'Scuse me, Mr. Rummsfeld, I happen to live here!
Munich is emerging from its annual state of siege during the NATO security conference. Bigwigs from all NATO countries gather in a hotel in the middle of the city, and everything gets shut down.
This year, they decided to shut down all the trains going below the city on the off chance someone would detonate a bomb when the train was closest to the conference hotel, which would make it only about, ahm, four hundred metres of packed earth and sturdy rock?
So, spontaneously on Friday evening at half past six, when just about everybody was going about their business or hurrying home, they closed down the trains on the say-so of some NSA goon imported from Alabama or some such location. The Nazgul was caught up in it and had to make her own way home best as she could, black cloak and all...
The city stayed closed all weekend. Who minds the effin' natives?
And did I mention it was a private conference, organised by some private committee, in a privately run hotel? They never pay their bills, either, for all that policing they need and disruptions they cause. Think they're due it because such important people come to their conference. They had a luxury cruise ship impounded recently in the Caribbean, Thomas the Metropolitan said, which they'd hired from some shipping firm to hold some of their important events on, and they forgot to pay the rent - they're too important, they don't have to. The shipping firm didn't think so, and after some five or seven unsuccessful tries found a judge in some harbour who didn't think so, either...
Yay for that judge! And yay for the foreign minister of Slovenia, by the way, who goes to such conferences and then annoys the hell out of his more "important" colleagues by asking awkward questions with an inimitable slow garrulousness that can't just be ignored. I always enjoy the fellow very much on TV.
Perhaps I should try and get his autograph next year; that would be a good joke. Next year, though, there might be no more Rummy, if we're lucky, and no more war in Iraq, the whole thing will go down relatively easily, and getting an autgraph from the foreign minister of Slovenia might be a piece of cake...
I'm rather irate, though, at the fact that I can't do a single thing to make that happen.-
This year, they decided to shut down all the trains going below the city on the off chance someone would detonate a bomb when the train was closest to the conference hotel, which would make it only about, ahm, four hundred metres of packed earth and sturdy rock?
So, spontaneously on Friday evening at half past six, when just about everybody was going about their business or hurrying home, they closed down the trains on the say-so of some NSA goon imported from Alabama or some such location. The Nazgul was caught up in it and had to make her own way home best as she could, black cloak and all...
The city stayed closed all weekend. Who minds the effin' natives?
And did I mention it was a private conference, organised by some private committee, in a privately run hotel? They never pay their bills, either, for all that policing they need and disruptions they cause. Think they're due it because such important people come to their conference. They had a luxury cruise ship impounded recently in the Caribbean, Thomas the Metropolitan said, which they'd hired from some shipping firm to hold some of their important events on, and they forgot to pay the rent - they're too important, they don't have to. The shipping firm didn't think so, and after some five or seven unsuccessful tries found a judge in some harbour who didn't think so, either...
Yay for that judge! And yay for the foreign minister of Slovenia, by the way, who goes to such conferences and then annoys the hell out of his more "important" colleagues by asking awkward questions with an inimitable slow garrulousness that can't just be ignored. I always enjoy the fellow very much on TV.
Perhaps I should try and get his autograph next year; that would be a good joke. Next year, though, there might be no more Rummy, if we're lucky, and no more war in Iraq, the whole thing will go down relatively easily, and getting an autgraph from the foreign minister of Slovenia might be a piece of cake...
I'm rather irate, though, at the fact that I can't do a single thing to make that happen.-