If I Was President Or God For A Day...PART I
...I'd clean up this God-forsaken mudball we call "earth." Stay with me here.
1. Journalists, War-time Correspondents and Imbedded Military Reporters. Get rid of them!!!! Seriously, I had probably one of the most pathetic experiences with one today. Some guy (who must have been like 300 lbs) from some Canadian newspaper.... like who reads any newspaper from Canada. What was the last economic/political/social problem that country ever had? Too much snow last year? Yeah exactly, point taken. This guy claims that his columns get 70% something-er-other from the readers. Appearently he gets alot of exposure. Well someone needs to expose a couple facts to this guy, like LOSE SOME WEIGHT!!! Seriously, like how are you gonna be this World Travelor News Corresponder when you weigh 300 lbs? Shouldn't the requirement be to get to Afghanistan to represent your newspaper, news affiliate or whatever, that you can actually bend down and tie your own shoes. Velcro just never cut it for anyone, unless you are like physically handicapped. Anyway, so moving on.
Our pilots were hell-bent on hooking this guy up, probably for their own exposure I'm sure. They demanded he get a headset for starters, to listen in. On what? Two pilots arguing over how to fly an aircraft, yeah that should make headline news. So its back and forth for 15 minutes about how we are short on headsets, and there are no cords to actually plug him in...back and forth. Appearently this was top priority to say, uhhh.... RUNNING A MILLION DOLLAR AIRCRAFT!! You know they say "3rd time is a charm" not 5, 8, 10... we dont' have any fuckin headsets, so its tough titties for this guy in my book. Finally we track one down, just to save grace, it doesn't even work. We get up in the air and I can already tell the reporter is kinda annoyed with us. Our pilot is like "gosh I promised him a headset, i feel bad." Well the Army promised me alot of things and I never got what I wanted, so why should he!
We get up to QLT to drop off some shit and pick up some gas, standard operating procedure is off-load any passengers while refueling. In the slight chance the helicopter is somehow miraculously engulfed in JP8 and fire...i guess atleast the passengers will survive, while the rest of us are toasted. Great SOP. We start unloading these hapless victims and low-and-behold the reporter not only can barely see his own feet, appearently can't see the ground either, because a 1 1/2 foot drop is the most physically challenging obstacle this guy ever faced (i guess they don't have stairs in Canada). The guy tumbles over, onto the gravel...lemme rephrase that, onto the JAGGED ROCKY floor, cause I guess afghanistan doesn't have small pieces of gravel in existence. The guy cuts his hand open. And its just sad.
I've seen alot of guys take a fall off our ramp before, but thats usually because they had 500lbs of gear hangin off their person. This guy couldn't even manage a helmet and kevlar vest (that wasn't even on properly). I mean, why are you gonna wear a bullet proof vest if the sides are just flapping in the fuckin wind? I mean, pants have a belt, thats why I don't walk around with them around my knees for Christ's sakes. So this guy goes crawling off, blood spraying outta his hand, dumbfounded as to why he fell just taking the world's smallest step for mankind.
Now we load people back up and Dwight has to spent 30 extra minutes tryin to patch this guy up. This guy has probably never been in the boy scouts or taking first aid, cause it takes a 20-something-year old adult to put some bandaides on his 40-year old crippled ass. Now we are all flustered cause there's more attention on the gimp, then the mission itself.
Now it sounds like i'm really beating up on this guy. He fell and cut his hand. I've done that before. I've slightly injured myself onboard an aircraft before as well. Of course for me, it took a towel and some fuckin duct tape and I was back in action. Wasnt' like the dood stepped on a fuckin land mine and blew both his legs off...suck it up butter cup, this is the real world. Or 3rd World, how ever you wanna look at it.
In the end, we returned home, and this guy high-tailed it off the aircraft. We figured, good, we didn't want to give you are fuckin story anyway. Probably would have twisted the details around, claiming that we pushed him off the ramp, and how bad Americans are at first aid. That we can't help a poor fat man bandage up a small cut, its a no wonder they are losing the war on terrorism or some real shit like that.
So back to my point. You all dont' belong here. I really think them coming here isn't so much about exposing the truth. We know this, look at Geraldo. Shining example of truth right. This must mean they are here to fulfill some kinda destiny. To quell their fascination with soldiers. If you wanna play footsie with a soldier, go down the VFW and talk to a WWII/Korean vet who got his arms blown off and experienced some real shit. Or how about the Vietnam vet who still has nightmares of jungle rot and POW camps. Thats a real story. And if coming here is somehow your cathardic way of "experience military life because you never had the balls to join the military, so I will come over here for a couple days instead of wasting 20 years making a sacrifice" go play a round of Paintball and quit wasting our time.
