Treading Water

Tiredly Treading Water In A Storm

When I was young, I never thought I would get this old
Swimming had more to do with suns than moons
Nothing was considered, it took an explosion
To get me where my parents wanted me.
Their solid beach footing.

Yet there were shadows
Sacrifices to the dark side of their currents
As an ant in the sand of their raising
I spent too much time crawling in damp tracks
Belly knowledge is sticky piss poor growth.
My legs only grew to walking
When I got away.

When I did it was classic
Fire to frying pan
My head, everything about me
Sizzled with freedom.
I was I in the Navy.
Every droplet was about me, but today?
I have a better kindness towards drowning.

Home was a cold wet memory
Cards flipped traditionally at Tea
Snow and burdened pine trees.
A coastal dog whistle in the wind.
That’s not to say it was all bad
There were days I pranced.
Inland unity cornfields I will drag to the end.
I will die smiling at Peaks Island
Mail Ferry’s, and a stone cottage
By circumstance I own on a stony beach
Shit happens when you live long enough.

Rivers and oceans, breathing must be down above water
Or you simply drown, even in two inches depth.
They say it is painless, filled with best wishes
At that last gasp? Are there Gale Winds?

ROFLMAO

Hey Folks, meet Bradley Manning, a 22 year old Private First Class serving with the 10th Mountain Division, as a clerk. Private Manning is the fella that the United States Military would have us believe gave Wikileaks 150 thousand secret documents concerning our war in Afghanistan.

This 22 year old Private managed according to his arrest documentation to compile an extensive archive of secret documents from the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, The State Department, The CIA, the Agency for International Development, The DIA, the Whitehouse and other agencies including private contractors. This child in uniform then managed to disseminate all of these "secret" documents to wikileaks. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2548077/posts

http://bellum.stanfordreview.org/?p=2615

NO WAY! No phreaking way in hell could this guy have pulled this off. To even contemplate it is silly. To gather 150 thousand secret documents guarded by the US Military and then disseminate those documents would take a whole team of special operators. If a 22 year old Private can do this? Then we need to bug out of Afghanistan at once and review our entire military, quite possibly drug testing our military's Officer Corps.

I am just an old retired Sailor. My short term memory is in many ways shot to hell. But I do seem to recall that a couple of months ago there was a General who was in charge of our nations war efforts in Afghanistan that was fired? This General spent his entire career in The United States Special Operations Command and according to the Rolling Stone magazine article that got him fired carried nun-chucks and surrounded him self with an extremely loyal collection of Green Beret, Navy SEALs and other soldiers, sailors, Marines and civilians that the Military designate as "Operators". What makes more sense? A 22 year old Private, with less than one term of enlistment did this? Or a Command General with his team of "Operators" pissed off about what happened to their leader did this? Keep in mind that in the same Rolling Stone article General McChrystal spoke about how "computer weenies play an important part, and need to be brought into the fold of Special Operations". Also keep in mind 150 thousand files were collected, caroused, compartementilized, and downloaded to wikileaks...150 thousand files? All by a private first class?

I think this incredible leak of classified information is where General Stanley Allen McChrystal, announced his Presidential Candidacy. I also think that Barack Obama is in a tight spot. President Obama will not be able to campaign on "governmental transparency", or "change" ever again. President Obama also can not publicly and therefore politically admit that he has been played by a General he fired. That's a big time rock and hard spot by 2012. Welcome Mr. President, to the world of "Special Operations".

As for PFC. Bradley Manning? I am sure after the proper "motivation", and advice from counsel, he will plead guilty to all specifications of the UCMJ against him. He will receive a General Discharge under Honorable Conditions and just disappear into Corporate America.

The whole affair is sad, if you think about it. But yet it is brilliant, today the press is fixated on 90 thousand files released.

Makes you wonder about the value of the 60 thousand documents still laying out there in the tall grass?

Potato Words

Potato, Patato, Tomato, Tamato
For Richie and Sam, friends I let down

At the close of World War 2
There was a boat,

The USS Indianapolis
Missioned secretly to carry

the first Atom Bomb
So secretly that no one knew

they were alive
When torpedoed returning home
Of 1,196 souls aboard

880 hands were eaten by sharks over secrecy.

The Navy concluded officially
(I shit you not) “The loss of life was directly linked
To failure of team communication….”
Like those men and the feasting sharks didn’t know?
Secrets suck. I don’t expect you to understand
What I am trying to say, you are grocery store managers
Which in honesty leaves me an old man
who needs to, understanding such things, drink at the VFW
Next to secrets? Drama sucks second worst.

Being old, I have this half ingrown gray hair
across my ass That gets easily inflamed
when it experiences hyperbole being blown at it.
Wannabe kool aid drinkers screaming “Team”
Leaves me reaching for emotional Preperation H….
It is so hard for me to sit still for such things.
When it itches I scratch stupidly.
Some I suppose would call it “Post Something Or Other”.

Yet truthfully it is not Naval Special Warfare
No one dies. It isn’t even Salvation Army Disaster Services
No one starves or is left to cold elements
It is cleaning shitters, empting bus trays, mopping floors
It is a freaking grocery store.
It is time to porter the retired hair, join the VFW
Give up email discourses
Drink with those who will understand me
And know that I am quietly right.
That’s the best I can do. A vow of classified silence.
After all, you can’t blow smoke up an ass

You’ve plugged with a boot.

