messiestobjects

It's All About The Little Differences

I was in San Diego for a week and on one of my days off, naturally I headed down to Tijuana Mexico. There's not much to see there, but I wanted to get a real Mexican taco and some cheap prescription medication. Specifically I was looking for a topical creme (none of your business!) that even with a prescription here in the land of the medically fleeced is wicked expensive. Also I was thinking of picking up some prescription strength ibuprofen because the constant long flights criss-crossing the land of ridiculously high medical care costs can get tedious in my lower back and ass-bone area.

These are pretty much the only pictures I got in Tijuana, but I have more border town follies to tell. Luckily, I also visited the Mount Palomar Observatory while in Southern California and there's not much to tell about that trip so I'll punctuate my Mexican tale with those pictures instead.

So randomly, I chose one Mexican pharmacy out of hundreds; a tiny corner shop that I liked the look of. I went in and the proprietor introduced himself as Federico. I asked him if he had my topical creme (shut. up.) and he did, and then I asked him about my ibuprofen. He had it of course but it was a bit expensive for me so I opted not to get it there and maybe shop around a bit first.

So as I was purchasing the topical creme Federico pulls up a bottle from behind the counter and asks me if I like Tequila. I stutter for a moment but what is one supposed to do in such a situation? I say well sure, who doesn't? So we do a shot of tequila together. I then sputter a bit with the tequila shivers, but it's actually pretty smooth stuff and I enjoy my shot. I say well that's mighty nice of you Federico, thank you very much. He says hang on hang on, want another?

So we're hanging out for a while, chatting about this or that, doing shots of tequila in this pharmacy over the counter in broad busy daylight and I think, "Mexico is different." Then he asks me why I wanted the prescription strength ibuprofen for and I explain to him about my lower back pain and all of that. So my new friend ducks down under the counter again and pulls out a large blue pill and hands it to me with another shot of tequila and says to try this one out. I of course take it because I trust this mad chemist completely, for some reason (I'm guessing it had something to do with the tequila but I suppose we'll never know for certain). "What is it?" I ask, putting down my empty shot glass. "Vicodin my friend," he says. "Wonderful," I reply.

I had sprained my foot jogging on a hotel treadmill earlier and I quite forgot about it during my afternoon in Tijuana. I had the nicest time, walking about, buying a cup full of salty pomegranate seeds from a street vendor. I got my taco and a cerveza too, and they were delicious and I felt very good and nice.

My job in San Diego was on a Navy Base, and the next day I was talking to one of the Navy guys in the class telling him about my trip to Tijuana and he got all weird on me. He said "You went to Tijuana?!" And I was kind of like uh, yeah why not? It's like 15 minutes down the road, what's the big deal? And apparently the big deal is that the military has forbidden servicemen to go into Mexico while off duty because of all the drug cartel related violence down there. He was telling me how people are getting killed there all the time, or kidnapped, even American bystanders and I was thinking huh, I'm glad I went and had such a nice relaxed time there without knowing about all of that.

"I Don’t Know Why People Are So Keen To Put The Details Of Their Private Life In Public. They Forget That Invisibility Is A Superpower." - Banksy.

"People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.

Any advertisement in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It belongs to you. It's yours to take, rearrange and re-use. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head" - Banksy

"The Art we look at is made by only a select few. A small group create, promote, purchase, exhibit and decide the success of Art. Only a few hundred people in the world have any real say. When you go to an Art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires..." - Banksy

After checking out the aspens, I drove down into Park City, Utah. I almost decided not to even stop in town because from the road it sort of looked like a typical cutesy American main street chock-a-block full of quaint shops, which depresses me. So many American towns sell themselves as Historic or as a good tourist destination when in reality all that they have to offer is a short stroll past shop windows and Galleries full of crap. However, the Sundance Film Festival is held in Park City every year, so I figured there might be something worth seeing. I parked on a hill, walked down some steps that led to an alley which exited out onto Main Street Park City. And just as I was getting to the end of the alley, before I even really caught a glimpse of the town, I did a double, triple, quadruple take at the above work of graffiti on the wall. I recognized it immediately as a Banksy! Well, and not just because the locals framed it with a big BANKSY nameplate, neither.

"The human race is an unfair and stupid competition. A lot of the runners don't even get decent sneakers or clean drinking water. Some people are born with a massive head start, every possible help along the way and still the referees seem to be on their side. It's not surprising some people have given up competing altogether and gone to sit in the grandstand, eat junk food and shout abuse. What we need in this race is a lot more streakers." - Banksy

Needless to say, I stood around that corner for about a half hour taking shots, not even really noticing that my assessment of Park City as yet another whimsical trade street was otherwise entirely correct in my desire to use it as background.

"You're mind is working at its best when you're being paranoid. You explore every avenue and possibility of your situation at high speed with total clarity." - Banksy

Although I love Banksy's work, embarrassingly it was a bit of time before I came down off of the high of discovery to actually think about the meaning of the piece very deeply. I mean, my initial assessment was that it was a sort of anti-film industry statement and I left it at that. Then when I'd gotten off a few shots and calmed down a bit, I started to feel a bit stupid as I began to suspect that the joke was on me and my need to photograph everything, and that's the type of mania that Banksy was lampooning. I got a little shy and surreptitiously looked around to make sure that the locals, who were probably in on the joke by now, weren't laughing at me. Nothing too overt, but a girl walked past and I swear that she snorked at me.

"We can’t do anything to change the world until capitalism crumbles. In the meantime we should all go shopping to console ourselves." - Banksy

Then I decided that I had better study it more closely. I slowly began to realize that maybe it was more of a comment on places like Park City; People find a beautiful bit of nature and WHAM! Ruin it by plunking down a town full of boutique shopping, ski slopes, spas, gigantic resort hotels that resemble Hogwarts and a million vacation houses which, due to the non-stop real estate frenzy, wind up all facing and contemplating each other, thus destroying the open natural beauty that had made the area a popular destination in the first place.

"People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish. But that’s only if it’s done properly." - Banksy

Feeling satisfied that Banksy wasn't necessarily having a laugh at my expense and being happy with my pictures, I wandered through town for a bit casting internal aspersions on the stupid snorking girl and continuing to contemplate the piece. One thing that Banksy is right about for sure; seeing a work of art in context is much more thought provoking than seeing it on a wall in a highly secured building, or in a book. I imagined that there was a reason he chose to paint that particular piece in a town where the rich and famous gather in obnoxious droves every year to celebrate themselves. I eventually decided that perhaps it was a comment on art and celebrity in the media, how in the race to put something under the microscope and on film for exploitative purposes, you destroy what may or may not make it valuable. Then I saw some photographs of aspens in the shop window of a gallery. I "ooohhhed" and "ahhhed" in the privacy of my hypocritical head, and went in to see. Inside is where I learned about aspens, and also that the reason that Banksy had been in town was for the opening of his film "Exit Through The Gift Shop". He street arted the place up, and then later on the locals framed it with pride for him. I'm not exactly sure what Banksy's current stance on permanently framing his work and hanging his name on it is, but I suspect he has complicated emotions about it. The gallery attendant told me of another small piece that Banksy had left behind (and also locally framed), and where to find it.

"I'd been painting rats for three years before someone said "that's a clever anagram of art" and I had to pretend I'd known that all along." - Banksy

He's famous for his rats. They're a bit of a trademark; better than a tag, really. At any rate, by the time that I left town, I'd decided that the main piece could probably mean any or none or all of the things that I went through thinking it might, which is the great thing about seeing it live. Though the Banksy book that Julie has will always be one of my most treasured rat books, isolated on the page I got much less highly dignified contemplation out of his hundreds of great pieces than I did from seeing that one where it was meant to be seen.

"Sometimes I feel so sick at the state of the world I can’t even finish my second apple pie" - Banksy

The only other thing in town that tickled my fancy was an advert for a certain beer in a bar window. Normally I wouldn't have cared much, but being in Utah, with the Mormons and all, I was compelled.

"I used to tell everyone I met to be an artist..... I don't do that any more." - Banksy

"O Krampus! My Krampus! Our Fearful Trip Is Done...

...The whip has weathered every whack, the prize we sought is won;
The beer is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady march, the Krampus grim and daring"

-A Krampusization of the first verse of 'O Captain! My Captain!' by Walt Whitman

And so we come to it at last, Krampus fest 2010! For anyone who has been wondering just what the hell Krampus is, and why I've been making such a fuss over it for the last several posts, hopefully this one will explain our love for it. The last time I was at Krampus was in aught 6, so it was really great to hit it again at long last. Here's a distant glimpse of a pack of demons led through the lower part of town by St. Nick as they make their early house calls.

Krampus fest is awesome. In a nutshell, on every 5th of December many small mountain villages from the area around Berchtesgaden send a Krampus delegation consisting of a band of demons led by the village's St. Nick stand-in. St. Nick will usually have a couple of little girls dressed as angels following close to his side, ringing small chimes to warn of their approach. The demons come in a few different types. Some wear simple furs with a furry dog-face looking mask, and carry whips. Some wear furs with a more elaborate wooden hand-carved demon face mask, sometimes with cowbells strapped to their backs, and carry whips. And others are covered in straw, usually with the wooden masks, always with the cowbells strapped on their backs, and carry whips.

The delegations converge upon Berchtesgaden for the official Krampus opening ceremony. It was really crowded during the daytime this year, so we were unable to get close to the square where they had it, but I've seen it before so I can describe the gist of it. Basically what happens is that St. Nicholas, in an effort to make the human race behave more admirably than is it's wont, meets up with an old friend of his, a shady character named Knecht Ruprecht. St. Nicholas asks to borrow the demons that are under Knecht's control for two days and nights, that he might lead them into battle for the souls of children. The German Bundeswehr, a military outfit, supervises the handing-over ceremony. If negotiations go smoothly they promptly escort Knecht and themselves out of town, essentially handing control of Berchtesgaden over to the demons of St. Nick for the duration.

This is where it gets scary. So in order to wage war against the sins of mankind, St. Nicholas orders the demons to begin their rampage. Krampus demons, being demonic, are able to sense the sinful. Sniffing out their own kind, as such. They know if you've been naughty, and when they find you, they use the combined psychological warfare tactics of being damned scary looking, their towering Bavarian farmer-like sizes, and the maddening sound of the cowbells of hell in order to make you flee in terror. And when you flee, that's when they chase you, and use the whips.

You see they're no Disney whips, this is a serious business. They whap! you pretty hard with those things on the back of the knees or thighs, and it stings. The purpose of the whipping is to beat the sins out of you. St. Nicholas, being the kind saint that he is, wants to be able to give the little German children presents on Christmas morning and the only way to insure that he doesn't have to leave anyone out is by punishing them for the past year's sins first. It's quite an elegant system, if you think about it. No coal in the stockings, or wooden shoes or however they do it there. No child left behind. Whap!

It starts off fairly tamely in the late afternoon. The crowds of onlookers are thick, and the demon packs roam about town in fairly orderly fashion, whacking the occasional bystander who sticks out from the crowd a bit too much. The Krampus fest coincides with Berchtesgaden's Christkindlemarkt, so there are plenty of places to stop and grab a gluwein or a beer and some wurst or spätzle while shadowing a particularly fun bunch of demons. There's even a bit of time to... do... some... window... shopping?

Erm... I love it. I'm not sure if little armless goat/tree boy here has anything to do with Krampus, but for him to just sort of appear in a wood carver's window amongst other more standard shop fare is fairly indicative of how awesome Berchtesgaden is. Is he supposed to be vomiting twigs? Anyway. As the night carries on, things get a bit rowdier. The demons get drunker and start hitting harder, the crowds get thinner, and those who stay get numb from both the cold and the whippings. And drunker.

Gluhwein comes in those nice little mugs. The above scene is a demon showing a rare bit of selective craftiness. He'd reached over John there to grab the mug of gluhwein from the young lady in order to lure her away from the table, where he proceeded to whip the tar out of her. I sort of can't believe she fell for it, but she was pretty young, after all. Very young, John. [Ahem.] Shows you they do in fact know who needs a good whipping.

