On Exercise

I have to run a lot, because I make myself do it, and I engage in a wide variety of mental activities to distract myself from the fact that I still have miles to go and I'm tired.  I considered the other day what makes someone decent at working out, or makes someone do it at all.  For me, and I speak only for me, I've found that its equal parts self loathing and self love.  I am running because I am not good enough, fast enough or strong enough.  Yet, I can finish the distance I set because I am powerful and able to do so.  It's a really strange balance that essentially equals optimistic masochism.

Camel Spider Jr.

Expeditionary reporter slash photojournalist slash entomologist Kristin Russell took one step closer this week to discovering the legendary Camel Spider, or Syndaesia sp.  

At a meeting over tea with some Iraqi counterparts in the Kurdish Capital of Erbil (it would be Irbil on our maps, but I defer to their spelling...) a terrifyingly fast, although not camel-looking, spider appeared from under a leather couch, proceeded to sit still for a few minutes, then ran directly at my boots, then under the couch I was sitting on.  This caused a little panic as I pictured it scurrying up my pants leg and plunging its sword like jaws into my jugular, but I managed to sit still and focused on the tasty tea biscuits and pistachios instead.  Also, I made up what the guys were saying in arabic.  

See specimin below.  Lindsay, do I get half credit for this one?  It was impressive enough that the Iraqi guy on the couch asked for a copy of the pic.  My zoom isn't that amazing, so this thing was about the size of a silver half dollar.  You know, the ones with Kennedy on the front that you have like 50 of and don't know what to do with?

Maps

I can't sleep, so here's some of Iraq's relatively interesting geography taken on my fun trip a few weeks ago.

This last one is the Ziggurat of Ur.  Biblical Abraham's house is supposed to be around here too.  The dude in the bazaar back here tried to help me properly pronounce ziggurat.  He says it like, "ziccurah" and it's not Ur, it's "ouhr".  I appreciated him trying to help me out but still hoping I'm getting as salaam walekum out right, thanks.

Book Fair Part 1

Before I left the US I asked people to chime in on books I should read while I am in Baghdad.  Here's how I'm doing so far:

1 - Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves
This was my own choice.  I wanted I love grammar.  I hate your misspellings, incorrect use of you're, and misplaced apostrophes.  I love this book.

2 - Rob Sheffield, Love is a Mix Tape
A pretty decent book about this Rolling Stone contributor and his girlfriend/wife who dies and the mix tapes he goes though as he deals with his loss.  Some of the songs struck a relatively nostalgic note with me but since I was all of 7-17 in the 90s, a lot of them don't register.  I think are the kind of music you can only tolerate if you lived it as it was being created.  In retrospect this would probably not be a good move to download and listen to.  The book itself was good though, I read it on the plane over to Qatar.  I did not read any books on the plane to Iraq as it was dark and I had on full gear and was sleeping (dramamine).

3 - J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories
Marty, I know you reccomended this one but I'll level with you and anyone else who read and liked this.  I liked the last story.  That was it.

4 - Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy, The Laughing Jesus
Connor, this was a great choice and got me interested in a lot of other books that are going to send me directly to hell without passing go or collecting that wildly attractive fake $200.  I have to admit that I only read the first half though.  The historical perspective was AWESOME.  After that the gnostic thing was fine, but it was like preaching to the choir and I already pretty much got it so I had to stop.

5 - Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd Be Cake
The reviews on the cover tout her to be just like a female David Sedaris.  Let me tell you about Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim for a second.  Sedaris narrates it HIMSELF for books on tape, which is how I listened to it.  It's gloomy as shit and I laughed a few times but it would take some serious convincing on the part of a trusted friend to get me to listen or read anything else by him.  Moving on, Crosley's book is actually quite funny and my favorite story is about her having to be a maid of honor for a friend she's barely talked to in 5 years.  It was actually pretty good.  Don't let the reviews on the cover fool you.  Also, I often expect cake, or at the very least punch & pie at any and all meetings I attend.  I am often disappointed but refuse to lower my expectations for anyone.

6 - Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire
YES!  What a fucking awesome book!  Spartans are super sweet.  It was extremely good and I would put it up there with Ender's Game as really really really important books to read if you are a military officer.  After this I watched 300, which is about the same battle of Thermopylae, but based on a graphic novel instead of Gates of Fire.  Thus, it was ok, decent even, but nothing compared to this book.  Supposedly George Clooney's production company owns the rights to the Gates of Fire movie, so someday that might be something to look forward to.

