Still Angry

So I went on to Cleveland and I ended up insane

2011-06-01T14:54:00.002-05:00

One of my more peculiar obsessions the last couple of years is noting every pop culture reference that cites Cleveland as a bottomless pit of despair.

There's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which puts the second(-rate) Hellmouth there. 30 Rock decided it was the most hilarious contrast possible with New York City. On the early seasons of Weeds I think but cannot prove Cleveland is the location Shane Botwin is always advocating they move to, but a substantial risk of prison or death is apparently preferably to everyone else. To Ryan Adams Cleveland is the place you go when you have nothing else. And today Matthew Yglesias notes that Cleveland is the cheapest place to go if you want a job.

I confess I've always found this puzzling. I have a small list of awful cities I've never visited, and Cleveland was never on the radar. Detroit or Newark, sure. But what's so special (or the opposite) about Cleveland?

Maybe the problem is me and my prejudices. As I am perpetually telling one of my frenemies who hails from there, Ohio is the most generic and boring state in the United States. It's not terribly important or irrelevant or culturally significant or notable or notorious in any way. Who cares?

Because nobody knows the wreck of the soul the way you do

2011-05-08T21:42:00.002-05:00

I'll be in Afghanistan in less than a month, which means I felt compelled to spend a week in Texas the week before last to see Italian Girl and put in a few cameos with my family. On the latter front, I can safely call home more often, as the odds of getting hit up for money in the near and medium term have dropped precipitously.

On the former, 6-8 months seems pretty optimal between meetings, given her...difficulties in maintaining personal relationships of all kinds. The previous gap was 20 months, which nearly drove me insane and when it ended felt so good heroin junkies were trying to lick my sweat for a hit.

Interestingly, this will be our last ever meeting in Houston. She's moving this summer to LA, a city we both think we hate based on limited exposure long ago, to take a job. I'm invited to share the misery when I get back.

What the hell does the PKF think it's up to, Lieutenant? Honestly, I don't think anybody but Melissa has much of an idea

2011-03-26T15:55:00.003-05:00

My source on the same base in Afghanistan I'm going to be spending a year at tells me that unlike Iraq there is no private internet or wifi - it's all Army/DOD controlled/restricted stuff that you can't plug a personal computer in. Which probably means no blogging and seems to definitely mean no Kindle downloads which is kind of freaking me out, since there are several books that will be released while I'm there that I'd really rather not have to wait for my return (or mid-tour leave).

But overall I'm happy, because this knowledge inspired me to check on all of the books I really wish I could take with me in Kindle format, which apparently now includes my favorite deeply flawed sci-fi novel, as well as its prequel. Better yet, the sequel which has been in publisher purgatory for 15 years has apparently been bought back and will be self published...eventually. For about five years that's the one book I would have burned a wish to bring into existence. Not because I expect it to be the best, but because I thought it would never happen without supernatural forces brought to bear.

In other news, there's also a torrent of all Barry Hughart's books. I've already bought four copies of Bridge of Bird s and and one each of Eight Skilled Gentlemen and The Story of the Stone, and would buy an official Kindle version if it existed, so I feel entitled, but let your own conscience guide you.

The take away is that some of your favorite orphaned books are probably out there in some sort of epub format (you can convert with Calibre). Do some investigation.

My iPad dilemma

2011-03-24T23:24:00.002-05:00

I want an iPad for my upcoming year long deployment to Afghanistan. Alas, I want one without a camera so I can take it into classified environments. Which poses a problem.

I can justify through moderate self delusion paying for a 64GB model iPad 2 if I am only going to use it for entertainment and load it up before I go with movies that I probably can't download over there quickly (or at all) due to the extreme suck of deployed internet speeds.

I can also justify a dirt cheap discounted 16MB original iPad if I'm going to be loading it up with work related .pdf and books that might be more convenient to read on that than my Kindle. Alas, there are none of those left.

What the Ft. Carson PX is sitting on (tax free!) are ten 64MB iPads marked down a measly $100 to $589. They seem unlikely to go anywhere unless they get marked down another $50 or $100.

Does anyone think that's likely in the next month or so? I'm caught between ordering an iPad 2 that I'd probably receive right before deployment or waiting for further discounting on the originals and risking getting nothing.

No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded

2011-03-23T23:27:00.003-05:00

As alluded to previously, when I visited DC for a class in November I discovered upon my arrival that a very good friend from law school who is an Air Force JAG and former co-resident of Colorado Springs was there the same week on vacation, enabling us to hang out a few times.

This was aided by the fact she slept on my hotel suite's pull out couch the last couple of nights, possibly bending some travel regulations, although not, alas, the UCMJ's sodomy prohibition despite what some coworkers who saw us getting a drink one night erroneously thought. (I blew one my one chance at that back in the day because I didn't want to blow what I had going with Nobody Girl at the time. There's no chance she would have known, but that wasn't the point. I've tried to regret that decision over the years without much success.)

Anyway, I visited DC again for another class the first week of this month, and discovered via Facebook twenty minutes after I landed that the same friend was also in DC. And also in my class. And staying in the hotel directly across the street. Life is weird, sometimes.

I also saw another friend in town, but it wouldn't be Appropriate (or particularly interesting) to describe.

If he were not knee deep in mud he'd bring her his jokes

2011-03-23T23:07:00.003-05:00

I'm back, and have been for nearly a month. JRTC was pretty uninteresting.

For my own benefit of recall years from now I'll just note the first week it was ridiculously cold (central Louisiana doesn't freeze solid very often), overall fairly boring, and of very little consequence to me personally as a training event. I spent my free time getting fairly ticked off at two people I don't care about at all anymore, got promoted by someone else's absence to Funniest Person on the staff, and was commissioned to write three sets of sanctioned jokes for inclusion in some briefings to the commander, one of which ("Top 10 Battle Rhythm Events") was deemed safe enough to be used and was well received, but the Top 10 Battle Drills and Top 10 Quotes (half of them my own) were better, if perhaps court martial worthy.

On Valentine's Day I had a my usual enjoyable flirtatious conversation with a wickedly smart and pretty divorcee soldier I only encounter during these field exercises. It ended with the observation, "yeah, you seem like one of those nice guys who will never get married." I sought solace from a more frequent lieutenant acquaintance who more subtly and safely flirts with me. Quoth her: "Oh, Dylan, you'll get married! Besides, you're not actually very nice. This girl must not know you very well."

Hold it, I'm about to drop off, let me tell you my last thought

2011-01-30T21:16:00.004-06:00

I'm off to spend my second full month at (and third trip to) Ft. Polk, LA out of the last seven. The food will be bad and I'll have no internet except a one or two bar no 3G connection on my phone (non-ATT customers won't even have that), but at least I won't get much sleep.

I should be back on the 25th or 26th, and I should be on a plane for another week away from home on the 27th. If you're in DC, buy me a drink. I'll need it.

Truth

2011-01-29T09:45:00.003-06:00

The Facebook status of one of the more questionably attractive ladies I have, er, "hooked up with" when she got me drunk right before she left Houston and I joined the Army:

This was my fortune cookie: "When you have no choice, mobilize the spirit of courage" in bed.

Kirk Lazarus

2011-01-26T22:06:00.002-06:00

Dear Duuuude:

Recently you texted me suggesting that we needed to talk, so that I could explain exactly what my issues with you are, given that we're sort of doomed to work closely together for the next year plus. I can't really see having that conversation in person, but here you go.

Where to begin? Well, with Manic Pixie Dream Girl (nee Furious Girl), I suppose. Obviously that incident on the drive back from Copper Mountain two weekends ago caused your textual entreaty. But my enmity didn't spring fully formed from MPDG's head in your lap in the back seat. I've lost out on better girls than her before.

But always before to better guys, Duuuude.

I suppose my issues began with your appearance the first day you reported to the unit. Grown men should not have blonde hair, and people in the Army shouldn't cut it that way. But it was really your voice that got me, Duuuude. I never hoped to meet the obvious casting choice for lead in a remake of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, and certainly never expected him to be sitting two desks over from mine.

Now had you actually been raised in the wild by Keanu Reeve's impersonators on a diet of hallucinogen mushrooms I would be prepared to forgive this. But you're from fucking Georgia, went to boarding school there, and college in South Carolina. I'd forgive you, or at least understand, if you sounded like Super Cracker, but you don't.

It's like the man said: You're Australian! Be Australian!

And yet despite all of that I tried. I invited you to that trivia night, and holy shit, despite all appearances to the contrary you're not actually a moron. Intellectually. But afterwards the attitude was out, as were you, and the next day I find out you'd gotten a DUI your second week here, quite possibly ending your career.

Then there was the DC trip. Your shameless, unending, and clearly unreciprocated moves on Mysterious Girl made me ashamed to have invited out to the bar that first night. Your encore performance when she felt bad about your subsequent shunning and told me (much to all of our regret) to invite you the last night sealed it.

Between the subtle talk about how you "don't like white girls" (does MPDG know?), practically pouring that drink down her throat, and general asshattery, I had to flee. But the sleazy t-shirt, purple cardigan, and matching poofball hat you wore to a bar where the majority were wearing a tie was a nice touch. I'm just disappointed that it took me a few days to dub it your "snow wigger" costume.

Shall I go on? There was the S&M t-shirt you wore to the staff dinner in combination with the jeans that were more rips than fabric. (Everyone on the plane to Louisiana four days prior thought you were a private.) The casual rape joke about that NPR story in the unmarked white van. (Is there any cliche you can avoid?) There's the stupid "special edition" Volkswagen (I guess not) you drive that looks like a Yugo and that you entirely predictably stuck in the snow for a week, necessitating our rescue and setting up The Lap Incident. What's that? Now it's out of the snow bank but in the shop 150 miles away? Of course it is.

That would all be enough to be going on with for reasons I don't like you, but the most bizarre thing out of the long list is that you're actually above average in job performance once you've bummed a ride to work or avoided the DUI patrols, so it wouldn't be a big deal day-to-day. I can repress the interior eye rolling and do the job.

But, alas, there is Her. You seriously screwed up our current friendship. You also killed some long-term potential there, although probably a lot less than I initially thought and you still do, to the extent you can think. But the really unforgivable thing is that because of you I think so much less of her now than I did two weeks ago.

So there's my answer to your inquiry. I don't think we're going to talk about it face to face. You may be right that we might live together in Afghanistan. That's actually fine, and doesn't actually require any resolution of my issues where you're concerned. I hated my last deployment roommate a fair bit more than you. And in a nice bit of symmetry, he had the misfortune to lay it to my exgirlfriend after I finally got rid of her, although he did sadly miss on the ultimate doom.

And she will wake up with baby; there but for the grace of God go I

2011-01-26T21:50:00.004-06:00

Shortly after I and the post-deployment ex-girlfriend first got together, she "joked" that she'd had a conversation with a friend about how long to wait before "accidentally" getting pregnant to rush the marriage thing.

She blocked me on Facebook after I defriended her in response to some crazy/embarrassing shit she repeatedly posted on my wall, but every once in a while I check her Twitter feed to see how she was doing in the previous 72 hours, as I can't stand to read more than 500 tweets at one sitting.

In December I learned she'd gotten engaged to some dude over Thanksgiving, and this morning I learned that she just recently publicly announced that she's pregnant...to the tune of 15 weeks.

I'm good at math and excellent at jumping to conclusions. To whit: WHOA. CLOSE FUCKING CALL.

Find the one's who don't believe, hang them from the trees

2010-12-20T16:07:00.002-06:00

If I were exchanging gifts with Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens this Christmas I'd send them this song, the best (and second funniest) on I'm Having Fun Now.

I have never seen a love that was greater, between two men who couldn't be straighter

2010-12-20T15:43:00.003-06:00

My main feeling about the DADT vote was sadness that both sides couldn't lose. While all the right people are mad on the losing side, there are more than a few snide twitterati that I feel could use an attitude adjustment.

Anyway, I doubt I'll see much immediate change after the repeal becomes final. The support troops all already about as gay as it's possible to be so it won't be a big deal there, and I doubt too many combat guys are coming out in hostile environment, in those units where it exists, even if they have the legal right.

Here's what's currently my fourth favorite and third funniest song on my album of the year. Apparently Jenny Lewis and her (sigh) boyfriend Johnathan Rice made a ~~porno~~ album called I'm Having Fun Now. Me, too!

And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night.

2010-12-10T19:47:00.004-06:00

So this girl called me again. At 2:30 a.m. Yes, that post is dated two and a half years ago. No, I hadn't heard from her since then. No, I hadn't met her more than a half dozen times or seriously spent time with her more than once.

It wasn't until about three hours after she passed out and I hung up that I finally remembered who she was and when/where we'd known each other; her drunken explanations for why she called were highly entertaining and interesting but not very factually useful.

Now you're all gone, got your make-up on, and you're not coming back

2010-11-28T11:55:00.003-06:00

~~Easy~~ come, easy go.

I'm off to buy a Blu-ray player and a copy of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. The second time I saw it in the theater I was puzzled to realize I recognized the eight second excerpt of this song; I remembered it just as they cut away so I could appreciate just how perfectly spot on its use in that scene was.

The usual

2010-11-16T09:29:00.004-06:00

Romancing the stones

2010-11-10T22:31:00.009-06:00

Whilst waywardly wandering the main street of Manitou Springs last Saturday I and a young lady who is rather shy in public and therefore not quite on my arm found a hidden wine bar neither of us previously knew existed down an obscure side street.

The table in front of the couch we selected had a chest full of several games I'd never heard of and a few I hadn't played in decades. My lady friend, who apparently was short of real entertainment growing up in small town Minnesota, knew them all and selected one whose name I forget to teach me.

It involved moving a series of stones around under a set of rules that were not terribly complex but whose somewhat subtle implications both appealed to her math teacher soul and somewhat eluded me, slightly inebriated as I was on wine and her eyes. I was shellacked on the first game and did little better on the second.

But! Lo! A famous victory of great proportions on the third. "You're a fast learner," she allowed, with equal parts admiration and exasperation. And yea, verily, I won also the fourth game, notwithstanding her new focus.

This brought us to a moment of crisis and conversation. Could we accept a tie? Kissing sisters wasn't what either of us was looking for in this relationship. Could her oh-so-slowly budding affection for me survive such a swift reversal of fortunes at the hands of a tyro? That was never quite answered. Should I throw the game in a desperate attempt to avoid finding out? Absolutely not, we both agreed, with me remembering and almost being foolish enough to fully explain the great apologetic love letter in A Civil Campaign inspired by just such a mistake.

Battle was joined, with neither side giving quarter. It was the best yet, with no one giving away cheap points, and each of us cleverly earning some unavoidably painful gains at the other's expense. But, disaster(!?) as I finished with a clearly larger pile of stones and tried to gauge by the look in her eyes how to spin this unfortunate victory into a less damaging move in the greater game we were playing.

I needn't have bothered. Her eyes were downcast; not because she was upset, but because she knew that bigger wasn't always better. She patiently counted out the irregularly-shaped stones to find romantic reversal in their final sum: she'd beaten me by a single stone.

She's shy in public, so my triumphant defeat couldn't be celebrated immediately. Fortunately, the stone paved street outside was both deserted and heavily shadowed.

Oh, hello. I didn't see you there.

2010-11-10T22:22:00.003-06:00

So last week I went to Washington DC for the first time on the taxpayers' dime and went to a class and saw some friends, one of whom lives there, and one of whom was very randomly there on vacation, a fact of which I was almost never aware. I might have blogged some of it, but it didn't seem appropriate.

So this week and next I'm supervising/administrating several training lanes in a big brigade training exercise. I might have (and might) blog about it, but between the hours on the job and the two hour plus round-trip commute to get from the field to base to home I don't have the time.

So the last three weekends I've gone out with this girl. I could have blogged about it, but it's the most normal and comfortable dating experience I can ever remember, which doesn't make for very good blogging.

Arrogance without cause, arrogance without achievement...was an abomination.

2010-10-28T22:18:00.003-05:00

YES. FINALLY. AGAIN.

After the modest disappointment of his last Culture effort, Matter, and the greater futility of his last sci-fi novel, Iain Banks is definitely back with Surface Detail.

I'm confused about exactly where to rank it. For readability and pulling you along it's probably second, rivaling The Player of Games. But it's clearly better and worse than that one in significant other ways. 80% of it is better than his best, Use of Weapons, but that other 20% of UoW, and especially the last five pages, are so far above anything in this one that I don't know how to compare them. At worst, I think, this is is his third best Culture novel.

But I may be overvaluing it because it gives a big fat kiss to long-suffering fans in the form of one character who I had suspicions about half through through the book and near-certainty at the three-quarters mark.

Then I got progressively more scared towards the end, thinking he wasn't going to confirm the reveal. Oh noes, the book is over! Yea, there's a dramatis personae section that says what happened to the characters after! Oh noes, he's not in it! Wait, there's an epilogue! Yes, it's what I thought! Wait, why did you have to spell it out quite that explicitly in the last line for the slow folks?

If you're the 1+ people who have read him before, add this one to the list.

A classy one

2010-10-21T20:08:00.003-05:00

I spent Wednesday morning in a series of video teleconferences with people in Afghanistan. The last focused on the area we're supposed to be headed next year, which, naturally, is the most violent and the greatest open sore on our efforts to do whatever we think we're doing the last couple of years.

The most shocking thing to me, having only heard bad news about this place for years, was that the current brigade commander said in his closing remarks that they'd made amazing progress in the three months they've been there. I wondered when someone was going to realize he'd been dipping into their confiscated opium supply.

But that was nothing compared to my shock this morning when I saw he's also sharing it with the New York Times, who published this amazing slobbery, balls fondling blow job that reads like it was printed straight out of someone's information operations department.

ARGHANDAB, Afghanistan — American and Afghan forces have been routing the Taliban in much of Kandahar Province in recent weeks, forcing many hardened fighters, faced with the buildup of American forces, to flee strongholds they have held for years, NATO commanders, local Afghan officials and residents of the region said.

A series of civilian and military operations around the strategic southern province, made possible after a force of 12,000 American and NATO troops reached full strength here in the late summer, has persuaded Afghan and Western officials that the Taliban will have a hard time returning to areas they had controlled in the province that was their base.

Some of the gains seem to have come from a new mobile rocket that has pinpoint accuracy — like a small cruise missile — and has been used against the hideouts of insurgent commanders around Kandahar. That has forced many of them to retreat across the border into Pakistan. Disruption of their supply lines has made it harder for them to stage retaliatory strikes or suicide bombings, at least for the moment, officials and residents said.

NATO commanders are careful not to overstate their successes — they acknowledge they made that mistake earlier in the year when they undertook a high-profile operation against Marja that did not produce lasting gains. But they say they are making “deliberate progress” and have seized the initiative from the insurgents.

First, there's nothing new about HIMARS firing GMLRS. Second, I just bought a lot of new life insurance.

(Title reference.)

Update: That's more like it:

It sounds like wonderful news—finally, a reason for optimism!—until you read some news that isn’t sourced to the military. The International Committee of the Red Cross, for example, reported earlier this month that civilian war casualties in Kandahar are at an all time high, indicating the military never did a very good job of “protecting the population,” its counterinsurgency mantra under General McChrystal. Pajhwok Afghan News reported last week that death threats, nearly 600 assassinations by the Taliban, and low pay have gutted Kandahar’s provincial and municipal governments, leaving hundreds of vacancies and crippling any sort of governance efforts. When reporters talk to locals, the story is of thousands of refugees fleeing the fighting, not of a triumphant NATO building victory on Taliban corpses.

