The Writings of Jason Arment

2011-11-23T12:51:00.001-08:00

Paul Nycz

Vote "yes" to keep judges

2010-11-01T20:38:00.000-07:00

As you all know, tomorrow is election day. Its passing will bring a feeling of relief to many Iowans, and who can blame them? The political dynamic in Iowa is turbulent. Things are changing in this state; freedoms denied are being returned to the citizen. I'm not sure why this would upset anyone living in the "land of the free," but some feathers have been ruffled.

There has been an effort to convince people to "Vote No" when they flip their ballot over and consider whether the Iowa Supreme Court judges should be kept in their positions.
Allow me to clue those who have had their heads buried in a book and their shoulders to the grindstone, without time to look up to take in the political landscape around them.

Christian fundamentalists aren't happy that LGBT people can legally get married in Iowa. Despite the many verses in the Bible about love and acceptance, it is somehow unacceptable that any non-traditional couples be married.

Many of the people who disagree with LGBT marriage are Republicans who avidly speak about how the government needs to be held financially accountable, and has grown too large. They still advocate the removal of the judges despite that a vote to dismiss them is backlash from the removal of government power that dictated same-sex couples could not marry.

I dare to beg the question: How can someone be for a smaller government, freedom or the Constitution and still vote not to retain judges who had the courage to stand up for a minority of people who had been stripped of civil rights?

It's a sobering thought, that there are wolves that circle in the darkness around liberty's torch. There are those that would strip their brothers and sisters of their ability to live the way they want — if we let them.

There are people that walk around campus that couldn't care less if fellow citizens had civil rights stripped away if they think it's what their God would want. It would be foolish of me to say, "That's what it's become, religion morphed from something that is intensely private to something that is to be forced on others in the public forum of society through laws."

The "That's what it's become," is the foolish part. How many centuries have to go by before people can start saying, "That's the way it has always been"?

Can you think of a time when religion was something that wasn't a hot-button issue, not something to be talked about at dinner — unless it is to agree with the majority at the table?

Here religion is again, being used as a winch to convince people that they should vote out judges that had the courage to restore liberty where it had previously been denied.

If you believe that individuals in the LGBT community have the same rights as any other citizen in this country, if you believe in liberty, if you believe that people have the right to be left alone when they aren't infringing on anyone else, then you need to vote "yes" to retain the judges.

Tell your friends and family to vote "yes" to retain the judges as well. We need an overwhelming decision to keep the judges in order to send a message that Iowans won't tolerate intolerance.

Barbie

2010-10-26T16:54:00.000-07:00

Her mental capacity wasn’t the greatest, Barbie had been told. She had also learned this through many encounters in which her mind had failed her. One of her patients had been telling her how he was five with his birthday coming up, when he asked her, “How old are you?” she just sort of stopped. Her arm ground to a squeaking halt as it returned the patients file back to its place at the foot of his bed. Her unblinking eyes continued to stare off into space as they always had.

During her afternoon rounds, she decided to ask the Doctor when her birthday was. He was in his office, shuffling papers and smoking some kind of plastic cigarette. When she walked in, her jerky steps making a sharp clap clop on the hardwood floor, nothing really seemed to

“Karen?”

“ . . . what was that?” the Doctor looked up at Barbie quizzically from his paper signing. Barbie wasn’t sure what had happened. She tried to scratch to her head in a quizzical gesture but couldn’t, because her arms wouldn’t move that w—

“Earth to Karen. Are you with me, Karen?”

Karen came to with Rick snapping his fingers in her face. The lights in the cafeteria were dimmed, and the lights in the nearby by cubicles had been shut off for the night. Data entry wasn’t exactly glamorous, and the night shift didn’t provide the comforts of human distractions the day shifts had with a staff present.

At night it was just the two of them: Karen and Doug. Karen didn’t mind working with Doug; he was easy enough to get along with. She didn’t really know anything about him, though. When she thought about asking him to tell her more about himself, she could never overcome the feeling that she just didn’t care enough to sit there and listen to him spell it all out for her. Doug never seemed to take an interest in Karen, either. They were coworkers first, and to the utmost.

Karen did know that she found Doug somewhat attractive, but not attractive enough for her to ever consider flirting with him. The sterile office environment they worked in set the no-nonsense attitude of their relationship, coupled with the fact that when they got off of work there were no bars gearing up for the night. At the end of their work day the sun was coming up, its rays cresting the bleak skyline of squat cement buildings and casting cold shadows onto the city’s stonework.

“Why is that whenever I come back from my smoke break you are out somewhere in la la land, staring at a puzzle that you’re only half-finished?”

Doug had a way of making acute observations in a cool, effortless way. Sometimes it was funny, but other times they hung in the air like the disconcerting squeaks of a rusty carnival ride.

“I always start daydreaming at night here. This place just seems so dead without anyone else around,” Karen glanced up from her puzzle, taking a quick inventory of the dimly light cafeteria that she had been brought. “How much of the quarterly reports do you have left to input on your half of the sector?”

“Not too many. Let’s get it wrapped up and duck out of here early.”

As Karen settled back into her work cubicle that she commandeered from some “day worker” every night, she couldn’t help but think of her daydream. To Karen, Barbie was a number 8. So much of Karen’s mundane life revolved around numbers, and 8 was the same number as Barbie’s figure. It was also the infinity sign, turned on its side.

The sun was barely a glow in the horizon as Karen pulled onto the freeway to drive home. The road was a barren track of cement, without a single motorist out on it in the early hours of the day. Karen turned on country music and hummed along as she tried to pass the time. She couldn’t help but think about Barbie. She wondered if her insides were made of plastic, and if they were the same jarring red color of her nails.

“No mom, the Doctor’s visit went fine. He said there was nothing unusual about the ultrasound.” Karen’s mother had the habit of calling while Karen was on the way to work; most of the time it was just idle chit-chat, but today was a more serious kind of conversation.

“Well, ok honey; I just want you to follow up with him in a month or so. It’s important to stay on top of these things.” Jamie was a gracefully aging woman of fifty-five. Karen thought of the shapes that those two fives made in her mind as she talked with her on the phone. Such sharp, jagged edges 55 had. Nothing like the number 8.

“Ok honey?” Her mother’s voice carried concern with it as it came through the speaker in Karen’s phone.

“Oh course, I’ve already scheduled the appointment already.” Karen wondered when she had stopped lying for her mother’s sake and started lying to herself; if she could pin point the exact moment the change had started to take place. Karen’s brief moment of introspection passed, leaving her with a heavy feeling in her stomach. She parked and started to head into the office, seeing the door close behind Doug as he walked into the building.

There wasn’t much to say to each other at the beginning of the shift. They had both been working the night shift so long that neither of them tried to have any normal semblance of a life that a normal “day-worker” would have. Going to bars and not drinking and then going to work was about as crazy as Doug got. Karen would sometimes go to a movie before work, but that had become more of an exception than the norm in her life. Karen’s life had leveled out to a steady repetition that embodied the definition of mundane. The only thing that had brought any variety to her life was the growth on her ovaries, and those might end up killing her.

“How did the doctor’s visit go?” Doug asked with a voice louder than normal so that Karen could hear him on the other side of the room.

“It went fairly well. I mean, I didn’t find out any news--good or bad--so I guess it went ok.”

“Well, let me know if you find anything out. I mean, when you find anything out. I’m sure everything will turn out ok in the end.”

Doug’s last words hung in the air. As soon as you tell people that you have a weird growth on your reproductive organs, everyone starts mentioning “the end.” Karen’s thoughts had taken on a weird kind of third-person vibe as they ran through her head, as if she wasn’t thinking them and they were just reflections that she would have made if she were really present in the conversation. Karen thought that maybe it was her minds way of coping with questions about her health that came from friends and relatives.

I never should have told anyone. It’ll be months before I know what it really is; whether I need to have surgery or not.

Another work day ended like the ones before it. Another night slipping into bed, wishing she didn’t work a job that isolated her from everyone who worked a normal job. More brief moments before her dreams became convoluted with thoughts about children.

Karen woke up suddenly, gasping for air. A sharp pain in her abdomen had pulled her out of her dream. She rolled onto her side and curled into a fetal position for what seemed like hours. Finally, the pain passed, and she relaxed, unclenched her arms from holding her legs to her chest. The pain was becoming more and more frequent. She hadn’t told her mother about them; she didn’t want her to worry. The doctor had said that just because it hurt didn’t mean it was cancer. They could just be cysts on her ovaries.

As the sun fought to get through her tightly drawn curtains, dim shadows played against the walls. They slowly traced the contours of the furniture, often jumping from one object to the next, bounding across the space instantly. I wish Eddie were here, Karen thought to herself as she rolled over and buried her face into her pillow and cried. Thinking about her ex-fiancée never made things easier. Sometimes she wished she could just cut him out of her mind--excise him like the growths on her womb were going to be excised.

“I have some unfortunate news, Karen. The growths on your ovaries are malignant, and they seem to be spreading down your fallopian tubes into your uterus. Our only option is to perform a hysterectomy as soon as possible. I’ve got you scheduled for Saturday afternoon. My receptionist will send you an email. I’m very sorry.”

Karen sat there, fully clothed, having just changed out of her white gown. The look on her face was the same one that someone who gets punched in the stomach makes. Did--did I just hear that right? She didn’t know what to say. The tiny egg-shell white room seemed to close in. The look on her doctor’s face wasn’t registering, not much of the doctor was registering at all.

“Are you ok, Karen? Karen I’m sorry to have been blunt, but I know you hate it when I’m otherwise. When I try to be ‘nice,’ as you call it.”

The doctor paused and looked intently at Karen. “I’ll let you collect your thoughts. Take all the time you need. I have to see other patients, but if you need to talk to someone feel free to press the call button for a nurse.”

As the door closed behind her doctor Karen caught a brief glimpse of a little girl walking through the hallway with a Barbie backpack on. The little girl looked back and locked eyes with her for just a second before the door clicked shut. Karen slowly left the small room, feeling numb.

She got to work a little early, since she went straight there from her doctor’s appointment. Doug nodded to her as he made his way to his work space. The shift went by as it always did--uneventfully. As the time drew near for them to leave, Karen did something she had never done before.

“What are you doing after you get off?” The question sounded stiff to her as it hung in the air.

“Ummm . . . nothing, I guess. Why? What’s up?” Doug asked without looking up from his computer.

“Well, I just wanted too . . . I just wanted to see if maybe -- would you want to come over to my place for drinks, or something?” Karen stumbled through her offer of companionship, hoping that it didn’t sound as bad to him as it did in her own ears.

Doug kept packing up his things but he slowed down to the point where he was barely doing anything; frozen while putting one folder after another into his bag.

“I’m really sorry, Karen; I just don’t think that’s such a good idea. We work together, and I’ve never heard of this sort of thing ending well.” Doug couldn’t raise his eyes to meet hers. He muttered something unintelligible as he quickly shuffled toward the exit.

Karen couldn’t sleep. The sun’s cresting rays tested her curtains once again. Her head hurt, and her pillow was stained with tears and snot from crying. She was alone, completely and utterly. Even Barbie had Ken, she thought. Her mind filled with images of Barbies, dolls, and toys. She drifted off to sleep, and dreamed of doctors who turned their patient’s insides to plastic.

Tasteless choices turn politics into three-ring circus

2010-10-26T16:53:00.000-07:00

You can put clown shoes on just about anything that you aren’t comfortable with. Not in the physical sense, but in the ideological sense. Laughter serves an often underestimated utility in our society, because we laugh at everything.

Why do we find TV personalities like Glenn Beck and Stephen Colbert humorous? We take what they have to say deadly seriously. If we didn’t Colbert wouldn’t have spoken in front of congress; so many people wouldn’t think that Glenn Beck was actual right instead of being a bad characterture.

This paradox of taking them seriously while thinking they are hilarious is used to counter any criticism leveled at them by supporters. If I say, “What [insert name of person] is outrageous and disregards the responsibility that comes along with being public figure,” the retort of, “Chill out man, they’re just entertainers,” is quickly offered up. Meanwhile people hang on to their every word, and using the ideas that are put forward by these “entertainers” to shape their own ideologies.

Entertainers is what they are, though, as is shown through their actions. Glenn Beck brings the big top circus atmosphere to the Lincoln Memorial. I’m sure I’m not the first person to voice this opinion: I think that was hugely disrespectful.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a man who died for what he believed in. He gave a very moving speech at the Lincoln Memorial not so long ago, having the courage to get up in front of a crowd of Biblical proportions and bare his soul to the world; to cry out against the oppression that his race was experiencing. He had the courage to keep getting up and pushing forward every day, even though the times were showing that doing so might not end up being so good for his health – Malcolm X was gunned down in front of his family and friends while giving starting to give a speech.

But these are all things I shouldn’t have to tell you, right? You’ve weighed these things in your mind, carefully. You didn’t just “yuk, yuk, yuk” along with everyone else’s laughter. You stopped and really thought about what was going on around you, about how the attitudes and ideologies of your peers are affecting society’s paradigms, and therefore affecting you.

William Blake wrote that, “Excess of sorrow laughs, excess of joy weeps,” poignantly pointing out the duality of emotions. We laugh not just when we’re happy, we also laugh when we’re miserable. This nation has much reason to laugh then, when “entertainers” are so arrogant and everyone seems to be ok with it.

The people in Colbert’s camp have their hackles raised right now. Yes, I understand that his rally is a response. I’m not sure that if the fact that it is a response, in and of itself, is a justification.

Is the three ring circus that our political thought process has become really so sad that it’s funn?

Published at iowastatedaily.com 10/25/10

Multiculturalism is not a failed experiment

2010-10-18T21:19:00.000-07:00

Is multiculturalism a failed experiment? It's a question I've been pondering for some time now; sometimes I pick it up off of the floor of my head to examine it for a while before I drop it to rattle around the corners of my head. I recently came to an impasse.

I realized that the "experiment of multiculturalism" has yet to begin.

It is not enough to just let other races reside in the same sphere of existence that is America, and that's exactly what is going on right now. We have grudgingly allowed those other than white Anglo-Saxon people to come to our nation, and they have brought culture with them. America's silent majority have either accepted these cultures with varying degrees of awkward approval or just turned their nose up to them with disdain.

