Director of Damnation

Subject:	Faith..
Time:	5:12 pm.

So, i've been thinking recently on the subject of faith, and why, when trouble strikes, there's an almost visceral need to reach out and to find something bigger than us. When we're young it's Mother, as we get older we might turn to a mate, or to a mentor, but most often people to turn to "God". There's a saying "There are no atheists in a foxhole." As if it's much easier to believe in a conscious being that decides life or death and not the eye-hand coordination of the enemy, and plain ol' physics that determines your fate. What is that that makes a man believe that only a higher power can guide him and take him down?

They're trying to take away my dolphins. As in, they're tryting to tell me that I can no longer wear the dolphins that I earned with sweat, and blood. They're trying to take away the two years i spent on the boat and reduce me to less than what I was when I got there. And I'm not going to do that. Not without a fight. It will take a direct order for me to sign that paperwork and then only if I can make the statement that it's under duress. I talked to the OIC of the Navy Legal Services Office, and he's got FOIA letters out to the commands up and down the chain. Until I can verify that my Nuke NEC is removed, and until the appeal of that process is complete, I'm not signing a piece of paper that takes my Dolphins away. Fuck that.

Four Months ago I was an E-5, Nuclear Operator, Submariner. NOw I'm an E-4, they tell me they took away my NEC, they're trying to take away my Dolphins and retty soon they'll tell me that I have to go be something besides an ET.

The Boat was... is Family. Big Navy just fucks you over. That's becoming more nad more obvious every day.

2 strokes Stroke my ego.

Subject:	How I became a Scavenger and an Outcast
Time:	7:49 pm.
Music:	Right Down The Line - Gerry Rafferty.

So, in the last couple of weeks I feel like I've lost the greater part of who I am, of how I define myself. Because of a mistake I made, an unconscious accident, I am no longer on the USS TEXAS (SSN 775). I was removed from the boat, dropped to E-3, and sentenced to 60 days restriction. The last explains why I am typing this entry from the thumbpad on my Palm Prē, why I have to bribe subschoolers to get Ben & Jerry's Peanut Butter Cup ice cream, and why I have come to crave text messages as if they were laced with cocaine. My texting output has increased at least threefold.

It's like I lost my family. A little over a week ago I hae 130 brothers, united in common goals, bonds strengthened by common travels and travails, a brotherhood of iron men in a HY-100 steel ship. Now my "posse" consists of the dregs, those broken, those who drive drunk, those who blaze signatures, those who buy alcohol for minors and lie about it, those who sleep with other men's wives with the permission of those men, and, of course, those who fall asleep on watch. For the first time since March of '06 my collar tabs are empty, and I'm no longer eligible to live anywhere but the barracks. I've caused myself to be reduced to the same level I was right out of bootcamp.

Worse, no one knows my path from this point on. I could be separated from the Navy, de-nuked, de-subbed, or just sent back to a different boat and told to do better this time.

I don't even know what I want.

Stroke my ego.

Subject:	Christianity.
Time:	5:15 pm.
Music:	Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed.

I feel that America would be much better off if they stopped all the damn debate about Gay Marraige and Abortion and concentrated on the following

1 Corinthians 13 " So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love."

Matthew 7:1-5
Judge not, that ye be not judged.
For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

Matthew 22:36-40

³⁶"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" ³⁷Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'^[a] ³⁸This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'^[b] ⁴⁰All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

Fuck "not suffering a witch to live", fuck "Do no lie with man as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination" and all of that.

I, on the other hand try to live by the following

Do what thou wilt, but harm none.

7 strokes Stroke my ego.

Subject:	Actual Journal-ing
Time:	4:48 pm.
Music:	Deborah Cox - Absolutely Not (Hex Hector/Mac Quayle Chanel Mix).

So... my little sister is amazingly high strung.

I don't help this situation any. *L*

My other sister (technically also little) Emily, had the following thing to say about it. "But she has so many shiny buttons, that are just BEGGING to be pressed! And she keeps developing new ones, so you'll be talking to her about something innocuous and SHH-BAM! she's off again." Yes, Emily will do just fine in the armed forces, I believe, I definitely believe.

Anyway, my usual leave pattern is to mohawk my hair and dye it fantastic colors. This time around I went with orange. Or rather I went with "Electic Lava" by Manic Panic (known for their vegan hair dyes!). I love orange, the color, a lot and I love my orange hair. However, orange hair dye fades quickly, unfortunately. Even leaving the hair dye in for six hours was not enough time to let it last a week and a half. Oh well. tomorrow the orange hair and the mohawk will just be a memory. I'm toying with possibly getting cool designs carved into my hair for my next leave period, but I'll probably just leave it as is. It'll make my dad happy if nothing else.

So, my littlest sister, Sarah, who is actually slightly taller than Emily, knew nothing about my plans to dye my hair. Of course, I knew nothing about Sarah's hair plans either as, when I showed up at around midnight, Sarah's head was cut short, spiked up, and dyed magenta. Some of you will probably think that this is quite a dykish haircut. *spreads hands* This is okay with Sarah, because shortly after seeing Sarah and her new hair do, I met Sarah's exgirlfriend Jean. Who is also the exgirlfriend of Sarah's current girlfriend, Taylor. (Who I didn't meet until much later.)

