The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King

After waiting for the last 6 months or so, the 6th book of the Dark Tower Series, Song of Susannah finally arrives. For those of you that aren't following the series, it's an epic that Mr King began in the late 70's about a gunslinger named Roland that comes from a world that is not ours but one of the worlds that lie parallel. All the worlds are connected by 16 beams to the Dark Tower which lies in the center of everything. Something somewhere has gone wrong and the Beams are failing, when they fail the world that's attached to it, moves on. When this happens time loses it's meaning, distances change, people become sterile, war's flash out of control and the entire world darkens. This series is attached to many of his other works, It, Salem's Lot, The Talisman and The Stand, I'm not going to name them all here but it's the underlying meaning to almost half of his writing. You can catch glimpses of it in much of his work, it's all connected. The Stand is a good example of what happens when a world moves on. Reality loses it's meaning and life flees.

King was hit by a car in 1999 while walking and I was extremely worried that he was going to die and wouldn't be able to finish this masterpiece. Guess this thought went through his head too and after recovering and writing 2 other books he was working on before the accident he finished the rest of the series in a whorl wind, he had all the books done and set up a publishing schedule last year. The fifth book was released last fall, 6th on June 1st this year and the last book is coming out this fall. I ordered the 6th from Amazon and it shipped out May 28th and I received it 26 June, damn military postal service, almost a month! Anyway back to the story.

Roland's ancestral land is overcome with bloodshed and mindless violence, destroying his family, his love and everything he held dear. In a cryptic vision he learns the only way to save everything is to go to the Dark Tower and fix the problem. We still don't know what his exact vision was but he vows to journey to the Dark Tower to try to fix what is wrong. His travels take him more years then he could count because time had lost it's meaning and the trip across thousands of miles of vast desert that seemed to dwarf anything from our world (one of the unique side affects of his world moving one was his world growing stretched, threadbare). The journey and take him back and forth between his world, worlds that could be ours and one that might even be. Worlds that have been blackened by nuclear war, emptied by plagues, lands far in the future where you see remnants of what could have been our world thousands of years after civilization had collapsed. Some of the worlds are in the same time as our world, just little differences that you notice, names of baseball teams are with the wrong cities, some of the names of cars abandoned on the sides of roads are unfamiliar, author's names for the same book are different and turning point events don't coincide. The superflu from The Stand is the big one. He gains 4 companions on his journey, Susannah Dean, Eddie Dean, Jake Chambers and Oy the billy-bumbler (intelligent dog critter that looks sort of like a collie mix with a long neck and can speak a few words). Together they are a ka-tet, a group of people that share sort of a family psychic bond that ties them together across time and space and are following ka, which is a sort of destiny. Everything has it’s meaning. The joining of each character is a story by itself so I'm not going to get into that. Song is the next to the last novel; he sets the stage for end game. It's a long convoluted complex tail that back tracks, jumps forward, every little thing has meaning and you can tell King has put a majority of his though in this (or as he says he's been channeling the dream to paper). I highly recommend it and it got me out of Iraq for the 13 hours that it took to finish.

funky sleep patterns

This switching back and forth between day crew and night crew with 24 duties tossed here and there has hosed up my sleep patterns. My sleep won't seem won't regulate it self into a normal 8 hour sleep cycle right now. I'm catching 2-3 hour catnaps at odd times, 3-6 in the morning and 2-5 in the afternoon, sometimes a little longer or shorter, even if I skip the one at night, I only sleep the 2-3 hours in the day. I don't seem really tired but sleep seems to be getting less important. I would like to blame it on stress or excess caffeine I think I've just lost touch with the regular rotation of the planet. I don't seem to pay attention to whether it's day or night anymore. Couple of people are like me now too, doesn't really seem to affect us but we can't seem to sleep 8 hours in a row. My afternoon naps for the last week have all been cut short by vivid dreams, not nightmares really, I've started a dream journal to keep track of them, might open up another blog on just my dreams. But I'm not going to write about it here because I don't want to mix the two up and have everybody think I'm a nut, which I am sometimes but that's besides the point.

