The Greatest Navy in a Whirl

More than almost anything, I loathe going on board ships. The smell of burned grease from the Hardy's rejected food cooked in the galley permeates everything and leaves its residue on all surfaces. That smell, the overpowering smokey smell, combined with wet metal leaves its mark in one's nostrils. The ladder wells, the mattresses, the decks and bulkheads and a person's skin are slick with a combination of oil and sea water. The glazed look in the eye of each blue jumpsuited Sailor is telling of the poor nutrition, lack of excercise and sunshine and the loneliness they endure. In dark corners men and women can be found lurking, planning port rendezvous, or flirting heavily with one another before they sit down to write emails to their children and spouses waiting for them at home.

Ships are never really clean, despite "sweepers" or "cleaning stations" or "field days" which sounds like fun, but never is. These jobs end up being delegated to the lowest ranks, to those who are disgruntled, and it shows. Time spent waxing decks or polishing brass is, within hours, ruined by careless fire hose teams dragging damp, mud smearing hoses through passageways while some Ensign (no doubt a graduate of the Naval Academy), younger, and with less time in service than they have, screams at them to go faster, be safer, hydrate, don protective gear and doff protective gear. The hose team prays for the order to doff and hydrate as they stand in a passageway in which the air has been secured in the middle of an afternoon with 100 degree, 90% humidity weather wearing 20 lbs of protective clothing.

On a ship, a Sailor's solace is his rack. It is behind those thin, blue curtains, 4x7 foot coffins, stacked three high, that Sailors find the only privacy to be found in the six, eight or ten months they are cutting through the ocean toward a hot war that doesn't mean anything to them. They float along at night, half of them in their coffins, while the red lights overhead create a womb-like calm for the coming day in which they will carry out the orders of their Chief, who's carrying out the orders of his Lieutenant, who's carrying out the orders of the Captain, who's carrying out the orders of the TYCOM, who's carrying out the orders of the CNO, who's carrying out the orders of the Secretary of Defense, who's carrying out the orders of the President, who is carrying out the orders of God and the Rich.

Sea Duty

The newest chapter in my dramatic life involves negotiating my next set of orders. I have major pressure from my detailer to take a ship. Some people want me to go to Iraq. I want to go home.
So I thought I would compromise. I put in a request for a billet at Commander Naval Forces Europe staff. Sounds good to me, plus it's sea duty. It's in Italy and the thought of going back both excites me and makes me sad.
I will miss my brother's daughter, Madlynn's first years. I long to be Aunt Trish. I long to be Wife or Mom.
But Italia! I miss it. I love it. I want it!

Conversation with Brad that may never take place

No, Brad. I do not want to get you in trouble. I do want you to sit down on the bar stool next to me and sit with your legs spread around mine, my knees in between yours and lean forward so that I can whisper this into your ear:
What I want is to get to know you on an emotional and physical level. To make love to you in the slow way that will make you understand that there is good left in the world. I want to make love to you in a way that will make you forget the heat and death of the dessert, that will make you forget you are an officer and I'm not, that will make you forget about your girlfriend in Equador.

Pensajacksogulassippi!!!

Pensacola: you can't even say it without a slack jaw.

Things I discovered during my trip to Pensacola, Florida:
1. My hair does not react well to humidity.
2. Pensacola is the poor man's Guam. If you've ever been to both, you know what I mean.
3. Pensacola bathrooms rarely provide toilet seat covers, however, if they do, they will not be in individual stalls, but provided near the hand-drying materials. You must know this and have the foresight to bring your own into the stall with you.
4. There are really places in the world where people say "y'all" and mean it; Pensacola is one of them.
5. "how's y'all's sweet tea?" is not an uncommon question in Pensacola.
6. Pensacola Junior College does exist, and people are so proud to have attended that they display stickers on their cars and various other belongings with the abbreviation: "PJC," seemingly disclaim their intelligence.
7. California really is the greatest state in the nation.



disclaimer: all comments about Pensacola and the South are not meant to hurt or offend people. While I am not sorry that you are hurt or offended, please know that I am sorry you are from Pensacola and the South. Sorry Jim. You're okay.

