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mel's rant
		28-Sep-04   finding my voice Finding my voice I looked under the bed and at the bottom of the closet but all I found was cat hair and brown-bottomed socks. I asked my boss if he saw it but he was distracted by my dirty apron, and suggested that I clean those fucking salsa stains off it. My girlfriend hasn't seen it, and my mother doesn't know I lost it. Maybe I never had it - or maybe it's expendible - like fossil fuels. Maybe my voice isn't lost, maybe it's time to go to war. People have tried to help by suggesting so many different things. "Write about me," they'll suggest. Somehow, I'm not inspired. Or else, "Write about sexism." "Write about waitressing." "Write about not being able to find a job." "Write about art, and how it sucks to be an artist right now because no one wants to pay for art, all they want to pay for are, ironically, airplane bombs and destruction and oil and how the media sucks and how they all report bullshit propaganda..." "Write about peace." Write about peace. OK, write about peace. Hmm. How can I write about peace? All I know is war. War has been injected into my innocence since childhood. Cowboys and Indians, G.I.Joes, and spy vs. spy crept into my backyard. When I was in junior high, the United States went to war with Iraq. The way I learned it, 6 or 7 american soldiers died and about a couple hundred Iraqi soldiers. It wasn't death like real people die, like me or my sister or Fran the neighbor. It was tv death. Number death. A person that didn't exist until they died death. It all seemed ok to me. The president was saying we had to do it, and my social studies teacher was saying we had to do it, so, we musta had to. Saddam musta been the next Hitler and at the United States was providing american-jesus-christ-jon-bon-jovi-superstar-soldiers to help them out. Did you know they live in a desert? It's funny (in a, wow this is really fucked up kinda way) what they teach you. I know that communism is evil, Johnny Appleseed planted a bunch of trees, and Betsy Ross sewed the flag. I know the lyrics to the national anthem and God Bless America, I know that George Washington never told a lie, and that the founding fathers had all of our best interests in mind when they wrote the constitution - a constitution that can be amended (phew!), but never re-thought. Never re-imagined. Never tossed in the trash can. This is a document that was intended to live on forever and ever until the sun blows up and America is blown to smitherines. I wonder now how many people internationally have been killed, starved, maimed, tortured, raped, violated, and threatened since my birth to ensure my "American way of life." I wonder why we agree that these international borders are barriers and not lines drawn in the sand to ensure that my clubhouse is better and bigger and badder than yours and you can't come in 'cause you have cooties. It's immature, our American pride. Congratulations. You were born here. It's not like Gay Pride, or Puerto Rican Pride  these are groups of people that the system works against. Borderline people. People that are not part of the power majority. People who have been told their whole lives that they would be better if they were just, straighter, or whiter. They can be proud. They live hard and fight hard to exist. American pride? What's hard about being American? The drive thru? The 72 cable channels spliced from the next door neighbor's plan? The choice between coke, pepsi, rc cola, store brand, and all the diets? Compared to the rest of the world, most of us have running water and can use the bathroom at Starbucks. No health care? Buck up and get a band-aid. They come in many different shapes and colors... sponge bob bandaids, big giant bandaids, teeny tiny butterfly bandaids, clear band-aids, traditional flesh (pink) colored bandaids, blue fingertip bandaids....who needs health care? Write about peace. I need to pull myself together and write about war. Michael Moore was the first to really show me what war looked like. I knew, prior to seeing Fahrenheit 9/11 that war was evil, wrong, sickening, perverse. I knew this. I didn't know what war looked like. I didn't know that war is huge holes in the earth where homes and grocery stores once lived. I didn't know that war is shattered streets and felled power lines. I didn't know that war is families interrupted by sudden death and disfigurement. I didn't know that war is my brother - my eighteen year old brother - signing up to the airforce when he flunked out of college. War has been an American past-time since before America was stolen from the indigenous populations. Since before Europeans stole whole villages, whole communities from Africa and enslaved them here. Since before segregation and lynching were legal and then illegal but still sanctioned by the government. Since prohibition. Since the industrial revolution and the rise of the union. War and violence and bullying and lawmaking are involved in a four-way orgy and we have recently decided to super-size it. Before we finish devastating Iraq, before we finish building our pipeline through Afghanistan, we're already hearing about Iran and North Korea - weapons of mass destruction again. Nukes. They're being casually reported on CNN and MSNBC. Since we have been oh-so-successful in Iraq, we're planning our next attacks. Keep your eyes open for news about Iran. It's slowly creeping in, preparing us for war. Maybe our televisions are set to CNN while we're cleaning our houses. Maybe the news is on in the car. Maybe AOL is flashing news stories at us when we log on. However you get it, mass media is leaking testosterone-filled-power-addicted propaganda into our everyday lives so that when our s/elected leaders decide to attack, we'll be ready to sign up our children. I would write about peace if I knew anything about it. Sadly, in finding my voice, the only language I speak is war.