Sunday 07 October 2001

Wedding bands and bombs

I'm writing this late on Sunday afternoon, after a totally lazy day spent indoors (with the wind roaring outside, sounding like a prop plane). Sam has 23 pages to go with Prelude to Dune:  House Atreides and then I might be able to talk to him again ... like me he's a totally focused reader; interrupt and you're lucky to get a grunt! I finished House Corrino yesterday so I can't wait until he catches up so we can gossip about the Bene Gesserit's manipulative ways and the lovely icky progress of the Baron's  disease and and ... Yes, we are geeks. I basically enjoyed the trilogy, the background and character development leading up to Dune; although the writing style annoyed me at times, as did the constant flicking from one scene/action to another then another then back ... also whoever was hired as the sub-editor or proofreader ought to be taken out, covered in honey and tied down near an anthill, in the middle of a desert, as was done to serious offenders in the Crusades. I think ... or was that a Doctor Who episode? Geeks again.

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We had a pretty busy Saturday, really. After a slow start, we went into the city for lunch at our favourite restaurant (I'm working my way through the menu - this time I had the famous 8 oz sirloin steak with Strangford mussels) then dandered around for a few hours. We only had a couple of "missions" so we could take things slow. First stop was the jeweller's where Sam had had my engagement ring made; yes, we were after wedding rings. I had one of those kinda nice, warm shivery "oh wow, oh my goodness, this is really happening" moments. Hee. 

After looking at a rather gobsmacking range of rings (fancy, plain, sparkly, different metals, stones/no stones .... ), we decided on matching ultra-classic (ie, plain), rounded bands in rose gold. We both liked the concept of a contrast/mix  of metals, continuing the theme of the engagement ring, but anything other than a plain rose gold band detracted from the rose gold and platinum gorgeousness of my engagement ring (there it is; is it not beautiful?), also I have tiny kiddie-sized fingers that tend to look "overwhelmed" with too much on, so we went for the plain bands. Which do indeed look divine. 

Wow, we might actually pull this wedding thing off; that's a few tasks/decisions we've completed this week!

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We made it home for a quick dinner and change, before heading out to meet Melissa, Amy and a bunch of other friends for The Menace's birthday. The Menace's girlfriend Anya had arranged in deepest secrecy for everyone to be at the particular meeting point (a nice but rather yuppy pub) and she would bring The Menace along. The boy was incredibly surprised to see us all there, as he had no idea whatsoever, and had just been moaning to Anya about how all his real friends were ignoring his birthday. Heh.

After a drink or two (just one Shmirnoff Ice for me) we left the nice but yuppy pub and went on to a more "traditional" flavoured pub, which both Sam and I really really liked and would have been happy to settle in there, but it was not to be ... and to our horror we were dragged off to a loud noisy crowded club/pub type joint.

See, Sam positively abhors clubs, and I have never been a great fan; I went clubbing on occasion with Sooz back in Oz, and generally had a great time, especially if I liked the place and the music was good dance music. (Yes, I do like dance music as well as Mozart, shh.) But ew, this place ... it was vile and anathema to both of us, being way too crowded, as in fire hazard crowded, the noise levels were way too loud for a "pub", it was full of stale cigarette smoke and had sticky floors ew ew and oh no the music, talk about crap. And there is no reason on this earth to play "Lady Marmalade" three times in two hours, Mr DJ.

A couple of times I got up to dance with the girls in the group (hardened glittery every-single-night regular clubbers all - can anyone say, not Jules' type?) and could have got into it if (a) the music hadn't sucked quite so much and (b) pimply little boys hadn't kept putting the (PATHETIC!) moves on me, despite me turning my back/ elbowing / flourishing my left hand ... At one point I knew either I was going to offer to rip this particular little chap's fucking balls off if he didn't back off, or judging by the expression on Sam's face, there was going to be a fight. So I got off the dance floor. I was kind of in the mood for a rumble too but wasn't sure of the etiquette ... dayum.

