War and Suicide

It's sort of odd, eh, that no one's said much of anything about the war on here since it began - hell, it's hardly been mentioned in three weeks.  I can say that I think I sort of conditioned myself to expect an absurdly short war, Six-Day War magnitude, which was just completely unrealistic.

The problem with these skewed news reports we've been having concerning the war - suddenly the WMD become just plain ol' missiles, etc. - is that my mother sits in front of the television and yells at every new fantastical update. Every time Dubya comes on and speaks to us I have to tell her to calm down because she gets crazy. My mother doesn't identify herself with any political groups, nor could she be called a liberal, yet she loathes our President for "sending our troops off to this war we shouldn't be in." As a result, I've been spending the time during this whole thing trying to explain to her why we are over there, what we're trying to accomplish, and that the reason these people signed up in the Armed Forces was not just to defend our country but to help us defend other countries from crazed dictators. Getting caught and tortured is something that these people were supposed to be prepared for and were willing to face, but I can't seem to get that through to my mother, who thinks we should pull everyone out of there and just blow the place up (kind of defeating the whole humanitarian deal).

I didn't think we'd have a short war. It'll be short compared to stuff like the Korean War or WWII, but we're going to be there for a while. There were two ways we were going to have a short war - blowing all of Iraq up simultaneously (which is dumb), or like 85% of Saddam's troops defecting to our side in anticipation of a Hussein-free Iraq (which was unlikely). The fact that they're already using suicide bombers is good because it shows the desperation the current Iraqi regime, though. And on the topic of suicide:

I can't imagine anyone in her position being happy enough with their life to want to prolong it...

I can't either. I wake up early in the morning and get up. I shower, I get clean, I do all those good things which help me to be presentable in public, and then I go about my day. I leave the house and do things. She doesn't wake up early in the morning, she never leaves her room save to come downstairs and get some food, and she doesn't have a job. I can't fathom being happy in that sort of situation. I wonder, does she put on a happy face? Is she frustrated with her situation? You all saw how I was without my job before I got the one I have now. I was devastated and I was still getting up on time and getting out of the house and doing things. So it's beyond me how she can be happy with her situation. I guess, if you're lazy enough, her situation is good - doesn't need to work because she's "disabled", her parents will always support her because they feel bad for her, all the food she can eat, a safe place to sleep at night, with little to no effort involved.

That's fuckin' lazy.

Have you ever eaten a six-pound lobster...

... off the chest of a seven-pound lobster?