I Don't Get It

I was pretty adamant about it. 

I refused to give in to all the hype a couple years back. I'd just roll my eyes whenever I would hear something on TV or refuse to read an article about what the latest craze was that was making all the middle aged ladies I knew lose their minds. 

And one day I was having lunch with a young friend of mine. She insisted I had to have it. 

So, I reluctantly bought it on my Nook. 

Should I sum up my review here or should I make you wait. 

Nah.  I won't put you through the misery I endured. 

It was the worst purchase I have ever made in my life. And after reading to final page, fully expecting that surely at some point there would be one single redeeming sentence in the whole damned thing, I found out I was wrong. If only I had stuck to my original principle and not given the author one single penny of my money.  

Hell, I would rather have given it to Michael Moore. And that's saying something. 

So now, all those rabid women who read the book are back at it. Because some idiot decided to make it into a MOVIE. Gad. Now I have to listen to all those same women drone on and on about who played Grey. 

I could only care less if they had cast Johnny Depp. Thank God, that psycho never made a penny from me. 

Ok, I understand all the idiotic sex scenes described in the book sent some horny old and apparently young women crazy, but I still didn't get it. 

Since I had originally heard many middle aged women talk about Fifty Shades of Crap (sorry, I cannot bring myself to say what should never be mentioned), I had assumed it was some erotic mid-age crisis drivel. 

And again, I was wrong. 

Instead the female lead was nothing but a fresh young newly-graduated college chick. And instead of following in the footsteps of all these crazed empowered feminists, she becomes some neurotic sex slave to a man that is several years older than her. 

That's it. The entire novel is nothing but this chick getting smacked, beaten and sex-slaved by this idiotic character. 

What the hell happened?  

I am NOT a feminist. Mainly because I think they are all idiotic Sandra Fluke wannabes. And that crappy book just proved it. 

I mean if feminists really believe the crap they spiel, then why didn't even one of them complain about this book?

I mean, here is this supposed smart college graduate who instead a of even attempting to become a functional part of society instead decides to be hit and whipped and controlled by this older man. She is not to have a job, see her friends and she must answer her phone the minute her "master" wants to screw her after he's finished with his female sex torture room. 

And not one radical feminist that I heard screamed foul. Not one. 

There was a deafening Bill Clinton silence. 

Feminists, my ass. 

Just Get Over It.

I just must be in a weird mood lately. 

Like in the last year "lately". 

I have all these things to blog about all day long. Imaginary writings during the day that if someone would invent a damned app that would just auto fill this blog would leave you in awe of my amazing talent. 

But when I sit in my chair, which is way too often nowdays, I don't accomplish anything. 

Sometimes I'm working on this new "secondary" career so that I no longer spend months and months at someone else's beck and call and will allow us the freedom to winter far from this frozen hell.  

Sometimes, I'm playing some idiotic game on my IPad that I would never admit to in real life. 

Sometimes, well most times, I'm facebooking.  

Which should bring me to the subject of how horrible it was to learn that two of my five readers have been Facebook friends and have left me out. 

Ok.  That's just a joke. I HATE Facebook drama and decided to poke fun at Dana and Coffey on her post about drama bloggers. 

Which exhaustedly brings me around to my original intent. 

I stay away from drama. My family doesn't do drama and I attempt, at nearly all costs to avoid it everywhere. Not always possible, but it's certainly better than it has been in years.  And somehow tonight I fell. No, that's not right,  I inserted myself into a situation on Facebook with a friend who posted his rant about a bumper sticker. 

Now one would think from reading this blog o' mine that it was a political argument. 

But I refrain from political discussions on Facebook.  And I quickly unfriend anyone who feels it necessary on a daily basis to post cartoons or make comments about my political beliefs. 

Anyway, here was the first part of the exchange.  

This was written by a guy that grew up in my hometown and who, until recently shared many of the same beliefs as I. He has recently had some life changes and I have been sensing this "turning liberal" mantra coming from him. 

"I have a rant (again) and well, quite frankly, it is sure to piss some of you off. And well, I'm sorry about that, but it will not change my attitude. I just saw a pickup truck with a bumper sticker that read "US Army, Vietnam Veteran, You NEVER welcomed us home"

First off, thank you for your service. I cannot express enough how much your service means to me as an American. But here's my issue. The Vietnam War was 40 years ago. The majority of the folks who never welcomed you home are either deceased or at the very least no longer a player in the public or private sectors. You will be the first one to tell a young black man that he needs to get over his ancestors being slaves because that is ancient history and we have made amends to them. Well sir, it's time for you to get over the fact that you were never welcomed home. Every President since Reagan has honored your service. Each one of them has done something to memorialize your service. Many memorials across this great country have been built to show you this generation does care and we do thank you. It's time for you to move past it and allow your heart to heal."

I read it earlier and started to dismiss it. 

