My first embedded video clip!

This is the best movie sequence in the history of movies...

Problems solved

Hollywood and I were sitting around in his living room discussing the world. We came up with a plan... though a little bit harsh and quite drastic, would solve quite a few of Americas current major problems; War in Iraq, the disappearance of the middle class, energy shortage, some forms of pollution. There are several steps, and if done completely and fully should work.

Step one:
Immediate and complete withdrawal from Iraq.

This is not because I want to abandon the mission of defeating terrorism or any such thing. I just think that the real battle isn't there. That is just a major league out of hand side skirmish. We should be advancing, no charging in fact, in an entirely other direction. Withdrawal does two things:

First of all, it frees up huge amounts of national finacial resorces. It is obvious with only a vague notion of what the national budget is spent on that there is insane amounts of money hemoraging out of the US into Iraq, with some but very slow progress. Granted it takes time, but I don't think we have it right now and we need the resources for other things. (to be explained in a moment)

Second, and more more harshly... It seems to me that real freedom can't be given as a gift. The U.S. TOOK ours from England, the French took theirs from their monarchy, women in the U.S. the right to vote, etc... To establish your self as a real true sovern country, you have to take your indepentance from your oppressors by force, be that an occupying army or an oppressive totalitarian government. If you are, "liberated," then in reality you are just indebted to a new master. Though sometimes this may be a much nicer more benevolent master... you still are a debtor, and can never appreciate what you have anyways because you didn't earn it the way it must be in order to understand it fully. So, We leave Iraq, they kill each other for a while, end up with a new biggest asshole at the top, or they deside to work together to get their shit stableized and develope their own country in a fair way for everyone there... Either way it is their fate and their desision. Having the US there as a protector and occupying force just hinders the eventual outcome. Might as well leave them to get on with it.

Some of you might be thinking right now, 'but Notorious, I understand all that, but realistically we will need vast amounts of cheep energy to maintain the american way of life. That cheep energy is oil, eventually we need to control that oil to continue. People don't want to abandon their American dream just so that the annoying new story about war in the middle east goes away."

I agree that we do need shit loads of cheep energy... This brings me to my next step.

Step two:
We, America at least, needs to get the fuck off oil!

The first advantage is it takes away the power that the oil producing countries have over us. Lets just be honest, we wouldn't care politically what was happening in nieghborhoods in iraq if they had no oil, we wouldn't be overlooking the Saudi Arabian protection and development of world terrorist organizations, and we wouldn't care what the veneswalan president thinks of US at all. Personally I don't like the idea that the shit that happens in these other countries effects us so significantly. They have us by the short and curllies... and I don't like it. Not needing their oil take away their power over us.

To do that, we need a massive change in infustructure! We would have to build many many nuclear power plants, we have to put up wind turbines all over the place, we have to develop technology that nobody has even thought of yet. Where would we get the resorses to do all that. Well, remember that huge budget we had for fighting the war, we still need it to fight the war, but the new front is home energy production! Depending on how you do the math, there are different numbers as to how much the war is currently costing us... but even conservitive estimates are in the hundreds of billions. Now imagine we spent hundreds of billion on changing our infastructure to home energy production. We would have shitloads of cheep energy. Building a nuclear power plant costs between 3 and 10 billion dollars... and a large wind turbine beween 1.5 to 3 million. The point being we are already spending the money on this fight... we should be spending it in a different place!

There are also many other advantages to not using oil as a primary energy sorce. A short list includes less air pollution, more more oil available for fertilizer and other petrolium products, possible reduction in greenhouse gasses. Each of those could be developed into a full argument in it's own right.

Step 1.5
That being the plan: leave Iraq, then spend all those resorces on changing the energy infastructure within the US thus taking away the power of the oil producing nations have over the US as well as making us energy independant. There are also many aditional advantages to this stratagy. Think of a moment what kind of work force it would take to design, build, this huge new energy infastructure... You could put all of detroit back to work building wind turbines, electrical grid components, and new electric cars. There are so many things that need to be produced, not to mention constructed. The US might even have to increase its production capacity! Those are jobs you're smelling kids... and not low paying service industry jobs either!

Now what we will have is a huge energy production industry. Nuclear, Wind, Solar.... all that shit

I am just making this up... we don't do this.

Back here to water the plants

If "Every Marine is a rifleman first!" then, "Every Airman is a power point briefer first!"

I just spent the last few weeks at some predeployment training for Afghanistan. The first half was some sort of torture... it was a week of see above.



Luckily, the last week and a half were more like this! There was also some incredibly tits driving! It was probably the most useful non-flying training related training I have ever had.

Yesterday I got to fly a very well known pilot around. This guy has been flying longer than anyone else yet alive...

Some pics...

I pretty much don't come to Montana except to bring in my mail, water my plants, and play guess what's that in the fridge. So for lack of anything interesting to say, I'll just put up some pictures.



A few volcanoes...

Seattle and most of Elliot Bay.



I was in my parent's garage the day I left. I found this clock on a shelf under some old pictures. It was the clock my grand mother had in her living room for the entire time I knew her. The pendulum in the bottom makes a significant ticking sound and every 15 minutes it chimes out the standard melody for 15 past, 30 past, 45 past and the full hour tune... with clanging for each hour of the day. I have always been a fan of this clock but of course was never aloud to touch it. After about three hours of fiddling with it I got it fully working and up on the wall of the room I used to live in at my folk's house. The clock is now filling the whole upstairs of my parents house ticking and bonging! My dad figures he will wake up in the middle of the night thinking he is still in high school and living at home... I have a feeling that the pendulum on that clock was stopped before the flight attendant gave her shpeal on seat belts and exits.

