Dogs can grow beards all over

Finally found the time and resources to do an actual post here and I actually am not entirely sure what I'm going to write about. I could write about Afghanistan but at this point it seems kind of redundant, there really isn't much new I can say here. I went out on my first mission last night and it was uneventful to say the least. Not that I'm complaining; I'd rather be bored and have everyone come back home in one piece. We went out and set up a traffic control point and searched civilian vehicles that came down our road. I really can't go into too much detail about our mission but if you watch the news I'm sure you can gather who/what we're looking for out here.

The other day I had to exchange my SIM card on my hadji phone out here for some reason or another and the Afghani running the store thought it would be a good idea to either re-sell my old SIM or use it himself to make calls to the numbers that were still in my phone book. A couple nights ago my mom got a call from that number and recognized it as mine but there was an Afghani on the other end of the line instead of me. He ended up calling her several times and after a bit my mom began to worry that I had been captured by the Taliban. Long story short, she ended up getting a hold of me and telling me about the phone calls. Needless to say, I was pissed off to no end. Something you need to know about me: I'm really easy to anger and that day was no exception. My supervisor grabbed me as I was heading out the door with a loaded weapon and explained to me that I needed to take the issue to the 1st sergeant and our intel officer and do things the right way.

The situation is handled now but I'm still angry about it. My family worries enough about me without some random Afghani making calls to them and scaring them half to death.

Other than that day-to-day life is pretty mundane. I've made a game out of pissing off army NCO's because they tend to get their panties in a bunch over really stupid stuff. I got cussed out by one the other day for doing my job. I know sometimes I can rub people the wrong way and come off sarcastic or maybe just "less than sincere" but this was NOT one of those times (until he pissed me off). The guys honestly said to me: "Do you know who the f- I am?" like he was some kind of badass. The guy was an army staff sergeant, the equivalent of a rat turd compared to who I'm used to working with. I honestly did everything I could to make him understand that I was just trying to do my job but he apparently didn't like my attitude when he told me only an S6 (Comm guy) could work on a military computer and I told him I was an S6. Ok so I might have sneered and looked at him like he was retarded but honestly, when you see a dorky looking guy like me carrying around a notebook that says CLASSIFIED on it while working with computers, wouldn't you assume that he's the tech guy? Aparently he thought that I shouldn't be in his area and sent me back to "whoever [I] report to."

So I calmly informed him that I would be sending someone of higher rank over to take care of his problem and to have a nice day. Well... actually I think I might have muttered something to the effect of 'go f- yourself' under my breath instead of 'have a nice day' but it's a little hazy and I'm not sure of all the details.

I guess my supervisor went over there and kindly informed the army staff sergeant that I was S6 and could go anywhere I damn-well pleased and if he got in the way of my work again that he wasn't getting his comms set up and would have to tell his commander why he couldn't do any of his work. See, that's how a supervisor takes care of his airmen. Granted I was also informed that I needed to keep my attitude in check, even when dealing with incompetants and morons but that's ok. I can take a lecture when I deserve one and I did.

Some old posts

This is some stuff I wrote while I didn't have internet connection. It's not too out of date so I'll throw it up here and try to do a fresh one tomorrow.

Par for the course
30 June 2009 @ 16:18 Kabul local

So, first impression of Afghanistan: Dusty. We landed in the middle of a mild sand storm and I’m still trying to fish the grit out of my eyes. From what I could tell there are some mountains not too far off. I know they’re not too far off because I could see their silhouette in the dust storm. Everything here is brown by the way, which is really depressing. God could have made the desert an interesting color like orange or blue or yellow. This isn’t even an attractive shade of brown. It’s like you ate a cheeseburger, threw it up on tan carpet, and then let it sit there for two months and set. Not fun.

We got off the plane and immediately to a briefing that was one of the biggest wastes of time in my life. I’m glad our Army counterparts were still in Manass because if they had come on the same flight as us and had the same briefing we would have never heard the end of it. The air force guy that gave the briefing had a stutter or speech impediment of some kind and took about 15 minutes to get through a one-page brief. After that we off-loaded our bags and caught a bus over to our tents, which took about an hour. Traffic here on Bagram is a little bit like Main Street in Calcutta during a soccer riot. I’m pretty sure we ran over 3 people just trying to get out of the parking lot.

So now we play the waiting game once again. We’re clear across base from anything relevant and our chain of command has no idea what’s going on when. We’re supposed to be told where we need to be when in about an hour and a half but I doubt that that is even going to happen. It’ll probably just be our commander saying “Stand fast, we still have no idea what’s going on. Be patient with the system here and embrace the suck.” I’d be surprised if it wasn’t par for the course.

July 5, 2009
Finally made it to Gardez. Our commander put us on a plane to Salerno, a FOB on the Pakistan border to try and get a flight to Gardez on space available. It took us 5 days to make it here but we did it. Over the course of that time we were rocketed twice which was an experience. Nobody was hurt, thankfully, but they did mess up one of the buildings on the FOB.

