It's been a long week, but today is my Friday and it can't come to soon. We work 12 hour days, but with preparation before work and adminsitrative stuff after work it is usually a 14 hour evolution each day. I'm not complaining mind you, merely laying the foundation for my point that as the week wares on I tend to migrate into this sort of tunnel vision-single mindedness where a day consists of waking up, going to work, working out, and sleep. At any rate, even though it's technically Sunday over here, to me it's Friday and I can't wait for the next 14 hours to pass!

That Summer... v2.0 That summer, where work was merely the point between waking and the beginning of each nights decent into madness, was perfect. The passion with which one roomate sang, while another would thrash the place all wide eyed and pine fresh from gin shots. Nosering Girl, I love you... where Weekends seemed to flow into each other amidst the backdrop of his tortured tone-deaf lyrics I learned about magic that summer and playing good chess. I wanted to teach compassion and understanding but fear that at both I am in need of instruction myself. I remember the day for saying goodbye. Off to fight for God and Country. One of the hardest things I've had to do was closing that chapter and turning to walk out the door. -Asa

Count the black dots

Does having muscles make you stupid?
I have a very physical job, and in order to keep from getting my *ss whipped I've started lifting weights. I've never really lifted seriously before, and really enjoy the extra energy it provides. What I've noticed now though is that people are reacting to the difference in size and responding to me differently than they used to.

I don't think I've changed.
I still try to stand up to the man and poke a bully in the eye whenever possible. (metaphorically speaking)
I do spend a bit of time in the Gym now and not nearly so much with reading as I used to. But still, I don't think my ability to think critically has been seriously impacted in a negative way.



What do you think, does having muscles make you stupid?

I sent my mom some spring daisies the other day along with this note Mom, You're the greatest woman I know. If I ammount to anything at all in this life it is because when I'm talking with my Chief I envision you right behind me, at the ready with your big wooden paddle of justice. ;D Ace

They're serious as cancer... Colon Blow.

Improved colon health
may help address some of the
following, just to mention a few.

Headaches, Sinus pressure.
Fatigue, Lethargy, Potbelly.
Prolonged constipation.

They're even giving away a free poop t-shirt.
I couldn't believe this was a real site.
The horror of it all was just too much to pass on by.
I couldn't help sharing it with everyone.

My brother's best friend won tickets to a racing school down in florida. Of course the friend wanted to enjoy it as much as possible and so left the wife at home and brought my lucky little b*st*rd of a brother instead.

Nate he was a race car driver And he drove so *!*@#$%^ing fast He never did win no checkered flag But he never did come in last Nate he was a race car driver He’d say el solo number one With a bocephus sticker On his 442 he’d light ’em up Just for fun -Primus

I watched an A&E made for TV movie today called Horatio Hornblower and based on a fictional British Naval Officer and his exploits during the French Revolution at the turn of the 19th century.

At first I thought it would be stupid, but the more I watched the more it wrapped me in. The characters are extremely well crafted and the cinematography behind the ships and sea battles was superbly amazing!
I'm off to catch those wankers who would rather endanger their future and the lives of your family by drunk driving than spend seven bucks on a cab, but will post some pics of this tomorrow.

Avast Swabies! Rusted Mort Flint here, What's yer pirate name?

So I got new tread for my car today. It's a good thing too, because the back end was bald as hell and I didn't even know it. I ride 17" low profiles and the car has a body kit, so the only part of the back tire you can really see is the extreme outside of it which is also the only part of it that doesn't wear. To make a short story long the outside looked ok while the middle was bald and the inside was worn through to the belts. After having seen these tires I'm not sure how they didn't blow apart on me a long time ago. The crappy part of the day came as I was backing my car off the lift. When the lift brought my car up, it reset the suspension (I have air adjustable suspension) in the front to super low, and I didn't know this until I was backing down and heard the CRRRUNCHHHHH. Painfully I finished backing and got out to survey the damage. It's bad, real bad. Fifteen minutes later the kit was back up and attached again, but my front end is now way too low and doesn't want to raise. I'm not sure why that is, but if it doesn't come back up soon (I think there's a short somewhere) I'll have to bring it in to the shop and pay through the nose for them to tell me it's broken and it'll cost hundreds to fix. Man this car pisses me off sometimes. But on the plus side with all new tread it really eats the road. We're talking 24 valve dual overhead cam single turbine 3.0 liters and 227 horses that get up and go like there's no tomorrow. It's almost scary how fast this car launches. But I digress. It's pissed me off for the last time with this front end suspension not responding and as soon as it's working again I'm selling it to a gearhead who can fiddle with it to his/her hearts content and getting a jeep.

