Funny story though, for the longest time I wanted to transfer over from the Marine Corps to the Air National Guard because their reserve unit is only 5 minutes away from my house and I can reap mucho benefits when it comes to college money.  However, when I went to Five Guys yesterday I saw two fat Air Force E6′s in line wearing these new tiger stripe cammies.

Only $49.99!  Lack of enthusiasm and constipation not included.

Yes, now the Air Force wants to jump onto the digital utilities bandwagon.  Maybe its just me, but the tiger stripe pattern is horrendous.  This guy up there almost looks embarrased to be wearing them, he probably told the cameraman to shoot him in the mouth after they took his picture.  In fact, after seeing the new Tiger Stripes, I changed my mind completely about transfering to the Air National Guard.

Now, with the ridiculous looking pattern aside, at least the uniform is tactically sound.  BUT… if anything is worse than the AF Tiger Stripes, look no further than the Army’s excuse of a bag-of-douche for its soldiers to wear:

VERY Tactical.  Lets pray our enemies are all colorblind.

However, I am looking forward to joint operations in the future with the Army.  Since the enemy would shoot at anything that is gray, the casualties on the Marines side would be marginal at best.  I mean, I’m sure they tested out the pattern before they decided to issue it, which makes me wonder if the guys testing it were blind or they decided on the uniform based on how cool it looks.

My friend Jimmy in the Army told me last summer when he was playing GI Joe down in Ft. Lewis with 2nd ID and played OPFOR when he encountered the new Army cammies.  He was radioing a SALUTE report and described the enemy as wearing white T-shirts, turned out it was the ACUs.  He said he could spot them from a mile away and stick out like sore thumbs.  Needless to say, the team wearing the ACU’s got treated with the taste of what I like to call the new ”Goat-Shit Defeat” flavor.

All jokes aside, any combat veteran could tell you that unless you’re a sniper, blending in with your surroundings is a waste of time.  But sticking out like a sore thumb, they might as well wear pink ballerina tu-tu’s, they’re probably just as tactical.

I like the Marine Corps woodland and desert uniforms not because I am biased towards them, but they actually serve a purpose and is still tactical at the same time, with minimal moving parts to keep it simple.  Look at the zippers and velcro all over the Army’s ACU– mandatory velcro will get troops killed one of these days.  Plus, they just look silly IMHO.

Personally, I like the idea of back in the day when the old cammies were used by both Marines and Army, only difference being the cover and nametapes that say “US ARMY” or “US MARINES”.  Now everyone wants to look exclusive, as some sort of Pentagon’s fashion show project + waste of tax dollars.  It seems like we’re going away from the concept of a joint military– dress uniforms should be different, but in the field, everyone should wear the same uniform.  One Team, One Fight.

I had no idea about your crazy ass until the first time I saw Whats Love Got to Do With It?.

The real tragedy here is that from now on, bitches are going to be stepping out of line everywhere.

I happily spent my weekend doing one of these:

That really is me, btw.

Just the way I like to spend my weekends, with women whom share the similar interests.  Its easier anyway.

“So what will it be, a Jack and coke for you, and the usual roofie colada for your date?”

My aunt and uncle showed up with my cousin the other day, apparently I haven’t seen any of them in years upon years.  Now cousin “G”, we’ll call him, who’s only 15 years old, looks like he was fresh off the boat out of a BET commercial.  These guys are from Taiwan and only recently moved to Southern California, so their english isn’t that good yet.  Especially “G”, who supposedly kids these days have the propensity to be able to grasp the English language better than their parents.  What do we get here?  “G” not only dresses like something straight out of a Roca Wear catalog, but TALKS like one too.  In his broken accented ebonics.

Accented ebonics.

Now the Chinese accent is already funny enough (those of you whom have listened to Russell Peters’ many diatribes over making fun of the Chinese accent would know what I’m talking about), but combining that ‘CHAI-NEES ACK-SUNT!’ along with Ebonics is so sad to the point that its hilarious….. Chinese Ebonoics, lol.  Lets call this “Chingbonics”

I had to spend the most grueling few hours of my life when my parents asked me to take him around to the mall and hang out with “G” for a few hours.  First of all as a rule of thumb in any man’s car– you don’t touch a man’s radio unless he tells you to– failure to comply can result in broken kneecaps or unwanted pregnancy (you get to choose).  I have my iPod wired up to my car stereo where I am the only one allowed to control it, and “G”, in his Chingbonics insists on listening to “Soulja Boy” or any “duhhtee souf beeets” (Dirty South beats….. holy shit, i can’t emulate his Chingbonics with text, its impossible).  I had to expose some REAL hiphop starting with some Talib Kweli, and apparently this pissed him off because he insisted on something he could “lean” to.  So I played rock music to piss him off even more.

