Is this thing on?

Good lord it'd been a long time since I updated this thing! All the days from November to now stretch out before me like one long accusation...lazy Sunny, lazy! 8 months or so, and I couldn't be bothered to even put up an under construction sign, or something, to assure my readership (arrogance, much?) that I haven't dropped off the face of the earth. I suppose I ought to do one of those obligatory "where am I now" posts to catch you all up on my comings and goings since I last felt it necessary to grace you with my wit. Haven't gotten any less wordy, more's the pity. It's the Irish in me, darlings, blame my genetics. Cast Iron Liver and Verbal Diarrhea, as much a mark of the Celts as my hair of red and my eyes of blue.

Moving on.

I made it home from Iraq safely -- good for me, good for Uncle Sam...my parentals and such breathed a collective sigh of relief when my shapely, desert-clad derrierre landed in Savannah January last. The last few months of my personal Iraq saga ended not with a bang, but a whimper. We moved from our cushy little trailers with air conditioning and cable hookups (war is HELL) to shabby little "transition tents" on the opposite end of our operating base. The last month or so was an exercise in boredom, as our only job was not to get hit by a stray mortar round while waiting for the Air Force to rustle up our flight to Kuwait.

It's actually kind of funny -- now that I'm home, I don't care to know ANYTHING about the war in Iraq, how the troops are doing, what's going on...not a thing. I refuse to watch "Baghdad ER" on HBO, by all accounts an absolutely riveting new show, because the thought of seeing bloodied and broken GIs disturbs me past all reckoning. Maxim, Men's Health, and all those other rags will insist on having articles on soldier-stuff...typical menfolk, wanting to read about things going boom in the desert...when will you Manly-Men realize that war isn't a bit fun? Not a bit glamorous, not a bit heroic. It's small and dirty and scary and it smells bad and when people die, it's tragic in a stupid way, not in a let's-build-a-monument way. I know less than a lot of people, I saw less than a lot of people, and the regular-Joe's fascination with Iraq annoys the piss out of me. I HATE talking about it, I hate reading about it, I hate listening to people who've never been over there PONTIFICATE about it...so anyway, I actually didn't realize the Air Force had bombed the snot out of Zarqawi until my mother mentioned it over the phone.

It seemed funny to me at the time. Maybe it's just sad.

I spent a couple of months partying my rear end off. Went to Jenna Jameson's Pajama Party at the Hard Rock in Fort Lauderdale. Saw Ron Jeremy there...he's about 300 pounds and smells like diapers filled with Indian food, but he was covered in buxom blonde girls like his johnson was giftwrapped in fifty dollars bills. Who knows, maybe it was. Jenna's much cuter in person than in the videos (er...or so I was told...) and had an entourage of skantily clad young porn stars whose job it was to break a few public decency laws up against the walls of the club for the scintillation of the drunk and disorderly. The young Porn Queen herself looked mightily bored by the whole proceeding (girls in various states of undress, free flowing booze and drugs, much groping and exchanging of bodily fluids...like any high school prom afterparty, with fake tits) and spent most of the evening playing her Game Boy while near-fornication went on around her. I could understand her ennui...the girls fucks for a living, watching people worship at the altar of her vagina must get a little bit old. I wonder if she ever just wants to cuddle?

Anyway, after a few months partying like a rock star started to wear on me...one can only run so many liters of vodka through one's liver before that liver starts to send up SOS messages. Mine is tapping out morse code against the walls of my abdomen. I destroyed myself several times -- once or twice during a memorable weekend in Orlando (where one of my friends corrupted an ROTC cadet in town with a convention...that might be a topic for another post, with the names changed to protect the guilty), once or twice or three times running around Savannah like the world's worst idea of a sorority girl...ick. Got old. So I've been taking some weekends off...went to a wedding over Memorial Day weekend, went to Fort Lauderdale to meet the boyfriend's parents, and this weekend I'm at home for Father's Day. I'll try to dip my toes in the River of Iniquity that is Savannah's bar scene once again next weekend, but I can't say I'm too eager to down Jager shots like a champ or shake my admittedly well-formed backside on the dance floor...getting hammered and acting like a retard is an entertainment that wears thin quickly. Am I getting old? Or just growing lame? Time will tell, gentle readers.

