A new product endorsement!

So, it is a semi-regular thing with me where I say “you know, I need to rant a bit, I should start a blog.” 

Then I completely forget about it. 

Then every now and again, Blogspot reminds me that I have a blog, and that my 2 followers have not heard from me in a while.  I go back, spend an hour trying to figure out how to log in, and then entertain myself reading my past blogs, most of which I don’t remember writing. 

Then I completely forget about it. 

Well, not this time!  I happened to have a weird confluence of a few free hours (sitting in CLT the night before drill with limited internet capability), something I want to talk about, and a reminder that I do, in fact, have a blog.

So…  Product Endorsement Time!

You know, the funny thing about head wounds is that they bleed disproportionately to the actual injury.  You can give yourself a minor scrape on the scalp, and all of a sudden your skull looks like grandma’s spaghetti pot is boiling over.

I was working in the walk in cooler the other day, trying to convince this and that to join together into a single, useful item.  This went this way, that went that way, and I pitched forward, lips first into the wall.  Fortunately, I did not bust my lips, as my skull was clever enough to make contact with the sharp edge of a gas regulator.  I felt my skull slice open.  Huh.  Must be Tuesday.  I bent over to pick up this and show it who was boss when I crammed it on to that.  As I stood up, the left lens of my safety glasses filled up with blood.

Son
Of
A
Bitch.

We got a gusher here boys!

Muttering dark thoughts (mostly) to myself, I wandered back in to the main part of the brewery, heading to the bathroom to assess my little boo boo.   My head was hurting a little bit (I have a special relationship with pain, and mostly ignore it), and I was not changing the color of the ceiling, so I did not hit an artery, so it was mostly a question of getting the blood to stop so I could finish my project.  I walked around the corner of the brew kettle, and the guys I was working with (let’s call them Guy 1 and Guy 2) got a good look at me.  Whoooo, son.  Four eyes as wide as saucers.  To be fair, at this point the left side of my face, from the scalp to the chin was doing a wonderful Carrie impression as The Little Hemorrhage That Could attempted to change the color of my shorts and shoes to match the new and improved color of my shirt.

A few words about the different types of people and how they react to things like randomly bleeding people.  The first type is the stoic.  Guy 1 was one of those.  He just looked at me.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t pretend to be some sort of tough guy, I just don’t see a point in freaking out when it won’t do any good.  If running around and screaming would have made the pain go away, I would have been caroming off the walls.  If crying and caring on like a little girl would have made the bleeding stop faster, grow me some pig tails, and let’s get to work.  No, the simple fact was I had been stupid, and gotten dinged for it.  Guy 1 noted that I was moving under my own power, was alert, and did not seem worried about anything.  He was satisfied.  “Sup” I said, feeling the need to say something.  “Don’t get that shit on the doorknobs” he said, feeling the need for the last word.  See?  That’s fucking simple.  No hysterics, no drama.  These are the guys you want to have around you when the shit hits the rotor blades.  Later on, he would check on me to ensure I was fine, and say something to reassure me that he was concerned about my wellbeing.   I think his exact words were “you get that shit cleaned up?”  You can’t buy concern like that at any price.

The second type is the healer.  God love medics, be they military medics, paramedics, or people that have been through enough shit that they got some training and bought some gear.  These are the guys that glance at you, do a quick assessment, and disappear, only to re-appear minutes later with what seems to be an entire surgical suite (minus the machine that goes ‘ping’) crammed into an enormous aid bag that cost more than a single family home.  They PAID for all this stuff, they are GOING to use it.  These suckers are pretty handy to have around.  There was a guy working in the other room that was like this.  I no sooner got to the bathroom than he set down 3 different first aid kits.  Then, miracle of miracles, HE LEFT.  No namby-pamby “sit still!  I need to see this.”  No lectures about keeping it clean or pointless jabber designed to keep my heart rate down.  Just, here’s some useful shit, peace.  Perfect First Aid right there folks.

The third type was Guy 2.  He didn’t exactly wig out, but he became anxious and worried, so Guy 1 sent him to the drug store to get some peroxide so he had something other than rivers of blood to think about.  He followed instructions, calmed down, and contributed.  You can’t hope for more than that from most people.  No problem.

