Indianni Jones

I like to wear my boonie cap when I go four wheeling through the mud in my HmmmmmmmV.  I feel like an adventurer, a real Indianni Jones.  Slipping and sliding to the left, I start turning the wheel the
other way and then stomp on the gas.  Mus flies up in all directions and onto the window.  As I'm trying to reach the window wipers the seat belt jerks me backwards and the vehicle starts slipping back to the left and all of the way around and deep into a puddle of mud.  it seems to be stuck, but this is no ordinary vehicle.  It's my very own HmmmmmmmmmmmmV, part SUV, part tank.  i gun it and sink deeper and deeper into the mud until the beast darts forward and out of the obstacle.  Victory is mine.

I used to take the paved roads.  They were safe.  I used to wave at people along the way and and follow the speed limit and let other vehicles pass while I parked myself in the mud on the side of the road, but no longer will i conform to the limitations that the road has to offer.  Out in the mud I make own own routes, rules and regulations.  The three R's are mine to do with what I will do to with who.  I drive the speed necessary to get through the mud.  I drive over whatever is in my way and I wave to no one. Not that I'm being rude, there just isn't anyone out there to wave to.  It's the wilderness and I'm a pathfinder, the path-maker, the maker of paths.  I'm free.

I've never been a big fan of straight roads and regulations.  i like deviation.  Does that make me a deviate?  I think the wilderness is where the fun lies.  Everything worth dong seems to be in the wilderness.  It's like these roads are built to keep us away from the fun.  this does not apply to just roads and rules for me. This applies to everything.   I like the odd things in this world.  the things that don't fit into a particular mold.  i like the old guy playing the organ grinder with the clown shoes,
corduroy vest and missing teeth.  I like the all black punk/rap band that dresses like the The titled rock
groups and sounds like a mixture of Outkast, Dr. Dre and Sublime.  i like the girl in the dance club with the thick wool scarf around her neck and the Alaskan slipper boots on her feet drinking the straight shots of whiskey, with the bright blue eyes and dark brown hair who likes making out by the bar.  I like the random things that makes life interesting and fun.

Most people describe this as being random.  Most people describe me as being random.  i don't think
anything I say or do is random.  i think it's just that my mind is just broken up and compartmentalized
into little boxes stored and retrieved a little bit  differently than most.  Most people organize their DVDs in alphabetical order.  I do it by director.  My mind works the same way.  certain things that trigger certain things in most people triggers something completely different in my mind. so leave me alone about it okay.  I'm not normal.  i would hope that I'm not.  I've spent a good portion of my life striving to be different from the norm.  if I was completely normal that would discredit much of the work that I've done thus far.  Who wants to be normal anyway?  I know I don't.

Soundtracks

I love music.  All types and variations, except maybe country.  But there are even a few country songs that have a place in my heart. 

When I wake up in the morning, I don't want to hear some radio talk show blabbing about what happened with the celebrities or other important life changing events in the world.  That's not important to me at that moment.  Who cares what about Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston breaking up or that half the globe was demolished by a meteor when you haven't even left the house?  That isn't going to put you in a good mood for the day.  That definitely isn't going set your daily pace, your internal rhythm.  No way.  No.  You need music in the morning.

When you have your music in the morning, you have music for the rest of the day.  You may not have heard the song that's playing in your head that morning but listening to the music in the morning is just to get the Jukebox started.  Once it's turned on you get to sift randomly through the collection of songs compiled in our mind.  It's like having your own personal soundtrack.  It's like you're always in a movie.  I
personally like to have “Stayin Alive” pumping when I enter the office on my Monday mornings.  It puts a little pimp in my stroll.

And that's what really matters, starting your day with the right stroll.  If you do this every day you'll start to realize that your life is like this enormous well orchestrated film which any portion can be played in your mind just by pressing the play button on the song title in your head.  It's that simple.

For instance, today I was listening to this song that goes "all I want to do is zooma zoom zoom zoom and a boom boom" and it brought me wayyyyyyy back to the seventh grade when I was dating the overdeveloped girl with the blue eyes and the hairy arms who made me kiss her with tongue in the barn at her friends house on the half day, circling it around like it was a ferris wheel, changing my life forever.  That slimy awkward spasm seemed to me, to be,  a gift from heaven, sent just for me.  It was after that day that all I ever wanted to do was zooma zoom zoom zoom and a boom boom.

Then I started to think about that one song that goes "hey fat boyyyyyyy ahhhhhhhhhyeahh i wanna make you smile" and it brought me back to that fateful day back in high school when I was drunk at that party dancing and singing and having people roundhouse kick me in the head while I was wearing a bike helmit.  i did "the tuck" later for a bunch of fans of mine and then passed out on the floor next to the full-scholarship winning defensive tackle that had fallen victim to the old tampon in the mouth with toothpaste trick hours before my concussion set in.

