messiestobjects

Career Day

    This summer I took a Creative Writing course. It will come to no one's surprise that I wrote a rather atheistic short story as a part of my final. My college writing career is getting to be a little one-note, but at least I'm getting it out of my system, right? Anyway, here it is, in all its self-published glory.

 

Career Day

 

Child abuse. Defining what it is and what it is not is a tricky thing nowadays. But it always comes back to a single dynamic—the one between the child and an authority figure. It’s my job as a Deprogrammer to determine on a case-by-case basis the extent of the damage—of a type referred to as iatrogenesis in our business—and whether the State has the right to interfere in such a relationship. And if I determine that it does, I deprogram.

It’s an audacious position to accept in society, and requires no small amount of intelligence, self-righteousness, and tact. It’s a relatively new branch of social services, and practitioners are paid according to its importance in the survival of our society. Let me put it this way: I make more money doing this than any thirty of the highest paid social services employees made all together fifty years ago. In other words, I only make slightly less than teachers do.

But to enter into this career for pecuniary satisfaction is a mistake. If that’s your goal, you won’t last long in the business, take it from me. The money is nice—it gets you through the down times—but eventually you’ll stop getting out of bed in the morning if you don’t view this job as a calling. That’s my job today; to help you people determine whether you truly belong here before it’s too late to make a different career choice. I plan on doing this by showing you what child abuse victims look like, what child abuse means. The following is an excerpt of our initial interview with one Mr. Jacobs.

 

“Mr. Jacobs, do you understand why your son was taken into protective custody?”

“Yes, I understand your reasons.”

“Mr. Jacobs, your son has been routinely abused. He’s terrified, and he may need years of therapy. We’ve brought you here to determine if you were the one responsible. I’m here to help you and your son.”

“Is it abuse to teach a child the discipline and values of his father? Is it a sin to teach my own child right from wrong? I understand the law, but I also know that the bond between a father and his son is sacrosanct and that interference by the law of man goes against the laws of God. I have the right of a father to raise my child as I see fit, to make him see the world for what it is and to prepare him for the horrors that are coming.”

“Perhaps that’s true, Mr. Jacobs. But you’ll forgive me if, from the outside, it looks like a simple case of abuse. Doesn’t the right of a father to raise his child include the rights of the child? In the old days people beat their children black and blue in the name of discipline and ‘raising them right.’ We have found better ways.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not. In any case, I do not beat my child black and blue, Miss Taylor.”

“No, I wasn’t implying that Mr. Jacobs. What you’ve done is in many ways quite worse.”

 

So, you see what we’re up against. It isn’t easy, regardless of the fact that society has largely come out against this type of cult behavior. The saddest part in all this is of course that Mr. Jacobs is not simply an abusive parent. If it were that simple then our jobs would involve a lot less self-recrimination and stress. No, the fact is that Mr. Jacobs is himself a victim. What he did to his son Reuben is only what was done to him first by his parents, and if we had been unsuccessful at deprogramming Reuben then he would most likely have gone on and passed the same abuse on to his children. This is how this particular meme operates, of course. Children are hard-wired by evolution to unquestioningly believe whatever an established, trusted authority figure tells them—and to thus meekly accept whatever harm is done to them—because they haven’t yet developed their full capacity for reasoning. It is because of this that deprogramming children is so difficult. But it’s our duty to break this chain, for the good of society. We are in conflict not with individuals or their bizarre ideologies per se, but with a potent mind virus that has held humanity in its grip for far too long.

Of course, it’s not always as disturbingly complex as separating a child from his family. Because the damage done to a young mind is internalized, symptoms often don’t appear until later in life and so iatrogenesis is more pronounced in older children. In these cases our job is more dangerous, but it’s easier to identify them at least. Teenagers diagnosed with Stygian Complex, for example, are more likely to behave in a reckless manner and may cause real problems in society, lashing out against what they view as a very hostile world. Here is a case study that came across my desk thanks to a school counselor who contacted us when she realized what was going on with a student of hers named John.

 

“John, please tell me why you’ve stopped caring about your education.  Your transcript says that once you were a fairly decent student with a good mind. What happened?”

“It’s all so pointless. School, I mean. What difference does it make if I do well in class?”

“What do you mean, John? A good education is the best way to understand the world we live in, and it enables us not only to succeed, but to make a difference in life.”

“We’re all gonna die anyway. I could die tomorrow. We could all die tomorrow! Judge’s Day will be here soon enough! All that matters is living life according to the Hallows, only people who do that are gonna have a life to look forward to anyway.”

“John…”

“All that science and junk, it’s crap! I mean, it’s fine for what it is. I like watching holos and thank God for the Pont Tubes. But all that crap about climate change and overpopulation; it’s just signs of the end. It’s arrogant to think that anybody can change the plan. And don’t get me started on all these dupes who actually believe that the Universe ‘evolved’ from some primal multiverse somewhere. It’s so obvious, man, ‘Uni’ means one! People who fall for those lies are gonna be sorry. That’s why I don’t care about my grades; all that matters is avoiding the traps, and honoring the Judge of the Quick and the Dead!”

“John, what would be so awful about Universal Evolution, if it were true? What are you afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid of anything, because I’m goin’ to Heaven when I die! You people though, with your arrogance, you have something to fear!”

 

Once we got John to open up about the specific reasoning behind his behavior, we were eventually able to help him see why his beliefs were detrimental to his own well-being, but that’s not always the situation. As in the case of Mr. Jacobs, many people who reach mid- to late adulthood infected with these destructive ideas are nearly impossible to deprogram. They have held on to them for too long and invested too much of their time and energy to allow themselves to be convinced that their entire lives may have been based on a cult-induced misconception.

That is why, as a general rule, the younger we can find victims of abuse, the better our chances of long-term success. Some of you may sense the irony in that statement; after all, we are claiming to fight against childhood behavioral indoctrination by taking them from their families and deprogramming them which, from the outside, is easy to confuse with further indoctrination. There is a crucial difference, however, which I will address after we see what this abuse we are fighting against looks like at a relatively young age. Everyone, meet Mr. Jacob’s son, Reuben.

 

“Reuben, have you ever heard of the theory of Universal Evolution? The Multiverse?”

“What? No…?”

“Hmm. Let’s go a bit further back. Are you familiar with the general theory of Evolution? Natural Selection?”

“Oh yeah, that’s the one that if you learn it, it will kill your soul and the Judge of the Quick and the Dead will spit you out on Judge’s Day.”

“I… H-how about the age of the Earth? Do you know how long our planet has been in existence?”

“Well, Dad says that some people think it’s only six or seven thousand years old, but that’s silly.”

“Well, that’s certainly true at least. How old does your father say it really is?”

“He doesn’t know for sure because it’s impossible for people to know something like that, but that it doesn’t matter ‘cause we’ll find out all the real answers in Heaven anyway.”

“But… Reuben, according to your family’s beliefs, you will have to… what is it…? ‘Die the hallowed death.’ You will have to die the hallowed death here on Earth to go to Heaven. What good will those answers do you then?”

“Well… what good do they do me here? Nothing like that really matters. Life is just a test, and if we fail it...”

“What happens if you fail it, Reuben?”

--

“Reuben?”

 

For those of you who decide to stay with it and devote your lives and careers to the cause of Deprogramming, these case studies and others—including the actual deprogramming sessions—will be examined further in future classes. The methods for repairing the mind of a very young child are at the heart of what we do and will be better understood after you’ve received some basic training. We will delve further into the point-by-point methods of dealing with every mental roadblock you will come across as a professional Deprogrammer.

The difference which I mentioned earlier—the one between childhood indoctrination and Deprogramming—is that as you’ve just seen in Reuben’s case he was sheltered from a proper education by his family, which is a large part of the disturbing framework of what child abuse really is. He was denied the chance to form his own reasonable conclusions grounded in evidence-based knowledge by being pre-programmed with an unprovable and frankly quite primitive belief system which he most likely would have been unable to break free from later in life and additionally, as we saw with John, would have made him incapable of accepting any contradicting information, no matter how factual.

Deprogramming, on the other hand, is the careful breaking down of this mental barrier. That is all we do. Despite some of the media paranoia we’ve weathered, we don’t actually replace old ideas with new ones, their beliefs for ours. We simply make sure that they know they can safely evaluate conflicting ideas without fear of some sort of divine retribution and then provide them with the impartial tools they need in order to do so. In the meantime, however, you can see from what I have shown you the damage that can be caused by indoctrinating a child with a debilitating fear of the afterlife.

Once the idea of an eternity of unimaginable torture and suffering is planted in a young, impressionable mind, it is very difficult to overcome that fear enough to become a fully functioning, mentally healthy human being. Now, if you try to instill this fear in a relatively normal, educated adult who has never before encountered the idea of a hellacious afterlife, he will engage his critical mind—which he will have become well accustomed to using in the weighing of evidence against various claims—and most likely come to the conclusion that it’s an irrational doctrine without a single fact to support any of its assertions, and he will dismiss it out of hand. Most of you here know exactly what I’m talking about. However, the point here is informed consent. If as an adult you were confronted with this particular brand of belief, and you still decided that the idea had merit and you converted your worldview to this outlook, you would be well within your rights to retain your beliefs in that case. But you would not have the right to abuse a child with this idea, not even your own.