Finally Sam and I left, and had a nice refreshing walk back to City Hall where we had a cab ordered. Even though we were home by about 0130 we were wrecked all day Sunday, not good for anything but lazing around reading and snuggling a little. Okay, snuggling a lot.

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Later on Sunday ... So Sam and I were just lying around the house (he reading; me writing) when I clicked onto the BBC Online news site to see what was new (BBC Online is about my favourite news site) and there it was ... US strikes in Afghanistan. Even though the build-up has been so intense, the actual realisation that war was underway shocked me ice cold.

I deliberately haven't mentioned the horrendous events of 11 September before, nor the build-up; it has just been too much of ... something. Just plain too much of everything I guess - too much to take in, to process, to feel. I was weepy and nervy for days after 11/09, thinking about the people killed, the enormity of such an event, and the total idiocy of such an attack.  I would read entries by my favourite OLJ-ers and burst into tears ... it was all too much.

Then I began to get angry; not about the terrorism, but the reaction to it. It seemed as if everytime I tuned into the news I heard mindless gabbling rhetoric from politicians, about wars and hunting down folks and bombing Afghanistan, and every commentator and online-journaller seemed to be competing to out-weep, out-shock, out-profound everyone else, and that's what made me angry; the competition, the almost salacious ambience. I stopped reading journals but couldn't avoid the news. I wanted to keep informed, not be a total ostrich, though sticking my head in the sand did seem like a good idea ... 

I became seriously worried. Hey, blowing the Taliban to smithereens would make me pretty happy because the human rights abuses they have committed against their own people make me shudder, but that's not what this is about. And its surely impossible to destroy an amorphous enemy. Making sweeping general statements about a war on terrorism, and deploying 4.5 acre death machines (well, okay, aircraft carriers) to one country ain't gonna solve anything much, as far as I can see - its one helluva big testosterone-y "my stick is bigger than your stick" fest.

So anyway, the war began. I don't believe it is right. There is no such thing as a *good* war. And all of it makes me feel like retching. As I see it, the essential problem here is not terrorism - that is only a symptom of Islamic fundamentalism. All the smart planes, dumb bombs, Tomahawk missiles, aircraft carriers, and B-52s in the world are not going to fix that. The basic tenent of such fundamentalism is that dying for the jihad is the will of Allah, and will make you a hero-martyr, and in its way that is far more powerful a weapon than all the firepower the US and allies has to offer. 

During the 1967 Six-Day War in Israel, there was a joke; the Israelis said they had a secret weapon to win their war, and the secret weapon was that they had no choice. The Taliban feels exactly the same. And that could win them what looks to be an un-winnable war.

I also have concerns about the whole "the enemy of the enemy is my friend" policy which seems to be in practice. The US et al are lining up with the Northern Alliance, who as far as I can tell from reading up on Afghanistan pre-1996 (the year of the Taliban takeover) are just as bad as the Taliban for fundamentalism and removing human rights. 

But I reiterate; this war is not about restoring peoples' rights or even about stamping out terrorism. No matter how many politicians and commentators and OLJ-ers tell me that's what this is about, I do not and will not believe it. It's about revenge, an eye for an eye, and I understand why people feel that way ... But it's not a civilised rationale. If the war was about restoring human rights and removing insane Islamic fundamentalists from government, we'd be seeing a different kind of action - we should have been seeing it for the last 10 years for heaven's sake. The UN and NATO would have been in there replacing the government, restoring the right of women to lead the lives of human beings, putting sanctions in place .... Not continuing to provide arms to all sides of a disorganised, essentially tribal war. And I'm sorry, but food-drops and setting up concentration, I mean, refugee camps is about as effective at this point as a dodgy bandaid.

Instead, the nations of the world turned a blind eye and in a way, and yes I will probably Go Directly To Hell for this, I feel the action on 11 September serves the Western World bloody well right. Inhumanity breeds inhumanity, and the US does not have lilywhite hands.

End rant.

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