Biff Calhoon presents: Biff Calhoon in, Take the Long Way Home, the Next Chapter

A long time ago in a town far, far away… (From where I’m at right now)


TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME

EPISODE V

FORT CAMPBELL AND WALKFEST 2003

BIFF
CALHOON
had just
returned from
basic training and
was preparing to go to
FORT CAMPBELL, his first duty
station. He was home visiting and getting
ready to get married to Hera.

My visit was short and sweet but it’s something I would get used to the longer I was in the ARMY. I almost severed my index toe on my left foot on a piece of glass at the U.S.S. OREGON and that was the fourth time I woke up in a pool of my own blood on the bathroom floor…………………………………………………







I was married on July 6th 2002. I moved quickly to Hopkinsville Kentucky where I would stay the entire time I was at Fort Campbell. Hera and I were happy for a little while but in about six months I had already started to regret rushing into a marriage. She had not changed at all from high school and she wasn’t the most fun person in the world then, believe me. I was having a rough time adjusting to the Army life but it soon came to suit me. I was in the 3-502 Infantry battalion. Alpha company Colesteel, 3rd platoon WARPIGS. I was in second squad and did we ever have a funny group of guys. SSG Benjamin Lewis, SGT Matson, SGT Ransom (Amy), Fred EX, Goforth, Copeland (Barry), Webb, Mikler, and myself. Now we had others come and go but that was the roster for Iraq. The whole damn platoon was funny as hell. We trained a lot at Fort Campbell and we all had a great time. After work the guys would go out on the town and invite me to come along. I would always decline. I was going back home to my wife every day just to be with her. Maybe figure out why I was so unhappy. Nothing came of it and I soon just kept declining to go out, out of habit.
My first real field problem at Fort Campbell was a month long stretch in the woods complete with what we called the Battalion Death March. Hurricane season had just hit the Carolinas and Kentucky was catching hell from all the rain. We were in the woods. All of us quoting Water World and talking like pirates. Fred Ex said that that was one of the worst field problems he’s ever been on and he’s been in over ten years. Later on that year we would start preparing to go to Iraq. 2003 was looking to be a really bad year. Like in a late year training problem that had us out at an old MOUNT site on our way to a new one in the dead of winter to prepare for the desert. Yeah didn’t make much sense to us either. At this old MOUNT site we trained all day and then bedded down for the night on the second floor. The second floor was wooden and in the morning someone probably Webb made the comment that it was cold and SSG Lewis had us doing side straddle hops till he returned. It took us all of three seconds to figure out that once he was out of the room we could just stomp our feet and it would sound like we were still jumping. We looked funny all stomping around like mountain folk around a still so I started as I oft times do breaking into song. One thing lead to another and the Irish jig was added to our repertoire of funny things we did constantly.
Two thousand and three marked the beginning into a madness for me. I would for a while believe that Biff Calhoon and Mike Lanzer were two different people. One was the conceited dick and the other was the passive stepping-stone of all who took advantage. Here’s how it happened.
. March 29th 2003 we invaded Iraq. Flying for three hours in a Black Hawk to the city of Al Kufa. There I saw my first dead bodies. My first five bodies actually. The car was filled to capacity and all the passengers were dead. 3rd ID went through and lit everything up. We followed and secured a bridge while we planned the Baghdad invasion. Our first night at the bridge two Iraqis approach and are given warning to halt. Well all of us must have turned to see these guys because they were glowing with PAQ4 dots. They started yelling pleas in Arabic and stripped down to nothing in two seconds. We were all thinking what the hell are they doing. On Hera’s birthday we went into a city called An Najef. We pretty much walked there from Kufa, which isn’t a small task. Then we went to Karbala, which was a hell of a walk as well with two combat loads of ammo a spare barrel and my SAW. I loved that weapon. Two combat loads of ammo is 1600 rounds. That’s a lot of weight if you start counting the body armour and grenades and shit. In Karbala we ran out of water and it was rumored that the military didn’t order us enough. Wouldn’t surprise me. Well after Karbala we made it to Baghdad. Then one day we’re talking about moving north when all of the sudden a mission comes up in a small town just to the south of Baghdad. First of all, they said we had to clear a path for the tanks. The tanks are supposed to clear the path for us. Second, they only sent my platoon. However, we didn’t take our Javelin teams, which we never did before, third, all kinds of useless officers came with us. That means it was supposed to be a dog and pony show. We were so pissed. At the beginning of the trip we found a huge cache of weapons and mortars and TNT and C-4 and all kinds of fun US killing devices. We blew them up in place cause we didn’t have the vehicle support to take then back with us. So on we walked. Ironically the one day I’d like to forget the rest of my days happens to be the same day I got most of my souvenirs. I found an Iraqi gas mask with pouch. All of my skeleton keys were in one building we searched. I found a Iraqi police beret. I got my Iraqi flag in the town in question. Al Mhamadia. April 13th Palm Sunday Bloody Sunday 2003. You could tell that there was something wrong with the people in this town. They weren’t smiling or waving. They weren’t enjoying Princes song Kiss that I was singing. We searched the police station and I got my trinkets. Then we found intel that told us where there were more military compounds around for us to search. So we went and prepared to leave. My squad was the