messiestobjects

The "May You Live In Interesting Times" Curse

At the risk of perhaps speaking too soon... well, it's the 29th, and nobody has yet showed up to forcibly escort us away from this junky beat writer's paranoid idea of heaven known as Interzone... I think that means that our lawyers and their lawyers are yukking it up back in the States and so all of this will be handled in a more lawyerly, and therefore slower, manner. So, barring any more wackiness, it looks like once again we've managed to buy ourselves more time. I feel that I should offer a clearer explanation of our situation here than I have in the past at this point. The reason I haven't until now is that it's really just a bunch of minutia, and I didn't want to bore anybody's computer into standby mode. So, please feel free to skip to the end; I'll understand. But if you're at all worried that, despite all of my protests, I have in fact been involved in illegal activities by remaining in the Interzone employed by a known (and jailed, I might add) criminal, and wish to set your mind at rest, well, read on until you find yourself waking from a stupor with drool on your keyboard.
Anyway, I'll try to make it as painless as possible. The gist of the matter is that the property upon which GBG built it's 100 Man Camp was given to us by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) back in the wild wild east days of American Occupation in Baghdad. The problem with this is that the CPA of course didn't have the right to give out any properties, as all property in the Interzone belongs to the Iraqi people. Now the Iraqis didn't have a government at the time; we were still trying to set one up for them after demolishing their original one, so the CPA took a lot of such liberties, assuming that there was no one to tell them they couldn't. When the CPA left town, replaced by the Office of the US Embassy (Once again, The Castle) after the Iraqi government we created had begun to function, (well, sort of function) there were quite a few such imperialistic messes to clean up. In the case of property issues, all American squatters such as us were given new contracts. These contracts said that we could remain on the land until the Iraqi government issued eviction notices asking for their land back, which was likely to take a while as property issues in the Interzone were hardly their primary concern at the time. Well, the day of reckoning did eventually come, as it always does. The thing is, our eviction notice didn't come from the Iraqi Municipality; it came from the Joint Area Support Group's (JASG) property management office, which is a US military office inside The Castle. They said that they were going to officially turn the property over to the Iraqi government, and before they could do that, we had to leave and take all of our things with us. So when we got the initial eviction letter, we contacted an Iraqi company, who hired an Iraqi lawyer to look into leasing the property from the Iraqi government once it was handed over, and our arrangement is hopefully to then sublease it from the Iraqi company. So that is why we think we'll be able to stay. If some of you are confused as to why exactly we want to stay here, well, so am I, but a company is as a company does, and ours is schizophrenic, and so is ours, I think.
Anyway, the problem is, we are fairly certain that the JASG is lying and does not, in fact, wish to turn the property over to the Iraqis. The only way they can make us leave is by turning it over to them, and that's why they're saying that, but there are a lot of other people in the Interzone having the same problem. One company in particular that I know of actually did the exact same thing that we are doing, except they actually physically left their property with the understanding that once it was actually turned over to the Iraqi municipality, with whom they had a pre-arranged sublease agreement like we're doing, they'd move back in. But once they left, their property was not in fact given to the Iraqis as stated, but signed over to some people from the Japanese government (or a Japanese company... I'm not clear on that exactly) for an undisclosed "donation." Now these poor guys are screwed; they physically left their property because their company had current contracts with the government, and didn't want to rock the boat, and so they lost their property. Incidentally, the Iraqi municipality is also extremely peeved with the JASG over the affair, as they thought they were getting their land back, but were instead subjected to the peacup con as well. 
So, we are not playing it so easily. We have kept ourselves and our assets on the property in defiance of The Castle, as we have nothing to lose, really, and our lawyers in both Iraq and the States are working the case. And at the moment, it seems to be working... after we issued a legal letter on the 24th stating our case, and our intent to sublease the property and therefore not pack up and leave, we have had only silence in return. Which of course could be a bad sign or a good one, but they didn't apparently feel that they could forcibly remove us on their stated eviction date as threatened, so that's hopeful.
  So that's where I'm at now. I apologize for the keyboard-shaped imprint on your cheek. If drool has in fact ruined it, please feel free to send me the bill.
No, not really. You could've stopped reading at any time, you know.
Anyway, as you've probably already noticed, I recently added a little mp3 player to my website...* if you don't want to hear it, just hit the pause button once the music starts. There's no stop button, which is annoying, especially as I have a very slow internet connection and it takes like ten minutes to load a song, so it starts and stops, starts and stops. For those of you with much faster connections, you'll have to let me know if it plays smoothly and is worth me keeping it. If it's too annoying to bear even for the best connections, I'll remove it. Also, for those of you with sensitive natures, a few of the songs have rather explicit subject matter. For instance, if there are children around whose ears will shrivel up and fall off upon hearing some foul language, avoid the following tracks: 'Nuclear War' by Yo La Tengo, 'I'm An American' by Dennis Leary, (But that's not even actually the name of the song. I committed some minor censorship there for the sake of a spot of clean humor; so spank my *** and call me Tipper Gore) and while 'Heterosexual Man' by The Odds has no explicit words per se, it does deal with some humorous adult situations.
And so there, now you've been explicitly warned, and it's time for me to go as it's the busiest part of my day: Lunch.

