The Wisdom of Uncle Robert

A week or two before I was to head off to Basic Training at Fort Benning, I got a call from my uncle, Robert. He's my Mom's youngest brother, and travel for his job had brought him to New York City. He wanted to get together, buy me dinner, and give me some advice about what I was about to take part in.

So we went to a nice deli style restaurant, and enjoyed a companionable meal. The talk ranged over quite a number of subjects, but as we came to dessert, the topic of Basic came up.

Robert had a number of good suggestions for making my time in training as smooth as I could, but the most interesting thing came about because of a flip answer on my part.

"Look," Robert said in his deep, somewhat intimidating tones, "There are some things you never want to do..."

"Never volunteer, right? I volunteered to get in, and that used up my quota?" I piped up.

"No, not at all." He said after a moment of thought, "You just have to be smart about what you do. Use your head. For instance, at the end of our course in Basic, my platoon had to make a twenty mile march. Right before we left, they asked for volunteers for a detail, so I raised my hand and nudged my closest pal to raise his. When we got called out, he asked me if I was crazy. I reminded him that everyone else was about to walk twenty miles, and asked him what they could have us do that was worse.

"Sure enough, we loaded a truck, and drove out to the end point of the march, where we set up everything for the breakfast the guys were gonna be served when they got finished with the march. Then we sat around for a couple of hours."

Smart guy, Robert is.

A Picture

I found a picture online this morning. Someone had chalked onto a paving stone, 'Real Life is Here'.

I've spent the last four hours trying to find out where the picture was taken, so I can go and see real life.

There She Is

I like animation. Enjoy Studio Ghibli, loved The Incredibles, and Akira, and I've seen enough of Spike and Mikes Festival of Animation to want to check out each new one I hear about.

So I was pretty happy, a couple of days ago, when my perusal of the Intarwebs brought me to the site of a little gem called 'There She Is'. Its' the story of what happens when bunny falls in love with a cat. Not a girl from Playboy and a beatnik, but a rabbit and a feline.

The animation itself is a deceptively simple, anime style. A little on the cutesy side, but that's not a strike against it, especially as the true depth of the story unfolds. The hero, Nabi the cat, and heroine, Doki the rabbit, are drawn in a quite basic style, and it speaks to the skill of the creator that each shade of emotion is readily apparent for both of them, and the world they inhabit.

The story starts of quite simply, with Doki becoming enamored of Nabi, and follows them from their first meeting, through Doki's pursuit and Nabi's acceptance, and then begins to show how the wider world responds to the realtionship of these two disparate types. Each of the four available chapters of their story gives increasing depth to both of the protagonists and the world they share, all while eschewing any dialogue in favor of action and appropriate music.

'There She Is' is a gem of story-telling. The fourth chapter ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, and the fifth is not, as I write, available, but I find myself checking the website daily to see if it has. I'd urge you to take a bit of time to watch one or two, and as none of the four currently viewable are more than six minutes long, it is more than worth the time to experience them.

There She Is
http://www.sambakza.net/amalloc/tteotta_main.htm

The Wisdom of Robert Heinlein

What did I want? I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, “The game’s afoot!” I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and Lost Dauphin. I wanted Prester John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and to eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be the way they had promised me it was going to be, instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is.
I had had one chance — for ten minutes yesterday afternoon. Helen of Troy, whatever your true name may be — and I had known it — and I had let it slip away. Maybe one chance is all you ever get.

— Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road

The Wisdom of Theodore Geisel

"Don't cry because it's over,
smile because it happened."

Mugshot

I've never had a mugshot taken, thank god. I've done my share of stupid and even illegal stuff, it's true, but somehow I've always managed to make it away from whatever situation came up without having forced some roly-poly cop to take a picture of me. Once, believe it or not, I actually managed to avoid it by sprinting away as fast as I could, which, for those of you who know me and my attitude towards moving faster than a slow mosey, is something of a miracle.

So I suppose that it's bad form of me to get so much enjoyment out of The Smoking Gun's weekly mugshot round-up, or this site I just discovered...http://mugshotdujour.com/

I'm really hoping there isn't anything to this Karma concept...

Wake-Up Call

So, I got assigned to drive an LMTV from Camp Manhattan, right on the Euphrates, to the Combat Outpost we were setting up near Ar Ramadi. It was an easy run, but for some reason, we ended up having to stay the night. There were about four of us driving the trucks, and a Humvee with one of the sergeants in it. It was kind of a pain in the ass sleeping in the trucks, especially for a guy my size, but it was better than being back at Manhattan, where the rest of the platoon was undoubtedly being pimped out on random work assignments so Lt. Nelson could look good for the CO.

