Constance

So I got my bimmer.  It's just fantastic.  It's a little older, but it runs like a champ, everything works perfectly and it gets 37 mpg on the freeway (where I do most of my driving).  A man can't possibly ask for much more than that. 

In other news, well, got 6 shots today.  Three of which were IMs meaning intramuscular immunizations.  That transulates to hella long needles to be followed by a day or two of muscle pain.  Talking to the doc.  No good news yet.  Such is life.

Not doing much else.  Friday we (the Admin division) are all going to see a movie together.  Don/t know just what yet, but we're going to see something darn it!  hahaha.  

I guess I don't have anything else right now to write about.  But I really feel like writing.  It's a bit of a weird feeling, and a difficult one to describe.  

I suppose I could continue, for the first time, intentionally blabbering about something, or absolutly nothing at all.  That's a turn of events now isn't it?  lol

So...where to begin?  hmmm...... well, First thing that comes to mind is how much I've been neglecting my guitar playing.  I have two that sit perminantly out in the open and I must look at both of them at least a dozen times a day and don't seem to do anything about it.  I think as of tomorrow I will remede that situation.  I need to get back on a 45 minute per day minimum to build my finger strength and calasises back up to snuff. 

I guess what I'm really thinking about, the underlining concern if you will, is that I only have 11 months left in the Navy.  And as much as I cover it up, that really scares me.  Like honestly.  As much as I hate being in the Navy, there's a certain satisfation that comes with it.  I think it's a combination of job security, structure, a constant and descent pay check, free medical and dental, so many very good friends and the freedom to live in so many places.  But what I can't deal with anymore is the beratement.  I will not be treated like a 6 year old anymore.  I am just so very tired of it all, and all the games that come with it.  The freedom to quit carries with it a lot of weight.  Even if you don't intend to, the fact that it is an option is a reassurance that can't be found here.  It's a get out of jail free card if things get too hairy, or if you just need a change of pace or something like that. 

Jeff and Priscilla want me to stay with them and go to college.  I need to, but I don't know if I want to be here anymore.  I'm just so far away from my family, and I have been for so very long.  I miss my friends and my house and my old life.  I know there's no job there for me, and nowhere really to live.  My stepdad gave me a very small trailer, said I can use it as long as I want.  Can hook up power and water and sewer no problem and that way I have some privacy and no bills really.  Of course I'd pay for what I use, I'm a descent enough person to know that's the thing to do.  And that's a bit attractive really because my needs are few, and it would be very nice to live minimalistic for a while.  I think I'd really enjoy that.

But I have a fear too that if I go back home, I'll fall into the rut that all my friends back home were seduced by.  All they do is work some crap job and make just enough money to get drunk every night.  And that's all they do with their lives. 

And I'm 28 now.  Where have the years gone?  They went so fast, I don't even know anymore. 

And then there's purpose.  There's this girl back home.  I think there is for every guy who joins the military.  Anyway, she's always liked me, and we've kept in touch actually pretty well these 10 years.  We're good friends, I dunno maybe a little more.  hahaha she calls me about...oh I don't know maybe every other month on average and we talk for a few hours just to remind me that she's still waiting for me.  Cute.  And she's really great, funny, very pretty, smart and level headed.  She's a hell of a hard worker and dosen't complain about having to work.  That's quite admirable.  I think the only thing that's ever stopped me is that she's a package deal.  She has two kids by two different fathers.  One's in prison for armed robbery, and the other's a convicted drug dealer on the run for a couple years now.  And I really do think she's great but honestly.....I don't much want anything to do with that situation.  But on the other hand, a part of me wants to help out.  I think that's the true human side of me.  I have a side that wants to go be with her so that takeing on that family can give me purpose, something that's noble to concentrate my life on.

  Direction.  Sometimes I think when left alone, I'm lost without it. 

And that's a lot of what I think about:  women.  And the severly lacking skills I have in the dealings with them.  For as many relationships as I 've screwed up for just being an idiot, I don't know if I deserve a good woman lol.  No, but I think that's another reason why I keep thinking about Savannah, she knows me well enough to clarify the things she knows I need to hear and ignore the stupider things that I do alot lol.  Yes, yes, I'm human and make plenty of mistakes too. 

But I think she's always been there, in the back of my mind.  Beckoning.  For a long time now I haven't paid much mind to the call, I deemed it too riskey many some ago.  But the more time passes, the more I find myself replaying the possibilities in my head, late in the afternoon, alone in my apartment, watching the sunset between  the trees, through the window behind my computer desk. 

