Random thoughts

[Sandia]

New Yorker
April 7

I crossed the boulevard through six lanes of slow-moving traffic. Another bomb had hit the roadside there, leaving a shallow pit. There was a lot of rubble--broken plaster and mortar and more aluminum siding. Two men in their late teens were standing nearby. One of them began dry-heaving. His friend took him by the arm and led him away. A few feet from them a couple of dozen men who had gathered in a circle were looking at somthing. I pushed my way through the crowd and saw a hand, severed below the knuckes, sitting grotesquely on the green metal window shutter that had fallen on some steps. The hand was think and gray, and its red-and-white guts, at the messily severed stump, spilled out like electrical circuitry from a cut cable. One young man crouched very close to it, his face just a couple of feet away. He stayed there, staring for a long time. Someone told me that a man's brain was sitting on the floor just inside the nearest workdshop door, but I didn't go to look at it.

I walked away and fell into conversation with a pleasant-faced young man who stood by himself on a pile of rubble. He spoke a little English, and he explained that he was a student at the College of Arts at Baghdad University. He was in the English Department, he said, proudly. He asked be where I was from. When I told him the United States, he said, still smiling politely, "Welcome." We shook hands. He explained that he had not been there when the bombs struck; he had come over from his home, several blocks away. Quite a few people, maybe as many as thirty, he estimated, had died, several of them in their cars. There were a dozen or so destroyed vehicles, on both sides of the street. The dead included an entire family of five, he said, pointing to the scorched-looking apartment directly above us. The bodies had already been taken to the morgue, and the many wounded had been taken to hospitals.

Another man, a little older, approached me. He, to, spoke some English. He told me his name was Muyad, and that he was a "librarian." I think he meant that he had a store that sold stationery supplies, because he explained that he sold school copybooks and also ran a photocopy machine. He pointed diagonally across the street, to the next block, where he said he lived. I asked him if he knew any of the victims. He nodded yes, and gestured toward one of the blackened cars. A mechanic had been underneath it when it was hit: "His name was Abu Sayaff. He was my friend." I nodded in sympathy. "Bush and Blair... They said this would be a clean war," Muyad said. He smiled tentatively. "This is not clean. This is dirty--a dirty war." He was still smiling, and he asked where I was from. "America," I said. He turned away for an instant, then looked back at me. I told him I was sorry about what had happened. "Don't be sorry," he replied. "It's not the American people. Most of them are against this war. We know this." And then he added, apparently by way of explanation, "I saw the director Michael Moore on TV yesterday." He had been watching the Oscar ceremony.

Jon Lee Anderson
A Letter from Bahgdad

 

[Sandia]

Wouldn't it be wonderful, to be where Jon Lee Anderson is now, to be in the thick of things, and have the ability to write back, and influence how people think?

 

[Frimost]

cheery-picker, you chose only the quotes in the article that support your point of view, I read it too. Why didn't you quote the Kurds in that same issue, or some of the other Iraqis who were more ambivalent to thier fate and confided an anti-Saddam sentiment in secret?

 

[Sandia]

It's a thing that isn't talked about - that sense of thwarted ability, of unspent talent.

Of course, in America, the answer is always the same: "Well, get up off your butt and do it then!!"

 

[Sandia]

cheery-picker, you chose only the quotes in the article that support your point of view, I read it too. Why didn't you quote the Kurds in that same issue, or some of the other Iraqis who were more ambivalent to thier fate and confided an anti-Saddam sentiment in secret?

Frimost, the answer to your question is so simple, so obvious, I don't think I need to take the time to explain.

 

[Sandia]

I think I'm really starting to like the Iraqi Minister of Information. I mean, he smiles right through all his lies. Can you imagine him at trial? He'd charm the pants right off the jury.

I wonder if he's any relative of Bill?

 

[Sandia]

It's like: "Hey, you know I'm lying, I know I'm lying. But can't we just be friends?"

 

[Nora]

Sandia, what have I told you about that thinking stuff?

 

[Sandia]

I'm impressionable. Looking back now, I realize it's one of my faults. I hadn't realized it before, but perhaps I'd just mislabeled it as honest or sincere.

 

[Sandia]

Sandia, what have I told you about that thinking stuff?

Hi Nora!

I'm in a contemplative mood tonight.

And no, I haven't been drinking.

Though it's not a bad idea.

J makes fun of me for being a lightweight, but I think it's merely economical.

 

[Nora]

I dunno that I'd say you're a lightweight, and I've never found drinking with you to be economical! *grins*

Contemplative, eh? You need a good dose of fluff, mi amigo. Go look at some porn or something.

 

[Sandia]

My favorite shows:
Six Feet Under
The Sopranos
Da Ali G Show
Survivor
Married by America
Also, Triggerhappy, on Comedy Central, looks really good.

 

[Xstatic]

You need a good dose of fluff, mi amigo. Go look at some porn or something.

Hmm - well, I'd say those two kitties could provide a reasonable dosage

(Of fluff, that is...)

How in the world did they get the wrestling gear on the cats?

 

[Nora]

Hmm - well, I'd say those two kitties could provide a reasonable dosage

(Of fluff, that is...)

How in the world did they get the wrestling gear on the cats?

Yuh, I have the fluffiest kitties around! *Grins*

I'm not sure how they did it, but i'm thinking there were a lot of drugs involved.