Coach's Blog

Where have I been?

2012-01-29T23:56:00.000-05:00

I hate finding good blogs that haven't been updated in a while. Not that this is a good blog. I also hate finding posts like: "I'm finally back after a long while and I resolve to post every day from here on out." And they're dated 2 years ago. I'm around, just really busy with grad school. Maybe I'll try to update regularly again. We'll see.

Letter From Basic Training - March 31, 2004

2011-07-09T01:50:00.000-04:00

31MAR04

Dear Mary Beth,

I ran out of the good paper, so I will have to tear it out of my notebook until I get back to the PX. I am good right now but very cold. I am sitting in the bleachers at the rifle range and guarding weapons. I wished before that I would get a chance to sit here, and I did, but now I've been here for 2 hours and its getting old. We have these targets like this:

And we have to shoot six shots in a 4 cm circle. The shots today do not have to be anywhere in particular they could be here [arrow] or here [other arrow], it doesn't matter as long as they are close together, and then they adjust your rifle, so that when you aim at the center, that is where you hit. [This is called grouping.]

Ok, it got too cold to write. Now it's 1 AM and I'm down at the CQ desk with Manning, the guy who wants out. He's a nice guy. I hope he gets his wish and gets out of the Army. Some guys are dicks to him and I don't think that's right, but it is funny when the drill sergeants yell at someone else.

[It's funny because I thought I hated Manning and tormented all these guys. I feel a little better that I wasn't a total bully. On the other hand, it's important to weed out the weak and the unsound in Basic before they become liabilities. This is War, not a social club. I guess I figured the other guys were doing a good enough job]

Today, instead of shooting, he went to a support group for soldiers not able to handle Basic [ahhhahaha], and they [the Drill Sergeants] were pissed.

I got in an argument with this kid today. It's one of the same kids that is always out to get Manning. His name is Carter and I used to think he was cool. He claims to have sex with all sorts of people like lesbians and midgets and to have pitched in 2 major league games. But I caught him in a lie about wrestling with the Navy team the other day, so I'm going to have my dad check out the baseball thing. [stay tuned :)]

We got in a fight because it was 8:30 PM or so, and the drill sergeants hadn't really given us any instructions on what to do, so everyone was standing around, either bullshitting or loudly arguing, and I was behind a bunch of guys by my locker addressing a letter to Ty [buddy of mine from the gym I worked at who was briefly in the Army], when all of a sudden Carter is like, "Dude is it true personal time? (time we have in evening for letters, showers, etc.)
Me: No.
Him: Well, why are you writing a letter?
Me: (Gives finger) I'm putting a stamp on one. Mind your business.
Him: We're not supposed to write letters now!
Me: Relax, I'm not running around the bay naked. No-one can see me here.
Him: I'm just trying to get people to have some discipline..
Me: I'll tell you what, when you become an E5 (sergeant), come find me and give me some discipline. Until then, leave me alone.

[The army is full of these busybodies who think they are in charge of everything. I mean, sure, if someone is doing something unsafe, correct him. Or if he is flagrantly violating some norm or standard, like wearing his hat sideways, say something. Hell, if you don't and a sergeant shows up, you'll get in trouble for not stopping him. But like the Bible says, if you've got a log in your eye (or the other guys in the platoon do) don't pester people with splinters)

He rolled his eyes, but I was pissed that he called me out like that, because if anything, we were going to get in trouble for people being loud. A minute later, DS Swartz came through the door and as I promised, I closed my locker and no one was the wiser. I think that neither one of us will hold a grudge though.

Some kid told me that family day is only 11-7 on Saturday, in which case you'd probably find it pointless to go and might want to come during graduation instead. I was so pissed when I heard that. I'll ask my parents because they got the letter and check with the drill sergeants in the next couple of days. [deleted personal chit-chat] I don't know, if family day is only 8 hours, I'm depressed. No-one who lives farther away than like Alabama will have anyone visit. I'll just go get a pizza or something and call you. :(. They didn't give us mail today either, and I know there should have been some.

[sappy romantic crap. Here's a song that we sing that I like]

Used to date a beauty queen,
Now I have an M16.

Chorus: And it won't be looooong,
Till I get on back hoooooome.

Left my family and my wife,
So I could live the Army life.

Millions of other verses.

At least I grouped in 12 shots which was acceptable. Layton did it in 6. Bastard. But it took Greenberg 54, which was amusing.

[This was my least favorite part of marksmanship training. If you are reasonably competent, you shoot a few shots and you're done for the entire day. If you are utterly hopeless, you get to shoot over and over again, endless rounds. I think that some guys would eventually pretend to fail the first few times so that they'd get to shoot more. Greenberg, on the other hand, legitimately sucked at everything.]

The Last Temptation of Christ

2011-06-05T22:32:00.000-04:00

Karena and I watched about an hour of The Last Temptation of Christ. Both of us agreed that if we were going to run the risk of watching a blasphemous movie, it should at least be entertaining.

nfl lockout

2011-05-26T23:58:00.000-04:00

Call me a hater, but I hope that the NFL Lockout continues indefinitely.

Swords

2011-02-26T12:37:00.001-05:00

i just got done playing "Swords" (nerf bowling pins) with Rex.

He consecutively defeated The Troll (moans,uses bowling pin as club), The Baron (talks in bad French accent, tries to hit him on the ass with a plastic golf club) and Two Sword Guy (take a wild guess).

After each of these opponents are defeated, they lay on the ground, weapon within easy reach, and summon Rex in a Marlon Brando-Godfather-Hospital voice. "Noble Knight, come here, I will tell you where the secret treasure is buried!" From long experience, Rex has learned that this is a Trick, and he carefully delivers the coup de grace to his downed opponents by jabbing them in the midsection.

Southern Tonguetwisters

2011-02-26T03:55:00.001-05:00

Towards the end of this post, I made fun of my wife's southern mispronunciations. Disclaimer: I have a problem pronouncing big words that I have read, but never heard.

Okay, I've shown I have a weakness, now I can ethically get to the fun stuff, teasing others. Have Karena/someone from the South say these things:

"Mint! I meant mint."
They'll say: "Mint! I mint mint!"

"Andy, I want ten eggs, no chemicals"
They'll say: "Endy, I want tin aygs, no kimicles."

Hilarious!

This dude's shirt looks like a pack of Newports

2010-12-30T22:54:00.000-05:00

Alive with Pleasure!

First photo courtesy of CJ

Cocaine and Marijuana Are Good For You.

2010-12-30T01:50:00.002-05:00

Note that the State Police "Special Operation Response Team" wears the same camouflage as the Army. Because it's necessary to make people think we're under martial law.

Check out this story in the Albany Times Union by Robert Gavin. Some lunatic named Issac Peterson took a lady and her kids hostage because he wanted to call his ex-wife. I'm surprised it didn't happen in Troy which is slightly more dangerous than its Bronze Age equivalent. The guy drew on cops and got shot five times in the chest with a rifle. (he definitely deserved it) He is expected to live. The highlight from the article is this information from Capt. Steven James, commander of the State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation:

"James, a 23-year veteran of the State Police, said someone who was shot five times would seemingly have a remote chance at survival. But he noted, in his experience he's seen drug users survive serious injury; he suspected Peterson was using cocaine and marijuana during the ordeal."

So the takeaway is that if you want to survive serious injury, take drugs, specifically cocaine and marijuana. I wish I knew this before I went to Iraq. I would have felt a lot safer. And if James doesn't let his men get high before raids, isn't he risking their lives?

Drugs saved this man's life. Legalize today!

Twelve Ways Lifting Weights Is Like Brushing Your Teeth

2010-12-29T22:34:00.000-05:00

1. Have you ever heard someone say "I'm so busy, I just don't have time to brush my teeth!" No, but I bet you hear people say that they don't have time to go to the gym. Aha! I can hear you already saying "Brushing your teeth only takes a minute. Going to the gym takes hours!" Well exercise (should) work your muscles, bones, circulatory and respiratory systems. I think it's worth more than a minute.
You don't even have to go to the gym. I mean you should do a little more than a couple of pushups - educate yourself on bodyweight training - but you don't have to devote hours to exercise. (See #2) If Arnold Schwarzenegger had time to make movies, have a family, run for governor, make millions of dollars, endorse products and still work out every day, you can take an hour out of your busy schedule too.

2. So you want clean white teeth. As a New Years Resolution, you brush three hours a day, every day. You impress everyone - look how hard that guy is scrubbing away at his teeth! But it's too much to maintain. You're too busy one day to brush. Then you just give it up. Your teeth don't really look any whiter, so you take the next eleven months off. You're going to have moss mouth. The guy who sticks to a regular brushing schedule, day in and day out, year in and year out will have pearly whites.

3. Imagine that a group of people are into having strong, sharp teeth and muscular jaws. They enter contests where they tear apart rawhide and gnash lumps of taffy. And another group enters contests too, but their criteria are aesthetic only: they just want to have the most spectacularly gleaming smile. In either case, by all means, be competitive, but never sacrifice your enamel or your gums in order to win a plastic trophy. Remember, unless you want to wear dentures at 40, think twice before you start filing away on your teeth or injecting things into your gums.

4. Toothbrushing should never become the sole focus of your life. Even if you are making your living as a tooth model or a professional chewer, you should not neglect friends, family, intellectual pursuits or your spirituality.

5. Even small children can and should brush their teeth. But they don't use adult-sized toothbrushes. And they require strict adult supervision. I still brush my 3-year-old son's teeth. Otherwise he would just swallow the toothpaste, then grind the bristles of his brush against three or four of his teeth and call it a day. (Not to mention leaving puddles of water on every flat surface)

6. There's a proper technique to toothbrushing. Circular motions. Brush all sides. Take your time. And if you're not sure how to do it correctly - maybe you should pick up a copy of Toothbrushing for Dummies. Or - God forbid - ask someone? Go to a dentist and find out if you're using proper brushing form. Rather than spend hours each day doing it wrong, potentially harming your teeth, why not take a little time to educate yourself?

7. Avoid scams and supplements. Miracle Paste! Once-A-Month Rinses! Sonic Toothbrush! Throw this garbage away and brush your teeth correctly and consistently. Don't risk your health and your wallet on hoaxes and quackery.

8. So you don't want the whitest teeth in the world. You would be satisfied if they just would stop being being that vile green color. This doesn't mean that you should brush half-heartedly or only once a week. Don't worry ladies - your teeth won't get "too manly".

9. Be neat and courteous. If you share a bathroom with other people, don't leave toothpaste globs in the sink. Wait until it is your turn to brush, then move out of the way.

10. There's a limit to how white your teeth are going to get. If your parents had rotten teeth full of cavities, you may never be toothbrushing world champion. Also realize that the tooth photographs in the magazines are airbrushed, and many of the models have had their teeth capped.

11. Everything about toothbrushing has been discovered by 1950. All the new-fangled Russian brushing systems, Crossbrush, and group brushing classes are just clever ways for people to take your money.

12. Don't eat crappy, sugary food and wonder why you can't have nice white teeth.

Siena vs. Georgia Tech

2010-12-22T22:37:00.001-05:00

Went to the Siena/Georgia Tech game tonight at the Pepsi Arena with my father. Some interesting tidbits:

1. My dad got tickets from two of his hiking buddies. They have season tickets, but one had to work late, so we got to go. This has happened before. Siena is 2-0 with my dad attending and 0-3 when the ladies attend.

2. The old Siena Coach, Paul Hewitt, now coaches Georgia Tech. Because he was the winningest Siena coach, I asked my dad how he would be received. My dad correctly predicted the crowd response - hearty applause

3. Georgia Tech scheduled the game last year because one of their players is from Albany. Or was. The guy decided to graduate early.

4. It was spring break, so the student contingent was missing, but Siena might literally have the oldest fans in all of college basketball. My dad and I were the two youngest people in our section. The average Siena fan is an portly Irishman wearing a newsboy cap and a "Class of '38" sweatshirt. He has not missed a game since Latin was spoken in church. He will not respond to cheerleaders his granddaughter's age ("MAKE SOME NOISE") but he knows the rulebook and loudly points out any of the referee's failings. (Judging by the commentary and the number of bifocals in the stands, the officials' eyesight must be really bad). Siena packs the stands (8000+) for two reasons. There is nothing else to do in Albany and their fans never die.

5. Siena has the least physically imposing team in college basketball. Their 6'9 center Ryan Rossiter has just entered puberty at the age of 21.

6. Siena won, much to everyone's delight, except for Paul Hewitt, who looked a bit nauseous, considering he'd come all the way from Georgia to lose to a team who he supposedly "outgrew". Understandable - his job might be on the line.

7. Last time I went to a Siena game was in 1994. It was an NIT game, and they upset Georgia Tech at the Pepsi Arena. That was the last time the two teams played. However, given the age and dedication of the fan base, I would imagine that 6,000 other people also attended both games.

Testosterone

2010-12-18T04:28:00.000-05:00

Sigh

So I recently had my testosterone levels checked. I was hoping for one of two outcomes. If my levels were low, it would mean that I could be prescribed testosterone replacement - legal steroids. On the other hand, if my levels were high, it would confirm what I already suspected - that I am a dominant, rage-filled, aggressive alpha-male barbarian.

They tested my "total testosterone" and my "free testosterone". Both were average. Well my total testosterone was a little bit above average. Like the 55th percentile. And I took the test in the afternoon (levels are higher in the morning). Still, not the results I had hoped for.

Letter From Basic Training - March 30, 2004

2010-11-13T00:40:00.001-05:00

30MAR04

Dear Mary Beth,

   [redacted: 3 of the corniest lines ever written, talking about my rifle, which I named Mary Beth]

    My friend [redacted] got a Dear John letter today. He'd been seeing the girl "on and off" as he put it, for a year and a half. She wrote him and said she didn't think it would work out. He was not overly distraught - I think he expected it.

    Now it is morning and I'm trying to finish off my letter. Last night we had a simulated promotion board. We had to report to the drill sergeant like he was an officer and answer questions. It was a test of the first 3 weeks. I got all the questions right and passed.

[the questions I was asked: name, rank, air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow]

    There's a kid called Manning. I think I told you about him before - he doesn't want to be in the Army and said he didn't want to kill people. He went to Cornell. Now he is saying that he is gay to get out. The drill sergeants told us not to harass him about that, but we should harass him about other stuff. Now he has to eat last every meal. I don't mind him though - he bunks next to me (and got me sick).

[by coughing wet hacking coughs all night long - they made us sleep in opposite directions, like my feet faced the center of the room, and his faced the wall - it didn't work]

I hope he spares my life when he goes on a shooting spree.

Slimer the Sumerian

2010-10-04T03:15:00.001-04:00

Look at this advertisement. Specifically the word "SLIMER" Look at it and make your eyes a little blurry. Could it possibly appear as SUMER? I find this interesting because the first Ghostbusters movie features three "Sumerian" entities: Gozer the Gozerian, Zuul, and Vinz Clortho. Keep in mind however, that the name "Slimer" does not appear until Ghostbusters II. Frank Baun came up with the name Oz by looking around his office and seeing "O-Z" on a file cabinet. What if some individual affiliated with Ghostbusters looked around his office and saw a book with "SUMER" on the spine, possibly a book which they used as reference for the first Ghostbusters movie, and thought, "Hey - Slimer - that's it!"

Poetry is Dead, Rap is King, The Novel Survives

2010-10-02T01:45:00.006-04:00

Quick - Who's having more fun?

I know that I'm a Philistine, but very few poems could not be improved by making them rhyme and setting them to one of Dr. Dre's beats.

Exceptions are the few great poems/poets of all time: Ozymandias, Howl, Gravy (Carver), some Eugene Field, The Ancient Mariner, epic poems like the Iliad, Jami, Kubla Khan, The Raven, Kipling, Bukowski, some Robert Frost, and a handful of others that will be pointed out to me, I'm sure. Not being on this list doesn't mean your poetry/poem sucks. But there's a better than average chance that it does..

Poets are mad because, for 5000 years, they got all the girls and the fame and got to work for about fifteen minutes a day and drink wine. While the Beats were on top, they expressed admiration for jazz musicians; when the Beats grew old, the musicians took over. Now desperate poets even bring bongo drums to readings, when what they should be doing is learning how to use a drum machine.

Rappers are the new poets. Wait a minute! All rap is about bling and guns and drug dealing etc. That's not art! How can it compare?

First, let's not be hypocritical. A lot of poetry is about flowers and shadowy souls and angst. Or about how you were oppressed. But the difference is there are still numerous good rap songs about the gangsta life, while I challenge you to show me some good emo poetry.

Second, rap is a new art form. After 5000 years, there are maybe a hundred or so great poems. That's one every fifty years. Whereas my mp3 player is full of great rap songs from the last 25. I don't see this trend reversing itself.

Third, rap will some day diversify, just like how all rock music is not about surfing anymore. And I'm not talking about "positive rap." Ugh.

Fourth, don't use the example of Southern rappers. They don't rhyme and seem like "In Living Color" caricatures. I'll admit that great poetry doesn't have to rhyme, but all rap does. As a matter of fact, don't point out sh*tty rap songs or trite lyrics to prove me wrong. Because I guarantee I can find 10 crap published poems for every song you show me. Pick up any literary magazine, if you can find one. And chances are, the guy that wrote the crappy song about wheel rims at least has diamond encrusted teeth and a couple of hot backup dancers to show for it. (Note: This is a joke. Having diamond teeth or booty dancers does not indicate artistic talent. But they make its lack much easier to bear.)

Fifth, Rap is a more complex art form. The songs need good beats and rhythmic, powerful delivery. No one can just write lyrics on a piece of paper and call it a day.

The novel lives on and has not been totally eclipsed by its technological rival, the movie. Now I'm not saying that there aren't a lot of blockheads these days who don't read anything and only watch movies. But you can still make a living as a novelist. Sure, it's unlikely, but so is Hollywood success. And it is impossible to make a living as a poet anymore without teaching (teaching what - other people how to write poetry no one will pay to read?). The novel still has its advantages. An author, cannot, by himself, in one year, for free, create a movie that precisely expresses his artistic vision. If he could, the novel would die too.

New Things Rex Says

2010-09-26T02:08:00.001-04:00

I'm trying not to turn into a mommy blogger, but hearing about my kid a couple of times a year won't kill you.

Rex saw the neighbors (from a distance) and yelled "Hi Neighbors" at them several times. Unfortunately, they didn't hear him. Later he told me that he "did a good deed...I say hi to neighbors". He's learning about good and bad deeds from Chutes and Ladders.

Rex and I play a game where we insist that the other person is an unpopular or imaginary character in Super Mario.
Rex: Daddy is Princess Peach.
Me: I'm not Princess Peach, I'm Wario. You're an old bird egg.
Rex: I'm not an old bird egg, I'm Mario. You're an onion!
Me: (feigns shock)
Rex laughs hysterically. Apparently, in Rex-world, calling someone an onion is extremely insulting.

Karena and I sing Rex bedtime songs. Sometimes he sings along. The other night, he replaced every word in the song with "Crack".
Me: Nighty-night...and good-night...
Rex: Cracky-crack...crack crack-crack...

Misunderstandings
Me: So what did you do today.
Rex: Library sucks.
Me: What?!
Rex: Library sucks.
Me (calling Karena on phone): Do you know what our son just said? He must have learned it from you. You took him to the library today.
Karena: Well we didn't actually go, it was closed. He made a big deal about how the library door was stuck.

We're teaching Rex about truth and lies. The other day he told me, "Truth makes lies mad."

Like Paul Revere
We have three lightswitches in our bathroom: two for lights and one for the fan. Rex is adamant about only turning on one of the lights when he goes to the bathroom. On the other hand, when I brush his teeth, I like to see, so I turn on both of them. During lunch the other day, he told me, "Two lights is for pooping, brushing teeth, taking bath; one is for potty."

Rex-isms
Posterous = preposterous
Factidy = factory
ToMario = Tomorrow

That's Gay

2010-08-20T00:41:00.001-04:00

Usually when someone tells me not to use a word, it just makes me want to use it more. But I have noticed that around friends/relatives who are gay, I make a concerted effort not to say "that's gay" meaning "that's bad". I'm not always successful, but if I am embarrassed to say it in person, I should stop myself from using it in this manner on my blog. I did a quick search and I use it something like 138 times in this way. I'm not going to go back and change them all but from now on:

NOT OKAY:
This sleeping bag is gay. It does not keep me warm.

OKAY:
This sleeping bag is gay. There are two naked men in here with me.

Why I Was Not On Oprah

2010-08-19T00:39:00.003-04:00

There is a lot of speculation over why I did not appear on Oprah. I want to set the record straight. I was not "uninvited" nor "disinvited", nor even "anti-invited". I did not turn down her disinvitation, nor did she turn down my invitation to not appear. In fact the truth is exactly the opposite, not the other way around as some of my detractors have alleged. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to clear up this matter once and for all.

more gym antics

2010-08-11T03:56:00.001-04:00

You ever see the movie the Shining where Jack Nicholson kisses the woman and she turns out to be a dead naked corpse? If not, just picture an old corpse of a 50 yr old woman that is starting to get puffy. That is what the personal trainer at the gym looks like. She seems to have lots of out of shape clients who are willing to pay her 85 dollars an
hour. I'm not making this up. She has skinny arms and legs and a puffy gut. For story reference purposes her name is Lauren and the kid who seems to be in charge of the gym is Ralph. I don't think he owns it but i've never seen the owners. He's a college kid and he's skinny and it looks like the only thing he uses at the gym is the tanning beds but at least he seems like a nice guy when I've talked to him. Anyway, I am deadlifting and I just did a warmup set with 195. She comes over and taps me on the shoulder and I take my headphones off.

Lauren: I've noticed that you seem to put the weights on the bar really hard, is that a psyche up thing that you do to lift more weight?
Me (kind of embarrassed): Actually, I probably didn't notice the noise because I had my headphones on. I will be more conscious of it and not slam them on. (why anyone cares about this is beyond me but it's easy enough and I wasn't really paying attention)
Lauren: Because if you're doing it for a psyche up I understand. i've been involved in powerlifting (bullsh*t) and blah blah blah and heavyweights and I'm not trying to blah blah. This isn't Planet Fitness, but blah blah
Me: No, no, I got it, I'll put them on quieter.
Lauren: Okay because if you need the noise to psyche you up, that is fine, you see blah blah blah it breaks my concentration blah blah
Me (interrupting): No, it's cool.
Lauren: Oh and can you make sure not to drop the weights because underneath this rubber mat, the floor is concrete and we don't want the bar to bend.
Me: I don't drop the bar. (I'm telling the truth. This is illegal in powerlifting anyway)
Lauren: Well there are some other guys who also do heavy deadlifts here (bullsh*t) and I'll try to see if maybe Ralph could get you some towels or something for you guys to deadlift on.
Me: Okay (like towels will make a f*cking difference, also, they charge for the towels, so I'd be interested to see if they would give me 3 free ones every time I deadlift)
Lauren: Ralph, can you get him some towels?
Ralph: How about a mat?
I do my next set of 235.
Ralph returns with two sections of thick, folding tumbling mats.
Me: No - I'm not using that. I'll be standing in a hole.
Lauren: Maybe if he got you a third one to stand on.
Me: No!
Ralph: No, you know what, it's gonna rip the mat or something, forget it. The bar's not going to bend. Don't worry about it.
Me: Thanks, I'll be careful.
Lauren: Hmm (then goes off to be an annoying c*nt somewhere else.)

George Steinbrenner - Nice Guy

2010-07-20T00:47:00.000-04:00

When I only meet a celebrity for a few minutes, those few minutes don't only affect how I think about the person. Because I'm so influential, with thousands of personal friends and millions of blog readers, those minutes affect how those people feel about the celebrity. For example, everybody I've spoken to knows that Kiefer Sutherland was a stuck-up, bloated, coke-addled poser when I met him in Toronto in 1996 (story to follow in later post).

My only encounter with George Steinbrenner came at the Hall Of Fame game in Cooperstown in about 1985. My dad bought tickets but couldn't get us seats in the same location. So I sat behind home plate, my mom and dad sat somewhere else. I think my younger brother got to sit with one of my parents because he was about 5. My dad would check up on me every few innings and gave me food money. I had a blast. The lady next to me I think felt bad for me and carried on a conversation with me, which couldn't have been pleasant. I was squeaky and more of a smart-ass than the average kid. She pointed out where George Steinbrenner was sitting. I was too shy, but after about 3 innings she convinced me to go ask for his autograph. I went down behind home plate where he was and asked for an autograph. He signed my glove and told me to sit in the empty seat next to him, where I remained for about a half inning. He was pretty much the nicest guy ever. I still have that glove. (I think getting George Steinbrenner's signature on your glove instead of, say, Cal Ripken means that you will never be a great athlete, but instead will excel in other areas. At least i hope it does. I still haven't made my first billion)

So say what you will about George Steinbrenner. All I know is that in the 10 minutes that I knew him, he was extremely kind and gracious to a snot-nosed punk kid who pestered him for an autograph.

