WOTD: conflicted

Today’s word is a feeling, one that I think a lot of us are experiencing concerning the death of Osama bin Laden. To feel conflicted is to be full of conflicting and often contradictory emotions or impulses.

Upon hearing that Osama bin Laden, FBI’s number one most wanted bad guy, the one responsible for the atrocities of September 11, 2001, the July 7, 2005 bombings in London (among others) had been killed in a surgical military operation, well, one can’t help but jump for joy and shout, “YESSSS!!!!!!”

But wait, is that really an appropriate response? I mean, should one be filled with joy over the death of a fellow human being? Even one with such a defiantly uncompromising and completely distorted view of reality? Evil or not, he was still a man, who unfailingly believed he was doing God/Allah’s work by ridding the world of the oppressive infidels. Just like Adolf Hitler, Osama bin Laden hid himself away, and he held on to his misguided convictions until the very end. And like Hitler, he would rather die than be captured by the enemy. And thus he did.

The fate of Saddam Hussein was undoubtedly a fate he wished to avoid at all costs.

More on this later…

Bittersweet Thoughts on Bin Laden

One more bad guy bites the dust,
Yet the moment’s bittersweet,
When people whoop and cheer for blood,
The victory’s not complete,
When ideologies come to blows,
Push sometimes comes to shove,
We’re drawn onto the path of war,
Though we’d choose the path of love,
Lennon, Ghandi, Martin Luther King,
All had good points of course,
But the truth is sadly sometimes,
Force must be met with force,
That truth is somber, sobering,
And as such should be met,
Not with joy and pleasure,
But some measure of regret,
The hawks and doves will argue,
Neither one completely right,
There are times though that safety,
Must be shielded with might,
We wish for peace, and work for peace,
Still this must be reconciled,
With the fact that none would hesitate,
To give their life for their child.

WOTD: dysania

I was introduced to his word from His Royal Foxiness only yesterday. It is apparently the state of finding it difficult to get up in the morning. Heh. If this is a real disorder then I and just about everyone I know “suffers” from it.

There may also be an element of alcohol involved, as the Urban Dictionary further defines “dysania” as the “state of finding it hard to get out of bed in the morning after a hangover.”

However, after failing to find a mention of this supposed disorder on Wikipedia or the online dictionary I regularly use, I’ve come to the conclusion that “dysania” is not a real disorder.

Someone, somewhere, just made it up.

Stay tuned…

“USA! USA!” is the wrong response

By David Sirota via Salon

There is ample reason to feel relief that Osama bin Laden is no longer a threat to the world, and I say that not just because I was among the many congressional staffers told to flee the U.S. Capitol on 9/11. I say that because he was clearly an evil person who celebrated violence against all who he deemed “enemies” — and the world needs less of such zealotry, not more.

However, somber relief was not the dominant emotion presented to America when bin Laden’s death was announced. Instead, the Washington press corps — helped by a wild-eyed throng outside the White House — insisted that unbridled euphoria is the appropriate response. And in this we see bin Laden’s more enduring victory — a victory that will unfortunately last far beyond his passing.

For decades, we have held in contempt those who actively celebrate death. When we’ve seen video footage of foreigners cheering terrorist attacks against America, we have ignored their insistence that they are celebrating merely because we have occupied their nations and killed their people. Instead, we have been rightly disgusted — not only because they are lauding the death of our innocents, but because, more fundamentally, they are celebrating death itself. That latter part had been anathema to a nation built on the presumption that life is an “unalienable right.”

But in the years since 9/11, we have begun vaguely mimicking those we say we despise, sometimes celebrating bloodshed against those we see as Bad Guys just as vigorously as our enemies celebrate bloodshed against innocent Americans they (wrongly) deem as Bad Guys. Indeed, an America that once carefully refrained from flaunting gruesome pictures of our victims for fear of engaging in ugly death euphoria now ogles pictures of Uday and Qusay’s corpses, rejoices over images of Saddam Hussein’s hanging and throws a party at news that bin Laden was shot in the head.

…more…

…bin laden’s dirt nap

Hoo.  Hah.  Bin Laden is dead.

Oddly enough, it doesn’t seem to lessen the loss, horror and complete nightmare that is 09.11.  It’s not revenge.  There is no retribution.  How could there be retribution for the worst attack against our country?

There are three things that bother me right now:

  1. It took us over 10 years to do it.
  2. A bullshit war that destroyed all credibility in the arena of American foreign policy is still going on.
  3. Haters still gonna hate.

