messiestobjects

The Men Who Stare At Goats... And At Me!

Several months back, Julie and I were watching that movie "The Men Who Stare At Goats" and there's a scene during the opening credits where Ewan McGregor's character, Bob Wilton, is preparing to go to Kuwait in an attempt to be an Iraq war journalist. In one frame, about seven and a half minutes in, he is signing his Kuwaiti visa. I said to Julie,"Hey, I have a visa just like that one!" I had spent a few days in Kuwait before running up to Iraq for work, and I even posted a scan of my visa and the story behind it back in August 2007. But just in case you don't feel like following the link to read that exciting entry, for the purposes of this entry I'll post the scan again. Here it is:

Now as you can see, my name  is only written here in Arabic, as well as the Kuwaiti company who acted as my sponsor for the purposes of this Visa. But my old passport number is clearly written there in Arabic numerals, as well as the residency number.

So this guy, 3azeez, commented on that particular post last week, and then we continued the conversation via email. He speaks Arabic, and had been watching the film, and when he saw the Kuwaiti visa pop up he was confused because the name in Arabic did not match the name of the character played by McGregor, Bob Wilton. In fact, the name on the passport was mine. So he did a search online and eventually came to my blog, where he kindly informed me of what must have happened.

That's right! Some prop guy for the movie must have run across my blog when searching online for a Kuwaiti Visa, and rather than bothering to reproduce it, he just copied mine with minor changes! And to prove it, here's a still from the film!

My passport number, except for the 0 covered by Ewan McGregor's thumb! My residency number! All they did was change the dates in Arabic numerals, and change the top part from where it said 'Residency' to 'Work Visa'. And if you have a keen enough eye you can match up the Arabic writing to see that my name is there and everything. Ha ha! My passport is famous! Right up there onscreen next to the producers... one of whom is George Clooney! It loved acting with Ewan, but it feels bad it didn't get an actual scene with Clooney or Jeff Bridges. Right now we're waiting to hear on a deal with the next Peter Jackson film.

3azeez asked me to cut him in on a percentage if we decided to sue, but I don't think we can and anyway I wouldn't. I just think it's awesome. Especially because it's a pretty cool movie. It could have been much, much worse. There are very few films out there lately that I don't consider pure garbage. Besides, in a movie about psychic spies, perhaps I should take it as a sign from the Universe. Maybe I'm supposed to join the New Earth Army. 

Anyway, my Kuwaiti Visa was actually used twice during the opening credits. I guess the film editors thought it was such a good actor that they wanted to see it again. Here it is, a few seconds later from another angle.

My regret is that they did not contact me to ask about it first. Not for any reason other than that I could have saved them from a few Kuwaiti Visa continuity errors. For instance, they shouldn't have had him sign it. That signature on my Visa isn't mine, it's the Kuwaiti issuing authority's. Also, in the upper left corner of the visa you'll see that blue stamp, where it's half white on the top. Well, that's actually a hologram stamp, and when I scanned it it just came out with a glare like that. So that's another indicator that it's a copy. And also, I'm not entirely positive about this one, but I'm pretty sure that unless Bob Wilton was going to be doing journalism in Kuwait, he wouldn't have needed a work visa. He may have needed a residency visa just like I did since when he would be going to Iraq, he wouldn't technically be leaving Kuwait since it was a closed border at the time. See the entry I linked to up top for more info on how that all worked. But I didn't go over as a journalist so like I said I could be wrong about that one.

If you want to join my passport's fan club, or just be alerted on any upcoming roles, please contact it at [email protected] to join the mailing list. Thank you for all your support and love and it would especially like to thank the Seattle Passport issuing agency without whom it never would have existed, and also messiestobjects.typepad.com for daring to give it a chance. God bless.

The Biggest, Awesomest Colon EVER!

I was going through some old photos and junk that I had scanned, and I found this clipping which Scott had found in the military newspaper, The Stars & Stripes, when we were in Iraq. It's horribly funny in so many wrong ways that I wanted to share it with the world. I mean, look at the expression on that kid's face. WOW! He seems to be thinking. This colon is the shit! And what's that stuff on the sides of the colon wall? Too much detail perhaps? And who thought this was a good picture to print? How will that kid ever live a normal life? Ketchikan is small, and I'm sure his friends will never let him forget this. "Hey Ryan, remember that time you crawled through a giant asshole, thought it was awesome, and then had your picture in the paper?" Who built the COLOSSAL colon in the first place? Who thought it was a good idea to make an ass cavity into a fun thing for kids to crawl through? I mean, I'm all for education, and the more that people understand their bodies and health and all that, the better. But I mean come on, this borders on the depraved. And then they printed it on the front page of the US Military's self-propaganda machine.

Anyway, these are the same questions that ran through my mind when I first saw it, and it's nice to know that you can bury something like this in a drawer, find it years later, and be knocked on your ass by it all over again.

Soulless Meat Products Of War

I ran across this article on this guy because of email alerts I get from Google on any news out there relating to my imprisoned boss from Iraq. The article barely mentions my old boss, but this guy, Colonel Frank Wismer III, is a real piece of work. He's an Episcopalian Army Chaplain; you know, a believer in the Bible and Jesus and peace and love, and the article says this:

"Wismer, whose awards include the Bronze Star Medal and the Combat Action Badge, passes on to readers many lessons he learned while in Iraq. Here's one: "Going to war is an incredibly fantastic experience if one lives through it…One year in Iraq revealed things about community that the church was not able to reveal to me in 50-some years. I say that not as a criticism of the church, but to highlight the incredible bond that is established by individuals who survive the horrors of war."

Going to war is an incredibly fantastic experience? Because of the bond soldiers get while protecting each other and killing the other guy? I think he's missed the point of his religion. I mean, I get the bond thing, I really do. I've been in several situations which can never be understood by anyone who wasn't there with me, and this certainly creates a bond, so I can maybe imagine what being in the life or death struggles of combat can do for friendships, though I'm not sure what that has to do with religion. But this is a supposed man of God, talking about how great war is without any sense of irony. I'm not sure that "Onward Christian Soldiers" was meant as a literal call to literal bloody war, dude. My understanding, from having grown up in the church, was that we were being called to fight a purely spiritual war to convert human souls to God, and I'm not sure how you can justify turning people into soulless meat product in even a just war, let alone the atrocious moral and criminal mess that has been Bush's campaign in Iraq, as a so-called man of God.

"The big picture, he suggests, are the strategic objectives that led to the invasion of Iraq -- to fight the war on terror outside of America's borders, to plant democracy in a part of the world that spawns terror; to isolate neighboring Syria, influence a democratic movement in Iran and give notice Saudi Arabia that it cannot tolerate a strict, conservative brand of the Muslim faith practiced there and harbor Islamic militants."

He's agreeing with the sentiments in this paragraph, by the way, calling the lies and misinformation that led to our illegal and immoral war in Iraq "strategic objectives." And he feels that his God is okay with fighting the war on terror, America's war on terror, outside of America's borders. This, to me, is a most horrific sentiment. That a supposed Christian man thinks it is okay to take our battles and fight them in someone else's home. We've taken our war on terrorism, which now we all know had absolutely nothing to do with Saddam Hussein, Iraq or terrorism, and destroyed those innocent people's lives and homes, and he thinks this is what we as God's army had a right to do.

I don't know. I've never understood how any church can justify Army Chaplains who are also war mongers for the church. In my mind, if an Army Chaplain were to be living up to his beliefs, he should only be there to encourage moral behavior among the troops, (Hey guys, when you're out there today, please don't rape and kill any Iraqi women and their families. They're God's children too, you know) and to do everything in their power to help end conflicts, not promote them.

If you really want an extreme lefty belief here, I'm pretty sure that, were Jesus everything the Bible says he was, he'd vastly disapprove of the very concept of Army Chaplains. Men of God have no business in war, except perhaps to be there independently, (not on the military payroll) and being compassionate to all people involved while doing whatever possible to end it. However, he's actually against withdrawing our presence in Iraq, mostly because of how he thinks it would make us look.

"To pullout our troops out of Iraq now would be a colossal mistake and send that country to chaos," he says. "Strategically that would not be helpful. We would be seen as a people only in something for a short time, not for the long haul."

"I would like to see the Iranian government be able to manage, the military be able to protect the country from without and the police to protect it from within. Then there can be phased withdrawals, but that needs to be done over time."

Iranian Government? I hope that was just a misprint and not a telling slip of the tongue, dude.

Back To School: My Book Report & How I Spent Four Summers

Hey guess what? I'm having my Groundhog day. I'm in Virginia again, for the third week-long assignment in a row. Ick. If anybody ever wants to travel to Vienna, VA, I know all the good restaurants. I forgot my camera, so even if I wind up doing something interesting, I won't be able to share any images. I'm probably not going to do much though. I might go see another concert on Saturday; there's a band I really like named Louis XIV playing.

But I finally got around to reading a book which I'd touted here waaaay back in October aught 6. I'd been wanting to read it for a very long time, but I think I felt like I was still too close to my own experiences in Iraq, so I kept putting it off. I don't know exactly why I finally decided to pick it up, other than that I just needed something to bring to Virginia with me. At any rate, after I finished reading it, I went to the author's website and dropped him the following note:

I just finished your book... I lived in Baghdad (successively in a hotel in the Karradah district, the VVIP airport terminal, and in the Green Zone) for three years, from August 2003 through October 2006. Since I left, the level of both stupidity and insanity which I witnessed there slowly seeped away from my daily consciousness, until I was almost fit for normal human company again. Reading your book was an extremely engaging experience for me as it not only brought all of those old emotions back, but additionally shed some new light on the chaotic events that went on around me which I did not fully understand at the time.

Uh... thanks?

Which about sums it up. It's an excellent book in that I believe he really went out of his way to be as impartial and as nice as possible to the people he was writing about, which in the end only made their grand stupidities even more painful to read. Having lived there during the period about which he wrote, (The CPA's tenure in control of the reconstruction of Iraq led by Paul Bremer from 2003 to 2004) it added another layer of emotion which I find to be inexplicable. For instance, there was an incident near my company's compound in the Green Zone one time while I was covering for Rodney there while he was on his vacation. Rodney was the Irish scalawag friend of mine who'd had a friend working in Iraq who got us all jobs there in the first place back in August aught 3.

Anyway, one night the Green Zone incoming alarm went off, followed by a warning to all CPA employees to stay out of the streets of the Zone. Word came down to us that an American had been stabbed right out in the open inside the Green Zone and that the army was searching for the terrorist that had somehow snuck in and done it. We never heard anything else about it and, with so many other crazy things going on all the time, it was quickly forgotten about. Well, Rajiv wrote about that incident in his book. Apparently it had been quickly discovered that the stabbing was done by a fellow American; the two men had been having a drunken brawl or something. This news was hushed up, and that was that. It seems that the powers that be would rather have had us believe that an insurgent was loose in the Green Zone than admit the truth, and I'm not even really sure why. But I'll tell you one thing, when I read that, I laughed my ass off. I'd always kind of wondered about that stabbing, and it was an unexpected release of, something, when I read what had really happened, over four years later now.

That was one of just a few incidents that I was around for which he writes about from an insider's perspective. He wrote about the bombing of the United Nations building, which had happened just a week after my arrival in Baghdad. One funny incident that he wrote about was when the Iraqi Soccer team won an important match against Saudi Arabia. That night, the Americans inside the Green Zone freaked out when they heard an insane amount of gunfire coming from the city just outside their 12 foot high protective barriers; they all ran for bunkers and basements thinking that this was it, the Iraqis were storming the Green Zone. It was my second night in Baghdad and we were staying in a hotel downtown, NOT protected by the concrete blast walls of the Emerald City. We were inside, probably playing cards or eating strange and greasy local food or who knows what, when a CRAPLOAD of gunfire began right outside on our street. Dave, Scott and I were kind of like, aw hell, we're going to die on our second night here? Rip off. Ironically, my future boss-who-is-now-in-prison was there too; it's where I first met him. Dave tried to lock himself in the bathroom, Scott was standing in the hallway trying to figure out what good hiding was going to do, and I was under me bed. Phil (my future boss) was in his room, gesticulating at all of us urgently (and creepily) to come into his room while holding out a bottle of Jim Beam; I think that he was thinking that hell, if we're going to die we might as well party first. (That, incidentally, should have tipped me off about him right away.) We heard someone walking through the courtyard of our hotel, bullet shells dropping onto the tiles. Oh God oh God oh God, this is it. Phil's security guard walked in with a big grin, because he'd just been outside joining in with the celebratory gunfire over Iraq's victory in the soccer match. I wrote about that in less detail at the time here.

