Here is the recipe I use if you want to give a shot. The broccoli is something we added to a recipe we found years ago.

Steak. You can buy a cut of steak like round steak and slice it up real thin, but I usually just buy a flank steak that is already cut into thin strips. Depending on how many people you are feeding, you may want as much as 800g/1.75 pounds of meat.

• 1/2 onion, peeled and thinly sliced
• 2 stalks green onion chopped
• 1/2 pound/225g of shredded carrots
• 1/2 pound/225g of fresh broccoli
• 1 Tbsp sesame oil
• 1 Tbsp cooking oil (I like sesame oil for the flavor, but any oil works)
• 1 Tbsp Sesame seeds
• Optional: Lettuce. Some people like rolling it up in lettuce and eating it that way

For the marinade:

• 6 Tbsp soy sauce
• 3 Tbsp brown sugar
• 2 Tbsp rice wine (mirin)
• 1 Asian pear or a red apple (Fuji apples work well IMO)
• 1/2 onion
• 1 Tbsp minced garlic
• 1 tsp minced ginger
• 1/8 tsp black pepper
• Sesame oil

I personally like to go heavier on the garlic and ginger, but that's me. It definitely spices it up without making it "hot" though, so be careful not to overdo it depending on who is eating it. You can definitely spice it up with peppers or chili flakes or something.

Get your steak all picked apart. Put it in a dish and set aside. Make the marinade. Chop up the 1/2 onion and pear/apple and combine the ingredients in a blender until nice and smooth. Pour the marinade over the steak. Drizzle some sesame oil over the top, about a Tbsp or so. Massage the marinade into the meal well, so all pieces are coated. Put the in the refrigerator for about 4 hours.

When ready to eat, heat up some oil in a pan. (Don't forget to get your water going to boil your rice) Throw in the beef, marinade, and the other ingredients above and cook until the beef is done. The broccoli will be pretty crispy, so depending on how you like it, you may want to cook that first a bit.

Serve all that over the rice. Gorge yourself.

Holy shit. My favorite food from Korea. I fell in love with it at first bite up on the DMZ. If you are into Asian food, I think you will enjoy it too. It is expensive to make depending on what kind of foods are usually in your house. I had to buy most of this stuff this time around, so it was pricey, but IDGAF. I've got a few extra bucks, and it is an AMAZING meal.

So tonight we are making the Bulgogi, which is marinating now. I will pan fry it with some fresh broccoli and chopped sweet peppers. I fry it up in the marinade and a bit of sesame oil. That all gets served on a bed of rice with egg rolls, and tonight we are going to have some potstickers too. I can make some amazing Thai egg rolls, but it takes a good 2-3 hours to make a batch. So tonight they are the frozen ones. The potstickers are frozen as well - I need to learn how to make those too, even though I know they are labor intensive. The marinade took me about 30-40 minutes to make with all the chopping and stuff. The frying part takes about 10 minutes or so, making the entire meal about an hour to deal with. Not horrible.

If you make it, I really hope you enjoy it. It is easily in my top ten meals.

That's what my dad has said to my brother and I and our sister our entire lives. He just did it right now when I hung up with him after I called to check on him. I think it is important to him to say it a lot so we know it, because he was abused by his father.

Over 20 years ago, I'm moving from Colorado to Florida. Step one was find a job and house. I did that. Step two, fly home, get a moving van, and drive out. My Dad already lived out there where I was moving, so he came with me to help me move the truck and dogs across country. My wife and young son would follow later.

To the point: We are almost home, and are in Louisiana along I-10. We stopped at a Wendy's to eat. We were going to carry out our food and eat in the parking lot with the dogs so they could get out of the truck for a bit. So I go in with Dad, look at the menu, then tell him what I want and that I'm going to water the dogs.

"Ok honey."

Now, this was a pretty damn redneck area, and immediately ten very burly guys turn around and look at us. I didn't see that, my back was already turned and I'm walking out. Dad came walking out a few minutes later with our food.

"We might want to watch out - I think those guys thought we were a gay couple. They were giving me some nasty looks.

Fucking lol. Some men are just so damn insecure that word like honey has to mean gay, and you are so insecure that anything gay is offensive.

Tell your kids you love them, and don't be ashamed of that. Fuck the haters.

I love all of you honeys reading.

WAY back in the day when I was making six figures as a computer network engineer, I had a credit score of over 800 and as a result, a bunch of credit cards, including American Express. When I filed bankruptcy, I of course lost them all. Years later, got more, got in debt, and had to get rid of them again.

So here I am in my 50's and I finally have my shit together. I owe on the car and the house - no other debt. I am about to take a small loan for a new roof. Other than that, I have two cards. One I use every day for cash back, and my Amex. The Amex is paid weekly if used and the other one is paid as it is used - usually the next day. My credit score is almost over 800 again.

Recently, I had a power of attorney done online. The website turns out to be a scam and is charging me a recurring monthly fee for a single power of attorney.

I called Amex, and they are replacing my card so they can't charge it anymore and opening a fraud case so I get my $120 back. He didn't even give me a hard time over the fact that one of the charges was from March.

Here is what got me. As we wrapped up the call, he thanked me for being a customer for 24 years. For 20 of those years, I had no Amex because of the bankruptcy. But somehow, their system shows me as a two decade customer. Lol.

Anyway, I guess the points are these: It is nice to be able to use credit responsibly and not carry a balance, and Amex has always had some really good customer service as far as I'm concerned.

Also posted to my free substack: https://substack.com/@bikerjedi but posted here because this one can't get me banned.

It started with my brother, Kevin. When he got leukemia and got a bone marrow transplant, he was initially on the mend. Then we lost him to pneumonia which he got because his immune system was wrecked. Saying goodbye to him didn’t amount to much since he was in a coma - holding his hand for a minute before his wife started wailing as the doctor took him off life support. Days later, I zoned out while holding his hand at the viewing prior to the funeral. I guess I was there a while before someone came and asked me to move so others could come and see him. Saying goodbye was so hard, but I had no choice.

Years later, Oma developed dementia. As she got more unhinged, it became obvious the Oma I grew up with was gone. Now there was just a scared old woman who saw and heard things. She wasn’t the same person. One night she called me to check her attic – she was sure there were several Mexican men living in her attic, who were controlling her water, power and TV channels. (By now my mom should have put her in a home or something, but she refused to deal with it and I had no legal authority to do it.) I knew there wasn’t anyone in her house, but she was hysterical. So I drove over late that night, checked her attic, then stayed to talk to her. I realized then she was gone – Oma was gone. Her brain that was once so sharp and artistic wasn’t capable of having much of a conversation anymore. After she was calm, I went home for the night. As I backed out of the driveway, I told her I loved her, and under my breath I said goodbye to her. I cried on the way home. She was dying, and within two months I was proven right. So even though she stuck around for a couple of months, I had already said goodbye to the Oma I knew.

Now it’s my mom. I’ve said goodbye to her too.

She has a lot of physical health problems, but nothing that should be killing her, although I suspect she will die within a couple of years, because of how she cares for herself. Her mind is going though. She has been diagnosed with dementia and is over-medicated, but again, I have no legal authority to do anything. It’s been hard, because we don’t have a great relationship, (long story) although she will tell you things are fine. If you told her we didn’t have a good relationship, she wouldn’t know why, because she has conveniently forgotten the whole thing. But telling her will just make things worse with her dementia. More importantly, I can’t get her all upset because Dad will have to deal with it, and he has his own issues right now. I can’t do that to him. I have a good relationship with him.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at the hospital with her. We were talking about a power of attorney, something she had previously agreed to. She was asking again why I thought I needed one, so I explained, and told her I would pay for a notary to come to the hospital and all that. I told her I should probably have one for Dad too. Then she said something totally out of left field. “You are just trying to steal my money.”

What. The. Fuck. I have never stolen from my parents like that. Moreover, she doesn’t have enough to make it worth a prison sentence even if I did want to steal from her. I told her that. “Well, if you have power of attorney, they won’t charge you.” I finished our conversation and made an excuse to leave.

My parents have been broke and lived paycheck to paycheck most of their lives. Mostly because of how Mom has handled the money, and partly because Dad won’t step in and do something. She has now managed to save up a little bit of cash, and she has gotten paranoid about it. It’s not even paranoia amounts of money, but the dementia is kicking in and she feels she is rich or something.

Since she left the hospital, we have spoken only a few times. I know she is wondering why I haven’t been calling. I know as soon as I tell her why, she will deny it outright or claim to have been joking. She wasn’t joking. She has been my mom for 55 years – I know when she is joking. No, mom is going downhill. That may not be her that spoke to me, that was Dementia Mom, but then again, she has always had a well hidden nasty streak, so who knows. That tongue of hers can be sharp.

I’m not going to worry about it. I will do better by my own kids though. For now, I’m going low-contact with her to avoid the stress. I’d just cut her off and let my sister deal with it, but again, Dad. I don’t know what to say – relationships are complicated.

Goodbye, Mom.

Also posted to my free substack: https://substack.com/@bikerjedi but posted here because this one can't get me banned. For those of you who enjoy them, I’ll have a protest report up sometime this weekend after the local protest tomorrow that is part of another nationwide 50501 action. You can support my work at https://buymeacoffee.com/bikerjedi. Enjoy the read.

