The infamous Walla Walla Sweet Onion
(PICTURE: MMH)
No, not a Walla Walla Sweet Onion. Yes, there IS a city in Washington state with the name "Walla Walla". The city of Walla Walla is home to a college, and the main state penitentiary, where any and all executions are carried out (the primary method of execution in this state being lethal injection. The primary method prior to 2001 was hanging, and if condemned inmates so choose, they can be hanged). Walla Walla is an actual city in this state; I swear to God, I swear to God. And yes, I know what it means. Some Jordanian friends of mine got the serious giggles when I mentioned that I had just bought some Walla Walla sweet onions at the grocery store to use in a rock cod recipe. It then brought on a discussion with my dear friend Suma (one of my bridesmaids, and one of the ones "recruited" to do my makeup) about how onions make her husband Bashar, another friend of mine, fart like crazy, and how they used to make my extremely charming Syrian ex (no, really!) Riad clear a room. I found out QUICKLY why he had candles EVERYWHERE in his house.
So much for my dear old Dad's attempts to turn me into a "lady"-- I think he realized true defeat when at 13, he taught me to belch on command. He denies he ever did... but whatever.
I should NEVER be challenged to a belching contest, because I'll win. Or be a member of a winning team, like that day following LDS services (I got sick of being asked to attend church with them, so I did, and rather liked it) at FLW (Fort Lost in the Woods, Misery, aka, Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri) where our drill sergeants forgot to come pick us up, and a group of six of us (three women, three men) were contemplating marching the ten kilometers back (we made it about three before the blanking blank DS's realized they'd forgotten us... and we DID get credit for the march and didn't have to go on one later that week, getting to ride in the cattle trucks!). We were belching en masse (the men refused at first, but when you have three women and ONLY three men, the three women will get the three men to do whatever they want extremely quickly. Afterwards as we ate lunch, the men confessed they'd thought we were all pretty hardcore bitches, and were happy to see that in fact, we were pretty down to earth), and the cattle truck pulled up. The drill sergeants were like, "Ladies, that's disgusting. We could hear you from fifty meters away WITH the windows rolled up and the radio blaring."
Anyways, one of my favorite sites is "The Onion" @ http://www.theonion.com/. It's a satirical newspaper first introduced to me by Colonel Klink, uh, I mean, Harkema, which surprised me. I always thought my big brother (and I ain't talkin' age; he's 190 cm and roughly 100 kg on a normal day; we had to point out when he wanted to diet after his first deployment to Egypt that dieting would be futile since he's a good 20 cm taller than MOST Afghani men!) lacked a funny bone. It turns out, like the rest of the family, he appreciates his humor like he likes his deserts... very dry. The less rain, the better, because when it rains, it clogs those blankety-blank blanks of blank M4 carbines up surer than if you'd poured concrete through the thing and left it to set up in the heat, oh wait, that's what this damn dirt is, a helluva lot of gypsum! (according to one of his postcards from Kabul). His postcards home from Afghanistan (on his second deployment; the first was to MFO-North, the third to the IZ-Green Zone/Baghdad) were pretty amusing, though I doubt he intended them as such. Things like, "Earthquake the other day got things shaking pretty good. Not sure if the house we went to looked like that BEFORE or AFTER the quake though." Towards the end, the postcards got darker, and basically advocated turning Afghanistan into a nuclear wasteland for the next three millenia. I can't agree with such an idea; Afghanistan is one of those countries that has so much promise, if only she realizes it for herself. Until she does, and until closed minds are cracked open like windows, that country will not be much more than organized chaos. NOBODY has been able to tame that wild beast, from the Mongols onward to the Russians. I see in Afghanistan many of the same issues that plagued the Western World and North Africa ONE THOUSAND years ago. Frank decried the destruction of the Bamayan Buddhas (before his time there), saying