Thank Goodness We Lost

2010-06-27T01:47:00.001-04:00

Of course I didn't watch it, but I was pleased to read in the newspaper that Ghana beat the US in soccer. Finally, I can stop hearing about soccer for another four years. I rooted for Algeria to knock our team out, but I think it's probably better that the US made it at least to this mediocre level. If we do too poorly, I start having to read the "Why we are bad at soccer" articles. We are also bad at cricket and ping-pong and I don't have to hear about it - ever. I guess I pay more attention to the World Cup than most people, because I know we beat England and they had riots in their streets, the coach was flogged, and the queen went to Wimbledon to pretend that she was interested in tennis instead. Meanwhile in the United States, nobody cared except a handful of pretentious yuppies. There are a few million soccer fans in the US, but they root for the Latin American country they came from.

Soccer is like the metric system, the WNBA and gun control. There's a vast left-wing conspiracy to force these things on the American public, but because we stand (mostly) united against them, they are unsuccessful. Anyone over 13 who plays soccer should be deported. So yay Ghana, or whoever. Just keep off my TV.

Def Leppard predicts the future

2010-06-18T02:04:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite songs, "Pour some sugar on me" by Def Leppard has a strange lyric.

"Livin' like a lover with a red iPhone."

I never knew what the hell they were talking about until recently. Twenty-three years later (it came out in 2009) you can buy a red iPhone.

Gary Busey causes problem at gym

2010-06-15T02:41:00.002-04:00

Crazy stuff at the gym today. There is this guy who comes in - he looks a little bit like Gary Busey but the gym owner says he is an attorney. I have had problems with him before, namely that he parks himself on a bench on the smith machine (which I squat on - using a real bar of course - Smith machines are for pansies). There he'll sit for hours, doing high speed repetitions of the top three inches of a smith machine bench press with 95 lbs. I swear that this is not an exaggeration of this exercise. It is the only thing he ever does. He's about 50 and has a physique like a homeless wino.

Between every set for 10 minutes, he will either: get up and watch ESPN, read a magazine, or go find someone to talk to. Today after fat bar deadlifts 423.5x4 and closegrip bench 260x6, I wanted to do good mornings. But Gary was there.

Another habit he has that drives the gym owner crazy is trying to stay late after the gym closed. Since I still had like 40 minutes, (he'd been on the bench for 20 min already and done 2 sets), I went on to assistance work like fat bar row and crap like that. But then after another 20 minutes I got fed up. He hadn't done another set and he'd been watching ESPN with the owner. He left his Iphone on the rack.

So I asked this high school kid "Is this yours?" He said, "No I think
it's that old guy's." And then because Gary was by the door, he grabs it and runs over and says "Sir, sir, please, don't leave without your phone". Gary mutters that he wasn't leaving. So I say, "Oh are you done with the rack?" He says I can use it (Gee, thanks) so I went over, took his weights off and started lifting. One set later Gary comes up and says "What kind of car do you drive?" I ask why. Not really scared because this guy is not threatening. He says "So I won't come in any more when you are here." I said, "Great, it's a [color make model year] with a US Army retired sticker on the back". The gym owner told me that he used to run a restaurant and Gary was the same way with a special booth. If someone was sitting there, he'd just turn around and leave.

I'm glad he's not planning on coming back while I'm there. But what if he's there first? I hope he doesn't expect me to leave. I'll pick him up, bench, Iphone and all, and throw him out the door.

Letter From Basic Training - March 29, 2004 - Road March

2010-06-11T00:59:00.003-04:00

29 MAR 04

Dear Mary Beth,

I'm sorry we were so rudely interrupted in my last letter, but tomorrow we have to wake up at 3:30 for a 6 mile road march. So the drill sergeant decided we should all go to bed at 7. Since when do they care about us getting a good night's sleep? It's still light out and hot and everyone's lying awake. It feels lke summer when your parents would make you go to bed when it was still light out and you could hear kids down the street playing outside. I had to wrap up my last letter because since we won't be around tomorrow, no mail will go out.

You asked me what we do on weekends. Saturdays are just like any other day, except we get a little more personal time at night. Sundays are the greatest day, laundry and letters for me, sleeping in church for everyone else. The drill sergeants seem to be preoccupied with chores, so they will pop their heads in every hour or so, yell at guys for being rowdy, and get volunteers for work details, so it's best not to hang around the bay. Total control ends Friday, unless we greatly f*ck up, so I'll be able to call you more. I don't think we will f*ck up, our platoon was the only one not to have anyone get an Article 15 at that court thing. I have a lot of fun with Layton and my other pals, I beat him in the PT test, but he beat me in the obstacles. He beat me in taking apart our rifle, but I made a better dirty poem about his girlfriend than he did about my mom. We stay up late and do the trivia questions my mom sends us in a big group. It's a lot of fun. What is weird is no one has called me by my first name in a long time, no one knows each other's first name and it's a shock to see pictures of each other with long hair, in street clothes. No one calls each other by the first name because our last names are printed on everything. Everyone calls me Coach usually, which is fine by me. There are only two other guys in the platoon who have nicknames that are used more than their names. Jersey, who's this little kid with a loud mouth, and Papa Bear aka Father Time, who's the oldest guy here (30).

Monday we did our 6 mile road march, our longest ever. It is hard with all the gear and holding the rifle makes your arms numb. I got a big blister on my right pinky toe. There's not much I can do about it except wait to toughen up my feet. The pace we walk would be equivalent to setting the treadmill on 3.2 mph and a 6-7% incline. Sometimes we go up to 4 mph.

[which is easy compared to road marches in either Special Forces Qualification or the Airborne Infantry. Really, there's nothing like having that big tick on your back, making your shoulders and back sore. But if you were to try to duplicate a "serious" road march on the treadmill, I would set it to 4.0 mph and about 4% incline. Then do that for 3 hours.]
What motivated me today besides thinking about you, was the kid in front of me who was lagging behind and f*cking up the formation. It is supposed to look like this:

And then if the slow guy in front of you tries to catch up by running, everyone else has to run and running with the ruck sucks. And if the formation is not spread out, (gotta spread out so snipers and grenades can't wipe everyone out at once) the drill sergeants scream at you. This kid, Greenberg, kept lagging and I was right on his ass, and Layton, who was across from him, started ragging on him until the two of them were screaming "F*ck you!" back and forth across the road.

[So much for keeping things tactical or surprising the enemy - but it was entertaining and motivational. And when you get into doing a serious road march, you're gonna have to do a really slow jog to keep up if you're short or slow. I talk about this elsewhere on the blog. The thing is, do it because your legs are too short, not because you're not in shape. Don't do the thing where you walk to recover your wind, then sprint up to the guy in front of you. That is what screws everyone else up, not jogging at a constant 4.1 mph]

We do this thing every week where we make a list of the 10 best and 10 worst soldiers in the platoon. Then they add them up. Greenberg has finished third worst both weeks, I have not been on either yet, which is good.

Someday they will be in charge of you...

2010-06-10T22:46:00.001-04:00

A good reason not to enlist in the Army:

YOU ARE HERE BY ERROR

2010-05-23T00:23:00.000-04:00

Binghamton Bearcats Basketball - Because we know you wouldn't google us intentionally.

Dolphins Even Like Rotten Fish

2010-05-19T02:20:00.000-04:00

Paris Hilton is surprised to find that dolphins even like nasty, smelly fish.

my submission for "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day"

2010-05-16T04:05:00.004-04:00

Letter From Basic Training - March 28, 2004 - 200 Years of Practice making guys miserable

2010-05-16T03:45:00.001-04:00

3/28/04

[about 4 pages of extra-stupid gibberish precedes this]

Yesterday, I think I told you on the phone that we took our first PT test. Pushups, situps and 2 mile run. I did good - 6th out of 55 in our platoon. My goal is to get a 300. I got a 268 so I have to do 9 more pushups, 8 more situps and run 1 minute faster [to get a perfect 300] The run needs the most work but because when I was sick I missed 2 runs, I have only run 3 miles total since I got here. And you know how much I used to run back home. After our test, we sat in a big hot classroom with our new rifles spread out in front of us, taking them apart step by step. I was very bored becasue I have the same gun at home.

[Ahhhhh! You called it a gun! It's a rifle - or a weapon - or a carbine - but not a gun! Yes, you get in trouble for calling it a gun in the Army. Who cares? Now that I'm out - gun gun gun gun gun. Just don't call the rear sight assembly the "carrying handle", you toolbox.]

We walked through a step-by-step function check like this: put your weapon on safe, pull the trigger, nothing happens. Put the weapon on semi, pull the trigger, hear a click, etc. But there was always one guy who would f*ck it up and his gun would click or clang when it shouldn't and the drill sergeant would make the company do 10 pushups and start over. It should have taken 45 seconds, but it took us an hour. There are some dumb motherf*ckers in the army. Also all my clothes were dirty so I had to wear my winter BDUs. They are a little hotter but not that bad.

[So stupid - issue us 2 pairs of summer BDUs and 2 pairs of winters - even though it's spring in Georgia. They look almost identical unless you hold the fabric up to your face. And when you wore the winters, you had to wear a cap with earflaps. But you could NEVER wear the earflaps down]

    We won the obstacle course and the PT test average but we were last in cleaning the barracks so we didn't get the pass to the PX. If we had won, we would have had a 2 hour pass to shop, eat pizza, drink soda and use the phones and internet for the duration.

       Today we have just been doing laundry and guys have been going to church - the usual for a Sunday, but then something really cool happened.

[I must have been Lord of the Flies sadistic to think that this was "really cool"]

   The captain ordered the company downstairs in a box formation. At the center was his desk and chair. He called these guys up one at a time and proceeded to hold a military court. One guy (Pyle - the 17 yr old kid) got 45 days of hard labor, 45 days of restricted activities (we're restricted already but he'll miss passes) and a fine of $300, for being disrespectful and disobeying in the dining facility. Another couple of guys got 15 days of each and the fine for fighting. Two others got 15/15 and the fine for neglecting to guard weapons. And some guys from the winning platoon who tried to bring candy back with them got 3 days of each but no fine. It was pretty entertaining.

[I guess I was just bored. I'm not sure why I thought this was so great. It did reinforce an important lesson. Do not get in trouble in the Army. You'll probably be somewhere, waist deep in mud, flies biting you, getting shouted at, and think, "What are they going to do to me? They can't possibly make it any worse than this." Famous last words. Of course they can make it worse! They've had over 200 years of practice at making guys just like you EVEN MORE MISERABLE when they break the rules.]

Lawrence Taylor

2010-05-07T03:37:00.000-04:00

This is my 300th post. Hurrah.

Lawrence Taylor got arrested today. The news media said that he "raped" a girl. Turns out that he actually was with a prostitute who was 16. The whole story is non-news. First of all, prostitution is legal in one state, and punishable by a minor fine or short stay in jail in the others. Second, 16 is legal in most US states. Finally, the girl should thank Taylor. Of all the thousands of sexual intercourses she will have in her lifetime, he is one of the partners who will be courteous enough to pay her. If he wore a condom, she should be doubly thankful, as many of her partners will probably not even do that.

Free LT and reform our Age of Consent laws and vice laws.

Letter From Basic Training - March 25, 2004

2010-03-27T02:15:00.001-04:00

25 MAR 04

Dear MaryBeth or Mary Beth or Marybeth,

[I was never exactly sure how she spelled her name]

    I got out of the infirmary this morning. It was good to get some rest and TV, so I felt much better. The nurse asked if I wanted to stay another day but I told her I wanted to get the hell out. Mostly I didn't want to miss training and fall behind. Then you could get recycled which would mean another 2 weeks before I can see you so forget that. Hell, if I wasn't seeing you, I would milk that sh*t as long as I could, basic training is nobody shooting at you and you get $50 a day, base pay and bonuses.

[wisdom and idiocy in the same sentence]

    But I left this morning and the nurse walked me to the road. I felt like a baby bird being released to fly. All the other baby birds had to stay in the infirmary. But big [Coach]-bird leaves the nest and is trusted to walk 100 yards all by himself without the nurses, drill sergeants or battle buddies accompanying him, all the way to the Health Clinic where my adventure began Wed. morning. Because I knew where my unit was (doing PT, then eating) it would make too much sense for me to rejoin them. Instead I would have to go back to the clinic, see the doctor, tell her I was OK, then call for a ride of 3/4 mile (we can't walk) wait 2 hrs and 45 minutes, finally get back, eat breakfast at the barracks (MRE) and since the company had already rolled out, wait for another drill sergeant to drive me out there. I woke up at 5 AM, and didn't get back to normal duty until 12 PM.
    We learned about landmines today, and I missed them detonating them by about 15 minutes. Goddam it. I only got to practice setting up the test mines. The mines we learnt to use are the remote control Claymore ones like this:

[Nice picture. It's funny after almost 6 years in the Army I never got to fire a real claymore, although I did see quite a few detonate].

    Now you see how they work. We also learned about detecting landmines.   The army has a procedure for dealing with landmines that's a lot like its policy for defending against nuclear or chemical attack. Look, we're going to teach you something so we can say we taught you, but to be honest, we all gotta go sometime.
    Then we marched back at a rapid rapid pace with all our gear. A lot of the guys missed me and asked where I was, which made me feel good. It was super hot and I was soaked with sweat when I got back.
    Then more madness with organizing stupid f*cking wall lockers. I don't mind work, but I hate sh*t that doesn't make any sense. We have to buy a separate soap dish and soap to display perfectly. The regular soap dish must be hidden in our personal drawers, taking up more room while we never use the display. #$%&! I can't even think of a word to describe how annoying wall lockers are. Why must we roll our underwear into 6 inch rolls!?
    You asked about when I get mail. Usually we get it every day except Sundays. It sometimes screws up though and I get two at once, which is fine by me, I just look at the date to see which one came first.
    Right now it's Friday evening and we are standing in formation waiting for dinner and wasting more time. Today was a long day.
    So long... now it is lights out and the red light is back. I won't be able to write much longer. It was one of those rotten days where nothing went right.

[I'm not really sure which day is which here. It doesn't really matter, does it?]

    Woke up, did PT which was just walking because we have a PT test tomorrow. So we stretched and walked then went back to the obstacle course I drew for you before and the high confidence course. This was really scary stuff. Climbing up 50 ft ladders, doing monkey bars across with only a little net underneath, climbing a rope, going down a cargo net, etc. I thought I was going to die at least twice. I did ok, though, and then we did the obstacle course afterwards. Our platoon elected 2 guys to run again for a time and they won - all the other platoons are jealous and we might get some kind of prize if this keeps up.
    Then we did stupid bayonet training which is retarded the way they make us do it, it's this whole involved process of setting down the rifle, fixing the bayonet, taking a step, putting on gloves, picking up the rifle, etc. If someone is that close that we actually need bayonets, I'm just gong to whip that motherf*cker out and slap it on the rifle however and start jabbing away.

[Yeah, it was really like that. Set down your rifle, put on your leather gloves, get the bayonet out, etc. Biggest waste of time in all of basic training, and that's saying something]

We were supposed to watch a movie tonight but we didn't. Instead we made our bunks and shined our boots. I had duty answering the radio at Battalion HQ so I still have one boot left and have to wake up at 4 to finish my locker cleaning. And dinner was small and terrible. Okay, enough about my day. Oh yeah, a letter didn't come today, but I still have 2 from yesterday. Also all my clothes are dirty and it sucks :) I'll stop crying now.

Letter From Basic Training - March 24, 2004

2010-03-25T00:31:00.001-04:00

24MAR04

Dear Mary Beth,

3/18    I'm glad you're taping the Chapelle show. i'm so cut off from pop culture. People here make jokes about what was hot three weeks ago. Guys are still going around saying "What did the five fingers say to the face? SLAP! Cold-blooded. I'm Rick James, bitch," and guys will still be saying that in eleven more weeks and laughing about it.

   I'm at sick call today guarding our weapons in the hallway, waiting for my name to get called. They gave me and some other guys surgical masks to wear because we keep coughing. We were supposed to do some rope climbing thing and then rappel down. It's called Eagle Tower and I'm actually kind of looking forward to it. I hope I don't miss it, but if I do I have to make it up anyway.

[nope, was sick both days we went there. never conquered my fear of rappelling. Never had to make it up]

   They fed us MREs this morning. Mine was good, it was Jamaican pork chop and rice. Meat in a bag that you can cut with a plastic spoon is always nice. Also there was a bag with spiced apples in it. Yummy. And these crackers like Wheatables with jalapeno cheese spread. The bad thing was mine didn't come with any candy.

It's a little after 7 AM and I'm sitting by myself in a deserted hallway of the clinic, waiting for a chest X-ray [...] I have a great tan on my head and hands - they are brown and everything else on my body is pale white.

You asked me some questions and I wanted to answer them
Favorite color - black
Favorite songs: Sweet Child O'Mine - Guns n' Roses
anything by Biggie Smalls
Release Yo Delf by Method Man
Pour some sugar on me - Def Leppard
We're not gonna take it
I wanna Rock - Twisted Sister

   By the way, I just got my chest X-Ray back. They say I have pneumonia and it is contagious so I cannot train, I have to go to the hospital,.so I don't know if I can even go back and get my stamps and an envelope. I hope it is all goodness of sleeping and watching TV, and I hope when I get back they don't put me on profile. That's where you hang out with your unit but don't do any of the fun stuff, just stand around because you are gimpy. There's one called no run-jump-march and no-pushup.

[oh, the much coveted no run-jump-march...]

The EMT who took me to the hospital took some kids from airborne school there yesterday who hurt themselves when they landed and a jumpmaster trainee (training to be an instructor) who landed on his head and got knocked out.

[all airborne school cadre are jumpmasters. All jumpmasters are not black hats. Disregard if you don't know what I'm talking about. It's not that important ]

He told me some current events. Fort Benning is huge, something like 1200 square miles. I think he said it was like 30x40 miles - not sure if that's right, but it is big and you take off in Georgia, but parachute down into Alabama.

You want to hear something weird? I'm at the hospital now and my nurse who saw me first was Senior Drill Sergeant Swartz's wife. She was really nice to me. Drill Sgt. Swartz is a cool guy. He has said so many classic quotes; we're making a list. He'll tell jokes about other drill sergeants or kids in other platoons and when we laugh, he yells "Stop Laughing!" He'll also go up to guys in the front of the formation and say, "Who the f*ck are you? What platoon are you in?" And the poor kid will say, "Second, Drill Sgt."   And then Swartz will say "Well I've never seen you before. Are you sure? Echo Company, 2nd Platoon?" One day he did this to 3 different kids. It was hilarious.

[I guess you had to be there, but yeah, he'd always pick out the quiet, socially inept types who were dying to be left alone and demand to know who they were, really.]

    I hear they are going to give me an IV antibiotic. Yuck. I got this from the kid in the bunk next to me. He's the one trying to get out of the army or switch jobs becasue he doesn't want to be a killer, he wants to be intelligence. He goes to sick call all the time. I think he's jealous that I have pneumonia, and he only has bronchitis. I get to go to the hospital, and he only gets the infirmary.

   I change that. I'm only going to the infirmary after all. I just saw a real doctor after sitting in the examining room for over an hour. I was sitting on the end of the table, then I started to fall asleep. I didn't want to because I didn't want to get in trouble, but I am so tired. Last night I had fireguard so I got 5 hrs sleep. Getting four to 5 hours of sleep is not bad, but we work all day and run around which tires you out, plus being on your feet. Try going a whole day without sitting down except 5 min at breakfast, lunch and dinner. It's tiring. Usually now though we sit down for classes, but that's when you fall asleep. In the morning, you feel like 'ugh, I'm dead,' but you have to jump right up and shave so by the time you finish that, you are busy moving fast, so feel tired at that point, but you immediately start to snooze when you sit. They know this so they have a drill sergeant walk around the classrooms, looking into peoples' eyes. They get mad [or pretend to] when they catch someone, but it is such a frequent occurence. They tell you to stand in the back if you feel sleepy, but no one's going to voluntarily stand for two hours. A lot of times when you come into a classroom, you have to stand at attention for 10 minutes and then shout the company song:

We are the men from Echo Company you've heard so much about!
You lock your wives and daughters up whenever we are out!
We fight with knives and forty-fives and broken bottles too!
We are the men from Echo Company, who the hell are you?
Mailed Foot!

Then you put your hand down and hum until someone yells "Sit" or whistles. Then you take your seat in one motion and sit at attention, hands on the desk, until they tell you to relax.
   Anyway, so I fell asleep. But I woke up whten the doctor came in and gave me a breathing machine. It had a tube that went into my mouth and vaporized Albuterol for me to breathe. I started to drift off again as I was sitting there. But Albuterol is a stimulant (same stuff is in an inhaler), so I got a good rush and that always makes me want to write, so I got this letter out and speed-wrote this last page which is why it probably is all jumbled up.
   I'm getting antibiotics, cough syrup, Sudafed, Motrin and an inhaler.
   What I really need is sleep and real food. They should give us coffee in the Army. I'm not sure if they are smart because they want to train us to stay awake even when tired, or dumb because half the guys sleep through stuff like first aid, nuclear weapons and guard duty.
   Here's the infantry song which is my new favorite. Just like summer camp we sing, chant and yell a lot. Most of the songs are cool, everyone acts like they hate them but I secretly like most of the songs.

You can hear it in the heat of the jungleYou can hear it across the sea.
It calls out to every freedom-loving man,
The cry of the US Infantry
Follow me!
Follow me!

It has a catchy tune, you'll have to hear it later.

   I could go for chocolate now. You? Any kind of candy, gummi bears, sour patch kids, nonpareils would be good. And to sit at the cafe at Barnes and Nobles or Borders and drink some fancy kind of coffee while I read stuff. I miss reading. All I've read in the past 3 weeks besides letters and descriptions of how to kill people, is the headlines of USA Today. But today in the waiting room I got to read part of a Vanity Fair with Gwyneth Paltrow on the cover. If you see that one (Feb 2004) steal it from the gym. I want to finish it.

3/18

   You did have my address mostly correct on your envelopes, but I laughed when I saw that you wrote STC instead of SPC for my rank. SPC is specialist, which is between private and sergeant. STC is not real.

(One sergeant's 3 ways to stay awake in class: a. Stand up or B. drink water or C. play with yourself)

It's noon and I've been in this examining room for 3 hours. BTW I usually don't read my letters over before I send them, so if you see anything weird or nonsense in them, ask me what I mean. I got more paper but didn't have time to mail my letters, so I'll send it out when I get a chance. So you may go a day without, but this one is long and hopefully will make up for it.
   I just noticed one of the sheets has only half a page. Not sure what happened there. I'm in the infirmary now - just watched Survivor. It's laid back like the kid said, just TV, sleep, food and talking to each other.   There are about 8 guys here - only one has a real sickness, the others have what I have - coughitis. And one guy has bloody noses a lot so he gets to go home. Poor baby.

[ha i laughed then, now i get bloody noses like 2-3 times a day. It isn't so funny]

Letter From Basic Training - March 23, 2004

2010-03-11T01:11:00.000-05:00

23MAR04

Dear MaryBeth,

    How are you? I'm sicker and sicker and going to sick call tomorrow. We hiked 2 miles with our our gear today. It was a little chilly in the morning but I liked it. The kids from California and the South all bitched. Then we took classes on using a radio, and then we did a course on land navigation with a compass and a map. Then we got viciously smoked for talking in the bleachers afterwards. We did pushups, flutterkicks and tons of rifle PT. Raising a 12 lb rifle over your head isn't bad until you do it 200 times. Ask Ty [guy I used to work with who was in the Army briefly]. Then we marched back. After that, pretty much nothing, but by the time I tied my knot for rope climbing, got my mail, took a shower and shined my boots, we had a formation and now its lights out, so I'm writing this by red light.

    Today when we were walking, my drill sergeant said, "Hey men, did you see Eagle Range?" And we were like, yeah, why? He said it used to be a golf course and he would have sex with his future ex-wife there when he was in Basic and he would go to "church" on Sundays and meet her there. This is Drill Sergeant [redacted], the mean one. He can be funny sometimes but usually he's a prick. All the drill sergeants are about 30ish and they all were in he same platoon, in the same bay as we are, which is kind of like teaching at your old high school.

    We are all so hungry right now. They feed us well for breakfast, lots for lunch, then a tiny bit of slop at 530. Kids try to take each others vegetables if they don't eat them and by 10, all anyone is talking about is foods they want.

