It's Really Simple Sucker

If you haven't noticed, I now have RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and Atom feeds of my blog available for public consumption. That is going to be really important when I go off to Iraq and become a war hero/minor celebrity - people are going to be able to keep up with my travels in the desolate Iraqi war zone.

Intimacy

Intimacy, isn't that all that anybody really longs for in their personal life? That feeling when you wake up looking directly into someone else's eyes; that feeling on the dance floor when your foreheads touch gently, your noses brush, and your mouths are less than inches apart; that split second feeling from a good hug; or that little thrill when someone kisses you on the neck where the jaw line approaches the ear. Let other people have sex and prostitutes - if a woman were to sell intimacy, I would pay any price she could name.

Lawrence Lessig on how Copyright is Destroying Flamenco

Why do people feel the need to claim ownership of everything?
Lawrence Lessig

Jet Lag

The upside of being jet-lagged is that I am also feeling really creative. I usually get inspired late at night anyway so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. I have made a lot of tweaks to the blog's appearance and added a few links. I hope that my reader's (all two of them) appreciate the effort. I shouldn't laugh about not having readers. At times, the fact that nobody reads this blog is a saving grace.

Investigating Myself

Every time I come back to Dallas, I feel as I am investigating my past life. Evidence that I lived before the Army is quickly disappearing. I came home and I spent 3 hours looking for people I want to hang out with in Dallas. The list is depressingly short. I am beginning to think that is very little reason for me to come back to Dallas anymore. I think I will see the world after all, what is the use of coming home too see friends when there are no friends left to see?
I find that I am a user and a loser. I hang out with people I don't necessarily like because they are useful. I also tend to lose contact of even the people I really like. So I use friends and then I lose them. Sad...
I feel as if I had something profound and sad to say about loneliness and lost childhood, but the words have slipped my mind and the feeling remains. If my friends were to read this they might think I don't value their friendship, but the opposite is true. I am puzzled and disappointed that I don't hear from them daily, I long for communiques from people I haven't heard from. I covet their time. I don't know why but when I travel thousands of miles and cross eight time zones, I feel good when people drop everything there doing to spend time with me.

A funny link to lighten a heavy post.

Don't Tell the Folks

By the way, nobody knows I am in LA yet, or that I am going to be in Dallas in a few hours. So don't be the one to tell them.

California Love

So I am sitting in the USO at LAX writing this post. Regrettably, I am not going to explore LA while I am here, although I am still adding it to the list of places I have been. I have visited: Columbia, SC; San Antonio, TX; Atlanta, GA twice; Tongducheon, Republic of Korea; Seoul, Republic of Korea; Osan, Republic of Korea; South Padre Island, TX during spring break; Austin, TX three times; Houston, TX four times; Dallas, TX my home in the US; and Anchorage, AL). Of course, I only know many of these places by the airports. Flying is still a strange experience for me, although I am quickly accruing more time on jets than all of my family members combined. I am not afraid, yet on every takeoff and landing I imagine the plane shuddering tipping and bursting into flames. I have a very morbid imagination.
I never thought I would become a war blogger, yet here I am. After eleven days of leave, I will be returning to South Korea to train and then deploying to the Middle East. Odds are, judging by the results of other war bloggers, my chain of command is likely going to shut me down for saying the wrong thing, but let's have fun until then shall we?

Politicians Never Learn

So this intern screws a congressman and mentions it in her blog... Uhoh...
Washingtonienne

213 Things Skippy is Not allowed to Do

I would have probably wanted to kill this guy if I had to work with him but I thought it was hilarious.
Avalanche Company: The 213 Things Skippy is No Longer Allowed to Do in the U.S. Army

Do you feel a Draft?