One that really got me was the bombing of the Green Zone Cafe and then the Market on October 14th 2004. I knew that date off the top of my head, and could have told anyone who asked when that happened without having to look it up. I'd quit my first job in Iraq and began working for Phil on October 12th, 2004. Rajiv called the market and cafe bombings the beginning of the end of the CPA staff's illusions in the Green Zone (I'm paraphrasing). I'd been to the cafe with Scott a few times, and we'd frequented the market during that summer. I think I also wrote about that in a mass email at the time, here. (This other page that I keep linking to by the way is a companion blogpage where I posted a bunch of mass emails I'd sent to friends and family from my early days in Iraq, before I had a blog) I was two blocks away from the market when a suicide bomber blew himself up, along with one of my favorite shops there; A tent where a nice old Iraqi man and a young Iraqi John Lennon lookalike sold songbirds and various other bric-a-brac.

It was a sobering omen of what was to come, and it certainly saddened me in ways that few other bombings which I was around for did. For the remaining two years that I was there, every time I drove by the area where the market used to be, I shook my head like an old man, and even indulged in a tut-tut occasionally.

But these are some of the moments I felt while reading his book because of how I experienced them, not what the book is really about. It's really about how the Bush Administration not only did NOT have a real plan for Iraq after his wrong-headed war, but how even more egregiously they sent people over to fix the country they'd just demolished who were chosen for their jobs because of their affiliation and loyalty to the Republican party. People who actually understood Iraq and what needed to be done were short-shrifted, shunted aside, even fired and removed in favor of Bush loyalists, most notably Jay Garner for Paul Bremer but also hundreds of others. Quoting from the book jacket:

...the case of the 24 year old who had never worked in finance put in charge of reestablishing Baghdad's stock exchange; a contractor with no previous experience paid millions to guard a closed airport; a State Department employee forced to bribe [other] Americans to enlist their help in preventing Iraqi weapons specialists from defecting to Iran! (that's my favorite one, by the way); Americans willing to serve in Iraq screened by White House officials for their views on Roe vs. Wade; people with prior expertise in the Middle East excluded in favor of lesser-qualified Republican Party loyalists. Finally, he describes Bremer's ignominious departure in 2004, fleeing secretly in a helicopter two days ahead of schedule.

Of course I wasn't even close to being directly involved in any of that stuff, but I was around for it and witnessed a lot of the side effects. I heard all the talk... the Green Zone was a small community in those days. I highly recommend 'Imperial Life In The Emerald City'  by Rajiv Chandrasekaran as a clear minded journal of one of the most embarrassing moments in American history. And yes, I was a part of it in my own small way. Yay.

On a final note, I want to say that one of my proudest moments in Iraq was when I got to be rude to Paul Bremer. Dave, George, Scott and I were eating dinner in the CPA building when who should walk right by our table, but Paul Bremer and Dan Rather, followed by a gaggle of reporters and suck-ups on their way to a quiet corner of the Republican Palace for an interview. As I saw him coming, I loudly whistled Darth Vader's theme. For my trouble I was rewarded with a sharp look from Bremer and some very frightening glares from his body guards. In retrospect, especially after reading this book, I realize that he was not so much a Dark Lord as an opportunistic incompetent, and it would have been more apropos to whistle the Animaniacs' theme.

No Witty Title This Time. If I Am Still In Baghdad Tomorrow Night, I'm Killing Something, And Singing 'Happy Birthday To Me.'

So, this time, it really could possibly be my last post from Baghdad. No, really, it seriously could be. In fact I'm almost %90 sure that it is. My last post, I mean, from here. If it's not, more sensitive readers may wish to avoid this site for a few days, as the only reason it is not my last post from Iraq is that I missed the plane again, and any further posts from Baghdad are likely to be laced with extremely angry, profane, shocking, and inexcusable language, which I suspect could burn the eyes right out of your sockets. You have been duly forewarned.
So this is a hell of a way to spend my 34th... yes yes please comment on how much you wish me a happy birthday. Please? Seriously, everybody who reads this has to pay the price of admission by saying happy birthday in the comments of this one, and be creative. Don't just say 'Happy Birthday'. Say instead, 'Have a Happy Birthday while you're stuck in Baghdad, sucka!' And so forth. Since my birthday will consist of just sitting by myself on a couch and reading junk on the internet, as I have all week, with a pit of nervousness about getting the hell away from here tomorrow, I could really use the encouragement. If you're reading this one for the first time a week or a month or a year from now, and you've totally missed my birthday, it's not too late. You may still say happy birthday to me, and I will credit you retro-actively. You're welcome.
I wish that I had something to write about Baghdad, here in my last post while I'm here. Something insightful, or stupid, or whatever. But I've been holed up in an Army happy camp all week, and have had little contact with any of the things which keep me in touch with what's going on in the Interzone, or with my Iraqi friends. I do know that Karrada street is still on lockdown, almost one week after that soldier went missing. Which makes me wonder if he was really what the lockdown was all about in the first place. I've heard rumours that they are going to keep that part of the city under wraps for a full month... weird. Anyway, I already tried to do a final post from Baghdad last Monday night, about the emotions I was feeling on the verge of leaving forever, and look where that got me. So that will have to serve, and this past week will have to be classified as filler. Just killing time, and amusing myself. See you in Turkey! Or else...!!!!

OK Fine, I'll Tell You How It's Going, But You'll Be Sorry You Asked.

Yeah... sorry about yesterday's sermon. It was a tad preachy, I know, and I was certainly out of my depth. I feel pretty strongly about the subject, but I'm not certain how the subject feels about me! Anyway, I got to put up a picture of a hot astronette, and that makes it totally worth it.
I managed to get my flight to Turkey rescheduled for this Tuesday, so we'll try again. I'm a bit anxious, though, because Yahoo weather calls for thunderstorms in Baghdad on Tuesday, and often when there's bad weather, such as light rain or dust particles, Iraqi pilots get nervous and cancel flights. It's as if a light smattering of water is the equivalent of the 'Great White Death' blizzard of '49 over here! I swear if I don't get on a plane again this Tuesday, someone is getting... well, I'm going to misdirect my petty anger at someone completely undeserving, I'm sure. Oh, and, Tuesday is the 31st. Halloween. So that's good.
My Aunt Mary wrote to tell me that "instead of complaining about late night comedy, why don't you actually spend some time writing about your future plans, your goals, what it is that you are actually thinking about doing?" Ouch! Well, I knew I was in over my head with trying to defend Space Tourism. But still, I don't have to be told to shut up and start talking about myself twice, so here it is, Future Plans: Turkey for the month of November. Germany to see friends for Krampus fest the first week of December, and possibly Egypt on a group hypertrek afterwards. And ultimately Thailand. My goal in Thailand is to do some serious beach time, and get lasik eye surgery. Thailand is cheap, so I could conceivably spend months there and not spend very much money at all, which makes it the perfect place to relax and figure out what's next. There are a few other major events in between, which I have refrained from divulging here because I don't want to jinx anything... I think I mentioned several posts back of my distaste for talking about things too soon, and there are so many things that could go wrong that I'm really not going to test the fates here. You will just have to wait until said events are over and done with before I say a word, and if said events fail to come to pass, you may never know what happened, and that's just the way it has to be! Right. Cryptic enough for you? Sorry about that... ask a question I don't want to answer, get a vague response. It's almost mathematical. I'm rather pathological that way. Honestly, you'll all be much better off if you just stop caring, really. It's not worth it. I'm weird and narcissistic, and there are better ways to spend your time.
In other news about me... well I was given the oportunity for one final good deed in Baghdad, so I have to hope I'm not a total lost cause just yet. I was talking to the manager of Freedom Rest, and she mentioned that she was having a hard time finding good people to work here. I told her that I had recently been forced to lay off several Iraqis from GBG, who were likely still looking for a job, people I'd known for years and knew to be good people. So the upshot is I made a few calls and got the last few ladies who were unable to work up north in Kurdistan jobs here at Freedom Rest! So I'm feeling pretty smug and proud of myself, which means I'll be getting hit by a shovel to the face at any moment. Stay tuned for a detailed description of the scars which the spade will leave on my nose.

Sermon On The Mount Of Space Tourism And Exploration

Something that really bothers me is when I hear otherwise-intelligent people making denigrating jokes about the idea of Space Exploration, or in the particular instance that has set me off on writing today’s rant, Space Tourism. Now I don’t actually know if Lewis Black can be safely bedded in the intelligence camp or not; he seems a little too coked out or something to retain much hold on his objectivity, but he is a regular on John Stewart’s show, and you have to respect that. I was watching the Daily Show yesterday, here on one of the two big plasma TVs which they have in the lobby of Freedom Rest. Incidentally, the mini-palace compound that is Freedom Rest is just a few blocks down from Saddam’s Presidential Palace (now the US Embassy), and served at one time as an Officer’s clubhouse for the former Iraqi President’s more favoured staff. Now my friends Darren and Steve, who were awesome enough to let me stay here until I can get out of country, run the place and oversee a team of people dedicated to making sure that soldiers here on R&R have fun. There’s a guy here whose job it is to fill up water balloons. I think I’ve mentioned that one before. The first time I came over here to visit a while back, Darren was refereeing a Sumo Suit match… that’s pretty much what it sounds like, where the contestants wear these really large padded suits which resemble sumo wrestler blubber and attempt to roll each other around the mat. Now as cool as all that is, let’s change the subject and talk about what a waste of money space adventuring is. (Yes, in case you missed it, there was definitely some snark in that last sentence. The Government spends a lot on Morale, Welfare, and Recreation programs for soldiers… which in and of itself is not a bad thing, but come on, it produces a resume which claims ‘water balloon filling’ as job experience?! Anyway, I won’t even get into the overall waste of money that is the war in Iraq; I think we’re all on the same page as far as that goes at this point.)
Anyway, Mr. Black was making fun of Anousheh Ansari, who returned recently from her 8 day sojourn aboard the International Space Station, saying that the reason she spent the $20 million for the experience was so that she could basically yell nyah nyah at the world’s poor from really high up. It was funnier the way he said it, I suppose, but as I’ve already said that sort of narrow minded joke telling irks me. I understand the fact that a lot of people consider Space Exploration, and more importantly the money that Space Exploration costs, a huge waste. I understand the fact, but not the why. Miss Ansari is an Iranian-American, and was the main sponsor of the Ansari X-prize. A real hero, as far as I’m concerned. The Ansari X-prize was an award of $10 million to the first non-government organization that could build a reusable space craft; it had to be launched and reach an altitude of 100 kilometers, the true boundary of space, twice within two weeks. The X-Prize has done more to spur competition in the private sector for reaching space than anything before or since, and has directly led to the possibility of affordable space flight for those of us who were too dumb in high school to understand that you had to get really really good grades to become an astronaut. With cheap spaceflight, a whole new frontier will open for the world, and the possibilities are awe-inspiring. I honestly believe that, for my (hypothetical) grandchildren to survive, we as a species have to keep moving forward. In a world where large sums of money are spent on infinitely more questionable purposes, it seems like the relatively small amount of money spent on furthering our understanding of the Universe should be beyond ridicule. It is, after all, merely a continuation of the greatest endeavour of the human race. Without exploration, we are nothing, and further, when man is brave enough to push at his boundaries and go where few have gone, invariably he comes back with knowledge that can change the face of what we thought we knew about the world.
Something I hear or read about a lot as an argument against spending money in Space is that the world has too many problems, more attention should be focused on poverty and yadda yadda. All this is true, but why start with bashing Space? There are so many other wastes of money and resources going on, that Space Exploration is a very small fraction of where the world’s money is going, and it has such tremendous possibilities. Compared to other wasteful government spending, for instance, space funding, which usually takes up less than 0.5% of the US Government budget, doesn’t even make the Heritage Foundation's top ten list of wasteful spending! And as far as someone like Miss Ansari spending a cool $20 mil on her lifetime dream goes, well, to hell with Lewis Black. I wonder if he, or even John Stewart, spends the same percentage of their worth on charities that she does? I mean, she was on the board of directors for the Make-A-Wish foundation, for god’s sake! It doesn’t make sense to make a joke at her expense in that manner. Even if you believe that she, or people like her, are morally bankrupt for spending that kind of money on something that you consider frivolous, you have to understand that for those who dream of a better future, Space is the catalyst that can make it all happen, the dream of man come true. It’s the highest ideal worth spending on, certainly more worthy than much of the other 99.5%! Well, that's an opinion, not a fact, but go take a look at that list and tell me that funding for space programs should be cut before any other single thing on it.
By the way, I’ve been trying really hard not to use Star Trek phrases here, (Final Frontier, etc.)  because I hate that anybody with an enthusiasm for space exploration is often lumped in with the Trekkies… I actually rather despise Star Trek. It’s just another easy joke for those wishing to minimize the awesomeness of the whole endeavour. Irony, sarcasm and wit are fine tools, but not when they are misdirected at the dreams of mankind. Save them for simian Presidents and pig-headed Secretaries of Defense and State. Speaking of which, don’t you think it’s rather amazing that Bush is getting impatient with Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki? That takes a lot of chutzpah, even for him. Bush illegally invades Iraq, his boy Bremer disintegrates the Iraqi army, they have absolutely no discernable plan for running the country, and everything goes to hell over a period of three years, so they throw up this poor guy al-Maliki and a few months later are trying to shift the responsibility for all of the chaos to him. They are getting impatient with him for not cleaning up their mess quickly enough, a mess which to all appearances is beyond fixing. I think that someone just needs to punch the man in the face, seriously. It’s way overdue.