    I was going to tell you how the Army ripped us all off. It's not the end of the world for me, but some guys got really taken. Remember how we bought all that stuff for me to bring? Well when we went to the PX, the sergeants at Reception told us we had to buy certain things like toothpaste. A lot of guys were like "I already have that" but they made them buy it anyway. All the stuff, and it turns out that there are no required items, they are not allowed to tell you that you must buy anything. And the running shoes. Some kdis shoes didn't fit and they had to buy new ones. They also were supposed to offer different priced options, but they didn't. That's where the bastards got me. Mine are nothing special but they cost $73+tax, the most expensive pair in the store, and I had no choice. Our drill sergeants sent a letter to their commander and investigators are coming to talk to some of us. I guess this is an ongoing problem and they are saying there is some kind of scheme involving AAFES, the company that runs the PX to get new soldiers to use up the entire $250 advance on the card they give you, becasue otherwise it goes back into your bank account.

3/18 Your work sounds hard. I could never do that with all of those bacteria and precision work. I think I would go crazy, but I enjoyed your description and diagram. Overall, I enjoy Army life, well not really right now, it is supposed to suck, but I know it will get better as we get our freedoms back. Now that we moved I do have the bottom bunk, which is good because I had the top for 1 [week - in Reception] and the bottom for 14, Layton got it the other way around. And no more living out of bags.
    I have to go, I've been so busy the last few days, and I still have 2 1/2 more days of your letters before I'm caught up.

P.S. The good news is I made over 1000 dollars since I got here.

[With little to no expenses, you should be able to save a significant amount of money in basic training. In fact, you should be able to save a ton throughout your Army career if you're careful. Or you can do what most people do, live paycheck to paycheck and squander it on fancy cars, gizmos and strip clubs]

Letter From Basic Training - March 22, 2004

2010-02-28T00:29:00.003-05:00

22MAR04

Dear Mary Beth,

    I'm sitting in a classroom waiting to learn more about map reading. Today seems to be an easy day. More to do than yesterday, but it is mostly learning stuff, map reading and introduction to weapons. I'm listening to the drill sergeant tell everyone what is happening in the NCAA tournament. I am fortunate that my dad sent me the bracket. Now I have to hope I get some results soon. I miss watching it a lot.

[all my life, whenever I am away from home, my dad will send me sports clippings or save them for when I get home. Sometimes I did not appreciate, for example, a big stack of high school wrestling articles, five years after I graduated. But when I was in basic training, every little thing was awesome, because there's nothing to read and not much to do in your free time. Also it was great to be the only guy who could keep up on sports and current events.]

    This morning we did an ability run, where they split you up into groups by your time on the mile last week. There are a lot of good runners, so they split us into 4 groups A1, A2, B and C. A1 and A2 are the same. We only ran 2 miles and you are supposed to stay together, but for some reason a lot of guys couldn't keep up. I did good (I'm in A2) but next time to make it harder I'll run on the outside of the track.

[One trick I learned is that after they announce the ability groups, they just would say "break down into your groups" but not check them. So if you were sick, you could run with B or C, and if you wanted a challenge, you could run with A1]

     I'm still sick from last week. I feel ok, but my throat is sore and I've had this cough for almost 2 weeks. I'm thinking about going to sick call tomorrow again. i have until about 9 PM to decide, but I can't change my mind in the morning.
    Now it is lights out. The pen from before I borrowed from one of my buddies. I got mail today and finished in first place again with five letters - two from you (thank you) one from my dad, one from my Grandma and Grandpa and one from Andy [my brother].

[damn what a competitive jerk I was. I hope I was kidding about the "first place" thing. I think I was.

    After the drill sergeant passed out the mail (he's drill Sergeant Sansbury, the youngest guy, 29, I think with red hair, who's cool and says "f*ck" a lot) he says "show of hands, who didn't get any mail?" Some guys raised their hands and he goes "Ha ha!" It was really funny.

    I have a nickname now that started before at Reception. It's "Coach." I don't know why but these three kids started calling me that and now a lot of guys do. I definitely don't mind because it pre-empts worse nicknames, like dickhead or something.

[In reception, this guy, Futch, who was a former MMA fighter, and almost knocked Byrd through the ceiling [see March 9] started it. The day before we were talking about our former jobs and he couldn't remember my name, but remembered that I said I used to be a wrestling coach, so he called out "Hey, Coach."]

3/15 I could go for some bacteria media right now. [Mary worked in some lab] I'm always so hungry after dinner. A lot of times the drill sergeants go into their office with pizza and I crave it.

[Layton would "steal" packets of Saltines from the chow hall. I put steal in quotes because we could eat them, but we were forbidden to bring food out; maybe "smuggle" is a better word. We'd eat dinner at maybe 5 o'clock and not go to bed until 11. We would be so hungry. He would share his packets of Saltines with me after the drill sergeants left for the evening. That's a good battle buddy. In case you're wondering, the first couple weeks of basic training are called "red cycle" or total control. That means that each platoon has at least one drill sergeant 24 hrs a day, and 2-3 during the daytime. If you figure out that we had 3 drill sergeants and 24 hours in a day, that means some pretty long hours for them. After a few weeks, they go to a system where 2-3 drill sergeants will be there during Monday-Saturday and on nights and Sundays, there would be one drill sergeant on duty for the whole company. So you could get away with a lot more. If the drill sergeant was cool, he'd assign you some cleaning and then leave you alone. If they were jerks, they'd call formation every half hour and make everyone do pushups and yell a lot. There were different colored cycles, I can't remember any more of them, but each one meant that you got a few more privileges back.]

    Today was cold here, like 70 degrees at the hottest, maybe 55 degrees in the morning. A nice day, but the kids from California and Florida were complaining. Not me. We have to hike four miles tomorrow so I hope it stays that way.    BTW I did not call that Monday night or whenever you asked about. Luckily, you've answered evertime I called. I hope we get phone privileges soon. I can't wait to go to the dentist, I haven't been in 5 years.

[You know you're a real adult when you look forward to visits from the dentist. They are free. However, there's only so much they can do. There was this one kid in another platoon with one rotty looking tooth in the whole front of his mouth. They did not give him dentures or anything. Then one of the drill sergeants knocked the tooth out semi-accidentally]

I want to write more and to other people and my website journal but I am sick and tired so I'm going to get some sleep.   Please send pictures.

I gotta tell you the scam the Army pulled on us in our next letter. [the whole PX scam I referred to earlier]

PS. How is Maryanne doing with Dan? I may write her if I get more time. [I was a personal trainer and I had to farm out all my clients to other trainers when I left.]

Letter From Basic Training - March 21, 2004

2010-02-19T01:32:00.001-05:00

21MAR04

Dear Mary Beth,

Sorry about the incredibly folded letter. They made us change out of our BDUs and into PT clothes and the shorts pocket is really small. We are wasting an amazing amount of time right now. Before lunch, the drill sergeant had us clean out our wall locker. Now a new drill sergeant took over and made us clean them again. Naturally, most people's are already clean. So guys are fooling around, one guy went to sleep inside of his and got caught and had to do pushups. Other guys got yelled at for writing letters, so I am hiding in the laundry room bringing down sheets of paper one at a time. We have a sheet with the description of how everything must go in the lockers. There are hangers, a shelf and drawers. It is such a pain in the ass because almost nothing goes on the shelf, but the drawers have stuff crammed into them. Not at all the way anyone intelligent would set it up for convenience. At one point, they made it so that you could hang your dirty PT clothes, washcloth and towel on your wall locker and your laundry bag on the end of your bunk. But the standards to which these things have to be hung, tied and/or folded is so exacting that there is no time. [specifying for the laundry bag how many times the drawstring has to go around the top of the bag and the knot that has to be tied at the top] So you leave all your dirty clothes piled up with your wet towel in your locker so you never have to mess anything on the outside up.
Yesterday (Saturday) was an amazing day. We did two obstacle courses. One was traditional, the kind you say "ready, set, go" and go through, the other kind was more of a challenge course where 20 of us and a drill sergeant went through. We would go one or two at a time across each obstacle and proceed to the next one. I was glad to see that I could still climb a rope with no legs and do monkey bars even though I hadn't done either in 10 years [more like 5]. Here's the course (1st one)

We did it once, ten at a time, the whole company, and it took about six minutes, but was really exhausting, especially the barbed wire and the crawling in the dirt. Then we did it as a platoon, six guys at random from each one. Our six guys won, so we won. We are the Demons. The other platoons are the Wolverines, the Predators and the Wolfpack. We beat our archrivals of first platoon, they finished last. They are the other special forces recruit platoon.
I was totally and completely caked with sand, sweat and mud by the time we were done. I felt like a sugar cookie. We went back to our barracks, but the drill sergeant wouldn't let us take showers, so I had to go to the PX and the barber all filthy. We did put on clean clothes but the barber was pissed. My head was full of sand and it was too much to brush out. At the PX I got more letters so I can write you on nice papers.
Back to writing things back to all the stuff you wrote me two weeks ago so I can catch up.

3/8 Let me know what you are reading. The cool thing about being here is I write more, letters and otherwise than I did at home becasue there are so few other distractions. It feels like jail, how my only diversion is to secretly carry a little piece of paper to write on. I think if they gave us all of our freedoms at once, I'd go crazy. I don't know what I would do first. Besides see you of course.

3/9 I know we have to get more pictures taken. Take some of yourself in provocative poses and send them to me. In an envelope not a package, they don't look at envelopes.

[this was true, since envelopes were considered "mail" and you are not allowed to look at other people's mail. Packages are not considered mail. But if you're about to go thru basic training, I would err on the safe side and get some regular pictures first and see if the drill sergeants try to look at them]

3/10 - Now I have a little bit more experience making the bed but no time, so I still sleep on top. We have a dust cover that I pull over myself if I'm cold. It's like a wool blanket. Every week they launder our sheets which we never use and leave the dirty blankets. I love the Army.

[When you are in PLDC (Professional Leaders Development Course), which is now called WLC (Warrior Leader Course), they play the same silly games of devising an unrealistic wall locker scheme and expecting you to adhere to it. Also, everyone sleeps on the floor so they won't mess up their beds.]

Bonus - We are all like 8 year olds once again. The new game because we have to roll our socks is to take the sock rolls and try to throw them at each other's balls. It's fun. You should try it sometime. Layton missed me so I ambushed him and hit him in his nuts.

3/14 I have not given ##### or ##### my address, but I will soon. Do you know the zip code in #####? Remember if you give anyone my address give them the new correct one, not the one I fucked up giving you over the phone when you were drunk.

I have to go now, but I wlll be up to date answering your letters in tomorrow's edition.

Letter From Basic Training - March 19, 2004

2010-02-17T00:34:00.001-05:00

19MAR04

Dear Mary Beth,

How are you? I'm sitting in a classroom, sweating my ass off. We had a good day today. After morning PT, which was really easy but got me covered in sand from Bennng Beach, we packed up our gear and instead of getting on the trucks we walked a mile or so downrange. It was about 80 degrees today, so the walk wasn't hard at all, but with 50 lbs of gear, helmet, rifle, long pants and jacket, we were pretty cooked when we got there.

[If it sounds easy to walk with all this crap, it's not. Although for an experienced infantryman, a mile march is what we do to get to a clean port-o-pot, it was very wise of the drill sergeants to build us up like this. We added about a mile every week to how far we would march with full gear. It worked well to condition us gradually.]

Then for some reason the first sergeant got a bug up his ass and decided to smoke us. We did hundreds of pushups and flutter kicks in all of our gear but the pack. I drank six canteens of water by noon.

The obstacle course we did was very cool. We split into 15-20 man teams. There were various obstacles we had to move ourselves, our equipment and a dummy or a stretcher or our ammo crate across. Usually we had ropes or planks and were not allowed to touch the ground. I was the hero and the goat both. First we had an obstacle like this:

using boards to walk across, which was not that bad, but someone had to pick them up after they went through and not let them touch the ground. At one point I was laying on my back with the board balanced on my toes, inching it backwards over my head. We did it, and everyone was like "you're the man" and I felt :) :) :)
    Then we did another one like this:

but only like 5 feet from the end I lost my grip and fell and my team lost ponts. It was no big deal, but I felt like a wuss.

It is 1 AM and I'm on CQ duty, guarding a laundry room with a fake M16, but I'm happy, because tonight the drill sergeant called us together and he had a big box of mail! He'd call our our number and then throw it acrosss the room at us, throwing star style and laugh as we'd dive for it like frisbee-catching dogs. I was like "I hope I get a letter, please."   I got one from my mom. Then I was like, "I hope I get one from Mary Beth," but I knew you might not have sent them right away so I didn't want to get my hopes up. Then I got another one - but it was from my mom. Then I got another and another, until the drill sergeant was looking puzzled. Some guys got none, but I got 7, which is either the most or the second most in the platoon. Four from you, two from my mom and one from my dad.

I will try to do is answer your questions starting with the earliest letter and I should be able to catch up in no-time because tomorrow is Sunday and I will have plenty of time to write.

[I spend a lot of the next couple of letters referring to her letters by date like 3/15: That was a great story you told about your job, I agree that blah blah blah. I'll spare you these, unless they are related to basic training or in some way interesting]

    You sent me so much nice mail and nice encouraging words that really lifted my spirits. I have to go soon, but we get to sleep in tomorrow until 5:30 which is awesome.

    You asked what I would be doing so I will try to explain where I will end up. Basic training ends June 21, and then I will go to Airborne school, same place, here, until July 11 (dates are approximate). Then I go to Special Forces Preparation Course in NC, which last until August 8. After that I will go to selection, which ends August 29, or so. Barring unforeseen circumstances, this is the first part I really have to worry about passing as a percentage between 20-80% pass this, depending on the source.
    If I pass, I will be going to various training courses and schools for the next year, many of them in Camp Mackall, NC a place my drill sergeant described as "the land that God forgot" I'm not sure what he meant. Some portions of the training I can have people with me, others I will be off in the woods.

[people, meaning her. What's funny is that this is a very accurate timeline and description. Usually I write something which in retrospect is cocky or just plain wrong]

    Should I fail (hopefully not, but let's say) I will be reassigned as an infantryman according to the needs of the Army. I will be airborne, which would probably mean an airborne unit, such as the 82nd in Fort Bragg, NC, or the 101st in Kentucky, or if I got my choice maybe the 10th Mountain in NY.

[Actually, if you wash out of the special forces training after airborne school, you WILL be assigned to an airborne infantry unit as they don't want to waste the training. Which means, in descending order of likelihood, Fort Bragg; Fort Richardson, Alaska; Vincenza, Italy; RTB (Ranger Training Brigade), to be the OPFOR for Rangers. The last two, Italy and RTB are extremely unlikely. The 101st is no longer an Airborne unit, it's Air Assault, which means you won't go there, because you've been trained to jump out of airplanes, not slide out of helicopters on ropes. If you wash out before passing Airborne, you'll be on worldwide assignment, needs of the Army, and you've got a good chance of going to Korea]

Should I pass all the hellish courses, I will end up in either Fort Bragg, NC, Fort Cambell, KY, Fort Lewis WA, or Fort Carson, CO. I would have my choice. Of course at any point I could get shipped out to Afghanistan or Iraq, but that is impossible as long as I keep passing the training. A lot of guys are already starting to have second thoughts, because Basic is hard. And the path is long. Many now just want to go 11B infantry and opt out of the 18X program. There's one kid who bunks next to mine who started crying to the drill sergeant today about wanting to switch his job to intelligence because he didn't want to kill people.

[That's kind of ironic. I later served as part of an intelligence task force. And we ranked somewhere between tuberculosis and drowning as a cause of Iraqi death. Kidding. But seriously, don't think you're gonna switch your MOS and not have to go into combat. Even if you switch to something totally pogue-ish, like Laundry Service Specialist, you'll end up going to war and finding out that contractors do our laundry, which frees you up to guard convoys. Yay. This kid was named Manning and besides coughing on me every night and getting me sick, he also was a weak sister. He did have one skill. He could fart continuously and on cue. It was sort of cool. I think he like sucked air into his anus. Because that's a guy you'd like in a foxhole next to you. Killing?...well no. Coughing? Check. Farting? Check PLUS. There were a few other turds that I'd like to call out in detail, which if I don't mention in my letters, I'll go back and tell you all about them. Basically, everyone gets caught avoiding work, is tired and sick, has second thoughts, doesn't get along with someone, etc. But these sh*tbirds went above and beyond]

    The other night the drill sergeant made me do a bunch of work on Excel in his his office because I raised my hand when he asked who was a computer geek. The other guys had to unload trucks or something horrible like that. While I was in his office, a lot of guys came into the office to complain about their problems. And these are guys who seemed outwardly strong.

[Wa'ah, my girlfriend is leaving me. Wa'ah, how come we can't use the phone more? Wa'ah, I'm homesick. In other news, it's great to be the computer guy. There are a lot of "single" jobs in basic training that guys get. Right now I can't remember any of the others, but I don't know how many times the drill sergeants would call me in to fix their computer while everyone else was dong pushups or yard work or something. And they were terrible with computers. Like one time, they couldn't figure out how to print something in Microsoft Excel because they didn't have the little button that looks like a printer on the top of the screen. I went to File -> Print. But I'd always stall and pretend it was taking a long time because I wanted to avoid work and because I liked overhearing gossip]

3/2 Please send me a new picture of you or anything to look at as I have none.

[I highly recommend the three books below. Usually when I look back at my past I see a lot of idiotic things I've done, but at least I had good reading taste.]

3/3 What other books did I give you besides Kissing in Manhattan, Things they Carried, and Going After Cacciato? You don't have to worry about me being "good" here, the wildest sex anyone is having is in their minds, there are probably two women and two thousand guys in the immediate vicinity.

[Well, there was the supply room private who was like 4'10" and Hispanic. Her name was Mercado, I think, and even though some of us technically outranked her and we had to address her as "Private". At least we didn't have to stand at parade rest. Guys would get in trouble for even lingering at the weapons room door for a split second longer than necessary to take whatever we were being issued. I heard a rumor from one of the drills that she was a lesbian. Funny story, we used to go on these road marches and leave at ridiculously early hours. It was chilly, but because it would soon warm up in Georgia, plus we'd be doing hard work, the drills wanted to make sure we didn't overheat and they forbid us to wear long underwear (polypros). To check, they'd make us pull down our pants. The only problem is that nobody wore that stupid brown underwear they issue you. Except maybe one or two blockheads. So one day, Mercado came to work and there were 200 guys standing there with their schlongs hanging out. She just went over, unlocked the arms room door and went inside without batting an eye.]

[If you come into the Army as an E-4, you'll be lucky to wear your Specialist rank, let alone be treated like one. The exception is when the drill sergeants are looking for someone to take responsibility for something. And you'll get paid more. Do me and everyone else a favor. Don't pull rank on privates, dick. You'll get a sock-in-soap party. Second, don't do anything that furthers the "book smart but no common sense/toughness/street smarts, etc" slander. Yes, there are guys like that. Remember, you have a college degree and could have been an officer. So act accordingly.

[Oh yeah, there's also the chow hall ladies. Most of them are in their forties with moles on their faces and arms as big around as mine. If you're really lucky, there might be a skanky looking 19 year old chick who probably already has three kids.]

Letter From Basic Training - March 18, 2004

2010-01-29T00:49:00.001-05:00

18MAR04

Dear Mary Beth,

    I've been standing here for the past 35 minutes in formation, waiting to eat. There are 3 kinds of food here. DFAC, the dining facility, which is a lot like a college dining hall; MREs, which are the rations; and hot A's, which are what we had for all three meals today.
    I think that's the name for them, but they really suck. They are basically the dining hall food, but you don't have a seat, and there are less choices and condiments. Especially if your platoon is last, you might get pancakes with no syrup, or salad with no dressing. That's how they feed us when we are on a "field trip". But for some reason today we were around the barracks for breakfast and dinner, but we still got the slop. The worst part is sitting in the dirt with a lunch tray in your lap. I know, it's not that bad, but we all like to complain a lot. It just sucks to not get enough to eat when you are right by a dining hall. I hate lima beans and I chased every one of them down anyway.

[ In retrospect, hot A's still sucked 6 years later. You get them because there's no time to go to the chow hall and because MREs are a really expensive way to feed Joes. But several thing make them undesireable : the cooks forget stuff, that sure, you don't need, but they make meals more bearable. No-one's fighting effectiveness was ever destroyed by having to eat salad with no dressing or hamburgers with nothing on them, but it's annoying, and lowers morale. (The MREs have little condiment packages sealed within, so you know you won't get gypped.) And then the commanders make it seem like they're doing you a favor. "Hey men, we could have had old cold MREs, but look, the supply sergeant brought some bland chili, white rice and limp cauliflower out to us. Let's all give him a round of applause!" The only hot field chow that's any good is when you're out in the freezing cold and they roll up with some hot soup, hot cocoa and coffee and it doesn't even count as one of your meals. Now *that* is applause-worthy. But in general: F*ck Hot A's!!!]

     The drill sergeant said we might get mail tomorrow. I hope these letters aren't like piling up on your front porch and you'll throw them away when you get back from the Bahamas with your new boyfriend.
    Our drill sergeant is a pretty funny guy, SFC Swartz. He is an airborne infantryman for like 12 years but he seems like he was destined to be an accountant, but picked up an M16 instead.
    He is usually really cool until he loses patience and then out of nowhere will scream at someone, but it's usually really funny.
    Today he let us have 45 minutes of TPT (true personal time) before lights out. A million hands went up.
    "Shut up," he says, "That means shine your boots, take a shower, write a letter. It does not mean make a phone call, go to the PX, run on the track or freakin' dance."
    A few minutes later he told me and this other guy to "put on your shirts this isn't the motherf*cking beach."

[No, I don't remember what I was doing with my shirt off. This sounds gay. Maybe we just got done working out or something. We were always doing extra calisthenics to get ready for Special Forces training, since, for the physically fit, most of basic training is a cakewalk. Maybe we were giving each other a rub]

    We did some wild stuff today. We went to the range in these cattle cars they always stuff us into. They are about the size of a Greyhound bus, but one variety has benches to stand on. "DO NOT SIT DOWN, PRIVATES!" So you can either stand in the aisle and get bounced around or teeter precariously on these benches. And they pack you in too, 110 guys on one bus. ON the other kind, there are real seats, but they cram you in and you have to turn your rucksacks to the front. The good thing is if you sit down, you can sleep.

[After a week, we would just sit down, on a bench, or on the floor, as soon as the drill sergeants weren't looking. Some guys would yell about how we weren't supposed to, that not everyone was going to be able to sit down, so we shouldn't sit. Those were usually the guys that had no friends. Generally if you just give them the finger, they'll turn away and cry.]

We were learning about NBC today (Nuclear Biological Chemical warfare) today. They showed us how to detect chemicals, decontaminate, put on a chemical suit and a gas mask. Then we had to go into the dreaded gas chamber. they make you go into a room about forty at a time. In the center is a barbecue with a CS gas cylinder burning. There are two scary drill sergeants and you're suited up and wearing your mask and gloves. Three at a time they make you take off your gas mask, take three deep breaths, say your name, rank and social, and then put your helmet back on.
    Guys were screaming, spitting, throwing up. CS gas is like super Mace or tear gas. I took one breath, nothing much, then it hit me. It's like throwing black pepper in your eyes, biting down on the hottest habanero pepper ever, and dunking your head into a tank of vinegar all at once.
    I didn't cry or moan or puke, but I was shaking I wanted to get the hell out of there so bad. When you get out, they take a picture of you, snot running down your face, eyes red and swollen, face red. Then of course, five minutes later, you're fine and telling your buddies, "It was nothing."

[For some reason, this is the most dreaded part of basic training, probably because it's very photogenic. People on web forums are always worrying about it. People in reception were always prattling on about the gas chamber. Really, it is a joke. Yes it sucks. But if it were really the worst part of basic training, would they do it on the sixth day? You go in there and you breath some CS and you cry and then you're done. Don't be a baby and try to run away because they will make you go in again and then everyone will laugh at you. Two amusing anecdotes: I didn't put my mask or gloves on correctly, so I was starting to get itchy and antsy even before we were supposed to take them off. Don't be a dumbass.   It was leaking in where it wasn't sealed and stung my neck and my wrists and made my nose start running. Second, there were two drill sergeants standing right next to the barrel with the CS canisters, with no masks on. I guess this is something you can acclimate to. They should participate in riots. That's really cool.]

Letter From Basic Training - March 17, 2004

2010-01-27T22:33:00.000-05:00

Wednesday
17MAR04

Dear Mary Beth,

    How are you? Right now I'm in sick call. It's 630 AM. We woke up and had to be in the formation area at 445. Myself, my bunkmate, Layton, and this guy named Johnson went down from our platoon. Two days ago, twelve guys went. Half the company is coughing and sneezing. Yesterday at class, you could hardly hear through all the hacking.
    There were eleven guys from the company going to sick call, and they gave us each an MRE for breakfast.

