Sushi for Beginners

Is this thing on?

2006-06-18T19:44:00.000-07:00

Good lord it'd been a long time since I updated this thing! All the days from November to now stretch out before me like one long accusation...lazy Sunny, lazy! 8 months or so, and I couldn't be bothered to even put up an under construction sign, or something, to assure my readership (arrogance, much?) that I haven't dropped off the face of the earth. I suppose I ought to do one of those obligatory "where am I now" posts to catch you all up on my comings and goings since I last felt it necessary to grace you with my wit. Haven't gotten any less wordy, more's the pity. It's the Irish in me, darlings, blame my genetics. Cast Iron Liver and Verbal Diarrhea, as much a mark of the Celts as my hair of red and my eyes of blue.

Moving on.

I made it home from Iraq safely -- good for me, good for Uncle Sam...my parentals and such breathed a collective sigh of relief when my shapely, desert-clad derrierre landed in Savannah January last. The last few months of my personal Iraq saga ended not with a bang, but a whimper. We moved from our cushy little trailers with air conditioning and cable hookups (war is HELL) to shabby little "transition tents" on the opposite end of our operating base. The last month or so was an exercise in boredom, as our only job was not to get hit by a stray mortar round while waiting for the Air Force to rustle up our flight to Kuwait.

It's actually kind of funny -- now that I'm home, I don't care to know ANYTHING about the war in Iraq, how the troops are doing, what's going on...not a thing. I refuse to watch "Baghdad ER" on HBO, by all accounts an absolutely riveting new show, because the thought of seeing bloodied and broken GIs disturbs me past all reckoning. Maxim, Men's Health, and all those other rags will insist on having articles on soldier-stuff...typical menfolk, wanting to read about things going boom in the desert...when will you Manly-Men realize that war isn't a bit fun? Not a bit glamorous, not a bit heroic. It's small and dirty and scary and it smells bad and when people die, it's tragic in a stupid way, not in a let's-build-a-monument way. I know less than a lot of people, I saw less than a lot of people, and the regular-Joe's fascination with Iraq annoys the piss out of me. I HATE talking about it, I hate reading about it, I hate listening to people who've never been over there PONTIFICATE about it...so anyway, I actually didn't realize the Air Force had bombed the snot out of Zarqawi until my mother mentioned it over the phone.

It seemed funny to me at the time. Maybe it's just sad.

I spent a couple of months partying my rear end off. Went to Jenna Jameson's Pajama Party at the Hard Rock in Fort Lauderdale. Saw Ron Jeremy there...he's about 300 pounds and smells like diapers filled with Indian food, but he was covered in buxom blonde girls like his johnson was giftwrapped in fifty dollars bills. Who knows, maybe it was. Jenna's much cuter in person than in the videos (er...or so I was told...) and had an entourage of skantily clad young porn stars whose job it was to break a few public decency laws up against the walls of the club for the scintillation of the drunk and disorderly. The young Porn Queen herself looked mightily bored by the whole proceeding (girls in various states of undress, free flowing booze and drugs, much groping and exchanging of bodily fluids...like any high school prom afterparty, with fake tits) and spent most of the evening playing her Game Boy while near-fornication went on around her. I could understand her ennui...the girls fucks for a living, watching people worship at the altar of her vagina must get a little bit old. I wonder if she ever just wants to cuddle?

Anyway, after a few months partying like a rock star started to wear on me...one can only run so many liters of vodka through one's liver before that liver starts to send up SOS messages. Mine is tapping out morse code against the walls of my abdomen. I destroyed myself several times -- once or twice during a memorable weekend in Orlando (where one of my friends corrupted an ROTC cadet in town with a convention...that might be a topic for another post, with the names changed to protect the guilty), once or twice or three times running around Savannah like the world's worst idea of a sorority girl...ick. Got old. So I've been taking some weekends off...went to a wedding over Memorial Day weekend, went to Fort Lauderdale to meet the boyfriend's parents, and this weekend I'm at home for Father's Day. I'll try to dip my toes in the River of Iniquity that is Savannah's bar scene once again next weekend, but I can't say I'm too eager to down Jager shots like a champ or shake my admittedly well-formed backside on the dance floor...getting hammered and acting like a retard is an entertainment that wears thin quickly. Am I getting old? Or just growing lame? Time will tell, gentle readers.

Anyway, I'll have to sift through the news and see if I can't come up with a topic suitable enough to rant about in my next post...there's so much stupidity in the world, and I have so little patience...but I'm sure I'll come up with something at least mildly entertaining for your edification and enrichment.

Better than doing work, anyway.

Torture For Dummies

2005-11-27T05:03:00.000-08:00

Okay, boys and girls, today we are going to talk about "torture".  What it is, what it isn't, and why the fact that we use it against our enemies should make all Americans want to crawl out of their skin with disgust.  For those conservative right-wing morons in my readership, you may want to skip the next few paragraphs.  My liberal ravings can cause: (but are not limited to) headache, nausea, hypertension, loose stools, coughing, wheezing, runny-nose, heart palpitations, kidney stones, insomnia, impotence and decreased feelings of self-worth.  Consider yourself warned, O Party of Lincoln.

Americans have an extremely difficult time with gray areas.  We do black and white morality very well, ie, Christians = Good, Muslims = Bad (see our current administration for details) but when it comes down to seeing the middle ground, we really kind of suck.  Ask yourself the following question:  If I was the President, and I had a terrorist in custody, and that terrorist knew the location of a bomb that threatened the lives of hundreds or thousands of innocent Americans, would I torture that terrorist to get the information I needed to save lives?

In that highly inflammatory scenario, I imagine most peoples' answer would be "yes, of course".  Most people seem to have a flexible definition of morality…we'll sing off the Democratic, Let-Freedom-Ring song sheet as long as it's expedient, but put us in a situation where hard decisions have to be made and we fall back on that old adage 'the ends justify the means'…or to whit, in extreme situations, extreme measures have to be taken.  Personally, I think this is a load of self-satisfying hooey.  There are plenty of situations where lives take a backseat to Political Idealism™ -- abortion, the death penalty, hostage situations, genocide in countries that lack a significant American interest…the list goes on.  I believe this is known as collateral damage.  In any case, it's hypocrisy – the same people in our government who are Pro-Torture are also Pro-Life and probably Pro-Death-Penalty to boot…call me if you manage to untangle that particular logic puzzle, because I can't.

In any case, the hypocrisy of the pro-torture stance isn't really the point of this particular blog.  My POINT, dear readers, is that the above scenario, known as the "ticking bomb" scenario, is a bunch of made-for-TV bullshit.  I actually took the question from the plot of a recent episode of Commander In Chief.  TV isn't real life, though it tries very hard to imitate it.  The problem is, real life is usually pretty boring and mundane, and I find it very hard to believe that every detainee in Abu Ghraib or Guantanimo Bay has life-or-death knowledge of an imminent threat to American lives.  In any case, the real question isn't whether you can justify the use of torture in an extreme case…it's whether you can justify using torture in everyday interrogations.

What's a little disturbing is this:  we're not supposed to use cruel, inhuman or degrading methods of interrogation on detainees.  It's forbidden by our Constitution, and backed up by a 1994 UN Convention Against Torture.  Good for us, we're against forcing detainees to urinate on each other, desecrate the Koran or dance around in naked pig-piles with electrodes on their ding-dongs.  God Bless America.  So what's the problem?  Well, according to our current administration, the Constitution doesn't apply outside the United States, so any Constitutional protections against torture A) don't apply as long as it's off US soil, and B) don't apply as long as we're torturing foreign nationals and not American citizens.  Okay well, check this out:  August 6 PDB.  This is the declassified Presidential Daily Brief from August 2001, which says that some members of Al Qaida are American citizens.  So how long before our illustrious government decides to throw the second prohibition out the window and start torturing Americans?  Imagine how much easier Law Enforcement types would have it without those pesky 5th amendment rights getting in the way of suspect interrogation…we could break the mafia, we could break pedophile rings, we could torture crack dealers to get information on drug cartels…forget that none of the resultant information would be admissible in court.  Times change.

The point is that you're never going to catch all the bad guys.  What our courts have accepted with Miranda and other Constitutional protections like the Presumption of Innocence and Burden of Proof is a certain measure of risk – risk that occasionally a really bad guy is going to slip through the net, and occasionally criminals may go unpunished.  This risk is balanced against protections for our citizens who may be innocent of the crimes they're accused of – we accept that sometimes the Justice system may fail, that sometimes we have to err on the side of the Defendant, that sometimes we'll be wrong.  We need to extend this same balance to our dealings internationally – when we detain someone, we'd better have evidence against them.  When we interrogate them, we should use the same standards we use in the American legal system.  When we bring them to trial, we should operate under the same rules that govern courts here in the States.  Occasionally a bad guy will slip through the net.  Occasionally we'll be wrong.  But we'll also have the moral high ground, we'll also be what we want to be in the eyes of the rest of the world – we'll never have to go before the UN and explain our legacy of abuse, we will be seen as a country that respects human rights, a nation of idealists rather than a nation of hypocrites.

And by the way, that whole "well they tortured us first!" argument went out in the 3rd grade.  So they cut off heads on national television – if Osama Bin Ladin jumped off a cliff, would you?  Saddam Hussein also used chemical weapons on his own people – we going to try that one next?  Two wrongs don't make a right, people.  Somebody must've missed the Golden Rule day in Bible Class.

Hypocrisy is a bitch.

Until next time…

Not-So-Intelligent Design

2005-11-12T02:23:00.000-08:00

For my dad.

Let me prefice this by saying that I love my country. Have you ever seen that episode of the Twilight Zone where the little boy had supernatural powers, and he was terrorizing his small town with his tantrums? He'd turn people into macabre Jack-in-the-Boxes if they displeased him, and he'd banish them into the cornfield. That's what America is like. We are the youngest superpower at the Big Kids Table, and baby, it shows. If someone pisses us off, we ruin their shit and banish them to the World Community's cornfield as a warning to others -- and honestly, who's going to put us in a time-out when we get a little too big for our collective britches? England? Germany? France? Russia? Pfft. Bring it, bitches.

Stay with me, I AM going somewhere with this.

Anyway, children have a remarkable capacity for faith and a seriously faulty bullshit meter. They believe in a bazillion and one impossible things -- that a poster-boy for Jenny Craig slides down your chimney once a year to lay gifts on the alter of consumerism, that a winged lady with a serious tooth fetish leaves coins under pillows in exchange for lost bicuspids, that the inside of golf balls contains toxic sludge, that a dime put on a railroad track will derail the next train to pass through, that stepping on a crack will bring bodily harm to one's mother, and that a hasty "circle circle dot dot" will protect one against the more virulent forms of cooties.

By the time you hit adulthood, you realize that gifts at Christmas appear under the tree due to credit cards as opposed to the generosity of a jolly old slave driver, that your parents steal your teeth from under your pillow while you sleep (and if they are especially clumsy you might catch them at it), that golf balls are hollow and one should not borrow daddy's circular saw to discover this, that dimes on railroad tracks just get smooshed, that no amount of crack-stepping will result in back-breakage for one's mater familias, and cooties are small potatoes compared to some of the things you can catch from a boy.

The point is, when kids believe in impossible things, it's cute. When adults believe in impossible things, it's mental illness...or religious faith.

America is pretty evenly divided when it comes to answering the question "where did we come from". Camp 1 believes that God created the Earth, sometimes in 7 days but occasionally over a span of millenia, that we're all descended from the first man and his derivative first woman, and that all events since our creation have been...if not directed, then at least overseen...by this benevolent Creator. Camp 2 says that the progenitors of Homo sapiens split off from chimpanzees roughly 5 million years ago, and went through several evolutionary dead ends (including Australopithecus, Homo erectus, and Homo neanderthalensis) before finally settling on Anatomically Modern Humans, who migrated out of Africa roughly 100,000 years ago and replaced more archaic populations in Asia, Europe, and eventually America.

I'm not going to argue the benefits of Camp 1 vs Camp 2...I understand why people gravitate towards religious explanations for our existance. It's incredibly comforting to think that there is someone out there who loves us unconditionally, and has a place reserved for us at His side when we die. Unfortunately, we have this pesky little thing called The Separation of Church and State to contend with.

Evolution is a scientific theory based on 100 years of research, careful analysis, and facts. It's not proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, but it is the most reasonable explanation for our emergence as a species, based on the available facts. Religion is doctrine with no proof to support its tenets -- no facts but suppositions, no logical inference but the tests of faith.

I am not knocking religious faith, here -- people believe in all sorts of things, and that is our government granted right. If you want to believe that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is responsible for creation, or that the earth rests on the back of an elephant carried by four cosmic turtles, or that Raven shat the world following a great flood...well, that's your perogative. It's when you start imposing your beliefs on someone else that the situation gets sticky.

Evolution is taught in science classes around the Nation because it is a scientific theory. Social conservatives, who have long deplored this Child of Darwin's presence in the schoolroom, have fought for years to remove or replace it with something more palatable to their religious convictions. The flavor-of-the-month is Intelligent Design, which purports to be an alternative scientific theory that challenges Evolution's stranglehold on the classroom.

Okay, quick logic test. If a theory is based on a premise that can neither be proven nor disproven (like, say, the existance of God) does that theory hold up to the Scientific Method?

The answer is: "No." (as any self-respecting graduate of grade-school science fairs can tell you.)

So the question becomes, if Intelligent Design is not a legitimate scientific theory, why on earth should it be taught in a science classroom?

The answer is: "It shouldn't."

until next time...

Great Moments in Voting History

2005-10-22T04:58:00.000-07:00

I did promise, after all.

I was going to write a blogspot on the history of embalming, or something equally morbid. I found some fantastically disgusting pictures of adipocere on the internet (research!) and I just couldn't wait to share -- but then I remembered that in my last post, I'd promised to discuss great moments in voting history. Promises are a bitch.

So here goes, gentle readers -- bend over & brace yourselves, you are about to be educated.

1787

The passage of the U.S. Constitution gives white male property owners age 21 and over the right to vote, thus starting the United States off on the "right" (ha-ha, a pun!) foot, and in one fell swoop preventing the dregs of American society -- ie, the estrogen-impaired, excessively pigmented or financially degenerate -- from mucking up the wheels of democracy with their self-indulgent whining about "female suffrage", "slavery" or, pfft, "food". Fucking commies.

1807-1843

A dark half-century for conservatives everywhere -- poor people get the right to vote. (Provided of course they possess a penis. Oh, and are white. Darkies, Jews, Indians -- Tonto, not Habeeb -- and the damn Chinese need not apply.)

It was around this time that those crazy lesbians Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott decided that -- get this -- ovaries need not disqualify one from participating in the quadrannual popularity contest that is the National election. They, along with a bunch of other camel-toed bleeding hearts, formed a coalition of sewing circles designed to nag the government into submission. Thankfully their high-pitched chatter did nothing to distract Washington from its holy mission to keep White Penises at the helm of American Public Policy.

I'm sorry, I can't say that with a straight face.

The Battle of the Sexes took a backseat to the concerns of racial equality during this time, as most activists for women's rights were also agitators for a variety of other social issues, of which emancipation was paramount. Most female suffregettes allowed their cause to be "prioritized", and worked for abolition and African American Civil Rights before they secured their own. The end result of this remarkable self-sacrifice was that the first black man voted a full 60 years before the first woman saw the inside of a polling place. By 1840, it was still Penises - 1, Vaginas - 0.

1870

The 15^th Amendment guaranteed the right to vote to all men that were 21 or older regardless of race or ethnic background. They were even serious. Sort of. The first black man to vote under the protection of this well-meaning but rather weak amendment was Thomas Mundy Peterson, of Perth Amboy, New Jersey. A school custodian, he was also -- ironically -- an active member of the Republican Party. This was in the days before the Republicans sold out Peterson and others like him following World War II. Compassionate Conservatives, my ass.

The South, of course, wasn't going to take this lying down. To them, allowing former slaves or their children to vote would be like letting their livestock march down to the polls and agitate for suffrage -- would you let a cow vote? Clearly not understanding the marked anatomical and physiological differences between cattle and...uhm...people, the South established a series of laws designed to keep African Americans in their place. You know, uneducated and unrepresented. They used clever tactics like literacy tests (one memorable test required a black university professor to recite the US Constitution from memory. Did he do it? You get three guesses, and the first two don't count, moron.), grandfather clauses and if that didn't work, good old fashioned physical intimidation to keep prospective African American voters from the polls. Isn't history fun?

This still didn't apply to Tonto, Geronimo, or any other descendents of the headdress-wearing, tomahawk-throwing smallpox victims running around the United States before Columbus. Native Americans didn't get the vote until they gave up their tribal affiliations and embraced the life of their white brethren. Most, understandably, said "Kiss my Tee-Pee, Whitey" and chose to live quietly unenfranchised on reservations until alcoholism, diabetes and wholesale slaughter by the US Cavalry sent them to the Great Buffalo Hunt in the sky.

1920

American women are finally granted the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment, paving the way for abortions, bra-burning, women in the workplace, Take Back the Night and tampon dispensers in public restrooms. Score 1 for the Vaginas!

85 years later, we still have not had a viable Presidential or heck, even Vice Presidential Candidate with breasts instead of balls. Given the current state of world affairs, that's a little depressing.

I am so writing my next blogspot on adipocere.

Until next time...

Happy Referendum Day!

2005-10-15T03:18:00.000-07:00

Daily Non-Sequitor: Suicide bombers, indirect fire, drive-by shootings...I'd like to see Puff Daddy try his "vote or die" campaign here. (Brian, on Iraq)

So, today is October 15th, the day that the Iraqi people get to vote on the US-backed Constitution, which will decide the direction their country will travel in for at least the next few years -- religious authority vs. secular authority, the role of women in Iraq society, voices for ethnic and religious minorities -- these are the questions that need answering, and today, your average Man-About-Baghdad gets to answer them. Pretty heady stuff.

Ignore the fact that many Iraqis are afraid to vote; anyone seen as a collaborator with the American forces in Iraq is labeled an enemy of Islam and as such, a target for al-Zarqawi's suicide bombers.

Ignore that your average Iraqi woman has little faith in the Constitution's ability to improve her social standing or secure her rights.

Ignore that the other Islamic countries in the region -- Syria, Iran, Turkey -- are casting a worried eye on Iraq's ethnic Kurds, who have been given an unprecedented voice in Iraqi politics and may be legally recognized as independent if today's Constitution goes through.

Ignore all that, and see instead that a formerly oppressed people are exercising their democratic power for the first time. Despite the troubles that roil just beneath the surface -- or the bombs that I can hear going off outside our perimeter -- a country's first vote is something for the record books.

Democracy is never a painless process. It has distinct phases...we can look to our own history as Americans as a predictor of what the Iraqis have to look forward to.