Socrates Didn't Know Jack, Yo! Or wait, Maybe That Was His Point?

So I finally got around to reading a 14 page article on Time.com which Jeff had sent me a link to a week ago... it's titled Life in Hell: A Baghdad Diary. It's pretty interesting. Although I have to say that his description of the flight descent into the Baghdad International Airport (BIAP) seems a tad exaggerated. I mean, it's true that planes can't begin their descent until they are pretty much right on top of the BIAP, and that they do the whole more-exciting-than-usual corkscrew drop thing, but every time I've done it, it's pretty smooth and I've never noticed anyone screaming or panicking. Of course, I usually sleep through the whole thing, so I guess it could be true. (Hey, it's my blog, I'll make myself look cool if I freaking want to, okay? So you see Ken, don't go basing your opinions of me based on my own self-congratulatory drivel; I don't often tell the stories that make me look like a snivelling coward!) And I've already talked about the road-formerly-known-as the most dangerous in the world, so I won't get into that again. But I believe that the intention of the author of the article was to set the mood for the rest of his piece on the utterly depressing, frightening, violent and chaotic aura of Baghdad, and which I don't believe is an exaggeration at all.
Beyond all of the depression and anger which the truth of his journalism stirs up in me, it's also interesting because I can see alot of paralells in the worsening situation and likely eventual disintegration of Iraq, and the shorter, less important story of GBG. I won't outline GBG's demise here again; all 5 longtime readers of this site already know it, and quite likely wish they didn't. Anyway, my subject here isn't really GBG, I just think a lot about how both the larger issue of the bushoglio in Iraq and the absolute mess that Phil made of his own company have affected my outlook on life, being so caught up in both events simultaneously. Since I've been given this extra week in Baghdad, and all of my former ties here are effectively severed, I find that I am able to approach the whole sordid mess a bit more philosophically, and here is what I've come up with: George Bush is an evil, stupid man. Phil Bloom is an evil, stupid man. I am a stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid bloody idiot, for ever getting involved with either of them. And that all we are, is dust in the wind, dude.
Well, I'll keep working on it.

The Mundane Details Of A Life Delayed

Well, my old camp is almost completely disassembled now... Darren came over and picked me up this morning and brought me over to 'Freedom Rest', which as I mentioned before is a sweet little R & R compound inside the IZ where soldiers come to hang out when they get a few days off. In some ways it reminds me of Chiemsee, if only because it's a nice large building that is set up with loads of fun activities. And Steve and Darren are in charge of having fun, which seems to be the natural order of things.
Anyway, it looks like the travel office will not be open until Friday, and so it's doubtful that I'll be able to get tickets for Saturday, and even if I were able to, the office with the Visa stamp I need doesn't open until Sunday. So I have to resign myself to sitting around until Tuesday... grr argh. What a waste. I'll be spending my 34th birthday in Iraq, after all.
So that's all. Unless something changes, I will refrain from posting further about how bitter I am, because I realize that it's boring. I only do it now because I wanted you to know that at least I am safe, and additionally am in fact situated nicely in the Interzone, and not glancing furtively out from behind a thick curtain on a window in a house in the Red Zone.
Here's a picture I took this morning of what's left of my old camp.

I Could Be In Istanbul Right Now! Sighhh. At Least I'm Not Headed For The Red Zone.

Well, Scott and Jeff left for the airport this morning, and I am the last guy in the camp. My caravan and the two right next to mine are the last ones left, and they will be unhooking my power and water in about an hour... I love being last man standing! Anyway, Darren and Steve were able to get me a room at their camp for a few nights, so I can stay inside the Interzone until my flight, which I still don't know the time and date of, because the travel office is closed for the holiday. I'm hoping Saturday, but it could possibly be next Tuesday. Grr. But at least I don't have to stay in the Red Zone, so that's nice.
Anyway, those guys work at an Army R&R camp, so it actually shouldn't be too bad of a wait. They have an olympic size swimming pool, a library (of sorts) internet, game room, etc etc... unfortunately the weather has recently dipped down into the 80's so it's a bit too chilly for me to go swimming, but the rest of it should keep me busy.
More later, if I get the chance.

GAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

It's always the thing you don't see coming. So, I'm still in Baghdad. I didn't even make it out of my room this morning. S called me and said that all the roads in Karrada district, where he and H live, are closed and the Green Zone was locked down, also. A soldier has gone missing and so the US Military started a door-to-door search at 7:30 last night in the Karrada district, and at some point a major gunfight broke out so the Iraqi police closed all the streets and issued a curfew, and no one can get in or out and it's still going on as I write this; it is 9am.
So aside from stranding me here for perhaps another week, I'm sure that US soldiers, already pretty well hated by most Iraqis at this point, are out there winning the hell out of hearts and minds by kicking down doors and scaring the crap out of people. By the way I really have come to hate that phrase, "Winning hearts and minds." It sounds nice, but so far it seems that it's mostly been used as an insidious form of Bush double-speak around here. Karradah district is one of the few areas of Baghdad that is still relatively safe... several of my employees were from that area. I'm sure that after today it's all downhill for Karrada. I mean, stuff still happens there, but not nearly as much as in many other areas. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the fact that when a soldier goes missing, the army will go to any lengths to find him, but I think that what's going on out there right now is not a good idea. They've been searching for 14 hours now; I can't imagine how many families they've scared the total hell out of and are right now trying to talk their sons out of angrily going out and joining the insurgency.
Sooo... I don't know how to even begin to approach the next week. That house I wanted to stay at in the Red Zone, if I couldn't have made it through immigration, was in Karrada. Not that I can't stay in my caravan in the Interzone for another night or two, but after that my caravan will likely have to be removed. On the bright side, I can get that Visa stamp now because the office should open in a day or two, so the next time, as long as there are no police actions going on, I should have no trouble.
I will keep you posted.

As Long As It's Just A Coda, And NOT An Encore!

So I lied... one more post from Baghdad. I hope only one more. Because I'm actually a bit nervous about whether or not I can make it out of the country... See, because I no longer have my DoD badge, in order to make it through immigration at the airport I have to have a visa stamped in my passport, which I don't. A DoD badge acts as a visa; you don't need the stamp because the badge shows that you're here working for the US Government. When I had mine taken away, I actually fell into illegal immigrant status. Which is really not a big deal, because normally you can pay a guy downtown 50 bucks to get a Visa stamped in your passport a couple of days before you leave, but it's the end of Ramadan. At the end of Ramadan is a 3 day holiday called Eid (eed) which is rather like Arabic Mardi Gras. After a month of fasting and not smoking or touching women, Eid could be translated as "almost anything goes!" Those wacky Muslims really know how to party, right!? And so anyway the Visa office was closed... They are sure to give me some trouble at the airport, but S assures me that he's got a friend up there that, with a little help from my friend Ben Franklin, will be able to get me through. Ahhh... I'm going to miss certain things about Iraq!
Steve and Darren came by one last time last night to doss all the stuff Scott, Jeff and I are leaving behind... Scott and Jeff are actually leaving the day after I do, now, but they are flying to Dubai. Scott is going from there to Greece and Jeff is headed to Rome. I may meet up with them at Krampus fest in Germany the first week in December.
Anyway, if you're wondering what the heck 'doss' means, it's one of those words that nobody knows who coined it, but came into widespread use, in this case in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, at the employee housing for the resort I worked at there. The word itself never gained in popularity at Chiemsee, but they did in fact use the doss system there, also. In Garmisch, there was such a regular turnover of employees, that every day you could count on walking down the hall and finding a pile of stuff that someone had ditched when leaving employment in Garmisch to continue their travels. Mostly it would be clothes they didn't feel like carrying, but often it would also include used ski equipment, hot plates, books, etc etc. Stuff not needed anymore. These piles came to be called doss, and the act of rooting through them and taking what you wanted out of them became the act of dossing. It was a great system, I got alot of cool junk that way.
Anyway, Steve and Darren dossed a bunch of our stuff and we split a bottle of absinthe that was brought from Germany and had been sitting in someone's closet here for years for just such a special occasion; Absinthe will always be a fondly remembered tradition among ex-Chiemseers. Fortunately, between the five of us, one bottle wasn't enough to elicit any ear-cutting madness, and we parted ways happily. I went to sleep, but kept waking up at hourly intervals as I often do when I'm excited about going somewhere the next morning. I decided to just give up on sleep, and now it's 5:30 am. So it's going to be an interesting day... especially since our Iraqi engineer, N, sub-contracted some badged people to dismantle the camp after I lost my badge, and if I can't make it out today, I may not have a caravan to come back to! Well, if that happens, I'll be staying at N's house out in the Red Zone, so wish me luck.

Way Too Self-Aware To Honestly Attempt Writing Crap Like This. Or, So Long, Baghdad, And Thanks For All The Dust.

Well, this is likely to be my last post from Baghdad, so I better make it a good one, right?
Um.
Sorry, I can't take that kind of pressure.
I leave early tomorrow morning, and arrive in Istanbul in the afternoon. That's all I have to say about that for the moment.
I am having really mixed emotions about leaving; On the one hand I'm ecstatic and simply can't keep my stomach from jumping around in that exuberant manner it has when something really great is about to happen. On the other hand I'm also way too relieved about leaving someplace I've lived for such a long time. ... Oh wait, guess I'm not feeling all that mixed after all.
I guess I have to say, though, that I am getting pretty nervous about what's next. I have some big travel plans, and one of those big life-events staring me right between the eyes, but I don't have a job or an idea of where I want to live while I work at that job lined up, and that's kind of scary. Sure, I've saved a little pile of money, but I know only too well how quickly money can disappear.
I've also been thinking a lot these past few days about the depressing situation in Iraq. I've seen it go from pretty bad to really bad to awful to god-awful to absolute s***. In the early days I had hopes that things would get better gradually, if not extremely realistic hopes. Now I don't think anybody really believes that it will for decades, and what's worse is that America's presence here, and therefore MY presence here, is directly related to the failure of Iraq. I often think about whether the very tiny amount of good I tried to do helps get me get out of being a part of the problem, and then I wonder if the very tiny amount of good I tried to do even comes close to mattering when I've been getting paid to do it. It's a really depressing thought, on my last day here.
I don't deny that I came for mostly self-serving reasons, but that didn't bother me when it seemed that things could possibly get better here; after all, everybody in the world goes where they think it will help them do better in life. Now that Iraq pretty much seems to be a dead dream, it feels worse.
Ok dammit, there are those mixed feelings rearing their ugly heads after all. I'm happy that my Iraqi friends don't think I'm a bad person for coming here, and that they like me and stuff, and that I was able to help them out in the end. I'm just not sure that it's enough so that I can feel justified about it, ever, and hope that I am able to sleep at night for the foreseeable future.
The only reason that I am being so open about my inner conflict and contradictions is that I understand the larger context of it; If you are American, you are also reaping the benefits of this mess. Wartime economy is good economy, although apparently, Bush has managed to blight even that part up. And you are also suffering the consequences of it, the National culpability and guilt. Granted, if you didn't throw yourself into the thick of it, the way this idiot did, you are not reaping either in a personal way, unless you voted Republican in which case all you get is the guilt, but the context is there.
On November 7th vote Democrat and help to end this nightmare!


P.S. If all this strikes you as utter bull**** rationalization, please don't tell me so; people need their illusions.

P.P.S. For all my talk of being in Iraq, it ain't nothing compared to stuff like this.

