The Good Side of Having Clemson Friends

Clemson Friend's beleaguered email after his alma mater lost to Auburn on a missed field goal at the end of the game (2nd attempted field goal; the tying kick was nullified due to penalty):

"40 yard line, first row tickets for the Auburn game = terrible decision. They have a huge crown on their field which meant that we had zero visibility. You couldn't see anything in the bottom five rows. Biggest waste of money in my life."

My sympathetic response:

"So you spent a lot of money to travel to a crappy school that your crappy school is based off of only to have your heart ripped out at the end of the game in the most painful way possible? And you couldn't even watch? Then you got to drive 6 hours back?

That.Is.AWESOME!

'Auburn' should be a new multi-purpose cuss word for you.

'I got pulled for an auburnin' DUI. If that weren't bad enough, while I was waiting for bail a big black guy auburned me right in my auburn. Now I have herpes. Auburn.'

Ouchers

I have/had an ingrown toenail. Never had one this bad before. I've always been able to dig them out on my own before. This one was...unpleasant...to say the least. I'd bump my toe and electric bolts of furious pain would shoot up my foot and leg. I'd clench everything and burst inhale. I had to go to the docs.

The doctors that the company hires are foreigners. I got two Macedonian docs. I'm okay going to a foreigner for health care if it's something simple like a cold or the flu, but when blades start coming out, I get more than a bit skeptical of medical training in other countries, particularly in nearly 3rd world Balkan countries.

The lady doc was the one with the blade. It was not a scalpel. It really looked more like a super-skinny box cutter. She started probing.

"There pain?" she asked as she made her initial forays.

I'm not necessarily the most physically dominating guy, I know, but I like to feel that I can handle pain at least the way a normal man would. Sure, there was a little pain, but she was digging around under my nail bed with a razor; there was going to be pain. Now, while I can handle (a bit) of pain, I'm not foolish about it. I don't really see any need to watch my flesh cut. I turned my head. I suppose that wasn't macho.

"There pain?" she asked, seemingly because I wasn't watching.

"A little. It's fine."

Then she stone-crab-pinced her non-blade-holding fingers directly on the inflamed nerve cluster.

"There pain?" she asked, almost pleased she'd found where the pain was, as evidenced by my quick inhalation when she pierced the spot.

"We not want you hurt. We give anesthesia."

I happen to know from prior experience that anesthesia typically hurts as much if not more than anything else. Yup, they jammed the needle into the nerves, but only on the 3rd attempt. The first two were queries to see where they could make my toe bleed but not numb anything important.

I did not gasp. I did not cry. I DID clench my fists.

Then she decided to go in deep with the blade. It turned out she hadn't stabbed the nerves deep enough with the anesthesia. I winced.

An eruption of Bosnian followed. I heard her say it.

The other doc said, "You know what he said?" (The male doc refers to both genders as "he" or "him.")

"Yup, she called me a baby."

"You are big man and..." he said but couldn't finished and started chuckling.

She laughed.

Half-jokingly, I said, "Feet have a lot of nerves, and since mine are so much bigger than most peoples, I have more nerves."

I'm pretty sure I took this reasoning from my brother, verbatim, when he tried to explain his non-stoic reaction to having a German doctor use his foot for a pin-cushion.

They laughed more.

I considered violent acts.

She stopped laughing.

"No more anesthesia. There going to be pain."

I ended up watching most of what she was doing and it really seemed like she didn't do much cutting of the offending toenail. She got up under it and into the nailbed a bit, but mostly she cut flesh, which had the rather typical effect of bleeding, a lot.

Layman that I am, it just seemed like she scraped at it a bit, but then got aggravated by the blood blocking her view so she jammed gauze dripping with betadine underneath the nail.

"How did she jam gauze into the nail bed" you might ask.

"With the tip of a sharp pair of scissors" I answer.

There were repeated looks of merriment between the two Bosnians every time I winced. Finally, at the end, I was told, "Okay. You come back tomorrow to clean. You take shower?"

"Most people prefer if I do."

"Yes. Keep foot out of shower," the male doctor said as he pantomimed shampooing his head and hopping on one leg, the other kicked way out like he were auditioning for the Rockettes.

"Ohkiedohkie."

"Oh, before you leave...," he said as he handed me a bag of ibuprofen, "for pain."

I put my flip-flop on and left.

