ANOTHER OLD POST, this time from October of 2005 : ) Just doing some cleanup, this one may have been posted already but I can't find it in my archives (and I'm not looking that hard for it either)

More Hollywood Rubbish

This time disguised as a news article. I was catching up a little bit on the news and came across a movie project that Hollywood has decided to work on. It’s going to star Kirsten Dunst, as an American Citizen who went to work in Iraq to get aid to war victims. Now, let’s look beyond the obvious disturbing ignorance in making a film about a war that is STILL GOING ON, with our military members STILL FIGHTING, and visit some of the more idiotic parts of this editorial so thinly disguised as an article.

“The movie, to be made for Paramount Pictures, will tell the remarkable story of Ruzicka, 28, who ran a non-governmental organisation that lobbied for financial compensation for civilian casualties of war, Daily Variety said.”

Ohhh, ‘remarkable story’ now, is that how we describe non biased news these days, with adjectives implying good or bad? Interesting, now let us look at some other parts of this ‘article’ that are misinforming.

“Ruzicka, through her organisation Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, worked extensively in Iraq and in Afghanistan to document the exact number of civilians killed or injured by US forces.” UH, WRONG!!! Way to doctor the facts. This campaign was not aimed at those ‘killed by US forces’ it was aimed to help ANY civilians harmed during this war, by either side. Why do you think she was targeted and killed by a suicide bomber? Well, there are those that believe her investigative work was working against the insurgents by putting exact numbers killed by both sides up from an impartial source. So certainly if it were just ‘civilians killed or injured by US forces’ , that would work FOR their cause. Way to get the facts WRONG. And way to misspell organization in your ‘article’ too, great editing.

But hey, it’s being produced by MTV films, which should really say a lot. MTV can’t even put music on a stationed named after music, how can you expect them to put up factual information in a serious movie? This is typical of the media, who trumps up larger than life estimates of those who have died in Iraq anyway, and attribute all deaths in Iraq to American forces, taking no time to break down the numbers in terms of who killed who, such as when suicide bombers kill a hundred civilians, that’s attributed to the US Military. They also lump insurgents who are killed in with innocents to inflate the totals. Gotta love the bullshit.

The article goes on to talk about how the Hollywood is lining up films about the ‘three year old conflict in Iraq’, listing several titles, and stupidly includes "Jarhead," starring Jamie Foxx and Jake Gyllenhaal, which is set to open on November 11. Wow, way to do your research, considering Jarhead is about the FIRST Iraqi conflict, Desert Storm, more than 15 years ago.

Interestingly enough, the article is not attributed to any author, instead listed simply as LOS ANGELES (AFP). I wouldn’t want to put my name on this garbage either, considering the inconsistencies and one sided viewpoints that are inferred within. Just another attempt by the half witted non educated Hollywood types to try and sway political opinion concerning topics they know nothing about.
Current Lyrical Ramblings

Bend and shape me, I love the way you are
Slow and sweetly, Like never before
Calm and sleeping, We won't stir up the past
So discretely, We won't look back

Doesn’t Remind Me – Audioslave

The Home I Have Yet To See

As many people who read this know, belly was still doing her military occupational specialty training when I was activated in August of last year. Everything we owned went into storage and I headed to beautiful Ft. Riley, Kansas, for a couple of months of training in preparation for my time in the Sand Box.

Even as I was deployed to where I am now, I had no idea where we were going to live. We figured Yuma, Arizona, given belly’s high test scores and class ranking, and because not many people would actually pick Yuma given the climate and that Yuma isn’t exactly party central, so to speak.

Of course, as seems to be the military’s way of doing things, they went another direction than where we intended, and sent belly to San Diego to Camp Pendleton. Then we battled with the Marines over her basic allowance for housing, that all married people are SUPPOSED to get, but of course they wanted to keep her from getting it and call our marriage one of ‘convenience’ (aka FRAUD MARRIAGE FOR MONEY).

So we finally got that sorted out, and now we have, as I have been told, a quaint little apartment in a suburb of San Diego on the northern side of Pendleton, a place that I have not yet seen save for pictures. California… as most of you know I despise pretty much everything the so called “Sunshine State” stands for, smug self serving liberals with that pseudo intellectual superiority, with their smothering red tape liberal legislation and expensive reform programs and moronic political viewpoints, but belly says the weather is nice. I’ll just have to avoid getting my srt4 pulled over if I get some modifications in Nebraska, cuz they certainly won’t be legal in California.