Three guesses which Army officer is responsible for planning, coordinating, and assessing military governance efforts in Kandahar starting next summer. And in unrelated news, I'm going to be Washington DC the week after next for this.

Preach it, mom

2010-10-20T21:19:00.004-05:00

So apparently my mother is an ordained minister now.

Her best friend has an atheist daughter who got engaged and is having a crisis over how to have a nice ceremony that doesn't mention God. So Mom decided to help her out by finding an online ordination mill in California. As soon as her certificate arrives she'll register for the state and stand by should she be required.

Sometimes I feel very close to my mom and sometimes like I got switched at birth. This is sort of both and in between.

Addendum: She also contributed a new sign to the tip jar at Jamba Juice:

Do you fear change? Leave it here!

According to my sister's friend who works there, tips are up about infinity percent.

Bonus round

2010-10-19T21:03:00.002-05:00

I realized at some point this morning that although I started paying the bill back in July I'm only right around now getting my agreed compensation from my deal with the devil to keep me in Colorado an extra nine or so months (and then to Afghanistan for a year).

My original orders would have sent me back to Lawton, OK for a six month course that all captains must attend sooner or later with a report date of November 1. From there I would have been sent who knows where, but not back here and not likely one of the few comparable locations.

Making reasonable assumptions about early reporting leeway and not taking any leave, I probably would have moved this last weekend. And not arranged a date with the new semi-scandalously young girl.

Who, incidentally, is not 25 as she reported two weeks ago, but she will be next Wednesday. I choose to take the fact that she felt inspired to lie as a good sign for me in particular rather than a generalized dislike of appearing too young.

Did that just happen?

2010-10-19T07:55:00.000-05:00

Clearly XKCD reads this blog.

Mitigated Disaster

2010-10-18T23:25:00.003-05:00

Here's to thinking like a pig.

I just got back from the Monday night quiz competition at my favorite pub. Our team lived up to its name, finishing 11th out of 16th. The real competition, however, a rope-a-dope verbal sparring match with my lovely teammate, ended much more satisfactorily.

She and the friend she brought along laughed uproariously when I mentioned that something they'd never heard of before was really popular in the 80's. (She's 25.) I earned back massive street cred when I correctly wild-ass guessed that the cookies used to entice pigs in races were Oreos.

Called upon to say what kind of perfume the "Devil in a Blue Dress" wore I naturally asked the devil in the (nicely fitting) blue shirt as the closest expert. Her abrupt walk off and my snarky apology were were almost as well-synchronized as they were transparently self-serving.

And then we reached our musical showdown, in a round featuring musical numbers sung in German. She was dominating and carrying our team, but made one huge mistake on "I Dreamed a Dream," which she misidentified as something from Evita. I knew she was wrong and cited it as the certain beneficiary of the Glee clue for the round. She was adamant and challenged me to a bet. I'm no fool and took a favor owed from a lovely girl over a point for our team in a lost cause.

Then, disaster! I identified some Phil Collins abomination as from The Lion King, but she suggested strongly, without insisting that I change the answer, that it was Tarzan. With another bet. Seeing several moves ahead, I doubled down in the hope that I'd lose that one.

Split! I was right and she was right, although I won the emotionally contentious point, and, in the end, the game. On the walk out to our cars I suggested that having the wagers cancel out as she proposed was hopelessly boring, and that each of us owing the other a favor would be a much more interesting outcome. Did I have a suggestion, she inquired?

I did. I get to take her to dinner this weekend, but I have to pay.

In three weeks I'll have a birthday and be maxing out my minimum age, so to speak, but whatever the long-term prospects of it I'm glad I recovered from the horribly awkward send-off I gave her two weeks ago at our first meeting, which was approximately: "wow, you're really tall. Uh...good night." Tonight wasn't flawless, but the missed notes were pretty evenly balanced and kind of adorable all around.

If there's anything the last few years have shown I excel at, it's improbably salvaging something from my early mistakes.

High

2010-10-17T23:23:00.002-05:00

I'm back in Colorado, and I spent a couple of hours talking to Italian Girl today, some of it face to face. It can't possibly be healthy to feel that good about anything.

There's actually one other person who makes that kind of euphoria wash over me just from the sound of her voice and the way we make each other laugh, and she communicates with me a lot more often via email but hasn't let me call her in about five years. (Maybe you'll reconsider some day.)

Anyway. She's been single for a year, she's hotter than ever, she did move but still lives in the same half mile radius that we and our short tripod leg, the seldom mentioned New York Girl, have always lived in, and she's gotten a couple of my birthday dinner memories scrambled up, especially the wife/mistress discussion where I'm quite certain it was IG I agreed to marry and NYG to keep as a mistress so that they could break out of their self-perceived stereotyped pedestal roles.

Which is how I would have wanted it anyway. NYG was even more temperamental, wounded, and ultimately flaky than Italian Girl. Tomorrow's her birthday, when I'll make my traditional call or Facebook posting that will be ignored. I haven't seen her since she moved back to NYC in 2004, and the last communication was a couple of months later.

I feel like I can fly right now, but the superpower than can drag that girl back into my life doesn't exist.

As fucking predicted

2010-10-17T01:20:00.004-05:00

Yes, yesterday was the worst thing that has ever happened to me in my entire life since the last three times this happened, and two of you who are responsible for those are reading this. I trust you both feel bad.

The third prior victimizer is allegedly going to call me tomorrow morning for the first time in 22 god damn months. I am so bent and twisted up inside that if she actually does it will make the latest worst thing in my life worth it. I feel when I hear her voice or look in her eyes like I was born in this world just to feel that moment of perfect joy at being the object of her attention.

The one thing I'll grant is that I never was going to feel that way about Impossible Girl. There was unending shock and wonder about how much we had in common, but no real spark. And I have to say she was remarkably calm, generous, and oh so fucking reasonable in her bullshit explanations for what happened tonight. They just made me want to destroy everything and everyone around me even more. I kept waiting for her to use the word "inappropriate" so I could just completely lose my fucking mind, but that itself would have been too human and emotional.

She's the complete antithesis of Italian Girl in a way that makes it hurt just as bad for entirely the opposite reasons. I can't believe she called me back to talk about it that many times. And I hate her for it.

The two of you reading this are on a spectrum somewhere between these antipodes, and interestingly enough hurt me a bit worse for much, much longer.

I eagerly await the soothing return of numbness and lack of any hope for future romantic happiness. May I never meet another interesting woman again. Statistically speaking there are probably only a dozen or so of them out there, and my odds of avoiding them are pretty fucking good.

Women are the devil. Except, maybe, Italian Girl if she really does call tomorrow. Add to clever haiku and short trips home from a warzone having my soul sliced up by one of her competitors as a means to make her care again. It's almost worth it. Overwhelming pain to get relief from long-term pain to feed inevitable greater never-ending pain.

I just talked for an hour to the sweetest girl I ever dated who I broke up with for fairly shallow reasons. I should have married her. I never, ever will. I deserve all of this and more. Bring on the next one. But not before the morning.

I envy heroin junkies.

Update: I just remembered that my boss called me today. Apparently there were eight, eight, EIGHT fucking DUIs in our brigade Friday night. Two of them may have been fellow staff officers, and he was required to call his subordinates and tell them not to drink and drive. Don't worry about me, sir, my wedding is within walking distance of my hotel, and the girl I'm seeing after is coming to the hotel.

I had a moment tonight, after the second phone call, where I wanted nothing so much as to get my rental car and drive somewhere as fast as I could until the cops caught me. The only thing that stopped me is that I don't have anywhere at all to go. Italian Girl isn't in town. I think she doesn't live at her old address anymore, anyway. The only person in this town who still lives at a place I know I can find is two floors up fucking his new wife.

Do just what I tell you and no one will get hurt

2010-10-16T13:21:00.010-05:00

So I met a girl last night at the hotel where I spent my first night in Houston nearly 11 years ago, where I first met Italian Girl, where I failed to seduce Inappropriate Girl two years ago, where I wrote several of the emails that contributed to a sort of mutual reconciliation/forgiveness with Nobody Girl that same Christmas.

In physical appearance she is not entirely unlike Italian Girl (tall, hair, eyes), in musical taste she is quite like Nobody Girl, and ditto on books and Inappropriate Girl.

Have you ever seen Arrested Development?

Uh...when I'm not watching Veronica Mars for the fourth time.

I own all three seasons on DVD.

Me, too.

Battlestar Gallactica--

Please stop before I wake up.

* * *

What kind of music do you listen to?

Mostly indy stuff.

Like who?

Imogen Heap...

Wait, wait, she's in, damn, let me think...

Frou Frou.

[Cautiously:] Do you know Metric?

[Fearfully:] I love Metric.

Which songs?

Gold--

Guns Girls. What about Help I'm--

Alive? Yeah, that's the other one I really know.

Rilo Kiley?

Yep.

[Looks around for the crew of Punk'd]: What are your favorite songs? Portions for Foxes?

I only really remember that one with "I don't care I like you"...

Yep, that's Portions for Foxes.

* * *

What books do you read?

Fiction, non-fiction, a lot of nerdy sci-fi, like George R.R. Martin.

Or you did until you waited seven years for the next book to come out.

I know!

Speaking of which, have you read The Name of Wind?

[wide eyed nod]

* * *

...then my father died last year.

Mine, too.

* * *

I do play too many video games, though.

Yeah, I've been overdoing Halo: Reach lately.

I've never played Halo, I'm more into RPGs.

[Disbelieving:] Like?

Mass Effect 2.

[Step forward, hands on her arms, long silent eye contact smoothly segues into a 15 minute discussion of Mass Effect 2, with specific reference to optimal gender and paragon/renegade orientation and interaction with romance options and real life sexuality. Shut up and wipe that smirk off your face.]

And so on, nearly without end.

She has a law degree (NYU). She doesn't practice anymore, she got burned out. She works for her family foundation right now.

She has a dog and two cats. She resists taking formal ownership of the second one (technically her brother's), because as all right thinking people know that way lies the vaguely defined border of crazy cat-ladydom. I put it at three (Hi, Rebecca!), but I know many argue for two.

She's three years younger than I am.

We share a favorite restaurant. I always ate there for lunch and dinner, and didn't even know they served a different breakfast menu on the weekends. She only eats there for breakfast. We went this morning with some other people. The lunch/dinner stuff is better. No one's perfect.

I have her phone number but not yet her last name. Her father apparently instilled kidnapping fears into his children. They're Columbian, it starts with a B, it's not a "normal" Columbian name, but she denies being Ingrid Betancourt's niece. I've had to twice stop her grinning friend (who deliberately brought her out to meet me) from telling me.

She's spending the day with her mother, something I would never dream of interrupting, and might/will/might come by the afterparty following today's wedding. She has a first date lined up tomorrow with some blandly possible guy. There's quite a lot I'd dare to dream in that regard.

This is clearly going to end up being the worst thing that has ever happened to me in my life. I'm leaning towards Impossible Girl.

Psychobabble, which, as I told Nobody Girl a couple of months ago, is Frou Frou's best song. So, what do we do now, indeed.

Once more, with less feeling

2010-10-14T22:38:00.002-05:00

I'll be traveling to Houston tomorrow for a wedding, and staying in the same hotel where I wrote some of my most overwrought blog posts ever. Let's hope for something different this time.

And this thing we have, will it mean anything when October rolls around

2010-10-11T12:23:00.003-05:00

A new Old 97's album, The Grande Theatre Vol. 1, will be released tomorrow. Early reviews are positive.

Melt Show, one of Milbarge's favorites, about a booze-fueled summer fling.

All the lace/and the skin/in the shop Couldn't get you off

2010-09-30T18:18:00.010-05:00

The first lingerie-related Super Bowl half time entertainment seems like it was at least a decade ago. So why has this taken so long?

In the tunnels beneath the stadium, the locker room and rituals of the Baltimore Charm -- one of this year's expansion teams in the weird and wonderful Lingerie Football League -- offered a whole new version of pregame festivities.

For one, the players in the locker room are buxom young women wearing little more than René Rofé lingerie (tight-tight boy shorts, fringe-cut sports bras), shoulder pads, garters and small helmets with clear plastic visors across the face.

It's a surprisingly interesting article, more so, as far as I can tell, than the girls. They're actually a bit scary looking.

"Gold Guns Girls," the most popular, catchy, and maybe the best Metric song. I'd intended to use it and the title for Amber's first Etsy column I became aware of but never got around to it.

I read with every broken heart we should become more adventurous

2010-09-25T02:04:00.004-05:00

Tomorrow I attend my first wedding since December of 2008. That one was pretty boring, but the aftermath of my post-wedding dash to Houston to see a girl resulted in some of the most maudlin, self -involved and -pitying blogging this site has ever seen. And yes, thank you, I do realize what a bold claim that is. I did write all of it, you know.

The festivities this time are expected to be very, very far from boring. "Epic" is the most common prediction, for reasons both uninteresting and very much otherwise, but I won't discuss the latter because of who might find this blog some day.

My own personal cross to bear is that the bride-to-be has made several heavy handed motions, reaffirmed tonight, towards setting me up with various someones. This never ends well, although leaving me alone as a free agent often does.

The goal, as always, is to recreate the sublime awesomeness of the summer of 2004 when these two got married in Pennsylvania and my Texas wingman and I conquered the Yankee horde and restored Southern honor through random acts of hilarity, drunkeness, charm, and general debauchery.

The wedding album still contains several compromising photos of me, including my wingman giving a thumbs up to the camera about six inches away from where I sat in the hotel bar sucking face with a friend of the bride. To this day he gives me hell about not sealing the deal, thereby opening her up to being stolen by her lesbian friend who apparently had the same idea but fewer scruples, but given that my new friend clearly didn't remember who I was several hours later I maintain that by doing nothing I did the only proper thing.

Besides, I was harboring a bit of a new (and sober) crush on the bride's sister, an(other) adorable, albeit short, redhead, although that slenderest of hopes died the next day when I advised her father that I looked forward to seeing him again if we got to help "the young one" move in should she come to Houston for med school. He performed a truly hilariously appalled double take, and she went to St. Louis.

The expected level of decorum being so much lower this time, I'm a little afraid of tomorrow.

"More Adventurous," sung by an adorable, albeit short, redhead.

And you ruined, like the rest of us ruined, rest of us ruined

2010-09-22T21:34:00.006-05:00

Reviewing my stories from Iraq I'm struck by how many little details they bring back that are already starting to slip away, and also by the big events I haven't written about in detail. I think I'll try to get the rest down.

First: The Rollover.

It was a late morning in March, and my platoon was the day's quick response force (QRF), the emergency backup for anyone in trouble. A platoon of engineers on a dismounted foot patrol had an improvised claymore explode, injuring several of them, three seriously.

We were scrambled and sent out to the location without any actual guidance on what to do. In the panic to get moving, I assumed we were going to help evacuate the wounded; initial reports made us think they had too many litter cases for their own vehicles. I did a very quick map check since it was in an unfamiliar part of the city, discussed the route with my platoon sergeant and lead truck and headed out way too fast, bouncing with bone shaking force over potholed roads, siren screaming from the lead truck I followed.

Half way there the situation clarified, and we understood that they were able to self evacuate; we were just to go secure the abandoned bomb site and wait for EOD to gather evidence and look for any secondaries that might not have exploded.

We didn't slow down.

We also weren't able to make it down my chosen route. We got there and found that like 80% of small to moderate intersections in Mosul it was blocked off to cut down on the routes available to car bombs and force them to go through checkpoints. I hastily found an alternate possible route and we kept going.

We slowed down. A bit.

By now we were away from the city center, with buildings more spread out and traffic more sparse than usual. We reached our turn and were thrown another wrinke; it was a quasi-clover leaf, with no left turn that we needed. My lead truck did what we usually did when traffic didn't cooperate, and drove the wrong way up the left side. In our usual city center the Iraqi police at the intersection would have stopped oncoming traffic for us; today there were neither police nor traffic out here on the edge.

We made the turn and headed back into the city on the wrong side of the road.

As we got further in the traffic picked up a bit, mostly on the right side going the same direction as us, but also a few people coming head on who saw us and pulled off to the left so we could keep going. Given the heavier traffic to the right, I didn't order us to try to merge back onto the right side. And then there he was. White nameless sedan, middle aged man, not fifty feet away, rubbernecking at my lead truck as it blazed past and he made a blind u-turn.

Right in front of me.

Vehicle rollovers are extremely dangerous and disturbingly common. The unit I joined after Iraq lost three soldiers over there to a rollover. They paralyzed another the same way before the deployment. I've read about half a dozen other fatal ones over the years.

So we practice extensively what to do. You yell "rollover rollover rollover!" and brace yourself; if you're the gunner sticking out you drop inside before you get decapitated or crushed. I saw what was about to happen, coming up on the blind side of my 5'4" and none too competent driver, so I grabbed the oh-shit-handle and screamed the only sensible thing.

"OH, FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!"

My driver saw him at the last possible moment and did the instinctive and very wrong thing; he jerked the wheel to the left in an attempt to dodge. The long pole with a heat decoy extending from our bumper hit the car and suddenly our nose was pointed sharply to the left while all of the momentum of our top heavy, 9' tall, 25 ton armored vehicle was still very much going straight ahead.

I looked out the barred window of my door with what I was certain would be my last moments on this Earth and watched asphalt approach with horribly suddenly slowness. I belatedly decided there were better things to do than rubberneck at my impending demise and jammed my head into the window and pressed my body to the door, easy given that I wasn't wearing my seat belt, and had an instant to realize that no last thought of Mom, Italian Girl, Nobody Girl, or Inappropriate Girl flashed through my head. In my more morbid moments I had been given to wondering which of them would be my last thought if it came to that, and what it would say about who I really was and what really mattered to me. I think I had a moment to start hysterical, grim laughter when I understood I really was going to die with None of the Above on my mind.

Crash. Slide.

Dust. Laying on its side like that with a huge, jarring impact, every buried bit of dirt in every crevice came flying loose and landed on me where I laid on a hardened steel door separating me from the ground six inches away. I choked, I spit, I choked, I flexed, I choked, I didn't hurt, I choked, I desperately screamed out, sure the intercom wouldn't work anymore, sure no one was, was everyone ok.

They were.

Immediately after I heard a panicked call from the truck behind me telling my lead guy to stop, the LT had just flipped his truck and, his tone implied, was probably seriously injured or dead. For two or five or maybe ten seconds that took an hour I desperately scrambled with my left hand, since my right wasn't ready yet to release the oh-shit-handle, trying to find the radio switch. Success. Relieved response.

Escape.

I greatly feared we were on fire, and couldn't tell the swirling dust still obscuring my vision from smoke. Nor could I remember where the emergency fire extinguisher system handle was, but my one dismount in the back told me we weren't burning. Yet. I told my driver to turn off the engine. He mumbled something. I told him again. More mumbling. I finally let go of the handle and looked up.

Flopping puppet.

