So there I was, in Iraq, getting ready to go on a mission. Now, before a unit moves out, they usually meet up about an hour early for briefings which cover the route of march, order of movement, recent operations in the area, evacuation and contact procedures, etc. But the briefings never get started on time, so usually we’re just there waiting around in the vehicles. Usually, this is the perfect time to go over your own gear and make sure your truck is definitely good to go.

This night was unusual because the route commander was especially late.

So, there we were, just sitting around with nothing to do.

It should also be understood by those non-military types that certain job specialties, and especially their holders, are considered… weird. PSYOP, if you haven’t guessed from Skippy’s stories, is one of those. Another one that comes to most people’s minds is EOD, Explosive Ordnance Disposal, my job. Basically, we VOLUNTEER to work with explosives. While we are trained for so much more, the Army uses us as a bomb squad.

We’re the guys that get angry, count to ten, calmly ask what kind of car you drive and if it’s parked outside, and then usually get whatever we want. Basically, people think (know?) we’re crazy. We’re the type of people that it’s bad to have bored…. Maybe Skippy could edit here to corroborate this idea. (And now a word from our sponsor?)

corroboration from skippy- You may have heard the phrase “Idle hands are the Devils tools”? Have you ever seen a trencher? It’s basically a bulldozer but instead of a plow, it has a giant chainsaw. If idle hands are the Devil’s tools, then idle EOD is the Devil’s trencher. Being piloted by ferret. On methamphetamines.

Anyways, there we were, inside our very large  JERRV truck, with nothing to do. It was chow time, and our staging area was right across from the mess hall, within full view of the line going in. Our Team Leader, a Staff Sergeant, or an E-6 for those of military but not Army savvy, was outside, his back against the truck and this is important, talking to a friend of his.

I look over at my co-Team Member, who was driving that night while I was in the back in the gunner’s seat. “Brandon,” I say “what would you give me to do an Irish jig on the roof of this truck?”

Yes, we use first names when “in the truck”, basically when no one of higher rank can hear to get mad; calling people by their rank and last name falls under customs and courtesy, and some people of higher rank get really bent up about that kind of thing.

Brandon then reaches into his pocket and pulls out a dollar. “I found a dollar,” he said, holding it out.

“Done and done,” I say, snatching his dollar. I climbed out of the gunner hatch, and begin doing am Irish jig. I wasn’t very far into it, when I saw a shadowy figure separate from the chow line and make a bee line for us.

Now, for anyone that has never met one, Sergeants Major, or any military E-9 (as high as an enlisted man can get) have a certain kind walk when they are perturbed. Only THEY can do this, as I’ve never seen ANY impression come even close. Maybe they teach it in the Sergeant Major’s academy. Again, I might need corroboration from our military writers (another word from our fabulous sponsors!)

Corroboration from skippy- You know how in the Jaws movies, there’s the part where the cello music starts picking up and the shark is now moving directly towards the helpless and delicious marine biologist/nocturnal skinny-dipper/comedically chubby kid? You can see the fin, and it’s cutting through the water, as the monster opens it’s mouth to bite the victim in half. That’s how a ticked off senior NCO walks. Except with feet, instead of awesome John Williams music.

This particular shadow was doing just that walk, so I knew he was a Sergeant Major, and annoyed. What else to do? It was obvious that he was annoyed with ME, and hiding it would have only made it worse.

So, I REALLY got into my dance, adding twirls and little hops and everything. He storms up to my TL, who you may remember, had his back against the truck, and therefore to me.  He then does the whole Army point with all four fingers of one and says, “Sergeant, before I speak, put your cover  on and stand at parade rest! You,” here he turned to my TL’s friend and pointed at her. “Put your Gawt-Damn eye pro on!”

For the non-military readers “cover” is Army for “hat”.  “Eye pro” is Army for “Eye Protection”.  And “Parade Rest” is Army for “Brace yourself, here it comes!”

