Guess What This Is----BONUS!

Well, Jack just couldn't leave well-enough alone. There were more wonderful sights around here so I just HAD to indulge everyone in a bonus round of "You've Got to Be Freakin' Kidding Me" aka "Guess What This Is."

Again, anyone from OSHA, you never saw this. This first one is fairly easy, and don't tell me none of you have ever done it (or at least thought about it). I, however, believe the Afghans have taken this to a new level. If you'll notice the "ladder" below, not only have they made it from 2x4s, it was too short, so they just overlapped them----vertically! Observe the meticulous craftsmanship in maintaining step intervals. This is a veritable masterpiece. Da Vinci would be proud!

Bet you didn't know that besides being excellent structural building material, bricks serve just as well for shimming in windows. Oh, empty plastic water bottles would probably work, too. This is just the only one that was still visible as I was walking by. All of the others were enclosed with mortar. I bet they have a body hidden in that wall somewhere. Sometimes you just don't want to know.


I really don't know what to say here. Wouldn't you think that if you were going to put a steel door in a wall and the door frame had rebar stubs built in to brace it into the wall, you would build the frame into the structure? Now why in the hell would you do that when you have hammers and chisels that can not only beat the door hole out so the frame will fit, but they're perfectly suited to cut channels so the rebar stubs will also fit. Then you just slap mortar over the holes and pray that whole frame doesn't fall on you when you yank on the door handle that never works. Yeah, good luck with that. Thank God military members can't sue the government!


This one's a hall-of-famer! And no, this is not one of the "kitchens" the Afghans use for their jobsite cooking (although it's an identical setup). This, my friends, is bucket full of third degree burns. This is pitch for roof waterproofing, and it's being heated on a pile of those window shims (I mean bricks) over an open flame. I didn't bother to stick around to see exactly how they got it from the ground up to the roof, but I have an inkling it has something to do with that bucket next to the flames---I just really don't want to know. They did manage to cover it for the night. Lord knows we can't have any foreign material falling into the pitch. You've obviously noticed how cleanliness is next to godliness on our jobsites.


Anyway, given the way these "opportunities" continue to pop up, there might be other bonus rounds from time to time----Jack out!