You may have noticed that the hands and arms of the demons are covered in a greasy soot. They tend to rub their hands over the faces of their victims, leaving a sooty hand-print. I'm not sure exactly why; logically I would guess they do this so as to leave a message for the other demons that this one has been taken care of, move along, but I haven't noticed that the demons leave previously-marked victims alone any more than anyone else. Indeed, sometimes it seems as though the mark is given to single out those who need more attention than usual, and may end the night having been beaten several times.

Young women in particular do seem to get singled out more often. But if I explore this thought it leads into uncomfortable examinations of German sexuality and the whole town seems to view this behavior as a healthy and normal outlet for the youth once a year so I suppose we'll leave it at that as no harm, no foul. Or rather; not too much harm other than a slight stinging and a few morning after bruises, no foul.

Creeeeepy. But then, this isn't supposed to be charming. It is an ancient tradition and despite the rather gleefully dark connotations of the whole thing, is actually religious in nature. As such, there are certain aspects of Krampus that should be taken seriously which, I am ashamed to admit, in my younger and more vulnerable years I did not realize. Pretty much anything goes at Krampus but the main thing is that during the festivities, the demons are in charge. It is not appreciated when some wise-ass American stands up to them. I know that sounds crazy; I mean look at these guys, who would have the nerve to stand up to them anyway?!

Well it happens. Some stupid drunk American thinks he's braver than most people and flits about, trying to steal a whip, or simply standing in the middle of the road forcing a confrontation just to display how unafraid of getting a whap! behind the knees he is. Sometimes the demon ignores him, but often, especially the later it gets, said dumb-ass American finds himself on his back on the cobblestones after having been the victim of a running tackle and shoved 15 feet through the air across the road. And then group-whipped repeatedly. Usually the victim is too stupid to realize this is a severe reprimand of his behaviour and instead mistakes it for "all in good fun". Sheesh.

One of the greatest of the worst-kept secrets of Krampus fest in Berchtesgaden is the Goldener Bär, (The Golden Bear) a solidly good German restaurant with an Italian restaurant upstairs. If you sneak through the Goldener Bär, then sneak upstairs, there is a balcony which overlooks a hidden courtyard behind the building. And in this courtyard is a sort of staging/pow wow/rest area for the Krampus demons. It is a very long, exhausting two days for these guys, dressing in heavy costumes and running around all day whipping people and ringing bells. They need the occasional break to rest up, drink some beer, howl like demons, and party it up on their own. And of course a place for me to get some good shots. Here St. Nicholas is basking in the worship of his demons.

And then, just to prove he's no prude, St. Nick instructs them to let the howl-down begin!

Austria has this brand of chocolates named after Mozart. They are dainty little bon-bons, and cardboard cutouts of Mozart displaying a box of them are ubiquitous in the Alps. Apparently, Krampus demons thought Mozart needed a good whipping this year. Off with his head!

And this seems a little dangerous to me but hay, if a demon needs his nicotine, I for one am not standing in his way. (misspelling intended, haw haw!) A flaming straw demon would have been pretty scary anyway, and I was ready, if disappointed, with my camera.

The balcony overlooking the courtyard is really a great spot. Next time we go I will try and borrow someone's video camera so I can catch all the action. The cowbells from hell, the chanting, the howling, the demonic singing. I love it! One of the demons needed to use the demon loo and came up and was trying to get by us. I think he scared Nimmer a little.

But at the end of the night, even demons need to tone it down and kick back a bit. Even from the demon pow wow, a rest in a normal pub with some human friends is occasionally needed.

As for myself, one of my favorite places to rest my whipped buns and weary feet with a beer is upstairs, at that Italian restaurant I was telling you about. They serve good European style pizza and of course wonderful German beer, but most importantly it's very warm and not usually too crowded. So Gerald, Julie and I took a break up there for some quiet replenishment when some of our friends came in for a quiet rest of their own!

The above photo was taken with Julie's camera by a demon, and believe it or not it was their idea! I don't think any of us had the courage to ask for a photo but it turns out this was a really friendly pair. They just came over and plopped down next to us and began a half-hour or so of friendly chat. Of course, they didn't speak much English and my German is minimal, but it was educational nonetheless. Julie took this one.

The demons were obviously friends. The one you've seen here is a giant Bavarian man, and would be extremely intimidating even without the getup. His friend was a much smaller man, and they made an amusing pair. Julie got this fantastic photo as well.

The smaller demon allowed Julie to try on his mask. I can't believe she asked him if she could; I was still terrified of them. Perhaps I have too many preconceptions about Krampus Nacht to be able to separate the guys wearing the masks from the traditions they represent.

When I tell people about Krampus, I get very mixed reactions. Some people think it sounds like the coolest thing ever but more often, people just think it sounds stupid. "Why would you want to let a bunch of scary men in costumes whip you?! You're weird and a little gay, dude." That always surprises me. It's an experience like none you'd ever be allowed to have in the States. I mean, people like the idea of running with the bulls, or going to that crazy tomato festival. This is along the same lines as those but much more fun in a way more primal.

Notice I got greased on the top of my head. I think they like to take advantage of such a landing deck when they can. Anyway, I hope I've managed to get across why Krampus is awesome and not stupid and a little gay to anyone reading this who might be new to the whole thing.

So that was Krampus 2010. It was awesome, and really great to see my friend Nimmer again and meet his girlfriend and his friend John, and it was great to have Gerald along as well; he was one of the few who thought it sounded awesome the first time he heard about it so it's nice to see it get appreciated. It wound up being a really fun group of people. I was bummed that other Krampus companions of years past were unable to make it, but maybe next time. However the best thing about Krampus this year was being able to share it with Julie, who has had to listen to me yammer on about it and Germany for the last 4 years and finally got to see for herself. She had a really great time and now when I yammer on about it, she can join in. She and I stayed in Berchtesgaden for two more days after Krampus in order to recuperate from three weeks on the road and a nasty bug. I'd never done that before but A) Berchtesgaden is a near ghost town after the fest and B) the perfect place to decompress at the end of a Honeymoon. The hotel Bavaria had a Turkish bath and sauna in their private spa room, and we took full advantage. And two more delicious German dinners at the Goldener Bär are nothing to pass up. Well, until next time, may visions of gluhwein and whip-bearing demons dance in our heads.

Glückliches Neues Jahr! Wilkommen Auf Deutschland!

After Paris, I finally returned to the Fatherland. There is something special about crossing the border into Germany; I feel finally at home. Nürnberg is a nice easy train ride from Paris. We'd arrived at night, in the middle of a big snowstorm. There had been a couple of delays, but I was so happy to be traveling on Deutsche Bahn again that I didn't mind at all. This is a nice blurry shot of us about 5 minutes after being outside that night. I was using my small pocket camera and didn't realize the date stamp was turned on. Grr.

Nürnberg is the home of the largest, cutest damned Christmas Market (Christkindlmarkt) of all time. In Germany they are ubiquitous this time of year, and this was Nürnberg's 175th annual market. 175th. I've been to Nürnberg several times, and have yet to get a decent picture of the market. I'm not sure exactly why that is, except that I may be too busy enjoying it to bother trying too hard with my camera. They sell all kinds of delicious holiday treats like Lebkuchen, Wurst, and gluhwein along with various other staples such as Christmas ornaments, hats, gloves, candy, liquor, and good, solid, practical German cheer.

Nürnberg is also home to the Albrecht Dürer Haus. He was a very famous 16th century artist. This is the Albrecht Dürer square.

See the rabbit? That's one of his sculptures. Let's take a closer look.

Are those human toes? And demon baby rabbits? Dürer was kind of a nutjob. But then again so are all those mid-millenium religious artists. It doesn't seem like something that came out of the 16th century, does it? More like that H.R. Giger guy who designed the Alien.

Anyway, Nürnberg is a small town. To be savored more than photographed, apparently. Julie had her birthday there, where I totally scored points for best birthday party location ever. We there began our week of eating delicious German food with spätzle, nürnbergerwurst mit sauerkraut, and good thick beer with twice the alcohol content of American and including Bavarian State-mandated pure beer ingredients. And we took a break from the snow and cold to see the latest installment of the Harry Potter franchise at an original language version cinema there. Good good times.

So that's that. It was awesome. I'm getting all excited just reliving my time in Germany, so imagine how happy we were to actually be there. I will retire there one day, I swear. Here's the next Krampus teaser pic. The mountain is called the Watzmann, as viewed from our hotel balcony in Berchtesgaden. At the bottom of the shot you can see some Krampus demons jogging through the streets of town on their way toward the evening festivities.

They're a bit hard to see. If you click on the picture you can view it in a larger format (that's true of all the pictures I post, by the by) or, I'll post a bonus-bonus Krampus teaser shot of a closer-up. The bells, the bells!!

All Rallied Up For Sanity

For the first time ever, I posted my photos and comments on facebook before blogging here about it. So here are the bad jokes again. Suffer. My sister threw me the biggest birthday party ever, with 1/1228th of the US population in attendance!

Julie picked me up at the Baltimore airport on 10-29 and we drove down to College Park, Md and spent the night. Got up early, met my sister Katie, her boyfriend Drew, and a college friend of theirs named Patrick. Got on a sardine can Metro and headed to the rally.

It was packed! We squeezed our way forward as far as we could, but we only could make it to the first monitor section, and could barely see the monitor. But we could hear just fine.

I love this one. The cop car was beeping, booping, and edging people out of it's way, and I wanted to time the sign placement just right.

Most of the mass crowd experiments that the Mythbuster guys did were kind of tedious from where we were, but the wave one was pretty cool. So was the seismic stomping but that was harder to capture in a photo.

My back was getting sore from all the chickens-in-a-coop standing, so I had to kneel down for a break.

This is the crowd waving to Cat Stevens. Or rather Jusef Islam as he calls himself now. That's right, John Stewart had CAT STEVENS sing 'Peace Train'! It was actually beautiful, and the crowd was kind of mass touched, you could feel that. But Stephen Colbert interrupted the song for a gag involving Ozzy Osbourne, and I actually got really angry about it. Pissed, actually. And I'm sure I wasn't alone. Why on Earth would you get Cat Stevens to sing and then cut him off for a stupid gag?! Shameful. They let freaking Kid Rock sing his whole song, and that was pure torture.

I feel really happy that I went. It was no Woodstock or anything, but it was really, really refreshing to see that smart, sane, polite people will show up for an event like this, in 3 or 4 times the numbers of those who would show up for a Beck rally. It made me feel like maybe the US isn't totally unredeemable, which I'm sure was John Stewart's intention. I've been feeling quite down about the state of affairs for quite some time, angry and shocked that there are so damn many willfully ignorant, racist homophobic idiots both in postions of power and among the general populace of the US. It's great to see that people who are more intelligent than FOX NEWS viewers could actually be in the majority. Or at least, not as much in the minority as it usually feels. If you haven't yet listened to John's main speech, his moment of sincerity, I highly recommend it.

I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be the flying spaghetti monster. The clean-up crew guy just looks happy because he doesn't have much work to do, picking up after such an orderly crowd.

A Post rally we-were-there shot.

A parting shot.

Apparently Reading PD James Influences The Way I Write My Bitter Rants

I realize that complaining about airports and airplane travel is rather banal and overdone, and that there is nothing new I could possibly add to the general discussion in this matter. But complaining isn’t about creativity or elevating the conversation; it’s about getting things off of your chest and passing on the impotent rage of less-than-rage deserving things. For me, in the case of all things air travel, it’s about dealing with the shock of modern dehumanity.

 So let’s start with the TSA agents. I’ve already made my contempt of security in general known, that I feel that security is %90 for the sake of appearances and comfort for the dimwitted, and only %10 of any actual effective deterrent, if that much. For instance I found, while digging through my carry-on bag looking for my ibuprofen, a large tube of sunblock that I’ve been apparently carrying around on planes with me for months. I’d forgotten I had it in there and of the 30 times I’ve been through security clearance to get to my departure gate since I first placed the lotion in my bag, exactly zero TSA guards have caught it, obviously.

 And now I want to add that the TSA agents themselves are a dull and predictable consequence of the paranoid yet exasperating culture of security. They are people who quickly become a natural extension and personification of the tepid evils of their jobs. They fall into a few general categoric personalities, and I’ve named the ones I see the most often.