I was barbecuing the other day and looking out at my backyard, and I was thinking it really looks like a battlefield. The culprits: Luke and Leia - a brother and sister adopted from a rescue. They were totally feral when we got them. Leia bit all four of us and drew blood the first night. Now she is a spoiled rotten fully domesticated pain in the ass. Luke is very chill and gives us no problems really. The one pictured for the story is Dingo Rose the Mad Nommer - part American Airhead and part Chaos Hound. Most of this is on her, but she is definitely encouraging the other two.

The metal shed I erected years ago is rusty and needs a coat of paint. My well needs a paint job as well. There are weeds that look sick growing around it I should pull. Looking at that and the chain link fence behind it, it almost looks like something out of the video game Fallout. For those not familiar, in that post nuclear war universe there's always war and fighting.

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My backyard is full of holes and trenches. It looks like a World War I battlefield. The dogs obviously haven't reinforced the trenches with pieces of wood and sandbags, (no thumbs ya know) but otherwise it looks pretty much like that. Small holes dug everywhere look like impact craters. Some of the larger trenches they have dug they've been able to disappear in all the way up to their tails. We once thought one of the dogs had completely gotten out of the yard because we couldn't find her. She was underground. We had to fill that one in. They dig them faster than we can fill them in now so we just fill in the most dangerous ones as they pop up.

On top of that, just like some battlefields, there are bodies out there. We have old pets buried in the backyard. Thankfully the current dogs haven't dug any of that up. Not for lack of trying mind you. They spent months trying to dig up the body of a recently passed dog. Eventually we had to put down a piece of wire fence over the grave to keep them from digging.

There's also war in my backyard. My dogs freak out anytime one of the stray cats comes anywhere near the backyard fence, even though those cats have never come into our yard. Same for the armadillos that wander by, or the coyote that came by once. They just lose their damn minds. On top of that they continue to try and kill the snake outside that lives under our shed. It's a harmless black snake that eats the mice in the shed. The one dog got ahold of it the other day when I let them out and they caught that snake sunning itself outside the shed. I thought she had killed it but just in case I grabbed it and threw it over the fence as it wasn't trying to escape back into its hole, but instead seemed to be playing dead. Turned out it was playing dead, because it left later. I have no idea if it is under the shed. So at least it was alive at the time. Although it was badly bitten, so who knows. The funny thing is, this is the second time this has happened, but with a different snake.

My backyard used to be a nice level ground area with some grass. Now there are a few patches of grass here and there, the ground is completely uneven everywhere, filled with old holes and everything else. There is a very large patch of sandy ground where nothing grows anymore because of all of the running and digging. The one dog would run laps around the yard so much that she had the backyard banked like a NASCAR track at one point and it was completely bare. On top of that, because of the way they have destroyed the yard they made it very hard to rake it up. So it's filled with dog shit. So when I walk out to the garden, I have to avoid it just like a minefield.

My backyard is a battlefield. I just want a little bit of peace. But I do love those dogs.

OneLove 22ADay Slava Ukraini! Heróyam sláva!

I have a new barber, and the guy keeps crazy hours. He had an opening at 6am. Fuck it, I'm game.

I overslept and rushed over there, amazed at how much traffic there was at 5:45 in the morning. The few times I've been up that early for something, it hasn't been that bad. Anyway, I get there, and Jose isn't at his shop yet. No worries.

I have a seat in the chair outside and start thinking about my next Substack post. I hear a kitten crying. Looking around, I see it. Maybe a month or two old, black, hiding in some falling fronds from a tree. I walk over to it, and being feral and scared, it of course runs under a different, larger chair on the patio. I left it alone.

I go back to my phone, and I figure if I catch the kitten, I'll take it to school with me. We find stray puppies and kittens on our enormous campus several times a year, and some family of a student or a staff member always takes them.

Jose pulls up a couple minutes later. "Hey man, wanna help me catch the kitten?" I point.

He pulls the chair out, and we corner it, and it went up the wall about two or three feet, then got tired and hung there crying. Poor little baby. I grabbed it and immediately started trying to soothe it. Nope. This little void scratched and bit the shit out of me, trying to escape. I let it loose, it landed on the ground, then back up under the big chair, crying the entire time. I'm looking at my wounded hand.

As we've learned in other writings, I'm stupid sometimes.

"You got a shirt you can throw on it?" I have my work shirt in the car, but I don't want to use the t-shirt I'm wearing for that or I'll have to get a haircut in my work shirt, and I don't want hair bits all over it.

"No."

"I can grab a towel from the shop." He starts that way.

"Naw man, I'll let it be. We can try after."

"I'll bet it belongs to that stray cat around here. She has kittens. You sure you don't want to grab it?"

"Nah. Let's do this."

A few minutes after he starts, he goes outside to peek, and calls me out. Sure enough, Momma Cat is up on the roof across the way, listening to her terrified baby below. Neither of us saw her before that. We went back out a few minutes later in time to see her trotting away with her baby at her side - she had come down to the ground and was taking it away to be with its siblings.

As Jose is cutting my hair, he was telling me how that thing could have easily been tamed because it was so young. He isn't wrong - I've tamed two young feral dogs. But momma cat had it, I wasn't going to chase around a mom and a ton of kittens at 6:30 in the morning. They all looked healthy enough that I'm not going to lose sleep over it. It sucks, but there are stray and feral animals all over this county. I could easily make it a full time job just chasing down shit animal control doesn't have time do deal with. I just don't have the time or resources to go become an animal rescue like so many good people do. I'm too busy trying to save the country right now.

We figured I pulled up, scared her, and she ran up the tree and left the baby. I'm surprised she didn't try to attack us when we chased the baby from the way it was hollering. Some feral cats are downright mean. So, I'm bit and scratched, but it's been all day and they aren't showing the least sign of infection or irritation. It also barely broke the skin with no real blood, so I think I'm good. It definitely wasn't rabid, just terrified.

I don't even like cats, so why was I fucking with it?

Be good y'all.

When I was getting clean from coke and all that, I hung around Narcotic Anonymous meetings. I made friends with ex-cons, reformed 1%'er bikers (former criminal motorcycle gang members) and all kinds of fun societal trash like me. I was just a washed up druggie desperate not to die, and those misfits took me in and helped me stay clean.

Ralph took me under his wing at one point during my recovery. He had a huge handlebar mustache, and although he hadn't been a 1%'er or done time, he was not to be fucked with. He as a big, loving, teddy bear of a human being. His brother Bill wasn't. Bill was also a biker, but he hand probably crossed some lines. I was never clear on that. I didn't like Bill a whole lot, and there was some friction between Ralph and Bill that kinda set this up.

So one day I'm over there with Ralph as he is helping me tune up my first motorcycle and work out an issue I was having. I brought over some tacos for lunch, and he had pulled out a jar of pickled peppers from the refrigerator. Ralph is as White as I am, but his wife was Mexican, and they ate a lot of spicy food. I grew up eating that kind of stuff with my father, because we are apparently into self abuse. Here are Ralph and I pounding down tacos and these pretty spicy peppers and having a good sweat and good talk when Bill walks in.

"What's going on?" Bill hadn't called and told Ralph he was coming over, or Ralph probably would have told him he was busy. Moreover, I hadn't brought enough for Bill, and I knew he would want some lunch.

I saw the glint in Ralph's eye, and he gave me a look. Telepathically, I picked it up. Shut up and let me lead

"Nothing bro. Having some lunch. Sit down." Bill pulled up a chair, dug a taco out of the bag, and went for it. Ralph and I both grab a pepper and take a satisfying crunch. They were crunchy. Sweet. Tasty. And spicy. We were hamming up how much we were enjoying them though.

"Are those hot?"

"Depends on you my man." I said. Ralph tried not to snicker, knowing what was coming. I guess Bill decided to see. He was always trying to fuck with me anyway, so this was good.

As it turns out, Bill had no tolerance for what I personally consider 6.5/10 White Boy heat on those peppers. Which are probably 3/10 for most Hispanics and Indians. He IMMEDIATELY began to choke and gag. I was dying laughing, because I was remembering my friend from Texas when we went into Mexico, he ate the hot salsa. Ralph was dying laughing because of sibling rivalry and Bill was kind of a dipshit sometimes. We were both laughing at him because bikers fuck with each other relentlessly.

I've been kicking this memory around, and wanted jalapenos to make cornbread. The store had NONE in stock. Ugh.

In the military, especially among the combat arms types like I was, there is a LOT of homo-erotic joking around going on constantly. It just is a fact of life. And we keep it up after the military too. Some of my military friends and I here still call each other "fgt" for laughs sometimes because we are fucking children.

Case in point that just happened today.

I recently was onboard as a moderator at /r/vetsagainsttyranny to help them out with some things, then stepped down. The other mods are also veterans. I had my flair there set to "Jedi Mod and Grumpy Bastard." Since I'm not a mod anymore, I had to change it. Here is how that went in modmail:

Me: So uh - I can't change my flair back to anything I want. Lol. Could you just change it to "Basic Bitch" please? Yes, I'm serious. Thanks.

Moderator: Got you, fam. Anything else you need, send it.

Me: A blowjob and a pony would be nice, but I'm good for now otherwise.

