Spy vs. Blog

Check the traffic statistics for any blog or site and you'll see plenty of curious things. Every site has it's share of mysterious daily visitors who never seem to comment. Every site gets visits from far away or obscure places. Every site has its share of confounding searches displaying downright odd tastes in everything from sex to coffee. It's even odder to know your blog actually touches on some of the weirder topics.

Some of my mostly puzzling visitors are with the US government. I had a spate of visits from the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms last year. Ditto for visits from the IRS. I get the occasional drive by from the Commerce Department and even a single visit from some poor troll in the basement of the White House. With all the reports of wiretapping and clandestine blog visiting, it's easy to see a conspiracy behind every IP address, but visits from a series of US Navy addresses are a bit worrying.

And the Hits Just Keep on Comin'

For approximately 6 months last year - around the time when news surfaced about governmental blog tracking - I began to get daily visits from:

• gate4-sandiego.nmci.navy.mil (138.163.0.44)


• gate2-sandiego.nmci.navy.mil (138.163.0.42)


• gate5-sandiego.nmci.navy.mil (138.163.0.37)


• gate6-sandiego.nmci.navy.mil (138.163.0.38)


• gate1-sandiego.nmci.navy.mil (138.163.0.41)


• gate3-sandiego.nmci.navy.mil (138.163.0.43)


• gate8-sandiego.nmci.navy.mil (138.163.0.36)

I also got a few visits from similar "nmci" addresses with "gates" labeled Norfolk. The visits eventually tapered off, but they're still a regular occurrence.

There were several things that made these addresses stand out.

Dateline: San Diego, NY

First, even though the server names indicated San Diego or Norfolk, the server locations were in New York. Sometimes, I also got visits from 3 or more of the gates at the same time on the same day and the number of past page loads and visits from each one (even now) are identical whether there is a record of them in my site logs or not.

Curious about the "nmci" identification, I found that it stands for the Navy Marine Corps Intranet, an Intranet developed by global contractor EDS to provide, "secure, universal access to integrated voice, video, and data communications." According to the EDS, NMCI will eventually "link more than 400,000 workstations and laptops for 500,000 Navy and Marine Corps users across the continental United States, Hawaii, Cuba, Guam, Japan, and Puerto Rico."

I've tried to log on to NMCI, but as you might expect, I'm not authorized. I'd think a typical sailor or marine would have little or no reason to visit my blog - much less know of its existence.

Nefarious Plots

Now, I'm not alleging some nefarious plot. There may be some valid reason for my sudden popularity with sailors and Marines - perhaps they love the same witty punditry that so entranced the Sergeant-at-Arms and the White House troll - but it still makes one wonder. Perhaps the most troublesome thing about this issue is this. We now live in a county where the possibly of government plots is more than just the thought of a crazed conspiracy nut.

And that gives me the willies.

Labels: bloggers, media, society, travel

Truth Told by Omnipotent Poobah, Thursday, May 24, 2007

A Good Walk Spoiled

---

I've somehow reached middle age without taking up golf. I don't see the appeal of doing something so damnably difficult for recreation, but there you go - "different strokes for different folks" as they say.

When she was younger, I took the Omnipotent Daughter to mini-golf a handful of times. Aside from breaking a window in the miniature Dutch windmill with an errant putt, not much good came of it.

I also allowed co-workers to drag me to a golf scramble in mid-February on the frigid, blustery plains of Ohio. We shivered and played with an orange ball so we could find it in the snow. My slow pace kept everyone waiting way too long and several of us missed the next week of work with severe colds.

Golf at Goose

My only "real" game came in Goose Bay, Labrador. Braving swarms of mosquitoes and black flies, a friend and I borrowed a putter and a driver and went to play the now-defunct course on the Canadian Forces Base where we were staying. We got an idea of just how challenging the course would be on the first hole.

We teed off from a 12' round slab of cement covered in moldy Astroturf. It was equipped with a permanent steel tee jutting up in the middle. Our first shot was down a long "fairway" choked in weeds and sporting hundreds of pine tree stumps cleared for the second coming of Arnold Palmer. On the left was a large water hazard about the size of Lake Michigan. A moose grazed in the reeds along the shore.

Because I'd always heard it in the movies, I yelled FORE! and smacked the ball as hard as I could with my borrowed putter. "Nice shot," my friend said as my ball caromed off a granite boulder.

Mind the Moose

He lost his first shot in the lake after it bounced off a 2-ton moose ass. "Can I have a do-over on that," he asked?

"Yes. Please. That moose looks a little pissed."

We merrily chased the balls down the fairway, chopping and hacking as we went. We covered our huge divots by pushing knee-high weeds over them. Occasionally, we lost our balls in the rough (no pun intended). It was hard to tell where the fairway ended and the rough began. So, we agreed that when a ball went far enough into the head high weeds that you couldn't see the other golfer, it was officially in the rough.

