............. SERIOUSLY?!

I didn't know what else to title this post. I have no real words to succinctly frame my state of mind, my opinion on this issue.

So the Courts are meeting on Same-Sex Marriage. Again.
A-
-fucking-
-gain.

OK, I don't understand this. Here are my issues:
1) "Marriage" is a union given religious sanction. To be "married" is to be joined in the eyes of the church. If a religion rules that you may not be married to someone of the same sex, then that's that. I don't give a fuck. If Church A says "no", but Church B says "yes", then you may be married in Church B, but NOT Church A. Simple as that.
2) Don't we have something called... what is it.... SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE?! Why the FUCK is the fucking GOVERNMENT deciding what CHURCHES may or may not do?!??!?!??!?!!! Negative. If the Church decides that men may marry donkeys, but the Government doesn't hold that as legal, then go right ahead; marry that donkey and the man. Inside of that church, that's sanctioned. Step outside the doors of that church, and you have *no* legal sanction; you don't get to file joint taxes, you don't get whatever other things the Government allows for most unified couples, because it doesn't recognize your union. Vice versa: If the Government recognizes your same-sex union, WHICH IT SHOULD, then that's fine; you get to file the joint taxes and raise children and be recognized by the State as a unified couple. However, go into a church, and you are no longer recognized. The Church is under NO OBLIGATION to recognize you, and the Government CAN'T FORCE IT TO.

So, Civil Unions are FINE. The Government has NO RIGHT to declare whether or not someone may marry another person. If the Government gave Person A a tax break for wearing a shirt, it can't refuse the same break to Person B for wearing the wrong color shirt. The Law in the United States is supposed to protect its citizens and allow for their pursuit of Liberty and the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.
I'm sorry, but gay people should NOT be "married". They can live together, and be unified under the Law, and thereby get all the rights and allowances and privileges of heterosexual couples; however, they CAN NOT BE MARRIED. Remember Problem #1? Yeah; "marriage" is a union UNDER THE CHURCH. The CHURCH decides who may or may not be married. Saying that the Government should *make* the Church marry people whom the Church doesn't believe should be married is like... like telling the Catholic Church to marry Wiccans! FUCK NO. If you don't believe that the Bible *does* condemn homosexuality (which it very much does, BTW) then start your own fucking Church. Don't demand that the ancient established religions rectify the teachings they've gone by for a few thousand years to recognize what you believe is right. You join a religion because you believe what it says; if you don't believe it, then you don't join that church.

..... Seriously, I can't say this enough:
MARRIAGE IS A RELIGIOUS SANCTION.
THE GOVERNMENT HAS NO SAY OVER WHAT THE CHURCH DOES (so long as it doesn't interfere with the Government or cause harm to its citizens)
I don't understand why this is a fucking issue. Do gay people just want to say that they are "married"? Is that actually different from a "union"? Call it whatever the fuck you want; the fact is that you can't be "married", because to be "married" you HAVE to go through the Church, and the Church believes that gay people are evil and wrong. You should be allowed to have a Civil Union.
Heterosexual couples get a marriage license, and are recognized officially by the Law as married; going to a Church and being wed by a priest/pastor/whatever doesn't make you "married" legally. You have to go through the two systems separately. So gay couples should be allowed to be joined legally; they just don't have to use the Church.

OK, listen; the Church is actually right about one thing: They Bible DOES condemn homosexuality. Several times. The Church is absolutely right about denying homosexuality as true love, and declaring it instead a perversion and a sin; in the Bible, it says so, and assuming that the Bible is absolutely true, then homosexuality is wrong. (I don't believe that the Bible is without flaws; I mean, *come*on*- *humans* wrote it!)
Pastors who decide to defy the Church's teachings and marry gay people shouldn't do that. If you believe that the Church is wrong, take it up with the Church, but you are in NO position to act outside of official authority. If I were in Afghanistan and said, "You know what, this war is totally wrong; we shouldn't be fighting here. Let's make peace!" and went outside the wire, laid down my rifle, and gave the Taliban maps and money and supplies, I'd be branded a traitor and probably shot. Several times. And rightly so; I'm acting as a United States Marine, doing something outside of the United States' policy, with detrimental effects to the United States' efforts. Pastors who marry gay people *are* acting outside of the Church's allowance, without official go-ahead, and should be removed from their positions within the Church for doing so.

STOP BEING CONFUSED AND FUCKING THINK.
The Church gets to decide what it will allow. The United States can't go to Great Britain and demand that it meet its emissions standards and change their road signs to match the ones in the USA; they're separate heads of power. Likewise, the Government has NO SAY in what the Church does, and the Church has NO SAY in what the Government does.

I..... seriously, just...... FUCK. I don't know what else to fucking say! I want to say *something*, but I don't know what to... seriously, this pisses me off. Not because I have a personal stake in this matter; I'm heterosexual, and I'm not about to hop fences. But it really, really angers me when people keep saying STUPID SHIT and arguing about this without actually thinking about what's going on. Heterosexual Bible-belt conservatives think that gay people are coming to destroy marriage and interfere with their Churches; liberal free-spirit pussies think that the conservatives are gun-waving lunatics who can't cope with change and hate gay people for no reason other than their homosexuality.
OK, parts of that are true, but overall it just isn't.
Christians are failing to realize that the Government of the United States isn't acting under the Bible's teachings; they need to let it go. Just because the Government passes a law doesn't mean you have to *believe* in it, it doesn't change what you're allowed to preach SO FAR AS THE BIBLE GOES. You can't tell your congregation to lynch the gay couple downtown, because that does overstep legal boundaries; you *can* refuse an openly gay couple to make out in your pews on Sunday, because that's overstepping *your* bounds.