I run into my friend Pam at the mall, and listening to “G” trying to get his game on with her is probably the funniest and pathetic thing I have ever seen in my life.  Not only that, Pam is much taller (she’s 5’6″, imagine how short this guy is) and 10 years older than “G”.  Anyone a mile away could tell the searing headache being injected into her frontal lobes, which somehow results in a facial expression that says what the fuck.

You know what…. I forgot the whole point to this story.  In the end, I was ready to beat up my own cousin.  I somehow let him know what an idiot he is, and little guy starts throwing a temper tantrum, even with “nigga what you talking about?”.  Under two circumstances would I have raped him in the mouth and thrown his lifeless body into a dumpster at that point– if he wasn’t my own cousin, and it was a dark alleyway.  I just shook my head and took him back home, also threatening to cauterize his genitals with a boxcutter if he tried to touch my radio on the ride home.  I even played rock music on the way back.

I told my parents upon our return that not only am I disappointed in my own cousin, but if our honorable ancestors could see this right now they would shit themselves in the face and die again.  Chingbonics, geez.

Once upon a time during a Christmas season, a very bored Marine Reservist General decided to make other reservists feel useful by making us collect toys for the needy.  On the surface, it is a charitable drive that donates toys to less fortunate children…. which really is true by the way.  However as historically noted, Marines always have ulterior motives for doing volunteer work, anywhere from helping the poor and impoverished people, or blowing up third-world countries– all rewarded by food, beer, more beer, steamy romps with underage drunk college girls who are attracted to just about anyone holding a beer bottle…… after that, followed by more beer.

I could go on forever about that, but back to my original point– here’s how Toys for Tots work.  A Marine (or several) will stand at a location where there is a donation point (ie. Toys ‘R’ Us) by wearing his dress blues and greeting people as they walk by.  Ok honestly– the whole point of standing there is to have women give out their phone numbers to the volunteering Marine collecting toys in his Blues, like throwing magnets at a refrigerator door.  Troop welfare, as I like to call that, is achieved; and somehow while these Marines are happily working on the helpless women in the store, somehow a mysterious pile of toys show up in the donation boxes.  Troop welfare AND mission accomplishment, where there are plenty of toys to go to the needy kids, and the Marine who made it happen managed to take home the nineteen year old blonde sorority girl that was shopping for gifts for her niece but ending up accepting the Marine’s offer of buying her a beer, only because he’s over 21.

In my world, here’s how its done:

The Lance cooley, fresh out of boot camp and training and still thin enough to attract women will stand there like a statue, like how you always see them in the TV commercials.  Take Lance Corporal “T-Bone” here, an example of fresh bravado who still believes in the mission and stands tall and proud alongside the toy bin.

Meanwhile, the seasoned NCO in charge of the Lance Coolie, whom has picked up an unhealthy drinking problem after years of slaving away to these ridiculous programs (plus a combat tour or two), he will show up to the family-friendly environment extremely drunk (with a possible flask hidden away in his front pockets that he isn’t supposed to use) and proceed to get lost every once in a while and prey on young mothers innocently buying toys for their kids, but lured into the NCO’s web of attraction, due to the combination of a great-looking uniform, overbearing frat-boy attitude, the smell of whiskey, and his large penis that once made John Holmes blush in shame.  Take for example here, Corporal-Second-Award “Dirty Fungus” here that just showed up to this Toys for Tots event driving his new car he just recently purchased on eBay (coin-operated engine, with standard ‘Tigger’ hood ornament!  Optional drivetrain included in Premium package #44).  He may be just another old salty-dog, but look– he’s still extremely enthusiastic about this event (and extremely hammered from drinking for 3 nights in a row, while also doped up on several cans of Red Bull).

Thus, is how this dynamic duo strike a perfect balance between troop morale levels and mission accomplishment.  The lance coolie witnesses toys being donated, plus his fearless NCO catching another STD from unprotected sex with 15 girls in one night thanks to his new ride!

…………………………

All jokes aside though, T-Bone and Dirty Fungus did manage to get six large boxes of toys donated at the Toys R Us event before noon, a record high for that store.  Thanks to pretending to be nice for 6 hours and putting guilt trips upon customers at the checkout line when told to “think about the children!”.

