A Healthy Alternative to Work

The big question for me right now is "where the hell am I going?"

As some of you may know, I’m on orders to go to Fort Bliss, Texas. It sounded good at first – a more operational environment, an air-defense artillery unit, I’d be working under the brigade’s S1 (personnel) branch with a lieutenant, and chances of deployment wouldn’t be high – barring a new war with, oh, say Syria.

Unfortunately, I got my PERSGRAM (sort of a notification of orders, online), which says that I’m supposed to be reporting to what’s called a "life-cycle" unit, which requires three years of active-duty left on your contract. I’ll have two at my projected report date, and the PERSGRAM said that if I don’t have enough time left, that I need to extend or reenlist to make sure I’m covered.

Hah. That sounds like about as good a deal as a stay in shipping crate with a gorilla on hormone therapy.

So forget extending. When I heard about this, I talked to my boss, and he said he’d get in touch with our career branch manager, who’s in charge of handing out assignments.

The response was basically a threat – either go to Texas and extend, or risk being given an "undesirable" assignment, such as a new Public Affairs Detachment (which means Iraq) or... drum roll... back to good old Korea.

I guess he figured that would be enough to convince me, but I told my boss that I’d much rather head back to Korea and get out on time than take an assignment that required me to extend my time in past the five years I signed on for.

That all went down about a month ago, and I haven’t found out anything new yet. My supervisor had me sign a request for a 120-day deferment, but I have a feeling that has approximately a snowball’s chance in hell of going through, since our branch manager is scrambling to fill all these new positions...

So we’ll see what happens, eh?

Meanwhile, the Fort Knox garrison has gone broke, and generals are telling congress that recruiting and retention goals are being met. I’m glad everything’s hunky-dory, aren’t you? Fortunately, we’re all going to be fine – according to this version of the story.

Coming this week - a story on a vicious dog attack, the DUI problem on Fort Knox, one of our high school coaches getting a job with the University of Louisville’s Cardinals coaching staff.... and some commentary of some kind.

Which reminds me: here’s the one I did this week on Hunter Thompson’s death: Louisville loses a unique son.

I’m off to bed. Cheers.

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It’s a gorgeous Sunday afternoon, and with me I’ve got a fresh pack of smokes, two boxes of hot chocolate mix, and J.S. Bach pumping through my computer speakers, courtesy of iTunes internet radio. Yes... it’s times like these that I realize what weekends are for.

Friday night I headed uptown with the Idiot Squad for the first time in a while, since Numb-Nuts had promised that he was going to meet up with a girl who was going to be trying out for the Indianapolis Colts’ cheerleading squad. I asked him if it was anything like the time he’d been a first-round draft pick for the Carolina Pathers.

An uneventful night, really. They found the girls, who seemed pleasant and a little less vacant than the normal targets, but I left them alone and did what I do best at bars - swallow Truth Serum.

I hadn’t been out drinking in a while, so it caught up to me quickly, and I quit early, but not before I’d bumped into a wall or two, pissed off with my legs for not obeying my brain.

We got home early Saturday morning, around 6 a.m., and I crashed hard when I found my bed. I’m going to have to think about getting a new pair of glasses – I seem to go through them pretty quickly.

But who cares? Tonight, it’s the Oscars! And I’ve got to say that I couldn’t care any less. I know that Chris Rock is going to be hosting the annual frivolous awards show, and I know that because there was no possible way to avoid learning it this week, short of walling oneself up in a cave with a case of MREs and a flashlight. Yes, Chris Rock will host the show, and with any luck, he’ll burn the place down, and every single dress and outlandish tuxedo that Entertainment Tonight photographers are eagerly shooting will be scorched beyond recognition.

There’s this fascination some people have, apparently, with what stars wear (or don’t wear) to the Oscars. Back when I was a kid, we had something like that – it was called "Halloween." Judging from some of the photos I’ve been unable to avoid seeing, some stars haven’t gotten over that yet. Bjork wearing a swan wrapped around her neck... all she’s missing is the Icelandic trick-or-treat bag.

