Addendum to Christmas Post

I didn't come up with this, but I thought it was pretty damned funny:



And here's another Wondermark comic:

Interesting Reading for Today

This year's survey of the Afghan population by the Asian Foundation. It's an interesting look at how things are going in this country according the the folks that live here.

Click here for the key findings.

Click here for the full-length version with all the gritty details.

I'm sure there's other stuff out there, but if you're interested in an independent appraisal of local opinions here this is a good place to start.

On the Road Again

So the other day I found myself on the road to Bagram. There's a pretty regular shuttle flight from Kabul to get there, but since I hardly ever get a chance to go out and see what there is to see in Afghanistan, I'd rather drive.

Traffic in Kabul is always a bit of an adventure. This trip was pretty mild. There were no especially frightening moments. We did have a near collision in one of the traffic circles. Then, moments later, a passing car tried to merge into us. Along the way they snagged our front bumper cover and pulled it almost all the way off:


Once we kicked the bumper cover off, the rest of the drive was thoroughly uneventful, so I'm afraid I really don't have all that much to say about it. I did snap a bunch of pictures on the way:








Scattered along the sides of the road in construction zones were dozens of small boys who I'm told make a few cents here and there by filling potholes:


I've made mention of all the dogs I keep seeing on the roads out here. So far this is by far the healthiest one I've seen (probably because of his exercise regimen):


On the way back into Kabul, I spotted yet another burnt-out Soviet tank:


And when we were finally in town again I caught a few more random scenes. Here's a typical Kabul commuter:


And someone's less-than-effective security wall. Patchwork like this can be seen all over town:


And because it wouldn't be Afghanistan without it, here's a shot of an open sewer:


To wrap it all up, here's a bus with a political message:


More to come. Stay tuned.

Kabul Kristmas

With all of the holiday well-wishing and whatnot, I've been unable to get enough bandwidth to post any bloggage. In case it matters, I apologize for the untimeliness of this entry.

In recognition of Christmas, we had a "low ops day" here at the HQ. That sounds really cool and all, but suddenly not having to spend all day in the office isn't the same as having a day off. The list of options for activities was pretty limited and pretty much everything was shut down. My solution: try to sleep through the whole day.

I failed.

Despite my best efforts, I woke up around 1400 in the afternoon and, bereft of anything else to do, went over to the office to check my email. Then I stopped at the US NSE (National Support Element, basically our admin shop) to see if there was anything going on there. I found a couple of other Navy officers equally bored who had stumbled across a build-your-own gingerbread house kit that was unclaimed in the mail.

It hadn't survived the trip intact and these two characters were trying to glue the roof parts together with icing in a vain attempt at rebuilding it. Enter Shawn. By the time I was done helping, we'd converted this run-of-the-mill gingerbread house into a bombed-out Taliban gingerbread house as shown below:



The kit provided a few constraints, so we had to take artistic license. For example, there was no dust-colored icing, so this is the only house in Afghanistan with a green lawn. Also, there was nothing in the kit that looked like wires, so we had to substitute a couple of hair ties for the trigger leads on our SweetTart IED (visible in the right of the pic above). Finally, we were unable to come up with a good way of making any of the candies in the package look like opium poppies, so we settled for the more conventional Christmas trees that came with the kit.

At least the gingerbread insurgents look appropriately angry with their candy cane RPG launcher and pistol, as well as their frosting and candy suicide bomb belts:


I'm told I've got a lot of loot coming in the mail, so there will be some delay before I can tell anyone what I got for Christmas. For now I can say that my sister Sheryl sent me some bulletproof sunglasses with interchangeable lenses made by Oakley. So now I can be stylish and stop ballistic threats with my eyes. Cool.

More to come, stay tuned...

My First Goofy Project in a War Zone

So the other day I got a pack of these guys in the mail:


There's nothing really special about them. They're the same cheap, green, plastic, injection-molded army men you can find in almost every drugstore or supermarket in the entire United States since 1952.

The problem though, was that they were horribly out of date. I'm not talking about the fact that they're wearing fatigues and helmets from World War II or the fact that they're clearly armed with weapons that can only be seen today in museums or third-world militias. I'm talking about the fact that they're all quite clearly Army guys. Nowhere in the entire package, all 40 pieces, were there any Individual Augmentee sailors like me helping them out.

That's why I went ahead and sculpted out these guys:


I started with a plasticene sculpture, made a silicone mold, and then cranked out a few copies in urethane casting resin with a bit of blue pigment added in.

I'm pretty happy with them and they seem to look the part:


Mostly I just got a kick out of making a cheap little plastic toy to represent myself in my current situation here:


I plan to sculpt out at least three more unique poses. The bag originally had 12 unique army guys in it, so they won't be grossly outnumbered. For now, I've got the updated version of the package hanging over my desk:


Now I just need to think up at least four or five other random things to tinker with over the next few months.