lead element so we were already lined up about to take a stroll down the road to the next compound. Our leadership and first squad and some of weapons squad were still getting ready to leave. A car drove past and the passenger threw out a grenade. Here’s where it starts to blur cause I was all on instinct here. I heard the blast, turned and saw half of my platoon in disarray. I looked to SSG Lewis, my squad leader, and Goforth, my best friend. SSG Lewis’s mouth was bleeding cause his tooth was knocked out by shrapnel. That’s when I saw one of the scout SGT’s about five feet to my left side. He turns to me and his left eye is gone. What’s there is a waterfall of blood. Suddenly, the guy right next to starts to shake and fall to the ground. He was shot eight times with an AK47. Seconds is all this takes. We start dragging the bloody bodies into the building. The few vehicles we had we used as cover to get back to the building. My squad was farthest from the blast so we had the most intact people. We had to get to the roof so we could get some payback. I remember stepping on wounded friends to get to the roof we had so many hurt. Fact is one of our guys slipped on blood and hurt his fucking neck. We got to the roof and immediately take fire from buildings on all sides of us. The insane number of Iraqis who had followed us to this point were still just standing there. These people need TV. Our weapons squad is the element that has our largest platoon weapons, hence the name. We took them from the wounded below and set up on the roof. The SAW is the second largest weapon in the platoon and as I said I was one of the guys with that. Suzanne was her name. Anyway, once we were placed and have our targets acquired we opened fire. Had to be over three hundred people. Old men and women, young men and women, and children, we cut them all down. This part is where I start to get gaps in my memories. We shot everything that showed itself. We had no support because we weren’t supposed to be on a real mission so we had to spend the night in the kill zone. We were still strung out after we medevacted our wounded. At midnight our 1st platoon finally made it out to us and helped us pull guard. The next day we were still there. We blocked the roads and shot anything that came towards us. My buddy shot a warning shot into an Iraqi riding his bike towards us. Hit him center of the chest and another Iraqi came out and stole his bike. These people suck. We were the cowboys of our company and we acted like those badasses that you see on crazy war movies. Actually we quoted movies like Predator and Aliens more then real war movies. During my turn watching the road my buddy Webb was calling me cause I was looking down a different road. He was calling me saying, “Biff this guys isn’t stopping and it’s a truck.” I came around the corner with Suzanne propped straight up in the air and then brought her down to the trucks level and shot off a 3 to 5 second burst. The truck screeched to a stop and reversed back whence he came. Webb said that needs to be in the movie Hollywood was going to make about us. We were always saying that about certain things we were doing. After we got back to Baghdad our leadership took us off duty. OFF DUTY in a fucking war zone. We weren’t allowed to go near our compound wall with our weapons and we couldn’t go on patrol and we couldn’t pull guard either. They were afraid and rightfully so that we were going to just kill anyone we saw after what we did in Mhamadia. That’s when I started to truly for the first time in my life hate an entire people and religion. I was insanely prejudiced against Muslims. I hated them. Anyway, I don’t like to talk about that stuff that much. It’s weird to witness mass amnesia. Not one of us really remembered the whole thing when we all started talking about it after getting to Mosul. For the rest of the deployment we stayed in Mosul and the village of Bartalla. In Bartalla there’s a little girl named Safa who had no fingers on her right hand. If I could have legally done it I would’ve adopted her and raised her as my own. I loved and still love that little girl who I’ll never see again. She’s my daughter as far as I’m concerned. I miss her and hope she’s okay. Upon returning to Kentucky I find that Hera’s acting funny, distant. I try my hardest to feel anything for her at all but Iraq took all of my feelings away. I was completely apathetic to everything that was going on around me. Without knowing why and really not caring all that much Hera and I agreed to divorce. I was a wreck. Not cause of the divorce but because I had hoped that the feelings of dread I had in Iraq were just my over powerful imagination.
When I went home on leave I met Pandora. I was back on the sauce and trying to enjoy what was left of the ruins of a life abandoned for a year. You never know how important the people back home are to you till the ones you’ve left in charge fuck everything up. Well Pandora would flirt and flirt with me but I wasn’t really that open to it at first. Having no feelings about anything and a growing hatred for the “regular” people who stayed home in the States while I saw and did what I did made me pretty hard to get to. The one thing that has never really changed (it just got darker) was my sense of humor and that’s how she eventually wore me down. The more she made me laugh and the more I smiled at her the better I felt. Funny story, at her birthday party I am drunk as hell and I keep grabbing her moms ass. Well later in the evening I say to her, “Claudia, I just had sex with your daughter four hours ago and now I would like to have sex with you and make it a Grand Slam.” Well I, thank God, didn’t have relations with her mother cause it would be really weird at gatherings. The divorce from Hera was legally final on the 20th of January 2004. I had been hanging with Pandora for three months. February 15th is when I got to Germany. Ray Barracks, my second duty assignment. I left Pandora behind with no promise of any kind of future. Why give her hope I had none myself…

See you all further down the path...

