An Unquestionably Horrible Weekend

[geminigirl]

No really, I've had a horrible weekend. Between yesterday's work horrors, and the sick car, one would have thought that to be enough. But no. When it rains it pours, as my mom would say.

Saturday night for whatever reason, have a hard time sleeping-manage a couple of hours on the couch, get up to go to the bed and can't fall asleep again. I finally decide to head back to the couch, where I get in another five or so hours. Wake up, don't feel like dealing with the car, but I put some clothes on, and head over to the auto store, where I get some fuel system cleaner and some drygas. I decide to drive to the gas station, add the stuff, fill the car with high test and see what happens. And the engine light goes off. I'm happy, thinking, "okay, need to keep an eye on this but this may be the solution."

I go home, and start the batch of sugar cookies I'd promised dwildchil for the Super Bowl party tonight. The dough is made and chilling in the fridge. I head into the shower and decide I'll cut the veggies and make the dip post shower. I get out of the shower sit down to post something here and all of a sudden, there's a loud pop, and all my electricity goes out. I check the hallway and find out it's just my apartment. The breaker box has been blown open by the force of whatever blew, but none of the breakers are tripped. I call the maintenance number. An hour later someone shows up. He checks the breaker box and nothing is tripped. He goes downstairs and fiddles with stuff-there are periodic explosions of sparks from my breaker box. He checks the outlets. He fiddles some more, upstairs, downstairs, there are more sparks. He changes a few of the breakers, the electricity comes back on and he begins to put the panel back on the breaker box when it goes out again. Change more breakers, flips things downstairs, flip things upstairs and as he flips them up here, with his hand in the box, huge explosion of bright blue sparks. He discovers that there is water in the breaker box. (It would later be determined that this had something to do with my upstairs neighbor trying to clean his carpet.) Four hours, several phone calls later, and more explosions, plus a hairdryer to dry out the breaker box, I have electricity back. But I have no heat.

Yes. It's January. We've had below freezing temperatures for nearly two weeks. And I have no heat. (And the maintenance guy deemed this acceptable...I'm taking it up with the management office tomorrow. In the list of "emergencies" in the resident manual, no heat is on the list.) On top of which, because of Beta, I'm afraid to have a space heater in the house.

So I've got PMS, a cold, a possibly sick car, no heat, and I get to hang around here tomorrow waiting for them to come and check out the heater. I didn't get to post what I wanted to, about the possible use of nuclear weapons in Iraq (which was, in a really quick summary-the local NBC affiliate reported that one of the west coast papers-the LA Times I think was reporting that our esteemed leader was consdiering the use of nuclear weapons in Iraq. And my thought was, irrespective of ones views on war there, the mere fact that there's a possibilty or discussion of nuclear weapons has to just be beyond belief. The end results, the consequences are far too dire to inflict on anyone.)

Needless to say, my weekend was horrible beyond belief. I'm pissed off and cold, and a whole bunch of other less than pleasant emotions.

Grrrr.

Comments

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

I read the William Arkin piece in the LA Times (The Nuclear Option in Iraq), and while I've agreed with Mr. Arkin many times in the past, I think this is a case where he isn't quite on the mark. His assertion that there's been some sort of "policy firewall" about use of nuclear weapons is only generally true; for example, during Gulf War I, assurances were given to the Iraqis that use of biological or chemical weapons would be met with a nuclear response. There were circumlocutions, and it wasn't explicitly stated, but that was the gist of the threat.

I've also seen rumors floating around various unclassified sources in the last few years talking about nuclear weapons in other situations, such as deep penetration and bioweapon cleanup, which Arkin mentions, although he implies that it's only recently that official sources have started considering these things. That may be true, since I'm sure his sources beat the hell out of mine -- I'm just someone with an interest in the subject who pokes around the 'Net, where he's been writing on military issues for the LA Times and the Washington Post for years. Still, it seems odd to me that he's putting a spin on this that implies these ideas are recent, when they just aren't.

I personally don't believe that we'll ever see nukes used in those sorts of situations. I think that the political cost of resorting to the use of nuclear weapons is entirely too high to ever balance out their utility. I could certainly envision scenarios where we might retaliate to WMD usage with nukes, but even then, it would almost certainly be a response based on anger, and not battlefield necessity.

The USAF has studied the effectiveness of striking infrastructure targets during Gulf War I, and they've been very clear about the political downside caused by collateral damage. They're willing to consider strikes that might inflict terrible destruction, but only if the target is worth such a price. Our system is also set up so that there is civilian oversight of targeting, particularly anything that might cause widespread casualties. It's the planners' job to think about what might happen, no matter how unlikely, and come up with prospective responses. Some of those situations might indeed involve nukes, and while we might not be able to convince everyone not to strike first with WMD, we can at least hope to convince them that striking us is suicidal.