Riding the Bike with One Pedal.

Category: craziness (Page 3 of 9)

Them’s the Pits….

I had a day on Friday where I rolled from one thing to the next: coffee in the a.m. with a salesperson, then the rest of the day unfolded at my feet. Off to Costco, then to Indigo Wild, one of my favorite local businesses, to get some Xmas shopping wrapped up. Their factory has a little storefront and the employees are always cheerful, dogs can be seen roaming around,  and the smells are to die for.  I fell in love with the Mazel Tov soap (a heady mix of almond and orange) but stuck to my list…except for one little “for me” treat. I was looking at their Zum Mist, which comes in 10+ scents, and had a little note that said something about “the perfect mist for rooms, lockers, cars, anyplace that needs a little freshening, even your body.” I think, “Self, that is nifty! Let us select one of these!” I sprayed about four different ones, and settled on Clove-Mint. Nice and spicy, with the uplifting mint notes. Paid for my purchases and headed off to meet friends for lunch.

Now this part is unheard of: I’m more than an hour early. So I decide to hang out in my car, maybe do some knitting. Keep in mind, the weather was unseasonably warm, and the sun beating in on me through the car windows had me feeling a bit steamed. A smidge sweaty. Not so fresh, you might even say. I think to myself, “Hey! I just got that spray!” and I proceed to snake the spray can into a sleeve and give my armpits a refreshing little mist.

Then I decide I should call my insurance company, to make sure that my prescription refills were sent in properly, and handle any problems before the weekend comes and offices are closed.

Suddenly, my armpits begin to burn. As in, BURN. CALAMITY. A NEST OF FIRE ANTS UNDER EACH ARM.  EN FUEGO. CUIDADO. And I’m shouting my choices at the automatic operator, writhing about in my seat, trying to reach behind me to see if I can grapple successfully for some handi-wipes I keep in the car, apparently for emergencies like this one. No luck. So I continue with my phone call, while keeping my arms in the air, trying to prevent skin from touching skin, as that seems to exacerbate the problem. Every so often I do have to clutch them in pain, while the service representative keeps putting me on hold to check things. I think to myself, ok, essential oils, probably best not sprayed directly on skin, and especially skin that doesn’t really see daylight and has only seen  gentle Dove products for the past decade.  It feels like the fire of a thousand suns is pouring out from each armpit, and a gingerly attempt to touch the skin makes me imagine a rash the size of Kentucky. I revert to arms-in-the-air. This phone call with the insurance dude takes 23 minutes. By this point, I am ready to run into traffic and make the pain stop, but it also begins to subside, albeit at a much slower rate than its onset.

By the time everything is wrapped up, and I decide I can go into the restaurant and wait without tying up a table for an obnoxious amount of time, the pain is nearly gone. I was prepared to go to the washroom and have a mini-shower right there in the sink, if it came to that.

BUT.

My pal Teri did point out that at least it was just my armpits. That not-so-fresh-feeling-let’s-try-this-OMG could have been a helluva lot worse.

Good Times

Last night, in my dreams, I was teaching a knitting class. In a different city, in a huge -crazy huge- auditorium. And famous knitters were there, and it was all rather chaotic. I was feeling stressed, worrying about everyone keeping up, trying to keep the room in control.

But I didn’t need to worry. Because then a stream of colored water came rushing in behind me, eddying and flowing towards the drop off beyond the podium, and as I looked at it more closely, I saw that it was actually blood. And I ran towards the back of the building, to discover it was raining blood. Torrential downpour. A veritable Stephen King Epic World Awash In Blood.

Get to! Analyze THAT. I’m sure it’s just that Christmas spirit, misdirected!

Fuchsia Friday

Screw all this “Black Friday” stuff. I get it, it’s all about stores coming out of the red ink and into the black, but good lord, folks, you really NEED to trample your way in? I was thinking about all of this yesterday, as I considered reviving my tradition of going out shopping on Black Friday, wondering when it all turned from a shopping day with more excitement into a fuckin’ piranha tank.  There’s very little I need that would require me getting up at 3 am at this point in my life.  James even reminded me of this adventure (“Remember, you said you weren’t going anymore?”)

