“Did anyone give you a package to carry?” the security dude asks me. Before I can even think of an honest response, “No” jumps out of my mouth.

I’ve traveled so much that it’s just automatic anymore. All I want is those prying, uncaring, cynical eyes off of me so I can go to the bar and down a tranquilizer before boarding yet another overcrowded flying shitcan. So it was a surreal astonishment when a TSP agent said, “over here please” one afternoon last Christmas before guiding me to the “rape booth” for an uncomfortable violation of my personal space. Here’s how the play-by-play went:

TSP: “Did anyone give you a package to carry for them?”
Me: “No.”
TSP: “Okay.”

Guard 1 looks over at Guard 2 who’s intently studying a bag on the X-Ray. I recognize the bag as mine.

Me: “Oh shit.”
TSP: “What Sir?”
Me: “Nothing.”

Guard 2 gives the super-secret ‘nod of knowing’ to Guard 1, who turns to me.

TSP: “Come this way Sir.”
Me: “Why are you pulling out gloves?”
TSP: “What gloves?”
Me: “Those gloves.”
TSP: “Just a precaution. Nothing to worry about until you see a tube ‘o lube.”
Me: “Don’t joke.”
TSP: “Am I laughing?”
Me: “Is that a question or an attempt to coddle me?”
TSP: “Do you need coddling?”
Me: “Grief counseling will be in order if you break out anything labeled ‘petroleum jelly.’”

Guard 2 gives another nod and I’m sure they’ve just had a telepathic conversation about my impending bodily violation. More guards gather on the fringe, including one with a vicious looking canine. I suddenly know how a steak feels.

TSP: “Sir, I’ll ask again. Did anyone give you anything…”
Me: “It was my mommy!” I blurt out.
TSP: “Your mommy?”
Me: “I mean my mom.”
TSP: “What did she do? Make the big bad boogie man come to town?”
Me: “No! Those closets were terrifying!”
TSP: “Do you have something to hide?”
Me: “No! I mean yes. I mean whatever’s in there, it’s my mom’s fault.”

My shaky voice fails to convince the guard. A rare, uncomfortable silence ensues and although I welcome the lack of sarcastic questions, I want to run. The bomb sniffing ninja dog forces me to reconsider.

TSP: “Do I need to ask?”
Me: “She gave me a gift to give to my sons.”
TSP: “Is it in your bag now?”
Me: “Yes.”
TSP: “But I asked you already if anyone had given you anything and you said no.”
Me: “I know. It was a Pavlovian response.”
TSP: “A what?”
Me: “He had a dog…”
TSP: “I know who Pavlov was.”
Me: “Then why did you…?”
TSP: “Because I’m a bit dismayed to be categorized as a canine experiment. My job isn’t incredibly difficult, but I’m on the front line of stopping another 9-11, sir!”
Me: “I’m not trivializing your job.”
TSP: “But you compared it to Pavlov.”
Me: “I did, I’m sorry.”
TSP: “What’s in your bag?”
Me: “I don’t know. My mother gave me a gift to give to my boys.”
TSP: “You said that.”
Me: “And I was telling the truth.”
TSP: “Finally.”
Me: “I’m not lying.”
TSP: “But your credibility is in question, wouldn’t you agree?”
Me: “You got me there. Please put away that tube. You told me I didn’t have to be worried unless…”
TSP: “We’re going to have to open the gift.”
Me: “And ruin the surprise for my boys?”
TSP: “Would you prefer I open something else?” He holds up the tube for emphasis.
Me: “Sucks for them. Is that a taser?”

“Here’s the wires,” Guard 1 says as he pulls an iPod out of the upper pocket of my backpack.
“The machine says something underneath is organic, though,” Guard 2 interjects, shooting me a suspicious shoe-bomber look. “Cut it open.”
Guard 1 gives the perfectly wrapped box a Jack-the-Ripper and slices it open so efficiently I have an “Iron Chef” flashback. Three guards finger their weapons as the dog drools over my filet-like thigh. I get the feeling everyone has visions of themselves on the cover of Time thwarting another 9-11 and each one wants to be the first to put two in my chest.

“Fed him lately?” I jest as my piss hits the floor next to the drooling dog.

“Are you kidding me?” Guard 2 suddenly lets out as the final piece of wrapping falls away to reveal…Playdo. “Fucking Playdo,” he laments. “Beneath an iPod!” Fourteen guards gently lift their trigger fingers as the brightest part of their day fades away in abysmal disappointment.