As a navy cop, I was assigned to run radar on this one specific street each morning for a week or so. I was in plain view at the top of a hill, and even though I was there for two and a half hours every morning I would only catch five or so people not going the speed limit. Officers are the always the worst people to bust as they think they are above the law. Below is a compilation of several conversations I had with them.

Me: Good morning Sir, The reason I pulled you over this morning is that we clocked you doing 45 in a 25...
Lt: 25? Where is that posted?
Me: Once when you turned onto the street, once again halfway up the hill.
Lt: I See. Could you hurry it up, I don't have time for this.
Me: You know Sir, this is a residential street. A lot of children are crossing around this time on their way to school.
Lt: You know you're running a speed trap right? You just caught me when I was trying to get up the hill.
Me: Sir, I've been here all morning, of all the people I've watched come up that hill only you and two others have had a problem with obeying the law.
Lt: You know you're running a speed trap right? You just caught me when I was going down the hill.
Me: Sir, I've been here all morning, of all the people I've watched go down that hill only you and two others have had a problem with obeying the law.
Lt: I'm the duty officer today, you don't have to give me a ticket do you?
Me: Sir, our records indicate your insurance is expired, could I see your vehicle registration paperwork?
Lt: I just bought a new wallet and left my drivers license at home. Wow my insurance expired last month, my wife/husband is the one who takes care of it. I'll just park my car at work and take the bus until I can get it renewed.
Me: You're right about the bus sir, because I'm impounding your car right here.


Call me a bastard if you want to. I don't like ticketing people, and don't do it often unless someone's doing something dangerous like almost twice the posted speed limit on a street kids cross while on their way to school.

I am starting to train my own UI's (Under Instruction) out here on the various aspects of our job, and one of the big problems they have is with driving. They're so afraid to do something wrong and kill the both of us, that they don't want do drive at all and do everything within their power to avoid it. I always laugh at them as I'm handing over the keys and tell em "I joined the navy to live a life of peril, today you're gonna make that happen." Without exception, every one of em starts off hitting the windshielf wipers instead of the blinker, on the wrong side of the road after a right hand turn, going down one way streets the wrong way and generally living up to their end of that life of peril crack. You have to start somewhere though and after a few weeks they all pick it up and you'd never know they hadn't been driving over here their whole lives.

I've been at one of our satelites lately and life has been pretty low key. I found out today that I don't need to file state taxes this year, but that was balanced by also finding out that I will need to take my car to the Nissan dealer to get the front shocks replaced. :( I should be home for leave towards the end of June or beginning of July. One of my good friends from Brainerd has apparently decided to take life seriously. He moved to Moorhead, landed a job (AS THE MAN!) somewhere in administration and to top it all off is getting married. I've never met his lovely bride to be, but from what I know of Chad she has to be extremely patient and understanding, cool.

Today was a long day.
Yesterday was long, the day before long and the one before that was pretty long too, althogh that first day was spent shooting big guns so it wasn't quite as bad. When I say long, I don't just mean hour wise, although my day starts at 0345 and ends about 1830 or later, I mean that a lot of messed up crap happened. Today for instance one of the things I was involved in ended up with us escorting a mother and her four year old to the front gates and giving them the old heave ho into fridgid weather because they were on the base illegally. We were able to contact her mother in law and arranged for the woman and her child to wait where it was warm until their ride arrived. I also did a few things that I can't really write about in here, needless to say 1830 couldn't come soon enough.

Well, the weekends gone and it was a pretty peacefull one too. I took a long drive and saw some nice seaside.

My friend Royal isn't in trouble anymore. When the command cooled off and got around to trying to legitamize the confiscation of his civilian clothes and the rest of the unofficial restrictions they had imposed on him without any charges, njp or otherwise having even been filed, they realized that he and another friend had actually done nothing wrong and had in fact acted in good faith to protect the life of a shipmate when she walked in to the bar the two of them were in and proceeded to drink herself into the hospital. From there it was a simple step to restoring the confiscated clothes and lifting the other restrictions unconditionally.

