Month: July 2010

I think I speak for all Marines when I say one simple truth: I despise MOL.

In all honesty, I sort of wonder how the Corps functioned before MOL. It seems like everything we do revolves around what gets updated on this anciently designed website. If it doesn’t happen on MOL, it didn’t happen. In reality though, MOL is a great device for keeping the Marine Corps interconnected in every aspect, keeping the admin side of things available to the average grunt is a wonderful idea.

The worst part about MOL isn’t the system itself though, it’s just how dated the website really is. It feels like some relic of the 90’s, back when the internet was shiny and new in all it’s 56k glory, and email and Facebook weren’t requirements for daily functioning. The password system being the worst part of it all. How many times have you forgotten your MOL password? I know I have just about every time I use it. Really, there’s only so many different combinations of characters I can think of that actually contain the ridiculous password requirements to access the site. Even if the requirements weren’t as stiff as they were, the fact that it makes you change your password every week adds tremendously to the problem.

Anyway, outside of that, I have a couple of little things I’d like to mention.

In site news, expect a new set of prints to go up for sale today! I will be putting up 10 limited edition prints of Terminal Lance #22 “Why He’s Always Late” The prints are hand autographed and numbered by yours truly and will be up for sale later today–so stay tuned to my Twitter and the Facebook Fan Page, as well as the News portion of the site for when they go up.

Outside of the site, I’d like to wish a Happy Birthday to my mother, Pam! My dearest mum is 48 years young today, and I’m happy I can finally be here for it for once in the last few years.

That’s all I got for you, have a good weekend motivators.

I don’t typically try to sell my punchlines on pop-culture references. However, I recently saw “The Human Centipede” and was so excited I had to find a way to put it into a strip. As well, I think the point of the strip was easy to say within two panels. Active duty Marines hate reservists–those assholes found a way to be in the Marines but still be at home all the time and not have to deal with the bullshit every day.

I remember graduation day at SOI, everyone was in their Bravos, getting ready to head to the airport to continue their Marine Corps journey. Well, at least some of us were… half of the company just went to the airport to fly home, never to be seen again by the active duty guys heading to their duty stations to be hazed by hungover Lance Corporals at 0100 in the morning. The split is abrupt and deceptive. Marines that have been your friends and allies against the common evil of Marine-dom are sent back to their homes, back to their civilian friends and family, and back to their lives. Active duty never gets that luxury, only going home on leave blocks and dealing with the brunt of hazing and weekly field ops.

In other news, I am back from my trip to California. I managed to find an apartment–not in Oakland–and will be making the move down there next month. I appreciate everyone’s support on the subject. Additionally, I’d like to put up another set of prints on sale this week. Whenever I can get an actual work space set up I’d also like to do some more involved work for the site, things like special edition strips and so forth.

The trip back from California was draining to say the least. We went up Highway 101 in order to visit a Marine friend of mine in Healdsburg. The plan was to take 101 back up to Oregon and cut into Portland sometime around Newport. After a delicious lunch with my good pal Bob, we continued our journey back up to Oregon. As impatient as I am though, I decided to cut back to I-5 as soon as possible instead of waiting til we got into Oregon as originally planned. The result was a 4 hour long trip down the scariest highway I’ve ever driven in my life, where it literally turned into a one-lane road through the mountains (with traffic coming both ways). As for wildlife, I came close to hitting the usual suspects: deer and cow. More interesting, however, was when I almost hit a fairly good sized black bear, which I narrowly avoided via some decent brakes. After the not-so-much lauded drive through the wilderness, we ended up coming to I-5 at Redding, which put us about 5 hours behind schedule.

All in all, it was a good trip to Conan the Barbarian’s kingdom (not quite Aquilonia). The trip back though… not so much.

Anyway, if any of you are wondering what the movie reference is, it’s a terrible horror film that came out last year called “The Human Centipede.” This trailer should explain all you need to know about it… and you don’t need to know much.

Oh and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter for everyday bullshit, for those of you into that sort of thing.
TLCplMax

This idea was initially spurned by a comment on the Facebook fan page.

Well as I mentioned before, I am currently in California on a trip to find an apartment. I was initially looking into Oakland for an apartment, until I actually went to Oakland yesterday. Now don’t get me wrong, there are some nicer parts on the North and Western sides, but for the most part it didn’t exactly strike me as a place that I would want to hang my hat, perse.

