The World According To Chris Brewer

Great. Yesterday I made a whole big post about love and the first and second comments on it deal with how the milk I drank with my cookies tasted like sour cream.

John Stevens wanted to know where I keep the billy goat that provides our milk. We have felt it necessary to tie him up to a palm tree right outside our trailer. It is my roommate’s job to feed him today. By the way, its name is simply Kirk. Kirk the Billy Goat. (I feel bad for my future wife because I might come up with all these interesting names to name my kid — get it? — and she will surely disagree. Who wants a kid named Kirk.) But anyway, the goat woke me up at 4 AM with all its bleating. BAAAAAAA BAAAAAAAA BAAAAAAAAAAA all the way down the corridor toward our trailer…it got so annoying. This morning when I rode the goat to work (that sounds so horrible) he kept bleating when he saw all the military convoys.

Enough of the fanciful stories. It would be pretty awesome if I did own a billy goat here though. I would name him Kirk in a heartbeat.

Speaking of animals you can ride, have you ever read that Bible story about this guy named Balaam who was riding on his ass when it started talking. By ass I mean donkey of course. Whoa I am gonna take some crazy comments for using that word, but hey it’s in the King James Version of the Bible. Which if you were in the Church of God of Prophecy until the 1980s, that was the only Bible you ever read.

Speaking of the COGOP, I think my website looks better than theirs. And it is updated much more often, and it doesn’t even require the manpower and dedicated resources!

Speaking of my website, it might go down on Monday for awhile. Do not be alarmed as this will be a simple server transfer. It’s not really expected to take too long though. I do have to back up all my data and move it tomorrow which will be a pain in the neck.

Not much else is goin’ on today. Just chilliwackin’. Tonight I have to review this video I made with a general. Very fun stuff.

Love you all and God bless. More detailed post coming tomorrow!

Kids, when dealing with 9mm handguns it is essential to exercise proper weapon clearing procedures!

I say this because I sliced my thumb pretty good today while clearing my M9 at a checkpoint, and I am trying to keep a good attitude about it. I actually laughed right after it happened.

What basically happened was today as I was standing at a barrel to clear my M9 before going into the dining facility to grab lunch, I was talking to a friend as well. This apparently is a big no-no for me from now on based on what happens next. I grabbed the bolt of my gun and pulled it back to make sure the weapon was clear of ammo, then released it. Instantly I felt a hard pinch and a huge wave of pain go through my left thumb. I had caught a fair amount of the skin on the gun, and the bolt ripped it right off as it snapped back forward. Holy crap, it hurt like sixty at first. Then the pain went away and out came the blood. Mass amounts of it. The cut didn’t look deep at first and there was no more pain so I walked into the Al-Rashid Hotel and found the restroom. I ran it under water and I could see where the bolt had just sheared through the skin. I had to wash it out.

This Iraqi hotel attendant who had been cleaning the restroom came up to me and offered me a bunch of paper towels and started bowing and mumbling, “Not good, you hurt, not good.” Then he pointed to this little button on the wall next to the sink, and he pushed it and grabbed his hand and put it next to the button. I did the same with my hand and I realized he had just turned on a hot air dryer. What a nice guy. He kept standing there saying stuff like, “You hurt, much bleeding, no good.” I kept telling him I wasn’t in pain but I was bleeding. Of course he didn’t understand English all too well so I gestured to him that I wasn’t in pain. Man I suck bad in games like Charades but today I could have won easily as the man understood easily what I was saying. I bowed, thanked him and rushed out to the shops inside the hotel to find some tape, anything to cover my finger. Nothing. So I grabbed the paper towels and made a makeshift bandage and went and grabbed lunch. Of course I used my right hand to grab all the food accessories.

Now here I sit, with no pain, but the chunk of skin that got ripped out was right next to a nerve, so as a result my hand won’t open completely. It’s really weird. It doesn’t even hurt, but I just wish I didn’t have this hole in my thumb.

Onto much better and more fulfilling news.

Let’s give a warm-hearted round of applause for Aftan, the new member of my editorial staff that only consisted of one person beforehand (thanks for that post, and the care package). I asked her two nights ago if she wanted to work on the blog with me and she said yes, even though she didn’t know what she would want to post right away. Which is fine, I said, because she will have plenty to post about over the holidays and throughout next year. So let’s welcome her to the blog, she has left many comments and shoutbox notes before and now she is a bonafide member of the World According to Chris Brewer (which is why I put “And Friends” on the title today too, if you noticed).

Speaking of Aftan, let me talk for a minute about this care package I got from her yesterday. This thing is awesome. The package contained three different types of cookies, multiple Big Hunk candy bars, a package of Atomic Fire Balls (my favorite candy), a few CDs and a card, a picture and some other great stuff I can’t open until Christmas. I can hardly wait. It makes me get all excited for Christmas again just like a kid. Except there’s no tree, but I think I can cut down a palm branch and that can substitute.