The fourth type is the type that just freaks the fuck out and goes hysterical.  Just shoot those people at the first sign the wheels are coming off the bus.  They’ll just be underfoot in an emergency and probably manage to get worthwhile people killed or injured.

But, you might say, this was a product endorsement?  EXACTLY.  This is a product endorsement the same way Deadpool was a love story.

Guy 2 came back with some peroxide, which is unpleasant when it runs into your eyes by the way.  He also brought back a septic powder called WoundSeal.  This stuff is the bomb!  It says right on the tube not to squeeze the tube, just sort of let it pour out natural like.

Yeah.
Right.

I rinsed off all the blood with about half a bottle of peroxide and squeezed the entire tube of powder down into the cut.  I did not really have time to enjoy the discomfort of half a quart of bloody peroxide displacing my ocular fluid before I was distracted by a new and impressive sensation.  WoundSeal don’t play.  The bleeding stopped.  I mean JUST STOPPED.  Oh, it stung a bit.

A bit of reference is in order.  I am very susceptible to poison ivy.  I break out easily, and I spread easily.  If I do not react quickly to an outbreak, I will be at the hospital getting a shot within a day.  A quarter sized spot will engulf half my body within 48 hours if not treated.  In the paratroopers, I learned the fastest, no bullshit way to deal with poison ivy.  Take one of those green scrubbing pads.  Debride the entire effected area.  I mean SCRUB THAT FUCKER.  The most important thing is that ALL the pustules are scratched open.  If you don’t get them all, the outbreak will linger and could re-contaminate.  Suck it up, buttercup.  Get it done thoroughly so it only has to be done once.  Once you have the entire effected area roughed up, thoroughly drench it in chlorine bleach.  Yeah, I get it, chemical burns are unpleasant, but you should only need to do it once, and the poison ivy is GONE. 

Back to the point of this whole paragraph.  You know those smiley-frowny 1-10 pain scale things they have in the doctor offices where they want you to report your pain level?  The way I perceive pain, I rate the entire de-ivification process as about a 3.

Now, reading the previous paragraph, the WouldSeal

stung
a
bit.

But the bleeding STOPPED.  On the box it says “creates an instant scab.”  It sure as hell does.  I walked around the rest of the day with my shirt looking like I was a Freddy Kruger victim, and the (maybe should have not used the entire tube) WoundSeal scab the size of a golf ball on my head.

Went home and took a shower, fully prepared to deal with a fresh bleeder, but nope.  The seal-scab held and everything was good.  I STRONGLY recommend this product.  The next time you decide to head butt a sharp edge, grab a tube of this stuff and get sealed up tight in record time.

I freaking love helicopters.

I just do.  What the hell is not to love?  Hopping in one and then cruising around, checking shit out.  The Blackhawk is just fun to ride.  I do miss the Hueys.  The most fun jump I ever had was out of a huey.   Freaking egg beater, sure at any second the engine was going to freeze up and dump you a couple of thousand feet to the ground.  Good times.  The color schemes on the MFO helicopters in not exactly  standard for the army.  However, since orange helicopters are de rigor for the Coast Guard, I did not really think anything about it.  We have a comedy team pass through and one of the guys started busting on the choppers.

“You take one of the most bad-ass, intimidating choppers in the world, and then paint it up in clown colors!  What the fuck is up with that?  I get in a Blackhawk, I want to hear ‘ride of the Valkyries’,  not fucking merry-go-round music.  Kept expecting 25 people to jump out of the damn thing.”

Oh, yeah, one more thing.  The comedians were not very good, but the name act was pretty good.  The guy that made the helicopter jokes had something about him though…  Everybody kept looking at him, looking at each other, listening to him, looking to each other.  About the time people stopped responding to him, he said “you guys are going nuts, right?  ‘Where the fuck do we know him from?  How about this?  ‘I’m loading, cover me!’”  The place went batshit.  The guy does voices for most of the more popular first person shooter games.  He started calling out a bunch of lines from games I don’t know, but the crowd loved it.  Whatever those popular first person shooter games are that all the college kids play, I met a voice actor for most of them.  He was not that funny in person.

