Hahahah. Oh, lordy. Was just telling girl drama to roommate, and mentioned that this one girl who I've been on dates with two different times now (and the first time, after a few dates, she and another girl she was dating decided to be serious/monogamous, the second time was a year later and they'd broken up...but then they decided to try again) has been checking me out on OKCupid and it made me roll my eyes and if she wanted something she'd have to freakin' message me....and voila, she messaged me on FB to say she had lost my number when she switched phones, but she'd like to hang out soon. Oy!

Tell her if she's just wants to meet for coffee, just friends, OK, but if she's unsure if she should get back together with other girl yet another time that you'd prefer if she worked that out on her own.

OTOH, if y'all do end up happily ever after that'll make a great story.

How is it this late and I am still awake? I honestly do not know how that happened. Maybe my lunchtime coffee wasn't really decaf...

Never thought I'd send an episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour to HR at my job, but Trevor Noah talked so specifically and correctly about hiring for diversity, I just had to! Interesting. The whole thing is here: [link]

I don't think I'm going to make it through a full day of work. My head is trying to kill me.

However, I can still tell that the person doing annual property inventory really, really, really needs to start using deoderant. Ack.

Syria has me stumped. You've got the Assad supported by Russia and Iran (I believe mostly through working through Hezbollah) on the one side, the moderate Syrian rebels on the other side supported by the United States and Saudi Arabia and Jordan, ISIS on the other other side not really supported by anyone, and the Kurds on the other other other side also supported by the United States.

We want to defeat ISIS, but we don't want to get ground troops involved because that has clusterfuck written all over it in 128pt Helvetica. However the moderate Syrian rebels don't seem interested in fighting ISIS, they want to fight Assad. Assad doesn't seem interested either, he wants to fight the moderate Syrian rebels. Russia doesn't seem interested either, they want to support Assad. Same seems to be true with Iran. The Iraq army outnumbers ISIS massively, but they don't seem especially interested in fighting ISIS either. Meanwhile the Kurds have been fighting ISIS, but our ally, Turkey, wants to fight the Kurds and the Kurds aren't large enough to really deal with ISIS by themselves anyhow. Meanwhile we're bombing ISIS, but that isn't going to be very effective unless we decide to tolerate massive civilian causalities which would probably create a lot more anti-crusader resentment in the region, leading to more terrorism.

Of course that may be the easy part because stability needs to be achieved and the U.S. goal is to establish a pro-western secular democracy by supporting the moderate Syrian rebels who are not cohesive enough to be called something other than the moderate Syrian rebels.

What the hell do you do with that?

I'm starting to think the best answer is to just tell Russia, hey, you want to own this shitshow, you go ahead and own it. We'll just put a fraction of the money we'd spend on military action for humanitarian aid and resettlement of refugees and you guys can be left holding the bag of regrettable middle-east policy.

There are also the Syrian Turkmen, supported by Turkey against Assad, ISIS AND the Kurds.

Oops. Overlooked that other other other other side.

I don't think I'm going to make it through a full day of work. My head is trying to kill me.

Ditto, but because people at work are trying to make my head explode