PTSD

Marching (or not) in the Capital of the Free World, Part I

Just to let yous know. I don't spend ALL my weekends, watching footy (Big match mid-week this week and I am too poor to go to two matches in one week). Sometimes, I remember I am a postgrad student and go off to do other stuff. Like study. And, get involved in invertebrate welfare efforts (We have new cuttlefish at place-where-I-wish-I-really-worked-but-don't. They are about an inch long now and need feeding thrice a day so they can grow).

When planning what to do on Saturday, I have to admit it was a difficult choice among marching to bring "our" troops home (E put it succintly when she told me my troops weren't even in Iraq. Hence the parentheses. Also, and this is a topic which led to my having arguments with some of the other TUWSNBN's students in the past week, I am not sure the US should withdraw from Iraq right now, as the organisers of the protest wanted. Hence, should I march if I didn't agree with what I was supposedly marching for? You'll have to wait till Part II of the post to find out. I do still say Elizabeth should have been there so we could have done a joint blog post for once. And, I'd have had pictures to put up with the upcoming post) and watching The Corpse Bride with doing work coming a distant third. Since I had to be at TUWSNBN's for a class at 9am anyway (This is a blatant attempt to get sympathy from my readers, most of whom probably roll into bed at around 9am on Saturdays instead of being at Uni then), I thought I'd go march after that, leave, watch the movie and return for the Operation Ceasefire concerts later. A good plan on paper, right? What could possibly go wrong with such a plan, you ask. Well, wait, come back to this site and read the upcoming post. Right now, let me set the scene with this:

Overheard on the way to Operation Ceasefire

Where?: on TUWSNBN’s bus to the Metro station. I'm sitting on the bus pondering my choices for the day. Opposite me were "The Pirates for Peace" (a group of people dressed as pirates including one boy with a stuffed, cloth parrot on his shoulder. Unfortunately, the parrot refused to stay on his shoulder and kept falling down at odd moments, turning him into "the pirate with parrot in his armpits").

Next to me, was a couple talking to each other.

Girl: You’ve got to read Ann Coulter. You’ll love her. She’s so smart.
Boy: Who is she?
Girl: She’s really smart and biting and funny. She writes about news and people in the news and politics.
Boy: So, she’s in the media?
Girl: No, she hates the media! She calls CNN the Communist News Network and Clinton the aging porn star (laughs). She’s awesome.
Boy: Ok
Girl: And, she’s totally hot too.

posted by Priya @ 2:47 PM