This is not the experiment, though. The experiment of multiculturalism isn't, "They can come here and adapt to us, to our way of life, and figure it out somehow." The experiment will involve the paradigm that is currently established of white culture dominance changing dramatically.

Yesterday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said some things that I found to be a little disheartening. As was reported by the BBC, the German cultural update went something like:

Merkel told a gathering of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union party on Saturday that at "the beginning of the '60s, our country called the foreign workers to come to Germany and now they live in our country."

She added: "We kidded ourselves a while, we said: 'They won't stay, sometime they will be gone', but this isn't reality.

"And of course, the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side-by-side and to enjoy each other ... has failed, utterly failed."

After reading this I thought for sure that this had to be some kind of peripheral, iconic person in German; maybe some kind of senator saying something a little off-color. Turns out the Chancellor of Germany is the head of Germany's federal government.

It's kind of surreal that anyone of high position in the German government would say something like that, but it's not like we get to pretend like our thought process as Americans never resembles this.

Merkel is sure to represent the business aspect of things, when she articulated that, "We should not be a country either which gives the impression to the outside world that those who don't speak German immediately or who were not raised speaking German are not welcome here." Again, this was reported by the BBC.

I really wish I could have talked to the guy who reported on it before he wrote the article. I mean, does Germany not realize that it's kind of ironic that they are saying this? I wonder how that invisible elephant in the room got addressed behind closed doors.

The immediate easy solution is, "Well, they just have to learn the language."

In fact, no, they don't have to learn the language. Not only this, immigrants by and large don't need permission to get into a country. America is a great example of this. If our brothers and sisters south of the border want to come across, guess what, they can walk across.

Should there be a national language requirement? If we are going to start mandating a culture to our citizens just to make things "easier," why don't we go ahead and mandate a national religion and political affiliation as well?

Differences can be inconvenient, but they are a fact of life. They aren't going away. We need to learn to live with each other.

Let the multicultural experiment begin.

Published 10/18/2010 at Iowastatedaily.com

Deserting Brian

2010-10-05T19:53:00.000-07:00

So I didn't read the instructions for a writing assignment. I read the part where the sentences had to be three words long, and then stopped.

This is what I wrote before I understood that the story had to traverse the temporal realm by five years.

**********************

Plane touches down. Another desert landscape. A hopeful beginning. Jam packed airport. Kids running around. Parents yelling frantically. “Get back here!” “Get over here!” “Put that down!” God, kids suck. Airport equals labyrinth. Weave through, finally. There’s Brian waiting! We drive home. Me new home. A new start.

First day working. Get directions, routes. Take the truck. The road winds. Terrain gets rough. The truck struggles. Stop at rest-stop. Get out, stretch. Payphone, vending machine. It’s just bathrooms. Old concrete outhouses. Men’s room aroma. A rude fragrance. Women’s room unsettling. Creepy crawlies everywhere. Black Widows weaving. Start to clean. This job sucks. Brian was right. Tough it out. Give it weeks. Something bites me. Get very sick. Have to quit. Things look grim.

Year of struggling. Got on food-stamps. Truck having problems. Finally breaks down. Find pay phone. Brian speaks quickly. “I’m coming now. Sit tight Sarah.” I say, “Ok.” I stand waiting. It’s getting dark. Still no Brian. Full moon above. So many stars. A beautiful sunset. Sun dips, disappears. Scarlet sky fades. Coyotes howl mournfully. Where is Brian? Can’t tell time. Dead watch batteries. No more change. None in payphone. Getting thirstier; parched. The desert cools.

New head lights. Bobbing and weaving. They pull over. A young man. Brown curly hair. A lithe build. Pretty good looking.

“Where you headed?” His voice soft.

“Tulsa, over yonder.” I reply confidently.

I climb in. He drives quickly. Three coyotes cross. Miss, miss, certhump. The truck bounces. He winces soundlessly. Glances over sheepishly. Starts small talk. I hesitate, unsure. He senses standoffishness. Fills the silence. He is Jack. Runs a business. Lives past Tulsa. Likes to read. Likes to bike. He seems nice.

Silence once again. My turn now. I start talking. Start explaining things.

“Brians been waiting.” I manage slowly.

“Wating, not coming? Who was coming?” He looks cute. So confused, perplexed.

“Both, I guess. I left him. He moved here. I didn’t come. Stayed in Ohio. Broke it off. He’s been waiting.” I tried clarifying.

“Taking him back?” Jack asks bluntly. His eyebrows arch.

I try answering. “I sure am.” Nothing comes out. What’s wrong now? Why now, here.

“Should I’ve stayed?” Words spoken accidently. My escaped thoughts. I feel foolish. Revealed too much.

“That’s your decision. You need time. Deserts got time.” Jack explained slowly.

He went on. He offered help. I could work. Help his business. Try ranching out. It seemed farfetched. Jack wasn’t joking.

Sarah stands up. She tucks-in children. Smiling to herself.

“That’s about it. I worked ranching. Then we married. Now, lie still. Go to sleep.”

“Good night mom.” Comes in unison.

********
Then I found out that I did the assignment wrong, said "Damn it," and wrote the following piece, cannibalizing the above piece in the process.
********

Some head lights. Bobbing and weaving. They pull in. A young man. Brown curly hair. A lithe build. Pretty good looking. He’s sorta tipsy. I’m the nightshift. Gas station cashier. He starts refueling. The phone rings. It’s the hospital. Brian is hurt. I’m frantic now. No vehicle, ride. Haven’t replaced truck. Guy walks in. I need help. Ask him, “Please?”

“Where you headed?” His voice soft.

“The Tulsa hospital.” I reply quickly.

Brian recovers slowly. In and out. Sometime asleep; unconscious. Coma’s a nightmare. Hit Coke truck. No medical insurance. Parents support us. Use nest egg. I’m always crying. So depressed, sad. Wish on stars. Pray to God. Nothing works, nothing.

I’m leaving Brian. It’s heart wrenching. Can’t handle it. Not anymore. Sick of wishing. Sick of hoping. I’ve lost hope. For us, him. I need someone. Someone to hold. Jack is someone. He is nice. He helped me. Has been helping. Brian’s parents erupt. They found out. They are furious. The scream, berate. “I’m so sorry!” They don’t care. Cut me off. I don’t care. I’m with Jake. It is enough. I am happy.

Brian is dying. Brain shutting down. Doctors are useless. I feel helpless. I still care. Jake is supportive. I feel terrible. Makes me sick. I wish, pray. Again, nothing happens. I scream heavenward. I ask why. There is no answer. I turn introspective. Am I selfish? A black widow? A traitor, deserter?

****

Hope you enjoyed it.

We’re not ready for legalized prostitution

2010-10-04T09:34:00.000-07:00

On Sept. 28, usatoday.com reported, "Justice Susan Himel of Ontario's Superior Court of Justice ruled that the laws 'individually and together, force prostitutes to choose between their liberty interest and their right to security of the person as protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.'"

I'll admit I was a little taken aback by this. It's not that I didn't know that prostitution wasn't illegal in Canada; it's just that I had never really thought of what it would be like to live in a place where prostitution is decriminalized on a larger scale.

Every once in a while something happens to make me think really hard about how far personal liberties should go. Being a Libertarian, my boundaries for what a person can do of their own accord extend much further than most people's. What made me ponder the realm of personal liberty in our society is whether our level of individual accountability is up to par.

How would legalizing prostitution in this country on a large scale change things? What would happen to our society at large?

No, I'm not about to go off on a tangent about how prostitution would tear society apart at its seams, or how it would somehow turn people into animals. I'm not really into sensationalizing things. We'd be fooling ourselves if we didn't think prostitution goes on every day around us, along with a myriad of other crimes we don't like to think about.

I just wonder about the more subtle repercussions.

If we legalized prostitution, demand for prostitutes would rise and all of the problems that go along with prostitution would be magnified.

Who sets the standards for what good working conditions are for prostitutes?

What higher authority would step in and say, "Hey, this young woman is being overworked. She clearly needs to take a break from servicing customers. The amount of men that her employer is having her sleep with now is too many."

The higher demand for prostitutes would attract sex trafficking. You can say that having prostitution highly regulated would stop this all you want; I'm not buying it. Drugs are highly regulated, pollution emissions are regulated and alcohol is regulated, but somehow we still have problems with all of those things.

The horror stories that come with the sex trade are slightly different than someone smoking a joint, smog hanging over a city or teens buying booze underage. The end result of things going wrong during a sexual exchange is not pretty to think about. Nor is it comfortable to entertain thoughts of the kind of abuses shady business practices would entail.

I'm just not naive of what could go wrong.

I don't think it's hypocritical of me either, even though I am a Libertarian. Yes, when things "go wrong" with firearms, the result is not pretty, to say the least. Anyone could point out an instance where a tragedy like a school shooting took place, and say, "See, look at that. People aren't personally accountable enough to handle owning firearms."

The difference is the context. People will always have access to firearms, whether they are illegal or not. Will people always have access to prostitutes if they look hard enough? Yes, of course.

But we are uncomfortably aware of what can happen when things go wrong with firearms. There isn't a placid academic discussion of what happens when someone decides to do something crazy with a weapon.

What happens when prostitution goes wrong isn't as media friendly; it's gritty and less sensational.

The Montreal Gazette wrote something disturbing about the dark side of the sex trade's legalization.

"The pimps, according to the police officer, will emotionally manipulate the young women by, for instance, buying them a dog and then killing the dog as punishment for misbehaviour or poor performance. He said one prostitute was found by police with her breasts nailed sideways to a wall, in a horrifying message to other sex workers to toe the line.

"'This isn't the kind of happy place that these people think it is,' he said with a cynical nod to the marauding tourists."

That's an unsavory image, isn't it?

The step necessary to assure that atrocities like that didn't happen in our society — terrible things happening to prostitutes while the masses walked around oblivious — would be paramount to a total paradigm change concerning most people's accountability.

The attitude of "It's not happening to me, so I don't care," would have to disappear. The idea that it's OK foremployers to take advantage of the economic situations of their employees would have to disappear.

The real question is, "Can we handle it?" Because if we can't handle stepping up as a society to make sure prostitutes aren't mistreated and sex trafficking doesn't step in to make big bucks, then we just can't handle it.

Does this mean I think there are limits to a person's liberties? Absolutely not. It means I don't think our society holds itself accountable for what it does right now. I'm not interested in seeing what happens when we throw thousands of hookers into the mix.

Published on October 3. 2010 on iowastatedaily.com

The Thirteenth Step

2010-09-30T21:28:00.000-07:00

This is something I penned for a class. The lists are the characters.

**************

People I’ve wronged: Frank, my parents, my boyfriend by not setting boundaries, (too many, this Step is harder than I thought it would be. I’ll finish the list later)

Shopping List: bread, eggs, broccoli, carrots, cereal, milk, shampoo, soap, EPT, tampons

To Do: get organized, go shopping, clean up lawn, get motivated, set boundaries in relationship, better myself

What I need to clean up in my lawn (what I can see in my lawn): rake leaves, pick up downed branches, pick up after neighbors dog, paint fence (future project)

Motivation (reasons to live): Live up to my sponsors expectations, make my parents proud of me, start that book I’ve been meaning to write, move away from this place, the job I deserve, falling in love with my boyfriend

Boundaries in the relationship (things I would never say): don’t say “I love you” for at least two months, don’t say that “it is ok for you to leave a tooth brush,” don’t say “it’s ok to not use condoms”, don’t say “it’s ok for you to go through my phone,” don’t say “it’s ok for your kids to call me mom.”

Things to change: better posture, be more positive, stop thinking about martinis, start jogging again, see if that book club is still going on, get more involved with politics? (maybe)

The Thirteenth Step

Something nagged at Rachel’s mind, as she sat at her kitchen table with papers sprawled out in front of her. It wasn’t that rent was due next week, and her landlord had made it clear that if she was late again that she would be seeking another place to call her home. It wasn’t that she needed to get outside and clean up some downed tree limbs, rake, or clean up the shit that her neighbor’s dog kept gracing her lawn with. It was the broken ideology behind what she was doing. It was “The Steps” themselves.

Last February she had gotten involved with her local AA chapter that met in the basement of Frank’s house. Frank, the old Vietnam veteran who ran the chapter, had taken responsibility for her sobriety. No one else in the program wanted to sponsor her because, as Frank had said, “They don’t think that you really believe that you have a problem. People who don’t think they have a problem don’t stop drinking.” Frank’s weathered face, with its deep creases and wrinkles bearing testament to a life hard lived, hadn’t betrayed if he thought the same. Rachel hadn’t asked.

Now she sat at her kitchen table, with its linoleum top peeling at the edges, scribbling list after list. The clock on the wall—one of those cat clocks with its tail that swings back and forth in tandem with its eyes to mark off the seconds—was staring down at her with slitted eyes of accusation. God damn thing, always looking at me. Her phone vibrated. It was Frank.

“Hello Frank. Yes, I know I haven’t been in attendance the last couple of weeks. It’s this Eighth Step. It’s hard to do a personal inventory of your life. I don’t know, because it’s draining? I’m almost done. No, I haven’t been drinking. I know that’s not what you asked, I’m sorry. I’m doing fine. You have a great rest of your Sunday, too. Thanks for understanding.”

Rachel got off the phone with Frank and stared at the dingy top of the table. As her eyes traced the little smeared eclipses that the condensation of past drinks had left as water marks, her mind started to drift. It started out as her mind being blank, her contemplations being nowhere in particular. Then worry formed in her mind, as thoughts of money problems and her budding relationship with her boyfriend overtook her. Her hands wrung together, but slowed as something comforting came to mind. She thought of the bottle of gin in her fridge’s freezer. She thought of a tall glass of gin and tonic, but mostly gin.

This is when she would drink. While the cat watched, casting knowing glances side to side; while things looked bleak, with rent closing in, and the threat of losing her shanty in the slums. You have to admit to having a problem for The First Step, the Eighth Step makes you do a personal inventory of your life and people you have harmed. The cat’s eyes flashed side to side on the wall. Her thoughts blurred. It was always like this before she drank.

“You have to go through all the steps in sequence, but you can jump to the thirteenth anytime,” she heard her own words as if they were spoken by someone faraway, as if they came from the other side of a hill. It was an old joke that she had overheard one of Frank’s war buddies whisper to him one night; Frank ushered him out as the AA chapter filed in. Frank had looked at his friend, gave him a sad smile and squeezed his arm. When Rachel asked Frank what the thirteenth step was, the corners of his mouth turned down and his eyes squinted. His face hardened. “Relapse. Relapse is the thirteenth step.”