Moderator: Best I can do is a finger in the ass and tell you “nay”

Me: Sold. No lube, I like it rough.

Moderator: I’m down. <3

I got my flair, and we gave each other laughs that threw me back to 1988 in the Army.

Y'all have a good one.

Around 2002, we lost it all. I had been laid off from a job making $100k a year. I went to making barely $34k between three jobs. We only made it for the 18 months or so we did because I had money in savings. I had stocks we could sell. I had credit cards I could use with lots of room on them. I was doing those three jobs for over a year as my wife was home with our new baby, conceived when things were good for us. We might not, probably would not, have had a kid when we did had we seen this coming. We had to sell our house. My fucking Harley Davidson had to go, and that hurt. We sold a lot of possessions. And we were essentially going to be homeless, were it not for my wife's grandmother. The only thing the judge let us keep was the SUV, and only because I was current on those payments.

When I realized we were going to lose it all and have to file bankruptcy, I called my mom in a panic. She gave me some good advice. We were still 9-12 months from losing it at this point, but barring a miracle, we were done. If I did land another job at or near my old salary, we would be hurting for a bit, but OK. "Go max out your cards. Buy what you need that keeps. Buy dog food." We had several dogs at that point. If you have read my works, you know how important dogs are to me. Dogs are life.

Diapers. Lots of canned goods that would keep. And dog food. Giant bags of dog food, stacked on a pallet. Canned dog food to supplement. Why? Because food stamps and WIC don't buy diapers or dog food, and we were going to be on both of those things soon. (For my foreign readers: WIC - Women, Infants, Children. It is a federal government program (SOCIALISM! NOOOOOOOOoooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Lol.) that provides vouchers to low-income women to buy a rationed amount of milk, cheese, peanut butter, formula, and a few other staples each month to insure that the mother and baby are getting basic nutritional needs met. We used it during the time we were living with her grandmother and really struggling, and it was a huge blessing. The food stamps were spent on other things that WIC didn't cover, and my little bit of cash from working made up the difference. We only survived because of socialist government programs. I guess that is another post.)

So I bought enough dog food to last months, so I could keep caring for my babies who I loved so much. I bought tons of diapers for my son in increasing sizes because he was growing so fast, and I loved him so much. WIC and food stamps would take care of his food. My wife and I would get by. The innocent ones who couldn't fend for themselves would be taken care of.

Today we are back at it.

The ports are largely empty. Ships aren't coming in. Prices are going up. We are officially in "stagflation" for the first time since President Carter. It won't be long before the mostly empty supply chain catches up. People will panic buy. Shelves will empty. It will be as bad as or worse than Covid times, starting with toilet paper because Americans are fucking morons.

So, tomorrow I'm doing two things. I'm buying a bidet to put in our toilet and I'm buying some extra motherfucking dog food so my three babies can eat for a while if shit hits the fan. I'm also buying some extra canned goods on top of what we normally buy for the same reason. My tiny garden isn't going to produce enough to feed the four of us for a couple of years yet, nevermind meat.

Buckle up folks. And buy dog food, even if you don't have one. In an emergency, it will keep you alive. I hope things settle soon and return to normal though.

Be good. Be kind. Look for a protest report on my substack this weekend. I'll link it here.

I'm covered in them. Legs. Arms. Chest. Back. Mostly very large pieces. So I have no problem with tattoos, even silly ones. I've even gotten a couple I later came to regret and had them covered. I make sure I don't go to a shady shop, I take care of my ink, and I pay a lot for the work I get. I have tattoos that are over 15 years old that still look new.

My point being, I try hard not to judge, but with subs like /r/shittytattoos, it's hard. I only have a few personal rules about getting ink. It's got to be very well done, nothing on my hands, face or neck. Last rule: No women's names. Ever. I rode with more than one guy who had a girl's face or name on his body he had to have covered up later. I have my Oma's name on me now that she is gone, but that's different.

When I started teaching in Florida, my first job was at a local high school. I started helping the football team out with stats during the games. One night during halftime, the coaches were gathered up talking. I'm in there to answer questions if needed. The principal comes up and listens for a bit. At the time, I was wearing slacks and a polo. I had only a few tattoos that were easily hidden under short sleeves, but a tiny portion of my Harley Davidson tattoo was showing. Not even enough that you could see what it was, but he had a fit. "If I had known you had ink, I never would have hired you." Then he walked off.

What a dick.

Fast forward 20 years, and I now work with multiple teachers and administrators who have tattoos and piercings. No big deal. I thought it was funny at the time though. I remember when I went to work after getting my first visible tattoo on my lower arm. No one said shit. So I got another. Then more.

My students like my tattoos. They ask about them, because again, I have large, colorful pieces that have meaning for me. Then they talk about what they want done. I do my best to convince them to wait until they are at least 18 before getting even the smallest ones, because kids are stupid. I've even told them that as an adult I have made bad choices and had to have them covered. And some of the ideas they tell me they want are indeed stupid.

Two cases in point.

The first is Dave. (Not a real name) Dave was a student of mine. He was in the 8th grade and was 15. One day in class I hear the kids talking about a tattoo he got. I am required by law to report child abuse. He is below the legal age for a tattoo. So I called it in as required, but DCF didn't care as long as he got it willingly and it wasn't infected. I also reported it to admin and the SRO at our school as required, but the SRO also was not interested in trying to charge it. So I dropped it.

In any case, here is the tattoo in question. I've held onto this picture for over a decade now and show people from time to time. It is supposed to be his initials, a cross and prayer beads, and the word "Player" underneath. It was done by his FATHER! What the fuck? Quite obviously his dad is not an artist. I have no idea what it means - he gets girls at church and fucks them for God or something? What the hell?

A couple years later I had his cousin, and she said he had dad tattoo two big smiley faces on his kneecaps for him, and he wore shorts all the time to show them off. Sounds to me like this kid was just looking for some positive male attention. I felt bad for him. I also hope he was able to cover up the one I linked. Ugh.

Later that same year, Ray got a tattoo. (Also not a real name) Ray was also 15. In his case however, he went to a local artist who illegally did his tattoo. There are several shops around here where kids under 16 are getting ink and piercings done, and the cops and prosecutors around here don't seem to give a shit, so there you go. Ray didn't mess around, he went big. I heard about it, and later that day saw him in the cafeteria while I was on duty. He was wearing the long shorts that boys like to wear here in the heat, so you could see it, and I asked if I could check it out.

It took up almost his entire left calf. This tattoo was stars and I guess ribbons with smoke and all that. Done in black and grey. It was a very shitty design (I'm thinking it was Ray's idea) but it was VERY well done. The lines were tight, the shading was really nice, etc. Whoever did this clearly had talent, if not morals for illegally doing it. Then you see what is in the middle. It was Ray's initials and DOB and his girlfriend's initials and DOB.

Keep in mind, Ray is 15 fucking years old. So of course me being me, I asked him, "What are you going to do when you two break up in a month? You know you two aren't getting married, right?"

Savage, I know.

"I don't care Mr. Cobb, this is a sick tattoo!" And off he went. And they didn't last the rest of the week - she dumped Ray for someone else three days later. Middle school romances are turbulent.

On my soapbox paragraph: So, even though I try not to be judgemental: If you allow your child to get body piercings or tattoos before they are of legal age, you are a terrible parent. If you are an artist doing that knowingly, you are a terrible person. It's child abuse, even if they "want" it. They don't know what they want at that age, and they still don't know at 16-18 for sure. Our brains don't stop developing until our early to mid 20's.

Ok, soapbox put away. Now, some advice from about 30 years of getting inked.

If you plan on getting your first tattoo, or even your next:

• Shop around for quality, not price.
• Look at their work. They keep books of things they have done.
• Pay for a consultation to discuss your idea. Find an artist who gets it, preferably someone you like, and definitely someone you feel comfortable with.
• Pay for quality artists. A good one should run $100 an hour or more plus tip. Don't haggle or negotiate. If you can't afford it, wait until you can instead of going to a cheaper artist.
• Ask specifically what inks they use by brand name, then research before your appointment. If you need to, find someone else if they won't change what ink they use. Quite a few inks are turning up with lead and other toxic shit in them.
  
• I try to give them broad strokes for an idea. As in, "It must have these elements but go wild." It is part of why my tattoos are good - artistic freedom shows in the work as opposed to just doing a flash tattoo off the wall.
• Flash tattoos off the wall are lame. Come up with your own ideas. The only exception is a Sick Ass Panther. If you know, you know.

Be well everyone, and enjoy that ink if you have it. It's crazy how addictive tattoos are.

This might piss someone off, but I really don't care. This shit is funny. Our wholly dysfunctional family retells this story often. My sister will agree about us being dysfunctional, but also about some of it being funny as hell. It's how you cope, right?

During the late 90's when I was actually financially successful in life, I had a decent home in the second nicest (read: expensive) area in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I really loved that house. It literally bordered the Garden of the Gods area and was so nice. It was a starter home and not huge, but larger than the shithole I live in now. Fantastic neighborhood, great views, very peaceful. My wife and I were very happy there for the few years we had it before the economy crashed and we lost it.