Mike

Biff Calhoon presents: Biff Calhoon in, Take the Long Way Home, a Biff Calhoon production

A long time ago in a town far, far away… (From where I’m at right now)


Take the Long Way Home

EPISODE IV

U.S.S. OREGON

It is a time
Of change for the
Class of ’99. The graduation
Ceremony complete and the paths
Of all diverge to the four corners as everyone
Reaches out to explore their potential and try to make
Their dreams become a reality. It is a time of change for the better.

BIFF CALHOON sets out to live his life on his terms. The easy going way that was his trademark in HIGH SCHOOL remains a practiced way of life in the years after graduation. He joined a group of his friends a year or two later and embarked on an adventure that has yet to end………





I worked at HP Products for a couple of years. I worked in the shipping department of the factory. It was and is still my favorite job I’ve ever had. I had so much fun there and I was really good at what I did. I was dating Scarlet then and I loved her very much. She meant a lot because of the effort I put into getting into her heart. She was a fighter. Probably still is, but I haven’t seen her in years. She was my first adult love. I was nineteen when I was with her and she was one in a million. Her very uniqueness gave her a compelling mystery. I was blown away when we parted ways because it was my fault and I had not planned for things to work out like they did. I basically gave her a my way or the highway ultimatum, and she chose the highway. Didn’t see that one coming. Well at the time I was looking for a place to move to so I could move out of my fathers house so my good friend and yours Dr. Robinson says to me that he needs a new roommate at his place. So I go over that weekend to scope out the place. I drink for the first time to get smashed and the spark lit from there. I was in the house within two weeks. I chose the basement room because I like living in basements and because I’m lazy and didn’t want to move my shit as we lost and gained roommates. The main body of the U.S.S. Oregon crew was Dr. Robinson, Mysterio, Biff Calhoon, Hot Ham, and Tcep. Tcep came later on in my stay on board. This was the roster that got along the most though. The extras that came and went sometimes caused friction in the house. We were all very much of the same easy going live life to the fullest type people. We all had a blast together.
Ham and Dr. Robinson and I all worked at HP at this time while Mysterio worked at the Hoover Company, and Tcep worked on living his Budda-esk lifestyle. Mysterio, Tcep, Dr. Robinson, and myself would jam away in the basement as the band, French Bread Pizza. We covered all kinds of songs from Foo Fighters to Harvey Danger to Green Day to anything from the 80’s, and ultimately Nintendo music especially from Megaman 3. All kinds of fun was had. Most of the fun was had sauced out of our fucking minds. We all loved the drink, none so much as Mysterio, Ham, and the ol’ Calhoon his self, though no one was a slacker in the drunkard department. The following facts are for that very reason probably not in any kind of order. It’s hard to put in sequence that which you learned second hand, even if you were involved first hand. Haha. The good Dr. Robinson will tell a lot of the same stories just from his point of view in his blog on blogspot.com. (Shameless plug) There is a restaurant across the street that we called the Main Street Café but I think it’s real name was Main Street Restaurant. We named it cause we ruled the seas of that neighborhood, our Jolly Roger flying high on our TV antenna. Every morning Mysterio and I would stand on the porch and drink our screwdrivers (the breakfast of champions) and cat call at the old people who were unlucky enough to walk in front of us. The neighbors all began to despise us all but Racist Bob. We believe to this days that he is the reason that the cops weren’t called on us that much. The neighbor directly across the street drove a Frito Lay truck so we called him Frito Lay-all-day. The house next to him was a rats nest of hilljacks. It was like watching clowns get out of a car only it was an unholy river of white trash flowing from a rather small house. They were our nemesis and we did all we could to get the kids in trouble or free their poor dog from the abuse that they beset upon it. The house next to that housed our sister ship in the neighborhood. Five-O lived there and we would party all up and down the street. Bonfires galore. The fact is for as much that went on at the Oregon the cops usually showed up cause Mysterio and I were lying in the street. Come on though can you blame us? Cool summer nights lying on a warm road. Come on, there’s nothing more relaxing. Dr. Robinson and myself would on occasion climb the tree in the back yard with our grappling hooks during a tornado or dump flour all over a table full of drunks playing poker. First off the 25 pound bag of flour was an impulse buy on my part at Wal-Mart. It was only four bucks. Somehow I couldn’t pass that up. One night Dr. Robinson and I are watching TV totally sober and we both look over at the doorway to the kitchen where we can hear the yell of drunkard’s playing cards. At the same time we look at the flour and then at a random squirt gun that was on the floor and the light went off in both our heads. Next thing you know I have the flour in hand he has the gun. One squirt of mist and a dump later there’s flour everywhere. Mysterio comes in and tackles me into the flour on the floor and Dr. Robinson dumps what’s left of the bag on us. One of our friends Sheriff we found out later is allergic to flour. Whoops. That’s six hours of a Saturday I’ll never get back. We went through six vacuums and two carpet scrubbers. Good thing Mysterio worked at Hoover so we never had a shortage. The weird thing is that of the six three were purple and three were green and the green ones just quit working after awhile of flour clean up, but the purple ones caught on fire. That shit was crazy. Another time Joseph head butted our basement door and we found out that it was hollow. So Mysterio and I naturally felt that we should jump through it and tear it the fuck down. We didn’t plan it so well and ended up jumping down the basement steps. Upon climbing back up the steps we would see some door hanging still mocking us and right back down the steps we’d go.
Of course there was also the day that Biff Calhoon was born. There was a new cashier working at the Dairymart that was right behind the house. I had asked her that morning how she felt about drunken idiots being retarded around her and she said that she wasn’t easy to offend. I made sure that she understood that I would be back later that night and that I would be completely wasted. That night it rained and hard. It was the night of “The Rain Boyz”. The Rain Boyz would strip off articles of clothing, as they would get waterlogged and heavy till they were comfortable again. They would do anything to be comfortable except GET OUT OF THE RAIN!! There were about ten to fifteen of us all running around the neighborhood. I made it back to the Dairymart as promised. No shirt, no shoes, but demanding service. Not the kind that’s stocked on any shelves either. Mysterio comes in and yells “Hey I’ve been looking all over for you. We can’t be the Rain Boyz without you.” I said, “ But I’m not done sexin’ her up” Mysterio says, “ Yeah you are”. Okay. That’s all the convincing I needed. Back up to the house there was a fight to be had. In the