 Slagathorn is the bitchy generally older but sometimes merely overweight female who thinks she works on a factory line inspecting cans of meat product. She talks to people queuing up to have their traveling lives inspected as though we are a single multi-headed cow whom if she were to look us in the eye would cause her to feel as though she needed to bathe. She treats us as though we are retarded 3rd graders who still don’t comprehend how to line up rather than as tired and confused travelers who can’t always keep up to date on the latest byzantine line-up rules dreamed up by the security authorities which pointlessly change from day to day, even hour by hour, as well as from airport to airport. She sees us trying to collect our bags after they’ve been processed by their X-ray contraption and yet will still attempt to push them all in a row further down the conveyor belt the second they emerge in order to clear the way for yet more bags and totes coming through as though we were weren’t standing there already waiting for our bags, so we consequently wind up stepping on each other’s toes and reaching over, under, and past the next guy to try and snag our bags which were a second ago just in front of us.

 Dullard Bing is the guy who, in order to relieve the boredom and tension of his job, tells bad jokes about what to take out of your bags, which of your clothes must come off and what stays on, all with a slightly condescending though ultimately apologetic manner as though he actually has a glimmer of how demeaning their job requires them to be. He’s trying to put us at our ease about our upcoming rectal exam by being our funny friend, but unfortunately lacks the true wit required by this position and in any case isn’t doing so out of sympathy, but for the purposes of crowd control.

 Then there is Paws Grubby. I hate this guy the most. He’s the guy who loves his job more than the others because occasionally, if the TSA agent currently scanning your bags via X-ray vision stops drooling long enough (thus, the X-Ray scanner’s name is Señor Droolcup) to spot something suspicious like a bottle of water or some nail clippers, then Paws Grubby gets to look through your bags while you have to sit there and watch him do it. It’s not just the violation of privacy of the job itself; that’s unfortunately the nature of the beast and in order for the illusion to work, sometimes bags must be checked. I get that. What makes this agent particularly odious is the casual disregard for your sovereignty as a person from a position of bureaucratic (and hence, petty) authority with his commentary on the things you choose to take with you. If he were to find a knife or a bomb or a bottle of sunblock, fine. Make a comment, confiscate it. Them’s the rules. But if you find my vitamin box and feel the need to jovially judge me on being a silly person for being a health nut; don’t, you fat retarded slug. Or when you find a bunch of computer gadgets and want to say something witty like “Wow, you really need all this stuff on the plane?” Fuck off. Just fucking die. My life is not up for your review. I don’t like you and I don’t respect your job, even if I have to put up with it silently.

 I think that ultimately what I despise about the TSAs is that they don’t seem to realize that they are an inconvenience to us, not the other way around. I know they don’t see it that way because they’ve been told that they’re protecting us from more would-be planejackers. But the reality is that they are not. If I can get a bottle of sunscreen onto a plane 30 times, not to mention my big metal pointy tripod, they aren’t stopping anybody with the will to do so from doing something tragic.

 But whatever. It is the way it is. This rant of mine is really just my frustration at my own powerlessness to end stupidity in the human race. It’s a frustration caused by many things, but most notably by the daily barrage of stupid people in and on and reporting the news, and by the people that eat it all up. I’d rant about that, but they do that very well over at the Huffington Post already and anyway that’s what posting links on facebook is for. I guess that I used to think that religion was the greatest evil plaguing mankind, but I’ve been realizing more and more, through the dubious joys of general human interaction, that stupidity and willful ignorance are the greater. In any case, you couldn’t have religion without those two as the catalyst.

 There’s another thing that got to me on the plane, which made me sad in a different way. When I have a window seat, I enjoy staring out at the sky. When there are an especially large amount of cumulus, the clouds can transport me for the entire flight in a bemused trance. It still amazes me that we can fly in a huge metal can, thousands of feet above clouds. One of my favorite feelings in the world is the sudden jolt of catching a rare and quicksilver glimpse of another plane going in another direction. It’s a fascinating perspective to see another plane so high up; it really gives you a clearer sense of how fast planes are going, how high up you are, and of how odd the whole endeavor is. We’ve made the dream of flight routine, but when you take the time to meditate on it, you remember how amazing and beautiful it is that we fly.

 But then the in-flight movie comes on. Usually it’s some safe, trite rom-com or inspiring yet shallow drama which I have no interest in seeing. On this flight I had an aisle seat, and the Captain came on the intercom and asked those sitting by a window to close their shades so that everybody could see the movie screens better, and everybody did. This made me incredibly sad. Maybe I’m just too sensitive today, but it felt like a betrayal of the spirit. When I have a window seat, the shade stays open, even if it’s a rare occasion where I happen to want to watch the movie. It’s unthinkable for me to close the shade, especially just to try and get a clearer view of a tiny screen with a brain killing movie. One time a person sitting behind me tapped my shoulder and asked me to close my shade, and I told him no. He seemed a little surprised, but I didn’t understand why; I myself felt that he’d been incredibly rude & insensitive to even ask. Now I know that it’s because in modern life, it’s more important to shut the outside, well, out, and zonk yourself out whenever possible, and I’m the weirdo.

For a fun bonus anti-TSA story, click on the TSA agent in action below.

The Fact Of These People's Existence Makes Me Want To Be A Cutter

So okay, GoDrex posted this YouTube, and then Julie did, and I commented on it, and now I have to post the video, because I can't stop thinking about it and it inspires a constant state of weird otherworldly incredulity in me, because I think it accurately represents the thought processes of most people who actually think another Republican administration is a good idea, and because this was a convention in Bethlehem, PA, near where we live, and it's embarrassing and I can't wrap my head around the fact of these people's existence.

I'm re-posting my commentary from Julie's page on it here and expanding on it, because I need to get it off my brain before it freezes in this expression forever.

Does that first guy know that 25 out of the 43 American Presidents were lawyers? And that it's actually sort of an advantage to understand law if you're going to be in a political field? Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe and John Quincy Adams. Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, James Polk and Millard Fillmore. Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison and William McKinley. William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and William Clinton. (I know that's only 23, I can't find the other 2.)

European socialist is a buzzword with these people. (Instead of buzzwords, I’m going to start calling them FOXwords) Like Terrorist. Why is European Socialism bad, exactly? Because of all the free health care? I particularly find the “I think you’re stupid” guy quite illuminating.

Why am I stupid?
“… uh… because… that guy gets elected, he hangs around with terrorists.”

Who’re the terrorists?
“Obama”

So… Obama hangs out with himself?
No just kidding, I get it. I know what he means, it’s just that he doesn’t know how to speak properly, or form a logical or coherent thought. What he means is, Obama is a terrorist because some guy he sort of knows did some crazy shit when Obama was 8. And that's a more accurate understanding of the situation than even FOX news was able to tell him to think.

As cogent and insightful a point as this guy makes, I have to wonder, with all of the black men in prison, and all of the “suspected terrorists” at Guantanamo Bay, is it very likely that had any politician or policeman or spook at any time throughout Obama’s life even had the tiniest shred of real proof that Obama might have actual terror affiliations, isn’t it likely that he would never ever ever ever nerver never nev been allowed anywhere near any sort of elected office in the USA ever?

Or maybe FOX news and every dumb piece of crap that believes this Rhepublican Rhetoric has proof in a shoebox under their beds that Obama really is a terrorist that the guys over at the CIA doing his background check somehow missed.

“Get a Job!”

What does that even mean?! How do you know they don’t have jobs? Because they’re exercising their political right to protest? If you’re basing the fact that someone is at a political rally because they don’t have a job, then what are you doing there? Maybe you should get a job yourself? But oh wait, you can’t because Bush screwed up the economy so badly that the jobless rate is skyrocketing and competition for work is heavier, and you’re about to attend a rally for the guy who wants to continue the same policies.

“Go to Russia!”

Go to Russia? Because… people aren’t allowed to politically dissent in Russia (which isn’t exactly true anymore, but we’ll let that one slide because you obviously haven’t thought out your statement anyway) and you think that people who dare to dissent with your Republican knee-jerk non-views deserve to get shipped off to Siberia… which would kind of make you more like a Communist than an Obama supporter/McCain protester could ever dream to be? And as far as the whole "Commie/Faggott!" slur goes, I think we all know which political party has had more of those types outed from it. Plus, Joe McCarthy was a Republican Commie hunter, and I think it's probably widely agreed now that he was the biggest Commie of them all. I mean sure, not technically, but his tactics certainly were not American nor were they Democratic.

I think that by telling someone who disagrees with you at an American political rally to go to Russia, you’ve officially chased your own tail and deserve to be impounded for being dumb as a dog and not on a leash.

And ACORN? How the FRICK is ACORN, a community-based organization that advocates for low- and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, health care and other social issues, responsible for our current economic crisis? Hey check out this picture and story of McCain with... that's right. ACORN.

And for God's sake people! Obama is NOT a Muslim, (not that being a Muslim is automatically terror-worthy) nor is he a terrorist, or affiliated with terrorists! Again, CIA background checks! They're pretty thorough. They'd have caught it by now, and Obama would be in Guantanamo. Palin, on the other hand, had the hands of a Witch hunter laid on her. Now, Olbermann is a tad histrionic, but if you're not one of those finger-in-your-ears Republicans, singing "God Bless America" to block out opposing viewpoints and spouting party FOXwords as substitutes for logical argument using fact and proof, this is something you need to watch. I mean, those types need to watch and understand it more than anybody, but they've got their fingers in their ears, you see.

 And I could go on and on, but the fact of the matter is, people like those in the YouTube video believe what they believe because they want FOX news to tell them what to think and say so that they don't have to hurt their little brains trying too hard to think about it themselves. No amount of logical argument or fact checking or proof is going to sway them. God, I hope America is smarter than I give it credit for this election day.

Ghouls & Goblins & Palin Oh My! It's Going To Be The Scariest Halloween Yet!

I haven't been around much lately, I know. My question is, have any of us? For myself, I've been consumed with fear and paranoia over the state of the economy. My 401k has less money in it now than what was put into it out of my original paychecks. My stocks... well, as I've said before; when in 2050 they are teaching schoolchildren in the most powerful Nation in the world (my prediction: Eurasia) about the great world stock market crash of '08, my picture will be in the book as the poster child for those who bought in at exactly the worst moment in history. Maybe. I'm sticking it out in case my fears are incorrect.

Also, I've been consumed with the fear that no matter how many nonsensical utterings of bullshit come out of Sarah Palin's mouth, we still might be forced to look at her pasty vapid psycho doll eyed face for the next four years. If that happens, it'll be the final nail in the coffin of our country. She's deeply stupid (yet thinks she's smarter than everyone and that no one can see through to her motivations) and masks it poorly with down-home stylings meant to fool the common man into thinking she's like one of them. She's playing on the irrational blue collar disdain of elitists, which is scary because apparently the present down-home version of an elitist is someone with an education who speaks with knowledge and authority on a given subject. Apparently, the people with whom Palin is trying to connect would rather the officials in charge of their government not understand how to answer basic questions and mask their ignorance with folksy exclamations which make no sense. I CAN NOT believe that people are being taken in by her and McCain, especially after realizing finally that they've been taken in by Bush for the last 8 years.

It's embarrassing to have these people on the world stage representing us, and if you're voting for Palin (to hell with McCain; he's irrelevant and will keel over soon) shame on you, dupe. Well, the polls do currently favor Obama of course, but not by a wide enough margin to quell my disbelief.

Another thing I'm afraid of lately is this Creation Museum in Kentucky. It's a museum. Dedicated to Creationism. And people are visiting it in droves. Creationism is the belief that the world was created by God around this time of the year on a Monday morning in 4004 BC. Dinosaur bones and all. Now, the belief in God, the Bible, and its literal truth, is a Faith. Faith, not Science. The line between the two concepts is under attack. Science is the search for truth, based on verifiable fact. Faith is the belief in something for which you have no proof. I have no problem with people of Faith going to Church and learning about what they believe in. I just wish they'd stop trying to force their beliefs into the schoolroom. It's dangerous and useless. Education in America is already severely limited these days. I met a Gas Station attendant in Germany who studied math for fun and spoke four languages. Most European students can talk intelligently and at great length about world politics, and know where Eritrea is on a map. There are people like that in the States, to be sure, but they get made fun of and called geeks. Something that modern day religious Americans seem to forget is that part of the reason why America is such a great place to live is that we once valued a secular education, and our prosperity comes from the application of our knowledge AND hard work. And on Sundays and at mealtimes, God was valued and thanked in many homes, sure, but at the end of the work day, God helps those who help themselves. Deceiving ourselves into thinking that faith needs to compete with science is not going to help anybody, because it's false. When it comes to science, religion tends to breed rather a hostile attitude of indifference because what difference does science make when Jesus is coming back to turn the Earth into blood soup and all the people who are looking forward to this disaster get to skip it and go to Heaven for candy and unicorns? They tend to forget that, even according to the Bible, we are Stewards of the Earth, and as such will be held responsible for it one day, one way or another.