*The mp3 player widget has since been removed because the website that had offered it as a widget has ceased.

I Can't Wait!! or, Signs, Coincidences, And Other Hopeful Superstitions

I was in the Port Authority bus terminal in New York City, looking for the bus to Seattle. I was on my way to Petersberg, Alaska for my second summer gutting fish for 16 hours a day at minimum wage plus overtime. I couldn't wait! Anyway, I saw a guy sitting in a chair, reading. I recognized him immediately; his name was Justin and I knew him from the previous year's fishgut-flingin' festivities. I went over and said hello. It turns out he was on his way to Portland, Oregon. He wasn't going to Petersberg to work the fishing industry again this year as I'd initially assumed; He was from New Jersey and was riding to the West Coast to see some friends. It was just a freak coincidence that we were going to ride the same bus all the way to Portland, so of course we became bus buddies for the three day/three night bus ride. No comments about 'bus buddies', please! I know how it sounds, but I don't care... a three day & night bus ride on a dirty Greyhound 9 years ago made me extremely grouchy, and I still haven't recovered. So BACK OFF! Grr.
Anyway, we talked quite a bit on the ride, but what makes this whole thing a significant event for me is that I had already decided that when the summer was finished and I'd saved up, I was going on a trip to Europe for as long as my money would last. Justin had spent the past year in Europe, so of course we discussed it quite a bit. He gave me a list of places he had run across where an American might find work in order to lay low for a bit and extend his time over there. One of the items on the list was the Armed Forces Recreational Center (AFRC) in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany... Well, after I blew too much money in London, Edinburgh, and Amsterdam, I took a train to Garmisch and wound up staying in Germany for 6 years. At the end of that time, the hotel in Chiemsee where I was working was about to close permanently. I'd saved no money from the pittance I was paid there, mostly due to lots of drinking and travelling, and I was a bit panicked about having no prospects, when I met Rodney. He had come to Chiemsee to work for the last 6 months or so that the hotel would be open, as he had worked there many years before, and wanted to be there for the end. He had a friend working for a company in Baghdad who needed some people... and here I am.
Anyway, my point is that I think that running into Justin was the happiest coincidence of my life. Or at least the most significant... It's amazing how one small event can change the course of your life. Of course, I would never have gone to Alaska in the first place had I not been delivering auto parts in Tannersville, PA, trying to decide whether or not I should just pick up my dull pathetic life and leave for the unknown. I was turning over the idea of my recent research into a fishing cannery in Petersberg, Alaska, when I drove by a house that had in it's driveway, parked quite inexplicably, a small freezer-truck with the words 'Petersberg Alaska Seafood' painted on it's side... so I do know a bit about signs from above, oh yes I do. From that truck to Justin to Rodney... I wonder if I'll get another chance at seeing such a signpost, or if I'm on my own now, the universe being tired of leading me around by the nose.
We are three days away from our latest eviction date, and once again I have no idea what's going to happen. I think I'm ready to go... it's getting pretty heated up around here again. I've been hearing loads of mortars and rockets the last few days... Insurgent attacks on the Interzone are like stock funds; they're cyclical. Months will go by and you won't hear a thing, and then a time will come where for about 3 weeks they're lobbing ordinance at us on a daily basis. And then it'll stop again for a while. I'm not worried about getting hit by anything; the insurgents have notoriously bad aim and pretty much never hit anything of signifcance. There are loads of king size potholes around, though. But it's that, plus being tired of not really having anything to do and never knowing what is going on, plus being guilty by association, and feeling like I can't accomplish anything here. I mean, if we win our property battle someday far in the future, this could again become a good job, but it just seems like it can't happen, and it keeps getting pushed back. 
Send me a sign! Actually, getting escorted out of Interzone at gunpoint on July 27th would be a good sign. I can't wait!