This blog started out to be just about my trip to the island, but I ended up taking a bunch of pictures and decided that this blog is now about whatever the hell I want to ramble on about in order to explain all the pictures I feel like posting here.

By the way, this is Cat.  Don’t think he has another name, but he’s not going to pay any attention to you even if you did decide to talk to him, so why would he need a name.  Cat introduced himself to me the first day I got here by wandering into my room as I was moving in and announcing that this was his building, and I better watch my ass if I expected him to allow me to live in it.  That was the last word he had to say to me.  He does random room invasions on a few people in my building, but stays away from my end of the building mostly.  Rumor has it if you accidentally lock him in your room, he will shit on your pillow.  This little bastard has a serious attitude on him.  Cats have been worshiped as avatars of the gods for centuries here, and it has inflated their already vast sense of importance.

While we are meeting the neighbors...

These are our neighbors.  See how nice the place is? 











This is us.  Not so much, right?  They are not real fond of us.  We are lowering their property values with the tornado magnets, the firing range, and constant chance of terrorists cutting through their backyard to set up mortars.  You have to see their point, right?

Anyway, I went out to an observation point we have out on an island at the entry point of the Gulf of Aquabah.  This is quite a large island at the mouth of where the Red Sea cuts up between the Sahara and Saudi Arabia. The only way to safely get out to the OP is by air.  The island has been mined by both Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia since there have been land mines.  The beaches are the most heavily mined in the world.  Good times.  Everything has to be flown in.  A bunch of the kids were griping about what a shit hole the place was, but I just did not see that.  I saw some pretty cool engineering.  First off, any of these kids that have deployed before are used to the big FOBs that are in Afghanistan or Iraq.  What they forget is that these things were built by contractors using all new and modern equipment.  The contractors got to charge more for every bell, button, or whistle, so they heaped the shiney on.  This site was built in the late 70s, with the technology of the day, stuck up on the side of a wind blasted hill, no heavy equipment to level the place, all work done with hand tools.  It’s pretty fucking impressive.  Not to mention it was built for less money than the Boy Scouts spend on a summer camp out post.  The MFO has no budget.  They don’t get funding from the US, or the United Nations.  They get donations from people interested in peace in the middle east.  Seriously.  That’s how we pay for shit.  The next time you are at a restaurant check out and see one of those donation boxes to help world peace, give generously, were almost out of toner.

Love the cool-ass 70's technology

Anyway, here are a couple of cool photos I took while out on the island.  See that boat?  I asked the guy at the outpost about that boat, what the hell is there for him to be doing out here.  He said that the guy was probably diving.  If they heard any explosions, or the boat was there in another day or two, they would figure the guy came up on the beach to cook out, and call the Egyptian navy to come find the body and tow the boat away.  I don’t think the guy was kidding with me



Let’s see…  This is just a cool picture.  I have no problem imagining a camel caravan traveling through here with a load of Asian spices. 

There are a bunch of dudes that come out here and spend a long time watching shit.  They get bored pretty easily.  The cardinal rule of military discipline is that if you let a Soldier get bored, he is going to entertain himself.  That never ends well.  From time immemorial, the solution to this is make-work.  Keep a Joe busy, you keep him out of trouble.  Rocks get painted, whether they need it or not, sandbags get filled, whether you need sandbags or not, and some pretty cool desert art happens.  Here is an example of said desert art.

This took more than a couple of hours to do...

You can't really get an idea of scale here, but the "R" as about 20 feel tall.

What else have we got here?  Here is my shack as viewed from the air, about a hundred feet above the Gulf of Aquabah...

Here is the island as seen from my back proch, Cat's primary lair.  It's pretty hazy.  Usually you can see it better, but I'm too lazy to go re-shoot it.

Last, but not least, I loved the sling load operations.  Everything has to be flown into the island, and then the empties have to be flown out. The first picture is the chopper bringing in 4 5o gallon water bladders.  The chopper drops them on the water pad, then guys jump up and monkey wrestle the bladders around and attach hoses to them and drain the water down into their storage tank, where it gets pumped up to where it needs to go.  Other sling loads bring in diesel, food, etc…  The guys on the ground have to police up all the containers, and load them back into a sling for the chopper to take away.

