From a Biblical sense, can you imagine what would have
happened if the Ten Commandments had to be reviewed and approved up the chain of command? If that happened, we would have Ten Commandments, Thirty-Four
Amendments, and two court martials contending violations of the Uniform Code of
Military Justice!
I found this ad in an old girlie magazine and just had to pin it here for your enjoyment. This is too rich!
Hollywood Actor, Rod
Steiger once said in an interview…
“Long before Hugh Hefner, there was the circular bed with the silk sheets and the changing lights. If you have one of those in your room and you add some good music, it may not work as an aphrodisiac, but it’s certainly beautiful, As Pushkin once said passionately, (You can’t romance all the women in the world, but you must try). Of course, there’s one brief romance I could have done without. When I was in the Navy, I got crabs and they had to shave my pubic area to get rid of them. Now that should interest the American public.” … thus the girl in every port.
In all my
time in the Navy, I served as a Firecontrolman (FC). Not to be confused by you
landlubbers as a fireman as I always tell people we were meant to start fires,
not stop them. I’d been asked a
gazillion times if I’d wished I’d had the glory of shooting down the bad guy in
times of war. Well, how the hell do you answer a question like that? I did twenty-three years in this Canoe Club as
an FC never firing a gun or missile in anger. We practiced like hell, but I never
had to squeeze the trigger, push the button, or flip the switch as it were.
I mean,
how’d you feel having another man, child, or woman’s loss of life weighing on
your conscious? Well, I couldn’t tell you because it never happened to me. But I
knew what my duty was and I would’ve carried it out promptly, but the
situation never presented itself in my behalf. It reminds me of a question I
asked a Vietnam veteran a long, long time ago if he’d ever killed anybody over
there…
“Well, that’s an asshole question.”
… was his
reply.
Looking
back and realizing what I know now, yes it absolutely was an asshole question,
and so is asking someone if they wish they had the glory of doing so. I would
suspect the majority of our men and women in uniform ain’t itching for the
chance to take out some bad guys but some here in our own US of A seem either
damned sure that our military members are a bunch of psychopathic trained
killers or are rooting for the other team. I just don’t get it.
I grew up
and enlisted during the Cold War. My God, twenty-thousand testicle-radiating
nukes could go off at any time from all around this fishbowl, and we’re
kicking our own asses harder than the enemy at large! Pro-Hamas provocateurs are lighting torches
and lighting fires in our own homeland scaring the hell out of anyone who
believes in the Judeo-Christian way of life. We've got kids on college campuses hiding in the
library bathroom while hundreds of protestors are breaking windows and banging
on the doors chanting, “Let-Us-In … Let-Us-In!” Reporters are getting kicked in
the head just for covering these mutineers.
I just don’t
get these snot-nosed imbeciles fawning over Iranian, Hamas, and Hezbollah terrorists
while propping up their corrupt regimes and bending over backward to accommodate
their actions. Don’t they realize these groups
would sooner lop off their brain-dead heads than have a civilized conversation
with them? And that totally leaves out the axis of evil manifesting between
China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and who knows what else.
Unfortunately, the way we are spreading ourselves thin and the debt we’ve incurred over the
years, a couple of well-armed row boats might be all we can do to help out the
Israeli IDF. It used to be that the enemy would eventually give up when they
got tired of dragging their dead children out of the rubble from all of the pain
and destruction. The Israelis aren’t fighting a war where the leading faction
gives a damn about their own civilians. All they care about is the eradication
of the Jews and any other infidel hiding on the planet. I’d say they are worse than Hitler because
their fervor comes from religious ideology rather than nation-building.
That
being said, the ways of war do not include humanitarian feel-good patty-cake
sessions with fake crony allies in the likes of Qatar and Pakistan. These people don’t give two shits about the
rules of war or the Geneva Convention.
As a matter of fact, they use it against us as we’re the only ones who
will remotely play by the rules. While we’re sitting at home arguing over
gun-free zones, gender ideology, and pronouns the enemy is teaching its youth
how to tear down and clean an AK-47.
This puts us in a reactive state just waiting for another 9/11 or Pearl
Harbor to happen.
Unfortunately, the next one will probably be a megaton explosion or some sort of biological devastation.
In the meantime, our political leaders try to appease our enemies while we sit
our collectively complacent asses on the sidelines in a non-participating way
while we watch the world burn. Let’s all hope that in the end, cooler heads
will prevail and we don’t resort ourselves to ash and cinder… We need more Teddy Roosevelts in the world.
When asked about one of his greatest experiences of all time, Jimmy Buffet beamed …
“Easy.
