Author: Maximilian

I suppose I’m the kind of person that’s never really been “in to” conspiracy theories. In general, I find the vast majority of them tend to assume a lot of things in order to validate themselves. Being someone that bases his opinions off of logic and obvious evidence, conspiracy theories are something I just don’t tend to agree with. Also, conspiracy theories usually involve the government, and having worked for them directly I find it hard to believe they’d at all be capable of pulling 90% of this stuff off. With that said, I’m sure all of you have either run into this or at least heard of or seen some bullshit YouTube scientists “exposing the truth” about the September 11th terrorist attacks.

Being a Netflix subscriber and a slut to modern technology, I noticed that “Loose Change” was available to watch on my PS3’s Netflix app. I figured, why the hell not? I sat through the entire series of “Ancient Aliens” and found it entertaining enough to laugh at the ill-informed Greek guy with the crazy hair, how bad could it be? (Has anyone noticed that his hair gets crazier and he gets more spray-tanned every new time he’s on screen?)

So I start watching “Loose Change” and for about an hour I’m like, “Okay, I guess this could make sense if I believed everything I saw on TV.” The majority of the film seems like it is relatively well-researched, genuinely trying to make a point and asking some real questions about the attack. I’m at a point where I’m starting to question my own beliefs, I’m starting to think, “Hey, maybe these crazed hippies are onto something…”

And then it happened.

Yup, Smedley-tittyfucking-Butler shows up in the “documentary”. You know, one of the most famous Marines in Marine Corps history? Two Medal of Honor awards? Yeah, that one. Only, within the film in question, they said he was in the Army.

Yup. I know right? Take a moment to clean the shit out of your pants before reading on.

Apparently, for the all the effort it took to compile YouTube videos in a pizza and Mountain Dew-filled basement into a “documentary” about the “conspiracy” of the 9/11 attacks, the creators of Loose Change couldn’t even be bothered to do a fucking Google search about Smedley Butler. My patchouli-scented, unkept-hippy fantasy about the “conspiracy” of 9/11 was completely shattered around me. You could say my conspiracy-boner went from 12 o’ clock to 6. No way in fucking hell was I going to believe a single word this hack-job movie says if they can’t even get that one relatively minor detail correct. For a movie that relies entirely on details, it lost all credibility the instant they claimed Smedley Butler was a hooah.

Anyway, moral of the story? Most conspiracy theories are bullshit, created by people with nothing better to do.

In other news, I’m just going to plug my video again in case you haven’t seen it yet. It’s only gotten about 7,000 views so far, so I know for a fact that not all of you have watched it. I guess I wouldn’t watch it either if I didn’t like awesome things that make my life better. However, I know you’re not the type, so you should definitely watch it.

If you’re just now finding out that my book “KNIFE-HANDS!” is available to order, take a minute to flick yourself in the testicle of your choice, then scroll up and click the ad at the top of the page to buy the comic. Or, you can click here if you’re too lazy to be bothered with such trivial matters. The book is only $19.99, has over 100 strips in it and more. Also, purchasing the book directly supports the site, and lets me do cooler things in the future since I won’t be begging for change on the street like the people that clearly made “Loose Change”.

I KNOW YOU JUST GOT PAID. Get on that shit.

Seacrest, out.

Any Marine that’s free of his virginity and mentally capable of a relationship with a female (or otherwise now, I suppose) may have run into this situation. Yes, in the Marine Corps’ good-Christian-valued-self-image holding hands is considered a “public display of affection”. Well, yes, it is a display of affection and I suppose it is public, but is it unprofessional to do this in uniform? I don’t think so. While I can understand the argument behind walking and talking on cell phones, walking and smoking, etc; I do feel that this particular rule is a bit absurd.