Oh yeah. And here I was, contemplating Joann’s AND CostCo. I still was, until I saw that I’d been looking at the wrong day, and that Joann’s didn’t open at 7 am, but instead, at 6 am. One hour was enough to make me really question if it was worth it or not. So I jumped online to calculate just how much I’d save on that damned OTT-Lite, and lo and behold? Joanns.com was having a sale. With a floor OTT lamp for $50, and free shipping if you spent $75. Since I was going to shell out over $100 on the lamp alone (with the extra coupon), I tapped in all my info, got a replacement bulb and one thing I needed to complete a gift. Grand total of $75.97, free shipping, bay-bee!

I did go out later, made a grocery store run and a trip to Westlake Hardware, and let me just say, I don’t know if they have a special training course at Westlake Ace for how to treat women when they come in? But the car industry could learn a LOT from these people.  I needed to get a few nuts and bolts, a new humidifier filter, and what I thought was a thumb screw. Within a minute of entering the store, I was greeted by two people, and the man working the floor asked if I needed help finding anything. Indeed I did, and within five minutes, we had all the nuts, bolts and washers I needed, at the correct size and length. He looked at the part I brought in, pronounced I already had a screw in there, but needed a tiny allen wrench (for thirty-nine cents) and I was on my merry way, with everything I needed and no frustrations.  As I left, I was reflecting on how awesome everything had gone (I had imagined myself digging through compartment after compartment of bolts, probably spilling some) and that my experience is like that every time I go. I don’t work for them, no affiliation, I just have to say, I’m either lucky, look unbelievably pathetic, or they’ve got some really good customer service, and I’m betting on the latter.

At CVS, I couldn’t help but stare at the woman who was checking out in front of me, and she looked back at me with some glimmer of recognition, but didn’t say anything. I pondered how Kansas City gets smaller and smaller each year, and sometimes people who work in other places I frequent will pop up (say, at the grocery store, and your mind struggles to place them.) I didn’t think much of it, but she returned, because they’d overcharged her for photos, and she had no photos. She looked at me again, and I finally had to say, “Do we know each other? You look really familiar.” And she said, yes, we did, and told me who her husband was, who is someone my husband got into it with during his last months with a local waterfowl organization, and so there we had it, not only did we have a connection but it was utterly fractured and stupid.  I was instantly regretting asking her who she was and realizing exactly why she didn’t greet me in the first place, and so we stood there at the pharmacy counter, awkwardly, like Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant and Mrs. Robert E. Lee somehow got stuck at the same tea table  (I’m playing the role of Mrs. Grant, btw, I don’t care what side Missouri fought on.)  I graciously told the cashier to handle her refund first, and we both stood there staring at her while attempt after attempt to credit her back failed. Then she had to call a manager, who didn’t show up, and she finally asked Mrs. Lee if she could take care of me real quick while they waited for the manager. I scrawled my name on the line and escaped as quickly as I could, wondering how in the hell they were now in our neighborhood. Like I said, small town, big city.

So it was a good day, no crazy shopping, though I’ve lived vicariously through others, as people post pictures of their giant tv’s and exhaustion from having to either work the sales or from still dealing with family. Me, I’m having a British crime procedural marathon, watching episodes of MI:5 (Spooks) and nibbling on cheese. If I were to paint the day a color, it would be the shockingly bright, happy magenta I love so dearly, making it a very fuchsia Friday indeed.

File Under: “Couldn’t Make This Up If I Tried.”

It’s been a pretty stressful week here at Chez PlazaJen. I’ve got a ton of work going on, and I’ve been burning the midnight oil to get it all done. Yesterday I was just plain stupid by the time I got home! So, my perspective on things is a little skewed, as I’ve had some tunnel vision and whack-a-mole days of late.

