Love is...

...what I got.

Remember that.

-Owen

Lamesauce.

This blog is terrible.

Sure.

I sit by this field so clutched by change
Green in the summer, wet in the rain,
Brown and dry and barren and white
In the deepening suns unbroken array

I sit pleasantly with joy induced grief
Though pastel colors adorn each leaf
This wooden bench basking in sunset
Orange cuts blue as winters corset

And in the fall my song's depressed
No longer in summer's ardent eyes
Only cold december wherein winter lies
Spring's ethereal blossom's are duressed

It's so late...

LVIII

The sage lectured brilliantly.

Before him, two images:

"Now this one is a devil,

And this one is me."

He turned away.

Then a cunning pupil

Changed the positions.

Turned the sage again:

"Now this one is a devil,

And this one is me."

The pupils sat, all grinning,

And rejoiced in the game.

But the sage was a sage.

Time travelling rockets!

I copied this whole just so you could read this one tiny paragraph in context, however, those villagers from 1710 must have been pretty impressed to see an AT-4 and then probably immediately upset... You'll get what I mean when you read it...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Snipers firing from the shadows slowed the advance of U.S. Marines and Afghan troops Monday as the siege of the Taliban-infested town of Marjah entered its third day.

An Afghan general claimed the allies captured almost all of Marjah and that the Taliban were on the run across theHelmand Province.

"They are under our control," Gen. Aminullah Patiani told Agence France-Presse in an interview far from the front lines.

Evidently some of the Taliban in Marjah did not get that memo.

Several gun battles erupted across the town of 80,000, slowing the troops' advance.

"In many parts of Marjah, we have seen very little opposition. There are areas where Marines have met with stiff resistance, but they are making steady progress throughout the area," Marine Capt. Abraham Sipe told Reuters.

"There's still a good bit of the land still to be cleared," he said. "We're moving at a very deliberative pace."

Soldiers foiled an audacious Taliban attack Sunday night by when a group of insurgents firing rocket-propelled grenades tried to storm a temporary Marine base. After firing RPGs, three men rushed the base but the Marines inside threw grenades at them, killing all three.

"The enemy is trying last-ditch efforts," the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Cal Worth, told the Washington Post.

Troops recovered hundreds of pounds of explosives, and CNN reported they discovered $8.7 million worth of raw opium.

The largest military operation in Afghanistan since the U.S. invaded in 2001 suffered a setback on Sunday when two American rockets went 300 years off course into a house outside Marjah, killing a dozen civilians.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, apologized to Afghan President Hamid Karzai for inadvertently taking innocent lives.

The blunder was a blow to U.S. attempts to win local Afghans to their side as they root out the Taliban, the Muslim hardliners who sheltered the al Qaeda terrorists behind the Sept. 11 attacks.

On Monday, airstrikes in the Kandahar province killed five more civilians who were mistakenly identified as insurgents. The strike was not related to the operation in Marjah.

The Marines have had to contend with a fierce sandstorm and hundreds of booby-traps as they fight Taliban guerillas from house to house.

Also, the Marines can't just open fire on suspected Taliban fighters. Under strict new rules of engagement, troops cannot fire at people unless they fire first or show hostile intent.

"I understand the reason behind it, but it's so hard to fight a war like this," Lance Corp.Travis Anderson, 20, told the Associated Press. "They're using our rules of engagement against us."

Fifteen thousand allied troops began storming Marjah and the district of Nad Ali just to the north on Saturday morning.

While the Allies have faced fierce skirmishes, the organized Taliban resistance they expected has turned out to be mostly a mirage.

Afghan officials said 35 insurgents had been killed in the operation. Two NATO soldiers have died in the offensive - an American and a Briton.

NATO hopes to secure Marjah, set up a local government and rush in development aid as the first test of the new strategy.

hkennedy@nydailynews.com

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/02/15/2010-02-15_marines_afghan_troops_dodge_sniper_fire_as_battle_to_control_marjah_rages.html

Friends, Romans, Countrymen...