He turned back to the TL. “Now, tell me why in the f*** this soldier” he pointed up at me, now also at parade rest and rather fortunately with a cover and eye pro on, “is DANCING on top of this gawt-damn truck?!”

His voice was starting to crescendo. It had probably been a good while since he had issued a really GOOD ass-chewing. “Why does he not have three points of contact ?! Why….”

His voice trailed off as he noticed that both myself and the TL had very obvious EOD letters on our left arms, proclaiming to the world not to trust us with their daughters, but their lives were safe with us. It was like he had switched a button in his head that turned him from screaming maniac to Uncle Bob instantly.

“Shee-it, Son,” he put a hand on the TL’s shoulder. “You boys got that stressful job. You pick up that shee-it from the roadsides and take it apart, don’t'cha?  Shee-it, I know y’all are just blowin’ off some steam, just don’t let it go too far. Make sure he don’t fall.” then he turned and sauntered back to the chow line.

I was back inside the truck in record time. The TL took a minute to climb in. When he did, he just sighed. It took him a minute to speak. Finally, he said, “At least life is interesting.” And that’s the last I ever heard about the subject.

As anyone who has been through boot camp will tell you, we did a lot of stupid things daily that made no sense. One such practice was tucking our shirts into everything. If you’re wearing uniform pants, tuck your shirt in. If you’re wearing exercise (PT) shorts, tuck your shirt in. If you’re wearing a sweat suit, tuck your sweatshirt in. The point: We always had to have our damn shirts tucked in. The military also has written directives on how to do almost everything. One such directive is the “Marine Corps Grooming Standard” that dictates our hair cut, our weight, our glasses, and how we wear our clothes. There is a line that specifically states “The face will be clean-shaven, except that a mustache may be worn.” It’s that first part that got me in trouble. We didn’t learn verbatim the shaving part, but we did shave everyday so maybe they figured we’d keep up the practice or maybe I was just sick that day.

I have the curse of having a 5 O’clock shadow by noon, because of this, shaving everyday for me is not only a pain in the ass figuratively it’s a pain on my face literally. I countered this by not shaving all weekend or on days off so I could give myself a break. This was all well and good if I would have had my own place to live outside the gates, but when you live on base there are countless number of people who are waiting to not only point out your problem but also tell you about it loudly. It makes for some drama. One such incident occurred when I went shopping with the wife.

It was a typical Saturday morning, I was sitting on the sofa in my boxers, drinking coffee, watching TV, when the wife then says, “I want to go to the mall.” So I head to the mall without shaving. It didn’t cross my mind until who should come walking the other way but the Sergeant Major who is a career grunt, who is going through culture shock by serving in his first Intelligence Battalion in over 20 years. We didn’t get along. He worked harder and I worked smarter. The two worlds could not be further opposite. Upon seeing him I quickly did what any man would do in that situation, I hid in the nearest store in hopes that he wouldn’t see me or my “Elvis Beard” (I know Elvis never wore a beard, but to many a Sergeant Major he did and, he was also used to illustrate all contradictions to the grooming standard.) After he passed, I went back to my wife who was standing in the center of the mall with a very confused and annoyed look on her face. I thought I was safe, but come Monday it was apparent that I thought wrong.

As I passed his office I hear a bellow from his office summoning me. I tried the dumb approach and entered his office with a smile (Mistake 1) and said, “Good morning Sergeant Major! What can I do to you?” (Mistake 2). He told me that entrance was disrespectful and he’d address that shortly but first, “Didn’t they teach you in boot camp to shave every day? Didn’t your highly motivated, truly dedicated, Drill Instructors tell you that a Marine is to be clean shaven daily?”. To which my prep school smugness kicked in and I responded with a very dry, “Yes Sergeant Major my DI’s did have me shave everyday, but then again, they also had us tuck our t-shirts into our underwear so I just figured it was another cruel joke.”

As I watched his eyes bulge, his face turn red, and his teeth began to grind, I noticed the vein on his forehead begin to swell so I knew I was in for a real treat. He proceeded to verbally assault everything about me except my mother.