To be honest, I’m glad she chose a swan. I really wouldn’t have been surprised to see her dressed up as a labia.

Anyway, I’ll be tracking NCAA basketball tonight. So far, my picks this week are 8-0, with Kentucky, Bucknell, Clemson, Drexel, Nevada, Louisville, Utah, and Mississippi State winning in the games Larry selected for prediction. There’s only one week of picks left, but hopefully I’ll be going out on a high note. My record got hit hard late in the football season thanks to the foibles surrounding the high school football games and the generalized impossibility of getting the Fort Knox Eagles to win against anyone other than tiny Christian academies.

With that, I’m off. Time to sip hot chocolate and read more Tom Wolfe. Cheers.

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Since I heard about Hunter Thompson’s suicide, I’ve been reading everything I can find on the various wires, newsgroups, and online publications – various obituaries, memories, tributes, even poetry composed in memoriam...

I’m normally a rather regular reader of National Review Online, and I find their copy to usually be both entertaining and insightful. But I came across this article when I got to work this morning, and found it to be not only negative, but short-sighted, mean spirited, ignorant, and clearly written by a man who missed the point completely.

Austin Ruse took the occasion of Hunter’s death to thumb his nose at the writer’s wild lifestyle - his penchant for illicit drugs and booze seems to be Ruse’s main criticism. Here’s a perfect example:

"It is a blessing that his work is not now still terribly well-known for he was a net negative influence on an entire generation. His famous aphorism, ‘When the going gets tough, the weird turn pro’ was the font of more ruined GPAs than any other single source back in the 1970s. ‘When the going gets tough, the weird turn pro’ meant that you could stay up all night doing every manner of substance and in the few milky hours between sunrise and the start of morning classes churn out a master term paper. Almost all of us discovered this was not true. Some, like Hunter himself, never learned it."

I couldn’t believe that Ruse, who is obviously a writer with much more prestige than I have, could possibly have published such short-sighted drivel. To completely ignore Thompson’s incredible body of work and characterize his career as a "net negative influence on an entire generation" is beneath contempt.

What’s immediately clear is that Ruse missed the point completely. Tom Wolfe, an American writer and novelist who’s been lauded since his book on hippies, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test was published in the 1960s (Wolfe, incidentally, first met Thompson while working on that project), knew better when he wrote his own eulogy to Thompson:

"[H]e was also part of a century-old tradition in American letters, the tradition of Mark Twain, Artemus Ward and Petroleum V. Nasby, comic writers who mined the human comedy of a new chapter in the history of the West, namely, the American story, and wrote in a form that was part journalism and part personal memoir admixed with powers of wild invention, and wilder rhetoric inspired by the bizarre exuberance of a young civilization.."

Truly, I can see why Ruse may have been led astray. Thompson never made his love of mind-bending chemicals a secret, but unlike anyone else on record who had such an appetite for drugs, he was not a slave to them by any means. It was Thompson’s unique take on the search for truth, that form of writing that would eventually be called "gonzo" that made him great. The U.K. Guardian Unlimited’s Jon Ronson understands, writing his own tribute:

"He was the first journalist to really spot that a story becomes truer when the reporter honestly chronicles his or her own idiosyncrasies, and admits that those foibles act as a prism between real life and the page. This realisation of his has changed the face of journalism, giving generations of writers licence to put themselves into their stories. Take - for instance - Lynn Barber's beautifully hassled, sardonic battiness. Ostensibly, it couldn't be less gonzo-like, but it was (she has written) greatly inspired by Thompson and the new journalism he helped create."

Many self-professed fans of Thompson have come to him because he subscribed to the same school of self-medication that Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters established in the ‘60s. As Ruse points out, many young aspiring journalists and writers thought that they could emulate Thompson by smoking pot and eating MDA, but Thompson was more than a drug icon. His influences also included Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, and, as he said himself, The Book of Revelation.

Wolfe continues:

"Hunter's life, like his work, was one long barbaric yawp, to use Whitman's term, of the drug-fueled freedom from and mockery of all conventional proprieties that began in the 1960s. In that enterprise Hunter was something entirely new, something unique in our literary history. When I included an excerpt from "The Hell's Angels" in a 1973 anthology called "The New Journalism," he said he wasn't part of anybody's group. He wrote "gonzo." He was sui generis. And that he was...

