Hell Is Other People

It is so simple.

In the words of Jean-Paul Sartre, "Hell is other people."  

As I drove into work this morning, I was stuck behind an old lady in a new Mercedes sports car, going 55mph in a 65mph zone, right next to a dump truck going the same speed, which was slowly passing some kind of Sanford-and-Son jalopy pickup in the right lane.  I was not alone.  There were dozens of other vehicles right behind me, desperately trying to maneuver around this little clump of stupidity, to no avail.  Words cannot express how enraging that is.

The Slower Traffic Keep Right Campaign

Traffic Jams Mostly Caused By Complete Assholes

Slow drivers frustrate the rest of us

It is a very, very simple idea.  Move right, let the faster traffic pass.  And why would you buy a fancy sports car if you are going to drive it like that, you jackass?  Hey law enforcement, here's an idea.  Start ticketing these assholes.  It is a posted traffic regulation, you know.   

I don't really have anything else this morning.  I just had to vent.  Enjoy your day, Dear Reader.  Just remember to move the fuck over to the right lane.

The Euphemism Treadmill

I've had about enough with being told that I can't say this word or that word anymore.  The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, not freedom from being offended.  I don't intend to go off on some weird Tea Party-esque  diatribe about free speech, so don't worry.  I'm just trying to figure out why we are so afraid of offending people these days.  Left-leaning people seem to shudder at the thought of accidentally offending almost any vocal minority, or at least those that are popular with the Democratic party, such as black people, gay people, or Jewish people. Offending rednecks and religious people is apparently encouraged, however.  For the record, I'm neither religious nor a redneck.  

Okay, there might be just a smidgen of redneck in there.

Well, I'm not religious, anyway.

I'm also not one to be politically correct, as I'm sure you've already picked up on.  I fact, I tend to offend somewhere in the neighborhood of 80% of all human beings I come into contact with.  Some who've never even met me have already determined they hate me (on reputation alone, I assume--though perhaps they read my blog).  So I'm not afraid of upsetting folks, but I find it disturbing that I can suddenly alienate vast swaths of people for using the wrong language, with no real reason given for it, apart from the whim of the Cult of Political Correctness.  There's something basically wrong with that...  I mean, it's the ideological equivalent of trying to follow a flock of blackbirds.

Let me show you what I mean.  First, let's just try to nail down what IS politically correct.  What are the socially acceptable phrases of the day?

It's hard to keep up with.  For instance, gay people apparently don't like the word "homosexual," or so I've been told by my liberal friends.  They now prefer the word "gay" or the "LGBT community".  That's the initialization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transexual community, in case you aren't up on the latest in PC speech.  I was completely unaware of it myself, and was walking around referring to people as homosexuals, and actually was feeling pretty good and proper for not using any of the purposefully offensive slurs, like "queer" or "faggot" or the like.  I understand fully why those types of words are considered improper; they were meant from the beginning as insults.  The thing I don't get is the adoption of a former slang term (gay), and the rejection of the scientific term (homosexual).  Who decides this shit?  It just makes no sense.

Race is another PC minefield.  Black people have changed labels at least three times in my lifetime, from Black to Afro-American, back to Black, to African-American, and now presumably back to Black, since African-American has too many damn syllables.  That's not counting the old-fashioned labels of negro, colored, and such.  Again, these earlier acceptable words were not meant to be insulting; on the contrary, they were considered the civilized, proper, and non-offensive monicker.  I completely understand the rejection of the dreaded "N-word," as it was meant from the very beginning to be derisive.  I'm trying to wrap my head around why words originally intended NOT to be offensive suddenly are verboten.

It's an endless cycle it seems.  Let's look at the word "retarded" as a case study:

There have been people with mental handicaps for basically as long as there have been people.  All sorts of unfortunate problems and accidents can cause people's brains to not function as well as most.  We have words for this, because it is a thing that exists, and that's what language is.  They used to call kids with intellectual disabilities "slow," "feeble-minded", or "simple."  The actual medical terms for various levels of low-IQ scores at the time were "idiot," "imbecile," "cretin," and "moron."  Guess how kids started using those words.

This seemed a little harsh to folks after a while, so they decided to come up with some less hurtful words.  The terms "mental retardation" and "mentally retarded" were invented in the middle of the 20th century to replace the previous set of terms, which were deemed to have become offensive.  The idea was that these new words would imply that the people were not stupid, but that their mental development was just delayed.  Thus, we manage not to insult anyone, right?

Somebody went full retard anyway...

The problem is, the words still mean the same thing.  Pretty soon, these words were being used as playground insults.  See, no matter what you call the "special" kids at school, the other kids will learn that word and will then use it to insult each other.  The process is called the "euphemism treadmill,"  which is an excellent term for it.  