“I don’t get it,” I say.
“The X-Ray machine saw an organic material beneath a group of wires. Looked like a bomb,” Guard 1 confides in me as he powers down his taser. “Guess you’re good to go.”

I was allowed to leave unconfined and more thankful than a thoroughbred in a barn full of fillies. But not fourteen steps later the universe taught me a valuable lesson as another man zipped past me. A man running, whether it’s from fear or joy, makes no difference to a dog. We’re all steak to a canine. You just have to be faster than the steak next to you.

I’m Not a Country Boy

“I’m guessing you’re not much of a golfer,” a suit says beside me.

“The only birdie’s I shoot don’t get up,” his newfound friend at the bar responded. I didn’t want to look, but the smooth, yet gruff Sam Elliot voice was wet with contempt and confrontation has always been my siren song. I kinked my head just enough to see a cowboy hat juxtapositioned against the bewildered expression of a businessman who was trying to make casual conversation, but instead found himself on the wrong end of an irritated Clint Eastwood. It was an innocuous comment between two people I didn’t know in an airport bar while I was half lit on bourbon and a cancelled flight. The curmudgeon in me pleaded with my reasonable side to start an argument, but luckily reason pulled a five-finger death touch and stopped it cold. Still…an inner struggle had begun and I couldn’t have stopped it with anything less than beating my head against the bar.

Is there something so thoroughly shameful about being bereft of bucolic instinct that we should feel ashamed for living in major population centers and not knowing if we’re driving by alfalfa, cabbage, or carrots when we venture into the countryside? When I drive by a farm and get a whiff of soybeans and cow shit, I think two things: Thank God for Farmers and Thank God I’m not a Farmer. Farming is a backbreaking, dusty crotch, ripped nails, unending suckfest work that makes grown men weep and barely earns enough scratch to keep it going, much less live off of. I respect the people who do it, but it’s just not me and I kind of get tired of people like this cowboy at the bar trying to make us concrete jungle dwellers feel like lesser men for not having any country in us.

I like the sounds and smells of Suburbia on a Sunday when I’m sleeping in and not going to church. I got a Swedish Husqvarna riding mover that I don’t even know how to change the oil on. If I were to tell that to this guy here at the bar, he would most assuredly disapprove, though I’m not sure whether it’s for my panty-weight mechanical skills or the fact that I didn’t buy American. He would look down on me because I don’t know the cud chewing side from the ass end of a cow and most of America thinks it’s funny stuff to emulate country folk and emasculate those of us who know the difference between houndstooth and tweed.

I think there’s a conspiracy between Cabelas, Ford, and Jeff Foxworthy to make us non-country boys feel like little Susie Homemakers for not being more outdoorsy. Every so often Hollywood gets in on the act with movies like, “The Cowboy Way” that makes city slicking sinners look like haphazard chumps. I got two words for you, Hoss – Brokeback Mountain. Denim and chaps do not provide you with testosterone, much less an infallible air of superiority.

Truth is, I think we need each other, though not in the way you’re clearly thinking after that Brokeback Mountain comment. It’s like the Yin and the the Yang, the balance in The Force, Obiwan Kenobe and Darth Vader. Who’s who? Not important. The point is country folk and city folk balance each other out. One isn’t greater than the other. If the great white hunter wants to spend twelve hours in a deer stand waiting for a buck to walk into his line of fire so he can make flavorless jerky and an antler hat rack, let him!

And if Armani over there wants to enjoy a frappucino and a scone while bitching about how he had to wait in line to get into a club and then his date with a microwaved sock fell short, well Lamb Chop be damned, this is America and he can do so. So what if he’s never run through a cornfield and felt the sweet sting of a sharp stalk leaf against his supple forearms and suffers PTSD from the sight of a tick. His keen eye for a Coach man purse deal helps define who the rest of us are not.

Us soldiers are even more at risk for having a redneck background than other demographics, but we temper our contempt with integrity and military bearing. The military mindset seems predestined to revert to the hunter-gatherer instinct and many of us go out to the field to train for weeks only to come back in, load the family SUV, and get lost in the Cascade Mountains. Some guys just can’t get enough rain and pine straw. Luckily I’ve beaten that side out of me and convinced myself that climate control is God’s way of saying ‘stay inside, my son.’ My concept of camping now involves a thirty-foot trailer, several propane bottles, and a flat screen TV with satellite hook up.

