I've decided.
I'm going to go for an MA.
Not in theater.
In military history.
Yes.
Stay tuned.
Monday, June 23, 2008
We're All History
Two comments in the past two weeks have been causing a little bit of thought.
The first (with genuine interest): So, I can't figure out your position on the military.
The second (with ill-concealed derision): Dude, you are such a nerd.
***
To address the second one first: the Amazon.com Marketplace is a very dangerous thing.
Since working on The Company A Blog, I've realized a need to widen my range of research materials, and as such, went hog-wild on the Marketplace about two weeks ago. Packages have been arriving in spurts; days will go by as I anxiously check the mailbox, then four or five will show up all at once. The coffee table in the living room is covered with books on the Marine Corps - firsthand accounts, the easily identified Osprey books on specific uniforms, organization, and battles - and the DVD player has a new stack of documentaries on top of it.
The comment was made by a friend of mine as I expressed excitement over the latest arrival - two collections of original footage shot during the battle of Saipan, one of which had been made into a very detailed USMC training film, and the other (with the sinister title "Saipan Uncensored") containing interviews and sounds recorded during the fight, as well as a large amount of color footage - some of which has never been aired anywhere due to its extraordinarily graphic nature. (We'll come back to this in a little bit).
These films are really invaluable, I think, especially as a research tool - they were shot by trained USMC crews who hit the beaches with the first wave, and while they couldn't record sound on their cameras (the audio was picked up different team) you almost don't need it. The scratches and imperfections make them seem all the more real (which, of course, they are) - especially when they are over- or under-exposed and you know whoever loaded that film had no time to fiddle with their camera adjustments. They provide an interesting and shockingly up-front look into situations that are most often described in words, and no matter how evocative the word, a picture will always be worth a thousand of them. (And speaking of pictures, it's also interesting to see how many famous images are actually still frames from the film crews - someone who has always been frozen while jumping off his amphtrack now appears over the side, rolls over, lands awkwardly on his stomach, then collects himself and stumbles inland). The combat Marines didn't always appreciate the intrusion - some coming off the line glare at the camera with a look that could stop a train - but you are still seeing them there, moving, talking, running, and sometimes bleeding and dying - and it is real. This has not been staged for Hollywood, these guys aren't actors, and you wonder about each face you see pass in front of the camera.
Anyway, I was really excited to get these, and then was promptly deflated by that one comment. I've been called a nerd before (many times) and this particular friend is one of my most caustic (and yet oldest). We're used to quibbling, we've had serious fights in the past, but for the most part we just rib each other and it rolls off like water on a duck's back. He had an edge in his voice, though, which was unusual, and while I'm not taking the fact that he said it seriously, the stigma attached gave me pause.
History, and particularly military history, has been my primary area of interest since I was old enough to play with toy soldiers. Almost every young boy is fascinated by the action aspect, the building of forts, the racing around with cap guns, arguments over who shot who. My friends and I built countless forts in our backyards - endless competitions over who built the best one, who had the best supplies, the design changing by location - by the small pond in my backyard where we dug a stream to provide a natural barrier; by the creek down the hill behind Mike's house where we threw stones at fleets made of tinfoil and built big reservoirs guarded by little plastic men. Mike and I, being voracious readers, picked up book after book on tanks, soldiers, battles, and wars, and while he gravitated towards the modern, I took interest in the past, how the lumbering catapults of medieval times eventually led to the Abrams tank and everything in between. Even then, I thought how important armed conflict and the army had been in shaping the world's history; if a British private soldier had shown less compassion to a wounded German there would have been no Second World War and Adolf Hitler would just be a name on the rolls of the missing on the Western Front; how a Confederate sharpshooter at Monocacy missed picking off Lincoln by the barest degree of error; how my older family members survived or died on what seemed like a whim.
As we grew older, the differences began to tell. Mike, enamored of airplane technology, dreamed of a career in the Air Force. I looked at the pictures of young men grinning as they left their homes, then lying stark and staring in the mud, and wondered why anyone joined the military anymore, especially if they could see such pictures. It seemed like there should be a better way to resolve problems than periodically killing off the youth of a nation.
Some boys never fully outgrow this phase; those who want to keep pretending become reenactors, those who find truth in it join the actual military. I went into reenacting at 16; Mike went into ROTC at 18 and is deploying to Iraq at age 24 (though, luckily, not in a combat capacity).
I'm digressing here. The point is, I have been fascinated by the minutiae of the military for almost as long as I can remember, and I don't consider myself to be a war-positive person. I do think, though, that like it or not the country (and human society as a whole) was created by people killing each other for whatever cause they thought right. This appears to be a basic, underlying precept of human nature - we are a combative species, not content to coexist, and no matter how long or hard we may campaign to do away with warfare, I think it will always define us and always has, from the first club and spear fight between Neanderthals until the day when some uniformed figure pushes the red button on his Doomsday Device. It's an unpleasant reality, but a reality it remains. And whenever the drums start beating, the sabers start rattling, and the speeches get eloquent, people like me are going to drop what they're doing and learn to kill because they think it is right.
(I'm going to just say right here that I do believe in the notion of a Good War. It's not a term that can be used lightly, of course, and the term "good" is relative inasmuch as destruction and death will occur as a result. My chief example, and it's a bit of a cliche, is the Second World War, which for my money absolutely had to be won. While the post-war squabbling launched us into the Cold War, nuclear paranoia, and fears of international Communism, the liberation of occupied countries as a primary goal of an invading force is, I think, one of the best causes that could justify fighting - and, of course, one that is begun on no uncertain terms, which is another kettle of fish for another time).
Digressing again. The question is: why?
