Archive for May, 2008

To keep with the zombie theme that Michiel seems to have started, I would like to discuss some zombie survival techniques.

Say you are sitting in your living room, minding your own business, when you happen to notice what appears to be a pack of zombies standing on your front porch. Simply follow these easy steps.

Step 1 – Confirm The Zombie Infestation

Check the date. Is it Halloween? If it is there is an excellent chance that the zombies are merely some kids in make-up, and they want candy. It is generally considered bad form to shoot your neighbor’s children in the brain.

However movies such as CHUD 2, Revenge of The Living Dead, and many others have taught us that sometimes the flesh-hungry damned do rise up to attack during Halloween. And these movies always feature at least one suburban family that get ripped apart because they opened the door to what they foolishly assumed to be trick-or-treaters.

There are generally speaking only three ways to confirm the presence of zombies. The first is to open the door and see if they eat you. There is a rather large and glaring flaw with that test.

The second option for checking for zombies is to ask them.

“Excuse me, are you a zombie?”

If they drool, and reach for you while licking their chops, then its a zombie and you should shoot it in the brain.

If they answer “yes”, then thank them for their honesty and then shoot them in the brain. (But try to do it politely.)

If they tell you that they are not a zombie, then shoot them in the brain anyways. Because everybody knows that zombies are liars.

The third test I like to call “The Test Shot”. Shoot one of them in the leg. If they stay up, and just glare, moan, or scream for you tasty tasty brains, then it is clearly a zombie and you should follow up with a shot to the head.

If on the other hand, they fall to the ground screaming in pain and dropping candy all over, then its just a little kids wearing a costume, and you can go back to watching television. If it falls over dropping candy without the screaming, then congratulations. You just shot a pinata. And what kind of asshole shoots a pinata?

One thing that has always bugged me about zombie movies is that only humans return from the dead. It does not matter what the cause is, there are only dead people getting up and walking around.

Well, in spite of what your religion may tell you, people are not special, and I am pretty sure that whatever reanimates dead people will reanimate everything else too. This totally makes the coming zombie apocalypse even more horrifying, and the odds of surviving it drop to zero.

That’s right, I said zero. No one will survive it. Let me show you how I see this going down.

Imagine you and a few friends have gotten together to try to ride out the zombie apocalypse. You’re all huddled in a house. You have the place barricaded pretty well, and it is holding the zombie people and their zombie dogs and zombie cats at bay. But in the house there are terrors you did not count on.

One of your buddies goes to use the bathroom, and after a couple of minutes you hear a blood curdling scream. He comes running out, holding his ass, saying something bit him. You point your gun at the toilet and see zombie goldfish, that have come back from their watery grave to feast on their former human masters. Since your friend has been infected, you have no choice but to shoot him in the head, declare the bathroom off limits, and from now on, you all go in a bucket you found in a closet.

While you all sit around and ponder what to do with the bucket once it is full, one of your friends begins to scream as he is bit by a zombie mouse that died in the walls several months back. As he freaks out, he knocks over a box, and a bunch of zombie cockroaches come running out. You could just turn on a light to keep the zombie roaches at bay, but there is no electricity.

You realize you can’t stay in the house, it is not safe. So you shoot your mouse bitten friend in the head, gather some supplies and leave. But as you head for the door, one of your buddies bumps into the plant that died because it never got watered, and one of the branches scratches him. He thinks nothing of it, since he didn’t think that plants would come back from the dead too.

What none of you realized is that the plant got reanimated, and even though it moves so slow you can not perceive it, plants do move. Although it is stuck in a pot, don’t think for one second that the plant has not been trying all this time to find a way to fertilize it’s soil with your brains, and it has slowly turned and leaned towards the area you and your friends were hiding, just like it had turned towards the sunlight when it was alive.

You all run to one of your friends SUV, and have to dodge a zombie bird on the way. One of you almost got pecked. It was close but you are all ok. You decide to head to the high school gymnasium, as it should be relatively free of pests and animals, and you can figure out your next move there.

As you are driving to the school, you notice all the road kill dragging itself along, searching for flesh of the living. You are not sure what is more disturbing, the half a zombie possum clawing its way along the roadside, or the family of zombie ducklings feeding on the remains of the mother duck. Suddenly you see something even more disturbing, it is a couple of undead squirrels filling their cheeks with the brains of a jogger.