He had been wearing his seat belt, which kept his 130 lbs plus 40 pounds of gear from crashing down on me, but he'd slammed forward into the wheel and then whiplashed in suspension, and wasn't making a great deal of sense. Finally he understood and turned off the engine. A little more coaxing got him to lower the rear ramp, sideways, and my second greatest fear evaporated; we were going to be able to get out easily.

Or not.

Climbing up and over surfaces not meant to be climbed upon in full body armor after slamming into an unyielding surface isn't as easy as I hoped. I took my armor off and shot putted it to the back, where it could get dragged out. Then I reached up and grabbed my driver while my first rescuer, the truck commander who'd been right behind, climbed in and popped his seatbelt loose. He was alert and semi-responsive but of no use to himself or us. Rescue guy tried to take his armor off the same way I'd taken mine, and just got it tangled up. Yelled suggestions from the back. I was annoyed, we didn't have time for that, reached out.

Emergency release.

His armor fell off in four parts that take half an hour to figure out how to put together again if you don't have the manual in front of you, and I once again shot putted the parts to the back while others dragged him out. I followed.

Aftermath.

My guys were all alive. My driver was obviously hurting and at best mentally vague, but my gunner (who knew exactly what "oh, fuuuuuck" meant and dropped down) and dismount squad leader were just moderately sore. My right arm was a bit sore, but that was all. My interpreter, who abandoned us to slide out the escape hatch almost immediately, didn't have even a little bit of pain. My functional trucks were formed up in a reasonable defensive position around my cripple. Nothing required my immediate attention.

Which left...

The driver, amazingly enough, was alive, although probably not very appreciative of that fact. He was also very much trapped. I ordered my platoon sergeant to call for some extraction equipment to come out with the QR...

Fuck.

Who would rescue the rescuers? The Iraqis, to begin with. Of the watching crowds of at least two hundred gathered around us, fifteen of them rushed forward with makeshift crowbars and with about two minutes vigorous work, yelling their heads off the whole time, freed their countryman. My medic put him on a back board and gave me his analysis. Head lacerations. I could see the blood. Concussion. No shit. "Crushed shoulder." I didn't look. And maybe internal injuries.

To make a long story shorter, we eventually let him and the back board go into the back of another civilian car with a dude who claimed to know him and who would take him to the local hospital. No, they didn't need any more favors from Americans, thanks.

I belatedly left a claims card with an Iraqi army major who came by. He promised to get it to the man. Seven months later, back in the US, I got an email from a JAG that some guy had filed a claim for me destroying his car and putting him in the hospital. I told them they should give him as much as they could.

Our sister platoon came out to rescue us with an M88 to lift my truck up and tow it back. Another platoon from another company completed the mission I'd been sent out to accomplish. The remains of my platoon were escorted back to the FOB where we peeled off to the hospital to drop off my driver and get my other two guys, whose original "moderate" soreness had stiffened up into painful near paralysis, checked out.

On the way out we realized another of my trucks was also broken; the speed run over potholes must have snapped a spring on the axle. We limped it home. Amazingly, both trucks were fixed and fully functional just eight hours later.

My driver, not so much.

The joke about soldiers who fail the post blast/crash memory/math test is that they weren't all that good at it before. Alas, we're pretty sure that he had been previously capable of dialing a phone number if it was written down in front of him. Now he couldn't. He also was a little slow and frustrated looking in conversation. Given that and the fact he'd deployed with a torn ACL that needed eventual surgery I tried to get him sent home, but for some insane reason they wouldn't do it. He worked in the command post as a runner the rest of the deployment and slowly got better. He tells me he's fine now, although he's due for yet another ACL surgery.

There an investigation. My god, was there an investigation, the first of three that would affect me in a record setting span of 19 days. I was judged contributorily negligent in several respects, as was the driver, but my job was never in danger. The day after the crash I received the first officer efficiency report counseling of my career from my battalion commander, and it wasn't particularly awkward. A couple of weeks later I gave a well received class on roll over safety, and walked out feeling almost like that had left my overall reputation enhanced. It also became the start of my reputation for good/bad luck, one that would grow exponentially before everything was over.

And before everything was over I would twice actually come much closer to death, and once theoretically so, but that was the only day I ever really believed it was going to happen. I'm not going to die until I have a better answer than None of the Above.

Crash Years, The New Pornographers.

Happy, happy, joy, joy

2010-09-22T00:57:00.004-05:00

1) Even though they threw a last sucker punch this afternoon, the exercise is almost over. I got home before 1700; 2200 was the best I'd managed for the previous ten days.

2) Glee is back on. The part before the first commercial looked fantastic.

3) I didn't finish it because two of my best friends invited me to karaoke. I've know him for a couple of years, and met her a little over a year ago when they used a fake engagement claim to make me and some other guys go out for a late drink on a Sunday night. In the year since I've spent many a Saturday evening with him and turned down at least a dozen weeknight invites.

Tonight instead of sleeping, catching up on my DVR, or my blogging, or my reading, or finally playing the new Halo game I decided for the first time ever to take them up on the latest invite out of purely random whimsy. Naturally, they got engaged for real tonight, in the weird and memorable fashion that I knew he eventually would. It involved karaoke, a keytar, and ukelele.

4) With apologies to all of the intelligent, angsty or informative ones I very much enjoy reading, this is my favorite blog to click on every time I see an update. That kid is just so adorable, even after I let him face plant on a big plastic toy early this ummer.

Comma chameleon

2010-09-22T00:47:00.004-05:00

On second thought, my late tour emails do have one very great flaw: I appear to have reached the apotheosis of the comma diarrhea I've struggled with for years.

I think I mentioned years ago on the old blog that my conversational style at its best consists of either short, cutting ripostes or long, rambling stories with a lot of carefully timed pauses and changes in cadence. It's a constant battle not to try and inevitably fail to recreate that in written form with overuse of commas, parenthesis, and similar flourishes. I clearly lost that fight miserably in the spring of 2009.

But even in their abnormally vast quantity, I do think my semicolon use is spot on.

Deep cuts

2010-09-21T01:12:00.006-05:00

I have decided now that I have some emotional distance between me and the events to share at long last my final batch of emails sent to my friends and family list when I was in Iraq.

Looking back to my last such post, I'm amazed at how ridiculously, awesomely overwrought "You Can't Go Home Again" was. Until I think how easy it would be to fall like that for her again. But damn, the transition to "Danger Zone" was surprisingly abrupt and seamless. I'm also surprised at ~~how much better the one's I'm about to share are than I remember~~ my extreme comma use. I was right that the tone got darker, and they aren't as clever and spot on as the early ones (I remember being particularly proud of "Crimes of Passion" at the time), but they aren't actually bad.

Incidentally, in the style of both these emails subjects and the predominant style on my old blog it's nice to get away from the music lyrics and go back to the use of sharp (heh) double entendre.

"Sensitive Subject"
0746 hrs, February 1, 2009

Q: How many soldiers does it take to find a pistol dropped from a flying helicopter at midnight? A1: Something more than one platoon, two crashed helicopters, and four dead pilots. A2: Who would be dumb enough to try?

The Army has what are known as sensitive items, not defined in FM 1-02, Operational Terms and Graphics, as "that class of equipment that when unaccounted for will cause the Army to completely lose its fucking mind." Sensitive items include, but are not limited to, all weapons, all night vision devices, and lots of communication equipment.

There are no end of stories about the retarded things various units have put their soldiers through when a sensitive item goes missing. I've heard about two week lockdowns in the field with limited food until someone either confessed or the item was found, two hundred soldiers spending four days conducting "hands across the desert" walks, and my own experience at a training class, where a five hour search found the item ten minutes after the Criminal Investigative Division detectives had arrived, and thirty minutes before the commanding general's deadline to lock the gates of the entire post to incoming and outgoing traffic. The missing item? A less than $1,000 set of night vision goggles that a dumb ass lieutenant in my platoon had left in his locker three days before and forgotten to turn in. As the student platoon leader that week, I was up until 2 a.m. signing sworn statements with uncontrollably shaking hands explaining how it happened and claiming more than my fair share of the blame so he wouldn't be prosecuted for theft rather than simply shunned for ruining several hundred people's Friday night.

There are no end to the nonsense reasons soldiers and officers will tell you why certain equipment is classified as sensitive. For weapons and certain pieces of communications equipment many of them are plausible, but apply just as well to other items that are not sensitive. No, the real reason, which you will not find in any Army publication and which no one else I've yet discussed the matter with has inferred, is that an item is sensitive if people would steal it a lot if the Army didn't go stark raving mad in the search for it every time one went missing.

For an enlisted guy protected by certain safeguards (if you get drunk and drive a tank into a lake, you owe the government only a minuscule portion of its replacement cost), paying for a depreciated weapon or set of night vision goggles as a keepsake or to sell at a big markup as "real Army equipment" can make financial sense. So to keep them from frequently disappearing into private hands one will be randomly thrown into a short term version of the Soviet Gulag at various points in one's career.

This makes sense in garrison. It makes less sense in the field if there is plausible proof or reason to believe it was simply lost. It makes little to no sense in a combat zone unless one can immediately tell from the price tag or danger the item presents that it's inherently a big deal whether the item is classified as sensitive or not. But because the number of people who understand the reasons for standard policy and when to waive it is not obviously greater than one, four people died on the night of 26 January.

In a tragedy of errors, a pilot flying a transport mission dropped his M9 pistol out the open window of his helicopter around midnight. (The holster wasn't attached to his body, the pistol wasn't lanyarded to his body, and the door didn't stay closed.) This was noticed when it occurred, so the pilot called in the grid location, accurate to within 10 meters. If he got that grid the instant the pistol went out the window, if he were hovering instead of flying at a high speed, if he were flying over terrain that did not consist of dust crisscrossed by water filled canals, and if it were noon instead of midnight, there's a good chance it might have been found by a hundred or more people looking for it. None of these conditions being present, some unknown officer of extraordinary intelligence and flawless judgment made a decision that eventually resulted in an order for a platoon of our company to go look for a pistol worth no more than $500 in a country awash with automatic rifles and where the Army spends more than $100 billion per year.

A standard, full strength tank platoon has 16 soldiers. We use trucks here and have bulked them up with some infantry, but they aren't huge. Subtract drivers, gunners, and some vehicle commanders who can't dismount, and you might reasonably guess that if the number of people available to get on the ground and search isn't in single digits, it isn't far off. The platoon leader, one of my buddies, not being an officer of extraordinary intelligence and flawless judgment, might have thought it was a fool's errand to look at night for a pistol that could be as much as kilometer from the reported grid, and was in any case probably under a foot of loose sand and dust, with a group of personnel that might not have been larger than a baker's dozen. Whatever the reason, he didn't look for long and after showing his obedience to the letter of the order returned to base.

Where he was soon sent back. Because if it made sense to look for this item from the ground with a few people, it surely made even more sense after they'd failed to send in two helicopters to look from the air with their optics. Unfortunately, something went wrong with this essential and completely justifiable mission. The helicopters apparently crashed into each other, and, almost two hours later, someone finally noticed they hadn't returned or checked in like they were supposed to, so the same platoon got to go back out and secure the wreckage and bodies.

As a part of our mission planning we are required to submit what is called a comprehensive risk assessment. In these we discuss every foreseeable risk, what will be done to counter it, and what the residual risk is. If it's "low" your company commander has to approve it, if it's "medium" (the standard over here) your battalion commander, and so on for "high" and "extreme." Clearly, if I ever want to undertake a mission of negligible value and moderate risk, I only need to do one thing - claim I dropped my sad, beaten up pair of night vision goggles at the objective site. I'm fairly certain Patton's ghost will appear and order me to recover them at all costs.

* * *

"Exit Ramp"
0825 hrs, February 1, 2009

It has been one of those weeks. A few days ago four pilots died near here in events we were peripherally involved in. And the night before last, my company and our battalion suffered our first casualty, Specialist [DF].

He was a member of the mechanic section normally attached to our company; some of our soldiers had deployed with him before and known him his entire four years in the Army. He only arrived in Iraq less than a month ago due to a required surgery, but he'd pushed hard to get to us as soon as he could. By the time he arrived we were over strength on mechanics, so he was put in headquarters to work in our command post on the night shift.

Most nights he would come knock on my door to summon me to some meeting or job that needed to be done. Yesterday morning his day shift counterpart came to summon me to another job that needed to be done - locating his personal effects that had been shipped to our next post, because he'd died in the night and they needed to be sent home to his wife.

The cause of death was a vehicle accident that absolutely should not have happened. He drove what was basically an overgrown go-cart into a chest high bar meant to prevent vehicle traffic that is set across the access road near our command post. He knew it was there, he walked past it at least half a dozen times a day on the way to meals or errands, and he somehow ran into it anyway. It was dark, perhaps he was distracted by his passenger, maybe he was tired, maybe it was one of those one in a million times when you just completely forget a basic fact. Hell, trained Kiowa helicopter pilots aren't supposed to run into each other on a clear, calm night, either, and that just happened.

However it occurred, it was senseless, entirely preventable, and that almost as much of the fact of his death is what's eating us up.

SPC [F] was very tall (the only one in our company taller than me), was one of the least athletic guys in the Army, tended to talk your ear off if you let him, and was perhaps just a little bit goofy. But despite the fact we had nothing in common, he seemed to like me. So I was glad to be able to participate in a small way in his ramp ceremony.

A ramp ceremony is how we send off the remains of a fallen soldier. A plane is flown in solely for this purpose, it backs on to a set location, and two columns, one Army, one Air Force, march out to line either side of the approaches to the lowered tail ramp.

Then I marched out, the van with his body following me, to guide it around to the end of the corridor formed by the drawn up soldiers and airmen. Eight pall bearers, his fellow mechanics and a few tankers of his rank he'd been close to, removed the casket and carried it, feet first, to the plane while everyone present rendered a salute. Once the casket reaches the color guard at the tail of the plane it is rotated and loaded head first, all alone in an empty cargo hold. While everyone else saw him pass by them from side to side, I stood at attention by the van and watched him carried away.

After the body is loaded the two columns are marched away and everyone is dismissed. I and some others close to him stayed until the plane had taken off. When we brought him out the sun was setting. As the plane flew off, chasing it to the west, it was gone.

* * *

Interlude
0032 September 21, 2010

Looking through my old Army email sent messages for these, I just discovered that my next three messages were sent to the soldier, one of my favorites ever, who accompanied SPC F's body home and was killed himself ten weeks later. He went because their wives were best friends.

I don't remember crying about him and the others after their memorial service until six months later when I drove to Denver for a plane to see my new girlfriend and remembered that fact about their wives.

* * *

"Your opinion is important to us"
0900 hrs, February 12, 2009

The first thing I noticed about Mosul is that soldiers tend to speak their minds more freely since we got here.

Take, for example, The Great Vehicle Debate of 8-9 February 2009. Most of my soldiers freaked out at the idea we might take outside the gate some of the M1151 uparmored Humvees that we recently acquired instead of pure MRAP (Mine Resistant, Ambush Protected) vehicle patrols. There were sound logistical reasons to do this, but they look a lot more vulnerable than the MRAPs and might arguably attract more enemy attention for looking like a soft target. (Our recently acquired MRAPs are such an old and chintzy model that I don't think they actually offer any more protection than an M1151 against the types of threats we face here, but I'll grant they do look somewhat more intimidating.)

At 1300 on 9 February we had a leaders meeting with the commander, and three sergeants spoke up simultaneously to say they didn't want to use the Humvees, and would rather hotseat in the MRAPs. To everyone's mild surprise, the commander gave in without a fight and said it was their problem to deal with.

And to everyone's not so mild consternation, an hour later we learned an interpreter and four Soldiers from 3-8 Cav, including their battalion commander, had been blown up in an M1151 by a suicide car bomb less than two miles from where we had been arguing. I still maintain they aren't objectively more dangerous; MRAP and even Bradley Fighting Vehicle crews have died here from the same thing. If they build the bomb big enough, they're going to get you no matter what you're driving. But whatever the truth of the matter, that united bitching won out, and the subsequent disaster has dampened the complaining on the other end, about all of the predictable maintenance and equipment accountability hassles from trading off vehicles between platoons.

Our Soldiers have been more vocal in less serious ways, too. Certainly since I got promoted I seem to catch twice as much crap from them as I did before. Our maintenance section and our 4th platoon have formed some sort of pact to salute and greet me as obnoxiously as possible in the most inappropriate and casual circumstances available. Just on the way here to the internet room three consecutive soldiers who didn't see or encourage each other put some truly ridiculous flair on their salutes. I'm not sure if the middle one was more ballet dancer or Nazi storm-trooper in that weird hop and full body freeze, but it certainly was the most impressive yet.

But the most impressive thing of all that I've seen here is perhaps the most brilliant innovation the Army has made in Iraq. No, not new equipment, not new tactics, but something far more important - a response to the problem of latrine graffiti. How boring and tedious it became to read the same thing over again, what a hassle to get out paint and a brush when something truly outrageous went up on the wall.

Never again!

Some genius has hung up on the walls of the latrine stalls massive paper tablets. Write fresh graffiti! When the page is full, tear it off, keep it for posterity (or, if one must, throw it away), and start anew on a fresh page! It's fantastic. Now all of my bathroom reading is topical. The usual war of insults between tankers and infantrymen can proceed through multiple, never ending phases relevant to current events, and the various units being told how worthless they are are actually still in residence.

1-67 AR is particularly unpopular right now. 3-8 Cav, I noticed, has received a respectful silence.

* * *

"A bang up job"
0426 hrs, March 3, 2009

Shrapnel from a car bomb flies farther than you would think.

I arrived at the Iraqi Army company headquarters around 1900 hours, looking for their commander to discuss some combined patrols later in the week, and secretly hoping my offer to help him out with anything he had going that night would be refused. As a few of you know from my incoherent phone calls Sunday night, I didn't make it to bed yesterday until 0630; half my infantry squad got scooped up for another mission that morning and got less than two hours sleep.

So I had to wrestle briefly with my conscience when I discovered the commander had just left to check out a possible VBIED. (Pronounced "vee-bid," that's a Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device to the Army, a car bomb to everyone else.) Did I try to go find him and get roped into his possible wild goose chase, or head back early and let my guys get a decent rest before their physical fitness test Tuesday morning?

I reluctantly did the right thing, and as a result two of those sleepless infantry probably saved some Iraqi soldiers' lives. Not that they thanked us for it.

With the help of some wildly waving Iraqis at a checkpoint, we found the Iraqi commander with little difficulty. He mistakenly thought we were the help he'd requested and been told was on the way; Iraqi Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) only operates during the day, so they need US help to identify/defuse possible bombs at night.

I kept my trucks well back, and I deployed myself and my infantry squad with the Iraqi's forward edge, at most 200m from the suspected bomb (our preferred minimum distance, which previously seemed excessive, is farther than that). Two of my men went up on a rooftop to survey the area, most of the rest took shelter against a house that along with an intermediate wall provided two layers of cover from the questionable car, and I talked to the Iraqi commander to find out the situation.

The car, a Datsun hatchback or sedan, had been parked in this nice, upper class neighborhood for four hours, and the locals, none of whom recognized it, had called it in as a possible bomb. The police had run the plates and discovered it had a fake registration. That was enough for me to call it up the chain of command and request EOD.