Rachel’s hands shook in anticipation as she opened the freezer. As she poured herself a tall glass of gin and tonic she told herself that it was just the ice clinking around in the glass, it wasn’t the shakes.

Iowa countryside holds gems

2010-09-28T19:32:00.000-07:00

I like to think that I have a pretty good amount of situational awareness. Not just awareness of what is going on around me, but geographical awareness: knowing where I am, what resources are available to me in the local geography and how to get in and out of places. I take resourcefulness in relation to one's environment seriously.

When it flooded this summer, family and friends told me that it was being made to sound like Ames was cut off from the world. I replied with, "I drove to Des Moines today. Took the back roads southwest to Polk City, and then went across the mile long bridge." I was smarter than the flood, and saw other people doing the same thing I was.

So when I heard that my ecofeminism class was going on a field trip to some farms just northwest of Des Moines, around the Woodward area, I was skeptical. I grew up in the Grimes, Johnston area, so I thought there wouldn't be anything that would catch my attention.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

We visited several places that were great examples of sustainable farming, and how people can treat animals humanly while still using them as a utility for monetary gain. It wasn't just interesting in the, "That's neat," kind of way. It was more attention-grabbing for me in the way that it fit into the Libertarianism philosophy that calls people to come together and support each economically in a tight-nit, local community.

I'm sure the places I was exposed to aren't the only ones out there. I just need to take the time to actually look. I guess I forgot about the seeking part in the venerable maxim, "Seek and you will find." I'd gotten lazy, used to the easy quick local grocery chain. The places I'm talking about aren't going to completely replace chain grocery stores, but they certainly have some foods, lotions and pastries you aren't going to be able to find anywhere else.

I found it downright cool to go to a place that is self-sustaining and community oriented. They've got a friendly down to earth feel that is hard to come by in businesses that aren't hugely emotionally invested in what they are doing.

It's easy to forget that places like these mom and pop operations exist. If we want them to stay around it's important we give them our hard earned dollars, especially in the deep recession our economy is going through.

Don't be satisfied with just staying in Ames. If you're new here, believe me, soon enough you'll need a change of scenery. If you've been around Ames for a couple years or more, and haven't thought to check out the local country side for gems tucked away there, you're doing yourself a disservice.

I know it can be hard to take the initiative, so I'll give you some places to start with. Check out Northern Prairie Chevre, Prairieland Herbs and Picket Fence Creamery. They all have websites that can be easily found, and reside a mere half an hour or so drive from Ames.

Don't be afraid to try new things, to leave our college town and head out for new places. Don't let yourself stagnate; seek out new things and you'll find them. The seeking part my take some work, but the finding pays off in the end.

Published Tuesday, September 28, 2010 on Iowastatedaily.com

The mechanics of hate

2010-09-21T18:31:00.000-07:00

Racism is something that exists in our country in a muted way. It’s not a comfortable subject for people to talk about. It brings up a past that America is still trying to forget or come to terms with, and calls for a very meticulous introspection of one’s own attitudes, ideologies, and what exists swirling around the gutters of your psyche. It’s subject that isn’t talked about enough judging by the sore state of our nations race relations.

When it comes to understanding racism, Frank Meeink is an expert of sorts. Frank Meeink is a reformed neo-Nazi. He did time for violent crimes, got out, and started thinking. I was fortunate enough to talk to him recently, and have him speak to me further about something I heard him talk about at the Memorial Union March 30^th – what composes hate.

“To go out and just hate something for no reason -- basically that's what you do, you're looking at someone because of the color of their skin and hating them -- there's no reasoning there. It's one of the most evil things on earth, to judge something like that.” Frank said, and I have to agree with him. You can’t reason with racism, because there is no reasoning behind it. Hate is behind racism.

For many people hate is something difficult to understand. Have you ever hated anyone? For many the answer to that question is will be no, and for other souls brave enough to admit it the answer will be yes. Few though, have a grasp on what makes hate tick.

It’s more than just getting really mad. Anger fades, but hate tends to stick around, to endure. Hate is something that is personal, intertwined somehow with our being.

Frank put it poignantly, “There's something wrong with the person that's the hater. Something along the line has hurt their ego and made them fear this person or these people, that's why they start to judge.”

“What do you do to your enemy? You don't sit there and say, 'They're tougher than we are, they're better,” no you say, ‘They're dumber than we are, we're superior to them, that's why we're better than they are.’

“It's all by hurting someone’s ego and fear that drives racism; that's the key components to racism.”

That’s what racism is, in words as simple as they are true.

Why is that we as a nation refuse to speak about our race relations? I’m not talking about sound bites from the media, I’m talking about conversations in families, between friends, and most importantly between races. An overall familiarization of what racism is needs to happen nationwide if we want to progress as a nation.

I can’t remember my family ever explaining to me the racial environment of this country. Maybe it’s a good thing to allow children the chance to figure it out for themselves; rather than someone emotional invested in the politics of it trying to explain it to their kids.

If we don’t start to address the issue racism will continue to fester like a rancid wound. The vast urban sprawl we have laid out for ourselves will continue to decay: from the recession, from broken homes, from another generation ignoring difficult issues. Will my generation finally address racism in this country, and start to pound nails its coffin through knowledge?

It’s possible. Frank Meeink is living proof that’s it’s possible. As soon as people throw off dogma and start to think, minds open up. What was once unthinkable becomes the everyday.

Asalaam Alikum, pronounced asa lama lakum, is an Arabic greeting that means, “Peace be with you.” Como estas means “How are you?” in spanish. Next time I see a person from the country of India I’m going to ask what their greeting is, and how to say it. I’m going to reach out. I’m going to progress.

Published September 21, 2010 on iowastatedaily.com

Drinks Before Noon

2010-09-17T07:23:00.000-07:00

Something I wrote for a class

I can’t believe it took so long to get the kids from school today, I’m sick of their teacher making me late for work. Why is the parking lamp so poorly lit? Of course they wouldn’t have it lit up; those pigs up in their offices don’t have to worry about getting raped. God I hate this elevator, it smells like cat piss and homeless people.

Yes sir, I’ll be up to your office immediately. I wonder if this asshole will hit on me again. Should I feed into it? Maybe it’ll get me a raise? That’s probably a slippery slope I don’t want to go down. When he figures out it’s not going anywhere I’ll be looking for secretary jobs on craigslist.

God, I’m having a bad day, and this elevator taking forever to make it to the tenth floor really isn’t helping things. Finally! Tenth floor, I wonder if he’ll be behind his desk or at the window brooding as the rain streaks down to all the little people on the streets below.

I’m sorry you aren’t feeling the best sir. No, I don’t know any herbal remedies. Your wife left you? This prick better not expect me to console him. Things seem bleak, I’m sorry. No, I will accompany you to dinner, I have to get home to my children, I don’t make enough to afford a baby sitter. Thank you sir, I do my best to look good at work.

Holy shit this is getting weird, I need to get out of here. I don’t get paid enough to deal with this guy’s problems. Maybe I should try to console him. Maybe I should throw out a, “It’s ok, you’ll find someone else. Plenty of fish in the sea and all of that. It’s not your fault, she doesn’t know what she’s missing.” Good looking, suave, rich types like him thrive on being the victim when things go wrong.

No thank you, I wouldn’t like a drink, I’m not sure if it would be ok, and even if it was I don’t drink in the morning.

He must be pretty broken up over it. Good. Maybe he’ll treat people a little better from now on. I doubt it, people that egotistical don’t learn.

I really have to go, I need to get back to work. I’m really busy.

It is not my job to keep you company. I resent you saying that. I also resent you wasting my time by calling me up here when you’re drunk. This behavior is very unprofessional.

What’s he fumbling around for in his desk? What is he talking about he’s going to make me care?

What are you doing sir? SIR!?! Put it down!

Shit. That son of a bitch.

Whatever is going on it’s not that bad. Nothing can be that bad! It’ll all work out in the end.

Holy shit, he’s going to blow his head off. I should have consoled him . . . I’ll call the police! That’s what I’ll do!

Sir, everything is going to be ok, I’m going to call someone who can help us.

Wait, what the fuck does he think he’s doing. What about my kids, I can’t leave them so young. What about me? This isn’t fair.

Please, please no. I’ll put the phone down, there, there it’s down. I didn’t call anyone. Just let me walk out of here and I’ll never say a word. It’ll be like it never happened.

Holy shit, he’s going to do it. He’s pointing it right at me. Maybe he’ll miss, maybe someone will call and he’ll answer and I’ll be able to slip away. I’ll talk him out of it.

Maybe we should go out, out to dinner. We could go back to my place an------

Oh my go

Mixed martial arts needs to be re-evaluated

2010-09-14T22:13:00.000-07:00

This is my half of a "column battle" over MMA. If parts of it seem less than fleshed out -- like I don't introduce something thoroughly -- it's because my opponents column had already put that information forward. If you want to read the opposing view check it out at the daily's website.

I stopped going to mixed martial arts events years ago. It was getting hard to just go and have a good time. Too many nights out in the MMA scene would include people exuding tough guy attitudes I didn't like: fights would break out in parking lots, accidentally bumping someone at the event would cause peoples hackles to raise and other testosterone filled antics ensued.

The crowd had changed since MMA had first come on the scene. It had become more immature and ill tempered. The testosterone had always been there, but hadn't seemed as unfocused in its aggression.

MMA was slowly moving toward the end of the entertainment spectrum that is spectacle, and the crowd was reflecting that. Now sound bites are played where MMA fighters describe how they are going to defeat their opponents that are plain and simple trash talk.

Some would retort that same goes on in boxing. Of course it does, I'm not saying it doesn't. I'm just not sure if the infamous trash talk of people like Mike Tyson telling his opponent he is going to eat their children is something that boxing wants to be remembered for or if the clip of Tyson biting Holyfield's ear off is exactly a shining moment in the sport.

There are myriad of reasons why the last matches of Sam Vasquez and Michael Kirkham went the way they did. It's hard for me not to think of the obvious, albeit insidious, answer: People that watch MMA want to see fighters get pummeled, and the referee's actions reflect the needs of the audience.

I used to fight in amateur tae kwon do competitions while I was in high school. The longer I fought on the national level, the more I came to realize why the point system that was used to determine the winner was geared to encourage people to land kicks to their opponents head.

Encouraging kicks to the head makes matches flashy, but it also makes them more dangerous for a couple of reasons. The contender receiving the full blast kick to the noggin is going to have his brain sloshed around. That is potentially a bad thing.

The person throwing the kick is up on one leg leaned back in order to deliver the blow. I've known many athletes who have had their martial arts career ended abruptly due to losing their footing mid kick and slamming backward onto their head and neck.

That's what happens though when a sport starts to cater to spectacle, to the bellows of the crowd and to ticket sales. Things start to happen that aren't necessarily in the best interest of the athletes participating in the sport.

It may be better for ratings to let an athlete pound on his opponents face, or to not disqualify someone for throwing illegal blows. It's not better for the athletes though, and sometimes when a person's body receives enough trauma the worst case scenario happens.

MMA needs to take a long hard look at where it's going compared to where it started and where it's been. Why now, after all these years, are people dying from injuries sustained at regulated events?

Published Monday, September 13, 2010, on iowastatedaily.com

Social Darwinism on social networks

2010-09-13T16:52:00.000-07:00

I keep hearing this weird complaining about Facebook. "My parents are on Facebook, and I don't have the intestinal fortitude to not accept their friend request, now they can see everything I do." That's a common one.

There's also, "I don't like the way my personal information is being mined from Facebook, I can't wait until the new social networking site comes out." There seem to be a lot of complaints lately. I have a piece of advice that will ease your mind and cease your Facebook troubles.

If you don't know enough about the Internet to know that all of the solutions to your social networking gripes are at your fingertips, you should disconnect form the interwebz before you hurt yourself.

It isn't going to matter what social networking site is on the horizon until people realize that it isn't smart to put your personal information on the Internet. You shouldn't post your address, phone number, class schedule or anything else that a motivated person could use to mess with you.

Being an attention whore on a social networking site comes with its drawbacks. While you're posting a zillion pictures of yourself, you are slowly quilting together a digital identity. People can piece together where you live by the backgrounds — be it a city skyline, a street sign or the inside of your house. There's something else that many don't realize about pictures: Many phones stamp the pictures they take with latitude and longitude coordinates. That's right; the pictures have where you are imprinted on them. Post it on a forum and people can just type it into a search engine and find you.

As far as parents, bosses, coworkers and other people joining your friends list: That could potentially make trouble for you if you fly off the handle on your profile. If you don't know how to act, you probably shouldn't friend them. This seems to be some kind of problem for people, so I'll let you in on a secret — on Facebook, you can limit how much of your profile others can view.

If you can't muster up the courage to limit what they can view, well, you're sunk. No matter where you go they will follow and friend you. Looks like you are out of luck on that count.

I'm not trying to put forward that social networks don't try to take advantage of you, they do that in spades. People need to realize that the majority of social networking sites are free and have to make money somehow. The way they mine your personal information is distasteful, but the nature of the beast. They do give you the option to stop a good majority of the invasions of your privacy; you just have to be vigilant and turn off features as they arise.

Some people just don't get it when it comes to protecting themselves. These people are going to continue to be in sore shape wherever they go for their social networking needs. Social Darwinism applies to social networking, there is just no way around it.

Published September 10, 2010 on iowastatedaily.com

Enduring college

2010-09-07T20:09:00.000-07:00

College can be a hard gig sometimes, especially if you are working to put yourself through it. It seems like you're constantly breaking your back to get ahead, and at best, you achieve a marginal amount of breathing room that is swept away as soon as you walk into class the next day and your professor assigns a mountain of homework.

For those of you that are reading this and nodding your heads, I feel you. You are definitely not alone in the thankless struggle. This last weekend I attended a welcome-home party for a friend of mine that was back in Iowa for a few days, taking a break from his career in the Marines. It's hard for me to justify not doing work for a night, but for a fellow jarhead and long-time friend, I took the night off.

During the party I ran into someone from my high school that I make a point to avoid when I see around. He's just one of those guys that doesn't get it, and doesn't try to get it — saying ignorant things and asserting himself in haphazard manners that make you cringe. We got to talking and he asked me what I was going to school for. "I'm an English major," I said.

