The Monkey Ranch

Good Day!  Finally the internet god let me access this blog site again - it seems to allow me access 2 or 3 times a week - the remaining bandwidth for the week must be designated to others for communication with the big world out there.  I may have to move up to human sacrifices.  Busy week so far - busy - and I also had the good fortune to eat from an actual plate for the first time in months!  It's the little things, right?

So, this has been a week of planning - lots and lots of it, and with too much planning comes headaches, disorganization, too much talking, male posturing and adult-baby behavior in some instances.  The best part though, by far, have been some of the discussions regarding who we are ultimately planning for in the long run.  We are,  basically, in a Third World country trying to build and train a military and police force - however, we are attempting to do so with Western standards and expectations - I kid you not, this is like handing the keys to your brand new house to a gang of monkeys.  Much of what we plan will eventually be staffed and supported by the Afghan military and police forces so we try to take into consideration what we need versus what they can maintain.

Before I write the next couple of very derogatory and ethnocentric sentences, I do understand that lack of education and gaping cultural differences play a huge role in these situations - but they're still damn funny even considering that!!!  I think you could leave unsupervised, 15 year old boys alone for the weekend with better results.  The most common things - like using a toilet correctly, per the design - are impossible nuggets of information to impart to many of these guys.  They are literally taking large poos in the shower stalls, and breaking off the toilets at the base by standing on the seats to use them - apparently, they use something more "turkish" if at all (largely the great outdoors).  This standing results in a "painting" of the toilets or breaking them altogether.  How do you toilet train a nation???  Secondly, perfectly operating generators and electrical systems are something they can't resist - it's like a giant shiny penny and the minute we leave them alone with them, they are taking them apart and creating third-world wiring scenarios that shock, kill and maim them.  Finally, you can't build kitchens for them or construct anything of wood - they all eventually burn down.  Tents make them crazy and we actually have force retention issues if they have to live in them too long - I ask you, why then aren't we just building the mud hut villages they are accustomed to???  We are spending billions on infrastructure they can't even maintain or are willing to learn to use.  So, by and large, we are planning, designing and building these mini-bases that will eventually be left to the Afghans - complete with kitchens, electrical systems and latrines that they will burn down, electrocute themselves with and poop all over.  It's truly like a giant monkey ranch!!  I have never seen a group of people harder on equipment in my life - it's like an army of "Man-childs"!  And the conversations are always something like ... "nope, nope - you remember what happened last time ... they shot the toilet instead of flushing it ... "  or,  "they just crap right next to the port-a-john".   It's truly amazing and interesting - I still don't know yet what the best compromise will be, but I have a feeling we'll have ghost bases of modern, tattered facilities full of goats, kids and the Afghan Army.  There has to be a better way because the Afghans are a pretty ingenious people from what I can see - it's truly an example of the huge cultural divide.

Weeeellll,  hope you found this interesting!  I don't have the energy to pontificate on anything else tonight - I have to get up early and head out to a FOB tomorrow unless the dirt fog causes the flights to be cancelled again - seriously, it's creepy - brown fog with a layer of dirt floating in it.  Toby Keith will be here tomorrow night apparently and I will be sleeping either under the stars or in a shipping container converted to a sleeping berth!

Drink of the night - a hot, decaf tea with an actual lemon wedge I have been carrying in my pocket the entire day -

I Have Defeated Menno Paws!

Yea, I killed my mouse.  Kind of a let down and he died in a back alley channel of my room, with a face full of jam - similar to Elvis signing off on the toilet - when the mighty fall, it's not always pretty...  While I'm happy to be momentarily rodent free, I was hoping for more of a Moby Dickish epic hunt - manic in my sole purpose of finding - and then killing - Menno Paws!  In the end, I ran back to my room to grab something and saw his little carcass laying under the trap - a paper towel, a quick case of the willies, a carefree toss of the his lifeless, rodent casing in the bin (with my pinkie poised upward) and the saga was o-vah!  He was a formidable opponent, but like Rome, was conquered and partly due to his own gluttony.

I am in the waning hours of my coveted and celebrated day off.  I do nothing on these days, but clean my room, read, watch movies and play on the computer.  It's too hot out to enjoy anything and I'm usually totally over other people by Sunday - these are fantastic days!!  Last night was some colored level of alert which meant you couldn't go outside without wearing your body armor and helmet - boring - and hot!  There was going to be a poker game on the picnic table but the forces in charge of ruining even the smallest amount of fun were in full swing.  I stayed in my room (which is getting very warm these days) and made creative, edible things with hot sauce and ramen noodles. It was also the night for the malaria pill which means nice dreams and deeps sleeps!  If I had the confidence (and privacy), I would take a how-to-sleep page out of my nephew Brody's book - it involves partial nudity and a leg-cross but looks incredibly comfortable - ah, the freedom of being two ...

Today has been the periodic detonation of controlled explosions - they will announce them "within five minutes", but then 20 minutes later the GD things go off ... I have changed my shirt twice and shorts once from coffee and soup splashing all over them every time I am startled by the late-in-coming detonation.  It's amazing that something so loud and forceful can become a common, every day thing.  It's also amazing that nobody making these announcements has a true concept of what  5 minutes actually are ...  you would think that somebody, somewhere would be shooting for some accuracy being that we are in a war zone and explosions do make one ... edgy.  Between those explosions and the random boom of the sound barrier being broken or the anticipation of waiting to hear the giant cargo planes crash as they struggle to get off the ground - it's been pretty noisy around here today.  I basically live next to the runway and under the subsequent flight path so it's pretty festive at times.

I have been watching back to back "bad girl" films - I guess you would call them morality films, but they are hysterical, politically incorrect and I think cast with Hollywood hopefuls who never really made it past the casting couches.  These were part of a DVD collection sent to me by very dear friends - friends who know how much I enjoy these types of things!  Some of the titles include ... "Delinquent Daughters",  "Escort Girl",  "Ten Nights in a Barroom" and "She Shoulda' Said No"... I can't express how much I love these old 30s films - complete with the crazy eyes and tough-talking bad girls.  There are also a few on the perils of Marihuana (their spelling) and cocaine.  The best one was about syphilis ... I am dedicating the last CD of my cult classics to all of you bad girls out there - I think we all know one another - and I will include you too, Craig ...  So goes another lazy Sunday!   The final film of the day will be "Terror in a Tiny Town" which is a western filmed entirely with little actors.  Thank you Collins sisters - I almost feel like a normal human today. "Drinking and smoking feels swell! Just don't let mother find out!"  Love this dialogue ...

Drink of the day - Jailhouse rot gut, brewed in a dirty toilet and filtered through pantie hose and an old sock ... naw, that was what a bad girl would drink - in prison - which is where you end up if you don't listen to your mother.  Today I will stick with a cold, fake Becks with a chaser of Crystal Light - which I've taken to calling Crystal Carrington Light in my attempt to honor the pinnacle of the entertainment era found in the television dramas of the 1980s - BLLAAAAKKEE!