How ABBA saved my life and other musings

How I felt then is how it feels to know that you are alone in the world. That feeling of hopelessness when you know that somehow you where wired wrong, differently than the others. I felt no connection with anyone. I was one person in a sea of other people, none of us really connecting to one another. None of us really understanding one another.
I lay in my rack, silent tears streaming, hot, down the side of my face, seeking comfort in my ears. My nose so filled with snot that it leaked out, lava.
I breathed, quick, sucking breaths in through my mouth. I breathed out silent, slow, forceful, wanting my whole being breathed out.
The way I felt then is the way it feels to realize that you have no soul. That you are only an intelligent animal and that you aren't special at all. Your whole life is a sham and so is everything else. It's the way it feels to lose faith.
The way I felt then was that ABBA was singing to me when they sang
"Chiquitita, you and I know
How the heartaches come and they go and the scars they’re leaving
You’ll be dancing once again and the pain will end
You will have no time for grieving
Chiquitita, you and I cry
But the sun is still in the sky and shining above you."
And that was all I needed to survive the loss of my soul. One song.

But how I feel now is worse. Even ABBA can't help me deal with the emptiness I've discovered now that I'm in the same place again. I'm still utterly alone. I will always be alone, except for myself, a monstrous being.

I saw Bush. 

I hate wikipedia

I've seen people use wikipedia in their links to explain things that maybe wouldn't be understood by the layman. I thought this was cool and I asked matt what it was all about. It was sort of confusing, but I decided that this would be the perfect venue for a strategic communication operation for my job, Sea Warrior.
I poured my heart into a very informative entry. The next time I went to the link, found it had been edited by some guy named Bbpen. Bbpen replaced all of my up-to-date material with an article from 2003 (yeah, two years ago) about how Sea Warrior was coming soon. I emailed this Bbpen and based on his response, soon developed a venomous contempt for Bbpen.
Fuck Bbpen, fuck wikipedia. This is nothing more than a way for communists, disguised as liberals to force people into conformity by putting restrictions on what information is distributed to the masses. How dare Bbpen change my posts merely because I didn't know the "rules" of wikipedia. He could have changed the post to reflect the rules if it was so important to him, but instead, he chose the change the content of my entry, which is classified as censorship.
It's frustrating to say the least. Even though I am a resident expert of Sea Warrior, this Bbpen has final authority over the content of the Sea Warrior information on wikipedia. This leads me to question the validity of the rest of the information on wikipedia. How many others have tried to add their genius to the archive only to have their information deleted by the wikipediacracy? It's a dark day in the history of the First and Fourteenth Ammendment to the United States Constitution!!

yes, it's true. i'm tired of being here in lemoore, ca. if it's not fog, it's 100 degree heat. if it's not micromanagement, it's complete lack of attention. if i don't get out of here, i'm going to snap.
i was thinking about my duty in naples, italy, and how much i hated it. how could anything be so bad to make me hate italy. then i remembered that it was the navy. the thing i hate is the inundation of bullshit. it's like there's no common sense up or down the ranks. for instance, here at vfa-22 we have an NC1 who irritates me. her voice is so loud and she doesn't realize it, i guess because she's always talking. "shut up", i think, but apparently, she's not psychic, because she never shuts up. on top of all that, she's a "close talker". you know, the kind of people who seem to need to be two inches from your face when they're talking to you and then when you move away, they act like your shadow and keep that two inch distance no matter what. "get away", i think, but again, she's not psychic.

where there's smoke...
i want to not smoke. i say that instead of "i want to stop smoking" because the latter sounds cliche. i want to not smoke for several reasons, the most important being that it ruins ones sex drive, and i like sex. something about constricted blood vessels, lack of oxygen, medical jargon, etc. a close second is the hair loss factor. i'm not sure if it's true, but i'm not taking any chances with that one. it's hard to not do it though. stress, alcohol, stress, coffee, stress all make me want to light up.
i woke up this morning and felt like crying. solution: have a ciggy! now i feel better. i know i'm crazy, but a girls gotta have a vice, right?
have i mentioned that while i was in chicago i got this fabulous blush? its called "style" and it fucking rocks! it's everything i could ask for in a blush- i highly reccomend it. luv, luv.