Anyway, I'll have to sift through the news and see if I can't come up with a topic suitable enough to rant about in my next post...there's so much stupidity in the world, and I have so little patience...but I'm sure I'll come up with something at least mildly entertaining for your edification and enrichment.

Better than doing work, anyway.

Torture For Dummies

Okay, boys and girls, today we are going to talk about "torture".  What it is, what it isn't, and why the fact that we use it against our enemies should make all Americans want to crawl out of their skin with disgust.  For those conservative right-wing morons in my readership, you may want to skip the next few paragraphs.  My liberal ravings can cause: (but are not limited to) headache, nausea, hypertension, loose stools, coughing, wheezing, runny-nose, heart palpitations, kidney stones, insomnia, impotence and decreased feelings of self-worth.  Consider yourself warned, O Party of Lincoln.

Americans have an extremely difficult time with gray areas.  We do black and white morality very well, ie, Christians = Good, Muslims = Bad (see our current administration for details) but when it comes down to seeing the middle ground, we really kind of suck.  Ask yourself the following question:  If I was the President, and I had a terrorist in custody, and that terrorist knew the location of a bomb that threatened the lives of hundreds or thousands of innocent Americans, would I torture that terrorist to get the information I needed to save lives?

In that highly inflammatory scenario, I imagine most peoples' answer would be "yes, of course".  Most people seem to have a flexible definition of morality…we'll sing off the Democratic, Let-Freedom-Ring song sheet as long as it's expedient, but put us in a situation where hard decisions have to be made and we fall back on that old adage 'the ends justify the means'…or to whit, in extreme situations, extreme measures have to be taken.  Personally, I think this is a load of self-satisfying hooey.  There are plenty of situations where lives take a backseat to Political Idealism™ -- abortion, the death penalty, hostage situations, genocide in countries that lack a significant American interest…the list goes on.  I believe this is known as collateral damage.  In any case, it's hypocrisy – the same people in our government who are Pro-Torture are also Pro-Life and probably Pro-Death-Penalty to boot…call me if you manage to untangle that particular logic puzzle, because I can't.  

In any case, the hypocrisy of the pro-torture stance isn't really the point of this particular blog.  My POINT, dear readers, is that the above scenario, known as the "ticking bomb" scenario, is a bunch of made-for-TV bullshit.  I actually took the question from the plot of a recent episode of Commander In Chief.  TV isn't real life, though it tries very hard to imitate it.  The problem is, real life is usually pretty boring and mundane, and I find it very hard to believe that every detainee in Abu Ghraib or Guantanimo Bay has life-or-death knowledge of an imminent threat to American lives.  In any case, the real question isn't whether you can justify the use of torture in an extreme case…it's whether you can justify using torture in everyday interrogations.

What's a little disturbing is this:  we're not supposed to use cruel, inhuman or degrading methods of interrogation on detainees.  It's forbidden by our Constitution, and backed up by a 1994 UN Convention Against Torture.  Good for us, we're against forcing detainees to urinate on each other, desecrate the Koran or dance around in naked pig-piles with electrodes on their ding-dongs.  God Bless America.  So what's the problem?  Well, according to our current administration, the Constitution doesn't apply outside the United States, so any Constitutional protections against torture A) don't apply as long as it's off US soil, and B) don't apply as long as we're torturing foreign nationals and not American citizens.  Okay well, check this out:  August 6 PDB.  This is the declassified Presidential Daily Brief from August 2001, which says that some members of Al Qaida are American citizens.  So how long before our illustrious government decides to throw the second prohibition out the window and start torturing Americans?  Imagine how much easier Law Enforcement types would have it without those pesky 5th amendment rights getting in the way of suspect interrogation…we could break the mafia, we could break pedophile rings, we could torture crack dealers to get information on drug cartels…forget that none of the resultant information would be admissible in court.  Times change.

