A Little Soldier and a Clear Voice

Wow, I almost forgot.

I'm sorry, man.





Corporal Yari Mokri
26 years old
KIA, 6 December 2006
Al Abassi, Kirkuk Province, Iraq

1. Go to www.careercruising.com
2. Put in Username: nycareers, Password: landmark.
3. Take their "Career Matchmaker" questions.
4. Post the top umpty results.

1. Firefighter
2. Kinesiologist
3. Industrial Designer
4. Historian
5. Animal Trainer
6. Interior Designer
7. Nursery / Greenhouse Grower
8. Mediator
9. Desktop Publisher
10. Animator
11. Dental Assistant
12. Cartoonist / Comic Illustrator
13. Fashion Designer
14. Chimney Sweep
15. Personal Trainer



From firefighter to historian to desktop publisher to... chimney sweep? What a bizarre mix. And yet, with maybe the exceptions of animal trainer and dental assistant, I might be okay with any of those - in a different world, of course.

Ugh, I sunburned my lips. And ONLY my lips.

Drinking. Brawling. Hurting.
By Sarah Stillman
Sunday, September 2, 2007; B01

The wounds on my friend Pete Yazgier's head come in as many colors as
Cezanne's fruit bowls.

Cherry-hued flecks dot the left half of his skull -- grim mementos of
the rocket-propelled grenade that walloped his armored vehicle in
Baghdad last September. A bright scar bends like a stalk of rhubarb
above his left ear, the result of six surgeries to treat the brain
cancer doctors found while ministering to his shrapnel wounds; they
fear the tumor was caused by depleted uranium that Pete, 28, handled
as an Army mechanic.

And now, a plum-like bulge on his upper right jaw ripens before my
eyes. This, oddly enough, is the one that really scares me: It's the
aftermath of a Marine's clenched fist that hurled into Pete's face
just moments ago.

Only the bar gods know exactly how the skirmish began. But I'm
guessing it went something like it did just the week before:

Marine: "Hey, [fornicator], what are you staring at?"

Army guy: "I don't know, you [fornicating] Jarhead, you tell me."

Marine: "I think I'm staring at a [fornication-head] who's about to
get his [buttocks] kicked."

Lame invectives turn to blows. Soused onlookers hustle to their
buddies' defense. Only when a huge bouncer enters the fray do flying
fists cease and desist -- Marines head for the front exit, Army guys
to the bar. As I search for ice to press against Pete's busted cheek,
the cops appear, looking downright bored by the redundancy of the
mayhem.

Yes, sir, it's another Friday night at R.J. Bentley's Filling
Station, a cozy bar in College Park, where wounded Iraq and
Afghanistan veterans being treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center
come to fuel up on Coronas, honky-tonk dance and the "Rocky"-style
pummelings I've seen on half a dozen visits this summer.

Venture here around dinnertime, and you'll find University of
Maryland professors eating fettuccine with their kids. But stay until
the floors start getting sticky -- say, around 11 p.m. -- and it's a
different world altogether: a chance to brush up against college
football hunks and thin girls in slinky tube tops, and also, perhaps,
to witness some of the raw consequences of two faraway wars brought
home.

Half a decade into the "war on terror," America's bars have become
our barometers: instruments that measure the extent to which our
veterans have been left to wrestle alone with substance abuse,
anxiety disorders and other mental health problems after long tours
in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The men and women who come back from the traumas of war "are often
hyper-alert, quick to respond and susceptible to a loss of impulse
control," says clinical psychologist Jeffrey Jay of the Center for
Post-Traumatic Stress Studies in Washington. "The brain is actually
altered by these experiences -- it's part of a survival mechanism,
and it's very confusing for them."

It's similarly confusing for watering holes such as R.J. Bentley's,
where Pete likes to go because it's the only bar around that
occasionally plays the kind of country music he loves. "We've seen a
massive rise in customers, thanks to Walter Reed," one bouncer at
Bentley's told me. "But we've also seen a rise in fights."

Police and news reports corroborate that fighting has been mounting
in nightclubs, restaurants and bars near military bases nationwide:
places such as McDonough's Restaurant & Lounge near Fort Stewart,
Ga.; O'Blarney's Irish Pub south of Fort Lewis, Wash.; the entire
"Strip" near Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas. Drunken driving and
bar brawls so plagued the area around Fort Carson, Colo., that a
National Guard unit was put on "lockdown status" after returning from
Afghanistan in June. In the District, the Hawk 'n' Dove, a Capitol
Hill bar, has banned Marines without female dates.