Sure, I’m no stranger to a torrential downpour, humping through the woods all night, or dragging my footlocker all the way from my Hummer to my GP Medium tent and to be honest, I abhor people who have no survival instinct in them. I’ve done it and I just don’t want to anymore, so I think it’s hypocritical to try to make a guy with hair plugs and four-hundred dollar shoes feel inferior because he doesn’t sit on a porch swilling homebrew while singing John Denver songs. This is America. Individuality and the pursuit of happiness is what makes us who we are, even if that happiness is being a chain smoking, bulimic gimp that you find morally reprehensible.

My inner daydream was suddenly interrupted when the cowboy gathered himself up to leave and reached to the ground for his bag, revealing a Manchu tattoo on his forearm (Manchu = 9^th Infantry Regiment) and turned to go.

“Want to settle up?” the bartender said, holding a receipt that hadn’t been paid. I snatched it like Bill Clinton feverishly scrambling after a discarded bra.

“I’ve got this.”

Ranger Up brings back the Two-Martini Lunch

Who says you have to wait until the sun sets to drink? Getting schnokered in the middle of the day was an executive privilege going back to the days of Romans, Mead, and the always entertaining Coliseum until a bunch of clumsy, tea-totaling Jodies ruined it for all of us by losing too many fingers in wayward heavy machinery accidents. Just when we thought the hell of public bra burnings and pepper spray-laced political conventions was over, America got a conscience, kicked the hard-living Rat Pack to the curb, and mumbled “I’ll never drink again” like a sorority chick on an early morning walk of shame. Overnight, getting buzzed at work was a bad thing.

Well, this is America where unnecessary indulgences are a rite of entrepreneurial passage, so Old Blue Eyes would be proud to know that Ranger Up’s World Headquarters in Raleigh/Durham is a den of gin and vermouth-laced iniquity and profanity between the hours of 1130 and 1300. Wars, laws, and trade routes have been fought over booze, so this small company has tapped into the siren song of libation to get a leg up on the competition. Gird your loins.

“There simply isn’t enough self-righteous egoism in the workplace anymore,” says Ranger Up CEO and Supreme Overlord Nick Palmisciano while killing his first slightly wet, three-olive Hendrix martini. “All these rhinestone and foil wearing, faux hawk coiffed pantyweights don’t know jack about being a revolutionary. Two fingers of your favorite poison was a lunchtime staple for our fathers, but ever since the Carter Administration, everyone’s been uptight about drinking at work…even when we were in the Army. What kind of crap is that?”

Chief Marketing Officer Garrett Schemmel, barely competent after a pair of sugar-rimmed Appletinis, describes the new tactic this way: “One martini is nothing more than an unsatisfying appetizer…like the Minnesota Vikings…and we knew three was too much when a hide-and-seek game didn’t end until we discovered Tommy six days later camping in the rafters like a caveman. Two is just right. It stimulates the creative brain cells, which in turn kill the unproductive ones. So it’s really like brain cell Darwinianism. The weak cells die off leaving the herd stronger…until nap time of course.”

So far the net effect of the two-martini lunch has been limited to a Jackson Pollack wall covered with plans of unrealized world domination, lists of esoteric nonsense like “Kama Sutra uses for peanut butter,” and a collection of crayon drawings depicting RU employees bloodily decimating the greatest MMA fighters. “It’s mostly jibberish with an occasional nugget of stupid,” says Tim Kennedy, who enjoys a vodka martini without vodka. “I don’t know how a fully automated flux capacitor will turn a profit, so I crossed it out and wrote ‘V-necks’ because that shit’s money.”

“We’re still not sure who wrote, ‘I’m a genius surrounded by small vocabularies.’ but I suspect it was our resident curmudgeon, Crigger,” says Tommy Batboy as he polishes off a Tropic-tini and eats the orange, rind and all.

Of course, combining booze and work invariably has its downside. Recently Ranger Up had to let go of their temporary worker, Danielle, because she used the term “inappropriate touching” one too many times. The company also suffered a setback when Tommy donned a Beefeater outfit and trudged the hallways with a giant axe looking for a Queen to behead in order to ‘add realism to the martini coven.’ Thankfully Nick streaking by wearing only fuzzy bunny feet gave Whitney the chance to sweep his leg and put him in a triangle choke before the company’s lawyer woke up.

