Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Flavored Water and Other Weak Stuff
Just before the holiday weekend, a friend set me a link from the Daou Report featuring a list of ten pro-war fallacies and the facts about each one. I should have passed it on in time for Thanksgiving, in case you ended up in a discussion with your pro-war relatives--but here it is now, and Christmas is coming.
One paragraph struck me particularly, since it responds directly the assertion that I've been making for a good long while, and I'm not alone--Democrats as prominent as Howard Dean have said the same thing, and lots of war supporters use the argument, too: Since we're in Iraq now, never mind why we're there, we have an obligation to fix what we broke.
Just before the holiday weekend, a friend set me a link from the Daou Report featuring a list of ten pro-war fallacies and the facts about each one. I should have passed it on in time for Thanksgiving, in case you ended up in a discussion with your pro-war relatives--but here it is now, and Christmas is coming.
One paragraph struck me particularly, since it responds directly the assertion that I've been making for a good long while, and I'm not alone--Democrats as prominent as Howard Dean have said the same thing, and lots of war supporters use the argument, too: Since we're in Iraq now, never mind why we're there, we have an obligation to fix what we broke.
For those who counter with the Pottery Barn rule (we broke it we should fix it), the question is: What's the statute of limitations on that rule? What if we can't fix what's broken in Iraq? Is there a point at which we acknowledge we can't fix it and stop trying? Is our attempt to 'fix' Iraq breaking it even further? Also, are there other things we've broken that we're obliged to fix before we try to fix Iraq? Is there a reason our limited resources should go to fixing Iraq and not saving poor, sick, and hungry children in America?I got an entirely different e-mail from another recipient recently. He regularly forwards stuff to every person on his e-mail list without much regard for the politics of the recipients, so I get Clinton-bashing e-mails, recycled Rush Limbaugh riffs, and various syrupy/cute religious messages. (At one point, I had a filter set up to automatically trash the guy's e-mails.) Every now and then something worthwhile slips through, however, like this list of New Rules. A couple of them are particularly funny:
New Rule: There’s no such thing as flavored water. There’s a whole aisle of this crap at the supermarket, water, but without that watery taste. Sorry, but flavored water is called a soft drink. You want flavored water? Pour some scotch over ice and let it melt. That’s your flavored water.Although I'm a flavored-water drinker myself, perhaps I will start flavoring it with Jack Daniels a little more often.
New Rule: Just because your tattoo has Chinese characters in it doesn’t make you spiritual. It’s right above the crack of your ass. And it translates to “beef with broccoli.” The last time you did anything spiritual, you were praying to God you weren’t pregnant. You’re not spiritual. You’re just high.Sometime somebody needs to explain to me the popularity of those lower-back tattoos. Or even better, of tattoos in general. The best explanation I've yet read for their renewed popularity the last 10 years or so had something to do with people's desire to reclaim their physicality in an era of virtual reality. Maybe. Or maybe they're just high.