Anyway if any of you are watching the news, there seems to be some sort of action happening everywhere, how is this affecting us? We're just prepared for most anything but we're sort of isolated so we don't have much personal contact with the bad guys. Hope it quiets down and everyone is bored playing video games at home. That would make me happy, can't we just all get along?

Happy Fathers Day Everyone!

We've been living in the building behind this out door movie theater for a month now (kind of like a drive in but you just walk and sit, the first few weeks were sort of rough. Days when it was over a hundred outside and we had no power. Sucked pretty bad, the base kept giving us these huge generators that looked nice and new but would break down after a day or so over heating, fuel leaks, slipped bearings. We went through three before they brought in an old rusty generator that looked like an engine that was pulled out of a farm tractor and put a large fuel bladder in the ground. Since then we've had no problems, just the first two weeks. Our new home isn't anywhere as cool personally as the bunker that I had all to my self but it's nice having people around. It did isolate me a bit down there. The new hooch is close to the BX, internet and haji shops. We actually have hangers now so our guys are out of the sun while their working on the birds.

The base has started Friday night boxing and the first night we had 6 people go up for it and they all won, the next Friday we were 5 out of 7. Our guys are kicking butt out there. I posted a picture of one of the shiners after a match, should have some good boxing shots too soon. It's grown into quite the event.

Days are mixing one into another, sorry I haven't been writing lately, I've found jumping back and fourth between days and nights seems to impose some sort of writing block on me. I'm walking around dazed most of the time. Plus it doesn't help any that I'm a reading fool and I have the new Stephen King novel Song of Susanna coming in the mail. Should be here any time. I think I've read more out here then I've ever done in any period in my life and to anybody that knows me, that's a lot. Yes war is making me into a slacker. It's much easier to just go and post pictures sometimes.

It's surprising how much wildlife we've ran into. Every night we find a bigger camel spider and the Marines gather around and say "Wow, that's the biggest one I've ever seen". They just keep getting bigger each day, really! Which leads to other sorts of fights, they'll catch scorpions and other bugs and toss them in. They're big and mean and they'll eat anything, they tossed a mouse in once and you could hear the cheering from hundreds of yards away. Face it Marines are just big kids, take them to a body of water and they'll be skipping stones for hours happy, give them a magnifying glass they'll find an ant hole, if they invade your country expect silly stuff to be written on all the walls. Anyhow, we've ran into snakes both venomous and non, I've taken pictures of a few of them. Glad I was the only one that spotted the non venomous one, took the picture and let it go on it's way. I'm not much into killing things. Things I've found out? Scorpions do glow under black light, camel spiders have ten legs and two eyes and not even related to true spiders and don't ever use a k bar alone to kill a venomous snake.

I'm beginning to master the art of taking pictures and movies through night vision goggles. Should have a camcorder in the mail any..day..now. Building a rack to mount it with a set of NVG's, sure to improve the quality of my movies.

One of our pass times is playing Unreal Tournament over a network with personal laptops. We've had 8 laptops hooked up to a hub in airframes, we had a day off a couple of weeks ago and I think we played for 12 hours. By the time it was over we were all burned out on video games for a little while.

We all did suffer from a bit of mid deployment blues, the place we're at does suck but it is relatively safe. We sent one of our guys to Baghdad for a medical appointment and he came back with tales of wonders, you can wander around out in town, there's places to shop, the locals actually have cool stuff to sell unlike the junk that we have out here and people seem to be pretty friendly. Myself, other then the people that work on base I haven't had an contact with the outside world. The change over of power is just a concept that's in the news, not something that's striking into everyday life. We're just living day to day.

