For some insane reason I plonked down one (yes, one whole) dollar to buy my local rag paper. It's one of those tabloid type, small papers that tell you about the local bake sale and the number of traffic tickets cops are handing out in your little town.
So I take this eight-page rag home. I read about the price of trash stickers (don't ask), looked at pictures of housewives posing with their toddlers, buying eggplants at the farmers market and other such fascinating tidbits of life in suburbia.
One page had these pictures of concrete slides and a teeter totter...basically a playground, except with tall weeds growing out of everything. General disrepair and desolation. Apparently, it was built by some army unit in Iraq a year or so ago. The photos were sent back by a town resident (oh yeah...did I tell you W was born here. Yikes! I found that out after we moved in) who serves in one of the armed forces.
He was lamenting the state of this playground and then says, "My culture teaches me not to destroy a gift." Obviously the Iraqi people don't have those same values, he adds. Wtf? Can we say cultural superiority?
I don't know about you but when things are blowing up all around me, my country is occupied, every Islamic fundamentalist nut around is arriving there, and my husband is probably being raped and killed in US custody (those non-public 87 Abu Ghraib photos were described by one Republican senator as "pictures of rape and murder")...taking my kid to the local park is not going to be that high on my list of priorities. Arrrghhhh!
That was not a good start to my day. Which world do these people live in?
D'you think I can get a refund?
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