Back in September, my girlfriend was online at the website of one of her favorite retailers, checking out candles and other foofy girl stuff, and there was something on the site that caught us both off guard. They were having a sale. This was not your average ordinary sale. They were having a 9/11 sale.

Now, I was not offended, as there are few things out there that will offend me. Even so, I had to wonder if this was a wise marketing campaign.

I guess it is not totally out of line, since after the attacks on September 11, our own president suggested that we go shopping, and basically not let the terrorists disrupt our American way of life, i.e. consumerism. It did make me wonder if this is the future of advertising, where we can exploit any tragedy as long as we offer substantial savings on merchandise?

But then my disbelief gave way to my wandering brain, which started to think about how if this did become a regular thing among retailers, just what the ads might look like. Basically, I ran with the Presidents Day sale motif, as it would be done by a local car salesman that produces and stars in his own ads, and just gave it a 9/11 twist.

DISCLAIMER (Yes the following is not exactly tasteful, so, if you go forward and get offended, you have no one to blame but yourself, and I will have no sympathy and probably make fun of your “outrage.” Seriously, you have been warned. Enjoy).

I picture a local car salesman dressed as a suicide bomber and yelling, “Death to high monthly payments.” Then there is a big fakey explosion, and as the dust settles there is a vehicle with very reasonable monthly payments painted on it’s windshield, and a voice over saying, “This beauty can be yours for a down payment of $911.”

Maybe they will use the slogans from 9/11 and say things like, “Lets roll… back prices,” or “Our savings are wanted dead or alive.”

Or maybe the salesman will be in a flight suit and do a bad George Bush impression, “The terrorists hate our free clock radio with every test drive,” while behind him is a banner that says, “Savings Accomplished.”

Maybe they could use actual video of the planes flying into the towers and have a voice over that says, “We couldn’t save everyone on 9/11, but we CAN save you… MONEY!” Then, as they the plane crashes into the building they superimpose a bunch of dollar bills to look like they are coming out of the explosion.

If they run with the idea of using actual 9/11 video with things superimposed, they could show a crowd, running from the dust cloud of the collapsing tower, with the words “High Prices” superimposed on the cloud, and a voice over that says, “Don’t let high prices catch you. Run, don’t walk, to our 9/11 sale.”

Obviously, the only way to end any of these commercial ideas is to say the following: “If you pay more, you support the terrorists.”

Yes, I know it is tacky and tasteless, but I’m not the one who had a 9/11 sale. I just followed the idea to it’s natural conclusion, and if you live in America, you know that none of it is that far fetched, and you can probably picture it all as clear as I could.

I have to admit, it cracked me up, but come on, after seven years, can’t we find some humor in this tragic event?

Yes it is very dark humor, but somehow, I doubt you can come up with a good 9/11 puppies and rainbows joke. And lets face it, being able to laugh at tragedy is a sign of healing, and it is also a very human thing to do, as it helps us to cope and move on. So be human or be offended… the choice is yours.

(By the way, if you were offended by any of this, then the terrorists have already won).

Story By Jayson, with help by skippy.

Once upon a time, in a far away land called Korea.

Well, the rest of the world calls it Korea.

We called it “Land of the Not-Quite Right”. We being the troops in the 4/7 CAV, who were stationed in what appeared to be the worlds largest flea market. This was a little town called Sonjuri that only had 3 crappy bars, and was near the DMZ.

I was a young, high speed-low drag, arrogant Bradley gunner in Alpha Troop. Our troop commander had always talked about wanting a goat as a unit mascot. As any regular reader of this site can guess, this was probably not the wisest life-choice he had ever made.

One night, most of the unit was out drinking. As sometimes happens when a bunch of soldiers are out drinking, we hit upon a really good idea. In this case we decided that to demonstrate how much we appreciated and respected him as both an officer and a gentleman, we should acquire him a goat mascot of his very own. And thus I found myself with a small group of highly motivated troopers, preparing a night infiltration operation against a local dog farm. In case you are wondering what a dog farm is, it is exactly what it sounds like, and you probably don’t want to know anything else on the subject.