Of course, no one is trying to argue that it’s acceptable for Marines to be able to just stand around tongue-fucking their significant others in their dress blues, but I think something as innocent as a held hand is justifiable under any practical circumstances. Of course, I can only speculate as to why practicality takes a back seat to this argument for some. I’m sure regulation-thumpers with rock-hard moto-boners salivate at the thought of being able to flex their Marine Corps knowledge at the sight or mention of such a travesty, but some of us have lives and people we spend those lives with. A uniform is a lot of things, full of honor and pride and all that neat stuff–but to a significant other, its often just a series of intricately woven fabrics draped over the person they love.

In other news, in case you missed my spamming on Friday, “KNIFE-HANDS!” has officially been released. If you missed the commercial this weekend, check it out right here! (Make sure you watch it ALL THE WAY to the end) If you like the video, please share it on your Facebook wall or Twitter or whatever you use to passively “keep up with” your friends and family.

To purchase the book, click here or the link at the top of the page.

“KNIFE-HANDS!” is currently available for just $19.99–that’s 100 high-res printed strips, plus the blog posts and a bunch of extra stuff, for the price of a few drinks at a bar–and you’re much more likely to get laid with this book than you are with a slurred speech and alcohol on your breath trying to remember whatever lame pickup line you think works. We plan on doing some book signings some time in mid-late September (not sure what dates or where yet), so make sure you have a book before then! As I mentioned before, I’m not signing your genitals.

I know pay-day is coming up in a couple of days, a perfect time to grab yourself a copy of “KNIFE-HANDS!”

*Edit*

For international customers, we seem to be having some trouble with the ordering page. If you are out of the country and are having trouble with an international address, please order directly from Amazon. For us in the beautiful US of A, please continue to order off the publisher’s site as it is better for us and gives less money to Amazon.

I’ve been slow to respond to emails lately, I’ve had a lot going on. For the record though, I do read every email I receive, but some may or may not be responded to depending on the content and whether or not something shiny appears in front of me at the time of reading. I do get distracted very easily.

***UPDATE***

“KNIFE-HANDS” is officially available to order! Check out this disgusting video of me.

Click here to order!

As I’m sure many of you that have been following my little strip here know, the line of comics known as “Literally” are meant to depict, in the most literal way, some of the more absurd sayings and phrases we have in the Corps. If you’ve been in the infantry, seen Jarhead or Generation Kill, you’ve more than likely heard this expression in some form or another. If you still can’t figure it out, it goes something like this:

“I’d eat a mile of her shit just to see where it came from!”

Other forms of it:

“I’d drink a gallon of her piss just to see where it came from,” and “I’d suck a mile of dicks to (etc)…”

Granted, there’s always slight variations of these things floating around different parts of the Corps. If you’ve never heard it, then I’m happy for you that you haven’t had to hear such depravity in blunt. I suppose the point of this saying is supposed to be largely comedic, and rightfully so, as eating a mile of human feces, from anyone’s ass (we’ll use Scarlett Johansson as an example here)…

…is obviously disgusting… isn’t it?

Okay, maybe Scarlett Johansson is a bad example. I’d drag my dick through a mile of broken glass and discarded heroin needles just to rub it on her thigh.

Moving on. (Because I’m sure my wife would want me to at this point)

So, as much as I hate to acknowledge it, the book is continuing to be delayed. It should be up any time now, we’re waiting on Amazon’s processing… process. They claimed it would be up within 24 hours, it’s been 3 days now. I apologize for the inconvenience, we’re hopeful it will be up any time now. Stay tuned to Facebook, Twitter, the Forum and this site for updates and when it’s released.

It really is coming! I swear! Unfortunately it’s absolutely out of my hands at this point, but again, we do expect it to be available any minute now.

I’m fairly certain that at some point or another on this beloved blog of mine I’ve mentioned that the marriage system in the military is somewhat broken. Not as bad as, say, the cutting score system, but it could definitely use some refining. It’s no secret that Marines all over the Corps enter into contract-marriages with women they either barely know or friends from back home.

Why do Marines do this? A number of reasons really–for starters, a bigger paycheck. Yes, in the military you quite literally get paid to be married. Well, it of course isn’t defined as such, but that is the inevitable result of receiving BAH (Base Allowance for Housing). Married Marines automatically get BAH, which can be quite a large sum depending on where you’re stationed. Where I was stationed–beautiful Kaneohe Bay, HI–the BAH rate for an E-3 (Lance Corporal) is currently $2,016 per month–mind you, this is in addition to the regular paycheck he’s already receiving.

