Damn I'm tired. Its 9:38 in the morning, I don't have class until 11 and I thought I'd write a daily dose before I finished my german homework. Not that I have anything particulalry interesting to say this early in the morning but hey, why not? Fuck Im too tired for this.

Okay, so its 2:04 pm and I still tired but not so tired. A few weeks ago I mentioned something about making people feel good. How I missed doing that or something. Well it's pretty much the reason I want to write, to make people feel good. There are things that I know about life - theories or whatever - that I believe can make people happier. Well I was sitting outside just now smoking and a fly landed on my leg and instead of swatting it I just let it sit there. Cheesy yes, but the point it that I'm more myself again, I have friends that I care about and thats important. Also my family, the source of many fights but now I want to make them happy. I love them so much. I have this burgeoning relationship with my young sister and I'm getting along with my mom. My dad is awsome and seems so happy lately, that makes me feel great. Yep. Thats all I wanted to write about, I guess I'm adjusted on the emotional level here.

On a really random tangent side note:

I am not one of those politcal bloggers. In fact, I am not particularly pationate about polotics. Film, Literature...these things I care about. On a politcal lever, White Washing American history and making criminals into heroes in order to save face is one of those things that REALLY pisses me off. So today in lecture my professor showed "Dear America." This film seems to think that the tradegy of vietnam existed on only an American level. Lementing the 40,000 troops that died and deifying the 260,000 that were wounded. I don't know how I feel about Vietnam veterns. I respect defending freedom but hardly consider Vietnam an example of fighting for freedom. I see it as an extension of Manifest Destiny - which is the reason everyone felt so comfortable massacaring Native Americans and worshiping the frontier figure, the cowboy, making Custor (sp?) a hero. The sources I checked* seem to have the numbers from 600,000 to 1,000,000 Northen Vietnam dead and the number of S. Vietnam civilans range from 200,000 to 1.2 million. The number of casualties resulting from American massacres range from 400 to 220,000 (this larger figure is calculated by the sheer number of missing retrieved weapons which suggests that innocent bystanders were commonly mistaken - I hope - for Viet Congs. The 400 comes from documented massacres such as: Son My and My Lai. Furtheremore, considering that in total - N and S civilians and VC - one quarter of the population was killed during the Vietnam war. Thats a rediculesly LARGE number and I hope that this illustrates that the vietnam war was a Vietnamese tradegy (common, the number of casualties DWARF the number of American casualties). I'd like to argue that American involvement in the Vietnam war probably escalated the death toll, and for sure accounted for at least 400 innocent deaths. So as a country, stop white washing our history. We fought a war to defend democracy. We paid a price for that, but they paid a much larger price, not to mention the MILES of land that our bombs destroyed from farms to beachsides to forest. We did a bad bad thing.

Sources (in brief):

Britannica: not specified, but the implication is that the statistics cover the entire war.
Clodfelter, Michael, Vietnam in Military Statistics (1995)
Eckhardt: covers the years 1965-75 (unless otherwise noted)
Grenville: does not specify which years are covered, but by context, it seems to be 1960-75
Kutler, Stanley: Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War (1996)
Lewy, Guenter, America in Vietnam (1978): Lewy's estimates cover the years 1965-74. (u.o.n.)
Olson, James: Dictionary of the Vietnam War (1988): covers the years 1965-74 (u.o.n.)
Summers, Harry: Vietnam War Almanac (1985)
Tucker, Spencer, Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War (1998)
Wallechinsky: death tolls apparently cover the years 1957-75. (u.o.n.)
Young, Marilyn, The Vietnam Wars: 1945-1990 (1991)