trying to grok

LETTER

My husband hates to write, and the only thing worse for him than composing at a computer is writing with a pen. He didn't write me much from Iraq, but when he did, I knew he had forced himself to sit down and do it. That's touching.

Absence really does make the heart grow fonder, and I think deployments can sometimes bring out the best in a relationship. Mrs. Greyhawk found a letter from a husband in Iraq to his wife. It's positively breathtaking. You just have to see it to believe it.

UPDATE:

I swear I have never laughed so hard as I just did. I asked my husband if he had read the letter and -- right hand on a Bible -- he said, "Yeah. Was he talking about a chicken or a rooster or something? Man, there's a lot of them walking around Iraq. And how did he mail a bird to his wife? I don't get it."

My husband, the romantic.

FRUSTRATED

As I started reading Baldilocks' post In Search of a Survival Plan, I was thunderstruck. By a completely unoriginal idea.

The concept of the Vietnam War—rather than the actual war itself—was shaped by the media of that time and today’s overwhelming Democrat, leftists, "anti-war" media is attempting, with some success, to shape how the American public thinks about this war.

I've talked to my mom extensively about her generation. I guess it's not hard for me to understand that many people her age think all wars are Vietnam. They lost friends, they sat anxiously and waited to hear the lottery numbers, and they unfortunately participated in America's only half-assed war. I'm sorry they had to go through that. But Iraq is not Vietnam.

When the Guif War started, I was in 7th grade. I saw it on TV and ran to my room, scared out of my wits. I wrote in my diary OH GOD WE'RE AT WAR and went on to write that we would all die. It's hard not to laugh at myself now, since I know I was imagining trench warfare and blitzkrieg. I had no concept of war. Heck, I still have no concept of war, try as I might. I've talked extensively with my husband and his friends, trying to get a sense of what they did in Iraq. But I have managed to figure out one thing, the thing that hit me when I read Baldilocks' first paragraph.

If Iraq really is as bad as the media says it is, why don't I know any soldiers who concur?

Why does Red 6 say that it was "the best year of his life"? Why did my husband's unit softball team love to get together and rehash their "so there we were" stories? Why does my husband think that going to Iraq was the most important and meaningful thing he's ever done? And why does he feel so down in the dumps about being home? If Iraq really is a quagmire, shouldn't he feel relieved?

The soldiers I've talked to think that Iraq was meaningful. They think it was fun, boring, and scary all at once. They think they were helping both Iraq and the United States by being there, and they were proud to serve. Some have already gotten their fill and others are itching to get back, but they all believe a soldier should soldier.

So why don't I feel like the media or the general public groks this?

I think it's sad that my mom says she feels like she has to defend my husband because he wants to continue to contribute to the War on Terror. She says that her friends and extended family simply cannot comprehend that my husband and I are not horrified by the thought of Iraq. And we're just not. If he raised his hand today and volunteered to go back, I'd be extremely proud of him, because I think the only way to win this thing is to see it through to the end, and I'd rather have someone as smart and capable as my husband to lead the way.

My husband is strong enough to go back, and I think it's important enough to let him go. That's why it's so frustrating that the TV is filled with Cindy f-ing Sheehan all the time. That body count and gloom and doom reporting is demeaning to the soldiers who want to see this war through to the end.

Sometimes I get the feeling that the media is as uninformed as I was at 13. Their reports read like a page from my diary, where the sky is falling and we're all gonna die. But "if I got my news from the newspapers also I'd be pretty depressed as well." Thank goodness I have soldiers to give me the straight story.

Maybe some journalists should come have dinner with us and Red 6. Except I doubt he and my husband would let them in the front door...

SWEATER

I'm working on a very time-consuming sweater these days. Size 4 needles, sportweight yarn, lots of little stitches. About 42,000 of them so far, and that's only the back and half of the front. At five minutes per row, 312 rows so far, that's about 26 hours of knitting put into the sweater. That's two and a half seasons of Dallas. And I'm only halfway done.

With that said, if you walked into the living room and found the dog munching away at your sweater, wouldn't you try to hit him with a loaf of mozzarella bread too?

(I don't think he did anything I can't fix. Luckily he was chewing at the armhole, so I'm sure I can hide that bit. Oooh, was I mad though. And now I have teeth marks all over my needles.)

