AN END OF DAYS

Posey was a cat. A very very beloved cat. Who was very old and ill and so Posey went to the Vet and died and her body was just left there. I should have seen the writing on the wall. I didn't. 13 years of affection and love were tossed away in a single heartbeat.

BACK

Just finished watching Educating Rita. The thing has stopped for now and actually for some time but I had to move out of San Diego to end it. 2 7 hour highway trips without any concern at all for the potential consequences. Remarkable.

Saw the neurologist today, or should I say that he saw me. Spitting image of my brother-in-law. 2nd dan Taekwon-do. Turns out the whole shebang may be laid out to migraines. I don't have headaches. I had one about 5 years ago and it felt like somebody had jammed a white hot spear into my head. Nothing since then but what I have which I thought was all unrelated but the Dr. assures me is consistent with multiple parts of my brain throwing a hissy fit. Can't type, sleep, keep eyes open, dizzy, fall down, loss of s/a. and zero pain....unless, God help me, I spin into one of the end tables on the way down. He gave me some pills the size of a super tanker to deal with further outbreaks.

I told him I went a whole week without any symptoms at all when my girl was here and he recommended that I keep her around. If only I could I would.

BEACHING IN DEL MAR

Discovery of the pure fun of boogie boarding in a wet suit.

SHARKs

I see Dallas drivers are among the worst drivers in America. Too bloody True! They tailgate on the interstate at 70mph with about 4 feet of following distance. Bunch of bastards if you ask me.

SCARY BAD NEWS

Wow!

At some point this week the IRS in Atlanta sent me a letter telling me that their records showed I entered a combat zone back in 2008 and they needed more details. I never claimed any tax exemption for it or mentioned it in my return for that year..... but they caught up with me.

Bastards!

NEENER

Well that was fun and interesting. Sarah Palin's Tea Party nominee just won the GOP nomination in Alaska. 2 and counting. Somebody has coat tails!

THAT'S STRANGE

I am always amazed to see otherwise sane people trip over the moderation line and leap into a frenzy of hatred when others disagree with a particular political viewpoint or approach and then react balefully when they are called on it. You used to see it with Bush Derangement Syndrome or extreme hatred of Karl Rove or Dick Cheney and now one sees it as they attempt to deal with Sarah Palin and the Tea Party Movement. It's really odd. 42% of Americans pay no Income Tax because they are exempt but they get to go out and vote higher and higher taxes on the Americans that do pay taxes in order that LA Unified Schools can build a $578 MILLION dollar school. That would be for 4200 'pupils' probably half of them illegals and half of them with parent that pays no taxes beyond the $8.00/pack on their smokes. That's a nice progressive tax.

Dare to disagree with one wingnut and you are evidently, unpatriotic. Dare to disagree with the opposite wingnut and you are evil, mean spirited, stupid and ugly.

I'm kind of looking forward to November but also looking forward to any pending revelation that 2nd Fleet is on the chopping block. You talk about a useless and pointless staff.... JFCOM did ALL their work and JFCOM is going away which tells you how pointless 2nd Fleet is. I spent 3 years as OPS on a midlevel staff and I would talk to my 3rd Fleet counterparts a couple of times a week but never ever had to show up with a powerpoint briefing about anything. My peer on the east coast had to routinely show up with full powerpoint briefs to brief his counterparts at 2nd Fleet which was pretty pointless on the whole since he also had to walk and talk his brief over to JFCOM for any decisions. Good riddance and take 4th Fleet and 10th Fleet with you into that dark night. Oh, and 6th Fleet too.

TWEEN BLOGS

Can you imagine the one owning slippers and a cat. Cat shit up there at the toe every day.

TROLLS AND DESPICABLE ME

Hsd way more fun in a week with a 7 year old girl than you could shake a stick at. Also got word from multiple sources, again, that I'm an ass. What can I say? I really truly like to argue and of course could never ever not even once do it in person. The intertubes were perfect for somebody like me. Just as marriage was the death of Random at USENET so is the invite to the world the death of Curtis. We shall not see his like again, I hope. Does anyone else miss the naps of childhood?

Napping turned to nooners turned to can't sleep more then 4 hours. It used to take nothing more than covering her feet on the couch and out she'd be. Less than five minutes to unconscious after toe warming.

I thought about it a bit today and decided, I don't really think I'll miss slanging off. Nobody else will either.

RESULTS IN

Sa place I've not been to since 1988 in Shah Allum or Rostam or even Farsi. Endo results in this morning. Still hanging on the brain scan stuff. Probably take an MRI to resolve the mass hanging on the back of the cerebellum.

MORNING TIDINGS

Picked up the little love of my life on Sunday and brought her home where we've had a great time playing with cousins on the beach and eating and playing with cousins in Del Mar until the wee hours (2045 if that must be defined); she's only 7, as of today. Smart and cute.