And yet tonight it really started to irk me. 

And then I read what a friend of his wrote. 

"Also the same ones that tell us to suck it up they faught real war...they aren't comparable really two very different animals...but both WAR, how does the type of fight entitle you to be "more" scarred. Dont get me wrong love and respect the road they paved for me, but like you didn't want judged don't judge us. We dont choose the WAR."

I thought about my response for a minute. 

As I said, I don't do drama and I normally just ignore things that can get heated in a Facebook discussion. 

But tonight I wasn't in that kind of mood.  Maybe because I have respected this man up until this point. So I was honest. And I worded my response as I would any other good friend. If you're my friend and the time has come for real words, then expect them from me. 

So I wrote the following. 

"Ok. I am going to vehemently disagree with you here. 

I don't know of any Nam Vets who take this attitude. None. All of them that I know have quietly lived their lives and never used Vietnam as an excuse. 

What is happening now is that many are getting into their retirement years. And that leaves more time on their hands. Which means that they are just now experiencing a lot of the PTSD symptoms that they had suppressed up until now. 

It may have been 40 years for you and I, but it's every night for some of these guys. 

No one living today lived through slavery, so your comparison fails miserably. 

Just getting over isn't so easy when you have spent your life trying to forget the bad memories and just when they should be able to relax and enjoy themselves, they are haunted by horrible nightmares. 

And just so you know, none of those guys CHOSE WAR!

They were drafted. They didn't get a choice like today's vets got. 

They were forced to fight by their own government. 

And instead of hating America, they love it even more. 

Much more that those of us able to bitch about a bumper sticker. 

Because they watched their buddies die beside them on a horrible Christmas Eve in 1969. And they listened to the screams all night long and were unable to help them because of the incoming fire. 

Most likely you saw a bumper sticker placed there by a spouse. Who knows full well the horror of that war. Because she's seen her husband suffer through the late onslaught of PTSD. 

Enjoy your freedom."

Of course that set off a £!%#storm. Especially from the chick who thinks the Vietnam Vets chose the war they "faught" in. 

A couple of women had lost brothers in Vietnam and they agreed with me. 

The last straw was when my friend who posted the original rant came back on and said he had the utmost respect but I had missed the point. 

Here's the great thing about Facebook.  If someone is really starting to get on your nerves, there is about three keystrokes to delete them from your life. 

And with that I was done. 

However he must have noticed because within about 2 minutes he deleted the entire post. 

Yeah, I certainly missed his point. And glad I did. 

The Greatest Play in Baseball Had Nothing to do With the Game

 

The Rockets Red Glare

Yeah, it's my annual July 4th post. I really tried not to get so irritated about all the stories going around this year about being courteous of veterans during the 4th celebration of fireworks.
I couldn't help it. Of course I appreciate what our veterans have gone through, however I guarantee today's young veterans never saw the kind of action my uncles did. Pretty sure most didn't see what my husband saw. But it was a fad this year to be aware of the terror the sound of fireworks causes veterans. I AM aware of it. Because of the following story. And you will note that my uncle never, not once told us kids not to participate in the festivities. Maybe I'm being heartless, but I remember that this hero didn't whine to the local news about jumping out of his skin when he heard firecrackers.

Uncle Bob would always come outdoors and sit in a lounge chair on those long ago July 4th celebrations when we would visit our cousins during the dog days of summer. We had spent our days walking along the uneven sidewalks of Loogootee to get Mister Mistys and toward dusk we'd gather in their small backyard that still had our cardboard box houses we had built from refrigerator and other appliance boxes we found in the back alley of a local store.

Invariably someone would end up stepping on a still hot sparkler some rugrat had dropped in the yard. Then the firecrackers would come out. They were set off in bunches, still tangled together or individually, a single loud pop here or there. As we kids would be running around the yard, Uncle Bob would remain sitting in his chair. Occasionally when I would turn my head from all the celebrating I would notice that his hands would be clutching the plastic arms of the chair and his eyes would close when the bang of the firecrackers and bottle rockets would explode.

I can still picture him sitting there, visably wincing as each bang seemed to get louder.  Even as a kid I knew why he winced, but I sure didn't appreciate what it took for him to sit there and be reminded of his days in Sicily. 

I wish now I had taken the time to sit down with him and hear what it was like fighting in WWII.  To hear of the battles and the reason he had a Purple Heart that I never saw until the day of his funeral.

I wish I knew.  I wish I had understood.  I wish I could thank him now for his service to our country.  But wasn't the innocence of not understanding, of living free and carefree exactly what he fought for?  That I COULD take my freedom for granted as a child.  Didn't he fight so I would never know the horrors of living under tyranny?

Happy Independence Day everyone.  I hope we never forget the sacrifices the thousands of "Uncle Bob's" that have provided us the opportunity to live in the greatest nation on earth.