Kung Foo Fighting

For the last year in a half my Marines have been going through the new Marine Corps Martial Arts Course, it was directed from higher up that all Marines must be a certain belt by so and so date (remember I'm a Squid so it's not required). Back in the rear I was the only Corpsman between 2 squadrons and they had a course running every other week. So every other week I was the medical coverage, couldn't find anybody else to cover it so I could get my belt. The training was painful, harsh but it came in handy. During that time I spent a lot of time taking pictures of and sometimes laughing. The instructors have been telling me "One of these days Doc you're going to go through the class" Eep, time to curtail my laughing. At long last, they're wish came true and my name my name appeared on a list for a tan belt course that was taking place in a couple days. The head instructor had an evil smirk on his face when I showed up that morning. What have I got myself into? It started off easy enough, stretching out and warming up exercises. We learned some of the basic techniques that morning then our first round of body hardening. Pretty much striking blows upon on each other in painful places to deaden the nerves in that area using kicks, forearm blows and punches. Think someone has it in for me. Ouch. Learned shoulder rolls, different kicks, joint manipulation and different blows. Twice a day body hardening, ugh! Somehow I kept ending up partnered with the evil instructor, please just let me die, don't kick me again! After each round of body hardening I wiped away my tears like a man. Sheesh that hurts! No I actually didn't cry but I did yelp a few times, believe me I wasn't the only one! Considering how many classes I've watched and taken pictures of I should have been a lot smoother and gracious in handling my pain, but maybe there was a little payback in there? Watching is a different ball game. Promise to my self, I will try not to laugh at the Marines taking the training. I stopped limping after a couple of days and with the memory of pain fading it's probably going to be a hard promise to keep. Hmm, there's the course for the next belt on the schedule! Time to hide, today anyway.

Advice to the Squadron that's replacing us someday

One of my Gunny's that used to be with us is in our replacement squadron. He's been passing the link to my fotopage so they can see what to expect. So here are some words of advice:

1) Medical folk: bring lots of cold medications, when you first get we experienced a boot camp like crud, instruct your guys on wearing insect repellent, expect there to be spikes of people getting the runs. We're trying to leave you guys the sick call AMAL that we were issued out here. We could use a 20 foot eye chart for physicals though. A more detailed list is heading your way by email soon.

2) Bring power converters with the different attachments, if you have electronic gear try picking up stuff that can take either 110 or 220, specially battery chargers. School your guys to check the voltage before plugging anything in, just because it looks like an American power strip doesn't mean that it's running 110 (lot's of fried expensive stuff in trash cans out here). DVD players and laptops can usually take both 110/220 check just in case. We're probably going to pass along a lot of our gear that we've personally bought to you guys (maybe for a small fee in some cases, don't worry it will be worth it, Marines have go to take care of each other). Don't see much use in carrying around a bunch of 220 electrical gear back home. Besides it wasn't all that expensive.

3) If you start up a fotopage like mine, it will make families back home really happy, just make sure to clear all the pictures that you post with the base Public Affairs Office. It will save you grief later when your page gets shut down and families are upset. They will come by in the first few weeks that you are here and tell you what you can and can't take pictures of. It's pretty much common sense. Buy a THUMB DRIVE before you come out they're cheap, right now they're not letting you plug your personal laptops in at the internet cafe so the only way to upload is a thumb drive or CD, thumb drive is a lot easier to use. Also compress your pictures to 800 pixels wide before you put them on your thumb drive if you're using fotopages. It takes longer to upload if you don't compress them first and let fotopages do it for you, so save everybody time and bandwidth and do it yourself.

4) We have a pretty big BX for being it in Iraq but that's only because it's in an old warehouse. The stock changes daily so don't expect what you saw yesterday or last week to be there today. So if you see something you like when you're in there. Buy it right then because it might be gone an hour later (or don't buy it and save some of your cash) Don't worry about bringing CDR's they have those at the BX, also have a small selection of digital cameras (4-10) at any given time, I would advise buying any kind of electronics gear you want before you leave the states. Mail ordering does work but companies like Amazon won't ship electronic gear out here, probably for liability reasons which I can understand, boxes that show up out here are sometimes pretty jacked up. Something else your loved one might like is for you to bring your own webcam which I haven't seen sold here.

