My Mom Told Me To Get Off My Soapbox and Tell Some Funny Stories...

So I have been doing a lot of writing as of late. I have started about 4 posts that I have not finished. I don't know if I actually have writers block or if I have just run out of shit to piss and moan about. I am not particularly worried about it, given the fact that it is only a matter of time before the Army gives me another abomination to be pissed about. But in the meantime I have nothing really. The four posts that I started have the following titles...

1. Grandma, Sit down until Frank's Done Singing.
2. Greetings, Mr & Mrs Friendly Ghost.
3. There & Back Again.
4. Alright Mom, You Were Right All Along.

I don't know why I told you that but I figured we could hold another vote as to which one I finish first. So cast your ballots folks on which one of these you think would be the best. Knowing nothing but the titles should make this interesting.

Oh, and I came up with #15 on the list of "Ways To Know You Are In AssCrackIstan"

15. You keep high explosives next to your jelly in the refrigerator.

I know, it is probably not the best place to keep high explosives but I didn't want to leave them laying on the floor and the only enclosed space I had left was the refrigerator. So I stuck some in there. (Nobody ever said I had to be smart to be in the Army)

Moving on, I couldn't figure out what the hell to write about so a buddy of mine suggested that I write about writing. So I said, "Why the hell not?, I mean we all know that the dog's used to it" (If you get that reference you are either here with me, or you have been reading this blog for entirely too long.)

What does writing do for me? It's therapy, I told you all that before. The Army is a rather large insanity factory. Meaning it takes raw material, in this case my boys and I, and turns us into loons. So I need the therapy.

Why do I write? Actually its mostly because there are so many people back home that I want to keep in touch with, but the problem is that I am incredibly lazy. So instead of writing letters and emails to all of them, I write this so that everyone of them can read it. Surprisingly, I picked up a bunch of new pals from writing this which has been cool, especially on mail day. So that is definitely an added bonus.

I don't really know if my writing helps anyone but me. In fact I am fairly certain aside from the entertainment value it helps very little. However, I do think that maybe somewhere in this mountain of shit that I call a blog there might be one little gem of insight or an idea that sparks something in someone who might be able to make a difference.

Oh, I did forget to welcome Mr & Mrs Joe K. to the mix. They are the parents of the guy who did the pictures that were in the last post. They stumbled across my blog while surfing the net. I can only imagine their surprise when they started reading and got to the bottom of the first post and saw a picture of their kid. He's the guy in the middle.

In addition to that I apologize to anyone who decided to look through all my pictures on flickr. I don't care that you saw them but I figured that I better put all but the ones for the blog onto private status. I mean I am not sure that all my wonderful readers appreciated being introduced to all the nice young ladies I met at "Nudes-A-Poppin" a couple years back. But hey it was fun for me, and if you didn't like them, well you need to lighten up.

Well I just got up from my computer for a minute because my squad leader came in with all the bullshit that I have to do tomorrow and he gave me a little piece of information that is incredibly depressing. Someone here got their credit card stolen, and they think it was by the company that sells us our phone cards here in country. Well if that is true, no one knows for sure. What kind of world, check that, country do we live in when people will take advantage of deployed soldiers in a war zone? Again, that is not a rhetorical question, I want to know the answer.

So it goes. Unfortunately for all of us, my life just became incredibly boring. We went from mission platoon over to the tower platoon. Which means for 8 hours every day I stare out of a window with a rather large machine gun in front of me and watch as the world goes by. I can't really complain that much about it. I needed the break from missions for a while. Now give me a week or two and I will be going insane from staring at the same 4 walls and I will be anxiously waiting to get back on missions. In that sense, I am damned if I do and damned if I don't.

Well whatever, I actually just got back from calling home for the first time in a while. Who did I call? Of course, you guessed it. The mom. And I realized a very depressing fact. Even from 9000 miles away this crazy woman can lay a guilt trip on me. Really! And the biggest part of all of this is she didn't even realize that she was doing it, nor was she actually trying. I can't even imagine what she would've been able to pull off if she was putting some effort into it. She told me to get off my soapbox and start telling the funny stories again. So I pretty much have to otherwise I risk the wrath of Attila the Mom. Alright then, here goes.

