Not used to being in this state of mind...

I'm generally such a happy person. I'm pretty easy going. I usually make the best of things. I've been making the best of things for so long now. I'm just tired of it. I wish Afghanistan was a person, I would punch him/her (that's right, even if Afghanistan was a girl) right in the face. So, to help cheer me up, I'm going to list all the good things about being here. Ha, there I go trying to make the best of things again. Sneaky optimism, very sneaky.

I've met a lot of really cool people. Some of them have become good friends that I imagine will be that way for a long time to come.

I've been a help to a many people; Lots of people a little bit of help, and a few people lots of help. I enjoy being useful, so that's good.

I've realized that my life in the states is pretty close to heaven on earth. I will cherish everything so much more than I did before. I'll also worry a lot less about all the shit that doesn't matter.

I have also managed to save a lot more money than usual. Actually, my darling wife has been doing the saving. It was probably a lot easier for her to do without me constantly buying gadgets and gizmos.

I'm in better shape than I was before I came here. I haven't lost all the weight that I wanted to, but I've still got more time. I've already lost about 25lbs. I want to lose another 10 more or so. Even though I haven't lost as much weight as I want, part of that is because I've bulked up a little bit. So while I've been losing bad weight, I've been gaining good weight, and I feel much more healthy. I go on leave in less than a month, and I think that my wife will like what I've been doing in the gym.

That's about as positive as I can be. It already helped a little bit just to think about it.

Cup of Joe for a Joe

Do you have one of those yellow ribbons on your car that says "I support our troops?" If you have one (or even if you don't), and you wanted to do a little bit more than pay your taxes and sport a car magnet there is a cool program offered through Green Beans Coffee that you may be interested in. You go on to the website at the bottom and give a few dollars and a few words of encouragement or thanks and then Green Bean will give a soldier credit to buy a coffee. If you aren't familiar with Green Beans, it's a lot like a Starbucks, but for deployed soldiers. So instead of waiting in Starbucks for hours on end hoping that a soldier will randomly walk in so you can buy him/her a coffee, just buy them one from the comfort of your computer. Who knows, you might even buy me one!

http://www.greenbeanscoffee.com/coj/index.php

I'm still here...

I haven't posted in a little while. I really hate being away from my family. It's such a drain being here that I have a hard time being motivated to post anything. It's hard to feel proud about being here when I don't want to be here. If I could leave right now I would. It feels like a prison sentence, like I'm being punished. None of this is worth it for me, but there is nothing I can do except wait for my time to be up. Sorry for being negative, but I thought that maybe it would feel better to put it down in words. On a positive note, when I am finished here, I'm finished for good. My obligation to the military is entirely complete. I'll never have to be away from everyone I love for so long ever again.

Should I buy a kindle?

I've been seriously debating whether to get a Kindle 2 or not. I thought it might help to list the pros and cons. I also thought that I would throw it on the blog to get some outside input. So, here is my pros/cons list and please put forth any thoughts you may have on the subject.

Pros

• Have you seen electronic ink screens? They are freakin' awesome!
• Lots of books, low weight. I travel a lot (when I'm back in the real world) and often a significant portion of my travel weight is books. I also don't take as many books as I want with me when I travel to limit weight.
• Built in dictionary. I love new words. I look up lots of words. Carrying a dictionary is another book that I don't want to carry, and you don't always have access to the internet.
• Being able to take notes without messing up the book is nifty. I'm not sure if I don't take lots of notes because I don't like writing in books, or if I'm just not the note taking type. I do usually have a small notepad with me, but that's mostly just to write down words I want to look up. I wouldn't have to write down words to look up anymore, but I might be more inclined to take notes if it were built in to the book.
  
• Not having to deal with bookmarks and losing your place. Enough said.
• I'm a gadget whore and a Kindle 2 would really give me geek cred, whatever that means.
• Free Wikipedia just about anywhere. I find Wiki to be almost as useful as Google. In terms of time, I actually spend more time on Wiki than I do on Google, but that's not a fair comparison because Google is a gateway and Wiki is a destination. Wikipedia is a truly valuable tool and it would be a real boon to have it in your pocket (Hey, I have big pockets!).
• Music. In some situations it would fill a dual role as mp3 player and book reader. Although with how small mp3 players are and how long the batteries last, I wouldn't use this all to often. Could be nice to listen to music and read while on an elliptical or exercise bike though.

