A Healthy Alternative to Work

The Problem of Pork

2009-01-30T16:27:00.002-05:00

During the leadup to the Nov. 4 election last year, both candidates promised to take a strong stand against earmarks and pork in Congress. Now that Obama's stimulus plan has made its way through the House, it's clear to see that pork isn't going to be swept out of the U.S. government quite as easily as the electorate might have hoped.

The stimulus bill, which in its House of Representatives form constitutes $825 billion in spending, apparently is a mish-mash of some legitimate projects and a hell of a lot of pork for congress members to take home to their respective districts and purchase votes with. It's been resoundingly decried as a purely partisan piece of legislation that lacks any clear cohesive unifying philosophy, as Peggy Noonan writes for the Wall Street Journal.

To paraphrase King William "Longshanks" from Braveheart, the trouble with congress is that it's full of congressmen.

The economic crisis is a fact for the entire United States -- it's a national problem, and it has to be solved with a national perspective in mind. It's a fact of the system, however, that legislators have no motivation to look at things with the "national good" in mind -- instead, what's important to them is doing whatever it takes to impress the voters in their districts. Which, of course, means standing on some urban renewal project somewhere in BFE Kentucky and making pronouncements about how they're going to squeeze those Washington-types for more local money and drawing roars of support from their constituencies. This makes legislating in Congress look more like a game of "Hungry, Hungry Hippos" than legal craftsmanship.

Add to this the fact that the stimulus bill was already going to be gigantic, and that it was meant to be targeted at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder, and... voila, you've managed to turn the Capitol into a big Chuck-E-Cheese at happy hour.

It's futile to hope that Congress will change, and for a lot of good reasons, it ought to be set up the way it is. But when it comes to a national emergency like the economic crisis, how do you solve the Prisoners' Dilemma created when hundreds of self-interested people get into a room to decide how to divvy up a very big pie?

I suppose if I had a feasible solution, I would probably have a very nice job right now. As it is, I don't... but I will say that the unfortunate product that this stimulus bill has become shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

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A new holiday tradition

2008-12-21T13:04:00.002-05:00

I'm not certain about this, but I am ready to bet that the phrase "the War on Christmas" was coined by Fox News' enfant terrible Bill O'Reilly, who, along with his simpering, platinum-haired cohort John Gibson, have made a new Christmas tradition (as well as, in Gibson's case, a fair amount of money) out of complaining that Christmas is "under attack."

By who? Well, liberals, of course. Liberals, one is led to believe, are taking over the country in what is ostensibly a renewed effort to force homosexuality, Leninism (that's code for universal health care), and godlessness into the impressionable and as-yet-pudding-like brains of your children. Yes, they're out there, those damn Reds... and they're battling as we speak to take the Christ out of Christmas.

This, of course, is utter nonsense -- and I am of course not the first one to point this out. But let's examine the American tradition of Christmas, now as in decades past, and find out exactly how much of the Baby Jesus is apparent in the way we, as a society, have celebrated the Savior's birth.

First, there are the old traditions. There's the timing, of course -- December 25, eerily close to the druidic celebration of the Winter Solstice (December 21), which is the shortest day of the year. According to Christianity Today, December 25 was settled on around A.D. 273 after a long controversy over whether to even celebrate the Nativity at all, and was eventually chosen to coincide with two pagan holidays: the natalis solis invicti (birth of the unconqered sun) and the identified birthday of Mithras, an Iranian god considered the "Sun of Righteousness." Both gods were popularly worshipped by Roman soldiers. Church fathers, apparently eager to make the transition to Christianity (which had recently been elevated to the status of "official religion of the Roman empire") as smooth as possible, decided to pick a feast day that already was being used as one by the people.

So, in terms of timing, we've already departed from the scriptural account (which lacks any mention of a specific date anyway). How about the Christmas tree?

Well, according to the hivemind responsible for Wikipedia, the Christmas tree is most likely a derivative of a Germanic pagan tradition linked with the Festival of Lights, celebrated on the Winter Solstice. The Wikipedia entry claims further that the practice of decorating evergreen trees as part of the Christian festival was initially decried as a pagan practice when it arrived in the United States in the 19th century... but apparently, the novelty caught on and its origins in the pagan wilds of medieval Germany were forgotten, replaced with new metaphors -- the evergreen tree, rather than representing the cycle of seasons, now represents Christ's triumph over death. Fair enough -- symbols are only as good as the notions they evoke in their viewers.

On to more recent additions. In a memorable Saturday Night Live skit, Dana Carvey's "Church Lady" decries Santa Claus, pointing out (to great comic effect) that there's only a transposition of letters separating the names "Santa" and "Satan." That aside, it's with the adoption of Santa Claus that the less-benign elements of the American tradition of Christmas begin to creep into the picture.

Saint Nicholas was traditionally honored on the anniversary of his death, which is recorded as having occured December 6, A.D. 346. He was a bishop who lived in Lycia, which is now Turkey, and had a "reputation for secret gift-giving," as well as having been a miracle-worker. Older traditions of Saint Nicholas Day involved placing small gifts in the shoes that children left out overnight on December 6. Other than being a Christian saint, Nicholas (in his own Greek, Agios Nikolaos), had nothing to do with the birth of Jesus.

Christmas gift-giving ostensibly has something to do with the visit of the Magi, who are said to have brought gold, frankincense and myrrh to the Holy Family shortly after Christ's birth (their visit is traditionally celebrated January 6, on the feast of the epiphany). But Nikolaos of Lycia somehow got dragged into the mix, and this eventually was mutated into the decidedly non-Christian notion of a "kindly elf" who lives at the North Pole flying around the world distributing gifts to children who have been good all year.

Other cultures have interpreted the myth in different ways. But America's version of Saint Nick -- the plump, jolly, bearded grandfatherly-figure in red and white who works all year in his magical toy shop -- dates back only to the late 19th century (much like the Christmas tree), and was given his place in popular culture not by any church or faith, but by Coca-Cola (the company has since switched its holiday advertising mascot, and now uses polar bears).

It would no doubt be possible to make an exhaustive list of "Christmas Traditions" that have no roots whatsoever in the birth of Christ -- but hopefully, these few examples have made my point. There's very little of Christ to "take out" of Christmas in the first place, and to the extent that Jesus is remembered during the holiday, he is certainly not under any kind of real attack. The only place the story is actually celebrated is in churches, pageant plays, and in homes -- and there's nothing even resembling a credible threat to any of that (perhaps with the exception of school pageant plays, but really, how horrible would it be if those were to go away?).

What is under threat, however, is the assumption that everyone in the country celebrates Christmas in the way that Christians do. Jews, for example, who constitute a sizable minority among Americans, understandably want little to do with Christmas, and instead celebrate Hanukkah, their own festival of lights (which also has been corrupted over the centuries and now has its own cultural over-emphasis on gifts).

Simply saying, "Merry Christmas" to some stranger during the holiday shopping season -- and shopping really is what the season is about -- does little or nothing to recall the birth of Jesus, and the rest of the Christmas traditions have nothing to do with Christ anyway. Substantively, what changes if Wal-Mart or Target clerks politely call out, "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas"?

Lots, if you're troglodyte like John Gibson or Bill O'Reilly. Apparently, it's phrases uttered by store clerks that inspire the bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked, Norman-Rockwell-esque youths populating our country to ask their parents questions like, "Mommy, who was this Baby Jesus guy?" Clearly, Toys-'R'-Us employees have a crucial role to play in the catechesis of the young. In all seriousness, though, why should anyone rely on the rest of society to instill religious curiosity in children? If faith is important enough that store employees remind kids of the importance of a particular holiday, shouldn't the subject have been brought up in the home by the time a child is old enough to start asking theological questions? Or are we to believe that parents, by and large, are mute on the subject of Christ until their offspring broach the subject?

On reflection, it might even be possible to understand if this indeed were the case. Christmas, as celebrated in the U.S., runs from the "Black Friday" (which, this year, resulted in at least three shopping-related deaths) to December 24, and has much more to do with bargain-hunting than Savior-celebrating. The cherished traditions have decidedly un-Christian heritages, and Jesus has indeed been relegated to an afterthought -- but not by any nefarious liberal scheme. Indignation over the new, alleged "War on Christmas" is sheer lunacy, because it is based on a notion as fundamentally fictional as Santa's eight tiny reindeer.

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What did we learn?

2008-12-15T12:21:00.004-05:00

Well, it appears (so far) that I've survived my first semester of graduate school. Now, I suppose, would be as good a time as any to look back and figure out exactly what it is that I've learned.

The first thing I learned was what political science isn't -- it is not comparative history, it isn't advanced civics, and it isn't about rhetoric. This may come as a surprise to no one other than me, but apparently, political science is actually science -- sort of.

Even practitioners of the "social sciences" (sociology and political science, for example) are careful to note the distinction between their field and the so-called "hard sciences," such as physics and chemistry. While the "hard sciences" study the interactions of physical bodies and particles and predict their behavior, doing the same thing to human societies is a little fuzzier... humans, as it turns out, are somewhat less predictable than hydrogen atoms.

Enter statistics, which I got a great introduction to this semester. Skipping over the boring, number-y parts, the value to using things like "normal distributions" and large sample sizes is so that you can get a reasonably good predictor of behavior to a certain level of probability. There are also handy ideas like "rational choice theory," which makes it possible to do a little hand-waving ("Okay, let's just say everyone's going to act in his own perceived best interest when making choices") and aggregate behavior over a whole system. To the extent that it works, it's a useful idea.

Deeper than that, however, is the issue of a philosophy of science. What exactly is "scientific method," and what is it meant to accomplish? Are we adding to the growing pile of human knowledge, or are we merely filling out the latest paradigm by which we understand the world? That still seems to be an open question, so I don't have an answer. But it's an interesting line of thought to follow down the old rabbit hole.

I've had at least one friend suggest that these courses aren't doing me any good -- that this field of study is encouraging my left-leaning tendencies. I don't really blame her for coming to that conclusion, but it isn't the case. My professors haven't made their personal political beliefs particularly secret, but the course material is almost completely sterile of normative political rhetoric or propaganda. Instead, our readings and discussions have focused entirely on theories of political phenomena -- given X circumstances, why does Y happen? That kind of thing. The suggested answers normally involve complicated algebraic formulas, and they tend to treat the workings of political entities like parts of a car... avoiding pronouncements about what is right and wrong.

So I haven't drawn my political views from the coursework -- although I do feel as though I have a better understanding of how things work, and that understanding has helped to reinforce notions I already had.

I'm looking forward to next semester. Now that the initial shock has passed, I think it'll be easier to keep my head above water.

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Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson

2008-11-23T15:59:00.002-05:00

Since I wasn't able to find a theater near here showing it when it had its run, I only just now got around to seeing Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, the post-humus documentary on the man whose writing has served as a touchstone and inspiration to my own career and outlook.

The film is, like a lot of documentaries, an amalgam of stock photos and archival video footage, focusing mainly on the events in Thompson's life that shaped his admittedly bent approach to journalism. The directors also staged a few dramatic recreations to highlight moments of the film -- the opening credits roll to a Hunter Thompson stand-in riding a BSA motorcycle at breakneck speed down the California oceanside highway, set to a raucous soundtrack and Johnny Depp's voice, reading Thompson's sequence on "an honest run."

It's a moving picture that does a rather good job of attempting to explain Thompson the man -- as distinct from the "Gonzo" character he created for himself (exploited some years later, and during Thompson's lifetime, by Gary Trudeau's "Uncle Duke" character in "Doonesbury"). It's not altogether flattering -- Thompson's reputation had equal parts of revolutionary writer and legendary substance abuser mixed in, and there were points where the latter outweighed the former.

The interviews come from many of the people who knew him in different aspects of his life and career -- his first wife, Sandy, decries his 2005 suicide, and Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner tears up and has to halt the interview when it comes time to discuss his old sometimes-friend and sometimes-enemy's demise. But we also hear from contemporary "New Journalist" Tom Wolfe (whose Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, about Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, drew from audio tapes Thompson had made while covering the Hell's Angels for his own first book), and then-Nixon aide Pat Buchanan, who, surprisingly, had many warm (if sometimes alarming) memories of the writer. Former Sen. George McGovern (whose disastrous campaign against the incumbent Nixon Thompson followed and turned into a book, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail, '72) and singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, who took Thompson in after his first wife asked for a divorce, also contribute.

The end of the film features footage from Thompson's funeral at his Owl Farm in Woody Creek, Colorado interspersed with a younger Thompson walking the grounds of the expansive rural property and explaining how he'd like to be sent off -- he wanted his ashes fired out of a gigantic cannon, shaped like his trademark double-thumbed fist, over the place he'd called home since his move to Aspen at the end of the 1960s. This wish he was granted -- Johnny Depp, who spent three months with the "Good Doctor" prior to playing him in Terry Gilliam's film adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, reportedly financed a large portion of the funeral.

It's a good watch. There could perhaps have been more time spent on the substance of Thompson's work, but perhaps a more personal look at him as a human being is exactly what we were missing in the catalog of Thompson-related memorabilia. As an avid Thompson fan, I have to say I was moved nearly to tears by the end. I felt, once again, remorseful, that there is no more Dr. Thompson to look to for that strange mix of hilarity, rage, and madness that somehow helped at least some of us better understand the crazy world we live in.

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Pirates!?

2008-11-18T08:58:00.004-05:00

CNN.com reports that pirates have hijacked a supertanker off the coast of Africa.

NAIROBI, Kenya (CNN) -- A hijacked supertanker carrying up to $100 million worth of crude oil -- the largest vessel seized to date in an escalating regional piracy crisis -- was believed to have anchored off Somalia Tuesday, its operator said.
The Sirius Star's crew of 25, including British, Croatian, Polish, Filipino and Saudi nationals, are reported to be safe, according to Dubai-based Vela International Marine.
"Our first and foremost priority is ensuring the safety of the crew," said Vela President Salah Kaaki. "We are in communication with their families and are working toward their safe and speedy return."
The Saudi-owned vessel was seized on Saturday more than 450 nautical miles southeast of Mombasa, Kenya in what Saudi Arabia's foreign minister called "an outrageous act."

An outrageous act? Yeah, you might say that. Seriously, this is the kind of thing that seems pulled out of a summer action flick.

For a long time, it seemed to me, the term "pirate" was increasingly being shifted to people sharing music and software illegally over the Internet. Cheers to these entrepreneurial types for taking the word back!

Actually, this is pretty scary, and I'm sure the families of the crew (who are all reportedly "safe," although I think that's a bit of a stretch for the term) wouldn't appreciate me making jokes about it.

What this actually reminded me of was a conversation I had a year or so ago with my brother Zach. We'd been sitting outside talking about the world and our lives and what we were eventually going to do with ourselves, and he brought up the concept of the Merchant Marine.

"These guys actually go and fight pirates off the horn of Africa," he said.
"Wow... can you imagine how cool a job that would be?"

We decided that it would probably be extremely dangerous, but it would be a great response for when you get asked about your line of work at a bar. Further, we figured that if everything goes pear-shaped for us, we'll just have to sign up with the Merchant Marine. Fighting pirates isn't a bad fall-back plan.

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Am I dreaming?

2008-11-05T02:22:00.003-05:00

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.
-- Barack Obama, Chicago, Nov. 4, 2008

There's no easily-referenced historical anecdote to bring up right now, no comparison I could make that I think could actually sum up what I just watched happen. Barack Obama has been elected the next president of the United States.

I have this cerebral knowledge that I just watched history happen, but I'm still having a hard time getting my mind around it. Maybe I shouldn't be as surprised as I am, though. There are plenty of other places to read run-downs of why what happened really happened, and I certainly don't need to contribute to the pile -- what I can tell you is how I wound up where I am, a "blue-gummed" liberal as an Army pal from Alabama recently referred to me, stunned that my country has actually done the right thing. I hope I may be granted the indulgence of making this "all about me" for a post.

I grew up observing passionately conservative values, which I equated -- as my parents still do -- with the Republican party. I knew God was watching me in everything I did, and as I grew older, I realized that society would be better the more it fell in line with the Catholic ideology I'd learned.

I graduated in 2002 with marginally decent grades and a degree in journalism from a stridently Catholic school, still espousing those same religously-grounded notions of right and wrong, and still equating those with the Republican party -- which had led me to vote in 2000, in Ohio, for George W. Bush, the "compassionate conservative."

Still feeling some nascent nationalist rage over the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, I joined the Army a few months after graduating college. I had been utterly unsuccessful in my half-hearted attempts to find a job as a reporter, and I shipped off for basic with a contract to become a "public affairs specialist" on August 25, 2002.

Basic training was at Fort Benning, Georgia, and when I arrived, my coddled, comfortable world was taken away from me, and I learned what it was like to be afraid. I suppose that's the key to military training -- showing you constant fear and teaching you to operate even in the face of it.

Most of basic is a blur, now. But there's an image that has stuck with me: in late September, I was outside my company's barracks, trimming hedged with a pair of rusty shears on a Sunday afternoon. My battalion was located near the edge of the basic training area, and a set of railroad tracks ran past it. While I was out trying to appear busy while enjoying the suddenly pleasant weather, a long train passed by -- several locomotives towing a seemingly-endless chain of flatbed cars loaded with Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, all painted desert tan.

Our drill sergeants had told us since the beginning that we'd all be going to war within the next few months. They told us that we better listen, because if we didn't, we'd wind up being hamburger on the side of some Iraqi road (they all took it as a foregone conclusion that that was where we were headed).

Months later, in March of 2003, I crowded into my new company dayroom at Fort Meade, Maryland, to watch the beginning of "Operation Iraqi Freedom" (which was later retroactively dubbed "OIF 1") -- U.S. tanks rolled into and across Iraq from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and we saw brief video of sporadic firefights interspersed with breathless after-action commentary from battalion commanders on the ground, whose men had fought valiantly against a foe all too eager to surrender.

It took a tour in Korea with the 2nd Infantry Division and a subsequent reassignment to Fort Konx for me to finally realize what a horrible mess we were in -- war in Afghanistan had started before I'd joined, and the Iraq war was ramping up deployments of my more combat-oriented friends at an alarming pace. And our leaders were dissembling -- we'd gone in to Iraq on the assertion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and those weapons hadn't materialized. Worse, the team sent in to oversee things had hideously botched matters. All this I had been willing to forgive -- after all, I remained a loyal soldier, true to the oath I'd sworn in the Syracuse federal building some years before...

I, Ian Boudreau, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

But it eventually occured to me that the officers appointed over me, and to a much greater extent, the president of the United States -- one George W. Bush, who we've heard precious little of in the last three months -- weren't all they were cracked up to be. And the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back was Bush's failed nomination of Harriet Myers to the United States Supreme Court.

There's not much to dig up here on how I felt when it happened -- it actually seems to have stimulated a long period of inactivity (which never seems to have entirely gone away, actually). But it was a chink in the armor of what I'd up till then held as unassailable beliefs -- in American exceptionalism, in the inherent goodness of capitalism, and in our right to do pretty much whatever we wanted because of those things.

Today, I watched a country -- a people -- tell the rest of the world that we're sorry for telling it to go fuck itself whenever it doesn't get along with what our leaders want to do. Today I saw that Americans, by a large margin, are upset that we've lost standing in world opinion, that we want to get along, and that we don't want to be seen as the rednecks of the globe.

The last thing I want to do here is to take anything away from Obama, who has accomplished something that couldn't even have been conceived of 50 years ago in Selma, Alabama. He has been accused of the most fatuous group of lies ever concocted about an American presidential candidate (early on, he was suspected of being the antichrist), and Americans spoke and said "We want him anyway."

As much as it is a validation of Senator Obama's platform, it's a vote of disgust and no-confidence for the ideals the Republican party has come to espouse over the past decade. We want forgiveness from the rest of the world, because we're interested in being a helpful and benign part of it, not an opportunistic, vendetta-oriented warmonger looking to depose and hang inconveniently popular rulers in areas we have economic interests in. We care about the way our soldiers behave, and we care about whether the prisoners we take are tortured. We care about social justice, we care about the poor, we care about veterans, and we're angry that getting sick in America means going broke for most people.

And the operative phrase there is, "We Care." Maybe I'm a short-timer compared to some of the life-long protestors out there, but god!

Barack Obama is going to be our president in January, and no other explanation makes sense other than, Americans really do care.

It's late now. This could have done better justice both to Obama's win and my own history. Maybe I'll write more down tomorrow. It was an interesting night.

An Open Letter to French's

2008-10-30T22:25:00.002-04:00

Dear Makers of French's Mustard:

I've got to give it to you guys, you really have embodied the American dream -- and you've done it with a name like "French's"! Seriously, you guys have to be laughing every time you take a check to bank -- the irony is just too delicious.

Much like the mustard you create every day. It's really amazing that you've been able to make this bright yellow substance and convince us all that it's "mustard," when around the world, people are spreading spicy, brown, seedy stuff all over their krauts.

But I digress. I didn't intend for this letter to spark off some kind of mustard war between yourselves and the Grey Poupons of the world. What I wanted to do was implore you to take a different kind of action; namely, get rid of that vinegar piss that comes out of your squeeze bottles whenever I'm trying to make a sandwich.

This is 2008, guys. There are iPhones, the Internet, and space-age polymers everywhere you look. You can't swing a dead cow around in this country without hitting a Wi-fi enabled hotspot. And yet, every time I want to make a goddamned roast beef sandwich, I have to suffer through the humiliation of one of your French's mustard squeeze bottles planting a diarrhea fart on my lunchmeat.

Get on this one, guys! Come on! I know you've got the money for it -- I haven't been to a July 4th barbecue and not seen a dozen of your mustard bottles everywhere, just waiting to make a PPPPFFFFTTTTTSSSH sound over someone's hot dog. Hire some good R&D guys and get rid of that crap.

Well, that's how I feel, and I wanted you all to know about it. I don't want to come across as hateful -- I'm merely suggesting you make an improvement to an already great product. Thanks for listening.

Patriotically,

Ian

Lies and Bullshit: On the Campaign Trail, '08

2008-10-30T20:13:00.004-04:00

WHO WILL EMERGE VICTORIOUS!?

Will it be Sen. Barack "Hussein" Obama, the shadowy character who has emerged out of nowhere, whose birth certificate no one can find? The Marxist, Muslim terrorist sympathizer with ties to political dissidents in Kenya and whose father might even be Malcolm X?

Or will it be Sen. John "Maverick" McCain, the cranky old Navy pilot who calls his wife the "C-word," abuses vacationers in Fiji with William Faulkner performances and whose hobbies have included crashing fighter jets?

Well, you read it here first, folks: the answer is neither, because neither of the two men described above exist.

Phony stories about presidential candidates are nothing new. Rumors circulated about the Clinton family in the lead up to the 1992 election, and George W. Bush was the subject of much fantastical speculation in 2000.

But in a world of news driven by sites like Digg.com and the Drudge Report, these idiotic fictions are getting harder and harder to keep out of the mainstream discussion. It's end users who determine what the news cycle is -- they click on stories, moving them up in the CNN.com "most viewed" list, or they forward vicious emails around the country. Phony news makes it from coast to coast before the first pot of breakroom coffee has percolated.

For anyone interested, it's usually easy enough to demonstrate these "email forward" stories as blatant falsehoods -- you've just got to wander over to Snopes.com or FactCheck.org, both non-partisan sites devoted to identifying blogospheric baloney. But as easy as it is, and as much time as I've spent trying to convince people that Obama probably isn't the antichrist, these stories persist.

First and foremost, I think a large part of it has to do with wish-thinking. We are, by nature, not particularly scientific when it comes to things we want to believe. If I were a McCain supporter (I'm not), my initial reaction to a story that painted Obama in a negative light would be to believe it, and the same would go vice-versa. We seem tuned to filter out information that doesn't fit nicely with the worldview we already have, and anything we find that supports what we already think is automatically attractive.

So I do understand that element, but only to an extent. Some of these phony campaign stories are getting ridiculous -- beyond the point where it's easy to explain them away as simply fitting into existing worldviews. Questions about Obama's citizenship are still circulating -- even though there's plenty of evidence to show he was born in the United States, and none that he wasn't (for a great run-down of a few of these "unreported" stories, check out this item on Politico. My buddy Brad sent it to me). Attacks on McCain's military record are similarly out of order -- you can disagree with the guy, but there is simply no call whatsoever to question the integrity of his service in the Navy.

And I don't think it's the candidates themselves who are responsible for these slurs against each other -- in some cases, it's the people working on their campaigns, such as the McCain campaigner who scratched a backwards "B" in her face in Western Pennsylvania and claimed she'd been assaulted by a black man "enraged" by her McCain/Palin sticker.

But in most cases, it's just the "Joe Six-Packs" around the country, trying to weigh in on the election, thinking he or she has just found the next big story. We've arrived at the world Andy Warhol promised us, where everyone gets to be famous for 15 minutes. Normally, we seem content with viral YouTube videos, but during an election year, the contest seems to be finding out who can create the biggest, baddest meme about the election. And if it takes off, you're guaranteed press coverage... once something gets emailed enough, apparently there's no way for the networks to ignore it.

Maybe, though, it isn't about fame -- maybe it's because political campaigns are, considering the amount of hype and attention they get, perhaps some of the most boring things that go on in the world. Sure, there are the buses, the conventions, the whistle-stops and the stump speeches (and let's not forget the nail-biting debates). But to really get down to the nitty-gritty, what you're looking at is hundreds of pages of proposed tax plans and budgets. And who wants to read those? What these lies and exaggerations people are sending each other might be is a way they've found to superimpose a dramatic narrative onto something that actually bores them to tears. It's not as if everyone is making up their own stories -- but a lot of us are emailing them to all our friends. And maybe that just goes to show that we do want to participate in the election -- but that we've found the actual meat of it about as exciting as eating a bottle of Ritalin and then watching The English Patient.

Personally, I'm burnt out on it. I can't wait for Nov. 5. And I decided to STUDY this shit!

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Weekends are overrated

2008-10-19T18:37:00.003-04:00

For a variety of reasons, I spent Friday night at home drinking too much wine, which resulted in a Saturday that was characterized on my part by a hangover and hatred of the universe.

That was unfortunate, because what I'd planned to do was work on/finish a paper that's due tomorrow in my world politics class -- our assignment was to pick a data set and write a paper about it. No guidelines were provided as to length, and there were no specific instructions on what to include in the paper -- "Everything" was about as good as it was going to get.

I'd never written a data paper before. Using a method not much better than throwing a dart at a spinning globe (I've heard people sometimes plan their vacations this way -- but maybe that's just in cartoons), I wound up picking a data set called "Extra-State Wars," part of the Correlates of War Data Project, based at the University of Michigan.

I won't bore you with the details of the paper -- which involved looking at an Excel spreadsheet of 108 cases with 35 variables each -- but if you want to read it, you can email me and I'll send it to you. Maybe you're an insomniac and need a little help falling asleep, I don't know.

Precious little of it got done Saturday, so I spent most of today (Sunday) pecking away at it. I have no idea of how to use most of what Microsoft Excel does, and the analysis software normally used to examine stuff like this was far away -- in Binghamton, which I didn't feel much like driving to. So instead, I printed off the 12 sheets needed to contain the whole set, taped them together, and stuck the whole thing to a wall in my room. I then used several high-lighters to mark parts of the data I felt were important, then counted them up and plugged them into a calculator (for special effect).

The result is a 16-page pile of paper and ink that represents what I think may be the most boring thing I've ever written (unless you count this post, which at least at this point is way shorter). An informal poll I did after I finished the rough draft (Dad read it) produced positive results -- the paper was described as "scholarly, I think" by 100 percent of the respondents who said they'd read it.

I have no idea how well it's going to go over with my professor. Like I said, he wasn't very specific about what he was looking for, so my aim was to show that I'd looked hard at the information and maybe drawn an inference or two from it. I'm unsure of what else to do with it, short of folding up the high-lighted, taped sheets currently hanging on my wall and handing that in.

The underlying point here is that I'm still working on re-adapting to "school mode." Writing isn't hard for me, but writing papers isn't really like writing, at least, not in the way I've been used to doing it for the past six years. It's hard not to feel useless, too, when what you really need to spend your days doing is reading books with complicated titles and articles pulled off JSTOR and Lexis-Nexus.

Don't get me wrong, I like my current field of study -- although it's maybe a bit different than I'd been expecting. I had this idea about political science in my head -- something of a cross between a civics class and sitting around in togas listening to Plato talk about "the Republic" -- and it turns out that there's a lot more numbers and talk of "scientific method" involved than I'd initially expected.

Which is fine -- it's making me think in ways I hadn't before, which, I'm led to believe, is the whole point of "school."

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Cherry picking

2008-10-11T10:04:00.002-04:00

It's impossible to tell what's actually going on anymore.

Fox is hammering on Obama's connection to Weather Underground founder Bill Ayers, while (most) other news outlets seem concerned with the report of Palin's "abuse of power" in the "Troopergate" firing in Alaska (by the way, and I'm sure Bill Maher's already hit on this in his "New Rules" segments, but can we quit naming scandals with this "-gate" scheme? Watergate was actually the NAME OF THE HOTEL!). Meanwhile, Obama's supporters have dismissed the allegations of the candidate's connection with Ayers, just as Fox and the GOPers have already begun minimizing the significance of the Palin fiasco.

