Eschatology

It's a beautiful day here in lovely Camp Liberty, as you can tell from these two photos I've chosen to upload. Sandstorms are one of those pleasant bits of local color one can expect if one makes a trip -- voluntary or not -- to the Middle East. (We've all decided to adopt a new Glass is Half Full view of our deployment -- we were not involuntarily sent to Iraq under indefinite orders -- non, mis amis -- we have been given the luxury of a 12 month paid vacation to an exotic semi-tropical locale with a charming local populace and plenty of historic sites to see, if you don't mind the occasional exploding car. Oh, and the sand flies are a real bitch.)

Both of these photos were taken from my front porch -- unfortunately, I don't think either really captures the true je ne sais quoi of the situation. It's orange outside. Orange. The sky is not supposed to be that color. While I am not a religious girl, I have been known to skim the gorier parts of the Holy Writ upon occasion, and one thing I've gleaned from my somewhat ghoulish obsession with the Book of Revelation is this: when the sky turns the same color as a tangerine, that is generally an indication that you need to start checking small children for demonic possession and dousing all household pets in holy water. (Okay, that last part I got from Pet Cemetary -- but still, totally relevant, right?)

Religions are so weird -- most embrace life, embrace life's work, and speak in appropriately glowing terms about a wonderful afterlife where we will be free from all pain and all suffering. I'm not trying to prosthelytize here, I subscribe to the Live-and-Let-Live religious philosophy, I just think this is a really pretty piece of writing:

7:16

They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat.

7:17

For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.

So heaven is where we will experience all the bliss that comes from shuffling oneself loose the mortal coil, if these heads of Religious State are to be believed -- and why not believe? Belief is free. Anyway, one thing I've noticed about religions is that each one has stamped an expiration date on our fair planet. I bet most of you didn't know that the world "Apocalypse" didn't originally mean "The Day the Shit Hitteth the Fan". It used to just mean any sort of prophetic writing that revealed -- through Divine intervention, usually -- some previously esoteric bit of religious belief. For some reason though, the one that got the most press (probably for the same reason that newspapers today are morbidly fascinated with blood n' guts journalism) was the Book of Revelation, which I quoted above -- also known as The Apocalypse of John. This cheerful bit of monster-shouting ended up embraced by the Powers That Be when the Bible as it stands today was compiled. Contrary to the belief of certain fundamentalists, the Bible was not handed down to humanity intacta, it was put together piecemeal over the centuries from the writings of early Church fathers, finally being ratified in Rome in 473. Why Revelation was included in this compilation while other similar works got left out for being too freaky, it is not for us to know.

Anyway, let me tell you, this Apocalypse thing sounds like a show worth seeing. Devils rising out of the fiery pit led by creatures with their hair in flames, with huge leathery wings and swords bathed in fire, faces like destroyer angels and tails like the stinger of a scorpion? A lake of blood from which all the corpses in hell will be vomited forth to walk the Earth? Plagues to afflict the unfaithful? If you're part of the club, that could be a serious "I told you so" moment, couldn't it? "Ha! Mabel, you wanted to worship the Greek Gods when I tried to get you to come to Church! Where's Zeus now, bitch?"

Honestly, that's what the Book of Revelation reads like -- a vindictive rallying cry for all persecuted Christians by the prophet John, who had a wicked nightmare one night and decided to share. John is speaking directly to his followers, and the gist of his 22 chapter book is this: "They may be feeding us to the lions right now but stick with us and you won't be roasted alive by the twisted denizens of Hell over the ruins of Babylon like all those other Schmoes. Boys and girls, you just wait until Jesus gets back. He's going to kick some serious unbeliever ass."

Let's go through some of the more cheerful end-of-the-world scenarios:

1) acharit hayamim (end of days). This is the Jewish vision of the Apocalypse, and it's almost identical to the Christian version, since the Christian version was developed back in the days when the Holy Rollers were still swiping their best material from the Kosher Klub. In the Talmud, which is the book of Jewish law (the interpretative text for the Torah, which Christians will recognize as the first 5 books of their Bible) it is stated that the world will only last for 6 thousand years, so if one goes by the more creative Creationist standards our number is pretty much up. Some extremists have calculated the death date as the year 2240, if you're interested. I wasn't particularly, but hey, to each his own. I live to educate.