Utilizing our highly trained stealth skills, natural sneakiness, and a near lethal BAC, we made it into the dog farm. Shortly after that we made positive contact with our target. We then subdued our four legged friend, and promptly headed back.

So, we started off back to camp, sneaking through the back streets and alleyways. We had made it about halfway back to our camp, with the goat fighting us the entire way, when the goat executed a counter-measure that we had not anticipated.

It pissed all over the guy carrying it. And the guy next to him.

Cursing our luck (and the goat) as we turned onto the next alley, we encountered three old Korean women. We faced off, looking as innocent as you can while covered in urine and carrying a goat. The women started yelling and chasing us. Even drunk and carrying a goat, we were faster and made it back to the gate well before them.

Now all that remained was the rather trivial task of sneaking a live goat past the guards. Our guard shack had a main room, where the guards were, and a corridor for people who entered to show their ID through the Plexiglas.

So all we had to do was get the goat through the corridor without the guards seeing it over the counter, and out the other side.

“This should be easy,” we thought as we set our plan into motion with the kind of confidence that can only be accomplished with heroic amounts of alcohol, and struggling livestock.

So, we have one guy start talking to the Korean guard who was outside, and the rest of us open the door to the shack and just kind of pushed the goat in. Unfortunately that’s when the three old women caught up and started shouting. Once inside the guard shack, the goat took off like crazy and ran out the other door, into the camp.

So we forget about the animal for a minute and join the three way argument between us, the guards, and the elderly ladies who are claiming that the goat is theirs. Now it might not have technically been ours. But we didn’t steal it from them, and damned if we were going to give them the goat which we had stolen fair and square.

Finally the sergeant of the guard has had enough. He tells us to go retrieve the goat and give it to them, regardless if it’s theirs or not. So we start off onto camp and start looking for the goat.

Now, this is a small post. Only about 500 Soldiers live there, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find this thing. After all, how much trouble can one unattended goat get into in a military encampment late at night?

Well a few minutes later we tracked it down to the lawn of a house.

Which turned out to belong to our Squadron Commander.

So, now we have our Squadron Commander standing on his porch, watching us and wearing the kind of expression that can only belong to a man who has experienced the joy that is “Surprise Midnight Drunken Goat Rodeo”.

We finally manage to get a grip on the damn thing, and take it back to the guard shack. We give the goat to the guards, and they give it to the old women. And we head back to the barracks for some beer. But first a shower because two of us smell like goat and the other two smell like goat pee.

It’s that time of the week again, when I show off some more things that our various servicemen can’t do. This time the entire list is courtesy of SPC Jason Greco.

• Not allowed to order chloroform

• Not allowed to cut a lock because I’m too lazy to walk back and get the key

• I am not a Government Slave

• Not allowed to use privates to test the validity of an MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet)

• I should not barricade my Platoon SGT’s door with water bottles.

• No longer allowed to refer to Marines as “Targets”

• No longer allowed to call a deployment a “Field Trip”

• Hitting another soldier with a frozen fish in the Commissary will get you kicked out

• No longer allowed to tag things with the phrase “Army Smart”

• I am not allowed in areas that require a security clearance, even if I have one

• Not allowed to claim a crowbar as my weapon

• Not allowed to use military vehicles for an “Ice cream run”

• It is optional to participate in “Man Love Thursday” if you are higher ranking than I am

• I am not the juggernaut

• I am required to wear underwear to PT formation

• Not allowed to build anything without supervision

• Not allowed to order prosthetic testicles

• Not allowed to order things “just because I want one”

• Not allowed to run a sex toy business while deployed

• Not allowed to wear a cape to work

• Black Hawk mechanics are not “crash test dummies”

• The other 0.1% do not work here

• Snowball fights are not authorized on the flight line

• Not allowed to buy anyone, especially Local Nationals.