Examples of the different responses:

On the Huffington Post this morning, a headshot of Palin is accompanied by huge, red "Drudge Report" style headlines screeching the news that the probe has found her "guilty of abuse of power."

On National Review Online's The Corner, editor Kathryn Jean Lopez posted under "Confused" that she's puzzled by the furor over the report, since Palin apparently didn't do anything illegal.

Townhall.com's Hugh Hewitt ignored the Palin debacle and drew more attention to the Obama-Ayers connection, which is what some of the Corner posters are talking about this morning.

And that's just three major blogs. There are plenty more.

So if the media were bad before, they're worse now -- blogs, of course, have always led the charge, and now there are so many of them on either side that people can read enough of one angle to feel like they've actually got a clear picture of what's going on. Well, if all you read is Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, and National Review, you haven't gotten a well-rounded picture. The same goes if you spend all day on the Huffington Post and DailyKos.

Me, I have some reading to get done for my world politics seminar Monday (although not much, since we didn't get to much of what I'd read already last week), but in the meantime, I'm going to put together another cheesy horror movie live-blog. That'll probably be forthcoming later today.

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Bad news for Palin

2008-10-10T21:43:00.002-04:00

Looks like the panel looking into Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's alleged abuse of power haven't come down on her side:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (CNN) -- Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin abused her power as Alaska's governor by trying to get her ex-brother-in-law fired from the state police, a state investigator's report concluded Friday.

"Gov. Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda," the report states.

This is not good news for the McCain campaign, particularly since we're so close to V-day. McCain's already trailing Barack Obama in the national polls, which stand tonight around 51.9-46.6 percent. His attacks on Obama's past association with William Ayers seem to have backfired, and according to this CNN.com story, his hard-core followers are none too pleased... campaign journalists have reported having racial slurs yelled at them, and during a Palin stump speech earlier this week, a member of the audience screamed "Kill him!" loud enough for the microphones to pick up when the governor mentioned Obama and Ayers. "Rage" seems to be growing in the GOP base.

Eight years ago, Bill Clinton's eight-year presidency came to an end, but the protracted legal battle over the Gore/Bush vote lasted into December -- when the Supreme Court determined that Bush had won in Florida. There wasn't any kind of immediate shock or catharsis on November 5, 2000 -- nobody really would know what was going to happen for another month or so. I'm hoping we avoid a repeat of that fiasco this time around, but the tenor of the campaign has turned even more vicious this time around, it seems.

Today was the deadline for voter registration in New York, and a friend and I went to make sure we'd gotten registered. 2000 was the last time I voted -- I was in Ohio and in school, and I'd registered so I could vote for George W. Bush. That was a long time ago, and since then I finished college, did five years in the Army, worked as a reporter briefly, and have started on a new degree -- and my personal politics in the meantime have done a 180-degree turn from the conservatism I left undergrad with.

In all honesty, I agree with the late George Carlin as far as voting goes, more than anyone else. He made the point that the only time you have no reason to complain is when you DO vote... he, on the other hand, stayed home on election day, and therefore can't be held responsible for any of the incompetent idiots voted into office; whereas the chumps who go out and pulled the levers are the ones who have no right to complain about what they'd done.

I don't have much of a point here, and if I did, it was to go out and vote this November -- but I managed to shoot that point squarely in the foot with that last paragraph, huh? That notwithstanding, I do think it's important to cast votes in elections -- plus, you won't just be voting for the president, but for the state representatives, district attorneys, judges, coroners, mayors, and whoever else is looking for a job running your government. At least don't give the bad ones a free pass.

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Debate 1

2008-09-27T10:26:00.002-04:00

I only caught the end of last night's two-hour presidential debate between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. Judging from the reaction in the polls and papers this morning, though, it seems like I didn't miss a whole lot -- the consensus seems to indicate that both men stuck to their talking points, neither made any huge gaffes, and both (according to FactCheck.org) managed to mangle the truth several times each.

I was actually looking forward to the start of the "debate season," since out of almost two years of campaigning (these keep getting longer and longer, don't they?), there've been precious few times where the candidates actually have to face each other and talk about their positions. But after seeing some of last night's debate and then reading the subsequent reactions, I remembered, "Oh yeah. This is a campaign debate. Nobody's changing their mind about anything."

The editorial pages are all echoing the meme that "there was no 'knock-out' blow," and there wasn't. And pundits, columnists, and voters on both sides believe the candidate they already supported won. Republicans are saying that McCain was able to attack Obama on foreign policy (saying he was "naive" in his first reaction to the Russia/Georgia crisis -- by the way, what happened with that?), and Obama's crowd has been pointing out McCain's apparent inability to make Obama seem any less polished on world affairs, and their own candidate's strength on domestic issues.

As the debate wore on in Mississippi, the New York Yankees were beating the stuffing out of the Boston Red Sox in Fenway Park -- Cody Ransom hit two home runs and Johnny Damon hit one, leading the Yankees to a 19-8 victory over Boston... which would be great news for me, except for the fact that the Yankees were mathematically eliminated from the playoffs a week ago. The only good news is it keeps the Red Sox from the AL East title -- they'll have to make do with the wild card slot.

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Cringe-worthy

2008-09-15T23:18:00.004-04:00

Okay, I've read over my last couple posts a few times and I can't stand them. I'd delete them wholesale, but I'm keeping them up just to maintain some sense of personal integrity.

It may have been the beers I drank (before the one immediately proceeding this especially) or the classes I'm taking in high-minded theoretical models of comparative politics -- or some combination of both -- but the end result is an embarrassing mess of pseudo-intellectual, poorly-thought-out bullshit that I'm not happy I put my name on.

So what I'm doing is promising not to ever pretend to sound scholarly on here, ever again. It's annoying and pretentious and it makes me come off like an asshole.

As for an update, well -- I'm a happy guy. Things are going well. Classes are demanding but I'm starting to feel like I'm actually learning something (other than how to write like a jackass).

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Pigs and lipstick

2008-09-11T10:25:00.004-04:00

"I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals." -- Winston Churchill

"I am very proud to be called a pig. It stands for pride, integrity and guts." -- Ronald Reagan

"[A] single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute. Hence the expression, 'as greedy as a pig.'" -- "Bricktop," Snatch, Guy Ritchie, 2000

"Hey, a sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I'd never know, 'cause I wouldn't eat the filthy motherfucker. Pigs sleep and root in shit. That's a filthy animal. I ain't eat nothin' that ain't got sense enough to disregard its own feces." -- "Jules," Pulp Fiction, 1994

The poor pig does not get a very fair shake in literature. The pigs in George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) are stand-ins for communists (Snowball is said to represent Trotsky, and Old Major is said to be either Karl Marx or Vladmir Lenin or a combination of both); in William Golding's Lord of the Flies, the severed pig's head is regarded as a savage diety by the eventually animalistic boys who find themselves marooned on the island -- along with their hapless, glasses-wearing compatriot, the chubby boy known as "Piggy."

Pigs then, one might guess, are fortunate to be blissfully unaware of the metaphors we use them in. Pigs are, genetically speaking, strikingly similar to humans, so much so that their organs in some cases can be used in humans as transplants. Despite their reputation as "filthy animals," both by pop culture (see above) and religion (see the Torah), pigs are naturally rather fastidious about their upkeep and hygiene.

But their reputation as dirty, loathsome things persists, and it is as such that they are used in our present-day analogies.

"You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig," said U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, talking about U.S. Sen. John McCain's recently-rebranded campaign of "change."

Obama has since come under fire for the comment. Republican boosters (and, I'm sad to say, the news media) nation-wide have crowed that the presidential candidate from Illinois was most certainly referring to McCain's pick for vice president, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who, during the Republican National Convention in Minnesota, joked that the difference between a bulldog and a "hockey mom" was lipstick.

Therefore, the logic seems to run, Obama must have been calling Palin a pig.

It isn't the case (Obama was actually referring to McCain's economic policy and deriding him for suddenly painting himself as a "change" candidate), but that's almost beside the point. What has happened is that attention has successfully been diverted from the question of "Where do the candidates stand on such-and-such a policy" to "who called who what barnyard animal?"

This makes my current field of study -- political science -- supremely frustrating. What's the point in learning about this stuff if ("We The") people pay about as much attention to the political process as pigeons do to traffic patterns?

I'm just a student, and a new one at that, in political science. But in my first few weeks of study, the subject of voting behavior has come up in discussion. It's difficult, apparently, to accurately model voting behavior, because mathematically speaking, there's really no reason to vote -- there's no "margin." Any individual voter has an infinitesimally small chance of actually having any impact on the eventual outcome of a national election.

It follows, then, that doing any serious research into what candidate will actually influence policy the way one wants is subject to the law of diminishing returns -- you're putting more time into a choice that still has a near-zero impact. Why bother?

But people do vote, and perhaps that's a phenomenon that can't be easily represented by equations comparing x and y. People still (less so now than in years past, maybe) understand that voting is their one shot at participating in democracy -- although the time they spend balancing one choice against another may be severely curtailed.

My guess is that both parties are aware of this, and are (more or less successfully) campaigning with it in mind. It's a little frightening, since there are two months between the party conventions and the general election, and at least two of the days in the interim have been spent figuring out the importance of an offhand reference to a pig and the makeup it might wear. Out of the 54 days between the close of the Republican National Convention and November 4, that's 3.7 percent of the time... which of course is time we aren't spending talking about issues like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the country's flagging economy, energy policy and education.

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Sarah Palin's RNC speech

2008-09-03T23:20:00.005-04:00

Alaska Governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin delivered her speech in St. Paul tonight at the Republican National Convention, and I have to say I was impressed, with perhaps a couple reservations.

Her family, including the overly-scrutinized 17-year-old daughter Bristol, joined her on the space-age stage as she discussed bringing what she called "real change" to Washington. In a comment leaked to the press pool ahead of time, she dismissed charges of inexperience, saying that being the mayor of a small town was "sort of like being a community organizer... but with actual responsibilities," an obvious barb directed at Sen. Barack Obama's own relatively recent beginnings in politics.

Speaking about her own experience as Alaska's chief executive, she said she had used her veto power to save state taxpayers about a half billion dollars in costly legislation proposed by the state legislature -- but she didn't mention any of the bills specifically, which means now I have to go look them up.

She criticized Obama (and really, the Democratic Party) for allegedly planning on adding billions of dollars in tax burden to the American economy, and talked about Obama's intention of raising the "death tax" (formerly known as the "Estate Tax") and further burdening American taxpayers.

It's worth noting here that Obama's stated position on taxes is to protect tax cuts to the low and middle classes, and reverse only the tax cuts Pres. George Bush instituted for the extremely wealthy -- a rather important distinction. But when have campaign speeches ever stuck entirely to the facts?

Palin made some hay with the notion that a Democratic administration would be for "bigger government" and "irresponsible spending." Again, these are bad things, but Obama's (who she never named) stated position is to eliminate these things, too. And it's also worth noting that it's been under a Republican president and administration that the federal deficit ceiling was increased to $9 trillon (which Obama as an Illionois state senator voted against), the apparently worthless Department of Homeland Security was established, and countless billions in federal dollars were awarded in no-bid contracts (here's looking at you, Kellogg, Brown & Root and Blackwater).

This is not to say her speech was anything less than impressive. Palin spoke with confidence and poise, and I can't not like her. She has a commanding presence and voice, and, unlike Sen. Hillary Clinton, doesn't sound like an alien from Mars Attacks!. It's clear that Palin is a leader and is comfortable in that role.

On the subject of her running-mate, Arizona Sen. John McCain, Palin praised his record of service in the U.S. Navy and his steadfastness during his years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. She spoke of him, not surprisingly, as a change-oriented reformer with a maverick streak. It makes me wonder what happened to the bill he authored a few years ago that would have made the Army's Field Manual on the interrogation (read: torture) of war prisoners standard for all U.S. agencies (including the CIA, which proved to be too restrictive for Vice President Dick Cheney's tastes). McCain seems to have backed off on that position in the two years since it fizzled.

Some of Palin's material seemed designed to distance her campaign from the sitting president -- certainly a good move, given Bush's past 20 months of 33 percent or worse job approval rating. But she also made a few pandering moves, such as bringing up the stock-standard Republican paper tiger of the shadowy al Qaeda operatives lurking just beyond our borders and plotting our destruction. She derided Obama for being worried about them "not being read their rights," which drew jeers and applause from the crowd. Call me crazy, but I am and remain a big fan of due process. Oh, and the Constitution.

There's plenty more to say about the speech, but it's late and I have statistics homework to attend to. Sarah Palin is a remarkable candidate and, by all appearances, clearly cut out for an executive role. That her speech departed from or ignored certain truths is to be expected -- since, after all, this is all really just theater.

-30-

Getting the inside track

2008-08-31T22:04:00.003-04:00

I am Important. I know this because I've been getting text messages from Barack Obama. Joe Biden and Michelle Obama wrote me emails. They were addressed to me, personally, starting off with "Dear Ian."

Actually, the Obama campaign has become more like the annoying co-worker who won't stop sending email forwards. I've gotten ones presumably from all the top players in the campaign, and they're normally breathless reviews of the last night's speeches (and always accompanied with links to YouTube videos of the same), or indignant "taking the high road" rejoinders to the McCain camp's latest juvenile TV spot ("He's the most popular person in America... but he also might be the antichrist").

What they all are is marketing. Image creation and manipulation is the name of the game today -- and that extends to both sides' purported "plans" for this great nation of ours.

After eight years of George Bush and Republican boondoggles, I was only too happy to jump on board the Obamawagon. But the infatuation is now over, and I'm getting that September sinking feeling, knowing all too well that campaign promises -- whether it's Winning the War or Bringing About Change -- are all just so much hot air, delivered, often eloquently, by individuals whose sole goal is to get into office.

I'm not alone in that theory. In fact, according to a textbook I bought just last week and read the first few pages of, getting into and staying in office are the first and foremost priorities of any polticial leader. Every decision made by a politician, the authors of this overpriced book say, is designed to hold on to or gain more power.

So, posed with the ethics question, "Is it better to lie or to tell the truth," our hypothetical politician would most likely say, "Well, which one would get me elected?"

Which brings us to Sen. McCain's choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential nominee. A startling choice (if one is to believe the AP headlines), particularly since Palin is a rank rookie in American politics, whose resume still includes her service on her small-town PTA.

But she does bring a seemingly important trait to the table: she is, indeed, a woman, which apparently is all a certain bloc of Hillary Clinton supporters need to jump ship and turn Republican.

I don't have any particular problems with Palin at the moment, but it's worth pointing out that her selection to the GOP ticket shoots holes in McCain's favorite criticism of Obama -- "He's popular, but is he ready to lead?" Sure, the vice president doesn't necessarily need the leadership skills that the president does, but isn't the whole point of having a vice president so that you have a qualified person ready to take over should the president become unable to lead? I mean, if not, why not have Rebecca Romjin as your vice president?

But, as I've been pointing out at every opportunity possible, experience either matters, or it doesn't. When you're talking about potential presidents and vice presidents, the same requirements should be expected out of all of them. And to me, "experience" is a bit of an ephemeral idea, anyway. I heard someone make the claim that Palin actually has more "executive" experience than anyone else in the race -- all the rest of the candidates only have legislative political experience.

Well, okay, but I think it's fair to draw a distinction between running a po-dunk town of 5,000 and governing the "Great" state of Alaska, and governing the entire United States of America. In fact, my own feeling is that serving on the U.S. Senate would probably be a better set of "experience" for executive office than being governor of the only state where your building codes have to make allowances for igloos.

Anyway, all that aside, the point I was setting out to make here was that Palin is a marketing choice on McCain's part. She's easy on the eyes, has a kid headed to Iraq, and is by all accounts a social conservative. These aren't really indicators of the influence she'll have on policy (should she and McCain make it into the White House), but they're tags that make her marketable to a certain demographic of voters.

I feel pretty much the same way about Joseph Biden, who clearly was picked to counteract the "inexperience" Obama has been constantly criticized for. Of course, Biden is now considered a "Washington Insider" and a "good old boy," so I'm not sure where one is supposed to draw the line.

Or if you're supposed to draw one at all. At this point, I'm pretty convinced that the whole lot of them are cynical scumbags out to advance their own careers at whatever cost. I'd love to see some change -- some REAL change -- but I'm afraid that the way we have things set up, change is about the last thing we're ever going to get... at least on our own.

-30-

Bad blogger

2008-08-31T17:43:00.003-04:00

Yup, I admit it -- I suck as a blogger, and really have for, oh, the past two years or so. If you're here, chances are good that you accidentally discovered this page during a Google image search for ACUs, or while trying to find the lyrics to a Li'l Jon song I referenced a long time ago.

But that doesn't mean things here are dead. I may be shifting gears with the blog rather soon, since I'm going to be spending pretty much all my time reading about various theories in the field of political science.

I was just reading one such paper today, which conveniently happens to be written by my comparative politics professor. In it, he creates a mathematical model to predict the outcomes of party politics -- there are variables, Greek symbols, and a bunch of operations that I don't even remotely understand.

It's frustrating so far, because I feel distinctly out of my depth (which I may have mentioned below, in my last vodka-flavored post).

But the hope is that as the semester rolls on and I cram more of this stuff into my head, I'll eventually be able to start digesting it and making intelligent comments about it in class -- maybe even writing papers about the stuff. In order to help that process along, I think it might be useful to use this space as a sounding board of sorts -- a place where I can hammer out ideas or just spitball. And who knows -- maybe some poli-sci expert looking for ACUs or Li'l Jon lyrics will happen across it and provide some direction for me.

-30-

Post 410

2008-08-26T23:08:00.002-04:00

Blogger tells me that up till this point, I've created 409 posts -- which makes this 410.

That really doesn't mean a thing. But it's enough of a start to get me rolling on a new post, anyway.

I've arrived at the beginning of yet another new chapter in my life: a return to school. Monday, I began coursework on a master of arts in political science at Binghamton University, a scant 40 miles down the road from where I live now.

After only a couple days of actively participating in the program, I'm already acutely aware of the fact that my classmates (and the faculty) are academics -- members, or potential members, of the intelligentsia I have never felt much of a synchronisity with. They've all got extensive backgrounds in the social sciences... familiarity with Gauss-Markov assumptions in analytical statistics, understandings of the differences between "soft" and "hard" power, and the knowledge of what the term "rent-seeking behavior" actually means.

So I tend to feel as though I'm starting from behind the curve. I'm good at dropping a name or two when conversations turn philosophical -- I can identify an idea as essentially "Rogerian" or explain how the terms "liberal" and "conservative" both began as descriptions of different branches of the same post-Frech-Revolutionary tree -- but I'm hopelessly at sea when it comes to scientific method and the tools used in empirical enquiry, which are critical tools in the study of political science.

At least, that's how I felt when I showed up on campus for the first time. There I was, a pot-bellied, tired, ex-soldier, looking for directions on a prestigious state school filled with fresh-faced freshmen 10 years younger than me, gabbing to each other about what they expected out of school.

And after delving into the first set of assigned readings -- all treatises either attacking or defending the social science claim known as "Rational Choice Theory" -- I can feel my brain starting to turn on again. I don't pretend to understand the underpinings of political science yet, but it's certainly fun to re-examine the differences between inductive and deductive reasoning, and to look at the various ways a dispassionate researcher might examine the current conflict between Georgia and Russia.

Without any claims of being a great writer, I know this, though: I've got them schooled when it comes to putting words into sentences. These clowns know nothing about getting ideas across to people outside their field -- which might make for an interesting research paper in itself. I may not know how to plot a curve on a Cartesian table, but I can at least express my lack of knowledge in a way that makes some sort of sense.

But I've gained at least one insight: my understanding and feelings about politics have, up to this point, been rhetorical in nature. That's kind of a loaded word, so what I mean is this: I've listened to arguments, and aligned myself with whatever argument I feel takes into account the most variables and offers the best solution -- in its own terms.

That's a little weird, even for me to go back over and try to make sense out of. But the point is this: till now, nothing I've understood politically has ever been based on any scientifically testable data. Evidently, this is exactly the problem I'm going to be fixing over the next three semesters, and truth be told, I'm both incredibly excited and hopelessly intimidated.

I now have a desk under the Glenn Bartle Library (South), where I am apparently free to keep books, and am informally expected to spend the balance of my time while enrolled in the Binghamton University Graduate Program. I'm looking at two months of being totally broke until my G.I. Bill benefits kick in, but once that happens, I'll be free to completely delve into devotion to study and academia -- which hopefully will mean more faithful updating of this poor blog.

They tell me I should look at this as a 9-5 job. I've had those -- which have typically been more demanding than "9-5." Whatever the case, I'm excited about this new step (which I'm not paying for -- thank you, five years in the Army), and while I'm admittedly nervous, it's certainly the "right" direction to be moving in.

More soon....

-30-

Best man speech

2008-07-08T18:51:00.003-04:00

I meant to post this a while ago. My brother Zach got married a couple weekends ago, and he asked me to be the best man. Naturally, I was honored, and I was given the traditional task of making a toast during the reception. Here's what I said (more or less).

As his older brother, I've known Zach for at least as long as anyone... with the possible exceptions of Mom and Dad, who technically met him before me.

I don't want to take up too much time here, but I wanted to tell you all a little about Zach, and why I'm very happy to be able to be here for this great day in both his and Kristen's lives.

We've been friends since the very beginning, in Wenatchee, Washington, where we were both born. Growing up, we did everything together. We'd spend our days building forts with the sofa cushions in the house, sledding down into the "Weeds" near our house on Canyon View Place, or climbing into the tree house Dad built in the willow by the driveway.

One thing eventually became clear about Zach -- that he is absolutely single-minded in purpose when he decides to do something. Over the years, this has occasionally been mistaken for obstinacy or stubbornness, but the fact is, when Zach wants to accomplish something, he does it.

A couple examples. As a teenager, Zach decided to learn how to play guitar. He started on Dad's, learning chords and picking patterns bit by bit. For his sixteenth birthday, Mom and Dad got him a beautiful Gibson Les Paul (that's an electric guitar, if you're wondering). After that, it seemed like he'd disappeared. We thought we'd never see him again -- but we certainly could hear him. He stayed in the basement with that guitar and an amplifier for hours on end, practicing, practicing, practicing. Eventually, he was playing licks from Guns 'n' Roses and Van Halen with note-for-note accuracy.

It wasn't long ater this that Zach decided to get into shape. Neither of us had been particularly athletic growing up -- we'd generally chosen Legos over soccer balls. But Zach apparently woke up one day and decided to lift weights -- which is exactly what he did. Every day, he was in the gym pumping iron, until he had transformed himself. I got a chance to experience this first hand once when I came home from Franciscan during my freshman year. Zach and I got into our only fight, and I was very soundly beaten.

Zach's determination is clear now from his decision to start off on a new career. He wasn't happy about what he was doing in the mental health field, and one day not so long ago, he decided to go into marine biology -- just like that. And he's done it. He's managed to turn his career around and start working in a field he really loves, and I respect that decision -- and the determination it took to pull it off -- a lot.

The reason I bring up these stories is partly to show why I've always had an admiration of my younger brother, but also to illustrate why I think he's going to make a terrific husband.

Zach and I haven't had much time together over the last few years -- our careers have taken us in different directions and to different places. But it has been reassuring for me to know that he has Kristen in his life now. I don't know of another couple who is easier to be around, or who seem more suited for each other than these two. Kristen has been an ideal friend, partner, and co-conspirator for Zach, and now, some eight years after they met, I find it difficult to imagine them apart from each other, and I feel very happy to be here to send them on their way into their life together as husband and wife.

So, thank you, Mr. and Mrs. M_____, for hosting this beautiful event, and thanks to everyone who has come, some from very far away. And I think I can speak for everyone here when I offer you, Zach and Kristen, my warmest congratulations and wish you the very best of luck. Thank you all. Cheers.

Congratulations, brother. Catch me a lobster.

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Death by Commencement

2008-06-29T14:58:00.004-04:00

This may come as a bit of a surprise for some people, but being a reporter for a small-town daily newspaper isn't all glitz and glamor. Sometimes you find yourself at events you have little or no interest in, and in many such cases, there's a good reason for not intending to attend.

How about an example? Sure. This Saturday, it was my turn to work. For the Saturday edition, what typically happens is copy from Friday afternoon is used to fill the local pages. Since we go to press around noon, there's not much time to pull things together the same day. The stories written by the Saturday reporter are kept in the queue for Monday's edition. Friday, I'd discussed coverage with my editor, and he'd wanted me to cover two things: first, a local high school commencement ceremony, and next, a memorial service held for a woman who was murdered last month.

The second item we can safely set aside for now. What I'd like to discuss instead is the atrocity against the human nervous system that was the high school commencement. "Boring" does not describe this event, since the word fails to conjure up the anger, fear, resentment and hatred generated in me -- and, I believe, many of the other onlookers -- at this ceremony.

It's not as if I had high hopes. Commencement ceremonies are boring even for the people receiving diplomas, to say nothing for their poor friends and relatives who have been guilted into attending. And for hungover reporters who have no connection whatsoever to the graduation, they're murderous to begin with.

And everything was right on track Saturday morning. I spoke to a few students outside -- my angle was, "What are you looking forward to most, and what do you fear the most, about post-high school life?" It was supposed to be a look at how today's high school students view the world and society around them -- a pretty safe premise for a very run-of-the-mill sort of story.

The problem with my thesis, such as it was, was this: high school students don't view the world and society around them. So as the ceremony began, I was 0-3 for useful quotes.

Then the ceremony, which was held in the state university's basketball arena, got underway. The band played "Pomp and Circumstance," the graduates, who wore purple robes and mortarboards over camouflage shorts and flip-flops or dirty basketball sneakers, filed into their seats. It was all very pro forma, and apart from the mild hangover, I was doing fine.

But after the principal's welcome and the salutatory, the gates of Hell opened and issued forth the worst speech ever foisted upon human ears. One of the school's gym teachers had been selected by the graduating class to give the commencement speech, and I hope the whole lot of them realize what a horrible mistake they made.

For 40 solid minutes, this woman rambled on about setting goals, creating strategies, and pursuing dreams. She encouraged the graduates, in the vaguest way possible, to accept defeats as learning experiences, reading from her notes with the emotional range of a metronome.

The entire speech -- or, at least the parts I could bear to listen to -- was made up of warmed-over cliches found in inspirational day-planners and Chicken Soup for the Soul books.

"Ask yourself, what are you passionate about? What do you want to do with your life? What are you good at? What's your game plan? What's your strategy?" she said, miraculously offering no insight whatsoever to the 177 graduates.

I wrote this in my notebook: "A tea kettle, when it's up to its neck in hot water, sings its best song." Next to it, I drew an arrow pointing toward the quote, with "Someone actually said that" written at the other end of the arrow.

Looking at my watch, I saw that 20 minutes had gone by. It had felt like a lifetime, and I was going from simply bored and distracted to incredulous and angry.

I sent a text message to a friend: "The list of things I would prefer to this includes being dragged through a cancer ward by my eyelids."

Walking out back, where I could still sort of hear what was happening inside, I ran into a man -- probably a father or uncle of one of the graduates -- smoking a cigarette.

"This is unbelievable," I said, not knowing how else to address the situation.

"Yeah, she just won't stop," he said. I lit up a Camel and looked back toward the building, where the crowd of hundreds was still being subjected to the verbal version of the Ice Age. As furious as I was at having to be there, I still felt a few pangs of sympathy for the parents, friends, relatives, and even the graduates themselves, who were locked into the seats they'd chosen.

As time went on, the speech continued, and gradually, people started leaving the building. Some came out to the area I was standing and lit cigarettes, and others with kids in tow moved toward their cars. I couldn't hear the actual words of the speech any more, just the dull, monotonous meter of the speaker's voice, reading line after line in the same droning cadence she'd started in.

When the commencement address finally ended, it occurred to me to check the stands for casualties who had succumbed to terminal boredom, but I was interrupted by the school principal, who decided to read off the names of scholarship recipients in a voice that would have been more at home at a midget pro wrestling extravaganza. Since there is apparently a new policy that demands every student must receive some kind of award, this went on interminably as well, and I remained outside smoking and wondering what poor life decisions I must have made in order to wind up in this horrible place. More audience members were trickling out of the doors, trying to make stealthy escapes to their cars in the parking lots on the other side of the building.

At long last, the ceremony ended and the purple-robed graduates filed out the large doors at the rear of the basketball arena. I spoke with a few -- one, who wore large earlobe stretchers, told me he planned to become a tattoo artist. Others told me they were going to the local community college and eventually wanted to become dental hygienists. Others said they were looking forward to "new beginnings" and "making new friends."

Almost three hours, and this was it? Yes, apparently... that was about all I got from all the graduates I spoke to. But I suppose I can hardly blame the kids. After that soul-crushing speech from one of their teachers, I can't even begin to fathom how they made it through high school without being voluntarily lobotomized.

So the lesson here is this: Next time your job requires you to attend a high school commencement ceremony, just quit and move to a new town. It'll be much less painful.

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Concert, up too late

2008-05-23T09:21:00.004-04:00

I went to see Scythian at The Haunt in Ithaca last night. The guys put on a great show -- initially, they'd planned on playing a quick set and hitting the road, since so few people had shown up. But by the time they'd gotten about 40 minutes in, a good-size crowd had gathered, and the band played on, shutting the place down at 1 a.m.