So now the word "retarded" is being phased out.  The Sarah Palin Journal  is insisting that it be referred to as "the R-word."  She is an authority on this because she has a son with Downs Syndrome.  I've got bad news for you, though.  Even if no one ever again uses the word 'retarded' in a sentence, your child will still have Downs.  That's the harsh truth.  No matter what euphemism you dream up, it will become the new insult.

The root problem in this case obviously isn't the poor souls who have intellectual disabilities.  It isn't even the mean kids on the playground who are insulting each other.  I think the problem lies in the self-indulgent people who appoint themselves as the high priests of language.  They seek to control people by making them feel guilty, by bullying them with their indignation over common words.  

What's the moral here?  I think it was to point out that words are tied to a meaning, and even if you change the word, the underlying meaning will remain. Getting upset at the word itself is just—retarded.

"A rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet," as Juliet put it.

A Turd By Any Other Name

Full Video

This is a video of Secretary of State John Kerry addressing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on September 3rd.

He was hoping to convince Congress to agree with President Obama's request to conduct strikes against Syria.  I am a Marine, so I do not let myself get emotionally involved in the political leadership's decision-making process.  Even if I did, I certainly wouldn't comment on it here.  But I did hear a few people saying some things that were disturbing.  The most glaring example came from Mr. Kerry as he scolded Senator Rand Paul:

John Kerry telling Congress he wasn't talking about a war...

The phrase he used that raised my eyebrows was, "The president is not asking you to go to war.  He's not asking you to declare war.  He's not asking you to send one American troop to war."  I heard that and I nearly dropped my glass.  How can this highly educated and experienced man, a former senator, a presidential candidate, himself a veteran of Vietnam, think for one second that what he said is true?  Of course that is what the president is asking!  He is proposing launching cruise missiles and air strikes against another sovereign nation because that nation's government has done something the government of the United States finds intolerable.  That sounds like a war to me.  Maybe not a big one, but a freaking war nonetheless.

I'm not saying if it's right or wrong; as a Marine, it's not my place to do so.  I do believe there is such a thing as a Just War.  I guess I better believe that, given my vocation.

War is just an extension of politics, after all.
Thank you, Uncle Carl.

We have to look at this objectively, though.  How would the United States view a similar attack, if we were on the receiving end of it?  You don't have to merely imagine it.  It has already happened in history.  On December 7, 1941, the Japanese conducted a precision naval air strike at Pearl Harbor to degrade the United States naval forces in the Pacific.  We seemed to take that pretty seriously then.  From what I've read and seen on the History Channel, America got more than a little upset and wound up inventing a whole new type of super-bomb to get revenge on Japan with.

Would the Syrians be less angry?

How about just 12 years ago, when guided missiles in the form of hijacked airliners struck at financial and command and control targets on September 11, 2001?  Did that seem like an act of war?  Damn right it did.  We were justifiably pissed, and the perpetrators got way more back than they bargained for.  They wanted the United States out of traditional Muslim lands, and instead wound up with thousands of Americans running about the entire Middle East, blowing things up and playing country music.  I was one of them, and I was glad to be there, if for no other reason than that my very presence was a thumb in the eye of those who dreamed up the 9/11 attacks.

I'm the really good-looking one.

What am I saying?  I'm saying that war is war.  Calling it something else doesn't change its nature.  It's terrible and it's unpredictable.  It is messy.  Innocent people will be hurt and killed.  Things will happen we didn't intend.  Chaos is the only thing we can count on.  War is sometimes necessary, but we should never be so naive as to think we can completely control it.  We should at least be honest enough with ourselves to call it what it is.

It is our pride that gets us into trouble, our hubris.  It is the most intelligent and accomplished among us who are the most susceptible.  We start to feel so superior that we believe that we can strike other nations with impunity.  We can't.  People are very, very inventive when it comes to hurting each other.

We should all know better by now.

Where's the Innovation?

If there is one thing that we Marines are good at, it's believing our own press releases.  There's actually a lot of good in that.  Young Americans will do amazing things, as long as they believe in themselves and in each other.

USMC Video

But senior officers need to stay a little more realistic.  Believing in yourself is good.  Fooling yourself isn't.

When I joined the Marines, 20-something years ago, I was made to memorize a long list of facts about the Corps.  Or at least I accepted them as facts at the time.  It went something like this:  

A drill instructor asks a question, and the whole platoon of recruits recites the answer back at the top of their lungs:

"Who is the Grand Old Man of the Marine Corps?"  

"Sir, the Grand Old Man of the Marine Corps is Archibald Henderson, sir!"

"Who is the father of Marine Corps aviation?"

