Not My Usual Post

I don’t like the word “meme.”  It’s kind of annoying, really.  You take a picture, use Photoshop to put a clever passive-aggressive phrase over the top of picture, and then throw it up on your Facebook wall and sit back to see how many people think you are super clever by sharing it and reposting it a billion times.  I have seen a lot of memes flying around social media lately, and I am finally to the point where I can no longer just scroll past them and shake my head.  Most of them involve mass generalizations about large groups of people.  For instance, a number of my friends on social media seem to be claiming that anyone who opposes unfettered acceptance of ‘refugees’ into the United States must be illiterate anti-Muslim bigots who don’t know what it means to be Christian.  These same people post meme after meme accusing anyone who has the nerve to state that radical Islam (such as the brand espoused by Al Qaeda and ISIS) is a problem is somehow indicting the entire Islamic faith.   One such meme is a composite picture of a group of KKK members complete with white robes and hoods on the top half, and a group of radical Muslim terrorists on the bottom half with words to the effect of “The KKK does not represent Christianity any more than ISIS represents Islam.”  Well, no shit.  I have not heard any reasonable person state that all Islam is the problem.  I think we all can agree that at this point in history, radical Islam is definitely a problem.  Just ask the families of the hundreds of people who lost their lives in the last two weeks in terrorist attacks in Beirut and Paris and the skies over Egypt.  Shaming people who choose to state the obvious and mischaracterizing their statements isn’t doing anyone any favors. 

One of the most clever memes I have seen posted about a bazillion times on my Facebook feed alone has to do with refugees.    “Christians in the South put on a nativity play every year which about a Middle Eastern couple desperate for shelter.”  Oh yeah…that’s a good one.  IN YOUR FACE, CHRISTIANS!!!  This particular gem is an apparent response to the large group of governors who have stated that they do not wish to have unvetted Syrian refugees deposited in their cities, and are trying to make a point to our President by being vocal about their concerns.  The FBI director James Comey, whom President Obama appointed, has stated that there is no system in place right now to adequately screen the Syrians who wish to come to our country to determine whether they are in fact refugees.  “We can only query against that which we have collected. And so if someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database until the cows come home, but there will be nothing show up because we have no record of them,” Comey explained.  Because of these comments, some members of Congress (who have an R by their name, thus rendering them incompetent boobs in the eyes of the meme-crafters), have suggested that we pause admitting them long enough to put a process in place that will help ensure that refugees can get in, and terrorists cannot. Of course, since these members of congress and governors have the audacity to question whether the refugees which are being brought to the United States are actually refugees or perhaps a mixture of mostly refugees and also a few bad guys, they are being raked over the coals for their insensitivity by a lot of people who have no idea what the word refugee means. 

Article 1(A)(2) of the 1951 Geneva Convention defines a refugee as an individual who is outside his or her country of nationality or habitual residence who is unable or unwilling to return due to a well-founded fear of persecution based on his or her race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. Applying this definition, internally displaced persons (IDPs) – including individuals fleeing natural disasters and generalized violence, stateless individuals not outside their country of habitual residence or not facing persecution, and individuals who have crossed an international border fleeing generalized violence are not considered refugees under either the 1951 Convention or the 1967 Optional Protocol.

President Obama recently spoke in Turkey about the refugee issue.  He focused in on the statements of the Pillsbury Dough Boy, aka Ted Cruz, who stated that he believed that we should focus on accepting Christian refugees from Syria.  President Obama derided what he called a “religious test” and then mocked anyone in the United States who believes that we should proceed carefully as being “afraid of widows and children.”  Well, that was certainly productive, Mr. President.  You keep on using the word “refugee.”  In the famous words of Indigo Montoya, “I do not think it means what you think it means.”  The problem is that a person who is fleeing generalized violence (such as the kind of indiscriminate violence that ISIS perpetrates against whomever happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time) is not a refugee under that convention.  So, whether you like Mr. Cruz or not, what he said was an accurate statement of the law.  Paul Ryan, the new Speaker of the House, reiterated the words of President Obama stating “there will not be a religious test.”  Read the Geneva Convention, Mr. Ryan.  I would rather call it a “persecution test” but nobody has asked me.  Christians, thousands of them, have been rounded up and slaughtered by ISIS.  If you are a Christian in Syria, you are being persecuted by ISIS.  If you are a Shiite Muslim in Iraq, you are persecuted by ISIS.  There are many more ethnic and religious groups that have fallen under the Sauron-like eye of ISIS.  This we know.  What we don’t know is which of the people who are leaving Syria are simply fleeing the generalized violence there (not refugees), fleeing religious or political persecution (refugees), or if there are some of them that have other nefarious purposes (terrorist assholes).  The idea that we would accept people fleeing from any country where they are persecuted for their religious or political beliefs is unquestioned.  But how do we determine whether they are being persecuted for their religious or political beliefs?  Hmmm.  Let me think.  I suppose WE WOULD HAVE TO ASK THEM.  Uh oh.  Bring on the clever memes. 

