How Will You Spend Your Veteran's Day?

EventHorizon · Nov 10, 2011

being the responsible and trustworth 22 year old man that i am, i will be stuck at schoolworkhome all day tomorrow and i won't get a chance to barbecue, throw up red white and blue stuff everywhere, or get drunk. what does TFP have planned for Veteran's Day?

uncle phil · Nov 10, 2011

i'll remember the guys i served with in nam, maybe reply to one or two of plan9's posts, and have a few BCs...

KirStang · Nov 10, 2011

Working. Have a client coming in for a conference tomorrow. I'll probably go do some 400M sprints and squats over the weekend, though.
--- merged: Nov 11, 2011 2:14 AM ---
ETA: I will also dedicate 1 minute of my time to discuss the Glock 34 w/ the only Vet I speak with regularly, Plan 9.

snowy · Nov 10, 2011

I will be at work, but I already arranged via the Buddy Board at my pub to buy one of my favorite vets a beer.

EventHorizon · Nov 11, 2011

whats a Buddy Board?

Plan9 · Nov 11, 2011

(has flashback to when he joined TFP in '07)

Old Plan9: "I'll be in the fuckin' desert!"

Grasshopper Green · Nov 11, 2011

I'm working. Hubby has the day off. Appropriate, since he's a vet.

Craven Morehead · Nov 11, 2011

pretty much says it all.....

Thanks for all you've given, Vets.

SeanMyklKing · Nov 11, 2011

Watching Full Metal Jacket. Over and Over and Over.

SuburbanZombie · Nov 11, 2011

Working. Have a full day scheduled.

snowy · Nov 11, 2011

EventHorizon said: ↑

whats a Buddy Board?
Click to expand...

It's a big whiteboard on which they write the names of who the beer was bought for, who bought the beer, and what kind of beer they bought. I'm not going to be able to get to the pub tonight, but a gentleman there who is a regular is a WWII vet. He has some really awesome stories. So I bought him a beer in advance.

Cayvmann · Nov 12, 2011

I visited my veteran brother, who is being treated for brain cancer. Doesn't look good, but he's tough and has a good attitude.

roachboy · Nov 12, 2011

i like armistice day much better than veterans day. its quite different, about an end to war rather than a celebration of the people who carried out war. so on armistice day i made a little story.

http://100edgeeffects.tumblr.com/post/12698264627/armistice-the-armistice-they-signed-at-1111-on

uncle phil · Nov 12, 2011

roachboy said: ↑

i like armistice day much better than veterans day. its quite different, about an end to war rather than a celebration of the people who carried out war. so on armistice day i made a little story.

http://100edgeeffects.tumblr.com/post/12698264627/armistice-the-armistice-they-signed-at-1111-on
Click to expand...

gotta take issue with this; the politicians put the veterans in positions to carry out their whims; how many of us were in a position to say 'no?'

i would love to celebrate 'armistice day,' but it ain't gonna happen in our lifetimes...

Plan9 · Nov 13, 2011

So, basically, according to Reddit and TFP and SomethingAwful:

How Civilians See Veterans
Brave Good Guys on Veterans' Day, Sellout Brainwashed Tools Every Other Day

You all can eat a dirty dick. If you're going to scream about how I'm a baby killer on Tuesday, don't buy me a beer on Thursday. Be consistent.

I think a good number of veterans are slack-jawed retards that went off to the big daycare center where you get automatic weapons. And I think a good number of veterans are halfway intelligent people that enjoy the structure and discipline and challenges that only the military services can provide. It's really kinda 50/50. You know, just like the rest of the work force. All this group-lumping doesn't help anybody understand anything.

