DNA List
Okay, Skippy, just because you asked.
This short list is what you might call “post-military”.
A while ago you abandoned a promising new list in consideration of you own health, well being, and longevity. That list was entitled “Things I Am No Longer Allowed To Do Now That I Am Married”.
Well, while I was in a Special Ops unit, I had the precarious pleasure of serving with an individual who was your absolute doppelganger. For quite some time I was convinced that you were him, and he just wouldn’t cop to it. I still think that’s a possibility, you conniving bastard.
He had a penchant for quasi-paganistic, clothing-optional antics that both amused and disturbed the whole unit. He got away with it because a.) it was amusing, if disturbing; and b.) he was damn good at patrolling tactics, which was our bread, butter, and continued corporeal existence.
(Note from Skippy: I am not good at patrolling tactics. As far as I’m concerned, patrolling is like shark attacks and lightning strikes. It’s the sort of thing that happens to other people.)
He wound up as an Army journalist deployed to Bosnia; where the larger, more rigid journalist unit did not take so kindly to his sky clad antics, and where his skill at patrolling was not so highly valued. He also became subject to a rather long list of “You Will Not Do….” imperatives.
After a year of partially sublimating his free thinking inclinations and being exposed to what the US mission in Bosnia, and military journalism in general, is REALLY about, he came home bitter and disillusioned; and vocal about it. Somewhere in there, he got married. And while the fun didn’t exactly stop, per se, it did certainly get pushed through a very limiting filter.
The first part of the filter I have known about for years. I call it the DNA List. The DNA- Do Not Associate- List is the compilation of all of your associates that you are no longer permitted to associate with because you have suddenly found love and a supposedly better half, which means you are now above such cretins as used to fill your days. Every girlfriend/wife compiles a DNA list, and enforces it with a variety of unpleasant domestic coercive tactics, most of which revolve around the withholding of the good stuff. I know about this list because, being a bachelor with a variety of life threatening hobbies, I am on a great many of them.
While there are a great many qualifiers that will land one on the DNA list, here are a few that pertain specifically to those who know what a rucksack is, and how to pack it.
Having been indoctrinated into the holy order of regular sex, you are no longer allowed to associate with any of the following, or anyone else deemed unpalatable by the woman who is kind enough to let you see her naked:
Old Army buddies that remind you that dirt, explosives, and obscenities are fun.
Old Army buddies whose ideas of recreation are likely to get you killed.
Bachelor friends who remind you that furniture does not require an IKEA label to be functional.
Anyone who reminds you that there are other indices of self worth besides direct earning potential.
While the academic understanding of how to build a fire will be allowed under the heading of manly survival skills, hanging out with people who actually build fires on a regular basis will not be allowed. Especially fires that can be seen from space; and which cause you to come home reeking of smoke and babbling excitedly about outrunning the cops you attracted. Viagra (Sildenafil) in United States available at HowMed http://howmed.net/viagra-sildenafil-canadian/ website.
Anyone who stocks and maintains an “Armageddon Room”.
Anyone who repeatedly asks when your new child will be heavy enough to effectively operate a belay station.
Anyone who entices you into environments where a breathable atmosphere can no longer be taken for granted.
Anyone who sees horrible accidents and spectacular injuries primarily as a good training opportunity.
Anyone, really, who uses the word “training” as an invitation.
Anyone who sees standing on flat, level ground as merely a prelude to not standing on flat, level ground.
Anyone who is proud of their ability to dress self inflicted, life threatening wounds; and can cite multiple occasions of having done so.
Anyone who considers fire a tool.
Anyone who considers gravity to be a recreational device.
Oh, and a plug for my website: www.kf3biodiesel.com, which is not funny at all, not even a little bit, but is the place to go if you are actually serious about making eco-groovy fuel from societal waste, and not just talking about it. Developing these devices and processes are what landed me on the elite Perpetual DNA List.
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February 20th, 2009 at 1:46 am
Something tells me that someday I’m going to be the guy who makes the Armageddon Room and is subsequently placed on the DNA list for most of my friends. But their wives are going to be glad that they know me once the zombies come.
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February 20th, 2009 at 4:29 am
Heck, 95% of that is the sort of fun I like! Good thing my DH is so understanding.
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February 20th, 2009 at 5:47 am
Oh Hell, I just made the list. One of my best buddies just got married, but I met her long enough before this that she knows about the room and my love of explosives. Also, I have an addition. Anyone who likes meat and thinks its perfectly normal to kill dinner. My favorite is the gravity one.
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Kemperfish reply on February 22nd, 2009 12:32 pm:
By All Means:
Anybody who shows up on your doorstep with a dead forest creature in one hand, a bottle of red wine in the other (SF is, after all, a classy organization), and proclaiming loudly: “Let’s Eat”
Anybody who promotes the ideology that the harder it was to subdue, the better it will taste.
And, on an unrelated note;
Any entrepreneur who wants you to invest in his harebrained scheme to save the world by turning societal waste into useable energy. Even if he doubled your money during the first round. ‘Cause that was scary…
Captcha: 1975 Partisan. Yeah, SF was there, too, we just can’t tell you where or who….
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Kemperfish reply on February 22nd, 2009 3:28 pm:
Oh, one more:
Anybody who persists in communicating with incomprehensible, environment specific TLAs will be banned from all further human contact. Forever. Really, just knock it the fuck off.