If you had to call for a wilderness guide, it was a two-stroke penalty.

A Little Juice

After an hour, we arrived at the Hole 1 putting green. It rose about 4 inches above the veld on a square concrete slab covered in the best Astroturf the Canadians could provide. My friend putted first.

"Guess I'm going to have to give this a little juice to get over that lip on the green," he said as he thwacked the ball with his driver. And thwack he did - so hard the ball struck the concrete lip and rebounded into his forehead with a solid POCK.

"Nasty break on that one," he said. "Be careful."

I prepared my putt by yanking a handful of reeds out of the ground and throwing them professionally in the air to test the wind. They fell with a thud because I'd neglected to shake the muck off them before casting them aloft.

"Hmm, looks pretty calm," I said knowledgeably.

The Ungloved One

I lined myself up and wiggled my ass as I'd seen professionals do. I was confident I'd make the putt. There were no windmills with broken windows to block my way. I only wished I had one of those single gloves the pros wear - maybe a rhinestone one like Michael Jackson's.

I wasted six strokes before getting up onto the elevated green. When my friend's ball joined mine, we wasted another five strokes playing croquet and knocking each other's ball away from the hole.

Eventually, I managed to accidentally hit my ball into the iron pipe hole and it disappeared into the bowels of the earth. My friend's ball also disappeared, although we did hear his gurgle when it hit water a few feet down.

We'd played one hole. It took close to two hours. We tied at 60 strokes each and felt quite proud of our accomplishment. As we drank the celebratory beers we carried on our pockets and slapped at the huge insects sucking us dry. We wondered what par was for the hole. We looked for the sign, but it was laying in the grass, apparently shredded by a passing bear.

"Good game," my friend said.

"Yeah, same to you," I replied. "Maybe we can go on tour next year."

---

Labels: humor, memoir, travel

Truth Told by Omnipotent Poobah, Saturday, May 12, 2007

High Atop Corcovado

There they are, the spews du jour. Another Gonzo acolyte will plead the fifth. Turd Blossom gouged the taxpayer for political purposes. The Idiot King's 2004 campaign manager expresses a true "well, duh!" moment.

It's Sunday morning and my patience with these crapweasels is short. I must think about something else or I'll go mad. And, the thing I've decided to think about is, "wow, just WOW!" That's Peacechick Mary's comment about Friday's post, Tea and Cookies in Turkey.

Mary's comment took me by surprise.

Cookies is a typical memoir post for me. They allow me to escape the unrelenting vicious political screeds and humdrum boredom of life. I can wander through more pleasant times and vicariously live a little via memories.

Chocolate Memories

The memoirs are the chocolates that wipe the foul taste of a bad meal from my mouth.

Oddly, the exotic times don't seem like WOWs to me. Rather, they're an extension of my present - a quiet and vanilla life filled with everyday pleasures and annoyances. Over the years, I've burnished my memories through constant use. In hindsight, they shine in the sun, lustrous and illuminating.

But, they weren't always like that.

The Everyday Exotic

At the time, they seemed much less romantic and more like everyday experiences - because they were. For a time, my everyday life was filled with hundreds of events like Cookies. Before I turned 30, I'd survived a childhood in daily contact with two schizophrenics, interviewed Daniel Elsberg, and traveled to every US state and Canadian province. I'd visited 25 countries on every continent save Australia and Antarctica - from Yokohama to Tehran, Point Barrow to Punta Arenas. I'd already had a career as a writer and photographer and moved along to aviation - a career that lasted more than another 10 years in various capacities.

Someday, I may tell you about standing atop Corcovado looking at the beauty of nighttime Rio. If I do, I'm sure the breathtaking beauty will come through because that's the way I like to remember it.

But at the time, it was different.

I'd been traveling non-stop for nearly four years. That night came during a 16-day swing through South America. My life was over-full with exotic places and experiences, and quite frankly, I'd begun to take them for granted.

In real life, that night was beautiful, but also telling.

Atop Corcovado

I stood there with a good college friend who lived in Rio. Although she'd seen this view dozens of times, she was captivated. We stood hand-in-hand in the star-filled night with the shining Christ statue at our backs and she said, "Isn't that the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?"

And I replied, "Yeah, it's OK."

It was incredibly beautiful and I saw that, even at the time. But by that night, my eyes had already seen so much I expected excitement as my due. I was jaded. I saw the beauty, but didn't feel it. It's only now, 30 years on, that I have the luxury of distance and the maturity to appreciate the life I led.

The stories I tell really happened. I lived them. The details are all true. My only edits are exorcising the boring parts and presenting the shiny remainders so the stories conform to my idealized memory.

Comments like Mary's are frequent. Some say they envy my life and wish they'd lived even a small portion of it. I'm flattered by those comments, but they make me think about stories like Cookies.

