March 10, 2010
1. College Version 1.0 One of the most prominent buildings here on the FOB is the education center. There are signs all over it and posters for the online universities it represents. These posters are all over the FOB. Ordinarily I’d be all for encouraging people to get college credit, but when one of the colleges is, and I’m not making this up, “The University of Maryland University College Europe,” I think attending may actually damage brain cells and lower job prospects. I sure as hell wouldn’t expect anyone to hire me if I graduated from the Preparatory Academy School of Scholastic Academic Prep.
When I was in the army, the young soldiers thought that all that differentiated them from me was that I had a college degree; they were NOT impressed. “College ain’t nothing. I’m taking classes now.” “Indeed,” I’d offer, “but you can ‘take a course’ in literally two hours to get credit.” “Exactly! How dumb you feel for wasting four years on that?”
P.S. This isn't the first idiocy to come from the University of Maryland. First of all, they have a fight song. Why is that retarded? Because their mascot is a turtle. A turtle, of course, doesn't fight. The lyrics of the fight song command, "fight, fight, fight" when it should obviously say "hide, hide, hide." If the disaster of having a mascot who, by its very nature was selected by survival by Nature because it doesn't fight, wasn't bad enough, it also isn't even a bad-ass turtle. At least a snapping turtle can put a hurtin' on you before it holes up. Nope. A terrapin. I looked it up to find out exactly what differentiates a terrapin. Not good for the U of M: "This eight-inch long freshwater turtle is considered by many to have the best meat among turtles. Its flesh is often pounded and served like steak."
P.P.S. They should pass out helmets to the soft heads at the graduation ceremony for the University of Maryland. Or maybe a protective shell they can crawl into. Yes, that would be fitting.
2. College Version 2.0 One of the other colleges that I see on posters everywhere is Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. Think about that. I'm not sure it's such a good idea to bring the flight school TO Afghanistan. Wasn't it flight school and Afghanistan that started this War on Terror in the first place?
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
D.R.A.M.A.
March 9, 2010
My silence of the past week hasn’t been due to any absence of interesting material, in fact, far from it. I have walked into an office political storm that, heretofore, I thought had only been talked about in caricature. Yowsa. So…
I landed on Monday, March 1st. After I’d been issued my plated protective vest and helmet, I was sent over to transient billeting. I was put in a tent loaded with 200 bunk beds. Sleeping in a tent with 399 other guys is honestly the part of this whole deal that I figured would be the most grating. Still, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the bunk beds had actual mattresses on them. In Iraq, I had a metal bed frame, but instead of springs and metal links supporting it, there was simply rebar. Instead of a proper mattress, I had a foam rubber pad. That was actually comfortable for the first fifteen minutes, until it compressed. For the next year, I pretty much slept on lightly padded rebar. Thus, a mattress is a huge selling point.
Still, I had plenty of time after I’d been given my bunk. I hitched a ride on a FOB (Forward Operating Base) shuttle over to the other side where the offices are. The FOB is huge and the shuttle ride can take 45 minutes, with the extraordinary traffic here. At any rate, I managed to make my way over to where my office was purported to be. Fortunately, it was there.
I walked into the building (and actual 1 story building! Not a tent!) to chaos. Someone asked me if they could help me. I introduced myself. There was a low rumble of what seemed like excitement. The boss, Tom, a gregarious yankee, scooted up. He was very excited. “Hey, everyone! This is Andre. The new guy!” I awkwardly waved and said hello.
Tom took me outside to talk. He was very excited that I’d arrived. They were/are grossly undermanned and he’d been waiting for me to arrive. He arranged for me to move into the tent next to the office. He mentioned that I had an “impressive resume.” I’d not heard that one before.
The office has, including me, five Americans, the rest are Eastern Europeans (the majority being Bosnian, though we have Macedonians and Albanians…well, Albanian Macedonians) and Asians from the Philippines and Sri Lanka and India. I call the office “The Olympic Village.”
Tom took the time to tell me what my job is, at least for the moment. I work in Air Operations. We are responsible for all in-country travel of company personnel. This is accomplished by rotary (helicopters) or fixed-wing (airplanes). Fluor has a contract with a helicopter company so we have much more control over flight times and manifests (what people and what cargo are going where) than we do over fixed wing, which is typically run by the military. For fixed wing, we can only request the people and cargo we’d like and they tell us whether we can do it. The majority of our planning is for rotary. Fluor personnel are not allowed to travel by ground in Afghanistan. They can only fly. Since Bagram is the larger of two bases that fly people out of country, we are the largest air operations in the country. It is chaos.
I didn’t start work until Wednesday because I had to go to one day of in-processing. I was having the worst case of jet-lag I’ve ever dealt with so I went to bed at 7pm the night before. I was in the office at 5:30am. Tom came in and set down what he wanted me to do. First of all, the basic, obvious part was that he wanted me to learn as much as possible from the other coordinators. There are four of them, three Americans (Stephanie, Holly, and Chad) and one Bosnian (Emir). Ordinarily, foreigners don’t get the supervisor positions because they are cheaper to hire and it isn’t necessary to pay them the same as Americans. Tom had gone up the ladder to get Emir hired at a higher level (still paid less than an American, but much more than other Bosnians).
One would think that Emir, who with the rest of the Bosnians in the department had been working for a sub-contractor $2700 a month (still fantastic pay considering the average annual income in Bosnia is $2980. $2980! A YEAR!), would be extremely appreciative that Tom had convinced Fluor to hire them on at approximately double the money (so approximately 20 times the annual salary in Bosnia). Hell, if someone hired me for a job that paid over 20 times the US average annual income, I’d definitely consider touching his/her leg inappropriately, if ordered to. I might even offer. (Annual US individual average income is $35499. To get paid as well as a Bosnian comparatively, I’d have to be paid $709,980. I am not paid $709,980.) Beyond that, as mentioned, Tom had taken a lot of flak to get Emir paid even more than that to be a coordinator. Emir was not appreciative. Emir was pissed off that Americans got paid more. Very pissed off. Tom had been rather blunt. He told Emir, “I don't know what to tell you. Deal with it or crawl back in the womb and get born again on the right piece of real estate.”
Tom told me about all of this my first morning. Apparently, someone had passed on salary information to a website, so all the Bosnians knew exactly how much everyone makes. The issue of not being paid as much as the other American coordinators had apparently been simmering, but my arrival blew it up. I found that all to be distasteful, but outside of my control and thus care. I was here to do a job. What it was, well, we weren’t quite sure, but I was going to learn what I could. Additionally, Tom wanted me to review our operations and do common-sense checks and trouble shoot. There is no question the office needs improvement. Chaos.
My first two days, I came up with a number of areas where I had questions. I didn’t think I was doing anything revolutionary, just asking why the personnel in the office were doing what they were doing, but Tom was quite pleased. Tom being quite pleased with me did not make Emir happy. Emir and the other Bosnians were arguing with Tom often, and in a manner I thought was inappropriate for employees to talk to a supervisor.
Tom took me out to the flight line (where the helicopters and airplanes land) on my second day. Emir and the Bosnians were furious, claiming that the helicopter company personnel were kicking people and cargo off the helicopters simply because they didn’t want to fly and because they hated the Bosnians. When Tom and I went out there, that wasn’t what came across at all. What came across was that the Bosnians weren’t respecting the helicopter company’s rules, designed to keep people safe. The Bosnians weren’t weighing passengers and their equipment and annotating those weighed on the proper paperwork. Aside from that, the Bosnians were cursing and yelling, hardly tactics designed to get the helicopter company to help them out.
Tom calmed down the situation, ordered the Bosnians to follow the rules, and we got the people and equipment on the helicopters. As we walked away, Tom told me, “That’s going to piss off Emir even more, because I embarrassed him.” I asked how Tom had embarrassed Emir. “Because I showed that it was relatively easy to solve the problem so he thinks I’ve shamed him.”