Gardez is pretty cool. It’s small and there’s pretty much nothing here but the scenery is gorgeous. Maybe it’s because I have a place to lay my head for the first time in over a week and my own personal room for the first time in 3 months but I think I might actually like it here. I’ll probably change my tone after living here cut off from the civilized world for a couple of months but right now I’m not too disappointed. I’ll have some cool pictures to upload to my facebook soon so you all can see where I’m living and what it looks like.

But I’ve been awake for over 36 hours straight right now and I can feel my eyelids beginning to droop so I’m going to crash for the night, that is until somebody feels like they need to come wake me up for some reason or another.

Hell and High water.

I was originally going to post a response to one of the comments I received but after a few days of having fun with my wife and my friends I decided I'm just not in the mood to deal with the idiots that clog the pipes online. I leave tomorrow to go wait for my plane to depart sometime in the next week or so. I'm not going to see anyone I care about for the better part of a year and it makes me sick to my stomach to think about. I'm not going to lie, I'm a little bit scared. I'll probably be fine but everyone my age has a feeling of immortality about them. Tragedies always happen to someone else.

But honestly, that's the last of my worries. The hardest part about doing this isn't my own mortality staring me in the face. If I was afraid of dying I would have taken the easy way out and claimed that I was suicidal or depressed or something less legit that would have gotten me disqualified. I know I wrote about wanting to get sent home when I first got to Camp Atterbury but I wasn't feeling well before I got on my medication and just wanted to be home where I could fix the problem and go on with my life. I still don't want to go over but I feel physically better and know that I can complete the mission without being a liability to anyone else.

The hardest part about doing this is leaving my wife behind, leaving my friends and family behind, and leaving unfinished all of the things that I want to accomplish with my life at the moment. It feels like writing a big paper for school, one that you feel adamant about and is very important for your grade, and then the power going out for the foreseeable future. Sure, you'll be able to get back to it as soon as the power comes back and your instructor will understand when you see him next but it doesn't make you feel any better about it at the same time. Now that I'm home I have a better picture of what I want to do but it has to wait. The interests of the United States are waiting on me to get over and do my mission.

However, if I took all of that out of the equation, I'm actually a little excited to get over there and do some good for whatever it's worth to the people of Afghanistan. I know there will be good times ahead and it won't be all doom and gloom. There's dangers ahead of me that most of you that read this won't ever see in your life but in the grand scheme of things many Americans face death on a day-to-day basis and don't even know it. How many times have you been driving down the freeway and merged into the other lane and not seen the car there, almost hitting it while doing 70 miles per hour? You don't think twice about getting in the car again after that, even though you just escaped almost certain death. It will be the same with me. People willingly put themselves in danger on a day to day basis without knowing it. I know I'm probably downplaying what I'll be facing but hey, it helps me sleep at night.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is a chance that I might not come back from this but there's a chance that I might not come back from the grocery store too.

I'm not the most religious of people. If there is a god then I think he's probably sitting back and watching the show. How else could he let things like what's going on in the middle east and North Korea happen? Mankind will destroy itself and it's quite possible that it could happen in my lifetime. What god would create life and then give it the power to destroy itself? But if you are religious, which I respect, then pray for me. Pray for everyone that's going with me. The unit that we are relieving lost 2 people last year. 2 out of 80 is a small percentage but that is 50% of somebody's marriage and 25% of somebody's immediate family and those are way bigger numbers. I have a good team and I want every one of them to come back to their friends and families. So pray for them.

So if you will excuse me, I'm going to lay down with my wife and do my best to express how much I love her and how much I will miss her in the 9 months to come. I'm not the best at expressing my feelings, mainly because I'm a man and I wasn't gifted with a woman's ability to do so but I hope that she knows how much she means to me and that I will go through Hell and high water to come back and see her again.

Changes Come

All the names, call signs, and unit names are completely made-up to protect the individuals involved and maintain security of possibly sensitive military information.

-Thursday, June 11, 2009

And just when I thought it couldn’t get any dumber; that the level of retardation here at Camp Atterbury had reached its breaking point, 1st Army and the other groups here managed to stretch the barrier just a little bit further and claim a new, previously unchartered, realm of stupidity in the name of military training.
First off, I have to say that I’ve considered the Navy as a whole to be a pretty decent branch. Yeah, they’re all sea-faring raging homosexuals but they generally seem to be equipped with a few more chromosomes than the army. It’s not the case here. The Navy teams (there are two of them here) have single-handedly managed to jack-up almost every bit of training that we’ve done with them. It took them 7 hours to sight in their rifles when we first got here. They managed to break some of the training equipment we were supposed to use so we had to reschedule for another day. The icing on the cake happened two nights ago while I was on night shift:

