Eighth Notes Midweek

Dinosaurs & Soldiers If the Dinosaur Media reporting comfortably from their hotels in Baghdad cannot “go out” because it is not safe, shouldn’t the critical mass of their reporting be interviews with, and the perspective of those who, everyday, do “go out “? Will they not put aside their reflexive distaste for things military, and ask the experts on things military, what did you see today? Why is their viewpoint automatically discounted? When I hear NPR report that attacking “militants-insurgents-gunmen firing machine guns” this once PFC 71D (legal clerk) shakes his head. Do they really mean machine guns, 7.62 caliber, 1200 round per minute, link belt fed machine guns? Or were they firing automatic weapons? Ask the experts won’t you? Now and then, in between cigars and white out.

His, Yours, Mine & Ours. The news reader and classical music CD cover reader said this today: “ President Bush seeking support for his Iraq policy…” His Iraq policy? Shouldn’t that be our Iraq policy? If the Iraq policy is ‘his’, what is ‘yours’? What side would your side be?

Icons at 10,000 Radios. Early in December,for one day and one hour, I worked at a large commercial cabinetmaking shop. There were about forty people working on the floor. In the assembly area were some odd twenty of us. There were eleven radios at full volume, on four different stations. Everyone turned them off at breaktimes and at lunch, the only time one could really have heard them over the machine noise. I’ve taken to calling the place, 10,000 Radios, like the rock band, 10,000 Maniacs. Worse than the noise were the pin-ups, pictures of naked women on the shelf walls of individual workspaces. Very not professional. If I had been forced to stay, (I was some nine weeks into a layoff at the time), I was going to take in a few pictures of my own. Just to test the boundaries as it were. Something really controversial! John Paul the Great, or The Sacred Heart of Jesus, or The Virgin Mary.