This is what I do.  I work and for some morbid reason, dwell in the past?  Maybe.  Or maybe just right now.

I have thought about staying here in Virginia and going to school when I get out.  And staying with Jeff and Priscilla.  Jeff has long been a sort of...dipstick for me.  He sizes me up now and then and determines what I need, then suplies it.  hahaha.  Really great guy, and a truly irreplaceable friend.  I don't even know yet if I could leave, just for his sake.  See, I'm his moral fiber, his compass if you will.  As much as he helps me when I need it, I keep him in line and out of trouble.  Funny, I have all the good advice to give, but can't keep any for myself.....age old dilemma I suppose.

Well, I think I've rambeled enough and used enough contractions for one night.  Perhaps the results will finaly be back on my heart tomorrow.  I'm really quite tired of wondering.

and he sends his greetings from beyond.  Well, beyond the Pacific ocean anyway.  I have many linux problems I'm trying to work out so I'll be posting them here --->

well, well, all is well. I'm working again. I rearranged my room to give me something to do yesterday. I spent 9 hours tearing it apart and putting it back together plus a good clean. A change is nice and well deserved. But the thing I notticed was that anything that I did the last few days since (and including) Monday were just...not enough. I'd pick something up, and be instantly bored with it. I'd turn on the TV and immediatly want to turn it off. Open up a game, and as soon as I opened it I had to close it because it simply wasn't enough. I don't ever remember this feeling. A feeling of need. I have been absolutely restless. All I can seem to do for any amount of time is sleep, or lay in bed teary-eyed with a mess of thought stirring me into some sleeping state. Pretty much all of Monday I wore my sunglasses all day to cover up the red eyes. Good byes normally are easy, however, with this person, they never are. And this time is hardest of all.

Well, two things happened over the last 20 days. Very much and very little. I'm happy and sad. Loving things and hating things. Knowing what things are going to happen, and then being suprized when they do. She left today, and the second we got to the ticked counter it all went down hill. Thirteen hours have passed since then, and it's been tearing me apart every second of it. Just like the last two times. I hoped things would be different this time, I had the wisdom to know better, and still hope got the better of me. And so life continues as it was. One day at a time. One task after another.


Wading through the shallow end of clueless wonderment
scrounging for the scraps of snaity
birthed by a skin in a chromium laminent
cowered in the depths below an endless entity
dark and cold, while woundering-fearing
fumbling constantly, picking the pieces from the sand
a puzzle of forever, completing and consumeing
pulsating from fingertips, to the palm of my hands
I loose myself within sounds, so consistantly consuming
open wide and suck it in
this time
I can't feel it move across my skin
prying forever-so hard I try
endless I see through my third eye.
-Rennik

I wonder if I'll sleep tonight

Ok, one last time. lol

http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=28937110&imageID=670943302&MyToken=d0cbeac5-0a62-4393-b079-77f70296bdc1


http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=28937110&imageID=670947182&MyToken=f791145b-8dca-419a-98d3-0a72375bc5a1

Lets see if these post. Sorry about the last two.

hehehe we were having SO much fun in the war between us training folks and the HPU division (Harbor Patrol Unit)...and we took it a bit too far, as the pictures to follow will show. yea, we stole the "tip of the Spear" or HPU-7 which is a EZ-go cart that they had all done up to look like one of the patrol boats. And we took the prop off and painted it homo-rainbow and put hello kitty stickers all over it and parked in the LT's spot. yes....he was not too happy about that. So we all got "extra duty" which entailed sweeping the entire parking lot of the Security building for 2 hours after hours with foxtails (little hand brushes). So we decided that that was so stupid, we wern't going to do it unless we went all out. So we got a box of poopey suits (Chemical undergarmet protection gear) and wrote our last four on the left side front, our nicknames on the right side, and "HPU/TRNG" on the back, then tied us up together on the chain gang and got on with the sweep.







that's one pic, here's the other.





haha, that is all

Mr. X Marked the Spot
We could use another containment strategy, but George Kennan died



Yankee, go home: Kennan was only briefly U.S. ambassador to Moscow. That was in 1952 (above). After five months, the Soviets declared him persona non grata. But he'd already done his damage to them several years earlier as progenitor of the doctrine of "containment."

TOO BAD THAT George Kennan, the famed "Mr. X" of last century's Cold War, died before he could inspire a containment policy to stop this century's homegrown empire-builders. Instead of the Soviets, we're the ones who need to be contained, and later in his life, Kennan recognized thator at least he said he did.