• I should not test how sharp my knife is on living things

• “I can find things to do” is not the correct response when asked what I’m doing

• Not allowed to shoot cigarettes out of soldier’s mouths

• Mardi Gras beads are not allowed in the Dining Facility

• No longer allowed to wear a cape while driving a convertible military vehicle

• My kevlar is not a pimp hat and I’m not allowed to put a feather in it

• A $1000 piece of equipment does not make a good ash tray

• Mohawks are not authorized haircuts

• I am not allowed to boycott our CSM

• Not allowed to attach mullet wigs to hard hats with super glue

• Not allowed to order a new aircraft from supply, even if the one on the flight line is broken

• “Playboy: The Mansion” is not an authorized military program

• Not allowed to build a statue of myself using Government resources.

• Not allowed to replace my rifle with a baseball bat, even if it does have the same serial number, butt number, a sling and a magazine attached to it.

Last week I played a prank on my readers, by leading them along about an unpleasant subject, before turning it into a joke. If you just got here, go ahead and read it now, I’ll wait.

I’d say that I am sorry for doing that to my regular readers, but let’s face it. You know that I’m not, and that’s probably why you keep reading my site. Because you know that I have the capacity and the willingness to turn painful emotional turmoil into a bad pun. That’s just the kind of service I like to provide.

But it has been pointed out to me that this is a serious issue that needs to be addressed publicly more often.

We currently have a suicide epidemic amongst those that serve. Take a look at this article.

Over 6,000 veterans killed themselves in 2005. That’s more than we have lost in combat since operations in Iraq began.

And so I am going to talk about the same thing, but this time no jokes.

Pretty much everything I described about my problems coming home from Kosovo was true, with the exception of the model part.

I got back to the states and took leave right away. I was a little weirded out at first, which I just attributed to having been home for only a week or so. I noticed that I now had issues with being in crowded areas. And once a friend of mine tried to run up and hug me. I reacted by stiff-arming her hard in the chest with my left hand, while reaching my right arm to my side where my (now imaginary) rifle would be hanging, to make sure she couldn’t grab it. Which was a tad embarrassing.

Upon returning I was sent to language school.

Unfortunately I stopped falling asleep at night. I lashed out at my teammates, and I couldn’t concentrate or study worth a damn. Which made trying to study Arabic go from a rather unpleasant exercise in futility to nightmarishly unpleasant exercise in futility. I tried to talk about it with a few of the soldiers I worked with, but was mostly left with the impression that they thought less of me for bringing the subject up. So I quit trying to talk about it. And so I just got worse.

Maybe soldiers are better about this sort of thing now. I certainly hope they are. But if one of your buddies has started acting like an ass lately, talk to him about it. Make sure he’s alright. I know that it can seem like the sorta thing that rough-tough, high-speed, low-drag troopers shouldn’t worry about. He might even make fun of you. But would you rather suffer through an uncomfortable conversation, or find out that one of your pals was in serious pain, in need of help, and that you didn’t do anything to help?

Eventually my team SGT decided that something was seriously wrong and did send me to the medical center to speak to a shrink. And I was diagnosed with PTSD. And my treatment was Wellbutrin and sleeping pills.

Because if there’s one thing a soldier with PTSD needs, its a bottle of sleeping pills. Don’t worry though, he wasn’t completely irresponsible. He asked if I was suicidal first. Its not like a soldier would ever lie about something like that, and besides, I’m sure that the nearly half an hour he spoke to me gave him enough of an impression of who I was and how I was doing.

So let’s recap. Half an hour with a doctor. Two bottles of pills, and an appointment to come back in a few weeks to see how I was holding up.

Things did not improve significantly. Maybe Wellbutrin has helped some other people. But in my case, it just made me feel hyper, frantic, and hostile. Also, it made Dr. Pepper taste funny for some reason.

Fortunately I did happen to have a decent social support network outside of the military. I have a family that gives a damn about me, and I had plenty of non-military friends that I spoke to. And they also noticed I was acting different since I had gotten back.

