Reality keeps intruding...

Well, episode three isn't any better the second time. It isn't bad, no, I'm quite admant about its not sucking. I just hoped I'd discover levels of insight or deeper meaning tucked in with all the crappy Anakin-Padmae scenes. Would it have killed Lucas to make episodes one and two a single movie and have given us either a back story or more Vader? Maybe an episode one that set up the millennia long war of attrition between Jedi and Sith? Some freaking back story? Or, a whole episode of Vader just going gangbusters on Jedi s? How cool would that be! We (book and comic reading geeks...) know that there were Jedi who survived Vaders' trophy hunting. Why not a whole episode about that, one where Vader really becomes willingly evil, not just 'I'm-a-confused-teenager-evil'? Also (sort of a spoiler, but come on...) who really thinks Obi-wan wouldn't of lightsabered Vader right through the eye-socket? He would of taken him out. For sure. Alright, enough bitching about what could have been. It was do or do not, and Lucas wasn't even trying. Just don't look back in anger...Ok, yeah, I'm listening to Oasis right now. It's on the internet radio station I'm grooving to while I type. Sorta fitting and all, plus, I'm just a big hack. Well folks, back to my memorial day sponsored three day weekend. Retrofitted an attic ladder in the garage yesterday, bought another billion feet of insulation. Was up till three in the morning aligning hinges and trying to attach springs. That's my salute to American resolve. On a rare but serious note, it was sorta tough to watch nightline last night and see all the people who have died in the Iraq war. I have a cousin and uncle that both made it back from Iraq mostly whole. Outside of their eyes they look the same. I'm lucky that they came back, and that I wasn't watching for their faces on the show. I was watching for one guy I knew from my high school band, and while we weren't that close, it still hit hard. Watching all the faces go past and to feel a generational attachment form was odd. I must be getting old, because some of those kids looked like kids. Whether you're from the "lies-lies-unjust-war-of-aggression-by-imperialistic-baby-killing-cowards" party or the "doing-their-duty-one-hundred-times-more-people-that-age-die-in-car-crashes-each-year- than-in-the-entire-war-respect-their-sacrifice" camp, you can't be blase about the deaths of Americans, however they died. Heck, forget Americans, any death can't be treated indifferently. Justified or not a death is an outcome that represents failure. Somewhere, sometime, somehow either the person who died or the person who killed that person failed and brought about the death. And in either case their is a victim, due to that failure. People don't die without consequence. There may be righteousness to the death, on either side, but there is no death that does not affect. I watched as long as I could, then went back to work on my ladder. Onwards, upwards, and always in circles. To Staff Sgt. David Weisenburg, and his family: memorial day is a bit different for me now. I'm truly sorry, and truly grateful. It was a pleasure to know him when I did.