5) The local merchants sell bootlegged DVD's, cigarettes, electrical appliances, bikes, crappy generators, fridges, satellite dishes, TV's, rugs, bland food, sewing services (nametapes, patches, embroidery) cheap tools, sodas, cigars and touristy stuff. If you need anything special ordered you can ask and they will tell you if they can get it for you. Sometimes they also have some unknown brand computer gear, hubs and microphone and headphone sets.

6) There are a bunch of military support sites that send care packages out to members, they kick butt! Check out Keystone Marines, Operation Sandbox, Soldiers Angels and Books for Soldiers (links on the side bar).

7) Phone calls, mail and internet are cheap out here, call home and write!

yes E-blogging works!

Well that was my first try at E-blogging, now just have to figure out how to wrap the text!

A few words on Sandflies

Sand Flies about a quarter size of a mosquito, they move faster, barely visible to the eye unless in full light and they don't usually attack in the daylight. I've seen them in closed quarters fly right through citronella candle smoke like it wasn't even there (don't burn citronella candles in closed quarters, not because of the smell or chance of asphyxiation but because it leaves black grime all over every smooth surface that's really unsightly). They're viscous, they don't take their fill in one place like mosquitoes, they come back again and again trying to find that perfect spot to bite. They love soft tissues of the ankle, undersides of the wrist, back of the hands and fingers but will generally bite you anywhere. Single flies have been known to bite sleepers over a hundred times in a single night (who in the hell did that study? Sadist! I would have squished the little bugger). It's not uncommon for my Marines to show up after walking to the shower once with 6 or more bites on their ankles because they forgot to wear bug repellent. They itch just like mosquito bites but without the big slow mosquito to squish. The thing the medical community is worried about is
Leishmaniasis, a parasite that is vector born by the sand flies, meaning it makes a circle from the sand fly to a host (us) grows into nice little macrophages which the sand fly laps up and takes to the next person. It causes weeping sores that do not heal which sometimes end up looking like little volcanos. A majority of the sand flies likely don't have the parasite but there have been 70 or so cases already reported coming out of the country which is actually a small number compared to how many people
that get bit. The numbers are probably higher but just aren't getting reported. So part of my job is to go around preaching the values of wearing DEET, yes it's smelly but it does keep them from biting. People come to me with bug bites and I ask them why aren't they wearing insect repellent and they say that they didn't have time, after a few nights of not being able to sleep because they itch so bad and can't get comfortable usually helps my message go through. Marines are still stubborn, but I'm getting fewer
patients with bug bites so I guess some of my preaching is working.

moving day

I tried emailing this in but it didn't work, will have more to post soon..

My unit just moved to another location on the flight line so there goes my nice private little medical bunker. Medical, Admin, Ops and the Ready Room are all in a big bunker, too bad I'm only getting a quarter of the space that I was before but then again I'm not living in my work center either, moved back into the general population. For the last 3 weeks the entire unit has been dreading the move, many pissed off people, grouchy, bitching, packing and condensing everything down. Then when it happened, we were done in under 30 hours, Semper Gumby, that's us. Other then the actual move (lot's of lifting and lugging around heavy stuff) and loss of com for a few days it went surprisingly smooth. My new office isn't quite the cool bat cave that I had before but across the hall from me is the internet and phone. The only thing that I had down in the original bat cave was power. Every time we had a dust storm and I forgot to shut the airlocks (all the bunkers have double steel airlock doors) everything would be covered in dust, no dust here. First few days we were hoofing it up to our work center from our new living arrangements (mile and a half walk uphill) but tonight they got the bus back from the shop and so we're cooking with gas again.

Who's behind Doc in the Box

This is part of a letter I wrote responding to an email with some editorial changes. Little about my self and what I think about Milblogs.

First off I think this is the latest voice of this generation and we're still in the infancy of the blog movement. I don't think it will replace the regular sources of news but it does give the average reader a taste of someone's life here on the ground. Blogs are just giving more people voices, if you're doing something interesting or a good writer, people will read your stuff. I'm not even among the better war blogger's out here, I like blogging but I know when I'm beat. My main connection to the world is through my fotopage, I've been in the top twenty for the last 7 months or so, since I got out here I've been number one or in the top five out of 15000 or so fotopages. That's my real love, but I'm a big follower of blogs, I've been hanging around the blogging circles for a while, making comments on web sites and message boards till peer pressure from some fellow bloggers led me to start up a "respectable" blog.