His '40s ideas of how to contain the Soviet empire, set out in the "Long Telegram" and in "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," a July 1947 Foreign Affairs article he penned as "Mr. X," helped set in motion the Cold War. But subsequent generations of right-wingers went farther in their military blustering toward them there dirty Reds than Kennan would have.

In fact, Kennan became an opponent of the Vietnam War; he was a trenchant critic of American foreign policy after he formally exited the State Department more than half a century ago. Of course, he lived so long that he had plenty of time to perhaps try to rewrite some of the history that he had a hand in making.

That and other things about Kennan are abundant online. You could start with Wikipedia's bio. Or, try the interesting and comprehensive page of links George F. Kennan on the Web, compiled by Vancouver, Canada, computer jock Russil Wvong.

First, though, read Condoleezza Rice's short, official statement released yesterday. It starts:

It is with profound sorrow that I learned today of the passing of George F. Kennan. I knew him, and I admired him as one of the greatest strategists in the history of American foreign policy. He had a profound influence on me.
Yeah, well, not enough of an influence. Here's a snatch of Kennan that Rice obviously doesn't profoundly recall. Speaking about a particular war we were waging, Kennan once told a dinner crowd in Newark:

[N]o conceivable political outcome could justify the attendant suffering and destruction.

And that's not the only way this effort has been unsound. It has also been unsound in its relation to our own world responsibilities and to our responsibilities here at home. It has represented a grievous disbalance of our world policy. It has riveted an undue amount of our attention and resources to a single secondary theater of world events. It has left us poorly prepared, if not helpless, to meet other crises that might occur simultaneously elsewhere in the world. And finally, it has proceeded at the cost of the successful development of our life here in this country. It has distracted us and hampered us in our effort to come to grips with domestic problems of such gravity as to cry out, as we all know, for the concentrated, first-priority attention of both our government and our public.

These are indeed grievous drawbacks to any sort of military effort. They were all clearly visible a long time ago. It did not take the agony and the grievous human losses of these past two to three years to make them evident to anyone who wanted to see.
Sounds like Iraq, right? Kennan was speaking about Vietnam.

He made those remarks at a February 1968 dinner introducing Eugene McCarthy, who was challenging an earlier warmongering Texan, Lyndon B. Johnson. Kennan's little speech can be found in the New York Review of Books. It's also excerpted in one of the best fairly recent pieces about Kennan, Ronald Steel's essay in the April 29, 2004, NYRB. (If you have to subscribe, don't whine. The NYRB is must reading these days.)

Even the way Steel began his piece will give you more perspective on Kennan than you're likely to get from most of the establishment media:

George Kennan, who recently celebrated his hundredth birthday, has been best known as the author of the containment doctrinean ill-defined formula he proposed as a government official early in the cold war for confronting the Soviet Union with a vigorous American "counterforce."

This is a great pity, for it is among the least of his accomplishments, and the one that most distorts the subtlety of his mind and the acuteness of his sensibility. Indeed it is one that he himself later denounced as being excessively focused on military rather than political containment.
Not that Kennan became a liberal hippie, y'understand. As Steel put it:

Certainly not a conservative in the way the term is today used in American politics, Kennan is a classic, organic conservative, the intellectual companion of such other historical romanticists as Ortega y Gasset and Spengler. What he deplores is the messiness and leveling of mass democracy, where the median is often the lowest common denominator. What he admires is order, tradition, and an aristocracy of taste and values. Naturally communism is even more abhorrent to him than mass democracy or untrammeled capitalism, for it compounds the sin of leveling by stifling expression.
That's right. He was from the snooty class, perhaps, but he didn't like the stifling of expression. Kennan fought fire with fire, not just with firepower, like the idiotic Bush regime. He was cunning and sneaky, as a diplomat should be. But he wasn't trigger-happy and he spoke his mindand Kennan had a mind from which to speak.

Steel reproduces (and so will I) a passage from a 1999 NYRB interview of Kennan by Richard Ullman. Here's that snippet, from a conversation that took place just after Kosovo simmered down:

Ullman: The United States is these days the world's only superpower. How long will this last?

Kennan: If you measure it only by military statistics alone, it could last, I suppose, for a long time. We have by the tail, after all, in the form of our Pentagon, a vast bureaucratic monster that we don't know even how to cut down, not to mention to bring fully under control. But purely military power, even in its greatest dimensions of superiority, can produce only short-term successes. Serving in Berlin at the height of Hitler's military successes, in 1941, I tried to persuade friends in our government that even if Hitler should succeed in achieving military domination over all of Europe, he would not be able to turn this into any sort of complete and long-lasting political preeminence and I gave reasons for this conclusion. And we were talking, then, only about Europe. Applied to the world scene, this is, of course, even more true. I can say without hesitation that this planet is never going to be ruled from any single political center, whatever its military power.
Kennan's breadth, of course, encompassed more than just the politics of politics. He was long a culture critic. I doubt that he ever pestered Jerry Springer for ticketsas the British are about to do. Here's more from Kennan during the Ullman interview:

Ullman: It isn't only our military power that makes us No. 1. For better or worse, our cultural impact is equally profound. The world flocks to American popular culture.

