More Great AIDS prevention ads

This is a great ad that promotes safe sex. The thing I like about it is that it gives you the message in postive way instead of trying to trying to terrify people into not having sex.

Have fun with it and take notes I know I did.

PS: This isn't safe for work.



This post: Dan approved

To you my #1 fan.

It's weird to say but I have fans. It is so surreal to me. People that know me in physical life know that I can be pompus and admittatly a bit of an ass. It's all in my nature. But, when it comes to this blog I am really humble about it. That isn't an act even though I write this blog I am often amazed at the fact that it has struck a cord with so many people, so many places, across the world.

What I really like are my gifts I've been lazy in getting my thank you cards out only becasue they moved all the damn mailboxes around here. But I love the books that you send me, I love the picutures that you send me and I love everything that you do for me. It really helps to make the day go by.

Today I went to the post office and the guy says I have a package for you and it seems like it has some sort of liquid in it. I was really confused I could never guess what would be liquid that would be sent to me. He hands me the package and sure enough it is got this liquid in it. So I open it up and this is what I see...

I got that with some books and a card all VERY nicely giftwrapped and the card said here is something for you if you ever feel romantic again.


That was super cool.

So thank you very much for that.

Beware Popo Bawa the sex demon!

By William Maclean

CHAKE CHAKE, Tanzania (Reuters) - Mohammed Juma starts to sweat and fidget as he recalls his rape by Popo Bawa, the most feared spirit-monster of the Zanzibar spice islands.

"We believe reading the Koran is our only defense, nothing else," says the 41-year-old driver and father of four. "But Popo Bawa is real, and well prepared."

Vacationers on the Indian Ocean islands tend to smile dismissively at accounts in guidebooks of the bat-like ogre said to prey on men, women and children. But for superstitious Zanzibaris a visit from the sodomizing gremlin is no joke.

Although no one ever has seen it, belief in the monster and his unnatural lust is so strong that entire villages will sleep out of doors for protection: Popo Bawa (Swahili for Bat's Wing) prefers to attack behind closed doors at night.

In huts set amid rustling groves of jackfruit and mangoes on Zanzibar's Pemba island, victims told Reuters in interviews that they detected a bad smell, became cold and went into a trance in the moments before they felt the creature's inhuman strength.

Some attacks were heralded by the sound of giant wings and claws rattling and scraping on huts' tin roofs. Others cringed in terror at what sounded like a car engine ticking over.

"We heard a rustling on the roof," recalls Asha Saleh, in her late 50s, in Machomanne village near Pemba's main town of Chake Chake. "I felt someone fondling me. I felt very cold. I felt weak," she said, recalling the attack some 35 years ago.

LEGENDS

"I couldn't call out for help to my husband who was lying asleep beside me. Popo Bawa is strong: He really presses down on you. And it took such a long time: One hour! Eventually I lost consciousness. And I was one of many who were attacked."

Successive waves of colonizers and traders -- Arabs, Portuguese, Hindus, Chinese, Britons, Persians and Africans -- left behind a multinational array of legends on Zanzibar.

Accordingly, many dismiss Popo Bawa as another of the satanic stories swapped over the centuries by migratory Indian Ocean peoples as they moved back and forth on the tides from Indonesia to the Comoros, from Madagascar to the Maldives.

Zanzibar's distinctive past as an Arab-run slave market prompted some academics to speculate that the story of Popo Bawa emerged from a collective race memory of the horrors of slavery.

But Popo Bawa is unlike the many goblins believed by the islanders to populate the tall grasses that ring their huts.

Many on the islands are adept at exorcisms, placing charms at the base of fig trees or sacrificing goats to avert evil or draw favor from the spirit world.

So experienced are the isles' traditional healers that they draw visitors from the Gulf and east Africa, with the successful amassing riches and prestige.

But no placatory offering or witch doctor can deflect Popo Bawa when he has made his mind up to strike, islanders say.

The monster favors Pemba, the poorer and more backward of the archipelago's twin islands despite being home to the clove plantations that provide the mainstay of Zanzibar's economy.

He also becomes active at election time: a habit that is testing nerves ahead of polls due in October.

His last major visitation was during elections in 1995, when Juma says he endured his terrifying ordeal, although some reported his presence again in 2000 and in 2001.

"APOLITICAL"

Pemba's population are staunch opposition supporters. Many accuse the ruling party of Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa of neglecting the island since 1964, when Zanzibar merged with mainland Tanganyika to form the United Republic of Tanzania.