Afterwards, Joey, Dan and Nathan came back to my folks' house in Cortland, and we spent a while watching Darkness videos on YouTube, eating hummus, and telling animal jokes.

Around 4 a.m., Joe told me, "I'm dark and excessive. You're excessively dark."

It's amazing how every so often someone can sum things up with incredible accuracy and economy of words.

Which reminds me, I have some 40 pages of Scythian-related interviews and narrative that I need to boil down into something meaningful at some point. It's been sitting in my computer and weighing on my conscience for at least six months now.

Fortunately, we reigned it in last night and were responsible citizens. The bad news is that I only got about two hours of sleep before I had to head out for police beat, so I'm feeling a bit punchy this morning.

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Burn it

2008-05-12T18:54:00.002-04:00

Despite his nearly insurmountable delegate lead in the race for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is trailing Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) by about 40 percentage points in that bastion of free thought known as West Virginia, where residents will cast their votes Tuesday in the state's democratic primary.

Why? Some quotes from some of Mingo County's itinerant scholars:

“I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife’s an atheist,” said Mr Simpson, drawing on a cigarette outside the fire station in Williamson, a coalmining town of 3,400 people surrounded by lush wooded hillsides.

...

Most people questioned said they mistrusted Mr Obama because of doubts about his patriotism and “values”, stemming from his cosmopolitan background, his exotic name and the controversy surrounding “anti-American” sermons by Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor. Several people said they believed he was a Muslim – an unfounded rumour that has circulated on the internet for months – despite the contradiction with his 20-year membership of Mr Wright’s church in Chicago. Others mentioned his refusal to wear a Stars and Stripes badge and controversial remarks by his wife, Michelle, who described America as “mean” and implied that she had never been proud of the US until her husband ran for president.

...

Josh Fry, a 24-year-old ambulance driver from Williamson, insisted he was not racist but said he would feel more comfortable with Mr McCain, the 71-year-old Vietnam war hero, in the White House. “I want someone who is a full-blooded American as president,” he said.

We all know that "full-blooded American" is West Virginian for "white person," right? And I wonder who Mr. Simpson "heard" the rumor that Obama was Muslim from -- maybe it was from the state's senior democratic senator, Robert Byrd, who got his start in politics in the Ku Klux Klan?

The good news, I suppose, is that the nomination isn't going to be decided by any kind of "democracy" at all, but by mysterious people known as "superdelegates" who nobody knew anything about before January this year. While that's somewhat disenfranchising, it's a bit of a relief given that it'll keep the dolts in that intersection of the Rust Belt and the Bible Belt from having anything to say about who's running the country a year from now.

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Eureka -- I've found it!

2008-05-11T15:23:00.004-04:00

It's been a long, hard journey, but I have found it: the worst movie ever made.

Throughout the years, various critics have compiled lists of what they consider the worst movies ever. I've seen many of these pictures, which are indeed bad, but all have paled in comparison to the steaming pile of dogshit that is Cannibal Holocaust 2.

Before you point this out, I'll acknowledge that you're right -- anything called Cannibal Holocaust 2 really wasn't shooting for the Academy Awards in the first place. But this movie moves beyond the fun, party-atmosphere badness provided by sheer camp and exploitation and elevates awfulness to an entirely new plane of existence. I'm unsure if I even have the vocabulary necessary to explain how truly god-awful this film is.

Okay, some background information. First, I only recently became aware of what is now known as the "Cannibal Boom" of the late 1970s, during which directors (almost exclusively Italian) churned out a surprising number of cannibal-themed movies to grindhouses and drive-ins across the U.S. Cannibal Holocaust, which made its way to theaters in 1979, was considered the grisly pinnacle of the short-lived trend -- and it also was the first movie (at least that I know of) to use the faux-documentary style (a la The Blair Witch Project and, more recently, Cloverfield and Diary of the Dead) to lend the film an air of realism.

It inspired a host of knock-offs, including the thoroughly unpleasant Cannibal Ferox and, naturally, Cannibal Holocaust 2.

The original Cannibal Holocaust is gruesome almost all the way through, and I'm not proud of having seen it when all is said and done. But it's Bridge on the River Kwai compared to the sequel, which begins in a Brazilian courtroom where a young woman is on trial for murder. The majority of the action takes the form of flashbacks as she provides testimony detailing the murder (and decapitation) of her parents and her subsequent abduction by a tribe of "headhunters." As the story -- such as it is -- unfolds, she eventually falls in love with one of the tribesmen and exacts revenge on her parents' real murderers (who aren't the natives at all... that's a spoiler, but I'm not ruining this for anyone, because hopefully you will never, ever waste the hour and a half watching this piece of celluloid garbage).

There's not much else to it, really. Being one in the long line of Italian horror exports, it's horribly dubbed and the acting makes your local elementary school's last Christmas pageant seem like something fit for Carnegie Hall. The heroine narrates some of the scenes and provides the kind of commentary you'd expect from the explanatory boxes in Archie comics. The whole thing is remarkably boring, and winds up being something of a fake documentary on a tribe of people who do not exist. The film also has an almost childlike racism to it.

In short, this is a film that has absolutely no redeeming characteristics. It's awful from start to finish and from top to bottom. And it's so boring that you can't even laugh at the hideousness of it.

I'm not sure what it is, but I have a certain love for truly horrible movies -- I got kicks out of obscure camp horror movies like Slugs and Blood Beach, and the Friday the 13th movies are a hoot. For whatever reason, a movie can at some point move beyond bad and into this weird "good" category, where you enjoy it for its hilarious awfulness. However, Cannibal Holocaust 2 moves beyond bad, skips over that weird "good" category, and dives headfirst into a whole new level of horrid.

I had read that it is considered the last of the cannibal movies, and now I understand -- Cannibal Holocaust 2 was actually bad enough to destroy an entire subgenre of film. That sounds like exaggeration, but trust me, it isn't.

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Sunday night rumination

2008-04-27T20:09:00.003-04:00

Today I read back through some of the posts I've written here years ago -- some news analysis from back in 2005, specifically.

Then I clicked back to the current posts -- and the only things I've really had the energy to write lately are "live blogs" of rotten horror movies... which I haven't even had the patience to really finish.

And it's not as if there isn't anything to write about. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are still squabbling over the Democratic nomination, there are still wars going on (we hit the grim milestone of 4,000 U.S. troops dead some weeks back), and the American economy is poised to take a headlong trip down the shitter. So where's my excitement? Where's this urge I once had to throw in my two cents about everything?

I think the problem, at least in part, is that the Problem is too big. As a people, we Americans are too complacent, lazy, ignorant, and comfortable to be bothered with anything -- at least for more than five or ten minutes or so. And there's just too many huge issues to try to take on: the epic failure of the current administration is a good example. Where do you start? The war? The collapsing value of the dollar? The fact that Americans are now pariahs wherever else we dare to venture in the world? The decline of our education system despite promises of "No Child Left Behind"?

On that last note, a friend of mine told me she'd recently read a study that showed that some 40 percent of high school students now use "emoticons" on text-script in their homework assignments. She's a teacher, and said she'd just graded an assignment that included "idk" as an answer. For the un-unenlightened, that's cellphone-ese for "I Don't Know."

I'd be more inclined to cobble some thoughts together on the presidential hopefuls who are crisscrossing the country at the moment hoping to shore up enough support to get elected in November. But unfortunately, the three of them -- McCain, Obama, and Clinton -- all appeared in videotaped messages at the WWE's Monday Night Raw this past week. I lost all respect I once had for Obama as soon as I heard him say, "Can you smell what Barack is cookin'?"

More importantly, I've lost all remaining respect I had for American voters. All three of the remaining (viable) candidates have large campaign staffs whose job it is to tell them where to appear and what to say to have the maximum impact on the electorate -- and all three agreed to appear on Monday Night Raw. This indicates to me that American voters have been measured as perhaps the stupidest demographic on the planet, vying with sub-groups such as "NASCAR Fans," "pre-frontal lobe lobotomy patients," and "Crossing Over viewers" for the coveted bottom slot.

Be that as it may, I've basically had it with being an American. I don't want to be associated with a people who need presidential candidates to appear on a professional wrestling/gay ballet show to get them excited about voting.

I'll end on that note, because I really don't know where else to take this. Current events are just depressing, so maybe for the time being, I'll stick with old horror movies.

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Another old-school horror movie live-blog

2008-04-22T07:01:00.005-04:00

This is always fun – I pop in an old horror movie, and write down my thoughts as the film unfolds. Tonight, it’s Dario Argento’s Suspiria, regarded as one of the scariest movies of all time.

Suspiria is dated 1977, and is apparently the first in some trilogy about evil mothers. It’s supposedly a legendary horror film, and it features music by the Italian rock band “Goblin,” who also provided music for several of Argento’s buddy George A. Romero’s zombie pictures (Argento’s daughter, Asia Argento, is an actress who had a lead role in Romero’s latest zombie apocalypse movie, Land of the Dead).

I’ll admit that I didn’t think of doing this until I’d started the movie up and gotten about nine minutes in, so here’s a synopsis of the first little bit. And be aware, there are spoilers coming up.

An American ballet student, Suzy Banyon, has decided to study at a prestigious school in Germany. She arrives (after some storybook-type narration over the opening credits) around 10 at night, and catches a cab to the school during a torrential downpour. When she arrives, there’s another female student fleeing in terror, and Suzy isn’t allowed into the building. A voice over the intercom tells her “Go away! I don’t know you!”

Suzy gets back into the cab and heads for a hotel, picking up the woman fleeing through the woods on her way. The two hole up in a very strangely-decorated hotel, and the German student tells Suzy that she must escape from the school – but for reasons that she couldn’t possibly explain.

“It’s too… fantastic,” she says, unhelpfully.

While she’s getting set for bed, a window in the bedroom flies open, scaring her. Suzy tells her to calm down… which puts us at:

00:09:20 – The girls are milling around the hotel room, and the tense Goblin music is building. Something bad is going to happen very soon, and if Dario Argento’s reputation is anything to go on, it’s probably going to be very gory.

00:09:55 – Blonde student is approaching the open window. This is never good.

00:10:27 – Huh? Nothing’s happened yet, but the musical tension hasn’t shut off. Blondie seems intent on hanging out right next to this window. Where’s that Alan Brooks character from The Trollenberg Terror? He’d get her mind off her troubles with a healthy shot of Scotch from his trusty flask.

00:10:39 – Nervous inner-monologue from the German girl: “Must… open… scary… window… for no… apparent… reason…!”

00:11:08 – Woah! Creepy moment Number 1: While dummy is staring out the window into what seems to be a loaded clothesline (who leaves laundry out on a line in a monsoon? And who has a clothesline up right next to the ninth floor of a hotel? What the hell is up with Germans?), she holds up a lamp to the window, and two weird disembodied green eyes suddenly stare back at her. Since this is a horror movie, and we couldn’t have two characters discussing and rationally dealing with something that screwed up, I’m afraid Miss German Dance Student is not long for this world.

00:13:40 – Well, I certainly called that one. The killer is apparently a somewhat hairy man’s arm, which comes out of nowhere and forces the German girl’s head through the glass window (she never really got around to opening it). Suffice it to say that she is now very, very dead. To top things off, the Killer Arm drops her through a stained-glass window on the roof, and the falling glass manages to kill another woman who happened to be standing in the lobby. That puts our body count at two, and my estimate on gallons of red-dyed corn syrup used so far is three.

00:13:47 – Cut to the next morning, and a blind man with a seeing eye dog and a fixation on the early Beatles’ wardrobe is wandering around the dance school. I need to pause right here and point out the fact that blind people really got a pretty bad rap in movies up until, say, Scent of a Woman. This dude is walking around as if he just now lost his sight: head tilted back, mouth agape, flailing around with his red and white cane (despite the placid presence of his guide dog, which you’d hope would keep him from having to whip that thing around so much). Anyway, let’s see what this dope is up to.

00:14:12 – Hah! Unintentional comedy moment number one: Blind Dude has just tied his dog up to the bike rack outside the school’s main entrance. In the seventies, you apparently could smoke your face off inside, but don’t bring your damn seeing-eye dogs in. Or maybe Blind Guy thinks he’s a cowboy, and that he’s just tied Old Silver up to the trough outside Poot’s Saloon in Tombstone. I have no idea. Actually, based on the way he’s dressed, I’d expect him to be singing “I Want To Hold Your Hand” on the Ed Sullivan Show.

00:14:32 – Suzy shows up at the school right on Blind Guy’s heels. She clearly is unperturbed by the fact that her roommate was yanked through the bedroom window and given a working-over with a set of Ginsu knives last night, because she’s sort of moseying calmly toward the door, seemingly enjoying the nice morning weather. This time, she doesn’t screw with the intercom, and just heads right in.

00:15:22 – Inside is a blue atrium filled with students and instructors. One of the instructors is a severe-looking woman who inexplicably has the mouth of Ed McMahon. She introduces herself as Miss Tanner, and asks Suzy why she didn’t show up the night before. After Suzy explains the locked-door-and-hostile-woman-on-the-intercom situation, Tanner apologizes and takes Suzy over to meet Madame Blanc, the vice-directress. “She was a very famous ballerina,” Tanner explains toothily. Blanc is an older woman in what looks like a 1940s cocktail gown, who is talking with three guys in suits.

00:15:38 – Blanc’s first impression of Suzy seems good, if creepy: “You’re pretty. Very pretty,” she says. Suzy actually looks a lot like Marian Ravenwood from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Different actresses, though. As it turns out, the guys she’s speaking to are police officers, who are investigating the rather elaborate deaths that went on last night. I may have screwed this up, because Suzy seems to not know anything about the death whatsoever – only that she saw a girl running away from the school that night. I guess the two who died were both students… anyway, Suzy’s at the school, and Tanner takes her for a tour.

00:17:45 – The molarific Miss Tanner explains that the school doesn’t teach students to dance, because the assumption is that they already know how. During this conversation, a large servant passes them on the stairs. His name is Pavlo, and he might be the brother of Sloth from The Goonies. Apparently, he’s the general handyman at the school, and it’s perfectly acceptable for students to tell him how horrible he looks, because he only speaks Romanian. Pavlo looks a little crestfallen at this explanation from Tanner (but who can tell for sure? He looks like he’s capable of maybe three distinct expressions). He’s high on the Obvious List of possible dancer-slicers.

00:19:02 – Tanner shows Suzy to the locker room, where the other students are getting ready for class or something. Tanner tells Suzy to borrow a pair of shoes from someone who has two pairs. After she leaves, one of the students saunters over to Suzy and introduces herself as Olga, in a distinctly American accent. Apparently, she’s who Suzy is going to be rooming with off-campus. She seems to be out of her mind, and after Suzy meets another student, Sara, Olga observes that names that begin with the letter “S” are the names of snakes. “Sssss! Ssss! Ssssss!” she hisses. I guess now we know why this one wasn’t up for the Oscar in ’77.

00:23:29 – Back at Olga’s place, Suzy finds her room. An Italian guy – also a student, apparently – brings up her suitcases. He’s apparently got to get back to the school, since he lives on campus and “can’t be late for supper.”

00:23:39 – At the school, students are dancing ballet steps all over the place. Wonderful.

00:24:59 – Madame Blanc shows up and tells Suzy that her room at the school is ready, and free of charge. Suzy says she’d rather stay with Olga, and after some attempt at coercing her to change her mind, Blanc tells her it’s her choice. After the brief exchange, Miss Tanner creeps up behind Suzy and says, “I had no idea you were so strong-willed. I see that when you have made up your mind, nothing will change your decision. My compliments.” She grins, and I think she should be holding a giant Publisher’s Clearing House check.

00:25:46 – On her way down the hall after class, Suzy runs into a strange old woman polishing a crystal, as Madame Blanc’s odd little nephew stands by. As the woman polishes the crystal, it begins to glint, and suddenly it glows white, stunning Suzy. The lights go all weird, and Suzy manages to continue down the hall – looking as if she’s about to barf.

00:27:42 – At her next ballet class shortly afterwards, Suzy tells Sarah she’s feeling a little weak. She lets the grinning Miss Tanner know, who tells her to try the step anyway. The blind Beatle from earlier turns out to be the school’s piano player. Instead of wearing the normal sunglasses, he’s got what look like a pair of welding shades on, and he still looks like he’s just getting used to being blind. Suzy tries to dance along, but passes out – with bright red blood seeping from her nose and mouth. Why is it that horror movie blood looks nothing like actual blood? I mean, this stuff looks like red paint – which is probably what it is. Couldn’t they make it darker? And do I need professional help for this?

00:30:35 – Suzy’s taken to her room in the school – ah, so it was all a plot to have her move in! – where Miss Tanner is forcing her to drink water out of a crystal jug. The weird old lady is in the room, arranging Suzy’s possessions, which apparently Olga was kind enough to bring by. The doctor – if he is a doctor – says she’ll need some time in bed, plus plenty of peace, quiet, and bland food.

00:32:17 – Oh, and wine. Apparently, the professor – who is also some kind of doctor – has told Suzy that wine will be a part of her diet, because it “builds up the blood.” It’s constantly amazing to me how social attitudes toward alcohol have changed so much in the past couple decades. You watch a movie from the ‘70s or before, and alcohol was this ubiquitous thing that everybody just had as part of their daily lives. Now, anyone in a popular movie who drinks is usually a sad, sad case. The moral of the story? Well, apparently our parents were total drunks.

00:33:33 – Gross. Suzy has just found worms or maggots or something in her hair.

00:33:51 -- …which apparently dropped from the ceiling, which is covered with them. Gross, again.

00:35:33 – The maggots apparently were coming from a crate of food in the attic, which, Madame Blanc explains later, was ordered from what they believed was a reliable source. The story is that the food spoiled and drew the flies, which then dropped the maggots down through the cracks and onto the school’s shrieking female population.

--:--:-- — Okay, I don’t care if this movie is a horror classic. It sucks. That, plus pausing it every minute or so to write up my own commentary makes it take about three times as long to watch. I’ve had it. Just so you know, the dance school turns out to be a front for a coven of witches. Nothing else gets explained, you never find out who the killer is, and Suzy kills the big bad witch at the end. Oh, and the stupid piano player gets killed by his own seeing-eye dog.

The lesson I’m taking away from this is that the Italians should keep to making pasta, fast cars, and Coliseums. Leave the horror movies to the U.S. – they’re more our speed, anyway.

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Epic blockbuster dream of the summer

2008-04-19T08:04:00.002-04:00

I woke up this morning after having a remarkably Michael Bay sort of dream -- there was something about huge alien spaceships crawling out of the water and abducting people and performing experiments on them, but the experiments were more social than physical. For example, I think in one of them, the aliens (who I never saw, it was all robots) gave abductees whatever addictive substance they wanted. People would go aboard and get offered beers or heroin.

The weirdest part was that the whole thing seemed like it was shot like a summer action movie. There were wide establishing shots, and images from the sky of the space ships causing huge tsunamis in the cities where they came ashore. I'm pretty sure there was a closeup shot of Will Smith standing on a golf course saying, "Oh, shit" at one point.

The other day, I was talking with a close friend of mine about how intolerable long, drawn-out dream stories are. I remember hearing Greg Behrednt talking about it (this was back when he was a comedian, before he took a job as daytime company on television for housewives and shut-ins). He said there are two kinds of stories you probably want to think long and hard before telling: the dog/pet story ("Unless part of the story is that your dog started speaking Spanish, you might not want to tell that story") and the dream story. His point was good -- that dreams are amazing, they can be spectacular or horrifying, and they can leave you reeling.

"Here's the thing about dreams, though -- they didn't really happen," Behrednt said, pointing out that this is another kind of story you generally don't want to hear from other people, so you should avoid telling them yourself.

I think he was right, but I think it's more applicable to that kind of dream storytelling that involves a lot of time and explication. I mean, dreams (at least mine, anyway) rarely make sense in a narrative format... it's not as if your subconscious pays much attention to story arcs or the value of sensible conclusions.

But I think you can get away with a very abbreviated version of the dream story without making whoever's listening start plotting an escape route. Basically, you say something like, "I had this really weird dream about oranges last night," or, "I had this crazy nightmare about monsters breaking in and stealing all my coffee last night." If you leave it at that, nobody's going to feel too awkward and the ones who are actually interested might indicate the fact that they're willing to hear more by asking questions like, "Really? What kind of monsters?"

I broke that rule in this post, but at least I kept it to two paragraphs. So don't whine.

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The Trollenberg Terror

2008-04-08T23:54:00.003-04:00

A while back, I decided to watch "The Trollenberg Terror," a cheesy 1950s horror movie that was alternately titled "The Crawling Eye" -- the second title is also the title of a Misfits song off Famous Monsters, and it gives way too much of the movie away.

Anyway, here's as far as I made it through a minute-by-minute "live blog" of the movie-watching experience.

-------

Greetings, sports fans.

For tonight’s entry in my neglected blog, I’m going to be watching “The Trollenberg Terror,” a 1958 movie also commonly known as “The Crawling Eye.”

I’m not exactly sure what to expect – here’s what I know, though. “The Trollenberg Terror” was directed by Quentin Lawrence and involves mysterious and hideous alien creatures taking up residence in a radioactive cloud at the top of Trollenberg Mountain in Switzerland. Mayhem and carnage ensue. There’s talk of some psychic chick who has an inside track to the aliens – but this is just me going off the Misfits song, “Crawling Eye,” from Famous Monsters.

Let’s begin!

The opening screen is a message from the British Board of Film Censors, and certifies that the film is okay for display as long as no one less than 16 years old is present. Apparently, the Crawling Eye predates the MPAA – I’m not yet sure which is more horrible, though.

00:00:39 – A rather beautiful panning shot of the Swiss Alps. There are some mountain climbers on one of the mountains.

00:01:40 – The two climbers are calling to their buddy Jimmy, off-screen. He says someone’s coming. His pals ask if it’s the abominable snowman. Jimmy screams and falls off the mountain hilariously.

00:02:09 – Fortunately, Jimmy has been secured to his pals by a climbing rope, which they use to haul him back up to their level. Unfortunately, he’s dead anyway. We don’t get to see what exactly has happened to him, but his arm is bloody and his friend in the white knit cap screams “NO!” when he catches a glimpse of him. The rope frays and breaks, and poor ol’ Jim takes the quick way down the mountain. Aliens – 1, Humans – 0.

00:02:18 – An interesting discussion between the two remaining climbers: “You idiot, we almost had him! Why did you let go?” “Didn’t you see him? His head – it was torn off!” Seems like that would have been the first thing they’d both notice. Decapitation isn’t exactly a minor detail.

00:02:20 – Cut to a train racing through the mountains. Credits roll, accompanied by a stereotypical “high tension” orchestral score.

00:03:57 – We’re back on the train, and we’re meeting some travelers -- a mother, who I’m going to assume for the moment is named Betty Crocker, and her daughter Anne, who, according to Betty, was talking in her sleep right before we made it into their train compartment. An old guy with a horrible perm is sitting across from them, reading a newspaper.

00:04:43 – Hey, wait a minute here. Maybe they’re not mother and daughter. Anne seems to be at least a teenager, and Betty Crocker suddenly appears to be in her 20s. Sisters, maybe?

00:04:57 – Anne faints and falls into Old Creep’s newspaper.

00:05:14 – …but she recovers quickly, and is completely unalarmed by waking up lying in an old dude’s lap. He introduces himself as “Alan Brooks.” A likely story. Anne introduces herself as Anne Pilgrim, and clues us into the fact that the other woman is her sister, Sarah. Sorry, Sarah – at first I thought you were her mom.

00:05:40 – Mr. Brooks helps out by giving Anne a shot from his clearly well-used flask. Man, the ‘50s were awesome.

00:06:10 – The conductor announces that the next stop for the train is Trollenberg. Although Sarah has said the two are on their way to Geneva, Anne immediately takes interest in Trollenberg, stating that she can’t go any further and that’s where they’ll be stopping. Brooks, conveniently, is also stopping there. Anne says they can stay at the Hotel Europa. At this point, I’m pretty sure Anne is the psychic chick.

00:06:56 – The party has arrived in Trollenberg and met a buddy of Mr. Brooks’, a wacky Swiss guy who apparently runs the Europa. He agrees to lodge the Pilgrims without notice, and alludes vaguely to how this is normally a busy time of year, but not this season…

00:07:52 – Brooks offers the girls cigarettes while the Swiss dude drives them to the hotel. There’s a discussion about how climbers disappear into the mist and are never seen again. The party disembarks the car in front of an incredibly fake mountain backdrop. Inside the hotel, there’s a guy smoking his face off while a drinking beer. It’s Philip Truscott, who apparently has been expecting Brooks. He thinks the Pilgrims’ name rings a bell, and the women head up to their room.

00:09:46 – Anne looks out her window at Mount Trollenberg and seems to know all the details about the area. She gets scared and asks Sarah, “Why does it seem like I’ve seen it all before?” Why would Sarah know, you crazy wench?

00:11:12 – Truscott stops by Brooks’ room and asks if he’s a climber, and Brooks says not if he can help it. Truscott helpfully observes that Trollenberg is an odd place to come for vacation if you aren’t a mountain climber, and notices that Brooks is packing a revolver. Truscott launches into a creepy discussion about Anne and Sarah being attractive girls, and offers to buy Brooks a drink later on. Truscott leaves, but Brooks overhears him talking on the hall phone shortly after, asking a friend to check on an “Alan Brooks, 40, American.” Brooks dramatically removes his horn-rimmed glasses, squints, then heads downstairs.

00:12:52 – Holy shit, people in the ‘50s were total drunks. Brooks runs into two mountain climbers, Duratt and Brett, in the lobby who are about to head off to climb up Trollenberg. They inform him that they’re going to have a “noggin” before they head up, and that they’re going to need a bottle of brandy for the trip. I don’t know about you guys, but personally, I always get smashed before I try to climb any mountains more than a mile high. Brooks agrees to join them for a nip and orders up a Scotch.

00:13:34 – Sarah and Truscott show up, and Duratt orders them drinks. He explains that it’s his first mountain climb, and that he’s a geologist. Truscott advises the climbers to keep an eye on their rope, and brings up the guys who were climbing around in the opening scene. “Nasty business,” everyone agrees.

00:14:53 – Truscott said some guides found the bodies of “Jimmy” and his pals, and that even though the official story is that the young climber had been decapitated by his climbing rope, the rope had actually been found around his waist, still tied – which apparently would make it impossible to loop around his neck. This is all as per Hans, the bartender, who’s busy being mysterious and cryptic while getting everyone shitfaced. Truscott prods Hans to tell the party what the villagers are saying – which is that the decapitation happened before his fall.

00:15:41 – Brooks follows the two drunk climbers up to the observatory in the cable car. They have some discussion about chemical changes within rocks on their way up, which doesn’t sound even remotely scientific.

00:16:41 – The observatory. Nutty professors are looking out through telescopes, and “The Professor” is busily scribbling notes in a pad. He’s irritated at first when one of his lab-coat-wearing flunkies tells him there’s someone at the door to see him, but changes his tune and becomes excited when he learns that it’s Alan Brooks. I think the professor is drunk, too.

00:17:52 – The professor shows Brooks a bank of screens, which are off. He turns them on, and they display views of the mountain. “You see? Television cameras on the roof. We watch everything!” he exclaims, then promptly turns the monitors back off. He’s definitely drunk.

00:18:35 – The professor brags about how his equipment is all very expensive, and that it’s to study “cosmic rays.”

00:20:08 – The accidents are discussed again, and the professor says remains are never found. This seems to be in direct contradiction to the villagers' discovery of Jimmy's decapitated body, but who's really keeping score? He also mentions a radioactive cloud that seems to be hanging around the side of Mount Trollenberg. The two discuss “an incident” that took place three years prior, in the Andes.

00:22:31 – “Climbers on the Trollenberg!” one of the lab coat flunkies shouts. It’s our besotted buddies from the hotel, Duratt and Brett.

00:24:00 – Back in the observatory, Brooks and the professor disagree over whether to go to the authorities. Something fishy is up, but Brooks wants hard facts before he sticks his neck out again, which apparently is what happened in the Andes. Meanwhile, the two wino-geologists have made it to the cabin a ways up the Trollenberg.

---

That's as far as I made it. I watched the rest of the movie, and surely enough, there are aliens, they're basically gargantuan eyeballs with tentacles, there's a confrontation, and the good guys win. Everyone drinks copiously. The end.

Check it out -- it's definitely entertaining.

Trial

2008-01-31T07:37:00.000-05:00

Today is the fourth day in the murder trial for a local woman accused of drowning her 2-year-old niece last May. As the paper's courts & cops guy, I'm providing continuing coverage of the proceedings, which are scheduled to go on for two weeks.

Naturally, it's been horrific from the word go. The little girl, who was wearing a "Dora The Explorer" outfit the day she drowned, suffered a ghastly series of injuries -- her lungs were full of fluid (indicative of a "wet drowning," someone who's been trapped underwater), she had serious bruises to her face and neck, and evidence of sexual abuse was also found on her body.

So there's no way this was going to be the kind of event where someone can sort of blithely go about his business while attending. But on the other hand, I can't say I'm much more comfortable with the morbid fascination involved in covering the case. There are two elements to this: my own interest in the case, which has been piqued by hearing details at the rate of a few per day, and the interest of the paper's readership, which I am representing by continuing my coverage of the trial.

