Nasty Like a Peep

There hasn't been much candy-eating around here lately because, well, I'm almost too cheap to buy food that is nutritious, much less things that aren't. I'm just practical like that. Practically Insane. I like that. If I ever start another blog, that's what it will be called. Dibs. Another reason is that the Wife, aka the Sugar Freak gave up chocolate for lent, which is a momumental feat, and you should congratulate her, although she did have some odd stipulations. Chocolate in liquid form didn't count, neither did white chocolate. I caught her once melting down a bag of chocolate chips. Sad. When she did get her fix on Sundays, she'd run and crouch in a corner and unwrap the confection and start petting it and calling it 'her precious.' So I didn't intervene. Additionally fabulous, I went a whole lent without having to look at a Peep. There is a God. Between the Wife and past roommates with odd fascinations for marshmellow-sugar creatures, I haven't had an easter season without the vile beings for a number of years. They give me the willies. So all of the above could be partly responsible for why I've been losing weight for the first time since...conception. (That doesn't include Ranger School, Basic, or years of wrestling season, which are all wholly unnatural events) But on to the point of my post.

The Easter Candy Mom sent arrived today. Thanks Mom!

Now the box is empty and the world won't stop jumping around and looking all fuzzy.

I Am...

Not coordinated.

The other two wisdom teeth came out this morning. Similar enough to last time. About 40 minutes of slicing, prying, drilling, levering, awling, clamping and pulling to get the buried tooth out, and, no shit, about 40 seconds for the other one.

Not the point of the blog, though. What I wanted to share was that I've never been one to handle multiple moving pieces at the same time. The whole pat your head while rubbing your belly thing? Never came close to succeeding there. I can concentrate for hours on a single task, say, a paper that requires my attention all night, with the best of them. Walk and chew gum? TV and carry on a conversation with someone? (I owe a million apologies to many people for that.) Make out and caress simultaneously ? Not happening.

So here I am at home, with my cup of ice on one side of the computer and my spit cup 'o blood on the other. In about the time it took my second tooth to come out today, there I was with blood all over my ice cubes and one and a half inches from returning two ounces of A+ into the hole in my gums.

I've had this kind of problem before. I have consumed copious amounts of sunflower seeds in my lifetime, and like most things I attempt, I do so with great efficiency. (Fantasy baseball not included.) I can go through a large mouthful of shells in a pretty short period of time. I can even shell seeds, eat them, and store the shells on the other side of my mouth for times when I'm in the car or go indoors and don't have a repository readily available. My soldiers in Iraq were greatly impressed with that ability. (Although the final download isn't a pretty sight.)

I encountered problems on a couple of occasions when I had one empty Mountain Dew bottle for shells and one full Mountain Dew bottle to keep me awake during IOBC death by PowerPoint classes. It didn't take long before I was drinking the shells that were now floating in my pop. (Yes, 'pop.' I'm from Minnesota, dammit.)


I'll try to do more posts of the "I Am..." variety as I have such revelations about my own perpetual weirdness.

What the Hell?

One of the TV stations we get is the EuroSport network, which is a British network, I think. The announcers are often an odd match for the sports they cover, which is a wide variety and makes for pretty good entertainment. For example, in all the biathalon coverage I've seen they have what sounds to be an obviously Scottish announcer, which would be more or less like picking a Finn to broadcast for a baseball game.

Tonight, though, was "Fight Night" which broadcasts usually some type of boxing, kick boxing, or other similar martial art. The British broadcaster kept using phrases in such a manner that I would assume they were sports clichés if not for the fact that I had never heard any of them before. I burst out laughing a handful of times and can only wish that American sportscasters weren't so lame. A handful that I made a point of remembering:

In discussing a particularly diminutive fighter, he kept repeating the phrase "Pocket Dynamo" and a couple others, and then referred to him as a "wee man," and I couldn't help but imagine a kickboxing leprechaun taunting his opponent and cursing up a storm. '...coom a leatle closer ye' Mui Thai bastard, and I'll put me foot upside yer fookin' head...'