But as we now know, the concept of Hell was invented solely as a way to violently coerce impressionable young minds into adopting a pre-determined viewpoint—usually a particular interpretation of a particular religious doctrine—and as such constitutes mental and emotional abuse of the worst sort. I’ve casted a document for you all to read which will help to understand the utter depravity of such a worldview. It’s an annotated copy of one of those doctrines that used to be a publicly endorsed book of acceptable moral behavior, and which was used as an excuse to terrorize children for generations. Now, if you will all please search and open the section titled ‘Exodus,’ chapter 20, verse 5.

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So it's not so much a short story as it is a monologue, but hey, it got me the grade. In any case, before you start to worry that I'm in favor of some sort of Orwellian Nightmare where children are taken away from their families for the crime of Religion, well, actually I see why you might think that. But I got the idea for the story from this news item that appeared at the time my class was starting, and I thought it might be fun to write a little Spec-fi about what such an unlikely future society would be like. If religion were to become considered a mental illness, how would it be dealt with? There are no easy answers to the problem of religion.

 

I've Been Framed!

Is the phrase "Fateful Coincidence" an oxymoron? I think that on the surface of it, yes for sure. But I'm going to go ahead and use it anyway. I've blogged about fateful coincidences in my life before; Now I have got another good one which serves both as a nice little bookend to the post I just linked to, and allows me to go into the latest bit of news quite nicely.

Now, to be clear, when I say coincidence I mean coincidence. People, objects, and events are like pool balls on the pool table of time. An infinitely large pool table with billions of balls, where everything just careens around and bangs off each other until you're knocked into a side pocket. I don't need greater explanations of why things happen, good or bad, than that. And by fateful, I mean fate as it appears in the rear view mirror. A person's trajectory can appear to have meaning in the background because you can only see a trail once you've blazed it. Ok, enough of the clunky mixed metaphors and onto my latest epiphany of a fateful coincidence.

Back in '96, when I realized I needed to get out of town to seek my fame and fortune, I was pretty cash poor. Well that's misleading... I didn't have anything of value, I was just poor. My plan was to get a bus ticket to Bellingham, WA just north of Seattle and then from there a ferry ride up to Petersberg, Alaska. Those tickets were expensive enough on their own, but I also had to survive for a month or two up there before I'd get paid by the fishing cannery. So, having thrown myself all in, I sold my entire CD collection, about 200 CDs for $800. I sold them to Tom, the owner of the then relatively recently opened Main Street Jukebox. Now, I don't know if you young whippersnappers can appreciate this, but back in '96, $800 was a lot of money. I took it right up the street to Alice's Travel Agency, and bought a Greyhound bus ticket all the way to Bellingham for $88. If it hadn't have been for Tom, I would have had a lot of trouble trying to scrap together enough cash to begin what was to become my fantastic ten years of travel.

What makes this a fateful coincidence? Well that's my news. Tom is hosting my travel photography at the Main Street Jukebox for the month of April! It's my first show, possibly my last, and it makes quite a nice little wrap up to my adventure. My opening is on Saturday April 4th, and there is also a great musician by the name of Nicole Erin Carey playing at 7:00pm. I'm not sure what time I'll be there, probably around 6, but you're welcome to stop in whenever; then or anytime during the month of April. I've spent the last few weeks matting and framing about 30 pictures of mine, the ones I put in my typepad portfolio in fact, and obviously those will be the ones on display. I'm contemplating selling them as well, but I'm hesitant as setting myself up for disappointment is something I generally try to avoid. It's cool enough for me that someone is willing to hang them up!

Now, the best part of this fateful coincidence doesn't stop there. There's more. Alice's Travel Agency? Alice is Alice Luongo, the fabulous mother of the fantastic Julie Luongo, author and artist extraordinaire, love of my life, and also the person who has been nagging me for well over a year to print out some of my photos and try to get them displayed somewhere. Back in '96, do you know what Julie was doing? Working in her mother's shop, is what! It was a long time ago, but I'm positive that the person who sold me my bus ticket was a young pretty girl, and Julie assures me that she was the only young pretty girl working there at the time... Well, you can do the math. Ain't the fateful coincidence game grand?

My basement framing studio.

A Dream Of Germany And All Points Nostalgia. Ugh.

I had a dream the other night which, when I woke up, left me with that bittersweet feeling of joy and loss that only dreams can evoke. Not to sound gay or anything. But it was a pretty simple dream; I was in a hallway, and people started arriving. They were people I'd known from Germany. More and more showed up until we formed a very crowded circle in the hall there, and everybody was chattering away, laughing, telling old stories and old jokes from our time at Chiemsee. Nothing can be as nice and comforting as an old joke retold between friends you haven't seen in years. Like the time Bailey caused Deutsche Bahn to cancel the 11:10pm train route from Munich to Bernau because he got a bit too toasty and kicked out a train window, uh, accidentally. Disco night at the Windjammer.

Or when a rogue storm came up on the lake during a sailing class that Danielle and I were in together, capsizing our sailboat, losing my glasses to the bottom of the Chiemsee while trying to right it. Or Nimmer catching the train by his teeth as it was pulling out of the station during an unscheduled church points stop at 2am. Or Scott... well, he wouldn't want me to tell that story. But it's a funny story. Seth playing Frogger on the autobahn. Dirk tying a kite to his rear bumper, lighting it on fire and going for a ride on the hotel strasse, then waking up the next morning cuddled contentedly next to Josh in the Summerhaus kitchen. Dirk, Josh, Lauren, Dave & I seeing Foetus in Salzburg and getting locked out of the car, then driving up to Dirk's Dad's historical German hunting lodge for a weekend of too much rich food and cappuccinos, causing unspeakable trouble in my bowels. Dumpster diving. Charlie's. The Bernauer Stuben. Krampus fest. Al Harms! Bus Olympics. Absinthe parties after Absinthe runs to Czesky Krumlov. What was Matt's roomate's name who Scott made up all those stories about? Windjammer Halloween parties. "Stealing" the maypole from the Badehaus. Radlers on the German beach. That last summer on the dive shop dock. Volleyball Tuesday. Singing The Yellow Submarine in German. Rosenheim. Munich. The Bernau Bahnhof.

Anyway, I could go on and on, each one of those memories spawning a hundred more. Forgive me; wistfully reminiscing about Chiemsee is a pathological pastime for those of us who were there, annoying and boring on a regular basis our friends who were not. Suffice it to say it was a bittersweet dream, laughing with old friends whom I'll never see all together in one room again. I spent three years in Chiemsee, but I also spent three years in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a ski town near the Austrian border in the Alps. Garmisch tends to take back seat in my memories of Germany, as it was so much longer ago and the dynamic at Chiemsee during the final year of its operation was rather show-stealing. But coinciding with my dream, a good friend of mine, Marc, from the Garmisch days recently got back from a vacation with his wife whom he'd met there to revisit our old stomping grounds. He posted some pictures on his Facebook page from the trip and I of course found myself looking through them with a renewed sense of old days gone. He has loads of great pictures of our favorite German food and beer. Nostalgia, that's the word. Yuck. I had had a really great time there as well, and I think that it is perhaps one of the most beautiful spots in the world.

Marc reminded me of a historic night on the town. On the week prior to the night in question, we had been at the Santa Fe, otherwise known as the local American Bar. When the Santa Fe closes, there's only one other bar that stays open later (Well, except for the Evergreen, but that's another story) named Peaches. It's a horrid place. Fruity girl drinks and obnoxious party beat music. But at 3am, all pretense of discernment tends to fade. So we walked over, and the doorman wouldn't let me in. It was rather unbelievable for a bar that catered to the 3am crowd. He said my pants were too baggy; he thought I looked like a snowboarder. And I was a snowboarder in fact, but so what? He said, in middling English, that they'd had trouble with my kind. "They, they come in here and cause trouble and drink too much and, and they snowboard," as though it were an unspeakable crime. Weird, right? So I glumly turned around and went home, while Marc & Lenny got inside. The next week, for whatever reason, they let me in. I was dressed the same, I had actually gone snowboarding that day. It was ironically funny, but I was bitter. Last week had been inglorious. I felt wronged. Marc was retelling the story to Lenny, Sabino, and Rio. They laughed, the flavor of wormwood remained with me. I had never caused trouble, I was not one of "those" snowboarders. I had never come to this bar and... snowboarded... I cheered up. I wasn't thinking clearly, but I was thinking.

If I'm going to be accused of sinning, I might as well sin, right? I happened to have my snowboard strapped to the roof of my car right outside, having in fact, as I said, gone snowboarding that day. I ran outside to my car. The same doorman who had not let me in previously, but had inconsistently decided that I was okay on this night was working. I told him I'd be right back. No problem. I grabbed my snowboard and ran in. He didn't try to stop me from bringing my snowboard in, I think he was too confused. Perhaps the hand of God restrained him. In the back of the bar where we were seated, we were on a raised platform table with two or three stairs leading down to the main floor. Here, Marc took a picture of the very spot on his recent trip:

I strapped on my snowboard, gave a drunken rebel yell, and snowboarded down the stairs. Now Mr. Bouncer, you won't be lying next time when you say that snowboarders; "They, they come in here and cause trouble and drink too much and, and they snowboard."

Of course, the joke was really on me because I scraped the crap out of my nice new snowboard on those granite stairs and I had to pay a sweet 50 Deutsche Marks to get it re-waxed. But you know, in the annals of Drunken revelry, score one for me and the snowboarders.

My Adjective-Heavy, Overlong Version Of The Emperor's New Clothes.