Taking off and landing on an aircraft carrier in an F-14 Navy jet fighter. Top
of the list. I rode in the navigator’s seat ... Unbelievable. There’s nothing
like it. It's beyond anything you can describe. I fly, but this takes flying to
another level.”
“I always
wanted to do it,” he said. “I used to drive over to Pensacola from Mobile, and
I'd see all the Navy officers in flight training. I'd see these guys tearing up
the sky, then driving sports cars, and they'd have their uniforms on, and it
looked pretty snappy. If I had not become a musician, I would probably have
become a pilot. Something had to get me out of my dull existence in Mobile. I
wanted to see the world, and these guys moved and traveled, and I wanted to go.
That was just in my blood. I always was a road dog.”
Just
another evening sitting around the butt kit on the fantail shoot’n the shit
with the new guy talking about things your Grandma would not want to associate
with. We were good at those kinds of things before the Canoe Club Cabaret came to
town…
“ I heard
Smitty got a case of the crabs the other night hanging out in the hole in the wall
downtown. Anybody know what’s up with that?””
“Ah hell,
crabs is something you gotta watch out for. You can pick up those things on a dirty
shitter in no time.”
“Well, if
you had to, you could get rid of them by putting a mirror on the floor. Then
squat over the mirror and the crabs will see another set of balls and jump on
the mirror. Then you then take off running and leave the bastards behind.”
“That’s
the dumbest shit I ever heard!”
“An old
Chief told me the best way to get rid of crabs was to shave half of your pubes,
pour lighter fluid on the other half, light it on fire then stab them with an
ice pick when they come running out from the fire.”
“That ain’t
nothing. I heard the Marines put lighter fluid on their balls and light it up.
When the little critters run out, those damn marines shoot’em up with a trusty
ol’ 45.”
“That’s
so stupid … I wouldn’t put it past one of them jarheads.”
“Well, I
heard of guys using JP5 to get rid of crabs!”
“Hell, we
used kerosene back in Nam.”
“You old
coot! Of course you did.”
“On the “USS
Last Ship” this girl gave me crabs and the clap the night before a dress white
Admiral inspection in Subic ... you haven't lived until your standing in that
hot sun for over an hour dripping and wanting to rip a hole in your pocket
to scratch your balls...
“Hell, back
in Bootcamp, our brother Company had a crab infestation that was passed through
their laundry. We gave them the nickname, “Crab company!”
“Here’s a
no-shitter! Back when I was stationed at the Naval Hospital in Oakland, our skipper
stayed home and sent the XO to a conference back east. The skipper loved
seafood so the XO had a case of crabs and some 'Old Bay' sent to him. The Base paper wanted
to publish the story … "XO gives CO crabs".....!”
“We told
the new guys not to let their blankets or sheets touch the floor. Cause them there
were circus crabs, and they could jump from one rack to the next!”
“After a
visit to Ocho Rios the crabs were so bad they “were” jumping from rack to rack!
Thank God I was spared but I think engineering berthing was infested. I’d never
seen so much ball scratching at quarters.”
“I had a
buddy get "clap of the yap" (gonorrhea in the throat). They had to
put a tube down his throat!”
… And
there you have it. Another typical evening of shoot’n the shit with the new guy
next to the butt kit on the fantail. I think they call it hazing or some shit
nowadays. Who would’ve guessed that fuck’n with the new guy would get you in so
much trouble…
When I
made Chief, one of my charge book entries said ...
"It's inevitable. One day you are going to piss off a junior sailor and he is going to dirty-dick your coffee cup. Just get used to the idea now. It's gonna happen and you're kidding yourself if you think any differently."
(
FiN )
Welcome back
again to another installment of DantheNavyman and his Internet Bullshit Show.
Now excuse me while I sweep down fore and aft years of cobwebs and mental oxidation
as I engineer another distinct journey through my flawed memories of … “This
ain’t no Shit.”
Back when
this ol’ Canoe Club was about Dungarees, White Hats, Thirteen Button Blues, and Boondockers,
we sailor’n types used to bait each other from time to time with fool’s
errands, banter, and plenty of scuttlebutt to plow the way. In the world we grew
up in, there was a hell of a lot of stuff we had to learn along the way. This
was before the internet search engines came about.
Kids
today don’t know what it was like before Google, Ask Jeeves, Duck-Duck-Go and
all of them other search engines. We got thrown into the rigmarole of banter.
There was no polite discourse and gentle conversation. You fucked with the new
guy, and he learned how to take it with a smile or bounce off with his tail
between his legs.