I didn’t know what to think about that kind of attitude. It just seemed damned childish to me.
The next morning, I saw Tom and Emir arguing. Shortly thereafter, Tom came into the office. “Change of plan. André, you’re no longer on review. You’re in charge of the flight line. Emir has decided to quit.”
Day three and all of a sudden, I’m in charge of the operational portion of the job. Awesome. I was dumbfounded that someone making 20 to 30 times the average salary of his country would quit that job over ego. I was also dumbfounded by the fact that Emir and his close confederates held me personally responsible. Emir’s brother-in-law, Ahmed, who Tom had hired as a favor to Emir, refused to work for me. Mirza K., a young guy, Emir’s good friend, was surly and confrontational. “I don’t report to you,” he told me when I went out to the flight line, “I work for Emir.” I had to have Tom make a department-wide announcement that I was in charge. Just how I wanted to make an impression. Sweet. (Sigh…)
Later that night, some of the other Bosnians came to me to tell me how happy they were that Emir had gotten fired and that I was in charge. Apparently, Emir had taken his authority to his head and treated the other Bosnians outside of his posse like second-class citizens. “We’re on your side.” Great, now it was being portrayed as me v. Emir. I was bewildered. All I knew is that I’d gotten hired for a job. I’d walked into a civil war.
The next couple of days involved Emir, who, though he had quit hadn’t left and now realized how badly he’d shot himself in the foot, was still around, going to Tom to repeatedly tell Tom how I don’t know anything and that everything was going to blow up. It’s true, I’d only been there for a few days. I didn’t know the details, but, ultimately, a) it wasn’t an overly difficult job to grasp, and b) I don’t have to know the details; I have to know how to make the people who do know the details do their jobs and make sure we meet our objectives. That, I can do. That is management.
Anyway, I was the bad guy and the hero. Ahmed refused to have anything to do with me and Mirza K. was argumentative. Eddie and Mirza E. kept telling me how smart and wonderful I am. The rest of the Bosnians hunkered down to see how everything else played out.
Fortunately, I was able to institute a degree of planning into the process that standardized things and, other than out-of-nowhere changes, we’ve run smoothly. The helicopter company has bent over backwards to help because I listened to them and integrated their rules. Tom has been happy because flights are typically going out as planned, and when they aren’t, it hasn’t been because of operational issues.
After five days, Emir finally flew this morning. Thank Jesus.
My silence of the past week hasn’t been due to any absence of interesting material, in fact, far from it. I have walked into an office political storm that, heretofore, I thought had only been talked about in caricature. Yowsa. So…
I landed on Monday, March 1st. After I’d been issued my plated protective vest and helmet, I was sent over to transient billeting. I was put in a tent loaded with 200 bunk beds. Sleeping in a tent with 399 other guys is honestly the part of this whole deal that I figured would be the most grating. Still, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the bunk beds had actual mattresses on them. In Iraq, I had a metal bed frame, but instead of springs and metal links supporting it, there was simply rebar. Instead of a proper mattress, I had a foam rubber pad. That was actually comfortable for the first fifteen minutes, until it compressed. For the next year, I pretty much slept on lightly padded rebar. Thus, a mattress is a huge selling point.
Still, I had plenty of time after I’d been given my bunk. I hitched a ride on a FOB (Forward Operating Base) shuttle over to the other side where the offices are. The FOB is huge and the shuttle ride can take 45 minutes, with the extraordinary traffic here. At any rate, I managed to make my way over to where my office was purported to be. Fortunately, it was there.
I walked into the building (and actual 1 story building! Not a tent!) to chaos. Someone asked me if they could help me. I introduced myself. There was a low rumble of what seemed like excitement. The boss, Tom, a gregarious yankee, scooted up. He was very excited. “Hey, everyone! This is Andre. The new guy!” I awkwardly waved and said hello.
Tom took me outside to talk. He was very excited that I’d arrived. They were/are grossly undermanned and he’d been waiting for me to arrive. He arranged for me to move into the tent next to the office. He mentioned that I had an “impressive resume.” I’d not heard that one before.
The office has, including me, five Americans, the rest are Eastern Europeans (the majority being Bosnian, though we have Macedonians and Albanians…well, Albanian Macedonians) and Asians from the Philippines and Sri Lanka and India. I call the office “The Olympic Village.”
Tom took the time to tell me what my job is, at least for the moment. I work in Air Operations. We are responsible for all in-country travel of company personnel. This is accomplished by rotary (helicopters) or fixed-wing (airplanes). Fluor has a contract with a helicopter company so we have much more control over flight times and manifests (what people and what cargo are going where) than we do over fixed wing, which is typically run by the military. For fixed wing, we can only request the people and cargo we’d like and they tell us whether we can do it. The majority of our planning is for rotary. Fluor personnel are not allowed to travel by ground in Afghanistan. They can only fly. Since Bagram is the larger of two bases that fly people out of country, we are the largest air operations in the country. It is chaos.
I didn’t start work until Wednesday because I had to go to one day of in-processing. I was having the worst case of jet-lag I’ve ever dealt with so I went to bed at 7pm the night before. I was in the office at 5:30am. Tom came in and set down what he wanted me to do. First of all, the basic, obvious part was that he wanted me to learn as much as possible from the other coordinators. There are four of them, three Americans (Stephanie, Holly, and Chad) and one Bosnian (Emir). Ordinarily, foreigners don’t get the supervisor positions because they are cheaper to hire and it isn’t necessary to pay them the same as Americans. Tom had gone up the ladder to get Emir hired at a higher level (still paid less than an American, but much more than other Bosnians).
One would think that Emir, who with the rest of the Bosnians in the department had been working for a sub-contractor $2700 a month (still fantastic pay considering the average annual income in Bosnia is $2980. $2980! A YEAR!), would be extremely appreciative that Tom had convinced Fluor to hire them on at approximately double the money (so approximately 20 times the annual salary in Bosnia). Hell, if someone hired me for a job that paid over 20 times the US average annual income, I’d definitely consider touching his/her leg inappropriately, if ordered to. I might even offer. (Annual US individual average income is $35499. To get paid as well as a Bosnian comparatively, I’d have to be paid $709,980. I am not paid $709,980.) Beyond that, as mentioned, Tom had taken a lot of flak to get Emir paid even more than that to be a coordinator. Emir was not appreciative. Emir was pissed off that Americans got paid more. Very pissed off. Tom had been rather blunt. He told Emir, “I don't know what to tell you. Deal with it or crawl back in the womb and get born again on the right piece of real estate.”
Tom told me about all of this my first morning. Apparently, someone had passed on salary information to a website, so all the Bosnians knew exactly how much everyone makes. The issue of not being paid as much as the other American coordinators had apparently been simmering, but my arrival blew it up. I found that all to be distasteful, but outside of my control and thus care. I was here to do a job. What it was, well, we weren’t quite sure, but I was going to learn what I could. Additionally, Tom wanted me to review our operations and do common-sense checks and trouble shoot. There is no question the office needs improvement. Chaos.
My first two days, I came up with a number of areas where I had questions. I didn’t think I was doing anything revolutionary, just asking why the personnel in the office were doing what they were doing, but Tom was quite pleased. Tom being quite pleased with me did not make Emir happy. Emir and the other Bosnians were arguing with Tom often, and in a manner I thought was inappropriate for employees to talk to a supervisor.
Tom took me out to the flight line (where the helicopters and airplanes land) on my second day. Emir and the Bosnians were furious, claiming that the helicopter company personnel were kicking people and cargo off the helicopters simply because they didn’t want to fly and because they hated the Bosnians. When Tom and I went out there, that wasn’t what came across at all. What came across was that the Bosnians weren’t respecting the helicopter company’s rules, designed to keep people safe. The Bosnians weren’t weighing passengers and their equipment and annotating those weighed on the proper paperwork. Aside from that, the Bosnians were cursing and yelling, hardly tactics designed to get the helicopter company to help them out.