[Since this is one of the most confusing things for non-Army folk, besides the ranks, I'll go over it again. In basic training, our platoon is 55 guys. The company has four platoons. We all started basic training the same day. Each company has 3 drill sergeants, although there's a few extras and a captain, a first sergeant and a supply chick. We sleep in a bay with just our platoon, but we eat with all the platoons, and do most of our training together. We were E(cho) Company, 2/54. There are other companies, but for example, Alpha and Bravo companies are on break. Charlie was I think just graduating and Delta started a few weeks before us. And of course, scattered across "Sand Hill" - the basic training area of Fort Benning (they have real soldiers there too) are other basic training battalions like 1/58, etc. What do the numbers mean? 2nd Battalion, 54th Infantry Regiment. I think these all used to be "real" units in World War II or something. You say it just like it's written "Two Five Four"]

My MRE was Beef Teriyaki, which was not so bad, but not as good as the spaghetti and meatballs. [My recruiter gave me that one and I ate it at my parents' house while my mom tsk-tsked.] All the MREs come with a little heater, which is just a plastic bag with chemical packets in it. You add water and the packet of food into the plastic bag, prop it against a rock or something [the instructions literally say "a rock or something"] and it heats the food up, then you scoop it out of the packet and eat it with a long spoon. [Note for mongoloids - don't drink the water. It's now poison] They also give you candy. I gave my tootsie rolls to Layton, but I ate my M&M's which were the first chocolate or caffeine I have had in a while.
    Now I am in the waiting room and like thirty other guys from the other companies are here, all coughing, sniffling, limping around, etc. They drove us over in a "cattle car", like a flatbed with a roof over it, I'm sure you've seen something like it on the street. We were all bounching around in the back in the dark, coughing on each other.
    My buddy who went to sick call yesterday told me not to talk and not to fall asleep in the waiting room. If you talk, they make you come back with the drill sergeant [who then has to punish the crap out of you for wasting his time, even though he's probably excited to get out of whatever he's supposed to be doing] A few guys fell asleep. It's hard not to when you're sick and only got about four hours of sleep a night the last week. The medical sergeant made them stand up for fifteen minutes with their hands in the air. These two guys from the platoon who have been in the infirmary were here this morning to see the doctors. One of the guys whispered to me on his way in: "Go to the infirmary - there's TV and you can sleep all day. That sounds like heaven to me now. Although I know that I am getting tougher and more disciplined even though I've only been here for 2 weeks.

    I think we are missing PT right now. Yesterday, we ran a mile. Sounds simple, right? Get the platoon outside, line them up, stretch, run, line up, go eat. Total time: 15 minutes. Instead we did it with the whole company. So we had road guards, guys in orange vests who would run ahead and stop traffic, a big truck, twenty drill sergeants, 220 guys, we marched a mile and a half, did the stupid Army stretching and warmup routine, stood around for fifteen mintues so we would coold down in the rain, and get stiff again, then did the run.

[in six years, nothing changed. We still made a huge production out of every little run.]

My time was 6:27, which was in the top 30% of the platoon, but I was coughing like crazy the whole time. My best is about 30 seconds faster. But the drill sergeant said below 7 min was good.

[wow, I'm kind of proud of myself for running a 6:27 mile while I was sick as crap. I did run 5 or 6 days a week for a few months before basic]

    It was funny when the eleven of us walked into the sick call carrying guns. They freaked out and were like "oh no not here you don't leave your weapons outside and have two of you guard them." The guys from the other companies think it's a punishment that we have to carry rifles. I think it's actually kind of fun.
    I just saw the doctor/nurse and all I got was cough syrup and Sudafed. Apparently half of the company has what I have, it's called the "Joe Crud". If you have a fever of over 100, they give you antibiotics, otherwise you get cough syrup. I ddid get to miss morning PT, though.

   Now I'm done with my first aid training, and I hope that no-one especially me gets hurt. We had to learn tourniquets, splints, field dressings, artificial respiration and carrying injured guys, which sucks big time.
    It's hot in Georgia, how's the weather up by you? We just got smoked. I remember how people told me, if they ever ask for volunteers, don't raise your hand. Well, the drill sergeant asked for 20 volunteers and all the rest of the guys who didn't volunteer had to exercise. A lot. In the hot March sun. I can't imagine July here. 3-6 soldiers a year die at Ft. Benning due to heat injury.

[i don't know if that statistic is accurate, but folks do die. And of the 481 times they asked for volunteers, I never did. 3 times I missed out on something good. 478 times I missed out on hard, awful labor. I like those odds.]

Being sick and drinking cough syrup hasn't helped either. I've had 6 canteens of water today.   I can't wait until I get my first mail. I'm hoping tomorrow. I want to know how you're feeling and if you still remember me. Also, I know this is not your fault but I feel like I'm talking to myself. I like writing you letters anyway.
    Please tell me about all the fun stuff you are doing.

PS It's lights out now,
2200 and I'm mailing the letter

Letter From Basic Training - March 16, 2004 - We Get Guns

2010-01-25T23:03:00.001-05:00

16MAR04
Tuesday

Dear Mary Beth,

    How are you? I am good. Right now I'm standing on a training range in formation. It's pretty hot, but not that bad. however I'm hot because I've been wearing BDUs, my helmet, my LCE (suspenders and a waist strap that hold canteens, ammo pouches and first aid kit. I'm going to try to write like this, [page is folded several times] like a greeting card so that I can hide the letter more easily in the little book they give us and write during the times we are supposed to just stand here and do nothing.

    We had classes on first aid today. I'm not sure why, but the first sergeant, who is like the boss of the company's drill sergeants, and a super-ultra intense motherf*cker, decided to have the class outside at the range, which is why we brought all the gear I told you about.

[he reminded me of a baptist hellfire and damnation preacher, except you're stuck in the church for 15 weeks. Sample Sermon: "Stand up straight. You think you're back on the block? Fool, you're ten up and two down! You know what that is? Eight (Ate) UP! There's a reason we alphabetize our clothing in our wall lockers, private! ATTENTION TO DETAIL. You forget to alphabetize your shirts, you'll go into combat with no weapon and get someone KILT! AIIIEEE. Drill sergeants, square this private away. And then when I'm done, you come see me. I got something for you, too. Oh, you privates don't think I can scuff me up some drill sergeants? See this here? (pointing to rank) Three on top, three on the bottom, diamond in the middle. Anyone else here got that? I didn't think so... etc."]

Also we bought our rucksacks. My gear is all jacked up, my webbing on my LCE is super old, and my rucksack doesn't fit right.

[because there's billions to spend on fighter planes we never use but privates in basic training have to make do with stuff that is so crappy that they'd have banned it from going to Vietnam. It's crucial that privates learn the ins-and-outs of dealing with a rucksack that hasn't been used since Korea, so that as soon as they get to their unit, they can get new equipment that they have to figure out all over again. Common sense philosophy says that you should learn to navigate with a compass before you learn how to use GPS. Army philosophy says you should learn to ride a horse before you drive a tank.]

Also, they give us these fake rifles to carry around. The reason for this is that in Iraq and Afghanistan, new guys were not used to having rifles around with them and would forget where they put them [or so the drill sergeants told us, but having been there, I can believe it]. So we have these realistic looking rubber and metal black M16s [called "rubber ducks"] that we carry around everywhere we go and we get in trouble if they are more than an arm's length from you at any time. Except when we use the bathroom, then we can leave them with our battle buddies. They wanted to give us real ones on the first day which has never been done before either, but we will start with replicas and switch to the real ones by week three.

[Whenever you get new equipment in the Army, you go through several stages.
1. Longing - "Man, I can't wait til we get guns." They left the rubber ducks on our beds, so we were eyeballing them the whole time the drill sergeants were talking. They looked like the most realistic fake guns a 12-year-old could imagine
2. Preciousness - "Wow! This is great. I wish I had my camera. A real fake M-16"
3. Horseplay - As soon as the drill sergeants leave we're having imaginary wars, posing with one in each hand, poking each other in the ass with them and yelling "Say Hello to my Lil Friend!"
4. Use - "All right, privates, lift the rifles up shoulder high. Hold them there. Lower them. Raise them back up. Lower them. RAISE THEM UP! We'll teach you to leave your weapon in your wall locker, Private Snuffy!"
5. Irritation - "Bro, I am so tired of lugging this stupid f*ing rubber rifle everywhere. I hang out in the bathroom, just so I don't have to bring it."]

[Another note: I overheard from drill sergeants, and observed personally that each basic training cycle at Sand Hill tries one or more experimental things. Later, the drill sergeants report on whether the results were positive or not. Based on their feedback, and probably the observations of some officers, these experiments might be adapted into the standard curriculum. These experiments might be positive or negative from the trainee's standpoint. For example, another group of soldiers actually managed to carry weapons around all through basic training without killing anybody in the chow hall, so it became a permanent change. Our "experiment" was very positive - letting us have passes to go to the PX almost every weekend after we were out of Red Cycle/Total Control (more on this later). One company got to keep their cell phones in a locked drawer and use them during phone time so that the pay phones weren't mobbed. On the other hand, your experiment might be something awful, like seeing what happens when privates are only fed once a day, or run 4 times as far or something.]

    Oh yeah, my new battle buddy/bunkmate is a lot cooler than my old one from 30th AG who failed his fitness test. His name is Layton   He remends me so much of my college roommate (also named Rob) that it's not even funny. Major deja-vu. We watch out for one another, making sure our gear is all squared away. Very cool guy.
    There are two other kids here that remind me a ton of my buddies from home. It's very weird. One reminds me of my friend Pat from Voorheesville and the other of my friend Flynn who goes to school at Berkeley.
    The drill sergeants are not physically intimidating, but they have voices that will make you jump out of your skin.
    "PRIVATE, COME HERE! YES YOU! GET THE F*CK OVER HERE!"
    Ours are medium sized, there are two really big guys who are drills for other platoons in the company. One is this big necked guy with a gut and a Hitler mustache. He's always in a bad temper. I think his name is Rivera The other guy is a giant black dude, who's got to be 6'6 and 290 pounds. [Still to this day SFC Jones is the biggest guy I have ever seen in the Army - there was a taller guy in our Battalion, but he was like a beanpole]

    I have to go to sleep now, I am going to sick call tomorrow. I am all fucked up, coughing and fever.   I got some good news. After 8 weeks, there is a family weekend deal, where you could come down and if you wanted, see me all day Saturday and until Sunday evening.   Up to you. Also I get off at 5 from Airborne school (after Basic). So if you wanted to, you could stay a day or 2 into the week, and I could see you when I got home. I don't know if you can get off work. I can't wait to get a mail from you.

Letter From Basic Training - March 14, 2004 - CQ and Grits

2010-01-22T00:27:00.001-05:00

14MAR04

Dear Mary Beth,

    I'm writing this letter while I'm on CQ duty. That means i have to sit at a desk with my battle buddy and answer Echo Company's phone, which I doubt will ring Also we have to do small cleaning tasks. I was glad that I volunteered to sweep the laundry room, becasue when it was time to clean out a mop bucket, I did not have to do it.

[in the beginning, the drill sergeants made out the CQ/fireguard roster. Then they would put one or two of the nightly cleaning tasks next to each shift, but it was usually only like 15 minutes of work]

    Basic training sucks a lot and it is a lot different than 30th AG Reception. I am doing all right though even though I can't march for sh*t, and I got screamed at this morning because I was out of step. It is hard to be on the front of the formation, becasue you can't see the guy in front of you. I'm not allowed to be at the front anymore, which is fine with me.
    I miss you a lot and it was hard barely getting to talk to you on the phone the last two times. Also, last time I really missed you because I heard you at a party or something with a bunch of people and I was lonely.

[dirty whore]

    Our new platoon has only 55 guys in our own bay. At reception, there were 110 in our bay (two platoons) so we have much more room now. Also we have wall lockers, so we don't have to cram all of our stuff into bags.
    Everybody is sick. I have a cough that I'm hoping will go away. A lot of guys went to sick call, but I don't want to miss training time.

[idealistic nerd. On the other hand, they make it such a pain in the neck, that you don't really want to go. Also, you don't know what training is actually going to prove useful later and you don't want to fall behind your buddies. On the other hand I once heard some drill sergeants talking. Three of them said "Ha, I NEVER went to sick call. Lazy pussy privates." The only one who had been deployed said "Are you kidding, I used to go as much as I could get away with." Basically, you will get sick and go to sick call. Hope it's nothing serious so you don't get recycled - the basic training equivalent of having to repeat a grade]

We have not got a platoon leader or squad leaders yet, like I was at Reception. I hope it will not be me as this is enough work as it is. I don't want to have to tell guys to do things or be in charge of marching.
    Basic is pretty awful. We get up at like 4, and do PT. They march us out to this big sand pit which is a lot like being on the beach, except there's no water. We do exercises which aren't so bad at all, except that we have to do them with the whole company of 220 guys. If we don't do them all together, then we have to do pushups. If we f*ck anything up at all, we have to do pushups, or flutterkicks. The pushups and flutterkicks are way harder than the actual PT.

[I'm guessing that the drill sergeants are evaluated on how we do on our PT tests, but at the same time required to make us do this gay WWI aerobic class PT. So they get around us by constantly smoking us.]

Today I think we've done 350 pushups and it's only 4 PM. After we do PT, we marach around a bit, get yelled at by the drill sergeants, and then we go to chow. Before we eat, we have to go through this big production. First we march there, then we do chinups, then we do trivia about the army, then we sing these songs and recite the soldier's creed, and the new improved infantryman's creed which is three times as long as the soldier's creed they made us learn at Reception. When we go in, we approach the desk of the woman who works there and say "Good morning ma'am. Regular Army, 6660, ma'am" (6660 is the last four of my social). Then while we are in line, we have to sidestep, holding our trays out in front of us while they dump food onto them. We don't get a choice, they just put it on there randomly. So sometimes one guy will get roast beef and the next guy gets meatloaf. It doesn't really matter though because you are so hungry you will eat anything. The other day I had baked fish, which I hate and I ate it in about 3 bites. There is only one exception. I always get grits for breakfast and I hate them. I won't eat them. They are nasty like the food from Matrix. We also have to drink nothing but two glasses of water with meals. We have five minutes to eat, no talking and no looking around. If they catch you talking, they throw you out. So guys just look straight ahead and shovel food in.

[I got around the Grits thing by telling the ladies that I'm allergic, if the drill sergeants are not watching. Only one time one of them asked what I was allergic to. I said "grits". She said "What?" and I said "I'm allergic to wheat." Which she accepted, despite the fact that I had toast on my tray and that I don't think grits are made of wheat. Other times I would calculate every other man getting grits, count off the number of places to the front of the line and trade places with the guy behind me. Don't get caught by the drill sergeants doing this. But usually all but one are already sitting down eating and the one guy has a lot to supervise.]

This place is like a hellish prison, but I don't mind it that much.

[two things I've noticed - in one paragraph I'll say that basic is awful, the worst ever, then in the next I'll say it's not bad at all. This is true. Also, I constantly write "he was like ...." instead of "he said...." which makes me sound like a valley girl. I guess I want to stress that I'm paraphrasing]

I know what I have ahead of me is even harder, and this will prepare me. You really learn to appreciate certain things like free time, or changing out of dirty smelly clothes into a comfortable t-shirt and shorts, instead of putting the same clothes on the next day. I'm sick of these BDUs it took so long for us to get. I think my boots are breaking in. Our drill sergeant said that having your big toes be numb is a normal thing and to give it a week or so.

[for some reason both of my big toes went totally numb. The boots they gave me were great, though - I still have them and wear them. Not the best for when the temp is over 70 degrees though]

    Our drill sergeants are pretty cool, but they are like good cop-bad cop. They can be really nice, and be like "Dude, don't worry about spit shining your boots, just knock the dirt off of them, because you guys will be getting them all f*cked up every single day anyway." Then they make us pump out 75 pushups for not lining up our boots in a straight line or something. Our senior drill sergeant is Drill Sergeant Swartz, he kind of looks like a killer accountant. We also have two others. One is Drill Sgt. Fuller who is a prick, he's the one who shouted in my face this morning, and the other one is Drill Sgt. Sansbury, he's young and has red hair and talks exactly like the stoner Jay (Jay and Silent Bob) from Clerks and Mallrats, etc. He has a broken nose and he says stuff like, "Dudes, pick up your fucking shit so it's not all fucked up, hooah?" Hooah is what people say in the army, it means all right, cool, understood, kick ass, a lot of different stuff. For example, "Let's go shine our boots! Hooah?!" to which the listeners respond back, "Hooah".
    We have classes in lecture halls like in college, but they are like no college class ever, except maybe at West Point. The classes might be on using your gas mask, loyalty, or going AWOL, and everyone has to sit up very straight and pay attention. If you fall asleep, you are brutally punished, and someone walks around and checks. The problem is, it is really hard to hear, and the drill sergeants sit in the back and talk, which is f*cked up. There's no microphone, so if you are in the back, you hear nothing. I only pay attention when it is something important like gas masks, otherwise I write these letters like during a lecture on "Duty to your Country" or something like that.

[We had so many required blocks on things like "Not Stealing" that either everybody knew, or wouldn't pay attention to because they were thieves, that basic skimped a bit on things that would keep us alive later. For example, we never drove a vehicle. We never used a 50 cal or a MK19 grenade launcher. On the other hand, they at least made some kind of effort to teach us marksmanship, room clearing, discipline, etc. More about basic training subjects later.]

    A lot of kids are feeling a lot more stressed and depressed than me, though. One of my friends from 30th AG, Pyle, told his drill sergeant he was going to kill himself. They put all the 18X guys in two platoons here, mostly, and the other two are mostly all infantry. The problem in mine is that most of the other guys are smart, focused and in good shape, so it is important not to be the weak link, because there aren't really any dumbasses you can use as scapegoats.

Letter From Basic Training - March 12, 2004 - Pain for a Pointless Cause

2010-01-20T01:06:00.002-05:00

Friday 03/12/04

Dear Mary Beth,

    Today is the big day we ship out. Actually, it's tomorrow, but I wanted to write this now so I have it ready to mail. I talked to another guy who had actually been to Basic and Ft. Benning and he says that we can get mail right from the start.

[since all I've done is repeat rumors I've heard, the way it was in 2004 was that you could send letters from the first day in reception, all through basic training. But you could only get them in reception if you were held there (failing the PT test, in trouble, hurt, etc). We got an address our friends and family could send mail to the first day of basic training and the first mail arrived about a week later. On the other hand, a lot has changed. For example, FTU, the unit for weaklings, has been eliminated. Now you just go on to basic training and the drill sergeants deal with your fat ass. This has probably improved retention.]

    Now it's 2 in the morning and I'm on fireguard. If you remember Full Metal Jacket, the last night is when the guy kills the drill instructor and himself. We have to wake up at 345 this morning. I have the second to worst shift. Some guys like getting up early, but I think the worst is the last, because you can't go back to sleep. I'm definitely going to bed when my shift ends around 250. One guy guards the front door, one the back door (me) and one walks around counting everyone. I don't think anyone is going to try to kill anyone tonight,
    We got smoked last night. Guys were being noisy by the windows of the bay, so they called us down outside and made us do overhead hand claps.

[I'm sure that this time we got smoked, like most times in basic training was because of one or all of the following reasons: The drill sergeants want to improve your physical fitness. The drill sergeants are in a bad mood/hungover. It is scheduled/traditional. It's very rare that you're smoked because you actually performed poorly or because you screwed up, regardless of what they told you, particularly when this "corrective" action involves the whole platoon. The only exception might be if you do personally something exceptionally stupid, like leaving your weapon in the chow hall or getting caught sleeping in your wall locker.]

This has to be one of the worst exercises ever invented. You stand with your arms out straight, parallel to the ground, palms up, then you bring them up and clap over your head, arms straight, and you count one-and-two-and-three-and-ONE, so you are doing the double the number. Sounds easy and it is, until about #60. Try it if you don't believe me. We did 75, then back inside and the captain who gave the speech came upstairs.

[overhead arm claps are one of the stupidest exercises ever invented. They will increase your ability to do one thing - more overhead arm claps. Of course they are good at causing pain for a pointless cause - which makes a better motto than "Army Strong" or "Army of One"]

I've made up my mind that he is what they call a "chairborne ranger". He talks tough and is a cockhead.

[I became perceptive very early on in my Army career]

He made us do 100 more, then 100 front claps, then flying, which is laying on your stomach, lifting your arms and legs and holding it. Then 100 more overhead claps. My shoulders were toast. I can expect more tomorrow.

We got our military ID card. I look tough on mine.

[It's pretty funny, everybody looks like a serial killer on the black and white ID cards, especially if you have your head shaved]

    Tomorrow, by 7, we have to be lined up in order, sitting on our duffel bags and holding our civilian bags and our laundry bags like we are riding a tiny little train of duffels.   Today we packed our bags, which they did by making us carry 100 lbs of your gear into the hot parking lot, then one item at a time, "Hold up your pants, put them away, hold up your washcloth, put it away. They could have just given us a list instead of wasting two hours. The army has lots of dumb guys. Especially the infantry. But there are a few smart ones here too.
    Wish me luck, baby. I hope you are doing good and your family too.

Letter From Basic Training - March 10, 2004 - Downrange

2010-01-18T23:54:00.001-05:00

Wednesday
10MAR04

Dear Mary Beth,

     Only 1 more day until we ship downrange. Most of us are a little nervous but mostly bored and anxious as hell to get out of here.
    They got out our civilian bags today and a bunch of us took off our BDUs and put on our old stuff. It was funny to see everyone slouching around in them. It was also funny, since everyone is clean cut when in Army stuff, to see some guys pull out giant baggy skater gear or goth looking stuff. Some guys found cigarettes that they did not dispose of, or their cell phones still charged. A few guys had bottles of drink stashed away. Tonight after lights out is going to be a big clandestine smoking/cell phone calling/Snapple drinking party.
    I just heard a bad rumor that we cannot send nor receive mail for the first two weeks of basic. Or we can send one letter. I hope we can get letters soon.

Letter From Basic Training - March 9, 2004

2010-01-18T01:28:00.001-05:00

Tuesday
9 MAR 04

Dear Mary Beth,

     Now once again we are sitting here doing nothing, this time in an auditorium. We are waiting for a briefing from the chaplain and one about health care.
    The situation with my bags is getting ridiculous. They keep issuing us more and more stuff and we only have the two bags to store it in. Today we got the rest of our BDUs. We got half yesterday and the other half today, the jackets and outer shirts, because they had to sew our names on them. When I put on all my gear I feel half like a real soldier and half like someone playing one for Halloween. I got my picture taken today, I would have ordered it so I could send it to you, but the cap they gave me originally did not fit and I traded with another guy, but not until afte the picture. I'll get some pictures later and send them.
    As I'm writing this, I'm sitting waiting for the chaplain to make a speech and some weird kid named Tallon who is sitting next to me told me to tell you he said hi. He looks exactly like my friend Flynn from home who's getting his PhD in math from Berkeley. I keep having to nudge him to wake him up. There is one guy in our group named Byrd and he's this little guy who hates being here. He swaggers around and always rolls his eyes, he never says what he is supposed to in the formation and he's always late. The other day he was real late and when we came back to the barracks some big guy named Futch [he actually was an MMA fighter, we sarcastically called him "Captain America"] called him out and was like "Lose the attitude" and they sort of squared off jawing at each other. No-one threw punches, Byrd because he knew he'd get f*cked up and Futch because he didn't want to get an Article 15, which is like a Courts Martial lite, where they dock your pay and bust you down a rank.

[I know this sounds like an excuse, but there was no doubt Futch could have killed him. Also, you really don't want to get in trouble for fighting during basic training. You will lose a LOT of money]

Then yesterday when we were in fomation standing at parade rest, Byrd calls over the head of another group, 633, this kid they call "Fluffer" and was like "Yo, I hear you're the one who's bisexual." Fluffer says, "Huh?" and Byrd says, "Yeah, you're the faggot of the company." Fluffer said something back and I told them to knock it off, but it was funny as hell.
    Holy Sh*t! Something awesome just happened! We are done processing so all we do now is stand around the barracks and wait, like the weekend, but with no phone calling. Then for some reason the drill sergeant comes in. I was by the laundry room writing you this letter, but when you hear someone call "At Ease" you have to jump to your feet. So he calls out "Byrd?" And no response. Then someone says "He's in his bed, drill sergeant." Which didn't make any sense because being in your bed is a big no-no during the day. So the drill sergeant yells out "Well wake him up!" We walked over but he wouldn't get up. In fact, he pulled the covers over his head. So the drill sergeant and another sergeant run over, grab the mattress (he's on the top bunk) and drop him on the floor.   He got up and was like "F*ck you, motherf*ckers, you ain't my daddy," to the sergeants. So the one sergeant said, "F*ck this, go call the MPs" That got him moving and they took him away.
    Then he came back alter and now he has to move his stuff into the crazy barracks and probably wear the orange vest.

