A Past Due Tribute to COL David Hackworth

The other day I was feeling kind of shitty and I had some time to kill, so I do what I usually do when I'm stuck in my office and running low on motivation: I browsed the vast wasteland of the internet looking for some new material from one of my heroes.

COL David Hackworth--in case you didn't know--was an amazing man.  To me, a modern-day Leonidas.  I won't waste words recounting his legend.  If you aren't familiar with his exploits, you should get familiar--QUICK.  If this doesn't interest you I will kindly ask you to leave this blog and never return.

He died not too long ago, and when he passed on to Valhalla this country lost one of its most ardent defenders.  He not only believed in this country, he was one of the few men left who could honestly say that he would gladly die for it (and he came close many, many times).  More importantly, after he had retired from the uniformed service as a career enlisted man and officer, he continued this defense with his pen, writing constantly about the criminal conduct of our failed current administration and the resulting quagmire that our military is presently dealing with in Iraq.

He was there for the soldier--always.  He posted their thoughts for the world to see, and was their champion.  Prior to his career as a journalist, he led them front the front.  Bottom line: he cared when so few do not.  Because of this, he was effective in the face of our military's most disastrous features: ego, fear and bureaucracy.  Few would be able to carry his torch--fewer still would care enough to do so.

Despite the fact that it is several years belated, I wanted to thank "Hack" for all that he was, all that he achieved.  The best tribute I can think of is to hang some of my favorite quotes, so here they are for you to ponder:

(1) "Sweat in training saves blood on the battlefield."

(2) "...the very core of leadership has always been to set the example and let soldiers see that their leaders care about them, share the same risks and conditions.... The best way to get this message across is by living as the troops do, leading from up front, and always, always setting the example: first up, last to eat and last to lie down."

(3) "War is hell, but real combat is a motherfucker."

(4) "One enemy is never enough, two is far too many."

Goodbye Hack, you left some mighty big boots.

Kenneth Eng for President

Finally, someone who tells it like it is--dragons and all.

If you do nothing else today (besides your regularly scheduled Sunday bowel evacuation) please check out this link.

Kenneth must be worshipped.

If you cannot find beauty in this, then there is simply nothing left to live for.  I have always secretly wished I was Asian.  With their huge cocks, amazing game shows and mathematics skills, Asians have proven again and again that being a Dragon always beats being a lowly human.

God of the universe, you have my vote.  I just don't want to be standing next to you on a college campus--or at a KFC for that matter.  Also, since this is an election year, you might want to lay off the angel dust.

It's good to be an Asian Supremacist.

My First Roommate

Cody was a timid boy, and I think he was asthmatic.  Two bad things to be.  He was rat-like, secretly coveted all things homosexual, and hated my stinking guts.  I think he hated me because he secretly wanted to fuck me, but deep down he knew this would never work out.  He was Mormon, I was the antichrist.  He was short, I was tallish.  He was a sneaky little queer, I was (and am) straight as an arrow.

It is curious then that in the moment we met, I made a wisecrack about being a gay predator.  It was how I tried to break the ice, and it had worked in similar situations before.  But not with good ol' Cody--or his mother.

(Before I explain, let me just say that I had no idea she was in the room.)

I moved in to our dorm room on a Friday.  School started the following week, and I didn't want to spend the weekend unpacking my meager possessions.  Instead, I had plans with a good friend to head to a neighboring city and take in a concert.  I was extremely excited to be starting school, and even more excited to be immersing myself in the marijuana-smoke cloud that was sure to envelope the outdoor venue where the show would take place.

I unpacked and headed to the local Wal-Mart to buy some shaving supplies.  I had spent the previous year washing dishes at the best (and only) bar and grill in my hometown, and because of the nature of this work I had little need to pay attention to hygiene.  Washing my clothes was a waste of time because they were covered in filth at the end of each shift.  No matter how hard I could have tried to stay clean it would have been futile, and because it's kind of silly to be clean-shaven when all you have to wear is putrid clothing, I just decided not to bathe, shave or wear any kind of deodorant.  The effect was pleasing to me.  I could detect the many different tones to my pheromonal potential, and after awhile the stench just became part of the scenery.  I grew a massive, gnarly beard, which in turn grew a beak and feathers of its own.