Here's one perspective:

Another Baby Killer said:

2003-2004

War is hell, war, war never changes, war is a racket... you hear this shit? What war is, to me, was a dream I had. It's all hazy like a dream, and I remember it like a dream. If there is anything unsettling about it lurking in my mind that Freud would like to hear about, which I'm sure there is because I'm writing this, I can only recall it like I would recall monsters chasing me in a dream. Sometimes the dreams I have about it get mixed up with the memories of the real life event. I've had plenty of mortars dropped on me and gone on raids where I've been blinded by a dead NVG battery and walked waste deep through human shit and have been swarmed by zombies and kicked in the door to a legless man's house and been trapped in a giant spider web and gone on a joy ride over Baghdad in a cowboy show off's Blackhawk and it was all in the same perpetually brown blah assed environment. Some of them happened and some of them didn't. It's all the same to me because in the end it makes fuck all of a difference. Nothing I did matters there. Nothing. It was a waste of my time, it was a waste of government money, and from the other sides point of view I was nothing but another faceless hinderance. To them I was either a skull they'd like to bash or an MRE M&M dispenser. Didn't matter either way. Still doesn't.

War is a circle jerk. If there were ever a direct metaphor, and this is just from my personal perspective and experience, but it would be jerking off. At night you had rotating guard in this fighting position on top of a building. Two of you and a 240B and your dinky (in comparison) M4's. What you watched through the green/black/white world of your NVGs was rubble. Bombed out rubble and wild packs of dogs fighting each other. And when it was time to change guard and have two new fuckers stare at the rubble one went back to get them and one stayed. If you were the one that was left behind that meant that you got a good 10 minutes to jerk off. Not one ounce of female in the whole place, and even then your memories of them are skewed and wistful and that's what you've got. You'd jerk off and deposit it onto the dusty pile of sandbags that was meant to protect you from the invisible enemy that really was never there. We all left just entire generations of potential children behind to crust over on a bag full of dirt. And that's it. That's what the whole war was to me. A bunch of young men standing around jerking off. It's like a porn, and the big-dicked studs were the ones flying the A10s and the Apaches and the Delta operators with their sniper rifles slung behind their backs and the unmanned drones. They did the fucking. The rest of us stood back and jerked off. We took pot shots and masturbated at night onto sandbags.

We were stuck out on our own; you couldn't even call it a FOB, it was nothing like that. It was just 2 platoons. That's it. We got fucked around, some mortars set off a big fire that blew up a big Iraqi ASP and were were literally right in the middle of it when it happened. So was all of our shit, our equipment. We went to the Sadam's palace where the big shots were at to tell them our shit was all fucked up and we didn't even make it into their perimeter. We were out of uniform and there were journalists in the area. Can't come in. Go somewhere else. They might take pictures of us. Fuck it. So we go to the air field. Once again, sorry shitheads, you're 2 combat platoons, you're ATTACHED to the 101st, not part of it, why are you coming to the airfield? Fuck of back to the 82nd. Lot of good being an airborne hardass does you. That's one way to look at it. At the same time, we're somehow proud of our burdens. Mech? Fuck mech. We are light infantry we WALK EVERYWHERE WITH ALL OUR SHIT, OH YEAH!! So, we waved goodbye to the 88 Mikes and 92 Alpha's with the chickens on their shoulders and said our farewells, or grumbled fuck you's amongst ourselves if you want to look at it that way, and went back to living it up shitting in holes in the ground and burn barrels and not taking showers and doing everything the 101st didn't think was glorious. QRF? Yes, all the time please. Except when they found out Saddam's kids were involved. They were sure to handle that one. So, not if it's something glorious. We were literally loaded up on the trucks ready to go, then the next thing you knew we had the day off. I don't care. Good. I still say good. It wasn't something I wanted to be a part of. None of it really was.

But it was. All of it was. There is some strong reason why I wouldn't trade any of it for the world. I can't even explain that one to myself. Why? And why is a rhetorical question. I don't want some front page reading veteran motherfucker seeing this and trying to give me the "we're all military brodawgs" reason. I was never one of you. When I was in I was never one of you and I'm out and I'm definitely not one know. I thought you were all ridiculous. Then I got stuck in a desert and had no choice. And even then. But I still wouldn't trade it. I don't want it but I'd do it again. You can't help it, maybe. There is something in a person that would drop every bomb and unload every belt into those that are different than they are, no questions asked. And that's scary. If you think about it, and it admit it to yourself, I think anybody would do it under the right circumstances. A rich man in a suit sends you off for some arbitrary reason and you get a taste, and you don't actually understand any of it, but you get a taste and then there is always some black violence lurking in there some where. It's not something you parade around, you don't scream PTSD or tout it at the VFW hall. It's your own business. It's just there in you and you can't look at anything the same. You might forget someday, when you're old, exactly how to break down the mechanical parts of an M4. It's a good bet you'll never forget how it felt on your cheekbone and shoulder. You're not going to forget that gentle kick or breathing that carbon smoke up your nose.