We had
very little in the way of instructional reference. You had to figure it out on
your own. The only Google there was back then, was the infinite amount of horse
pucky you could throw at the wall to see what would stick. Before Google had
arrived, all we had was the local library, the World Book Encyclopedia, and that
kid down the road who was clearly full of it. What made it a bit more
complicated is that no young man passed his adolescence would ever admit he
didn't know a damn thing about anything.
Where I
grew up, the older kids like Terry Baker and Jeff Nichols were the neighborhood
authority on damn near everything. Jeff Nichols and all those sons-a-bitches he
brought with him dragged your little happy ass to the graveyard across the way
from the local elementary school at midnight with an old burlap bag and a stick,
only to leave you on your own tapping that stick on some gravestone while they
disappeared and left you by your lonesome…
“Here
Snipe, Snipe … Here Snipe, Snipe …”
The
entire gang had the collective intelligence of a Hostess TWINKIE. You would
think we were so stupid back in the day we couldn’t find our asses with both
hands!
At seven
years old, my step-daddy, Charlie Brown, told me that refried beans were
processed baby shit. It took a few years before I realized how full of shit he
was that his eyes were as brown as his last name implied.
I’d often
say …
“I wonder
if they’ll ever come up with a computer or something that will tell us what’s
real and what’s not so we didn’t get put in such a predicament.”
But like
my Grandpa used to say …
“Wish in
one hand and shit in the other and see which one gets filled the fastest."
Then I
joined the World’s finest Navy and learned how Sailors get the most recent
scuttlebutt among their shipmates. Back in those days we’d sit around the buttkit
discussing busts sizes or what if “God dropped acid, would he see people?” or “If
you try to fail, but succeeded, did you do either?” Yes, the circular yarn we
would spin could be pretty unbelievable, but gullible minds wanted to know. Life
without a smarter-than-your-parents search engine was entertaining as hell.
As early
as Bootcamp, I remember hearing stories about the Saltpeter they put in your
food to pipe down the libido of a bunch of post-adolescent young sailors so
they wouldn’t get too horny. There were other stories like not to use shitter
#4 in the Galley because the last guy to use it two weeks ago had the crabs.
That had to be the cleanest shitter in the head for many years. Then there were
others like the story of an island off of Cambodia where they would send you to
rot away if you’d caught the dreaded black clap overseas. When I was a
Recruiter, the Marines told a prospective recruit that he could become a
paramedic when the Marine Corps medics are actually Canoe Club Penis Machinists.
I could go on and on, but I digress…
For every
Admiral, Captain, Lieutenant, or Chief trying to set the story straight, there
are ten times as many Petty
Officers and Seamen passing scuttlebutt of the next port-o-call or fool’s
errand to keep the monotony from killing everyone off.
Then came
the whopper of all whoppers. Just when you thought you’d heard it all, someone
said …
“Hold my
Beer!”
As most
of you know back in the day, Sailors were world renown for our excessive
drinking and sexual exploits. We were often guilty of the most ridiculous excess
and shameless conduct, and the scuttlebutt was the largest Word-of-Mouth
network the military had to offer.
As the
story goes, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, we were looking at the prospect
of a major war in the middle-east. The Department of Defense wanted to make a party
oasis where our hard-fighting servicemen could catch some well-deserved R&R.
Rumor had it they wanted to make it a popular spot where we could get hammered,
mingle with a hooker or two, and label it the Sodom and Gomorrah of the New Age.
The Navy already had many a barge not bearing fruit while they sat around and
rusted away in the local shipyards. So why not make a floating brothel barge
and plant it somewhere in the Persian Gulf?
The idea of
Sailors, Marines, and Soldiers gathering in large numbers after an unholy
deployment period to a waterfront brothel would make for a party of epic
proportions. After all, for centuries Sailors wrote shanties about their
exploits with hookers and whores. It’s ingrained in our past. Songs such as
Barnacle Bill, Black Ball Line, and South Australia come to mind when singing
“Now my boys we’re in the docks, the pretty girls come out in flocks.” It
sounded believable to a young dumb sailor with sex on the mind 24/7. Boy, that
rumor wasn’t even bullshit, it was horseshit! But, we've heard them all a
thousand times. Your shipmate heard from another sailor on another ship who
swears up and down that when his brother was at the Pentagon he heard it straight
from the horse’s mouth.
With
ports like Subic Bay, Pattaya Beach Thailand, and Pusan Korea, horny sea going
Sailors amidst a bunch of hookers carrying on in a world of commercial romance
seemed reasonable. When it came to sex we were like starving anteaters in a
termite nest.
