Another Weekend Catch-up

[selenite0]

That was a busy weekend. Gaming Friday night with the Dallas Browncoats. Fun crew. I have to get them to come over more, I'm too old to make hour-long drives at 3am. ORAC meeting on Saturday. That was lots of fun for Maggie and Jamie as they played with the other kids. We got home a little later than we'd planned, our friend Brandy was coming over and she got to the house a few minutes before we did. For the 4th we had sandy_tyra and family over. I grilled burgers, Sandy made corn, and we generally stuffed ourselves. Then we had the traditional readings of Patrick Henry's "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!" speech and the Declaration of Independence, followed by watching 1776. (I wonder if anybody's showed that to the Iraqi constitution-writing committee? Might be useful perspective for them.)

I also got a few chores done--putting up pictures, trimming weeds, etc. One was taking bumperstickers off the cars. That grated on me. Not the McCain sticker, that's several elections ago, and it was time to get rid of it (if I wait for somebody I like more to run I'd probably never take it off). But back in 2003 I got fed up with the "No Blood For Oil" bumperstickers all over Los Angeles and decided to answer them. There weren't any good pro-war stickers I could order, so I went down to Kinko's and laminated printouts saying "FREE IRAQ" in big letters. That's been on the cars since.

That was a very clear message before the invasion. But the problem with bumpersticker slogans is they can mean something completely different if you change the context. Now there's lots of lefties waving "Free Iraq!" signs, but they mean "Pull US troops out now" instead of "Get rid of Saddam and build a democracy", which is what I meant by it. And at this point the new meaning's common enough that people seeing my bumpersticker assume I'm using the lefty meaning (which may have protected the car in the UU parking lot, but never mind). So I scraped them off. Not that I've changed my mind, or don't want to announce my beliefs, but I don't like being misinterpreted.

Still bothers me.

Comments

[thegameiam.livejournal.com]

I hadn't realized that you worked for UU, but now that I think about it, I think I've seen your name before. I was with UU in Fairfax/Ashburn, in CNS and then other support-related endeavours from 2000-2002. There were a ton of lefties on that campus - I felt kind of overwhelmed myself...

Are you still at UU?

BTW - I'm totally with you about McCain: he was my candidate, and it really sucked that he fell apart at the SC primary.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

We were "friends" of the local Unitarian church in Fort Worth for most of 2004. Finally quit after getting fed up with the political obsessions, but not until after I'd been dragooned into being a sunday school teacher.

[thegameiam.livejournal.com]

hee hee - so that's what a comic misunderstanding looks like :)

I worked for UUNet (which was/is and MCI/WorldCom division), and it was called UU by those who knew it...

Sorry the UU church is political down there: I think that religion and politics rarely mix well...

Constitution quote from a friend

[bkseiver.livejournal.com]

This was in my inbox: CONSTITUTION

They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it's worked for over 200 years and we're not using it anymore.

Re: Constitution quote from a friend

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

Sad but true...

It's really getting a little thick over here in the military category (I am a servicemember, but I'm not a conservative, thanks much....)

DV

Re: Constitution quote from a friend

[p-o-u-n-c-e-r.livejournal.com]

Ha!

I'm just wondering how a person in a military environment who feels herself to be isolated out at the left edge of political opinion would feel if --without altering political opinion the least bit -- she were to hang out in a university setting, or a newspaper's editorial office ...

Re: Constitution quote from a friend

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

Well...

I'm conservative on some issues, liberal on some. I'm what I like to call a moderate. Pro-choice, anti-illegal immigration, pro-gun, pro-military (obviously), anti-discrimination. I'd really like it if people would put themselves in other people's shoes for two seconds and think.

Check my LJ for the full on rant.

I do feel uncomfortable around a lot of university students, but then I'm uncomfortable about being looked down on. I did have an interesting email discussion with Charles Moskos at Northwestern about the attitudes his students expressed.

DV

[selenite.livejournal.com]

I'd like to hear about the Moskos discussion someday, if you're willing to share.

The problem with bumperstickers...

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

Is that people get stuck behind one's car in traffic. They've got no recourse but to view one's opinion (w/no chance to respond) for ages. Even when agreed upon, it can be interminable in the "once is funny, twice is silly..." fashion parents know all too well.

Which is why my only sticker is the website address for adopting greyhounds :-)