Resolve

I'm heading back to Iraq tomorrow. I'll be alone at midnight over the Atlantic. Some of you are encouraged to blow me a kiss.

I mentioned earlier that Cowboy Mouth is the only band I know worth seeing live. Their webpage (sound warning) is playing a new release I hadn't heard before, Tell the Girl Ur Sorry. It has a wose message as we head into a new year and new resolutions to improve ourselves and our behavior.

Well it looks like I'm a dumb ass, I dropped the ball again
'Cause the woman I love is pissed at me saying this has got to end
Now I tore it up late last night - got way too drunk, it's true
Can I somehow make it up to her? Is there anything I can do?

You've got to tell the girl you're sorry for anything you ever said
Tell the girl you're sorry for making her wish she was dead
Tell the girl you're sorry for leaving her alone and cold
Tell the girl you're sorry for being such an asshole

So she tells me she's getting really really tired of the crap I tend to pull
Like showing up where she works naked covered in baby oil
Now I'm trying really hard, trying really hard, trying to keep my evil side in check
But sometimes you just gotta kick the cat and deal with what you get

Tell the girl you're sorry for being such a selfish jerk
Tell the girl you're sorry for not caring that the kitty got hurt
Tell the girl you're sorry 'cause the two of you still ain't wed
Tell the girl you're sorry for being such a shit head

I'll say I'm wrong
Will this take long?
No need for you to go on and on
I earn my keep
Just give me peace
I swear I love you
Let me sleep

Now it seems that I must apologize even though I think I'm right,
'cause lordy knows, hone, if I don't there will be no nookie tonight
So I slowly turn to the woman I love saying, "baby, baby, baby please"
Then I watch her smile and point to me saying, "Get down on your knees and..."

Tell the girl you're sorry for everything you never said
Tell the girl you're sorry for giving really lousy head
Tell the girl you're sorry for feelings you can never show
Tell the girl you're sorry for being such an asshole

Regurgitations IV

[Editorial note: This is the droid that I was looking for, my last installment of emails sent to select friends and family from Iraq. I apologize for the delay; I wrote this draft on November 10, and have updated it with the few emails I sent after that.]

Dylan vs. Momzilla! And other happenings.

For those who read the blog and receive the emails, yes, I have fixed some of my more egregious typos here. I also added in the lines that were inexplicably lost from the end of "Saddam's Revenge."

Previously.

Harvest Fruit Medley! My favorite!
Monday, October 27, 2008 16:31

After trading several emails titled "The USO loves me, even if you don't," I have provisionally decided to trust my mother again. Two packages arrived from her today. (And one from the Costellos. Tell them thanks.)

I say provisionally, because I have not decided yet how to regard the presence of a certain food clearly intended as a joke. On the other hand, this is the woman who keeps asking me if I want salad at every dinner despite my streak of 523 actions in the anti-affirmative (i.e., "no"), so perhaps she was serious. Seriously delusional.

Now that I know the dark conspiracy of mom, apple pie, and the brigade mail platoon is not out to get me, I remind you all that my birthday is November 14th. Packages and cards sent immediately will probably reach me in time, or soon enough after. That address again:

2LT Dylan LASTNAME
Team Demon Dog (PB H*well)
FOB Warrior, APO AE 09338

I have been asked by some what I actually want to receive out here. Now that we have washers of a sort installed, laundry soap is actually the most precious commodity. I think I owe one of my specialists four cartons of cigarettes or the equivalent for the double scoop I borrowed from him. Random cheap "classic" DVDs are also worthwhile: I was amused to get Spaceballs in my surprise box today, and someone with surprisingly good and unlikely taste put "Midnight Run" up on the big screen the other night.

As far as food goes, random chocolate or potato chip type stuff would be welcome, but instead of name specific items that might be repeated too often, I'd rather have variety and the opportunity to shake my head over your poor but well intended culinary choices. I may be stuck in Iraq for a year, but at least I can take comfort in the fact that I'm not the kind of person who would normally choose to eat Chex Mix. Or, god help me, Harvest Fruit Medley.

(Seriously, Mom of the Year.)

Mom responded with reply-all:

Okay, Dylan, I just remembered what the hell the harvest fruit medley is.

When I read your email I thought I had sent you some random grocery store package of dried fruit, which by the way, I could not remember sending (because I know you hate dried fruit). So, I went back to look at my customs receipts and then EUREKA! I remembered that I had sent you a package of candy corn with those cute little candy pumpkins and Indian candy corn, which by the way, I ALWAYS bought those and had them in a candy dish at Halloween for whoever wanted them.

