If you won’t stand behind our troops, feel free to stand in front of them

Armistice Day was originally created to mark the end of World War I on 11/11/1918. After World War II, President Eisenhower expanded the holiday to celebrate all veterans, not just the veterans of WWI, and so, Veteran’s Day was born.

 

I love America, but there are several things wrong with this country. Our treatment of our veteran’s is one that angers me the most, perhaps because it hits very close to home. Veterans are the people who fight preserve our rights. They’re the ones who risk their lives so we don’t have to. Accordingly, you would think that taking care of them once they return home would be the government’s top priority. You would be wrong.

 

The government is cold and bureaucratic. Once a soldier is no longer useful to them because of physical injury or PTSD, they simply don’t care anymore. My father went to Iraq, came back with a bum leg and PTSD, and was fired from his government job because they didn’t want to pay his medical bills. of course, they didn’t say it like that. They simply said that they felt he was “no longer able to complete his work in a satisfactory manner.” Odd, considering that he’d been given a promotion for doing that job so well while he was in Baghdad, before he was injured. It’s a familiar story, as those of us who pass homeless veterans on the street daily, or have lived with a veteran, know. And let’s not forget about the families left behind by those who have fallen. The spouses and children, who will help take care of them? The government might send them some money, if they’re lucky, but just as with Social Security, it’s rarely enough. Besides, no amount of money can make up for a human life.

 

This Veteran’s Day is an especially somber one, given the recent attack at Fort Hood. Many people prefer to live life as it we’re not at war, as if Americans aren’t dying overseas in defense of our country. It really pissed me off today when I heard some people criticizing veterans and Veteran’s Day on the way to work. In America, they’re free to say things like that, but who the hell do they think fought to give them that freedom?

 

The bottom line is: you might not support these wars–I know I don’t–but I refuse to play politics and withdraw support for our American soldiers because of it. As the title says, if you won’t stand behind our troops, feel free to stand in front of them, because freedom isn’t free, and they’re the ones who pay the price.

How did this happen?

I’m sure everyone has heard about the shooting at Fort Hood in Texas yesterday afternoon. If not, here’s a brief summary: a military psychologist named Nidal Malik Hasan who had been “mortified” about being deployed, who had been taking every step to try to prevent it, and who had been trying for years to get out of his military contract because he said he was harassed for being Muslim after 9/11, took two handguns, entered the Soldier Readiness Center (where soldiers get last minute checkups before being deployed overseas), shouted “Allahu Akbar(god is great),” and killed 13 people, wounding 30 in the process. He was shot 4 times, but is still alive. For the moment.

 

What makes this even worse (and it’s hard to think of something worse than American soldiers getting gunned down in an army base on American soil by “one of their own”) is that Fort Hood not only houses 50,000 soldiers, but also 150,000 family members, children included. Luckily no child was killed, but just thinking of how much worse this could have been makes my skin crawl.

 

What I really want to know is who the hell this guy thought he was. He joined the military to get his undergrad and medical school paid for, knowing that joining up meant the possibility of deployment, yet when his time came, he took the coward’s way out. And he took 13 people down with him. I get that hearing the horrors of war can make you realize that it’s definitely not something you want to witness firsthand, but you signed a contract knowing the risks, so man up and deal with it. Or go AWOL and end up in prison instead. Don’t go on a fucking shooting spree to take down those who are braver than yourself.

 

My father went to Baghdad in 2007. He served as civilian support to the military, his Navy Reserve contract having been up several years before, and when he came back early with a hurt leg, he also came back with PTSD. I won’t go into the details, but I read the journal that his psychiatrist made him keep, and I know what happened, and I can only imagine how hard it would be to go over there knowing details like that. But, my dad is ready to go again and would be there in a heartbeat if he could. If he–who has a history of depression and who already lived through it once and suffered the mental consequences–can find that bravery, why couldn’t this guy? He was a psychiatrist, for crying out loud, it’s not like he was going to be out on the front lines. He would be sitting in a hospital doing almost the same exact work he was doing here. The only difference is that he’d be halfway across the world.

 

What really ticks me off is that this might have been stopped. There were internet postings made by someone with the same name as this guy which glorified suicide bombers, comparing a Muslim who kills 100 non-Muslim enemy combatants to a soldier who throws him/herself onto a grenade to protect the people around them. The military knew about these postings and said that the shooter was “under suspicion,” but no real moves were made. Perhaps if they had investigated a little bit harder, or been suspicious of his frequent heated arguments with other soldiers about how he didn’t believe in the wars, and hoped President Obama would end them both before he was deployed, perhaps this wouldn’t have happened.