The point is that you're never going to catch all the bad guys.  What our courts have accepted with Miranda and other Constitutional protections like the Presumption of Innocence and Burden of Proof is a certain measure of risk – risk that occasionally a really bad guy is going to slip through the net, and occasionally criminals may go unpunished.  This risk is balanced against protections for our citizens who may be innocent of the crimes they're accused of – we accept that sometimes the Justice system may fail, that sometimes we have to err on the side of the Defendant, that sometimes we'll be wrong.  We need to extend this same balance to our dealings internationally – when we detain someone, we'd better have evidence against them.  When we interrogate them, we should use the same standards we use in the American legal system.  When we bring them to trial, we should operate under the same rules that govern courts here in the States.  Occasionally a bad guy will slip through the net.  Occasionally we'll be wrong.  But we'll also have the moral high ground, we'll also be what we want to be in the eyes of the rest of the world – we'll never have to go before the UN and explain our legacy of abuse, we will be seen as a country that respects human rights, a nation of idealists rather than a nation of hypocrites.  

And by the way, that whole "well they tortured us first!" argument went out in the 3rd grade.  So they cut off heads on national television – if Osama Bin Ladin jumped off a cliff, would you?  Saddam Hussein also used chemical weapons on his own people – we going to try that one next?  Two wrongs don't make a right, people.  Somebody must've missed the Golden Rule day in Bible Class.  

Hypocrisy is a bitch.

Until next time…

Not-So-Intelligent Design

For my dad.

Let me prefice this by saying that I love my country. Have you ever seen that episode of the Twilight Zone where the little boy had supernatural powers, and he was terrorizing his small town with his tantrums? He'd turn people into macabre Jack-in-the-Boxes if they displeased him, and he'd banish them into the cornfield. That's what America is like. We are the youngest superpower at the Big Kids Table, and baby, it shows. If someone pisses us off, we ruin their shit and banish them to the World Community's cornfield as a warning to others -- and honestly, who's going to put us in a time-out when we get a little too big for our collective britches? England? Germany? France? Russia? Pfft. Bring it, bitches.

Stay with me, I AM going somewhere with this.

Anyway, children have a remarkable capacity for faith and a seriously faulty bullshit meter. They believe in a bazillion and one impossible things -- that a poster-boy for Jenny Craig slides down your chimney once a year to lay gifts on the alter of consumerism, that a winged lady with a serious tooth fetish leaves coins under pillows in exchange for lost bicuspids, that the inside of golf balls contains toxic sludge, that a dime put on a railroad track will derail the next train to pass through, that stepping on a crack will bring bodily harm to one's mother, and that a hasty "circle circle dot dot" will protect one against the more virulent forms of cooties.

By the time you hit adulthood, you realize that gifts at Christmas appear under the tree due to credit cards as opposed to the generosity of a jolly old slave driver, that your parents steal your teeth from under your pillow while you sleep (and if they are especially clumsy you might catch them at it), that golf balls are hollow and one should not borrow daddy's circular saw to discover this, that dimes on railroad tracks just get smooshed, that no amount of crack-stepping will result in back-breakage for one's mater familias, and cooties are small potatoes compared to some of the things you can catch from a boy.

The point is, when kids believe in impossible things, it's cute. When adults believe in impossible things, it's mental illness...or religious faith.

America is pretty evenly divided when it comes to answering the question "where did we come from". Camp 1 believes that God created the Earth, sometimes in 7 days but occasionally over a span of millenia, that we're all descended from the first man and his derivative first woman, and that all events since our creation have been...if not directed, then at least overseen...by this benevolent Creator. Camp 2 says that the progenitors of Homo sapiens split off from chimpanzees roughly 5 million years ago, and went through several evolutionary dead ends (including Australopithecus, Homo erectus, and Homo neanderthalensis) before finally settling on Anatomically Modern Humans, who migrated out of Africa roughly 100,000 years ago and replaced more archaic populations in Asia, Europe, and eventually America.

I'm not going to argue the benefits of Camp 1 vs Camp 2...I understand why people gravitate towards religious explanations for our existance. It's incredibly comforting to think that there is someone out there who loves us unconditionally, and has a place reserved for us at His side when we die. Unfortunately, we have this pesky little thing called The Separation of Church and State to contend with.