At the end of a close match, he used the phrase "I do believe Kraus has won it, and it will be Puramuk drinking from the chalice that is defeat."

After the same match, the fighters had embraced, a little awkwardly, and he described it as "the warm, wet kiss of mutual respect."

But by far the winning mother of all ne'er before hear sports clichés was after a fighter landed a vicious hook for a knockdown:

"Bye bye Pepsi-Cola, Hello Holy Wine!"

What the Hell?!

What the Hell?

For today's "What the Hell?" please see this article.

I don't know what puzzles me more, the fact that someone would resort to that over a territory dispute, or just what exactly that is supposed to accomplish.

Seriously, if I'm pissed about Russia wanting Alaska back, the French denying the sale of Louisiana, or Canada trying to re-claim Canada, it won't be my fingers getting the chop.

No Respect (#2)

I ate a banana today.

(Right now you're thinking I'm hurting for material. In most cases you would be correct, but trust me, this is going somewhere.)

After eating said banana I was walking in the general vicinity of the wife, who commented that something smelled like a pear. I replied that I had just eaten said banana.

She asks: "Are you sure that's what it was?"

Now, in this age of genetic engineering, I can understand how fruit identification has become a matter of skill. If you were to ask me whether the mutant fruit I had just eaten was, say, a tangorangelo or a nectarapricrange, I might not be able to tell you. But the basics are still the basics, and I've been able to identify apple, orange, pear, banana, grapes since before I could count or wipe myself, and yes I'm sure that was a banana I just ate.

There will probably be more blogs of this category to come in the future.

Pretty soon I'm going to stop trying to find productive uses of my time.

OK, so things have been a little dull around here lately. Don't get me wrong, in the Army, dull can be a very, very good thing, but dull nonetheless. Things have been so quiet that I find myself willing to do things like swinging by the dental clinic to see if they'd be interested in performing some unnecessary oral surgery on me. As it turns out, the folks at dental aren't very good at reading sarcasm (Or the Army has severely retarded my ability to project it. Two years of "You don't sound very motivated" could have done that.) They also aren't opposed to indulging apparent masochists, a la Little Shop of Horrors. And finally, my ultimate undoing, it seems things must be a little dull around there, too.

So there I was kicked back in the big chair, expecting some kind of oral surgery evaluation, or pre-oral surgery evaluation screening, or just one of those things where the look in my mouth a while and tell me I have nice teeth, which I assume they mean in terms of the moral character of my teeth because when I take a bite out of a ham sandwich I leave an indent that looks something like one of these: £. I would have liked some kind of warning. This is the kind of thing one likes to prepare for. Spiritually. Suddenly, and out of nowhere, out comes the syringe. Not some needle, I'm talking about a spear with a plunger hovering over my face. The thing is so big that you fill it by inserting a canister resembling something you'd put in a tranquilizer gun. And then I couldn't feel my face anymore.

I'm usually a trooper about dental work. That could be because every time I go, they look in my mouth a while and then tell me I have nice teeth. There is something more than a bit unnerving about watching a scalpel enter your mouth and then not know exactly what is being diced up in there. The thought of that tool actually being sawed into my tooth left me more than a little unnerved. I think, however, that the good doctor was merely peeling away my gums so he could get at my wisdom tooth with the dremel rotary tool I'm pretty sure I saw maintenance using on the way in the building.

Not all that much time was spent working on the tooth itself. He was using a considerable amount of force, such that I had to brace myself against the chair to keep from sliding off the chair and into the lap of the young German dental hygienist who was kind enough not to make comments as she cleaned up my tears. I mean blood. What I didn't really appreciate was different faces popping into my field of view to peer into my mouth and offer their observations. Picture 'King of the Hill' but with everyone just looking into my throat.

"Yep." (sips beer)
"There goes number 17." (sluurp)
"Uh huh."