In the morning I head off to the doctor who will describe in some detail for me what it means to have: in the left posterior aspect of the posterior fossa a space-occupying extra-axial lesion of CSF density measuring 3.1 x 1.4 cm causing mild mass effect on the left cerebellar hemisphere. Now that's a mouthful. But then, what are CT scans for?

I won't have better days than this one. It was great!

LEST YE DESPAIR

Some things move through a different realm. When one begins to question the networks one moves off them. The media is way more sussed.

and, it sucks to be them anyway.

SECRET ISN'T IT

Once one delves into the code word world one loses touch with reality. SSES would occasionally share some data with us mortals. It was usually pointless but it revealed meaningful capabilities that should have been part of OUR toolkit.

Intel made its own world and then it strained to the max to make it stay in that world. Not much use there. You know, not much value added to the guy fighting the war since all the intel stayed at TS/SCI code word and could not possibly be shared with the guys on the pointy end. Oh, sure the VADM and his intel staff knew it but they didn't/couldn't share it. So how much use was that? It usually boiled down to deploying surveillance units and telling them to be vigilant. Thank you. Vigilant for what? Can't tell you.

I deployed in response to that sort of garbage many times over the last 25 years and it was all garbage. We have signs and warnings they would say. Show me I would say in return and they would toss back that we did not have the need to know what caused the nation to suddenly divert a C5 to the mission of deploying a surveillance unit overnight to the Far East, Middle East. A lot of us held TS/SCI but outside the intel community. We didn't have the need to know.

All the spies and operatives burned to death when the top leadership of the spy sheds at CIA and FBI sold out make me question the value of anything we develop beyond the national technical means. Probably we'll find in a year or two that traitors at NSA canceled out a lot of the technical means capabilities too.

As a very old hand I find it absolutely amazing that some soviet agents convinced EVERYBODY to create the SIPRNET and put all that stuff online where it could be drained off every day, every single day.

When I joined up classified was classified, need to know enabled access and it was all controlled. With SIPR, it all went on line. And we told ourselves that was useful. Perhaps. Can you suss out the underlying madness of making a thing a SECRET for national security purposes and then allowing 2 million people access to that secret?

We have gone way down a path that I don't think is acceptable in a republic. SECRET used to be something that caused major damage to the republic if it became known. We used to do annual page checks of secret material and you don't want to know what we did with the TS. Now we've created some organizations into being that routinely classify the local news in Chicago as TS/SCI/code AND we've created organizations beyond the law to execute people beyond the Pale. (look up Pale/Ireland. It had a dreadful meaning once and it ain't based on color though it was most assuredly race based).

There are several networks that combine all that is known that run at different levels of classification. Ask me if I think that the best government sponsored hackers on earth haven't compromised all of them. Go on. Ask.

Still, I used to work for a guy. He was XO and CO of an OCEANUNIT. He told me one day about how the US Embassy in a certain country once delivered his mail to his ship. It came on a host nation bus, unescorted, including all his new crypto. Red spies didn't, don't have to work very hard.

HOW DID THEY SLEEP?

How did the firebombers, the atomic bombers the first city bombers, the starvers and rapists ever sleep at night?

Me to the bomber crew:

So what was it you set out to do at Dresden and Nagasaki?

Them: Kill everyone in a firestorm that would plunge 20,000 children into a cauldron of fire.

Me: Oh.


there was some kind of war crime for using railroads and gas chambers and not another one for using firestorms.

I'm glad of my service but had they asked me to do this I'd have walked away.

We've had an enormous number of fine outstanding officers who held the keys and the SAPS to get access and launch nukes. I was one once. Now, at 49, I could never do that.

The last century sucked.

ANATHEM

I'll see if this one works. I expected no comments really. I'll try it again on the plane to Bahrain. If I have a hard to read/get into book, I save it for the flight to Amsterdam or Heathrow. The boredom of such flights focuses the intellect on what one has brought.

FLAG

Ah,
justthisguy, I dreamed of being alone on the internet. This is a kind of free association blog thing and I had thought that only far east cynic found me. Silly me.

Lex and I were both on active duty together here in SOCAL, he at AIRPAC and me at MESG1. As you say, he is the embodiment of, "thank you sir, but no thank you". On the other hand there are bunches of FOGOS that just got there through shear competence and duration. Lex made the point that he turned down the billets that lead to that end for his family. Back when I was unmarried, childless and ruthless I took every challenging overseas assignment. I loved it! When I got married it stopped. That said, I remember VADM Costello asking the room who was representing AIRPAC and TACTRAGROUP saying it was Lex but he was running a little late and Barry saying, 'good'. I agree. A good man.