One of my favorite stories of all time is The Emperor's New Clothes. It's a popular one, and technically it's a fable I think, but it's been in the back of my head for years and years. I think about it so much because it works on so many levels and also it’s another piece in the puzzle of human nature. For a short Fable, it explains so much about human behavior that it feels like an epic. I don’t remember how old I was when it clicked in my head what that story was really about, but ever since then it’s behaved rather fractal-like in my head (Although most things are behaving that way to me right now, because I’m an official Frack addict) as I’ve consistently seen more complicated patterns of human behavior within it every time I think about it.

An Emperor, who is very vain about his fashion sense, spends a lot of his country's money on his vanity, yet he feels that most of the people around him are too stupid to appreciate what is in reality his extremely gaudy taste. So he searches for a Tailor who will make him something so "beautiful" that only those with the "highest" fashion sense can appreciate it. It doesn't take him long to find his Karl Rove, his Ahmed Chalabi, his St. Paul. A clever Tailor has heard about his quest and responds with a devious plan.

He takes the measure of the Emperor, and declares that he will make him the finest suit imaginable, with the caveat that it will be so unimaginably fine that only those who are truly capable of sensing the greatest beauty will be able to see it, so ineffable will this creation be. The Emperor, of course, is very pleased by this and is looking forward to the day when he can prove to the world that he is not a vain idiot, but that he has the very keenest of aesthetic appreciation.

The Tailor takes his down payment and goes off to the pub and has a merry time. He plays some golf, takes a long weekend off in the hills with an easy lass from down the street, and sleeps off the hangover. He meanwhile sends messages to the Emperor that he's been hard at work, along with descriptions of the suit and how lovely it will be, relating his progress on how difficult and rewarding the work is. How the color is beyond the glamour of gold. How he searched far and wide to find the mythical thread of the gods in ancient and little traveled lands. How he imported the finest lace from ancient Babylon. How he is using only adamantine needles gathered from the secret merchants of Atlantis to do the thread work painstakingly by hand, being so careful that a well turned stitch may take him an hour per knot. The Emperor is beside himself with impatience, and daily his imaginings of the suit grow greater until the blinding beauty of what this suit will be has formed an unshakable picture in his mind.

At long last, the clever Tailor wakes one morning and decides that it is time. He opens up a closet door and grabs a dusty old clothing box from the back of it, cleans it up and proceeds to turn it into the finest dressed box in all the land using old ribbons and bits of cast off cloth from his cutting room floor, causing an absurd amount of envy in all of the other clothing boxes' tiny black hearts.

He then cleans himself up, and dresses himself in what are actually very fine and tasteful clothes, because he really is a fantastic Tailor and truly knows what a nicely cut suit is all about. In fact, looking at the Tailor that morning, you'd be forgiven for thinking that he was the lord of a wealthy fief with an old family and refined sensibilities. Further, he might have been happy to cut the Emperor as fine a suit as this one, but the Tailor knew that his tastes did not run in that direction and would demand something far showier than was truly tasteful.

Getting himself into his role, he grabs some air and arranges it fussily inside the handsomest box ever created. He then sends word to the Emperor that the suit is finished at last. Beside himself with joy, the Emperor sends an escort of his personal guard to bring the Tailor and his suit to the palace.

When the Tailor arrives at the palace, Box of Adonis tucked safely under his arm, the Emperor greedily demands to see the suit, so eager is he to present himself to his subjects as a man of the greatest sensibilities. The Tailor first admonishes the Emperor to remember his caveat, and before taking out the suit, begins to remind him of how sacred and beautiful this suit is, and that he must prepare his eyes to see it lest he be blinded by the beauty etc etc etc...

So after much ado about nothing, they retire to the Emperor’s chambers along with several choice Imperial Attendants and there, apart from prying eyes the Tailor opens the box and... Well what happens here is a matter of much debate. Some people believe that the Emperor, so fixated on the ideas carefully planted by the Tailor of the amazing technicolor suit, in fact actually saw the suit exactly as he imagined it, his fantasies becoming a mirage before his eyes. Others believe that, seeing nothing there he was loath to admit to himself (but even more importantly, would be loath to admit to his courtiers and advisers) that he could not see it, especially in front of his attendants and more so after talking it up for so long that only those with fine aesthetic discernment would be able to look at it, and so proceeded to convince himself that it was there, lest he be laughed at by those with more acumen for not apprehending it. Still others believe that the Emperor knew very well that there was in fact nothing there, but again for the same reasons as stated above and further chose to go along with the Tailor's clever ruse so that he could proclaim himself the only one in the world with the ability to see it; God's chosen fashion sensor.

In any case, whatever was going through the Emperor's mind at the time, the outcome was the same. It will be up to him to face the reality he hid himself from, or the reality he created, on judgment day. For the rest of us, it is what comes next that is important.

The Tailor made a great show of lifting the invisible clothes out of the box and draping them ‘round the foolish ruler. His Attendants, after an initial moment of confusion, began to help the Tailor and made various sounds of approval, exclaiming that the Tailor had done a wonderful job and that the Emperor looked simply incomparable. One of the Attendants quietly slipped out of the room to warn… I mean, to announce of course! To announce to the Lords and Ladies of the court that the Emperor was now dressed in his eldritch suit of appreciative eyes only, and would be attending them shortly.

The Emperor presented himself to his court, beaming happily in his amazing new outfit which everyone saw to be his bright pink polka-dotted underwear, yet none of them would be the first to say other than that his robes were splendorous (lick spittle cowards that people of such station invariably are). There was a tense moment for the Tailor when a poor ignorant chambermaid came in to tend the fire and gasped upon seeing him holding court before hundreds of his courtiers, wearing nothing but his Imperial Knickers! She turned a truly amazing shade of white which possibly had never been specified on the royal color charts before that day, and began to stammer an apology for walking in on the Emperor in such a state. Having gone over every eventuality in his head many times over, the Tailor smoothly explained to the Emperor and his Attendants in a voice loud enough to be heard by all, but especially by the poor white-faced chambermaid that it only proved his point that those without class or fashion sense would not be able to comprehend the world’s finest fabric creation.

Chambermaids, poor creatures that they are with little in their lives other than the drudgery of cleaning up after other folk’s dirty messes, are resultantly prone to gossip. So naturally word of this exchange spread quickly, although the story which the chambermaid told changed from her simply having seen the Emperor in his knickers to having been temporarily blinded by the Emperor’s au courant hauteur, and was now in fact one of the lucky first to have seen the new wonder which could only be seen, according to the greatest Tailor of the land, (For he was the Emperor’s personal Tailor, was he not?) by people of taste and education! An article of clothing which only those of a complete doltish nature would fail to behold, and of course all of the Lords, Ladies and residents of the palace, who with their position, wealth, and refinement were the envy of those of the working class, had perceived it and therefore proven that the rumors of the Members-of-Refinement only suit were in fact true.

And so of course it was not long before everyone in town determined that they would not be one of the unfortunates to expose their ignorance by failing to see the new outfit, having a great desire to prove themselves every bit as refined as their social superiors.

As it so happened, the Imperial Scheduler had on his calendar for this day an Imperial inspection of the Empire’s Cavalry. As the bent, near-blind old Scheduler informed the Emperor of this duty, the Tailor listened closely, and worried a little. He asked the Imperial Scheduler what he thought of the Emperor’s attire, and whether it was appropriate garb for an official public inspection. The Scheduler, having heard the talk of the eldritch suit of appreciative eyes only, and near blind though he was, exclaimed how fine the Emperor looked and declared that the Cavalry would likely be honored by his well-dressed inspection.

And so the Tailor, deeming the public ready as evinced by the fact of word having spread to the servants, was sure that by the time the Emperor’s retinue arrived outside word would have spread even further, and felt confident that he was safe. He then approached the Emperor and asked for the remainder of his fee, having delivered the new clothes as promised, before taking his leave. The Emperor, being always in the public eye, paid the Tailor his due with a healthy bonus thrown in for having far surpassed his greatest expectations. The Tailor then bowed his way out of the palace, thanking the Emperor for his magnanimity, and telling him that should he have any problems or need any further work done not to hesitate to summon him. The Tailor left in a very jubilant mood indeed, having more gold in his pockets now than ever another tailor may receive in a lifetime, and all for such toil free deception!

The Emperor ordered his retinue be made ready, and, dressed impeccably in naught but his undergarments, proceeded out onto the streets for a much anticipated inspection of his cavalry, for now all of the people would see and understand how wonderful their Emperor’s taste in clothing really was!

Strutting down the avenue outside of his palace, surrounded by his slavering suck-ups, The Emperor began to preen. Never before did such a preening take place as this one. In fact, were the Emperor even a small touch more smug and self-loving, this story may have come down to us through the ages known as The Emperor’s New Preen.

But of course, we all know what it’s really all about. It’s about a grown man publicly walking about in his skivvy, pretending that he looks simply fabulous. And as he walked down the main street of his city in this manner, the people were trying not to snigger, because while they all saw him, um, very clearly shall we say, none of them wished to be the first to admit it and invite possible ridicule in case there was any truth to the idea that he was actually very finely dressed, and so laughing would only expose their own lowness.

People are generally pretty stupid and have overlarge egos, and the Emperor was, well, their Emperor.

A young child, too young and intelligent to have paid any mind to the nonsense talk of the adults but not so young that he didn’t know what was truly important, was therefore looking around the street for interesting things to pick up from the ground and chasing pigeons. As he was running after a particularly energetic pigeon, he found himself quite inadvertently out in the middle of the street… directly in front of the nearly naked Emperor.

