Attachments Can Come Where Least Expected

This is not my car.  At least, it isn't anymore.  But for more than 13 years, this car was one of the very few things in my life that didn't change.  It was my car through 5 residences.  A great many friends have come & gone since then.  So much so that, other than family, only one person who was a close friend when I got it is still someone I talk to regularly, despite us now living in different states.

I was never particularly attached to this car.  It was just my car.  It was reliable enough that it went over 10 years without a major problem.  Even now, its only problems are repairable.  But the cost for those repairs had become enough to justify just replacing it instead.

I did hate some things about it.  It's got a cup holder in a weird spot that couldn't really even be used for fear of the drink falling out.  It's got automatic lights, which means they come on automatically when it gets dark.  But I also couldn't shut them off, which meant blinding the gate guards any time I went on base after dark.

I should be happy that I've now got a brand new car sitting in my garage.  And I am.  Yet, my brain isn't viewing it that way.  For some reason, I find myself not feeling like I've gained a new car but that I've lost my car.

I'm well aware that attachment to inanimate objects is typically limited to children^[1] with various exceptions for adults.  I don't think any of those things apply, as I never considered the car something I was attached to.  I never treated it any differently than the average person treats their car.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this.  It's just a weird thing to find myself having been attached to an inanimate object in such a way.  Especially for someone like me, one of the most non-emotional, non-sentimental people you could ever meet.

If you actually read this, thanks for indulging my rantiness.  Sometimes it just helps to get thoughts out, even if they don't make sense to anyone else.

I want promise the next post will make more sense, but it's on morality and addressing a Christian's questions, so...

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1.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/mar/09/psychology.uknews

I Still Hate The Fourth of July

I love my country, but I hate the Fourth of July^[1].  Why would I hate a celebration of the Declaration of Independence for the world's first secular nation?

She doesn't like explosions

This is why I hate the Fourth of July.

Fireworks went on sale this week.  They've been going off all night, and if this year follows the trend, they'll be going off every night for weeks.  Which means this dog will be scared every night for weeks, just because my neighbors want to blow shit up.

And she's the calm one.  There's an even more scared Great Dane alternating between pacing all over the house and hiding under things you'd never think a 140 pound dog could fit under.

Last year, I donated to the Wounded Warrior Project^[2].  This year, I think it'll be the Nebraska Humane Society^[3].

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1.  http://aparticularblogbyaparticularatheist.blogspot.com/2012/07/i-hate-4th-of-july.html
2.  http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/
3.  http://www.nehumanesociety.org/

I Hate The 4th of July

I've come to the realization that I hate the 4th of July.  I don't hate its origin, the Declaration of Independence.  That would be silly.  I hate what it's become.

We celebrate our Independence by torturing our pets.  We take them into our homes with a promise to protect them (in return for their independence), then we scare the shit out of them with fireworks they cannot possibly understand.

We celebrate our Independence by showcasing the flow of jobs out of America.  We spend enormous amounts of money on blowing up stuff made in China by people (some who are children) paid nearly slave wages.

And worst of all, there's how we treat combat veterans on this day (and the weeks before and after in at least my neighborhood).  We use the day as a reason to thank our troops, but mostly only with Facebook status updates & tweets.  And explosives.  We still don't thank them properly by giving them proper benefits, especially medical (which should include mental health).  We certainly don't thank them by not putting them in, or bringing them home from, the situations that cause their physical & mental ailments.

Thanking them with words, social media updates, and bumper stickers is meaningless when we still neglect the injuries they endured on our behalf.

Instead, we thank our troops, home from, and still recovering from war zones, by having non-stop explosions all over town for hours at a time.  Essentially, we bring them home from war, ignore their PTSD, and carelessly rub their noses in it on a day we're saying how much we appreciate their sacrifices.  We mock those who lost limbs by being careless with explosives & losing fingers.

In case I wasn't clear enough, fireworks can be a trigger for veterans suffering from combat induced PTSD.  And we make their homes a place they cannot escape those triggers.

If you really want to thank the troops, contact your Congressional Representative & Senators, and tell them to fund adequate mental health benefits for veterans.  Then, factor their response into how you vote.  I think they would appreciate that much more than the current practice of spending money to aggravate their PTSD for a few minutes of your own enjoyment.

Better yet, take the money you'd have spent on fireworks and donate it to a veterans organization.

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA)
The American Legion
Veterans of Foreign Wars
AMVETS
Wounded Warrior Project
Disabled American Veterans

I went with the Wounded Warrior Project.  If you have other suggested organizations, please post them in the comments.