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Reflections from a 26 year old
2008-06-25 01:30:38
I turned 26 today, I am now officially closer to 30 than to 20.
Something is inherently scary about that. I'm not afraid of getting old and dying, thats part of life. No, I'm afraid of not DOING anything with life.
The Army can be a great thing for a great many people, however I find it can trap you in a cycle.
People join the Army for a myriad of reasons, some to get away from home, others to pay for school, yet some still because frankly they've watched too much Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, Black Hawk Down and a bunch of other military movies.
I joined the Infantry becuase years from now I didn't want people to ask me, "You were in the Army, what did you do?" and I respond with, "Well, I was a supply specialist," or "I monitored the systems on a Patriot Missile."
No, I wanted to be part of the front lines, to be there when the crap went down.
I got my wish, I've now been blown up, shot at, rocketed, and mortared. I've seen more dead bodies than I can count. I count myself lucky as well as attributing my continued mental stability to the fact that I'm such a sarcastic smartass.
However, I look forward to living the rest of my life, whether I live for another 80 years or just one more. Being deployed has made me appreciate everything I have in my life. From my family and friends to my TV.
Life is worth living my friends because it is LIFE. People concern themselves so much with things that won't matter in a few years and only in the recent years have I understood this.
Heres to the rest of a lifetime spent doing the things I love.
Katara -
Kevin Poehls
2008-06-03 04:59:38
I am a member of "The Originals." The Originals are members of the platoon that were here in 2004 to early 2005 back before we were even the 506th. Some are NCOs now, some are out of the Army. However, there is still a core group of us and we literally are the backbone of the current platoon.
Kevin Poehls was one of The Originals, coming to the Platoon in late 2004, he was one of the guys that I trained with and went to Iraq with. He, like many of us, went through several IED attacks, and one or two firefights.
Upon returning, Poehls was one of the guys that would get to ride through the rest of his contract, he was going to get out roughly summer of 2007 (we got back november of 2006). However, there seemed something wrong with him.
When our platoon would go for runs, Poehls would fall out, complaining of headaches, one time he literally fell over. They sent him to sick call who then sent him to the hospital to get an MRI. There, they discovered a form of brain cancer, the doctors told him bluntly that even in a best case scenario he had maybe two to three years to live.
They sent Poehls to Vanderbilt hospital to begin radiation treatment, Poehls as a result of the cancer, and the treatment became disoriented. He would walk into walls and seemingly forget where he was at times. His emotions would swing in any given direction at a moment's notice. By late spring of 2007, Poehls was discharged from the Army and went back to Texas to continue treatment back home with his family.
On the 21st of May, Kevin Poehls finally lost his battle with cancer.
I won't sit here and say Poehls was the best soldier I've ever known, he wasn't. He was an asshole at times, and at times a downright shitbag. But he was one of us, one of our boys, one of the originals. Despite anything negative that can be said of him, Poehls served his country at a time when few would. The last five years of his life that he had, four of them were given to the Army.
He wasn't our most valuable soldier, nor was he the most well liked, but all of us treated Poehls like he was still one of us while we still had him. We would crack jokes about his hair loss during his radiation treatments and I think that the fact that we never pitied him may have made him feel like he was still part of the Platoon.
Goodbye Poehls. If there is a heaven, hopefully you and Castillo are having a laugh at all of us here in Afghanistan, you magnificent son of a bitch. -
Visit Afghanistan! We smell worse than Iraq!
2008-04-09 01:50:50
Yeah, so I'm in Afghanistan. To put it mildly a crappy place, apparently temperatures will get over 130 degrees here come summertime, thats great if you want to lose weight and all but totally sucks if you hate the heat, which I do.
I plan on getting a new picture of myself with the new patches that some guys and I had made, if your a huge Star Wars fan, you'll understand the reference the patches make. Afghanistan for the most part, smells worse than Iraq if that can be believed.
I will admit, I've been remiss in my anime watching duties before I deployed. After all, I was paying for a car, insurance, internet and cable, plus food. I barely had enough money to feed my video game habit, let alone my anime one.
Plus, there have been few shows that have "grabbed" me. Now I'm not saying that nothing GOOD has been released in the past year or two, its just that compared to the plethora of seemingly awesome shows that came out several years ago, where else can we go?
When I first started buying DVDs, some of my first purchases were Armitage III, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Rurouni Kenshin, Akira, Mahoromatic, Love Hina, and a few others.
None of those shows are bad, hell Cowboy Bebop I consider the pinnacle of anime, it has yet to be topped in my eyes.
But when you hit such a high plateau the only place you can come is down, now there are one or two shows that have drawn my interest, Witchblade and Ghost in the Shell being a prime examples. But in all honesty I haven't been rushing out to buy each and every DVD, in fact, I haven't even bought one yet.
I will attempt to remedy that when I return to the states sometime next year and get out of the Army.
I look forward to picking up my old hobbies, playing on Xbox Live, drawing (a hobby I started just before I left and hope to develop while I am here), and yes, even making AMVs.
Though I'm sure many of you probably could give a damn what exactly I do with my life, I decided to pour my thoughts out on here and the only reason you've even read this far is due to the fact that you're wondering where this shambling monstrosity of a blog post is going.
But it seems that everyday I grow a little more out of touch with the world at large. Imagine if the things that you once took great pleasure now were no longer familar to you. I can't even tell you what anime is coming out that I'd be even remotely interested in watching. I used to be able to recite several titles off the top of my head.
Everytime I walk into the video store back home I scratch my head when I see the Anime section, I don't recognize over half the titles there anymore. I suppose it could be that I'm getting "older" and anime has lost the appeal that it had when I was in my teens and early twenties, but I fervently hope not.
Many people have hobbies that they for some reason or another give up on. Either because they are too hard or they have other priorities in life. Few people fight for what they love to do and many accept the fact that what they used to love when they were younger just can't be done anymore.
Me? I plan to fight. I am having my computer rebuilt upon my return to the states, faster and more powerful than it was before. I will eventually release a new AMV, once I get caught up on some newer shows with fresh material. All I need to do is get through this deployment.
Its gonna be a long deployment.
Katara
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My Invader Zim vid is finally online
2008-03-04 01:43:46
After nearly three years of sitting on my harddrive I uploaded "The Other Doom Song" to Youtube. Granted, not exactly the medium I expected it to be shown on but as a device to get it out there, it works just fine. The link is below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ckX9xDnp4w -
Considering leaving opinions on AMVs
2007-09-22 21:07:50
In recent times, I've been giving thought to leaving opinions on certain videos. Nothing overly negative of course, but my thoughts on the video. Hoenstly, I'm so out of touch with technical details my comment about your video's technical aspects would probably consist of "It flashed alot and was pretty."
I've steadfastily maintained a policy of never commenting on any AMV I download because I can never be sure how my comments will be taken. I've always been concerned that should I ever leave criticism, then I would be hounded by people insulting me for my thoughts (if you think that people around here are too mature to ever insult someone for an opinion then get a hold of me, I have some land in the Antarctic I'd like to sell you).
I'm still up in the air as to whether or not this is a good idea, if it is, then I'll start doing it. However, I'm not about to leave opinons such as "it was good" and thats it, I'd try to write a little bit about why I thought your video was "da shiznit" or not. I'm a brutally honest person when it comes to rating things and I sometimes wonder whether or not people would actually welcome my viewpoint, I suppose we'll see.
Cheers,
Katara
JOURNAL: Katara (Matt Reppert)
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