smallest area of the house, the kitchen, ten to fifteen soaking wet guys wrestling around for no reason. Joseph had hit his head on the corner of the counter and slumped passed out at the edge of the mass of limbs that didn’t seem to connect to any one body. Suddenly I roll out of the bottom of the pile with a look in my eye that wasn’t my own and say,” I’m not the one. I AM the one! Elbow drop!!!!” Thus was born Biff Calhoon. Bane to all things glass! I’ll always remember that back then at Metzgers Hardware storm windows cost twenty four ninety five. Good stuff. One particular night Biff had decided to wage a war on drugs and so with his Axe Handle of Doom he set forth. A bare footed bike riding drunk with a mission. I went over to my mom’s church and told the pastor all about my mission and then I was off to other points in the neighborhood.I next went to Holly’s house to inadvertently scare the hell out of her pregnant mother and then, of course to the Main Street Café. There I was promptly kicked out for not wearing shoes and cause I brought the bike and Axe Handle in with me. Memorial Day weekend was the first drinking binge I had ever done. Not one day that weekend was I sober. That Friday is when we invited over the waitresses from the Café. They were under age to say the least but their flimsy lies were good enough for the likes of us who cared little for the trappings of the law. The months to come they would play a small part in the bigger picture of a group of guys more concerned with their booze consumption then with getting laid. On Memorial Day Little Red, Carolina, Love, Doc Rob, Ham, and myself (at least I think Ham was there) had a huge water fight. The girls started it but were soon bested and their control of the hose was no more. To spite us they locked us out of the Oregon and chucked water balloons at us. Well the side door that went into my room was unlocked and I had my room locked from the inside so the girls couldn’t get to the outside door to lock it. I went in and got my briefcase of ninja gear. A couple sais, a couple on throwing stars, but what I was looking for, of course, was my grappling hook. I came out and it was decided that Dr. Robinson would to climb the house and so I threw the hook through the window by our corner booth and up the good Doctor goes. He gets all the way to the top without anything going wrong and then grabs the windowsill. The sill comes completely off the house and Dr. Robinson falls two stories to the hard ground below where we waited patiently. He lands hard on his wrist and while he rubs it and wonders what went wrong Ashley throws a water balloon that hits him square on the head. While he’s yelling at her I kicked the back door in and we retook the Oregon.
We formed the Council of Evil in those days, Mysterio as Chancellor of the protectorate, Biff Calhoon as Vice Roy, Hat Ham as Man at Arms, and Tcep as our PR guy. The rules were simple, if you wanted to challenge another person in the council for their position the two would fight it out in the contest of, lets see if I can spell this one, Gombay Parry. You hold one leg up behind your back and use your other arm to help balance. However, you cannot use your arms against your opponent. You can only use you body weight. Fun times. The council was formed so that Mysterio and I could stop drinking so much so fast and take a more leisurely approach to our parties. You see everyone had come to expect Mysterio and I to just pound them out one after the other and then we usually ended up hurting each other. So we would take someone who usual drank like a girl and make them drink like we do while we sip our drinks and enjoy a more relaxed environment. Well to this date the only victim of the council was Bob-o. The next weekend no one showed up to our house, which had never happened before. We heard the brothers Bailey had a party and the Council of Evil took their weapons of choice there to lead the sheep away from a police attracting party in the middle of town back to our place where the cops tolerated us. Mysterio with mighty Bo Staff, Biff Calhoon with the Axe Handle of Doom, Hot Ham with Deadly Katana (believe me we all had concerns about that), and Tcep with the Segmented Staff of Bad Publicity sallied forth to the Bailey’s house. Once there we brought forth the people into the Promised Land, cop tolerating womb of the U.S.S. Oregon. Unfortunately, some guys we didn’t usually party with started to fight. I went outside to help Ham break the fight up and keep the peace. My strategy had one flaw…… So I punched Ham. Ham and I start fighting. Mysterio quickly joins the fray. I took a tiki torch and hit Mysterio across the face with it. He does a horizontal Matrix type spin in the air before falling on the cement drive way and lying there for a minute to collect his thoughts. I somehow ended up at Hera's house, who would become my first wife. Weird times.
Now Love, whom I mentioned above during the water fight had started coming over to party with us and we ended up getting together. Biff Calhoon thought he was just using her for a good time. Turns out that I have a hard time not developing feelings with women I’m fooling around with. I guess it’s the romantic in me. That wasn’t to last though. When your main concern in life is partying and having fun you have little to no tolerance for dealing with a relationship. Love went her own separate way.
Another fun night that ended in me being hurt pretty bad was the Cookie Sheet Challenge night. Now the intent was not to do anything that would hurt us but to do the Milk Challenge like on Jackass. Mysterio, Ham, and myself would see who could drink a whole gallon of milk the fastest. Well we spent all of our cash on booze so we couldn’t afford three bottles of milk. So we went looking for something else to do in the kitchen. That’s where we found our three cookie sheets. So we went out to the front yard and took turns hitting each other on the head with it until the person getting hit couldn’t take it anymore. Well to bend the cookie sheet back to being flat we kept flipping it until it burst in the center. The sharp shards of medal stuck out like knives and I took the last hit. Blood gushed out of my head and that was the third time I woke up on the bathroom floor in a pool of my own blood.
Days became weeks and weeks months and the fun times never seemed to dull. Then 9-11 came and knocked the Oregon into dangerous waters. That day changed everything. Not at first oh no. But slowly over the next three months I had to do something. Ham quit HP and gave blood, found a new job and he went that route for a while. Harder times were in store for him. I quit HP and joined the Army to go do something that would change the world. I was ever the dreamer. Now there were way more fun times at the Oregon but this is already running pretty damn long and I need to move on to the next part. The U.S.S. Oregon is my favorite part of my life and if I could repeat it all over again I wouldn’t change anything. The Army took me away from the place I called home and the friends I called family. A piratical group of guys the likes of which are still unique from anything I’ve ever seen since leaving Louisville. That’s saying a lot cause there’s a lot out there besides Louisville but it has something that no place else has. The crew of the U.S.S. Oregon still crazy, if scattered, after all these years. Things were still looking pretty good for me even with me heading into the Army. I was off on my adventure………….