Going to war, shooting and killing and the mindless terror it engenders are not something that I can ever imagine happening to me (and this is something I'm very thankful for). I understand that anyone who hasn't experienced these things first-hand cannot possibly know what they're like, and should count themselves lucky. However, I am curious. I want to know as close as possible how people not so different from me felt as they faced possible destruction for an ideal. I want to know what they saw, how their clothing was covered in sand, how minor things like a hot meal became the most important thing in the world; how an eighteen year old kid could go overseas with a gun and come back aged wildly beyond his years; how my ancestors could hide in the trees like I did when I was little, then take aim and kill another human being. I want to know these things because I don't want them to happen to anyone again, as foolish as that sounds and as impossible as it is, I want to learn these things in their detail and try to pass them on so that others will simultaneously realize what a great sacrifice soldiers have made for this (or any) country and by illuminating that sacrifice make people think about where their children are going with the courage in their heart and the fire in their stare.
There is also, I'll admit, a hint of guilt that so many kids have been killed while I can sit here in my office and write about them. Likewise, a hint of jealously that they could believe in something so strongly that they were willing to risk their lives.
This brings me, in a roundabout way, back to the "Saipan: Uncensored" film.
I do think that it is detrimental to exclude scenes of death and devastation from documentaries. I'm not talking about showing a house that's been knocked over, or a line of graves. These images, while evocative, don't pack the same punch as a filmed image of a head lying in a field. Just a head. No body, no equipment - just a head, lying on its side, the eyes still open and staring. Or a short image of a graves registration team, some using long-handled spatula-looking tools, some using hooks on long poles, to detach decomposed corpses from a pile where they fell. Rigor mortis has set in, the arms and legs no longer obey gravity, but what was once a young man now resembles a frog that has been run over on the highway and left to rot in the sun. Pictures of casualties are one thing, and are terrible enough, but it's far too easy to think "Oh, the poor guy" and move on. Filmed images, somehow, are a whole new level.
I've heard the term "war porn" bandied about with regards to such explicit material, and it's one of the most inaccurate terms I have ever heard. Although there are doubtless many people who take a morbidly ghoulish interest in pictures of the dead, I think it's wrong to label them as inappropriate for display. Honestly, people do not learn through subtlety. As John Doe said in the movie Se7en, you have to hit them with a sledgehammer to get their full attention. Certain pacifist groups in Germany, France, and Britain hit upon this idea immediately after the First World War, and collected the most gut-wrenching photographs they could find; these were published in book form in the hopes that people would look at what had been and work together to keep it from happening again. To label such images of reality as pornographic seems to indicate a desire to cast aspersions upon the greatest certainty of warfare - people WILL die, and die violently. When a sergeant from A Company was hit by a machine gun on Saipan, his captain thought the following:
I used to wonder what the people back home thought when they saw the name of someone they knew on a KIA list. Did they think the corpse looked like the one they'd seen in a funeral parlor back home? Because if they did, they were sadly mistaken.
It's this kind of mistaken that leads to the glorification of warfare, and adds in part to its perpetuation. To see someone laid out in state in their coffin does not compare to seeing a body without a face lying alone and far from home as flies and maggots eat away at the tattered flesh. I had nightmares after watching part of Saipan: Uncensored, and I know I won't be forgetting the sight of the head in the field any time soon. To ignore this sort of brutal imagery, or to defame it by labeling it as "porn" is, to my mind, an affront to people who have seen or caused these things to happen in real life and who will be remembering it for the rest of their lives. To shudder and turn away, that is acceptable, but before one goes about glorifying warfare, one should SEE the result.
The ability to remember, to study one's past and interpret its implications for the future is another of those inherently and exclusively human traits, just like organized warfare. Activists are fond of saying that humans are the only species that routinely engages in massed slaughter of their own kind, but it is also true that we are the only species to have any cognizance of what happened to generations before us, and it is foolish BEYOND REASON to discount this second trait in favor of the first.
I guess I am a nerd after all, but I'm a nerd that knows a lot about guns, so watch out.
***
Heading back to the first line, my position on the military. This has never been an easy question to answer, and it's a favorite with people who want to call me out on being a reenactor (though this particular instance was a genuine question, not an attempt to catch me in a contradiction).
I have had family in the military. William Emerson in the 1st Massachusetts in 1861; Phil Wood Senior and Hamilton Wood in the First World War; Phil Wood Junior, Ned Billings, Linc Richardson, Tom Willams, and Ralph Gillett in the Second. Private (later Captain) Emerson received a debilitating wound that left him unable to use his right arm; Phil Senior landed in the quartermasters while Lt. Wood survived fighting with the 307th Infantry; Lt. Phil Wood Junior died with the Marines on Saipan, Lieutenant Commander Billings disappeared with his burning ship at Guadalcanal, neither Linc Richardson the Merchant Marine nor Tom Williams the pilot were willing to talk about their service, and Ralph Gillett, my grandfather, died before I was old enough to know where Indochina was.
World War Two was a wakeup call for my family, and we haven't been in uniform since.
I have had friends in the military. Eric Wisbeth was a gunner on a Humvee in Al Faw, Iraq. My friend Corinne's brother Paul is flying Apache helicopters overseas. Mike, who I've known since kindergarten, is due to ship out in August. Bobbie Small went overseas with the Army. Lindsay Pfeiffer married a young 1st Lieutenant out of West Point; her cadet brother was in the honor guard. Some have been luckier than others. Joey Walsh got posted to Alaska, where he and Linds have been perfectly content. Paul Neal's gun camera footage was used in a segment by Fox News, so his sister and friends could see tracers streaking by his cockpit as little infrared people fell under his bullets. Mike is working with a damage assessment team, having decided that he wasn't made to kill after all. Bobbie Small came home with wounds and health concerns. Wisbeth wakes up in the night sweating because he looked down the barrel of his M16 at a four year old girl and hesitated just long enough to recognize the difference between a scared child and a screaming insurgent.
