I Know What I Want To Do...

The neighbor has 2 daughters that are now off for the summer; school is out. I have been doing preparation in the back yard for the annual install of the above-ground pool, so I see into their yard along our shared fence-line. He must have asked/hired his daughters' boyfriend to power-wash his house and other light, yard work. (the little pimple-farmer doesn't look like he's good for any real work.)

Two days ago, I hear the power-washer start up and see the girl and her friend walking alongside the house with the washer. I think. "Good, He's getting some work out of the boys that are sniffing around his girls." The house gets a little spray as I go back to my puttering. The next time I look, they are under the deck; she is standing between his knees as he sits and his hands are all over this girl. I'm thinking. " With gas $4.00 a gallon, I can't believe he's just letting that engine run while he mates with his girlfriend." I smiled and looked away, minding my own business; high school kids will always find somewhere to make out.

Today I learned that he is a high school junior; she is only 13.

Like I said, I know what I'd do...but it's not my daughter and maybe her parents know.

I am not happy with this conundrum.

Manual For Boys Contemplating Dating A Man's Daughter

I brought Ohana's balls home in a jar this morning, following his castration and it got me to wondering how I will behave when boys begin to sniff around my daughter in another 10 years...

I've begun formulating a questionnaire to sort of 'pre-qualify' them.

From the questionnaire:

Here's a likely scenario:

Suppose that you had wronged someone, really done them bad, and you wake up in an abandoned barn with a locked 1/4" braided steel cable secured firmly around your junk and bolted to the floor, a rusty shears in your hand. Just as you begin to realize that the cable is too burly for the shears, the barn bursts into flame...
You will roast like a suckling pig if you stay there. There is also a brazier with a red-hot piece of metal, just out of your reach, that you could use to cauterise your junk-stump, but you'd have to use the shears to get to it.
Question: Isn't there a bus leaving for Cleveland you could be on?

Scenario #2:

Detonation cord burn rate=approximately fifteen thousand feet per second to approximately twenty-three thousand feet per second, depending on pressure and other environmental variables. Extreme caution must be used when handling detcord due to its' potential to induce significant tissue and bone trauma, ugliness and corpsification when incautiously detonated.
note: figures representative of 50 grain PETN (pentaerythritol tetranitrate) variety.

Because of the diversity of loads and bullet styles, it is hard to generalize, but the following are typical American factory loads for the .308 Winchester and are also probably representative of the majority of handloads. The 150 grain Spitzer bullet is usually loaded to a muzzle velocity (MV) of 2,820 fps and muzzle energy (ME) of 2,648 foot pounds. The figures at 200 yards are 2,263 fps and 1,705 foot pounds. These are estimates based upon averages due to different grades of propellant used in rifle cartridges and other varying conditions.

Burn rate for common cannon fuze=30 seconds +/- per foot. Cannon fuze is a primary ignitor for most explosive compounds of commercial manufacture or local improvisation. Source; TM 31-210 Improvised Munitions Handbook, United States Army.

A highly motivated runner in the prime age category (17-22), according to standards of measured time used by the United States Army is capable of covering only a fraction of the a distance within the working effective engagement range of 400-600 meters. In that time a skilled marksman could cover that same distance and terrain with no significant shortage of breath.
Question: Were you aware that certain Tibetan Monastic orders take vows of celibacy?

Scenario #3:

You are swimming to shore from the floating dock at the beach after behaving in a generally un-gentlemanly fashion towards my daughter. Suddenly your hear the splash of oars and, upon examination find a rowboat converging upon your path and dividing your angle to the shore.
The smiling man that pushes you away with oar is me.
Question: How long can you tread water?

Lick 'em While You Got 'em.

I'm conflicted. Ohana is going in for a neuter on Tuseday and I have the following considerations:

Upside:
1. Neutered dogs live longer and have fewer issues with aggression.
2. Ohana won't miss his nuts, or so I'm told.
3. I could (there's still time) to purchase some Neuticles and have them installed during the surgery.
4. I could put them in a jar and show them to teen boys who start sniffing around my daughter in 10 years..."See these balls, boy?" "That boy sings in the choir now as a soprano."

Downside:
1. Ohana's man-tackle has been an excellent weather barometer, or at least thermometer; they swing when it is warm and wither up like a French soldier when it is chilly.
2. Those balls, swinging in the open made an important statement that I endorsed, albeit vicariously about this house and my position here as regards male masculinity.
3. Can you say 'Emasculate'?
4. Can you say 'Gender Traitor'?


Oh well, Ohana cannot be bred due to a mildly dysplastic left hip. He'll still, always be my best bud; faithful and true.

Howard Delaney

Howard Delaney died a couple of months ago. It was a quiet passing, off the radar of public notice. My friendship with Howard was such that it took me a couple of weeks to learn about it.

Howard would have liked that immensely; he was old-school agency with Bill Donovan and operated in the Aegean during the greek Civil War. Howard had migrated to CIA with other talent from the army after WWII.

He was, in his vernacular an "Aviation Buff" who collected warbird prints and could cite particular facts about the artist, aircaft and story behind every one of his pieces. He fussed over flight sims on his computer and clipped interesting articles which he could never again find in his condominium.

He left everything to charities in St Paul and nothing to the angry niece who showed up after his death to claim his possessions. I don't know everything but from what I knew of Howard, she'd had many years to earn exactly what she stomped away with.

