Author: Maximilian

If you were to add up the total amount of awesome moments you’ll have in an average 4 year enlistment, you end up with about 15-16 minutes of actually really rad stuff.

The rest of it?

Well, it’s kind of shit. For some, that 15 minutes is enough to keep them sticking around. In this regard, the Marine Corps is a lot like an abusive relationship. You experience those one or two once-in-a-lifetime occasions and it’s all you can think about. You know the overall thing is terrible, but you keep sticking around, convincing yourself that those fleeting moments of cool shit make up for everything else.

For every 2 minutes you spend on the hill shooting spotting rounds and rockets, you spend two hours police calling and getting yelled at for something you didn’t do. For every badass helicopter beach landing you do with your boys, you spend three days cleaning your weapon and your barracks room and also getting yelled at for something you didn’t do.

The Marine Corps is a mean mistress, but for some, those brief moments of glory are worth it.

Over the last week, Terminal Lance has gotten a lot of criticism for not condemning all hate groups equally. It is because of this that I would like to take this moment to unequivocally condemn boots once and for all as a hate group.

Boots, with their Camelbaks and their tucked in mom-jeans, have been a gathering in large groups out in Oceanside and Jacksonville without a permit for years now. They incite eye rolls and rage by looking like fucking boots, and carrying god-knows-what in their backpacks. The lamestream media won’t talk about it, but I’m tired of people ignoring this growing menace on many sides.

I would also like to classify Twentynine Palms as a hate group, for its continued torture of innocent Marines every day just by its own existence.

On a serious note, and I know I’m not helping, but being a boot really fucking sucks. Boots are the only demographic you can legally hate in America without recourse. There’s just something about being new that really bothers Marines. Be it the shiny glint in their beady eyes, the mom-jeans and go-fasters, or the fact that they haven’t learned to hate life in the Corps yet; everyone has their reasons for why they hate new Marines, and it’s probably not going to get better any time soon.

Boots, if you’re reading this, just know that it eventually gets better…

When you EAS.

In other news, stay tuned, there’s lots of great Terminal Lance stuff coming down the line.

What a sad state of affairs we’ve had over the weekend.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, this weekend saw violent Nazi and white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, where one innocent woman was killed and 19 others injured when some sister-fucking, racist hillbilly plowed his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of counter protesters.

Possibly the saddest part of all? People seem to be having a lot of trouble unilaterally condemning Nazis in 2017.

72 years after the end of World War II–the bloodiest war in human history, instigated by the Nazis–the Nazis (and white nationalists, supremacists, etc) have somehow duped a large chunk of the American right wing into defending them and their “free speech.” The partisanship on this situation is deafeningly stupid, with trash fake news like Breitbart and Alex Jones creating an easy out for racists by suggesting the real problem is the “antifa” and the “BLM” protesters for instigating violence against the Nazis.

At a certain point you have to really ask yourself if you’re on the right side of things here.

I’m going to share with you my secret for knowing whether or not you’re the good guy or the bad guy here. If you have a swastika anywhere on your body or within a reasonable vicinity of yourself and you think Hitler wasn’t that bad… You are the bad guy.

The toxic rhetoric of the election and the rise of fake alt-right news has allowed this foul excrement to gain traction in mainstream discourse. Once reasonable people are now taking to defending literal Nazis–a group many of our great grandparents swore to defeat through the most violent means necessary–and it is little more than depressing.

Fuck Nazis, fuck white supremacists and white nationalists, fuck the alt-right and whatever else they call themselves these days. The brave American men that fought and died on the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific would be ashamed of this. It’s sad that even Marines fall for this nonsense and completely forget what it means to be a real American patriot.

Stop reading fake garbage like Breitbart and Infowars on the internet and come back to reality. America needs to get its shit together and we can’t do it without you.

There’s an omnipotent force in the Marine Corps that all Marines spend their days desperately avoiding:

The Green Weenie.

The Green Weenie will fuck you at every turn, so you must be on your guard at all times, and your butthole remain tight. Though He is powerful, He is not infallible. You can dupe the Green Weenie with some simple tricks, like putting your top pick for duty station at the bottom of your list.