With that said, I have obviously not seen my apartment, save for a few photos that my baby has sent me. I am excited about finally being able to see our apartment and checking out some of the sites around San Diego, and maybe a little bit of time doing a couple of adventures, but I hope belly realizes that I’m doing a lot of adventure right now and for me, living a normal life during my break is what I’m most looking forward to.

I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have belly in my life. This deployment would be a lot more miserable, that is for sure. I know I can have a truly crappy day and all I have to do is hear her voice or get an email from her and the stress just melts away.

***OLD JOURNAL ENTRY, for some reason it was never posted? Oh well, and if it has been posted I never found it, so who cares right?

Book Review: The Broker by John Grisham

This book begins during the waning hours of the presidency, as an ousted president makes several very controversial pardons, one being Joel Backman, a major power broker who was sent to prison after pleading guilty to theft of military secrets. Turns out that the CIA pressured the president into making the pardon, then quickly secreted him out of the country to Italy, where they would release his whereabouts to several other countries, who are very intent upon killing him.

The book started off rather well, but upon Backman’s arrival in Italy, things slowed down too much to really keep a person occupied with the novel. The main problem was the daily Italian life that Backman was leading was drawn out much too far and became relatively boring. Certainly Bologna, Italy is likely a wonderful city, but it seemed like Backman went to every café and little restaurant in the city, and Grisham had to write in detail about every one of them, and also about every single day’s Italian language lessons that Backman was taking. It was all a little too boring for my tastes, and you ended up wanting to skip ahead to find out just what was going to happen.

In the end, Backman has a moral dilemma, does he sell the technology that he has or does he do the moral thing and give it up to his own government, despite the fact that part of his own government wanted to see him killed. I was disappointed with the ending because there were many ways that Backman could have made a great variety of people pay for their greed and treachery, yet Grisham sort of ended the book without any of that being done, there are far too many loose ends in my opinion to really slam the book shut and think to yourself “what a great ending”. It was a little change in pace from Grisham’s usual works, and an interesting yarn, but had too much filler in the middle and too little substance in the end.

Rating: ***

The Not So Joyful Traveling Extravaganza

I’m sitting at 34,500 feet at this point, row 14, seat G, traveling somewhere over the northern Atlantic on a North American Airlines Boeing 767 with around 300 other servicemen and women. I don’t know that I have ever even heard of an airline called North American until I stood on the tarmac staring at this plane, but even so it was wonderful to see a piece of high tech machinery that wasn’t military in nature, for the first time in more than six months.

The last couple of days seem almost to have been drawn out into weeks. I was in Kuwait with 3 other members of our unit and we fully expected that we would be in Kuwait just a couple of hours and then head to the airport and be immediately on our way home. Well, how sadly mistaken we were. The entire process is a TOTAL clusterfuck. We arrived in Kuwait at about 1700 on the 2nd of May, and we find out that our flight doesn’t even leave until 2300 THE NEXT DAY, so we were stuck spending 30 hours on this itty bitty “Purgatory” between Iraq and the United States.

This didn’t have to be so bad, had it not been for the completely asinine and incompetent way the personnel stationed at the installation ran the place. Lazy, ignorant, non caring morons is about the best way to describe them. We turned in our IBA vests and Kevlar helmets upon arriving, and got ourselves rooms at billeting (tents) to stay overnight in. Then for some reason, rather than do the 2 week rest and relaxation briefing right there, they made us wait till 2130, despite the fact that many of us were very tired (a good portion of the soldiers were under the impression we would be on a flight right away so we had been practicing sleep deprevation so we could sleep on the plane).

Upon arriving back in the reception area at 2130, we discover that we are in there with about 100 more soldiers who had just arrived who were given the SAME BRIEFING that we received (orientation, turning in your equipment, getting billeting) some 5 hours before, so we were stuck waiting nearly an hour and a half for the newly arriving soldiers to get that taken care of. Then finally at some time after 2300 we got started and were able to turn in our request for final destination packets, and then we were told that we had to come back at 0500 to pick up our itineraries that would tell us what flights we were on.

