Security?

That's me talking to Nicki.  I do look like a terrorist, I guess.

A couple of weeks ago, my kids all came to town to visit me here in Northern Virginia and we decided to go visit the National Aquarium in Washington, D.C.  I won’t go into what a letdown the aquarium was, because I’d like to talk about how hard it was to get through the security at the door.  The aquarium is located in the basement of the Department of Commerce Building (which should have been a clue that it might not be all that awesome), and because that is a federal building, there is a security checkpoint at the door.  I understand why this is, and I support having at least some level of security of government buildings.  I don't really expect much out of people.  I'm a life-long cynic and a dedicated pessimist.  I still managed to be surprised by the lack of professionalism and competence on display at that doorway, though.  I was turned away by a somewhat rude security guard who looked a bit like Nicki Minaj, because I had a small knife in my pocket.  Not a samurai sword, mind you, but a pocket knife with a blade of about two inches.  

This is the fearsome weapon.

Nicki Minaj, Security Guard at the Department of Commerce.

But Nicki didn’t let a little thing like common sense bother her.  She had a position of power, and she was going to exercise it.  When I asked her why I couldn’t have a small pocket knife, she cracked her gum, and with one hand on her hip said “‘ummm… it’s too big.”  So then I asked what the size regulations were, and I got the infamous eye-roll of the put-upon African-American woman and no answer.

So, I decided that rather than winding up in the paper, it was better to just leave and put my fearsome edged weapon back in my car, which was in the parking garage of the Reagan Building, just across the street.  The Reagan Building is also a federal building with security at the door.  However, I breezed through this time even though I still had the pocket knife.  I asked this security guard about the pocket knife specifically, and he just shrugged and said it was fine.  So I hurried to the garage, put the knife in the car, and went back across the street to look at the albino alligator with my family.  I found the whole experience bewildering, and also infuriating.  What is the danger of citizens carrying pocket knives in a federal building?  You can’t hijack a building, last I checked.

Why on earth have we lost our minds when it comes to security?   The events of September 11, 2001 were horrific, to be sure, and we should never allow such a thing to occur again.  That being said, we can’t prevent another terrorist attack by searching for the tools of the last one.  This is called “closing the barn door after the horse has bolted,” as the idiom goes.  The airport is the easiest place to see this, of course.  Terrorists will observe the security apparatus, locate the gap in coverage, and then exploit the gap.  They will seldom repeat an exact same tactic, especially one that depends on surprise.  After the events of 9/11, they couldn’t hijack a plane with a bazooka and a heavy machinegun.  Every passenger on the plane would rise up and beat them down.  Little old ladies would be bashing them with their walkers.  There isn’t a knife in the world big enough to take over a jet filled with people anymore, not even that giant sword Mel Gibson had in Braveheart.  You just can’t get people to sit down and shut up if they think you’re going to fly the plane into a building.  The days of the passengers passively complying with hijackers are behind us now, and I’m sure that the terrorists understand that.  It’s the TSA that hasn’t quite realized it.  It’s time to realistically and pragmatically examine the threat, rather than just a knee-jerk response to past attempts.

Feel Safer Yet?

The thing that makes it so retarded is that it is futile.  You just can’t stop people from sneaking things onto planes.  Even if every single passenger was stripped naked and cavity-searched, they would find a way.  From out-smarting the scanners to bribing the TSA agents, there is always a way.  Take a long, careful look at those TSA agents the next time you go through the airport.  I’m sure that will fill you with a sense of security.  No, the only guaranteed thing the technique of trying to find every conceivable weapon accomplishes is to make the battle for the plane now occur between an armed terrorist and completely unarmed passengers.  Hardly an improvement. 

Richard Reid, Certified Dipshit

The real thing we should be worried about here is explosives.  Hijacking is pretty much a thing of the past, for the reasons I put forth above.  But some nutball can absolutely make the plane crash and kill all aboard with just a small amount of explosives, and there is no shortage of nutballs willing to blow themselves up to make a point.  Finding hidden explosives is a difficult thing to do also, but it is a whole lot easier and less obtrusive than taking naked x-ray pictures of grandma.  The danger posed by explosives is the reason for the weird rules about how much shampoo or toothpaste you can have in your carry-on, and for why you can’t have gel shoe inserts (remember the Shoe Bomber?).  These rules also seem kind of arbitrary, but they are actually based on a scientific reason, namely the amount of explosives required to puncture the skin of the aircraft, which makes them much easier to tolerate.   I find it funny that Richard Reid’s crazy ass was actually foiled by the unarmed passengers and flight attendants around him, and he was physically subdued despite being six feet four inches tall and weighing more than 200 pounds.  It’s a good thing he didn’t have a nail file on him.  What we really needed up there was a cop.  If you think about it, why aren't we spending our money on air marshalls?  Because we'd rather take a picture of your uncle's junk, I suppose.  
The really big question is how much more are we willing to put up with?