But you can haul up each morning in life

The Problem With Light Years...

The problem with time? Is that you have to place it in space. The old Baker-Nunn Cameras that tracked satellites and other things in the sky had a huge problem. They could track space, they could track time, they just couldn't wed the two. That is a classified secret.

I am a retired Spooky Sailor. An "Ivy Beller", a "Blue Knee" deeper than most, struggling with the compartments of my life, hanging out at a natural foods store. The store has recently been purchased by a national chain. Which makes me ponder the failures of the Baker-Nunn Cameras.

Today, someone asked "what does 'SOC' mean, everyone from the regional office signs their email with their name and 'SOC' ". I laughed and said SOC means "Special Operations Command" out of McDill. People looked at me like I was crazy. I hushed up, having already had a go round with the regional office over the word "team". They claim it, and define it, poorly.

Time and Space! It leaves me both chuckling, and pondering the light years: Where do the civilian corporations get their jargon from?

Phreaking Outstanding.

If you want to ponder or discuss the glass ceiling, how women are never taken seriously? Then Lt.Col. Brenda Cartier must be a part of the discussion. This woman just shattered a glass ceiling in the military that many "in the know" would have bet hard cash would never be shattered by a "split tail". This woman, just became the first Squadron Commander in the United States Special Operations Command. SOC is dear to my heart. Operating out of McDill, it does the "Quiet Shit"

Lt.Col. Cartier recently assumed command of the Air Force's 4th SOS Squadron, which employs the AC-130U, Gunships....often called the "Spooky". I met her once years ago when she was a Major. She was impressive then. Honestly however, I never thought she would break such a barrier. The United States Special Operations Command has been such a gung ho male dominated organization.

It is so beyond fitting that Lt.Col Brenda Cartier not only paved the way? But busted into the men's room. I have only one thing to say to the lady:

"HOOAH"

All I Can Do Is Shake My Head......

I have this bathroom, the size of a maximum security prison cell. Six feet by 8 feet. My wife decided to remodel it. She is my wife, I thought "adventure". Afterall, I have learned to take so much.

I suppose it was my mistake, I hired the contractors."With dreadlocks"...Yeah my mistake. They actually were good on the demolition. They got the the old walls, tub, and everything outta there with exhubarance. I even had a beer and played guitars with them......

It was on the rebuilding that they sucked....by then we were friends, to be taken advantage of. The walls of my shower are in....upside down, it is going to take creative enginneering to on my part to make this right.

Years ago, I served on a Submarine, where a shower was installed upside down. No one except those on a sub would know the maintianece requirements of that? "Overhead draft and water"....you can learn alot from that statement.

The Hippies charged me 5 thousand 200 bucks, to put my corner shower in. Upside down.I appriciate need. Isn't that the way things go? But I also remember who I am. I am the guy who's shower was put in upside down.

being forced to clean up after them, "dreadlock" contractors suck

You Have got to be kidding me?

You have got to be kidding me. A Master Russian Spy sent here (as the FBI claims) to become Americanized establishes a facebook page with a hundred something friends, 90 percent of who are Russians? Who meets with the undercover FBI agent receives a passport to give to another undercover FBI agent and then buys a phone using a fake name and an address of "99 fake street" calls her dad explains what is going on and is told by a Russian Father "take the passport to the local police turn it in and come home". Like a Russian father would say anything different?

Let us use an ounce of common sense shall we? If a heavy-duty undercover illegal spy was to call their contact in Moscow? Would they be told to go to a police station to turn in a fraudulent passport? Silliness.

Anna Chapman was arrested at a police station in New York trying to turn in to local police an undocumented United States Passport given to her by a FBI Agent with instructions to give it to another FBI agent. This was to say the least embarrassing to the FBI. She called her father; this is a documented fact. Now we have days later her ex husband making the claim that her father is ex KGB? Uh HUH! I wonder if FBI 302 reports will show agents of the FBI meeting with her ex after her arrest?

The day they remanded her without bail they called her a "highly trained agent and professinal deciever". All the press reports claimed she had been in "contact with her control agents". The FBI and press did not report that she had called her Dad and was arrested turning the contraband passport over to the local Police. Now, why do you suppose that is? No, the press reported what the FBI said "she had contact with her 'control agent'". The 28 year old woman in a foriegn country called her Dad.

Now days later, very late for the local US Attorney, who could have made much Hay out of her Dad being "ex-KGB" we have her ex-husband making the claim? Her father is ex-KGB? (I bet the US Attorney is pissed about this). After all the FBI claims they "followed this ring for years"? Yet, they didn't know Ms. Chapman's fathers occupation? Until a week after her arrest? When they convieniently discussed it with her ex husband and paraded him to the press 6 days after her arrest. Gimme a break!

It is convenient to explain away her call to her Father, by declaring her daddy to be ex KGB. It fills in some embarrassing holes in the FBI's story. However the FBI arrested 10 people who they can not in any way shape or manner link together? This whole "spying" is horseshit.

According to court documents filed by the FBI to date? The only thing these people are guilty of is being Russian and Internet chatting. Unless of course you believe that a highly trained foreign agent would take an undocumented passport to a local police station in a country that they are illegally spying in as opposed to taking a flight home?

SILLINESS, just silliness, a self-inflicted bite in the ass to the FBI!