7 - Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I think I have to thank Scott for this.  I wouldn't know, because FB deleted my posts from like April to August including the one where everyone made recommendations.  I'm more than halfway done and it's fine and nonsensical and I'm enjoying it.

I realize that's only 7ish books (I started the first one before I left) in 2 months and though not terrible I'm not sure I'll be able to get through every book I've got here but I'll make an effort and keep logging I guess.  It was one of my goals to read and relax here.  I'm finally, at 2 months trying to figure out how that works.  School doesn't help, stalkers don't help, work doesn't help, but I get a little time each night for the most part and that's at least part of the reason this is my sandy vacation.

Amazing 80s Lifting Music

I started the women eagles off season workout for lifting, just like last year.  This year I have found that for whatever reason I ONLY want to do the workout to my 80s playlist on my ipod.  I thought I'd share...

Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams
Stevie Wonder - Part Time Lover
Bon Jovi - Shot Through the Heart
Whitney - I Wanna Dance With Somebody
Eddie Money - Take Me Home Tonight
Pat Benetar - Love is a Battlefield
The Cars - Just What I Needed
Fine Young Cannibals - She Drives Me Crazy
Janet Jackson - Rhythm Nation
Toni Basil - Mickey
The Outfield - Your Love
Loverboy - Working For the Weekend
Run DMC - Tricky
Journey - Any Way You Want It
Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer
Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up
Cars - You Might Think
Ah Ha - Take On Me
Rick Springfield - Jesse's Girl
Blondie - Heart of Glass
Steve Winwood - Higher Love
Bon Jovi - Living on a Prayer
Pat Benetar - Hit Me With Your Best Shot
Guns & Roses - Sweet Child of Mine
Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
Soft Cell - Tainted Love
Madonna - Material Girl
Madonna - Express Yourself
Van Halen - Jump
Genesis - Invisible Touch
George Michael - Freedom 90

Today's Angriest Thought

Oh hi [gym stalker #2].  What?  I can't understand your english, so this is going to be a confusing conversation that I wish was shorter.  I see you plan to stand here and talk.  Did you notice I was 2/3 of the way done with my Romanian deadlift sets?  You clearly don't care about interrupting my gym time.  Thanks for stalling me long enough for my legs to get cold so I strain a hamstring later finishing my set.  Dick.

Halloween Awareness Theme and Your Second Amendment Rights

For most of you at least, it's that time of year again when the leaves start to change colors, crisp fall breezes float in, hot cider comes back into vogue, and you consider your Halloween options.  Lindsay has so graciously sent me 30 pairs of vampire teeth, so I'm confident that myself and the USF-I J6 have our costumes covered on October 31.  As it's the holiday (read: pagan heretic abomination) of high fructose corn syrup (mmmmm) I'd like to take the opportunity to bring awareness to an important issue that is both close to my heart, or more accurately, close to my hip (I wear the shoulder holster).

Zombies.  I've taken the initiative here at Camp Victory to use the unit's 'Friday Movie' nights to enlighten and educate my fellow arms professionals about the pending dangers of the living dead.  Maybe the source will be a mutated plague, radiation, a curse, whatever.  I've seen enough of these films to keep Zombie Preparedness and Safety perpetually at the forefront of my thoughts.  Remember: Nothing is as delicious as your brains.  Zombies want your gray matter the way I want to pour this value bag of candy corn into my mouth.  Either way, it's not going to be pretty.

As additional vaccines and scientific research progress, I can clearly see that at some point, Hell will fill up and the dead will walk the earth fiending after your mouthwatering flesh.  Then you'll join them.  Lame.  A few weeks ago I half expected to see frantic and infrequent static/terror filled news reports from the US announcing the rise of the living dead following the release of of a new swine flu vaccine.  Maybe it just takes longer.

Because of this, and as someone who now carries an unconcealed weapon at all times, I'm going to have emphatically support that position that: for serious, we're going to need all these firearms.  Maaaaybe not assault weapons, but wouldn't you feel safer with a cache of those in your reanimated corpse surrounded farmhouse?  What do you mean you don't live in a farmhouse?  Look, you're going to want to be in the country when this hits.  The cities will just be deathtraps.  Close quarters, too many tasty victims, lots of basements.  No good.  You can better form and defend a commune of the survivors in the rural areas, just saying.  But when Betty Sue's daughter gets scratched by one of 'them', you've gotta kill her and burn the corpse, no exceptions.  In addition, my limited knowledge of the ban on assault weapons tells me they're now legal.  What a relief.  I wonder how many AK-47s I can fit in the weapons locker I am currently 'Buy it Now'-ing on eBay.  Not enough.  What does the law say about flame throwers?  At any rate, it appears that shotguns do the best job, which seems strange because it is my understanding that they the shot goes over a wider range.  I guess you could use slugs.  Perhaps the blast area/force is enough for the zombies, whose flesh is normally decaying at said time.  If I can give you any advice, go for the head.  In most scenarios they 'die' after you if you crush/destroy the skull.  Burn the bodies, get creative on weapon usage (home made incindiaries, napalm you borrowed from your Michigan militia friends, etc), add a little humor in there, and for the love of appetizing brains, don't fall in love with anyone.