 

I’m not religious, so I can’t say that I’ll pray for those killed and their families, but my thoughts are with them, and I only hope that the gunman lives so he can receive the punishment he deserves for such a heinous, cold-blooded act.

Cheater!

 

The audacity of people never ceases to amaze me, especially when it comes to things like tests and projects.  So, we get back our marketing test, and my group member/friend of mine, S, and I both got high As, with the curve.  The guy sitting next to us asks us our grades, and when he hears them, this follows:

 

Him: “Oh wow, you guys are like freaking geniuses.  My group and I didn’t do so well.  You guys are so smart.  Maybe next time we should look off your tests.”

Me and S: “Uhh….”

Him: “You know, really.  We should.  I mean, you guys are so smart, so why not?”

 

Luckily the prof started talking so he had to leave us alone, but he was completely serious about cheating off us! I get that sometimes you don’t have time to study for a test and you do badly, but purposefully slacking and choosing to copy off other people really ticks me off.  Why would I put in the effort and let you reap the rewards?  Sorry, darling, it doesn’t quite work like that.  You want to graduate, you need to work for it.  If you’re not willing to do that, why the hell are you in college in the first place?

Ramble

One of my favorite places in the City is the Ramble in Central Park. It’s a gorgeous network of trails through nearly untamed woods, and it doesn’t get much more beautiful than when the leaves are changing in the fall. I took advantage of the beautiful weather today to take a ramble through the Ramble, and it was like falling in love

To get to this wilderness, you must first weed your way through the throngs of tourists and families. Climbing over the large rock formation along one side of the large lake, you then cross a crowded bridge, and voila, you have arrived. It takes a few more minutes of walking before the crowd around you starts to thin, but before you know it, you’re practically alone (well, as alone as you can get in New York City). Aside from the occasional helicopter or group of obnoxiously loud people, the path is very quiet and serene. There are many routes to choose from–by the lakeside, over bridges, winding through the trees, etc. There were several points where I stopped, looked around, and realized there was not another soul in sight. For the first time in I don’t know how many months, I was not within sight or sound of another human being. It was amazing.

There’s really nothing quite like a walk alone through the woods, listening to the sounds of small waterfalls, and of animals rustling in the leaves. I’ve never been a people person, and there are few places more populated than New York City, so it’s really nice to have a place where I can just get away without having to stay locked in my apartment. Nothing against my friends from up here, but I think Central Park is what I’ll miss most when I leave. After all, friends have facebook, but pure nature cannot be electronically replicated. And, perhaps, that’s part of the appeal.

Judged

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s been judged for my “lifestyle.”  Or, rather, for my lack of lifestyle, as seen through the eyes of some others.  I don’t smoke, don’t do drugs, don’t go out clubbing, and rarely drink, and because of that–as well as the fact that I’m a hard worker and dedicated to school–many people assume I have absolutely no fun, no life, and could not possibly be happy.

I don’t understand the people who think the only way you can have fun is if you’re drunk.  Sorry, but that’s just not the case for me.  I have much more fun when I’m sober than I do when I’m drunk, but that could be because I absolutely detest the bitter taste of most alcohol.  My close friends and I prefer hanging out, chatting, going out to lunch/movies/bowling/museums, etc to going clubbing.

What spurred this rant was an emailed conversation between myself and one of my coworkers, J.  J was “concerned” because she felt I was missing out on life since I’m “always at work or school and never do anything else or hangout anywhere else.”  Then she started listing famous places in New York that I’ll “regret not going to since I’ll have lived in New York City for years and not experienced anything.”  Sorry J, but you couldn’t be more wrong.

Yes, I spend a lot of time at school and work, but I have Friday evenings and the weekend to do whatever I want.  I go to museums, parks, touristy-spots, basically anywhere of interest in the City, including the outer boroughs and even Jersey.  I google search every weekend to find something I haven’t done that I want to, and it’s getting incredibly hard to find anything.  I do have some casual acquaintances/friends outside of my coworkers who I hang out with when our schedules mesh, and just because I don’t tell her about every single thing I do doesn’t mean I do nothing.  She kept on lecturing me in her “mothering voice” about how I should be out “experiencing life and going through a wild child phase, or else I’ll regret it,” and it really pissed me off.  And then she continued by asserting that I was alienating myself by never socializing, and would be very sorry in the end because I would forget how.

