Thursday, October 18, 2007

Why Iraqi Bootleg you ask?

Well, it all starts back in 2004, the first time I was here. This was back when bootlegs were everywhere, sold in markets, on FOBs, and by little kids who zoomed around the Green Zone, before it changed its name to GSAVE, oh wait, sorry I mean International Zone, on mopeds offering regular bootlegs and flicky flicky to any soldiers who might be walking around. Hooray for capitalism.

But back to my story, some of these bootlegs were good, some were bad, if you were lucky you got one that was stolen from a master (usually French for some reason - my copy of Dodgeball says the four D's are detour, deplace, depose, detour). However, what I found very interesting was the fact that whoever mocked up the "cases" for these DVDs had obviously never spoken English, and they just sort of cut and pasted things from the web that seemed to fit. I started collecting them, especially the ones with particularly funny blurbs. The Holy Grail of this quest, which I only saw once, failed to buy, and regretted it ever since, was a copy of Passion of the Christ, which was described by one critic (apparently) as "Absolutely Hilarious!"

So, at some point while here, I am going to start collecting images of some of the funnier bootlegs that come across my path. One for instance, was the complete seasons one through seven of Star Trek: The Next Genrelation.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Hot Chicks and Airports

So, anyone who has ever been to an airport has noticed that there are always a larger proportion of attractive women there than there seem to be at other place. I'm sure part of it is the unattainability, plus I have a theory (backed up by science, strangely enough) that traveling increases your sex drive...

But, I am happy to say that this rule applies even here. I spend a few nights a week at the airport here, helping out some people, and every night I walk in and there's just hot chicks everywhere. Now - the mitigating factor here is that most of the people who work at the airport are Air Force, amd anyone who's been in the military knows that Air Force chicks are the hottest, follow by Marine chicks, then Navy, and finally Army. The last two switch sometimes, depending, but it's like the Air Force recruiters will look at a recruit and say "Yeah, um, you might be better suited to the Army..."

It's something about Army butt, too. Marine chicks may not be as pretty, but they are still active, even if they're in an Admin position. Army chicks who have admin positions develop the military equivalent of secretary butt. I'm sure it happens to the men, too, I just don't really check out men's asses all that much.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Some things never change

So everyone loses socks. You lose them somewhere, whether its in the laundry, before the laundry, walking back from the laundry room, something. I, personally, have a serious problem with this. What's interesting to me is that I lose socks in exactly even numbers. So, for example, I currently own four different types of socks, each very distinguishable. In the picture below, I will call them, from left to right: regular, reinforced, red mark, and new balance.


Now - why the picture you ask? Because, and I swear this is true, I have somehow managed to lose one, and exactly one, of each of these four types of socks. The picture here is one I took after getting my laundry back from the KBR facility and sorting out my socks. How is it, I ask myself, that I have the unique ability to lose one of EACH pair of socks, and somehow still have the same number of sock types that I'm supposed to? I mean, if the guys at KBR really want to steal my socks, don't you think they could at least have the decency to steal a matched set so I don't notice? And frankly, so I don't walk around feeling lopsided because my left sock is significantly thicker than my right???

Sunday, October 7, 2007

The surreal nature of life in Iraq

Yeah, so here's a picture:



This is what makes life here so strangely surreal. First of all, it's a cloudy day, so the dark thing hanging in the sky (smoke) doesn't seem too odd at first, because maybe its a storm cloud. But no, if you look closely, its a huge plume of black smoke, billowing up from somewhere to the north of us. So - maybe its inside the wall, maybe outside. But no one, and I mean no one, seems to even register it. I look on the news, no mention of it. Just this huge plume of black smoke, happens everyday. Well, not everyday, but you get used to seeing things on fire here, so you just give it a miss. Very bizarre. So, I jump in my car and head out to find it. Actually, I was on my way to somewhere else and I kept getting closer, so I just drove out to the wall to take a look. Turns out it was someone burning trash. A LOT of trash:



Video