Evolution is a scientific theory based on 100 years of research, careful analysis, and facts. It's not proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, but it is the most reasonable explanation for our emergence as a species, based on the available facts. Religion is doctrine with no proof to support its tenets -- no facts but suppositions, no logical inference but the tests of faith.

I am not knocking religious faith, here -- people believe in all sorts of things, and that is our government granted right. If you want to believe that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is responsible for creation, or that the earth rests on the back of an elephant carried by four cosmic turtles, or that Raven shat the world following a great flood...well, that's your perogative. It's when you start imposing your beliefs on someone else that the situation gets sticky.

Evolution is taught in science classes around the Nation because it is a scientific theory. Social conservatives, who have long deplored this Child of Darwin's presence in the schoolroom, have fought for years to remove or replace it with something more palatable to their religious convictions. The flavor-of-the-month is Intelligent Design, which purports to be an alternative scientific theory that challenges Evolution's stranglehold on the classroom.

Okay, quick logic test. If a theory is based on a premise that can neither be proven nor disproven (like, say, the existance of God) does that theory hold up to the Scientific Method?

The answer is: "No." (as any self-respecting graduate of grade-school science fairs can tell you.)

So the question becomes, if Intelligent Design is not a legitimate scientific theory, why on earth should it be taught in a science classroom?

The answer is: "It shouldn't."

until next time...

Great Moments in Voting History

I did promise, after all.

I was going to write a blogspot on the history of embalming, or something equally morbid. I found some fantastically disgusting pictures of adipocere on the internet (research!) and I just couldn't wait to share -- but then I remembered that in my last post, I'd promised to discuss great moments in voting history. Promises are a bitch.

So here goes, gentle readers -- bend over & brace yourselves, you are about to be educated.

1787

The passage of the U.S. Constitution gives white male property owners age 21 and over the right to vote, thus starting the United States off on the "right" (ha-ha, a pun!) foot, and in one fell swoop preventing the dregs of American society -- ie, the estrogen-impaired, excessively pigmented or financially degenerate -- from mucking up the wheels of democracy with their self-indulgent whining about "female suffrage", "slavery" or, pfft, "food". Fucking commies.

1807-1843

A dark half-century for conservatives everywhere -- poor people get the right to vote. (Provided of course they possess a penis. Oh, and are white. Darkies, Jews, Indians -- Tonto, not Habeeb -- and the damn Chinese need not apply.)

It was around this time that those crazy lesbians Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott decided that -- get this -- ovaries need not disqualify one from participating in the quadrannual popularity contest that is the National election. They, along with a bunch of other camel-toed bleeding hearts, formed a coalition of sewing circles designed to nag the government into submission. Thankfully their high-pitched chatter did nothing to distract Washington from its holy mission to keep White Penises at the helm of American Public Policy.

I'm sorry, I can't say that with a straight face.

The Battle of the Sexes took a backseat to the concerns of racial equality during this time, as most activists for women's rights were also agitators for a variety of other social issues, of which emancipation was paramount. Most female suffregettes allowed their cause to be "prioritized", and worked for abolition and African American Civil Rights before they secured their own. The end result of this remarkable self-sacrifice was that the first black man voted a full 60 years before the first woman saw the inside of a polling place. By 1840, it was still Penises - 1, Vaginas - 0.

1870

The 15^th Amendment guaranteed the right to vote to all men that were 21 or older regardless of race or ethnic background. They were even serious. Sort of. The first black man to vote under the protection of this well-meaning but rather weak amendment was Thomas Mundy Peterson, of Perth Amboy, New Jersey. A school custodian, he was also -- ironically -- an active member of the Republican Party. This was in the days before the Republicans sold out Peterson and others like him following World War II. Compassionate Conservatives, my ass.