[Later I saw him handing out spoons at the chow hall, looking defeated. Most likely they kept him there for another 4 weeks, then he gave up and they started him in basic with another group, or if he was still recalcitrant, they sent him home]

    We took our PT test this morning and it was f*cking freezing out. We all stood in a big formation and they made a half hearted attempt to stretch us out then we just stood around in the cold. Then we did our 13 pushups and 17 situps. They stopped us after this number We ran the mile run at a controlled pace. Most guys were bunched up behind the drill sergeant who ran first (7:30 pace), and there was another drill sergeant in the back (8:30 pace). You had to stay between them. If you fell behind the back one, you were out. A lot of guys ended up out and are in the fitness unit now. Spud aka Malcolm Tex, and my bunkmate, who is the only white kid in the world named Tyson were among them. I kind of hope they get my bunkmate out of there, he's a nice guy but I want the bottom bunk.

Rex Time

2010-01-17T00:50:00.001-05:00

Rex is a country boy. He doesn't get to go to the big city very often. When we were in Raleigh with my dad, everytime he saw a "Don't Walk" sign, even if it was two blocks away, he'd scream out "DON'T WALK!" Since we were always within two blocks of one, he basically continually shouted this, only pausing to yell "CAR STUCK" at every parked car. We walked by numerous parking lots. Walking with Rex was a noisy endeavor.

Above is a picture of one of Dale Earnhardt's cars. Rex saw it as soon as we walked into the museum. "DRIVE CAR!" he pleaded. As you can see, the car is surrounded by barriers. Beneath the informational panels, there was glass. I'm not sure if you can make that out from the pictures. However between each barrier was a 9 inch gap which a two year old is just small enough to squeeze through. This is exactly what Rex did. One second, he was standing with my dad, and the next, I hear my dad yell "Hey, wait, oh no!" Rex backpedaled up to the car, grinning at us. He knew he was doing wrong. No amount of pleading or demanding on our parts could get him to come back. He started touching the car and out of nowhere, four security guards dashed up, determined to protect North Carolina's greatest treasure. "NO DOOR!" Rex announced, sounding puzzled, and indeed, it was fortunate that it was a race car. You are supposed to jump in the window, but Rex didn't know that, or he'd probably have tried to start it. I tried to squeeze through the same tiny gap that Rex did, but I almost got myself stuck. Karena and I had the idea to bribe him, I think this occured to us simultaneously. I held up my cell phone and she offered her keys, two tantalizing treats that he is not typically allowed to get his greedy little hands on. It worked and he toddled over, close enough for me to grab him by palming his head and puledl him out of the enclosure. Afterwards, I remarked that if Rex really were in danger, for example if inside the barrier were live crocodiles and not a stock car, I would have MADE myself fit through the gap to rescue him.
"Why wouldn't you have just climbed over it?" Karena said. Honestly, I never thought of that.

Above is a picture of Rex being driven around in his toddler Corvette by his girlfriend Ava. Ava gets to drive because Rex is always ramming into things and going in circles. And honestly he is more interested in the radio and the other little buttons. We did not by this spoilt child toy new, we got it for 1/4 price at a yard sale. Ava likes to take off in the car and leave Rex in the dust so that he chases behind, exclaiming "Wait!"

Letter From Basic Training - March 8, 2004

2010-01-17T00:28:00.001-05:00

Monday
3/8/04

    Today was horribly mis-spent. We woke up at four, stood outside in formation, ate breakfast, got issued BDUs (all the camoflage stuff) and boots, hats, glove, you name it. We had to inventory a lot of our stuff in the slowest, most time consuming process possible. We poured all of our stuff out into a bin and then held items up as the sergeant called them out. Then we put them in our laundry bag.

[Get used to this method of issue/inspection/packing. The US Army - where a few morons ruin it for everyone]

There's this kid they call Gump who's kind of inbred, always has his mouth hanging open and talks slow like Forest Gump. Gump would always hold up the wrong thing. The sergeant would say "two gloves" and Gump would hold up his socks. I think he was excited to finally be getting clothes of his own. There's another kid who's only 17 who they call "Pyle" like Private Pyle from Full Metal Jacket, only he's not really a screwup and he's not suicidal or anything, he's just a goofy exuberant kid who seems to be psyched to that he's away from home for the first time.

[looking back, I get that he's supposed to be Gomer Pyle, the namesake of Leonard "Private Pyle" Lawrence from FMJ. At the time, I'd seen Full Metal Jacket 50 times, but never seen the Andy Griffith show]

Other characters are a big black guy called Jolly Green Giant, a little annoying putz they call Malcolm Tex or Spud, a guy called Captain America, this big Asian guy they call Kong, and others with nicknames like High Times, Sweetheart, and Perv. I don't have a nickname yet, but I hope I get a good one and not a shitty one.

[I wonder how many of these nicknames gotten in the first week of the Army followed the guys through their careers? I'm sure many were quickly forgotten]

    After we got all our gear we had to lug it back in our laundry bags across the reception area to our barracks, then change out of our sweats and into our shorts and t-shirts. Georgia is chilly in March until like 9-10 AM then it gets hotter, but its still not bad at all.

[Wait til April...]

    After lunch, we sat in this big financial meeting where if you didn't have a bank account or yours was f*cked up they set one up for you. This took hours. They also set us up with one-on-one meetings with people to make sure our contracts were correct. I signed up for the Montgomery GI Bill. 108 days till I can see you, 1819 till my enlistment is up, 7294 until I retire with full benefits. We'll see about that last one.
    Then we had this long presentation from the first sergeant of the company, and the company commander, a captain who's about my age. They both made speeches trying to tie in the importance of keeping your stuff neat and tidy and not winding up killed when you go to war. The captain's was really inspiring tellng this whole dramatic story that had us on the edge of our seats. Afterwards a few guys had tears in their eyes, when he was talking about lack of discipline leading to some mother, father or wife being without their soldier. Then he said any questions and about 5 kids asked if they could go to the latrine. Oh well. Way to ruin the moment.

[This captain had never been deployed anywhere. I'd like to take a dump on his head, the big phony. On the other hand, he was a hell of a public speaker]

Letter From Basic Training - March 7, 2004

2010-01-16T02:06:00.001-05:00

Sunday
07MAR04

Dear Mary Beth,

   I hope you don't get these letters on the same day. I'm actually starting this letter after lights out on Saturday, sitting on my bunk with the red lenses on my flashlight. I hope the battery lasts when I need it.

[don't worry, past self, you will only use this flashlight for writing letters at night and occasionally finding your way to a latrine or the woods to take a piss. After you get out of basic training, you throw it away because nobody after 1953 wants to carry around a flashlight the size of their forearm]

We bought a bunch of stuff at the PX which is like a Walmart with 1/8 of an aisle. We all stood in a line while the sergeant threw stuff into our baskets which we held out. We were forced to buy certain stuff, like running shoes. I didn't mind buying new shoes, but the ones they forced me to buy cost like $75. The money came off our smart card which is actually a $250 advance on our pay. But a lot of stuff they made us buy came in handy. I wish I could buy more uniforms though.

[this is funny, because later there was an investigation into a collaboration between some of the sergeants and the PX. The main thing they would do was, make you buy stuff on the packing list, like "3 Towels, Brown" regardless of whether or not you already had it. This wouldn't have been so bad, since you're always going to need more brown towels later down the road, but it was a pain in the ass because we had so little space to store it it all in]

    The first two days I was worried that I would barely get a chance to write at all, but today we had the whole day to just sit around. Literally all I did before I called you was eat three times and stand in formation five times. Some guys had to do work like painting, sweeping or doing lawn work, but I don't have to because I'm the leader of our group, #632.

[another part of the investigation into mistreatment of privates in reception stemmed from this work detail. They made guys work in the sun for eight hours with no sunscreen and a lot of them got SERIOUS sunburns, like blistering bad. And not a big deal, but kind of funny - they made dudes paint in their uniforms which then had splotches of white paint all over them for the rest of basic training].

The leader of 633 is this private they call "Fluffer". They hate him, because he acts too much like he's a drill sergeant himself. I'm real laid back because I don't want to get one of those parties where they beat you with soap in a sock at night. My job seems to just involve keeping track of the time and getting guys to line up when it's time to line up anyway.

[We literally spent most of our days waiting in line to eat. There were so many guys that had to go through the chow line, that for example if dinner was from 5 PM to 630 PM, we would start standing outside the door at 430 PM and the guys in the last group wouldn't eat until 620 PM, and we all had to get back in line until everyone was finished, so we wouldn't return to the bays until like 645 PM. And we did this three times a day]

There are four Puerto Rican guys who never do anything, just lay around, lose things and jabber at each other, but they are not half as annoying as these two or three guys who are like "you've got to crack down on the Puerto Rican guys with your full authority." I'm like "what do you want me to do, spank them?" It would be different if we got in real trouble because of them, but we haven't yet. This is not even real Basic yet.
    Today I sent you and my parents a letter and started like four more to friends and relatives, but got bored writing the same thing over and over. I need to conserve paper and more importantly, stamps, so further letters will be exactly three sheets long.
    Today is Sunday about 9 AM. I'm standing next to a pay phone which is turned off. Today is the Protestant and Jewish church. The drill sergeant said he was going to turn the phone on today during church. Last night was the Catholic service, but I decided to call you instead.
    Some kids were like, it's Sunday, can we lay on our bunks in the daytime today? I was like, "hey it's Sunday, right? Go for it". I figured no-one would f*ck with us today and I wanted to sleep myself. I hate having the top bunk, since it is so hard to lie down and get up quick without anyone noticing. I slept for like forty minutes. A lot of the guys spend all day sleeping, but I wanted to try to adjust to the new schedule.

[haha, what a nerd. You can't adjust to the sleep schedule in basic training. It's designed to make you tired and miserable. Get your sleep when and where you can, kids]

Also, there is no coffee or soda here. However, tonight, I have fire guard. This means that one guy stands at the front door, one at the fire escape and one walks around the bunks with a flashlight. You count everybody and the   three guys switch with another 3 guys every hour. Nothing ever happens, it's just one of those things to f*ck with you and to get you ready for real guard duty.

[haha idealistic nerd, like most things in basic training, its designed to screw with your head and make you even more tired and miserable. Guard duty is important. In the real world, if you fall asleep or f*ck up the rotation, lives could be lost and equipment stolen. So you do a lot of guard duty in basic in the hopes that someone will screw up and then an example will be made of him and the other guys will learn from it. If you are smart enough to hear the instructions "Lives are at stake, stay awake and keep alert," and pay attention the first time, well tough luck, you're still going to have to pace around a bunch of sleeping guys from 2-4 AM three times a week until EVERYBODY learns the lesson]

Well, I heard that a month or so ago some soldiers from "downrange" (real basic training) got drunk and snuck in and beat some guys up. I don't know if that's a true story or not.

[possibly, but probably not. I think we heard this from the same source (drill sergeants) who told us about the guy who tried to kill himself by tying the power cord of a floor buffer to his neck and flinging it out the window, but the cord was too long. Which I assume is apocryphal, since other guys' drill sergeants at other posts told them the same story]

[also, I find the word "downrange" to be stupid. It's one thing for soldiers to joke about going downrange (the part of the rifle range where the targets are), but it totally jumps the shark when its use is so ubiquitous that you get circulars from the PX urging you check out their sale on foot powder and calling cards for when you go downrange. Sort of like Hooah, which was probably cool for about 3 seconds in one particular unity, quickly became corny, then became ironic, and finally just stuck in your head and you found yourself saying it without realizing. Anyone who says HOOAH without a smirk on their face, and is aware that they are doing it should be sent to Guantanamo. This means you, cheerful and phony colonel.]

    There are hundreds of guys here and most of them generally do the best they can at everything. But there are some guys that linger around here for weeks and months, a lot of them just waiting to get sent home. Some of them failed their fitness test of 13 pushups, 17 situps and a mile in 8:30. There's actually a lot of these guys, like 50 or so. You get put in a special unit called FTU - allegedly Fitness Training Unit, but we call it "Fat Tired and Useless" You still get paid and you have six weeks to pass it, then they send you home, which means another six week wait for paperwork. Some guys have to wear an orange vest. This means that they went crazy, tried to go AWOL, threatened suicide or something. There's about 3 or 4 of these guys. These guys don't care about anything, nor do the guys who are hurt and waiting weeks to go home. They make noises in formation, mouth off and just generally look depressed as hell. But I don't blame them. It would suck to be them. One guy was telling me that he got hurt when someone fell over doing pushups, landed on him and broke his wrist. He was an E-4 too and had a Special Forces contract also. Now he just slouches around here looking lonely. At first we thought he was sort of in charge because he was always telling people what to do. Then the other day he was telling stories to guys about how we are all going to have to stay an extra week in reception, and how we are going to go to the hardest company in basic training, when a drill sergeant snuck in and took his hat off so no-one saw him. Then he stood there listening until someone noticed and said "At Ease" which means you have to stand up straight, feet ten inches apart and clasp your hands behind your back. It's what you do when a drill sergeant or other sergeant enters the room. Anyway, the drill sergeant said "Malta, you don't know a got-damn thing" and started laughing and making fun of the kid who was telling the stories.

[as a trivial point of contention, there are two separate types of sergeants here. The drill sergeants are E-7s, and the ones who wear the smokey bear hats, are like 35 and cranky. Reception is a coveted job for them because they only have to work 9-5, show up, scare a few easily intimidated privates, and then get rid of most of the problem children a week or two later. The processing sergeants, were younger, E-5s, (maybe some E-6s). I don't know how you get to become one of these, but it was a much worse job. They were the ones who filed us around to get our shots and had to stand there through all of the routine BS. Also, there was one on duty all the time. They were typically a little more human than the drills, but seemed to be worn out and annoyed. They were basically the adult supervision. When I was writing the letters, I didn't know any better and just assumed some drill sergeants wore the fancy hats. So the sergeants from the anecdotes could really be either variety.]

    The other day a really funny thing happened. We always walk in lines, usually single file. The other day we were walking in a double line and the guy on the left walked out an open doorway, but the guy on the right walked directly into the glass window that was next to the door. It was hilarious. Even the sergeant laughed.

[Sounds like you had to be there, but trust me, someone marching full steam into a window brings a smile to my face, even years later].

    There's one guy in our bay who lied on his enlistment about his asthma. He said that he didn't have it, but he does, and he's had to go to the hospital three times so far

[Turns out this guy was actually faking these attacks, hiding in the toilets faking throwing up, pretending to not be able to breathe, etc. Trust me, if you enlist in the Army and change your mind, it gets harder the longer you wait. If you bail before you take the oath of enlistment at MEPS the second time, you'll be fine and nothing will go on your record. Pretending to be sick or refusing to train at basic training is just dumb. You had all this time to get out of it scot-free and you waited til now? What, you didn't realize that they'd yell at you and make you do pushups and take showers in front of other men? Poor little ninny]
.
    Another guy got disqualified for having a tattoo that was not up to snuff. It was this giant outline of an eagle across his back. I am not sure why, because it might have been a white supremacist symbol.

[yeah, the recruiters do tattoo checks. Or they're supposed to, but because their motivation is to cheat to get unqualified folk into the Army, the drill sergeants have to double check everything. My favorite, though is the male Air Force recruiter who was giving (naked) physicals to female recruits and got away with it for 10 years before one of them at her first duty station finally mentioned to her friend how her least favorite part of enlistment was the creepy physical in the recruiters office.]

    That's all I'm going to write for now. I'm going to mail it before our Sunday night formation.

[man, getting permission from the sergeants to walk 200 yards to the mailbox to mail our letters was the closest I'd get to freedom for weeks. I wrote more of this letter in 2010 than I did in 2004, but maybe you can learn something.]

Letter From Basic Training - March 5, 2004

2010-01-13T01:43:00.001-05:00

1 pm
Friday, March 5, 2009

Dear Mary Beth,

I feel better today because I got more than 2 hours of sleep like I did the last two nights. Today we got tons of shots one in each bicep, tricep and shoulder, all vaccinations. Then we took an eye test, got dental x-rays and a mouth guard, practiced singing the Army Song and the Soldier's Creed. After lunch we are going to have an inspection. The worst thing about this place (well one of them) is that they give you tons of uniforms, junk, papers, plus the stuff we have like toothbrushes, dirty clothes, wet towels, etc, and then two big canvas sacks to put them in.

[also known as duffel bags, although I think one was actually a laundry bag]

So everything is piled in these big sacks and everything else has to be spotless. Making the bed is too hard so I sleep on top of the blankets. I also have to shave every morning or get fined $300.

[also known as an Article 15]

That's the number one rule here. Number two is always be in the right place at the right time in the right uniform. I forget the number three rule but it is something about respecting officers and NCOs (sergeants).
    I just had a giant brainstorm. There are a lot of times when we have nothing to do but wait. Today is one of those days. We were supposed to have an inspection of our bay (55 bunkbeds in a big room). So this means that everything has to be tied shut and locked while we wait for fear of being caught unaware. But at 2 PM, the drill sergeant came in, yelled at us and left after we did pushups. He made us straighten some stuff out while he was gone, but now it's 3:30 and he's still not back. And we got these books we have to carry around everywhere which are called "smart books". So I came up with the idea of folding a piece of paper and writing, then stashing it in my book. Now I can write to you more. But the paper will probably be more wrinkled.

[it's a good thing I did this, or you wouldn't be reading this blog right now. And for those of you who are worried, you carry these books around for 16 weeks and have almost nothing else to read. Even though I spent all my time using the thing as a writing tablet, I still memorized it cover to cover. Everyone does.]

    Hopefully, the weekend will be more relaxed because the sergeants are real people and go home eventually. We get to sleep until 5! You would probably do well here with your early hours.
    Here's another thing that is annoying here - Bet you're sick of hearing me bitch, but there is always an uncomfortable way to do things. If we are waiting in line, we are not sitting, talking or leaning on the wall. This makes me miss the MEPs where at least we could lounge on couches and read magazines while we waited. We are not allowed to sit on the beds until 8 PM or maybe never, but right now there is a bunch of guys sitting on the floor next to their bunks.
    Now it's lights-out 9PM and I'm writing this with my red lens flashlight. I just got back from calling you and took a shower. I'm not really tired and I'm actually having fun here. It's kind of refreshing to be told exactly what to do at all times. It also makes you enjoy simple things more, like finally showering or eating or even doing laundry. We have 110 guys and two washing machines and two dryers. I was able to get a load of laundry in today which is awesome because we get about 3 outfits and they are all instantly dirty. [exageration, but yeah, do your laundry in reception and basic whenever you get the chance]

[in this part of the letter we started a hangman game which we continued playing throughout, each trying to guess the other persons puzzles. It's kind of amusing to play hangman by mail, but I won't bore you with it anymore]

    There are all types of guys here, smart guys, dumb guys, fat guys, skinny guys. The youngest guys are 17, the oldest over 30. [39 actually] The average is probably a 21 year old with 2 years of college.
    I was lucky to use the phone tonight. I brought one of my buddies, named Davila. He was really thankful he got a chance to use the phone and call his girlfriend.

[the rules on phone calls in reception were very lax. Not only were we allowed to use the row of payphones all the time, but guys would screw over other people by spending as much time as they wanted on them until the guys behind them were howling mad.]

    Now it's Saturday morning. We cleaned the place up for the inspection that's supposedly coming this morning. Some guys hide and sleep, other guys run around and get all agitated. The ones who yell at other guys annoy me.

[you'll be dealing with these two types of people your whole army career. The utterly useless turd and the guy who enjoys bossing other people around. Trust me, six years later, I still infinitely prefer the first type and given a choice, most other people do too. If you had to rake a lawn with 19 other guys, would you rather one person be hiding behind a tree or leaning on it shouting at you? I thought so.]

It's raining here now and I still miss you. I hope I get a chance to call you again today. Carrying my phone card just in case. I also hope I can send this letter today.

Letter From Basic Training - March 4, 2004 - 30th AG

2010-01-12T01:21:00.002-05:00

4PM Thursday
3/4/04

Dear Mary Beth,
    Right now, I'm in the middle of what seems like summer camp from hell. This is the first chance I've gotten to write since we got here about 24 hours ago. Actually it seems much longer, time goes really really slow here. Sometimes we just wait for two hours, standing in formations and then we get to eat lunch or get shots or something.
    I'll tell you more of the story from when I got here. And in good news I think you'd be able to come visit here after my basic training, while I'm in airborne school. That's in about 16 weeks. Then in seven weeks after that, I'll come home for two weeks. Then after that I'll know more about where I will be. [deleted mushy crap] i guess I would still do it because I needed to do something productive in my life [...]    Let's see, I left you on Tuesday night. I was trying to guess if my roommate would be out partying or in sleeping.

[I have a good story about the last night before I joined the Army, which I'll post later. But all you need to know here is that they put all the military recruits in a hotel in Albany so that they could keep track of us and bus us to the MEPS, or Military Entrance Processing Station at the crack of dawn. Some guys are coming from across the state, but I lived only about 5 minutes from the MEPS, so I headed down there at like 10 PM Tuesday night, right before lights out so that I could spend more time with my friends and family.]

The first choice was right. He got there around 11:00 PM which was lights out. He was a fat, muscular Irish guy named Sean. He had his girlfriend coming up from Rockland to visit him. But she got lost and did not get there until like 2:30. We had to get up at 4:30 AM. He was like, "Yeah, I got to find out if she's the mother of my baby." So I figured he worried she was pregnant. But what he really meant was that she had a 2 1/2 month old and he just didn't know if he was the father. Then the next day he failed his weight check because they raised the standards last week. Now his physical expires. And he has to try again to see if he can get his job - which was Navy SEALS - Poor bastard.

[Navy SEALS aka BUDS is a giant scam. You have like a 2% chance of making it and they'll sign up anyone. They give you a backup job that no-one wants, like boat rower or deck swabber. With all the guys failing, it's a great way to get more swabbers and rowers into the Navy]

    So Wednesday morning I went back to MEPS and this time my paperwork was ready. Cabs took 6 of us to the airport around 11:30. I hung out with a few of the guys until my flight left at 2p. I've never ever done so much waiting than the last three days. It is literally impossible to describe. And it makes time go so slow.
    I was the only one on my flight down to DC got there around 4p and left for Atlanta at 5p. In DC I met these four guys who I instantly could tell were going the same place I was (tiny gym bag is only luggage, carying manila folder, looking around nervously). They all had the same job code (or MOS - Military Occupational Specialty) as me - 18X - which is Special Forces Recruit. I later met other guys who mostly just graduated high school and were the other possibility for Ft. Benning, 11B (infantry). Some are going to airborne school and becoming paratroopers, other are not. A few are trying to become Rangers, but not that many, maybe because the Special Forces program is becoming more popular.

[all of this is right, except that they also trained combat medics and some other MOSs at Ft. Benning, but not many and I didn't know this until like 10 weeks later]

We met up with a few more yahoos on the plane, and many more in Atlanta airport. I fell asleep gong to DC, but was too nervous/excited on the second part of the trip. We took a bus to Fort Benning in Columbus about 90 minutes away.

[contrary to the movies, they didn't really yell at us when we got off the bus. That came later when we got to real basic training. They made us line up and then they brought us onto these benches where we had the first of 5,000,000 "Jimmy Dean" meals that I would eat while I was in the Army. It's cheaper, tastier and less nutritious than an MRE, it's like a pack of oreos, a tube of pringles, a hamburger roll, some shredded meat in a tin and a can of lemonade. It's all on a styrofoam tray and covered in saran wrap.]