Now I'm back. I've been back for a while. Probably too long to even talk about this with any authority at all. But driving down the freeway past all the auto dealerships and goofy family restaurant chains and strip clubs and billboards and lights you just want to go back. At least that was pure. At least it wasn't this horse shit. Then you knew where you stood even if it was for something pointless. Even if you were hot and nasty and uncomfortable and lonely. At least where you were at people wore a different type of blinder. At least you understood their ignorance.

Granted, this is a hyperbolic and summarized interpretation of it. I didn't know where to start so I just jumped in the middle and this is what I've come up with. Plus I'm a good 6 beers in. Sorry if it's a jumbled ball of fuck. It is what it is.
Click to expand...

It is what it is.

Ourcrazymodern? · Nov 13, 2011

That must have been Plan 8.

Plan9 · Nov 13, 2011

Ourcrazymodern? said: ↑

That must have been Plan 8.
Click to expand...

English, motherfucker... do you speak it?
Click to expand...

Ourcrazymodern? · Nov 13, 2011

Not really, I guess. I spent Veteran's day thinking about people who died as innocents. Living in pain probably sucks almost as much. Without the larger cause to blame for my pain, though, & assuming a whole lot about people's motivations, I thank you for your input.

roachboy · Nov 13, 2011

i dont question anything about the folk who found themselves for whatever reason in a position of carrying out politics by other means. i really don't. i was just thinking about the symbolic differences between armistice and veterans day. and i decided that i prefer armistice day. celebrating the end of war.

Baraka_Guru · Nov 13, 2011

"In modern war... you will die like a dog for no good reason." -Ernest Hemingway

The danger of November 11 is the glorification of something I consider a failure of humanity.

In Canada, November 11 is "Remembrance Day." It still marks the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, when armistice was established in 1918. It's a well-entrenched tradition here to have two minutes of silence at 11 o'clock.

The day also is meant as a way to pay respect to those who serve and have served in the armed forces since that time.

This is regardless of your political position.

I don't view Canadian soldiers as "babykillers"; I view them as having to do a really shitty job that I would have a very difficult time doing for philosophical reasons. Family members of mine served the Canadian forces in both World Wars. My brother is a corporal in the Canadian armed forces. He was in Afghanistan when the shit was hitting the fan. He served in Bosnia. He's done a few other tours as well and would go again at the drop of a hat, despite having two young children (and one with autism). He loves what he does because he knows how important the role our armed forces plays on the world stage.

But there are a number of differences between what Canada does and what America does.

It's difficult to paint so many people with one or two brushes in these matters because there are so many aspects to what November 11 is and what it means.

Armistice is one of the greatest things to celebrate, but even that shouldn't be romanticized. None of this stuff should.

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How Will You Spend Your Veteran's Day?

EventHorizon assuredly the cause of the angry Economy..

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KirStang Something Patriotic.

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EventHorizon assuredly the cause of the angry Economy..

Plan9 Rock 'n Roll

Grasshopper Green Getting Tilted

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Plan9 Rock 'n Roll

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How Will You Spend Your Veteran's Day?

EventHorizon assuredly the cause of the angry Economy..

uncle phil Moderator Emeritus (and sorely missed) Staff Member Donor

KirStang Something Patriotic.

snowy so kawaii Staff Member

EventHorizon assuredly the cause of the angry Economy..

Plan9 Rock 'n Roll

Grasshopper Green Getting Tilted

Craven Morehead Very Tilted

SeanMyklKing Chef

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