So here is a plea for anyone who may be contemplating sending me care packages soon: Please withhold perishable food items until further notice. I could last the entire first season of LOST with all the cookies Aftan made for me. Thanks for the generosity but I cannot accept any more perishable food for awhile. (Man, these cookies are good.)

Right now I am going back into the 80s with some Christian rock and listening to some Mylon LeFevre and Broken Heart. I remember the days when my dad had a Toyota truck and he’d drive us to church and play Mylon the entire time. I survived on that music for years, and it sticks with me today. Them and DeGarmo & Key. What a couple awesome Christian bands. Christian music today does not hold a candle to old Christian music, in my opinion. Even though the lyrics might be deeper and might relate more to today’s generation, I still prefer the old Christian rock. That stuff was the best ever. Too bad Mylon got a heart attack in the early 90s and relegated himself to soft music, which you can find on iTunes. His album of soft music is horrible. I don’t even know the name of it, that’s how bad it was.

Wow, this is a long post. I’ve been working on it for 34 minutes now.

In closing, other than my thumb getting owned by an M9, I’m doing well. Today is cool.

So the morals of this post are remember to clear your weapons properly and carefully, Aftan is awesome, and Mylon LeFevre & Broken Heart was the best Christian rock band out there until Mylon’s heart attack turned him into pretty much a crooner.

Peace!

Noah survived this long in the ark in pouring rain. What a trooper. 40 days over here is cake compared to that.

So today is Day 40 of my Iraq experience. Has it really been that long already? If the next forty days could pass like this, I would be a very happy boy. And the forty days after that pass like the previous 80, I’ll start getting really excited because I will have made it through unscathed. And the next…well, you get the idea. Well I would like to make a Biblical analogy…Noah survived this long in the ark in pouring rain. What a trooper. If he can survive that then I can survive any 180 day delopyment.

How completely retarded is it that I move to Newport News, VA, in September 2004, and I read websites that say “Newport News averages a significant amount of snowfall each winter.” They must be smoking crack because there were only two snowfalls that amounted to any accumulation last year. And I was only around for one of them. Last Christmas — in fact, the day after Christmas, NN got socked with 12 1/2 inches while I sat in the cold rain of Rainier, OR. Totally unfair. Don’t know too much of what it’s like this year but I’m sure they haven’t got much yet.

If I recall though, the one snowfall in January was retarded. We had this one day where they let us off of work early (remember, I am stationed at Langley AFB) because it started snowing, and when I turned onto Dodd Blvd. traffic was at a standstill. Amazing. The traffic lights were functioning normally, but some idiot who tried to drive the normal speed limit got hung up on a curb and all the base cops responded. So I just went back to my office, parked my car, got out and made snowballs to throw at my license plate. Man I hurled those snowballs fast and hard.

We got more snow in February, but not much accumulated. One night we had this revival at church that they were about to cancel because there was this snowstorm that dumped egg-sized flakes on everything. It was like getting thwacked in the face with an ultra-soft pillow. That was fun, but that didn’t accumulate. Still, they sent us home from work early and the revival went on. There were like 20 people there. Pastor Rick said “Well we don’t have many people here,” and I said to Tyler, “Man, my old church was lucky to average this on a Sunday.” It’s true. Many of our COGOPs in Washington state’s attendance numbers are dwarfed by the COGOPs in the Bible Belt. But that’s another story. Anyway, back to the snow portion of the story, it was pretty lame because the snow turned to cold rain by the end of the service. Horrible.

The moral of these stories are that I miss snow. That’s all. I won’t get to see any until next year, so email me at christopher.brewer@gmail.com if you have any snow pictures. If you spam me, I will hunt you down in a dark alley and your life will be miserable.

GREAT NEWS!!! Shortly after Thanksgiving, my good friend Aftan sent me a care package. Today it finally arrived. Two weeks to the day she sent it, just like the U.S. Postal Service promised. Looking at the size of this thing, it is obvious she put a lot of time and effort into making this thing for me. That means a lot. I can’t wait to see what’s inside. If I remember right, though, she said I would have to wait until Christmas to open it. Man, I thought I was bad as a kid when I saw that tree full of presents…I can’t even shake the box to find out what’s in there because that would be cheating big time. I don’t have a tree and free space in my trailer here is less than most people have in their freezers (I’m almost not kidding), so looking at this box every day I am going to have irresistible urges to open it without thinking twice.

Which is why I make this public plea. AFTAN PLEASE LET ME OPEN THE CARE PACKAGE TONIGHT. OR TOMORROW. I CAN’T WAIT.

My video project is done, so far. What I have neglected to tell the general public is that I have to meet with the General tonight to get this thing looked over, and then he will probably propose changes and I’ll have to tinker around for a bit. But that’s okay. That’s what I’m here for.