As the child’s clear eyes scanned up from the Emperor’s feet to meet his royally clouded eyes, widening in surprise along the way, I like to imagine that a chill of doom shivered up the Emperor’s regally ambivalent spine. I think that deep down, everyone knows you can’t fool children, not about the important things anyway, even when you’ve managed to fool yourself.

The child, not understanding the silly adult complexities of the situation, shouted up to the Emperor (who, leaning back with one leg crooked and arms going bent as he was, looked as if he was ready to flee from this harmless little urchin):

“Why aren’t you wearing any clothes?”

Those nearest the unfolding drama gasped, and the silence thundered like a wave. The complete ridiculousness of the situation had been apparent to all, but after being too cowardly to state their convictions on the matter, the child’s innocent question was as a needle to a balloon for the people on the street. And then: laughter. Unable to hold on to their imagined dignity any longer, the throng bellowed until the tears came.

Now, in the old telling of this story, the Emperor, looking quite like a scared little monkey, became ashamed as he realized that the jig was up and high-tailed it back to his palace in order to become decent and to find that louse of a tailor and hang him by his fingers. However, times being what they are, our story does not end nearly as tidily. Instead, our Emperor, looking more like a smug, semi-intelligent nose-picking little monkey, chose to ignore the laughter, loudly pronounce that all of those who were full of mirth were in fact scoundrels, and that he very well was wearing very fine cloth which they obviously were too uneducated and unpatriotic to see, until some of the people came around again to believing in the ruse and began to accuse each other of being on the wrong side of things until no one knew anymore what was naked and what was not. And rather than hanging the insipidly deceitful Tailor, the Emperor made him his top fashion adviser and gave him a big raise.

And that is The End of all things, children.

The Austrian Ski Patrol Is Always There When You Need 'Em.

I was reminded recently of a story about running from the cops. Well, sort of cops. I was living in Germany in the winter of '98/'99, and it was the best snowboarding season, ever. Bavaria was getting record amounts of snow. It seemed like every day, there was a foot of fresh powder on the ground. It would snow like crazy all night, and in the morning, clear skies. It did that every day for weeks. Like I said, best snowboarding season ever.

I was working as Night Hausmeister at the Von Steuben Hotel in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in the Bavarian Alps. Heh. As an interesting aside, General Von Steuben was a Prussian military officer who was either exiled or escaped from Germany after being found out to be a pedophile. He went to America and offered his services to the American military in the American Revolutionary War. I don't know if his vices were continued in our great, forgiving nation, (See Deliver Us From Evil... my God. I mean it. See it. Everyone needs to.) but he did become a war hero. Anyway, after World War II, when the US Army wanted to have a place for soldiers to go on R&R in Bavaria, they took the old Nazi Youth Headquarters in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and re-named it the Von Steuben Hotel. The Prussian pedophile was allowed to return home to Germany honorably, thanks to US! That always gave me the giggles. Uh... I mean, MANLY giggles, that is. Anyway, that's where I worked as Night Hausmeister, which is a fancy German word (House Master) for Night watchman/housekeeper. It's a nice word, I like it.

Anyway, my friend Dirk (Whose picture that is at the top) was the Night Auditor. Our hours were from 11pm until 7am. After I finished my work, I'd crash on the couch in the main lobby in front of the fireplace from like 2am until 5 or 6. We'd eat breakfast, run back to our rooms and get geared up, hop into his VW van (which he called his toybox because he was an avid outdoor sportsman and had four seasons worth of sporting goods he kept in there, including a unicycle and some juggling pins... don't ask, he was insane) and head to any one of about ten different Alps in the area for a full day of snowboarding on a foot of fresh powder. Get back home by around 5pm, sleep for a few hours, get up, go to work, repeat every day all winter. Again, best snowboarding season anybody's ever had in all of time!!! It was really great. Dirk was a really excellent boarder too, and my own boarding skills improved dramatically that winter, just trying to keep up with him.

But it was all possible because of the Happy Ski Pass... the season pass which Dirk and I each had that allowed us access to all the Bavarian Alps AND Austrian Alps in the area. Our favorite mountain was in an Austrian town named Lermoos, about 45 minutes down the road from Garmisch. They had some really awesome runs, and the best off-piste (off trail) boarding anywhere in the area... which turned out to be the problem. When the snow is really good, there is a particularly fun off-piste run that goes right down under one of the main chair-lifts, and due to the copious amounts of snow on this particular day, there were signs saying to stay out of that particular area due to avalanche danger. Of course, we either didn't see or chose to ignore the warning signs. It was a fantastic run. It was so fun and we were so cool for hitting it first that the Austrian Ski Patrol was waiting for us at the bottom.

They asked for our Happy Ski Passes. Dirk (who spoke fluent German)  started flipping out and said "No! No way! Mike, don't give 'em your pass!" And I was all like "No! No way! Dirk, don't give 'em your pass! What do we do?!" Have I told you yet that Dirk was a Genius? Well, he says "Dude! There's a Church at the bottom of this slope! (The slopes commonly would run all the way right down into town in the Alps) Get away! start boarding! They can't arrest you in a church, it's sanctuary!" So we run. I followed him down the slope, the Austrian Ski Patrol following us in a rather bewildered state... I don't think they'd been faced with this particular problem before. This picture is not of the Church at Lermoos that is being implicated in this story, but it's pretty, no? This particular church resides on the slopes of the Zugspitze, the tallest Alp in Germany.

Well, a not-so-much-longer-story short, we made it down because I don't think that the Austrian Ski Patrol was really trying too hard, because I think they weren't sure what to do if they actually caught us, ski-chases not likely being a part of their regular routine. We boarded right through the front doors of the small rococo Tyrolian church, which was mostly empty at the time, and unhitched our boards in the foyer. We ran to the back of the church, got out of our ski clothes, ran out the back door through the church cemetary and hopped the back wall surrounding it. We made our way separately back to the toybox, hiding from the ski patrol who apparently hadn't thought we'd try to escape from the rear and laughed our asses off all the way home. We avoided Lermoos for a few weeks after that, but of course we couldn't stay away forever. That run under the ski lift was too sweet.

Sanctuary. Sheesh. Thank God we were so dumb, or we might have actually had our Happy Ski Passes confiscated. Good times.

There was another time, a few years later, when I was snowboarding at another location in Austria, (The Steinplatte, I think) when the Austrian Ski Patrol saved my life. I was going off-piste again, when all of a sudden I found myself staring down a 300 foot sheer cliff. I screeched to a halt, and sat at the very edge, looking down at my death. I couldn't move to try and unhook my board, because if it slipped while trying to unhook my foot, I'd be going off-cliff. I couldn't turn around because I was too close to the edge. So I sat. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Austrian 911... I tried to explain where I was, but it was difficult because my German has never been stellar, and besides, I was in the woods off some ski trail. So I sat there, staring down at my 300 foot death with my ass in the snow, eventually going numb from cold, for about 2 hours until the Austrian Ski Patrol found me... So you know, they're nice to have around when you need them. Even though they helped me out, I don't feel bad for not letting them take my Happy Pass all those years ago. Besides, if you think about it, I really owe my life to cellphone technology. The Austrian Ski Patrol only gets partial credit. The greater portion, of course, but still.

This is me on the Zugspitze. I have no pictures of the Austrian Ski Patrol, I'm sad to say.

I Was Fated To Choose To Write This Post In An Idiosyncratic Manner

There's an old conundrum bandied about in philosophical and spiritual circles about whether or not our lives, the universe, and everything are driven by free will or are pre-destined. I believe the Catholics like to call it pre-determination, which is the specific opinion that God has chosen all of our destinies, made all of our choices for us.

Leaving out the existence of God or lack thereof argument for the moment, this has always struck me as an idiotic and short-sighted position on the matter for religious types. The whole point behind the oldest Christian moral, that of Adam and Eve, is about giving man a choice between happy-go-lucky gardening in Eden or the loss of their innocence in exchange for cold hard knowledge. In other words, the very first choice in the Bible that was given to man by God was to do as he will; ignore the fruit tree as commanded, or eat some and suffer. That's what I believe what the kids are calling free will these days is. God wanted to see what Adam was made of, so he gave him a choice. So I really don't understand where all this religious pre-determination nonsense comes from. Probably some crusty old robed dude with a superiority complex sitting in the Vatican thinking up ways to justify his job.

Leaving pre-determination behind as anachronistic and moving on to the more philosophical aspect of the question, known as pre-destination, we begin to tread more logical ground. Pre-destination makes more sense to me as an idea because of some of the revelations of modern science, actually. Namely, the fact that Einstein discovered that Time is in reality not something that hasn't happened yet, but merely a 4th dimension. In other words, Time is quite possibly all of a piece; what we consider the past, present, and future are extremely subjective and actually may conceivably exist in the Universe all at once, and we are like mites on a round table or cavemen on a globe, too small to see the shape of it, but destined to travel in circles while believing we walk in a straight line. In other words, everything that ever was, is, or will be, exists right here and now, but our little minds are not large enough to perceive more than a tiny bit of it at any particular instant, which we call the present. By this logic, our futures have already happened and there is no changing them, and this is where the more philosophical side of the pre-destiny of our lives argument comes from. And you can still blame God if you want, or shake your hand futilely at the sky and rail against unpersonified fate. Whichever tickles your angry fancy.