As far as a “wild child” phase, that just doesn’t appeal to me.  There were several weeks in college when my first roommate and I would go out clubbing or go to frat parties or floor parties, and I hated most of it, so why would I want to try it again?  And alienation?  Just because I prefer a group of 8-10 close friends to countless acquaintances doesn’t mean I’m alienated.  And how could I forget how to socialize when I do it with her 40 hours a week, and am constantly facebooking, emailing, texting, or skyping with my friends from back home, as well as going out with friends from up here?  This point is an epic fail for her argument.

Amazingly, I’ve heard this whole “you’ll regret it if you don’t live life the way I think you should” argument before.  Many times, in fact.  I don’t expect people to understand my mentality–since it is different from many people my age–but I do expect them to respect the fact that I have a different mentality and am perfectly happy with my life.  So I don’t live life the way they did/still do.  So fucking what?  I’m not them and I don’t want to be.

What really irks me about being judged is when the person doing the judging should really be focusing on their own lives.  I love J, but she should not be lecturing me.  She just screwed up a great relationship with a great guy because of her fear of commitment, and constantly uses her child as an excuse not to better her life or move outside of her comfort zone.  Maybe I’m being a little harsh on her, but if she’s going to judge me, she should be prepared to be judged herself.  The only difference between the two of us is that I will never tell her to her face that I think she’s wasting her potential and will look back in a few years with regret, because I’m not her, so I could I possibly know that for sure?

Oh, the people you meet on the train….

One can never be sure what exactly to expect when they step on the train in the morning. Most of the time, it’s an average, non-eventful ride. But sometimes you happen to be surrounded by some very….interesting people.

This morning, for example, I got on the W train as I always do, and took the nearest empty seat, which happened to be next to a guy on a cell phone. Oh, the things you can learn from hearing one side of a conversation… This guy was a little distraught, and I soon learned why. Apparently, he had been busted by the police for selling drugs and was trying to figure out how to get charged only with possession, and not with selling, even though an undercover cop saw him take money from a girl, wall away, and come back with a small packet of drugs. His argument was that since the money wasn’t on him when he was busted, it didn’t matter what they saw…..oh, and his biggest fear was that his mother would find out…

I thought it would end there, but it got better. He saw a person walk inbetween the subway cars and started going on about how he had been arrested for doing that because he was a felon, and apparently the police department sent him the letter from the MTA urging all officers to arrest any felons breaking MTA rules. He was so indignant that the MTA didn’t want felons on the trains. Gee, I wonder why that is….

Then he changed the topic to his protoge’s family. He started bad mouthing one sister who was 5′4″ and nearly 300 pounds who kept popping out kids, then, out of nowhere, he practically shouts “omg dude! One of the sisters is a dude now! No fucking joke!”. So he spends the next 5-6 minutes going on and on about how she should have stayed a lesbian even though she was an “ugly cunt” and how you just “can’t put a dick on a chick,” and how he almost spit in her face and laughed when he saw her. Then he proceeded to make fun of the mentally ill mother of the three kids (his protoge, the overweight girl, and the tranny). Yeah, it was a real class act I was sitting next to. I can’t even imagine what the conversation would have turned to if we hadn’t entered the tunnel at that time.

Whatever it takes

Random fact about me:  I’m studying business management. There are many people in my college with supposedly the same interests, but many of them will never make it past the first rung of the managerial ladder because they are not like me. They are incapable of making decisions, and question the ones they do make. They show up late if they show up at all, and do the bare minimum required to pass. Yet they all have these grandiose visions of sitting behind a CEO’s desk. Hate to break to them, but they never will because, unlike me, they’re not willing to put in the work and do whatever it takes

I’ve known I’ve wanted to be a manager for as long as I can remember. That position was solidified when I got my first management job and loved it. My goal is to make it to the top, and I don’t particularly care who I have to step on to get there. It’s a dog eat dog world out there, and if you can’t keep up, it’s not my problem. I’m not going to go out of my way to sabotage my coworkers–since that could backfire–but I also certainly won’t go out of my way to help them if I see no benefit in it for me. Cold? Certainly. Bitchy? Definitely. The key to success? Absolutely.