sevent to go
seven days 'till land, and i can't wait. i've watched more espn in the last week than i have in my life. i've actually started to like basketball. nothing much ever happens on the ship- only drama. it's like every emotion is concentrated to the boiling point. after a week, ugly guys start looking good, your best friend is your enemy, and garbage tastes good. it's amazing..
once off the boat, dave, bass and i are going to party it up in SD. The next day, we're going to head back, only stopping to have lunch with bass' brother in the oc. saturday we're having a "stip and go naked" party. thanks nikki for the recipe. it's sure to be a good time.

bpo
as the berthing petty officer (bpo), i am responsible for about eleven females, the cleanliness of the berthing, and the overall atmosphere of the berthing. well, in the last week we've had two incidences that put my leadership skills to a test.
the first incident involed a close aquaintence who is recently engaged to be married. she brought it to my attention that she was bringing said fiance into the berthing at night to sleep with her. obviously, this is against every rule in the navy. not only was i uncomfortable with her stupid boyfriend in there (right above me nontheless), but imagine someone else seeing him and freaking out!! The command found out about it, and yelled at her, very lucky for her since most people wouold have gone to mast, but she had the nerve to get mad at me! not only did i get in trouble for not "knowing" about it, but now i have her bitchy ass to contend with. i should have fucking told the co of the ship.
the second incident happened last night, when i got a phone call from above mentioned bitch, complaining about one of the other girls's rack. this girl has always had hygiene problems,and i guess the smell wafting through the berthing had the girls in a tizzy. i asked pn3 if she had clean clothes and whatnot, and she admitted that she had been wearing the same skivvys over and over. that's just sad. i made here change her sheets, put all of her clothes in the laundry, buy new skivvys, and she's to take two showers a day. sad, sad.

extra, extra...
a lot has changed since my last post on august second:
i'm no longer on the dreaded uss carl vinson
i have a tan
i'm taking yoga and water aerobics classes
i put in a rental application for a three bedroom home three days ago
i'm back into blogging

needless to say, i'm happy. it turns out a sailors life may not be quite the life for me. now that i'm back, i've been spending my days leisurely, laying in the sun, eating good food, thinking of my life and the direction i would like for it to take now that i have my freedom back. i'm reading a book by the infamous dr. laura schlessinger, entitled: ten stupid things women do to mess up their lives, and it's a book every woman should read. it's the closest thing to a feminist book this anti-feminist will ever read. she also authored ten stupid things men do to mess up their lives
the best thing that i've done since getting back is talking to my friend nikki meyer who lives in downtown chicago and leads this ideal, mary tyler moore type of life. she never fails to wow me and always sort of wipes the smudges off of my rose colored glasses. this girls is the furthest thing from jaded it gets and one of my very few, but very close girlfriends. i'm amazed constantly at her intelligence and her sense of adventure, for instance, she jetted off to italy this summer to spend two weeks with her ex-lover, jeff, and she and jeff subsequently jetted off to tunisia and spent lovely days basking in the african sun. i mean, that's a whole different continent!
amazing women seem to be the theme of my homecoming (could it be that i fit into that category somewhere?). i've been watching sex and the city, season three over and over again because i refuse to pay for cable and it gets boring sitting around my barracks room waiting for my rental application to come through. i never tire of the crazy misadventures of the four single new yorkers and always find something new and fabulous with every veiwing. i've come to think of my life as an episode of this show, as most women probably do, and i can't help but associate my misadventures with some of theirs. one thing that happened to me, that i can bet would never happen to them, but millions of regular women probably experience daily is this:
at four this morning i awakened to a rustling, no, a clinking of dishes. my assumtion was that it was the few dishes that i had on top of my small refrigerator rattling together as the motor shut down, but when it happened again just seconds later, i became alarmed. i turned on my bedside table light and looked in the direction of the noise and saw this little mouse. i let out a muffled scream and was surprised at how terrified i was. after all, it was a tiny mouse that was probably more afraid of me, but all i could think of was that it was going to attack me and scurry up my neck and get in my hair. then i remembered reading somewhere that women in a survey proclaimed that their biggest fear was having an living thing (bird, spider, mice, etc.) get in their hair and not being able to get it out. i knew where they were coming from. i threw my dr. laura book that was laying next to me at the mouse and it jumped- i swear on my life- two feet, and scurried behind the armoir. i ran out of the room and told the guy in charge of the barracks that there was a mouse in my room. he apathetically suggested i use a broom to swat it, which made no sense to me- what better way than to climb up the brrom handle, for the mouse to get in my hair? he eventually sent his footman to my room to set a mouse trap. the footman was decidedly more of a huntsman than the guy in charge and he cleverly set the trap with a combination of blue cheese and sour dough bread as bait. the mouse would be helpless to pass by such a smorgesboard, and the footman promised that as soon as i shut off the lights i would hear the sharp snap of the trap and my problem would be gone. i thanked him and said goodmorning. i got back in bed and shut off the light, but there was no immediate thwack and i fealt the terror return. what if the mouse, like the nimh mice in the cartoon, was too smart for the footmans' trap and became enraged at my murderous solution to his starvation and called his little mice buddies to get ready to make their nests in my hair as soon as i fell asleep? or what if he did fall victim to the smorgesboard and his little body was trapped beneath the metal, but he was still alive and he was squeeling and making those terrible mice noises? i finally had to get up and turn on loud music and make loud noises and leave. i'm dreading my return, the anticipation that his tiny body will be broken under the wire is too much, but i'll forget about it as soon as someone takes it away. the only thing left for my to worry about then is whether or not he told his little buddies.... dun dun dun!

