2006 Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt

scribe, what the hell are you doing!?

Agreed...what are you doing Scribe?

Just look under the bed, already.

so you are hiding under the bed with the expriest g?

you better believe it. ;)

how do i know this i just heard it somewhere it's driving me nuts...like i'm not without the mental annoyances like this!

[Edited by on Mar 3, 2005 at 08:49pm.]

Having a good time being an editor 3M?

Stewart can return to work, start drawing her $900,000 salary again and even throw lavish house parties — as long as she doesn’t invite any criminals. She must wear an electronic anklet to allow authorities to monitor her movements.

Maybe she wants to be a cooler chick?

Having a good time being an editor 3M?

me2 Samich Joe!

[Edited by on Mar 4, 2005 at 05:38am.]

Martha Stewart returns home from prison

OMG...I'm going to need to invest in a new home security system.

oxh9r
wh6fx

free song / itunes...

have at it....I'm soo happy somebody is using these...

Hi All!

Just wanted to pop by and say greetings. Been really busy with life. 

Zephy - just want you to know that I am thinking of ya babe!

AW - can't wait for Sunday!  I will be popping in more frequently to noodle.

Over and out!

Hi L4V!

Is anyone else mesmerized by that Physician's Formula commercial with the lady floating away on balloons, the sailor, and the genie with the stockboy dancing? The music gets into my head and I can't get it out!

It's for makeup, if that helps.

Green Team, you B*TCH!  You stole my sex line joe! AAAAAAAAA.

For those of you with no sense of humor, I don't think GT's a beyotch or anything.  it was a joke.

but hey, since I'm on the way...

big fat cheatin' JOE!

I kinda like the commercial where everything is moving in one place.  People walking/jogging, car tires rolling etc.  Those HP commercials are cool too where they use picture frames to toggle between scenes.  Pretty neat.

But the guy holding the knife with the cat covered in spaghetti sauce is the best lately.  ;-)

speaking of cheating...when is the next poker night? ;)

OMG...I just knew I got hustled......

I bet timmers was in on it....

 

got hustled?


Ibetyou loved it!

Nice to see you have an avatar me2- I just thought you were going incognito for a while.
HAPPY FRIDAY EVERYONE!!!!!!

popping the top on a brew* glug, glug, glug, glug...BURP. Ahhhh. :)

HICCUP.

Here's another snapshot from G.I. Janet Eldred:

Market day
We have a souk here on post, right near the gate, and some days before
work the 1st Sgt and I go there. It looks like a refugee camp; there's
little stalls made up of tables with tarps tossed over them, and the
whole thing abuts the motor pool, with a messy chain link fence
stretched around it. The vendors hang paintings and veils on the
fence, and because you can't park vehicles close to it, when you walk
up to it from a distance, they see you and the noise starts.

"Miss, miss, miss, how are you! Welcome to you, come see my shop, please!"

"Miss, miss, miss, hello, hello, please! You're welcome!"

"Madam!"

"Sir, how are you?" (This could be directed at me, or my 1st Sgt, really.)

By nine AM every day, it's over a hundred. By noon, it's a hunded and
fifteen. In three weeks it will be a hundred twenty, a hundred and
twenty five. And every day the men set up their stalls in the souk,
submitting to searches, having driven to Baghdad, Karbala, and
Fallujah and back in unairconditioned cars in that heat. Your skin
shrinks from it; it feels like someone is pressing a frying pan to
your exposed skin.

You go in the entrance to the market and the kids swarm around you,
pressing in against you, little hands grabbing wrists and
shoulders--if they can reach that high. They all seem to be ten years
old, old enough to be in school, and all of them speak some version of
English. "Miss, miss, miss, let me carry, let me carry. I good friend.
No Ali Baba.." My fourteen-year-old nephew, five feet tall and slight,
towers over these kids, three feet tall, some of them a bit taller or
shorter. All of them are frail and thin. Most of them are not ten
years old, or eight---they're fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. I'm five
foot three, and I tower over them.

Some of the vendors, make no mistake, are rich. At my former base, the

guy who ran the market regularly gave freebies away to favored
friends, and carried around a roll of hundred dollar bills. But he
wore Saville Row, and these guys wear jeans, tee shirts, and hungry
looks that they try and cover with desperate smiles. When they smile,
it's tense, but that might be because their tendons are so bare in
their faces; one can see the flex of muscles that are hidden in people
more well-fed.