As long as the Green Weenie thinks its fucking you over, its fury will be satisfied.

I actually really wanted to get stationed at Camp Pendleton when I was on my way out of SOI, since I had close ties to the southern California area. The Green Weenie sensed this though, and decided to put me on an island 3000 miles out in the middle of the Pacific. In retrospect, it’s hard to complain about being forced to go to Hawaii, but that didn’t stop me at the time.

You see, when you’re leaving your MOS school, they let you have the brief illusion of choice by letting you fill out a piece of paper that says where you would like to be stationed permanently after you graduate. I’m pretty sure they just throw these in the trash, because why would the Marine Corps give a shit what a PFC wants?

In other news, I’m really excited to announce that I’ve just signed a new publishing agreement with Little, Brown & Company to put out the official Terminal Lance Ultimate Omnibus! This is a collection of over 800 Terminal Lance comics–all of the comics from the website plus 300 comics previously published in the Marine Corps Times newspaper! Plus original bonus content you won’t find anywhere else! It is the ultimate Terminal Lance fan service and I’m super excited about it.

Look forward to more details soon!

In the meantime…

is we fuckin up North Korea or is we not?

— Terminal Lance (@TerminalLance) August 8, 2017

Avoiding work is hard work.

Skating is a term commonly used in the Marine Corps to describe the act of avoiding any kind of actual work while in uniform. Some have even claimed this to be an acronym.

S= Seek Cover

K= Keep Quiet

A= Accept No Responsibility

T= Take No Action

E= Evade

In the Army they refer to this as “shamming.” (In the Navy and Air Force, they don’t actually work anyway, so no one has invented a term for avoiding it.)

The only people more adept at avoiding work than Lance Corporals are Chief Warrant Officers, who have gone so far as to convince the establishment that they need their own type of rank that needs to be saluted and not bothered with trivial, human matters. Lance Corporals are crafty, and they will avoid work and responsibility at all costs unless absolutely necessary.

What most fail to understand is that there is true work involved in avoiding work. It’s difficult to cover up a lie about going to medical with a lie about being at dental. A true skater makes this his full time duty, while ironically working parties usually don’t take longer than an hour. It’s not about time or money though, it’s about the craft. The art.

Skating at this level involves dedication worthy of the title of Marine.

There’s nothing worse than getting saddled with the Platoon Commander during your PT or field op. There’s something inherently off-putting about officers, as if they decorate themselves with fine perfumes prior to every field op. They look and smell nice, but that’s exactly why the enlisted hate them to so much. There’s an explicit otherness to officers that is impossible for the average enlistee to ignore.

Perhaps its their extended education or their characteristically hot wives. More commonly, it’s because the stench and aura of the boot is hard to shake. Marines in the infantry respect rate above all else, meaning they value the virtue of experience moreso than the rank that might be on your collar. This puts new officers in a tough situation, since you’re essentially universally hated as a boot, despite the fact that you are in charge of the entire platoon.

Lest we forget, the worst sin of the Marine Corps is that of the boot.

However, it’s totally possible to be a boot and not act like a complete boot. Boots are easily spotted by their beady eyes and remaining bits of excessive Marine Corps motivation. They can also frequently be heard from a distance impersonating drill instructors.

As well, cammo paint is generally boot as fuck unless you’re literally Arnold Schwarzenegger in a 1980’s movie.

In other news, we got some cool new stuff coming down the line, so stay tuned. Lastly, I want to mention that The White Donkey should have a new cover imprint with the best seller tag, so check that out if you’re into collectables!

Oh, you didn’t get the word?

The President announced sweeping military policy changes on Wednesday, via Twitter, regarding transgender service members. Beginning, uh… Sometime… Transgender service members will no longer be allowed in the military full-stop. This came as a total shock to the Department of Defense itself, as Secretary of Defense Mattis was on vacation, and General Dunford–the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff–put out a memo stating that no policy changes would occur until they received direction from the White House.