i'm a lernin!
i know how to perform first aid on a sucking chest wound, also known as a gunshot, or stab wound. all i need is a peice of flimsy plastic, like the type conveniently found around packages of cigarettes. all i do is slap that plastic right over the wound and it acts as a valve so that the injured persons diaphragm won't push all of the air out of the lungs. important stuff to know in such troubled times. another usefull fact: a person needs an average of 20.8% oxygen to survive. 16% is the minimum, anything over 22% will kill ya.
i'm amazed at the reality of the whole "ask and you shall receive" concept. i mean it. i asked for something that is totally against the rules, and i got it. w-o-w baby. i'm also amazed at the ignorance of the people in charge of me. not all of them, but the ones i have direct contact with: i was working on the computers in the ready room, they were all mysteriously running slow. i was doing all the things i knew to fix the problem. halfway through my troubleshooting process some dudes came in and annonced that they were securing the ventilation for maintence. about ten minutes later it became very HOT up in there. so now, i had officers breathing down my neck, wondering why they couldn't log on, a fucking heat wave, and a seemingly unfixable problem. as a last resort, i called tim and asked him to reboot the switch in 314, and as i was on the tele with him, my ADP officer was looking at me in disbelief and telling me that rebooting a switch wouldn't help. i wnated to tell him he was stupid, and to shut up. after the switch was rebooted, it worked. in your face

i guess the grievance guy has not balls. he would just prove that he was stupid if he went through with it anyway. i was thinking about my first memory last night and i realized it wasn't the poop story.:
when i was so little, we lived on spinacker lane in san jose, california in a condo. i had a light switch cover with the seven dwarves and snow white on it. my brother had not been born. i was sitiing at the dinner table and i didn't want to eat my food. my dad told me that if i didn't eat it i wouldn't get dessert. i asked him what dessert was because i didn't remember ever hearing that word before. he told me pudding. ... i felt like an alien who had just been dropped ont he lanet and i didn't know what anything was. in my memory even my dad seems like a stranger- that is my first memory.