I don't think I was quite the baby they thought I was, but I do know that I wouldn't last two seconds under torture.

Confusion and Fury (Abject Whining)

I've not written much of late about the job because, frankly, it's not an exciting job and it's highly routine. The strange thing about it is that it's both monotonous AND chaotic. Surely that makes sense to those who have experienced this sort of thing and incomprehensible to those who haven't.

Basically, my job is to make sure people get where they need to go. It's frustrating because I don't control any assets to move people myself. When people need to get to a distant base, I put in requests to get them flown there; when they need to get to local bases, I put in requests for the military to take them there in Rhinos (up-armored buses). I don't fly the helicopters or drive the buses; I don't even set their schedule. I put people's names on lists and get told when they can be moved. Knowing the way that the helicopters and buses tend to move, I try to balance my requests and give people reasonable expectations when they can move. It's a bit stressful, because the PAX (lingo for passengers), don't want to hear that I'm having problems with the helo planners or that the military is running behind. They want to get where they need to go ASAP. Especially if they're trying to get out to go on vacation.

Overall, I not only do that coordination, but I run around and receive the PAX when they get off the helicopters and Rhinos and I'm there to help them move all their baggage when they get on. Some mornings I'm up at 0450 doing this. Some nights I'm up past midnight doing this. While the number of PAX was low, I was doing the coordination plus execution by myself. There are relatively set times when helos and Rhinos move so I would have frantic bouts of chaos (especially if a Rhino and helicopter arrived at the same time) and then long periods of nothing to do.

The camp I'm on is going through "Transition." My company is Fluor. It won a contract for all the northern Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) in Afghanistan. That's in between 60-80 bases. My company has employees who run the dining facilities, provide and maintain the generators, import and keep the water clean, kill the pests on the FOBs, etc. Basically, we run the camps so the military can focus on going out and killing bad guys. At any rate, we took over these camps from a company that lost the contract bid, KBR. Fluor has been transitioning the property and a good many of the employees from KBR. To deal with counting all the property and hiring all the new employees over (which for the switched employees sometimes just means literally switching hats), a "Transition Team" gets sent to each base going through transition. A transition team can be upwards of 100 people. Moving them is tough because they are on intense deadlines and so they can't give notice. They say "I need to go here now!" and I have to jump through hoops to try to get them taken care of. No one wants to hear that they didn't give you enough notice.

I'm going on vacation in a few days. For most people, that means that they can start winding down at work and getting into the vacation mindset. My camp is in transition now and won't finish until the 15th, so I've been running around like a chicken with its head cut off. In addition, unlike virtually every other department, whose jobs become easier once transition is finished, movement gets exponentially tougher because we are importing 60% of the KBR work force (and thus more than doubling the Fluor work force). When I first got here, I was "pushing" about 4-5 people a day. Lately it's been 30. Pretty soon it will be 60.

My boss, who I initially liked until I discovered he's a two-faced back-stabber, finally came to my base to look over things to see what was needed since I'm going on vacation soon and he needs to send people to cover. While he paid lip service to the fact that I've moved all the people through my area (I'm responsible for not only my FOB, but seven others) without any missing their flights out of country (which can cost them hundreds or even thousands of dollars) with virtually no assistance (he did send me a Kosovar to act as my deputy two weeks ago; but even then that's barely enough) or support (I'm doing all my paperwork/emails from my bunk because they don't have office space for me), he really came down to tell me I need to do things more like how they do it at the main FOB, Bagram. Mind you, Bagram is a perpetual mess, because his leadership style is to send away anyone who is doing a good job there. He likes chaos and problems because then he can step in and "fix" it and impress the higher ups. That's why he has Bosnians and Macedonians scheduling all the helicopters; that's why he has sent away a lawyer, a chemical engineer, and anyone else who has shown himself to be competent out to run other FOBs, far away from the eyes of upper management. At any rate, instead of me doing what I have been doing, he wants me to cede what little planning I actually *can* do to the bosnian planners. Fine. I'm leaving in a few days for vacation. I can let it blow up in his face.

Cut to today.

