At the village of Savelyevskaya, voters were fewer still. But after a few minutes Russian soldiers arrived with a metal detector to sweep for land mines, and a Rottweiler to sniff for explosives. The soldiers led the dog into the polling station, where it ran its nose along the curtains to the booths, then the two cardboard ballot boxes, and at last the flowerpots.

The workers switched on a cassette, filling the room with Chechen music. Vakha Yunoskanov, a voter, and Maria Magomedova, a poll worker, began to dance, circling each other to the music. They said they were showing their joy.

Only minutes before, when asked if anyone in the village would vote for a candidate other than General Alkhanov, Mr. Yunoskanov had said, "No."

Ms. Magomedova quickly corrected him.

"There are some," she said brightly but firmly, as Mr. Yunoskanov, sensing a shift of message, nodded in agreement. "We have a democratic, free, honest election," she continued, as he nodded some more.
--New York Times, 30 Aug 2004

That's news from Chechnya, the breakaway Russian province where the state military is routinely outgunned by separatist rebels. What do you do when there are no good guys? This is the Chechen Dilemma.

A quick system notice: The 'Fish was down for a while going into the weekend. Last month, while I thought I was renewing our hosting agreement online, I accidentally ordered all services cancelled as of last Thursday. Everything is fine now, and this failure won't happen again, ever, for the next eleven months.

More news as events warrant. For now...

THING OF THE RECENTLY
It's a bit late, but for the last week I've been enjoying the Olympics web site, Dead F'ing Last: Because they're there and you're not.

At four polling places that foreign journalists were allowed to visit, always accompanied by Russian soldiers and Chechen guards, not a single voter could be found expressing support for any of the six other candidates.

"We voted for Alkhanov," said Hanifa Izayeva, 34, speaking for eight women who were presented by the authorities as voters in the village of Alpatovo. "We hope that he will bring peace.''

I'm back in Iowa now, and looking for a job. The trip to Rapid City was quality, and featured what was--in the spirit of other Internet gatherings--perhaps the first 'Fish-Up since I moved away, held at the peak of Little Devil's Tower near Harney Peak. That sounds cornball, OK, but Jesse, Joan and I--along with Mutual Friends 1, 2 and 3 (right)--did some hiking and hung out a while. Incriminating pictures exist; stay tuned.

Since returning to Iowa, I have done very little besides look for work and read, so there isn't much to write about for now. Between the ongoing Olympics in Athens and the upcoming Republican National Convention, the newspapers are pretty hard-up for controversy and it's hard to get worked up about things. I suppose there's always the Iowa Values Fund, the Grand Duchy's primary business development program... or rather there isn't, after a separation-of-powers lawsuit struck down the program; and there won't be unless the Democratic governor and the Republican state congressional leaders can work out some kind of agreement to reinstate the project. For the moment the Fund is an un-Funded mandate, with two million dollars remaining to cover fifty million dollars of financial commitments. It will run out of money within four weeks. Add a lame-duck governor and two hard-line congressional leaders who weren't crazy about this whole "economic development" business in the first place, and you have some interesting drama bubbling in what would otherwise be a vacant Capitol building down in Des Moines.

But so much for all that. I promised some words about the decay of my old hometown, and I'll get to them soon. For now, though, please enjoy the...

WHATEVER OF THE RECENT PAST
When I was in Rapid, I spent my scant spare time looking through the Forest Service's excellent Black Hills Trail Guide. Now that I'm back in Iowa, though, I'm finding myself spending far too much time on a site about life on another barren and featureless land: Antarctica. The site is called Big Dead Place, and it chronicles life at the McMurdo research station.

It's no Daily Show, of course, but that's why I've uploaded another good clip I've been sitting on for a month or so: Jon Stewart on talking points (AVI/XviD, 6MB). If you've never heard the term "media literacy" before, give that link a click and let a basic-cable fake-news show teach you a thing or two.

I'm back in Rapid City. Bikers in sweaters = CONFIRMED. Crazy local journalist slash 'blogger = also confirmed. It sounds like a hokey idea at first, but this is probably the most aggressive journalism the Rapid City Journal has ever done--or at least some of their better photography--so cut Bill Harlan some slack. The man is King of Dubious Honors, yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean he is doing a bad job of doing what he does with what little he has to do it with.

To-do:

• Find a good hiking trail in the Hills, see if Nik wants to come
• Second try: see Alien vs. Predator (?!)
• Call Grizzly to see which cheap Sturgis merchandise I should bring back to Iowa
• Try some Fjord's Ice Cream
• Write up crappy-intarweblog-rant inre: the rise and fall of Rapid City. It's been rolling around in my dome for a while now, but perhaps I should write it down before I forget it.

BONUS MEDIA OF THE SOMETIME
A Donald Rumsfeld classic (WMV, 8 MB) from March or so. It won't be up for too long, so get it while you can.

The big news I alluded to earlier is this:

1. I'm taking a year off of school to establish Iowa residency and save myself thousands of dollars on college tuition. In return, I lose my health insurance and a bit of my scholarship package. Somehow I must work in Ames for a year, keeping my health and recovering my sanity in the process. Which leads me to...
2. ...the months of December, April and May: they were a bit rough. Tonight I broke out my old social psychology textbook to find some answers, and it suggested that if someone had locked me in a room with six nice young women for a couple of hours, everything would be fine now (Myers 583) I'm not sure I buy it, but it's probably better than my solution at the time, which was the fetal position. Playing dead, while a useful course of action in case of bear attack, is not a skill that carries over well into daily life.
   I think that's all I should say about that in public.
3. I'll be back in Rapid City this afternoon through Sunday to do laundry, deal with the family crisis (which I suppose is mine) and gawk at bikers in sweaters. Supposedly, this year's Rally is the coldest in history; I expect to validate this claim for myself soon.

Sorry for the drama and for not calling, even if I have never met you and don't know your phone number. Through the vast power of the Internet, I should be able to legally "steal" your "identity" and "stalk you" just based on the information your computer just gave me, just now, without you even knowing... but that's a lot of work, and I'm lazy. Oops, I mean depressed. MANAGED HEALTH CARE thank you for clarifying this! Where were you eight months ago when all I needed was a concerned phone call?

LINK OF THE NOW
The Bali Satay House, the local Indonesian-restaurant-cum-night-club, finally got themselves a website. Unfortunately, last week's Arecee show was probably their last good show this month. Still, this advance is a great victory for Ames music fans tired of picking through the sea of weight-loss flyers on "the pole" in Campustown.

Referenced: Myers, David G. Social Psychology. 7th ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 2002.