yep. apathy. i think it may have been the same thing that made the trench coat mafia kill all of the kids in their high school. if you don't care, it doesn't make you a budhist monk, it just makes you an asshole. and maybe it's not even apathy, just a lack of all things good. like the other night in berthing: this girl talked about her eyebrows for a half hour straight, and she was serious about it. she gave us the history of her eybrows and how they had progressed over the years, she talked about her plans for the future of her eyebrow and how her life has changed because of their metamorphasis. i finally had to stop her by commenting on the fact that she had a lot to say about her eyebrows. she got the hint. she could have talked about anything else, but she chose facial hair. another big excitement is that some guy wants to file a grievance against me because he's an asshole. story:
he called and asked for his girlfriend (by the way he's married) and i told him she was on the phone. he asked if i would have her call him, i said yes and hung up. he called back and asked if i heard him, in a very abrasive tone. i said yes and hung up. i was not in the mood to converse with him, nor did i feel the need to. then, he cam down to the shop and started yelling at me, asking if i had a problem. as i was already annoyed, i replied that frankly i didn't like him and that was a problem for me a t the moment, so he flew off the handle and peters had to bring us in back.
whatever, he's a racist black man who is abrasive and the antithesis of a productive member of society. his opinion of me means nothing, but i think it's funny that he wants to file a grievance against me just because i don't like him.
i live and work around the crap of the nation, social rejects from all walks of life. apathy? disgust? is a grievance the only excitement i can expect? can i hope for something more, can i hope for something real? is this my life?

australia has been postponed, but i'm dealing with it. i'm thinking i'll get over it, not sure though. i'm not really even feeling australia right now if you can believe that. it doesn't seem all that great from the perspective of this ship. i have nobody to look forward to seeing, nothing to look forward to doing, its a very apathetic situation and i despise apathy, so you can see where the dilema starts. everytime i go out to the smoke deck i see the same view: sea. sometimes there is the occasional island, or another boat, but mostly it's sea. we've been in fairly high seas lately, upwards of nine feet. it rocks me to sleep. Oh, but damn those high seas and all their non-pulling in ways. reason number four million five thousand twenty not to reenlist. the number after that is the caliber of people in the navy. the ones preceeding that are obviously too numerous to mention in this small post.
since apathy doesn't really lend itself to passionate writting, my post will probably be as bland as boiled chicken, so get over it.

singapore slung
wrigly's doublemint is on the 10 most wanted list in singapore. any person caught chewing gum or selling gum will be fined $50 singapore. it is against the law to spit on the ground, litter and outrage the modesty of a female, punishment is severe. remeber the international incident cause by the american bastard who got caught spray painting a car or something some years back and got cained? yeah, that's not some boogeyman fairytale your parents told you to keep you from being a fucking prick as a kid, it's real.
i'm amazed to be in singapore. the city is so clean and full of greenery. as it's location is so near the equator, it is hot, humid, but not as much as guam. singapore heat is relaxing. I read this blog the other day called tonight we "sail for singapore" or something. this couple who live in atlanta or something want to move to singapore, and they are all excited about it. yeah, i want to move to singapore too. there is such cultural diversity, nice weather, beautiful scenery, and everyone speaks english. paradise found? i guess. i was only there for a couple of hours before i had to head back to the ship due to technical difficulties of a friend, but what i saw, i liked. the MRT (subway) is so easy to use. i feel safe in sing. i could probably walk down the street in the middle of the night naked, drunk and screaming "fuck me!" and nobody would even look at me let alone lay a hand on me. too afraid of the caining, ya know. tomorrow starts my two days with crush. i'm so excited to relax with him. to whisper, kiss, drink wine, talk, bathe, sleep, eat with him. it's sure to be a good time.

berthing blues
last night i rolled into berthing at approximately 2325. the lights were on and girls were sitting there, one doing her nails, one doing anothers' hair. i asked them if they were almost done and they said no, so i asked them if the would move to the bathroom, and i walked away. the girl doing her hair came over and started yelling, so i asked her to be quite because people were sleeping, and then she got beligerant. long story short, i'm in to work early to look up the regulations to show a senior chief who knows damn well what the fucking regulations are, but who just played dumb last night so the girl could do her hair. for the record, lights out is at 2200. fucking bitches.

snapshot of phil
phil likes guns. phil has a whole aresenal back in washington. phil packs heat wherever he goes. the nra passes out buttons that say "phil for life". when phil becomes president, he will change the title to, "el presidente por vida". phils speaches will never begin with "my fellow americans..." , rather phil will stand at the podium, shotgun in hand, and say, "'sup?". one of the first things on el presidentes' to do list is to nuke michigan, specifically detroit. while some hippies may say this is a bit harsh, phil believes it neccessary. nothing good comes out of detroit anymore, not even cars. next on his agenda is making puerto rico a state, whether they like it or not. after puerto rico, cuba is next on his takeover list- watch your back fidel. once the us has aquired all the mangos, cigars, and marijuana resources of our new states, el presidente will set forth to help the world as a whole. step one is to invade the tiny island known as great britain and liberate its inhabitants from the tyrannic rien of the evil queen mother. millions of toothbrushes and the ada will be dropped by the navy as reenforcements. another worldwide justice phil will initiate is the immidiate cease and desist of the use of the word "aboot" by all canadians. militant english classes will be instructed by the most elite of navy seals.
phils world would undoubtedly be a better world. when phils name appears on the ballot, my check mark will go next to it, how 'bout yours?

