I’ve spent countless hours browsing for books/video games/music/clothes. I’ve spent a fair amount of money on books. In fact ever since my husband gave me a Kindle, gift cards for Amazon.com are all that I’ve asked for.

And now I come to find out that my respect for Amazon is not mutual.

I’m devastated.

You would have thought that I would have had a premonition that something in our relationship was amiss. Perhaps a strange email, or trouble getting into my account, or a missing order. But no– nothing of the sort happened. I was completely blind-sided.

It happened just this morning.

I was looking at Amazon.com, thinking about what I might spend the gift card that my parents gave me for Christmas – when there it was, the smear, the blight, the attack upon my character.

Amazon recommended that I buy Sarah Palin’s book “Going Rogue.”

What was it about me that prompted them to think that I was the type of person who would not only read that book, but that I would actually pay money to do so.

It has caused me to reflect on what could have caused their algorithms to put me into the Palin buying crowd.

Was it buying vampire themed books for my daughter? Or demonic looking Bionicles for my son? Or perhaps it was my recent search for pork intestines for making home-made sausages?

And more importantly – how am I going to fix this?

One colleague suggested that I start buying collected works on ancient philosophy, another suggested purchasing bags made from recycled materials by people in developing nations, and a third suggested vegetarian cookbooks.

After much thought I think that I’m going to start by buying DVDs of “Queer Eye For The Straight Guy” episodes. I hope it works – if not, I may have to buy a Nook.

Since I had spent the entire summer out of the country, I missed the June freshman orientation– which as it turns out was when I needed to sign up for classes. By the time August freshman orientation rolled around pretty much all of the classes had been taken. I managed to find a hodge podge of classes that still had some room in them. These included ball-room dance, an ecology class, and a genetics course with an almost retired professor who kept forgetting to come to class. The best by far was a Literature of the Vietnam War class.

My only recollection of the war was seeing a friend’s dad come back after his tour. I don’t remember seeing news reports, although I must have. We had never really covered the Vietnam War in any of my history classes either– we usually ran out of time before we got around to modern events (my European History class got bogged down in the renaissance for 3 months.)

The professor John C. Pratt, did a good job of taking us through the war using literature from all sides of the conflict. Being an retired military man himself, he was also able to give us some idea of what things were like on the ground, both in the civilian and military worlds. It helped that we had a handful of Vietnam Vets in the class, including at least one who was on the verge of insanity.

So– when I decided to come to Iraq, I thought that there must be similarities.

A few weeks ago I had to go to the embassy in Baghdad. It was not what I thought it was going to be.

Before I got there others said that the new embassy is a combination of a college campus and a minimum security prison. Those living and working at the embassy have all of their basic needs met. Lots of food– and good food too. Not the slop that they always showed on M*A*S*H. There is a large lap pool, a big gym and state of the air fitness equipment. There are a variety of places to sit outside if it is not too dusty or hot. The apartments are homey and come wired for free Internet access.

There is also a convenience store (a PX.)

It was in the store that I realized how different this war was.

All the books and movies, documentaries and magazine articles on the Vietnam War show legions of young soldiers.

But Iraq is different. Front line negotiations are happening through the work of the 500 or so positions at the Embassy. But the State Department can’t staff all of those positions with regular Foreign Service Officers– in reality there just aren’t enough of us to do so. So the State Department has been hiring individuals with experience in certain areas to come and work at the Embassy on year long “agreements.” They are like contractors, but we can’t call them contractors because of the way that they are paid.

So what demographic has experience in a certain area, has some freedom to leave their career for a year or so at a time, and could use some extra money????

Lets just say that in the store:

There were as many golf magazines as there were girly ones.

That the wine selection rivaled the beer section.

That there were three different types of at-home colon cleaners.

That there was a bigger variety of denture cleaners and adhesives than deodorant.

And lots of vitamins for healthy joints.

At 40 I was one of the youngest ones around.

I have to say, that the embassy WOULD make a nice assisted living facility.
Warm weather. Lots of sun. No noisy kids.

So watch out for ads in your local paper:

Tigris Tempo Assisted Living
Dessert Wind Retirement
Dust to Dust Solutions

Well– it could have been, except I was happily left at home while the big event was going on. Although from what I’ve heard a few people who were supposed to remain in Baghdad managed to sneak their way on the transport up here. If I had really wanted to maybe I could have hitched a ride in the back of one of the suburbans.

The closest I got was walking past the line of 30 SUVs as they waited to caravan over to the airport to start the show.

But the real brush with fame happened just this morning.

I was looking for books to download to my Kindle as I’ve pretty much read everything that I’ve bought so far. As I was looking the title of a book caught my eye “A Bad Day For Sorry.” That sounds interesting I thought.

Looking at the reviews– it has an average of 5 stars. Good sign.

I started reading the first review– which seemed like it was just copied from what is on the back of the book.

Then I saw the name of the reviewer.

Harriet Klausner

The HARRIET KLAUSNER.

It was bound to happen– but I’ve never noticed her before.

She is Amazon’s controversial #1 reviewer, with 108,439 contributions at this point. She says that she reads two books a day– but reviews more than 6. Who is this mild mannered ex-librarian? Who is this woman who reviews books faster than a speeding bullet, is more prolific than a lithographer, and is able to read stacks of books in a single day?