I cannot believe that (1) you have such feelings of disdain for them (2) you can't barter them for something of equal or greater value and (3) you should be totally grateful to have a mother who tries to bring a little bit of the holidays to you in BFE!!! (As I am sure you are not carving jack-o-lanterns and making costumes right now!) So, when you get the box with the scarecrow, don't EVEN give me any shit about that! I think you should have a little bit of home and childhood memories of holidays past, even if they were traumatic! To this day, Julia still has nightmares about those frigging marshmallow Peeps at Easter!

So, in conclusion, I think the harvest fruit medley was timely and traditional. Somewhere in your unit is a soldier who is cursing his mother for not sending him the candy corn harvest fruit medley! Find him and REGIFT! You will be a better person for it. I love you more than the USO does. Afte rall, they won't be sending you a scarecrow!

Love, Mom

Counter-battery:

Re: Harvest Fruit Medley! My favorite!
Tuesday, October 28, 2008 21:19

Mommy Dearest:

I am regifting the Harvest Fruit Medley. To you. When I come home on mid-tour leave in May. But don't worry, it will be no more inedible then than it is today, because it most certainly IS random dried fruit, not traditional Halloween candy, unless banana slices are a previously unknown Celtic treat that unexpectedly became spooky and terrifying to anyone but me. But I thank you for your strange contribution, as it has entertained me greatly. Perhaps we should blame the Ogre for sabotage?

In answer to your previous email: The only problem with Chex Mix is that it contains Chex and is a mix. I happen to like steak, chocolate ice cream, and Dr. Pepper, but that time I mixed them all up in the blender was not one of my prouder moments.

I look forward both to your scarecrow and the alleged Halloween candy. One of my soldiers received Halloween decorations over a week ago, and he and his roommates have been in the forefront of mocking my glum face after every previous mail delivery. Hopefully the 'crow comes with a kung-fu grip so I can turn it loose to wreak my revenge.

This is almost as much fun as publishing break-up emails. I'd better go delete one of my old gmail accounts before I give into temptation.

Love,
Dylan

We return to our regularly scheduled emails:

The sound of silence
Sunday, November 2, 2008 23:16

Much of my life here is defined by noises, both real and metaphorical.

On the latter front, enemy activity around here is relatively quiet. In every direction around us our sister companies are coping with guys tossing armor piercing grenades at their vehicles and setting several road side bombs a week (so far with no casualties in our battalion), but, except for a couple of bombs safely found and cleared this week, very little has happened in our area of operations.

Then there are the real noises. Like Foghat.

Yes, Foghat. As in the band. My room has a glass window that divides it from our Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) room. A plywood panel that blocks about 0.05% of the noise, an obscuring cloth, and three feet of space separate it and my head from a 36" flat screen TV and an Xbox.

I can handle the guys who blow shit up on Call of Duty 4 at midnight. They listen when I explain matters, and have even started turning it down on their own initiative as it gets later. But the fools who get off guard duty at 4 a.m. and start playing terrible songs on Guitar Hero have already failed at life before I can even stagger from bed, around three corners, and make dire threats.

As my roommate noted: "If sound travels through it, I'm pretty sure 9mm rounds will, too." An excellent point, but maybe we should try a sign first.

Bad rock anthems aren't the only sounds around here that get my pulse pounding. Over a week ago some idiot threw a box of ammunition, including a 40mm grenade launcher round, onto our trash pile. Which. We. Burn. Regularly. I just barely avoided crashing into my commander and our most permanently angry sergeant when I rushed outside to see what the hell was going on.

We had a similar recurrence last night, when around 1:30 a.m. a moderately large boom sounded outside. Of the surprisingly large number of people still awake who crushed into the command post afterwards, most guessed gunshot, while I voted small explosion, although I couldn't see how a grenade got lobbed over the wall, and it certainly wasn't a mortar.

My final guess was that a tower guard negligently fired a single shot on his M240B medium machine gun, which just might have been loud enough. I don't blame him for lying about it; the truth that he was trying to stroke out the fake chords to "Slow Ride" on his trigger guard so his fingers would be limber for my unwanted wake up call in a few hours might have finally led me to test the bullet resistant qualities of plywood.

* * *

Wail to the chief
Thursday, November 6, 2008 9:55

I have been consistently amazed how little political commentary I hear in the Army. As arguably the most racially egalitarian organization in the United States but with a pretty strong misogynistic streak, I heard a moderate amount of Hillary hate during the primaries, but almost nothing about the presidential election. Most yesterday professed indifference, or would have if they'd said anything at all.

