Thursday, November 29, 2012

The Pottification Of The Navy

I can’t take credit for this one!  I found it on… http://www.fredoneverything.net/Potties.shtml  ... and it’s quite fitting for my blog… so to whoever Fred is… ‘Great Article’

Hoo, the Navy has gone funnier than when Junior put his tadpoles in Aunt Lu's milk. It's wonderful. Headline, the Washington Times: "Navy admiral wants to get rid of urinals."
On aircraft carriers. Yep. See, urinals aren't good for gender-equity, which is what the Navy is for.

Best I can tell, the admiral figures urinals make the girls aboard feel plumbing-challenged. It gums up their self-concept. And life, remember, is already tough for gals on warships. It's bad enough having those boomy old gun thingies everywhere, and those smelly airplanes. They make a hostile environment and all. But the worst is those disgusting white patriarchy symbols, stuck threateningly to bathroom walls.

Think about it. Every time a woman goes to the men's room, there they hang, row on row, in silent reproach, telling her she isn't Fully A Person.

The horror.

But now help gallops over the horizon, thumpety-thump. The help's name is Admiral John Nathman, and (incredibly) he's a naval aviator. Yes indeed. Potty John, the Carrie Nation of urinals, is going to make it all better. He wants "gender-neutral water closets."

When I was a Marine, I always wanted a commander who had an interest in urinals. None of them did, and they probably still don't. But the Navy, as Marines have always suspected, is a little different. And apparently getting differenter.

Personally I don't think Potty John has gone far enough in making the military resemble a sorority house. For example, a gal on ship stands out by virtue of having breasts, which must create a hostile work environment. (In fact I've never met a sailor who was hostile to breasts, but I'm being socially progressive here.) I think that as a simple matter of consideration for our warrioresses, men in the services should be required to have breast implants. Gender equity. This is, after all, the New Navy.

If compulsory surgery seems extreme this year, at the very least silicone strap-on mammaries should be mandated. Think of them as pre-loaded bras. Since servicemen have to wear uniforms anyway, minor additions could do no harm. Infantrymen carry packs, don't they?

I figure breasts might become insignia of rank. Enlisted men would get small ones. Officers would have big mommas. Potty John, being an admiral, would have three. The Chief of Naval Operations would wear an udder.

Look, I'm just trying to be helpful.

Let's be honest. Many unnecessary hardships are inflicted on women by the Navy. It's so…military. I figure the Navy might consider renaming a carrier or two in a more woman-friendly manner -- the USS Daycare comes to mind, or the good ship Terrycloth.

Then there are family separations. I'm agin'em. So I figure a carrier's hangar deck could be divided into a labor ward and a nursery. Granted, weapons would have to be sacrificed, but all they do is encourage violence. (Onboard counseling might help to reduce this lamentable side-effect of testosterone. We could have caring, sensitive fighter pilots.)

Fact is, I admire Potty John for his willingness to be different from all those stodgy old male admirals we used to have. Can you imagine Bull Halsey (I guess today he'd be Heifer Halsey, or maybe Steer Halsey) focusing on urinal equity as he led the fleet against the Japanese? How about David Farragut: "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ah…Wait! Let's stop and talk about gender equity!" No. No urinals for them. They were fixated on violence.

My father spent four years at sea during World War II, first aboard the USS Greer in the North Atlantic, and then in the Pacific on DD-554, the Franks. He didn't talk a lot about it. He was there for some of the big assaults, doing close fire support with 5-inch-38s. Those were ugly days when blood ran on the decks and the kamikazes screamed in and you red-barreled everything you had at the nacelles and hoped you hit a fuel tank before the pilot hit you. I bet those sailors, mostly dead now, all of them forgotten, would be proud to know about Potty Consciousness.

Truth is, the military needs to be stripped of all manner of gender-unfriendly trappings. What could be more phallic than a tank gun? The very thought must be offensive to women, and make them Uncomfortable. Submarines are nothing but nuclear-powered phallic symbols. (With a propeller, which is a disturbing thought.) I reckon we ought to have gender-neutral, cubic submarines. Flowered wallpaper would add a homey feel and, if you got rid of those awful male torpedo-things, there might be room for a shopping deck.

