Dear Officer Henry

This post is dedicated to Officer R. Henry of the Chatham County Metropolitan Police (near Savannah, Georgia). On December 23, 2009, approximately 300 feet south of the South Carolina / Georgia border, Officer Henry and about 12 other useless assholes laid in wait around a bend to issue bullshit tickets to every car with an out-of-state license plate. She issued me not one, but two traffic citations on that day! Well, I can’t write her a ticket, so instead I will write her a blog post. Please accept this humble offering in honor of the birthday of lord baby Jesus.

1. I know that you are not a “real” cop - real cops chase murderers and drug dealers and keep gangs off the streets. You are more of a traffic-monitor – you just harass hard-working American citizens and collect $110.00 at a time from out-of-towners to make sure Savannah has the cash on hand to keep it flush with Civil War statues and confederate flags. That however is no excuse for you to be so fat… you still have to wear a uniform so hit the occasional Stairmaster and lay off the bear claws.

2. I am going to let you in on a little secret; an unspoken, time-honored law of etiquette that you seem to have missed somehow: Cops don’t write tickets to military personnel – ask your buddies. I’ll admit there is the periodic belligerent asshole that gets what he deserves, but the default rule is that you just tell us to be careful and let us on our way. You have a uniform, we have a uniform, you carry guns, we carry guns; that little bit of congruence is enough to grant us free passage through your horseshit speed-trap. Even though, as mentioned in item one, you are a fat, useless turd and I am not… we still have enough in common that you should have granted me this simplest of courtesies.

3. Doing 80 in a 65 is not against the law or dangerous. Doing 65 in a 65 is dangerous… doing 65 on a four lane Interstate would fuck up traffic completely. Everyone along the entire I-95 is doing 80 mph. You do it every day just like everyone else. It is important that you remember that just in case you ever get it in your head that your job is somehow noble or important. Just in case you someday actually believe your bullshit that you are somehow looking out for people or keeping them safe. You are just an obnoxious little tax collector; like a meter-maid or a toll-booth operator… it is important that you not forget that. Not ever.

4. Two tickets… really? You bitch. Yes, my insurance card was expired. And yes, that ticket will be dismissed as soon as I mail a copy of my current card; but you’re still a bitch for writing it. Especially for saying that “I had to write it.” I hate your guts.

The Augmentee and the NAVADMIN

I’m going to try not to make this a long story…

Like many IAs, I had assumed that I would recover 100% of my shore duty time for my Iraqi troubles. That had long been touted as a promise on the FAQ lists of official IA sources. Therefore, I had assumed that I would receive an eight month extension to cushy billet, upon which time I would gracefully resign from the Naval Service – forever cementing my legacy in the annals of naval lore. Well, I am an idiot.

In June of this year, I informed my detailer of my desire to exercise my extension. He told me I just needed to submit a request… no deadline or sense of urgency was revealed to me. It seemed a mere formality.

On Thursday of last week, the nomination package for my replacement was delivered to my command. He will be here in May to facilitate my August rotation. I called the detailer and told him that he needs to contact this unlucky officer immediately; let him know that his Helo Bubba Placement Officer placed him in a job that wasn’t available. Sucks to be him… but he probably didn’t just get back from a 10-month IA, so while I’m sympathetic, I can stomach a small amount of discomfort on his part in order to prevent my life from turning upside down. I was sure my detailer would agree… He did not.

He told me that while I was still welcome to submit my request, it would likely be denied since my job was promised to another person. Clearly, this was entirely my fault; why hadn’t I submitted this letter already? Didn’t I know the rules? Hadn’t I read the applicable chapters in MILPERSMAN chapter 13?

Sadly, I had only read through chapter 12 of MILPERSMAN, and I did not know the rules. But I do now. The MILPERSMAN is not really the issue… the real article is called NAVADMIN 273/06. If you are a returning IA, you need to read this thing but for the purposes of brevity let me summarize. The 100% extension promise only applies to enlisted personnel. For officers, the text reads as follows:

“OFFICER IAS COMING FROM SHORE DUTY: DETAILERS WILL CONTACT THE OFFICER TO DISCUSS OPTIONS WITH REGARD TO CAREER PROGRESSION, PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, AND TOUR LENGTHS TO MAXIMIZE THE LENGTH OF A SHORE DUTY EXTENSION WHILE KEEPING THE OFFICER’S CAREER ON TRACK TO ACHIEVE ALL COMMUNITY MILESTONES.”

Read as follows: I am not entitled to shit. So here are my options:

1. Negotiate another sea-duty.

2. Resign in August 2010 vice May 2011.

3. Negotiate another IA/GSA deployment.

I have some hope; the guy who has been promised my billet will be offered other available NROTC billets. If he accepts, I’m good. If he declines, I’m fucked.

Do I feel like I’ve been screwed? Yes I do. However, I accept that I had a hand in screwing myself. If I have to choose from the options above, I’ll take number 2. If anyone knows a company in the New York City area that needs a good man around September, please let me know.

I’ll keep you posted.

---

“Annals” refers to archives, history or chronicles, not the human anus; but have fun with it anyway Bosque & Bowl.

I Don't Tweet

Bosque is right, tweeting sucks. Tally that up under failed experiments; the only bright spot was following OchoCinco; it got old, but I do love me some OchoCinco.

I'll stick with blogging; it's low maintenance and I'm good at it. Thanks to everyone at the Hawkeye Ball who told me how much they love the blog, you have confirmed that:

a) I am very smart, funny, charming and talented.
b) This blog is not nearly as "anonymous" as I thought it was and I have therefore burned many, many bridges.

Hopefully Major X does not decide to murder me - for the record I have nothing but respect and admiration for Major X, he is truly as wise as he is handsome and powerful and I never intended to portray him in anything but the most flattering fashion (that should smooth things over).

