Vortexes and other interesting things to observe!

I think this country will never stop demonstrating complete absurdity to me. The above picture is of a few huge dust devils that were roaming through the city a few days ago. These were right in the approach corridor, otherwise I would have liked to go look at them most more closely from the helicopter. Beside giant marauding dust filled vortexes, there is plenty of other crazy things around here. For one, I met a Norwegian that was hilarious. Though Scandinavians seem to approach anatomical perfection, they often have personalities like dishrags. (As examples: it is the swedish bikini team, not the swedish bachelor party entertainment team. Also, volvos... supposedly they make a sports car.) But anyways, I met a Norwegian that even made Marines laugh openly. To be fair though, the Norwegian may not have been aware of his sense of humor. Another twilight zone moment... I saw a several huge African guys from the French Foreign Legion dancing with themselves, sober, to a little Latvian blond girl singing Joan Baez songs. ...just ponder that scene for a moment.

In other news, imagination combined with books is fucking incredible! It isn't that I haven't known this, but it seems especially crazy around here. You can just look at a piece of paper... instantly you are on a life boat in the south pacific, or rolling down 8-mile chasing thugs, or in a Richard Feynman lecture... It doesn't even take any work. You just look at the paper, remember to turn the pages, and it happens all by itself. Then the mind blowing part is to close the book, open the shipping container door and there you are in fucking Afghanistan again! Maybe it is just me.

Also,

The more I observe people, the more it seems totally obvious that we are just clever wild animals. The way humans establish Alfa, Beta, through Omega social order, the way people defend territory and personal space, the way people become agitated if routine or surroundings are disturbed. Just clever highly social monkeys. You can trust that I will be reading a lot of animal training books in the future...

I have built my first battle kite! I had my interpreter bring me some glass coated kite string from the market downtown, I built a kite out of a few sticks cannibalized from a crashed kite I found on the airfield as well as a plastic laundry bag. Now, I just need a little wind and we will see what happens. Pictures will follow.

Catholicism... a good way to raise a family, it is to bad it is associated with a religion.