2001-10-9 - 9:01 a.m.

On the internal soundtrack: Some manic Smiths song I forget the name of.

So, Poindexter drove out to my office to pick me up for lunch. We went to a new Korean buffet place that opened nearby. I had the expectation that I would go and try stuff and find out which Korean dishes I liked.

Uh, well, that would be all of them.

What a fantastic place. ALL the food was good. We barbecued some chicken in a little gas grill at our table. Various types of noodles, about 12 different vegetable salads, lightly steamed vegetables, chicken and beef dishes. Oh my GAWD. It was just SO GOOD. Not your typical cheapie lunch buffet, apparently. But at $10 apiece it was a total bargain.

"Very few round-eyes in there," Poindexter remarked as we left. It was true. I've heard that's often a good way to tell whether an ethnic restaurant is any good -- by what proportion of the restaurant is patronized by that ethnicity.

I'm stuffed.

Speaking of ethnic restaurants, when we were out gallivanting around Virginia on Friday with the MIL, we pulled into a Chinese buffet restaurant to grab a quick lunch.

The outside of the restaurant was a little shabby, but since some of the best ethnic restaurants we've eaten at look like dives from the outside.

We got inside, though, and the place was dark, with cheap furniture, and it looked old and dirty. I felt funny right then and began to have reservations about eating there. The buffet was 10 minutes from being ready, so we took a bathroom break.

MIL took one look at the bathroom door -- covered with dirty smudges around the knob -- and said with a look of horror, "I'm not going in there." I was a little desperate, so went in anyway, and touched everything with paper towels rather than my hands. I got out, went straight to Poindexter, and said, "Do you really want to eat here? Um, I don't."

So we left. I was nauseated for the next hour or so. If the bathrooms look that bad, I really can't believe they take much care in the kitchen either. It was just horrendous. How is that restaurant making any business? I wonder if we should have said anything about why we were leaving. I don't know.

It's funny, the reaction some people are having to Rush Limbaugh's deafness. People really don't like this guy. They're making comments about how "he never listens anyway" so the deafness won't change much, and somebody made a crack about his weight, too (even though Rush has been skinny for quite some time now -- I barely recognized him).

To be perfectly honest, I find Rush Limbaugh's ego sufficiently annoying that I don't particularly care to read his stuff. But I do agree with some of his views, and I admire his just-do-it philosophy and belief in the power of the individual. I think he's going to find this deafness thing difficult but it's not going to hold him back at all. Well as it shouldn't.

I'm just a little surprised at how petty people can sound, I guess. They dislike someone, for whatever reason, and they have to express this in the most nasty ways possible, by insulting them with untruths or half-truths or even by saying things that aren't true at all. It mystifies me. Or by calling people "stupid" or "evil" based on a single statement they made or remarks taken out of context and not looking deeper at the whole story of the person.

(Heh, in rereading that it sounds applicable to a lot of different situations -- idiots who confuse peace-loving Muslims with terrorists, people in other countries who hate the U.S. based on anything but personal experience with this country, racism in general, stuff like that. Must be a really strong component of human nature.)

I have a fairly strong dislike of Bill Clinton for a variety of political and philosophical reasons. I also am repulsed by him personally, on a gut level, and do not share the great love that I see many people have for him. But I do admire his intelligence, and particularly his brilliance at being able to figure out what people seem to want and giving it to them. This is no small talent. I'm grateful that he left the U.S. economy alone, for the most part, allowing it to flourish as it did during his two terms. And I'm pretty sure I've never talked shit about him here in my journal, or made any stupid snotty statements about him based on my dislike.

I guess I just don't see things in black and white. I lean towards one or the other at times, but nothing is ever that simple. And I'm usually willing to give just about everyone or any idea the benefit of the doubt. Or at least, I really try to.

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