Sunday's are usually pretty slow around here with no flying being done so I spent most of the morning catching up on my reading, emails, and of course, wasting a bit of time on the net. I was reading an article about a North Korean immigrant was struggling to adjust to life outside of the prison camp that he was born and raised into and I pulled up a Google search on life in North Korea and spent the next few hours reading one heart-breaking story after another.
Sometimes it's easy to forget how good I have it in life while at this very same moment as I sit in front of my own computer, with an A/C unit running and a full belly, millions of poor souls a few thousand miles away are desperately eking out a pathetic existence with no concept of the outside world other than what their Glorious Leader wants them to hear. Reading about the country is both tragic and comical at the same time. Ideas and beliefs that even the most naive of Americans, except perhaps a few from the People's Republic of Boulder in Colorado or Berkeley, would dismiss as insane are perceived as absolute truth when put forth by the Government. Eye-opening for sure.
On a related note, I recently received as a birthday present from my mom "The Imperial Cruise" by James Bradley, the same author who wrote "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Flyboys". In his search for what lead up to the events of WWII on Iwo Jima that killed so many Americans and affected his father so greatly, he explores the influence of Teddy Roosevelt (never liked the guy anyway) and his cronies on politics and wars of the 20th century. Could it be possible that in a roundabout way, America shares a significant portion of the burden for the current state of the two Koreas, and with it, the misery of the North? He definitely makes a strong case for it, though that was hardly the point of the book.
As for today, everything that I do; church, reading, talking to friends and family, will be done with the almost subconscious awareness that the freedom by which I act is definitely not a given.
And so I turn back to my music and my new book; some Michelle Branch song and World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War on my Kindle. It is most definitely good to be an American.
Below are some good links detailing North Korea's ideas on a few things:
Some interesting thoughts on Reunification
Becoming a "friend of Korea" for only 50 Euros. I considered this just to see what kind of stuff I'd get in the mail but I imagine I might lose my security clearance for something like that.
The best part is that I'd get discounts on hot items like North Korean movies & music.
For another 30 Euros, I was sorely tempted to buy the DVD "A traffic controller on crossroads".
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
I miss out on all of the good stuff while I waste away over here...
"Boobquake" rocks the world of seismology
In mid-April, senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi issued a warning that recent earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, and elsewhere were caused by women's loose sex and immodest dress. Immediately, Jennifer McCreight responded on Facebook by urging women worldwide to dress provocatively on April 26 to create "boobquake" and test the cleric's theory, and at least 90,000 women promised they would reveal serious cleavage on that date. On April 26, following a several-day drought of earthquakes, a Richter-scale-measuring 6.5 quake hit just south of Taiwan. (Slight advantage to the ayatollah, since a Purdue University seismologist observed that a 6.5 quake was not uncommon for that region.) [Courier-Mail (Brisbane)-AFP, 4-17-10; Indianapolis Star, 4-28-10]
Sunday, May 23, 2010
A change of pace
It's funny how life works sometimes. Last night as a buddy and I were sitting out in our office on the flightline lamenting what a boring day it had been, the rocket attack sirens start blaring followed by a the faint scream of a rocket passing overhead and then the dull unmistakable *whoomp whoomp!* thudding of rocket warheads. We walked out onto our porch to watch the fireworks when the sirens went off again and more rockets hit. We get rocketed fairly regularly but it's usually just ones and twos so this was a bit different already.
Now, on the base here they have what they call the giant voice. It's a system of giant speakers set up on towers scattered throughout the base. An office that coordinates the security of the base has the microphone for the speakers and is crewed primarily by British soldiers. I love the Brits but sometimes it can be tough to understand what they're saying. And the speakers don't make it any easier because they are wired in series and there is a slight delay from one to the next. So when tower A starts saying something, it'll go for a second or two before tower B kicks in, and it goes on down the line until you've got 20 different towers each shouting a different syllable of the same sentence. Throw in what would otherwise be a charming British accent, and the resulting screeching inevitably confuses 24,000 people at once. It's even more amusing when the sirens go off because the delay also affects the sound of that, and then you have 20 different towers all simultaneously blaring a different pitch of the siren. That sound makes the dogs howl.
But yeah, that went on for a bit and then the giant voice began hollering that there was a ground attack in progress from the north. We were just a couple hundred yards from the northwestern perimeter of the base so this was something of a concern and we climbed up on the roof of our building just in case some angry little men came wandering by on the ground level and set out a couple of infrared markers to identify ourselves as friendly to the attack choppers and UAV's orbiting overhead.