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February 20th, 2009 at 6:15 am
My wife has figured out that the women she gets along with are all married to men that end up on her DNA list. My ignoring her DNA list pretty much keeps me on her other list, heh.
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February 20th, 2009 at 7:02 am
Going by that DNA list, my wife and I are both on it. As one friend put it, my house is both the arms room and the ASP (ammunition supply point). I remember finding a case (500 rounds) of rifle ammo that I had forgotten I had (and had sold the rifle it would work with).
Captcha: 1968 cosmic – a good description of that year, for dirty hippies.
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February 20th, 2009 at 7:59 am
I love my wife. She would find the idea of a DNA list offensive and demeaning to women in general. How can that be enlightening and liberating, to assert dominance over superiority? For those that are subjected to such things, why can’t you make your own? Put THEIR friends that you find offensive down. Like that psycho fem-nazi that probably convinced her she could get away with emmascluating you like that? Or her mother, who you could argue by saying it undermines your relationship when she runs to Mom with a problem in your relationship, instead of working out with you? Just understand that their withholding of the “good stuff,” which undoubtably includes “laundry,” can’t last forever. I guarantee she’ll begin to cave after catching you in the shower “washing your own laundry.” Or better yet, in the bed next to her. Anyways, if she does get indignant about it, send her packing back to Momma, and I guarantee that if she doesn’t get the hint that you’re not putting up with that s***, you’ll be better off and happier without the b****.
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Minty reply on February 22nd, 2009 1:00 am:
I agree. Personally, I can’t see the appeal of women (or men) like that; they’re no fun at all, and usually end up sucking the color out of life entirely.
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February 20th, 2009 at 8:01 am
This, if I may make so bold, is where being gay wins everything. Last time we set off all the smoke alarms in the house, it was my beloved’s doing; the time before that, it was me. We take turns, and have his-and-his fire extinguishers.
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February 20th, 2009 at 8:44 am
I had found a decent way to circumvent the DNA list. You see, a friend of mine, one who never played WoW, was peer-pressured enough by another friend of mine to join. This first friend was married, and by the sounds of it, WoW was like crack to him for a while. I am now pretty sure that after he quit working at target, WoW was his way of talking to me and others like me w/o his wife knowing.
Captcha Hildereth, 90.1, another crappy sequel? Is it in space now?
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February 20th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Awww. Is it strange that I find that incredibly sweet?
Captcha:
Obaldia 69-I bet she did.
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February 20th, 2009 at 11:41 am
I found out that you can have a friend taken off the DNA list if you an point out at least one time they they have actually have saved your life.
Assuming it wasn’t the friend who almost got you killed.
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Kemperfish reply on February 22nd, 2009 12:44 pm:
Oh, Yeah; words from someone who’s being there and and doing that.
I’ve found there seems to be a general limit of three instances of invoking this clause for the same individual. After that, she figures that, even if you’re not the one doing the direct endangering, your mere existence is a threat to the stability of her home and the continued ability of her husband to provide for it.
Captcha:
Ecrella’s Clinch,
Just one way of enforcing the DNA List
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February 20th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
OK, am female and I think I want the lifestyle that comes with that list. I suspect my OH would rather he compiled the DNA list, starting with urbex and working up from there.
Screw that! I live in my own world where explosions, fire and frikkin big engines are good. However living in the UK does kinda put a crimp on the explosions thing.
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February 21st, 2009 at 5:18 pm
I strongly suspect I’m on a few of these lists!
Captha: the Talbert, a pub I don’t know about.
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February 21st, 2009 at 8:55 pm
lol i’m probably on a few lists myself but luckily my best friends wife likes me. ;) so she doesent mind that i’m a bit of a weird nutcase :P
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February 22nd, 2009 at 2:25 am
I’m on my best mate’s DNA list, as given him by his dad. TBH it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference cos we still join one-another in going off the rails on a frequent basis.
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February 23rd, 2009 at 3:47 am
What does it say about me that I can’t (with a few hours’ background thinking) name a single person I could honestly believe to NOT be caught on that list, as written?
My mother, my mother-in-law, and my wife’s (late) godmother would each have fallen foul of at least three items each…
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February 23rd, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Everyone we know would be on that DNA list! I love my husband’s friends for all these… how to put it… quirks. We have only the DND Rule: Do Not Die. …And understand that if you do something stupid, you may be mocked for it, even while you’re in pain.
Nope, when the derring-do goes beyond my personal limits, I just stay home with the other patient, eye-rolling women and wait for the stories and the photos. :)
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February 24th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
I am on most of my friends DNA lists, but there is a way to circumvent those lists: Be friendly, give your girl a charge card, and tell her to gather the spouses/girls of the buddies you cannot hang out with cause of said spouses and girls, offer them a weekend at a spa. TA-DA! a weekend of blowing stuff up, drinking contests and in my case, dune buggy paintball fights (get a group of people and 2 dune buggies, outfit everyone with guns and plenty of paintballs and find the nearest clay pit and camp out.) and all the other stuff you got banned for. It works most of the time.
captcha: Plant Heavyweight -The only weed you dont want to meet in a backalley-
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May 8th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
I’m just glad to know that my better half is good with my army buddies, even if most of them are female. Of course, I’ve yet to mention the time a few of the females in my unit took a drunken friend of theirs, and plastic wrapped her to her rack, naked. For 6 hours.
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