Thursday, March 20, 2003
After walking in the door this evening and planting myself on the couch, I called justin. I wanted to see if he was into the idea of joining our NCAA bracket pool.
"Hey" he says -although not in as many words. Justin's a weird kid.
"Hey," I say "what are you up?"
"Sitting on my couch, watching the WAR, man."
haha. That's what i was doing.
Watched the war start on TV tonight.
Played some Grand Theft Auto for stress relief.
Ate some imitation cocoa puffs.
Watched Tom Brokaw in his pin-striped suit.
Dave and I watched Tom Brokaw and laughed about his off-colour commencement speech at Hopkins last year - it was about the most politically incorrect, uninformative, ignorant-sounding, and possibly even drunken speech I've heard by anyone, let alone someone of Brokaw's popular stature. We sat and watched him, laughing when he fumbled with his words and laughing more when miscues confused the live broadcasts...
*"...and now here's CNN's Chest Rockwell with more on that story from Kuwait...."*
*cut to confused looking reporter in goofy army hat, staring with a half smile off into space*
*painful silence*
*cut back to the news desk where some Skinemax-adult movie-type-lady-anchor sits in her low cut business suit, her hand cupped to her earpiece as she gets the news that she has to wing it because someone messed up*
*cut to stock footage of missiles firing...
"sssssSSSSSSSSSSHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooo...."
that's what the missiles sound like*
*cut to that goddamn street intersection in Baghdad where a building just kind of sits there, looking very bored. A car passes.*
*cut to cool computer graphic fly-over of Baghdad and then cartoon map with war plans*
*commercial*
According to dave, the suit Brokaw's wearing on TV is the suit from the Mentos commercial. The one where the young businessman accidentally sits on a bench with wet white paint on it. Upon noticing he's got paint on his ass, the businessman ingeniously decides to roll around on the bench, creating a "pin-stripe" effect on his suit and therefore solving the critical "I-look-like-I have-paint-on-my-suit" dilemma. He then celebrates his awesomeness with a Mento.
Tom Brokaw never eats a Mento. But he, and a few of his fellow reporters, manage to say and do some equally funny stuff.
There's one retired general that NBC is using as a analyst who talks like he's trying to do a bad Shaun Connery impression...In his mean-looking shades-of-gray suit and power tie, he spouts goofy insights like: "We already have shome shecret operashuns already going on in Iraq, sho our shpeshial forces will be cri-ti-cal in the Nesxht few hoursh"
Then some stuff blows up and we, the viewing audience are bombarded with the same ambiguous ounce of information over and over - the army has made a pre-emptive strike on a bunker thought to possibly contain Hussein and his cronies. Graphics are drawn up, panelists speculate and postulate, pictures of "bunker-buster"bombs are flashed. Then more nothing.
SO the WAR is on it's way.
WAR happens on my TV.
WAR is happening, and the world gets alot bigger than it used to.
Countires all over the world issue statements of "concern" over our WAR.
The other governments, ones who are too economically involved with the U.S. to say bad stuff, re-iterate their support for the WAR while their populations shake thier heads in disbelief.
I have no idea how to feel, watching this video game.
I know a guy through Jenn who is in Bahrain right now, doing one of those millions of non-active army roles they advertise so heavily for in promotional highschool videos. I forget what he does, he was a history major in college.
A few of our family freinds have kids in the army.
I have a middleschool buddy in the Marines over there.
I guess i have to be on thier side. They're good people.
As people, they're not out to do evil.
And Saddam's a real asshole.
It seems easy to feel okay about what's happening looking at the WAR like this.
That simplicity is sweet and easy... and so I sit and joke with dave and pretend to enjoy it, because it's alot better than dealing with the fact that i am not at all for what is happening.
or why it is happening.
Beyond thoughts of freinds in the war, of cool TV graphics, and the think-tank projections that the Iraqis will surrender bloodlessy in the face of our might....
beyond this, I have to know that there's alot of bad at work, behind all this TV euphemism and war cartoonery
Alot of bad reasons.
Alot of bad things are going to happen to people who don't deserve it.
Alot of bad things are going to happen to people who VERY much deserve it.
Alot of teenagers without jobs or school, running around the middle east are learning how to hate America.
Alot of people all over the world are wincing, wondering how bad it's going to be when it's all over.
Alot of Americans are hating eachother for how they feel about the war.
ALOT of people are just watching and praying.
The peace movement around the world kind of seems unprecedented, in its size and in its momentum, but also for protesting a conflict that has only now just begun. I suppose that means there's hope. That's always good to know.
FInally,
I thought about it, and there'll be no Pacifist quoting going on here on this blog if i can help to remember it.
90% of the time...
...Quoting just shows lack of ability or inspiration. It's saying something without having to figure out how to say it - because someone else already did.
Quoting is also kind of like a litereary version of socialite name-dropping - like a car-buff talking about the specs on his Mustang's engine.
So yearbooks really piss me off.
People who quote alot say to me:
"Look! I quoted from somebody!"
"I know about Dante/Thoreau/Plato etc...!"
"I agree with whatever it is that they said, and i had to say it by quoting them rather than writing anything myself!"
That's kind of unfair, but i'm sleepy and i'm remembering some particulary bad quotes i read in Jenn's College Yearbook.
So.
no quotes about WAR here.
War is too big for small interpretations of old ideas.
there's just me.
and daily life.
worried,
but not too much.
doing stuff.
watching
and waiting patiently
for this to be over.