Okay, so 4 hours of sleep and then back for ANOTHER meeting, no big deal, it’s important to get the itinerary, right? Oh, but wait, it gets better, “Be back here at 0730 to find out if there are any changes to your flight times for Atlanta or Dallas” (everyone flies to those two ‘gateway’ airports before taking a final flight to their home airport). I went up front and asked the PFC “Why are you having everyone get up at 0500 to get their itineraries when you are having another meeting at 0730 anyway, why not just give the itineraries out at the 0730 meeting???” to which I was told “I’m sorry sergeant that’s not how we do it.” Okay… “Well, what is the reasoning behind having two meetings 2 hours apart that could just as easily be combined into one meeting at the later time” to which she looked at me stupidly and said “We don’t make the rules that’s just how it’s done.”

“Oh, okay, so basic ignorance, is that it?” and I walked away. At that point I was pretty pissed off, as were a lot of other soldiers, because nothing was making much sense at all. Adding to the confusion was the apparent complete lack of NCO’s on the post doing any leadership at all, everyone running the briefings, handling the situations, etc, were SPC’s at best and many times PV2’s and PFC’s, completely and utterly nonsensical, any questions you had for them in terms of better ways of doing things were always met with the same response: “We don’t make the rules that how our leadership wants it done”. WELL FUCK, then get your leadership down here so we can discuss a better way of doing things!!!

May 3: We had an NCO pick up everyone’s itineraries for our group, which was very nice of him, a red haired SGT out of the 82nd Airborne who didn’t mind getting up early and grabbing about 150 schedules for us all, which we didn’t give much of a shit if that went over well for the people running the place or not. After all, if your freaking leadership skips out all the time and leaves the shop run by idiot subordinates who don’t outrank you, they can’t do shit about it when you do things the way you want to do them, in a way THAT MAKES SENSE.

I don’t think they were too happy about it, but fuck ‘em, they had done an admirable job of ruining our last 24 hours already. Oh, but it got better. Lockdown for our flight was at 1400, nearly TEN HOURS before we were even scheduled to board. Why? Ohhh, we get back into the reception area, and guess what? “Okay, those of you that just arrived, line up single file to turn in your IBA and Kevlar…” hey hey hey, they did it again, hooray for ineptitude, three cheers for bungling stupidity, they had EVERYONE arrive early to enjoy another hour and a half or equipment turn in by yet ANOTHER group. By this time there were many of us who were ready to choke the shit out of the military staff running this shit hole.

So, then everyone from Dallas stands in a big formation outside for about an hour before we are sent off in a giant single file line into the customs area, where our bags are ex rayed and gone thru. Then after that, we sat in another tent for 3 hours or so waiting, for what you might ask? WELL, you’d never guess it, we waited for 3 hours so we could board a bus and ride for an hour and a half then wait for an hour on a cramped bus with seats spaced out for toddlers or midgets, so we could finally board the plane.

You would never think you could actually get onto a plane and silently scream with delight about the leg room in coach, but you do when every bus in theater (Iraq/Kuwait) has legroom for little people, and you are 6 foot tall. About a half hour later and we were airborne, and I was streeeeeeetching out and loving it, MP3 player out and plugged in, sleeping, then reading a book, then sleeping, then eating one of the meals they serve every 3 hours (I am eating one, skipping one, as we go, don’t want to eat a lot before I get home, I’m sure my baby has big food plans haha).

Seven hours later we landed at Shannon International Airport in the Green Emerald Isles. I did a little shopping at the duty free shop, got some chocolates for belly, and stayed away from everything else because it was rather pricey. Ireland is every bit as pretty and green as you can imagine, and for all of us sitting on the plane as we took off a couple of hours later, after a long time staring at very little green and mostly sand for months, it was a welcome sight.

So now here I am, roughly 4 and a half hours into a 9 hour flight to Dallas, still marveling at human scientific achievement, the ability to create a machine that flies you some 5 miles in the air, whisking you around the world in such a short amount of time.

Did I say a short amount of time? Because actually, it does seem like an awfully long time. But at least the seats are comfortable, at least we have movies to watch, and food to eat (although the food has been pretty bad haha). Halfway to Dallas… then another 6 hour wait for my next flight to San Diego. Hey, look on the bright side, at least I don’t have the farking idiots from Kuwait having briefings and meetings every two hours in Dallas. I can call my wife, then find an internet café and enjoy myself.

It’s good to be coming back to the USA, even if it is to somewhere I’ve never been, and only for a couple of weeks : )