While I was in the Marine Corps the closest I ever got to action was the nine days I spent on the Kuwait/Iraq border, back in the summer of 1992. Where the remains for Iraq’s first line of defense were being used as target practice by our armor units.
“Action” isn’t the right word but there isn’t a word for “so damn hot that I didn’t care what happens just get me some place cooler”. I spent the majority of the time in the back of my ambulance, the only shade, wearing only running shorts and holding a block of ice to my head.
Out of boredom, the corpsman and I went out on the range and got some up close and personal pictures of the tanks, APCs, artillery and trucks that made up the line after the Warthogs tore them up eighteen months prior. When you’re driving an ambulance, you can go any place you want, which doesn’t mean you should, here’s an unexploded munition that I almost stepped on.
Notice how we’re not in any of these pictures? That’s because we’re not stupid.
[Full set at flickr]
How long has it been since I’ve discovered a new hip hop artist that’s blown me away? Was MC Frontalot the last one? Wow, that’s a long time.
Busdriver [Official Site]
I can’t tell you anything about him that you won’t find on Wikipedia except that he’s very clever, very awesome and seems to have a thing against hippies. I’ve been listening to the track The Trogolodyte Wins on repeat in my car for the last week, which is something that I never do.
In the Summer of 1992 the USS Tarawa crossed the equator. I had the distinction and misfortune of being one of the last to go through the crossing the line ritual called Wog Day
I’d appreciate it if no one got turned on by this picture.
“Wog”s are the crew members who have never crossed the equator before while “Shellbacks” are the ones doing the hazing. Which always made me wonder, who hazed the first guys?
 |
The Wogs were required to dress this way: Cami pants-inside out, underwear on the outside (yes, we all wore tiddy-whities. no we didn’t know any better) and knee pads made of cheep shower sandals and duct tape. The knee pads were essential because we were crawling on our hands and knees on the steel deck all day.
You might be wondering why I have “Danzig Rules” written on my ass. Let me explain; while I was in the Marine Corps the poor white trash influence on my life was very high, I was also driving a black ’81 Camaro. But the real reason for the underwear declaration was to taunt Sgt. Frey, my platoon sergeant and shellback who reminded me every week that Danzig was the devil’s music. |
The shellbacks are the ones dressed like thrift store pirates.
Highlights include: The Royal Baby, the fattest sailor on the ship covers his belly with some condiment and sticks a cherry in his navel. The wogs are required to take the cherry out of his navel with our mouths. When we’d go it he’d grab our heads and try to smother us with gut and mayo.
The Wog Queen: Earlier in the week there is a cross-dressing competition for the position of Wog Queen. Ostensibly, the queen doesn’t have to directly participate in the ceremony, he/she only has to sit on deck with mustard on his/her foot while the other wogs crawl by and kiss her toes. I don’t know if this is true for all wog queens, but at the end of the ritual our queen had to get down on all fours and crawl though all the muck like the rest of us.
As well as: A toilet full of garbage that reverse-flushed when we stuck our faces in.
A
yellow, plastic sleeve of… yes, garbage. An occasional
beating. (At some point a shellback shoved a pork chop down my pants. The guy did me a favor because just about every time I got hit I got hit right on the chop.)
Being submerged in a tank of I-don’t-know-what-but-it-burned. There was also a wooden coffin (not pictured) that they put us in and beat on the sides, my least favorite part. And a lot of waiting around
like this.
From what I hear the Navy doesn’t do this anymore. Charlie went through again a couple years later and said that all of this was gone, instead they just handed out certificates, “Welcome to the Southern Hemisphere!” What a rip.
[Full Set on flickr]
Anza-Borrego is huge! [Melissa shown for scale, and attractiveness.] The perfect way to end an eighty hour work week.
We’re not sure if we really found the mine but we did find the sign and some square trenches that seemed kind of mine-like and that was good enough for me.
The trip was filled with beautiful sights (and there’s a desert behind Melissa that isn’t bad to look at either).
And now that I have the GPS device I might take up Geocaching. Gaming + hiking
[Full Set]
I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Captain America’s dead. This provided a kind of ending to Marvel’s Civil War. At least it would have been more satisfying than how the series itself wrapped up.
I had high hopes for Civil War; The security vs. privacy debate played out by Iron Man as the military industrial complex vs. Cap as the American ideal. But by issue four (or issue Clor) it was pretty clear that Mark Millar had spent too much time writing for the Ultimates and wasn’t in touch with the mainstream Marvel characters. Side issues from other writers did a good job of covering up some of Millar’s… liberties. But the story was still filled with road hazards that a good editor should have fixed. But I have a feeling the editor’s were part of the problem (this is Marvel after all).
They’re still turning out Civil War spin-off books but I can’t bring myself to care. Maybe World War Hulk will slap the 616 back into place, but I doubt it.
managed to salvage the pages of Civil War into one of the funniest parodies I’ve read in a long time. Don’t wait for the trade, issues: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
You were right, the beard was evil:
After an hour long rampage that caused great loss of life and property damage eventually the beard was subdued by Godzilla and Anguirus. I’ve learned my lesson; no beard for me.
(I also took picture of myself wearing a Tom Selleck and a John Waters, but I ain’t posting them. If the beard was a mistake, a mustache is a fiasco.)
Straight on, it looks alright:
But when I turn my head to the side:
“Where’d it go?”
It looks like my era for facial hair was the Go-Go-Goatee Early Nineties. Maybe in eight years they’ll be fashionable again.
The beard is
really starting to itch, I won’t be sad to see it go.
- Don’t update the BIOS without a really good reason.
- Having an external hard drive to backup files on only works when I copy the files over to it.
- Don’t keep my only copy of important files on the Desktop.
Applying any of these lessions before Sunday would have made this week easier.
HP tech support sucks, I can hear them reading instructions off the spreadsheet. At least with Dell I got someone who knew what they were doing a third of the time.
Ah well, at least I had the novel backed up on the thumbdrive. (and now on gmail)
