Decisions, Decisions

Well, we have to pick from several different combat patches to wear on our uniform to designate who we were tasked under while in Iraq. We did a lot of work with some pretty prestigious divisions over here.

The 19th Airborne Corps (Airborne Dragons)
The 4th Infantry Division
The 101st Airborne Division
The 82nd Airborne Division
The 485th Support Battalion (Germany)

Now, the 19th was in charge of us for the first month we were here, overall in charge of the Army portion of Ali Air Base, which is Camp Adder. After they left, the 16th CSB took over, and the 485th was in charge of us. But they were tasked under the other three in support of the 4th, the 101, and the 82nd, at different times depending upon our mission.

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t mind any of those three. Everyone in the unit is voting on which one they want to wear, but for someone like me, who will be in a different unit, I can pick any of the patches I want to wear. The vote has overwhelmingly been for the 101st Airborne, but to be honest, I would rather have the 82nd Airborne patch. Doesn’t much matter though, I’ll be allowed to wear whichever one I want, although I will pick just one, unlike some asses I’ve seen over here who have several different patches on different uniforms.

I also got two packages in the mail from my brother in law. The cookies were awesome, but please, no more haha. I have to try and get myself into tip top condition, so even though I ate some (due to my lack of self control), I ended up giving the rest away, everyone loved them. Everything else was awesome too, koolaid is always great to have. I really appreciated it.

More Armor? ALRIGHT!! THANK YOU SO LITTLE!

Upon being mobilized last fall, we were given an IBA (Individual Ballistic Armor) and we pretty much universally hated it in the unit. It was heavy and seemed so incredibly restrictive but it was mandatory to wear it over in Iraq so we had to get used to it.

Then they gave us these plates that had to be inserted in the front and back, and throat protectors, and a back of the neck guard, along with a crotch protector. Now it was even heavier and sucked even more.

Upon arriving in Iraq, after wearing the damn thing for awhile, you got used to it, it didn’t seem so heavy. Of course then they gave us these ‘wings’ that wrap around your shoulders, and made it hard as hell to move your arms. IBA = Heavy.

Then they gave us flank protectors that you have to put underneath your arms, they hang up over your shoulders with a strap and you put them on before you put on the rest of the armor. IBA = Heavier.

Now we have plates that go with the flank protectors, and the damn thing weighs even more!!! IBA = HEAVIEST!!

Of course we have a moron for a battalion commander, she gets so excited about all the new armor. She also has everyone wearing eye protection, inside the truck, and the elbow and knee pads on every convoy, and making sure that the gas mask is there (even though there hasn’t been one chemical attack during this entire f’ing conflict). I am guessing next that there will be a neck brace device like they use in nascar, maybe a face shield right? How about a butt plate? There actually is word of a plate to put in the crotch protector which would fucking suck, because that stupid thing already gets in the way all the damn time.

Of course their reasoning is that they have all this ‘proof’ of people who have been killed because a bullet ‘slipped into the side’ of a soldier because they didn’t have protective armor and plates on the sides of the IBA. But then, they have no data on how many soldiers were killed because they were COMPLETELY fucking immobilized and unable to run due to carrying 60 freaking lbs of armor on their body and unable to turn their head or move their arms more than 30 degrees vertically and none to the rear!!! BLAH, I get mad just talking about it. God help us if there is ever a fire fight that requires us to dismount, because it will take 10 fucking minutes to even squeeze out of the door.

More from the stupidity police: word has been handed down that anyone caught flying a confederate flag even in their rooms is going to be reported up the chain of command for violating EO regulations. This after some black soldiers complained after seeing a flag inside of another soldiers room. Get fucking bent, that’s what I have to say about that, if you have a problem with the confederate flag, so freaking what. It’s not a symbol of hatred, it was a symbol of individuality and freedom for those in the south for many years before the civil war and it continues to mean the same thing now. I would be the first to call out someone for racist behavior but that is not being racist at all. Myself, I wouldn’t fly one, but then I’m not from the south either, so it wouldn’t really pertain to me. I get so freaking sick and tired of people being over sensitive to things that no one has any right to control. Political correctiveness run completely awry.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

Which one of us is right
If we always fight?
Why can't we just let love decide?
Am I the weaker man
Because I understand
That love must be the master plan?

Diamonds And Pearls – Prince

Random thoughts

Congratulations to my baby on hitting expert on the rifle range!

Pepsi still tastes like Coke, but for the last month I’m here I will drink NO soda and I will try to keep myself to drinking just water or very watered down fruity drinks (weakened Koolaid) at the chow hall. September is set to be my ‘get healthy and get ready to go home’ month.

