Author: TSO

Crossposted from Burn Pit. I promised Jonn all sorts of updates this weekend, but the internet in my hotel was horrid, and the only time I made it back there was pretty much to sleep. Got to visit friends (both alive and sleeping at Arlington) and take part in an awesome event, so all good. For those I didn’t see in Virginia on this trip, virtually everyone but two Army buddies I had a quick dinner with, I’ll try to make it out and see you soon.

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It’s hard to imagine just what hundreds of thousands of motorcycles look like gathered together until you’ve been to the Rolling Thunder.  Rolling Thunder is an annual “Ride to the Wall” on Memorial Day weekend from the Pentagon over the bridge into Washington DC, where it makes a circuit of the mall area, and ends near the Jefferson Memorial.  In 1988 the ride drew 2,500, but today as I look around the Pentagon North Parking Lot early on Sunday morning, I am surrounded by an estimated half a million riders. 

“A lot of bikes isn’t it?” asks my friend Pat Quinn of Fairfax.

“Certainly is” I remarked, “I never imagined so many.”

“You know this is just the one parking lot….the South parking lot is almost entirely full too” noted Pat.

The weekend had actually begun on Friday, when American Legion riders from across the country coalesced on Post 177 in Fairfax, Virginia.   It began with a large meal of shrimp or BBQ ribs, and then a Prisoner of War/Missing in Action ceremony with two gold star families present.  Bob Sussan of the Department of Virginia served as the emcee for the event.

From there the group headed down to the Vietnam Wall for a candlelight vigil.  The chilly night air didn’t deter thousands from attending.  Led by a bag piper and a torch bearer, Gold Star families of Vietnam proceeded along the wall to the center area, where an invocation and prayer were delivered.

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The mental patient from “Combat Internet Stalking” had some nice things to say about me last week, although they were as accurate as you might expect:

Part of the veteran-harassing “thisainthell” blog
Claims to be an attorney.
Gives advice to liars and trolls that they are protected by the 1st Amendment which allows them to stalk and harass whoever they want

Who the hell would claim to be an attorney when they aren’t one? That’s like claiming to be the dude who drove the shit suck truck around Bagram air base, only with less clout.

I love this argument that I give advice to people to stalk and harrass. No one can show a time I have ever done that. Stalking is illegal. Harrassment is illegal. The First Amendment though is something else entirely.

Nonetheless, old Dougie Fresh here deleted my stuff. Which pissed me off. As my wife’s favorite band once said:

I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and I don’t have time
To go round and round and round

(She’ll kill me for that one.)

Anyway, today I see he is kibbutzing with some dude named Wittgenfeld. Not sure who that dude is, but he clearly also has issues.

Combat Internet Stalking- Yeh, I have only talked to him [me] a few times. I wonder if he got smart and snaked away from getting involved with me after he looked at the lies his idiot lovers were using to attack and harass me with. It is tough to argue with the Marine Corps who sets the MOS’s and what they fall under.

When the hell did you talk to me assmunch? I didn’t snake away, you banned me from your ridiculous page.

Now, I need to assuage my hostility. All you idiot lovers get over to my house, draw a bath, put on some Elton John music, and I’ll be there when I get there.  Oh, and don’t delete Glee from my DVR.

Note, please hit play on this youtube before reading.  It will enhance your reading pleasure.

Dear “Judgment day” (IP: 71.178.164.92)

You really are a fucking moron. Seriously.

Your comment you left last night is so asinine that it made me giggle.

Jonn and Mark in WV and Indiana, Keep it up especially your filthy vile content.What is going to play really well with your neighbors in the 21st Judicial Circuit, is all the uncontrolled speech as to excretory and uro-genital sex organs and unnatural acts. Really makes your point becoming in your content,

I’m going to avoid using [sic] as I go through your illiterate ramblings here for the sole reason that no one has the time it would take to make this conform with the traditional rules of grammar, spelling and logic. First, great work on the research! Took a Sherlock Holmesian genius like your self to accomplish locating us. I mean, what with our Facebook pages displaying where we live.

Second of all, the 21st Judicial Circuit, if that is where you would chose to file a claim will love our “uncontrolled speech as to excretory and uro-genital sex organs and unnatural acts.” Dude, everyone loves our uncontrolled speech. (What in the holy name of Spongebob’s dick is “uncontrolled speech”?)

