Sunday, November 28, 2004

Port O Johns

Ok so I’m about to leave and I started to think about what is it I am supposed to take away from this experience….what is it I was supposed to learn? When I look back on this what is going to be the one thing that sticks out in my mind….Hands down, the port o potty. A port o potty is like a gift and a curse all in one. A port o potty has the ability to put you through just about every human emotion possible You experience heartbreak when you find there’s no toilet paper, fear when your almost carried away in it (see Ode to Lieutenants Blog), happiness when you’ve been holding it all morning and one comes into view, disgust when you see what the last person left in it, inspired when you see the wisdom of those who have come before you written with flourish (and sometimes obscene pictures) upon its walls, and downright motivated when the stench is so bad you think your going to pass out from holding your breath. Here, I guess in retrospect the port o potty’s have not been that awful. Unlike your run of the mill nature park port o potty that hasn’t seen fresh water since the glaciers came through in the ice age, ours get changed pretty regularly. Oddly enough, besides construction, this is the only thing I notice the local population doing, what a shitty job (pun intended). You know when I first signed up for the military (enlisted) I took the ASVAB and scored not too shamefully yet when I went into the assignments wizard I was offered 2 jobs, Crane Operator or 75B (Administrative Specialist). Can I get a constipated look from the audience? Hmmmmm, let me think about this, 5 foot 3, 115 pound female…Crane Operator…..Secretary….Crane Operator….Secretary. Wow that’s a toughie there; can I hear the options again? I can imagine it went somewhat the same for Mr. Akbar….Terrorist Suicide bomber bastard…Fecal Matter Specialist…Terrorist Bastard….and so on.

There's No Place Like Home

It’s started. Today it was about 35 degree’s when I crawled out of my hole to use the bathroom. It’s absolutely insane, I mean no wonder they had this place so long, who would possibly want to live here? Its ass crack sweating in the summer, and skull freezing cold in the winter. My Other pointed out to me when I was complaining, that a few months ago I didn’t want to go outside and use the bathroom because I was afraid my butt would melt and become one with the bowl. Now I’m worried getting frostbite as my rear hangs out there in the open alone and unafraid. You typically imagine the desert as not getting much rain, but that is not at all true, the fact is this place appears to get just as much rain as back home except that instead of being spread over a reasonable 6-8 month period it will be 500 degrees one day and then piss on you for the next 3 months straight. You know one time (at band camp…) no but really, it actually hailed here once too. I like to think it was Karma since it came right after Mr. Terrorist Bastard was out wreaking havoc and it came down with a vengeance. We were good the rest of the night. I think the cold is actually a plus because it seems these little guys don’t like to be uncomfortable when they are fulfilling the will of Allah. I wish we had that philosophy in our military. Secretary of the Defense to Prez Bushy: Aww shit dude, its way too hot out there let’s just stay in America. Meanwhile akbar won’t leave the hut because his nipples are cold. So we’ve had some uh…adverse activity you know out in our area here. This has been unfortunate because you know, since then our Sergeant Major, henceforth affectionately referred to as “Chicken Little”, decided to make his office up here his permanent residence. Showers, Shaves and Sh*ts and Sleeps up here, it’s like his own personal little bunker fully staffed. He’s kind of like a Cracker version of Sadaam, pretty soon we’ll have to drag him out by his beard, and pick off the sand fleas to get him on the plane home. (Continued later) So it’s Thanksgiving today. I started to reminisce about the year past and those special moments that have made this deployment all I thought it would be, and found I was thankful for many things such as:

1. The vigilant NCO Big Daddy H that attempted to disarm me at a clearing barrel coming back from a convoy when he thought I had fired off the negligent discharge instead of the civilian who was shitting his pants next to me. “Just give me the weapon Ma’am, come on just give it to me”. Yes Big H I do tend to look confused when someone pops a round off next to my head.
2. Not electrocuting myself after plugging the 110 plug into the 220 outlet, a few unfortunate battery reactions, and not frying my roommates TV when I decided to see if I could screw an American Lightbulb into a not so American lamp.
3. The little street urchin that weasled me out of my last 2 dollars in the city by giving me a kiss and a pitiful beady eyed look.
4. The God of Mercy that put me on night shift to reign free over online shopping everywhere, and allowed the time zones to coincide for easy phone purchasing.
5.The acclimation of my intestines to the Great Middle East outdoors after oh only about 10 months of recurring explosive diarrhea and some questionable beef products. Now I can go back to America and start all over again.