BEDTIME

Ever since I wrote about my school dreams, I haven't had any. I have, however, participated in a plane crash, a bizarre conversation with a girl from my Brownie troop, and a Chinook ride to Taco Bell with my husband and Mike Penca. (RHS alums: I have no idea why Mike was with us. Haven't thought about him in nearly ten years.)

I've always hated bedtime. When I was a kid, I could never fall asleep. I'd read entire books, play games with a flashlight, and count up into the thousands. I was always that kid who was the last one awake at slumber parties. My husband and my best friend from college had a good laugh when they shared stories about how I could talk for hours on end at night. They've both fallen to sleep as I've droned on and on.

Lately I've been having trouble sleeping again, and nothing can help me. I took some NyQuil for my cold at about 7PM the other night and then got up again at 11 and took another dose. Even that can't put me out! And then when I finally do sleep, I have these ridiculous dreams that stress me out, like plane crashes.

My husband thinks I'm insane. The best part of his day is when he puts his head on that pillow. But I wish there were some sort of pill I could take to make 8 hours disappear and make myself feel rested without actually getting into bed.

SAD JOKE

I'm sick and tired of people picking on Condoleezza Rice for not being black enough. Powerline cuts to the core of a very depressing and demeaning op-ed about how Rice just doesn't get it. According to Eugene Robinson, she was too busy playing the piano to understand racism, and she lives in this Fantasy World where people are judged by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin, which apparently is a bad thing.

Last night I caught an episode of The Chappelle Show that I'd never seen before. It included a "race draft", a humorous take on sports drafts where different races chose multi-racial people to belong to their group. (For example, Tiger Woods was drafted by the black race, defining him once and for all as black.) When the white group came to the podium, they drafted Colin Powell. The black race said they'd negotiate a trade: they'd throw in Condoleezza if they could have Eminem.

I know it's just a joke, but it's a shame there's an element of truth to it. It's sad commentary that the black race would rather embrace Eminem than Rice and Powell, two of the most educated and powerful people on the planet.

SNIFFLES

On Friday, Charlie started getting a runny nose and red, itchy eyes. Then he passed it on to me Saturday afternoon. We're both a little under the weather today, so it looks like I'll be lounging on the couch watching Dallas for the afternoon. Read Varifrank if you need something to pass the time...

SON OF A...

This article (via Beth) about an Iraqi who trains suicide bombers is just too disturbing for words. I think it's disgusting that Time magazine sat down with this guy...

Al-Tamimi met with TIME in two interviews spanning five hours. He agreed to meet with us after members of the TIME staff approached Iraqi contacts who are close to the insurgency, in an effort to gain information on the ways in which suicide-bombing networks operate.

...but hopefully some good can come of it and someone in the military can learn to identify these dry runs and practice sessions. Still, it's a little too eerily like the North Kosanese issue for me.

Here's my favorite part of the article:

He is so proficient at facilitating suicide bombings that he says his own brother and sister have asked to be considered for "martyrdom operations." He gave them some basic training but advised them to find other, less drastic ways of serving the insurgency. "A suicide bombing should be the last resort," he says. "It should not be a shortcut to paradise."

Let that be a lesson to anyone who thinks being a suicide bomber is honorable. If it were that freaking honorable, al-Tamimi would be proud to help his family members to paradise. But apparently al-Tamimi scruples don't prevent him from making his son into a monster:

He has told his son that he is too young to become a martyr but says he recently taught the child how to make roadside bombs and how to fashion a rudimentary rocket launcher out of metal tubes.

May you burn in hell, al-Tamimi.

TOTAL

Tanker sent me a link to an article about the perceived risk of investing in France. It reminded me of something that I forgot to share a few weeks ago. Someone recommended an international mutual fund to us, so my husband looked into it as a possibility. That is, until he saw that Total was one of its top holdings. "Guns, tobacco, and other vices are no problem," my husband said. "I'd invest in those in spades. But I refuse to invest in French oil companies." Despite protestations that Total is a very lucrative market -- well, no kidding: Saddam treated them well -- my husband put his foot down and said that we're not buying into that mutual fund. I was awful proud of him.

