Thursday's Thoughts

• One thing I liked about being in Iraq: No matter how much you drank during the summer you could at best be only marginally hydrated, so when you stopped and cut the top off a water bottle and dumped some ice in there and had a simple glass of ice water it was like the best glass of ice water you ever had back home in your whole life- ever. Every. Single. Time. You could feel that water trinkle all the way down your throat to your stomach and for those very few seconds, that one little moment in time- you felt a little less terrible.





• If you leave the square (literally) in Decatur on West Main street at 88 mph in a 1988 Camaro you'll land by Barry's office and a very impressive shower of sparks will fly up from the undercarriage of the car as it bottoms out on the pavement and the girls riding in the car with you will simultaneously squeal, scream and laugh hysterically.





• Or, so I've heard.





• The reminder that caused mention of that night was kind of cute and funny- I saw one of those girls this afternoon. Predictably, she was driving a minivan.





• I'm reading Enemy At the Gates. It is the one they based the 2001 Jude Law movie on. The odd thing is the book was published in 1973. It's really good- it has shattered some illusions for me though. It appears the battle for Stalingrad wasn't quite the lovefest-picnic I'd always pictured. I know the author is using words to convey the insanity of that battle, but there nearly aren't words.





• In a time when life was cheap- death came wholesale at Stalingrad.





• I just came up with that one. That was pretty good. Use it if you want.





• The execution of Willie Francis- what an awful story. He was the first person to survive an attempt at being killed by the state in an electric chair. As the current hit him the first time he said,"Take it off. I can't breathe. I'm n-not dying!" Then, somehow the state had the horribleness to actually killify him in the same chair 10 days later.