Monkeys, Menswear, and Marines

Today’s rant is about something that all the Marines will understand.  My civilian friends may not be aware of this, but the Marine Corps has some strange rules.  One of these rules is that we are not allowed to wear our camouflage utility uniform off-base.  This is our usual, everyday uniform that we usually refer to as "cammies" or perhaps "utilities" if we want to sound more professional.  If a Marine has business to conduct in town, or must travel via civilian transport, then he must change into his civilian clothes or into a dress or service uniform.  If a Marine works in a higher headquarters like the Pentagon, he can't wear his cammies on public transportation to and from work.  He must first change into jeans and a polo shirt.  I have absolutely no idea why this is so.  I’ve had a million conversations with a thousand first sergeants and sergeants major, and not one of them has given me a valid reason for the rule.  The best explanation I’ve ever heard is the somewhat ridiculous claim that it “puts a bad image out there.” 

Judge for yourself—which of the pictures below do you think puts out a better image for the Marine Corps?

This one?

Or do you like this better?

                Believe it or not, the Marine Corps currently favors the second picture.  In fact, I imagine every Marine Staff NCO that saw the top picture spent some time trying to discern if it was taken off-base or not, and to figure out who the guy was in case they wanted to chew him out later.  We Marines will actually sometimes hold what we call “Liberty Formations” where we gather all the Marines together to give them a final safety talk (remind me to describe these jewels to you some time) before they go off on a holiday weekend.  The Marines are required to wear their civilian attire to these formations, and they come looking exactly like you would expect a gaggle of young people between the ages of 19 and 24 to look, which is exactly like the picture above, wearing whatever baggy ridiculous outfit is the latest trend.  I cannot for the life of me figure out why we do this.

            Now for another little wrinkle.  Recently, the Marine Corps adopted a spiffy new running suit.  This spiffy new running suit is approved for wear on liberty.  I’m not bagging on the running suit--I like it.  But why is it okay to wear your sweaty running suit on a shopping trip to Wal-Mart, but if you wear your cammies the world will stop turning?  Riddle me that, Batman.

Pretty Spiffy

What's wrong with this, though?

What I'm not understanding is the institution's apparent hate of its own uniform.  And I must say, that as far as working uniforms go, it beats the other services hands down.  At least that's my unbiased opinion.  So what's the big deal?

I offer this by way of explanation.  There is a little story I heard once, first in a speech from Colonel Robert E. Lee (his real name) at The Basic School in Quantico upon my graduation there in 1999, and have since repeated countless times.  I researched it on the internet, but I have been unable to determine the original author.  I’ve taken to calling it the “Story of the Monkeys and the Cold Water.”  It goes like this:

Start with a cage containing five monkeys. In the cage, hang a banana on a string and put stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the monkeys with ice-cold water.


After a while, another monkey will make an attempt with the same response – all of the monkeys get sprayed with cold water. Keep this up for several days, and then turn off the cold water. If, later, another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it even though no water sprays them.

Now, remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. As soon as he makes a move to do so, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he learns that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will get the crap beaten out of him.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. An interesting point: the previous newbie takes part in the ass-whipping with enthusiasm. Replace the third original monkey with a new one. The new one makes it to the stairs and is attacked as well. Two of the four monkeys that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey. But they don’t let that bother them.

Continue replacing the fourth and fifth original monkeys, and now all the monkeys who have ever been sprayed with cold water have been replaced. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs.

Listen to the Dude explain it.

