So I quit the army today

No, that doesn't mean I don't work there anymore. It just means that I'm done trying. I had myself removed from the leadership position that I'm not qualified to be in (objectively.) I'm no longer going to the promotion board where I would have to lie to try to get rank that I don't deserve (objectively.) I'm done with caring about this fucked up, stupid army. I'm done working harder, done looking for things to do, done trying to take charge, done volunteering ideas and volunteering for tasks. I'm done.
I'm done with being angry, frustrated, laughed at and disappointed all because of how much I do care and how hard I do try. No more. I'm done trying to be something that isn't wanted. I'm done considering myself a failure when I don't achieve a standard that no one else is trying to meet. I'm done trying to lead people who don't want to be led and done trying to follow people who can't lead.
I'm done ironing my uniform and shining my boots every damn day (yep. gay as it is, I'm switching to the ACU.) I'm done caring if I'm 5 minutes late. I'm done trying to finish first in ruck marches, done with over-packing for ruck marches. I'm done with letting a damn fly crawl all over my motherfucking ear because you aren't supposed to move when at the position of attention. I'm done with putting on my headgear to walk 10 steps out of a building. I'm done running when I could walk and walking when I could just not go.

I'm going to hate it of course. I'm not even going to try to change instantly. I'm not even going to pretend that I really don't give a fuck about anything. I do care. I'll still do the things that matter right. There's not any other way.
But I'm not going to be all that I can be. That day is over. The rest of the army gave up on that years ago. Welcome to the motherfucking army of one less soldier who cares.


NOT FOR THIS ARMY

Monica Rocca's husband is in the:

A. Army.
B. Marines.
C. Navy.

Remedy for Depression

There is nothing more gratifying and uplifting than accomplishing the basic, mundane things that need to be done- like cleaning the bathroom, washing your bedding, doing the laundry, washing all the dishes, and making your apartment look great. You just feel so much better about life, and ready to face the day.

... or your roommate who will be coming back from his weekend trip any minute now. It's just one of those nice little self respect boosts.

Why are big trucks called 'semi's? Semi-what?

A Few Tips on Renting Vehicles (or, "A Haggling Opportunity Without Having to go to Tijuana")

Okay, so since I started working for a rental car agency I've learned a few handy things.

First of all, make a reservation online beforehand for the cheapest care they have. You're not really reserving a car, you see, you're reserving a rate. Furthermore, they have hardly have any of them in their fleet so odds are you won't even be driving one. In fact, all week I have yet to have had an economy class car available at either counter. They are then REQUIRED to give you a free upgrade to the next available class. For free! So before you do anything, act like you WANT the economy car, and then find out, specifically, what car they will be putting you in.

THEN, if that's still not as cool as what you wanted, you can upgrade. Upgrades are tricky. You see, the sales agent will say there's a deal or something- but there's not. They get to make up whatever-the-hell deal they want to. The deals only exist according to the whim of the sales agent.

Oh, and they'll give you discounts for AAA or Sams club memberships- but they don't mention that they MAKE UP WHAT THE STINKING DISCOUNT IS. In fact, they'll ask what airline you flew in on, and regardless of what airline you say, they'll give you a discount just to make you feel like you're actually getting a deal. They're just trying to get as much upgrade $$ as possible.

Talk them down- they'll go down if they think you'll just settle for the free upgrade anyways. They NEED you to pay a little more, regardless of how much, because it affects their pay if they have lots of contracts with no upgrades or extra fees. The sales agent can decide whatever rate they want to give you on the car. The coverage fees (Loss Damage Waivers, Supplemental insurance, etc.) are set in stone and usually superfluous, but they can adjust everything. They also have the ability to waive the extra driver fees too. Be hardnosed, but treat them nicely, and you can get a freaking awesome deal.

So yeah. There you go.

One person at a time

That's really the only way to make the world better. For us normal kids anyway. I think I'm doing more harm than good right now though. I guess I have to be that first person that I change. It's so damn hard though, focusing on the little things. The problem is being willing to give up your life for what you believe. Not your death. Dying for something is easy (at least it seems like it would be to me.) I mean, you only have to do it once and it's such a major decision that you're going to care about doing the right thing. It's living; the mundane, repetitive, seemingly insignificant, everyday shit that's hard to do right.

"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
- Wilhelm Stekel

I need to grow up.

I just put on my PJs..

Oh, yes.

... it's a onesie.