And what turned out to work for me was talking about my issues with people I could trust. And it didn’t get better overnight. But over time, it did. I quit taking the pills and told Army mental health “Thanks I feel fine now all better!” for pretty much the same reasons. Because they weren’t doing a darn thing to make me feel better. And I talked it over with my friends a whole bunch more. After a few months I started to feel a little better. And after about a year or so I was pretty much over it for the most part. Although I’m still not all that comfortable in crowds anymore.

Now I’m not claiming that pills are always going to be bad for you. Nor am I saying that talking to your friends fixes everything.

There are good and bad doctors in the Army, and I think I just happened to draw a bad one. And the pills didn’t help me. But talking it out did.

So if you feel like you are having any trouble coping after a deployment, talk to someone about it. If you don’t feel comfortable talking with those you serve with, talk with your family, or friends outside of the service. Check with the mental health people in your branch of service. If you don’t want to talk about it with your chain of command, lie about having an STD scare and go anyways. If you do go with military mental health services, remember that they should be making you feel better, not worse. If they make you feel worse, speak to someone else, or try to find a private therapist or councilor. Talk you your Pastor, Rabbi, or High Priestess. Look online for support groups. Hell post anonymously in the comments on my site if you just can’t find anyone else to talk to, please just talk to someone.

And for everyone who has had any experience with problems like this, please share any information on any resources you happen to know about that could help.

Some Resources:

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

National Center for PTSD

PTSD Support Services

Military One Source - Anonymous mental health care for people in the service.

Celebrate that fact that you have gotten past hump-day by watching these videos at work.

Be sure to turn the volume way up, to maximize the distraction to any nearby co-workers.

If you like zombies and babies, you might like this. (And if you read this site, then you probably do.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPgxCiE3hqY

Here’s a trailer for a movie that will, rather unfortunately, probably never be made.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=31462745

I have worked in haunted houses for eleven of the last fourteen years. I started in Nightmare on Grayson in San Antonio, and I got five seasons under my belt before moving to Austin and finding a haunt that became my home. Although, the first night I worked for The Nightmare Factory, I was not sure I was going to stay for more than the first night.

I had sent in an application and never heard back from the owners. Then on opening night in 2002 I got a call about thirty minutes before they opened, saying they were short handed and wanting to know if I could help.

Naturally, I jumped at the chance as it had been a little over three years since I moved to Austin and slightly longer since I got my boo on.

Even though I was a veteran with several years of experience I was still just a new guy to them. I had to prove myself. I later found out that anytime in the past that they had an actor show up from another haunt, it never worked out. They figured I would be no different.

So, to put me to the test, they stuck me in this scene that looked like an Egyptian tomb. They called it Chitchupaz, (pronounced chit-you-paz,… get it?) It was gorgeous. There were hieroglyphics everywhere and large hieroglyphic images from the Book of the Dead in spots. There was fake gold all over the place. Sand all over the place. A sarcophagus that was set up with mirrors so that it would fade back and forth between a view of the outside of the sarcophagus, to the inside so you could see the mummy contained within. There was also the torn up remnants of a bloody body on the floor.

I was impressed. I asked them what I was supposed to do in here. I was expecting to be a mummy or something.

Nope.

The owner and his right hand man had been really into Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter that year, and they made this big, beautiful scene without thinking about what to put in it. And well… I think they used to smoke a lot of pot back then, or something, but they thought it would be great to have a Steve Irwin-esque, archaeologist being attacked by a mummy.

So they show me my costume. It was basically the Steve Irwin shirt and shorts, which looked even dorkier with my black work boots, and pale white legs. Needless to say, I felt like an idiot.

Then they showed me the “mummy.” It was a zombie mask that was stuffed and sewn on to a body that was made out of cloth. The arms were sewn together in a loop so that it could hang around your neck… like it is attacking you.

They told me when people come by to run out and pretend the mummy is attacking me, and tell people to stay away from the gold, because it is cursed. The idea of cursed gold got set up in the previous scene by Becky, a talking ventriloquist dummy who would tell bad jokes and also told people to stay away from the gold in Chitchupaz. (Like I said, I think they smoked a lot of pot back in those days.)