My rooftop observers called in several reports of activity on the far side of the car. The Iraqis assured me they had soldiers on the far side securing the car. This proved to be false, but led me to ignore the report of someone on a different rooftop illuminating the car with a laser pointer shortly before four men approached it, briefly conferred, and then walked away.

Unfortunately, the Iraqi commander was arguing with me too much to enable me to fully concentrate on developing situational awareness of who was where doing what. An artillery officer (like myself), he was regrettably focused on keeping his men dispersed. That's the right answer if you're afraid of machine gun fire or artillery, but not so much when your big concern is a possible bomb with a known location. I diplomatically explained that I was not going to move my cluster of men in the shelter of the wall because that was the best protected location if the car exploded, and enabled me to effectively control and account for them. He disagreed. Repeatedly.

So a few minutes after the report of the laser pointer and the four men walking off, which I'd barely noted during my argument about whether I was going to sit in the Iraqi commander's (partially exposed!) armored Humvee with him, a helicopter arrived on scene and we tried to make it understand where the car was. I had my observers illuminate it with a laser of their own, and as I turned to ask my radio operator whether the aircraft had seen it - BOOOOM!!!!

Certain thoughts and observations flashed through my mind.

The first was surprise that it was real; even after hearing about the allegedly fake registration, I assumed this whole thing was a waste of time. The second was to note that in my shielded position the blast wave was hardly felt, while 20m away one of the "dispersed" Iraqis was knocked down like a bowling pin. A second or two later I was startled by the rain of car pieces that started to land - 200m really isn't very far at all, and this was relatively small as car bombs go. The largest piece of shrapnel, a jagged, twisted piece of sheet metal slightly larger than a hub cap, came sailing in, spinning like a saw blade, to hit the Iraqi commander's Humvee not more than one foot away from his open(!) door. More to the point, it was only ten feet away from ME, as I'd been standing in the middle of the street rather than hugging a wall. Silly artillery officer, shrapnel moves in a parabolic arc OVER your cover, not just in a straight line.

At this point I decided to do something other than think and observe. I ran to the wall, yelled at my squad leader to call the medic truck up and get the doc dismounted (I could see the bowling pin Iraqi twitching on the ground, and still hadn't heard from my two guys on the roof), and then I double checked all of my guys who were within eyesight. They were fine.

I waited about 30 seconds for any followup small arms fire to get going, then decided it was safe enough to run out in the open and check on the downed Iraqi. He was conscious, twitching, and looked like he was having a hard time breathing, but a quick visual and touch inspection didn't identify any holes in him or bleeding, so I grabbed under one of his arms and started dragging him to safety. One of my guys came up to guard my back, and another Iraqi grabbed his other side. We got him to the courtyard of my sheltering building/wall just as the medic arrived.

I found out my guys on the roof were ok, ducked out to check on the Iraqi soldiers vanishing into the smoke and darkness of the blast site, and told my guys to stand fast and pull security in place while we treated the casualty and let the Iraqis do their thing. I'd just decided that the casualty had simply been shaken up and had the wind knocked out of him by the blast when, less than ten minutes after the bomb went off, the shooting started.

It was fast and loud. At first I thought it was a .50 cal machine gun firing far off with an abnormally low cyclic rate, and was wondering how the hell one of my rear security gun trucks had ended up that far back and what the hell they'd gotten themselves into that far away from the blast site. Then a small explosion went off, and everything was clear to me - my guys on the roof had fired a M203 grenade launcher, and the "distant and slow .50 cal" was close and fast rifle fire from the far side of the roof of my adjacent building, distorted by echoes off the surrounding houses.

The fire fight lasted less than a minute, and ended abruptly when the grenade round went off. Both the bad guys on the roof and the Iraqi soldiers in the street who were apparently firing aimlessly in the air around the corner from me decided to pause and reassess when the big ordnance went off. It was all over before I knew who was firing at what, although I was fairly sure at the time my guys were killing Iraqi soldiers and was just hoping they'd done something to deserve it like shooting at us first. It was good to be wrong.

As far as we could reconstruct and guess afterward, the car bomb had been dropped off by one group, probably the manufacturers, and the guy with the laser pointer was keeping an eye on it for the next group, probably the ones who were supposed to pick it up and attack a checkpoint with it that night. They realized it was under observation, waved off the pick up crew (who never would have gotten close if there had been far side security like the Iraqis told me there was!), and blew it up, hoping to take some of us out before it was defused. Then the four guys circled around, climbed on some roofs, jumped a couple of houses over, and fired down into the street at the Iraqis. My guys on their roof returned fire, and then when the bad guys started shooting at them, loaded up the grenade launcher to finish things.

As far as we could tell (the rooftop they were on was very difficult to reach in body armor), all of the bad guys got away after being scared off by the grenade. As far as the Iraqi Army could tell, the Americans had gone crazy and almost killed them all. They thought the night watchman for a nearby cell phone tower had popped off a single shot and we'd then then shot the whole neighborhood up. They never saw the four guys on the roof above them shooting down at them.

After their commander was done accusing me of trying to kill him, he moved into yelling at me for barging in to his area and making him look bad. The Iraqi Army didn't need the Americans to save them, thank you very much, so I could get the fuck out. I got.

Then I got called back halfway home. Always one to close a barn door after it's too late, I had to go back and pull security for the team who assessed the blast and looked for evidence. The Iraqis were gone, so I had free reign to wander around and take pictures of the shrapnel that almost hit me (full of holes, probably from ball bearings packed around the explosive), and the entire engine assembly under the hood (halfway between my position and the the bomb crater; the explosive was probably in the trunk and threw everything forward in my direction).

After the bomb squad was done, I got to go accuse the wrong people of shooting at us. A local professor and his family and neighbors were cleaning up the remains of one of the nicest houses in Iraq after it had been smashed up by the blast wave. He had the additional misfortune to live next to a vacant building that was probably the actual place the shooters used.

It was an exciting night full of many lessons. Beware of falling shrapnel, not just the direct kind. Bring a ladder. Practice better radio discipline. Split one of my mounted sections off independently sooner to ensure 360 degree security. And the next time someone shoots at the Iraqi Army, let them.

Well, maybe not that last. Maybe. [We made up; it was even in the papers.]

* * *

"The exploding teapot dome, and other scandals"
1416 hrs, March 22, 2009

Yesterday I received my first award, the much maligned combat action badge (CAB) for the car bomb incident on March 2. This is (according to any infantryman) a lame post-Iraq rip off of the long standing and prestigious combat infantryman badge (CIB), which the infantry wear to show who has actually been shot at in combat. The CAB is for everyone who survived enemy action but doesn't primarily train to get shot at up close and personal for a living. The state of the war in Iraq being what it is today, they now give them out for fairly minor and not very dangerous engagements.

Or as my commander joked: "Good job, you walked into an ambush, out of pure luck didn't get blown up or shot, and fired back." I didn't remind him that I personally didn't shoot back; two of my guys on the nearby rooftop did. One of those two was similarly disparaging, having earned his CIB the hard way on his last deployment. His boss, my infantry squad leader, earned his own CIB by surviving an extended gun and rocket propelled grenade battle in which he personally killed two of the enemy. It took him four months and three rewrites of the application to get it. It took me three weeks, and I don't think one of the two required sworn statements actually mentioned me in the properly required way, but no one else noticed or cared.

In any case, they can't really give me too much shit because of the incident I have dubbed the Teapot Dome Scandal. (I think all of the officers get it; I don't think anyone else does.) Some of our hard charging, bitching, moaning, and overly proud infantry survived a--no shit--exploding teapot thrown at their heavily armored vehicle. Despite being attacked by a joke of an improvised grenade and being in no actual danger, they all got CIBs the same day I got my CAB.

Grenades, improvised and other wise, are big around here. A few days after the car bomb someone, probably some Iraqi police speeding by the other way, rolled a real one at my platoon as we drove by. This makes my platoon the most engaged (and both times the most seriously so) in our company. Not being insecure primadonnas, we shrugged the incident aside and didn't bother submitting anyone for an award.

Alas, I've been submitting quite a bit of other paperwork. On 14 March my infamy jumped several steps after my driver crashed the 25 ton armored vehicle I was personally commanding into a crappy early 80s model hatchback that inadvisably pulled in front of us, thereby completely destroying the car, seriously injuring the driver (who really, really shouldn't have survived), rolling my vehicle on its side, giving two of my crew sprains, giving my driver a concussion and brain injury that currently makes him almost entirely unable to do simple math or even dial a phone number written down in front of him, and requiring a platoon to be sent out to complete our assigned mission, while yet another platoon came out to right my truck and tow it back to base. I, naturally, suffered the least physical damage, despite not wearing a seat belt, and have merely had to deal with a sore shoulder the last week. The damage to my pride and reputation are greater, but the battalion commander didn't crucify me in the discussion of my annual performance rating the very day after the accident, and the investigative report has now been in long enough that I'm probably going to keep my job at this point.

Almost as significant are the reports that haven't been submitted.

I managed to avoid official notice of the wild goose chase my platoon went on after the helicopter gunships providing overwatch teamed up with my platoon sergeant on a radio net I wasn't monitoring to hijack my platoon and send it after two guys who "looked suspicious" and then conducted the crime of "running." This led to a high speed chase over the remains of the great wall of ancient Ninevah, a feat I had been told that if possible in an armored vehicle was extremely unwise, and which resulted in my lead vehicle who led us on this inadvisable path sticking himself axle deep in mud while the rest of us joined him on the wrong side of a VERY steep earthen berm.

There then ensued a short dismounted adventure where I got carried along in the attempt to apprehend these highly dangerous but vaguely defined criminals, and which climaxed in the invasion and clearing of two houses and the handcuffing of a fat middle aged man having a panic attack while vainly trying to reach his asthma inhaler. I finally called a halt to this disaster, cut the man loose, offered an abject apology, and did not quite scream at and humiliate the people who I had permitted to lead us into this mess with their independent action and failure to properly report what the hell was going on.

I won't talk about the two hour walk/drive through that incredibly cramped neighborhood after we determined that going back over the Ninevah wall from our new, even steeper side would be pure madness. It was...interesting.

Also interesting was the recent temporary loss of a $26,000 radio assigned to me. I had no recollection of what happened to it after receiving it and signing for it six weeks ago, and failing to find it during our monthly inventory, had thrown up my hands and told them to charge it to me. Alas, this dramatic gesture was ruined by my normally even tempered and placid commander appearing to take me to a formation and intimating that the ass chewing of my life would follow. Something about this finally jogged loose a memory of where my men had temporarily stored all of the other (cheap!) radios I did still have; sure enough, the Big Kahuna had been left there. Once again, near disaster had been averted.

Naturally, I was very pleased to find that the very next day I would be doubling down yet again on my bet against fate, as my platoon would escort my company commander and our brigade commander, a full colonel, on a tour of our area of operations, to include, apparently, a drive through that same area where I'd required two frustrating, backtracking hours to escape down winding, frequently blocked off streets populated by unfriendly locals. But now with nine vehicles instead of four, and on two different radio nets to make things more interesting! Alas, the colonel proved to be fond of walking, so we just went on a three hour tour hoofing it from an entirely too sensible and secure parking location rather than engaging in the impossible parking maneuvers mixed with highly inadvisable driving in the original plan.

The worst I suffered that day was the mocking hilarity of my men when I told them a member of the colonel's security detail asked me if I was a former Marine and then told me I "had that look." None of them have personally witnessed my rarely seen but apparently formidable game face when I'm dispassionately looking for anyone who needs killing while directing my forward deployed chess pieces via radio.

If they had seen it they might have learned from it; certainly today's screwup showed that I could use more former Marines with their cult-like devotion to their rifles. My new replacement driver managed to run over and destroy his M4 carbine around 0400 this morning after returning from a late night patrol and then repositioning the trucks. He'll pay for it and take the blame; I'll have my name appear on the report and take another ration of amused shit from my peers.

I especially look forward to my next breakfast ambush by the battalion commander, who has recently taken a special relish in sitting next to me to discuss whichever of my latest misadventures have come to his attention. I am quite possibly unique in being able to respond with a measured amount of humor without (yet) having my head bitten off. I look forward to admitting, with regard to this latest incident, that I believe any officer who lets something like this happen should be immediately relieved; as I was the very last person to learn today, apparently the same thing happened to his driver a few months ago.

March has over a week left to run. It often feels like the easiest thing that's happened so far was the car bomb.

* * *

"Bad Friday"
1610 hrs, April 11, 2009

Back in January we learned we were being moved to Mosul, and I spent the next few hours studying faces around me and wondering who I knew was going to die because of that decision. You could see the same thought periodically on everyone else's face. It lingered for a couple of days.

I was self consciously aware at the time that we weren't being particularly morbid and certainly not pessimistic - the odds of a battalion operating more than half a year in this town without any deaths were always negligible, the chances it would be someone in our company were decent. Yesterday those fears were proved right.

Late Friday morning [Good Friday] an explosion rattled the window by my head as I lay napping. Thinking it was a mortar or rocket that had landed very close, I rolled out of bed onto the floor and counted to twenty before deciding there weren't any additional rounds. I got up and ran outside, boots unlaced, to see if any of my neighbors were hurt.

Instead I saw a large plume of black smoke about a mile distant. Based on that distance and the direction I judged it was just off our base, maybe on the edge of the adjacent Iraqi one, but in any case another battalion's area of operations and none of my business. I was half right.

I ran to our command post to find out what it had been and where it was, and by the time I arrived we were already receiving a video feed of burning Iraqi vehicles INSIDE their base. We couldn't see a crater or figure out how the the suicide bomber drove his truck inside. Shrugging, we went about the mundane task of tracking everyone down and verifying they were ok, a job made somewhat more difficult by the fact our attached infantry platoon, lead by my roommate, had been loaned out to another unit for a certain period of time. This was their second day of detached duty, and they'd left over an hour before.

I don't know what they did with that hour, but they didn't get very far. Just about a mile. Right outside that adjacent Iraqi base as a suicide bomber in a truck packed with about 10,000 pounds of explosives ran past a checkpoint. The Iraqi guards opened fire with their rifles, and our trucks opened fire with their machine guns. They killed the driver well before he could get where he wanted and probably saved the lives of a score or more Iraqi police, but not before he got within 20' of one of our trucks.

An hour after the explosion the video feed moved outside the Iraqi base. We still couldn't identify the crater, which I'm told was massive, but the burnt, crushed wreckage of an armored vehicle designed to survive driving directly over several hundred pounds of explosives was all too obvious. Everyone inside--the platoon sergeant, driver, gunner, platoon medic, and a dismount infantryman--was killed.

I knew two of them well.

Their platoon sergeant, Staff Sergeant [H], came in my room every morning (and sometimes afternoon!) the first three months of this deployment to wake up my original roommate for their missions. He had a new platoon leader and I have a new roommate now, one who actually obeys his alarm clock, but he was still a regular visitor to discuss the details of whatever missions they had coming up.

Still, I hadn't seen him much recently. He been gone for three weeks on leave to see his wife and children. He'd only been back four days. We didn't speak in that time.

The driver of the vehicle, Staff Sergeant [W], had no business being behind the wheel. He was our Executive Officer's gunner, our administrative paperwork genius, and for the first half of our tour in charge of the night shift in our command post. I would stop in there every night to trade jokes and insults with him. He always got the best of me.

I hadn't seen much of him lately, either. He was gone almost a month escorting home the remains of Specialist [F], who died in an accident in late January. Their wives are best friends. He spent almost all that month stuck in Kuwait with my email account as his only tenuous connection to the unit before he eventually got a couple of depressing days back in the States for the funeral.

When he finally got back headquarters had been massively reorganized and he was one of several mid-level sergeants who no longer had much of a job. A few days ago I suggested, half-jokingly, to our First Sergeant that if he was going to waste this young, smart, athletic, and energetic sergeant I'd steal him for my platoon. He told me to shut up and leave his administrative genius alone.

I don't know if that conversation was the catalyst or it was just a coincidence, but Friday Woodsy volunteered to be a driver, which another underemployed Staff Sergeant had done on a lark for my own platoon sergeant just a week before. I'm certain I pointed that out when I was trying to steal him. And I think Friday was the first time he left the gate on a mission this entire deployment. I didn't even know he had gone until they told me was...gone.

I had wondered how I'd react outwardly when something like this happened. Better than I expected, and better than most of those around me. Something cold and clinical took over and held on, mostly, for the next several hours. Mostly.

I hadn't wondered how I'd feel inside when something like this happened. Like that premonition when I learned we were headed to Mosul, I already knew.

* * *

Interlude
0107 hrs, September 21, 2009

The next story amuses me greatly, because I found out a month ago that it is now taught as a cautionary tale to some soldiers deploying to Afghanistan. A buddy going through augmentee training heard the sanitized version of the What Not to Do Lesson and exclaimed, "hey, I know the guy who did that!" It's been distorted slightly, alas. I did not hang it around my neck. Just everything else.

Additionally, everal months ago I found out my battalion operations major saw the HERO warning flier as well when it landed in his email box in the States. Another dude knew a buddy at the Pentagon who saw it.

* * *

"Don't be a HERO"
0204 hrs, August 6, 2009

Today is exactly eleven months since I left Iraq, six days until I leave, and almost four months since I wrote one of these updates. Since that last one I decided I was tired of writing about depressing things, and am pleased to report that no one else has died or been seriously injured since 10 April.

Not that we and they haven't tried. In late April one of my soldiers touched a five pound pipe bomb in a bag that blew up two minutes later, in May a suicide car bomber rammed the truck behind me, waved cheerfully at the next truck, and then detonated his van with over 1,000 lbs of explosive 50 meters away, leaving a very impressive crater and putting two of my guys in the hospital overnight with concussion symptoms [I forgot to mention that was the day I announced during the patrol brief that I suspected I was immortal. Half of them looked at me sure I was going to die that very day]. Last month, on my very last real mission, another small pipe bomb blew up next to the truck in front of me, making us the last platoon in our battalion to be attacked and the only one ever attacked during curfew hours.

My peers are divided over whether I'm the luckiest guy in the battalion for surviving these things, or the unluckiest for getting into them. Several of them are amazed I survived, mostly for things that I (almost) did to myself. There was the time I picked up and shook out the contents of the white bag that I was 95% sure wasn't a bomb, because I didn't want to have to wait for explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) and miss lunch. (They showed up two minutes later.) And then there was the time I caused a safety warning to be issued to the entire brigade.

My platoon went to the site of a reported explosion to get the story from any witnesses and search for evidence. Amazingly enough, we found an intact cell phone next to some unattached red wire thirty meters from the blast site. We collected the phone and as an afterthought I hung the wire from my armor, before later stuffing it in my thigh cargo pocket. When EOD came by I handed one of them the items, and noted that he froze for a moment before displaying my wire to his partner with a carefully blank face.

That night I received a phone call from a rather irate EOD captain who wanted to know why I had picked up a three foot length of detonation cord attached to a blasting cap. Which, apparently, is what the "wire" was. Blasting caps, I was informed, are very sensitive, can be set off by static electricity at a touch, and are powerful enough to take off a few fingers and maybe a hand. Det cord, fortunately, is very insensitive, and can only be set off by another charge...like a blasting cap. Three feet of it is more than enough to take off a leg or, without armor, a torso.

