*= New Posts
The War of the Word "War"
9/11
2 photo analyses:
Dirty Surgery
Quiet Chaos
One group effort:
Blackwater Bridge
Two creative pieces:
*Bedtime Story
*I'm Failing
Two letter:
Dear U.S. Citizens...
*Missing Santa's Workshop...
One post using creative medium:
*18,000 Patriots
One of my own design:
*Creepy Facebook Wars
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Missing Santa's Workshop...
5/4/08
Dear Friends and Family,
I am writing to you on a Sunday. I’m not sure there’s anything special about today, other than that I have enough time to write a few words. Not much is new; I see the same cities full of the same people. More friends have been hurt, and I take care of them the best I know how. When I started at this clinic, the sights, sounds, and smells I encountered from car bombings were more than I could stomach. Now, they are a part of my world. Just what I do. The other soldiers have a lottery going. It’s not your typical lottery, because it’s for our return date. We each put in one dollar and guessed the day this war will end. You would think that would make us more miserable, but I guess once you’re here you need something to look forward to.
Enough about depressing things. How is everyone? Have Steve and Tiffany had the baby yet? When does Josh start at Hartford? I can’t tell you how much your letters mean. There’s nothing like getting “good” mail even when you’re a civilian, so you can imagine how exciting it is to hear from all of you while I’m here. It really breaks up the monotony and homesickness. Please tell me everything, as if I never left, so that I can come home and all will be right back to normal.
It’s funny that I talk about coming home. As much as I miss you all and desperately want to be done with this tour, I can’t imagine what life will be like “outside”. Every time I try to picture it, I get this strange feeling in my throat. I hope you will all see me as the same Jen-Rae you watched grow up. I don’t want anything to change, but I’m sure that’s impossible. I feel different now. About life in general, what’s important to me, and this idea of “home”.
It’s as if all anyone can talk about is home. What their home was like before they left. What they’re gonna do first once their home. What it’ll be like to be home. It’s some abstract thing that everyone longs for but can’t necessarily describe. Almost like visualizing Santa and his North Pole, or something…
But anyways, that’s enough philosophy, and as there’s not anything new to report, I suppose I’ll end my letter. I miss you and love you all. Please know that your support and kind words are what keep me going.
All my love,
PFC. Jennifer Rae Cloonan
332nd Expeditionary Medical Group
Balad, Iraq
Dear Friends and Family,
I am writing to you on a Sunday. I’m not sure there’s anything special about today, other than that I have enough time to write a few words. Not much is new; I see the same cities full of the same people. More friends have been hurt, and I take care of them the best I know how. When I started at this clinic, the sights, sounds, and smells I encountered from car bombings were more than I could stomach. Now, they are a part of my world. Just what I do. The other soldiers have a lottery going. It’s not your typical lottery, because it’s for our return date. We each put in one dollar and guessed the day this war will end. You would think that would make us more miserable, but I guess once you’re here you need something to look forward to.
Enough about depressing things. How is everyone? Have Steve and Tiffany had the baby yet? When does Josh start at Hartford? I can’t tell you how much your letters mean. There’s nothing like getting “good” mail even when you’re a civilian, so you can imagine how exciting it is to hear from all of you while I’m here. It really breaks up the monotony and homesickness. Please tell me everything, as if I never left, so that I can come home and all will be right back to normal.
It’s funny that I talk about coming home. As much as I miss you all and desperately want to be done with this tour, I can’t imagine what life will be like “outside”. Every time I try to picture it, I get this strange feeling in my throat. I hope you will all see me as the same Jen-Rae you watched grow up. I don’t want anything to change, but I’m sure that’s impossible. I feel different now. About life in general, what’s important to me, and this idea of “home”.
It’s as if all anyone can talk about is home. What their home was like before they left. What they’re gonna do first once their home. What it’ll be like to be home. It’s some abstract thing that everyone longs for but can’t necessarily describe. Almost like visualizing Santa and his North Pole, or something…
But anyways, that’s enough philosophy, and as there’s not anything new to report, I suppose I’ll end my letter. I miss you and love you all. Please know that your support and kind words are what keep me going.
