So, what do Fort Benning, Fort Bragg, Fort Hood, Fort Polk, Fort Lee, Fort Gordon – let’s just save time and say just about every major Army post in America – have in common?  That’s right – they are all named after treasonous traitors who helped make the Civil War possible (with no Soldiers or generals, the civil war doesn’t happen – that’s basic science right there. 101 level stuff).

If people want to keep statues of traitors and not change the names of Army installations named for traitors, I figured I should present a list of other idiotic non-sense we should be working toward. It’s easy – just take two things that have a horrible association and slap them together and everything is good as new. 

The Timothy McVeigh Federal Building with attached Jared Fogel Daycare

The Jeffery Dahmer Culinary Institute and Laotian Refugee Center

Richard Spencer’s Race Relation Hotline 

The Rocky V Tommy Gunn Film Awards for Artistic Achievment in Movies

Bernie Madoff’s Totally Legit Credit Union – member FDIC.  Probably. 

The New Coke Institute of Great Ideas

A statue of Bill Cosby and three frat bros mixing you a drink 
Ok – I think I’ve made my point. I’m sure reasonable people on the internets will now agree and we change the names of all Army bases named for traitors. 

(Fort Sam Houston, interestingly enough, not named for a traitor – he actually refused to join the traitors and so was removed from office and he died before the war ended)

I saw this bumper sticker in the parking lot yesterday while I was Contributing to the downfall of American Unions, i.e., shopping at WalMart. I also hate that I shopped at WalMart, trust me. But it happened. That’s not the point of the story.

For the briefest of moments when I saw that bumper sticker, I thought it read, “Pray for Unicorns.”  Now, I know this bumper sticker addresses and extremely volatile subject in real life, but for a split second it was about Praying For Unicorns.  For a nanosecond, I lived in a world where people were so passionate about unicorns they implored you to pray for them on the bumpers of their Ford Focuses.

Given the choice, that’s the world I would rather live in.

It’s not that I am particularly passionate about unicorns – I mean, I think they probably have some magical powers and I think when you rub them a genie appears and grants you three wishes, so that’s cool.  But I like the idea of living in a whimsical world where unicorns are that important.

Here’s a partial list of other things I wish would make people passionate enough to vandalize their own vehicles with stickers in support:

Pray for a world where guac isn’t extra

Pray for a TV remote that only has three buttons but still somehow does everything you want

Pray for dogs that can understand English perfectly and are more interesting to talk to than humans

Pray for a third season of True Detective and we all pretend the second season wasn’t a thing

Pray for the ability to eat bread without spending the day in the bathroom (you think this is just for me, but there are a lot of people who would be on board with this prayer)

Pray for your wife to remember not to set the cap to a jar on top of the jar without tightening it so the next person that comes by picks it up by the lid and it drops and shatters/spills all over the floor

 

These seem like prayers for a world we can all live in.  Maybe we need to start making it happen.

Last year I bought a boat.  I can’t remember if I talked about it here, but basically I bought a cheap 18 foot bowrider made when I was still in high school.  The theory went, we need to buy a crap boat first because I’m likely to hit a bunch of stuff in the river while I’m remembering what it’s like to be a pirate.  I mean boat owner.

Sounds ridiculous, right?  I mean, I’ve been up and down the Damariscotta River about 1000 times in my life.  There is absolutely no chance I could miss the channel markers and drive right over a sandbar I’ve known about for 30 years and ruin a brand new propeller, right?

I think you see where this is going.

But the Layla Mae is in the shop for the opening of the season, trying to repair, among other things, the fact that water which is supposed to remain outside the boat seems to be making its way inside the boat.  Very odd, indeed.

Obviously I need other toys this year.  So I got some.

Sure, the tractor is fun.  You can dig stuff up, haul stuff around, crush the wheelbarrow with the bucket because honestly you’re never going to use it again, etc.  But it’s not all tractor time around here.  Because I also got this:

That, my friends, is a 1996 E350 van with a V10 and 51,000 miles.  We use it to pick up my father and drive him to various places to eat lobster.  It was made available to us for only the cost of some repairs because a friend of my father and my uncle donated the actual vehicle to us.  All kidding aside, it is an incredible thing that someone did this for us and it’s allowing us to get my father out of the assisted living facility all the time now.  Very special and very happy about that.  Also, it doubles as the most bad ass party bus you’ve ever seen.

The boat will be back soon.  And by soon I mean August or September.  And it’s probably going to cost more in repairs than I paid for the boat.  I’m pretty sure that’s the whole point of boats.

Not too long ago United was the worst organization in the world.  Just the worst.  They made Neo-Nazi groups shrug their collective shoulders and say, “Those guys really have an image problem.”  United Airlines spent an entire week poking itself in the eye not with just one sharp stick, but with dozens of sticks.  They were running around taking the sharps sticks out of other organizations’ hands just to poke themselves in the eye.  It was crazy.