1) Independence Phase. 230 years ago, we had our own crazy dictator to worry about (King George had porphyria and used to run naked around his palace. Saddam Hussein used Sarin gas on his own people -- totally the same thing, right?), our own war to throw off the yoke of oppression (Example: the British had authority over all judicial cases in the Americas, and used to ship criminals back to England for trial without the benefit of a jury of their peers. Saddam's security detail executed 160 men, women and children and incarcerated 1200 more -- without trial -- following a failed assassination attempt in the town of Dujail), our own insurgency against the occupying power (Tea in Boston Harbor...bombs over Baghdad. This is the best metaphor ever). Anyway, Iraq finished this phase -- with a little help from the Third Infantry Division -- in 2003.

2) Constitutional Phase. Back in 1787, we were having our own referendum to decide on a Constitution, similar to what the Iraqi public is going through now. Then as now, no faction was entirely satisfied with the finished product. The Iraqis are a bit more enlightened than our forefathers were (at the moment) -- there's at least lipservice to women's equality (American women didn't get the right to vote until 122 years after the Constitution was ratified) and ethnic Kurds count as a full person as opposed to 3/5s of one. When it comes to voting equality though, Americans and Iraqis are on the same page -- Iraqis have to worry about getting blown up at the polling places, Americans had to worry about getting tarred & feathered (1790), lynched (1860), raped (1920) or beaten (1960s). See my next blogspot, Great Moments in Voting History, for all the gory details.

3) Civil War (Genocidal) Phase. It's interesting that when a country turns in on itself, we have two different words for the resulting bloodshed, depending on how badly the winners kick the losers' collective ass. We had a Civil War because the North and the South were both white, primarily Protestant, and each managed to put a serious hurting on the other at one time or another. Lee had his Gettysburg, sure...but Grant lived with the shadow of Chancellorsville on his soul for the rest of his days. The Iraqis may have a Civil War between the Sunnis and the Shi'ite majority, but if either side turns on the Kurds (hey, they're used to it), that will probably be genocide...especially if Syria and Iran join in the Allah-u-akBOOM shenanigans.

Anyway, the point is -- setting up a legitimate Democratic process isn't easy, and we can expect a lot more its citizens to water the tree of liberty with their patriotic blood (and brains, and fragmented body parts) before Iraq is ready to sit at the big kids' table.

Until next time...

Haunted

2005-10-08T05:18:00.000-07:00

Oh darkness, I've lost my way
Take my hand, I'm stretched too thin
The light is fading
The light has gone
It won't come back again

Dirty Little Secrets

2005-09-28T10:08:00.000-07:00

Daily Non-Sequitor: "I play hockey and fool around because those are the two most fun things to do in cold weather." (Mystery, Alaska)

I'm finding it difficult to update my blog, recently. As a fully-functional member of Tribe Vagina, my conversational defaults are (in order of merit): 1) boys, 2) juicy gossip preferably about people I know but really, I'm not picky, and 3) bitching about relationship issues with other card carrying Soros-titutes. My blog follows this outline unless I have something topical to discuss, and recently the Witty-Well has run dry. Unfortunately, one of my conversational defaults has been rendered...uhm...defunct...through total fault of my own. There are two bits of village wisdom that I try to live by -- to whit, "never shit where you eat" (both literally and figuratively), and "never tell people more than they need to know". I made a bit of a strategic error in giving out this web address to any and all, and for that reason, I can't really discuss boys anymore...at least not boys with a direct interest in me. Too many partisan factions read this for me to be able to be really honest about my current lovelife. Honesty is a wonderful thing...but sometimes it's just not appropriate, and it's hardly in my best interest to over-share.

(Let's face it girls, there are times when we want the potential men in our life to know we aren't available (read: when they have girlfriends), and times when it's much more prudent to keep that information under wraps (read: when they don't).)

I think people (read: my father) assume I'm having a lot of casual sex (*winkwinknudgenudge* nothing casual about it!) because there's not much else to do out here in Iraq. I think I mentioned that earlier. Probably several times. For the record, dear readers both related to me and not, it's none of your damn business who I'm seeing over here, unless you happen to be that person. And, as I just broke it off with the one person over here who reads my blog, I seriously doubt that's the case. Unfortunately, since he DOES read my blog, I will not be issuing any more relationship updates...at least not until I get back stateside. Curious parties, feel free to query me directly. I will say this though, since there are at least three people who have a seriously skewed image of how easy it is to get into my under-roos: 1) I do not have sex with boys without prior emotional engagement, 2) Contrary to popular belief, security surrounding my under-roos is roughly similar to say, Fort Knox, 3) who exactly has access to my under-roos is a state secret on par with the true mastermind behind the Kennedy assassination, and finally (yes, I mean you) 4) emails, however polite, are not going to grant you an all-access pass.

My dad's been flipping out recently about my little sister. She's gorgeous, I'm not sure if I've mentioned -- she's the pretty one in the family, all dark-haired and mysterious. Boys flock to her like ants to a sugar-pile, and my dad (crotchety and suspicious old man that he is) is convinced she's doing things she ought not to be doing. She's 14, for cripes' sake, on top of which she's adopted a Straight Edge lifestyle...no drugs, no alcohol, and no sex. She's a nun, for as long as it lasts, and Dad should really count his blessings that his daughters have such a strong sense of self. Well, my prudeness probably stemmed more from lack of opportunity (I was a late bloomer, you understand), but Molly knows her own mind. I'm proud of her, and Dad ought to be too. She's not going to bring you home a grandkid any time soon, Old Man. Chill out, willya?

Until next time...

Ghoul

2005-09-07T18:03:00.000-07:00

Death is before me today:
Like the recovery of a sick man,
Like going forth into a garden after sickness

Death is before me today:
Like the odor of myrrh,
Like sitting under a sail in a good wind.

Death is before me today:
Like the course of a stream
Like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house.

Death is before me today:
Like the home that a man longs to see,
After years spent as a captive.
A Babylonian meditation on death
From: Masks of God, by Joseph Campbell

I found that poem (prayer?) in the first volume of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, Preludes and Nocturnes, tucked inside the last story where Dream contemplates his sister, Death. Most people, he recalls, are scared of her, or revile her...this long-dead Babylonian celebrated her gift and longed for her the way exhaustion longs for sleep, or pain for release.

You can tell a lot about a culture by its image of death. Mayans had Ah Puch, the owl-headed ruler of the 9th hell, who's screech-owl children heralded when someone was fated to die. Lithuanians had Giltene, a maiden dressed all in white who strangled the sick with her hair. The Norse had Hel, the demon offspring of a half-mad father, a hag with a beautiful face whose legs crawl with rot. The Sumerians had Ereshkigal, the dark and obsessive goddess of the underworld who threatened to loose the souls of the dead on the living whenever she felt snubbed. (Interesting side note: most of these examples are of a female incarnation of death -- death wasn't violent so much as sneaky; Greek sirens stealing the breath from heroes, or mermaids seducing doomed sailors with watery kisses -- Italians call orgasms "the little death", so I guess it's no wonder that in many cultures death is not only a woman...but a beautiful one.) And we Westerners, we have our Pale Rider, the 4th and most terrible horseman, riding towards creation with his scythe sharpened, all hell following after.

Some cultures look on death with horror. Americans certainly do -- we view it as a tragedy, as some terrible boogeyman that comes to collect our souls like a crow after a shiny object. We look at bodies much in the same way we look at bodily functions -- perfectly natural but all the same, slightly embarressing and best kept out of polite conversation. Egyptians used to venerate their dead, but of course, that was back in the days when well-to-do Egyptians used to let their wives...uhm...ripen...a bit before shipping them off to the embalmer...who knows what those sickos got up to when no-one was around to watch. The general feeling was that it was better not to provide them with any temptation, especially if the wife in question was especially good-looking. I leave you to ponder the ick factor.

Dear reader, you may be asking yourself what the deal is with today's admittedly morbid blogspot. Well, I've been doing a lot of thinking about My Life Plan, and I've made a decision. (As my father told me today, I'm not getting any younger, and I need to stop...in his immortal words, not mine..."farting around" and get started achieving my goals.)

Well, I've decided -- I want to be a death investigator. You know, like the creepy blonde lady on the original CSI or the girl from Crossing Jordan. I haven't -- quite -- decided if that means I need to go to medical school and specialize in forensic medicine (just a nice way of saying "morgue mama", really) or if I ought to get a combined JD/Masters of Forensic Science and specialize in hard tissue analysis. Hard tissue -- bones and teeth -- is a lot easier to deal with than soft tissue. Soft tissue is the squishy stuff of horror movies. It has the bad manners to retain human-ish characteristics like facial features, tattoos, nail polish. It preserves the rude bits...genitalia, that sort of thing. It tends to get infested with maggots. And it smells vile, even fresh...like a boiled boot mixed with rancid pork. It's the sort of smell that crawls up your nostrils and sets up camp. Hard tissue, on the other hand, doesn't really smell. It's a bit waxy when it's fresh, yellowish and slightly offensive, the sort of smell that apologetically tugs on your sleeve to get your attention. Dry bone doesn't small at all. I wonder if that says something about me -- that I can handle all manner of gore and ghoulishness, as long as it doesn't offend my tender nostrils.

Currently reading: Teasing Secrets from the Dead (Emily Craig, PhD) and The Egyptian Bookshelf: Disease (Joyce Filer).

The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them. Lois McMaster Bujold

My Fair Lady

2005-09-05T07:25:00.000-07:00

"My Aunt died of influenza, so they say," said the actress, who is not Audrey Hepburn and never will be, "but it is my belief that them she lived with done her in." You can't help but laugh, watching this girl slip into the character of Eliza Doolittle like a shoe (though the shoe doesn't fit the lady as well as it might, and her singing reminds me of nothing so much as a canary stuck in a vacuum cleaner -- a mixture of warbling and sucking air). "And what become of her new straw hat, which was to come to me?" Pregnant pause. "Somebody pinched it."

Daily Non-Sequitor: Has there ever been a more beautiful woman than Audrey Hepburn? Julie Andrews originated the role of Eliza Doolittle on Broadway, and fully expected to get the role when the smash hit musical was made into a movie -- she was seven different flavors of pissed off when they chose to give the role to young Audrey instead. Oh, how that must've rankled! Audrey Hepburn, who couldn't even sing, but had to mouth her musical numbers while a sort of pinch-voice subbed in (Marni Nixon, who had a career of providing the voice for tone deaf actresses during the golden age of musicals in Hollywood). I wonder if Julie Andrews asked the producers why they'd picked the dewy-eyed little twig over her, and what answer they gave. "Sorry, Miss Andrews, she's prettier than you are"?

Any relationship (romance-like or otherwise) is by necessity white space on a map, uncharted to those looking in from the outside. It needs to be that way -- the inside jokes are what makes it yours.

Thought: Maybe that's how we know relationships are truly dead, when we lose that white space. When whatever was between the two of you becomes common knowledge and fodder for the peanut gallery. I deleted a whole bunch of names off my buddy list last night, and all I felt was a casual disinterest as I did it -- one thing I've learned is that longing for people is most often longing for the past. You don't really want them, you want the you that used to be with them, the you that could be seen reflected in the mirror of their association.

Anyway, back on topic -- white space, inside jokes. A casual observer will notice that my mother and I are close, but how would they ever know that our favorite movie is My Fair Lady and that we fall into witchy cackles during the Ascot Races scene, when Eliza twists the usual small talk concerning weather and everybody's health into something darkly comic and hilarious? At Wolf Trap yesterday she and I spent the entire show trying not to burst into wild peals of laughter -- once or twice we even got shushed by the people in the box in front of us. Shushed. The indignity. My little sister was there with us, so it was three Reid women, dressed to the nines in skirts and fancy jewelry, sniggering like street urchins throughout the entire show.

Last night, for the first time, I was truly happy to be home.

And...rest.

2005-09-03T08:47:00.000-07:00

So I'm finally home again -- for two weeks (slightly less now because I've been exceedingly delinquent in updating this little treasure trove of my intellectual and emotional detritus). Two weeks is a teasing length of time -- it's just long enough to cement a habit, as Shape magazine explains in this month's alliterative Better Booty article (not that I need a better booty, you understand, but one needs something to read when one is on the stair-stepper) -- but it's not long enough to completely shake the dust of Baghdad off my heels. That and there's the looming specter of Going Back hanging over my head...there's a niggling little part of me that wonders if I should've just stayed in Iraq.

People have asked me what it's like to be home, if it's weird, or if I'm having trouble adjusting...the tenor and scope of their questions leads me to believe that they expect me at any moment to scream "incoming" and dive under the table or attempt to lead a raid against the communist-sympathizers next door. Newsflash, civilians -- delusions, flashbacks, and all the other nifty symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder do not typically strike sheltered little chemical lieutenants whose experiences of the war thus far have closely resembled a survivalist summer camp (complete with scary wildlife, homesickness and bed checks -- general order number 2 is a real bitch). Anyway, no...I'm not about to take a nose-dive off the crazy tree, you all may stop worrying (or taking bets, either or).

Everybody expected me to come home and drink myself silly -- I tried that last night and it didn't really work. It felt so bizarre to be out at a bar with "normal people", competing for time and attention with all the other skantily dressed females in the room -- females who don't have biceps the same size as half the guys and shoulders like a defensive lineman. I felt out of place, to say the least. I stood in a corner watching my friends salsa dance, explaining to "Beautiful Grant" why I didn't need him to find me someone to sleep with (and we were sober having this conversation), nursing a vodka-cranberry and wishing I was home in bed. Now I'm sitting at my kitchen table with my aching feet up on a pillow (you try going from 8 months of combat boots to sparkley pink sandles and see if your tootsies don't complain -- mine are singing Ave Maria) in sweatpants and a chemical corps pullover with my hair pulled back...and this feels slightly more comfortable. Has the Army destroyed my ability to be a girlie girl? God I hope not. I don't have the energy for another major personality shift.

I'm meeting my replacement tonight -- my dad has this pharmacy tech named Becky who apparently walks on water. She's 21, married to an Army specialist stationed at Fort Belvoir, and she has "THE CUTEST BABY" named Alan, who's picture currently graces my picture phone, which has been commandeered by my little sister because her phone wasn't cool enough. I'll have to break her fingers to get it back. Anyway, Becky apparently comes over all the time for dinner because she's lonely, she runs errands with Molly to the mall and my parents love her. Why this bothers me on some innate level I don't really know, but it does.

Anyway, no more complaining. I have two or three extremely exciting things in the works and I'll post on those as they occur -- until then, dear reader...

Eschatology

2005-08-07T23:14:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-05T02:32:00.000-07:00

"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.

Blood and Bone

2005-07-23T05:08:00.000-07:00

It happened shortly after 7am, almost at the moment of my platoon's arrival at the Transload site. We pulled up in the trucks and heard it – two explosions, in quick succession – and saw the darkly curling smoke rising from outside the gate. I went with six soldiers to see what had happened. We drove up to the gate from the inside, unlocked it, and went outside. We locked and loaded our weapons and went outside.

There were two Iraqis who had been wounded. That was what you saw first, these two Iraqis slumped up against the concrete barriers that form a wall around the site itself – bleeding. Blood, real blood, does not look like blood in movies. It isn't all one color, for one things…there are darker bits where it begins to dry, and deep red runnels that trickle down a face and drip off the chin. It drips like a leaky faucet. Three of my soldiers are combat lifesaver qualified – they began to work on these two wounded. One had a deep head wound, moving and speaking in a drifting, distant way that made us instantly suspect a concussion. The other had lacerations to his scalp, his arms, his calves…blood dripped into his eyes and made wet tracks in the dust on his bare feet. These two had been dragged to this location by the rest of the crowd. The explosion had happened 50 meters farther up the road.

I left my three soldiers with the Iraqis and went up the road to see the site of the explosion. There was an infantry unit already there, and their medic was talking care of yet one more wounded person, who I never saw – by the time I got up there, they had already trundled him into the back of a vehicle and taken him to the hospital. I turned the corner of the concrete wall and saw it – a truck, completely blown out by the force of whatever explosives it had been loaded with, with another truck behind it, on fire.

The infantry unit's platoon leader came up to me and gave me a status report – two dead, one wounded. "Three wounded," I said, and I pointed back towards the gate. "There are two over there." I could see over his shoulder one of the dead Iraqis. He was lying on a stretcher with his arms at his sides and blood on his face. He didn't look like he was sleeping. "Listen," the lieutenant said, lowering his voice. "Do you have something I can cover him with?" We were already starting to generate a crowd.

"Where is the second body?" I asked. He pointed behind me. You might have missed him at first, if you weren't looking. All you could see of him was his arm, slung over the side of one of the cargo trucks – he'd obviously been sitting in the back with the cargo when the explosion had gone off. "We'll have to move him." I said. "Well, they won't do it," the other lieutenant said, meaning the Iraqis. "They say half of his head is gone."

I got the rest of my platoon out there and had them isolate and search the drivers of the trucks from their vehicles, then search the vehicles themselves. They moved the two casualties to the street, waiting for a vehicle to arrive that could take them to the hospital. The translator told us they didn't want to go to the American hospital. "It's free." I said. Then they wanted to go.

We took a stretcher and went to the vehicle with the dead body. Two of my soldiers climbed into the back with him, and grabbed him by the shoulders to roll him over. "Oh gross," one said. "His brain just fell out." We rolled him out of the truck and onto the stretcher. He was very fat and very heavy. It took four of us to carry him. We laid him by the other body, and then rolled him off the stretcher, onto the ground. We needed it to carry one of the wounded, whose leg had been hurt so he couldn't walk. There were brains on the stretcher, and a lot of blood. The infantry medic looked at the stretcher and shrugged. "He can't walk, so he won't complain."

A body without a face does not look like a person. You look at it, and you think to yourself, something isn't quite right here, but your brain won't let you see at first what it is – then you realize that the dead guy is missing the top half of his head, torn off neatly above the eyebrows. One eye had popped out of its socket and lay on his cheek – the skin around the wound looked rubbery and fake, like a Halloween mask. "We're bringing someone over to identify him, his family is here," said the infantry lieutenant. "We need to cover his head first," I said. "His family will freak out if they see him like this." I looked at the medic, and he looked at me. He shook his head. Finally I asked him for a pair of gloves. I took the body's head, and I wrapped the top part in cloth so you couldn't see where it was missing. He looked like he was wearing a turban. Except for the eye. I couldn't do anything about the eye.

We brought the family over – brothers of the two dead Iraqis. They lifted the sheets and started to cry, horrible gut-wrenching tears and I remember thinking, "Wow, are they overacting," as if it was a movie, or a TV show. You always see people on CSI or Law & Order identifying victims and sobbing, screaming, shouting, saying no, no, no and in real life, I guess that's how it actually is, too. We put the bodies into body bags, which are now called Containers for Human Remains in Army speak, because I suppose that sounds less upsetting, and loaded them into cars the family brought. Once we'd taken pictures of the bodies, once we'd gone through their pockets and gawked at the man with half a head, there was nothing left for us to do, so we didn't need the bodies anymore. They were no longer evidence.

After the bodies were gone, the explosive ordnance disposal team showed up and did their thing – we stood around guarding the Iraqi drivers while the team made sure the site was secure. Then we let the drivers go back to their trucks, and we went back inside the Transload site, and opened the gate.

