Fitness Challenge Day 4

Kickboxing it was. And it was good. At the part where you're supposed to jump rope or kick the bag I kicked the bag and broke into dance moves instead of jumping rope. I dance like a honky. I so do not care about being cool anymore.

I kind of broke my no-buying-lunch-at-work today; I had to go to the airport to meet some people who were bringing in pets from Kuwait — long story, read it in The Gateway next week — and the plane was delayed and I was ravenous. I bought a brownie for $1.85. I later totally maoed my pasta n' pesto (a little too close to class, it made me feel a bit nauseous and weird) at work. But what this meant is I had a day that was so high in refined sugar: peach pie for breakfast and dinner, brownie for lunch. The only respite was the pesto. Ahh, pesto.

I am screaming through 9/11 Commission Report. It's as compelling as a Tom Clancy novel, but without the clunky ideology or the wooden protagonist. It's amazing not just that we as a country were so unprepared for such an attack, but that our response to it — we're the richest, allegedly most technologically advanced country filled with alleged rugged individualists — was so hampered by so many stupid mistakes, rules, layers of bureaucracy and plain old wishy washiness. From the airport screeners who watched the names pop up on the watch list and waved through the bastards with knives after they set off the metal detector to the FAA not wanting to tell the airlines not to do to — is this right? The vice-president ordering a shoot-down of hostiles by saying, in essence, "it's cool, the president told me this is cool." At any rate, I don't see why the VP shouldn't be able to offer such an obvious order. In fact, I really wish people had taken a little more initiative that day. Might have helped the passengers who died in Pennsylvania.

Since when is the government so afraid of business it won't make a move without them even when this country's security and thousands of lives are at stake? Do I sound like I'm advocating fascism? Egad. How about regulation? Is that better?