Questions In A World Of Blue

There was an incident two days ago where one of my Iraqi employees was caught unescorted in the Interzone. For anyone unfamiliar with Interzone escorting policy, I'll spare you a migraine and give you the basic idea: Everybody in the Interzone must have an approved ID badge. If you don't have one, especially if you're an Iraqi, you must be escorted everywhere you go inside the Interzone by someone who has escorting privileges on their badge. Now please take the time to pray and give thanks that I did not give you more details, as Interzone policies on any matter would give Byzantium a run for their money, and the Interzone badging policy is the worst of the worst causes of spontaneous aneurisms around here.
Anyway, my employee Abu Anwar, (Which actually means 'Father of Anwar... it's the local version of a nickname) actually had a badge, but it had recently expired and some busybody from some office of the Embassy (hereafter referred to as "The Castle", re: Kafka) saw him and I received a phone call asking me to make an appearance. When I arrived on the side of the road where they had snagged him, that same busybody (who wasn't a part of the Interzone police force, although the gentlemen from the Interzone police were there also) began asking me alot of questions and it quickly became apparent that he didn't actually care about the escorting violation as much as he cared about giving a GBG employee a hard time. That's been happening more frequently lately as it seems that someone in The Castle has a personal vendetta against GBG, and they are getting panicked as apparently we are getting closer to saving our property and remaining in operation.
Well the point of all this is that this agent of The Castle was a real colostomy bag and was trying to accuse me of something, although I'm not sure what. He apparently was happy being pugnacious and insinuating, hoping I would crack and tell him where all Phil's Gold was or something. While unjustly acting as though I was a criminal, he accusingly asked me if I felt comfortable working for a criminal. I have to say, as sensitive a subject as my former boss is with me, it was all I could do not to laugh in his face. And I mean one of those laughs where spit comes out of your mouth all accidental like, and you and the guy the spit landed on try to pretend it didn't happen. I asked him if he or his colleagues had found any Weapons of Mass Destruction yet. I asked where the billions of dollars of Iraqi money formerly in the care of The Castle went to. Luckily he wasn't smart enough to retort, because such questions really are unpatriotic, and as this gentleman from The Castle was kind enough to remind me, there still exist those people who unquestioningly believe in America's moral superiority, and he could have possibly given me a much harder time. We are all working for criminals.
Speaking of which, I received a phone call last week from Phil. I was sleeping the deep sleep of the mid-afternoon nap, and I answered the phone before I was really awake. When I heard Phil's voice on the phone, I think I lost 5 years of my life before I realized it was just a dream. When I realized that in fact it wasn't a dream, I lost two more, but I have to say that a phone call from your boss in jail who you haven't spoken to since he was arrested nine months ago is a more effective wake-up than Turkish Coffee.
Anyway, he was calling to thank me for not abandoning him... at this point I'm actually the only American left working for him. Everybody else has left or found other jobs. I must admit that, if I hadn't remained, his company here would be a total lost cause at this point. As it is, I've probably only delayed the inevitable for a few months, but I'm proud of having been able to hold things together somewhat. HOWEVER... as I voiced empty responses to Phil, I was thinking that the reason I didn't "abandon" him had nothing to do with him... at all. I owed Phil some loyalty, it's true. He hired me on at a salary that is more than usual for someone of my experience level, even here in Baghdad, and gave me a chance to prove myself. It's been a great opportunity all around and even apart from the money I've set aside, the experience is invaluable and my resumé looks great. But as far as I'm concerned, after our 600 Man Camp contract went down in flames, my debt to him is repaid and concluded. Now it's all about salvaging what's left, and hoping that when I do leave, I can leave things better for my Iraqi friends than they were when I arrived.

A Treatise On The Origins Of Religion And Political Movements

About ten or fifteen years ago... I'm not sure exactly when, but my brother and sister were very young; maybe 8 and 6 respectively, or somewhere around there. Anyway, at the time I was sitting in our living room, probably reading, anti-social bookworm that I was in those days, and my sister Katie was sitting by the entryway playing with one of those mid-size inflatable beach balls. My brother Peter came around the corner through the entryway and inadvertently kicked the ball out of Katie's hands, sending it soaring down the hallway. They both went after it at the same time, and as they were running down the hallway it quite accidentally became a race and they began laughing hysterically because they both realized it had been an accident, and they'd reacted the same way to it... I don't remember who got to the ball first, or maybe I didn't see, but by the time they got there they were laughing so hard with the shared experience that it didn't seem to matter who "won". They had just invented the greatest game ever for the two of them to play together.
So the next step of course was to re-create it. Once they finished falling all over themselves laughing, they gleefully ran back to the main entryway where Katie sat down with the ball and Peter went back around the corner. He "stealthily" came back and "accidentally" kicked the ball down the hallway again, and they both ran after it laughing. By the third or fourth time they played this marvelous new game, they began taking more serious note of who got to the ball first, which of course led to rules about what position Katie would be in when the ball was kicked, so that they had an equal chance of reaching the ball on time. By the fifth time they were no longer laughing, but still having fun, and another rule was added about no pushing or tripping, and perhaps another stating that once the ball was kicked, they had to each count to 3 seconds before running, and then the ball had to be thrown rather than kicked to better control the distance and final destination of the ball as kicking it could unfairly send it closer to one participant's side than the other's, or worse yet, break a lamp and get Mom angry.
By the tenth time they did this, they were arguing about a questionable rule, and whether it had really even been broken, and it seemed that the fun had gone out of it, yet the competition to see who the ultimate beachball-chasing champion was drove them to keep playing. At some point around the fifteenth game, a real fight broke out as one participant had committed an illegal offsides and wouldn't admit it, at least according to one witness, but the ref had unfortunately had his head turned at that moment. When they realized they didn't actually have a referee, they asked me to settle their dispute, but I told them I was reading a very important treatise on 20th century literature and could not be bothered, although of course I was watching closely and was quite secretly amused.
By the twentieth game, it became not so much a game, or even competition, as a full-out ice hockey-style brawl in the middle of the living room floor, at which time Mom came out, did a little yelling of her own, and sent them to their respective rooms.
This is a true story, with little to no embellishment, and it is an event which has been stuck in my mind for most of my adult life. I don't mean to embarass my younger siblings, who were of course very young at the time and behaved in a manner identical to that of children all over the world... but it illustrates something about human nature which I've never forgotten.