No one categorization covers this new form unless it is Hunter Thompson's own word, gonzo. If so, in the 19th century Mark Twain was king of all the gonzo-writers. In the 20th century it was Hunter Thompson, whom I would nominate as the century's greatest comic writer in the English language."

Hunter’s suicide is a tragedy, and it’s made all the more tragic by the fact that legions of his "fans" and others will remember him for all the wrong reasons.

Gonzo is not about drugs. Gonzo is a life that’s led in the pursuit of truth, putting that quest in front of personal safety and social convention.

In 1955, Hunter wrote an essay for Louisville’s Athenaeum Literary Association's yearbook, The Spectator, at the age of 17. Now, his words seem prophetic of his own life:

"A man is to be pitied who lacked the courage to accept the challenge of freedom and depart from the cushion of security and see life as it is instead of living it second-hand. Life has by-passed this man and he has watched from a secure place, afraid to seek anything better. What has he done except to sit and wait for the tomorrow which never comes? ...

As an afterthought, it seems hardly proper to write of life without once mentioning happiness; so we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on the shore and merely existed?"

Hunter S. Thompson was surely the former.

I haven’t been posting a whole lot lately, and I’ve got to confess, I’ve been short on material. But every so often, I get the inspiration to rant about the salacious trash that poses for entertainment these days.

I’ve got nothing against the violence or sex on television. That’s probably because I don’t have kids to worry about. If I did, I might feel differently. As it is, I’m just a single guy, and as far as I’m concerned, there could be a lot more of it.

Actually, that doesn’t really matter, since I don’t have cable hooked up in my room. I’ve thought about it, because it would be nice to be able to sort of zone out and take in the news without having to look it up online – but you know what? Considering the monumentally huge proportion of out and out crap on TV, I can’t see how spending 50 bucks per month on five hundred channels of tripe is a worthwhile investment.

It’s nice to be reminded of it so often. What tipped me off tonight was the cover of "People" magazine (possibly the most inappropriately named magazine ever, since hardly anyone who appears in that publication qualifies as a person) on the newsrack in the shoppette tonight – a big composite photograph of Paula Abdul and Simon from "American Idol"... apparently, they’re at odds! Paula says she’s all about "hope," and Simon, she says (according to the bold type that seems to serve as "headlines") makes too many comments about contestants’ weight.

So as I’m getting my Easy-Mac and beer ready to check out, I have to wonder "Who in God’s name gives two shits about this?"

And then I realize that "American Idol" has been the top-rated show in this country for a while now. I don’t really know where to go from there. It’s just a really depressing thought.

So let’s not think about "American Idol." There are plenty of other shows that could conceivably make one pray for nuclear holocaust tomorrow. Basically, any show billed as "reality TV" fits snugly into this category.

The trouble with these shows, really, is that they aren’t real at all, or even based on anything even remotely resembling reality. Like, for example, "The Apprentice." Pretend-gazillionaire Donald Trump creates two teams - this season there are MBA-grads and self-made entrepreneurs who didn’t go to college - who compete in different "business scenarios," like creating marketing campaigns for a really gross Burger King sandwich.

Then each week, someone gets fired. They all live together in swanky apartments, to give the show that bile-inducing "Real World" flavor, and they freak out about how the people they’re with are different, unfriendly, or unhygienic.

Or how about "The Simple Life"? What the fuck is this? Paris Hilton and.... uh, her sister who hasn’t appeared in a porn.... traipse around the country and screw with unsuspecting members of the public. How is this reality? Nothing that has to do with Paris or the other Hilton has anything at all to do with reality! Nothing! They are famous for being rich, plastic, sluts! That’s it. And enough people actually care what they do with their exorbitant amount of free time that their show actually landed a second season.

Please, let the bombs fall now.

How could this happen? We’ve got personality cults around here so strong that they’re making Kim Jong-Il feel like the bassist for Styx. Really, are there that many people in our society whose entire interest in the world revolves around vicariously living the lives of celebrities?

