RIP Ricky Johnson

At 5:00 Friday morning EST my cousin lost his battle with cancer and passed on.

You never know what to say in these situations and I think I'll just leave the world with this.

Ricky is at peace no more pain and no more suffering, plus his family especially his Mom can get back to living instead of living for him. I could see in her eyes that she had a real tough road she's been walking and only she knows that inner pain. I just hope my Uncle and Aunt and his siblings can have time to themselves to reflect on his life and come to grips with his death in their own way.

I'll see you on the other side

Love,


Tommie.

From the Peanut gallery - 01/07/2005

Well this is a special Peanut Gallery for two reasons. First off this is my first full month here in Iraq so that’s a good milestone the second reason is that this blog passed over 1000 views. That is extremely impressive to me that means that there are at least 4 other people that refresh this site on a regular basis. I have been incredibly surprised by the response this site has generated. I’ve met people from all sides of the political spectrum & people from all over the world. When I first started this it was really just a way for my family and a few friends to keep up with me while I’m out here. I guess it still it’s just now I have a few more friends.

I’d like to take this time to thank a few groups of people that have really been integral to me. First of I have to thank the posters at Game Assault and Gaming-Age. They were some of the first people I told and they have been really cool. Besides that they are consistently funny people (if you have a dark sense of humor) so thanks for helping me keep my sanity.

The next group I have to thank are the bloggers that have fallen into my corner of the Internet. I think it’s cool to go to other people’s sites and see my links on their sites that means people like me, they really like me.

The last group that I have to thank is my friends and family. I really appreciate the emails and I look forward to them everyday it’s the only thing that really makes these days in dullsville go by. Thank you all for checking on me it’s really cool, on to the gallery...

Q:
I have to applaud you on your editorial skills. Your writings are vivid...

A:
Thanks on that. Hell, I never even read those things to be honest with you. I just write these snippets on the fly and post them up. Maybe one day I'll go back and read them all to see if I even make sense.

Q:
When are you due for a break from the day-to-day ordeal in Iraq? I know you may think of it as something you do and yet don't like to think about for obvious reasons.

A:
I’m slated to leave out of here on May 30 but I probably won’t leave until that next week sometime in early June. I’m supposed to hook up with a friend of my who is working in Poland right now and we are going to hang in Berlin for a few days. That is all pie in the sky talk right now once it gets closer to that time we will see what’s up. After that I’m headed back to the states and I’ll be off for a few more weeks and I really don’t know what else will come after that.

It doesn’t cross my mind much not because I want to jinx myself or anything like that. The one lesson the tidal wave taught us if anything is that you can’t escape. It comes for you whenever and however, it’s much more mundane than that. Could you tell me what you will be doing 5 months from now?

Q:
You seem very superficial when it comes to women. I don't think you would like for someone to talk about you like you do the women in your posts.

A:
Depends on whom you are talking about. The Hamburgler? No, I wouldn't but, I would want someone to tell me to get some Noxzema or some stridex pads.

Superficial? No. High standards? Yes. The way I see it any woman that is going to be with me has two jobs.

1. Make me look better (I already look good). That is not just in the physical sense. That means I need a woman that can handle herself in all situations and if I need her to handle something for me she will in a manner that represents me the way I want to be represented and she will never let me slip. She is always looking out for my best interests.
2. Make everyone in the room feel like a sinner when she shows up. I want every woman in the room to envy her and I want every man to lust for her.

If she can't do those two things I don't need her and she doesn't want me. I won't even approach a woman if I don't think she can do that. If I've ever asked a woman out on a date it's solely becasue I think she can fit that build. So to me I think a woman should consider me asking them out a compliment on the highest order because that's what I'm thinking when I ask her out. I don't ask people out just because. Part 2 is the easy part, it is the part 1 you really want. If you ask people that know me I don't compromise in my values or my vision. Either I get everything I want or I'll pick up my toys and go home.

Q:
How many nanoseconds did it take for you to hit the ground after that missile attack Slick?

A:
None, it happened too fast. You don’t even realize what when on until it was over. Had it been closer to me my reaction may have been different. The rule of thumb around here is if you can hear the explosion then your probably ok. You don’t want to be the person that didn’t hear it.

Q:
It seems you should have a good assessment on the level of the security there. Do you feel at all comfortable now?

A:
Comfortable is a relative phrase. I mean I feel comfortable most of the time and I'm not worried about getting shot at or kidnapped. I may get a bit nervous if I’m out at night by myself or something but that’s the kind of paranoia that you would have anywhere. I'm not even worried about missiles and mortars so much because the combat here has changed from what it was 4 months ago.