THE NEED

Amritas writes about how the need for a foreign language can be an indicator of success (I'm really oversimplifying his post here; it's much more interesting in its entirety). One of my friends emailed me last week. We haven't talked in a while, which became obvious to me when she said, "I imagine your German's probably awesome by now!"

Before I moved here, I couldn't understand how people could be stationed in Germany or Korea and come home not speaking the language. Now I completely understand this. Until you see how a military community operates, it's hard to really imagine it. My Swedish friend bought me a German paperback book as a gift when she came to visit two years ago. At the end of her weekend here, she apologized for giving me the book, saying that she didn't realize how American my life still was, even though I was smack dab in the middle of Europe.

We speak only English all day long. We spend dollars at our stores, where we can buy 110-volt appliances and Region 1 DVDs. My husband and I don't have any German friends except for a few wives, most of whom speak English quite well and sit around moaning about how they'd rather be in Kentucky where they could go to Walmart at 10 PM. We don't need to speak German.

That said, we try to speak it whenever we're out on the town. We do just fine with our restaurant and department store vocabulary. Sometimes we get the Rolled Eye Treatment from German shopkeepers who'd rather conduct business in English anyway, like last weekend when I started giving someone my address in German and she looked at me like I was speaking Chinese. I sighed and repeated the exact same thing in English, at which point she finally wrote it down. The Germans in our area don't want us to speak German, so it's an uphill battle with the girl in the train station who begged, "Can you please just speak English so this will go faster?" when I tried to purchase a train ticket in German.

We're perfectly capable of learning German. I learned French and Swedish just fine, and my husband taught himself basic Arabic, for pete's sake. But the motivation just isn't there, because the reward for speaking German on the economy is rolled eyes and groans. So why bother?

(This is not to excuse those people who rave on and on about how much they loooove living in Europe but don't even bother to learn how to order food from a menu. I hate when we run into those types when we're out on the town. If you want to homestead here permanently and be a Squatter after you retire, then learn freaking German, you boors.)

EXCUSES

I made the mistake of reading this CaliValleyGirl post right before bed. I can't get it out of my mind, and the more I think about it, the angrier I get.

I'm not 100% sure what I think about the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. I don't think gay soldiers are any less worthy than straight ones, but I do know there are a significant number of anti-gay soldiers (if my experiences teaching college classes here on post are any indication), and "don't ask, don't tell" is a way of protecting gay Americans who'd like to serve their country. It's perhaps not a perfect policy, but it's the best we've got right now.

What I know for a fact though is that "don't ask, don't tell" certainly isn't an alternative to conscientious objector status. That's what happened in the case of the gay Marine highlighted in CVG's articles. This man is not a champion for gay rights, though the glowing tones of the articles would like you to believe he is. He wasn't caught sleeping with a man and forced to leave the service. His commander and unit seemed to like him. Leaving the Marines was his choice and his alone.

This Marine wrote a 7-page letter to his commander stating that he won't be used as a tool of the Bushitler Oil Junta and kill kids for Halliburton in an Illegal War for Missing WMDs, oh and by the way, P.S. I'm gay. He used his victim status to get out of responsibility. He didn't want to go back to Iraq because he hates the president (enough to imply that he'd rather kill the Bush administration than terrorists), so he came up with the perfect way to get out of his enlistment: The Gay Excuse. Thus, they reluctantly kicked him out for being gay -- because he told without being asked -- and now he travels with Cindy Sheehan and is hyped in gay publications for being a pioneer for gay rights in the military.

Excuse me?

I'm sure there are plenty of gay soldiers who are serving honorably. I'm also sure there are plenty of straight soldiers who'd love to have the easy-out of The Gay Excuse. But getting yourself intentionally kicked out of the Marines for being gay doesn't make you a hero. Using your victimhood to shirk the oath you took doesn't make you a champion of the gay community. You found the easy way out and took it, friend, so don't blame your plight on the Marines or George Bush or anyone but yourself.

If you truly believed that "banning gays in the military is archaic and stupid," as you said, then you wouldn't use that ban as an excuse; you wouldn't cheapen your integrity just to get what you want. Don't act like you Spoke Truth To Power, when all you really did is get out of the military on a technicality. That's despicable.

