Guest Post: War is Hell, and Sinning is Delightful Part 2

Note to the Reader:  Sorry that it took so long to get this guest post out.  And yes, I'm copping out of my Wednesday post by posting a late guest post.  Yeah, I know.  My parents' expectations of my life are probably the standard to which you should hold your expectations of my posting schedule.  That bar is limbo low.  In regard to this Nony piece, I really wish I just sat down and edited it with the first part.  The two are much stronger together than apart.  I'm personally looking forward to the next installation because this one was a ripe cunt to edit.  I may be too close to it to appreciate it singularly, and frankly, I'm/we're still waiting for the story to move along.

Have you ever heard of Hedonic Adaptation?       

War is Hell, and the sinning is delightful. (part 2)

               Put simply, it is the reason why the amount of Nutella you put on your drumstick gets larger with each passing day, until you get tired of it. We all experience this little bitch in one facet of our life or another. The reason we exist and push onward as ethical, sexual, political, intellectual etc... creatures is because of a need for new and exciting additions to our personal experiences.

               The experiences of war (especially of those who have indulged in the savaged privileges granted to them by unnatural positions of authority in foreign lands) have irreversible effects on a man's appetites in ways you would be fascinated to hear an NPR report about.  As with the previously mentioned lack of recruitment standards, a whole lot of Bill & Ted's with preexisting fascinating appetites were given clean slates after a retreat to an environment in which they were pretty much allowed to get away with rape and murder.

               You may not be aware of it. You may deny it. Doesn't change the fact that the world is a hard and tragic place that does produce people with certain quirks and kinks in their minds. For an assortment of "logical and ethical" reasons they are perfectly normal at least in their own eyes. Then they are just sent home and out of respect granted the don't ask, don't tell policy in regard to their experiences.  Their extracurricular proclivities simply never entered public view.

               Sighting down my scope, I realized that I don't know what to do about any of these issues.  I can't do anything about the numerous teachers, preachers, politicians, and god knows who or what else that get away with such despicable deeds.  Many just slip through the cracks of bureaucracy only to commit savage acts yet again.

               I honestly believe you can never know the mind of another man. Thus I can't pronounce with absolutely certainty that I was correct, but the look Bill and Ted had through my scope left me without a shred of doubt that they aimed to misbehave that day.   

               In their minds eye they are perfectly normal for a conglomeration of logical and ethical self redeeming delusions.  But when I look into the mirror eyes of  men like Bill and Ted, I see a creature who knows how much more intense and satisfying it is to take without permission. To gnaw at a thighbone with claws and teeth covered in mud and blood.            

               As I watch Bill and Ted start to descend towards the sun bathing girl, I remembered something some talking head Wall Street prick said in an interview.  He was going on about his belief in the "Falling Tree Methodology." What's that, you ask? If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is there to notice, then it's legal. That was his legal, ethical moral guiding tool. The CNN bloke or whoever was interviewing him just nodded and agreed, as if this is the new norm. 

               When you are deployed, everyone knows everyone if not directly, then by association via rumors and stories. Based on what everyone knew about Bill and Ted, I knew they subscribed to that man's sort of methodology. When we returned home, I couldn't let it go.  After a while I began shadowing Bill and Ted from time to time. Eventually, I found myself watching them through the scope of a barrowed rifle as they stalked to rape a girl in the middle of the woods.  Perhaps, come to think of it, they might have just been trying to kidnap her. But then, definitely rape her, I would bet.

               Do details like that matter to you?  

Guest Post: War is Hell, and Sinning is Delightful (Part 1)

Some Insight for the Readers:  Let's speak on length and content.  This serial already was a huge monster of text before I got my grubby, bloggy hands on it.  When I made the agreement with my writer friend, Nonny, to take that monster and share it with the world, I had the stipulation of 500ish words.  I'm not too persnickety about the 500, but I wanted to keep the serial to have enough content to make your brain-gonads want more.  This is a two parter, which was divided by Nonny.  In regard to content, this is definitely a food for thoughty installation.  Really digest it.  Read it a few times.  Then curse Nony for not moving the story along.  Yeah, he can suck a monkey for drawing this sucker out.