It's not like I'm alone in the public seats in the county court room. There are press people from local TV channels and other newspapers, and while I have yet to see the local radio news DJ, I hear he's at least been cribbing details from the newspapers to include in his daily local news broadcasts.

The whole proceeding reminds me of what scientists call "The Observer Effect." The idea is that the very act of observing any phenomena changes that which is being observed.

In this case, you have a woman accused of multiple counts of second-degree murder and sex abuse. By writing about the trial and connecting her name to the charges and developing details of the case, it seems like I'm condemning her before the jury has rendered their eventual decision.

But other than including material from her defense counsel's cross-examinations (and, eventually, the witnesses he calls to the stand), how else am I supposed to write about it? It's a public proceeding, sure... but does constant, every day coverage of the event deny the defendant the right to a fair trial in the vaunted "court of public opinion"?

It's an academic question -- I've already put on my tie (double-Windsor, thank you... none of that clubhouse slipknot nonsense) and in a few minutes I'll be heading off in the Reichswagen and driving down to Ithaca to hear the third day of prosecution testimony.

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Somewhat big things I've not gotten around to mentioning

2008-01-26T18:37:00.000-05:00

It's been an interesting process, leaving the military behind (mostly) and adapting to my new life as a civilian working man.

For the first several months after I got home, I did pretty much nothing. There were a couple trips, a few attempts at freelance projects, but I've got little to show for it. There are a few reasons for that, but I think the main one was my natural inclination toward indolence.

Of course, that was only temporary, and by November, I was becoming frantic to get out of the house and be doing something.

In December, I applied for and accepted a position as a staff reporter for my local newspaper. I'm now Cortland's police beat reporter, which is a very interesting assignment. The copy is often very by rote, but I'm learning a lot about civics and the legal process, and the pace at a daily newspaper is a lot more intense than it's been at any of the weekly or bi-weekly papers I worked for in the Army.

Anyway, last week I finally got around to replacing the decimated Road Shark. I don't have a name for my new ride yet, but here it is:

It's a 2001 Volkswagen Jetta GLS, which isn't exactly the road master the Z28 was, but it's got a lot of pickup and by my shaky figuring, insurance costs about a third of what it did for the Camaro. It's silver, like the Camaro was, so I think of the Jetta as the Road Shark's brainier and less-athletic little brother.

So that deals with the latest major updates in my life. I'll tackle something more interesting next time around.

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Monkey brains used to control Japanese robots

2008-01-19T10:44:00.000-05:00

By now, I think it's pretty much common knowledge that humanity is going to be wiped off the face of the Earth by one of the following catastrophes:

- Zombie outbreak
- Germ pandemic
- Sentient robots who decide to overthrow their meatbag creators

Well, scientists at Duke University have brought us at least one step closer to the third possibility. They've stuck probes into the brains of rhesus monkeys and used the monkeys' thoughts to control robots walking around in Japan.

"They can walk in complete synchronization," said Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, who also is the Anne W. Deane Professor of Neuroscience at Duke. "The most stunning finding is that when we stopped the treadmill and the monkey ceased to move its legs, it was able to sustain the locomotion of the robot for a few minutes -- just by thinking -- using only the visual feedback of the robot in Japan."
Implanted electrodes gathered feedback from brain cells of two rhesus monkeys as they walked forward and backward at different paces on a treadmill. Sensors on the monkeys' legs tracked walking patterns while researchers used math models to analyze the relationship between leg movement and activity in the brain's motor and sensory cortex. From there, researchers in North Carolina and Japan determined how well brain cell activity predicted speed and stride.

It's hard to know whether to laugh or to shriek in terror at this development. On the one hand, monkeys are hilarious and always good for a chuckle or two, but on the other, scientists are hooking up electrodes to fucking monkey brains and allowing the monkeys to control robots!

The thing about scientific research is that the vast majority of it is incredibly boring and only meaningful to scientists. That's okay, though, because the scientists are generally benevolent and using their collected data to solve problems faced by humanity, such as how to create the perfect artificial papaya flavoring.

Then you get scientists like the ones on this Duke team, who seem to be hell-bent on bringing on the apocalypse. I can just imagine what's next -- monkeys telepathically controlling Predator drones and Abrams tanks, which will plow over the surface of the planet searching out the terrified human population and committing wanton slaughter.

You read it here first -- 10 years from now, we'll be facing the Robot-Monkey-Zombie apocalypse. When it happens, you won't be able to say you haven't been warned.

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Fear and Loathing in the Mystery Machine

2008-01-18T20:17:00.000-05:00

Being the devout Hunter S. Thompson fan I am, I don't normally take kindly to parody of the man or, especially, his writing.

That said, Fear and Loathing in the Mystery Machine might be one of the funniest damn things I've ever read. The premise, such as it is, is that Hanna-Barbera decided to include Raoul Duke as a guest in an episode of Scooby-Doo.

I don't know if I ever saw a Scooby-Doo episode where the guest wasn't either Vincent Price or the Harlem Globetrotters, but The Good Doctor seems like he would have been a good fit.

A couple excerpts:

We were ten minutes south of San Clemente when the putrid green daisy walls of the van started closing in. I recall the fat four-eyed lesbian sweater girl saying something like "are you okay, Mr. Duke? We've got a mystery to solve..." when suddenly the gullet of the garish chartreuse steel beast began to spasm, as if a digestive track readying itself to vomit. I began clawing at my hamstrings and when I turned my head I was looking into the irridescent eyes of a grotesque animal screeching "Ruh Roh! Ruh Roh!" in a hoarse irritating dog-accented gibberish. That's when it things began to turn weird.

The team heads down to Mexico on a special mission...

Hanna and Barbera liked my story on hormone doping at the '72 Laff-a-Lympics and proposed that I cover a Harlem Globetrotters game at a haunted Aztec pyramid in Mexico. They called me to their offices in Burbank. "Jesus Christ, you're killing us here, Duke," Hanna complained when I demanded a $1500 advance for the project. "I've got expenses," I said. They relented and arranged for a chirpy entourage to escort me into the belly of the beast. There was the lesbian chick, the blond Palos Verdes neck scarf Nixon boy and his frigid miniskirt girlfriend, the gawky soul patch hippie kid and his paranoid Great Dane. Lost Manson kids all, Squeakies and Leslies and a canine Tex in a puke green van hoping for some Mexican helter skelter. All the better reason to pack a few guns, I thought.

Check it out. Laughs all around.

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Obstacles on the career path

2008-01-13T14:46:00.001-05:00

To a certain extent, my enjoyment of working in the journalism field is tied to the fact that I get to put my name on top of the articles I write, and then get paid for it. There's a low level of some kind of celebrity involved in being a working reporter, regardless of how small or obscure the publication is that one works for.

That said, I'm nowhere near the "big leagues" occupied by the Important Journalists who have become household names. There's a vast and yawning chasm between my job and that of, say, a Bob Woodward or Christopher Hitchens. They are, and I think deservingly, the "rock stars" of the journalism business.

Whereas, I'm currently something like the fourth violin in some backwater philharmonic.

How does one make the leap from this low, entry-level position to that exalted talking-Beltway-head status? Apparently, there are a few requirements, but several ways to go about pulling it off.

To use the above examples, there's Mr. Woodward, who by all accounts took the traditional route to fame and quiet fortune -- working his way up through the Washington Post hierarchy and being fortunate enough to be involved in what was perhaps the biggest tip of the 20th century. While Watergate was certainly a career-defining moment for Mr. Woodward, one can't ignore the fact that he's also an incredibly diligent reporter.

Hitchens, on the other hand, while also serving as a reporter and foreign correspondent, seems to have rocketed to fame by aligning himself with certain political activist groups and by writing things that are hugely unpopular -- such as his remonstrations of people like Ghandi, Ronald Reagan, Mother Teresa, and God.

The fact that Hitchens is also an accomplished scholar and rhetorician shouldn't be forgotten, it's notable that other famous "journalists" have acquired at least similar levels of fame without the erudition or study that he has. Ann Coulter, the lawyer-turned-slime-spewing-harpy for the GOP, is probably near the top of that list.

So if certain levels of fame and renown are the goal, how should one set about determining a career path? There are a few immediate things to put on the "to-do" list:

- Accumulate various unrelated degrees, such as law, political science, or anthropology; anything that adds letters to one's suffix will apparently do;
- Take up several controversial positions and loudly denounce everyone who thinks differently.

On this second point, I don't mean to automatically discredit or brush away all of the positions taken up by writers I've mentioned here so far. To be sure, I think Hitchens has excellent arguments and bases for even his least-popular ideas. However, I'm not sure that his star would have risen to the heights it has if he hadn't been noticed for thinking things that a lot of people find shocking, and I'm absolutely positive that Coulter wouldn't have a career at all if it wasn't for her rather disgusting propensity to revile and insult people who are generally considered undeserving of such abuse. Things like that, it seems, make people sit up and take notice.

(I'll note here that re-reading the last paragraph, I'm regretful to have mentioned both Hitchens and Coulter in the same breath -- I'd hate for anyone to think I consider the two comparable in any way, shape, or form, other than for the fact that they're both noted political writers. Hitchens is a well-spoken, well-educated scholar who is willing to go on the attack; Coulter is a stupid brute whose published work bespeaks a seriously underdeveloped mind that might be more at home with similar chimps in front of the large black monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.)

Anyway, I've got at least half of my to-do list planned -- I'm hoping to earn a master's in political science within the next two years. Now, all I need is a few controversial positions. So far, I've only come up with one, which I hardly really believe myself: that the Beatles were an overrated group of average musicians whose catalog of music is at least half-full of songs that are actually very embarrassing on reexamination.

I don't think that's going to be enough to rocket me into journalistic stardom, though, so I'm going to have to spend some more time at the drawing board.

My problem is, I think, that the more I try to learn about current events, the more I'm faced with what I'm now convinced are glaring and inexcusable holes in my education. I never learned anything about the period between 1950 and 1980, for example, in any educational setting, save for a few scraps about the Vietnam war.

That makes it tricky to really feel confident about any ideas I have about the Middle East or Africa, which have been practically left out of any history curricula I've received. I do know that the more I learn -- on my own, that is -- about those two areas, the less I realize that I know. A little additional education, as it turns out, can be intellectually crippling; unless, that is, one undertakes to learn the whole kit and kaboodle. And who's got time for that?

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Last post, 2007

2007-12-31T08:30:00.000-05:00

Well, 2007 certainly hasn't been a great year for blogging here at A Healthy Alternative to Work. But it's been a pretty eventful one for me, personally.

Here's a partial list of Big Things that have happened this year:

- Turned 27, was reminded of creeping mortality
- Won first place for commentary in the Army's Keith L. Ware journalism competition
- Finished my enlistment in the Army, joined New York National Guard
- Moved home to Cortland, New York, after five years of sojourning the wilds of South Korea and Kentucky
- Hung around doing pretty much nothing for a few months
- Was hired at the local newspaper as police beat reporter

Later today, I'm going to be driving down to D.C. to attend Scythian's New Year's Eve bash, "A Mad, Mad Masquerade." They're throwing it in the historic Carnegie Library, and everyone will be dressed to the nines and wearing masks. I need to find one of those, come to think of it. Anyone know where to find a Zorro mask on December 31?

Anyway, I'd promise to do a write up of the party later for this blog, but every time I do something like that, I never follow through. So maybe there'll be something -- but there probably won't. Check back here in three weeks or something.

In the meantime, enjoy your New Year's plans.

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Mike Huckabee loves the baby Jesus

2007-12-10T11:49:00.000-05:00

Mike Huckabee says that the reason we have so much government is because there's too much sin in our country. And that's because as a country, we've turned away from The Savior.

It doesn't bother me when someone proclaims things like this on the nightly "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" variety show called "The 700 Club." But Huckabee is vying for the Republican presidential nomination, and is already a state governor.

Just like the Reverends Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson are wont to do, Huckabee has used tragedy (his being the recent mass shootings) as a springboard to advance his ignorance of the first amendment and the establishment clause:

"Government knows it does not have the answer, but it's arrogant and acts as though it does," Huckabee said. "Church does have the answer but will cowardly deny that it does and wonder when the world will be changed."

Again, I don't have a problem with Huckabee's personal beliefs. He's free to believe (at least for the time being) whatever he wants. He probably nodded assent when Robertson and Falwell blamed Sept. 11 on feminists and lesbians. But what's scary is that he's proudly trumpeting these beliefs while on the campaign trail, which seems to indicate that he's got an audience eager to hear him -- an audience of people who really don't think there should be any separation of Church and State. These are people who have no idea what religious freedom means.

But they'll vote. And this is how they'll vote: "I believe in Jesus. Mike Huckabee believes in Jesus. I'm voting for Mike Huckabee!"

This is not a mentality that's worked well, historically.

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My problems with religion

2007-12-07T00:17:00.000-05:00

Growing up, Catholicism was a very important part of my life, and I think I'm right in thinking that faith had a very influential hand in my development into who I am now.

However, over the last couple years, I've done a lot of thinking about it, and I've fallen away from belief. This hasn't been borne out of a convenience or distaste for attending Mass -- it's more based on some very deep and important questions that I believe are left unanswered by Catholicism in particular and religion in general.

These questions might be better termed catastrophic philosophical errors -- because in a few cases, they are mutually exclusive postulations that are both required to be true in order for religion (particularly Christianity) to have any merit whatsoever. So here we go with two I feel are most important and foundational:

I: The Concept of Original Sin and Salvation through the self-sacrifice of Christ

Christianity holds that all of man is cursed with "Original sin" due to the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Creation story. Since humanity is all presumably the offspring of that first couple, it is held that everyone must be sacramentally baptized in order to be cleansed of that stain and thereby gain eligibility for eternal reward.

Additionally, it is due to Jesus Christ's sacrifice of himself that my temporal sins can be forgiven.

The problem with the first idea should be readily apparent. While the ancient Jewish tribes did not believe in any real afterlife, they did believe in a sort of trans-generational karma, whereby the good or bad deeds of a man (women rarely figured into such ethical calculus) would positively or negatively affect the livelihoods of his offspring.

This belief has been discarded by Christians -- except in the case of so-called "original sin." In order to believe in original sin, one must accept the idea that one person's actions, good or bad, have a spiritual impact on his or her progeny.

By any objective ethical standard, this is ludicrous. If my father were to deliberately disobey the rules of the Church in some way, I would not be punished for his "sin." And if I were, it would not absolve him of his own culpability for it.

Similarly, it is ethically ridiculous to believe that it would require the self-sacrifice of another person (albeit the son of God in human form) to absolve me of any sins I should commit 2,000 years after the fact. Were God really inclined to A) innumerate the sins of humanity and hold them guilty for them, and B) offer absolution from the same, it would not require him to send a son to die on a cross in a middle eastern backwater in order to do so. He could simply do it.

Christianity wants to have it both ways, but can't: Either I am accountable for my actions and my actions alone, or I am not.

II: Divine Providence versus Free Will

Another perennial problem for Christianity are the mutually-exlusive postulations that 1) God is all-knowing and is aware of the past, present, and future all at once and therefore knows the outcome of all of time and that 2) man possesses free will.

This is problematic, because if someone -- including God -- knows for a fact and has seen that I am going to pick a red shirt to wear tomorrow, then when I ultimately choose that shirt, I have only made what feels like a choice to me. If the outcome has already been seen, then any choice I have in the matter is illusory.

So, either the future can be known, or I can have free will. It cannot be both.

Over and over, I've heard Christian apologists try to address this very quandary (Augustine wrestled with it in Confessions) by way of various analogies. Tonight, I heard a priest use the concept of a film strip -- as temporal beings, we can only be aware of what is happening around us immediately, in the frame of film we are currently in. God, however, can see the entire film at once, and is aware of how things will eventually unfold.

This metaphor actually serves better to underline the serious philosophical problem rather than solve it. I've seen The Godfather Part II many times, and every time, Fredo Corleone gets shot in a rowboat toward the end. Never once have I seen Michael's weak brother do a thing to change the way his fate unfolds and avoid his pathetic death on Lake Tahoe.

The point is that characters in a film reel have no choices, and if they did, it would require breaks and branches in the film. And if there were breaks and branches in a film reel, then no one could know which ending was going to result in any particular viewing -- it would depend on the choices the characters made at each branch.

So, if time is truly like a film reel, then it is true -- human beings do not possess real free will and any choices we make are illusory. If this is the case, then striving to be good is futile, since our fates are already known by an Almighty who is allegedly willing to damn us to an eternity of torture for simply following the path he so wisely set out for us. This would also make intercessory prayer ridiculous, because changing the future would be impossible if it is already known.

If this is not the case, then God does not know the future and we can't really be sure of any prophecies we've ever been provided with, since God would apparently be giving us his best guess at an outcome that even he could not yet see, since it does not yet exist.

Personally, I think the second case is more likely, but since so many people are so attached to the Bible, I doubt it'll ever gain much mass appeal.

I'm not trying to be blasphemous or to denigrate anyone for their own faith. I am well aware that people much more intelligent than I am have had very strong faiths... but I cannot be so dishonest with myself as to pretend to believe something when these seemingly deal-breaking problems exist in the faith that's been set out before me to believe.

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I'm a crummy writer when I don't have deadlines

2007-12-03T17:41:00.000-05:00

Not really a crummy writer -- just an incurable procrastinator. Without a strict deadline, I don't seem to ever get around to writing anything. Even despite my excitement over the prospect of the music piece I'm working on, it's been incredibly hard to actually sit down and write it. In fact, in stead of simply bearing down and cranking it out, I went out and bought a bunch of needless upgrades for my computer and workstation -- a new chair, more RAM, a flatscreen monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse... apparently anything in order to put off the task of actually writing.

I don't know why that is. I do know that the piece is daunting, but that's never stalled me to the point of paralysis before. I suppose part of it is the fear that whatever I come up with is going to disappoint me -- and, by extension, anyone who reads it.

There's just so many things I want to address and capture. I've taken a writing course or two in the past, and one of the first things they'll inevitably tell you (after they get the tired old saw "Good writing is re-writing" out of the way) is that you need to limit the scope of whatever you're writing to something manageable. This is very good advice when you're putting a term paper together, but I have serious doubts as to whether that was on Jack Kerouac's mind when he wrote "On The Road."

Organizing my thoughts, here are what I need to cover in the story, in no particular order other than the one they occur to me in as I write this list:

- The history of the band
- Character studies of each member and the tenant characters
- The sound of the band
- The narrative of the week I spent with them
- My own reflections on what it's like to see an old friend making it in the music business
- Various rantings about how roots music is better, and is unjustly relegated to a corner of a music business that has been hijacked by hucksters and charlatans.

Now that I look at it, that's a tidy little list (other than the prevailing vagueness that characterizes the last half). Can that be done in 15,000 or 20,000 words, and then sold to a major-market magazine?

Maybe, maybe not. It can certainly be written, and in that case, at the very least I'll have come up with something that recalls an amazing time of my own life and provides a snapshot of sorts of life as a traveling Celtic-gypsy musician.

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New layout, plus Diggable posts!

2007-11-13T13:52:00.000-05:00

"A Healthy Alternative to Work" was getting a bit clunky, and, let's face it -- outdated.

So, a healthy two years behind the power curve, I've redesigned (read: used Blogger 2.0's new, fancy software to start over) my site. I've also added a Digg button, which should appear at the top right corner of every post -- each of these buttons will submit the associated entry to Digg.com, and hopefully gain fame and fortune for me on the Innernets. It should be noted here that I did not come up with the code for this button, either -- I just followed the directions of bloggers more tech-savvy than me.

In other news, check out Enough of this Palaver, a discussion blog for Adam and myself to hammer out ideas in. We're trying to figure out who the best American rock band is right now.

I'm also working on a fairly sizable freelance project at the moment -- an in-depth piece on Scythian, who I followed around for a week not long ago. I've got hours of recorded interviews and a boatload of scribbled notes, so I'm hoping to get 12,000-20,000 words out of this one. It's a turned out to be a bit of a beast in terms of organization, but I'm hoping the end result is informative, funny, deeply stirring, and poignant. And three out of four ain't bad.

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Impasse

2007-10-24T01:15:00.000-04:00

Two ACLU lawyers have written a book called Administration of Torture, which purportedly draws on more than 100,000 pages of recently-released government documents (obtained by the authors after several years' worth of Freedom of Information Act requests) to paint a rather damning picture of the Bush Administration's attitude toward the use of "torture" techniques in the so-called War on Terror.

Meanwhile, American law enforcement and espionage agencies have been exercising their USA PATRIOT ACT-expanded powers to conduct what would have been anathema in ages past: spying on U.S. citizens through warrantless wiretapping and Internet monitoring -- all in the name of preventing terrorism.

These are two examples of ongoing arguments that no one will ever win.

Here's the problem: both sides on both arguments are utterly convinced of the validity of their own understanding of the issue. And neither side in either argument understands either issue in the same terms as their opponents.

I'll try to explain that a little better by using the first example. I haven't read Administration of Torture yet, but Americans have been discussing the issue of our use of "high-stress interrogation techniques" since the first photos from Abu Ghraib hit the press. Officially, the U.S. has repeatedly stated that it does not engage in torture -- but was very careful later when actually defining what constituted as torture.

Those who wish to take "a hard line" on terrorism usually are perfectly happy to allow the government to use whatever means necessary to extract information from a prisoner in the interest of preventing a terrorist attack. Few will admit to endorsing "torture," per se, but will dismiss specific techniques (such as "waterboarding" and "stress positions") as not amounting to actual torture. Furthermore, if we need to torture a few Afghans or Iraqis in order to save thousands of American lives, well, isn't that worth it?

But then there are those who (like me) believe that any kind of torture violates the very principle that supposedly gives the United States the moral high ground (or what's left of it) in fighting terrorism -- that America, as a nation, should act in a way that demonstrates a respect for human rights (that's human rights, not American citizens' rights, by the way). Torturing prisoners for any reason is morally abhorrent -- the ends do not justify the means.

On the second issue, I had an argument with my dad this evening over PATRIOT ACT wiretapping, and I discovered that we will never find a common ground on the issue, because we understand the rights of the individual versus the authority of government in fundamentally different ways. Dad thinks that citizens who live law-abiding lives have nothing to worry about, and that the trouble of securing warrants for domestic wiretapping allows critical communications between potential terrorists to go unheard.

On the other hand, I believe that it's more important for our Fourth Amendment rights (which guarantees freedom from unwarranted search and seizure) to be protected than to unleash our law enforcement agencies on the general public in order to chase down leads on terrorism unimpeded by silly "checks" and "balances." I think this is particularly important in a country that bills itself as "Home of the Free" while "exporting democracy" to other nations.

In other words, Dad is more comfortable trusting the government than I am (except, notably, in the case of health care), and I am more attached to my Constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms than he is to his.

These concepts are absolute data for every argument that anyone's ever had regarding the war in Iraq and terrorism -- and you will never reach any kind of resolution to any discussion you have with someone who doesn't already agree with you on absolute data.

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Twelve From The Graveyard

2007-09-19T14:50:00.000-04:00

My buddy Adam is a newly-minted and unemployed lawyer and a lover of obscure music. He's re-entered the blogging world over at Twelve From The Graveyard, and I'm sure he's got a smug look on his face over the fact that only he knows what the title means. Go check him out.

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Salemonz lives

2007-09-15T18:30:00.000-04:00

It seems my old friend-turned-supervisor Salemonz has returned to blogging, now that he's settled into a more civilized life in the D.C. area. Check him out -- he's got a wealth of experience under his belt, including a tour in Iraq and lots of 46-Quebecking.

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Republican Marketing Tactics

2007-09-15T08:51:00.000-04:00

Since General David Petraeus returned from Iraq with his report on the progress made there by President George Bush's troop "surge," it's been remarkable to watch the language of Republican campaigns change to reflect the president's new goals -- which include a somewhat vague notion of reducing U.S. troop numbers in Iraq to pre-surge levels.

What's remarkable is that the G.O.P. has stolidly denounced any Democrat-led notion of reducing troop levels there as being tantamount to "admitting defeat," and that bringing the troops home "precipitously" would be conceding to "the enemy" we're supposedly fighting in Iraq. More polemical members of the legislature, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), have either implied or stated explicitly that this would lead to us having to fight this ghostly enemy (one can safely assume he means al Qaeda) here at home. Vice President Dick Cheney referred to al Qaeda as "the enemy we may face" in a speech Friday in Grand Rapids, Mich.

I heard McConnell speak to a host on NPR's All Things Considered. He said that he doesn't think it's a coincidence that we haven't witnessed another terrorist attack in the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001.

Gen. Petraeus, has been a combatant commander in Iraq more than once, including a tour (as a major general) as the commander of the 101st Airborne Division. In testimony, he warned against the kind of rapid pull-out favored by vocal Democrats, but he in turn has been accused of "cooking the books" on Iraq progress in order to support the delayed timetable that the White House seems to have begrudgingly accepted as policy.

By the White House's own report card, the Iraq government is making what would be considered a failing grade at any educational institution. Out of 18 benchmarks set by the administration in July, satisfactory progress is being made in eight of them. In eight others, progress is "unsatisfactory," and the remaining two can't be evaluated yet.

While this evaluation is still less than 90 days old, it's in keeping with the Iraq government's history thus far of being incapable of governing anything. Even with the increased troop levels (now up to around 160,000 U.S. soldiers), violence remains a definitive part of life in sectarian Iraq.

It's been accepted as read that total U.S. withdrawl from the country would result in catastrophe, but now that Republicans have decided that withdrawl is indeed necessary, we're going to be treated to some amazing lingual gymnastics from the party -- the G.O.P.'s strategy for troop pull-out will be a "carefully-considered plan for reduction in troop levels, in keeping with Gen. Petraeus' recommendations, where we still support the troops and their mission," while the Democrats' desire to pull troops back will be painted as a spineless call for unconditional surrender.

Never mind that both strategies amount to the same thing -- bringing troops back from the front lines of a "war" that the American public has lost any interest or faith in.

It's clear that the Iraq government is willing to take advantage of every dollar and uniformed body the U.S. is willing to send its way -- and demonstrating independence from that aid is a good way to have it removed. It's like in any business or bureaucracy: you have to use your entire annual budget each year (or overspend), or your budget will get cut. And no one wants their budget cut, least of all a fledgling government surrounded by bloodthirsty sectarians.

But the U.S. can't afford to continue funneling money into the country without some demonstration that the treasure and lives we're spending there is actually accomplishing something. It's time to wean Iraq from the American tit.

Nothing gets a creature moving on its own like the threat of starvation. Baby tigers figure out quickly how to catch their own dinner once their mother's milk has been taken away.

Of course, there are American companies who have it in their best interest to see hostilities continue in Iraq and Afghanistan. These include former Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR), which has demonstrated a level of greed and disregard for ethics I wouldn't have believed possible.

We'll see what happens, won't we?

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UPDATE: I meant to mention, in regards to Gen. Petraeus, that the top of his chain of command is the president -- the Defense Department falls under the Executive Branch, and therefore Petraeus, regardless of his long and admirable record of service, is hardly an unbiased source of information. This should be considered when weighing the content of his report against accusations of pandering to the White House's goals and objectives.

Sticky

2007-09-08T18:15:00.000-04:00

Humidity is soaring here now... I don't know what the actual figure is, and I don't know how it could be more than 100 percent, but it has to be. It's not even that hot, but sitting in my room for any length of time results in my body pouring sweat. The air feels thick to breathe, and there's an oppressive closeness in the atmosphere that is impossible to escape.

So far, I've accomplished precious little since I've been home, and this god-awful humidity isn't helping at all.

Lately, my hopes of regular employment have been dashed. That's courtesy of the National Guard.

I reported to my unit, the 27th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, based on Hancock Field in Syracuse, last week. They were surprised to see me, and couldn't find hide nor hair of me in "The System" when they examined whatever strength roster that informs them of when new soldiers are due to arrive. But I produced my contract, discharge papers, and a whole sheaf of other identifying documents, and the strength NCO promised to look into the matter and contact me with further instructions.

In the meantime: "Go home, sit tight," he said.

Before I left the 27th's headquarters (which are squirreled away down a labyrinthine system of hallways and double doors, deep within the New York Guard's headquarters building), the headquarters company first sergeant got on the phone to tell me that he didn't want me at this weekend's drill, but that he did want me to show up next month -- for the annual two-week training period, to be held up north at Fort Drum.

Additionally, he said I could (and would) show up a couple days early for that, to earn the two-days' worth of active duty pay that I'll be missing this month. My job, the sergeants there in the personnel office conjectured, would probably be something like guarding weapons in the unit arms room, or helping load boxes to prepare for the brigade's impending deployment, scheduled for early next year.

It's not glamorous, but it's a small price to pay to keep the Golden Ticket I had written into my contract -- a 24-month stabilization guarantee, which means that when the 27th ships out, I'll be staying in New York and waving to the planes full of Real Soldiers as they take off for combat duty.

I'm sure I've mentioned my acute sense of cognitive dissonance at being called a "soldier" for the past several years. I've worn the uniform, qualified on rifle and PT, and carried out whatever orders I've been given by superiors. I've stood at attention and parade rest when necessary, saluted officers, and even carried unit flags or guidons when I've been required to. But the idea that "I am (or have been) a soldier" wasn't something I ever really actualized in my brain. Soldiers are people who go to war and shoot other soldiers. That was never something I was interested in, and it was never something I even came close to doing.