“Lancer main, this is Navy1. Over”
“Go ahead Navy1.”
“Umm… yeah, we were calling to see if you were hot-micing, over” (Hot micing in the radio world means that someone has the push to talk button pressed down so nobody else can communicate over the net.)
“Say again, over?”
“yeah, we were calling to see if you were hot-micing, over.”
“Well, seeing as I’m talking to you right now I’m pretty sure there isn’t a hot mic. Over.”
“Ok, well we were having trouble getting a hold of anyone and we thought that maybe our antenna was causing a hot mic, over.”
-Now, I will tell you that there is no possible way an antenna could cause a hot mic at all. Even if you have ZERO radio or comm experience you know that there is no way an antenna, responsible for transmitting and receiving signal, can cause a jam over the entire frequency.
“Yeah, there is no hot mic. Lancer main out.”
Earlier this morning I was outside my command post smoking when a Navy female said “Did anything happen last night?” (I’m on night shifts for a while) “I didn’t hear anything after 10pm.”

Me: “Uh… yeah. A few things happened. Do you want me to take a look at your radio?” Come to find out she didn’t make the 10 o’clock radio freq change and it was a simple correction. After I corrected the problem she says to me “Maybe they shouldn’t have put a cook in here to manage the radios all by herself.” Umm yeah, just maybe.

Today we got word that we are supposed to man an entry control point (ECP). That would be cool but we also have two missions to do over the course of the day and only have 6 personnel left over. So we have to figure out how we’re going to cover a 4-man position for 24 hours with only 6 people.
I watched a guy, totally sober, take a piss in public on a military installation.
One of the teams decided to close up shop halfway through the night and just go home. It took Brigade 2.5 hours to figure out that they had just left. Well, actually it took the 2 hours to get off their collective asses and send a runner over to their trailer to figure out why they weren’t answering the radio.

Did you know:

In Navy dorms/command centers where there is an ECP, you have to salute the colors, salute the officer “on deck,” and ask for permission to “come aboard,” even if you are nowhere near a boat?

On army posts the reflective belt is worn as a sash and not as a belt?
You only need 3 hours of training prior to instructing a full team of soldiers and airman for a week on a military tracking system?

Update 12 June 2009:

So last night I was manning the radio and one of the groups out in the field called in to brigade to have an ambulance come pick up one of their soldiers because he was bitten by a spider and was having a reaction. I’ve spent quite some time trying to determine which surprises me more: the fact that it took brigade one and a half hours to react and get somebody out there (roughly 2 miles away from the main post) or the fact that the cavalry unit that was out there waited an hour and a half for them to come. They would have had 20 minutes before I said “screw it” and called a van or something from the barracks to come get him and take him to the hospital.
I’ve noticed that I’m starting to reach my breaking point already. I’m snapping at people I shouldn’t snap at. I’m getting upset over stupid things, and I’m smoking WAY more that I usually do. I’m not sure if it’s the lack of sleep from having to work nights and people being loud during the day or if the constant barrage of idiocy has eroded down my composure. Either way, I’m afraid the wrong person is going to set me off and I’m going to react in a less than favorable way and get myself into trouble. It’s easy for someone to say “Dude, you just need to calm down and unwind” but there’s no time for that.
(*Just heard my commander say something that pretty much sums up this training: “It’s like watching old people die over there” in reference to the Brigade trying to conduct a training mission.)
I can already tell I’m not the same person I was when I left 3 months ago. I’m kind of afraid that I’m going to go back to my friends and family next week and they’re going to wonder who the hell I am. I guess that’s probably on everyone’s mind that leaves for an extended period of time but I never really thought it would happen to me. I’m not changed so drastically that I’m a completely new person but it’s a lot of small things. I have less tolerance for certain personality traits that I would otherwise ignore. My spectrum of emotions is Angry, Sad, Happy, or apathetic. I feel almost manic-depressive. When I find that I can muster up the energy to care about something it has to be at one extreme or another, else I tune it out.
There’s a lot of things I miss about not being here but it’s hard to define one I miss the most at any given moment. Sometimes I’ll be sitting outside and night and miss going on walks and discussing sports and movies and women with Andrew. Other times I just miss the freedom to go where I want when I want, even though most of the time when I was at home I just stayed at home as opposed to going out. I think I’ll be able to determine what thing I’ve missed the most one I go home on leave. On second thought, after typing that out, I just miss home.

News

So I think the Army's retardation is infesting the minds of the senior leadership within my little Air Force group here. I was told the other day that I'm no longer going to be doing my job overseas (which would have been Comm, for those who don't know). Instead, I'm going to be a Civil Engineer which, in the grand scheme of my mission, means that I'm going to be a building inspector. I'm going to be hiring Afghani contractors to build roads, clinics, schools, and general improvement projects and then inspecting them to make sure they're doing their job correctly.