What’s going on with Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston? Who gives a shit?! Let it go, please, let it go. For the love of God, let it go. Brad Pitt’s even a decent actor (as long as he’s in "12 Monkeys" and not "Meet Joe Black" or some garbage like that). And now I despise him. Aniston was always overrated, so at this point, I hope they’re both taken prisoner by some Amazon head-shrinking tribe.

Well, that’s enough of a rant for today. Hope you all have a wonderful, blessed Sunday. Hah!

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Well, I just got home from another "pub day" at the Elizabethtown News-Enterprise. As they say in the business, another deadline, another miracle. For some reason, which will probably never be explained, it always comes down to the last minute when it comes to newspaper publication. It doesn't matter how much planning and pre-design you do, there will always be something that jumps up and creates last-minute problems that require scrambling and frantic throwing-around of paper.

Of course, part of the problem this week is probably due to our staffing shortages. We're losing people left and right, thanks to a decision to eliminate all soldier Installation Management Agency (Garrison, i.e., me) slots. So basically, orders are being handed out like one-hitters at a Phish concert.

-Post cut in the interest of National Security-

But check this out. What follows are the United States Department of Defense "Principles of Information," which are supposed to be guidelines for the release of information to the public:

"It is Department of Defense policy to make available timely and accurate information so that the public, the Congress, and the news media may assess and understand the facts about national security and defense strategy. Requests for information from organizations and private citizens shall be answered quickly. In carrying out that DoD policy, the following principles of information shall apply:

"Information shall be made fully and readily available, consistent with statutory requirements, unless its release is precluded by national security constraints or valid statutory mandates or exceptions. The Freedom of Information Act will be supported in both letter and spirit.

"A free flow of general and military information shall be made available, without censorship or propaganda, to the men and women of the Armed Forces and their dependents.

"Information will not be classified or otherwise withheld to protect the Government from criticism or embarrassment.

"Information shall be withheld when disclosure would adversely affect national security, threaten the safety or privacy of U.S. Government personnel or their families, violate the privacy of the citizens of the United States, or be contrary to law.

"The Department of Defense's obligation to provide the public with information on DoD major programs may require detailed Public Affairs (PA) planning and coordination in the Department of Defense and with the other Government Agencies. Such activity is to expedite the flow of information to the public; propaganda has no place in DoD public affairs programs."

You can find more information by following the above link, or by looking up Department of Defense Directive 5122.5, dated September 27, 2000.

-Post cut in the interest of National Security-

Anyway, it's just another thing to get pissed off about. I did a column on Jose Canseco's new tell-all book - you can check it out over at Smokin' News.

Mahalo.

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Well, since I don't have a lot to say at the moment, I thought I'd post some photos from the Turret archive. These are all taken by yours truly.









This one is a fallen tree, damaged after a severe wind storm ripped through here this past summer. Hah, hah. It's on "Colonel Street." This shot ran in the Elizabethtown News-Enterprise.




Here are some Navy folks working on a Seahawk helicopter. One shot in this series was a front-pager.




And this one is a change-of-command ceremony at Company B, 2nd Battalion, 81st Armor Regiment, a Marine Corps training company here at Knox's 1st Armor Training Brigade. These guys do Drill and Ceremony very well.




A Purple Heart ceremony. This one was a bit over-exposed and blurry, so it didn't run in the paper, but I liked the effect.

Mahalo.

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Well, it’s been a nice two days. Tuesday morning I woke up early for a company-sponsored eight-mile road march, and I felt awful. Chills, body aches... all the hallmarks of the flu.

But you can’t go to Sick Call on the day of a road march, or everyone will think you’re trying to slack off or "get over." So I went on the march, tramped around in the dark for two hours, listened to one buck sergeant yell "keep your interval!" over and over again, and eventually wound up at work.

So I went to the hospital Wednesday. I hate going to hospitals, and I avoid going to the doctor’s whenever I possibly can. My dad is a doctor, so as a kid, whenever one of us had something wrong, Dad would just bring home what we needed and that would be that.

