aka  Before It’s Over, I Have to Say Something

     I usually write a post on Veteran’s Day.  Last year, I couldn’t.  I’d watched a friend get shipped off and returned a few days later, and had quite a lot of subsequent conversation with him that left me dry.
     He had really high expectations of himself.  He went through his education and training with honors.  He knew where he wanted to be, what he wanted to do.  He’d planned his entire life around his career in the military, and everything was going to be okay.
     When he finally got to Iraq, however, anxiety took its toll.  Sent home, he felt like a failure, like he hadn’t lived up to the expectations his family had.  Though all of them were supportive, he felt that they didn’t, even couldn’t, understand.  
     More than that, even, he wanted the respect of the people with whom he’d served, and knew that he’d let them all down.

     Through the course of the conversation with him, I tried to put it in real-life terms, hoping he could get his perspective back.  I told him to think of it as a job, and nothing more. 
     It was a job he was trained to do, and, many times, trained through repetition.  His job, a lower management position, was to manage and train others, often by repetition, as well.  Sometimes, no amount of training can prepare you for the reality of the job.
     I explained that it was like going to McDonald’s and training to be a run the drive through, and being thrown into it busy as Hell on the first day.  Things will happen, mistakes will be made.  People will be upset at you.  Some will even hate you.  But you do the job until you either get better, or you’re laid off, or you quit.  At either of the last two points, you find another job.
     “But you know,” I told him.  “What you tried to do carried with it a lot more prestige than some crappy job flipping burgers, or even selling advertising a company who’ll never last two years.  You were part of something bigger than yourself, and went duty-bound into something that most people are terrified to even think about.  And that, right there, is why you haven’t lost anyone else’s respect.  Not even the guys you served with.”

     It’s one of the things I always enjoyed about Military.  Guys who worked together consider one another friends.  Sometimes, they only see each other in an aeon, but will still have a clandestine beer, perhaps even in silence for the friends they knew and lost.

     That fact was driven home for me even more over the next few months.  Pretty much all of my uncles were in the military, and I just never was cut out for it.  But I’ve worked with and around them in a civilian capacity for quite a while.
     In December last year, a few of them looked for me, found me, and all but twisted my arms.  “Mark, what?  Man, you were right there with us.  Get your ass out of that damn house!”
     I was going through a really rough time a year ago.  If it hadn’t been for them, I was so stressed I might never have left the house again.  I never really told them what was going on, and just took the opportunity to get away, to get out of Knoxville, even, if only for a little while.
     Almost exclusively, it was just a bunch of us sitting around in a hotel bar.  We told stupid stories about each other, making sure to exaggerate as much as possible, smoked cigars, bitched about politicians, drank copiously and laughed a lot.  And then, there was always the silent drink to the ones who weren’t there…
     Philip, Joe, Terry, JD, Nate, John, Larry, Joel, Paul, Tony, Dennis, Neal… and I know there are more, but I just can’t remember right now…  You guys don’t even know what you did for me.  And I thank you all.

     Those little road trips always ended the same.
     “It was great to see you again, man.  If you ever need anything, you give me a call.  I mean it!”
     There’s an unspoken rule of mine, and that is that I respect them too much to ever ask them for anything.

     To my surprise in January, “Mark, I’m shipping out for Afghanistan.  You fixed this Xbox for us, so, uh, we won’t need it, figured you’d want it?  And give me your address… we’re gonna send you some games when we get tired of them.”
     So now you know the root of my other time-waster / stress-reliever…

     And so, back to Lt. Cpl. Jared…

     Jared, you didn’t get to serve your entire time, but you were let out honorably.  You did your job as best you could, and I seriously think it was just bad timing.  But for all that worry, all that being down on yourself, and all that crazy shit you were thinking back then… look at how you’re doing now. 
     You’ve got everything together, just like I told you would. 😉

     And those people you crawled through mud and walked on sand with, even the ones you sat at a computer next to, or sat around all night in the barracks playing Xbox with, they are the salt of the earth.

     And I’ll guaran-damn-tee, after they’re back, given a little time, they’ll call you up and wanna go out for a beer…

     Jared … and everyone else … Happy Veterans’ Day, my friends.

