1. No matter where I end up and no matter what I do, I will always use the standard ring on my cell phone. Anyone who uses songs should just go ahead and kill themselves.

2. I hate handicap parking spots. You should not be driving if you’re handicap or old.

3. I am a certified badass

4. Also got my PhD in awesomeness

5. I spend money like it was growing on trees. Unfortunately the crop is ready for picking only twice a year.

6. I lost one of my legs at childbirth. Ladies, do you wanna find out what my other leg is?

7. I suck in to whistle.

8. I cannot stand Mariah Carey. At some point you’re not singing anymore, you’re squeaking.

9. I majored in Biology but I have a job in finance. I like to attribute the job offer to my awesomness and sexiness.

10. I have no idea who half the screennames on my buddy list are. Honestly people, at some point, anything with princess, foul and/or baby language have got to go.

11. I proved that you can live with working 13 hour days without a day off for 7 months and counting.

12. I miss colors. Everything here is a shade of tan.

13. I have my own special way of dealing with impulse buying. I put the item down, I walk out the store, and spend the next 5 weeks researching the product, the reviews, the pros and cons, the alternatives, and then I obsess over it until I break from the lack of sleep.

14. I sat through 2 girls one cup without wincing or flinching.

15. I can cook….You will not want to eat it.

16. I have a long “to do before I die” list. It consists of 125.5 women. One is a midget.

17. I never understood what was so offensive about the following rhyme.

Ching ching chinaman - Ching ching is a common name for Chinese people.
Sitting on a fence – Some people sit on fences.
Trying to make a dollar out of fifty - Chinese people are naturally fruitful and Entrepreneurial in spirit.

Whats the problem with that??

18. I have a weight problem. I can’t gain it.

19. I cannot poop after I shower. It’s just not happening. I also cannot eat after I brush my teeth. I have hygiene issues.

20. I cannot study, sleep, or workout with music on.

21. I constantly spell the word “dosen’t” wrong

22. My mom cries whenever she hears me speak Chinese. Its that awful.

23. Really fat people disgust me. I don’t care what you say, it is not genetic and you can control it fatty.

24. People say I’m hairless, I say I’m aerodynamic.

25. As a young child, I always aspired to grow up and one day be an analyst of some sort in the finance industry.....yeah....right...

 

Soldier:  Sir, We will be upgrading to Portajohns next week.

Me:  You can Upgrade to Portajohns?!?!

...........................

I paid a visit to one teams that’s situated in one of the more remote sites we work in.  It is so far out there that they were still tasking privates to burn shit with kerosene.  My guys were living in tents that had gravel floors up till a week before my arrival.  There was no menu for chow, and you eat what you get.  MREs were still the standard lunch meal. 

 

This location that we were at, took incoming fire almost everyday and although there is never a serious threat of a breach, it was still daunting that there are only dirt filled barriers that separated us from the outside.  At night you were shaken awake by outgoing artillery fire, after which you would wonder if that shot hit its intended target or it would be another tragic story you see on CNN.    

 

The thing is, in lieu of the awful situation we were in, I expected to be bombarded with a list of complaints.  Contrary to this, I was greeted with open arms, smiling faces, and the usual pleasantries of seeing a familiar face.  I brought them up to date on the current events of the world and offered them the opportunity to rotate out to another site.  To my surprise, no one accepted.  As unbelievable as it seemed, my soldiers were…. happy? 

 

How can this be?  There was not indoor plumbing, no privacy and no entertainment whatsoever. 

 

I have soldiers at sites with more amenities that bitched and groaned about things that seemed trivial compared to this.

 

Over the next couple of days, I observe them work and live together.  Its inspiring how quickly this group of soldiers were able to band together even with their huge differences in background.  Black, white, Hispanic, male, female or other, nothing mattered except for the survival of the collective.  They shared food, living space, stories and genuine laughs.   It was a testament to the human spirit.  

 

Before I took off for the next base, I commended my soldier for the family they’ve fostered in lieu of the families they left behind.  I departed with a heavy heart as I leave their world of simple pleasures back to the consortium of emails, meetings, and convoys I will return to. 

 

I got to thinking that day on the return trip.  Perhaps they have the answer right there.  Perhaps the answers we seek is not as complicated as we imagined it to be.  Maybe when we are stripped of all the luxuries to life and forced to band together and recognize that we are all just another vulnerable animal in this world could we learn to cherish each other and achieve world peace.

Happy Holidays Folks!

I was hoping that it would not happen, but it is looking inevitable at this point.  I’ve been flying and convoying around Iraq for the last week and a half doing what we like to call “battlefield circulation.”  It’s our professional way of saying “visit the troops so that they know you still exist and they still take orders from you.”  Alas, all the flight cancellations and delays have broken my tightly planned schedule and it looks like we’re going to have to go to overtime and tack on some more days on the road.  But do I fret?  NO!  For I am a United States officer, sworn to  lead my troops into combat, reenlist them  before the allure of the bonus wears off, and serve them food during the holidays…  But only on the big ones like Thanksgiving and Christmas, and only on the main line…. These bars don’t do dishes.  (By bars I mean my rank.)

 

The plan was to schedule my visits right after Thanksgiving but before Christmas so that I can reap the benefits of the first holiday, bid good tidings to my troops for both, and make it back to my AO to celebrate Christmas with the ones I love… My laptop, my TV, and 3 seasons of “Prison break.”  These added days will push my return to base date past Christmas and hopefully before New Years so that I may celebrate that milestone with my family….. of websites I frequent…. Facebook, Gmail, Digg, and Autoblog. 

