When the Chickens Come Home to Roost

Ignorant assholes playing terrorist in the Michigan State Capitol

The Capitol press room was standing room only. Designed to comfortably seat two dozen reporters, that afternoon there were at least sixty people crowded together awaiting official word from the president. Once again the world was coming apart and the average person was fearful that yet another war would endanger their tenuous existence. So much had been lost in the past decades and only in the last few years had any sense of peace and prosperity returned to the nation.

The chatter in the room was a constant, low nervous buzz but when the assistant press secretary stepped into the room and then to the podium, everyone fell silent.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” Carrie Barns said standing at the podium. “Undoubtedly you know that Article Five of the NATO alliance has been activated by one of the member states. In a moment the president herself will address you and the nation about what this means. Understand, the president has conferred with the other members and they have come to a joint resolution. There will be a short question and answer session once she reads the joint declaration.”

With that, Ms. Barns stepped back from the podium and looked to the door she entered a moment before waiting for the president to appear. It was one of the aides standing next the door that announced her arrival.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the press, please stand for the President of the Republic of Cascadia.” An almost regal Sandra Parker quickly stepped up to the podium taking a couple of seconds to look at the small computer tablet Barns had left. She then looked out at the seated reporters and the cameras on the other side of the room and began to cut the last few shreds of what had once existed.

“As you all know,” President Parker began, “the Southern Confederacy is reporting that an invasion force made up of naval and ground units of both the Caribbean Federation and the nation of Brazil are sailing towards the Gulf Coast. Confederacy Intelligence expects them to make landings somewhere between the Florida Panhandle to Louisiana in five to six days. Also, Mexican Army and Air Force units have moved to staging areas south of the Rio Grande threatening the Republic of Texas."

“With the Confederacy's main benefactor, Russia, already fighting a desperate war with the Central Asia Caliphate, its president has called for assistance under the North American Treaty Organization. I have already contacted both the Confederacy ambassador in Portland and President Hannity in Atlanta and told them the Republic of Cascadia will not send troops. Moreover, neither will California, nor Utah, Colorado, the Great Lakes Federation, New York or the New England Union."

“This looming conflict originates from both the Confederacy and the Republic of Texas sponsoring Christian libertarian anarchists all through the Caribbean and Latin America. What appears to have provoked the coming war was Brazilian Intelligence discovering that Texas has allowed Amazonia Libertarian Front terrorists to build training camps in isolated prairie lands outside Waco. The same group that six months ago murdered over two-hundred people environmental recovery specialists working on the Peruvian/Brazilian border. The civilized American nations will not be a party to the actions of two rogue states."

“For that reason, California, Utah, the Great Lakes Federation and two divisions of the Cascadian Army will be stationed along the southern Kansas border once the conflict begins to make sure our interests and territory are respected. I would strongly advise the civilian and military leadership of the Confederacy and Texas to concentrate on the invading forces and ignore the neutral troops along their northern border.” President Parker finished while looking at the press who were now jumping up and down trying to get noticed.

Once the reporters calmed down, President Parker pointed to one of the journalists so he could ask a question.

“Madam President, Jacob Wall from the Cascadia Broadcast Network. Why are we taking this action now when its been an open secret for decades that both the Confederacy and Texas have actively interfered in the affairs of other nations? In fact, there is clear evidence that the Idaho Insurrection of 2039 was sponsored by the Confederacy, a conflict that killed over a thousand Cascadian soldiers.”

“Mr Wall, both the Confederacy and Texas have been pushing their Christian libertarian anarchist ideology since their founding at the ending of the Disunion War. Quite simply, at the end of that horrific conflict that killed over eighty million Americans, saw over one-hundred million forced from their homes, and brought the downfall of the United States Government, there was no stomach for further overt fighting."

“The basic infrastructure of Oregon and Washington State were in ruins.” The president continued obviously remembering the incredible hardships that three full generations of survivors had to endure. “Things like clean running water and electricity were close to nonexistent in places like Portland and Seattle for years. The early Cascadian leadership wasn't worried about a piece of rural territory filled with religious zealots and illiterate white supremacists. Yes, the Idaho Insurrection was terrible, but Cascadia was essentially powerless to oppose them until 2035.”

The next question was from David Lewis, a reporter working for the Spokane Times, a newspaper whose publishers push for American reunification.