I have some unfortunate news for those of you with any relation to 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment. Cpl Joe Wrightsman was killed in Afghanistan this week during combat operations. As well, Cpl Christopher Chamberlain was announced dead in his home town this week (he had EAS’d). It is a great loss on both parties, and I hope you send your prayers and thoughts toward their families and friends. While you’re at it, send some prayers to all the Marines currently serving in Afghanistan–I’m sure it’s all they really want from us.

Until next time, warrior-devil-fighters.

You may have noticed today’s strip doesn’t contain an official number designation. The reason for this is that today’s strip isn’t really a strip, simply a doodle I put up that may or may not be funny. Why, you ask? Well I’m actually doing some travelling this week, I’ll be heading down to the California Bay Area today to look for an apartment this week. I plan to move next month, as school starts early September.

Friday’s strip will also most likely be a similar doodle.

This strip isn’t necessarily hating on Staff Sergeants. In my time I’ve actually met more than a few Staff NCO’s I genuinely like and respect, I just always thought it was funny how often times Staff Sergeants find themselves at the bottom of the staff food chain. Inevitably, they end up knowing not much more than the average Lance Corporal, and sometimes even less, about a particular event either going to occur or actually occurring at the moment.

Also, I always got tired of hearing them say “Lance Corporal don’t know huh?” When really they don’t seem to know half the time anyway.

Well I don’t have too much to say, I hope the doodle makes some people chuckle. “Staff Sergeant Don’t Know” may become a recurring character in the Terminal Lance canon, so stay tuned for his future exploits.

Wish me luck. Yesterday was wrought with the horrors of Washington drivers and their nonsensical freeways and barely paved roads around Seattle.

PS: Washington, there are multiple lanes on the freeway. Typically, the left lane is used for either passing or “driving faster.” I learned that this isn’t an established rule in Washington, in fact, they like to form solid walls of cars going the same speed, as if some kind of secret Washingtonian code prevents them from passing one another or changing lanes. As well, when someone drives onto the freeway from the onramp, typical courtesy is to slow down to let them in–since obvious logic would persist that they too will be driving on the said freeway. Please stop speeding ahead when someone is coming from the onramp–let them come in, you will get your chance to pass them if you need to.

The end.

Marines bitching is a favorite pass time of everyone, including myself. However, one thing that truly annoys me is when Marines bitch about things they bring upon themselves. You all know these guys, the fat, suckling shit-birds that do something unexplainably stupid and try to complain to you about it–as if you’re going to agree with them in their idiocy. They roam the halls and catwalks of the barracks, waiting to give their undereducated advice about the Corps and all things involved with it, not once contemplating that maybe they’re just wasting everyone’s time and patience. A lot of the time these guys haven’t even been on deployment, yet still believe they rate as a voice of wisdom.

Please, if you are one of the fat, tit-smothering shit-bags who hasn’t been overseas and wants to complain about the Marine Corps to people who obviously don’t give a shit about your opinion–consider going to your local McDonald’s, order as many McDouble’s as you can afford and eat yourself into a permanent coma or until your heart explodes.

Additionally, I’d like to mention that Apple isn’t paying me to promote their products or anything–the iPhone just happens to be the phone that I use, and therefore has found it’s way into the strip. I think the whole subject of the iPhone is ridiculous; it has become so politically charged by nerds and tech-junkies that they’ve forgot one important aspect of the argument involving the Droid OS, Apple, HTC’s whatever, etc: it’s a fucking phone. No one cares.

When I realized today was time for Strip #51, I decided to do a tribute to my personal MOS: The 0351 Assaultman. It is kind of the odd-ball of the infantry; no one really knows what we do or how to properly employ us. As a result, we are often just turned into a rifle squad or divided to be machine-gunners (like my first deployment as a .50 gunner). Assaultman are actually quite handy, and all of them really are trained in demolitions.

I mention this because we actually had a combat engineer attachment with our battalion, all the way from Oki, when in all reality they could’ve saved the Marine Corps the cost of plane tickets and just entrusted the 0351’s with their demolition needs. Granted, perhaps we aren’t quite as deeply trained in the field as they are, but they were hardly used for that purpose anyway.

Assaultmen–or “Ass-men” as they can be known–are often given the stigma of being really smart and “nerdy” due to the higher GT score requirements to attain the MOS. A lot of the MOS training is equations relating to explosives and demolition formulas, most of which becomes forgotten in the monotony of the fleet. Regardless of how much flak we get for being useless though, everyone and their mother wants to see the SMAW in action.

To be quite blunt, I loved my MOS. I loved shooting the SMAW. Shooting the SMAW is one of the most exhilarating feelings I’ve ever experienced. The warmth of fire and flame engulfing your body, the dust and rocks swirling around you after the backblast explodes into the most powerful noise you’ve ever heard. The SMAW is a good time.

