Hi, my name is Rick.

After the following email, Michael Collins never wrote back.  I think I might have taken it too far.

From: Rick
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010 05:22:30 -0700
Subject: Re: Identification: You yell “Ooyester”
To: Michael Collins <jdcertifiedconsultant@gmail.com>

“Michael,

I thanks to you.  This is an excitement time for us!  How much money we will make together!  Yahoo!

Thank you for your information to me, thank you.  I am so excited to hear of the “accumulated interest” for the past years.  I don’t even remember that I made an investment but if the interest is due to me then how excellent!  I am lucky you found me on the internets!  There are so many internets and you found me on the one I use.  What luck!  Please use the address on the ID I provided to further process the informations with the law attorney.  Unfortunately my official goverment job is of so secret a level that I can’t have a phone.  I hope we can continue with the investements of opportunity by working on the email on this internets.  Please advice!

Please, if it is not too much to ask, can we begin using code names for our emailing?  I am starting to get nervous about spies.  I will begin using the name “Meredith the Lionheart”.  Please advice me what code name you will use.

If I send you more money, will you be able to invest it for the 30% you said I can get with the investment stock return money option?  Please!  I like to strike while the kettle is black.

Thank you again.

My favorite quote is: “This is the most fun, the most glory, the most of everything.  Now pass me the wine you toad fingered shallot.  I will drink it to you, and me.  And poetry too!”  – Shake Spear

Thank you,
Meredith the Lionheart”

The picture today is one that my civilian friends and family will think is quite cool, but one which my Army friends and co-workers will make fun of me to no end for posting.  So be it.  It’s of me near the Iraqi Department Of Border Enforcement border fort of Al Hwuza about 15 or so km from the Iranian border.  I went to the border fort to inspect some work which the contractor had “completed.”  You have not seen shoddy work until you’ve seen contracted Iraqi work.

Iraq, Leonardo Matilda Shukran, Rick

The internet on FOB Hunter stopped working all together.  So I left.  Now I’m on COB Adder with Eva and I’ll be here until I leave Iraq.  I’ll try to update more frequently, but I am still working so we’ll see.  Please enjoy Episode 3… bear in mind that this guy I was writing is dead serious.  What’s crazy is that there are people who are really as stupid as he thought I was.  Bummer.

From: Rick
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:11:16 +0300
Subject: Re: Get back to Me Leo
To: Michael Collins <jdcertifiedconsultant@gmail.com>

“My Dearest Freind Michael,

Thank you very much for the persistint email.  You have passed my test!  I wanted to make sure that you were interested in the business oportunity and since you have emailed me again I know that you are interested and want to make this an official business!  I am interested in stocks too.  Also investing.

Please, Michael, I needs you to understand me.  I am a very high influential, person.  I am not comfortable giving you too much information before I know more about you.  To make it evenly, I am including a high quality digital image computer techno scan of my identification.  I’m sure you have the MYA2FI system to verify the credentials which this ID contains.  With your level of investment expertness I would be very surprised if you did not!  Please let me know if the ID processing meets your initial requirements.  I thank you.  Thanks.

Now, about you.  Please answer these questions for me so I can documentary your data for my own investment portfolio information system.  First, the important business questions:

What Is Your Favorite Company?
Do You Invest?
How Much Money Can I Make Working With You?

Now, more personal questions so I can get to no you better as a person and freind:

How Old Are You?
Are You With Childrens?
Do You Like Art Or Music Better?
Have You Traveled To Asia?
How Are You?

Please, Michael, please, I am interested in the oportunities with you and your company and business.  I hope to hear back from you soon.

Thank you again very much my good freind.
Leonardo”

This is the ID I sent him which he bought hook, line and sinker.  What a dum dum.

On 2/18/10, Michael Collins <jdcertifiedconsultant@gmail.com> wrote:

“My Good Friend Leo,

Your detailed email was received with thanks and all the contents is well understood.

Firstly, I must commend you for your efforts and your advice too, because I think stocks is also very good investment so to say.

Secondly, I now understand why you are not comfortable in releasing your informations; knowing how influential you are.  “I’m assuring you that every information MUST be kept top secret/confidential” as far as this opportunity is concerned.

What Is Your Favorite Company? “British Government (Immigration Dept.)”
Do You Invest? “Not really”
How Much Money Can I Make Working With You? 30%
How Old Are You? “53 yrs” by “20/11/2010”
Are You With Childrens? “(2) a girl and a boy”
Do You Like Art Or Music Better? Music better
Have You Traveled To Asia? “No”
How Are You? Am Fine.