Okay, so what did I read in the Word today? I backtracked to 1 Corinthians 4, 5 and 6, and what I read in Chapter 6 really amazed me. Paul puts a whole new spin on the sancity of sex, and how God created it to be pure. Check this out:

1Co 6:13 You know the old saying, “First you eat to live, and then you live to eat”? Well, it may be true that the body is only a temporary thing, but that’s no excuse for stuffing your body with food, or indulging it with sex. Since the Master honors you with a body, honor him with your body!
1Co 6:14 God honored the Master’s body by raising it from the grave. He’ll treat yours with the same resurrection power.
1Co 6:15 Until that time, remember that your bodies are created with the same dignity as the Master’s body. You wouldn’t take the Master’s body off to a whorehouse, would you? I should hope not.
1Co 6:16 There’s more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, “The two become one.”
1Co 6:17 Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever–the kind of sex that can never “become one.”
1Co 6:18 There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from all others. In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love, for “becoming one” with another.
1Co 6:19 Or didn’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you.
1Co 6:20 God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body.

How powerful is that? Not only did he touch on sex, but he touched on basically how our bodies are to be used for God’s glory no matter what. That to me is some of the most powerful and intense writing Paul did in the New Testament. Another reason why I love the Bible so much. Also if you have any thoughts on what that passage says to you, feel free to leave a comment.

On this note, let’s remember to do everything to God’s glory today. God bless all of you! I’m outta here.

After about 30 days of producing videos for the American Forces Network here in Baghdad, I feel it is time for me to take some footage and make a music video. We all know that soldiers here rely on heavily armored vehicles to get them wherever they go, and these vehicles sometimes hit improvised explosive devices (we know them as IEDs). The armor does play a big part in saving lives, so I decided I want to pay tribute to the armored vehicles and humvees with a one-minute music video of Gary Numan’s song “Cars.” More on that soon.

Anyhoo, onto how things are going here. More video editing. The weather remains in the mid-70s by day and in the mid-50s by night. I don’t think it’s gonna get too much colder than that anytime soon. If this is the cold season in Iraq, this is cake. I find it hilarious though, to see the Peruvian gate guards wearing polar fleece jackets at night. Maybe it is always warm down in Peru or something. Anyway they are great people so I will not make fun of them.

Chris Brewer Weight Watch: I was 176 pounds when I deployed, and now I am 169. Good weight to chill out at for awhile. I am even more motivated to work out, lose weight and gain muscle ever since Aftan told me “Chris, you’ve really filled out since high school.” I’m sure she meant that as a compliment, but it couldn’t possibly be one since the only expansion I did was outward on my stomach and my face got a little fluffy. But I am by no means fat. I can still run a killer 2 miles, I can do 63 push-ups and 54 sit-ups in a minute each, and I find myself able to play basketball very well with the rest of the guys.

Speaking of basketball, our court outside the gym is about as ghetto as you could possibly get. Two portable basketball hoops with some sort of rubber mat on top of concrete for the floor. Very interesting. It’s like stepping on a permanent Twister mat, and dribbling into dirt, but you get the hang of it. Also the rims are a little bouncy and leave little room for error, so your shot pretty much has to be dead on. Which mine was in a game the other day. Me and a couple guys were playing these Marine thugs in a pickup game and I torched the dude guarding me for 24 points. They must have been smoking crack on duty because they put this 5′5″ Spud Webb looking guy on me, and while he was faster, he was no match for my still lanky yet somewhat stocky 6′1″ frame. I bullied him around in the post and even felt like Shaq when I boxed out for a rebound. I also hit 3 3-pointers in a row to put the game out of reach, and we won 76-63. Good stuff. All this happened at like 9 PM. It was very dark, very cool. It is very interesting to hear 50-caliber gunfire in the background and see humvees rolling through the gates, and to be able to see over razor wire only to come face to face with Saddam’s former palace. Weird place to be playing basketball but hey, you gotta play somewhere.

Tonight in Bible study, since I didn’t have time to do it this morning, I shall be reading 1 Corinthians 13. Just thought I would share that.

So how are things for the rest of you all out there in the world? Hope everything’s going well. That’s it for now…I’m going to bed early tonight and coming back tomorrow morning. Peace!

Yeah, I just wanted to say to all my Republican friends out there to be sure you vote for Ronald Reagan in 2008. Even a deceased Ronnie will get more support than Hillary will for the Demo-craps.

Anyway, I hate politics. On to the news of the day.

My brain is officially fried. I have been searching through video all day trying to find something usable for this Year In Review project. Which brings me to the Bible Verse of the Day. Today’s is John 11:35, and you would weep too if you had to do what I am doing for hours upon end.

Naw, it’s really not THAT bad, but it IS less than desirable. Hey, what made my day a ton better was that I got to talk to my mom and Aftan today, and almost both in the same timespan. That made all the work worthwhile.

Not too much else goes on in the Brewer world today, just a bunch of work and chatting it up with friends. Much thanks to John Stevens for the photo he sent…I really enjoyed it. Good stuff Hoss.

Anyway, I am out for now. Hope you like the new layout of the site. Of course I will tweak it and make it better, just a little bit. For now, chow. I mean, ciao.