I wound up with two days of restriction to quarters and a bag full of free drugs - ibuprofen, cough syrup, and some decongestant.

So here I am now. I’ve gotten my beloved Road Shark back, the Finch has headed off to PLDC - primary leadership development course - and I’ve got orders to Texas for this summer.

More later.

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Since it's Super Bowl Sunday, I figured I'd post this week's Turret sports column here. There is no love lost between the New England Patriots and me, let me assure you.

Not a Pats fan? Watch the ads.

By Spc. Ian Boudreau
Turret sports editor

The Patriots sure are pushing their luck.

No, I don't mean New England is going to have a rough time taking down the Philadelphia Eagles - with or without the maybe-could be-might-be-playing Terrell Owens. I mean their time has come and gone, and now it's another team's turn to earn some rings.

Patriots quarterback Tom Brady -- known to his friends as "Mr. Brady" or "the Bionic Man" -- is starting to take on the aura of some evil supervillian. I expect him to toss his head back and let out some maniacal laugh - "Bwua-ha-ha-ha!" - when his team lands its third Super Bowl victory in four years this Sunday.

Someone should be there to stop him. There should be a Conan or Indiana Jones or someone to put an end to his bid at reigning over the NFL for another year.

But what we've got is Donovan McNabb and the Eagles. This isn't going to be pretty. I guess it's going to be another Super Bowl of watching the commercials and getting angry in between.

Actually, one of the reasons the Super Bowl is the most-watched television event every year is because of the advertisements. A recent poll by the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association found that nearly one-fifth of Super Bowl viewers tune in just for the commercials.

The statistic is even higher for the much-coveted 18-24-year old demographic: 24.5 percent of those polled said they watch the Super Bowl strictly for the advertisements.

Last year, an online poll by InsightExpress found that 54 percent of Americans planned to watch the game, and a full 50 percent of those were watching just to catch the new commercials. Respondents also said that they pay closer attention to the Super Bowl commercials than they do to those shown on daily television.

That's a lot of people - particularly when you're talking about a potential viewing audience of 145 million.

I guess that explains why corporate giants (expect a Clydesdale or two) are willing to shell out $80,000 per second when it comes to snatching up Super Bowl advertising time.

The Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake stunt last year supposedly led to stricter guidelines when it comes to decency, both in the programming and the advertising spots. But never fear. Our friends in the pharmaceutical industry will be back this year, forcing many an embarrassed parent to explain the term "ED" to young football fans nationwide, according to a USA Today report.

When it comes down to it, though, the Super Bowl isn't about the ads, it's about the two best teams in the National Football League coming together and determining the national champion. It's the sport at its finest, with winner-takes-all stakes.

And even though I know it's a pipe dream, I really hope those darn Patriots lose. New England has had a run of luck that's gone on long enough.

That's why I've got a clipped newspaper photo of the Steelers' Kimo von Oelhoffen sacking the sense out of Brady from earlier in the season taped to my desk cabinet.

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Hey! Look who stopped by Fort Knox last week!

Turns out, Sean Astin ("Rudy," "The Lord of the Rings") is a buddy of our commanding general's, and is also a civilian aide to the secretary of the Army.

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As the pundits compare notes in preparation for the next news-cycles’ upcoming barrage of commentary, I’m looking over 16 pages of hastily-scribbled notes I took while watching George W. Bush’s State of the Union address on a two-inch display on my monitor.

A CSPAN commentator just came on to inform me that the president was interrupted 63 times for applause.

Before anything else, here’s a more-or-less play-by-play... inasmuch as I can interpret my notes.

9:03 p.m. - Bob Woodward has noted that GWB often sets forth policy in his speeches... will we hear new plans here? What of the next four years?

9:04 - Applause. Here come the associate justices of the Supreme Court... the president’s cabinet... there’s this weird ringing in the speakers and a jerkiness to the video... it reminds me a bit of The Ring for some reason.

9:08 - Dammit, I’ve screwed it up... CSPAN radio? Nothing. Ahh... it’s back. Here’s applause in a sea of suits... Oh! And there’s John Kerry, looking at the floor and half-heartedly clapping.