     While the media keeps going off to castigate Fort Hood as a violent military installation, do remember that it houses nearly 50,000 people.  It’s less a Base than a medium-sized small town.  It’s also on the outskirts of the small city of Killeen, Texas.

     Please keep this in mind when you listen to this “bullshit” that Media keeps portraying about “so much violence in recent years.”  At least half of said violence has been caused by people who didn’t even belong there, much more in off-base apartments, etc. etc.  Its “record of violence” is miniscule when compared to “business as usual” in many average towns of the same size, so these assertions by Media — made because they have nothing REAL to report —  are becoming pretty ridiculous.

     In the meantime, for those who *have* the heart and soul that our media seems to lack…

     We watch.  We listen.  And we care.

     And I hope to hear from some people soon…

     Now, I don’t smoke weed, and this isn’t against our Military personnel…

     But this t-shirt right here I found funny as Hell…

     (Ooh, I’m a poet, and didn’t know it)

     The fact that the image is 420×420 is purely coincidental.

     So’s the fact that’s about 4:20 right now…

     Seriously, I don’t smoke weed.

     I’m allergic.

     Bad.

     Just buy the damn shirt, already.

Image Copyright © 2008 T-Shirt Hell

American Flag: $24.99
Gasoline: $5.32
Cigarette Lighter: $2.50
Catching Yourself on Fire Because You’re a Flag-Burning Asshat?
PRICELESS

     Now, Diva’s last blog, “Skank of the Week: Paris Hilton” was funny to me.  Most rational, thinking people think she’s a bit … well … Useless.  I mean, really, what makes her a celebrity?  Why the Hell should anyone care, one iota, about her life in the least?
     Apparently, it’s because she’s rich, and totally enjoys making an ass herself, her family, exploiting the silver spoon, etc. etc. etc.  She’s a train wreck waiting to happen, a poster child for “Rich Bitch.”
     Everyone hates her.

     Free Speech comes to mind…

     We’re just past Memorial Day.  I didn’t blog, because I was busy living my life, being an idiot and having a good time.
     If I had blogged, I would’ve reminded people about all of the people who had died to make this a Free country.  Those are people who made an extreme sacrifice, whether they lived or died, that were dedicated to furthering our Freedom, or the Freedom of a given nation.  They’re people of conviction and character, who stood up and took action while others sat on their haunches waiting for the next episode of blah-blah-blah.

     I also would’ve reminded people about the ideals that those heroes stood for in defense of Freedom in this country.
     I’ve lived in a few other countries, some at others’ suggestions, and found out that Americans, as a whole, take those Freedoms for granted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NymRecFWgAs

     You have the right to be offended.  You have the right to change the channel.  You have the right to read another blog.  You have the right to hate our politicians.  You have the right to vote.  You have the right to marriage.  You have the right to divorce.  You have the right to rant about them on a blog.  You have the right to free yourself of toxic people.  You have the right to file a restraining order against an abuser.
     So long as you’re obeying some pretty loose concepts of law and trying to be a decent person, you can do pretty much anything you want.  Nobody’s telling us what to do — we make our own choices, we lead our own lives, and there’s no Government standing over us to tell us what to read, what to think, what to express.
     That makes us unique in the world.  As much as people “complain” about the “loss of our freedom,” I’d have to say — go live somewhere else for a while, then get back to me.

     So it strikes me as funny, with all of those rights, how some people seem to feel think that they have the right not to be offended — how they might “sue” a blog for a derogatory comment which reveled no personal information whatsoever.  How they might file a gag order on a legal case to prevent it from being talked about, no matter how heinously ridiculous the case might be.  How they might file a “stalking” charge because someone put up a link to a video they didn’t like.

     Hippies ate a lot of Acid, pretending to be activists for Free Speech.

     So … What, uh … Changed?

     Remember Perry Caravello, the guy who’s so Internet savvy he couldn’t even spell “youtube” — or get Johnny Knoxville name right — in a lawsuit?  This is to people like him.  It’s also to “celebrities” who might garner attention via research, and thus benefit, from a sarcastic diatribe…

     G’night, kids.

     God bless.

Tip: Zacque Hitchcock, who found these two perfect examples of video