It's fun to stay at the YMCA...

We went to a shitty Iraqi style YMCA today. Part of being in the US Army is showing the Iraqis that we want to help them and make their country a better place. So we fund projects to better their communities and schools. Personally, I liked this war a little better when we were blowing things up and shooting anyone who had a shovel in their hands. We have to be nice guys now.

This recreation center was a far cry from our YMCAs. Sure it had an outdoor swimming pool... but it was empty and had murky water, frogs and garbage in it. They had a soccer field... but it looked like a mortar had gone off in the center of it. There was a computer lab... full of yellow 1980's Apple computers with green screens. It was sad. But they were trying. Once they get some of our money to fix it up, it'll be better, I guess. We had to walk down a filthy alley to get to the YMCA. There were garbage piles with swarms of flies lining the roadway. Cloth propaganda posters had been hung up. There was a dude on all of them who I thought looked like Jesus. Several of the posters depicted his head on a stake, and him holding a baby with a spear through it's neck. I wanted to take pictures of it, but one of the officers I was with made me feel like a total asshole for being interested in that. So I just got one of me and Psychedelic Jesus, as pictured below.

The garbage in this part of Baghdad was particularly stinky. There was a lot of standing water that added to the foulness. Of course, the kids were all playing in it like it was no big deal. As I was walking along, I thought to myself, "Man, if I farted next to someone out here, they wouldn't be able to tell a difference." So I tested the theory. I totally crop dusted Major James and he didn't say a damn word about the stinky butt odor that he smelled. Haha.