that they'd been the only blanking thing worth seeing in a land devoid of anything other than a helluva lotta dirt and dust. And during the winter, a helluva lot of snow mixed with dirt and dust. He'd never before seen so LITTLE white snow, even coming from Oklahoma with all that damn red dirt mixed with snow. Lemme tell ya, a water moccasin looks pretty beautiful against a back drop of snow... I have to say that I am VERY proud of my brother. In that second deployment, they were doing some VERY dangerous things, and because Frank hadn't yet gotten his gold leaf, he was "allowed" to do them. He was a "EP captain", being paid at the rank of major, but with the worn insignia on his ACU's of a captain, probably partly because of the nature of what they were doing, and the fact that ANY U.S. military officer is considered a "high value target" by the Taliban. Not to mention, Frank DOES now speak relatively fluent Dari and Arabic; both of which he'd taken a course in during his time at MFO-North. It was either that or sit around on base drinking ouzo and eating, and since Frank's mother's family (VERY German) tends to put on weight if they LOOK at anything fatty, he chose to study (although he did do a fair amount of eating and drinking, and consequently weighed close to 125 kg. when he got back from the Sinai). To this day, Frank cannot tell us exactly where he went or what he did ("it's a matter of national security"-- so I could probably find it out on WikiLeaks!), but has told us, "check out the Wikipedia entry on the 45th Inf. Bde., that'll tell you". Frank was still being sent on patrols with the Afghan troops and did extensive training with them. They're apparently not the best shots-- he described sending part of a platoon to a firing range, and having three of fifteen men hit the target, and it wasn't even THEIR target, but their neighbor's to the left or right... the miracle in all this is NOT ONE OF THE MEN UNDER HIS COMMAND was injured. Every single man came home safe. I later met First Sergeant Clayton Kelly at a rest stop along I-5, that KNEW WHO I WAS based on my facial expressions and certain things I said and how I said them, and when we got to talking about his transfer from Ft. Sill to Ft. Lewis and I mentioned my brother was a unit commander. Without me saying, Kelly said, "Lemme guess, your brother is Lt. Col. Frank Harkema." He didn't, however, know my brother's "real name", since Frank goes by the nickname instead of the full name. The Oklahoma accent, while thicker than grits in Frank and like a bowl of malt-0-meal in me, does get replaced by the PacNW accent most of the time, though with Oklahoma slang. We're very high brow Okies, in other words. I do know part of his unit's safety is due to prayers of my friends from all over the world. Prayer warriors for them could be found amongst ALL faith groups, from Hindus and Buddhists to Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Our God always listens to us and protects us, though maybe not in the ways we expect.
So much for my dear old Dad's attempts to turn me into a "lady"-- I think he realized true defeat when at 13, he taught me to belch on command. He denies he ever did... but whatever.
I should NEVER be challenged to a belching contest, because I'll win. Or be a member of a winning team, like that day following LDS services (I got sick of being asked to attend church with them, so I did, and rather liked it) at FLW (Fort Lost in the Woods, Misery, aka, Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri) where our drill sergeants forgot to come pick us up, and a group of six of us (three women, three men) were contemplating marching the ten kilometers back (we made it about three before the blanking blank DS's realized they'd forgotten us... and we DID get credit for the march and didn't have to go on one later that week, getting to ride in the cattle trucks!). We were belching en masse (the men refused at first, but when you have three women and ONLY three men, the three women will get the three men to do whatever they want extremely quickly. Afterwards as we ate lunch, the men confessed they'd thought we were all pretty hardcore bitches, and were happy to see that in fact, we were pretty down to earth), and the cattle truck pulled up. The drill sergeants were like, "Ladies, that's disgusting. We could hear you from fifty meters away WITH the windows rolled up and the radio blaring."