my response to a 'sermon from a freed man'
adrian,
my parents sent me a book, "a purposeful life". it's a 40 day guide to living the life god wants us to have. day two says, "you are not an accident". god puts us all of us here for a purpose. although your navy experience was one of disappointment, you have impacted so many lives in ways you may not comprehend. we all remember you, and you have given some of us the strength to persevere. you served your purpose in the navy and you should not look back on it with regret. in the short time i knew you, you gave me the gifts of courage and wisdom. courage to endure the attacks set against me by the enemy, and the wisdom to love them for it. i'm a stronger, better person because of these gifts.
adrian, you have always been a free man. nobody can impose limits upon a person he or she is not willing to accept. you've moved on to impact the lives of others, and i wish you peace of mind in your experiences. godspeed.

a sermon from a freed man

(an e-mail from adrian sizemore, the departed rebel)

I was standing on my balcony last night puffing on one of my cigars and
came to a fairly emotional epiphany, I do not miss that boat one bit. I can
honestly say that there is not one thing that I miss about that boat. Some
may say, "Well, at least you always had something to do". For those who may
continue to live with that tid bit of nonsense, Go Die!!! Others could
possibly mention that, "Hey, at least you were getting paid a decent wage".
For those of you who are staying there because of that, you go die with the
other guys. Now for the, "Well at least I will get some type of
retirement", FUCK YOU. What the hell kind of retirement is $1500/mos, not
including the taxes from that, for the rest of you life. You can save your
money invest it wisely and make that much by the time you are ready to
retire. Don’t think so, well I challenge you to step out of you pathetic
little comfort zone and try it. Here is the truth, you do not need that
place. You don’t need their bullshit games and backwards doublethink
philosophy of how to live your life. Look people, those ass holes never
took a chance in there life, so who the hell are they to tell you what to do
with your life. Don’t believe me? Just take a good look at your bosses,
you tell me they stayed cause they, "Love the Navy", or were they scared?

Look, I left the Navy homeless without a place to go. I had to sleep
in a hotel for a week. Yes it cost me about $236.00, to be precise, and I
had to sleep in my car a couple of nights. But every day that I faced an
uncertain future I came to the realization that hey, there really is nothing
holding me back from doing what ever the fuck I want to do. So within a
week and two days I found a really nice looking studio for $370/month. I
met a really nice woman at the unemployment office and she is taking a look
at my evals to help me build a resume. One of the Department heads at the
school I am applying for is enthused to meet me and said that she, "Will do
what it takes" to get me started there. A Counselor at the Unemployment
Security Commission is willingly bending over backwards to help me collect
unemployment, and even telling me how to beat the system.

I can keep going, but the point here is to understand that you will
never be all you want to be while you are there. Sure it's easy money, but
the rewards will never amount to what you could get if you just take a
chance and see what your true potential is. Those ass holes that are your
bosses are afraid of you and your intelligence because it’s a direct threat
to their way of life. They will hold you down and suppress you because they
are too afraid to take a chance. They are too stupid to understand what it
is you are doing so they dumb it down and make you feel incompetent. Don’t
let them ruin your lives. Let it feed your desire to be free; and when you
finally make it to the outside then you will, "Discover that you had not
truly lived".

No one is stopping you from doing what you want to do, but you.