Miscellania Minutiae Mania

It's another Keith Olbermann special comment... my favorite part about this one is the last paragraph; the idea that the next President can use Bush's own New World Order policies against him is wonderful. But in reality, with everything else our miserable excuse for a President has done, there's no reason to believe he won't vote himself in for a third term. Think that is a silly thing to be afraid of, do you? Don't forget, Franklin D. Roosevelt did it. He served for three full terms, and I believe was elected for a fourth! Think you that Bush won't try to claim that America needs him as much as we needed FDR? Well sure, it sounds like sci-fi, but so does having a monkey for a President. A sci-fi sitcom. As a reminder of what grape ape is capable of, here's a picture link of him effectively destroying our Constitution. He's signing that odious military tribunal piece of crap.
Moving on, because the more I think about it the more I want to slit my wrists; I was transferring all of my computer files from my work computer to my tablet PC yesterday in preparation for getting the hell out of Dodge; the screen on my tablet is differently shaped than my work screen, and when I went to my blog, my page was all crazy lookin'! The banner was way off center, html code was peeking out from behind it; it was all afright. Apparently I was using a fluid layout for the main column, and on wider screens that just jacks it all up! So for anybody who uses a widescreen, or any other differently shaped monitor, and were wondering why I seemed to be lacking in pattern recognition skills, well, that's why. It's all fixed now, I think, but you have to clear your web browser's cache to view my repaired layout in all it's glory.
Otherwise, things are moving along nicely. I'm packing up and getting pretty excited about leaving. There is a certain amount of tension in my shoulders and neck which won't go away until the plane takes off because I'm paranoid about more harassment from the Castle, and just want to get out of here before they get another chance. Scott and Jeff have quit their jobs, also, because they were staying at my camp due to the fact that their company had been unable to provide them with housing, other than a dilapidated caravan on a street with no security, no water, and broken windows, and so they are calling game and heading out within the next two weeks. We hung out with Steve and Darren one last time; they are planning on leaving Iraq for good in December. We also went over and said bye to Rodney and Barney, two other guys from Chiemsee who are still working over at the camp where I used to work before making the mistake of choosing employment with GBG. Rodney is the Irishman who actually hooked me up with my first job in Iraq, so I'm not sure whether to be grateful or hateful! Well, it is what it is, and I suppose he meant well. I thanked him, of course.

Act III Scene 10.... and Cut!!!

I have no idea where to begin on this one. Today has been the craziest day. I got arrested! It was totally sweet. I was awoken by my cellphone at around 7:45am, by Scott calling to tell me to look out the window because the camp was crawling with about 20 soldiers doing their whole police raid schtick. I ran outside, only to discover that we were being harassed in a major way. The guy in charge, a Lieutenant Colonel Davis, was the most stereotypical military guy ever. Total jerk. When I actually mentioned that in some circles what the JASG was doing could be considered harassment, he decided to bust Scott down for some reason, and not me, saying that this was not harassment. Harassment would have been him dragging us out of our rooms and stripping us down and doing lots of other extremely uncharitable things. I was thinking, oh, so he's obviously harassed people before, then, since he seems to have such a fine sense of the degree of it. It's good we're in such professional hands. And he had another guy with him, who played good cop to his bad cop. It was hilarious! They made a few false accusations, I got irate, and they cuffed me. Took me to the clink. Then, because they had nothing, they let me go. But they took my DoD badge, because of course they can do whatever they want, really. And they made all of the Iraqis leave the camp, because without my badge, I'm not allowed to have Iraqis under my supervision. As a result there is no one left to do any work, and no chance of getting anybody in to do any without my badge, so GBG's whole asset removal plan is effectively neutered, and I bought my plane ticket! I'm out of here on tuesday the 24th. I'll tell you, I am ridiculously happy to have the matter settled! I'm finally leaving!
But these JASG military guys, man. They are a riot. Good Cop was asking us what our plans were when we left here, and I said I wanted to go to Thailand, and he asked if I was some sort of Hippie or something. I'm not kidding, I swear. When Jeff said that he had plans to hit Europe, Bad Cop went nuts and said "What! Why you wanna go there?! Buncha lefties! Just tell me this; you're not going to France, are you?" Jeff responded instantly with "I'm going to France first! I've just now decided, thanks to you." Bad Cop had a field day with that, let me tell you. He told Jeff that when he got to France, he should declare that he was there to take over the country, and watch how fast they all throw their guns down and surrender. You can't make this stuff up, folks, because it's so clichéd that it doesn't seem possible to actually exist out there in the real world without it being a movie about some hick or other. I wanted to ask him if he was going to torture us if I said that it's thanks to France that we had a successful American Revolution, but I was already in cuffs at that time, so I bit my tongue. Not that any of this has anything to do with anything. They weren't there to put the also-recently-neutered Habeas Corpus on a trial run; they just wanted to mess with GBG. Which is funny, you know, because if they'd just showed up and said, hey man, we're shutting you down because we hate GBG, I'd be ecstatic and say ok great! I'm outta here! Noooo problemo, hombre. Which is essentially exactly what happened, except that they got to play their favorite game of exercising military authority and getting their jollies from other people's powerlessness. It was really amazing to see all the sterotypes on display, in 3D. I shouldn't have lost my temper with Bad Cop, but even though I knew he was just trying to get a rise out of me, I couldn't let it go, I couldn't let him say whatever ignorant thing rolled off of his tongue next and sit there and take it. I think I may, as it turns out, have a real problem with authority. Go figure. I was such a nice, quiet boy. But you know, Scott and I were talking about it afterwards, and he said it very well; people who actually want authority over other people are generally bad people. So sometimes, having a problem with authority is probably the right way to be.
Anyway, it was really sad to see the last few Iraqis go, but I'm not worried because I know that they will be ok. Saying goodbye to S was hard; I've been working with him for a long time. But he's got a good job waiting for him in Kurdistan, so it's all good. Generally speaking, I have to say I'm feeling pretty good and relieved that it's finally all over. What's totally awesome about the whole thing, is that while the JASG was hup hup hupping around the camp, looking for guns, or Iraqis, or key making machines, (They confiscated our bleeding key making machine! Said it was a security risk!) and I was sitting on the side of a curb, hands cuffed behind my back and trying to swat flys away from my face with my knee, I got a great Deja Vu: The last scene of 'Monty Python & The Holy Grail'! That's exactly what it felt like. Quest over, stop the camera!

In Which I Take Aim And Shoot At A Mosque... Yeah. Those Guards Were Thinking The Same Thing That You Are Right Now.

So I was recently asked by a newcomer to Interzone what my scariest moment in Iraq was, and I laughed at him and said "So, how long you been here?" Damn newbies.
Ok I can't keep a straight typeface over that one; I hate that phrase so much that I just gave myself the willies. See previous post. PLEASE! I am not that kind of jerkface. I am a totally different and unique breed of jerkface, who takes umbrage at such relatively innocuous status-seeking comments.
Well, moving on, I had long ago already put a caption under a certain picture on my smugmug page which briefly relates my scariest moment, which came about because I took that picture in the first place. So here's how it went, long-winded version:
In September or October last year, I was busy making arrangements to go on my month-long vacation. My itinerary included Russia, where I was going to have my edge-of-space flight in the Mig-25.* I had to get a visa to visit Russia, so S stuffed me in the back of his car and took me out to the Mansour (mon-soor) district of Red-Zone Baghdad, where the Russian Embassy is. I actually had to do this little jaunt out into Baghdad a couple of times, because first I had to go bring them copies of my passport and fill out the visa application, and then come back a week later to pick up the visa after they'd finished processing it. The first time we went out, on the way back from the Russian Embassy, we passed by this HUGE mosque that is even now still under construction. I don't know what it's to be called, but work on it was begun by Saddam a long time ago; He wanted for it to be the biggest mosque in the world, and when it is completed, it will be. It's really quite unbelievably large. Anyway, after Saddam "left the building", the new Iraqi government took up the cause and continued construction, and it's looking pretty impressively mosquey these days. So  obviously, I had to have a picture of it, and on the second trip out there I brought my camera.
The mosque sits far off one of the main roads of Mansour, and yet due to it's immense size, is extremely visible. S pulled onto the curb and I rolled the back window down slightly enough for me to point my lens out, and snapped a few. Here's the one that I think really did us in, and you can click on it to go to the page where I have the others. Anyway, we started to pull out, when ten Iraqi guys, significantly I thought, not wearing any type of uniform came running out from a dirty shack that I'd thought was abandoned and pointed really big guns at us, yelling for us to stop. I started yelling at S to "Go! Go!" But he didn't, and backed up to where the guards were instead. Later when I asked him why he didn't burn rubber, which would have made the most sense to me, he said it was because he believed that they would have shot at our car. I was incredulous because we were on a very busy street in downtown Baghdad, and had a decent 30 yard lead on the gun-toting Iraqis who were on foot, after all, but he said that they still would have opened fire... I can't really bring myself to believe that, but you know, when there is a good soccer match on Iraqi TV or a wedding, Iraqis point their guns up and send out braps of celebratory gunfire, no matter what part of the city or how busy the area they're in is, so who knows. He also said that if we'd had our own gun, he could have waved it at them and then we could drive away because they wouldn't want to get involved in a gunfight. That one really stretches my credulity, and makes me extremely happy that I don't believe in carrying weaponry. Not having a gun probably saved us that day.
So they made us get out of the car, guns pointed at us. I had a large one aimed at my belly while they searched the car and took my camera for a look over. They then made us drive over to their shack, all the while chattering away in that incomprehensible moon-man language of theirs, and S was too involved in what was going on and, I presume, a bit too freaked out to translate anything for me. This went on for about ten minutes, when they took my badges and camera, and made S get in another car with them. I started yelling all angry-like with "What's all this then? What's all this then?" indignation. They let S tell me then that "Everything is fine, they just want to look at the pictures on your camera and ask me a few questions. Just hang out here and we'll be back in a few minutes." Well, he looked nervous, and not quite like everything was fine, but not totally freaked out and his voice was mostly steady. Besides, what could I do? Well I'll tell you what I could do; I'm a real pig-headed dumbf*** when I get in tense situations and am scared, so I started yelling "This is Bullsh**!!" really loud a bunch of times. You know, because when people don't speak your language, swearing at them noisily and aggressively gets the point you're trying to make across and helps bridge the culture gap. S got out of the car and came over to me and tried to calm me down and made me get back in our car. "Dude", he says, "I'll be fine. Just chill out and these guys will get you a cup of tea." Yes, his english is often that colloquial. We've taught him well.
So he took off with a few of the mosque guards, as they turned out to be, and I waited in the back seat of our car while the guy who'd had the gun pointed at my belly brought me a little paper cup full of Iraqi chai. I must have sat there for about an hour, exchanging tense yet polite nods with the guards, while they kept trying to give me more tea. A very hospitable people, even with guns trained on you. I was totally freaked out by now, and not for me. I figured that if I was in any danger at this point, I'd have been the one whom they drove off. It was a very long hour, but finally the car came back and praise Allah! They brought my camera back to me unscathed! As I hastily checked my camera for marks and made sure that the CF card was still there, I absent-mindedly asked "Hey, where's S, anyway. Isn't he ready to go yet?"
I am so going to hell for that joke. You know I'm kidding, right S? But everything was mostly ok. They hadn't tortured him, and although he seemed a bit shaken, assured me that nothing bad was going to happen. Once he'd explained to them that I was just a mentally challenged American tourist who took an inordinate amount of photographs, and they saw that there was nothing other than a few innocent snapshots on my camera, they decided that we were not, in fact, terrorists who wanted to blow up their big new mosque and were going to let us go. I'm still baffled to this day as to how they could have thought that a very white American with a DoD badge might be a terrorist, but I suppose they felt that they couldn't be too careful. They apparently took a photo of S's ID, because they were afraid that he was some sort of informant, and one of the guys was giving him some veiled threats; S figured it was because he was working with an American. Luckily it was an old ID, which didn't have his current address on it, but he was still a little freaked about that and spent a few weeks inside the IZ at our camp just in case. Nothing came of it, so all's well that ends well, I suppose.
So that's my scariest moment in Iraq. I mean, there have been others, but those don't involve my own stupidity, and have more to do with intense heart palpitations after hearing explosions and whatnot, and are not really interesting to write about.
By the way, I've really been enjoying Orcinus lately. I know that there is already a link on my sidebar to it, but the articles are so intelligent and in-depth that I wanted to plug it and highly suggest that you go take a look. Orcinus is yet another site I've been turned on to by GoDrex.