As for hinge, well...

I Tweet; What of it?

In an effort to garner a better understanding of "web communities," I have joined the Twitter universe. I am currently serving an MBA internship at big brand company, so I need to understand how to use the internet to sell a bunch of bullshit to these useless fucking "Generation Millennial" or whatever they're calling these savages that I live amongst.

I can't really figure out the point of twitter; how is it different than my facebook status? I am essentially just duplicating my useless bologna in three places; here, facebook, and now twitter. I am generating volumes of electronic text that nobody reads, and then making two copies.

On an unrelated note, my dog just ate half a tray of pizza dip off the coffee table while we were in the other room. Pizza dip is loaded with mozzarella and ricotta, enough to wreak havoc on the stomach of a dog twice his size. So while my little buddy is going to be up all night air-brushing the lawn; he will learn nothing and regret nothing. You have to admire that about dogs.

Do you think that would make a good tweet?

"Dog 8 mad cheese. Outside spraying diarrhea; lol. I hope he doesn't step in it and walk it all over the house again. ;)"

"My Cat Acts Just Like A Dog!"

Ashamed cat-lovers, particularly the appropriately self-loathing male variety, will always assert that their cat is just like a dog; he fetches and he plays and he wrestles… he’s a dog trapped in a cat’s body. No he’s not! He’s a cat – if you want a dog, go get a dog. There are people giving dogs away all over town. You chose a cat because you like cats – not because you magically found this one special cat in the whole universe that is not really a cat, but a dog that uses the litter box.

I had a CAG onetime who was obsessed with making corporate metaphors for every god-damned thing that we did for an entire cruise. We are a business and you are the delivery truck and the bomb is the product and Hadji is the customer. But the next time the troops on the ground who needed air support were the customer and Hadji was the market and I think we were the customer support help desk and the guys in CATC were accountants. It never made any sense – we weren’t a “business” and our cats were not dogs.

Now I’m in business school, and ironically everything is a military metaphor. The employees are troops and the Dupont ratios are our weapons and the CEO is the General.

The moral of the story is, stop making metaphors... unless you happen to be Redman; because he's got so much game he can con Edison.

A Commentary on FITREPs

We have undergone a change of command here recently, and with it the obligatory change of command FITREP and debrief. My former boss is very heavy on the “career counseling” aspect of these debriefs; he leads with the question, “what do you have planned for your next tour?” Never mind that I’ve made it clear on several occasions that not only did I want to get out, but that my community is structured in a way that wouldn’t provide a path back in, regardless of my wishes, so his efforts to change my mind were futile. In general, I play the “I’m getting out” card pretty close to the vest, but when asked directly, I don’t beat around the bush.

This decision was made when I accepted this tour; the Hawkeye community places no value on education and no value on IA tours. I was introduced to this concept long ago, when as naïve LTJG, I wondered aloud why the Department Head selection board would even consider passing on a guy who has a PHD in aerospace engineering from MIT in favor of a guy who spent three years teaching some useless PDS class over at the RAG. My CO told me flatly, it is because the guy at the RAG “gave something back to the community.” That may have been the first time I heard that concept, but it would not be the last; as I moved closer to my shore rotation, I was offered excessive career advice from anyone with an oak leaf and chance to run their mouth for a few minutes, and it always bounced back to the same theme – give something back to the community.

Let’s get this out of the way up front; being a “member” of the Hawkeye “community” is in every way equivalent to playing for the losing team. The E-2C is an aging platform, unable to effectively adapt to a modern warfare environment. I could go on forever about the reasons why, but I’ll save that for another day. The point is, asking me to give something back to the Hawkeye community is absurd; it is like asking Barry Sanders to give something back to the Lions. Flying the Hawkeye was a booby prize; it is the participation ribbon of Naval Aviation – I don’t feel indebted to it in any way, and I don’t think my “good deal” shore tour is any less of a contribution than sitting in the Simulator at the RAG or re-drafting useless TTP in a triple-walled nerd-locker in the desert.

In fact, I’ll stack my tour here up against anyone of those as far as contribution to the Navy; after all, we all joined the Navy, not the Hawkeye community. My tour, to include my 9-month combat tour, compares favorably to a RAG, WTI, or NSAWC tour in every measurable way except one – It has nothing to do with sitting in the back of an E-2C (by the grace of God). By the time I leave here, I’ll have delivered hundreds of commissioned Ensigns to the Fleet, I’ll have more joint experience than any of my peers having a FITREP signed by a member of 3 of 4 service branches, I’ll have invaluable combat experience on the FIRES end of CAS/TST – a mission which should by now be an E-2C core competency but falls short in favor of Cold War doctrine - and I’ll have a master’s degree.

All of those things would strike an ordinary person as pretty favorable traits to bring before a career board; which is probably why my CO continued to bring it up for two years, but the Hawkeye community is not listening. Hawkeye CO’s are still encouraged to manipulate the FITREP system to give the maximum advancement opportunity to guys who choose jobs that are on the “track.” You may be the number one performer, but this other guy “needs” the EP because he’s going to the RAG. He’s giving something back! I don’t mean to sound bitter, because I wasn’t trying to stay in, and I was never mislead – my detailer looked me right in the eye and told me I’d never make command if I took this job. It’s just an infuriatingly broken system; and the community will never advance in any meaningful way as long as clings to this incestuous promotion scheme. There are plenty of very good, very deserving officers at the RAG and NSAWC; top performers who I admire and in many cases count among my closest friends. But there are more than a few clowns too – and it is a straight roll of the dice which of these guys will be the next generation of squadron COs.

New ideas are not generated by homogenous groups who have been more or less stuck in the tube of an E-2 for their entire careers. It is a frustrating conversation to be forced to have every fucking FITREP cycle.