We sat and sipped our instant lemonade and munched on MRE crackers for another 20 minutes or so before we started seeing tracer rounds and flares around the perimeter. Suddenly out of dark sky tracers came pouring from an unseen helicopter and ricocheted in all different directions. Then the distinctive *whoosh!* and I could trace the path of the launched missile as it trailed sparks across the sky before it slammed into the ground right next to the fence in a bursting flash of orange streamers, not unlike the fireworks we used to shoot at each other as kids. *whoosh...BOOM!* Another! Some more gunfire rattled off and then the noise faded and all we could hear was the distant droning of aircraft engines overhead and the hum of generators.
A few minutes went by and I was just starting to gnaw the beef jerky strips in my MRE when more automatic weapons opened up outside the nearby fence, quickly followed by more machine gun fire from the choppers. A couple of dull explosions followed and then a helicopter came in real low and must've emptied a whole rocket pod right on the fence. There were a few more scattered bursts of machinegun fire that took out some of the lights on the compound between us and the fence, but it pretty much quieted down as I imagine whatever survivors were left tried to beat it back to the safety of their villages. The base was on lockdown so we just went back in the office and locked the door and went to sleep, me on the floor and my buddy on the desk, and I slept like a log until 0530. Not necessarily dangerous to me, but it was quite an evening.
As I watched the furious pounding of missiles, rockets, and machineguns, I felt immensely grateful that I have all of these assets on my side to protect me. At the same time I felt a tremendous pity for the terror that must have gripped the poor dumb bastards caught in the wire. Imagine some idiot mullah getting you all fired up to go kill yourself some infidels and claim whatever glory awaits a martyr, and your last moments on Earth are spent running through the darkness pursued by some terrifying attack helicopters that you can hear but not see, and knowing that you're gonna die for absolutely nothing more than getting close enough to maybe touch the perimeter fence, and for some big Al Qaida clown to make headlines for a day or two to show how they're really dishing it out to the infidel invaders. What a waste of life.
Now, on the base here they have what they call the giant voice. It's a system of giant speakers set up on towers scattered throughout the base. An office that coordinates the security of the base has the microphone for the speakers and is crewed primarily by British soldiers. I love the Brits but sometimes it can be tough to understand what they're saying. And the speakers don't make it any easier because they are wired in series and there is a slight delay from one to the next. So when tower A starts saying something, it'll go for a second or two before tower B kicks in, and it goes on down the line until you've got 20 different towers each shouting a different syllable of the same sentence. Throw in what would otherwise be a charming British accent, and the resulting screeching inevitably confuses 24,000 people at once. It's even more amusing when the sirens go off because the delay also affects the sound of that, and then you have 20 different towers all simultaneously blaring a different pitch of the siren. That sound makes the dogs howl.
But yeah, that went on for a bit and then the giant voice began hollering that there was a ground attack in progress from the north. We were just a couple hundred yards from the northwestern perimeter of the base so this was something of a concern and we climbed up on the roof of our building just in case some angry little men came wandering by on the ground level and set out a couple of infrared markers to identify ourselves as friendly to the attack choppers and UAV's orbiting overhead.
We sat and sipped our instant lemonade and munched on MRE crackers for another 20 minutes or so before we started seeing tracer rounds and flares around the perimeter. Suddenly out of dark sky tracers came pouring from an unseen helicopter and ricocheted in all different directions. Then the distinctive *whoosh!* and I could trace the path of the launched missile as it trailed sparks across the sky before it slammed into the ground right next to the fence in a bursting flash of orange streamers, not unlike the fireworks we used to shoot at each other as kids. *whoosh...BOOM!* Another! Some more gunfire rattled off and then the noise faded and all we could hear was the distant droning of aircraft engines overhead and the hum of generators.
A few minutes went by and I was just starting to gnaw the beef jerky strips in my MRE when more automatic weapons opened up outside the nearby fence, quickly followed by more machine gun fire from the choppers. A couple of dull explosions followed and then a helicopter came in real low and must've emptied a whole rocket pod right on the fence. There were a few more scattered bursts of machinegun fire that took out some of the lights on the compound between us and the fence, but it pretty much quieted down as I imagine whatever survivors were left tried to beat it back to the safety of their villages. The base was on lockdown so we just went back in the office and locked the door and went to sleep, me on the floor and my buddy on the desk, and I slept like a log until 0530. Not necessarily dangerous to me, but it was quite an evening.