“It’s not Bacchanalian orgy, at least not a good one,” says Whitney, “but replacing food with intemperance at lunch certainly helps dull the ringing dissonance of Tommy’s apoplexy and dampens Nick’s irritating capriciousness. I mean, it’s cool…as long as they don’t bring back Thighmaster Thursdays. Disturbing.”

Proudly brought to you by the Rhino News Network

The New Year is upon us and it is time for Ranger Up’s New Year’s Resolutions.

While we don’t have them all ironed out yet, Tommy and I have firmly committed to defattifying ourselves.

Now it isn’t that we’re grossly out of shape and except for one drunken moment where we considered gorging ourselves for months in order to qualify, we’ve never considered applying for “The Biggest Loser”. We both can still easily make the Ranger five-mile time of 40 minutes and our combined bench, dead lift, and squat score is still north of 1000 pounds, but time away from active duty and consistent Jits/MMA competition has made us well…a little too squishy for our liking.

And it isn’t just that we’ve let our girlish figures slip (I think I am getting a muffin top). I found myself gassing a little too early when I grappled or running a little slower than I liked and Tommy failed to max the PT test for the first time in ages, coming in at a 286 in his guard unit. His Fran and Cindy records on Crossfit also slipped by 2-3 rotations.

Of course, it didn’t help to have Tim Kennedy walking around with his eight-pack, a constant reminder of what we once were (okay, maybe not, but we at least had the top four to six), but we’re busy dudes and we can’t really work out three times a day like professional athletes or two times a day like we used to in the military.

Tim has too many abs and we hate him for it.

So what’s a couple of chubby military t-shirt makers to do?

Enter P.R. Cole, or “The Pixie” as she is affectionately known, owner of FueltheFighter.com. Cole is the premier nutritionist in MMA, writing for Fight! Magazine each month, supporting such fighters as Tim Kennedy, Frank Trigg, Kenny Florian, Phillipe Nover, and Jorge Gurgel with personalized nutrition programs, and, if the rumors are true may end up with her own TV segment in the near future. As if that isn’t enough, she is also a seasoned gymnast and muay thai practitioner, and holds something like 107 degrees from Columbia University. When she started working with Tim, we wondered “What could she possibly do for him?” Well, he actually grew four additional abs, so he now has a twelve pack, which is just bullshit. In short, she is more than qualified to help the likes of Tommy and I get a little less fat.

Graciously, even though she is the busiest woman alive, she offered to build programs for us. We think she is doing so because of our incredible charm and good looks. Others claim that it is because I went to school with her brother and she pities us. You decide.

They key here is that this isn’t a diet. I was a wrestler. If I wanted to weight 135 tomorrow, I could probably pull that shit off. The plan is to fundamentally and permanently change the way we eat. My theory is that if it works for workaholic/alcoholic freaks like us, you guys ought to try it too.

Progress to Date

So here’s the deal. Tommy has been at it for 9 weeks. At 5’ 6” he has gone from 174 to 159. He wants to hit 155 before he starts building more muscle with an eventual goal of landing at a very solid 170.

I started ten days ago, so there is a lot of work to be done! At 5’8” I weighed in at 209 and as of last Friday (weigh day)was at 204.5. I want to drop down to 185/190 depending on body fat percentage and then add lean muscle and land at 195-200.

We will post updates every week or two because it will shame us into committing.

What’s In it For You? (Other than laughing at us)

1) We work better when we have other goals, so we’d like your help coming up with our other resolutions. Ideas on the table from friends: Run a marathon (time TBD), Actually try to get belted in Jits and get our Blue Belts from Tim Burrill (a tall order at Tim’s), Lift X, Win X Judo Tournament or Y Jits Tournament, Accomplish Random feats of Crossfit Awesomeness, etc. If we pick your resolution (and yes, there will be some voting involved once we vet the top ones) you’ll get a $50 Ranger Up Gift Certificate.

2) We need workouts to keep things interesting, and we’re so busy that we pretty much work out at RU or run and that’s it right now. At our disposal at RU: tons of kettle bells, a sledge hammer and normal-sized tire, a bench press, deadlift area, squat rack, lat pull down machine, pull up bar, dip bar, thai bag, and jits mats. We’ll pick one workout every week from the comments section here, our facebook group, or from email (nick@rangerup.com) to knock out. If we use yours, we’ll mention how it went in our updates, give you credit for life, and send you a free t-shirt.