"Sir, the father of Marine Corps aviation is Alfred A. Cunningham, sir!"

"Where did the Marines earn the name 'Devil Dogs'?"

"Sir, Marines earned the nickname Devil Dogs from the Germans at the Battle of Belleau Wood in World War I!"

These stories of the Corps are mostly at least sort of true, at least I think they are.  Over the years, I heard these stories repeated, over and over, to the point they became a sort of a dogma, almost a religious scripture, something that was beyond question.  It doesn't matter if it's bullshit or not.  

They aren't all that open to the idea of debating things at Parris Island...

One of the big things that we Marines tell ourselves is that we, as a service, are very innovative.  Some examples of this innovation are below.  There is an underlying truth in all of these, too.  

• The close integration of fire support from aircraft with ground maneuver during the "Banana Wars" in the 1920's.  This resulted in what we call "close air support" today.
  
  
  
• The first use of helicopters to deliver ground forces in a combat maneuver (called vertical envelopment) during the Korean War.

  

  U. S. Marines of the 1st Marine Div. Reconnaissance Co. make the first helicopter invasion on Hill 812, during the renewed fighting in Korea. September 20, 1951. T. G. Donegan. (Marine Corps)

• The development of amphibious armored vehicles (now called AMTRACs) that can deliver troops to shore and then move inland on land.
  
  
  
• The use of personal body armor ("flak jackets") for ground troops, also in the Korean conflict.

  

  Marine holding the shrapnel stopped by his body armor in Korea.

• The development of amphibious assault doctrine in the 1930's, just in time for World War II. 
  
  
  

The most significant thing from that short list of examples is the last one: amphibious doctrine.  It saved the world's bacon in the 1940's, in case you don't realize that.  Amphibious doctrine is the how-to guide for delivering land forces to a hostile shore by ship.  It integrates naval gunfire and air support.  It describes in detail how to load ships, how to organize the landing craft, and how to allow for logistics and resupply.  What it did, in effect, was to analyze the disastrous Allied amphibious assault in WWI at Gallipoli, and then it solved all the problems through planning processes and new technologies.

Not sure how they failed, given that they had Mel Gibson with them.

This new doctrine, after some tweaking early in WW2 at places like Guadalcanal, became wildly successful.  It allowed for some of the most famous American victories ever: Normandy, Iwo Jima, Okinawa.  Perhaps you've heard of them.

The most famous photo of all time...
"This guarantees a Marine Corps for 500 years"
-James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy, 1945

  All of this success during World War II most definitely went to our (meaning the USMC's) heads.  The Corps transformed, almost overnight, from a small, specialized force of 17,000 Marines into an amphibious force of more than 500,000.  We had generals and bases and funding.  The public loved us.

But we had become too big for our britches, it seemed.  During the post-war drawdown, there was a serious attempt by some to dissolve the US Marine Corps, on the grounds that it was a redundant capability, essentially a second land army.  Furthermore, nuclear weapons had made major amphibious landings obsolete, or so it was said.

“Large-scale amphibious operations will never occur again.”
-Gen Omar Bradley, US Army, 19 October, 1949.

US Marines landing at Inchon, Korea on 15 September, 1950.
This landing reversed the course of the Korean War, and saved America's bacon.  Again.
Take that, Omar Bradley.

The Marine Corps survived this period of infighting amongst the services, but we developed an intense institutional paranoia about people trying to get rid of us.  The "graybeards" of the Marine Corps at the time understandably wanted to hold on to this impressive force they had developed.  Furthermore, the idea of keeping a large amphibious force ready at all times seemed vindicated by what happened in Korea.  In fact, there was so much protective love for the Marine Corps, that Congress codified the minimum size and composition of the Corps in 1952 in an amendment to the National Security Act of 1947.  The Marine Corps still clings to this mission, large-scale amphibious assault, as its raison d'être.  Many still quote the National Security Act of 1947 as if it were sacred scripture.  But what if Omar Bradley was right (read the article in the link)?  Then what?  

When Major Pete Ellis was dreaming up amphibious doctrine in the early 1930's, the Marine Corps was facing a fiscal strain and looking at an uncertain future.  The Corps' missions up until then had been what we would call special operations today, but then we called 'small wars.'  In fact, at the same time that they were busily developing amphibious doctrine, other Marines were writing the "Small Wars Manual," which is still highly regarded today, from the experiences of the Marines in the interwar years.  But World War II was on the horizon, and small, specialized operations was not where the action was going to be, and the Marines damn well knew it.  So they reinvented themselves into what was needed for the time.