 

Truth be told, I have never been one to celebrate any of America’s great holidays, not even the federal ones.   But then again, I don’t truly celebrate anything at all.  Birthdays, promotions, Wednesdays (hump day) have all come and gone as just another day in my life.  This lack of spirit can all be traced back to my parents.  As much can I gush about the values they’ve instilled in me and the teachings of yore, they’ve also managed to instill a strong resentment for holidays and the exchange of stuff.  Stuff is evil.

 

 

O who am I kidding, I love stuff.  Stuff is awesome, stuff is wonderful, If stuff was personified, it would have Jessica Alba’s body, Beyonce’s butt, and Batman’s face because they are all  that comparably awesome.  I didn’t get much stuff as a little kid, but boy did I love it whenever I received something new…ish. 

 

Speaking of which, let me tell you the story of my first Christmas.  I was in second grade at the time…

 

Sidenote  [I came in halfway through Kindergarten, and was in ESL for 1^st grade…. Yes I was in ESL, you got a problem with that?  I’ll have you know that I was one of the few who made it out of the ESL program and into the army as opposed to being in the army and still in need of some ESL refresher courses.]

 

…and we were sewing santa hats together using scraps of linen and yarn.  I remember thinking “wow this is fun, I wonder why mom complained so much about working at the factory.”  Bear in mind that this was my first Christmas, ie first time I heard of the word, so I had not the slightest idea of why the classroom was so festively decorated and why we were making linen triangle hats with a cotton ball at the end of it.  This was certainly completely different from ESL where at that same point and time the prior year, I was striving to remember that it was pronounced “island” and not “is-land”. 

 

My teacher gathered the class around her and read us stories of Christmas, sugarplums, and Santa ho, ho ho-ing to all the good little boys and girls bringing about joy, love and stuff.  And what mind-blowing stuff he brought… stuff that can be had simply by staying off the naughty list. 

 

Now, I knew even as a young child that my parent’s perception of good behavior blows every other parents ideals away.  What one parent sees as good behavior, my folks will see as their downfall as disciplinarians and a disgrace to the Wong family name… which is like half of China if you think about it. 

 

So taking into account that I was in the second grade and not in a gang,

 

not a junkie,

 

not been on Maury,

 

and was not any lucky lady’s baby daddy, I figured I was a shoe-in to be on the top of that white bastard’s list. 

 

But it was not meant to be. 

I made a list of very reasonable demands that night, and put that list of very reasonable demands into my stocking/ Santa hat.  I did not expect everything off that list, but even one thing off that very reasonable list was more than enough.  There were some truly awesome things on my very reasonable list. 

 

Visions of sugar plums and all that crap were dancing in my head that night as I went to bed along with some very high expectations.  My teacher really played it up on us and my gullible brain ate it up like it was one of those delicious sugarplums.   All I could think of as I went to bed that one snowy night, was how I was going to make use of all that awesome stuff.

 

The next morning was not so awesome. 

 

I awoke from my slumber and looked around for the bicycle that was on my list.  No bicycle.  Well that’s ok, I didn’t know how to ride one anyway.  I looked around the room again and could not help but notice that there was nothing different,  ie no new additions to the room since the prior night.  I looked over at my stocking/ santa hat.  It looked a little flaccid.  Maybe the other stuff I wanted is magically in there.  I mean c’mon, the guy sneaks into peoples homes and still manages to stay jolly even though you can clearly tell that he is slowly dying from diabetes, high blood pressure, and a cholesterol count that’s through the roof.

 

So I took a gander inside saw something in that stocking/santa hat  Was it the lego set I wanted?  Or the gameboy I asked for?  NO!  All I got for Christmas that year was my very reasonable list that I created the day prior. 

 

I did not shout, I did not cry, nor did I pout, and I’ll tell you why.  Santa clause is a racist and I swore to bring him down.  Never again will I let anyone get me all riled up about these things.

 

And so it was like that every subsequent year.  A Christmas tradition as I call it.  The holiday would come, I would expect nothing, get nothing, and admire the new stuff other kids received.  That was the same for my birthdays and my milestones until not too long ago when the cycle was broken.

 

But that’s a different story.

 

So here I am writing in the darkness that engulfs the Iraq-Iran Border.  I’ve resigned that I’m destined to spend my Christmas’ alone with my thoughts.

 

My rifle will be my tree,

the MRAP my sleigh,

the driver, my Rudolph,

and I’ll Ho ho ho all throughout southeastern Iraq, bringing sugarplums and candy canes to the children of Iraq…. Literally.   Seriously folks stop sending so much candy. 

 

Sad isn’t it?

Makes you feel kind of torn up and awful inside doesn’t it?

Wondering if this amazing story is true and not just something I made up? 

Well that’s for me to know and you to never find out.

 

In the meanwhile, before the effects wears off, please send your guilty conscious Christmas packages to.

 

398th CSSB/ 590th QM
Unit #3124
APO AE 09344

 

Happy Holidays folks!

Waking up groggily to witness your hip gyrate and thrust to the tune of “We like to party- Venga boys” (think six flags) then bolting up in embarrassment before realizing that there is no one else there.  

 

What a day.