I am in an incredibly foul mood. I have managed to kill another rice cooker after a mere three uses. Marcus alleges that the wiring in my quite old apartment building must be burning it out. I pointed out that every other electric device I own, most of which are plugged in all day, still works just fine. Anyway, it quit right in the middle of cooking the rice for my dinner (just like the first one), which made me late to work. Work was filled with toil. My period started while I was there. Which, since I was tired of waiting for it to show up, made it perhaps something of a mixed blessing rather than a further bane on my day. My grouchiness caused me to eat more of the luscious Girl Scout thin mints cached in my desk drawer than I should have. And now I am very tired but too crabby to go to bed.
Also, I'm in a quandary about what to read when I finish The Shipping News, which I will likely do either tonight or tomorrow morning. I have too many options. That, at least, is an
thing. As is the fact that it is raining.
in the towers of steel, belief goes on and onThe mortal citizens of a planet are praying right now that we will bear in mind, better than ever before, that no kind of bomb ever built will extinguish hatred.--Barbara Kingsolver, September 23, 2001
Tonight as I worked, snatches of George W. Bush's rhetoric caught my attention. Once in awhile, I paid attention long enough to notice that his attempts to justify a war on Iraq were as unpersuasive as they have been for months.
In fact, I must confess that even after all this time, I'm still puzzled with Bush's obsession with Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and his Weapons of Mass Destruction (tm).
I'm mystified why the American public so willingly swallows the line that Iraq is a threat to this nation, when in the same breath our government openly flaunts America's unrivaled power. Huddle up, folks; I've got a secret to tell you.
A nation you can crush without thinking about it, a nation you can force to destroy weapons, is not a threat to your freedom.
For months, officials have flogged our fear. But it is our government that has acted as the aggressor, and the threat of force is all the more frightening for being cloaked in the language of righteousness.
Not so long ago, Bush charged that failure by the U.N. Security Council to use force against Iraq would render it irrelevant. In fact, I think quite the opposite would be true. We live in a world with an unprecedented possibility to cooperate on a global level. To begin the arduous, painful process of learning how to create a world in which our chosen response to our problems is not a destructive one. And if we, the most powerful nation, choose to remain of the might-makes-right mentality, then I would argue that it is we who have become irrelevant. Empires fall. And if this one falls, we will have done it to ourselves.
If we choose a war on Iraq, people will die. People as innocent as those who died on September 11, and who have already suffered far more than most of us could ever understand. One could certainly argue that if our military ousted Saddam Hussein, these people's lives would be better. And this may well be true. But we don't know that, and we cannot forget that the welfare of the people of Iraq is not the justification we are being given for war. That is, if we're being given one at all.
When you think about a war on Iraq, think about September 11. Think about how we shook and how we cried, many of us for people we never knew. Remember that every person who dies in Iraq is someone's child, someone's parent, someone's brother or sister or lover. Remember the agony you felt when you saw people cheering for the destruction of the Twin Towers.
And then ask yourself if you would cheer when we "won" this war.
America has tremendous power. And it can be used in one of two ways: For great good, or for great harm. We can move forward, or we can watch the rest of the world pass us by.
This is the choice we are making now.
Tuesday, March 4
the sky is a hazy shade of winterMundane, mundane, mundane. Yes, this is my life I'm talking about. I think the highlight of today was going grocery shopping. Maybe I should try tangoing down the aisles with a grapefruit next time.
Wait -- the burning desire to humiliate myself in front of old people and screaming children at Safeway has suddenly subsided.
I've always sort of despised March. It's that month where there are previews of the glorious spring to come flitting amongst the days and days and days of gloom. The way the trees outside my window are blooming, for instance, and how the temperature hit 60-something on Saturday. Just enough to tantalize, not enough to satisfy. This is about the time of year when I start to dream about being warm.
Becca came to visit last weekend. I can't say we did anything wild and crazy, but it was fun just to hang out since we get to do that so rarely now. Of course, she had a couple ulterior motives for coming, one of which was a fact-finding mission about Marcus. We cooked him breakfast on Saturday so she could meet him (he, of course, had no say in the matter). Hence, Becca is the only person who can prove he's not merely a figment of my imagination. One would think, though, that if I were going to invent a boy to go out with, the fictional relationship would last longer than three weeks and involve a lot of... bliss.
You know, I'm actually writing this to avoid working on the Lewis and Clark style guide my boss asked me to give him 5 weeks ago. I'm glad to see I haven't lost the aptitude for procrastination I worked so hard to develop in college. While I was supposed to be doing something else, of course.
