Dixie Chicks

I was elated when I heard that Madonna had performed an anti-material, anti-war album, only to meet disappointment when I heard that Madonna was sending out decoys which have not her songs but the epithet "What the f are you doing?" That's the hit song of the year, by the way. "What the f*** are you doing", by Madonna.

Now I hear that the Dixie Chicks have disappointed me. I was encouraged by them because they took a stand against our administration. But then their lead singer Maines wore a T-shirt at a recent awards ceremony reading F.U.T.K., which means, I take it, "Futk you, Tony Keith". So this is an acronym that contains itself. Well, not quite. I misspelled a word to avoid some of these filters, but imagine what if Keith's first name had been Chris. Now who was Tony Keith? I looked on the Internet and found that he wrote a song called "The Red, White and Blue", and I read the lyrics. They were pro-American and expressed an angry mood, like many Americans had after Planeattack. Maines criticized these lyrics, and Tony Keith replied by saying that the Dixie Chicks were not in his league. So Maines replied with the T-shirt. It caused quite a stir. I don't think it was appropriate. I think that word beginning with f is grossly misused; most of the time it is not used to mean sexual intercourse. Maines showed herself as trite by putting that on her shirt and wearing it to the awards ceremony.

It's the same sort of thing that Madonna did, in a different context. This is the second famous woman that I have heard of in recent days use the f word. To me the f word shows the user to be rurale, as it shows the user can't find words to mean more than that. I won't buy Dixie Chicks albums either.

Memorial Day

I saw a movielet in a Power Point demonstration last week which inspired me to write this poem:

All gave some

All gave Some and
Some gave All
But I hope for the day
When none'll have to give
But to live
Else there may be a day
in which
All will give All.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

One of the purposes that the US administration had in attacking Iraq was to get rid of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Now we know that at one time he had them because he used then against the Kurds and the Iranians. So the US and Britain attacked and overthrew the Saddam regime and looked for those weapons of mass destruction but did not find any, at least not yet. He got rid of them long ago or a short time ago, or he got rid of them while the inspectors were doing their job, or maybe he had moved or hid them, although that seems most likely. But the failure to find them has turned out to be a disappointment in Persian Gulf War II and its aftermath. This failure to find them has inspired me to write two items - a song and a nursery rhyme. The nursery rhyme goes:

The US Army
Went to Iraq
To find for George Bush some weapons of mass destruction.
But when they got there,
Iraq was bare,
And so for George Bush they found none.

In this rhyme, say "weapons of mass destruction" fast and all at once as though it were a single syllable word such as "war". Same way with the song:

Oh where oh where are those weapons of mass destruction
Oh where oh where can they be
Where's that gas and those germs and the glow in the dark
Oh where oh were can they be.

Would you pose nude to get a driver's license?

In Florida there has been this issue about a woman who had her picture taken for a driver's license. She was a Muslim and wore the veil all the time in public. She insisted on wearing it for her driver license photo. However, Florida authorities ruled that that was not valid. She would have to expose her face to have a valid photo taken. That seems reasonable enough. Having the face visible is needed for identification.

But look at it from the woman's point of view. Would you pose nude to get a driver's license? Suppose the law required you to have your nude picture taken and placed on your license because clothes can prevent one from identifying you. You sure would object, wouldn't you? Well, this is how this woman feels. We have our taboos on nudity; these may not be reasonable but we live with them. They say we need to cover certain parts of our anatomy, mainly in the crotch and buttocks, and for women, the breasts. For this Muslim woman, the taboo area includes her face as well. To her, going out in public without a veil on is like one of us bare-faced individuals going out without anything on. Looking at it from this view, don't you see her point?

Of course, issues like this are rarely simple, and this is no exception. The same Muslim religion that requires her to wear a veil also forbids her from driving; that's a male privilege. So she should not be getting a license to begin with, unless she breaks with the teachings of her sexist religion, in which case why the veil on the driver's license? What Florida is saying, then, is that if your religion allows you to drive, then in order to drive, you need to expose your face. This could violate someone's religious views or scruples, and it's possible that a case could come up which does just that. But in this case it appears that it doesn't. I see the woman's point but if she wants to drive, she needs to consider removing the veil.