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.

Someday, You'll Be Able To Pull The Green Zone's Finger On Smell TV

The wait is over! Smell-o-vision is here at last! I can't wait to get one. The sad truth is, of course, that no matter how noble the ideals behind wanting to make audio/visual and nasal sensations into a collaborative "learning" tool, much like what they said about TV in the first place back in the day, I guarantee that when I pick up my first Stinky Set at Smell-o-Visions R Us, the first thing I'll be sniffing is a commercial for McDonalds. You think advertising is pervasive now? Just wait until you are subjected to ads for awesome fatty foods with smellomercials! You'll be able to taste the greasy goodness all day long, and won't be able to rest until you buy what they're smelling you. Plus, those geeks in high school are going to have to change all of their door plates to say AVN Club! At least the media can finally give a positive spin to the meaning of Snuff Films. The world is changing too fast for me... I was just getting used to this whole internet fad, and now this. Minority Report didn't predict the half of it. But seriously, the day I walk down the street, and billboards are doing retina scans on passers-by to determine how to tailor their ads based on their personal consumer profiles, and I then have to not only be subjected to a bright, noisy, obnoxious ad for a quarter pounder with cheese, but also have a squirt of burger perfume micturated in my nasal direction, I'm stabbing myself in the brain with a coffee spoon.
Well, I'm getting off-topic, I know. I should be sticking to writing about life working for a corrupt company in the Interzone. Incidentally, I looked up International Zone on Wikipedia, only to discover that, even though it officially had it's nomenclature changed to International Zone in 2004, due to the stubbornness of people and their cliquey lingo it is slowly being reverted to Green Zone. Which makes me feel like we've missed a great opportunity... I always call it the Interzone, a portmanteau coined by William Burroughs in his novel 'Naked Lunch'. Interzone was his drug-induced alternate universe version of Tangiers, Morocco, which was in fact an International Zone at the time. Interzone describes the madness and paranoia of this place infinitely better than dumb 'ol Green Zone does. A different kind of paranoia, to be sure, but paranoia nonetheless. Ah well, I will continue in calling it Interzone, though I be shut from "Green Zone" high society for my crime.
I don't have much news, unfortunately, about the closedown of my camp. It's taking a depressingly long amount of time to get moving, and we only have about 12 days left! Plus, while we have begun this sort of low-level disconnecting of the caravans from their foundations, (unhooking power and water lines, loosening the bolts, etc. etc.) the guys back in the States are still trying to appeal our eviction... It's really very upsetting. I am bored all to hell with this whole thing and am really counting on getting my ass tossed out of this place on the 26th. If they actually manage to stave off the inevitable, I'm going to scream. It doesn't matter; I'm still leaving, it's just that getting evicted will be a nice clean break and I don't have to feel bad about abandoned responsibilities, whereas this slow process of GBG having a death grip on the pathetic life they have left is really eating away at my soul, such as it is.

My Mind Sometimes Reminds Me Of A Pinball Machine

I know that it seems like every time Keith Olbermann makes a Special Comment, I go all googly in the knees and post about it here. Well, it only seems that way because it's true. This latest one definitely takes it up a notch... I don't care if what he says is unprofessional, or hysterical, or part of a left-wing conspiracy to defame the President and all the President's men, as people who disagree with him are bound to criticize. It's the truth of what he says that is important! And it's really funny, because it is true. Here's a link to the transcript, and I highly suggest you watch the video instead of just reading it... inflection is important and adds to the overall spice of the art of the presidential bitchslap.
Anyway, things are moving right along here on the ground... I did get the word from above to begin disassembling the camp... so we have just under three weeks to do it. I suspect that, as long as we are close to finishing but not quite finished as of the eviction date, the JASG will give us a slight time extension to complete our asset removal, so I don't have an exact day of departure just yet, but I can't imagine that it will be any longer than the first or second week in November.
People keep asking me what I'm going to do next, and I refuse to answer based on a couple of flimsy reasons. The first: I'm not entirely sure what is going to happen in the next month. I mean I have some thoughts on where I want to go, but really I'm a bit too preoccupied with stuff going on here to really figure it out just now. The second: Even if I knew exactly what I wanted, I still wouldn't say until I knew it was definitely going to happen. I don't like to jinx things up by speaking too soon. Or worse, say what I want and then suffer the embarassment of not being able go through with it... it's like when you want to quit smoking. If you go around telling everybody that you are going to quit smoking, and then you don't, people give you loads of crap for not having any willpower, which depresses you and makes you want a cigarette. And also, if everybody knows the date that you are supposed to stop, that puts alot of pressure on you to actually go through with it. As any smoker knows, pressure is what makes you really want a cigarette in the first place, so on quitting day you're so freaked out and pressurized that the only thing that keeps you from totally melting down is a smooth relaxing smoke; It's a lose/lose. So really, it's infinitely better to just quit one day, and wait for people to notice that you're in bed sweating & shaking from nicotine withdrawal, and cussing out anybody that comes close and hey! NOT having a cigarrette. Good for you, man! (Grr! Argh! Go Away!)
Anyway, what the hell was I talking about?

Synchronicity Which Hopefully Doesn't Point To Famous Last Words!

It's all about timing. Just days after I finally made my decision to leave this place, we got an eviction notice from the JASG! Synchronicity, man, you can't beat it. Granted, it's about the third one they've tried to give us since May, but I feel that this time they mean it. No really. I really believe it this time, I swear.
Anyway, the company is of course not giving up just yet, but I think that they will have to in the next couple of days... If they don't tell me soon to begin removing all of their assets from this property by the eviction date (October 26th), they run the risk of having everything confiscated by the Iraqi government, and I'm not sure that they are prepared to take that risk. So we will see. Anyway, no one can say it hasn't been a long time coming... Phil was arrested November 15th? 2005, and we were forced off of the 600 Man Camp in early March. We haven't done an honest day's work since, and it's October! So basically we've been on the edge of the precipice for nearly a year.
Anyway, I'm in a mental space where, and please excuse my French all you more delicate readers, I really don't give a merde! I want to leave!
The camp is a ghost town these days... all of my friends have already left to begin their new work in Kurdistan, except for a very few essential people including S. He, being my most valuable friend and employee, has stayed on here just to help me tie up some loose ends before he cuts loose for the Northern greener pastures. I know that he reads my blog from time to time, so I want to give him what all the young people are calling it these days; "props". Good luck to you S, and your family and friends. You deserve all the good stuff that comes your way. Just try to avoid people who want to pawn off funny money on you in the future, and you'll be alright!
Anyway, other than that I don't have much. I did want to say that Route Irish, (The 6 mile stretch of road between the Interzone and Baghdad International Airport) which once upon a time was widely considered to be the most dangerous road in the world, has had it's status downgraded to the safest road in Baghdad. I only bring it up because of my description of it from my trip to Kurdistan post. I'd said that I knew it was alot safer these days, but apparently I had no idea how much. I've been asking around in the last week or so, and it turns out that there are checkpoints at every entrance and exit from the road, where all vehicles wanting to utilize the road get searched. And as I'd seen when traversing it this last time, there are alot of military vehicles posted all along it. They've also been busy installing a fence with barbed wire on either side. "Who cares?", you may be asking yourself. Well, I personally feel a certain stretch of relief over this. If I am truly about to leave Baghdad for good, then I have to negotiate it one last time. I have been on it many many times in my three years here, but you know. The cop that gets shot on his last day before retirement, the soldier that bites it on the convoy home... these are clichés for a reason! It's just nice knowing that it ain't what it used to be, is all. Here's an apropos picture: The entrance to the BIAP, with Flying Arab on one side, and a last look at GBG on the other!

Flying Man, here I come!

A Dream Of Injustice, My Moral Dilemma, And What It All Means

I read 'Almost Home' last night, which is the autobiography of Damien Echols, the most prominent of the West Memphis 3. He's not necessarily a great writer, although the closer he gets to the main event that has shaped his life, the more eloquent he gets. But man, his story and his attitude on death row are incredible. Obviously, the saga of the WM3 has left a lasting impression on me. I had a dream last night where I was accused of something, I can't really remember what, but something to do with my fat ex-boss (not Phil; he's too shark-like to ever be fat) which I hadn't actually been involved in. Anyway, there was a "trial" (In the woods?) which was more like a kegger and nobody would listen to me... the drunk judge at one point told me that all this didn't matter, it didn't matter what I or anyone said, I was going to prison for this crime, it was decided before the alleged crime was even committed and this was all for show, allbeit a rather poor show.... well it's obvious where that dream came from, having just finished that book. But what was really neat about that dream was how it really suffocated me. I mean, really. I woke up taking deep breaths, and with the realization that the right to a fair trial was more than just words... it's something you hear all your life as an American, but until you actually suffer the injustice of being falsely accused and railroaded... yes it was only a dream, but that is sometimes what is so great about them. If you are deep enough in it, you really feel what's happening, and it doesn't matter that it's not something you've ever experienced in actuality. You are watching a movie in which you are the principle protagonist, and you forget that you're in a cinema until the lights come on.
The range of your emotions in dreams can be quite surprising, also. Usually dreams are fluff; odd and interesting but ultimately very easy to slough off. But occasionally... I woke up from this one with an incredible amount of rage, which was I think the true cause of my breathlessness. It's hard to feel that kind of rage about anything in normal day to day life, even for someone like me who enjoys a good rant from time to time. It was the rage of personally feeling my right to exist taken from me... My first rational thoughts, after all the dream events and emotion began slowly sliding away, were of this: This dream wasn't so much about the WM3, although obviously inspired by them, but about the feeling of terror and helplessness that is going through the internal systems of mine and everyone else who understands what is going on as our rights and dignity are being slowly (or not-so-slowly, as it were) stripped away by the Red Administration. Granted, most of us may never be affected by the atrocity of a Senate-approved interrogation tactic, or a House-approved listening device in your overhead light. But they are still your rights that are being taken away, and as 3 extremely normal boys (even though they were not considered normal by their own hometown, they could have been dropped anywhere on either coast without making so much as a dribble) in West Memphis, Arakansas could tell you, you never know when it might be convenient for someone with more power than you and something to hide to use those stolen rights against you, or someone you know.
Anyway, as some would say, who am I to complain? Well, they'd be right. I've been thinking about my moral quandry quite a bit recently. An old friend of mine basically called me a baby-eater for being here, and while I could never see it that way, the very fact that someone could think that about me has given me pause... There are three main reasons why I have continued to stay in Baghdad. 1) The money, hence, baby-eater. I no longer view the money as a reason to stay... honestly. If that was the only thing I had, I would leave this week. I don't need more. 2) My Iraqi friends. I am paying them very decent salaries, and they were unlikely to find other work if I'd have left prematurely, given the overall situation in Baghdad, and I've come to care for them quite a bit. Scott picks on me and rather derisively says I have a false Great White Hope attitude, but I fail to see how caring about your friends merits that. Anyway, I was able to, through a contact, find employment for most of them with a US contract in Kurdistan! So, my friends are about to begin a very decent-paying job in a very safe place... many of them will be moving their families up there. So, very shortly, reason #2 will be out of date! That's 2 down, one to go.
The third reason is more personal and less easy to write about, but suffice it to say, with reasons #1 & #2 down, #3 will be much easier to handle, and I am going to start making preparations to leave this month, actual date of leaving to be determined, depending on some mundane logistical issues. Definitely by December. Will keep you posted, of course.

Messiestobjects' Messy Morality

I love Keth Olbermann. His latest Special Comment, regarding the ambush of Clinton on Fox News and his rather appropriate reaction, despite what "the other side" is saying; namely, that he came off poorly because he lost his cool. What kind of idiot values composure over the truth? When someone is being attacked and having their contributions to history re-written, I think that a bit of loss of cool is extremely justified. It was actually very nice to be reminded of what it's like to have a real man, a real human being, as President.
Anyway, I suppose I don't really have the right to take a side against the current administration. It was recently pointed out to me that, being a contractor in Iraq means that I am being very hypocritical when I rail against Bush and his war. I admit, I don't know how to counter this charge, or if there even is one. I've found myself in a very strange place, and I'm not sure how to resolve it. I mean, as the talented Mr. Ripley says, nobody thinks they're a bad person.
I have admitted the amorality of my position before; specifically in my June 15th post after reading Riverbend's book. I don't suppose admitting it is enough to justify it, though. What I'm trying to say is that, even though I am here, and, while maybe not necessarily getting rich, certainly getting middle class off of this war, I don't feel that I've given up the right to my humanity, which allows me to take a position against outright evil. Is there a taint on my soul which I will be called to account for one day? Certainly. Regardless of my original motivations for coming here, I have long outlasted my justifiable rationale for staying.
In this I can judge myself. In this, all of the human race can judge itself! Everyone has found themselves somewhere they don't belong, at one time or another. However, does the guy that designs websites for a souless corporation give up his right to be angry at the way souless corporations are gobbling up the world's recources? All I'm saying is, I've come to terms with my mistakes, and I will pay for them. In the meantime, I am here, and I have a pretty unique view of what is going on, and I feel I have the right to talk about it. Since I can't really leave right now, my only other option at this point is to cave in and be evil. Since I can't really do that, I'll continue being hypocritical until the time comes, soon I think, when I can shake the dust of Iraq from my feet.
Please feel free to comment on this one, everybody, as I realize I must be sounding like a crazy person, and probably need to take a good slap upside the head.