Nick and Tommy getting their hair done before their PR Cole diet began.

“Gentlemen”, the boss said, “We are no longer going to Africa.”

Well, that was a bit surprising. A huge game-changer that wrecked months of planning and preparation by many, many Navy and Marine Corps officers & their staffs for our training mission in West Africa… but only slightly surprising.

We were halfway between Camp Lejeune and Little Creek, and had pulled the buses over for a quick break and some chow in some podunk North Carolina town. The CO had checked his command-issued Blackberry for email, then pulled all the SNCOs and officers off the buses to spread the good news.

On the plus side, we were ahead of the game: that afternoon, we were scheduled to embark on a small-deck amphibious ship that already had our vehicles & equipment aboard, as well as a good amount of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief gear ready to go. There were also several other ships gearing up or already underway to meet us in Haiti. The bad news was that we’d just gone from a secondary, “would be nice” humanitarian & PR mission to part of an urgent, real-world operation.

Had I known this would happen, my packing list might have been a bit different. And I sure as hell would have fought for better weapons & equipment for my Marines.

As I sit here anchored near Port-au-Prince, I’m anxious to find out specifics of our mission. We all want to know what the plan is going to be at our level, so we can accurately plan & prepare to execute. We sit here, looking over the rails and across the bay at still-smoking buildings, watching the jetsam and debris drift alongside us in the water, and we wait.

We’re not the only ones in the bay here, either – there’s a lot of ass sitting alongside us ready to push ashore. The past five or six hours seems like a lot longer. I’ve honestly never deployed anywhere without getting some guidance even before arrival and going full-throttle the minute I hit the deck. This time, the wait is killing me.

I’ve gone in the past four days from having a deployment training schedule so tight my new fiance could make reservations for my homecoming, to not knowing how long I’ll be ashore, how I’ll get back home, or even when.

I do know the chow here ain’t much better than MREs at any rate. And I know that I want to get the hell off this can and do something.

The “Greatest Generation” is often used to describe the generation of Americans who persevered through the Great Depression and subsequently fought in, and supported from home, World War Two.

Fast forward sixty years, and the driving political force (insert sarcastic sneer here) which is “Rock the Vote,” is taking political activism to new depths…er…heights. Corralling the hoards of mindless carcasses, wallowing in their cesspool of teenage and twenty-something angst, and branding them with the company logo “MTV,” Rock the Vote is taking individual thought to task. Don’t dare think for yourself, don’t have the audacity to have an opinion outside the liberal close-minded box, and don’t you dare “go against the family” (Apologies to Marlon Brando).

Rock the Vote has completely glossed over ostracism and rational dialogue, they’ve skipped ahead to the dreaded triple dog dare of getting your way, withholding sex.

“We pledge ourselves to the health and liberty of young Americans and to government for the people … and to never f—ing you if you are against us.” Ah, Rock the Vote, your militant liberal mothers must be so proud.

What is going on here? Has our political discourse really devolved into this? Sexual extortion? Do it my way or don’t do me at all?

This assumes, of course, that the threat of sexual withdrawal is enough to send conservative men scurrying about in search of Michael Moore’s latest documentary, knocking each other over in the frantic attempt to “liberalize” our minds.

Oh please, please, please! Don’t withhold your crusty, diseased Va**na from us! I’ll do anything! I’ll change my stance on anything you want; National Defense, Economic Issues, Health Care, ANYTHING!

And this also assumes that Rock the Vote speaks for all of young America, not just the mindless, spineless droves of drooling sycophants. Is this what Rock the Vote President Heather Smith envisions? Her army of sex-starved health-care “reform” opponents, being led to slaughter on her jewel studded leashes. Crying out for crumbs of sex from the liberal supply wagon.

Bad news Heather, HOT CHICKS DIG SHOOTERS! The metro-sexual men who frequent your peace rallies, sewing circles, Mary Kay parties, and vegetarian cooking contests may fall for this crap, but rest of us men don’t. Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen. We all give you a collective, Kiss my Ass!

But the old axiom applies here. If you can’t beat em’, join em’. So with that as my rallying cry, I sally forth, hands on the reins of my valiant steed (His name is Justice, by the way), trampling the opposition with discombobulated logic, whiny retorts, selfish demands, and self-serving motives. Talley Ho!

by

Lex McMahon

Last night my band of brothers assembled for a night of holiday fellowship – Korean BBQ, cigars, and port. As great as the night was there was a void. One of our brothers, Cesar is currently deployed to Afghanistan for his second tour.