The South, of course, wasn't going to take this lying down. To them, allowing former slaves or their children to vote would be like letting their livestock march down to the polls and agitate for suffrage -- would you let a cow vote? Clearly not understanding the marked anatomical and physiological differences between cattle and...uhm...people, the South established a series of laws designed to keep African Americans in their place. You know, uneducated and unrepresented. They used clever tactics like literacy tests (one memorable test required a black university professor to recite the US Constitution from memory. Did he do it? You get three guesses, and the first two don't count, moron.), grandfather clauses and if that didn't work, good old fashioned physical intimidation to keep prospective African American voters from the polls. Isn't history fun?

This still didn't apply to Tonto, Geronimo, or any other descendents of the headdress-wearing, tomahawk-throwing smallpox victims running around the United States before Columbus. Native Americans didn't get the vote until they gave up their tribal affiliations and embraced the life of their white brethren. Most, understandably, said "Kiss my Tee-Pee, Whitey" and chose to live quietly unenfranchised on reservations until alcoholism, diabetes and wholesale slaughter by the US Cavalry sent them to the Great Buffalo Hunt in the sky.

1920

American women are finally granted the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment, paving the way for abortions, bra-burning, women in the workplace, Take Back the Night and tampon dispensers in public restrooms. Score 1 for the Vaginas!

85 years later, we still have not had a viable Presidential or heck, even Vice Presidential Candidate with breasts instead of balls. Given the current state of world affairs, that's a little depressing.

I am so writing my next blogspot on adipocere.

Until next time...

Happy Referendum Day!

Daily Non-Sequitor: Suicide bombers, indirect fire, drive-by shootings...I'd like to see Puff Daddy try his "vote or die" campaign here. (Brian, on Iraq)

So, today is October 15th, the day that the Iraqi people get to vote on the US-backed Constitution, which will decide the direction their country will travel in for at least the next few years -- religious authority vs. secular authority, the role of women in Iraq society, voices for ethnic and religious minorities -- these are the questions that need answering, and today, your average Man-About-Baghdad gets to answer them. Pretty heady stuff.

Ignore the fact that many Iraqis are afraid to vote; anyone seen as a collaborator with the American forces in Iraq is labeled an enemy of Islam and as such, a target for al-Zarqawi's suicide bombers.

Ignore that your average Iraqi woman has little faith in the Constitution's ability to improve her social standing or secure her rights.

Ignore that the other Islamic countries in the region -- Syria, Iran, Turkey -- are casting a worried eye on Iraq's ethnic Kurds, who have been given an unprecedented voice in Iraqi politics and may be legally recognized as independent if today's Constitution goes through.

Ignore all that, and see instead that a formerly oppressed people are exercising their democratic power for the first time. Despite the troubles that roil just beneath the surface -- or the bombs that I can hear going off outside our perimeter -- a country's first vote is something for the record books.

Democracy is never a painless process. It has distinct phases...we can look to our own history as Americans as a predictor of what the Iraqis have to look forward to.

1) Independence Phase. 230 years ago, we had our own crazy dictator to worry about (King George had porphyria and used to run naked around his palace. Saddam Hussein used Sarin gas on his own people -- totally the same thing, right?), our own war to throw off the yoke of oppression (Example: the British had authority over all judicial cases in the Americas, and used to ship criminals back to England for trial without the benefit of a jury of their peers. Saddam's security detail executed 160 men, women and children and incarcerated 1200 more -- without trial -- following a failed assassination attempt in the town of Dujail), our own insurgency against the occupying power (Tea in Boston Harbor...bombs over Baghdad. This is the best metaphor ever). Anyway, Iraq finished this phase -- with a little help from the Third Infantry Division -- in 2003.

2) Constitutional Phase. Back in 1787, we were having our own referendum to decide on a Constitution, similar to what the Iraqi public is going through now. Then as now, no faction was entirely satisfied with the finished product. The Iraqis are a bit more enlightened than our forefathers were (at the moment) -- there's at least lipservice to women's equality (American women didn't get the right to vote until 122 years after the Constitution was ratified) and ethnic Kurds count as a full person as opposed to 3/5s of one. When it comes to voting equality though, Americans and Iraqis are on the same page -- Iraqis have to worry about getting blown up at the polling places, Americans had to worry about getting tarred & feathered (1790), lynched (1860), raped (1920) or beaten (1960s). See my next blogspot, Great Moments in Voting History, for all the gory details.