As I said, apparently it's been a little slow around there. I tried to participate in the conversation wherever inappropriate. Which was pretty much the whole time considering I couldn't feel my lips and had six fingers and a small assortment of metal chisels, prods, levers and powertools in my mouth for the duration of the ordeal.

After the tooth popped out, which the dentist assured me was thanks to his study of physics, but I figured was due to his hammering away at my jawbone (But I'm no doctor. It did seem like an odd time to be thinking of my high school physics teacher, and how he hated 'stupid kids' but we managed to get along...), he stitched up my gums, my cheek, the cavernous hole with nothing more than a fishhook, a pair of needlenose pliers and some floss. He was just getting melancholy about the process being over already ("...like having the fish in the boat...") when he noticed the one on the top on that side.

Out comes the syringe...

I have to go back in again to have the other two dug out. At least I get a couple days off for this (off of what, I can't really say) I could have lived with them in for a while, but they may have gotten me sometime when I would be important, so better to get that kind of thing over with.

I think the medical community calls that preventative medicine. I prefer to think of it as a preemptive strike against gingivitis. Too bad they needed a 'bunker buster.'

Once all was complete, the teeth were gone before I could ask for them, on account of the doc's 10 minute Army certified Powerpoint presentation on how to care for the craters in my jaw.

I could have really used those $2.

Things that make me want to live in a cave...

May I never again see a song from any type of stage theater poorly re-written as a pop song for American audiences. Gwen Stefani singing "If I was a rich girl..." undoubtedly has Joseph Stein rolling in his grave, and is barely tolerable, even out of the usually artistically interesting Stefani. If I see Britney Spears singing "What the simple folk do" or Ricky Martin belting out "Fie on goodness, you can start forwarding my mail to the nearest very deep cave.

And he's a Minnesotan (revised)

Do you read Thomas Friedman of the NYTimes OP/ED page? Well, you should.

I don't know if he has a political affiliation, but he seems moderate and usually full of common sense. He's both willing to call us on our mistakes, but doesn't take a liberal stance that glorifies Europe and the rest of the world when it opposes us. His articles are informative, sometimes idealistic, usually hopeful and always reasonable. He is a bright spot in the usually gloomy world of international and political opinion.

His website is here.

**I should also mention that I have read and would recommend Friedman's book Longitudes and Attitudes, which, as a collection of Friedman's articles from 2001-03, provides excellent perspective on the Mideast especially, along with Friedman's observations about many other matters of international interest. It was a birthday gift last year from a dear friend. A most thoughtful and exceptional young woman, I might add.

There goes the electronic neighborhood

Well, now she's done it. She loves Prince, Ghostbusters (even the second one), and longs for a return to the 1980s. And she finally got her own blog up. I know I certianly look forward to hearing how things are going. And my lies will remain unexposed no longer.

The truth can be found here. (Or in the link on my sidebar.)

'...something something Deutsche sprechen?'

I was entering the gate today and after giving my ID to the guard, he rattles off something in German to the effect of "...something something Deutsche sprechen?" To which I replied, "Um, no." When he gave me my ID back I asked if it was because of the name. His response was affirmative, but then added "...and you looked like it."

Now at this point I was already holding up traffic or I would have pursued the matter further. Apparently, I look like I can speak German. I really haven't noticed any particular trait in the German population that would suggest to me they are a genetically grouped ethnicity, but apparently I do fit the model. I'm not sure how to feel about actually looking 'German.' They aren't a particularly good looking bunch. That's why they keep marrying the Americans at a pretty significant rate. (Well, that, and as one soldier informed me [to my regret] 'well, German guys just can't f***.' I'm so proud. And yes, I did have to have him explain his theory further.)

I have to figure out how I can use this new development to my advantage, but I really can't think of anything.