Still, you might remember my post from a month or two ago complaining about American Airlines and their batshit crazy (that’s not a swear – it’s a technical term) in-flight WiFi prices.  Well, at least United isn’t American Airlines.  Here are their prices:

For what it’s worth, I still didn’t pay for it.  I just take my cell phone out of airplane mode and use it like I’m on the ground. No crashes yet.

I’m kidding.

Or am I?

Anyway, if you are wondering what a year in my job is like, I can sum it up in one picture:

Each of those keys represents anywhere between one night and two months away from home.  In glamorous locations like Missouri.  And Ellsworth.  And Missouri.  And Florida.  And Missouri.

But, a few of them are from my vacation in Florida, so don’t count those.  Although at least one of the places we stayed in Key Largo had an actual key.  Like, you know, metal keys?  Wait, maybe the keys are in the Keys because…never mind.  I lost my train of thought.

Because I love you, my readers, I will leave you with yet another granddaughter picture.

 

I recognize that I am supposed to be posting farming stories on here and that I made a promise to do something and then bailed on it like a terrible divorced dad from an after school special. Is that still a thing?  Do they make after school specials anymo really?  If not, how do kids learn about important life lessons such as how Jodie Foster would handle getting her period? 
Too much?  Ok.
But I can’t be inside blogging all the time like a damned bookworm when I have recently purchased this:

To clarify, I purchased the tractor, not the baby. However, my granddaughter is the other 50% of my lack of blogging. Toddlers, it turns out, are extremely needy. Terrible farm hands and always wanting you to take care of them. 
Anyway, here’s a typical dinner scene since Layla decided she doesn’t like baby food, despite the fact that she doesn’t have teeth and can’t handle a lot of solid food. 

But I’m going to rally. This blog thing is going to get back on track, I promise. Right after I nap. 

Contrary to what every high school teacher ever said about me, I can totally make it in the real world.  Just last night I made myself a nutritious dinner.

 

I’m staying at the Jacksonville Holiday Inn Express.  Florida has decided to cool down to the high 50s, so my plan of sitting around poolside while I wait for my flight home in the morning has been flushed.  Instead, I decided to walk over to the nearby shopping plaza to catch a movie and eat dinner.

By the way, if you saw and liked John Wick, I’m pretty sure you’ll like Chapter 2. It opens with a violent motorcycle chase and keeps going from there.  You won’t have to endure much talking other than just setting up the next sequence of violence.  Keanu’s weapons and fighting skills are excellent in this – at one point it looked like they were just filming him at a three-gun match.  Solid.

 

As I’m walking over to the theater, I pass through what is clearly not a great area.  After recognizing the signs of this being a crappy part of town (gas stations where the attendant is behind plexi-glass, trash everywhere, abandoned shopping carts every 30 feet, free range meth heads, etc), I decide I don’t need to advertise that I’m from out of town.  I’m not terribly alarmed – I’m not deep in the hood or anything, just not in a great area.
I decide my sweatshirt is a dead giveaway that says I’m a tourist.

 

I decide the best thing to do would be take my sweatshirt off and just go around in my t-shirt.  It’s t-shirt weather anyway, so what have I got to lose?

 

I think I need to update my wardrobe.  At least for vacations.

Also, not the sunglasses.  Not sure how I ended up with those on in these photos. I blame watching John Wick: Chapter 2.  It made me want to be cooler than I’m ever going to be.

I’m assuming the rest of the people who fly American have gold plated toilets and feed their purebred dogs filet mignon because the prices for WiFi are bananas. 

$17 for wifi on this flight?  Are you out of your mind?  Two hours of Internet?  The saddest thing is that people are clearly paying it – I’m guessing AA hasn’t been offering this at $17 a flight, never had a customer and are wondering where they went wrong. 
And, given that my flight had a connection, I would have needed to purchase it twice, meaning my three total hours of flying time breaks down to internet at more than $11 an hour.
$11 an hour to watch cat videos and argue with strangers on the Internet. That seems reasonable. 

Are you looking for some non-political entertainment?  Are you sick of 2/3 of your Facebook feed being taken up by political talk?  This post is for you – 100% devoid of politics and completely not about politics.

I’m just kidding, it’s totally a political post.  But I ask you to bear with me for just a few minutes.  This blog is meant to be mostly apolitical and it has been for half a year. However, I do need to take a timeout and acknowledge the reason I can afford to have this little slice of my life be without politics.

I’m white.  I’m male.  I’m straight.  I’m financially well off right now and expect to be in the future because I work in the defense industry.  I have health insurance through my defense industry job.  I like guns.  I’m going to be just fine under the Trump administration, in an icky, short term sort of way.  And almost everyone I see on Facebook complaining that politics is all they read about now are in some kind of similar predicament – they may not be quite as comfortable as me, but most of the people complaining about political talk, protesters, etc have one thing in common:  they don’t have as much to lose as those protesting and talking non-stop politics.

I’m confident when I get pulled over by the police I’ll be treated fairly or, at worst, receive a ticket that I don’t think I really deserve.   I don’t have to worry that my skin color is going to set the officer on edge or make him take a second look at what I might have in my car.