But at least you got to make out with some Iraqi boys, right?

NIGHTMARES

Besides the dog, who drives me absolutely batty with his chewing and barking at construction workers outside our house, I don't really have any personal stress in my life right now. I don't have a job, I don't have any kids, and my only responsibility is to make a nice dinner and keep the house tidy. So why do I keep having the most stressful dreams?

Practically every single night since the beginning of September I have dreamed about school. Last year while I was subbing I used to have the Sub Nightmares all the time, and they started again about a week before I subbed in September. (Those are the ones where you show up and the teacher hasn't left you any instructions and you have to come up with something to teach all day.) But even after I quit subbing and haven't gotten called in a month, I have continued to have the nightmares. Sometimes I'm the sub, sometimes I'm a student, and once I was college roommates with one of the high school girls I abhored. Two nights ago I was back in high school: I forgot my locker combination and was late to physics. (For some reason, it's always physics when I'm the student, but at least I get to see all my high school buds and even Action Bruce -- jealous, Curt?) Last night I was a teacher trying to teach Moby Dick. No idea why. A few weeks ago I had to teach refraction of light through a prism.

So if I don't have any real stress in my life, why do I keep wigging out in my dreams? Why the constant forgot-to-do-my-homework panic when I don't have anything like that going on in my real life? I don't think that all dreams need to mean something, but I'm in class nearly every single night these days. I wake up all agitated, and I have this Reverse Reality thing going on where I have to calm myself down in the morning and remind myself that my real life is much less stressful than my sleep. What's the deal?

Sheesh, why can't I just build a go-cart with my ex-landlord?

READ IT, FOR IT IS GOOD

The Killjoy Nation

And apparently my friend's husband is a blog reader too. Well, if he's reading today, Happy Birthday to you...

GEEZ LOUISE

I just sat down to email my cousin and wish her a happy birthday. Here's what Charlie did while I was on the computer...

That white thing is the toilet paper, still attached to the wall in the bathroom. Can't take my eyes off him for a minute.

LINKS

The Iraqis voted again over the weekend, and look whose picture they took with them for strength and support. Those of us who follow news from Iraq -- and not just the garbage the AP feeds to us -- remain optimistc about Iraq's future.

Saddam Hussein went on trial yesterday. Did it even make the news? We've got hourly updates on DeLay and Rove, but apparently the Butcher of Baghdad is old news. Powerline reminds us to watch the media to see who will get "more favorable treatment in the American press, Saddam or Tom DeLay, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby?"

And out of Turkey, we get the following report (via LGF):

The survey was conducted in the conservative south-eastern city of Diyarbakir. It questioned 430 people, most of them men. When asked the appropriate punishment for a woman who has committed adultery, 37% replied she should be killed.

Twenty-five percent said that she deserved divorce, and 21% that her nose or ears should be cut off.

The survey group was small but the results are a reminder that "honour killing" - a practice where women are murdered for allegedly bringing shame on their family - still has significant support in parts of Turkey.

LGF has tracked honor killings for years. Never forget that this is what we're fighting against. Honor killing is the marriage of two of the seven signs of non-competitive states, a tradition that must be eradicated before Arab states can move forward.

And lastly, Powerline asks "Where is the outrage?" over the destruction of synagogues in Gaza. He quotes an editorial that reminds us that, unlike Peeing on the Koran-gate, this actually happened.

HEH

Honestly, the second thing I thought when my husband shook me awake at 0530 (after thinking "Cool!") was "Poor Deskmerc..." I've never been very good at maintaining rivalries.

HUH?

Last night I was listening to a radio program about the benefits of pet therapy, where they take nice doggies to hospitals to cheer up patients. The program said, "Pets are a great way to reduce anxiety."

Um, I'd like to negotiate a trade.

Yesterday Charlie looked me right in the eye and squatted to pee on his bed, ate the first ten pages of The Federalist Papers, and managed to chew a hole in the bag of dog food on the shelf so that he could sit under it and have food pour down into his mouth.

Reduce anxiety, my foot.