His drunken face blanked out for a second as he looked at me and he said, "You can't write."

That's the way it goes, though, people don't hesitate to cut you down when you're struggling to do something that matters to you. For the students that work day in and day out, putting themselves through college, trying to get all of their homework done and wracking up massive amounts of debt, this struggle is marked with isolation. It's hard to get out and be social when you constantly have your shoulder to the grindstone.

If your parents are paying for your stuff, you're privileged, plain and simple. Make time for your friends who don't have time to go out. I know, it's asking a lot of any one college student to think of someone else other than themselves for even half a second. I think it's not too much for me to ask, though.

One thing I've noticed lately and found a little humorous is those college students that put on the airs of the self-made man [or woman]. They act like they are breaking their backs toiling, but have their parents paying for their rent, tuition, books and car payments. I'm not mad at them, it's great that they don't have to worry about such things. I just don't think a person should play around about their situation.

Acting like you're pulling yourself up by your boot straps when you haven't even started to pay the dues some of your peers have is just bad form, and you aren't fooling anyone.

To the students who are struggling to make ends meet, Winston Churchill once said, "If you are going through hell, keep going."

Don't give up, and don't expect a pat on the back. The struggle is the glory.

Published September 7 2010 on iowastatedaily.com

Iowa's grass should stay native

2010-09-07T19:35:00.000-07:00

One of Michael Crichton's most culturally dynamic novels was Jurassic Park. If you haven't read the novel, I won't ruin it for you, but the gist is that nature cannot be contained.

Crichton took time to cultivate man's hubris — that is, a very negative kind of pride — by showing great men recreate dinosaurs, and failing to be able to keep them under control. In effect the book is an exciting tale of man not just losing to nature, but running away screaming in fear as their environment turns hostile.

The novel does much more than just excite the imagination, it brings forward the question, "What is acceptable for man to do to nature, and how far is too far when it comes to manipulating it?"

Iowa State is particularly sensitive to the environment. It's MFA program focuses on the environmental aspects of writing, the campus is beautiful and there are even CyRide buses that are electrical hybrids.

It bears asking then, just why grass that is non-native to Iowa is being used in the landscape. This probably isn't as bad as what happened in Jurassic Park. The non-native grass isn't going to uproot and try to eat you. It could end up in Iowa's prairie or along the shores of Iowa's bodies of water.

This may seem to many like the social phenomena that some refer to as "no big deal." If that was your initial reaction, you're right, but only for the moment. It's hard to tell what introducing new species to an environment will do until it is too far gone to do anything about.

A good example is the zebra mussels. These little, shelled creatures are very troublesome in some places of our country. They have a striped black-and-white shell, and they are best thought of as locusts of the water. "Zebra mussels upset ecosystems, threaten native wildlife, damage structures and cause other serious problems. Millions of dollars are spent each year in attempting to control these small but numerous mollusks," according to nationalatlas.gov.

We didn't introduce these little creatures into our ecosystem voluntarily. They originated in Poland and somehow — by either hitching a ride or being taken as a pet — made their way to the waters of Lake St. Clair.

I guess we can only hope that the non-native grasses don't somehow make it out to Iowa's prairies.

Given, I do not have my doctorate in landscape-ology, but it stands to reason that we cannot control nature. I'm not sure how many more times mother nature has to tear our barns out of the ground with tornados, destroy businesses with floods, scorch us with the sun or let her creatures run amok all over our careful sculpted landscapes before we realize that we aren't the ones in control.

Non-native grass may not be as sensational as experiments with dinosaurs from Michael Crichton's imagination, but it is certainly still something to be taken seriously. We will be passing this world on to our children; we should strive to leave it better than we found it.

Published September 7 2010 on iowastatedaily.com

President Obama's Religion Doesn't Matter

2010-09-06T16:09:00.000-07:00

Part of a column battle I had with a Doctor at Iowa State. His part can be found on the website iowastatedaily.com.

*****************

If you ever get the chance to happen upon a street magician doing his thing, stop and watch for a bit. There’s a lot to be learned from their act. I like the card tricks, and of course the classic three upside down cups with one covering something – the way they whirl the cups around and stare you in the face. I figured out shortly after my first encounter with a street magician that it didn’t matter what was in the cup, it didn’t even matter if you watched on cup really hard. It slowly dawned on me that focusing on anyone one thing would make you lose, and that meant forfeiting money you put down to play.

Then I realized something else; the magician wasn’t working alone. When I would win, or help someone else to win, there was always someone who would ask me to leave, or give me a hard time. As I focused on the game less I started noticing more that there was always someone there to provide a needed distraction if the chips were down and the magician was struggling. They were plants: people that were planted there to help the magician.

Glenn Beck and others put forward that Obama is a Muslim, and as soon as the American public loses interest in that the cup will slam back down. Another will whirl forward to reveal the next thing as the last cup seamlessly moves back. All the while Glenn Beck will stare you in the face and smile. As soon as you start to figure the game out something or someone will distract you – the plants rarely miss their ques.

When something is so arbitrarily exchanged, it doesn’t matter. “How can you say that religion doesn’t matter when it comes to the President?” I know, it’s crazy to think like that isn’t it? Or is it? There is a fallacy referred to as the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy – “after this, therefore because of this,” think faulty cause and effect arguments . This fallacy makes people believe that a person of their same religion will be better suited to lead them also will tell you that there is a cause and effect between a presidents religious beliefs and public opinion.

I would put forward most Christians don’t understand their own religion. To most people religion it is just a dogma passed down to them from their parents. If they don’t understand their own religion, how can they be expected to understand a religion like Islam? If they don’t are rejecting something they don’t understand, aren’t they just being xenophobic? It doesn’t matter if they understand, does it, only what they think. Why do they think what they think? History shows that few bend their will to real critical thinking in the way that so few philosophers have guided so many. People think what they think because other people tell them what to think.

If religion really mattered to people, it wouldn’t have just started mattering to the extent that people say it does now – unless, like I assert, outside influences are using sleight of hand to make them think it matters. Let’s say it does matter, fundamentally, and all of the people who think Obama is a Muslim now thought he was a Muslim during the election. Sure, there were those that did, and made a fuss, but I can’t seem to remember hearing a general outcry about it. It was almost like it didn’t matter, and that we were trying to elect a man based on his own merits. That’s why Obama won the election by a landslide 365 to 173 electoral votes.

In recent times the issue of our presidents’ religion has come to the fore front; the cup spins deftly out, rises to show something to do with our president’s religion underneath. I’m not sure what will be next when the cup is snapped back to the magician and another is put forward, but when that happens the new thing will “really matter.” I do know that when trying to establish a cause and effect relationship, the cause must be something concrete, it can’t be something that can be changed at the drop of a hat.

When it can be, it’s not cause and effect, it’s a magic trick. You’re being hoodwinked.

This time in our nation’s history when our first black president was flagrantly ad hominem will be looked back on with more than just a tinge of shame – and why calling someone a Muslim was used as an ad hominem will be considered as well.

Published September 6 on Iowastatedaily.com

A Moment of Panic on Post One

2010-09-05T15:35:00.000-07:00

Ulrich and I had been standing post one together for the last week or so. It was a pretty nice post, as far as posts go, so there really wasn’t much complaining about the duty assignment between us. The post was elevated, which meant that there were few rats, and the door of the post locked, which meant you could sleep without worrying about being walked in on. Sleeping was frowned upon, but anyone who tells you’ve they haven’t racked out on post in a combat zone is a liar.

Our shift was about to end for the day. The eight hours of starring at the same neighborhood in Iraq we had been holding down for the last three months was not exciting, and the one hundred and twenty degree heat was not helping the matter in the least. I had decided to sleep most of the post, as Ulrich had said that he wouldn’t be able to. Whether he stayed up for the whole eight hours or not, I have no clue. Having both Marines sleep on post was a really bad idea for obvious reasons, but we always would say jokingly that the “shots would wake us up.” I had just risen out of my seat, and made my weapon --- an M 16-A4 service rifle --- condition four. Condition four being no round in the chamber, no round magazine inserted. Ulrich had just sent out radio traffic from our post saying that we were ready to dismount and receive our relief, those who would replace us on post. As we stood there, hating life, and wondering what tedious chores the rest of the day would have in store for us, a shot rang out less than fifty meters from our position. This, we both knew, was about to be a “bad day,” as the saying in the Corps goes.

I hit the deck the quickest way possible. It wasn’t the bullshit Hollywood way of hitting the deck, where someone dramatically throws themselves to the ground in a flourish, finding time to grab their buddy, and be a hero. It was the most effective way, letting your knees buckle and simply dropping, like God had just hit the light switch in your head. On the way down I went from being groggy, to fully awake. The endorphins dumped into my blood stream. I was vaguely aware that Ulrich had also decided to see if he had magically become weightless, and found that instead of floating he dropped like a rock.

I would like to say that I hit the ground with a thud and a sharp pain, but that is not the case. To be honest I have no idea how I hit the ground, because it didn’t matter. My brain was absolutely out of “give a fuck” when it came to registering the details of everything, with the exception of: find a magazine in a magazine pouch, slam it into your weapon, and rack a round into the chamber. Somewhere in the middle of going condition one (as such actions are referred to by gunslinging professionals) I heard Ulrich ask “Where’d it come from?” Out of my peripherals I barely registered his baby face, completely blank, as his body’s chemical composition did that age-old waltz from being complacent to fight or flight.

I came up without realizing I had come up. I was one second on my side, reloading like it my life depended on it, and the next I was behind the sand bags. The instant I noticed I was standing I realized I had my newly loaded rifle in my hands, and it was being aimed at the intersection where, to my best estimation, the shots had come from: and I was hunting for heads. Suddenly a voice sounded from somewhere in the post, it half yelled something as follows: “WHERE THE FUCK? WHERE THE FUCK? FUCK, FUCK . . .”
I was about to tell whoever it was to shut up and stop panicking, when I realized it was my voice I was hearing. I stopped yelling and started regulating my breathing, immediately wishing I hadn’t. In the scuffle-filled silence the small dimensions of the post were made crystal clear by adrenaline. Every bit of the fighting position was so sharp and clear it took on a surreal grainy texture. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, the claustrophobic post cinching in on me like an anaconda.

I heard Ulrich slam his back into the heavy metal door of the post. He had come up with his rifle aimed out the window in the general direction of the street. He was completely running on instinct now, something I would have stopped and admired instead of just seeing out of the corner of my eye if the circumstances had been different. With his shoulder and the back of his body armor wedged as far as it could go into the small corner that the meeting of the door frame and wall made he froze—like a deer who has heard the gun shot of a hunter, jumps, and then turns into statue—he wasn’t even breathing. We stood stalk still for what seemed like a minute, but was really a fraction of a second.

“Where’d it come from?” Ulrich’s whisper was all I could hear. The street traffic, the dogs barking, none of it was registering. My ears were ringing. After rotating back to the real world—that is to say, stateside—I sometimes have weird kinds of mini-flashbacks where something will trigger the part of my brain that is all business and my body goes from zero to hero at the drop of a hat: my ears always ring when this happens. People who study such things say it’s a learned predatory response, my ears bracing themselves for dangerously loud noises and concussions.

“The intersection,” I whispered back, “Where’s the radio?” Was I talking normal and the ringing in my ears making it sound like I was whispering?

“It’s over there.” Ulrich was pumping his legs to stay wedged where he was; his feet were starting to slide in the thin layer of sand that coated the floor. It hit me like a splash of cold water. The radio had somehow fallen out of the post in the commotion. We were fucked.

“Leave it, don’t go out for it.” My thoughts were blurring through my mind, and I couldn’t seem to concentrate. What do we do? What do we do? Did the other posts hear the shot? Was there more then one? Will they call it in? It all flew through my head, but the blizzard of static in my brain was making it hard to focus on anything. I jammed the broom stick—a piece of gear used for patrolling that is attached to the long portion of the M-16—into the sand bags and put all of my weight against the butt stock.

I felt movement to the left of my legs. Ulrich was crouched down on the radio, squawking with a scratchy voice, “SHOTS FIRED, SHOTS FIRED, DO ADVISE. OVER” After a couple of seconds of waiting, that seemed like an eternity, the Command Post came back with “It’s just the Iraq Police dealing with traffic, nothing to worry about.”

And that was it.

We unloaded and walked down the stairs to the ground. I’m not sure what Ulrich did after this. I know we didn’t talk about it, except for a muttering from Ulrich that he had meant “over there” as in on the floor, not outside of the post, but that was it. I went and sat in one of the Porta-Johns and shook while I smoked a cigarette. You couldn’t talk about it, not right after anyway, and there was no way you could go have a break down in one of the designated smoking areas. All of that “emotional shit” was for behind closed doors, taken care of by the squad. Except my squad was broke, split down the middle by those who played along with our squad leaders bullshit, and those who were waiting for him to get someone killed. With no one to turn to, I just tried to chill out, to calm the fuck down. I got something to eat before I had to go one shift for eight more hours of work before my daily allotted eight hours of free time and sleep; and by the end of the meal I had come to the age old nihilistic adage that many Marines turn to in times of crisis: “FUCK IT.” That was the best I could come up with, and I just left it at that. It was nothing to worry about.

Now we can talk about it. It’s ok to be scared now, to have feelings, to be absolutely freaked the fuck out. It doesn’t matter now though. We’re all back in the states living the good life, sleeping on beds every night and eating food whenever we want to. None of us have to ask ourselves what we would do in extreme stress situations, we’re “been there, done that Marines” now. Been there, done that, didn’t talk about feelings afterward so we could all pretend we were hard as nails. No one wanted to think about anything but eating danger and shitting victory. No: feelings, second thoughts, regrets, and by God you had better not question our reasons for being here and occupying Iraq while we’re doing it.

Iraq is a world away. Who I was in Iraq is a world away now. Our military has all but pulled out of that country, leaving the Sunnis and Shiites to sort out who will run it with AK’s and RPG’s. Who I was is still sitting on some lonely post there, chain smoking and starring out into the desert with steely eyes. That me will always be there. Sometimes I think I see him in dreams across a great expanse. I try to wave him over and talk to him. Talk to him about shaking, about breaking down, a girl that’s cheating on him, and a grandmother who won’t be there when he gets back. I shout at him, cupping my hands around my mouth I try to grab his attention. He never listens though. He turns, gear thumping rhythmically against his body armor as he fades away. Trudging steadily back to Never Never Land. A place worlds away. A place deep inside of me.

