Religion and Medals: It's motherfucking fiction, bitches

Religion is tough. It's an individual choice whether to be spiritual at all, much less religious. Then you have to decide which religion is right for you if any. I do believe, absolutely, that walking your path changes you, but I believe even more absolutely that those changes become obvious to the outside world. You might not be "on" 24/7, but you make different choices, you come to different decisions, and hopefully you're a better person with more investment in the world community.

Hopefully. I know some religions are much more about feeding the "me me me" generation, and it sure is easy when you can declare that your preacher said you can sin all day so long as you are a True Believer. I'm sure the iPhone generation loves that as much as my microwave generation did. Going to hell? Press the I Believe button and be instantly transported to heaven!! And there are plenty of Christian churches I've encountered in my life that tell you just that. You should strive to be a good person, but if you're just a dickbag and can't help it, ask for forgiveness. It's always on tap.

And here's the wacky part. I might not get it, but I respect it. That's your path, that's what you need to feed your soul, that's how you're going to learn and grow in this lifetime to walk one step closer in the next? Awesome. Get your bad dickbag self on.

What I have a hard time dealing with is hypocrites, and if you've been a dickbag once in spite of your religion (while not playing the Forgiveness Is On Tap card), I just don't trust your religious intentions. And that's a large part of my problem with Glenn Beck's masturbatory theater this past weekend.

I read the transcript of Beck's rally recap and was stunned by how often Glenn Beck referred to himself in the third person. It rather reminded me of an experience in high school, when I was playing all my cards to get into the Naval Academy (thank gods I'm a fucking midget and had to go up for a height waiver - dodged that bullet). I was on my congressman's "teen advisory committee" or some bullshit thing. We basically met twice in a year and listened to the good congressman and his guest speaker yammer at us for a while.

Our first meeting's speaker was George Foreman. Mind you, this was 1991, before George Foreman re-entered popular culture post-boxing or whatever the fuck he did. During George Foreman's long-ass talk, George Foreman used his own fucking name, often in third person, a hundred fucking times. I'm not kidding. He'd just built some youth center in Houston, which had a name that went something like this: The George Foreman Youth Sports Center and Center For Kids Who Can't Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too. I'm not fucking kidding, y'all. George Foreman loved George Foreman's name. He also loved his youth center's name, as every time he referenced it, he called it by it's entire fucking name, including the part that was George Foreman. The dude I carpooled with to this fine event, a nice guy who was seriously made for the Navy (he did go to the USNA, bless his sweet little soul) with a stick up his ass only slightly larger than my own, also snarked on George Foreman and George Foreman's penchant for repeating George Foreman's name at every opportunity. The snarking from this guy? Comedy gold. But I digress.

I thought about George Foreman as I read Glenn Beck's sweet reminiscence of his very public self-love and ejaculations. I also thought that a man who claims to be sooooo religious and wants the country to go back to god (Yahweh, I assume? not sure whose god, but apparently there's just the one he's aiming us for) was sure full of hate.

The hate's not new. He's a sexist and a hateful douchenozzle, of course, even admitting in an interview on 20/20 that the only reason he became a Mormon was to get into his "hot" wife's little Mormon panties. A man so full of loathing that he once - as a personal vendetta against someone with better radio ratings - called his nemesis's wife on the air and mocked her for having just endured a miscarriage. A guy who claims to be a Christian and yet derides the idea of social justice and believes that poor people are poor because of a bad work ethic.

So when a guy gets up in front of a large crowd and plays the I'm-A-Good-Christian card, then whacks off about it the next day with all his faux-humility out there with the repetitions of his name and how awesome he is, I don't buy it. On top of that, he pissed me off with his bullshit before he ever stepped foot on the Mall in DC.

He pissed me off when he lied regarding the Badge of Merit he wanted to resurrect and the Purple Heart. And in his lying, he also made disgraceful statements about those who have been awarded the Purple Heart:

That's right. He's interested in honoring integrity and those folks who really stick their necks out. Not just because they got shot. Because any asshole in Afghanistan can take a bullet, and who the fuck knows what he was doing before an insurgent blew a hole through his intestines. He could have been smoking a crack pipe! Yeah! And I bet that means he was a progressive!! Yeah!

Never mind the history diddle Beck did here, either. Never mind the huge progressive conspiracy that turned the Badge of Merit into a Purple Heart (which, as I've heard, was a military request, not a political movement of any flavor). Never mind fact - we have fiction!