This was a pretty cool little adventure, and I had a good time.  I am going to try to get out to some of the other remote sites, but unfortunately, I won't be able to fly.  I think that I would happily deploy to a remote location to watch a slug not crawl across a fixed distance, if only I could ride a chopper to get there.  I think in my next life, I am going to be a door gunner.  Choppers and machine guns.  Life would be good.

How the Bedouin saved Christmas

Twas the (day of the day before) the night before Christmas, and all through the Sinai, many millions of creatures were stirring, but not the goddamn mail truck, it was fucked.  We have some seriously sketch trucks here.  A big part of it is that they simply get the wheels driven off them.  The MFO operates on such a shoestring budget that there is no money to replace trucks with 300,000 miles on them.  There are new things ordered, but they take years to get here.  Some sort of budgetary thing.  The box trucks for the mail runs are just worn the hell out.  A couple hundred thousand miles of desert driving is not the same thing as a couple hundred thousand miles driving in Kansas or something.  It’s pretty rough out here.

Anywho…

So the mail here comes through Israel.  They put it all in a bog box truck and drive it south.  We meet the truck at a certain point and give them an empty truck, then we drive the truck full o’ yuletide goodies southward.  Well, this truck had electrical problems, and when it hit a bump, the lights would all go batshit crazy, and the governor would lock the truck down to 40kph.  That’s 25 mph to you yanks.  That’s not a fun thing when you have to go 300 miles or so.  They shut off power to the system for a few minutes, and the system reset.  They had to do this a few times.  Then, of course, there was the fire.  Wasn’t much of a fire, but it did get them to pull partway off the road to try to find it.  Once they got things squared away, they attempted to pull away, only to have the road bed crumble under them, and end up all wonky in the ditch. 

While we were getting a wrecker spun up to go find them, a group of Bedouin came along with a dump truck, and rescued them.  This saved several hours on the evolution, allowing people to get their gifts on time.  Forget gold, frankincense, and myrrh, Joe got Care Packages, and the wise men rolled off in their dump truck. And to all a good night. & shit.

Bahhady, bahhady, bahhady, or “Why I’m sticking with WAL-MART” or “why none of you bastards got anything for Christmas.”

It was bad, man.  I have forgotten how irritating the third world can be.  Pardon me, there is an advisory on the wall here reminding me that we can no longer say “third world.”  The politically correct title is now “developing nation.”  The only thing developing is my fucking migraine.  Wow.  The second you get out of the taxi, you are swarmed by shills that try to divert you to their stores by any and all means including by surrounding you with 10 people and marching you up three flights of stairs to the store in question, where you must have tea and socialize and get whatever the store carries handed to/rubbed on/ sprayed on, or draped over you so you can “admire the quality.”  Super only for you mah frien special discount so I can start my day, first sale of the day special.  Escaping this trap only convinces the next shill (six feet away) that you still have money that he must take from you.  God, these fuckers are annoying.  I managed to make it in the tourist bizarre for almost two hours before my Battle Buddy escorted me to a cab and put me in time out.  Apparently I was beginning to get a 1000 meter stare and local police units were being summoned.

By the way:  “Handmade” does not mean it’s worth a shit.  The crappy finger painting your six year old niece did of the family dog is handmade.  That does not make it a Rembrandt.  Ragged seams, poor stitching and uneven button hooks are all shitty.  Even if they are handmade.  Truth to tell, clothing made on machines by 10 year old slaves in Laos is often higher in quality than “handmade” clothing made by hand by 10 year old slaves (probably still from Laos.)  The machine at least can make a tight stich.  I guess it’s just a sign of my running-dog imperialistic mentality of oppressing the poor that makes me resent being obviously, badly lied to and swindled.  I need to take some more cultural sensitivity classes I guess.

Pepsi does exist in the Sinai!  Next time I’m downtown and not hiding from the police, I will try some!  Coolness. 

I was really impressed by the quality of some of the knock-offs here.  If you look at the quality of forgeries in the US, it is often quite low.  The stitching is bad, they often switch thread colors to whatever happens to be on the bobbin, and the materials are obviously lower in quality.  I do not honestly believe Gucci would be a world famous brand if they shipped purses where the fastener was attached to the bag with a straight pin.  Some of the knock-offs I was offered in Miami had the names misspelled.  I am not very good at spelling, but Tommy Hillfinger was not too hard to spot.  True story.