After I get people on the morning helicopter run, I get on to update my paperwork. I send in my list of people I need to move tomorrow so the planners can figure it out, which the boss told me to do. A planner emails me to tell me that the list he has doesn't match the one I just sent him. I wonder which one of us will be right? He sends me his list. I email him back to inform him that the list he has for tomorrow's flight has the same names he put on today's manifest, the very people I just put on a helicopter to him. "Oh...we must have a problem with our process." No....you don't say... The thing is, that planner is the good one. Which of course means my boss is sending him to replace me here at my FOB while I'm gone on vacation. Because he can't have someone who is "good" (even if they aren't really so great) stay in one place and do the damn job.

On a positive note. I have a great paycheck and all the drama a girl could want! Hooray!

Where the Wild Things Are Movie Review

I found the movie to be terrifying in places. If I'd been a child, I'd have run screaming from the theater. I had no problem with the scariness of the book as a child. The movie's a whole 'nother (wait for it...) monster.

Max is entirely too old in the movie. No kid old enough to be in a class where the teacher is explaining the sun's death (5th grade, 10yo, minimum) would wear a wolf suit. Max should have been about 3-5. He came across as creepy and delusional at the age in the movie, not wildly imaginative at the age in the book. Giving all the monsters emotional baggage that adults would struggle with was also a let-down for me. I enjoyed the lighter parts of the movie, of which there were tragically few. I would think that if I invented a whole other world populated by creatures of my choosing in order to get away from the troubles of my life, the creatures wouldn’t be paralyzed by abandonment issues. But what the hell do I know about creativity OR mental disorders.

The end of the movie ticked me off. The kid runs out of the house into the night, disappears for hours, and when he strolls back in the middle of the night, what does his mom do? My mom would have beat my butt. His mom hugs him and feeds him cake. Cake? Cake! That’s what’s wrong with America.

I just thought it was adults positing their issues on a child. A blog of a grandfather who took his grandson to the movie expressed my opinion perfectly: "Perhaps the problem is that the film was written more for the amusement of the writers than for children." Since the book was supposed to be for children and is more about a child’s imagination, rather than musings on metaphysical loneliness and the loss of innocence, plus overcoming the intense emotions of childhood, I found the movie to be its own creature entirely. It’s sorta like “Die Hard With a Vengeance” was originally a script called “Simon Says” and they said, “Hell, if we cast Bruce Willis, we’ll make a fortune.”

“Where the Wild Things Are” wasn’t “bad” per se, just false advertising. They used the look of the book, but missed the point. They could have done that with any kid and any creatures from his imagination, but the visual appeal of the movie is really the only thing it shares with the book. I mean, I get the fact that the book is mainly pictures and that they needed to add much to flesh out a feature film. Mr. Jonze, having cut his chops in music videos, could and easily has captured lyrical, beautiful, and sometimes even haunting images, but it was just damn miserable. I refuse to confuse moroseness with deeper meaning, or, if it’s there, I say that’s not what it should have been.

I loved that book as a kid and would much preferred to have seen something that transported me back to a time where I could whisk myself away using my imagination. If I wanted to think about the deeper difficulties in life, I wouldn’t use my imagination, I’d just consider my life as an adult. No thanks.

Kabul

The storm came from the west,
grey and black and blue and glorious,
a reverse nightfall.
An anvil cloud,
ferocious in its pregnant beauty,
dwarfs the mountain cradle.

Above, the pale blue stretches to its lazy limit
with no idea of the barrage to come

But I am shielded,
protected by a warm embrace of sunshine,
as the storm, the wolf, skirts and prods
but the shepherdess' pen holds fast

and, safe, I am simply struck by such natural sublimity.

A torrent pierces another portion of the pen.
While I am secure and serene and unaware
and staring at the wrong threat, my head in the clouds,
brains and fingers and eyes and ears and
rent meat come plodding down.
A man, a bomb, an abattoir.
A baby cries on mother's corpse.

Indifferent, the skies are pretty.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/world/asia/19afghan.html

To Bank of America

"I would like my $50 'Foreign Service Fee' removed from my account. I have a good-paying job as a contractor in Afghanistan. If using my credit card, which I've had for a very long time, even though the service and rates have gotten worse and worse, is going to incur ridiculous fees, I will cut it up. I'm sure other financial insitutions will be glad to have my business. Poor business model. "