This is why you should pay attention to all 100+ Power Point slides in the Kuwait class about improvised explosive devices. I am informed that one or two of them were relevant to my near mistake. In any case, a red bordered safety flier was duly issued, displaying all of the items I had recovered, and saying, in not so many words: DON'T TOUCH THIS STUFF, YOU IDIOT! The title of this notice: Hazards of Electromagnetic Radiation to Ordnance (HERO).

Eleven months ago today I said goodbye to one Staff Sergeant [Wa], who was staying behind with our rear detachment because of a bad back. He advised me, more than once, "don't be a hero," clearly concerned I'd do something reckless and get myself killed. Sigh. I'm so misunderstood.

Thank you for all of the messages of support and packages you've sent over the last year. If there are no weather or maintenance delays I should be landing in Colorado around August 15.

If I stumble They're going to eat me alive

2010-09-18T23:01:00.002-05:00

So where was I?

Ah, yes. Three weeks of suck in the field away from Ft. Carson, working a night shift on my new job on brigade staff. Then a weekend at home before three and a half weeks of worse suck at Fort Polk, Louisiana, worst place in the Army, and home to the Joint Readiness Training Command (JRTC), where they train brigade and smaller units in preparation for deployment. JRTC has had its budget greatly cut recently, and now they fill out their quota of trainer/mentors with augmentees drafted from other posts who can spare them. Thus my second free vacation. Once again on night shift.

I got back on a Thursday morning and went into work, shocking and appalling everyone. I tried to explain how getting kicked in the nuts at Fort Carson was better than a blow job at JRTC (theoretically; I haven't directly test either side of the equation). I worked another half day Friday, got promoted to captain that night, got one full day off Saturday in recompense for my six weeks of screwing, and then showed up 0630 last Sunday to begin being metaphorically kicked in the balls. Hard.

We are currently engaged in a digital command post exercise where all of the staff and command and control elements play an elaborate war game involving orders analysis/drafting and mission analysis. The digital facilities that play the enemy require us to be closely collocated, so we're doing this from tents set up in fields on Ft. Carson itself.

The good news is that I'm not on night shift. The bad news is that I haven't worked less than a 17 hour day and have averaged maybe 3.5 hours of sleep; on Tuesday night I only grabbed a one hour nap in my car. Being on Ft. Carson means no meals served on top of no scheduled meal breaks and no tent readily available to sleep in. I have a 50 minute round trip commute to eat up my time once I finally get out at 0100 or 0200. Woo hoo!

Today things got slightly less hectic as the intense planning cycle [the shortest our senior trainer has seen in seven cycles of these exercises] ended and the operation began. The ~~powers that be~~ power that is doesn't want regular soldiers to get hammered, so the official day is only 12 hours long and ends at 1900. I got home at 2200, first time before midnight.

I won't bore you with details of what my job is. I was, however, entertained this evening when the most senior captain on staff, due to be a major very shortly, offered the most junior captain in the Army some friendly advice that I'm "pushing the line" in my jokes and meeting/briefing style with senior officers. This marks the third time I've heard that in the Army and I think five times since I got out of high school.

Yet on one level, this is both surprising and disappointing. This guy was a company commander in my battalion during the last deployment and he really should know the stuff I did and got away with. Heck, he was certainly at the semi-infamous class I gave on vehicle rollovers after the entirely notorious event itself. After advising that one should practice evacuations, I slowly and deliberately suggested that "big guys" like myself, my commander, and our battalion commander wouldn't successfully fit through the escape hatch. Fully half of the jaws in the room actually dropped, convinced I'd just called both my commander and my senior rater fatties in front of all the assembled junior officers. I did a double take and barked at them, "What? We're big boned!" LTC C, not famed for his sense of humor, laughed loudest of all.

But whether it should have been surprising to hear it or not, exhibit 1 for my latest notoriety came immediately after my promotion. While I've been especially screwed this summer with field time, bitching about it is popular pastime even for those who've done the minimum. I came up with the following purely off the cuff.

Sir, thank you. If I were still in [my old unit] I'd have a lot of jokes for all of you tonight, but as the Colonel just noted, tradition makes the joke on me; I'll be buying all the drinks for the next half an hour. [jeers, cheers, applause] But before that, I'd like to say that I am sincerely very happy and honored to be here with you tonight. When Lieutenant Colonel M [my previous commander] asked if I was willing to delay the career course to come up to brigade staff I was overjoyed and told him so.
Sir, there is nothing I desire more than to spend two extra months in the field, two additional months at JRTC [the brigade goes in February], and, if I'm lucky, maybe another three months actually living in Colorado Springs before deploying for a year in Afghanistan.
[louder applause and cheers from the audience; a somewhat sheepish smile and comment from the commander; a high five afterward from his XO with advice I keep that attitude, because I was going to need it, and a total lack of foreboding at how accurate that advice would prove to be]

Since then I've popularized the best quote from ~~Von Moltke the Elder~~ Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord.

I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Most often two of these qualities come together. The officers who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Those who are stupid and lazy make up around 90% of every army in the world, and they can be used for routine work. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately!

I somehow always seemed to share this immediately after immensely painful late night meetings where two majors wasted massive amounts of time arguing circular trivialities rather than letting us move on. I certainly hope no one becomes seriously angry with me, for if they do they are sure to be struck down by fate.

When I showed up to my first unit as a new second lieutenant as an icebreaker I immediately told a great joke disparaging of majors and lieutenant colonels to my soldiers and then quite soon hugely pissed off two important captains. The first was our battalion intelligence officer, and he didn't like that I constantly interrupted him to save time; he got caught smoking marijuana and booted from the Army several months later. The second was the headquarters company commander. He became completely enraged and gave me my first and perhaps only serious ass-chewing when I let the battalion XO know some of his soldiers were refusing to do their job and help me out; he was relieved of command two weeks later over some property accountability and related honesty issues.

The group dynamics of these things being what they are, a reappearance of my Defensive Aura of Doom is unlikely. I'm receiving thankful glances from slightly more senior guys for throwing myself in front of these out of control buses, and you'd be amazed how you can politely ~~interrupt~~ interject with the brigade commander in a room full of people who outrank you if you immediately offer a short, concise explanation of what you know he's looking for and that no one else has been able to provide. On your first real week on the job.

On a more favorable note, I'm getting glowing praise the last couple of days from the observor/trainer responsible for my staff section. He's personally rather abrasive and a little weird but hypercompetent and the only FA59 guy I've ever met, the functional area career path I think I might want to switch to when I'm a senior captain.

Five more days of the exercise. I burned most of my extra sleep time writing this. I hope both my readers these days enjoyed it.

Tonight's very appropriate song is "Help, I'm alive," the second Metric song I listened to and the one that got me hooked.

What it is and where it stops nobody knows, you gave me a life I never chose

2010-09-11T12:17:00.002-05:00

I find most 9/11 anniversary reminiscences and commentary unavoidably but perhaps not unnecessarily tacky and confused. That's certainly the case with several Facebook comments from Army friends today.

I'll just leave you with (yes, another) song, whose lyrics certainly weren't intended for the occasion but are surprisingly adaptable to every side of the political spectrum's theory of why it happened and the wisdom of the most consequential result, the Iraq war.

"Blindness"

Send us a blindfold, send us a blade
Tell the survivors help is on the way
I was a blindfold, never complained
All the survivors singing in the rain
I was the one with the world at my feet
Got us a battle, leave it up to me

Find us a trap door, find us a plane
Tell the survivors help is on the way
I was a blindfold, never complained
All the survivors singing in the rain
I was the one with the world at my feet
Got us a battle, leave it up to me

What it is and where it stops nobody knows
You gave me a life I never chose
I wanna leave but the world won't let me go
Wanna leave but the world won't let me go

I was the one with the world at my feet
Got us a battle, leave it up to me
Leave it up to me

Every mighty mild seventies child beats me

2010-09-11T02:07:00.003-05:00

This morning I had an extended, charmingly nerdy and slightly flirty conversation with an age appropriate blonde with exquisite bone structure who I was surprised to realize was single. This evening I learned she was going through a tough divorce and began to plan an appropriately classy and therefore reasonably delayed rebound strategy. Quite recently I met the rebound she already imported for the weekend, assuming, gallantly enough, that he wasn't the proximate cause of my intermediate discovery.

So it goes.

On the long walk back to my car I engaged in some passing, profane and propitious conversation with an age inappropriate brunette girl walking the same way who stopped at the bar I'd begun the evening at (and played a Metric song). A glance as we parted demonstrated she had an amazing set of legs and attached asset. Immediately after moving on I thought up half a dozen lines that undoubtedly would have landed me a seat at the patio table she and her friend occupied in my wake.

I can't quite care.

Some minor measure of success to the evening: I am officially a captain now, and managed to create on the fly several well received jokes that look likely to keep my streak of getting away with murder where (still) senior officers are involved.

I have returned

2010-09-09T17:33:00.002-05:00

Everyone was shocked when, after waking up at 0100 this morning I headed straight to work instead of home when we landed at 1030. They became more befuddled when I expressed cheerfulness at learning we have to work Sunday and the next weekend. As I succinctly explained:

Getting kicked repeatedly in the nuts at Ft. Carson is a thousand times better than getting a blowjob at JRTC.

And I get Saturday off! Man, I can't remember the last time that happened. I love this job!

Everybody, everybody just wanna fall in love, everybody, everybody just wanna play the lead

2010-08-15T20:20:00.002-05:00

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a redemptive tale of the power of love and the original 8-bit gaming consoles. It also inspired both a new Metric song and a text message that will provide me with blackmail and ridicule material for weeks.

Have u seen then there yet Scott Pilgrim

Sure, why not.

"Sung" by Scott's ex Envy:

And another bad video for a good song:

Survivor's guilt for all we know

2010-08-13T22:53:00.003-05:00

I was suddenly reminded of the one significant event that did occur while I was incommunicado the last three weeks, the death of SPC Michael Stansbery in Afghanistan on July 30.

Stansbery was briefly my soldier for a few months last year after I changed units. He was in a hurry to get to Fort Campbell and waive his one year dwell time so he could deploy again, this time to Afghanistan. Next week will mark the year anniversary since he came back from Iraq and the time he could have been sent back overseas without volunteering.

As I said, I didn't know him long, but he made a big impression as the bravest soldier I knew. Not for any physical action, but because he admitted to a bunch of dumb artillerymen that he spent a lot of his weekends going with his girlfriend to cosplay conventions in Denver. Having blown and expanded their minds with that bit of knowledge, he doubled down by confessing they usually crossdressed, with him as the female half of some anime couple and her as the guy. As someone who deliberately doesn't let his nerd flag fly in public, I found it all pretty admirable as well as amusing.

I wish I'd known him better and he was still with us.

I fought the war, but the war won't stop for the love of God

2010-08-12T12:35:00.002-05:00

Ugh.

To recap the last couple of months: I went on two weeks leave, drove through Texas, did some hiking in Colorado, then changed jobs. I'm now an assistant fire support coordinator on brigade staff which for my sins required me to spend the last three weeks pulling night shift during during a distant field exercise and trying to sleep during the day in 90+ degree heat.

I got home yesterday and leave again Tuesday, this time for four weeks, as a trainor/mentor augmentee at the Swamp of Misery, the worst place in the Army.

Here's a music video from my latest new favorite band, Metric.

Can you please release me?

Let MST3K back in

2010-07-01T16:36:00.006-05:00

En route to my parents' house from Colorado I stopped in the wasteland of Midland, Texas to see an ex-girlfriend. Lacking anything else to do after dinner, we watched Let the Right One In via Netflix. I doubt any two people have been so confused and upset since, well, we broke up.

I keep seeing it referred to as a Swedish vampire horror movie, which causes this commentor's reaction in me:

Wait wait wait wait... Let The Right One In was a horror film?

Which isn't to say it didn't fill me with horror. I looked at the hair and clothing the actors wore and searched in vain throughout the movie and online to find some evidence it was supposed to be set in the late 70's or early 80's. Finally the awful truth dawned on me as I turned to me ex and screamed "OH MY GOD, PEOPLE IN SWEDEN WERE CUTTING THEIR HAIR LIKE THAT AND WEARING THOSE CLOTHES ONLY TWO YEARS AGO!"

Then I tried to end my overwhelming existential fear by bludgeoning my head with her Wii controller. Stupid Japanese junk. But at least they know how to do weird fashion and horror movies right.

From reading the Wikipedia entries about both the movie and the book it is based on, I see that virtually all of the really edgy and interesting plot was cut out of the screenplay. The best praise I see of it is that it allegedly "beautiful." Since they can't possibly mean the actors or wardrobe, and probably didn't mean the cinderblock building used as an elementary school room and that undoubtedly did previous duty as a cell block in a Holocaust film, they must mean the outdoor scenes.

I do remember one particularly lovely one. Some old dude whose interesting/creepy backstory was completely removed from the movie has kidnapped and strung up by his feet a victim so that he can cut his throat and drain his blood. He does this in a picturesque sparse wooden copse at night, visible from every single direction and beautifully backlit against the pure white snow because HE'S COMMITTING THIS BLOODY MURDER AT NIGHT UNDER A FLOODLIGHT WITH NO CONCEALMENT. Very pretty. Pretty dumb.

I'll bet the book is good, though.

He probably smells my dog!

2010-06-28T20:01:00.002-05:00

Someone's dubious list of the top 25 SNL skits. I am surprised by all the cowbell hate in the comments, but pleased to see one (and only one) mention of my darkhorse favorite.

Ratfucked

2010-06-25T19:50:00.002-05:00

I became vaguely aware of Dave Weigel a couple of months ago, as a putatively libertarian writer covering the right for the Washington Post. I had no interest in his primary line of work, but I kept seeing retweets of pretty funny stuff he'd written, so I added him on twitter a couple of weeks back. That finally compelled me to add his blog's RSS feed to my Bloglines account yesterday. Aaaand...today's he's gone.

Naturally, I fully support his ouster purely due to his misuse and misappropriation of the term "ratfucker." But among all of the sympathetic libertarian commentary I see today, all of it so far written by personal friends, I have yet to be convinced yet that all of the conservatives glad he lost his job are wrong. I'm glad to see that most of the Reason Hit & Run commentors seem to agree.

What is a purported libertarian doing on Journolist (where he worked behind the scenes to coordinate a media strategy to pass the health care bill!); voting for Nader, Kerry, and Obama; and, on top of those substantive issues, run around as a best pal of Matthew Yglesias, Spencer Ackerman, and Ezra Klein?

That latter issue is the most interesting to me, given assorted things I've read recently about the incestous social relationships in DC. Why would any libertarian associate with Ygelasias, who calls them cruel sociopaths pretty much weekly? Spencer Ackerman has somehow turned into a decent reporter on defense issues the last couple of years, but as far as I could tell from his internet persona and self admissions was a completely loathesome piece of shit prior to that. Klein's the biggest, if not the brightest, advocate for an increased welfare state among his crew.

Julian Sanchez is another libertarian "offender" in this area; as far as I can tell his sharp focus on surveillance and related civil rights issues has driven him into the arms of full spectrum leftists who agree with him there, if no where, else, as long as they share his taste for pretentious clothing and music.

I, of course, sharply disagree with the politics of pretty much all of my friends. But we mostly don't discuss them, and they certainly aren't our jobs. Advocates trying to move public opinion and government policy can be compromised by such friendships.

As usual, Matthew Yglesias comes out looking the best; he's clearly not afraid to call his friends evil people just because it might piss them off. Will I find out next week that he's godfather to the daughter of "moron" Jonah Goldberg?

Small war

2010-06-22T19:37:00.003-05:00

The only comment I'll make on today's General McChrystal news is about this bit:

The article also describes a meeting in which a soldier vents his frustration over General McChrystal’s tightening of the rules governing the use of airstrikes against suspected insurgents. The soldier, Pfc. Jared Pautsch, is quoted telling General McChrystal that he is endangering the lives of soldiers by forcing them to be too restrained.

I've actually heard of this soldier before, because his brother, Jason, was famously one of the soldiers in my company killed in this incident. Famously, because a friend of his gave an incredibly moving and hilarious tribute at the memorial service, pretty much off the cuff. Several months ago I'd heard he had a surviving brother who was currently in Afghanistan.

Jason's death had nothing to do with the issue at hand, but I'm sure 95% of his platoon agreed with Jared's general point. I personally do not, from the perspective of the war as it was being fought in Iraq in 2008-2009. Afghanistan today? No opinion.

Grand Theatre

2010-06-22T19:35:00.001-05:00

Discussion and previews of the forthcoming Old 97's album by front man Rhett Miller.

We apologize for the inconvenience

2010-06-18T18:29:00.000-05:00

People are blaming bad officiating for today's World Cup tie, but the real culprit is bad PR. Today's draw with Slovenia was karmic retribution brought to you by the US Army.

A little over one year ago I got a pair of very pissed off Slovenian reporters dumped on me before a patrol in Mosul. They'd been there almost a week, trying to chase a story that didn't really exist anymore on a type of patrol we didn't really do anymore. I took an immediate liking to them, with their hopeless quest and anorexic Eurotrash looks; they resembled nothing so much as Matthew Yglesias released from a concentration camp after receiving some grooming assistance. They firmly won me over when the lead guy effortlessly tossed off some translated idiom that referenced Monica Bellucci and acknowledged her central role in well adjusted male psychology.

Alas, my goodwill did not avert their overall disgruntlement. The brigade public affairs officer, presumably not greatly concerned with the geopolitical fallout of receiving some negative press in one of (?) the large Slovenian dailies, had reputedly ignored their requests for assistance, causing them to linger on base in futility while their time and budget ran out without any story. Someone finally begrudgingly dumped them off on me, where despite my sympathy and friendliness their dissatisfaction only grew when I took them on a boring patrol the allowed almost no interaction with the locals and failed to get an appointment with the midlevel Iraqi Army officers I knew.

To add insult to injury, I was the only person between my interpreter and my platoon that could understand them. I assured them they spoke better English that most American graduate students, and vastly better than most of my own soldiers, but apparently the unusual accent combined with polysyllabic vocabulary and a lack of my tediously learned simplistic patois used with the interpreter made them totally unintelligible. They thanked me after the patrol, and we shared a pleasant dinner that evening when the ran into by chance, but I had the feeling they were returning home to curse the United States, excluding only me, in some Eastern European blood ritual derived from gypsies.

So today the United States were robbed of a goal, and I showed up late to work in shorts and flip flops before blowing it all off before noon. Coincidence?

More Fuse Week

2010-06-13T21:57:00.000-05:00

The voicemail a buddy left me in the field proved to be his rendition of "Bust a Fuse" sung to the tune of Young MC's "Bust a Move." And his barbeque today included a Fuse Week cake on which the spelling and grammar differed enough from what was requested to prove there are still people out there worse at their jobs than us this week.

Happy Fuse Week!

2010-06-12T12:13:00.002-05:00

I have completed my sixth and last week of artillery gunnery. Thank god.

The troubles began Monday, when we passed through our seventh or eight ammo pick up. I had observed from prior experience that the only way our forward support company (FSC) can successfully set up and operate an ammo point is to have a minimum of two field grade officers present to supervise; the second lieutenant and sergeants in charge obviously never learn anything.