There were some really good looking things out there that were reasonable priced, and the materials and workmanship were very nice.  The sunglasses were much nicer than the fakes you get in the US.  Remember the “fauxklies” that they used to sell around WCU campus?  Buhhhhh… About the only way that you know these ray-bans are fake is that they say “Ray-Ban” 17 times on the frame and lenses.  Although to be fair, given the criminal decrease in the quality of the classic wayfarers, these glasses might have actually held up better that the real ones. 

Rolexes do not tick.  Important consumer tip there.

Egypt does not play about a few things.  There was a local equivalent of a GNC at the “mall” that had a twelve foot tall poster of a freakish body builder with Arabic writing all over it.  In very large letters it said in English, “many fine steroids sold here.”  I guess “meathead” is universal. 

I will have to give a shout out to the Islamic culture about one thing.  It is a very strict, formal culture steeped in ancient traditions, as such it is highly conservative. They wait until after they serve you tea to offer you a date with their sister.  She is seventeen and knows not the touch of a man.  For you only mah frien.  Special sale for first customer of the day. In Honduras, the street urchins would hit you with that shit before you got out of the taxi.  I really can do without that.

I guess I can’t really be surprised about the hunger of the vendors.  This place is a ghost town.  Everybody I met wanted to assure me that all violence was in Cairo, and I should call all my friends and tell them that Sharm El Sheikh was as safe as a cradle.  For a world class dive resort, even in off season, things are sort of dismal.  Although, if one more fucker had tried to hug me, I was going to disprove the theory that violence was limited to Cairo.  They all wanted to teach me new words in Arabic.  When one of them offered to go to America to “supervise and ensure that there was no violence in schools anymore” I asked him how to say “green stick fracture” in Arabic.  His English was actually much better than you might expect, either that, or he was a very perceptive man.  He departed rapidly.  At this point my battle buddy decided that all the shouting and police whistles were directed more or less at us, and we departed the scene at once.

Always negotiate the price of the cab ride before you get in the cab.  Unless you are making a getaway.  In that case, pay the nice driver the three extra bucks with a smile.

 

BTW.  Christmas decorations can get a little off in non-Christian countries.

Gayest Snowman Ever

Content removed to reflect my current beliefs.  Also: too drunk to just find the fucking delete button.

Drive Wrong

Based on the results of my driving test, I am the greatest single threat to human safety since Ebola Zaire.  Wow.  Bad enough that I had to come off a 12 hour mid-watch and had to get up early to go take a driver’s test for a license that I don’t want and will never use.  No, that’s not bad enough.  I have to spectacularly fail the thing with a Kiwi evaluator who seems to genuinely enjoy his work.  According to the other Kiwi, this guy has never, in two years passed anybody.  No one.  He fails everybody, then goes and drinks beer.  My crimes against the free world:

1.       Driving a critically unsafe 12 feet with only one hand on the steering wheel.  10 and 2 is king in the Sinai, baby!  Forget all the modern research that shows 10 and 2 are about the worst possible hand positioning on a steering wheel that has an airbag.  TIS!  Fail!

2.      Exceeding the posted speed limit.  On a downhill slope, I allowed the vehicle speed to reach a blistering 27 KPH (for you “yanks” that’s  16.7 MPH.)  I am amazed that the Hungarians (the local equivalent of MP’s) did not jump out of the bushes and subdue me with pepper spray and billy sticks! Fail!

3.       On an unlined road, I failed to cross the centerline prior to making a left turn.  Fail!

4.      I did not perfectly center the truck when I backed it into the parking space.  I’ll cop to this one.  I did it!  Put me in bad driver’s prison.  There was 3 feet of space on the driver’s side, and only 5 feet of space on the passenger’s side.  It was a huge parking space, but there is no excuse when it comes to safety mister!  Fail!