While this system works great the way it was intended, for people that genuinely love eachother and are married because of such feelings, it also tends to work great for those that just want some extra cash. Contract marriages usually work by agreeing to split the BAH with someone, still netting you an extra $1,008 a month in Hawaii and the added benefit of living off base. Granted, $2,016 in Hawaii isn’t going to get you much luxury, but anything beats the bricks, right?

I believe my stance on it before was that I had no real suggestions to fix it, but I do think it’s something that can be worked on by someone much smarter than myself. As for the issue of the gays… well, I think my opinion on it is both moot and obvious, and I’ll leave it at that.

Moving on, I couldn’t help but notice a lot of really derpish, sister-fucking, hillbilly, asinine comments on Facebook when I put up a review of Friday’s Conan the Barbarian. Some people apparently believe I have no business writing about anything other than what entertains them personally. I think it’s sad that I even have to say this, but this is my blog, and I’ll write about whatever I feel like writing about. If you find yourself having a problem with what I’m writing about, I feel I should remind you that the content that spews from my fingers onto this keyboard involves a voluntary action on your part to read. That is, of course, going to the site and reading it. If I write something you don’t like–like a review of a really, really shitty movie–simply don’t read it.

One more thing! I mentioned last week the confusion regarding the book release.

The book is still on track for August 24th now, bumped up from August 15th. As soon as it is available I’ll be spamming the shit out of Facebook and Twitter, as well as debuting a related video… Stay tuned for updates!

We certainly don’t need to go into details about how I came to this strip, but I’ll say it involved me jerking off and porn. Surely I’m not the only one that has experienced this scenario…

You’re alone in a dimly-lit room, the shades are drawn and you’re hunched over your laptop with your pants undone, enjoying your favorite ‘Tube site of two consenting adults engaging in the most grotesque displays of coitus one can imagine. Only this time, something isn’t right. At first, you try to ignore the medium-reg haircut and convince yourself that maybe he’s just very clean-cut or Mexican. But alas, as the clothes come off and his tattoos reveal, you may often find the markings of the beast seared upon his flesh.

There’s some strange mental barrier that makes it nearly impossible to jerk off to any adult entertainment when you know the guy is a Marine. Not to divulge too greatly into cliches, but Marines often feel like family–and since when would you ever want to gaze upon a nude family member on your screen while touching your genitals inappropriately?

Hopefully, the answer is never.

Shout, show, shove, shoot.

This was the mantra given to turret gunners in my battalion during my time in Iraq. The “Escalation of Force” procedures varied depending on the tools available to the gunner. For me, I had a square of brightly colored orange safety-fabric strung up to a stick (literally, a stick–as in, from a tree) with 550 cord for shouting; I had a pen-flare for showing, which was a small flare shot out of a pen-sized launcher; I had my M16-A4 loaded with tracer rounds for shoving, and of course my beloved M2 .50 for shooting.

All of us knew the steps, and they weren’t hard to remember. However, during my time in country, the guidelines became increasingly strict. As a result, Marines would more or less be apprehensive to actually shoot at an oncoming vehicle. Not because they might shoot back, but because they might face punishment back in the rear. I recall one event on MSR Mobile, we pulled off onto a side road. My vehicle, the lead truck, successfully traversed the turn, however the vehicle behind me had a close call with an oncoming Iraqi truck. The gunner, we’ll call him Bob, ended up taking a couple of warning shots at the vehicle to get it to stop moving.

Bob followed all of the necessary EoF procedures, but when we got back to the rear he was placed under an absurd investigation. The Iraqi was fine, no one was injured, it was really just a misunderstanding of the Iraqi driver. While Bob ended up being cleared, and rightfully so, the company ended up putting our entire platoon under a death-by-powerpoint style presentation of EoF procedures. In addition, they decided to fill the rest of the day with other safety classes that had nothing to do with EoF, shooting, or Iraq.