Most. One of our mechanics said with snide sincerity something about having a Muslim for president. Our (black) First Sergeant explained that Obama is a Christian, as you'd know if you followed the Reverend Wright racist whacko religious inspiration scandal. I explained that Obama is a supremely cynical atheist opportunist who found it politically opportune to join a radical Christian church that met his political/social/emotional needs until it was no longer convenient.

[paragraph deleted]

As usual, the Onion had the best post-election analysis: "Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job."

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/black_man_given_nations

I also enjoyed the following election day analysis from Fafblog, my favorite hilarious source of left wing satire. I recommend reading the whole thing; the photo and caption are particularly priceless.

http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/fafblog-election-day-special-know-your.html

Fafblog Election Day Special! Know Your Swing States

Well it's sure been a whirlwind two-and-a-half years, but election day's already here! Before Campaign '08 finally wraps up let's stop and take a last look at the swing states we'll be hearin about all night long.

IRAQ
Population: 29 million
Big issues: gas prices, the economy, explosion reform
Major swing demographics: Joe the insurgent, Joe the government-employed death squad member, Joe the sad bandaged child with one remaining limb
Electoral votes: 0
Leaning? maybe Nader

AFGHANISTAN
Population: 31 million
Big issues: the environment (curious rain of missiles and bullets, possibly linked to human activity)
Major swing demographics: poppy farmers, wedding survivors, Reagan Taliban
Electoral votes: 0
Leaning? might write in Ron Paul

Fafblog's McCain Interview was brilliant, too.

http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/fafblog-interviews-john-mccain.html

FB: Well you make a pretty convincing case, John McCain, but why shouldn't I vote for a president who has even more experience being tortured, like Congressman Sheikh Mohammed or Senator Jesus or that guy who gets his head exploded at the beginning of Scanners?
MCCAIN: Because I know the problems Americans are going through right now. The American people are angry, my friends. They're hurt. They've been beaten by their captors for five and a half years. And they need a leader who's willing to stop federal tax dollars from going to research harbor seal DNA.
FB: We might lose our jobs and we might lose our homes and we might have to sell our youngest, weakest children to black market organ scavengers for a cardboard box and a can of refried beans, but we'll always be safe in the knowledge that our taxes aren't going to further our understanding of marine biology.
MCCAIN: Oh, and that's just the tip of the iceberg, my friends. Do you realize that federal earmarks last year directed literally thousands of your tax dollars to children's hospitals? Think about that now! Hospitals! For children!
FB: Now look John McCain, everybody wants to shut down children's hospitals, but how're you really gonna do it what with all the Washington gridlock and the Beltway infighting and the fatcat lobbyists from Big Children? I mean Ronald Reagan promised us he'd destroy the government and twenty years later we're still stuck with a functioning public sewage system.

I will never vote in my life.

* * *

Saddam's revenge
Tuesday, November 11, 2008 8:28

It often seems like my main function around here is comic relief and morale boosting. On the latter front, for example, last night I used the Army's multibillion dollar integrated vehicle tracking and communications system to send a text message to our platoon that is out roughing it for a couple of nights. I felt it was important for them to know that they'd missed a dinner of steak, crab legs, and fried shrimp; by inspiring their hatred of me the men can more easily forget the discomforts of deployment.

Mission accomplished. The platoon sergeant sent back a text message calling our cook some pretty inventive names, presumably for his menu schedule, and then got on the radio to tell everyone in the command post to do pushups until he gets back. My name was apparently mentioned as well, but the exact instructions on what I should stick where were rendered incomprehensible by a combination of spittle and static. I slept soundly last night in the knowledge that the warm glow of anger would keep him comfortable through the cold night.

But sometimes I'm funny, too, although not always for reasons I myself understand. One of the biggest laugh getters was my observation that Iraq is pretty much indistinguishable from the seedier parts of Mexico. Every unhappy family may be unhappy in its own way, but every crappy country appears to be crappy for pretty much the same reasons. Cinder block houses, trash in the street, tacky color schemes (the big shot in the nicest town we oversee lives in a huge house of by American standards average quality that is painted an alarming pink), and mobs of kids trying to hustle you. Although, I confess I do prefer "mister, give me" to "chiclet?"

The local food, which I've eaten on three trips to attend local district council meetings, is in quality and aesthetics reminiscent of real Mexican food I've had. The massive slabs of bread even resemble tortillas, albeit shot full of steroids after being cross-bred (not "bread," Claire) with a 21" pizza. Seriously, I've thought about bringing a piece of bread home with me to use as a blanket.

