Author: Maximilian

Too soon? Believe it or not, I actually debated doing this strip many months ago when I was still in Hawaii and still active duty, however ultimately I deemed it to be “too soon” to make fun of the puppy incident. Don’t take me the wrong way; I grew up in Oregon, I love animals and wildlife. What LCpl David Motari did in the infamous video is deplorable and disgusting by all accounts. I won’t post it here, because I don’t want to see it again, but feel free to Google “Marine throws puppy” and I’m sure you’ll be pointed in the right direction if you are unfamiliar with the incident.

I wouldn’t necessarily say that my intent here is to make light of the puppy-tossing, but to make fun of the inevitable inside jokes that occurred immediately afterward.

Maybe it is too soon, but it was almost 3 years ago. For those that are curious, David Motari got exactly what he deserved: brig time with a dishonorable discharge.

In other news, my first day of classes are officially underway tomorrow (Tuesday). While many schools remained open during MLK day, mine honored the holiday by closing for business. It may be worth noting, however, that class was in full session during Veteran’s day. A little irksome, to say the least. I don’t mean to discount the value of MLK day–quite the contrary–he was a true American hero by all accounts. However, it would be nice if Veteran’s day had the same consideration.

There came a time in my days at Recruit Training that I realized I wasn’t getting the comprehensive survival training I had expected when I joined the Marines. For some reason, I assumed that Marines, of all people, would be the most adept wilderness-survival experts in the world. However, perhaps the fact that boot camp itself is the least memorable event in the Marine Corps once you’ve been in the fleet for a bit, causing to become a large blur, maybe I simply forgot it all. I doubt it, because I don’t think there was ever a time in my 4 years that I was expected to start a fire without matches or truly survive in the wilderness on my own without MRE’s and supplies.

The fact is, the average infantry Marine, at least during a time of war, isn’t really given much true survival training. In all reality, it isn’t our job. Our job is to shoot things, and shoot them well. I consider myself quite adept at that; however, I am slightly disappointed I didn’t walk out of the Marines ready to eat snakes and tree bark on a moment’s whim. That isn’t to say I don’t know how to camp–quite the contrary–infantry Marines camp all the time, usually every week. On my first workup, I’m pretty sure we spent more time in the field then we did anywhere else. That’s not the point, the field to us is ranges, room-clearing, maybe some land nav–but no true survival training.

In retrospect, there was that 1 hour long brief when we got to CAX about how to survive in the desert, but hardly what I would call comprehensive training.

Is it a necessity right now with our mission in Afghanistan? Obviously not, but it would be really awesome.

For those of you that don’t know who Les Stroud is, he was the host of the now-cancelled Discovery Channel show Survivorman. I recently discovered Survivorman on Netflix Watch Instantly and caught myself up to speed on all 3 seasons. He’s also Canadian. He’s also, frankly, a straight badass.

I’ve always had a personal disdain for the sausages served in tray-rat breakfast. After the first time biting into the over-processed, foul tasting entity I vowed to never again submit myself to their tyranny. I was first exposed to these horrifying sticks of meat during training on the big island of Hawaii, or PTA as the base camp is known. During this time, while standing around in circles talking to eachother, it became a sort of inside joke that they were actually manufactured by Yoda himself.

You can see here, him stealing the sausage out of Luke’s MRE:

Yoda actually operates a sausage-factory on the top of highest peak of the Big Island of Hawaii, where a conveyor runs between plethoras of defecating felines.

Long story short, I don’t eat the tray-rat sausages. Neither should you.

While my mother has never gotten a high and tight, I have noticed an overwhelming wave of motivation fall upon my loved ones. Like some kind of illness, the motivation takes many forms, usually more severe than anything I’ve ever displayed. I’ve never worn a shirt with a giant EGA or brandished anything overtly “USMC”, but that hasn’t stopped any of my family members. Somehow even when all you can think about is an EAS date or changing out of cammies, all your family wants to do is surround you with “oorahs” and watch war movies with you when you come home on leave.

I wanted to include another panel of a family dog with a high and tight, but three panels is sometimes limiting.