I started out with a fotopage by way of Salam Pax the Iraqi blogger. He had a link from his blog to a fotopage that he started up, at that time I was using an MSN group to post pictures, and fotopages offered me unlimited posting, blog like features like commenting and a great sense of community. Lot's of like minded people there that leave comments on your site (except for political troll that has been leaving comments over there). I've always been a shutterbug and it grew to a point that my guys always wanted copies of my pictures, it was easier posting them online then giving out individual pictures or emailing them, 380 Marines, too much work for one person to handle without it being a fulltime job. So here I am the unit's unofficial photographer. Back in the rear, I publish a photo CD every 6 months or so of my unit's adventures (or when I get enough good pictures to fill up a CD) which I sell to the members my unit, proceeds go towards new equipment (cameras, blank CD's, CD stompers, printers, etc, low overhead). I made a slideshow video with music a month after coming out here titled Kuwait Take One and everyone started offering money to me for copies to send home to their families. That's become one of my side projects out here. Just finished "Iraq Take " with a little bit of fanfare. The fotopage lets the family back home know that their loved ones are doing alright. It's grown a bit out of my control in some ways, if don't post pictures frequently and my CO and SgtMaj get on my case (in a joking manner, I think) and I get hate mail or sad comments from family members. So the fotopage is here to stay.

As for the blog, you've probably noticed I've tried to stay away from the personal viewpoints on politics. I'm a supporter of the war, but I don't really lean to the right. I don't always agree with reasoning that they used to justify coming in here, there were many good concrete reasons like Saddam using chemical weapons on his own people, mass graves, etc. Saddam was a pretty bad dude and I have a firm belief that the world is a much better place without him. Of course there is no clear cut black and white answer to exactly we came out here, maybe it was the war on terror but only historians further down the road are going to be able to give the world the true story. People can dance on streets yelling for answers and protesting but I don't think it's going to make it come any quicker.

Terrorists need to be stopped, now do I believe that we can do it? I look at it this way, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing, these guys are some pretty evil bastards in my book.

A little bit of personal history on myself, I came in originally in 91, missing the entire first gulf war while at school. Was stationed at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station with an F/A 18 squadron then at Naval Weapons Station China Lake. Got out of the Navy in 99 to pursue a different career field, was out for 3 years in school and worked in a field totally away from medicine. I'm one of those that came back in because of 9/11. Figured my skills could better used here. So I'm doing my little bit, saving lives when I can, making sure my guys stay healthy and keeping the families in touch with their loved ones. A side note it gives the rest of the world a snapshot of my mundane life (most days). As for the legal aspects of my internet life, I've been running all of the pictures that go on my fotopage through the base public affairs office for clearance (they've been cleared) and as for my blog I really don't say anything that would violate OPSEC, keeping a fairly low profile by not rocking the boat. Yes I have links to people that are Anti-American but that's deliberate choice on my part. Sometimes it's good to hear what the other side is saying. I think the best way to brain wash someone is to only give them one point of view. If you want that, go listen to Rush. I don't tell of troop movements or anything that plans into the future. Definitely don't talk about people that have died, that's a big no no. There is no real message behind my blog or fotopage except for saying we're regular people out here too. It has increased the size of my voice, I've had more attention in the last year then I've had most of my life. If something does happen to me while I'm out here at least I'll have left some kind of mark on the world. Plus this is a great spring board to see what people think about my writing and pictures. Who knows, I could find a future doing something of this sort.