According to the attorney’s briefing, he said that the bank has confirmed that the “accumulated interest” for the past years, which means apart from US$15,381,000 Million + (interest) should be paid in your favour; But, due to the fact that we have not furnish them with the full information, he was unable to ascertain the actual amount. If you give me the authority to use the address in your id, maybe by tomorrow the attorney will conclude all the documentations.  Please, answer this question asap because tomorrow is Friday, so that he will conclude tomorrow.

With all due respect sir, which address should we use in the form; your id address or should you provide your residential address?  Also, I understand your status, but you need a telephone number which you can be contacted with, incase the bank want to call you or me.  Am working on the telephone which you can reach me with, so you must have to arrange yours also.

However, According to the attorney, everything is almost ready, he said that as soon as he submit the forms/documents (from the court), then we will know what is the next action.

Finally, he advice that you endeavour to make available the remaining information so that he will conclude his legal representation with us.  Leo my friend, I am looking forward is meeting with you as soon as possible.  Have a wonderful day!  Are you married too?

Thank you once again.
Michael.”

Here’s a picture of beautiful Iraq for you to enjoy.  After you look at this you’ll probably wonder why I want to leave at all.

Iraq, Leonardo Matilda Shukran

The Michael Collins saga continues.  In Episode 2, Michael tries to get more personal information about Leonardo.  He succeeds… in Episode 3.  Stay tuned.

From: Michael Collins
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:51:13 +0100
Subject: Confirm Receipt
To: Rick

“Dear Leonardo,

I appreciate your wonderful mail to me. I read your mail and all the contents is well noted.

With all due respect sir, i would love you to give me more information about your humble self, knowing fully well that any information pertaining to you MUST be kept secret. Let me know more about you, your business (“finding me and my business”). Are you married, all that i suppose to know? I would want you to tell/advice me in which direction you deem necessary we are going to make this investment.

Moreso, i will need the following informations, before i will commence in any documentation am going to do on your behalf.

1. Full Name (confirmed)
2. Residential address
3. Telephone for easy communication
4. Id. (Driver’s License or International passport).

Sequel to the above, i cannot apply to the authorities, parastatals and the bank without your full informations. please note that all these are very important information for the good start of this business; also it will boost more trust, knowing fully well what it takes to enturst on Mr. Leonardo Matilda Shukran and you entrust on Michael Collins. Also, Mr. Joseph Yohanna Hoponu also ENTRUST on both of us to actualize his dream.

Finally, i await your response so that we will commence. Attached herewith is the identification of my client for your perusal. Endeavour to confirm receipt.

Respectfully,
Michael.”

From: Michael Collins
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010
Subject: Confirm Receipt
To: Rick

“Dear Leo,

I am still expecting to hear from you regarding the information we to commence in the claims. Your urgent response will be highly appreciated in other to commence.

Regards,
Michael.”

To please those of you uninterested in the Michael Collins saga, I am posting a completely unrelated picture.  This is a panoramic shot of my side of the room here on lovely COS Hunter.  I auto-stitched it in Photoshop from 12 source images.  This is a compressed version of the image… the original is 51MB.

Iraq, Leonardo Matilda Shukran

A few funny things have happened here recently.

First, Eva was nominated by her co-workers to be the President of the COB Adder Curling Fan Club.  Her name went out in a publication which is sent to thousands of people as the point of contact for the club.  Needless to say, Eva did not realize that she was being volunteered for the position.  Fortunately there are about as many curling fans in Iraq as there are in the rest of the world so no one has asked her where the club meets.  Yet.

Second, my roommate received a phishing email from someone claiming to be from Haiti.  He said we were eligible to receive a portion of the $15 million payout which his “firm” had recently received.  Obviously we wrote him back.  I will be publishing the email correspondence here in the next few days.  He hasn’t written back recently.  I think it’s because I insisted that we start using code names.  It’s quite the read, let me tell you.

The photo today is of a little girl in pink.

Iraq

So I went out on a patrol the other day, which, as a staff officer, I admittedly don’t do very often at all.  I went out to inspect an Iraqi Department of Border Enforcement (DBE) border fort.  A contractor from Baghdad completed some repairs and improvements which you fine readers paid for.  They thank you.  On the way, as I bounced along in the backseat of the humvee, I saw some of the country.  For my newer readers, I’m located about 35km or so away from the Iran/Iraq border near the city of Amarrah and even nearer to the city of Majarr al Kabir.  We drove out toward the border to inspect the fort and passed through a few small villages along the way.  You can’t even fathom how a lot of these people out near the border live.  Dirt floors.  No electricity.  No water.  Feral dogs everywhere.  Houses made of woven reeds.  More children than you can count.  Skinny, sickly looking cows wandering in and out of the reed houses.  Dirt roads.  No plumbing.  Trash strewn all over the ground.  Children covered in dirt.  It’s incredible.  And unimaginable.  So when you think you’ve got it bad because you’re stuck in traffic or because you ran out of CoffeeMate, remember that you’re driving back to a house and that you can go to a supermarket.  This place is terrible.