Could you
imagine back in the day, a US Navy ship pulling up next to a Brothel Barge in
the middle of the Gulf? It would turn out to be organizational lunacy, “Esprit
de Corps.”
Eventually, the internet took the world by storm and Google made its debut. All the mayhem
of a good fool’s errand or silly goose chase disappeared like a fart in a pair
of string underwear.
Most of
those mythical urban legends had been hauled off to the trash bin like the
Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and the Boogie Man. When Google came about, it was
like some kind of evolutionary transitional stage from monkeys to homo-sapiens.
I mean, you gotta wonder how we survived without that instantaneous know-it-all
computer that puts things back into perspective. Now a kid with an IQ of 150
could benefit himself with the cognitive stratification all made possible by
the all-knowing internet.
But the
consequence of so much information at our fingertips changed the way we did business.
I feel sorry for today’s Canoe Club Cabaret. Now they’re preached to about the
use of tobacco and alcohol, to use their free time going to school or the base
gym and not to take pleasure in the horizontal mambo with the opposite sex. And
if you still have any free time left, organize a bake sale. Without Google,
these poor kids couldn’t fry eggs without a mentor or a support group.
I might
sound like a pugnacious old coot who can’t remember a gauddamned thing about
the Sailor’s Creed with Honor, Courage, and Commitment, but I can’t help
thinking that in today’s Canoe Club some transgender fembot will get her penis
in a knot because some sailor called her the wrong pronoun … and your career
is destroyed. I say rinse the sand out of your crotch and spare the rest of our
Sailors the frustrations of sitt’n through another unpleasant session of a ‘Red
light, Green light’ GMT! Just say one wrong thing and they’ll be on you
like buzzards on carrion.
Now if I’m out of line, just say so. It’s okay … I’m an old fart and the days of the drunken sailor with a girl in every port seem like a dream from far, far away. But I swear, it really existed … all of it. So there’s no need to sick rabid dogs on me or set my ass on fire with flamethrowers.
(FiN)
When you
spend as much time with shipmates as I have, you come to realize the whole crew
of scallywags belonged in an asylum. Here is a small collection of words and
phrases I’ve heard coming from the lips of those ol’ Canoe Club rapscallions
over the years…
From a
shipmate who came from a tender back in the day…
“My
last ship was called the egg factory … Everybody onboard got laid!”
A shipmate explaining what he did while TAD…
“When I was sent with other shipmates to take part in training or exercises outside of our command it was called "TAD" or Travelling Around Drunk!”
Referring
to the Westpac Widow at the EN Club…
“She
calls her love pot the Bermuda Triangle … lots of seamen get lost in it.”
Dumb
Sailor and his Pick-up lines…
“Hey, the Navy called, they want their heat-seeking missiles back, and for you to stop wearing that dress, you look so hot it interferes with the guidance system.”
Shipmate
when he came back off of leave…
Mom
said: "I don't care what you call it on the ship. In this house you'll
call it chipped beef on toast."
The
one-night-stand before heading back to the ship…
“Hey
sailor, you left your other discharge here too…”
Chucky ‘V’
aviator when asked about landing on a carrier…
“Shucks,
you can land anywhere,” said Lieutenant Jones. “Nothing to it. What you want to
do is find the flight deck before you do it.”
Female
shipmate underway and horny …
You
had me at… “Get in the fanroom while I close and lock the door!”
Petty Officer of the Watch on the USS
Puget Sound…
"Bong Bong....Bong Bong.... Pubic Mound, Departing ---- Bong"
Shipmate in berthing joking about
sticking things up your ass…
Remember… “Big flared base, it’ll stay in place!”… “Long and thin it’ll get pulled in!”
Quarterdeck Watch on USS Neversails …
"D'you hear
there...anyone who wishes to do so and has not done so and still wants to do so
before they cannot do so......do so now."
"That is all"
(
FiN )
One thing that I always heard about over the years was the Four “F’s” of life! There are several variances to this depending on where you stand on the subject or where you come from. One would be the primordial needs of existence in life…
“Feast,
Fuck, Fight, or Flee.”
Another
may be concerning the finer sex …
“Feel
them, Finger them, Fuck them, and Forget them.”
And yet
as Sailors, we tend to mix the other two…
“Feast, Fun, Fight, and Fuck'em!”
Here are
a few toons I’ve collected for your swashbuckl’n entertainment concerning a
Sailors four “F’s” of life!
That is
all …
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If you
are a good American Sailor you will naturally want to spread the Good Will when
you are in a foreign port and make yourself and your country popular with the
natives. As they say,
“You are
an Ambassador for the United States so act like one.”