So when the rest of my guard unit leaves for The Sandbox (or the Theater, or the Quagmire, or whatever else you might call this current venture), I'm not going to feel as though I've shirked any responsibility or anything. I'm just a guy with a notepad and a camera who looks a little silly wearing camouflage.

What I meant to get at, before I launched off on that tangent, was that given the requirement for me to be at Fort Drum for the first few weeks of October, landing a job prior to that is basically impossible. I'm going to check in to doing some stringer work for the local paper, and maybe talk to a publisher I know up in Syracuse to see if he'd be interested in picking up another series of my columns. Having something specific to do would be a big help. As great as it sounds to have every day be Saturday, after a while you sort of lose any energy or motivation you had going in.

Also on the agenda, however, is to get enrolled in grad school. I'm planning on visiting my top choice on Monday, so we'll see how that pans out.

I've been losing weight, but very slowly, and it's not out of any effort taken on my part. That's another thing I've decided to change -- a workout regimen is a must, so I've decided to take up running again. Also, once I get back to town on Monday, I'm signing up for a kickboxing class... or something. Maybe some mixed-martial arts thing. I've never been a fighter, but I don't concentrate well during workouts, and I think having a training routine and concrete goals would help with that, too.

So yes, there are things I'm planning on getting done... things on the slate... I just have to start knocking them out.

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End of a chapter

2007-09-03T10:21:00.000-04:00

I'm home.

I've been here for about a month and as much time as I've spent on the computer (emailing, playing Texas Hold 'Em on Facebook), I haven't gotten around to finishing a post.

There's one in the queue about my departure from Fort Knox and the active Army, but it's a long, drawn-out narrative of my last couple days there and I ran out of steam. I guess I just didn't want to re-hash anything.

Besides, I've been readjusting to life as a civilian -- and, perhaps more importantly, to living back at my parents' home in central New York.

Over the past month it's been hard not to slip into the feeling that I'm back at square one -- that the past five years have served little but to age me and wear me down, and that after all that, I'm back at the same place I once departed from in the hopes of finding fame and fortune... or at least, weird adventures.

And I suppose the weird adventures part came true, but looking back over what I've written off-the-job since I was in Korea, they seem to fall flat. They weren't the kinds of adventures old men tell their grandchildren about by the fireside. And the three years spent at Fort Knox, well, they're filled more with regrets than with accomplishments.

At least that's how it seems sometimes. I've been clipping my articles out of the old Turrets I had kept in a cardboard box, scanning them into Acrobat files, and printing out copies I can send in to someone looking to hire a disaffected writer. Unfortunately, some of the ones I really liked are missing -- no doubt culled during a Keith L. Ware search at some point or another.

Or maybe I just neglected to save copies for myself. I've found that I have a hard time planning for the future, and I think it's because I have a hard time conceptualizing the idea of there being a future somewhere other than wherever I am. While I was working at the Turret, the idea of someday coming home was a fuzzy, vague notion that might as well have been a half-forgotten dream.

But here I am, and the Turret is behind me, as well as active duty military life, Kentucky, and a disastrous relationship that I can't seem to shake myself of completely. On that last count, it's not for lack of trying -- but evidently both parties involved need to agree to move on, and so far that hasn't happened. I'll leave it at that for now.

I've been filling my days with sporadic lawn care, comedy radio, and wandering the property -- looking out at the river or at how the sun lights up the leaf cover provided by the large maple and oak trees here. I've made a half-hearted attempt at a resume and caught up with the few friends who still are living in the area.

Yesterday I read through some of the blogs I wrote years ago while I was partying hard in Korea. It's striking how different a person I am now -- quieter, calmer, less prone to all-night drinking binges and screaming, and completely reversed on my political ideas about conservativism and America's newly-rediscovered Manifest Destiny mentality.

Maybe I've just gotten older, but maybe there's something else involved -- something about the loss of hope or idealism or joie de vivre or some-such abstract bullshit. When I find a diagnosis that seems to fit, I'll let you know.

For now, though, I'm content to relax and enjoy the balmy upstate weather as the summer ebbs away. There's a coolness to the air now, and even though the leaves have yet to turn, you can tell that fall is on the way. I have four months until the spring semester, and my plan is to be enrolled in a master's degree program in political science by then. I'm not quite sure where yet, but I need to get cracking on applying, since the deadlines seem to be somewhere around October 1.

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Getting out

2007-07-17T18:54:00.000-04:00

After an unnecessarily irritating final Tuesday at the paper here (the next two will be devoted to clearing and leaving active duty), I had an interesting exchange with a shoppette clerk as I was buying a six pack and a box of Camels.

She asked for my ID, which I produced.

"About time for a new one of these," she said, looking at the date -- August 27 of this year.

"About time for me to get out of the Army," I said, taking my card back.

"Oh, you're getting out?"

"Yeah --" I corrected myself. "-- Well, going to the National Guard."

"Wasn't the life you wanted, huh?" She asked, as she bagged my beer.

"It was what it needed to be, for as long as it needed to be," I said. "Now it's time for... well, whatever the 'next phase' is, I guess."

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Rope

2007-07-02T22:28:00.000-04:00

"Don't think you're going to get out of this."

There was a hush over the group of privates sitting in the bleachers.

"This is one of the funnest things you'll do in basic training," the sergeant barked. He spoke in a tone that commanded respect, but it was clear that he was trying to win the privates over.

I was standing in a gravel pit next to Fort Knox's confidence tower, and Staff Sgt. Daniel, a rappel master, was explaining to the incoming company what was expected of them.

When I had approached the scene, the first group from a basic training company had arrived to make sure everything was in order. I saw the first sergeant, and decided to ask if I was welcome.

"Hi, First Sergeant," I said. "I'm with the Turret."

I showed him the large camera bag I take wherever I go.

"I wanted to know if it was okay to shoot your guys going through the course," I said.

"It's okay with me," the grizzled NCO said. "Just don't shoot my guys. You can take pictures of them, though," he said.

"Fair enough," I said, pretending to laugh along with him.

"Who here is afraid of heights?" Daniel demanded of the group of around 200 trainees who had gathered in the bleachers.. About 100 arms shot up -- along with Daniel's.

He regarded the group of new recruits. They were young -- mostly -- and they stank. Word had it that the company had come to Thunderbolt Tower after two whole days in the field.... which translated to two days without a bath. The company was ripe.

But there was an Ohio Valley storm brewing. As the recruits sat in the bleachers listening to Daniel, I stood about 50 meters off, snapping photos and watching the storm front. There were black clouds approaching, and it wasn't a rainstorm. It was the kind of cloud formation that blotted out the day... the kind that made you think, "I better get inside."

Daniel had moved from the bleachers to a stand that rose about five feet above the ground. Aware of my camera, I'd ducked inside the shed that cowered under the 50-foot tower that formed the core of the "Thunderbold Confidence Tower." The trainees had all lined up and been issued lengths of rope that would become the "Swiss seat" each would use to descent the 42-foot tower that loomed over us.

You learn a lot in basic training, even though the curriculum is suitable for an easy night course. What you really learn isn't technical information -- the basic facts about being a soldier are very simple. What you learn, and what's actually valuable, is that you're capable of doing things you had once thought were impossible. That's why everyone goes through the Confidence Course.

The storm grew stronger. Light left the day, even though it was around three in the afternoon. I scrambled inside the gear shed, where a sergeant was handing out the rope equipment each recruit would need to tie a "Swiss seat;" a rappelling term for the knot formation used to keep a climber safe during a descent.

Eventually, the rain and lightening grew too heavy. We had to call the training off.

More to come.

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What's up? Nothing

2007-05-25T17:02:00.000-04:00

My military career is winding to a sputtering closure, and it seems like my life has just settled into a very predictable routine of waiting for what's next.

There are ETS briefings to attend, appointments with Reserve Component career counselors, and gathering together the things I need to give back to the Army -- a canteen, some raingear, a couple laundry bags, Kevlar helmet, load-bearing equipment... nothing I'll miss.

The things I've worn on a daily basis -- the uniforms I've gone to work in, sweated in, basically everything I've gotten sweat on -- I'll get to keep, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them. I'm a bit of a pack rat, so they'll probably go into boxes until such a time as someone else decides to throw them away.

It's a funny time to be leaving the military. Fort Knox has been under a hiring freeze since the War Supplemental bill got hung up in a pissing match between Congress and the White House, and now it seems that Our Dear Leader has finally gotten his way -- buying off the Democratic war opposition by "compromising" and allowing certain pork-barrel projects to be tacked on to the revised bill, which now excludes any language demanding a troop pullout by any specific date.

It goes to show how craven the supposed opposition is -- the ones who ran on platforms of "End the War" and "Bring Home the Troops" during the mid-term election last year. So much for reform.

What else? At the moment, I can't think of a thing. The end.

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Columns, kudos, and neurosis

2007-05-06T01:51:00.000-04:00

I waited and waited, but the Army decided never to see fit to actually publish my award-winning commentary on its Keith L. Ware Web site. So, for all you who didn't read it -- and most of you didn't -- here's the link.

Advocacy is not good sports copy

That's what got me the first-place nod.

Here's the "Honorable Mention" story I did for sports:

Lakers clobber Eagles 62-27

Great.

For two Department of the Army-level awards, I was given two Certificates of Appreciation from the garrison. For those of you not in the Army-awards-know, that's the equivalent of, "Thanks for showing up for work, keep it up."

As frustrated as I am with my job situation right now, I am happy that I got to interview the Wall Street Journal's Greg Jaffe, who has covered the Pentagon for the Grey Lady for the past seven years. I taped our interview, which was held at Fort Knox's golf course, and came up with this story:

Reporter discusses media-military relationship

By SPC. IAN BOUDREAU/Turret staff writer

Thursday, May 3, 2007 1:56 PM CDT

During one of his regular visits to Iraq as the Wall Street Journal’s military correspondent last year, Greg Jaffe was interviewing a squadron commander with the 1st Cavalry Division.

As he took notes, a sergeant major from another division noticed him and approached.
“Are you a journalist?” the sergeant major asked.
“Yes,” Jaffe replied.

The sergeant major looked at the soft-spoken Virginia native, eyeing his notepad and pen.

“You people all look the same,” he said.

“You guys all look the same, too,” Jaffe said to the ACU-clad sergeant major.

Jaffe visited Fort Knox yesterday to speak to participants in the annual Armor Warfighting Conference about the military’s relationship with the media.

He talked with the Turret Tuesday afternoon.

He’s something of an expert, having covered national defense for the Journal for the past seven years.

In 2000, he was a member of a team of Journal reporters who earned the Pulitzer Prize for their work on national defense issues.

Based in Washington, D.C., where he covers the Pentagon, Jaffe makes two month-long trips to Iraq each year, a schedule he’s kept up since 2003. As a reporter, he said he — and most other journalists — look at the war with a different perspective than members of the military.

“I think we tend to look at problems differently than they do, and it’s probably helpful for them to understand how we see the world,” he said.

Jaffe said he understands the frustration expressed by members of the military about a perceived lack of coverage of their victories and successes, but Jaffe explained that coverage needs to be driven by the overall strategic situation.

“At the strategic level, it’s hard to look at the last four years as anything but a real disappointment,” he said.

“I think the most important metric in any counterinsurgency operation is the security of the people, and if the people are less secure, then you’re losing.”

He said that during his visit to Baghdad in March he noticed that people in various neighborhoods had barricaded their roads with the heaviest objects they could find to prevent suicide car bombers from entering.

“There was a real bunker mentality there,” he said. “There was a lot of fear. And people talked about it.”

With that in mind, Jaffe said the challenge reporters face is accurately representing the strategic situation while at the same time recognizing the very real sacrifices made on the ground by individual Soldiers and units.

“The hard part is that at the tactical level, there has been a lot of heroism, and people are making an incredible sacrifice for the Iraqi people,” he said.

“It’s a huge sacrifice to ask people to be away from home for 12 months or 18 months. They’re sacrificing for the Iraqi people, they’re sacrificing for us, and the challenge is to celebrate that while also acknowledging the overall strategic picture, which is pretty bleak.”

That balance between the strategic and the tactical isn’t easy to strike.

“I think we could do a better job celebrating some of the tactical successes and the sacrifices that are being made,” he said. “But on the other hand, it’s that strategic-level picture that has to drive the coverage, to give people in this country the information they need to know to be able to make informed decisions.”

But to do that, Jaffe said he has to approach the war one battalion or one neighborhood at a time. Expecting a single news story to explain all the complexity of the war is asking too much.

“You’re writing with the hope that people who have better things to do will read it,” he said. “I try to pick a battalion or a neighborhood that illustrates some sort of broader truth about the war.”

Jaffe’s work in Iraq has been done exclusively as a media “embed,” which he said is a system that has benefits for all parties involved.

“I think it’s good for the media, and I think it’s good for the Army,” he said.

As a result of the embedding program, “We in the media understand the military a lot better.”

He said he hoped to be able to shed light on the media’s different perspective of the war during his speech at the Armor Conference.

“If you’re going to deal with the media, it’s worth understanding what the media thinks of the story, and how they think about events,” he said.

Commanders have a responsibility to account for themselves to the American people, he said, and that means talking to media representatives becomes essential.

“The biggest thing you can do is to be open and accessible,” he said. “It’s your job (as a battalion commander) to explain what’s going on in your sector. You are the expert on your sector…

“A key center of gravity in this war is the American people, and you better explain what’s going on in your area to them. If you haven’t done that, you’ve probably failed in a key component of your job.”

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Paintballing with the Cav

2007-04-12T12:52:00.000-04:00

There's a new batch of photos up on my Flickr page for all to see and revel in.

Fort Knox's 16th Cavalry Regiment was holding a Spur Ride this morning, and my assignment was to go take pictures of whatever it was they were doing. I had a training schedule, a camera, and a notebook, plus the name of the range the troopers were training on.

A call to the Regiment's S-3 shop got me directions to the range. It was out beyond Knox's infamous old marching hills, Misery and Agony, which in days past were used to put basic training privates through ruckmarch hell.

When I got to the range, a staff sergeant in a Cavalry Stetson approached me.

"What's up?"

"I'm with the Turret," I said.

"Ah, okay... you'll need a helmet and a mask."

A Spur Ride is a Cavalry tradition in which new troopers (Cavalry-ese for "soldier") endure two days of gruelling training in order to earn the right to wear spurs. While Cav soldiers these days don't normally ride horses in the line of duty, they're still attached to some of the accoutrements of the Custer-era Cavalry -- the black Stetson and shiny spurs.
Today, the Spur Riders had to make their way through several training events, including an advance up a simulated alley to search for a weapons cache (which everyone in the Army insists on pronouncing "Cashay"). The range lane was nicknamed "Hogan's Alley" -- a narrow roadway between two rows of building fronts. The alley was littered with empty barrels, wooden pallets, and a blown-out pickup truck.

Range cadre had also set up a series of pop-up targets and traps along the course. Pyrotechnic IEDs would explode, covering anyone nearby with a layer of red chalk, for example.

As a captain showed me the way up to a perch at the far end of the alley, we found another trap -- a paintball gun set up in a narrow alleyway and rigged to a motion sensor. We had to cross in front of the sensor to get to the stairs I needed to climb to reach my second-story photographer's perch, which happened to be next to a very loud .50 caliber machine gun simulator.

"Don't worry, everything's off," the captain said.

Not quite confident, I held back as he crossed in front of the sensor. As soon as he was across, the paintball cannon whirred to life and spat about 10 rounds across the alley at about knee level. The paintballs splattered on the opposite doorway, covering it with red goop.

The captain looked back at me.
"Well, I thought they were off," he said.

I looked at him but didn't say anything, then moved through the motion sensor's path as quickly as I could. After he showed me where to set up, he assured me he'd brief the squad coming onto the range not to fire on my particular window. I said I'd definitely appreciate that.

Once I was in position, I realized I was basically at the far end of a shooting range, and that I'd look a lot like a sniper peering out of the left side window with my 200-mm lens. This thought was reinforced as the first squad turned the corner into the alley and the pointman's paintball rifle immediately zeroed on my face.

"DO NOT SHOOT THAT PHOTOGRAPHER!" boomed one of the cadre.

"Thanks," I said to no one in particular.

Still, the troopers couldn't help but aim at me when they saw me moving, and I couldn't help but duck a bit when they did.

Another captain yelled at me from behind the buildings.

"Hey, photographer," he said.
"Yes, sir?"
"Try not to look like a target, okay? Don't duck in and out of the window."
"I'll try not to, sir," I said.

He also advised me to keep my camera in front of my face. Given the choice between taking a blue paintball to the grill and having to explain how an $1,100 camera lens got covered in goo, I wasn't exactly sure what my preference was.

After clearing two buildings on one side of the street, the advancing team ran into an unforseen problem. The truck in the middle of the street was rigged with a simulated IED, and they didn't notice it until it blew up.

The cadre assessed a few casualties.

The .50 cal next to me would periodically let loose with a volley of very loud reports, and the squad below would return fire in its (and my) direction. I didn't get hit, but I did feel the splatter of exploding blue paintballs hit my hands and camera every so often.

Eventually, the team made it through the lane and found the weapons cache, behind the door that had previously been splattered with automatic red paintball goop.

--------------------

Anyway, that's it for now. Check out the photos and leave some love if you feel like it. It's nice getting out of the office and seeing some real Army stuff going on now and again. With just four months left on my contract, I'm going to try to get as much of this in as possible.

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Love letter to a pig

2007-04-07T08:20:00.000-04:00

Henry Rollins -- formerly of Black Flag and the Rollins Band -- is now a political activist with his own TV show. Apparently, the guy with the biggest traps in punk rock feels like he should encourage Ann Coulter to make a major career move. He seems to have more hope for Coulter than I do, so he wrote her this love letter.

Enjoy.

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Quick notes on the current goings-on

2007-04-01T13:42:00.000-04:00

Tommy, can you hear me?

Probably not... the few people who used to drop by this space have most likely long-since abandoned it due to my own lack of interest in it. I'm not sure what the real reason is for my dropping blogging as a regular hobby, but whatever it is, I've been out of the habit.

At any rate, things have continued to happen, both in my life and in the world at large.

I got this email the other day from the organizer of a "pro-troop/pro-war" group:

A great read on the Senate's despicable vote to undercut our troops in Iraq.

From Melanie Morgan at WorldNetDaily.com:

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54942

P.S. For those of you who don't know, Melanie Morgan is Chairman of Move America Forward, the nation's largest grass-roots, pro-troop organization. Learn more about Move America Forward at: http://www.MoveAmericaForward.org

The link is to Ms. Morgan's article on the recent Senate approval of a war budget that would require U.S. troops to be pulled out of Iraq in a little more than a year. It was a mass-email, but I wrote back anyway after reading Morgan's boilerplate, toe-the-line article:

Sir,

This isn't a good read, and I think it's pretty intellectually dishonest. It's certainly not unique in that dishonesty, but it serves as a pretty good example of the overwhelming sentiment among the few Americans who remain "pro-war."

Melanie Morgan's argument -- that Senate Democrats ("and two despicable Republicans") have "blood on their hands" for "knifing" our troops in the back by adding language to the war budget that would require a timetable for withdrawl -- depends on some serious assumptions:

1) That the military's mission in Iraq is worthwhile because we are fighting terrorists there who would otherwise be attacking American targets elsewhere in the world;

2) that the U.S. military can work toward some kind of "winning" status in Iraq, provided sufficient time and money; and

3) that the President of the United States (who she constantly refers to as "the commander-in-chief") should have unchecked power to prosecute war as he sees fit.

At the same time, she ignores several important issues that should be taken into consideration before arguing for the war, for unrestrained presidential power, or against a reasonable timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq.

First, it is the president who has threatened to veto any measure passed by Congress or the Senate that involves a timetable. That kind of bullying is not only undemocratic, it also necessarily involves pushing the military's budget back for at least a matter of weeks, if not months. It is the president who has obstinately insisted on keeping U.S. troops in harm's way, and it is because of this war that the number of Americans killed on Sept. 11, 2001, has more than doubled (more than 3,200 U.S. service members have died in Iraq and Afghanistan). If there is going to be talk of "blood" being on someone's hands, the president deserves at least an equal share of the blame.

Second, it was the White House and the Republican party that so thoroughly screwed up the first six years of Bush's presidency that Americans voted to put Democrats into the majority in both the House and Senate. No one could have made any mistake about what the DNC wanted to accomplish if given control -- an end to this war, which has now gone on longer than America's involvement in World War II, was high among their list of priorities. Should Republicans (and the White House) have acted with more credibility while they had the opportunity, then perhaps voters would have kept them around.

Third, the United States is built on a system of checks and balances, which is designed to preserve the very freedoms we're supposedly "exporting" to the very country we're currently engaged in. Despite American citizens' seeming disinterest in civil liberties, it is those freedoms that have made the U.S. the free country we're so proud of. Suggesting that citizens and politicians who don't toe the Administration line are "treasonous," "anti-American," or "supporters of terror" is not only stupid, but also, by definition, "anti-American."

These checks and balances serve also to keep each branch of government accountable. A recent study of the Defense Department's budget by the Government Accountability Office found that not even top DoD officials could properly account for their budgets. After the scandal that erupted last month at Walter Reed, it seems clear that the Pentagon is not exactly a sound steward of the tax money awarded to the military.

Before I get written off as some "liberal whack-o," I'd like to point out that I am an enlisted, active-duty soldier who's served this country for almost five years. I didn't sign up for college money; I already had a bachelor's degree when I joined. I did it because I believe strongly in American principles -- the ones spelled out in America's foundational documents, including The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, the works of John Locke, the Federalist Papers, and the Constitution.

In the Army, I've worked as a "public affairs specialist," which basically has meant I've written for various Army newspapers. It's been an opportunity to speak with some of the people who've been directly involved in America's role in Iraq.

A couple weeks ago, I spoke with a lieutenant colonel who was in charge of an advisory team from First Army's 4th Cavalry Brigade who were assigned to help Iraq's 2nd National Police Division become self-sufficient. He had just returned from a year deployment. The colonel made what I think is an important distinction.

"Our job isn't to make Iraq a safe place," he told me. "Our job is to give the Iraqi government the opportunity to make Iraq a safe place."

He said that he felt he and his men had indeed accomplished that mission, but whether Iraq will take advantage of their efforts remains to be seen.

Bush's commitment to denying the "terrorists" (mostly rival Sunni and Shiite militias, who are simply vying for control of the region, which remains a "country" in name only) is also allowing the Iraq government to avoid taking responsibility or control of their own land. Nursing infants must eventually be weaned from the breast, and so too must the Iraqi government. It is futile to indicate to this new government that America's support is unconditional, because they will continue to rely on it for as long as they possibly can.

The talk here at home seems to center around name-calling and patriotism competitions. It's puerile and unseemly, I think, for people who supposedly love their country so much to take for granted the system whereby they've been granted a heretofore unimagined level of freedom.

Support the troops by giving them some kind of light at the end of the tunnel to look forward to. Iraq is beyond the point of "winning" or "losing;" it's a country struggling to redefine itself and get off the ground. Even the United States needed a Civil War to forge it into what it is today.

In the meantime, the blood of American troops is on the hands of those who refuse to give them an end to look forward to.

Very respectfully,

Spc. Ian Boudreau
U.S. Army
Fort Knox, KY

So, that's that.

The other day, I was listening to AM talk radio, which is a great place to go to find out what people who love war are talking about.

In this instance, Mr. Mike Gallagher was talking with a caller about the Marine Corps' tattoo policy. The two decided that since Marines and soldiers are working "in a dictatorship serving a democracy," that the freedom of expression granted to normal citizens didn't apply. Therefore, it was important that the military be able to maintain standards on tattoos. You don't get freedom of expression in the military, and that's the way it's supposed to work, they said.

The caller then went on to say that the "dad-gum" Democrats in the Senate weren't following the lead of the "commander-in-chief" (I hear this term more often than "president" these days), and that it was a gosh-durn good thing that we weren't running our war that way, because we'd be in some serious trouble.

The implication, of course, was that Democrats are pretty much the same as soldiers who disobey orders or go AWOL.

I wanted to call in and tell the two idiots to pick up a civics textbook, but it wouldn't have done any good anyway. It seems like everyone's forgotten that in our Democracy, it's important to have things called "checks" and "balances," and that no one person, office, or department has complete control of anything.

But accountability has been seriously undermined in the past six years, and conservatives have in general fallen into step behind the GOP, questioning the validity of commissions set up to examine serious failures of the government (notably, the 9/11 Commission, which Bush and Cheney did everything in their power to stall and hog-tie [to use a Texas colloquialism]).

Enough political ranting for now, though.

In good news, I won first place in the Department of the Army for commentary (military) in the 2006 Maj. Gen. Keith L. Ware Army journalism competition. They've got a link to the story up there, so check it out if you have a couple minutes.

Tomorrow I'll be back in the courtroom for a spousal rape court-martial. It'll be a nice change from some of the dreck I've been covering lately. I find covering courts-martial exciting, so I'll try to get back in here to talk about how things develop.

That's all for now -- mahalo.

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No news is good news

2007-02-23T09:13:00.000-05:00

In media companies' never-ending pursuit of more viewers, readers, listeners, and/or browsers, the idea of "news" has been denigrated to the point of pandering.

Here are CNN.com's "top stories" this morning:

Played up is a feature called "Behind the Sunni-Shiite Divide." Fair enough... that's sort of news, but it's really more of a feature piece than anything "breaking."

On to the list of top stories:
- Smith's body gets mom's body -- who gets baby?
- Weepy judge, woozy lawyer create court drama
- Analysis: Clinton-Obama tussle reveals issues
- U.S. soldier gets 100 years for rape, killings in Iraq
- Iran complains of nuclear bullying
- Concrete balls used to plug mud volcano
- Five-year-old rider trampled to death at rodeo
- Has hip-hop gone too far in degrading women?
- Thongs, fishnets called harmful to young girls
- Toned-down Oscars opt for 'gay woman in a suit'
- Fortune: Crazy behavior of the very wealthy

See if you can spot the two stories in there that might actually be useful. I'll wait.

It's definitely not one of the top two. The dead formerly-bloated skank has been monopolizing headlines since she quit stealing oxygen a couple weeks ago, and the story is lingering like the stench of a week-old, over-privileged corpse.

Did Anna Nicole Smith ever accomplish anything, aside from nabbing a few Playboy accolades and an advertising gig for TrimSpa?

The next presidential election should certainly be in the news. It's a tad early, but we should definitely be examining the hopefuls who've tossed their hats into the next race.

Too bad the story, which is written by CNN's "Senior Political Analyst," is about 20 inches worth of Captain Obvious remarks.

Then there's the soldier conviction story, followed by "Iran complains of nuclear bullying."

So, five stories in, we finally make it to something that has global impact -- no pun intended.

I guess the reason things are ordered this way is because CNN (which is only one among a throng of offenders) is trying to pander to the public's questionable mores by placing "popular" stories near the top of their page.

But here's the thing -- as a news organization, you're not supposed to just give people what they want. You're supposed to be giving them what they need to know, which includes, but is not limited to, information on the war everyone's tired of hearing about. Anna Nicole Smith warranted maybe one tongue-in-cheek obituary, not two solid weeks of total coverage.

Everyone knows that the stupid broad is dead, and that Britney Spears shaved her head, but has any significant demographic of people been informed on any late-breaking developments in Iraq?

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Don't panic

2007-02-01T17:53:00.000-05:00

I deleted a couple recent posts because I hated them. Just so you all know.

Silver Platter

2007-01-22T21:07:00.000-05:00

I'm starting to think that American politics are becoming intentionally difficult to pay attention to.

It's a field I'm meaning to get into -- at least as an observer -- so I feel a certain obligation to try to pay attention to what's going on. But the realities of day-to-day political headlines are so stunningly stupid that it's hard not to just throw in the towel and go look for stories about Apple's new iPhone.

Take, for example, the Democratic Party's front runners for the 2008 presidential campaign: Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. One is a woman, and the other is black.

Trust me. I'd love to believe that the United States of America, as a people who are supposedly so devoted to freedom and equality and human rights, are thoroughly prepared to elect a female or black president. We've beaten sexism and racism, haven't we? We certainly showed those damn communists what the score was.

But let's be honest. Does anyone think that the enormous expanse of backwardness that exists between America's two coasts is really going to vote for someone who doesn't look like JFK or FDR? Are we really at a point where the ethnic demographic a candidate falls into isn't going to matter?

Christ, has anyone seen an episode of COPS lately?

I think I can say without exaggeration that the GOP has done everything in its power to hand the next presidency to the DNC on a silver-gilded platter. Democrats, in response, have simply slapped that platter out of the garcon's hands and send it clattering to the floor. No, they're saying. We don't want to win. We'd rather show that we have inclusive principles.

Sorry, guys. The same red-state rubes who re-elected George W. Bush are going to be returning to the polls next November, and they're not about to have some colored gentleman running their blessed country. And God forbid they give the job to a woman... Hell, we'd be bombing some damn country every month or so.