In addition to the standbys of rice, chickpeas, and hummus, they've given me chicken, lamb, some sort of huge grouper like fish from the Tigris river, and what one of my interpreters assured my commander and I with good cheer was "just meat." We tried it and agreed that it did indeed taste like just meat, although it looked vaguely beefish. "Just meat" is now what I call every particularly bad or overcooked piece of animal flesh our cooks inflict on us.

The most straightforward Mexican comparison, however, is the commonality of gastrointestinal difficulties one may suffer from eating the food and drinking the water. The bitching and moaning about this from everyone around me in the first couple of weeks was disgraceful. In my role as morale booster I let them know it. In between dashes to the toilets they all assured me I'd suffer the same if I kept eating the food.

"I don't think you appreciate the squalor and filth I inhabited in Colorado Springs. My system can handle anything!" Especially steak and crab legs.

* * *

I'll be home for Christmas
Friday, November 21, 2008 11:47

I get 15 days of leave during my tour in Iraq. I requested June, was given May, was then switched to January, and then a week ago was told I was going in December. Tonight I learned I begin the trip back on December 10. I'll probably hit the US on the 12th or 13th; whenever I arrive, I don't get on a plane back to Iraq until 15 days later.

I know where I'll be on December 25th, and one or two other locations in TX I'll be visiting, but I'm open to invitations to travel anywhere else. I'm willing to do one cross country plane ticket. Let the bidding begin!

* * *

All quiet on the northern front
Friday, December 5, 2008 2:52

I haven't written in a while because there's not much to say.

As I had to explain to our battalion intelligence officer, who also feels I don't send enough reports, nothing of consequence ever seems to happen here. There are people occasionally shooting and throwing grenades at soldiers in our battalion, but none in our company area. There are roadside bombs in our company area that are found or explode weekly, but always involving our engineers who are looking for them or our supply guys bringing me seven new boxes of stuff (the same intel officer asked about rumors I was receiving an absurd number of packages in the mail).

Since the first week my company has had zero direct enemy contact. They're out there, but they aren't, so far, very effective.

Our focus is on civil stuff. The platoons drive around our attached civil affairs team to do assessments of utilities and infrastructure projects that the Iraqi government may want to undertake, and our company commander "mentors" a couple of sub-district councils, sort of like small county governments.

As the extra officer without a platoon, I'm supposed to be doing intelligence work, tracking bad guys and coordinating information flow. Except there aren't many bad guys, they aren't up to much, with the new Status of Forces Agreement and the political situation leading up to it we're fairly circumscribed in what we can do about them without Iraqi government pre-approval, and for a month [something happened which made my job difficult but doesn't need to be on a blog].

I will gladly vote myself the most expendable officer in the battalion. It's probably a good thing that I'm going on leave early.

It's an even better thing that I learned a week ago that they're moving many of the lieutenants around to new jobs. One of the primary reasons is to get the fire support officers some platoon leader experience. Probably in February I'll be put in charge of a tank platoon that doesn't have any tanks, to lead them out on these civil affairs and information gathering missions. It will almost certainly also involve a new company, in a new area, on either a somewhat better or much worse base. I may be the only LT in the entire battalion who is mostly happy about the change.

But before I know the details I'll be back home for 15 days. I should land in the US somewhere in the 12-14 December time frame. I'll reactivate my cell phone and get back in touch with all of you. We have had three phones out here, but the CST +9 time difference and total lack of any privacy when talking has made me reluctant to use them.

Let the record show that four hours after sending that last email, a patrol was hit by a bomb for the first time. No casualties, no damage.

I have a gift.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em

[Editorial note: originally written 2/24/08. I have no idea why it was still lingering in my unpublished drafts. Maybe I had some final paragraph intended, but whatever. No less topical now than it was then, so here you go.]

I was reflecting on my disappointment that because of dry weather I never got to witness white phosphorous or illumination rounds being fired during my officer basic course and belatedly realized there is probably some footage on Youtube. Well, sort of.



Those are M825 smoke rounds, which drop a bunch of WP soaked felt wedges that burn in a fan pattern to create a smoke screen. Contrary to the numerous paranoid raving videos that use similar footage to claim US and Israeli atrocities, it's not a chemical weapon or even really a direct weapon at all. And if the smoke does all the horrible things they claim, it was probably a bad idea for them to teach us how to plan smoke targets within 200m of friendly forces.

But what I was really looking for is some video of plain WP rounds that blow up on the ground. That would be something usable as a direct weapon against people, although doctrinally we only learned to use it set things like refueling points on fire when mixed in with high explosive to rupture gas tanks.

WTF, over?

I have 27 draft posts saved. I have no clue what they are, except the one I was looking for.

