Pay your respects bitches

The hardest part about being here is knowing that things are happening back home and there is nothing you can do about it. When you leave you imagine your life gets paused and everyone is waiting right where you left them, but I think we all know that's not the case. Life, your life as you knew it, is still happening. People move, get different jobs, personalities change, babies are born, people die. You come back expecting to pick up where you left off, but you're the only one who hasn't moved on. You open the cupboard and can't figure out why the fuck the cereal isn't where you left it. We have a hard time re-adjusting because while we're here we maintain this idealized memory of home. We build up home to be this paradise where nothing bad ever happens and problems don't exist. So when we get back and the bills are overdue, and the roof leaks, and life isn't perfect... we crash pretty hard. Same thing happens when we get bad news from home.
While I'm here I'm fully prepared to get the news that another soldier has died. It's expected and it happens. What I'm not prepared for is when someone dies at home. Home is safe, and normal, and God-dammit that shit is supposed to be on motherfucking pause. Today I found out that one of my roommates and good friends from college is not going to be there when I get back. The shower is the only place in my entire world where I have any privacy, so that's where I cried today. Dan,we're all going to miss you more than you could know. I hope you found what you were looking for. RIP man.

#1 Medium Fade. NO skin.

One would think that if all a guy did all day long was cut hair, then that guy might be able to at least give a decent haircut. I'd like to believe that if I had a few months of haircutting experience under my belt that I would be able to cut someone's hair without that person wanting to stab me to death with a comb afterward. However, the guys here at the barbershop seem to have been recruited less for their hairstyling skills than for their learning disabilities. Yesterday I got a haircut and my head was so fucked up that it looked like a twisted up Rubik's Cube. If I wanted a shitty haircut I would either A) Do it myself for free, or B) Tell them to buzz it all off and save myself 10 minutes. I don't really care what my hair looks like. I'm not trying to sex anybody out here. It's the principle of the thing. There's principalities involved. If I pay a "professional" barber for a haircut, I expect a certain level of quality in return. Granted $4.50 does not buy you a high level of quality, but I feel that what I'm getting is not commensurate with what I'm paying for. I wish I could call the Better Business Bureau, but I think their office got blown up last month.

Cancel Christmas

I don't know if it's more quiet here lately or if they're turning up the loudspeakers at the mosques. I hadn't heard the call to prayer since I had been here and then I heard it loud and clear on Christmas Eve of all days. I can't think of many things more eerie than walking alone at night and hearing that sound above everything else.
Sometimes you get detached from the reality of this place when you're going about your normal workday routine. If you don't leave base then you kind of forget where you actually are and how close you are to real life. The base seems relatively safe when you're walking around all day, but it only takes a voice from a loudspeaker or a few rounds of indirect fire to remind you that you're not as safe as you thought. I think some of it has to do with the T-wall blindness. Not being able to see past a few hundred meters will alter your view of things a bit. I don't even know what my reaction to seeing the horizon again will be. What was Columbus' reaction to seeing land after months at sea? Probably not the same, but it will be a trip. Too early to start counting yet.

*The title to this post is a reference to a funny story about a tank that was told to me by an old Cav scout I used to work with. He could have gotten out after he lost parts of both feet to an IED, but instead he's probably the best NCO I've ever met. This one is for you Jim, I'm glad one of us is home for Christmas.*

Tut, tut, looks like rain.

Holy shit. I can't believe it's been almost a month since my last post. I hope this whole deployment goes that quickly. Seems like last week I sat down and wrote in this thing. How can someone be so completely bored and yet so busy at the same time?
Well, it's wintertime in Iraq, so that means we're firmly entrenched in the rainy season. Now guess what that really means. Mud! Lots of mud. And not normal mud like you would find in the US. I say this because normally in the US we find mud where dirt used to be. However, here in lovely Iraq... there's dirt everywhere. So what does that mean during the rainy season? That's right, mud everywhere. All the dust that lays like an old dog on everything turns into a slop with the consistency of baby shit. So I've got that going for me for the next few months, which is nice. At least when there is plenty of water that's one less thing for them to kill each other over. Although that leaves no shortage of viable reasons to blow shit up. Or shoot at each other for that matter. Bring on the rain.

First real post

Well, as the dates show it's been a pretty busy couple of months. You try moving to a new continent and see how often you have time to write in your lame ass web log. Same rules still apply. I wanted this stuff written down in case I happen to not be around to tell about it. Which sounds silly to say and I feel like an ass for saying it but it's the truth.
There was a extra amount of heaviness going on in my life in August and I thought if I wrote about it it would help. I had just moved to a new duty station and found out we were deploying in three weeks. Pause life. No big deal I guess, they were nice enough to give me three months to get back to good from the three months I had just been gone.
Then it kind of snuck up on me. I'm eating breakfast and I get a text message from a friend that basically informs me that someone I knew from AIT had just died in Iraq. I don't really know how to say that. "Informs me?" How do I phrase that? How can I write that so it sounds like a normal text message that one would receive during breakfast? --Well this guy we lived down the hall from for five months just got blown up by a molten-hot piece of copper that flew through an armor-plated vehicle. Want to hang out later?--
So I find myself two days later loading my company's gear to head to the desert. And I'm thinking to myself, man I hope I don't get ripped apart by a piece of molten copper. That would be a shitty way to go. So this blog is partly yours Taylor Marks. I can only hope you're the last one I know that doesn't come back. Unfortunately I know that won't be the case. RIP man. I hope this is all worth it.

This Desert Life

I always said I'd never start a blog about my military stuff, but recently a few things have happened and I figured I should write down some of the shit that goes rolling through my head before it's gone (the thoughts or the head). So if you're reading this then welcome, but I need to establish a few precedents:
1. I don't claim to speak on behalf of all soldiers. The Army has all different kinds of people. Most of them are weird as shit.
2. I think blogs are a major OPSEC violation so don't expect details about anything, anywhere, anybody, or anytime.
3. I'm not doing this for attention. I don't give a fuck if no one reads this. At least it's written down.
The title is a reference to a lyric in a Counting Crows song which doesn't really have anything to do with the Army, but I think it accurately describes what the Army life can be about. And I like Counting Crows.
Some might not like my bad language, some might not like my macabre sense of humor, some might not like me just because of who I am and what I do. This place isn't for you, this place is for me.