All my love,
PFC. Jennifer Rae Cloonan
332nd Expeditionary Medical Group
Balad, Iraq
June 5th, 2055: Bedtime Story
Once upon a time, there was a GREAT, BIG war.
Our story starts with a man we'll call Prince George, who inherited his position of power from his dad King George. King George ruled the land in search of Black Gold, which is like regular gold, but much more powerful and priceless. King George would go to any lengths to get his Black Gold, including saying that others were being bad and starting fights with his neighbors. Eventually, King George’s reign was over, and after a few years, Prince George was ready to take his father’s place and carry out his legacy. Soon, Prince George was starting fights with the countries that possessed the precious Black Gold. George made these countries mad, so they decided to fight back. They attacked Prince George’s many castles spread throughout his land. This is how the big war started, and it is the biggest war the world has EVER seen.
Pretty soon, every country on the planet had joined in the third Great War. There were two sides: Prince George’s Alliance and the others. Each side used the nastiest weapons they could find, in an attempt to win the war. Around the very same time, they decided to bring out the biggest weapon of them all: the super-duper bomb. This bomb would destroy anything and everything, and would eliminate an opponent in one fell swoop. Word got out that Prince George and his enemies wanted to use these very dangerous bombs, and both sides set off the weapons before their rivals could. These bombs wiped out the whole world and the only ones who were safe were those who had been smart and moved to our world: Mars. These bombs were so dangerous, that they eliminated all life and history on the planet Earth.
And so, this is how our people got a clean start. All the bad people who caused the Great War disappeared with their planet, and the smart people started their own civilization on Mars.
The moral of our story is that you don’t start fights with people and everyone gets along and shares what they have. When everyone can play nice, they can all have fun together and live beautiful, productive lives.
THE END
18,000 Patriots
This is my postsecret. I received this picture in an email, and wrote over it with MSPaint.
This picture was taken on September 5th, 1918 in Des Moines, Iowa at Camp Dodge. 18,000 men and officers came together for one message of patriotism.
I'm Failing
Some Unholy War-Amy Winehouse
If my man was fighting
Some unholy war
I would be behind him
Straight shook up beside him
With strength he didn't know
It's you I'm fighting for
He can't lose with me in tow
I refuse to let him go
At his side and drunk on pride
We wait for the blow
We put it in writing
But who you writing for
Just us on kitchen floor
Justice done,
Reciting my stomach standing still
Like you're reading my will
He still stands in spite of what his scars say
I'll battle till this bitter finale
Just me, my dignity and this guitar case
Yes my man is fighting some unholy war
And I will stand beside you
Who you fighting for
B - I would have died too
I'd of liked to
If my man was fighting
Some unholy war
If my man was fighting
I took the lyrics of this Amy Winehouse song and wrote a poem using the same form and left the first letters of every word unchanged.
Some Unstable Water
If my moon was failing,
some unequal water,
I wish blatantly beyond humans.
Strong, shaken up beyond humankind.
Within Socrates humans discuss Krusty the Klown.
It's yesterday I'm failing for,
humans cannot lessen world morals in time.
I re-use to lessen human grunge.
At Hercules’ sunken arrest, drones of prejudice
wail wildly for the beginning.
We place initiative in wrong-doings,
but who yesterday waits for
juxtaposes undermining our Klean future.
Jailbirds drink,
relishing mistaken sorrow sans socialization.
Lastly, you're relinquishing my worries,
hastily stopping scars in spirit of when heaven's screaming stops.
I'll banish tears to basement fortresses
jealously mustering my disparity among this guilty cause.
Yes, my mood is filthy, subtract undone waste
and I want sullen banishment. You,
who yesterday flittered for,
because I wished heavily down trodden,
I would have liked to
insist my mantra was first.
Some unclean water
in my mind was filtered.