So we didn't have a white Christmas this year. No snow, even though we are like 7000 feet above sea level and it was as cold as penguin balls. Well what do you do if you don't have snow? You make it! What do you make it out of? Shaving cream!

It began innocently enough. One of the chicks came into my room and started shooting my roommate with marshmallows. Apparently, they make some kind of pump action marshmallow projectile weapon nowadays. (Jeez, I wish the Taliban would fight us with marshmallows!) So as was his right, he decided to retaliate. By filling a Frisbee with shaving cream and smashing it ever so gently into her face. Somewhat reminiscent of a Laurel & Hardy pie in the face gag. From there it turned into an absolute free-for-all. Everyone running this way and that, carrying cans of shaving cream, shampoo, lotion, and whatever else would make a mess and make you smell phenomenal all at once. We continued to do this for about an hour. Now if you could picture for me please, several GI's, about 20 of us. Sprinting all over the damn place with two hands full of shaving cream or whatever and proceeding to smash this stuff into each other. Combine that with the water pistols, water balloons (filled with shaving cream and water), and water bottles conveniently altered to make them into water bombs, and you have a recipe for a really good picture! And bear in mind that we did most of this with little Santa hats on. Making us look all the more ridiculous, and making it all the more fun.

Here Is A Picture Of The Aftermath...


After that and after we had gotten off the last of our missions, our NCO's decided that there will be no time off here. (Whatever sucks the most) And that we needed to help the fobbits unload all the water that got dropped off recently. Like fucking 15 truckloads of it! (Not an exaggeration) So you have about 12 GI's all standing around unloading water off a pallet that is about 20 meters from where the water actually needs to be. Now does the Army find a forklift for us to move the entire pallet at once? Hell no, they say move it one by one! OK, this should be fun. So we start moving this water, and tossing it down the line. I am sure you have all seen this somewhere before. A line of men all turning back and forth as they grab one case of water at a time and pass it on down the line until it makes it to where it has to go. You get the idea. So about half way through all of this shit we stop for a smoke. And as soldiers are known to do, we got bored! As soon as we get bored we find whatever we can to entertain ourselves. In this particular case we found the water bottles. Fortunately for us the wall of the FOB was about 20 meters from where we were loading this shit. Don't ask me why, but we started trying to kick the water bottles over the wall. Probably had something to do with us never wanting to see another bottle of water again. 15 truckloads is like...a shit ton of water. Well after a while, this little spectacle just degenerated from a field goal contest into a full blown game of dodge ball with water bottles. Let me tell you, full water bottles (plastic) sting like a bitch when it is like 30 degrees outside.

So they finally reined that in, and made us finish the job. Now at the end we had to take all the cases of water that broke open and put all the loose bottles of water into one big pile in this building that they use to house our water. By the way, the building they chose to store the water has the best floors in the whole FOB. Sure, send the GI's to the barracks with a crumbling dirt floor. Put the water in the building with a brand new concrete floor. Thanks Uncle Sam.

Well now we are sitting there looking at a pile of water that is about 10 meters squared at its base, and its like 10 feet tall. You know it was almost like one of those pools of balls they have for kids at amusement parks. You know you jump in and the balls fly all over and they are all multi-colored and shit. Kids love that stuff. And so do GI's. Mostly because we are, by-in-large, only moderately more mature than your average 6 year old. So yep, we jumped on in and sent this water flying. We actually managed to bury one of our smaller soldiers using nothing but water bottles. Why did we pick him? Well he's little and the little guys can't fight back as well, and it didn't take long to bury him because, well, he's little.

Once again folks, this is your military at work. Your hard earned tax dollars send us water and what do we do? We kick it over the fence, throw it at one another, then we jump on it, and bury each other in it.

You are nice enough to send all your soldiers shaving cream and other personal hygiene substances and we manage to, once again throw it at each other, rub it in each others faces and generally cause a lot of mayhem and make a huge mess with products specifically designed to clean!

So hopefully that satisfies my mother's want of a few funny stories. I'll let you know as soon as I make some more.

I am done for now.

Later,

I love you mom...


P.S. Here is another funny picture that Pigpen and I took. Yes those are what you think they are. We have way too much time on our hands sometimes.