Many have speculated on this very subject. Some say that she is the figment of a corporate conspiracy– coined up to convince innocents to buy books that they will likely never read. Others say that she is a in fact a borg-like group of toadies nestled into an up-scale house in a mid-western city, looking normal with only the truck loads of Fed-Ex deliveries to hint at something amiss. Then there are those who think that “Harriet Klausner” is an evil undercover trafficking ring that promises the literate of the world easy money but then imprisons then in a dingy sweat-shop environment forcing them to turn out one stellar review after another.

As for myself. I bought the book.

I searched the State Department’s Intranet pages. Nothing. I did Google searches and found a few tidbits that I held onto dearly.

Starting in February I emailed the person that I was going to replace– trying to get details so that I could prepare myself. I tried to do this in a polite non-needy manner. It didn’t work.

Perhaps I should have resorted to begging.

I read and re-read my job description– which frankly sounded like I would be doing everything but washing windows. I have no objections to this, however, when the description is that vague it becomes difficult to prepare.

Finally I went to training. I am glad that I managed to move the schedule of my training up (they had me literally leaving the training class and going straight to the airport to get on a plane headed for the Middle East.) The way that I worked it– I returned to my last post for a few months, which gave me time to think and ponder great things about what I would be doing.

Finally– 6 weeks before going to Iraq I received the message that I had been waiting a year for.

The packing list.

It contained all of 5 things:

Dress clothes
Machine washable clothes
Mosquito netting
Toothpaste if brands matter
Winter jacket

And that took them a year???

In training they had a couple more suggestions–

Sand colored clothing
Loose fitting clothing for women
Long sleeves for women

So that was my task for this summer. Loose-fitting, long-sleeved, machine washable, sand colored clothing.

I started off thinking that I would try to find clothes that women in the Middle East wear. I am much larger than most women in the Middle East so I was hesitant to buy something without trying it on. I tried to find a store in my hometown– but could only locate deli type grocery stores.

So then I moved on to trying to find something in regular stores that would fit this.

I ended up in the “Plus-sized” women’s area.

So now I am wearing shirts that are 3 sizes bigger than I normally wear, look horribly out of place here in Iraq (where the women wear much prettier dresses), and look rather masculine.

So if you ever see a picture of Iraq and in the background there is a large oxford type tent walking by– it is probably me.

(I just hope that I don’t grow into these clothes.)

Bureaucrat

• an official who works by fixed routine without exercising intelligent judgment

Dictionary.com

Almost 20 years ago a Polish friend and I were staying at a hostel in Amsterdam. One weekend a friend of hers came for a visit. As he didn’t know how to get to our place by himself, we went to the train station to wait for him. His train came and went – and he was not on it. We were concerned because he did not speak Dutch or English and would have a difficult time navigating Amsterdam on his own. We were also worried that he had gotten lost.

We decided to check with the information desk– which had access to the schedule of trains for all of the Netherlands– and would be able to check with other stations to see if they had heard from a confused Polish speaking young man. We figured that he did one of three things; he could have gotten off of the train too early, stayed on the train past the correct station, or missed his train entirely.

These seemed like reasonable possibilities to us. However the rude women in the ticket booth did not think so. She looked at us incredulously and told us in a snotty tone of voice that all of these scenarios were “IMPOSSIBLE.”

This struck me as a rather odd thing to say– since train tickets are not checked when you board (like they do with planes.) Sometimes it would be hours and many stops before a conductor would come around to punch the tickets. This lack of control made these three things at least possible if not common.

We left the station defeated. I can not remember the exact details of what happened– but the missing train-goer did managed to track down my friend later that evening. But the interaction with the information agent at the train station has remained fixed in my brain. It was a defining moment with a true Bureaucrat.

That woman sat all day in a small glass booth answering the same small set of questions again and again. While she worked in a train station and likely occasionally took a train herself – she had no concept of what the system looked like to others, or how the system could be broken.

She lived in a myopic world, not able to imagine life beyond the glass in front of her. She was trained to deal with a specific set of circumstance and anything outside of that set became inconceivable. In the real world people miss their trains everyday, they get off at the wrong stop all the time. But in her world trains came on time, left on time, and always carried the correct amount of passengers. And as a Bureaucrat she did not have the inclination to seek out solutions to a problem she had not previously encountered.

A Bureaucrat is someone who has become completely compartmentalized. They live, think, and breath 100% “IN THE BOX.” Anything out of the limited known realm is not just unlikely it is actually “Impossible.”

As such, a person who is a Bureaucrat cannot be forward thinking in a society that is dynamic. They can only look at the past to see what has already occurred, and even then they can only analyze what has happened through the lens of their small myopic world.

We run into Bureaucrats in our every day lives. They are not just in government jobs. I’ve seen them working at super markets, running restaurants, and volunteering at churches. While they are not just in government jobs– our government agencies are structured to create, nurture, and build Bureaucrats. It takes an enormous amount of energy to buck the standard, to think outside of the box, and to risk using creativity to solve problems.

Our society is more dynamic that at anytime in its past. Twitter, text messaging, flash mobs, online communities, blogging, email, forums, Second Life, and YouTube are just some examples of how things are changing. If government agencies intend to be forward thinking with their programs and their priorities, they need to change their structures to enable their employees to shed their Bureaucratic tendencies.