As I watched the furious pounding of missiles, rockets, and machineguns, I felt immensely grateful that I have all of these assets on my side to protect me. At the same time I felt a tremendous pity for the terror that must have gripped the poor dumb bastards caught in the wire. Imagine some idiot mullah getting you all fired up to go kill yourself some infidels and claim whatever glory awaits a martyr, and your last moments on Earth are spent running through the darkness pursued by some terrifying attack helicopters that you can hear but not see, and knowing that you're gonna die for absolutely nothing more than getting close enough to maybe touch the perimeter fence, and for some big Al Qaida clown to make headlines for a day or two to show how they're really dishing it out to the infidel invaders. What a waste of life.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Cougars, vomit, and the future
So there I was on the last leg of another hot and sweaty day in the back a chopper heading home after a day spent hopping from one dusty FOB to another, I had 4 or 5 passengers on board and the windows open to try to cool it off. One of my pax, a tiny little Indian guy that couldn't have weighed more than 100 lbs, he seemed pretty nervous when he got on board and got even more anxious when we lifted off and went bouncing into the dust-filled sky over the red desert. I just figured he was like any number of the hundreds of other guys that fly around with us so I just ignored him as I got back to reading a book on my Kindle. After about 30 minutes and just a bit of mild bumping, out of the corner of my eye I saw him lean his head back and I just assumed he was dozing off but suddenly he pitched forward and let loose with the most massive cannon-load of vomit that I've ever seen.
In spite of the noise and his obvious discomfort I was suddenly overcome with the desire to ask him a dozen stupid questions like, "Hey, was it something I said? Or "Who wants chowder?"
Instead I kicked the trash bucket and tossed a roll of paper towels over to him and made him clean up his mess and then opened up the window directly behind him as fresh air usually helps with airsickness and it seemed to do the trick. However as we came in on our final approach and the aircraft was doing its violent washing-machine routine as it hovered into the LZ, he suddenly grabbed the bucket again and let loose with another blast almost as big as the first. Except this time it came shooting out his nose as well and from the way his eyes were bugging out, I thought he was gonna pop his eyeballs out of his head and squirt vomit out of his eye sockets. Taxiing to our parking spot, he let go with two more bursts, neither as large as the first two but impressive nonetheless. The other guys in the bird just stared at him in awe. Here a man had puked up probably 5% of his body weight in about 30 minutes and still had the strength to walk. I've been a few places and babysat my fair share of drunks and helped even helped take care of my preggo friends, I've gotta say I was impressed with this little guy! Or maybe he was just the ugliest pregnant chick I've ever seen lol.
Ahhh, I wish I had more exciting things happening in my life than work but unfortunately one of the great curses of the desert is the boredom, especially the off-work hours. On a particularly slow evening awhile back a few of us sat down and decided to try out some of the more unique dating websites that the internet has to offer and I have to say that I was a hit on both Cougarlife.com (old ladies, not the BYU variety) and some Indian site called Gogrumogru.com. Those old ladies are crazy lol. But I think from here on out if I decide that I want to meet anyone off of the internet I'll stick to the more mainstream type websites...and girls no more than 10 years older than me.
And R&R plans...I hate trying to make up my mind about where to go and what to do. I've got to pick and choose between a bunch of awesome places and people. So far I've got Virginia, Ukraine, London, Germany, Denver, Utah, Spokane, Vancouver, and a few others as potential destinations. 30 days just isn't enough!
In spite of the noise and his obvious discomfort I was suddenly overcome with the desire to ask him a dozen stupid questions like, "Hey, was it something I said? Or "Who wants chowder?"
Instead I kicked the trash bucket and tossed a roll of paper towels over to him and made him clean up his mess and then opened up the window directly behind him as fresh air usually helps with airsickness and it seemed to do the trick. However as we came in on our final approach and the aircraft was doing its violent washing-machine routine as it hovered into the LZ, he suddenly grabbed the bucket again and let loose with another blast almost as big as the first. Except this time it came shooting out his nose as well and from the way his eyes were bugging out, I thought he was gonna pop his eyeballs out of his head and squirt vomit out of his eye sockets. Taxiing to our parking spot, he let go with two more bursts, neither as large as the first two but impressive nonetheless. The other guys in the bird just stared at him in awe. Here a man had puked up probably 5% of his body weight in about 30 minutes and still had the strength to walk. I've been a few places and babysat my fair share of drunks and helped even helped take care of my preggo friends, I've gotta say I was impressed with this little guy! Or maybe he was just the ugliest pregnant chick I've ever seen lol.