Anyway, the night went by uneventfully, and, come morning, I got woken up by Dyer, telling me that the cooks had breakfast up. I pulled my head back under the blanket. It was a toss-up which was gonna be worse, chow cooked in primitive conditions, or an MRE.

Not a minute later, a mortar landed in the middle of the Outpost. About fifteen meters away from my truck.

'Jesus Christ!', I thought. 'All right, I'm up, I'm up...'

I hope everyone had a nice Halloween

It seems like a lot of people enjoyed themselves. I have one friend that wore a perfect Ming the Merciless costume.

Me, I went as 'The guy what springs out of the bushes, kicks the kids and steals their candy, then runs away'. It was great. I even got a picture of myself on the news!

Some thoughts on McCain

http://pattonoswalt.com/index.cfm?page=spew&ID=90&mode=comments#post

Why I'll never have a kid...

There's only room in my life for one person that looks like a pile of uncooked bread dough.

And that's ME!

#2 is the International Space Station

Number 3 on the list of all time best places to fall down a flight of stairs: Hasbro's Nerf factory!

A Little Angel

Most years, as Halloween started to creep up, may parents would eventually recount the story of the Little Angel.

Seems like, back in the before time, in the long, long ago, before they had decided to get around to their purpose in life, namely, having and raising me, my parents were occupied with giving away candy, one dark All Hallows Eve. And, late on the aforementioned evening, when all candy had been disbursed to smiling, costumed cherubs, a final knock was heard at the door, just before the porch light was doused.

Not wishing to be rude, my parents opened the door, and were greeted with the sight of a young girl, decked out in the finery of one of the Lord's own servants, wings and all. The wide-eyed, solemn, and be-winged urchin spoke not, but simply held out the bag she carried, already filled with the sweet swag of a profitable evening.

Both my parents were nonplussed, but didn't want to send the hopeful youngster away empty-handed, fearing that such disappointment would lead inevitably to a life of dissolution, communism, and chicken-raping. So, thinking quickly, my father made haste to our kitchen, laid hands upon a bright red apple, and, returning to the front door, dropped the fruit into the still-open bag.

The little angel looked into the bag at the gift she had received, then spoke to my father.

"You broke my cookies, you dumb shit."

I'm an American

If I can't fix it, I need a bigger gun.

Heh

Dark, unsettling, malevolent, surprisingly thoughtful. Truly a comic for the 21st century.

http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php

I feel all warm and fuzzy now.

Where everybody knows your name.

It crossed my mind that I was ordering Chinese food too often today. The proof was in this exchange:

"Hi, I'd like to make an order for delivery?"

"You the guy down the street, right? You want Mongolian Beef again?"

My Word

http://eroticfalconry.com/Site/Home.html

Really?

Maybe, just maybe...

I think most people have heard about how UFO's have supposedly been abducting our cows. If you haven't heard of this phenomenon, congratulations, you are being much more productive with your time than I am. To bring you up to speed, aliens have been helping themselves to our large dairy creatures for quite some time. Unbelievable? The truth always is, my friend.

But what if these Space Brothers aren't just running away with free chuck steak? What if, open your mind real wide, and just ask yourself, what if the little gray dudes are trying to help? What if there's a war beyond the stars, with the Human-Gray Alliance opposed by the evil Bovine Imperium? Suppose this war came to our little planet ages ago, and was fought to a standstill? In the end, the Gray's died off and the cows lost their intelligence?

But every once in a while, a genius among cows is born. One which possesses at least a little of the psychic powers that allowed its stellar cow brothers to subjugate an entire galaxy under their mind-controlling hooves. And the Gray midgets who keep watch over us until we're ready to rejoin the Alliance sweep down, and remove this threat from our midst.

Make me feel better about liking steak, y'know?

International Relations

I think, during my year in Iraq, I saw the moment that Iraqi/American relations hit their peak when I saw a small kid approach the barbed wire fence my platoon was working on and say to Sgt. Cota, "Hey! Hey, you give me water, I let you freaky-freak my sister!"

The "You Die" Line

There are any number of things I liked about working for the circus, but I've never told anyone about the little spark of joy I always felt when the "You Die" Line was mentioned.