The new ACU

(Army Combat Uniform)

In case you can't tell, I don't like it. I had to wear it today for the fourth time (for reasons that are slightly complicated and unimportant. For the most part I am sticking to the BDU until they force me to wear that shit.) So here's the weird thing(and the actual point of this post.) Of the four times I have worn it, today was the second that I have put on my underwear and undershirt backwards (and not noticed until later in the day.) To put that in perspective, I cannot think of a single time in my army career that I have put my underwear or t-shirt on backwards when wearing the BDU. I'm not sure what the significance is exactly but it's definitely odd. Perhaps I am subconsciously rebelling against this ass-backwards uniform.

(ok, so that's a pretty weak punchline, but I make up for it with my awesome microsoft paint skillz)

I started work today

I started crying in front of my older brother and sister when I got home. Enough said.

I do, however, find it ironic that commando boy is posting about how one should always wear underwear. Anybody else? Anyone at all?

Alright, I admit it already

Wikipedia was actually a pretty darn good idea. I guess I didn't like all the hype around it at first and didn't see what it was actually going to do. But a couple of months ago I started noticing that wikipedia articles were in the top ten google results for almost all of my searches. Then yesterday, I found this. So yeah, I admit it. Wikipedia is awesome.

Also check out this article: Sealand

Oriana Fallaci is one hell of a character

...even if she does believe in animal rights and call herself a Christian athiest.
It's quite a bit of fun to read things like this in a book by a 70 year old lady with cancer: "The trouble is that Mrs. Hunke was a fucking Nazi. As learned as you like, as intelligent as you want, but a fucking Nazi." (from The Force of Reason)
awesome.

"Ms. Fallaci ... believes that ours is 'an age without leaders. We stopped having leaders at the end of the 20th century.' Of George Bush, she will concede only that he has 'vigor,' and that he is 'obstinate' (in her book a compliment) and 'gutsy. . . . Nobody obliged him to do anything about Terri Schiavo, or to take a stand on stem cells. But he did.'"
Do we have leaders or just a bunch of damn dirty politicians who follow from the front? A representative government is all well and good but a leader should do more than figure out what a majority of the voting public wants or will approve of and do that. Otherwise we might as well have a pure democracy. Frickin' democracy. For all of Fallaci's independent, politically incorrect thinking, she still doesn't question the great ideal of 'democracy.' Democracy is bad, people.

Anyway, here's another good quote from her(about the decline of Europe): "I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. It's that simple!" source

Dear Phil

I somehow managed to make the font in our blog larger than it was before. I have no idea how, but I don't like it. Can you show me how to make it small again, and how to avoid making it large again in the future? I would very much appreciate that.

Sincerely Yours,
Mags

So I was thinking

Astonishing, I know.

I've been having a lot of sleepless nights as of late, though, so I've had to rely on my prattling inner dialogue for company. It started (the thoughts, that is) when I idly recalled a conversation with someone that made me remember how an unnamed a super-suburban friend of mine voiced concern about visiting me because she thinks I live in an unsafe neighborhood.

My immediate reaction of course is to roll my eyes. Okay, so I hear police sirens 3 or 4 times a day and on average see a cop car parked across the street at my naughty neighbors about twice a week. And while sure, it's a lower-income type person area, it's still not that bad of a neighborhood. Not the best, but not a bad one.

But then I started thinking about why I resented her comment, and I realized it had nothing to do with my neighborhood, it had to do with how I felt about where she lives, and how uncomfortable people who choose that lifestyle generally make me. Their big, newborn cookie cutter houses, with not a shard of chipping paint in sight. The spacious lawns manicured to perfection, dripping with weed killer and perfectly uniform- not a blade of grass out of place. Their artificial, 'decorative' koi ponds and fountains. The evenly spaced flowers, measured out down to a quarter of an inch accuracy, tamed and clipped beyond credibility. Not a shriveled leaf allowed to remain in sight. The cheesy family name signs on their mailboxes giving the illusion of hominess when really they hardly spent 9 hours a day there, eight of which are sleeping. The virtually non-existent children, neither seen nor heard- TV and video games, no doubt.

And then I wonder why it makes me so uncomfortable. So I think of my neighborhood. The sounds of cars and bustle at most times of the day, children playing and yelling and screaming at each other, the man across the street who plays his radio talk shows loud outside on his porch in the early evenings after dusk. The cat in his pimp-mobile that usually honks his horn, his music blaring so loud it makes the windows of my house rattle, between 12pm-3am for his girlfriend to come out. The 50 yr old man next door who I secretly watched spend 25 minutes at 11pm in his front yard with his hose trying to see how far he could get it to spray out into the street, and chuckling to himself while he watched the reaction of cars slowing down and trying to go around the stream of water, just to mumble something about "watering the tree"(a HUGE maple manifestly not in need of watering)and walk away when he saw another neighbor pull up and look at him questioningly. The banging of screen doors on porches, the growling of junker cars, the barking of dogs. The baby next door that cries a lot. Some would find it obnoxious, I'd imagine. But personally I find it comforting.