What does worry me is my proximity to Iraqi nationals. I don't trust them and I know it's easy for one of them to hide in the bathroom or around the corner and stab someone or something like that. I walk around with a heightened sense of awareness and I work with Marines on my for self defense. I do boxing and the same stuff you get out of boot camp when they let me. I don't walk around in a constant panic but, I am aware of where I go and who I see. I am very random about how I do just about everything. I don’t eat at the same time don’t get up at the same time take different routes from one place to another. I don’t want to give anyone an excuse to try me.

Q:
Do you get scared when you have to go off base?

A:
Scared? No, not scared I wouldn't be able to focus if I was scared. I was scared before I got here and on the way here. I am apprehensive and I am more attentive to my surroundings. At the same time I have to temper that statement with the fact that I’ve never been shot at. The fact that I’ve never been in danger explains my view.

Another thing is when you get into a dangerous situation you go into fight or flee mode. I can’t fight so that leaves me with flee. I could run but where am I going to go? When you can do neither all you can do is sit back and find a happy place.

Q:
Tell me why is the Iraqi police are such a "soft" target. I mean, I would be dead inside the car and wouldn't allow anybody to drag me into the street to a predetermined ending (my death)! One likes to think one would act this way and not beg for mercy cause I think mercy is not in season. I can understand the IED problem but in too many cases it appears at least from the reports that the Iraqis are not either putting up a fight or fighting period. I remember when my wife and I were in Basque Spain. Real military personnel guard the police headquarters and I didn't think they were window dressing. In Spain, as you know, the IED was mastered long ago and is a favorite medium for mayhem.

A:
The short answer is the insurgents are better trained and better organized. I think the biggest myth that we have out there is that the military came in here and just whooped ass. Yeah we did because the Iraqi troops realized there was about to be a new sheriff in town and there was no reason to die for nothing. So they took their AK-47s, changed into civilian clothes and waited.

I can only give you a layman’s analysis. The real military personnel are playing for the other team. The nationalist insurgents were part of the military and police force. They are the ones with the tactics and skills. They were trained in intimidation, torture, and terror. They were doing things like this before the US got here its now just open season.

The way I see it someone had the brilliant idea of banning the Baath members from holding any positions in the government or holding any civil service jobs. Well, even the most casual observer of Iraqi life knows that being a member of the Baath party was the only way that you could work in Iraq. It didn’t matter if you believed it you only had to make the person hiring you believe you did. So what a particular someone did by banning Baathists from getting jobs is basically

1. Prevented the ones most qualified to maintain order and rebuild the country from working.



2. Gave a reason for a highly educated, trained, and recently unemployed workforce time to stew, plot, and plan. I believe the saying is idle hands are the devil's playthings.

The current government of exiles and halfwits are actually fighting the better-trained and organized old government of lead by the Baath party's crème de la crème on one hand and foreign trained insurgents on the other. Either way both groups have more training than the current defense forces remember by and large those in power in Iraq today are the ones the Baath party oppressed. You don't train opressed people how to fight. US forces provide the only backbone that the current government has. I don’t think I needed to come to Iraq to tell you that. The most telling thing about this whole thing came from a Marine that was talking to another Marine that I happened to overhear. When you read this put on your best redneck Southern accent and that makes it not only telling but damned funny. This discussion was verbatim

Sgt – Hey man did ja hear that they offed the governor up in Baghdad?

Cpl – Are you serious?

Sgt – Shit, yeah man. From what I saw they damn near dragged them fuckers clean out the car. Shot ‘em point blank, sure did.

Cpl – No shit?

Sgt – Nope, I tell you what man, if dem motherfuckers came up to me and said “Hey! Guess what man? You’re the new governor.” I’d be like fuck that man! Y’all can git Saddam or any other motherfucker you want to git shot up. I ain’t doing it.

A few updates

Well, it seems someone forgot to lock the back door and as a result I was able to accidentally log onto imageshack and get a few pictures up that I was meaning to do a long time ago. They closed the gap not to long ago so I didn't get to post all my pics from in Iraq but, I have a good bit. Feel free to go into the November and December archives to see some pictures.

I would also like to give a very special thanks to all the people that neglected to tell me that I looked like a former Alcoholics Anonymous member that just fell of the wagon.

