Notebook entry
Four reports given, maintenance day pack up, last of the Mohicans.
Journal entry
In the morning I woke up at 0500, did my routine before Brawny was up
so that he could use the truck.
I talk to Suzan and fought the Battle of the Inbox for a while. I had
a rather refreshing cleanup of my desk, saving only the things that
the other guy might find useful.
At noon I went to eat with Graham and Brian. Fareed met us once we were
in there. He is not doing Ramadan because he has Asthma, or so he
says, though he seems to have little trouble with physical activity.
Just another dedicated Muslim.
In the afternoon, I loaded up a bunch onto the SharePoint site so that
others could access it. That took forever. I started watching Last
of the Mohicans. It is funny to see the difference between a movie
made in the early 1990s and one made now. I can't really put my
finger on it, but a lot of the epic moments just seemed to be a little
bit corny. One thing is clearly different, my own perspective. I
remember watching it as a seven year old and not understanding that
plot, it was too complicated for me. I also remember being confused
about the scene where the younger sister commits suicide rather than
be taken as the bride of Magua, the bad indian dude. I didn't
understand it at the time. I remember asking my sisters, "why did she
do that?" "She'd rather die than be with him." At the time I didn't
understand all that 'being with him' entailed, but I couldn't concieve
of anything worse than death. Hmmm.
I wondered another thing about myself yesterday. Brian said to me
"most people would be bothered by the fact that they just pissed off
their entire team by calling them pussies, but it doesn't seem to
matter to you."
He's right. I don't care. I wonder why that is. I like to blame it
on my Asbergers, but maybe it's something different than that. Maybe
it is that I can't care about people I don't respect. I have a
tendancy to bifircate humanity. There are people who are worth my
time, and people who are not. I generally try to be curtious to the
latter, and I used to beleive that there was always something that I
could learn from anyone. I still intellectually feel that is true,
but I don't often act like it. Maybe it is because dealing with
people requires so much energy from someone like me. I can do it, but
it is hard. I also wonder if my perspective hasn't changed. I can't
articulate it. There are lots of reasons that different people
frustrate me. Some people because of internal inconsistencies, others
because of vacuousness, others still well, I thought there were other
things, but nothing is coming to mind. The former is a point of honor
and courage, if you are internally inconsistent if your values
conflict you are either lying to yourself or lying to others or you
don't have the courage to act on your beliefs. The latter is an
unevaluated life, a life where people don't find something worth dying
for, they just act on their thinly-veiled genetic predispositions and
childhood perceptions with no thought to why. Perhaps the most
frustrating thing here is that if you ever want to rise above your
origins, and by extension if you want humanity to progress, you need
to be able to step out and do something different than what you have
always done. I admit my own irrationality in this. I certainly have
not consulted every facet of humanity that annoys me, like everyone
else, I am a human, and I am subject to the incomplete reference of my
memory, these two particular annoyances were probably made more
salient in my brain by the movie I watched last night, but I felt the
annoyance viscerally prior to that.
I should also recount at least one more conversation from the day that
I pissed everyone off. and make a couple of reminders.
First the reminders. There were actually two conversations with Capt
Brawny. One where he called me a punk and I told him if the shoe
fits, then were it, and asked him why he came to Afghanistan, and the
second that I largely recounted before.
GySgt Casanova walked into the COC and the LtCol said
"Hey with all of this talk of pensions, it looks like they are
changing the scheme"
The gunny suggestively tapped the release button on his pistol leg-holster.
"Yah that's how its gonna be" the LtCol said acknowledging the Gunny's threat.
The other thing was a conversation with GySgt Young, our comm chief.
I talked about the economics of the unsustainable system.
He said "yah but everyone knew that social security and medicare were
not going to be around"
"They could say the same for you and the military, that is, 'you
should have forseen that we couldn't pay for your big salary, and two
wars, and pensions.'"
"Yah but that's different. I just want was I was told I was going to
get. I would have gotten out a long time ago and gone to school and I
could be in a better place right now. If give up all of this time
with my family so that I could retire early and enjoy life. At first
when I joined the Marine Corps I just wanted to serve the country. I
thought about being a plumber, but once I was in and realized that
this could be a viable career I stuck around."
I believed his intentions, I believed what he would have done if the
incentives were different. I don't believe that America should be
culpable for his lack of forsight.