The plans and agendas that Clinton and Obama bring to the campaign debate table will never matter, believe you me. And the DNC ought to know that by now... but they don't, and I'm wondering if they'll ever figure it out.

And the repercussions of electing a Republican president after eight years of this current maniac are too horrible to imagine.

A new GOP president with a referendum? It chills my blood.

-30-

Return of the PA Specialist

2007-01-08T13:25:00.000-05:00

As quickly as it began, my leave ended. There were the tearful goodbyes, the pledges to keep in touch, and expressions of hope for the future -- when my tenure in the Army will be over and I'll return to New York state.

Time at home is always followed by a surreal plane trip back to Kentucky. I fly out of Syracuse and make the connection to Louisville at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, where I usually find time to stop at the Fox Sports Bar for a drink and a couple smokes.

This time, I found myself sitting next to a guy around my age who introduced himself as Bill. He was dressed in standard gear for a twenty-something -- a baseball cap covered unkempt hair, and his baggy jeans fell over a pair of well-worn sneakers. He told me he was heading to Washington, D.C. for "meetings." The way he spoke reminded me of Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which didn't exactly seem to befit someone heading to "meetings" in the capital.

But since I was feeling talkative due to two large glasses of Sam Adams, I asked him what he did.

Turns out, Bill works as an independent humanitarian aid consultant. He said he was working out of Ecuador, building homes and schools for street children.

I could hardly believe it.

"So, sort of Peace Corps-type work?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "But I work pretty much on my own."

He told me of the high-power connections he'd made during the year he lived in D.C., and how when he needed money for some kind of humanitarian project, all he had to do was make a phone call. He talked about meeting ambassadors and high-level dignitaries at house parties, and how a guy he worked with had once met the Dalai Lama.

I lit another cigarette. I wasn't sure what to make of his story, because it sounded fantastic to the point of seeming fictitious. But despite the surfer/pothead drawl to his speech, his story held together and I couldn't help but think he was telling the truth.

He told me he had no immediate intentions of settling down, and that he liked the element of world travel and the freedom his job afforded.

Eventually, I had to head to the C Concourse to catch my flight to Louisville. I wished Bill good luck and left the bar, shaking my head at the thought of how for some people, life just shakes out being remarkable.

Now I'm back at work on Fort Knox. I suppose a good New Year's resolution would be to make as much of a mark here as I can -- before the Next Phase starts in August.

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Holidays and grim reading

2006-12-29T12:17:00.000-05:00

This morning, I finally finished reading Bob Woodward's "State of Denial." I had read it in spurts, basically absorbing large chunks of it whenever I had some real time off, and then ignoring it for several weeks.

If you haven't read it, go ahead and pick it up. It's a revealing look at a dysfunctional administration and a disastrous war, as described by the very people who are involved at the top levels. Members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are interviewed, as are Condoleeza Rice, former Coalition Provisional Authority Director Paul Bremer. Donald Rumsfled speaks on the record, and Woodward includes an interview he conducted with the president in 2003 (as the war waged on and his approval ratings plummeted, Bush refused further interview requests from Woodward).

It's aptly-titled. Throughout the book, which is "Part III" of Woodward's "Bush at War" series, there is a systematic denial of the facts on the ground in Iraq. The White House's very atmosphere prevented the kinds of factual reports in many cases from even reaching the president, and when they did, they were glossed over and reworked in order to fit into the kinds of rosy platitudes Bush felt the nation needed to hear.

Bush's former chief of staff, Andrew Card, is quoted as saying he felt that the presidency and administration had come to be recognized by two key distinguising characteristics: arrogance and ignorance.

And the mess goes on today.

Or at least, it did last time I checked. For the past week, I've been home in upstate New York on leave. Christmas has been a wonderful break, even though I took the Graduate Records Examination Wednesday. Despite how much I procrastinated in studying for the test, I think I did pretty well. No word yet on the analytical writing portion of the exam, but I got a 690 on the verbal section, just 10 points shy of the 700 I was hoping for, for insurance purposes.

Other than that, it's been reading and spending time with the family. For Christmas, my parents gave me an XM radio, so I've been stealing away to listen to Opie & Anthony and the Fungus channel (it plays punk, exclusively, and good punk: Ramones, Sex Pistols, Dead Kennedys, etc.) when I can.

So that's it from me at the moment. What's left to do is visit Syracuse University and find out about how to best apply for their graduate program in political science. Wish me luck...

-30-

Gonzo tagging

2006-12-10T13:34:00.000-05:00

I put this on the wall in a punk bar I went to in downtown Louisville.

It's called the Third Street Dive. Great place for live music and Smithwick's draughts.

UPDATE: Just in case you can't make it out, next to the dagger I wrote, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn Pro. -- HST"

-30-

Santa's surly

2006-12-07T21:49:00.000-05:00

I got yelled at by Santa Claus today.

Nope, I'm not kidding.

Here's the set up: In my ongoing quest to leave no journalistic stone unturned, I spoke with a Santa impersonator from Louisville this week for a seasonal feature story. For those who aren't familiar with the business, "seasonal feature stories" are the newspaper field's equivalent of HIV. They're those pieces on Easter egg hunts, beach openings, and of course, Santa Claus impersonators.

For what it was, the story turned out okay. Here's the link you won't click on:
Santa Claus? He's a 1960 graduate of Knox High

Anyway, I had laid the story out on page A2, but my editor liked it and moved the beginning to the front, with the story jumping to page A2.

Our paper's A-section is now split into two sections thanks to the evil advertising department's collaboration with our lazy pressmen. On the front page of the second A section, which begins on page 17, I laid in a standalone photo from the post's Christmas tree-lighting ceremony. The photo shows the "guest of honor," Santa Claus, giving candy canes to two young girls. Definitely your standard, non-threatening Christmas fare. The paper hit the racks this morning.

So after a soul-stirring staff meeting this morning, I was sitting at my desk handling my normal Thursday afternoon workload, which generally consists of browsing CNN, Wikipedia, and various messageboards while trying to earn a positive balance in Vegas-style Windows solitaire.

My phone rang. It was an older gentleman on the phone, and he didn't sound pleased.

"I'm Mr. So-and-so," he said. "And I saw that you ran a story about a fellow who dresses as Santa Claus on page 1."

I looked at my as-yet-unopened copy of the paper.

"Right," I said. I was waiting for him to launch into some irrelevant explanation of a perceived mistake in the story.

"Well, it goes to page alpha-two," he said. Okay, he was probably prior military.

"Um, yes," I said. I checked -- the jump on the front said to turn to page two, and the jump indeed started on page two. No mistakes yet.

"Okay, now if you turn to page 17, there's a photo of Santa Claus," he said.

I picked up the second section of the paper, and there was the standalone I'd laid out. Still, I wasn't seeing a problem. But the man on the other end of the phone was becoming increasingly excited.

"Yes, sir, there it is..."

He cut me off.

"Well, why doesn't it explain that this is a different Santa than the one in the story on your page one?"

I didn't have an answer. There were 15 pages of newsprint between the end of my Santa story and the standalone photo of the other Santa.

"Uh, sir, I don't think..."

"I'm that Santa!" he said, beginning to raise his voice. "Any normal person would think that this was the same Santa you wrote about in the story on page one! I think it was in very poor taste that you didn't differentiate between the two! I... I... I can't believe this! I feel like I've been kicked in the shorts!"

I'll be the first to admit that I'm a bastard sometimes. But I really wasn't trying to be a jerk to this guy on the phone. It's just that I couldn't believe that I was being yelled at by a guy who dresses up as Santa Claus and hands candy canes to young children after they tell him what they want for Christmas. I had no idea what to tell the guy, and I was beginning to think he was insane.

So I laughed at him. It wasn't a belly laugh -- just a nervous chuckle that sort of slipped out. I really was becoming convinced that the man I was talking to was either joking, or was a cellmate of the Chief's in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

"DON'T YOU LAUGH AT ME!" His voice went up an octave. "THIS IS SERIOUS! I'M SERIOUS! YOU... Put me back on with the first person I spoke with!"

I could hear my editor just outside the newsroom. He was giggling. The bastard had gotten the call, realized the guy was a nutter, and suggested he speak with "The Guy Who Did the Layout."

I shot the call back to his office, and listened while Santa Claus chewed out my editor for 15 more minutes -- as it turns out, the ass-chewing was about me, the young ingrate who had the gall to laugh at the "Post Santa," who's been doing this Saint Nick gig for some eight years.

I looked around the newsroom, and the two other writers in the room had stopped what they were doing to watch the show. Both had huge shit-eating grins on their faces.

"You just got bitched at by Santa?" John asked.

"Yeah," I said. "I guess I'm getting coal in my stocking this year."

I paused, and then cursed.

"Damn. I wish I'd thought to say that on the phone," I said.

My editor had finished up the call and walked into the room.

"That's a new one," he said. "In 26 years of editing this paper, I've never gotten yelled at by Santa Claus."

-30-

Oh yeah, I had a blog

2006-11-27T09:29:00.000-05:00

Happy belated Thanksgiving, people.

I spent the holiday in Somerset, Kentucky, with a buddy of mine and his family who graciously invited me to have the Turkey Day meal with them. It was a nice break -- we ate well, and Saturday hiked around Cumberland Falls for a few hours.

Now it's back into the last throes of the 2006 working year. I'm planning on taking a couple weeks off for Christmas, which means I'll be heading home to New York for even more R&R.

This was the fifth (and last, hopefully) Thanksgiving I spent in the Army, and the fifth I've been away from home. It's funny the way holidays take on a different character when you're away from family -- really, Thanksgiving has always been "just another day." Since it's a day off, historically I've used it as an opportunity to go out drinking the night before, since there's nobody expecting any conversation out of you when you go the the "Thanksgiving Dinner" at the post dining facility, and gravy is good for hangovers.

Instead, this year I just enjoyed taking it easy. I really must be softening up -- I mean, read this sentimental dreck I concocted for last week's paper.

On the U.S. politics side, once Bush announced that SECDEF Rumsfeld was being "asked to leave," I decided to revisit Bob Woodward's "State of Denial," which I'd picked up when it came out but never really got into.

While I was away for Thanksgiving, a woman noticed it while I was carrying it outside to read. She said, "Oh, I wouldn't read that. I used to like Bob Woodward, but this book is all untrue."

Apparently, she enjoyed Woodward's two previous Bush books, "Bush at War" and "Plan of Attack," which were widely considered to be at least sympathetic to the current administration. In "State of Denial," that is not the case.

In college, I took a survey course in psychology as an elective, since I switched majors too late to get into any journalism classes my freshman year. I remember reading something about "ego defense mechanisms," and while I understood the concept in the class however many years ago, I hadn't seen one jump out at me quite so blatantly and advertise itself.

Then again, I guess I have -- it's a pandemic across the country, and you can see it in that tenacious minority that still clings to the idea of George W. Bush being the saviour of the American way of life and the stalwart defender of freedom and apple pie he's painted himself as. If Mr. Bush says we need to go to war to beat bad guys who want to steal our babies and keep us from voting, then, by God, that's the way it has to be. Besides, what better way to restore our faith in the American youth than by having a couple thousand of them die in the desert, defending "freedom"?

In psychology, it's called creating ego defense mechanisms -- those ideas you construct so you can keep from believing that something awful or unacceptable is actually true. In art -- movies and literature, usually -- it's called suspension of disbelief. When you watch a movie, you need to temporarily ignore the knowledge that what's going on on the screen is fake; that way, you can become involved with the story line and experience the thrill ride the director is trying to take you on.

But in both ego defense and suspension of disbelief, there can come a time where the burden of evidence becomes so great that these are shattered, and the real world is left there unadorned, staring brutely back at you.

Many conservatives in America have been able to maintain their suspension of disbelief through a series of fantastic events -- the absence of weapons of mass destruction, the U.S.' s utter failure to rebuild Iraq, the thieving and war-profiteering going on in Washington, just to name a few -- and one wonders what exactly it will take to bring them all crashing back down to reality.

When they do, it'll be a good day, and those of us who have already left Candyland should welcome them with open arms. It won't be until then that we can actually make any real progress.

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Soldier pleads guilty to raping and killing 14-year-old Iraqi girl

2006-11-16T13:47:00.000-05:00

I used to be a member of the official "milblogs" ring, but I tendered my resignation after I noticed that the milblog community at large was eager to defend the actions of U.S. Marines at Haditha, Iraq.

I saw the story below as it came up on the AP wire yesterday. Before I posted this, I stopped by a couple prominent milblogs, looking for a reaction. There was none.

Apparently I made the correct choice when I quit the ring.

Soldier pleads in Iraq rape, murder case
From the Associated Press: (FORT CAMPBELL, KY) -- One of four U.S. soldiers accused of raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl last spring and killing her and her family pleaded guilty Wednesday, and agreed to testify against the others.

Spc. James P. Barker agreed to the plea deal to avoid the death penalty, said his civilian attorney, David Sheldon.

The military judge presiding over the case, Lt. Col. Richard Anderson, asked Barker why he participated in the attack in Mahmoudiya, a village about 20 miles south of Baghdad. It was among the worst in a series of alleged attacks on civilians and other abuses by military personnel in Iraq.

"I hated Iraqis, your honor," Barker answered. "They can smile at you, then shoot you in your face without even thinking about it."

Anderson accepted the plea agreement, which calls for Barker to serve at least life in prison. The judge will decide in a hearing Thursday whether Barker should be allowed to seek parole.

Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, 24, and Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman, 22, members of the 101st Airborne Division with Barker, also are charged in the case. Cortez deferred entering a plea during his arraignment Wednesday morning. Spielman will be arraigned in December. The fourth soldier, Pfc. Bryan L. Howard, 19, also deferred entering a plea at his arraignment in October.

A fifth person, former Army private Steve Green, 21, pleaded not guilty last week to civilian charges including murder and sexual assault.

Green was discharged from the Army for a "personality disorder" before the allegations became known, and prosecutors have yet to say if they will pursue the death penalty against him.

The group is accused of raping the girl and burning her body to conceal their crimes, then killing the girl's father, mother and 6-year-old sister.

After entering his plea Wednesday, Barker gave the court a vivid account of the events.

Barker said he and the others were drinking and playing cards while they manned a traffic checkpoint. Green brought up the idea of raping the girl and killing her family, he said.

"He brought it up to me and asked me what I thought about it. At a couple of points, I told him he was crazy," Barker said.

Barker said he and Green then approached the others with the idea, but there never was a verbal agreement to do it.

"Things just got set in motion, we just started changing (clothes), myself, Cortez and Green," Barker said. "By the time we started changing clothes, it was more or less a nonverbal agreement that we were going to go along with what we were discussing."

Barker said he, Green and Cortez raped the girl, and Green killed the girl, her parents and her sister.

Barker did not name Spielman and Howard as participants in the rape and slayings, though he said they were at the house when the assault occurred and had come knowing what the others intended to do.

Under military law, soldiers who are present when a crime is committed can be charged with that crime even if they did not play an active role.

Cortez, who could face the death penalty if convicted, and Howard watched from the audience as Barker described the assault. They were accompanied by their defense attorneys and declined to comment.

# # # # # #

In other news, the Army's new advertising slogan is "Army Strong."

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Staccato

2006-11-14T23:41:00.000-05:00

Something's loosened me up, that's for sure. Suddenly, I'm wanting to write again -- no grand ambitions, of course; just enough to get me to browse on over to Blogger and click the "New Post" icon.

I don't know who came up with the phrase, "familiarity breeds contempt," but it's true... and I'm not about to go looking around Google and Wikipedia to see if I can find a footnote. I might ruin this new spate of inspiration I've inexplicably discovered.

It might be the Palahniuk book I told you about last time. The man has a singular tone -- he constructs his sentences so carefully that you're at once disarmed by the casual tone and entranced by the hypnotic, progressing narrative. There's something about his economy of words and punctuation. Something rhythmic. Like you're approaching the second movement of a sonata, the one that introduces the pace, the sense of rushing toward the end. Sentence fragments. Beginning paragraphs with words like "and" or "but."

Did I catch you there? That last paragraph that starts out normal but steadily quickens with progressively shorter sentences, moving inexorably toward the italicized rhythmic? Did it work? You see, I'm just working things out at this point. I'm not versed enough in the theory of English prose to know if I'm doing it well or if I'm just ham-handedly muddling my way through each paragraph.

I'm at the point now where I'm easily influenced by powerful writers I'm fortunate enough to stumble across. Steinbeck changed the way I wrote. Thompson did, too. And this latest little horror novel of Palahniuk's... well, that's made me realize writing never has to be boring.

Looking back on what I've just composed, I can see the bad parts. There are too many adverbs (too many words ending in "y"), and too much self-referential focus. Too many gratuitous sentence fragments.

Who cares, though? This whole site is just an experiment. It's just a place for me to vent or whine or work out personal issues or see what kinds of things I can actually do with the languag or figure out the difference between me as a writer and me as a writer who's had too many beers.

Pay me, and I'll make it worth your while. Otherwise, if you don't like it, leave.

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UPDATE: Holy shit, six beers make me an intolerable read.

Is there a muse in the house? Anywhere?

2006-11-13T19:31:00.000-05:00

November's almost halfway through, and I'm still wandering my way through a crippling case of blog-boredom that's been plaguing me for months. Where I once watched eagerly for evidence of lies or sensationalism on television, now I can only manage to turn the set on for Sunday football games. I used to be an avid politics junkie, and now, even the recent mid-term elections barely elicited a peep as far as writing goes.

While on TDY, I watched the relentless election coverage on CNN, MSNBC, and even FOX. When the results came in showing the Democrats had wrested control of the house from the Republicans, who have led what has been arguably the worst congress in the history of the United States, I hardly even cared. When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- who was, in some way, my boss -- was shown the door shortly afterwards, I shrugged. Thursday, when the Virginia Republican incumbent conceded his senate seat to the challenging democrat, handing the DNC a one-seat lead there, I was just glad it was over.

To be honest, at this point, I'm actually excited to see the U.S. government come to a screeching halt. If you meet anyone who claims to believe the bullshit about "a new need for bipartisanship" or "civility in government," ask them which American-flag-pin-wearing creep is paying them. You don't need a long memory to know that while opposition feeds growth in the market, it creates screaming stalemates in our government.

Bush is having lunch with the soon-to-be speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi. He's appearing in press conferences and cracking lame jokes about "thumpin's." The winners are expansively praising the losers, and only a couple weeks ago, both were running television ads claiming their opponents were taking naturalization applications for suicide bombers and flag-burning pedophiles. The losers are pledging not to leave their former constituencies behind, and meanwhile are even now settling into new lobbying offices from which they'll launch new smear campaigns on different fronts.

Entropy is the tendency of any system to become more disorderly and chaotic as time passes. The more independent factors that are involved, the faster the system reduces to chaos. There have been civilizations in the world that have lasted for hundreds of years, perhaps even thousands. But could it be that this huge, free country of ours just has too many independent variables at work? Is our inherent entropy spinning us toward chaos and destruction faster than any empire before us?

There's a part of me that's desperately hoping so. If it's true, the next few years could be very interesting, and I wouldn't want to miss out.

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Postscript: I'm not actually reading that Kurt Vonnegut book anymore. I picked up a copy of Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted in the airport, and I've been devouring it this weekend. It's really a collection of ghost stories -- but instead of ghosts, Palahniuk uses the mundane and ordinary things we're accustomed to... and in twisting them, makes them more horrifying than any vampire or Frankenstein's monster ever committed to the page.

It's filled with the kind of obsessive research that characterizes Palahniuk's work, and it's also incredibly gory. If you're struggling to make it through a Dean Koontz, give Haunted a wide, wide berth. If you giggle when the helicopter lops off the top of the zombie's head in the original "Dawn of the Dead," then this one's for you.

Temporary Duty

2006-11-12T00:56:00.000-05:00

As usual, it's been a while since I wrote anything for this godawful blog. Again, though, I have an excuse: I was on Temporary Duty.

Evidently, it all started when someone at the Great Lakes Recruiting Battalion thought it would be a good idea to get a couple Army broadcast journalists up to talk to area high schools about how cool the job was. A couple months ago, I got a copy of the request, and, since broadcasters are technically in the same career field as I am, the sender asked if I'd be interested. They wanted two broadcast journalists to speak to high school classes in the Detroit area about their jobs. Instead, they just got one of me: a singular 46Q.

Some background: Since the Army (and, presumably the military in general) has moved to civilianize the post journalism field, there have been fewer and fewer journalists (Career field 46) back in garrison environments. When I arrived at Knox, the entire staff of the paper was soldiers... now, I'm the last one left, and I work with a gang of civilians. We used to run the TV station here, and now the all broadcasters (46Rs) have since left and moved on to presumably better things.

So as far as Fort Knox is concerned, I'm the only 46 left. I responded to the email explaining that I am by no means a broadcaster (but stay tuned for my upcoming Podcast), but that I'd be happy to talk about my job with the Detroit high schoolers.

The long and short of it is that the Army flew me to Detroit, hooked me up with a very nice rental car (a Chrysler Sebring with satellite radio) and a hotel room, and paid me somewhere around $100 a day to speak to area high school year book, English, and journalism classes about what I do for the Army.

I'm not used to being on the spot, expected to speak knowledgeably about anything. My job, really, is to come up with questions that get a subject matter expert or other point of contact talking... I'm always uncomfortable on the business end of an interview or photo shoot.

For the weekend that I was left to my own devices, I tried to come up with a coherent speech -- some kind of presentation that would highlight my own reasons for joining and the benefits I've gotten out of having been in the Army. After checking into my hotel (five miles north on Gratiot Avenue from the now-famous 8 Mile Road), I bought index cards, pens, scissors, superglue... hoping that my suddenly-squared away uniform and series of "key points" would get me through a week of high school class periords.

After the first presentation, I realized that I needed to ditch any semblance of a script. It made me feel awkward and staid, and the last thing I wanted was to talk at the kids. It was clear from the beginning that what I should really do was to tell them who I was, what my responsibilities were, and why I decided to take the route I did... and then to open it up to questions. I didn't want to presume about what the students wanted to know or hear, so the question period, in my mind, was the critical element.

Unfortunately. I'm not a natural stand up comic or teacher. When I spoke and moved to another point, I felt it was disjointed and awkward. Still, kids asked questions and wanted to know more about actually practicing the newspaper craft -- at least in the context of the military. I'm not sure if I got anyone more fired up about that... but the recruiters who escorted me certainly have a couple more leads now.

I got questions like, "Who advertises in your paper?" "Did you know you would be going into journalism when you joined?" "Could you be deployed?" "What's your favorite question to ask in an interview?" "Have you ever been 'in the Action?'" "Did the Army pay for your college loans?"

For me, it was at least a productive exercise. Have I accomplised what I hoped to do when I signed up? Has my career over the past four years stood out as much as I'd hoped? Have I done things that your average new reporter not had the chance to do?

Well, yes.

I interviewed Twisted Sister. I crawled through the woods with an infantry squad, snapping pictures while they fired their rifles. I've felt a tank company roll by and shake me in my boots, and I've sat in the gunner's hatch of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle during a 20-mile road march. I've penned two columns, and I've been responsible for the layout and design of a newspaper with a weekly 20,000 circulation.

I bitch about the Army a lot, and maybe there's good reason. But now, as my time is drawing to a close, it's becoming clearer that the things I wanted to accomplish by joining really have been accomplished, and that even though five years is a lot of time, the investment actually is going to have returns.

I'm looking foward to the next phase... but I certainly will never forget this one.

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RED ALERT! DEFCON 5!

2006-11-01T17:20:00.000-05:00

Battle stations, fellow assholes! Batten down the hatches and prepare for war! Light up those Molotovs and make sure your powder's dry. No quarter can be given! No mercy for the weak! A whining, defeatist DEMOCRAT has made comments that could, maybe, sort of, be interpreted as a slam on the military, so naturally, THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT HE MEANT!

For those of you who aren't knuckledraggers who get their news from Drudge or FOX, the word on the street is that Sen. John Kerry recently said something about education, success, and military service -- and how "one of these things is not like the other."

Here's what Ol' Ketchup Man said: "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well... If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

I got the quote from the Chicago Tribune's John Kass, who's convinced that Kerry's remark, multiplied by its timing, could easily be construed as a con-job by the GOP, who until the former presidential candidate's "joke," were about to lose the upcoming mid-term elections.

Republicans must be uncorking the champagne bottles they'd morosely stashed under the Pentagon's sub-basement (with labels reading "Do Not Open Till Doomsday" on the crates). The unconvinced need only watch a few of the party's disgraceful campaign ads, which have been in near-constant rotation for the past month. Republicans have basically been accusing their opponents of being kid-touchers.

Michael J. Fox, meanwhile, had the unmitigated gall to appear in a campaign ad for Democrat Ed Perlmutter in Colorado. In the ad, Fox, who suffers from Parkinson's Disease, shook visibly as he explained that Perlmutter would work to help overturn President Bush's veto on creating new lines of stem cells for research into possible cures for many degenerative diseases, including Parkinson's.

GOP shill Rush Limbaugh was quick to point out that Fox had probably neglected to take his Parkinson's medication in order to exaggerate the tremors associated with the disease. Limbaugh, of course, is something of a subject-matter expert in the field of perscription drugs -- but one might wonder if his gourmet taste in OxyContin qualifies him to diagnose symptoms of non-compliance in a Parkinson's patient.

It should be said that regardless of the frequency of Marty McFly's oscillations, the man does indeed have Parkinson's, and probably would prefer not to. The debate over stem cell research is one for another day; the fact at hand is that Limbaugh, like the party he shucks for, is a bag of shit who should be beaten with rubber hoses as he's chased over a cliff and into the sea.

Actually, what we were really talking about was John Kerry's ill-advised remark, which he's since explained was a botched joke. I suppose we know now why Kerry isn't doing Bill Burr's job(NSFW). What he should have said is, "Study hard and try to be smart, and you could succeed. Otherwise, you could get stuck in Iraq... or in the White House."

I've been in the Army for four years as an enlisted soldier. I haven't met many Ivy Leaguers here, believe me. There are a couple people I've met who've been degree holders, but a majority of enlisted soldiers come in with little or no college experience. The Army offers a means to get a degree (I'm personally planning on applying my education benefits toward a master's in political science, more on that some other time), and so, lacking the means with which to attend college otherwise, kids sign up and trade a few tours in Iraq for the chance to go to school.

Plus, I've met more drooling idiots in the Army than I had imagined existed in the world beforehand. So as far as I'm concerned, Senator Heinz was pretty much on target. Too bad his stupid comment is going to be so spun up by the GOP (one of their groups has spent about 80 percent on smear campaign ads) that the Democrats, this late in the game, can only really resort to collecting rabbits' feet and hoping for the best.

Have fun at the voting booths, kids. You won't catch me choosing between two soulless, stuff-suit used car salesmen.

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An update? Me? Why.... yes!

2006-10-18T22:25:00.000-04:00

Holy crap, I've become an ex-blogger.

I guess it's a combination of things. I've been pretty busy, which is one excuse. Part of that has come from an intensive PT program I've been participating in for the past two months. After I left Korea, I gained something like 30 pounds -- none of which was good. But I'd gotten to a point where I felt like it was becoming a problem, and after busting tape a while back, it was clear I needed to do some more physical training.

That's come in the form of running four and five mile courses three times a week. It was murderous at first, in part because it was still hot and humid here, and in part because I had previously had no particular reason to focus on running. I was appalled at my two-mile time when I finally got around to having it measured, so I knew I needed to basically just run my ass off.

And a certain staff sergeant at HHC Garrison has been happy to help out, which is to his credit. My company holds PT three times a week, and generally it's a waste of time. Some pushups, crunches, and maybe a few laps on the quarter-mile track -- and then we're done. Generally, I'm home by 7:30, which is when the sessions are supposed to end.

We make up for it in the afternoons. We stretch out at 3:30 p.m., and then head off to various far-away points on Fort Knox. The most brutal is a five-mile jaunt over hill and dale, which takes us across Wilson Road and into the old basic training grounds -- out to the original water tower, which is usually covered in turkey vultures looking for roadkill, and around Triangle Motor Pool, then back down toward Wilson, down to Gold Vault Road, and a left turn up the steep hill to the company.

The first time we ran it, I didn't even make it to the water tower (which is at about the two-mile mark) without quitting and walking. I couldn't imagine being able to maintain a run -- even a shambling "airborne shuffle." I was pouring sweat and my shins felt like they were being sawed off.

Three weeks later, I was keeping pace with the other runners, and beating a couple of them back to the company. It's not fun, but I can do it now -- sucking air in through my nose (which dehydrates you less, since breathing through your mouth loses more water to respiration) and running from my hips instead of my knees, letting both feet roll from heel to toe on each step.

In the time since I started the additional PT, I've dropped nearly 20 pounds. I can see the lines delineating my calves again, and my ankles have narrowed down. My reflective PT belt started hanging loose around my waist two weeks ago, and last week I had to readjust it just to keep it from slipping down over my hips.

Don't let me make you think I've become a health nut. There has never been a single time when I've looked forward to our brutal afternoon runs -- I do them because I know I have to, and now that I'm seeing results, it's easier to force myself to attend. On the way there, I always hope something will happen that will cancel the session... but that never happens, and when I'm there, I put everything I've got into the exercise. At first, it was "don't quit!" Now, it's "how hard can I push this? Can I go faster?"

