I was rummaging around

  and realized I haven’t upset anyone in awhile.  I mean really upset them, and it makes me feel like i’m not doing the one thing I was placed on this planet to do.  That being said….

My best friend growing up was a lesbian.  I didn’t know she was a lesbian, and I’m pretty sure since we slept together a time or 6 she didn’t either.  Once we were grown we were still friends, but we stopped sleeping together.  She told me things about when she was growing up that I had never known.  Her step-dad was one of those sick fucks, and without going into details should’ve been taken out behind the barn and shot.  He had 5 step daughters.  Anyway, I went to hang out with her and all her lesbian chums In Virginia Beach.  Oh, she was in the navy at the time.

   Each of the young ladies in her little don’t ask don’t tell clique seemed to have stories much like hers.  They were all very nice people, and i had a very enjoyable week.  On the last night I was there they took me to dinner at a bar restaurant called Reflections.  It had a bit of a gender bender type crowd.  The best looking gal in the place was this really nice guy named Scott.  I pride myself on being able to be plopped down anywhere and thrive on whatever happens.

   I did.  It was a very good night. I met a lot of freaks.  they met the personification of mentally deranged straght, and a fine time was had by all.  The food, I had shrimp alfredo, was terrific, the booze flowed as it was supposed to, and i think I danced with at least three human genders, and maybe a couple of aliens.

  Afterwards everyone went to their respective homes, and we all got together for the big sendoff the next day.  4 of the young ladies showed up for my departure with black eyes.  It’s quite possible that their upbringings had nothing to do with the sexual orientation choice, but i’m betting it had something to do with the relationships they were in being abusive.

That’s right…i wrote about something personal, and about lesbians.  If you aren’t mad yet, remember.  I have the whole weekend.

oh, I’m not a lesbian

Dad, can I join the military?

     I  know its unpopular to say, but most people in America we’re hoisting the flag, and rattling there sabres when we went off to bash the heathen muslims. I wasn’t. It wasn’t out of some humanitarian hand wringing impulse, but self serving as hell. I have a son that was 13, and I knew, yes knew, that we would still be there when he turned 18. Which happens soon.Today that son asked me how I felt about him joining the military. It seems the pied pipers of bloodshed and gore were at his school. I don’t have any particular problems with recruiters, except they talk about college tuition, exciting travel opportunities, and not the incredible drudgery of garrison life, or the horrific trauma of their stock in trade. Thats called salesmanship, and hearkening back to my last post, well, for lack of a more accurate description,disingenuous.

So I sat and discussed it with my eldest progeny. I explained what a green stick fracture was, and how to apply a tourniquet to what remains of the leg of your best friend. I waxed nostalgic about the sound a bullet makes as it pierces the flesh of a human being lying next to you, or the pitiful moans a grown man makes when he knows he’s hit bad and isn’t going to make it. Not the “tell susie I love her crap” but the begging, pleading, making deals with god if your able to speak reality of it. I didn’t mince words with him, as he’s almost a grown man, and i confess the description of the smell of a 3 day old corpse covered with dried feces, and urine, and blood and shredded into something that didn’t really resemble a human corpse at all was not proper pre-dinnertime conversation.

Unfortunately it was all lost on him. As were the descriptions of the sounds of screaming and explosions, the raw terror of that near miss buzzing sound, or the agony that folllows being waxed by a hand grenade. The fact is he is a man, and men for whatever reason have this urge to run to the sound of the bugle.

All over the world people are fielding that same stupid question from their children, or picking up the remains of children that asked it last year. I’m sure smart people can explain in detail how its instinctual and dates back to when we were writing on cave walls; this desire to go out and conquer our fellow man. I’m not one of them. The only explanation I have for it is that the ignorant often make bad choices, and war seems a hell of a lot more glorious when you watch it on tv than when you’re wiping the shit off you after you luck out and don’t die when it all goes horribly wrong.

and it always does.sooner or later.

    If you don’t wish to have this conversation with your children, exercise your right to vote.  All of the democratic candidates, and at least one Republican (Ron Paul), have pledged to end the war.  Of course they only said one war.  We have several that we’re involved in.