If my man was fighting
Some unholy war
I would be behind him
Straight shook up beside him
With strength he didn't know
It's you I'm fighting for
He can't lose with me in tow
I refuse to let him go
At his side and drunk on pride
We wait for the blow
We put it in writing
But who you writing for
Just us on kitchen floor
Justice done,
Reciting my stomach standing still
Like you're reading my will
He still stands in spite of what his scars say
I'll battle till this bitter finale
Just me, my dignity and this guitar case
Yes my man is fighting some unholy war
And I will stand beside you
Who you fighting for
B - I would have died too
I'd of liked to
If my man was fighting
Some unholy war
If my man was fighting
I took the lyrics of this Amy Winehouse song and wrote a poem using the same form and left the first letters of every word unchanged.
Some Unstable Water
If my moon was failing,
some unequal water,
I wish blatantly beyond humans.
Strong, shaken up beyond humankind.
Within Socrates humans discuss Krusty the Klown.
It's yesterday I'm failing for,
humans cannot lessen world morals in time.
I re-use to lessen human grunge.
At Hercules’ sunken arrest, drones of prejudice
wail wildly for the beginning.
We place initiative in wrong-doings,
but who yesterday waits for
juxtaposes undermining our Klean future.
Jailbirds drink,
relishing mistaken sorrow sans socialization.
Lastly, you're relinquishing my worries,
hastily stopping scars in spirit of when heaven's screaming stops.
I'll banish tears to basement fortresses
jealously mustering my disparity among this guilty cause.
Yes, my mood is filthy, subtract undone waste
and I want sullen banishment. You,
who yesterday flittered for,
because I wished heavily down trodden,
I would have liked to
insist my mantra was first.
Some unclean water
in my mind was filtered.
Creepy Facebook Wars
Anyone who has had a facebook for a couple years will agree: facebook has become quite stalker-ish. When I started my facebook account back in the summer of 2005, it seemed simple enough. You could "friend" people, write on their walls, and join funny groups like "If you remember this you grew up in the 90s" and "Drunk Dialers Anonymous". This went on nicely for a while, and I had my addictive moments with the online social network.
Then... DUN DUN DUNNNNN... the creep-factor went sky-high, as the news feed was introduced.
Now you can see when ANYONE does ANYTHING. Rumors flew that police could bust you for your facebook activity, and drama started over "who got invited to what" and "how dare she write that about me on so-and-so's wall!"
I even went so far as deleting my facebook account, as I had decided that things had gotten a little out of hand. However, I couldn't stay away for long, and re-opened my facebook. I was addicted, and there was no quitting cold-turkey for me.
Facebook has now morphed into something HUGE. You can add millions of applications that allow you to play games like Oregon Trail, and pacman. You can add decorative trees to your profile around Christmas time and send presents to your friends (I must admit I'm guilty of this one). You can send all kinds of gifts: I have been sent drinks (Cosmos and Long Islands) and one friend sent me a plant that sat on my profile page and grew into a snowflake over a few days.
You could spend years of your life searching and playing with these applications. I decided to type war into the search bar for these applications and see what came up.
1) You can start a war among your network over blondes vs. brunnettes vs. redheads.
2) One application, upon being posted in your profile, will give you daily quotes from Che Guevara or Sun Tzu's "The Art of War", and you can send these gems to your friends' walls.
3) A war of "Bros vs. Hos" can be started in which friends can exchange pimp slaps and booty grabs.
4) You can create virtual protests and invite friends to join your Facebook war on just about anything: war, terrorism, abortion, genocide in Darfur, Burma, global warming, politics, Bush, Clinton, Obama, Colbert, privacy issues, tasers, spam, zombies, vampires or teachers in your school. "You can make a difference!" is this application's inspirational tagline...
5) War is presented as a game that you can play with your friends with applications such as FarmWars, Thugz Passion, Cricket Wars, thumb war, and Paintball Assault.
6) The news update application allows for bulletins about the current war in Iraq.
7) And of course, one can add the classic war card-game app. that allows you use the web to play this mindless game of our childhood.