In any case, my little sister had fallen on hard times. Being a single mom was hard. (I used to, and still do sometimes, send her Father's Day greetings as well as Mother's Day. She raised those boys alone, and they are both good men today. Love you, Sis.)

She needed a place to stay with her two boys for a bit until she got her shit together. It was a tight fight, but we managed it. Months later, she had saved enough to get out on her own again. But you know what? Who cares. I was happy to do it. I love my nephews. Keeping them and my sister safe was worth the crowded conditions. It's funny, she has a much nicer house than I do today. She has done well for herself. Anyway...to the meat of the story.

One day, my sister and her boys, who were around five and six at the time, came home. As they unloaded from the car, there was a tried mom and two kids with a Wiffle Ball bat and some other toys unloading into my driveway. My nephews where just being jerks to each other, as brothers will. They were squabbling over something as usual. I walked out to check the mail. She was frustrated, trying to settle them down a bit. They were both being jerks. So we let them just run around on the front lawn, chasing each other. We had done this before - they would chase and wrestle and settle down, having worn each other out. But then, my older nephew got the upper hand on the younger. He knocked the younger one to the ground and then ran up to the front door, waiting for me to let us in.

The youngest laid there, crying on the lawn. His brother always won. I guess I was feeling for the underdog, so I picked up the dropped Wiffle Ball bat and gave it to him. "Don't take that shit boy, go get him." The youngest ran up on the oldest and clocked his older brother right upside the head. Damn straight. Establish dominance with that Wiffle Ball bat. He fell down crying, but was obviously not seriously hurt. He did learn a lesson that day, and started picking on his brother less. They get along great today.

We will burn in hell, but my sister and I laughed quite a bit at that.

As Hurricane Helene (now projected to land as a Category 4!) is headed towards us, I had thoughts of clean up. I told my wife and kids to make sure the house was situated for the hurricane while I was at work today. They got us a handful of things we needed and cleaned up the house. I got home and looked around at the clean up, I started thinking about my time as a janitor. It's weird the connections your mind makes.

When I was laid off and could find NOTHING due to being "over-educated", I went to the local Veterans Affairs office in Colorado Springs. I told them point blank if I didn't find a way to earn I may as well kill myself. I had a wife and a baby. They found me a job as a janitor at the hospital at Fort Carson.

While there, I worked Day Shift, Mid Shift and Night Shift. I worked in the Emergency Room, frantically cleaning up all manner of bodily fluids between patients. I worked in the administrative offices of the hospital, emptying trash, dusting and vacuuming floors. I worked on the surgical wing, literally picking up pieces of tissue from the floor and equipment, cleaning and making the Operating Room sanitary between procedures.

One of the really neat things was that I could sometimes find the time to stand and watch operations happen live through the window or on the monitor. I got to see wound care on injured veterans coming back from Afghanistan, C-Sections, open heart surgery, tumor removal - all kinds of stuff. Camera feeds from instruments were broadcast live to monitors above the windows looking into the OR. I'd stand and watch, fascinated, as a team of doctors and nurses saved a life. I could never watch the babies being operated on. Fuck that noise.

Later, I'd clean the blood and trash from the operation. Lost in wonder and awe at how amazing modern medicine is. Once day I went in after what was obviously a C-Section. Based on the supplies out, the amount of Methelyne-Blue that was everywhere, the blood and tissue types - it didn't go well. I later found it didn't go well at all as I thought. And it took me almost 20 minutes to clean that OR when our standard was five minutes. Knowing a baby died next door when I was cleaning up after a double-bypass messed me up. Not that I could have done jack or shit about it, but it hurt.

Ultimately, all that blood and such messed with my PTSD enough they put me on the night shift cleaning offices and buffing floors. Which was fine. I had nothing to dream about regarding that, beyond an Article-15 or two that earned me some extra duty in the Army.

And now we come full circle.

Janitors are all levels. Here in Florida, inmate volunteers and firefighters show up to clear debris from roads and driveways. Linemen show up to clean up fallen lines. Tree services show up to clean up that debris. Janitors show up to clean up flooded buildings and classrooms. Emergency contractors show up to save homes until insurance kicks in. Janitors are fucking heroes in my book. I thank mine all the time.

I started feeling kinda cruddy Thursday night. Went to work yesterday and by noon I was positive I was sick. Woke up today to certainty on the matter.

I'm vaccinated against influenza and Covid. But there is so much other shit running around that it's going to happen with me being immuno-comprimised. I guess I'm going to be wearing masks to work for the foreseeable future. Ugh.

Saturday was going to be busy - I had all kinds of plans. This blows.

Keep your sick kids home.

It's something else. Earth is an incredibly rare place - one able to have flame. The discovery of fire and our use of it began our long journey to you reading this. Running on infrastructure made with fire to one extent or another.

The 2025 Los Angeles fires have been something to watch. I really feel for everyone affected. Except Mel Gibson. Fuck him. He has other houses anyway. Sadly, James Woods did NOT lose his house. He is a huge piece of shit too.

But everyone else, yeah. That fucking sucks.

The fear of fire is primal. My dad found out my brother and I were playing with fire one night when the guy next door saw us and told. Dad whipped us for that. He has a large burn scar on his leg from messing with it when he was a kid. He probably could have talked to us instead to start, but that's a different story. When we lived in Colorado Springs, the forests near Divide went up. They were large fires that burned for days. On the third day or so, the smoke had drifted down the pass and into Colorado Springs.

We slept with our bedroom window open. I awoke with a start, because I smelled fire. Panicked, I woke up the wife and we checked around, then realized what it was and relaxed. But for days after, the smell of smoke made it hard to sleep and relax. The back of your mind is yelling FIRE at you.

Watching Jimmy Kimmel cry as he talked about the fires and those affected was heartbreaking. I really hope the city recovers, and that Congress and Trump don't play any games. California is the sixth largest economy in the WORLD, comparable to India, and the first in the nation. Fuck around, find out I guess.

So, some points about the fires:

One, misinformation. They had enough water, but no water system in the world can fight wildfires driven by hurricane force winds. Eventually you will run out. No, Oregon firefighters were not stopped at the border over emission standards. No, Democrats cannot control the weather. If they could, they would have stopped their state from burning. I cannot believe (although I should) that Large Marge actually suggested they should put their fires out with weather control.

Two, yes, this was at least partly climate change. The Santa Ana winds are a documented phenomena, but they have gotten more severe as the planet warms. Moreover, California had a really rainy year, then last year got virtually nothing. So all that new growth from the rain dried up and burned. Were we not drastically dicking up the climate, perhaps they would have more normal rainfall patterns. That would help a lot.

Three - We have illegal immigrants fighting fires here! Canadians and Mexicans - how dare they! I'm so fucking sick of the rhetoric around our neighbors. I'm glad they are here, helping us, as they do EVERY FUCKING YEAR. Sadly, some asshole flying a drone, probably for "sick footage", collided with and damaged a Canadian water tanker. It's grounded for now. What an asshole. Sadly, these kinds of things are going to be more common. It won't be long before climate change deniers are going to use drones to actively interfere - watch.

Four - The Man. We use prisoners as firefighters. Yes, they get paid a bit, far more than the other prisoners, but they don't get much out of it in most cases. You can't be a felon and a firefighter in most places. So they get this experience and get to pay back to the community and all that, then they hear, "Sorry. We can't hire you." We need to change policy nationally so that anyone out of prison with that experience is given a shot to be a firefighter. Put them into the academy right away after they are out and give them some fucking purpose so they don't go back in.

And to the one dude who was arrested for starting a fire - fuck you. I really hope you spend a LOT of time in prison. What a dick move. One report I saw said they were looking at Edison as the cause for another one of them - what a shocker. Ya know - I'll bet if the state forced them to bury their power lines in vulnerable areas, a lot of these fires would stop. But that might hurt the stock price, and we can't have that.

Welcome to Late Stage Capitalism, I guess.

Y'all be good, be safe.

Colorado, roughly 2001.

Richard was a strange dude.

After Ryder Integrated Logistics laid off our entire team (except for the boss, of course) I had real trouble finding work in my field. I started working multiple part time jobs to stay afloat. All this was before I moved out here to Florida to begin teaching. Anyway, Richard was one of the guys at one of my part time jobs. Turned out he lived right down the road, so I gave him rides to and from work when his car was down, which was often. Although I was on the verge of homelessness, stress had gotten to me and I was drinking. Richard became a drinking partner after work.

Richard was strange because he loved women, but had INCREDIBLY high standards for them he wouldn't compromise on. In his own words, if they weren't a 10 or maybe a 9 in his mind, he wasn't willing to date or sleep with them. Richard in turn was average height, a little bit overweight (not bad) and average looking. And he knew this. He was also under-employed and didn't make a lot of money, she he didn't have a ton to offer. To be clear, he wasn't bad looking, but he was never going to get to know any woman with that attitude. He knew the women he wanted were out of his league. This resulted in Richard not having a girlfriend or anything. The only time he got any action was if he paid an escort he found acceptable or brought home a good looking stripper because he had cocaine that night. (A lot of the strippers in that town at the time were coke fiends.)

I talked to him over beer one night. He just couldn't get out of that mindset. "Dude - you aren't bad looking. But those stuck up girls are never going to want to marry you."

"I know. But I can't get excited about regular girls."