It's hard to figure out what to think. Some of the men who have stalls
are obviously selling off their belongings while the others sell
electronics and wheedle, staring you in the eyes with that unique
intensity that seems to be a feature of this country, daring you to
bargain just a bit more. Most of the time, it reminds me uncomfortably
of Russia, and the people lining the subway vestibules there, selling
off their freshly-laundered clothes, their tea glasses or even their
pets, not meeting your eyes. Here they stare you down and dare you. I
knew people who'd bargain with those desperate ones, and then pride
themselves on bargains obtained by kicking people who were down. It's
a raw demonstration of power. You have it; they don't. And every time
I go to that market, it occurs to me that anyone who'd want power
shouldn't have it. Or should have it taken away.

It's an awful feeling. Just like Russia, it's impossible to dicker,
because what does five bucks mean here? For a soldier, well---for a
single soldier----five bucks is a month-old magazine and some soda at
the PX. In Russia, the fact that I could speak the language meant that
it wasn't this uncomfortable. Here, sometimes you have the
uncomfortable feeling that there's contempt beneath the desperation.
It feels like being on the other side of that particular power divide.
I don't know what the moral of this story is, except it's really
uncomfortable. They're almost disdainful of how comfortable we are,
even while they know they have to appeal to us to get some of our

money. But I know the feeling: I remember feeling it. That, and anger.

I tend to see everything through the prism of gender. Why not? It's
not like certain people ever let me forget it. When they bring it up,
it's supposed to be necessary; when I do, it's whining. It depends on
whose purpose it serves. But here, I wonder if the true prism we
should be looking through is economics. The more comfortable one gets,
the more one's priorities change.

I have a digital camera and I bought a memory card for it. I sleep in
a boarded-up cubicle with a life-saving air-conditioner, electricity
that blinks off and on, and a computer that I write on. I have to make
sure that the lizards have vacated the premises before I go to sleep.
The place is so open that I have mosquito netting flung over the top
bunk. A diesel generator provides the electricity, and it blinks off
at least once a night. For some people, this would be luxury. And
luxury does weird things to the mind. I call it the Vogue Blouse
Theory. (TM me) Just like Maslow had his triangle, so too does luxury
have its pyramid, but once you move to one level, you can't really
retreat back.

It's based on the idea that in Vogue magazine, you see some pretty
clothes amid the scary haute couture. You might even be able to wear
them, you think---till you check out the price and find out that the
blouse or whatever is a thousand dollars. (In one case, I saw a
leather, $1000 Evian bottle holder by Chanel.) What would you do with
a blouse that cost that much? I'd frame it, frankly. I sure as hell
wouldn't wear it. It'd get damaged!

But what if your life style regularly includes that? Hell, I'm glad
when my lifestyle can afford $2.99 panties from Victoria's Secret. You
wear thousand dollar blouses with impunity and utter disregard, but I
think that the disregard isn't limited to just the exorbitant prices.
If you're used to $1000 dollar blouses---and I'm not arguing they're
$10 dollar blouses with a markup----there must be a noticeable

difference in quality. Can you go back? Do you think people who're
used to this stuff would want to?

Probably not.

I imagine becoming spoiled on stuff like that brings with it an
attitude toward people who do, in fact, wear less expensive clothes.
After all, you can't see the appeal, and they're certainly not as nice
as you're used to.

I wonder, actually, what Paris Hilton would do in the souk. Sorry, I
just couldn't help myself.

"Miss, miss, miss, please, come see! DVD maybe? See, see, see!"

What makes it especially uncomfortable is that some of the guys are
way too grabby and pushy. "No touching!" said over and over tends to
put a gloss of irritation on an already-uncomfortable experience. They
block your path, grab your sleeve, beckon at their stalls. There's one
guy who's got nothing in his stall but two pitchers, a plate or two,
and a blanket. Another guy is missing his right hand---and half his
face. I think I'm going to go back there and buy everything.

Looking at these guys you see their irritation, and you understand it.
This is the way I used to feel whenever I was kicked while I was down.
It's weird realizing just how much power you actually have, especially
if it's only in situations where you just can't use it for anything
good. Back home, I'm not much; but here, it's something else, and it
makes me really uncomfortable. And the thing is, I get the feeling
that if you walked in there and offered money, they wouldn't take
it---They'll bicker, they'll bargain, they'll argue, but they wouldn't
take it unless there's some exchange going on. It lets them keep their
pride---they're working, after all. And somehow, it humbles whoever is
doing the buying. Don't be pleased with yourself; it's too easy to
make a difference here. It's too easy to do something good. I think
that means the standard should be higher.

It's different here than it is out on the street. There's a noticeable

difference in the police, in the Iraqi National Guard, in the people
on the street. People are noticeably more effusive now; waving
enthusiastically, blowing kisses. The biggest difference is in the
police and the Iraqi National Guard, although when you keep hearing
about unarmed civilians going after the Mahdi Army en masse, you have
to be impressed. But the ING is doing things I wouldn't have imagined
being possible, after the past four months. I saw them abandon their
posts, and I could understand it, because they're still poorly-armed,
and they don't have body armor. Some of them are still unarmed. But it
sure makes a difference when it's their own country they're fighting
for, and it shows. Before, the Mahdi Army would attack police stations
and the police would run after token resistance. Now they're fighting
back and standing their ground. It must be nice after such a long run
of bullies. The bullies all call themselves something different around
here, but it's funny how you can recognize them; whoever they are,
whatever they are, they all have the same methods. They claim they
want to liberate Iraq from the infidel, or bring true Islam to this
country.