My soldiers still had blood on their hands and on their uniforms, and we had to open the gate, we had to let the vendors in to offload their cargo, so they could get paid, so the Army could get paid, so everyone could get paid…including, I guess, us.

Charlie Mike, motherfuckers.

Naive

2005-07-22T09:43:00.000-07:00

From years ago: This was how the conversation started: at dinner, nervous because I am remarkably perceptive even when my crystal ball is on the fritz, I twisted a napkin in my hands and started talking – filling the silence, mostly – about the things I most wanted to do…one of which is to go to the storybook castles in Germany. I wanted to see them, these odes to fairy tales written in marble and glass, the last gift of a mad king to his countrymen. I wanted to stand in the halls of Cinderella's Palace and close my eyes and listen for the sound of a glass slipper on the cobblestones, the scuttling of mice in the wainscoting, the soft weeping of stepsisters who lost their eyes to greed. Who are you? He asked me, in disbelief, in dissatisfaction, his mouth twisted as if I had said something obscene. I opened my mouth and closed it again because I couldn't think of a single thing to say.

I was watching my DVD of Jim Henson's The Storyteller today, and it got me thinking. For those of you unfamiliar with the show, which enjoyed a brief run on HBO in the late 80s, hie thee hence to Amazon.com…the DVD contains nine episodes based on some of the more obscure stories of the Brothers Grimm, lovingly fleshed out by the Creature Shop and the wizards behind Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. I love fairy tales – dragons and little people and the everyday reality of magic, reflecting the mundane back at the reader like a carnival mirror, like truth with a twist. I couldn't explain my fascination to that long ago significant other, couldn't explain why I held on to my battered copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales, couldn't explain the rush of love I felt for that long ago little person (who put gold stars by the stories she loved best) whenever I opened its pages.

The episode I watched today was called Hans my Hedgehog, a sort of precursor story to Beauty and the Beast. In it, a young woman and her woodcutter husband (fairytale husbands are always either woodcutters or millers, and their wives are always barren…it's a hard life to be a minor character in a fairy tale) are desperate for a child. After trying for years to have a baby, the wife blurts out one evening that she doesn't care what her baby looks like, he could look like a little hedgehog, and she would love him anyway. Now, anyone with a passing familiarity with the world of fairie should immediately know that making such rash statements inevitably leads to unintended results. In this case, the wife did have her baby, and just as she wished, he looked like a human-hedgehog hybrid (imagine changing those diapers!). Long story short, the boy was ostracized for his monstrous appearance and eventually ran away into the woods to live among the animals, with only a few chickens and a goat for company (who do not care what one looks like as long as they are fed with passing regularity).

Rule #1: If you suspect you have wandered into a fairy tale by accident, do your level best to not wish for things, at least not in front of open windows or suspicious pieces of garden statuary.

Some years passed, and one day a King got lost in Hans' woods. Kings in fairy tales always have a truly rotten sense of direction. Anyway, Hans finds the King, takes pity on him, and shows him the way out of the woods and back to his castle. The King, who's a good King, luckily enough for our Hans, wants to repay the kindness done him, and asks Hans what he wants. Hans replies (pay attention, gentle reader, this bit is important) that he will take the first thing that greets the king when he arrives home at his castle. The king, thinking the first thing to greet him will be his faithful hound…uhm…Fido, immediately agrees. Giving up Fido seems a small price to pay for being led out of the darkness of Hans' forest – fairy tale forests are not especially nice places at night. Funny things happen there, Kings tend to go missing and reappear as White Stags…fair maidens get lost and end up living scandalously with seven men of suspicious stature…young princesses ensconce themselves in trees to knit shirts for their brothers who are under an enchantment…so you see, our King was quite grateful for being led out of the woods. He rather liked being a King, and rightly assumed he'd like it much better than being a stag or sharing a bachelor pad with a pack of midgets.

Rule #2: Avoid getting lost in the woods unless you are a pedigreed young princess, fair of face and noble of bosom. Stouthearted lads need not apply – too often they'll end up under an enchantment to a wicked witch/ogre/mother-in-law and perhaps turned into some unpleasant woodland creature. Not a bunny though. Can't recall a single case of a prince turned into a bunny. Usually a frog, or a raven. Wicked witches are seldom creative.

Well, the King heads for home, whistling a little "my-bacon's-out-of-the-fire" marching tune as he went, when lo and behold, what is the first thing that comes rushing out to greet him? Not faithful Fido, who'd gotten into a ruckus with the cook's cat and was lying in the garden with an injured paw; no indeed, the first thing that rushed into the King's arms was his beautiful, nubile, conveniently marriageable daughter. (This is another common facet of fairy tales – if someone wants the first thing that greets you when you come home, it's a basic tenet of magic that the thing will end up being your son, your wife or your jailbait female offspring.)

Anyway, the daughter is a saint and obviously on some sort of mood-enhancing drug, as she accepts her fate with the calmness of the chemically cushioned, rather than behaving as a normal teenage girl would and pitching a fit. Can you even imagine that conversation taking place sans valium?

"Oh daddy, I'm so glad you're home!"

"Yes, me too, sugar dumpling…uhm, sweetheart, I have some news. Both good and bad."

"Yes, dearest daddykins?"

"Well, the good news is you won't have to marry Prince Charming after all."

"Oh good, I thought he was a frightful bore…but what's the bad news, oh paterfamilias?"

"…"

"You made a deal with some creature in the woods and I'm going to end up marrying him, aren't I."

"Well…"

"You're an asshole, daddy."

Anyway, Hans shows up to collect his bride, and they get married. It turns out though that our boy Hans is under an enchantment and is able to shed his hedgehog pelt every night to reveal the uber-hunky Prince-body beneath. If his dear wife can stay silent for three days about his nightly wanderings in the nude, she'll get to keep him in his true form forever after.

Rule #3: The Brothers Grimm must've had a pretty dim view of women's ability to keep their bloody mouth shut. Fully half of their stories hinge on the princess keeping a secret, which she's never able to do. So, if you find yourself in a fairy tale, and under an enchantment, and the breaking of this spell will only happen if the beautiful heroine manages to avoid being a big fat blabbermouth…hate to break it to you, but you're pretty well fucked.

So, like all women this Princess is a huge gossip and accidentally lets it slip to her mother that her husband isn't quite what he seems. I thought this whole scene was pretty hilarious, because you can do some serious reading-between-the-lines about previous mother-daughter post-marriage conversations. The mother is clearly quite curious about hedgehog sex, something strongly hinted at in the original story. The Brothers Grimm were a bit pervy, let me tell you. Anyway, Hans disappears in a snit because his wife is a faithless nitwit, forcing the intrepid bride to go after him. On foot. In iron shoes. Nevermind that she's a friggin' Princess and probably could've borrowed Daddy's carriage for the weekend…for some reason nobility in fairy tales is equal to lengthy walks in impossible footwear. Iron shoes…imagine the blisters.

Ultimately because fairy tales believe in happy endings, the Princess finds Hans, and he's so bowled over by her constancy that the enchantment is broken and they run off to live happily ever after. One has to wonder if the Princess is happy with her all-human husband, or if she ever has a hankering for hedgehog lovin'…or maybe that's just me.

I think the thing I love most about fairy tales is there are rules that one follows like a road map to a happy ending. If you're a good person, if you're nice to people (even the ugly ones), if you're kind to animals and share your food with strangers you meet while traveling, you'll be rewarded. Nothing is capricious, nothing is left to chance. If you're in love, that's reason enough for an entire adventure, reason enough to brave a dragon or a giant for their treasure horde, to face down an evil wizard and his host of impossible tasks, to wind your way through a maze of hallucinatory landscapes until you find yourself in the center of the story, back in the arms of your other half...the ending of a fairy tale is always a foregone conclusion. It's how the hero or heroine gets to that ending that's the really entertaining bit.

Rule #4: Nothing is impossible if you believe, and you try, and you're willing to walk a really long way in ridiculously uncomfortable shoes.

Until next time...

A Giant Mess-O-Potamia

2005-07-20T00:08:00.000-07:00

Daily Non-Sequitor: The NCOIC of the dining facility, with whom I am on friendly terms from my stint as officer-in-charge of the DFAC guard, gave me quite a compliment at breakfast this morning. I was standing at the fruit bar, loading up my environmentally-unfriendly styrofoam to-go plate (as it happens, Iraq has a far different take on conservation than Americans -- their country is littered with unexploded minefields and their rivers are clogged with refuse and human waste -- the entire place smells like an overturned porta-potty. The non-biodegradable contents of their local landfills are probably the least of their worries) with melon and steadfastly ignoring the chocolate muffins, who were not so much calling my name as setting it to music and flashy choreography -- when in the middle of the muffins' Broadway-style dance number, this young man came up to me. "Ma'am, I don't want to scare you or weird you out," he began...and let's face it, ladies. When a man starts a conversation in this manner, are we not automatically weirded out? No matter, he plowed gamely on -- "Ma'am, I just wanted to say that I think you are extremely pretty...and you know how some people just brighten your day? It's very stressful here but I see you, and you brighten my day. I'm always happy to see you." Then he walked away. I shall take this in the spirit in which I hope it was meant and be flattered...but if some anonymous person starts nailing camel spiders to my door, it'll be game on.

I got my leave date yesterday afternoon -- for you interested parties, I leave here the 27th of August, so give or take a few days of travel time, I'll be back in the States sometime in the neighborhood of September 1st. Those of you interested in basking in the glow of my company, let me know, and plan on being in the DC area the first two weeks of September.

I thought I would take this opportunity to upload some pictures, as I find myself lacking a blogspot topic (other than a discussion of the new Supreme Court nominee...that is forthcoming. My suspicions that W has 666 tattooed somewhere on his person are deepening.) and certain people have been asking me, with increasing lack of patience, for pics. Hopefully this will satisfy even my most ardent stalk -- uhm, readers.

This one is obviously me. On second thought, it might not be so obvious. Dressed just like this with my uber-hard-core-ness in full display, I am often mistaken for a boy. I'm at the Transload site, in full-battle-rattle, as we army types like to call kevlar + flak vest + goggles + earplugs + MOLLE pouches. Getting used to the Army as a female really wasn't that difficult -- just the accessories are a bit different.

These are tanks. I don't get to drive tanks. According to the Army, you need a penis for that. (I assume it must act as a rudder.) Actually I'm not so jealous of my tank-platoon-leader friends anymore. Since this Army is kinder and gentler, and we technically aren't fighting a "war" out here so much as conducting rather ineffective damage control, tankers are not allowed to shoot their main guns. Apparently the collateral damage would be too great and commanders live in horror of getting their pictures on CNN for killing an assload of Iraqi children...nobody wants to get on CNN for ordering a modern-day Mai Lai. In any case, since tanks are swiftly outliving their usefulness at least in the Baghdad AO, most of the tank platoons out here have turned in their tanks for armored hummers.

This is a quite lovely picture of Camp Liberty in the evening. Honestly, it can be pretty out here -- there's a certain desert oasis charm to Baghdad. After all, it was once the cradle of civilization, sitting smack between the Tigris and the Euphrates, which should be ringing some bells for all of you who were forced to sit through World Civ in high school. This is modern day Mesopotamia, the home of Babylon and one of those so-ancient-it's-been-turned-into-a-parking-lot Wonders of the World, the Hanging Gardens. Apparently the Garden of Eden used to be here. You'd think the Tourism Bureau would put up a sign or something. Apparently the Tigris and the Euphrates used to overflow their banks and flood the river valleys with silt in the manner of the Nile, but unlike the Nile they didn't do this on any kind of predictable schedule. If I recall correctly from AP Humanities, this made the people of ancient Mesopotamia a bit skittish, and the Gods they worshipped were as persnickity and capricious as the rivers themselves. Imagine you're some ancient Babylonian...you've been doing your thing, going to your temple regularly, sacrificing your best goats to Enlil or Enki or whatever it was devout Babylonians did, and BAM...the river overflows and destroys your house, your dog drowns, your kids are eaten by crocodiles and your wife runs off with the carpet salesman. If that's the sort of cultural heritage that modern day Iraqis rise from (as opposed to Americans, whose culture is deeply rooted in both Grecian independence and Roman ruthlessness) Saddam Hussein must've seemed rather unimaginative. The man eats doritos in his underwear, for crying out loud. One loses a certain sense of menace in such circumstances.

Until next time...

Why I Make the Big Bucks

2005-07-17T00:11:00.000-07:00

Daily Non Sequitor: "I want to be on you." This is what Grady says when he's trying to be funny, which is often. Being funny is Grady's thing, it's his signature, as much a part of his essential personality as his habit of getting out of answering uncomfortable questions by telling the questioner they're looking lovely today and have they lost weight. Grady works in the S2 shop, which is Military Intelligence (haha -- oxymoron) and I think all the plotting and tracking and intelligence gathering might have made his brain go a bit odd. (He's not the only one, of course -- all of his little S2 minions -- and Grady has several minions -- are just as cracked as he is) Grady has the perfect face for humor -- he looks a bit like Pee Wee Herman's love child, if Pee Wee Herman had a love child with Alfalfa from the Little Rascals. I probably shouldn't let Grady read this entry.

Officers say a lot of things. The Army has catchphrases, as you remember from a few blogs ago -- and one of these is the patented smartass answer whenever someone praises an officer for doing something obvious. That's why they pay me the big bucks. What you mean by saying this is that you understand you have just totally shocked your subordinates, who were prepared to be entirely underwhelmed by your performance in a command position, and you are subtly letting them know that you are in fact able to breathe without being reminded. (When an NCO compliments an officer for doing something right, that generally should be taken as an expression of polite surprise, similar to what you say to a potty-training toddler who remembers to go in the toilet as opposed to his pants.) I'm not an idiot, you fucktard. That's basically what you mean.

Random Tangent: Another funny thing people say is "I'm fucking this monkey, you're just holding the tail." This implies that someone is attempting to step on your toes and run your operation. You are politely...or not so politely, as it were...reminding them that you are in fact in charge and they need to go sit in a corner before they hurt themselves. Why you must do this with a crass allusion to cross-species sodomy, I am unclear. Perhaps I missed the memo.

The last few days have been a bit rough -- as I think you all have gathered by the fact that I haven't updated my blog in over a week now. I spent this morning crying in Jamie's office...Jamie is the Battalion Maintenance Officer. He prefers the title HOMO, which is Head of Maintenance Operations, but nobody can call him that with a straight face. Admit it though, knowing what you know about the military -- a guy saying, perfectly seriously, "I'm the Battalion's HOMO"? That's comedy gold. Anyway, I got a little weepy in Jamie's office because over the course of our Change of Command Inventory preparation, it has become apparent that my NCOs have no idea where half of our equipment is. Let me back up.

Can we agree that the Army has a lot of stuff? The Army is also anal with this stuff, in the manner of an autistic 6 year old who will immediately know if you've moved one of his GI Joes six inches to the right of his bookcase. As a commander, the Army entrusts you with some of its stuff but it makes you sign for it, so it knows exactly how many 1.5" widgets it gave you to turn the widget-screws on your M12 Decontamination Apparatus. If you don't give back exactly that number of 1.5" widgets, along with all the widget screws and anything else involved with the day to day operation of the M12 Decontamination Apparati, of which you have three (if you are me, say) then you had better break out the checkbook 'cause momma needs a new pair of shoes.

Anyway, realistically the only time we actually CHECK to make sure we have everything we're supposed to have is when we do a change of command -- if there are any discrepencies between what we ought to have, what we think we have, and what we actually DO have, well -- somebody is going to be paying through the nose. This is supposed to build character. Long story short, my NCOs tell me that we are missing quite a lot of stuff. I spent the morning crying in Jamie's office because I am quite sure I will end up paying for a lot of it -- to the tune of 1000 dollars, if my most dire predictions are correct...and when it comes to money, I'm fucking Nostradamus.

Man, something funny had better happen soon -- I'm leading a convoy tomorrow. Barring death or dismemberment, that ought to provide some pretty good laugh lines. Until then, dear reader...

BOHICA, bitches.

UPDATE: We reconducted our platoon-level inventories, and I'm not missing nearly as much stuff as we originally thought. It looks like the Army will NOT be supplementing its 2006 budget with a healthy chunk taken from my paycheck. Ha, take that, Pentagon!

Why did I join the Army?

2005-07-09T04:29:00.000-07:00

In answer to the usual question...

I was born on September 10^th, 1982, almost 5 weeks early. 21 inches long, extremely skinny, and afflicted with a bad case of jaundice, my unfortunate appearance was that of an underfed Purdue oven roaster. (This resemblance to a plucked chicken would continue until high school, when I discovered snickers bars.) I was my parents’ first child, which might explain my mother’s reaction to the initial symptom of impending motherhood. When she went to the doctor and he delicately suggested she might be in the family way, she answered, “Oh no doctor, you don’t understand. I’m dying.” My father was ecstatic and my mother less than enthused when it became apparent that rather than leukemia she had caught herself a parasite – the 18 year version. My grandmother took my parents out to lunch in DC when, three blood tests and a hissy fit later, my mother had finally accepted the news. My mother remember, "Your grandmother and father drank champagne and discussed name possibilities. I sulked and drank a Sam Adams." This must be why to this day I can't stand the taste of that particular brew. I must associate it with subconscious rejection in the womb.

My parents met at the University of South Carolina, where my father was studying pharmacy (having picked up the major in preparation to marry a girl who later dumped him – kudos to Dad for sticking with the hand he was dealt) and my mother majored in journalism. My father is 6’4”, large framed and dark, my mother is petite and pale. I take after him in build and my mother in coloring, with my Scottish granny's red hair and temper. Luckily, my ancestors are all attractive people and the combination of their features in me is not an unpleasant one. Ugly children tend to screw up your holiday pictures, so my parents really won the genetics lottery with all three of their offspring. I got my father’s height, which has always been an asset in sports. Growing up I was extremely active, which has served me well especially with the chocolate addiction I've been feeding since discovering cake at my first birthday. Unfortunately, I also inherited my father's lack of coordination, which has left me at a disadvantage for any activity involving a ball, field or referee. Any sport ending with "ball" was a disaster waiting to happen. I had the nickname "Bam-Bam" on my peewee soccer team, not for my lead foot, but for my unerring knack for kicking the ball into my teammates' unprotected genitals. When I was nine, we moved to a new neighborhood where the local pool had a thriving swim club, and I discovered my talent for sports ending with "Ing". It's very difficult to injure your teammates (accidentally) in sports ending with "Ing". I swam competitively for seven years, year-round, until I got to high school and discovered where my true talents lay: on the river. My boat won Nationals my Junior year. Not that I'm bragging, or anything, it just has bearing on later decisions.