[Most of the rest of this entry, I'm going to quote/steal from another blog which was originally at hoo-ah.net. The author does an excellent job describing a whole block of time which was almost exactly identical to mine, down to the contraband list, sleeping under the light and being woken up almost immediately after getting there]

"A few minutes later, a balding sergeant comes over and starts barking orders at us. We are told to empty our bags, and the sergeant reads off a list of contraband at us, and told us to throw all of it away. He tells us that if we throw all our contraband away now, we will be fine and no one will pursue any disciplinarian action against us, but if we keep anything that we brought on the list he read, they will find it and we will be punished.
This made no fucking sense to me. We were given a list of items to bring before we came, and told that anything else is contraband. One change of clothes, some white underwear, shower slippers, tooth paste, tooth brush, bathroom bag, a pair of sneakers, and that was about it. Yet, when the sergeant told those of us with contraband to file in to throw it in the amnesty box, nearly EVERYONE got in line. People had everything you can imagine--food, knives, drugs, shanks, cell phones, prescription medicines, tools, anything you could imagine. It was ridiculous. ALL of these items were specifically listed on the "Do Not Bring" list. Why would these idiots bring this stuff?
After this, we must have spent 3 hours doing the most tedious paperwork I could imagine. When we got on the plane we were given a huge packet of paperwork from our recruiters that they had filled out for us, and now we had to meticulously pour over each fact and verify that nothing was wrong. Anytime anyone had something wrong, one of the sergeants would come over and assist them. I didn't understand it at the time, but this scrupulous snail like pace is the way the Army works. Get things done exactly right, no matter how long it takes, and no matter how long you have to wait.
Let me explain where we are now. When you arrive at Ft. Benning you don't go straight to Basic Training. You are inprocessed at a place called 30th Adjunct General, or 30th AG for short. [My recruiter] mentioned this place in passing, but didn't really explain what it was. The balding DS just told us that we'd be at 30th AG for at least 4 days, and maybe up to 14 days. Two weeks till we start basic? What the fuck is wrong with this place?
We finished all the paperwork at around 3:30am, and were taken across a courtyard to a huge open air concrete building 3 stories high. It was cold out, like 40 degrees or less. Of the 50 guys who came with me on the bus, 40 were put in one bay, and I was put with the other 10 in a different bay because the first bay was full.
My group was taken to one of the rooms on the second floor. There were two guys in grey sweats with "ARMY" across the front and black watch caps on. They told us to go inside and find an empty bunk and go to sleep.
The inside of the bay looked exactly like the one in Full Metal Jacket; nothing but concrete floors and bunk after bunk after bunk, on both sides and in the middle. It was dark and everyone except for the guys standing guard was asleep, and almost every bed was taken.
There was one halogen ceiling light on in the bay, at the very front. Since I was the last one in, I ended up having to take the top bunk directly below the light because that was the only bed available in the place. It was 4am by the time I got settled. And the mattress had no sheets on it, because the bay was out of fresh linen and I couldn't pick any up until tomorrow.
I had started my day at 4am at MEPS yesterday, it was 24 hours later, and I'd had no sleep. I laid there almost in shock. I could not believe what a awful shitstorm this day had been.
[here i skip ahead and omit his griping about how stupid the Army is]
And to top it all off, there was a loose spring digging in my side. This is just great.
I tried to go to sleep, and ended up having to literally tie a sweat shirt around my head so the blinding light that was 12 inches from face wouldn't keep me up. As soon as I got to sleep, I was shaken awake.
I looked at my watch: 5:34am.
Are you fucking kidding me? Is this what I signed up for?
I raised up off the bunk to get up and hit my head on the light cover. As I was rubbing my head I looked up at the ceiling, and carved into the tile next to the light was the only thing that made me smile in the past 24 hours:
30th AG:
Operation Clusterfuck
I wasn't even vaguely aware of how appropriate I would come to find that little carving to be."

[end quote - that guy's an awesome writer, unfortunately that's the last post about his Army experience and the site is now down. Also, it's 30th Adjutant General, not Adjunct]

Right now, we are in the 30th Reception Battalion where we will stay for 9 days, although the processing only takes 4. Right now we are being processed, which is a hideous thing. If someone ever offers to "process" you, run like hell. On March 12, we go to real basic training only a half mile away. There's about 150 guys in our company "Alpha Oscar" who arrived the same day as me, and more guys are getting here every other day. This place is huge. It's like a cross between summer camp, college and prison. Our company is divided into 3 platoons about 50 guys each and I got put in charge of one. Me and one of the other guys from the airport because we are the highest rank, but it is a really awful job because you are sort of responsible for people lining up on time, dressed correctly and you don't have any real authority. Nor am I really into it. There's another guy who's in charge of one of the other platoons and everyone thinks he's a prick because he bosses everyone around. When we got there, we got issued army PT clothes, sweatpants, sweatshirts, long sleeve T-shirts, shorts, short-sleeve Tshirts. That's how you can tell the people who just got here from the peeps about to leave - they get reall camoflage and we get grey sweats that say ARMY. Also we are not allowed to wear underwear becasue the shorts are like bathing suits.

[this sounds gay, but I don't think they checked our underpants. On the other hand, why would you wear any, they shorts have liners. In the Real Army, I'd cut the liners out of all my shorts and wear underwear when I did PT. Who wants to exercise in a bathing suit every morning]

In fact we have to wear sweat tops and bottoms, long t-shirts too. And it's 71 degrees here. Everyone is nasty.
We learned this army chant thing. [The Soldier's Creed. Little did I know our drill sergeants just learned this too because it was written about 4 months earlier. Everybody in the Army thinks it was written in 1812 or something though, and seems shocked if you don't know it] And we line up in formation and sing it before every meal. I got dropped for pushups before lunch because our guys were not loud enough.
    I have so much more I have to tell you. And I want to hear from you, but have no address yet. I will call you tommorrow.

Letters from Basic Training - Introduction

2010-01-12T00:42:00.002-05:00

I've decided to post some letters I wrote to my girlfriend, Mary Beth while I was in basic training. I typed them up and will post them one at a time with minimal editing, only changing the following:

1. typos - if I misspelled something, I fixed it, of course I probably introduced more typos in the scanning/typing process.

2. mushy stuff and addresses - you don't need to read this

3. i added some explanations and thoughts in brackets [ ] If I called something the wrong name or was slightly confused, I usually note it in the brackets. But if my dumb private ass was so mixed up that I'm shaking my head reading this years later, I just cut it out to save me embarrassment and the reader confusion. I figured that this would help guys who were about to go through basic training themselves. Plus I give my old, wise thoughts, comparing my experience in the "Real Army" to my time in Basic.

Some background: I was 25 when I enlisted. I entered the army as a Specialist, pay grade E-4, because I had a college degree. I went to basic training in Fort Benning, Georgia. I had a Special Forces contract (18X). If you want to know what happens after that, you'll have to keep reading...

at jims house

2009-12-30T16:12:00.001-05:00

Went with Karena to visit my friend Jim and his wife Megan downstate. My father, who spends all of his time checking the weather channel or various weather websites, implored me not to go. The plan was to have lunch with Jim and Megan in their town, go to the City, check out a museum, have dinner and then meet up with some of my old TAU brothers and their SOs at a quiet bar (try catching up with buddies you haven't seen in 10 yrs at a noisy club - thats what I did last time), sleep at Jim's house and then head back on Sunday.
"Ten inches of snow - an hour! 20 mph gusts! You don't even have snow tires!" my dad shouted, "They're calling it Winter Wallop 2009! You're crazy to go."
What could I say to someone with an encyclopediac fascination with meteorology? Someone who has a vested interest in whether I live or die, despite being a blood relative. You see, we were leaving Rex with my dad and mom and if he were orphaned, they'd become full-time caregivers to a two year old whose hobbies include shouting all night long and finding hiding places to poop.
There were a variety of reasons I wanted to go. Jim's only free weekend this month. Seeing pals I hadn't seen in years. The trip was already planned. Karena likes "doing things" and this counts as a "thing"
"You can't believe everything you read on the internet, dad," I said. "Internet weather? Preposterous! sounds like a gimmick."
While he spluttered angrily, we threw our crap in the car and sped off.

In the car, Karena drove and we had charming exchanges like this one:
K: I'm hungry
Me: well, you can stop and get something, or we'll probably go to the yacht club to eat when we get there.
K: What do you mean, probably?
Me: I don't know, or we'll eat something at Jim and Megan's house.
K: You said probably
Me: Well okay, I mean I'm pretty sure
K: You said probably.
Me: We'll definitely get something to eat, okay?
K: Why'd you say probably?
Me: Look, forget I said "probably", all right? We'll get food when we get there. Definitely!
K: If we're definitely getting food when we get there, why'd you say probably?
Me: (opens window and closes it on own neck)

This was reminiscent of the Gravel Pit Pizza episode of two years ago, which I'll explain in a later update. I was on dangerous ground and remained silent the rest of the way.
When we got there we decided that it was unwise to venture into the City. This meant that Jim and I had to call all my buddies and tell them that I would not see them for another year, which sucked, but no-one wanted to get stuck in the city if the trains stopped running.

We did go to eat lunch at the Yacht Club. Neither Jim, Megan, Karena nor I own a yacht. But we still had lunch there. Jim and Megan actually had their wedding reception there.

When we returned, we watched The Proposal, which was not as bad as I thought it would be, but still pretty corny. It's a shame that every role that Betty White gets involves her talking crudely so people can enjoy seeing an old person use dirty language or talk about sex for the 1000th time. It's the senior citizen equivalent of the "hit in the balls" gag, which also never ceases to amuse.

Megan made us a delicious dinner of ziti, meatballs and garlic bread. Then we played board games including "how well do you know the other person" a swedish game from the 80s which I won, and trivial pursuit, which I was the early favorite in, but lost because Jim got me too drunk. Question: What metal were US Army bullets formerly made of. Correct Answer: Lead My answer: Uranium. Which I insisted on even though everyone begged me to think carefully and reconsider. Megan won and I said it was "because she works for google so she could google all she wanted for free."

In the morning we had pancakes and eggs and then Jim shoveled. It snowed 10 inches while we were there. I offered to help, but Jim only had one shovel. Then when we opened up our trunk to put our bags inside, I found that my dad had thrown a shovel in there. Which was sort of ironic, but I at least helped with the last few scoops of snow. Turns out trains did get stuck and people had to sleep on them so we made the right decision.

The ride back was peaceful and utterly devoid of snow on the roads.

I hate AVATAR

2009-12-21T01:53:00.000-05:00

this blog post sums up how I feel about this stupid movie I will never watch. What's that, you say? I should watch movies before I condemn them? Well if I were an actual movie reviewer and not some loudmouth on the web, I'd probably have to. But I don't need to watch KKK promotional videos, Russian farming documentaries or various teen-angst vampire crap to know that I will not like them, do I?

in other news, I spent the weekend at Jim's house and will have to tell an engaging story for my web audience. Perhaps tomorrow!

I'm a published author

2009-12-16T01:02:00.000-05:00

First the good news. I finally broke into print. After long years of trying, the book comes out January 5. It's a real book. It's not a webpage. It's not published by some vanity press that *you* pay. It's not one of those self-publishing services on Amazon that prints a copy everytime (never) someone orders one. No, this is the real deal, folks.

Now the bad news. As you can probably tell from the graphics above, the book is called "More Six-Word Memoirs". While a point of pride is that the first volume sold enough copies to warrant a second, my contribution to the book (like everybody else's) is only 6 words long. The premise is they get a bunch of famous people to contribute, and then pick the best of the other submissions from the rabble. For example, Tiger Woods' six-word memoir might be, "Golf Champion, but bad at infidelity."

I hesitate to divulge mine. I get a free copy of the book, but what if, after people are exposed to my gem of autobiographical brevity, they are reluctant to purchase a copy? Oh well, I don't think I'll hurt sales too badly. Here's mine:

Army or jail? I chose wrong.

Iraq World

2009-11-30T00:13:00.000-05:00

Rachel Uchitel, the girl Tiger Woods is allegedly cheating on his wife with. It's hard to blame him. I just cheated on my wife with this picture.

Rather than tell you what I did today in exhausting and overanalytical detail (worked on college applications, played with Rex, played Wii Resort, watched football with my father-in-law), I'll tell you about an idea we came up with while I was in Iraq. I declare copyright on this idea. However, most of my ideas are the intellectual property equivalent of this stuff:

Nobody is standing in line to dispute my ownership of Motorized Pants, the Remote Control License Plate Obscurer and now ...(drum roll)... Iraq World!

My buddy Scott and I came up with this one on one of our many missions in Iraq. It's a way for civilians to relive the thrill of war (and some of the annoyances) without the carnage and danger (depending on how drunk the carnies are that day). The theme park is in some hideous desert in Arizona. You arrive and are issued ACUs, a helmet, 55 lbs of body armor, 7 magazines full of blanks, an M-4, an MRE and some water. You'll get some basic safety guidelines and instructions on how to use an M-4 and a 50 cal. Then you get briefed by some Sergeant First Class (retired) who yells at you like you're in a football locker room at halftime, down a touchdown, and explains your mission. Something about driving a convoy from point A to point B. This differs from reality because pre-mission is the only time these people DON'T yell. Twenty-three hours a day theiy're hollering about something wrong with your uniform or why you were sleeping in the motor pool. But before the mission they're either: A. too nervous to continue the charade, B. too busy checking to make sure that you remembered your bullets, tied your shoes, etc. or C. Don't want to make you angry immediately before they walk in front of eight privates with loaded automatic weapons.

Along with the motivational speech will be some powerpoint slides. They'll show the route, which doesn't matter as you'll see below, and a "High Value Target", basically some bad-ass terrorist you're supposed to be looking out for and in real life is probably in Syria.

Then you start your convoy. Maybe you're escorting some tractor trailers. I haven't decided yet whether to put the vehicles on rails like in Disney World or just have the drivers work for the theme park. Driving a Humvee would be super cool for Joe and Jane civilian, but on the other hand, rear ending the guy in front of you during a sandstorm is not exactly the kind of thing that would make it easy to get insurance, and guns and explosions might have to be enough of a thrill.

On the way, you get to talk on the radio and say things like "Wolfpack 1-6, this is Wolfpack 1-3, radio check, over." Everything is routine and dull, until AMBUSH! An IED (pyrotechnically simulated of course) goes off in front of the lead vehicle. Some of the American actors are wounded and spray fake blood all over the place. Then RPGs go whizzing over head and there's shooting. It's a bunch of Al-Qaeda guys in pickup trucks with machine guns in the back. Quick, 50 cal gunners, waste them! After the technicals are blown up, they're hiding behind a berm. The high value target is back there. Time to dismount and push through the ambush. After you wipe out all of his men, (played by either Mexicans or Arabs, whichever is cheaper) Abu Hussan surrenders and you have to zip-tie and sandbag him and bring him back alive.

Back at the FOB, you get to eat at an actual chowhall simulator and then there's an awards ceremony, where you all receive Army Commendation Medals (downgraded from Bronze Stars).

Too soon? Why can we have Civil War re-enactments but not Iraq War ones? I declare COPYRIGHT on this idea. Investors?

The Fight

2009-11-20T00:10:00.001-05:00

Pacquiao vs. Cotto

In a rare social outing, I was invited by my brother-in-law "Leo" to watch the Cotto-Pacquiao fight on Pay-Per-View last weekend. It was at his buddy WJ's house. Others in attendance were Karena, WJ's father and a guy named "Winky". As a nickname, Winky is sort of like how you call the big guy of the group"Tiny," he's like a 190 lb professional boxer. In fact WJ is a professional boxer too and Leo is a very accomplished amateur boxer himself. WJ's father is a former boxer, now a trainer and has a house full of trophies and awards.

Anyway, the only really notable thing about the night is that it is good to watch boxing with such knowlegeable people. During the undercard fights, they would consistently refer to an obscure fight one of the boxers had in 2004 or mention something a boxer was doing before the TV commentators did. I was able to use my quick wikipedia skills (Wapedia actually - the mobile version) to look up obscure facts about boxers and at least participate somewhat in the discussion; although Karena made fun of me for doing so.

Answers and the Forgotten Friend Phenomenom

2009-11-17T00:14:00.001-05:00

A crazy guy tries to push Karena into the Lake in Central Park.

First, I'm putting these answers here and not in the comments section so that my readers can find them easily

1. It's Kid Rock
2. It's HOT STOVE LEAGUE
3. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/biweekly Biweekly can mean twice a week or every two weeks. I'm trying to think of a joke that has to do with "bisexual" but we'll move on for now.

On to today's topic, which I call the Forgotten Friend Phenomenom. A combination of two things has caused me to remember many of my old acquaintances and decide to re-establish contact with them. First, I'm out of Alaska, which means that I live nearer to these people and therefore hanging out would be theoretically possible. Second, I've become more organized with my emails lately, so I'll find someone's address who I've lost touch with. Unfortunately, these interactions have taken an unhappy and predictable pattern. Let's examine the process of catching up with an old friend, "Bill". Bill is not supposed to be any particular person, although these email exchanges are all so similar that he might as well be. Let's say he's an old Army Buddy, a guy I went to basic training with. Or an old college pal.

1. I find our old emails and drop him a line that goes something like this "Dude, just seeing if you're at this address still, if you are, drop me a line. Take care. The Ruiner."

2. He is, and he writes back a lengthy email. "Hey Ruin Christmas, how the hell are you. It's great to hear from you. I'm married now, with two kids, here are the pictures. I work as a bacon engineer and we have a cat and we live in Rhode Island in a lighthouse, etc."

3. I write back "Hey Bill, awesome that I got in touch with you. Here's a picture of my kid, I'm a professional seagull hunter and I live in Connecticut in a teepee etc."

4. I never hear from Bill again.

Look, I understand that Bill has a job in the hectic bacon field. But when I email someone to keep in touch, it would be nice to get at least a three word response back to my second email. Not everyone has time to sit in front of the computer and type out long-ass emails, but seriously, if I just wanted to find out where you lived and how many kids you had, I'd hire a private investigator or something. If we were close friends for a couple of years ten years ago, but haven't spoken since 2002, and you get an email from me and you don't want anything to do with me because your wife doesn't let you have friends, or you've heard about the prostitutes I've murdered or you remembered that I stole your sweatshirt the last time we hung out, then don't answer the first one!

Before anyone says anything, I've even taken various tactics so as to not scare away potential correspondents, and I've done this from the beginning, not just because I creeped out the last 25 dudes I emailed. (Oh yeah, and two chicks - neither were ex-girlfriends)

1. I wait an appropriate amount of time between emails. Nothing like sending a long email with pics at 4:44 PM and at 4:47 PM getting emailed back; like I've been sitting here slavering over the keyboard. If you took 2 days to hit me back, I'll also take 2 or 3 days so I don't scare someone. I know you don't have time for a freaking penpal. Just answer with a couple of words and I'll go away happy.

2. I ask questions. If we just "caught up" I could see thinking that we were good for another ten years, but if I ask "So what's new in the bacon field" or "Do you ever talk to Jimmy anymore?", you can feel free to answer.

3. I don't send longer emails than Bob sent me. Then they feel like they have to write a novel back and since that's an intimidating task, I can see how it would get put off until they forget all about it.

When I hear from Bob initially, but not after the second email, I figure either:
1. He never got it.
2. He's dead or a tragic accident befell him or his family..
3. Something I said was terribly offensive.
4. He's afraid that I'll stalk him and put him on email chain mail lists.
5. I'm a loser.

Here's a tip. If you are super-busy, or you just have run out of things to say to the person, say so in your email. "Dude, we've got to flatten out like 100,000 pigs in the next two months and we just started a line of llama bacon. I'll write more when I get a chance." and then three or six months later, sending me another message would be cool. When I'm emailing someone and we've gone back and forth a few rounds but there's really nothing else to say, I'll put stuff in my email like "Well it was good catching up with you. I hope you get that second lighthouse erected. Keep in touch!" Indicating that you can still write me if you want to, but I'm not going to be hitting refresh on my gmail waiting.

I am so sick of being all happy that I got in touch with someone, followed by despair and feeling like a lonely jerk or a stalker two weeks later, that I am swearing off initiating correspondence with old friends. You want me, you know where to find me..

The Biweekly Outing

2009-11-11T20:53:00.001-05:00

Can you identify this celebrity visiting Iraq in December 2006? He is the only famous person who can make wearing his military protective geer look cool. Even the helmet he wore was all black and didn't make him look like a dork like most civilians. I regret being too cool to go stand in line to meet him when he was in the chow hall.

Today we made our bi-weekly outing into town. I don't like going out into public. It's a good way to catch swine flu. Of course this does not count the gym I go to 4 times a week, even though it is no doubt full of hideous bacteria. Especially since I like to lick the seat of the inner/outer thigh machine after ladies use it.

Every Friday our family goes out to eat at a Fish Restaurant*. One other time a week the wife drags me out into public. Today we went to Walmart and then Subway. The Suibway took heavy mortar fire while we were there, not really, but something outside kept blowing up, so I found it hard to concentrate on watching Rex eat his sandwich one condiment item at a time. The thud of the incoming rounds was appropriate for Veteran's Day. There was also an Air Force Junior ROTC cadet and it made me nostalgic because my crueler Army Paratrooper buddies would have tormented him like Varsity Football players might torment members of the JV Bowling team - "Come on guys, leave me alone! We both play sports for the same school. Where's your spirit? Ow!"

*note: I read this post to the wife. Her comment: "We don't go to the Fish Restaurant every Friday."

At the Gym

2009-11-11T02:19:00.002-05:00

this is a picture of what colors the numbers are from the Wikipedia article on synethesia

Some things I've observed in my gym in the last month:

1. Owner watching football game while members do seated cable row by
holding their arms straight and leaning all the way back until they
are supine.

2. Owner wearing lifting belt during entire workout including
answering phone during break.

3. Owner instructing weak customers on a super-secret exercise that
involves standing in the cable crossover and looks like a reverse
lateral raise. Now that they have this secret exercise, they'll be
unstoppable.

4. After my workout, Owner asking me what I was doing. I said Power
Cleans. He said "No, overall, you do caveman exercises,"
Which I thought was a pretty good description, but I was kind of in a
hurry, so I said "Yeah, I like strength and uh, endurance" and he said
"Oh, like plyometrics".

5. Guy whose workout consists entirely of the bench press. His form is fair for a commercial gym, ie, he's not rebounding it off his chest, kicking his legs or lowering the bar to his neck. His workout seems to be 40 sets of 225 for 6 reps, 3x a week (estimated). This has resulted in no physique development and, since his workout never varies, a strength plateau.

6. Owner and his buddy doing a workout with a copy of Men's Fitness or its ilk spread open on the floor while they "blast arms".

Most egregiously, the owner failed to tell me that several of the bars actually weighed 55 pounds instead of 45 pounds, causing me to have a demoralizing lifting day.

On the positive side, I'm allowed to use chalk. There are never more than 5 people in the gym. There's a place to squat. They have round weights, not octagonal. They have up to 120 lb dumbbells. The 55 pound bars are extra thick and decent quality, now that I know how much they weigh.

I'm planning on entering a powerlifting meet in January 2010. Right now I train M-T-R-F, my main lifts are Squat, Overhead Press, Deadlift and Bench.

Blog-istential Crisis

2009-11-10T02:27:00.000-05:00

Some gold from the Anchorage museum GOLD exhibit which we were not able to see because it cost a ridiculous amount of money and it was also sold out. I plan to buy a small piece of gold and charge people to see it and then invest all of my profits into buying more gold. Eventually, I will rule the world.

Yesterday, I wrote a long post about an existential crisis I was having about the blog. What is its purpose? Should I take it down? What should I be writing about? The last three sentences sum up about three pages of soul searching, which I'll spare you, because the internet went down before I could post it. I did come to a number of conclusions, however, and I'll list them here:

1. The purpose of the blog is merely to detail my daily life.

2. I will try to make the posts entertaining or insightful in the hope that someone else will read it. If not, I can always look back on it years from now and use it as a journal.

3. I will try not to worry too much about what I write. The people who read it either know me well enough to already realize that I'm a freak; or live in some far away place, so I don't have to worry about how I come across.

4. One of my most faithful readers, who we'll call "Jim", enjoys pictures, so I will try to include one with every post.

5. I should try to post every day, even if it is just a tidbit. On days where I had a remarkable series of adventures, I should be intimidated because I feel compelled to post a novella. On days when my life is boring or meaningless, I can make a small entry, or tell a story from the past.

6. I need to update my website and possibly switch to a different web hosting service, which would probably be both cheaper and easier to use (the current service is super easy to use - so easy that it's like driving a car made of styrofoam) but the one thing I like about my current service is that I get away with having a false name on my registration, so lookie-loos can't see who the site belongs to.

Now I can sleep.

Changing Names

2009-10-27T17:07:00.001-04:00

From here on out, I'm going to change references to my wife's first name to "Karena" and my son to "Rex". This will make me harder to track. For frequent readers, don't worry. I didn't remarry.

Wheel of Fortune

2009-10-27T17:06:00.001-04:00

Usually, I'm terrible at this game. I'm a jeopardy champion and a word jumble speedster, but all the other members of my family can best me at Wheel of Fortune style questions. However, this appeared on the scoreboard of the Braves Game we went to the other day and I was able to solve it (and yell out the answer, spoling it for everyone within earshot) with NO LETTERS PROVIDED. Can you?

CLUE: Winter Baseball

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
(3) (5) (6)

Cum

2009-10-21T03:07:00.000-04:00

Newspaper and magazine editors continually want to take back this word. They want it to refer to the Latin meaning: "along with". But no matter how much you use it this way, unless you're talking about a kind of diploma, 99% of the population is going to think of ejaculation first. Give up your crusade. It's too late.

"The homeless woman was sleeping in a storage bin cum dumpster."

It just doesn't work.

Things Rex says in his sleep

2009-09-15T06:02:00.003-04:00

Since we are staying in temporary lodging, we only have 2 rooms. The room where Rex sleeps has everything fun, like the internet cable, the TV and the refrigerator. Fortunately, he is a sound sleeper, so after he goes to bed at 830, I can wait about 30 minutes and then go play on the computer.

From time to time he talks in his sleep. These are some of the things he yelled out last night:

"ARMY!" (I'm serious)

"A,B,C,D....monquee"

"No!"

"Why?"

"Frog."