But college is no place to be fucking around with social experiments--at least not in your first semester--and I was convinced that if I were to screw anything female that year I would have to shave and take a shower.

When I returned to the room, Cody was in the process of unpacking.  I could hear him (or at least the person I thought was him) rummaging around in the drawers and cabinet that I had left him.  As I approached the open door to the room, he came walking out.  I stopped him with a firm handshake.  "You must be Cody?" I asked.  I could sense the fear in his heart as he smelled my dog-like musk, and took in the visual feast of my hair and beard.  He was observing someone who looked like a roadie for Foghat.  I was observing a miniature Ryan Seacrest.  He was as obscenely clean as I was obscenely unkempt and foul-smelling.  He had on a skin-tight boy toy shirt--presumably from the GAP--and I had on my dishwashing uniform: a thrift store ensemble with a t-shirt that proudly proclaimed The West Wasn't Won with a Registered Gun!

There was an extremely awkward moment of silence which I could no longer bear.  So I took the first step with my aforementioned anecdote.  It went something like this:

"Don't worry little buddy.  I'll knock you out with ether before I ever fuck you in your ass.  You won't feel a thing."

If I thought he was giving me strange looks prior to this, I was instantly aware of the impression I was making now.  But nothing--and I do mean nothing--would compare to the look that his mother would give me about ten seconds after I said it.  Being unaware that she was inside the room, busily unpacking young Cody's collection of high school memories, I had let go with possibly the most crude assertion that she had ever heard.  Because it was so outlandish, it was slightly easier to assure her that she did not hear what she thought she heard.

Maybe she figured it out in the car on the way home because the Parent's Weekend was kind of tense.

Paging Dr. Dunbar, Dr. Chet Dunbar

Shane was a great friend.  I suppose he still would be, if I knew where the fuck he was.  About a year ago he just dropped off the face of the earth, which is sad because so many of us who were privileged enough to count him as a friend will truly miss his hijinks.  He was an extraordinarily imaginative man, slightly degenerate, completely in the moment.

The best nights with Shane always involved lots of booze.  Because he was a former college football star his bulk was massive and his frame sturdy, and he could put it away with the best drunks out there.  It usually took around a hundred dollars and several smuggled pints of hard liquor to get him in his zone--well worth the effort and cost.

Most of my nights out with Shane--unfortunately--took place in one of the countless many establishments that comprise the vast wasteland of American nightlife.  Here, drunk women come and go, jokes are told and forgotten, and it all eventually blurs together in one hellish nightmare of squandered time.  Sometimes, however, through the fog of all the fraternity faggots and their putrid cologne, college tricks and their desperate attempt to look unamused, and the local older crowd trying to feel young again, there will shine a beacon of pure magic.  This is why people keep going to the smoke-congested, overpriced, piss-on-the floor killing fields of America's lost social dignity--known to most simply as a 'club.'  They keep coming back because they know that eventually, something genius will occur and they might be lucky enough to witness it.

At any one of the places that we would frequent you would generally find nothing more than a pack of overweight twenty-somethings grinding their sweat-soaked bodies against the midsection of a complete stranger.  This was always hard for me because where I come from a bar has stools, a surly sober person to pour stiff, never watered-down drinks, and a classic rock jukebox.  You treat it, and its nightly occupants with a certain degree of reverence.  Not the case with your typical 'club' type of hangout.  Here, you expect the following: go deaf listening to the "DJ" play the latest re-mixed version of Jock Jams: Volume 34, urinate anywhere but the urinal, and watch the frat kids discuss their strategy for getting one of the drunk skanks to come back to the house and get gang-raped.  Because of these features, the 'club' received no reverence from me.  Not one ounce.  And fellow patrons would also be treated accordingly.