Unfortunately though, more often than not, the specificity of the MOS turns it obsolete according to the mission. In a non-kinetic environment, why do you need to blast a hole in the wall using an oval charge? Blow open a door with a linear, donut or water charge? The answer is simple, you don’t. As a result, the MOS is practically useless outside of a larger scale kinetic environment, thus making the 0351 a kind of jack of all trades in the infantry world. They usually pick up machine-gun skills, 0311 standards like proper patrolling and room clearing, and are often handed over to the Mortar teams to fill empty slots. It’s unfortunate, but makes them an all-round asset to the platoon when extra bodies are needed for just about anything.

For my beloved readers that are not in the loop; “NAM” stands for “Navy/Marine Corps Achievement Medal,” and is awarded to people who go above and beyond their normal duties assigned to them. However, the medal somehow always seems to find its way onto the chests of those closest to Headquarters or H&S Company. Even though the guys on the ground are out there everyday, risking life and limb, they are usually the last people to receive the award.

I refuse to believe that the average grunt rates a NAM every day he’s outside the wire. However, I also refuse to believe the company clerk, police sergeant, intel guy, etc.; rates the award every time he does his job. I’m not saying I’ve never agreed with the awarding of it to the less-than-salty population, but I think the system is fairly slanted in their favor.

Take a Headquarters platoon for example: every day they are in the company office, under close supervision to the top ranking members of the company. How often does the Company First Sergeant or the Commanding Officer see Lance Corporal Dipshit offer a child some water or some of his own food outside the wire? How often does even the platoon commander see it? If you’re a good squad leader, hopefully never–because no squad leader wants to have to deal with an “LT” or an “Echo-8” on any sort of a daily basis. Unfortunately, it takes something much greater for the average grunt to earn the medal than just… doing what he’s asked to do–which isn’t always the case for the other side.

Outside of that, all I really have to say is have a good weekend, and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @TLCplMax.

I decided to go in a somewhat ridiculous direction today. Lately my sense of humor has been fairly eclectic, I can’t help but feel drawn to the slightly absurd for some reason. I also really wanted to start a new “series”, one I am calling “Myths and Legends”. These of course are the Myths and Legends of the Marine Corps, the ones that you hear about every day, embedded within the culture itself.

All Marines know the name Susie Rottencrotch. If you don’t, you’ve been doing it wrong. Its just been a personal endeavor to imagine what she must look like–worn out and abused from years of plethoric amounts of cocks and semen filling the void of her hollow soul–well, her vagina at any rate.

Maybe I just have an overactive imagination, but Terminal Lance wouldn’t exist if I did not–and therefore you will all be subject to my aimless and sporadic thoughts and theories.

So after much debate I finally sunk down and got myself a Mac. I’m having quite a bit of fun learning the Mac OS, I’ve personally always been a Windows guy. With my entrance into the California College of the Arts, however, I had to make the switch. Currently, I had to make the strip on my PC since I don’t have Photoshop on my Mac yet, but I expect to remedy this soon enough. Frankly, throwing down that much on my credit card felt like I was making some kind of deal with the devil at the Mac Store, but it is a very high quality piece of equipment and worth it from what I can tell thus far. I look forward to my future exploits with the device.

In other news, I’m putting on my civilian weight. Apparently not PT-ing and taking late night trips to IHOP and the like is bad for your health. Who knew? I won’t have gym access until I start school so I’ll just have to “rough” it out until then (as rough as eating pancakes can be, I know).

Well, until next time gents. I hope you all had a good 4th of July!

I hate seeing soldiers in the airport. I think all Marines do. There’s something about seeing them in their digital ACU’s that just pisses the average Marine off. I could go into how much they look like a tool, and how much dick they suck and so-forth. The real reason, however, is that we envy them. We envy the way they can wear a comfortable outfit to the airport and still get free beers and bumps up to first class. Unfortunately for us, we don’t get that luxury–as we’re limited to wearing service and dress uniforms out in public. I think if Marines could wear cammies to the airport, you’d see it a lot more often; and it has nothing to do with motivation or pride in the uniform or any of that bullshit–it has to do with getting free drinks.

Anyway, I don’t have too much to say on the subject.

In other news, I got an email from a certain Michael Fay containing photos of Marines currently in Afghanistan. Mike spent a month with my former unit this summer. I will post them up tomorrow, it is past 4am and I need my beauty sleep.

Goodnight!