I'm pretty sure that the first Peeled Snack mix ever was Figsated.  I could confirm that by asking our president and founder, Noha, who's actually sitting five feet away from me right now, but it's more fun to speculate.  I contend that it's our first because it was probably the first one that she imagined while looking through an airport in search of something to chew on (and coming up empty, excepting pringles and candy bars).  She imagined it first, so my imagination tells me, because Figsated is basically her childhood afternoon snack.  See, she grew up in the Middle East.

Sigh.  What a mess we're sitting in.  Yesterday the venerable old man of diplomacy, the UN, lost a few of its observers in Lebanon to a perhaps something that can be written off as an accident, but which won't be by many.  The Israeli sloppiness here hints at an incompetence not generally associated with Israeli military tactics.  Usually when we talk about Israeli incompetence, we're speaking about their diplomacy.  But militarily?  They're supposed to be surgeons!

What's this got to do with snacks?  Good question.  When I was a wee little 12 year old, in my social studies class we studied potential causes for World War III, and a conflict between Israel and Lebanon was first on the list.  Seeing as that was the Reagan era, World War III seemed very real and frightening to me, and that nasty little lesson left a deep impression upon my terrorized little mind.  Fast-forward to the Dubya era and strife in the Middle East doesn't necessarily mean nuclear war (or, in Dubya parlance, New Que Larr).  And yet I can't help but imagine the difficulties of selling fruit and nut snacks to whatever mutated peoploids survive a newquelarr conflict.

I'm not given to conspiracies, and while I can be  accused of owning an over-active imagination, I don't usually waste time with "doom and gloom" prognostications.  However, in this new war between Lebanon and Israel, I just can't right now imagine a way out.  The Israeli policy of attrition (that is, punish the Lebanese so viciously that they never act up this way again) seems to me a monkey's policy, very simian, very Jean Claude Van Damme.  They assume that they inflict enough violence to end all violence ever.  Raise your hand if you find that just the stupidest thing.

Hezbollah and their Lebanese hosts don't get off easy either.  Woops, did we take your soldiers?  Sorry about that- they looked like our cousins Fiezel and Ahmed, now you can have them back.  Indignation like Hezbollah's makes for a great shovel with which to dig many, many graves.  Israel could never accede to such a prisoner swap, because it would just mean more hostage-taking.  And yet Hezbollah's "leadership" keeps hoping for a trade.

If Israel is a bunch of murderous baboons running amok in your house, Hezbollah is the whiny little four year old brat that's locked himself in the bathroom and is refusing to open the door.  Neither side is bothering to be either reasonable or logical.  But I suppose it's too much to ask for such things when it comes to that terrorized, trampled, tragic crossroads of culture.

This'll all get worse before it gets better, and not even Condie's thigh-high boots can change that.  Just google "US Clout" and see where we stand in the international press.  It makes me wonder if the current administration thinks that a weak United States is good for business, if they are scrambling to recover all that they've squandered, or if they's just like Hezbollah, locked in the bathroom and ignoring everyone and everything that tells them they're wrong.

Haikus:

Back yard just blew up.

Used to be a nice garden.

Now it's soot for sale.

Nukes don't scare me much.

I live in New York City.

Sucks to live through nukes.

I kidnapped your dog.

Give me back my goldfish, PUNK!

Where'd my grandma go?