I'm glad the command realized the error of what they were doing. The way things were before they changed their minds, the message they were effectively putting out to all these seamen was that they would be punished for helping a shipmate out and effectively keeping her from being raped or worse. On the other hand, I'm dissapointed in the command for handling this so foolishly because now they look like idiots and all these seamen who were actually thinking twice about the consequences of drinking too much have let it go in one ear and out the other.

So I left for work this morning at 0430. I was relieved tonight at 1836. That's a 14 hour shift and right now I'm beat.

Other than than life is great. I don't work for the next two days and have plans to go do some site seeing tomorrow. I almost tapped this dude out today because someone told me he was stealing my rain parka and putting his name on it. I told him it was mine and to stop but he just laughed and kept writing. I'm a pretty peaceful guy, but some things you just can't shrug off. After all, it is the middle of winter and that is the only jacket I have for my BDU uniform. As things turned out my jacket was folded neatly behind him where I couldn't see it, and I appologized wholeheartedly, but he was still pretty shocked and just wasn't expecting me to react quite like that. In fact, everyone who was there pretty much thought they were gonna have to step in and separate us until he moved and I saw my jacket.

To be honest, I'm pretty dissapointed in how I quickly I lost my cool over a jacket. In every case like this I would much rather have a controlled conversation about the item in question, but that doesn't mean for one second that I'm sorry for rogering up when someone was trying to lift my stuff. An unfortunate aspect of life is that while there are some things you can overlook, every once in a while there are others wich require you to kick someone in the pants till they can tast the kiwi from your size ten's.

SINCE MAY 1, 2003

Interesting points to remember when we read all the negatives that are printed daily.

Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...

... The first battalion of the new Iraqi Army has graduated and is on active duty.

... Over 60,000 Iraqis now provide security to their fellow citizens.

... Nearly all of Iraq's 400 courts are functioning.

... The Iraqi judiciary is fully independent.

... On Monday, October 6 power generation hit 4,518 megawatts-exceeding the prewar average.

... All 22 universities and 43 technical institutes and colleges are open,as are nearly all primary and secondary schools.

... By October 1, Coalition forces had rehab-ed over 1,500 schools - 500 more than scheduled.

... Teachers earn from 12 to 25 times their former salaries.

... All 240 hospitals and more than 1200 clinics are open.

... Doctors salaries are at least eight times what they were under Saddam.

... Pharmaceutical distribution has gone from essentially nothing to 700 tons in May to a current total of 12,000 tons.

... The Coalition has helped administer over 22 million vaccination doses to Iraq's children.

... A Coalition program has cleared over 14,000 kilometers of Iraq's 27,000 kilometers of weed-choked canals which now irrigate tens of thousands of farms. This project has created jobs for more than 100,000 Iraqi men and women.

... We have restored over three-quarters of prewar telephone services and over two-thirds of the potable water production.

... There are 4,900 full-service telephone connections. We expect 50,000 by year-end.

... The wheels of commerce are turning. From bicycles to satellite dishes to cars and trucks, businesses are coming to life in all major cities and towns.

... 95 percent of all prewar bank customers have service and first-time customers are opening accounts daily.

... Iraqi banks are making loans to finance businesses.

... The central bank is fully independent.

... Iraq has one of the worlds most growth-oriented investment and banking laws.

... Iraq has a single, unified currency for the first time in 15 years.

... Satellite TV dishes are legal.

... Foreign journalists aren't on 10-day visas paying mandatory and extortionate fees to the Ministry of Information for minders and other government spies.

... There is no Ministry of Information.

... There are more than 170 newspapers.

... You can buy satellite dishes on what seems like every street corner.

... Foreign journalists (and everyone else) are free to come and go.

... A nation that had not one single element - legislative, judicial or executive - of a representative government, now does.

... In Baghdad alone residents have selected 88 advisory councils. Baghdad's first democratic transfer of power in 35 years happened when the city council elected its new chairman.

... Today in Iraq chambers of commerce, business, school and professional organizations are electing their leaders all over the country.

... 25 ministers, selected by the most representative governing body in Iraq's history, run the day-to-day business of government.

... The Iraqi government regularly participates in international events. Since July the Iraqi government has been represented in over two dozen international meetings, including those of the UN General Assembly, the Arab League, the World Bank and IMF and, today, the Islamic Conference Summit. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs today announced that it is reopening over 30 Iraqi embassies around the world.

