In today's dark, scary world, with the holiday season bearing down upon us and unemployment angst filling my days and nights, I find myself only obsessed with one thing- the big musical Buffy extravaganza that's on tonight. I don't even know why I'm so psyched for a musical episode, but the reviews have been excellent and anyone who knows knows that when Buffy is good, it's damn good. I get mocked for watching it, feel slightly embarassed for being 33 and obsessed with it, and don't know that many other people who watch it, but "Buffy" kicks "West Wing," "The Practice" and all those other generic tv shows butts. It's not even close too. But enough about Buffy....

Here's today random musing- recently I read a story in the New York Times discussing how the bombing of Afghanistan is turning opinion against us. In the story, they quote various people from around the world, some in the Middle East who have their reasons for not supporting it, and one guy from Switzerland. And I'm thinking Switzerland? We're getting criticized by someone from Switzerland? Shouldn't they be banned from expressing they're opinion on anything? That's even lamer than someone from France criticizing us. At least France pretended to put up a fight, Switzerland's done nothing.

I've always wondered what a Swiss history class was like. I'm sure it's a quarter long class and the text book is around 100 pages. Kind of like that old joke about Greatest Jewish Heroes or Great British Cooks. What can the book say? Well, Napoleon came and tried to take over all of Europe and parts of the world and we did nothing. Then WWI came and millions of people died ghastly deaths over six miles of land in Belgium, and we did nothing (which, come to think of it, wasn't that bad of an idea). And then WWII started up, Hitler tried to take over the world and wipe out an entire race, and we didn't do anything. Actually, we did something. Our bands made a bunch of money off of it all. So, a lot of the money was stolen from people who were later gassed by the Nazi's, but we held fast to our principle of not doing a damn thing. Neutrality forever!

I think the best thing ever said about Switzerland comes from the great Orson Welles flick "The Third Man":
`You know what the fellow said: In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love--they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.''

And the country's really boring too.