As you almost reach the school, your friend with the zombie plant scratch begins to turn, but no one notices until he bites into the back of the drivers skull, and the SUV crashes into the big electronic sign in front of the high school. You know, the sign that was purchased by the class of 1987 and tells you when the next girls volleyball game is going to be. You feel bad that it got destroyed, since you know those kids sold a lot of candy, and washed a lot of cars to raise the money for that sign. But you figure that none of that matters anymore, since they are probably all dead from zombies.

Zombies. You forgot about the zombies for a second and got all focused on the electronic sign. You must have hit your head in the crash and thats why you forgot about your zombie friend gnawing on your other friends skull that caused the crash in the first place.

You shoot them both in the head and make your way to the school.

Suddenly, you see some undead emo kids heading for you. You hate emo kids, so shooting them is the first bit of fun you have had since this whole zombie apocalypse started.

You make it to the gym and realize it is just you and one friend that is left of your party. The two of you try to relax, since there is nothing in the gym. No birds that got trapped. No bugs that you can see. No animals of any kind.

It’s as you both breathe a sigh of relief that your friend gets bit by a mosquito.

You have no way of knowing if it was a zombie mosquito or not, especially after your friend slapped it and crushed it.

Not wanting to take any chances, you shoot him in the face. You two weren’t that tight anyway. He was a friend of a friend. He was the fat guy in your group, and you were amazed he survived this long. Although it was funny when he tried to sneak some food, and opened the can of sardines. He screamed when the zombie sardines all started to flop out of the tin. Fortunately they were soaked in oil and just fell apart as they tried to attack.

As you think to yourself that you will miss him more than you would have expected, you begin to feel funny, like a fever is coming on. You notice some of your flesh is slowly becoming necrotic.

How can this be? Nothing got to you. You confirm it buy stripping down and checking every inch of your body in the mirror. No bites or cuts or anything.

As the fever gets worse, you finally figure out what happened. All the bacteria that your immune system has fought and killed since this whole ordeal began are now zombie bacteria. You are becoming a zombie from the inside out. Your own survival mechanisms have betrayed you. Your final thoughts consist of the realization that this will happen to everyone and everything on the planet, and you are witnessing the end of the world.

As you may have noticed I have been using my site as a forum for soldiers and veterans to share their funny stories. And so I get stuff emailed to me I read through it, and put the best ones I find up here.

Some of the stories I get sent are funny, but not written in a particularly comedic manner. Up to this point I have gone back and forth with the original writers to try to help them polish it up. Unfortunately this is beginning to eat up a bunch of my time, when it would probably be faster for me to just re-write the thing.

And so that is the new policy on submissions. If you send me a story, I will edit it, and possibly re-write a portion of it, to make it a funnier read. You will still get credit for writing the story, I will just mention that I helped you to tell it.

When I was going through the Army LPN program at Ft. Sam Houston, part of our course requirements was doing clinical rotations on the various floors and sections of the hospital. Most of the job was becoming familiar with doing complete patient assessments, charting, and basic procedures; ie: dressing changes, moving the patients, etc. One of my classmates whom I was paired with one day, learned a very valuable lesson.

My partner that day (who I will refer to as PFC Mybad) was taking care of a young man on a medical/surgical ward. That means all the serious problems he had were treated and he was now recovering. The morning routine was pretty simple: go in, greet the patient, do a physical assessment, change the linens if necessary, and ask if there’s anything they need prior to morning medication rounds. Unfortunately, Mybad forgot one key element at the beginning of this encounter. She failed to read the man’s chart to get a history of his current condition.

The physical assessment is essentially a rundown of check on the body’s major systems; musculoskeletal, cardiac, pulmonary, integumentary, etc. She did all of these very cheerfully and professionally, the whole time chatting up the man and his wife who was at the bedside. Then things went wrong. When checking muscle strength, a routine test is to hold your hands out, palms up, and ask the patient to press down on your hands with his as hard as he can. When she asked him to do this, he just kind of stared at her, bewildered.

That’s when the wife softly said, ”He’s a quadriplegic, dear.”

PFC Mybad turned beet red while the patient, his wife, and I went into near hysterics laughing.

And before I show the list, SPC Jeremy Johnson wanted me to tell you about Operation Happy Note.

In his own words”
“These guys are sending musical instruments to deployed soldiers, which is fucking awesome, and I figured its the kind of thing that you would plug on your site.”