See you further down the path…

The Day That Dreaming Ends

I remember this night. A night that was the fulcrum turning my life and my mind into the direction I’ve come since. Everything building up to this moment has finally crushed down on me. My return from Iraq, my divorce, my fractured mind, my hate for my left eye, and my constant increasing drinking to numb myself from the world finally culminates in one night of utter hopelessness and despair. This was the night the light went out of my soul. This was the night I died.

When I returned from Iraq in 2003 I was greeted by a wife who seemed genuinely happy to see me but something was wrong. Not just with her but with me too. A couple weeks pass and she says that she’s no longer in love with me. Whatever right? It happens at least I’m not getting shot at anymore. That was the first inkling I had that I really wasn’t the same anymore. So my wife leaves me and we part on what I thought okay terms considering she raped me of my car and the support I needed coming back from that hell.

I went back home for leave and hung out with friends and got ready to go to Germany. I hit the booze pretty hard but nothing near to what I would in later months. When I arrived in Germany I was alone. No friends or family around and I knew no one in this strange new land. The unit I was in was still in Iraq so I was on Rear Detachment. Rear D was pretty much a ridiculous game of finding bullshit to do for us all day and when after a few months when we had everything done they started us over again. It was needless to say not the best environment for us who had just come home from Iraq to get readjusted. It was here though that I met such key players in the up coming chapters of my life like Domenico Carbone and Cody Brock. It was also the time when I realized that good ol’ Biff Calhoon, my drunken ego who helped me rationalize the things I did and saw was a little more difficult to get rid of after coming home. It was like the part of me that was him wanted to just be him and the part of me that wanted to go back to the way I was before was helplessly being overtaken and buried.

Every night we would go drinking in downtown Friedberg. At one of the bars I met a girl named Carol who had just been through a divorce of sorts when her American husband abandoned her to go back to the states. For a couple of hazy drunken months her and I comforted each other and bought some peace of mind for a few minutes each day. It was around this time that I found out that the ex had slept with my best friend Dragon while I was in Iraq. I know it sounds like a bad play. Only it really happened, to me. Well now the totality of my ex's abandonment and betrayal was clear to me and it sent my mind reeling. Not only that but I had become obsessed with my left eye and would set to planning it’s removal to rid myself of it’s evil influence on my life. Then there was the booze. It flowed all night on weeknights and all weekend long. For nine months I drank to die. I drank to rid myself of the feelings, the hurts, and the loss of my innocence, in that dessert land. Before all this I had the divine spark. I created art. I drew and sang and I loved. Now I had nothing no art, no song, and most of all no love. I couldn’t even remember what it felt like to love and the loss of that more then the loss of whom it was I loved was the worse.

