Category: Geezer Alert!

This post is prompted by simple curiosity. Judging by handles and, maybe prompted by a comment or two, many of us seem to have held interesting post-service jobs. One of the elements that defines a stint in the military is what happens next. TAH has invested mightily in the PTSD phonies, and that lot. But what about the “actual” rest of us?

I’ve got a hunch that many, if not most, TAH readers have led a post-service life that may be of interest to the rest of us. I wanna provide  an open platform for us to share. I suspect that we can look forward to “Oh Shit, YOU did that too?” moments that will be fun. I am genuinely curious myself, and I suspect we’ll find more common ground outside of having worn a uniform.

So… I’ve worked at a LOT of different jobs – I’m old, BUT I’ll open the door here with just a few.

Been a tech/lineman/outside plant supervisor in tv cable, AND climbed poles on hooks.

Been a tech for NASA for the first 7 or 8 Shuttle missions.

Been a broadcast engineer.

Been a Recording Engineer – still am, but semi-retired.

Made a living writing computer code.

Have fun… Exaggerations may well be laughed at.

Two jobs I kinda hope we don’t see here are undertaker and full-time clown. Both scare me almost as much as Dentists.

 

First and foremost, nobody was physically hurt in this incident, but I gotta believe that there WAS some fervent finger pointing in the aftermath.

Warwick Castle cannonball show sets fire to medieval boathouse.

“Hundreds of tourists have been evacuated from Warwick Castle after a burning cannonball fired from the world’s largest working siege machine destroyed a medieval boathouse by fire. “

Okay, I’ll admit a certain ignorance of medieval “cannons”, but I have never considered a trebuchet to be a cannon? My personal experience begins and ends with 5in Naval Guns. Regardless, we’re talking cannonballs.

And the “cover-up” begins… “A spokesperson for Warwick Castle said the trebuchet would continue firing shots but only dry ones rather than fireballs until the investigation into the blaze is completed. “

I dunno… if the shooters can make this kind of mistake – what difference does it make. The verbal depiction in the article that viewers had to be evacuated which suggests they were downrange:

“There was a lot of panic and people were scrambling up the bank because they had no idea if the fire would spread.”

“The place was packed with lots of young children and families. We were all evacuated and it was quite scary.”

So the tourists/fans were in a position to be threatened?

Just struck me as odd. YMMV

Oh wait… It was religious.

This may well be the strangest story I’ve come across in some time. I DO like silly, but this… I’m at a loss.

“A former girlfriend testified last year that Harris told her he shot Gerety in the stomach, tortured him for two days, then cut off his head. Prosecutors allege Harris kept Gerety’s head for months for some type of religious practice.”

So this guy gets 4 years in a plea bargain?

I’ve only just stumbled across the above link. My Google- fu found other links to the story like this. The victim’s brother did ask a painfully obvious question:

“The justice system is a joke,” Tom Gerety, victim James Gerety’s brother said. “You can murder somebody and get out in 50 months. What’s that tell everybody on the wrong side of the law?”

Admittedly some aspects of this case may give lawyers room to preen and chase cop cars instead of ambulances, etc… otherwise, read the links, or find yer own.  Still, the only reason I’m posting is to offer you miscreants a way out. Maybe them Damn Guns and their evil magic.

At least Mr. Harris ain’t a cannibal of record, and I have no/zero/nil idea what religion was involved. Hopefully YOU lot can fill in THAT blank.  The “rest of the story” is just too odd for even me begin to grasp.

With Iron Jaw Kerry facing down Iran over them dang old nuke things it is with a sort of  giggle that I offer up  a Story I stumbled across just today from 2004. It HAS been said that laughter is the best medicine. It’s that or break my diabetic beer fast a few days early. And, to be candid, I’d forgotten this part of his illustrious career.

So from the Village Voice, no less, a tale celebrating John Kerry, the flawed hero. Join me in being deeply thrilled that this a*hole is “leading the charge” to protect the world from a nuclear Iran. Yeah, I’m feeling MUCH better now.

