Somewhat big things I've not gotten around to mentioning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

"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

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

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

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

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

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

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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