Published in Iowa State's Sketch, a journal for writers that is circulated around campus. It is published in the 2010 spring edition.

Allah Willing

2010-09-04T14:32:00.000-07:00

This is a short story that I wrote for a college non-fiction class. Wrote it in under an hour, revised it for a couple of months. I wrote it from the perspective of someone who is an oppressor. I think that I improve the man in the car be making him more brave, when really I'm just oppressing him. That was the whole point of the piece anyway. Out of twenty five odd peers only one girl replied with, "But wasn't it you, not Allah, who made him move forward?" So at least someone got it I guess.

********************************************************

I was on the tail end of the bullshit. I helped break down one of the last real Forward Operating Base’s as they were known in the early part of that war. In the beginning the strategy was the same as the one employed in Afghanistan right now—move into the cities and set up bases. Towards the end of the war “mega bases” or “fortresses” were in place. Camp Fallujah was one of them. It was a monstrosity of a base outfitted with a helicopter pad and had squads of Marines patrolling its perimeter in constant vigil. You could feel the space as you rolled into it. The great expense of the sprawl seemed somehow to loom over you, looking down at you through shrouded eyes.

The base was a labyrinth of twisting gravel roads that led deep into the oasis of friendly territory. An oasis that sometimes was too good to be true. The chow hall there was unlike any other chow hall in our battle space; it was almost like being back in a real chow hall stateside. Giant plasma screen TV’s played the latest sporting event, or whatever dish channel was the flavor of the moment. Paper tablecloths, metal silverware—it was enough to make the most hardened veteran drop his guard. The stark contrast between the personnel that lived on the base, and the transient convoy goers that would ravenously eat there was the reminder that home was a long way off. While personnel native to the base were clean cut and wore pressed uniforms, Marines from outside were grizzled, dirty, and carried weapons that were beat up and caked with sand. There’s nothing that dispelled the mirage more poignantly than looking like a homeless person eating in a fancy restaurant.

Traveling to the entrance of Camp Fallujah you had to go by a great dip in the terrain of desert between the road and a far off ridgeline. Approaching the kilometer-long depression in the ground you got the feeling it was filled with something; but instead of being filled with water, it was filled with carcasses, the cold remnants of death. It was an assortment of every kind of vehicle on God’s green earth. Every last one had been torn open and burnt to a crisp. It had never occurred to me that the blown up hulks would have to go somewhere. Here was that somewhere. Here they were, the sea. They were countless, and stretched to the eastern horizon that was along the crest of a ridge several miles out. After watching that sea fly by you for twenty minutes you would roll underneath several checkpoints. Bases with scenes like that at their gates made it so much safer for us in the end. No one in their right mind would try to roll up in to that base, not even a suicide bomber. You just couldn’t make it.

The tail end of that bullshit was a mass exodus. Everyone who wasn’t attached to a battle space that was getting broken-down got pushed out of where they were. It was called, by some, an egress, or a withdrawal. Anyone who was there can describe breaking down command outposts like it was going out of style. We couldn’t do it fast enough, and we weren’t leaving anything behind. Not us marines; we wouldn’t leave anything for the dinks, not now, not ever - except we weren’t calling opposition forces dinks anymore. The names we used to dehumanize them had changed, but the concept remained the same. We made them different somehow so we could justify acting like they were no better than cockroaches that we scraped off the soles of our boots. So as we stripped the copper wire that ran all through the base we cursed them, calling them names that were not their own.

We were told that we should believe everything we didn’t strip would be made into some kind of killing device. Then a “terrorist” would wear it into a meeting inside Fallujah and smoke half of 1/5, or 3/5, or whoever was holding down that hornets nest of pissed off Arabs who were all out of give-a-fuck. And if it wasn’t used for that, it would be strapped to some female who would bear hug an Iraqi police officer who was barely 18 and then show some love by detonating. Suicide bombers heads pop straight off like dandelions when they detonate, and that shit is just bad for business. As soon as you have haji heads blasting off around you like party streamers, you have somehow failed yourself. Somewhere along the line you let yourself down and the hajis knew it. Those clever little guys didn’t pull any punches. You had become complacent, and now they were going to make you pay. They were going to bring the pain like you had never felt, in ways you had only imagined in nightmares. We were told the time to not blow it was the present. So we stripped out everything that wasn’t bolted down as if it was decay in an aching tooth.

But that’s not the picture that got sent up to battalion. No sir. It didn’t get a picture of how our fine boys were “egressing,” or “getting the fuck out of there.” Battalion got pictures of me on the front berm of the FOB, parking my vehicle between post one and two. We hadn’t remembered to take any pictures that patrol; the sand storm was so thick you could cut it with your bayonet. All we had done was drive around for four god-forsaken hours in a brown out, not seeing, not doing a damn thing. We didn’t even watch the haj because those little brown men didn’t come out in that weather; there was no point. We got back to the FOB, and realized, “Oh shit. Higher is all about us getting picks of current operations, because we’re the squad that’s digging weapon caches out of the ground like it’s an Easter egg hunt and we’re some kind of idiot savants who can feel where the steel is buried in the ground.” So we posed on a berm inside of the actual FOB itself, and got a picture that made it all the way to higher, of me standing in front of the humvee, in the base. But you can’t tell that in the pic, so battalion was happy. And that made America happy. That made every disgusting jerk off who was getting laid as high, wasted and happy as a pig rolling in its own feces.

The Marines that were there at the tail end of the bullshit knew better. Everyone knew better except the people who weren’t there. They hadn’t even thought to care how our leaving would be handled. So we just bounced. We did so short handed, and we put people in positions that were sloppy, unprofessional, and dangerous. We left entire companies in logistical darkness about how they would not be receiving supplies, or how they would manage a small command post with three quarters of their strength gone and no help on the way.

I remember waiting for my team leader, Rose, a tall man of twenty three with a good humored laugh and friendly-face, to get out of a patrol briefing that I was pointedly not invited to so we could get on the road. While I waited I sat on my bunk, in jail cell sized room I shared with five other men. I sat reading the parts of Orwell’s Animal Farm where the pigs started to rewrite the rules and walk on two legs. In the chalk talk, our crooked Sergeant assigned Rose and I to the south end of a double blockade that would cut all traffic off on both sides of the road in order to cover the engineers who were tearing down the berm and gathering up the razor wire. The way things broke down left our Sergeant no responsibilities and plenty of time to sleep at the north end of the roadblock. As we walked out of the FOB to the trucks, the smell of diesel, dirt, and the nearby latrines wafted rudely through our noses; Rose informed me that we were doing it severely undermanned. He knew I was going to be pissed that we were getting hung out to dry in the center of the town, with no boots on the deck to haul our asses out of the fire and back to the half-torn-open FOB if Allah willed his children to play rough with us. I hadn’t known at the time why I had been black balled from the meeting; looking back it was an amateur mistake not to realize what was going on.

We hit the center of town like we owned the place and threw up the first roadblock of concertina wire that would tangle people and even stop tanks by getting in their tracks. The second one required us to dismount and stand in the streets; just Rose and I, because we only had an undermanned Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle at our end the blockade. Then it was Larkin and his huge nose in the turret, and Doc Martinez as the medic. Medics aren’t supposed to be used in aggressive roles according to the rules of war as set by the Geneva Convention. We had to bend the rules a little bit, and left Doc guarding the back door of the MRAP, with Larkin in the turret behind the machine gun. That left no one in the driver’s seat—the vehicle dead in the water—as we cleared out an intersection of cars that had for some reason stopped and refused to move.

With all of this on our minds we dismounted. We didn’t just get out of the trucks. We exited our vehicles like UFC fighters entering the ring for the championship bout. I hit the ground with my 9 mill already out and in my drop pouch that hung from the right side of my body armor. This is where Marines excel: violence and intimidation. It was up to Rose to keep his head, and talk nice with whomever could be talked into compliance. I was there to put bodies in motion.

Rose took the right side of the street. I wasn’t about to talk to the family he was going to kick off of their front porch and make go inside for the remainder of the night. There were few people outside of their homes playing soccer or mulling about, and we were glad for that. Out of their cars people were generally harder to deal with. I took the left side with the southbound cars standing still in it, stacked two abreast and more than thirteen deep. I had to move these cars south across the intersection so we could set up the blockade. I went up to someone’s car, and motioned him forward. No one would move so I pulled out my pistol and started asking questions angrily. A shop owner who had walked outside to see the commotion clued me in that a giant convoy was sitting across the intersection. The haj could tell we were trying to clear the streets, and I think they wanted us to get the giant convoy out of there as well. The sooner they could go back to gutting animals and readying them for the evening meal, the happier they would be.

I walked over to a beat up blue Toyota and told the driver to pull forward. He looked me in panic. “What are you talking about? Have you lost your mind?” I could read it all in the man’s sun worn face as sweat dripped down it. He wasn’t so much upset with the question as the idea. If I got it into my head that he was going to ram a car, he knew I was going to make him ram another vehicle in order to clear a path. He understood this. I understood this. Everyone on that street understood this. They also knew that I wasn’t going to just start smoking innocents. They didn’t know one hundred percent for sure, but it could be assumed I probably wasn’t going to redecorate his dashboard with the beef cranberry of his brains just yet. That just wasn’t on the menu as things then stood. So the car sat there, and the people standing in the dusty street stared at me. I felt heat rise up my back into my head, my pulse made my vision distort in a rhythmic twisting, and I became angry at the world as one thing became certain: I was going to move that man.

Jackie the Iraqi was going to be the link in the chain that forced the cars in front of him forward, and lead the charge for the cars behind him. It was going to be heroic for this middle age haji to summon forth the intestinal fortitude to do this, but I was going to help him. I was going to storm over to my vehicle. I was going to tell Larkin to cover me. He was going to say “I’ve got your back.” I was going to throw open my door, and toss the nine on the seat. I was then going to grab my M-16 A4 service rifle, and slam a thirty round high capacity magazine into it. And that’s exactly what I did. I drove my heels into the deck on the way over. Larkin told me that it was Apocalypse across the intersection - the unit call sign for battalion personal safety attachment, the small army that guarded the Battalion commanding officer. My nine clanged off the metal of the middle console, and the first round in my magazine slid into the chamber like a finger into a virgin on prom night. I was ready to bring the law to those who had it not.

The courage welled up in him. It started as a bubbling first as I started to drive my heels into the deck back over to him. I was about to make this man a fucking hero. Someone who was so brave he would no longer sit idle in line at the intersection to his town. He would advance forward, and brave the waiting guns of the unit who unbeknownst to him had the call sign of Apocalypse and that man was going to stand before them, an emissary for those who would no longer let the Americans impose on their personal lives. He tried to plead with me through the open car window, calloused hands flashing in panic as he conveyed his terror to me. I would like to think he was pleading for the angel of death to pass over so that he could go on to take part in some greater glory, that Allah had come to him, and told him that some day he would be used for some other purpose than standing up to those who thought they could tower over him. But I don’t think that’s what he was saying to me. I think he was saying that he wasn’t ready to pull forward. Not until his path was clear of not only cars but also gun trucks. That he wasn’t ready to be a hero.

I looked at him and I thought no.

This day was the day that he was going to be hero. It was his day to step forward as a man, and lead his people. He didn’t know it, but I was not going to give him a choice. As my weapon leveled at his head and hung in the breach of his half opened car window, he knew he was going to be a leader that day. He knew that was the day that Allah had chosen for him to step forward, ahead of his peers and younger countrymen. He became a man as defined in the Koran, a man of honor and courage.

I looked at him and whispered “No,” and then “Forward.”

He became the man of his forefathers’ youths, and he did pull forward. The cars ahead of him started moving, and the cars behind him followed. In that way, the south-bound traffic was cleared. I walked over to the truck and Rose told me that the people he had been talking to hauled ass inside as soon as I racked my rifle and put on my business face.

We were happy. We were happy because higher would be happy. Battalion was happy with pictures, it was happy with cleared intersections. It would never occur to anyone that if I was doing a job that could only equate to something as ridiculous sounding as “Gestapo traffic enforcer,” than my skills were being implemented in a manner so ingrained with the life of the community it was nothing if not intrusive. I thought about that briefly before I fell asleep in the truck, behind the roadblock, curled into a ball in the driver seat, dreaming of a sweet nothing that wasn’t the bad dream that I was in my waking.

And that’s how the west was won. It was a victory that hinged on us leaving as quickly and efficiently as possible. And that’s how I helped win that day, by being a traffic cop that flew all the way around the world to tell a people that they were wrong in their resistance of a foreign entity existing in extended presence in their land. All of the sacrifice, the tears, the blood, the lives and limbs that were left there -they were part of that victory also. A way of saying that America could go anywhere, and do anything it wanted. It could walk into your country and make it “democratic,” and if you didn’t have the courage to like it, we would bequeath you that courage from the 5.56 millimeter hole at the end of our rifles.

This mental violation will not stand

2010-09-03T21:31:00.000-07:00

Banksy put forward the idea in his book "Wall and Piece" that whatever you can see is yours. You read that right, any advertisement, sign along the interstate, billboard, or anything of the sort that is in the view of the public is owned by the public.

This idea stems from the belief that people don't get to invade your mind and shove things into your cortexes that you don't want there. Banksy's idea holds that you return such invasiveness in kind — returning the disrespect of inconsideration with the same.

This thought process loomed up in my mind this morning as I approached the library on campus and saw some evangelicals standing on either side of the path. Some had huge banners hoisted over their heads, while others stood holding wooden crucifixes in front of them. According to the laws I can't do anything about this, nor do I think I should be able to do anything about this. If people want to stand in public places and hold signs and symbols, that is their right.

The evangelicals called out to me and my peers as we passed by, telling us to beg for salvation and forgiveness. Banksy's ideas of how something is yours once people try to force it on you hasn't been articulated to include audio yet, but the laws have.

I could not legally stand by these intruders and scream at the top of my lungs to drown them out, to keep them from harassing those that would pass by them on the path. That is illegal, as I would be obstructing another's right to free speech.

The only thing I could was to verbally retort, and tell them how I felt, defacing their audio with my own. That is exactly what I did, I told them to stop harassing me.