Meanwhile, I was raised in a peaceful family, had a hippie babysitter, learned mistrust for the government when young, went to a very liberal school; read and read and read military history and spent money I didn't have on reenacting equipment and trips to Virginia.
It's hard to get into a discussion of feelings towards the military without sounding like a hypocrite about the Iraq war. I don't think we should be there at all, I don't think there was ever a reason to go, and I think that no matter how we try to push up the "liberation" aspect, people there are not really all that much better off. They may become so in time, but it will take many many years to repair the infrastructure. That said, since we DID have the poor sense to go, we owe it to the people whose country we've destroyed to stay and fix it, and that unfortunately is going to involve a military presence.
What the men and women have to do on the ground isn't pretty, but it is now necessary. I don't like why they have to do it, but recognize that it's not their decision. They believe enough that they were willing to go, and for that they should be respected. The way this country has treated its veterans in the past has been nothing short of shameful, especially those coming back from Vietnam. I have never been able to understand how the United States, celebrated champion of equality and fair treatment, could turn her back on the very men and women who secured that safety. Sure, the people might disagree (as is their right, one of the rights those in uniform are ostensibly protecting) but for the government to betray them as well, to deny them opportunities and leave some of them to fend for themselves on the streets is a treason beyond anything Benedict Arnold might have dreamed. Pacifist or hawk, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, those young people who forsook being a carefree eighteen year old and picked up a weapon to fight for you - there are few people more deserving of respect. Understand that I am for world peace - I think it's improbable that we'll see it in my lifetime, or even in the span of humankind, yet I support the idea - but listen: respect the hardship that those in uniform face, because those soldiers are not so different from you. If you must apportion blame, most of it belongs with the politicians whose families have never been touched, who have never been affected when the "purple testament of bleeding war" has been opened, who apparently find the entire thing an adventure.
Tell them about the lone head lying in the field, eyes open and staring, flies buzzing around, maggots already devouring the eyes. Don't tell those who are willing to take the chance on being the faceless corpse far away in the mud. Are all soldiers blameless? Certainly not. The environment created for them robs some of their decency and leaves the rest to handle what is left on their own.
As Sage Francis says: "You support the troops by wearin' yellow ribbons? Just bring home my motherfuckin' brothers and sisters! 'Cause they don't call the shots, but they're right in the line of fire..."
This is enough tirade. Just remember this: there are legions of people your age who are willing to shoulder the responsibility of killing and take the chance of dying to protect the life that you know. Even if you can't endorse it, appreciate and remember it.
The first (with genuine interest): So, I can't figure out your position on the military.
The second (with ill-concealed derision): Dude, you are such a nerd.
To address the second one first: the Amazon.com Marketplace is a very dangerous thing.
Since working on The Company A Blog, I've realized a need to widen my range of research materials, and as such, went hog-wild on the Marketplace about two weeks ago. Packages have been arriving in spurts; days will go by as I anxiously check the mailbox, then four or five will show up all at once. The coffee table in the living room is covered with books on the Marine Corps - firsthand accounts, the easily identified Osprey books on specific uniforms, organization, and battles - and the DVD player has a new stack of documentaries on top of it.
The comment was made by a friend of mine as I expressed excitement over the latest arrival - two collections of original footage shot during the battle of Saipan, one of which had been made into a very detailed USMC training film, and the other (with the sinister title "Saipan Uncensored") containing interviews and sounds recorded during the fight, as well as a large amount of color footage - some of which has never been aired anywhere due to its extraordinarily graphic nature. (We'll come back to this in a little bit).
These films are really invaluable, I think, especially as a research tool - they were shot by trained USMC crews who hit the beaches with the first wave, and while they couldn't record sound on their cameras (the audio was picked up different team) you almost don't need it. The scratches and imperfections make them seem all the more real (which, of course, they are) - especially when they are over- or under-exposed and you know whoever loaded that film had no time to fiddle with their camera adjustments. They provide an interesting and shockingly up-front look into situations that are most often described in words, and no matter how evocative the word, a picture will always be worth a thousand of them. (And speaking of pictures, it's also interesting to see how many famous images are actually still frames from the film crews - someone who has always been frozen while jumping off his amphtrack now appears over the side, rolls over, lands awkwardly on his stomach, then collects himself and stumbles inland). The combat Marines didn't always appreciate the intrusion - some coming off the line glare at the camera with a look that could stop a train - but you are still seeing them there, moving, talking, running, and sometimes bleeding and dying - and it is real. This has not been staged for Hollywood, these guys aren't actors, and you wonder about each face you see pass in front of the camera.
Anyway, I was really excited to get these, and then was promptly deflated by that one comment. I've been called a nerd before (many times) and this particular friend is one of my most caustic (and yet oldest). We're used to quibbling, we've had serious fights in the past, but for the most part we just rib each other and it rolls off like water on a duck's back. He had an edge in his voice, though, which was unusual, and while I'm not taking the fact that he said it seriously, the stigma attached gave me pause.
History, and particularly military history, has been my primary area of interest since I was old enough to play with toy soldiers. Almost every young boy is fascinated by the action aspect, the building of forts, the racing around with cap guns, arguments over who shot who. My friends and I built countless forts in our backyards - endless competitions over who built the best one, who had the best supplies, the design changing by location - by the small pond in my backyard where we dug a stream to provide a natural barrier; by the creek down the hill behind Mike's house where we threw stones at fleets made of tinfoil and built big reservoirs guarded by little plastic men. Mike and I, being voracious readers, picked up book after book on tanks, soldiers, battles, and wars, and while he gravitated towards the modern, I took interest in the past, how the lumbering catapults of medieval times eventually led to the Abrams tank and everything in between. Even then, I thought how important armed conflict and the army had been in shaping the world's history; if a British private soldier had shown less compassion to a wounded German there would have been no Second World War and Adolf Hitler would just be a name on the rolls of the missing on the Western Front; how a Confederate sharpshooter at Monocacy missed picking off Lincoln by the barest degree of error; how my older family members survived or died on what seemed like a whim.
