Journal

day after last quarter
may 5, 2002 ~ 1:48 p.m.

On April 20, which was three Saturdays ago now, my father and I took the subway downtown to join the protests and marches that were happening downtown, and coming together on the mall in front of the Capitol Building. I wanted most to protest the war in Afghanistan, because it won't work, it will just create more hatred toward the US, and because it's unjustifiable to kill more civilians there than were killed here in the attacks. And there were a lot of people there to protest that, but the main thing was the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Actually I didn't know a whole lot about it until a few days before the protests, but I quickly learned about the horrendous apartheid in Israel and the Palestinian attempt to gain freedom by killing Israelis, and how Ariel Sharon is now just massacring Palestinians. I think both sides are acting stupidly, personally.

The most important issue here in the US, though, is that we're funding the genocide. We continue to give funds and arms to Israel despite their obvious human rights violations and massacre of innocents. We give 30 percent of our foreign aid to Israel, which is the 18th richest country in the world. The reason for this, as far as I can figure, is that the right-wingers here just love Israel because it's right wing. Still, even that can't really account for it -- I guess it's just that right-wingers are assholes. But that's kind of a given. Although there's also some democrats who are vehemently supportive of Israel, like Hilary Clinton and Joseph Lieberman. So maybe it's just that there are a damn lot of stupid assholes in Congress regardless of their party.

So anyway, we joined in a march down Pennsylvania Avenue towards the Capitol Building, surrounded by all kinds of different people: Palestinians, peace activists, Black Muslims, and random groups like "DC Asians for Peace". There were tens of thousands of people there according to the news that night, which is a whole helluva lot of people. I went to a protest of the NATO bombings a few years ago, and there seemed to be only a few hundred, maybe a thousand people there. And it was hard to tell at the Bush Inauguration protest, since there were so many republicans mixed in, there to cheer him on. It looks like this time there is really a significant opposition to our foreign policy in both Israel and Afghanistan. This may be the biggest protest I've ever been to, except maybe the Gulf War protest I went to when I was ten, which I barely remember.

My parents finally saw my tattoo while I was home last week. My mother and I were making dinner, when suddenly she lifted the sleeve of my shirt and peered incredulously at my arm. "Is that PERMANENT?" she asked, and I fairly laughed, and said, "Yes, it's permanent." But I could see from the look on her face that she wasn't about to laugh -- she was pissed. She looked as if someone had tattooed it on her, without her permission. She then proceeded to tell me that I'm stupid. Well, fuck her. And the next day they both confronted me to lecture me on how I will definitely regret this someday. They don't know that: maybe I will regret it, and maybe I won't, but hell, I'll regret plenty of things I do in this life. You never know how you'll look back on things, so you can't live in fear of regret.

Movie review: Kissing Jessica Stein. About a straight woman that decides to date a woman after having trouble finding the right man. I read some reviews of this movie that really criticized it for having Jessica end up dating men, but I really liked this movie. So what if a straight woman dates another woman for a while, then realizes she likes only men -- what exactly is wrong with that? It's completely realistic that a straight woman might experiment and then go back to men. Did these critics want her to ignore her straightness and stay with Helen and make them both unhappy? That's just as bad as a lesbian staying with a man when she knows she's gay. I liked the movie because it explored this issue in a really intelligent way. Also it was really funny. So go see it, you'll enjoy it.

I started my spring class this week, Contemporary Novel. I thought it would be incredibly boring, but actually, it's been really fun so far. For one thing, we're reading my absolute favorite book, Foxfire. And three of the other books are ones I've been planning on reading -- The Color Purple, Oranges Aren't the Only Fruit, and The Monkey Wrench Gang. And the other books sound interesting as well. The problem is that we're reading seven novels all together, over a period of four weeks, plus a paper due every week, which sounds like a damn lot of work to me. At least it's my only class, so I don't have to deal with other homework assignments in addition.

previous ~ next

Diaryland