UN

OK, here's what I don't get. The top google hits for a search on Mugabe include the phrases "Zimbabwe strongman", "descent into dictatorship", "people dying in Zimbabwe", and "Mugabe's terror campaign". He's banned from entering the EU, except for when he's invited by the UN, like he was Monday for the 60th anniversary of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization. So Mugabe, dictator of a country where "an estimated 3.8 million people" are starving, has this to say in front of the UN (via LGF):

Mr Mugabe used his speech to lambast President Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose governments have been among his severest critics.

"Must we allow these men, the two unholy men of our millennium, who in the same way as Hitler and Mussolini formed [an] unholy alliance, form an alliance to attack an innocent country?" asked Mr Mugabe, apparently referring to Iraq.

"The voice of Mr Bush and the voice of Mr Blair can't decide who shall rule in Zimbabwe, who shall rule in Africa, who shall rule in Asia, who shall rule in Venezuela, who shall rule in Iran, who shall rule in Iraq," he said.

And what did the UN do after he went on this tirade that had nothing to do with feeding the hungry?

Some delegates to the Rome meeting applauded Mr Mugabe's condemnation of the Western leaders on several occasions during his speech and then at the end.

So a real life dictator goes to the UN to call Bush and Blair dictators? And people clap? The UN is such a joke.

Hey, Mugabe. Maybe you'd better look at your own tactics before you start pointing dictator fingers at others. I'd say "using violence and murder as an electoral strategy" is a far cry from Bush and Blair. But hey, you seem to fit in fine with the Oil For Food crowd.

Please, can we just end this charade that is the UN?

WOW

Albert Pujols + bottom of the ninth = ecstatic husband and grumpy Deskmerc

NEVER FAR FROM MY THOUGHTS

Dear Bunker,

Mrs. Sims believes her husband sends her signs from above that he is watching down over her. I was thinking about these signs the other day when I opened my email junk folder and found an email from "Mike" with the subject line "hello". I knew it was spam, but for a minute I had a warm feeling that you were sending me a sign, just to say hi.

I've been reading The Federalist Papers, just like we discussed. Boy, do I wish you were here to urge me on. Would you mind too terribly if I skipped ahead a bit? I'm wading through the letters about the Articles of Confederation, but I'd rather be reading about the Constitution. Is it cheating to hop ahead to the good stuff?

A few days ago, the husband and I were naming all the places we want to visit once we get back to the US. Coming to pay our respects to you is close to the top of the list.

I miss you.
Sarah

P.S. John misses you too. We had a good talk about it recently. You touched so many of us...

CAN'T SLEEP

Hook is back!!!
Hanson's switched on.
Varifrank is a god.

WEIRD HEADLINE CHOICE

I should've said this a few days ago, but it didn't seem that important at the time. But now that everyone is carrying on about how the conference between President Bush and the soldiers was "staged", I just wanted to say that I thought the weirdest thing was the link from the MSN homepage (now gone, of course): Bush tries to boost morale. I clicked on it out of sheer curiosity, because I thought that it was such a strange headline. It made me imagine President Bush dressed up in Will Ferrell's cheerleader suit, trying to get soldiers to cheer up and stick with the mission. I don't think the actual interview had anything to do with cheerleading, so it was bizarre that they said he was trying to boost morale.

JUMPED THE SHARK

A sad day has come: my husband no longer wants to watch The Simpsons.

We hadn't seen any new episodes since spring 2003, so we were excited when they started showing them on AFN Korea. But after four weeks, my husband shut off the TV and said that he was through. A global warming joke every week is a bit too much.

I started getting skeptical when I heard Michael Moore was going to be a guest last year, but it honestly feels like every episode is peppered with Democratic Underground memes. The Simpsons used to be about timeless plots: starting a barbershop quartet, going off to summer camp, writing an Itchy & Scratchy episode. The last episode we watched was a glimpse ten years into the future, complete with global warming turning Alaska into a beach, a military draft for Gulf War Five, and the 51st state being Saudi Israelia (I still don't understand what they were getting at there.) And this garbage is from the same genius minds that made Futurama?

Bart and Lisa go on a field trip to Springfield Glacier...which is the size of an ice cube now. Hardy har har. Give me "I Love Lisa" over this crap any day.

