Mini-rant on a Sunday afternoon

I've got my sister-in-law and her beau here for the week, with Thanksgiving coming up and all. So my office has taken the form of guest room for a week.

I've switched from one addiction to the other for the time being- TV. Last night while flipping through the channels, I came across this little program:

http://times.discovery.com/convergence/offtowar/offtowar.html

Hmm. Military Reality TV in Iraq. OK, I'll see what is *really* going on in Iraq. Bret looked up from some newspaper puzzle he was doing, glanced at the TV, and said, with a hint of worry (for him)in his voice, "honey, this is going to make you angry."

*Grin*- me? Get angry? Nah... I just wanted to take a peek.... why would I get angry?

The particular episode I caught was the day of Iraqi elections (not the recent constitution one). Within 5 minutes I felt my blood pressure rise. They were about to begin their day to check election stations, and they gathered for their prayer.

To paraphrase: Jesus, help us bring Christianity to Iraq and these Iraqi people...

From the kitchen table: "Honey..... you really shouldn't be watching this at 11pm...."

Too late. "WHAT???!!??" I shrieked.

From the kitchen table: "sigh..."

Oh it just went downhill from there. This is apparently a story of one Reserve Unit that has been there for 18 months. Towards the end of the episode, they lost one of their men to a sniper. The hatred that brimmed from these men was actually shocking to me, and very misplaced. All they kept saying was they hate the place. They hate the people, they hate their beliefs, they are all terrorists.

One even went so far to say they should just take a nuke to the whole country and wipe it out.

They had another episode at midnight. I continued to watch the train wreck, unable to tear my poor tired eyes away. The next episode began following another member of the team on his birthday. They went out on their rounds, going into random houses of Iraqis and doing searches. The people were pleading, "we don't have anything. Please don't take our things."

They took away someone's flares, claiming that "they didn't have any use for them". The Iraqis looked very frightened by the men being there. They didn't really explain WHY they were going through these poor people's homes in the first place. The "birthday boy" brought out a box with clothes, and started handing out things to the children. Well, as would be expected, it started to get a little crazy, everyone started to clamor for things, and he got overwhelmed. But what he did about it nearly made me put my fist through the TV.

He said, "if you people can't do this right, no one gets anything." and HE TOOK IT ALL AWAY. Just like that. ARGH!

Getting back into their humvee, he said, "I hate all these people. They are all insurgents. The women marry them, and they have babies that become them. I hate this place."

I finally got a clue and turned it off.

These are not people who are proud to serve their country. These are people who I don't think even KNOW why they are there! They hate what they are doing. They do not believe in the cause that their president has fed them.

This is the trash that is being fed to the American people, and only brewing more hatred and fear.

I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was.

And for added enjoyment and slight nausea, I found the message board for the show. It's amazing how efficient the propaganda machine is:

http://community.discovery.com/groupee/forums/a/frm/f/477101732

OK I'm done. I didn't mean to drone on and on about it.. but OMFG how can people buy into this shit?

Realization while cleaning my kitchen

You know, if there weren't bigger things meant for me in my life, my house would be a whole lot cleaner.

Is this good or bad?

"See what will happen if you don't stop biting your fingernails?"
-- Will Rogers, to his niece on seeing the Venus de Milo


Did he think it was good art, or bad art? :-)))















Which I know the real joke was no arms, but I guess even a quote is open to different interpretations.

Rejoice! Halloween Month has passed!

Seriously- it seems every time we took the children to an event, it "required" their costumes. I had to *wash* them- twice! And by *hand*, too! WTF? I certainly don't remember ever wearing my costume other than Halloween night. Allow me to show you in pictures the events of the past month:

I think the wings helped balance her on skates

At the school annual Mercado


Carving pumpkins at Eleanor's
Birthday Party

Finally, Halloween arrives! Complete
with strange Hippy-dude

Not bad for her first carved pumpkin-
Yes she did it all herself!

Summer weather in the fall

88 flipping degrees outside. Should I still be in shorts and flip-flops three weeks before Thanksgiving?

Only in Arizona... where is my FALL????

Can't wait for Christmas... we'll be back EAST! WoooT!!