But Juma says Popo Bawa is apolitical even though electoral emotions seem to summon him from the beyond. "He can strike even if the opposition wins the elections," he said.

The driver vows to do his utmost to avoid what happened to him back in 1995 as he sat alone late one evening.

"Many were afraid and were sleeping outside. But I was confident and was alone in my room. I was reading the Koran for protection. After about 20 minutes I started feeling sleepy. I heard something falling on the roof. I continued reciting. I started feeling something in the room.

"I felt my mouth becoming bigger and bigger. I started losing my ability to form words. My feeling was that my lower lip had stretched to my lap. I felt weak in my body. I became very sweaty. My experience was like that of a neighbor of mine who said his head seemed to grow to an enormous size."

Popo Bawa gets annoyed if villagers deny his existence -- a fact to which Khamis Juma Hamad says he can testify.

Hamad, a retired village chief now aged 75, said that in 1971 Popo Bawa spoke to terrified villagers on Pemba through a girl possessed by the monster.

"I am Popo Bawa," said the girl, called Fatuma, speaking in the unnaturally deep voice of a man. "You have challenged my existence so I have come to prove I am here."

Seconds later, he says, the villagers heard the sound of a car revving and a rustle on a nearby roof -- signs of Popo Bawa. "The people felt cold, almost paralyzed. They were terrified."

Sound like Popo Bawa could get some work in the States.

Interesting Set of Articles

On Class Structure in America from the New York Times. This is the type of reading I truely enjoy if I had life to do over again I would spend it pondering the nature of civilization.

That being said you have to register and NYT to read the article. Tommie Hu$tle doesn't register for a damn thing! I will share with you all another secret of the internet. Bugmenot is a website with fake registration names that work at all the site you may need to register at in order to read an article. All you have to do is enter the URL of the site and it comes back with a username and password. Goodbye annoying registration pages, no I would not like to try a subscription to your magaizne for 19.95 and no I don't want to get email from you either. I don't have time for that but, I do have time to steal this article from you.


Thanks suckers!


This post is REN and Prospero approved.

The application of pain

I have pieces of sand trapped in the fold of my ear. Right where my ear connects to my head. My fingers are too large to dig it out and I cannot make my hand bend in a way that allows me to scoop out the sand. This sand is cutting in my ear like glass I've taken four showers and I still cannot get the sand to come out. It hurts like a SOB.

Let's take a tour and see why I don't

This is some of the design in an Iraqi home. The center piece was probably some solid gold mantle that was looted during the riots.



This is the other door to the house. They had some beautiful glass designs in the home that I really liked. I wouldn't to it for my home but it looked really good.



Some Arabic script. I don't know what it is saying but, I do know that the US is supposed to leave as much art and script up as possible also US troops are not to deface any of this art or script. The US wants to preserve as much of the written history of Iraq as possible. Now then if the Iraqi people want to tear it down it is up to them but, for the US we keep the work that is still standing up.





Lake Taquaddum



This is a far as I plan on going. You see the wire setup there. That denotes that possibly there are UXO (unexploded ordinace) in the area. One thing the Iraqis were good at is hiding things under the sand. So around here there are all sorts of explosive devices in the area. I'll let your mind wander and think about what they could be. Needless to say I don't mess around near the lake too much. It's too bad that Saddam's government wouldn't allow the people to come to the lake. In the states this place would be a major resort town and maybe in the future it will be one.

Here is another shot of the lake I wanted to get to a higher vantage point but it was fenced off by UXO. This lake is probably as large as one of the Great Lakes.

Here is an old air bunker. The only thing inside of the air bunker is pigenons and crap (literally)

Here is a picture of one of the many aircraft that litter the landscape. This one is lucky to still be in one piece. Most aren't.

And finally this is the anwser to the second (or third) most asked questions I get. How do you look? Are you ok? Are they feeding you well? You haven't emailed me from the last time I emailed you 20 seconds ago, please don't be dead. Well now you have visual proof that that I have met at least 3 of those questions.

Now then there was one other place we went to that was an underground bunker. their had to be at least 10,000 bats hanging from the ceiling, we didn't stay in it long and I didn't take pictures figureing that the flash would have spooked the hell out of those bats and they would have rained down on us. I've watched enough movies to know that getting bitten by bats is a bad thing.

This is when the job starts to become not worth it.