I've been thinking about closure and the measure of someone who lives in quiet dignity, but social isolation. I never got to say good-bye and his phone number is still in my cellular listing. One of these days the message, like Howard himself will be replaced by an emptiness.

shot group

"The U.S. military said May 18 it had disciplined the sniper and removed him from Iraq after he was found to have used Islam's holy book for target practice. The copy of the Quran was found May 11 by Iraqis on a firing range in Radwaniyah, west of Baghdad, with 14 bullet holes in it and grafitti written on its pages.

On May 17, the top American commander in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, and other officers held a formal ceremony apologizing to tribal chiefs in Radwaniyah.

Al-Hashemi's Iraqi Islamic Party issued a tough statement May 19 saying that apology alone was not enough and the U.S. military should impose the "severest punishment" on the Soldier to ensure others do not repeat his act."

I just wonder what size the book was, the range he was firing from and if it was in the coat pocket of an Al Queda Terrorist...14 shots in a quran is pretty fair shooting.

Mmm-Hmmm

Yeah, baby!

Man Code, What War Movie Should I See?

If you want to see what the war in Vietnam meant in 1965, without the filter of the weepy little Hollywood historians like Penn, Cruise, Sheen(s), Clooney et al; This is a terrific opportunity. The screenplay is the faithful adaptation of the book co-authored by Moore and Joe Galloway, who was a UPI correspondent on the ground at Ia Drang with 1/7 CAV. Imagine, a war film by warriors who spent time there with a rifle in their hand…

I especially appreciated the role of CSM Basil Plumley, played by Sam Elliott.

War Movies.
Psalm 42:6. Why art thou so full of heaviness, O my soul : and why art thou so disquieted within me?
War stories are usually cynical. Soldiers are cynical too. Film-making is about art, movie-making about revenue. Nehring offers up some reviews on little-known films that he really enjoyed. Unless you are Mel Gibson, you don’t underwrite your own big budget movies. What do you want when you pay to see a ‘War Movie’?

I was disgusted by ‘Born on the 4th of July’. Life’s a bitch and her pre-nup has a lot of fine print. The message in that film is the socialization of boys to become soldiers/Marines and the effects on the men they become. Ron Kovic has his demons like a lot of us. Psychology and Psychiatry may never catch up to the needs of combat veterans; why should Hollywood understand them any better? The combat soldier is not an alien from beyond the Still-A-Planet, Pluto, just someone with experiences that are outside your frame of reference if you wear soft Italian leather, smoke Gauloises in a Rodeo Drive coffeehouse and have your little set of followers to reassure you and pet your hair when you wake, sweating in the dark, afraid of other men.

To answer my own question, you probably expect some heroism, realistic battle sequences and even a little traditional idealism. You have had to tolerate political ideologies woven into the story that make the protagonist a troubled ‘Anti-Hero’. Soldiers are portrayed by liberal film-makers as sub-human psychotics or junkies who beg for sympathy in old tattered fatigues. O.K., so I'm both but see this film anyway.

I saw the rushes for ‘We were soldiers once’ and took a deep breath, prepared to loathe yet another old windbag who wanted to make a buck and had to gussie-up his accomplishments from a 40 year old war. I’ve never been happier to be wrong.

When you see this film, and you must see it, keep in mind that the LTC ‘Hal’ Moore portrayed by Mel Gibson is, if anything, an understatement of man himself. LTC Moore was the real deal. The soldiers you serve with are generally good at deciding if you are one of the good guys, or a BOHAS. Troops of the 1st of the 7th Cavalry in 1965 had Moore figured for a good guy.
This is excerpted from the prologue of ‘We Were Soldiers Once…and Young'.

The Ia Drang Campaign was to the Vietnam War what the terrible Spanish Civil War of the 1930's was to World War II---a dress rehearsal. The place where new tactics, techniques and weapons were tested, perfected and validated. In the Ia Drang, both sides claimed victory and both sides drew lessons, some of them dangerously deceptive, which echoed and resonated throughout the decade of bloody fighting and bitter sacrifice that was to come.
This is about what we did, what we saw, what we suffered in a 34-day campaign in the remote Ia Drang Valley of the Central Highlands of South Vietnam in November, 1965, when we were young and confident and patriotic and our countrymen knew little and cared less about our sacrifices.
Hal Moore retired from the Army as a 3 Star General in 1977 with over 32 years active service. Commissioned a 2nd Lt of Infantry in 1945, he served and commanded at all levels from Platoon through Division. Highlights of his career include:
∑ Service in the Korean War as a Company Commander and Regimental S3 (7th Div)
∑ Service in Vietnam as a Battalion and Brigade Commander (1st Cav)
∑ Commanding General of the 7th Inf Div in Korea
∑ Commander of Ft Ord, CA
∑ Service as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, Department of the Army

After his retirement from active duty in 1977, Hal became the Executive Vice President of the Crested Butte Ski Area in Crested Butte, CO. During the '80s and early '90s, he researched and wrote a book, 'We Were Soldiers Once...and Young' with his co-author, Joe Galloway then of US News and World Report. The book covers the first major battle of the Vietnam War, the Ia Drang Battle (LZ X-ray), in which both men participated. Hal was the Battalion Commander on the ground and Joe was a UPI correspondent. The book is recognized as a classic on the Vietnam War and spent over 17 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List.
Most Generals have a laundry list of awards and decorations a mile long. The awards most important to Moore are:
∑ Appointment to the Honorary Grade of Rifle Platoon Sergeant by the Sergeants-Major of the 3rd Brigade, 1st CAV in Vietnam
∑ 2 awards of the Combat Infantryman's Badge
∑ Distinguished Service Cross
∑ Master Parachutist Badge


"In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watch'd
And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars ... "
--Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I