This particular day, 18 years ago, was a Tuesday.

What a stretch of time, huh? In April 2007, war was the major topic, and shit looked bad — yet in a nowadays perspective, them was the good-ole-days. Sarah Palin was still more than a year off, and Barack Obama was already on the scene: ‘“America cannot meet the threats of this century alone, but the world cannot meet them without America … We must neither retreat from the world nor try to bully it into submission — we must lead the world, by deed and example.”‘

A quick leap 18 years later into a nightmare more profoundly hideous. Of course, the entire Iraqi adventure was horrible from the absolute start — for an instance, the day before this long-ago Tuesday:

Meanwhile in Iraq, at least 68 Iraqis were killed in violence around the country Monday. And at least nine U.S. troops were killed in a suicide bombing north of Baghdad. It was one of the deadliest ground attacks on the U.S. military since the start of the Iraq War. Another 20 soldiers were wounded. Eighty-five U.S. servicemembers have been killed this month, the most since December.

We would end up with a total of 4,492 US GIs killed via the Iraq war, with more than 32,292 wounded. Plus, close to 500,000 Iraqis died (other estimates have been higher). Despite all the war shit, there was a democratic, governmental sense of order, though (an inhumane, immoral, incompetent sense of order), not like that currently present in the burning fabric of our daily activities.

Anyway, at 3:46 PM this afternoon 18 years ago, Eric Metze, my original/longtime blog administrator/go-to IT guy, tapped in the appropriate code and brought Compatible Creatures to life with a two-word exclamation: “Woo-hoo!”

Maybe this a recurring theme-like music:

Anyway, again, five hours later on that long-ago Tuesday (8:34 PM), I published my first blog post, aptly titled, “Word,” for then and nowadays:

In an age where events are known so fast and everybody just about everywhere can instantly become aware of every corner of the globe even the smallest little word can carry a big weight.

And the little word here today is “palliate,” which means to try and make a wrong or an offense seem less severe, mitigate the circumstances. And palliate is just what the Bush Black House is now doing with the announcement that Scott Bloch, Bush-appointed head of the US Office of Special Counsel, will lead a sweeping investigation into Karl Rove’s politicking with taxpayer money and breaking a ton of federal laws while doing it.

Bloch himself was recently investigated by the IG of the Office of Personnel Management for pushing a right-wing agenda down the throats of federal employees.

So all Bloch is doing is an obvious attempt to try and bury Rove’s political wrongdoing by creating and intense investigation and then, By Golly, there was no indication of any lawbreaking on Rove’s part. Bush/Cheney/Rove are just trying to palliate the whole mess.

However, there’s no righting a wrong by the T-Rump crowd — as I wrote above, we’re in a different space/zone than 18 years ago. In that near-20-year stretch of the immediate past, I have to all intents and purposes (hopefully) covered a shitload of topics on this blog, creating post subjects from politics/war, to social/culture shit, music,  the environment (in April 2007, however, I wasn’t aware fully of climate change — which would hugely, enormously shift the following summer with the publication of the UN’s Fourth Assessment), and just about all kinds of crazy-ass shit that popped up on the news.
This little digital space has been a comfort for the past 18 years, and fun. And hard to believe this particular episode of Compatible Creatures is the blog’s 4,719th post — slim pickings on posts since last November, and really slack since the T-Rump started his rampage in late January.

I wonder what this time next year will hold? Or if even I’ll make it around the sun one more time? And what will America look like a year from now? The world? Life?
Just way-too much shit in the fan at present to even attempt to forge anything near a guess.

A screenshot/pix of that first post (image out front):

Near two decades later, or not, yet once again here we are …