I took it for granted that I would row in college, because after winning Nationals one begins to think one's shit does not stink. 18 year olds are brilliant at taking things for granted. So are 22 year olds, come to think of it. Anyway, there's something magical about visiting college campuses as a recruit. It's like being a celebrity, even when your sport is as relatively unknown as rowing. When I was offered a scholarship from Duke University’s crew team, it was like getting an offer from the pros. All of my friends were so jealous that if envy were acid all that'd be left of me is teeth. "Duke?" They would squeal. "Oh my god, you could date a basketball player!" Flattered, excited, and thoroughly convinced of my own awesomeness, I didn’t stop to think about what I was getting myself into. Rowing in college was a completely different animal than in high school. I'm a healthy 5 feet 8 inches tall, which in the world of high school rowing is enormous. When I got to college, for the first time in my life I was shorter than the majority of the people on the team. The coach focused on recruiting girls who stood at 5’10” or better, so it became very hard for me to remain competitive. I stuck it out for two seasons, even trying "lightweight" rowing when it became apparent that I couldn't hack it with the bigger girls. Lightweights in college must weigh less than 135 pounds during the fall season and 130 pounds during the spring season: on my frame, this made me look like an extremely muscular heroin addict.

After my sophomore year, with my health and my grades suffering, I realized that I had stopped enjoying the sport at all. At first, quitting the team was not an option because of my scholarship. I needed to find a way to finance my education without the NCAA money, or I would be forced to transfer to a Virginia school at which I could pay in-state tuition. I didn't want to transfer. I loved Duke. I was 19, I had a tight-knit group of friends affectionately known as the Dawg Corps (despite the name they were really quite attractive), and I was active in my sorority. I was dating a KA, for God's sake. I was happy where I was.

It was at this point that I received an email from the recruiter at the Duke Army ROTC department, offering full scholarship opportunities for female athletes. This seemed like the answer to my prayers. In hindsight, it was a little creepy that just as my problems were started to become complicated, this email appeared out of the blue. Had they been tapping my phones? Invasions of privacy aside, I met with the cadre to discuss my options. I didn't know anything about ROTC, other than that occasionally they had to wear uniforms to class. LTC Ernest Sherrill, the head professor of military science (PMS) of the program, and the man I would soon realize was the coolest NCO alive, SFC James Cook, explained it to me.

For those of you who don't know, the Army is broken up into three broad classes of soldiers: enlisted, non-commissioned officers, and commissioned officers. Enlisted soldiers are the rank of specialist or below and perform the majority of the technical jobs in the army. If you've ever seen a recruiting video, all the bad-ass scenes of the soldiers decked out in camouflage rising out of the water ready to engage and destroy the enemy…these are probably enlisted soldiers. Enlisted soldiers will, if they don't do something stupid enough to get themselves kicked out, eventually become non-commissioned officers. NCOs are the backbone of the Army, responsible for day-to-day running of a unit and individual training of soldiers. Officers are made one of three ways: either they graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, applied as an NCO or civilian to the Officer Candidate School, or they graduated from an ROTC program. There's a rivalry between all of these different officer groups. West Pointers are the golden children of the Army, get preferential treatment for duty assignments and school slots, and are often referred to as "ring knockers" for their tendency to favor other Pointers over non-Pointer peers. Pointers tend to be lifers, and are the most institutionalized members of the officer world. OCS graduates are the smallest pool of officers in the Army. They usually have the most interesting backgrounds, as they often came from either the enlisted side of the house or from civilian jobs. They also spent their entire tenure at OCS getting the shit kicked out of them, so they sneer at Pointers and ROTC graduates for getting an easy ride to a big paycheck. OCS graduates tend to be early retirees, as they often are halfway to the 20-year mark before they switch over to the officer side of the house. ROTC is the easiest route of the three, and graduates of ROTC programs are often looked down on because they so often turn out to be worthless. ROTC graduates tend to be the "four-and-out-the-door" crowd. We make up the largest group of officers in the Army. Draw whatever conclusion you wish from that. Most of the enlisted soldiers already have.

The ROTC program is relatively simple. It's an extra class you take in addition to your major requirements in college. It teaches its students about the Army through leadership classes, weekend overnights in the woods, and a three-day field exercise once a semester. The cadet rank structure mirrors the Army's; freshman year you're a private, so you can pretty much be a huge moron and you will be forgiven as long as you maintain a suitable grade point average and can pass the PT test; sophomore year you're a specialist, given slightly more responsibility; you're an NCO your junior year, the watershed year in the ROTC program, the year that you're ranked against all other cadets nationally so if you suck it's really going to screw with your career track; senior year you're an officer and thus do exactly what officers are supposed to do: you plan training and supervise. You also make coffee. This is good preparation for staff time. After graduation, you owe the Army four years of active duty plus four years in the individual ready reserve (IRR). IRR used to be a pretty sweet deal: you'd sit on your butt with chances being slim to none that the Army would call you back into service. Ever since the invasion of Iraq, though, IRR soldiers have been called up left and right to fill gaps in personnel strength. I'm sure a lot of newly minted ROTC cadets are wishing they'd read the fine print a little more closely right about now.

I liked what I heard about the ROTC program so I signed on the dotted line. My friends and family were a little baffled, and less than thrilled. Sarah, one of my best friends said, "Honey, you can't be a soldier. You wear Victoria's Secret underwear. There's got to be a regulation against that." My mom sobbed, in one of her best foot-in-mouth moments, "I raised you to be a scholar, not a soldier!" to which my Dad's best friend, a retired Army Ranger retorted, "I consider myself to be both." Pink underpants and scholarly ambitions aside, I saw no disconnect between my career path and my personality. Surely the two could mesh; there had to be a place for bikini waxes and sparkly toenail polish in between the battle dress uniforms and drab color schemes…didn't there?

Being in ROTC was an interesting experience at Duke, which is an extremely small, extremely liberal university. My sophomore year, just after the 9-11 attacks, some anonymous wit posted flyers all over campus with pictures of the burning Twin Towers and the caption: "join ROTC and you'll get firepower just like this!" The campus buses had "ROTC out of Duke!" graffiti. We had to wear our uniforms once a week, and professors could get a little hostile if they were ideologically opposed to the military with such an obvious statement of support paraded through their classrooms. You try wearing BDUs to a class entitled, "The Culture of Protest in the 1960s" or "Gender Identity and Alternative Lifestyles." I am not making this up; I took a class on religion in American life my junior year and had the professor ask me point-blank why the military hated gay people. For the most part, I never had much of a problem with wearing the uniform once a week, except that the boots are hell on a pedicure. My sorority sisters used to love to borrow my camouflage pants for Halloween costumes or Greek Week dance routines. My practice of loaning out bits of my uniforms to the girls for these occasions used to piss off some of the boys in the program who thought it was disrespectful to the military to see scantily dressed Chi Omegas in camouflage pants with "Major Hooch!" or "Private Parts!" nametags running around the local bar scene.

I always just thought it was funny. Made for some great pictures, anyway.

Army-Speak, Decoded

2005-07-01T05:55:00.000-07:00

Any sociologist will tell you that groups tend towards homogeneity – it's a herd mentality beaten into us by distant mammalian genetic roots. Those who stood out of the pack for any reason – different coloring, odd behavior, deformity, body odor – were ruthlessly culled by either the alpha leaders or the relentless predators that stalked our primordial forebears. (As apelike mammals, we're two-time losers in the genetics lottery – mammals weren't the big dick around the waterhole until the dinosaurs went the way of the do-do; and apes, being primarily vegetarians are a threat only to the unwary. And carrots. Ultimately, humans weren't at the top of the food chain until we developed fire and supermarkets.) Anyway, it was in the best interest of our rodent-like antecessors to stomp on the "unique snowflakes" and eat their young, a practice I understand still takes place in High Schools around the Nation.

The Army is a brilliant example of herd mentality.

We dress alike, we eat alike, we wear our hair in similar styles, and we sound alike. For some strange reason there are only two accents in the Army -- Redneck and New Yawka. (Stay in long enough and though you may have grew up in Long Beach, even your family will swear you spent your youth picking bollweevils out of the cotton with Cousin Cooter.) The Army has its own distinct language, one that you pick up unconsciously, much like a toe fungus or social disease. I've been in the Army 14 months, and already I've forgotten how to speak like a civilian.

I was talking to one of my friends last night, and we were IMing about the usual things – work, our respective days, etc – and somewhere in between the playful banter and half-assed marriage proposal, he had to stop and ask me to translate something I'd just said. That's when I realized…the Army has taken over my mouth. I cuss more, I use more TLAs (three letter acronyms, baby), I drop obscure phraseology into everyday conversation…it's invasion of the body snatchers, except my eyes haven't gone spooky blue and I don't sleep in a pod at night like some escapee from Cocoon. I am an American Soldier. I am a warrior and a member of a team. I serve the people of the United States and live the Army values. Fear me, bitches.

Anyway, the point of this blogspot then is to translate for my friends and family some of the more common instances of Army-Speak that may creep into my speech from time to time. In no particular order:

1. High Speed. This can be a noun or an adjective. Common usage: "Where you headed, high-speed?" or "He's so high-speed he's a danger to himself and others." It usually means something positive, especially when paired with "low-drag". It means you're a stud, a go-getter, a future Captain America, mission first and people always, halleluiah Praise God. A person can be high-speed, some particularly cool Army toy or training scenario can be high-speed, or perhaps some new piece of technology recently written up in one of our jingoistic publications. Sometimes, and this is my personal favorite, the term is used in a derogatory fashion. When used this way – for example, "The door opens the other way, high-speed," – it essentially means "asshat".

2. Good Frikkin' Night/Doggone/Daggone/etc. Example: "Get your daggone butt in gear, private, before I'm forced to motivate you!" These relatively toothless swearwords are used primarily by "schoolhouse" NCOs. These are NCOs who spent the bulk of their career as Drill Sergeants or Instructors at Basic, Advanced Individual Training Course, or Officer Basic Course, collectively referred to as the Schoolhouse. In the Schoolhouse, it's against the rules to swear at the students. It's a kinder, gentler Army these days – we are molding the future fighting force with a firm and steady hand, not brass knuckles and a bullwhip. If you ever hear "Good Frikkin' Night" or similar drop from the lips of an acquaintance, dollars to donuts you have yourself a genuine former wearer of the Brown Round.

3. Blue Falcon. Blue Falcon is a nice way of saying Buddy Fucker. These are the dickheads who go pawing through the MRE box looking for the best meal, who sleep with the wife of a deployed person, who get pregnant to avoid deployment, who take the last cold soda from the cooler and don't put any more in, etc. We have whole cadences devoted to the Blue Falcon – my personal favorite verse goes like this:

You hear the chopper coming

It's hovering overhead

It's come to get the wounded

But I jump on instead

I'm a Blu-u-u-ue Fal-al-al-al-con

4. Charlie Mike, Tango Mike, Charlie Foxtrot, BOHICA, FUBAR, SSDD. Some of these you may recognize, especially thanks to military movies like Saving Private Ryan and Blackhawk Down. The Army LOVES acronyms – everything is an acronym. We publish whole TCs (training circulars), FMs (field manuals), and TMs (training manuals) with lists of relevant acronyms, because much like the individual characters in Cantonese, there are far too many for any one person to ever memorize them all.

FUBAR – Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition

Dude, if you want to go to the PX you're going to have to drive. My fucking truck is FUBARed.

SSDD – Same Shit, Different Day

My girlfriend always wants to know what I'm doing over here – it's just SSDD.

BOHICA – Bend Over Here It Comes Again

Oh fuck ma'am, it looks like another BOHICA mission.

Charlie Foxtrot – Cluster Fuck
When the Colonel came out to our site, he brought all of his little minions with him. It was a goddamned Charlie Foxtrot.

Charlie Mike – Continue Mission

When the IED hit our truck, there were no casualties. We called it up to higher and they were just like, "Charlie Mike, motherfuckers".

Tango Mike – Thanks Much

Dude, can I get my Maxim back please? You're drooling on the cover. Tango Mike, asshat.

5. Squared Away. This may be used as a verb or an adjective. "Square me away, Sergeant," or "That soldier is really squared away". The phrase "let's get this squared away" means essentially the same thing as "tighten up the shot group" or "lean forward in the foxhole". It means to fix a problem. When used as an adjective, it means that things are running smoothly, or that a soldier really knows what they are doing (synonymous with high-speed, used in the non-sarcastic fashion).

6. Kiwi Injection, 4^th Point of Contact. Usually used together, ie "I'll give that yahoo a kiwi injection in his 4^th point of contact", or separately as in "My commander has his head shoved straight up his 4^th point of contact." Let's break this one down. Kiwi is a very popular brand of boot polish. When a soldier is climbing an obstacle, he or she is instructed to keep three points of contact…either two feet and one hand, two hands and one foot, etc. Your fourth point of contact is your rear end. You're intelligent people, I'll let you work out this one on your own. Sadly, since the new combat boot does not need to be polished, I think this phrase may go the way of the buffalo.

Anyway, that's all I can think of right now. But drop these in conversation, and you too can sound as hardcore as the stone-faced killers in the United States Armed Forces. Until next time:

Charlie Mike, motherfuckers.

Champagne High

2005-06-28T05:11:00.000-07:00

"Man...if we had beer right now, somebody would probably die."
-- Rob on this weekend

I had a FANTASTIC weekend. My company, against my wishes, sent me to Freedom Rest, which is a hotel complex in Baghdad where soldiers can...hm...let their hair down and relax for a few days. I thought it was going to be the height of lame, which just goes to show that even I am occasionally full of shit. The hotel had foozball tables, a movie theater, a 24-hour ice cream bar and an enormous pool with three diving platforms at 3, 10, and 40 feet. It was just like being on vacation in some exotic tropical locale, except for the M1A1 tank that had its main gun pointing directly at my window. Come to think of it, that actually sounds a bit like Cuba.

Random Thought: Can you IMAGINE trying to explain away a negligent discharge as a tank commander? Ka-BOOOM! "What was that noise, soldier?" "Sir, we just vaporized the Falanaiko Inn!" "Er...whoops."

Anyway, we arrived at the complex Sunday morning. There were 11 of us -- me, my friend Matt (who, btw, looks so good in a bathing suit it makes your teeth hurt), my friend Caleb (who gets my vote for most likely to die before 30), Captain Jenny, Captain Rob, and his sidekick Jim, plus 5 random people who don't count because one was a chaplain and the rest were his minions and really, God has no place on my vacation. Jim is 41, and when he found out I was born in 1982, flipped his shit because that's when he joined the army -- "I'm old enough to be your father! Come to think of it, where were you born? Is your mother hot? You're from Virginia? Holy shit, I could be your father." I tried to explain to him that my conception involved my parents, a cold January evening, Air Florida's crash into the 14th street bridge (and for some strange reason, a turkey baster), and I told him I was quite sure he wasn't involved. I'm not sure he believed me.

Highlights from the weekend:

1) Rob teaching me how to play Nothing Else Matters, Shook Me All Night Long, and Wonderwall on the electric guitar. I am officially a rock star.

2) Caleb perfecting a move called "The Squirrel" off the diving platform. Despite catcalls from the Peanut Gallery, Caleb explained much alcohol would have to be involved for him to transition the move to the 40-foot platform, and that emergency medical personnel really would have to be standing by. Despite begging and bribe attempts, and the fact that the pool was open 24 hours, he refused to even entertain the idea of "The Naked Squirrel." I leave that one to your imagination. I maintain it would've been frikkin' hilarious.

3) A Quentin Tarantino film festival at full volume until 2 am with enthusiastic recitations of one's favorite lines (If any of you sons-a-bitches got anything else to say, now's the fucking time!), photo shoots with fuzzy leopard print blankets, freebasing red bull and diet coke, and Sniper Attacks with Mike & Ike candies will in fact piss off the hotel staff and earn you a stern talking-to from the guy in charge.

4) Jim getting his picture taken with one of the staff members, whose shirt read "Yes I work here...don't ask me for shit."

5) Me & Captain Jenny sitting on the 10 foot diving platform for a half-hour, having a philosophical discussion about why we didn't want to jump off (because really, we had nothing to prove) at full volume with the guys on the ground. One of the staff members leaning his head out of a window and yelling, "jump already, you are ruining our soaps!" Coining the phrase "my cojones are not in question here."

I'll post some pictures later as soon as Rob emails them to me.

Now I must go a meeting -- more fun recappage later.

Drama Queen

2005-06-24T02:43:00.000-07:00

I create drama. It's not so hard, really -- if you know someone well, knowing exactly which buttons to push in order to create some fantastic emotional fireworks is easy as pie. I'm an expert at it, a master of emotional manipulation, a girl in whose veins flows an ancient gift -- the unspeakable power to piss people off. I don't know why I do it...except maybe siphoning off some of my anger?depression?rage?misery? into someone else distracts me somehow.

Let me back up. You, fair reader, have perhaps noticed a trend in my last...oh say, 6 or 7 blogspots...in which the tone is less Sugar-and-Spice and more Arsenic-and-Straight-Razors. I'm lashing out -- I've gotten simultaneously more vicious towards those who've somehow earned my antipathy, and more...well, "whiny" is as good a word as any...in my description of my day-to-day situation. I'm sorry for that. It can't be that fun to read a blog that could be pithily translated: "bitchbitchbitchCurrentCrushwhinewhinewhineVibrator".

I'm just so unhappy all of the time, I guess it was naive to think it wouldn't spill over into Sushi. This is hardly new -- my slide into melancholy is (like the shape of my hands, my fair-Irish coloring, my bottom-heavy mouth) inherited. I lost out in the genetics lottery -- Molly got my mother's bone structure and AJ got her eyes, while I got her mood swings, going up and down so fast those standing nearby are prone to whiplash. I'm about 92.7% sure that I'm bipolar (based on the symptoms listed here). Not crazy "Yea mortals, bow down before me for I am your God" grandiose bipolar -- I don't lose my grip on reality entirely (though Chaz might disagree with me there) -- I just...slip sometimes. It's like there are two people living in my head, the one who's bouyant and relentlessly optimistic fighting for control with the one who'd like nothing better than to gargle drano and tapdance in traffic. In point of fact, I have so many different personalities living in my head that I really ought to charge myself rent.

To tell you the truth...maybe the reason my exes morph into Turbo-Dick after we break up has less to do with their own inherent assholishness than I originally thought.

Anyway, no more posts about ME. Introspection leads to dangerous territory, boys and girls, and I'm not having it anymore. There are places in my head that should never see the light of day. There are wounds that hide in dark places and while I have counted each and every one, there is no reason for you all need to be privy to that sort of information. There are some things a well brought up young lady just does not discuss in public -- body hair removal procedures, the freshness of her nether regions (or lack thereof), and of course, any suspected mental disorders which may be lurking in her chemically imbalanced brain.

I need help.

Anyhoo, keep on the lookout for my next post, which will be a return to my socially conscious and somewhat feministy roots.

Thank God for ice cream, or I'd really be in trouble.

The Bitch Factor

2005-06-23T09:04:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer for the men in my life: Firstly, Dad, I realize that you gave this web address to all your friends and coworkers and most of the immediate family, but that's really not my problem. This is my little corner of cyberspace, and I shall fill these pages with the random musings from the deepest recesses of my brain, as is my right. If my topics are a little risqué, I apologize, but that's the nature of the beast. You raised me. Deal with it. The rest of you – and you know if I'm talking about you – I will not call you out here, but if you don't like a) the topic I've chosen, or b) the light in which you are portrayed herein, feel free to send any and all complaints to stfu@gmail.com. This is MY BLOG, and you have no place in the editorial process. Thank you.