Cons

• The price.
• THE PRICE! Seriously, even with the fact that you would be saving money on the cheaper electronic books, it would still take awhile to recoup the initial $360 investment. If you saved $10 a book (which you won't), it would still take you 36 books to break even. That would probably take me more than a year and maybe as long as two. Saving money on books can't be my motivation if the warranty is already expired before I recoup my money.
  
• Graphic novels probably don't transfer well to Kindle. Not that I read all that many, but who wants to be excluded?
• Black and white screen. Tied in with the above, but also with a lot of science magazines and blogs that I follow there are a lot of really cool color pictures that wouldn't transfer over.
• You have to subscribe(read pay) to blogs. I'm all for bloggers making money, hell, I wish I made money blogging, but I don't know if I would pay for them directly.
  
• No videos/movies.
• When I'm at work, we have some down time that can be (and has been) spent on reading. This is in the cons because I'm typically in facilities that don't allow electronic devices inside. This is only a little con because only a small amount of my time is spent reading at work.
• No expansion/memory card slot. If I'm going to use this for music and books, it would be nice to stick an 8gb micro SD card in there for extra storage
• After reading a book I enjoy, I can't just hand it to my friend to read, unless I want to give up my Kindle until he/she is done.
  

That's all the pros and cons I can think of right now. If I think of more later I'll throw them on at the bottom as an edit. As it stands, all the pros are either things that make my life a little easier, or things that make me look cool. I obviously don't concern myself all that much with looking cool, so the only thing I gain is convenience. You know what's not convenient? Work, and work is what I would be doing to pay for the $360 price tag. That basically sums up the cons. It's really a lot of money just for a little bit of convenience. I think it's the future of books, and that eventually all books will be predominantly electronic, if not exclusively, but being a part of the future right now is always expensive. Even if I was a millionaire (which I'm definitely not) I would still think this was a silly way to spend money. Of course the whole point of being a millionaire is being able to spend your money in silly ways.

The ants go marching...

Bunch of ants all marching from one hole to another hole about 10 feet away. I've never seen such a mass migration of ants before. They were almost all going in the same direction. They weren't carrying anything. They all looked like the same kind of ants, and didn't seem to be fighting. I've walked this way dozens of times and never seen it before or since. My buddy and I watched this go on for more than five minutes, a steady stream of ants. Anyone know what they were doing? Maybe running from the Egyptians and about to wander the desert for 40 years?

Afghanistan ornithology - The Common Myna AKA the Indian Myna

I'm stuck on base all the time, which is good because it's safe, but sucks because it's boring. I've taken to following birds around to pass the time. There is one interesting bird that I've never seen before that I've been documenting. A quick Google search of Afghan birds and I found out it's probably an Indian Myna, aka a Common Myna. It's a pretty cool bird. Looks like a mix between a crow and a puffin. The very first thing I noticed about Afghanistan was the Mynas. I didn't know what it was at the time, but right after getting off the plane we walked under a tree that had about a thousand of these birds all chirping at each other. It was late at night and at first I thought it was bats. After being here a few nights I realized it was actually these birds. Every evening and morning they are in the pine trees fighting/mating/partying? They would also hang out on top of a few buildings and an antenna tower.


Here is a video of the birds going crazy in a tree.Here is a picture of the tower covered with birds.

I've actually been following these birds around for quite some time. I've got hundreds of pictures that are just too far away to be any good. They are very skittish. They seem to know when you are looking at them, and take it as an act of aggression. They really don't like you to get closer than about twenty feet, and with my camera it isn't close enough for a good picture. Lately they haven't been chirping in the trees, I assume because they are nesting. For how many hundreds (thousands?) of birds there are around I've only been able to find one of their nests. There is a couple that is ever vigilant about watching you when around this one stack of shipping containers, so I spent some time looking and finally managed to find the nest. It's in a hole made by the joining of two shipping containers stacked on top of each other. I can just barely see a bunch of grass that is probably the nest. I didn't take any pictures of it because I would have to stick my camera in the hole to get a good shot and I don't want to disturb the nest. I have since sat and watched from a picnic table just in sight of the nest and have watched them visit the nest confirming that it's theirs.


