An Orgy of One

Things I hope to try for the next room inspection that my First Sergeant intends to do -

-Use Hello Kitty linens, including pillowcases
-Push my roommate's bed next to mine and cover it with a single king-sized comforter, so that it looks like a king sized bed that my roommate and I sleep in. If the First Sergeant demands an explanation I could respond with "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, First Sergeant!"
-Place clothing irons in an array, heating elements faced upwards, with a cast iron skillet on top. None of these items is explicitly forbidden as a fire hazard in the Barracks SOP (Standard Operating Procedures).
-Put up numerous photos of someone else's family, preferably someone who is a different ethnicity/race than myself.
-Place green "unclassified" stickers on my toilet.

Labels: barracks

Posted by Joe Dirtbag at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments

Tattoos are fairly popular in the military. Well, with any large group of tattooed individuals, you'll see at least a few with really stupid tattoos.

There are several types of crappy tattoos I've seen in the Army
Nonsense Asian characters
It's pretty common to see Asian characters that are flipped or upside down. One time I've seen a guy with a nonsense string of 5 Chinese characters running down his arm. Turns out, he thought the characters were the Chinese equivalent for the letters "H, A, R, R, and Y." He was fairly shocked and appalled to learn that Chinese doesn't have anything like our alphabet. Most others aren't nearly as bad, but they all seem to forget that saying something stupid in another language doesn't make it profound.
Gender-inappropriate tattoos
There's a guy who walks around the barracks with no shirt on sometimes, and he has angel wings on his back. I think this tattoo looks bad even on hot girls, but it looks absolutely ridiculous on a guy. There was also a guy in basic who we made fun of once for having a butterfly tattoo until he told us that he got the tattoo when his daughter died in a house fire. Oops.
Weight-change distortion
Lots of people gain or lose large amounts of weight in the Army. This results in warped or stretched tattoos. That in itself is not a problem, but usually when this happens, the person doesn't realize how bad it is and still proudly sports his funny-looking tattoo.

Labels: people

Posted by Joe Dirtbag at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments

I just spent a week training in the field. Besides adding new names to my mental "people I really don't want to go to war with" list, I got to try out some Army-issued insect repellent for the first time.

It comes in a small olive green tube, and has the appearance and texture of sunblock. The tube is labeled with 31.58% N,N-Diethyl-m-toluamide (which is DEET) and 1.75% "other isomers." I don't know what the other isomers are, but I like the degree of precision in their labeling - 4 significant digits on the DEET concentration.

Anyway, I squeeze a little bit onto my hands and rub it onto my hands and face, which are the only exposed skin that I have while wearing my uniform. A few minutes later, I experience a strange burning sensation on my face. It intensifies over the next few minutes as the burning warmth slowly becomes a numb sensation. I feel like someone who had Novocaine applied all over his face. It sucks.

I walk over to my platoon sergeant and ask him whether that Army-issued bug lotion is supposed to make my face burn and tingle. He responds, "Oh yeah, that's normal. Don't use that stuff. It works pretty well, but I don't think it's worth it. Plus who knows what kind of cancer or birth defects it might cause."

Posted by Joe Dirtbag at 1:58 PM | Permalink | Comments

Some people join the Army so that they can seek adventure and travel the world. Not this guy. He has already traveled around the World of Warcraft, which is far more exciting than Germany, Alaska, or Qatar. Besides, if he really wanted to talk to South Koreans, the server he plays on has plenty anyway.

Gamer always finds a large number of like-minded individuals so that they can all LAN in someone's barracks room, much to the chagrin of that guy's non-gaming roommate. The weekend diet consists of soda, pizza, and Doritos, since a trip to the dining facility would interrupt their scheduled raid. Between the junk food and the expensive hardware, Gamer really can't afford to buy a car. Besides, he's not leaving his room for anything anyway.

Labels: people

Posted by Joe Dirtbag at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments

So the other day a platoon sergeant was giving some of us younger soldiers some training that really, all soldiers should know. We sat around in the grass while the sergeant gave us handouts and started talking. I noticed that the grass had a lot of bugs, which I had already gotten used to. Well, somewhat, at least - the flies were still pretty annoying.

I looked down at the paper we were given. The first thing I noticed was the acronym METTTC (pronounced "met-tee-see") and what the letters stood for:

Mission
Eenemy
Time
Ttroops
Tterrain
Civilian impact

Nice. It's a good thing that the Army came up with this decision making technique - when I make decisions I usually forget to account for the eenemies. And the tterrain. What bugged me the most was that there was no consistency here - Mission, Time, and Civilian Impact were all spelled correctly. Oh well.

After chuckling to myself about all this, I realized why there was an unusually large number of flies on me as compared to everyone else. I shifted my weight a little bit and realized that I was sitting on something fuzzy. Specifically, a fuzzy, dead, decaying pigeon with ants digging through its carcass. I interrupted the sergeant giving the training with a strange yelping noise as I jumped to my feet. I probably have some virulent strain of avian flu now. Great.

Posted by Joe Dirtbag at 8:11 PM | Permalink | Comments

Hi.

You probably don't know me, but we use the same laundry room. Today, I made the mistake of not moving my clothes from the washer to the dryer the instant that the cycle finished. Since today is the last day of the weekend, the washers were in high demand all day. I understand that you wanted to use the idle washer, and that you were probably in a hurry. I apologize for not freeing up the washer for others to use immediately.

Ordinary laundry room etiquette requires that when you decide that you will use an idle washer that has finished its cycle, you are to move the wet clothes previously inside to a dryer and begin drying. You could choose whatever random settings you please; the clothes' owner will probably be there shortly to change the dryer settings to his own personal preference. Well, I suppose that sounds like a lot of work to be doing for someone you don't know, so maybe instead you could have put the wet clothes on top of a clean countertop. Or failing that, just a countertop. No, instead you found it necessary to hide the wet clothes in the broken dryer in the corner, so that I had to go around looking for my clothes for a few minutes.

When I checked every dryer (except the broken one in the corner) for my clothes, I was confused that my clothes were nowhere to be found. I checked each dryer again. Why would someone steal my wet clothes? That seems like so much work and inconvenience for not much of a payoff.

The broken dryer you chose to store my clothes in smells funny, too. Now my freshly cleaned laundry load has a faint odor. You are lucky that I own Febreze. And that I'm too lazy to actually find you.

Respectfully yours,
Your Neighbor

Posted by Joe Dirtbag at 7:24 PM | Permalink | Comments