Anyway, I just packed up my car with dang near everything I own and set it in the equivalent of the tigris river... the car being Moses. Moses being led by my two younger brothers, except instead of down the river it's back to Utah. Trailing behind my parents, they're good kids but let's face it, I don't trust me to drive my stuff across the country... and they're younger.

Oh well, I'm now sitting in my stripped down room (oh my) and I realized that I'm not really that bummed, or excited yet. But it is all coming down to the wire. The next few weeks I'm going to be finishing up working at the Pentagon, starting to out-process and all that because exactly one month from now I'll be hopping on my bike, putting on my big boy pants, and driving myself back to Utah.

That being a picture of Utah.

I hear what I'm proposing is preposterous, well maybe it is a little crazy to hop on a 2008 Kawasaki Ninja 500R and go across the country, maybe. But I'm doing it anyway. I've always wanted to do this, ever since I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Not that I'm very zenful, nor am I too amped about the maintenance part but I am excited at having this experience rapidly approaching.

And that's my bike all geared up for a trip... two summers ago I think. I drove to ocean city and back. Pretty fun stuff. I also made a long trip down to GW national forest, I also made a trip up to pennsylvania, I can't remember if I actually made it to philadelphia or not. Probably not. I didn't see the statue dude, anyway.

Well both of you that read this blog, I hope the text... plus the pictures, which were contextual this time, make up for some of the however-many-months-ness that I've completely ignored this. I like reading your blogs though, how about some updates huh? You lazy people... geez. :)

-Owen

There ought to be a "Thatbored.com" methinks.

Why?

Because I'm that bored.

Sorry for leaving you all hanging, here's a drawing of a duck.

Stormy Weather

Sometimes God calms the storm, sometimes He calms the sailor.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We sent out the S.O.S. call.
It was a quarter past four, in the morning
When the storm broke our second anchor line.
Four months at sea. Four months of calm seas {only}
To be pounded in the shallows off the tip of Montauk Point.

They call 'em rogues. They travel fast and alone.
One hundred foot faces of God's good ocean gone wrong.
What they call love is a risk,
'Cause you will always get hit
Out of nowhere by some wave
And end up on your own.

The hole in the hull defied the crew’s attempts,
To bail us out.
And flooded the engines and radio,
And half buried bow.

Your tongue is a rudder.
It steers the whole ship.
Sends your words past your lips
Or keeps them safe behind your teeth.
But the wrong words will strand you.
Come off course while you sleep.
Sweep your boat out to sea
Or dashed to bits on the reef.

The vessel groans
The ocean pressures its frame.
To the port I see the lighthouse
Through the sleet and the rain.
And I wish for one more day to give my
Love and repay debts.
But the morning finds our bodies washed up thirty miles west.

They say that the captain stays fast with the ship,
Through still and storm,
But this ain't the Dakota,
And the water's so cold,
{We} won't have to fight for long.

-Brand New

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

Don't know why
There's no sun up in the sky
Stormy weather
Since my gal and I ain't together
Keeps raining all the time
Life is bare
Gloom and misery everywhere
Stormy weather
Just can't get my poor old self together
I'm weary all the time
Every time
So weary all of the time
When she went away
The blues walked in and then they met me
If she stays away
That old rocking chair's bound to get me
All I do is pray
The lord above will let me
Just walk in that sun again
Can't go on
Everything I had is gone
Stormy Weather
Since my gal and I ain't together
Keeps raining all the time
Keeps raining all of the time

-Frank Sinatra

...Two feet of snow here on Fort Myer and it's still coming down. Fantastic.

Art of Manliness

New blog sensation, check it out.

http://artofmanliness.com/

Popularizing being a man. And not in the "I guzzle beer and get with chicks gah! I don't have an original thought in my head..." sense of being a man. But a "Oh the car is broken, I got that taken care of, no worries." And the "Son, this is how you build a fence/mow a lawn/change a tire/make a model airplane."

I literally went out and bought a suit because of this website. Pictures soon. Oh and latest and greatest is a social club, not a motorcycle club although... what's more manly than a classic style bike with that old throaty purr?

-Owen