"Hey" he says -although not in as many words. Justin's a weird kid.
"Hey," I say "what are you up?"
"Sitting on my couch, watching the WAR, man."
haha. That's what i was doing.
Watched the war start on TV tonight.
Played some Grand Theft Auto for stress relief.
Ate some imitation cocoa puffs.
Watched Tom Brokaw in his pin-striped suit.
Dave and I watched Tom Brokaw and laughed about his off-colour commencement speech at Hopkins last year - it was about the most politically incorrect, uninformative, ignorant-sounding, and possibly even drunken speech I've heard by anyone, let alone someone of Brokaw's popular stature. We sat and watched him, laughing when he fumbled with his words and laughing more when miscues confused the live broadcasts...
*"...and now here's CNN's Chest Rockwell with more on that story from Kuwait...."*
*cut to confused looking reporter in goofy army hat, staring with a half smile off into space*
*painful silence*
*cut back to the news desk where some Skinemax-adult movie-type-lady-anchor sits in her low cut business suit, her hand cupped to her earpiece as she gets the news that she has to wing it because someone messed up*
*cut to stock footage of missiles firing...
"sssssSSSSSSSSSSHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooo...."
that's what the missiles sound like*
*cut to that goddamn street intersection in Baghdad where a building just kind of sits there, looking very bored. A car passes.*
*cut to cool computer graphic fly-over of Baghdad and then cartoon map with war plans*
*commercial*
According to dave, the suit Brokaw's wearing on TV is the suit from the Mentos commercial. The one where the young businessman accidentally sits on a bench with wet white paint on it. Upon noticing he's got paint on his ass, the businessman ingeniously decides to roll around on the bench, creating a "pin-stripe" effect on his suit and therefore solving the critical "I-look-like-I have-paint-on-my-suit" dilemma. He then celebrates his awesomeness with a Mento.
Tom Brokaw never eats a Mento. But he, and a few of his fellow reporters, manage to say and do some equally funny stuff.
There's one retired general that NBC is using as a analyst who talks like he's trying to do a bad Shaun Connery impression...In his mean-looking shades-of-gray suit and power tie, he spouts goofy insights like: "We already have shome shecret operashuns already going on in Iraq, sho our shpeshial forces will be cri-ti-cal in the Nesxht few hoursh"
Then some stuff blows up and we, the viewing audience are bombarded with the same ambiguous ounce of information over and over - the army has made a pre-emptive strike on a bunker thought to possibly contain Hussein and his cronies. Graphics are drawn up, panelists speculate and postulate, pictures of "bunker-buster"bombs are flashed. Then more nothing.
SO the WAR is on it's way.
WAR happens on my TV.
WAR is happening, and the world gets alot bigger than it used to.
Countires all over the world issue statements of "concern" over our WAR.
The other governments, ones who are too economically involved with the U.S. to say bad stuff, re-iterate their support for the WAR while their populations shake thier heads in disbelief.
I have no idea how to feel, watching this video game.
I know a guy through Jenn who is in Bahrain right now, doing one of those millions of non-active army roles they advertise so heavily for in promotional highschool videos. I forget what he does, he was a history major in college.
A few of our family freinds have kids in the army.
I have a middleschool buddy in the Marines over there.
I guess i have to be on thier side. They're good people.
As people, they're not out to do evil.
And Saddam's a real asshole.
It seems easy to feel okay about what's happening looking at the WAR like this.
That simplicity is sweet and easy... and so I sit and joke with dave and pretend to enjoy it, because it's alot better than dealing with the fact that i am not at all for what is happening.
or why it is happening.
Beyond thoughts of freinds in the war, of cool TV graphics, and the think-tank projections that the Iraqis will surrender bloodlessy in the face of our might....
beyond this, I have to know that there's alot of bad at work, behind all this TV euphemism and war cartoonery
Alot of bad reasons.
Alot of bad things are going to happen to people who don't deserve it.
Alot of bad things are going to happen to people who VERY much deserve it.
Alot of teenagers without jobs or school, running around the middle east are learning how to hate America.
Alot of people all over the world are wincing, wondering how bad it's going to be when it's all over.
Alot of Americans are hating eachother for how they feel about the war.
ALOT of people are just watching and praying.
The peace movement around the world kind of seems unprecedented, in its size and in its momentum, but also for protesting a conflict that has only now just begun. I suppose that means there's hope. That's always good to know.
FInally,
I thought about it, and there'll be no Pacifist quoting going on here on this blog if i can help to remember it.
90% of the time...
...Quoting just shows lack of ability or inspiration. It's saying something without having to figure out how to say it - because someone else already did.
Quoting is also kind of like a litereary version of socialite name-dropping - like a car-buff talking about the specs on his Mustang's engine.
So yearbooks really piss me off.
People who quote alot say to me:
"Look! I quoted from somebody!"
"I know about Dante/Thoreau/Plato etc...!"
"I agree with whatever it is that they said, and i had to say it by quoting them rather than writing anything myself!"
That's kind of unfair, but i'm sleepy and i'm remembering some particulary bad quotes i read in Jenn's College Yearbook.
So.
no quotes about WAR here.
War is too big for small interpretations of old ideas.
there's just me.
and daily life.
worried,
but not too much.
doing stuff.
watching
and waiting patiently
for this to be over.
Comments:
Post a Comment