Today I got an email. From someone I didn’t know, and it didn’t appear to be spam. (I even checked, afterward, and the sender and send-ee both have LinkedIn pages that match city/state, plus the signature contained a phone number and address.) A little background first: I use my full name for one of my gmail addies and sometimes I get invitations to family reunions that aren’t mine, I’ve been asked to weigh in on Christmas plans (by family that isn’t mine), so on and so forth.  I usually, gently, try to steer the person back to their address book so the other Jennifer out there doesn’t miss out.

Given my state of mind, it might explain why I found this so goddamned funny when I opened an email that had every appearance of being intended for me, as it did actually come from a real person, who was sending to his wife and me. (but not me.)

The email subject? “Wedding Pics You Requested.”
The copy? “Enjoy”

Now, I’m sure it’s a joke between them, but I really was still a little surprised by the last one….not what I expected. At all.

wpic1

wpic2

wpic3

The (Self-Appointed) Spelling and Grammar Police Are Having A Week.

I don’t claim to have perfect grammar, spelling, or even spectacular sentence structure. I do, however, make every effort to use correct spelling and proper grammar, and I try to limit the number of sentences I start with the word “so”, as that is a particular weakness of mine.

This week has been a bit crazy, hectic, stressful, you name it – but I have been provoked twice now to actually yell at the television because of spelling and grammar. The Fox 4 morning news crew are a fun bunch, but a couple of them just cannot get the proper use of the word “good” versus “well”. I finally had to post on their Facebook page because I just couldn’t take it anymore. Don Harmon, the weatherman, had just finished saying “Slow..ly. Slowly. I think that’s right.” And then Mark Alford responded with something like, “It’s going good out there.”  My post:

Way to go, Don, properly identifying adverbs! (slow-LY!) You are correct!
Next, let’s get Mark telling the world things are going WELL instead of
‘good’, since that is not proper grammar and it makes me yell at him.
Thanks!

To his credit, Mark actually responded with humor, saying “im well with that!” I may have to go down there with a ruler and rap some knuckles. Actually, it would be rather fun to have a paintball gun and every time an egregious grammatical mistake is uttered, KAPOW! I would also shout what they should have said, since I’m quite good at that already.  The traffic guy should be very afraid if this comes to fruition.

Which brings me to this morning, when KSHB (NBC)  flashed up two different slides (the typed-up cards on their template background that accompany the anchors while they’re talking) with horrid typos. The first one was about the new television season, and that production had “haulted” on a show. Uh, wtf is that? You can haul things, but you don’t hault them. Then, THEN, the next story was about – wait for it – BOAL GAMES. This is not the closed-captioning system translating, this is someone typing it in for the day’s stories. Seriously, I think six-year olds know how to spell “bowl”.

I think what bugs me in all of this is that even though I don’t hold my local media outlets to the standards I would hold, say, the New York Times, I do expect a certain amount of accuracy and I expect a whole lot of proper grammar. This isn’t a reality tv show, this is the news. Manufactured, selective, tilted at times, sensationalist most of the time, but you are still THE NEWS. And in ignoring grammar and spelling, it feels like we are moving yet another ten paces closer to accepting an unacceptable level of national stupidity. Why not just start typing it all in phone-texting style? Hell, start doing shots of Jager during the news, why wear a tie, or a nice pantsuit (Katie Horner, I’m lookin’ at you), just wear swimsuits or dress like the cast of Jersey Shore? Talk smack, talk trash, why have standards at all? Editorialize while you’re at it!

Nevermind me, I’ll still be getting my real news from NPR. I have never heard Steve Inskeep say “Things are going good!” And I’m GREAT with that.

I Would Shoot This Week Like I’d Put Down A Rabid Possum, If I Could.

Hey, didja all enjoy the full moon this week? Beautiful, bright, havoc-wreaking full moon that it was? Good god. The Crazy ratcheted up pretty high this week, I must say.