In Massachusetts, meanwhile, the Norfolk County district attorney's
office has begun an initiative called "Beyond the Yellow Ribbons" to
prepare police and others to deal with struggling vets and the
stigmas they face. District Attorney William R. Keating says he has
received requests for the program's training video from organizations
in more than 20 states, because "the federal government simply isn't
providing enough guidance on how to deal with this."

Perhaps that's because the Bush administration's $500 billion-plus
"global struggle against violent extremism" has so far proved to be
one of the most socially and economically quarantined conflicts in
U.S. history. Whereas 12 percent of the population served in World
War II and 4 percent in the Vietnam War, less than half of one
percent of Americans are engaged in active duty in Iraq or
Afghanistan. Translation: Only a sliver of my generation has been
exposed to war's dirty psychological laundry.

But with a growing number of troops returning home from multiple
tours, more Americans like me -- a 23-year-old occasional volunteer
at Walter Reed and the girlfriend of a soldier serving in Iraq -- are
getting our first unsettling glimpse.

On a recent night at R.J. Bentley's, I perched near a young man
nursing a flask of whiskey who told me he'd been ordered to collect
his best friend's body parts from the crater of an improvised
explosive device, and an older vet with darting eyes who said he'd
tried to slit his wrists in Kuwait rather than return to Fallujah.
And if you agree that trauma begets trauma, the evening's trajectory
won't surprise you: Mix equal parts broken bodies and frayed minds,
stir in college kids who couldn't tell an IED from an iPod, add
alcohol, and things are bound to get explosive.

I suspect these aren't just the sort of routine bar fights that have
typified military culture since George Washington's troops sneaked
their first swigs of moonshine. Strike Pete Yazgier, and you may
slice your knuckles on his titanium skull. Toss an elbow at the man
in the corner, and you could get a shin-kick from his $26,000
motorized foot, an emblem of the spectacular violence that new
technologies are helping today's troops survive.

The rough-and-tumble encounters jibe with national statistics on the
effects of longer, repeated tours of duty. Soldiers who've deployed
to Iraq more than once have a 50 percent higher rate of combat
stress, according to one Army study, and soldiers with a higher rate
of combat stress exhibit approximately a 10 percent increase in anger-
management issues. Simple diagnoses such as "post-traumatic stress
disorder" and "generalized anxiety disorder" collapse under the
weight of it.

Consider Jonathan Schulze, an Iraq vet with two Purple Hearts who got
drunk at a Minnesota bar in January, then went home and hanged
himself from an electrical cord wrapped around a beam in his
basement. The tragedy unfolded only after the Marine machine-gunner
returned from Ramadi with deep psychological wounds, threw a 200-
pound potted tree through a window during a brawl, and beseeched the
local Veterans Affairs Department for help, only to be told that his
suicidal confessions put him 26th on the waiting list for assistance.
(According to a recent Pentagon report, suicide rates are 35 percent
higher for Iraq veterans than for the general population.)

Then there are cases like that of Spec. Richard Davis, who survived
"shock and awe" in Baghdad only to be stabbed to death by his fellow
soldiers in 2003 after celebrating his homecoming at a Hooters
restaurant and a topless bar near Fort Benning, Ga.

Institutional ignorance isn't the problem. In January, the Pentagon
released a survey cautioning that the rate of binge drinking in the
Army skyrocketed 30 percent between 2002 and 2005, hurting combat
readiness. Even so, the best response the Defense Department could
muster was a Web-based campaign called "That Guy," which goofily
implores soldiers to "Turn your speakers on, dude!" so that they can
hear cartoon-animated warnings about how guzzling beer might hurt
their sex lives by causing them to puke in their date's purse.

Perhaps the $2 million this cost would have been better spent on
comprehensive treatment programs for servicemen and women of the sort
that are sorely lacking at Walter Reed, where the renowned PTSD
program accepts a paltry average of 65 patients a year and a typical
mental health regimen involves, according to a report in The
Washington Post, random screenings of movies such as "The Devil Wears
Prada" and a dearth of one-on-one therapy with trained clinicians.