All in a Day's Work

Walking the airplane back up that hot, dusty runway was simply my work. There was always a tomorrow when I could dip my toes into the Black Sea or see a remote place few people ever visit. I surely enjoyed the tea and cookies, but I'd broken bread in many exotic locales and accepted the kindness of people like the Turkish man and his grandson many times before.

It makes me realize that someone else's life always seems more exciting than your own. Their experiences are unique and that makes them fresh and exciting. With the benefit of hindsight, I also realize something else. I've lived my life as you see it. Looking back from afar and savoring it as you sometimes do. I wish I could step back into the past and relive those stories - this time, smarter and wiser - but I can't.

In the end, I only have the stories and they will have to do.

---

Labels: memoir, travel

Truth Told by Omnipotent Poobah, Sunday, April 01, 2007

The Applause of Birds

The day began well before dawn in snowy, sub-zero Anchorage. There were northern lights in the sky as I began the long flight over the unending Pacific horizon. The monotonous blue broke only once all day - during a short, but viciously hot midday stop at Wake Island. Too many hours later, I arrived over the beautiful coral reefs and clear water of Midway Island. Omnipotent Dad - who'd been there as a submariner during WWII - always described the place as a bomb-pocked hunk of rock jutting up from the sea. He'd told me many times about Navy ships inbound from the US hauling in loads of dirt in an attempt to green the place up. Apparently the effort worked, because the Midway I saw below was a lush place with the big green lawns and thousands of coconut palms common to most tropical military bases.

Dad also told me stories about the gooney birds - the huge and comical albatrosses that crowd the island. My image of them was mostly based on National Geographic pictures and tales of sailors taking a break from the nasty business of war to feed ice cream to the chicks.

Meet the Goonies

As we taxied to our parking spot, I was amazed that hundreds of the birds lined the runways and taxiways. None of them seemed the least interested in the giant metal bird screaming a few feet away. Off in the distance I could see one or two using the runway for their own takeoffs. They gullomped down the runway flapping their impossibly long wings and bumping their asses on the concrete. After seemingly running for miles, they slowly lifted and struggled for altitude like an overloaded airplane. Once in the sky, their clumsiness fell away and they soared in effortless beauty over the sea. Their flight was so economical. It put man's feeble confection of being the master of the skies to shame. They flew for hours on the island thermals, adjusting their flights with only the subtle movements of their tails.

When we shut down our banshee-screaming engines, it became so quiet. The air held nothing except the gentle ticking of the cooling engines, the hush of the far-off surf, and muted voices from the crew as we unpacked. The wind picked up slightly and the solid thock of a coconut falling onto the concrete reminded us we were in the tropics.

After checking in, a sailor from the naval facility ferried us to our quarters in an ancient Jeep. If I'd been impressed by the number of goonies around the airport, I was totally unprepared for what I saw on the streets. It was mating season and every inch of the island - lawns, driveways, picnic tables, cars, even the road itself - was choked with birds. It was Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds writ huge. There were so many birds that we could drive no faster than 5 mph. Our sailor navigated around eggs laid on the bare ground and straddled birds that refused to make way for the Jeep.

Mom, Dad, and the Chicks

Some of the nesting couples had already hatched their huge eggs and jealously guarded their chicks and ridiculously small patch of ground. It seemed the only thing that ruffled their feathers was another bird or a human getting too close. They squawked loudly and bobbed heads at intruders. If you drew too close, they'd snip in your direction with a pronounced clap of their hooked bills. I'm sure they could do real damage if they managed to connect with flesh.

The chicks couldn't be more different than their parents. Instead of strikingly white, three foot tall birds, the chicks were cantaloupe-sized balls of furry brown fuzz. Lost in the tangle were two beady, glistening eyes and the tiniest of beaks. They looked like fobs on the end of a teenage girl's key chain. Although the parents made poor nest builders - bare ground was fine with them - they made very attentive keepers of their small broods. Periodically, one of the adults would make the long takeoff run and return later with a mouthful of regurgitated fish. It seemed as though the parents might swallow the chicks whole as their kids fed directly from Mom's beak. But they were happy families, the parents periodically stopping to do their silly dipping, flapping love dance culminating in an orgy of claps from their massive beaks.

The Applause of Birds

Our quarters were in an old house, previously used by a navy family. We removed the plywood from the windows and the protective plastic from the mattresses and settled in. We watched the sun go down in a dazzling display from the back porch. When it grew dark, we all moved inside for sleep. As I lay down I felt the cool island breeze tickle the hairs of my body. I could feel a slight sheen of sweat evaporating in the breeze. My eyes grew heavy and as I began to drift off I could hear only one thing - the quiet applause of a million goonies doing their dance and clapping their bills of love. My last thought before I slipped below the waves of sleep was that avian applause seemed like a very fitting end to the day.

Clap, clap, clap.

Labels: memoir, travel

Truth Told by Omnipotent Poobah, Tuesday, February 27, 2007