Two Prickly Hair on Your Arm Musical Clips

I heard about this clip while listening to WNYC radiolab. It is a clip of Gregory Warner playing a Johnny Cash song to a crowd of Afghanis and getting a really amazing response. Gregory won a competition that allowed him to travel anywhere in the world to work as a journalist, he chose Afghanistan, and he brought his accordian. Turns out many Afghanis were familiar with western songs because a Afghani pop star from the 70s, Ahmad Zahir, used many western melodies to create songs that are still very popular. If you listen to the Radiolab podcast you will find out that it likely Zahir was assasinated by the Communist government in Afghanistan in the 80s.

I personally enjoyed this clip because I was a soldier in Afghanistan, and if I have the authority or the power to say one thing about the Afghanis is that they are people. I know that sounds ridiculous, you say: Of course they are people Bill, but I counter: do you think of them as people who are important and equal to people from other places. I think not, because these people have been dehumanized in the media, and that dehumanization is most disheartening for someone like me and the guys in my unit who got to know and became friends with Afghanis.

I enjoyed this clip because you can not fail to see their perfect humanity.

This is a clip I found on Blogginbindoggins, and he found on Yiekes.

The Book

I have been thinking some more about the content for a: How to Make Pictures book. My old ambition was to make the best How to Draw Book available, now I have changed that to making a book that comprehensively explains the major systems used in picture making.

I think they will be:
1. Space, with the sub-category of Form
2. Color
3. Composition

I am sick, and my body is achy, so that is all I am writing tonight. Just wanted to keep you in the know on my book project.

You can get a copy of my book that is filled with the drawings from my journals in Afghanistan, click here.

Afghanistan

Pics I took in Afghanistan.

Coins

I have a coin collection, these are some of my favorites. They are not very valuable, but I like them for the images and the history behind them. There are American, Roman, Afghani, and Sassanian coins in this photo.

I especially enjoy the portraits, they really fire my imagination.



From top left to top right:

American Quarter 1854, American Penny 1853, American Penny 1852



From middle left to middle right:

Roman Coin The Usurper Claudius Gothicus, Roman Coin The Usurper Victorinus, Afghani Rupee from the Muslim year 1273 which is about 1900 AD, American Half Cent 1834



From bottom middle to bottom right:

Sassanian Dirhem Khusru II 590 to 627 AD , Sassanian Dirhem Khusru II 590 to 627 AD, Roman Republican Denarius sometime BC





This is a British coin from India depicting the Empress Victoria. It is a 2 Annas coin, and it is from the late 19th century, 1897. It is about 1 cm in diameter.

Camel

This is a camel. The gray thing in the foreground is my rifle strap. I did not shoot the camel.

This is what a typical street looks like in Afghanistan on the edge of a city. It was so hot in Afghanistan the only thing that compares in America is sticking your head in an oven or over an open flame.

Kids in Afghanistan

These kids lives would make the characters in the film Kids blush.

I found some photos from Afghanistan I thought I had lost

It is cathartic for me to present these photos to the world to see. My time in Afghanistan was so stressful and so hard to relate to people who have not been there, that it remains a secret despite my trying to talk about it. The top photo is me, the middle photo is a food stand next to a highway outside of Kandahar, and the bottom photo is the kids that lived next to our base.

Afghanistan

Here are two pictures from Afghanistan. The top one is me with some kids who befriended us while we spent hours guarding, the bottom one is a shot of the mountains around Kandahar with the city sprawling underneath it.