Congress.Org -- Issues and Legislation

Tall Children

According to this website, all I need to do to have a six foot tall son, is marry a 5'8" woman. Ok, it's not that simple, but it is a good excuse to chase long legged women.
Health-E-Meters - Trustworthy, Physician-Reviewed Information from WebMD

Sarin Gas in Iraq

They would have to start finding this stuff right when I am going to go there.
The New York Times > International > Middle East > U.S. Finds Shell With Nerve Gas in Iraq

I don't promise heroics

If you watch the news, you might have heard something about troop rotations in Iraq. Understandably, soldiers everywhere listen for this type of news closely. Their families and friends watch and listen fearfully, dreading the inevitable news that someone they know will go. Right now is a very fearful time to be in the military.
If you have been living in fear on my behalf, thanks. There is no more need to fear my going to Iraq. I leave for Iraq in August. I am not coming home first. It's done. Second brigade from the Second Infantry Division is sending 3,600 troops (the entire brigade) to Iraq this summer. My unit, the 1st of the 503rd Infantry Regiment is an air assault battalion in 2nd Brigade.
I promise you one thing. You will be proud to claim me. I will not shame you. Cowardice will not prevent me; incompetence will not hinder me; frustration will not cloud my judgment; boredom will not lower my guard; and hardship will not slacken my resolve. Realistically, I can't promise all of these things. I am only human, but I promise you my best. I don't promise heroics; heroes die and I assume that everybody wants me to come back. I am coming back.

Salt Lick

People always get the wrong idea. I suppose I am very busy giving them the wrong idea but other people's lack of perception is not my concern. There are two schools of thought on my "love life" (or lack thereof). Some people think I am Don Juan reincarnated. Then there are the people who know me and think they know better. That's just my male friends.
So I licked my boss's girlfriend's back Saturday night. It was completely innocent, I assure you. At least as innocent as it could have been with as much alcohol as we had consumed between us. I ran into her late Saturday night at a club in downtown Seoul. I recognized her, called her by name and she was happy to hang out with me. We danced for a while, until the DJ announced a contest requiring couples. She immediately grabbed my hand and said we should compete. I agreed. Well, it was a "sexiest body shot" contest and my boss's girlfriend was looking me directly in the eyes and telling me earnestly, "I think the sexiest body shot would be with my ass facing you and you licking the salt off my back." When a beautiful woman is telling me where to put my mouth on her body I tend to not think twice.
The other contestants were an unattractive white couple, and a Korean couple. Supposedly, two girls were going to compete as a couple but I didn't see them. We went first. The best part wasn't licking the salt off her back, and that was good; but taking the lime from her mouth was almost too much. How our lips met around the lime I do not know, but they did, repeatedly. The unattractive couple won. I can't remember what they actually did for their body shot but the girl exposed her fat midriff and large breasts to incite the crowd. Even the Korean girl's exposed nipples couldn't elicit more cheers from the unruly, classless mob in the club.
It didn't occur to me that explaining my actions to my boss would be a problem until later, when his girlfriend started telling me how she felt guilty. Even then, the concept of guilt was far removed from my mind. Casually, I made a mental note not to tell him anything about meeting his girlfriend, but I didn't dwell on the ramifications of what I was doing. She went on to say that she shouldn't dance with me anymore because she was beginning to feel "close" to me. So we kept dancing anyway, despite her protestations and any misgivings I was beginning to have. I didn't realize how drunk she was until she dropped the shot glass on the dance floor. She left pretty quickly after that but not before telling me how I was "beautiful".
I only feel comfortable telling this story because she called my boss and told him the next day. My boss brought me into his room and told me to get into the "front leaning rest". I assumed the push-up position as he spoke on his cell to his girlfriend. "Did you fuck my girlfriend?" He asked.
"Negative," I responded.
"Did you touched her boobies?"
"Negative."
"Did you lick salt off her back?"
"Yes."
My boss had a good laugh at my expense. His girlfriend promised to punish him for playing the prank. He's been laughing ever since.
So now I have a reputation as someone that you shouldn't leave a girl unattended with; and you know what I don't mind.