The reason I mention all of these puke-making features of the contemporary after hours scene in America, is that one night Shane made me forget all about them--which was a feat.  He gave me something that made all our forays into the void worthwhile.  He gave me that piece of genius that everyone is in search of.  But I also mention them because of the security measures that these features could necessitate.  Chiefly, the need for a phony name.  Something akin to an author's pseudonym or a porno actors performance handle.  I was usually Randolph Sloan, or Chest Roberts.  Shane typically stuck to his old faithful: Chet Dunbar.  I was usually a medical supply salesman.  He was almost always in the insurance game.  We only existed from the moment we entered to the moment we left.

The night was hot, sticky and distinctly Saturday.  I knew that the next day would absolutely suck because I was bound--out of sheer boredom--to drink more than I should, and I would undoubtedly be hungover.  I knew that I would spend most of Sunday trying to get the blurred images of drunk college kids in pastel polo shirts--collars upturned--out of my head.  I always hated Sunday without a hangover, so the headache and dry mouth would just make the sabbath that much more unbearable.

We entered the establishment like most Japanese would get on a subway car: by squeezing through a ginch-gaggle at the door, taking great care to avoid the great plumes of menthol smoke that rose forth.  Once at the bar, Shane casually indicated that there was someone he was interested in, and, much like he has done in reality, he disappeared.  My friends and I were unable to locate him until we saw him walking toward the back exit about an hour later--shapely vixen in tow.

We--myself and two friends who had accompanied us that evening--gave Shane about an hour and decided to head home.  We stopped at a gas station en route and my pal Ali purchased an enormous bag of Cheetos.  The cramped ride back to Shane's apartment took all of twelve minutes.

We walked in the door and immediately heard the soft moaning of the girl that Shane had somehow convinced to come home with him.  STOP, STOP, STOP!  Before I go any further, I must tell you about Shane's place.  It was easily one of the coolest places that any of us had ever seen.  It was also the nicest place Shane had ever, or probably will ever live in again.  It was an old warehouse that had been converted into studio apartment spaces with lofted living room platforms.  You could take the stairs to the top of the platform, turn around and look down into the bedroom.  On this unforgettable evening, the three of us decided to go to the top of the platform and have a seat.  Take in the show.  Eat some Cheetos.

So, there the five of us were.  The girl was moaning, Shane was going to work, we had a front row view--feet dangling down off the stoop.

I don't know why, but Shane was always into being the subject of the voyeur's curiosity.  He loved to fuck girls in front of .... well, anyone who would watch.  Strange but true.  I always felt he should leverage this joy of sexual performance to his favor, and maybe that's were he is these days.  Who knows?  All I can tell you is that Shane was not angry when he saw three of his close friend watching him screw this girl.  To the contrary, he was delighted.  And, apparently, he was very hungry.

Shane spotted the gigantic bag of Cheetos and immediately gave us the universal symbol for eating food, and then indicated that we should quietly bring him some Cheetos.  He continued gesturing until Ali, who was just drunk enough to think it was a good idea, began his descent of the staircase toward Shane's bedroom door.  The next we saw of him, he was commando crawling toward Shane's bed--trying to sneak up unnoticed.  As he arrived, Shane turned the girl's torso away from the edge of the bed and began to mount her from the backside.  As she squealed in apparent delight, Shane would use the noise to conceal his rummaging in the Cheetos bag.  This continued for several minutes until, unexpectedly, the girl turned back around and pulled Shane on top of her.  I must admit, if I hadn't been so impressed by the feat of daring that Ali had been performing, I would have definitely admired this woman's savagery in bed.

The mid-fuck feed was going just fine until this last position shift.  With Shane on top, the girl began demanding full, spit-soaked porno kisses from poor Shane.  When this happened she began to taste something foreign, something that had not been there when they started.  She was now tasting the greasy, but still pleasing flavor of the Cheeto.  Perhaps it was this flavor failing to agree with her, or her sense that she was being watched, but in one furious and super-human movement she managed to push all 250+ pounds of Shane off of her.  As she did this she let out an Amazonian war-shriek that scared poor Ali so badly that he stood and bolted out of the bedroom.  She scanned the room like the alien from Predator, almost as if she could see thermal patterns and, very deliberately, settled her gaze on the gentlemen at the top of the stairs.  We gave a weak smile, and a short wave hello.