I should be running more, but I haven’t been. The last run I did was the 4th of July 4 mile run here on post, out of 255 people, I finished 22nd. But another guy in my unit finished 15th. ARG! I will work out more but…

The problem with my chest is still there and it makes it tough to really run hard, because it’s hard to breathe. I still haven’t gotten word about my blood tests I had done here, I am not expecting much.

Working at night is getting so boring, but that’s what you’d expect, 12 hours from 2100 at night till 0900 in the morning, we don’t get a whole lot of visitors, at times it’s like being glorified janitorial workers, but oh well, it’s important that the operations center is up and running 24 hours a day.

When you are bored, time can go by pretty slow. Thankfully we got the tv up running in the ops center with a partial listing of channels. But we have both movie channels, the sports channel, and a news channel, so that’s good. There is one more channel but I haven’t watched it enough to know what the hell it is. Last night it had Sesame Street on. Not my thing, honestly, it’s not.

I cleaned my room the other day. Top to bottom, everywhere. In the military they have this stuff called pine oil, and it’s not really the most pleasant smell like Pine Sol, but it’s one of those smells that I can only refer to as a ‘military smell’, because much like the CLP lubricant for the weapons, or the kiwi boot polish for the black boots (yah, I’m an old school military man, I remember the black leather boots, it was only 2 years ago but damn there has already been a lot of changeover, new people coming in). I shouldn’t really say that the smell is BAD, because the room smells all hygienic and clean now, but I would prefer pine sol or even murphy’s oil soap.

All my albums in my mp3 collection are labeled now. Took forever to find some of the albums that the songs came from, and the years that they were recorded, especially on some of the compilation cds I have. There were times I scoured 6 to 8 different web sites trying to find out when my Rock On UK Sony Promotional cd was recorded, or to find out that The Bog was released only as a single in 1990 (there were some songs that took forever to find on those 2 cds, quite the mix of music). I did discover a few things too, some irritating. I wonder why the hell Madonna did not put the “I Remember” song from the movie “With Honors” on her second greatest hits cd, I’ve always liked that song and I never realized it wasn’t on there. Bah, oh well.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

Technology, the battle's unfair
You pull the hammer without a care
Squeeze the trigger that makes you Man
Pseudo-safari, the hunt is canned...

Countdown To Extinction – Megadeth

Not So Smallville

I’ve been watching season one of Smallville, the show on WB about a young Clark Kent (Superman) as he grows up. After watching about the first 7 or 8 episodes last night, there are some interesting things about the show.

It appears that some high school aged kid dies in just about every episode, under strange circumstances. Of course these strange circumstances always seem to be caused by some strange green smoke/rock/liquid/material, and oh my, it’s Kryptonite.

From a Kryptonite necklace to Kryptonite gasses in a sauna, drinking water from a lake with Kryptonite in it, to eating vegetables grown in a patch with Kryptonite in the ground around them, good old Kryptonite is always there to dick things up for the wonderful residents of Smallville. It’s interesting that they choose a population of 45,000 for Smallville, considering that with that many people, it would be like the 4th largest city in Nebraska, hardly small by Midwestern standards, seeing how Kansas is where the show is set at.

Lana’s high school football jock boyfriend Whitney wrecks more pickups than a NASCAR truck series driver. In fact, everyone wrecks their vehicles, a lot. Lana wrecks her Dodge pickup, Lex wrecks his Porche, Clarks parents drove their pickup into a crater. Smallville is riddled with such poor drivers, it’s frightening.

The actor playing Lex Luthor is probably the best actor in the show. He plays the tormented soul so well, torn between his self centered lust for power, and the decent human being who has befriended Clark and tries to help the Kent family whenever he can. But even when he helps there is always a part of Lex that is seeing what he can get for himself out of the deal, as he does with anyone he is trying to ‘help’.

But, anyways, they do a decent job writing the show, there are plenty of characters to keep you entertained, and if the storyline concerning one character is too far fetched or boring in one show, there is always something going on with another character or two to keep your attention. It’s not too bad of a show.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

Passion or coincidence once prompted you to say pride will tear us both apart
Well now pride's gone out the window cross the rooftops runaway
Left me in the vaccuum of my heart
What is happening to me crazy some will say where is my friend when I need you most
(gone away)

Ordinary World – Duran Duran

Pedal To The Metal

Okay, I’ve been playing Need For Speed Underground II a lot again lately. When I was back home, midas and I played the hell out of NFSU, the first version, and I really enjoyed it. I went out and bought the second about 2 days before my deployment started, packed it up with the playstation in a box to be shipped over to Iraq.