And now maybe this is a stretch, but for my crazy mind I feel like the choice I'm making is somewhere along the lines of choosing the likelihood of people hurting each other over the likelihood of people hurting themselves. So maybe my neighborhood has more crime, but I'll betcha anything her neighborhood had a larger percentage of suicides and people with massive depression. I think their problem is far more disturbing. If you don't value your own life, the next step is to not value those of others anyway. And even on a less fundamental way, just socially.. so maybe the people around me are more eccentric, ridiculous or insensitive... even stupid, but at least their personalities aren't dulled and their manners aren't inhibited by empty politness.

Anyways. I only slept an hour and a half last night (I had company), and I had to get up early and have spent the day thus far helping out at my 4yo neice's birthday party with little munchkins yelling screaming tripping running waddling stumbling falling splashing throwing hitting pooping grabbing everywhere. Gotta love 'em, but I'm tired.

I'm gonna go turn off my head for a while. Later.

Randomness

So today I got all dressed up to go apply places this morning. I checked my email before I left and I had a message from my recruiter saying I start work Monday morning. This was random because no one told me I was hired? In fact, last I heard, there were supposed to be three interviews. I only attended one. I guess I was what they wanted. Fine by me.

I decided it wasn't necessary to go apply places after all. So I dressed down and went over to my sisters and baked a cake shaped like a mermaid and decorated with candy and stuff. Totally fun, but also kinda random. I mean really, who bakes mermaid cakes anymore?

So then my cousin KP came over ta hang out in the evening- chat, play darts, watch movies. You know the deal. Also random, considering she lives in Chicago and I wasn't expecting her to be in town yet.

So then it's like 1am, right? I get a drunk call from my oldest bro. He's drunk. He asks me where I am, and I say I'm at home w/KP. Then he asks me if we're going to be here all night? Random question if you ask me, considering that I live here and all. That's kinda what the 'home' thing's all about, am I right?

He goes on to tell me that he's in a bar in Milwaukee. So I ask what bar it is... and guess what. It's the very same bar that Matt and I had been planning on going to this evening, but decided not to at the last minute. How random is that? We would have randomly ran into them- they also live in Chicago- at OUR bar.

Huh. Nifty.

the quiet before a storm

I am on the verge of a serious breakdown.

I need to find a new outlet/coping device. quick.

Have you ever...

been thinking about the principle of non-contradiction and caught yourself trying to think of examples that disprove it?
Yeah, me neither. I know, talk about crazy, right? Yeah, I have this friend and he was telling me that one time he did that. Yeah, ridiculous I know.


It's definitely time to go to sleep.

Today's realizations

I realized a couple things today.

First of all... I have major trust issues.

Second of all... my mother, older sister and I are like a bunch of teenage girls.

Third and lastly... it is a WAY bad idea to leave old journals in a box of books at your parents house when you move out.

Bleh.

If I had a huge cardboard box...

I'd go about four hours into the past and force that stupid, irresponsible past-Phil to iron his damn uniform and wash his boots.

And if I had a water gun, I'd transmogrify this book I'm reading into something with a lot less Muslims and mass murder into something with a lot more colorful illustrations and Calvinball.

Dan the Climber Man

So, right! This is just a little tribute to a cool person. Tonight I went to the bar with Matt and Dan, one of his rock climbing buddies. I'm really diggin' Dan. He's so straightforward, guileless. I was totally struck tonight, because my temptation is to classify him as a stoner (he smokes pretty often), and all the negative baggage that goes along with that, but I was so wrong to jump to that conclusion. Even where I do disagree with him, I still like him, because he makes his drug use be less recreational and more spiritual. I appreciate that, whether or not it's realistic. Furthermore, I just cannot believe how much he increases the desire to love, simply, in the people he interacts with. He's the kind of person who makes you feel like you ought to be together. I do not mean this in a creepy way, I mean it in the companionship way. He doesn't have the nimby-pimby "if you want to come along, that'd be great, if not that's fine" way of inviting you to do things... he just says "you should come." He makes you want to do things. I like that. Dan has disarming simplicity and charm. I wish I could be more like him.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Atlas Shrugged

So 5 days later, I finished Atlas Shrugged. Not bad for a book with 1069 pages, eh?

I have so many thoughts about it. So many things I agree so deeply with, so many things that make me frown so hard my eyebrows pop off. I'm glad I read it now, though. I think this was a good time for me. I have an interview coming up this afternoon in a couple hours, and thinking about it really put me in the right frame of mind.

I initially wanted to write specific themes that I've been thinking a lot about, but I realize that my time would be better spent in prep for my interview. So this will be continued another time.

Hasta la later.