shall we? It's an important acknowledgment of culture.

I hope all those scary scenarios of evil dictators of the future are just nightmares. As Bob Dylan said, you can be in my dream if I can be in yours.


Current Fads
Listening. Paste Sampler CD #22 ; gunshots in the night
Watching. Monk, Season 2 (2003); the sun
Activity. wishing
Gadget. cheap reading glasses
News Source. the news feeds in Safari; Perceval Press
Reading. The Second Time Around - Mary Higgins Clark; Writing Essays - Harold P. Simonson; On Writing Well - William Zinsser; GD USA; MacWorld; Fortune; Wired (Yes, I really am reading them all right now—I'm a reading addict. What can I say?)