getting unreal

Tuesday, mar. 18, 2003   |   0 comments

I don’t know about you, but over here at Evany HQ, things have been getting really, really unreal as of late.

Like last night I saw this commercial for osteoporosis medication that featured Frankenstein? They had him sitting in front of a television, tsking and shaking his head as he watched footage of himself lurching around, hard evidence of “how stiff he used to be.” Then they followed that up with these amazing scenes demonstrating how much things had changed since he started taking the medication: Here’s Frankenstein sitting around reading stories to a bunch of little kids, there he is gardening in a weird floppy hat, here he is doing tai chi. Serious! I think there was even a part where he was swimming laps. Anyway it was the most eerie thing. Like, is this is a joke? An Energizer Bunny ad? Some shitty Saturday Night Live skit?

I got the same “wait, what is GOING ON?” feeling yesterday afternoon when my friend at work Matt directed me to the frontpage of CNN, where, stacked right on top of each other, were these amazing headlines: something like “Bush gives Saddam Hussein and his sons 48 hours to leave Iraq’” followed directly by, “Saddam Hussein insists that Bush resign.” It’s, wow, straight out of The Onion, you know? Actually, I can’t believe that hasn’t been reduced to an acronym yet: “That headline news story is so crazy, it’s SOTO … Straight Outta The Onion!”

The war itself is the most unreal thing of all, like king of unreal mountain. It’s not that I’m surprised it’s happening — my belief in the core-deep nuttiness of Bush, Cheney, et. al. pretty much knows no bounds. The thing I’m struggling with is the complete lack of understandable rationale behind it all.

For instance I’m a total choice pro, but at least I understand why people are against abortion (not the crazy clinic bombers or the people who line up to scream at women on one of the most difficult days of their lives, I’m talking about the somewhat sane people who simply have a different idea about when life begins). While I may not agree with the argument, I can manage to follow it. But the explanations I’ve heard for why we need to invade Iraq make absolutely no sense to me.

If this is about 9/11, then maybe give some evidence to support the link between Saddam and al-Qaeda that doesn’t read like a sixth grader’s sloppily researched book report? And if we really want to keep our country safe from future terrorist attacks, maybe not anger a whole bunch of countries that already house lots of potential, “just give me a little push” terrorists? I can see Osama bin Laden now, giggling away in some Starbucks somewhere, absolutely shit-eating happy that we’re creating so many new pals for him simply by making such international retards of ourselves.

If this is because we’re anti-anti-democracy (ironic as we completey shit in the face of the United Nations’ democratic process), there sure are lots of other countries that fit the bill, so why Iraq (especially since invading ten years ago didn’t seem to change much)?

Plus all the “support our troops” stuff is just so confusing. How did “support our war” become interchangeable with “support our troops”? It seems like the nicest, most supportive-ist thing I could wish on the soldiers warming up on deck over there is that they never get shot at, bombed, gassed, or sunburned in the reported 130-degree Bagdad summer heat.

But whatever. Meow, moew, moew. Obviously if even head-in-the-cake me has been chewing and choking on this, then politically savvy you has already thought it all through and I’m either preaching to the choir or I’m falling on deaf and dumb ears. So I guess all I’m saying is that these sure are some unreally crazy times, huh?