Most of my brothers are part of one gun club or another – Marines, Army, or law enforcement – it does not matter they’ve all been in harm’s way and fully understand the all too often taken for granted concepts of service and sacrifice.

As we sat around the proverbial campfire smoking our cigars the war stories invariably came out. We each recounted firefights, ambushes, and assorted near death experiences such as a RPG attacks while taking a shit.

During the course of our conversation my thoughts kept wandering back to Cesar. What was he doing? Had he been in any significant contact yet? How would he and his Marines celebrate Christmas?

After a great night of testosterone enhancement with my brothers and with Cesar still very much on my mind I headed home to the comfort, love, and safety of my family.

Before I went to bed I jumped online to send an email to Cesar to wish him a happy holiday and to let him know that our group of friends had gotten together for dinner and had saluted his sacrifice. Cesar happened to be online and promptly responded with this message:

“Yesterday was a bad day. Three medvacs, one double amputation…. I’m ok and so are my guys”

As I read Cesar’s email I was reminded that the amazing night I had just shared with friends and the holidays I was about to enjoy with family were a gift. A gift paid for by the service and sacrifice of Cesar and his Marines and the other members of our military.

Know this – as you enjoy your holidays with friends and family, you have been afforded this luxury by the service and sacrifice of others. Somewhere in Iraq and Afghanistan a Marine, Soldier, Sailor, or Airman is living in a dirt hole, has not eaten for days, has not bathed in weeks, and is fighting for his life and the life of his brothers-in-arms.

So as you listen to Christmas music, drink eggnog, eat too much food, open presents, and spend time with your loved ones – take a moment to pray for those that have given you the gift of freedom which allows you the opportunity to do all these amazing things. Pray for Cesar.

Most of us drink, but do we all know why? The most often noted reasons for imbibing in alcohol are to feel good, forget painful moments, or take the edge off a long day of “”What the fuck are you doing ass hat?” But we’re all individuals. We all have our reasons for hitting the bottle, taking a nip, and living life by the drop. Time to confront those demons once and for all.

Now, real quick, I would be lying if I said I came up with this snappy title myself. Comedian David Cross recently penned a book called, “I Drink for a Reason,” so he has to get the credit for coming up with the title or those blood sucking fuckstick lawyers will come after us. Tim Kennedy and Team Rhino are formidable, but they can’t hold a candle to high-powered, rainmaking corporate barristers, so there. Take your fucking royalties and get out, Cross. Now let’s get to it.

I drink because there are things in this life that I will never have no matter how many times I steal them.

I drink because “if you can dream it, you can achieve it” is bullshit unless you have a twenty-inch schlong, an artistic eye for camera angles, and a group of very gullible hotties.

I drink to overcome the guilt of not deploying as many times as all my buddies.

I drink because I lost one of them and had to find out through The Army Times.

I drink because I live in a country where Green Bay, Wisconsin has two Superbowl rings and Los Angeles doesn’t even have a team.

I drink because I still don’t understand what the fuck extra virgin olive oil is and why it turns me on.

I drink because I have a daughter who is not a horse-faced troll with protruding teeth that could eat apples through a picket fence. Life would be easier if she was.

I drink because those who have made the ultimate sacrifice would want me to.

I drink because there are, and always will be, ignorant Americans who simply cannot fathom why those of us in uniform do what we do.

I drink because there are still poor, unfortunate souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

I drink because I am confused and I am confused when I drink. Such is the sweet circle of cereal malt beverage.

I drink because I am a fool who thinks logic dwells in the chambers of the human heart.

I drink because I have a horrible memory. Wait…what was I talking about?

I drink not to silence the voices in my head, but to understand them better. They like to put the lotion on its back.

I drink because society demands that I not festoon my bedchambers with the entrails of my enemies.

I drink because Nancy Pelosi breathes.

I drink to make 3’s look like 7’s (whiskey makes them 8’s-shameless plug!).

I drink when Tommy Batboy’s Ritalin wears off, Garrett rejects my t-shirt designs, RU Nick drags me into an all night beer pong bender, and Tim Kennedy is late for a meeting because he’s primping again. Oh Snap!!