He returned to Corpus Christi in a borrowed VW bug

I'm headed back to return my mother's borrowed ridiculous red convertible bug and prepare to return to a simpler and less emotionally fraught place. I'll quit all this music blogging and likely just do a simple good bye before I head to the airport.

I will say, however, that I was quite amused to be reminded last night of the lyrics to The Fool, which the Old 97's didn't play and I haven't listened to that much.

He came from Phoenix in a borrowed VW bug
To be somebody or just be somebody who
Came from Phoenix in a borrowed VW bug
Just to prove that he was on her like she was a drug
Hallucinogenic with no hangover at all

She kept quarters in a jar in a drawer in her desk
In receipt a baby deep in the valley girl
She will give him what she wants if he will only ask
He will give her what is left in his life of this mess
Which will end in no time at all

There is love
Everywhere you go
But it is never enough

He met his tragic fate in an automobile
With a relatively innocent young girl who
Would of blamed all the fate sat behind the wheel
Just to prove the point, nothing, nothing is real
Except the very thing you can't believe at all

and there is love
Everywhere you go
But it is never enough

He came from Phoenix in a borrowed VW bug
He was the kid voted most likely not to return
To Phoenix in a borrowed VW
What did he care
Tomorrow we're all gonna burn
Which you know, so it's no surprise at all

There is love
Everywhere you go
But it is never enough
Nah, it's never enough

Love is gonna come
You gotta work it out
You got to be a fool to be
A fool in
Love is gonna come
You gotta wait it out
You got be a fool to be a fool in
Love is gonna come
You gotta coax it out
You gotta be a fool to be a fool in
Fool to be a fool in
You got to be a fool to be a fool in
Fool to be a fool in love

Counter proposal

Contra my previous disparaging of live performances, here's an excellent example of the rare occasion when one is not greatly inferior to the studio recording - Neko Case singing my theme song, Look For Me (I'll Be Around). I suppose it's easier when the song completely fails to rock and you don't have to scream it.



I'd previously given this song a brief note as "The torch song." Although the Youtube commenter who calls it (favorably) a "sexy stalker ballad" is not entirely wrong. Just mostly.

When you tire of all the bright lights
Haste that's killing and you're willing to stay home nights
When your feet are back on the solid ground
Look for me, I'll be around

When the new crowd starts to bore you
Just remember there is someone to adore you
When you're weary of nights out on the town
Look for me, I'll be around

May not seem exciting the way those others do
I'm emotion, my devotion
You will need some day as I need you

When the kicks go that it brings you
You will hanker for an anchor just to cling to
When you've lived it up till it's got you down
Look for me, look for me
Look for me, I'll be around

Hold On, Hold On is another good one, and a plausible Neko theme song for a lady of my acquaintance.

The most tender place in my heart is for strangers
I know it's unkind but my own blood is much too dangerous
Hangin' round the ceiling half the time
Hangin' round the ceiling half the time

Compared to some I've been around
But I really tried so hard
That echo chorus lied to me with its
"Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on"

In the end I was the mean girl
Or somebody's in-between girl
Now it's the devil I love
And that's as funny as real love

I leave the party at three a.m.
Alone, thank God
With a valium from the bride
It's the devil I love
And that's as funny as real love
And that's as real as true love

That echo chorus lied to me with its
"Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on"

That echo chorus lied to me with its
"Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on"

You are a miracle, but that is not all

English is in dire need of a special term for the romantic equivalent of premature anti-fascism: telling someone you love them before they want to hear it, even though the correctness of your stance will later be clearly justifiable and acknowledged as such by the counterparty.

Correction

Having heard it sung live tonight, I must revise my previously provided lyrics for Color of a Lonely Heart. I now agree with my first instinct and the lyrics as presented here.

The lines aren't

Scorpio's up, bleeding all day into pasture
Scorpio's up, bleeding all day into Cancer.

They're

Scorpio's up, a leading ol' Dan to pasture.
Scorpio's up, a leading ol' Dan to Cancer.

Dan, of course, is a commonly known short form of Dylan that I just made up, so the proper interpretation of the lyrics is that a Scorpio has put me out to romantic pasture and inflicted a chronic sharp, crippling pain in my gut. Both of which are obviously true.

He came from Phoenix in a borrowed VW bug It's very tricky business

I'm not really a fan of live shows of any band not called Cowboy Mouth. The performances always lose more in vocal quality than they gain in novelty or "energy" from the crowd. Tonight's Old 97's wasn't any different, but I suppose it had to be done once.