While the American attention span is not much greater than that of the ordinary house-fly, I have a distinct feeling that the blind hatred of Muslims will still be pervasive in our society.  I fear that we will never move beyond our xenophobic ways and still target the innocent.  I will be tremendously embarrassed by chest-thumping and flag waving of my fellow citizens as this is not an achievement.  An achievement would be smiting him in 2001.  An achievement would be getting our enemy without destroying other countries.

While it’s nice to see the evil dispatched to the gates of a non-existent hell, it is also nice to conduct oneself with a bit of humility. This admonishment is addressed directly towards the segment of American society that is now blasting Toby Keith at the top volume of its dated boombox.

Humility, folks.  Humility.  Think about it for a second before you rush to the streets screaming about our greatness.

WOTD: a “shower of bastards” and other collective nouns…

With many thanks to Cissi for the idea…

According to the Urban Dictionary (the unreliability of the source notwithstanding), the phrase “shower of bastards” is Irish slang for a “group of not altogether nice people.”

As in, “Look at that shower of bastards over there. They’re not even drinking Guinness.”  Oi, what a bunch of gobshites.

Anyway, this got me thinking about how many colorful, surprising, and just plain odd collective nouns there are. Wikipedia of course names all of them but here’s a few of my favorites:

A glaring of cats. (Hehe…I’ve certainly been glared at by my cat)

A coffle of asses.

A shrewdness of apes.

A chin of beards. (This one made me laugh out loud.)

A singular of boars.

A cheat of bursars.  (A bursar is the person responsible for billing you at a college or university.)

A threat of courtiers.

A murder of crows.

A busyness of ferrets.

A parliament of owls.

A storytelling of crows.

A drunkenship of cobblers. (You know, those guys who make and repair shoes.)

A neverthriving of jugglers. (Does this tell us something about juggling as a possible career choice?)

A number of mathematicians (Hahaha. This one might be a bit dubious.)

An obstinacy of buffalo.

A scathe of zombies.

An ugly of walruses.

And my number one all time favorite:

A sad of emos. (I shit you not)

Until next time…

The Sadness Worm

You never feel it move or squirm,
But you know when you’ve got,
The Sadness Worm.
You get it when you swallow pain.
And it makes a mark.
It makes a stain.
So everybody knows your plight.
You’ve got this worm,
This parasite.
It shrinks away from joy and fun,
Just like a vampire avoiding the sun.
Unfortunately there is no cure,
No medicine to take for sure.
The Sadness Worm gets sick and weak,
But it never dies,
Just goes to sleep.
It burrows deep inside your heart,
And from within,
Tears you apart.
And there it stays and there it lies,
Until one day,
Your heart just dies.

…it’s not a crack house

It is a crack home.

Forgive the silence.  We have had a lot of home improvement activity going on at the House o’ Dock and Kang for the past few weeks.

Years ago, when we first moved into the house, I had this wild idea of building in the deck and transforming it into another room. Like everyone else in the world, one more room is always needed in a home.  Just.  One.  More.  Due to budget constraints (ie:  complete lack of money) and trepidation, we decided to table that initiative for a long time.  The idea of someone removing walls, adding a foundation and rebuilding walls is just a wee too much for us right now.

We decided to stick our toes in the renovation pool by taking care of some things that we are incapable of doing ourselves due to lack of talent, patience and inclincation.  The foyer and hallway (upstairs and downstairs) has needed a new coat of paint since we signed the closing papers back in 2004.  The living room walls had been painted the week after we moved in.  Dock promised to take care of the trim. Seven years later, it was still the same color.

Also in consideration, the hideous color of the exterior.  It was (note:  was) a lovely shade of brown with green shutters and cream trim. That needed to go away.  Forever.

We had only hired a contractor once before and that was for a very small flooring job. Hiring someone to rip siding off your house and repaint was unchartered waters for us.

Everything had been humming right along until the tornado ate Raleigh.  Very, very tragically, some of the crew was directly impacted so work stopped for a week.  But now it’s back on and almost done.

One of the most peculiar things I have noticed is that the moment you make an improvement to one part of your home, the other areas become, well, painful to look at. Our home is now a happy shade of white with black shutters.  Just the way any good Yankee would have it. It’s lovely.  Incredibly lovely.  Alas, the gardens look pitiful in comparison.

If I had to identify one take-away from this particular exercise it would be – just leave your house looking like a dilapidated crack house.  Sure – your neighbors will be very unhappy.  Sure – you’ll lose any potential value you have in your home.  But – you won’t have to sit there and look at part of your home and think “Gee…it’s so lovely.  How unfortunate that (insert problem area here) sullies the improvement.”