I’m pretty sure the next morning just about everyone in the platoon told Bob, “Hey, don’t shoot at anyone today–I don’t feel like sitting through another day of bullshit classes.”

I will concede that it is a tricky situation. Ultimately I believe the strict enforcement of EoF procedures undoubtedly lead to less innocent deaths of Iraqi civilians–a very favorable result. However, for the grunt–for the guy behind the gun–it becomes a stressful fumble of figuring out what step is next and whether or not it is actually the right thing to do.

However, the same can be said for just about any situation in a war when there’s guns and people involved.

With that said, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m encouraging skipping steps or discounting the validity of EoF procedures. I implore all turret gunners to use their best judgement with the tools available.

In other news, my book is coming out next week!

I’ll have the URL for you the day of the release, there are no pre-orders but I don’t think we’ll sell out of them, so don’t worry about it. We’re shooting for an August 15th release, but that may be off by a day or two depending on how fast the shipment to the fulfillment center goes. I will keep you all updated, be sure to check the Facebook fan page and my Twitter for the latest updates. I’ll also be updating the News section of the site with book details when it’s available.

Be advised: there may not be a new comic on Tuesday. I’m moving this weekend and may not have my internet set up in time in my new apartment. Not to mention, I’m moving.

Anyway, have a great weekend! If you tap it, take photos.

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure if the whole “Senior Lance Corporal” billet is even a thing outside of the infantry. Typically, for MOS’ that are not infantry, they tend to pick up at a rate that makes sense. In general, they are able to match their rank to their corresponding billets. In the infantry, where the cutting score system is virtually broken, a series of  individual Lance Corporal billets becomes a necessity as it becomes laughably impossible to pick up the coveted rank of E-4.

A boot Marine will most likely pick up Lance Corporal within the first few months of entering the fleet. This, however much your Battalion Commander may suggest, does not make them equal to the person of the same rank that has been on a combat deployment. The rank of Lance Corporal itself becomes divided into ‘Boot’ or ‘Junior Lance’ and ‘Senior Lance’. No one argues this hierarchy, because it becomes a necessity as you realize that two people of the same rank do not make them equals, when one of them has a vast wealth of life-changing experience to draw upon when the other simply does not.

As I mentioned, I’m honestly not sure if this applies to the POG ranks. From what I gathered in my last 6 months of contract time at Combat Camera, I don’t think it does. While yes, the 4641 Combat Photographer faces the same cutting score issues as the average grunt, there simply isn’t the vast sea of Lance Coolies that necessitate the divide in rank as there is in the infantry. As well, and this is just anecdotal observations, I don’t think most POG’s regard a combat deployment as a rite of passage in the same regard as we typically do. That isn’t to imply that a POG with a deployment isn’t given a special value, but in the infantry life it is a necessity. This, of course, is due to the fact that infantry battalions are typically involved in a regular deployment cycle that facilitates such semantics; as well as the fact that most Marines are stuck in the same battalion for at least two deployments, or usually even their entire enlistment.

Anyway, back to the strip; I’m not entirely sure if this happens to everyone, but it certainly happened to my battalion a number of times. Every so often they would try to crack down on hazing, making us ditch words like “boot” and “senior Lance Corporal”. Whether or not the command actually believed it or just did it to check the box, I suppose I’ll never know. In any case, things like that never stick for long, as the natural order of the grunt world falls into place within a few weeks or even days of the lecturing.

In other news, I’m going to pimp the shit out of my upcoming book release.

Available August 15th!

Knife Hands feature strips 1-100, complete with the blog posts. As well, it features a ton of extra notes and commentary, some extra strips and even some strips previously only published in the Marine Corps Times newspaper!!! This book is full of awesome, so make sure you pick it up. The price has yet to be 100% finalized, but we’re leaning toward $19.95.

Also, we’re planning on doing some book signings next month, so you’ll have to have something for me to sign… I’m not signing your dick.

