Honey! I'm Home!

I haven't seen my wife in almost three months, and yet, for some reason, I spend the night on the couch. Not because she wanted me there, NAY! She tried, at least a dozen times, to get my lazy ass to move to move. Did it? Hell no. So I deserve the nasty kink in my neck that I have...

To My Navy Wife

Hey Baby,

I feel compelled to write this, despite the fact that I don't know what to say. But I have gotten really good at stringing a whole bunch of randomness together for you, and you have gotten really good at being the only person to decipher my ramblings.

I don't know who we would be if we weren't who we are now... A SEAL, a Marine... In some sort of odd twist of fate, we put aside the competitiveness of our respective branches and somehow managed to fall in love anyway...

I love you baby. I know how hard it is being a husband to a military woman, I can imagine how hard it must be being a wife to a military man. But this is who we are. We do these things because we love to do them. I do my best to give my everything to this great country first.
I have been a better SEAL than husband, I know that without you ever having to tell me. But I have tried to do better, to support you, to be there for you when I could. I know that I fail at it, every single day... It has never been because I don't want to do it. Sometimes it is just not possible.

We have been married for seven months, and we have been apart for almost half that time. And I am once again leaving you. I know that you hate it. And not without reason. The last time was an in and out deal, and three and a half months later I was back... I don't want to put you through this. Through all the worry and the sleepless nights. I don't want you waiting for that call and sleeping with the phone. I don't want your tears staining your face so everyone at your work knows you've been crying again. I also don't want to go bankrupt, buying new glasses and dishes...

I cannot be one of those people who sit back and complain about the world, and do nothing to change it... Like you, I want action, not just empty words. This is the life that we chose, together and apart, for better and for worse... And I love that you won't beg me to stay, even though we both want you to.

I have never been more proud of anyone in my entire life then I am of you, every time I see you or think of you. My heart swells when I say your name, when I hear your name... You are the woman of my dreams, the woman of my heart. I will fight a million wars to come back to you. Any of those other cliches, I will do too. (Walking through fire, slaying the dragons...)

Baby there is nothing that will stop me from coming home to you. I know in the past I haven't always done it in a timely fashion, but I have always come home. The days are long with my thoughts of you. You are my best friend, the love of my life, the woman that I have pledged my entire life to, before God.

I promise when I come back, I will be a better man and a husband that tries even harder to be worthy of the love that you give me. You love me more than the all the sands on all the beaches, and this is something that I can simply not comprehend, as I pack my gear to leave you yet again.

Not everything I take is physical, baby. I take your heart in my hands, your kiss lingers on my lips, your words are still with me, threatening to kill me if I don't bring my ass home to you (I believe the word fine, sweet and/or sexy was in there somewhere...)... Most of all, the most prized thing that I am taking over there with me, is YOU. All those pieces of you that you have shared with me have etched themselves into my soul. Maybe we aren't there together, physically, but we are together every second of every day, just like we have always been... Because you love me.

U.S Navy Slang

Some of my comrades thought that they would help me put together a list of our Navy slang, so all you civs could follow along. Thanks to all for their input!

Of course .. we ALL wanted to be a Bullet Sponge - U.S. Marine!

Never heard this one before, but it seems to fit:
Queer - nickname for the EA-6B Prowler. Also Air Force Personnel

Of course, there's the usual:
aye - yes
bulkhead - wall
skipper - capt
as you were - keep doing what you were doing
by your leave - may I go, or excuse me
Cracker Jacks - Slang for the dress blue uniforms worn by sailors below the rank of E-7

And the flap in the front of the trousers - a MARINE TABLE CLOTH!
Diego Garcia 10 - ANY woman on Diego Garcia....

Do you know why they put Marines on Navy ships?
because sheep are no longer practical...
deck ape - a Bosun Mate
twidget - an electronics expert
nosebleed country - the upper superstructure, because the engineers get nosebleeds when they go up there
sliders - burgers, because they have enough grease to slide off the plate
midrats - leftovers from dinner or cold sandwiches for the midnight meal
BUG JUICE! .....
Scuttlebutt - drinking fountain or rumors
Buttkit - ashtray
Ropeyarn Sunday - Time set aside to mend clothes and sails, usually on a Wednesday.
Hatch - opening between decks
Line - rope
Monkey's paw - Line formed into a ball around a weight attached to a heaving line.
Bilges - where Marines are bred.
Snipes - Engineers
R & R - Rust & Redlead
Sea Story - Tall tale
Shellback - Sailor who has crossed the equator.