A coworker of mine suggested that EK and I team up since she seems to share the same brutal mentality. The world better hope that we never do, however, because we would rule you all

One hell of a ride

It may sound silly to say baseball is my life, but it is.  Alright, maybe it’s not my whole life, but each year from April-October it is never far from my mind.  I’ve dreamed of Red October 2009 since October of 2008.  As the 2009 season went on, that dream seemed more and more plausible.  In July and August, we seemed unbeatable.  We clinched the Central Division early and looked forward to what seemed to be an sure path to the World Series.  Alas, ’twas not to be.

I don’t know what happened–I don’t think anyone does–but after clinching the Central Division, we forgot how to play the game.  Maybe we got comfortable; full of ourselves.  Maybe we’d played too hard and were exhausted.  Whatever happened, it wasn’t pretty.  We trudged our way to the post-season, playing worse in the last two weeks of the regular season than we had all year.  And the post-season games didn’t get any better.

We were making errors we would have never made before, our Ace was off his game, and, most tellingly, Albert Pujols’ bat was silent.

Most STL fans were optimistic after we lost the first game, less so after we lost the second (which should have been ours), but we still held out hope.  At least, until the middle of the third, with the Dodgers leading 3-0.  Even though it was early in the game, you could tell that our players knew the outcome.  Their body language–and that of the coach La Russa–was riddled with resignation.  The sold-out crowd at the ballpark felt it too and when Pujols came up to bat a third time, the stadium was all but silent…..

As any baseball fan can tell you, all you can do is look to next year.  We’ll get them next year.  Red October 2010.  We’ll have everything we need.  We had everything we needed this time around, but for some reason it didn’t click in the post-season.  Hopefully this sweep….this humiliation…will push our players to figure out why and fix it.  I’m still a passionate Cardinals fan and I’ll never cheer for or even think happy thoughts towards any other team, but it’s going to take a little while to get over this blow.  In STL we take our baseball seriously–we talk about and treat the team as if they were family.  And when family lets you down, it hurts all the more.  But the one thing to remember from all of this is that even though we lost in the end, it was a hell of a ride to get here.  Thanks for that, Cardinals.

The newest Nobel laureate

As I’m sure everyone is aware, President Obama won the Nobel Peace prize earlier today.  There are some who say it is too soon and that he hasn’t done anything, but I would disagree.  There are very few promises he made that he has not started to act on.  His predecessor brought this country so low in eight years, and President Obama has brought us back up so much higher in just 10 months.  He has defined an end to the Iraq war, helped create a massive health care overhaul that will likely be pushed through very soon, and passed an economic stimulus that kept the Great Recession from becoming a Great Depression, and has visited more countries in the past ten months than George Bush did in eight years.  He’s raised us from the 7th most respected country in the world back to the 1st.  And all in less than a year.  Besides, this prize is as much for what he will do as for what he’s done.  His vision of a nuke-free world where we all “get along,” for lack of a better phrase is one that we can all agree should be encouraged.

Cleopatra’s Daughter

Reading has always been one of my favorite pastimes, and while I somewhat gave it up my first two years of college–who wants to read for fun when they’ve spent hours reading textbooks?–, I have restarted with a vengeance this summer/semester.  I’m very picky when it comes to what I read, and I rarely venture out of the historical fiction genre.  What can I say, I know what I like.

In the past three months, I have discovered two relatively new authors of this genre who are responsible for my newfound desire to read, read, read: Jo Graham and Michelle Moran.  Their characterization and wording is breathtaking–you really do get drawn into the novel.  It would be impossible for me to pick a favorite novel of the five written between these two, but the latest I read was ‘Cleopatra’s Daughter’ by Michelle Moran.  I felt as though I truly connected with the narrator; I felt what she felt, I saw what she saw.  I was saddened by the loss of her kingdom, horrified by the humiliation she underwent during her first weeks with the Romans, disgusted by some Roman practices, and so upset over a tragic twist of fate at the end of the novel that my eyes filled with tears.  I was in a haze of melancholy for the rest of the night, but I was also internally thrilled that I had finally found a book and an author who could so captivate my emotions.  There’s really no rush like a good book, and it had been far too long since I felt that euphoria.

She may be new to the scene, but Michelle Moran sure knows how to write.  My only regret is that her books are so engrossing, I finish them in just two or three days, and the thrill ends much too soon.