What do I want to be when I grow up?

This is time-filler (I've run out of previously written pieces, and have yet to sort out photos, so the Galapagos is behind).

The following list is from Career Cruising

Bold are things I've done. Italic is things I've considered. Strikout are things you can't pay me to do (well, maybe not that strong for all of them, but they aren't things in which I'm interested)

1.Anthropologist
2.Professor
3.Archaeologist
4.Historian
5.Foreign Language Instructor
6.ESL Teacher
7.Lobbyist
8.Electrician
9.Technical Writer (this is a sort of. I was hired to do some, but a month after I started the job was eliminated. Some of the things I write for the army might be seen as that, and I've done/am doing, some books on photography/editing software, so I could probably bold it)
10.Computer Trainer
11.Criminologist
12.Electrical Engineering Tech
13.Electronics Engineering Tech
14.Cabinetmaker
15.Sign Maker
16.Dental Lab Tech
17.Electronics Assembler
18.Director of Photography
19.Conservator
20.Makeup Artist
21.Chef
22.Office Machine Repairer
23.Tool and Die Maker
24.Machinist
25.Occupational Therapist
26.Optical / Ophthalmic Lab Technician
27.Hydrologist / Hydrogeologist
28.Cable Installer and Repairer
29.Activist
30.Corporate Trainer
31.Musical Instrument Builder and Repairer
32.Writer
33.Bicycle Mechanic
34.Public Policy Analyst (I used to do political writing for a paper... so it sort of counts as both)
35.Communications Specialist (WTF... this is vague, it might be something I've done, something I want to do, or something I wouldn't do for anything)
36.Print Journalist
37.Upholsterer
38.Critic
39.Picture Framer
40.Translator

More in pity than in anger (but there's some anger in me)

Over at Hullabaloo tristero has a post about the death of a couple of the soldiers who penned the op-ed in the WaPo.

He thinks it wasn't an accident. He doesn't think it was intentional, but he does think it was combat related; maybe even a Uriah moment.

Me, I think accident is a likely reason.

That's not what I'm really writing about though. It's certainly not why this is, at the moment, locked.

No, it's a poster, under the name Jill Bains, in the comments, who has offended me.

She, you see, would be happy if I were killed.

Why?

Because I am a soldier, and the deaths of soldiers might stop the advance of the American, imperial terror occupation. Honest, she said that, right after saying the death of soldiers might be seen, with a certain regret as a positive.

Fuck that. I havee a certain regret that I never told Jennifer Gertzkin how I felt about her when I was in High School. I have a certain regret I never got to eat at The Chronicle in Pasadena, and that I didn't know Mon Grenier was closing, and so eat a valedictory meal there.

I have a certain regret that I have Reiter's Syndrome.

The death of someone is not something one faces with a certain regret. It's possible to have a certain regret that one had to kill someone; but that's circumstantial, contingent on need having forced one's hand.

But for someone one doesn't know, to feel a "certain" regret that their death furthered your political aims, that's incomprehensible to me. It's psychopathic. Immoral.

Hell, I kill people (even if only at a remove, or two). I can live with that. But I don't wish for those deaths. So it's not the death part that offends me. It's the callous disregard for what those deaths she's wishing mean.

Words fail me. Saying, "Fuck her" or "The back of my hand to her," or, desiring that she might,
go down
To the vile dust, from whence (s)he sprung,
Unwept, unhonor'd, and unsung.
as Scot's subject in the last canto of "Lay of the Last Minstrel," will is both too much, and not enough.

I guess, for all the things I've seen people do, and say, to each other, that I read it, and read it again, and can't really believe it.