I wrote this update with my headphones on.  As I finished typing the above paragraph, I realized that my roommates were talking next to me.  I took off my headphones to hear what they were talking about and I heard one of them say “The other day a sheikh asked me if he could have our trash… I said no.”  I can’t make this stuff up.

My next three or four posts will be pictures from my little adventure.  The theme today is women.

Iraq

…you can walk around outside in shorts and a t-shirt, as long as the shorts are Army PT shorts and the shirt is an Army PT shirt.

…there is a live nativity scene staffed by dining facility employees from Malaysia dressed as the Three Wise Men.

…you go to work on Christmas Day.

…you wake up at 7 to do laundry because you’re pretty sure the laundry room will be empty Christmas morning, but you’re wrong.

…you eat Christmas “dinner” at 1:30 in the afternoon and all the servers look strikingly similar to the Three Wise Men in the nativity scene.

…Christmas celebratory events include early morning wake-ups and long distance runs.

…you don’t mind Christmas day coming to an end because it means you’re one day closer to leaving.

…and last but by no means least…

…there’s a Santa, in full Santa garb, walking around the living area with an M4 carbine rifle.

The photo today is of some boats in the water in Ghent.  Oh… and don’t think I’m being too negative about Christmas.  I was lucky enough to be with Eva so there’s really not too much to complain about.  Merry Christmas!

Ghent, Belgium, Iraq

I am in Tallil with Eva before we go on leave.  I’m doing a whole lot of nothing here and it’s spectacular.  We had Thanksgiving dinner yesterday and it was very good.  And very interesting.  There were myriad decorations and gigantic food-ish sculptures.  The piece de resistance however, was the living, human diorama.  Picture this: one Laotian man dressed up and face-painted as a Native American.  A Phillipino woman next to him adorned in Pilgrim attire.  Bookending the Pilgrimesse is a Nigerian man festooned in Native American garb; his costume bested only by his Laotian brother’s but his of a similarly gaudy nature.  In the foreground, a model helicopter emblazoned with a giant medical red cross turns in infinite circles over a small model of a poorly rendered depiction of what I can only imagine was a 1962 Vietnam jungle scene.  There was a gigantic butter dolphin.  There was a massive chocolate icing sculpture of a turkey as well as an enormous cake decorated with a turkey.  The cake borne turkey was made of cheese, lunch meat, black and green olives, kiwi slices, croutons and more– it’s making me a tad sick to type it.  There were hundreds and hundreds of Thanksgiving decorations splashed across every vertical face imaginable.  It was great.

The picture today is of Eva at the Ziggurat near Tallil in Iraq; it was taken by one of her co-workers also on the field trip.  There are 32 known Ziggurats, 28 in Iraq and 4 in Iran.  Eva was at the Great Ziggurat of Ur, one of the more well known structures, and also the Wiki article linked above.  Perhaps it’s more well known because people with cameras and Internet connections actually go there.  Who knows.

Eva, Iraq

They say that Iraq is in the cradle of civilization. That’s because civilization here is still in its infancy.

I can’t wait for R&R.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, this place is really beautiful, but I think reliable electricity will be preferable.  We’ll see.

Not much going on here right now.  The day time temperatures are around 80 degrees and at night it gets down to 50 or 60 which seems really cold.  It has also started to rain which is a nice change of pace to tell you the truth.  Except when my office floods.

A few weeks ago, and NCO in the Plans Shop called me into his room to show me something.  He said he’d been putting his boot on for 3 days or so, and every day it felt like his left sock was bunched up under his foot.  Finally on the fourth day, when his sock once again felt bunched up, he decided to check his boot to see if instead of a bunched sock he in fact had some foreign object in his boot.  He upended his boot.  What fell out you ask?  A snake.  A dead, squished snake.  What’s worse is that the first day he felt his sock bunched up the thing was alive.  Yeesh.  Needless to say, since then I have been religiously checking my boots and shoes for snakes and, of course, scorpions.  Iraq is sweet.

No photo today because my connection is too slow.  Sorry.

Iraq

As I lay in bed reading Atlas Shrugged the other night, I put the book on my chest and allowed my mind to wander.  I thought of nothing in particular.  This and that.  The TV in our room was on and I glanced over.  At the time, the Saints were losing and defeat seemed imminent.  I never give Drew his due.  I peered through my bug net, the room’s darkness compounded by the net absorbing the light from my bed-mounted reading lamp.  My wandering gaze eventually reached the bunk-bed across the room.  On the top bunk rested my roommate Lincoln, on his back with his laptop on his chest as he watched an episode of The Office.  I looked at this and thought nothing in particular.  Then I realized that what I was really looking at was a 30 year old, married, college graduate with an infant daughter.  On a top bunk.  He was laying there nary 2 feet above a 27 year old, married, college graduate with a 1 year old son.  It was a very funny revelation.  Then I turned off my light and went to sleep.  On a bottom bunk.

