Can I just say that, either due to the server or WordPress getting hung up every time it auto-saved, this post took me FIVE HOURS to do? You’d think it would be a lot funnier, wouldn’t you?

It’s not so much funny as… somehow shockingly appropriate.

Good job.

How dare those “troops” refuse to have the patriotism and decency to get killed so that we don’t have to pay for their college or to treat their wounds? I’m so mad, I’m considering taking that yellow magnet off the back of my Nissan Armada! And that dirt imprint it will leave will probably take 20 seconds to clean off! TWENTY SECONDS! Traitors!

I’m considering taking that yellow magnet off the back of my Nissan Armada!

Careful. The paint underneath will come off with it.

I dunno. I’m not here to fuck wit’ ya, Mr. Pierce, and I KNOW your heart’s in the right place. But this fractured ha-ha baby talk LOLSpeak kind of doesn’t seem appropriate to your subject matter to me. Y’know?

We got lots of lives, torn apart, ended violently, ruined, interupted, shattered and destroyed. We got folks, a few of them americans, but remember we started it, millions of ’em, widows, orphans, amputees, heartbroken, sick, scared and alone.

We got memorial day. A day where we could look at our fighting men through the misty lens of history and honor their sacrifice, all the while understanding their secret complicity. But maybe, just maybe, on balance, there was enough good to offset the brutality and domination.

Now we got Iraq. Coming, as it does, on the generational heels of vietnam. How are we to approach this thing? What honor have we earned? How can we thump our chests and weep for our fallen, when they died for a meaningless crime, when the wounded and the damaged and the broken still walk our streets, still struggle in our communities without support, when the families are shattered and broken?

Somebody needs to tell me how to do this Memorial day. I don’t think LOLVets works. Frankly, it pisses me off. But I’m just me. But I don’t want to worship our “heroes” either.

Sure. They did the best they could. This criminal idiocy wasn’t their idea, and it was set on their shoulders to accomplish an unspecified goal in an unspecified amount of time for an unspecified reason. They fought for their honor, they fought for their colleagues, they fought ’cause it was their job.

And now they have to come home, with the memories of the dead civilians, the ruined country, the crimes and the pointlessness in their heads. And home is a place where people lament the cost of filling the SUV, of taking that Disneyland vacation, of trying to get that promotion at the bank.

I don’t know what this Memorial day means. I guess I only know two things. One, I’m sick. Sick at heart, and sick to my soul. None of this should ever have happened, and none of this happened for any reason at all. And two. They don’t carry the guilt. But you can never absolve them. Pretty much what I wrote a year ago still carried a certain truth:

http://stoopid_stuff.blogspot.com/2007/05/memorial-day-how-many-more.html

mikey

I dunno. I’m not here to fuck wit’ ya, Mr. Pierce, and I KNOW your heart’s in the right place. But this fractured ha-ha baby talk LOLSpeak kind of doesn’t seem appropriate to your subject matter to me. Y’know?

We got lots of lives, torn apart, ended violently, ruined, interupted, shattered and destroyed. We got folks, a few of them americans, but remember we started it, millions of ’em, widows, orphans, amputees, heartbroken, sick, scared and alone.

We got memorial day. A day where we could look at our fighting men through the misty lens of history and honor their sacrifice, all the while understanding their secret complicity. But maybe, just maybe, on balance, there was enough good to offset the brutality and domination.

Now we got Iraq. Coming, as it does, on the generational heels of vietnam. How are we to approach this thing? What honor have we earned? How can we thump our chests and weep for our fallen, when they died for a meaningless crime, when the wounded and the damaged and the broken still walk our streets, still struggle in our communities without support, when the families are shattered and broken?

Somebody needs to tell me how to do this Memorial day. I don’t think LOLVets works. Frankly, it pisses me off. But I’m just me. But I don’t want to worship our “heroes” either.

Sure. They did the best they could. This criminal idiocy wasn’t their idea, and it was set on their shoulders to accomplish an unspecified goal in an unspecified amount of time for an unspecified reason. They fought for their honor, they fought for their colleagues, they fought ’cause it was their job.

And now they have to come home, with the memories of the dead civilians, the ruined country, the crimes and the pointlessness in their heads. And home is a place where people lament the cost of filling the SUV, of taking that Disneyland vacation, of trying to get that promotion at the bank.

I don’t know what this Memorial day means. I guess I only know two things. One, I’m sick. Sick at heart, and sick to my soul. None of this should ever have happened, and none of this happened for any reason at all. And two. They don’t carry the guilt. But you can never absolve them. Pretty much what I wrote a year ago still carried a certain truth:

http://tinyurl.com/5fmxb3

mikey

It seems like only yesterday I could go down a row of cars and tear yellow stickers or magnets off of a good two thirds of them. Nowadays it’s maybe one in… 50? 100? I’ve stopped defacing them now – I figure the ones who are left have a pretty high chance of being completely insane…

I wish I could replcace one of those little American flags with a Palestinian or a Mexican flag.