That's something Beck and I have in common - we're fiction whores. The difference is my kind comes with a label that clearly says MOTHERFUCKING FICTION, BITCHES on the spine. His kind comes with a veneer of truthiness and a metric smeg-ton of hatred and vitriol, which I'm pretty sure peace-loving baby Jesus in his heavenly manger would frown upon. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if baby Jesus has been crying for years now from the bullshit Beck declares in the name of Christian lurve and integrity. I bet it breaks his poor little baby-god heart that a whole fucking rally was dedicated to him, preceded by lies and hate, and capped with a sweet self-love-making session on the air.

Yeah, let's get this country on the path back to GAWD, and let's make sure we do it with a badge of lies awarded for integrity, discounted heroism, and a single religion's view to to bind us all together. Exactly what the founding fathers were thinking about when they drafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The hypocrisy is unbearable, but the hatred is worse.

And now I've exhausted myself trying not to drop every creative swear word I know and love into this post. Because that smegbucket fuckburger isn't worth all my pretty profanities. Not even close.

Navi Pr0n

I get a kick out of looking at the keywords and keyword phrases that bring visitors to this site. Lately, I've seen an increase in people coming here looking to find Navi porn.

First, how awesome is it that Google will offer up Navy instead of Navi? Second, how awesome is it that Google sees fit to offer my site as a fine example of Navy porn? Third, how delightful is it that people see the title of the site, see bits of phrases containing no Navi but lots of Navy and perhaps some pr0n and still come here anyway? Score, my bitches! Score.

Of course, the next question that arises is what the hell is Navi porn, and how hilarious is it. Fear not, dear reader. I have friends who know about Navi porn, and they shared with me the fact that Hustler is doing a 3-D porn flick based on Avatar. It's supposed to be a parody, but I'm guessing there won't be much intentionally funny if yanno what I mean.

Oh, and I have a link! To Navi pr0n! Well, not the pr0n but to an article about the pr0n that includes the question how could navi pr0n possibly be titillating when they don't have mammalian sex organs? Quite so! Enjoy the pr0n article, and have a great weekend. Because I'm a-storing up to rant my ass off about Herr Glenn Beck. Yes indeedy.

Jai Ma!

In the great quest to find a spiritual outlet each time we PCS, I often end up driving a good distance to see what's what in the area. Since coming to Monterey, most of my driving has been to the local UU church, but last fall I had the opportunity to drive into San Francisco and take part in a Kali Puja put on by Sharanya. It was incredible. Long, intense, and so beautiful.

And look! Pictures from the puja! In which I appear....



Look! It's me, be all devotional instead of snarky and bitchy. But wait. Which one was me? Hmmm.

I'm delighted I had the opportunity to attend the puja last year. I hope I can do it again this year, and that I have similar opportunities at our next home. This year will be the last one I can attend. :( (see the Navy give me a sad? mean old navy.)

Is the TV supposed to smell like that?

Our TV blew up. Actually, it melted.

We bought an Oh My Fucking Gods huge-ass Sony TV when we got back to the States after the hellish two years in Bahrain. We promised ourselves the whole time we were there that when we were back "home," we'd take the money we'd saved up over there and sink some of it into a nice new television. And it was HUGE. Gargantuan. A 50-inch screen. I lurved it with all my little commercial-whore heart.

About two years ago, when the TV was four years old, it suddenly went fritzy on me. I googled the issue and saw that it was likely a burned out lamp (it's a rear projection TV - the LCDs were just too expensive for us at the time when we bought). Not too shabby, the lamp lasting as long as it did, even if it had gotten dark lately so that we had some trouble seeing action during nighttime scenes.

Naturally, this occurred during a deployment. Of course, right? So I ordered a new lamp, waited patiently for its arrival, got on a stool and maneuvered the TV to pop open the front (we had it up on a shelf), and replaced the lamp. All was fine. The TV revived, and we enjoyed a much brighter screen than we'd seen in probably a year at that point. Around that time, I was also watching much less TV since I was armpit-deep in school. We still don't watch a whole lot of TV. It's rare we get in more than, say, an hour a day if we turn it on at all. Weekends are different - we put on movies and watch news shows, catch up on anything Tivo grabbed for us, etc.

So my mother just left from a week-long, wonderful visit (excepting her preference for Fox News, which she would turn the TV to by default). I decided to sit down and watch an episode of Arrested Development while I ate lunch, so I turned the TV on, flipped to Netflix, and *ploop*. TV screen went blank. This happens sometimes - it just means we have to reboot the TV from the wall plug. Unplug, replug, turn the TV on, and voila. There was the screen...and then it faded to black. That time, I couldn't get it back on.