Anyways, one of my favorite sites is "The Onion" @ http://www.theonion.com/. It's a satirical newspaper first introduced to me by Colonel Klink, uh, I mean, Harkema, which surprised me. I always thought my big brother (and I ain't talkin' age; he's 190 cm and roughly 100 kg on a normal day; we had to point out when he wanted to diet after his first deployment to Egypt that dieting would be futile since he's a good 20 cm taller than MOST Afghani men!) lacked a funny bone. It turns out, like the rest of the family, he appreciates his humor like he likes his deserts... very dry. The less rain, the better, because when it rains, it clogs those blankety-blank blanks of blank M4 carbines up surer than if you'd poured concrete through the thing and left it to set up in the heat, oh wait, that's what this damn dirt is, a helluva lot of gypsum! (according to one of his postcards from Kabul). His postcards home from Afghanistan (on his second deployment; the first was to MFO-North, the third to the IZ-Green Zone/Baghdad) were pretty amusing, though I doubt he intended them as such. Things like, "Earthquake the other day got things shaking pretty good. Not sure if the house we went to looked like that BEFORE or AFTER the quake though." Towards the end, the postcards got darker, and basically advocated turning Afghanistan into a nuclear wasteland for the next three millenia. I can't agree with such an idea; Afghanistan is one of those countries that has so much promise, if only she realizes it for herself. Until she does, and until closed minds are cracked open like windows, that country will not be much more than organized chaos. NOBODY has been able to tame that wild beast, from the Mongols onward to the Russians. I see in Afghanistan many of the same issues that plagued the Western World and North Africa ONE THOUSAND years ago. Frank decried the destruction of the Bamayan Buddhas (before his time there), saying that they'd been the only blanking thing worth seeing in a land devoid of anything other than a helluva lotta dirt and dust. And during the winter, a helluva lot of snow mixed with dirt and dust. He'd never before seen so LITTLE white snow, even coming from Oklahoma with all that damn red dirt mixed with snow. Lemme tell ya, a water moccasin looks pretty beautiful against a back drop of snow... I have to say that I am VERY proud of my brother. In that second deployment, they were doing some VERY dangerous things, and because Frank hadn't yet gotten his gold leaf, he was "allowed" to do them. He was a "EP captain", being paid at the rank of major, but with the worn insignia on his ACU's of a captain, probably partly because of the nature of what they were doing, and the fact that ANY U.S. military officer is considered a "high value target" by the Taliban. Not to mention, Frank DOES now speak relatively fluent Dari and Arabic; both of which he'd taken a course in during his time at MFO-North. It was either that or sit around on base drinking ouzo and eating, and since Frank's mother's family (VERY German) tends to put on weight if they LOOK at anything fatty, he chose to study (although he did do a fair amount of eating and drinking, and consequently weighed close to 125 kg. when he got back from the Sinai). To this day, Frank cannot tell us exactly where he went or what he did ("it's a matter of national security"-- so I could probably find it out on WikiLeaks!), but has told us, "check out the Wikipedia entry on the 45th Inf. Bde., that'll tell you". Frank was still being sent on patrols with the Afghan troops and did extensive training with them. They're apparently not the best shots-- he described sending part of a platoon to a firing range, and having three of fifteen men hit the target, and it wasn't even THEIR target, but their neighbor's to the left or right... the miracle in all this is NOT ONE OF THE MEN UNDER HIS COMMAND was injured. Every single man came home safe. I later met First Sergeant Clayton Kelly at a rest stop along I-5, that KNEW WHO I WAS based on my facial expressions and certain things I said and how I said them, and when we got to talking about his transfer from Ft. Sill to Ft. Lewis and I mentioned my brother was a unit commander. Without me saying, Kelly said, "Lemme guess, your brother is Lt. Col. Frank Harkema." He didn't, however, know my brother's "real name", since Frank goes by the nickname instead of the full name. The Oklahoma accent, while thicker than grits in Frank and like a bowl of malt-0-meal in me, does get replaced by the PacNW accent most of the time, though with Oklahoma slang. We're very high brow Okies, in other words. I do know part of his unit's safety is due to prayers of my friends from all over the world. Prayer warriors for them could be found amongst ALL faith groups, from Hindus and Buddhists to Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Our God always listens to us and protects us, though maybe not in the ways we expect.
NOTE: Replace "blankety", "blank", "blanks", and "blanking" with your favorite English swear word(s). I suggest the "eff bomb", aka, "a crude term to describe copulation."
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