I tried it their way, as they suggested. And it looked as stupid as it sounds. I would hide in a corner and wait for a group to come by, then they see me come running out, looking dorky in shorts and work boots, with a stuffed mummy hanging off my neck, trying to act like I am being attacked and warning people to stay away from the cursed gold.

The looks of confusion on peoples faces were priceless.

The laughter stung a little.

Sometimes, I could not help but join the customers in laughing at the whole thing, as I knew how ridiculous I looked trying to act like I am being attacked or fighting off what was essentially a stuffed animal, while running around yelling, “Stay away from the gold! ARRRRGGGH! It’s cursed! Don’t touch the gold!”

After about thirty minutes, the boss came up to me and told me that they were getting something into fix the scene, (Oh, thank god), but it would not be in until the next week (Aww, crap). He told me he knew it sucked and to just… well… do the best with what I have.

I think I saw him stifle a giggle after he said that and turned to walk away.

Being a veteran of haunted houses, I said the hell with this, I want to actually scare people. So, I went back to hide in my corner and wait, just like I had earlier in the night. When a group came through my scene, I ran out, like the mummy was attacking me, again, just like I had earlier. But this time I came at customers fast, so that by the time they could process that I had a really fake looking, stuffed mummy around my neck, I was right next to them at the rail, and launching the mummy out over the railing at them, and shoving it in their faces.

I was actually scaring people, and even put a couple of them on the floor. (Hooray me. I’m like scary and stuff.) This even impressed the boss, that I was able to get any scares at all in that scene.

The next week, the owner did fix Chitchupaz. He ordered Anubis. Anubis is a Stalkaround, which is basically a puppet that you wear on your shoulders that makes you look about eight feet tall. Naturally the scene got a whole lot scarier, and to say I fell in love with Anubis is an understatement. I had crowds hitting the floor consistently, running out of the scene terrified, and I fed off the energy.

Anubis had a long life, he was used for the next two years, then was turned into Death for another three years before the Nightmare Factory got shut down.

I got to keep Death, since I spent the most time in him, I helped to maintain and repair him and trained newbies on how to use a Stalkaround and not make it look stupid. Now Death lives in the corner of my computer room, and is sitting behind me as I write this.

Death does get out once in a while. He helped me to win the costume contest at work, and he also was a celebrity judge in the Zombie Apocalypse Talent Show. He also lives on in virtual reality, in City of Villains as “Mr. Death.”

But what happened to the stuffed mummy? Well, I am not sure who has him. But he lived on as a catch phrase that we all still use to this day: “A mummy around the neck”.

(Definition) Mummy around the neck - something that seems like a good idea, but once implemented is obviously lame.

ex. Do you think it is scary, or is it a mummy around the neck?

ex. Do you think Segways will change the way people travel or is it just a mummy around the neck?

ex. Was this an interesting and entertaining post about the haunted house, or was it a mummy around the neck?

Feel free to use and spread the phrase.

Around a week or so ago I got my first official board game rejection.

Despite how that sounds, this is actually pretty good news.

You see, I have submitted my designs to publishers in the past. But no one has ever actually bothered to tell me that they don’t want it. Usually they just ignore me.

Heck one company, which will remain nameless, expressed interest, told me they liked my game and wanted to run with it, and then never spoke to me again.

And so an actual honest-to-goodness rejection letter is actually a step up.

This time they cared enough to tell me to buzz off.

I’m still waiting to hear from some other potential publishers and I’m also looking into the possibility of self-publishing, either by making it a downloadable file that the customers print themselves or by actually shelling out the bucks for a print run.

Of course, this means that I would have to also find an artist to make all of the illustrations. So if you know an illustrator that works cheap and can follow instructions, please encourage them to contact me.

Also, if you know anything about the Board Game Industry, or just happen to own a publishing company, feel free to email me about this.

Details about my new project are here.