I have inherited a very nice chest of drawers but it reeks of cigarette smoke. 30 years after it was removed from the total cigarette environment it reeks from 3 rooms away! Any clothes placed within the drawers stink of cigarettes. The whole damned thing reeks.

When I downsize, this thing is the first thing to go.

HEAR THE MUSIC

Listened to some of the music again as my right hand went numb. It's a weird feeling. I'm pretty sure I don't like it.

I really hope that Mattis and Petraeus meet for a sit down dinner at least once a month from now on, one on one. I don't doubt that CENTCOM and JFCOM gave every request from McChrystal their full attention and support. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Worthless in the end since we're talking Muslims and they're as changeable as stone.

Weird, the right hand is visibly shutting down.

SLEEPING INTO THE CAT SCAN

Serious measures used to make it to the CT Scan in the morning. Bludgeoned into sleep. May take 2 of the damned things.

SOME NICE PEOPLE

I was recently honored to be asked to attend an Ordination for a friend. Several others I knew were also invited. I was pleased and honored to attend. Guy saved my life, what else did I have to do that evening..... Yep. Easy.

Here's a couple of shots from the evening. Good man bound on a good voyage. As I told him, he is surrounded by good company so we can all expect the best. There will be dark moments but he has already weathered some of those. I expect he'll clear the horizon and come home every time. Strikes me as a very good man.

HOW TO DO IT

My dad took me aside when I was commissioned, by him, and gave me some perfectly good advice. I would recommend it to anybody seeking a commission in our armed forces.

1. Don't ever measure yourself against your peers.
2. Always just do the very best job that you can do.

Worked for me. Making Flag is a personal ambition that I never had. That's a fire that must burn within from the time one is an Ensign. That is all 'contacts', and 'perfect jobs', and schmoozing and there are people to whom this comes naturally. Not me, not grandad.

I was certifiably ruthless until I got married, 22 years into a navy sort of career. The ruthless got a tweak at that point.

2340 and the world flipped

spark.

just before trigannic pu. song on the IPOD. Opened two eyes on the future possibilities of a really nice little girl.

PROGS GETTING POKED

1. Good grief. New Mac, not used to the operating system but here's another repost from elsewhere.
2. Carry on out there Skippy. Here in Californiastan the state treasurer, commissar decided last year that it was legal to just go ahead and direct a further 10% on tax withholdings on all Califinistan residents paychecks on account of an urgent need for the revenue and whatnot. Pay tax returns in IOU, etc.

3. Only tsarists and communists and socialists/NAZIs and democrats and liberals and progressives would see that the government had that kind of unilateral after the fact right to steal money. But you’d see that. Right?

   Don’t fight man! Just give them YOUR money!!!!!! What are you? Some sort of TEA BAGGER? The STATE of Alabama has a right to all your money!!

   I’m SHOCKED, SHOCKED! to find tax evading going on in the house of liberalism. You owe Alabama the money. Just pay and shut the fuck up why don’t you?

   Why don’t you Skippy-San? It’s their money right?

   Am I using a nail gun on this one?

   Manifold pressure down to zero after blowing the load on what must be the stupidest side of an argument in all time?

   Pay up or shut up.

   You sure felt an entitlement to my money.

   Feel the pain.

SOMETHING FROM SKIPPY-SAN

Thank you. My fingers are on the blink this week. As I stand up and fall down and hit the furniture really really hard I am thankful again and again that I bought soft stuff, except for the end tables I bought in Pakistan 30 years ago. Those suckers are deadly.

1. How many countries have you traveled to? ( Travel to means at least an overnight stay. Does not have to be exact.)

55

2. What is the best place you ever visited?

Del Mar

3. What was the worst place you have ever been-and would you go back?

Djibouti and no.

4. If you could change one thing, and only one thing, in the world to make it a better place, what would it be?

The absolute extermination of those that think they’re Palestinian.

5. Who would you rather sleep with? Men: Tonya Harding or Nancy Kerrigan? (When they were in their figure skating battle). Women: Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert? Explain.

Silly question

6. What is the worst thing to happen to the country you hold a passport for in the last 50 years?

9/11

7. Do you view someone that you know, or know of as a “hero”? If so, what makes this individual so special?

Dad. Battery commander in the 101st in a forgotten war. And my dad.

8. If you could be born again would choose to be a different sex to what you are?

I don’t know.

9. What is your favorite alcoholic drink? If you say, ”I don’t drink”-STOP NOW. Just hang your head in shame.

Black and Tan but one must leave the house for that.

10. What is your favorite magazine?

4 years ago I went to get my guts opened up at Balboa Medical Center and read the Economist in the waiting room. Most certainly the last time I ever read a magazine. Twas an interesting article on Pashtun.

So, Economist.