Tonight, he inexplicably started sobbing "Apple....apple! AAAAAPPLLLLE!" Wept for a few minutes and then fell silent, all without opening his eyes.

Making fun of my wife

2009-08-26T15:11:00.004-04:00

I like making a list of cute things that my son Rex says. I always found the mispronunciations in Family Circus "Oh boy - pasghetti!" to be super annoying. But like many things about being a parent - it's cute when your own kid does it. Also, years from now I hope that he will be able to pronounce these words correctly. So that I remember, I write them down. Here are a few.

"Vity!" - He loves his flinstone gummy vitamins

"Helple" - We have no idea why he calls balloons "helples"

"Tee" - As if TV wasn't a short enough abbreviation for television

"Ay-Tee" - Rex's favorite place, the AT&T store.

"Oh my!" - Rex is surprised by everything

If you ask Rex a yes/no question, he will always answer no, unless you mention something incredibly desireable, like the AT&T store or cookies. He will never say "yes", he will repeat the name of the item.

If you ask Rex a multiple choice question, he will always choose the last choice.

If you have a discussion with Rex and make a statement which means very little to him, he will repeat the key word, then say "Huh." For example, if I say, "Rex, it's important to make new friends," he'll respond "Friends, huh." I think this is an elementary active listening technique. I've been trying it on adults and nobody seems to mind. They just assume I'm paying close attention and keep talking.

Here is where this post will become controversial. I also make a list of things my wife Karena mispronounces. I'm sure she will become angry when she reads this, but I'm going to go ahead anyway. Two disclaimers - I'm not making fun, I find these things charming. Second, I mispronounce words all the time. I learn a new vocabulary word in my reading and mangle it when I work it into a conversation and sound like a pretentious buffoon. On to the fun...

Apparently in the south, the short e sound does not exist. Karena asks me if i want "Aygs" for breakfast. The number after nine is "Tin".

She calls Teddy Ruxpin "Teddy Rupskin"

Some one-off mispronunciations:

She's called Nintendo "Nantando"

She's called Binghamton "Bangleton"

She was trying to tell me that Rex's height was increasing and his weight was not, so she said,
"he's talling"

Once I was talking to her grandmother on speakerphone about Rex (age 2 months) and she asked if I was "Narsingham" I had to look frantically at Karena for the translation. "Nursing him." she explained. "What," I whispered, "That's impossible, I'm a man." Apparently, nursing also means taking care of, sort of like babysitting. So yes, I was "narsingham" if Karena went to the store or something. I'm pretty sure her grandmother thinks I'm slow.

Rex's First Video Game

2009-07-24T04:42:00.009-04:00

Metroid Zero Mission for GBA

The title of this post is misleading. It is not really Rex's first video game. That was the Learning Leaps game.

Learning Leaps

As you can see in the picture, Learning Leaps has two modes, baby mode and toddler mode. The way it works is you pop the DVD in and then it says something like "Press any button to see the frog" It doesn't matter what mode Rex is in, he just alternately whaps one button over and over, or stares at the screen and refuses to press anything despite coaxing from me and the DVD. He sits in my lap and the console sits on his lap while we play.

Today we played Metroid on the Game Boy. Karena gave him her game boy and he has been relatively gentle with it, unlike the broken laptop computer we gave him, which he tore keys off of and danced on. Of course he loves all electronics, and he asks for it "game? game?" He would just turn it on and off, staring at the startup screen and mashing buttons. I got tired of this and decided to show him how to play. We learned how to move the man around and press B to shoot and A to jump "B, B, shoot, B shoot" What worked best, though, was me moving and jumping and him shooting.

Me to Karena, 4PM Alaska Time - "All right! Rex killed his first man!" See above for what he shot.

Jiu-Jitsu Notes

2009-07-17T03:49:00.002-04:00

In jiu-jitsu class, when we roll (wrestle live), I try to seek out the best opponents so that I can learn. However, a lot of people have the same idea, and sometimes you wind up fighting someone who is perhaps much smaller or very inexperienced.

When I fight the teacher, for example, he always thrashes me; which is why he is the teacher. So after he beats me silly for a few minutes, I will ask him for advice on where I am going wrong, or how I can improve - and get a little one-on-one instruction. Mostly this is to get the most out of being beaten - probably a little bit is because I get tired :)

When I fight someone who is half my size, or someone who's only at their second class, for example, I will try my best to beat them, and I will also try different things. If I used an arm-bar to submit them the first time, I will try a choke the next time. Since I am weak at certain positions I will try to wind up in those positions. And then after a few minutes, I will usually offer a suggestion or two. I'm not that great, but if the person is doing something obviously wrong, particularly a mistake I made myself in the past, I will give my advice. And it gives us both a chance to rest.

Today, there was a lot of "new" people. Now some of them were obviously new, like high school kids, but sometimes people from the jiu-jitsu academy in town make an appearance and they tend to be quite good. One tip-off - if someone has their own gi (karate suit), they tend to be better than average.

So I saw this guy who was wearing a gi and seemed to know the instructor. He was also tall and strong looking, maybe 220, but seemingly only 18 or 19 yrs old. I figured he was a phenom and when I got the chance, I sought him out to roll with. We started and within seconds, I'd gotten the mount and put on an arm triangle. He tapped out.

"You weren't choking me," he said, "But I wasn't getting anywhere, so I tapped. You should try to grab my hand and spin me like so, then apply this choke here..."

I listened and nodded - the move was at least worth trying at some point, but I always get annoyed when people make excuses like "oh yeah, I tapped because my arm is dislocated, I forgot to mention it" - or a similar phenomenon, telling you beforehand "Watch my neck, it's really sore, also my left arm, my torso and both my feet" Really, maybe you should take the day off - at least the fighting portion of the class.

So we started again, and this time I put him in a guillotine and tapped him out immediately.

"You're expending too much energy," he told me. "Try to relax and take deep breaths."

I've heard this advice before and it's valid, a lot of ex-wrestlers need to learn this, myself included, but on the other hand, if I can submit you in 15 seconds, I could hold my breath if I wanted. I suddenly had a creeping fear that he was actually really good and was toying with me, and the next time, especially since I'd made him mad by being so aggressive, he was going to pull my arms out of my sockets.

We started a third time and this time I quickly got his back, sunk my legs in and finished him with a rear naked choke.

"Okay," he told me, "What you want to do is...(something too byzantine and complicated to describe here, but that even a novice like me realized is patently ridiculous).

We shook hands because the time was up and found different partners. Maybe you'll disagree, but I think that a qualification for giving advice, or at least me taking your advice seriously, should be skill in whatever you are advising. I could understand if this guy was really small, or if I caught him in a lucky move, or if I was doing something terribly stupid and winning anyway, and he just wanted to give me a quick pointer to help. But none of these things were true in this case.

A very puzzling incident.

some sort of vampire poem

2009-07-06T02:33:00.001-04:00

Where did I read this?

In Paris people shake all over
In terror as they wait
The Count prefers to come at night
Expect us at half past eight

Rex's First Poem

2009-07-05T04:00:00.004-04:00

Rex and I at the fish hatchery.

I heard Rex reciting this yesterday, just saying it to himself.

"Poop nine.
No, mine.
Two, nine."

Beautiful Poem

2009-06-28T05:34:00.003-04:00

The most beautiful poem I have ever read, from an inscription on Jami's tomb:

"When your face is hidden from me, like the moon hidden on a dark night, I shed stars of tears and yet my night remains dark in spite of all those shining stars."

Send it to your lover today ... it will fit in an SMS text message.

BTW I invented the 160 character poem as a form of literature. Write one every day.

the wrestler

2009-06-27T06:53:00.006-04:00

You should watch the movie, The Wrestler. It's really good.

I thought that the guy in the movie was most like Lex Luger. Also check out the picture at the top.

Rex is in the summer reading program at the library. We are allowed to count us reading to him. We also count him leafing through books on his own. The pre-readers don't have book counts, they have hours read for their prizes. He gets on Skype with his grandma Hattie and she holds up flashcards for him with letters, numbers and words. A lot of times she has her friends or other family members over, which makes me smile. We are proud of our 2 year old baby who knows all his letters and his numbers up to 12. He still cannot jump, though, and is still working on his colors. I am Philip of Macedon and Rex is Alexander the Great.

Karena got excited that Rex read the word "Mouth" today on a flashcard that grandma was holding up. Karena yelled out "Holy Crap" and I ran upstairs, but he wouldn't do it again. We only give him 5 minutes of reading time for the Skype, because he spends most of it being difficult and refusing to show off.

cheese is everywhere

2009-06-01T05:46:00.004-04:00

Rex today pointed up at the light on the automatic garage door opener and said, "Look, cheese."

I guess if you're 2, you're greedy, you only know a few words, and you love cheese - the big yellow light does sort of resemble cheese.

4 things before they are used

2009-05-29T03:26:00.002-04:00

these are 4 things that i love but are always a tiny let down from their pre-useful states.

Coffee beans/grounds always smell better before you make the coffee. Even the worst coffee smells great. After I make it, I can never tell the difference between any of them, and I love coffee. Right now I drink Folgers, the big red can. I used to think Dunkin Donuts had specially good coffee, but it's just that they give you more milk and sugar than you're expecting.

Steak is my favorite food. Not many things are as beautiful as a raw piece of steak. And even though it's my favorite, after you cook it, it never looks as nice. I like my steak rare. Pittsburgh rare. I think really i'm just trying to find a way to eat it raw without getting sick. I think I could do it

Fancy whiskey always smells good to me, but i can't taste the difference between jack daniels, and the expensive scotch that my buddy Clemmer used to buy.

the marijuana pictures in high times always look so good, with their hairy leaves and crystals and all that, but just like all alcohol gets you drunk in the end...

Album from Hell

2009-05-21T01:55:00.003-04:00

I have an idea for the worst album ever. It would be a mix tape of Intros, Outros and Interludes from rap albums. I.e. No music, besides maybe a couple of background beats. Just tires screeching, gunshots, yelling, screaming and dirty jingles. And then just when you thought the next song was going to start, there'd be another one. You could fit hundreds on a regular CD, as they're usually less than a minute long. Worst Party CD ever.

An Early Sentence

2009-05-21T01:26:00.004-04:00

Rex spoke one of his first three word sentences today. Karena was putting his pajamas on and I leaned over and tickled him on the tummy.

He said, "Hey, my juice!"

There was no juice.

Warehouse Man

2009-05-15T03:24:00.004-04:00

A short story I wrote for class.
Haven't got a grade yet.
Assignment was to write about an imaginary conversation.

------------------------

Marshall Hearst strode towards the Express Aisle, his biceps bulging like grapefruits in the sleeves of his black t-shirt. Jeanelle scanned a old woman's groceries, her gold hoop earrings jouncing as she worked. She needed no bagger.

Marshall selected a pack of Cherry Bubblemint gum and waited until the woman wrote a check and pushed her cart out of the way.

“Hey, Jeanelle,” Marshall said.

“Oh, hi, Marshall,” Jeanelle twirled a braid nervously.

“How do you know my name?” said Marshall, “Us warehouse men don't wear name tags.”

“Of course not,” said Jeanelle, licking her caramel apple lips. “It would interfere with the heavy lifting of boxes and other products that you do.”

“Then how...?”

“Oh, all of the girls talk about you in the break room. But we figured a handsome and hardworking man such as yourself would surely be married, or at least have a sexy and adoring girlfriend.”

“No!” said Marshall, “But I am going to buy this gum for you. I know it's your favorite.”

“Thank you, Marshall. It is my favorite. How did you know?”

“I've been watching you.” said Marshall, “You chew it all the time. In fact, I was wondering if you might like to chew on some food at the Burger Castle next door. With me.”

“But Marshall, I thought you worked the late shift?”

“I checked your schedule. I can take my dinner break right when your shift ends.”

“Well, I...”

Mr. Hubert, the assistant manager, burst through the swinging doors that led to the Produce Storeroom. His gray hair was unkempt, his tie loosely knotted. Marshall could smell the whiskey breath from where he stood.

“Get away from her,” Mr. Hubert bellowed, the vein in his forehead throbbing. “Stock boys are not to pester the cashiers.”

“Warehouse man,” said Marshall, his voice low, but determined, “Not stock boy.”

“Also, I've been Sexually Harassing her,” announced Mr. Hubert.

“It's true,” sobbed Jeanelle, “Just yesterday, he...he told me that he'd like to see what was under my red cashier's smock.”

Marshall paused, considering this.

“All the way under it,” she clarified, “Under my clothes, and even my underwear!”

“Bastard,” said Marshall, taking a moment to wipe a lone tear that trickled down Jeanelle's mahogany cheek.

She smiled gratefully at him. Tenderness and rugged manhood were a rare combination.

“She's mine!” said Mr. Hubert. He produced a wicked-looking cleaver he'd stolen from Meats from the inside of his sports coat. He brought it down hard on a grapefruit lying on a roller cart, halving it. No mess, no splatter. A clean cut.

Jeanelle trembled with fear.

“That's gonna be your head, stock boy,” Mr. Hubert said, advancing.

Anthony, the small but hard-working produce clerk, stood clenching his fists, incensed at the murder of innocent fruit. He seized his push broom and put his foot down on the bristly end, yanking it apart. He threw the broomstick to Marshall, who caught it neatly. Jeanelle pressed the back of her hand to her forehead, scarcely able to watch.

Marshall approached Mr. Hubert, twirling the broomstick in a rapid blur, demonstrating his martial arts prowess. The two combatants circled within a ring of terrified consumers.

Mr. Hubert swung the meat cleaver. Marshall blocked, but the blow snapped the broomstick in two. The crowd gasped. Anthony peered out from under the broccoli display where he'd taken refuge, his hands over his mouth.

“Now I have you,” Mr. Hubert crowed, gnashing his rotten black teeth. He charged, waving the cleaver in front of him.

“Roundhouse kick!” advised Anthony.

Marshall threw the broomstick halves aside and leapt into the air, clearing the final swing of the cleaver by mere inches. His work boot met Mr. Hubert's jaw with a solid thock. Mr. Hubert staggered into a pyramid of apples. They collapsed onto him, burying him in Granny Smiths.

“It's like he always said,” quipped Marshall, “Time to lean, time to clean.”

Thunderous applause from the customers.

Jeanelle rushed over to kiss him passionately, even using her tongue. People made the “woo woo” noise, like on TV. Anthony whistled his approval, then got out from under the broccoli and began picking up apples.

“Oh, Marshall,” Jeanelle said, “I'd love to go to Burger Castle with you after my shift. You saved my life.”

The automatic doors slid open with a hiss. The store owner, Mr. Gold, a short barrel-chested man with a gray crewcut and an expensive suit, dashed in, two police officers hot on his heels.

“That's the man,” he said, pointing at Mr. Hubert's feet, sticking out from under a pile of fruit, “Arrest him at once. Sexual Harassment is against ShopMart Policy.”

The cops rushed off, stumbling on stray apples in their haste to apply the Taser and pepper spray.

“And you, son, are going to be promoted. How does Chief Executive Warehouse Man sound to you?”

“Yes sir,” said Marshall, shaking his hand firmly, “Thank you, sir. But some of the credit belongs to this man,” he said, pointing to Anthony, “He also gave me a ride home once when I missed the bus.”

“Oh, Marshall,” said Jeanelle, impressed by Marshall's magnanimity.

Marshall realized he was punching the air in front of his bathroom mirror and starting to sweat a little bit, not that anyone would notice. Warehouse men were expected to perspire. It was a demanding job. He took a serrated combat knife from the counter and tucked it into an ankle scabbard, then pulled the leg of his jeans back down over it. Downstairs, his mother yelled something about the bus. Marshall checked his watch, then straightened up and threw another quick combo at the mirror..

The store might be robbed tonight. There might be looters, terrorists, ninjas, any number of threatening situations. Jeanelle would need rescuing. And afterwards, he'd ask her out. She'd say yes, of course. She had to. He glared menacingly at his reflection. He was ready. Anything can happen when you're a warehouse man.

New Text Novel

2009-05-10T03:41:00.001-04:00

I just had a new brainstorm for an awesome novel, and I got so excited about it that I decided to put my textnovel on hold and start writing this one. More as the story develops, including the link.

Gang Training

2009-05-06T14:52:00.003-04:00

Last Thursday, we had training from a CID agent about Gangs and Hate Groups.

The good news was that whoever was supposed to do the second hour of training didn't show up.

The bad news was that the gang guy thought that meant that he should extend his presentation into the second hour.

The presentation was a lot of videos and pictures of people fighting and making cool hand signs that spell words. Also they had tattoos and wore white shirts. Sometimes they didn't wear shirts at all. And they were set to music. It was awesome.

The Hate Groups had secret codes, like 88 is for HH which means Heil Hitler. Also websites.

Question 1: Your presentation made me want to join a gang, but it seems like the only ones open to white people are Hate Groups. I'm not into the whole KKK thing, on account of being Catholic. Do you know if any of the cool gangs are accepting whites these days?

Answer: You are not allowed to be in a gang and in the Army.

Followup: Why are you telling us all of this? It seems like a tremendous waste of time, considering that most of us are getting out of the Army and a lot of the people here are disabled.

Answer: Gangs are dangerous. You might be walking down the street and see three guys all dressed alike and try to fight them, but then they kill you with guns and knives. Also, if you were staying in the Army, you would have to inspect your soldiers naked every 6 months to check if they had gang tattoos.

All the rest of the questions were from the Discovery Channel gang specials. They weren't really questions.

"I heard that there's this gang that joins the cops to infiltrate them."

"Did you know that the word crips stands for cribs"

"I saw this thing about this gang that gets ultraviolet tattoos so that you can only see them at a nightclub under a black light."

Another productive Thursday morning.

April Tag Cloud

2009-05-01T13:41:00.003-04:00

created at TagCrowd.com

This is a tag cloud of the words I used most in my blog during april. The bigger the word, the more I used it. Words that appear as part of the blog, like "comments" and "ruin christmas" are not included. Neither are super common words like "a" or "the". I am thinking about doing one for the blog all time. That would surely be interesting.

text novel

2009-04-28T13:11:00.003-04:00

I'm writing a story at textnovel.com This link should take you directly to it. The way it works is your story is supposed to be able to be read from someone's cell phone. This is all well and good, but now that I have my shiny little laptop, I like to type on that. So I typed directly into the little box on the website, but then I lost a page of a story because I clicked BACK by mistake. You ever do that with an email? that's why I like how gmail, yahoo mail and blogger now save your draft every minute or so. Now I just type the story in Notepad, cut and paste into the site.

I like that there seems to be an audience for the story, and that it motivates me to work on it every day because people want more.

One of the tough things is that in writing any story, sometimes you have to go back and change an earlier part. maybe you don't like one of the characters, or maybe you want something different to happen. But I don't know if when I do this, people are notified. So I imagine that people reading it who have been following it all along will get thrown off.

anyway, check it out. You should also click the little thumbs up icon next to my story name in order to vote for it. That will boost my ego and encourage me! So many of the stories on this web page are like "im gonna write a story bout vampires" and that is the ENTIRE story and they have 20 votes! I have 5, but for a long time, I had 3, and one was me and one was my brother-in -law. Ha. If I can finish by July 1, I'll have a shot at a book contract and 1000 bucks. That would be awesome. It's not based on votes, but on the decision of an editorial board.

My writing class started today. I have 10 pages of writing to finish by the end of the week. Wish me luck. I'll need it!

jobler

2009-04-28T03:08:00.003-04:00

Save The Words is a website where you adopt a little-used English word and agree to use it in your writing and speech in order to save it.

My word is "jobler" - one who does small jobs.

Here's my sentence:

"Before I joined the Army, I was somewhat of a jobler."

Feats of Athleticism

2009-04-27T01:51:00.003-04:00

I'm working to do various feats of strength and danger. I would like to

1. close the #2 captain of crush gripper. I used to be able to close it when I worked in a gym and could play with it all the time at work. Now I am back on a regular schedule of training every other day with it, and I also got the 1.5 gripper, which I can already close 5 times in a row with my right hand. After I remaster the 2, i will buy the 2.5 and the 3, which is my ultimate goal.

2. Do a handstand pushup. I.e. without the wall, go from a headstand to a handstand.

3. do a muscle-up on the rings. this is pulling yourself up like you're doing a chinup, then pushing yourself up into a dip.

4. do 20 consecutive pullups. the most i have ever done in a row is 18.

5. run a 5k faster than my brother. Okay, this is sort of a vain one, but I have to set my sights high. I do crossfit and only run 1-2 days a week, even though I do endurance training a lot, so this is also a somewhat difficult proposition, but I have lowered my time by several minutes in the last year. I think he can do it in about 19 minutes. My time right now is 23:12

6. total elite in crossfit total which is a sum of your max squat, deadlift and standing military press. Right now, my cross fit total is 1037.5. I would like to get 1245 in the 181 weight class, or 1305 in the 198s.

7. fight a refereed match in wrestling, jiu-jitsu or combatives and win with my wife and son watching.

8. complete the pushup program at hundredpushups.com and do 100 consecutive pushups. I started, but doing this was too much in addition to starting jiu-jitsu class again, so I stopped. i'll get back to this later.

9. burn 56000 calories on various cardio machines. i think if i do this over a period of time after my regular workouts, I will burn 15 pounds of fat which will make me a lean mean machine.

Guest Poster: Rex belongs in a zoo.

2009-04-20T19:09:00.005-04:00

Above: Everything is wrong.

Today's post is brought to you by my wife, Karena. She tells the story of our awful day at the zoo so well in an email, that I'll just repost it here, changing only some of the punctuation and my name. Karena doesn't call me "Coach" but that's the name of the blog, so deal with it.

------------

Today we took Rex to the zoo because it was kid's day. They had different games set up and the petting zoo was open. We had to wait in line for about 15min to get into the zoo. Rex did really well until Coach decided to get something from the car. As soon as Coach left, Rex cried his saddest cry and huge tears fell from his eyes. The grandfather behind us wiped Rex's tears and told him it was going to be ok. When Coach came back Rex had a huge smile and the people in line with us thought it was cute. Once we got into the zoo, his cuteness faded and out came Rex the Intolerant. He didn't care about the animals, he cared more about sticking his head through the railings, or grabbing peoples cameras. They had about 5 game stations set up; we played two. The first was searching for food. The lady shook a box of nerds (candy) at him then hid it under some straw. Once he got done looking at each individual piece of hay, he found the nerds. Once that was done we went to the petting zoo. This one was not as much fun as the one at the fair. There was so much poo our shoes will never be clean again. He refused to let go of the box of nerds and when we tried to take it from him, he would scream "Ow" and try to throw himself on the ground. Not wanting to ride with a poo covered baby we let him have his way for the moment. Once we left Rex decided he wanted to sit down and have a banana. That was a nice quiet time until Rex decided to walk near the bathrooms. He wanted to go in, but I wouldn't let him . Coach was holding Rex's hand at the time and Rex showed us his new trick. Now instead of just saying "ow" when he doesn't get his way, if you are holding his hand he will hit himself in the head with it and say "ow" so you end up looking like you are punching a baby. I was waiting for someone to pull us to the side or arrest us. In the end, Rex screamed and Coach carried him away from the bathrooms. This was only the first part of the day. Then we took him to the coloring station. I left to stand in the 1/2 mile long line for cotton candy. I got out of the line because nobody needed cotton candy that badly. Rex was busy taking crayons out of the box and waving them over the paper. I left those two to see if anything worth seeing was nearby. I found nothing and when I got back to Coach and Rex, Coach was struggling to get Rex to put his coat on and about that time we decided it was time to see the tigers and go home. Rex decided he didn't want to walk or be carried. Neither one of us really wanted to carry him (earlier Rex took a knee in some poop/ mud). So we played a fun game of follow the fruit snacks. I would take out a fruit snack and run ahead of Rex and he would chase after me and when he got close I would run away again. This worked well until I ran out of snacks, but we were pretty close to the popcorn stand. We all went to get popcorn; there was one other person in line with her little girl. The mom gave her daughter a bag of popcorn and Rex tried to take it from her. He tore her bag (only a little) and I apologized for my unruly child, got some popcorn, and left. That was our last trip to the zoo and I think after our trip to the aquarium we won't be taking Rex anywhere until he is five.

Email addresses that got me yelled at

2009-04-17T14:42:00.003-04:00

This week our stupid mandatory training was three one-hour classes.

On Tuesday, we had "TSGLI" which stands for "Traumatic something life insurance". I spent the first fifteen minutes listening carefully, then I realized that in no way was I eligible for something like this, so I spent the next fifteen minutes figuring out how I could leave politely. The class was good, it just didn't apply. The teacher was some sergeant who went from post to post talking to soldiers about this. I felt bad. Usually the bad classes are taught by nice people. About 30 minutes in, some kid had a doctors appt and got up to leave, so I got up and followed him, like I had one too.

