Thanks for Your Lack of Service

                Over the years I have had countless people ask me about my time in the United States Marine Corps.  Usually I am happy to talk about and share my experiences.  This is mostly due to the fact that despite serving during a time of war I never saw combat.  Hell, I never even deployed to the countries where combat was taking place.  As I talk about my experiences I can see their eyes begin to glaze over because I am not talking about combat and how many people I killed.  Suddenly, at some point, they will say the one phrase that I know is a set up and that I know I will have to hear that one phrase that I truly dread hearing.

                “I could never be in the military,” they will say.

                “Why not,” I take the bait willingly knowing exactly what the answer is.

                “I would not be able to stand getting yelled and screamed at all the time,” is the response.

                When I would have this exchange with people I would merely laugh and assure them that things are not really that bad.  That was while I was in the service and for about six months after I got out.  Now, however, I usually just lose all emotion in my face and body language and stare at them silently for about fifteen to twenty seconds.  I study the person that I am talking to and try to find out if they are joking or really and truthfully as stupid as I believe that they are.

                Other than being called a baby killer while I was home on leave once, this has to be one of the most offensive saying that I have ever heard said to a member of the United States Armed Forces.  I do not know if the people who say this are trying to give us a complement for being able to take what they perceive to be an unending supply of vitriolic verbal abuse or they are so completely clueless that this is what they think actually goes on. 

Yes, in boot camp the instructors in charge of recruit’s training scream and yell a lot.  That is not because they are trying to be unrelenting dickheads.  There is actually a purpose behind it, and a damned good one at that.  It is meant to stress you out.  When you are in combat, when you are working on your thirty-sixth straight hour on the flight line, or when your naval task force goes to general quarters you will be stressed.  Stress is a part of the training.  Doing this help you learn to overcome the stress and deal with it in a more productive way than curling up into the fetal position and pissing your pants.  More than once I went a full week managing about forty-five minutes of sleep a night and getting stressed the hell out the other twenty-three hours and fifteen minutes of the day.  And that was just training deployments after I had graduated boot camp and my job school.

Truth be told, after boot camp the only time there was yelling was during the noise of live fire, meaning when we were shooting weapons, training, when I screwed up and deserved an ass chewing, or the person I was talking to was out of the range of hearing for standard speech.  Much of the time we actually sat around and chatted in normal vocal registers. 

The last time a person said that phrase to me I called them a coward.  They were using the most bullshit reason to justify not serving their country.  I understand if a person has certain physical, mental, spiritual, or philosophical “limitations” that prevent them from joining the armed forces.  But, to not join because you do not want someone to yell at you is ridiculous.  Most of us have been yelled at by our parents, teachers, coaches, and anyone else who was in charge of us and our safety at one point or another.  Of course they took offense, but they matched none of the prior mentioned criteria for my being able to tolerate their stupidity and cowardice, and I told them that.  I then followed it up with, “If you cannot take getting yelled at then I really feel bad for you.  Your handling of stress must involve a bottle of alcohol, Xanax, and rousing round of single player Russian Roulette.”

So, for those of you who cannot take having someone yell at you on occasion I say, “Thank you.”  Thank you for your lack of Service.  Thank you for not tainting my beloved country’s military with your presence.  Thank you for let the real men and women earn the titles of Soldier, Sailor, Airman, and Marine.  Thank you for knowing you are too much of a psychological cripple to handle a supposed angry man or woman yell at you to help make you a better person.  

A Band That I Used to Know

                In preparation for a new addition to my family in the form of a baby girl I have been going through many of my belongings to determine what I can dispose of that will not actually impact me in the losing of said belongings.  I have been combing through drawers, cabinets, boxes, bookshelves, and even my CD collection.  While flipping through my collection of compact discs a few days ago I came across some rather interesting discoveries or re-discoveries, as it were.  This was where I can to several conclusions: a) younger me was WAY more musically eclectic that I am now, b) younger me was way more musically stupid than I am now, and c) younger me wasted way too much money on music.

                Up until the about four years ago my CD collection was immaculate.  That is not meaning that it was a perfect collection of music, just that my numerous books of CDs were not only in alphabetical order but also in alphabetical order by genre, year of release, or in case of multiple releases in the same year by album title.  Yes some of my CDS were scratched to hell and back, but they still managed to play in any CD playing device that I put them in.   

                As I poured through the books of CDs I began to remember listening to almost every album that I own and enjoying over ninety-five percent of the music.  I took a few of the albums out and threw them into the CD player to jam out while finishing the cleaning up of the office.  Almost instantly upon the first track beginning I thought to myself, “What the fuck was I thinking when I bought this?  More importantly, why the hell did I even like this?”  Seriously, almost every one of those CDs was crap.  It was crap when I bought it.  It was crap when I was jamming to it.  It was just crap.

                Instrumentally, the music is stock.  There is nothing challenging in how the guitars, drums, basses, and other instruments are presented to the listener.  Lyrically, the writing is on par with the poetry of between an eighth grader to sophomore in high school.  And much of this is from grown people who have been in the music business for several years and have several albums under their belts.  Oh sure, much of it has “shredding” guitar solos that rocked my face off back in the day.  Today, though, I realize that all the soloist is doing is playing scales really fast.  The singer is going on and on about the travesty of war like they are the first one to put into song the notion of war being a bad thing.  The song is completely void of any real depth or meaning.