Well, the world has turned a few times since 1945, and the Marine Corps once again faces an identity crisis during a fiscally tight period.  Technological advances in sea mines and anti-ship missiles have undercut some of the traditional ideas in how we might conduct an amphibious forcible entry operation.  The ways of the past are out-dated.  It's time to reinvent ourselves again.

But what passes for innovation in the Marine Corps today is really just clinging to the past glory of World War II.  Our developments are not really revolutionary, they are evolutionary.  Our new technologies, like the Expeditionary Assault Vehicle and the MV-22 Osprey are really just new technologies that help us to accomplish a landing that would look very much like the one at Iwo Jima nearly 70 years ago.  We aren't thinking up new ways to provide a useful service to our country in the modern world, we are busy cramming a square peg in a round hole, trying to justify our existence.  Another thing--I'm tired of listening to people use the requirements of O-Plans (contingency plans developed in advance by DoD) as justification for a certain number of amphibious ships and the appropriate size of the Marine Corps.  Those plans were made to use existing capabilities, and using them in turn as as a source of what our requirements ought to be is circular logic, and is guaranteed to stagnate our thinking.  The plans should be adapted to the forces fielded by our nation, not the other way around.

It isn't all bad, though.  Some of our new technologies, like the MV-22 and the LCAC hovercraft, actually do provide some amazing capabilities to the amphibious world, but they go far beyond their use in a traditional large-scale amphibious assault.  But these new capabilities haven't made much of an impact on our roles and missions, because we remain dogmatically locked to the past.

LCAC - Landing Craft, Air Cushion
It's a hovercraft, and it's really fast.

So I ask you, Marine Corps, where is the innovation?  Where are the forward thinkers?  Where are the new ideas?  With no money available, we aren't going to technology our butts out of this one.  We are going to have to really think.

Those of you still reading this far down the page who aren't Marines, may not realize the absolute heresy of my even saying any of this, especially in a public forum.  I may end up like the ending of another Mel Gibson movie if I'm not careful...

Like this one.

Or like this one...

Our True Heritage

One of the things that some Marines will tell you is that large amphibious assaults are our heritage, our service identity, our tradition.  I disagree.  That's only a part of it.  Our true heritage is our adaptability.  Our true heritage is in small wars and independent actions, at least since the end of the age of sail.  There is the previously cited example of the Banana Wars in the Caribbean, but also think about the actions in China between the world wars, and even many of the smaller landings during World War 2.  We are the original American Special Operators.  In fact, I think that the development of the modern SOCOM community was necessary to fill the void left by the Marine Corps' transformation into a conventional force in the 1940's.  

So there's one idea for you.  Return the Marine Corps to its true roots.  Make it an amphibious arm of the special operations community, like a seaborne version of the Rangers, but with the heavy equipment that being on ships allows.  Using the MV-22 Osprey and the LCAC, our reach is enormous, and we can completely bypass most types of beach defenses and obstacles.  We could shrink the Corps and the amphibious fleets drastically, while raising our training quality and increasing our interoperability with SOCOM forces.  This would drastically reduce the size and cost of the Corps, while increasing the utilization of Marines in real-world operations.  

When Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was created in 1987, the Marine Corps stiff-armed it in disdain.  The Corps didn't want to lose control over its best Marines to some outside command.  The Marines are too small of an organization to survive this kind of talent bleed.  Also, the whole Marine Corps considers itself elite, and doesn't like for some Marines to think they are better than their brothers.  That kind of thing really damages Esprit de Corps.

I'm not talking about MARSOC the way it is now, which is exactly what was worried about.  I don't mean a few "operators" or some dudes who think they are badasses jumping out of airplanes.  I mean the entire service of the United States Marine Corps falling under SOCOM.  That removes the big problem right at the source.  I mean completely redefining the missions and roles of the Corps; actually I mean redefining the roles and missions of all the services.  It's damn sure time for it, too.  The organization of the Department of Defense is a bureaucratic nightmare scenario, which defies the understanding of many career military officers, including Yours Truly.  It's wasteful, unwieldy, and bloated.  And it wishes mainly to preserve itself, above all else. 

I'm no Pete Ellis, but this seems like an idea to me.  Our current organization was codified early in the Cold War, a war that has been over since 1991.  I think two decades is long enough to wait for someone to take another look.

You don't like my ideas?  Let me hear some better ones then, Marines.  I'm just wiping a booger on the wall to see who notices.

The Perils of Not Dying Young

Let me warn you up front--this post is going to be gross.  Some material may not be suitable for all ages or dispositions.  Reader discretion is advised.  This means you, Mama.

Are you still reading?  Well, then let me tell you a little bit about my butthole.  My asshole is much like my personality: angry and irritated.  Or at least it was a few months ago.  I'd like to share with you the tale of my tail-end because, well, it's kind of funny.  Also, several people have advised me against it, so it must be good.