One kid no older than six years old did come up to us and asked us what branch of the military we were in.  When we replied ‘Marines’, he asked us if its got anything to do with the Navy (Annapolis is a pro-Navy town, I’m thinking it might have something to do with the Naval Academy being there).

Kid:  You guys Navy then?
Me:  Not really.
Kid:  Those uniforms are cool!  You MUST be from the Navy!
Me:  Why is that?
Kid:  They have the BEST football team!

Ahh yes, brainwashing their kids with the permanent directive of “Go Navy, Beat Army!” for the Army vs. Navy game (38-3, boooyaaa!) can start as early as childbirth some say.

….is an insane game.  For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, its a 1st-person shooter videogame that depicts combat in the real world, with realistic physics and detail, none of that sci-fi crap like Halo.  As far as presentation and visual detail, it is beyond realistic to the point of being pee-yourself creepy.

In fact, I had to stop playing it because some missions reminded me of Iraq way too vividly.  No joke.  I almost shit my pants on the extreme detail… but for some reasons when I was playing through the US Marine missions, I had to stop playing after I watched quite a few fictional Marines in-game get killed in combat.  I don’t know why, “its just a game”.  No, not when you actually lived the game itself.  Watching an imaginary in-game Marine get killed is just as real when you’ve actually seen a real Marine go down in front of you.

Still, it was entertaining nonetheless.  I mean, I’ve only lost all of sleep as I know it by staying up late playing online.  Probably why I forgot to do my paper for class last night and I probably need to hide this game if I ever feel like getting any sleep back.

………………………

I watched a few documentaries where they brought veterans from past wars revisit the former warzones, such as Vietnam, France, and Iwo Jima.  Its a strange contrast brought about where films, photos, and footages depict the lowest depths of hell on earth for these men that participated in these wars.  Years later in the 21st century, these same men that sweated bullets and ate hand grenades for breakfast went back to revisit their past warzones as tourists; even though the scenery changed, they still remember every account vividly, and emotions fly astray.  They could detail every spot they visited– where they were pinned down, where they shot their first enemy combatant, and where they watched their best friend die.

Maybe if things settle down over in the great Sandbox in the future I could follow afoot.  Perhaps maybe, someday in the future I could revisit Iraq again with a camera and fanny pack, instead of body armor and an assault rifle.

You know what you have to do. 

ps. Doesn’t it bother you that most people don’t mind standing in line for 12 hours for a sale, but can’t even stand for more than 5 minutes to vote at an election?

A man must die in order to become a hero.  The rest of us are simply survivors, ordinary people thrown into a extraordinary situation.  Some of us walk out of it, some of us don’t.

Its been three years since I flew my first combat mission to Fallujah, Iraq in 2004.  I think about it all the time, the first time I literally remember pissing my pants that isn’t from an alcohol-related incident.  I keep putting it behind me but it just keeps coming back.  Its almost 10:00 am, and I’ve been awake for the last six hours playing all the battles and combat missions through the back of my head.  I woke up in cold sweat, another nightmare.  Funny thing about it, right before that nightmare I had this wierd dream about strippers and kicking the crap out of a Leprechaun before taking a pot of gold.

I got up and played Call of Duty 4 (which by the way is an INSANE game) to possibly make me feel better, but the game features a Marine fighting in a fictional Middle Eastern city, which obviously the game developers tried to recreate the infamous Battle of Fallujah in 2004….. at least thats how my memories interpreted it.  The street fighting, air cover overhead, broken down buildings, the general chaos, and streets and alleyways littered with dead bodies, some of them belonging to a friend of yours.  Wait, am I talking about the game or Fallujah for real?  I don’t know.  Its all the same to me.  I just know that I at least had a grenade launcher underneath my M4 instead of using that outdated M-16A2.  And my M9 seemed to do more damage in the game than it actually does in real life– and don’t ask how I know this.

Enough of the game, I took out my pistol and started cleaning it, and put some music on while brushing down the chamber of the SigPro.  I felt my room around me transform into the bowels of a helicopter, where numerous times we sit on standby before a mission and I took that time to clean out my service pistol.  I see some blood stains on the bulkhead, possible something one of the flightline guys missed earlier when washing out the blood from the casualties we brought back just hours earlier.  I hear a knocking, and my fantasy world quickly became reality when it was actually just my dad banging on my door before letting himself in.  I hear my name being screamed at me before I snapped back into reality– within mere seconds, I had somehow re-assembled my broken down pistol and was aiming it at my dad.  Oops.  He wasn’t too pleased with that.