                Then there are the albums where the singers are pouring their hearts out over the loss of love, the anguish of loss, and how much not having that one person in their life anymore sucks; all while playing slow, simple bar cords on an acoustic guitar.  Hell, these are Taylor Swift’s albums before there was a Taylor Swift.  For the most part all of this together does not annoy me, I still like Jewel’s first album.  However, when you take into consideration that at one point I had heard all of her albums and they were all the freaking same.  Sappy music, weepy lyrics, and melodrama.  Some of the songs have good vibe to them, but in the end, it is still the ingredients listed in the previous sentence.

  

              These days I seem to have gone away from wanting to listen to what is popular and current or classic and “Retro.”  I have a tendency more than ever to listen to the music whose lyrics actually inspire with more than just a catch phrase.  Music that discusses things which are important to us as a people, a nation, and a world community.  Music where it is obvious that the instrument players know how to play their instruments and did not just learn by reading tabs off some webpage and suddenly thought they knew what the hell they were doing.  I have also begun to listen to more of the classical music that I have.  I am not talking about Skynyrd and Sabbath.  I am talking about Mozart and Bach.  It calms me, relaxes me, and allows me to have something to listen to whilst thinking through things.  Hell, couple classical music, stroking my beard, and actual thinking and I will have world peace through domination down in a week.

Double Homicide, Hold the Mayo

Thinking back to my college years I remember that there was always this one guy who stood out in front of the main entrance to the building where classes were held.  He was there two to three times a week handing out little pamphlets.  He would have been almost invisible to me except that he looked and smelled like shit.  I mean that almost literally.  He smelled like he bathed about once a month and his look pretty much confirmed my suspicions.  Where he stood made it really hard to avoid him; at the top of the stairs moving to intercept people as they came up to get in the building.

I mentioned that he was handing out little pamphlets.  Apparently, this guy is a vegan and the pamphlets he was handing out were filled with pictures of dead animals at slaughter houses and the like.  The first time I passed I simply took the pamphlet, gave it a once over and then tossed it.  It was in my possession for about twenty seconds.  After that I began refusing the pamphlets.  In the short amount of time I had held that first one I had read the entire contents of it.  To paraphrase, “Meat is Murder, End the Atrocity, Go Vegan.”

Now, I can certainly sympathize with a portion of what this pamphlet was trying to say, at least in the pictures.  The animals should be treated with respect, period.  If they are being grown for the soul purpose of food they need to be given a better life that what they have.  They need to be given a life with dignity that they deserve before become a tasty snack to fill my stomach.  I have absolutely zero issue with many of the beliefs of vegans.  My issue is some of the people themselves.

Mr. Stinky eventually got tired of me rebuffing his attempts to continue to give me his pamphlets.  So much so that he actually followed me up to the door of the building.  Finally, one day in his attempt to pawn off a piece of paper on me, maybe the stack was getting heavy, maybe no else had taken one, maybe he just really thought that I needed one, he followed me into the building.  This was the instance that caused me to snap, and in front of the campus police department’s office no less.

I was walking and then suddenly there he was, in my face, barring my way to my destination. 

“You really need to read this,” he said. 

That was it, not only had he barred my way, he was now invading my personal space.  Suddenly I was no longer a college student; I was no longer a husband, father or anything that I had become since 2003.  I was back in United States Marine Corps mode.  To be more precise, I was in Non-Commissioned Officer mode.  For those who do know what that means, I took on the persona of Drill Instructor.  My face became redder than my hair, my eyes bulged, veins popped, and the only sight in my eyes was this little “fuck stick” standing in my way.

I will not post on here what I said; some of you may be scarred for life.  Just suffice it to say that my language, tone and volume were enough to get the police officers to pop their heads out of their office.  They instantly drew the conclusion that the guy they had seen handing out pamphlets had pushed too hard to hand one over to the wrong person.  The male officer quickly escorted him away while the female moved to calm me.  

 It shocked her that as soon as the guy was out of my sight I was no longer angry.  She escorted me outside and discussed the situation with me on the patio while I burned through a cigarette to help my body relax.  Cigarettes smoked, situation explained, body relaxed, and with class time rapidly approaching I excused myself.  After that the guy spent a lot less time hanging out on the stairs in front of the main building. 

I do not regret my actions that day.  The only thing that truly bothers me is that someone who I know was trying to do something good ended up doing something bad and that caused me to lose my temper.  Had he stayed out of my personal space I am sure he would still have been out front the next day handing out more pamphlets.  I do not know if he ever fixated on giving a pamphlet to anyone else, but for me it was one of the most annoying circumstances of my life.

So remember all you vegetarians and vegans, people might be willing to stand there and listen to your rhetoric, maybe they will take a pamphlet from you, they might even sign that little petition you have in your hand.  However, the second you violate the personal space of the wrong person you are liable to get slapped with a cheese burger.