As you all well know I'm not fan of cold weather but, I do see the benefits of cold weather. Primarily being that insects tend to stay dormant around that time of the year. Anyone who has been to the middle east can tell you when night time comes the wild life comes out. Snakes, spiders, flies (god the files), biting gnats, scarabs, beetles, rats, bats, mice, foxes, hyenas, and mosquitos. That is pretty much what I have seen who knows what I don't see.


Well, one particular night I was fast asleep and I thought I felt something crawling on my neck. I reach for my neck make contact with something rather large and fling it to the floor ASAP. I go to turn on the lights and this is what I see.

Lucky me.

Cribs Iraqi style: The Alamo

The Alamo is another one of the places I lay my head during travel. This place is basically an apartment complex that was for Iraqi soliders. Well after the Troops handed the soliders their eviction notice they moved in.

The front of the Alamo.

The front door.

The courtyard.

My bed.

Sitting Area.

Not much to it. It's one of the nicer places that I live in but, it can get crowded.

This is Tommie - Babies don't wait.

Well I think we stayed broken up for a few weeks before I could grovel my way back into her life (she was probably just horny). It is around the time the right before first Gulf War was going to jump off and kids my age (as well as parents) were freaking out. We didn't know if there was going to be a draft or anything. It was kind of a scary time to be a 17 or 18-year-old boy. I mean Bush was in office, Iraq REALLY had WMD, Iraq really had a standing Army, the US hadn’t been to war in over 20 years, people were trying to make this Armageddon, or a new holy war.

So anyways I go over to her house and we start talking about war and she would be scared if I went to war and she wouldn't know what she would do and all that stuff so next thing you know we are having sex as usual but, something about this time was different. I couldn't tell you what it was and maybe it was different but I knew something "happened".

Well she came to my job about 3 weeks later and said we need to talk when I get off work. I was like ok. I called my folks and asked if I could go by Daria's to pick up some homework after work and my mom said be home in 30mins. I was like cool, I had no plans of really staying over there anyway it was a work night. So I get over there and she tells me that she is late with her period and that she is pregnant. My first thought is oh shit. There is no way I can tell my parents I just got out of trouble for ME being late, her being late wasn’t going to go over well. The idea of what might happen if my Dad finds out sent me into a panic. I'm freaking out I've got this full ride to University of Miami I'm one of the smartest kids in school, we are two of the smartest kids in school. This isn't supposed to happen to us. Well, I told just hold up and we will figure something out.

Well no one told me that babies don't wait for you to figure something out. She started going through morning sickness and her Mom knew what time it was. Hell, my Mom knew what time it was too. I remember one day Daria came by the house and my Mom blurted out, “Daria you are getting big are you pregnant?”

We looked at each other like oh no we are caught. I said, “Pregnant? Mom you can't be serious.”

Daria said, “No, my goodness Mrs. Hustle I’m nowhere near pregnant.”

My Mom replies, “You've been gaining some weight and getting a little big girl I was just asking.”

My mom probably knew for weeks but she didn't want to accept it (It goes back to seeing your child as a sexual being) so my answer was sufficient. Well we couldn't hold off on this any longer we had to tell someone. I knew I wouldn't get in trouble if she told HER Mom so I convinced her to tell her Mom. The three of us sat down and had this conversation about what a responsibility babies are and that we aren't ready for a baby and we have our whole life ahead of us and that she would take care of it. So Daria went to have an abortion with her Mom.

I didn't even offer to show up. I was just so scared that I would get in trouble. I eventually went over there a day or two after and I stayed over there everyday till she got "better" and I never thought about it again. From my perspective, I didn't get in trouble my life was saved, I wasn't in trouble, I didn’t have my Dad choking me out nothing could be better. I know for her she was never the same and I know she hated me for not being as concerned, as I should have been.

The true impact didn't hit me till I was about 22 about what happened. Every August I get a bit wistful that's when the baby would have been born. I couldn't see myself with a 14 year-old child, but that’s what I’d be looking at today. The idea is insane to me but that is my reality. People always say that I'm good with kids but it's not because I'm just good with kids. I feel like it's my penance to be good with kids because I was so flippant with the life of my own.

To this day I've never actually talked to my Parents about what exactly happened it was one of those elephant in the room situations, and open secret if you will. When I think back on it maybe I should have told them. Would I have gotten in trouble? Probably but all things come and go. In the whole they should have been let in on the situation I know ultimately the decision would have been the same but, it was an unfair burden to put on Daria and her mother.