Tag Archives: MySuddenlyOkayLife

Drones: A Blind Intelligence

   I’m pretty proud of this piece and I thought I’d kick us back off with it. I expect it to be controversial, but I’m happy with the research that I did and I want to be able to put more serious work on here as well as my regular programming. Even if you don’t agree with it I just hope you enjoy it and feel free to comment.

Drones

A Blind Intelligence

Nation of Change

     In the novel Ender’s Game, children are selected to train for an interstellar war using simulations in the form of games. The idea of the game allows players to make riskier decisions because of disconnection from reality. Casualties do not matter as long as the ultimate goal of decimating a pixelated enemy is met. Little do the characters know, the simulation is real, and they successfully drive an entire race to extinction. Orson Scott Card wrote this novel in 1985, but in 2002 his idea of dehumanized conflict became real as the CIA launched the first modern Predator drone strike near Khost, Afghanistan (Sifton, 2012). Like Ender’s Game, drones objectify the target. Human beings become voiceless, neon monsters on a motion-tracking camera to an aerial sniper behind a computer screen. This is the reality of drone warfare. Drones are a silent killer that causes unrest in communities and tarnishes the American presence in the Middle East. They are said to be safer for troops because an unmanned aircraft saves lives from combat fatalities, but their use increases distrust and hostility to those serving on the ground. With every unintentional casualty, terrorist organizations such as ISIL gain fuel to lure traumatized populations into joining their cause. By using drones, the U.S. also opens the gate for further violations of international humanitarian law by countries like Russia, creating a new arms race (Boyle, 2013, p. 22). By using armed drone technology, the military willingly adopts terrorist tactics. The U.S. government has crossed the line from War on Terror to War of Terror. Continue reading →

Festivus For the Rest of Us: Part I

It’s The Most Magical Time of The Year

Ah, December. What a magical time. Frost in the air, cookies in the oven, stockings hung on the mantle with care. It’s a time when families gather all around and set out as a pack to choose one tree that will serve as a reminder to the other trees not to get too cocky as we parade it through the streets atop our four-door, family vehicles before dragging it inside and decorating it’s withering body with sparkles and various other whimsical baubles. We prefer to put them in front of large windows so that its slow and drawn-out, but none the less beautiful, death tells passerby’s “Hey, hey look at all this shit we can pile on this thing. I know right? Keep it moving, plebeians”.

O Christmas Tree

O Christmas Tree

How much better does your slowly rotting carcass look in our house that it does from that

tacky whore, Debra’s?

Continue reading →

Working Nine to Five

Walking into work after class felt like slowly scraping away at a chalkboard locked inside my skull. Mentally, I had just about had it with remembering to open each eye after blinking and the fact that my feet somehow continued to shuffle one after another is a miracle. Between analyzing every minuscule detail of Richard the III and decoding whether or not toddlers can be racist based on their Teletubbie preferences, I was a lobotomized mess. The lack of sleep combined with mental anguish was beginning to drive me insane. For some reason my mouth constantly tasted like cotton balls and those weird off brand gummy bears and my hands were always covered in hives. My legs essentially felt like I was saving up for a broomstick harvest at a contemporary crafts festival. It was leggings day, every day for fall was gonna come early this year regardless if it was 93 degrees outside. Wild animals scurried away from me when I went outside. Hordes of vultures circled my house. Murders of crows haunted my ears as I aimlessly plucked out an out of tune rendition of “Banana Pancakes” on my sad little ukelele. There would be no banana pancakes here. Nay, I say! Nay! For they are too happy a thing to reside in the darkness that was my heart in the depths of despair that were these times. Continue reading →

Beginning of Season II

New Season

Hello wonderful followers, facebookers, and the seven to nine friends of my mother that she insists read what ever this may be. It’s wonderful to be back on MySuddenlyOkayLife! I had to take a bit of a break to get a bunch of college stuff all adjusted and ready to make important adult decisions that could affect the entire outcome of my life with the simple choice of to take Shakespeare or Minority Literature first.

   I ended up taking them both at the same time. It seemed like a good idea but it ended up providing an impressive mountain of reading. I’ve learned the general idea of how to survive being a character in any form of literature seems to be universal regardless of genre.

   Rule 1. Be white.

   Rule 2. Be a man.

   Rule 3. Don’t not be white.

   Rule 4. If your uncle has one weird, shriveled hand, he’s probably an asshole and you shouldn’t invite him to family functions.

   But really.

Continue reading →

T.Hanks and the Tab Key

“Does anyone not know how to log on to a computer?”

I lean back in my desk and feel the glaze on my eyes further solidify as I join the rest of the class in silence. The curve of the chair bites into my tail bone but at least I feel something again. I check the time on my phone from the pocket of my dress. We’re entering hour two of our three-hour tour. I was forming a theory that this was a psychological experiment of some sort over how long it will take for millennial’s to go all Planet of the Apes on an old man.

“Okay, so you start with your name, usually it has this format with a name box and password box.”

Lord have mercy he’s doing it again. I could not count the times that I had seen this exact presentation. It was a good fifteen minutes about the importance typing with the correct fingers.

“Now, some people do, I think it’s chicken beak type style, like this”, he held up his stubby little hands, “Notice my pointer finger is up, like this, and the rest of my fingers are curled under like a fist without the raised finger. Now watch.” Continue reading →

Revenge of the ‘Nads

A post about one of the many reasons I have been so busy as of late.

Enjoy.