I'm talking about hemorrhoids, of course.  Another of the many problems I'm having to learn to deal with because I failed to die before now.  It's probably a result of all those times I ate nothing but MREs for a week and only pooped once.  I used to see the constipative effects of the "Meal, Ready to Eat" as a positive thing, a way to delay the inevitable until I was in a location with a good place to shit. (Is constipative a word?  Spellchecker doesn't think so, but I think it is.)


You never think about things like this when watching Game of Thrones, do you? 

Some Marines think they can go through life eating MREs all the time with no ill effects, but sooner or later, you must pay the piper.  And the later it is, the worse it's going to be.  I once went 11 days on a diet of only MREs and this weird sort of pita bread they used to give us.  I don't remember exactly what it was called, but "long shelf life" was written on the wrapper.  They should have written "You will not shit for two weeks if you eat this" on the wrapper instead, because that's the effect it has.  At the same time that I was eating this constipation-maximizing diet, the MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit) I was with was ashore on the island of Sardinia.  We had about 10 port-a-johns to share among about 2000 people, so those things were completely ruined pretty much immediately.  To make matters worse, some dude put an MRE-bomb in one of them, right into the poop-well.  It exploded and absolutely coated the inside of the port-a-john with liquid shit.  I naively walked right up and opened the door, not even wondering why there was no line for this particular shitter.  Big mistake.  So, I consequently gave up all hope of using those things.  We were also expressly forbidden to poop anywhere but the port-a-johns (port-a-shitter in Marine-speak), lest we ruin the delicate ecosystem.  Ordinarily, I don't let rules like that influence my behavior, but Sardinia has precious few trees or even tall brush to hide behind.  I'm a private pooper, as I've said before.  So I just held it.

After the training exercise was over, we all got back on the ship, where there was plenty of fresh fruit and coffee.  I had  a belly full of both, smoked a cigarette, and then it was time to see a man about a horse, so to speak.

Click this link to set the scene: Randy Takes a Crap

It was horrifying.  I would have sworn that they had been hiding broken bricks and shards of glass in that extend shelf life bread.  That crap was taken in 2001, over twelve years ago, but I still remember it.  That's how bad it was.

But I digress.  The point is that over the years, things had gotten out of sorts in my nether regions.  My butthole was angry, and wasn't coming around.  I tried every home remedy the Internet had to offer, to no avail.  I kept winding up on websites about various terrible diseases.  I really didn't want to go to the doctor, though.  I didn't want to have to show my brown starfish to some stranger.  But the Internet was being very scary, and I really didn't want to die of butt cancer.  That's what took Vince Lombardi out, you know.

I'll bet his turd cutter was much tougher than mine,
and look what happened to him.

I told you all of that to tell you this story...
I finally had enough of my ass hurting, and decided to go to medical to get it looked at.  While I'm stationed here in Quantico, I use the medical facility at Officer Candidate's School (OCS), which as far as Navy medicine goes, is pretty good.  They do tend to have a lot of very junior people working in there, however.  And so it came to pass that after I checked in to sick call, I found myself in an examination room with a 19 year old young woman describing my anus.  To her credit, she didn't so much as crack a smile.



This young Navy Corpsman took my blood pressure, asked me if I had any allergies, all of the usual jazz, and then she left me alone to go get the doctor.  After a good long while, she returned with another young woman, this one a lieutenant, junior grade (LTJG) medical officer.  For those of you unfamiliar with the sea services, a LTJG is an O-2 in the Navy, one step up from an ensign, the lowest officer rank.  It is also the rank immediately conveyed on a medical officer upon graduation from school.  She couldn't have been more than about 26 or so, and looked younger--a brand new graduate of the Navy's medical program, in the Navy for only a year or so total.  And so, now I was discussing the in and outs of my sphincter with TWO very young, fresh-faced ladies.  Everybody was so serious, too.  It was hilariously awkward, like a sit-com come to life.

I need to lay off the Mexican food for a while...

This female version of  Doogie Houser, M.D. asked me if I had hemorrhoids, or anal fissures, or what.  I told her that I had no idea, since I find seeing my own asshole challenging, even with a mirror.  She told me that if I had fissures, I would know because it would hurt like hell.  I told her that I wasn't in that exam room because I felt a tickling sensation.  My butthole was hurting, bleeding, and inflamed.  And itchy! I had been scooting around on my rear-end like a dog on the carpet for months.  Besides, shouldn't she be the one to make the diagnosis?  She's the one who went to medical school, after all.  Wasn't there a class on anuses?  (Is anuses the plural of anus?  I'll have to look that up later...)