Tom calmed down the situation, ordered the Bosnians to follow the rules, and we got the people and equipment on the helicopters. As we walked away, Tom told me, “That’s going to piss off Emir even more, because I embarrassed him.” I asked how Tom had embarrassed Emir. “Because I showed that it was relatively easy to solve the problem so he thinks I’ve shamed him.”
I didn’t know what to think about that kind of attitude. It just seemed damned childish to me.
The next morning, I saw Tom and Emir arguing. Shortly thereafter, Tom came into the office. “Change of plan. André, you’re no longer on review. You’re in charge of the flight line. Emir has decided to quit.”
Day three and all of a sudden, I’m in charge of the operational portion of the job. Awesome. I was dumbfounded that someone making 20 to 30 times the average salary of his country would quit that job over ego. I was also dumbfounded by the fact that Emir and his close confederates held me personally responsible. Emir’s brother-in-law, Ahmed, who Tom had hired as a favor to Emir, refused to work for me. Mirza K., a young guy, Emir’s good friend, was surly and confrontational. “I don’t report to you,” he told me when I went out to the flight line, “I work for Emir.” I had to have Tom make a department-wide announcement that I was in charge. Just how I wanted to make an impression. Sweet. (Sigh…)
Later that night, some of the other Bosnians came to me to tell me how happy they were that Emir had gotten fired and that I was in charge. Apparently, Emir had taken his authority to his head and treated the other Bosnians outside of his posse like second-class citizens. “We’re on your side.” Great, now it was being portrayed as me v. Emir. I was bewildered. All I knew is that I’d gotten hired for a job. I’d walked into a civil war.
The next couple of days involved Emir, who, though he had quit hadn’t left and now realized how badly he’d shot himself in the foot, was still around, going to Tom to repeatedly tell Tom how I don’t know anything and that everything was going to blow up. It’s true, I’d only been there for a few days. I didn’t know the details, but, ultimately, a) it wasn’t an overly difficult job to grasp, and b) I don’t have to know the details; I have to know how to make the people who do know the details do their jobs and make sure we meet our objectives. That, I can do. That is management.
Anyway, I was the bad guy and the hero. Ahmed refused to have anything to do with me and Mirza K. was argumentative. Eddie and Mirza E. kept telling me how smart and wonderful I am. The rest of the Bosnians hunkered down to see how everything else played out.
Fortunately, I was able to institute a degree of planning into the process that standardized things and, other than out-of-nowhere changes, we’ve run smoothly. The helicopter company has bent over backwards to help because I listened to them and integrated their rules. Tom has been happy because flights are typically going out as planned, and when they aren’t, it hasn’t been because of operational issues.
After five days, Emir finally flew this morning. Thank Jesus.
Afghanistan- March 10
March 4, 2010
1. Simply for the fact that the Bagram Air Field (next to Kabul) is surrounded by snow capped mountains, it reminds me of Anchorage. While it’s dirty, dusty, and muddy all around me, it’s nice to look up and see pretty skies and snow. Below the mountains? Well, it’s dusty here. I mean, really, really dusty. The past few days it’s rained though, so it’s been muddy. I mean, really, really muddy. The roads on the FOB (forward operating base) are mostly dirt and when it rains they erupt in foot-deep pot holes. There are shuttles to take people from one side of the FOB to the other. Luckily, I don’t have to go to the far side.
2. It smells here. It just does. What does it smell like? A distant septic tank. Iraq smelled like that. Dubai smelled like that. Afghanistan smells like that. You get used to it, but yeah, ugh. Still, it could be much worse. It smells like that because we’re doing our best to take care of the plumbing issues here. When I was first in Iraq, we had burn crappers. What’s a burn crapper? It’s a wooden outhouse where your deposit goes into a 55-gallon drum cut in half. When that drum got full, it got removed to a burn location. You’d fill it up with diesel, set it on fire and stir it with a long stick/pole. Poop on fire makes poop flakes/ash. It can be pretty until you realize it’s poop flakes/ash. The smell of diesel burned poop flakes is way, way, way worse than a distant septic tank.
We actually have toilets here (in containers like the backs of tractor trailers) and I’m thankful for them, particularly because we can flush the toilet paper. Often times in countries like these, you have to throw your used paper into a trash can next to the toilet because the plumbing is too small to handle it. Retraining yourself to throw toilet paper into a trashcan is a pain, and then when you go on vacation, it’s a hard/embarrassing habit to break. What I don’t like about our toilets is that they’re the German models. The Germans are famed as engineers, but they haven’t figured out how to make a decent toilet. These are the shelf model. Our wonderful American toilets are bowls with plenty of wonderful water to smother and mask the fumes. The shelf toilet has a shelf six inches under your posterior where your former meals pile up. There’s no water on that shelf. Thus, it reeks. When you’re finished and flush, a massive jet of water slams your deposit into the front of the toilet where it then slides down a drain. Other than people who like looking at poop, it’s a horrible, horrible system (well, it obviously isn’t water wasteful, but I don’t care). Make sure you shut the lid before you flush is all I can say. You don’t want to learn why so take my word on it.
3. I'm fine with my living conditions. My coworkers are of the opinion that we are living in the stone ages and bitch at every opportunity. When I first got here, they put me in the transient tents. Those tents have approximately 200 bunk beds. I'd heard horror stories, but the beds didn't seem so bad. They actually had mattresses. When I was in Iraq, I had a bunk, but no mattress. That meant that I put a foam rubber pad on top of iron cross bars. The foam rubber compressed after 15 minutes and I slept on iron cross bars for the next 10 months. A mattress is a luxury to me.
After they got us into the tent on the first day, we had free time, so I went to find where my job/office was located. I met my boss and he immediately had me moved to the Air Ops sleeping tent, right next to the office. I'm stoked about that because the transient tenting is on the other side of the FOB and it took a 45 minute shuttle ride to get to the office. The Air Ops tent is smaller. There are about 50 of us in there. I'm on a top bunk (not so fun as an adult), but I have a mattress. The heating duct, which runs down the center of the tent, blows on me. Not so pleasant when it's warm during the day; the tent gets to about 80 degrees and smells like wet hamster, but at night, when it's cold, it's nice enough. I'm fine with how things are. People bitch about the conditions, but that stuns me. We're in a war zone. I'm stoked about being dry and warm and (relatively) comfortable.
4. I'm a bad judge of food. When I don't have to cook it, I like it. We get the DFAC (Dining Facility). That's been fine for me. Because this is the biggest base in AFG, we also have a Burger King, Subway, Pizza Hut, Popeye's Chicken, and Dairy Queen. I'm not going to eat at those if I can help it. A) Why spend money when I don't need to and B) I'm trying to lose weight. The DFAC doesn't slop huge portions on us. I like that.
5. I finally found out what my job is. I knew my job title was Air Operations Coordinator, but no one in Greenville could really give me any information on what an Air Ops Coordinator does. I met my boss and it’s pretty straightforward (in theory). Fluor is responsible for many dozens of bases and we have personnel on them. My job is supposed to be coordinating their movement from base to base, most of the time when they are coming to Bagram to get on airplane flights to Dubai for R&R or getting back here from R&R and going back to their FOBs. That sounds easy enough, but there are untold moving parts and different departments who all have their fingers in the pie that it’s sheer chaos. The old phrase is “There’s more than one way to screw a cat.” (I’m pretty sure that’s the phrase, anyway.) We’re actually trying to come up with just one way to make things more efficient.