Not a good idea.  The only think that I can recall coming out of her mouth that was actually a word was something like "what in the fuck are you smiling at motherfucker?!!"  I was, for perhaps the first time in my life, truly terrified.

She stormed into the bathroom, pushing past Shane as he tried to stop both her and his own laughter.  She did not exit for thirty minutes, in which time we tried to work out what we would all say to her.  I wanted to leave, but Shane would have no part of that.  If she was to be faced, it would be all of us facing her.

When she came out she was far less angry, but it was still very awkward.  How do you explain the hilarity of things from our perspective?  How would Shane explain that when a 250 pound man does cardio, he needs to have carbs to stay in the game?  More importantly, what would she say to us?  One thing was certain, Shane would never apologize.

And so it went.  She reappeared, fully clothed, tapping her foot, arms crossed.  This is the classic I-want-an-apology-for-this-bullshit-Cheetos-eating-and-voyeurism-routine stance.  None was forthcoming.  This childish standoff lasted about fifteen minutes--a goddamned eternity.  Something would have to be said--or done.  Something symbolic.

You could always count on Ali, and true to form, he pulled through with the icebreaker.  As he gently extended the Cheetos bag, he looked at her softly and asked "would you like one?"

We never saw her again.

Dammit vs. the Ace Bandage

My Grandparents were born in the early 1900s, so it is no surprise that they are prepared for everything.  They have always remained steadfast in their belief that the apocalypse will occur at any moment, and because of this my grandmother packs her toiletries as if she were marching off to war.

Included in her kit are needles (injection and sewing varieties), every kind of salve known to man, copious amounts of the wonder-drug Benadryl (which not only lessens the effects of allergies, but also provides a mellow, sleepy high), various cutting and pulling utensils, a one quart jumbo-size bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and the list goes on, and on, and on.  Needless to say, the woman could touch down in an unknown, war-torn wasteland and immediately begin triage/surgery on a long line of waiting wounded refugees.

I often wonder if this is what she envisions as she regularly refills the contents of this mobile hospital.  She is, after all, nuts.

Perhaps the crown jewel in this toiletry kit from hell is the ace bandage.  Affectionately referred to by my cousins and I as simply, The Ace.  Its uses myriad, this amazing item will always remind me of my many childhood trips to consult the contents of the kit.  An ace bandage really is a marvelous thing.  It can stem bleeding from a sucking chest wound, it can bind a realigned broken bone, it can support a useless arm after it has been pulled out of location from the shoulder, or it can bind the hands of small younger siblings when they are misbehaving.  (I have had great success with this latter utility, but that's a different post altogether.)

What is most intriguing about The Ace is its durability and smell.  As a kid, whenever I was feeling blue, I would visit my grandmother's bathroom and pull The Ace out of her M*A*S*H toiletry bag and let the healing begin.  It was possibly the only item in her fix-it bag that could bring comfort simply through the memories attached to it.  As the rain would pour down outside, I would hold The Ace close to my face and recall all the good moments we had shared.  The time I fell out of the tree in the backyard and sprained my ankle, and it was there to save me.  The time I crashed on my bike and had angry, bloody road-rash on every pristine part of my left ass cheek--The Ace was there to hold fast the peroxide-soaked bandaging.

It smelled of medicines that only the elderly know about, and its unfading elasticity was more comforting than anything I've yet encountered in this life.  The Ace was, as they say, the absolute tits.

With all of the healing potential of the bandage offered for your consideration, it should definitely surprise you that my most enduring memory of it had nothing to do with medicine.  Far more bizarre than anything you would encounter in an emergency room, it had to do with the slovenly yellow Labrador that my grandparents owned.  A dog called Dammit.

