Getting our troops home is not as easy as it sounds

Now to take advantage of my unlikely backup career: the US Army MP Corps.

If a single TV pundit knew anything about how troop movement works, he (or she) would win the argument every time. It is a FACT – even if operations in Iraq ceased tomorrow (which they couldn’t), American troops wouldn’t be home the next day. This is not a matter of the current political environment, this is not a matter of grassroots terrorism in Iraq magically appearing in a major American city. This is pure logistics.

Say CENTCOM got the order to cease and desist. Okay. I estimate it would take a month to (shoddily) hand over control of things like prisons and checkpoints to Iraqi police. Quality and corruption don’t matter anymore; it’s their own damn problem now.

Now nobody’s doing anything except sitting around with billions and billions of dollars’ worth of crap, waiting for transport to pick them up. There are only so many carriers to go around – yes, we still move things by boat. Strykers can’t walk on water, and lots of things are way too heavy for airlift. Not to mention over a hundred thousand people, all their personal gear, and trying to sort out what equipment belongs to which state’s National Guard. The reason why so many National Guards are stuck for equipment is because on their last rotation, they’ll leave stuff in country for someone else to use.

Six months at the quickest. Maybe. Let’s see if the new Army logistics guru (and our first female four-star) is worth her salt.

I’m cured!

Not really. But at least I have another theory about my piss-poor short term memory.

“Defects in working memory — the brain’s temporary storage bin — may explain why one child cannot read her history book and another gets lost in algebra, new research suggests.”

Okay. I can buy that. My brain kind of overwrites things as I go. Especially with numbers and lists of things. If I don’t repeat something back to myself in three seconds or less, it’s like you never told me at all.

“While he is not sure working memory can be expanded, Levine said children can be taught ways to function better in school. For the girl with the reading problem, Levine’s solution was for her to own a set of school books so she could underline key points when she reads. Then she can read those points into a digital tape recorder and play them back.”

Now that wouldn’t work at all. Everything would just overwrite again. But contrary to what the article says about the link between working memory and ADHD, one doesn’t mean the other. And I am more than capable of sitting down for hours and hours, digesting books and homework. Some things take longer, but my hypothalamus is still puttering along.

Tomatoes Ravage the South

That’s seriously what I thought a Yahoo news headline said until I read the entire thing carefully.

Nevertheless, if it came down to tomatoes or the South, I’d have to go with tomatoes. They’re absolutely delicious in ketchup, marinara, and sun-dried. All other methods of tomato consumption are putrid. Tomatoes smell so bad! The square footage of the family garden is bigger than that of the house and half of the area is devoted to cultivating tomatoes. Fresh tomatoes are sticky and stink. I’ve picked enough of them to be an authority on the subject. Or maybe I’m just hick enough to have grown massive amounts of tomatoes in the backyard.

Did you know they came from South America (like peanuts) and were considered a weed? Elizabethan England threw them at rotten actors because they (both tomato and actor, I suppose) had no other practical purpose. Though the Italians figured out that the dubious fruit had culinary potential, it wasn’t until they stole the tomato from South American Indians and the noodle from the Chinese to start cooking “Italian” food.

Yum!

wtf does that mean

Krasnaya ekra (can I get a world keyboard, people?) is Russian for red (sturgeon) caviar. It’s the cheap stuff but it’s good anyway. I hope that my blog is kind of like that – cheap (free) on the Internet, but good nonetheless. A good tin of chornaya ekra (black, or beluga caviar) costs an upwards of $60. I think the red is sturgeon and the black is beluga. I could be wrong.

 ”The vintage typewriter” refers to the 1950’s Smith-Corona manual typewriter that my father found and restored, stashed in the basement, and dug out for me last weekend. It serves two purposes: novelty in an age of reckless techological advancement, and instant results. I can type forever on a computer but never have a hard copy if a printer is nowhere to be found (like at the current moment in time – The Male’s printer lacks a working cartridge and stupid fucking Vista won’t recognize my hardy little HP. But with a typewriter – the possibilities! Sure it lacks something as basic as a separate key for an exclamation point – you have to do apostrophe – backspace – period – but when I’m done typing I have something in my hand right away. And The Male makes fun of me for it too which is kind of silly, him and his Alienware.