Their reply was to continue to harass me about their religious beliefs and to try to further shove them into my head, raping my thoughts.

So I held firm, and told them exactly what I thought of their little performance in the middle of campus; I let them know how much disdain I had for their inconsideration of others in much fewer words than I have used here.

What if I had not been me? What if I had been a person of a shy nature and a slight build? Would I have still said something, or would I have been intimidated?

As I have mentioned before, these people were not students, they were outsiders. They stuck together, and at least one of them was a large man wielding an even larger wooden cross. Being who I am, none of those things intimidated me. But being someone else, maybe someone more vulnerable and less aggressive, perhaps I would have allowed the rape of my mind to go on unprotested out of fear.

The intruders were large, numerous and bold. They were organized, moved in packs, had leaders and obviously an agenda to push.

With the right to carry concealed weapons being banned on campus by state law, all a person has to rely on for self-assurance is their attitudes and physicality. In that way the omission of our Second Amendment right allows for the censor of our First Amendment rights.

Any confidence that someone of a smaller stature or more vulnerable nature might be lent by the Second Amendment is plucked out of their mind before it has a chance to give birth to actions. In this way their minds are raped and thought process changed by outsiders, as an agenda is unabashedly bent upon them.

Robert A. Heinlein once wrote, "The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle, anywhere, at any time and with utter recklessness."

Today the evangelicals showed up and did battle. No one will know how many minds were intruded against their own volition; being physical intimidated into silence they lost the battle by default.

The First Amendment is necessary, but so is the confidence that the Second Amendment gives people to loose their tongue and shoot a fiery brand in retort. Why the Second is marginalized and demonized is beyond me, but the consequences are not. I think Banksy would agree with me.

Published September 2 on iowastatedaily.com

A call to arms

2010-09-03T21:30:00.000-07:00

I noticed that even after I offered a position to write at the Iowa State Daily to any and all who wanted to write at the opinion desk and could actually do so, there were still some grumblings. The reasons for the gripes and complaints vary. One thing does not vary, though: If you are telling someone how they are doing it wrong, you are asserting you know how to do it better.

Consider this your personal e-mail. You are cordially invited to column battle myself, or anyone on the opinion desk staff. Write in to opinion@iowastatedaily.com and put "Column Battle" in the subject. Lead out with your best writing. You can defend a viewpoint or aggress against another; it's up to you. Know that the kid gloves will be coming off, though. If you write a poorly written column, I'm going to smash it; then again, maybe what you write will be so good I'll have no choice but to get smashed.

What you have to understand is that it's good for me either way because it's all community response. If you write in and get smashed, the opinion desk looks better and by extension I look better. If you write in so strongly that I cannot muster a defense that doesn't get smashed, then we've got smart people writing in and it's still a good thing.

This is it, your signed, sealed and delivered invitation to duke it out with the opinion desk. No more "I could do it better," or "It's just the Daily." Let's battle: no ifs, ands or buts.

There's an old adage that's coming to mind. It goes something like, "If you can't run with the big dogs, then stay under the porch."

How do you know if you can hang if you never test yourself?

Published August 20 on iowastatedaily.com

The technological negatives

2010-09-03T21:29:00.000-07:00

The dehumanizing effect that technology has on our species is unmistakable, but accepted by society.

People spend hours on social networking sites instead of going out and being social. In a search for community, a surrogate community has been found. This community is, by and large, a farce. Unlike a real community, where people help and support each other, a social networking community will offer little support when your house floods or you need your car jumped in the morning.

There are people on social networking sites that have thousands of friends. I think it can be agreed that taking it to the extreme of 1,000-plus friends on a social networking site is a poignant example of how superficial these "friendships" are. You get or send a friend request, view a small page of information and a few pictures that represent — many times that misrepresent — the person behind the computer screen, then you are "friends."

Texting, while useful, has significantly replaced telephone conversations. We move further away from human interaction with many such things that are useful in the sense of utility but not in the sense of expression. E-mails — posts or messages, if you are a social networking site — are extremely useful for business. They communicate quickly, and when used by an articulate person, adequately. Using a utility for business exchanges to fill in what should be human interaction is as ridiculous as it sounds.

As we dehumanize ourselves with technology, we are also dehumanizing each other. The introduction of the Maxim gun, the first machine gun, signaled the rise of machines in warfare. An even better example of this is the Predator drone. Pilots far away from the drone itself control it by remote as it rains hellfire missiles down on people defending their town from American imperialism.

This is considered a good thing to our government and the military. The human element is taken out of the equation. Our side doesn't see their side screaming and writhing in agony as they bleed out in the sand. Our side doesn't smell the burning flesh, and doesn't have a chance to taste their blood as arterial spray shoots pink mist into the air. It's all on a screen, either as a video-game-esque representation on a LCD or as a statistic on a general's desk somewhere.

As a society, we aren't really informed anymore. We consider ourselves to be up to speed with what's going on, simply by watching a television screen or reading an online blog.

I wrote a column about how people play the race card needlessly at times. I was apprehensive, worrying about the black youth out there that would read my piece, and after retreating back to the lab with pen and paper, would come out and smash me. This never came to pass, though.

I did get a negative reaction from a piece I wrote about Walmart. People aren't well-informed enough about racial issues, beyond what is put forward by the media, but when it comes to Walmart, they'll be damned if I say anything bad about that corporate giant.

As a people, where did we lose the plot? Why does a white guy get a free pass when he writes about the race card, but when he writes about a business that exploits the labor force, people are ready to draw swords?

It's because we've lost each other. Between social networking, television, video games, the internet and phones that are more or less laptops, we can no longer see the forest for all the trees. People form opinions about political ideologies without ever having any real world experience.

In the beginning of this nation, the "hero" was everywhere. You had to be ready to fight to the death at a moment's notice, stand at the bar and orate why you were ready to die for what you believed in to any who would challenge you, and you had to be able to pass this on to your children. Those great men had to be scholars, philosophers and warriors. It slowly came to pass that the "hero" went the way of the buffalo.

Things become easier, and we have become complacent. The world has shrunk and we have replaced talking with texting, e-mails and posts over social networks. We've replaced thinking and inquisitiveness with watching media, absorbing the views of others and regurgitating them. I'm afraid that what we are replacing our humanity with is something that isn't positive.

When we aren't ourselves, what are we?

Published August 18 on iowastatedaily.com

An open challenge to write for the Iowa State Daily

2010-09-03T21:28:00.001-07:00

Recently I have been trying to recruit columnists for the Iowa State Daily.

I would like to have a really strong opinion desk with many voices and viewpoints coming from it. I've cast a wide net in my efforts to obtain this variety of people, and this has led me to find something that I hadn't encountered previously.

This aberration is people who can write but don't want to.

I had a hard time fathoming this.

When I first encountered it, I thought for sure that these people actually did want to write, and just needed to be convinced. I tried really hard with some of them. I broke it down like shotgun: how having published work would be of benefit, that putting good work out there with their name on it was something they could take pride in. I mean, was the fact columnists don't get paid that much really enough to stop someone?

I still don't think the money, or lack of, is enough to stop someone. I've slowly come to realize that some people legitimately are over it.

But how can anyone be over it?

It's striking pen to paper in such a way to communicate your thoughts to an audience much larger than any mega phone could reach.

It's out-articulating the braggarts and bumbling idiots that can be found in every nook and corner of our society; a way of firmly planting your feet on the ground and being willing to publicly acknowledge your beliefs to all who care enough to take others thoughts into account.

To me writing very much is a tool. I've carried, cared for and clung to many modern-day weapons in my short time on this earth. I realized years ago that my ability to unleash volleys of machine gun fire, or hit man sized targets from 500 yards away with an assault rifle, were trifling compared to the impact the written word delivers.

How else could Tom Robbins completely change my view on religion with "Another Roadside Attraction," or Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" make me realize that a free market economy hasn't existed in my lifetime? George Orwell helped me come to terms with the military industrial complex, as well as realize gay rights were something worth supporting to the utmost.

When someone tells me they don't want to write, they walk up to the sword in the stone, feel it quiver in its sheath of granite, begging to be pulled free and turn their back on it.

The attitudes and excuses for not writing range from flimsy excuses to valid situations. Some people say they don't have the time write, and really don't. I think far more people say they don't have the time than people legitimately making that claim. If you don't have time to write, then you don't have time to go to the bars, watch TV or do anything that is not a necessity.

Others just don't think it's important, or aren't interested. What they don't take into account is that someone else will be interested, someone else will grasp the hilt of the sword in the stone and tug it free. The people that turn their backs inevitably sound like anyone you know that complains about the president but didn't vote — a forlorn wisdom about how it should be done that's useless after the time for action has come and gone.

The most humorous explanation of why someone wasn't writing their opinion was something a friend said to me.

"You chose to have your opinion published, I choose not to."

Indeed, like how I choose not to have six-pack abs or own an island in the Caribbean. Writing is work, and that tends to scare many away from even attempting the struggle with it when they can endlessly surf the Internet, get drunk or zone out watching the tube.

Consider this my personal invitation and challenge to come and write for the opinion desk at the Iowa State Daily. Call the Daily, e-mail me [Jason.Arment@iowastatedaily.com], come in and demand my immediate attention; anything, just act!

Use your voice now, for as Mary Ann Evans once said, " The realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave."

Published August 14 on iowastatedaily.com

Turn away from the Sirens call

2010-09-03T21:27:00.001-07:00

I was feeling good about myself, as thunder rolled and lightning traced jagged teeth across the sky. I had just helped push someone's vehicle out of a flooded intersection, and was still riding that high every good Samaritan gets when they do something selfless for someone else — although since I do it for the rush, maybe it's less than selfless.

Even though the weather outside was scary on a biblical scale, I wasn't worried. The journey to my humble abode on campus only consisted of a scant few more blocks. I was confident that having made it from Boone to Ames that it wouldn't be a problem.

Turning left on Hayward from going eastbound on Mortensen, I saw a car stalled out in a large puddle that had formed in a low spot in the road. Being so close to home, I heard the call of my bed competing with the voice in my head telling me to help the stalled vehicle. My eyes darted right, to the entrance of the parking lot in front of the giant, dreary concrete dormitories. I thought that maybe I could duck into the lot and ride what looked to be higher ground parallel to the stalled car to non-flooded streets just a few blocks north.

The sultry voice of my pillow won out, but it proved to be a Sirens song. As I moved northbound through the parking lot, I ran into knee-high water that stalled my car out.

I sat there for a second. I didn't swear, I just assessed the situation calmly. "I've got to get out and push my car back up hill, that's all there is to it," I thought to myself as I opened my car door and water gushed into my car.

The knee-deep water rose to my thighs as I crouched down to put my back into pushing the car out of the flood. The torrent of water rushing down to the drains located in the middle of the concave parking lot tore off one of my sandals; debris being swept along by the watery onslaught slapped against my legs, leaving trails of slime.

When I finally managed to push the car to higher ground, I looked like I had walked off of a movie set — clothes beyond soaked, hair matted, cutoff Marine Corps green utility trousers tattered, and tattoos showing beneath the slime. I looked the part of a homeless Vietnam veteran.

Standing there in the lot, looking at the horizon wondering what to do next while rain drops plummeted to join the water rushing past me, I felt the presence of authority. To my left a squad car had rolled up while I had been pushing my car out of the water. A sense of relief rushed over me, and I crossed the lot — my feet slip, slapping on the pavement —and walked over the sidewalk and into the calf-high water on the street. I was just thinking about what I was going to say, I mean what was there to say? Before I could answer that question, a voice bellowed out, "Stop right there!" as the police car door swung open.

I froze midstep, with one foot hovering above the water. "Can I approach the vehicle?" I asked, careful to keep my hands at my sides and not to make any sudden moves.

"No! In fact, don't even come into the water," an officer replied.

I slogged back to the muddy grass by the sidewalk and turned back to the police car with a look on my face that I'm sure spoke volumes of the kind of turn my night had taken.

"Sorry," the officer shouted. "You just never know about some people." Then he slammed his door.

I was just starting to ponder how this figured into "Protect and Serve" when I noticed a civilian car about 20 meters in front of the officer's squad car. Expecting to be rewarded for the good karma I had generated earlier for being a good Samaritan, my spirits lifted.

I slogged away from the police car and up the sidewalk. Right when I was within hailing distance of the car, the driver succumbed to the voice in his head calling him to his bed and he stepped on the gas.

What I hadn't taken into account about my karma — if you want to call it that, I think of it more as momentum — is that I had blown off the second stalled car and chosen to pursue my own selfish desires.

That's going to be easy to do in the next few days. With the weather being borderline apocalyptic and school approaching, there will be agendas vying for your attention that will tell you to only think of yourself.

Don't fall for the Sirens song. Look out for yourself and others in times of trouble.

Published August 11 on iowastatedaily.com

Land of the doublespeak

2010-09-03T21:26:00.002-07:00

America is the land of the free, and the home of the brave. Well, not quite really.

Living in this country means you are either willfully ignorant, or brave — brave enough to pay attention; brave enough to pry your eyes away from the spectacle of sports and celebrity gossip and realize there are those who are absent of the freedoms that you yourself are enjoying.

Speaking of freedom, we're the land of that as well, right?

The knee-jerk reaction to that question every patriot has is to shout, "Yes!" even if you're beliefs are jaded and cynical — like mine tend to be — you say something like, "Were working on it."

No one says anything like, "Actually, from 1987 to 2007, our countries prison population nearly tripled, and as it stands now 1 in 100 people are incarcerated."

If you ever hear someone say that, hide your disbelief, lest you show yourself to be a less knowledgeable person than them. The person you hear say that isn't telling a bad joke, they're telling you the truth.

Our nation's penal systems have swollen to a size never before reached in our nation's history, according to a 37-page report titled "One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008," released by The PEW Charitable Trusts.

The report breaks down the statistic in it's second paragraph:

"For some groups, the incarceration numbers are especially startling. While 1 in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine. Gender adds another dimension to the picture. Men still are roughly 10 times more likely to be in jail or prison, but the female population is burgeoning at a far brisker pace. For black women in their mid- to late-30s, the incarceration rate also has hit the 1 in 100 mark. Growing older, meanwhile, continues to have a dramatic chilling effect on criminal behavior. While 1 in every 53 people in their 20s is behind bars, the rate for those over 55 falls to 1 in 837."