How do you identify a Sea Story? They all begin with "Once upon a time" or "Hey, this is no shit.."

Sea Story - Tall tale
Don't forget 'Sea Lawyer'. Every body needs a good 'Sea Lawyer'.
Or 'Sea Daddy'.
Good times.
And of course there was "Sea Pussy"
Ballast - Marines... (Plus, they take up space that could be used to stow Ice Cream...)
BCG's - Birth Control Glasses. Standard Navy-issue corrective eye wear. So named because they are so thick and hideous that you are guaranteed never to have sex while you are wearing them. Term has become obsolete due to more normal looking frame choices offered nowadays (outside of recruit training, at least).
Dirty-dick - To rub genitalia on someone’s cup or soda can as an act of retribution or to be funny.
Drop your cocks and grab your socks - A saying that the petty officer of the watch yells in the sleeping quarters when it's time for everyone to get up. Often done in boot camp.
Gyrene - derogatory Navy term for a U.S. Marine. Also called "Jarheads".
MARINE - acronym for Marines Always Ride in Navy Equipment...or Muscles are Required Intelligence Not Essential... or My Ass Really Is Navy Equipment..or My Ass Rides In Navy Equipment...or Muscles are Required Intelligence Not Expected.
Naval Infantry - the U.S. Marines.
Puddle Pirate - Members of the US Coast Guard.

Solomon's Guide to Review Notes

For those of us who do not know, occasionally I do some copy editing... Lol. Some of the stuff is decent, some is average. Most is downright appalling.

My lovely wife has asked for clarification on some of my comments. So I present: Solomon's Guide to Review Notes:

"Good" - Good.
"Great" - Great.
"Wow!" - That's pretty impressive!
"Yay!" - Wow, that is phenomenally unimpressive.
"?" - I'm not even sure what this means!
"Uh..." - This makes no sense.
"No" - No
"Really" - Are you sure about that?
"Oh rly?" - Absolutely not, no, not a chance, you have no clue what you're talking about.
"Not Reasonable" - Have you worked in a school before? Ever?
"OMG" - How could you even write that?
"OMFG" - This is so unbelievably unreasonable that my astonishment is inexpressible.
"Data?" - Do you have any evidence of what you're saying at all??
"WTF" - What possessed you to ever even vaguely believe this might possibly be relevant?
"Plug-n-Play" - Nice boiler plate. But, uh, gotcha.
(music notes) - Now that is some mighty impressive data manipulation skills.

Sadly, due to the nature of the Peer Review Process, the people I'm reviewing will never see these, or any of my far more relevant, comments written - the copies I'm reading will be shredded... What fun is that?

Life Can Be Seriously Funny

No wonder none of the girls want to ride horses anymore...



Oops... They miscalculated... The car bomb was simply not big enough... He'd have to go home and get another one...

WHAT THE HELL?

Pretty interesting?
The following is an actual question given on a Washington University chemistry mid-term.

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong t more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, "It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you," and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct......leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God."

Zombie Survival...

Real Iraq Plan: Stay in and Win!

A WAR THAT ISN'T: President Obama, arriving at Camp Lejeune, NC, yesterday, declared the US combat mission in Iraq will end by Aug. 31, 2010 - yet 50,000 non combat troops will remain to ensure against renewed al Qaeda attacks or civil war.

By RALPH PETERS

February 28, 2009

YESTERDAY, President Obama went to Camp Lejeune. He spoke in front of US Marines, but his real audience was his left-wing campaign supporters. And his carefully worded speech - its parsing of language worthy of Bill Clinton - may go down in history as his "Mission Accomplished" moment. We'll see who leaves Iraq when. During last year's presidential campaign, it was evident that Obama wouldn't keep his promises to his leftist base to pull our troops out rapidly. While he benefited greatly from the troop surge he opposed - which handed him a convalescent Iraq - he's learning that reality trumps rhetoric. Forcefully delivered, his speech to the Marines served up more waffles than the International House of Pancakes.

