Creating a Monster

Today the weather here was perfect. Cool leaning toward cold, dark and overcast, windy but not steady.. it was windy in gusts that shook all the tents. Perfect nap weather. So we only had one short job to do today and that pretty much suits everybody fine. Ramadan is coming to an end and not a minute too soon, there have been 13 consecutive days of attacks on the main road we use every day and nobody wants the next attack to be on our team. I guess everyone back in the states is probably upset over the latest media craze “marine shoots injured unarmed iraqi prisoner in head”. I am out of touch with the pulse of the people being, for the most part, totally isolated over here from all mass media. Probably makes me sound like a beast but in my opinion the only fucked up thing that guy did was do it with the camera present. I remember that scene in Full Metal Jacket when that guy kills the injured Vietnamese sniper and how Thompson’s grandfather (retired ww2 marine mastersergeant with a bunch of combat under his belt) was totally outraged. He thought that as soon as the enemy combatant had lost the ability to fight that you should give medical attention and take that person prisoner.

Noah, Matt, and I all went to talk to the finance guy for the company to follow up on repayment of our travel expenses and ended up sitting there while he showed us every gruesome picture on his computer. He was one of these dudes that has a huge collection of bloody headwound photographs where some guys would have porn. Some of that stuff is kinda interesting to check out.. maybe it’s a guy thing or a military thing to look at images of horror and make jokes about it but it just seemed a little off for the finance dude to be sitting there like ‘oh boy, wait till you guys see this one’ then opens up some picture of a dudes parts after a bomb went off or something like that. Anyway, at least he’s following up on our cash for us.

Road March

Recently Noah and I have become entangled with one of the dudes that works on the camp here with us. We don’t actually work directly with this guy, but we see him on a regular basis around camp and there have been some strange things afoot at the circle-K. First of all, we always see this one guy going on these long road marches towards or returning from Camp Striker (about 2 miles from our compound). He is wearing full combat equipment, with AK, and wearing one of those iraqi scarves around his neck. Noah and I were always like ‘what the hell is that dude doing?!? That is so weird’ because it is strange. Then one day I was getting vehicle keys so that we could go off camp and eat and the dude confronts me:

road march “are you allowed to use these vehicles?”

me “well yeah, at least that’s what i’ve been told” (surprised but calm)

road march “well we have these vehicles for very specific uses”

me “ok. i wouldn’t use them if i thought i weren’t allowed” (as nice as you could ever say it)

road march “hey! calm down!” (angry tone)

Noah and I just looked at each other like ‘what the fuck??!?’

anyway.. so this was more proof that the dude was weird, I mean to snap at me and say calm down when he was the one all fired up. I asked a few people about the dude because it just didn’t seem to add up and discovered that he had a girlfriend over at Camp Striker. He used to take a vehicle over there when he would go to see her but was told that he could not just keep a vehicle out of the vehicle pool all night while he spent time with his girlfriend. Anyway, it all seemed to be adding up.. this explained both the road marches as well as the anger about me using the vehicle.

Some time passed until about a week ago when Noah was in the bathroom brushing his teeth. Road march comes in, takes a piss, then on his way out the door says:

road march “hey, why do you leave the water running like that?”

noah (no comment.. just kinda shrugs)

road march “well, you know people wonder why we run out of water in this place”

noah “dude, we don’t run out of water.. we just run out of HOT water”

road march “well we used to, maybe you just weren’t here then!” (kind of implying that not only is noah a bad person for being a water waster but for being new as well)

and the dude walks out. Noah comes back to the tent and were both just like.. fine.. this dude is a weirdo asshole. Noah was kinda pissed off about the dude making those comments and started asking people in the tent what the fuck was up with that guy. He even drew a funny picture on one of the white boards involving road march and some penises and stuff like that. We were content just to stay the fuck away from him and hopefully avoid future incident. Well that plan was working fine until tonight.

We were just pulling back into camp after getting dinner and road march was at the front gate. He waved us down with his AK and asked for a ride back to the tents, I said ‘sure dude, hop in’ and we were off. The ride was very quiet until road march says:

road march “I think I might have rubbed you the wrong way” (after discussion we decided that noah rolled his eyes at the dude as he got into the car)

Me “huh? you talkin about me?”

road march “well I guess both of you”

noah “yeah, well you come off a little weird”

road march “well you come off a little weird too, it all depends on perspective”

noah “well you seem to always start stuff with people for whatever reason”

road march “well i don’t try to do that but i do believe in instincts”

as we got out of the car he said something like ‘im gonna show you something’ but neither one of us could understand what he said. Noah thought I should have just turned around and punched the guy right in the neck but I kinda have a guilty feeling about the whole thing. I would hate to think that we were doing wrong by a misunderstood dude that was actually not an asshole. The guy spoke like he was sincere and truly a nice person which kinda makes me wonder if I was all wrong about this guy in the first place. Noah is even more convinced that the dude is a nut, and based upon just what he said he didn’t convince me of his non-assholeness, but he did attempt to mend a relationship that he sensed was damaged. I think Im gonna have to talk to road march and get to the bottom of this thing once and for all. Noah has expressed forbidden me from becoming friends with this guy. I have become notorious (i guess) for becoming friends with all the weird people around. This habit has become known as ‘creating a monster’. Other famous monsters here on camp have included:

Rob – large, black, air guitar playing, loud, obnoxious, supply guy who gets food all over his face no matter what he’s eating. tells us about the songs he wrote the night before then performs them. Songs include:

Why?!? (if I remember correctly some of the lyrics go like.. ‘might get you leg snapped, might get your head split, might get your feelings hurt.. why??’ – when asked ‘why what?’ he replied ‘why man, just WHY!?’)

Separated (a love song about being separated from your wife.. ‘you know, you’re not divorced you’re just separated, you know, when you split up all yo things’)

Cornelius – short, fat, broken-english-speaking, south african hunting safari guide. Strangely ambiguous insults and bizarre sayings that make no sense are his forte. Quotes include:

‘that is a dude of note’

‘get the fuuuuck’

‘get the fuuuck and get lost’

‘what the fuuuuuck’

‘you’re killing me softly man’

‘who pulled your chain’ (when asked who pulled his chain he replies ‘i pull it myself, im automatic’)

‘deeeckhead of note’

‘state of the art’ (as used to describe basically anything.. like southafrican for cool)

Gator – short, red hair and beard, wears corrective shoes for arthritis that have giant springs on the bottoms. Really nice dude who is always trying to talk about movies and guitars and stuff just to hang out. Will repeat his last statement in a different way for literally minutes until you respond.

‘hey dude, i just finished watching that movie you loaned me “Saw”. it was really good man, i didn;t see that ending coming, it was like wow, like i really had no idea what was gonna happen and then, bam, i had no clue that the movie was gonna end like that, what a suprise ending, you were right, that movie has a good ending, what an ending, i mean, whoa, like one minute i thought i knew what was happening then all of a sudden the ending..’

Sooooooooooooooo I guess thats it for now.. if you read through all that crap then congratulations you are kick-ass. Until then. Oh yeah.. special mention goes out to the punk band The Damned .. Aaron emailed me that it was totally unsat for me to describe any 77 punk and leave those guys out. And why the hell not.. The Damned kick a lot of ass.. Later.

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