Second Gun Not Necessary

I was awakened abruptly by the sound of the front door being closed forcefully. You have to slam my front door for it to close all the way. Someone had slammed it. Many times I’ve been awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of something that could have been a door, but this time, I knew. You know how they say when it happens, you’ll know? Well, this time I knew. My eyes had popped open as the sound of the door in the otherwise quiet house echoed in my head.

I jumped out of bed where I had been sleeping hard. I had been asleep for around forty minutes. I slung my headlamp over my shoulder because it was the first light I was able to find in the darkness. I also don’t want to be wearing a target around my forehead when I’m clearing the house. Then I grabbed my pistol and turned on my bedside lamp. As I’m standing there naked by the bed, my red-haired wife rolls over and says, “What’s going on?”

“It’s go-time, babe.”

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Old People Like Applebee’s

There’s an old man who lives in my neighborhood, right across the street. He and his wife are probably in their late 70s, early 80s, possibly late 80s. I’m not very good at judging ages on old people. But yeah, they’re old. He’s a cool old dude. He was a sailor back in his day, so I know he’s got some guns in that house. I’m trying to get on his good side so maybe he’ll put me in his will, because I like guns too.

Anyway, he has this tree in front of his house that is notorious for losing branches. I mean, they’re easily found – it’s like it loses one, we look for a brief period, and say, “Oh, there it is, right beneath the tree from where it fell. How about that.” So it’s not really losing them as such… maybe not even really misplacing them. We’ll just say that branches have a tendency to fall off that damn tree quite often. More than the rest of the trees in the neighborhood.

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SpaceBrew Review: District 9

I finally watched District 9 a couple of weeks ago. It was nothing like I thought it would be. When I originally dropped it in my queue I was only vaguely aware of the plot. Here’s the plot summary from IMDB:

In 1982, a massive star ship bearing a bedraggled alien population, nicknamed “The Prawns,” appeared over Johannesburg, South Africa. Twenty-eight years later, the initial welcome by the human population has faded. The refugee camp where the aliens were located has deteriorated into a militarized ghetto called District 9, where they are confined and exploited in squalor. In 2010, the munitions corporation, Multi-National United, is contracted to forcibly evict the population with operative Wikus van der Merwe in charge. In this operation, Wikus is exposed to a strange alien chemical and must rely on the help of his only two new ‘Prawn’ friends.

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Remember Memorial Day

So how was your Memorial Day? Did you remember? I know most of you did. And most of us remember by drinking beer and grilling out. Any kind of meat seems to be appropriate. Any kind of beer seems to be appropriate. And as long as a swimming pool is involved, people are enjoying the hell out of their Memorial Day. But are we really remembering why it’s even called Memorial Day? I hope so.

I know Siege dressed in his full Class-A Marines dress uniform and visited the Dallas Memorial Cemetery. He went to pay his respects to those who have fallen in the line of duty. Stout and I were going to go as well, but it was too short notice, and we found ourselves lacking parts of our uniforms. But that won’t happen again. Next holiday we will be ready.

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Is it cold in here, or just me?

Tuesday in Taiwan, a man grieving over the death of his girlfriend, decided to climb into the morgue freezer with her. Good sweet shit, what the hell is wrong with people? As if it wouldn’t be claustrophobic enough in there just by yourself, imagine halving that space. And further, being in there with a dead body. Bllllrrrr… Screw that.

I’m not really creeped out by death that much. I’ve been exposed to my share of it. But I don’t really like touching cadavers if I don’t have to. And I’ve had to before, which might explain why I don’t like to anymore. Okay, so back to the point… I’ve seen that movie The Jacket where The Pianist gets stuck in a meat locker in a straight jacket-type thing. Talk about some mother effing claustrophobia. Sweet Elephant, no thank you.

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International Affairs

When I was still in the service of the Service, back in late 1996, I was sent to Germany for Operation Joint Endeavor. Basically, we stationed ourselves in Germany for 90-day-tours and handled their aircraft maintenance while the permanent party there flew into Bosnia several times a week. Bosnian women are hot, by the way. I don’t really care too much about color of skin or whatever when I’m on the prowl. But I for some reason thought they were a brown people. No. They’re Scandinavian. White, blonde-haired, blue-eyed snow bunnies. Cute little gorgeous cuties. Anyway, I digress. The point is not the hot Bosnian women. The point is that I was sent to Germany.

It’s funny, by the way, how German women love Texans. Garret and I wore our cowboy hats and boots and the whole getup while we were over there. Every time we would walk into the Irish House (in Germany), the women would immediately flock to us. Have you seen me? I’m not that hot. I guess Garret was. But meh. They loved my hat. And this shitty German rock band that did 80s American Rock covers was playing “Dead or Alive” by Bon Jovi when we walked in one time. And every time he would get to the part where he says, “I’m a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride”, he would point to us during the ‘I’m a cowboy’ part. Sigh. Yeah it was pretty gay. But every single time he’d say it, he would point, and every time he would point, everyone in the bar would turn to look at us. So we’re standing there just sort of waving. Every time. I might have gone home with a brown woman that night. Anyway, that’s not the point either.

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No Such Addressee…

Kimbre’s column reminded me of something that happened during my time in the military. I worked in the Logistics Group, in the HQ building smack dab in the middle of the base. High profile, dress blues, etc. So there’s typically a lot of high-ranking traffic breezing through those hallways. Well our shop code was (I’m going to make one up so as not to divulge the actual code) 7LGCX. The base hospital’s was 7LGXC. We took a delivery for the hospital.

It’s not that they labeled it correctly and the mail carrier dropped it in the wrong building. They labeled it incorrectly, so it was actually addressed to us. This happened quite frequently too, like once every few weeks or so. Anyway, we got a large cold crate one time, sealed and insulated with dry ice cells. Not the kind of shipment we generally receive, but we opened it. After the fog cleared, I pulled the sheet of insulation plastic off the top of the contents pack and stared aghast at a crate full of human body parts.

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From Panama With Love

I guess I should talk about this. It's still the source of bad dreams that wake me up during the night, even eight years after the fact. It happened when I was still in the military. Way in. I was sent to Panama on an MRT (a Maintenance Recovery Team) to repair a bird that went down out there. I had been there for about two and a half weeks when we finally got the parts in and made our repairs on the C-130. Typical procedure is that it flies home immediately and we as a crew hitch a ride on it. Well due to circumstances upon which I cannot comment, I had to stay behind for several more days, and would catch a bus to Costa Rica (ugh) and from there, fly into San Antonio. All good. I was staying in a cheap shitty motel on the outskirts of…

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Children: Spare ‘Em or Spoil ‘Em?

Let’s talk about spanking children. A lot of people have a lot of problems with it, and some people cannot decide if they think it’s wrong or right. Well let me set the record straight, at least about my point of view on the issue. Anyone who’s gonna be my kid better be ready to receive spankings when they eff up. Period. To spare the rod is to spoil the child. My sister told me her Child Development class teaches (from the text book) that spanking your kid makes them violent as a teenager. I say to this – hogwash. I can’t tell you how many times I was spanked, and I am further from being violent-minded than the East is from the West. Complete horse caca. I will hear no more of it.

At that, I would have had to walk out of the class in disgust, tossing the text in the trash on the way out. It is not only Biblical, but also statistical that children who are disciplined correctly (i.e., spanked – for you lay people) are better in school and less likely to be in trouble with the law as adolescents. Is that not clear? I have witnessed firsthand children who walk all over their parents. Whether or not they are disciplined correctly is none of my business. But I can tell you what I do know. I do know these children I speak of are not spanked as a general rule. So make your own analysis, but my inference is that something is amiss.

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