On Wednesday, I met a couple friends for an impromptu lunch at Red Snapper. Upon leaving, I thought my back tire looked low. Indeed, it was. As in almost flat. Yikes! So I hustled across the street, got air back in it, skipped my errands, and came home. It stayed inflated pretty well and looked good the next morning, so we assumed it was a temporary seal thing, hitting a pothole, etc. But now I’m paranoid. So I left work yesterday with paranoia in my heart, looked at my tire, and decided it looked lower. Not like the first time, but lower and something must be wrong. (One thing to know about me: I go from blissfully ignorant to OMFG WE’RE GONNA DIE AND LOSE ALL OUR MONEY FIRST in about 8.2 seconds flat.) So I’m worrying. And as I start to drive in the parking lot, I hear this crazy noise. OMFG! I pull over, spanning four parking spaces, and put the car in park, frozen, listening. I’m quite certain this sound is coming from my tire. Except the sound continues, after I’ve stopped. I finally realized that it was a plane flying overhead. Yay! I’m losing my mind!

Get home, the Wo takes a look, agrees it’s low, and we come up with the game plan: tomorrow at some point, I’ll go in to Firestone, get the thing fixed, get an oil change, and be on my merry way. We refill a bit with the pump he has. He checks it this morning: pretty low again, so now we accelerate the time frame, and I’m heading up there for an 8 am appointment so they can get it taken care of and I can be in Westport by 9:45. Everything seems fine, I’m hanging with Mr. Magoo in the waiting area until he’s finished, then I switch seats so I can keep an eye on things, and get called to the counter around 9. Lookin’ good. Except for one thing. They can’t fix the tire. It’s all shredded on the inside, he says. And my two front tires have wear on the insides of the tires and you can’t see it unless the car is up on the hoochymomma thingy, but it’s really bad and I need four new tires, he gestures at wildly circled numbers on a sheet of paper and can I hang on a sec because he has to run something out to some manager in the parking lot.

I get out the phone, and call the Wo. Tell him briefly that I’m being sold 4 new tires and could he talk to the man when he returns. Which he does, at that moment. I hand the phone over, he goes through the spiel again, and hands the phone back to me.

Now. Here is where, for me, it really broke apart. I can be blissfully clueless and unaware at times. But the rest of the time, my antennae are set on “11”. And so, as I take the phone, and as most people do, my head tilts down to listen and talk. But I am still watching the employee – who is looking at the computer, and I see, in this short second, he rolls his eyes. So as I’m hearing my husband in my left ear “THEYARETRYINGTOSELLYOUTIRESYOUDON’TNEEDYOUNEEDTOGOSOMEWHEREELSE” I’m thinking, “You motherfucker. There are two people standing right here, and the only one who gets to roll their eyes at my husband? IS ME.” So I’m pissed. He’s pissed. The Wo’s pissed. I hang up. Store dude looks at me and I say, “OK, this is why I let him handle these things. Can we just fill the tire with air and I’ll pay for my oil change?” And he says, “Well, he sounded really angry, I’m just saying, if you don’t replace all four tires, you have AWD, you would void your warranty (I’m still puzzling that one, as the dealer’s warranty expired a year ago), and let me take you back in the shop and show you this wear, you can’t see it unless the car’s in the air, so you can explain it to your husband,” and I’m all, “NO, that’s fine, let’s just settle up here.”

Because if I go back into the garage, it’s another point of sales pitch to wear the little lady down, I suspect.

So I wait, and then another employee comes in and tells me all about her morning and how she was t-boned on her way in and blah blah blah, and then a new dude comes in and says it looks like I need to be helped. I decline, saying I’m just waiting. But here’s what I think is interesting. First dude has now gone back into the garage, and never comes back out to interact with me again. New dude is now “handling me” and feigns shock and awe at the numbers on my tires and that I’m going to drive off the lot with my car in such a state, even, but is all smiles and polish and tells me they will give me their recommendations and an estimate, should I want to return. Now, I’m not all-knowing in the world of auto repair but I felt like this guy’s appearance was definitely a planned move and part of the whole schtick. (I heard the schtick given by the t-boned employee over the phone, all the dreadful things they found and how much it would cost.)