6. We get mortared here occasionally. I haven’t been mortared here yet, but it’s gonna happen. When I say occasionally, I don’t mean daily. I don’t even mean weekly. My boss said we’d been mortared maybe 20 times in the 14 months he’d been here. From my experience, mortars aren’t that dangerous, at least in likelihood you’ll get injured by one. Typically it takes a direct strike. If you get hit directly by a mortar, it was your time. If it weren’t the mortar, God was gonna hit you with a bus or lightning or something. We’re supposed to go to concrete bunkers if we get incoming. Usually, by the time you make it to the bunkers, the attack has finished.
7. Out of an office of approximately 50, there are only 6 Americans. The rest are Bosnians and Philippinos. I call the office “The Olympic Village.” The Bosnians are teaching me Bosnian cuss words. I wish I’d remembered the cusswords the Bulgarians taught me a couple of years ago in Alaska. One of the Bosnians, Eddie (well, in Bosnian it’s nigh-on indecipherable, so he just goes by Eddie), was an English Professor in Sarajevo drove me around the FOB. After a while he said, “You are not like other Americans. I know you for an hour and already I can tell you are very strange. We are going to be friends.”
8. General facts: The time difference is 9 1/2 hours. It's currently 6:30am on thursday, so it's 9pm on wednesday in SC. It's 4500-5000 feet here. They gave us all anti-malaria pills. After I had a mental breakdown (of sorts) in Iraq due to the anti-malaria medication they gave us (lariam), and it turned out we didn’t need to take that, I didn’t even bring the anti malaria pills this time. I was right not too. Malaria carrying mosquitos don’t get above 2200 feet. I’m not taking pills just because a drug company convinced my company to buy the pills.
1. Simply for the fact that the Bagram Air Field (next to Kabul) is surrounded by snow capped mountains, it reminds me of Anchorage. While it’s dirty, dusty, and muddy all around me, it’s nice to look up and see pretty skies and snow. Below the mountains? Well, it’s dusty here. I mean, really, really dusty. The past few days it’s rained though, so it’s been muddy. I mean, really, really muddy. The roads on the FOB (forward operating base) are mostly dirt and when it rains they erupt in foot-deep pot holes. There are shuttles to take people from one side of the FOB to the other. Luckily, I don’t have to go to the far side.
2. It smells here. It just does. What does it smell like? A distant septic tank. Iraq smelled like that. Dubai smelled like that. Afghanistan smells like that. You get used to it, but yeah, ugh. Still, it could be much worse. It smells like that because we’re doing our best to take care of the plumbing issues here. When I was first in Iraq, we had burn crappers. What’s a burn crapper? It’s a wooden outhouse where your deposit goes into a 55-gallon drum cut in half. When that drum got full, it got removed to a burn location. You’d fill it up with diesel, set it on fire and stir it with a long stick/pole. Poop on fire makes poop flakes/ash. It can be pretty until you realize it’s poop flakes/ash. The smell of diesel burned poop flakes is way, way, way worse than a distant septic tank.
We actually have toilets here (in containers like the backs of tractor trailers) and I’m thankful for them, particularly because we can flush the toilet paper. Often times in countries like these, you have to throw your used paper into a trash can next to the toilet because the plumbing is too small to handle it. Retraining yourself to throw toilet paper into a trashcan is a pain, and then when you go on vacation, it’s a hard/embarrassing habit to break. What I don’t like about our toilets is that they’re the German models. The Germans are famed as engineers, but they haven’t figured out how to make a decent toilet. These are the shelf model. Our wonderful American toilets are bowls with plenty of wonderful water to smother and mask the fumes. The shelf toilet has a shelf six inches under your posterior where your former meals pile up. There’s no water on that shelf. Thus, it reeks. When you’re finished and flush, a massive jet of water slams your deposit into the front of the toilet where it then slides down a drain. Other than people who like looking at poop, it’s a horrible, horrible system (well, it obviously isn’t water wasteful, but I don’t care). Make sure you shut the lid before you flush is all I can say. You don’t want to learn why so take my word on it.
3. I'm fine with my living conditions. My coworkers are of the opinion that we are living in the stone ages and bitch at every opportunity. When I first got here, they put me in the transient tents. Those tents have approximately 200 bunk beds. I'd heard horror stories, but the beds didn't seem so bad. They actually had mattresses. When I was in Iraq, I had a bunk, but no mattress. That meant that I put a foam rubber pad on top of iron cross bars. The foam rubber compressed after 15 minutes and I slept on iron cross bars for the next 10 months. A mattress is a luxury to me.
After they got us into the tent on the first day, we had free time, so I went to find where my job/office was located. I met my boss and he immediately had me moved to the Air Ops sleeping tent, right next to the office. I'm stoked about that because the transient tenting is on the other side of the FOB and it took a 45 minute shuttle ride to get to the office. The Air Ops tent is smaller. There are about 50 of us in there. I'm on a top bunk (not so fun as an adult), but I have a mattress. The heating duct, which runs down the center of the tent, blows on me. Not so pleasant when it's warm during the day; the tent gets to about 80 degrees and smells like wet hamster, but at night, when it's cold, it's nice enough. I'm fine with how things are. People bitch about the conditions, but that stuns me. We're in a war zone. I'm stoked about being dry and warm and (relatively) comfortable.
4. I'm a bad judge of food. When I don't have to cook it, I like it. We get the DFAC (Dining Facility). That's been fine for me. Because this is the biggest base in AFG, we also have a Burger King, Subway, Pizza Hut, Popeye's Chicken, and Dairy Queen. I'm not going to eat at those if I can help it. A) Why spend money when I don't need to and B) I'm trying to lose weight. The DFAC doesn't slop huge portions on us. I like that.
5. I finally found out what my job is. I knew my job title was Air Operations Coordinator, but no one in Greenville could really give me any information on what an Air Ops Coordinator does. I met my boss and it’s pretty straightforward (in theory). Fluor is responsible for many dozens of bases and we have personnel on them. My job is supposed to be coordinating their movement from base to base, most of the time when they are coming to Bagram to get on airplane flights to Dubai for R&R or getting back here from R&R and going back to their FOBs. That sounds easy enough, but there are untold moving parts and different departments who all have their fingers in the pie that it’s sheer chaos. The old phrase is “There’s more than one way to screw a cat.” (I’m pretty sure that’s the phrase, anyway.) We’re actually trying to come up with just one way to make things more efficient.
6. We get mortared here occasionally. I haven’t been mortared here yet, but it’s gonna happen. When I say occasionally, I don’t mean daily. I don’t even mean weekly. My boss said we’d been mortared maybe 20 times in the 14 months he’d been here. From my experience, mortars aren’t that dangerous, at least in likelihood you’ll get injured by one. Typically it takes a direct strike. If you get hit directly by a mortar, it was your time. If it weren’t the mortar, God was gonna hit you with a bus or lightning or something. We’re supposed to go to concrete bunkers if we get incoming. Usually, by the time you make it to the bunkers, the attack has finished.
7. Out of an office of approximately 50, there are only 6 Americans. The rest are Bosnians and Philippinos. I call the office “The Olympic Village.” The Bosnians are teaching me Bosnian cuss words. I wish I’d remembered the cusswords the Bulgarians taught me a couple of years ago in Alaska. One of the Bosnians, Eddie (well, in Bosnian it’s nigh-on indecipherable, so he just goes by Eddie), was an English Professor in Sarajevo drove me around the FOB. After a while he said, “You are not like other Americans. I know you for an hour and already I can tell you are very strange. We are going to be friends.”
8. General facts: The time difference is 9 1/2 hours. It's currently 6:30am on thursday, so it's 9pm on wednesday in SC. It's 4500-5000 feet here. They gave us all anti-malaria pills. After I had a mental breakdown (of sorts) in Iraq due to the anti-malaria medication they gave us (lariam), and it turned out we didn’t need to take that, I didn’t even bring the anti malaria pills this time. I was right not too. Malaria carrying mosquitos don’t get above 2200 feet. I’m not taking pills just because a drug company convinced my company to buy the pills.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Hookers! Hookers! Hookers!
