A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic. -Joseph Stalin

Jihad.

There are times when I wish I had never heard the word. I certainly wish in those moments that I never came to understand the word, to feel its weight and take its measure and to understand what it would do not only to myself and to my family and to the world I have come to call my home, but to the human race and the universe itself.

( Heavy hangs the head )

Write about a stranger who changed your life.

Snake Eyes never met the man who changed the course of not just his life, but those of almost everyone that Snake Eyes knows. He never met him, but Snake Eyes knows his name. In fact, he knows everything about the man that can be found in the public record and in any private, governmental or military database on earth. Not, it turns out, that there was much remarkable about the man, other than his position on a wide-reaching and tangled web of coincidence.

( Connections )

Lyric Prompt: "Pencil Full of Lead" by Paulo Nutini
I got legs on my chairs and a head full of hair
Pot and a pan
And some shoes on my feet;
I got a shelf full of books and most of my teeth
A few pairs of socks and a door with a lock

To call Snake-Eyes' quarters "Spartan" is to commit grave understatement. Granted, it's not as though the Pit-- despite being the most technologically advanced military base on the planet-- provides five-star, silver platter accommodations, even for the most senior members of the team, like him. The people who live in and work in and out of the Pit are soldiers. Barracks, lean-tos and pup tents have been their homes all over the world, so the two-to-a-room spaces for the majority of the Joes and the single-occupancy quarters for the senior members might as well be the Ritz.

( The Grand Tour )