Updates and the Waterballoon incident

I hear some people would like updates on the happenings of the birds and wine making process. I will do my best to keep updates coming but if I don't know I wont post them. Birds: Since day two of the bird attack when I first got here a lot has changed. The day in question, one of those little fuckers were sitting on the cover to the fan mocking me. Just daring me to make a move. So I did. I grabbed the "green" cleaner that Clorox sells and sprayed a fine mist of its might potency toward it. This confused the bird and it lost all flight power. It took me 2 and a half hours to wrangle the little SOB up and shoo him outside. The problem lies with the shooing process. Although I view these winged spawns of satan to be resilient to most pain and abuse, the fact is they are little birds and cant take much of a beating. I had it pinned under a trash can upside down and scooped and flung the little bastard out the door onto the balcony. What I didn't take into account for was the strength in which I did it. The bird bounced off the railing and died. I felt bad, really bad. Even those these little death bombers were out to get me, it didn't help to see one die. I mean seriously I'm not cold hearted, I honestly felt bad. Not bad enough to lose sleep over it, or conduct a proper burial, but bad enough to watch how hard I treat things smaller than me.

The homemade wine: OK, now don't get me wrong, I am not one to turn down a free drink. In fact I believe you get your ass kicked for something like that. Or at least your man card revoked. I'm not sure and I'm not about to find out. Dave pours me a glass of his homemade concoction, a grape juice turned into wine by adding a little yeast and sugar. Set outside for a couple hours in the heat and then let it react for a day or so. He continues this process daily to feed his unquenchable habit for grandpas cough medicine. I dont really understand the disease, but apparently I have seen it rear its ugly head when its not fed on time. The first thing I notice is the clarity and color. The color resembles that of a grape Popsicle and the clarity can be best described as chicken stock. I know, I know, bad visual. Just picture off-purple chicken stock. With no acids and bases to clean it up and clear the cloudiness its not the most visually appetizing drink I have ever consumed. The smell is what put me back the most. If you took a jug of grape juice and lost it in your car for a month in the Phoenix summer, the smell would be about half, that and rancid bread. I dont know how the fuck this dude drinks this every time hes home. Shit, he might be drinking it at work. Must be why hes on the base with ONLY TCN's and Kuwaitis sitting at the Iraq border. The taste wasnt as bad as the smell at all. Like communion with no break in between. Grape juice and bread with an afterburn of bad vodka. The ONLY thing I got from this nasty beverage was a headache that lasted about 3 hrs. Guess I needed more than one glass right? Wrong. I wont ever ever ever try that again. I dont like drinking that much at all!

Its been a couple of weeks now, at least I think it has. Maybe only three days. Every blends together into a massive heat ridding nightmare after a while. So I was off work and my buddy J got the idea to use this waterballoon slingshot to pass some time. Great idea I thought to myself. What could go wrong. This is the part where you think something went wrong. It didnt. But the story still makes me laugh out loud everytime I think of it.

We were in J's room a couple floors up in our building and had his bedroom window open. The problem is Jeff faces a dirt lot with not a lot of foot traffic, or vehicle traffic for that matter. But we had already filled up 10 balloons and werent about to back down on such a terrific idea. So we got another guy and him and I held the frame of the window while J pulled the slingshot back. BOING!!! That balloon took off like a prom dress. Right in the middle of the dirt lot, SPLAT. After three or four of those untargeted weapons of wet destruction we headed down the hall to an empty apartment. This one faced the street. We continued our water flinging assault missing most of the cars and people and became bored of it. Thats when J got an idea.

Lets go to another building about 6 floors up from the one we were on. Hell yeah. Better targets and the advantage of height for distance we couldnt go wrong. We made our way over knowing full well that termination could be the result of something like this. But fuck it. What were we gong to do. Sit in our room and behave. No way.

With a new vantage point and nothing to stop our teenage maturity we filled more balloons. Sliding glass door this time was our catalyst. We set to aiming on a group of buses about 500 yds out. With J halfway across the room from the sliding door he let er fly. We all ducked in fear of being seen and being reported to the proper authorities. WHAM! Right on bus number one. What I have failed to mention thus far was at the end of the group of buses was a couch, on that couch were 3 TCNs set to guard the buses from what I could gather. They took off like a bomb just went off. Full sprint these dumbasses ran toward the bus we hit, looking around for damage or what the hell would've caused that noise. Laughing uncontrollably and close to wetting ourselves we reloaded and perused our attack on the buses, just to see how much they would react to our airborne assault. 5 or 6 balloons into the mayhem and confusion on their faces as the ran around staring up at the sky, we stopped. The look of utter confusion of nothing above them, but loud noises coming from the buses was priceless. I couldnt breath. I was laughing so hard I thought twice that I pissed myself. They had no idea where this was coming from. It was great.

Target two was out another window. We aimed carefully and sent two rounds as aiming practice out until we were sure it would be a direct hit. Target 2, a corrugated metal roof over the front entrance of a little shop 400 yrds out. The bang from balloon three was loud enough for us to hear, even that far up. The hadjis scattered like roaches running out of the shop to assess the damage. I dont know much about middle east living. But what I do know, is if something makes a really loud bang. I dont run out to check to see what it is. I make sure that Bang #1 is all there is. No bang 2 or 3 fuck that. I dont get paid enough to be a human bomb checker. After target 2 we decided its best to quit while we are ahead. No sense in blowing our cover and ruining all future missions.