Alas, I am apparently the only one to have noticed this, and a lack of adult supervision caused the second most screwed up effort so far. All of the special (non high explosive) rounds (illumination, white phosphorus, and M825 smoke) were in an undifferentiated pile, not separated out by platoon, so the crews picking them up had to rely on some bored FSC truck driver who knows nothing about artillery ammunition standing around to tell them how many to get. The assorted fuses that go on the tip and determine when and how the rounds function and which do not work with every round type were scattered around in a wild jumble as well.

In the most screwed up previous effort, I drew my ammunition almost four hours after schedule. Not wanting to repeat that process and take the hour or more it would take to personally ensure everything I picked up matched, I put my faith in the faithless and took what they gave me without question. Oops.

Our Monday afternoon ammo count on our firing point revealed that we had three too few fuses to fire our illumination or M825, and two too many of the types to shoot everything else; we'd drawn one fuse too few, and swapped two others. My personal hands on ammo count on Tuesday revealed that we'd actually only drawn one too few for illum/M825 and were even on everything else. Wednesday's count found that we were two short on illum/M825, one over on the rest, and that I can't count even with two people verifying me when I've had ten hours sleep in the previous three days.

Lost fuses require almost as much stupidity as lost weapons or other sensitive items, so I had to dump all of my soldiers bags and search the contents and prepare to send foot patrols sweeping two km of roads and a square km of range where it might have been dropped. The rest of the battalion suffered similarly, with our battalion executive officer, a major, searching the remaining unissued ammunition by flashlight at 10 p.m.

It was finally found in some dunnage (packing materials) awaiting turn in. The FSC monkeys probably threw it in there when they were unpacking them. We never did fix the other missing/surplus fuze issue, so I had to turn in an unfired illumination round with an incompatible fuse.

Thus concluded Fuse Week incident number one. Of seven.

On Tuesday morning one of my guns reported that one of his electronic time fuzes couldn't be set, probably because someone checking it long ago had inadvertently set it and run down the ten day battery. We drew another one, reducing the number of rounds we would be able to shoot at Friday's direct fire range. Incident two.

Later on Tuesday morning we conducted a short movement of the guns. During this procedure a driver was surprised by the sudden appearance of a ditch and instead of doing a slow roll like you should in a tracked vehicle, slammed his brakes on. One of the rounds in that howitzer's ready rack, which contains pre-fused rounds, was improperly secured and flew out of rack. This hit the gunner's leg, leaving a nice bloody welt, and inflicting a serious day long limp. It also smashed the fuse to pieces. We drew another from our direct fire stock. Incident three.

At this point my fellow platoon leader (PL) next door sent me a text message wishing me a Happy Fuse Week. He also tempted the gods by posting a Facebook status asking if the week could get any worse (he had previously slammed his helmet into and broken his Humvee windshield over the fuse search antics he had to go through on my behalf).

On Wednesday around noon I received a text message from my fire direction officer that my fellow PL's platoon next door had fired the wrong type of round. This is Very Bad. I looked at the ridge line we were shooting over and could see the tell tale cloudiness of white phosphorous (it should have been high explosive and a dust cloud) peeking over, and with a bright new white cloud several hundred meters in the air from a prematurely functioning fuse. That was Very, Very Bad.

I sprinted 500m in full armor to let my commander know he might be getting fired and then continued on a slightly shorter distance to ask the other PL what had gone wrong. He was completely unaware of the issue; apparently his fire direction officer was still swaying back and forth in white-faced catatonia and hadn't passed the information on.

It was about this time that Range Control, the civilian department that runs all shooting ranges and tries to ensure us uniformed morons don't kill anyone, came racing up at extreme speed in a truck with a flashing red light on top. Everyone was ordered out of their guns so that they couldn't do any further damage or cover up any evidence of the last coordinates they'd shot. Apparently the premature airburst had occurred several hundred meters outside the designated impact area, shocking the hell out of four different groups of observers that called it up on the radio.

I was required to gather up all of the remaining fuses and the guns' records of fire for the investigation, then returned to my platoon. It was eventually determined that the fuse malfunctioned rather than being set wrong (the same thing had happened last week, but inside the impact area). I still don't understand how or why they shot WP instead of HE. Thus ended my involvement in Fuse Week incident number four. I walked away glad no one had been killed, and that the heat was most definitely off my back for the rest of the week, as a firing incident overwhelmed my transgressions.

Ooops.

Two hours later, Wednesday afternoon, I received an order to move my platoon to the alternate firing point we had scouted out the other day. The usual procedure is to slowly put all of your vehicles in a column and move them to the next point where you redeploy. This is slow at the beginning and end, and it makes you much more vulnerable to attack on the move, but it hugely enhances control and efficiency when you are on the move. But this was a short (1200m) move in wide open terrain and I have by far the best gun line in the battalion when it comes to maneuver and occupation drills, so we decided to try moving in a line abreast wedge. If done right it was faster, much more defensible (although there wasn't anyone playing bad guy on this exercise), and would look cool as hell. If it didn't quite work the total time would be about a wash when adjustments were taken into account, and we'd learn how to do it better next time.

We started out, and damn it looked good. These guys don't do this sort of thing, but the average tank platoon I've seen would have looked about the same, albeit with less need of radio traffic to coordinate and adjust. Then we topped the ridge line half way there and disaster struck. The FSC had set up our next ammo resupply right in the middle of my new firing point, choking off about 40% of my field of maneuver. There was more room on the right, maybe just barely enough, but my guns came over the ridge bearing left, and were choked into chaos and confusion that eventually I had to reorganize into a column after all, so that we could pull out and start the whole thing over again. It was at this point that I received The Call.

Another of my guns, not the one involved previously, had a driver spooked by a trench, and had slammed on its brakes. This time five, five, FIVE, FIVE freaking rounds didn't have the required spacers behind them. Lacking those spacers the crash stop let them build enough momentum to burst out of their locking rings and hit the deck. All five fuses were smashed apart. Appropriately, this was incident five.

We reorganized, redeployed, and redeployed, which involved me getting out of my Humvee to discuss with the FSC commander how close I could put my firing line to her fuel truck sitting in the middle of my firing point. It also involved explaining the chaos to my battalion commander who happened to be present and who seemed more impressed with the ambition and initiative of the move and its good early execution and quick recovery than he was with its ultimate failure. I forebore sharing with him the new information about FIVE more smashed fuses until I'd inspected them and told my direct boss, the battery commander.

After finally reaching my firing point I did share that information with my boss, who cursed in the disbelieving voice of a nearly broken man. Almost an hour later I received The Supplementary Call. Apparently at the same time my moron gun chief was driving around without spacers behind his ready rack rounds, he was also driving around with a fused round laying on the feed tray directly behind the breech and tube (we had been about to shoot a mission before the order to move). The force of the crash stop lifted the round off the feed tray and forward into the tube, from whence it could not be removed. If any of you have any artillery experience, let me assure you this actually happened. My battery commander, the battalion XO, and the battalion commander don't believe it. The physics are highly improbable; a quiet common and more likely transgression is to prematurely load a round into the tube without orders to make it quicker to fire when the order does come. But we looked at it, and it really did fly off and seat itself that way.

This gave me two options. I could fire the round on the next mission (assuming, as was highly likely, it called for HE) and trust that it was not damaged by this unorthodox loading technique (extremely unlikely) and that the fuse had been set for point detonation and not on time (which would result in another premature detonation) or not set at all (which would cause no detonation, requiring an investigation for an unobserved round). My chief assured me the fuze was set right, and I guessed the chances of further disaster if we fired it as 1/500, with a potential error of one order of magnitude either way. My gunnery sergeant's estimate was on the positive side of that error; my fire direction officer was on the pessimistic side, and he refused to fire it just to save me and that chief from further embarrassment. It was the right call.

So we went with option two. I called the problem up (more cursing, but less brokenness as he resiliently bounced back) and we rammed the round out, inflicting moderate scrapes on it that would probably let it fire accurately and safely, but nevertheless administratively deadlining the round and fuse. The gun also couldn't shoot again for 24 hours until we got a specialist out to check the tube for damage. Thus ended incident six.

Incident seven, the last, was a repeat of incident two, this time on Thursday morning. We had another dud fuse, we once again drew against our direct fire allocation. The final count was one fuse lost then found, six broken on two different occasions, two duds, one administratively deadlined after being punched out the tube, one prematurely functioning outside the impact area (potentially but not actually the worst, and the only one not mine), and the wrong kid of fuse drawn and thus one round unusable for that reason.

At the Thursday afternoon after action review (AAR), attended by a deputy commanding general and my brigade commander, I was called upon twice to discuss the more severe of these incidents, which I confidently BSed my way out of with approved, time worn platitudes (e.g. "competence leads to complacency which leads to catastrophe") while name checking the fact that my platoon on actual core artillery tasks had consistently performed the best.

Indeed, afterward I pointed out to my battalion commander and his executive officer that on the much discussed Power Point slide showing time standards and actual performance across the battalion for the entire week, the only component of the entire battalion that actually met its standard (29 seconds versus 30 required) was my platoon's gun line. So really, I archly inquired, wasn't my platoon really the great success story of the week? They appeared neither amused or unamused. Mostly, I think they were disconcerted.

Direct fire went off Friday without a hitch. Possibly because with all of the previously broken/inoperable fuses we were only able to shoot 60% of our initial ammo allocation.

I slept twelve hours last night.

One of these things is not like the other

2010-05-23T17:40:00.001-05:00

Um, what?

One presumes he got the mustard out

2010-05-19T23:25:00.003-05:00

Having watched the scene about six times, I finally got the joke in last night's Glee when, in this Joss Whedon directed episode, the director of the local production of Les Miserables mentions he runs a dry cleaner. I knew there was something about that bothering me.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, your life is a pale, sad shadow of what it could be.

Unhappy anniversary

2010-05-18T19:31:00.003-05:00

Almost exactly one year ago, something very much like this happened to my platoon as we returned from a patrol:

The Taliban struck at the heart of the Afghan capital Tuesday, with a suicide bomber steering his explosive-laden Toyota minibus into an American convoy as it moved through the thick of rush-hour traffic. The attack killed 18 people, including five American soldiers and an officer from Canada, and wounded at least 47 civilians...

The Taliban took responsibility for the attack in a posting on its Web site, saying the group had dispatched a young man named Nizamuddin, a resident of Kabul. The Taliban said that Nizamuddin’s bomb weighed more than 1,600 pounds.

Ours was a van instead of a minibus, the estimated size was 1,200 pounds, and the driver was either incompetent or overly clever. Coming from a side street as we passed by, he rammed my platoon sergeant's vehicle immediately behind me, waved at the next trail vehicle as it drove by, and then blew himself up about 50m away when we failed to stop. Our best guess is that he was trying to stage a wreck so we'd get out to render assistance, which in a worst case scenario could have bagged me, half a dozen American infantry dismounts, my medic, and lots more Iraqis who would have rushed in to rubberneck and interfere.

Two guys in my trail vehicle spent the night in the hospital and a few days resting in their rooms; allegedly some Iraqi pedestrians were killed, but by the time someone showed up to help us secure the site and we got out of our vehicles all casualties had been cleared away by the locals. Except the bomber - the biggest piece of his van we found wasn't much bigger than my fist. Given the protection offered by an MRAP, I mostly didn't take the IEDs we encountered very seriously, including a few 300-400 lbs ones in parked cars, but 1000+ lbs in direct contact would have done the job. Thanks for getting overly ambitious, asshole.

There was aerial video footage of the attack and detonation. Of the several incidents that lead my friends to question how I was still alive, this one got the biggest reaction.

Whoa

2010-05-16T10:42:00.002-05:00

While checking to see if for some crazy reason they made a Kindle version of Bridge of Birds, I noticed the reviews have become kind of insane. How many other books average a full five stars with 175 reviews in?

Awakened to cheers after years on the faultline

2010-04-18T21:33:00.005-05:00

I've been in the field the last two weeks for Paladin gunnery, and will be the next two as well.

With only four weeks in charge, I have since led my platoon to only 50% combat effectiveness (two of four guns broke early this week, one semi-permanently), and yet first in the battalion in average gunner's certification scores, accuracy, and time to process missions. Previously, this platoon only led the battalion in overweight soldiers, lack of initiative, discipline problems, and UCMJ actions.

Just between you and me I had very little to do this, except perhaps my well established luck field that springs up whenever anything is exploding nearby, but that's not what I'll tell my battalion commander the next time he asks how it feels being "half a platoon leader." He's been getting awfully uppity the last month, and is drawing dangerously even on verbal sparring points after the massive score I ran up on him last fall when he first got here.

And this loss isn't good enough for sorrow or inspiration

2010-04-04T11:32:00.002-05:00

For Easter Sunday today's Rilo Kiley song is It Just Is (full recording).

Today is the day i realized that i could be loved.
It echoed though the park last night:
'He wasn't our son;
He belonged to everyone...'

And this loss isn't good enough for sorrow or inspiration.
It's such a loss for the good guys,
Afraid of this life,
That it just is.
'Cause everybody dies...

This loss isn't good enough for sorrow or inspiration.
It's such a loss for the good guys,
Afraid of this life,
That it just is.
Everybody...
This loss isn't good enough for sorrow or inspiration.
It's such a loss for the good guys,
Afraid of this life,
That it just is.

'Cause everybody dies

But you are what you love, and not what loves you back

2010-03-20T16:24:00.002-05:00

Today's former Rilo Kiley lead singer's song is You Are What You Love, which I listened to for the first time as I was grocery shopping today. Alas, no video footage captured the expression that quickly passed over my face when I unexpectedly heard the title line. I imagine it was somewhere between shock and something not entirely unlike horror.

This is no great illusion
When I'm with you I'm looking for a ghost
Or invisible reasons
To fall out of love and run screaming from our home

Because we live in a house of mirrors
We see our fears and everything
Our songs, faces, and second hand clothes
But more and more we're suffering
Not nobody, not a thousand beers
Will keep us from feeling so all alone

But you are what you love
And not what loves you back
That's why I'm here on your doorstep
Pleading for you to take me back

The phone is a fine invention
It allows me to talk endlessly to you
About nothing disguising my intentions
Which I'm afraid, my friend, are wildly untrue

It's a sleight of hand, a white soul band
The heart attacks I'm convinced I have
Every morning upon waking
To you I'm a symbol or a monument
Your rite of passage to fufillment
But I'm not yours for the taking

But you are what you love
And not what loves you back
So I guess that's why you keep calling me back

I'm fraudulent, a thief at best
A coward who paints a bullshit canvas
Things that will never happen to me
But at arms length, it's Tim who said
I'm good at it, I've mastered it
Avoiding, avoiding everything

But you are what you love, Tim
And not what loves you back
And I'm in love with illusions
So saw me in half
I'm in love with tricks
So pull another rabbit out of your hat

What I'm watching

2010-03-20T10:24:00.007-05:00

Stuff I DVR that's currently putting out new episodes:

Modern Family, ABC, Wednesday @ 9

The funniest comedy since Arrested Development.

The story of three related families (patriarch with hot young wife and stepson, plus his daughter and gay son's husbands and kids), this is the best lowish middlebrow comedy I've ever seen. The espisodes are stand alone so you don't have to watch them consecutively, but you'll get the most out of it after you've seen several and grasped the full essence of the surprisingly unique but believable (there are no Buster Bluths) and well drawn characters.

The writing is top notch. The casting is done by a heterosexual man with excellent taste and judgment. Last week's guest: Judy Greer! She did not flash her boobs for the fourth last time, alas.

Spartacus: Blood and Sand, STARZ, Friday @10

They tried to call it "Caligula: the Series" but got tied up in rights issues.

Watch this in the privacy of your own home, because you'll have a hard time convincing a casual passerby that it's not a softcore wannabe snuff film. The story of Spartacus' days as a gladiator, the sex/violence warning before every episode is hilariously inadequate, but that's also what makes this something noteworthy instead of just another competently acted and plotted drama on pay cable.

Drinking game hints: While you can safely drink for every full frontal penis shown, I highly recommend a three pairs of boobs on the screen minimum if you want to make it to the end of the hour. It's always appropriate to finish your drink for a decapitation, limb chopped off, or disembowling. Have a full handle of 80 proof on standby for the combined crucifixion and penis removal.

Castle, ABC, Monday @10

The dumbest show I can't stop watching.

A formulaic detective show with a silly angle (a crime novelist follows a cop around), this is not particularly clever, definitely not realistic (get a fucking lawyer, five consecutive interviewed suspects!), not really anything special. It's also the only show I can immediately watch at any time and be sure of enjoying it, treating it as mental popcorn. Stana Katic is great and has all the best lines, and Molly Quinn is, alas, too young. Nathan Fillion is...still working, apparently.

Caprica, Syfy, Friday @9

It's like Dynasty in spaaaace

A prequel to Battlestar Galactica, it covers the creation of the cylons. It's really nothing like BSG, for both good and bad. I like, I don't yet love it, and if you're not already watching it you're not going to start now, so never mind.

Glee isn't back yet with new episodes, but you should start watching it when it does, and if you didn't know, South Park started up season 14 last Wednesday. The first episode, about Tiger Woods and sexual addiction, indicates they still haven't lost their mojo.

You're sort of welcome, taxpayers

2010-03-17T21:56:00.003-05:00

I've spent about 40 hours the last three days running a .50 caliber machine gun qualification range where bullets are allegedly $5-6 each.

In the process I have learned that I am the only person around who cares about wasting many thousands of dollars by "burning" unused rounds in a free-fire totally devoid of training value to avoid waiting half-hour to have them picked up and turned in for future use by someone else. I weakened a little bit today, but that only cost you a month of my salary in ten minutes instead of five times that if almost anyone else had been in charge.

Monday's theory that Alpha battery was only using three of their eight gun tracks in a similarly motivated effort to save taxpayer fuel, however, gave way to Tuesday's realization that they are so underprepared and doubtfully competent that they didn't want to risk disaster by actually using and coordinating all of their vehicles at once. On Monday morning nothing could have convinced me any unit in the Army was more screwed up and incompetent than my own platoon, let alone the entire battery next door. But if competence, like economy, can be judged in comparative rather than absolute terms, we're not doing too badly.

In any case, while my appetite for planning in ass-bleeding detail and obsessively checking my subordinates to ensure they can function at a third grade level without supervision has not grown any since Iraq, certainly not to a level needed to keep my blood pressure from erratically spiking sky high, my ability to master chaos and pull inventive disaster-averting miracles from hopeless situations I have arguably inflicted on myself has increased from "impressive" to "inspiring," if I do say so myself.

Anyway, doing things the easy way in advance is overrated, and is usually counterproductive from an efficiency or economy perspective. I still have occasion to remember the three boxes of recipe holders we burned immediately upon receipt in Iraq because they weren't the document protectors my company XO, by far the most competent and detail-oriented officer I have met, actually wanted. Why there is a National Stock Number for recipe holders in the first place, however, continues to elude me.

I just hope the female urinary director has one. I'll take a dozen for morale purposes.

How well they know us

2010-03-13T10:17:00.003-06:00

AKO, the Army's centralized email program, has a new security feature where you have to answer personal questions in addition to supplying a password. For each question they have about twenty "standard" answers that you can just click if you don't want to have to type a custom entry.