Interestingly, half the people I used to work with at Foley's turn out to be Old 97's fans. If by half you mean "two, plus the husband of my ex-boss." One of them was the law school graduate who never took the bar. And one of them is a tall, attractive blonde with big tits who I don't find attractive at all. Just not my type. But she did possess a rudimentary theory of the Old 97's, which made her more interesting than she ever was seven years ago. I briefly explained to her the taxonomy of songs mostly dealing with NG, one with "I"G, some about some other Girls, but, surprisingly to her, none directly on point about IG.

Following is a more or less complete list of the songs played tonight in sort of the correct order, with relevant or situationally amusing lyrics pulled out that appealed to me at the time. My predictions were all wrong, although I was almost right that they wouldn't play Indefinitely, and I was the only one who seemed very glad that they did.

Dance With Me

And he takes your hand tenderly
And he whispers
Sweet surrender, nothing
How he feels about girls like you
Your flip flop smiles,
And your big blue eyes
On vacation

West Texas Teardrops

I made my bed, so here I'll lie
I'm rolling west Texas teardrops in my eye

Barrier Reef

Midnight came and midnight went, and I though I was the President.
She said, "Do you have a car," and I said, "Do I have a car?"

Won't Be Home

You're a bottle cap away from pushing me too far
Well the problem's getting big and it's a compact car
So I won't feel so bad I did all I could do
Now I'm on wounded knee and we're at waterloo
So please get out of my car

No Baby I

The difference between us
Is way down on the inside
It’s very tricky business
No baby I
No baby I
No baby I don’t want to see you hurt

Smokers

I'm just sitting up it's late
It's getting rough
It's two o'clock black and white
Ceilings got no good advice

Color of a Lonely Heart

And the hours behind are all ways to few
The miles between can't begin to undo
The feeling you will never see another like her

My Two Feet

I bet you said, "what have I done to deserve this mess?"
That’s as easy as a question gets
Well, you should have said yes
But you couldn’t care less

Buick City Complex

Do you wanna mess around?
Do you wanna spend the night?
I've known both kinds of love
But I want to get it right this time

Here's to the Halcyon

Get me through this Lord and I’ll devote my life to you
Things look pretty bleak right now but I know you’ll come through

Question

He took her to the park
She crossed her arms
And lowered her eyelids

Murder (or a Heart Attack)

And I may be movin' myself closer
To a real untimely end

Doreen

Doreen, Doreen, Last night I had an awful dream.
You were laying in the arms of a man I'd never seen.

Four Leaf Clover

Why don't you come over? I'll show you my four leaf clover.
Who'm I trying to kid? I'm not the kind of guy you'd go for.

The New Kid

I should be kissing that girl
We should be so in love
There is no justice
There’s just dark stars above

Big Brown Eyes

You made a big impression for a girl of your size,
Now I can't get by without you and your big brown eyes.

Rollerskate Skinny

Ain't nobody gonna see eye to eye
With a girl who's only gonna stand collarbone high

I believe in love, but it don't believe in....
I believe in love, but it don't believe in me
I believe in love, but it don't believe in meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.....
No, it don't believe in meeeeeeeeeeeeeee...
No, it don't believe in (me)

Niteclub

Telephones make strangers out of lovers,
Whiskey makes the strangers all look good.
Well my angel of the morning is in mourning.
My life was misspent, don't let me be misunderstood.

Indefinitely

We got busted by your mother, though you're 29 years old

And it symbolizes something although you don't know what it is
Like loneliness and longing for a future perfect kiss

Time is gonna tell your little secrets to me
There's a frightened girl inside of you, I'm gonna set her free

Timebomb

I got a timebomb, in my mind Mom,
It's gonna go off, but I don't know when
I need a doctor to extract her
I got a feeling she'd get right back in again

Appropriate

I'm finally going to see a live Old 97's show tonight. In honor of which, I post the lyrics to my favorite song, Designs on You.

A decent acoustic version of it is here. The studio/CD version is here. And yes, I really hate these TV/song mashups that people put up, but not enough not to use them. [And having just actually belatedly watched that one...I'm willing to make an exception.]