Mocking people who have genuine concern for the safety and well-being of our citizens is not accomplishing anything.  I think the United States should actively work on a system which will allow refugees to come to our country.  I believe that we can all agree that our safety should be a consideration in this process.  I don’t believe that belittling people for their concerns is doing any good whatsoever, and in fact divides us even more.  There is a common middle ground here.  But I guess there isn’t a meme for that.  

Can I Get a Do-Over, Please?

My friends know that I occasionally suffer from migraine headaches.  When one of those suckers is coming on, I see flashing lights, auras and the soft sounds of my children breathing or pressing the buttons on the x-box controllers are enough to send me right over the edge.  The only thing that helps is to lay in a dark room, put ice on my head, take powerful drugs, and hide all of the x-box controllers.

I started feeling the tell-tale signs Sunday afternoon, after a rousing family trip to Costco where we spent almost $400 on food and a two-pack of ink for my HP printer, which is now WAY more expensive than gold per ounce.  I ignored the signs, however, because if I take my migraine medication it puts me to sleep, making it difficult to harass my children into cleaning their rooms and walking the dog.   Also, we had invited my in-laws over for dinner.

After we arrived back in North Bend, I had my husband stop at the grocery store because, shocker, even with $400 worth of food and printer ink in the back of the car I still didn't have everything I needed to cook dinner.  I purchased basil and a couple of green chili peppers at Safeway and then we headed home to unload the mountain of Costco purchases and cook dinner.  I knew my headache was coming, but I figured I could make it past dinner and then head straight to bed.  I should have listened to my head, however.

I was making a new recipe, roasted chicken with grape tomatoes and basil.  The chili peppers were to add a little heat to the sauce.  I de-seeded a pepper and sliced it according to the recipe instructions. Because I watch the Food Network, I remembered to wash my hands several times to remove all of the capsaicin, which as every budding home cook knows, can linger on your hands and cause you to burn your eyes and mouth and other soft tissues of unmentionable nature.   After dinner, I told everyone that I was just going to have to go to bed because my headache was getting worse and I excused myself to wallow in my own misery.

I went in to my room and started preparing to head to bed.  First, I took out my contacts.  Actually, I say 'first' but in reality it was the first and last thing I did.  Why, you ask?  Because as soon as I put my finger in my eye to pull out my right contact, I felt a burning which I would equate to placing my eyeball directly onto a stove burner.  Blinking back tears, I muttered how stupid I was and I washed my hands several times and then moved on to my left eye.  Amazingly, it hurt even MORE than the right eye, similar to dousing it with alcohol and then placing it directly onto the surface of the sun.  I dug around for my contact blindly, but couldn't get a grip on it.  More burning.  I flushed my eye with contact solution, washed my hands AGAIN and went back for another go.  MORE BURNING.  Three more tries and I was now wiping the apparently irremovable pepper toxins and remnants of soap all over the entire surface of my eyeball, and I had yet to extract my contact.  At that point, I was willing to just go to sleep and let my eye fuse shut permanently, contact and all.  So, I took my migraine medication and staggered, weeping, over to the bed and crawled under the covers,

When I awoke the next morning, my headache was still there, but thankfully my eye was blessedly not fused permanently shut, and it didn't burn anymore.  I went over to the sink to throw away my other contact because I figured that if I wasn't able to wash my hands enough to get rid of the evil pepper juice, no amount of soaking over night was going to take it off either.  Then, I attempted to locate my left contact.  I fished around in my eye, but I couldn't find it.   I searched again, but no luck.  It was when I looked down into the sink that, lo and behold, I saw it, shriveled up near the drain.  I wonder now how many times I unnecessarily probed and prodded my eyeball after the damn thing had fallen out.  At least three.  And there was the time that I thought I had the contact but instead was actually pinching the surface of my eyeball in a last desperate attempt to remove it. I'm sure it just fell out on its own in a tide of tears sometime after the second attempt.

Is there a moral to this story?  Yeah.  I just don't know what it is right now.  Something to do with peppers and migraines and refusing to cook dinner for my in-laws ever again.  I'll figure it out eventually.