Consider his big sound bite: "Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end." What does that mean?

Will the 50,000 troops he intends to leave in Iraq, the trainers and maintainers, be forbidden to defend themselves? Are they just going to hang out? If terrorists or the Iranians skunk us, are we just going to ask for more?

The enemy gets a say, too. The situation on the ground will determine when combat operations end. Obama's just going to call them something else.

In the immortal phrasing of Ol' Bill, it depends on what the meaning of "is" is.

As for Obama's claim that "I have chosen a timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next 18 months," just watch.

We're not going to leave 50,000 support troops in Iraq without combat units to protect them. We'll just ban the word "brigade" and call our shooters "task forces."

The reality all along has been that Obama can't cut and run.

He began campaigning for a second term on Inauguration Day and he's not going to let himself be blamed for "losing" Iraq.

Meanwhile, he's praying that progress continues in Baghdad.

As for yesterday's boilerplate nonsense that "The end of the war in Iraq will enable a new era of American leadership and engagement in the Middle East," hey, if it does, thank George W. Bush. History has a wicked sense of humor.

Of course, the rhetoric's necessary. Obama had to lecture the Marines to placate the angry extremists who put him in office.

The fundamental purpose of the speech was to hide the 50,000 residual troops in plain sight: "It's OK, see? They're not combat troops." Obama's scared as a naked sheriff at a moonshiners' convention.

He piggybacked on the left's hatred of "Bush's war" in Iraq, but had to show his tough-on-security bones during the campaign.

A strategic novice, he declared Afghanistan the good war. Now it's his. And while Iraq looks increasingly like a success story, Afghanistan's going south. Iraq's the prize, Afghanistan's the booby prize.

Success in Afghanistan's a one-off, while even a half-baked democracy in Iraq changes the Middle East. And Pakistan's the monster under the White House bed. In artilleryman's parlance, Obama's speech to the Marines was all flash, no bang.

He's struggling to appear decisive while carving out maximum wiggle room. And in the modern tradition of Democratic presidents, he just wishes these foreign conflicts would go away. But they won't.

Welcome to reality, Mr. President.

ObamaZombies

I have long wondered how many of the hardcore Obamabots really knew what they were voting for or just simply looking for a savior to give fulfillment to their meaningless existence. If the bots really knew he was a communist would they still have voted for him? Probably. One consolation in this clusterfuck of government is that its at least fun to play armchair quarterback for a change. I did enjoy watching Plugs go over and ask the Eurotards for more help in the "war on terror" only to have France tell him to pound sand. I was just wondering if any of you here knew or heard if any of the dipshits who voted for Teleprompter Jesus were experience buyer's remorse as of yet? Personally I think that is when the real fun will begin.

Tactical Pointers

A few tactical pointers.

1) Go around corners wide, not narrow like they do on TV. Wide lets you see them before they see you, no matter where they are around the corner. Use a ruler, pencil, and piece of paper to prove this to yourself.

2) Firing a gun sideways has saved more lives than emergency rooms. It looks neat in the movies, but you do not hit your target.

3) Inside, it is far better to be prone, shooting up, than be standing up and having to lower your gun to shoot down.

4) Do not go to them, let them come to you. The advantage is to the defense.

5) Have a knife in your other hand. You can often close a wide gap and kill with a knife, before you can be shot by a novice. Knife wounds are often deadlier than gunshot wounds.

6) Just because they are shot, doesn’t mean you’ve won. Lots of crime scenes end up with two people who have shot each other. There is only a very narrow line in the human body where you will have a “one shot drop kill” most of the time. People can live an hour or more even with serious organ damage.

7) The very drunk sometimes think that gunshot wounds are from somebody punching them, and they get angry.

8) Don’t worry about karma. Worry about lawyers.

Rules For a Gunfight

1. Forget about knives, bats and fists. Bring a gun. Preferably, bring at least two guns. Bring all of your friends who have guns. Bring four times the ammunition you think you could ever need.

2. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammunition is cheap - life is expensive. If you shoot inside, buckshot is your friend. A new wall is cheap - funerals are expensive

3. Only hits count. The only thing worse than a miss is a slow miss.

4. If your shooting stance is good, you're probably not moving fast enough or using cover correctly.

5. Move away from your attacker and go to cover. Distance is your friend. (Bulletproof cover and diagonal or lateral movement are preferred.)

6. If you can choose what to bring to a gunfight, bring a semi or full-automatic long gun and a friend with a long gun.

7. In ten years nobody will remember the details of caliber, stance, or tactics. They will only remember who lived.

8. If you are not shooting, you should be communicating, reloading, and running. Yell "Fire!" Why "Fire"? Cops will come with the Fire Department, sirens often scare off the bad guys, or at least cause then to lose concentration and will.... and who is going to summon help if you yell "Intruder," "Glock" or "Winchester?"

9. Accuracy is relative: most combat shooting standards will be more dependent on "pucker factor" than the inherent accuracy of the gun.

10. Someday someone may kill you with your own gun, but they should have to beat you to death with it because it is empty.

11. Always cheat, always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.

12. Have a plan.

13. Have a back-up plan, because the first one won't work. "No battle plan ever survives 10 seconds past first contact with an enemy."

14. Use cover or concealment as much as possible, but remember, sheetrock walls and the like stop nothing but your pulse when bullets tear through them.

15. Flank your adversary when possible. Protect yours.

16. Don't drop your guard.

17. Always tactical load and threat scan 360 degrees. Practice reloading one-handed and off-hand shooting. That's how you live if hit in your "good" side.

18. Watch their hands. Hands kill. Smiles, frowns and other facial expressions don't (In God we trust. Everyone else keep your hands where I can see them.)

19. Decide NOW to always be aggressive ENOUGH, quickly ENOUGH.

20. The faster you finish the fight, the less shot you will get.

21. Be polite. Be professional. But, have a plan to kill everyone you meet if necessary, because they may want to kill you.

22. Be courteous to everyone, overly friendly to no one.

23. Your number one option for personal security is a lifelong commitment to avoidance, deterrence, and de-escalation.

24. Do not attend a gunfight with a handgun, the caliber of which does not start with anything smaller than "4".

25. Use a gun that works EVERY TIME. "All skill is in vain when an Angel blows the powder from the flintlock of your musket." At a practice session, throw you gun into the mud, then make sure it still works. You can clean it later.

26. Practice shooting in the dark, with someone shouting at you, when out of breath, etc.

27. Regardless of whether justified of not, you will feel sad about killing another human being. It is better to be sad than to be room temperature.

28. The only thing you EVER say afterwards is, "He said he was going to kill me. I believed him. I'm sorry, Officer, but I'm very upset now. I can't say anything more. Please speak with my attorney."

Lone Survivor

"On a clear night in late June 2005, four U.S. Navy SEALs left their base in northern Afghanistan for the mountainous Pakistani border. Their mission was to capture or kill a notorious al Qaeda leader known to be ensconced in a Taliban stronghold surrounded by a small but heavily armed force. Less then twenty-four hours later, only one of those Navy SEALs remained alive. This is the story of fire team leader Marcus Luttrell, the sole survivor of Operation Redwing, and the desperate battle in the mountains that led, ultimately, to the largest loss of life in Navy SEAL history. But it is also, more than anything, the story of his teammates, who fought ferociously beside him until he was the last one left-blasted unconscious by a rocket grenade, blown over a cliff, but still armed and still breathing. Over the next four days, badly injured and presumed dead, Luttrell fought off six al Qaeda assassins who were sent to finish him, then crawled for seven miles through the mountains before he was taken in by a Pashtun tribe, who risked everything to protect him from the encircling Taliban killers. A six-foot-five-inch Texan, Leading Petty Officer Luttrell takes us, blow-by-blow, through the brutal training of America's warrior elite and the relentless rites of passage required by the Navy SEALs. He transports us to a monstrous battle fought in the desolate peaks of Afghanistan, where the beleaguered American team plummeted headlong a thousand feet down a mountain as they fought back through flying shale and rocks. In this rich , moving chronicle of courage, honor, and patriotism, Marcus Luttrell delivers one of the most powerful narratives ever written about modern warfare-and a tribute to his teammates, who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country."