3) Civil War (Genocidal) Phase. It's interesting that when a country turns in on itself, we have two different words for the resulting bloodshed, depending on how badly the winners kick the losers' collective ass. We had a Civil War because the North and the South were both white, primarily Protestant, and each managed to put a serious hurting on the other at one time or another. Lee had his Gettysburg, sure...but Grant lived with the shadow of Chancellorsville on his soul for the rest of his days. The Iraqis may have a Civil War between the Sunnis and the Shi'ite majority, but if either side turns on the Kurds (hey, they're used to it), that will probably be genocide...especially if Syria and Iran join in the Allah-u-akBOOM shenanigans.

Anyway, the point is -- setting up a legitimate Democratic process isn't easy, and we can expect a lot more its citizens to water the tree of liberty with their patriotic blood (and brains, and fragmented body parts) before Iraq is ready to sit at the big kids' table.

Until next time...

Haunted

Oh darkness, I've lost my way
Take my hand, I'm stretched too thin
The light is fading
The light has gone
It won't come back again

Dirty Little Secrets

Daily Non-Sequitor: "I play hockey and fool around because those are the two most fun things to do in cold weather." (Mystery, Alaska)

I'm finding it difficult to update my blog, recently. As a fully-functional member of Tribe Vagina, my conversational defaults are (in order of merit): 1) boys, 2) juicy gossip preferably about people I know but really, I'm not picky, and 3) bitching about relationship issues with other card carrying Soros-titutes. My blog follows this outline unless I have something topical to discuss, and recently the Witty-Well has run dry. Unfortunately, one of my conversational defaults has been rendered...uhm...defunct...through total fault of my own. There are two bits of village wisdom that I try to live by -- to whit, "never shit where you eat" (both literally and figuratively), and "never tell people more than they need to know". I made a bit of a strategic error in giving out this web address to any and all, and for that reason, I can't really discuss boys anymore...at least not boys with a direct interest in me. Too many partisan factions read this for me to be able to be really honest about my current lovelife. Honesty is a wonderful thing...but sometimes it's just not appropriate, and it's hardly in my best interest to over-share.

(Let's face it girls, there are times when we want the potential men in our life to know we aren't available (read: when they have girlfriends), and times when it's much more prudent to keep that information under wraps (read: when they don't).)

I think people (read: my father) assume I'm having a lot of casual sex (*winkwinknudgenudge* nothing casual about it!) because there's not much else to do out here in Iraq. I think I mentioned that earlier. Probably several times. For the record, dear readers both related to me and not, it's none of your damn business who I'm seeing over here, unless you happen to be that person. And, as I just broke it off with the one person over here who reads my blog, I seriously doubt that's the case. Unfortunately, since he DOES read my blog, I will not be issuing any more relationship updates...at least not until I get back stateside. Curious parties, feel free to query me directly. I will say this though, since there are at least three people who have a seriously skewed image of how easy it is to get into my under-roos: 1) I do not have sex with boys without prior emotional engagement, 2) Contrary to popular belief, security surrounding my under-roos is roughly similar to say, Fort Knox, 3) who exactly has access to my under-roos is a state secret on par with the true mastermind behind the Kennedy assassination, and finally (yes, I mean you) 4) emails, however polite, are not going to grant you an all-access pass.

My dad's been flipping out recently about my little sister. She's gorgeous, I'm not sure if I've mentioned -- she's the pretty one in the family, all dark-haired and mysterious. Boys flock to her like ants to a sugar-pile, and my dad (crotchety and suspicious old man that he is) is convinced she's doing things she ought not to be doing. She's 14, for cripes' sake, on top of which she's adopted a Straight Edge lifestyle...no drugs, no alcohol, and no sex. She's a nun, for as long as it lasts, and Dad should really count his blessings that his daughters have such a strong sense of self. Well, my prudeness probably stemmed more from lack of opportunity (I was a late bloomer, you understand), but Molly knows her own mind. I'm proud of her, and Dad ought to be too. She's not going to bring you home a grandkid any time soon, Old Man. Chill out, willya?

Until next time...