I guess what it really comes down to is whether we'll have George Romero zombies, Peter Jackson (yes, of LOTR fame) zombies, or Danny Boyle zombies.  I think the answer is pending, as it is quite possible that the British Forces Broadcasting Station (BFBS) has had their staff attacked by zombies, or at least their brains eaten as they choose to show soccer over rugby on the only channel that could possibly show a match or two over here.  Get the shotguns.

Pearls Before Swine

First, the USO is awesome and really made my day.  They brought a bunch of artists all over the AOR and yesterday I had a picture drawn by Stephan Pastis, who does Pearls Before Swine (the comic strip).  I actually picked him over some other artists (you can see a list here) because I like the comic more than most in Stars & Stripes daily.

Pretty neat eh?  I got to pick the characters :)

Sitting and chatting with Stephan.

Awesome!

Swine flu or your FW:

This will be brief(ish) and paranoid.

I hate FW: emails, especially when you know they're going to be something idiotic that you've seen before (when you were young and still opening them).  I've been saying for about a year that if I wanted to spread a computer virus quickly across the US, I would package it in an email with puppies, angels, possibly something holiday themed, add a paragraph of good cheer or a clever but predictable surprise ending to some story, and perhaps demand that you send it back if you are really my friend and probably name it something like "Inspiration" or perhaps "An Angel For You".

While my gut tells me some of this really is 40+ white ladies who have learned to use the e-mail sending around things that make their friends smile and think of them, some is also a lot of it is just a means to distribute low or medium level viruses, trackers, cookies, trojans, whatever.  Thus, unless it's something funny and (personal) and not a forward, don't even bother sending it to me, it's going in the trash.  Like swine flu, FW:s tend to be a disease that hits the youth and elderly pretty hard.  Children seem to become immune to it at some point, but older folks often will iron-grip this genre of email til the end.  Would Jesus send this email to 10 people to prove he believes in his own magical powers?  Doubtful.  He might have better things to do than wasting his valuable time forwarding dancing cherubs to his contact list.  In this case, if J-man isn't trying to give me a computer STD, neither should you.

Come to think of it, every time I receive a different rendition of a video in my inbox of someone dancing in a leotard to "single ladies" that also feels like a virus, but of the stomach variety.  It was only hot when Justin and Andy did it...

Oh, and un, forward this on to 15 people before 10pm tonight and I'll send you a prize!  Seriously!  This one lady didn't do it and her friends MISSED OUT AND IT WAS TERRRRRRRRIBLE!

Animal Planet: Iraq, Episode 1 Evil Bunny

Lindsay has insisted that I find a camel spider while here in Iraq.  I am going to get to go to a few different parts of the country, and if I find one, you can be sure I'll take a picture.  In the meantime, to appease her need for Iraqi animals (and mystical creatures) I've hunted (read: stumbled upon): a dead baby snake, 2 jackrabbits, 1 jackal, 1 rat, sparrows, and man-eating (or anything for that matter) "saddam" bass, which you can see on youtube if you feel like it.  I convinced some friends to go feed them with me when the weather cools, so expect that within the next month.  


I've only had my camera on me and charged since a few days ago, but tonight was a real breakthrough.  I was riding my bike toward my CHU and saw a jackrabbit on the side of the road.  Exhibit A:

Hey little fella.  I wish I had carrots at this point, but he was pretty suspicious and probably knew better than to eat carrots from the chow hall.  I was amazed he let me fumble through my bag, making all sorts of noise and twisting the bike around to get a the camera and take not one but multiple pics.

                                




I realize this discovery isn't a HUGE deal, but like seeing shit underwater, everything is a little neater when you're like, on Saddam's former Presidential complex or whatevs.  With what I've seen so far I can predict that I *might* photograph at least one deadly animal (with venom or perhaps rabies as its weapon) and a few other cool ones.  At the very least, we'll feed a bunch of cool stuff from the chow hall to the fishes.

