Good news, what?
Seriously. Mark the calendar.
I'm getting promoted. Finally. After missing it once for not having my points turned in and missing it by nine stupid points last month, I've got it this month. Not without some work first though! Even though I had the points and my points were all in the system, my name wasn't on the promotions roster. After lots of what the fucks and oh my gods I talked to the supervisor in the personnel section. He said everything checked out and I must've just slipped through the cracks because the Army is in the middle of changing the way promotions are done (for the worse but that's another rant later) so he put in some paperwork and now I'm good to get promoted on June 1st. Finally. After 18 months of waiting.
Almost-better news! I'm going on leave in thirty days! Well, almost, in thirty days I should be leaving Iraq and on my way home for leave. As I told Katie earlier this week, it might be weird for me, spending time with people I more than barely tolerate. I'm currently working on a human hairstyle so when I get home I look more like I belong there rather than belonging here.
June and July will be good months. Then August will be shit again.
Dog Eat Dog.
Just after I get off work I get a little time to relax in my room before I go to sleep. I work 12 hours a day, which is longer than most people in my shop. I look forward to my three hours of downtime. After a couple hours I decide I'm about to go to read my book and go to sleep but there's a knock at my door. It's one of the privates in my shop. He says I have to bring my sensitive items (weapon, night vision goggles) to the shop. He doesn't know why.
There's nothing I can't stand more than having my free time taken. Even worse is when I'm summoned by Private Whothefuck. The icing on the fucking cake is when they can't tell me why I'm being summoned. I can't stand that shit. Nothing puts me in a worse mood as fast as Joe Jackass knocking on my door and telling me I have to be somewhere for no good goddamned reason.
Whatever. I get dressed (in PTs), grab my sensitive items, and start off to the shop. On the way I run into Private Whothefuck. He got the message wrong. I have to bring my sensitive items up at 1400, well into my sleep time. He's already gotten this message wrong once, I'm not relying on his memory for anything. I'm already out of my room and dressed, I'm not going back until I know what's going on. I get to the shop and they tell me I need to be there at 1400 with my sensitive items. No, no one else can take them up there for me, I need to be there with them to show them to the armorer. When I ask if I can take care of it right now, they say I need to speak with the armorer myself.
I walk across the hall, and speak with his supervisor. He tells me where I can find him. I spend a whopping two minutes looking for him, found him. I say "Hey, 1400 means I don't get a whole lot of sleep. Can I do this now?" He literally looks at the night vision goggles in my left hand, the weapon in my right hand, and tells me I'm good. That's it. Mission accomplished. I go to the shop and let them know that I've shown the armorer my sensitive items and he said I was good. If I don't do this, they'll assume I didn't and wake me up at 1400 anyway. I go back to my room, read my book, and seethe.
It's utterly ridiculous that it took one Corporal who's willing to fight for his own sleep to fix this. There's four other people in my shop higher ranked than me who just didn't give a fuck. It's not their time they're taking. No one else is losing sleep over it. And for something so trivial that it wouldn't have taken more than someone saying, "Can he do this later tonight? Can he do this now so we don't interrupt his sleep?" If I were Joe Nobody with no sense of self-preservation, I'd have been up there, half awake, for no good reason.
There's a big misconception about the Army. That every soldier is a brother. That everyone is looking out for the person to their left and right. That we're all in this together and we're all on the same side. But we're not. It's basically every man for himself and if you're looking out for anyone else you're needlessly burdening yourself. No one else is looking out for you.
For God and Country
There was a good article about religious discrimination in The New York Times (posted here) wherein a soldier who has declared himself atheist finds himself threatened by people in his unit who refuse to respect his (lack of) religion. It also goes on to describe a few instances where being an atheist is used against him in trying to get promoted or even enjoy a thanksgiving meal. Though these are extremes the article cannot begin to highlight how the only religion in the Army is Christianity.
In the Army I am constantly hammered with god this, jesus that. God's everywhere. Every prayer is Christian. Every religious service is Catholic or Protestant. Even functions that have no need for religion get some god injected into them. The worst offender was early in my enlistment when a couple's first deployment meeting was offered. It might as well have been called "The God and Sex Power Hour". It was an hour long sermon. No one told me this was a Christian service. Katie was seriously offended by how this supposed couples meeting was just another way to push god on us.
The Family Readiness Group started putting out a monthly newsletter. This too takes no consideration into the fact that not everyone in this unit is Christian. Come on now, is it really necessary to push god in a monthly newsletter aimed at my wife and other spouses while we're away? Don't they think that the Christians in the group are already going to church on Sunday and the non-Christians are doing their thing without the need to remind us that Christianity is the only Department of Defense approved religion? The worst part is that I know it was brought up in an FRG meeting that not everyone is Christian and it's not necessary to put prayers and inspirational messages in the squadron's FRG newsletter but the end result was it was God's way or the highway.
