Tendentious

The local Giant supermarket suddenly changed the recipe for their hot wings.

They have been around a four. Mind you, a nice, tasty four, just enough to remind you that you're eating something. So imagine my surprise the other day when I tried one, and I tasted, beyond the usual tang of tomato, that ever-so-slight bitterness that lets you know that something fun is coming. Sure enough, after I finish, I start to feel the burning in the back of the throat, slowly advancing until it fills the entire mouth with searing pain, radiating to the other side of the lip, throbbing uniformly and unrelievedly until finally, a few minutes later, the first other tactile experience that I am able to notice is the sensation of tears running gently down the sides of my face.

Cool.

I am overwhelmed by the war today and can't write anything coherent about it. Thank God there were no new lurid little anecdotes that the media could grotesquely and disproportionately focus on, so they were forced to look at the actual military situation, which overwhelmingly favors the good guys.

I found one of the most vivid descriptions of what the days to come will probably look like in an FR post by
wretchard which I shamelessly reproduce here:

The Iraqis are scrambling to assemble their terminal defenses. I think they were distracted by the bait dangled in the south. It seems as if they could not credit an advance to the gates of the capital in under 5 days on a flank they must have considered impassable. My own guess is that Franks will go for it. He seems, more than any American general since Patton, to believe in the very power of tempo.

The lack of news from the 101st Airborne is deafening. They will either make an appearance soon or be sent home largely unused. My own sense is that the 101st will launch as soon as the Iraqis go retrograde, as a blocking force, to trap them between their own rivers. Then, assault and pursuit will merge as never before.

I have mixed feelings about the coming days and hours. It will be the great killing time. Dispassionately considered, that is what the V Corps has been working toward relentlessly. It's what we wanted. On the other hand, as a human being, I cannot help but shudder at the prospect which awaits.