As we grew older, the differences began to tell. Mike, enamored of airplane technology, dreamed of a career in the Air Force. I looked at the pictures of young men grinning as they left their homes, then lying stark and staring in the mud, and wondered why anyone joined the military anymore, especially if they could see such pictures. It seemed like there should be a better way to resolve problems than periodically killing off the youth of a nation.
Some boys never fully outgrow this phase; those who want to keep pretending become reenactors, those who find truth in it join the actual military. I went into reenacting at 16; Mike went into ROTC at 18 and is deploying to Iraq at age 24 (though, luckily, not in a combat capacity).
I'm digressing here. The point is, I have been fascinated by the minutiae of the military for almost as long as I can remember, and I don't consider myself to be a war-positive person. I do think, though, that like it or not the country (and human society as a whole) was created by people killing each other for whatever cause they thought right. This appears to be a basic, underlying precept of human nature - we are a combative species, not content to coexist, and no matter how long or hard we may campaign to do away with warfare, I think it will always define us and always has, from the first club and spear fight between Neanderthals until the day when some uniformed figure pushes the red button on his Doomsday Device. It's an unpleasant reality, but a reality it remains. And whenever the drums start beating, the sabers start rattling, and the speeches get eloquent, people like me are going to drop what they're doing and learn to kill because they think it is right.
(I'm going to just say right here that I do believe in the notion of a Good War. It's not a term that can be used lightly, of course, and the term "good" is relative inasmuch as destruction and death will occur as a result. My chief example, and it's a bit of a cliche, is the Second World War, which for my money absolutely had to be won. While the post-war squabbling launched us into the Cold War, nuclear paranoia, and fears of international Communism, the liberation of occupied countries as a primary goal of an invading force is, I think, one of the best causes that could justify fighting - and, of course, one that is begun on no uncertain terms, which is another kettle of fish for another time).
Digressing again. The question is: why?
Going to war, shooting and killing and the mindless terror it engenders are not something that I can ever imagine happening to me (and this is something I'm very thankful for). I understand that anyone who hasn't experienced these things first-hand cannot possibly know what they're like, and should count themselves lucky. However, I am curious. I want to know as close as possible how people not so different from me felt as they faced possible destruction for an ideal. I want to know what they saw, how their clothing was covered in sand, how minor things like a hot meal became the most important thing in the world; how an eighteen year old kid could go overseas with a gun and come back aged wildly beyond his years; how my ancestors could hide in the trees like I did when I was little, then take aim and kill another human being. I want to know these things because I don't want them to happen to anyone again, as foolish as that sounds and as impossible as it is, I want to learn these things in their detail and try to pass them on so that others will simultaneously realize what a great sacrifice soldiers have made for this (or any) country and by illuminating that sacrifice make people think about where their children are going with the courage in their heart and the fire in their stare.
There is also, I'll admit, a hint of guilt that so many kids have been killed while I can sit here in my office and write about them. Likewise, a hint of jealously that they could believe in something so strongly that they were willing to risk their lives.
This brings me, in a roundabout way, back to the "Saipan: Uncensored" film.
I do think that it is detrimental to exclude scenes of death and devastation from documentaries. I'm not talking about showing a house that's been knocked over, or a line of graves. These images, while evocative, don't pack the same punch as a filmed image of a head lying in a field. Just a head. No body, no equipment - just a head, lying on its side, the eyes still open and staring. Or a short image of a graves registration team, some using long-handled spatula-looking tools, some using hooks on long poles, to detach decomposed corpses from a pile where they fell. Rigor mortis has set in, the arms and legs no longer obey gravity, but what was once a young man now resembles a frog that has been run over on the highway and left to rot in the sun. Pictures of casualties are one thing, and are terrible enough, but it's far too easy to think "Oh, the poor guy" and move on. Filmed images, somehow, are a whole new level.
I've heard the term "war porn" bandied about with regards to such explicit material, and it's one of the most inaccurate terms I have ever heard. Although there are doubtless many people who take a morbidly ghoulish interest in pictures of the dead, I think it's wrong to label them as inappropriate for display. Honestly, people do not learn through subtlety. As John Doe said in the movie Se7en, you have to hit them with a sledgehammer to get their full attention. Certain pacifist groups in Germany, France, and Britain hit upon this idea immediately after the First World War, and collected the most gut-wrenching photographs they could find; these were published in book form in the hopes that people would look at what had been and work together to keep it from happening again. To label such images of reality as pornographic seems to indicate a desire to cast aspersions upon the greatest certainty of warfare - people WILL die, and die violently. When a sergeant from A Company was hit by a machine gun on Saipan, his captain thought the following:
I used to wonder what the people back home thought when they saw the name of someone they knew on a KIA list. Did they think the corpse looked like the one they'd seen in a funeral parlor back home? Because if they did, they were sadly mistaken.
It's this kind of mistaken that leads to the glorification of warfare, and adds in part to its perpetuation. To see someone laid out in state in their coffin does not compare to seeing a body without a face lying alone and far from home as flies and maggots eat away at the tattered flesh. I had nightmares after watching part of Saipan: Uncensored, and I know I won't be forgetting the sight of the head in the field any time soon. To ignore this sort of brutal imagery, or to defame it by labeling it as "porn" is, to my mind, an affront to people who have seen or caused these things to happen in real life and who will be remembering it for the rest of their lives. To shudder and turn away, that is acceptable, but before one goes about glorifying warfare, one should SEE the result.