Genius Recipes For A Patriotic Day, Which Commemorates A Host Of America's Past Triumphs And Atrocities, Not Just The Independence Which In Fact No Longer Exists As It Was Meant To, Anyway

So I've discovered the best way to make coffee: Every time you make a pot, make just a little more than you actually need, and after you've poured your last cup, leave the warmer on for a couple of hours so that the bit that's left over evaporates down to about a tablespoon of rather thick coffee syrup. Then, the next time you make coffee, leave that syrup in the pot for a nice extra kick... of course there are people who like Turkish coffee, which is actually worse as they enjoy stirring tablespoons of coffee grounds in such coffee syrup and drinking, I mean chewing, that. But my way works a little better for me as I feel that I can do without the resulting Turkish heart-attack.
Anyway, I've received a couple of emails from friends and family who are worried about my spiritual well-being, due to my whole 'ashamed to be an American' thing a few posts back... they seem to think that because I said this, it means I am suffering from some sort of disillusioned stupor of the spirit... anyway it struck me as funny that anybody would think that, and it got me to thinking about it. I've never really strongly identified my sense of self with my country, so the idea that finding out about all sorts of really bad things we've done would affect me on a level where I'd feel personal shame or responsibility is ludicrous.  I don't believe in Patriotism... at least not in a way beyond waving flags about and letting off firecrackers on the 4th of July. (That's more all about firecrackers being neat-o.) I did not go to the moon, much as I'd like to, and I did not kill any American Indians in the 1800's. I am proud to be a part of the country that landed on the moon, and ashamed to be an heir to a bloody conquest, but I did not myself do those things. I am ashamed of my ignorance and naïvety, but that is true of all humans, or at least it should be. If that shame were to bruise or destroy me, I'd have needed a thicker skin before ever leaving the womb.
What I believe is that Patriotism without responsibility, without questions, without thought, is blind and stupid, and paradoxically, un-American. Or actually not so paradoxical... Patriotism without responsibility is un-American. I think it's only a paradox in the minds of Far Right Christian Conservative Republicans. Love of Country does not equal Love of Government. Love of Country, right or wrong, does not equal Loyalty, or Justice, or Honor, or even (gasp) apple pie. That would actually be closer to fascism, or Little Bo Peepism (You know, because of the sheep).  I tend to think that Jefferson, Lincoln, or Washington would be quite shocked at the state of modern American affairs. I'm not saying I'm some sort of genius political thinker, because any idiot can see that what is going on is insane, if they take the time to try. Anyway, here's one of my favorite Einstein quotes regarding patriotism to bolster my weak argument, and I think we can all agree that he was some kinda smart guy:

"He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."

"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!"

    -That's right, A. frikken Einstein said that.

Of course, he did write that whole letter to Teddy about using the bomb, so that's where overthinking yourself will get you.
Anyway, I'm not really trying to convince anybody that I'm right; people tend to hold on to their beliefs in such matters whatever cases are presented to them, and I am no great convincer. I just want people to stop worrying about me, and my supposed bruised and battered soul... these are my beliefs and I'm doing okay. Whatever I'm going through here is probably not as horrific as some imagine. Make that definately not. My few and recent soapboxy angst-ridden anti-occupation posts are just there so I can have something to write about... well, mostly. I do feel very strongly about this stuff, but I'm still sitting in my caravan, perusing the internet, eating and sleeping, and planning on having a grand old time in Thailand someday to shake the middle-east out of my skin.
Well, considering I've spent the last half-hour reading other Einstein quotes on the internet, I'm going to end with one which speaks very well about the current bloody mess in the middle east, from Iraq to Gaza, to many other parts of the world even, because the odious term 'Peacekeeping Force' has always simultaneously amused and enraged me:

"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."

-A. frikken Einstein

He who has ears, let him hear. He who has big monkey ears and is our President, let him remove his fingers from them, as well as from various other orifices in his body.