Monday, November 15, 2004

Baa Baa Blog Sheep

Alright so yesterday I discovered it is entirely possible to play hangman for nearly 4 hours straight and have it be thoroughly entertaining, particularly when you are spanking your opponent like a porn star. I mean I seriously stomped this guy all night long at this game. He wasn’t about being a graceful loser, but then I do a little victory dance after each stomping so I guess that would make me a less than humble winner as well. What made it so much funnier was the fact that no matter what he came up with I would always win and he would always lose. The last game after he wasn’t able to guess one little word, he had no shame whatsoever with coming up with a 9 word phrase to try and stump the chump. Naturally I was able to figure it out and so then he insisted Jambalaya was not a word, my last victory was null and proceeded to check every online dictionary he could find to prove it (each time it became “two out of three have to say it’s a word, 3 of 3, ok 4 of 4…). He was like the little engine that could…it was kind of sexy. So anyway I got the rank sewn on my Kevlar finally after about 2 weeks of walking around still a lieutenant. Most of the time to avoid the hassle I’d salute other captains to avoid the explanation, but when I was feeling particularly redneck, I’d strut right past another captain looking straight at them waiting for one of them to be froggish enough to try and have a lieutenants ass for breakfast. No takers this week, well unless you want to count our Sergeant Major hehe. He walked outside this morning and I turned towards him my one black bar glistening with fresh morning dew. He threw up his hands and said… “Ahhh, I am so disappointed, here you turned around and I was waiting to see those brand new captain bars and all I get is one…I’m just so disappointed”. Naturally, not being one to like to be a disappointment I leaned in close and whispered conspiratorially, “Well SGM, (looked to my left and right as if to reveal a great secret) if you cross your eyes, there will be two.” It was refreshing to see that constipated look on someone else’s face for a change. I kill me sometimes, I really do.

Thursday, November 11, 2004

Not a Damn Thing

Ok I’ve been surfing the internet like a mad woman lately, it’s like time has stood still. I am crawling across the desert dying of boredom and the great big amusement park mirage in the distance keeps getting further away (yet strangely half naked gyrating Pakistani sandwich men get closer). I have also discovered that my new favorite snack is the culprit giving me the runs…Hot spicy wing and bleu cheezit twisters. It was day number three after I had loaded my grubby little paws with these and gnawing away happily when I suddenly found myself going into code brown (my new ER-esque like phrase for the need to go #2 or explode and die). Now this was particularly unfortunate for me because you know we’re kind of in the middle of the holy month of Ramadan (which has become kind of like a Middle Eastern revision of Hawaii’s Kill A Haole Day except its kill all Americans and its more like 30 days) and I lack the necessary equipment to send out the cease fire while I take a crap. Now I’ve heard of running for you life, but having the runs for your life? No, not really feeling like going to see Allah in a port o john, can I take a rain check Mr. Terrorist bastard? I sat hunched over and suddenly it came to me and my fist curled and I cursed the bleu cheesy twister gods. Speaking of the runs, I went to the DFAC the other day and since I prefer to stay in my big cement building during the nightly activities of Mr. Bombing terrorist man I usually emerge during the daylight hours frantically doing the Pee Pee dance. So I get to the DFAC and decide that there’s no way I could possibly enjoy my breakfast unless I released the spirit of 8 diet cokes to the great port o john in the sky. There were 8 choices in front of me. Behind door number 1 was no toilet paper, door number 2 had plenty of toilet paper but it covered the floors, seat and seemed to be everywhere but on any type of surface that I would consider connecting with my nether regions, 3-6 had decidedly suspicious liquids on both the floor and seats (come on guys I can’t even hover if you pee all over the seats), door number seven had sort of a combination of doors 2 and 3-6 so I’m not quite sure what made me even open door number 8. Maybe it was morbid curiosity, maybe it was because I had already checked every other door, maybe I just like to be punished; so I found myself unable to resist (you sick b*tch). Somewhere the bleu cheesy Gods were rolling around laughing as I opened this door and laid eyes upon their latest victim. Some a*shole had taken a big fat orange (ok Cosmo, orange is not, and never will be the new pink) dump. This would have been fine, except whoever it was must have had his butt cheeks invaded by the ghost of Van Gogh because actually crapping inside the toilet was apparently just not enough of an artistic statement. No this person had instead chosen to unload just to the left of the hole actually designed for his contribution to the world. It was piled up in kind of a mosque like shape. One might think I stood there staring at it for some time due to the painful details that I remember but honestly I only took one look but it burned itself into my memory and has haunted me every minute of every hour since. I slammed the door in disgust and turned around to the amused look of three soldiers and two sandwich men who had been eyeballing my progress. I hesitated trying to think of an angle that would make door number 1 work for me, but I have a strict anti drip dry policy and in the end I couldn’t find myself equal to the task of hovering that long, I was weak from holding it and hunger. I danced the pee pee dance all the way through breakfast…

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

One Man's Trash....

