Happy Thanksgiving!

"I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land."

- Jon Stewart

WTF just happened??

Holy crap what a horrible, horrible friggin football game.  If you know me, it would be wise not to mention the annihilation that occurred today until I've had sufficient time and therapy to process it.  Seriously, I'm so not up to jokes yet.  Sure, I would have rubbed it in had we won.  But that's what the double standard is all about, right?  The standard is all ...double and shit.  Damn, that sucked somethin' serious. 

Tears for Bobby Pope

RIP, I Heart Iraqis

Words are something that generally come easily to me. So the fact that I’ve been in a futile struggle to find the right ones for over a day now is an odd feeling. I am overcome with emotion that needs to be expressed, but the words simply are not there. As I sit and ponder, fighting a constant battle with tears of frustration and anguish, it occurs to me that perhaps the words in themselves are not the biggest problem. Maybe this inexplicable combination of sorrow, grief, rage, guilt, hopelessness, pride, patriotism, despondency, and utter and total confusion comprising my present countenance is just not meant to be felt at all. Maybe the situation that has borne these feelings is so inherently wrong, so unnatural, that there should need be no words to describe it. No one should have to feel this way in the first place. Things such as this should just not be happening.

A friend died in Iraq this week. He was young, beautiful, funny, and full of life. I didn’t know him for very long, nor did I know him terribly well. But I knew enough of him to care deeply for him, and to know that there are so, so many others out there who care deeply for him as well. He will be greatly missed. His loss is a great one for all of us.

I am angry! I am angry that I can browse MySpace pages at any given time and find soldiers in Iraq whose headlines say things like “The Forgotten,” and who list their occupations as “Prisoner of War.” I am angry that morale is so low there that a soldier remarked on the subject to me just yesterday, “How can you be low on something you don’t have?” I am angry that every single day, the Department of Defense issues yet another press release announcing the name of yet another casualty of this horrible, senseless war. I am angry that these men and women largely ARE ‘The Forgotten’, and many of them, for all practical purposes, ARE prisoners of war.

Many of these men and women have fulfilled their contract. Yet they remain in Iraq. They are there under the notorious stop-loss program, if you can really consider it such. I, personally, consider it breach of contract. They have fulfilled the terms of theirs, yet the government feels that they need not do the same. They are forcing these people to stay in service longer than they agreed to, as if their sacrifice thus far was somehow inadequate, and effectively making them slaves to the system. Or as a very eloquent friend put it, "prisoners of war." The message stop-loss is sending out is that enlistment in the military is a crap shoot in the game of life. What good is a contract when the only enforceable aspect is the part where you sign your life away? Is it any wonder that there are problems with recruiting these days? Even those who LOVED being soldiers, took great pride in it, were proud of what they were doing would no longer have their worst enemy enlist. They are angry, they feel forgotten, they are mad. As well they should be. They are being held essentially captive by the country they loved enough to volunteer to protect.

I have heard it argued by people who make me quite literally homicidal that these guys can’t complain, that they knew what they were signing up for. “They VOLUNTEERED,” I’m told. Yep, they did volunteer. They volunteered so that you didn't have to be drafted in order to preserve our great American way of life. All the more reason they deserve our respect. And all the more reason they deserve to have people making decisions who actually value their lives, and who put them in harms way only when ABSOLUTELY necessary and with the means and the PERMISSION to protect themselves effectively. Right now they have neither. They are caught up in a bureaucratic death trap, and no one over here seems to give too much of a shit. I do not understand it at all.

I am living in a country I recognize less with each passing day. We act like nothing is going on. The casualties are just names on a piece of paper until it is someone we know. Yet the world still stands still every September 11 while we remember a list of people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. What is wrong with this country? What is wrong with you???? We are over here basking in the ignorant freedom afforded us by these incredibly brave men and women who serve, and the vast majority of us don’t want to open our eyes and see what is really going on. We just stand behind our jackass of a president and gobble up the horseshit propaganda spoon-fed to us by the media like so many helpless pea-brained chicks. Why? Why doesn't anybody care? It doesn't make sense.

We all sit back and think that this war is so far removed, that it does not affect us, that we can not change it. We tell ourselves that it is not our fault. But it IS our fault. Every one of us who enjoy the freedoms that are afforded us by the constitution these men and women signed on to defend, we are culpable. We elected this president. We elected the congress. We sit idly by while this travesty of a war plays out. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his "Letter From Birmingham City Jail", "We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people." We are culpable.

The truth is out there. The soldiers are talking. Why isn’t anyone listening? Why, WHY won’t somebody make it stop?

to Bobby Pope, Thank you for the laughs. Thank you for your sacrifice. You will never be forgotten. To the rest of my POW's, (and you know who you are), you have my eternal respect, love, and gratitude. I am PROUD to call you all friends, prouder than you know.

Liberty, Justice and Vibrators for All

Found this online, and laughed like crazy. She makes a good point, though. Enjoy.