Is it just me, or have we become desensitized to the thought of war in our everyday lives?
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
The War of the Word "War"
war1 [wawr]–noun
1. a conflict carried on by force of arms, as between nations or between parties within a nation; warfare, as by land, sea, or air.
2. a state or period of armed hostility or active military operations: The two nations were at war with each other.
3. a contest carried on by force of arms, as in a series of battles or campaigns: the War of 1812.
4. active hostility or contention; conflict; contest: a war of words.
5. aggressive business conflict, as through severe price cutting in the same industry or any other means of undermining competitors: a fare war among airlines; a trade war between nations.
6. a struggle: a war for men's minds; a war against poverty.
7. armed fighting, as a science, profession, activity, or art; methods or principles of waging armed conflict: War is the soldier's business.
8. Cards.
a. a game for two or more persons, played with a 52-card pack evenly divided between the players, in which each player turns up one card at a time with the higher card taking the lower, and in which, when both turned up cards match, each player lays one card face down and turns up another, the player with the higher card of the second turn taking all the cards laid down.
b. an occasion in this game when both turned up cards match.
These are just the first eight of 21 definitions that dictionary.com gives for the word war.
The word war gets used in many different ways. The most obvious is to think of physical battles that armed forces engage in. But what about the idea of war? Our government likes to use this term to describe a new agenda against bad things: the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, the war between the left and the right, etc. Basically, this is our goverment's way of offering relentless dedication to an area that is important to us citizens.
The perfect pop culture example of this is the movie "Traffic". The whole movie is about the war on drugs, but seen from each side of the war's fighters. The audience witnesses the newly appointed drug czar, whose daughter turns out to be an addict. We meet the drug dealer disguised as a Suburban family man, and watch as his family life is torn apart when the drug bust goes down. We learn what it is like for the employees of the drug business, the junkie best customer, the politicians who attempt to stamp out drugs, and the families of all these characters.
No matter what the type of war, it affects countless people. Be it violent or not, war always has primary and secondary characters, and its consequences spread much farther than what is seen at first glance.
1. a conflict carried on by force of arms, as between nations or between parties within a nation; warfare, as by land, sea, or air.
2. a state or period of armed hostility or active military operations: The two nations were at war with each other.
3. a contest carried on by force of arms, as in a series of battles or campaigns: the War of 1812.
4. active hostility or contention; conflict; contest: a war of words.
5. aggressive business conflict, as through severe price cutting in the same industry or any other means of undermining competitors: a fare war among airlines; a trade war between nations.
6. a struggle: a war for men's minds; a war against poverty.
7. armed fighting, as a science, profession, activity, or art; methods or principles of waging armed conflict: War is the soldier's business.
8. Cards.
a. a game for two or more persons, played with a 52-card pack evenly divided between the players, in which each player turns up one card at a time with the higher card taking the lower, and in which, when both turned up cards match, each player lays one card face down and turns up another, the player with the higher card of the second turn taking all the cards laid down.
b. an occasion in this game when both turned up cards match.
These are just the first eight of 21 definitions that dictionary.com gives for the word war.
The word war gets used in many different ways. The most obvious is to think of physical battles that armed forces engage in. But what about the idea of war? Our government likes to use this term to describe a new agenda against bad things: the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, the war between the left and the right, etc. Basically, this is our goverment's way of offering relentless dedication to an area that is important to us citizens.
The perfect pop culture example of this is the movie "Traffic". The whole movie is about the war on drugs, but seen from each side of the war's fighters. The audience witnesses the newly appointed drug czar, whose daughter turns out to be an addict. We meet the drug dealer disguised as a Suburban family man, and watch as his family life is torn apart when the drug bust goes down. We learn what it is like for the employees of the drug business, the junkie best customer, the politicians who attempt to stamp out drugs, and the families of all these characters.
No matter what the type of war, it affects countless people. Be it violent or not, war always has primary and secondary characters, and its consequences spread much farther than what is seen at first glance.
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