In the morning I woke up at 0500, did my routine before Brawny was up
so that he could use the truck.
I talk to Suzan and fought the Battle of the Inbox for a while. I had
a rather refreshing cleanup of my desk, saving only the things that
the other guy might find useful.
At noon I went to eat with Graham and Brian. Fareed met us once we were
in there. He is not doing Ramadan because he has Asthma, or so he
says, though he seems to have little trouble with physical activity.
Just another dedicated Muslim.
In the afternoon, I loaded up a bunch onto the SharePoint site so that
others could access it. That took forever. I started watching Last
of the Mohicans. It is funny to see the difference between a movie
made in the early 1990s and one made now. I can't really put my
finger on it, but a lot of the epic moments just seemed to be a little
bit corny. One thing is clearly different, my own perspective. I
remember watching it as a seven year old and not understanding that
plot, it was too complicated for me. I also remember being confused
about the scene where the younger sister commits suicide rather than
be taken as the bride of Magua, the bad indian dude. I didn't
understand it at the time. I remember asking my sisters, "why did she
do that?" "She'd rather die than be with him." At the time I didn't
understand all that 'being with him' entailed, but I couldn't concieve
of anything worse than death. Hmmm.
I wondered another thing about myself yesterday. Brian said to me
"most people would be bothered by the fact that they just pissed off
their entire team by calling them pussies, but it doesn't seem to
matter to you."
He's right. I don't care. I wonder why that is. I like to blame it
on my Asbergers, but maybe it's something different than that. Maybe
it is that I can't care about people I don't respect. I have a
tendancy to bifircate humanity. There are people who are worth my
time, and people who are not. I generally try to be curtious to the
latter, and I used to beleive that there was always something that I
could learn from anyone. I still intellectually feel that is true,
but I don't often act like it. Maybe it is because dealing with
people requires so much energy from someone like me. I can do it, but
it is hard. I also wonder if my perspective hasn't changed. I can't
articulate it. There are lots of reasons that different people
frustrate me. Some people because of internal inconsistencies, others
because of vacuousness, others still well, I thought there were other
things, but nothing is coming to mind. The former is a point of honor
and courage, if you are internally inconsistent if your values
conflict you are either lying to yourself or lying to others or you
don't have the courage to act on your beliefs. The latter is an
unevaluated life, a life where people don't find something worth dying
for, they just act on their thinly-veiled genetic predispositions and
childhood perceptions with no thought to why. Perhaps the most
frustrating thing here is that if you ever want to rise above your
origins, and by extension if you want humanity to progress, you need
to be able to step out and do something different than what you have
always done. I admit my own irrationality in this. I certainly have
not consulted every facet of humanity that annoys me, like everyone
else, I am a human, and I am subject to the incomplete reference of my
memory, these two particular annoyances were probably made more
salient in my brain by the movie I watched last night, but I felt the
annoyance viscerally prior to that.
I should also recount at least one more conversation from the day that
I pissed everyone off. and make a couple of reminders.
First the reminders. There were actually two conversations with Capt
Brawny. One where he called me a punk and I told him if the shoe
fits, then were it, and asked him why he came to Afghanistan, and the
second that I largely recounted before.
GySgt Casanova walked into the COC and the LtCol said
"Hey with all of this talk of pensions, it looks like they are
changing the scheme"
The gunny suggestively tapped the release button on his pistol leg-holster.
"Yah that's how its gonna be" the LtCol said acknowledging the Gunny's threat.
The other thing was a conversation with GySgt Young, our comm chief.
I talked about the economics of the unsustainable system.
He said "yah but everyone knew that social security and medicare were
not going to be around"
"They could say the same for you and the military, that is, 'you
should have forseen that we couldn't pay for your big salary, and two
wars, and pensions.'"
"Yah but that's different. I just want was I was told I was going to
get. I would have gotten out a long time ago and gone to school and I
could be in a better place right now. If give up all of this time
with my family so that I could retire early and enjoy life. At first
when I joined the Marine Corps I just wanted to serve the country. I
thought about being a plumber, but once I was in and realized that
this could be a viable career I stuck around."
I believed his intentions, I believed what he would have done if the
incentives were different. I don't believe that America should be
culpable for his lack of forsight.
 |
| A hedghog that my tent-mates brought me. They thought it would be funny to put on my rack. I agreed |
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