A

p.s.
This isnt my, "Oh I miss you guys and every one there", email. Fuck that,
spread the hate and never let them choose your fate.

sex and the city, cvn70 style
i've been frequenting the smoke deck more often than is preferable. calm seas today. i saw some fish that looked like piranha jumping in and out of the water. no man overboard for me, thank you.
crush and i have been discussing the possibility of taking a roadtrip after cruise, or going to italy. i'm entirely smitten, i'm telling you what. i'm starting to feel weird about how great he is. it's like an episode of sex and the city where carrie starts dating aiden and things are great and she freaks out. "do we need drama to make a relationship work?", she asks. i'm not sure carrie. all my life i've made an effort to be appealing to just the right guy, and now that someone is recognizing that, i'm terrified. do i need the ebb and the flow of a f'cked up relationship to be happy? if he were to start calling me a whore would i be happy? i guess i think that a relationship sans drama equals a passionless one, but maybe it's time i learn otherwise. *thank you crush, for showing me the light. XO honey.*

automated information systems is comparable to a three ring circus. at any given time you can look in any one of three directions and see some freak of nature in all his glory. it's amazing.

We had captains call yesterday. i hate to hear people bitch. CO asked if anyone had a problem with CMC and all sorts of shitbag hands went up. i got so pissed i started shaking. "he's not for us, he's mean. he never tells us we do a good job", etc. stupid fucks. he's not there to coddle us. he's there to put a boot in our asses. and he does recognize excellence, but he shows it in a different way. he's the one who got me my "c" school when the whole rest of the COC said no. he's the reason why i'm a second. i had to get in the first Lt's ass yesterday too. she hasn't been cleaning the head, and she was sleeping during cleaning stations. it was like i was a mom telling a kid to clean their room. nobody wants to do their job anymore. i just want to shake people and remind them that we're in the navy, not in high school. who cares if you're sick, you still come to work. nobody brought their mother along to write them a sick note. if training is after your regular twelve hour shift, who cares? where in the fuck else would you go? all in all yesterday was an angry day. i have so much work to do and too much bullshit is getting in my way. i'm going to start punching people in the neck. that will make it all better. i need to stop whining.
my crush situation is going relatively well. i think he's a bit smitten, but i can never tell. i can't wait to hang out with him. he smells so good.

oh shit son!!
what?! they had avocados on the mess decks today. i ate two. ummm avocado.

the beginning of a new beginning
there is a butterfly in the automated information systems. the guys say it's from the rotting fruit in the storeroom below us, and it may be, but to me it's a divine symbol of change. things are going to get better. if a fragile, winged insect can survive on this dog-eat-dog ship, than i surely can. it's perched above a printer, and hopefully it lives for a couple of days without being killed. there's something about things that fly and boys wanting to kill them. go figure.
in other news: one of the handsome men i have a crush on is paying me a bit of attention. it makes me blush. hopefully he's not a schizophrenic, pathological liar. i'm sure he's not, he's too cute for that.

we had corn dogs for lunch today. i was happy. my new burt's bees bay rum exfoliating soap smells super yummy. i can't explain the smell because it has so many notes to it, but it is reminicent of this incense that taunya an i burned back in high school that we got from pacific avenue in santa cruz. it came in all these metallic colors and smelled better than any other incense ever has, and ever will. it was all bundled up and tied with a string. ah, santa cruz. in high school we used to jump through hoops, skip school, lie, cheat and steal just to spend an hour there. some of my best memories, or lack of them happened on pacific avenue or on the 45 minute (sometimes less if i was driving) drive to and from our mecca. my little jetta, with the sunroof open and pauls boutique blasting was all we needed. well, that and a joint. those were the salad days, to quote a quote. i miss them.

civilization has not yet reached guam. i'm not going to say that the gaumanese (?) are a primitive people, but a people who have been beaten by mother nature, and have simply given up. when we were last in guam, i had the opportunity to drive around the entire island, and what i found was a bit shocking. the houses that people live in are like squallows. i assume that they once upon a time had nice houses, but the humidity, typhoons, and cockroaches took their toll and the people just said "fuck it". how tiring would it be to build a nice cozy home and then have it destroyed by a storm. a shack would be easier to maintain than a mansion, especially since i can't see what sort of industry guam has other than the tourist. i don't remember seeing factories with billows of smoke, or even a bussiness district. i'm sure they have the usual maintenance workers to keep the power on, the water safe to drink, and the television on 24/7, but i'm pretty sure that's it. they do have both a maxstudio, and a bcbg in the mall, so that's a plus, but other than those two perks, guam is as "deserted island" as giligans'. i'm not sure i would want to live here, but it is definitely cool to visit. i see it as the poor mans hawaii. i hear the diving is better in guam than it is in hawaii, and i take my dive class this weekend, so i'll be sure to fill you in once i'm a card carrying expert. 'till then.......

