InsaneJournal

Update!
It feels so nice to have 100 icons again! I'm only using 68 at the moment, but I'm sure I'll fill the rest soon enough. Now if I could only have my mood theme back and I'd be set.

So. What I have done these past couple of months? Not much. Nothing to really bother making an entry on hence the lack of updates. Plus, if I'm going to be completely honest, no one was commenting so I didn't see the point. Now, I'm not a person who NEEDS comments (the journal should really be for my own enjoyment), but a comment everyone once in a while is enough. For a while there it was post after post with no comments at all so, yeah, didn't feel the need to flood flists of people who weren't commenting or, worse, weren't reading.

I'm really out of practice with this whole journal thing, though. As if one could be out of practice, but the only things I've posted in the past few months had been concert related. Updating on my daily activities...not so much.

I made a terrible discovery that I don't mind Amy Winehouse's music. As a person I'm not a fan, but I can't deny she can't write a good song. I'm also currently listening to a song my sister, who has the worst taste in the world, turned me onto. It's disco-ish and I love disco so it was like a moth to a flame. Hm...no new music discoveries other than that. Would love to hear some new music, though, so if you've got a band you're pimpin' drop the name in the comments and I'll give 'em a listen.

I'm currently reading Company Commander Vietnam by James Estep. It was in the bargain bin at my grocery store and since it was Vietnam related (I swear I lived in the '60s in my past life) I bought it and it's pretty good. A little sad, a little disturbing, but good.

To understand something of the infantryman's war in Vietnam, one must first know of his extraordinary desire, his unparalleled need, for letters from home--letters that were, in many respects, his only tangible link with the sanity of his existence on this planet. Frequently kept in the top of his helmet liner, they were read and reread until memorized, folded and refolded until Vietnam's harsh climate reduced them to little more than confetti.

Of course mail from home has been important to all soldiers in all wars, but I believe it never before meant quite so much as it did to the American infantryman in Vietnam. The reason is that seldom before has an American soldier been asked to make such a profound change in his life--a condemned man's transition from freedom to incarceration pales in comparison.

Snuffie usually arrived in his unit via an early morning or late evening helicopter sortie as an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old replacement. At this juncture he probably realized his chances of dying in the Nam were, statistically, greater than those of any other man in the unit he had just joined because he would remain in harm's way longest--the others were all "shorter" and would rotate home before he would. From this point on, with the possible exception of the a seven-day rest-and-recuperation leave (probably spent somewhere else in Asia), he would live each day of the next year in the surreal, virtually indescribable existence of the "boonie rat."

He would dig a hole each night and, if he were lucky and things remained quiet, sleep half a night in it; he might dig three hundred or more such holes before completing his tour. He would stand to before dawn each morning because, centuries before his birth, great tacticians had concluded that this was the time he's most vulnerable to attack. With no attack forthcoming, he would eat his cold C rations; shave and wash out of his helmet, when water was available; and then clean his weapon--a daily ritual he could, and often did, perform in total darkness. Then he would walk the mountains, the jungles, the plains, and the paddies of Vietnam seeking Charlie. At night, after swallowing his nauseating daily malaria pill and digging a new hole in a different location, he would mark another day off his "short-timer's" calendar.

He would rarely bathe because bathing facilities were rarely available, would wear no underwear because underwear rotted, would reek of the unwashed but would be unaware of it because everyone around him smelled the same. When it rained, he would get chillingly soaked and prayed for the drying rays of the sun, and when the sun appeared, he would sweat mightily and pray for the cooling comfort of a tropical shower.

During his twelve-month tour as a boonie rat, there would be no movies, no television, no radio, and no Bob Hope--these were reserved for those serving in rear-echelon assignments. He would read the Stars and Stripes when those of the rear echelon remembered to send it out on the evening log bird, on those evenings the log bird flew.

Human nature being what it was, he would try to make friends upon joining his unit but would often find others reluctant to befriend him, the reality of infantry combat being what it was. He would eventually find a close friend only to lose him through rotations, evacuations, or death. He would then be reluctant to befriend others.

He would live this day-in, day-out existence of denial and repetition, of heat, sweat, cold, mud, dust, boredom, and at times start terror, until he was wounded, was killed, or completed his tour. Before that happened, he would very likely kill a fellow human being on at least on occasion. He would undergo all of this while his country was at peace and his more fortunate civilian counterpart was reaping the benefits of a prosperous nation ten thousand miles and another world away. His only anchor to his past, to the reality that that world still existed, was through those letters from home.

And too many of those letters were eventually stamped "Search."

The thing that has been taking almost ALL of my time is Virtual Hogwarts. It's a forum based RP and I have two characters on there. My original character is Nico Woodstock. I then have a boy, but his identity is a secret. :P Seriously, I'm on there, like, ALL the time. Sad, really. I love it though.

And that's about it. Going to DC again with the truckers so expect more pictures. Hopefully it won't rain this time (keep your fingers crossed).

EDIT: I realized that, until I add more people on this account, I should probably keep my entries public. :P