Author: Maximilian

Like most normal humans, I have had a fever before. Again, like most normal humans, I have used a thermometer to take my temperature. However, never in my life have I thought to myself, “…what if I put this thermometer in my ass instead of my mouth?”

The United States Navy has convinced you all through complex information operations campaigns that sticking a thermometer in your asshole is a medical necessity. Did you know there are very common thermometers that take temperature based on your ear? Is there a reason Doc can’t carry one of those in his med bag? I mean, let’s be realistic here, the symptoms of heat stroke are fairly obvious.

When it’s 104 degrees outside and you’re running for 2 hours because Staff Sergeant is a depressed alcoholic, we can safely assume that a Marine passed out on the ground is probably a heat casualty. Like, anyone can tell this just by looking at him, and a simple ear thermometer would be able to confirm this fairly easily as well.

It’s a trick. It’s a dirty, dirty trick designed to keep the fear of Doc in you, should you fall out of the hump. The ubiquitous silver bullet awaits those who fail the test of fortitude.

Don’t be the one.

…Unless you’re into that sort of thing.

Don’t give them ideas, because they’re always looking for ways they can make your life worse. By “they” I mean your command, and by your command I mean literally anyone that’s in charge of you.

Marines (and other branches) are often known colloquially as “brothers in arms,” which is an apt description of the familial relationship that Marines have with each other. They love each other, but also low-key hate each other and kind of want to see them suffer any chance they can. If you’ve ever had a brother, you know what I’m talking about. I suppose that’s why they don’t call Marines “cousins in arms.” Also probably so the Marines from Alabama don’t start trying to fuck each other.

Never forget, it could always be better too.

Marines are a special breed of animal. They call themselves “Devil Dogs,” but really, they’re more like cats. They can sleep anywhere and on anything, skulk around at night looking for something to mate with, and can’t really be controlled by their masters. Just when you think you have them where you want them, they go and do something strange and unusual as soon as you turn your head.

I say we change Teufel Hunden to Widerspenstige Katze, or “Unruly Cat” according to Google Translate.

I know for a fact that every staff NCO and officer truly believes that Marines in the field are Marines out of trouble. While yes, they aren’t getting DUI’s, strippers pregnant, or causing a ruckus out in town; they’re surely up to no good in some way or another.

Marines are trained to fight trouble, and if they don’t have trouble to fight, they’ll make their own.

Just do me a solid and film it and send it over to the Terminal Lance Instagram page for the entertainment of others.

MRE Menu item 23 has been in development for some 30 years, as scientists scoured the earth to find the right ingredients to make the saddest slice of pizza they could imagine. With a lot of hype, the lauded and dreamlike pizza MRE became a reality this year. This is an actual photo of it:

How sad is the life of a Lance Corporal that this is something people are excited about? When your whole world is shit, the person beating you can give you a piece of candy and you’ll think he’s a really nice guy. It’s like being excited that Buffalo Bill is giving you lotion to put on your skin, because the dirt down here really dried you out. Marines are so elated to eat this thing that it should tell you more about the conditions of being a Marine and less about the quality of the pizza. You’re basically getting leftover refrigerator pizza that’s able to survive at room temperature for 3 years.

With that said, being a Marine sucks, so any bit of goodness is a welcome addition to the lexicon of MRE culinary tricks. Throw some Tabasco and jalapeño cheese spread on that bitch and eat your feelings in the field.

As a Senior Lance Corporal of Marines, it is your duty to train the upcoming generation boots below you to survive at home and abroad. Don’t worry about teaching them tactical stuff, they learned all of that at SOI (LOL). What the Marines of today really need is someone to teach them how to avoid bullshit and cut corners in every day garrison life. These skills will be more valuable to them during their 4 years in the Corps than anything else you can teach them.

I had the great honor of being a guest speaker at a Lance Corporal Leadership and Ethics Seminar graduation last week at Camp Pendleton, where I told the Marines the importance of staying true to yourself (and how I believe that Lance Corporals are the dick and balls of the Corps, among other things). I asked the junior Marines what the course actually consisted of (since they didn’t have it while I was active duty) and they told me it was essentially a bunch of moto stuff about Corps Values, JJDIDTIEBUCKLE, etc.–yada, yada, yada. I suppose that’s about what I would have expected, but it is also disappointing. When I think of leadership and mentorship, I think of passing down realistic, practical, and essential knowledge and values rather than just repeating platitudes heard since boot camp over glazed over Lance Corporal eyes.

Last week I was also honored to receive the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) Media Award for Terminal Lance at their national convention in Kansas City. Kansas City was cool, but extremely empty. The convention itself was cool, but got really weird when Trump showed up. Overall it was certainly a fun time and I’m grateful to have been nominated for the award. It’s been a busy month for me on a personal level, but having just relocated and settled into my new place in Santa Monica (with the help of some awesome young Marines from Camp Pendleton), I hope to be back in the regular swing of things for the foreseeable future.