Granted, science has caused a lot of problems on this Earth. Next to all the good things like medicine and movie theaters. But at this point, Science is also the only tool we have to save ourselves, and subverting it with Bible stories is NOT the way to go.

So now I come to the thing I'm actually afraid of this morning, the real reason behind this post. I get up and begin my routine as usual; perform the daily miracle of turning tap water into coffee. Eat breakfast. Drink some pre-miracled water, gulp down my daily plethora of vitamins with a big glass of more tap water, brush my teeth with tap water from the bathroom sink. I go sit down at my computer for my daily stock torture, notice I have a message on my phone. It's my landlord, Frank, telling me they put out a warning last night not to drink the tap water, not even after boiling it, and that it might not be safe to even bathe in until further notice; I listen to this as I'm taking another long sip of coffee. SO, I call Frank back to see if I need to go to the hospital, and he says he doesn't know; he's on his way up to the borough office to find out what's going on. Meanwhile, I wait here, typing out my ranty fears in this post, wondering how sick I can expect to be at any moment. I continue drinking my coffee because, what the hell, what's done is done.

I finally get a call back from Frank. Apparently, someone who lives next to the town Water Tower saw three guys hanging around the tower. Climbing it and other shady behavior. Neighbors called it in, water's being checked to see if terrorists poisoned it. I live in a very small town; that water tower probably supplies about 5 or 6 hundred people.

I make more coffee and drink a big fat glass of tap water. Laugh and shake my head. More disbelief, more wonderment at how afraid people are, and how much America is being ruled by their fears. I laugh as my stocks tumble. Screw it. It's only money. President Palin? Ha! Good joke! She'll only hasten the downfall of this abominable government we're stuck with! The terrorists have already won anyway. They've shown us how weak and vulnerable we've become, all on our own. Thank God I got to see Stereolab at the Fillmore in NYC before I died. Miss Luongo and I went up to see them last week with my friends Jeff and Steph. Pure aural pleasure.

A Perfect New York Day, Gabba Gabba Hey.

“One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years”
- Thomas Wolfe

I live about one hour to the west of NYC, and I haven't been there in like fifteen years. I've still never even been up to see the Statue of Liberty except one time when I was too young to remember; apparently my Pop Pop, who used to work in the City, took me there once. It's one of those traveling oddities. Germans that I knew from Bavaria had never been to Italy, which is only a few hours away by train, yet had been to the Statue of Liberty. I've been to Venice, Baghdad, and Moscow even, but it's been fifteen years since I spent any time in the greatest city in the world. I'd seen online that one of my favorite bands was playing the final show on their tour there on Saturday night, so Miss Luongo and I drove over there yesterday to have a perfect New York day.

Miss Luongo doesn't particularly enjoy concerts, so in order to bribe her into attending one with me, I had to promise that we'd see a Broadway show which is one of her favorite things to do in the City. We hit TKTS which sells discounted day-of-show tickets, and scored a sweet deal on Equus. I'd never seen it before, but it's one of Miss Luongo's favorite plays and she credits it with being an important force in her decision to become a writer. And, to top it all off, the cast consisted of Daniel Radcliff (Harry Potter), Richard Griffiths (Uncle Vernon Dursley), and Kate Mulgrew (Captain Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager)! I really enjoyed it. It's a very 70's sort of sexual psychodrama, but it holds up and I think having British leads really helped make it work. If you've ever seen it or heard about it, you know that the role of the boy calls for some nudity, so yes, we got to see Harry Potter's penis. But other than that tense moment it was quite enjoyable and it's nice to see a child actor grow up into a good actor and not yet another screwed up tabloid case. I was able to sneak a blurry picture of the set before the show got started, which I was reprimanded for. Sometimes getting in trouble for pictures is worth it, but on this one I'll have to say, eh. Those silver things are the horse heads which were donned by actors portraying some scary-ass horses during the show.

After the play we hit Little Italy for the street festival of San Genaro and got some awsome Italian food and Pinkberry, which is some sort of Asian frozen yogurt and awesome. Then we hit the Angelika, an independent movie theater and saw some wacky Woody Allen movie about love and it's myriad disappointments. And threesomes. Vicki Christina Barcelona. Go see it. Or not. Afterwards it was time to hit the concert at the Zipper Factory on 37th and 9th.

It was Dean & Britta again, and Spectrum opened for them. Spectrum is a band formed by Sonic Boom, singer from another legendary band that I love, Spacemen 3. My friend Scott turned me on to them a ways back and he used to say that they don't play their instruments better than anyone. This was definitely the case last night... Sonic Boom does this sort of trance-rock thing and he opened with a Spacemen 3 bit called 'Transparent Radiation' which made me very happy. Then he did a bunch of loud sonic-y things which weren't really songs and got progressively weirder until the final number which prompted Miss Luongo to uncork her ears long enough to tell me angrily that she thought he was basically saying "screw you" to the audience because nobody was even playing instruments by this point, he was just utilizing foot pedals and amps to produce massive amounts of feedback. Again, Spacemen 3 used to do this better than anybody, and Sonic Boom was in top form. I guess you have to know what you're getting into here otherwise it pretty much is just noise, but I really enjoyed it.

Dean & Britta were of course awesome. I don't need to go into how awesome they are all over again... I saw them in DC not too long ago and you can go read that one again if you want to know how awesome they still are. I did grab a copy of Dean Wareham's book after the show and had him autograph it. My friend Steph had originally wanted to join us to go see the show, but she had already read Dean's book and said that it sort of disappointed her to see what one of her favorite musicians was really like. She still might have gone, but she'd have had to take off work and her heart wasn't in it. I can't wait to read it. It sounds like it's going to be honest.

I got a nice shot of Britta grinning at me. We had the best seats! It was a terraced u-shaped theater going up, and the seats were all old discarded minivan seats. A very nice and comfortable way to enjoy New York shoegazer Rock.

And here they are, singing 'You Turn My Head Around' again. I love taking pictures of them during that song.

Here's four shots of their shoes that I cobbled together.

So yes, it was a perfect New York day. A broadway show, an Italian streetfest, a Woody Allen film, and quintessential New York shoegazer icons. Some things are just worth saving up for. We didn't make it to the Statue of Liberty, but that's really ok. I'll make it there one day and then I'll be like, "Huh. I wonder what the people who declared that this gift of friendship to us from the French should symbolize Liberty and Freedom would think of how far we've come from those heady days of hope."

Doctor, Will You Tell These Fools? I'm Not Crazy. Make Them Listen To Me Before It's Too Late!

Ambulance Driver: We had to dig him out from under the most peculiar things I ever saw.

Dr. Hill: What things?

Ambulance Driver: Well, I don't know what they are, I never saw them before. They looked like great big seed pods.

Dr. Hill: Where was the truck coming from?

Ambulance Driver: [King George, VA].

Dr. Hill: Get on your radios and sound an all points alarm. Block all highways, stop all traffic, and call every law enforcement agency in the state. [on phone] Operator, get me the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Yes, it's an emergency!

             -Invasion of the Body Snatchers

So I just got back from an overnight job down in Virginia. It was a job from hell too... definitely payback for all those more exotic locales where I usually get to play in for a week or two. I left on Thursday morning at around 9, drove for five hours and then went right to work when I got there. It turned out to be one of those times where Murphy's Law was pumping iron and needed the good steroids. So what should have been two, maybe three hours worth of work setting up the next day's exam turned into ten. I didn't get to my hotel room until 12 pm, and I still had my administrative duties to attend, so I didn't get to bed until around 3 am. I of course had to wake up three and a half hours later to go back in to work to administer the exam. I got done with that, packed up all the equipment and got on the road by 2:00pm, hitting Philadelphia rush hour on the turnpike right around 5pm. Meanwhile, it was 90 degrees outside and my car's A/C was broke.

Despite all of this travail, I have made it home to report that I don't believe that Virginia really exists. I don't mean that there is not a US State that goes by the name of Virginia; What I mean is that it's a made up place. Like that playground in the first X-Files movie; the one that the secret shadowy people put up really fast in order to cover their tracks and make the site of their latest machinations look like it was an ordinary place. I've been down there a couple of times now, and that's always my impression of it. As you first enter Virginia via route 301, you immediately pass a Naval Warfare base. Everything is covered by trees, even scrapyards and auto places. In fact, all you really see are signs for scrap yards and auto places, and dirt roads leading to these supposed places of business

And the people... I almost didn't notice it at first, as I'm somewhat dismissive of the general human populace, but especially the American human populace. However I had to deal with some of the locals, and they had this peculiar trait of being curious about people from other places, as though there were any difference between a Virginian and a Pennsylvanian general populatory. (I think I just made that word up, by the way. It's supposed to connotate a member of the general populace, leaving out any indicator of an individual nature) But when some of the people found out I wasn't from the area, they'd get all questiony, rather like drunk college girls do to young men with British or Italian accents. It was strange and unsettling and brought home to me the fact that Americans in general don't get out enough. Also, they all work for the Government in one capacity or another down there. My job, in fact, was at a government contractor's site; one of those civilian weapon systems designer companies. They all have Secret or Top Secret clearance, and they tend to walk around with shrewd looks in their eyes, whether or not any of them have any call to look that way. People who think they're shrewd tend to don that glance, (like that stupid woman in that commercial who suggests going to Chili's for lunch as though it were an idea on par with the Grand Unified Field Theory) and people who are tend to hide it. Also, a large percentage of them are overweight in that way that only "poor" Americans can pull off. On the whole, it's a very unsettling package.

So due to all of this, my gut feeling is that Virginia is a place where the government hides it's pod people, poorly disguised as typical Americans, and that if there are any Virginians who are not pod people they just don't notice it because they're used to it and are in fact becoming assimilated. I see this as the future for the rest of America. I mean, obviously it's a national trend that's well under way, but I think it's something that as a social construct which covers an entire area, it's actually already complete down there. Freaky.

"Do You Have The Sack With You?"

"Do you have the Sack with you?"

I spoke: "the Sack, that is here;

because apples, nut and almond core

eat pious children gladly."

"Do you have the rod also with you?"

I spoke: "the rod, it is here;

but for the children, only the bad,

those it meets them right, upon their part."