Ok so after many long excruciating months I am finally starting to prepare to go home. So of course my room is a sty, well more so than usual. I would have liked to began with some logical process to my packing, but since that requires patience and strategy I instead dumped everything happily into the middle of the floor (which by the way is only about 1ft by 4 ft) and then kind of sat and looked at it like a monkey looks at a wristwatch. I knew I was in trouble when I went to pick something up and then thought no, I should start with this other something and then no…better start with…actually…until I realized I had been doing exactly the kind of circling a dog makes before squatting to take a gigantic dump, but since I already had the gigantic dump in front of me I was only left with the look of extreme constipation (a rather frequent look for me) without any actual progress. Since I obviously couldn’t take all of the crap I had happily squirreled away in my little hole, I was going to have to prioritize what I could keep and what had to go. Hmmm…well let’s see I have an absolutely worthless purple feather boa, definitely a keeper that one. So with that on the keeper list I had to pick a loser….Eh, who really needs deodorant anyway right, it’s not like anyone would notice in this place. I had too many fond memories with my light up alien antenna headband, so I instead said goodbye to a few good tampons and my allergy medicine (viva la boo-gars). So I went on down eliminating until I had a medium sized box full of those items that had no place in my big pink feathered world. Being the nurturing giver that I am, yet still slightly lazy and unmotivated I opted to dump my pile o crap in the nearest trailer bathroom versus taking it all the way down to the barracks because again that would be (say it with me all you dedicated readers) entirely more effort than Blondie wishes to put forth in one day. So I crept towards the bathroom trying to keep a low profile (due to my highly illegal civilian attire, and troll doll hair style). I poked my head into the bathroom to assure I would have absolute privacy to begin the second dump of the day, because I really needed that box all the stuff was in. As I crouched over my box giving that container of floss one last look of consideration, the door swung open and I found myself backed up into the wall looking as guilty as my dog daisy when I catch her taking a crap in my closet. Staring in beady eyed fascination, were three of the little Filipino women that clean our bathrooms every day. They began closing in on me, circling chattering excitedly in a version of English I’m guessing they must have picked up from Bob my Sandwich Man because I only understood about every third word. Again with that monkey-wristwatch look going, and a 3-5 second delay on my brain to translate I began to understand that they were not going to tar and feather me for planning on leaving more stuff for them to clean up. They were instead trying to figure out if what I planned on dumping was free game, or just for soldiers. I made a sweeping gesture to indicate it was for anyone (since my bobeeze is still kind of rusty), and found my spidey senses saved me once again as I leapt nimbly out of the way as three Tasmanian she-devils leapt over one another towards my box. In a blur of fingernails, flying hair, grunts and giggling it was about three seconds before I did a double take and noticed that my once full box only had one super sized tampon spinning freely from the commotion left in it. Before coming to a stop, it too disappeared into the small claw of Jackie Chan’s kung-fu sister. I stood there mouth hanging open, with the other half of a small appliance that had only 4.5 seconds earlier been in that box clutched to my chest. They turned slowly towards me, and the thought occurred to me I could fake to the left and throw to the right and maybe the flying treasure would cover my retreat….Ok so I’m getting a little carried away, actually what happened is I was absolutely speechless and released my death grip on this part and handed it to the lady who had secured it’s other half. The hunt was over and they chirped away happily to me. I managed to get out a few pleasantries before making a hasty exit. I walked back to my hooch (slang term for my hole), shaking my head in disbelief at what I had just witnessed. I was slightly embarrassed that I hadn’t thrown away better stuff (guilty thought of the sheets I threw in there, that I’m not entirely sure were washed). I guess it’s true what they say; one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. I went back to my trailer, white trash that I was and took a nap.