But DJ, what do you know about construction? I'm glad you asked. Nothing whatsoever. I mean, I've worked with my grandpa a little bit when he was building houses but nothing terribly extravagant. (*side note: they're playing German metal here at the all ranks club on post. Very annoying*) So what it essentially boils down to is that the military is more concerned with having a body in a position than someone with actual knowledge in the job that they will be doing. I really feel sorry for whoever is going to have to utilize these buildings because they are going to be all sorts of jacked-up.

Other than that I have a grand total of 10 days left in this hell hole. It's going to be refreshing not being angrily woken up by my first sergeant every morning. It'll be nice to be able to drive somewhere, anywhere, whenever I want. A few of my buddies are coming down from Michigan and we're going to party like rock stars. I think Carrie and I are planning on staying at a casino one night and going to Six Flags for a day as well. I can't freaking wait.

Never go full retard...

It amazes me that they actually give people live ammunition after making them endure a month and a half of their training. I really wish I could break it down for you in greater detail but there is just so much to cover that I'm not entirely sure I could do it justice in the short amount of time that I have to write this today. I guess I'll just try to touch on the key points.

First and foremost I hate the fact that we literally spend the entire day sitting around and whatever training location we happen to be at for 20-30 minutes of training. The most prominent one that stands out in my mind was our Gunnery training. They had us convoy out into the middle of nowhere on base and stay in what appeared to be a refugee camp for 2 days to drive a course with our heavy weapons mounted for a grand total of 1.5 training hours. I really wish I was exaggerating here but I counted.

Secondly these "instructors" have really told us some StUpId things. Two days ago we were at a location on post and they were giving us a safety briefing. Part of the safety briefing consisted of what to do in case of a tornado. That's fair, let's see what they have to say. These morons actually pointed to a 4 foot steel cylinder set into the ground and told us to take cover in there if a tornado hits. Haha, right. You guys go into that vacuum wind tunnel and I'm going to go ahead and lay face down in that ditch over there and take my chances.

We've been scheduled classes that end at midnight one night and another class that starts at 4:30 the next morning. We've been double-booked for training. We've showed up for training and they didn't have the key to the building we were supposed to be in so we had to wait for an hour and a half before we could even get in. At one point we were banned from playing organized sports because people were getting hurt, yet they had no problem putting us in a Hum-V rollover sim and having that beat the hell out of us.

My favorite so far was when we got told the gunner has to get confirmation and permission to return fire from the truck commander (the person who sits shotgun in the hum-v, usually a senior NCO or officer), even if we are getting hit from the 6 o-clock and it is humanly impossible for the TC to see where we are taking fire from. Screw this training, if we are getting hit my gunner sure as hell better be sending lead down range. I know we're there to win hearts and minds but if we're being shot put two in the heart and one in the mind. End of story.

I really wish I could give you an up-side to the training that we're getting here but I'm getting a headache just trying to think of something positive. I get to go home on leave 3 weeks from today and thank God for it. This really isn't my usual bitching either. This has surpassed stupid and gone full-blown retard and you never go full retard.

Oh Boy

Where to start?

I'm a week into Army PRT training and have been trying to survive that long without constant internet connection. Life is rough, let me tell you.

We wake up at the ass-crack of dawn every morning, sometimes we PT, sometimes we don't. Lately we've been in "hury up and wait" mode which essentially means we rush to be somewhere on time only to find out that there's 3 groups in front of us that we have to wait on. We literally spent 5 hours the other day sitting out in the sun doing nothing because they had garbage equipment that kept breaking for the group in front of us so we couldn't go.

I went to the hospital the other day.

I get bad migraine headaches; I've had them for as long as I can remember. It's just the way it's been. The other day (I can't remember which one exactly, they run together out here) I had the worst one of my life. I was shaking and hyperventilating because I was in so much pain so they called emergency and I got my first ambulance ride.

I saw an ER doctor and he recommended a medical evaluation board to determine my deployable status. Tomorrow I go see a neurologist and he may or may not start that process. Basically, I might be coming home.

Here's the thing: I don't want to leave my team hanging. I'm one of four comm. guys on this particular team. I've already started my training, I'm here, let's do it. I also don't want to have another episode like what I had in the middle of BFE Afghanistan where I'll be. But more importantly: DAMN I want to go home. I miss my wife, I miss my friends, I miss my dog, I miss the Thai restaurant down the road, and I miss not being here. I already have my hopes up and I'm going to try my best to get the doctor to send me home and the hell out of here. I don't care about the consequences, I don't care about anything else, I want to go home to my wife and my NORMAL job.

I don't know what I'll do if they tell me I can't go home.

The final countdown

A couple days left before the real fun begins. I'm not quite sure how I feel about it to be honest. A really big part of me wants to get out of here and do something real and tangible instead of sitting in a class room all day. Another part of me is apprehensive because I'll be stepping outside of my comfort zone to train hardcore for the next 2 months. I'm sure I can handle it but that doesn't mean I want to do it.