The circus isn't a safe place, at all, at all. There are many possible ways to hurt yourself when putting up or taking down a circus tent, any number of things to get cut by or fall off of, and that doesn't even take into account the deranged quality of your co-workers. Or the elephants.

But most of the accidents that could happen would be rather mundane, really. Tripping over all the things that would be laying around, taking a wrong step and twisting an ankle, having a finger pinched by something heavy and suchlike. But being inside the "You Die" Line when an accident occurred meant that, you would, indeed, die, and that your death would go down in circus legend.

The Line only existed for about 20 minutes during the course of loading in or out. This would be during the course of raising or lowering the multi-ton metal masts that supported both the tent canvas and the light array. Nothing else happened while this was going on, as only about four guys were really involved in the process, but none of the rest of us could do our things until the masts were set. 98% of the crew would just be watching and waiting, and, like me, hoping just a little that the worst would happen. It would have been a hell of a thing to see.

The "You Die" Line was just that, the demarcation circle at which, should you be within it's boundaries when the wheels came off, you would be reduced to a sack of bloody pulp and bone splinters. Short of being on the grenade range during basic training, it was as close as I'd ever come to being near such singular possible mayhem.

I couldn't tell you why, but the very idea of the "You Die" Line Makes me smile, just a little, every time I think of it.

Basic Graduation

I didn’t have to wear the dress uniform for my graduation from Basic Training, which I am quite thankful for. My company, Alpha 2/58, were inducted into the Infantry on a hot day in April, 2004, and most of the company was forced to stand at attention on the parade ground while the ceremony took place, sweating under the unforgiving sun while dressed in dark green.

I sweated, too. But I and the rest of the Infantry Squad were dressed in camouflage BDU’s, wearing pseudo-ghillie suits and camo face paint, and carrying weapons. We had a full squad, with two SAW gunners, two Grenadiers, two Riflemen carrying anti-tank weapons, and a squad leader. We spent all day running around in full battle gear, and it was glorious.

None of us got to see the start of the demonstration we were putting on, because the nine of us were stuffed into the back of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, waiting and perspiring. We knew there was going to be loud music, and that some smoke grenades were going to be fired off, after which the Bradley would be raced across the open graduation lot. When it skidded to a stop, the rear deck would drop and we would exit the vehicle as quickly as possible. I’m sure a skilled Mechanized Squad soldier would have found our performance laughable, but it wowed the crowd when we hit the ground running. I had been stuffed into the most forward corner of the squad area, farthest from the door, and was the last man out. I managed to make it through the various bits of metal that all seemed to be at shin-damaging height, and kept myself from doing a face-plant on the lowered deck, although just barely. Down the deck, sprint a short distance to the grassy area and to the end of the line of my squad mates, hit the ground with weapon pointed towards the grandstand filled with our assorted families and well-wishers, and fired off my twenty rounds as fast as I could. Not to worry, they were all blanks.

The up, onto our feet, weapons at the ready, scanning back and forth while walking forward at the ready, as if we were on patrol. There was a voice on the loudspeaker, but the only words any of us heard were, “Infantry Squad!”, which was our cue to stop patrolling and run full tilt to the muster line, all the while sounding a might roar.

Hit the muster line and fall back into patrol stance, scanning back and forth through our weapon’s sights, until we received the order to come to attention at port arms.

Each member of the Squad was introduced, by their position, and each stepped forward and held out the weapon they carried as the loudspeaker reeled of the litany of duties and armaments each one was tasked with. I hear “Rifleman”, and step forward, holding out my M-16 rifle when it is announced, then doing an about-face to give the crowd a view of the anti-tank weapon I have strapped to my back. Then, again on cue, I step forward, back onto the muster line, and execute another about-face so that I’m in line with the rest of the Squad.

Another command comes, and the Squad performs a bayonet strike, and draws back up into the patrol stance again. The Bradley roars in and drops the back deck again, and we back towards the vehicle in the combat stance. Except for the Squad Leader, Sgt. Pickett, I’m the last man in. The Bradley normally carries six fully armed soldiers, and were stuffing nine in, so when my turn comes, I barrel up the ramp at full speed, hitting the press of bodies hard to make room for the Sergeant and myself in the small area. The Sergeant is right on my heels, and the groans caused by my impact double as the deck closes, forcing the already cramped Squad to squeeze even closer together. I hear various imprecations heaped upon my person, and laugh even harder.

My family was there that day, all of them, along with some very beloved friends. But it was being in the Infantry Squad that took my graduation from being special to being spectacular.