I pay, collect my key, my receipt and go. In my car, I look at the price tag: just over $1,100. Yes, eleven-hundred. Dollars.

The Wo is already regretting having sent me there, but he wanted me to have a nice place to sit and wait, but now I’m going where he wished he’d sent me in the first place, to Larry’s Wholesale Tires on Wornall.  Larry, or his other cousin Larry, comes in from the shop to see what I need and sends me down the road to the U-Haul place (which he also owns, and I ponder this, thinking how unassuming he is and he probably is quite well-off), because that’s where they fix tires. Honestly, I don’t know why I ever thought I’d be incapable of driving a car in NYC, because if you can cross two lanes of Wornall without a light and make repeated left-hand turns while you’re on it, I’d say you could take on just about any traffic situation in this country. I get down to the U-Haul spot and for whatever reason, I am instantly reassured. I’m greeted, there’s no problem, just back it in here, okey dokey, the guy finds a 1.5″ metal shiv that’s in the main part of the tread, he extracts it, does other manly things to the tire (including patching it), tells me he doesn’t see any shredding, but at some point I’ll need A new tire, because the side seam looks a little worn, and they all blinked when I told them what their neighbors up the street wanted me to spend.

So then I ate some Indian food at Chai Shai with Beth and knitted and decompressed (and wished I’d gotten the mango shake instead of the iced chai, because o.m.g. is it good,) ran into Dan of Gone Mild there, always nice to see him and say hello.

Then I came home, and discovered the breezeway was filled with bits of foam and bright red maribou feathers. Because Tripper had GONE INTO THE CLOSET, removed one slipper, and systematically shredded it everywhere. Then he took JWo’s old shoe he’d already done a number on, and completely chewed off the toe. That fucking dog isn’t getting out of his crate until he’s 12.

Next on my list? Re-installing software on my laptop that was rebuilt on Wednesday. I told you, this week has just been from hell! TGIF, indeed!

Can’t you hear that beeeeeeping????

Yesterday afternoon, in the midst of issues with my printer/scanner, I started to hear a faint beeping. It was erratic, in many ways – the length of the beep, the frequency of the beep, the time in-between beeps. I figured it was somehow related to the fight I was having with the printer, and dashed out the door, hoping it would somehow magically resolve itself. Or perhaps just my imagination.

Ahhh, magical resolution. I sense I’m not the only one in the universe who’d like that shit to happen.

Of course, it didn’t. The beep was on such a tone/frequency that made it incredibly difficult to figure out exactly where it was coming from. I bitched about it on Ravelry. Several people suggested the usual suspect – smoke detector with a failing battery. And certainly, I’ve been plagued by that one, before, but this was different. Those tend to chirp, sharply, so even when they’re on another floor, you know you actually heard it. This beep was just enough to make you question your hearing and sanity.

I stood by the printer. Beep sounded far away. Stood in the living room. Still could hear it. Stood in the breezeway. Sounded further away. Put head in stairway leading upstairs. Nothin’. Put head in stairway leading to basement. Nothin’. Stood in living room. Faintly heard it again. OK. Gotta be in the living room, and lord help me if it’s some random thing like a digital watch, because I’m currently sitting in my very own mouse nest of knitting, papers, books and other flotsam. It has to be coming from my laptop. Unplug the speakers and the cooling mat. Yep, still beeping. WTF?! Turn it off, shut it down, and blessed silence. Indeed. It’s the laptop.