Ahhh, I wish I had more exciting things happening in my life than work but unfortunately one of the great curses of the desert is the boredom, especially the off-work hours. On a particularly slow evening awhile back a few of us sat down and decided to try out some of the more unique dating websites that the internet has to offer and I have to say that I was a hit on both Cougarlife.com (old ladies, not the BYU variety) and some Indian site called Gogrumogru.com. Those old ladies are crazy lol. But I think from here on out if I decide that I want to meet anyone off of the internet I'll stick to the more mainstream type websites...and girls no more than 10 years older than me.
And R&R plans...I hate trying to make up my mind about where to go and what to do. I've got to pick and choose between a bunch of awesome places and people. So far I've got Virginia, Ukraine, London, Germany, Denver, Utah, Spokane, Vancouver, and a few others as potential destinations. 30 days just isn't enough!
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
More pigeons
As we were out flying today, something happened that brought back a few funny memories for me...funny for me, not so funny for the other party involved. We were taking off from some dusty base out in the middle of nowhere and I was leaning into the cockpit trying to point out something to the pilots when I looked out the windshield and saw a big flock of pigeons coming at us. It was as if time slowed down a bit and I could easily pick out individual birds with their frantic expressions, I could almost hear their little bird-brained thoughts, "...wow...Omg...WTF IS THAT?!?? AAAHHHHHHH...." Good thing for all of us we somehow missed every single bird. Of course it'd be a stupid bird to fly into a giant roaring MI-8 helicopter, but that's pigeons for ya.
As I sat down in my jumpseat I started remembering all of the bird strikes that I've had over the years in cars, bikes, buses, and especially a memorable ride in an Army chopper. In that particular instance, we were zooming along one gloomy and wet winter day when the chopper made a series of violent banks and jigs as the pilots saw a flock of birds ahead and tried to dodge them, and then *BAM!* we hit a pigeon. I had a headset on so I heard what was going on but for the other passengers, it must have been pretty scary because the bird actually hit a pitot tube and just disintegrated in a bloody mess that smeared all over the door gunner and window. Of course one of the two girls screamed and made a fool of herself, but then again so did two or three of the guys.
Ahhh the memories. Every time I start to forget how stupid pigeons are, the avian gods choose a sacrificial pigeon to remind me firsthand. Why me? Maybe because I'm the only one who maintains a written memory of these dead pigeons, even if it means memorializing their stupidity in stories about buses and choppers nailing them.
In other news, still can't wait for R&R this coming fall. I've yet to decide what I'm going to do with the 30 or so days that I'm taking, other than getting my wisdom teeth pulled. Loads of fun there. I think I'll try to find a few folks to go camping with. Lazing away in my hammock by a fire sounds really good right now, maybe plinking targets with my rifle, or panning some more gold nuggets out of my secret stream up in the mountains. Ah well, fun and good times have a way of finding me where ever I go so as long as I make it to church every week and don't kill anyone, I'll count it as a success.
As I sat down in my jumpseat I started remembering all of the bird strikes that I've had over the years in cars, bikes, buses, and especially a memorable ride in an Army chopper. In that particular instance, we were zooming along one gloomy and wet winter day when the chopper made a series of violent banks and jigs as the pilots saw a flock of birds ahead and tried to dodge them, and then *BAM!* we hit a pigeon. I had a headset on so I heard what was going on but for the other passengers, it must have been pretty scary because the bird actually hit a pitot tube and just disintegrated in a bloody mess that smeared all over the door gunner and window. Of course one of the two girls screamed and made a fool of herself, but then again so did two or three of the guys.
Ahhh the memories. Every time I start to forget how stupid pigeons are, the avian gods choose a sacrificial pigeon to remind me firsthand. Why me? Maybe because I'm the only one who maintains a written memory of these dead pigeons, even if it means memorializing their stupidity in stories about buses and choppers nailing them.
In other news, still can't wait for R&R this coming fall. I've yet to decide what I'm going to do with the 30 or so days that I'm taking, other than getting my wisdom teeth pulled. Loads of fun there. I think I'll try to find a few folks to go camping with. Lazing away in my hammock by a fire sounds really good right now, maybe plinking targets with my rifle, or panning some more gold nuggets out of my secret stream up in the mountains. Ah well, fun and good times have a way of finding me where ever I go so as long as I make it to church every week and don't kill anyone, I'll count it as a success.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