So it was on this dateless night, for they all run together when you’re constantly inebriated, that I sat alone in my barracks room watching the Moulin Rouge as had become my habit of late because of it’s theme of love enduring above all things. A half empty case, which had been full when I started the movie, of Hornsby’s Hard Cider sat next to me on my bed. I had moved my tv as close as I could get it to the bed. I watched. I drank. I yearned. Then, I cried. I wept for I felt it for the first time. The mental internal wounds that were ripping open in me. The chasm that was devoid of all emotion. My soul tainted by what I had been through. The light that was dim till that night went out entirely. Dead, numb, nothingness an under layer at the core of my being that keeps me from ever truly experiencing those now long forgotten emotions.

What are on the surface now, the feelings I have for my new baby Kati Rae Lanzer are all built on top of that dead spot on my soul. I experience no joy at all in the things and people that are around me no matter how hard I try and it's been that way since that night. There is always numbness and an apathetic stain that can’t be erased or scrubbed out. A blackhole that helped me do what I needed to do over in Iraq but can’t and mustn’t ever go away lest I be driven mad by the things I’ve seen and done. No one can ever understand what it’s like unless they have experienced it too.

See you all further down the road.

Mike

Stop, just stop!

My first two years in the Army were spent at Ft. Campbell Kentucky on the Kentucky/ Tennessee border in an area the local ass hat radio djs call tuckessee. *Kif sigh noises* I used to hate that. Anyway, the group of guys I was with were insane. We were constantly ripping on each other and joking around and getting the shit smoked out of us for running our mouths off like Trapjaw on He-Man. Now in the Infantry, you have to understand, that there are no women and only a few nancy-sally-sensitive type males make it through basic training. So the joking and the language are all uncensored. No subject is too taboo. Racist, sexist, sexual, appearance, and anything you can get in trouble for in what the civilians call real life is fair game. Everyone has a really thick skin and knows that all is in good fun and to be honest I wish it was the same in all walks of life because I pass up more joke opportunities in a day because I don't want to hear whoever's going to whine their cry box because I've offended them. Boo fuckin' woo! All you easily offend jackholes are missing out on a lot of comic gold and you ruin it for the rest of us who aren't asses.

I digress, all this is setting you up for is why it took so long to get under my friend's, we'll call him Amy, skin. As you may have already gathered his name really isn't Amy but it's one of the jokes we tormented him with so it's funny to me on a lot of levels. Now Amy is a good guy and was always real fun to be around but he was no where near as quick witted as the rest of us and we would fire off jokes nonstop. G to the oforth was my best friend at Campbell and he just happened to be in my same squad and those of you who know what it's like on my level of humor will know the crasiness that Goforth and I could come up with. Together we were like a M249 Squad Automatic Weapon of mass hysteria. Everyone in the squad had their own idiosyncrasies that's good for future stories, but Amy's is that he has the look and frustrated temperament of a Gorilla. So we would call him Amy like the smart Gorilla who uses sign language and finger paints. Amy was a team leader and when he got mad at his team we'd yell that he was going to start throwing feces and start breaking things. Goforth was on his team and I was on the other team. Our squad leader was trying to get Amy to start laying the law down to us so he had us do things wrong on purpose to see if he would get us in line like he's supposed to. So while he's giving out a plan for the days training Fred Ex walks off in the middle of it. When Amy finally gets him back Goforth walks off. SSG Lewis starts yelling at him to get his team in line and he would get so frustrated but still he hadn't snapped on us. When SSG Lewis gave us orders either myself or Goforth would give Amy hand signals so that he would understand what was going on and not be afraid and throw feces. He would get upset and we'd scold him and tell him that he'd lose his finger paints if he didn't behave. When he'd get even more frustrated he'd try to shoot off a tasty comeback really quick, but as I said earlier wit wasn't his strong point and he'd stop halfway and say, "Stop, just fucking stop!"

This was the norm even in Iraq. In fact, in Iraq it was worse because we were with each other twenty four seven. That's a lot of time to find something to make fun of someone for. Sure we were all business most of the time because that's what you have to do over there but I'm not talking about the serious stuff right now I'm talking about what made us laugh. When we got to Mosul we set up in a television studio. On Saddam's birthday the people were shooting their rifles in the air for a celebration in the middle of the night. So several of us go to the roof to see if we can see what needs seeing. The First Sergeant tells Amy to shoot a flare out to his twelve and three o'clock. The flares set the dry grass ablaze and we spent the rest of the time stopping fire from reaching the benzine truck we seized. Even though he told the First Sergeant he didn't think that the flares would make it over our walls we still called him a big stupid gorilla. When we finally got some kind of support up with us and had chow sent out we would collect the banana chips that no one ate because no one eats banana chips and put them on Amy's bed. That was the straw that broke the silverback. He finally tore into Goforth and myself pretty good and gave us a little smoking. However, it wasn't long before he slept walked over to Barry and pissed on him to give us more bad gorilla jokes to throw his way again. Goforth saw Barry out in the middle of the night hanging his wet bed gear up and asked him what happened and all he said was Amy pissed on him. We laughed and laughed through neither of them thought it was too funny until later and Amy probably still doesn't dig it too much. We had many more names for him too as Goforth reminded me after I originally posted this. Names such as, king kong bundy, gorilla monsoon, grape ape, gorillas in the mist, silverback, congo, and big dumb ape. Must of our exclamations started with, "You big dumb ape," especially when we found out he didn't know the words to the National Anthem.