“Madam President, aren't we violating our treaty obligations under the North American Treaty Organization by not coming to the assistance of the Confederacy and Texas when there is a clear and imminent threat to the continent?”

“Mr. Lewis, the NATO alliance was formed for two reasons. The first being to defend the continent from the perceived threat from China when it foreclosed on the nation of Panama and took over it and operation of the canal back in 2044. The second reason was to dissuaded any North American nation from interfering in the affairs of each other. The best example was the California Civil War and the Idaho Insurrection already mentioned, conflicts that either Texas or the Confederacy gave shelter or supplies to the enemy combatants. The NATO alliance was not meant to aid terrorist nations who got caught with their pants down, dick in hand trying to rape someone."

“The sickness the Confederacy and Texas suffer from originated well before the Disunion War. President Hannity's own grandfather was one of the chief madmen that spawned their political mindset. It destroyed the United States, reduced the people of this continent to something worse than Third World status, and sent shock waves out that forever altered human history. I only wish like Hell Old America had realized the road they were taking changed course."

“Since the Disunion War, the nations that eventually formed out of the ashes of the United States have next to know real contact with each other. Here in Cascadia we have more in common with Canada or California than our nominal allies New York or the New England Union. To fly to New York City or Boston from Seattle or San Francisco you have to go through Calgary or Toronto. Whatever America unity that once existed was pissed away in the name of religious extremism, sanctifying the rich, willful embracing of ignorance, and the glorification of weapons and bloodshed."

“The Confederacy and Texas have sown the wind and now finally they will reap the whirlwind in the form of massive invasion by two of the most powerful nations on Earth. Another way to say this President Hannity would understand is that their chickens have come home to roost. That concludes my briefing.”

Tales From REFORGER-2: I Accuse

 (Author's note: This story is true, although I had to go creative-nonfiction to stretch it out and alter it enough so I wouldn't have anyone going crazy on me.)

All things considered, Captain Bryant, the S4 of my air defense battalion at Fort Carson, Colorado, wasn't a bad guy. Which makes what happened to him in a West German field all the worse. Without overly explaining what the S4 does, it can be boiled down to anything to do with supply, logistics, maintenance, transportation, and budget for the entire battalion. It is a demanding job and takes someone with a detail oriented mind and who can deal with the stress involved when millions of dollars of equipment and supplies are involved.

Since I was just a junior enlisted soldier at the time when the incident occurred, everything I heard from the NCO's suggested Bryant was perfectly competent in his job. Captain Bryant's one problem though was that despite his best efforts at the S4 job he was still catching hell from his lackluster command of one of the batteries of the battalion. See, Bryant was suffering from one of the worst traits that can befall an individual not only serving in the United States Army but anyone living in a country that prizes charisma and hard charging excellence. 

Bryant's first sin was that he had absolutely no charisma or anything else in the way of inspiring others to perform great deeds. Like any leader who command people, army officers are almost required to give speeches that motivate those under them to push harder. Given that the batteries in my battalion shared a common assembly area I caught a few of Bryant's speeches and even as a junior enlisted guy I could tell that someone born without vocal cords could have given a better, more inspiring speech. Sure, he could relay information and give instructions but his spoken voice had the personality of one of the old “Speak and Spell” toys from the 1980's.

His second, and possibly worst, sin was that Bryant was average in all his abilities. I learned this from one of my friends, Specialist David Speakman, who was the driver for the battalion sergeant major. While Speakman was my best friend, I often found him irritating as shit since the man excelled at absolutely everything he did from scores on the rifle range to maxing out the PT test. Speakman would regularly tell me battalion scuttlebutt since he spent all normal duty hours at headquarters.

The overall word about Captain Bryant was that the battalion commander and battalion sergeant major, both hard charging types who expected nothing less that one-hundred percent and then more from everyone in his command wasn't happy with his performance. Back then I believe myself to be a member of the hard charging group but was frankly perplexed at what exactly they wanted out of Bryant. However, my lack of understanding of the nebulous requirements they expected suggests I was closer to Captain Bryant's group than the one my friend Speakman belonged.

The curse with being average is that people tend to remember your mistakes, and misfortunes, more than anything else. Being “average” myself in many ways its almost as if you're wearing sign that everyone else but you can see but you that tells people not to expect much. For Captain Bryant to carry such a burden pretty much meant his military career was going to stall and die unless he somehow turn perception around. That opportunity came in the form of one of the battalions units, Alpha Battery, being sent to West Germany in 1987 for REFORGER.