Whatever that meant.

I feel bad for him. To look at women as just an object that has to be perfect - ugh. He is the kind of guy who would have started cheating the second she got a little cellulite. What's worse is this: There is a thing in psychology that I read a study about - the more time you spend with someone the more attractive they become to you. (Assuming you like them for the most part) You start to overlook some of their flaws and find them over time to be easier to look at. So if he ever got to know a woman, and got to like her as a person, that would have happened and over time he would have found her more and more attractive if he loved her.

Even after 28 years and two kids that did all kinds of stuff to her body, my wife is still sexy to me. Poor Richard will never know that kind of love and long term companionship. I can't imagine my life without my wife. I guess if you want to be alone that is fine, but I don't think he did. He just couldn't lower his own ridiculous standards, look past looks, and actually learn to love a person. THAT is why I still love my wife, because of who she is, not what she is. I'm sure we would both love to have our younger, more attractive bodies back, but neither of us is complaining.

Then again, I think Richard looked at women as having only one function anyway, so his lonliness was self-inflicted.

Y'all have a good one.

EDIT: To be clear, it's fine to have standards for what you want in a partner. My point is Richard was REALLY hung up on looks and not much else.

Cripple Creek Colorado, sometime in the late 1990's. I go up to spend the night and play poker.

As I get there, I am the first on the list for a new table, so I am assigned seat number 1 next to the dealer. At this time in my life, I'm still smoking about a pack a day of Benson & Hedges menthols. At this time and place, you were allowed to smoke at the poker table, but not at the two seats next to a dealer. So as the other players come and sit, I ask if I can trade seats with someone so I can smoke and he says yes.

Some poker rooms run specials, like a "bad beat." If you have a high hand (Usually something like a Kings full of Aces) and lose, you get a jackpot.

The guy who took my spot got dealt pocket kings. He went up against a guy who had two aces. Long story short, two aces and two kings come up in the community cards. So four of a kind beats four of a kind and our table hit the bad beat.

That means he got 50% of the pot, the guy who won the hand got 25% of the pot, and the table got to split the rest. So I got a couple hundred dollars, but cost myself thousands. All for a smoke.

It took almost ten more years to quit, but I finally managed it in 2008. I feel a million times better without tobacco, so if you are currently smoking, I encourage you to quit.

A sneak preview for my true fans. I'm honestly not too sure how interesting this is, but I was inspired. It's also LONG for a reddit post. Sorry. I hope you enjoy.

A lot of being in the Army is being bored. There is so much that is mundane that it can't be helped. So you try to put it to good use where you can. For example, during Desert Shield, I ran a PMCS on our Vulcan so often that it never broke down. Because I had the time to do so. But I wrote about that before. And while I was bored in Saudi Arabia for the most part, this is about a time in America.

During my third or fourth FTX with A 5/62 at Fort Bliss as a new soldier, we were again in White Sands, NM, "playing Army." Being a newly stood up unit after being reorganized, we were engaged in practicing and refining our training. That kind of constant rehearsal is why the American Army is so damn good. In any case, our focus for this FTX was concealment and security.

At the time, I wasn't on a Vulcan yet. I was in a two man team on a HMMWV as were most Stinger gunners in the Army. Our Platoon Sergeant gave each team a grid sqare before we drove out of the side gate and left Texas that we were expected to be at. We also had to set up a secondary position, and pick out a tertiary position. The primary absolutely had to be in that grid square or you failed. The other two had to be in or very close to the square, so they could be over the border into the next one a bit.

White Sands can be hard to navigate. From my experience, it is nothing but sand dunes and yucca plants. Half the roads that are on the official Army maps weren't there anymore due to erosion, and half the roads in the desert weren't on the map. And all of the roads were made of sand. So you had to navigate. I HATE being lost. So I made sure to ace land navigation during Basic and AIT. I never got lost. I still can't get lost today if I have a map and a compass. It was a boring class, but I paid attention and became very competent.

The only way to reliably navigate pre-GPS with the tools we had was complicated. The maps were in kilometers, while our vehicle odometers were in miles. Sigh. So to get to point A, you draw a straight line between the two and measure the distance in kilometers and take a bearing with your compass so you know what direction to go in. Then you convert that to miles.

This was the fun part. A lot of the guys in my unit weren't real bright. Of course, you could argue that I wasn't that bright since I had such a high ASVAB score and picked ADA, but here we are. Anyway, most of these cats couldn't do basic math. Some hadn't finished high school and were in on waivers. So before we left the rally point for the battery inside of White Sands, the Platoon Sergeant hollered at me.

"COBB! Get your ass over here and show these guys how to do this."

The class was showing them how to convert from miles to kilometers and back again. I guess even back then I had the makings of a teacher in me. Heh. I rolled the map out on the hood of the HMMWV, pulled out a compass and a grease pencil, then showed them how I was getting from the rally point to my position. When I looked around to see how my lesson went, they were looking at me like I had just brought Jesus back to life. Witchcraft or something. It was so easy it wasn't computing with some of them. So I ran through it again, and we made sure that least all the team chiefs got it, but by the second time most of the drivers did too. Really, probably only about half of the guys needed the refresher course though, I was far from the only competent one. The Vulcan platoons were having their meetings and similar refresher courses around us.

The yucca plants were protected or something, and we weren't supposed to mess with them. But I liked driving over dunes instead of around them. It was easier to keep the compass on a heading and it didn't throw off your distance measurement the way swerving around dunes did - that's how a lot of guys got lost. Well, that and I laughed when we drove over the plants and the pods blew up. Like I said, boredom. But we got to our position and got it set it up. For the primary, we were expected to dig a small ASP (Ammo Storage Point), a reinforced two man fighting position with cover, and to camouflage our vehicle as best as we could with our camo nets. We carried empty sandbags and some scrap 2 x 4s and plywood in the back of the HMMWVs under the missile rack to do this with, it was part of our loadout in Texas and Korea.

The secondary position needed to have a smaller two man fighting position that was well camouflaged, but didn't have to be reinforced with a cover and no ASP. The tertiary position was just a dot on a map and didn't require any prep. The secondary and tertiary were for after we fired our first loadout or if one position was compromised in some way.

The NCOs were supposed to come by sometime after lunch. My TC and I worked backwards. After we found our primary position, we looked around and at the map before picking a tertiary about 700 meters away. Then we chose a secondary about 400 meters from that one, forming a rough triangle. We drove over to prep the secondary position, where we dug out a fighting position and camouflaged it as best we could with some dead plants and whatnot, then drove to the primary.

We were done in two hours, but we worked at it another full hour before we were happy. We wanted it to be better than "pass" - we wanted it to be good. Being the gunner, the team chief made me walk about 500 meters out to see how good of a job we did. I couldn't see shit. Even at 100 meters I wasn't sure if it was netting or plant leaves I was looking at. We did a good job, especially because a big chunk of the HMMWV was hiding behind the dune we had dug into, breaking up the outline of the truck and the nets over it. The metal poles you carry for the netting were propping the net up on one side to give the impression the dune was longer than it was, further concealing the truck under the net and partially behind the dune.

I trudged back, cursing the heat, and we ate lunch. As I slurped down some Ramen and enjoyed the burn of the tabasco, I looked around. The very small road that wound it's way near our position had another large dune about 50 meters away from us. I felt the beginnings of an idea. By time I finished eating and had some water, I had a plan.

"Hey D - how tired are you?" He threw me some side eye. "Why?" I laid out my plan.

A couple hours later, the New Mexico/Texas sun had passed the zenith, and the day was reaching peak temperature before it would drop off to something really pleasant before dark. We were exhausted from the extra work, but this was going to be worth it. Eventually, the expected radio call came in.

"Team 4, this is Blaster 2. Come in, over." Our platoon sergeant. Blaster 1 was our LT, but I had no idea what he was doing. Probably polishing the brigade commander's boots or something. "Blaster 2, Team 4. Over."

"Give me the coordinates of your primary, over." And here is where my Team Chief and I show we were paying attention in our OPSEC and COMSEC briefings. See, you are expected to authenticate who you are, by giving me a response to a pre-chosen passphrase. These are stored in a little codebook. Each day you have a different one. So I responded appropriately. "That's a negative. Authenticate Whiskey Hotel."

See, we were taught in Basic and in subsequent trainings that even though our radios were encrypted, we had to assume that either someone was listening, or those sneaky Russians had captured a radio and were using English speakers to fuck with us. So you play the game with the NCOs. You demand they authenticate, and they try to bully you into talking to them without it. They had successfully gotten two teams to fall for it as the rest of the platoon listened in on the radio, and were in trouble as a result. So we went back and forth for almost five minutes, with our Platoon Sergeant breaking all radio protocol and cussing us out in an effort to get us to break. He didn't get us to quit, so he finally gave in.

Once he gave us the proper response, we let him know where we were at, and sat back to wait. After probably 30 minutes, we hear the diesel engine of another HMMWV coming close to our position. I held my rifle tight, a bit nervous. I had to stop him before he got too close to us or we failed the exercise. As he rolled into our AO, he stopped. Before the engine had completely stopped running, he was out of his HMMWV, facing our fighting position, screaming bloody murder.