The ability to remember, to study one's past and interpret its implications for the future is another of those inherently and exclusively human traits, just like organized warfare. Activists are fond of saying that humans are the only species that routinely engages in massed slaughter of their own kind, but it is also true that we are the only species to have any cognizance of what happened to generations before us, and it is foolish BEYOND REASON to discount this second trait in favor of the first.
I guess I am a nerd after all, but I'm a nerd that knows a lot about guns, so watch out.
Heading back to the first line, my position on the military. This has never been an easy question to answer, and it's a favorite with people who want to call me out on being a reenactor (though this particular instance was a genuine question, not an attempt to catch me in a contradiction).
I have had family in the military. William Emerson in the 1st Massachusetts in 1861; Phil Wood Senior and Hamilton Wood in the First World War; Phil Wood Junior, Ned Billings, Linc Richardson, Tom Willams, and Ralph Gillett in the Second. Private (later Captain) Emerson received a debilitating wound that left him unable to use his right arm; Phil Senior landed in the quartermasters while Lt. Wood survived fighting with the 307th Infantry; Lt. Phil Wood Junior died with the Marines on Saipan, Lieutenant Commander Billings disappeared with his burning ship at Guadalcanal, neither Linc Richardson the Merchant Marine nor Tom Williams the pilot were willing to talk about their service, and Ralph Gillett, my grandfather, died before I was old enough to know where Indochina was.
World War Two was a wakeup call for my family, and we haven't been in uniform since.
I have had friends in the military. Eric Wisbeth was a gunner on a Humvee in Al Faw, Iraq. My friend Corinne's brother Paul is flying Apache helicopters overseas. Mike, who I've known since kindergarten, is due to ship out in August. Bobbie Small went overseas with the Army. Lindsay Pfeiffer married a young 1st Lieutenant out of West Point; her cadet brother was in the honor guard. Some have been luckier than others. Joey Walsh got posted to Alaska, where he and Linds have been perfectly content. Paul Neal's gun camera footage was used in a segment by Fox News, so his sister and friends could see tracers streaking by his cockpit as little infrared people fell under his bullets. Mike is working with a damage assessment team, having decided that he wasn't made to kill after all. Bobbie Small came home with wounds and health concerns. Wisbeth wakes up in the night sweating because he looked down the barrel of his M16 at a four year old girl and hesitated just long enough to recognize the difference between a scared child and a screaming insurgent.
Meanwhile, I was raised in a peaceful family, had a hippie babysitter, learned mistrust for the government when young, went to a very liberal school; read and read and read military history and spent money I didn't have on reenacting equipment and trips to Virginia.
It's hard to get into a discussion of feelings towards the military without sounding like a hypocrite about the Iraq war. I don't think we should be there at all, I don't think there was ever a reason to go, and I think that no matter how we try to push up the "liberation" aspect, people there are not really all that much better off. They may become so in time, but it will take many many years to repair the infrastructure. That said, since we DID have the poor sense to go, we owe it to the people whose country we've destroyed to stay and fix it, and that unfortunately is going to involve a military presence.
What the men and women have to do on the ground isn't pretty, but it is now necessary. I don't like why they have to do it, but recognize that it's not their decision. They believe enough that they were willing to go, and for that they should be respected. The way this country has treated its veterans in the past has been nothing short of shameful, especially those coming back from Vietnam. I have never been able to understand how the United States, celebrated champion of equality and fair treatment, could turn her back on the very men and women who secured that safety. Sure, the people might disagree (as is their right, one of the rights those in uniform are ostensibly protecting) but for the government to betray them as well, to deny them opportunities and leave some of them to fend for themselves on the streets is a treason beyond anything Benedict Arnold might have dreamed. Pacifist or hawk, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, those young people who forsook being a carefree eighteen year old and picked up a weapon to fight for you - there are few people more deserving of respect. Understand that I am for world peace - I think it's improbable that we'll see it in my lifetime, or even in the span of humankind, yet I support the idea - but listen: respect the hardship that those in uniform face, because those soldiers are not so different from you. If you must apportion blame, most of it belongs with the politicians whose families have never been touched, who have never been affected when the "purple testament of bleeding war" has been opened, who apparently find the entire thing an adventure.
Tell them about the lone head lying in the field, eyes open and staring, flies buzzing around, maggots already devouring the eyes. Don't tell those who are willing to take the chance on being the faceless corpse far away in the mud. Are all soldiers blameless? Certainly not. The environment created for them robs some of their decency and leaves the rest to handle what is left on their own.
As Sage Francis says: "You support the troops by wearin' yellow ribbons? Just bring home my motherfuckin' brothers and sisters! 'Cause they don't call the shots, but they're right in the line of fire..."
This is enough tirade. Just remember this: there are legions of people your age who are willing to shoulder the responsibility of killing and take the chance of dying to protect the life that you know. Even if you can't endorse it, appreciate and remember it.
Monday, June 16, 2008
XM Satellite Radio; or, The New Hit List (In More Ways Than One)
One must inevitably take some bad with the good. Generally, the two balance each other out into the monotony of everyday living. Your subway arrives just as you set foot on the platform, but you forgot to charge your cell phone. You pull off a sweet Matrix-style move to get around slow people on the sidewalk, but you bump your head on your desk. Your breakfast apple has just the right blend of tart and sweet, but you step in a puddle. The universal system of checks and balances is just that - universal - and often raises no more notice in one's daily routine than a private celebration or an inaudible curse.
Occasionally, though, something gets out of balance, and a situation is thrown off-kilter. Your subway arrives just as you drop your cellphone on the tracks; your Matrix moves send you falling down an open manhole; and your delicious apple somehow manages to give you Ebola (if salmonella can come from tomatoes, there's no telling what other fruits are up to - perhaps they're all bathed in raw eggs and packed in chicken for transport, but that's a topic for another time).