... Shah religious festivals that were all but banned, aren't.

... For the first time in 35 years, in Karbala thousands of Shiites celebrate the pilgrimage of the 12th Imam.

... The Coalition has completed over 13,000 reconstruction projects, large and small, as part of a strategic plan for the reconstruction of Iraq.

... Uday and Queasy are dead - and no longer feeding innocent Iraqis to the zoo lions, raping the young daughters of local leaders to force cooperation, torturing Iraq's soccer players for losing games, or murdering critics.

... Children aren't imprisoned or murdered when their parents disagree with the government.

... Political opponents aren't imprisoned, tortured, executed, maimed, or are forced to watch their families die for disagreeing with Saddam.

... Millions of longsuffering Iraqis no longer live in perpetual terror.

... Saudis will hold municipal elections.

... Qatar is reforming education to give more choices to parents.

... Jordan is accelerating market economic reforms

... The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded for the first time to an Iranian --a Muslim woman who speaks out with courage for human rights, for democracy and for peace.

... Saddam is gone.

... Iraq is free.

Iraq under US lead control has come further in six months than Germany did in seven years or Japan did in nine years following WWII. Military deaths from fanatic Nazi's, and Japanese numbered in the thousands and continued for over three years after WWII victory was declared.

I've never liked bullies.
I remember this one day of my childhood very clearly. I was a freshman and my brothers were both in middle school, so they got off the bus before I did. This kid who would constantly pick on my brothers and I, for whatever reason I still don't know. Being a peacfull guy, I put up with it, and put up with it. I ignored the words and shoves and even an occasional fist, but one day that little wanker put some gum in my hair. It was that day I decided that enough was enough and so, I waited until my brothers had left the bus to get him. I waited until we were at the high school and knocked him backwards onto the isle as we were getting off the bus. I then jumped on him pinning his arms beneath my knees and proceeded to give him a bloody nose and was knocking his head into the floor (literally one hand on each side of his slippery little head, bonk, bonk, bonk.) When they pulled me off him, yep, I got in a bit of trouble but guess what. Nobody messed with me or my brothers on that bus ever again.

Was it wrong? Go to CNN.com and do a search on giving up nukes.


The people of Iraq were under a great tyrany and while war is never easy sometimes you have to take it in the shorts to help your fellow man. I am a bit worried about how long we're going to be sticking around over there though. Once the infrastructure over there is tottering on it's new lew legs with a modicum of stability, if we're still milking the cow... Well, I'll burn that bridge when we get there.

Christmas was sweet, although most of mine was spent working. I did get a good Ghristmas gift though. This LTCMDR tried to catch us not being vigilant on post and since he wasn't in my chain of command, and with due respect, I schooled him in front of his peeps. I love it when people think I'm an idiot just because I wear BDUs and shoot big guns. Seriously, it couldn't have been more embarrassing for him if I'd smacked his bum from behind with one hand while air humping him and hollering “WHO'S YOUR DADDY!” Pluss I got away with it because he had absolutely no idea what my post was about and had tried to call me on something that was actually the responsibility of one of his people....

-Mwaa haaa haa haa Meeeery Christmas to meeee.

I love this car...
It's sitting rather low in this picture, but that's normal as it comes stock with an adjustable air suspension system that lets you take it from a low riding, fast responding, turn on a dime boxy type sportster, to a high riding, smooth sailing, sweet road tripping, honey of a luxury ride.
But I digress...

I found out last night that I have a friend at work (Mullins) to thank for the hook-up on this car. As it turns out he was interested in purchasing it and had called the owner (Danny) last week to set up a meeting. As they are both car enthusiasts my Mullins and Danny ran into each other a day before the meeting and they started talking about the car. The hook-up comes when the Danny doesn't realize Mullins is the one who has already called him about the car.

You have to realize that these two had never actually met face to face, so when Danny tells Mullins that he's holding the car for someone from security who's pretty much agreed to buy it already. Mullins is a bit put off but continues his car hunt in other areas and of course doesn't meet Danny the following day to look at the car. Being the stand up guy that he is, Danny holds the car for a few more days hoping one of his perspective buyers would purchase it, but when that didn't happen he again put the word out via fliers, one of which I was lucky enough to see being posted.