March 1st, 2010
I was in Greenville for approximately a month. I had managed to make it the first 30 years of my life never having gone there. I hope to never have to go there again. (Hell with Clemson! Go Cocks!) My first week there involved “training”, which was little more than filling out paperwork that I’d already filled out prior to my arrival. What little more there was mostly had to do with prostitutes. I had done an online certification on human trafficking, which required my printing out the certificate, signing it, scanning it, and then emailing it to the company. We had to do that one at least one more time, plus I think there were more. The surveys were titled “Awareness of Human Trafficking” or some such, but what they really meant was “Don’t Use Hookers!”
When I got to my first unit in the army I was amazed to meet people who not only had frequented brothels, but were proud of the fact. Contractors apparently come from the same stock, but, since they make inordinately more money, they use inordinately more hookers. Thus, the company attempted to put a face on those many prostitutes by presenting them as victims of international crime, dubbed “human trafficking.” I’d have to say the company failed spectacularly.
Though Fluor threw money all over the place, even going so far as to book me a $950 plane ticket from Charleston to Greenville (which I cancelled for being ridiculously wasteful), they paired us up in rooms in the Crowne Plaza Hotel. My first roommate hesitantly mentioned his use of prostitutes. My second roommate had no qualms whatsoever. He trumpeted hookers as a necessity of the modern age. Once, while drinking, he informed me that he’d heard a rumor that the cleaning ladies were “pros”, so he took it upon himself to call the front desk and ask the manager if he could get some action. He was notified that rumor was incorrect. The day that I left Greenville (the three weeks after the week of filling out paperwork mostly involved me playing video games in a classroom to clock in my required 40 hours), the roommate tried to bargain with me.
Him: “Sir (He really liked the idea of me being a captain), you gotta promise me something.”
Me: (knowing where this was going) “Um. We’ll see.”
Him: “Sir, you gotta promise me you’ll get a hooker in Dubai!”
Me: “No. I’m not promising that.”
Him: “But Sir! Why not? They’re hot.”
Me: “Not my thing.”
Him: “You’re not gonna get laid for four months. You’re gonna go crazy. Trust me.”
Me: “I guess I’ll have to make do.”
Perhaps I should mention that directly before that exchange, when I walked into the room, he was webchatting with a prostitute. I say she was a prostitute and not an internet “model” because they were chatting about her fees for sex.
At any rate, I put all thought of sex workers out of my mind when I got to the airport. I was seriously dreading the 12 ½ hour flight from Washington DC to Dubai. I had visions of cramped seats and screaming children; my luck wasn’t doing too well since I’d managed to lose my cell phone on the connector flight from Greenville to DC. I was thrilled to discover, however, that I got a seat in front of the bulkhead with plenty of legroom and there was not a child in our section of the plane. God be praised.
We were only going to be in Dubai for 12 hours, and we had significantly less time than that after the time it took to wait for our luggage and get through customs. Finally, we got to the hotel. The company put us in a swanky $300 a night hotel. It even had a separate face washer, though it was a bit unusual that was right next to the toilet. Still, it did the job. Those Arabs are strange.
Anyway, while we were checking in, up above us, on the mezzanine level, were prostitutes motioning for us to come up and say hello. A porter walked by me and thrust a piece of paper in my hand. It read:
Sketch Bar: One free beer or spirit of choice!
Then it had a perforated tear off portion where we were to put our name and room number for accounting purposes. Sometimes there are times in your life where you get to announce “Hey, I’m an idiot!” This was one of them. I wasn’t going to do it. First of all, “Sketch Bar”? Yes, the name was drawn in wavy pencil to conjure up images of artistry, but the last thing anyone with any intelligence is gonna do is go to a foreign country, hang out with hookers and take a free drink at a sketchy bar. “One free beer or spirit of choice! Free roofie and wallet removal!” Probably not gonna happen in a $300 a night hotel, but still, there’s no way I’m doing that.
Six hours after I finally got checked into my room, I was back in the shuttle back to the airport. I mentioned the Sketch Bar and the prostitutes to the kind, regal-looking grandfather sitting next to me. He told me the better prostitutes were actually around the corner and down two blocks. I now have no faith in humanity.
P.S. Yes, I know what a bidet is. Calm down.
P.P.S. It just so happens I like to use the bidet to wash my face.
I was in Greenville for approximately a month. I had managed to make it the first 30 years of my life never having gone there. I hope to never have to go there again. (Hell with Clemson! Go Cocks!) My first week there involved “training”, which was little more than filling out paperwork that I’d already filled out prior to my arrival. What little more there was mostly had to do with prostitutes. I had done an online certification on human trafficking, which required my printing out the certificate, signing it, scanning it, and then emailing it to the company. We had to do that one at least one more time, plus I think there were more. The surveys were titled “Awareness of Human Trafficking” or some such, but what they really meant was “Don’t Use Hookers!”
When I got to my first unit in the army I was amazed to meet people who not only had frequented brothels, but were proud of the fact. Contractors apparently come from the same stock, but, since they make inordinately more money, they use inordinately more hookers. Thus, the company attempted to put a face on those many prostitutes by presenting them as victims of international crime, dubbed “human trafficking.” I’d have to say the company failed spectacularly.
Though Fluor threw money all over the place, even going so far as to book me a $950 plane ticket from Charleston to Greenville (which I cancelled for being ridiculously wasteful), they paired us up in rooms in the Crowne Plaza Hotel. My first roommate hesitantly mentioned his use of prostitutes. My second roommate had no qualms whatsoever. He trumpeted hookers as a necessity of the modern age. Once, while drinking, he informed me that he’d heard a rumor that the cleaning ladies were “pros”, so he took it upon himself to call the front desk and ask the manager if he could get some action. He was notified that rumor was incorrect. The day that I left Greenville (the three weeks after the week of filling out paperwork mostly involved me playing video games in a classroom to clock in my required 40 hours), the roommate tried to bargain with me.
Him: “Sir (He really liked the idea of me being a captain), you gotta promise me something.”
Me: (knowing where this was going) “Um. We’ll see.”
Him: “Sir, you gotta promise me you’ll get a hooker in Dubai!”
Me: “No. I’m not promising that.”
Him: “But Sir! Why not? They’re hot.”
Me: “Not my thing.”
Him: “You’re not gonna get laid for four months. You’re gonna go crazy. Trust me.”
Me: “I guess I’ll have to make do.”
Perhaps I should mention that directly before that exchange, when I walked into the room, he was webchatting with a prostitute. I say she was a prostitute and not an internet “model” because they were chatting about her fees for sex.
At any rate, I put all thought of sex workers out of my mind when I got to the airport. I was seriously dreading the 12 ½ hour flight from Washington DC to Dubai. I had visions of cramped seats and screaming children; my luck wasn’t doing too well since I’d managed to lose my cell phone on the connector flight from Greenville to DC. I was thrilled to discover, however, that I got a seat in front of the bulkhead with plenty of legroom and there was not a child in our section of the plane. God be praised.
We were only going to be in Dubai for 12 hours, and we had significantly less time than that after the time it took to wait for our luggage and get through customs. Finally, we got to the hotel. The company put us in a swanky $300 a night hotel. It even had a separate face washer, though it was a bit unusual that was right next to the toilet. Still, it did the job. Those Arabs are strange.
Anyway, while we were checking in, up above us, on the mezzanine level, were prostitutes motioning for us to come up and say hello. A porter walked by me and thrust a piece of paper in my hand. It read:
Sketch Bar: One free beer or spirit of choice!
Then it had a perforated tear off portion where we were to put our name and room number for accounting purposes. Sometimes there are times in your life where you get to announce “Hey, I’m an idiot!” This was one of them. I wasn’t going to do it. First of all, “Sketch Bar”? Yes, the name was drawn in wavy pencil to conjure up images of artistry, but the last thing anyone with any intelligence is gonna do is go to a foreign country, hang out with hookers and take a free drink at a sketchy bar. “One free beer or spirit of choice! Free roofie and wallet removal!” Probably not gonna happen in a $300 a night hotel, but still, there’s no way I’m doing that.