Yeah, Mikey, I hear you — frankly, I don’t know how to react to it either, and gallows humor is really all I got. If it makes you feel any better, I also just gave a hundred bucks to IVAW, and am encouraging everyone I know to do the same.

There comes a point for many of us where we become exhausted by the situation and take refuge in humor, satire, sarcasm, and yes, LOLvets.

I reached that point a long time ago. I cannot function if I take this seriously.

That said, middle Angry Vet is hot.

Can I just say that, either due to the server or WordPress getting hung up every time it auto-saved, this post took me FIVE HOURS to do? You’d think it would be a lot funnier, wouldn’t you?

I’ll get back to you in five hours, when I’ve downloaded it over this West Va. phone line.

P.S. Nice work.

Gallows humor keeps us going sometimes. Even though Mikey is right. But I find the LOLRumsfeld et al. kinda satisfying, in a thin, bitter way. So thanks, LP, and thanks, Mikey.

moar funny pictures

Most sanitized war evar. Good post.

But this fractured ha-ha baby talk LOLSpeak kind of doesn’t seem appropriate to your subject matter to me. Y’know?

Well I usually hat the LOLthings but I thought they fit pretty well. I mean that’s been about the level of maturity we’ve seen from the press and political establishment for a long time now. We joke that irony is dead, and The Onion and The Daily Show do a better job than the newspeople do, and that it is literally impossible to caricature these people – well, this is the next natual step in the digression.

I can see how it would rub you the wrong way, but so much of this stuff has been obvious for so long that normal modes of expression don’t seem to work anymore. Everyone opposes the war, but what was the last major peace protest? Taking it down to an absurdly dumb level gives it a kind of urgency, for me at least. But I do talk a lot of shit.

Trivia as LOL vs sad and incomprehensible reality via the links = satire.

It’s like a giggling cartoon bunny on the conveyor belt to the rendering plant.

I’m for it.

How about an annual Impeach Bush&Co Day. Now that might be satisfying.

Mikey & Leonard, thanks to you both. Indeed, gallows humor is sometimes all we have–and it is certainly all the criminal administration seems to feel is necessary to give to the vets coming home from the wars the criminals created.

They have no respect. They have no honor. They are criminals.

Our veterans deserve so much more.

In honor of my father, USN, WWII, Pacific Theatre
In honor of my wife’s father, US Army, WWII, European Theatre
In honor of my wife, USN (peacetime)
In honor of all who served.

Who was it who said, “War doesn’t determine who is right, only who is left?”

…bc…

I hope we have huge demonstrations on Jan 20th. Oh that would be fun. It will be the most festive inauguration day ever. I wonder if they would block off Times Square for us and let us use the New Year’s ball?

How about an annual Impeach Bush&Co Day. Now that might be satisfying.
Wow. That’s depressing.

you can’t laugh just once!

We could try reading these sites.

Memorial Day generally fills me with rage.

“Angry vet in the middle” look hot shirtless too:

http://boozhy.typepad.com/my_weblog/adam_kokesh/index.html

Angry veteran is hot, too.

Just sayin’.

lol…Goat beat me to it.

His name is Adam Kokesh. He’s the guy who held up the “I don’t recall” scorecard at the Alberto Gonzales testimony.

He can haz gunz.

grrrrr

http://sparklepony.blogspot.com/2007/04/omg-i-know-who-can-replace-alberto.html

(scroll down)

who could have predicted that the VA system would need a vast infusion of funds in order to deal with the flood of returning veterans?

War is a very costly business, in many ways… the cost of fighting the war is just one of the bills we’ll have to pay. There’s the cost of taking care of the veterans who return home with broken bodies and broken minds… the interest on the debt we incurred to pay for this war… the loss of the US’ prestige and moral high ground… the opportunity cost of what we could have done with that money instead… and of course the lost lives, whether American and other coalition troops, contractors and Iraqis.

This administration deserves nothing less than war crimes trials and life imprisonment for the ghastly, unnecessary and criminally negligent course they chose to put us upon.

I left a link, but wordpress eated it.

Here’s Rev. Lennox Yearwood of Iraq Vets Against the War. with a sermon called: “I Can’t Sleep at Night.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3j5oMsOAWQ

Powerful stuff.

But, Bush gave up golf out of respect for the troops, so it’s all good.

I hope we have huge demonstrations on Jan 20th. Oh that would be fun. It will be the most festive inauguration day ever.