2) Qiyamah. This is the Islamic version of the end times. It parallels the Jewish and Christian version very closely, with the arrival of a teacher who will establish an empire of Allah on earth, as well as a Beast who will mark the faces of the unbelievers. What is awesome about the early Muslims is they figured out the day of Armaggedon based on solid mathematical principles -- no bandying about with iffy prophecies and arguing over signs written in blood for these guys, no sir -- they were scientists. You can view the formula at Rotten.com, along with a truly hilarious account of the history of apocalyptic study (known as eschatology -- hence the title of this blogspot).

3) The Age of Kali. The Hindus really know how to party. Not only do they have more Gods and Goddesses living in their Cosmic stratasphere than we have people in DC, their gods have some serious personality. Take Kali, for instance, who is one of the aspects of Devi. This is one of the other reasons I love Hinduism -- their gods have multiple personality disorder. One minute, she's Devi, the Supreme Mother, the next, she's Shakti, the beautiful goddess of love and sex, and then before you can say "Ramayana" she's morphed into a black-skinned, multi-armed Bitch Demon Killer from Hell, with dripping fangs and truly questionable taste in human-bone jewelry. There is a metaphor in there for human women, but I am not going to touch it with a 10 foot pole. *Insert Joke Here* Anyway, we're currently living in the Age of Kali, which explains all the strife, war, famine and general nastiness that infects our planet like a virulent foot fungus. It won't be any time soon, but eventually we're going to get overloaded with bad karma, and the Big Guys upstairs will decide to give us a Cosmic enema to reboot our chakras and promote spiritual colon health. At this point, squeaky clean and perhaps walking a little funny, we will enter the Fifth Age.

Let's just hope the Powers That Be give us a little warning that the end is coming, no matter what form it takes -- I bet humanity would throw one bitching "Going Out of Business" party.

until next time...

War is Hell

"Look ma'am," my soldier said, holding up his black PT shorts. He was showing me a series of reddish eruptions on his legs -- the sores looked like ingrown hairs. "I have leishmaniasis!" He told me this with a curious mix of pride and horror in his voice -- the way a little boy will show off a particularly nasty scrape as a badge of honor. "Screw that!" another soldier said -- "Check this out!" Then he showed off a festering bite on his arm. "Camel spider," he said proudly, while the rest of us made noises of disgust in the backs of our throats. No bullet wounds here, no shrapnel, no mortar fragments lodged in bone...my guys are covered in the bites of Iraqi fauna.

Daily Non-Sequitor: I met a guy from the Louisiana National Guard the other day, at a farewell pizza dinner for one of the lieutenants in my battalion. He's an Infantry platoon leader, and he's been awarded the Purple Heart 4 times -- his platoon has been hit 12 times with IEDs, twice with rocket propelled grenades, 4 times with mortars -- and no one but him has ever been injured. We have anti-IED signal jammers in our trucks called "Warlocks" which are supposed to keep command detonated IEDs from going off -- the trigger devices out here are usually cell phones or motorolla radios, and the Warlock jams their signal from setting off the explosive. This lieutenant seems to trigger IEDs himself, so his platoon calls him "The Wizard" -- the exact opposite of a Warlock. He described this one experience at a forward operating base (FOB) in the south of Baghdad when he went outside of his tent to get some water, and a mortar round exploded right in front of him. He hobbled back into the tent, swearing, blood pouring down his leg -- and his NCO says, "Shit sir, you can't even walk around the FOB without getting hit!"

The purpose of this blog is to outline for you at home the threats we face out here in Iraq daily. In case you think this will be another blood-n-guts blog like my last one, think again. The above vignette doesn't hold a CANDLE to some of the horrifying things I am about to describe. We have many enemies out here, and they are vigilant. Screw mortar attacks and unwashed insurgents -- what I am about to describe is the true terror out here. If you have children, you may want to ask them to leave the room. Please, try not to scream.