We caught a camel spider in our office today.  I saw it scurry out from under the table at which I sit.  We put the disgusting little creature in a decapitated water bottle.  We went outside and found a giant beetle and dropped it into the water bottle in hopes of providing the camel spider with sustenance and us with entertainment.  It was very anticlimactic.  The beetle couldn’t get off its back and the camel spider couldn’t bite through the beetle’s exoskeleton, try as he might.  I lost interest in the bottom-of-the-food-chain-ballet and went outside in search of a specimen which the camel spider would find more appealing.  Or at least more defenseless.  I didn’t see a single bug.  This is significant, people.  I’m in Iraq–there are ALWAYS bugs.  Not this time.  We released the camel spider outside after I snapped the below photograph with one of my co-worker’s point and shoots.  He seemed relieved.  The camel spider that is.  When it was all over I realized that there was very little reaction to the fact that this giant, hideous creature was in our office.  I think reactions in a workplace in the US might have been slightly different.

My internet connection out here has been particularly terrible of late.  I apologize for the infrequency of my updates.  I don’t understand why it’s so difficult to get us flawless and speedy internet out here in the middle of the desert with no infrastructure.

Iraq, Point & Shoot

“If it stings you, your heart can stop in 20 minutes.”

That’s how our resident doctor here on lovely FOB Hunter described a scorpion which one of our Air Force comrades found under his bed.  You see, creepy crawlies are so prevalent here that there are posters, well, posted around which have pictures of the more common, and, while not necessarily common, more dangerous critters as well.  The deadly vermin which our Zoomie brother discovered lurking below his mattress matched a scorpion on the top and most dangerous/deadly row.  Also, its name is, and I’m not making this up, the Death Stalker.  Awesome.  What I needed was a scorpion in the bedroom refresher course.

I’m reading ‘The Road’ by Cormac McCarthy right now.  It’s actually my roomate Lincoln’s and he hasn’t read it yet.  He’s on leave right now however, so as far as I’m concerned that means I can do whatever I want with anything he left behind.  He didn’t lock anything up.  In the Army I wouldn’t be guilty of using his stuff.  He’d be guilty of failing to secure his belongings.

The shot today is of, from L to R, my sister Erin, my wife Eva, my mom Julie, my sister Laura, and my grandmother Mimi.  The photo was taken in my parent’s condo in Chicago.  You know, Chicago, the place where all minority honor roll students are beaten to death.

Chicago, IL, Eva, Iraq

Some of my more attentive readers may have noticed that I said I’d post pictures of the recent extreme bikers and that to date, as of yet, I have not.  I’m a man of my word.  That being said, let me tell you how lame it feels to refer to them as “extreme bikers.”  But I don’t really know what else to call them.  What’s the opposite of precocious?  Kidding, kidding…  In reality they were really talented, really nice, and it was very generous of them to visit us out in the middle of nowhere.  They had intended just to come for a meet and greet.  Then they asked if there was any wood they could build ramps with.  Fortunately they had their ramp designer with them who happened to be the same guy that designs the ramps for the X-Games and Gravity Games.  We pooled together some wood, the designer hashed out some quick measurements and designs, they started building, and two hours later they put on a two hour show.  We really appreciated it.  One of my co-workers, 1LT Torres, is our Squadron Public Affairs Officer and he wrote an article about it.  He used my pictures which can also be seen on that page so I’m only posting one; you can check out the rest in his article.  His article has an interesting story about an unintentional reunion.  Give it a look.

Iraq

“The land of gumdrops and lollypops.”  That’s what my roommate Mitch calls Tallil Air Base, which is where I am right now.  Let me tell you something: he’s right.  This place is ridiculous.  Granted, it’s all a matter of perspective but honestly.  I’m about to outline all of the things that make this place better than the FOB I live on.  I live on FOB Hunter.  After everything I mention, I will include either (OH) for On Hunter, or (FUCNO) for Findings Unclear: Currently Not an Option.  Here we go.