I am 100% certain I won’t need birth control or an abortion in the next four years.

I can use the public bathroom I’m most comfortable with because I am lucky enough to have grown into my body comfortable with the gender on my birth certificate.

My marriage will not be questioned or overturned, no matter which way the Supreme Court shifts.  I won’t ever have to worry that my spouse won’t be able to make medical decisions for me when I’m in a coma or that, God forbid, if we ever got divorced, custody might only be based on biology.

I am confident that I won’t die from lack of healthcare coverage.  I might die because I eat too much or drink too much, but I’m not going to die because I have a pre-existing condition that, without the ACA, will no longer be covered.  For thousands of Americans this is a very real fear.  If ACA goes away without a replacement, people will die.  That’s a fact and it’s being ignored in all the rhetoric.

Along those lines, I don’t fear losing my healthcare coverage because a political party has branded it “Obamacare” instead of referring to it as the Affordable Care Act and is acting as expanding health coverage to 20 million people is somehow the worst thing that’s happened to America.

My family is not going to be torn apart because of my immigration status.  I won’t be ripped away from my US citizen wife and children because I don’t have the proper paperwork which the government has refused to allow me to obtain for decades.
The worst thing that is likely to happen to me in the next four years is another deployment and, frankly, that was likely to happen under Clinton too.

What’s the point of all this?  It’s that if I want to stop thinking about politics, stop thinking about what’s going on, stop being involved in political discussion and protest, I can and almost certainly my life will not change.  I hesitate to call it a privilege because calling it a privilege implies that it is something above and beyond what is expected for all human kind, but at this point, that’s what it is – a privilege.  And I recognize that I have been given this privilege through almost no work of my own.  I did nothing to earn my gender, skin color, sexual orientation, etc.  Yes, I worked hard to get where I am financially, but I was aided by to color of my skin not holding me back.  I was aided by not being a woman.  I was aided by being straight.

And a lot of you out there are in the same boat.  If you’re saying, “I’m sick of politics,” and “Not another political post” every time you log onto Facebook, I ask you to imagine how it feels to be in one of these groups that is scared.  At risk.  In danger.  All the time.  Every day.

I’m not even asking you to go out and protest or even to start in the political discussions if you don’t like them.  I’m just asking you to reflect for a few minutes on the fact that you feel comfortable opting out of these things and what that says about your life.  Then consider how it would feel not have that luxury.  Just think about it for a while and maybe you’ll find you can handle all those political posts after all.

There.  That’s it.  FF is going back to posts about my half-assed farming and falling off ladders.  But please think about what I’ve said.  You don’t even have to agree.  Considering it will be a legitimate start.

During a recent visit to a military installation in our nation’s heartland (definition: states you move out of, not into), it occurred to me that it must be a full time job on these posts to place reserved parking signs in each parking lot.  Anyone who has ever been on an Army post will tell you there are seven or eight reserved spaces at the beginning of each row at the PX.  Sure, the first few are reserved for folks with disabilities, which is great because disabled vets come on post to use the PX and the commissary, etc.  But then there are usually not one, but two spaces for general officers.

Pro-tip:  General Officers are officers in one of the four General ranks.  It is not meant to be interpreted as a parking space random officers (you know, run of the mill generalized officers).  This is an important distinction.

 

Honestly, the odds of two GOs showing up at the same time at the PX seems a little remote, considering there are maybe three on the entire post at any given time.  Then again, after a recent “poor investment” in lottery tickets, I am no longer allowed to discuss odds in any format, so just ignore what I’ve said.

 

Then there will be parking spaces for the post Sergeant Major, Chief Warrant Officer 5s, Drill Sergeant of the Year, Instructor of the Year, Volunteer of the Year, etc.  The reserved spaces get more and more specific and less and less worthy of a reserved parking space all the way down to the spot for 3rd Transportation Battalion Logistics Soldier of the Month.  And while I made up that last one, the rest are all legitimate reserved spots I have seen.

 

The funniest thing is, nobody parks in these spots.  Based on how empty they are at all times, I assume even people who are eligible are passing them up.  Everyone seems terrified to park there, as if the MPs are watching these spaces ready to hem someone up for illegally parking there (they probably are).  But there are a new crop of reserved parking signs I’ve seen on posts in the last decade, and everyone ignores them.  Like, completely and totally ignores them.  I’m talking hurrying your step past a panhandler level ignoring.  I mean an ignoring deeper than you gave your husband the rest of the month when he bought you a gym membership for your birthday.

 

 

Now, to be fair, it’s possible those are two electric SUVs and a hybrid pick-up truck.  I can’t be sure.  But it doesn’t seem likely.  At a certain point I realized they weren’t just parking there to get the closer spots – this was climate change deniers in action.  This was people who weren’t going to let some pansy hippie tell them where to park.  The drivers of these trucks were ‘Mericans.

Sigh.   That’s it.  There is no more to this post.  Just, sigh.