(translated excerpt of 'Farmhand Ruprecht' by Theodore Storm)

My last day in Rome was pretty laid back; all I really did was wander around trying to hit a few of the lesser sights I hadn't gotten to yet, but mostly wound up back in my favorite spots, which were The Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain. I did sit down and do the whole three-course Italian Meal thing... that was awesome. I sweated, alot.
I've opened my Rome Gallery on smugmug; please remember that I was photodepressed... there's only so much you can do that hasn't been done before in that city.
That night I caught my train, slept really well, and woke up about an hour outside of Munich, in a town called Kufstein. I'd been to Kufstein before, and there's a great German castle on a small hill right by the train station, and when I first opened my eyes and looked out the window, the Kufstein Castle was my first sight of Bavaria in three years...

honestly, it felt like I was home. And then at almost every train station between there and Munich, I had a memory or a story from that town that just got me even more choked up... It felt really, really good to  get off the train in Munich and walk through the Hauptbahnhof (Main Train Station)... itself an area of many memories. I got there at 8:30am, and wasn't supposed to meet my friends there until 10:00am or so, but I was really happy to just hang out and get a cappucino at one of the kiosks there and smell that good Bavarian air. Granted, Munich is a big city more than 100 kilometers away from the mountains, but I swear you can still smell that fresh Alpen air from any part of town.
And then 10:00 rolled around, and the first person I saw was Nimmer, of course. Then Scott, and Jeff Rydell, and lastly Matt. It was good to see them all. Well, without getting too technical, we checked into the youth hostel right next to the Hauptbahnhof, and spent the rest of the afternoon catching up... we did the traditional Munich walking tour: Bacon Cheeseburger at the Irish Pub off the Marienplatz, a walk through the Dalmyers' shop, and of course Nimmer had to pay his respects at the German war memorial. Then that evening, we killed many hours and many brain cells at the Hofbrauhaus.
I Love Munich!
Next morning we got up and trained it down to Berchtesgaden... talk about fresh mountain air... if it's refreshing in Munich, then it knocks you over and tries to give your lungs an enema in Berchtesgaden! We checked into the Hotel Bavaria. Here's the view from my room balcony:

I love German Guesthouses... they're all very clean, very solidly built, (all of the furniture in them is made of thickly cut, solid wood. Probably hand carved.) and remind one of Little Red Riding Hood's Grandmother's house in the woods. The comforters on the beds are soft, thick, and garnished with a flower and chocolate... or so I'm told as apparently a certain roomate helped himself to mine before I got there. Well, no use opening up old wounds.
I don't have much new to say about Krampus fest itself... for a description of what the Krampus festivities are all about and this year's pictures, go here. I haven't made the fest since I came in December '03, but this was probably my 5th or 6th Krampus fest, (and here are some even better Krampus pictures from the ghosts of Krampus past) and it was, of course, as fun as any of them. One thing I got to see for the first time was the opening ceremony. There was some sort of evil anti-santa who the real St. Nick brought into town that I'd never seen at Krampus before... he was kind of creepy. I think he might have supposed to have been the chief Krampus demon, the Berchtesgaden version of Knecht Ruprecht, but really I'm not very sure what he was all about. I got pictures... they'll be up sooner or later.
Long story short, we all got hurt real bad. Nimmer got it the worst, I'm afraid... it wouldn't be polite to describe exactly where he took the worst shot known to any man, but let's just say that it's now apparently a blueish color and he's walking with a decidedly leftish limp, and that the title of this post doesn't only refer to the Krampus poem I quoted initially. Another friend of ours who had moved to working in Garmisch-Partenkirchen when Chiemsee closed showed up, which we were all very happy about. Greg, who some of you may recall was with us on Nimmer's Great Northern Europe Tour 2003, got beat down into the pavement... hard. Scott took a pretty good swipe to the eye, and Matt got it in the throat, and of course we all took the more normal lashes to the backs of our knees... I have a few bruises, I am proud to say. However I actually didn't get it too badly... Scott had picked up a bottle of Jagermeister earlier in the day, (It's good for numbing the pain) and I happened to be holding it for no particular reason at one point when a running, howling, lashing pack of very large demons descended on us. One of them headed straight at me, whip raised, and I thought for sure that I was finally going to get what's coming to me. As he got about a foot away from me, lash still poised to do me a world of much-deserved hurt, he stared at me for a full five seconds, not moving while I stood there frozen in awe, as one would stare at a 50 foot tidal wave of lava about to crash on your head, or a shark with a laser cannon tied to it's fin who was deciding whether to shoot you or not, when he reached out and grabbed the Jagermeister bottle and took a healthy swig. After whetting his thirst, he handed it back to me, growled his thanks, and took off in another direction. This actually happened several times, each time with me getting more and more angry because, while my friends were all coming back with grand tales of the pain that was levelled on them, all I had was a measly story about thirsty demons who apparently were not threatened by me at all. Quite an ego-bruising, I assure you. The demonic word must have got passed around that I was a Demon-juice provider, because even after I'd got rid of the bottle as though it was a plague, they left me alone. It all turned out mostly okay... later on in the night the Krampus devils must have had enough of their elixir that they forgot that I'd apparently been called off-limits, and I managed to get a few of those long awaited punishments.
I bought a Krampus mask! So did Scott. They had them for sale in a wood-carving shop in the middle of the old part of Berchtesgaden, where the festival actually goes down. It's the first time I was really there during the day, and so in past years had never noticed the opportunity to have my very own Krampus mask... I am very excited. It was really cool too, because when the Wood-Carver realized as we were looking at the few masks which he had on display in his shop window that we were serious customers who by the look on our faces would rather die in a wood-chipper than leave without a Krampus mask, he took us down to his basement where he had a more varied selection. I'm having it shipped home in a few weeks, and one day it will be hung on my wall proudly, and very intimidatingly. Perhaps I will use it to teach the local children the joys, and terror, of the true spirit of Christmas.
Now we're all back in Munich, and tomorrow morning, Nimmer, Matt, Scott and I are flying to Cairo. We're going to spend about four days there before heading back here again to go our separate ways. It's getting rather clichéd of me to say that I will be telling you all about it, so I'll try to avoid that from now on.
In the meantime, here's a picture of my mask. It's the one in the middle, and Scott bought the one on the lower right.

 

How Getting Sidetracked By Pet Peeves Can Sometimes Lead You To Find A Good Book

I was recently asked by a newcomer to Interzone what my scariest moment in Iraq was. Speaking of newcomers, before I launch into that tale I'd like to take a moment to talk about a really annoying aspect of Interzone culture. I really hate talking to other Americans that live here; there is this thing that everybody does when you meet them as sort of a status gauge. One of the first questions these neanderthals always ask you is: "So, how long you been here?" As if the length of time you've lived pampered inside Interzone has anything to do with anything. You can always tell the ones that have been here for more than a year because they ask with a sort of smug pre-emptive gleam in their eye and an "I'm such a bad-ass old-timer" inflection in their voice: "So, how long you been here?", as if there is no chance anyone could have been here as long as they have. It's true that very few people stay longer than a year, but so what? Don't get me wrong, I love that I can say I lived in Baghdad for 3 years, but I'm acutely aware that, in and of itself, that is not really something to be proud of, and certainly is a retarded thing to use as a status gauge; It's not like, as an American, living in the Interzone is fraught with trials and tribulations and surviving them for three years is a measure of manliness. Really, the hardest thing about coming here was the initial decision to actually get on a plane and fly to freaking Iraq! Once you make the decision to come, and weather the doubt-filled flight to the middle east with a pit of "oh my god oh my god oh my god what am I doing?!" in your stomach, the rest is easy. Just being here isn't so bad, not for Interzone denizens, anyway. As the book reviewed in this article says, the Interzone is an Emerald City, with several thousand pampered contractors strutting around with power and water and pork and beer 24/7 acting as though they are total bad boys. The funniest thing I see on a daily basis are the Embassy rats; 300 pounder, late middle-aged men sauntering over to the dining facility with pistols strapped to their beefy thighs, with a look on their face much like an 8 year old whose father just got them their very first Red Rider BB gun for Christmas and is showing it off to his friends. I'm ranting about this because yesterday I was driving down the road in front of the new Embassy complex that they're building, and I noticed a gas point run by KBR on the side of the road. I've seen it before, but, what with our camp closing down and all that, my supplier has stopped sending us gasoline. The sign on the side of the station says 'KBR retail fuel'. Now, gasoline, called benzine locally, is a hot commodity in the IZ. I know very well that KBR is only allowed to provide fuel to the military or certain authorized others. But, seeing as how I don't have a supply of my own any more, and the sign actually says 'retail', I figured it was worth a shot. So I pull in and ask if I'm allowed to purchase fuel with cash, even though I don't have a fuel card, and the redneck KBR station manager laughed and said, "Naw, man. You gotta have a guv'mint card... you oughtta know that. How long you been here?" Argh! I resisted the urge to tell him three years, because I actually try not to play that game with people, as satisfying as it is to shut them up. Instead I just verbally abused him saying that the sign should not say retail then, and drove off. But I hate that! Seniority is stupid, and besides the point. The fellow that wrote this book (Rajiv Chandrasekaran) was only here for a year or so, but I'll wager he is far more knowledgable and worthy of respect than I am.
Anyway, sorry for the pet peeve post. Sometimes it's just good to complain. (Sometimes? Does being aware of your self-delusions negate them, or make you a worse person for continuing to tolerate them within yourself?) And I actually had no intention of going on for so long about it... I wanted to write about my scariest moment in Iraq! Well, I will save that one for tomorrow, maybe.

Rather A Long One About My Exciting Trip To Kurdistan, or, Interesting Characters As Unlikely Bedfellows With Unusual Stories, or lastly, The Souk Of Sulaymania