The potty problem has reared its genderishly inequitable head for years in the mascara military. You just get in trouble for talking about it. Consider urinals and the Army. They were never a problem, because men regard the entire earth as a urinal in waiting. The side of the road, the middle of the road, a tree, the ocean -- they don't discriminate. The way feminists see oppression everywhere, men see urinals. It's a design feature.
Which means that if a battalion of trucks is maneuvering in the desert, guys don't care. Anywhere is as good as anywhere else. Women see things differently. They're embarrassed. They want a bush to go behind. In deserts there aren't any bushes. That's how you know it's a desert.

So they want all the guys to stand on one side of the truck while the ladies retire to the other. Of course, if the truck is in the middle of a group of trucks, this doesn't work. And if some dimwitted guy forgets he's not really in the military, and thoughtlessly goes to the wrong side of the truck to check the oil -- that's sexual harassment, buddy. Firing squad to the fore.

I'm dead serious: Research has been done on ways to let female soldiers pee standing up. If that's not gender equity, it's at least comic relief.

I have to agree with Potty John: For many reasons, none of which I can think of, men should not be allowed to stand comfortably while making a sacrifice to the Porcelain God. However, the Navy shouldn't simply write off its investment in urinals. Surely unmasculine uses can be found for them.

They would make splendid planters for flowers, for example: They have a robust watering system and good drainage. The lighting would have to be replaced with grow lamps, but this requires a mere changing of bulbs. Easy. We would have a win-win situation: Feminists would get even with men for being able to use urinals, and men would have flowers to look at. A window-box arrangement around them with drapes would be lovely.

See why I tell guys, Don't enlist in this silly circus?

I've gotta run. To my stockbroker's, to invest in implant companies.


What Inspired the last Story...

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

'Flam Basted Crackerjack McBrag’

If you’re an ol’ Salt you probably don’t miss the fun of busting your ass with water crashing over the bow… grown men gett'n tossed around like skivvies in a clothes dryer… moving fore and aft in the pitch & rolls of a drunk’n Irish River Dance with ass pok’n valve stems... unforgiving stanchions and bone crushing steel hatches waiting for your approach… crusty valve handles and orifice knife edges… low hang’n pipes & unused brackets tearing gouges outta your nogg’n!!  It was a gaudamned smorgasbord of things that’d knock you into tomorrow before you knew what the hell hit you!!!

Not much to brag or write home about… at least at that point in time anyway… but all be damned if you went home without a story or two to tell the Moms, Pops, and all the ones left in Midtown USA… Cause back home was different than being on the beachfront in Sailor town USA where the sign says ‘Keep the Sailors off the Grass’ or ‘No Squids Allowed’!!!

You see back home you could have a face of a bulldog chewing a hornets nest look’n like you fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down… but in a Service Uniform it didn’t matter… Every dame hotter than a goat’s ass in a pepper patch would be rubber neck’n to get a look your way… it’s enough to make you happier than a hound dog with two peckers! There’s nothing like being home all gussied up in your crisp Crackerjacks or favorite pair of Dress Whites!!!

Of course the kinfolk would say…

“The last time I saw you, you were knee-high to a grasshopper… boy how you’ve grown!”

But some of them hometown gals were look’n for a real man to take them away… added with a bit of flam basted Sea Story gibberish… a ‘Crackerjack’ on a fourteen day furlough might be a good catch!!! Nothing like sweet talk’n the honeys when you got home about a life of wonderment and adventure… hell they didn’t know any better! It’s one of the reasons why passing the art of tell’n Sea Stories from one generation to the next is so important… so us ‘Crackerjacks’ can cook stuff up so full of wonder and amazement that anything wear’n a skirt and laced panties would fall in love in a New York Minute!! Because everyone knows that any Squidly-Do-Right who can’t tell a Sea Story is about as useless as tits on a bull!!!

The truth is… it ain’t really lying… but just stretching out the truth a bit! You know what they say…

“It ain’t bragg’n if you done it… as long as you can back it up!”

