Technocracy: Blog

A colleague I have known for many years payed his last court-mandated child support about a year ago (three female offspring). He live like a pauper for about 26 years, never worked less than one full-time and one part-time job, never had a new vehicle, never had a new computer, used my internet or whatever freebie hot-spot he could find, ate mostly beans and rice (and the apples and oranges off of my trees) has lived above my workshop in my 50 square meter office during the last two years while his youngest was in grad school, was homeless for the first six months after his divorce, then lived out of an old truck for a year, and, for over 25 years, never missed one fucking child-support payment.

His oblivious daughters are now demanding they co-sign their loans. His ex called me to scream at me for my 'negative influence' (blocked her number) and threatened to drag him back into the court system. And, wait for it, his oldest daughter was arrested yesterday for attempting to break down my gate to get to her father (told him that the 250k he spent on his kids college did not help much).

Bribed my lawyer with the promise of grilled pork burritos and some quality doggy time to come talk to this man for an hour or two.

My doggos will miss the guy, but I am looking forward to getting my office back.

I am certain that there is a story in all of this madness.

I will be in and out for the next five or six months due to my evil boomer post-capitalist avarice. A former client dangled a gold-plated contract that appealed to my world-destroying greed and capitol accumulation. Updates will be infrequent and indeterminate.

By popular demand, a severely truncated glossary and acronym list for the W&S series.

Written without reference, let me know what is missing, or any corrected explanatory.

AAV - amphibious assault vehicle

AO - area of operations

BAS - battalion aid station

BLT - Battalion Landing Team

CENTCOM - United States Central Command

CMC - Commandant of the Marine Corps

CP - command post, check point

click - kilometer

DM - designated marksman

DIA - Defense Intelligence Agency

DOD - Department of Defense

DOJ - Department of Justice

EAS - end of active service

FMF - Fleet Marine Force

FOB - Forward Operating Base

fobbit - POG that works in a FOB

fuck/fucked/fucking - noun, verb, adjective, adverb, antecedent, relative pronoun, demonstrative pronoun, indefinite pronoun, reflexive pronoun, intensive pronoun

gunner - in particular, the battalion weapons officer; in general, a warrant officer

gunny - Gunnery Sergeant

HOG - Hunter of Gunmen

JAG - Judge Advocate General

JSOC - Joint Special Operations Command

IAW - in accordance with

IOC - Infantry Officer Course

ISAF - International Security Assistance Force

ISIS - Islamic State of Iraq

LAV - light armored vehicle

MCC - monitored command code

MarDiv - Marine Division

MEB - Marine expeditionary brigade

MEU - Marine expeditionary unit

MEF - Marine expeditionary force

mag - magazine

mil - millimeter

mike - minute

MOUT - Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain

MRE - meal, ready to eat

NCO - Non-commissioned Officer

OCS - officer candidate school

OP - Observation Post

PEBD - pay entry base date

POG - person other than grunt, non-infantry

PCS - Permanent Change of Station

pig - M60, perhaps M240 or heavy machine gun

PIG - Professionally Instructed Gunman

prick - PRC radio

SOI - School of Infantry

ROE - rules of engagement

S/S - scout/sniper

tango - target, terrorist

top - master sergeant (USMC), company first sergeant (army)

SAD - special activities division

SOCOM - Special Operations Command

TAD - temporary additional duty

TDY - temporary duty travel

TBS - the basic school

TIG - time in grade

TIS - time in service

T/E - table of equipment

T/O - table of organization

NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NJP - non-judicial punishment; 'ninja-punch'

UDP - unit deployment program, user datagram protocol

UCMJ - Uniform Code of Military Justice

sierra hotel - shit hot

S, G-1 admin

S, G-2 intel

S, G-3 operations

S, G-4 logistics

S, G-5 plans

S, G-6 information and communications systems

S-X alpha - number two officer of a staff shop

UD - uniform of the day, typically charlies

utilities - USMC cammies

X/Y - x battalion of y regiment

zero - officer

Most messages I receive contain criticism.

They don't like my plot, it should go X and not Y.

They don't like my grammar and spelling, 'a third-grader wrote this'.

They don't like my politics, 'you are a socialist' or 'you are a fascist'.

They don't like my depiction of the military, 'you glorify violence' or 'you disrespect X branch'.

They do not like my depiction of sexuality. "No man would do X' or 'All men do X'.

None of the above bother me. Most of they time, these messages state some level of truth. But there was one that really chapped my butt. I deleted the message, and blocked the writer. The message accused me of being anti-LGBT. The writer called me a typical boomer homophobe.

Your assumptions about boomers are stupid. You really think that most boomers give a flying fuck about your sexuality? Geez people, I voted against California's prop 8. Guess which age group had the largest percentage voting for prop 8.

BEEP! Time is up. According to two polls, Gen X voted in grossly in favor of prop 8. Remember gen X? They were the generation that said they were going to fix all of the bad stuff done by boomers. They have not done shit to mitigate the ills of society.

Which generation has been most resistant to change?

BEEP! Time is expired. Gen X.

Want to know the generation that has been the most malleable?

BEEP! BEEP! Time has, again, expired. Gens Y and Z. The 'alpha' gen is not looking good; probably because they are being educated by Gen X.

As for all of the geezer politicians, every last one of those assholes, regardless of political affiliation, can eat shit and bark at the moon. It has always been the geezer generation that send kids to die in fucked up places.

Item One

I will have to assume that my sarcasm, irony, and satire is falling short of the mark. My nephew did warn me that my humor does not translate. My wife said that only artists can do nuance and hyperbole well. I am not an artist.

alter vs altar

culpable deniability vs plausible

And many other 'error' notifications that I have received in the last several weeks. If you see a blaring error, such as the two examples, it may be intentional. As for the numerous grammar/spelling/punctuation errors, those are (probably) not intentional.

Item Two

I receive about four or five offers per week to edit my shit. I asked in the very beginning and was told that my shit is shit; maybe it was that my crap is crap. Allow my prose to be ugly. Consider it part of the story.

An editor that can answer the question below and qualify the answer, gets the job of proofing my shit. And I have two more piles of shit in the queue. Otherwise, with all due respect to the editors that haven given much effort to help make some good SOL prose, please go away.

[ What does time point to in a black hole? ]

Many fucking thanks to those that let me know I fucked up. Fucking git. After a year you would think I would have figured out how to use fucking git. But it is a non-intuitive piece of shit. Why the fuck the fucking world has migrated to fucking git is beyond my fucking comprehension. But that is what I am using to manage my stuff. Never had these problems with subversion or mercurial.

Chapter Three has been re-posted. Fuck.