I expected this reaction, so the yelling didn’t really bother me. What I took away from the whole thing, however, was this:

The Sergeant Major was not a witty man. If he was he would have told me to pull my pants down to make sure my T-shirt was tucked into my underwear and then yelled at me for that too.

After finally getting my trebuchet back I still hadn’t learned my lesson completely. I bought my own beer and soda intending to drink the soda, and launch the beer. I brought my supplies to the place where my trebuchet now permanently resides. I also brought along several friends to help me turn the trebuchet so it was instead pointed at a much larger, and unused, helicopter pad.

As my friends and I were loading up the twelve pack I had bought, someone pointed out that it was a waste of perfectly good beer.

After a quick discussion and an informal poll, the beer launch was vetoed. So we loaded the soda instead. All four 2 liter bottles. We didn’t bother with ties or anything because the sling would hold them together nicely until about half a second after release. We all popped a beer and toasted the trebuchet dubbing it “Soda-Slayer”.

And the I pulled the firing cord.

Did I mention the four plastic soda bottles? The two liter ones.

Well they make a sound similar to a twelve ounce can of beer slamming into the side of a building.

Especially when they slam into the side of the self-same building.

In all our re-aiming and adjustments, we forgot to readjust the launching platform. What resulted was something similar to a “hook” in golf. The bottles flew the correct direction for about one nanosecond then proceeded to veer off in a beautiful arc before slamming into the roof of the headquarters building and exploding. I was told it sounded something like a cannon going off on the roof. They shook the whole building. The only thing that saved us was when the base commander came storming over, we saluted, and handed him a beer with the promise to clean up the mess and re-roof the building.

After that day I was permanently banned from my trebuchet. It is still sitting there though. It is slightly rusted and the sling is rotted, but a little loving care and an new sling and it will be ready for more soda/beer slinging action.

What would you do if you found twelve pieces of twelve foot long steel I-Beam sitting next to a metal recycle bin? Me, I’m interested in the late feudal eras of Northern Europe so I did the only thing I could think of. I built a trebuchet.

For those of you who do not know what a trebuchet is, it is a fourteen foot tall counter-levered catapult capable if flinging large object tremendous distances with great accuracy.

In other words, it’s fun!

So there I was, I-Beams and a plan. But how to do this? Well our local vehicle maintenance shop just happens to have not only a welding machine, but an acetylene torch as well. It took me two weeks of leave and a lot of secrecy, but what I emerged with was a twelve foot tall 16,400 pound steel and lead contraption that I was proud of. I even attached a tow hitch and wheels to make it transportable.

My first day back to work I towed it along. During my lunch break I wanted to test fire it, but had no ammunition to fire. Again providence provided and I found a fridge full of nearly expired beer. So I grabbed a six pack, unhitched and set up the trebuchet and had it loaded and ready when one of my co-workers returned from lunch.

He saw me with a rope in hand, a full unbroken six pack upon the launch platform and a huge grin on my face. Unfortunately he was just a hair slow in telling me not to pull the rope.

WHAM!!!!

The six-pack launched about two-hundred feet into the air and sailed completely over the parade grounds I was aiming at. About mid-flight the plastic rings gave out and I suddenly had a cluster shot instead of a single projectile. As it flew I realized my mistake as the beer also flew over the parking lot on the far side of the parade ground and began to pelt the side of the base headquarters. If you’ve never seen an entire six-pack explode in rapid succession I’d recommend using this particular method.

Just don’t hit the side of the headquarters building.

Especially right out side of the base commander’s window.

And doubly especially with the base commander’s own beer.

It’s been a while since I last posted anything. I’d like to give you all a good reason, but I just don’t have one. Football season is starting, and keeping up with the NFL and Fantasy Football has kept me busy.

I have various little witty sayings that I have picked up over the years, such as when someone drops something I’ll say, “Just throw that anywhere.” Or when I have a situation handled and someone mentions to me to be prepared to handle said situation I’ll say: “I’m on it, like flies to the things flies fly to.”