Six hours after I finally got checked into my room, I was back in the shuttle back to the airport. I mentioned the Sketch Bar and the prostitutes to the kind, regal-looking grandfather sitting next to me. He told me the better prostitutes were actually around the corner and down two blocks. I now have no faith in humanity.
P.S. Yes, I know what a bidet is. Calm down.
P.P.S. It just so happens I like to use the bidet to wash my face.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Murphy's Law (Job!!!)
So, as many know, since I graduated from law school and took the bar, which I subsequently passed, I have been trying to get a job, but not as a lawyer, though I kicked the tires on law jobs too. I was working with a recruiter from Fluor, one of three companies that have the government contract on Afghanistan, but, after he got me an interview with a hiring manager in October (I didn't get the job obviously), he fell off the radar. He wouldn't answer my emails or phone calls. Finally, at the end of last month, I finally got through to him and he said, "Oh, I got a different job in the company. Keep applying on-line. Good luck." Sweet!...
As I've had no job nor job prospects, I've been hemorrhaging money. My cousin Dave had been nice enough to let me stay with him for free for a few months, but still, I've had bills. I even had to cash out the IRA that I'd built up from my years in the army in order to pay bills. At a crossroads, I took the only option I had, really. The government passed a new GI BILL. In addition to paying tuition and books, it gave me a living allowance that was more than I'd get in unemployment. I talked to USC and it was easy to get back in.
Flashforward to today. After leaving my new Columbia apartment, which I've only just gotten set up, I was in my Economics class. The professor was just giving his definition of unemployment, when I got a phone call from the new recruiter from Fluor. I rushed out of the classroom and took the call.
She'd called yesterday to let me know she'd taken over the reins from the old recruiter, but I just figured she wanted to touch base with me. At any rate, I answered. Turned out, she'd already found a hiring manager who wanted to hire me. She offered me the job. I accepted.
After I got off the phone with her, I immediately went to the financial aid dept, bursar's office, and registrar to remove myself from classes, all of which was made complicated by the fact that I'd paid for my tuition and fees earlier today, not realizing I'd get a job offer.
My 2nd undergrad lasted under two days. I now have to break my lease and pack up my apartment.
So long as I pass my medical and dental exams, I now think I will be the highest paid member of my graduating class at law school. Hysterical.
As I've had no job nor job prospects, I've been hemorrhaging money. My cousin Dave had been nice enough to let me stay with him for free for a few months, but still, I've had bills. I even had to cash out the IRA that I'd built up from my years in the army in order to pay bills. At a crossroads, I took the only option I had, really. The government passed a new GI BILL. In addition to paying tuition and books, it gave me a living allowance that was more than I'd get in unemployment. I talked to USC and it was easy to get back in.
Flashforward to today. After leaving my new Columbia apartment, which I've only just gotten set up, I was in my Economics class. The professor was just giving his definition of unemployment, when I got a phone call from the new recruiter from Fluor. I rushed out of the classroom and took the call.
She'd called yesterday to let me know she'd taken over the reins from the old recruiter, but I just figured she wanted to touch base with me. At any rate, I answered. Turned out, she'd already found a hiring manager who wanted to hire me. She offered me the job. I accepted.
After I got off the phone with her, I immediately went to the financial aid dept, bursar's office, and registrar to remove myself from classes, all of which was made complicated by the fact that I'd paid for my tuition and fees earlier today, not realizing I'd get a job offer.
My 2nd undergrad lasted under two days. I now have to break my lease and pack up my apartment.
So long as I pass my medical and dental exams, I now think I will be the highest paid member of my graduating class at law school. Hysterical.
2nd Undergrad
Quick thoughts
-Thank Jesus I wasn't the oldest guy in my first class. There was a grey haired 48yo. Pfew!
-My French textbook costs $194 new, $145 used!!! It comes with mandatory online software instead of a workbook, and if you get the used textbook, you have to pay the website for a unique passcode which costs an arm and a leg. My 1500 page Con Law textbook didn't cost nearly that much. Sweet God!
-Kids these days sure like bolting metal into their faces.
-Of course, on my first day back, I finally got a call from a recruiter about the job I've been trying to get. Not paying my tuition and fees until I figure out what the chances of me getting that job are.
-Thank Jesus I wasn't the oldest guy in my first class. There was a grey haired 48yo. Pfew!
-My French textbook costs $194 new, $145 used!!! It comes with mandatory online software instead of a workbook, and if you get the used textbook, you have to pay the website for a unique passcode which costs an arm and a leg. My 1500 page Con Law textbook didn't cost nearly that much. Sweet God!
-Kids these days sure like bolting metal into their faces.
-Of course, on my first day back, I finally got a call from a recruiter about the job I've been trying to get. Not paying my tuition and fees until I figure out what the chances of me getting that job are.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Avatar:3D! (and a devolution into politics)
First and foremost, regardless of what I gripe about with the movie, it's a spectacle. I didn't mind wearing the glasses and even though most everything is CGI, I didn't feel like I was watching a video game, which is good considering the movie is about 2 and 1/2 hours long. The Avatars/Na'vi worked. If you like to be wowed, it's definitely worth the price of admission.
If you're a hoity-toity who watches mostly European films only seen by a handful of pretentious snobs, and despise anything that is just good, old-fashioned mass entertainment (which I argue is much rarer and more difficult to pull off than being boring and depressed in another language), you're going to hate it no matter what. I'll spare you the time you'd take condescending to watch the movie and say, yes, it's basically a $300 million "Dances With Wolves."'
However, there's more to it, really. Even though you've seen the plot before, I guarantee you haven't seen it this way. The 3D works. It's not a gimmick used to jolt you. It's fluid and seems reasonable, even vital to the presentation. Just from the previews you know what's going to happen, but, as the old saying goes, it's the journey, not the destination. Other than one glitch (the Na'vi sex scene), I could remain within the movie and buy the goings on.
Don't read further til you've watched the movie, or go ahead if you don't plan to.
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1. Yes, I liked the movie, but, Jesus, I get it already with the whole "we have to love the Earth" thing. "They've destroyed their mother!" I get it. Everything's connected! I get it. I kept waiting for a scene where they beat one of the dead eight-legged horses. One thing though, while the movie tries very hard to get the message across that the world and its inhabitants are all interrelated, the script sure tries to de-ball the notion of mysticism it presents by trying to science it up with some gobledygook about electro-chemical bonding that takes away the spirituality it's trying to foster. I mean, as it stood, without that, it made a lot more sense and was much deeper for, on the Na'vi world of Pandora, it to have its own goddess, but instead of sticking with that, the script debunks that by having the planet be a super-organism. A decent idea, but makes the Na'vi a lot less wise and a lot more foolishly superstitious.
2. The Na'vi love and respect all life. Boy, do we get told that a lot. They live in harmony with nature. Boy, do we get that a lot. Um, if they love life, why are they carnivores? I mean, other than having incisors, if they've understood and have proof that all life is woven together, wouldn't it make sense for them to rely less on hunting and gathering and more on agriculture? I know it's nit-picky, but that's why civilization evolved, when we we stopped chasing our food around the continents. Prey steer clear of predators, particularly 12-foot-tall ones with bows and arrows so that's why the earliest peoples were nomadic, they had to go where the food went. Yes, the Na'vi fly and ride long distances to hunt, but they're basically wiping out their own areas of the creatures they claim to love and respect so much. Surely, since they see the "seeds" of the Great Tree everywhere, they understand that plants can be grown from seeds and that they could produce far more food, and cause far less harm, by planting. The inspiration for the Na'vi, American Natives (though some Aboriginal influence along with shades of others) sure figured out planting. Hell, if not for them, no Thanksgiving. Maybe since the trees and plants are all woven into the goddess network, that means harvesting plants is worse than killing sentient creatures. Hmm...