The court couldn’t care less whether I think (and write) that Monkress is a chocolate starfish nibbling assmonkey who should eat a bag of steamed muskrat testicles. They don’t care if I write that in my opinion he is the homo sapiens equivalent of bovine fecal matter. All the court cares about is whether it was a malicious publication expressed either in print or in writing, tending to expose another to public hatred, contempt, or ridicule, and (as Monkress is a public person) whether that statement was published knowing it to be false or with reckless disregard to its truth. To date, no one associated with Monkress has stated that we have an incorrect statement of fact in anything we’ve written about him. They can’t. We cite to our sources and show you pictures of where he said it. End of discussion.

But we can tell right off that this guy isn’t a lawyer. A lawyer would have known that

At the heart of the First Amendment is the recognition of the fundamental importance of the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest and concern. The freedom to speak one’s mind is not only an aspect of individual liberty – and thus a good unto itself – but also is essential to the common quest for truth and the vitality of society as a whole. We have therefore been particularly vigilant to ensure that individual expressions of ideas remain free from governmentally imposed sanctions.

Of course, the publisher in that case was vindicated, probably because they never engage in discussions about such horrid things as an anthropomorphised Porifera penis. Oh wait, it was Hustler Magazine. Disregard.
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Am I missing anyone?

USassyMC
LostBoys
pineywoods
lucky
Nicki
ROS
Doc Bailey
Sam from the Corn
Average NCO
MSGTAF
AW1Tim
Green Thumb
Old Trooper

All of you should have received an email with teh info. If you did not, or if someone out there also wants to be on teh committee, just leave a comment here, be sure to include your email in the block that asks for it.

OK, that time of the year again. Tourney to actually start probably next week with an unveiling of who made the big dance.

WHAT I NEED:
Need 5 more people for my seeding committee. If interested, email admin@thisainthell.us Must be able to devote about 5 hours to sorting through these peeps, and have a working knowledge of Excel. We’re going to have 10 members of the seeding committee, and it will be just straight mathematics on who ends up where. Lowest across the 10 seeds gets the #1 slot and so on.

READY TO NOMINATE?

Jonn has been listing them as them come through, but some of these appear to be repeats, and we’ve probably missed guys from other (non-TAH) links. So, feel free to nominate in the comments below. But for starters, this is Jonn’s list:
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Cross posted from my paying gig.

From Stars and Stripes:

Thirteen servicemembers who were killed when their helicopter was shot down during the final battle of the Vietnam War will be buried together Wednesday in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.

Their CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter — known as Knife 31 — had been among those tasked with rescuing the American merchant vessel SS Mayaguez and its crew, who were detained by Cambodian Khmer Rouge forces several days earlier in what became known as the “Mayaguez Incident.”

The chopper, with 26 servicemembers aboard, crashed in waist-deep surf just east of Koh Tang — a Khmer Rouge-controlled island in the Gulf of Thailand about 60 nautical miles from mainland Cambodia — as it approached to offload Marines on May 15, 1975.

A lot of folks don’t know much about the Mayaguez Incident.  Here’s an old TV News account about the basics:

Last year at National Convention we honored the survivors of that battle:

Those who survived the battle that etched the last 41 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington were recognized onstage Tuesday at the 94th National Convention of The American Legion in Indianapolis.

The president of the Koh Tang/Mayaguez Veterans Organization, Dan Hoffman of Columbia, S.C., told thousands of Legionnaires the story of the deadly, unexpected combat mission in mid-May 1975 to rescue the S.S. Mayaguez and its crew from the Khmer Rouge. The communist guerrillas had seized the American cargo ship in international waters on May 12 and played a bloody three-day game of cat and mouse with the American military.

Here is an awesome video (about 10 mins) about the Incident:

 And although this video is fairly long, Mr. Hoffman had an absolutely incredible address on Mayaguez that should be watched in its entirely.

OK, so we’ve said now repeatedly that it was about 50/50 on whether a contractor is a “Combat Veteran”.  At this point, it really doesn’t matter to the fight, since superceding events have taken it elsewhere.  Nonetheless, I am curious what you guys think.  At this point, I don’t even know my own position, so I guess I won’t be altering your opinions.