ectoblog.com

Orgasm is to Little Death as

1. Pain is to Little Sphincter

2. Love is to Little Crime

3. Thought is to Little Sphincter

4. Sleep is to Little Oblivion

Answer 4. Sleep is to Little Oblivion, because the other three are stupid.

I assume this is legitimate. If it’s not, it should be.

What We’ve Lost

I was deployed in my reserve unit (USMCR) as part of operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield. Marine infantry, and we were on the front lines, supposedly to guard a gunship base, but really, though, the gunships guarded us. Not too much later, it was time to take prisoners. One of the platoons went north, and when they came back, there were stories about how Iraqi soldiers lined the roads, trying to surrender. I spent a week guarding Iraqi men in a makeshift prison camp, a way-station really, and more than I could count. They didn’t look like they were starving or dehydrated. Apparently, once the ground war began, they just pitched their weapons and headed south at first opportunity. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I realize that they knew bone deep that they’d get fair treatment. We gave them MREs (with the pork entree’s removed) but almost immediately some Special Forces guys arrived and set up a real chow line for them. We gave each man a blanket, (I kept an extra as a souvie) and I think I saw a Special Forces doc giving some of them a once over. Once, only once, one of them got all irritated and tried to get in one of the Corporal’s faces, loud. (I was a lance-corporal). He wouldn’t back down, so the Corporal gave him an adjustment, a rifle butt-stroke to his gut, not hard, but he went down. The Corporal sent me for the medic. The guy was ok, and now calm (or at least understanding the situation), and hand-signed that he was out of smokes and really, really needed one… Not a bad guy, just stressed-dumb and needing a smoke. None of the others prisoners in the camp even registered it. We went north to mop up not long after that. I saw the Iraqi weapons: rocket launchers a little smaller than semi-trailers, hidden in buildings, AKs in piles, big Soviet mortars and anti-tank mines, everywhere but unarmed. They had food too. Pasteurized milk to drink, but most gone bad by then. Some of the mortar rounds were still in crates. They had long trenches that were hard to see in the dunes, bunkers with maps, fire-plans laid out, and blankets, all placed with decent vantage for command and control. They even had wire laid for land-line communications. The point is, they could have fought. Not won, no they couldn’t have won, but they could have fought. Instead, they chose to surrender. Looking back, I think that one of the main drivers in these men’s heads was that they knew, absolutely, that they’d get fair treatment from us, the Americans. We were the good guys. The Iraqis on the line knew they had an out, they had hope, so they could just walk away. (A few did piss themselves when someone told them we were Marines. Go figure.) Still, they knew Americans would be fair, and we were. Thinking hard on what I now know of history, psychology, and the meanness of politics, that reputation for fairness was damn near unique in world history. Can you tell me of any major military power that had it? Ever? France? No. Think Algeria. The UK? Sorry, Northern Ireland, the Boxer Rebellion in China… China or Russia. I don’t think so. But America had it. If those men had even put up token resistance, some of us would not have come back. But they didn’t even bother, and surrendered at least in part because of our reputation. Our two hundred year old reputation for being fair and humane and decent. All the way back to George Washington, and from President George H.W. Bush all the way down to a lance-corporal jarhead at the front. Its gone now, even from me. I can’t get past that image of the Iraqi, in the hood with the wires and I’m not what you’d call a sensitive type. You know the picture. And now we have a total bust-out in the White House, and a bunch of rubber-stamps in the House, trying to make it so that half-drowning people isn’t torture. That hypothermia isn’t torture. That degradation isn’t torture. We don’t have that reputation for fairness anymore. Just the opposite, I think. And the next real enemy we face will fight like only the cornered and desperate fight. How many Marines’ lives will be lost in the war ahead just because of this asshole who never once risked anything for this country?

I was sitting outside in the backyard this evening, and the breeze was mellow and the shadows were long, and then the world rotated into place around my internal stonehenge with an almost audible click. Summer’s gone.

I know what the calendar says, but the calendar is based on arcana that my body doesn’t believe in. It believes in other things, and while I can see some of what it believes in, and agree with it, I can’t see it all. I see the shadows, and I feel the slightly lower temperatures, but why today and not yesterday? What was different about today that made my inner druid start dancing? I can’t perceive it.

So it takes me by surprise, every year, when it happens.

The worst crisis since Benedict was elected in April 2005 was sparked by a speech in Germany Tuesday that appeared to endorse a Christian view, contested by most Muslims, that early Muslims spread their religion by violence.  In his speech, the pope quoted 14th-century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus who said: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

I’m a little surprised it isn’t raining fatwas yet. Salman Rushdie must be spinning in his grave.

from this photoblog. It’s a great note, but the editor in me wants to substitute “odd” or “unsettling” for “weird.” “Weird,”  as a word that still means what it was meant to mean, is just about dead.

Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin dead | NEWS.com.au

I will miss knowing he’s out there somewhere. Bill Nye, remember to take your medicine.

CNN.com – Season’s hurricane forecast downgraded – Sep 1, 2006

DENVER, Colorado (AP) — Hurricane forecaster William Gray downgraded his expectations for the 2006 Atlantic storm season Friday, calling for a slightly below-average year, with only five hurricanes instead of the seven previously forecast.Two of the hurricanes will be intense, according to Gray’s forecasting team, based at Colorado State University.

“We have made changes in our predictions for this season in order to maintain our reputation for accuracy,” a spokesman for the team said.

In other news, the Ministry of Truth announced today that “Eurasia is the enemy. Eurasia has always been the enemy.”

Follow up to this post.