Palm, meet Forehead; Forehead, Palm.

Ahahaha...

Looks like Jay G. decided to post a bit o' public mea culpa. Seems like the ole goober's been reading this li'l blog for awhile with not so much as a link... on... his... blogro-


*ring, ring...* [clue phone]

"Hello? Oh, it's for me!"

*smack!*


Hey everybody, guess what time it is?

Yup, blog love time!

MArooned is the cleverly titled blog of the above named author. Dad, gun-nut, biker, owner of what is possibly the best crazy-face with a shotty at the range that'll I'll ever see, and all around Masshole of the highest caliber (ha!). I've likewise been reading his blog for quite some time. 'Wicked Pissah' blog, Jay.


With a casual glance over at my feeder and blogroll, I note that I'm obviously not only in that particular same boat, but I'm the friggin' designer, captain, and ship's monkey. More blogs to be updated soon...

Blogvertising?

I was on the couch the other evening, 'sleeping well and dreaming of large women', when the television I had fallen asleep on - woke me up.

In the moments immediately after waking, still half-asleep, I caught the first part of the clip and thought to myself, 'holy crap, Rachel Lucas has advertising now? That's so cool!'





Oh yeah...

Anybody watch the show?

Me neither. Thought the ad was funny, though...

Man, I HATE when that happens

Coupla things;

1) Wear your cammie blouse next time. It might not have stopped it, but on reflection, wouldn't it be swell to improve your chances (however slightly) of that never happening again?

2) RSO, good on you for grabbing the weapon. A little sooner next time, and then we can all sit back and watch him squeal, m'kay?

3) Why am I thinking of the Johnny Cash song, 'Burning Ring of Fire'? Hmm, must be because they're on ship...

Pleasant Conversations

In the movies, the guys take a moment from the action to wax eloquent about the meaning of life, make heroic speeches, and/or foreshadow their impending doom.

Real life, as you might be shocked to learn, is usually a wee bit different.

We were set up just outside the boundaries of a cemetery and on either side of the only decrepit pontoon bridge for miles around. Beyond the cemetery, on a slight rise and to our direct front was the village, and to our rear was the river. It wasn't the greatest of locations by a long shot, but the mission of being ready to provide support for friendly units in the immediate area left us little choice in the matter. My APL (Assistant Patrol Leader) grumbled about why we didn't go ahead and drop trou, bend over, and spread the cheeks for the bad guys, but he was always the pessimist. I rationalized that the village folks only marginally hated our guts, so we should be okey-dokey. (If they openly despised us oftentimes very little actually happened (right then) and if they apparently all loved us you knew you were royally screwed).

Nevertheless, we of course followed SOP and set up our security. 'Complacency kills', you know...

It was shortly after we had all set up for the indeterminate wait and I had linked up with our sister-squad's leader that I realized we'd be there for much longer than originally anticipated.

Nice.

I began to make my rounds.

After the squad sets up pretty much anywhere for any length of time, I would go around and double-check the situation. There's quite a bit to look after, even when the squad was just hanging around; dismounted Marines' positions to check, vehicles' lines of sight / interlocking fire, VCs (Vehicle Commanders) understanding of the plan / the back-up plan / the plan for when plan Z goes bad, quashing horseplay and/or general mischief - all this while/after co-ordinating with friendlies, checking in with the rear, and the like. When passing my vehicle again, I found my APL doing pretty much the same thing.

Good man.

We took a moment, at my vehicle.

We covered some of the rough plans for the day, all of 'em pretty much at some point involving the phrases 'goat rope, semper gumby, SNAFU, and follow my lead'. There was some discussion as to the two guys that were still blowing mud from eating the local... 'food' that the ING soldiers offered us the other day (there's being polite, and then there's being smart. Guess which one I was? Most definitely in the 'smart' column, thanks be to Allah). Coming back to the matter at hand, my APL nodded in the direction of the graves and grunted. I responded by telling him that we'd try to stay off the final resting place of dear ole Ab and Om if possible, but if things got real interesting, we might have to really piss off everybody in the village by driving right through. Thankfully, the local po-po and ING showed up around that time, marginally reducing my ever-constant expectation of attack.