The point I'm trying to make here is that while my office provides me with air conditioning in the hot summer months, it also provides XM Satellite Radio.
Specifically, it provides XM 25: The Blend. I don't know what the statistics are for people being driven mad by Light Adult Contemporary (or, as the site says, "a perfect blend of pop"), but Science has shown that music has a terrific impact on human emotion, so surely it must impact our reason in some way.
The primary problem with XM 25: The Blend is the playlist. I am a bit of a music snob - I'll be the first to admit it - but I do tend to keep an open mind about different genres. And, yes, XM 25: The Blend will occasionally play a song that I like. The Beatles, Billy Joel, and some song whose title I don't know - it's the one they play in the movie Donnie Darko when the camera goes on a trip through the school.
The advertisements don't lie: they play songs from the superstars of pop from the last thirty years. However, you'd think that each of the superstars of pop had written ONE SONG and then sat back upon their laurels. (Undoubtedly this is the case with some artists, but I refuse to believe that everyone on XM 25: The Blend is a one-hit wonder). I have been in this office for almost a year now, and apart for a few memorable occasions where a different radio station was on (the Celtic Trance station was interesting) I have heard the same bland, insipid, uninspiring excuses for music every single day. And when I say "the same" I don't mean similar. I mean THE SAME SONGS EVERY SINGLE DAY. "Only the biggest hits from the artists you know and love!" trumpets the website. True enough, I suppose, "for those who like this kind of thing, this is the kind of thing they like" and heaven forbid anything should change.
Let's have a look at what's on the playlist. (I blame daytime DJ Mike Kaufman for most of this auditory regurgitation as he has the 10 - 5 shift; the morning and evening shifts are equally as culpable as they are responsible for all the repeats, but fortunately I'm out of the office most of the time).
* Matchbox 20 - If You're Gone
As far as I'm concerned, The Onion hit the nail on the head when they described Matchbox 20: "Grab a chair, America! The most uninteresting band in formulaic, corporate radio is back!" You really can't say enough about them - simply because there isn't anything to say in the first place.
* Madonna - Borderline
I blame Madonna for the sudden disappearance of Guy Ritchie from the Awesome Movie scene. Where once there was the man who gave us Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, there's now an empty shell married to the woman who wrote this song. Thanks, Madge.
* Jordin Sparks - Tattoo
This song never fails to get Rihanna's "Umbrella" stuck in my head. I suspect thievery on someone's part.
* U2 - With Or Without You
I actually kinda like this song, though when Bono really lets loose with the "WAAAAAH-OH OH OH" part I can only think about the Axies, drunk as skunks, performing this at a capella concerts back in college.
* Michael McDonald - (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher
Aside from the song itself, there are two problems here. Tammy Faye Bakker did a song called "Disco Jesus" which consists of 1% annoying disco beat and 99% caterwauling "A-Jesus keeps-ah liftin' meh higher an higher/ Higher an higher / Higher an higher" - another little-too-close similarity. Michael McDonald is also fined for Excessive Use Of Parenthetical Titles in a Non-Metal Band.
* Maroon 5 - She Will Be Loved
Maroon 5 shot their wad on "Harder To Breathe," an infinitely superior song that one never hears on the radio. After that, they're just another Matchbox 20.
* Avril Lavigne - Complicated
I remember when this song came out. It was during high school, I was working at Stewart's, and I heard it at least five times per shift because it was on heavy rotation. The song has not aged gracefully; rather it remains a shining reminder that people will listen to terrible songs and that Avril Lavigne, despite how punk rock princess she tries to appear, will someday get her comeuppance.
* Train - Drops of Jupiter
A sterling example of a band trying to sound deep and meaningful while actually saying nothing at all.
* Natasha Bedingfield - Unwritten
There's something about a spirited young lady singing "release your inhibitions" to people in an office that just seems fundamentally wrong. There are few more inhibited environments, and the people here who appreciate irony certainly don't make it a habit of showing it.
* The Eagles - There's Gonna Be A Heartache Tonight
Come on, man. I had a rough night and I hate the fuckin' Eagles, man!
* Daughtry - Home
Chris Daughtry can go fuck himself. This song makes me angry, but not quite enough to put it in The Trinity. This is the kind of song that a moody 13 year old would quote in his AIM profile to look extra dark and along. I should know. I was a moody 13 year old who was into bad song lyrics too, and if I could meet that me now, I'd punch him in the face.
THE TRINITY
* Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
Okay, I know a lot of things happened in the 80s that people regret (the sideways ponytails, the acid-washed jeans, Ronald Reagan, etc). Outside of the plague of 80s-themed parties most events that transpired between 1980 - 1989 are viewed with anything from gracious good humor (Ah What Young Fools We Were) to outright hatred (They Killed The Fuckin' Seventies, Man). This song is one of those iconic anthems, but an icon of what was wrong with the decade. And I don't mean that from a sexist standpoint - yes, girls should go have all the fun they care to - but come ON. My first reaction to this song is a sharp mental picture of a mildly overweight woman at a receptionist job somewhere, with bright pink fingernails, dangling earrings, and pictures of horribly cute baby animals all around her desk, snapping her gum and thinking about what it was like to be a go-go girl in 1983, except she wasn't actually one, she was too shy and gangly and thus spends the rest of her life living vicariously through Cyndi's shrill voice.
As far as I'm concerned, the best thing that happened to the eighties was that they had the good sense to eventually become the nineties.
* Colbie Caillat - Bubbly
One day, Weird Al will do it better, that's all I'm gonna say.
* Tina Turner - Private Dancer
Legend or not, this is one of the worst songs I have ever heard. Mercifully, this one only shows up when the DJ is feeling extra special.