Open Season on Care Packages

How to describe the life I have already gotten used to on deployment?  It's going well, really.  The food is still new, and pretty delicious.  The key to chow here is having to choose what you're going to eat at any particular meal. Breakfast is my favorite, but one cannot reasonably keep up a breakfast diet of scrambled eggs, breakast burritos, hard boiled eggs, multiple hash browns, biscuits, juices, and tons of fruit every day.  You have to pick one egg entity, a hash brown, a biscuit, and fruit.  Or, more accurately I do or I'll actually gain weight here like I did at Field Training and that's not really the goal.  You may be wondering why my breakfast doesn't feature a bacon or sausage, and that's because they do not look appetizing and for some reason they're floating in something and I don't understand, and so it's off.

I'm getting over a horrible congestion/cough/cold and starting to work out more too.  Apparently everyone gets sick when they first get here for like 7 days (the crud) and then it's good times.  So I'm doing much better everyday and soon my alveoli will be saturated with tan dust and cease to make trouble and my cough will go away.

I'm still missing a bag but am supposed to get it today so fingers crossed.  That'll give me a camera cable to upload stuff with and charge the thing.  I showed Fist the youtube video of the best wildlife (why are all my friends obsessed w/ the animals here?) I've seen so far, Saddam's fish:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcR0Py-mru8

Finally, last 2 things.  1 - my address works so feel free to send whatever ridiculous thing you were going to send.  I like fruit snacks and they don't have them here.  One thing I could actually use are reflective stickers, like you'd put on a biker or a helmet.  If anyone has spares laying around, toss them in an envelope and get them here.  The other thing that would be great are pictures, like of shit we've done or even what's going on now back home or just a pic you particularly like.  I am a captive audience for your amateur photography products.  Now what the hell was 2.  Oh yea, I hear it's fall at home which means blazer weather.  I wanted to just get out front of this and say I miss blazer too.  It'll be ok as I'll be home in time for spring blazer weather.   Just you wait.

Kicking Around...

I’ve landed on the hot moon as far as I’m concerned.  As the 747 broke through the Qatari haze yesterday I thought, “Where the fuck are you taking me, Mars?”  It looks like a dryer, less interesting Arizona desert from the air.  On the ground however, the ground up former seabed (that’s what it is) resembles a moon with powdery dust and little rocks.  If the moon landing was faked, and I’m not saying it was, I know where it might’ve been filmed. 

Checking in wasn’t horrible and I somehow cleared customs.  USAirways decided to just not put my 2^nd bag on my flight from Charlotte to the military terminal, so I’m missing some pretty important items that I’m not going to list and I’m convinced that USAir is likely run by AQI from Syria.  Bastards.

I pretty much spent yesterday in periods of nap, panic (I’ll explain in a second), eating, drinking water from *gasp* plastic bottles which I never do at home, and mild exploration of the base.  The panic comes from the incredible amount of water I consumed yesterday in a few hours time.  I’ve woken up 3 times already in my dark tent in a horror over how bad I had to pee.  I’m only sharing this because it’s funny.  I have to walk only about 50 yards to the bathroom, but it’s still a frantic minute or two as I pull on my shoes and grab my already beloved reflective safety belt before hurriedly exiting my tent.  Yesterday I went to sleep around 0900L (2am EST) and woke up around 1300 full to the brim, if you will.  I opened the door with my glasses on and went partially temporarily blind in my left eye it was so damn bright out.  I’d say I’m actually having a pretty good time minus the eye situation.  Vision recovered in the left after about an hour.  Now, if I go outside past 7am or before 6pm I just wear my Wiley-X goggles without glasses.  I have a pretty good idea of what the buildings are if I can get within 15 feet of them; plus I look like Vin Diesel in Riddick.  Extra cool points.

Last night I walked what I’m going to guess is around ¾ mile to the BX with wireless internet and then Frank picked me up and we had some beers at the base lounge.  Erik even rolled over after awhile and the three of us reminisced and obviously talked about people we all know.  It was fantastic to see them both so I was pretty happy.  I would’ve taken a pic, but my camera battery is low and the charger and cord are both in my temporarily missing bag so I won’t be posting anything until I get into Iraq.  No word on when that might be, but I’m actually looking forward to it so that I can have things like more than 1 set of PT gear etc.  I dumped my 2^nd set because my computer weighs 9lbs (its like 12 or 13 w/ the behemoth ac adapter) and there’s a bunch of other crap I have to have on me so 2^nd set made the sacrifice.  I’m hoping to get out of here soon though and get back to my bag. 

Final note: the snuggie light is amazingly effective and useful.  I’ve used it a bunch already.  I ate most of the candy too.  My friends are awesome.