CRC Music Factory - Day 6

It's gonna make me sweat till I bleed. Is that dope enough? Indeed.

Anyway, the sun is setting on my time in El Paso and at CRC. The busy schedule has prevented frequent posting. I have survived this painful week at the ironically named "Fort Bliss" for precisely two reasons. My friend Rob Perkins and my Sony PSP. It's been good to have Rob (aka Perk-dog) around, and I think we've managed to cheer each other up through the dreary army deployment readiness factory over here by constantly making smart ass remarks and being generally amused by the concept of "pistol whipping" while carrying 9-mm handguns everywhere. (There's no situation a quick pistol-whip to someone's teeth can't fix, we've discovered.)

This past week has been crammed with the usual array of painful army crap - a lot of lines, a lot of late nights and early wake ups, lots of yelling seargents with hideous haircuts, and a lot of "hurry up and wait". I've now re-qualified on the M9 hand-gun, this time on a range that required me to gun down several pop targets at different distances and occasionally while moving forward. (For some reason, i did much better on this, qualifying as 'expert'.) I fired an M-16 for shits and giggles. One of the instructors here had the mutant power of taking 10 minutes of material and expanding it into an hour lecture. He proved consistent on this, doing it time and time again and also succeeded in leaving at least half the audience in a quaking fetal position after each power-point presentation in the process. I sat through a two hour lecture on 'first aid' that made me want to stick my leatherman into my eye. I have been issued all of the latest US Army gear, as well as all the 1960 re-hash that goes with it. I have a new helmet, new body armor, and of course the new army ACU, which I now dub "Atari Combat Uniform" because that's what I've decided the camoflauge pattern looks like most. I've had to endure countless "Hooahs" and generalized meat-headedness for a full week. I sat through a 3 hour lecture on IED's and saw disturbing footage of men getting killed by explosives, 50-caliber machine guns, and even tank cannons. I've listened to gun nuts thrilled at the prospect of "smoking some Haji ass". I've sat in auditoriums and endured several propaganda films while many around me laughed and cheered to my dismayed horror. I ran around in the dirt, low crawled, high crawled, crawled under barbed-wire, and jumped over a wall with a dummy M-16. (I'm a doctor, by the way). I declined an anthrax vaccine. I sat through lectures on Arab culture, Rules of Engagement, and combat stress. I've been fitted for a gas mask and now have my very own. I received a Geneva Conventions card this week. I've signed my name a thouasand times. I've heard way too many southern accents this week.

And now its time to go. Soon, I will board a plane and fly out of the United States and head "over there", most likely and ironically stopping briefly in Germany during the process. And then, it's desert time.

More later as I get the chance.