They kidnap, they kil, they rape and ambush. Every last one of them.
If they didn't issue press releases and wear different-colored
clothing, we wouldn't be able to tell them apart. Oh, no, wait. One
group has a fixation on a certain type of explosive.

Iraqis have been treated so badly for so long that they don't really
realize yet that there's other standards of behavior. The ING and the
police are starting to realize it; they're like a battered woman who
finally realizes what's actually going on. I should add, too, that
they're the ones paying the heaviest price. Some eight hundred and
fifty soldiers have died here since Iraq was invaded, but the
terrorists are deliberately aiming at civilians in an effort to
manipulate them into getting angry enough to toss us out. More and

more, it's civilians that the Sadrs and the Zarcawis are aiming at,
and civilians don't have body armor or helmets. Every soldier who dies
here is accompanied in death by civilians who were deliberately
targeted by either religious fanatics or cold-blooded opportunists who
aren't even Iraqi. And now the Iraqis are taking matters into their
own hands.

I thought it was extraordinarily tacky to believe that we would be
greeted as liberators. That we've been treated as well as we have is
merely a sign of humanity. There's no real graceful way to liberate a
people---maybe the best thing you can do is set the steps in place so
they can do it themselves.

I keep thinking of the discussion yesterday, of tzedekeh(too tired to
go back and look), of charity being synonymous with justice. These
people are so desperate that if some militia came along and offered
them money, they'd do what we see them doing----shooting at nothing at
all, abandoning the weapon, and then claiming their money. The guys
selling their stuff in the market are a step above that, not having
gotten there yet. There's got to be a better way.

If I were home, I'd be reading about the handover, about the slow tide
of dead Americans, the bombs and explosions across Baghdad. I won't be
able to see another example of 'nation-building' again without
wondering who's selling their pitchers and Korans at the market. As
bad as the terrorist acts are, somehow it seems worse that people have
to denude their homes of the everyday things that make them home. It's
not like the standard of living here is that high.

They sent me over here with a gun and the ability to ask questions
that people really shouldn't answer if they want to stay out of jail.
When's the next wave coming? There's just got to be another set of
people coming here, the doctors and the money men, the people who are
going to finish the work we've started. I think Abraham Lincoln once
called it binding up the nation's wounds. When does that start? Why
can't it be now?

I bet timmers was in on it....

That was the worst hustle ever, I lost $30. She told me to that if I just trusted her, I'd end up winning...

oh sure...I bet she split her winnings with u....

I bet it was a team effort....I'm thinkin' its why me2 wanted to play footsie all the time....to throw signals accross the table...

G?

Scribbles- does THX approve of your epic posts?
 Oh- stupid me....THX prolly approves of everything where you are concerned. :P

I LOVE to play footsie!

Lets just have a 'footsie party' instead of poker next time ;)

HUGE A$$ JOE!!

 

scribe - when was that written?? recently?

[Edited by on Mar 4, 2005 at 08:07pm.]

that was a really sweet Joe.
I'm wondering if you really earned it.
I'm wondering alot of things tonight.
...must be hormonal.
...good thing I'm not a man.
...I'd probably buy a truck.

"hehe" ...?
That's all?
 I spent a good part of my life coming up with that!!!!!, and all I get from frozen buttox, is ( diminuative ) hehe.
Why do I bother being a weekend insomniac?

Just kidddddding FB, You know I love ya- Just exercising my God-given right to be hormonal.

There aRE SOME REALLY SWEET-ASS POTENTIAL jOES IN OUR NEAR FUTURE.

PLEAse reFER tO mY caPS-lOCK taGLINe.

THIS! Is why I am a Gomer.
Love you all.,

outta

Crap, I did it again.

Heh

So it's my birthday today, trying not to think about the hunt. I go to the bar in St. Cloud and who do I see, Aaron fucking Neidorf. Yeah, thats right. Funny thing is, he tapped me on the shoulder as I saw him at the bar last fall. He ended up buying me a couple of beers. What a trip, this god damn hunt won't leave me for 15 minutes. You'd think that even I would have some semblance of a life outside of this hunt, apparently not.

[Edited 2 times. Most recently by on Mar 5, 2005 at 01:13am.]

 

Happy Birthday Joe for Jake ;)


thinking about you -I miss you

please call me when you are in town again