Of course, logically, this breaks down for me also. The fact that our futures have already happened, are happening, or will happen, doesn't really mean anything. In other words, even if the future is all laid out, so are the choices we made at those points in our destiny. If the future is as set in stone as our past, well, you made your choices then, you're choosing to read this now, (sorry about that), and you will choose in a moment to get up and get more coffee. I've never understood why pre-destination has to cancel out free will. Just because the future exists doesn't mean your mind isn't there also to perceive it and make those choices.

I think it's just an outdated religious question that got out of hand, and a good example of people who think that they are logical not being logical. There's no reason to think that just because the future exists means that we didn't get to choose how it unfolded, barring any more data on the matter.

If you're wondering why I seem to be using the word logic a lot (See? I can get it right from time to time!) lately, it's because I'm apparently an INTJ and that's allegedly just how we operate, according to Personality Theory. So, now that I know that, I've spent a lot (See? I did it again!) of time thinking about logical conundrums. So, do I think logically because I choose to, or pecause Personality Theory (or God, or Fate) dictates that I should, hmm? Am I even thinking logically? I think that most people think that they think things through, so, it's entirely possible that I'm deluding myself.

One thing that I think that I am fated, predestined, or just simply chose to be is the kind of person that likes to play Devil's advocate. I often like to argue with people whether I agree with what I'm arguing for or not. Usually I do it just to irritate my friend Scott, but I enjoy the argument for argument's sake, also. I'll never forget the time when I turned my Mom's face pastier white than snow could dare to dream to be; I must have been like 1 or 2 years old, tops. I realize that that is an awfully young age to have such a vivid memory of, but if you'd seen the look on my Mom's face, you'd never have forgotten it either. I remember thinking, in a vague sort of way, that I wanted to get a reaction out of her just to see what would happen. We went to church every Sunday, where there was a lot of talk about God, and Jesus, and all that, and being so young I liked it all. Good vs. Evil was a concept I appreciated and I liked Jesus well enough. But again, I was looking for a reaction, and I remember walking into the kitchen and very innocently stating to my mother in a sweet little 2 year old boy voice, "Mom, I hate Jesus."

Well, I got a reaction all right. I hadn't realized it would be such a controversial statement. I remember being shocked by her anger and by what I didn't recognize at the time as her own shock and fear; I believe I actually thought she would think it was a funny joke. You know, two-year old humor. It took a long time to convince her that I didn't really mean it, which was really hard because I don't think I had the words at my disposal to explain myself at that age. It was a very strict lesson that arguments about ideas are not always well-handled by others, and also taught me that I sometimes enjoy getting a reaction out of them, regardless.

Anecdotal Evidence To Support My Claim Of Superior Knowledge... You'd Eat It Up If I Performed It Live To A Catchy Gospel, Rock Or Rap Tune!

While I'm waiting for inspiration on the eternally boring question of what to do next with my life to strike, as it has been so kind to do in the past, I am always on the lookout for new things to blog about. It helps keep my sanity, you see. In that rather pitiable spirit, here is something I woke up thinking about this morning; the why and wherefore of religion. So yes, if you are not in the mood for another rant on messiestobjects' tired, banal views on religion and why it's bad for you, feel free to bail now.

I often worry about publicly talking about my views on religion, because I know that my family, who are devout Christians, care about me and therefore worry that my soul is condemned to a fiery eternity for saying such brash things as I tend to do. The problem is that I know that no amount of discourse will ever bridge the gap between what they believe and what I believe, and so I tend to keep my mouth shut and avoid the topic. The fact of the matter is that people, once they reach a certain stage in their lives, and have given the matter serious thought and/or credence in their lives, are almost never capable of changing their minds. There's actually scientific evidence somewhere out there about the hardening of our minds as we get older, although don't look to me for details as it's something I read a long time ago. Something about our neural pathways being wide open when we're babies, gradually becoming more solidified or defined as we apply words to objects, and later becoming downright jungle elephant paths in our brains as we ascribe our beliefs to ideas. In other words, the more times you tread a path, the easier it is to follow that same path the next time you go that way. It's very hard for even the most open minded person keeping pre-set personal beliefs or perceived truths out of our rational observations as we get older. But that's really not the point of this.

I thought that this time, rather than expounding on why I think religion (Not God! I think I've been rather clear on the difference in my mind in the past.) is not only false but unhealthy, I would rather explain how I came to these ideas in the first place. Not that I'm special in regards to my beliefs; lots of people share them. I just feel I have a unique perspective, being a reformed religious type rather than the offspring of godless academics.

I was born and raised a Christian, and generally speaking I think that in some ways it did me good. Or at least, I believe I have a highly sensitive view of Good Vs. Evil, and I think that's a good thing. I also don't believe it's unhealthy to walk around with the constant feeling that somebody is looking over my shoulder, whether it's true or not. It can be a valuable mental trick. The first time I started doubting was at a Christian rock concert I went to with a church youth group. The performer was a guy that went by the name of Carmen, whose stuff I actually liked. I had a tape of his; I was probably 13 or 14 years old at the time. Anyway, we were at this concert and he had been singing his tunes, with no band... lip synching. But whatever; at the time I didn't know that was cheesy and nobody seemed to care anyway. But he would stop every once in a while and preach a little bit, and there were two things in particular that he said at one point that just kind of made me go, "ummm, really?"

The first was minor, as indicators often are, but it made me think a little bit. Apparently The Grateful Dead were playing that same night at another venue up the street, and Carmen was all like "Let me tell you, The Grateful Dead may be sinners who think it's cool to be dead, but tonight we here are grateful to be alive in Jesus!!" Much cheering ensued. But I was kind of like, and I didn't even know all that much about them, but I knew enough to know that they didn't actually want to be dead, at least not in the sense that Carmen was saying. He was saying it like they were willful emissaries of Satan or something. In their Wikipedia entry, it says that they chose the name in this manner:

The name "Grateful Dead" was chosen from a dictionary. Some claim it was a Funk & Wagnalls, others, the Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book Of the Dead), but according to Phil Lesh, in his biography (pp. 62), "...Jer (Garcia)  picked up an old Britannica World Language Dictionary...(and)...In that silvery elf-voice he said to me, 'Hey, man, how about the Grateful Dead?'" The definition there was "A song meant to show a lost soul to the other side."

So, it was really pure hippie bullshit, but hardly Satanic. This statement of Carmen's, when I thought about it later, made me begin paying attention to preachers and to begin the realization that most of what they say is off the cuff and full of assumptions. They often, especially at that time in the 80s, called things Satanic which they merely didn't understand or was associated with things which they found personally distasteful. It made me realize that they often didn't really know what they were talking about, which is a shattering blow to a religion that claims to have knowledge of the truth of the way of things. If you can't back up simple statements of fact, why should I take it on faith that you know what you're doing in other areas? Faith belongs to God anyway, supposedly, not preachers.

The second thing he said, later that night, was a larger issue for me. Towards the end of the show, when he'd just played his biggest hit to a crowd of young screaming christian rock idolators, (And I admit, I was one of them. I loved that song.) he bellowed out, "I can feel the spirit of Jesus here with us tonight! Can you feel the holy spirit in the room? He's speaking to all of us, can you feel his love, right here right now!!?" And, as my fist was in the air and everyone around me, tears of joy in their eyes and answering with a heartfelt "Yes! I feel him! I feel Jesus!", and I, about to join in and add my agreeing sentiment, had an odd sensation. I was still for a moment, and kind of quietly thought to myself, (and I'm paraphrasing, of course; it was a long time ago in a mindset far, far away. But I remember very well what was going through my head in spirit. Snicker.) "Jesus? Huh. Actually, what I'm feeling is awe for the rock star that just lip synched that awesome song and got my fist pumping and adrenaline rushing, and has even made me feel good about being a Christian since I'm in a large group of people that feels the same way and we're all cheering for Jesus, but one thing I don't feel, and have never felt, actually, is anything spiritual. It actually feels a lot like that time I got all excited and heart-full when Luke Skywalker blew up the Death Star. That made me SO happy, and that's the kind of elation I'm feeling right now, so, unless Jesus had something to do with the destruction of the Death Star, and said destruction was a spiritual event, I don't think that what I'm feeling right now is him in the room."

Now that I'm slightly wiser, I can add even more significance to that event. It was a rally, pure and simple. The theatrics and speeches that those guys use is no different than, say, Hitler's Nazi rallies. Or the Republican party rallies. It's a leader taking advantage of the psychology of mob mentality, and getting the crowd all worked up into a frenzy, and directing that energy in a desired direction. Jesus is not actually in the room, folks. The emperor is wearing no clothes. This doesn't in and of itself mean that what is being preached is bunk, (The Reverend Horton Heat, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon, The actual message of love preached by Jesus himself, (which you can hear if you you read closely between the lines) for some examples) but I think it's important to be aware when age-old crowd control techniques are being used on you. In other words, if the leader is being honest with his agenda in such a rally, he's trying to passionately convince you of the logic of his argument, not passionately trying to beat you over the head with a scary dogma.

Anyway, for some reason, that night my mind opened up a little bit to more rational thought and always afterwards I applied a much more critical eye to what was going on around me. It's not like all of a sudden I ceased being a Christian. In some ways I always will be; you can't really escape your roots, and anyway I have never confused the sins of men, even self-proclaimed spiritual men, with a failing on God's part. One of the facts of nature that I will always hold dear, in my slowly hardening neural pathways, is that men are quite capable of committing acts of good and decency without invoking God, and men are capable of choosing to commit the most heinous evils without needing Satan as a scapegoat. People make their own choices, plain and simple. Blaming Satan or thanking God, or vice versa, is a cheap and easy way of avoiding responsibility.