So Kurdistan was nice! I actually got back yesterday morning, but I was pretty worn out. It was pretty uneventful all around, except for the whole aspect of flying from Baghdad to Kurdistan and travelling around with an Iraqi family and friends as an event. I left Interzone on Thursday morning to drive by myself on Route Irish to the Baghdad International Airport (BIAP)... Route Irish is not as dangerous as it once was, so it's not as crazy as it might have been in the past. There is a pretty solid presence of both American and Iraqi military all along the road and I haven't heard about any incidents in a long time. At any rate, even back in the more dangerous days of Route Irish, I never had any problems on it and I used to drive it much more frequently. My philosophy about safety in public in Baghdad has always been that the more blasé, the better. In my experience, the people who are targeted on that road are the ones driving like idiots in mini-PSD convoys... they will have three to five Suburban vehicles, and they hang out of the windows armed and armoured to the teeth. They weave back and forth in the lanes at high speeds and point their guns at anyone who gets too close. Flashing lights and obnoxious king-of-the-road attitudes accompany them, and they stand out as extremely tempting targets. They also make it very dangerous for other westerners on the road as they slow up traffic, and they don't care about you getting stuck in a jam, surrounded by Iraqi vehicles, who all of a sudden have plenty of time to give you a look-over. If you don't rate a personal convoy, you might as well be a possible insurgent. You know, like all Iraqis. Man I hate those guys. (PSDs, not Iraqis.) Anyway, this particular post isn't supposed to be about them; it's just so hard not to skewer them every time I get the chance! The other attractive targets on Route Irish are of course military convoys. While they are much less asinine than the civilian contract security monkeys, they still stand out quite a bit and halt traffic. So, getting back to the point; As I said, my philosophy about Route Irish has always been low-profile. I get in my white Nissan Sunny or white Peugeot, which are common vehicles in Baghdad, dress normally, and just go with the flow until I arrive safely at the Flying Man Statue, which marks the entrance to the checkpoint you go through to enter the secure (relatively) area known as BIAP, a large piece of land which includes several military bases in addition to the actual airport. It's always worked for me, and I almost never get a second look. When I got to the BIAP this time, I noticed that the old GBG signs are still standing...  I couldn't believe it. I thought for sure someone would have taken them down by now... I hadn't been to the BIAP since March, on my trip to Romania.
Anyway, I had received a sort of underhanded deal on my ticket... Iraqi Airways flies domestically to several cities, and normally you have to book 5 days in advance, although I'm not sure why. This being sort of a last minute trip, I didn't have 5 days. So S. called a friend who works at the airport, and he was able to secure me a flight to Erbil, but he had to use his name on the ticket. Obviously, he had a very Arabic name, and I certainly don't look like a Hassan Al-shamackalackawhatever, but I was supposed to meet him at the airport where he would check me in himself, avoiding embarrasing questions about my ethnicity. Well, he wasn't there, and his phone was turned off, so I was kind of screwed. Luckily I found a friendly airport worker who was apparently aware of Al-shamackalackawhatever's little scheme; so I handed him some baksheesh and he, in situ, got me all checked in. (Baksheesh, incidentally, can be translated several ways. Politely, it is a tip. Less politely, as a bribe or grease money. It is, however the connotation, viewed as the norm in Iraqi society for getting people to do the jobs that they are already paid to do. In a hospital, for instance, the  nurses will hound you for baksheesh, and if you don't pay, they won't do anything for you, such as sticking an IV in your arm, or putting you in a room to see a doctor.)
The flight was only about 45 minutes, and S. and a family friend, Sa., also one of my employees, met me at the Erbil (air-beel) airport, having driven to Kurdistan already from Baghdad a few days before. We then drove for about an hour and 1/2, arriving at mid-evening in a small Iraqi tourist town called Shaqalawa where they had been staying in a rented summer house. We went into town and looked at the shops on the street and had some Iraqi Chai (tea) at a restaraunt. There were nine of us all together: S. & R., (those two brothers I've written about before) their mother I., their cousins H. (mmm briani!) and her sister L., another cousin E., and two friends (and my employees) Sa. and A. And of course myself. I wish I could tell you their names, it would make telling the story much easier. But you know, I'm paranoid about doing that.
The next morning we woke and ate some Iraqi concoction of eggs, beef, and bread for breakfast which was actually quite good. A. had said he wanted to make it, so they went to the shop that morning and bought the necessary ingredients, but when they got back to the house he got lazy and there was a fun little family fight about making him get up and make good on his plan... they wound up dragging him to the kitchen. I'm not sure how they actually got him to do it... perhaps R. also grabbed his wrists and had to puppeteer him all the way. At any rate it all came out ok in the end.
We then piled into the two cars they'd driven from Baghdad and went on a driving tour through the Kurdistan mountains to a spring of water that came out of the side of one of the hills. I found out later that they'd done exactly the same drive the day before, but they wanted me to see it because it was such a high point of that part of Kurdistan. Iraqis can be embarassingly hospitable that way sometimes... I felt really bad that they were wasting a day of their trip for me on something they'd already done, but they don't really know the rules of Hypertrekking and anyway they didn't really consider it a waste, being endlessly pleased to show me "The good stuff". Anyway it was worth seeing in two respects: a) it was pretty and b) it's amazing and funny to see how a medium-ish sized waterfall becomes such a huge tourist attraction in this part of the world. The drive itself was also quite pretty; Trees and mountains with winding roads, as anticipated. We drove by a town named Halabcha; it's infamous for being the town where Saddam and Chemical Ali used the chemical weapons which killed many Kurds all those years ago. We didn't go through it, as I understand there isn't much to see, and anyway that's hardly a fitting destination for an Iraqi family on holiday. But they did stop so I could get out and get a picture or two from the main road.
That afternoon we returned to the house and packed everything up for what turned out to be the four hour drive to the city of Sulaymania (sooh-lay-mah-knee-ah). We arrived, and spent another hour looking for a place to stay. There was a serviceable hotel on the main street where we stopped finally, and some of the staff turned out to be Iranian... awkward but interesting. The one guy, as I was checking in, saw my passport and asked, "American?" I said yes and he pointed at himself and said, "Iranian". I took his hand and said, "Pleased to meet ya, Mr. Iranian!" When it was translated for him, he laughed and said (in Arabic) that it was probably the first time in recent history that an American and an Iranian shook hands on friendly terms! Of course I know that can't be entirely true; the Middle East is full of interesting characters and unlikely bedfellows with unusual stories, but it was a tensely amusing moment, nonetheless.
The next day we spent walking around the souk of Sulaymania. A souk (sōōk) is a veritable warren of a street market made up of hundreds of individual kiosks, selling all kinds of wonderful crap. The girls went crazy over the shopping opportunities which are currently unavailable to them in Baghdad. The boys stood around waiting for the girls to finish one kiosk only to stop again five feet away at the next, all the while ogling all the beautiful Sulaymania babes walking about, unafraid of exposing their hair, or wearing tight jeans and loose-fitting blouses, another rarity in present-day Baghdad. And I tried a street vendor delicacy known as Iraqi water gum. It's essentially unflavored gum with odd flavoured water in the center of it, and it tastes like chewy wet tree bark. I didn't try it for very long, actually.
I called Dave and George, as promised, but it turns out that they are working in a fairly secure location, and the Station Chief told them he wouldn't authorize a non-essential person access to their camp; It turns out they're not allowed off of their compound, and surprisingly have never seen the city of Sulaymania, even though their camp is within it. In fact, I apparently caused the camp personnel some consternation as they had never been faced with that situation before: "A friend. From Baghdad. Flew up here. And is travelling around with a group of Iraqis. And wants to visit you here in our high security compound. Ummmm... Let me get back to you on that. - No." So that was that... I talked with them on the phone for a few minutes, but disappointingly did not get to hang out. Which is stupid and ironic because supposedly they escort uncleared Iraqi day laborers onto their compound, well, every day, in much the same fashion that people hire Mexicans for day labor in the back of pick-up trucks out west. But I, a cleared American with a DoD badge, am a security threat. Huh. I even used to work for the same company and client! For fourteen months! I'm telling you, all these military, contractors, and secret service types over here are far more paranoid, delusional and muddle-headed than intelligent or organized. At least that's how they generally come off.
Anyway, later that afternoon we went to the Iraqi Airways office so I could change my return ticket, as I'd have to fly out of Sulaymania the next morning rather than Erbil. It turns out that tickets to Baghdad only cost around $75, so H., L., and A., also purchased tickets as they wanted to get back home, and had never been on an airplane before! I guess once they realized how easy it was, and the fact that I was going anyway, made it a no-brainer for them. The eight hour drive between Baghdad and Kurdistan is, I imagine, endless.
That night we went to this amusement park they have there. It was rather like a small-town carnival that showed up in some way-off-the-track borough 20 years ago and never quite got the energy to pack up and move on again, but it was nice. We went on a ride; one of those swinging ship things... more like a 20-year old prototype perhaps, of what you might see at Oktoberfest today. We sat at a lawn restaraunt and had a beer and a nargila (water pipe) with apple tobacco, which I don't count as a lapse in my having quit smoking because it's very different and, for me, is a rare special occasion, anyway. It never makes me want a cigarette, and it tastes like apples. Mmm, apples.
The next morning the four of us that were flying woke at 5am and caught a ride with Sa. to the airport, where there were 3 separate security checks and at each one they completely emptied the contents of my bag, carefully sniffing my deodorant, peering suspiciously into my vitamin bottles, and prodding superstitiously at my camera. THREE times! The Iraqis didn't generally seem to get nearly as much scrutiny... that was certainly a new experience for me, being the suspicious character in the airport because of my race. I guess they don't often see westerners in them there parts. It felt karmically correct though, so I accepted it good-naturedly, anyway having little choice in the matter. We boarded without any incident, and my friends had a lovely time on their first flight. H.'s young sister, L., was delightfully terrified and enthralled by the window seat, not to mention the goosey feeling of the ascent and descent.
So that's my trip to Kurdistan... S. and his family continued on to the cities of Dahouk & Zakho that day, where their family had originally come from. I'd like to have gone with them, but I needed to get back... even though nothing much is going on, I would hate to not be around in case something does happen. We're still waiting to hear from the JASG, or the Iraqi Ministry, or ANYBODY, as to what our fate is to be...
I've loaded my pictures from Kurdistan onto my smugmug site... unfortunately there wasn't a whole lot to photograph, and many of my pictures had my Iraqi friends in them, which I won't load for the same paranoid reasons I won't give their names, so this gallery will be a small one. Click on this picture of the flag of Kurdistan to go see them.
An interesting final note, on the flag of Kurdistan: One of the high muckity mucks in the Iraqi government is a Kurd (Jalabi, I think; we drove by his hometown in Kurdistan on the way to Sulaymania), and he is causing trouble in the Iraqi Ministry because he wants the Iraqi State of Kurdistan to retain it's own flag, them being such an independently-minded people who are, after all, very different from southern Iraqis. The current Iraqi Prime Minister, Al-Maliki, wants all of Iraq to share the same standard Iraqi flag, eschewing the more local flags which, he thinks, only help to further divide the newly formed Iraqi Republic. Dude, if flags were the major impediment, or even one of the top one-hundred roadblocks to a unified Iraq, I'd sympathize more. But he's got way more serious problems than that, and besides, the Kurdi flag is pretty, don't you think? Iraq needs more pretty.

Lessons In A Tri-Culture Clash

I was reminded today of yet another aspect of Iraqi culture. Most likely it is something which all Arabs have in common, but as I'm mostly only familiar with this particular section of the Middle East, I will stick to calling it an Iraqi thing.
As you may or may not know, there are still a few Romanians residing in my camp; leftovers from the 600 man camp contract. Last week I became aware that the Romanians, who work our kitchen, were preparing meals for themselves and not sharing the food with the Iraqis whom are in my employ. I've had problems in the past with the whole Romanian / Iraqi clash of cultures, and was not very surprised. So, rather than cause a lot of bother, I authorized a weekly purchase of food which was to be used for Iraqi meals, so that they might make whatever dishes that they preferred for themselves.
This afternoon S. informed me that apparently for the last three days, some of the Romanians were coming in and raiding from the Iraqi food stores. R. had told them that the food they were now taking belonged to them, but they ignored him. I worked myself into a fit and proceeded to the kitchen to yell at the offenders, only to find that they were not the burly sour Romanian men I was expecting, but two petite, smiling Romanian kitchen girls, happily making a Romanian mash of some sort from the Iraqi's food. Having gotten myself all up into a state of heaving hairy chestiness with some good foamy rabidity thrown in for good measure, it was too late to back off and I regrettably sent them off in tears.
Well of course I instantly felt sorry, but it was after the fact and anyway the circumstances seemed to justify at least a little righteous rage, if not a tirade meant for men and misfired at cute little women. Once I calmed down, I went and spoke to one of the Romanian guys, Pieter, (the girls wouldn't come near me, after) and explained the situation to him. He told me that it wasn't true that they hadn't shared their food with the Iraqis, that they were welcome to anything they prepared.
I was thus faced with a circumstance I'd seen at least one hundred times before between the two groups; One side swore up and down that the sky was grey, and the other swore up and down that it was dusty, and I had no way of really knowing who was closer to the truth, I myself seeing it as rather a hazy blue.
I realized later, as one always does who is slow of thought, when it was too late to use the insight, that an item of Iraqi behavior could explain the situation perfectly.
To wit: if Scott, Jeff, and I are watching a movie, and one of the Iraqis walks into the TV room, he will stand there for a minute looking really interested in the movie, and then leave. This is because unless you make a point of inviting him to come in and watch it with you, even if he is a close friend, he will not stay. A friend of more Western roots, whether you know him well or not, will just sit down if he's interested in the movie, and ask if you've got an extra beer. Iraqis (and I assume, most Arabs) must be invited, or they feel unwelcome and will promptly exit the scene.
So, it's entirely possible that the Romanians just made food come one come all, and the Iraqis, being so invitation-sensitive, felt shunned. And the Romanians in turn helped themselves to the "communal" food in the fridge. And, what with being ex-communists and all, it kind of makes sense! Of course, it's also entirely possible that the Romanians are just a dour, unfriendly lot who resent everyone who is happier than they are, (which is everybody including Harvey Pekar) but I'm trying to put a good face on it.