Important business nearly completed, it was time to move on to the next order of business; chow. Opening the flaps on the MRE box in the foot well of the rear-right passenger seat, I saw that the top-most MRE was Frankfurters; Beef, 4. Uhhh, no. Flipping that one to the side, I saw that there was only 4 or 5 MREs left in the box, and the second one I looked at was also the 4 Fingers of Death meal. Ignoring the chuckle from the gunner in the turret, I was about to check out the rest of them when one of my Lance Coolies popped his head around the vehicle and excitedly informed me of some Important News.

"HeySergeant,gunnerofBlack3justcameonthesquadradioandsaidthe
terptoldhimthatthere'sawhorehousearoundhere!"

Sighing at the collection of Meat-Sticks and Crapolaya, I grabbed a MRE, tossed a curse in the general direction of my vehicle crew (and promised them more fire watch), and turned to the Lance Corporal. "What was that?", I asked. "Whores!" was the excited response.

Seriously?

"Wanna check it out on our way out of town?", my APL asked, "might be something... uh, interesting going on in there. You know... uh, suspicious activity, or something."

I'm pretty sure he was mostly joking around.

"What in the heck are we gonna do in an Iraqi whore house?", I asked.

I decided to ignore his raised eyebrow.

My Lance Corporal put a disappointed look on his face and commented as to how I never let the guys have any fun [pout]. I told him that the squad, their weenies, and for that matter his mom would thank me later. He trudged off to tell the rest of the guys the bad news.

I know, I know, no 'troop welfare'. Bad Sergeant...


HERE was going to be where I linked to a story about a visit to 'what just happened to be' a south american brothel (yeah, just one), but I wasn't able to find it. Have I not posted it on this blog?


Turning to my APL who looked like he wanted to continue the discussion, I held up one of the weenies from my MRE. "Can we talk about something that else, at least when I gotta choke this bad boy down?"

"Sure", he said, " I got this rash..." [scratch, scratch]

sigh.

Shaking My Head

Check out this turd.

John 15:13

I sincerely hope that the Peralta family knows that to many, Sergeant Peralta could not possibly be held in any higher esteem throughout the Marine Corps. Even when I was still in Iraq, his name and actions had already entered into Marine Corps lore, and will be carried forth for many, many years to come. I am only one of many that feel that the Navy Cross, while a very high honor itself, is insufficient in this situation.

link.


Semper Fidelis, Sergeant.

Semper, Semper, Semper Fidelis

There are a number of stories that I remember on this anniversary. Some are of cops, many are from firefighters. Those stories from 9/11 and many others from day to day life are mainly now why I consider both of the above to be brothers in arms or members of a sister service, if that makes any sense.

Of course, it's hard to forget the responses of 'regular' folks, men and women, just going about their lives. I do have to say though, if pressed, that this story is one of my personal favorites.


"You can call me Staff Sergeant."


Semper Fi, Staff Sergeant.

Gonna run run run...

The running post a ways back was inspired largely due to the fact that I'm trying to get back into running shape. Only slightly more accurate of a thing to say would be that I'm trying to get back into some sort of shape other than what I am right now. I'm not wheezing from climbing a set of stairs or from a couple of 12 oz curls, but I've notice quite a bit of decline in my conditioning since I've gotten out.

Shocker, I know.

Not trying to set any records here, and I'm being careful to not set any impossible goals (can you tell I've done this before?).


A brief snippet of what runs around in my mind nowadays when out for my PT run.


Ok, here we go, easy little run... how did it go? 'Forward at a double time!' Pffft...

Allrighty, not so bad... keepin' it slow and easy... well, slow, anyways.

Damn, shins are starting to hurt, wonder if I should change out my 'go fasters'. The shoes are only...oh hell, 5 years old. Yeah, I should probably put that on my 'crap to do' list, volume 1, section 2, chapter 3, page 12.

Damn that sun is awfully shiny today.

Geez, this sucks more than I remembered. Must've gone a couple of miles by now... hmmm, how long've I been running? Crap, 5 minutes. Definitely not a couple of miles.

Ugh, just got passed by Timmy... on his tricycle.

Stupid kid... with his stupid lacrosse? stick... running (at a friggin' sprint) in his stupid h.s. jersey.

Urf, think that was breakfast threatening to make a re-appearance.