In my own small way, I've seen the price of this negligent government
policy, coupled with the military stigma against seeking help for
psychological distress. I've sat outside the hospital with Pete's
friends as they drank heavily, talked about friends' corpses,
compared R.I.P. tattoos and fed their psych meds to the squirrels to
pass the slow-drip nights. I've held the forehead of my courageous
boyfriend, Robert, as he shivered on the cold tile floor of our hotel
room, vomiting Scotch, on our last vacation in January, before his
most recent deployment. We laughed at his New Year's resolution --
"Don't get blown up" -- but all the while my brain screamed, "This
can't be normal!" because, well, my heart knew it wasn't, and because
I sensed the deeper pain his jokes masked.

"You don't get the option to not be scarred by war," he recently
wrote me from Iraq. "You don't get to shed your uniform and go home
like nothing's different. You forever carry the seeds of violence
inside."

Those seeds are sprouting like strangle-weed as the rest of America
bustles along, debating the fates of Posh Spice and Harry Potter, as
if war were just a pixilated thing that happens to far-away Muggles.
Some of these weeds can be uprooted: More than 45,000 vets overcame
the stigma of PTSD to seek medical help in the first quarter of 2007,
and national legislation such as the Wounded Warriors Act promises to
funnel more resources toward vets' mental health, if it ever escapes
congressional molasses.

But much of the current wars' noxious overgrowth is proving
ineradicable, coiling stealthily around our bars, jails, businesses
and private lives.

One damning manifestation is traumatic brain injury (TBI), the
unforeseen consequence of modern military technologies and equipment
such as Kevlar helmets. Sixty percent of all injured vets entering
Walter Reed suffer from TBI as a primary or secondary injury,
according to the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center.

Three of the four most notorious troublemakers I've gotten to know at
R.J. Bentley's are victims of TBI -- a silent disability that
receives little of the public sympathy afforded the war's more
visible amputees. And there's no snazzy Web site or government
program that will undo cranial nerve damage or recover a personality
that has fallen off the tip of its own tongue -- slow to remember,
quick to violent outbursts, unrecognizable to loved ones.

On a recent night, I loaded up the car with TBI-afflicted friends,
including Pete (who, for the record, is funny and smart and kind),
and drove to a happy-go-lucky bar in Adams Morgan in the District,
where the drinks come with cheerful pink umbrellas.

Approaching the bar, we saw a blond guy with a cast on his wrist.
"Hey, you were in Iraq, too?" asked Pete's friend Zach, tapping the
cast. The kid looked befuddled. "No -- I just fell at the pool."

The exchange was a perfect reflection of how the true costs of war
have been outsourced to a very few Americans, and a great many
Iraqis. But it also reminded me that full-scale containment of the
wreckage is impossible -- that, as Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe
wrote of imperial ventures in years past, "things fall apart."

You know, I've been trying for a week now to figure out who on earth would send me three gigantic boxes of coffee, and I *finally* noticed that at the bottom of the letter from Boca Java, YOU are mentioned as the person who gave my name and contact information to Operation 3 Million Cup.

You, girl, are way too much. But I'll have you know that three platoons + three gigantic boxes = one box of coffee for everyone, and it was richly appreciated. I'll write you a real thank you letter, but just so you know, THANK YOU~ ! 

Nothing says "I support you" to a MI company more than liquid caffeine! You rock, dude.

This kind of stuff just makes me so sad.

(the improves, btw, make me sad. the sustains are good. v. good.)

adifferentdrum threw it out there, and since it somewhat pertains to the point of this lj, here we go. Here's the challenge:

Warren Ellis a while back started a thread on his message board The Engine calling all writers to post a single page of script from any point in the script of their current projects. I thought it was a novel idea so I figured I'd start it here with a little difference.

I know one of you is working on a costume, a couple of you are doing artwork, a few of you are doing writerly things. So whoever you are, post a tidbit of what you're working on whatever it is! Be it a photo, a paragraph snippet, a WIP drawing. Anything! Let's see it. :> No preamble with the what's and why's of the project needed. ^.^

Everyone join in! Ok, now, go!

