In boot camp I attended a class on terrorism and how to best “protect” yourself and avoide a terrorist attack. Some of the suggestions from the class instructor included the following:

1. Vary your schedule and do not take the same route to work every day.
2. Do not wear your uniform out in town or in public any more than is necessary.¹
3. Do not tell people that you are in the Navy.
4. Do not tell people where the ship is located.

Having said that:

1. I don’t really take a bus in the morning every day to work only to get back on the bus late in the afternoon to return home.
2. Not only do I not take a hypothetical bus ride every day, but there is absolutely no way I don’t really ride the bus on the exact same route every hypothetical day.
3. I am not in the Navy. Nor did I every hypothetically say that I was.
4. The big fucking hypothetical gray ship with the “72″ painted on it (which is also hypothetically illuminated at night) that you can hypothetically see from the public highway is not the USS Abraham Lincoln. You never saw it, and neither have I. What you really saw was swamp gas from a weather balloon that was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.

If you’re a terrorist and you read this far, please forget everything at this point. Thank you!

¹It’s not permitted to board the hypothetical bus unless you are in uniform. But don’t let this fool you, as the big bus with all the uniformed personnel is not really full of uniformed personnel.

Afishionados,

It is with much pain and regret and I am here to inform you that my ship, the U.S.S. Neverhome CVN-72 is on its way to the other side of the Puget Sound here in Washington. This means that former Navy personnel that have the fortunate luck to be out of the Navy yet the foolishness to return to working alongside it and have converted from “I’m a neat and tidy sailor with a pristine haircut” into “Fuck you, I make 8 times as much as you and I can grow my hair out and throw my cigarettes anywhere I please thank you very much because I am now a shipyard hippie” will be working on my ship.

This also means that my 8-hour day now includes a 2-hour bus ride to work and a 2-hour bus ride from work. Ah, yes, Uncle Sam, how I do love thee. From the creators of “Boot Camp” and “Naval Nuclear Power Training” comes the exciting sequel to the Naval Adventure that is my life, “The Shipyard”!

But that’s not all! If you act now, Uncle Sam will also throw in a FREE night’s stay¹ onboard CVN-72 in the most narrow, claustrophobic, shit-stained bed you can imagine! But wait, there’s more! If you call within the next 10 minutes we’ll also include our famous “Cinderella Liberty²” package and no additional cost to you! Hurry! Operators are standing by!

Someone send me some Midol because I’m going into Uber PMS mode until the spring.

¹This will be my first night I’ve slept onboard the Lincoln since I reported to it, hence the fruity picture. You get it, right?

²Cinderella Liberty means I have to report back to the ship no later than 12:00 midnight. Happy Happy Joy Joy.

Afishionados,

After three days of oversized maxi pad mattress moving, my weekend is finally here. Day three of being on the Stain Chain Gang was the quickest, and put new meaning to the term “Naval discharge”.

I didn’t do anything last night except watch television. Advertisers must be running out of ideas because the same three or four commercials kept repeating over and over again. I’m pretty sure I got the “message” after the 30th viewing: My brand new white VW Jetta is the safest car in its class and will protect me in the event that I crash into the new Dominos Square Fudge Brownies while Orville Redenbacher rides with me and explains, using antiquated popcorn poppers, why his popcorn is the best in the world!

The most annoying and repetitive commercial is the Dominos brownie offer. You can see the commercial I’m talking about here. It “features” Fudgems, a 3 foot tall fudge brownie who comes to the door along with the delivery guy to bring you (what else?) fudge brownies.

I don’t want to ruin the magic for all you believers out there, but Fudgems is not the High King of the Fudge Brownies that he pretends to be. In reality, he’s a midget in a square costume that’s made of fur. Fur brownies!?! Wait a tick, maybe I am interested in this offer! I mean, come on, who among us out there wouldn’t just love to sink our teeth into some fudgy fur?

I haven’t seen a mascot this stupid since the Olympics. And what’s with the name “Fudgems”? Fudgems sounds like a term for those devious devils that find your way into your underwear when all you meant to do was sneak a squeak.

Say no to Fudgems. Say Yes to Wiz.

Afishionados,

Fellow sailors in the reactor department onboard CVN-72 have been asking me if I’m planning to reenlist this fall (I have the option at my two year point to do so). So, let’s take a look at some new evidence in the Case of Atlas Cerise vs. Reenlistment.

This morning, I was part of a working party group of people who were off to the other side of the water to another Naval base in Bremerton, WA. The bus was meant to arrive at 0700, take us directly to Bremerton, we’d move mattresses, then the bus would bring us back. We’d be finished by 1400 and we could have the rest of the day off.

The bus arrived at 0700. I got on. And waited until 8 fucking thirty to finally leave the base. Seamen Recruit Gomer Goddam Pile was our bus driver, and spent 30 minutes on the phone calling someone to find out how to get off the base. How to get off the base. My first instinct was to, oh, I dunno, go out the big fucking gate.

Finally, SR Pile gets us off the base. It takes almost two hours to drive to Bremerton because:

SR Pile does a fine job driving to Bremerton, and we arrive. And wait. For another hour. We don’t know why. Eventually, a truck full of mattresses from the carrier arrives and we need to offload the truck and get them into various racks inside the barracks. This is not a hard job to do and it takes less than an hour.

