Last night as I was nursing my popped knee with a bag of french cut green beans from the freezer, I happened to catch the 11 o'clock edition of our local news. At about 11:05 they broke in with the news from the AP.

Yasser Arafat was dead.

I cringed a little. As much as that man did to incite the Palestinians against the Israelis in the early part of his career, he did even more to reign in the hotheads toward the end. God only knows what's going to happen in Israel now. If you thought the Middle East was unstable now, you ain't seen nothing yet.

(Did I really use ain't in a sentence? Sweet Moses I need to move out of this area.)