Standing on the corner of 6th and how to forget
Trying to do right by you all night Annette
You can go ahead and get married
and this will be our secret thing
I won't tell a soul except the people in the nightclub where I sing

I don't want to get you all worked up
Except secretly I do

I'd be lying if I said I didn't have designs on you
I'd be lying if I said I didn't have designs on you

Standing on the corner of 6th
Where do I go
The parade's shut down now the rain is running the show
Where did all these people come from
And how soon can they leave
Normally I'd be into it but I need to get some sleep

Though I do wish you'd come over
But I'm warning you if you do

I'd be lying if I said I didn't have designs on you
I'd be lying if I said I didn't have designs on you

Standing on the corner of 6th
Where do I get
Trying to do right by you all night Annette
This would only be an experiment
In things that could have been
You can go ahead and get married
And it'll probably never happen again

I don't mean to make you excited
Except secretly I do

I'd be lying if I said I didn't have designs on you
I'd be lying if I said I didn't have designs on you
I'd be lying if I said I didn't have designs on you
I'd be lying if I said I didn't have designs on you

Fear of flying

Last night's (well, this morning's) incredibly vivid dream that kept me from falling asleep again:

I'm in the back of a Blackhawk helicopter. A surprisingly spacious Blackhawk, but I guess that's why it's a dream. A door gunner, the only other occupant in the back, gives a thumbs up and we lift off.

He then belatedly realizes I'm not wearing a helmet and gestures at me to put one on. I indicate back that I don't have one. He produces one that is clearly too small, and we get in this extended non-verbal argument over whether it can fit and whether I should just pointlessly perch the damn thing on top of my head and look ridiculous to meet his irrational form over substance safety fetish.

In the middle of the argument he glances out the door and this profound oh, shit expression comes on his face. He then turns towards the cockpit and starts yelling at the pilots. I glance outside and realize that we are very, very close to a lot of very large trees and a large modern building that is either an office or a hotel.

It's not Iraq. Wherever it is, we're going to crash.

I instantly know two things with dream certainty - my argument with the gunner distracted the pilot and caused the incipient crash, and it also distracted me from the minor issue of attaching my safety harness. I scramble to fasten it, remembering that the first time I did this it took me over three minutes (really), and that my best time is still around 15 seconds with full gear on. I know I'm not going to make it.

Jarring impact, I go flying, and I repeatedly ask if everyone else is ok. There's no sound of anyone responding; there's no sound at all. I wake up a very long time after I realize I'm dead.

Once I sat up in bed and turned on the bed side lamp I noticed the following inspirational(!?) quote on a hotel provided card next to my glasses. It's headlined "friendship."

One of the best things people could do for their descendants would be to sharply limit the number of them.

- Olin Miller

The first google result for "Olin Miller" is this collection of quotations. The first quote:

A man who will not lie to a woman has very little consideration for her feelings.

Pros & Cons

My very nice hotel room has a nice view of the fountains at Main and Montrose. I thought it might.

The hotel's very nice lounge/bar that closed right before I got back appeared to be overrun by people of Middle Eastern extraction. My guess is they are Iranian and own the place.

HBO HD on the 40" flatscreen is playing the Shawshank Redemption. I have no particular desire at this time of night to watch a film about the long years of misery inflicted on an innocent man as the result of some woman's infidelity. The happy ending, as I recall, although involving some clever scheming on the part of our hero, didn't really seem worth what it took to get there.

I did not drink nearly enough tonight.

I have no idea what happened to my absurdly expensive tie after I removed it. It's probably in my car. It would probably be more emotionally meaningful and a better story if I never saw it again. I am certainly a fool, but possibly in a good way.

Italian Girl may or may not call me tomorrow.

I'm not sure which category any of these falls into.

Bah, humbug!

A Private on my fire support team who went on leave at the same time called last night to wish me a Merry Christmas. As he's getting a divorce started I asked him how he was doing, and then to get past that brief awkwardness launched into a rant on how the Army really screwed us over by sending us home during Christmas, where we get to do what a bunch of cranky old women who provided 25-50% of our DNA tell us what to do instead of what we'd like to do. He laughed with sincere appreciation.

Personally, I'd rather be somewhere more fun and less stressful right now, like Iraq. Or Houston.

Personally, I'll wait for the 8-track

Most bizarre store sighting of the Christmas season: vinyl albums on sale at the Houston Galleria Best Buy. They only had about 50 disks by about 30 artists, all of them major names from the last 30 years. All of them except...both a solo Ryan Adams album and, what was truly fucking crazy, Whiskeytown's Stranger's Almanac.

Yes, the sleeve contained a double album and all 38 tracks. I'm willing to bet two month's pay that there are not more than five Houston residents (including an honorary me) who would be interested in that one. You can multiply that by the ownership rate of record players to realize how many lashes their music buyer deserves before being shitcanned.

Of course, I did once own a record player. When I was seven. It was a Cookie Monster themed machine, for which I possessed only two records, both of which were Olivia Newton albums. For no reason I can recall I loved her with a passion whose intensity was rivaled only by its brevity.

Fortunately, this early childhood obsession with an Austalian blonde seems to have inflicted no long-lasting damage to my psyche.

