terrshee's Diaryland Diary

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Trapped in Life

I'm definitely trapped in life.

The past two mornings I deliberately altered the time I left home so I didn't have to look at the same mind numbing routine set of faces on the subway.

Ten minutes is apparently not enough to alter the universe.

It was the same people, except for the annoying guy who carries the 7-11 coffee cup past the same Metro employee who never gives him a ticket.

Maybe twenty minutes would make a difference? I have this fear that in fact I'm in some sort of time bubble and my life will never alter from the boring round of commute-work-commute hell.

I watched a documentary yesterday called Control Room. It is about Al Jazzeera television during the first days of the Iraq war.

Fascinating stuff.

I can't dismiss the propaganda aspects of it, but then the whole film is rather a meditation on propganda. What is the truth? How do we select what information we find valid, powerful, pertinent? Who is to say what serves the public good? Is there really a difference between what people believe and what is real?

The thing that really keeps coming back to me is the footage of American soldiers commanding captives to "face front," "get down," etc., and seeming to expect the Iraqis to understand the words shouted in English. Couldn't the military have taught the soldiers even a few simple Arabic phrases?

If foreign soldiers landed in the U.S. and started trying to herd a bunch of English speakers, could we be expected to obey commands we did not understand?

It so frickin' stupid and frustrating. A pointless, misguided war where the liberators have no real understanding of the country they are trying to free, and can't seem to make the most basic accommodations to the environment.

It started badly, and I can't imagine it will do anything but end badly.

I found another reason to be glad I was bitten by the home rearranging bug.

I had an old wicker chest stuffed with miscellaneous SCA crap and random unused clothing that was beginning to disintegrate, and have been thinking of replacing it for a while.

I finally found a new one I liked, and brought it home yesterday.

In the process of transferring crap from one to the other, I discovered some sort of mold had been growing in the bottom of the old one for a while. Ew.

Much washing of clothing and throwing out of now ruined treasures later, the new chest is in place and the old one in the dumpster.

I just can't figure out how this happened in a perfectly dry bedroom.

6:54 a.m. - 2006-07-10
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