so this is the mysterious watch i bought in Kabul last year. i knew it was manufactured by Vostok for the Soviet military but not much else. until now, that is.
according to some very knowledgeable people i’ve met on a few great forums, it’s relatively rare and the insignia is for Specialist First Class of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces a.k.a. the chaps who held their fingers precariously over the Big Red Button during the Cold War.
that said, i wonder how this particular timepiece came to be in Afghanistan because, as far as i know, there was no real reason for any member of the Strategic Rocket Forces to be in the country. my only theory is that there might’ve been some watch swapping amongst Soviet servicemen.
…and that there are hundreds of secret Soviet missile silos buried beneath the Afghan soil.
today is my last day in Las Vegas for now. having been here for more than a month, i can honestly say that, while it certainly is a fascinating place, it probably wouldn’t be on the top of my ‘places to settle down’ list. the air is too dry, the sun too hot, city too fake, but this has still been a good trip for me and i suspect that i will always look back on my time here fondly.
okay. so i confessed some time ago that i enjoy playing Grand Theft Auto. i can’t help it; the game is extremely addictive and a helpful stress reliever when life has its knee on your throat. it’s incredibly freeing to know that you could steal a garbage truck at gunpoint, jump in front of an elevated train, or lane split at full throttle through opposing traffic without any real-life consequences to speak of.
anyway, i recently created KillNikoBellic.com to share my new enthusiasm for killing Niko Bellic, the main character in the latest Grand Theft Auto game. i’m not really sure where i’m going with this site, how long it’ll last before it falls into total neglect or what i’ll do a few days from now when i’ll no longer have access to this game, but it still seems amusing enough to me at this point to keep going.
i got up early this morning to peruse yet another estate sale today. and by “estate sale,” i mean a small garage sale that was falsely advertised as a “HUGE ESTATE SALE.” and i drove all the way to the other side of Las Vegas for it. what a horrible waste of time :(
from a distance of roughly 93 million miles, it takes sunlight approximately 8.3 minutes to reach the earth’s surface. so let’s say that the sun has suddenly died and you’ve been notified that only 8 minutes and 18 seconds of sunlight remain to be enjoyed until the sky falls into perpetual darkness.
i’d do something that i used to do all the time as a kid: close my eyes and tilt my face toward the sun until my brain adjusts for all the red light, then open them and see the world in cyan for a few fleeting moments. then i’d take out a video camera and record the last few minutes so i can show my pasty white grandchildren one day.
here’s a radio interview with Dr. Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14 astronaut, the sixth human to walk on the moon) in which he claims that extraterrestrials have indeed made contact with us and that our governments are only just now declassifying files from the massive cover-up that’s lasted for more than half a century.
cans of frozen juice concentrate are highly underrated as an alternative to cumbersome bottles of the stuff (which is usually made from concentrate anyway). they take up minimal freezer space and can be made ready to drink within a minute or two; and let’s not forget that they’re usually much more inexpensive.
i’m sorry, i just got back from grocery shopping. it won’t happen again :(
sometimes i get so fed up with how needy the human body is. all the necessary eating and drinking, exercise and grooming, sleeping and breathing, it gets annoyingly repetitive and cumbersome, doesn’t it? why we can’t be more independent and self-sufficient? why can’t we be more like rocks?