One of my sayings when leaving to go somewhere is “Let’s head out like a fetus.”

My 9 year old son came up with one the other day that had me in stitches (on the inside)

We were going into my brother’s house and my son, the great mimic that he is, said “let’s head out like a fetus”, I explained to him that we were heading in, so that saying wasn’t accurate, so without missing a beat he says, “we’ll then, let’s head in like a gay man.”

Here’s a few new one’s that I’ve added to my stand-up routine,

1. I can’t do the two guy one girl three-way. I’m always afraid of crossing swords, and that’s just a little too gay for me. So, much to my chagrin, I’ve realized that means no more Letter “H-ing” midgets, the dicks still touch somewhere in the middle.

2. Did you know that every year there are over a million battered women in the United States? And to think, I’ve been eating mine plain all this time.

3. I have this cousin who is always in trouble with the law. He had to get a waiver to even enlist in the military, then was thrown out in AIT for pissing hot. I see him every Christmas and at family reunions (when he’s not incarcerated or I’m not deployed). Every time I see him he has a new scheme or less than savory money-making endeavor that he is trying out. This last family reunion he shows up with a bunch of new tattoos, and tells me that he’s tattooing for a living now, and working part time for a loan shark. As he’s leaving the reunion I say, “bye, and stay out of trouble, and if you can’t stay out of trouble I have a great idea for your next tattoo: “HIV Positive” right above your asshole, might help you out next time you’re in the joint”.

No shit, there we were on board the United States Ship A. Nonymous, deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. As many of you know, the Navy sends our ships out for six or more months at a time to support operations world wide. During those six months you’re likely to pull into port 3-48 times depending on you ship type, mission, deployment area, prevailing wind, and whatever the aliens are broadcasting on their space beams that day. As it was, we had been underway for over 50 days, and sailors being sailors (and humans) shipmates started to look more attractive. Long cruises have a similar effect to large amounts of alcohol in this regard.

There was a sailor in my branch who we’ll call Seaman Butterface. While I doubt she saw much action when other opportunities were available, she was apparently quite popular once we had been out to sea for a while. Seaman Butterface’s Chief (E-7 for you Army dogs) and Leading Petty Officer (E-6) heard some rustling in the film locker while inspecting an adjoining space five days before our next port call. They attempted to open the hatch, but found it locked. Fortunately as they owned the space, the chief had a key.

He opened the space and they saw Seaman Butterface laying on a couple of life preservers wearing only her uniform blouse and scrambling to get her pants back on. The Chief and LPO also saw the escape scuttle (a small hatch about the size of a manhole used for evacuation in the event the main hatch was blocked by fire flooding etc.) closing. They hurried over to the scuttle but were unable to determine who else had been in the space.

As having sex with your shipmates is contrary to good order and discipline and against the CO’s standing orders, Butterface was scheduled for Captain’s Mast.

Captains Mast is like an Article 15 for you Army types. For civilians, it’s like getting sent to the principal’s office, except with the threat of financial loss, hard labor, or jail. - skippy

Before a case can go to mast it has to pass through the Discipline Review Board (DRB), where senior enlisted verbally berate the offending sailor, and Executive Officer Investigation (XOI) in which the XO chews the sailor out. During both of these grueling procedures Butterface maintained that she was alone and refused to answer any other questions.

I was the branch legal officer and I attended mast along with the Captain, command Judge Advocate General, a couple of master at arms, the legal secretary, Butterface, her LPO, Chief, and Division Officer.

The CO, who we’ll call Captain Prude, paused uncomfortably any time he heard anything that offended his overdeveloped Puritan sensibilities. He looked over the facts of the case, looked over her statements at DRB and XOI and then gave her the senior officer glare. He leaned over the podium and said “Seaman Butterface, you have maintained throughout this investigation that you were alone in that film locker but have not accounted for why you were…half naked. I demand to know what you were doing in there if you weren’t having… relations with one of your shipmates.”