I have this big fear of the unknown. I can KNOW 100% that something is going to be fine, it's going to be ok, doable, whatever but nothing drives me crazier that not knowing exactly what is in front of me. It takes me a while to mentally prepare for things. I have to go through stages of acceptance before I can cope with something uncomfortable. To me, none of this is even happening yet. It probably won't be "real" until a couple months after I set boots in Afghanistan and by that time I'll have started convincing myself that home isn't real.

I've been browsing youtube.com looking for some footage of the next set of training I'm going to go through and then maybe some footage of the location I'm going to be at. I managed to find a couple of videos but they didn't come right out and scream THIS IS WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING HERE! I don't know what I was expecting but I had hoped for more than a couple of slide shows with music in the background.

Sorry that this is such a small post; I've been kind-of sidetracked while writing this and can't really think of much else to say so I'll leave you with this:

I've never been a proponent of killing. I'm still not sure I could pull the trigger if/when I needed to. It's just part of who I am. I've definitely not been a supporter of the conflict(s) in the middle east. Outside of getting Osama Bin Laden I think that we should have stayed out and let God or Allah or whomever sort out the mess over there. That being said, I have to ask you one thing: Don't buy into the media coverage of everything that's going on over there. I've been reading comments of videos on Youtube where people have been saying "...[American Soldiers] celebrating by drinking the blood of Muslim women and children" and "The soldiers aren't even wanted over there. They don't do any good."

I can't speak from my personal experience but everyone I've talked to says that the majority of people over there are happy we are there. They didn't ask us to be there and we shouldn't have gone but now that we are over there we've given them something to hope for. In Iraq, since the Iraqi military has been trained, casualties have been reduced to 18% of what they were in 2003. I don't care who you are, less innocent people dying is a good thing. Yes, some soldiers have done wrong and screwed up and have been dealt with accordingly. But don't pin that on the whole military. If I had the choice I probably wouldn't go, and for selfish reasons, but since I don't have the choice I'm going to do the best that I can.

This may be the last post for quite a while but I'll try to get to it as much as I can. In the meantime I'll be shooting guns, kicking down doors, and rolling around in the mud; taking as many pictures of it all as I can.

What would you do?

Ok, so this is a follow-up to my last post which, if you haven't read, you should 'cause you will be totally lost otherwise.

Friday morning we had to get up for an familiarization course in ground radio, which would have been okay except we were really hungover. I guess I was the best out of the three of us because Shitty was throwing up outside before our morning brief and Rattatat had to get called 10 minutes before we had to leave; he was still sleeping. We all packed up, headed to class, and had a few minutes before it started so we (the Air force group and the Navy group) were all outside BS-ing. Shitty comes up to me and says "Hey, I don't want everyone to know about last night, let's just keep it to ourselves." Cool by me, I don't want any more drama than I need.

We get through class alright and then go back to the hotel to sleep. 3 AF guys (Fag Sauce, Brit, and Anti-poon) decide they want to go to the German restaurant. They get there and mention to Cute waitress that they were Air Force. She asks if they knew us. They said they were here with us. She tells them about the last night. (I know some of you can see where this is going but try not to jump ahead.)

Now, somewhere between Friday night and Monday morning the Master Sergeant in charge (Copper top) found out about what happened with me, Shitty, and Rattatat on Thursday night. He tells Shitty and Rattatat that he wants to see them at the end of the day and then, as part of his morning briefing, tells everyone that if something happens to us while we're out he needs to know about it, or something like that.

Long story short: Shitty and Rattatat get chewed but nothing big comes of it.

I don't know why I am the way I am but after hearing that Copper Top found out about it I wanted to know who told him, but not for the reason you're thinking. You see, in retrospect we probably should have said something to him instead of, we thought, keeping it to ourselves. I concede that. I wanted to know why the person who told him didn't say something to one of us first, you know, something to the effect of "Hey, heard you guys had a messed-up night. You should probably say something to Copper top," as opposed to going behind our back and straight to the boss.

So I did some digging and heard that those three guys had been to the German place Friday night. So I called Brit: "Hey man, I heard you were at the German place Friday night and heard our story. Do you know who said something to Copper top," and proceeded to explain my reasoning for wanting to know. He said that he talked to Copper top but by that point he had already heard the story from someone else. Since Brit and Anti-poon are tied to the hip, that only left one more person. So I asked Fag Sauce and this is what he told me:

"I didn't say anything to him. I found out about it Friday morning when you all were running your mouths about it outside. Copper top was next to me so I assumed he heard and didn't care and I left it at that."

A couple of things bother me about that story. The first thing is that he said Copper top was next to him when we were running our mouths. Copper top went inside after only being out there a short minute to find out where a couple of people were. Secondly, he said we were running our mouths about it. Shitty was puking over in the bushes, Rattatat was up in his room passed-out, and I was dividing my attention between watching Shitty hurl and getting pissed off that Fag Sauce was calling out Shitty in front of the whole group. My buddy, Hopeless, was right there with me and talking to me and said I never mentioned it. In fact, the only person that I would have told is Hopeless and I wasn't even going to say anything to him until after the situation had blown over.