Running hurts. On Fridays, when we do our final run for the week, my knees scream in protest. My shins burn, and the soles of my feet feel like I've been running barefoot over gravel. My lower back aches, and my abdomen tightens and cramps. But that's not because I'm injured or particularly old -- it's just because I was in rotten shape, because I was irresponsible and let myself go. Everyone who devotes themselves to running goes through the same aches and pains.

There's not really any short cut to getting better at running -- you just have to do it, and as far as I'm concerned, it sucks -- at least to do it. But now that I'm seeing results, I want to keep at it. But I'm going to hate every moment of it.

In the meantime, I rocked the house this week at the paper. It comes out tomorrow (Thursday, October 19), so check it out once it updates here. I've got one in there on a Georgetown-educated professor giving our legal folks a class on the Middle East (which was riveting -- a great class), one on some guys who have an idea about how to re-route traffic around one of Knox's gates, a story about a World War II veteran who jumped into Operation Market Garden with the 82nd Airborne and is still the division's most decorated soldier, and a piece on the "Field of Screams" in nearby Brandenburg. The two photos on this week's front page are also mine, which is pretty nice, too. I liked how they all turned out, at least in general, so if you get a chance, check 'em out.

Okay, so that's an update. Peace out, bitches.

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Uniform, and an affirmation

2006-10-02T20:42:00.000-04:00

It took a while, but I finally broke down and bought a set of the Army's new ACU -- the strangely-colored, Velcro'ed, "great new thing."

I admit -- I was a detractor when the new uniform first came out. I didn't like the look, or the fact that patches were stuck on via velcro rather than sewing. I'm a convert, though... and maybe it has something to do with the fact that the uniforms I've worn for four years were initially thrown at me over a CIF counter in Georgia, but the new threads feel more like street clothes or pajamas... they actually fit me, and don't feel like garbage bags.

Saturday, I worked as designated driver for my stupid, fascist roommate. Considering my distaste for clubs, it was as good as can be expected. I'm sure a blog will be forthcoming once I've sobered up.

Anyway, folks, I'm through here. Stay semi-tuned for an amusing account of my weekend.

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Sippin' on Gin and Juice

2006-09-28T20:27:00.000-04:00

That's a Snoop Dogg song. I don't listen to him, but I've got a little glass of Woodford Reserve here, and it's a nice way to wind down.

I don't post much these days, and I'm sort of sorry about that. Only a little, though -- because it wasn't for any of you that I ever posted in the first place, really. This is just a little space on the Internet where I can rant about something I think is relevant at any given time, and there's no financial interest in it, so it's not like I'm letting down the people who sign my paycheck or anything.

The trouble is, I think, that I've got short-timer's disease pretty bad. For those of you who haven't been in the military or served a prison sentence, "short-timer's" is the malaise that creeps over someone who's got their mind completely preoccupied with getting out... When you can almost taste it, it's hard to focus on the present with any kind of drive or clarity.

I'm looking forward to too much, you see. Once I'm through with this Army stint, I'll be hopefully checking into a graduate school for some studies in political science. I'm not sure which excites me more, the coming return to an academic environment or another shot at civilian life.

I've never been a very good soldier. Soldiers, to me, are the guys who carry around weapons in dangerous places, who stand in line, and who keep their hair cut out of a sheer desire to maintain the Standard.

Good soldiers always do well on their physical fitness tests. They march out of the wire in strictly-kept formation spacing. They study Army regulations religiously, readying themselves for the next board. They keep their class A uniforms sharp and up-to-date. Soldiers are men who carry weapons and look for hostile fire.

I'm not one of them. I wear a camouflage uniform to work every day, and it has an American flag on the right shoulder... but I'm not one of those guys. I do my job, but really, it's just a job. I have a lot of what they call cognitive dissonance when I hear "Soldiers died in Iraq today" followed by, "You're a soldier."

God bless those of you who do that dirty work. I'm not among your number. And that's why I'm not long for the Army. Next summer, here I come.

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I hate Us Weekly, and Doug Stanhope rocks.

2006-09-25T09:26:00.000-04:00

While it was monsooning here Friday, I dug up some angry feelings toward pop culture magazines and put this together. It's tentatively running in the paper this week, because my editor seemed to like it. It's still a draft, and I've got more messing around with it to do... but see what you think.

To the owners, publishers, editors, and writers of Us Weekly:

I'm writing to address a few concerns I have about the publication Us Weekly. I have several problems with the magazine, so I figure I'll begin with the nameplate.

Why on earth did you decide to name the publication "Us Weekly"? The second word is clear, but "Us"? Us is a personal, first person, plural pronoun meaning "you and me," where "you" can either be singular or plural. The word insinuates that the magazine is about you and me, and nothing more. This couldn't be further from the truth. It would be more accurate for Penthouse to call itself Better Homes & Gardens.

Your magazine is filled with the intimate details of the lives of Hollywood stars and media darlings. When Paris Hilton lost the runt she calls her dog, you were on the story. When we needed a faster way to say "Brad and Angelina," you provided us with "Brangelina." Whenever Nicole Richie drops five more pounds off her hideously emaciated frame and decides to hit the beach, your photographers are on the scene.

Thanks to "Us" Weekly, we can keep track of who Jennifer Aniston is dating. We know which Simpson sister is seeing who. We now can look forward every week to a new picture of Britney Spears looking like a social services disaster.

Nowhere in your magazine, however, have I ever been able to find even a single inch of editorial copy that pertains to me. You, perhaps; but certainly not me. Instead, it's all about other people--people who certainly have better things to do than read your publication. For example, they might make anti-Semitic remarks during a DUI stop, or secretly cheat on their significant other with someone we've seen on a "reality show."

Therefore, I suggest you change the name of your magazine to "Them Weekly." It's much clearer, and it takes away the disingenuous nature of your current flag.

Then again, I should probably ask why people read your magazine in the first place. After all, it's filled with nothing but the personal details of the lives of people more interesting than you and me, and presumably the rest of your readership. These facts and speculations couldn't possibly have any practical relevance to my life--or anyone else's, really. So why does anyone read them?

The only guess I can come up with is that people read your rotten magazine to get some kind of voyeuristic thrill out of peeking in at the "ugly" side of the lives of the stars, and by so doing vicariously become someone more "glamorous" and "fabulous" than they'll ever hope to be. You feed a desire many seem to have to be famous, but you do it without challenging them ever to leave the mind-numbing glow of the televisions they have tuned to the E! network (an organization equally as evil as yours).

So maybe calling yourselves "Us" Weekly works out in the end, in some horrible way. We can pick up your magazine, read about Tom Cruise's latest insane outburst, or the hottest Rodeo Drive couple, or who in TV-land might be pregnant, and think to ourselves, "Yes, I'm one of these people, too." And then we can turn back to our televisions, open a fresh package of Oreos, and continue to get dumber and fatter.

Thanks, after all.

Sincerely,

Us.

In other news, I went to see Doug Stanhope at the Comedy Caravan in Louisville Friday. Awesome show -- and in a very close, old-school comedy club atmosphere. Doug stood by the door after his act and I got to shake his hand and exchange a couple words. I'd written him months ago asking him to come to Louisville, and whether that had any impact on his decision to come here or not, I thanked him profusely for having made the trip.

I was almost surprised after his brutal act that he was very gracious and seemed happy to see he had fans in the audience. Anyway... it's Monday, so time to get the old nose to the grindstone.

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Advocacy is not good sports copy

2006-09-18T13:55:00.000-04:00

Just so no one thinks I haven't been writing at all lately, here's a column I did last week as I was filling in for the sports editor, who was on leave.

COMMENTARY - Advocacy is not good sports copy

By Spc. IAN BOUDREAU/Turret Staff Writer

"Just the facts, ma'am."

Sgt. Joe Friday used to say that on "Dragnet," and the phrase is four words to live by for reporters today--including sports writers.

I followed the controversy over Sports Editor William "Ski" Wilczewski's alleged non-support of Knox sports teams with some interest, and it seemed to me that there was, at least in some cases, a substantial misunderstanding of what a sports writer's job is--which is, simply, to obtain and report the facts.

I heard the same complaints during my own tenure as sports editor. "You're not supporting the team." "Your negative headlines aren't doing our kids any favors." "Why can't you put a positive spin on this?"

Here's the deal--reporters aren't paid to engage in advocacy. When nations do that in print media, it's called propaganda. When sports writers do, it's called crummy reporting.

The use of words like "amazing" and "breathtaking" is discouraged outside spaces such as this. Editorializing, as it's called, is best left to restaurant critics, uninformed columnists, and amateurs who can't figure out how to make the facts speak for themselves. I don't need to say Xavier Bacon's 73-yard touchdown run Friday night was "awe-inspiring;" the reader can come to that
conclusion on his own.

The other major point here is the fact that if everyone's a winner, then everyone's also a loser. What's the point in reading a glowing account of a team's performance during a 60-point blowout? Doesn't that take the luster away from a well-earned legitimate victory? Who wants to clip out a praise-filled newspaper article about a stunning win when every defeat has been lauded in the
same gushing terms?

The Boston Globe's Mike Reiss reported in February that a youth basketball league in Framingham, Mass., distributed trophies to each participating player. One of Reiss' sources was Roy Baumeister, a professor of psychology at Florida State University.

"The trophies should go to the winners," Baumeister said. "Self-esteem does not lead to success in life. Self-discipline and self-control do, and sports can help teach those."

That's why there's a Stanley Cup, a Lombardi Trophy, Olympic gold medals, and Masters' green jackets--it's to honor those who have struggled and ultimately won. That's why there are sports games held all around the world in the first place--to determine who the winners are, and to give them the respect the losers rue.

If anyone is responsible for encouraging and praising athletes, it's not sports writers. That's the job of the parents, friends, and fans of the team--those people who can afford to be biased in their appraisal of the organization. Heck, if it was the newspaper's job to act as the cheerleader for
the team, then why have actual cheerleaders?

Here's the very simple formula needed to get "positive" headlines in the Turret: win games. I understand that Knox teams are currently struggling to even fill their rosters. I know there aren't as many students as there have been in years past.

That's not the issue. It's the athletes' and coaches' jobs to win games, and it's our job at the Turret to be there when they do--and to stick with "just the facts, ma'am."
# # # #

Had to get my cheerleader dig in there, by the way.

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Great news, everyone! I've got horrible news!

2006-09-18T10:11:00.000-04:00

I'm convinced now that I've been at least partially comatose for the past year. Otherwise, I would have noticed something like this when it happened:

Pentagon seeks greater immunity from Freedom of Information Act

May 6, 2005 -- The Department of Defense is pushing for a new rule that would make it easier for the Pentagon to withhold information on United States military operations from the public.

The provision, proposed by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in the 2006 National Defense Authorization Act, would render so-called "operational files" fully immune from requests under the Freedom of Information Act, the main mechanism by which watchdog groups, journalists and individuals can access federal documents.

Open government advocates oppose the move, arguing that the proposed exemption is worded so vaguely that it could potentially enable the Pentagon to seal off large amounts of information, including evidence of abuse and misconduct, without proper justification.

The story was written by the New Standard's Michelle Chen. Any guesses as to why the Defense Department wanted to more easily evade reporters' FOIA requests?

Because responding honestly to those questions could threaten national security, you silly goose!
Of course that's why. That's why we do anything these days aside from tracking down pictures of Suri Cruise or pining for a new season of "American Idol."

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Five Years Later

2006-09-11T10:40:00.000-04:00

It's been five years since that Tuesday morning when planes driven by terrorists slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan and the Pentagon. I remember being rousted awake by my friend Louis, who burst into my room and shouted, "You need to come downstairs and watch the news, now."

We all did. At the time, I was living in the fraternity house on Oregon Avenue in Steubenville, Ohio. There were remnants of the weekend's partying, which had stretched into Monday evening, all around us, but our attention was locked on the television screen. The first tower to be hit was smoldering, and we watched as a second airplane full of people crashed into the second, sending out a huge plume of smoke, debris, and flame.

A year later I was standing in a remembrance ceremony at Fort Benning. I was in basic combat training, my head was shaved, and I was wearing thick Army-issue spectacles and a new set of BDUs. The ceremony was held in the still-dark dawn, and we watched the images from September 11 scroll across a huge projection screen, with inspirational music as accompaniment.

Sometimes people ask me if I joined the Army because of September 11. I've thought about it a lot, and my answer is usually, "I didn't join because of September 11. But if it hadn't been for September 11, I wouldn't have joined."

The anger I felt while I watched the twin towers collapse on live television was certainly the catalyst that drew me to the recruiter's office once I'd finished college. I suppose if that hadn't been there, I would probably have wound up with a job at some small-town newspaper, content to live out the next years covering city council meetings, school boards, and little league games.

As much as my life has changed due to 9/11, it's impossible to have been completely unaffected by what happened that day. For good or ill, that day set into motion the rapid changes in global society we're currently swept up in. The very word American has taken on new and strange meanings around the world, and our military is still engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The event has also served to further polarize our nation. Debate and discussion over national policy has been reduced to such pithy non-sayings such as "stay the course" and "fight or flight" and "cut and run." Gallup runs monthly polls asking American citizens if they "feel safer," we take our shoes off after waiting in huge lines at our airports, and politicians of all stripes cite 9/11 as a main reason they should be elected to whatever office.

Today, five years after the event itself, people across the country will take time to remember what happened that day and to think of the thousands who died. But I think it's also important to remember the fact that September 11 did not happen in a vacuum -- rather, 9/11 was one point on a continuum of world events. There were circumstances that led to it happening, and it has had an indelible mark on the time that has followed it. While we remember the victims who died that day, we should also be mindful of those who have died since, but no less directly because of it.

This includes the civilians and military working that day in the targeted wing of the Pentagon; the passengers aboard American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175, American Airlines Flight 77, and United Airlines Flight 93; the civilians, police officers, firefighters, and first-responders who perished at Ground Zero in Manhattan; Pat Tillman and all those who have died fighting in Afghanistan; and the more than 2,000 who have died in Iraq.

In November 2001, Jean-Marie Colombani wrote in Paris' Le Monde: "We are all Americans! We are all New Yorkers, just as surely as John F. Kennedy declared himself to be a Berliner in 1962 when he visited Berlin."

That sentiment has largely disappeared.

Today, when you remember where you were on 9/11, remember also what havoc that day has wreaked on our country and our world, and what we have spent in human lives in the years that have followed. In a very real sense, it's still September 11, 2001.

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The Donovan has a 9/11 post round-up here.

Football's back, and I stink

2006-09-06T20:56:00.000-04:00

Thank God football is back.

I don't have anything major against other professional sports -- at least, not seriously -- but I'm a football fan. Baseball is a nice thing to keep track of, but watching games doesn't have the same gravity when there are some hundred-odd of them to see over the course of the season. I've played baseball, and I loved playing it, but watching -- even as a weekend Yankees fan -- doesn't have the appeal.

Basketball I skip altogether. The pros are full of prima donnas, and the only school I hold any allegiance to -- Syracuse, because it's near home -- only shows up once in a while. I actually booked time to watch the Orange's appearance in the NCAA championship, only to find that our star, Gerry McNamara, decided not to show up. With a season average of somewhere near 20 points per game, the jackass decided he was only going to sink two lousy points in the championship run, and effectively booted Syracuse out of contention on his own.

Besides, it's rare for me to get emotional at all about basketball. When good college teams and pro teams regularly run up 90-110 points a game, where's the payoff after a score? Possession changes too quickly, and while teamwork is absolutely necessary, it still winds up feeling shallow -- at least to me.

Enter football. Every game matters, and every play is a chess match between two coaches. You get to see how each team adapts its plays to take better advantage of its opponent's weaknesses, and you recognize immediately how critical the pure physicality of your players is.

"Will they see this coming? Can we work our way out of this one?"

Incredibly deep questions, both; and they're asked routinely during each game of football played on American soil.

Superstition is not a football-unique phenomenon, and for a long while I thought I was immune -- at least until this past weekend. I'd gotten a bonus in my paycheck, so I splurged and bought a Ben Roethlisberger jersey I found on sale at a mall -- marked down from $79 to around $55. I'd wanted the (wide receiver) Hines Ward version, but they didn't have it in black, so I snagged the Big Ben.

Two days later, I find out the Steelers quarterback has been hospitalized for an emergency appendectomy. Ward, meanwhile, is out for the season opener thanks to a hamstring injury.

Is my buying of merchandise cursed? If so, then I could do well by snapping up Peyton Manning -- equipment. But maybe it's the fact that I got the jersey on sale... so should I make a point of paying full price from now on?

These are questions that are going to plague me while I watch Thusday's season opener of the Steelers versus the Dolphins. Years ago, I'd have given anyone with the same symptoms a free pass to the crazy ward, but now I'm too wrapped up in this thing to protest. Someone find me a bookie.

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Back again? Maybe.

2006-09-04T23:23:00.000-04:00

Geez. I've been treating this blog like a meth addict treats his kid. I've got little in the way of excuses -- which I'll go ahead and regale you with now.

First off, I've been picking at this book. It's not going too quickly, but at least it's fun when I get down to actually working on it. So far, we've got a healthy dose of gore and a curse word, and we're not even out the door from the coroner's office.

Second, there's work. It's been sapping most of the will I have to write anything lately, and that's about the long and short of what I'm about to say about it. I'm the only soldier left there, so suffice it to say it's a civilian issue, but it's had plenty of fallout, which even we Swiss are feeling.

I was actually saddened to hear about the death of "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin today. I'm exactly the kind of mean-spirited, heartless bastard who'd be expected to make a joke about it, but I really was remorseful when I read the story this morning. He seemed to be a genuinely decent dude, even if he was resented by more Australians than Paul Hogan. Argh... there's the joke, I suppose -- which was inappropriate, but the point is that it's a shame to see him go.

At any rate, I figured I'd swing back by this Trainspotting baby just to let anyone left hanging around know that I'm still alive... again.

So please, enjoy yet another worthless update that I only wrote out of guilt for leaving the thing completely abandoned.

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So I've been on vacation. Sue me.

2006-08-20T18:19:00.000-04:00

Yep, I've been a rotten blogger. Normally after a hiatus like this, I'd feel a little guilty for not having posted anything for ages. At the moment, though, my conscience is clear.

About 10 days ago I came home to central New York for some leave. I hadn't been home since Christmas, and the family had been planning a beach-side vacation during August -- since that's about the only time all seven of us could get together. We headed down to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and spent the entirety of last week sprawled on the beach, swimming in the surf, or drinking the very tasty beer brewed by Rehoboth's own Dogfish Head brewery.

I'm now brown as a nut, my hair has grown far out of regulations, and my vacation is rapidly drawing to a close: I fly back to Louisville tomorrow afternoon, and it's times like these I dread. The last fleeting days and hours of a trip home are always melancholy, since I know that soon I'll be returning to Radcliff, Kentucky, which is a place God has forgotten about.

The good news, though, is that the break has given me some good perspective and focus in terms of this final year of Army service. I've visited some old friends -- one of whom lives in Ocean City, Maryland, and has a dock on the channel for a back yard -- and I've seen a little of what life will look like once I'm out.

I also got some ideas together for the zombie book, which I think will be a fun, violent romp through post-September 11 American schizophrenia. After the events of the past few years, how could a zombie apocalypse story not involve some systematic failure of the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency? Write me now if you want to share in my millions.

It's really just an experiment, and I don't actually expect it to pay off in spades, if at all. But it'll be interesting to slog my way through the process of actually writing something that big, even if the content is going to be heavy on dreadful descriptions of undead cannibalism.

So, onward and upward, I suppose. I'll be back at the grindstone Tuesday, and while I'm not looking forward to it, at least it'll be the beginning of the last 365 days I have left in this business. After that, who knows?

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I'm back. I'm back in the New York groove.

2006-08-01T01:06:00.000-04:00

Sort of, anyway.

For those of you who have checked this space with any regularity, I'm sorry it's been so long. I just haven't had anything worthwhile to say.

For those of you who just happened upon this space while looking for Li'l Jon lyrics, go fuck yourselves and find some good music to listen to, because right now, you suck.

Now that that's out of the way, I might as well say that there's nothing interesting for me to talk about. No neat scenes ripe for description, no embarassing stories to tell, and nothing brewing on the professional side that warrants a retelling.

My latest plan is to write a crappy horror novel, which hopefully I can sell to someone who will eventually rid me of financial worry. We'll see how that goes.

Politics? I can't do them any more. It's too tiring. The headlines speak to an audience to dumb to understand what's actually going on, and I don't feel like I have the readership to make explication worthwhile. Figure it out on your own, I don't care anymore.

I just want this phase of my life to be done. I'm tired... it's been four godforsaken years already.

I'm not depressed, really. Just tired. Tired of the same old shit. It's definitely time to move on.

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Name-droppage, Army buddy makes good, and a new project

2006-07-16T20:05:00.000-04:00

I'm still foundering in the depths of uninspiration, but I thought I ought to drop by this old place and provide an update of sorts.

First, my old buddy-turned-NCO Josh Salmons has been interviewed over at CK's Blog. He was kind enough to give me a credit for getting his blogging career going. If you haven't been by there yet, definitely check out Talking Salmons. He's doing some great writing from Taji, Iraq.

Unlike the good sergeant, I've somehow managed to avoid deployment. And now that I'm about at the "year left" mark, it looks doubtful that I'll go. I joined the Army, and missed the war. I can't really say I'm that upset.

So now that I'm heading into the home stretch, I'm looking toward the next phase. I've settled, I think (at least for now), on going to graduate school, and Ohio State University seems to have the best program for journalism. I haven't made any firm decisions yet, but the general idea of going back to an academic environment is very appealing.

Anyway, that's it from me at this point. Maybe inspiration will strike this week.

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Time is relative

2006-07-09T17:58:00.000-04:00

It was noon, today, and I was pushing the intercom button at the entrance to the post airfield. My first attempt hadn't raised a response, so I held the bastard down for a healthy spell the second time.

"Yeah?" a voice crackled. It was surely one of the civilians in the Ops hangar.

"I'm here for the Autocross event," I said. I ran my hand through my hair. It was too long, and greasy, since I hadn't showered since the day before.

"Not here," the Ops guy said. "You've got to go through the museum park."

"Great, thanks," I said.

I was heading to the airfield to cover the SCCA Autocross race. It's a low-key amateur racing event where anyone with a car and twenty bucks can strap into their vehicle and try winding around a slalom course at high speeds. Normally, this kind of thing would be exciting, but I'd been on 12-hour Charge of Quarters duty until six in the morning, and I was feeling a bit punchy.

The good -- and bad -- thing about CQ is that there's literally nothing to do other than watch television or read. I'd picked up a couple books this week, and at the beginning of the shift I cracked open J.D. Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye. I'd never read it in high school, because back then I'd been reading Greek and Roman stuff primarily -- Homer, Virgil, Caesar, Thucydides, Herodotus, Xenophon. The great books courses I took in college petered out after Communist Manifesto and Origin of Species.

I didn't know what to expect from Salinger. I was only really aware that his seminal work was apparently a favorite among assassins and conspiracy theorists.

I was immediately struck by the tone and language, which reminded me of some of Steinbeck's stuff. But the more resonant element was Holden Caulfield's general disgust for everything in his life, including, to a certain extent, himself. Considering the time it was written, I suppose Salinger published the first book about the modern angry teenage punk.

I'd finished it by 3 a.m. It's one of those books that ends somewhat abruptly, and it's difficult to put my initial reaction into words. I had several, I suppose -- including, "Damn, what a time to pick to read a book like this."

When it comes to the Army, I'd say it's safe to say I have a bit of a Holden Caulfield streak.

Back at the airfield, I turned the truck around and headed for Keyes Park. It was overcast, but still bright for my eyes. I found a narrow dirt access road onto the side of the airfield and turned in, heading eventually onto the tarmac where a guy with a clipboard was standing. He smiled and asked me to sign a waiver.

"I'm here with the paper," I said. He smiled again and handed me the clipboard. Waiver it was, I guessed.

I headed down the landing strip after taping on the paper SCCA bracelet. There were cars of all description lined up along the sides of the tarmac -- lots of Nissan Zs, late-model Mazdas, a few Acuras. There were kit cars with their tiny slicks, some dropped Hondas with loosened suspensions, even a Lotus. Toward the end of the parking area, near the coned-off course, several Corvettes, Cobras, and even a Dodge Viper or two sat waiting their turn to race.

The course headed down a side strip heading south, then veered north-west to the end of the runway I was standing on. Racers made another sharp right and headed straight back toward the beginning. The post commanding general was sitting there in a folding chair next to his wife, wearing civilian clothes and a stern-looking pair of aviators. By the time I'd noticed it was him, he'd noticed me, too, with my large tan Domke camera bag.

"Afternoon, sir," I said as he stood up to turn around.

"Oh, hey there," he said. I was surprised when he reached out to shake my hand. "How are ya?"

"Not bad, sir," I said. "Are you going to be taking your Viper out today?" I'd seen what he had parked in his garage at Quarters 1 during the cricket match several weeks before.

"No," he said. "But my son's taking his Mini-Cooper out."

The CG's kid wasn't driving one of those new Coopers you see everywhere these days... his was vintage, probably 1968 or 69, complete with steering column on the right-hand side for use on the streets of London.

I wished them good luck and headed off on my own. I snapped a few frames of drivers heading into the finish line. It seemed most of them were making it around the course in under 60 seconds... the timer's booth was announcing 58s, 57s, and 56s pretty regularly.

The parking side of the airstrip was littered with people. Some were looking into their engine compartments, others were wandering around looking for refreshments, while others sat under awnings, watching what they could see of the race. The Family Readiness Group from our new Engineer Battalion had set up a concession stand of sorts near where everyone was sitting and watching, and they were handing out Gatorades and candy bars to anyone with a sweaty dollar bill.

Eventually, a volunteer appeared and offered to hook me up with a spotter so I could get some pictures from the sidelines of the course. The spotter wound up knowing who I was -- he was a sergeant who'd sent in some nice words a few weeks ago about a vicious dog story I'd done. We chatted a bit on our way out along the side of the course. As we walked, a newcomer in a red BMW screamed past us, but cranked the steering wheel too hard going into his second turn. His car screeched into a donut and came to a halt.

"We can't all be 'Fast and the Furious,'" I said, trying to crack a lame joke.

"That's 'Too Fast, Too Furious,'" the sergeant said, completely outdoing me in corniness.

We stood a bit back from the first major turn, and I shot about 400 frames of drivers negotiating the curve with varying levels of skill. Some of them, you could tell, were old hands at autocross, while others, despite their flashy rides, stunk at it. Someone in a Mazda RX-8 wound his way around the turn as if he was driving Miss Daisy to church.

"Don't hurt yourself," I said to the back of his car as he meandered down the second leg of the track.

One of the fastest drivers around the track was in a silver Acura. His wasn't the most powerful car out there, but he was beating just about all the rest of the drivers in his division by at least five seconds. He was an 84-year-old dude named Charlie, the sergeant told me.

"Wow," I said. "And they say old people can't drive worth shit."

We watched Charlie hug the cones as his Acura rocketed around the turn and into the slalom section. He wove back and forth effortlessly, without once touching the brakes until he entered the next big turn.

Eventually I headed home. I'd gotten all the shots I needed -- hell, out of about 500, there ought to be a couple good ones. It's a crutch for sub-standard photographers like myself who are lucky enough to have a digital to work with -- pros call it "spray and pray," which is apt, and they thumb their noses at the practice. I didn't care, though. I was sleepy and just wanted a chance to lay down and nap the afternoon away.

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Yes, it's Wednesday

2006-07-05T22:11:00.000-04:00

Belated happy Independence Day to everyone, and a hearty congratulations to my old buddy Seth, who got hitched in Nashville this weekend past. I was fortunate enough to attend, and there were multiple episodes of craziness that preceeded the actual wedding.

For the sake of everyone involved, I've been sworn to absolute secrecy on some aspects of what happened. And as for the rest, it'll be a story for another time (which, if my past track record of following up stories is any indication, will probably never arrive).

I'm still pretty fed up with the daily newsreels and the color commentary that seems to go along with all of them, so I'm not in the mood to come up with any topical content.

So yeah -- basically what I'm saying is that I had an awesome weekend, but I'm not going to tell the story; and that I'm good and pissed about a lot of separate issues, but I'm not going to write anything about them. I'm the best, huh?

Anyhow, the suggestion box is open, so if anyone wants to step in and substitute for my erstwhile muse, please feel free. In the meantime, I'll be listening to Opie and Anthony.

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The blogmuse has left the building

2006-06-29T11:01:00.000-04:00

It seems that periods of blog inspiration come in waves, and I'm currently sitting in a valley.

It's not that there's nothing to talk or write about -- quite the contrary, really -- but getting into any news-related subject matter these days makes me far too angry to be of any use.

On the way in to work today, I noticed a headline in the local paper, which proclaimed that Elizabethtown had enacted a ban on pit bulls and Rottweilers following a dog attack incident.

"Just another example of the media over-hyping a story and ruining it for everybody," my roommate said.

I looked at him.

"That's about the stupidest thing I've ever heard," I said.

The ban, he seemed to feel, could be blamed on the media for their having reported on the dog bite story. The paper hyped it up and caused an outrage, which led to the city council passing the new ordinance.