Stay tuned, there’s plenty more to come.

Rite-in-the-Rain has made a killing on the Marine Corps. Those notebooks can be found in every Marine’s pocket from PFC to Sergeant Major, and each one is filled with hundreds of doodles of demented thoughts and musings of bored Marines forced to take notes during some random class in the field.

In every Marine’s notebook, you’ll find the first page to be the only one that contains any important information. This ranges from squad leader names and numbers to rifle serial numbers, etc. Every page after that is usually blank, or filled with half notes of SOP’s, radio procedures, scribbles and random dicks of all shapes and sizes. Occasionally you’ll come across a page with genuine notes from an important class, but the Marine will have long forgotten what the context was, rendering the note absolutely useless.

And yet, every single Marine will have their writing gear with them at all times.

Understand?

One of the many banes of a Marine’s existence is gear accountability. Lose any piece of serialized gear in the field, and find your entire platoon police calling for hours on end. Despite the fact that Uncle Sam throws about $500 billion to the US Military annually, losing a $1000 piece of gear will mean the end of your world if you happen to be so unlucky. Most Marines will spend that much in a single weekend in single dollar bills at the strip club, but you’d better believe the universe will pause if a serialized piece of gear goes missing.

With that said, it’s difficult to lose an entire rifle. With that also said, I’ve seen it happen multiple times.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BlTiMaPhJOg/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Once you pull your rifle out of the armory, that thing is like an annoying little metal child that can’t leave your side. You’ll eat with it, sleep with it, and just generally be annoyed by it as it rubs a hole into your cammies over the course of a few months on deployment. Accidentally leave it behind, and you will feel the wrath of the green weenie like never before.

If you check out the official Terminal Lance Instagram IG TV channel, you’ll see a video of me catching up with the Marines after a cold night at Bridgeport. That same night prior, one of the Marines lost his rifle in the snow, resulting in a 300 man working party to comb the mountainside for it.

A fun night indeed.

The most under appreciated issued uniform item is definitely the All-Weather Coat. It is so under appreciated, in fact, that to this day I have never actually taken the tag off of mine. However, did you know that you can wear it with any uniform? Even in civilian clothes! How rad is that?

It is so rad, that I am formally asking all of you to wear yours to formation, out in town, in the barracks, or wherever else you can, and send me photos. The best pictures will be featured on the Terminal Lance Instagram, and you will be the legend I always knew you could be. I want to see those Inspector Gadget jackets. I know they’re just sitting in your wall locker, so let’s put them to good use! The best one may even win a prize…

On a related note, I am going to be totally honest here: I’ve never actually read a Marine Corps Order prior to looking this one up for the comic strip. As a grunt in the Corps, I figured Marine Corps Orders were POG shit that I never needed to look at. I was totally right, because much like my All-Weather Coat, I went 4 straight (questionable) years without ever actually looking at one. I spent this afternoon trying to figure out the difference between a MARADMIN, ALMAR and MCO.

Spoiler alert: There’s no difference and it totally doesn’t matter, so don’t waste your time.

On a very unrelated note, check out this CBS radio episode feature myself and Duffel Blog creator Paul Szoldra if you want to hear some dope shit.

Safe sex is important, and part of that is the full disclosure of any sexually transmitted diseases you may have acquired over the years. You’ll probably pick up quite a few from the Marine Corps experience–from achey back and knees, to tinnitus, depression, and probably some permanent DNA damage from drinking the water on base.

These STD’s are sexually transmitted from years of abuse by the Green Weenie. Time may heal some of these afflictions, but for the most part, they will stick with you for life. Give your sexual partners full disclosure if you’re a Marine, it’s the right thing to do. This is also in addition to the multitude of actual STD’s your dumb ass will probably pick up after a few MEU’s to Thailand, as well.

You may have noticed the hiatus over the last week, as I was up in Oregon for my own wedding! It was obviously a crazy busy trip, so I barely had a chance to maintain all of this while I was away. I’m back in beautiful Burbank now, and have a lot of fun stuff in store. Stay tuned on the official Terminal Lance Instagram, which is about to hit 300,000 followers!

Definitely the most exciting military news to come out this week was the official declaration of the United States Space Force yesterday. At first I had thought that it was somewhat strange to need an entire military branch for space, considering that we have enough trouble getting people into space as it is ever since the shuttle program ended. However, I remembered that we have a serious problem with space debris in low earth orbit, formed from many years of missions and satellite launches and zero effort to actually clean up. The problem is so bad that many countries are figuring out ways to deal with it.

Some countries are opting for simple ideas like a laser that blasts the debris from the sky. However, we’re the United States, and what better way to flex our military might than to send Space Lance Corporals up for a Space Working Party to Space Police Call? I mean, what else are they going to do?

Earth Beautification Week begins now. Enlist today!