So now I have this situation where I know somebody lied to my face. He looked me in the eye and said "I did not say anything to him" and tried to pull one over on me by making stuff up. I would, well I don't want to say I'd be okay with it but I guess I would just let it ride, but Fag Sauce is going to be on my team and possibly my boss when we get over there. I really didn't care for him in the first place but I tolerated him 'cause I thought he was a genuinely good guy who was a little on the annoying side. Now I'm stuck.

I brought it up to the NCO on my team and told him exactly what I just wrote down. Today, he said he was going to Copper top with my concern. I guess he thought it was a big enough deal that I can't trust him. The thing is, I really don't want to make it worse for Shitty who is already taking a lot of heat for this. It is plain and clear that my issue is not with that night or even that Fag Sauce reported that night, which I'm 98% certain now it was him. My issue is just that; I am 98% certain that he lied to my face and I can't have that kind of disrespect and untrustworthiness (yeah, I made up a word for it) from a guys who is supposed to be watching my back.

So what would you do? Would you pursue it farther and try to get your issue with Fag sauce resolved or would you just forget about it because you can't prove that Fag sauce is lying without Copper top telling you so? If you're reading this please either comment on here or hit me up on myspace (myspace.com/thepftbdrummer) or facebook. Thanks for reading.

Raining Cats and Dogs

It's been pouring non-stop since I woke up this afternoon and since I don't have a car down here, I get to walk everywhere which means when it's raining, I get to sit in my hotel room. I've literally exhausted everything I can think to do, and you really don't want to know what that list includes.

One of the things I have been doing is checking the "personal ads" on craigslist for the area I'm in, just for shits and grins. Here's some of what I've come up with so far:

re: ASSHOLE AT FT. *******

Oh I have notice that he email me as well replying to my ad. Thanks you so much ladies that i don't have to waste my time on a low life jerk like this

Yeah, well apparently you didn't waste too much time in English class, did you sweetheart?


Any men with class?

Are there any UNMARRIED men with an education and class in *********?

No

I have not come across one. Either I hear vulgar language or much anger. I am not responsible for your life or your lack of class. Does any man have any manners?

Sometimes but only when we want to get down your pants. You must be either ugly or a bitch or both.


Well, if there is one out there that knows how to behave around a woman, i.e. do NOT bring up former women, complain about your job, complain about your children, complain how everyone is out to get you, then I'd like to hear from you.

Jesus, and find me one woman that doesn't complain constantly. In fact, you were just complaining about how men don't have manners.

I am over age 40 and you should be, too, but less than dead. Oh, I am not interested in your basic lying man, far too many of those, too.

Good luck bitch. I hope you die alone.

Where are you.... - 33


WHITE guys on here looking for a big girl???? 5"10" blond, kind of cute! Please be white, single and like the bigger girls. I am real, send a pic!

Hmmm... racist much? Or is it that you've had too much black dick over the years and want to try a little variety. Good luck finding a white guy willing to pork your fat ass.

And just so I'm not making fun of only the pathetic ladies out there, I'll add some of the "man looking for woman" posts as well:

Looking for cute girl to watch Battlestar Galactica - 23

Its a rainy night, and I'm going to stay in, but I don't want to do it alone! I'm a 23 year old guy who's pretty new to Savannah, and I haven't met anyone to spend time with yet. I am thinking about starting Battlestar Galactica (I haven't seen it yet and I heard it was the best show around!). Anyways, I'm looking for an attractive, possibly nerdy girl to come over and hang out. I'm an employed, fit, pretty good looking guy. Hit me up with a picture if you're interested, and I'll gladly answer any questions!

Right, if you're an employed, fit, and pretty good-looking guy you:
1. Wouldn't be home alone on a saturday night watching Battlestar Galactica.
2. Would have posted a picture to prove it.
3. Wouldn't be looking for a date on CRAIGSLIST.

Companionship - 19

I am 19 year old white male, thin, brown shoulder-length hair, and hazel eyes.

I'm a pretty laid back guy. Not much bothers me. I have taken an interest in astronomy, psychology, technology, comic books, and video games. I'm the quiet, shy type. I listen to Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nirvana, among others. I'm the typical geek who spends his lonely night just looking up random bits of information with no particular goal in mind, other than just reading. I play the guitar. Not well, but i'm better than the dumbasses who think they can play.



Yeah, the poor guy included a picture of himself. I kind of feel bad for him. I guess that's what he's going for. "I'm a loser so can I get a pity fuck?" Sorry dude. On the bright side you only have 2 more years before you can go to the bar and pick up wasted whores!


I could be your Prince Charming in disguise - 21



Yeah, in the disguise of the kid from Superbad.