Enjoy!

What a piece of work is man?

War is Hell, and the Sinning is Delightful. (part 1)              

               The whole concept of "Sin" has lost all its weight in western culture. I'm not weighing in on this from a political or religious stand point mind you, just an objective observation. With the rise of secularism in the world, the idea that individuals, cultures, and even whole nations could be rewarded or punished based on the merit of their actions and behavior has been shrugged. I would have to write a rather novel book to answer all the critics on that statement, but stick with me here.

               With so many atheists and faux religious people in this world who have no idea what sinning is, the dynamics of human interaction have changed a bit and next to no one has noticed this.  

               I'm sorry... I do not know how to put this gracefully, so I'm going to just cut the shit.

               People just don't understand the gray miasma which is now ethics. There are a few things that I need you to be aware of so you can see why I had to put Bill and Ted down in front of a 18 year old girl, but not before letting them scare her for a bit.

               Out of over 3 million people, only 1.4 million serve currently in the US military. Out of that number, only about 200,000 are female. As you might imagine when deployed in places like Iraq or Afghanistan there are very few women around. Now think about the goings on of war throughout history. In my blunt summation, it was mostly a brutal and all too imaginable rape orgy. Especially if the motivations of the people involved were religious in nature. 

               In the days of occupation post the 2003 Iraq War and long after the President had declared "Mission Accomplished", which I guess is a modern way of declaring armistices, the American economy was booming. The news media was painting the ongoing conflict as sloppy, bloody, and increasingly unnecessary. The truth about poor equipment, neglected troops, and crimes against humanity made recruiting for the war effort difficult for the military.

               In light of this the Marine Core and Army began to wave their recruitment restrictions. The bar to which these standards were lowered makes me wish this were fiction. Any who was willing was recruited, scrubbed, and shipped off.  It mattered not if on their glowing CV was a list of prior drug charges or violent crime convictions.  Although throughout human history it was normal for the military to accept a the ragtag rapey type, but unique in today's secular and capitalist world. The truly hilarious thing is, they started paying outrageous bonuses to men who would agree prior to ever touching foot in boot camp, to go through boot camp and go straight to Iraq.

               Hell, up to and over six figures was offered to get Special Forces quotas. Despite all this, they still couldn't get enough people.

               Naturally, some very unsavory types were drawn into this sort of work.   

By: Nony

Guest Post: More Meat, Less Potatoes...And a Rant from Your Blogger

Hello, the two people who read my blog. 

Firstly, I apologize for missing my posting schedule, which was this past Wednesday.  Ironically, my guest poster managed to send me his entry on time.  Show's you how easily I'm one-upped.  I will be going to Florida soon enough for work, where I will be divorced from distraction.  I promise a slurry of posts that are hopefully less shitty that their predecessors.

Now that the obligatory, yet sincere apologies have been dealt--a rant from your blogger:

So, this guest poster of mine promised me that the title of this next post would be apropos.  More Meat, Less Potatoes implies that the story of the lone gunman, the two stalkers, and oblivious lady friend would move along a bit more laterally than it has been.  Frankly, I had a key board smashing moment while I was editing this bit.  It's good, but that fucker needs to get to something a bit more meaty before wasting such a good title with a misdirect. 

Enjoy the third installation of the Nony serial. 

So I was watching my two former co-workers through the scope of my rifle when-

More meat less potatoes.

               She came into view.

               I was perched far and away, but within perfect view and range to witness or intervene in the fateful scene that was about to unfold. 

               There she was, the adorable and care free product of a unwittingly sheltered life.  She came bursting out of the woods.  She engaged in various childish high jinks with the freedom of someone not aware that she's being watched and with the abandon of someone very much certain she's alone.  With that certainty, she pranced along the riverside and leaped semi-Disneyfied from boulder to boulder. Funny how when viewed from far enough away, like bacteria seen through a microscope, all human activity tends to resemble childishness.

               All the while, hungry wolves were circling the fawn.

               She picked a large flat sun exposed rock, promptly dropped her top, and laid out to bathe in the sunlight.