Also doing some editing on my blog list

I've added a few new milbloggers to my blog list that are out here in Iraq, all 3 of them are first reads for me, Leviraq tells a chilling story about what happened to his translator e-rocky-confidential is becomeing quite a good read and J from Iraq Calling seems to be a preventive med tech in the army, kinda close to my work. Give them a warm welcome. I also moved some people down to the back from Iraq section and even though I don't agree with much of what River has to say, she does an alright job doing it and it's helpful to get both sides of the story so she's staying in spite of the browbeating I've taken by unknown people. I don't want to get caught leaning any direction one way or another and unless I know who you are, don't expect me to have my blog jump though ideological hoops for your beliefs no matter how logical they are and you're probably right but it's not going to change what I'm saying.

We've come a long way

I've become a horrible blogger, I haven't been writing daily about many of my experiences. Like today, the squadron knows that I spend a bit of the time on the internet posting pictures, so they kicked my name up for the internet duty at the Segovia phone center. I was overseas in the nineties doing the unit deployment thing with a Marine F/A 18 squadron, 94 and 95 did 6 month tours that included Iwakuni Japan, Okinawa, Darwin Australia, Thailand and South Korea. Back in the day it was expensive to call home. A dollar plus a minute, we had one guy in my old unit that had a 14 thousand dollar phone bill, no kidding! In most big cities, you can get a person knocked off for that much or buy a new small car. It was a bit of craziness. Now I'm out here in the middle of the nowhere, desert for miles and miles around, closer to danger and further away. Now it's only 4 cents a minute to call home, that's better then my long distance in the rear. Online time is free, high speed, some computers have web cams and we're the people running the system, it's not too bad of a deal. Units take turns on who's running the cafe and everyone is happy. I have plenty of bandwidth post pictures or video conference if I feel the need and I can use my own computer. I'm in awe at how well it's working out, there are minor glitches but most people are just happy having the system up. We've came a long way in the last few years.

Done with Iraq take One

There are some things that you miss a lot when you're out here from back home, having your own shower that you don't have to wear shower shoes into, baths, choosing what you are going to have for dinner, regular clothes, flushing toilets, ice cream (some chow halls have it, not ours), regular TV but I would still have to say that I have it better then anonymous guy. He's probably going house to house, day to day wondering if some Iraqi that looks like everybody else on the street, you know the ones that smile and wave as you drive by, and when you turn around they shoot a RPG up your wazoo. He could be one of those forward highly mobile people that can't get mail from home because everything that they need is on their back. Guess I'd be pretty tense too if that was me, or maybe not. At least he has time to get on the internet. Just wish he would stop bothering me. I'll have to check out some of my milblog buddies out there and see if he's mad at them too. Anyhow it's a done subject for me.

Lost one of our tents last night in a sand storm, full of people but no one was hurt, I don't take pictures but there were a lot taken. I'll see if I can get some. Sorry I haven't been on lately, just finished up the Iraq Take One slideshow, it took up a couple of days of free time but it looks good. They should start coming on to the family members in a few weeks.

finally a good meal

Today J (my battle buddy) and I had the best meal since we've came out here. We were down in the bat cave (my home the bunker) and I finally opened up the package of Kasilof Fish Company Smoked Salmon that my dad sent my way and the box of hickory farms goodies. Everybody else on base is in the MRE eating mode, so I felt the smallest feeling of guilt while partaking of this feast. We spread Hickory Farms Sweet-hot Mustard on MRE crackers, put garlic cheese on it then topped it with smoked salmon. For beverage we had hot tea (I've purchased a electric tea kettle) with honey that I got from the local vendor. Mmmmm, it's funny how much pleasure you can get from an act this small. I have been sharing 95 percent of the goodies I've been receiving in care packages, I do get my fair share but I did hold back the salmon and some of the cheese and don't regret it a bit. Thanks dad and the person that sent me the hickory farms! And thank you Jennifer and Allen from Monroe MI for the care package.

Dear Anonymous Guy

Don't you think I know what Baghdad Burning and Salam Pax's blogs say? Salam has been posting since before the war and he was very pro American. Check out his archives, what I'm trying to give is a round viewpoint of whats going on around here. Do you see anywhere on this blog that tells where we are? Or on the fotopage. Read a bit more before judging.