---


Their convoy had stopped barely ten minutes after leaving the gate of the small fire base Johnny and his compatriots had already come to recognize as their home away from home. The lead vehicle had been deterred by a suspicious lump of refuse and animal turd lying on the side of the road. The fact that there was a slender black wire rising from the crest of the animal waste cemented their concerns, and now it was just a matter of time before the Explosive Ordnance Disposal guys came and cleared away the probable roadside bomb that some unforgiving hajji had left for them earlier in the day.

For all they knew, hajji was up in the hills right now, impatiently thumbing the switch to the whatever-it-is, wishing to high heaven and Allah to blow them all to Kingdom Come, his deepest desires thwarted only by the invisible emanations from their anti-bomb-exploding gizmos suspended from the grates of their hummers. Normal people would be frightened by this idea. But sitting in the turret, the Iraqi sun bearing down upon him, his thoughts already wandering away from the convoy back to daydreams of his hometown of Haliewa on Oahu’s North Shore, the rising aquamarine tide frosted in white, his girlfriend in a black-and-white striped bikini... Johnny was already bored. Shifting his weight in his swing-seat, leaning forward so that his M240B’s butt-stock bit deep into his shoulder, causing a crick, it was pretty much all he could do to stay awake.

“Fuck,” he swore. “Let’s just GO.”

Movement beneath him, his team leader stirring in his seat, the passenger’s side. Sergeant Michael Lane, a tall white boy with a thick nose, emitted a rueful laugh. “It’s not going to get any better, Pavlo.”

“I’m dyin’ up here, bro.”

“Hang tough, Pavlo, we’ll be moving soon.”

“Better,” Johnny muttered, and the conversation died there. Minutes stretched by in silence. Johnny was briefly entertained by the sight of a dog, nose to tail thick with dried mud, as it padded past the convoy with brazen fearlessness, but besides another gunner in another truck earning some pricked ears in return for an enticing whistle, the dog was soon gone from sight. Johnny’s head fell forward, the edge of his helmet propped up against the rear sight of his weapon.

A sharp PING! brought him back to reality. Johnny’s head snapped back, and his breath caught tight in his chest; then he was all movement, blurting, “What the hell was that?” as he threw the turret into a spin. He realized too late that he’d already been facing the direction of the fire and spun around again to face it, but then Lane’s hand was gripping his trousers, trying to forcibly drag him down into the truck’s belly.

“SNIPER! PAV, GET DOWN!”

Johnny froze, then went slack, sliding down into the truck like a kid down a water slide, all limbs and movement, accidentally kicking the driver in the head on his way down. He came to an ungraceful thump in the middle of the truck, his boots all up in the front part of the vehicle’s business until Lane shoved him back with a rough hand, the other on the radio’s handset: “This is Barracuda 21, we’ve got direct fire--” He twisted in his seat to face Johnny. “What direction?”

It was hard trying to get his jaw to work. “Nine o’clock,” Johnny finally managed, and sat for a moment longer mutely as Lane relayed as much. His thoughts moved like pond scum; he wanted, sharply and suddenly, to be back in the turret. Back on his feet, Johnny felt Lane tugging on his trouser leg again, but ignored it this time. He stood for a moment straight up, staring out over the top of the barrier through which his weapon’s barrel was aimed.

Johnny was slammed back, almost out of the turret. Instead his back collided with the edge of the turret opening, his flak vest providing only moderate cushioning, and he bounced forward slightly, enough to slip through the seat and fall back gracelessly into the truck. His head smacked against the truck’s hard metal insides; not even Kevlar kept that from hurting.

Lane bellowed at him, something indecipherable, but Johnny couldn’t answer; he opened his mouth and heard bubbling, felt wet. Frightened, he fell back into darkness and became still.

3 miles. 30 minutes. Pretty crappy. :p

On the plus side, I haven't stunk this bad in a long, long time. I neglected to take a shower this morning because I planned to go to the gym during the day, but I didn't until now. So I have unbathed sweaty grossness AND wonderful gym workout grossness.

If my parents were here, we'd indulge in the greatest family tradition of giving each other disgustingly wet hugs.

On the upside, I'm finally getting back into a regular gym schedule. If I can go three times a week after work, plus run my Tang Soo Do class the other three times, and leave a day to be lazy and recover, then I'll consider myself 'staying in shape.'

Until then, I'm fat and stinky, and I run like a hippopotamus. :D

*stinks*

Some days it's just really hard to remember what I'm doing out here.