I was sitting here trying to come up with a blog topic, and I found my brain wandering back towards thinking about relationships. There's really not a lot to think about out here in Iraq – it's a pretty standard playlist – I think about what I'm going to do when I get home, where I'd like to live once I'm not assigned to Fort Stewart anymore, which pair of this season's Jimmy Choos I'm going to invest in (shoes that cost more than an in-state college education are more of an "investment" than a "purchase")…and of course, I think about guys. It's no secret that I'm a big fan of most members of Tribe Penis. While I like to think that I'm a pretty equal opportunity subscriber to those of the male persuasion, I definitely have a "type". The guys that I've dated over the years have toed this phenotypic line pretty closely – tall, good-looking, with a distinct Bo Duke slant to their personality – with one significant outlier. But that's not what this blogspot is about.

I'm not going to write about any of those past relationships – why they didn't work out is incidental – the only thing that matters is I'm not dating any of them anymore. I'm not dating anyone at the moment – unless you consider my relationship with Current Crush™ to be such, and that only works if you have a really creative take on the definition of the word "dating". No, what I'm going to talk about today is the hormonal detritus that we engage in once said relationships are over.

I've got a good working relationship with 3, count 'em, 3 of my former boyfriends. One is an awesome friend, a fantastic photographer, and taught me the value of bullwhips, shotglasses shaped like cowboy boots, and enormous belt buckles. The second is an adorable metrosexual who takes longer in the bathroom than I do, but has great taste in music and introduced me to Alkaline Trio. The last is an infuriating self-absorbed assclown, but I love him anyway, even if he is picking up and moving across the damn country before I get home on leave so I can't say goodbye properly, you jerk. These three guys rock the house, and thankfully the bumps in the road of our friendships have been relatively minor – I'll always have a place in Austin, Fort Campbell or Cali should I choose to exercise the privilege. (No worries boys, I have no plans to invade your respective casa-de-los-hombres any time soon – you may breathe easy.) Most of the guys I've dated, unfortunately, do not fall into this mold.

Most of the guys I've dated morphed into Turbo-Dick upon the dissolution of our romantic entanglement.

That's the main point of my blog today – why do we do that…why do we insist on making the ending of a relationship even more painful by acting like complete hemorrhoids to the other party? Does that honestly make you feel better? It never made me feel any better, acting like a bitch to my former significants – then I just had shame to add to the top of an already heaping pile of suck.

I've noticed that behavior following a breakup follows a pretty distinctive pattern and involves playing a complex series of games using stereotypical and completely pathetic behavior in an effort to hurt the other person as badly as you yourself are hurting. 1) You play the I hate you and hope you die game, throwing every heinous thing the other person did back in their face (in technicolor, possibly in public and certainly not in your "Indoor Voice"), much like the Money Shot in a porn flick, only more grotesque. 2) Once you've exhausted that route, you try your hand at Russian Roulette in the form of the I swear I didn't mean it, baby game, in which you desperately try to get that person back, because as awful as the relationship was in those last few weeks or months, it's still better than the sudden cold shock of being single again. 3) Then, once you realize that there was a reason you broke it off with your *snicker* better half, you play the Looking for a Hole and a Heartbeat game, in which you either honestly go on a Debbie-Does-Dallas-esque rampage through the reproductive organs of your choice, or you merely attempt to make the other person believe that you are on a mission to single-handedly raise the stock of the Prophylatic Industry.

**edited for snarky content**

Happy now?

Mail Call

2005-06-17T10:09:00.000-07:00

It's amazing – ever since I got to Iraq, friends of mine have been universal in commiserating about the hard-core suckage of the situation and also in asking for my address so they can send me things, as if month-old issues of Cosmo and chocolate candy are some kind of lifeline to civilization. I've gotten emails from old boyfriends, far-flung family members, friends from junior high, teachers from elementary school – in any other situation it'd be a little creepy, in this situation, it's heartwarming.

Mail is the single greatest thing in a soldier's life. It's a direct connection to hearth and home, a physical reminder that those we love are thinking of us (unless it’s a Dear John letter, in which case, yeesh) and a relief from some of the frustrations of deployment – can't get your favorite shampoo in theater? Have mom box it up. Dying to know Mary Alice's awful secret? With the advent of DVD burners, your Desperate Housewives addiction can be fed. Jonesing for hersheys kisses? Seven to ten days is all you'll have to wait for relief. Packages from home are sent to an APO address that routes all mail through a central office before distributing it to the bases. Mail is inspected for contraband (we'll get to that) before it's released to the units, who are responsible for getting it to the individual. The time of day when mail is delivered – known affectionately as "mail call" – is probably the best part of a soldier's day, ranking right up there next to chow time and rubber-band-on-the-doorknob time in terms of it's necessity to maintaining a soldier's morale in theater. Chow time ranks higher because one time a fistfight broke out when the soft serve ice cream machine broke during peak hours. I haven't seen anyone resort to fisticuffs over failed mail delivery, but hey, it could happen.

Packages from my parents include the usual stuff – Riesens caramels, which are little pieces of divinity in chocolate form; the entire Harry Potter oeuvre as well as the 6^th book if they know what's good for them, cute cards and posters to grace the walls of my swinging bachelorette pad; and of course, books of logic puzzles so I can geek out to my heart's content. Other people always ask me what I need, as if I'm out here in the desert with nothing but my canteen and boonie cap to protect me from the glaring sun. "Lotion…do you need lotion? Can you get lotion there?" Yes, people, remember that discussion earlier we had about the PX? There are a LOT of generals on Camp Liberty, so there are very few things I have a problem getting for myself. Lotion is not one of them…after all, the army is made up of primarily males. Sunscreen is another thing the Army generously provides – we're in the desert, it's kind of a gimme. Anything electronic, computer or video oriented, the hadjis sell reasonably priced and they are willing to haggle. So what sorts of things DO we like to get, you may be asking yourself. Good question. To answer that, I took a short poll.

1. Naked pictures of our significant others. This is technically illegal but it was the most popular answer so I feel obligated to include it. If you are planning to send naked pictures to your soldier, make sure to hide them inside a box of tampons or cold medicine or something. Porn is not impossible to come by here, but according to General Order Number 1, we are not allowed to have it. Maxim is the strongest stuff you can obtain legitimately, but for some of my guys that's like giving a heroin addict methadone – it'll keep them from spazzing but it's way less satisfying.

2. Cookies/candies/brownies. We love getting these sorts of things in care packages. It isn't that the cookies and brownies at the DFAC aren't delicious (which they are, mmm mousse-cake) but getting packages filled with perishable goodies from home makes us feel like we're at summer camp. Summer camp is much better than war. We don't have pony rides, of course, but I bet we could talk one of the locals into getting us a camel. We'd have to be really clear about what we wanted though – asking for a camel to ride could lead to an embarrassing situation if you weren't careful. Translation issues, you understand.

3. TV shows, videos, mix CDs. You can get a sketchy bootleg copy of any movie that you want here, but when you get sick of grainy quality that won't play half the time, it's nice to have real DVDs sent from home. Mix CDs, especially of current music, are also appreciated. We have what's known as "freedom radio" out of Baghdad, which is a military-run radio station that plays different types of music – the morning is country, mid-afternoon is rap and the evening is alternative rock – but it's a few months behind the times. That and listening to state-run media outlets tends to give me hives. Propaganda, doncha know.

I was talking to one of my friends online, using that delightful invention known as AOL Instant Messenger, adored by college kids and agoraphobics the world over for its ease of communication with no requirement for personal contact. She and I hadn't spoken in several months. She had to be caught up on a couple of new developments…

JMUstarbaby: Hola chica, whatcha up 2?

Paichka: I'm in Baghdad.

JMUstarbaby: Holy shit, who'd you piss off to get sent there?

Paichka: I'm in the Army, I didn't piss anyone off, except maybe God. It was just my turn.

JMUstarbaby: Well hell. What do you do there?

Paichka: Honestly nothing. I sit around, eat pudding, go to meetings…

JMUstarbaby: I should've joined the army. I like pudding.

JMUstarbaby: I could go to meetings.

We started talking about my life in Iraq. When she found out about the strict hardships we labored under, she was floored.

JMUstarbaby: No ass and no alcohol? Good god, that's like the Taliban.

Paichka: With uglier clothes.

JMUstarbaby: That is not the American way. What on earth are we fighting for?

Paichka: Write your congressman.

JMUstarbaby: I intend to.

Then came the question.

JMUstarbaby: No ass huh?

Paichka: Nope.

JMUstarbaby: Not even the battery-powered kind?

Paichka: No. It wasn't on the packing list.

JMUstarbaby: Get your mom to send you one.

Paichka: That would be an awkward conversation. "Hey mom, would you mind popping down to the porn store and picking me up a rabbit habit?"

JMUstarbaby: She'd understand. Just make sure she includes batteries.

JMUstarbaby: That'd be pretty funny. The package starts vibrating when they're inspecting it

JMUstarbaby: "Oh dear we have a bomb! Evacuate the building!"

JMUstarbaby: But no, it's just sunny's vibrator.

Paichka: That'd be tough to explain. "See I have this friend…"

JMUstarbaby: Must be easier for guys. Little lotion and a maxim and they're good to go.

Paichka: Most of the guys here have roommates.

JMUstarbaby: Like that stops them. Little pervs.

She was kidding (I think), but the thing is, lots of girls brought little friends to the theater. I'm not making this up. The subject actually came up at one of our pre-deployment meetings back at Fort Stewart. CPT Porter had just received hard copies of General Orders 1 and 2, and he was reading them to us. When he got to the part about "relationships with soldiers of the opposite sex except those that are mission related" being prohibited, he elaborated with: "So you all are clear, that means no sex." SPC Green, one of the headquarters platoon's soldiers, piped up with: "What about sex toys, sir? Are those prohibited as well?" I thought the man was going to have an aneurysm. I laughed so hard I thought I was going to pee myself, but SPC Green was totally serious.

Today's take home message: guys don't have a monopoly on rubber-band-on-the-doorknob time. Women have needs, too, after all.

A little help, Big Guy?

2005-06-08T06:50:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how a little information – two very small, completely unconnected bits of news I found out just last night – can be so earth shattering. I went to bed last night numb, and when I woke up this morning, the whole world was different…which is to say, my whole world is different…I doubt the other two people involved see the situation in the same light that I do. One sees a golden opportunity and a fresh start where I see a closed door. The other sees justification where I see a betrayal. Two events – a new job accepted and an email sent several months ago – a change in perspective, and I've lost two people who were more important to me…in their own ways…than I think they ever did (or ever will) truly know.

In high school I had a friend, Andrew Breton, who used to say: "That sucks. But not in a good, 'suck my dick' kind of way, but in a bad, 'suck my ass with a vacuum cleaner' kind of way." Right on. Crude, yeah, okay. But descriptive.

This week has been like that…and Christ in a Side Car, it's only Wednesday. What's next, Big Guy? You going to go all Old Testament on me, a plague of boils here, a river of blood there; maybe smite my oxen just for kicks? Let me know so I can brush up on my Charleton Heston, if you send the Angel of Death out here to kill all the First Born again, I want to be ready. I knew that goat's blood I've been keeping around would come in handy sooner or later.

See, God and I have this deal worked out. He's allowed to dump as much crap on me as He likes, but He's got to balance in out with good things, so that at the end of the day I've got a neutral balance. Let's go over this week and tally it up…

Sunday

(Bad) Molly called me hysterical because the Parental units have decided to get a divorce.

(Good) Annahita liked my story! (Except for the incestuous bits, right, darlin'?)

(Bad) A very pissed off full-bird colonel, COL Resnek, visited my site and interviewed SSG Elam. He came away from the interview thinking that we have no idea what we're doing down there and any minute Hadji is going to come over the wall, capture us and put us on Al-Jazeera for ritualistic beheading.

(Bad) Am forced to attend stupid Hail & Farewell ceremony for Battalion where only food is pizza. Eat 4 slices and feel like a big fat cow.

(Good) Andrea and I embrace the Big Fat Cow-ness and commiserate about boys over ice cream at the DFAC.

Monday

(Good) Parental units will not be divorcing after all. All is back to normal (ha!) at the Reid household.

(Bad) Get ass-chewing from CPT Agena regarding COL Resnek's visit. Find out that as a result of the visit, COL Hooker and MG Webster will be visiting my site on Tuesday.

(Good) See Current Crush™ at command center when I go to check in.

(Bad) Make ass of self in front of Current Crush™ at command center when I go to check in.

(Good) Current Crush™ punches me in the shoulder in apparent manly greeting. Spend about 20 minutes on the phone with Best Friend™ discussing whether or not this means he likes me and whether behavior is direct outgrowth of elementary school habit of bashing one's amour in the head with a lunchbox as a sign of affection.

(Bad) Am starting to wonder if Losers Welcome is tattooed on my forehead in ink visible only to Perverts, the Emotionally Unavailable, and the Psychotic. Spend 20 minutes over IM with Other Best Friend™ discussing whether manly punch in the shoulder is a sign that Current Crush™ is closet wife-beater.

Tuesday

(Good/Bad) MG Webster and COL Hooker postpone visit to my site. I am forced to sit out there for 12 hours for no real reason. Eat entire bag of Chex Mix all on own. Throw up entire bag of Chex Mix in humiliating display of projectile pyrotechnics.

(Bad) Make ass of self in front of Current Crush™ at command center when I go to check my mail. He salutes me, apparently in recognition of my status as a certifiable crazy person.

(Bad) Find out Piece of Information #1. I'd go into more detail, but since this involves another person who may or may not like their private business discussed in my blog, suffice it to say that for me, this piece of information was Not Good…for this person, this piece of information was Not Bad.
(Bad) Find out Piece of Information #2. My reaction to this piece of information prompts a downward spiral in which the fragile peace built up between me and this person crumbles and we're back to square 1.

Wednesday

(Bad) Get period. Break a nail. Am told by PSG that I need to clean my room. The dining facility ran out of Diet Coke.

(Good) Have not died, broken out in boils, or spontaneously combusted. Yet.

Hmm. So far the score appears to be God – 11, Sunny – 7. That's a 5 point deficit. I was never much for math, but I'm thinking God owes me. Clearly, I've got something pretty sweet headed my way, and it's going to be huge.

Brad Pitt in a box? Winning the lottery? Redeploying early? Having Current Crush™ decide that despite appearances, I am not schizophrenic?

I'm waiting, Big Guy.

Just...waiting.

What. The. Hell.

2005-06-06T03:06:00.000-07:00

The following letter appeared in the May 28^th Edition of Stars & Stripes.

Army not a social experiment

Congress passed a law forbidding women from direct combat roles in 1994.

Women are not required to be registered for the draft, but men are.

Upon entering the Army, women are not required to get their hair all cut off, but men are. The reason for men getting their hair cut off is to let them know they are entering a whole new life. Women do not have this reality hit them in this way.

Women do not have to meet the same physical standards as male soldiers.

Why are women allowed into military academies? Academies prepare officers for leading men into battle. If women cannot go into battle, then they should be in ROTC or Officer Candidate School.

These are just some of the reasons women should not be called soldiers.

It seems Congress is hell-bent on using the military as its social experimental laboratory. Whatever social ill the United States has, Congress wants to try it out on the military first to see if it will work.

I am also tired of hearing about America’s fighting men and women. Women are not fighting these wars because it is against the law. Most of the casualties in the last three wars were men, not women. I wish the news media would stop portraying women as heroes for any little thing they do.

Since women have entered the Army in large numbers since 1974, the social problems that commanders have had to take on have been extraordinary. Most of them will not admit it because of fear of ending their careers.

If you want total equality in the military, then a standard must be set and all must attain it. Men and women need to have the same standard.

This is an Army we, the taxpayers, are paying for, not a social experiment.

Richard Pichette
Kuwait

Now, before I get into the meat of this misogynistic drivel, let me point out that our boy Richard is not himself in the Army. He's clearly a civilian. Retired Army folks will still claim the rank that used to be theirs – they're still LTCs and SGMs and CSMs – they just have a little (ret) that hangs on to the end of their name, indicating that though they were once among the proud warrior class, they are now, in the words of MacArthur, fading away.

Civilians, on the other hand, are just taxpayers, as Richard so helpfully points out. To that I say, write the checks, asshole, and stop trying to write policy.

Let's go through this happy horseshit line by line.

Congress passed a law forbidding women from direct combat roles in 1994.

Yes, and Congress also passed a law forbidding interracial marriage in 1883. Birth Control was illegal until 1968, and women couldn't vote until 1920. Owning slaves was legal until 1863. African-Americans only counted for 2/5s of a person until the passage of the 14^th Amendment after the Civil War. Up until 1970, you could be sent to die in wars started by the government, in which you had no voice because you were underage and couldn't vote. The POINT, dear readers, is that lawmakers are not gods, lawmakers are mere mortals, and as such they are hobbled by the shortsightedness of people raised with a certain mindset and a certain code of beliefs. This is why the Constitution is referred to as a "Living Document", because it grows and adapts as Americans do. We have the happy power to make changes to our laws and our government as our country and its citizenry evolve. This is why we can choose to elect new blood to the government every 2 (House), 4 (President) and 6 (Senate) years. (Except South Carolinians, who reelected Strom Thurmond 18 times, even though the man was over 100 years old and given to power naps while the Senate was in session. He served 6 months of his last term before anyone realized he was dead, and if you'd given the constituency their choice, they probably would've voted to just keep propping him up on sticks like a macabre Kermit the Frog.) Anyway, point is, times change. Bell-bottoms and male chauvinism went out in the 70s.

Women are not required to be registered for the draft, but men are.

The draft is an antiquated, unnecessary piece of legislature, and in any case stopped filling the ranks of the Armed Forces 30 years ago. Our Army is made up of volunteers, and in case you haven't noticed, the stop-loss program (called by some opponents a "back door draft") applies equally to male and female soldiers.

AHAHAHA. Oh, wait. He was serious. And getting yelled at by Drill Sergeants, forced to wear a uniform, forced to stand at parade rest when speaking to a superior, learning to march, learning to shoot, learning to throw a grenade…these things don't hammer home the reality of being a soldier? Yes, he's right – having one's hair cut off is what makes a person combat-ready. How foolish we've been. I wonder why nobody realized this before? Think of the money we'll save! Basic training could be so much shorter, just boot a young 18-year old through a revolving door into a barber's chair, give the boy a high & tight, and out comes Captain America.

Women do not have to meet the same physical standards as male soldiers.

Ah. This is the unfortunate reality of being female. We aren't as strong as our male counterparts – but I still know plenty of females who can max the male PT test. This is a stupid argument anyway. I beat the pants off most of my guys on the PT test – their scale or mine.

Why are women allowed into military academies? Academies prepare officers for leading men into battle. If women cannot go into battle, then they should be in ROTC or Officer Candidate School.