I remember, one time in church, I was listening to the pastor give his sunday sermon; He was addressing a germaine issue: "Some people say that the Bible contradicts itself. They say that the Bible was written by men, and is not the true word of God. Well folks, I'm here today to tell you that those people have been misled by Satan, and that they are liars! The Bible does not contradict itself! It is God's word, handed down to us by his prophets, and it is the truth!" I kept waiting for him to expand his argument, but that was all he had; a bald statement containing bold word stresses. I kept thinking to myself, That's it!? That's Christianity's argument for itself?! And for the record, there was no paraphrasing there. I remember very clearly that day, and what he said. It felt like an extremely disingenuous thing to say... basically he was saying, believe that the Bible is the literal truth and word of God, because I say so, AND so does the Bible itself. So there. Which struck me as rather circular and unproductive logic... That's pretty much what all the religious leaders are saying, all the time.

Another extremely revealing experience I had, I've already blogged about here.

Anyway, this is a conversation I've been having with myself for a very long time now, and I could go on and on, but those are a few of the more important moments which made me switch gears a little bit. Basically, I've come to the conclusion that in order to come to grips with God, the Universe, and Everything, one has to distance oneself from the religions of men, because they are a framework for misdirection, power, and corruption. If there is a God, then love and understanding come from him, not religion, and not men's inane preachings. If there is not a God, then love and understanding come from chemicals and neural pathways. If there is a God, then there is only one thing which he gave me in order to understand him. Not the Bible, not Pat Robertson, not even Jesus. Men took control of those things, and handed them down to me the way they wanted me to see them. No, what He gave me is my mind. We have this amazing tool which is capable of rational thought, and the application of that tool has yielded more knowledge about the nature of the Universe than any preacher or prophet ever has. If there is no God, well, thank evolution for my mind. If there is a God, He invented evolution. Either way, it's all good.

Now that I'm done preaching, for the moment, I'll leave you with a YouLube that I found of that Carmen song I used to love so much, as performed via Lipsynch by some church kids. I'm kind of cringing about the fact that I used to like this song... I remembered it as being much cooler. I can only offer extreme brainwashing as an excuse. Anyway, in this video, God is a bearded girl, so, enjoy! ... or not. I myself had to stop it just a few minutes in, or I was going to cringe myself into a fetal position.

A Cranky Family Heritage, And Damn Proud Of It.

Well I hope everyone had a splendid St. Patrick's day. I myself spent the entire day in Cincinatti helping the Ohio Williams clan help my Grandmother move from her independent living home into her newer, smaller, assisted living home. Other than to say that these are NOT the same things as a nursing home, I won't bore you with descriptions.

I am really, really sore. She has alot of old family heirloom furniture, and you know, that old time furniture is not nearly as good as IKEA. For one thing, it's all huge and made of solid, solid wood. Oak and whatnot. So, very tiring to move. I can't believe any of that stuff still exists; think about how much more useful it would be as firewood, and modern furniture is so lightweight and cheap that it's either much easier to move or is so fragile that you might as well throw it all out and buy new stuff every time you move. God Bless mass consumerism and the global pandering to the lowest common denominator.

Also, speaking of mass consumerism and the global pandering to the lowest common denominator, the area where my Ohio branch of the Williams family lives is chock full of fast food joints, chain restaurants, and chain stores... the modern strip mall hell that we're all used to seeing, right? Well, something I noticed, and have been noticing in the Stroudsburg area as well, is that if you don't fucking feel like eating at a Ruby Tuesday's, or Red Robin's, or TGI Friday's, or any of a hundred other chain restaurants that serve identical menus with identical-tasting food nationwide, you don't have much else in the way of choice. What I mean is, if you want to eat at a unique but tasty privately owned restaurant, where the owner is very proud and/or involved in his business and the food is cooked fully right there on premises (meaning that rather than an employee of Outback Steakhouse unfreezing a pre-cooked steak, warming it up and sending it out, a real live Chef in a fully functional kitchen picks a piece of raw meat out of the walk-in and cooks it to perfection and serves it to you fresh off the grill just the way you asked for it) you really have to search. While driving around town out here, I didn't see any businesses, food or otherwise, that weren't part of a chain located in a strip mall. And I was looking. In Stroudsburg there are still a few genuine restaurants left, but the chains are slowly taking over even there. Where my Dad lives, near Allentown, it's horrendous. There are still a few non-chain diners in the area, however, and hopefully that's an East Coast tradition that will never die out; I love Diners. The greasier spoonier the better.

But since leaving PA with my Dad for the 10 hour drive out here yesterday, we've eaten at a Bob Evans, a Red Robin's, Krispy Kreme donuts for breakfast, a Street-something or other (we don't have them in PA, I don't think. Can't remember the name) which is a chain that specializes in chili cheese dogs, and a Twin-Dragon Chinese buffet. And that's all I've eaten. I feel unbelievably bloated and greasy, actually. This isn't even fast food, folks! Well, mostly not. But the point is, I'm beginning to suspect that chain restaurants are no better for you than fast food, and that our finer dining-out options are slowly disappearing. And that the food in our grocery stores is slowly becoming pre-cooked individually wrapped crap.

Not totally of course, but think back to what grocery stores and restaurants were like when you were a kid... there is a definite downward progression in quality. Hell, I remember going to Pizza Hut when I was like 6 or 7 and the pizzas were made totally from scratch in an oven and they served beer and the place was cigarette, cigar, and pipe smoky as hell. And you could play Space Invaders on a glass table top console. Those pizzas were awesome, and it was before they began joining the fast food method of streamlining everything into utter shit. Ah well... I'm just sore and cranky and full of chain food gas, don't mind me. I'm not even being consistent. I may have to think deeper about my argument before I even know if I have a point.

But actually it hasn't been a bad trip. I got to see my cousins, and my closest cousin, Karen, has a 1 & 1/2 year old daughter named Kennedy, who is , I suppose as these things work, my 2nd cousin, and she was alot of fun to meet. While we were moving Grandmother's stuff, my other cousin Keith and I stumbled upon her photo albums, which generally we avoid like the plague because if she sees you with them she will want to go through every single picture with you for hours and I've lost one or two cousins to insanity that way, I'm sad to say. But it was an altogether different matter without her around, and I got to see alot of pictures that I haven't seen in maybe 25 years of when Cousin Karen and I were babies and of my very young Mom and Dad... It was nice because I often forget how beautiful my Mom was (My sister Katie looks alot like Mom did then) and how much I loved my cousin back then... but sorry, you guys don't really care about all of this. It was just one of those deeply nostalgic moments for me and I didn't want to forget.

But one thing I do want to mention is the story that I finally got straight (well, mostly straight) from my Grandmother on my great great (great?) Grandfather, Hawkins Hart Hatchett. I love this story and am very proud of it. His dad stole a horse. He was caught, and although he could have been sentenced to hang, Judge Hart was lenient and only made him pay a fine or something. So great great great (great?) grandpa middle-named his firstborn son after the Judge that didn't hang him, and Hart has been the firstborn's middle name ever since. Of course my line came through my Grandmother (née Hatchett), but she passed on the Hart name nonetheless. And on the Williams side... well, all we know there is that great great (great?) grandpa was a stowaway on a ship from Portugal, possibly a pirate, and when he hightailed it off the ship upon arrival in the New World he changed his name to Williams and we haven't got a clue what family he was originally from. Horsethieves, pirates and mysterious stowaways, that's my heritage. And I couldn't be more set-up about it.

Also, I may have embelleshed one or two details purely for my pleasure, but it's all essentially true. He could have been a pirate. What else was he doing, all stowing away like that on Portugese "Trading Vessels?"

Anyway, I've got another long day of driving back to PA with Dad tomorrow, and possibly some disgusting food to vomit up later. Time for sleeping and dreaming of my gloriously shady ancestors.