On Thursday, our first class was "Cholesterol and Nutrition". Fortunately, I know enough to bring a book to these things. I brought "Cursed from Birth", by David Ohle (and Billy Burroughs) a really sad book about Billy Burroughs, the writer and son of William S. Burroughs. During this class I learned some important nutrition facts like:

1. Junk food is bad for you
2. Protein causes kidney stones
3. if you're hungry for meat, eat some raisins, they're more filling because they have water in them
4. instead of granola bars, eat poptarts. LOGIC: since some granola bars have a lot of sugar in them, you should just eat a poptart because they taste better.

The second class was Creative Problem Solving. it was taught by a long white-haired, bearded dude who claimed that he had 22 years in the military. After which he immediately started taking acid daily. His assistant was some dude who kept telling us he used to work for a corporation. Wow, a real corporation! What's funny, is I learned about creative problem solving in Challenge class in 2nd grade from Ms. Foley.
What's not funny is that these guys get paid to teach classes like this. I finished my book. Since the class was scheduled to end at 11, that's when I got up and left.

The next day I got yelled at. The sign in sheet had a space for email, like I want any of these clowns sending me email. So I wrote down "yourmother@fatty.com" and "cheez@doodle.com" on the sheets. Apparently they knew that they were fake.

A journal of lies

2009-04-13T04:58:00.003-04:00

Everything I write on this blog is true, with the exception of obvious exaggerations. For example, if I say in one of my posts that I had nine drinks and beat up a transvestite hooker, that is true. You just think it's an exaggeration because nine drinks seems like a lot.

I keep a separate journal which is full of lies. It immediately diverges from the truth which appears here at about the point where I wake up. My regular days are full of classes, hanging around in the Army, letting doctors probe at me, writing pages of lies, reading good books, going to the gym, coming home, playing with Rex, eating dinner, putting Rex to bed, watching movies with Karena, writing more lies, fooling around on the Internet, taking Spanish class online and going to bed.

On the weekends, less classes, Army and doctors, more of the rest. When it's warm, we try to go somewhere. We go to IHOP, the state fair, for a walk, to the store. All my friends are gone, so I sometimes call or email them, or call my parents.

In the lie journal, I live like a Viking. I savagely kill people who offend me in minor ways. I commit crimes, and most of the seven deadly sins in one day. I cheat on my wife with girls both real and imaginary. I take drugs, drink enough to kill a horse, and slap transvestite hookers. Someday Karena will find the lie journal and I will have to explain myself. I'll show her this blog post. I toy with the idea of writing LIE JOURNAL on top of each entry, but the idea is that when I die, someone will find them and they will become part of my biography. Future generations will understand that their grandfather was a bloodthirsty barbarian and be pleased.

"Oh boy, sleep! That's where I'm a viking." - Ralph Wiggum

Note: some people actually interpret this quote to mean that Ralph is a "viking of sleep" i.e. that he excels at it. This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

¡México, usted está embarazado!

2009-04-10T02:00:00.004-04:00

Instead of spending 350 million dollars on fighting Mexican drug cartels, we could just legalize drugs.

I love how Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder lie to the public about how the Mexican cartel weapons come from the US in order to bring back the disastrous "assault weapon ban".

Or why don't we just annex the place? It's obviously a failed state like Iraq or Somalia.

Mexico - You're an embarrassment.

New Drink

2009-04-10T01:23:00.003-04:00

All right, I may have a temporary new favorite drink to replace Coach Juice. I learned about this in a book called "Parasites Like Us" by Adam Johnson. The main character, an anthropologist drink martinis made like this. The anthropologist says it reminds him of the primordial soup out of which all life on Earth originated. They are salty and briny and delicious.

Primordial Martini
1 glass
ice cubes
6 parts gin to 1 part vermouth
4 pimento stuffed olives
1 cocktail onion
1 rolled anchovy with caper.

"We guarantee satisfaction because satisfaction is our guarantee. We guarantee it." - Pam Beesly, Michael Scott Paper Company

To the shores of Tripoli

2009-04-09T03:13:00.003-04:00

Why are we letting pirates capture US ships and doing nothing about it? Thomas Jefferson didn't tolerate that and neither should Obama. (Bush didn't do anything either, but he's not really in a position to deal with this now). We are pouring money into the trash heap that is Afghanistan. Meanwhile, pirates thumb their noses at us.

Fact: Pirates took 1 million slaves from Europe to Arab lands.

Fact: After we fought 2 wars, we stopped having to pay tribute to Arab pirates. Will we be starting again soon?

Fact: Piracy ended when the French conquered Algiers in 1830.

Lakeview Terrace

2009-04-09T02:31:00.001-04:00

Good movie. Good acting.

But didn't anyone notice that the characters refer to it as "Lakeview Circle" in the movie? That's a pretty big mistake.

The team you love to hate

2009-04-08T18:36:00.005-04:00

Picture this, a balmy spring day in 2008. I'm driving home from some remedial PT, listening to a second-string sports talk show on ESPN radio. I'm a big sports talk guy. My dad and I both like sports, but he prefers watching them and talking about them. I prefer listening to other people talk about them and then talking about what was said. A little bit of how stupid that is came through to me when I typed it, but nevermind. What else are you going to listen to on the radio? Music? "HEY HEY it's LANCE IN THE MORNING ZOO WITH THE TOP 10 AT 10 WEEEE. TEMPERATURE IS 34 DEGREES HERE IN ANCHORAGE AND NOW A TRAFFIC REPORT."
Blurge. My three favorite shows in definite order are:

1. Colin Cowherd
2. Jim Rome
3. Anything Else, with Mike and Mike at the top of this pack.

So I'll be relaxing and listening when all of a sudden a fanfare of trumpets and a different voice is talking. Now this is an example of "hopelash" where my hopes are suddenly raised, then crushed, because this would be the sound of the Yankees games coming on back in New York. I like the Yankees and miss their radio announcers. Good ol' John Sterling. Not as much as the best baseball team ever, the Atlanta Braves, but it's still good. Then I realize that I'm not in New York, but in Alaska. And Anchorage, Alaska wishes it were Seattle, Washington, so we get Mariner games (also bad weather, good coffee and hippie backpackers). I listen intently for a second, because the Mariners could be playing an exciting team I care about like the Yankees, the Red Sox (I hate, but I care), or the Rays, but this never happens. The Mariners play half of their schedule against the Minnesota Twins, and the other half against the Kansas City Royals. Instead of interleague play, they face the Blue Jays. They are out of contention by March and they play a doubleheader every day even though they are not supposed to, in order to keep Ichiro's hitting streak alive. Teams like the Yankees call in August and say that they're not coming to Seattle because it may rain.

The pre-game show always come on 4 hours before the game, and the post game show lasts another 4 hours. Also, the Mariners always lose. I hate them so much. I am almost as much an anti-Mariner fan as I am a Braves fan. The only good Mariner baseball is what happened yesterday, when Rex and I went to vote. When I went into the polls, the Mariners were up 5-3 in the bottom of the ninth with two outs. When we came back five minutes later, the Mariners had lost 6-3 and the manager (best not to learn the new guys' names) was trying to explain himself to reporters. These post-game press conferences are at their best by August when the manager is out of cliches like "We played good ball, today but didn't get the win, hopefully we can still take the series"; by that point there's just a lot of sighing and short tempers.

LATE ADDENDUM - While I was typing this, the Braves managed to blow a seven run lead to the Phillies. I feel like writing this spiteful little piece jinxed the game for them.

Suckery

2009-04-07T03:26:00.004-04:00

It seems that lately, the major focus of this blog has been to rant about commercials. My life is not very interesting. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I spend most of my time writing and working on college classes.

The latest commercial I'll lambast is for GM. GM now operates on the following business model:

1. Take money from the government
2. Spend it.
3. Fail.
4. See step #1

It's like someone having a garage sale that loses money, then using their welfare check to buy more junk to sell at the next garage sale.

The commercial shows a small child playing baseball. "It's time for a comeback. It's time to put on our rally caps." Montage of people putting on the rally cap (inside out baseball cap - you'd know if you ever played Little League before the mercy rule was invented). All-American man. Sporty people. Ethnic people. People welding GM vehicles. Back to All-American man, who gives the camera a look as if he caught it buying a foreign car.

So, should I invest my money in a GM vehicle, or just send them cash in the mail to save the government trouble?

Tonight was the NCAA basketball final. I wasn't sure who to root for. Here are my criteria:

1. North Carolina - How many times do I want to hear what an outstanding citizen Tyler Hansbrough is? I know this is a terrible thing to say, but I sort of hope he gets in some minor non-life-ruining trouble just to make them be quiet. Like getting a tattoo on his face and jaywalking. On the other hand, there seems to be a memo out that told the broadcasters how gay this is and made them lay off a tiny bit. On the third hand, they are Duke's arch-nemesis and the epitome of evil Their fans are communist hypocrite Nazi perverts. Allegedly. Rooting for them would be like rooting for Satan.

2. Michigan State - Hey, did you know Detroit is near Michigan State? Boy, this economically beleagured state could sure use a victory to cheer them up. All those people welding with their rally caps on are rooting for Michigan State. Did you know that the stadium holds 70,000 people? Wow, this will be like a home game for Michigan State, only 90 miles from Detroit. Did you know that Magic Johnson played for Michigan State! What fun! Obama's ultimatum: If Michigan State loses, GM fails!

Blurg. I rooted for Michigan State, since you can't root for NC ever and call yourself a Duke fan. Also I think Lupe Izzo is hot. Michigan State rewarded me by playing the game in slow motion and falling behind 72-0 in the first minute. Rex was so bored he took off his diaper and ate it. I didn't notice because I had fallen into a coma.

The suckery began before the first half was over. In case you are wondering, "Suckery" is what basketball announcers do when the winner is clear but the game's not over. The measure of how good a ball game is how long before the suckery begins.

Examples of suckery: Show graphics of how many titles NC has before they've won. Start with the showing of players' parents, all of whom are inevitably in wheelchairs. "This is the first game Mr. and Mrs. Lawson have been to since they were attacked by that bald eagle, Dick." Anoint players for the winning team as saints. "Tyler Hansbrough. Not only the greatest basketball player of all time, but the greatest person alive besides Tim Tebow. Roy Williams - Some would say he is not the greatest coach of all time. They'd be members of Al-Qaeda, Jim."

Of course, if your team is winning, then it's not suckery. The announcers are finally showing some good sense.

Saturn

2009-03-29T03:39:00.002-04:00

I saw the new Saturn car commercial. A friendly man tells you that even though the economy is in a shambles, Saturn will be around forever and has recently created 5 new car brands that run on hydrogen and fly.

FACT - Saturn is a GM subsidary. Because GM was so screwed up in the 80s and couldn't compete with Japanese companies making quality small cars, they created a wholly-owned subsidary named Saturn which would be kept separate, so as not to be corrupted by the GM chain-of-command.

FACT - Saturn will be going out of business in 2010. Because GM's main way of making money is taking it from the government, it is hard to request additional funds when part of your company is making money. So as not to make too much money, they will close it down.

FACT - This commercial is full of lies and dishonesty.

Susan F. Kennedy

2009-03-27T17:30:00.002-04:00

Today we had a class where we learned that March is Women's History Month. Sergeant W asked us if we could name any famous women. A few hands went up. Joan of Arc. Madame Curie. Condoleeza Rice (my suggestion). We named five or six.

Oh, so we couldn't name very many. Coincidentally Sergeant W just happened to have sixty printouts with famous womens' names on them. We went around the room reading a short one-paragraph biography of each woman while people counted dots on the ceiling. When it was my turn, I stood up and pretended to read from my sheet, but actually read a biography I had written in my notebook on the desk.

Susan F. Kennedy (1861-1924)

The first wife of President John F. Kennedy, she founded the United Nations Foundation to Combat Literacy. In 1915, she invented an ice-cleaning machine known today as the Zamboni. She is best known for discovering the continent of South America, and was the first to capture a live penguin.

A few people seemed to take notice. "What continent did she discover?" someone said. "South America," I said, trying not to laugh, and passed my sheet back in. The two soldiers next to me, who spoke Spanish, had a quick puzzled discussion as they tried to figure out which bio I had read. Buena suerte, no está allí.

Movie Time

2009-03-24T04:37:00.001-04:00

Best Movie Ever: Repo Man

Worst Movie Ever: Space Odyssey 2001. Man, I love watching crap float around in orbit for 2 and a half hours. If you took that out, you'd have a decent half hour movie.

Commercials about nothing.

2009-03-22T22:50:00.000-04:00

You, sir, are gay.

(SEC mandated disclosure: I am long IBM)

Have you ever seen the new IBM commercials? Of course you have, because they are on every 6 seconds during the NCAA tournament.

Nerd Scientist: 10.4 petaflops, that's what our new computer can do. That's one flop for every .083 people on the planet.

Ethnic man: Petaflops are help solving problems of our global society.

Woman: Like global warming.
Man: Terrorism
Child: Traffic congestion
Ethnic woman: Ze World Peace
Child: Disease
Man: Petaflops bring the dead back to life.

Woman: IBM is doing all these things. Building a better global society everyday through the technology of tomorrow.

WHAT? What are you selling me? What kind of commercial is this? Am I supposed to buy something? Or just have a general feeling of goodwill because of your babble? Think how much money you spent on these ads to sell me nothing. Next time, just set your money on fire.

Did you know that IBM helped engineer the Holocaust?

Or that Binghamton University's Engineering Building and School, where I spent many of my formative years (though not as many as at the West Gym) is named after famous Nazi sympathizer Thomas J. Watson?

Tiki Mayben's Unibrow

2009-03-21T06:32:00.002-04:00

Watched the Duke/Binghamton game on the CBS Sports online thing. Pretty sweet. Watching the regular TV coverage is like watching TV with Rex and letting him hold the remote. Ok, it's not that bad. rexswitches to the TV Guide channel, then hits RECORD, recording a 24 hour block of ads. Then he records 1 minute of 5 different programs, does a little dance, then goes to a porn channel, which we don't get, turns the TV to Spanish, turns the TV off, then cries.

CBS doesn't know what games I want to watch. Maybe I want to watch my favorite team DUKE defeat my degraded alma mater Binghamton. Well I can do that online. Nice. Rex can say "DUKE".

Binghamton star player Tiki Mayben has interesting eyebrows. Here they are:

2008

2009

Clearly he is taking some sort of drug. I predict in 2010, he will look like this:

2010?

At what cost, athletic prowess?

You Are The Fattest Link, Goodbye

2009-03-19T04:32:00.008-04:00

Karena likes to watch The Biggest Loser. For some reason, the show is like 2 hours long. I can't help but watch. It's like a train wreck. Some observations follow:

1. Every episode has a shameless food plug that goes something like this:
Trainer: Oh no, what are you eating? Donuts?!
Fatty: No, these are Snackwell Air Donuts. They have negative calories in them.
Trainer: Really? Let me try one. Wow, it's good, Negative Calories, huh?
Fatty: Yeah, they actually make you poop more than you eat.
Trainer: That's great! etc.

2. Some positive comments for once: It's good that the contestants actually lose weight. It motivates people to work out. I think most of America should get a turn as a contestant. That said...

3. Seriously, why are you crying so much? So you have to kick some fat old broad off the island. You've known her for six weeks. Sobbb. You lost 2 pounds. Wahhh. You had to switch trainers. WeeEEP. You haven't seen your family in three weeks. Bawl.

4. Ok, you walked a mile, or lost 8 pounds. Does this really merit a fanfare of trumpets and the epic music from the D-Day scene of a war movie?

5. I kept making fun of the host, saying that she was getting fatter while the contestants get skinnier. Then I found out she was pregnant. My bad.

6. The father guy has managed to stay on the show for endless weeks by whining about how he needs to be there to help his son. Or he's crying about letting him down. Please show mercy - he just wants to be a good dad. He's shamed everyone into not kicking him off, while every week he gets closer to a million dollars. He also seems to have 8 tits.

7. This show is best watched in fast forward. Everything takes forever. The scale flip flops back and forth. If you weigh 200, it goes to 120, then 280, then 319, then 163, then ... for like a minute. That doesn't add suspense, it just makes me mad. And the weigh-ins take 40 minutes because they cut to commercial nine times, always right before you see someone's weight, (but after cutting to everyone looking astonished or horrified or possibly having some sort of seizure)

8. I wonder how the producers are going to work the finale. Usually the show is 12 weeks long or something and the people go from like 280 to 180. A lot of the contestants this time around weighted 400 pounds. So they've been working hard and they've lost 8 pounds a week for 15 weeks. That's 120 pounds, but you're still 280. And fat. So will they make the show go for 30 weeks?

9. I like to make Karena mad by saying about the female competitors, "She may have lost a hundred pounds, but she's still TFTF." The first TF is "too fat" You can figure out the second part yourself.

10. I think the model chicks purposely gained 100 pounds so they could get on the show and get attention.

11. Karena claims that I said that she should be on the show. I don't remember saying that. However, I did once say "You are the fattest link, goodbye". It was mean and untrue; she's actually quite small. I just thought it was funny and it popped out of my mouth. Then she wouldn't speak to me for 2 weeks.

Stop-Loss, The Movie

2009-03-17T04:39:00.002-04:00

yeah, this is how we roll in the B's. War will F* you up, man

I watched the movie Stop Loss tonight. Good flick. If you want to know what the war in Iraq is like, watch that. It's sort of like everyone's experiences condensed into a 2 hour MTV flick, but at least they did their homework. They even have it down to the time in the Army when people in the same unit were wearing 3 different uniforms. Only serious inadequacy I noted is that the battalion commander seems to be in charge of about 15 people, which is understandable since they need to make a movie, not a documentary on Army bureaucracy. But I've never met any dudes in the army that call a colonel by his first name.

All three of the main characters act like actual Army dudes I might have known at one point. Do people in Texas really act like that? I mean the parade and the bars and such. All I know about Texas is from Varsity Blues and King of the Hill.

I feel bad because I downloaded it and didn't want to wait for Netflix. I felt bad because it was good and I found out that it didn't break even. So I wrote this to encourage people to rent it and/or pay for it.

Rex is 2

2009-03-14T06:37:00.003-04:00

Today is Rex's birthday. He's 2. Isn't he cute?

He got a noisy light up toy that talks. It is some animal matching game that I can't figure out either. But he likes pressing the buttons. He also got a motorized bubble gun that cost a dollar. He got a pirate hideout made of fabric that he can hide inside and poop his pants in peace. Also, if he finds any tasty pieces of paper, he can eat them without us bothering him. The perfect place for the 2 year old pirate who needs privacy.

He had a slice of birthday cake and didn't need a bath afterwards like he did at his 1st birthday. We went to IHOP and he had a pancake with strawberries and bananas on it. He likes to have his own pancake. We saw a six year old with a pacifier there. Scary. Also there was another little girl there with her mom and Rex shouted and stared at her. Sometimes I wish I was a baby so that I could shout gibberish at people in restaurants. Then I could eat with my hands and make a mess and then go into my pirate cave to poop

Nobody cares...but you.

2009-03-06T17:28:00.004-05:00

This is something that I would sing in my head, usually when someone in the Army was ranting and raving about something that he felt was super important, like cleaning something or fighting a war that was stupid.

Sometimes I would get a voicemail, telling me that I urgently had to be somewhere else, when I was already released for the day, or doing something important.

Sometimes I would sing it aloud when I was alone.

The other day I sang it and Karena heard. She thought it was funny, which encouraged me to post this.

Remember, if your boss is trying to make you do something, or lecture you on a point, or someone's been leaving faux-urgent messages on your cell phone (Dude, everyone's got to come back to work, there's a formation at 1700. The first sergeant says EVERYONE.), just sing it:

Nobody ca-ares....but you!

MySpace

2009-03-06T05:23:00.005-05:00

This guy is going through his music, 15000 songs alphabetically and getting rid of the songs he doesn't like. Also giving them a rating 0-5 stars.

Loving: Alligator Dave, Big L

Hating: Alan Jackson, Alicia Keys.

Best Musician Ever: The Notorious B.I.G.

Best Boxer Ever: Mike Tyson

Book I'm reading about the downfall of Mike Tyson, Buster Douglas and boxing: The Last Great Fight by Joe Layden (from Albany, NY)

I'm addicted to the Beat Generation

Here's what else I'm reading: When I Was Cool by Sam Kashner and Naked Lunch by William Burroughs.

One of the best authors (also Kerouac, London, Fitzgerald, Hemingway) and best pencil sharpener ever: Edgar Rice Burroughs. If all you know about him is something vague about a Tarzan movie you've really missed out and should read "A Princess of Mars".

I should have links to all these things, but I'm too lazy. Maybe later. Google, bitches.

The RAVEN

2009-03-04T02:01:00.004-05:00

First a word of explanation about this poem. One day we came in and my coworker Renslow was getting yelled at by everybody. His job was to be in charge of the New Equipment Training (NET). So if the unit is being issued SX-17 Satellite Detectors, he has to send out emails to all the companies telling them where it is, who can go, when, etc. Also, how many dudes they are supposed to send (this is put out by Brigade) and then he makes sure that everything goes smoothly. For example, sometimes the instructors will be five minutes late, so all the soldiers will leave and then Renslow will fix everything.

Well Brigade has a unique method of letting us (Battalion) know about things. Sometimes they will email us. Sometimes they will hide them away in a little folder on the network drive. Sometimes they will do both. The problem is that you will get an email every day from them, and then something comes down that they don't mention, but you've been lulled into a false sense of security by the emails and don't check the folder until it's too late. It would be better if they just picked one method and stuck with it. Well Renslow didn't check the secret hidden folder. In fact he didn't even know about it.

When I came in there were three civilian instructors standing in the office. Like all civilians who have dealings with the Army, they looked like prior service. Sometimes the females are married to Army guys, and sometimes the civilians are Air Force, but these three, particularly their leader reeked of former First Sergeant.

"We came down here to train 30 soldiers on the RAVEN and no-one showed up! The Army is paying $84,000 a day for this training and it's being wasted!"

Renslow who was a nervous guy to begin with, and very serious about his job, was fretfully trying to fix things, jumping from the phone to the computer, then dashing down the hall to talk to someone and running coming back. The civilians left, no doubt pocketing today's 84 grand, and a steady stream of brass began coming in to yell at Renslow. I immediately put all work to the side and began typing the following poem.

Glossary
RAVEN - the hand-launched unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) we use to spy on our enemies.
tracker - spreadsheet telling what's going on
OPORD - memo telling what's going on
S3- Plans, training, ammo, airborne operations office (where Renslow and I work)
S4- Supply
"HAZMAT schooling with married whores" - Renslow went to HAZMAT school and some married chick kept hitting on him as he told us every day.

-----
The RAVEN

Once upon a midnight dreary, while Renslow pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a tracker and OPORD not read before.
While he nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at the S3 door.
"'Tis some visitor," he muttered, "tapping at the S3 door —
Only this and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly he remembers, the tasking from last December
Amid HAZMAT schooling with married whores.
While he nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at the S3 door.
"'Tis some tasking," he muttered, "Nothing crucial. Call S-4"
Quoth the RAVEN "Nevermore"

And the RAVEN tasking, never flitting, still is sitting,
In Renslow's Outlook Inbox inside the S3 door;
The colonel's eyes have the seeming of a demon who is dreaming
As he bursts inside the S3 door,
"Pushups, Renslow, now, get on the floor."
Quoth the RAVEN "Nevermore"
------

After I was done forwarding this masterpiece to everyone I knew, I started working on my next mission. No, not actual work. I went across the hall and made one of the intel guys call SGT Renslow on our office phone.
I answered:
"3-509 S-3 Shop, SGT Coach speaking. No, sir. That's SGT Renslow. Yes sir, he's here. Hold on, sir."
I gave the phone to Renslow, my eyes wide, covering the receiver with my hand.
"It's General Layfield!" I stage-whispered. Now all the officers in our office were paying attention.

"General Layfield" proceeded to light into Renslow, accusing him of waste, corruption and malfeasance. I gave the kid a basic rundown of the situation and a few key names and facts, like $84,000 and RAVEN. He ran out of meaningful things to say and just started shouting gibberish so loud that I could hear him yelling from across the hall. Meanwhile Renslow looked like he was about to cry. Finally, he figured it out and ran over to intel to punish the guilty with a few pushups. Oh, good Army fun.

My ETS date

2009-03-02T20:53:00.002-05:00

Today is my ETS date. ETS stands for Expiration of Term of Service. It's the day I am supposed to get out of the Army. It came and went with little fanfare, because the Army can ignore it at will. First they were going to stop-loss me and they made my new ETS date 5/26/2010. Then they ended up holding onto me for medical reasons which means that my new ETS date is ??? or whenever they are done with slowly processing all the paperwork. Could be July, could be anytime.

I remember thinking about my ETS date for the first time in a longing fashion. I remember how I had 1800+ days to go. I tried to picture myself getting out of the Army. They were pretty joyous thoughts. Now, it as if Christmas has been postponed to July. Ish.