Ooh look, shiny!

Dang, those shorts on that lady are pretty... uh, short.

Note to self: no need to run faster when other folks are running by, no matter what they happen to be wearing... *urp!*

Little Known Greek Mythology

It seems that I might have possibly discovered a new god - in the Greek Mythological sense of the word, made even more interesting by the fact that it's been years since I've done any reading of the myths.

Really.

Murfisticles, better known in his modern incarnation as Murphy, is the god of general goings wrong and is the inspiration for this humble blog. He is the bastard child of Ares and the result of what was reportedly a helluva liberty party with some 'ladies' of questionable reputations.

Tequila... does it every time.

Recent research has indicated that, interestingly enough, he got his start as the more specific god of... the nut shot. Bear with me here...

Many of Murphisticles' fans were ladies of course, but only guys are... er, properly 'equipped' to serve this minor deity. Proper worshipping position was remarkably similar to the fetal pos, on the knees, hands cupped around ones tender bits, moaning softly.

Murphisticles works in mysterious ways - including, as recently discovered - small toddlers who, excited at their new found jumping ability, visiting family, and by life in general, land - not on my lap, no! - my right. square. on. my.... urf!

'When In Doubt, Whip It Out'

Like the title?

Cheeky monkey, it's not what you think.

What the phrase referred to (ok-ok, amongst other things, I admit), was the practice of saluting. All Marines learn very early in their careers that they will salute all Officers, it will look sharp, and they will not %~@# it up.

Like everything else in the military life, there's rules for everything, and we learned that it was always better to say, salute an Officer that was aways away and walking in another direction in the parking lot, rather than learn what his personal feelings on 'appropriate saluting distance' was. 'When in doubt, whip it out'.

If you even think you see an Officer decal on the windshield of a vehicle, whip it out (the salute, that is). Don't be the PFC I had to instruct after I had some Captain get about neck deep in my ass on account of the PFC being in lala land, or something. Also, don't assume that the sweet young thang behind the wheel isn't an Officer, 'cause they're making 'em younger every year...

When spending time on the occasional foreign base, better to incorrectly salute a foreign subsergente during a hastily thrown together flag detail than to pass some dude on a sidewalk, nod and say 'whassup, dude' to your Major's personal shower buddy, 'el comandante' (generally, never a good idea to piss of your Major, for whatever reason, fyi). This one wasn't really too much of a problem, due to the fact that enough of the Os hung out with the foreign Os to make things somewhat workable, but still - 'When in doubt...'

You get the idea.

Generally, like I mentioned before, the ground rules were clear enough not to cause too much of an issue. Don't salute anyone in the field, you can get away with a salute to darn near everybody in a ceremonial function, don't just think that 'always salute the guys with the shiny rank', because Chiefs can be notoriously... ornery. Courtesy is always good, and when in doubt...


Now that I got that covered, another example.


I had the occasion when I was a much, much younger Marine (read: boot Private) to attend a formal event on a local college campus. It was a memorial-type event, so I decided to wear my Dress Blues. After the event, I ran into a lady friend of mine, and as it was getting kind of late, offered to escort her to her car. Thought it might be the Gentlemanly Thing to do. To get to her vehicle we had to walk through a somewhat dimly lighted park, and as we were walking in one direction, there was another couple approaching us. I was able to make out that the male half of the duo was wearing the formal uniform of the campus' ROTC, but not too much else.

He performed a rather good salute, complete with the greeting of the evening, in my direction.


Yeah, he called me a 'Sir'. Nope, didn't get offended.

My first thought was that a sneaky Officer had somehow ninjaed his way behind me (some've been known to do that, on the rare occasion). Second thought that was when he didn't see any shoulder rank on my blues, he must've ASS-U-MEd that I was a boot-Lt., and not a boot-boot (a stretch, I know, but still). My third thought, and the one I went with, was just that it was dark, he could tell I was wearing some sort of military uniform, custom and courtesy might have had something to do with it and therefore, what else was I to do, but return the salute? I did leave off the 'carry on' part of the response, though.

I did get a chuckle out of the thought that in about a year, if I remember the cadet rank correctly, I would be obliged to salute the same guy, and call him 'Sir', to boot.