That's just how we stayed somewhat sane over there and even here in the civilian world now. It takes me telling jokes and laughing and finding the funny in anything just to get by back here outside of the Army. To paraphrase Obi-Won Kenobi, " Every thing's funny to a certain point of view." Hope you all enjoyed yourselves, now get off my lawn!

See you all further down the road.

Mike

Deck the Oregon with Bras of Holly

There were a myriad of background characters at each and every party we ever threw at the Oregon. The reason being is that our inviting method had a huge flaw in it. We would tell our friends about it and then we would say the words " bring whoever." Now if you’ve ever said those words before then you know from experience that whoever is not always a very welcome guest. Not all of them per se but if asses show en mass it can ruin a party and quick. Well the Oregon was filled every weekend to capacity and beyond. Some of our friends were just as crazy as we are and fit right in. Others fall the wayside and would sit and observe the party patiently waiting for that moment of craziness such as a ruckus or the occasional stripping drunken lady friend. One such lady friend was a girl named Holly. She was a very flirty girl sober but once booze was in the mix it was like Mrs. Robinson making Dusten Hoffman crazy uncomfortable. It seemed that ten times out of five she’d be stripped to her knickers or groped by a random partygoer. For example even though this story takes place in 2001 as most Oregon stories do she let someone grope her for gas money. http://drrobinson.blogspot.com/2006/07/oregon-year-one-tale-of-young-pancho.html That’s back when gas cost less then a dollar a gallon. It was always a love/hate relationship when she would show up because at first it was funny watching her make an ass out of herself with her soft-core antics, but it always degenerated into a pukefest, babysitting fiasco.

One such evening the Oregon crew was kicking off it’s Friday night extravaganza. Joe and I worked at HP Products at the time and worked until nine so Dan would start off hosting duties until we would be able to join him. Back then I had it down to a working formula where I would walk in from work and grab my clothes and towel and a bottle of Galen’s 151 vodka and adjourn myself to the shower. Once there I’d wash work away and guzzle the alcohol sting of vodka to catch up with what I had missed while at work. Once cleansed and properly buzzed I’d join Dan and Joe at the corner booth for our ritualistic High Stakes Drinking Games and Fun Time Hours. These high stakes drinking games are what brings about the fun stories you all enjoy reading from the comfort of knowing it wasn’t you who did these things. All of our adventures for the most part originated from the corner booth and I have to say that it was like our oft times sticky, dirty, flour hiding, family center where the whole crew gathered. Much like the hearth was back when families loved each other enough to spend time together in front of a roaring fire, but I digress. Holly showed up one eve and true to her formula was fully clothed but yearning of some of the sweet libations that lead to her complete loss of any decency and dignity she tenuously held onto.

After some drinks she had a little more and after that she had a lot more. It became apparent pretty quickly that this wasn’t going to be the soft-core gropefest that our more indiscriminating friends were hoping for. She came down with Dan and myself to Dairy Mart to get more cheap cigars when I tell Dan that I ran into my friend Amelia there just the other day. Holly goes crazy with drink because she’s also friends with Amelia and begs us to take her over to Amelia’s house to invite her out. Seems like a great idea because Amelia is a very good person and Holly would probably attach herself onto her instead of any random guy at our party. We’d get a cool person to hang out with and a babysitter for our sweet drunken chickpea. So off we went into the night to send out emissaries of drunken debauchery to Amelia’s house. We took Holly’s car and Dan and I sat in the back while Holly sat in the passenger seat giving directions to the driver. It was a bit cramped because Holly had some groceries in the car from earlier. We arrive at a good size domicile with a yard full of trees and we park at the end. Our driver who I can’t remember right now threw the keys back to Holly who didn’t even attempt to catch them. We all started up the drive towards the house like we were the drunken Reservoir Dogs. Till Dan made mention of the bags in the car. Holly at this point starts to laugh hysterically and then slips into a realm of crazy reserved for lunatics and the clergy. She rumbles (mixture of stumbles and runs) back to the car and pulls the bags out and states in a demeanor that makes one wonder if this was her real intention all along that we should toilet paper all the trees and such. Our driver is stoked and starts to help her get ready. Dan and I feel that this is a little beneath us having matured to better pranks and levels vandalism naturally. It's high up here on our pedestal. Across the way stands horses in a wooden fenced in area. Dan and I quietly and carefully break down a portion of the fence and then stir the horses up a bit. We walk back towards our ride knowing that if the horses wander into the next yard it will be all kinds of funny even if we never find out what happened. Sudenly, lights come on at Amelia’s and Holly panics and that’s when we realize that she doesn’t have the keys. Her booze-o-matic decides that this is a good time to tell her brain to shut her legs and arms off. So here we are retracing her steps to find the keys, which are of course, right next to the car while she sits like a sack of potatoes that we have to stow into the car.