I’d like to pause here and describe the mattresses to you. The mattresses that the Navy utilizes onboard CVN-72 look like props from the movie SAW. I saw every possible form of stain known to mankind today. Cum stain, sweat stain, piss stain, puke stain… And those were just the first layer. I saw urine stains with rings. I could decipher the age of the mattress as though it were a tree trunk.

“Ah, yes, here’s a vintage piss stain back from ‘94. And if you look closely, you can see a cum stain from ‘97 that borders it. Yessiree, these are real treasures”

The female mattresses were even worse. Ladies, wear a fucking pad already.

Once the delightful task of unloading the mattresses was completed, everyone once again boarded the bus. And waited. For twenty minutes. Finally, SR Pile discovers his right foot and learns to push down on the accelerator.

If you’ve never been to Washington before, don’t bother coming. The Space Needle is not that cool and traffic is an absolute nightmare. What would be a 20 minute drive from Seattle to Everett is now an hour-and-a-half ordeal. By bus, it takes even longer. By Government bus, it takes the longest.

A couple years hours later the bus finally returns us to good ol’ Naval Station Everett. We arrived at 1400, just like we were promised 1530.

So, 7 hours of bus riding and 1 hour of work later, we return to the initial question of “Will I be reenlisting?”

The court finds in favor of ET3 Cerise. Judgement for the plaintiff in the amount of “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

My brother, Drew, leaves for Iraq tmorrow morning. This will be his third (and hopefully final) deployment. Good luck, Drew, I love you and I’ll miss you.

Afishionados,

I had an audiogram test this week for my best friend in the whole wide world: Uncle Sam. The test took place at Medical onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. The first step is to get inside the Stinks Horribly Inside This^TM Box. The SHIT Box has been around since the days of the Roman Empire and it’s nearly airtight. Therefore, it smells like the entire Roman Army died inside it, along with a couple hundred years of sweat and cat puke.

Once you’ve settle yourself in the RoidMaker^TM plastic chair of uncomfortness within the SHIT Box, you’re instructed to put on the oldest headphones known to mankind. Alexander Graham Bell would take one look at these suckers and exclaim, “Ha! You fuckers are still using those?”.

Then, to make the experience more exciting, you pick up the Clicker and prepare for the test itself. The Clicker is nothing more than a small, cylindrical device with a single black button. The idea is to push it whenever you hear (or, in my case, think you hear) a sound through the headphones. It’s like playing Jeopardy! without ever having to answer a question. I really felt like Ken Jennings in there. Only sweatier.

Eventually, very quiet tones are played through the headphones and you’re supposed to mash the hell out of the button to demonstrate your (in)ability to hear them. Oh, and did I mention that the SHIT Box and Medical are located right under the hangar bay of the carrier? Good luck trying to hear quiet tones over the scraping sounds of shipyard workers dragging big ass metal bins the size of motor homes across the hangar bay.

I performed the test Russian roulette style. Every few seconds I’d press the button in a vain attempt to demonstrate I could still hear even if I didn’t hear a damn thing. I must have passed, though, because I was given the nation’s finest earplugs as a lovely parting gift.

Afishionados,

You know you’ve got a good blog when someone steals your ideas and incorporates them into their own blog. I’ve already got a rotating, random sentence-izer beneath my O.F.a.L. header courtesy of the Tetherd Cow (Thanks, Reverend, check’s in the mail).

So now I’m going to rip-off my other blogging pal, Joey Polanski. If you’re not reading the Polanski Show, then you’re not cool and everyone wants to be cool so stop wasting time and go read it. See, Joey always starts his posts off with “Buddies,” like he’s writing a letter to some friends. Even if you’re an asshole, it’ll still show up as “Buddies,” in your browser (I know because I read his blog everyday and it shows up as “Buddies,”, even for me).

So this got me to thinking I should steal this idea from him. I think I’ll introduce my posts with “Afishionados” from now on. Besides, it’ll make the 2 or 3 of you that read my blog feel warm and fuzzy and special inside. And your self esteem and mental health is of the utmost importance to me¹.

But then I got to thinking even more. Sure, I’ll take the “Buddies” idea, but why not push it one step further? Why not have an awesome supersecret club, too? You’re excited about this concept, aren’t you!? Yea, I know, I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up, too!

I figure we’re gonna need a clubhouse, some rules, a password, a flag, and some t-shirts. Also some explosives, LOTS of booze, some vaseline, and a couple of boxes of rubber chickens but that’s for much later after I’ve gotten to know you guys a little better.

¹Cuz if you don’t feel good about yourself you might go off and do something crazy like kill yourself and then I’ll have no one left to read this.

I’m trying to stop biting my fingernails but it’s killing me. I’ve chewed them my whole life but I’m trying to quit. I think getting off heroine would be easier.

I’m not even sure why the whole situation is driving me so nuts. I’ve successfully avoided biting my nails for over a week now, but I think I was safer when I chewed them down to the skin. Let’s just say it’s a good thing I don’t scratch anything except my head else I’d be a eunich by now for sure.

A camera phone shot of a saran wrapped watermelon with a markered message at my local grocery store. I’ll probably end up buying one after trying out their demo. That is, unless one of you guys has got a working serial for me?

I got to thinking about what Mel Gibson said a couple weeks ago and it’s just not sitting right with me. Here’s the quote in case you missed it.

“Fucking Juice… The Juice are responsible for all the wars in the world.”

Lemonade’s got some juice in it, right? So I kinda take this personally.

Mel Gibson, seen here, throwing orange juice into the face of the King of the Juice, Jesus Christ.