Lately I’ve heard that word on the street is that the US is invading Iraq on March 1, my birthday. This will make a nice pairing with my wife’s birthday, September 11. I can’t wait.

But there’s still hope. In a Salon interview today, arch-feminist Camille Paglia fretted over bad omens the likes of which would have convinced Julius Caesar to turn tail and run:

As we speak, I have a terrible sense of foreboding, because last weekend a stunning omen occurred in this country. Anyone who thinks symbolically had to be shocked by the explosion of the Columbia shuttle, disintegrating in the air and strewing its parts and human remains over Texas—the president’s home state! So many times in antiquity, the emperors of Persia or other proud empires went to the oracles to ask for advice about going to war. Roman generals summoned soothsayers to read the entrails before a battle. If there was ever a sign for a president and his administration to rethink what they’re doing, this was it.

Ealier this week on Salon, blogger/journalist Joe Conason wasn’t convinced by Colin Powell’s UN presentation:

What was most noticeably absent from Powell’s presentation, however, was any evidence that Iraq is a present threat to its neighbors or any other nation—and thus must be invaded and subdued immediately. He showed that Saddam has sought an arsenal of mass destruction, and that his regime is still resisting disarmament. But he inadvertently made some arguments for continued inspections backed by force, rather than war.

Today Conason blasted fellow Salonite Andrew Sullivan for resorting to Orwellian doublespeak. Specifically, Sullivan said Conason’s war-hesitance makes him “objectively, a defender of Saddam.” Under Stalin or Mao (or Saddam, one assumes), if you weren’t sufficiently enthusiastic about the regime in all its goodness, you could easily be designated “objectively” an enemy of the state. Then the all expense paid trip to a workers camp in Siberia.

But I’m guessing that Andrew Sullivan has somewhere else in mind for his Republican death camps. The Onion reports that North Dakota is hiding a sizable nuclear arsenal. The Security Council should pass a resolution shortly.

Terry Jones sympathizes with North Dakotans but has something else on his mind: patience, or rather, the lack of it. In the Guardian he complains that one Mr Johnson and Mr Patel are most certainly planning to do him in through a devious secret plan:

Some of my neighbours say, if I’ve got proof, why don’t I go to the police? But that’s simply ridiculous. The police will say that they need evidence of a crime with which to charge my neighbours.

They’ll come up with endless red tape and quibbling about the rights and wrongs of a pre-emptive strike and all the while Mr Johnson will be finalising his plans to do terrible things to me, while Mr Patel will be secretly murdering people. Since I’m the only one in the street with a decent range of automatic firearms, I reckon it’s up to me to keep the peace.

Quite. I’m not worried, though. When the shit starts to go down, I’ll just use my invisibility cloak. Happy birthday to me…