Right now, I’m sitting in a CHU, or a Container Housing Unit (FUCNO), which has running water (FUCNO), a shower (OH), and a toilet (FUCNO).  I’m writing this whilst connected to relatively fast internet (FUCNO) and I’m sipping a Cafe Americano which I purchased at the local Green Bean Coffee Shop (FUCNO).  Yesterday I went to the gym (OH) which had loads and loads of dumbbells (FUCNO) and two sets of virtually every weight imaginable (FUCNO).  All the equipment at the gym was American made (FUCNO) and therefore solidly constructed and safe (FUCNO).  After the gym I went to the, for all intents and purposes, full size PX (FUCNO) to get some necessities.  After the PX it was off to the KBR DFAC (FUCNO).  For most readers, here’s a translation: a ‘KBR DFAC’ is a dining facility run by the American contracting company Kellogg, Brown & Root.  KBR DFACs serve cornucopias of delicious food (FUCNO) and have such delicacies as hot and cold sandwich bars (FUCNO), salad bars (FUCNO), ice cream bars (FUCNO), endless amounts of soda (FUCNO), fresh cut fruit (FUCNO), and various other delights.  These are just some of the benefits of Tallil.  There is plenty here I will not miss when I go back to Hunter however.  Such as being a stone’s throw away from Brigade, being around more field grade officers than the world needs, and having to take the bus everywhere because this place is so inconceivably enormous.  What’s even more mind blowing is that this place is tough living compared to some other FOBs in Iraq.  It’s all a matter of perspective.

The photo today is of the famed Opera House in Sydney.  I took this with a point & shoot 20 or so minutes after Eva and I got engaged right outside the Opera House.  From now on, whenever we see the Opera House we’ll be able to say “That’s where we got engaged.”  I think that’s pretty cool.  We got engaged there over two years ago.  I think that’s pretty crazy.

UPDATE: If the photos on my website look stretched out to you, it’s probably because you upgraded your browser to Internet Explorer 8.  There is a coding issue with IE8 and it interprets WordPress CSS theme code incorrectly.  To fix the issue, up near your browser’s address bar, there is a button next to the “Refresh” and “Stop” buttons which looks like a piece of paper torn in half.  This is the “Compatibility View” button and it basically makes the browser read the WordPress code like it did before.

Iraq, Sydney, Australia

I have a bug net around my bed.

[The following events took less than 2 minutes to actually occur.]  I walked into my room, or, should I say our room, not too long ago.  Same as any other day.  Walk past the TV, past the couch, past the “kitchen table” full of dirty dishes and unused flatware, past the locker of food, and into the back portion of the room.  This is where my bed is.  Across the room, nary eight feet away sits Mitch’s bed–Mitch was the one stung by the scorpion.  Diagonal from my bed, and in what would be considered the common area of the room, sits Lincoln’s bed across the room from the couch.  I walked past all these things like I always do en route to my little living area, my little place in the world, my little spot with my stuff.  I walked toward my computer, the very computer on which I’m typing now.  My screensaver wasn’t on, which meant someone had been on my computer recently.  This in and of itself isn’t too strange.  In a room of three guys, with well documented finicky internet, one person’s internet can go down while someone else’s works.  That could have been the case.  But it wasn’t.  Being that my screensaver wasn’t on, I could see what could have been misconstrued as my wallpaper.  They say possession is 9/10 of the law.  My screensaver, you see, had been a black and white shot I took of my beautiful wife.  You see, she’s a soft and delicate woman, feminine in every way, from her free-flowing strands of hair to her high cheekbones and soft skin.  This was not the photo at which I looked.  I didn’t know exactly what I was looking at.  The wallpaper was different but familiar.  On second thought it seemed the wallpaper wasn’t what was familiar, but rather the scene in the photo which now graced my computer’s background was what was familiar.  The background looked like my little place in the world, my little spot with my stuff.  And my bed.  I knew upon further examination that the bed was mine because my bed is very easy to distinguish from other beds.  I have a bug net around my bed.  A green bug net which usually keeps disgusting little critters out of my sleeping sanctuary.  A reading lamp which is attached to my bed was on, shining unnecesary light on the situation.  The lamp illuminated a man.  A man laying in my bed.  A man laying in my bed posed and giving the camera a “come hither” look.  Oh, and he was naked.  The picture showed a naked man laying in my bed seducing the camera with his eyes.  The man was Lincoln.  The photographer, one can logically deduce, was Mitch.  I changed the background as fast as humanly possible.  In hindsight I should have screen-captured it as it was the only evidence that existed–the original photo had been promptly deleted.  Hopefully Lincoln matured in the month between posing for that photo and now; he’s on his way home to be with his wife for the birth of their daughter.  Needless to say the little prank was worth more than a few laughs.  I thought growing up meant we would all get more mature.  I guess it really just means you get older.

The photo today is of my aforementioned beautful wife in Korea.

