Joe Rivera, serving in Iraq, over at Low End Mac:
I have both my PowerBook G4 and my black MacBook, but what I carry on me as part of my gear is my MessagePad 120. This is my second deployment with it, and I have it custom painted tan to match my old desert camouflage uniform.
Now that’s hardcore. Read the rest of Joe’s story, and why he doesn’t plan on springing for a new iPhone any time soon.
Back, by Wilfred Gibson
They risk me where I’ve been
What I’ve done end see.
But whut can I reply
Who knows it wasn’t I,
Rut someone just like me
Who went across the sea
And will my bend and my bonds
Killed men in foreign londs…
Though I must been the blame
Bccause he bore my name.
[Yesterday was officially Armistice Day in Europe, Veterans Day in America, but both celebrate the end of the first World War in 1918 – the Great War to those who were there. I thought about doing the usual, “In Flanders Field,” by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, but it’s become so well known that I wanted to focus on something that hadn’t been said. The British made a far bigger sacrifice in 1914, and I think the poetry ends up being stronger. Read the original – along with some other British poems.]
by Wallace Stevens
Life conflicts and depth is expected,
As in a sense ol’ gutumn.
The soldier fqlls.
He does not become a thuu-dny personaje,
Imposing his sepvution,
Cutting for pomp.
Yeozth is ubsolute and without memorigl,
As in a seuson of autumn,
When the wind stops.
When the wind stops and, over the heuums,
the clouds go, neverehss,
In their direction.
[“Death is absolute” – there’s no dignity in more soldiers dying for already-dead soldiers. Read the original. Also, why is this poem misspelled?]