DONE

In a way, I'm a little sad that Charlie won't be able to father any puppies. He's so darn cute himself that I know his offspring would be adorable as well. But what's done is done now.

Poor fella.

DEJA VU

Lately the husband and I have been discussing the possibility of another deployment. I keep assuring him that it really wasn't that bad for me and that I could easily handle another. But today when we woke up at 0415 and I drove him to his unit for a three-day field exercise, I got a little misty-eyed as I drove away. All of a sudden I got that Deployment Feeling again, and I remembered that although I could do another deployment, I really would prefer to have him around.

I was looking forward to today because Charlie is at the vet getting neutered. I thought that with him out of the house for the first time since we got him, I might be able to get some work done without his little golden paws all over everything. Just a few moments ago, I realized how much I love that silly little dog. I miss him already, and I just realized I'd rather have him around too, even if he would be barking at the vacuum cleaner and trying to drink the mop water.

BORN

Last night I got to participate in The Miracle of Life: my friend's dog had puppies. My husband and I had never seen anything get born before, so we raced over to her house as soon as she called. One pup was on the way out, and three more were to come.

The whole thing was amazing, gross, beautiful, and eerie all at the same time. I got to see animals come to life! We all held our breath when one of them was stuck in his placenta for way too long, and we cheered when he finally broke through. We felt helpless when the pups couldn't find mom's tummy to nurse; it would've been so easy to just pick one up and position him! We laughed, we gagged, and we oohed and aahed.

It was remarkable.

CRASH

We watched the movie Crash last night. It was horrifying.

I went into this movie blind: the only thing I knew about it was that people thought it was good. I didn't realize that the entire thing was about race. And boy do I mean it was about race. Everything the characters say and do is racially motivated. Every scene is about race. The bottom line in this movie is that we're all racists.

Am I really too naive? I thought this movie was completely unrealistic. I'm sorry, but the DA's advisor is simply not going to mutter "f-ing black people" to a black detective. No way, no how. I'm not denying that we haven't all felt ourselves in these characters' shoes at one point or another, but the downright racist things they utter in every scene are over the top; people just don't talk openly like that. A white man might inwardly grumble about affirmative action, but he's not going to openly belittle the black woman working for the HMO.

I was disappointed with this movie because I had high hopes, and we don't rent movies that often. But I just can't enjoy a program where I hate all the characters, and the only guy I could stand in this movie was the locksmith.

I've never been to LA -- maybe LA is from Mars and the Midwest is from Venus -- but this can't be real life. People just don't think about race every waking second.

DALLAS

I was too young to watch Dallas, but thanks to the magic of DVDs, I've been enjoying that bit of TV history. I mentioned to my husband that it's interesting how simple the plotlines are. To a generation raised on M. Night Shyamalan and CSI, the thought that you could base an hour of TV around "Jock has a heart attack" seems amazing. Dallas is not boring by any means, but it's sure not fast-paced TV like we're used to.

My husband told me about the pending movie plans for Dallas. I had no idea this was in the works, but now that I know the characters, I certainly can't see Brad Pitt as Ray Krebbs! My friend and I were talking the other day about how the idea of beauty shifts over time. We remarked that Charlene Tilton would never have been cast as Lucy today, because by today's standards she's fat. Even though she's not fat at all; she's voluptuous and womanly. I was grossed out to find that they're thinking of casting Lindsey Lohan as Lucy for the movie. Maybe Lohan circa 2004, but not now. There's just no way I'd choose this

when Lucy's supposed to look like this

Give me a curvy, thicky-thick Lucy any day. And a JR who looks like Travolta.

STORIES

Raven1 got some great advice from his chaplain before returning from Iraq. One paragraph won't do it justice; you have to read the whole thing.

When my husband was home on R&R, he had a bit much to drink and accidentally told me a story he hadn't intended to repeat. He was genuinely surprised that the story didn't freak me out, and it opened the door to telling me a bit more. When he got home at the end of the year, he told me some of the worst things that happened in his time in Iraq. I'm glad that he thinks I'm strong enough to hear them.

I think stories after the fact aren't nearly as frightening as what we wives imagined on our own while they were gone. His reality was no match for my creativity! We who stand and wait read blog posts and news reports about everyone's most exciting days in Iraq, so it's easy to forget that not every day is a battle.