I Hereby Dub Yah; President "Comical Criminal Half-Wit Jr."

I mean, duh. Seriously. Not to assist our culture in dumbing the language down or anything, but freaking duh. Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat. Do they really? Wow. Ok see, a McDonald's manager or Walt Disney's CEO can be removed from their positions based on crappy performance, miscalculations, ineptitude, etc etc. Forget actual criminal behaviour for the moment. A McDonald's manager doesn't have to lie to his staff or steal from the till to make a poor decision about something which can result in his termination. I don't think that Michael Eisner was ever accused of illegal activity, but man he fell hard in the end. The funny thing is, at least when Mr. Eisner realized the tide was overwhelmingly against him, he had enough sense of dignity to step down himself, one year before his contract was up! Maybe he made that decision on his own, maybe it was forced on him; I don't really know. But what I do know is that not only is President "El Diablo" Bush and his administration a bunch of liars and crooks, warmongering half-wits and advocates of torture, but now they have been proven to be inept by this report assembled from research conducted by National Intelligence, and represents the consensus view of 16 different spy agencies in the US government! His war in Iraq has made Terrorism a bigger problem, a worse threat, than ever before! And this is the consensus view of all of the REAL experts in the field! I mean, any dope could see this as truth as clear as day, if they were paying attention for the last three years. But now it's backed up by hard fact, more irrefutable than the "intelligence" which brought us here in the first place, and it is time to act on it. It doesn't matter any more whether he lied, or covered stuff up... he started a war which has not only failed miserably in it's stated objective, but his major platform, his self-proclaimed raison d'être known as the so-called 'War on Terror', rather than being fought and won by him and Rummy and Cheney, is categorically being fueled by his retardation! And so we must fire him for making such a costly misjudgement. The morality of his actions can be pursued separately, but for the moment it's enough that we know enough to remove him from office based soley on Job Performance. Incidentally, does the administration's behaviour over the last several weeks remind anyone of Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, who was given the silly nicknames of "Baghdad Bob" and "Comical Ali" when Saddam's regime was being bombed into the Sand Ages during the last invasion of Iraq? Bush is less composed and likeable, but the denial of everything going up in flames around him is quite similar. "Baghdad George". Dan Savage should start a campaign to have all Americans not only ITMFA, but to hereafter only refer to him as "Baghdad George". Or maybe George "al-Saha-ha-ha-Ha HAHAHAHA!-haf-wit" Bush.
Well, ok then. Sorry. Had to get that off my chest. Anyway, I'm sure Keith Olbermann will come out with a special comment quite soon which will really knock the issue out of the park.

Just Call Me The Stephen Glass Of Blogging, Already!

I am beginning to appreciate the necessity for rigorous fact-checking before beginning the process of cracking my hot air breathing embouchement. This will be the third apology I've had to make for blogging incorrectly, and it's a painful thing to have to do. At least I'm up front about being a narcissistic bloviating blogger, rather than a journalist. But still, it's important that I don't come off as someone who just makes crap up. I'll start with the easy one: The President of Iraq, who is a Kurd; His name is Jalal Talibani, not the improper compound Jalabi, which I mangled into being on my last post. At least on that one, I admitted in the first place that I wasn't sure of his name. But it would have been better to do a quick easy search, rather than to attempt to think it up on my own, always a dangerous game in my case. Actually, that one might be the more embarassing one precisely because it would have been so easy to look up. Although there may actually be someone named Jalabi involved in the Iraqi government; Maybe I should research that... nah. (Maybe I was thinking of Ahmed Chalabi? He's that guy that was wanted for some sort of bank fraud in Jordan, and escaped in the trunk of a car, only to later be made deputy Prime Minister of Iraq by that genius of geniuses and best friend to the crooked, President Bush)
The next one is more disappointing for me than embarassing. Apparently, I was not, in fact, anywhere near Halabcha on my trip to Kurdistan. Halabcha, actually spelled Halabjah on the map, where Saddam used chemical weapons on all those Kurds, was quite far from where we were. My tour guide was misinformed, apparently, as I discovered when I was looking at a map of the north-east corner of Iraq:

Halabjah is at the bottom right corner here, and Irbil (For which I don't apologize for spelling differently... I saw both it and Sulaymaniyah spelled 6 different ways while I was there, so I just picked the one that sounded right to me.) is far away on the opposite side of Sulaymaniyah, which we hadn't gone anywhere near at the time I thought we were in Halabjah. So I have no idea what town that is that I'm posing in front of in my Kurdistan photo gallery. I'll be sure to reflect that in the photo captions sooner or later. Grr.

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.

Everything Is Better, In El Norte

So it's that time of year again; the temperature is dropping, and people are starting to get the sniffles. I myself have started wearing my knit cap to bed at night to keep from waking up with a head cold. After a long summer with temperatures ranging from 115° - 120°, the last week or so has seen the range drop to 100° - 110°! And now, of course, you think I'm exaggerating about the sniffles and the knit cap, but I'm absolutely not. It's strange, but in a weird way you get so accustomed to those high temperatures that a small drop like that really can affect you. At least I do... the Iraqis actually think it's really funny that I wear that cap at night. In a month or so, when I pull out my black wool sweater, they're really going to give it to me, like every year. I seem to be particulary sensitive to the temperature drop here... I get a pretty severe cold in October or November every year, when the temp gets down to the 70's... But the funny thing is, when I've left the country for certain vacations, like my first one to Germany for Krampus, or when I went to South Africa in the fall (or was it spring there? It's below the equator) when it was quite chilly, I adjusted just fine.
Anyway, I really like this time of year here, except for the flies. The flies are dormant all summer, and they start waking up to continue their mission of annoyance around this time. Other than that, though... in the evenings it's comfortable enough to sit outside on the deck and it's actually quite pleasant. And during the days, you don't feel like a baked potato, which is enough to really put that spring back in your step.
I'm thinking of taking a 3 day vacation up to the north of Iraq this weekend. S. and his family just left this morning to drive up there for a week's vacation, and I might catch a plane in a couple of days to join them. Kurdistan is relatively safe, and they have cooler weather, mountains and even trees! Well, they have trees in Baghdad, lots of them actually, but only date palms. Which are nice, but I miss pine trees and stuff. It would also be nice to go see a calmer part of Iraq, one where I can walk around and maybe see some sights in. Plus, Dave Yurick and George Martin work up there, so I might get to pop in on them. Dave is one of the original gang of four of us that came to Baghdad together from Chiemsee in August '03, and George is another friend from Chiemsee who showed up several months later. They transferred up there for their company last year some time... I'm actually really envious of them because of all the nice stuff I just said about the north of Iraq. It'll be good to see them and find out how good they actually have it! Naturally, I'll keep you posted.

In Which I Skirt The Issue Of What Today Is The Anniversary Of

So some of you may have noticed that my posts seem to be deteriorating into ranty madness, lately. Well, I didn't really notice it myself until just this morning, and I'd like to continue ignoring that fact, because I'm not sure I'm really ready to confront the state of my mental balance just now. I mean, I knew, but I didn't see it as a downward spiralling pattern until today. I blame my inactive, caravan-dwelling lifestyle. It's been well over six months since I left the 600 man camp to come here and... subsist. Remember way back not long after I first came to the GBG camp when I said that there was a guy who was locked in his room as an experiment with no windows or clocks, and was given irregular meal times so that he wouldn't have any idea what was going on outside of his room? And how when the experiment was finished he came out all twitchy and wore two watches on each wrist for the rest of his life? Yeah... gettin' there. I also blame Dave Eggers and Mara Leveritt. I blame Mara because of that book I just finished reading... you know the one. Don't get me started on that crazy injustice again. I'm not really being toungue-in-cheek about that... Likely I'll be very angry about the ignorant West Memphis legal hicks for the rest of my life. They make an excellent focal point for impotent, outraged righteous wrath. Moving on; I blame Dave because right before 'Devil's Knot', I'd read 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius' by him, and he's got a loopy, self-conscious writing style which of course, combined with West Mephis Wrath, put me in the right frame of mind for loopy, self-conscious rants. So, I'm stepping out of it for just this minute in order to ask you not to tell the crazy person that he's trying to lick his elbow. Don't let on that you know he's out of control, it may only encourage him. And, whatever you do, don't stare him directly in the eyes... that can really backfire on you.
So, I was in the PX yesterday, and they were playing 'United 93' on the display TVs. The scene where the highjackers went from quiet passengers to taking over the plane came on, and everybody in the store, soldiers, contractors, cashiers, Iraqis; they all just kind of stopped what they were doing and watched with the fascinated revulsion that we all are familiar with when re-experiencing those events. It was weird.

Prisoners Imprisoned By Misunderestimation

Well, I finished my book, and after much feeling of impotent anger at Gitchell and Judge Burnette, I've decided to make a contribution to wm3.org's defence fund for the falsely accused. Now perhaps I can get on with my life and learn to love and laugh again. Because about every 2 seconds of reading in that book, I got up and shook my fist in rage at heaven. After the first 3 or 400 times I did this, I kind of settled into the position where one hand was holding the book open in two places; where the main storyline was and a pinkie hooked around into the endnotes section, and my other hand keeping up with the fist in rage at heaven shaking. It made drinking my coffee difficult at points, but sometimes I was able to channel it into furiously taking a sip 'o joe at heaven in rage.
According to this post, a movement is taking place among members of the Arab Nations which is not being reported in Western media, and that is that they are attempting to pressure the U.S. into re-instating Saddam's regime to control of the Iraqi government, in light of a US Senate report that says that Saddam had no links to al-Qaeda. Which of course we all knew. But it doesn't matter... someone must have introduced these guys to crack if they think that's ever going to happen. Not that they don't have a point... Saddam probably is the only one at this juncture that could end this mess over here, but just because we entered this war completely illegally to depose him and have royally f***ed this place up doesn't make him into a really nice guy who should be put back into a position where he can be a mad mad dictator again. But the concern is valid; This country needs someone as strong and ruthless as he was, an Iraqi, not a white guy or an Uncle Tom, to slap these crazy fundies down and put a stop to death squads, insurgents, (who, technically, wouldn't actually be insurgents any more) Iranian troublemakers, and whatever other mad freaks are stirring up the pot. Most Iraqis have been saying this for a long time now. The Iraqis that I know personally, who were originally very happy that Saddam was taken out, and sang and danced when they found him in that hole, now say that they would prefer it if he was still in charge. But that is actually old news. Now, most Iraqis just dream about leaving Iraq. Me too.

Um. I Get A Little Unbalanced In This One. Sorry. I Think I've Revealed Too Much, Maybe.