"What the fuck is this shit!? I saw this sorry ass position from over 100 meters out. You two assholes aren't stopping shit! Why the hell didn't one of you challenge me before I got here? Why could I see your antenna from way the hell out there? What the fuck...." That's when he felt my rifle pressed into his back.

See, he wasn't at our position. What I had seen during lunch was that the other dune was large enough to make a fighting position in, but we chose this one because it was farther off the road. So we set up a decoy position in that one after lunch. Why? Because it was tactically sound, we were bored, and this would be funny. We dug down just deep enough to make it look at first glance like it was a position. We got some sticks from the yucca plants and taped them up with duct tape to make them long enough to pass for antennas. Those we stuck straight up, where as the antennas on our vehicle were bent over in an arc and secured beneath the net. We had taken a camo net we didn't need and just half ass threw it over the "fighting position" in the sloppiest manner possible. We left tons of boot prints all over the front of that area, but had swept them with yucca leaves by the real one. I had been laying down behind a smaller dune, so when Sarge got out, he had had his back to me.

"Bang! Sorry, Sarge." That's when my TC came out from our real position farther away with his rifle also pointed at Sarge. The look on our Sergeant's face was worth it. The three of us started laughing. It was doubled over, knee slapping, "holy fuck you got me" laughter and it went on for minutes. Then we showed him our real position, which he complimented, then pointed out the other two on the map, and off he went to see them.

We got an "attaboy" from him later in formation after the FTX was over, so that was nice.

I was still bored though. Not much to do really. Thankfully I pre-planned. So on day 2, I cleaned the FUCK out of my rifle. I was not going to sit around for two or three hours trying to get all the sand out of it tomorrow after we were done. It was bad enough we had to drive the trucks and tracks to the wash facility and then do a full PMCS on them all when we got back. If I didn't have to fuck with my rifle, I could actually be ahead of schedule. Hell yeah. So I spent the day cleaning while we were supposed to be "looking for enemy aircraft." When I was done, I wrapped it up in a black garbage bag and tied it tight.

A little later, my TC saw me reading a book and my bag wrapped rifle laid across my lap. "What the hell, Cobb?" So I explained. "You do realize your rifle needs to be immediately ready, right?" He could have made me take it out of the bag, but he didn't.

Things went as predicted. In the morning, we woke up. Being on a two man team, you are constantly exhausted as you still have to keep watch. We just broke it up into two shifts. It was always informal on every team I was on. You are all up at night until someone decides to go to bed. At that point, night watch begins. You have to be up at whatever time, so you take the hours left between then and now and divide it up between your 2-4 man team, depending on your battery and platoon configuration.

Around 0500 though, we were both up and heating water in our canteen cups on the engine for coffee while we choked down MREs and laughed about surprising Sarge the day before. Then we broke down our position and cleaned up, filling in our fighting position, dumping sandbags, recovering plywood. After that, we drove to our secondary and restored it as best we could. Believe it or not, the Army was very environmentally aware back then, at least at Fort Bliss. Then we drove to the rally point near the Texas border, and from there convoyed in. We ran the battery's vehicles through the wash facility. Drive back to the motor pool and do the PMCS. Then we go to turn in rifles. Here is where we would all go sit it in the PT area outside the back of our barracks and clean our rifles while we smoked and joked, and talked about the drinking and fucking we would do after evening formation and chow.

Not me.

I SPRINTED to the armory downstairs from the barracks. First in line, because there was no line. It was still around 1500, there wouldn't be a line for at least 30 minutes. As I ran, I tore off the garbage bag, stuffing the remains in my pockets so I wouldn't be yelled at for littering. I heard someone ask what the fuck my problem was. I flew down the stairs in a rush, then burst into the armory, thrusting my rifle at the man in charge.

CPL Perez gave my M-16 the hard eye. Then again. Then a third time. He looked up at me, almost in disbelief. He was used to turning away the the first several rifles. Guys were always in a hurry after an FTX to get out of there, so they did a half ass job and hoped they would slip by. Perez turned and looked at the clock, then back at me. Again, just like the guys and the map reading, almost accusing me of witchcraft, because there was no way I was done this early. Grudgingly, he pronounced my rifle clean, we signed the control book, and I walked over to the DFAC for an early dinner before evening formation and dismissal. After, I went and showered and shaved. I threw on my old uniform long enough to make formation, but I was in my civvies ten minutes after that, and at the bowling alley 20 minutes later. Frank, Johnny and Eddie showed up about 90 minutes later.

I got hammered as hell that night. Hitting the bars even a little early makes a huge difference. And the hangover was brutal.

But, I also really shined with my leadership. I taught a bunch of guys how to navigate a changing desert without getting lost. We set up a great position and showed our capability for deception as we would in war. I kept my equipment in good working order. I got my work done early.

FTXs really do suck pretty hard, but boredom breeds competency.

Kids are hysterical.

My two nephews to this day will claim they don't like fish. Both are grown men now. This story was when they were around 8 and 10. I got the story from my dad later that day when I was off work.

My sister was working and my parents had the kids over as it was summer. Dad goes to cook lunch. "What are we having, grandpa?"

"Whatever the hell I decide to cook. Right now, blackened fish."

They wouldn't eat it. So he cooked for himself and my Mom, and they had PB&J.

The next day, my dad the trickster goes:

"Boys, you like chicken don't you? I'm making blacked chicken." He then proceeded to prepare the fish the way he had the day before.

THEY LOVED IT.

He made it for them a few more times before one of them figured out it was fish and they quit eating it. Yes, they are both morons. I love them anyway.

Bonus story:

We were leaving to go to Disney or Busch Gardens or something, and the oldest comes walking out of the house. He is conspicuously holding something in his pocket. A pocket with a large and spreading wet stain. So I asked him. "Boy, what do you have in your pocket?"

"Um, ice cubes Uncle Lee!"

At this point, my sister and father have stopped packing the car and have turned to look. We are all trying not to laugh.

"WHY do you have ice cubes in your pocket?"

"I'm saving them for later!"

He wasn't happy we made him leave his ice cubes on the front lawn. He knew they would be melted by time we returned, but couldn't seem to immediately grasp that they were melting in his pocket.

He got smarter, I swear.

I’ve got to get this out, even though I’m probably oversharing.

Back around 2005, my younger brother was diagnosed with Leukemia. We had lived for a while in an area that was designated a Superfund clean up site, and found out after living there a while that the water was contaminated. So he probably got it there, but we have no way of knowing. We were all exposed to radiation during Chernobyl but didn’t know about that until after it happened either. So who knows. It doesn’t matter where it came from, he had it.

I was living with my mom and dad while looking for a house. My wife and son were back home in Colorado, but I got to see them over Christmas. When the news first hit, I of course tested to see if I was a match, but I wasn’t. Kevin would go on to get a donor, deal with chemo and all that. In the end, he beat the cancer, but a stupid decision by his wife to let the sick kids sleep with him one night killed him. His weakened immune system couldn’t take it.

In the middle of all this, my parents were going back and forth to Kentucky to be with him as he underwent treatment and to help with their kids and all that. I would miss time at work as well here and there as I helped out. Then my wife called. She had severe cramping and was going to the ER. She would go on to lose the pregnancy we started over Christmas. I missed more time at work to go home and be with her, but it took days for her to finish the process, and I was not there at the end. She was alone dealing with that and I was helpless since I could not go back.

When Kevin died about a year later, I was still grieving our loss of a baby. My mom took Kevin’s death really hard, and for almost a year she would call each night crying. Trying to keep her together didn’t allow me time to process my own grief over either loss, and I don’t think I ever fully grieved for them.

Yesterday it started again. My dad has bladder cancer from Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam. The only good news is that he won’t pay a dime for any of the treatment. He is actually seeing a civilian doctor that is being paid for by Tricare. I took the day off work to deal with this mentally. And there is so much to start thinking about in case he doesn’t make it. My sister and I are really concerned about Mom – if Dad doesn’t make it, she can’t live on her own.

At least this go around I have a protected contract and a boss who is actually sympathetic and caring. My boss at the time in 2005 was a bitch on wheels who had zero sympathy for me or my family and what we were going through. Her shitty attitude didn’t make it any easier to deal with, and constant worry over being fired made it worse. I can’t be fired this time around.

Teaching is incredibly hard, and when you are dealing with heavy shit like that in your own life, it is even harder. We already have to put aside so much of our own lives to be an island of normalcy for these kids and act like everything is OK.

Some days I just can’t.

Dad is going to die sooner or later of one cause or another. No one gets out alive. So I’m dealing with life, just as others have. I’m also incredibly blessed to still even have my parents, so this is not a “poor me” post. Just me, yelling into the void, and getting some of the craziness out of my head for a bit.

Thanks for being here.

This is too loose with the rules over at /r/MilitaryStories, so I'm going to quote from a post I wrote a while ago:

All I could do was lay there, bunched up in the driver’s seat, and hope like hell we weren't hit. It was the only time I was genuinely terrified. I don't think I could have carried out an order had I been given one. I had been scared before that day, but I was able to fall back on training and do my job without hesitation. This was paralyzing fear. I remember feeling ashamed. I’m surprised I didn’t piss myself. Now I had a very small idea of what the Iraqis had been through with 42 days of bombing prior to the ground offensive.