5.      Based on how worked up the guy was, I think I may have accidently shot the pope.

This shit it typical military.  Don’t get me wrong driving is a full contact sport here.  These Bedouins are some crazy motherfuckers.  They will take a Datsun 720 (none of you are old enough to remember those) and weld on a ten foot wide bed.  Then load them with so much crap that it takes them 30 minutes to climb a hundred foot hill with a 2% grade.  Of course, once they make it up the hill, they keep it floored, so they can make up time coming down the hill.  If one of these things hits a fully armored F-350, the Ford loses!  Fuck being rated to take 3 RPG rockets, they can’t begin to handle a suicidal nomadic tribesman with a load of scrap steel and camel bowel soup.  An up-armored hummer will pop like a watermelon tossed off a building.

Auto accident is the signature wound of the MFO.  That’s all that really happens to anybody here.  Unfortunately, it happens quite often.  There is a macho game here among the Bedouins.  It seems to involve swerving through all the existing lanes of the road while cresting a hill.  Some sort of proof of courage.  It is entirely possible to be cresting a hill and have a guy swerve into your lane going 60 miles an hour.  Intentionally.  Fuck.  This Is Sinai.

Now, you have to understand the military mindset.  Whenever there is an accident, the military proceeds with the unshaken, inviolate belief that it was avoidable.  All stop, end of story.  So the poor sinner involved gets asked the critical question “what could you have done to avoid this?”  If the individual being questioned does not provide an immediate and satisfactory answer, one will be provided for him.  The provided answer usually involves the removal of rank and pay, so his first answer better be accepted.  “SGT Jones!  I can’t believe this could happen!  How did you allow yourself to be struck by a falling meteor?  What could you have done to prevent this?  PVT Williams got all crushed and burned to death!  You failed your Soldier!  How could you have prevented this?”  Seriously, this is exactly what an investigation into a meteor strike on an army vehicle would sound like.  Ask any of the MPs that follow my FB page.  They are all laughing and nodding right now.  Now if the stupid stopped there, if would be ok.  But it wouldn’t.  See, there are people in the Army whose whole justification, whose whole reason for existence is to analyze accidents and come up with prevention measures.  Under the Holy Mantra “one life is one too many” any common sense is flushed down the toilet and any manner of stupid can be used to provide justification for one’s phony-ass job.

See, what would happen in the above scenario is that SGT Jones, who let’s remember is damn glad to be alive, after surviving being in a truck hit by a fucking meteor, now has to justify not saving the life of his Battle Buddy.  Let’s remember that “act of God” is not a check box on any army form.  He will stutter something about admantium meteor shields attached to the body armor to be worn in trucks at all times.  Now, this answer will be accepted.  Really.  Jones’ CO knows there’s no fucking way that he could have avoided a fucking meteor!   But he has to “play the game,” because he has to report to his boss on how the accident can be avoided in the future.  And his boss will take the answer because he has nothing better, and he has to report it to higher.

Skip ahead 2-3 years.  Some Light Bird in the pentagon is struggling through the middle of his rotation as an army safety management officer.  His evaluation, and his chance for promotion, is based on his ability to make recommendations to improve safety.  But he really has nothing to do.  Anything that could reasonably be done was fixed 2-3 years ago at the company or battalion level.  But he has to produce something, or he won’t get a good rating.  So he will produce a recommendation that in areas where meteor strikes occur that local commands investigate the use of admantium meteor shields in all military vehicles.  He turns in the report.  Since the report deals with safety, it will be immediately disseminated to the lowest level.

It should, oh lord should be dropped there.  Yes, here is another chance for common sense to kick in, and the bulletin be crumpled up and tossed in the trash.  But no.  There are regulations that state that all safety bulletins will be posted, and inspections are conducted to ensure that they are.  There are individuals within every unit who are tasked with implementing all safety procedures.  They exist at the company level, battalion level, brigade level, division, and army levels.  Any of these monkeys can get hit by the Good Idea Fairy, and it’s game on.

