Day in the life

Here's a picture of where I work, the Perfume Palace. It's one of Saddam's sons' brothels. In the below ground level (basement doesn't really sound right for a palace), there was a 30ft wide bed and a pool. And really, what are going to do on a 30ft wide bed but have orgies?



Here's a close-up view of the side. There's air conditioning ducts all over the place. In fact some of the meeting rooms have 20 of these things running in through the window, obstructing the entire view, then running through the ceiling. And none of my coworkers has seen Brazil . (UPDATE: Yesterday, they briefed that one of the ducts leaked sewage down the side of the palace. Apparently, NO ONE else on the watchfloor has seen Brazil! Sorry, I just had to vent.)




Here's a view from the 3rd floor looking down. It's really about 6 stories tall, but each floor is two stories high. Yeah, it's a lot of marble. We dropped a super bouncy ball from the top once. it was pretty cool.


Here's a view of where I live. Good ol' trailer number B51. Home Sweet Home. The top rack is mine.



So there you have it. I'm livin the American dream. Work in a whore house, live in a trailer.

Auto-Googling

I Googled myself today, partly because it's been a while but mostly because I read an article in Wired about how Self-Googling is on the rise . What I found literally left me jaw-dropping.

Some of you may know that I posted a few pictures for sale on Art.com a few years ago. Several of you have asked if I made any money on them, and I said no. Well, this past spring, Art.com sent me check for about $35 for the royalties on 20 or so prints. When the total reaches $50, they'll send me another check. So the fact that my pictures on art.com turned up first in the results didn't surprise me.

What DID surprise me is that those prints are now sold at more websites than I dared imagine (5 pages of results). Amazon has my pictures for sale, presumably through its marketplace feature that allows other stores to sell through them. There's specialty stores like Castles & Palaces Posters, Emami.com which has nothing but religious posters, Goldenscape.com which has nothing but architecture posters, and even Commando movie posters (you can imagine what they have).

There were a few other sites, like Nathan Dornbrook's blog , where I've posted a few times. There's some huge family tree that includes me. Strangely, this blog didn't turn up in the results, though it may soon.

I'm pretty sure I'm not getting any royalties through those other sites. Heck, I don't even know how they all got my prints. But that's not what worries me. What worries me if this counts against my Andy Warhol clock of fame. After spending over 7 years of my adult life in the Marine Corps, I'm apparently known to the world as an artist. Good grief.

My First Project

I had an interesting first couple of days. First of all, I work in a building called the Perfume Palace . It's the home of MNF-I , and all of us here support Gen Petraeus. In fact, when Gen Petraeus briefed Congress, the charts and such he used were produced here.

Anyway, yesterday I heard some members of an outside agency were visiting our section. Not only was I invited to attend, but I was surprised to learn both how strategic their mission was and how little time some of them had doing it (all were seasoned intelligence professionals, but the intelligence cell they were working in had just stood up). Having only been here a few days, I nevertheless felt I was able to contribute, which is a far fry from my last job where I was treated like a doormat. During the meeting, we discussed an RFI (request for information) they sent us, which, due to the enormity of the work involved, occupied most of the meeting's allotted time. It involved doing some pretty in-depth Social Network Analysis, something with which I am familiar enough to recognize both how much work it would be and that I don't have the necessary skills to carry it out.

Well, it turns out I'm tasked with doing it. Luckily, we managed to pare it down to something more manageable in the meeting, but it's still quite a project. I'm not complaining, though. This is an opportunity to excel and show them what I can do.

Settling In...Finally

I just got my room today, 6 days after leaving the States. I spent three days living in an unheated tent in Kuwait with no sheets, pillow, or blanket. I slept in my clothes with longjohns and sweatpants underneath and dreamt all night long of digging in my seabag looking for warmer clothes. Mysteriously, I somehow managed to catch a cold in the process.

I then spent two days in transient quarters here in Baghdad, where at least I had a sheet, a pillow, and a blanket. Now today I have a room and linens, I've dropped off my laundry, and I'm going to check into my work section after lunch. I'm working on Camp Slayer, Baghdad which is where I was the first time I came out here in 2005. Things are pretty much the way I left them, except now there's a Green beans Coffee shop between my trailer and work.

My mailing address is

Joshua Kaminoff
MNC-I/L3 GSI
Camp Victory
APO AE 09342

Just a little note. All over the place here are cards, notes, posters, etc that schoolchildren and others send to the troops. In the chowhall, the walls are covered with crayon drawings of flags and other patriotic images, most with kid's names, grades, and/or ages. A lot them say stuff like, "You are my hero" or "Thank you for protecting me." One picture hanging in front of me while I was eating was of a teddy bear holding a flag. In the white lines were written, "fite safly/hope you win".