Anus Class in medical school

She asked me a battery of additional asshole-related questions, and then she asked if I would like her to just prescribe some medications--that maybe we didn't need to do an examination.  She obviously did NOT want to do the exam.  There was no way on earth I was about to let her off the hook that easily, though.  No, Doc.  It's time to EARN that medical school scholarship.  I told her that I had waited a really long time to come in, and there was no way I was going to turn back now after all of the embarrassment of spending a half-hour describing my "problem area" to them.  Nope, she was going to look at my butt, and that was that.  I did ask that she refrain from sticking a finger up there, since that seems to be what they teach doctors to do whenever they see a human anus.  She assured me that it wouldn't be necessary.

They (the young enlisted girl was still there for some unknown reason) then pulled a curtain around the exam table and told me to remove my trousers, and they stepped over to the door to wait.  Once I was disrobed, they pulled the curtain back, and both came back in.  I didn't get that.  What's the point of the curtain if you are just going to come in once I'm naked?  And why was the corpsman still there?  It appeared to be only curiosity, as she didn't really do anything the whole time.  Maybe they thought it would be more humiliating if they had more people in the room.

So anyway, we finally get down to business.  The doctor puts on her rubber gloves and looks at my butt for about 3 seconds.  Then she tells me that I have one "tiny" hemorrhoid at about the six o'clock position.  I'm not joking about that, she called my horribly painful hemorrhoid tiny.  I was sort of upset by that.  Made me feel like a wimp.  I went in there that morning assuming that I was going to have to have surgery or something.  Also, I'm a little hazy about the 6 o'clock reference, as if it was an enemy fighter plane or something.

My butthole hurts

After I pulled up my pants, the young LTJG wrote me out a prescription for some hydrocortisone cream and some suppositories.  Everybody was really uncomfortable and awkward (they had both just peered into my nether-regions, afterall), so I struck up a conversation to ease the tension. I asked each of them how long they had been in the Navy.  We discussed the LTJG's path through medical school and how my son wants to go to medical school.  She told me all about the program she attended med school on.  I also talked to the young corpsman about her experiences so far in the Navy.  But we all knew it would never be right between us.  They knew too much.

After enduring the Navy's blessedly impersonal automated pharmacy, I took my new medicine home and applied it right away.  I don't know if you have ever tried to use a suppository before, but it's no small feat.  My rear end is unfamiliar with the idea of it being used as anything other than an exit.  I must have gone through about four of those things before I got one to stay in there.  I kept putting one in, waiting a few seconds, and then the instant I moved my finger, firing it out of there like a bullet.  They would ricochet off the side of the toilet and make a pinging sound, no kidding.  Eventually, however, I was successful, and the medicine worked like a charm.  

Zing!

So, the moral of this story is to just go to the doctor.  It won't be as bad as you think it will, and they might be able to do something to help you.  After years of having them just give me a Motrin and tell me to drink more water, they finally came through with some good stuff.  Now I have a butthole like a 10 year old boy.  A Protestant boy, not a Catholic one, of course.  Thank you, Navy Medicine.

Those Kids Today...

My alarm clock goes off at 5:00 AM every day, and it is set to play the radio.  This morning, one of the DJs was talking about the latest prank to hit YouTube, something called the "gallon smash."  Here it is as presented by Good Morning America on ABC television.  The question I have is how such a retarded video got 3.1 million hits in a few weeks.  It isn't even very clever.

As you can see in the video, it's a few teenage boys doing what teenage boys do.  Namely, acting obnoxious and being ridiculous.  It's not particularly funny, and it's pretty stupid.  But it's certainly not national news, ABC.  Here's the whole video:

The radio DJ (the female half of the morning duo) seemed to be really concerned that other people would try to copy these pranks, and that some of the kids would get hurt.  This comment of hers really set me off.  She's worried that idiot teenagers might hurt themselves?  Really?  Because I think that them really hurting themselves would be just the thing to turn that prank video from barely watchable to HILARIOUS.  If you are new to this blog, read THIS to get my feelings about safety for idiots.

Don't expect me to feel sorry for some dip-shit who splits his head open flopping around on the floor and acting like a fool.  I might giggle, but I won't feel a moment of sympathy.  I hope one of them whacks his head on the linoleum and gets a concussion, so he winds up getting coloring books for Christmas for the rest of his life. And his mother has to explain to everyone how it happened, while he drools and gives everyone clumsy high-fives.

If only karma were a real thing.

Also, don't expect me to get all up in arms because some kids are being inconsiderate when pulling their dumb pranks.  Inconsiderate teenagers are hardly a new phenomenon.  YouTube didn't cause this, it just gave an outlet for the little retards.  Old people have been lamenting over the antics of unruly youngsters for as long as there has been the language to permit it.  Hell, even animals that can't talk get annoyed with younguns:

Yeah, you saw that right.  I put a kitten video in my blog.  What of it? I'm secure in my manhood.  You can put up football replays in your blog, if it makes you feel more macho.