               Now, this is a perfectly normal and even natural behavior for a woman who thinks she is alone to take in and enjoy nature in a perfect world. Oh, but if only people would look around and see that the world we live in is not only far from perfect, and it's all our own fault.

               (Not their real Names)

               Bill and Ted stood off in the distance, watching her with... a familiar look.

               How is your understanding of Einstein's theory of Relativity? My favorite laymen parallel is the novel notion that a moment with a beautiful woman slips by like sand through your desperately clutching fingers, but when you place your hand on a hot stove time seems to stretch on forever.

               I bring this up so that you might apply that principle to me at that moment and thus understand and appreciate the convoluted emotional storm I was experiencing. I was both an observer of and an ambiguous participant in the scene I have described to you. I do hope you know that it is truly impossible to know the mind of any man, but I want to show you mine as honest as I can, twisted as it may be so you might better learn.

               When I see naive innocence about to be introduced to truth, I feel a slurry of things:  Pleasure--the one I am least proud of; ethical panic--the one that usually ends up determining the outcome.

               Shall I be brutally honest about what went through my mind as I watched this girl through that scope?  

               I have seen so much violence in my life, and have been on both ends of it, that I honestly don't know any more what is the right or wrong thing to do or feel about anything anymore.

               My first bitter angry thought, "Good, let the arrogant bitch get a life lesson."

               I'm not proud of it.  Sometimes I forget that people, who aren't as close to the follies of man as I am, are not silly, self centered cunts for getting themselves into these situations.

               My second thought, "Am I legally or ethically allowed or obligated to intervene here?"

               At which point I'm starting to get a headache that I am pretty sure a few untraceable trigger pulls would have remedied.

               My third and favorite thought was, "How much reality should I let this girl be exposed to before snapping the curtains closed?"

               I mean after all, had I not been there to protect her from the situation that she had unwittingly stumbled into all on her own, she would surely suffer a horrific fate.

               Shouldn't I let her get a little taste of reality to help her better protect herself in the future?

               But, alas!  We just assumed that Bill and Ted would do harm didn't we? Until I interjected this bit of rationality you were about to condemn Bill and Ted to execution along with me, weren't you?

               How do you know you can trust my telling of the story? If you don't understand things from the larger perspective, then you might argue I was out looking for trouble.  

               Maybe I should tell you a few things about Bill and Ted first...

Guest Post: Nony Series--First, a Totally Related Tangent

Note to Readers:  If you haven't started reading the Nony series from last Saturday's post, read it here before this one.  Although this post is titled First, a Totally Related Tangent there are still spoilers.  Be sure to read the first one.

Enjoy!

So why was I stalking her?

First, a Totally Related Tangent. (That might prove I'm not entirely crazy)

               Life is Suffering.

               I had a rough childhood.  I will gladly spare you as much of the whiny details as possible, and instead just gaily prance to the pearls of wisdom retained from so much "real world experience". Without much option, I naively turned to the military who decided Iraq would be the perfect place for me to resolve my adolescent issues. As you might imagine it didn't help all that much.

               Despite the waking nightmare that has been my life, I am the inevitable and well adjusted statistical anomaly you get from child abuse. Too frilly? In other words, nature abhors a vacuum, if 99.9 percent of children who are abused go insane, then it stands to reason that .01 will come out as well...

               I'll want you to decide for yourself as to what I am.

               I will tell you that at least in my own mind I feel that I am fabulously well adjusted, albeit darkly twisted in my sense of humor.

               But is there a fringe benefit to all my suffering?

               A sort of bullshit detector that makes my skin crawl such as when the President told Americans that the most important thing they could do to contribute in the War on Terror was, as I may paraphrase, "spend more money, and keep a close eye on your neighbor" at which point he cackled and exited stage left.

               Before I go much further on this tangent, you need to understand that I am a strict atheist and skeptic.

               I come from a family of Christian morons, whose idea of accountability was that personal responsibility was trumped by angels and demons.  Domestic violence caused by demonic possession?  Yeah, didn't buy into that either by the umpteenth time the back of his hand popped a welt on my sister's cheek.  Worse yet, I was raised in the ghetto that prescribes to exorcism attempts on my entirely sober father.  At that point in my childhood, I started to wise up.  My father's abuse paired with sobriety and distinct lack of demons belied an individual who was the epitome of a piece of shit.