Outside of the infantry (and even in it, some could argue), not all Marine Corps MOS’ are treated equal. It is a complete fallacy to say that there aren’t any cool POG jobs, I used tank crewman in this example; but there are many non-infantry jobs that one could consider badass. Obviously, there are also many POG jobs that one would not consider badass, which I’ve exemplified here with IPAC. Though, frankly, I think the lamest POG job I’ve ever heard of is the 1171 Water Tech. When I first heard a Marine say to others, “they call us water-dogs!” I literally shuttered in disbelief that the Marines could possibly have a job that lame.

Sorry, 1171’s, but it’s not the first time I’ve made fun of you.

As some of you may be aware, tomorrow is actually the 1 year anniversary of Terminal Lance. Can you believe that? One year ago I was at my home in Hawaii, up til the wee hours of the morning getting ready to officially launch Terminal Lance. No one knew about it. I remember literally walking around the barracks in KBay, putting up fliers that read, “You Can’t Spell Disgruntled without Grunt” with the site’s URL on it. The following was small at first, not more than a couple hundred hits a day during the first few weeks. I remember when I broke 1000 pageloads in a single day, I thought I was on top of the world! Now, Terminal Lance averages over 100,000 pageloads every day and is ranked in the top 50,000 websites in the US (that’s good). Doing a little bit of Alexa research, I found that Terminal Lance is actually now one of the top military webcomics on the entire internet.

I couldn’t have done it without you all, the readers of Terminal Lance. Whether you were here from the beginning, or you’re just now joining us; let me say from the bottom of my heart:

Thank you for making Terminal Lance what it is today.

Well tonight is New Years Eve, try to make the best of it. I don’t want to repeat myself from the Christmas update, but do your best to have fun, no matter where you are. Yeah it sucks being away, but it can be fun!

When I was in Iraq in 2007, we spent Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years in country. I made it back about a week before Valentine’s Day, so that was nice. On New Years eve, I was standing in line at the phone trailer in South Camp, Camp Fallujah. At the stroke of midnight, the sky beyond the HESCO barriers lit up orange, and in front of me arose a massive fireball. While I was deciding whether or not I should shit myself or run, the sound wave hit the trailer and the area. Dust was knocked off its rest, the phones cut out, and everyone ducked for cover. Someone came running out of the nearby gym, “Is everyone okay?!” he asked me. I told him everyone was fine, and realized the explosion was far enough away to not hurt anyone. Here’s what it looked like:

I managed to run back to my can and grab my camera to snap this dark, blurry photo of the mushroom cloud.

Apparently, EOD had decided to detonate a midnight 500lb bomb in celebration of New Years.

Anyway, stay safe this weekend and have a Happy New Year!

This is the final part of the “Gift of Giving” series. I felt like a third piece was necessary to cap it all off. You can interpret the use of the Clone-a-Willy™ however you want. Did the Lieutenant use it on his wife? Did he use it on himself? Did he use it on… someone else? I’ll let you be the judge of that.

In the meantime, I hope you all had a good Christmas, I know I did. My wife got me the new Call of Duty so I’ve been catching up on that, along with Gran Turismo 5.

I still have another couple of weeks to laze about while I wait for school to start back up. If you haven’t been keeping up, make sure you check out the newsstand edition of the Marine Corps Times for exclusive Terminal Lance comics that you won’t see on the site! There’s not quite as many cartoon-dicks, but just as funny nonetheless.

If you haven’t received your refund from PayPal, shoot me an email and I’ll get it to you. When I sent the initial wave of refunds, some of the e-checks hadn’t cleared yet and I wasn’t able to refund the money at the time. Let me know and we’ll straighten it out.

I’ll give you a hint:

It’s a dildo.

A green-dyed Clone-A-Willy™ to be exact.

Anyway, I don’t have a whole lot to say about this strip, but I will say that I do plan on doing a third part to this next week. Stay tuned for that.

Today is Christmas Eve, with tomorrow obviously being Christmas. No matter where you are: CONUS, Afghanistan, Oki, Hawaii, etc… just remember to try and enjoy it. I spent a Christmas in Iraq in 2007, so I know how it can be–it’s never a good time to be deployed. Regardless, just be grateful for whoever is around you, whether it be your fireteam or your biological family. A lot of the time all Marines have is each other, and it’s up to you to make the best of it.

So I say to you, Merry Christmas and good night.

‘Tis the season, gents. The gift of giving is the best gift one can get! I hope this strip gives someone a good idea for a Christmas present. If you’d like to know where to get a Clone-a-Willy™, look no further than here. If not to prank your platoon commander, then at least for that girl back home you talk to sometimes when you’re drunk and on leave.

