Reading "The Fixer: a story from Sarajevo," by Joe Sacco, allowed me to finally verbalize two phenomena that formerly would leave me toungue tied. And beyond my rantings, I thought it was a really great story.

#1:
The spoonfed American male with an adulation for bloodthirsty mercenaries, expressed through Sacco's relationship with Serbian paramilitary/mobster Neven, and this amazing quote:

"It is a bond that hearkens back to the schoolyard, where certain kinds of boys who are still afraid of girls find snobbish brotherhood in matching Everests of knowledge about stuff between the toes of war...

[Neven] ...My other favorite action was the German capture of the Belgian fortresses at Eben Emael.

[Sacco] 1940. Gliders. A masterpiece."

#2
The culture of fixers (when you hire some scumbag to lead you to people to take pictures of and interview) is why I never want to be a journalist. I think Sacco portrays it very well. How can you possibly understand a conflict if you're just a douchebag in a many-pocketed khaki vest who pays the first asshole in the hotel lobby to show you around? Especially when his other part-time job is procuring you a prostitute? Shouldn't journalists understand enough about the area they are reporting on to not be too dependent on this?

May god bless Christine Amanpour. But there is, definitively, a genre of foreign correspondents dispatching to GQ that tends toward the sunburned, ex-pat, brothel frequenting, Soldier of Fortune reading, "I've seen war (but I'm still a douchebag)" variety.

And speaking of nomadic, life-endangering careers, tomorrow I start my new job as a document scanner on Wall Street. Oh. Boy.