Cultural Vexations And Martial Frustrations

Okay, that thing I said a couple of posts back about Riverbend being contemptous of Green Zone Iraqis was a tad off-base of me. I went back to try and find the part in her blog where I remembered her saying that, and apparently I'm an even bigger idiot than normal in this matter. What she actually said was that the only Iraqis whom the Americans seem to consider civilians rather than insurgents are those that work in the IZ. So actually she's just nailing us on stupidity and favoritism, not Uncle Tom Iraqis. Heh, I guess it got a bit garbled in my head there. Sorry, Riverbend. You rule.
The other thing I'd like to add is that many of the Iraqis working in the IZ and elsewhere are employed in menial capacities, and I think that Riverbend comments on that also somewhere, but we'll leave her out of it this time until I actually know what I'm talking about. But it's a little messed up... I've had some very educated Iraqis working for me from time to time, mopping floors or emptying trash cans. That's another thing that makes me really uncomfortable. Older men with families and degrees in engineering, working for me, an uneducated white boy. They always make it a point to tell me that immediately upon meeting them, and I can understand why. What they're saying to me is: "Hello mister. I will mop floors for you because I need to feed my family and you gringoes pay good flüss, but I want you to know I am smarter, more educated, and more experienced in the ways of men than you are."
Yikes. But they're right.
Of course, I've had my fair share of ne'er-do-wells working for me, also, and Arabs invented that concept, I think. In order to give a more balanced picture, I think I have to tell you about an Iraqi trait which is probably the most major cause of misunderstandings with Americans. Apparently, it is considered a great shame to admit to not knowing or understanding something, even if I'm saying it in english and they speak about 3 words of english. They would rather die than admit they have no freaking idea what you're saying, and that very trait has made alot of westerners believe that Arabs are generally stupid and lazy. Granted, a lot of them are, but you know what? There are equal amounts of stupid and lazy Americans; it's just that they're AMERICANS, and speak english, and of course we understand each other's motivations better than the Arab's, so we tend to not think about that when dealing with them.
Here's an example: One day one of our vehicle batteries died. We asked the guy who takes care of our vehicles if he had jumper cables. We of course had to use a bit of mime, but he said "yes mister, no problem," and we left him with the car as there were other things to attend to. We came back an hour later, and the battery was sitting on the ground, wires were sticking up out of the engine block everywhere, and he was busy trying to put a truck battery 2 sizes too large into the car. Much yelling and hand waving ensued. It turns out that he had had no idea what we were saying to him, and through trial and error figured out that the battery was dead on his own and only had a truck battery available. Apparently he'd never seen battery charger cables before... but instead of asking to have our translator come over and tell him what we were saying, he would rather have figured it out on his own. And the bit about the too-large battery was because of this: having already told us he could fix the car before he knew what the problem was because he didn't want the shame of not understanding english, but then realizing he didn't have the correct size battery once he did understand the problem, it was imperative that he get the car running no matter if he had to stuff a battery the size of an elephant in the thing to avoid the shame of not being able to fix it! I mean sure, we could have just had S. tell him what we needed in arabic in the first place, but it seemed like such a simple thing that it didn't seem necessary to bring him over. Just a misunderstanding, but if there had been any rednecks involved, they would have been calling this poor guy a total moron all over the place. As it was, I was certainly thinking it until we figured it all out. We got him a set of jumper cables, explained to him how they worked, and had a good laugh.
This whole shame for no good reason thing does seem stupid to Americans, and believe me, any premature gray hairs I have can be traced directly back to dealing with these sorts of cultural differences, but it is a cultural thing, not a personal intelligence quotient thing, and when in Baghdad, learn about the shame factor. Many Americans here are too stupid and short-sighted to bother.
Oh, and on a final note; If you think that Iraqi cultural differences seem strange, try dealing with the U.S. military! Good lord those people are infuriating. Every time you try to do something, there are new rules, and soldiers will never ever admit that those rules were not in place yesterday. For instance, every day you might drive through a checkpoint with an Iraqi in your car who has a Ginsea (Iraqi photo ID) and as long as you have an escort badge, they'll wave you through. Then, one day, the soldier there makes you both get out of the car, walk half a mile to some desk you've never seen before and sign in the Iraqi, and he has to leave his Ginsea there, forcing you to come back later and walk the half mile again in order to retreive it. When you try and tell the soldier that you come through here every day and you've never had to do this before, and why the rule change?, he'll get mad and tell you that this has always been the rule, you've never come through my checkpoint without signing an Iraqi in before, now shut the hell up and do it! And that's pretty much the blueprint for all things military. There are loads of other pointless procedures which I could tell you about, but I'm kind of getting angry just thinking about it, and it'd only bore you anyway. Maybe they have good reasons, but I'm having more trouble figuring those out than I do understanding Iraqis! And that's really saying something.

Bust A Notion, Bang A Gong, Get It On!

So H. and I were reminiscing about the good old days when we worked for a company whose owner wasn't in jail, and when we actually had real jobs with actual work involved. Well, she was. When she said that those were the good old days for her, I kind of did a double-take, because our boss really sucked and I was really happy to leave when I did. For me, that first job in Baghdad represented a major step in my life, but one which I was happy to get away from as soon as possible. But for her and the other Iraqis, it was a really important event in their lives and moving on was difficult.
H. and her family were sharing their small apartment with her Aunt's family after the invasion, and they were all out of work, with very little food. H.'s cousins, by the way, are the brothers S. & R. I was telling you about in my last post. At any rate she told me they would often sit around the apartment with nothing to do and bemoan their futures... they had no money and things in Baghdad at the time were, although better than they are now, still chaotic and uncertain. They were very hungry, eating only a little cheap bread if they were lucky, and talked and hoped that now that the war was over, they might have some better luck. Maybe they could find work with the rich Americans, somehow, but they had not heard of anybody getting that kind of work. Well, Inshallah (God willing). Inshallah is something Iraqis say often... they swear that they really mean it, but to me it comes across more as something you say fatalistically, when you have no hope but in some God that apparently has turned his eye away from you. Maybe that just has more to do with the times, rather than the intended usage of the word.
Anyway, another cousin of hers was working at an office in town which was funtioning as a sort of re-employment office for Christians. My original company's boss had gone there requesting housekeepers, kitchen workers, and groundskeepers for their contract at the Baghdad International Airport (BIAP).
When H.'s brother, A. went to the office to put his name down for work, he put all of his family's names down as well, of course. When he got the call that there was some crazy American asking for workers and his and H.'s names were picked out, she refused to go because she didn't believe it. There was just no way they could have the fortune of working with Americans and making some decent money, when that is what everybody in Baghdad at the time was hoping for. Well, most everybody, anyway.
When A. told her to stop being silly and to get her butt down to the office because they were going to pay $200 per month, she really didn't believe it. Not because $200 per month is a shameful exploitation of a labor force from a nation we recently bombed the crap out of (which it was), which among other things facilitated this exploitation, but because that was actually a lot of money at the time. H. told me that before the invasion, the most she'd ever made at a job was $50 per month, and this was considered a very good wage. Of course, those wages can be blamed on Bush Sr., but she is too young to remember the job market before the first Gulf War, when Iraq was a prosperous, sovereign nation.
Well, I guess after much yelling, hand waving, and "No, you're stupid!"s, she went down to the office and reluctantly signed on, not wanting to hope for a second that this might actually happen. Apparently her Aunt, I. was even more adamant (according to H., comically adamant) in her disbelief, not accepting the possibility until she was actually at work on the first day, in our kitchen.
And then it did happen. H. & her brother, her cousins and her Aunt were told to be ready one morning to be picked up and taken to where the job was; They were not told ahead of time where they were going or what they were to be working as or who for, other than for Americans, somewhere in Baghdad, and that it involved cleaning or something. H. told me that they were all awake at like 4:30 in the morning and too excited to sleep... It seems wrong to me that an entire family had had to be in the position where they were acting as though a new job working for the people who just conquered their nation for $200 per month was the next best thing to Christmas on acid, but there you go.
The BIAP is about a 15 minute drive from the center of Baghdad, and between that and all of the checkpoints at the time, especially the main entry to the BIAP, it could take anywhere from 1 to 1½ hours to get to work. In the summer of 2003, mid-August, it was very hot. There were alot of gasps on the un-air-conditioned bus, sitting in dangerous traffic in 120° heat, when the Iraqis realized they'd have to do this every day both ways if they wanted this job. But for $200 per month, most of them were more than willing.
I remember seeing H. and the others for the first time... it was only my second or third day in Iraq. We'd been told they were arriving to begin work that morning, and I remember thinking how weird it was going to be, working with people who wore black veils and probably wanted to kill me. And having to tell them to scrub toilets. That was really the part I was having trouble getting over.
But when we went out to meet them, and saw them getting off of the bus, my naïve preconceptions were pleasantly busted. They were all smiling and laughing, eager. The men wore dress pants and button shirts, the women wore casual skirts and blouses, their sunday best. Not a single black veil in sight. They brought changes of clothes for working in... jeans and T-shirts, men and women both.
And the Iraqis have made it their duty to continue busting my preconceived notions about them ever since.

In Which I Try To Prove To Myself That I Am Not A Narcissist. I'm Not, Am I? I Don't Know, Maybe I Am. Perhaps I Should Devote This Post To I Instead So That I Can Say For Sure Whether Or Not I Am... What Do I Think About That?

Something I was thinking about this morning has been bothering me, and so I figured I'd just go ahead and attack it here: A lot of times when I post about things here I sort of perform this censorship when it comes to the Iraqis I know. I often would like to say things about them, or things that happen involving them, as it's hardly balanced to be trying to give a picture of what it's like here without including the local populace. I don't have any pictures on my smugmug page of the Iraqis I've known for three years now, though I view some as friends as close as any I've had. But I tend to write them out, for a very good reason actually. Iraqis that work with Americans, especially in the Interzone where the entry/exit checkpoints are presumedly closely watched by the bad extremist element, tend to be very shy about letting other Iraqis know where it is that they spend their days. They ebb and flow, but attacks against Iraqis helping Americans are unfortunately a routine circumstance. Praise to Allah none have happened to my friends, (KNOCK THE HELL OUT OF SOME WOOD FOR ME!) but there have been a few on people of a more passing acquaintance nature.
Anyway, my constant fear is that by putting too much of a face to them will, however unlikely as my web page hits are mostly limited to friends and family of the Western persuasion, lead to a vengeful Iranian/Islamic nutjob discovering them. (That post about Abu Anwar, you might be asking me, gives a name though! But Abu (father of) Anwar is equivalent to like, you know, Mike. Or Mohammed. There's a million of 'em.) Even Riverbend, as much as I admire her, seems to have, at best, contempt for Iraqis working in the Interzone. While I don't feel that any opinion I have can really be objective in this matter, I have to say that's rather elitist of her. She obviously comes from a relatively well-to-do family in Baghdad and I think may not understand what less fortunate families need to do to get by, and honestly we rich American pigs provide an alternative to boiled shoes for dinner for a lot of people. I don't mean to be on any high horse; regular readers know that I am much more ashamed of what we've done here than proud, but I am happy to be able to help out in as small a way as I can, and people have to find work where they can.
Anyway, I've actually gone rather far afield from where I'd intended.
My point was that I wanted to try and put some perspective on my Iraqis. My Iraqis. Ok, I really hate it when I write that, but I do it often. I mean obviously they're not MY Iraqis. But still. It's their country, I'm the intruder, but I'm their boss. If I were in the States I'd say 'My employees'. But sometimes it feels like you need to make the distinction, you know? Still, it makes me uncomfortable, and I do it anyway. And also, many of the tiny anecdotes that do slip in, like in the comments from my last post where I'm all like, "Sometimes I would come out and say something funny and my Iraqis would laugh, because it was genuinely funny and not just because I was the boss, so there. And they don't even speak English, so you know I was damn funny if they got it." That dumb joke I made there feels like I'm all like "Duh, they don't speak English. They're so dumb, I was speaking English when I was like, 2 years old! It's so easy! Don't they get it?" Now, obviously, If you de-construct it that's not what I'm saying at all. I mean, what that stupid joke is saying is that they are servile and are kowtowing to their American master! Duh. But that's not true at all either, it was just a stupid joke, like all of my jokes, and while nobody reads it and really takes it that way... still.
I just wanted to give a better picture of what they're really like than what comes through from stupid jokes.
So let's start with S. - S. is my main guy. He actually does my job. It's great! He also speaks awesome English. When I first met him 3 years ago, he had fairly broken English. Better than many Iraqis, but nothing fantastic. He's been studying and watching TV and he picked it up really fast. He's way smarter than me. I don't do anything without consulting him, first. Well, that's not entirely true, but near enough. He's got a brother, R., who also works for me. He speaks English also, though not as well. Although I suspect he speaks better than he lets on, so he can pretend to not understand when you tell him something he doesn't want to hear. Without these two guys, I'd have to pack up and go home; GBG wouldn't have lasted a week without them. S. has the biggest office in the camp, which also doubles as our TV room; there's a thousand inch plasma TV with surround system in there. He's got the best office in the camp, and it's not as much as he deserves. When you walk in there, it looks like an operation to take over the world; it's great! Scott and I often joke about being afraid to piss S. off, and that we really shouldn't do anything about whatever the situation happens to be without clearing it with him first for fear of making him angry at me. Actually, come to think of it, there's more truth than joke to that.
A while back, my boss in Romania wanted me to fire the Iraqis that work in the 100 man camp as we weren't really operating anyway, and what were we paying them for? I refused on the grounds that if there are no Iraqis working here, then there are just like three Americans here with no security. Ok fine, he says, keep a few gate guards and S. No way, I says. I don't care if the 20 Iraqis I've employed here are sitting around getting paid and not doing anything, I want them here, because the less people in the camp, the more vulnerable and exposed I feel. I feel safer surrounded by Iraqis than without them! Go ahead, ask any other American in the Interzone if they feel the same way, and %90 of the time you'll get a racial, redneck response, and the other %10 will just be like "Are you freaking crazy?" Which is a stupid way to look at it. Iraqis by and large just want to live their life. The insurgents, terrorists, etc. are pretty much never Iraqi. The Sunnis and Shiites blowing each other up are largely Iranian instigated. Iraqis, until recently, didn't give a damn whether their neighbor was other than their own religious persuasion.
Another Iraqi whom I've known these 3 years, H., often brings me food because she feels bad that I only eat bad cafeteria food all of the time. Her aunt, I. who worked for the first company I worked for when I came here, makes Briani, which is my favorite Iraqi dish ever. It's fairly simple; a base of rice with slivers of lamb or chicken, mixed with nuts, peas, watercress, raisins, fried potato chunks, and lots of other tasty stuff. Her uncle works in the tailor shop where Scott, Dave, Rodney and I used to go to get those custom-tailored suits, back when it was safe, relatively, to walk the streets of Baghdad. We ate dinner at their house once back then, also, the first time I encountered and fell in love with I.'s Briani.
I'm going to marry H. She's awesome. Mmm, Briani.
There are others, but that's a good start, I guess.