That's it, we're dead. Bush won't be happy until he breaks every law and rule against ethics, morality, and reason. Run for your lives, the sky is falling! I don't know anymore what is propaganda, what is real, what is paranoid, or what is purposefully intended to scare us. All I know is, whatever they're trying to do to me, it's probably working. Iwlwpmbhjsd... excuse me, that was me wiping the blood off of my keyboard. The blood that's been dripping from my mouth ever since I started looking for little Men In Black installing satellite receivers in my teeth last night. Which is weird because teeth don't bleed, they're like bone or something. Maybe I got a few of the little buggers without noticing, and they're bleeding.
Ok, enough crazy talk, Mike. You're upsetting the children. Sure boss no problem.
Anyway, I've been reading 'The Devil's Knot' by Mara Leveritt. Which is another reason I'm in this weird mood, probably. If righteous rage were a valid legal defence for killing people, this guy Gitchell would also go down, man. I'd seen the documentaries 'Paradise Lost' 1 & 2 before, which are horrific enough, but one of the things you always hear the police say is that the movies show a one-sided opinion of the case, and that if you look at the facts, there's more to it. Well, that's what Mara did, and it actually makes the law enforcement look worse than even the film makers could have. She's a journalist, and went into the case cold, with no emotional attachments either way. She then reports more exhaustively on the actual police reports and court transcripts than the movies had time for. It doesn't look good, man. It actually looks exactly like a book on the Salem Witch Trials I read a long time ago.
On a side note, yet not entirely unrelated, something about the Superman franchise really bothers me. I mean, this guy is about the closest thing to a God that pop culture has. Why is he always flying around saving cats from trees and people from the same arch villian over and over again? I mean, he's a reasonably intelligent guy. And he has an exquisite moral belief system. I think that, if he were a real thing (which I know that he is not) he would be in Iraq, defending the helpless. Or in Darfur. Or Lebanon. Fat white rich America would probably get about a nanosecond of his time... I say this because if I was him, that's about what I'd be thinking. Not that there aren't people in America that need saving, but people in poorer, more dangerous parts of the world need it vastly more. Actually, in the deepest recesses of my wrathful little black heart, I rather believe he'd be spending alot of his time conquering armies involved in immoral actions. Al Qaeda, Those African Junta thingies you always hear about, the Bush administration. Had I his power, the rich, soulless powerful would be trembling in their boots. I'd be Castle Stomping their secret germ-warfare laboratories. I'd tear up secret CIA prisons. I'd show 'em what wire tapping really meant. And I'd have a sweet ass jacuzzi with Lois Lane waiting in it for me every day after work. I mean, I wouldn't really be made of steel, just righteous wrath and skin tights that I would take off every once in a while. Isn't that enough?
Well, it certainly is enough of my infantile fantasy. I just think that that would make a better Superman story than the usual fare. I mean, are our Gods not there to dispense justice to the evil? It's not hard to find where the real evil is, these days.

P.S. I don't actually advocate the killing of anyone, even Gitchell. It's a purile vengeance fantasy, is all. Just wanted to clear that up, in case I had my family worried.

In Which I Natter On About Things I Have Only A Passing Knowledge Of, And Even Coin A New Word!

Hooray! Finally, an in-depth article about corruption in Iraq that doesn't mention my company or the owner. It's titled 'The Ten Most Brazen War Profiteers', and we didn't make the list! I don't know whether to be relieved or feel slighted. Anyway, it's a really good article. I really like the bit about the company Custer Battles, because I've been laughing at their name since my first year in Iraq; They used to do security for the Baghdad International Airport, and there it was, lettered on all of their trucks proudly, Custer Battles. Didn't they get it? Didn't they realize that that was like, the worst name in the world for a security company in Baghdad to have? Haven't we dared God to do his worst enough already? I mean, I know that the two founders of the companies' family names are one Custer and one Battles, but still. Change the name. Or make one up. Be creative, not a southern idiot.
But it's all very informative. Apparently Stuart Bowen of SIGIR has in fact fried bigger fish than my old boss, so I have to eat crow again for that thing I said a few posts back. See, this is why I should stick to Space and funny cultural differences and anecdotes. I have no head for the titanic amount of information spilling out all over the internet about the big Bushoglio over here. That's right, I'm coining it. A Bushoglio is an imbroglio, a crisis, a pandemonius riot, an unholy mess of such titanic proportions that it's like has not been seen in the known history of man, nor has there ever been a word created previously which can hope to describe how chaotic that man has made this place. It is a whirlwind which has made a storm that is growing big enough to gobble the world. If you don't think it's really that bad, read this post and then be so calm about it. I can't, of course, vouch for the total veracity of it, but alot of what is talked about there is stuff I've been hearing about for a long time.
And how about those secret CIA prisons, huh? Bush is all like "What? Yeah we got 'em. No big deal. We gotta screw some people outta their human rights to save them for real people like us, God told me so." Yikes. There have of course been rumours of those things for years... it's actually somewhat of an Interzone worst-kept secret. But damn. I shudder to think what things like that mean for the future of us.

Go Get A Cup Of Coffee, As This One Covers Alot Of Ground, Some Of Which Is Of The Same 'Ol, Same 'Ol Variety, & Some Of Which Is New

Clear your web browser's cache! I tweaked my page banner, and you won't get to gasp in awe at it unless you do so. Unless you're brand new here; Hello! I guess that it's not really all that different than what was already there, but I like it better. I couldn't find a font that had a wing ding of a galaxy, of which some are Messier Objects. So instead I settled for one with a little orbiting action, which is not a Messier Object but it's spacey so I still like it. I will keep looking for a  proper wing ding. Anyway, like you really care. Hey, look over here! It's a picture of all the cataloged Messier Objects:

Pretty.

Anyway, I figure that it's about time for an update on my political situation. So prepare to be dazzled by the mundanity of it all. Or stop reading. This is more for me, anyway... Things tend to make more sense to me after I've written them down.
So, we left off in our story way back at the end of July, with me and my 20 Iraqi employees sitting around the camp waiting to find out if we were going to get Castle Stomped or if we could successfully thumb our noses at them. There was a little back-and-forth between us and the JASG for a while there... they accused us of stalling, to which we replied 'Well of course we are, that's what we've been saying all along! We want to not get kicked out right now so we can get a sublease on the property with the Iraqi Government! Duh.' To which they rejoinded 'Bah! We're tired of waiting on such legalities. Get out!' And we waited a week before saying '...ummm, no.' And our lawyer proceeded to list a bunch of reasons why we didn't think they had any authority over us, using sneaky little tricks such as citing International, Iraqi, and US laws. That was almost two weeks ago and we've yet to hear anything back from them. So does this mean we have won? Well, here's where it gets complicated.
See, the thing is, even if they are defeated and are not planning some heinous sneak retaliation, as much as we want these pesky pretenders off of our backs about evicting ourselves and our property, we don't actually want them to entirely wash their hands of us just yet. The problem is, that if they sign over our property to the Iraqi government before we have that elusive lease / sublease agreement signed and sealed, there are factions in the Iraqi Ministry who would love the opportunity to come in here and kick us out, and confiscate all of GBG's property! Our property consisting of the 50 or so trailers we sleep in, our dining facility and offices, and a large warehouse, among other sundries. They would consider this repayment for the crimes to which our hapless leader pled guilty... having bribed CPA officials to get contracts to rebuild portions of Iraqi infrastructure and then doing a crappy job, where there was any work done at all. (The JASG is a direct descendant, by the way, of the CPA, in regards to certain authorities which the CPA had assumed in the Wild East of 2003-2004, legally or not.) In light of the fact that he did plead guilty, it would seem that they do have a point. But it is not my place to decide such matters, sadly.
So it would seem that, as usual, I find myself in a moral grey area between the big stupid rock and a...nother big stupid rock.
Meanwhile, (Saying 'meanwhile' in a grand voice like the narrator from the old '70s early '80s Justice League cartoons has become one of our favorite jokes around here, lately. Say it! MEANWHILE!) here is what I have been doing to get by:
Selling GBG property! Oh, not any of the big stuff... that would get the owner in even more trouble, as all of his assets are frozen. No, I have to get permission through our lawyer from the Dept. of Justice to sell anything more substantial than building material, such as actual buildings or vehicles, and so far I have received no such permission. Thankfully, there is plenty of useless (to us) material around which I've been able to pawn for enough cash to continue paying the Iraqis, purchasing gasoline for our generators and vehicles, food, and miscellaneous other life-supporting items. It's been kind of fun, actually. I've discovered alot about myself in the process. Such as the fact that I am a lousy, miserable business man who doesn't know jack about what things are worth. In retrospect, I could probably have gotten more money for alot of the stuff I've sold if I knew what I was doing. But hey, I'm the only one here and I do what I can. If the company gets mad later, well, they should've been here themselves. I think that after selling what I can legally sell, I have enough cash to last us another 2 or 3 months, if we're thrifty. After that... Well, I just hope we have some issues solved by then, is all I'm saying.
On a side note: While writing this, something happened that made me realize I am way too jaded with Baghdad and should really leave. I heard a rocket launch, which is actually really loud and can be heard from several kilometers off, and is often mistaken for the actual explosion until you learn to tell the difference. Instead of freaking out, which you stop doing after the 5th one you've been around in your life, I just started typing faster because without really thinking about how stupid a thought it was, I wanted to finish this entry in case the rocket hit nearby and blew out my computer or killed me or something. This is not an unusual reaction, of course. I could tell alot of stories like that. Several weeks ago, Steve Steltzer and Darren Adams (Some Chiemseers who are also STILL here!) came over from their little happy compound for a night of movies and beer, and while someone was telling a story, Darren I think, a rocket hit nearby, shaking our caravans. We all kind of stopped for a second, to let the noise die down, and then Darren continued his story. About a minute later all five of us (Scott and Jeff were there, also) realized what had just happened and that not one of us had really reacted. We laughed about it and then quickly forgot the incident.
This is not a story meant to imply that we are cool, stone in the face of danger. No, what it really means is that we have become too complacent and are stupid. Stupid stupid stupid. Getting used to explosions should not be the same as getting used to the noises of New York City outside your bedroom window. But kind of it is.

A Little Nonsense Now And Then Is Cherished By The Wisest Men

I had a good chuckle at myself this morning as I was remembering the time when I was still in Chiemsee, getting ready to leave to come to Baghdad and was trying to figure out what to bring. Someone had read online somewhere that when deploying to Iraq you must have some kind of goggles for the desert to keep the sand out of your eyes, and that ski goggles were useful in this capacity, and I was panicking because I had already gotten rid of all of my snowboarding gear. I was thinking that I was screwed because it was August and I was going to have trouble finding any... Anyway, here I am three years later and I have not once found it necessary to wear goggles. Especially as what I did can not rightly be called "deploying"... more like jaunting off to the big middle eastern city. But it is a fondly recollected preconceived notion, which I was able to bid farewell to a long time ago. I've actually got alot of those.
Anyway, here is a picture I took the other day down at GBG's batch plant site of Saddam's old personal Helicopter. It was a pretty sweet ride back in the day; It has leather seats and what looks like it used to be a mini bar inside, but it's best days are definitely passed. That's the Tigris River and Red Zone Baghdad in the background.

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.

Rise And Shine, It's Insurgent O'Clock!

You know what else makes a good alarm clock? An RPG exploding 100 yards from your bed, that's what. At 6:00 am sharp, too. See, I think what these so called "insurgents" are really trying to do is to make sure that all of us foreign reconstruction contractors get up in time so that we can get a good start on the daily rebuilding of Iraq... they're not really trying to kill us at all! They're just doing their part. It's a symbiotic relationship.
Here's a picture of my hand and all of the shrapnel we collected from around our camp after the rocket hit.

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.

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.

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.

I Rant and I Rant, But I Know It's Not Helping Anything

So something you don't see in the news a whole lot about Iraq is the new fundamentalist trend. There is some really scary crap going on out in the streets of Baghdad, and I think the Bush Reich is trying to keep it on the down-low. There are roving gangs of fundamentalist Muslim bullies passing out fliers to Iraqis which state that any women wearing pants or men wearing shorts will be killed. All women must wear Haijab (those headcover things, so women's shameful hair remains covered). Men have to keep their shirts buttoned all the way to the top and must either shave their face completely or wear one of those Muslim-type beards, no mustaches or goatees or whatever. In other words, they are trying to impose strict muslim law, similar to what they have in Iran, upon a populace which has many secular muslims who don't believe in that strict an interpretation of muslim law, not to mention many smaller non-muslim populations such as the Christians, Jews, or Yezidis. I think it made the news last week about a team of Iraqi tennis players who were killed for wearing shorts, but one in particular that I know of has been kept silent. I only know about it because it happened in the neighborhood of one of my Iraqi friends; a 5 year old boy was gunned down in his front yard because he had on shorts and a tank top. This is so horrendous in so many ways that I think I'd be willing to murder the people that did it if I had the chance. There are many cases of women wearing pants being kidnapped off of the streets and being raped and killed. This doesn't lessen my desire to break one of the ten commandments at all. The hypocrisy involved in killing a 5 year old boy for something he can't possibly understand, or raping and killing a woman because she is so shameless a whore as to wear pants and let the world see her hair is... astounding, apalling, unbelievable, confounding, heart-rending, insane, incomprehensible, moronic, RETARDED! And I can't come up with enough other adjectives to make it clear how awful that is.
According to my friends, the people commiting these atrocities are largely not even Iraqi: They are Iranian fundamentalist nutjobs taking advantage of the situation here. The situation being that the Iraqi government now in place has neither the resources nor, to all appearances, the drive to take back the streets. And where, ultimately, does the blame for this all lie? George effin' Bush and his warmongering cronies, that's what. Man, I really hate those people. Here is a quote from an artcle I pulled off of Yahoo news from Stephen Elliott's blog:

"I got a note from a friend today. An American who works in Baghdad and does not want his identity revealed. He says women are being kidnapped and killed for the clothes they wear. He says women are being hunted. The country is in chaos. People are mourning the loss of Saddam Hussein, convinced things were better before.