Rogue's Gallery: Entry 0004 - Shen Long

Shen Long is the head FE here in Iraq. He is pretty much the head FE because he has been here the longest amount of time (almost a year) I have been working with him the past week or so and he has been busting my ass. Shen Long is the perfect manager in my view. He pays meticulous attention to detail, he is someone who reviles in pre-planning, he is attentive to the needs of his staff and he is one to work for the betterment of the staff weather they like it or not. Some people don’t like his methods but to me the guy is a genius you just have to let go of your ego. Once you let your pride fall to the side this guy can show you the world. He is a serious neatnic, which runs counter to my “its good enough/it will fix itself” lifestyle. In his life before Iraq he was a college professor one of the academic elite if you will, he is the type of guy you could picture in his office smoking a pipe and responding to every question you ask with a quote from Chaucer. He is built and looks like Phil Jackson to me with his beard but most of his hair is still brown I would say he is in his mid fifties. He comes off as a person who is very deliberate. He really has everything planned out; he is someone who hates surprises, chaos, and disorder. I on the other hand revel in those environments.

For example while I’m sitting here typing this he has spent the last 2 ½ hours editing a three paragraph email that he wrote before he sends it off. Yes, you heard me 2 ½ hours! I’ve seen him do it before so I know how this works. And I shouldn’t say write emails he crafts emails like he’s Eiji Morozumi or something. When it comes to words he is an artist. Every word has meaning independent of the phrase it is in. Each phrase combines to make a sentence, however a sentence is not whole unless it speaks to the soul of the intended recipient. These sentences, once independent will join with one another, much like water joins with seed and soil, to create a paragraph. Yet paragraphs can only become messages when they are sent. Like the soil, seed, and water they have everything you need but cannot form the orchid until the sun is present.

I honestly think that is the man’s line of thinking when he is sending out emails.

He has been doing a knowledge transfer with me and to be honest with you it has been painful. This guy has actually made me think and I hate thinking. Here’s the biggest secret about me I hate to think, I loathe it. I’m someone who will always do the bare min. That’s why I’m in the industry I’m in, not because I’m good with programming (I’m not) but, I know that once you have a process automated you don’t have to do it again. It’s the ultimate lazy man career choice. People think that I’m smart but I’m really not what I am is cunning. I do enough research to find the buzzwords and key phrases to make it seem like I know what I’m talking about but usually I don’t. If I just “know” something it’s because I guessed.

First of all let me tell you how he set me up. The first week I was here it was like the first week of college. Man we were watching movies on the big screen, staying up all night, getting up whenever we wanted, eating junk food, playing video games, on the internet having contests to see who could find hot pin up girls(Thanks GAF, I won, only to lose). Man this was big fun! I was like this is all I have to? Man this is great!

Then the fun stopped.

This one particular day, I was feeling pretty good. We hadn’t done much all week so I took a shower and put on some Civilian clothes. Well, we get a call from the COC about their projector being out and they have no on screen visual. So we head up to the COC to see what is going on. They say basically an entire bank of computers had no power shore power (the computers were running off battery power) and the projector that was on the same line, as the computers had no power as well. Well simple enough that sounds like a power surge to me so all you need to do is reset the breaker. Well the tried that and nothing happened. So Shen gives me the voltmeter (a device that my Dad showed me several times but I never took interest in it. Hell I’d never need it) and says get under the table and check the outlets to see what kind of current they are drawing if they are drawing any at all.

I’m like, “OK” but in my mind I’m thinking, “How the fuck am I supposed to use this thing? I know it goes in the outlet some kind of way. I sure hope I don’t kill myself.”

Obviously he detected the abject fear in my face so he casually mentions just place the positive and negative components into the outlet and see if they are giving off the proper voltage. Basically I am checking down the line to see where the power failure may have occurred. The thing is these outlets are under these specially made tables so I have to crawl under these tables and lay on my back to get these readings. The floors in Iraq are filthy from the dust and mud and God knows whatever else may be on the floor. Well I isolate where the power failure is coming from and as I move to jiggle a wire you hear a loud pop and then the projector comes back on and all the computers start working of shore power. What happened was that one of the Marines feet pulled on the main power cable and disconnected it slightly from the shore power.Well I just gotten out of the shower and now I’m covered in dust from head to toe and that was just the beginning.

What can I do to make myself look more ridiculous?

Well it seems that now I have officially seen everything. Our good friends over at Triple X gold teeth have introduced the latest in must have gold teeth accessories. That is correct ladies and gentlemen you too can now have SPINNERS added to your gold teeth. I can see it now.