1. Leishmaniasis: A parasitic disease caused by the bite of an infected sand fly. It isn't a huge problem where I am, simply because we aren't sleeping outside in the sand where the flies have easy access to our unprotected flesh. (Interesting note: parasites are especially common in desert climates because in places where water is scarce, because it makes good bioenergetic sense to pray on the blood of other creatures rather than hunt down water yourself -- man I love Iraq.)
However, it's enough of a problem that most of the soldiers know at least one person with a really bad infestation.

2. Camel Spiders: These little bastards are the Kenyan Olympic Sprinters of the bug world -- twice as fast as the zombies in Dawn of the Dead, meaner than the face-huggers from Alien, with a bite that makes the brown recluse's seem like a pleasant tickle. They have a face only a mother could love, if that mother were Mrs. Bates or that scary quadrapelegic inbred-woman from that one episode of the X-files.
(Learning Point -- the "camel spider" is actually a solpugid, which isn't a spider at all, but a funktified member of the arachnid family.) They have been clocked at speeds up to 10mph, which is pretty frigging fast considering their legs are only 5 inches long. They are nocturnal, which is a total bitch because they're apt to be out and about at 2 in the morning when all I want to do is make it to the latrine and back without incident -- the last thing one needs when one's bladder is full is an enormous spider-scorpion-alien-thing rushing out of the darkness to attack one. One might scream like a little girl and wet oneself, which would do NOTHING for your command authority, let me tell you.

3. The A**Holes at Laundry Turn In: The laundry turn in point is a black hole. They must have years of stolen underwear and socks back there -- most of the girls here will not turn in their undies anymore after repeated instances of turning in 5 pairs, and getting back 4. I mean, they are more than welcome to my sweaty, skanky cotton underdrawers if they want -- it's not like I'm wearing anything sexy out here in the desert. Funnily enough, I left all my thongs at home (what was I thinking?) and only brought sensible granny panties, thinking -- in my naivete -- that only myself would ever see them. If I knew the Filipinos were feeding such a dividing fetish, I might have brought something a little nicer for them to drool over. Now, normally this would not bother me -- but I really am starting to run out of underwear, so the next time I get my laundry bag back missing a pair of my plain white hanes-her-way, I am going to pitch the mother of all bitches right there in front of God & everybody. Goddammit, how am I supposed to defend the free world if I do not have a clean pair of underwear?

4. Army Goggles: This is a big one. We've been out here for over 6 months now -- and it is completely niave of Higher Command to assume that nobody is out here getting it on. Of COURSE people are getting it on -- they sell condoms at the PX and if you believe the medics, STDs are running rampant throughout the post. You put males and females together in a cruddy situation for months on end, and they are going to do the most natural thing to cheer themselves up -- get their friends to ship them alcohol in mouthwash bottles, then snort valium stolen from the TMC. After that though, they are going to have sex. Probably with each other, the animals. That's the rumor, anyway -- I've never caught anyone at it (though we've tried often enough -- whoo random bed checks!). The problem here though is not the risk of pregnancy or catching a gift that keeps on giving from your paramour, but of having your buddies see you with this chick and rag you about it for the rest of your life. In case you didn't get the memo, Heidi Klum is not in the Army. The pretty girls in the Army will probably not have sex with you -- they probably have significant others back home...or failing that, they have standards. The girls out here getting the most play are NOT the uber-hotties you were perhaps thinking. You've all heard of Beer Goggles, right? Well, Army Goggles are the same thing, only they are brought on by long periods of celibacy in a combat situation.

Your eyes see this: While your brain sees this: And that, my friends, is not something you want to go home bragging about. Eventually, even girls who look good with the help of Army Goggles are going to be busted again. Count on it. Is it really worth the price of admission to get naked with a girl who took a nosedive off the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down?

You be the judge.

Until next time, dear readers.