Eva, Iraq

Last week I went to dinner at a local prominent Iraqi’s home.  It was, to say the least, quite an experience.  He invited us over to celebrate Iftar, or the daily meal with which Muslims break their daily Ramadan fasts.  During Ramadan, practicing Muslims do not eat, drink or smoke for the entire day.  Each night at sunset, they have a feast.  The quality and quantity of the food at the feast is entirely dependant upon the the individual hosting the Iftar.  The individual whose home we visited was, as they say, quite well to do.  The living room equivalent which we met and socialized in before dinner doubled as the dining room.  Couches and chairs lined the walls while the center of the room was left open for a table cloth and the dinner spread.  The food was laid out on a 30 or so foot long plastic table cloth which was set on the floor.  Family of the local leader brought the food out on large platters and evenly distributed it across the table cloth.  We had lamb and fish on beds of rice with raisins, vegetable dolma, fresh dates, unleavened bread, iced tea, watermelon, lentil soup, fresh fruit, sour yogurt and some other sides and desserts I can’t name.  It was very good to tell you the truth.  (When we pulled up in our humvees there was a concrete block covered in blood–earlier that day, in what essentially amounted to the front yard, the hosts had slaughtered the lamb for the dinner.)  The only utensils used are spoons, and they are used sporadically at most.  Most eating is done with the hands, and then, only the right hand as the left hand is filthy in the Islamic culture.  (At one point I accidentally reached for some fruit with my left hand and the Iraqi next to me groaned out loud as if to say “No, no, no, no….”  I switched hands before I grabbed anything.  He looked at me, gave me a thumbs up and exuberantly said ”OK!”)  After dinner the same people that brought the table cloth and food out removed it and everyone sat back down on the couches and chairs along the walls for chaiwhich is always served in tiny little cups.  Chai is basically super strong tea with profound amounts of sugar, and it’s a huge part of Iraqi culture–there’s always chai.  During the chai service most of the sheiks and guests smoked and sat around talking.  The specific job of the man whose home we were in is settling tribal disputes.  Some of the guests belonged to local tribes and took the opportunity to bring their troubles to the attention of the host for settling.  There was a lot of yelling.  I’m not sure if anything was resolved, though it would seem from the body language and unrest that whatever was concluded didn’t please the sheiks who sought resolution.  Needless to say, I didn’t get involved.  After the chai and subsequent small talk, it was time to leave.  We all stood up, shook hands, and took a group photo.  I, of course, am not in the photo, because I took it.  Some things never change.  Finally we left and drove back to our FOB.  It was a very cool experience.

There were 30 or so Iraqis at the dinner.  There were no women.

“Rick, all the faces in the photos are blurry.”  Let’s just say that there are people not far from me that would not be too happy if they knew local leaders were having dinner with Americans.  The JAM and insurgent groups are nothing if not adept at exploiting digital media and the Internet–I don’t need to help them.

The first photo is of the layout of the meal before we started eating; the second is of some of the sheiks sitting across from me.

Iraq

Seeing clouds was, as hard as it may be for you all to believe, actually quite a novelty.  Yesterday was the first day I’d seen a single cloud since I landed in Kuwait on April 23rd.

Something else I would be remiss were I not to mention, is how nice the night sky is here.  I’ve never seen so many stars.  You can see the milky way every night.  It’s really cool.  Then you look back down and realize you’re surrounded by a 360 degree horizon of 12 foot high cement barriers, you’re wearing a uniform and you’re working on Sunday night, and the clear sky novelty dissipates like the inexplicable 1980′s appeal of Corey Feldman.

The shot today is of the silhouette of our 2-13 CAV Squadron guidon as it rests silently during a lull in what is a generally relentless hot wind.  I spoke with an Iraqi that works on the FOB here and he said he thinks it will start cooling down in about 7 days.  We’ll see.  I don’t see how it could get much hotter.  It has somehow also gotten mysteriously humid so I’ve been sweating like Eliot Spitzer at dinner with his in-laws.

I apologize for the sporadic nature of my recent posts.  Things here have been busy and, to put it bluntly, the internet connection has sucked.  The guy I spoke to about the weather happens to run the internet service here, and had, until yesterday, employed the gentleman named Sallah whom I wrote about not long ago.  Turns out Sallah no longer works here.  We asked the aforementioned weather man where Sallah went.  He told us “Sallah went on vacation.  A long vacation.”  I don’t think we’ll see Sallah anymore.

Iraq

Scroll down a bit and look at the photo of the sign posted below so the rest of this makes sense…  So, what did I find strange about the sign?  Take a look at the face in the top right corner of the sign.  That, my friends, is Muqtada al Sadr.  If you scroll down to the 2006 section of that link (or click here) you’ll read about the al Sadr Mahdi army’s capture of Amarah.  Al Amarah is the nearest large city to where I am right now.  That probably explains the sign.  Either way, I’m not a big fan of seeing signs lauding, in any way, Mr. Muqtada.  He’s mean.  And his beard looks gross.

