From the Peanut gallery - 12/17/2004

I've gotten a lot of questions and I figured I'd take time to answer some of the most common questions and respond to some comments that I get.


Q: What's the weather like?

A: Cold, cold, cold. Right now a cold weather front is going thru and temperatures are hovering between the 30's and 40's plus you have a bitter wind that is whipping around so it feel like it is in the teens at night.


Q: Where are you?

A: I'm in Iraq. Honestly I couldn't tell you. Even if I could I wouldn't want to. You would worry more than I think is necessary.

Q: How's the food?

A: Pretty good. We can eat pretty many 24 hours a day we have buffets and can eat pretty much anything. I tend to stay away from the fish but other than that the food is great. And if you know me you know I didn't eat much anyways. I don't cook and/or didn't have anyone to cook for me (I'll need to work on that).

Q: How are you sleeping?

A: Not well really, for two reasons. The nature of the job and the way we move has me keeping odd hours plus the jet lag is horrid so I'm still keeping time a half a world away. I may sleep a few hours here and there or I may not sleep at all. It takes some getting use to.

Q: Does Valve really suck?

A: Yes.

C: You know that people like you are really called mercenaries.

A: Technically, no. Realistically, probably. There is a book in my favorites called Corporate Warriors you should check it out. I consider myself a war profiteer.

Q: Are you sending out classified or sensitive information?

A: No. I'm giving you less detail than what you would find in a Time magazine I don't share everything I see or do. This is just a snapshot of what I see. The timestamps on my posts aren't necessarily when things happen I just put them there to give the impression of a chronological order. It's part of the writing style. Also when I use Marine's names it isn't there real names it's the names that I give them that represents how I think they are in 'real' life.

Q: This is some pretty personal stuff you are writing, is it ok if I send this to a buddy?

A: Sure, I want people to see it so they can get a view that I don't think that you can get from back home. Plus the way I see it if I am to die out here I want people to get a true accounting of me for all my pros and cons. It's really a history of me. Not everything I will write will be about Iraq sometime I may go off into some random thought or something that happened to me when I was younger. I've been very reflective in the past few months so this is really a way for me to capture my thoughts. This blog is more for me than it is for you. But, again send it to as many people as you want.

Q: How do you feel knowing that you are helping kill thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians?

A: The same way I feel when I step over homeless people so I can get in the club before the cut off for 2 for 1 drinks. I don't. Listen this is a war and people die. Sometimes the right people, sometimes the wrong people it's how it goes. We could go the old world route where they rounded up all the men and killed them and then took the women for themselves.

PS: Did you know that the baby Jesus kills two kittens every time you whine like a bitch?

Q: You talk about your Dad but how does you Mom feel?

A: Much the same way. My Mom is much more emotional than my Dad, Brother, and I. Not someone who is whiny or prone to crying but she is much more in touch with all of her emotions so she can handle emotionally difficult situations better than we can. She is like the glue of family.


Q: What's up with the women there?

A: What women? I showed up to sausage party central. Besides I'm a professional. I made the mistake years ago of having relations with someone I worked with. That turned out really bad from then on I swore never to do that again. As a result I don't even look at women that work with me. I mean there are some women here but 1. They are my customer and 2. They are kind of ugly (you could probably flip-flop those reasons).

Q: Do you cuss like that all the time?

A: No. In real life I rarely speak with cuss words. I think them allot and probably the nicer I am to you the more I 'm cussing at you in my mind but what you are witnessing is my reaction to highly unusual and surreal events. The things that have gone on in the past month are not typical in anyway of how my normal life operates.

Q: Do you hate White people?

A: No, why would I do that? They write the biggest checks. In all seriousness no, many things that happened to me when I was a child were transparent to me and I didn't really realize what those things meant until I was in my late teens (they probably weighed on my parents heavily). People are people, some are good and some are bad you can't label people with a broad brush. Besides the way I see it hating is the process of applying positive energy to a negative effort. You only have a finite supply of positive energy why not apply it to positive efforts. Besides once I started living around Blacks I was treated as poorly or worse (we will save that for another post).

Q: Will you marry me?

A: No. As seen here you have a strong penchant for making poor decisions just by virture of being late. If you really wanted to get married you would have let me know you wanted me BEFORE I took a screw job in Iraq.

Q: What does the name Tommie Hustle come from?

A: Simple it's really about the combination of the two parts of me. One the child and how my family knows me and the other part is how I am now and what I'm willing to do to stay paid.