And if there is one song that could describe my senior year it would have to be "Dammit" by Blink 182.  A buddy of mine used to make me listen to it before going out to parties because I was always a day late
and a buck short.  It became a sort of ritual.  We had to expel the old demons before taking on new ones.  Sitting in the truck in the parking lots of supermarket stores we'd jam to the song like we were
on the stage performing it ourselves and then dive off to the party.

This was all before my Billy Joel days when I was the Innocent Man trying to get the Uptown Girl who would eventually show me something that I hadn't felt For the Longest Time. It was also before The Drought and Subliminal Revival and it was way before I realized that I Can't Stop because I'm addicted to the shindig and Only the Good Die Young.*

Nowadays there's too much music that I listen to,  too many songs and groups that I've downloaded and love and play on a frequent basis to decipher any real prominent title track.  It makes sense for were I'm at in my life at the moment with all of this love.  It's still just spewing out and I'm not sure what to do with it all.  I guess maybe the Angel Pumping Gas would know.

*Note The Drought and Subliminal Revival are just chapter titles I've given to parts of my life, not songs.

Mashed Potatoes

The woman serving me steak and onions with the golden four front teeth says I have beautiful eyes.  I know I know, I don't understand it either.  They're plain poop brown eyes and one of the is bigger than the other.  My cousin noticed it one day and made sure to tell me about my retarded eye one afternoon while I was getting ready to go rollerskating with my friends (yes I used to roller skate, go ahead and laugh). 

I looked at myself in the mirror for an hour that afternoon and then for the next... well I still do now.  Every time I look all I see is that retarded half folded over eye.  It's defective and I can't return the product.  But this woman, of all the traits she could have picked out decided to compliment me on decided on my eyes.  I just couldn't understand it.  Was she being sarcastic? 

After saying thank you and walking away I pictured them laughing at me.  "Did you see that kid's retarded eye?"  "Ah Ha Ha  Ha Ha ... Ha  Ha Ha... Ha Ha."  Yeah real freakin’ funny.  That's just great of you to make fun of someone's shortcomings.  Want to make fun of my dandruff too?

Actually I think I've finally found a shampoo to cure that.  I used to use some dandruff shampoo that I can't remember the name of then I switched to some expensive shampoo that they don't sell here in Uzbekistan but since I've been on the road I've had to settle for the hotel shampoos because I was scared to pack mine and have it explode.  Last week I stuck with dove because it smells good and that was what was there, but this hasn't worked out all that well for me.  So yesterday, I decided to switch to Pert Plus and it has worked wonders.  And then, I swear to God this is true,  I used it again today and I decided to look a little closer at the label and low and behold "For colored women" was printed boldly just below the logo.

For colored women?  It works just fine on me.  Does that mean my hair is like a colored woman's?  Just
what does that mean?  How is a woman's hair different from a men's?  I don't know.  i don't have these
answers.  But I'm trying to find them.  Through Greek Mythology, which technically isn't mythology because mythology is not supposed to have anything to do with religion and the Greek mythology definitely has something to do with religion.

In fact.  I'm converting to Greek Mythology.  From now on I'm going to say "Oh my Zeus!" and "Thank Zeus" and "Zeus bless you".  Except when I am forced to wear this army garb, I will no longer dress of the current fashions.  I will adorn myself in sheets and wear wooden sandals with the toe thing, thong, or whatever on my feet.  And from now on I'd like to be addressed as Egotistus.  That is my most current name and I will not respond to anything but.

Field Trip

This morning I awoke to raindrops trickling down on the metal roof of the shack moments before my alarm went off.  It was 7:30 am and I dragged myself out of bed to open the gate to the compound so the water truck could fill up our bathroom facilities.  The rain was falling rapidly and I ran through a puddle on my way out to the gate and cursed the morning that brought this dreary weather.  We’re in a place where rainfall is very uncommon, yet the day that I have been slated to go on a humanitarian effort outside of the base is the day the rain has chosen to descend.  I ran back to the shack soon after opening the gate and returned to my bed with wet legs.

I dreamed of chaos and disorder overcoming the shack with visitors of a ragged sort populating our quarters with various forms of alcoholic beverages and black licorice.  My roommate became distraught and decided that he was leaving and my trip was cancelled.  I vaguely remember something about a chimp taking his place but I don’t think the thought was complete at the time that the sun began to shine through my window.  The clouds of misfortune disappeared as I rested my weary eyes and I awoke to a new day and delightful weather.