I can't even watch a little Armed Forces Network (Department of Defense satellite tv) without hearing about god. Every message from the Chaplain's Corps is a bible verse or prayer. There's even little messages about "who's going to be there for you? God." Hey, you know who else is going to be there for you? Allah. Abraham. Moses. Buddha. Vishnu. The Flying Spaghetti Monster. Xenu. L. Ron Hubbard. Eris. Nobody. Nothing. Do we ever hear about anyone other than Christian God? No.
I find it absolutely ridiculous that the Army and Department of Defense operates "religion neutral" and refuses to recognize religions other than Christianity. Either come out with it and say that Christianity is the only authorized religion in the Department of Defense or quit playing lip service to neutrality. I've been handed plenty of Christian religious materials and it's just as easy to say "no thank you" as it is to not hand them out to begin with and not playing to one religions fiddle would better serve the purpose of seperation of church and state.
Anybody want a free pair of boots?
Size 7.5 Wide. Desert tan. Hot weather type. Army standard issue.
I give up my sizes (top, bottom, hat, gloves, boots) about once every three months. Once every three months someone (usually supply) needs my sizes for god knows what. I cough up the same sizes every time; Small-Regular, Small-Short, 7.25, 8, 9.5 Regular. This last time we went to get new uniforms before this deployment I got small boots. I got small boots because the guy there told us not to go by the size we usually wear because these were different boots. The boot he gave me that he said was 9.5R was too big. The boot that felt closest to fitting was 7.5W. Whatever. I'm not wearing them right now, my boots are fine.
So I didn't wear them until about three months into the deployment. 7.5W is too fucking small. They don't fit. I can't get them swapped out because I'm in Iraq and there's not shit that can be done out here about it. Oh well, one pair of boots down the drain. It's a good thing the Army buys us new uniforms while we're in country, hopefully I can get a new pair of boots that fit.
Wrong. Even though I give up my sizes once every three months, supply decided to go with what I was issued more than nine months ago. A size I've never worn before as I've always worn size 9.5R boots. Every pair of boots I own are size 9.5R and every pair fits except these two pairs of worthless boots. So since I've got a brand new pair of boots that I know don't fit I thought I'd take them to my supply guy so I can get them sent back and get a proper pair out here that do fit.
Wrong again. My new supply guy must get off on fucking other soldiers because he basically told me I could go fuck myself. He said he can't (or won't as I believe is the case) send them back and I could try to find someone who wears a 7.5W boot (no one) and give them to them and let me get the right size when they get their stuff or else I'm stuck with boots that don't fit. So I'm stuck with boots that don't fit for a second time.
So if no one wants these brand new 7.5 Wide, desert tan, hot weather standard issue Army boots, then I'm either giving them away to some Iraqi kid who needs them (most likely) or throwing them in the trash (out of spite). Because 7.5W boots are worthless to my 9.5R feet.
The Bottom
I've come to realize that my relationship with the Army can be best described by the Tool song "Bottom" off of Undertow. The irony here is that my commander used a section of the lyrics to put on the back of our troop t-shirt but I know that it means something different to him and completely opposite to what it means to me.
I can't hide the fact that I'm a Tool fan but you definitely have to work backwards to see progression. 10,000 Days sucks but if you go backwards through their discography they get a billion times better. When all I owned was Lateralus, Aenima, and Undertow I thought it was the opposite and that Lateralus might have been a hiccup but then I heard Opiate and listened to Undertow again and I realized that I had it backwards. They go from fucking awesome to what the fuck.
I Hate It
Not Ft. Campbell. Not even Kentucky or Tennessee. I hate the little box of a hotel room we live in. It sucks. Thankfully, we're moving into housing within the next two weeks. 900+ sq. ft. of goodness to settle into.
I also hate the lack of good computer+internet time. Without an internet connection and a general lack of just TIME, not bored-time or game-time, simply unoccupied productive time, it's impossible for me to do such things as make a new layout for this site that takes advantage of new Movable Type features or even secure it against comment spam, which is why the comments are still off.
I can't wait to move. I can't wait to unpack EVERYTHING. I'm making a list of magazines and a newspaper to subscribe to because I'll finally have an address. And when I order things online, I'll be able to get them as soon as they arrive because they'll come straight to my door, not my parents' house to wait for me to come get them.
Nothing can ever be perfect for me. I'll always find something to complain about.
Hey, how about some positive news! White Wolf is have a 60% off (almost) all their Ravenloft D&D material. I've ordered everything in two shipments. And it's not the old stuff either, this is the new updated Ravenloft material. All three core books are $14.00 and they're the priciest books in the collection! And in more D&D news, a local gamestore (local to Ft. Campbell that is) is affliated with the RPGA (a d20 role-playing association) and are running two sanctioned events in March. So I can register as a player and score some reward points AND get in some D&D time! The shortfall is that there's two gamestores in the area and this one isn't the nice one. I mean all the people there were actual role-players, not Warhammer nutsacks or paintball goons, but their inventory was kind of out-of-date and (this probably only matters to me) I think they allowed smoking indoors. But I'm still going. To both events.
And once I get moved into housing and get all my necessities set up, maybe I'll be happy.