REFORGER, which stand for Return of Forces to Germany was a huge deployment exercise and war games meant to prepare for the possibility of war with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations it controlled. All told thousand of troops and equipment were loaded on planes and ships and sent to Europe from North America. In the days leading up to our departure from Fort Carson, Captain Bryant seemed to be constantly in action. After we arrived in Europe for the first four or five days before the people in my unit were dispersed I don't believe the man ever slept.

What Captain Bryant did between the time of our first arrival and when we all regrouped at the assembly area to wait for our turn to return home I have no idea, although I highly suspect he did his best to play super soldier.

Every soldiers' mission at the assembly area was to wait and prepare the equipment we had drawn in Europe for turn in. As duty goes it was pretty sweet, we lived in literal circus-sized tents with some of them dedicated to food stands, movie theaters, mess halls, PX shops, and even libraries. Our equipment was nearby, all lined up neatly with us spending about half a day cleaning and repairing what we could. After lunch, which was still first generation MRE's at that time, we were usually released and allowed to hang out in the recreation tents or even see some of the local sites. Captain Bryant didn't play that game, even though many of the officers were almost as eager to get away as the enlisted, he stayed in the makeshift motor pool trying to impress the his higher-ups. Sadly, even though he moved heaven and earth during this deployment his average-ness came back with a vengeance.

Naturally, given the human digestive tract and its normal functions the US government spent the money to rent hundreds of port-o-potties for the assembly area to prevent thousands of soldiers from turning the countryside into a disease ridden sewage pit. Most were the normal looking ones you would see here in the States with a wide base that strongly resists tipping over because of wind. But a number of them, like the ones situated close to the motor pool, were quite thin and light and placed very close together.

The morning the incident happened it was already quite windy. In fact, several of the people I was around had noticed the thin and light port-o-potties being moved by the gusts. Once lunchtime came we stopped what we were doing, ate our MRE's, then put away our tools before drifting off to pursue our off-duty entertainment. Not Captain Bryant who stayed behind inside his deuce and a half fitted with a shop van he used as a makeshift office.

Sometime later Bryant had to answer the call of nature and proceeded to use one of the abnormal port-o-potties. Unfortunately, he picked one in the middle of a line of at least fourteen or fifteen. From what I could gather one of those heavy gusts of wind hit when Bryant was inside and not only did the entire line of port-o-potties fall over like so many dominoes, their thin sheet metal construction bent in such a way that he was literally trapped inside. Yeah, as word passed down everyone learned the potty was tipped over enough that its contents did spill out.

Poor Captain Bryant was eventually rescued by someone several hours later but word of what happened spread through the area at a speed that defies Einstein's limit on anything moving faster than light. Efforts to limit the effect on Captain Bryant's reputation were enacted, mainly having already ill-tempered first sergeants telling annoyed platoon sergeants to pass down to the tired section sergeants to tell their troops that any form of misbehavior around Captain Bryant would be severely punished.

It didn't work, especially when news of the incident somehow spread to nearby British troops who were visiting our location. Reports were that when they learned of what happened to Bryant their entire contingent,which was eating in the mess hall tent, all fell onto the floor laughing their asses off. While it was probably American soldiers who did it, someone a few days later took a permanent magic marker and wrote, “Bryant-potty, Use only at your own risk” on most of the type that fell over and trapped him.

There is no happy ending to this story. This incident sort of capped a military career that never left the metaphorical launch pad. He only stayed with the battalion about six months before getting reassigned somewhere else in the United States. But even when I was about to leave the service in July of 1990 some a-hole was still writing “Bryant-potty” on the much more stable ones used at Fort Carson. The only person I knew who could have been immune to possible discovery of the action and had ample opportunity to hit so many of the potties used down range was my good friend, David Speakman.

Christmas Trials and Tribulations

To say I am a bit of pariah in the area I live is a given. I don't attend any of the local mega-churches that act as religious country clubs where the majority of inhabitants go to be part of the accepted social set. I most definitely do not drive an oversized trunk which is a male status symbol in these parts on par with what guns you own as well as the required circular NRA sticker on the back window. While there are a few exceptions, my politics alone keeps me at arms length with otherwise nice people who view Obama as a tyrant and anyone not white and Anglo-Saxon as an invasive species. I will offer up a backhanded complement and say the centuries old suspicions about Catholics appears to be dead.