And what do ROTC and OCS teach soldiers – flower arrangement? All three methods for minting officers have an infantry focus, because the Army believes in battle-focused training. There's a saying among military types -- "we're all infantry when the shit hits the fan". All three schools -- West Point, ROTC or OCS -- teach officers what they need to know to lead soldiers, be it into battle or into staff rooms. Anything else we need to know, we learn on the job.

These are just some of the reasons women should not be called soldiers.

And these are also some of the reasons I shall call you "Dick".

What ills does the United States have in regards to women? For crying out loud, you jackass, women can serve in dangerous jobs in the States – firefighters, policewomen, pilots…if anything, the military lags behind the civilian world, not the other way around.

Most of the casualties in the last three wars were men because the male soldiers a) are allowed to go on patrols, and b) make up a greater percentage of the Armed Forces than females. Trust me though, IEDs don't make allowances for ovaries.

And this is the women's fault? That old 'women as the root of original sin' argument went out around the same time we realized we could have orgasms. Men must take responsibility for their penis – it doesn't just wander off and them in bad situations while they aren't looking. If soldiers are doing what men & women do when put together in a close situation for months on end…it's up to the leadership to enforce the standards, and it's up to the individuals to take a little responsibility.

What kills me about this letter is that this jackass is probably a civilian contractor -- which means he's over here making three times as much money as me, running his mouth and utilizing the right to free speech that I and my fellow soldiers joined up to protect. It takes all kinds, hm?

Friggin' IDIOTS.

Something Completely Different

2005-06-04T06:33:00.000-07:00

So one of my Favorite People™ sent me an IM today complaining that my blog has become too depressing recently. "You used to be funny." (I'm not sure how, but she manages to make the written word sound reproachful. I'm feeling guilty for having written two downer blogspots in a row.) "Nobody wants to read about Child-Molesting Mall Santas."

In my defense, everybody wants to read about Child-Molesting Mall Santas. If they didn't, Jerry Springer wouldn't be nearly so popular. I see what you mean, though...there's a definite dark cast to the past few blog posts. Humor is usually just Anger with her makeup on, but lately it's like the old girl is getting a little sloppy with her application.

I wish I could be funny on command, girliepie, but I can only be funny when I'm in the MOOD to be. Lately, nothing has seemed all that entertaining. The last thing I want to do is complain about my situation – I made my own bed, now I have to lie in it, blah blah – but you all have to understand. It sucks out here. Period, end of story, thanks for playing. I'm thankful for all the things I DO have – internet in my room, a fridge, a TV, the entire Harry Potter oeuvre, diet coke, all the books I care to read (and that is saying something)…but as dressed up as this place is, it's still Baghdad. This is also why I've been avoiding the "Day in the Life" blogspot that several of you have been pestering me for…I don't really want to write about what it's like out here. It's very boring, very frustrating, extremely on-edge, and fraught with sexual tension and snide gossip. If you want to imagine what Iraq is like, head down to your local Middle School and spend a day observing the hormonal mental patients that pass for adolescents these days. That about approximates it. Petty, underhanded gossip, unrequited crushes, mandatory fun, false motivation, and extremely cranky superiors who are convinced of their own moral, physical and intellectual superiority and have absolutely no respect at all for you or your abilities. This is my world, boys and girls, welcome to it.

I read your away messages, blogs, emails, etc…and I am so jealous of you that if envy were acid all that'd be left of me is a couple of teeth and a belt buckle. Something as innocuous as reading about someone drinking a glass of Merlot can put me in a bad mood for the rest of the evening -- and I'm not that big a fan of red wine. So why have I turned into the Poster Child for Antidepressants lately? I despise getting my ass chewed by the hydroencephalic individuals appointed over me. I hate that there are cretins in charge of my career, who may blithely write whatever they please on my Officer Evaluation Report and that one little checkmark in the wrong column could condemn me to beaurocratic hell for the remaining 36 months I must spend in uniform. I abhor that my fellow officers are Brutuses who smile benignly while knifing you in the back. I am foul with resentment, and if I open the floodgates then you as my readers will be subjected to my litany of bitterness, my song of rage, which I assure you, with my tendency towards the dramatic, would be operatic in its scope. So I'm not going to talk about that. You wonder why I shy away from personal topics…well, that's why. Do you all really want to hear about the soldier who was killed in the PX bombing two days ago? Or the soldier who lost an arm when a rocket hit the trailers in the pad next to mine? Or that one of the soldiers had to get her uniform replaced because she helped a guy injured in an explosion and her pants were covered in blood? I didn't think so. Don't ask me again what it's like out here. I promise, you will not like the answer.

Funny though…I might be able to do funny. The man who runs the bazaar asked me to marry him. He said he'd give my father two goats for me. I assume that's not too shabby an asking price, the guy standing next to him looked kind of impressed. I told him my father lives in the suburbs and probably wouldn't have any use for goats. He paused for a minute, thinking, and said, "How about a car stereo?" You let me know, dad…I might even be worth a TV.

Andrea coined a new term yesterday as well. We were in the dining hall and we were talking about guys (duh). She pointed out a guy behind me who was pretty cute – probably not a heartstopper back in the states, but at least worth a second look. I said as much, and she replied, "Yes, that's what I meant. He's totally Baghdad-able." You're my hero, Andrea…you make me giggle even when I'd rather be punching things.

Cynicism

2005-06-01T10:53:00.000-07:00

I just finished Sarah Vowell's Take the Cannoli, sent by the parentals in my last care package. For those of you unfamiliar with Sarah Vowell – hie thee hence to Amazon.com. I will not go so far with the adulatory ass-kissery as some of her reviewers (the publisher's blurb on the back of her latest is almost masturbatory in its exaltation of this "madonna of Americana"), but the woman IS a brilliant writer, if occasionally a little smarmy and self-important. (She lives in New York, so that's to be expected.) Trivia Time: she was also the voice of Violet Barr in Disney's The Incredibles.

Sarah Vowell writes the sort of quirky, educational pop-lit that liberal university professors love to assign to their introductory level classes. Entertaining enough to be brain-candy, with enough substance to let you feel like part of the Intellectual In-crowd – especially if you get the pop-culture references – reading her books you feel as though you're having a chat with a close friend…a close friend with numerous phobias, an obsession with death, and a nasty case of verbal incontinence. I chuckled my way through her latest trip along the seedy underbelly of our nation…until she got to Disney World. Sarah darling, here we are going to have to agree to disagree.

I am a product of my generation – cynical, self-congratulatory, and viciously devoted to pulling back the Wizard's curtain to reveal the ersatz underpinnings of Oz. People my age have no sacred cows. How could we? How can we believe in anything? We've grown up in a world where the best selling video game is a first person shooter, where sports stars are more likely to appear on America's Most Wanted than a Wheaties Box, where politicians kiss interns instead of babies, where you can't sit on Santa's lap at the mall anymore because he might cop a feel while asking for your wish list. This is a world of rainbow parties, Columbines, three separate instances of government-sanctioned genocide in just the last decade alone, the Jackson trial and September 11^th. It's been said so many times that it's lost a lot of its meaning and become just one more thing to bitch about – but kids today really do grow up too fast. In 1897 a little girl wrote the New York Sun asking if Santa exists. She was 8. The Sun's response is one of the most reprinted editorials of all time, and one of the greatest examples of the innocence of children. In 1993 Robert Thompson and Jon Venables kidnapped 2 year old James Bulger and beat him to death before dumping his body on near-by train tracks. They were 10.

Disney's a huge, multinational corporation dedicated to making money, with several television channels, a thriving film industry, ready-made consumer tie-ins to all movies and TV shows, a satellite radio channel, and bi-coastal theme parks. Does its status as a media conglomerate automatically render all things Disney soulless and evil? Let's consider this a moment.

People criticize Disney for a multitude of sins, but primarily for sanitizing the fairy tales from which its most popular movies have been derived, drawn from the collections of The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson. People, have you ever stopped to READ the original Grimm's Fairy Tales? In the original Cinderella, the stepsisters slice off bits of their feet so they can fit into the proffered glass slipper. Blood dripping off the hems of their gowns give them away. At Cinderella's wedding, they get their eyes pecked out by doves for their wickedness. Not convinced? Let's consider The Robber Bridegroom, in which a young bride-to-be visits her lover's hideaway deep in the woods and watches him rape and murder a young girl, then conducts an elaborate j'accuse with the girl's finger at a dinner party the next night. Or Sleeping Beauty, in which it isn't a kiss from the Prince that awakens our heroine, but giving birth to twins gotten on her while she slept. Don't even get me started on Hans Christian Anderson. In his two most celebrated stories, a little girl freezes to death in an alley on Christmas Eve, and a pretty mermaid drowns herself rather than murder her lover's new wife. And we get uppity with Disney for taking some liberties with the source material? Kids don't need to read fairy tales for exposure to this sort of bloodshed – open up the Washington Post any day of the week for things ten times worse. The Giant in Jack and the Beanstalk wanting to grind a boy's bones to make his bread can't hold a candle to the real life horror of the DC snipers, or the monsters with normal faces who turn babies into broken dolls.

I love Disney World. I love the pure Stepford escapism of it, the fake castle with Communications majors dressed up as cartoon characters, the aggressive good cheer, the syrupy black-and-white moral lessons and the rampant commercialism. I love the themed hotels, fake beaches, the fact you can't buy alcohol in the Magic Kingdom, the long lines, and the absolute perfect shining wonder on the faces of the kids. I love the stupid Country Bears, the monorail, the suspiciously warm pools, the gigantic turkey legs sold in lieu of pretzels in Frontier Land, and the creepy animatronic things in the stupendously boring Epcot Center. I love the light parade.

I think Disney World is a symbol of all that is right and wrong with America – it's a crass celebration of all things commercial, true…but it's also a sincere effort to provide kids with a haven, a place where all things are sanitized for their protection, where the scary bits are clearly labeled and the entire atmosphere is geared towards the small, the wide-eyed, and the innocent. Even in our cynical age, how can we sneer at a place where dreams really do come true?

Memorial Day

2005-05-30T00:37:00.000-07:00

This was how the conversation started: "You're a veteran!" One of my friends told me. "You can join the VFW!" I'm a what? Having been in Iraq for 4 months now and having yet to even fire my weapon…having yet to even leave the FOB…I'm allowed to call myself a veteran? What kind of sick joke is that? I'm supposed to be able to hold my head up with survivors of WWII, Korea, Vietnam…? Thanks, but no thanks. I'm not a fan of taking accolades that I haven't earned. "Chill, Xena. It's Memorial Day." He said, "I was thinking of you."

I completely forgot that today was Memorial Day. I had been looking at my friends' away messages, wondering why they weren't at work, when this innocuous little IM hit me between the eyes. It's Memorial Day weekend, all self-respecting 20-somethings are drinking themselves into oblivion by the side of a pool. Or buying cars or mattresses, both of which are presumably on sale back in the States, advertised in eye-catching Patriotic reds whites and blues; a clever trick designed to convince your Average Joe that the best way to show his love for his country is to spend money. Bow down before the Altar of Consumerism, America, for lo, it is your God.

So it's Memorial Day. This is supposed to be the day that we remember our war dead, those brave men and women who made the final sacrifice and laid their lives on the altar of freedom, wave the flag, wipe the tear and cue the uplifting music. This should be a day that is especially meaningful for me, being that I am a proud little Soldier Girl and in Iraq, to boot. I should be watching Saving Private Ryan and taking notes – Tom Hank's CPT Miller is the ideal Army commander, selfless and focused on the mission (to the exclusion of all else) – I should be prancing around my room listening to Souza marches, practicing my Patton speeches in the mirror, going to barbeques, and patting myself on the back for being brave/loyal/stupid/desperate enough to land myself over here, involved in a land war in Asia. I should be racking up stories to tell my grandkids. Should be. How could I have let it get here without me realizing?

Memorial Day is like an unexpected present from an Aunt who doesn't know you well – you didn't want it in the first place and now that it's here you don't really know what to do with it. It means well, but it falls flat. This is a day of MEMORY – a day for honoring those who died in service of their country (and let me tell you, ask any family…it's not so dulce, it's not so decorum…screw the medals, they want their kid back), a day for remembering WHY it was we asked them to pro patria mori in the first place. What do we have now that we wouldn't have had if those people hadn't been brave/loyal/stupid/desperate enough to join up, to do their part, and to die by bullet, gas or bayonet? We have a country, we have freedom, we have Texas, we have the United Nations, English as opposed to German, the Space Program, the right to vote when we're 18, and graveyards all over the world filled up with the bones and blood of Americans. I thank God for those people, and my parents thank God that I'm not one of them.

I've been trying all morning to remember what in the hell I did last Memorial Day. I was barely two weeks out of college, working for my Dad and killing time until Officer Basic Course. Did I go to the pool? Probably. Did I go to a barbeque? I might have. I can remember last Christmas easily – I got tickets to Wicked on Broadway…last New Years – got a kiss at midnight from a boy who tasted like margaritas and cheap champagne…last Thanksgiving – the parentals got into it over what kind of sweet potatoes to serve…last Fourth of July – kicked some lieutenant ass in Flip Cup before going to the Montgomery Gentry concert at Fort Leonard Wood. Why is it that the only thing I can remember from last Memorial Day is a vague distaste for car commercials and an impression of the pool? I've spent many a Memorial Day at the pool, in a bikini, going to barbeques and flirting with boys. I don't think I've ever stopped to think about what it actually meant.

Maybe the best way to celebrate this day of death is to celebrate life? Whee, we're not dead, but let's raise a glass to those that are, who made it possible for me to stand here, drinking cuerveza, in a bikini, roasting a hot dog and flirting with boys? My little sister went to a Biker Rally in DC – Rolling Thunder, made up of Vietnam Veterans and Harleys. This is probably the ultimate symbol of memorial day – a day of sound and fury, signifying something…I'll be damned if I know just what, though. There are mothers and fathers all over America mourning their lost sons and daughters today – mourning and praying and remembering. I thank God for those people, for those mothers and fathers, and I pray for them, those families for whom today has a horribly immediate meaning.

I swear to God, Mom and Dad…you will never be one of them.

Busting Mine to Kick Yours

2005-05-29T21:03:00.000-07:00

Cause sometimes you feel tired,
feel weak, and when you feel weak, you feel like you wanna just give up.
But you gotta search within you, you gotta find that inner strength
and just pull that shit out of you and get that motivation to not give up
and not be a quitter, no matter how bad you wanna just fall flat on your face and collapse.
Eminem f. Nate Dogg ('Til I Collapse)

So today I took an APFT -- bright and early at 5am (which is early even for the Army...like most people we prefer to do things when the sun is actually up). For those of you not lucky enough to wear a uniform to work, the APFT is the Army Physical Fitness Test -- 2 minutes of pushups, 2 minutes of situps and a 2-mile run. Each event is graded on a 100-point scale, with standards changing for males and females of different age groups. I got a 300 -- 50 pushups, 89 situps and a 14:09 on the two-miler. One thing I love about the Army is that your worth as a soldier is judged almost entirely on your ability to peform on this bi-annual test of physical chutzpah. You could be the most technically proficient soldier on the planet -- THE smartest guy on xyz, but if you fuck up this test, you're automatically seen a shitbag. On the other hand, if you're only an average soldier in terms of your ability to do your job, but you're a PT STUD, well...you're pretty much golden. Kicking ass on the PT test is the only thing I have left out here that resembles an athletic competition.

I miss being an athlete. I miss rowing in particular -- I remember what it's like to walk out onto a wooden dock with a shell resting on my shoulder, I remember the feeling of sliding back and forth on my seat, my oar cutting through the water, the clean economy of movement that makes up each stroke...I remember how the river smells early in the morning, and I miss it. There's nothing like the pride you feel after getting off the erg and realizing you just got your personal best, there's nothing in the entire WORLD that can compare to being a god for 6 minutes on the water. The callouses and blisters that turned your hands into raw meat, and the slide-bites that covered your calves and made it impossible to feel pretty in a dress during the Spring season...the aches that forced you to go through tubes of icy-hot, the missed sleep, the banged fingers, crying walking up stairs, tendonitis, weekends spent chasing medals instead of boys...it was all worth it, just for that 6 minutes when nothing could touch you, when it was just you and seven others tearing your hearts out, chasing glory.

I think that's why I love working out. I'm trying to recapture what I've been missing since Sophomore year of college. It's not that I want to look like a Cosmo cover girl, like the cardio bunnies that make it impossible to get on the stair stepper at 5 in the afternoon -- I'm in search of strength, I'm hunting down my endurance, I'm pushing as far as I can as hard as I can, until I collapse. I want to bench my bodyweight, I want to squat 300 pounds, I want to run 2 miles in sub-13, I want to compete in a marathon and I want to feel that pride...I'm tearing my heart out, chasing glory. I want that stretch of time when nothing can touch me, when the whole world shrinks to my lungs, my heart, my legs, the blood in my ears and the rush that carries me as far as I can possibly go...when I can be a god again, even if it's only for a minute or two.

Who wouldn't want that?

There's Something About Sunny

2005-05-24T10:02:00.000-07:00

Every day we have a 1500 meeting with the XO, 1LT Sean Sullivan, where he gives us all sorts of perky little messages from higher command. Higher Command always wants a vehicle or two for some convoy, like that friend who's always borrowing your favorite skirt and returning it with a suspicious stain and not even offering to pay for the cleaning, the bitch. Anyway, besides the usual "give us your shit" messages, there were a couple of new rules we needed to tell our soldiers to adhere to…namely, eating at the Division dining facility is now off limits.

Pardon? Why is that, pray tell?

Well apparently, Higher Command told us conspiratorially (Higher Command is a HUGE gossip) that some idiot up at Camp Taji got drunk and stabbed some other guy at a party. Over a girl. I'll wait a moment to let that sink in.

Let's analyze this situation, shall we? First of all, the guys were drinking. We aren't talking the kind of drunk you strap on with a couple of shots of Jose Gold. Any booze one gets in country is probably of the bathtub variety, which may make one go blind. Clearly it does nothing for one's problem solving skills. Second of all, the one guy brought his knife to a party. At the sake of sounding facetious, Iraq is not the ghetto. Camp Taji is even more plush than Camp Liberty, there is no reason to run around with some 5 inch long pig-sticker hanging off your belt. Clearly this dumbass went looking for trouble and found it. At least he was well armed, hmm? Must've been a boy scout. Finally, they were fighting over a girl. Out here menfolk suffer from an affliction I like to call "Army Goggles", which are similar to Beer Goggles except they result from long periods of celibacy with only men's magazines for comfort. After a few months in the scratch, even the practically deformed start looking pretty darn good. I bet this girl wasn't all that, and in any case, couldn't she have done something to stop the two assholes fighting before one of them got an involuntary orifice?

I'm going to go off on a little bit of a tangent, bear with me, I promise to bring it around again. Females are stupid. We really are. So few of us have mastered the fine art of blowing guys off with finality. Take my stalker situation, for example. Did I mention I have a stalker? Well actually, I have several.