I know you find this troublesome, and you are undoubtedly duly alarmed; stay with me though because here's the real kicker: That report is from early 2008.

When Stephen Colbert had Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner on his show Aug. 4, and brought up the fact the United States has more prisoners than China, Posner replied with "Well I'm not sure if that's true."

Never mind that Posner is the Assistant Secretary of State — an organization that touts itself as the "Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor." Never mind that the information Colbert was quoting is two years old. Pay attention to the doublespeak going on.

America is the land of the free, but has the most prisoners of any other country. We are the home of the brave, which can be argued is truer for some people than others. For instance, as the above paragraph from the report says, one out of every nine black males from ages 20 to 34 is in jail. So, statistically, you have to be a little braver to live in this country and be black, because the prison rates for the same age demographic of white males is 1 in 30.

Does that mean black males have to be roughly three times braver than white males to live in this country?

I don't know. What I do know is that I'm not surprised Posner didn't care enough to have read the report and know the numbers and figures. Look at his demographic. He's 59 years old, and the incarceration rate for people over 55 is 1 in 837. He's also white, successful and above working or middle class. In other words, unless he does something really crazy, Mr. Posner will probably never be incarcerated.

Our nation cannot afford to have leaders unaware of what's happening. Yet time and again an example presents itself that shows the people in charge aren't in touch with what is actually reality.

Published August 9 on iowastatedaily.com

Top reasons to stay in college as long as you possibly can

2010-09-03T21:26:00.000-07:00

Going back to school pushes your student loan payments back another year.
Joining the work force means facing a terrible job market.
College is the only "job" where you can sleep in until noon.
Not returning automatically garners you the title of "townie."
Admit it, your work load in college is easier than digging ditches.
When you wake up drunk and crack another beer, in the real world it's a sign of alcoholism, but in college it just means there was a football game.
In college you get to write teacher reviews, in the real world no one cares if you don't like your boss.
The walk of shame grows much more humiliating when you can't chalk it up to your college lifestyle.
In college you don't have to hide your tattoos or piercings, and you can mohawk your hair and die it crazy colors.
College is the last oasis for people that need sports to actually matter in their lives; after this you'll just be another rabid fan at the bar.
In the real world you are not allowed to throw away dishes just because you are too lazy to wash them.
Looking in the police blotter and finding your friends is not cool after college.
No one will be sensitive to your feelings when making fraternity jokes outside of Ames.
Where else can you be assured that you will be getting a ticket or towed when you park.
Being super obsessed with someone after a few dates is love in college; in the real world, it's called stalking.
Acting like a jerk at the bar will only get you weird looks in a college town, but in bigger, less forgiving places it will get you thrown out.
Where else but college can you ask your parents for food and not look like a complete loser.

Published August 4 on iowastatedaily.com

Co-written by Gabriel Stoffa

The Daily wants you

2010-09-03T21:25:00.000-07:00

The Iowa State Daily is more than just an excellent way to serve your country. It's also one of the very best places to find excellent training that will help you in the battle for the career you want.

You'll be paid to learn job skills that fit you and your interests, and you'll get real-world training you can use right now — along with hands-on experience that will allow you to gain the high ground over those in your career field.

Engage ignorance and misinformation in fields such as reporting, opinion columns, design, photography, video production, editing and management. These are high speed, low drag jobs that will give you a tactical advantage over the enemy.

The Daily isn't just for journalists, any hard charger is welcome. No matter what your field of interest lies with, the skills you will learn at the Daily are applicable throughout the hostile environment you will encounter in today's job market.

You can take your career even further with the leadership opportunities available through your contacts and associates at the Daily.

Your future begins at the Daily. Join the fight today.

Published August 4 on iowastatedaily.com

ACTA enables censorship

2010-09-03T21:24:00.001-07:00

What is the ACTA?

To most people it's just the word ACT in all caps with an extra A at the end. That's a problem, considering that the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is a international treaty that will affect everyone.

The verbiage and lingo that makes up the text of the treaty itself is full of legal jargon. There were some paragraphs I couldn't wrap my brain around until I sat down with a pen and highlighter — this coming from a guy who read "Moby Dick" in the second grade.

After slogging through the 39-page document I felt drained. It's not that I can't believe the trade agreement grants governments sweeping and invasive powers. Given the current state of the thought process some of the authorities in this country have — it being made illegal to record law enforcement officers in some places — being surprised that people in the government think that they can stomp on your civil rights is getting to be a little cliched.

The ACTA will allow the "authorities" to search your iPod to see if it has any stolen content. Never mind how there will be no way to tell if you paid for that music or not. It will allow your computer, modem and all attached hard drives to be seized if you are even accused of downloading copyrighted content. Then the servers of whatever website you happened to download said content off of will be seized, and they will come down on your service provider for not keeping a closer eye on your activities.

Speaking of service providers, they will be required to hand over your IP and a log of all your activities on request. The amount of power that will wrestled from your hands and be given over to mega corporations is mind boggling to think about.

The old days of expecting privacy will be gone, like a dried up oasis. The corporations will have won, the little guy will be hung out to dry.

The ACTA also allows for information to be stripped from the Internet. In effect it allows for the censorship of the greatest informational resource available to man, and all in the name of commerce. Since the tech-savvy hackers have out-smarted the authorities, the authorities will throw a giant wet blanket over the fire fueling freedom of thought that the Internet represents.

Looking to President Obama to somehow fix or stop this is like digging for fools gold. The agenda from the white house is big government, and a government that is anything but transparent. This proposed expansion of governmental power is one I can't even begin to stomach.

The ACTA will effectively sever the social contract that binds me to this place. I have never agreed to live under the thumb of big business. Under no circumstances should the government be given such powers outlined in the trade agreement.

God forbid the ACTA becomes law. If it does I will have no choice but to succeed from the union. Walking away from the country I love will be hard. I've gone to war for it, tried to educate those in it with my writing and contributed to it in other ways that if I mentioned would just be tooting my own horn.

Mario Savio said it best, "There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."

Published August 10 on iowastatedaily.com

Columnists Wanted: Dead or Alive

2010-09-03T21:23:00.001-07:00

Do you have an opinion?

Do you think you can write?

Then maybe you should join the posse at the Iowa State Daily Opinion Desk.

We're currently looking to add a select few sure-fire gunslingers to our gang of writers.

No matter what race, creed or color you are, you'll be welcome in the gang. In fact, it would be great to diversify ourselves a bit, so if you have a political view or other ideology you don't think is being represented, be sure to throw in your hat with us.

The dusky trail of opinion writing can be somewhat intimidating at first, but with guidance at the Daily, you'll be hunting down bounties in no time.

Saddle up and send a writing sample to Jason.Arment@IowaStateDaily.com.

Be sure to include your contact info in the writing sample, e.g. full name, and a number where you can be reached.

Published August 2 on iowastatedaily.com

Co-written by Gabriel Stoffa

Social networking shows insecurities

2010-09-03T21:22:00.001-07:00

Social Networking has become ingrained in our culture. People add content, such as pictures and information about themselves, to a pre-built profile layouts in an effort to accurately represent themselves on the internet. Or do they?

As I surf Facebook and Myspace I see plenty of pictures of people drinking, partying and looking-cool in general. What I don't see are people being boring, sitting around or failing at anything. Those things are just part of life, and separating them from the representation of ourselves that we put online automatically makes that representation less than truthful.

How much of our sadness, guilt, shame and failure can we really put forward on social networking though?

With parents, bosses and co-workers friending you, it gets harder and harder to say what you want on your profiles. I remember when I first joined Facebook in late 2005. Statuses about smoking blunts, fighting or getting blackout drunk were nothing to bat an eye at.

This was way before the suburbanized Facebook of today, where most people won't even post the F-bomb in their status's — a far cry from the behavior of the college crowd that made up Facebook when I joined.

What exactly is the etiquette for social networking? Can one change their choice of religion on Facebook and expect to be left alone, or have the intrusive questions of others become something that is standard to the world of social networking.

On the flip side, how much information is too much information? Where the line falls when it comes to privacy that you should expect, and what constitutes putting forward altogether too much information is something that is still hashing itself out in the realms of the internet.

No matter what you do, represent yourself. Don't misrepresent yourself to be the representation that you wish you were.

All too often I see people blatantly trying to be cool, chasing trends and promoting those choices on their social networking profiles. Maybe the ADD-esque nature of our culture's attention span makes it easier to change like chameleons without everyone noticing.

It tells a great deal about society when people are so insecure with themselves that they take the time to go online and further an idea of themselves that is not accurate to real life. The need to please others certainly isn't one invented by social networking, but maybe it has been magnified and made visible due to the public nature of most people's profiles.

I take painful efforts to secure my privacy online. I've made it so you can't search for my Facebook on Google, or on Facebook itself — I recommend you do the same. I do my best not to try and make myself look cooler than I am. I mean, how cool can a working class white dude from Grimes Iowa actually be?

Maybe I'm selling myself short though. If I had more photos of my tattoos, guns or of me doing awesome stuff, would people like me more? Would I have a better job? Would I have more friends?

Probably not. If I ever turn trendy, hopefully I have friends that care enough about me to call me out on it; rather then letting me live in my own little world, where I can paint reality however I feel like it at the time.

Published August 2 on iowastatedaily.com

Not a job to be underestimated

2010-09-03T21:19:00.000-07:00

I was recently afforded the opportunity to go on a ride along with state trooper Jeremy Schaffer.

Getting into a Iowa State Patrol car and going out with a trooper for shift might have been awkward, except that I've served with Schaffer in the Marine Corps, so there was no need for introductions. After a brief familiarization to the gear in the vehicle, we were on our way.

Trying to get my bearings on where exactly Schaffer's area of operation was, I asked him to clue me in. His answer reminded me of my love of no-nonsense professionalism.

"District Nine, which includes the counties of Franklin, Hardin, Butler, Grundy, Bremer and Black Hawk," — if you look at a map he listed them as they appear stacked from left to right — "it includes the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Metro area, portions of Interstate 35, Highway 20, Interstate 380 and Highway 218," he said.

District Nine is a large area, to say the least.

Schaffer isn't just cruising to keep speeds down and bust drunk drivers, the State Patrol responds to all kinds of things: natural disasters, delivering organs and blood, even helping vehicles stranded vehicles. The State Patrol is more or less the premier in Iowa law enforcement, so don't think of them as meter maids or speeding ticket jockeys.

My next question was one that may seem like clever thinking to civilians, but is just standard operating procedure to military types. I asked him who else was out in the area operating with us.

I assumed there would be someone else; some other trooper on duty in District Nine because it was so large. It's pretty established doctrine in the military that things are employed in pairs, be it machine guns or soldiers. Two things can support each other. They can watch each other, and if one goes down the other can get on the radio and call in help. But I forgot to take into account how tight Iowa's budget is.

"On today's shift I'm the only trooper working the night shift in District Nine," Schaffer said. "If there are any situations where they asked for a trooper, I would have what could be up to a 100-mile response time."

I was extremely taken aback by this, and still a little shocked. With no other troopers about to help, it could be pretty easy to get into hot water very quickly. Pull over the wrong people, take a round to the shoulder, and suddenly you really need someone else to come get you and quick.

I thought maybe I was missing something. They couldn't be stretched that thin, there had to be local law enforcement to help out, right? So I asked him to break it down for me.

"As a State Trooper we operate by ourselves, we don't operate in two-man cars. We usually don't operate in the same area as another trooper because of the low man-power. What it boils down to is response time, if I were to be involved in a situation where maybe I was in a fight, shooting, pursuit or some other serious situation, and I needed somebody to back me up, the response time for another trooper to get there could be 30, 40 minutes or even longer," Schaffer said.

"At that point I'm relying on local agencies, county deputies or maybe local city police officers to respond. In certain times there may not be anybody on duty. Not every county staffs a 24-hour deputy," he said, "so there's nobody else out besides me and a handful of local city police officers. They may not be able to respond to help."

That's an unfortunate thing, when the budget dictates one of the most basic forms of public safety.

Your car dies, you get robbed, your tire pops or whatever the case may be: you call 911. If it's late at night on a country road, highway or interstate, chances are State Patrol will be tasked out to come and assist you. Chances are also high the responding officers estimated time of arrival to your position will be somewhat lengthy. The budget is also affecting their equipment, as the State Patrol currently has no Tasers, so with no easy way out they must rely on muscle and mace to subdue people.

I understand money is sparse around the state, and everyone is tightening their belts. But I become concerned when it starts to affect the safety of myself and others; and especially worried when it starts to put the lives of officers in situations that leave them hanging.

Published July 27 on iowastatedaily.com

You should be at the San Diego Comic-Con if ...

2010-09-03T21:18:00.000-07:00

You think storm troopers trying to use a urinal is funny.

Seeing hundreds of people dressed as Batman is cool.

Meeting Kevin Smith excites you.

Having enough life-size Star Wars memorabilia to make you believe you're in the movie is a dream come true.

You realize "Red Shirts" are expendable — you would never beam down to hostile planet wearing one.

Waiting for a bagel or coffee with a Predator, Klingon and Sith Lord is a line you don't mind being in.

You want to use, "I was an extra in 'Battlestar Galactica,'" as a pick up line.

Ladies dressed in gold bikinis, a la Princess Leia, is a huge turn on.

Dressing your family as members of the Borg and hanging out with other costumed families sounds like an awesome outing.

You would get geared up to look like Spider Jerusalem, so when people ask who you are, you can act like an elitist.

If you want to be around a bunch of people that think "Twilight" is one of the stupidest things to ever happen.

Co written with Gabriel Stoffa

Published July 26 on iowastatedaily.com

Anonymity in a free society

2010-09-03T21:17:00.001-07:00

There are question being put forward after Shirley Sherrod was fired.

She was wrongfully let go from her job in the Department of Agriculture after an edited version of a speech she gave to the NAACP was posted on the Internet. The edited version twisted the message she was putting forward, and it resulted in her termination.

I was recently watching a clip of CNN Live discussing how Sherrod had been misrepresented on the Internet. The discussion was extremely negative towards the notion that anyone on the Internet can post whatever they want, and can even do so anonymously.

Two CNN anchors took turns bashing anonymity on the Internet, even having someone who wrote a book with a title proclaiming the Internet is killing America cultural talk about the Internet as if it were a sentient being.