Yeah, hopefully this one will be festive, rather than another stolen election and the start of serious streetfighting. It feels like we’re all on the cusp of becoming “veterans”.

whateverdude said,

May 26, 2008 at 4:50

Yeah, hopefully this one will be festive, rather than another stolen election and the start of serious streetfighting. It feels like we’re all on the cusp of becoming “veterans”.

“Fucked up world! We’re all veterans of a fucked up world.” — Dead Milkmen

Kokesh is a good guy. He goes to my school (GWU). I wanna look him up and hang out with him sometime, but he’s a pretty busy guy.

Oh and the YAF has a chapter on campus and they freaking loathe him. Classic.

The lol treatment did not make me laugh. It was a prism that revealed a whole spectrum of sadness, anger and paradox. Comedy does indeed come from a wellspring of unhappiness.

That’s not an MRE.

Yeah, hopefully this one will be festive, rather than another stolen election and the start of serious streetfighting.

Oh, come on. Nobody is going to fight in the streets. I don’t think they would throw out the election unless it were close enough to raise doubt, in which case we would just whistle at their chutzpah and mumble about Canada like last time. If it were beyond doubt, like a violent coup or a showdown with Congress over the certification of the vote, we would get really pissed and go to a few protests and some people might get arrested. Then we would just wait for the next election, which they would promise to hold as soon as the national emergency was over.

Blue Buddha: A relevant Dead Milkman reference? *Swoon*

I don’t see any disrespect to veterans here. “Invisible benefits” made me laugh, but “my freedom, let me show you it” is the crux of the entire thing. The contrast between the whimsical lolspeak and awful picture is a punch in the gut. Well done.

Oh, come on. Nobody is going to fight in the streets. I don’t think they would throw out the election unless it were close enough to raise doubt, in which case we would just whistle at their chutzpah and mumble about Canada like last time.

They’re already creating polls that imply that Obama and McInsane are dead even (which doesn’t jibe with any reality I know of), so prepare yourself for a GOP win in the face of ridiculous odds. If this happens again without any response (on the streets) by those of us who recognize it as another fraud, then we deserve whatever we get.

If it were beyond doubt, like a violent coup or a showdown with Congress over the certification of the vote, we would get really pissed and go to a few protests and some people might get arrested. Then we would just wait for the next election, which they would promise to hold as soon as the national emergency was over.

Well, if you’re aware of my (admittedly) eccentric opinions, you know that I feel we’ve already been subjected to a violent coup, albeit, one who’s presence has been consciously suppressed by a large fraction of the country. After it happened, we were subjected to another fraudulent election (read that “Ohio, 2004”), followed by 2006, where we elected “our own” (only to be told that the agenda we wanted would not be acted on, starting with “Impeachment is off of the table”). If we swallow the poison of another rigged election without finding the motivation to make ourselves seen on every street corner in America, then we deserve to perish from the effects of that poison.

In my humble opinion, of course.

Snap. I give only two shits about Adam Kokesh’s wacky Libertarian politics: the man is just so fucking hot!

Somebody needs to tell me how to do this Memorial day.

I’ve been up all night thinking about that after talking to a friend who told me Memorial Day is not Veterans Day, that this is a day to remember all war dead — children, women, civilians, animals, the innocents, the casualties. This is their only day and their day only. A day to hang your American head in grief for the size and scope of this nation’s militarism, beginning with the Civil war, including our part in it.

That made sense to me.

Me, I think LOLspeak’s pretty played out, but I’m a big fan of humor so dark that it’s got an event horizon. I give this a thumbs-up.

This:
[…] Memorial Day is not Veterans Day, that this is a day to remember all war dead — children, women, civilians, animals, the innocents, the casualties. This is their only day and their day only. […]
is a much better way to wrap my head around Memorial Day, now that I’m old enough to understand. (When I was a kid, I never liked Memorial Day, but I couldn’t articulate -why-; I couldn’t really grasp the concept behind it, either. It still makes me unhappy, but at least now I can say *why*.)

This Memorial Day is decidedly more angst-inducing for me than any other Memorial Day before — my youngest stepsister graduated into the Marines just a couple of weeks ago. I couldn’t bring myself to ask my dad if she was going over to Iraq any time soon, because I wasn’t sure if I could remain civil if the answer was ‘yes’.

I don’t really know her that well, but I don’t want her to come home in a box, or to never come home at all, or to come home broken and strange and haunted.

So, today, I’m thinking about Ms. Day, The Marine, and a little girl whose name I do not know, and praying that come November things start getting better.

Somebody needs to tell me how to do this Memorial day.

Search me. I’m much better for the boozy ethnic holidays like St. Patrick’s Day and Cinco de Mayo. More of this please!

Memorial Day. Thank you, flawedplan. The sheer numbers of war dead…. So to get my head around it, I’m thinking especially of Pat Tillman, Lori Piestewa, and Marla Ruzicka, but mourning them all, even the lost and nameless ones.