            And that, Devil Dogs, is why you cannot wear your cammies out in town.  Maybe there was once a good reason, but nobody seems to remember it now.  But that won’t stop the first sergeant from tearing you a new butthole if he catches you at the gas station in your cammies.  We wouldn't want you to give the Corps a bad name...

www.despair.com

Grammar Nerve

People are basically stupid.  That is the thesis of today’s musing.  You want me to elaborate, you say?  Consider the state of language in today’s society.  Thanks to technology, more people are communicating through writing than ever before.  Text messages and emails are more common than phone calls now, according to a survey that I just imagined in my own head.  You would think that all this writing would help people learn to spell, or at least to form a proper sentence once in a while.  Wrong.  It’s had the opposite effect, in my observation.

I am the furthest thing imaginable from an English teacher.  I am at the whole opposite end of the spectrum—a Marine.  The term knuckle-dragger is sometimes tossed around to describe us.  Contrary to this popular belief however, we jarhead officers are an educated bunch.  Do not let my ability to do pull-ups cause you to underestimate my mental prowess.  The Marine Corps has seen fit to put me in an educational environment on a few occasions, both as the teacher and as the student.  I’ve spent better than four and a half years in college-level academia while on active duty.  During that time I have been exposed to the writings of a number of college-educated, professional men and women from all sorts of backgrounds.  And at this particular moment in my illustrious career, I am actually grading papers written by these great individuals.  Unfortunately, I am not all that impressed.  These people are not immigrant farm hands that I pulled off a turnip truck and asked to write a research paper.  These are the cream of the crop of the American citizenry.  These officers are our hope for the future.  If their grasp of the English language is to be our metric, I can tell you that I am a little afraid for our future.

I get it, I really do.  The early days of text messaging on phones was a little unwieldy, so by necessity people found ways to shorten some phrases.  But in the time of full keyboards and “smart” phones, it’s time to dump this crap.  When I see an email or letter with LOL, ROFL, TTYL, LMAO, or some other such nonsense in it, the first thing that comes to my mind is “R U freaking retarded?”  Those aren’t my real beef though.  Don’t misunderstand—I hate them and refuse to use them, but I at least understand their origins and purpose.  The thing that really gets on my grammar nerve is when people confuse words.  If you can’t differentiate between “their, they’re, and there,” or “your and you’re,” or “to, too, and two,” in your writing, then I am going to assume you’re an idiot and will probably disregard your opinion on all subjects.  I actually actively search for these kinds of things when I read something.  I consider these things a sort of barometer of the author's intellect—“dumbass indicator" is the term I use. 

I’m not unreasonable.  I allow room for typos, for self-correct on phones, stuff like that.  I’m talking about on official papers, documents, signs, and things of that sort.  I will forgive a few comma splices, maybe some use of the passive voice.  If you write “your a looser” on your Facebook page, you are still a retard, though.  Make that "you're still a retard."

Why Do You Hate Ron Paul?

                Those who know me well know that I am not much of a political guy.  I have my opinions, but as the saying goes, opinions are like assholes—everybody has one.   But I do like to argue, and nothing gets me in a good argument like politics (except maybe for religion, and I promised my mama I wouldn’t write about that).  But for some reason, any mention of the current political situation stirs up a lot of emotions in some folks, and if there’s one thing I like to do, it is to stir the pot.  So more politics it is…

Let’s talk some more about the Republican primaries.  How come my Republican friends are so up in arms about Ron Paul these days?  I mean, the man is a funny-looking old guy who has been dismissed as a crackpot for years and years.  Why does the rank and file seem so upset lately by his very existence?  Just a month or two ago, he was a non-player, nothing to worry about.  The guys on Fox News would giggle when his name was mentioned.  But now that he’s getting some votes, he’s considered the earthly incarnation of Satan. 

The Republicans are so angry because they feel that their party is being co-opted by the Libertarians/Constitutionalists/Tea Party crowd.  They feel that way because that is what’s happening.  They’ve been so busy arguing about social issues that they’ve missed the boat on what is really important.  Lots of people don’t want to live in a welfare state, but also don’t care if gays want to marry or whatever moral outrage the Sunday-school conservatives are railing against this week.  I personally think gays should HAVE to marry.  To quote the late Greg Giraldo, “I’m a little sick of their happy-go-lucky lifestyles.  Make them be miserable like the rest of us.”