The PFT Story

It's February, and that means my birthday is coming up.  AGAIN.  Getting older really, really sucks.  I suppose it beats the alternative, but it still blows.  I guess I never really believed it would happen to me, so any time I run into an indicator, such as an ear hair (I didn't even know that was a thing), it chips away a little at my soul.

The weird thing is, I don't feel any different.  I still look pretty good, too.  I have all my hair, it's still brown, and I haven't gotten fat or anything.  I think of myself as the constant--it's the world around me that is changing, including that asshole in the mirror every morning when I shave.  I know that's not really the case, at least intellectually.  For the little guy in my head watching the movie of my life, it just looks like everyone else is starting to look really young.  I saw a state trooper the other day that looked about 11 years old, for instance.




Some disconcerting facts:

Let's talk about this.

1. My son is now older than I was when he was born.  When I was his age, I was actually bringing my second child home from the hospital.
2. I say things like "When I was his age..." all of the time now.
3. I have been in the Marine Corps for longer than many Marines have been alive.
4. My knees make a sound like I have a bag of gravel in each pocket when I climb stairs.
5. The doctor now sticks his finger in my asshole when I have a checkup.  This is a highly effective deterrent to checkups, by the way.
6. I heard an instrumental version of a rock song that was popular when I was in high school while in the waiting room at the doctor's office (That's before the finger.  After the finger, I just went straight home.)
7. Nose hair is relentless.
8. I find that I hold my breath and make weird grunting noises when I pick something up off the floor.
9. The two hairs that I used to pluck from the back of my shoulders have begun to recruit reinforcements.  
10. The guys on the Viagra commercials are my age.

All of these facts, when added together, can begin to soak through even the thickest layers of denial, and crack even the most bloated of egos.

The PFT Story

Here's a little story about when I first began to realize what was happening.

Every year, I am required to take a physical fitness test, or PFT, for the Marine Corps.  This test includes doing pull-ups, sit-ups, and a 3 mile run.  I am excellent at the first two, but I hate running.  While I was never exactly a speed demon, lately it has been getting much worse.  My performance isn't horrible yet, just not very good, but it now takes a monumental effort for me to be mediocre.  Keep that in mind as I set the stage for the rest of the story.

This was about a year and a half ago, while I was a student at the command and staff college.  It was a bright and sunny May day in Virginia, maybe about 65 degrees, light winds.  A wonderful day to be outside.  We started with the pull-ups.  Like I have said before, my two main talents are doing pull-ups and pointing out the shortcomings of others, so I quickly and easily knocked out the 20 dead-hang pull-ups required to get a maximum score, even though my shoulder had been bothering me, and was making some weird popping noises.  I also had little trouble with the abdominal crunches that pass for sit-ups in the Marine Corps these days.  Then came the run.

I wasn't particularly worried about the run, though I knew it would suck.  I figured it would all be over in twenty-something minutes or so, right?  I stretched a little and waited for everyone to get ready to start.  I had worn a warm-up jacket in that morning, and I stashed it next to a tree by the starting/finish line, putting my car keys and cell phone inside the pocket for safekeeping.  A few nervous seconds standing at the start waiting to go, and then the time keeper says "Go!" and we're off.

I felt fine.  I started my own stopwatch to keep track of how slow I was running, and fell in right behind one of the front runners.  I always do this.  I am an Alpha male.  My ego kicks in, and I decide suddenly that I just won't let any of these scrawny little runner-punks pass me.  So I don't, and I'm hauling ass.  This lasts about a half-mile or so before the realities of weighing over 200 pounds and being over 40 years old kick in.  I start getting out of breath and my heart rate climbs, and I basically feel like shit for however long it takes me to run the next two and a half miles.

That is the usual way I run these things.  I was actually doing pretty well, and made it nearly three-quarters of a mile at a blazing fast pace before reality kicked in.  This time however, it wasn't just the normal amount of suck.  Something strange began to happen.  I began to realize that my arm was starting to ache, and that my hand was numb.  I thought, "Oh, shit."

Heart problems definitely run in my family.  My father had his first heart attack when he wasn't much older than me, and he wasn't running 3 miles when it happened, either.  You read about this kind of crap all the time in the Marine Corps.  Some  42-year-old dude who is the picture of health all of a sudden drops dead, usually while running.  I really didn't want to be one of those guys.  But I still had another mile left to run for the PFT.  If I stopped right then, I would have to redo the whole test from the beginning, and I really hate taking these things.  So I decided to ignore it.  That's how stupid I am.  I think I might be having a heart attack, and my decision was to ignore it.