Kennan: This, alas, appears to be true. We export to anyone who can buy it or steal it the cheapest, silliest, and most disreputable manifestations of our "culture." No wonder that these effusions become the laughingstock of intelligent and sensitive people the world over. But so long as we find it proper to let millions of our living rooms be filled with this trash every evening, and this largely to the edification of the schoolchildren, I can see that we would cut a poor figure trying to deny it to others beyond our borders. Nor would we be successful. In a computer age, it is available, anyway, for whoever wants to push the button and receive it. And so we must expect, I suppose, to appear to many abroad, despite our military superiority, as the world's intellectual and spiritual dunce, until we can change the image of ourselves we purvey to others.

There's a new poem brewing. I can feel it coming on. Maybe a day or two to work it out, but this I think will be one of my greater works I know already.

I actually memorized my first official scale on the guitar. I think it was an A flat scale. yea. Cool. Now...only about 300 more. LOL. crap, I hate wait. And today I learned how to play Invisible Wounds by Fear Factory. If anyone hasn't heard that song, I advise you find it and play it a time or two. There's 2 versions Dark Bodies, and Sutures mix. The former being on the 1st Resident Evil soundtrack. Album Digimortal. Good stuffs that. But I had a hard time tuning down that far. The song is played in drop A tuned down 3 1/2 steps. And that far down, my strings were buzzing pretty bad. Maybe I'll look into a lighter gauge string, currently my fettish is Ernie Ball: Hybrid Slinky. I literally buy them by the box. They have a real nice high end, not too taught, and an awesome low. Seemingly designed for drop D tuning and quick responsive soloing. Also good stuffs that.

Die Treufel.

Nehmen Sie mein Leben beim Venenübens in Stille,

nicht gibt es ein Zeichen vorderen Fortschritts.

Befreien Sie mich von diesem maddness,

und schneiden Sie die Verbindung,

die Sie geführt hat, zu verwechseln.

Einen anderen Tag in einer anderen Woche.

Sie sind so bline verdammt, und sind deswegen I.

Lassen Sie uns sind frei zusammen.

27 reasons why McDonald’s is better than the Navy

> 1. If you have to take a piss, you can go take a piss. No questions
> asked.
> 2. You’ll never have to go port and starboard on the fryer.
> 3. Better pay.
> 4. The ability to quit!
> 5. McDonald’s doesn’t deploy.
> 6. They have actual janitors.
> 7. No McDrills.
> 8. The grill breaks....You CALL someone to fix it.
> 9. No time at McDonald’s will you hear your boss give a 30 minute
> dissertation over the P.A. on the importance of being at the register 15
minutes early.
> 10. McDonald’s will eventually fire the ***REALLY*** stupid employees.
> 11. If McDonald’s catches fire, you leave.
> 12. Someone else makes the water.
> 13. Personnel inspection requirements are written on the door. (no shirt, no shoes, no service)
> 14. At McDonald’s, dislocating your shoulder is not considered getting the "good deal"
> 15. If you want to buy your boss a beer, thats okay.
> 16. If you want to tell your boss to "fuck off and just die, just fucking
die" that’s okay too.
> 17. Ther is no Uniform Code of McDonald’s Justice to deal with.
> 18. No one will wake you at 2 in the morning to start the grill.
> 19. Chances of you getting called back after you get off work are pretty
damn slim.
> 20. $2.99 is a meal price, not a daily wage at McDonalds
> 21. You don’t have to go single register operations if someone spills a
Coke.
> 22. McDonald’s doesn’t require a 24 hour Shutdown Register Operator and a McRoving Watch.
> 23. You don’t have to come in to work at 7am only to wait around for an
> hour for your boss to tell you things you already knew.
> 24. If you burn a hamburger, they won’t take away half a month’s pay for
> two months and restrict you to the playground.
> 25. You don’t have to take apart the shake machine once a quarter, JUST BECAUSE.
> 26. You scrub the floors because it’s dirty, not because it’s Wednesday.
> 27. ALL of the articles of the Constitution apply to you at McDonald’s