“I know there are questions about yesterday’s announcement on the transgender policy by the president,” Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a memo to military leaders. “There will be no modifications to the current policy until the president’s direction has been received by the secretary of defense and the secretary has issued implementation guidance.”

“In the meantime, we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect,” Dunford added.

Regardless of how you feel on the subject, I think it’s safe to say that Twitter probably isn’t the military’s first choice as far as passing down important word goes.

I brought up my own personal feelings on the subject on Wednesday, to which many maligned and disagreed–a few even quite respectfully–but I stand by what I said. Of course, Terminal Lance is always apolitical, but I feel like it would be strangely out of character for me to completely ignore a massive policy change that directly affects the entire United States Armed Forces.

The trans issue is unique in that, while it’s comparable in theory to homosexuals openly serving and even desegregation, it actually involves real logistics in regards to medical costs and confusing gray areas with PT standards and co-ed training. It is my personal belief that these are pretty easily solved and mostly innocuous issues to get hung up on, considering the very small number of trans service members currently active duty (about 5,000).

My solution is quite simple, and one that I’ve argued for in the past:

Remove all gender-based standards. A singular PFT that all must pass–male or female–to do the job required of a Marine… Any Marine.

Yes, you will lose a lot of weaker females (and males) and otherwise, but you will end up with a stronger military as a whole. It is the only real solution to both the transgender paradox and women in the infantry.

For the record, I refuse to shy away from subjects for fear of partisan backlash. If Terminal Lance and myself did things the same way as everyone else, it wouldn’t exist. So I’m gonna keep doing what I do, and you are welcome to go read content that doesn’t offend you.

In case you hadn’t heard, it rained in Twentynine Palms yesterday.

Marines have a tumultuous relationship with rain in most parts of the Corps. However, in Twentynine Palms, the story is much different. Don’t believe me? Look at how much the Marines of the desert lost their shit yesterday because of some precipitation.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BW-wYD3BgsK/

https://www.instagram.com/p/BW-xNBthvAM/

https://www.instagram.com/p/BW-xTIABUNk/

This was an event.

Can you blame them? Life in Twentynine Palms is so sad that a tiny bit of rain is essentially a base-wide snow-day. So while most Marines scoff at the curse of rain in the field, Marines in Twentynine Palms beg for even just a little bit of water to hit the tops of their covers. Anything that breaks the monotony of the desert is a welcome change of pace.

One can only hope that the rain suppressed the smell of Lake Bandini for even just a day.

When you spend enough time in the field, eventually the entire MRE menu becomes a bit of a bore. This is when it’s important to have an MRE chef in your squad that can mix and match the tepid ingredients of the meals to make 5-star concoctions for you.

There’s always at least one guy that swears he can make an MRE taste amazing. This usually involves little more than pouring the entire salt packet and mini tabasco bottle into the mix and declaring themselves Iron Chef of the platoon. Other common mixes usually involve the chocolate peanut butter packet thrown into basically anything else sweet, or perhaps adding jalapeño cheese to one of the main courses! 😱

No matter what though, there’s not actually much you can do to save an MRE from itself. Despite how much they might try to lure you with the promise of Skittles and chocolate peanut butter M&M’s, MRE’s are meant to be consumed rather than enjoyed.

More importantly, someone should figure out the recipe to get the MRE’s out of your butthole without damaging it.

Marines often get married younger than most civilians. There’s a number of reasons for this: most of the time the only way for a couple to be together in the military is to be married, since Uncle Sam doesn’t care much at all for girlfriends. Some Marines just get married for the money or to move out of the barracks. Either way, once you leave the barracks… You’ll never be one of the bros again.

The barracks is a special place filled with its own culture of depravity and buck wild shenanigans… most of which are not compatible with a married lifestyle. There’s few things more sad than the married Marines that still try to hang out in the barracks on Friday nights.

Like, dude, go be with your wife.

Traitor.

Leave the barracks to the manically depressed single Marines, it’s bad enough that no one loves them as it is.

I suppose I have marriage on the mind recently since I just tied the knot myself on Friday. Don’t worry, I won’t be hanging around the barracks, but you’re still welcome to come over for game night.