Well, it wouldn't be ignored.  The pain began to get worse and worse, and seemed to spread across my chest and even up to my neck.  I was gasping for breath.  Now I was becoming very alarmed, but the finish line was now less than a half of a mile away.  So once again, I decided to ignore what I was now absolutely convinced was some sort of cardiac event and just keep running.  Well, jogging at least.  I did slow way down.  Like I said before, I'm an idiot.

So, I crossed the finish line and walked straight over to the Navy Corpsman that was in attendance for the event and told him my symptoms.  I told him I thought we should get into the "safety vehicle" that was staged there and go to see a doctor.  He offered me a small paper cup of water.  I became somewhat more spirited in my request to go see someone who had actually attended medical school.  He suggested that we should wait for the PFT to be over, since he was supposed to be there in case anything happened.  I suggested that he should drive me to the medical clinic before I decided to pull his scrotum over his head.  He found this line of reasoning to be most convincing.  And so we left.

Now upon arriving at the Navy Medical Clinic aboard MCB Quantico, I walked up to the young petty officer at the desk and explained my symptoms.  She was very polite, and entered me into the computer she was sitting at.  Whatever she typed into that thing must have been some sort of code word for "middle-aged man having a heart attack" because they kind of freaked out after that.  They put me into a wheel chair and swooshed me into the back.  There they transferred me to a gurney and started attaching wires all over me.  Suddenly there were about ten people in the room.  Someone was pulling at my shirt, and then the next thing you know, they had cut it off.  Then somebody cut my shoelaces and yanked off my running shoes.  They wheeled in an EKG machine with even more wires and started trying to get an IV started in my arm.  A nurse put two aspirin in my mouth and told me to let them dissolve.  Try that sometime.  It's nasty.  I went from being somewhat concerned to being scared shitless.

The Navy Medical Clinic in Quantico doesn't have any emergency services.  They have to call for an ambulance to take any emergency cases to the hospital in Stafford, a few miles away.  I guess that explains somewhat why everyone was so excited, and maybe why they had such a time with the IV.  The people working on me were all of pretty high rank, so I guess they were the senior doctors in the clinic and didn't do IVs a lot.  They finally gave up after the ambulance crew showed up, but not before stabbing me about 12 times or so in both arms.  Once they released me to them, the fat ambulance guy got one going in about 45 seconds.  The next day both of my arms were covered in bruises.  I'm still a little pissed about that.

This was the first time I had ever been in an ambulance that I can remember (I was in one many years ago, but was passed out.  A story for another time.), and I was now quite thoroughly upset.  The fat ambulance guy asked me about my pain in my arm and chest, asking me if it was the same.  I realized that no, it was getting a little better.  My fingers were still kind of numb, but the aching pain in my shoulder and chest was not as bad.  He told me I was fine and stable, and that it looked like I was fine.  I realized that he was probably right, and started to not feel as scared.  Then I just felt foolish.

We made it to the hospital in just a few minutes, and they wheeled me straight into the emergency room.  I told the doctor that I was feeling better, though my arm still ached quite a bit, and they did a blood test to see if I had had a heart attack.  I had not.  To make this long story a little shorter, I got an MRI on my shoulder, and the diagnosis was that I had torn the labrum in my shoulder during the pull-ups, and it had swelled, putting pressure directly on my brachial nerves, causing the pain and numbness.  Talk about feeling foolish.  I didn't even know I had a labrum.  I thought that was just the ladies...

So anyway, they discharged me from the hospital in Stafford.  They brought me a phone to call someone to pick me up.  Here's the problem.  I couldn't call anybody.  You don't really know anyone's phone number these days.  Your cell phone knows all the numbers.  And my cell phone was rolled up in my spiffy USMC running jacket next to a tree at the PFT starting line.  I went from feeling foolish to realizing that I was a freaking idiot.  I had to look up the base operator and get the number to the Command and Staff College, which meant I had to talk directly to the second-in-command at the college, a full colonel, to arrange my ride back from my little freak out.  Got into a little trouble from my girlfriend too, when she realized I couldn't remember her phone number.

So that's how I came to be sitting outside the hospital in Stafford, Virginia, waiting for a ride from one of my classmates, in only my green PT shorts with no laces in my shoes.  Not my finest hour.

What's the moral to the story?  I'm not sure...  Maybe it's to memorize your emergency phone numbers.  Maybe it's a precautionary tale about getting older and not being too tough to get checked out.  Maybe it's that you should ignore all of that heart attack nonsense, because it's probably just your labia, you big pussy.