Q: Hey man, how’s your Burger King?

A: Honestly? This whopper is the quintessential burger!

Q: See that chick? Hot, huh?

A: Wow, she’s the quintessential smokin’ hot biscuit!

Q: Do you think OJ is guilty?

A: Oh yeah, he’s the quintessential guilty party.

Ahh, stop the madness! Surprisingly, this insanity is not singular to the sea-faring servicemen, and is shows no respect for person, rank, or branch of the military. The Army, I’ve learned, is equally susceptible to grammar abuse.

We in the Army have a propensity for turning every day, mundane tasks into feats of grandiose brilliance.

We also have the tendency to tell the world when we have completed the unbelievably difficult, time consuming, and heroic task of…..doing our job. We roll every single thing we do, every task we accomplish, and every possible mission into beautiful, but oh so overused, identifiers. So what wins the prize for the current flavor of the month, currently misused more than it should be?

Considering both the Army and Navy’s propensity for over-verboseness,   I propose the first in a series of grammatical retirements.

FULL SPECTRUM OPERATIONS

Yes, FULL SPECTRUM OPERATIONS means you can accomplish EVERYTHING you are SUPPOSED to accomplish. You have the capacity, the training, the resources, the ability, and the will to accomplish FULL SPECTRUM OPS (If I could add audio, FULL SPECTRUM OPS would be announced with a deep echoing voice….a pause….and an explosion). You aren’t going to accomplish partial spectrum ops, or intermittent spectrum ops, you are going to accomplish FULL SPECTRUM OPERATIONS. Why, exactly, do we use this term? Doesn’t FULL SPECTRUM OPS kind of smack of the “duh” factor?

FM 7-0 defines FULL SPECTRUM OPS as simultaneous offensive, defensive, and stability or civil support operations. As a doctrinal term, FULL SPECTRUM OPS has its place, although I once again point to the “duh” factor.

General XYZ: I’m sorry Mr. President, we only planned on conducting offensive operations, we never even thought of defensive operations, I mean…come one….two things at once?

But FULL SPECTRUM OPERATIONS has become so much more than a doctrinal term that describe 360 degree warfare. FULL SPECTRUM OPS is now the phrase de jour. The “in” term to use when describing your unit’s abilities, BDE through BN through Company to Platoon.

“Sir, we’re going to conduct a FULL SPECTRUM OPS FRG meeting. We’re going to have a Pot Luck, we’ll be having door prizes, we’ll put out some info, and we’ll make sure we put the signup sheets out, we really feel we need to hit FULL SPECTRUM OPS on this thing.”

Somehow, units that don’t even come close to having the capability to conduct actual FULL SPECTRUM OPS, are conducting them every day, in every possible mission set. I’ve been to numerous briefs where I’ve been told how such-and-such a unit is going to conduct FULL SPECTRUM OPS, when that unit has nowhere near the resources or know-how to do so. I’ve seen OERs that speak to an officer’s ability to conduct the FULL SPECTRUM OPS of his/her current position (Isn’t that really just doing your job…all of it?).

FULL SPECTRUM OPERATIONS has officially spilled over from the ranks of relevant doctrinal Army-speak (I’ll throw one last “duh” into the fray) into this quagmire we call nonsensical Army lingo, and therefore, must hitherto be retired. To steal a phrase from my Navy days, as we watch FULL SPECTRUM OPS go off into the setting sun,

“Fair Winds and Following Seas.”

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What military terms have you heard that should be retired to the grammar graveyard?

This certainly isn’t a bad thing, but I feel like I’m robbing my father’s generation of the gratitude that everyone who serves their country should know at least once. Contrary to the current public support of the military in America, my dad received the exact opposite when he returned from both tours of Vietnam. He received no adulation, no praise, no ‘thanks for your service,” and certainly no free cups of coffee. Yet he never wavered on his decision to join, despite the obvious confusion he felt at being ostracized by the people he swore to protect. Rather than be the exception, today’s wave of patriotism should be the norm and the Vietnam era’s apathy should be the lone moment in time where our veterans were not given the respect they deserve.

I now try to return the favor and go out of my way to pat a vet on the shoulder when I spot one in airports or restaurants. If people really feel the need to do something for the troops, thank an older vet for his service. Or leave a prepaid coffee card at the Starbucks counter for the next Vietnam vet that comes along. It’s long overdue.