Good Idea Fairy defined

 

There are good safety people in the army.  From the first line supervisor who says “enough is enough” and breaks apart the rickety ass ladder that people have been using because they have nothing better to use, thereby forcing the unit to buy a safe ladder, to the Commander that genuinely makes safety an issue at his unit.  These guys save people a whole lot of pain and suffering.  Then there’s Chock-block Charlie.  These shitbags are everywhere.  There’s one in most battalions or higher.  These guys live to enforce regulations.  No matter how stupid the regulation, it is their power base and they will protect it.  They hold inspections to ensure the ropes connecting chock blocks are uniform in length and serviceable as required in (fill in the blank regulation.)  They pour over every new safety bulletin looking for new policies they can implement and enforce.  Unfortunately, they usually have gathered a lot of power over the years, and armed with the “one life is too many” ace in the hole, they can do anything.  Now Chock-block Charlie sees the new safety bulletin and remembers that there was a meteor strike in the area “a few years back.”  He uses the safety budget to have “meteor shields” made.  The maintenance guys can’t get enough budget to order parts to keep the trucks running, but good ole’ Chock-block comes up with the tax payer’s moulah to have 40 pounds of steel hammered into a shield that can be worn over an IBA.  Just like that, everybody is that much more miserable.  I mean safer.  Everyone is safer!

There is a picture in the MFO drivers training slides.  It shows where some Bedouin has lashed down several full length telephone poles sideways to the hood of his pickup and he is driving down the street.  The poles are taking out fences on one side of the street, and mirrors of trucks parked on the other side of the street.  Homeboy is just trucking right down the road.  Obviously ensuring that I fully cross the centerline prior to making a left turn will allow me to avoid all accidents.

This is Sinai!  Hand me my meteor shield, I’m off to war!

Dirty rats and Ben & Jerry’s

We actually have Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in the dining facility.  The freezer said Ben & Jerry’s, but I figured it would actually be Ben & Achmed’s knock off ice cream.  Nope.  There is a licensed franchise in Israel, and we get the good shit.  Kosher B&J!  Step off.  Dude can’t make a steak softer than WWII boot leather, but we get the Ferrari of ice cream.  Go figure.  The food is actually pretty damn good, although they have fruits I can’t identify.  Also, remember the 2 degrees off I keep going on about?  They have Coke Light.  Not Diet Coke.  No.  Coke Light. It contains a blend of artificial sweeteners that have been banned in the Western Hemisphere because they have been known to cause lab rat’s heads to occasionally explode.   You can’t even get this shit in the slums of Mexico, because it’s bad for you.

 

Oh Yeah!

Well.  It’s that time of year again.  Screw Christmas.  The Grinch was a sissy quitter.  He should have pawned all that crap he stole and hit Jamaica for the New Year.  My usual approach to a Christmas tree is with a flame thrower.  So, of course, my little yellow belt had to mail me a frigging Christmas tree.  DAMMIT!  I can’t go screw up the holiday for an 11 year old girl, so I could not just toss the box in the dumpster, like I normally would.  Besides, there might have been cookies inside.  No, I had to open the damn thing, set it up, decorate it, and take pictures to send back to her.  THEN I threw the damn thing in the dumpster.  And NO cookies.  To top it off, this little girl actually mailed me a real frigging tree!  (She gets extra points for getting a damn tree past customs and immigration.  She could have ended up a wanted felon in Egypt, but she got away with it.  Egypt does not allow the importation of live trees.)  ##### ########, International Master Criminal!  The down side of her ingenuity is that I had to sweep pine needles up from all over the damn place.

I did get some levity out of the situation.  There is some godless Christmas crap out there, but Elf on the Shelf is a new high in lows.  If you are not hip to this piece of Christmas crap, here’s how it works.  It is a little elf, designed to sit on a flat surface and dangle its little legs over the edge. (**BARF**)  The book that comes with it explains that it places itself in a room to witness the behavior of children and let Santa know who is being naughty.  Every night, it moves, and the children can be delighted in its choice of sitting spot the next day.  You know what we used to call somebody who did that in my old neighborhood?  A fucking snitch!  You want to hang out all day and watch me so you can drop a dime to the man?  I got something for you.  That thing appeared in the TOC, and it wasn’t here for more than 3 minutes before the Captain from Brooklyn strung the little bastard up with 550 cord.  I labeled the informer myself. 

Rat-bastard snitch gets his.

Once the tree showed up, it was only natural to hang the damn elf from the damn tree.  Good stuff.

The logical conclusion.