For Hire

World renowned blogger, medic, photographer & mechanic. If this sounds like something you need to record your next trip into the badlands after the zombie apocalypse, trip or wedding. I’m your guy, can do photos, video, fix anything, machine, body or spirit and write about it, also a fair shot and a decent cook. Flexible is my middle name, will work for money, geek gear, food, beer or gas, in that order.

Dropping like Flies, Jeff Goldblum too?

Farrah Fawcett was expected any day, Michael was a quite a shock but Jeff Goldblum? Unconfirmed reports are saying the he died falling from a cliff in New Zealand shooting a movie. Rumor? Yes it was a hoax (or so I hope, there are pictures of him in New York a couple of days ago with Rachel McAdams). Maybe but it is sobering hearing of the other two, June 25th is turning out to be a strange day. I was behind someone at McDonalds in the drive through and heard them tell the girl in the window that Michael Jackson was dead and the girl said “no way!” and a couple of minutes ago someone in the barracks screamed “Michael Jackson is dead!!!” at the top of his lungs. My grandmother in law was in tears over Farrah and when I told my wife that Michael Jackson was dead, she didn‘t believe me and looked it up on the internet. I’m sure there is an entire movement of fans who are planning candle lit vigils all across the world.

Both were younger then my father and the in-laws, Farrah has my mom by a couple of years but it's close enough not to count. I’m glad that Jeff’s was a hoax because it would have probably bothered me more then the other two, Jeff was a cool cat at the top of his game and the world will be a sadder place without him, Michael and Farrah have had their days in the sun, while it's sad when people go but Farrah wasn’t in a good way which she shared with the entire world and Michael was living like a billionaire off a millionaires salary and face it, was nuttier then a fruit cake dropped in a bucket of peanuts and that was bound to catch up with him.

These stories have dropped NK out of the front page at CNN.com and that is the country threatening us with a “nuclear fire shower” right now if anything happens to them, it doesn’t seem to matter what or who causes it. It will be our fault and we would pay. These jokers keep crying wolf and eventually we got tired of hearing it but we really shouldn’t. The world is a tinder ground, Iran is in chaos, bombs going off in Iraq, it’s difficult to keep your mind on the ball when you don’t know what the ball is. I just know, we could live a lot easier if we didn't have a wack job who yells out craziness off his porch with his old dying fingers on the big red button (that doesn’t say “Easy”)

Alas, what are we to do?

The Little Black Bunny of Doom

Going to war has always been a somewhat mythical experience, legends often rise up and just as many are dashed to the ground (well really, mostly just rumors and stories). One such tale I've heard over the last couple years (since 2006) as been of a black bunny who comes out at dusk and goes up to strangers and allows them to pet him. Yeah, right, in the middle of war zone with some sort of howling beasts that live in the waddee a couple hundred feet away and face it, I know that there are some very unfriendly military folk out here. This has to be one of those urban myths that they use on the new guys fresh off the plane, I'm not about to fall for it.

Well I was walking home the other night, the light was at my back and a black blur came up on my left and I froze and looked and along came a little black bunny. He hopped right up to me as friendly as can be and puts his head on my foot. And my hand without asking my brain for permission, reached down and started scratching him behind his ears like it was the most normal thing in the world.

I sat there dumb stuck as the light drained from the day and continued petting him. What do I do now? Who's going to believe me, oh, yeah, me being me, had my trusty camera in my pocket and was able to prove to the non-believers that indeed, there is a friendly black bunny that comes out to be petted in the twilight. I gave him a granola bar from my pocket and went out to share a little bit of the mystery of the bunny with the rest of my Marines. It's not often you get to prove a legend on film.