I’m just gonna start by saying that I think I just single-handedly taught about 30,000 Marines how to correctly spell “Reveille” (pronounced “Revley”).

Taking a step back from it all, I decided to try and focus more on what Terminal Lance was originally intended to be. An infantry-based comic about the nuances of everyday grunt life. I feel like I get kind of distracted with deadlines and larger scale items that I have, as of late, been losing touch with what this comic is supposed to be. Terminal Lance was supposed to be the inside jokes, the bullshit, the funny shit, the shit. That isn’t to say I can’t talk about other things as well, but I’m going to really try and delve back into the world of the Lance Corporal–a world I’ve been absent from for over a year now.

More on point, I think we all can understand Abe’s frustration here. Every morning in the field, in those wee-hours of dawn, there’s always the boot that pulled last firewatch that has to wake everyone up. This dubious task is accomplished in a number of ways, but 90% of the time Marines tend to take the term “sound Reveille” a bit more literally than they should. They do, quite literally, yell the word “Reveille” repeatedly until everyone is awake. Reveille, for those of you that don’t know, is the song you hear in every 90’s military movie ever made, as well as horse races or something.

In lieu of the recent “budget debates” in DC these last couple of weeks (or really whatever you’d like to call them), this strip popped up as an inevitable reaction to the inevitable budget cuts due our way. Budget cuts are something that I more or less avoided during my time, as I was in while the wars were still kicking (for the most part). Bush endowed us with a seemingly infinite amount of cash–$90k re-enlistment bonuses, new weapons and gear, barracks and base housing renovations–it was a time of unbridled glory for the military.

Naturally, however, the country is now many trillions of dollars in debt. I don’t care much for the politics of it, but its obvious that the military simply can’t be spared in the discussion of cuts. In the last couple of years, annual cuts have been a regular expectation of service members across the board. Even with this reality, there’s still news of soldiers being issued smart phones while the Marine Corps is left in the cold.

This isn’t anything new for Marines, however, as I believe budget cuts are simply a reality of our history. Uncle Sam simply doesn’t care for us in the same way he cups the balls of the Army. Some of you that read the Marine Corps Times may also have seen my recent strip on the subject. If you haven’t, go get a copy and check it out! (Actually, this was a couple issues ago so you might be out of luck unless one of your motivator friends with the subscription keeps a backlog).

As for the Navy… Well, I don’t normally like to resort to gay jokes, but come on, you were wide open.

I’m just gonna throw this out there:

If someone can bring Daniel Craig to the Marine Corps Ball, I will send you a prize.

But seriously…

I’ll admit, what Sgt. Moore managed to pull off with Mila Kunis is nothing short of admirable and inspiring. However, the recent explosion of bad YouTube videos featuring Marines of all shapes and sizes asking out whatever dream-list celebrity they can think of is getting old really quick. I want to note that while it was a funny remark on behalf of Justin Timberlake to encourage Mila Kunis to go as a challenge to her patriotism, I think it’s necessary to point out that just because you’re a Marine doesn’t obligate anyone to do a damned thing with you.

Sgt. Moore had a good idea, he ran with it and put together a short, charming and humorous video that had character. Unfortunately, the vast fodder of copycat videos exhibit a complete dearth of originality and effort. So far, Marines have asked out Miley Cyrus, Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Aniston, Hayden Pannettiere (good choice), Mary Kate Olsen, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Drake, Ricky Martin (who is gay by the way), and even a male Lance Corporal asked Will Farrell to accompany him to the Ball–and I’m sure there’s more celebrities than that that have been asked.

I mean it’s all for fun really, but come on, everyone is a little tired of the idea by now. Mila Kunis is a great girl for accepting the invitation, but once is truly enough. If you’re really desperate for a date, I’m sure there’s some equally desolate girl you know from high school that leaves a slug trail at the sight of dress blues, so just hit her up.

Edit: As some people on Facebook pointed out, two of the more ridiculous ones were also the Marines that asked out Betty White and even Casey Anthony.