Upon
hitting the beach, buy funny native hats and always tip them politely, both
male and female natives, at the same time giving them a friendly greeting such
as “Whad’ya know Joe!” or “Open the door, Richard!” The latter is especially appropriate
if the native happens to be sitting in front of his own hut or place of
business.
Always
carry plenty of liquor and offer it freely to everyone you meet, taking care
not to overlook the native women. Don’t be afraid of asking them to drink out
of the bottle; they’re used to it… and tip your hostesses well!
Hire tuk-tuk
and jeepney vehicles but never sit down in them. Stand up and rock them from
side to side as you drink and sing gay songs such as “Working for the Yankee
Dollar!” Don’t hesitate to throw empty bottles in the streets; the natives use
the glass for quaint jewelry.
When crossing
walking bridges over foreign rivers and waterways, be sure to toss in a coin
or two to the young native in the bongo boat down below. This is much
appreciated by the local population. Be sure to tuck your wallets, watches, and
loose jewelry in hard-to-find areas as they find themselves missing at the
oddest moments.
When
entering a local establishment of drink and dance, be sure to accommodate the “buy
me drink” girls as they turn into the most adoring hostesses you will ever meet.
Be sure to hook up the “Mamasan” as well as she can knock off a good chunk of
the price provided she likes you.
If you
find yourself being hauled back to the ship by Shore Patrol with vomit covering
your shirt, your fly hanging wide open, and your mouth bloody while missing a
few teeth, always lay on your left side while in uniform to hide your rank
insignia so they will think you are an officer.
When on
duty bringing on stores, you’ll probably find plenty of old oranges and grapefruit lying loose around the messdecks. Don’t be selfish; throw them to the stevedores
on the dock along with a carton of smokes and maybe throw in a Zippo for good
measure!
(FiN)
How many of you remember those cardboard “Classified” coversheets they used to put over those folders to identify “Top Secret,” “Secret,” or “Confidential” material? Here are a few I gathered years ago that you might find entertaining. They got me in some trouble once. I hope you enjoy them…
Who remembers flipping the wheel on that beautiful chromed-out Zippo? Like the thirteen-button crackerjack Navy Blues, the Zippo lighter is a cultural icon of the Navy Sailor. The ship’s crest and slogans engraved on them give a distinct look inside the minds and lives of those who served before us.
Zippos
have a long history in this here canoe club. When America entered the Second
World War after Pearl Harbor, the Zippo company stopped selling its lighters
to the consumer market and instead dedicated the entirety of its lighter
production to the United States military. Many of those lighters survived the trials
and tribulations of saltwater candor and burnt-out boilers only to be treasured
and collected for money as well as sentimental value.
The image
of a Zippo with the ship’s insignia blaring on the front tucked into the front
pocket of some faded-out dungarees or in the dress blues with a picture of
Marie-Lou and a pair of Trojans for that special moment is seared into the
minds of us old farts. They went well with a pack of Camels, Lucky Strikes, or
Marlboro Reds … the typical choice in my day. Some bought a Zippo at the Ship’s
Store … maybe even an extra one for their dear old Dad back home. Even the
lighter fluid was good for shining brass belt buckles for inspection purposes.
I saw an
advertisement once that read, “Zippo lighter - it's not just a lighter; it's
the best company a man could have.”
When the USS Forrestal caught on fire, she had many a nickname from Forrest Fire to Firestal, and yes, even the USS Zippo. The lighter has made quite the impression on the sailors before us and still do to this day. When you hear them say a dog is a man’s best friend, the person in question obviously never owned a Zippo. There may never be anything like it again, except for Frank’s Hot Sauce, ‘cause Grandma puts that shit on everything…
You all remember that infamous S.O.S more regularly known as Shit on a Shingle! Well, this one was written during WWII. I hope you all enjoy …
Oh,
will you tell me true,
Is
this stuff really Shit on a Shingle,
Or
a nasty kind of glue?
For
it stuck my jaws together,
And
I’ve lost a tooth or two.
Fear
not, old friend, it’s dinkum stuff.
An
Old Navy kind of stew;
I
saw the cook a’makin it,
He
was grinding up a shoe.
With
a little soap, some table wax,
And
a cup of milk or two.
He
seasoned it with dynamite,
And
a bull cockroach, all blue.
Then
to make it set just right,
The
maestro of the stew,
He
sat down at the table and,
Tossed
in his other shoe!
He
stripped his feet of both his socks,
And
threw them in too;
He
added salt and pepper,
Just
to make a tasty brew.
He
served it over first aid packs,
Of
canvas nice and new.
I’ll
have to say, You’re right, old friend,
It’s
too damned tough to chew!