Well spotted Jeremy, and consider the info passed on.

(Submitted by SPC Jeremy Johnson)

• Not allowed to tell my LT “I don’t have to listen to you, you’re just a Lieutenant!” (Note that this never actually stopped me)
• Not allowed to remove computer equipment to install a microwave in the shelter.
• Not allowed to remove computer equipment to install a mini-fridge in the shelter.
• Not allowed to install an X-Box in the shelter.
• Not even if I give the LT a turn.
• Not allowed to convert my Humvee into a Pirate Ship.
• Not allowed to ‘just’ fly a Jolly Roger from the antenna mount.
• Not allowed to slash the tires of Vehicles that park in my spot.
• Even if they belong to other units.
• Especially if they belong to another Country.
• Not allowed to exchange my M16 for a Pistol, “Because it’ll be more fun.”
• Not allowed to Exchange my M16 for a shotgun, “Because all the cool kids have one.”
• Not allowed to exchange my M16 for a Sub-Machine Gun.
• Ok, I can, but only if I can find one for the commander too.
• Not allowed to shoot at Civilian Contractors in Suburbans if they’re tailgating me. That job belongs to the LT. (True story, don’t ever give that guy the finger)

(Submitted By Joshua Nolan)

• Cannot ride a quad-barreled APC designated for the Iraqi Army like a rodeo star.

• The answer “You might.” is not consent to attempt to jump a 3 foot sand berm in an 18-wheeler after running over the “DO NOT ENTER” sign.

• Cannot attempt to jump anything in an 18-wheeler.
• Dr Pepper is not basic pyro issue.

• Cannot start a pillw fight on an airliner and blame PTSD.

Best.

Dog.

Ever.

So a few years back the Army decided, in its infinite wisdom, that it had too many Staff Sergeants.

And so, as the Army sometimes does when this happens, it decided to offer incentives to any E-6s that would volunteer to leave the service early. And someone whimsical came up with a rather creative incentive system.

The volunteer could choose any two spots on their body, and an Army medic would measure the distance between them, and award one hundred dollars for every inch.

The morning the program opened, the medic, a Specialist, who had drawn the measuring detail received his first volunteer.

“Alright Sergeant before we get started I am required to ask you what your MOS is, and why you wish to leave the Army.”

“Well Specialist, I’m a mechanic and I was going to ETS next year anyways and I figure I could use the extra money, so why not get out now?”

‘Fair enough Sergeant. Where would you like to be measured?”

“From the tip of my left middle finger to the tip of my right middle finger.”

The specialist took his tape measure, and checked. “Okay Sergeant, you measure at 66 inches, go ahead and take this form to the Captain at the desk outside and he will cut you a check. Please send the next candidate in.”

The second candidate, a tall man, entered and was asked the same question.

“I’m a 25S, which means I work with satellite communications systems. I’m about to get married, which means I could use some extra money. And since civilians with my training make some serious money, I figure that now is a good time to get out and start a family.”

“Fair enough Sergeant, where would you like to be measured?”

“From the bottom of my feet to the top of my head.”

This man was six foot eight, and the Specialist told him so. “That comes to 80 inches, please give this form to the Captain at the desk outside and he’ll take care of your check. Please send the next man in.”

The third NCO walked in, limping badly. He too was asked for his MOS and his reason for leaving the service.

“I’m an 11B, infantry. I have seen too many combat tours, and my Humvee hit an IED a few months ago. I only recently got out of the hospital, and it is only a matter of time before my paperwork catches up with me and I get a medical discharge. So I might as well take the money and run while I can.”

“Sounds like a plan Sergeant. Where would you like me to measure you?”

“From the tip of my penis to the base of my testicles.”

“Wait, what?”

“Did I stutter soldier? I said from the tip of my penis to the base of my testicles.”

“Sergeant, I don’t mean this as an insult to your manhood, but wouldn’t it be a better idea to-”

“I SAID THE TOP OF MY COCK TO THE BACK OF MY SACK TROOPER!” the Sergeant bellowed while dropping his pants, “NOW GET TO IT!”

Feeling awkward, the Specialist got on his knees and gingerly brought the tape measure forward. Taking a quick look, he gasped and jumped back.

“Sergeant! Your balls are missing! Where are they?”

“Fallujah. Now pay up.”