THE ULTIMATE
* Gwen Stefani - The Sweet Escape
Oooooooh Gwen. Why she left No Doubt is beyond me - actually, why No Doubt left their ska band roots behind and swung into the pop mainstream is even further beyond, though I guess when the nineties and the ska revival started to die, certain Nervous Nellies tried to jump ship (I'm looking at you, Monique Powell) and we saw what happened there. Gwen goes from a totally respectable semi-rude girl to another bleached-blond pop starlet with her own clothing line. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Gwen Stefani seems to be more famous now for simply being Gwen Stefani, and when that happens you can believe the quality of someone's music is gonna take a turn for the worse.
This song... you ever have one of those songs that just ruins your day? That's what this song does to me. As soon as that little guitar line and tambourine starts up, I can feel my shoulder muscles tense; when the "weeeee-ooooh, a-WEEEEEEEE-OOOOOOOH" starts up the red bloody mists descend over my vision. In a past life, the Viking Berserker version of me would have charged forth with a big axe killing every living thing within reach. Within the corporate constraints, all I can do is glare murderously at the radio speaker and will it to shatter. This hasn't happened yet.
Somewhere in The Blend lives the world's most feeble guitar solo (which, actually, I think somehow managed to ooze out of Carlos Santana - I can only imagine he must have in the middle of recording a different, better guitar part at the time and had to play this one with his toes; either that or he was mid-concussion).
Almost enough to make you long for a Kenny Chesney marathon.
EDIT: Michelle Branch and Carlos Santana - The Game Of Love
Santana, you're in trouble.
Occasionally, though, something gets out of balance, and a situation is thrown off-kilter. Your subway arrives just as you drop your cellphone on the tracks; your Matrix moves send you falling down an open manhole; and your delicious apple somehow manages to give you Ebola (if salmonella can come from tomatoes, there's no telling what other fruits are up to - perhaps they're all bathed in raw eggs and packed in chicken for transport, but that's a topic for another time).
The point I'm trying to make here is that while my office provides me with air conditioning in the hot summer months, it also provides XM Satellite Radio.
Specifically, it provides XM 25: The Blend. I don't know what the statistics are for people being driven mad by Light Adult Contemporary (or, as the site says, "a perfect blend of pop"), but Science has shown that music has a terrific impact on human emotion, so surely it must impact our reason in some way.
The primary problem with XM 25: The Blend is the playlist. I am a bit of a music snob - I'll be the first to admit it - but I do tend to keep an open mind about different genres. And, yes, XM 25: The Blend will occasionally play a song that I like. The Beatles, Billy Joel, and some song whose title I don't know - it's the one they play in the movie Donnie Darko when the camera goes on a trip through the school.
The advertisements don't lie: they play songs from the superstars of pop from the last thirty years. However, you'd think that each of the superstars of pop had written ONE SONG and then sat back upon their laurels. (Undoubtedly this is the case with some artists, but I refuse to believe that everyone on XM 25: The Blend is a one-hit wonder). I have been in this office for almost a year now, and apart for a few memorable occasions where a different radio station was on (the Celtic Trance station was interesting) I have heard the same bland, insipid, uninspiring excuses for music every single day. And when I say "the same" I don't mean similar. I mean THE SAME SONGS EVERY SINGLE DAY. "Only the biggest hits from the artists you know and love!" trumpets the website. True enough, I suppose, "for those who like this kind of thing, this is the kind of thing they like" and heaven forbid anything should change.
Let's have a look at what's on the playlist. (I blame daytime DJ Mike Kaufman for most of this auditory regurgitation as he has the 10 - 5 shift; the morning and evening shifts are equally as culpable as they are responsible for all the repeats, but fortunately I'm out of the office most of the time).
* Matchbox 20 - If You're Gone
As far as I'm concerned, The Onion hit the nail on the head when they described Matchbox 20: "Grab a chair, America! The most uninteresting band in formulaic, corporate radio is back!" You really can't say enough about them - simply because there isn't anything to say in the first place.
* Madonna - Borderline
I blame Madonna for the sudden disappearance of Guy Ritchie from the Awesome Movie scene. Where once there was the man who gave us Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, there's now an empty shell married to the woman who wrote this song. Thanks, Madge.
* Jordin Sparks - Tattoo
This song never fails to get Rihanna's "Umbrella" stuck in my head. I suspect thievery on someone's part.
* U2 - With Or Without You
I actually kinda like this song, though when Bono really lets loose with the "WAAAAAH-OH OH OH" part I can only think about the Axies, drunk as skunks, performing this at a capella concerts back in college.
* Michael McDonald - (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher
Aside from the song itself, there are two problems here. Tammy Faye Bakker did a song called "Disco Jesus" which consists of 1% annoying disco beat and 99% caterwauling "A-Jesus keeps-ah liftin' meh higher an higher/ Higher an higher / Higher an higher" - another little-too-close similarity. Michael McDonald is also fined for Excessive Use Of Parenthetical Titles in a Non-Metal Band.
* Maroon 5 - She Will Be Loved
Maroon 5 shot their wad on "Harder To Breathe," an infinitely superior song that one never hears on the radio. After that, they're just another Matchbox 20.
* Avril Lavigne - Complicated
I remember when this song came out. It was during high school, I was working at Stewart's, and I heard it at least five times per shift because it was on heavy rotation. The song has not aged gracefully; rather it remains a shining reminder that people will listen to terrible songs and that Avril Lavigne, despite how punk rock princess she tries to appear, will someday get her comeuppance.
* Train - Drops of Jupiter
A sterling example of a band trying to sound deep and meaningful while actually saying nothing at all.
* Natasha Bedingfield - Unwritten
There's something about a spirited young lady singing "release your inhibitions" to people in an office that just seems fundamentally wrong. There are few more inhibited environments, and the people here who appreciate irony certainly don't make it a habit of showing it.