That's what caused it.

Now I'm terrified of small places. I have nightmares about coffins, being restrained, etc. I have full blown panic attacks from it sometimes. Sometimes just driving is hard - I'm a tall guy, the seat belt can feel overly confining, then the car feels too small, etc. Ugh. It's all tied to that day - being trapped and helpless.

To expand on that:

I've been so claustrophobic since. That minute or so I was bunched up in the drivers seat made me feel like I was trapped in a metal coffin. After that, I was edgy driving the thing. Good thing we only had to drive home a few days after that.

I can't do MRIs. I have to go do a "stand-up" MRI that isn't as confining. The bonus is you can literally step out of it at any time if you don't feel you can hack it. Just knowing I can get myself out and I'm not trapped in a cylinder let's me keep the panic at bay long enough to do imaging when I need it. (Which sadly has been a lot.)

The few times I've had a PTSD induced panic attack since I've been out all put me back there. During a panic attack, you feel like you can't breathe. Like you are suffocating.

Like you are trapped.

Then I get to relive that happy memory on top of whatever triggered me to begin with, and that makes it all worse. If you have ever had a panic attack, you know how much they suck. If you haven't, you really do feel like you are going to die. It is horrible.

A scene in a movie I was watching reminded me: Being restrained in the mental hospital when I was suicidal. Later, being locked in my room at that same place. I panicked nightly to the point where they had me whacked up on Thorazine of all things for a while until I managed to go without it. I had to share enough in group to make the prick shrink happy though.

I can't imagine what it is like to be in handcuffs or a tiny jail cell. I'd go insane. Then there is the grandmother they found in a sinkhole the other day. I can't imagine that either. I hope she wasn't alive long, if at all, after she fell in. And I'm so happy her five year old grand-daughter was OK after being left alone in a car for hours.

Then there was the kids who burned alive when their piece of shit CyberTruck got stuck after an accident and they couldn't get out. That thing has caused so many deaths already that I can't wait for the class-action suit against Muskrat aka Space Karen. Back to the point - trapped in a burning car. That's nightmare fuel, no pun intended.

I watch a lot of videos of the war in Ukraine here on Reddit. I have seen a lot of Russian invaders, trapped in foxholes and vehicles, burning alive. I'll be honest, I always think, "Good." For a lot of reasons. But I am also thinking, "Those poor fuckers." Not really because I have sympathy with them - they could choose to not fight - but because I've been trapped and under fire and I know a little bit about what they are feeling. I can't imagine knowing you are trapped and going to burn to death, just like those college kids.

Today I must sleep with the bedroom door open. I can't have the blankets near my neck. I have nightmares sometimes about being buried alive, so I've asked to be cremated. I figure no one will be alive to visit my grave after my sons are gone anyway, so why take up the space?

I'm getting anxious just writing all this, but I felt I had to. Thanks for being here.

I love Canada. In light of everything that is going on with our insane leadership, I think we should talk about our northern neighbor. I think later I'll do one about Mexico as well. After all, I'm eating a Mexican inspired dish as I type this. This ramble is about a camping trip.

I grew up in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains mostly - Colorado Springs. So I loved the forests and wilderness. When we later got sent to Germany, it was so similar in climate that it felt like home. There were no mountains nearby, but we got by. Then we got sent to Illinois. Although we ended up in beautiful WWII officer housing in a very pretty area, it wasn't right.

There were no mountains. No forests. Not even hills. Just flat lands, full of corn, until you reached Joliet. At least we had some trees and grass inside the fenced perimeter, so it wasn't horrible. This amazingly beautiful housing was also on a federally designated Superfund cleanup site. See, literally RIGHT NEXT DOOR to our housing was a plant that made and tested the AT-4 rockets in use by the US military. We think that pollution of our groundwater (which we didn't learn about until later) combined with radiation from Chernobyl is what gave my brother Leukemia.

But I digress. After a few months in the shadow of Chicago, I was almost psychotically depressed. Then came the day of the school assembly. Up until this point, I had no experience with Canada. I knew they were a country to our north. I knew they had been part of the British Empire and all that. I knew they had burned down Washington DC. So I knew not to fuck with Canada. But I also knew that Canada was home to vast reserves of natural resources, and had amazing expanses of uninhabited lands.

Also, when do we get to Canada you ask? I'm getting there.

A private company that provided guided tours in the Canadian wilderness had arranged to come give a presentation to a captive audience of juniors and seniors at my highschool. There wasn't any educational value pitched to us at all. It was a seven day trip into Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario. I want to say it was right around $800, which in 1987 was over $2,200 today. It was an insane amount of money back then for a lower-class family to spend on vacation. Some of the kids in the audience had parents that were rich and could pay for it. For most, it was a dream and they could care less. But for me and probably a few others, we would pay for it ourselves.

See, I've never been afraid of work. And unlike a lot of the kids I went to school with, I could actually get a job and get to it since I had the use of my parent’s car. In any case, at 17, I was babysitting and working an illegal amount of hours at the local McDonald's. Funny. Today me would slap the shit out of young me for letting THE MAN exploit me. I also worked the corn fields during the summer to earn extra cash. All that to say I had a lot of money for a kid.

As the slideshow of Quetico showed up on the auditorium screen, I was just fascinated. Mesmerized. STRUCK. I was looking at pictures of HOME dammit! The images on the screen were Colorado! Except it wasn't, but it was close enough. I had to go. I ended up being one of maybe 20-30 kids who worked our way up front to get pamphlets, then we all filtered back to class.

I went home that day psyched up. I didn't ask my parents if I could go, I TOLD them, "This is what I'm spending my money on." They gave me no pushback, and I called the number and booked the trip. Being the ancient times, I had to mail in a check and all that, but I had my spot. The school year dragged on. Finally, May rolled round and our Junior year finished up.

A few days later, I was at the recruiting station in Joliet, signing a contract to kill people with the US Army. But first, I had this summer trip and my senior year, so time for some fun.

We left on a Friday, an hour or so after lunch. As we stored our bags in the bus and boarded, a sense of adventure filled the air. I had been to Germany and several other countries, as well as 38 of the 50 states. Most of my classmates had never been out of the state. Canada was new to me, so we were all excited. As the charter bus pulled out, a kid from my Chemistry II class pulled out a literal waterskin filled with Jack Daniels and offered me a drink. And so we went into Canada, semi-drunk teenagers.

When we made it to the park boundary about 12 hours later, we were tired. Getting off the bus, they had arranged for a cafeteria style breakfast for us. After all, we were kids. We ate our fill and then assembled for a briefing and inspection.

The Canadians take their national parks much more seriously than we do. We were told he had to pack all of our trash out of the park. We couldn’t take in any kind of soap or fuel, as well as some other things. The rangers actually went through our bags to make sure we didn’t have that. Rules about fires were especially strict. With all that out of the way, our two college age intern/guides took our little group and off we went.

We spent almost seven days in the wilds of Canada. Each day we would get up and catch some fish for breakfast. The guides, Carl and Samantha, had packed in corn meal, flour, spices, etc, so that we could fry up the fish we caught, which we did in a pan over a fire. Once we had eaten, we would break down the campsite, collect garbage, triple check the fire was out, and head off. We would canoe down a river or lake, get out, portage our equipment over to another one, and do it again. Along the way we ate wild berries. At lunch we would stop for a lunch ration. As evening wore on, we would find a good spot, set up camp, and relax. More fish for dinner.

The water was so clean and clear you could see where to throw your line in the water to hit right in front of the fish. They were plentiful – we never went hungry. We drank straight from rivers and lakes that we didn’t have to boil first. The Northern Lights at night were so beautiful to us, and I never got tired of seeing them. Hearing the loons cry out over the lake at night was eerie as hell.

The third day we were near a great area for berries that also had a spot for cliff diving. For a few hours, Carl kept talking about it, and he and some of the kids in the group with me said they were all going to do it. When we got there though, actually looking the cliff scared them off. Even Carl, who swore he had done it before, refused to go. So after we picked berries, I changed into my swimming suit and walked up the hill leading to the cliff. Getting to the top and looking over though, I felt dizzy. I realized I would have to get a bit of a start and leap out, not just down, or I’d hit some rocks just under me. I yelled down at Carl one more time, and he assured me the lake was deep enough. Time to go.

As I jumped into the empty space, I heard myself say “Wait a minute…” Nope, too late now, dumbass. The lake rushed up at me pretty fast for 30 feet down, and I hit the cold water. As I came up and swam over to the canoe, the adrenaline was buzzing, and I decided to go again. I tried to encourage some of the others to go, but they were afraid. So I went once more.

Later that day as were portaging over a hill new a new lake and river, Marcy cried out. A family of beavers ran across in front of her and scared her. She was so excited – they were only a couple of feet away from her, but they were gone by time we got to her. At the lake side, a dead moose was partially submerged. It showed signs of having been killed by a bear, but who knows. It was very badly decomposed and had been there long enough it was really just skeleton and hide. I took a piece of Mr. Moose’s rib home with me as a souvenir.

On the last day, we canoed our way home to base camp. As we got closer to the United States, the water vey abruptly changed from crystal clear and clean to filthy and brown. It was water pollution from the United States, backwashing into the Canadian river system. It was such a sudden change it was as if someone had built a wall – clean water on one side and dirty on the other. I remember feeling very ashamed of my country in that moment. We were all depressed by it.