3. The sex scene. Um. Awkward. I am able to buy sentient creatures. I'm able to understand a bond or attraction, but it still seemed like creepy bestiality when Jake and Neytiri get frisky. I mean, yes, I'm titillated by attractive people being romantic, but I don't feel that way when I watch two lions go at it, nor would I be if it were a good-looking person with an animal. Perhaps I'm specieist, but it was enough to pull me out of the movie and make me giggle awkwardly. Maybe I'm troglyditic and not enlightened, but it was unnecessary.
4. No fire. That means they ate all the animals raw. Um. Yikes. Jesus. According to Avatar: Mankind=bad. But at least we cook our food.
5. Couldn't the goddess have sent out the hammerhead creatures and flying creatures BEFORE the Na'vi got slaughtered. Thanks for the help, bitch.
6. Is the sequel going to be obvious? The company comes back with biochem weapons or nukes. Good luck going against that. I was in the Army. I can tell you that when it comes to weapons, yes, every once in a while, if greatly outnumbered, the superiorly equipped can be overrun (Zulu, Little Big Horn), but ordinarily, it's a slaughterhouse for the less advanced. Direct frontal assault of machine guns is impossible if all you have is guns (see War, World I) and incomprehensible with bows and arrows.
7. "Shock and Awe!" "Preemptive attack!" Um, this is where I get hoity-toity myself and say, "stick with entertainment, not 'MESSAGE!!!!' This is a 3D blockbuster movie, not a social commentary." War is bad. Got it. Move on. It was sorta jarring and a bit ridiculous. The company is Halliburton. Got it. Does that make the Na'vi the Iraqis or Afghanis? Um...No. They're not noble people who we're callously exploiting for their natural resources (the oil rights in Iraq got auctioned to European and Asian nations). Has James Cameron been to Afghanistan or Iraq? I somehow doubt it. I didn't see the mirrors of the Na'vi, noble, spiritual people in tune with nature and living in harmony. I won't say what I did see, but it sure as hell wasn't THAT. Was it a commentary on our exploitation of the New World? Um, who knows? There was a jumble of sympathies that the movie tried to cater to, all mostly "liberal." I don't say that as a slur or condescension, but unless you want to be argumentative, it's fairly understandable why I say that. "We love the trees and animals! Exploiting natural resources is bad!" We know who those people are, just as much as we know who the "It's my damn right to drive my Tractor Trailer SUV and I'll shoot you with my gun if you try and stop me" people are. What I've never really understood is why, if the "liberals" are city folk (who use up tons of resources) and the "conservatives" are rural (not nearly as much, but too much anyway), why their roles aren't reversed? I would think the hunters (typically "conservative" would want the woods as clean and uncorrupted as possible, would want the quotas enforced so that the animals aren't killed to unsustainable levels) would want to save the environment. I was told (so it must be true) that an analysis of the famous smog of Los Angeles, so thick that it obscured a MOUNTAIN a half mile away the last time I was there, is primarily particles of hamburger from all the fast food places. G.R.O.S.S.
8. The humans were the bad guys, right? That's a flawed perspective. The helicopter pilot and the scientists (and the main character, of course) are the only ones portrayed as being humane. Everyone else are thoughtless murderers. Right, sure you can say that about the main baddies, the corporate goon, played by Giovanni Ribisi, and the Colonel, but how much can you? What did unobtanium do? They never say. Is it like gold? Is it used for energy? Who knows. What if mining it was absolutely necessary for the salvation of humanity? The movie doesn't say, but I'm just asking. Should humanity die out because 200 blue aliens won't move? I know that's not what's necessarily presented, again, I'm just asking. What if it wasn't necessary for the salvation of humanity, but it made things a hell of a lot easier. Imagine you and every other American can't have electricity in your home or fuel for your car because 300 people won't bargain with you for the oil that they have under their land, which they don't use or need. What do you honestly expect we'd do? What do you honestly expect people would clamor for the US government to do? Get that damn oil, that's what. "All cultures are equal! Exploitation is bad!" works fine in theory, but I bet a damn lot of people who feel that way would find it's not so easy to keep that mindset when you don't have the Nikes made for pennies on the dollar in foreign countries so that the costs can stay down, when a gallon of gasoline costs $25. We currently are living in an exploitative society. That's one thing I loved, was when, in school, people got on their morale high horse about Slavery and the Confederacy. Everyone who lived in the South wasn't an evil bastard. Not everyone who owned slaves was. Was it a reprehensible system? Yes. Obviously. All I mean to say is that we live in one now. No one likes to think of that about themselves. We basically hold much of the rest of the world in economic slavery so we can have what we want, but Susie Soccermom doesn't feel that way when she drives the wildly unnecessary Suburban to ferry the kids around. Donnie Dummie doesn't feel that way when he drives his $30k pick up truck that's never touched its tires to mud. You want to understand the people of the Antebellum South or the Southerners during the war, even those who weren't slave owners? Imagine if the UN said, "USA, you have to cut your energy consumption by 3/4ths. We voted on it." We'd tell them, "Hell no! We want out of the UN!" "You can't leave the UN! It's a binding union!" "Hell no! You'll ruin our entire system!" "We don't care; you're hurting the rest of us! It's morally reprehensible!" What do you think we'd do? Think an ultimatum like that wouldn't rip this country apart? Just food for thought.
9. Even if the Humans are the bad guys, are all of them? Yes, they're mercenaries, but does that make them bad? The normal grunts don't know the first thing about the Na'vi. They're on an alien planet where everything, Navi and animals, are trying to kill them. They're not thinking about geopolitics. They're thinking "survive." They don't know anything about "negotiations" with the Na'vi or probably even that they're not animals. If American soldiers in the congo shot monkeys who were throwing rocks at them, would they be evil? Not if the Americans only thought the monkeys were animals attacking them. I guess you could fault them for putting themselves in that position in the first place, but that's a trifle glib. Seeing as how I'm trying to become a contractor in Afghanistan myself, I can tell you that yes, I'm mainly trying to do it because of the money, but, last time I checked, when you're massively in debt, you need money to pay off your debt. Heaven forbid I get a job over there and get attacked, but I sure won't feel like I'm a bad guy if I defend myself. Anyway, just thoughts of Vietnam popped in my head at the idea that the common soldiery of the movie were all bad guys. We've gotten much better about that as a nation. I was treated warmly and appreciatively during my time in service. Blame the head honchos is all I'm saying.
If you're a hoity-toity who watches mostly European films only seen by a handful of pretentious snobs, and despise anything that is just good, old-fashioned mass entertainment (which I argue is much rarer and more difficult to pull off than being boring and depressed in another language), you're going to hate it no matter what. I'll spare you the time you'd take condescending to watch the movie and say, yes, it's basically a $300 million "Dances With Wolves."'
However, there's more to it, really. Even though you've seen the plot before, I guarantee you haven't seen it this way. The 3D works. It's not a gimmick used to jolt you. It's fluid and seems reasonable, even vital to the presentation. Just from the previews you know what's going to happen, but, as the old saying goes, it's the journey, not the destination. Other than one glitch (the Na'vi sex scene), I could remain within the movie and buy the goings on.
Don't read further til you've watched the movie, or go ahead if you don't plan to.
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1. Yes, I liked the movie, but, Jesus, I get it already with the whole "we have to love the Earth" thing. "They've destroyed their mother!" I get it. Everything's connected! I get it. I kept waiting for a scene where they beat one of the dead eight-legged horses. One thing though, while the movie tries very hard to get the message across that the world and its inhabitants are all interrelated, the script sure tries to de-ball the notion of mysticism it presents by trying to science it up with some gobledygook about electro-chemical bonding that takes away the spirituality it's trying to foster. I mean, as it stood, without that, it made a lot more sense and was much deeper for, on the Na'vi world of Pandora, it to have its own goddess, but instead of sticking with that, the script debunks that by having the planet be a super-organism. A decent idea, but makes the Na'vi a lot less wise and a lot more foolishly superstitious.
