(no subject)

I've managed to avoid having any serious, deep thoughts on any topic for two weeks now.

I haven't been bored or depressed, or had any emotional troughs or plateaus at all, over the last two weeks either.

I'm sure there's a correlation between A and B above, but to map it out would require deep thinking, which i am going to put off as long as possible.

The last two weeks coasted on a kind of pleasant baseline with mild peaks of happiness. This is, i think, the way vacations are meant to be. Perhaps it was even the way life was meant to be. Americans have this terrible propensity to make vacations into "quality time," which we approach as a venture. Like other ventures, quality time is judged to be a success or failure against a list of criteria drawn up before the venture begins. (This isn't the same as setting up an itinerary, BTW. It's more like... it's more like Americans expect vacations to have an "enjoyment budget" which goes broke if you spend too much time dawdling or not enough time doing "quality activities.")

Argh, this is beginning to sound dangerously like deep thought. Enough of that. Sooner or later the cosmos will force its way back into my awareness, and like it or not i'll start noticing new patterns of ickiness i never commented on before, and will be compelled to blog about them. I'd rather put that off if i can.

I don't feel physically rested (i need a new bed, i think the one i'm using now is costing me sleep) but i feel emotionally rested. Reality seems "rounder" and a bit more unfamiliar and curious to me today.

(no subject)

It's worse than you knew in Pakistan. Barnett Rubin writes:

I called a friend in Lahore this morning. The obstacles [to holding the election on January 8 as scheduled] are not just that electoral materials (possibly including those prepared for rigging) were destroyed in the rioting. The country's infrastructure is under severe stress. In Lahore there are only 7 hours of electricity a day, and water pressure is also reported to be unreliable (I know those of you in Kabul may not feel their pain). Optic fiber lines were cut in Sindh, blacking out telecommunications for a while. The front page of Dawn online yields the following: There has been massive damage to the country's rail network. Fuel is in short supply, and the shortages are likely to get worse. The stock market and the currency are both crashing. Government ministers are charging "foreign elements" (i.e. India) with organizing the riots, a useful excuse for martial law.

In Pakistan there is a massive outburst of rage against Musharraf and everything associated with his government, including the government's claim that it has evidence that the Pakistani Taliban, led by Baitullah Mahsud, carried out the assassination. I still lean toward the hypothesis that the operation was carried out by organizations connected to al-Qaida. Given the relationship of the Pakistani military to jihadi organizations that by no means absolves the Musharraf regime of responsibility.

Some are charging now that Benazir Bhutto was scheduled to meet, only a few hours after the moment when she was assassinated, with two US legislators to give them evidence that Musharraf was planning to rig the election.

Of course, now that the cover-up is a fait accompli and evidence has been destroyed or buried, Scotland Yard is sending people to assist in the investigation. When they toss up their hands in frustration and leave with nothing, Musharraf will be able to bolster his plausible deniability by claiming that even independent investigators could find nothing.