All that being said, it is this time of the year that one of my serious deficiencies shows itself to all the others who spend days, if not weeks, setting up Christmas decorations on the outside of their wondrous Mcmansions. I have never really seen the point of elaborate outside decorations. Of course, this is just a holiday extension of my distaste of yard work but it is also an expression of my dislike of light pollution and how it literally drowns out the stars in the sky. In an effort to not seem a total secular humanist douchbag, I do not harbor any contempt for those who do decorate the outside of their homes. As of this writing it is still a free country, although what happens after January 20 will be anyone's guess after that.

Where my family usually falls in line with everyone else is on decorating the inside of our house. My wife has three separate themed Christmas decorations boxes that contains items for the tree, the living room, kitchen, and even the bathroom. Frankly, I find the bathroom stuff ridiculous but it all makes her happy and while I'll never be confused with a rocket scientist, I have learned that it is best just to go along during this time of the year.

This year is a bit different though since we are in the middle of several major home renovation projects. With storage boxes literally overflowing and taking up a great deal of space all over the house there was simply no room to pull out the Christmas decorations this year. While this fact didn't sit well with my wife, this holiday sacrifice will be repaid with her eventually having new carpet throughout the house, along with new marble kitchen counters and revamped cabinets. On a side note, you cannot underestimate my happiness in the fact that the bathroom remodeling was largely completed a couple of weeks ago.

Now understand, to our far more holiday-minded acquaintances we haven't advertised the fact that we're essentially skipping Christmas this year. Our lack of outdoor participation has been mentioned in the past, which my wife diplomatically explained away as having more to do with the front of our house being a different design from most of the others in our neighborhood. We don't have a large front porch which is what most everyone else uses as the basis of their decorative garland, colorful lights, and tinsel ideas. I'm sure to our closer associates she has whispered that it's her damn husband's fault because he is a total scrooge.

From what my daughter has told me recently she has inadvertently revealed our non-participation in Christmas this year. It seems that during one of her classes just this last Monday the topic of Christmas decoration came up among her friends. The parents of all her close friends are Christmas decorating fanatics and the way my daughter explained it when she told them we didn't even have a tree up everyone was quite shocked. Making matters worse, given my known anti-social and leftist leanings beliefs, I am sure the assumption others will take is that I have gone total anti-Christmas if not militant atheist. Needless to say, given the area I have become a bit paranoid as of late. Another side note, no, I am not an atheist, my beliefs have me firmly in the agnostic camp. In fact, I pray quite frequently on the off chance God does exist and that one more person broadcasting on the supernatural hotline might cause him to reengage with his erstwhile hairless primate creations.  

Returning to the main point sitting out Christmas, I have this vague worry that as I try to sleep during the day after coming from work that a Yule tide lynch mob might invade my house with them super gluing glittering tinsel and cheap wooden crosses all over my body instead of the ancient ritual of tarring and feathering. So, if I am not heard from again that will probably be the reason. That being said, I wish everyone Happy Holidays while I consider the possibility of  avoiding the coming lynch mod by joining the secular guerrilla underground which is fighting the endless War on Christmas.

Yard Sale Hell

Last Thursday the indignities of middle age and the wisdom of medical science required that I surrender my personal sovereignty for about an hour so a doctor could check for any nasty surprises lurking in my nether regions. Frankly, basic decorum and the unwritten internet rule about it being best that we all resist the urge to overshare far too much personal information forbids me from coming out and actually naming the procedure. But I will say that given what the good doctor did find, I'll have to go through the crap again in five years.

Just for shits and giggles, I will admit that the drugs they used to knock me out made me feel all warm and fuzzy as what for me passes as consciousness faded into short-term oblivion. That being said, what I am about to go through tomorrow morning is probably going to be far more a trying ordeal than the session of preventive maintenance I endured last week. See, very early tomorrow morning my wife will begin her seventh yard sale since we were married with me as her chief and only unpaid and totally under appreciated and overly abused flunky.

On the surface yard sales are simply affairs, you set up some picnic tables in your driveway, bring out all the assorted unused crap taking up space in your house, and then place that stuff on the tables and wait for all the local human scavengers to arrive and pick everything apart like hyenas do a dead zebra. However, that basic premise ignores certain elements to the yard sale equation. The first being that you have to decide what unused crap will be itemized and then sold. This is highly problematic for me since my wife tends to believe anything of mine is a top candidate to be priced and them offered up to the ravaging hordes looking for a bargain. Just this morning after returning home from work, I made sure my DVD collection had not been located and absconded. The worst part of seeing my wife rifle through my belongings is to get the impression that if kidneys could be sold on the open market she would somehow clandestinely get a blood sample so my spare organ could be typed and matched.