Ok, well now that I've taken out all my frustrations toward being bored out of my mind on random people from craigslist I think I'm going to go to sleep, and by that I mean lay in bed with the TV on for a couple of hours til I pass out.

As a military member I am offended by:

He first says "my unit." Second he says "you would have never come close to what I've done where I've been." What the hell? Did he stab some Gook with his pen? Did he blind the enemy with his camera flash? This man is the anti-christ. No self-respecting human should watch his show. And if you think he's just an asshole to people on his show, get a load of this:





But my favorite so far is this one:





That's right, Bill takes the speaker's line completely out of context and then balks when the kid takes something from HIS OWN BOOK out of context. I love it.

Thank you for joining me on the "Bill OReily sucks giant balls" edition of Overseas tales of a Texas Ranger. And to play me off is -- what the hell is that? I can't read that. Geez, this thing Fucking sucks...

/wrists

Monday, March 23
All names that follow are made up. All events that follow are true to the best of my reckoning.

So training started today. I wasn’t there for it. The military has this awesome way of waiting until the last minute to get things done, and then panicking when they realize that… there’s no time to do it. Originally I was supposed to be there two days ago, plenty of time to get settled in and find who the hell I have to report to and where. Instead I have a day to make up, no contact information for anyone down here, and no clue how to get to base from the hotel (or how I’m going to do that with no car, for that matter). At this point all I really want to do is get my room, power on my laptop, play some video games til my wife gets home from work, and call her on skype. Instead I have a laundry list of things I need to do before I can even consider relaxing.

I did have an interesting weekend though. Had some people over, had some drinks, good times were had. By far the most interesting was Saturday night/Sunday morning. After I had gone to bed and advised the others to remain inside if they were going to be loud, everyone decided to go on a beer run (walking, don’t worry). After obtaining said beer, they were stopped by a cop (mind you only one of them was “legally” allowed to consume alcohol). One of my buddies, we’ll call him Adam, decided he would take the fall for the other two, since the other under-aged guy was military and he didn’t want the eligible guy to get busted for providing. In his infinite wisdom, he decided the best course of action would be to act like a complete asshole to the cops to draw their focus away. The cop asked him where the beer can he was carrying was and he denied having one. The cop said “I saw you carrying it,” and he “And I say I didn’t have one but here’s the thing, you’re a cop and I’m not so they’re going to believe whatever you say so go ahead and say whatever the F*** you want ‘cause it really doesn’t matter.” Then another cop showed up and said “I saw you—,“ “Shut the hell up. You just F***ing got here. You didn’t see S***” Hilarious. So, he obviously went to jail, the cop instructing the other two guys “If you want to see your friend, bring $100 to the [local] police department.”

So they went to the police station and bailed him out. Then they decided that Jack in the Box plus more alcohol would be a great thing for Adam to have. He chugged half a bottle of schnapps to go on top of J.I.T.B. egg rolls and God knows what else.




Adam with his MIP

At roughly 7am I was woken by the sound of glass shattering in my living room, not one of my favorite sounds I can assure you. Jumped out of bed and, I think, kindly inquired as to what the F*** was going on. I see couch cushions everywhere, Adam sprawled between the couch and coffee table, various items from my coffee table that used to be whole and intact strewn about the floor, and both Jay and Tony “facepalming.”

“He’s a little drunk,” explained Tony.
“I see that. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know, we all laid down to finally go to sleep when that happened. I think he tried to get up to go to the bathroom.”

It was at that point that Adam looked up at me with the look that Clarice had on her face the first time she met Hannibal Lector, arched his back like he was competing for the loogie long-distance record, and vomited the brownest, most viscous liquid I have seen this side swamp mud 3 ½ feet across the room at me.

The rest is history.

Tuesday March 24

So I guess it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I'm sorry, that's an understatement. It's actually pretty cool. Class runs 4 days a week (although we might go Friday this week) for roughly 5 hours a day. The hotel they have me staying in is pretty sweet:







As you may or may not be able to tell there is a mini fridge and microwave to go along with the king-sized bed. The hotel also has a pool and spa, neither of which I have been to yet. But hey, enough with the silver lining and on with the bitching.

One would think having 3 day weekends for a month would be great but what the heck am I supposed to do in Fort BFE? There is literally nothing here. A couple of restaurants that I'm sure are supported in whole by the military and a Wal Mart and other assorted super markets. The nearest "anything to do" is an hour drive and, guess what, I don't have a car. Awesome. So I think my free time is going to be spent playing video games and watching tv. I know, exciting.

I really don't want to get started on the training but I think I should for entertainment's sake. It's basically a shoddy tracking program on a linux platform on an archaic computer. The best part is that I get to take this class with a handful of Army guys and boy are they smart! One tried being a tough-guy over the keyboard to me and told me "You look like a peer queer," which I am assuming is a reference to a seaman (navy). I wish I could have mustered the effort to justify that with a response but I was too hung-over to care about exchanging wits with, I'm sure, the army's best. The class is literally "point at this button, click it. You should see this. Any questions?" I swear to God those neanderthal bullet-catchers raised their hands every frickin time: "uhh, what button?" God save me if these are the people I'm working with for the next year...

