A young American college student was killed today as she tried to stop an IDF bulldozer from tearing down a house in the Gaza strip.

The full story is here.

I cannot help but wonder what sorts of things she had been taught, either at home or in school. Why would she think that trying to defend the perpetrators of terrorism from the consequences of their attacks was a moral action?

Rachel belonged to a group called the Innternational Solidarity Campaign, a group with a long record of clashes with, and arrests by, the IDF.

They've attempted to stop several other IDF operations, to include the seige of Arafat's compound months back. Funnily enough, many of the dozen or so news accounts I read about this fail to mention that, and described her just a "peace activist."

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I wan't going to blog about my visits to the Houston Rodeo this year. Hell, I've still got several hundred pics and a few concert reviews for last year sittin on the hard drive waiting to see the light of an internet day.

But some stuff is just too damn good not to mention.

Lynyrd Skynyrd had been scheduled, along with Jerry Jeff Walker, for tonight's show. However, Gary Rossington had to have heart surgery last week, so the rodeo called in Clint Black to sub for him.

Clint played a few of his standards, and then played "The Breeze" for all the Skynyrd fans. To help with that song, he called up his two brothers, Kevin and Brian, with whom he used to play back in the days before he hit the Big Time. I thought that was pretty cool, as so far as I know (and that's a bigass caveat) that's the first time they'd ever been on a stage together in about fifteen years. Clint's band has a few former rockers in it (Jake, his bassist, is a great jazz and rock player, and Hayden smokes on guitar) so they did a truly good job with the tune.

I'm thinkin' to myself, that song alone made me glad I came.

Then Clint drops this bomb...

He says that he'd been fortunate enough to have been spending some time entertaining our troops, and after hanging around them for a while, just a few days ago, he and Hayden had finished writing a new song, and they were now going to play it for us. Oh, and by the way, you could download it for free. He said it was going to be free, like America. And would we mind calling the local country radio stations and ask them to play it.

It's called "Iraq and Roll"

It will become a number one song on the country charts, the unofficial anthem of our combat troops in the Middle East. I garan-dam-tee it. (I am sometimes wrong, but never uncertain :-)

I dl'd it tonight, then spent a half hour transcribing the lyrics, which follow:

The song flat kicks ass.

UPDATE 3-15-2003: They've finally got the lyrics up on Clint's site. However, the transcription is wrong, with several glaring discrepancies between the song and the published lyrics.

As an example, compare the official version of this line:

"I GOT INFRARED, GPS AND GOOD OLD FASHIONED LEAD"

(And what's up with the SHOUTING, anyway?)

This is clearly wrong. I stand by my version:

"I got infrared, I got GPS I got that good ol' fashioned lead."

Have I ever mentioned I can be a bit pedantic?

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I've not written too much this week, and I owe email to so many people it's ridiculous. Nor am I likely to catch up in the next week or so, for a few reasons...

It's rodeo season here in Houston. My life of late has been like this...

Work. Eat. BBQ Cookoff. Drink. Eat. Drink. Dance. Drink. Sleep. Work. ZZ Top. Drink. Dance. Drink. Eat. Drink. Dance. Drink. Sleep. Take massive vitamin doses in attempt to salvage liver. Work. Toby Keith. Drink. Dance. Eat. Drink. Dance. Boink CG. Sleep. Work.....

And so on....

But it gets worse...

CG blew her knee out two days ago. Dislocated it for sure, and probably tore the ACL. We've got to wait until Monday for an MRI.

This was her good knee, mind you - not the one she ripped to shreds when she was an All-State softball players sliding into second when she was about seventeen, the one that has three screws in it to hold her kneecap together, and will probably have to be compleatly replaced sometime in the next few years.

Worst part of it is, she did it dancing. With somebody other than me. I'm not jealous, dammit, but I love to dance with her, and we don't get to near as often as I like, and when we do go out, I can only dance with her to the slower tunes, and just a few dances a night, because of her bad wheels.

I figure if anybody was going to wreck her knee dancing, it shoulda been me.

So, she's gimping around on crutches, with an ankle to hip brace that keeps her leg locked straight. So, I'm having to play nursemaid. (sigh)

This is cutting down a bit on the time for writing. But my lack of output will leave a hole in the blogosphere like the one you get when you pull your hand out of a bucket of water. :-)

There's all kinda good stuff to read over there in the link farm on the right. Have fun.

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