Combat Queer Online

What I'm Giving Up For Lent

So, I've finally decided what I'm giving up for Lent. I'm only a little more than a week late, so, you know, I feel like I'm doing ok. 

What am I giving up? Conservative hate speech. 

Specifically, until Easter I will not go looking up examples of Conservatives saying horrible, horrible things. 

Now, dear reader, you may be asking, "Combat Queer, why were you looking up examples of Conservatives saying horrible, horrible things in the first place?"

Well friend, I don't know that I have a good answer. It's sort of a hobby. I read FoxNews, Conservapedia, Movie Guide, the works. I get all riled up, I bluster about how awful people can be, and frankly, I don't get a lot done.

Back during the campaign, well, sometimes caffeine just wouldn't be enough. I'd have already had several energy drinks, but fading. Where did I get that last but of energy to continue organizing and ultimately winning the election?

Anger. Hatred of injustice. I would go read some quality hate speech from the Conservatives, and no matter how tired I was, no matter how close I was to giving up, I was angry enough to keep working, remembering that each action I took was a blow against them.

Shockingly, that's not very healthy. Or resting. Or, you know, good.

After the election, I just kept going back to those sites. Maybe I was just looking for that same rush, maybe I just waned to know what they were up to. I don't know, but it needs to stop.

So I'm going to cut out reading what the Conservatives are saying for the next... 32 or so days. It'll be awesome. And healthy.

So anyway Mr. Hannity, Mr. Baehr, Mr. What-Ever-The-Fuck-Your-Name-Is-Over-At-Traditional-Values-Coalition, I'll see y'all after the Resurrection.

(Of course, if Conservative Hate Speech finds me, well, I'ms a-gonna talk about it)

Ultimate Wolverine Vs. Hulk #3

So we've finally, finally gotten a new issue of Ultimate Wolverine Vs. Hulk. It's been a while. The last time a new issue came out, it was early 2006. It has been a while. 

If you're into fights between, say, Hulk and Wolverine, this is probably the comic for you. It's written by Damon Lindelof(yeah, the LOST guy), and the first two issues were pretty cool. It's a story from the brief golden age of the Ultimate Marvel Universe. This was back when Ultimates was still in it's first fun and rocking it inventively. This was back before Ultimate X-Men collapsed into nothing more than a running update and "Ultimafy-ing" 616 characters and stories. This was a good time to be interested in the Ultimate universe.

And hows this issue? Well, the Hulk's talky, and Wolverine is trying to piss him off. We get a couple of flashbacks to Wolvy getting torn in two, a good character moment involving leg eating, and, sadly, the Ultimafy-ing of an old 616 character.

I'm a little bit let down.

But maybe, maybe we'll eventually get to see a good knock down, drag out fight between the two prime brawlers of Marvel.

Or maybe with just get to see what Ultimate Skaar looks like. Ug

Anger, Pt 2

So, in yesterday's post I talked about the anger I'm trying to deal with. I'm trying to deal with it like you might deal with a broken leg or flooded basement. This anger is a big, real thing that eats into me.  I'm trying to forgive people, trying to love my enemy, trying to turn the over cheek. I'm trying to not being eaten up with hatred.

But where does this anger come from? Am I just a crazed madwoman unable to control her hysterical emotions?

I don't think so.

Here's a video for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsBiUtVrgjQ

Watch the whole thing, just take a careful look at the bit right around 3:20 and just after. It has Ron Paul talking about how big a mistake the war in Iraq had been. Right there at 3:20, Paul admits that we've killed *a million* Iraqis, innocent people who weren't doing anything to hurt. We killed them in cold blood. 

About half the audience starts clapping and cheering. At thought of a million murders. At the thought that they had some part in a million deaths.

This is what makes me angry. This is what prevents me from loving my enemies as Christ instructed me to. People are cheering on the idea of murdering a million innocents. 

They are happy, gleeful, over the idea that they took part in genocide. 

Whenever someone stops me and Thanks Me For My Service, I always want to say, "Thank me? You should be apologizing, begging for forgiveness. The blood of a million innocents is own your hands."

It's on my hands too. And yours.

We let this happen. We didn't stop this. We participated in a million murders. How can we ask enough forgiveness for this? We have murdered a million people.

And those at CPAC, they're cheering.

Cheering.

A million murders. 

You've seen me use the most conservative figures in my earlier posts about our murder of the Iraqi civilians. I usually say 6-700,000. And that's huge, but it's about the most conservative real world estimate. A million may very well be closer to the truth.

And America killed them. 

And people are cheering. 

So yeah, I'm angry. Sometimes I don't know what to do. No one will take responsibility. No one will say they're sorry. No one will ask forgiveness.

Well, I'm sorry. I've never killed another human with a gun or a bomb, but I pay my taxes, I helped buy those bullets and bombs. I tried to stop this war, but I failed. My failure, America's failure, allowed this to happen.

And I'm sorry. I don't know how there can be enough grace to cover a monstrosity like the number of murders that we've committed, but I'm asking for forgiveness. 

Buffy Season 8, Issue 23

I haven't really talk about it much here, but I really like Joss Whedon. Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Dr. Horrible, that's all really great story telling. Those works have strong characters, sometimes so strong that you don't really notice the big story growing in the back ground until it's too late.