Butterface cleared her throat, looked the old man straight in the eyes and said “Well sir, when I masturbate I moan really loud, and I didn’t want to disturb the other girls in my berthing, so I went to the film locker.”

Captain prude turned beet red with embarrassment and summarily dismissed the case. Butterface remained on board for the rest of her 4 year tour and was promoted twice before leaving.

For those of you Skippy readers safely ensconced within the loving embrace of a military base, you may be unaware of a dangerous subculture that threatens our civilian way of life. That subculture, dear Skippy readers, is the Muffia.

The Muffia is a foul underworld organization, staffed by soulless Caucasian housewives so uniform in their upper-middle class mediocrity that a Stepford Husband would flinch in horror. Members of the Muffia (also known as ‘Muffiaso’) are convinced that they alone are the true paragons of femininity, espousing 1950’s rhetoric about a woman’s place being in the home while remaining totally incompetent in any of the “home arts”. They rule their families with iron fists, forcing their poor husbands to slave at the office for 60+ hours each week to support their designer label habit while reinforcing the stereotype that fathers who enjoy spending quality time with their children are secret pedophiles, and claiming that everything they do is “for the children”.

As each day passes, more harmless toys are kicked from the market, innocent television shows are ripped from the airwaves , and fathers become more confused about child-rearing. But we will not go down without a fight! Even as we speak, civilians risk their lives to take back those privileges the Muffia has claimed for itself.

My father is one such brave soul. A quiet man, he was raised to accept the status quo by humble, God-fearing Lithuanian Midwesterners. Yet even he could not stand idly by and watch the Muffia destroy all that is Wholesome and Good about America. This is his story, and I, as his beloved child, am proud to relate it here:

A few years back, I was visiting my family for Christmas. At some point, my stepmother asked my father to run to the grocery store for her. As there wasn’t a golf tournament to nap through that afternoon, he readily agreed and invited me along. Twenty minutes later, we were crawling up and down the parking lot rows, looking for a spot to park. At last, he spotted one, an ideal spot, not ten yards away from the doors to the grocery store. However, as we approached the spot, we realized that it was reserved. But, as we drew closer, we could see that it was not for the handicap, but for parents with children.

Yes, it was reserved parking for the Muffia, and, by coincidence, was on the verge of being claimed by one of its members.

With a strange glint of determination in his eye, my father gunned the engine and cut off the Muffiaso, stealing the spot from right under the nose of her minivan.

“But we can’t park here!” I protested, trembling at the thought of the Muffiaso’s wrath.

“In my day, we didn’t have special parking spaces awarded to us just because we reproduced,” he stated in a tone of voice I hadn’t heard since the Cookie Jar Incident.

I got out of the car, swallowing back a counter-argument about the substantial decrease in parking space size over the past two decades, and braced myself.

The tinted driver’s side window of the minivan rolled down, revealing the Botoxed visage of the Muffiaso.

“Excuse me, sir, but that spot has a Parent & Child Parking sign,” she whined nasally, while in the back seat we could see one tiny, innocent future victim of bad parenting gummed the lid of its Vera Wang sippy cup.

“Yes, I know. I’m a parent, and this is my child,” he explained, pointing to then-twenty-something me. The Muffiaso’s Priscilla, Queen of the Desert-inspired makeup was not thick enough to conceal her rage, and her French manicured-talons were poised to rend the flesh from his body.

“Excuse me, sir,” she hissed, “but Parent & Child Parking spots are bigger to make it easier to get children out of cars.”

“Yes, I know,” replied my father, his tone still calm, “but my child is bigger than yours, and my car doesn’t have a sliding door like yours.”

“I can’t get into a regular spot!” she shrieked. “What am I supposed to do?”

My father pointedly looked at all the minivans in the lot not parked in Parent & Child Parking spots, then just as pointedly looked at the dents and scrapes on the Muffiaso’s vehicle.

“Well, you could always learn how to drive,” he suggested.

At which point we ran for it.