The photo today is an abstract shot from inside the loop in downtown Chicago.  Click the photo itself to check out my Flickr Photostream if you haven’t checked it out in a while.  It’s pretty sweet.  Trust me.

Abstract, Chicago, IL, Iraq

I have not fallen off, oh my little droogies.  Far from it.  My internet has been finnicky the last few days.  The internet provider out here is a sketchy Iraqi guy named Sallah who I’m pretty sure would sell me to the Jaysh al Mahdi for a high-five and a happy meal.

Speaking of the Jaysh al Mahdi!  This is a picture of a sign I took on my drive from my last FOB to my current FOB.  Do you notice something peculiar about the sign?  I’ll point out what I found strange in my next post.

Iraq

The saga continues.
“Where the hell is my scorpion?”  We’d left him, again, on the shelves near my roommates bed.  He was dead, and, as such, unlikely to escape.  Or so we thought.  We started combing the room for the resurrected scorpion.

“What the hell is that?”  Said my roommate–the one who’d been stung.  “What?”  I asked, making my way over to the shelves on his side of the room at which he was looking quizzically.  “This,” he said, pointing to some little black dots on the top of his shelves, “these little black things right here.”  We looked at them and thought for a bit.

We have mouse traps set up all over our room.  One day a few weeks ago while my roommate and I were studying up on our Army doctrine and counter-insurgency techniques, (read: playing Gears of War 2), a mouse zipped across the floor, apparently realized he was out in the open and in the light, spun like a furry top and raced back into the hidden darkness under a bed.  It took this little event recurring exactly once for us to realize the bugger would likely complete the trifecta, and we set up the aforementioned traps.  Since then we’ve caught the little bugger.  Don’t worry PETA, he went quick.  I doubt he felt much and, in all likelihood, even enjoyed a final smidgen of peanut butter before the spring powered metal rod catapulted down on his rodent spine, snapping his mousy neck and leaving him lifelessly pinned to a dull and miniature mouse guillotine.  A few days later the scorpion struck with a fury.  Was it reciprocity?  Perhaps vengeance?  We can only speculate.

“What the hell is that?”  We were staring at the tiny black sprinkles.  Finally, “I know what that is dude,” said my roommate.  “It’s mouse $#!T.”  Sure enough.  Rodent excrement.  And it was on the shelf leading to what had been the final resting place of the regaled scorpion of terror and no mercy.  But said dead scorpion was now gone.  We believe the mouse that defecated on my roommates shelves absconded with the corpse as a snack.  Perhaps in the land of mice, dead scorpion is a delicacy.  Perhaps the mouse gave the scorpion mouth-to-mouth and miraculously resuscitated him.  This is all speculation.  What we do know is that the scorpion is gone.  Again.

A little slice of heaven.
On Wednesday last week I flew to Tallil Air Base where Eva lives.  I was there from Wednesday afternoon through Friday.  I got there on a Blackhawk and the total travel time was four and a half hours.  In 130 degrees.  In all my gear.  And gloves.  It was worth it though.  The picture today is of Eva and me on Thursday night, the night before I flew back to FOB Hunter.  If you don’t know where FOB Hunter is, it’s about 20 km or so south of Al Amarah.  The next time I’m supposed to see her is in Novemeber for R&R, but who knows… maybe I’ll luck out again.  Rest assured that if I do, you’ll read about it here.

Eva, Iraq, Rick

Let me explain.  I must first and foremost assure you that I did not make this up.  I couldn’t make this up; it’s far too horrific.

Last night, whilst I lay peacefully in my bed, slowly falling asleep after a day wrought with cabin fever inducing trivialities and boredom, my roommate suddenly sprung to life.  I in my restful state, however, did not see him leap out of bed and dash to the front of the room.  It had been dark when I set down my book (“In Cold Blood” by Capote), turned off my reading lamp and closed my eyes.  Suddenly the overhead light was on again; my roommate was clasping his hand in pain.  “Dude, dude, I got bitten,” he said.  I was groggy, exhausted, half asleep.  I didn’t understand what was going on.  “What?” I asked him, utterly confused.  “What happened?”  He came around the curtain which separates our sleeping areas and looked at me, his hands clasped and his eyes wild, “It bit me man.”  I blinked against the light, bewildered by the situation, my confusion compounded by his answer.  I asked him what bit him.  “I don’t know,” he answered, “I was lying in bed watching a movie and I saw something kind of like moving on my poncho liner; I had it pulled up to my chin.  I kind of reached down without looking and felt something that felt like twigs.  It was about as big as my hand, I mean, I could fit it in my hand and hold it.  And then it bit me so I threw off my poncho liner and got up.”  He started jerkily removing small items from his bed: his towel hanging on a bed post, his pillow, his poncho liner.  As he removed the items, he threw them on the floor, jostling them with his foot as he did so, searching for the culprit.  I sat up, now wide awake and somewhat alarmed.  “Wait; what bit you?”  “I don’t know man,” he replied as he continued reservedly sifting through his stuff, “I think it was a camel spider.”  This little tidbit of speculation made me feel sick.  I hate camel spiders.  Some of you may remember a posting not too long ago wherein I recounted my experience of having a camel spider hurriedly scaling my shorts en route to my neck so he could chomp my jugular.  I’ve since seen them in the gym and outside at night, lurking in the dark.  To put it mildly: I don’t like camel spiders.  That being said, the idea of a camel spider biting my roommate and escaping into the recesses of our camel-spider-hiding-spot packed room made me, shall we say, a little edgy.  I got out of bed, (it was 2AM mind you), and started helping him search for the hell spawn; I wasn’t going to be able to sleep until the blood-thirsty little cuss was found anyway.  It wasn’t on his pillow.  It wasn’t on his towel.  He picked up his poncho liner, draped it over a chair, and started peeling back the folds.  Eventually he pulled up a fold exposing the beast.  But it wasn’t a camel spider.  It was a scorpion.  3 or 4 inches in length, off-white in color with its stinger tail curled up in waiting.  We scooped up the scorpion in a water bottle with the top cut off, and my roommate went to see the medics with the scorpion in tow should the sting prove to be poisonous.