Don’t misunderstand me.  I’m not carrying a torch for Ron Paul, exactly.  He’s got some kooky ideas, like selling off all the National Parks, for instance, that I don’t really like.  He also says he wouldn’t have ordered the operation which killed Osama Bin Laden if president, which I absolutely disagree with.  But, on the other hand, he stands for a vast retraction of the power of the federal government, a return to a stricter interpretation of the Constitution, and a stronger commitment to individual liberty.  And that is something I can get behind.  Obviously a lot of other disgruntled former Republicans feel the same, as evidenced by the popularity numbers for Paul.  Our system of government is such that 90% of RP’s platform would never come to fruition (which is probably for the good anyway), so why do people seem so drawn to him lately?  One word—CHANGE.  Barak Obama rode this same idea into the White House during the last election, despite a platform that borders on socialism.  Well, it more than borders on socialism, it actually lives right next door, truth be told.  I think sometimes they mow each other’s yards.

People are just getting more and more tired of other people taking their money and telling them what to do.  They don’t like to watch the government get bigger and bigger, at least not those who actually have to pay for it.  They don’t like watching more and more freedoms being curtailed, and being reassured that it makes them safer.  A friend of mine sent me this quote today—“Bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of bureaucracy.”  I don’t know where he got it, but that pretty much sums it up. 

Ron Paul is not going to be elected President of the United States in 2012.  He’s too wacky, too ugly, and too short.  Sorry, RP supporters, but there it is.  But neither are any of the other Republican hopefuls.  They are all too boring and the whole party is too fractured.  But maybe Dr. Paul can do one very important thing.  He can serve as an alarm bell to the Republican Party that they need to wake the hell up.  

Smart Ass Kids

            I play video games.  I’m not ashamed of it.  I own a PlayStation 3, and I enjoy playing Call of Duty and a few other games.  I’m a modern kind of guy, so I even get on the internet and mix it up with the other gamers out there.  Don’t get the wrong idea.  I am not one of those pimply-faced couch potatoes who live online and would rather “frag a noob” than have sex with a woman (as if that’s a choice they have to make very often).  But I do like to run around shooting make-believe people with make-believe guns on the TV screen while I eat chips in my underwear.  I’m just not very good at it.

            Occasionally the game console requires an update, and for some reason the people over at Sony think you want to actually watch the thing download and install for 10 minutes.  They must think that, since it never seems to do any of this crap automatically.  First there will be a screen that pops up that says, “A system update is required.  Would you like to download it now?”  As if you would say, “No, thank you, PlayStation.  I don’t want to download the update.  I want all my games to stop working.”  So you push the “x” button on your little controller, and now you sit and watch the update download for several minutes instead of playing video games.  Seriously, Sony.  Cut that crap out.

            It was during one of these little intermissions this weekend that I discovered a new, heretofore unnoticed feature of the system.  You can send emails over the PlayStation Network to other people who also waste their lives on video games.  To my surprise, I had about 150 messages in there.  They were not kind messages.  Here’s a sample:

Subj: FUCK YOU
You are really not good at this.  Why don’t you just quit trying?

Subj: PLEASE KILL YOURSELF
You are terrible.

Subj: OOOPS
I almost played with you again.  You suck.

      Now, first of all that’s very negative feedback. You guys should try to be more constructive with your advice. Secondly, that’s some pretty harsh language from a bunch of juvenile punks sitting on beanbag chairs while their mom yells up for the laundry. I know this is who they are because I can actually hear their little high-pitched voices over the Bluetooth headsets they got for Christmas. Sometimes they get mouthy with their mothers and it makes me upset. But the really upsetting thing about this is that I suck so badly at a first-person shooter game that these lazy, unmotivated, barely literate, virgin, zit-faced slugs felt that they had to write me an email about it. I’ve been a Marine for more than 22 years now. You’d think I could do a little better than that at a combat game. 


 I console myself by remembering that they probably got so good by dividing their time equally between playing the game and pulling their puds. Cyberbullying buttholes.

The Hangover Part II

     I’m a movie buff.  Not one of those artsy, black-turtleneck-wearing fairies who watch foreign films and discuss the film’s deep symbolism and reflections of society and the evil of corporations, but a real movie aficionado.  I’m also not a cretin who can be wowed with a bunch of explosions and a few bare titties.  It will take more than a big special effects budget and a lot of car chases to get a thumbs-up from me.  I am a real, live, red-blooded, self-aware, white American male between the ages of thirty and sixty.  I am the demographic in this country who is supposed to be in charge of things, so my opinion should matter.  And I like enjoyable, entertaining movies with good stories and good music and believable acting and funny jokes.  Is that too much to ask?  Apparently.