1. Stalker No. 1 is El Gordo Nasty-Pants from Bravo Company. This guy is making an Olympic Sport of trying to get in my frilly under-roos with no subtlety whatsoever. He's at least a decade older than me and let's be frank, he's a bit on the slimy side. However, he's at least got the balls to tell me in no uncertain terms that he wants to be my Relief-For-Cause memo waiting to happen. I myself do not have the same balls of brass. Tonight, when he came up to me outside of the dining hall, I reacted the same way I always do – with jokes. He said, "Hey Miss Sunshine, in PT's again? Do you ever work?" I cheerfully told him to kiss my ass, to which he responded, "Oh I would love to." I leave you to ponder the ick factor.

2. Stalker No. 2 is one of the Joes on guard duty outside the dining facility. Not only does he recognize me even when I'm not in uniform, but he asks me if I'm okay if I miss a meal and tells me if they have cottage cheese or diet coke. I assume he notices that these are the items I most often leave the DFAC with, but still...slightly creepy. I feel like big brother is watching.

3. Stalker No. 3 is the most recent of the bunch. I don't know his name but he works the mail room and has a gold tooth, earning him the moniker "Mr. Bling-Bling" from SFC Brown. He recognizes me, always has some smart-ass comment about where my mail is coming from (mom, friends, bb.com or amazon.com) and when he found out that I work out (I assume the bodybuilding.com boxes were his first clue) he started pestering me for workout advice. Last night was the kicker, he said he was going to come work out with me. Then he told me I had nice legs.

So why don't I just blow these douchebags off? Why doesn't any girl just fix an annoying guy with an emasculating stare and say, "I'm just not interested"? I blame our ovaries. No, really. Bear with me. Our ovaries and their conflicting hormonal advice (our brains want one thing, our reproductive organs are on another plane entirely) are responsible for many of girls' less desirable traits, from our inability to blow off potential suitors before they resort to stabbing each other, to our tendency to morph into Uber-Bitch in the face of competition.

Even if you aren't consciously attracted to the male in question, your ovaries are still sizing him up as a potential sperm donor. Occasionally your ovaries will take over your brain and make bitchy comments about the other girls concerning the amount of fat in their ass, etc. Menfolk think we're just being catty, when in reality it's just biology. Like lusting after chocolate or shoes, we are helpless in the face of our hormones. It's hard to make bitchy comments about girls in DCUs, though…they're so shapeless and unflattering anyway, that'd be like rubbing lemon juice into a papercut. Even my ovaries are not that cruel.

My Muse Needs a Kick in the Pants

2005-05-20T21:08:00.001-07:00

I love to write. I've also always been described as a chatterbox, having a mouth like a runaway horse or as Grammy Jeanne used to say, hinged in the middle and flapping at both ends. (I loved my grandmother dearly, but reading that sentence I realize there's no way to construct the phrase "as Grammy Jeanne used to say" without sounding like an episode of the Beverly Hillbillies. Just trust that I'm being sincere, okay?)

Hearing words and reading them are two sides of the same coin…they have a similar rhythm whether written or spoken. I've noticed that there's a correlation between liking to see your words on a page and liking to hear your words in the air – if you're verbose in one arena that's probably going to carry over to the other. Someone with diarrhea of the mouth probably isn't going to spend a lot of time writing, say, haiku. Since I am heinously afflicted with this condition (I pity you all if I ever decide to jump on the next technological bandwagon and start a podcast – which I won't. My desire to conform only goes so far.) it makes sense that my blogposts are roughly the length of War & Peace, only unencumbered by that effervescent Russian optimism. (All you non-literary types are going, what's the joke?)

Anyway, back to my main point. Writing. Love to do it. I write a lot, and I get a million and one ideas a minute – only…well…see there's a slight problem. My muse, usually so helpful in Fed-Exing ideas straight into my brain, abandons me about halfway through the creative process to go sit in a corner and drool on herself. Oh well.

Practically what this means is I have a whole folder on my computer of aborted story attempts. There's one about a girl witnessing the end of the world, which I love but which isn't quite ready to stand on its own; one about a boy who does a favor for the God of a dead planet; one about a guy who meets Death and falls in love (this one is too derivative of Neil Gaiman and so will never get finished); one about a thief who steals unbroken hearts and sells them on the black market to people desperate for a second chance at love…then there's the romance novel I'm working on. That one has stalled less because I don't know where it's supposed to go, and more because every time I have to write an intimate scene, I feel like a voyeur or become jealous of my characters. Why should they be getting play when I'm stuck out here under the oppressive thumb of General Order Number 1? This is completely irrational, obviously, but as several of you card-carrying members of Tribe Penis have told me, irrationality is a woman's natural state. Tell you what – I'll give you that we're irrational if you will admit that your external genitalia make you a danger to yourself and others.

Just kidding.

I'll never admit that women are irrational.

Dairy, Bitches

2005-05-17T23:54:00.000-07:00

Have y'all happened to notice a trend to my posts? Besides being exceptionally well written and full of sociopolitical banter (in the manner of Murphy Brown – how I love topical humor! "blahdiblah…the Ayatollah…") they're long as hell, aren't they? Well if you have a problem with that, I'll try really hard to care but no promises. I have a lot to say, a short span of time in which to say it, and frankly, I could give less of a crap if you like my posts or not. I like them. If they seem more like PhD dissertations (written by someone with only a vague idea of what a dissertation should look like) than your average blogspot, well, that's the nature of the beast. This is my little corner of cyberspace and I shall clutter it up to my heart's content. If you want something a little less verbose, perhaps Curious George would be more your speed? Or my little sister's Xanga. As soon as I can convince her my intentions are good, I'll post the link. I shouldn't make fun, but 13 year olds are hilarious. Okay, on to today's feminist rant!

Just kidding.

What I have to say has nothing to do with feminism, the military or big science words. I hear my regular readers breathing a big sigh of relief. Seriously yall, if I get one more IM telling me that the word oxytocin makes your head hurt, I'm going to question your college credentials. No no, today's topic is straight off the bodybuilding.com forums. We are going to discuss the evils of dairy, and why I think animal rights activists are hypocrites.

This whole post was inspired by this thread. To summarize, one of my friends asked about milk as a weight-loss tool – should she drink it, etc. Most people responded saying that milk is a great source of calcium, a high protein diet leeches calcium from bones, active women need calcium so yes ma'am, drink up. This is what I like to call the rational position. For a complete list of why we support dairy, check out the thread, I'm not going to recap here. A few other people – the minority – responded with "milk sucks, it's unhealthy, it's meant only for baby cows, omigod ur goin 2 get cancer n die lol". Now, I have no problem whatsoever with people having different opinions from mine. Different opinions are what make the world go 'round, and besides, I find ignorance extremely humorous (which is a bonus because there's so much of it in the world). What I have a problem with is people dressing up their moral or ethical codas in pseudoscientific evidence to scare the pants off other people and coerce them into the shared belief that animal products are evil. If you choose to not eat animal products, it's not because they are unhealthy (if you're trying to convince yourself that's the case, or that humans were ever vegetarians in our prehistory…well you're wrong) but because of your ethical beliefs. Be up front about it, it's not like people are going to think less of you. People believe all sorts of shit in America – that animals deserve rights and humane treatment is hardly the weirdest of the bunch.

Too many people demonize whole sections of the food pyramid. Earth to space cadets, human beings are omnivores. We are designed to require and utilize a wide variety of food sources – cutting out any one section of the food pyramid is a good way to moralize your way into a nutritional deficiency. If you believe strongly in not eating animal products, more power to you, go forth and hug some trees…but don't try to force those beliefs on others. One of the websites mentioned as evidence for why dairy is bad for you is a website funded by PETA – milksucks.com. Gee, I wonder why they dislike milk. To quote Maddox, whoo whoo, here comes the clue train, next stop is you.

I love America. People can (and do) do anything they damn well please. If you want to follow a diet where all you drink is your own urine, nobody will stop you. People may start avoiding you, but they won't stop you. It's once you start standing on the street corner preaching the virtues of this diet that you open yourself up for attack (and a visit from those nice folks in white coats). Being political (and therefore not apathetic) is something that ought to be commended – so as much as I disagree with PETA, I can't fault them for their convictions. That being said, I think animal rights activists are hypocrites. Don't get me wrong, I believe in humane treatment for Rover, Fluffy and Bessie the Cow as much as anyone, but those yahoos who bomb medical research facilities or throw blood on old ladies in fur coats? What kind of fucked up individual thinks it's okay to destroy property, kill scientists and scare the pants off some poor bluehair in the name of Animal Liberation? Haven't these idiots ever heard of peaceful protest? Jesus, go smoke some ganja and simmer down. Anybody who puts the lives of animals ahead of the lives of their fellow human beings really needs to get their priorities in order. There are people all over the world living in poverty, violence, disease, who look at the wealthy Americans fighting over FOOD and think we've all gone off our smug Western-world rocker. As Chris Rock says, "don't eat red meat? Shit, don't eat green meat."

I just think if you're going to be politically active, there are far worthier causes than animal rights to get yourself involved in. Look at the Sudan – fighting in Darfur that echoes the heinous crimes in Rwanda has been going on for two years – or hell, the entire continent of Africa where children die of diseases that American kids maybe get a day off of school for, because they lack basic antibiotics. If you want to be a hero, if you want to fight for something, go join the Peace Corps or Doctors Without Borders – leave the arguing about poultry for when the rest of the world (hell, the rest of AMERICA) is enjoying the same standard of living as you are. Protest, like obesity, is a luxury of the industrialized.

Just my two cents.

So who are you really?

2005-05-15T09:24:00.000-07:00

"I'm not sure who I am," I said cautiously.

"Many people never are," she said, quite earnestly now…"But it doesn't matter, you know. If for one moment of your whole life you know that you are, then that's your life, that moment, that's unnua, that's all."

-- Ursula Le Guin, Changing Planes

I just finished that book, Changing Planes, and I loved every word, every syllable, every punctuation mark. Her language, the GLORY of it -- I got lost in the pages (good books are like will o'wisps, you follow their lights into the marshes and if you aren't careful you might not find your way back) and couldn't put it down; I read the entire book from start to finish in a single sitting, entranced, deaf and blind to the rest of the world, as if it had faded away, as if it had ceased to exist.

I love books. (Is there anything better, honestly, than a good story? I'm not entirely positive that even sex comes close.) If I could I would move to Borders, set up shop in Barnes & Noble...most of my care packages have included things to read, as most of my friends know me well enough to know that without a book, I'd shrivel up...like a mummy or a bog person, except without the bandages or the smell of peat. (Interesting side note: did you know that mummies were used as firewood in Egypt there for awhile? That's why there aren't as many dessicated dead people as you might expect, given the Egyptian prediliction for the spooky stuff) So the immediate sense of well-being I get from just being in a bookstore...Chaz used to bundle me up and drive me to Borders when I was in a pissy mood senior year, which was often...that's part of who I am, as much me as my tendency towards neurosis, my temper, and my hair. I am a redhead who loves books. I know at least that much. I don't understand people who whine about trying to find themselves, or not knowing who they are. How can you not know who you are? You live inside your skin every day, see the world through your own eyes and live an interior life that is uniquely yours. If you don't know yourself, how could anyone else ever know you, either? Introspection, people...look into it.

I know exactly who I am, and that's not going to change. Despite my flaws (everyone has flaws, except maybe The Pope, and he might have been a real booger as a kid) I like this person that I've always been. Finally, after all this time…I accept my temper, I accept my flair for the dramatic, I accept that I have verbal diarrhea and tend to fly off the handle without giving it due thought…I accept that I'm serious and sometimes awkward, that I take things personally and that I tend to demand a lot from the people I care about. As someone told me recently, I'm a "freakin' handful!" but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Is it bad to have high expectations for our loved ones? Is it bad to be bluntly honest and call bullshit when bullshit needs to be called?

People talk about growing into their skins, growing up, growing out…they talk about "maturing" like who you are as an adult is some completely new life-form from who you were at 5, 10, 15 or 20. I disagree. Do you think you would recognize yourself if you went back to sophomore year of high school? Fifth grade? Kindergarten? Or do you think you would see seeds of your future self in the person you used to be? I think "who we are" is an amalgam of traits that we're born with, and we don't change. We age and we become more comfortable with ourselves, but we don't change. Maybe your behavior changes, maybe your way of interacting with the world, but not the essential bits and pieces that make up you.

Know thyself. Really, what would be the point otherwise?

Dropping the Ball on Title IX

2005-05-14T03:53:00.000-07:00

I'm sure most people have heard of Title IX. It's the part of the 1972 Educational Amendment that states that schools may not deny any student participation in any activity or program on the basis of sex. The 1987 Civil Rights Restoration Act further expanded Title IX to include all the operations of an educational institution that receives federal funds – so not only does Title IX protect women's athletics, but it also prevents a University from discriminating against women in housing, admissions, financial aid or health services. This article is going to focus solely on athletics, and why I'm concerned about Title IX's future given the current political climate in the Bush White House.

Why is it so important for girls to play sports? The US Institute of Medicine compiled a series of public health reports during the 1990s and released the following findings:

1. Female athletes are less likely to smoke or use illicit drugs than their peers.

2. Female athletes are less likely to be sexually active, get STDs or become pregnant than their peers.

3. Women & girls who exercise regularly are less likely to suffer from depression and more likely to have a positive self-image than their peers.

4. Women & girls who exercise regularly are less likely to suffer from lifestyle diseases like obesity, breast cancer or osteoporosis.

Let's talk facts for a minute. Since 1972, women's participation in collegiate athletics has gone up 400 percent, and participation in high school athletics has gone up 900 percent. Prior to Title IX, only 1 in 29 high school girls participated in sports. Today, 1 out of every 2.5 high school girls participates in sports, and that number is growing every year. Before Title IX, there were virtually no college-level athletic scholarships for women. In 2000, I received an athletic scholarship from Duke University to row for their Women's Varsity Crew Team. On the surface, it looks as though we're making real progress. Alas, dear reader, trouble is brewing.

Certain underrepresented male sports – wrestling, for example – have accused Title IX of forcing schools to cut male sports in favor of female ones. Title IX doesn't force a school to do anything, it just states that athletic money must be spent equitably. If a school chooses to cut men's gymnastics because they don't want to cut into their football budget, so be it. Football and basketball spending has gotten out of control. The average Division I school spends 72% of its men's athletic budget on these two sports alone. Before you argue that football and basketball bring in the money that provides the budget for the rest of the sports at a university, think again. A 1999 study showed that 58% of Division I football programs don't bring in enough money to pay for themselves, let alone any other sport. (*coughcoughDukecoughcough*) Most athletic programs that year in Division I were running at a 3.2 million dollar deficit – because of spending excesses for basketball and football players, along the lines of getting them hotel rooms the night before home games, chartering them privates jets, and outrageous recruiting practices that already have several programs under NCAA scrutiny (University of Colorado, anyone?).

So despite accusations of foul play from "minor" men's sports, women's athletics still lag behind men's at the collegiate level. 53% of students at Division I schools are female, but women's sports only receive 43% of total scholarship dollars, 36% of athletic operating budgets, and 32% of recruiting dollars. That's not exactly equitable, is it? I'm not saying Women's Crew needs the same budget as the Men's Football team, but let me give you an example from my history. While I was at Duke, the school completed construction on a brand new 80-million-dollar football building for a team that hadn't won a single game in two years – the longest losing streak in Division I history. You could've bought 10 new top-of-the-line rowing shells for the crew team, built them a decent boathouse with indoor plumbing, replaced all the wooden oars with spiffy carbon fiber ones and gotten Dolce and Gabbana to redesign the unisuits for way less than half that amount – and the Women's Crew Team had a winning record. And Duke is a school known for its support of women's athletics. Imagine what it's like at a school that isn't.

So why am I worried?

Schools show compliance with Title IX in one of three ways: 1) They show that the percentages of male and female athletes are proportional to the percentages of males and females enrolled, 2) They show a history and continuing trend of expansion of athletic opportunities for the underrepresented sex (in this case, girls), or 3) They show that their athletics programs fully accommodates the interests of the underrepresented sex (again, for the sake of argument, girls).

This last provision is the focus of a new Department of Education memo that allows schools more freedom in determining the level of interest in women's athletics. Previously, the hoops a school had to jump through were pretty intensive – they had to get recommendations from coaches and administrators, survey high school athletics participation and participation in intramural sports for their feeder schools, and use a variety of methods to gauge interest on campus. Now, the Department of Education has come up with an Internet survey that schools can distribute to students via email that will replace all previous requirements for compliance.

Let's think about that one for a minute. What do YOU do when a random survey (a random EIGHT PAGE survey) shows up in your inbox? If you're like me, you never see it because your spam folder automatically filters that sort of thing. Surveys have a notoriously low return rate, and are relatively crude – I remember, I took Stats in college. I quote my professor, "Surveys are a poor statistical tool," end-quote. So when girls in college don't return these surveys, that's going to be seen by the university as a lack of interest and be used as justification to cut women's sports programs.

Look, 18 year olds are idiots and oftentimes don't know what their interests are, except maybe beer and other 18 year olds, usually but not limited to the opposite sex. How are girls going to know they're interested in sports if they've never been exposed to them before? Interest follows opportunity. If someone asked me when I was 18 if I was a fan of paleo-pathology, I would've looked at them blankly and probably shrugged. Funnily enough, that's what I would major in two years later – after being EXPOSED to the topic and given a chance to develop an interest. Half of the girls on the crew team were walk-ons, girls who'd played other sports in high school or girls who'd never played sports at all but were willing to give it a try – girls whose interest in crew was prompted by an opportunity to join the team. Are we really prepared to take that opportunity away?

College is a business. Schools are in it to make money, and honestly I can't really blame them. Football and basketball generate a lot of publicity for the school, and publicity ups donations, makes the Trustees happy, and ensures athletic supremacy in their conference for ever after. If given the choice between playing fair and making money, schools are going to choose making money every time. This is why we have provisions like Title IX that force Athletic Directors to play fair even when that isn't their inclination. If you weaken Title IX, you make it easy for schools to start cutting women's athletics and non-revenue sports to divert even more money to already bloated football and basketball program budgets.

All I'm saying is, if a guy can use athletic ability to pay for college, a girl should have every opportunity to do the same. Female athletes should have the same access to decent equipment, away games, facilities and amenities that male athletes have. It's only fair, and after all, isn't that what sports is about? We demand it from our athletes, let's start demanding it from our Universities and above all, the current Administration – when it comes to women's athletics, everyone needs to start playing fair.

Sources:

Christine Brennan, "Keeping Score", USA Today
Sally Jenkins, "Not for Lack of Interest", Washington Post
Women's Sports Foundation, "Her Life Depends on It"

Love: A Neurochemical Approach

2005-05-13T11:27:00.000-07:00

"We were not built to be happy, but to reproduce."

-- Dr. Helen Fisher, Rutgers University

Do you believe there's one person out there for all of us? More to the point, do you define love as some sort of ethereal meeting of souls, or more as a mixture of chemicals in the brain inducing some sort of feel-good response? Is love a by-product of sex, a sort of trickery enacted on our glands by our brains to ensure the survival of our species through neurochemical intimacy? Or is love everything the poets say it is – enduring, consuming, and free from the constraints of the physical?