2. The Na'vi love and respect all life. Boy, do we get told that a lot. They live in harmony with nature. Boy, do we get that a lot. Um, if they love life, why are they carnivores? I mean, other than having incisors, if they've understood and have proof that all life is woven together, wouldn't it make sense for them to rely less on hunting and gathering and more on agriculture? I know it's nit-picky, but that's why civilization evolved, when we we stopped chasing our food around the continents. Prey steer clear of predators, particularly 12-foot-tall ones with bows and arrows so that's why the earliest peoples were nomadic, they had to go where the food went. Yes, the Na'vi fly and ride long distances to hunt, but they're basically wiping out their own areas of the creatures they claim to love and respect so much. Surely, since they see the "seeds" of the Great Tree everywhere, they understand that plants can be grown from seeds and that they could produce far more food, and cause far less harm, by planting. The inspiration for the Na'vi, American Natives (though some Aboriginal influence along with shades of others) sure figured out planting. Hell, if not for them, no Thanksgiving. Maybe since the trees and plants are all woven into the goddess network, that means harvesting plants is worse than killing sentient creatures. Hmm...
3. The sex scene. Um. Awkward. I am able to buy sentient creatures. I'm able to understand a bond or attraction, but it still seemed like creepy bestiality when Jake and Neytiri get frisky. I mean, yes, I'm titillated by attractive people being romantic, but I don't feel that way when I watch two lions go at it, nor would I be if it were a good-looking person with an animal. Perhaps I'm specieist, but it was enough to pull me out of the movie and make me giggle awkwardly. Maybe I'm troglyditic and not enlightened, but it was unnecessary.
4. No fire. That means they ate all the animals raw. Um. Yikes. Jesus. According to Avatar: Mankind=bad. But at least we cook our food.
5. Couldn't the goddess have sent out the hammerhead creatures and flying creatures BEFORE the Na'vi got slaughtered. Thanks for the help, bitch.
6. Is the sequel going to be obvious? The company comes back with biochem weapons or nukes. Good luck going against that. I was in the Army. I can tell you that when it comes to weapons, yes, every once in a while, if greatly outnumbered, the superiorly equipped can be overrun (Zulu, Little Big Horn), but ordinarily, it's a slaughterhouse for the less advanced. Direct frontal assault of machine guns is impossible if all you have is guns (see War, World I) and incomprehensible with bows and arrows.
7. "Shock and Awe!" "Preemptive attack!" Um, this is where I get hoity-toity myself and say, "stick with entertainment, not 'MESSAGE!!!!' This is a 3D blockbuster movie, not a social commentary." War is bad. Got it. Move on. It was sorta jarring and a bit ridiculous. The company is Halliburton. Got it. Does that make the Na'vi the Iraqis or Afghanis? Um...No. They're not noble people who we're callously exploiting for their natural resources (the oil rights in Iraq got auctioned to European and Asian nations). Has James Cameron been to Afghanistan or Iraq? I somehow doubt it. I didn't see the mirrors of the Na'vi, noble, spiritual people in tune with nature and living in harmony. I won't say what I did see, but it sure as hell wasn't THAT. Was it a commentary on our exploitation of the New World? Um, who knows? There was a jumble of sympathies that the movie tried to cater to, all mostly "liberal." I don't say that as a slur or condescension, but unless you want to be argumentative, it's fairly understandable why I say that. "We love the trees and animals! Exploiting natural resources is bad!" We know who those people are, just as much as we know who the "It's my damn right to drive my Tractor Trailer SUV and I'll shoot you with my gun if you try and stop me" people are. What I've never really understood is why, if the "liberals" are city folk (who use up tons of resources) and the "conservatives" are rural (not nearly as much, but too much anyway), why their roles aren't reversed? I would think the hunters (typically "conservative" would want the woods as clean and uncorrupted as possible, would want the quotas enforced so that the animals aren't killed to unsustainable levels) would want to save the environment. I was told (so it must be true) that an analysis of the famous smog of Los Angeles, so thick that it obscured a MOUNTAIN a half mile away the last time I was there, is primarily particles of hamburger from all the fast food places. G.R.O.S.S.
8. The humans were the bad guys, right? That's a flawed perspective. The helicopter pilot and the scientists (and the main character, of course) are the only ones portrayed as being humane. Everyone else are thoughtless murderers. Right, sure you can say that about the main baddies, the corporate goon, played by Giovanni Ribisi, and the Colonel, but how much can you? What did unobtanium do? They never say. Is it like gold? Is it used for energy? Who knows. What if mining it was absolutely necessary for the salvation of humanity? The movie doesn't say, but I'm just asking. Should humanity die out because 200 blue aliens won't move? I know that's not what's necessarily presented, again, I'm just asking. What if it wasn't necessary for the salvation of humanity, but it made things a hell of a lot easier. Imagine you and every other American can't have electricity in your home or fuel for your car because 300 people won't bargain with you for the oil that they have under their land, which they don't use or need. What do you honestly expect we'd do? What do you honestly expect people would clamor for the US government to do? Get that damn oil, that's what. "All cultures are equal! Exploitation is bad!" works fine in theory, but I bet a damn lot of people who feel that way would find it's not so easy to keep that mindset when you don't have the Nikes made for pennies on the dollar in foreign countries so that the costs can stay down, when a gallon of gasoline costs $25. We currently are living in an exploitative society. That's one thing I loved, was when, in school, people got on their morale high horse about Slavery and the Confederacy. Everyone who lived in the South wasn't an evil bastard. Not everyone who owned slaves was. Was it a reprehensible system? Yes. Obviously. All I mean to say is that we live in one now. No one likes to think of that about themselves. We basically hold much of the rest of the world in economic slavery so we can have what we want, but Susie Soccermom doesn't feel that way when she drives the wildly unnecessary Suburban to ferry the kids around. Donnie Dummie doesn't feel that way when he drives his $30k pick up truck that's never touched its tires to mud. You want to understand the people of the Antebellum South or the Southerners during the war, even those who weren't slave owners? Imagine if the UN said, "USA, you have to cut your energy consumption by 3/4ths. We voted on it." We'd tell them, "Hell no! We want out of the UN!" "You can't leave the UN! It's a binding union!" "Hell no! You'll ruin our entire system!" "We don't care; you're hurting the rest of us! It's morally reprehensible!" What do you think we'd do? Think an ultimatum like that wouldn't rip this country apart? Just food for thought.
9. Even if the Humans are the bad guys, are all of them? Yes, they're mercenaries, but does that make them bad? The normal grunts don't know the first thing about the Na'vi. They're on an alien planet where everything, Navi and animals, are trying to kill them. They're not thinking about geopolitics. They're thinking "survive." They don't know anything about "negotiations" with the Na'vi or probably even that they're not animals. If American soldiers in the congo shot monkeys who were throwing rocks at them, would they be evil? Not if the Americans only thought the monkeys were animals attacking them. I guess you could fault them for putting themselves in that position in the first place, but that's a trifle glib. Seeing as how I'm trying to become a contractor in Afghanistan myself, I can tell you that yes, I'm mainly trying to do it because of the money, but, last time I checked, when you're massively in debt, you need money to pay off your debt. Heaven forbid I get a job over there and get attacked, but I sure won't feel like I'm a bad guy if I defend myself. Anyway, just thoughts of Vietnam popped in my head at the idea that the common soldiery of the movie were all bad guys. We've gotten much better about that as a nation. I was treated warmly and appreciatively during my time in service. Blame the head honchos is all I'm saying.
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