Dammit was so named because it was always doing something to incur someone's wrath, and it was easier to just change its name to the first word that would come to mind when you saw what he had accomplished.  This fucking dog would chew up something metal, shit the shrapnel out on sunroom floor, and then come to you wagging his tail because he expected you to be proud of him.  He was fat, lazy and smelled of something that I can only describe as the sweat that slowly drips of the dirty nutsack of a rhinoceros.  I absolutely loved this dog simply because it was proof that a goat successfully fucked and impregnated an unlucky dog somewhere in West Virginia.  Dammit was a household holocaust.

I don't know the precise moment that Dammit devoured The Ace, but I like to envision the event in my mind.  I like to think that he took his time, enjoying every last stretchy swallow.  Regardless of how much affection I thought I had for The Ace, it was clearly nothing compared to the desire of Dammit.  Like a jealous lover, he must have decided that if he couldn't have this beloved 12 feet of elastic miracle to himself, then no one else would have it either.  The patience that it must have taken to eat the entire thing is simply breathtaking, and doing it without getting caught is one of the finest K9 achievements in history.

And Dammit ate the entire fucking thing.  Gone, without a trace.

We may have never known the fate of Ace if it Dammit's digestive abilities weren't so peerless.  The Ace would probably have killed a normal dog, balling-up in the lower intestine and causing total blockage, but not this maniac.  This dog was special in many ways, but when I first caught a glimpse of The Ace working its way out of Dammit's larger-than-life, pink/brown asshole--only then did I understand the magnitude of his importance.

This dog was a freak of nature.  On the day when The Ace came out, he spent the entire day trotting around the house with his tail slightly raised.  My grandparents knew what was going on, but until Ace was completely out they would just resign themselves to the fact that their dog would be parading the numerous soft, fleshy folds of his asshole around their home.  I still don't fully understand how they could get so comfortable with the sight of that.  It looked as though someone had pulled the fabled yellow ribbon through a wrinkled knot in the old oak tree.  So rarely in life to we get to witness performance art that is so bold, so horrible and yet so beautiful.

The moment to pull the string came just as I was introducing my date to the junior prom.  I had brought this young lady to their house so that they could take the requisite snapshots and tell us how great we looked in a tuxedo and an evening gown.  This girl was the fucking daughter of a Mormon cop, and she was not impressed with me as it was.  No one else had asked her to the big dance, so I was simply a free meal and a ride to the party.  No one could have warned her about the beast known as Dammit.  Even if they had, no one could have imagined the series of events that would unfold as we were preparing to leave the house.

After the photos and hugs and kisses, we were turning to head out the front door when Dammit came prancing in--breathing heavily and dragging about 9 feet of The Ace behind him.  My grandfather--who was sitting in his easy chair--spotted the trailing bandage and in a sudden, but precise flurry, stomped his foot down upon it.  When he did this, Dammit spooked and began to run away.  Well, he didn't exactly run (Dammit was approaching 190 lbs.) but executed a sort of modified low-crawl across the living room floor.  My dear old granddad held fast on the bandage, and as the dog crawled he howled in laughter.  As he howled in laughter, the poor beast moaned in agony.  I'm not sure if the pain came from The Ace being violently unthreaded from his rectum or from the knowledge that his beloved would be back in the world for everyone else to access once more.

Either way the look on my date's face was priceless, and one reason that I will forever hold my grandmother in the highest esteem is that she seized the opportunity to take a quick snapshot of her face as she watched the pathetic creature free himself of The Ace.  It was absolutely poetic--the seamless melding of abject horror, Depression-era simplicity and the beauty of nature.

Love is often expressed, sometimes understood and frequently lost.  But it is never so fully embraced in each of these ways as it was by Dammit and his brief courtship with that childhood favorite, The Ace.

Dennis Hopper is a Festering Turd

I just saw the worst T.V. commercial ever...

I think I need a shower. I feel dirty, like a young schoolboy who has just been raped under the bleachers. I just saw an advertisement for a financial planning service and Dennis Hopper was the spokesman. What was that noise? Oh, that was just the sound of thin Peter Fonda rolling over in his grave.

What's that you say?  Fonda isn't dead yet?