I e-mailed the husband at school (thanking the gods this time he's not deployed for this fiasco) and told him I thought the TV lamp might be gone, except it was doing something strange this time. It wasn't like two years ago. Not at all. We googled and found that the lamp was the likely culprit, though. But before husband decided to order a new one, I suggested we pop open the front and check the lamp. After all, this one was only two years old and hadn't gotten a third of the action the previous lamp did in its first two years of use.

And what do you know? The lamp was just fine. Bright, clean, and clear on the inside, everything perfectly affixed as it should be. Except that the entire housing for the lamp was melted. There was melted plastic that had cooled to the side of the lamp, and we actually had to break the housing a bit to get the lamp out because it had warped pretty badly.

I tried to slide the lamp back in, but it wouldn't go. So we googled some more, saw the outrageous price to have the TV fixed (we could buy a new one for less), and opted to call this one a bad investment.

Here are some luverly pictures that show why I no longer have a hard-on for Sony products. Apparently this is a known issue with this television, but their customer service folks have told others that it's not a fire hazard and not their problem. I beg to differ.

Note the melty casing, all brown and broken and delicious.


Note the melty plastic, all brown and hardened and pathetic.Here's some melty brown plastic where it cooled and dried and hardened as it dripped down to pool in front of the lamp. But, you know, this isn't a fire hazard or really dangerous at all. Not even if this hot-ass plastic drips right out of the TV and onto carpet or papers or pets or sprogs. Nope. Not dangerous, and not Sony's problem.

At least, according to a slew of people who encountered this problem (some within two years of purchase) and called Sony to get it fixed. We didn't even bother, we were so disgusted by the whole thing. We're well out of warranty range at this point.

We bought a new TV yesterday. Needless to say, it's not a Sony.

And now, for your viewing pleasure (and to see what I fully intend to watch on my new TV this fall), the preview we saw at Comic-Con (wutwut) for the TV adaptation of The Walking Dead (the comics are recommended for sure):

Posted Without Comment...

...because he says it all.

And now for something completely different

F*ck Me, Ray Bradbury - watch more funny

Because genre fiction fucking rocks.

WikiLeaks and douchery

I've been completely boggled by the whole WikiLeaks uproar, which is why I haven't posted on it thus far. Mostly I'm boggled that we're having a discussion at all about it.

WikiLeaks is in possession of stolen property that directly affects our national security. And this?

"Every time we take on one of these big organizations, they try and try to find various ways to criticize us, and there might even be some legitimate criticism in this case," he said. "But we did try hard to keep back some material."

What?

I'm sorry, let me ask that another way. What have you been smoking, Mr. This Is Expensive But It's Our Moral Duty to Risk Lives of Service Members AND Civilians?

Trying to find out what ancestry I could belittle on behalf of that pasty little piece of shit, I found this article, where that pasty little fuckburger is quoted as saying:

"WikiLeaks aims to achieve political reforms by getting out information that has been suppressed to the public," he told Voice of America. "As far as we're aware, we've never made a mistake."

Never made a mistake? Define mistake. Would the murder of innocent civilians and military service members be a "mistake?" If this dude's goal is to take down the "American administration" among others, exactly how does he hope to do that? And are the lives of not just Americans, but his own countrymen, worth so little in his view of government reform?

People like him are why I write dark fiction. People like him are who I imagine when I'm writing a death scene. But that little fucking fuck Pfc Manning? String that motherfucker up. You can disagree with the government's actions all day long. And you can change what they're doing because of this brand new mcthingy called VOTING and by stirring up the shit with your opinions published for all the world. You don't fucking steal government property that compromises national and personal security and offer it up to a soulless smegstick to publish - unedited, for fuck's sake - on the web.

Now, before I really say some really bad shit I might regret later, let me offer a peace out.

Everything I Ever Wanted to Know About Deployment I Learned in Elementary School

We dropped our sprogs off for their first day at school. This year, they're at La Mesa, which is the elementary school inside the La Mesa military housing. Apparently it was once upon a time a military school, but they gifted it to the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, where now parents have to go toe to toe with the district to keep them from fucking over the kids. (Because here in MPUSD, if a school is the best in the district, you shut it down and farm the "smart" kids out to the shitty schools in hopes that the "dumb" kids catch a clue...and no, I'm not kidding.) Because of the number of military kids at the school, there's a military school liaison position. I haven't met the new person and have no idea who he or she is. But standing at the PTA table today next to the military school liaison business cards with the usual How To Deal With Post-Deployment fliers and brochures was a dude with a serious malfunction in his gray matter.