HP HDX-16 FTW

I'm a big fan of my new HP laptop. It's fast, has good graphics for a laptop, and will work quite well for movies, which is important for my remaining 8+ months in Iraq.

AKO users, take note: the fingerprint reader is magnifique for sites that require complex passwords that can't be saved by a browser. Not having to tie my fingers in knots every time I want to check my unclassified official email is nice. And it will be again when I return and am once again receiving significant unclassified email. Which I want to view from home instead of at work. And until some signal weenie realizes that my password can probably be extracted from the fingerprint file on my hard drive if it were stolen by shadowy agents of a foreign power, thereby leading to the promulgation of new regs forbidding the use of this feature.

Sigh.

Mo' money, 'mo prison time

Razib discusses the appropriate level of punishment for financial crimes. The starting point is this WaPo contribution by a criminal defense attorney.

But when it comes to large-scale frauds involving public companies and their millions of shares, the guidelines' grounding in mathematics sometimes results in sentences that are, quite literally, off the charts. They fall within the realm of prison terms usually reserved for Mafia bosses, major international drug lords, cop killers, child molesters and terrorists. Remember Jeffrey Skilling? Losses to Enron shareholders of more than $1 billion largely determined his 24-year-plus sentence. Or consider WorldCom's former chief, Bernard J. Ebbers. He got 25 years based principally on the $2.2 billion loss suffered by his company's shareholders. Sure, these men destroyed enormous shareholder value, just as the targets of today's criminal cases allegedly did. But it's hard to contend that they deserved prison terms longer than the average sentence for murder (22 years), kidnapping (14) and sexual abuse (eight).

It's not hard at all! Razib does it, as does this guy.

For my part, I've always considered the implicit "cost of a death" calculations that economists do when evaluating safety improvements to be relevant to the punishment of financial crime. Last time I paid attention, Americans implicitly valued a marginal life at around $6 million - that's what we've been paying to save a statistical life when setting regulatory/safety regimes.

That's not to say that the financial equivalent of a statistically preventable death is murder. But slap a very modest multiplier on it and I'd call it manslaughter. Put a very large modifier on it and I wouldn't cry at slapping the death penalty on crimes involving something in the range of $100-500m.

Not that I'd endorse that, either. The bigger problem with financial crimes in the post-Enron era is that many of them shouldn't be crimes at all. But trying to nerf the sentences for everyone involved in a financial crime strikes me as a poor way to address that problem.

Condemned

Rewatching all three seasons of Veronica Mars to kill time my first month in Iraq I was struck by the fact that they used three Old 97's songs, and managed at least two Neko Case tracks (plus an in character mention), but never anything by Ryan Adams. This was clearly their downfall.

Watching the last three minutes of The Condemned because some moron had put it on the big screen, I was struck by the fact it was really terrible, and then inexplicably used Adams' "To Be Young (Is to Be Sad, Is to Be High)" for the title credits. "Yellow Submarine" sung by the Vienna Boys' Choir in ancient Sanskrit wouldn't have shocked me more.

Although the bigger moron who later put Hostel 2 on the TV managed the trick. Thank god for the restoration of AFN so all I had to deal with was screaming yahoos cheering on the Cowboys at 2 a.m. local time right outside my room.

Folks, I'm here all week

So I got back to the US for 15 days mid-tour leave last Monday, and begin the long return on December 31. Internet has been surprisingly hard to come by, but I'll probably crank out a few posts in the time remaining.

If you prick me, do I not continue to bleed out?

Due to the Air Force breaking their one plane they consider usable for the purpose, I'm stuck on a large base in Iraq, trying to come home for mid-tour leave. Which is fine; leave me here another 2-3 days and I'll be home not only for Christmas but New Years' Eve, as well.

Anyway, to pass the time I occasionally drop by the command post of a sister company from my battalion that is stationed here. Yesterday afternoon they had just learned about and were getting ready to participate in the aftermath of this.

A suicide bomber attacked a packed restaurant on Thursday where Sunni Arabs and Kurds were meeting to ease friction in the tense northern city of Kirkuk. At least 48 people were killed in the bombing, apparently aimed at provoking extremists along widening ethnic fault lines just as American plans to withdraw militarily from Iraq became official.

Should any of you be taking tips from the Iraqi Police, an action I never recommend, please note that if you expanded the picture of the IPs carrying the wounded little girl, one should not carry an IV bag upside down if you want it to do the recipient any good.

I'll probably get around to posting my last round of emails when I get back to the states. I went through a month or so quiet period, so you haven't missed as much as you might have thought.