This is not the only shock that I had on arriving at my mother's house. First off, the amount of clutter scattered about the family room, living room, kitchen, and dining room is ridiculous. As posted about earlier, I could not live in these conditions. I'm okay with laundry piling up on the floor until the weekend if work is exhausting. But my apartment was NEVER as wrecked as this house is. And this is a recent development as when I lived here, the house was almost immaculate come every Saturday afternoon. This is when chores (vacuuming, dishes, bedroom cleaning, bathroom cleaning) took place. Sometimes the kitchen floor even got mopped. Debris certainly never piled up to the point that you couldn't walk through the living or family room without stepping on or over something. Re-fuckin'-diculous

Of course, two days ago, when I got a bug up my ass and decided that the family room should be cleaned, it was met by much resistance from the source of the majority of the cluster. Now I don't have volume control. I'm aware of this. But I don't frequently find myself shrieking either. This is not the case with the Pinkhaired one. I have never seen someone get so worked up over the concept of making ONE room of the house clean. That's all I wanted. I made a joke about cleaning the family room, then the dining room, then Sarah's own room, but the only one who took this seriously was Sarah herself. She took it very seriously though, if the histrionics is any indication. I just wanted ONE room to be clean. This was my childhood house, and seeing it in this condition was sorta... I'm a bachelor that lives in my own apartment (at least I did before I sent all my stuff to Hawaii and moved out) and I keep house better. This fact makes me sad.

Of course, the other shocking thing was seeing my Mother. Who has lost a lot of weight. A LOT of weight. I'm not exactly sure what this means but she went from a size 18-20 to a size 10-12. For the first time in my life, my mother weighs less than I do. Apparently she and my sisters can share clothing. Emily was complaining that Mom kept borrowing her things. of course I later found out that Jean anble d Sarah borrow my stepDad's (Sarah's father) things , so... Sarah was kind enough to inform me that she is a "tweener" * (which means something completely different to submariners), her girlfriend Taylor is a lipstick lesbian (or a "femme") and Jean is butch. I'm not quite sure how this came up, but it did.

While we were in the car on the way to Papa John's, Sarah started mocking a woman that had been pulled over on the side of the road. I pointed out that that was a horrible idea, as being that person sucked.
Sarah "I'm just making fun of her because she's a bleached blond ethat is probably just sad because she can't flirt her way out of the ticket"
Alex: "Judge not lest ye be judged."
Sarah "I'll listen to that part of the bible when the people who live in Parker do."
I was disgusted. I didn't feel that this statement was ignorant, or dumb, I was dis-gust-ed. It seems to me that this is what's wrong with America. (Oh yeah, I'm climbing up on my soapbox). People only want to be good people if they're certain that other people are also going to be good people. That whole "treat other people as you want to be treated" thing seems to have gone out the window. Instead people have decided "I'll see how they treat me and then treat them like that." People have become reactive and then when people don't act like they want them to, they use that as an excuse to act however they want. sarah has decided that the people of Parker are stuck up gay bashers, and therefore doesn't want anything to do with them.
Now, I understand that I am a white male. We don't have many natural predators in this part of the world. Furthermore I'm 6'6'', I dress "oddly", and I usually have at least one knife on my person at all times. this means that I tend not to get much "harassment" on the street. (Even when I do things like walk around inner city baltimore at two in the morning with an iPod and a cellphone clearly visible. Yes, I'm aware that it was a dumb decision). But I don't undesrtand fear, anymore than I understand hate. Both of those concepts are completely foreign to me.

I was going to continue on with a discussion of Christianity and gay bashing, but i'm going to save that for a different entry.

*Wikipedia is amazing by the way. I have never heard the term "friend of Dorothy" before or "The game of Flats" Also they have a picture of "a Dyke on a bike".

3 strokes Stroke my ego.

Subject:	That'll show them!
Time:	1:24 pm.
Music:	Faith No More - Easy Like Sunday Morning.

So much has happened lately that it's not worth even posting it all. Basically I've broken up with Nick the wife-beating loser and have moved on to someone else who I can't trust. Someone else who instills in me tremendous self-doubt. I've decided that no matter what, I'll never stop cutting. It's like I get to a point where I think that I'm over the hump and that I'm over it. Then...BAM it hits me and I'm back to where I started 8 years ago. Cutting myself to stop the emotional pain. It's not that it stops the pain but it deflects it. It's easier to deal with physical pain than emotional. That's just how I am. It's like there are no other means of dealing with my pain than taking it out on myself. When will I ever stop doing this? Then again, what else would I do to take away my pain?? What should I do? Does it even matter? All I know is that if I'm going back to cutting myself then I'm going back to all the other things I used to do. I'm going back to drinking, drugs, sex, cutting and bulemia. I've gained so much weight, that makes me very unhappy too. I've got too much going on right now to even understand where to begin.

So, if you do an interest search for Ana you find the most interesting people....

4 strokes Stroke my ego.

Subject:	At last I have returned to LiveJournal...
Time:	12:51 am.
Music:	The Thermals - Here's Your Future (Album).

And Colorado.

Of course, I haven't seen much of Colorado because it's mostly been dark, and I spent the majority of the day hanging out in the parking lot of Mile High Stadium. (I refuse to ackowledge it's corporate sponsorship. It's not even that I like the Broncos, because mostly they can fall into a fire. But Colorado's stadium should be known as Mile High.) My eighth consecutive Warped Tour has come an gone, and I have deemed it good. It's not the best one I've been to, but that was moslty because of the dearth of bands that I was interested in seeing. For some reason Flogging Molly didn't play today or Meg and Dia, both of which disappointed me, but oh well.
I had a lot of fun. a lot of down time, sure, but I got to see InnerPartySystem, Every Avenue, NoFx, Bad Religion, A Day to Remember, Less than Jake, and 3OH!3. I played on the slip and slide and ogled the scade of scantily clad women. I also got my glasses kicked off my head and then stepped on, so I'm out a four hundred dollar pair of glasses, and got hailed on. Hail freakin' hurts!

But I'm back in Colorado and I'm looking forward to chilling and relaxing for a week.

1 stroke Stroke my ego.

SPOON!!!

CamWhoring

Non Regulation Cover