I finally got an up close picture of one. This myna was harassing a group of sparrows (I think they are sparrows anyhow) that nest here. Probably the only reason he (she? I assumed since it was aggressive that it was a male.) let me get close enough to him. I haven't been able to tell the difference, if any, from males and females.

I also had to avoid making eye contact with him. I intentionally wouldn't look at him except through my camera so as not to spook him. After I'd snapped a few photos, I looked right at him, and sure enough he took off.

One of the shipping containers near this ones nest. By wearing my hat tilted down over my eyes and looking through my camera, this one let me get kind of close to it. They seem to be slightly more tolerant of me being around since I've been hanging around them a little. The tree in the background is a mulberry tree with a ton of fruit on it right now. I haven't actually seen them eating the berries, but they come to this tree a lot, so I assume they are.

Although they are indigenous to Afghanistan, apparently they are quite a nuisance as an introduced pest species through out the world. Anyways, I thought that I would share what I've been doing with everyone. If you want to know more about them here is a link to their Wikipedia page.

Maytag repairman and the Chaplain's letter.

So I've been the exact opposite of busy lately. I've fixed just about everything that I can fix, and not just the electronics I'm responsible for but literally anything I can get my hands on. After running out of things to fix, I got a little bored and thought I would stir things up a little. Every weekday our chaplain sends out an email entitled "The Hope Channel". It's what you would imagine a typical religious daily email to be. It's full of random excerpts from the bible, words of encouragement, usually some kind of prayer and "thoughts of the day". I don't particularly mind getting them, sometimes they are actually funny. Sometimes they are funny because they have a joke that is supposed to be funny, other times they are funny just because how silly they are. So, like a kid with a stick, I poked it into the ant hill to see what would happen. Here is the email that I sent the chaplain just to see what he would say.

Thought maybe you would like my "thought of the day"

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?"
-Epicurus

This line of thinking is the premise for why I don't believe in a
personal god.

His response was rather cliche, and really kind of disheartening. I've made the chaplain's writing blue, and I've put some of my thoughts mixed in. Any typos on the blue writing, are all the chaplains as I've only cut and paste. I have not responded to this letter from the chaplain. I thought I would see what everyone else thought, whether they think I should reply, and what I should say if I do.

SPC Jones, Thank you for your honesty and your comments.I believe everyone has choices and looks like You have made yours. It’s less of a choice, and more of just who I am. I’ve tried to believe, and I can’t. In my life, I had a real Living encounter with Jesus Christ. I’d be interested to hear of your encounter, but I would be surprised if it was a real living encounter with Christ, but instead an encounter with his followers.

To quote a Greek philosopher as Epicurus, Who believes that what is good is what is pleasurable, and what is bad is what is painful...you'll find that all you will seek in life is what this world offers. After that you die, and there is nothing else. Epicurus believes that pleasure and pain are the basis for the moral distinction between good and bad.

Epicurus actually gets it pretty right. All of our morals can be (and probably were) derived from the simple rule of pain is bad pleasure is good. The only thing that I would add into the mix is empathy. Empathy allows us to realize that other people have feelings as well. If you count emotional and physical pain and factor in empathy then you can easily justify all morals. You can even look at the so called morals in the bible and show that they are actually immoral.

I find that if I am wrong about Jesus Christ, at least I lived a life that is moral and honest and true. Unfortunately believing in Jesus doesn’t mean that you are moral, honest, and true. There are many aspects of the bible that are immoral. If you look at any major human rights argument you will find someone on each side of the argument claiming to be the religious right. The easiest moral arguments to think of are slavery, and women’s rights. Do you support slavery? Do you think that women are not the equals of men? I can easily find passages in the bible claiming both, and I’m not even a man of the bible like you are.

Currently there is a huge controversy about the morality of homosexuals. If it isn’t immoral (which I don't think it is), then the good book could actually be leading you away from morality by calling it an abomination. I see no reason to think it’s immoral, for just the same reason that I don’t think it’s immoral to like blonds over brunets. I also don’t think it’s immoral for the main reason I’m not a homosexual. It just doesn’t do it for me. It wasn’t a choice I made; I just don’t find men sexually appealing. If I did find men sexually appealing, I would be no more to blame than I am now for finding chocolate tasty. I never chose to like chocolate; I just tried it and liked it. I also didn’t choose to be heterosexual; I just looked at men, and didn’t find it appealing, then looked at women, and did find it appealing (some of them at least). If I was gay, and I suppressed it and hid from it my whole life because of the bible, it would have been detrimental to living a good life here in this world. If there is no god, then I would have suffered for no reason. Gay marriage is illegal (mostly), and many happy loving couples aren’t allowed to be married because of the bible. Does anyone really have the right to deny people, whom aren’t hurting anyone, happiness?