I awoke early on Saturday morning with a groan as my dog river-danced on my calves, whining to be let out. I glared at him. All night he had forced me to take him outside to bark at toads and his own shadow. Over and over again I shuffled through the house to open the door and shut the door before passing out again, praying that each time would be the last. Yet it never was. I begged for just one R.E.M. cycle but Max had other plans.

Was this my punishment for allowing him to be fixed? I would be angry too if my testicles had been cut off but this was just cruel. I rolled out of bed once more and glanced at my phone. I only had about 15 minutes until my alarm would go off to get ready for my father’s birthday party. My feet scraped along the wood as I limped into the laundry room to get my duck out of his carrier. He stuck his head out of the top as I approached, like a little duck submarine, and began talking.

“There he is! Mr. Amerrrriduuuuck“, I sang to him as I popped the lid and lifted him into my arms.

He pecked at my shirt and nibbled my hair as I opened the back door and set him down as Max ran out.

“Bye bye, duck!”

I shut the door and started on getting ready. My hair was halfway curled when I heard the dog barking to be let in. I let him in and he took his usual position in a leather armchair but his eyes were locked on mine with cold fury. Was this about the balls? I had a feeling it was but I put it out of my head and got back to doing my hair. Continue reading →

The Owl Knows

Last week, I got accepted into an actual university. It isn’t a community college or trade school but an actual four-year university with a football team and obnoxious mascots. I bet if I asked around I could even find underground hazing rituals. Ever since I applied I’ve been anticipating its arrival like a Golden Ticket. I only applied a few months ago but I feel like I had been waiting for that Charlie and The Chocolate Factory moment since the day I graduated high school two years ago.

Back then the plan had been to go to a community college, get my basics done and then transfer to a university, but I have always wondered if I made the right decision. As stupid as it may seem, seeing the college adventures of former classmates on Facebook drives a sword of regret piercing through my heart, twisting each time someone posts an obscure collegiate music event. Maybe I made the wrong choice and I convinced myself that I was making the smart decision when in reality I was just scared of the future. Scared of the unknown and yet to be discovered. Even now the thought of it still makes my heart race and my breathing become labored and strenuous because the worse that letter could say was “no” and that “no” would seemingly seal my future in this cesspool of a town. Continue reading →

Born in the U.S.A.: The Sequel

This is the sequel to the Independence Day Special “Born In the U.S.A.. You can find that by clicking right here!

It was later in the day now and after endless bouts of going inside and outside to back inside I had officially had enough of the mosquitoes. I could already pass as someone with chicken pox and I was beginning to worry if I would have any blood left after this incessant holiday. I rejoined my allies at the kitchen windows.

We were like spectators at a zoo watching the children swim in the water.

Earlier before our journey into the outdoors, our scantily clad guests had wandered upstairs to change and we each gave each-other a look that, in-turn, assured us that our thoughts were in the same place. After noticing how the girl seems to walk on her tip toes, someone suggested that if she had relaxed on her feet, the shear force of how high her shorts were pulled would either A.) rupture her clitoris and create an elevator-from-the-Shining-esque mess of blood or B.) split her in half altogether. Either way, I would be stuck cleaning it up and it would be icing on the patriot cake on my least favorite day of the year. Continue reading →

Hall and Oatmeal

Ah, breakfast. The meal where we break our fast of the night and welcome the new day with foods that we’ve cruelly segregated from the others. A virtual farmyard of foods ranging from the stolen eggs of chickens to the belly of Babe’s mother and possibly the rest of his long lost family. To be honest, you shouldn’t feel bad about that. The rest of those piglets ended up as right jerks. I saw one kick a pigeon once. Just punted it right across the sidewalk. It really caused a scene at the annual Christmas festival that year. Especially since it was right in front of the line for Santa. Also because his family is just genetically delicious or so I’m told.

Breakfast is also a time where one can enjoy the fruits that an underpaid worker probably tended with his own hands. You can almost taste the civil injustice with every sip of my tropical smoothie.
A wonderful concoction of banana and mangoes did I crave as I awoke this morning with bright eyes full of wonderment. Oh happy day! I practically floated into my kitchen and dramatically threw open the cabinet to retrieve my peacock print smoothie cup. A beautiful cup for a beautiful assortment of vitamin c and potassium rich fruits.

I set it aside and prepared myself for the unveiling of the contents of my freezer. With a smile I opened the freezer door to happiness and looked upon my prized smoothie shelf.

Nothing. Continue reading →

7 a.m. waking up in the morning. Gotta have my bowl but cereal makes me nauseous.

What a wonderful era we live in to be able to see a doctor that won’t go through your organs with waste covered hands. An era of medical breakthroughs and being able to find out exactly why your Aunt Martha smells like maple syrup after she eats creamed corn. What a world we live in to be able to give butter faces a fighting chance and to permanently freeze a look of childlike wonder on the face of someones aged grandmother. We can even remove enormous uteri to put photos of on the internet for imaginary points and approval. Let’s just admit it, America, we have it pretty good.

Pretty good, indeed. Until some cantankerous nurse decides to move your appointment to 7 a.m. on a monday morning. I’m not sure what about my persona gave her the assumption of “early-riser” or “morning person” when she was playing chinese checkers with appointment times. Maybe it was the dark circles under my eyes or the way my I wear a blazer. I will never know her reasoning and not even Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes could decode it, but damn would he look good trying.

Either way, there I was, driving along empty streets at 6:30 a.m., smoothie in hand, wondering if I really needed to see a doctor. I should have just craigslisted a witch doctor to rub eggs and squirrel tails on me while singing the national anthem of Saudi Arabia in B flat. At least then it would probably be around 4 and I’d at least get a free squirrel tail. Continue reading →