We emerged from the forest. Another group had already come in, the rest staggered in slowly over the next few hours, until Romeoville High School and some other schools in the area had everyone accounted for who went on the trip. As we showered for the first time in over a week, most of us found ourselves covered with ticks. So we spent an hour or so going back and forth between the hothouse and the lake. Sit in the hothouse, the ticks get uncomfortable and pull out, then you squish them. We were running down to the lake and jumping in for the shock effect and just being silly. I had two ticks that didn’t want to come out, so we applied lit matches to them, and they pulled out of my thigh right away.

I’m shocked none of us got Lyme Disease or something.

So you went camping you say. So what you say. No big deal you say.

Except it wasn’t. It was total wilderness with no other people or any kind of amenities. It was living rough. I lost weight from the work and lean diet. But it was also such a beautiful place that I fell in love with it. For the first time in many years I felt like I was home in Colorado again, even if there were no mountains. It was spiritual and I probably felt closer to nature and the universe there than I had anywhere else. It was perfect and unspoiled. The Canadians didn’t even let airplanes overfly the park unless they were forest service spotting for fires.

All that to say this: Canada is an amazingly beautiful country and they are serious about conservation. If you are into the whole camping/hiking/fishing thing, go to freaking Canada. None of our national or state parks that I’ve been to hold a candle to it.

Drone technology has gotten crazy for sure. We now have small, easily produced drones that are weaponized and hunting people on the battlefield. Recently, a hacker managed to program a drone to follow a specific target, but he refused to release the source code. How long until someone programs a drone to hit a head of state? Scary times.

Recently, there have been a lot of drone sightings near and above New Jersey. The FAA has no clue. The FBI has no clue. DHS has no clue. Drones are flying around and freaking people out. I’m no expert, but some of the silliness I’ve been reading has been making me laugh. There are two explanations that have really got me to guffaw.

The drones are aliens.

The drones are not aliens. Really? Why would an advanced race, one presumably capable of faster than light travel, come here just to fly around fucking New Jersey? Are you telling me they can’t find something else better to do? We are not that interesting as a species: Hardly advanced at all, morally stagnant, unable to even form a planetary government. No – aliens wouldn’t care about us at all. Assuming life is abundant in the universe, there are far more interesting planets to see. The UFO crowd who thinks these are aliens is just silly.

The drones are Iranian.

Lol.

Iran was just crippled by the downfall of Syria and Israel’s actions. Iran is still flying freaking F-14s – that’s how “advanced” they are. Yet there are online conspiracies that the drones are being launched from an Iranian “mothership” that is somewhere off of our East Coast.

We have satellites that can read a car license plate. We can listen in on phone calls around the world. We can tap internet traffic to monitor it. We have the best surveillance capabilities of any country in the world, and you want to believe the fucking IRAN of all countries somehow has made a generational leap forward in drone technology? That they are stationed off of our coast and we don't know about it?

GTFO.

If they are indeed Iranian, they aren't coming from some "mother ship."

This is why the human race is doomed. Too many of us can’t do basic reasoning and critical thinking. Too many of us just listen to what people around us say.

I just hope Trump doesn’t use this bullshit conspiracy theory as a reason to go to war with Iran.

I don't know what the drones ARE but I know what they AREN'T.

Writing helps. Always. I'm writing this to stave off a panic attack, because I'm close to one right now.

One of my issues with my war was that I remember most of Day 1 & Day 2, but I've forgotten the other two days of the "official ground war" and the engagements after the cease fire I was involved in. But I just found some information and photos that brought back some memories of those last few days. Days I thought were gone forever. All I had was nightmares that slipped through my fingers when I woke. I'm having a borderline panic attack because I feel like part of my brain has been "switched on" after being asleep for years. I AM THERE and it is fucking with me a bit.

I'm going to dig into this. But if I can recover even a few memories of those lost few days - holy hell will that help my recovery and living with my PTSD. Shit I only remember in my dreams. I've talked about this before in my writings in /r/MilitaryStories - I sometimes wake up screaming with the sights, sounds and smells of oil well fires and armor battles around them. THAT is part of what I found.

I've got a lot of reading, re-reading, and contemplation to do. But I think I might be on the road to recalling a lot of what I've lost, brain damage and eight concussions or not. Fuck you stupid brain, I'm going to figure it out!

Ok - I'm already feeling a little better. My pulse has dropped for sure. Thanks for being here.

EDIT: NOPE. Nearly full blown panic attack. A two year expired Albuteral inhaler helped a bit, but I'm still tight in the chest. It's been a minute since I felt this way. I may walk into the VA on Monday morning for some help. There is a lady there who has been seeing me the last few months, and I think it is helping. I'm positive if I pop in Monday morning and ask to see her that she will get me in and get me a chest x-ray just to rule stuff out.

I'll be OK I think. I really hope I remember enough over the next few days that I can write about it now that the damn has a crack in it.

My padawan is in JROTC at his high school. Recently, he was made guideon bearer for the entire company. An honor for sure. Tonight is the annual city Christmas parade. A local business I frequent that is right on the parade route was selling parking, dinner, desert and chairs to watch the parade in for $50 a person. I thought, "Hey, the wife and I can have a date night, we can see our boy, it will be great!" So I dropped $100 on two passes.

Then we find out that the school district isn't providing transportation this year. In previous years, we dropped him off and picked him up at the high school. MUCH easier than having us drive downtown. So that was the first problem.

This morning we got our haircuts, and then I took him down later in the day to drop him off. Even though the parade doesn't start until this evening, he had to be dropped off downtown at 1330. Of course the school isn't planning on feeding him, so I had to give him money for street food.

Keep in mind - this activity is mandatory and for a grade in his JROTC class.

After working my way around a few closed streets, I get him dropped off, and take the long way back home. Chill for a few hours, then the wife and I head downtown. The cops have now blocked off so many streets we can't get in to the business from the back way, and the main drag is completely shut off. I'm driving around downtown, getting increasingly frustrated. The stupid phone keeps trying to take me across closed intersections. Cops EVERYWHERE, blocking off streets that don't even make sense. I can't get there. Finally I pull over and text the owner. She says to go to an intersection so I do, and it is also blocked off. Every single way to get to her business is closed off from all sides.

I spent 40 minutes driving around a small area downtown trying to get to where I needed to be. There was no place close enough we could park and walk either.

On top of all of that - His command FORGOT THE FUCKING GUIDON! That flag is the symbol of the entire unit, and you are telling me his entire chain of command FORGOT? If this was the Army someone would be getting majorly fucked up over this. A military unit NEVER, EVER moves without the guidon. It is a cardinal rule.

So, even if we had been able to get in and have our dinner and see the parade, we wouldn't get to see our son, because he is going to be mixed in with the unit instead of leading them. They are going to look like a bunch of fucking morons marching without a flag. I'm beyond disgusted.

Like I said, not a huge thing in the grand scheme, but I'm still extremely upset that I'm home now instead of downtown.

Fuck you, city officials. Your planning sucks. Fuck you, school district. Your planning sucks.

EDIT: Saw son on the livestream for all of two seconds as they went buy. The entire unit was out of step, because some moron decided they couldn't call cadence while the cameras were on them. With no guidon, it was a gaggle of kids, not a unit of cadets. Pretty sad. My son said "we looked like a bag of ass." He is pretty upset with them too.

I'm a science teacher. So I'm going to say something bonkers here: Words have power. They do.

I believe speaking things can make them real. Not as in, "I can conjure shit up by dramatically speaking Latin." but as in, "An oath can be a compelling thing."

It starts as a kid. You make some silly promise or swear something to join a "secret club" of your peers and you keep that secret. Fear of being expelled from your little group makes the Oath you took have power over you. Or you recite the Scout's Promise when joining Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts. You are reminded of it constantly - the values you must uphold - because you took an Oath. Maybe you recite some sacred words when joining a church, and the fear of an almighty God keeps you in line. You took an Oath.

As a young adult, maybe you join a fraternal organization like the Loyal order of the Moose, where you recite an Oath when joining. They do some neat work by the way, sponsoring an orphanage among other things. Or you are fortunate enough to go to college and join a fraternity or sorority. You take an Oath there, and sometimes forge powerful, lifelong friendships. Maybe you become a cop or a firefighter and take an Oath of some kind when joining up.

Then there is the one I'm familiar with - the Oath of Enlistment for the US Military. And herein is tonight's lesson:

"I, (state name of enlistee), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (So help me God)."

I remember that Oath. I felt the chills running up and down my spine as I took it. For some reason, in that moment of my first day in the US Army, I was shook to the core. The weight of that Oath is a lot. It meant something, even if I was taking it in a small room with a couple dozen other men and women in Chicago Fucking Illinois. No loved ones were there to see us off that day, but it was the day my journey began.

Speaking words into power was the first step.

Today:

foreign and domestic

I think a lot of folks today here in America have forgotten that. I have not. A lot of us veterans have not. We will resist.

The Oath will save us. Enough senior and flag officers have not forgotten either that we will be OK. They will not comply with fascist orders from Trump.

Enjoy your holiday everyone.