Well, one person who deserves to be is Dennis goddamned Hopper. It's not bad enough that the hippie generation turned into the most dysfunctional group of self-absorbed, flabby, mouth-breathing fucks this planet has ever seen--now we have to endure the pimping of the one hippie who actually lived the dream. I used to love Hopper. The carefully selected roles, the strange affiliation with Sean Penn, his wonton drug use.

Now I hope he dies like Mama Cass.

Goodbye, Easyrider. I hope it was worth it.

Twelve Puzzling Things

No one can argue that these twelve things aren't just fucking ridiculous.

(1) Peter Jackson's aversion to the finest music ever created. It took three goddamned movies to capture the essence of J.R.R. Tolkien's masterwork The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (a total of 40 or so hours of viewing) and not a single fucking note of Led Zeppelin to be heard. No Zeppelin means no Gandalf motherfuckers.

(2) Jamie Lee Curtis. I bet her house smells like Funyuns and hermaphroditic nutsack. She is easily the creepiest person alive.

(3) Mormons.

(4) Texas. The whole state. Even Austin, Live Music Capital of the World, sucks the shit out of my ass now that the Bush skanks have been there. The only person who could have saved it is Stevie Ray (bless him). I would personally prefer just going to Juarez to hang out with the drug lords.

(5) Mormons who reside in Texas. "Daddy, I don't think the court-appointed Social 

Worker would approve of this position, even if it is missionary."

(6) The most genuinely entertaining show on television is not around anymore. The Kids in the Hall was absolute poetry. People who didn't get off on this show should be sent immediately to Iraq. I haven't even seen the re-runs for quite some time and it's almost too much to deal with.

(7) Time magazine's latest 1/2 page about modern day pirates (http://http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1828332,00.html). If there was ever a subject that was owed more than what a shitty little rag like time could give it, it is the subject of pirates. I knew a pirate once. No shit, I met him in Australia where he had fled from an angry neighbor who once lived next to him on one of the 700+ islands in the Philippines. His name--loosely translated--meant 'Crazy Bat' and he certainly lived up to it. He was short, psychotic and had a lust for fat women, goat meat and amphetamines. If I were the goofy jerkoff who wrote the piece I would seriously reconsider my profession. Churn out any more crap like this and a greasy little mutant like Crazy Bat might just turn up on your doorstep. Take a lesson from Hunter S. Thompson and his experience with the Hell's Angels: professional killers and drug fiends generally like their story told a certain way, and that is usually not the smart-ass Ivy League way. I would ditch the figures and historical facts and focus on raw pirate potential.

(9) People named Timothy. Every Timothy I have ever known was just plain fucking feeble. I cannot back this up (because I don't work for Time and I can't regularly converse with the geniuses who work there), but I would guess that the most common name amongst pedophiles is most likely Timothy, or Timmy, or just Tim--if you're into the whole brevity thing. Any name that marries so nicely to 'Tiny' is just not my flavor of meat.

(10) Grown white men who insist that they are Indians. The next one I see driving around with a dreamcatcher hanging from his rear view mirror had better be prepared to produce a tribal identification card--without hesitating. If not, he will experience something akin to having 'Crazy Bat' tear his nuts off. I suppose I would let him off the hook if he could cough up an employee badge from a local reservation casino. I am sick of the "White Hawk" Johnsons of the world feeling as though they are actually fooling anyone. I hate to be the heavy, but the frequently reported 'Cherokee Great, Great Grandmother' on your dad's side doesn't translate into full-blown Indian-hood. Get ready Billie Jack, I'm coming for you.

(11) Computers that will spell-flag a nasty word but give no alternate spelling. I guess this is just too family-friendly for me, and perhaps a bit of refusal to accept reality on the part of software engineers and computer manufacturers. I think they should invest in some research (maybe reach out to the dipshit cock-smokers at Time) about what most home computers are ultimately used for. I assure you they aren't purchased exclusively for Googling passages from the King James Bible or scouring Craigslist. Well, maybe the Women Seeking Women section. Think smut, I always do.

(12) Jay Leno. I wish he would choke on a Dorito. You can have the cackling faggot that plays guitar in the band too.