The word of the day: jingoism. Significance factor:9.99.
They're all over the place... prayer vigils, light a candle for solidarity, etc. It's like a person has to actually make the statement, "All of this is horrible!" before it will be accepted that indeed, they believe that all of this is horrible. And the louder that they shout, the more believable they think they are.
Any civilized person in the world knows that terrorism is horrible, and that none condone it. So why is the jingoism necessary?
Aside from rabble-rousing?
O. Yeah. Rabble-rousing is enough, isn't it.
"Hey, Joe, I didn't see you at the candlelight prayer vigil last night, what are you, some sort of a Palestinian (or insert nationality of choice) collaborator?"
I don't really want to come out against prayer... I really believe that if you want to pray, you should be allowed to. Even if you want to pray for my non-existent soul, you may do so with impunity. But remember... Those fellows who were piloting those planes into the civilian targets on Tuesday... they were praying. To a slightly different god, of course. One who is on *their* side. One who rarely acts in their favor... but he did on tuesday morning. But anyway... it's the self-righteousness of people who pray in public that really grates on my nerves. And the self-righteousness of people who wave flags in public galls me too. Self-righteousness in general pisses me off greatly. Veering just a little bit off the subject... brother Dan says that perhaps I should pray for better internet access. Somebody must've been doing that for me... last night I called in again, and there was a guy out here about 18:00 tonight. A guy that hadn't been here before, but he'd read the previous reports, he said. He checked the signal at the modem and shook his head. He went out and checked the line from the pole to the house and shook his head. He replaced the line from the pole to the house, and he told me that where the wire was attached to the house before he moved it was out of code... the very first guy that was here should've replaced it, and each subsequent guy that was here checking was equally guilty. Just like I told each of them, come to think of it. Only I didn't know that it wasn't up to code, I just knew that it was twenty years old. And... the cable modem is now working very well. So thank you for your prayers... mother. Yes, I know it was you! Karen has kindly pointed out that I'm one of the most self-righteous people that she knows. I guess that she doesn't really know that many people, heh... geez, what would I do without her? We had several gas stations here in Topeka jack up their prices on Tuesday to $5.00 a gallon. Just a few... one of them was quoted as saying that he couldn't get ahold of his supplier, so he naturally(?) thought that the price was going to skyrocket. However, he knew damned good and well what he paid for the gas that he had in his tanks at the station, didn't he? Of course, he promised restitution... but I really feel that him and his ilk should be heavily fined and then boycotted out of business... we know where their hearts are. Luckily, the Kansas Attorney General seems to have similar thoughts. Weird, me agreeing with an attorney. The day... well, the day was pretty bad. I found that one of my co-workers called in sick, and another was already on vacation. We did have some help, another guy named Doug (we had jokes all day about "Brother Doug and the other brother Doug") but he isn't all that familiar with how we do what we do... it was, in other words, a very hectic day. And I'm on call until 23:00 tonight, one of the evening shift people is taking call after that... so I will get a good night's sleep. I'm actually pretty happy that I haven't gotten called yet... only 90 more minutes to go! O'yeah, I did get up this morning, and I made it to work on time, but it was really hard getting out of bed. I'm just really tard lately, and I'm thinking that it's probably my meds, and that it'll even out eventually... O'yeah, I owe some people e-mails, but what with everything I haven't got around to doing that... forgive me, please, and you'll hear from me soon. Promise!