"It's not to say that anonymous blogging doesn't have its place. If you're in a place like Iran or North Korea or something like that, anonymous blogging is the only way you could ever get your point of view out ... but when it comes to a society like ours, an open society, do there have to be some checks and balances?" said John Roberts, CNN anchor.

Checks and balances to your freedom of speech? The knee jerk reaction of "regulate it" is still around and waiting for a new topic to apply itself to. The idea, "if people hide behind anonymity to slander people or be deliberately misleading then their anonymity should be somehow infringed upon," has some serious implications.

It puts forward that people in America do not have use for anonymity; that in our country you do not have to fear for your safety, job or public disapproval.

It ignores that people blow whistles on their employers and need to be able to have their identity kept secret. It also ignores that you do not have the right to walk up to someone and demand they tell you who they are.

Those that wanted or needed to be anonymous would be stopped and, in effect, censored.

If someone thinks they have something that needs to be said, and doesn't want to feel backlash from what they are saying, then they have the right to withhold their identity.

The regulation side of the argument is a fun one to think about. Since you can post whatever you want on the Internet, then places where things could be uploaded onto the Internet would have to be under surveillance. That would include a lot of places, and most definitely your home computer.

With so much of what we do being computer-based and on the Internet, the undertaking would have to be intrusive. Big Brother would, in effect, be established.

It worries me to hear the idea of widespread censorship being tossed about so flippantly on popular media television; especially considering that expanding the powers of government censorship would surely affect the media at some point.

If the option of being anonymous is ever taken away, letters like the following will stop being written.

Dear Opinion Editor,

Although the autopsy is still out on the death of Lucas Farlinger, when I heard the first report that tied Farlinger to child porn, a suicide came to mind.

This event is tragic for the campus but also provides an opportunity for us to step back and examine the culture and potential stigma that led up to this death.

I will be the first one to speak out against child pornography because it is an unspeakable act of violence against a child, but I can't help but feel the punishment for this and almost all sex crimes pales in comparison to the punishment for other crimes.

For most crimes the timeline of events goes something like this: crime is committed, perpetrator is captured, a jury decides the case, the perpetrator serves his/her sentence and is released back into life among the non-incarcerated because s/he has served his debt to society.

While this is the case for most crimes, the timeline for sex crimes is a little different. When a perpetrator is released s/he is marked for life. In our current system, s/he will never have "fully paid" the debt to society.

Most states maintain a sex offenders registry where the crime is put on display for the rest of the offender's life for all to see. Depending on the state, sex offenders must also tell neighbors they are moving in and cannot live near schools, and in some extreme cases, sex offenders cannot even own toys, as they might be appealing to children.

While I am not calling for these laws to be rescinded, we must look at our society and ask the question, "Is this the most heinous crime a person can commit?"

If a murderer is released after serving a sentence, s/he has no obligation to tell you anything before moving next door. If a burglar is looking for a place to live, there is no registry to make sure you lock up your valuables.

It comes down to this: Should Lucas Farlinger have had to answer for his alleged crimes? Yes, but to what extent and to what end? When the cultural stigma surrounding the accusation of a sex crime is enough to warrant a death sentence carried by one's own hand, you have to wonder, does the punishment fit the crime?

Regards,

Anonymous

Published July 26 on iowastatedaily.com

Hope remains despite tragedy

2010-09-03T21:16:00.002-07:00

Unaccounted For

When I rotated back from Iraq roughly two years ago, my battalion had a ceremony for the fallen. We stood in formation as role was symbolically called. When the names of the departed were called out, they hung heavy in the air.

When it was called out that they were not present, it was my battalion's way of trying to bring closure; closure brought to bear by a public acknowledgment in the Marine culture that some of us didn't make it back. Even with our boots, bullet proof vests, Humvees, machine guns and 12-ton armored troop-carriers, we were fallible. Even with our hate and discontent, our endless rage, there were those who in malicious violence took that which cannot be restored.

When Jon Lacina went missing, the reaction of the community was a positive one. A comprehensive search was mounted, the greek community searched their properties and posters with Lacina's face on them were used to cover all exposed waist-to-head-level glass on the Lied Recreation Center doors.

There was even a discussion in my cozy apartment at the northwest fringe of town. My roommates and I sat down to discuss what we thought happened, where he could be and what we could do; if anything. The only thing we could do was be more aware of ourselves and each other.

Gradually, the posters on the doors of the Lied curled around the edges, and the ones around Welch Avenue grew tattered from exposure to the elements. They were taken down and replaced with new, crisp ones, but always in fewer numbers. A kind of calm had fallen on the subject, but people were still thinking about what could have happened and carrying around questions with them through their days.

Tragedy

Some things that impact the community linger. There are times when things happen that don't make sense to us, or the sense they do make leaves us feeling a little bit hollow. The answers provided are sometimes incomplete. How does a community make sense of someone disappearing?

For a time, I thought the communities thought process would bustle away from the memory of Lacina quickly; that in a matter of months, his disappearance would cease to trouble the minds of the public. However, some time after a news release from the State Medical Examiners office ruling his death accidental, there were still unanswered questions. Amateur theorists abound in every town, and in college towns they are a dime a dozen.

Maybe forensic crime dramas fuel some of the more far-fetched speculation, or maybe it's just the way things are dealt with in communities. People fit it into something that plays out well in their imaginations, making it a little easier to understand.

We don't like to accept, as a community, that there are those who once journeyed with us that have been laid to rest. With all of our parties, good times, tests, cramming, drinking, romance and drama, we are just normal people. It makes us uncomfortable to think even with our seemingly infinite youth and oasis of college life, we are not impervious to death.

Tragedy is something hard for people to define. We don't like it when bad things happen to good people. That's what happened, though. Lacina went for a walk and didn't come back. Thoreau wrote, "We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return."

This isn't the first time someone has abruptly left the community, by any means, and it wont be the last. We have lost far too many students this year, and the effects of their absences will be felt widely and in ways we have not yet realized.

Find Jon. Live fully.

After his disappearance, red bracelets reading "Find Jon. Live Fully." were circulated. They are still relevant now, even after he has been found.

If there is anything tragedy illustrates clearly, it is the need to appreciate each other. To appreciate the lives we come into contact with, and to think about our priorities.

That sounds like the easy thing to say — we should stop and smell the roses. Think about it, though, do you? Do you really appreciate things for what they are?

Many college students come straight from high school. After spending the first three-fourths of their college career worrying about grades, they spend the last year worrying about what happens after graduation.

Stop. Talk to someone you normally wouldn't. Be conscientious of deadlines, but don't let them overwhelm the beauty in your life.

Be aware of the present moment.

Appreciate your own life, first and foremost, because it's the only one you've got. Pay attention to others, and be grateful for them; there are those who's travels end abruptly, and willful ignorance of this is selfish.

The community will move on from the death of Lacina, and the death's of our other fellow students. It is up to us whether we trudge away with our hands buried deep in our pockets and a grimace on our face, or we stride away taking solace in each other.

Published July 24 on iowastatedaily.com

Real change comes only from taking responsibility

2010-09-03T21:16:00.000-07:00

The flow from Deep Horizon has been stemmed. A yellow cap that looks like it means business has been installed over the gushing oil pipe.

Deep Horizon isn't out of the woods yet, though.

"The sealing cap system never before has been deployed at these depths or under these conditions, and its efficiency and ability to contain the oil and gas cannot be assured," according to a news release from BP.

Assurances are hard to come by in the troubled economic waters that are battering our economy. Falling prices hint at deflation.

"Such outright wage declines hint at deflation, a generalized drop in wages and prices. The last time that happened in the United States: 1931-1933, when prices fell at an average annual rate of more than 8 percent," according to USA Today.

Other signs that things aren't going well is the legislation Congress is pushing through.

"Congress on Thursday passed the stiffest restrictions on the banks and Wall Street since the Great Depression,: according to The Associated Press.

Congress is so worried about our nations money they are hearkening back to depression tactics — a time when the dollar was burned for warmth.

Rep. Ron Paul, time and again, beats his pulpit on the Senate floor, preaching how our monetary system that utilizes the Federal Reserve to create money from debt cannot last. His cries that our nation cannot afford to sustain its current wars — much less venture into new ones — fall on deaf ears.

Momentum is something this country fails to understand. The way we keep telling ourselves that we'll let the America of tomorrow take care of things only allows inertia to continue to carry us in the wrong direction.

What if we are heading to a kind of event horizon? A point of no return where we can no longer backpedal out of recession, and instead head for collapse.

The oil spill is the perfect example of how "we'll let the America of tomorrow deal with it" types of thinking leads to disaster.

We obviously were in no way ready for that kind of catastrophe. It's not that it wasn't feasible to plan ahead, we just didn't want to think about the possible future implications of our actions.

Deep Horizon showed us that tomorrow becomes today very quickly. We can either address looming problems with planning and real change today, or they can address us tomorrow on their own accord. How they get our attention will be much less pleasant than the work we could do to change things today.

Rome wasn't built in a day, nor was it put asunder in one.

Real changes need to be made in how our nation does things: how we think about war; how the economy works; how we utilize the Federal Reserve; the way we use energy and how we harvest it; and stopping our nation's move to be a colonial power in the world.

Until we are willing to take responsibility now for changing our direction and work laboriously toward that end, things will not get better.

Published July 16 on iowastatedaily.com

Society maintains a different set of standards for celebrities

2010-09-03T21:15:00.000-07:00

Lindsay Lohan makes the news again; surprise, surprise, it's in a negative way.

This time, it's for crying in court when a California judge sentenced her to 90 days in jail. I would feel badly for her if her prior offenses had gotten her a slightly stiffer penalty.

The life of a celebrity is one of perks and perils; sometimes they get off easy, other times the jaws of the public sink deeply into them.

Initially Lohan had received a get out of jail free card. After being convicted of two drunk driving charges and a reckless driving charge, she spent a grand total of 84 minutes in jail, according to the BBC.

If you know anyone who has appeared in the police blotter, there's a good chance you know someone who has spent more time in a jail than 84 minutes. They may have spent more time in transit and being processed.

If I were really famous, would things really be that easy for me? Even going to jail for some serious things isn't that bad. There's a chance my stay would be shorter than some movies.

Then again, the other side of the coin for celebrities is their private matters are public, and they get hammered for them. Tiger Woods had his personal life under a magnifying glass when distasteful things were afoot.

Would I wonder why people cared so much about my personal life? Would my thoughts be taken seriously, or would I be just another celebrity?

Granted I'd probably be pretty wealthy, but I'm not sure if that wealth makes other celebrities have happy lives. I'd definitely have a bunch of cool stuff like expensive toys and clothes.

I'm not sure an easier life necessarily means my pursuit of happiness would be a successful one. The pedestal the public could put me on might be too high to climb down from.

In our search for something to occupy our time as a society, we turn to many things. The emphasis of our cultural thought often falls toward sports, celebrities, pornography and material things.

Celebrities are nothing new to humanity, but the intensity of our attachment is stronger than ever. In our need to live out a life of meaning, we vicariously live through others. We study them in tabloids and on the Internet, there simply isn't enough access to them to satisfy the public's hunger.

Lohan's 84-minute jail stint for serious offenses reflects an inability to separate our thoughts of her being a celebrity from her as a person.

Tiger Woods' personal life is being invaded meticulously because we are watching celebrities all the time. The public takes a sick joy in seeing people floundering in their fall from grace — as if that finally makes celebrities human.

Celebrities will start being treated normally when people stop projecting them into their roles as entertainers when they aren't doing their jobs.

That's not really fair to them or to us. Placing them above ourselves is a weird way of saying we don't have enough going on in our own lives to be interesting to ourselves.

Published July 7 on iowastatedaily.com

Always low wages, values

2010-09-03T21:14:00.001-07:00

The same old story happened again, this time in the south side of Chicago: A Wal-Mart got its way when it wanted to move its corporate interests into a neighborhood.

The battle against the labor unions crying for higher wages was settled with an $8.75 hourly wage for the future workers employed at the to-be-constructed Wal-Mart.

"Smith, an alderman in Chicago, presented posters at a City Council meeting showing that Wal-Mart CEO Michael Duke's $35 million salary, when converted to an hourly wage, worked out to $16,826.92," according to ABC News.

Smith's protest concerning how much the CEO makes compared to how little the average worker makes was met with the haggard and old, "He's the CEO, so he deserves it," defense from Wal-Mart.

"I don't think Mike Duke needs, as the CEO of a Fortune 1 company, me to defend his compensation package," said Steven Restivo, Wal-Mart's director of community affairs.

That's the way it is, isn't it? The rich corporations bring their entitled attitude to the poor neighborhoods that are starving for work and smirk when people resist because the workers will be getting paid so little when it's blatant it doesn't have to be that way.

The community leaders essentially have no choice but to allow the corporation to come because they need the money so badly.

The labor unions can't do much about it; they just aren't as strong as they were two or three decades ago. Giant corporations pulled the rug out from under them years ago by exporting jobs overseas to be done for far less than in America.

But that's the American way, isn't it? You build something, therefore you get to reap the benefits of what you built.

Wrong, actually.

Not only is that not what's happening when Wal-Mart takes advantage of poor communities desperately needing money, it flies in the face of American values.

America has a distinct tradition of industries valuing their community. Only recently has this sort of thinking that makes contrary behavior by titans of industries acceptable taken hold.

Benjamin Franklin is a shining example of someone who was extremely successful and extremely sensitive to the needs of his community at the same time.

He designed reading glasses and an extremely efficient stove and didn't patent either so that they could be more readily available to the public. He still made a lot of money off of his designs, he just cared more about his community than he did about making the absolute maximum amount of money possible.

That seems to be the exact opposite of today's corporations though.

The maximum amount of money must be made with the least amount of overhead cost. So, employees are paid less than $9 an hour while their head boss makes a little less than $17,000 an hour.

Giant corporations aren't in the business of building communities, they're in the business of amassing huge amounts of wealth. They aren't concerned about the bottom-tier employee. Their entitled attitude doesn't leave room to think of the myriad of little guys that make their wealth possible.

Stop shopping at Wal-Mart. Buy whatever you're looking for somewhere else. If you can purchase something from a mom and pop store, do so. Keep your money in the community by giving it to locally-owned businesses that have a vested interest in seeing the community grow and thrive.

Trickle-down economics is for suckers.

Support people in your community so they can support you.

Published July 5 on iowastatedaily.com