Liberty, Justice and Vibrators for All

It occurs to me tonight, that most civilians probably have no idea what it feels like to know your sex life is completely under the control of the United States Army. I, unfortunately do. My boyfriend has been overseas for almost a year now. And let me just say, there is a very good reason the Army calls it a 'HARDship tour'. He won't be able to come home for midtour leave until Christmas either. And of course they can't even promise he'll come home then.

So...what's a girl to do, people ask. Aside from buying my batteries at Sam's Club in bulk, and ordering many toys off the internet, I have to rely on my boyfriend to know when I've had all I can take and call me for a very intimate conversation.

However, when going over my last few bank statements, I've come to the conclusion that I'm spending way too much money on sex toys and porn. Now granted, I do have a libido that, if properly harnessed, could provide enough electricity for a small country, but I'm sure all this pent up sexual frustration is a common problem with military wives and girlfriends.

The military makes it known that it is extremely important for the mental stability of soldiers that their women stay faithful while they are deployed...not that most of us wouldn't anyway. They even have special pin ceremonies, performed by the chaplain, wherein the soldier and his girlfriend pledge to remain faithful to each other during their separation.

Therefore, my question to the Army and the policy makers of our government is this...If our celibacy is so damn important to you, could you at the very least consider passing out 'survival kits' to the women left behind when you take our men away for years at a time?


Kits should include:

1 industrial strength vibrator (you guys build and operate powerful equipment...make us some heavy duty Army issued camouflage vibrators)

A card to present to the cashier at the PX (or any discount store) which guarantees us free batteries and lube for the duration of our soldier's deployment

And a stack of patches to sew on the *** of all our pants/skirts/shorts, that reads: "PROPERTY OF (insert soldier's rank and name), PROTECTED BY THE UNITED STATES ARMY". That way every guy who checks out our *** knows it belongs to someone who carries a big gun and isn't afraid to use it. It should also be a finable offense for a guy to persistantly hit on a girl if she is wearing one of these patches. (It never ceases to amaze me just how many low-lifes there are out there who will try to convince girls that they're wasting their lives waiting for a soldier to return home...that the girl would be much happier and more satisfied with THEM. Yeah, right...like that kind of bullshit would work on a girl like me!)

Adding some guaranteed 'alone time' on the phone with our soldier at least once a month would also be a huge bonus for all involved. (And I bet the boost in morale would benefit the mission as well.) There would need to be a small private room in every camp, a closet would even work, (nothing fancy, just a phone, a bottle of lotion, some tissues and a comfy chair). The guys could sign up for time whenever they weren't on missions or training.

I'll leave ya'll with this question...if the government isn't going to subsidize my sex toys, can I at least write them off on my taxes as a contribution to the military?

Got Coke?

Ok, so it isn't exactly a blog.  But it sure is funny!

The text on the poster says, "I'm not saying I've used cocaine.  But if I did, it was merely a 'youthful indiscretion'.  Today I'm clean.  And I'm tough on crime.  So if I catch you using coke, I don't want to hear any of that 'youthful indiscretion' nonsense.  I'm throwing your crack-addicted ass in prison.  That's not hypocrisy.  That's politics."

Moving On

The things that are good for you in life are seldom ever easy. The healthy food tastes like so much crap. Bettering yourself through exercise or education, well, it's hard work. And saying goodbye to someone you love, even though you know they are bringing you down, hurts.

I lost a friend tonight. A friend I believed I'd have forever. Turns out, I was wrong. I've 'lost' this friend in the past, only to find myself right back there again. But this time is different. This time I am not crying as much. This time I'm through fighting. I am just so tired. Too tired to ever try again.

There was a time when I could trust him. A time when happiness wasn't completely realized until it was shared with him. A time where his advice was indispensible, rock-solid, and so right most of the time. But things are different now.

He has hurt me more than any one person ever has. He lied and lied until I honestly believe he could no longer discern truth. That's what happens to habitual liars. You can only live surrounded by untruth for so long before it eventually becomes pathological. Deception infects you and grows like a fast-spreading cancer until there is no part of your life, no corner of your soul left untainted. Trust can not be destroyed and rebuilt an infinite number of times. There are limits. I reached mine with him a long time ago. I was naive enough to think we could be friends.

I have defended my actions and my feelings for the last time. I have listened to the Today's Special list of my featured faults one last time, and I realize that the person on the other end of the phone has no idea who I am. Three years, and all he knows of me is the character he has created in his mind that made it justifiable for him to treat me the way that he did. Why did he lie to me? My fault. I shouldn't have been upset when he told me about the other woman he was fucking. He believed that the fact that he was honest when he could have lied should give him absolution, spare him the discomfort of seeing me cry, of seeing the effects of his actions. I should have been grateful that he was honest. For him, the offending action was that of confession, not that which was the subject of said confession. He couldn't tell me the truth anymore, because I didn't know how to react with the appropriate amount of gratitude.

It is somewhat relieving that i do not have to be wrong all the time anymore. I will miss the good times that we had. But I look forward to better. I deserve better. I don't need him anymore. I'm realizing now that I never really did.