Well after twenty-three years I can surely back it all up! But at nineteen… twenty years old, you’re still wet behind the ears and don’t know shit about shinola!!  It’s funny how the horse crap you spoon fed the gals was inversely proportional to the crazy shit you fed your buddies!! Try tell’n a gal back home about the Tijuana Donkey Shows and the Girls in Thailand and she’ll skedaddle the other way quicker than shit... But the boys… they love that shit... they'll smile and look at you all amazed like a baby in a topless bar!!!

No the ladies liked to hear about the adventures of heroism and exotic places like Tahiti, Hawaii, France & Italy! But anyone who knows me well can attest to the ‘V’ shaped scar on my right leg… an ugly son-of-a-bitch it is!  To the ladies as the story would go…

“One of my shipmates fell off the portside and I had to jump in to the deep blue and rescue him from the shark infested waters… and that’s when this big tiger shark came in and clamped down on my leg… it was at this time I pulled out my trusty navy issued bowie knife and sent the critter to the bottom of ‘Davey Jones Locker’ as fish food… courtesy of the US Navy!!” 

Of course that’s a load of shit… but when you’re home on leave and in the backseat of her Daddy’s 88’ Olds… you ain’t even gotta wear the tits off the tires and she’s ready to do the horizontal mambo with the sexiest man alive!! And to the fellas who didn’t know any better…

 “So there I was on the streets of Olongapo in the Subic Bay of the PI… After a night of exasperated sex with the hottest bar girl in the land I was off to find another… when she pulled out her switch-blade and accused me of butterfly for not being faithful… and that’s how I got my War Wound… One Hundred-Thirty Six Stitches later!!!” 

And on and on the stories grow… nevermind the one about the stolen ambulance riding into town to pick up hookers and beer…  or how Seaman Smith Jumped out of a three story window of a cathouse butt nekkit to evade the shore patrol… and other gold plated bullshit stories concocted by the best minds this ol’ Canoe Club could muster!  Don’t bullshit me… if you’re a salty ol’ goat then your guilty as hell… we’ve all been there and done that!! Anything it takes to get down a young fawns shorts… never too big for one’s britches to think too highly of themselves… cause we were young and full of sexual angst!!!

More lies got told than any other time in your chronological history… no such thing as the gospel truth… and hell your parents… you didn’t even have to lie to them… just tell them what you do and they’ll embellish the story tenfold!! When I became a CIWS tech my Dad went around tell’n everyone how I was in charge of the fasted gun in the fleet… whatever the hell that means… and when I became a Tomahawk Tech he told everyone I was in charge of launch’n the Tomahawks into Iraq and Afghanistan… and I remember when I told him I made Chief he told the whole damned town I was Chief-of-the-Boat!! Now I’m retired and build rockets and he tells everyone I’m a Chief Rocket Scientist… I love my ol’ man… he really means well!!!

But when you’ve been around the world and seen the things I’ve seen… sometimes truth is stranger than fiction!! I’ve seen several nekkit ladies in the Phillipines, and their titties ‘Do’ have looong nipples… sometimes an inch or two looong… No Shit!! And there really are real live lady boys in Thailand that could make most women jealous… all over the gaudamned place!! And I’ve really seen Go-Go dancers shoot darts outta their cootchie-lala and hit a bulls-eye from ten feet away… No Futher-Mucking-Bun-Of-A-Sitch!!  And I’ve drank stuff that tastes like thirty year old turpentine and made me feel like a floor story tenant in a two story outhouse kind’a shit the next morning!!!

But at the end of the day we spent more time chipp’n paint… buff’n floors & shining brass than living those adventures around the world we tell you about! I couldn’t tell you where the mundane boredom stopped and ‘The Little Golden Book’ stories started… if I did it would be ‘Classified Information’ and I’d have to kill ya if I told ya!!

Ha-ha… it reminds me of that joke…

An Army brat was boasting about his father to a Navy brat.
"My dad is an engineer. He can do everything. Do you know the Alps?"
"Yes," said the Navy brat.
"My dad built them."
Then the naval kid spoke:
 "And do you know the Dead Sea?"
"Yes."
"It's my dad who killed it!"




"Slanted 'VG'....?!?"


Friday, November 23, 2012