I laid my Luigi T-shirt and took a shower but decided on my Nite Owl Shirt before leaving the shack. I ate nachos and French fries at the chow hall.  This is the meal that I always eat when there is not anything good being served.  I ate alone, as always, and tried to spot some of the others that could be going on the trip with me.  A big Asian soldier kept glaring at me and I realized that he had seen me in there before and in uniform.  He was probably thinking to himself that I was breaking the rules and wondering what he should do about it.  He was an MP.  It’s been my experience that MPs don’t like seeing people getting away with things that they can’t.  I found some joy in knowing that there was not anything that he could do to me because I was allowed to be wearing civilian clothes in this circumstance.

When I arrived at the meeting point everyone else was already sitting on some stools just outside.  I noticed a girl that I had seen before at the gym here and knew right away that I would enjoy the trip.  We all exchanged names and had some small talk before out host came out and gave us our plan of action.

I sat in the back seat of the van squished between the two biggest men on the trip.  The girl sat in the
middle row.  I noticed that there were tons of children on the streets on a Thursday afternoon.  We
were told later that the kids had a mandatory cleaning day as a part of their child development.  They went to school 6 ½ days a week with one full day dedicated to cleaning.  Some of the kids were dressed in suits and many of the girls were wearing dresses as they swept away at gutters and streets. Our first stop was a tower.  When we arrived there were many little children sweeping away at a pot with a fire burning at the bottom of the tower.  As we walked up the dark winding staircase to the top with the skinny steps there were children to greet us on every landing. 

When arriving at the top our guide notified us that this was one of the biggest make out spots in the city
and that we were interrupting all of the kids on the landings on our way up.  There were big metal cabins around the edge, which could easily fit two couples.  I pictured myself going to school in this country and going up there to put these metal cabins to some use.  I could see why it would be a big make out spot.  There was nice view, empty cabins and plenty of room.  It would be like the equivalent of “the lookout” in our culture.  We took pictures with the children who followed us up to the top, boys then girls.  The girls refused to take pictures with the boys.

The next shop was a library, where we spoke at length with English language students.  The females in our group spoke with the girls alone at a separate table.  A boy named William approached me very early and kept mentioning Scary movie.  Apparently this is one of the only American movies that he had seen.  He asked me for my email address and I gave it to him.  Later I had wished I hadn’t.  While I was drawing diagrams in order to explain football and baseball to one of the sophomore boys who was a fencer and spoke very clear English, William approached me and said he would like to talk to me in private.  I told him I would when I was done with my drawings.  In the hallway he assured me that he was not weird and then asked me if I had any sisters that I could hook him up with.  Nothing
weird, he just wanted their email address so that he could talk to them.  I walked back into the room without answering his questions.  We took more pictures and then made our way to the next stop.

The “Weeping Woman” was a sculpture of a woman on her knees who looks to be involved in some sort of prayer in front of a fire.  The sculpture was erected to commemorate all of the soldiers that they had lost in both the Afghanistan war and World War II.  In back of her there were big golden pamphlets with names inscribed on each one.  Each pamphlet represented a different region and included thousands of names on them.  There must have been 16 of these pamphlets and these only represented the deaths of the different areas of the city.  Uzbekistan lost millions of people in World War II.  Millions.

Our last stop was a place that is sort of a mixture of a Planned Parenthood, a car wash and a resort of
sorts.  The main reason we were there was to donate clothes and food.  Inside the main area we were
introduced to the woman that runs the Planned Parenthood side of things.  She was wearing a purple
scarf and a grey outfit with purple slippers.  She radiated something beautiful that I’ve been having a
hard time describing.  It’s almost like there should have been a halo around her.  She just radiated this
goodness that told me that she was trying to heal the world and succeeding.  She was a very nurturing soul.  We sat at their table with elegant woodwork with a middle section that was cut to allow plants to
overflow from underneath and onto the table.  The food was great and we all indulged in a glass of vodka that tasted like rubbing alcohol before taking a tour of the rest of the complex.

The woman’s husband owned the complex.  Just outside the back door was where the car wash as well as an open courtyard and gardens were located.  We were informed of a spa and a pool on the complex but were not shown them.  As I’m describing this to you all I get the sense that I’m not really going into enough detail.  Mainly because I don’t want to bore you out of your mind but understand that the car wash and the spa and pool and gardens are not of the type that we are used to seeing.  You would hardly know what you were looking at if you weren’t told. 

I wanted to hug the lady before leaving but I wasn’t really sure what their culture permitted so I didn’t.

While we sat at the gate to the base with a 50 Cal. machine gun pointed at us I thought about something that the woman talked about while we were eating that I didn’t mention.  She talked about the days when they were part of Russia as though they were the glory days of the country.  She said that they have been on a steady decline ever since gaining their independence.  The value of their currency has dropped significantly; unemployment is rampant and inflation increases dramatically every year that passes.  The communal mentality of their nation has had a difficult time adjusting to the western individualistic mentality that we want the entire planet to experience.  It made me think maybe some countries are better off doing what they are already built to do.