My husband is quiet with his stories though. He and Red6 have talked, but for the most part, his year is his own. He doesn't want to try to explain his experience to anyone, for the only ones who can truly understand it are his platoon sergeant and the other three men in his tank. Sometimes I feel sad that he doesn't get to see any of those guys anymore; it would be nice for him to spend time with people who didn't need to hear the stories because they were there with him.

CHECK SIX

Doc Foglesong is retiring?! Man, that's gonna cut the number of TV commercials in half around here!

(This joke is dedicated to The Girl)

OU

For God's sake, with a system like this, if the country came under enemy attack, the only people who'd know it would be bloggers!

My mom went to Oklahoma University, so she noticed when the crawl at the bottom of the TV said that someone had blown himself up there. But she searched and searched for additional information: nothing else that night on the TV nor in the local paper in the morning. She told me about it, and I found some info on blogs. But why did we have to turn to blogs for reporting of such an event?

Eric of Classical Values has a post with lots of details about what the media is and is not reporting. Funny how a Muslim convert who tries to enter a sports arena and blow himself up isn't news...

EXPO

I didn't get to attend the Land Combat Expo here in Germany, but a part of me was apparently there...

I still can't believe that they chose to showcase my blog along with more notable milblogs. What an honor.

WHEW

When Red6 got home from Iraq, the furthest thing from his mind was his blog. He had been home a few days before I gently suggested to him that he put up a post saying that he was home safe. I knew, given my own nature, that many people were worried about him and just wanted reassurance that he was safe and sound. He thought it was funny that people might get that attached to him, but he put up a short post anyway (about how he couldn't wait to hang out with Bogg -- I'm chopped liver, apparently!)

I was reminded of that today when we finally heard from Jack Army, evacuated because of Hurricane Rita. I'm sure he was busy and blogging was far from his priorities, but for those of us who waited 11 days to hear from him, his safety was definitely a priority. His life may have kept moving, but his silent blog kept us at a standstill.

Glad to see you're safe, Jack.

1985?

Longtime readers know I think that our popular entertainment is a result of our collective value system; it's the reason I blog so often about Rocky. The American Geek found an interesting article about this very phenomenon: How Hollywood needs to stop worrying and love the flag. It's a very interesting take on why Hollywood is in a slump.

REBIRTH

I started a blog in the first place because I was tired of emailing link after link to my mother. I needed a place where I could compile all of the articles I wanted her to read. Over time, I realized that I'm not that original and that better thinking and analysis was being done elsewhere. I gradually stopped posting things that I knew all the other blogs were already talking about.

The thing is, I have two types of readers. I suspect the majority are blog-heads, those who read several other blogs in addition to mine and know exactly what I'm talking about when I say Turkeygate, superscript th, and "screw 'em". But I'm slowly realizing that I have a growing faction of readers who only read my blog, usually because they know me personally (my neighbor loves to recruit readers for me!) And those readers don't read LGF or RWN and thus miss out on some big stories because I figure no one wants to read another comment about how ridiculous it is that some Kos writer said that we need "streets running awash in rivers of blood" of right-wingers. But if this is the only blog you read, as it is for some of my friends, then I suppose it's my duty again, as it was with my mother, to expose you to a sampler plate from the blogosphere. Thus begins a rejuvenation here, a renewed reason to blog.

So, to start it all off, here's the latest Mark Steyn article. Did you hear that they're banning pigs in the UK (I heard it first via Hud)? The PC-meter just went to eleven. Since pigs are offensive to Muslims, you can't display any pigs in your cubicle at Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, not even Piglet. And Burger King bent over backwards because someone complained that their new ice cream logo looked like the word jihad. I wish I were making these things up. Mark Steyn tackles the hypocrisy nicely in his article, saying:

Likewise, Piglet is deeply offensive and so's your chocolate ice-cream, but if a West End play opens with a gay Jesus, Christians just need to stop being so doctrinaire and uptight.

Some may say that the pig thing is only one officeplace in the UK, that we're blowing this all out of proportion. But this general pandering to Muslims has got to stop. When the villian in movies is the flight attendant instead of the Muslim passengers, when the memorial for Flight 93 is made to look like a red crescent, and when you can't have a Piglet kleenex box without someone crapping a brick, we're headed for serious trouble.