And yes, Dollhouse is pretty awful, but they say it'll get better, and maybe it will. 

But I'm not talk talking about that today. Today I'm talking about the new issue of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8, and I'm going to try to do it spoiler-free. This is another great on going comic. It world-builds, there a cool over arching story that doesn't cut into smaller stories, and hey, it's a neat idea with which inventive things are done. Who can ask for more than that?

I can, of course. One of my big problems with a lot of comics is that they are absolutely unable to tell a good story in a single issue. At fewest, most comics need three issues to get the job done. With Season 8, there's something amazing. Occasionally you get a good story all in one issue.

That's how this month's issue is. In fact, the last two or three have been like that also. 

In this issue we get the story of Buffy and Andrew, the sorta kinda villain, actual loser of Season 6, setting off to capture a rouge Slayer. Andrew had been the young woman's Watcher and blames himself for her going off the deep end.

There are some great character moments between Buffy and Andrew, although one or two of them feel a little forced. I really did enjoy Andrew's long, long nerd/travel monolog. 

Aside from the fun Buffy/Andrew dynamic, we also got some good ideas about what it means that there's now at least two Slayer armies for the rouge slayer. It'll be interesting to see where this all goes.

Man, I hope we get to see some more Fray.

Anger, Pt 1

I got angry today. 

I was talking to a friend of mine, an honest to God fine individual, a real live Godly Liberal Baptist Minister. I was trying to explain about Iraq, and about how I feel when I see those conservatives at CPAC making fun of veterans and joking freely about nuking Chicago. 

The anger. Sometimes I get so angry I feel sick. Like the anger is something bad I've eaten, something that I could vomit out and be free of. The anger is like a virus or a bacteria, something alive, something that's infected me, something that's poisoned me.

People, other people, when they see this anger they are either scared by it or somehow entertained by it. Pleased to see that someone, at least someone is angry about the state that the world's in. No one ever frees me of this anger though, they either just praise or admonish me for it. They don't help.

Of course, what could my friend do? Could he bring back the 700,000 dead Iraqis? Could he reattach my buddy from basic training, that fellows arm, the arm lost to a fucking IED? Could my friend go back and force the Republicans to tell the truth, to act honorably for the past eight years or fifty years? Could my friend make people less broken, less likely to sin against their fellow humans?

No.

Sometimes I just feel like we're just fucked, like there's nothing to do but try to make it a few more days, and God in Heaven, it pisses me off. 

But the Lord is there. When we bomb the least of these, we bomb Him. When we “accidentally” kill detainees, we kill Him. When the poor kid from Georgia looses an arm, Christ has lost an arm. When the young woman, the good young woman, who came back form the sand boy not knowing who she was takes her own life, Christ has died with her.

We can not allow ourselves to look out at the world and say, “Oh, it's a bad place. Nothing I can do about.” We've got to engage it. We've got to. We can't just stand back and let it happen. We've got to try. Try, please at least try. 

This can't be it. We've got to do better. We've got to be able to do better.  As Christ suffers with and as the world,  we too must not divorce ourselves from the world. Please, please, please do something. Please. 

I don't know how to beg and plead with you enough. The world is fucked up beyond all understanding, and you must try to do something. Please, please help. We've got Christ on the cross and the unpaid poor in the fields and we've got to do something. We have to. 

The anger can't be all there is. The anger is worthless and evil if it isn't the seed of transformation in the world. We've got to do better. We've got to come again.

This can't be the end of the story. 

I Miss Liberal Icebox

It's a weird thing to be in the middle. MY deployment is about to begin, but it hasn't. I have however already left my home. I wanted to make sure I saw everyone I cared abotu at least one more time before heading out to the sandbox, so I'm spending a little time out here in Temple Mount.

It kind of reminds me of being on summer vacation as a kid. I really don't have much to do but hang to with my friends and family and dread the upcoming return to being under somebody else's thumb.

But oh, I miss Liberal Icebox. I was just checking weather.com, and I happened to click onto LIberal Icebox's 10 day forecast(Shockingly, it was quite cold now, and will be quite cold in the future). SOme times I have trouble thinking of the military stuff as part of my "Real Life." It's so much easier to think of it as some sort of weird hobby that happens to take up a huge amount of time and that was one of the most formative elements in my life. 

I guess that doesn't really sound like a hobby.

In my life there's the Lord(or my fumbling attempts to chase Him, Her, my friend, all the names), there's the church, there are the people I love, there are the adventures. I've never exactly know how to fit the military into the scheme of understanding my life. Some folks I know, being a soldier is where they start and finish. No matter who else and what else they are, they are soldiers.

I don't know if I'm like that. I am blessed to be in the military, no matter how hard it can be at times, and I am thankful to be able to do it, but...  Sometimes it feels a little less than real.

Of course, that feeling will be gone after a week or two constantly in uniform. On long stretches on missions, I often get that same feeling of unreality when I think about the civilian world. Once during a training mission, the convoy stopped at a truck stop in Connecticut. I ran in to hit the latrine and grab a coke, and standing there by the soda cooler, there was somebody I knew. I didn't know her well, but she occasionally attended my church. She was on a business trip or something. It was very, very odd to talk to her in that situation.

But I guess we're all just passing from one reality to the next.