I was briefly concerned that the world was ending.

For the first time since I got the apartment, I was up early. Actually still up, but that's another story. Seven o'clock found me bored and not at all sleepy. I threw open the wonderfully opaque curtains on my enormous east-facing windows expecting to be doused with sunlight. It was dark. Several minutes past seven and there was no sun to be found.

CNN had mentioned nothing about the sun burning out, so I figured it must have something to do with the time zone and the fact that we're a few days from the shortest day of the southern hemisphere's year. I headed out for breakfast.

"Its six lanes were almost completely vacant."
As I walked onto the street it was approaching eight o'clock. And the streets were deserted. This is a city of something like eight million, but it was as though somebody had ordered the place evacuated. I reached Avenida Santa Fe, Buenos Aires' version of Fifth Avenue, to find all of its six lanes almost completely vacant. Now I was convinced armageddon was upon us.

After a few blocks I found somebody to sell me the English-language Buenos Aires Herald and stumbled into a cafe. Upon opening the paper I discovered what was up. I still couldn't explain why the sun had yet to appear by eight in the morning, but I now knew it was flag day. Maybe not a big deal back home, but here the flag gets an official bank holiday. I later hung the flag I bought several weeks ago on my balcony. Not many others have done the same.

The streets finally started to brighten as I had breakfast and I dismissed any notion that the earth had been flung out of the solar system.

"A neverending blur of buses..."
I still like Buenos Aires, but I'm getting sooo ready to leave. I feel like I'm wasting time, missing out on things. It's good, though. I think I'll have a sort of fresh start. Traveling constantly, the days had begun to run together... droning into a neverending blur of buses, hotels and tourist sites. Like restarting a computer, maybe I can throw away whatever bad habits, attitudes or unexpected crashes I'd developed and enjoy things the way I enjoyed them at the very beginning. We'll see.

I've tried so far to limit the amount of political commentary in here. You can go read radical rantings on plenty of other sites. I've felt like I should stick mainly to travel.

"I found my thoughts on a certain subject perfectly expressed."
But I'm gonna throw caution to the wind for just once. Reading a reprint of a New York Times editorial in the local paper, I found my thoughts on a certain subject perfectly expressed. Political discussions are a part of independent budget travel and I want to have a record of what was on my mind during this trip.

That said, if you're still reading, don't like people who question the president and want to respect me in the morning... you might want to go here. In fact, you might want to go there anyway. It's the fascinating speech William Safire wrote for Nixon in case the Apollo 11 astronauts were marooned on the moon.

"Some kind of tango-like Italian-sounding love song."
Just a brief aside here. The old man running the internet cafe is singing. Loudly. Some kind of tango-like Italian-sounding love song... as though he's serenading someone from a balcony. The same thing... over and over and over. At nine in the morning I want to strangle him.

Now back to our political diversion. It's about the purported unconventional weapons in Iraq.

I wouldn't say I was gung-ho for the war. I had issues with how it had to be done right now and how we unnecessarily inflamed relations with a bunch of countries while we were at it. (Was Rumsfeld's comment about old Europe really required?)

"I figured Saddam probably had the goods."
But at the end of the day I believed Bush and Blair (mainly Blair) when they said "trust us." I figured Saddam probably had the goods and we had to go finish him off... whether the French, Belgians, Germans and Russians liked it or not.

And we may well find that he did have unconventional weapons. Tomorrow somebody may stumble across enough Sarin to wipe out half of Asia. But it's starting to look equally possible that the claims of Saddam being armed to the teeth with chemicals and germs may have been way exaggerated. In short, it's becoming not unbelievable that Bush lied.

What bothers me the most, though, is that no one seems to care. About half of Americans don't even want congress to look into the matter. Shall we recall the last time the country got riled up over a lying president?

"Who had access to the presidential pants."
The last guy lied under oath about who had access to the presidential pants and we impeached him. Congress decided it was necessary to level the highest possible charge that can be handed a sitting president.

Now it seems possible that the current president might have lied to start a war. To start a war. And Gallup says 45% of Americans could not care less. What the hell's going on?

"The possibility he lied to bomb somebody."
The cliche rhetorical question is "Are we better off without Saddam? Of course we are." But I'll do one better. Should we have done it even without evidence of unconventional weapons? You could probably convince me. But these are different issues. My thing is about the possibility that a president lied so he could start bombing somebody. It's not supposed to happen in a developed democracy and we should be more interested in finding out if it in fact happened.

But instead of treating these questions seriously, some of those who most wanted the war glibly dismiss them. Favorite comebacks for people like Rumsfeld are quips like "Saddam Hussein himself was a weapon of mass destruction" and "We can't find Saddam, but no one's suggesting he doesn't exist." These were clever and even somewhat entertaining the first time someone said them. Now they have the dead tone of someone using long-outmoded pop culture lingo. Or maybe Arsenio's "whoop whoop." Remember that?

"Outlaw newspapers and invade Mexico."
It just seems like a pretty big deal that not many people care to know the truth about. The end justifies the means, I suppose. Sometimes I think if Bush said he had to outlaw newspapers and invade Mexico to stop the "evildoers," a good chunk of people would go along.

Or maybe I'm wrong.

OK. For reading my wanna-be pundit drivel, you get a reward. The fun things that can go wrong in television.

The Missing "R"

Both of these happened in the last week or so.

The first comes to us from NBC-owned WMAQ television, Chicago's channel 5. It appears the entire graphics department was fired for this little mistake involving one Mister Sammy Sosa and what the Brits might call his "bait and tackle." The job I do sometimes carries the risk of similar mistakes.

"They're not bush league."
And the second from WBNS-TV, the strong CBS affiliate in Columbus, Ohio. For as backwoods a town as it may seem, Columbus is about the 30th largest television market in the country. They're not bush league.

But that didn't prevent this modification of the classic "oops I put porn on TV during primetime." Here's the link to the video. It's probably best if you right click the link and save it to your desktop first. If the video's disappeared, here's the deal.

"Their favorite news anchor flipping them off."
On a Thursday night, the main female news anchor was taping an announcement off-air in the studio. The hit CBS drama "The Agency" was running at the time. At some point she jokingly flipped off the camera. Shortly thereafter, someone froze that image in what they call a still store. From there, it was only one more mistake away from being punched out on the air. Yes, for about six seconds, viewers saw Jeff Bridges disappear... replaced by a frozen image of their favorite news anchor flipping them off. And even better... there's a graphic behind her that says "show you care."

And one more thing. Ever wonder how right after a big, bad news event, the anchors know everything about the area where it happened and the history of other disasters like it? Check this site out. Entertaining in its thoroughness, it's everything you could ever need to know about anything that can blow up, break out or fall down. My personal favorite: resources on dangers posed by icebergs.