I took a few other pictures but not many... as it turns out I kept my camera in my pocket most of this trip. I have a picture of a bridge in the rain, some dead pheasants, and a blurry picture of my mother as I was trying to fight fire with fire by taking her picture while she tried to take pictures of me.

I took my mistriss on a trip to Las Vegas.

The reason I put it that way is because my name is painted on aircraft 11, yet I never take her anywhere. She is to heavy, always broken, and in general a party pooper... now 72! That chick is aways up for a road trip! I feel like we had a real connection on the trip to Tucson and you know... one thing leads to another... 11 is layed up right now in a million pieces anyways, so I went to the Phased Maintenance Hanger and told her I would be away on a business trip for a month. After reassuring her that I would miss her cute electrical shorts in the instrument lights and her unique control shake i told her i was going to Cleveland and probably wouldn't get the chance to call. Then it was off to Vegas in 72, "the other woman!"

(To any girls reading this... THAT WAS ALL MADE UP!... well, my name really is on 11 and I do feel weird that I never get to fly her... but the above paragraph is totally a joke and bears no relation to any previous interaction of mine with women or anyway i would behave in the future.)

*Also... most of the pictures are more impressive if you expand them to full size.*

ok... maybe not this one, but at least we are off!


Either there was a gigantic bug way the fuck up hear, or mustard condiment packets are self-aware and have a space program. Both are impressive... and neither was fun to look at for the rest of the day.


The Bonneville Salt Flats. Pretty much exactly how you would expect them. They are a lot easier to get to than I would have guessed. Actually they are right off the highway a few hours west of Salt Lake City.


This is where we spent our first night. It is effectively an abandoned WWII airfield. As we were getting closer the flight engineer said. "man, this looks a lot like the movie "Con-Air."" I said, "naa... half the air fields in the west look like this. it is just another dilapidated airfield..."


Son of a bitch... he was right! The plane is still here... abandoned. The inside was stripped and placed on a bus chassy. You drive it with a big steering wheel. It never actually flew in the movie. This airfield has actually been in quite a few movies. It was Area-51 in Independence day, as well as a bunch of others... the old guy in the fuel truck told me, but I forgot.


As it turns out this nearly abandoned airfield was where they did the training for dropping the first nuclear bombs. The whole place is being reclaimed by the desert, but there is a little display with a replica of Little Boy with a bunch of signatures on it...

It seems that the most impressive scenes that you want to show people can never be captured well on camera. Or maybe I just can't do it to my own satisfaction. Just imagine this picture as if it was incredibly awesome.


68-10772 is a bitch again. Transmission troubles force us down in the middle of the bomb range. We made a fire, played like damsels in distress, and waited to be rescued. 72 does this a lot to me...


So we hear that the pool parties at the Venetian are "off the hook." So we go there. The idea seemed to be that we pay them $20 to be on the other side of a curtain that was exactly like the side we were on only the other side was cooler because we payed $20 to be there. There were no honeys of floozies on either side. (The 60 Deg F and the 20 knot wind may have been a factor... but it seemed like pool weather to us from Montana.) Either way we had a drink at the bar instead of going in. Those are $8 beers we have in front of us... Looks like they got our money anyways. Vegas wins this round! "Eddie" is checking on some MILFs and "Snowday" is watching a sparrow eat his almond.

A helicopter tour of the strip is way cheaper if you bring your own helicopter... actually everything in Vegas is cheaper if you bring your own... the booze, the women... in fact, you are probably better off with what you have where you are. Don't go to Vegas with it, that would be pointless!


Because of the darkness the camera had a hard time taking clean pictures... but it still pretty much looks just like this even with out the shaking. We walked around down there quite bit. Hours and hours actually. I swear there are Mario Brothers style warp pipes down there. You will walk into one casino, then after a half hour trying to find the door back out, you will emerge from an entirely different casino half a mile away and on the other side of the street. Lots of walking... As far as I can tell, Casinos are built like lobster-traps. There is a huge obvious way in, but there seems to be absolutely no way out.


The reason this picture is in here is because of the conversation I had wile taking it:
Ogre: Hey, why are you guys sitting out here on the curb?
Notorious: They evacuated us, they found a suspicious package in at the front desk. They wont let anyone inside.
Ogre: That's no good. I need to get inside. I lost that big briefcase I had with all the mission paperwork... I need to go look for it...
(don't worry, his briefcase was found...)

We went out for Halloween. I taped some garbage bags together in the shape of a big condom and went as a gigantic dick. Just before we went home I sold my costume to this drunk British guy for $15... It didn't fit him very well... and he tore it putting it on. I still kept his money even though i sold him a condom that broke. I guess it wasn't a costume at all...

The most visually insane award goes to the Montigo Bay Casino in Wendover, NV. Absolutely everything in here is either glowing or reflective! Even the carpet!

THE PETTING ZOO!

There is a place at Nellis AFB called the petting zoo. It is basically a huge yard with a bunch of captured foreign equipment. The theory behind it is if you are more familiar with your enemy's equipment, you will better be able to defeat it. Whether that is true or not, it is a hell of an interesting place to play around. Sort of junkyard combined with museum.

Shitload of captured armor.

Holy Fuck! I am in a HIND... I never thought I would ever sit in one of these!!!


Russian labels with notes pasted over them. This may be a preview of the next year of my life.


"Snowday" getting familiar with an SA-7... sort of like playing with your nightmares...


I can't add to this picture with a caption.

Nellis Air Force Base gets full points for awesomeness. The Bomb Range also equally pimp. Las Vegas itself... Well, I'll just put it this way, you should never stay there long enough to do your laundry 3 times.

I am back

OK I have shitloads of insane stories from basicly a month in Las Vegas... and the trip down and back...

I landed in time mesured in hours ago comeing back. Two of my friends just got back from Iraq for a year... There may have been some beers drank tonight.

Stories will follow.

-Nick