Musings at 50 Days In

1. I got into a discussion with a friend of mine who passed along comments he'd gotten from a friend who attended a lecture by a well-known author. The author said that he tended to write in restaurants because if he tried to write in his office (he was a college professor), he had too many people bothering him to get any work done. As I tend to turn every discussion into something about myself, even when it's completely unwarranted, as it was in that discussion, I added my piece on the creative process. How I had the gall to insinuate myself into comparing what I do to a published author, I have no idea. I chalk it up to my Carpenter-ness. Nonetheless, 2 cents on writing:

"Though, of course, not a selling author, I do my best writing in bars and restaurants, but for a different reason. If I'm secluded, I'll think of something else to do: read a book, call someone, play a videogame, watch a movie. Anything but write. If I'm in a noisy place, where I've gone specifically to write, then I focus. Also, and this probably sounds horrid, but I get caught up in details that the reader wouldn't think about ordinarily. A few drinks frees the pen, at least for the draft, and I get a lot more done. Also, much of what I write, fiction-wise, is dialogue based, and I get great material and ideas from listening to the banter around me. Or a lot of cuss words. Plus, if you're really, truly writing when you're in a place like that, and not just pretending in order to attract women, you are virtually guaranteed of attracting a woman; ordinarily, one interested in books, writing, and/or weird men: the trifecta of qualities I look for in a woman."

2. I find what soldiers write on port-o-potty walls to be quite instructive. Apparently, situational homosexuality isn't homosexuality at all. "I'm 100% straight, but when you're deployed, there's nothing wrong with letting a dude..." I had no idea.

3. I hate cell phones. I've always hated cell phones. I got (illegally) ordered to get one when I was in the army. When I got out of the army, I deactivated it and then swore I'd hold out as long as I could. I find them to mostly be codependency enablers or electronic leashes. The year after the army, I bounced around from place to place, traveling to all manner of places and I did what the hell I wanted and my family and friends understood that if they wanted to get in touch with me, that email worked just fine and that if it was truly an issue, they could email me and I'd use a calling card to check in.

Finally, at law school, I broke down and got a cell phone for personal use. I was pretty darn broke and after my first semester of landline, the cell phone was simply much cheaper. I got the phone and tried to stick true to my beliefs. I left it plugged in at my apartment for maybe a month. Then I got used to the convenience and it was attached to me for the next two years. Argh! I felt like a hypocrite, but what to do? When I got the job in Afghanistan, I was thrilled to be able to deactivate the cell phone again. Woohoo! Autonomy!

Except that over here, every employee gets issued a cell phone. The cell phone network we use is called Roshan. It's an Iranian company. We have to be careful what we say because the assumption is that everything is being listened to by various foreign intelligence services. For the most part, they get to listen to me make supply requests. The thing that I despise about this particular cell phone is that the one they issued us had a battery life of, no lie, approximately one hour. It failed to recognize the SIM card 50% of the time. It shut itself off occasionally when you pressed a button. I hate cell phones, but I really, really, really hated the cell phone they issued me. What the hell was the point of saving a few dollars for those horrible phones when they didn't work? After 3 weeks, I broke down and bought the cheapest phone I could find ($57). The battery on this one lasts four days and it doesn't shut itself off. I hate it, but at least it works.

I don't give anyone my number unless I'm basically ordered to. When I finally leave Afghanistan, I'm gonna try to hold off from getting another one again. Probably not gonna last long on that one, but sometimes you have to fight the fight, even when you know you're gonna
lose.

4. One thing that I always annoys me when I've watched movies set in the future is the patent stupidity of the weapons. The weapons in those flicks are the same weapons we have now, but just with assorted crap bolted on. Yup, patent stupidity...except that 5 years after I got out the army, I discover that the weapons all have assorted crap bolted on (scopes, laser targeters, bipods for M4s, rail systems).

5. When I first starting running to get myself back in shape, while I was in Bagram, I was surprised by the fact that my speed and cardio were a lot better than I thought they'd be. Within a week or two, I was running 2 miles in about 13:30. Not bad for being, by my estimation, 30lbs overweight. I had to wait a week after I got sent here to the base in Kabul to exercise. The first time I tried to run here, I felt like I was gonna die. I barely made the two miles in 18 minutes. I've dropped it down to 16 minutes in a couple of weeks, but, still, it's brutal running here. Bagram is 4400 feet, Kabul is approximately 5900 feet. I knew I was susceptible to altitude, but I thought that was really only an issue at over 10,000 feet. Nope. This lowcountry boy ain't made for heights. Which is strange, considering I love the mountains so much.