               Nope, no need for personal responsibility, it's just the demons.

               That said... did anyone else notice that the "Five Pointed Star of David" on the Republican (GOP) Party's elephant mascot became inverted into a pentagram right about the time the War on Terror kicked off?

               As you may ask, what does all this have to do with stalking this woman?

               Well, I was stalking two men originally, two blokes I worked with in Iraq when I discovered they were stalking her. This caught my interest for a number of reasons.  Reasons that would make me wish retrospectively that I had stayed the fuck out of her business, but not really.

               Anyways, it was at this point I decided to thrust myself in her life. 

               For her own good.

               Opps.

---

 [SA1]Weave this throughout the story in later installments.

Guest Post: How I met my first and last Wife

Note to the Reader:  This guest poster will remain anonymous until revealing the identity of the individually is optimally dramatic and grandiose.  To piss him off and perhaps amuse him, he'll be referred to as Nony.  Get it?  From Anonymous?

Anyway, he is theatrical as shit, but there are so many layers to his writing.  Pay close attention to these weekly guest posts.  Note that the Nony guest posts are part of a series.  The labels on this blog will indicate to which series guest posts belong, as I plan on having other guest posters.

Note to the Creative Writers:  For those of you who dabble with creative writing and think you have a piece that pertains to the contemporary human condition...I want to have you as a guest poster!  Shoot me a comment at the end of this blog if you're interested.  Please feel free to tweet me as well if you're thinking of dabbling in creative writing here:  @LoveMiaLi.

Now... Sit up.  Pay attention.  Probably even read the story a few times.  Get furiously annoyed that it is brief, but know there will be more next week.

      How I met my first and last Wife

      "I'm sorry, you are stupid attractive" I failed to say charmingly.

      "What?" she snapped in that short crisp bitchy tone that only women (and gay men) can quite pull off without sounding like a woman or a gay man. That sounds redundant, but it's not, you're just dumb.

      "Wait, no!" and violating all common sense waving my hands like a mad man I rambled, "Foot in mouth disorder."

      At that point the look she was giving me was more "I'm going to call the police" than "Oh you're so adorable I just want to suck your dick until your eyes roll into the back of your head and melt!" as I had imagined it playing out as I watched her magnified graceful form through the scope mounted on my rifle.

      Run-on sentence much?

      Finally, she gave me a confused little smile, I set my sights on it and bore into the depths of my dark and twisted "soul" for any divine spark or some such thing to help me recover. When I came up utterly empty handed, I took one from the devil for a reasonable (albeit unfixed) interest rate.

      I looked her in the eye and after one last small flourish of gesticulated frustration, I dropped my hands to my sides as if to signal my surrender.

      I sighed and with a shrugged blurted, "What I meant was-" I pointed a finger at my temple, "You are so bloody attractive that it is making it really hard for me to think straight right now, it feels like my brain has been marinated in retarded and set to bake at 350. Seeing you carrying all those bags so precariously and in that all too realistic and drab nurses uniform... you are just the perfect image of American femininity. I'm sorry." I finished with a slightly depressed sigh and locked my eyes on a stain on the rug. The world seemed to vibrate and wobble in and out of focus as my eyes moistened.

         By the time I was done puzzling out the origin of events that led to the stain on the carpet the hard look in her eyes hard softened to the one I had imagined through the aforementioned scope. Oh, and on that note, I wasn't planning anything crazy mind you with that rifle, no sir I truly wasn't.

      It was just the most convenient device I had handy at the moment I decided to stalk this woman.

      ...wait.   

      I know that sounds way worse, please hear me out before you pull the trigger, but don't put the gun down either, okay? That's right. Good, keep it pointed right between my eyes. You will thank me later. 

      This was the first time I set eyes on the woman who regrettably would go on to become my wife shortly thereafter.  We'll call her Rox Ann, to protect her identify from irreparable embarrassment from association with me. 
  
By:  Nony