Also, Flintstone is going through all the same stuff – he’s witty, sarcastic and very smart.  Check out his blog at www.stonereportblog.com

Here’s Flintstone, holding his “icky gun”; You can check out his other pictures here

Ichabod and crew aren’t only flying me up to Seattle, they’re also flying my mom up and putting us both in a hotel. I’m so excited my mom gets to go. This will be a great mother/daughter trip before I leave. I’ve been so stressed lately, not just with Iraq but with a lot of things. It’s like some sort of depression is taking over and I hate feeling this way. I either want to cry or bite someone’s head off or both. This isn’t me at all, and I’m praying that God will pull me out of whatever hole I’m slowing sinking into. Maybe Seattle will be a great trip to help me climb out of this thing, and get even closer with my mom (we’re pretty close already).

I invested in a new pair of boots of some ballistic oakleys last week. The boots I wear now are from my first trip over, and even though I know they’ll issue me new boots they never seem to fit right. So, I took it upon myself to get my own. They gave us Oakleys and a pair of Wiley-Xs last time, but those didn’t fit my face. The lenses were way too big, so I ordered the smallest pair of ballistic oakleys they have and hopefully they’ll work. The Wiley-X glasses are supposed to conceal your eyes from smoke, etc. so they have this foam-like padding going around the inside of the lenses that acts like some air-tight device on your eye. It sounds great, but I had a huge problem with them. My eyes were get so hot and I’d lift the glasses to get some air circulation and all the sweat would just pour down like a waterfall into my eyes… I guess it just sits on the top of the glasses or something… Am I even making sense? Sorry if that’s gross.. you probably don’t wanna hear about my sweaty eyes.

On a cleaner, less gross note – I’m going to film a movie today. I’m just background, a cocktail waitress, and we’re filming at a club downtown called Phoenix. I don’t like to admit that I’ve ever been there, but it’s been a while…
I’ll let you know how it goes!

BAGHDAD The U.S. military’s most popular radio host in Iraq downs her last swig of coffee at 9:53 a.m., slings a pistol over her shoulder and steps into the makeshift studio with five minutes to spare.
She slips on a headset and grabs a puffy microphone from a desk drawer, standing before a bank of three flat-screen monitors and a large sound control board. This is 107.7 on the FM dial, known to U.S. soldiers as Freedom Radio, and it’s time for country music.
“We’re gonna get it started with LeAnn Rimes and some Kenny Chesney, who you all know I love,” says Spec. Kristen King, 21, her sugary twang a product of her Shreveport, La., upbringing. “And don’t forget the phone calls, y’all. They’re the greatest.”
A reservist halfway through a journalism degree at Louisiana State University, King is energetic and apple-cheeked, with a tireless smile. She wears desert camouflage fatigues, and her straight brown hair is pulled tightly behind her head.
Her program, “Country Convoy,” is four hours of down-home Americana beamed throughout Iraq from a fiberglass trailer tucked amid a warren of identical units in the fortified Green Zone. On the wall behind her is an Iraqi flag embossed with the logo of her distributor, the Armed Forces Network.
“Kristen King drives the cowboys crazy six days a week,” says a baritone voice over the speakers, as the host fiddles with the volume levels and taps her toes. A strobe light alerts her to the first in a steady stream of requests, some of them a bit puzzling.
“Hello, Freedom Radio,” she answers, cheerfully.
“This is Specialist Moore,” the caller says. “I wanna hear ‘Achy Breaky.’ ”
” ‘Achy Breaky’?” says King, making sure she heard him correctly over the faint phone line.
“Yes, ma’am. And when you do that, can you ask them guys down in Outlaw, ‘What you know ’bout killin’?’ ”
“Ask them what they know about killing?” she says, rolling her eyes and biting down on her index finger to stifle a laugh. “Okay, then. You got it.”
“I try to get the songs on quick for these guys, because you never know if they’re about to go out on a mission,” she says. “The most requested ones are drinking songs. ‘It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere,’ by Alan Jackson. ‘Alcohol,’ by Brad Paisley. You know — things they can’t get here.”
Also popular, she says, are songs that remind service members of home, like “The Things I Miss the Most,” by Van Zant, which she plays just before noon.
To those dogs out, barkin’ in the yard,
An’ that tractor in the field.
An’ them kids up on the front porch,
Screamin’: ‘Mamma, Daddy’s home!’
When I’m out here, I’m just thinkin’,
About the things I miss the most.
Since taking over as host in early May, King has developed a large and loyal following. Once, at a gym on base, someone heard her talking and immediately recognized her voice from the radio. Callers often beg her to post her picture on the station’s Web site. Polls conducted by AFN showed her program has the largest audience of any of the network’s shows in Iraq.
“I’ve got this one guy down at the motor pool who calls five times a day,” she says, more amused than irritated. “He dedicated a song to me and said, ‘Now you tell all those guys out there you got a man.’ ”
The hourly weather report, King tells listeners just after noon, is “the most depressing part of the day.”
“Baghdad, you’re gonna see a high of 116 and a low of 84. Basra, you’re the hot spot as usual, at 119 and 88 at night. That’s better than yesterday, though. Tall Afar, you’re the coolest at 111 and 76,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s gonna be sunny all day, y’all, so drink some water and try to find yourselves some shade.”
A half-hour later, a generator goes bust — the quintessential Iraqi frustration leaving the studio dark. The station shifts to a satellite feed from Germany. King is off the air.
“This is the third day in a row this has happened,” she says, her good cheer undimmed even as the trailer starts to warm, the air conditioner silenced. “I think the power people must not like country.”
When the lights flicker back to life after 20 minutes, the show resumes with one of several public service announcements.
“Hi, service members, I’m your favorite fruit, Billy Banana,” a cartoonish voice intones at 1:10 p.m. “You know whenever you eat those chocolates and carbohydrates before you go to sleep? Well, that stuff turns to fat. And it will make you a nasty fatbody.”
Minutes later, Billy is back, with a reminder that “even if you’re not thirsty, you still need to drink six to eight glasses of water per day to keep your pee clear.”
“People call up and request songs with a Billy Banana voice all the time,” King says. Soon, someone does.
Signing off at 1:55, King calls the show a success, with a good variety of requests. But she is quick to add that she is still holding out hope for a call from an Iraqi listening in from beyond the bases, in what the military calls “the Red Zone.”
“I’m waiting for my first Iraqi country music fan,” she says, exiting the studio. “I’ll be a happy woman when that comes.”