One problem, I didn’t send the instructions with the game, but no problem, I just played the crap out of the game till I figured out what everything did. I think once I got settled here at Camp Adder, even though I was up at like 5 every morning and done at 5 in the afternoon, I probably played that game for about 5 hours a day. I took an old Toyota Corolla, probably 1988 or so, and built the car up continuously, spent about 100,000 game dollars on it, till the car was like 50 percent carbon fiber and 50 percent motor haha. 0-60 in like 2 seconds, 220 mph top speed, that sort of thing, lots of fun.

So since I’ve been working nights we set the game up out at the ops center and we’ve been playing it quite a bit while we monitor all the commo stuff. I’m trying to solve the game one last time and actually get all of the different unique parts and unlock everything in the game. I still haven’t gotten the freaking scissor style doors yet, among other things. The dumb game though will tell you “CONGRATULATIONS, you have solved the game” when it says like “91% COMPLETED” which makes no sense. Oh well. This game is by far the most time I have spent playing any Playstation game here in Iraq. I know, someone is missing her PSII, sorry baby hehe, you’ll have it back soon.

I’ll have to spend a few hours kicking midas’ ass in it though *ponders* HAH!!


Current Lyrical Ramblings

Now I'm alone, the telephone
Don't tell me you don't need me
I ask you why, you tell me lies
And say the truth would hurt me.

Someday – Glass Tiger

I have a few posts that I collected up that never got posted, some from earlier last month, a couple I was working on at the end of July before we went thru some difficult times here. I'm going to clean up the closet so to speak and post them all today.

Flying Into The Turnbuckle

So I’m flipping thru the channels today and I come across professional wrestling. And of course, for some oddball reason, I end up leaving it on. And I don’t really know why. Why do I still watch this stuff??? I know it’s fake, I know that it’s basically like watching a male version of a soap opera, yet I still find myself drawn to it.

So much involved with pro wrestling is just ridiculous. Rick Flair and Hulk Hogan are both old enough to be living in a retirement community somewhere in Florida. Fake blood is used liberally, along with a lot of yelling and cussing and screaming. Maybe it reminds me my childhood? Haha, who knows?

Oh, there was a time when I actually believed what I was watching. I can remember in the afternoon on Sundays, after we get home from church, sitting down with Dad and watching some guy named Bruno wrestling, and how it wasn’t nearly so filled with outbursts and crazy behavior outside the ring, it still had plenty of fun inside the squared circle.

Then they moved it to Saturday nights, so we’d switch channels back and forth from Saturday Night Live to Pro Wrestling, with Hulk Hogan, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Junkyard Dog, Randy Macho Man Savage, The Ultimate Warrior, Hacksaw Jim Dugan, oh the list goes on and on. Even then it still seemed real, even Hulk Hogan getting up, shaking, as Roddy Piper pounded on him the entire time, only to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Of course looking back at it, I know it was all scripted out, a well acted out event for drawing in as much attention as possible, but it was still exciting.

Then as I got older and got more into watching real sports, football, basketball, boxing, etc, I realized just how phony professional wrestling was and basically got away from watching it throughout my late high school and all my college years.

Nowadays I don’t look to watch it, it’s just funny how it’s on what, 5 or 6 times a week now? I sometimes wonder if pro wrestling helped spawn the ‘reality television’ explosion, considering that it’s promoted like reality, only grossly exaggerated with steroid enhanced muscular personalities acting out to the adoring fans that pack every arena they go to.

So, I indulge in the ridiculous farce that pro wrestling is, watching two men fighting in a ring with a ladder in the middle, only to have another wrestler come into the ring and beat up on both of them, but wait, a ‘surprise’ as one of the wrestlers gets an ‘unexpected’ upper hand and wins!! THE CROWD GOES WILD!! I just chuckle and wait for the next match, or I try out one of the movie channels over here, if there is something with a better script, well, I watch that instead.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

You never doubted my warped opinions on things like suicidal hate
You made me compliment myself when it was way too hard to take
So I'll drive so fucking far away that I never cross your mind
And do whatever it takes in your heart to leave me behind

Hate Me – Blue October

I'm really lonely today

You Have A Type B+ Personality

You're a pro at going with the flow
You love to kick back and take in everything life has to offer
A total joy to be around, people crave your stability.

While you're totally laid back, you can have bouts of hyperactivity.
Get into a project you love, and you won't stop until it's done
You're passionate - just selective about your passions.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

The peace is dead in my soul
I have blamed the reasons for
My intentions poor
Yes I'm the one who
The only one who
Would carry on this far

Torn - Creed