so, someone stole my belt. this seems to be no big deal to the average onlooker, but it is, apparently, a huge deal. it serves as a symbol of the grand rape that is my life right now. of course, there are no replacement belts to be found (aka no solutions to my fucked up life in sight), so it will be days before i can get on the right track. you know, when it rains, it pours. the sharks have smelled blood and are moving in for the kill. stay tuned for the thick of the plot.

so, it's official, six more months of this. i'm really not sure i can handle it. i psyched myself out to last this long, i'm not sure, if i can lie to myself very much longer. there is just absolutely no joy anywhere i go. can a person be expected to live like this, even if only for six months? i'm not sure. i think i may snap. i have grand visions of slamming someones head into the wall if they piss me off. of kicking them down the ladder wells when they are walking in front of me. i want everyone to shut the fuck up, or to, at least, think before they speak. i want people to take showers daily and i want the people who clean the head to really do their job for once. i'm tired of being dirty no matter how much i shower, and i'm tired of eating food that has been rejected from hardy's. i'm tired of working for people who think they know everything, and have no grasp on reality. i'm tired of working with people who are only in the navy because they were rejected from society. uuuggg. enough self pity for today.

welcome to 1984
i feel like i'm in 1984. i'm in 1984, and when i wake up from a nightmare, i'm still in 1984. i feel like i felt when i was six and i had an overdue library book (something about caterpillars). i was so afraid to tell my parents because i didn't want them to have to pay the late fee. i felt like my life was over. i felt like i would never recover from the oversight. i'm in 1984, and i'm afraid i'll never get out, there will be no happy ending for me, no end to the borg. this is 1984 folks, nobody escapes, and they are all watching. think happy thoughts!

adrian responds to "a departing rebel"


I once went to the woods to live deliberately,

To live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,

And put to rest all that was not life,

And not where I came to die,

I discovered that I have not truly lived.

- H.D. Thoreau

Be careful trish, knowledge and self enlightenment will only imprison you while you are here. For now, just do what you have to do to survive.



adrian

my stay in maincomm has come to an end.

...... little did i know that while i was away, my demise was being plotted by the evil buccholz, a redneck, hailing from the desolate northern california. he sent a letter to all the heads of the automated information systems, pleading with them to banish me to maincomm forever."nobody likes her", whined the evil buccholz......
but there was another force at work...
behold! the forces of good heard of the evil buccholzs plan to destroy me, and went to the heads of the automated informations systems, united against him. the battle was bloody, but good prevailed- the evil buccholz was defeated. the balance of power was tipped toward the light.

a departing rebel

adrian is a misogynist. i didn't know it at first, and in fact, it is still sometimes hard to tell. i enjoyed my conversations with adrian and even started to give in to some of his propaganda. his callousness is catching. adrian bucked the system, won, and is now getting the fuck out. bz adrian. keep spreading your propaganda, and practicing celebacy. i wish you godspeed in all your endeavors.

snapshot of chef

almost 0415: omelette time. The man who matt dubbed the "omelette architect", is really named roland. even though he works in the galley on a aircraft carrier, in the worlds finest navy, he acts like he is the head chef at a five star restaurant. he knows my order by heart (veggie and cheese omelette) and makes sure to have matts ready at the same time so there is never a lull in our conversation. once, when matt was bullied by the guys ahead of us into getting our omelettes from the "other girl", roland got jealous. the day after the incident with "other girl", he pretended to forget our orders, and almost couldn't look at us. it took about half a week for him to forgive us. roland is a fine example of how having passion for ones job leads to loyalism. matt says that if he were a millionare, he would get up at the crack of dawn and fly his private jet to the uss carl vinson on a daily basis, just to partake in rolands delicacies.thank god for roland and all the rolands out there. and thank god matt is not a millionare because he would never be able to fly a private jet onto the flight deck, no matter how rich he was.