So this morning, even with the sound shut off, it persists in beeping. Rav peeps (yay #LSG) are also suggesting motherboard and cooling fan issues, and that I can go in and turn it off, but it’s probably trying to tell me something important. Dell service doesn’t seem to start until 8 am (that was the online help, I discovered), so my orange creamsicle came along for the ride to the office.

After some initial language barriers, Sir India Help Man and I were off to the races. I think he finally realized he wasn’t dealing with a plain old tack, but that in fact, I was fairly sharp, and we didn’t need to spell out “D-E-L-L” twice because I was already loping ahead of  him down the path. A few system updates and then came the inquiry, “Do you have a screwdriver?” spoken like Apu from the Simpsons, and now we were going into new territory. I’m good at putting furniture together, I read directions, I follow the steps, I enjoy the process, but things like popping off the bottom of my laptop felt a little treacherous. Fortunately, I only had to take out the battery. I thought. (My first clue should have been the fact I didn’t need to use the screwdriver.)

So after SIHM and I determine which side of the computer is which and it’s upside down, he’s telling me to find THE COMPARTMENT. Ok. The Compartment. I totally felt like I was disarming a bomb with very limited guidance. TWO SCREWS, TWO SCREWS. Well, dude, there are FOUR. No, no! They should not come out! (But they DO! they DO! I skipped telling him they just fell right on out.) Plus my line to India had a bobble that every couple of minutes we had a little 5-second tab of silence, which, when you’re unscrewing the laptop components, is enough to make you keep asking for shit to be repeated, and we were talking over each other, it was a-ok fun times, yesirreeApu. I did get the hard drive taken out, and then I was instructed to re-start the computer. (Me, ever linear and instruction-based: “Don’t I need to put the battery back in first?” “Yes! Yes! I am so sorry.” ) Well, the beeping was over at that point. So it’s the hard drive, and because I had also mentioned the mousepad getting hot, he decided to have the hard drive, motherboard and cooling fan all replaced.

Did I mention I have a two-year warranty that came with the laptop when I bought it? Thank heavens. Some tech person is going to call, make an appointment and fix it on the spot. Double thank  heavens for that part of the warranty.

So now I’m trying to make a backup, but it’s my own twisted form of backup, as Windows keeps hitting some component or software that won’t let it make a traditional backup, and I don’t want to call the Help Line back, because I just can’t imagine the fun that would be. arrrrrrrgh.

But speaking of fun, there was a point that I held the phone to the underside of my laptop and asked him if he could hear the beeping. (No, no he could not.)  Now as long as I don’t start smelling burning hair, at least I know it IS the laptop, and not the onset of a stroke.

The Hottest Pepper in the WOooooorld

Yep, the Bhut Jolokia.

Well, ok, as of 9 am, my husband discovered there’s some NEW pepper that has about 130,000 more Scoville units than the Bhut, but I really don’t care. BECAUSE I ATE THE BHUT.

The Ghost Pepper (as it’s commonly called) has over 1 million Scoville units to its pedigree. That means it’s super calicrazyfucking hot. A jalapeno has about 2500 SU. A habanero has 100k-350k SU.

Keep in mind, all the dudes were gung-ho. Oh yeah, gonna eat this chili pepper. And five of them did. My brother-in-law went all out and ended up eating about half a pepper. (HE CRAZY.) I decided to try a chunk of habanero. It really, really burned, but wasn’t debilitating.
Then the Wo finally said he’d try the Bhut. I’d told him I’d do it if he did it. (Which Beth was QUICK to remind me after he’d taken his bite.) So I did. And it really didn’t do much.So I took another bite. Ah, yes, that one …. resonated.

Here’s the crazy thing, about both the habanero and the Bhut: both had an unbelievable fresh, citrus, bright clean flavor. Before the heat even began. They were utterly delicious. Like your brain’s going, “Well, what the hell, you rang up and warned me this was going to be difficult and it’s surprisingly charming and OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD” because then, yes, after that delicious milli-moment, the burn rapidly takes over and it’s as though you’ve maced your tongue. It really does burn. But the endorphin rush is also something to be reckoned with. I felt like I’d had a victorious afternoon hike, followed by a relaxing hot tub. All from a vegetable sliver no wider than a few staples.