If I die and there is nothing - well, I lived a happy life. If I am right about Jesus Christ, and there is an after Life with those who believe in Him...well, then I will be With Him for all eternity. This argument is known as Pascal’s wager. The biggest flaw of the argument is that it assumes which god is real, and also that we know what that god wants. If you are wrong about Jesus Christ, and Mohammed was the true last prophet, then you will burn in hell for “betting” on the wrong religion.

If you don't believe there is eternal life after this one, you will live this one up in parties, alcohol, women, and all kinds of other entertainments that this world offers. That is kind of a crazy assumption to make, that just because I don’t follow your religious dogma, that I will be a drunken man-slut. I currently only enjoy entertainment that this world offers, as what other world is there to enjoy from? Even if there is a heaven, you can’t enjoy it now. Even if there is a loving god that cares for what you do, he may still make/allow you to suffer to make you stronger while here in this world. Currently the thing I enjoy in this world the most is the company of my friends and family. I love to play with my children. I love loving my wife. I love talking and laughing with my friends (of which I also consider my wife). I drink only occasionally, and in moderation. Even with the “simple” pain based morality you can reach the conclusion that if you drink too much it is painful and detrimental to your life. After you die, nothing, no judgement, no accountability with The One who created you. If there is a god to judge me, and he is the one who made me the way I am in spite of being omniscient and knowing that I was going to do everything I’m going to do, then the judgment isn’t really on me, but on the creator who is ultimately responsible for everything I’ve done.

But what if you are wrong. What if there is a God who is trying to get your attention and trying to have a living encounter with you...and you continue to not pay attention to His Calling you. Are you saying that an all knowing, all powerful, loving god is having problems communicating with me?
What if there is eternal life where God has prepared a future for you. This life offers 100 years but eternal life, How long is that? Is condemning me for eternity based on 100 years of ignorance moral?

Do you lie? Everyone has or does lie, although I can’t remember the last time that I did. There is hardly ever a time when it’s necessary, but sometimes lying is actually the moral thing to do. Do you steal? Not since I was a child, and even then it was rare and minor. Are you in a sexual relationship prior to marriage? I was in a sexual relationship prior to marriage, but now I’m married and faithful to my wife. Do you drink till you blackout? Not in a long time, and probably never again. I have done it before though. All pleasures that this world offers to keep you away From the Truth. Funny, but I don’t see lying, stealing, and blacking out as pleasurable. They are character flaws that some people have. I enjoyed sex before marriage, as I enjoy sex while married, but how is that keeping me away from the truth? If I knew your “truth”, wouldn’t that make me more justified in doing those things? Isn’t the whole reason that Jesus was a human sacrifice was to forgive us of our sins? If I didn’t sin, then that would be slapping Jesus in the face saying he died for no reason.
Jesus said: "I Am the Way." Did Jesus really say that, or did a book say that he did?

You'll never know what He offers you until you recognize that He is the One who: *gives us air to breathe *gives us food to eat *allowed us to see another day...
If he is the one who gives us all those things, then when we are without them, is he not also to blame?

All good things come from above. Above what?
We are created by God for God. Evolution?

I hope you find the Truth...before it is too late. I hope you find the truth before it is too late, Allah is a jealous god. I prefer to not live by such absolutes, especially when so many “truths” are contradictory and can’t all be right. Sounds to me like God wants to have an encounter with you. He is welcome to talk to me at any time, what is he waiting for? I just want you to know one thing...you can't hide for [sic] Him. I am challenged this day to pray for you. Is it so challenging to pray for someone that doesn’t agree with you? I wish everyone well, regardless of their beliefs, I just don’t believe that my wishing alone can make it happen.
Let me know how things turn out.

Blessings on your Journey.
Blessings until I die, and then curses for all eternity.