Man 1: Why the fuck do you have spinners on your teeth?

Man 2: It's like, when I stop talking, my teeth keep moving! Isn't that fucking tight?

Man 1: But teeth DO NOT spin!

Man 2: They do now!

RIP Shirley Chisholm

This weekend the light of the world has been made a bit dimmer with the passing of Shirley Chisholm. For those of you who don't know her she was the first Black woman to serve in the US Congress back in 1969. She represented the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn and served until retiring in 1983. She also was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus. She was a engrossing, a dogged critic of the Vietnam War, and a champion of woman and minority rights. People feared her independence and that gave her strength to challenge the status quo. However, her biggest asset to me was her pragmatism. She was one damn good political beast. She was one of the first members of Congress to visit George Wallace after he was shot to offer her condolences. And from that act of kindness she was able to get him to rally Southern congressmen for an increase in minimum wages, which helped those she cared about the most.

When I was an idealistic boy I had dreams of one day running for a seat in Congress or the Senate and I did research on the Blacks that were successful in that endevor it to see what I could learn from them.

Her story is the one that stuck out the most to me and her model was the one I would have wanted to emulate. It saddens me to see what the people of her caliber have been replaced by in the halls of the US Congress today. At the same time people of her integrity wouldn't be in US Congress today.

Iraqi democracy? Yeah, good luck on that.

Well if you don’t know by now the acting governor of Baghdad was killed today in a shootout. Well, I’m taking a wild guess here, maybe a shot in the dark, but hear me out. I know it’s a wild theory but I’m thinking that Iraq is nowhere near ready to hold elections at the end of the month. I don’t have any “political capital” as it were but if I were someone who believed that I did then I’d save my capital for something I’d actually want to buy. I think a lot of Iraqi people are going to lose their lives in this foolhardy attempt at democracy that is really a thinly glazed attempt to come up with some sort of exit strategy that will appeal to the masses in the States.

If you can’t tell the insurgency has pretty much become an Iraqi problem. The insurgents realized that they couldn’t beat the US in the violence game so they have moved on to softer targets. Unfortunately for the Iraqi people they have been mind numbingly successful.

Well, I’m taking a wild guess here, maybe a shot in the dark, but hear me out. I know it’s a wild theory but I’m thinking that Iraq is nowhere near ready to hold elections at the end of the month. I don’t have any political capital as it were but if I were someone who believed that I did then I’d save my capital for something I’d actually want to buy. I think a lot of Iraqi people are going to lose their lives in this foolhardy attempt at democracy that is really a thinly glazed attempt to come up with some sort of exit strategy that will appeal to the masses in the States.

If you can’t tell the insurgency has pretty much become an Iraqi problem. The insurgents realized that they couldn’t beat the US in the violence game so they have moved on to softer targets. Unfortunately for the Iraqi people they have been mind numbingly successful.

I don’t think the Iraqi people will be ready to vote in the next 326 days let alone the next 26 days.

MRE - Humanity's greatest creation

MRE or Meal Ready to Eat is perhaps the greatest use of humanites collective intellegence to date. I combines fission and food. For those of you unfamiliar with MREs the military issues a bag that has some freezed dried food in it. All you have to do is open the bag, pull out the meal (which could be anything from Chicken and rice to Hamburger patty), rip open the "oven" which is another bag with a hydrogen pack inside put some water in the oven slide the meal bag into the oven bag, then the oven gets about 30 gazillion degrees and you wait about 2 or 3 minutes and your food is hot. You take your food out of the oven rip the top off and dig in.

It's good for the times when I don't want to go to the chow hall.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Well it seems that whoever shot off those rockets had the bright idea of sticking around. So I spent the entire night listening to random gunfire and cannon fire.



Just another day at the office.

Dammit there is a mouse in here!

Here I am sitting here minding my own business when I see something rather large out of the corner of my eye. I look over and up and I see this field mouse climbing down the Ethernet cabling. I'm not scared of mice or anything like that mind you. I just know that they are filthy, disease ridden beasts.

However, the mouse does remind me of some field mice that were running rampant in my home when I first moved in there. It was funny my ex and I had this elaborate mouse catching scheme where we would attempt to catch the mice alive. Well after about one night of hearing random scurrying in the room that didn't work out to well. So then my ex-girl had them executed via sticky traps. I still remember when one was caught it wasn't all the way dead and when we put it in the dumpster I could have sworn it was squeaking her name.


Good times.