"The noises without increase in volume, pass into my dream and yet linger in my memory. In a half sleep I watch Kat dip and raise the ladle. I love him, his shoulders, his angular, stooping figure - and at the same time I see behind him woods and stars, and a clear voice utters words that bring me peace, to me, a soldier in big boots, belt, and knapsack, taking the road that lies before him under the high heaven, forgetting and seldom sorrow, for ever pressing on under the wide night sky.

"A little soldier and a clear voice, and if anyone were to caress him he would hardly understand, this soldier with the big boots and shut heart, who marches because he is wearing big boots, and has forgotten all else but marching. Beyond the skyline is a country with flowers, lying so still he would like to weep. There are sights there that he has not forgotten, because he never possessed them - perplexing, yet lost to him. Are not his twenty summers there?"

- Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet On The Western Front.

"All too rarely do I hear people asking just what it is that we've done to make so many children's hearts so hard, or what collectively we might do to right their moral compass - what values we must live by. Instead I see us doing what we've always done - pretending that these children are somehow not our own."

- Barack Obama, Dreams From My Father.

I have to say, I really like Linkin Park's new video for "What I've Done." Part of it's the "ooh neat" factor with how the artist (what would you call someone who splices video clips into musical sequences for a living?) tied in all of these different images that represented the same feelings and motivations, but different ends of the spectrum - like Ghandi and Saddam Hussein. Part of me knows that I know I'm only intrigued because of the shock factor of most of the sequences, the excitement of living vicariously through other people's pain. They made a statement without really choosing sides, and I liked the glimmers of hope amidst all the self-inflicted hurt. Bravo, Linkin Park.

For you iTunes cats out there, check it out. It's worth the $1.99.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/16/vtech.shooting/index.html

WHAT THE HELL, VIRGINIA?

31 dead?

God, please don't let there have been anyone I know there.

Well, I'm stuck in the Atlanta airport for the next four hours! Don't suppose anyone in the area wants to go out for a mid-day snack or something? :D I have to try, it's my last day in the States!

EDIT: Apparently I was SPITTING DISTANCE away from Rudy Guiliani and didn't even realize it. >( Because everyone was referring to him as Mr. Mayor, so I assumed he was a local mayor, but after he and his entourage left, I heard someone refer to him after the fact as Mayor Guiliani. ARGH. Guiliani is the only other candidate I would probably vote for if Obama didn't get the ticket (I'm one of those middle people that tends to swing close votes and annoy the piss out of pollers), and it would have been nice to at least got a picture or something. :| I was too busy talking to my mom on AIM though, which is a decent excuse, but ARRRGH. Well, if he gets the ticket and the vote, I guess someday I can say we were in the same room...? Oh well, haha. Still, pretty neat to see him out at the USO like that. I wish I'd had a better chance to see him in person, but all I got was a glimpse when he took a photo with someone (that should have been my first clue, honestly), and since I didn't recognize him, I promptly shut him and his media tagalongs out of sight and mind...

Well, if anyone's watching the coverage on Channel 46 tonight, you might see me because the cameraman took some shots of me on the computer while I was talking to Mom. ;P I'm the girl that looks like a teenage boy in glasses. Hah!

vacation

1. Can you cook?
2. What was your dream growing up?
3. What talent do you wish you had?
4. Favorite place?
5. Favorite vegetable?
6. What was the last book you read?
7. What zodiac sign are you ?
8. Any Tattoos and/or Piercings?
9. Worst Habit?
10. Do we know each other outside of lj?
11. What is your favorite sport?
12. Negative or Optimistic attitude?
13. What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me?
14. Worst thing to ever happen to you?
15. Tell me one weird fact about you:
16. Do you have any pets?
17. Do you know how to do the macerana?
18. What time is it where you are now?
19. Do you think clowns are cute or scary?
20. If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be?
21. Would you be my crime partner or my conscience?
22. What color eyes do you have?
23. Ever been arrested?
24. Bottle or Draft?
25. If you won $10,000 dollars today, what would you do with it?
26. What kind of bubble gum do you prefer to chew?
27. What's your favorite bar to hang at?
28. Do you believe in ghosts?
29. Favorite thing to do in your spare time?
30. Do you swear a lot?
31. Biggest pet peeve?
32. In one word, how would you describe yourself?
33. Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you?