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Apologies for the general lateness of things. Many work projects donchano. Axes and bulldozers New contest. Read yesterday's blurb for details. Yes, the Axe body spray commercials are dumb. Either some girl tripped and fell into me, and I said this line, or I just think I did because my brain is addled from drinking too much root beer. Either way, people do crash into me a lot. If I am at a store and some short girl is looking at something on a shelf and I am looking at something near it, there is a good chance she will turn around and crash into me, and not only that, she'll keep trying to walk for a few seconds, like she can't even see me. It's like, I'm so massive, you can't see me, the way you can't see France for standing in Paris. Either that, or this body suit printed with pictures of store shelves is really effective camoulflage. So an Olympia-area protester acting as a human shield in Palestinian Israel was run over by an Israeli bulldozer. I've heard two reactions. Oh, this is a terrible tragedy! She is a hero, and a martyr, and hopefully her death will wake us all up to the daily death and destruction this two-year-old outbreak of conflict has caused. Or, serves her right for standing in front of a bulldozer. She should have known the Israelis don't stop for nobody nohow. I think both of these reactions miss the point, and the second one is just mean. Arabs, Muslims, and, for that matter, every one else in the world hates Americans. It's been said that if we go around blowing shit up and taking it over, or if we send food and money and the Peace Corps, people hate us. We're damned if we do, and we're damned if we don't. That's because America is an arrogant country, full of arrogant people. Americans wield their financial power and sense of entitlement over others, and, be it for good, or for evil, it's met with resentment. While I'm hardly condemning any humanitarian action, going to another country and standing down a bulldozer is arrogant. Why? Because you're basically saying, "while this bulldozer is stained with the blood of Palestinian women and children, they would never run over me. I am an American." You are saying that your life is the most precious life in the world, just as your money is the best money, your carbonated beverages are the best beverages, and your military is the best military. The whole movement of Americans going to other countries, most notably Iraq, to be human shields is the same arrogant thought. They won't bomb us. We are Americans. We can change the world. We can do anything. WE are AMERICANS. Well, bollocks to Americans! Your lives are just as worthless as anyone's, and you know what? Even if the blood of one American IS worth the blood of 5,000 non-Americans, flinging that power around, for good, or for evil, is arrogant. The reaction of people around here was similarly arrogant. Where are the candlelight vigils for the two Palestinian infants run over by bulldozers yesterday? Or for the Israeli soldier who was shot? And would the death of one American girl wake us all up when so many non-Americans have already died? Oh, only NOW people will realize that the Israelis are kind of dicks? Only NOW people will realize the situation over there is really fucked up? Well, let's plod our fat American asses over there and fix it. And that's another thing, the conflict in the middle east, like the conflicts all over the rest of the world, are so old that nobody even REMEMBERS when they started. The cultures are so different from our own, the issues are so deeper than we can even begin to understand. There are no easy solutions. America is not going to flex its figurative muscle and fix these problems. Not in a week, not in a month, not in a year. Not even in a hundred years! To think one person's death, be that person an Iraqi dictator or an American student, is going to be a drop in the bucket in the history of the middle east. Well, that's just naive. — Tuesday, March 18, 2003, 11:16 a.m.; On Location 
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