I'm still working on a piece on this whole "shoot the messenger" phenomenon. It's ridiculous.

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Update: Conservatives are so full of humor. I just never quit laughing at their constant comedy gold!

Light blogging apology and photos explaining why

2006-06-27T23:17:00.000-04:00

I haven't blogged much, lately. Here's why.

I spent Monday riding around in this:

Why? Well, note the red plaque on the sides. It was with the guy on the right:

That's Maj. Gen. Robert Williams, the Army's chief of armor. While up in the Blackhawk, I took pictures of stuff. Like this unidentified Fort Knox structure, which I shot as per the direction of our new chief of staff (who I got to know while he was the G3):

What could that be? I have no idea. I think it's just a large, white, stone building guarded by guys from the Treasury Department.

Anyway, here's a shot of my company headquarters, as well as the godawful track we have to run around for our 2-mile run. The company is the low, white building that comes close to the right side of the frame:

Anyway, I've been busy. I've got three major stories in this week's edition, and I need to go finish the last one. Adios, muchachos.

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Monkeys in bars

2006-06-24T23:11:00.000-04:00

Okay, I don't have anything spectacular at the moment. But watch this video, and then tell me the "jury's still out" on evolution.

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Workplace stress

2006-06-22T17:18:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, it gets a little tense at work. You just don't know who to trust.

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Eight troops charged in death of Iraqi

2006-06-22T09:33:00.000-04:00

From today's Early Bird...

Washington Post
June 22, Pg. 1

8 Troops Charged
In Death Of Iraqi

All Are Accused of
Murdering Civilian

By Josh White and Sonya Geis,
Washington Post Staff Writers

Seven Marines and one Navy corpsman have been charged with murder and kidnapping in connection with the April death of an Iraqi man in a small village west of Baghdad, Marine Corps officials announced yesterday.

The corps said that the eight sought out Hashim Ibrahim Awad in his Hamdaniyah home, dragged him into the street, bound his hands and feet, and shot him during a late-night operation, according to Marine criminal-charge sheets released yesterday. The troops are members of a fire team with Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. It is unclear what motivated the incident.

The announcement marked the second time this week that the U.S. military has charged troops with murder in Iraq. Army officials announced Monday that three soldiers had been accused of killing three men their unit had captured near Samarra last month, and a fourth soldier was charged yesterday. The cases come as another investigation continues into allegations that a Marine unit gunned down as many as 24 civilians last November in Haditha.

The incidents have drawn widespread international criticism of the way U.S. troops are treating Iraqi civilians as they fight insurgents, and have caused the military to redouble efforts to remind troops of their moral and legal obligations on the battlefield. In announcing the murder charges yesterday, Col. Stewart Navarre said Marines are trained in the law of armed conflict and are expected to fully comply with it.

"The Marine Corps takes allegations of wrongdoing by Marines very seriously and is committed to thoroughly investigating such allegations," Stewart said at an afternoon news conference at Camp Pendleton, a Marine base north of San Diego. "The Marine Corps also prides itself on holding its members accountable for their actions."

Lawyers for several of the Marines and family members of the troops said yesterday that the men are innocent.

Gary Solis, a professor of the law of war at Georgetown University, said it is unfortunate that the cases have surfaced at the same time, because they provide an impression of a military run amok in Iraq. He said that fatal mistakes are common in war, and that the key to these investigations will probably be to determine whether the troops planned the alleged attacks.

"Where is the line? The line is premeditation," Solis said of wartime killings. "If you make a mistake, you're not going to be investigated. The only guys that have to be worried are those that have thought about doing it and then do it."

The eight service members charged in the Hamdaniyah incident are confined at Camp Pendleton. Stewart said four other Marines connected to the investigation are under no restrictions but could face charges in the future.

The Marine Corps identified the eight as Sgt. Lawrence G. Hutchins III, Cpl. Marshall L. Magincalda, Cpl. Trent D. Thomas, Lance Cpl. Tyler A. Jackson, Lance Cpl. Robert B. Pennington, Lance Cpl. Jerry E. Shumate Jr., Pfc. John J. Jodka and Navy Hospitalman 3rd Class Melson J. Bacos, who was attached to the Marines' unit as its medic. The four other Marines were not identified. The soldier charged yesterday in the killings near Samarra was identified as Spc. Juston R. Graber, 20.

Lawyers for the service members in the Hamdaniyah incident said yesterday that they have not had the opportunity to review much, if any, of the evidence against their clients.

"He's an all-American boy," said retired Marine Brig. Gen. David Brahms, who is representing Pennington, 21, of Washington state. "It's hard to imagine him conspiring with others to commit the dastardly deed."

Joseph Casas, a civilian lawyer representing Jodka, 20, of California, said his client believes he was taking part in a "legitimate, command-sanctioned ambush" in a location where insurgents are known to plant roadside bombs. Jodka, who was on his first tour in Iraq, was months out of boot camp.

"He does not believe that anything that happened that night was inappropriate, illegal or in contravention to Marine Corps rules," Casas said in an interview. "I will adamantly say that what the government believes happened did not happen on that night."

While the Marines have released few details about Awad's death, Iraqis who live in his neighborhood have told Washington Post reporters that the Marines shot him four times in the face before planting an AK-47 rifle and a shovel near his body to make it appear as though he had been trying to bury a roadside bomb.

He was known in the village as Awad the Lame because a metal bar was inserted in his leg several years ago.

An investigative statement obtained by The Post that appears to be signed by Hutchins says that the unit "spotted a man digging on the side of the road from our ambush site." It continues: "I made the call and engaged. He was pronounced dead at the scene with only a shovel and an AK-47."

It was unclear who shot Awad. All eight service members were charged with conspiracy, murder, assault and larceny -- the last count for allegedly stealing the rifle and the shovel before using them as props. Some of the men also were charged with lying to investigators and with obstruction of justice.

Navarre declined to discuss details of the incident and stressed that the accused are presumed innocent. All could face the death penalty if convicted.

Casas, Jodka's attorney, said his client was forced to sign a statement about the events that he knew to be incorrect after Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents kept him in a room at Camp Fallujah last month for more than seven hours without food, water or breaks. He said the agents threatened Jodka with the death penalty and scared him into signing the statement.

Ed Buice, an NCIS spokesman in Washington, said that such statements are voluntary and that suspects are "given the opportunity to review the statement and make any changes to it before signing."

Reached by telephone in Massachusetts yesterday, a woman who identified herself as Hutchins's fiancee said she is standing by the sergeant, the highest-ranking member of the unit charged.

"We are heartbroken about the situation and we love him very much," she said. "We believe he is innocent."

Geis reported from Camp Pendleton. Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Who's to blame here? Clearly, it's Josh White and Sonya Geis, and their anti-U.S., terrorist-hugging employer, the Washington Post. They're the ones to hold responsible for this.

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Fun with firearms

2006-06-20T17:16:00.000-04:00

Photo post today. I shot these out at a reflexive fire exercise the tankers and Cav scouts of Troop A, 1st Squadron, 16th Cavalry Regiment were conducting at Browns Range. If you're familiar with Knox's "Misery, Agony, and Heartache" hills, this range is near there. Enjoy.

A dry-fire run through.

Bang...

Bang...

Bang. Notice the brass being ejected, and the position of the slide. He's not out of ammo, I'm just quick. And lucky.

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Update: Open posting at The Castle.

References?

2006-06-20T00:34:00.000-04:00

I'm working on a post on informed dissent, and how it's becoming increasingly unwelcome in America's internal political debate. I'm trying to keep this one high-brow, so any citations you handful of faithfuls have that could help would be terrific.

Specifically, I'm looking for examples of blogs that attack the very idea of dissent, instead of taking a particular stance and supporting it rationally.

Thanks,

BG

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Thoughts while running

2006-06-19T10:48:00.000-04:00

I don't understand people who enjoy running. To me, it's an activity you do when required to -- for instance, when you need to escape from something, or catch something... or, when some over-eager NCO tells you that's what you will be doing for an hour on Monday morning.

I'm not much good at it. I chug along while wiry-limbed privates lope by, seemingly immune from the rising burn in the lungs, calves, and hamstrings. I am the tortoise, but I have yet to win any races.

This morning we headed up a usually-desolate stretch of road near the company building. There was a damp mist hanging in the air that made me think of all the earth science books I'd leafed through while I was a kid. It was like running through what I imaagine rainclouds are like at altitude -- dust particles clinging to the air while moisture condenses on them until they're heavy enough to fall.

Despite the cool, damp air, I was hot, sweaty, and aggravated to be once again slogging my way down some pockmarked Kentucky road. If it weren't for the Army, I thought, I wouldn't be doing this. I'd still be in bed, maybe clicking on "Imus in the Morning" on MSNBC and cursing the old buzzard for trying to get by on three minutes of air time surrounded by 10-minute commercial segments.

I've been in the Army for just shy of four years, and I realized suddenly that most of the people who'd signed up around the same time were probably getting ready to get out, if they hadn't reenlisted. Four years is the average sentence, it seems. I know now that if I'd held out a little longer, the recruiter up in Syracuse would probably have cut my contract down to four years, and maybe even agreed to pay off my college loans. Alas, at the time I'd had no experience in dealing with used car salesmen, horse traders, or loan sharks, and I took the man at his word. So I have another year to go.

"Sorry, that's the shortest contract we've got available for that job," he told me.

Six months later I was sitting in public affairs classes at Fort Meade, Maryland, next to more wordly-wise soldiers who'd shaved their active-duty time down to four years by haggling with their recruiter. If that had been me, I'd be packing bags right now.

But as it stands, I'll be in for another year. It should be time to get some savings together and line up whatever the next Big Step is for old Brother Gonzo. So hey, maybe one more year isn't all that bad.

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Traffic boom

2006-06-18T14:53:00.000-04:00

See if you can tell from this Sitemeter graph which day it was that it was announced I was quitting MilBlogs:

Things have pretty much levelled off since then, as you can see.

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New links, stuff to see

2006-06-15T13:52:00.000-04:00

I've made a couple additions to the old Blogroll to make up for the cuts I made last week.

First, check out Spc. Freeman's "Calm Before the Sand." He's got a very interesting take on Army life, and thoughts on Haditha that don't involve jumping on any bandwagons. (Hat tip goes to Dr. Kenneth Noisewater.)

New York Hack is a female cabbie working the beat in the Big Apple. The nature of her job mandates that she runs into more than her fair share of asshats, who she dutifully photographs. However, sometimes they're not asshats at all...

Go over to my brother's place and harass him for not updating in more than a month.

As for me, I'm at work, but still suffering from acute headboogeritis, and when I cough it sounds like the death ward in a tuberculosis sanatorium. I've usually got a strong constitution, so it's weird that a bug like this is sticking around so long.

Frustrated earlier this week with the lack of results from the drugs I got from the hospital, I added a bracing dose of bourbon to the regimen. So far, it has only helped temporarily. Maybe I need to increase the dosage?

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Update: A friend of mine, Jan Korda, does not work on the starship Enterprise, despite his moniker. He does, however, write messed-up short fiction when he's not too hung over.

Update: Go read this post over at Talking Salmons, right now.

Update: Because he whined in the comments box, here's another former coworker/NCO of mine, Sgt. Atticus "Longhorns" Finch, with a roundup of international sports action. Show him some love, Korean-style. Because he's in Korea.

Dixie Chicks still being punished by fans?

2006-06-12T21:29:00.000-04:00

Probably, yes. Joe Scarborough just asked:

"The Dixie Chicks... do slow sales mean the country trio should rethink their anti-Bush stance?"

Hmmm... it's a possibility. The other option would be to make music that doesn't suck.

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Update: Oh lord, I'm watching "Scarborough Country" on MSNBC, and I'm almost to the point of tears of laughter. Joe's got two lawyers screaming at each other over the the following issue -- Some pervert in California is making "cheerleader videos" by going to high school football games and videotaping the cheerleaders, with special emphasis placed on their private areas. This guy's then selling the videos on eBay for around $70 a pop.

This one guy with a fake tan is yelling about how this guy should be made to pay -- pay, I tell you! -- for the damages he's inflicting on the girls and their families. He'd want triple damages, he said, if he was to prosecute the case.

Scarborough played a clip of one of the girls' families watching one of the videos. They were, shall we say, uncomfortable. Freeze frames during certain moves had to be blurred out for cable television.

"I'll never feel comfortable wearing my uniform again!" the suddenly-famous cheerleader sobbed.

Guess what, jackass: these videos were taken from the stands, where a couple thousand fans were sitting and watching. If you're upset with anonymous people seeing your underwear, quit doing the splits. If you've been around here for a while, you already know what I think of cheerleading. Quit pretending it's a sport -- it's just a titillation for the crowd, and a symbol for the rewards of athletic prowess for the team on the field. To the victor go the spoils, and that's got one hell of a historical precedent to back it up. Cheerleaders, I think it's safe to say, represent the spoils.

And if you don't like cheerleading being sexualized, quit cheerleading. Short skirts and shiny underpants aren't there to make you better at your job.

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Another Update: If videotape of a varsity event can be construed as child pornography or child erotica, maybe it isn't the videotape parents should be worried about... maybe it's the varsity "event."

WHY GOD, WHY?

2006-06-12T14:52:00.000-04:00

From Sports Illustrated, via Newsmap:

Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger injured in motorcycle accident.

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who has said he dislikes wearing a motorcycle helmet, was seriously injured in a motorcycle crash and taken to a hospital Monday.

Dr. Larry Jones, chief of trauma at Mercy Hospital, said Roethlisberger was in serious but stable condition in an operating room Monday afternoon. Roethlisberger was undergoing surgery, but Jones would not say for what.

"He was talking to me before he left for the operating room," Jones said. "He's coherent. He's making sense. He knows what happened. He knows where he is. From that standpoint, he's very stable."

What did Pittsburgh do to deserve this?

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An acute case of slime-head

2006-06-12T10:35:00.000-04:00

I went to the post clinic this morning, because the goo coming out of my head hasn't abated. A major in very large jump boots and a lab coat said it could be allergies (I've never had those before) or a virus. He wrote me a perscription and sent me on my way with a slip that said I was confined to quarters for the next 24 hours.

That sounds bad, but it's just Army-speak for "stay home and get better." So now I'm chilling, blogsurfing, and alternating cigarettes and cough drops.

I've also been watching television. I've been sticking up for the news media lately, but it's always hilarious to watch them get all excited when a hurricane (or tropical depression, in this case) is on the way. "Tropical Storm Alberto" is on its way to Florida, and it seems that the worst it's going to do is make it rain a lot. No matter -- it certainly could turn into a cataclysmic Storm of Impending Bird-Flu Doom at any moment, so I'm sure I'll be treated to updates on its position, strength, and relationship to the Kyoto Accords every 15 minutes or so.

If I think of anything, I'll be sure to let you all know. Chances are slim, though.

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Habby Sudnay

2006-06-11T22:39:00.000-04:00

My enjoyment of the weekend was severely curtailed by catching some kind of upper-respiratory virus. I'll spare you most of the gory details, but I've spent a large amount of time making Chewbacca noises while trying to convince the crud in my throat to dislodge. However, I managed to have a productive weekend.

Saturday afternoon, I found myself staring at a table set up under an awning on one of Fort Knox's many sports fields. On it were the implements of cricket -- leg pads, chest protectors, gloves, and brutal looking bats. I once saw a special on the ancient Hawaiians, and apparently they used to make war clubs that looked like these things. All you need is a cricket bat and a set of mako shark teeth to set into the edge, and you'd be ready to wreak havoc on invading islanders.

Two different British liaison officers have tried to explain cricket to me, and they've made very little headway. The diagrams -- which show a large circle with a narrow rectangular strip in the middle and several dots scattered at random -- aren't much help, either.

A salty lieutenant I knew from one of the post's infantry battalions came up to me. He had been a senior non-com before going to Officer Candidate School, so he's a lot more grizzled than most looeys I've met.

"What's up, man?" he said from under a white boonie hat and sunglasses.

"Um, not much, sir. Trying to figure this weird-ass game out," I said. "You ever play before?"

"I came to the class they had this morning," he said. "It was... almost fun."

The match was between the English liaison's team and one organized by an Australian exchange student. The teams were both hodge-podges of children and adults, some with cricket experience, and some who just knew it was something like baseball.

The results were predictable, but at least I figured out the basic elements of the game. I snapped about 150 photos and headed out. I needed to pick up a new pair of running shoes, and talk to the mother of a 9-year-old who'd been attacked by a pit bull in one of the post's housing areas.

I'd already filled some of a notebook at Recruiting Command. They had been running a chat session where drill sergeants were talking to "future soldiers" -- guys who'd signed contracts and would soon be shipping out, eventually to wind up in the drills' training company. They were asking the usual questions -- "What can I bring," "Can we have cell phones," "How many push-ups do I have to do." I jotted down their names and made a mental note to call them on Monday.

By that evening, I was tired and starting to feel the effects of phlegm over-production.

I've just been reading and watching television, when I haven't been whacked out on the generic NyQuil knockoff I found in the bathroom.

But I'll leave you all with a worthwhile link. My dad called and recommended this piece by the inimicable James Lileks:

Self-Loathing and the Denial of Terrorism, at Newhouse News Service. Check it out, it's a hoot.

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Ann Coulter - Yellow journalist

2006-06-09T12:27:00.000-04:00

From Editor & Publisher:

9/11 Widows, New York Papers, Respond to Coulter's 'Slander'

By E&P Staff Published: June 07, 2006 7:55 AM ET updated 10:00 AM ET

NEW YORK Syndicated columnist and author Ann Coulter appeared on the Today show on Tuesday, promoting a new book. Host Matt Lauer asked her to explain certain remarks in the book aimed at activist 9/11 widows, including her charge that they were nothing but "self obsessed" and celebrity-seeking "broads" who are "enjoying" their husbands' deaths "so much."

After she defended these statements, Lauer closed by saying, "always fun to have you here." It's not known if he meant this ironically or not.

Elsewhere in the book, Coulter refers to the widows as "witches" and asks, "how do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these harpies"?

In response, a group of five 9/11 widows, who may have been the prime targets of Coulter's remarks, issued a statement denouncing Coulter's views. The New York Daily News on Wednesday featured a smiling Coulter and this headline on its front page: COULTER THE CRUEL. One story inside was topped with "Massive Chip on Her Coulter " and another called her a "a model of meanness."

The Star-Ledger in Newark, meanwhile, carried a story today with the headline "For 9/11 widows, book adds insult to injury." It featured interviews with some of the widows. The New York Post headlined a story: "RIGHTY WRITER COULTER HURLS NASTY GIBES AT 9/11 GALS."

Side note: I hate the New York Post's headline writers.

The Post interviewed one of the widows, Mindy Kleinberg of East Brunswick, N.J. -- part of a group Coulter dubbed "The Witches of East Brunswick." Kleinberg said, "We are trying to make sure that nobody else walks in our footsteps. And if she [Coulter] thinks that's wrong, so be it." Newsday (Melville, N.Y.) carried an Associated Press story.

On a separate matter -- charges that she knowingly voted in the wrong precinct in Florida last year -- Coulter said on Fox News Tuesday night that reporters who wrote about the case are "all retarded" and accused Palm Beach officials of having a sexually transmitted disease. "I think the syphilis has gone to their brains," she said. "This is all false, I'm telling you."

Universal syndicates Coulter's column. A spokesman there told E&P it had no response to the latest firestorm.

So it seems like Coulter's plan is working. I'll grant that the 9/11 widows have capitalized on their status as victims, but let's be frank. Coulter is selling books not because she has many compelling arguments, but because she's a mean-spirited hack who can call people names.

"How do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these harpies?" she asks. Hey, great question. As long as we're tossing hypotheticals around, how do we know you're not a member of the Ku Klux Klan, Ann?

Of course, the far-right's favorite blonde hellion has been at this for quite a while. Here's a collection of quotes from the she-beast: The Wisdom of Ann Coulter.

Here's a good one: "I am emboldened by my looks to say things Republican men wouldn't."---TV Guide 8/97.

Well, I am emboldened by my looks (which were specifically designed for newsprint) to invite Ms. Coulter to feel completely free to shove shards of broken beer bottles into her eyes. I hope that someday soon she's a victim of cannibalism.

Yes, that's mean-spirited and uncalled for, and I should really take the high road if I'm going to criticize. But you know what? I'm not selling books filled with libellous drivel and making the rounds on the morning show circuit. So I don't care.

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Hail to the Chief

2006-06-09T09:47:00.000-04:00

While I reserve this space for angry, drunken tirades about how our country is screwed up, I spend my working hours churning out stuff like this piece on our chief of staff, who's retiring next week. When I get out, my best guess is that I'll have written somewhere around a thousand of these.

Chief of staff 'humbled' by Soldiers
Gold says combat command provided lifetime of memories.
.. Gold has seen the results in action.
Before arriving at Fort Knox to take on his current job, he served as the commander of the 1st Armored Division's "Bulldog" 3rd Brigade, which participated in the initial ground war in the first Operation Iraqi Freedom and in the subsequent occupation of western Baghdad, including the district of Abu Ghraib.
He said the success of those missions is proof that the Army's system for recruiting and training Soldiers is far from broken.
"My time over there left me a lifetime of memories," he said. "I am humbled, and will remain humbled, by what is standing in our formations today... a mixture of generations X and Y.
"I said this in Iraq before I left. History will show that this mixture of generations is equal to, if not better than, any other generation of Americans -- to include Tom Brokaw's World War II generation that my dad was a part of."
Gold said he was amazed to watch today's Soldiers perform under incredibly difficult conditions, including extreme heat, harsh living conditions, and an always hostile environment.

The rest can be found here.

See? I'm not some kind of defeatist loon. I was rather torqued, however, at the fact that my subject in this story got to read it prior to publication, and since he's the chief, the changes he made stuck. It's a matter of backgrounds, of course, but field grade officers usually have a different idea of what makes a story "flow," so there are passages in the final copy that I feel are stilted and repetitive. But hey.

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Ingredients: Mechanically-separated Abu Musab al Zarqawi

2006-06-08T11:06:00.000-04:00

I had an e-mail from CENTCOM waiting in my inbox this morning:

Title: COALITION FORCES KILL ABU MUSAB AL-ZARQAWI
Release Date: 6/8/2006
Release Number: 06-06-08P
Description:

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Gen. George W. Casey Jr., Multi-National Force-Iraq Commanding General, announced the death of al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi in the following statement during a press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad June 8:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Coalition Forces killed al-Qaida terrorist leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and one of his key lieutenants, spiritual advisor Sheik Abd-Al-Rahman, yesterday, June 7, at 6:15 p.m. in an air strike against an identified, isolated safe house.

"Tips and intelligence from Iraqi senior leaders from his network led forces to al-Zarqawi and some of his associates who were conducting a meeting approximately eight kilometers north of Baqubah when the air strike was launched.

"Iraqi police were first on the scene after the air strike, and elements of Multi-National Division North, arrived shortly thereafter. Coalition Forces were able to identify al-Zarqawi by fingerprint verification, facial recognition and known scars.

Al-Zarqawi and al-Qaida in Iraq have conducted terrorist activities against the Iraqi people for years in attempts to undermine the Iraqi national government and Coalition efforts to rebuild and stabilize Iraq. He is known to be responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqis. Al-Zarqawi's death is a significant blow to al-Qaida and another step toward defeating terrorism in Iraq.

"Although the designated leader of al-Qaida in Iraq is now dead, the terrorist organization still poses a threat as its members will continue to try to terrorize the Iraqi people and destabilize their government as it moves toward stability and prosperity. Iraqi forces, supported by the Coalition, will continue to hunt terrorists that threaten the Iraqi people until terrorism is eradicated in Iraq."

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We Army types give the Air Force a lot of crap (I used to bug them at DINFOS by calling them the "Space Force." They hated that, for some reason). But they're damn good when it comes to turning terrorists into finely-processed Alpo.

John at the Castle suggests the "Go Code" might have been "Pickle."

---

In completely unrelated news, I saw Ann Coulter in several news clips last night. I'll save my comments on her for later, but I couldn't help but think that in her gesticulating and movement she resembled someone I'd seen before...

Yeah, that was who it was. I miss the Muppet Show.

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In Defense of The Press, Part I

2006-06-07T20:46:00.000-04:00

The press is currently the favorite whipping-boy among conservative blogs. Alleged botched, slanted, left-leaning coverage is now the leading issue on the right side of the blogosphere, having surpassed the Iraqi insurgency as the primary target of hatred. Ironic, perhaps, since one of the main allegations leveled by right-wing blogs toward the media is that the media ignores the reprehensible actions of the insurgents and focuses its energy instead on scandals involving our own troops.

Oddly enough, the men who founded our country thought having a free press was pretty important -- the protection of the press was included in the very first amendment made to the Constitution. Despite how the children over at the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler howl for journalists to be hung, there's a very critical role for the press and modern-day media to play in making democracy work. Simply, the press acts as an additional and independent set of checks and balances for the rest of the government -- making sure the populace is fully informed about the actions of those they elect to represent them. Examples of this in action are too numerous and well-known to bother citing.

America's military is made up of individuals who are all paid with tax dollars, meaning that each and every soldier, sailor, marine, and airman is a public servant, from the lowliest private to the most decorated general. The military is accountable to the public for its actions, and the public, having no choice but to fork over a third of its collective income to the government, has a right to know what its investment is up to and how well it is performing its job, which in the military's case is primarily the security of those same citizens. Hence the title, Department of Defense.

Naturally, for many reasons, security and safety primary among them, the public cannot possibly be immediately privvy to everything the military does. However, that does not change the fact that the military (and the rest of the government) operates under a public trust. When that trust is broken, the People (as in, "We the People") have a right to know.

Enter the military's public affairs branch, and the Defense Department's Principles of Information:

"It is Department of Defense policy to make available timely and accurate information so that the public, the Congress, and the news media may assess and understand the facts about national security and defense strategy. Requests for information from organizations and private citizens shall be answered quickly. In carrying out that DoD policy, the following principles of information shall apply:

"Information shall be made fully and readily available, consistent with statutory requirements, unless its release is precluded by national security constraints or valid statutory mandates or exceptions. The Freedom of Information Act will be supported in both letter and spirit.

"A free flow of general and military information shall be made available, without censorship or propaganda, to the men and women of the Armed Forces and their dependents.

"Information will not be classified or otherwise withheld to protect the Government from criticism or embarrassment.

"Information shall be withheld when disclosure would adversely affect national security, threaten the safety or privacy of U.S. Government personnel or their families, violate the privacy of the citizens of the United States, or be contrary to law.

"The Department of Defense's obligation to provide the public with information on DoD major programs may require detailed Public Affairs (PA) planning and coordination in the Department of Defense and with the other Government Agencies. Such activity is to expedite the flow of information to the public; propaganda has no place in DoD public affairs programs."

A lofty set of rules, to be sure. The first set of these I saw were signed by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.

Due to my own current involvement in the Army's public affairs program, I'm going to decline further comment at this particular time. However, I've seen enough to know that reporters are right not to trust everything spoken from an official podium.

And why would they? The goals of the public affairs branch and those of the press are inherently different. Given the press' role as a watchdog for the rest of the government, I prefer that they err on the side of cynicism. State-run media, as a general rule, have not been historically very helpful.

In many cases, and the military is one of them, the press is the only means by which a government agency can be expected to be held accountable to its masters -- the citizens whose tax dollars fund it. So go ahead, Rottweiler and whoever else would blame the media for every misstep in Iraq -- string all the journalists up and see what happens to this free country you love to extoll so much. Refuse to acknowledge the fissures and failures that continue to plague the human endeavor called government, and line the press corps up against the wall. Do it, and see what happens to your Free Country.

I think you'd be in for some very frightening surprises.

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Ratings

2006-06-06T21:11:00.000-04:00

In my last post, I referred to several failures on the part of the Bush administration as if they were stipulations of fact. The one I imagine riled the most military nerves would have been the claim that George W. Bush's administration has failed to show any measurable progress in Iraq. For the folks over at the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, that's probably enough to qualify me for inclusion into their oft-recited motto:

Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some assembly required.

They sell T-shirts, in case you don't click the link above.

But I thought I might offer readers the chance to evaluate my claim. Here are several measures whereby the United States might have shown progress in the past year in Iraq. Rate each on a scale of 1 - 10, with 1 being "no progress," and 10 being "goal accomplished":

1) Ability to reduce the number of troops in the region
2) Efficacy of the Iraqi National Army
3) Efficacy of the Iraqi police force
4) Ability of the newly-formed Iraqi government to make laws
5) Ability of the newly-formed Iraqi government to enforce laws
6) Strength of the anti-American insurgency
7) Level of personal freedom of the average Iraqi
8) Amount of national treasure, per annum, spent on efforts to "stabilize" the region.
9) Number of civilian Iraqi deaths, per month
10) Number of United States military casualties, per month.

That rating system provides for a possible 100 points. Please leave the score you assess in the comments section.

Why? Because... it's Evolution, baby!

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Update: Since I mentioned nicedoggie.net, I thought it might be appropriate to add a corollary scale. Additionally rate each item based on the complicity of the press, with 1 being "no involvement," and 10 being "completely responsible."

The world will be better off, of course, when all journalists have been lynched, since every alleged failure over the course of this war can be traced back to the anti-American free press... which strangely was guaranteed by the hallowed constitution.