And I did get very hot from it. My skin flushed like nobody’s bidness:

BhutFace

But I have bragging rights now, and I can certainly stare down any bowl of salsa in the future and say “I’ve had hotter…”

Rights, Rights, Rights.

So, I was mulling over this crazy situation that’s coming up this weekend, with the little cult-like church down in Gainesville, FL that plans to burn the Qu’ran on September 11.
On the one hand, you have freedom of speech, and what they’re doing falls under that umbrella. It’s like the nutters of Westboro Baptist, or the Klan, or any other group you despise. Hate what they say, defend to the end their right to do it.
In fact, it’s the Number One amendment in our Bill of Rights.

On the other hand, you have freedom of religion, and it’s not particularly love-thy-brother to burn any religion’s holy book, declare them Evil and want to eradicate them. One of the persecutions our founding fathers were fleeing was an imposed religion. Wait, that’s also covered in that First Amendment. Hm. In fact, this church’s brand of lunacy dogma is protected as well.

Certainly there are greater scholars than I, who could expound for days on the topic of Constitutional Law, Religion, and freedoms in general.

What our original government never could have imagined was a day when information transmitted in the millisecond of a lightbulb turning on, that images and words and moving pictures would exist and live on ad infinitum in an ethereal world that gives as much as it takes.

So what do we do? We can’t legally order this man not to proceed with his notion of protest. It is in direct contrast to (most of) our collective values, whether you worship Jesus, Jehovah or JellyBellys. (Allah, too, but it doesn’t start with J.) I’d like to see the entire world turn their backs. If the Qu’ran burns in the forest and nobody puts it on the internet, did it really happen?

Of course, our rapacious modern media won’t do this. Someone will argue the need to record the event for historic purposes. But the media attention is what this man WANTS. Giving it to him, and thus elevating his notoriety not only in our country, but the world, is, in my opinion, irresponsible. The so-called minister of this ‘church’, and I use the term loosely, has said he’s willing to die for his beliefs, but he has no regard for how his actions could trigger the reaction that would cause the deaths of our own soldiers abroad. Sure, you can spend another fortnight arguing responsibility there – if I load a gun, turn the safety off, and hand it to a ten-year old, do I get to throw my hands in the air and say, “Hey, I didn’t pull the trigger.” ? To me, this is where the decision breaks down. If you want to burn something – even a flag- and the only repercussions are social ostracization (or acceptance by like-minded people) or the only harm can come to you, then knock yourself the hell out. But when the fucking U.S. General overseeing our military operations says, “Hey, you doing this could really start some bad shit half a continent away, and oh by the way, your little shindig will be used in terrorist training videos,” wouldn’t you think twice? Maybe I’m being generous by using the word “think”. It just angers me that one of our soldiers, doing their job in Afghanistan, could somehow suffer the fallout from this person’s “conviction” to protest.

And, while I’m at it, I object to the conversations that compare this to burning an American flag.  Because when you burn the Bible, you’re making a statement against Christians. Or the Torah, against Jews. So on and so forth. The flag? That’s all of us. You, me, black, white, every shade in-between, no matter your god, no matter your political party, no matter your income or education status: all of us are under that flag. When you make the choice to burn the flag, you are indicting our country in your protest, and it is (pick your option) an act of defiance against the entire country or an act of aggression against the entire country. Even this is still protected in our country. But these two situations are not the same.

Just remind yourself this weekend about what our First Amendment rights protect. And remember the people who died on September 11th, and all the other people, soldiers, freedom fighters who continue to die to protect this right.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This is the most heralded truth I hold as a citizen of this country, and I am sad that the actions of one tiny pocket of our population (who enjoy the very freedoms they are denigrating) could be seen as representative of our collective beliefs about the Muslim faith.

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