     Which brings me to today’s complaint: The Hangover Part 2.  I recently saw that masterpiece of cinema again (accidentally, I assure you), and it raised my ire.  This pile of dog crap is the highest grossing R-rated comedy of all time (according to Wikipedia, and I can’t imagine that the internet would lie about such a thing).  If that’s true, then we should all be ashamed of ourselves.  Everything about this movie is contrived, formulaic, and predictable.  Obviously written by committee, it pisses on the greatness of the original. It has essentially the same plot, only set in Bangkok, and they gave Fat Jesus a haircut and Stu a tattoo.  The Chinese guy’s tiny penis is good for a couple of chuckles, and there’s enough slapstick and shockers thrown in to keep the retarded masses happy.  But for me, at the end of that film the strongest reaction I had was a vague sense of anger and that I wanted my $8.50 ticket price back.  Shame on you, Warner Brothers. 

     Don’t get me wrong.  I know it’s just business.  Warner Brothers took $80 million and turned it into nearly $600 million at the box office ($17 of that was mine).  I am a big fan of capitalism.  But this is also art.  I’m sure that Gone With the Wind II would have been popular initially too, but it seems a little inappropriate somehow.

I have decided that expecting Hollywood to cool it with the sequels is just too much to expect.  People will go and see a sequel to their favorite movie, and as long as that’s true, the movies will be made.  It just pains my heart to see it.  

Republicans Shmepublicans

It’s kind of stupid to have a blog and not write anything on it, even if there’s nobody to read it.  So, I’m going to at least put a post or two up there.  Wipe a booger on the wall, see who notices.  The thing that has been catching my attention lately is the political hoopla over the upcoming presidential election.  The Republican Party is getting itself worked into a froth trying to decide which mind-numbingly boring white guy they will sacrifice at the feet of Barack Obama in November.  I have no love whatsoever for the Democratic Party either (I consider myself a nut-ball Libertarian), but not a single one of those candidates has one-tenth as much charisma as the incumbent.  So I see this primary as a “tempest in a teacup”.  Much ado about nothing, as Billy Shakespeare put it.

The only guy with any kind of original ideas to take things in a new direction is Ron Paul.  Unfortunately, he is about a hundred years old and looks like he might have been an extra in the Lord of the Rings movies somewhere.  He also has a manner of speech that makes him sound like a bad insurance salesman.  Oh well.

The thing that really pisses me off is that there isn’t any damn difference.  Republicans think it's the place of government to tell everyone what's right and wrong.  Democrats think it's a giant soup kitchen/welfare program/jobs program.  One wants government to be an overbearing father-figure, and the other wants a nagging soccer-mom.  The Republicans want us to spend too much money on the military, the Democrats on social programs.  They both want a giant government that controls everything; they are just arguing about the flavor.  I don't think I should be forced to choose between fascism and communism as an American citizen. But that's just me.

An Introduction

I am a fairly normal guy.  I've been in the Marines for a long time now, which colors my opinions on some things--even though I would like to think otherwise.  I mean, I’m considered pretty progressive in Marine Corps circles, but taken on the whole, I imagine I’m pretty straight-laced.  It's almost time to do something else, whatever that might be.  I don’t know what this lifestyle has prepared me for, apart from pointing out the shortcomings in others and doing pull-ups.

My first opinion listed here—and the one that links all to follow is this:  A sense of humor is the most important thing. It is a sign of true intelligence. In other words, if you don't think my jokes are funny, it is because you are stupid.

My children are older, two in college and the youngest in high school (I had a "shotgun start" at an early age).  I’d like to have been a better father than I turned out to be.  Sorry kids.  I am also at the late stages of a divorce from my wife of more than 22 years.  I’d like to have been a better husband than I turned out to be also.  Sorry Becky.

The title of this blog comes from an old running joke of a good friend of mine, Greg Simpson.  I blatantly stole the idea from him.  I used it as a joke myself for a while, and now I am actually formally stealing it in print (sorry Greg).  The good news is, not many will actually ever see it. 

I am not even sure why I would desire to sit down at a keyboard and write down my insignificant musings like this, except that it is nice to have an outlet for the endless stream of ridiculous ideas that spew from my brain.  The real question, dear reader, is why on earth would you read this drivel?  I am neither famous nor rich.  I have no qualifications, apart from being a smart motherfucker.  But if you are here and still reading this far down the page, welcome to the party.