Welcome

Hopefully this is the first of many posts.


I'm deploying and have received several requests to create a blog so people can stay updated on whatever crap I decide to get myself into while I'm in training and over in the AOR. I'll try to include as many specifics as I can but we all know that, with the military, certain details can't be discussed openly or on a medium such as this. I will promise that everything I include on this blog is true to the best of my recollection. I say recollection because I may not be able to update this as much as I would like while over there; maybe never, who knows? I will at the very least be keeping a paper journal so I put everything down that happens over the course of the next year that will be the bane of my existence.


As you may or may not know, I'm not exactly pleased about my current situation. Let me explain:


To say I skated through high school would be to say that water is damp. I barely graduated but not because I didn't understand the material; my diction may lead you to believe I've taken a few english classes in my day. I skated through high school because I couldn't muster the motivation to get off my butt and do the homework I viewed as a pointless exercise. I was never one to practice anything. If I wasn't instantly good at it, it wasn't worth my time. So I didn't do my schoolwork. I don't pretend that I'm the first or the last person to underachieve, it's just a fact of life.


My lack of motivation to get my schoolwork done directly resulted in my lack of motivation to apply to more colleges after getting rejected by my first 3 choices. I had a good ACT score (29) but nobody wanted a student with a 2.4 GPA who had to take extra classes his senior year to receive enough credits to graduate. I'm sure I could have gotten into community college but I was above that. Instead I decided to take myself into the "real" world. That's right, I got a job. But even more than that dude, I got a Dell.


I worked for a company that did subcontracting for Dell. I received work-orders in the morning and went out an repaired computers that needed hardware replacements during the afternoon. It paid good when there was work to be done but more often than not there was only a couple of work orders to be split between 3 technicians. The money wasn't cutting it. I was stuck in a job that wasn't paying the bills in a small town that wasn't going anywhere for me. I needed a catalyst for change and that catalyst turned out to be the Air Force.


I got the glory story that every 18-23 year old receives. Talk of the money, the benefits, the job experience, the fact that I could retire at age 39, etc. etc. etc. I heard everything I wanted to hear and was told everything I wanted to be told. It was too perfect. So I put the pen to paper. I signed up to be a computer programmer for two reasons. (breaking news: I'm watching CBS and they are running a section of Facebook Faux Pas. And I just heard the reporter use the word "newbies." Just thought you should know.) Reason number one: I thought I wanted to do that for a living. I also thought wrong. Reason number two: how many computer programmers get deployed? Honestly...


Fast foreward one and a half years. I've been at my first assignment for just over a year and it's not bad. I guess you could say it's like any office setting. There's people I really like and there's people I will never miss when I leave. People gave me a hard time when I first got there because, well, you could say I'm a smartass and needed to be taken down a couple notches. I think there's probably a better chance Will Farrel putting out a genuinely funny movie than a few hopped-up upper management I-so-fucking-important jerks bringing me down or adjusting my attitude for long. Thankfully most of the people that had a hard-on for me left or deployed after a while so I kind of got to adjust my surrounding to me after a while. A few people learned to take me a lot less seriously and I learned to take them a lot less seriously. Trust me, the military has enough seriousness as it is, it doesn't need me to add to it. I think most people that know me there now realize that I joined for one reason: to mop up the mistakes I made when I was younger. I'm not in it for the long run. I'm not the most patriotic person in America. I'm not all "HooRAH!" about the conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq. I don't hate my country, I just don't always agree with it. Horray for freedom, right? I want to get my college paid for. I want to have a decent and secure job while I'm earning that. I want that job to get me valuable experience for when I'm on the outside.


So needless to say I didn't exactly volunteer for this assignment. My whole attidute the last couple of weeks that I've known about this has been "psh, I'm not going to do that. What's the worse they can do, not deploy me?" While probably false, that's my mindset. I'm going to miss my wife, my friends, and my family. Hell, I'm going to miss my dog more than all of them! The only upside to this is that I'm going with a good friend. That's honestly the only thing that has kept me from trying to botch this in any way possible to get out of going. That being said, this should be very interesting. Hopefully I can come out of the experience with some funny stories. I'm going to be bored over there so I'm going to have to entertain myself somehow. I'm not going to lie, 75% of this blog will probably be me bitching. I'm 9 time zones away from everything I know, what do you expect? But hopefully I can pull enough out of my day to fill the other 25% with tales of adventure, comedy, and debauchery. If I can't do that then I'll just fill in the rest with white space.


PS,
As a computer programmer, it depresses me that I had to put html tags in this to get it format the way I wanted...