Andrew Tilghman / S&S Spc. Kristen King of Shreveport, La., hosts the daily country music show on Iraq’s most popular English-language radio station. Classic rock also is popular on the station.

BAGHDAD — Spc. Kristen King cranks up her Louisiana drawl every morning at 10 a.m. in a cramped and foam-padded trailer in Baghdad’s relatively safe and quite Green Zone.
“It’s going to be a hot one in Basra today with a high of 107, so ya’ll make sure you drink plenty of water,” the 21-year-old reservist tells thousands of radio listeners as she cues up a daily set of country music tunes ranging from Willie Nelson to Toby Keith.
King, a journalism major from Louisiana State University, hosts the most popular English-language radio show each day in Iraq, the midday country music block broadcast on “Freedom Radio” on 107.7 FM.
The station, owned and run by the U.S. Department of Defense, is heard throughout Iraq and Kuwait. It is just one of the two options for U.S. troops in Iraq, where the only other non-Arabic radio station is the analogous British Forces Broadcasting Service.
Threaded with Associated Press news reports and snippets of military-style public service announcements, the radio station is run by Armed Forces Network and broadcasts live 18 hours a day with active-duty soldiers serving as disc jockeys.
In place of commercials, the station often tips off listeners to weekly activities such as a yoga class at Camp Taji, a chess tournament at Camp Liberty, or a belly-dancing class in the Green Zone.
The midday country music station’s popularity underscores some aspects of U.S. military culture, where many troops hail from the southern and western states.
“It reminds them of home,” said Master Sgt. Andy Starr, the station manager and a reservist and an engineer for Bell Helicopter back home in Fort Worth, Texas.
“And there’s a lot more patriotic music coming out of the country music world, so that’s part of it.”
Some songs with profanity or war-related subject matter are plucked from the playlist, such as Outkast’s Bombs Over Baghdad.
“These guys are seeing this stuff every day — bombs going off. They come in from patrol and try to relax in their hooch, the last thing they want to be reminded of is what they are going to see at work tomorrow,” said Sgt. 1st Class Gail Anderson, a reservist who has worked in commercial radio across the country.
“We’re not trying to censor anything; we’re just trying to improve their quality of life,” she said.
Anderson and others who run the station are part of the 206th Broadcast Operations Detachment based in Seagoville, Texas.
While primarily intended for the roughly 133,000 troops who are mostly young males, the station’s audience also includes contractors and U.S. State Department workers, along with a “shadow” audience of Iraqis. Those non-military listeners tend to be older and make the evening classic rock show and the 1980s “flashback” show on Sunday’s a popular one, Anderson said.
Despite the diverse audience, King says she feels like she is playing for the typical young soldiers.
“I kind of picture these greasy guys out there working on the trucks and listening to the music. You know, guys in the mechanic shops, and guys out there working on the planes,” she said.© 2008 Stars and Stripes. All Rights Reserved.