canned or dry, we neva die.

status check - sleepy
background ambiance - strong bad email

because she knows i can never find enough ways to procrastinate and otherwise waste time, michelle introduced me to the addictive, wiley ways of strong bad email at homestarrunner this weekend. which means i'm going to be going through all of the amusing goodness for the next several days. damn you - i mean, thank you - michelle.

thought i'd post something that i wrote over on the addictionspace this evening. one might think such a double-post serves as an attempt to make sure as many readers as possible could view my take on the war in iraq and explanation as to how i developed my anti-war philosophy. i would say to one that one should keep on thinking that, even after i admit that the post wound up taking a completely different tone than i'd expected when i wanted to comment on the fact that i'm seeing ani difranco at the flynn tomorrow night. i tapped into thoughts i hadn't thought in a good long while - thus feeling so happy about the writing process.

there's something about the coming show that just leaves me awed and nostalgic at the same time. the awe is the easy part to recognize, as she's the goddess of all that is righteous and i never cease to feel disappointed in myself for not playing my guitar (which is in need of a new name, by the way) more often than i do. i see her tearing up the place with her 5-foot-nothing frame and i realize the guitar is nearly half the size she is. if she can do it, there's no reason why i shouldn't get off my ass, turn off the strong bad email and get back to playing (ok - learning to play). per tradition, i'll spend the several days following the show playing my little heart out and my little fingers raw. hopefully i'll stick with it this time.

but the nostalgia is prompted a bit by ani, a bit by this time of year. the first time i saw ani, i didn't know much about her, other than the fact that lexi thought she was a goddess. lexi, then my hall-mate, invited me along to the ani show at memorial aud and i thought that was the coolest thing. so i went, was amazed and wound up talking with lexi more than i had before.

so you take ani and the realization that december's coming up and i get a little sentimental and sad, thinking of my fabulous, india-bound friend. i've been doing it a lot lately - thinking of her. the realization that it'll be three years on december 20th doesn't really register. it feels like it's been longer. she's already taken on this sepia-toned image in my mind - she's always been there, but she's also always been gone and i've always missed her.

anyway, ani. the myspace post. which officially makes this my "let's think back on people we knew until something stupid/tragic happened and they were taken away" post for the year. harsh-sounding? not intended. but somewhat fitting, you've got to admit.
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an additional 420 vermont national guard soldiers are likely to be deployed in january and february, thus adding to the number of green mountain boys and girls who are putting themselves in harm's way so as to placate the chimp in charge who nestles in the oval office.

truth be told, i give credit to those put aside their own personal thoughts to follow through on what they signed up for - which turns out to be a war without purpose or solution. granted, i give even more credit to those possibly facing court-martials for refusing to go into a particularly dangerous mission, but that's neither here nor there. the fact of the matter is that there's no way in hell i could possibly even attempt to do what the troops overseas are doing on a daily basis.

i've always been about as far from a militaristic type as one could imagine - a reality that amazes me, considering the family genes. both of my grandfathers served, and my father desperately wanted to go to vietnam.

i kid you not - he wanted to go. he tried to enlist several times, but couldn't get in because his vision wasn't up to snuff. i grew up with stories of how he wanted to be a soldier. how he and his friend both enlisted - and he actually passed through the tests that one time - but when he showed up at the buses to head off to training, they said his vision was really just too poor to go. he watched his friend leave in the bus and felt lost and uncertain about what he would do if he couldn't be a soldier.

turns out, he would start a career, meet a wife and have a couple of kids, all the while reading his war books and watching his war movies. "M*A*S*H" was a household staple, as was "tour of duty."

but his daughter? i used to laugh when army recruiters came to my high school to talk about a potential future in the military. i finally told one particularly persistent recruiter that the reality of the matter is "that you just don't want me representing or protecting the united states. first roll call of boot camp? the sergent would get in my face, i'd start crying, you'd send me home. but let's say i advanced and was on active duty. you'd actually trust ME with a GUN? let's just cut our losses here and now."

that military placement test you take as a sophomore? i drew pictures with the dots. and, oddly enough, placed in the high percentiles in mechanics because of it. which perpetuated things.

a few of my classmates went into the service following graduation - which meant a large chunk of my class enlisted (hey, you graduate with 32 others, anything three people do that's the same is pretty remarkable). i figured i'd see them at some reunion a decade down the line, with wives they met during their service years and little army brat children.

and then justin died in an ambush in tal afar and any possible "ok, i'm really stretching here but maybe i'll think about not completely disagreeing" thoughts i could have had about the war's justification flew out the window. we had our reunion, but it was at his funeral. think "the big chill" without the sex, alcohol or witty banter.

my republican father knows talking to his democrat daughter about politics will result in a long debate. but he knows it's better not to talk to me about the war. it's one thing to have idealized, romantic notions about a war like those he reads about in his books. it's another to try justifying a war with no cause, no end in sight, and nothing but broken bodies strewn along the way.

appropriate considering i'm seeing the kickass righteous babe tomorrow night:

and i must admit
today my inner pessimist
seems to have got the best of me
we start out sugared up on kool-aid and manifest destiny
and we memorize all the president's names
like little trained monkeys
and then we're spit into the world
so many spinny-eyed t.v. junkies
incapable of unravelling the military industrial mystery
preemptively pacified with history book history
and i've been around the world now
and i can see this about america
the mind control is steep here, man
the myopia is deep here

and behold
those that try to expose the reality
who really try to realize democracy
are shot with rubber bullets and gassed off the streets
while the global power brokers are kept clean and discrete
behind a wall
behind a moat
and that is all
that's all she wrote