Being all that I shouldn’t be

I have a few more posts about my Navy life in the works, but unfortunately I don’t think they are interesting enough bother with. For example, I drew a map on MS Paint of my shop, it was all detailed and every section of that shop has a story behind it, but like I said, I don’t think any of you really care.

But then again, what is it that YOU, the reader, really cares about in the first place?

I suppose that lately I have been on a “military kick” of sorts. Recently I unearthed from the closet my old sea bag full of uniforms, and that is probably what brought back all the memories.

I suppose I also need to admit what my “life changing plans” were all about. If you don’t know what I mean, you will after reading this.

College strikes again!

A few years ago, for an Interpersonal Communications class, the big assignment was to take this test (Jungian Personality Type Test) and write about how accurate the results were.

Back then, the results said that I was an ISTJ.

I retook the test a few minutes ago, and now I’m an INTJ.

So in a few years time, I’ve gone from a “sensing” type to an “intuitive” type.

Maybe 5 and a half years of college did have an effect on me after all.

Search Engine Hilarity – stop poo with duct tape

Now there is an add slogan for duct tape if I ever saw one.

Also, now I can’t help but wonder if somebody actually tried to stop poo with duct tape.

Search Engine Hilarity – photos of alan autry with his shirt off

Who the hell looks up shit like that?

It’s probably Autry Googling himself.

Furthermore, why does my site come up for that?

Irony

When I rented my first apartment with my Navy buddy Jared, we inadvertently choose the apartment for it’s “style.” As far as apartments went, it was pretty cool, and it was probably as big as the house I live in now. What we realized soon enough was that it was within walking distance to a billiards hall. And I mean really close, like across the street and through a Food Lion parking lot.

Food Lion is a grocery store, by the way. Not a lion that you can eat, as delicious as that may seem.

We often hung out at this pool hall, especially because if you went before 10pm it was all ages. Sadly, by the time either of us turned 21, we had moved on and no longer lived in that apartment.

Also, it was a little over a mile away to MY bar, which shall remain nameless because

Search Engine Hilarity – olive oil in my rectum

Oh yeah baby, you know thats how I like it.

Restriction gave me a cyst, Part IV

So there I was, bent over an exam table, naked except for a t-shirt and socks, with my boxers around my ankles. I may or may not have had my boots on, I don’t recall.

If that isn’t a good way to start out a post, I don’t know what is.

The Doc injects my lower back with some Novocaine, I guess. It was probably some generic version, because I could still feel him cutting into the flesh with a scalpel. It didn’t hurt, but the fact that I knew what he was doing back there with a knife made me wince anyway. As he was slicing, I was curling my toes involuntarily in reaction to the sensation. Always the Sailor, he said “Do you always curl your toes when you are in pain?”

It’s an orgasm joke.

Anyway, as he was slicing downward, he must have hit a sweet spot, because I felt release.

No, that wasn’t an orgasm joke.

Do you know the feeling that you get when you

WTF is a Twitter?

Whatever it is, I’m on it for now.

We’ll see how this goes. I don’t think my life is interesting enough to need this sort of constant attention, nor do I believe that anybody really cares enough to…care…about what I’m always doing. Nevertheless, I’m on it.

Look me up under MRoDT.

Restriction gave me a cyst, Part III

And now, on to the cyst.

I noticed an “abnormality” where the cyst was about a week before I went on restriction for the last time, right before I got out of the Navy in June 2003.

This abnormality would cause a sensation of discomfort when I sat down on a hard backed chair, which was just about the only type of chair available on a ship.  Also, when I laid down in my rack (or an empty rack), I noticed that my lower back would ache.  By lower back I mean the spot right above where my ass crack starts its way southward.  By “ache” I mean it felt tight, kind of like how one of those huge under the skin pimples will feel before it comes to a head.

I was not willing to accept that it was one of those huge under the skin pimples, as it was absolutely huge and on my lower back.   Also, I have had problems with my erector

Jewno

If you’ve seen “Juno,” this is pretty good. If you haven’t seen “Juno,” it’s not as good.”

Restriction gave me a cyst, Part II

Something else worth mentioning about restriction is the fact that there was sort of an unspoken rule about who you choose for extra duty. To obtain somebody for extra duty, all you had to do was make a call to the right person. You could request somebody by name, which helped with the hook ups, or just get a random person.

When you requested somebody for extra duty, the unspoken rule was that you wouldn’t request somebody from your own division. If you were in Engineering division, you would request somebody from Deck or Supply, for example. It’s all part of looking after your own people.

So far, the restriction I described probably doesn’t sound to bad. It’s better then being in the brig, thats for sure. So what I described isn’t that bad, honestly, especially if you are at sea and nobody can leave the ship anyway. However, I left out the worst part (to me, at least).

When you are on restriction, you have to muster 5 times a day. For you military-illiterate, “muster” is a fancy word for

One is dumb, one is disturbing.

Noticed these two gems today in my Search Engine Terms.

is toyota camry good for big and tall men?

I don’t know, but the real question should be “Is big and tall men good for the internet?”

duct tape wheelchair grandpa

Somebody should call the police on this one…

Restriction gave me a cyst

Something I’ve mentioned before is the idea of “restriction.” If I haven’t mentioned it, it doesn’t matter because I’m going to explain it now.

When you got in trouble, went to Captain’s Mast, and got your “award,” there was a 99% chance that one of those “awards” was an arbitrary (usually 45) number of days of being on “restriction.”