For "what scares you the most?" standard answers include women, men, children, and marriage. I picked one of those, although I would have added a few adjectives on the front of it.

I have been craving Dick for a long time

2010-03-08T19:51:00.002-06:00

FINALLY.

Nothing has made me feel simultaneously old and like a visitor from another planet as my occasional attempts to get people who really should remember it to admit any exposure to Miller Lite's once pervasive "Dick" ad campaign. I finally found one the other day, raising my record to 1/7.

Dick, incidentally, is indistinguishable from how I remember pictures of my father in the 70's.

Here's a later commercial approved by Dick which I don't remember at all, but in its essence is entirely like all of the other ones I don't remember very clearly.

And here's probably the most famous one. I think might have been a Superbowl ad.

Make it so, number one

2010-03-08T18:27:00.002-06:00

All of my built up store of karma is finally turning on me.

After notoriously being the subject of three army regulation 15-6 investigations in 19 days during my tour in Iraq, I have finally been assigned as investigating officer in one that involves a couple of traffic deaths, plus a few other fun wrinkles, and so requires quite a lot more detail, work, and time than the cumulative effort invested in me.

I'm also about to become a platoon leader and the executive officer (XO) in my battery. In armor or infantry companies XO is a dedicated job. Since artillery batteries already have four lieutenants (two platoon leaders and two fire direction officers vs. 3 platoon leaders and an XO) and those whiners won't let us have more than them, they make it an additional duty around here. As platoon leader I'll be responsible for about 50 men and 11 vehicles. As XO I'll be responsible for maintenance on about 25 vehicles and every supply and equipment headache possible, plus doing anything my commander doesn't want to or can't.

Which means my work load without the investigation that is laughably and officially my "primary duty" until complete has just increased by about 30 hours a week. (We don't, uh, need to discuss what a low base that started from; FDOs who don't have any equipment and who aren't about to do a gunnery are not the busiest people in the world.) Plus my battalion commander punished me for recommending to him several books by putting me in charge of building a professional library. I spent four hours on that Sunday since I had to be at work anyway for a staff duty shift.

Naturally, my job satisfaction is up about tenfold. I need help.

Expert opinion

2010-03-06T09:13:00.003-06:00

I have seen almost no Oscar nominees this year, certainly none of those that would be the nominees if there were a traditional five instead of the expanded field.

I have flirted several times with The Hurt Locker but every time I do I run into this opinion from yet another friend or acquaintance who has seen it:

Many in the military say "Hurt Locker" is plagued by unforgivable inaccuracies that make the most critically acclaimed Iraq war film to date more a Hollywood fantasy than the searingly realistic rendition that civilians take it for.

See also.

I know sixish junior Army officers or NCOs who've seen this movie, and every single one of them hates it. At least two report walking out or turning it off rather than finishing it.

The main absurdity that every one mentions is that apparently these guys go out in a single vehicle to disarm bombs; in reality you'd see EOD show up on site well after a bomb is identified and the site secured, and with its own escort coming coming along. Most EOD situations I was involved in had eight US vehicles present. Twice there were twelve (plus Iraqi security forces!). And, no, you can't get away with taking off your armor because you're reckless and don't give a damn.

At the tactical level the Army is shockingly into risk assessment and control. The strategy and overall mission from higher headquarters may make no sense and introduce risk for zero or even a negative realistically projected reward, but the detail planning and operational requirements at the platoon and company level suck all the risk you can out of everything.

There are minimum force levels and protection for everything, and as capabilities increase the equipment "deadline" or non-mission capable triggers also increase - systems that didn't exist three years ago can keep you from leaving today if they're broken, even if their lack poses only a very small risk increase. No one wants their ass uncovered if that tiny probability does hit.

Robin Hanson asks whether there are any truly "realistic" war movies and if so what they are.

What exactly could it mean for a film to be “realistic”? Since few are entertained by watching random samples of real life, entertaining films must select strongly from the space of actual and possible events. One might allow a movie any initial setting, no matter how strange, and call it realistic if events depicted that were typical conditional on that setting. But then how long does the movie get to “set the scene,” after which we start to evaluate its realism? And for how many settings could realistic behavior given that setting be entertaining?

This applies to plenty of genres beyond the military. We need more discovery montages in legal movies! And someday there may be a medical show I can make my college premed roommate (and now MD) watch, but it sure wasn't ER.

Two Gentlemen of Lebowski

2010-02-27T15:30:00.002-06:00

In concept this is the greatest thing ever. I am less certain about the actual implementation.

See, for example:

Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.

Vs:

Nihilists! I am beshrewn. Say what thou wilt
Of fascist tenets, Knave; it seeks to stand
Philosophy and politic, not void.

And so it seems that you've grown up and over me

2010-02-14T12:39:00.004-06:00

Seeking synergy with xkcd's Valentine's cartoon, today's Rilo Kiley song is Science v. Romance.

Incidentally, last night showed me the upside to being single. It took two minutes from first acquaintance to be called upon to slap a drunk girl's ass somewhat against my inclinations, and less than ten before I was offered the opportunity to touch her Cesarean scar. No, thanks.

It's good to be bad

2010-02-13T02:18:00.002-06:00

This is what I've spend about half my free time doing the last couple of weeks. A few of my favorite quotes didn't make it, and several I haven't seen yet did. The very end references my favorite joke by far in ME1.

Can you hear me now?

2010-01-18T18:30:00.002-06:00

I climbed the incline today for the first time in well over a year. The wisdom of doing this, notwithstanding our failure to receive any real snow in over a month, was perhaps questionable. Between the false peak and the actual top 95% of the path was covered with refrozen snow, requiring me to climb veeery slowly and hunched over practically on all fours.

Once I reached the top without falling and breaking every bone in my body I celebrated by sending a text message to a doubting friend, and received a soft spoken, out of breath "good job" from the high school girl who had been silently but watchfully pacing me the whole way up.

Yeah, I'm glad I didn't fall and drag you down the mountain to our deaths.

She looked vaguely uncomfortable and looked away. I felt vaguely uncomfortable as well; she'd started the conversation, and it's not like it was the worst joke in the world. (That would have been the line I'd have used if we were falling: "Well, I always did want to die in the arms of a woman half my age.")

After catching my breath and exploring the summit for a bit, I turned to see if she wanted a partner down the long switchback trail to the bottom. She was looking back down the stairs, gesturing at some length to someone apparently still climbing. I called to ask if she was waiting for someone, and was rudely ignored.

Miffed, I started down alone, wishing I had a fucking bobsled because the ice coverage of the trail somehow increased 50,000% since yesterday. I took my time, stewing over the cold brushoff I'd received after we'd shared that hour of hell in close proximity. Periodically I stopped to enjoy the view. During one of these halts, my silent climbing partner and a woman I took to be her mother approached and passed me.

I rather coldly nodded, and received in return a warm smile and a happy "hello" spoken in a harsh Marlee Matlin-eque honking goose voice.

Oooooh.

I laughed at myself halfway down the mountain, until it was abruptly cut off by my scream of panic as I fell on my ass, and not for the last time.

Task, conditions, standards

2010-01-16T16:55:00.002-06:00

For me whether 2010 will be a good year will be determined in larger part by whether Republic of Thieves and The Wise Man's Fear are released by the end of it. I have little hope.

The success of the 21st century will depend on the release of Dance of Dragons, not because I have any particular emotional investment in that book or series, but just because it's become such a spectacular trainwreck I can't help but watch. I expect a free copy to come with my first flying car, and not before.

January, however, was a good month.

Market failure

2010-01-10T19:40:00.001-06:00

This guy hasn't heard of this service.

Documenting dumbness

2009-12-31T10:29:00.007-06:00

The NYT has a collection of user submitted photos and captions of the last decade. Many of the pictures are moving, several of the captions are retarded. Pay special attention to all of the global warming by anecdote ones (contra this one), but my favorite one for overall irrationality is this.

Apparently a picture of one's father dying of a self confessed incurable brain disease is a call for the government to stop spending money on war and spend massively on health care, which of course couldn't possibly result in any price controls or regulation that would slow the development of future cures to currently incurable diseases.

And major kudos to the editor who let in four separate photos of the same post-Katrina house, albeit from different angles and months.

Worst Katrina caption, however, goes to this. No, a picture of Lake Pontchartrain with "water stretching beyond the viewer's sight," does not indicate anything about flooding. I look forward to the 2019 version, when a photograph of the Atlantic and the inability to see Europe anymore on the horizon demonstrates the rise of the oceans.

Baby business

2009-12-28T16:20:00.002-06:00

My boss brought his 4 year old daughter and 19 month old son to work today. I just sort of basked in their extreme cuteness for several minutes, and then belatedly realized that a fairly sharp 6" knife we'd used recently to cut a cake was a foot away from the girl's hand just as she started to eyeball it. My quick snatch disappointed her, but she did learn a new curse word from daddy.

One of my former gunners in Iraq invited me to his daughter's first birthday party. I have no idea what to get for her, my jokes on Facebook about incendiary sippy cups aside. (Her parents are both from Nigeria.)

I've been reading via RSS the baby blog of my former law school classmate and very good friend Brian Hrach for many months. Today I clicked over to the actual site and found to my horror a link to this blog whereby his family and friends, many of whom I met at his wedding, can read my demented commentary over here. Ack.

Al Qaeda urban renewal

2009-12-26T10:46:00.002-06:00

Seriously?

A Nigerian man tried to ignite an explosive device aboard a trans-Atlantic Northwest Airlines flight as the plane prepared to land in Detroit on Friday, in an incident the United States believes was “an attempted act of terrorism,” according to a White House official who declined to be identified.

I'm not surprised when these things go wrong at the tactical level, since you probably aren't able to recruit the smartest people in the world for these sorts of missions. But when the strategic planners are picking targets whose entire destruction would arguably provide a net benefit to the US economy (the minor issue of the population aside), I have to wonder.

You autocomplete me

2009-12-25T14:10:00.002-06:00

One of the best ideas ever, don't miss the Christmas themed stuff up right now.

And I say there's trouble When everything is fine

2009-12-25T13:27:00.002-06:00

Your Christmas Rilo Kiley song is The Absence of God for reasons both obvious and otherwise.

The absence of God will bring you comfort, baby
And planning's for the poor so let's pretend that we're rich
And I'm not my body or how I choose to destroy it
Folk singers sing songs for the working, baby

We're just recreation for all those doctors and lawyers
There's no relief for the bleeding heart
'Cause they'll be losing bodies tonight

And Rob says you love, love, love and then you die
I've watched him while sleeping and seen him crying with closed eyes
And you're not happy but you're funny and I'm tripping over my joy
But I just keep on getting up again

We could be daytime drunks if we wanted
We'd never get anything done that way baby
And we'd still be ruled by our dueling perspectives
And I'm not my perspective
Or the lies I'll tell you every time

And Morgan says, maybe love won't let you down
All of your failures are training grounds
And just as your back's turned you'll be surprised she says
As your solitude subsides

And Mike I'll teach you how to swim
If you turn the bad in me into good again

And I say there's trouble
When everything is fine
The need to destroy things
Creeps up on me every time
Just as love's silhouette appears
I close my eyes and disappear tonight

And something's got to change
'Cause our love's the slowest moving train

Remind me of who I used to be

2009-12-22T21:26:00.003-06:00

Any fellow conflicted Dollhouse fans wondering what that song was at the end of "The Attic" will find it here.

Doggone

2009-12-21T16:11:00.003-06:00

This may actually be the hardest thing to get used to for servicemembers who have deployed to Iraq moving to Afghanistan.

Shooting Dogs. There is no dog in Nawa province not accounted for by a local. They love their dogs and keep them for security purposes and treasured pets. You kill one and you have problems. It would be like shooting a West Virginian's dog. If he wasn't actively supporting the Taliban before hand, he is now. Unfortunately, we had to learn some hard lessons. Guys who have deployed to Iraq, shoot the fuckers like it is going out of style. It's different here. There are not a thousand stray, rabid dogs running about. Dogs are owned and cared for.

I had a relatively pro-dog policy, unlike the mentally questionable infantry platoon leader who lived with me. His men allegedly shot dozens in the sheep market we patrolled daily, with absolutely no perceptible impact on their numbers. We only shot one, and that one popped out of some reeds to menace one of my guys at close range and no warning.

Or rather we only shot one that I knew about. Apparently the same guy was blowing them away in small, consistent lots down on the Iraqi army rifle range while I was several hundred meters away talking to their officers.

Bizarro blog

2009-12-21T15:52:00.002-06:00

This post on Joss Whedon's Dollhouse and the comments (!) are the most rational and correct things that will ever be written over there. Until I wake up and realize I imagined it all.

Monk-y business

2009-12-19T10:29:00.002-06:00

In today's NYT:

FORWARD OPERATING BASE MAREZ, Iraq — When the 101st Airborne Division captured this base back in 2003, an American tank blasted the turret off a T-72 tank, catapulting it into the side of St. Elijah’s Monastery.

The force buckled a wall of mortar and stone that had stood for more than 1,000 years here in one of the earliest redoubts of Christianity. Such is the tragedy of war.

The division then made the site a garrison and painted its emblem on the stucco above the low door to the monastery’s chapel. The insignia remained there until a chaplain contemplated the righteousness of having “Screaming Eagles” adorn a house of God.

“That’s not right,” the chaplain said, as the story goes.

Thus began the accidental American stewardship of St. Elijah’s, an ancient site of Christian worship and martyrdom now stuck in the middle of a sprawling military base just south of Mosul, in northern Iraq.

Now, in one small act of preservation, and perhaps penance, the Americans hope to restore St. Elijah’s. Army engineers have drawn up plans to shore up the roof and walls of its main sanctuary — believed to have been built in the 11th century — before the last American troops leave the monastery to an uncertain fate.

I had to drive by this several times on the way to firing ranges, and I understand there were once a week tours that bussed in Iraqi Christians. My main area of interest was the boneyard across the road from it, full of broken Soviet-built tanks, artillery pieces, and armored personnel carriers. Alas, no photos were permitted, probably to stop a couple of thousand soldiers driving out there and blocking the road for people with actual business.

Before my old laptop crashed and I lost everything on the hard drive, I used to have many photos of a very cool Christian monastery on the side of a mountain overlooking what is believed to be the site of the Battle of Gaugamela.

That was easily my strangest day in Iraq. We drove our struggling, underpowered MRAPs up a steep switchback onto the tallest, most isolated mountain for 20 miles, and got out and ran out around without weapons or body armor for a couple of hours, interrupted only a confused Humvee patrol that came out from the radio retransmission station on an adjacent spur to find out what we were doing.

Rock climbing, picture taking, and acting like fools, mostly, although officially we were reconning the battle site for a helicopter flyby and history lesson for the brass that never happened. I also took the opportunity to chat with our company command post, located twice as far away as the official maximum range on my radio. It was the clearest radio conversation I ever had.

On the way down my commander, who was tagging along in my truck, diverted us to large monastery on a side road about halfway between the peak and base. He's fluent in Arabic, and struck up a conversation with the custodians/tour guides, who agreed to show us around, but only if we brought no weapons. While everyone else relaxed and took pictures of old 13th century architecture and newer additions, I made plans with my infantry squad leader to take away the one guard's loosely slung AK-47, barricade ourselves in the chapel with the heavy pews, and sell our lives dearly with the one captured gun and the 2" blade on my Gerber.

In the event, the worst threats we faced were the daunting climb up to the original cave that started it all, unfamiliar ice cream for $0.25 per, and "the library," which proved to a rapacious gift shop.

And if you’re well off, well then I’m happy some for you. But I’d rather not celebrate my defeat and humiliation here with you

2009-12-15T23:27:00.002-06:00

Some advice for ugly breakups with somewhat crazy people - unless you're willing to risk paying a high ongoing cost, make a complete break and don't try a lingering, fading friendship to let them down easy. Don't respond to the periodic bursts of paranoid delusional texts. Don't remain Facebook friends so that they can pollute your wall with drive by slurs or gather information to feed their twisted alternate histories of the recent past.

Case in point: in addition to the highly disturbing digging into my private Facebook messages I already knew about, apparently the ex also obsessively(?) used my account at some point during one of her visits to run through the pages of various female friends she found threatening. One of these led to a mention of my blog, which today she decided to revisit and found my breakup posts, which for reasons I don't entirely grasp are apparently both beyond the pale and potentially libelous[1].

In addition to a few mildly unhinged texts that I unwisely responded to, blowing it up into scores of responses and counter responses, this occasioned a hyperbolic post on her own Facebook wall, a link to this blog, and various mindless outraged comments from the usual assortment of friends largely composed of un(der)employed potheads, unselfaware narcissists[2], and one borderline illiterate mental case former Army deserter[3], who to my everlasting relief declared me the douchiest lieutenant he'd ever encountered.

All of which was forgiveable, as I don't concern myself with the goings on in various degenerate subculture ghettos, but, alas, a gross mischaracterization of our conversation of the day, to the false effect that I'd repeatedly asked her "am I creepy? lol" also appeared on my wall where friends, family, and coworkers could see it.

While composing this blog post a couple of interesting comments have appeared and begun the deletion/ban game. Certain fans and friends of a kindred blogger will be familiar with a not entirely dissimilar drama unfolding over there a year ago. Enjoy; I won't be.

If you really want to wade into some sordid crazy and awesome personal details about me, find her new blog. I won't help you.

Today's Rilo Kiley song is The Execution of All Things, a song about wreaking total destruction on the world as a form of revenge on a former lover.

Soldiers come quickly, I feel the earth beneath my feet.
I’m feeling badly, it’s not an attempt at decency.
And if you’re well off, well then I’m happy some for you.
But I’d rather not celebrate my defeat and humiliation here with you.

Someone come quickly, this place was built for moving out.
Leave behind buildings, the city planners got mapped out.
Bring with you history, and make your hard earned feast.
Then we’ll go to Omaha to work and exploit the booming music scene and humility.

And we’ve been talking all night….

Oh god come quickly, the execution of all things.
Let’s start with the bears and the air and mountains, rivers, and streams.
Then we’ll murder what matters to you and move on to your neighbors and kids.
Crush all hopes of happiness with disease ‘cause of what you did.

And lastly, you’re all alone with nothing left but sleep.
But sleep never comes to you, it’s just the guilt and forever wakefulness of
the weak.
It’s just you and me….

The execution of all things.
The execution of all things.
The execution of all things.

P.S. - Hi, Mom.
--
[1] - If she's upset it must be illegal, a concept I first encountered during an argument that hurt her feelings and led to threats to call the police for "abuse," which I learned after demonstrating hilarious incredulity, apparently meant I was "being very rude to a guest." Mentioning the Lautenberg Amendment in the context of a soldier may have had something do with this, as well. At the crisis point I had to actually visit a police station and invite them to either arrest me or help me remove this blackmail threat before it escalated into something real.

[2] - The author of this blog is, of necessity, fully support of selfaware narcissists.

[3] - Who, after she saw a similar arrangement with me in Extract, was apparently "hired" to bang the new girlfriend of her previous ex-boyfriend, who is also somehow and sometimes and sort of her best friend.