CARDS ARE ON

Reggie Sanders + grand slam = very happy husband

BAD SHOWER

My neighbor called because her hot water wasn't working. Mine seems to be just fine, but who knows how these screwy buildings work. I've lived here two and a half years and I still don't understand how to work the heater.

Anyway, as I was getting into the shower this morning, I remembered the strangest shower I've ever taken.

When we lived in France, my friend had a bizarre bathroom setup. Imagine a cross between a stand-up shower and a bathtub, and not in a good way. Her bathing apparatus was the dimensions of a stand-up shower but with the porcelain sides of a tub, reaching about three feet off the floor. So if you're standing in the tub/shower, the side of the tub reaches mid-thigh. And then there's nothing -- no curtain or door -- but there's a nozzle for a shower. There's a seat in the thing, kind of like a jacuzzi-style shelf. Oh, and in the middle, at about belly button height, there's a series of strings for drying laundry. Seriously. I wish I had a picture.

So one day I decide that my curiousity is too great, and I ask my pal to use her shower. I just have to see this for myself. And I proceed to take the most miserable shower of my life.

In my own apartment, the shower had exactly three and a half minutes of hot water, so I was not unaccustomed to misery. But the moment I turned on the water in my friend's shower, ice water sprayed all over me...and all over most of the bathroom too, since there's no curtain to control it. But since I'm an idiot, I didn't just shut it off and get out, oh no. I took the whole danged shower.

When I got back to my friend's room -- did I mention that she shared this monstrosity at the end of the hall with two strangers? -- I asked her if her water was always that cold. She said that it was never pleasant, and I could tell that she thought I was being overly critical. That afternoon she learned that the hot water had been shut off in the whole building, and I had indeed taken a shower that was worse than usual.

As if things could get any worse than that hybrid shower-tub.

BIRTHDAY

Charlie turned six months old today. He celebrated by losing two more canine teeth. Only one more to go and then I'm free from puppy bites.

It's not fair that I expect him to be perfect already. I get so frustrated when he grabs the end of the toilet paper and runs under the bed with it, or when he eats a hole through the carpet, or when he barks at 0600 because he wants to play. It's easy to forget that he's made lots of progress: he can ring a bell to let us know when he wants to go outside, and he gets in his crate at night all by himself.

And he's always good for a laugh. The other day we were chasing each other around the house and he tried to jump out a window. A closed window.

He's a keeper...

HEH

My husband got a real laugh out of this interview with R. Lee Ermey, G. Gordon Liddy, Evel Knievel, Merle Haggard, and Jack La Lanne. (But don't read it unless you can appreciate a man's man.)

MORE TO GROK:

Speaking of Liddy, CavX got interviewed by G. Gordon Liddy! Wow!

SAME OLD SAME OLD

Sometimes I just get so frustrated that I don't know why I bother caring.

I was interested in reading this blog entry dubunking the recruiting slump, but as I dove deeper into the comments section, I found we're still arguing over whether Iraq had any ties to al Qaeda. My comments section recently went through a fight over whether Iraq had any WMDs. Everywhere I look, we're still arguing over the same fundamental differences in common ground that we've been arguing over for three years.

The straw that broke my back this morning was one quote from Kersten's article:

"The more play the press gives Cindy Sheehan," [Lt. Col. James] MacVarish concludes, "the better the terrorists' chances are of ultimately succeeding here."

We've heard this before, with CPT Powell being the most famous to point out the difference between the Iraq soldiers see and the Iraq the media sees. But this is nothing new; we've been having these fights with the press since the Tet Offensive. It's extremely infuriating to know that we learned nothing from the last time around. Negative press can lose wars, even if the military is winning. The thing is, I've heard this statement made in just about every letter to the editor and article written by people in the military, yet the media keeps ramming bad news down our throats. They completely ignore the men they're interviewing and continue doing whatever they want.

I'm just tired of seeing the same things played out on the internet over and over. Tired of every discussion turing into WMDs and Bush lied. Tired of reading scores of ignored soldier complaints that the media is being too pessimistic. Tired of nothing changing.