The sting wasn’t poisonous and he’s fine.  But it doesn’t end there.

He came back from the medics an hour or so later; I was still awake, thinking about scorpions and how many scorpions were inevitably in my bed at that very moment.  He came in the room still holding the water-bottle prison we’d fashioned for his assailant.  He set it down on a shelf.  He vowed to keep it as a pet.  The next morning, (that is today, and was in fact 2 or so hours ago as I write this), my other roommate decided to take the scorpion outside to take a picture of it for a PowerPoint slide in a meeting we have tonight.  He got the shot, brought the bottle back into our room, and set it on a different table.  A table that happened to be in the direct blow-path of a fan.  A table that touched the foot of my bed.  He left the room and went back to the office.  While he was gone, the fan blew over the water bottle prison.  The scorpion escaped.  I was the first one back in the room after the escape; I walked in and saw the bottle knocked over, devoid of a scorpion.  I solicited help from my roommate who’d been stung.  We grabbed a black light which one of our neighbors had, turned off the overhead, and searched every nook and cranny of our room.  Eventually we found the little demon half dead under a book case.  We decided to make him all dead.  He’d made his way back to my roommate’s side; I think he was on his way back to have another go.

The photo today is, predictably, of the little bugger that did the stinging.  My roommate is holding it in the hand which was stung.  Walk a mile my friends: imagine finding this guy, very much alive, in your bed.  Then imagine it stinging you.  Then imagine catching it and feeling relieved, only to have it escape and lurk, once again, somewhere in your bedroom.  Horrific.

Iraq

The photo today is of me, in the back of an M1151 HMMWV.  “HMMWV” is an acronym for the nomenclature of the vehicle you all know as the “humvee.”  The acronym stands for ”High Mobility Multi-Purpose Wheel Vehicle.”  I think.  I’m not really sure… the Army has too many acronyms.  For instance, if I turned to someone in the Army and said “Hey, NLT COB we need the RFI from the SCO on the LMTV answered by either the CW3 at PLL or the XO,” they’d know exactly what I was talking about.  The word “humvee” is actually derived from the phonetic pronunciation of the military acronym.  Intriguing, no?  I took this shot as we drove two and half hours from the location of my old job, to the location of my new job.  The helmet I’m wearing is an ACH, or, Advanced Combat Helmet.  This helmet replaced the old Kevlar helmet worn in the 80′s and 90′s.  The sunglasses, which need no justification or explanation because of their unequivocal sweetness, are in fact bullet-proof and required.  The little black plate on the front of the helmet is where we mount PVS-14′s, which are our night vision goggles.  The boom-mic in front of my mouth is attached to the headphones over my ears; this set-up serves as hearing protection, and facilitates vehicle internal communications as well as external communications with your unit and the vehicles in your convoy.  An unintended benefit of this magnificent device is that in a 140 degree humvee, the ear-cups fill up with sweat, which is as cool as Hepatitis or roller blading.  I’m also wearing a bullet-proof vest, gloves, a long sleeve flame-retardant shirt, similarly flame retardant pants, and boots.  In this picture, I am quite hot and quite covered in sweat.  I didn’t, however, as is clearly evident in the picture, let these mild discomforts detract from my overtly masculine and rough-and-tumble appearance.  I’ve got terrorists to scare.  Or PowerPoints to generate.  Whichever.

Oh, and the novelty of the moostaash has worn off; I shaved it off yesterday.

Iraq