I think I thought I saw you try

2009-12-03T19:24:00.004-06:00

I'm debating one of Matthew Yglesias's typically moronic and ignorant commenters about a fundamentally silly topic (hypothetical future Iranian nukes against non-existent US forces not actually in the Middle East today), if anyone cares. The first of so far two rounds is down at comment #33.

It rather makes me miss the Slithery D v. Publius days.

Synopsis

2009-12-01T18:52:00.002-06:00

So to recap the last few weeks:

On November 4th the girlfriend came into town, for the second time in a row when I was on or just coming off staff duty (which requires me to spend the night at work), which contributed to our second fight at first sight.

On November 5th we attended my former battalion's formal ball, which ended in her crying in front of the assembled officers and many of the soldiers and NCOs before leaving with my worst enemy, who I presumed, not without considerable relief, that she was going to bang in revenge. This proved not to be the case.

On November 6th we got back together, not least because she wasn't due to leave until the 15th.

On November 7th we attended my brigade's formal ball, which went considerably better; even the shocked looks and commentary from witnesses of the penultimate night's events were amusing.

On November 12th the accumulated incompatibilities and annoyances of living with me resulted in a dinner conversation that implicitly acknowledged this relationship wasn't going to work. Several hours later her umpteenth reversal on this point caused a huge fight. Mistakes were made.

On November 13th I visited the police. That night and the 14th I stayed at a friend's house. I wrote an ill advised blog post about the events of the previous night. I took it down.

On November 15th I took her to airport on reasonable speaking terms. I also had staff duty again, marking my third night in a row not sleeping in a real bed and my fourth night without proper sleep.

On November 16th I attended the Hail & Farewell for my former battalion. I got home at 2230. As usual, I got up at 0430 the next morning.

On November 17th I finally finished Call of Duty: ~~Red Dawn~~ MW2. This had been the cause of some friction the previous week. I didn't go to bed at a terribly reasonable time.

On November 18th I attended the Hail & Farewell for my new battalion. I got home at 2200 this time.

On November 19th I attended the fourth going away speech of our outgoing battalion commander; he had nothing new to say, but he said it at considerable length. I got home a couple of hours late, but nothing too drastic.

On November 20th I arrived home and left the apartment only once in the next 48 hours.

On November 23 I got up even earlier than usual for a brigade run. It lasted an hour. Casualties approached 50% overall, and greatly exceeded that in the support battalions. Ten days into running after 45 off with a severe case of tendinitis, I lasted longer than I expected, and then took comfort in the awesome disaster at the rear of the formation that I became part of as each unexpected additional loop broke the hearts of more soldiers, a few company commanders, and even most of the brigade staff. On the drive home I spoke to the ex-girlfriend for the first time since she left.

On November 24th I attended the mandatory change of command ceremony that my friends skipped. It was cold. I sat next to the most annoying and verbose lieutenant in the Army. The outgoing brigade commander elected to ride a horse during the ceremony; of the four people who did so, he was given the smallest, fattest, most mulely looking beast, and proved unable to control it for a long time as it came to a stubborn stop and then turned circles while his bosses and replacement confidently cantered along. This may have been a metaphor for something.

On November 26th I flew to Texas for Thanksgiving. My step-father's annoying family were there. My sister brought her hobo hoard for dinner. There was barely enough food. I spoke very little between dinner and my departure on the 28th.

On November 29th I decided to finally unpack the majority of my equipment from Iraq that has sucked up half of my living room space for two months. It now looks like I moved in at least a week ago.

On November 30th I signed a form acknowledging that I have staff duty on Christmas day. Apparently my commander's intervention got me removed from the duty schedule on New Year's Eve.

Today I finally felt like blogging again.

Fit to print

2009-11-29T09:06:00.003-06:00

Is there anyone except people who exclusively read the NYT who doesn't know that part of the "speculation" about Tiger Wood's car wreck must necessarily include the tidbit that less than 48 hours earlier word leaked on the internet of a forthcoming Inquirer story claiming that he's been having an affair?

One doesn't need to believe or endorse that story to think the false claim might have come to Mrs. Woods attention on Thanksgiving and led to him tearing out of the driveway after 2 a.m. in such a state that he immediately crashed...or even did so deliberately. But you'll never know if you only read the Gray Lady.

It's such a big mistake, lying here in your warm embrace

2009-11-06T00:11:00.002-06:00

Today's Rilo Kiley song is The Good That Won't Come Out, in honor of my epically horrific public breakup tonight at my recently former battalion's military ball.

It's (probably) about being trapped in a doomed situation and being too afraid to escape it

Let's get together and talk about the modern age.
All of our friends were gathered there with their pets
just talking shit about how we're all so upset about the disappearing ground.
As we watch it melt....

It's all of the good that won't come out of us
and how eventually our hands will just turn to dust,
if we keep shaking them.
Standing here on this frozen lake.

I do this thing where I think I'm real sick
but I won't go to the doctor to find out about it
Cause they make you stay real still in a real small space
As they chart up your insides and put them on display.
They'd see all of it, all of me, all of it.

All the good that won't come out of me
and all the stupid lies I hide behind.
It's such a big mistake
lying here in your warm embrace.

Oh, you're almost home.
I've been waiting for you to come in.
Dancing around in your old suits going crazy in your room again.
I think I'll go out an embarrass myself by getting drunk and falling down in
the street.
You say I choose sadness
that it never once has chosen me.
Maybe you're right...

Let's talk about all of our friends who lost the war
And all of the novels that had yet to be written about them.

It's all the good that won't come out of them
and all the stupid lies they hide behind.
It's such a big mistake
Standing here on this frozen lake.

It's all of the good that won't come out of me
And how eventually my mouth will just turn to dust
If I don't tell you quick.
Standing here on this frozen lake.

'Cause you're just damage control for a walking corpse like me - like you

2009-11-02T18:26:00.003-06:00

Today's Rilo Kiley song, Portions for Foxes (CD quality file), is dedicated to the wife of one of my soldiers, who accused another one of them of rape this weekend under highly questionable circumstances. I got to conduct the administrative, non-legal, investigation today. Which is good, because I'd hate to prejudge the results of the rape kit just because she's previously recanted another rape accusation and [...] and [...].

Portions for Foxes is a catchy, upbeat tune about a trainwreck of a relationship.

There's blood in my mouth 'cause I've been biting my tongue all week
I keep on talkin' trash but I never say anything
And the talkin' leads to touchin'
and the touchin' leads to sex
and then there is no mystery left

And It's bad news
Baby I'm bad news
I'm just bad news, bad news, bad news

I know I'm alone if I'm with or without you
but just bein' around you offers me another form of relief
When the loneliness leads to bad dreams
and the bad dreams lead me to callin' you
and I call you and say "C'MERE!"

And it's bad news
Baby I'm bad news
I'm just bad news, bad news, bad news

And it's bad news
Baby it's bad news
It's just bad news, bad news, bad news

'Cause you're just damage control
for a walking corpse like me - like you

'Cause we'll all be
Portions for foxes
Yeah we'll all be
Portions for foxes

There's a pretty young thing in front of you
and she's real pretty and she's real into you
and then she's sleepin' inside of you
and the talkin' leads to touchin'
then touchin' leads to sex
and then there is no mystery left

And it's bad news
I don't blame you
I do the same thing
I get lonely too

And you're bad news
My friends tell me to leave you
That you're bad news, bad news, bad news

That you're bad news
Baby you're bad news
and you're bad news
Baby you're bad news
and you're bad news
I don't care I like you
and you're bad news
I don't care I like you
I like you

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

2009-11-02T18:17:00.001-06:00

For ten years, Boulder residents have staged a spontaneous “naked pumpkin run” on Halloween, in which dozens of runners (150 last year) don only shoes and a pumpkin on their head, then jog a four-block route through the city.

Fail.

Least. Informative. Lede. Ever.

2009-10-31T10:01:00.002-05:00

Way to go, AP:

BEIJING (AP) -- Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo sure know how to make a comeback.

Who? Comeback at what?

Competing at their first event since winning the 2007 world title, Shen and Zhao claimed gold at the Cup of China on Saturday with a landslide victory. Their score of 200.97 points was almost 15 ahead of reigning world silver medalists Zhang Dan and Zhang Hao.
''Our goal is the Olympics,'' Zhao said. ''That is why we're here ... to reach our goal step by step.''

The Olympics in what? Something with points, I guess.

Japan's Nobunari Oda won his second Grand Prix title of the season, beating world champion Evan Lysacek. Akiko Suzuki of Japan was the surprise winner in a lackluster women's competition, while Olympic silver medalists Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto easily won the ice dance title.

Why were a Formula One race and ice dancing happening at the same event?

Shen and Zhao retired after winning their third world title in 2007. But the two-time Olympic bronze medalists decided to try one last time for that elusive Olympic gold.
Though they were rusty in spots, their free skate to ''Adagio in G Minor'' showcased their power and their passion. Their triple twist was huge, and their lifts were smooth and featured unique positions.

Oh! I don't know how a piece from "Ice Skater Journal" got lifted without any modification for a general audience and reprinted in the New York Times.

You're gonna crash on the barrelhead son / You'll regret the things that you done

2009-10-29T17:02:00.003-05:00

John O'Quinn has died, not too far from where I once lived.

I'm selling people things they don't want when I don't know what you need

2009-10-28T21:38:00.002-05:00

This blog, obviously, has been somewhat adrift of late. Lacking any better ideas, I'll go back to that old volume (output, not readers) standby, music blogging.

My latest music obsession is Rilo Kiley, discovered some months back on Yglesias' blog. I like Jenny Lewis' voice quite a lot, and find something nicely romantically forlorn (or straight up interestingly depressing, on The Execution of All Things album) in a lot of their lyrics.

Today's sample is A Man / Me / Then Jim, one I just came to new appreciation of today.

Lyrics:

I had one friend in high school recently he hung himself with string
His note said
"If livin' is the problem, well that's just baffling."
And at the wake I waited around to see my ex first love
And I barely recognized her, but I knew exactly what she was thinking of
We sat quietly in the corner whispering close about loss
And I remembered why I loved her, and I asked her why I drove her off

She said
The slow fade of love
Its soft edge might cut you
And our poor friend, Jim
Well he just lived within
The slow fade of love

A woman calls my house once a week; she's always selling things
Some charity, a phone plan, a subscription to a magazine
And as I turned her down, I always do, there was something trembling in her voice
I said
Hey, what troubles you?
She said
I'm surprised you noticed
Well, my husband, he's leaving, and I can't convince him to stay
And he'll take our daughter with him, she wants to go with him anyway
I'm sorry I'm hard to live with, living is the problem for me
I'm selling people things they don't want when I don't know what you need

He said the slow fade of love
And its mist might choke you
It's my gradual descent
Into a life I never meant
It's the slow fade of love

I was driving south of Melrose; I happened upon my old lover's old house
I found myself staring at the closed up door like the day she threw me out
"Dianna, Dianna, Dianna I would die for you
I'm in love with you completely, I'm afraid that's all I can do"
She said
"You can sleep upon my doorstep, you can promise me indifference, Jim
But my mind is made up, and I'll never let you in again"

For the slow fade of love
It might hit you from below
It's your gradual descent
Into a life you never meant
It's the slow fade of love

Down

2009-10-15T16:33:00.005-05:00

This is a strange one.

The mystery appeared to be deepening in Fort Collins.
The authorities were investigating whether Falcon Heene could have been in a box attached to the bottom of the balloon. According to The Associated Press, one of the boy’s two older brothers had seen him climbing into the box before the balloon lifted off. But the box was not attached to the balloon when it made its soft landing in a field in Adams County, Colo., about 20 miles northeast of Denver International Airport.

Kathy Messick, a spokeswoman for the Larimer County Sheriff’s office, said that the box had been attached with pegs.
Ms. Messick, briefing reporters on the Heene family’s narrow, tree-lined street jammed with emergency vehicles, said that the authorities were now searching the three counties — Larimer, Weld and Adams — over which the balloon flew.

Apparently balloons are big around here. I saw one drifting along as I left work today. No children were observed falling from it.

Update: Disappointing.

A six-year-old boy thought to have been carried away by a helium balloon in Colorado was in fact hiding in a box in an attic at home, an official has said.

Larimer county sheriff Jim Alderden told reporters that apparently Falcon Heene had "been there the whole time".

And from Twitter:

#balloonboy, imma let you finish, but Amelia Earhart had one of the best disappearances in flight OF ALL TIME!!

and

Yo Balloon Boy, I'm a let you finish, but Anne Frank had the best attic hideout spot of all time.

And one to grow on

2009-10-15T14:45:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow postdeployment block leave ends; it's also my last official day with my current company and battalion. On Monday I report to the artillery battalion headquartered 50 meters from my current company office for a job TBA.

As a going away present tomorrow I get to do the end of the week arms room inventory, a task that normally requires a few hours, that since our return from Iraq has taken little more than one hour, and that tomorrow, if they decide to open and unpack our sensitive items containers that just arrived, will take all day plus some.

Thanks, guys.

Faith in humanity rises 2%

2009-10-12T10:33:00.002-05:00

After longer than I care to think about, Miley Cyrus' "Party in the USA" has finally fallen out of the #1 selling slot at the iTunes store.

To #2. And replaced by Britney Spears.

Boooored now

2009-10-09T14:09:00.002-05:00

Fort the 1+ occasional Iain Banks fans reading this, you can safely skip Transition. The three star ratings are correct.

Following Matter, this bodes ill for his future sci-fi output. I confess I haven't kept up with his more conventional weirdness of late.

Paths not taken

2009-10-08T09:55:00.004-05:00

My original orders after school were to 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, which is currently in Afghanistan and popping up in the news quite often in recent months as they suffer casualties. Here's an article on allegedly low morale with some choice quotes.

“We’re lost — that’s how I feel. I’m not exactly sure why we’re here,” said Specialist Raquime Mercer, 20, whose closest friend was shot dead by a renegade Afghan policeman last Friday. “I need a clear-cut purpose if I’m going to get hurt out here or if I’m going to die.”

Sergeant Christopher Hughes, 37, from Detroit, has lost six colleagues and survived two roadside bombs. Asked if the mission was worthwhile, he replied: “If I knew exactly what the mission was, probably so, but I don’t.”

The only soldiers who thought it was going well “work in an office, not on the ground”. In his opinion “the whole country is going to s***”.

The battalion’s 1,500 soldiers are nine months in to a year-long deployment that has proved extraordinarily tough. Their goal was to secure the mountainous Wardak province and then to win the people’s allegiance through development and good governance. They have, instead, found themselves locked in an increasingly vicious battle with the Taleban.

They have been targeted by at least 300 roadside bombs, about 180 of which have exploded. Nineteen men have been killed in action, with another committing suicide. About a hundred have been flown home with amputations, severe burns and other injuries likely to cause permanent disability, and many of those have not been replaced. More than two dozen mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles (MRAPs) have been knocked out of action.

By contrast, we in 1-67 AR suffered five KIA due to enemy action (in one catastrophic attack) and another dead in an accident (all six in my company), plus roughly half a dozen evacuated with not too serious gunshot or shrapnel wounds after spending the last half of the deployment in the most dangerous current area of Iraq.

I recall thinking when I made the trade to come to Colorado back in January 2008 that one of the downsides was that a deployment to Iraq was going to be slightly more dangerous than one to Afghanistan

Conspicuous consumption

2009-09-08T00:14:00.003-05:00

Since returning from Iraq three and a half weeks ago I have acquired the following big ticket items:

A television
A computer
A car
A girlfriend

So far these have cost me more than 90% of what I earned in Iraq, although with the exception of the last they are nonrecurring items that shouldn't hurt going forward.

I will continue to advise my soldiers not to do what I have been doing. I have been particularly disapproving of car purchases. Tomorrow should be interesting.

James Marsters news

2009-08-23T11:55:00.001-05:00

Buffy fans may be interested to know he's been cast as in the new Battlestar Galactica spinoff, Caprica, and he is dead.

e-lementary

2009-08-18T15:21:00.002-05:00

I believe it was on the last blog I discussed my peculiar love of the number 37, and how it crops up surprisingly often in fiction or daily life when people are called upon to invent a number, probably because 3 and 7 seem psychologically random (they aren't end or middle points on the 0-9 continuum) and also have religious/magical cultural significance.

But now I see that 100/e also rounds to 37, which is the optimal number of objects to sample in a set of 100 objects of unknown quality to maximize your chance of picking the best one. Very cool.

Got away

2009-08-18T14:37:00.002-05:00

I'm not sure what I think about this.

Back in the USSR USA

2009-08-16T18:05:00.002-05:00

I have returned to Colorado Springs, and nothing appears changed, except that one of the two girls at the coffee shop I used to frequent five times a week radically changed her hair.

I am in the slow process of putting my life back together. My car will eventually be released from durance government in a couple of days, if I can get the registration renewed and overnighted from Texas in time. I move into more apartment than I need but only a sliver more than I wanted (two bathrooms? really?) on Saturday, and then will need to spend a material fraction of the year's pay I have sitting in my checking account on various new and improved furnishings before belatedly finding somewhere productive to park the balance.

First stupid purchase: a MacBook Pro. What happened to this? Let us never speak of it.

With a bang, then a whimper

2009-07-25T13:42:00.003-05:00

Even allowing for dust storm delays, I will almost certainly be back home, deployment complete, in less than a month. With a very little luck I will not go on another mission before then, and will hold the questionable distinction (one of many) in our battalion of leading the last platoon to be attacked, as well as the last one to be go outside the gate.

The attack was a small pipe bomb that ineffectually blew up right in front of me and right next to my lead truck...the 18th in the larger convoy, and the first time US forces had been attacked during curfew in the six months we've been here.

In what I sincerely hope was the last time anyone serving as QRF had to do anything, yesterday I had to chase some ~~kids off my lawn~~ teenagers and their sheep outside our base's outer concertina wire perimeter. It ain't pasture ground, guys. Not that I could explain that, since my interpreter chose not to be findable in the fifteen minute window I had to respond to the call.

Nevertheless, my sudden transformation into a homicidal rage expression and loudly profane threats of impending death, combined with a modest twitch of my rifle barrel, finally convinced them to vacate the premises after an extended mutually incomprehensible session of babbling and arm waving at the signs they were standing on the wrong side of that read in Arabic "deadly force authorized." As a buddy commented after, "everyone speaks barrel to the face." Not something I literally tested, but given how much I scared my own medic standing next to me, not necessary, either.

Goodbye, Mosul. Try not to mortar me too much on my way out.

Waking up is a strange reason to diiiiiiiiiiie

2009-07-14T05:03:00.003-05:00

I first saw "Auto-Tune the News" in installment #2 a couple of months ago on Razib's blog and found it brilliant in parts, but uneven. Now the series has gotten positive mention on Slate so I thought I'd revisit it. Whoa! #5 and #6 are much more consistently brilliant.

Inadvertent utopias

2009-07-04T01:47:00.001-05:00

Troy Patterson invents Remote Roulette and makes me laugh:

81 IFC. RoboCop! Director Paul Verhoeven was clearly looking through rose-colored glasses when peering at the future of Detroit, but the film otherwise holds up well as a story of crime and vengeance—at least the stretch between Leeza Gibbons' cameo and the initial firing of the Cobra Assault Cannon.