Put Your Pants Back On, Partner

if you've been following the news, you will have noticed a few things. For one, mother nature won't shut the freaking faucet off on the East Coast of the United States. But perhaps the biggest piece of international news that's made the headlines is the ruckus up in Iran.

Iran, to say the least, has been "pretty interesting" (that's my analysis of the situation) in recent history. Ever since we sniffed communism on Mossadegh in the 1950s, the very spiky ball that is current Iran was set in motion.

Everyone has heard that story and the story of the 1979 revolution, where a group of people decided the best way to make friends with the world was to storm an embassy. Everyone remember the extremism. It is interesting to note, like many other revolutions, that the initial period before the fundamentalists took over saw much participation by moderates who were very much in favor of the Western ideals of democracy and basic liberties seen in many western states.

Other revolutions have functioned fairly similarly. The French Revolution was mostly dominated in the intermediate stages by the Girondins, a moderate group of middle-class folks who were in favor of some change, but not the wild shenanigans that would come later. People forget that the Russian Revolution didn't just spring from a dictatorial tsarist regime to a dictatorial communist regime without some sort of "in-between" period. It's not like everyone was all about the more extreme communist system.

So let's not get too excited about Iran here. The fan's still on, and the shit's still in the bucket.