“Senator John Kerry, a decorated battle veteran, was courageous as a navy lieutenant in the Vietnam War. But he was not so courageous more than two decades later, when he covered up voluminous evidence that a significant number of live American prisoners—perhaps hundreds—were never acknowledged or returned after the war-ending treaty was signed in January 1973.

The Massachusetts senator, now seeking the presidency, carried out this subterfuge a little over a decade ago— shredding documents, suppressing testimony, and sanitizing the committee’s final report—when he was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on P.O.W./ M.I.A. Affairs.”

Before anyone misinterprets this post I should note that I was at the Kerry Lied Rally that also happened in ’04, and count some of the Swift Boat folks that served with, and condemned him, as friends.

 

Dystopia: “a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding.”

I still lean towards Bizzaro World myself, but I HAVE spent  several days re-reading/skimming both books after the revelation I stumbled across.

“In 1949, George Orwell received a curious letter from his former high school French teacher.

Orwell had just published his groundbreaking book Nineteen Eighty-Four, which received glowing reviews from just about every corner of the English-speaking world. His French teacher, as it happens, was none other than Aldous Huxley who taught at Eton for a spell before writing Brave New World (1931), the other great 20th century dystopian novel.”

The last paragraph opens with chilling prescience:

“Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.”

I don’t really care about being thought as an odd sort of Luddite, but if you have spent any time around someone looking at their phone AND offering little, if any, connection to things going on around them perhaps you should wonder too. Toss in the notion of Texting While Driving, or this reaction to tech deprivation as discipline,  and maybe the modern day Luddite has a point.

Maybe, just maybe, Orwell and Huxley both missed, and yet sort of emphasized  a simple thing. Nobody was actually paying attention.

Why bother posting about things esoteric and a bit painful to deal with?  Most here have, at least, committed to watching the back of  their brethren. We’ve also committed by oath to defend this country. Still, when ennui becomes rampant what can we do? Yelling FIRE in crowded theater is only a crime IF there is no actual fire –  but what if no one is paying attention?

Oh well… Sitting around watching the world crumble is The Geezer Prerogative, ain’t it?

One thing that cheers me up is a song from some fellow hillbillies. YMMV:

Today is a “special” day. Among many it means little, still it matters to some.

“Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day is Monday”

For those who haven’t heard my grumps… I was spit at and called a “baby killer” when I came through SFO in ’69 while in uniform. The first welcome I experienced was in Hawaii. There was a parade for Gulf War vets and THEY decided to include us.  Members of my Rap Group were of a mixed mind. I said “What the hell” and showed up.

It was in Waimea on the Big Island where the wife and I were living on the side of a volcano.

Trivial crap for some, perhaps, but it did set the stage.

Forget my take, I had met ‘Nam vets who had shunned any form of public endeavor. A coupla of them were even there for the parade.

For me, when I finally stood in front of The Wall in DC I was thinking about those guys.

I dunno all the details behind This Day. Part of me is still angry. Still I simply can’t divorce the way many were treated from my own trivial memories.

But… Using this loud pulpit, I hope you each take  a look around, and maybe find one other of us and shake his hand.

There’s a story that has been showing up on the web that has some folks in a tizzy.

Operation Jade Helm is to get underway in July. Note: I chose this source to link to because it covers the other sources well enough.

“Seven Southwestern states will soon be infiltrated by 1,200 military special ops personnel as part of a controversial domestic military training in which some of the elite soldiers will operate undetected among civilians.

Operation Jade Helm begins in July and will last for eight weeks. Soldiers will operate in and around towns in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah and Colorado where some of them wil drop from planes while carrying weapons loaded with blanks in what military officials have dubbed Realistic Military Training.”

First alarm bell is the apparent total lack of OPSEC. I mean even I will be looking over my shoulder and I don’t live in any of the States involved. But then that’s just me anyway.

Those readers who actually live in those states will need to beware. Of what… I ain’t exactly sure. Seems to me that “1200 Special Ops Personnel” might be grabbing lunch or some such while on leave any time of the year.

Maybe it IS part of a plot, as some suggest, but us TRULY paranoid folks doubt it would be publicized???