There was a convo. Allow me to recap what I heard over the background din of celebrating parents.

D-bag: Here's some information if you're just returning from a deployment.
YodaMan: I'm at NPS right now.
D-bag: Oh, well, if you know any Army or Marine guys, you can give this to them. Someone who's been on a deployment.
YodaMan: I was in Afghanistan before NPS.
D-bag: Oh, an IA? Oh!

Husband was very grrr after this exchange, but I didn't get it. Seemed like an innocuous enough convo, but for the odd assumption that none of the NPS dudes might have been deployed before this semester started. Then my dearest YodaMan told me this isn't the first time he's met this guy, and the last time, the convo was similar. But different. And it went a little something like this:

D-bag: Going to sea isn't really a deployment. It's only deployment if you've been to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Exfuckingcuse me?

So then YodaMan told me that this attitude is apparently common among the army guys he encountered during his IA. It seems those fucking bad-ass dick swingers think when sailors deploy for four to fourteen months on a fucking ship into the middle of the ocean, they're just toodling around and fucking off. Not doing anything real, and certainly not sacrificing comfort or safety or freedom or family in support of American political and national security interests. Nope.

Not the Navy. No sirree.

The attitude was gnarly enough in Ass-stan that YodaMan had to have a Come to Jesus with a contractor who wouldn't let up talking about lazy sailors who don't know what a real deployment is.

I swear, when (if.ahem) we withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan and those fucking macho army dickbags aren't making regular deployments anymore, I'ma be up their asses. Because the Navy didn't take a fucking vacay during the Cold War, and when these wars are behind us, they won't be on vacay then, either.

Dickbags. Dick-swinging smegbuckets.

I won't deny that the deployment schedule for soldiers and Marines is insane. It's beyond fucking insane. It's unsustainable and a grotesque strain on troops and families. But to those who say that the Navy has never *really* deployed unless they've had boots on ground? Yeah, fuck your asshole with your own nutsack, you douchenozzle dregs. I'd like to see you spend six months of your life - after WEEKS and MONTHS away from your families in prior work-ups - in the middle of the fucking ocean on a floating steel coffin and shitty internets (if any) and no fucking AAFES and the constant smell of dirty oil and caged bodies and rare fucking fresh food and a quarterly decision about whether to use the budget for toilet paper or paint to keep the ship afloat.

And to those soldiers and Marines who know better: thank you, and I hope to gods this crazy fucking deployment sched ends soonest.

Some DADT Wangst

Recently, Karen told me about some bit of douchenozzlery at Stars and Stripes. Here's the whole thing (but go check out the site - I scanned a few comments, and some are full of win):

Repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” cuts at the heart of what makes the military unique in our culture. We are unique because we are a family: a large, often-unwieldy, traditional family. We are a family that bridges economic and social divides, that instills in its members honor and tradition and values that most of society has lost. We are a family with rank and discipline and a self-worth that most would almost kill to have. Most of all, we are a family that loves its members enough to literally “take a bullet” for each other. These are the things at risk.

Why do I say this? Simply put, it is impossible for a family that embraces homosexuality to function normally. Among other things, if both parents in a household are the same gender, it will be impossible to procreate normally, build a normal authoritative structure, or create the social dynamics of a heterosexual relationship. The unit ceases to be a family in the traditional sense of the word.

If I am correct in saying that the military is a family and that it is impossible for a family that openly embraces homosexuality to function normally, then it must be true that the familial elements of the military will cease to function normally if it repeals “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

The family dynamics of the military are already under severe attack, as the continued spike in suicides amply attests. Recent Stars and Stripes articles have pointed to things like lack of discipline and ignoring warning signs as contributors to suicide. These are things that a family might endure during periods of dysfunctionality.

I submit that allowing open homosexuality in the military will further erode an already-tenuous family dynamic, resulting in a reduction in combat effectiveness.

First Lt. (Chaplain) David D. Wooten

Camp Buehring, Kuwait

So Lt Wooten is basically making the following points:

1. The military is a family of a special nature, unlike most families.
2. By allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military means that the very special military family will no longer be able to function in a traditional sense and will become dysfunctional.
   