LT on Patrol

I have about five entries in mind that I want to get to, I just need to get myself to actually sit down and write them. I like the writing part, it's just that I expect myself to put up something really great every time I start typing. I'm not a perfectionist, I just have big expectations, and at times it's less unnerving to write nothing than to stare at the screen and hope I'm not making an ass of myself.
On with it, man!
...
I had the unique experience of 'Courtesy Patrol' last night. I've been trying to figure out how to encapsulate the experience in one thought. Something like "Getting to stay out at the clubs all night, but not getting grilled by the wife upon my four AM return" or "All the benefits of waking up feeling like crap, without the trouble of actually having a few drinks and enjoying myself the night prior."

The Courtesy Patrol is the attempt by the various Army units here to circumvent all the usual trouble that soldiers tend to find when the go out to the clubs on Wednesday night. They'd rather we physically remove a soldier from the club than have his name end up on a blotter, but nothing like that was necessary tonight. I've mentioned before Joe's attitudes about alcohol. He's also willing to take an up adversarial relationship against any and everyone. (See 'Travels with Joe') Fights do happen between soldiers for all manner of stupid reasons. The bigger concern, however, is the Russians and Turks picking fights with the Americans, usually after coming out of the club 100 meters away. "Let's let the Russians buy the club across the street." That's some great municipal zoning, right there.

So myself and the NCO I was teamed with got no-cover access to all the clubs in the Schweinfurt area, with the stipulation that we be in uniform, wearing our little "CP" armbands, and carrying the MP radio that would have come in real handy in the 120-decibel club environment, had we needed them. Want to feel cool? Walk into your local nightclub in a set of DCUs.

Basically, that's what the military calls a "Show of force." Preventing problems by making sure the problems know that they can be dealt with. Yes, Joe, Big Brother is watching.

It wasn't an altogether bad night, though. I probably could have gotten out of it had I wanted, but I haven't been particularly busy. (I was walking past an elevated area at one point in the evening, and I hear a voice from above say "Boy, YOU must have REALLY pissed someone off..." Not that I know of.) We spent the night pretty much in just one of the local clubs. A rock club. You know it's a rock club when the slow dance at the end of the night is 'Nothing Else Matters' by Metallica. Now that's romance. So at least the music didn't suck. And the manager made sure we had free beverages. Well, we were designated drivers. Naturally, the clientele became more and more friendly as the night went on. Occasionally someone would point out someone they thought might need a little attention, and we'd make sure they were ok. I was encouraged by the number of designated drivers there as well as individuals who told me they were taking cabs (which isn't a cheap ride, by any stretch of the imagination... except perhaps that stretch of the imagination in which one imagines getting arrested for DUI in Germany and the impact that has on an Army career...)

Arriving at about 2230 (10:30pm, for those non-military or western-hemisphere types reading this) I was encouraged (or not) to see that social interaction hasn't progressed much past where it was in eighth grade when dance-floors were empty, save for small, isolated pockets of gender-homogeneous groups. As the night progressed, however, and the average BAC rose enough, the dance floor got pretty crowded with about 55% Joe (male), 40% German female, 5% other. Joe tries to pick up German chicks, German chicks try to pick up Joe, that one scary old German guy dances by himself, and LT, as he watches over the club from an elevated position, tries to avoid staring down the copious cavernous cleavage conspicuously on display by the aforementioned 'chicks.'

It occurred to me that I may have been more comfortable at the club in uniform in an official capacity than when I've gone other times with groups of people. That doesn't seem quite right, and I've been trying to figure myself out in that regard. For all the abilities I do possess, it seems I'm not very good at having fun. There it is...I am a boring person. It is a sign of God's intervention that someone as independent or autonomous (or whatever it is that keeps me from engaging others except when absolutely necessary) as I am manages to have any associates at all, much less have the few people I have been privileged to call my friends. And a wife! How did that happen? Well, that was mostly her doing. "Marry you? Sure. Um, do I need to get a ring or something?" Anyway...she really needs to put up her blog if she's going to, because I'll probably just keep lying like that.

You should email her and ask her to write about how much she loves being an Army wife. Ha.

Good night all.