Typically, I’m not a huge fan of doing multiple part strips with webcomics, simply because I believe that doing so could potentially alienate new readers. However, I suppose there’s nothing wrong with doing it sparingly–as long as each strip is funny.

Who knows, maybe the Lance Corporal will pick something else to give to his Platoon Commander? I guess you’ll have to wait until Friday to find out!

I would like to take a moment to thank everyone for their support regarding the Toys for Tots issue. I have received many sympathetic emails about it. I appreciate the support, but lets not let the situation drag on. Next season we will find another charity, one that won’t turn down your money for politics.

Look forward to Friday for the thrilling conclusion!

I’m sure all of those that donated to the Terminal Lance Toys for Tots fundraiser have noticed by now that their money has been refunded to them. I’m also sure that all of you are wondering why I did this. Well, I am going to tell you, because you have a right to know the details of what happened.

The fundraiser went live last Friday, within 48 hours we raised over $2,000 for the Toys for Tots charity. On Sunday, however, PayPal flagged the account because it was receiving a lot of money very quickly. When they realized it was for a charity, they told me they require legal proof that the money is actually being raised for a charity–and not for my own sinister purposes. This is a security measure on behalf of PayPal to make sure your money is being kept safe. Now, all that was required to lift the limitation was a letter from Toys for Tots faxed to them, authorizing us as a legitimate fundraiser on behalf of Toys for Tots.

So, I figured hey, we had already raised $2,000, there’s no way Toys for Tots can turn us down now. I sent an email to the VP, Bill Grein, whose contact info is the only one listed on the http://toysfortots.org website. I didn’t hunt this guy down, his info is publicly listed on the website and is the only point of contact for the organization with an actual name. I explained in detail the situation to Bill, even encouraging him to watch the video I posted to raise funds for them. This is the response I got back:

Dear Mr. Uriate,

While we appreciate your success in raising funds for Toys for Tots, we have not changed our minds and we cannot tell PayPal that you are an approved fundraising agent for the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation.  I’m sorry if this places you in an awkward position.

Best regards,

Bill Grein

VP, Marine TFT Foundation

Well, it does place me in an awkward position, Bill. Over the course of the last week, we raised over $3,000 in support of Toys for Tots. In support of a good cause, turned down because of useless politics–irrelevant of the fact that there are kids out there depending on people like my readers, who donate to causes like this. It is very awkward, Bill.

On Bill’s behalf though, I understand his point of view: legally there’s no obligation or motivation to authorize me as a legitimate fundraiser for Toys for Tots. However, I would think $3,000 to charity would be a good thing.

I was left with a few options. My first thought was to close the donations and dump what we had raised on Toys for Tots. I learned today I couldn’t do this however, as I called PayPal and asked if that would be possible, but they told me that since the account was already under scrutiny, a large transaction like that would almost surely be intercepted by PayPal’s security. If no more action was taken before tomorrow, the money would have been placed on restriction for 6 months in some kind of PayPal limbo–unable to go anywhere. My next option, find a different charity to give the money to. Why couldn’t I do this? Because the money was collected under the idea that it was going to Toys for Tots. I am not so bold as to make decisions with your money, on your behalf. Donating to another charity would be lying to you. As well, there just wasn’t time to find another organization and have them authorize the account with PayPal. So, I had to make the call to refund all of your money.

And thus it is that I spent the last 4 hours clicking through PayPal’s slow, slow website and crappy interface to make sure that all of the money was properly refunded.

As disappointed as I am with the situation, I want to say thank you to everyone that donated. The fact that we raised so much, so quickly, really goes to show the quality of your character–and I’m extremely proud to call you my readers.

If you still feel strongly about donating to Toys for Tots, I implore you: go to their website and make a donation.

So again, I say thank you to everyone who participated, and I apologize for the inconvenience. I will post the bloopers video anyway, after I edit it, for shits and giggles.

As for the comic:

I realize TSA has been all over the media lately, but really I just thought of this based on my own experiences in airports. You’d think military personell in uniform would have an easier time, but alas, it proves to be a hassle no matter what you wear or who you are. No matter how many times your stack shows them you’ve been on the other side of the planet on their behalf, some overweight douche-bag with a lot of power will tell you to drop your pants and grab your ankles.