I Say Things Three Times Alot, Because That's Blind Panic For You

I can see I can see I can see! But, whatever anyone tells you, getting your eggwhites sliced open, and then being forced to stare at a tiny red dot which keeps slipping out of focus while your heart is palpitating, quite naturally given the situation, and a mad mad Thai opthamologist is yelling at you the entire time to "look at the dot look at the dot LOOK AT THE DOT DON'T LOOK AWAY DON'T LOOK AWAY DON'T LOOK AWAY! Just relax don't try to help I don't need your help I DON'T NEED YOUR HELP I DON'T NEED YOUR HELP!!!! is not, in fact, painless and over before you know it. In retrospect, of course, it didn't actually take all that long, but the waiting and surgery prep that goes on beforehand takes forever, and the quick 30 minute procedure itself is a hundred years. It didn't help that one of my first thoughts, right before he cut my first eye open while he was prepping it with eyedrops and plastic covering, was of that 'Friends' episode where Rachel has to get eye drops, but she has this freakishly weird thing about things getting anywhere near her eyes, and after many amusing hijinks all 5 of her friends finally have to tackle her in order to squirt the drops in her eyes. So at first I was chuckling to myself because I was handling the whole situation so much better than Rachel would have, but then of course once he started cutting, and then during the actual laser reshaping part, (which smells like burning hair, by the way) all I could think about was "Don't freak out and turn your head like Rachel did, Don't freak out and turn your head like Rachel did, DON'T FREAK OUT AND TURN YOUR HEAD LIKE RACHEL DID!!!" And then of course, once it's all finished the hippity hoppity mad Thai eye guy tells you, after putting shields over your eyes and you can't see anything and everything is very disorientating, "Whatever you do, don't squint. That's the worst thing you could possibly do, ESPECIALLY tonight, so don't squint. DON'T SQUINT!" Okay, my eyes are feeling really strained, because they've just been traumatized, I can barely see, and what I can see is blurry, and I've just been told that squinting could ruin the whole procedure. Okay, you try it, with the good eyes you're reading this with right now. Don't squint. I mean it, don't squint. Okay maybe it's easy for some, but all I could think about was don't squint don't squint don't squint oh crap did I just squint? No, that wasn't a squint, I don't think, so okay don't squint don't squint don't squint. Crap, what if I squint in my sleep? Oh god oh god oh god.
Once I finally made it back to my room, I ordered a victory calzone from room service (they have an italian restaraunt downstairs, and a McDonalds. How messed up is it that a world famous hospital and health care outpatient clinic has an on-premises McDonalds? What were they thinking? It's a good thing I gave up fast food for New Years), and then spent the rest of the night trying not to squint. Incidentally, for anyone who gets Lasik in the future, I highly recommend the following "Long Dark Night of the Non-Squinting Soul" music: Lush - Spooky, Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins - Rabbit Fur Coat (super fantastic album, by the way), Jolie Holland - Escondida (also super fantastic), The Cure - Disintegration, and I was getting ready to hit The Gun Club - Fire of Love (for the twentieth time in two weeks; I frikken love that album) but I figured it might ruin the estrogen high I'd gotten off the previous stuff I'd been listening to, and anyway I wanted to sleep.
Another thought I had, while trying to sleep with bug-eye shields on my face, not to mention burning, itching, the deathly fear of squinting, and wondering whether I was going to be able to see in the morning, and of course also the excitement that I would be able to see in the morning, if I didn't squint, was who in the hell was the first guy that ever underwent this procedure, and what kind of insane thrill-seeker was he? I mean come on, of all the risks you run from Lasik, even as small a chance as you have now of going blind or whatever, that first guy, man, he had no statistics to go by! He (or she, sorry) knew nothing about possible side effects! I don't know man, I don't think I could've gone into it blind like that. Oh wait...
Anyway, my two hours are just about up, so later.
I can see!

Holy Fait Accompli, Little Grasshopper!

Mmmm, Thai street food. Looks good, doesn't it?

You know that old adage, "You learn something new every day?" Well, today I learned that Thais like bugs. And I don't mean that they just like bugs, as in having warm friendly feelings towards them, but that they like to eat them. That's right, look closer, those are fried insects of various variety. Actually, it's not true that I just learned that today; Scott told me about it when he was here a month or so ago, and he even tried one. I forget what kind he ate though, because when he told me, all I heard was "I ate bugs today". Isn't that enough? Maybe it was grasshopper. They have street carts full of the little buggers. (Buggers! Ha!) I bribed a street vendor into letting me take that close-up shot by buying a sample bag. I was thinking about getting really really drunk and then trying to eat one or two, but after I stopped and had one Guinness, I realized that there really isn't enough beer in the world. I threw my sample bag away. It didn't help that after showing it to the bartender, who was a local Thai, even he was totally grossed out by them. Scott's a better man than I when it comes to eating bugs, and I'm happy to leave it that way.
Anyway, that was my evening. I just walked around for an hour or two because I didn't get out of the hospital until 6 or 7 pm... it was a very long day of getting poked and prodded, and I can't even decide which was my most uncomfortable moment. See, I had a comprehensive medical check-up which lasted about 5 hours, where at one point I was asked by my Thai physician if I wanted him to check my penis and my anus, while a cute little Thai nurse was standing there watching! (I swear to God that she smirked.) What am I supposed to say to that? Do I want him to? Of course not! But you know, isn't that part of the comprehensive? What if I have a hemorrhoid or testicle cancer or something? It would be foolish to say no, but on the other hand I've never had anyone's finger in my butt and I'd like to keep it that way. I also had an abdominal ultrasound. I got a tube of jelly squeezed on me and everything. The funny Thai doctor lady told me I wasn't pregnant. I told her that's a bummer, I'll just have to keep trying. Then a visit to the orthopedist, because I wanted to find out if there was anything to the lower back pains I've been getting, and I discovered that I have an extra joint-thingy on my spinal column that most people don't have, and one of them is slipped. He recommended excercise. Great. I hate excercise. And then finally my Lasik consultation, where I spent another 3 hours. They gave me a bunch of tests, then eyedrops, and then anesthesia drops to numb my eyeballs so that he could shove some glass lenses directly onto them to have a closer look at them. After all that, the doctor said I was clear for the surgery, and we were discussing the procedure when he glanced at my paperwork and saw that I'm allergic to lidocaine. There was a very bad moment because he then says "But then how will we do the surgery? We must put lidocaine in your eyes! (Lidocaine is a general anesthesia used in lots of operations; dentists use it all the time. I found out that I was allergic to it when I was like 6 or 7 or something when I was given it for some reason or other, and went into a convulsive fit.) So there was a second where I was feeling really disappointed and then it got worse. The cute little Thai nurse (not the same one; the hospital has about 800 of the cutest, nicest little Thai girls running around in very light green hospital digs keeping the assembly-line operation that it is running smoothly) about lost her mind at that moment, actually dropping to a knee and trying to steady herself with a little hand on the desk and her other little hand covering her shocked little "o" mouth; Then she says in a little voice, "You allergic to lidocaine?! Anasthetic drops I put in your eyes before are lidocaine!" At which point all three of us got really quiet, while the doctor kind of held his breath and stared at my eyes for a minute. When my eyeballs failed to melt, explode, or convulse in my sockets, I said, "Well, I guess I'm not allergic to lidocaine anymore, then." So all's well that ends well. My surgery is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, and not only will I not be allowed to wash my hair for 2 weeks (snork! I'm bald!) because I can't get water in my eyes, but I'm not supposed to look at a computer screen for more than two hours a day during that time either. So, maybe you guys will be spared from too much inane bullcock from me for a while.

In Which I Attempt To Reassess My Role In The So-Called Blogverse, Yet Somehow Manage To Go On About The Same Old Things

Well I'm home... home being a relative term as I'm actually staying in a house I'd never laid eyes on before two days ago, in a town I'd also never been to, but by default I can call it home, nonetheless. My Dad and his wife Erin moved out here several months ago, and I have to say it was probably a good move. It's a neat colonial sort of a design, (you know, like, from days of yore) and the ceilings are all low giving it that extra old-time Sturbridge Village feeling, which I like a lot, having been taken there quite frequently as a child. Now all it needs is a charming old man in 1800's duds and apron selling rock candy over our kitchen counter and we'll be good to go. Having said all that, I do rather wish we were still in Stroudsburg. For all the moaning that gets done about the place by it's residents, both the ones that get stuck there and the ones that get away, it does have a certain unique personality which you don't actually find in too many other communities, and it can surprise you and even be fun from time to time. Of course I haven't really lived in the greater Stroudsburg area in about nine years, so who knows. Anyway we're not actually all that far from there, so I can visit whenever I like.
So you're probably thinking by now that I obviously have no new tales to tell, nothing good to offer because I'm back in dreary old US of A. And I have to say, mostly you're right, although probably that's more my fault than it's fault, as loads of people who have never left our rotund nation seem to have plenty of interesting things to say on a daily basis, and so I should probably not complain and get my act together. I just really miss being on the road... ever since I can remember I was always looking at maps and wishing I could go places; back when I was probably 6 or 7 or so, I remember looking at a full map of the US, and carefully plotting a route to Riverside? or maybe Riverbend? anyway River-something Wyoming, where my second cousins lived, and asking my parents if I could have airfare so I could go spend a week or two with them. For a while I had a sort of a map room in one of the houses we lived in, although as I pretty much took what I could get in the way of wall hangings at age 7, there wound up being a lot of posters of whales or constellation maps from National Geographic hung up as well, and maybe one or two actual cartographic maps. Oh, and one time when I was like 4, I was playing in our backyard and decided I wanted to go see Daddy at work, so I just started walking in the direction that Mom would drive in when we went to go pick him up. Some hippie chicks in a green VW bug picked me up on the side of the highway and asked me where I lived, by which time I was happy to explain it to them because I was only wearing diapers and they were uncomfortably full, and they brought me up to the house where my Mom was cleaning and hadn't even realized I was gone, at which point upon seeing two hippie girls leading me up the steps and hearing their explanation commenced to have a full blown panic attack. Apparently I'd made it like a mile away before someone bothered to stop and ask the toddler in diapers what he was doing walking down the road by himself.
True Story.
Well my point is, I am definitely one of those itchy-footed 'The grass is always greener' types of people, and I think that travel has got to continue to be a part of my life in one way or another or I'm going to go bat-guano barmy.
...And so my first opportunity for travel since coming home has reared it's somewhat unfortunately double-faced head! The cousin of my former- boss- who- is- in- prison has been trying to hold things together for the failing dirtbag company for the last couple of months, and has contacted me several times in the last month to ask for help in GBG's lawsuit against our former dirtbag client, DynCorp. Now, I never received my last month's pay from my former dirtbag company, as the guy who was in charge at the time, the owner's son Chris actually, pulled a disappearing trick during the final act of GBG's tenure in Baghdad and nobody has heard from him since. I explained to the new guy that I understood the problems they were having, and that I'd be happy to answer any questions via email or phone if it helped them out, but that if they expected any really substantial help from me they'd have to pay my salary. Really quite reasonable of me, considering I could probably ignore them completely and just sue them. So the upshot is that I am likely getting an all-expenses paid trip to Washington DC sometime in the next few weeks to give a deposition to dirtbag GBG's lawyers there, and possibly another trip in March to be called as witness in the actual lawsuit hearing. And of course, my salary. So while it's not as exciting as a trip to Giza, it's still kind of neat to be getting free rides. I've never really been to DC either, so it'll be interesting to see the corrupt seat of power that started my whole adventure in the first place.
I actually have a whole lot of other stuff I could expound on, mainly really weird stuff that I've been noticing about the US since getting back, but I think I'll let that whole body of anecdotes build up for a few days, saving me something inane to go on about for far too long in another post.

