What Democracy Has Become

So there's these pro-Israel posters everywhere. The main gist of them seems to be that supporting Israel is the equivalent of supporting democracy. Assuming that America is the standard-bearer of democracy, let's look at some of the things these two countries have in common:

• Took someone else's land to form a country without a legitimate excuse
• Won wars against weaker powers
• Occupied someone else's territory

Which, of course, makes the Mongols, Japanese in the first half of the 20th century (when they were still enemies of the U.S.), and all sorts of empires legitimate democracies.

The sad part is that this actually isn't as ludicrous as the reasons on the pro-Israel posters for supporting Israel (which is a natural consequence of supporting democracy as it's listed on some of the posters). Here are the reasons:

• Only country with an increase in the amount of trees
• Ray Charles supports it

I've been avoiding these, so I can't offer more for now, but...eventually....

La Cenerentola

Opera: for the first time in eight years. It was awesome--Rossini's comic opera based off of the French version of the Cinderella story (the one where the evil stepsisters don't get what they've been asking for all along, though the French take it farther and actually have the two sisters marry lords under Cinderella's auspices). Anyway, it was awesome. Yah.

I really need a camera--the Chicago Lyric Opera has some impressive perspective going on, and I don't know when--if ever--I shall be back there.