Ode To 3 Freakin' Years In Baghdad or, Frankenpost

Three years. I've been in this bloody country for three bloody years, today. I was 30 years old when I got here. If I don't manage to get thrown out soon, I will turn 34 here. UN-FREAKIN'-BELIEVABLE.
My biggest regrets? Well, number 1, I can't believe I wasn't questioned by the FBI when Phil was arrested. That would have been so cool. I mean, they questioned one employee that quit about 3 weeks after Phil was arrested, and he'd only been with the company for like 2 months. I mean hello! Project Manager! Been with the company for like 2 years now! I bet I know some good stuff. Jerks.
Another regret is that yesterday my friend Jeff and I were talking, and came up with the best description ever of PSD guys, and I already wrote about those clowns months ago, so there's no place to use it, now. Hey, wait! I guess it might be apropos to give the description here! Nice how that worked out. Anyway, we had a run-in with some of them at lunch yesterday, nothing worth writing about at all, (There was no milk money involved, if that's what you're thinking) but afterwards we were kvetching and moaning about how much PSD guys suck, (Which is a common pastime here in the Interzone, believe me) and here's what we came up with: Imagine your high school football team. Now, not to totally cop the dumb jock cliché, but I kind of have to. Ok ok, every football team has one or two guys on it that are those all-around Alpha dog types; smart, studious, and also athletic. So, take those two guys out of the picture, there are none of those here. Now take what's left over and fill them up with steroids and give them guns, and actually, dumb them down a little more even, as at least your high school football team went to classes and had some sort of current sense memory as to what education and learning are.
Yeah okay, that really wasn't necessary or worth it, but we laughed about it pretty hard and I really wish I'd had that in my original whingeing about PSDs post.
Moving on...
I got an email from my grandmother this morning where she asks "What remains unclear is what their [GBG's] ultimate aim is. Do you hope to get back into operation (and when you do operate what exactly do you do, anyhow?)" - Well I guess that's a valid question, and seeing as how it's my 3 year anniversary and I've been hard-up for other stuff to write about lately, it's worth a shot.
Honestly, at this point GBG's goal at the moment is simply to stay afloat. Phil owes a lot of money to the US government due to his guilty plea and subsequent plea bargain, possibly more money than he made here in the first place. So, part of the goal is to make enough to pay those fines and hopefully come out at least even. As far as what we do... well I don't really know what all he's got up to all around, but my involvment was to run a valid (and legal!) life support contract at the 600 man camp until we lost that. Now, we are left only with the GBG camp, which we had built for ourselves to support other GBG contracts in the Interzone. But now that we have no other contracts, and are very unlikely to get any, we have this multi-million dollar asset here in the Interzone which is in perfectly good shape, and we want to use it as a sort of IZ hotel. There is a real shortage of property and places to stay in the IZ, and we've had hundreds of people asking us to let them or their company house people here, which we've had to turn down until we can clear our property issues up. So there is a market for an IZ hotel, and I am more than capable of running it with what we have here.
Also, my own personal goal is to keep collecting paychecks, and for my Iraqi staff to keep collecting paychecks.
My grandmother also asked "Then there was that latest message- [my previous post] -incoming shrapnel. What is the message there? Time to bug out?? That so-called safe green zone doesn't sound so safe anymore."
No message! I just thought the shrapnel looked neat. We get bombs all the time- no big deal. Anyway, I don't know that I've ever heard anyone call the Interzone safe... just more safe than Baghdad proper.
That blog that I (among thousands of others...) rave about all of the time, Baghdad Burning, has been turned into a play! I heard about it on BBC radio yesterday, and then looked it up online. It's apparently not a very good play, at least according to the New York Times, but I think it's cool that she's received so much attention.
Anyway, in honor of my three year anniversary, and due to the voluminous amount of free time I have nowadays, I've been re-calibrating my smugmug page. I've added a few new photos here and there, and also gone back and tweaked a few of the old ones in order to bring out better color and so forth. The galleries I primarily have been messing with are Baghdad, Blackhawk Ride to Balad, Venice, Prague, & Petersburg Alaska. I've made very minor adjustments to a few others.

You Should Never Blog When You've Had A Glass Of Guilt To Drink

I ordered the book they printed from Riverbend's Iraq blog, 'Baghdad Burning' last week. I just finished reading it in less than a day, and in addition to making me feel angrier than I've ever been, (which I seem to feel a lot lately) it also made me go back and read a lot of the emails I was writing to friends and family from when I first arrived in Baghdad. Riverbend began writing her blog online on August 17th 2003, just 3 days after I arrived here. While she was busy pouring her heart out and crying about all of the atrocities going on around her, I was writing glib notes about how much fun I was having. I never have thought of myself as naϊve, but going back and seeing what I was thinking about and what she was thinking about during that same time period made me seriously consider the adjective. It's not that I ever approved of what was going on here; behind alot of my snarky comments was a real cynic of Bush and his illegal war... but I now think that being a snarky cynic is the most shameful thing I've ever been. I can't possibly re-create the emotions which Riverbend was able to get across with her very real, very immediate expeiences as an Iraqi writing about the occupation firsthand, but it made me see myself as she probably would have seen me had I been sending those emails to her, and it made me wonder why my Iraqi friends here hadn't strangled me a long time ago. I don't believe I was ever intending anything other than sympathy and support for this country, but it was all an adventure to me... hell, it still is. That's one of my main reasons for coming in the first place, and I won't make a self-deprecating comment here about the money, because I'm trying to give up the snark. But it's fact; I really made the decision to come primarily for the sake of adventure and something new... it's true that the money is mostly why I'm still here 3 years later, mercenary that my grandmother says I am, but it wasn't the whole of my original intent. But having a grand old time, even while trying to do good by the Iraqis I know, and hating Bush and the evil that governments do, is a slap in the face to someone who had to cower with her family in her house for days while we 'Shocked and Awed' the crap out of her city, or who watched American soldiers raid a neighbor's house and throw the 16 year old girl into Abu Ghraib, all because the CIA was tipped off by a vindictive neighbor who had had some sort of domestic dispute with them the year before. And that's the light stuff. Her book has really affected me, and there is alot of really scary crap that's been going on the whole time, some things I was aware of, but much I wasn't. When you put it all together in the same spot, I begin to see my place here a little more clearly, and I have more reasons to stay up late wracked with the guilt of my nation. It doesn't change anything: I still have reasons for staying, beyond even money. Someday, when I'm gone from here for good, perhaps I'll even be able to explain it.
Speaking of which, we are getting close to the end of the month, and I still don't know whether it will find me starting over here, ready to go back to work, or on a plane to Thailand. I should find something out...well, before the end of the month. I've said it before, but either way brings it's own brand of relief and dread... so toss the die, cross your fingers, pray to God... but que sera, sera.

One Prima Donna Whingeing About Another

Something that makes me absolutely crazy about IZ culture is the whole PSD situation. Personal Security Detail teams are essentially patriotic mercenaries. They will whine and complain like little girls and possibly threaten you physically if you dare to call them by that name, but that's because none of them know how to open a dictionary.
            mercenary / adj. & n.
            adj. primarily concerned with money or other reward (mercenary motives).
             n. (pl. -ies)
            1 a hired soldier in foreign service.
            2 a person available for paid hire
Okay you can argue the 'in foreign service' bit, but not really. PSD teams guard mainly Americans, it's true, but there are also several American companies contracted as PSDs for Iraqi officials as well, and it's supposedly ALL in the service of making Iraq more secure, anyway. And most of the money is coming from Iraqi Reconstruction funds, so it's to no one's benefit to get all semantic about it... actually you could reasonably call me a mercenary based on definition 2, but I'll play the semantic card for myself in that it could mean anybody that's got a job then, is a mercenary. But that's ridiculous. And mercenary generally connotates fighting for money, which I am not. So now that that log is out of my eye, let me address the splinter that is mercenary culture in the IZ.
The camp I used to be in charge of life support for had 600 of these pampered prima donnas living in it, so I am uniquely qualified to comment on them. They are generally big pumped up rednecks. When I leave Iraq and enter normal society for vacation, I feel alot bigger than I used to because here everybody is built like a superhero. They get their own caravan room and bathroom, and are given power and water 24/7, and are usually provided with TVs and DVD players, cable and internet. Their assignments are usually not more than 3 to 4 hours long, a couple of days a week, if that. They may or may not venture out into dangerous parts of Baghdad on those assignments. They drive like maniacs, shoot to kill with little provocation, and act like the gods of Iraq. In fact, they seem to be stuck on the very silly highschool-like self appointed moniker of 'Baghdaddy', as in "Who's your Baghdaddy?!", to be seen on T-shirts worn by retarded Americans all over the country. To be fair, anybody can buy these T-shirts at the PX, but mostly the big monkey mercenaries seem to like them. Incidentally, the front of these T-shirts say this in English, but just in case they wanted to actually cross the line from stupid to offensive, they have it translated into Arabic on the back side, just to let their subjects know who's boss. Anyway, I've been told by my translator that it doesn't really make sense in Arabic anyway, so mostly it's just stupid. But it's the thought that counts.
When they're not on assignment, they're lounging about their secured and pampered compounds (which always have Gym facilities, various other recreation options, and excellent dining facilities) and complain about how their showers leak water onto their floor, the food sucks, not enough decent gym equipment, blah blah blah. Their salaries are almost never less than $20,000 per month.
Meanwhile, the American soldier gets paid substantially less (maybe a grand or 2 a month? I'm not actually up on the current salary for soldier danger pay, which they get for being assigned here) and spend a significantly more amount of time in the red zone, risking their lives. Their living situation, when they are on long term assignment here, is to bunk up with the rest of their unit and no personal space.(like in the movies!) PSDs usually get 2 weeks paid vacation every 3 months. Soldiers don't really get vacations per se, but their leave time is significantly less.
Now, a lot of PSDs are ex-military, (also ex-cops, ex-firemen, ex-security guards etc...) and feel they've paid their dues, but that's sort of beside the point for me. Why is so much of the reconstruction money being spent on security? They're paying mercenaries 10 times the money a soldier makes to do a tenth of a soldier's job! Not only is the money being spent on their salaries, but those huge plush secure compounds they insist on living in don't come cheap either, let me tell you. Just building one can cost tens of millions of dollars, and ongoing life support costs can also be in the tens of millions per year. It's so wastefull, it's almost too big to comprehend. Why not just offer a 4 or 5 times increase in soldiers pay to get people to enlist and come over here that way? If that's not feasible, there must be other options less insane than what's actually going on.
It puts me in a difficult position morally, because I've made alot of money myself by building and maintaining one of the biggest of those camps. So don't get me wrong, I am definately somewhat of a hypocrite. It doesn't make me any less outraged at the whole thing, though, even having admitted that. Plus I just really dislike these people, and have only received these impressions by having actually been in the middle of it; before I came to work for my current employers, I really wasn't completely aware of how messed up it was. It's one thing to read about it in a blurb in the New York Times, it's another thing to see it firsthand.
In my own personal news, we found a treadmill buried under lots of construction materials while cleaning out our warehouse the other day. We've plugged it in in one of the rooms in our office building and I've begun burning some calories... a much needed activity for me. If I'm this sore from walking for an hour a day on the treadmill, it would really have put a crimp in my travelling for whenever I'm freed from this prison.