3. The family is already going through enough troubles with war and the overly macho sentiments that demonize those who seek help for psychological and emotional problems brought on by war.
4. If gays and lesbians are allowed to live without hiding their identities and lying about their actual family lives to their military family members, we will lose the wars.

Here's what I think of Lt Wooten's argument: that's about the most hideous pile of post-chili-eating-contest shit I've ever seen. It's not just ridiculous (how can we be a traditional family when we cross economic and social divides? that's untraditional right there), it's also offensive and ignorant.

I'm sure plenty of others have already touched on the general asshattery abounding here, so I'm going to take a different tack. I want to look at a couple of issues I have that offer an argument to the foundation of his viewpoint: namely that his ethno-, religio-, and egocentric view of what a family is tends to nullify his argument.

If we were a homogeneous culture rather than a melting pot of varied backgrounds (especially religious), perhaps his argument could retain some validity, even if it's still bigotry exemplified. But his letter uses some vocabulary that I recognize from conservative Christians who believe there is only one type of family. Here's a description of this viewpoint from just one site of many:

Ephesians 5:22-24 -- The husband is head of his wife as Christ is head of the church...
Ephesians 5:22-24,33 -- Just as the church should submit to Christ, not rebelliously but respectfully, so the wife must abide by all her husband's decisions.

When Wooten says "build a normal authoritative structure, or create the social dynamics" I immediately see the attitude of man as head of household and woman as helpmeet and God-sanctioned sexual plaything that runs rampant in conservative Christian ideology. The patriarchal-ish structure works well for the military - I'm not sure any other form would be quite so effective given the roles and requirements within the military - but there's a huge gap here that makes no sense to me. Wooten, by comparing the military's authority structure to a patriarchal family structure, is saying that the XO is basically the wife to the man of the house (CO), and all the department heads, division officers, chiefs, and blue shirts (and please extrapolate that to whatever non-Navy vocab you use) are the sprogs. It's also saying that wifey's job is to procreate (yay! love that this is my sex's only value...except for sexual plaything and caretaker, natch). If Wooten insists that we're comparing Jonagolds to Braeburns here, doesn't that mean the XO needs to spread 'em for the CO and start squeezing out more troops?

But this weird little break in metaphor aside, I also have another beef: the structure of authority in the military is not actually patriarchal. There's one person in charge, and it's usually a dude, but sex and gender mean nothing within the military. A woman has every right to be (and may eventually be) Commander in Chief. Momma would be head of the household then, bitches. Wouldn't this subvert the traditional structure Wooten believes in? Would we see him arguing against a female president for the same reasons since it subverts the standard set up in conservative Christian biblical interpretation?

And my final beef on this is the whole Christian perspective. Perhaps it's because this piece of shit was written by a chaplain that I noted the Christian undertone. I don't fault the man for his misguided belief that some people aren't entitled to be treated equally. Okay, I do fault him, but he's entitled to his opinion even if he's a fucktard. My point is that the military family isn't Christian at all. The military bridges religious divides, in addition to the social and economic divides Wooten notes. There are athiests, Pagans, Buddhists, and Muslims in the ranks alongside the Christians. And in many of these families, the idea of procreation isn't mandated*, a single point of authority on decisions and guidance isn't a given, and if procreation has happened between a heterosexual couple, it's not necessarily the mom who's going to stay home to care for the ankle biters. And all of these ideas are implicit in Wooten's description of a "normal authoritative structure" in a heterosexual couple's family.

I guess to sum up, I'd have to say to this wee little lieutenant that he can take his dickbag assumptions and faulty comparisons and shove them up his tight little conservative asshole.

While we're at it, though, I still wholeheartedly think we should apply the UCMJ (including DADT) to ALL sexual beings in the military. Until DADT is overturned, any braggart who talks about getting a blowjob from his wife or sticking his dick up her sweet back passage should get bounced. After all, that's just as illegal according to the UCMJ as teh gay sexx0rs.

*since apparently procreative family structures only are approved...and let's not even get into the issues of infertility in this divine Wooten family structure

Crap! Comments and moderation...

Not sure why, but the spam with Asian characters are sometimes getting through, yet several valid comments ended up in moderation. And I received no notification about those captured comments. Thanks, Blogger!

I just approved the non-spam responses. Sorry if yours got caught in the filter. Lots of MyCAA angst (and rightly so), so go read those. Also, I think we've found another milspouse writer. Wutwut!