I say “award” because thats what it was called. Since Captain’s Mast was part of the process of “non-judicial punishment,” you wouldn’t be “sentenced” to restriction, you were “awarded” restriction, as well as any other punishments. It’s a little play on words that the Navy liked to use to mess with our minds. I knew a guy that got “awarded” 10 days in the brig with only bread and water. Yeah, they can still do shit like that. They can even “award” people 10 days hard labor, smashing rocks with sledgehammers. Some pretty barbaric stuff, I know.

(By the way, the guy that got bread and water was on restriction and getting dishonorably discharged for smoking pot. He got sent to the brig because he got caught smoking pot on the ship while on restriction awaiting his discharge. That’s a real pothead right there.)

Anyway, being on restriction meant that you were not allowed to leave the ship for ordinary reasons. You were restricted to the ship and the ship only, hence the term “restriction.”

Are you with me so far?

The only reason you could leave the ship is if you had

Crazy Asians

Concerning Fireman Shmuckatelli’s Work Ethnics, Part II

IC’s are also responsible for navigation and engine consoles. Consoles, if you can’t guess, are big…consoles…with indicator lights, switches, buttons, levers (sometimes) and steering wheels (at least the one that steers the ship). Also on these consoles are built in communication circuits, as well as the necessary gauges, meters, and other such relevant devices to display relevant information.

Each engine room has a master console in the EOS (Enclosed Operating Space, which is a small, cramped, air conditioned booth on the side of the engine room) that engine operators use to control the engines in that particular room. There was also a master console in the main engine room which could control all four engines.

These consoles were not really a big deal, and they pretty much worked well and never really needed much repair, except for the occasional new power supply (which weighed something like 100 pounds each and were the size of a toaster oven). However, one time I got in trouble for trying to fix a console over the phone. I didn’t get sent to Captain’s Mast, just got yelled at.

It was late (3am or so) and I was on duty. We were

Concerning Fireman Shmuckatelli’s Work Ethnics

As I mentioned before, my attitude towards “work” more often then not got under the skin of my superiors.

To understand why, I think it’s important to know what my job was. Read this to get a basic understanding of what being an Interior Communications Electrician (ICmen) is all about, especially the “What they Do” section.

Got it? Probably not, and if you were never in the Navy, you probably don’t know what half that stuff means. No big deal, I’ll be as thorough as possible with my explanations.

You no doubt read and understood the sentence about “telephone and other communications circuits.” Just about every space, compartment, or office on a ship has a telephone or other means of communication. That means that at any time, a phone or other communications device could break down or be broken, which means that somebody (me) had to go and check it out. I understood that it was part of my job to fix this stuff, that wasn’t the problem.

What I came to hate very quickly about the job was the fact that 90% of our equipment was broken or misused by somebody on the ship that didn’t know how to fix it themselves.

The reason I would “roll my eyes” or “complain” about doing the work was because that meant, generally, that some idiot broke something and now I had to stop what I was doing and go fix it. Such is the nature of a repairman.

The term “repairman” is very accurate. However, besides fixing what broke, we also

The Adventures of Fireman Schmuckatelli, Part II

It was a duty day, we were in our home port, and it was after working hours. I was laying in the rack (bunk) across from mine, which was empty because nobody had claimed it. Anybody thats in the Navy knows that empty racks are for napping. While I wasn’t napping, I was laying down with my CD player (old school). I was wearing my coveralls, which was what you wore when you were laying down in an empty rack. You also wore them all the time, but my point is that if I was just in my underwear, I would have gotten into my own rack.

As luck would have it, my duty section contained my Chief (ICC) and my Second Class (EM2), who both more or less had it out for me. I don’t want to say that they hated me or anything like that, because I don’t think they did. At least not at this point.

What went down was something like this, as far as I recall:

The Adventures of Fireman Schmuckatelli

Most people are unaware that I was in the US Navy for 4 years of my young adult life. These people are usually the ones that I meet nowadays, as people that knew me when I was in the Navy already knew that I was in the Navy (I tend to associate with people of average intelligence).

When I look back at my Navy years, I have lots of regrets. Not so much from personal choices I made relating to my life, but from professional choices I made relating to my Navy life. Since my Navy life doesn’t exist anymore, these skeletons in my closet are hardly worth seeing a psychiatrist about.

Yet some would say that I am venting all of this in lieu of seeing a psychiatrist.

What I’m talking about is the fact that I have been to Captain’s Mast at least five times (maybe 6) in the four years I was enlisted. In fact, that is so often (compared to not ever going to Captain’s Mast) that I have forgotten all but four. What that means is that there are at least two times in my life I have been tried and convicted of something illegal and they were so NOT a big deal that I forgot about them.

What were the charges? They varied from Mast to Mast. They include but are probably not limited to: absence without leave (Article 86), insubordinate

Turning Japanese

I noticed today while watching The Karate Kid, Part II, that Mr. Miyagi can’t really speak Japanese. He always speaks broken English, even when he is talking to his Japanese friends in Japan. Now it’s one thing to speak English when Ralph Macchio is around so as to not leave him out of the conversation, but even when Miyagi is alone with other Japanese people he still doesn’t speak Japanese, just his fabulous broken English.

I know that Pat Morita doesn’t actually speak Japanese, at least that’s what I’ve heard. He really doesn’t even have a Japanese accent, as he was born in Las Vegas.

You would think that the makers of the film would have went for absolute realism and made him learn a few lines of Japanese for the parts when he is Japan.

It’s just weird is all.