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.