We get into the car and drive off back to the Oregon where we chuck Holly on the drunk tank mattress and go about having a great rest of the party. By this time Doctor Robinson has been off work for a bit and joins the fray to hear what we’ve been up to. Some time goes by and the Holly Zombie stirs and keys in tow strives like hell to leave. We go out after her and Dan runs up next to the car. She runs his foot over and stops only after Dan falls to the ground. That’s when she decides that she is too drunk to drive. Not the fact that we are chasing her around drunk as well. Nor the fact that we had someone else drive out to Amelia’s house. Not even the fact that we left her to sleep it off on our drunk tank. No no it took running a man’s foot over. Well we took her back into the house and Dan got to end the evening in more pain then he started with. That’s how it went sometimes at the Oregon. Sometimes you had great adventures with little to no injury. Other times….. Well those are stories for a later date.

See you all further on down the road.

Mike

*Disclaimer for Employers*

This is a disclaimer to all the possible employers who may scan this and my myspace page to suss out my charactor and to see if I'll make a good employee for your organization. First, if you are reading my stories and think," Oh my God this guys a drunk and must do this kind of stuff every night," you are a fool and don't understand that I'm writting interesting and funny stories most of which happened in 2001. I'm twenty seven years old and those adventures are few and far between now. Second, if you read my stories and articles from Iraq and think, "Oh my God this guys crazy and is unstable!!" you are a fool and I wouldn't want to work for you anyway. I was in a war and it gives you some things to think about and if I chose to write them down and share them then that's my choice. If you really have a question them why don't you call and ask about them. I will be more then happy to answer any questions you may have. I have served my country in the Army and I will not edit my stories to get hired to anyones organization. If that is unacceptable to you then you will lose out on a fine employee. Thanks for your time and enjoy the stories.

Managment

Exile From Employment

I'm finally a civilian and I have no unexpected vacations to Iraq looming it's dark head over my shoulders anymore. Now the problem remains that it's the first time in six years I've been without a steady income. Truth be told I haven't really given it too high a priority because I feel I've deserved a break and also because I don't revolve my problems around money which sometimes drives Stacie crazy. Most of my time has been getting back into the groove of old friendships that I've been away from for so long.

To be honest it's been pretty easy due to the fact that two of my best friends are now unemployed as well. So we've had ample time to catch up and all our employed friends know where to come to see us so we're there when they get off work. It's been a lot like picking up where I left off so long ago when I left the Oregon for the last time. It has brought up a number of mild mixed emotions for me mostly because thanks to Iraq all of my emotions are tempered by apathy. Most of all I miss that place and have gone to visit it a couple times or drove past it with Dr. Robinson. It's grown over with neglect and doesn't even have a for sale sign out in front anymore. The other is great relief that my friends have welcomed me back so enthusiastically. You see we have rules and regs that require attendance amungst other things and I've been allowed time for serving my country. Yeah I know it sounds crazy but we all also don't really have a life outside each other so we make life a game and once we're all together it becomes an adventure. Take the other night when we decided to go swimming in the nieghbors pool. Not a bad idea but it was not a nieghbor who we really talk to or knew we were swimming. Dragon had gone to a wedding earlier and drank nothing but Jack and Coke all night. When he got back to the Club he pulls a gallon of Jack out of the freezer and proceeds to drink more like a starved kitten at his mother's teat. I came out later because I didn't know anything was going on so I planned to turn in early. I get there and have a couple brews with the boys before we get ready to leave. Dragon is entertaining us by falling over anything and nothing he can find and I'm laughing like hell because well there are reasons. Anyway, Mysterio sounds the vanguard call to the pool and off we go. Chip and Mysterio were like silent assassins while I was doing good though I couldn't stop laughing at Dragon who was barely able to make it to the pool. Once in we silently swim about for all of five minutes when Dragon almost drowns himself. I promptly almost drown laughing and then it's quite again for a few minutes. Then the cops pull up. We all duck down and then the search lights come on and when they get out of the car one of them says, "Shit it's five grown men." Mysterio proceeds to explain that in the daytime we are allowed to swim there but not right now. He says we live next door and get out. They let us leave and then they leave themselves as Mysterio breaks a pushbroom just for having the audacity for being a pushbroom and we wander back home. Now let me remind you that Mysterio and I should be looking a little harder for jobs then we are but we're not going to let the fire that drives us to have crazy adventures like that die out because there's other things to be done. On that note we're not going to let our own nature get in the way of finding work. All is tempered and balanced if only on a blades edge. For myself I've been vowing a return to physical fitness and have started today in fact and that's something for this shifless layabout to be proud of.

I've been looking to law enforcement for work and have applied at two different places. It takes a while to go through the process to even be seen so it hasn't yet been overflowing with results. However, I'm keeping an eye out for other possibilities. The ex left me with no transportation and Stacie has no license so getting around is a strictly on foot ordeal if I don't have my brothers car. That's all well and good because walking is good for me. I'm going to spend some time photographing the Oregon in it's current state and then finding old pics to show with them. I've got a couple up all ready but they were taken with my phone camera and not my good camera. It's wonderful being home and it's been a great relief to fit back in so quickly in what I thought was going to be a "constant struggle" between the soldier and civilian within me.


See you all further on down the road.


Biff