Thursday, November 04, 2004

Ode to Lieutenants

Alright, now that I’ve advanced to the distinguished rank of Captain, I thought it was time to pay homage to my Lieutenant Roots and recognize some of those things Lieutenants do on the painful road to respect. Since it would be unfair (and not quite as much fun) to limit it to only my own experiences, I will include some of my unfortunate fellow Lieutenants in my Hall o’ Shame. I think all Lieutenant mistakes can basically fit into two categories; Self Inflicted and Ah shit. Self inflicted is when you know what you do could result in embarrassment, missing body parts, shaming the family, some sort of adverse action yet you can’t seem to stop yourself from rolling around in the mess happily despite yourself. Ah shits are those honest to goodness help me I’m an asshole moments that just kind of sneak up and take a bite out of your self respect and dignity. I have a decidedly obvious slant towards the self inflicted sort (basically reference ALL my previous posts), however I’m not above random acts of stupidity either. So we’ll begin boys and girls with the Ah Shits:

So you might be a Lieutenant if:
1. (Technically pre-commissioning but none the less deserving) You tell all your ROTC buddies that you are going to ask to be stationed in Fort Worth. Yeah, apparently just having the word “Fort” in its name does not actually mean it has anything to do with the military, let alone contain a base for one to be stationed at.

2. You realize that when they call your Chemical Suit “MOPP” that actually stands for Might Open when you have to Pee Pee (or might not….draw your own conclusions)

3. You show up to a Class A( a formal uniform) event after deciding that morning that you just didn’t feel like wearing your skirt only to remember after you arrive that the reason you didn’t wear the pants to begin with was because you were to lazy to have the piping that lines the bottom of the trousers that says hey I’m an officer not a private on….suddenly you hear someone singing “One of these things is NOT like the other one”

4. If you have ever had your two bottom teeth knocked out from forgetting to push the charging handle to your M16 all the way in before firing, or gave yourself a black eye (some of us more than once) by trying to put your nose to the non-existent charging handle on your 9mm.

5. You whine to your Apache Helicopter Pilot friend how come they never take you for a spin in their ride like the Black Hawk guys do. Then understand when you walk in and actually SEE an Apache helicopter why they offered (with a smirk) to strap you to the side. (For those non-military readers Apache helicopters are two seat contraptions with just enough room for a pilot and co-pilot and a stick to drive it)

6. (Ok technically this was executed by a SSG, but since it was inflicted by a lieutenant, I’ll allow it) You don’t lock your computer screen and your friendly neighborhood lieutenant has a little fun with the contents of your intelligence report not anticipating you would actually brief the following to the Battalion Commander and all his staff : “…grenade exploded (your addition) and furry little bunnies were released from captivity”

7. If you have ever wailed pitifully from the inside of a port o potty that was about to be driven away to some unknown grid location out in the training hills of Fort Hood with you still in it only to be saved in the nick of time by the driver who finally noticed the one beady eye and smashed nose you managed to squish out the two inch gap in the door to scream for help….

To be continued:

Monday, November 01, 2004

Presenting La Capitana

Ok so I got promoted right. Naturally I was foiled in my attempt to exclude various individuals in my chain of command so that put a little bit of a damper on my love-fest (awww no shirtless Pakistani exotic dancing sandwich men for me). I stood up and got pinned by Black Ninja. Of course my original list grew from the invitation only VIP of about 8 people to more like 20 and suddenly I found myself staring ahead into 40 beady little eyes waiting for me to dazzle them with my academy acceptance speech. It went sort of like this:

(Mandatory good-for-you applause…..)
Um…well thank you for coming….(40 beady eyed expectant stares)
Um…that’s it….(amused laughter, yet oddly still slightly expectant beady eyed stares continue)
No really…that’s it….(more laughter)
Um…ok uh….

Finally someone got the hint and started the standard good-for-you handshake line. I mean I guess I probably should have said something or thanked someone right? The polite brown-nosing butt kissing weasel thing to do would be to thank the Battalion Commander for the positive mentoring and the great privilege of going to rot and die in the S3 shop. However feeling a slightly less generous mood I mustered my most constipated smile while he went down a short canned list of my contributions to the Gap online and cosmopolitan magazine (ok so maybe not that accurate of a list, more along the lines of you know taking care of soldiers and dedication to duty or some crap like that) I should have filled out a card for him. I think one is well on the way to excellence with this list of achievements

1. Successfully completed 300 hours of online shopping and earned Expert badge in Consumerism for purchasing in excess of 300$ of completely useless and offensively cute items.
2. Earned recognition for successfully completing 4-day Solitaire Practice course uninterrupted by work.
3. Nailed just about every male in the unit and a few females too, (that’s right boys) or so I’m told.
4. Completed over 365 anti-bacterial “hover” missions over more than 30 different plastic port o potty seat surfaces throughout the area of operations.
5. Completed 52 command and staff meetings without stabbing myself or anyone else with my mechanical pencil
6. Managed to avoid Voodoo despite many deserving people testing my will to not poke poke poke….

Sometimes I am too cool for even me….

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