Random Thoughts, Notes, & Incidents

Sorry to be a little slow to post a reaction, but I'm still a bit under the effects of surgery. Anyway, did you happen to catch that presidential address the other night?

Somebody is getting desperate to have us believe he knows what he's doing, and I think it's the President. Unfortunately, the setting of the speech (the Army War College) didn't allow for any questions (not going to make that mistake again), but I have a few anyway:

1 - If major fighting supposedly ended a year ago, why has it taken until now to come up with a plan for a quick turnover?

2 - If we are hand-picking the new Iraqi government, keeping 138,000 troops in country, and their soldiers must do as our commanders say, how can we claim that the "occupation is over" on June 30?

3 - Are they (the Bush administration) so stupid, so off on their own planet, so out of touch with reality, that they really believe any of this will work?

I had others, but I took some pain pills and managed to forget them. I'll have to take some more pain pills to try to forget the speech.

Right now I'm more concerned with the big vote. Who will it be? And was the vote fixed? Some claim electronic voting eliminates fraud, others say it only makes it easier. I think this is far too important a choice to leave up to untested technology.

Of course, I'm talking about American Idol. Not that other meaningless election coming up in a few months. No, the important question is Fantasia or Diana... Who's our New American Idol?

Anyway. Yesterday I was back at the gastroenterologist, and I'm scheduled to have the ERCP next Tuesday. What the deal is is that they got the gall bladder out last Friday, but there's still a stone (or more) floating around the bile duct irritating my liver and causing all sorts of trouble.

The ERCP is an endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography procedure (but you knew that); they stick a tube down my throat through the stomach and duodenum to the common bile duct opening, where it goes on a search and destroy mission to locate, photograph, and eliminate the rogue stone(s) before they hit the pancreas and cause real trouble. But I get to go home right after.