Once that is done, someone has to place an ad in some local paper to first attract the foragers. Here it is best to remember that while brevity being the soul of wit, it is also useful in placing expensive advertisements. It's best to state just the basics like time and location and let those searching for that huge bargain find you. But placing such a brief advertisement can also backfire when you see cars slowly drive by your house with the occupants silently appraising the items you carefully laid out while all the sane people were still in bed only to drive away without stopping.

The preliminary steps are over after several signs are made and placed at strategic locations along the roads leading to the house. Experience has taught my wife and I to place the signs out about two to three hours before the scheduled start. During our first yard sale back in 1996, I placed the signs out early Friday evening and had people knocking on the front door barely an hour later with others showing up until eleven o'clock that night. In fact, it didn't take many more yard sales before I noticed it was normal for a certain type of obnoxious person to show up at your front door the night before. Because education and proper hygiene are always suspected as a liberal conspiracies here in South Carolina, the early birds can often look like trailer park renegades on the verge of going Apocalyptic survivalist. Yeah, that's a mean statement but there is nothing like opening your front door around nine or ten o'clock at night and seeing a snaggletooth lady with yellow-tinted skin puffing on an extra-long cigarette asking if she and her friend can come inside to look at the stuff going on sale.

The next few steps all take place the day of the yard sale with all the items for sale laid out on the tables. My wife tries to organize similar items together but there is never enough table space. So you might have things like fragile Christmas decorations placed on top of a blanket laying on the ground. This seems to invite small children, who are always attracted to shiny objects, to ignore all the toys and go straight for the stuff that is highly breakable. For my wife, that is when she suddenly realizes the breakable item shouldn't have been included in the yard sale.

The worst part of an active yard sale is to realize something was left out that the homeowner or visitors might trip over. During one yard sale I left the water hose laying on the ground like a lazy python stretching from the facet next the backdoor to the center of the front yard. Of course, my wife almost tripped over the thing with her then yelling like a enraged banshee for me to roll up the damn hose. Since my mom-in-law already had me very busy carefully moving the heavy tables so they had a more appealing position, I had to break away from her to answer my loving spouse.

After rushing over to the decorative reel where the water hose should have already stored, I bent down on my knees to begin rolling it inside the container. Through some combination of being on my knees, reaching over to turn the handle, while using my other hand to guide the hose in, I threw out my back. Actually, the best description is that all the muscles in my back decided they had had enough of the bullshit and just seized up. For about ten seconds I was frozen in place unable to move, hell, even breathing during that time seemed optional.

I quite literally stayed that way until the slope of the front yard caused me to fall over. As you might expect both my wife and mom-in-law, long since worked up into a shark-like frenzy, yelled at me to get the hell off the ground and get back to work.

My yard sale experiences have taught me a little trick that I plan on using tomorrow. About the middle part of the sale, my wife will get bored and then ask me to watch the tables for what she will say is only ten to fifteen minutes leaving me alone outside. As soon as the next group arrives I plan on offering everything on a buy one item, get another item of equal value for free. It tends to clear things out rather fast, its one drawback though is that there isn't an inverse increase in the cash box, something my wife quickly notices.

The best solution for items that don't sell was inadvertently discovered at the last yard sale back in 2006. It was past noon and my wife, mom-in-law, and I were exhausted after spending all morning outside, which happened to be one of the hottest and humid days of that summer. As usual, we had a bunch of stuff left over with my wife again disappointed that she didn't make anywhere near the money expected.

A charity organization was supposed to drop by and pick up the leftover items, which we had positioned in a neat pile next the mailbox. A couple of hours later the guy driving the charity's truck knocked on our door asking where the stuff was he was supposed to pick up. We all went outside to look and it was then one of the neighbors dropped by to explain she had seen a car pull up with its occupants quickly jumping out and throwing everything inside the trunk before turning around and driving off. My wife and mom-in-law were incensed, while I couldn't help but laugh.

Mom-in-law isn't with us this time and yes, part of me is weighing the option of figuring out a way to leave all the crap alone for a few minutes while my wife is in the house. With any luck, those same people might show up again and save me a lot of hassle.