“Oh yes; faster, harder” she says to me in a low sultry voice.  A whisper.

“Yeah; faster, harder” another feminine voice chimes.   Inviting, sexy.

This is getting interesting now. I’m starting to sweat and my breathing is getting heavier.

The siren song continues.  “Oh God, don’t stop, faster, harder; I love it” a totally different voice this time.  Insistent more commanding than pleading.

Wow, three women at one time!  But, now the beautiful siren song has risen to a much higher level and the pleasant overtone is being shed for something along the lines of demanding.  More caustic and sarcasm laden. 

“Go faster or I’ll make you pay”.  The second one tells me in a more assertive manner.

My breathing is labored and I’m sweating profusely.  The enjoyment I was once having is slowly slipping away; being replaced by a sense of dread and concern.  Three may be too many, more than I originally thought I could handle.

“I’ll have my Dad fire you if you don’t go faster and harder” the first one a stately blond threatens.  Hey, is that Ivanka Trump?

“I can go faster than you” the dark haired second siren proclaims, she looks an awful lot like Danica Patrick.  She seems to be the ring leader.

The pace, tempo and sound has risen to a cacophony of yells, now berating me.  I’m gasping for breath and covered in sweat.  I think I’ve over estimated my capacity.

“Oh YES, almost there DO NOT stop” the final one screams this one looks like a Victoria Secrets model.

 …and the elliptical trainer beeps signaling the end of the workout.  Not exactly where you thought this post was going is it?  You should be ashamed or here in Afghanistan, either one will suffice.

I’m currently in our workout room here at the FOB, leaning against the front of the elliptical trainer trying to look cool and not vomit up my internal organs. It’s imperative in the Army to look cool no matter what you’re doing or how stupid it may make you look.   My encouragement for the workout comes from the pictures adorning the walls and probably the anti-malarial drugs I’ve been given. 

Scavenged copies of Maxim, SI, FHM, Jet and others provide the scenery in the plywood hut housing our aerobics equipment.  Pictures snipped from the pages and placed here by the soldiers of the FOB.  It’s insight into the psyche of the soldiers here, better than a dating survey, as to what they like in women.  All types of women are represented here.  This is true democracy in action, anyone can vote as long as they have a staple gun.

By the way none of them are nude as we’re forbidden by regulation from displaying those type images.  Not out of any fear of harassment suits; hostile workplace takes on new meaning here; but so as not to offend the Afghans.  It’s OK to shoot at people here but not display naked pictures.   I’m unclear which is more offensive being shot at or seeing women??   

I was reading through my blog the other day and came away with an interesting impression.  Combat and Afghanistan sounds really cool and exciting.  After reading I was thinking,” Dude; this is cool I want to be there” and then I realized I was there.  It’s just not that cool and exciting.  95% of the time it’s pretty monotonous.

Much of my time gets spent on the mundane, trivial and downright boring.   Such as working out. So we come up with ways to negate the feeling that our will to live is being slowly drained from our bodies.  Thus, I now have Ivanka Trump, Danica Patrick and Victoria Secrets models as workout partners.  By the by they’re not as nice as they seem, they regularly scream obscenities and call me weak.

An example, cleaning weapons.  This gets done multiple times a week.  During the last session MSG Famine, several other Vampires and myself launch into a spirited debate about whether or not you’d want to date Daphne or Velma from Scooby Doo.  After much spirited debate Velma seemed to be the popular consensus as we think Daphne is way too high maintenance.

Here’s another one for you; demonstrating our willingness to go to any length to break up our monotony.  We get Armed Forces Network here consisting of 12 channels of mostly crap movies and shows that aired several years ago in the US. 

The commercials are all public service announcements.  If you watch AFN for any extended period of time you’ll be left with the overall impression that all soldiers drink too much, beat their wives and gamble away all their money.  All you previously deployed personnel know what I’m talking about. 

After watching this stuff for a while I became deeply concerned that my drinking was getting out of control and that I might hit my wife.  What should I do?  What the…?  I can’t even drink here and my wife is thousands of miles away.  This tripe is rotting my mind!

MSG Famine and I launch a secretive and poorly thought out plan to get Indian Satellite TV.  120 channels of pure bliss and entertainment.   It’s exactly what it sounds like, SAT TV broadcast out of India.

So; we work a dope deal to get this hooked up only to discover that 3/4s of the channels are in languages we don’t even speak.  We are soooooooo smart!    Never fear as my guys have demonstrated the ability to watch MTV in Urdu and enjoy it. 

Notice nowhere in this post did I mention reading or getting mail as we still don’t.  The last time we saw mail was on 26 DEC.  So that is out as an option for the use of our time.  I’ll be adding as a regular feature of Afghanistan Shrugged a ticker on the number of days we’ve gone without mail; until the Army figures out how to get us our mail.  Current count is 24 days!

 This in all actuality are our lives as a deployed American Warrior.  Spending vast amounts of our time being bored and inventing things to do with our time.  Some of the readers of this blog have sons stationed here with me and I’m sure you’ve heard the stories of boredom.   This isn’t Rambo and I’d like to say that we’ve developed through much thought and calculation cleaner nuclear power.  But we haven’t.   Just decided that we’d rather date Velma and that music videos in Urdu are still pretty entertaining.    

Oh yeah, I know Danica Patrick hates me, I can tell by the sound in her voice.  I’m gonna have to get new workout partners, three women is way too many.  Anybody got a picture of Bea Arthur from the Golden Girls??