* The Eagles - There's Gonna Be A Heartache Tonight
Come on, man. I had a rough night and I hate the fuckin' Eagles, man!
* Daughtry - Home
Chris Daughtry can go fuck himself. This song makes me angry, but not quite enough to put it in The Trinity. This is the kind of song that a moody 13 year old would quote in his AIM profile to look extra dark and along. I should know. I was a moody 13 year old who was into bad song lyrics too, and if I could meet that me now, I'd punch him in the face.
THE TRINITY
* Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
Okay, I know a lot of things happened in the 80s that people regret (the sideways ponytails, the acid-washed jeans, Ronald Reagan, etc). Outside of the plague of 80s-themed parties most events that transpired between 1980 - 1989 are viewed with anything from gracious good humor (Ah What Young Fools We Were) to outright hatred (They Killed The Fuckin' Seventies, Man). This song is one of those iconic anthems, but an icon of what was wrong with the decade. And I don't mean that from a sexist standpoint - yes, girls should go have all the fun they care to - but come ON. My first reaction to this song is a sharp mental picture of a mildly overweight woman at a receptionist job somewhere, with bright pink fingernails, dangling earrings, and pictures of horribly cute baby animals all around her desk, snapping her gum and thinking about what it was like to be a go-go girl in 1983, except she wasn't actually one, she was too shy and gangly and thus spends the rest of her life living vicariously through Cyndi's shrill voice.
As far as I'm concerned, the best thing that happened to the eighties was that they had the good sense to eventually become the nineties.
* Colbie Caillat - Bubbly
One day, Weird Al will do it better, that's all I'm gonna say.
* Tina Turner - Private Dancer
Legend or not, this is one of the worst songs I have ever heard. Mercifully, this one only shows up when the DJ is feeling extra special.
THE ULTIMATE
* Gwen Stefani - The Sweet Escape
Oooooooh Gwen. Why she left No Doubt is beyond me - actually, why No Doubt left their ska band roots behind and swung into the pop mainstream is even further beyond, though I guess when the nineties and the ska revival started to die, certain Nervous Nellies tried to jump ship (I'm looking at you, Monique Powell) and we saw what happened there. Gwen goes from a totally respectable semi-rude girl to another bleached-blond pop starlet with her own clothing line. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Gwen Stefani seems to be more famous now for simply being Gwen Stefani, and when that happens you can believe the quality of someone's music is gonna take a turn for the worse.
This song... you ever have one of those songs that just ruins your day? That's what this song does to me. As soon as that little guitar line and tambourine starts up, I can feel my shoulder muscles tense; when the "weeeee-ooooh, a-WEEEEEEEE-OOOOOOOH" starts up the red bloody mists descend over my vision. In a past life, the Viking Berserker version of me would have charged forth with a big axe killing every living thing within reach. Within the corporate constraints, all I can do is glare murderously at the radio speaker and will it to shatter. This hasn't happened yet.
Somewhere in The Blend lives the world's most feeble guitar solo (which, actually, I think somehow managed to ooze out of Carlos Santana - I can only imagine he must have in the middle of recording a different, better guitar part at the time and had to play this one with his toes; either that or he was mid-concussion).
Almost enough to make you long for a Kenny Chesney marathon.
EDIT: Michelle Branch and Carlos Santana - The Game Of Love
Santana, you're in trouble.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Gonna Turn It Around On Ya
Another personal peeve (this one not necessarily to be a crime when I'm president of the world):
The use of terms such as "reverse racism" or "reverse sexism."
Okay. Let's have a look at the terms here. When one hears the term "reverse racism," at least in this country, it is usually applied to a member of an ethnic minority group who discriminates against a Caucasian; hence, a black man who denies a white man something because you can't trust Whitey is said to be employing "reverse racism."
There's nothing reverse about this. That's just racism. According to the dictionary, Racism is a noun that means:
As they go on to sing (wittily but with more than a grain of truth) "If we all could just admit / That we are racist, a little bit / Even though we all know that it's wrong / Maybe it would help us get along."
The same goes for "reverse sexism." Reverse sexism only ever seems to be employed when a woman is oppressing a man, implying that to be sexist is the sole capability of men. Women can be equally as sexist.
Actually, this does kinda piss me off. Maybe this will be illegal... these people can be cellmates with folks who overuse the words "dichotomy" and "I feel that..." instead of "I think that."
The use of terms such as "reverse racism" or "reverse sexism."
Okay. Let's have a look at the terms here. When one hears the term "reverse racism," at least in this country, it is usually applied to a member of an ethnic minority group who discriminates against a Caucasian; hence, a black man who denies a white man something because you can't trust Whitey is said to be employing "reverse racism."
There's nothing reverse about this. That's just racism. According to the dictionary, Racism is a noun that means:
NOWHERE does it say that racism is the exclusive property of Caucasians. I mean, let's call a spade a spade here and note that yes, we Caucasians haven't got the most sterling record when it comes to race relationships. In fact, historically, we've been some of the most intolerant people no matter where we live (in the broad generalization sense). HOWEVER. If we remember the musical Avenue Q: "Bigotry has never been exclusively white."
1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.
2. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.
3. hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.
As they go on to sing (wittily but with more than a grain of truth) "If we all could just admit / That we are racist, a little bit / Even though we all know that it's wrong / Maybe it would help us get along."
The same goes for "reverse sexism." Reverse sexism only ever seems to be employed when a woman is oppressing a man, implying that to be sexist is the sole capability of men. Women can be equally as sexist.
Actually, this does kinda piss me off. Maybe this will be illegal... these people can be cellmates with folks who overuse the words "dichotomy" and "I feel that..." instead of "I think that."
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