here in belfast

All right, so, first of all, elizabeth needed a haircut today, so she and I went to the salon and she had her hair cut by this girl leah, who is my friend misty's doppelganger.

Would that I were exaggerating. remove this girl's facial piercings and grow out her hair a little, and they could be twins. She's from canada, and she needed a break from her real life (her words not mine), so she moved over here to live with one of her friends (who's at queens university) and cut hair (apparently). She was very cool, and the real misty would probably get along pretty well with her. I hope to see her again, possibly when she's cutting my hair. I've decided that I won't actually cut my hair, length-wise, while i'm here, i'll just try to keep some layers in there so that it doesn't go all flat and boring, and then, when I get home, i'll chop it and give it to locks of love. Because I know you were wondering.

And now i'm watching jeeves and wooster, and I am almost positive that hugh laurie is wearing blush.

But, really, what I wanted to talk about today was the parade that occurred yesterday and the ripples it caused. The parade was in honor of the troops returning home from afghanistan and iraq, and so a bunch of people showed up in order to welcome them back. At the same time, a group showed up in order to protest the war—apparently, they thought that the parade was an opportune time/place to do it. However, many of these protesters were Sien Fien supporters (a typically Catholic/republican/unionist political group—the republic of ireland is generally against the war), so a large group of protestants/nationalists/loyalists showed up. Seemingly, they were there to support the troops and/or war, but in fact they were there to protest whatever the Sien Fien supporters were there to do.

You see, friends, northern ireland is currently separate from the rest of ireland (the republic of ireland). While northern ireland is a part of the united kingdom, the republic is currently not. The republic of ireland is mostly catholic while northern ireland is mostly protestant. The sectarian divide has come about because of this desire by the republic of ireland to remain separate from the rest of the united kingdom, whereas many folk in northern ireland want to remain a part of the uk (being that it's where protestant families are originally from). This is, of course, an enormous oversimplification of the sectarianism found here (and where it stems from), but there's the watered down version for you.

The parade debacle is obviously not the first time sectarianism has become this out of hand. Not too long ago, palestinian flags were put up in several republican communities (as a show of support for the palestinian people), and as a result, folk in several nationalist communities began to put up israeli flags—not because they necessarily supported israel in the conflict, but because they wanted to oppose the republicans by whatever means possible.

What made matters even worse, in the parade situation, is that when reporting parade routes, the local news referred to the parade path and the path that the “loyalists” could take (rather than specifying the route for people who wanted to support the troops or even for people who wanted to view the parade). What should have just been a parade audience, and maybe a small war protest group, because an issue of sectarianism, all because of the language used by the media. And because of the large number of people showing up to protest the Sien Fien protest, politicians in the future may only see this large turn out as proof of Northern Ireland's support of the war.