I don’t get zoned out often at all, but slow nights like these, partnered up with the time of the year will remind me of things forgotten.  Just months earlier I almost blew a man’s head off while driving on the interstate after he tried to cut me off three times.  My life flashed, I blacked out for a second, and when I woke up I had my gun pointed towards the driver on the road.  A while back I was driving home from school and suddenly zoned out, before I realized it I was standing on the gravesite of my best friend killed in Iraq (forgot to bring liquor, sorry bro!).  It doesn’t happen as often, but the nightmares will come back every so once in a while.  And most of the time, the dreams of a pot of gold and strippers doesn’t come with the nightmares of being back on the ground in the fighting (I have a theory that its my subconscious telling me that gold and stippers is what I really fight for, aside from that ‘freedom’ crap that everyone talks about).

Just over the weekend, we went out drinking after the Marine Corps ball while still in our uniforms.  Almost everyone was supportive of us, people lining up offering to buy drinks, shots, giving us poker chips (we were in Atlantic City, NJ), women giving us phone numbers– we were “heroes”.  At least thats what they kept telling me after I took all their drinks and giving a solid handshake.  One part of me is glad that the American General Public still supports the troops, no matter what their views of the war are.  But part of me is telling me that I don’t deserve their praise or their numerous drink offers.  I’m no hero, and I don’t even want to be…. and that’s one thing I learned about being in war.

A man must die in order to become a hero.  A survivor of an extraordinary event is simply a survivor.  And many more men will continue to die in order to become heroes, and others will come home and recall how proud they are to have met these martyred men.  But the point is, they’re dead, and the survivor has to return home bearing the guilt of losing a man out in battle.  Just remember– you’re buying the dead the drinks, not us– we’re just drinking them in behalf of those that left us.

Well…. that and I won’t ever say “no” to free food and drinks.  And sometimes women, which again– I am not picky.

Naturally I woke up with mysterious bruises in an unknown location the next day after the Ball, which half an hour later I figured out I was lying in the bushes in the back of the hotel by the parking lot.  Only because some other Marine woke me up because he was 10 feet away and fell asleep in the parking lot the night before.

Its getting better though, PTSD is an issue but it really doesn’t affect my life as bad as it used to be.  I’m prepared to face these moments of insanity every once in a while in the future– meanwhile, I’m starving.

I can sit in a college class all day and listen to 18 year old kids drone on about their “intimate knowlege of the war on terror” and shoot them down every time they say something– but nobody wants to listen to a washed up vet.  I just sit back and bite my tongue, hoping I won’t have to get up and walk up to someone and punch them in the face.  I got a bit out of hand the other day– I was grading this girl’s paper in English class (peer editing) and she was apparently some sort of expert in military strategy and geopolitics– she had no idea what she was talking about at all, ridiculous statements on how evil we as the military are, brainwashed pawns, soldiers are dying for no apparent reason, how the military became a dishonorable profession, and so on and so forth.

You see these left-wing liberal spouts on blogs all the time, but in a school environment, it just pisses you off when you can put a face to a piece of writing.  Of course with her war commentary, she made it a point that we have no reason whatsoever to be there, AT ALL.  Now I agree that we may have entered the war for all the wrong reasons, but I had to remind her that there are some things that I have been through that motivated me to keep fighting.  On the response sheet, I wrote down:

“The difference between you and me is that you saw some silly Michael Moore documentary, where as I actually saw the mass graves and guarded them with my life.
ON BEHALF OF ALL VETERANS, THOSE KILLED IN ACTION, AND THEIR FAMILIES,
FUCK YOU, BITCH.
–USMC

ps. Your spelling and punctuation sucks.  I don’t recommend you writing anything else for the rest of your life.”

I would have gotten in trouble for that, fortunately it was a random peer editing thing and I didn’t put my name down.  Its funny to watch her face go into extreme shock after reading the response sheet, while I’m trying to hold back the fits of giggling like a schoolgirl.  TEEHEEEHEE I’m bad!

I’m really unhappy at how America turned one of its finest holidays, a day of honor and respect to some of the bravest men and women that any of us could ever meet and butchered it into just another day of a corporate shopping spree; marred by sales, sales, and more sales.  Veterans Day is just another excuse to max out your credit card and going further into debt instead of taking a quiet moment to remember its meaning.

Fuck you Corporate America.

Take some time away from your incessant shopping madness and shop for the meaning of Veterans Day instead.  After you do that, go shake the hand of a proud veteran that have served in one of America’s wars….. and sleep with him.  Particularly, the author of this xanga page, yes ma’am.

ps. I can’t seem to find my credit card……

pps. Ball pictures are coming up soon.