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!

The Subject Of This One Is Pixies. You Can Tell Because I Use The Word "Pixies" An Awful Lot

I did something today which I haven't done in years: I listened to the Pixies. I. Totally. Love. The. Pixies. If I'm ever told to pick my favorite band of all time, it will be them. The first time I ever heard them was sometime in the autumn of 1990. I was living in the Benjamin Franklin House in Philadelphia with about 7 other roomates in a small 2 bedroom apartment on the 25th floor. See, two friends of mine and I had just graduated from high school and had also just turned 18, and we were like, way dumber even than now. So we did the big exciting move to the big exciting city thing. Man we were stupid. I mean, Philadelphia? What were we thinking!? Anyway, I won't get into it too much, but that was probably the most miserable time I've ever known, a definite failed experiment in life's freakshow laboratory. We had so many roomates because none of us had any money and we figured we could spread the rent between us. Only, if 8 people have $0.25 each, you still can't pay rent. Math has never been my strong point. And, my roomates were mostly Art School students (OF DOOM!), who also were probably not very wise about all that crazy junk, either. Well, long story short; due to a nifty little aspect of Pennsylvania law, we stayed there for like five or six months rent free, because it's illegal to evict people in the cold months of winter. You gotta wait until it gets warm enough out for your deadbeat tenants to sleep in the street. Ka-ching.
Anyway, the first time I ever heard the Pixies, their video for 'Head-On' came on that alternative music show, 120 Minutes on Mtv, and I was sort of like, huh, that's a crazy little ditty. One of the roomates, a total art school goth/industrial Tim Burton character-lookin' twig of a poser, whom I was completely awestruck by at the time, was all like "Gawd... I hate the Pixies. I'm going to go back into the room I share with 3 other people, and kick the guy who has been sleeping in our walk-in closet out so I can shut myself in there for some privacy and sink into my Skinny Puppy cassette on my headphones, where the earphone with the 'L' on it stands for 'life' and the earphone with the 'R' on it stands for sucks!"
I sort of paraphrased and amalgamized that last bit, but I think that it stays true to the mood. But the part about her hating the Pixies really stuck with me, because she was soooo cool, (and pretty. and smart. and funny. tee hee.) and I was so dumb and impressionable. So it was years before I ever picked up a Pixies CD and actually listened to it. But when I did...
I was living on Main St. in Stroudsburg, PA, with a roomate who, it turns out, is an evil judge-mental ostrich and shall remain unnamed forevermore. (Rawwwk!) But he liked the Pixies, and I was bored with everything else that life had to offer, and I was beginning to wonder if I had been wrong to base my opinion of a band on an offhand comment made by some chick whose name I couldn't even remember. So I chose out the one with the most interesting cover, 'Trompe Le Monde', and my only regret after listening to it was MY GOD HOW MUCH OF MY LIFE HAVE I WASTED NOT LISTENING TO THE PIXIES ALL DAY EVERY DAY!!! Alot of people don't like that album, saying it's too hard compared to their classic 'Doolittle' or 'Surfer Rosa', but I'll tell you, I think it just might be their best. Although it's really hard to judge. I fanatically love every single song they've ever written.
So, I listened to them a lot. And nowadays, years will go by with no Pixies. But unlike other bands that have fallen into my back catalogue, they always manage to nudge at my subconscious sooner or later, and remind me that it's about time for some Vitamin-Pixies.
And for all you poo-pooers out there, if it wasn't for the Pixies, there would be no Breeders. There would be no Nirvana. - Man I'm old! It used to really piss me off when dunderheads would say stuff like "Bro! Without Led Zeppelin, man, there would BE no Poison!"
To which I'd reply, "But I hate Poison."
"Well ok man, but without Led Zeppelin there would be no rock and roll, man!"
"Whatever. Go finish smokin' that crack and leave me alone, would you?"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

A Treatise On The Origins Of Religion And Political Movements

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

Smoky Ethics

You know that whole thing where it's a Federal offense to buy or sell Cuban cigars in the U.S.? You know, because we don't like Castro, so we won't let him bring over his cigars and play in our sandbox? Well, there is a coffee shop inside the U.S. Embassy here in the sunny Baghdad Interzone which sells Cuban cigars, displayed all nice and smoky looking in a nice humidor right over the counter. Perhaps the State Department isn't aware of this little inconsistency... perhaps someone ought to run on down the hall and tell them; I suppose they don't get out of their offices much. Not that it's illegal to be selling Cuban Cigars here, it is another country after all. But it is somewhat indicative of how the government views ethics as they pertain to themselves. Actually, now I think about it, isn't a U.S. Embassy considered U.S. soil? Perhaps it's not so legal after all... ah well, even if that's the case, I'm sure there's a perfectly moral loophole somewhere.
As a further tidbit of interest, there is a bar somewhere in Baghdad, the location and ownership of which I am not at liberty to disclose, which sells Cubans, also. At least, they did at one time; I haven't been there in quite a while. Lets just say it's the spookiest bar in town, and leave it at that.

Cigarette Noir

One of my favorite writers once wrote, and I'm paraphrasing because I don't have the book with me and my photomemory skills suck, "You can do anything you want. Do what you have to do, BUT you must be willing to pay the price. Too much of the evil in the world is caused by people who are not willing to pay the price." 
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that I did something very wrong tonight, but I wanted to do it, and before I did it, I convinced myself that I would pay the price... it's never easy, paying. I went on a day trip to Mont St. Michel, which has a neat little aside: Way back, when I first went to Germany and bought my first car there (around February of '98, maybe...) I bought a European road atlas, because I had all these big plans to drive all over the place. I did pretty good, actually; I went on several roadtrips. But anyway, on the cover of the Atlas was this picture of this awesome lookng place, which I knew I had to see... but the Atlas didn't say where the picture was from! I asked a number of people if they knew what the picture was, but nobody could tell me, which is actually sort of pathetic, because as it turns out it's a famous place in Europe, a Unesco World Heritage site. But I got discouraged after awhile, and just carried the Atlas around in my car for 3 years (3 different cars, actually) hoping someone would comment on it eventually... no one ever did and I put it out of my mind... so much so that it's a good possibility that a few years later I may have inadvertently heard what it actually was, and it didn't register in my tiny little brain! I say that because, when I saw a picture of it the other morning in the lobby of the hotel I'm staying at, I instantly knew that it was, in fact, in France... Northern France, in Normandy; Mont St. Michel. Ahhhh.
So that's not the very wrong thing that I did tonight, in case you were wondering. That came later. But I went to Mont St. Michel's and it was awesome! It was so cool, seeing that picture that I had in the back of my mind for so long in real life, finally! And I got some of my own pictures, I might add... I felt like I had to tip the sheep for being so obliging in one of the photos... good stuff. It was rather a sublime day.
I got back to Paris around 7:30pm... took the Metro back to the Pigalle area where I'm staying. And for those of you who know about the Pigalle, I know you're thinking that you already know what it is I did, but you're wrong.
As I was walking home, I passed Le Chat Noir, The Black Cat, which is a piano bar in Montmartre. I think it's famous... I've seen pictures of that black cat on postcards all over the place here. Anyway there were a couple of guys in there playing music; One on guitar and one on violin. I immediately thought of Django Reinhardt & Stephanie Grappelli, so I went in to see... they were doing Django Reinhardt & Stephanie Grappelli stuff. Awesome! I love jazz violin, it's so rare. So I sat down and had a beer. I was in such a good mood. A day at Mont St. Michel, a beer, and guitar & violin Jazz... I was so relaxed, I did the bad thing. I bummed a cigarette from a total French stranger and smoked it. It was sooooooooo good. Probably the best one I ever smoked.
I quit smoking at the end of February this year, and I've been really proud of myself for not smoking for 8 & 1/2 months. Your sense of smell returns, taste, clean clothes, clean teeth, and it's amazing that you didn't notice all that stuff before when you were a dirty dirty smoker.
So maybe you're wondering what, exactly, is the price I have to pay for smoking that cigarette? It's not in becoming a dirty dirty smoker again.... that would be easy, too easy, because smoking can be soooooooooo good! No, the price is that I can only allow myself that one, because I was in Paris, in a good mood, with violin & guitar jazz and a beer, and I allowed myself the pure enjoyment of it, with the price that I couldn't give in to the easy decision of having a 2nd, incredibly good, cigarette.
That's actually the reason I'm writing this.... to forget about the urge to go have another one. It's early, the jazz will go on for a few more hours, but I'm in my hotel room typing, not listening to violin jazz any more, because I'm paying the price I made myself pay.
Do whatever you want. Whatever you need to do. But accept the price, and pay it. If you can't pay, then don't buy. Hard stuff, but good.