CBS News Killed a man today

Jonah Goldberg: Media ethics, consistency questionable in release of photos

Women can't live with 'em

One simply cannot understand the profound effect women have in the military without living in an infantry battalion. The deep loneliness and desperation men live with when separated from their wives, mothers, and girlfriends is enough to drive sane men to distraction. Consider that a large percentage of the younger soldiers have never lived more than five minutes from their mothers and consider the psychological burden of the average soldier.
Do you want to know the number one reason why soldiers extend to stay in Korea? Women - from personal observation the overwhelming majority of male soldiers extend because they have met a woman somewhere in Korea that they do not want to be separated from. Informal research among my peers puts the ratio of women to men in Korea right at thirteen to one. Thirteen to one is terrible odds on a Friday night in a club. Meeting a worthwhile woman in Korea is nothing short of a miracle.
Introduce into this volatile mixture of simmering masculinity and sexual frustration the average female soldier and you have a recipe for disaster. The average soldier is isolated from easily available female companionship for months at a time. The presence of a small number of females produces chaos in military discipline. I am veering dangerously close to saying something that Army brass might disapprove of and shut down my weblog (thereby guaranteeing me millions of hits in the blog's demise) but the truth is the role of women needs to be reduced. When push comes to shove, soldiers simply ignore any and all rules the Army makes regarding sex and gender that get in the way of satisfying their needs for companionship. The men forget wives, children, morals, the threat of heavy punishment, etc for that one supreme moment of satisfaction. The women by turns submit to, exploit, and are exploited by the male soldiers. I'd like to think everyone involved was capable of adult behavior but the answer is obviously no.
Men can cope when women are not present. They buy pornography, write letters, make phone calls, go on leave, etc. Introduce a single woman to the mix with her own desires, longings, and profound loneliness, and there will not be a single man among thousands who will be satisfied till he has known that woman carnally. The rules regarding sexual behavior in the military are futile and laughable. You cannot force men and women to live together and not expect them to have sex. Not in this day and age. Just let it happen. Don't try to manage sex like another variable in a vast and incomprehensible battlefield simulation. Let it go.
In the end, the problem with women in the military is that women are necessary. It would be simply impossible to have enough soldiers without women. Yet, integrating women has caused problems the Army and the military at large refuses to acknowledge that are destroying the Army as an American institution. It's the classic sexual paradox, "Women, you can't live with 'em; can't live without 'em."

Combatives

I have just finished giving and taking various beatings for morning PT - in the Armyu we call it "combatives". The medical and scout platoons in battalion received instruction in jujitsu and boxing and I learned that I do not have a second career as a boxer. My strategy is to let the other guy get tired (of beating me silly) then try to knock him out. It works, but it doesn't win style points. It's also painful. My only boxing match was against my roommate. I had some reservations about fighting him; but he obviously didn't. He immediately proceeded to beat me like a rented mule. I backed away covering my face and chest till he tired. He did. Before I could finish the job, he quit. I was robbed of my moment of glory.

Ping

Ping

Command Sergeant Major's Farewell Dinner

It is not often that you go to a mandatory military function and leave feeling as if the time spent was worthwhile but I think tonight was once. CSM Hayward Thompson is leaving the battalion and the military; tonight was his official farewell. I feel ashamed at my reluctance to participate. CSM Thompson is a great man. At first brush he seemed severe and aloof, but over time I realized how personable and caring he really was. I am not sure how but I think he knew every one of his soldier's names and something about their personal life. He cared. He really honestly cared. It is strange how much that still means.

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

Contentment is being at peace with who you are. Happiness, ultimately is joy or pleasure in something outside outside of yourself. One could argue with my definitions, but none can argue that happiness brings contentment or that contentment brings happiness. Many things make people happy but few bring contentment. At the same time, contentment does not guarantee happiness - many people are content with less than happy circumstances. It is well known that all the joy and pleasure in the world cannot satisfy or bring contentment.
My life as it stands, makes me happy. I like my job. My coworkers are generally pleasant people. I enjoy my time off. I am further from being content than the heaven is from hell. I am searching for that something indefinable, something vague, something that makes me say "that's it!". Since I don't know what or who or where it is, I am in for a long search. I like being a medic, but I'd rather fly. I'd love to fly, but I want to be in special ops too. Special Ops would be cool, being a spy would be cooler. Speaking Spanish would be fun; Mandarin Chinese would be the icing on the cake. Being James Bond for a living would be great, but playing sports would be fun too. Playing sports would make me happy for a while, but not for long. Programming games for a living would be great, but I can't see doing it all my life. In the end it's all vanity. It's all transient, nothing really matters in the end. It's just like in the Bible: Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.