Mr. Bush has taken the dias. He looks good, confident.

Bush cites the privilege he and the other elected members of the United States government have in serving the people who elected them... a privilege, he says, they now share with the governments of Afghanistan, Palestine, the Ukraine... and a free and sovereign Iraq. Much applause.

Right now, Bush says, "the state of our union is confident and strong."

Americans, he says, must continue to do "what Americans have always done - to build a better world."

We’re going to "keep America the economic leader in the world"... the folks at The Nation aren’t going to like that one.

9:16 - Bush says he has a plan to cut the deficit in half by 2009. How?

Ahhh... 150 non-producing government programs are getting the axe. This seems like a good idea to me. But I don’t think everyone’s going to be keen on this idea, either.

"Taxpayer dollars must be spent wisely or not at all."

On to education. Bush is pushing for better high school education via the No Child Left Behind program. Each diploma must be a ticket to success, he says, and he plans to increase funding and support to community colleges.

Also, he wants to make it easier for Americans to get a college education by increasing Pell Grants.

And now, business: "We need to reward, not punish, the efforts of entrepreneurs" by protecting them from lawsuits. The Nation guys aren’t going to like this one either. Check there for the upcoming tirade about "class actions and frivolous asbestos claims."

Bush mentions liability reform briefly.

And now, the environment. Bush says he wants "affordable, environmentally responsible energy," including "safe, clean, nuclear energy," as well as other renewables such as hyrdogen and ethanol. The object is a lesser dependence on foreign energy.

9:21 - We need to update ancient systems, including our "archaic Federal tax code," changing it to something that is "easy to understand and fair to all."

What’s this? We need to update our immigration policy to incorporate a "guest worker" program. Ostensibly, this will open our borders to people who will work jobs that "Americans won’t take" and close them to drug dealers and terrorists. This could definitely be a good thing.

Ah, the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Social Security reform. He cites the founding of Social Security and says we need to "honor its purposes," but that the system is "headed for bankruptcy."

"We need to join together and save Social Security," which 45 million Americans are currently receiving, he says.

To the prone-to-freaking-out he says, "I have a message for Americans 55 and older: for you, Social Security will not change in any way." Good to get that out of the way first.

Bush is advocating for America the same thing we service members have the option of using: the Thrift Savings Plan. It’s basically a Federal IRA. I was thinking about getting one of those anyway. The good news about this is that it doesn’t need an Al Gore "lock box" – the accounts are the property of each individual payee, but not accessible to them until retirement. The potential for growth, Bush says, is better than anything the current program can offer. I like this idea.

9:33 - Values. "The government is not the source of values – but the government should never undermine them." Here comes the bit about gay marriage.

Ah yes, the Constitutional amendment. Bush says that "activist judges" aren’t the authority on marriage.

Woah. He just said "culture of life" - a phrase coined, if I’m not mistaken, by Pope John Paul II. The gist here is that scientists have a responsibility to make advancements, but not at the expense of human dignity. In other words, no growing human embryos for experimentation. This sounds good to me, too.

Judges are to "interpret the law, not legislate from the bench," Bush says.

Oh-ho. Laura will be heading up a new effort to mobilize faith-based and other community groups to reach out to inner-city males, to teach them to "respect women and reject violence." The crowd seems pleased with this, too.

In 33 minutes, President George W. Bush will give the annual State of the Union address, and as I wait here in my barracks room with a lit Camel and an open bottle of Miller Lite, I feel like one of the oddsters in the Vegas bookkeepers who provide the lines for ball games.

It’s a pretty easy call to predict what the fallout in "Spin Alley" is going to be. Conservatives will sit on the talking-head shows on Fox and talk about the power and vision (remember those two words, they’ll be used afterwards) of the speech, and liberals will cite public-speaking gaffes and talk (on other talking-head shows) about how he’s gotten America into an "unwinnable war" and lost "credibility" (two more words you should remember - they’ll be used often, too).

22 minutes now. Mark my words, friends. The aftershocks will be as predictable as the upcoming Super Bowl XXXIX.

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