1. Journalists, War-time Correspondents and Imbedded Military Reporters. Get rid of them!!!! Seriously, I had probably one of the most pathetic experiences with one today. Some guy (who must have been like 300 lbs) from some Canadian newspaper.... like who reads any newspaper from Canada. What was the last economic/political/social problem that country ever had? Too much snow last year? Yeah exactly, point taken. This guy claims that his columns get 70% something-er-other from the readers. Appearently he gets alot of exposure. Well someone needs to expose a couple facts to this guy, like LOSE SOME WEIGHT!!! Seriously, like how are you gonna be this World Travelor News Corresponder when you weigh 300 lbs? Shouldn't the requirement be to get to Afghanistan to represent your newspaper, news affiliate or whatever, that you can actually bend down and tie your own shoes. Velcro just never cut it for anyone, unless you are like physically handicapped. Anyway, so moving on.
Our pilots were hell-bent on hooking this guy up, probably for their own exposure I'm sure. They demanded he get a headset for starters, to listen in. On what? Two pilots arguing over how to fly an aircraft, yeah that should make headline news. So its back and forth for 15 minutes about how we are short on headsets, and there are no cords to actually plug him in...back and forth. Appearently this was top priority to say, uhhh.... RUNNING A MILLION DOLLAR AIRCRAFT!! You know they say "3rd time is a charm" not 5, 8, 10... we dont' have any fuckin headsets, so its tough titties for this guy in my book. Finally we track one down, just to save grace, it doesn't even work. We get up in the air and I can already tell the reporter is kinda annoyed with us. Our pilot is like "gosh I promised him a headset, i feel bad." Well the Army promised me alot of things and I never got what I wanted, so why should he!
We get up to QLT to drop off some shit and pick up some gas, standard operating procedure is off-load any passengers while refueling. In the slight chance the helicopter is somehow miraculously engulfed in JP8 and fire...i guess atleast the passengers will survive, while the rest of us are toasted. Great SOP. We start unloading these hapless victims and low-and-behold the reporter not only can barely see his own feet, appearently can't see the ground either, because a 1 1/2 foot drop is the most physically challenging obstacle this guy ever faced (i guess they don't have stairs in Canada). The guy tumbles over, onto the gravel...lemme rephrase that, onto the JAGGED ROCKY floor, cause I guess afghanistan doesn't have small pieces of gravel in existence. The guy cuts his hand open. And its just sad.
I've seen alot of guys take a fall off our ramp before, but thats usually because they had 500lbs of gear hangin off their person. This guy couldn't even manage a helmet and kevlar vest (that wasn't even on properly). I mean, why are you gonna wear a bullet proof vest if the sides are just flapping in the fuckin wind? I mean, pants have a belt, thats why I don't walk around with them around my knees for Christ's sakes. So this guy goes crawling off, blood spraying outta his hand, dumbfounded as to why he fell just taking the world's smallest step for mankind.
Now we load people back up and Dwight has to spent 30 extra minutes tryin to patch this guy up. This guy has probably never been in the boy scouts or taking first aid, cause it takes a 20-something-year old adult to put some bandaides on his 40-year old crippled ass. Now we are all flustered cause there's more attention on the gimp, then the mission itself.
Now it sounds like i'm really beating up on this guy. He fell and cut his hand. I've done that before. I've slightly injured myself onboard an aircraft before as well. Of course for me, it took a towel and some fuckin duct tape and I was back in action. Wasnt' like the dood stepped on a fuckin land mine and blew both his legs off...suck it up butter cup, this is the real world. Or 3rd World, how ever you wanna look at it.
In the end, we returned home, and this guy high-tailed it off the aircraft. We figured, good, we didn't want to give you are fuckin story anyway. Probably would have twisted the details around, claiming that we pushed him off the ramp, and how bad Americans are at first aid. That we can't help a poor fat man bandage up a small cut, its a no wonder they are losing the war on terrorism or some real shit like that.
So back to my point. You all dont' belong here. I really think them coming here isn't so much about exposing the truth. We know this, look at Geraldo. Shining example of truth right. This must mean they are here to fulfill some kinda destiny. To quell their fascination with soldiers. If you wanna play footsie with a soldier, go down the VFW and talk to a WWII/Korean vet who got his arms blown off and experienced some real shit. Or how about the Vietnam vet who still has nightmares of jungle rot and POW camps. Thats a real story. And if coming here is somehow your cathardic way of "experience military life because you never had the balls to join the military, so I will come over here for a couple days instead of wasting 20 years making a sacrifice" go play a round of Paintball and quit wasting our time.