Let me backtrack a little. Before you get any ideas, I'm not going to spend this episode attempting to convince myself and the world at large that love doesn't exist just because it hasn't come through for me thus far – obviously it exists, there are numerous examples of love dating back to the dawn of recorded human history. Some of the first examples of early writing are in fact love poems, which indicates that the human propensity for goo-goo eyes, sappy sentimentality and marriage is a trait we probably had on our emergence from the primordial soup. The question is, WHY does it exist? What function does love serve and why did it evolve in the first place? Social monogamy serves a distinct biological purpose, so no surprises why it arose -- and before you try to argue that monogamous pair-bonding is an unnatural state enforced on modern man by a judeo-Christian ethic, think again. Pair-bonding in humans predates Christianity. In point of fact, pair-bonding is common in most primates, especially in primates like Chimpanzees, Bonobos, and well, us, that are not especially sexually dimorphic. Gorillas, which exhibit a high degree of sexual dimorphism, have harems. The male gorilla (the silverback) has his little troop of female gorillas that he guards jealously from the sexual advances of any other male gorilla in the vicinity. Chimps, on the other hand, are more like us – everybody gets it on with everybody else. Keep in mind that there is a difference between social and sexual monogamy – for the purposes of this essay I'll assume they're the same, but they aren't. No mammal is truly sexually monogamous.

Unlike many pair-bonding species in the animal kingdom (birds mostly – see the Osprey, which should serve as a model for all couples), humans aren't truly monogamous (a sad fact bemoaned by cuckholded partners everywhere) but rather engage in serial monogamy with extra-pair affairs. The scientific theory behind this is that promiscuity ensures genetic diversity in small groups – but that increased group size among human populations leads to a rise in sexually transmitted diseases (also not a new phenomenon) which curbs promiscuity. So humans live in a sort of sexual gray area, where we are primarily monogamous but occasionally promiscuous – ensuring genetic diversity while at the same time avoiding STDs. "But Sunny," you're saying, "you're talking about sex here, not love! There's a difference." Au contraire, gentle reader, is there really?

Human behavioral scientists have isolated three stages of love and the accompanying hormones that drive them.

Stage 1: Lust

You can't love somebody unless you want to jump their bones first. Testosterone and Estrogen, the hormones which fuel the baby-makin' urge, are responsible for this stage.

Stage 2: Attraction

This is the cutesy, googly-eyed stage that so annoys your friends and roommates. The chemicals involved here are dopamine (cocaine & chocolate affect the brain in the same way – in fact MRIs of people in love look more similar to coke addicts than anything else), adrenaline (responsible for sweaty palms and heart palpitations) and serotonin, the neurotransmitter that makes us go temporarily insane. People in love have been found to have extremely low levels of this chemical in their brains – a state similar to that in people with anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Obviously people in love need to be dosed with some serious anti-depressants. Funnily enough, scientists believe that people taking anti-depressants might be jeopardizing their ability to fall in love – and anti-depressants may mitigate the pain felt when one's heart is broken.

Stage 3: Attachment

This is the "you had me at hello" stage, the happy-endings stage, the Golden Anniversary stage, the grandma & grandpa together for 40 years that's heartwarming but with the advent of viagra a little disturbing stage. It's governed by two hormones – oxytocin and vasopressin. Oxytocin, a chemical related to pair-bonding, is released during orgasm by both the male and the female -- which explains why it is extremely difficult to have sex without intimacy. If some chick ever wanted more from you than you were willing to give, blame that damn oxytocin. Scientists need to get on this; if we can come up with a chemical block for oxytocin – some pill that you can take that will prevent its release during sex – then bazillions of hornballs everywhere can fuck to their hearts' content without having to worry about whether their partner is secretly picking out china patterns.

The bottom line? We become addicted to love – or rather, addicted to the chemical response that the sight/presence/whatever of our beloved induces in us…and if love is an addiction, it follows logically that there must be a cure. Rats and other seriously promiscuous animals don't have the same arrangement of receptors in their brains for vasopressin and oxytocin as we do, which means that while they feel euphoria during sex, they don't have the ability to associate that euphoria with a particular partner. Unlike us. So one would think that if we could alter this series of receptors our brains, we could wipe out sexual jealousy, attachment and most importantly broken hearts in one fell swoop – think of how awesome it would be. We could ensure the survival of our species without having to endure the pain of a broken heart or a disastrous relationship. So here's to hoping that Behavioral Geneticists are hard at work on that particular bit of genomic tinkering.

Until then, pass the Prozac.

Women in Combat?

2005-05-13T01:49:00.000-07:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/12/AR2005051202002.html

I read this article this morning, and frankly, it really got me thinking. As a female soldier, what is MY stance on where women belong in combat? Before I get to that, let's talk about how the outside world sees female soldiers.

The following story is extremely common among the Army girls I know. This particular incident happened in January, while I was preparing to deploy to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (Version 3.0). I was at the mall, looking for a pair of sunglasses that would shield my baby blues from the harsh desert sun. (You might be asking yourself, but doesn't the army give its soldiers sunglasses? Well, it does, the army gives us lots of things when we're getting ready to deploy. The things it gives us, however, are ugly. We'll discuss this phenomenon more in-depth later on.) Anyway, I walked into the sunglasses store and said to the sales girl, "I'm going overseas and I need a pair of sturdy sunglasses." We started discussing the merits of various brands, and I finally settled on a pair of Oakley's. As she was ringing up my purchase, my mother mentioned that I was going to Iraq. At that, the sales girl looked at me suspiciously. "Are you in the army?" She asked. I answered that I was, and she looked shocked. "Really? You do NOT look like you're in the army. When you said you were going overseas, I just assumed you were a model going on a photo shoot! You don't look like you belong in the army…don't you have to shave your head?"

I don't share this story because I have a big ego and I want you all to think I'm pretty. Well, okay, that's part of it. The BIGGEST motivation I have for sharing that story, however, is because it illustrates how far off the mark most people's idea of a female soldier is. Notice, in fact, that the Female Medic's hair length is the first thing the Washington Post article mentions about her. We don't have to shave our heads. In fact, according to AR 670-1, females have a minimum hair length they have to maintain. Buzz cuts are prohibited and boyish haircuts are strongly discouraged. It's bad for the Army's image if its women are running around all Amazonian. Interesting side note: did you know ancient Amazonians used to burn off their right breasts to make themselves better archers? Even back in ancient times, female warriors had to walk a fine line.

Nowadays we don't have to indulge in any mutilation (which is good, can you imagine the publicity?) but we still have to walk a very fine line as females in the military. If we're too girly, the guys dismiss us as prissy and weak. If we act too masculine (ie, eager to get outside the wire or interested in lifting weights), the guys start to make jokes about our suspect genitalia and what team we play for. If we try to be hard charging and authoritative in our leadership roles, it's all too easy to get branded a bitch. If we're too friendly with the guys, we're whores, if we aren't friendly enough we're man-hating dykes. It can be tough to get respect from the guys, and near impossible if they spent any time in a combat arms unit to get them to take you seriously. You have to know your stuff 100% of the time, you have to be a physical fitness stud (but not scarily muscular), you have to be a politician, a therapist, and it helps a LOT if you can give a good manicure. Even the combat arms guys love manicures, as SGT Konvalinka, my only female NCO, told me. "They like to feel babied sometimes. That's how I made friends when I worked with the cavalry units. I must've given 30 manicures in two weeks."

The culture of the Army is tough on women. It won't let us do any of the trigger-puller jobs like infantry, armor or cavalry scout, and it tries to keep us sheltered from actual combat...tries, but succeeds only in an administrative sense. Females can't wear the combat infantry badge or the close combat badge – not because females haven't seen combat but because they can't serve in the units that are authorized to wear them. Infantry, armor and the other combat arms branches are the coolest branches in the Army – watch any recruiting video if you don't believe me – and these are the branches which command the most respect. Females are only allowed to serve in support jobs, and since support jobs are seen as something to do if you can't hack it in combat arms, most males in the army automatically assume we're worthless. This is an attitude that's deeply ingrained – many males don't even think women belong in the Army at all – and it can be very tough to change, if you manage to change it at all.

But that still doesn't answer the question -- where do I think female soldiers belong? It's not that I don't think female soldiers can hack it in dangerous situations, because we can. We get shot at, we shoot back, we kick doors in, we guard towers...we do a lot of what the male soldiers do, but usually with shittier equipment and no air support. The problem comes in when you look at the dynamics of males and females together...out here...alone...for months on end. A lot of the females in my unit are sluts, not to put too fine a point on it. People are at it like rabbits out here, and I think that some women would be a real distraction if combat arms units were mixed. I know a lot of females who could do it, but I know a lot of females I wouldn't trust to fire a gun properly unless the dangerous end was labeled. Of course, none of that matters -- what the article illustrates well is that like it or not, we're IN combat already. Iraq is not a conventional war zone...there's no front line. All of the convoys out of the gate are vulnerable to IEDs or insurgant attacks, every area gets mortored, we're all in danger. We're doing the job, so unless you want to pull all women out of Iraq, shut up and let us keep doing it.

Birth Control and Moral Outrage

2005-05-12T05:22:00.000-07:00

What's YOUR favorite court case?

Ask anybody, and they may remember something from their high school civics class. Miranda is popular among would-be criminals, Roe v. Wade among would-be feminists, and Brown v. Board of Education is always a favorite as a hallmark case of the surprisingly liberal Warren Court.

What's mine, you ask? Why, that teensy, sometimes overlooked case on which so many of our rights hinge: Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965, a landmark decision that secured an individual's right to privacy. While ostensibly the case was about contraception and its availability to married couples, according to Justice Douglas, who wrote the majority opinion, the rights people have are more than what can be read in the literal language of the Constitutional text. Griswold paved the way for numerous decisions that have direct impact on our everyday lives:

1. Stanley v. Georgia – Upheld an individual's right to watch porn in the privacy of his own home. Jenna Jameson had a career thanks to Stanley. We can debate the yay or nay factor of that all day long, but a whole generation of pubescent boys will not be spending their formative years in jail because of this important privacy case.

2. Eisenstadt v. Baird – Upheld an UNMARRIED couple's right to use birth control. This is huge -- the case virtually secured an individual's (especially a FEMALE individual's) sexual privacy. What you do with your body is your business, etc. Is it any surprise Roe appeared the following year?

3. Roe v. Wade – Nobody can stand on a pile of dead babies and say, "Whoopee for Abortion!", but the upshot of this case is that it's not the responsibility of old farts in Washington to make a young woman's reproductive choices for her. Roe v. Wade is why we have emergency contraception today…ever had a bad scare because the condom broke? Thank Roe and Griswold and Eisenstadt for that prescription you got filled at the local pharmacy that kept your butt out of 18 years of parental hell.

But wait…

DID you get that prescription filled at the local pharmacy, or were you turned away?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4425603.stm

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-11-08-druggists-pill_x.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5490-2005Mar27.html

Pharmacists across the country are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control and emergency contraception, in some cases refusing to turn over the prescription or transfer it to another pharmacy, subjecting the women involved to lectures about their moral fiber instead.

Please join me in a collective, "What the fuck??"

These pharmacists are taking refuge in little known "conscience laws" that most states have which allow medical practitioners to refuse to perform procedures (like abortion) if they are against their religious beliefs. Pharmacists don't technically fall under the protections of these laws, but some groups are lobbying hard to change all that. Some people are seeing this as a victory for personal belief…I see it as a major infringement of my privacy, my reproductive rights, and the entire structure of personal privacy protection that we all currently know and enjoy.

The insidious thing is that conservative lawmakers aren't going after Roe anymore…it's too obvious of a target. These guys are going after Griswold, and with it the entire underpinning of our conception of privacy. If pharmacists can refuse to fill birth control prescriptions, what's next? Doctors can refuse to prescribe them? Wait, that happens too.

http://www.prevention.com/article/0,,s1-1-93-35-4130-1,00.html

This is absolutely the most appalling thing I've heard recently. Who in the hell do these people think they are? What's next? "No, you may not have your Viagra"? "I am not filling this prescription for Zithromax because you shouldn't have gotten that STD in the first place"? This is not about personal belief, this is about PUBLIC HEALTH, and NOT imposing a certain brand of morality on a woman's body when she comes in with a legitimate prescription from her doctor.

Friggin' IDIOTS.

Infantrymen and iPods

2005-05-11T10:40:00.000-07:00

So the past few days have been crazy. I mentioned that I'm a Chemical Soldier (complete with a Dragon tattoo) and maybe one day I'll tell the story of how I ended up in the Chemical Corps, but for now suffice it to say that I am a platoon leader in the 92nd Chemical Company, 92nd Engineer Battalion, 3rd Infantry Division out of Fort Stewart, GA.

The Army is divided into three types of soldiers: combat, combat support (which is what the chemical corps is classified as) and combat SERVICE support (medical & supply chains). The Powers That Be have restructured the unit organization so that all the combat (AKA "maneuver") elements are together under one commander, and all the support guys are together under one commander. The brigade my unit is in is called a maneuver enhancement brigade, which is just a fancy way of saying that we help the trigger-pullers do their jobs better. To that end, we're made up of intelligence units, a chemical unit and combat engineers. Combat Engineers normally clear minefields and breach any obstacles in the paths of the maneuver units, and are called "sappers". Our group of engineers, however, is what's called a Combat Heavy Battalion, which means they are really just a group of glorified construction workers. They BUILD things, they don't blow them up. Practically this means that there aren't any COMBAT oriented guys in the entire battalion. Why is that a bad thing? Because they keep making mistakes that the infantry guys wouldn't make. For example, infantry and armor guys are concerned with two things: their vehicles and their firepower. While philosophically I support the idea of rebuilding Iraq, particularly their medical and educational infrastructures, I was also concerned about how well the builders were going to be able to take care of the chemical company.

A chemical company doesn't usually deploy together. Usually each platoon is assigned to a different brigade (1st platoon to 1st Brigade, 2nd to 2nd, etc) and we work directly for the Brigade commander. This deployment, they decided to deploy the Chemical Company together, under a single battalion. Philosophically this was supposed to keep us together so we could better accomplish our missions, do maintenance, support each other as Chemical Soldiers, etc. Practically, this means we are the Engineer battalion's bitch. Any time some random ass tasking comes down, my company gets stuck with it. Guarding the PX (think mini-mall)? Damn skippy. Guarding the Transload (construction) site and directing traffic? Yessiree, that's us. Then, a really COOL tasking came down the pipe. An infantry unit needed 20 extra people to take care of base security.

MY platoon got the job. Now we are attached to a light infantry company out of Hawaii. What's hilarious about this situation is myself and SGT Julie Konvalinka are the only two females in the entire BATTALION...the company we're attached to is attached itself to a Special Forces unit. So you can imagine how popular we are up at battalion headquarters. ;)

So my platoon's job is to guard three towers along the West Wall of the Victory Base Complex. It's a pretty sweet deal, we have to guard the towers 24 hours a day in three rotating shifts of 8 hours each, but we have our own command post with a telephone line, a computer, a printer, etc. I have my own humvee to drive around in, "trooping the line" (checking on my soldiers) and heading up to the company headquarters to get briefings from my new infantry commander, who treats me just like one of his male platoon leaders. He's even trying to convince his battalion commander to let us go on patrols with one of the other platoons. That has about as much chance of happening as I have of making Colonel, but it's a nice thought nonetheless.

I apologize for my last extremely angsty post...I just had a hilarious conversation with a couple of my best friends and I am feeling 100% better (okay, 85%, but still, huge improvement).

Now, I might have to kill someone because some testicle-less asshole stole my iPod. It's really my fault, I left it in the bathroom on accident after my shower...I ran back about a half hour later and the bitch was gone. Well, the batteries were almost dead, so I hope whoever took it is enjoying their new paperweight. *grrr*

Ordered a new one, should be here in about a week. This one I'll handcuff to myself.

Sunny's a CopyCat

2005-05-11T07:54:00.000-07:00

I am, really. That probably would've been a better title for my blog than ripping off some Bridget-Jones-esque book I borrowed from the library (with no real intention of returning, mind). I'm not sure I've ever had an original thought in my head, but that may be more a consequence of my mood than anything else.

I'm hurting, and I don't even know why. (Well I do, but that's a topic for another post)

Most of my friends have blogs, and here I am jumping on the bandwagon. For those of you who don't know, and I'm betting most of you don't, I'm currently deployed to Iraq. Baghdad if you'd like to get specific, down to the brass tacks as my commander is fond of saying. He's fond of saying many bizarre things. One of his favorites is "warm and fuzzy", as in "let's make sure you have a warm and fuzzy about your mission". Something about my commander makes that phrase seem almost pornographic, but I digress.

I'm in the Army, and I have been for a little over a year. I graduated from Duke last May which means that this is IT, this is the life I was waiting for through four years of college. As I look out my window on a landscape that resembles pictures sent back from the Mars land rover, I try not to let that depress me. I'm taking the MCATs next April, and hopefully I'll be in medical school someplace very green that following Fall...I miss the color green. Everything here is a washed out shade of tan. I'm a platoon leader, in charge of 18 other people. We're in the Chemical Corps, which is to the Army as the Chess Club is to High School -- we're the sort of people who'd regularly get our heads flushed down toilets, if adults did that sort of thing. My platoon is attached to an infantry company though, so our job is actually pretty exciting...or as exciting as things get out here, without things actually blowing up.

As for blogging...I wonder if my generation is so desperate for attention that we're reduced to throwing open the doors to our innermost thoughts for complete strangers to see...this is probably easier than trying to make contact with another real human being. Real human beings might reject you, whereas cyberspace never will. There's probably something profound and sociological in there somewhere, but I'm not really in the mood to dissect my reasons for making my own blog. Everyone else is doing it, and that's a good enough reason to hang my hat on for now. Introspection can be such a bitch. Beware of turning over rocks, you never know what you're going to find.

This is the new exhibitionism. There's something creepily satisfying about baring your soul on such an anonymous forum as the Internet, writing things about people that you would never say to their face…hoping in a small, bloodthirsty way that they'll read what you wrote, and be hurt by it. Pretending innocence, pretending ignorance, like instigating our own drama somehow makes our lives more interesting. I have lots of things to say, and this is honest-to-God easier than finding someone with the time to listen. We're all moving at 100mph and it's hard to give a flying fart in space about other people when you're having a hard enough time keeping track your own life. Or that's what they tell me, anyway.

I'm a Virgo, 5'8", redheaded with blue eyes. I like running, weight-lifting, reading, speaking Russian and writing bad poetry to put in my away messages (passive-aggressive, doncha know). I'm writing two books (one nonfiction, one book of short stories) and applying to medical school to pass the time here...it's going by fairly quickly, quicker still as it's only 4 months til I get to come home for Morale leave. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince comes out in July as well, so I've got that going for me, which is cool.

I'll be happier tomorrow, promise. I think tomorrow I'll tell you all about my platoon mission. That is if I don't lose interest first. :)