It's an awful thing to think, that things might have been better under a murderous dictator. But it seems to be accepted wisdom among the diplomats. And even if it isn't true, still, if it is close enough that a sizable percentage could think it, then we have failed miserably.

We have failed miserably in Iraq. We have tortured prisoners in Abu Ghraib, murdered civilians in Haditha. We turned our backs on the Geneva Accords and American values, promising to build democracy in the Middle East, and received only a failed state in return."

I stand behind what he's said here %100, based on what I've seen happen here in the last 3 years, from the American side of things and through my Iraqi friend's eyes. I am ashamed to be an American. Not because I hate my country, which I don't. I am ashamed of my government, and what it has accomplished toward making the world a lesser place to live in.
I apologize if I seem to be soapboxing an awful lot in my last several posts, but the situation is deteriorating so fast over here it breaks my heart. There are so many things that America and Americans have done here in Iraq that, when the patriot blinders are lifted, can be called evil, it makes me crazy. PSD mercenaries and marines killing innocent Iraqi civilians who happen to be standing there is nothing new, I'm afraid. It's been going on all along, but only now, with Bush's approval rating at %29, are people daring to put it in the news. These cowboy-types over here tend to lump all Arabs together in the terrorist category, regardless of the option God gave them at birth to use their brains to make rational distinctions, and their regard for life can at times equal a Nazi's regard for life in a concentration camp. Sure, that's an extreme thing to say, and when out in a danger zone you have to make quick decisions... I can't speak to that, anyway. I've never been in that situation. But I've seen how good Iraqi people are treated by cowboys in a safe place like the IZ, and more times than not it leaves the Iraqis with an impression of Americans as cruel masters, which they understandably resent.
I wish I had a constructive solution to offer along with all of my bilious criticism, but I don't. Just saying it's time for America to leave Iraq is not enough; we'd just be leaving them to the awful fate which we put in place for them. But staying only means a continuation of what we've been doing here all along: Nothing save serving our own interests and making their home worse for it.

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.

EITHER This Entry is a Dull Rant, OR it's an Ad for Better Blogs

So we just had a visit from the son of GBG's owner, whose name is Chris and is now running the company. After everything that's happened, we are just now FINALLY coming to our crossroads. We were served eviction papers saying that we have to vacate this property by June 30th, because the US is turning it back over to the Iraqi government. So, if we can continue to lease the property from the Iraqis, we will stay and continue to rent this camp out to clients, which means I could be here for a long time yet. OR, the Iraqis say "Screw you evil American opportunists, whose leader is in jail for stealing money from us!" and I'm outta here!
I figure it's 50/50. Either way I'll be happy and sad. It's a win/win lose/lose!
At least I finally have an either/or situation. I'm really happy about that. It's been nerve-wracking not knowing if or when something is going to happen.
Otherwise, it's slacking as usual. I finished Buffy, and have started watching 5 seasons of Smallville. It's not as cool as Buffy, and the writing is often clunky, but hey, it's Superboy and it kills time.
Hmmmm... I guess after that last paragraph, my whole case for the waiting being nerve-wracking kind of crumbles, doesn't it? But I'm actually really ... well, I don't know what the word is. Agitated? Unsatisfied? Meh... I'm really really tired of being so inactive. My gaze seems to be unfocused from too much screen time, and I feel icky from the lack of excercise. I'd actually be working out these days due to all the free time, but there's no good place where I'm at to do that. Oh yeah, and I'm lazy. That's the nicest either/or thing about June 30th; either I'll be leaving and getting ready for some intense travel, or I'll have a real job again. So I'm really looking forward to it. It's been awesome to sit here for 2 or 3 months and get paid stupid money to do essentially nothing... a Gen-Xer's dream come true, actually. But apparently that life style is bad for you. Well, bad for me. Who knew?
Oh, you should go to davidleeson.com, or his blog. He is a professional photojournalist whose pictures I'd found on a CD here and posted on my smugmug page. When TF recently notified me that they belonged to one David Leeson, I contacted him and he was extremely cool about it and let me keep his photos on my site. He was in Iraq in 2003 during the invasion, embedded with the military, and at great personal risk took some incredible photographs.
And speaking of other bloggers; a friend of mine who likes to communicate with me through vague blog entries of her own because I'm really bad at emailing and deserve to be boiled in my own pudding for my lack of response because I can't seem to make myself write an email any more turned me on to a blog written by a 24 year old Iraqi girl. It's an incredible website; She's been writing on it since August 2003 (The same month I arrived in Baghdad!) and her intelligence, english and writing skills are better than almost any native english speaker I know, certainly better than mine. If you're curious how this whole Post-American invasion of Iraq event looks through an Iraqi's eyes, it's an awesome place to go. They've actually published her blog as a book which you can purchase at Amazon. Anyway, the blog is called Baghdad Burning, and it's seriously worth spending some time with.

Colbert Electrifies the Blogosphere, and I Get All Political 'n Stuff

I don't normally blog too much about politics or politically-related things, because essentially there are millions of people out there who are much smarter and more research-oriented, and doing it better than I could anyway. The extent of my political feeling is that I dislike politicians intensly, and am probablly an anarchist at heart; Although I realize that Anarchy is hardly a feasible form of governance in reality. I think that Anarchy might be more organized than the the current political reality of crazed bush-whacking, however.
Anyway, regardless of my unpolitical proclivities, no Bush-hating blogger out there can resist making a comment about the recent Stephen Colbert bit at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and I laughed so hard and am so in awe of the man, that I have to post a transcript of his genius here. It's not that any of the things he said are any wittier than things which other people have had to say, although Colbert is certainly telling the despairingly comedic truth. It's that he is saying it without the slightest trace of embarassment or fear 10 feet away from the most powerful and evil man in America, and he doesn't back off. The man has stones, no doubt. Speaking truth to power, indeed.
I wish that people like him had been saying this kind of stuff to Bush's face since before the last election. I pray that the Dems win the upcoming Congressional elections so that there is the remote possibilty of seeing the great ape get his comeuppance... even if that might only mean that Evil Cheney is the fill-in president. There should be a provision in impeachment trials that allow for wholesale Administration impeachments, sort of like a White House Virus-Sweep, Disc-Clean & DeFrag program... the whole Bush Cronystration needs to go, not just it's mouthpiece. It's sad that it's likely too late for such a thing to make much difference in saving America's extremely damaged reputation with the rest of the world, not to mention any thought of reversal of actual death, damage and destruction which they've caused.
Anyway, on a side note and not entirely unrelated, I noticed something the other day while driving through the International Zone: America has been in Baghdad for over 3 years now, and Iraqis still have extremely unreliable electricity. My Iraqi friends tell me that they are currently getting 2 hours of electricity per day. The summer is starting up again, when temperatures typically will rise to between 110 and 130 degrees farenheit daily, and with no power for their Air Conditioners, Iraqis suffer through some long hot days and nights and it is really not fun... just because they are from here and have had these temperatures to deal with all their life does not make it easy for them. They were used to things being infinitely better when Saddam was the boss. Also, I'd like to mention that here in the IZ, we are almost never without power, so what's up with that?
So it's been 3 years and little to nothing has been done about the electricity situation, and I'm sorry, but the line that "Terrorists keep blowing stuff up" is just weak. It's simply not good enough when the brand new US Embassy, which construction began on about 2 months ago, is already extremely well underway. It is being built pretty much right on the Tigris river, with a clear view of the so-called Red Zone, which is military-speak for the part of Baghdad where the unimportant residents of the city are; Iraqis. It will be very easy for someone to shoot something over the river at them, and yet, construction continues at a brisk pace; I bet that barring any RPG attacks, it'll be finished more or less on schedule in 2007. Fixing up the Baghdad power station should not take nearly as much effort, and yet, it's been over 3 years. Every time I drive by the new embassy, there is a noticable difference in the amount of construction completed, and I get rather a sick feeling in my stomach because it makes me think about how obvious my government's priorities are, and how little they have anything to do with what they would have the world believe they are. ITMFA!!!!
It also makes me think about the company I work for, and how, as it turns out, I came to work for a corrupt individual doing shady deals to defraud a corrupt government of it's shady money... and how I really can't untangle my own choices from any of it, regardless of my relative innocence in all of this. I'm just a guy with a job, you know? And I'm really attached to good people here, Iraqi friends who just want to work with us so they can make some decent money for a change, because the alternative Iraqi jobs in the city can be comparatively grim. But I still feel dirty and conflicted about the whole thing. And my stomach just keeps getting more turbulent.
Anyway, I'll leave you with a nice parting shot of Mr. Colbert skewering Bush as he looks on, rather thundercloud-like you might say. It's the most inspiring event I've come across in a very long time.

Colbert for President, anyone?

Mayday! Mayday! This entry lacks cohesive control!

So I was, once again, going back through my past entries, and I noticed that I seem to frequently state that I will be leaving Baghdad shortly. Only it never seems to pan out that way. Way back when my boss was first arrested (over 5 months ago!) I was all like, dude. Bummer. Guess I gotta pack up. Then when we lost the contract in March I was all like, dude. Bummer. Guess I gotta pack up. And here it is, May 1st, and I'm jammin' out to my newest mostest favouritest band, 'The Eagles of Death Metal', in my cozy caravan, and I haven't packed a dang thing yet. In fact, we may continue in this sort of limbo indefinitely, as there seems to be no shortage of people for us to rent this camp out to.  Or, as the property our camp is built on is Iraqi Government property, and they've been making noise about wanting it back, perhaps we'll be evicted and I'll be all like, dude. Bummer. Guess I gotta pack up.
It all just made me think about how ever since my second month here, when I got into an argument with a spook, I've felt like I was going to be booted out of Iraq the next day. And almost 3 years later, that feeling hasn't left. Maybe that's how they get you. The more insecure you feel, the more you'll worry about being forced to leave, and never actually consider that, having been around for far too long, it might be time to leave of your own accord! Lordy how I been duped.
But that still doesn't mean I'm capable of actually choosing to leave. What can I say? I gave up an addiction to tobacco for an addiction to Iraq! I wonder which one could kill me faster? I wonder if, given the opportunity, I might someday look back and say, "Holy crap. I've been here for 10 years!" I mean, that's what normal people do, right? They get a job at some office somewhere, and never look up except on payday, until ten years have passed, and they've saved up for that killer family vacation to Disneyland and isn't it time to refinance the mortgage? I mean, what difference does it make if I do it in Iraq as opposed to Stroudsburg? Except on my family vacation we do an Earth Orbit, 'cause Earth Orbiting is way cooler than a roller coaster.
Anyway, I've been reading a book called "Holy Blood, Holy Grail". It's all about how a secret society has been hiding the decendants of Christ for  over a thousand years, incited the First Crusade, and got up to a bunch of all-around sneakiness. I was really enjoying it, because secret societies are neat-o, but then I went online and read in a million different places that it was all a big fat hoax. It's the same secret society that Dan Brown based "The Da Vinci Code" on; The Priory of Sion. So that's my great disappointment for this week, and I heave a great sigh. It's a far cry from threatening to junkie suicide it, ain't it though?

Talk About Yer Hard-To-Reach-Places!

I really just wanted to get in on the dust storm photo action.

Waiting For Something To Happen and Other Dreary Tales

This is another one of those no news is no news types of things. I'm getting really high up in level in a PC video game called Fate. I'm about halfway through Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 4... again. We have a temporary client, of sorts, who we've provided some living space for in our camp for a few weeks, but I haven't actually met any of them or done any work in that area. Not my department. I think I walk less than 1000 paces a day, because I appear to be getting greasy and fat for no particular reason. My old boss was in the papers again the other day because they unsealed his plea bargain... he had pled guilty to all of the charges against him in February, and will have to pay close to $8 Million in fines and restitution and faces up to 40 years in prison... to be decided at a future sentencing court date. Crime don't pay, kiddos.
We had a dust storm in Baghdad today, which is weird because it's really not the season for them. Here's a picture of our Head Chef, Robert, sitting outside our Dining Facility in the dusty weather.