I don't feel 'finished'- I'm still really pissed about how STUPID people are being about this- but I don't know what else to say.

I am such a boot...

Now, most of you reading this (if any of you are reading this) are civilians, and as such have no idea what a "boot" is. 'How is he footwear?' Let me explain: in the military, a "boot" is a new guy. This is because they are fresh out of "boot camp". Guys are generally called "boots" until they have a deployment under their belt- although one deployment is no guarantee of "salty" status. (you're called "salty" when you've been in for a little while, because when you swear a lot and the sweat dries on your clothes, it leaves behind a bit of salt- so a "salty" piece of gear is something which is, literally, salty. The term applies to anything in the military which has seen time in action)

See, I have only been through one deployment; it was on my first deployment that I got injured and landed in the hospital. I got to the hospital a 19-year-old Lance Corporal. I picked up Corporal while a patient. On my deployment, I saw no combat. I was not fired upon, did not shoot back at, didn't see anyone else shoot at anything, and saw very little 'action'. I just had horrible luck, and got blown back to the United States less than a month early.
So, I have not really been an NCO in the 'Fleet'. (NCO = Non-Commissioned Officer; 'the Fleet' = the Fleet Marine Corps; the majority of the Marine Corps, not in training, not in MOS School) As such, I often feel like I haven't earned my rank, and I'm not sure how to wear it sometimes. NCO's are the real leaders in the Corps; they are the small-unit leadership. E1 to E3 are the legwork; E6 to E9 make the decisions. E4 and E5 are NCO's, and it falls on them to make sure that the decisions made by the Staff NCO's, E6-E9, are completed by the lower Enlisted members. As such, they are generally the busiest, most-stressed people in the Marine Corps: any mistakes made by the E1-E3 fall on their shoulders, as the responsible party, and any failure to complete the orders falls on them as well. They generally sleep less, work more, and they are the ones who make things *happen*.
And I haven't been an NCO in the Fleet. I've only been an NCO in the hospital. I went from being a LCPL, following the orders I was given, to suddenly being the guy who's supposed to give orders; and I don't feel ready. If, right now, my leg grew back and my nerves healed and I was dropped in front of a platoon and told to lead them, I think I would be able to manage, but not easily. I would second-guess myself at every turn, something you can't do as a leader.

And beyond that, I'm a boot.
Sure, I have a deployment under my belt- one deployment. One, to an area with *very* little to *no* combat going on. I did jack. Shit. For six months. I feel like I didn't do my job. Well, no; I did my job. But then, the guy who sits in an office and never deploys does his job as a boot Admin clerk. I did my job as a Radio Operator; I did my *job*, but I didn't accomplish anything. I didn't win anything, didn't kill anything, didn't go anywhere, didn't do much at all. I was just supporting the other guys who were out there... not really doing anything.

This comes to a head tonight because I just had a great talk with a guy I sort-of know who's here- another Wounded Warrior. He's a Scout Sniper (translation: badass stone-cold killer MARINE) who's done *three* deployments. And it was really good to talk to him; made me remember what it was like, hanging with my boys after work, being a *Marine*. I miss that. I don't miss all the rigamarole and anal shit we had to do, but I miss being with my guys in the field.
So, I'm talking to this guy, and I'm feeling all over again just how much this sucks. He's had a full year more than me in the Marine Corps (we graduated High School the same year, but he went straight to Boot Camp; I went to college for a year) and he's had three deployments to do his job. He's done his job; he knew what he was there to do. When you're in combat, sure, you might think, "Why am I killing this guy?" but when you're there, and there's no one there to kill, but you're standing there with a rifle and a few thousand dollars' worth of gear on your body, all designed to save you and kill them, you ask yourself: "Why the fuck am I here?"

So, I'm a Corporal with a Combat Action Ribbon and a full deployment under my belt and 2 1/2 years in the Corps (hit my 1-year mark in Afghanistan, and my 2-year mark in the hospital...) and I haven't seen combat, haven't had to shoot anyone, have never been shot at, haven't seen anyone die, haven't known anyone who died in combat........
So I ask myself, constantly: Why am I here? What did this accomplish? What was the point? What did I do? I'm supposed to be a leader, but I knew PFC's with more *combat* experience than I have today. I don't like this.
I enlisted in the Marine Corps- specifically the Marine Corps- because I wanted to go into combat. I wanted to see, hear, feel, learn about, experience, and understand to some extent what people go through when they gace combat. I wanted to know what vets stare at that's 1,000 yards away. I want to know what it is about combat that you can't explain to someone who has never been there.
Instead, I got pushed through a whole deployment without any combat. I made NCO and still don't have the experience to back it up. I feel like a fraud most of the time, and I really don't like it.

Pain. (Again? Yes, again- it's still here)

I don't really like writing about my pain. I feel like I'm whining, or fishing for sympathy. But then, since I'm not really expecting anyone to read this, maybe I'm not really...
Plus, while I don't really like writing about it, I *really* don't like *having* the pain. And when it's been a while since I've written, and I go for a sort of stream-of-consciousness, it tends to bubble to the surface.

It's hard to deal with.
The pain isn't excruciating in and of itself. In hospitals, they use a "0-10" pain scale; if you go to a provider with complaint about pain, they'll always ask you where it falls on that scale. I hate the scale, because they say "0 is 'no pain', and 10 is 'the worst pain you can imagine'." Well, the worst pain I can imagine.... Okay, imagine if your entire body spontaneously combusted at the same moment you swallowed a mouthful of hydrochloric acid; take a snapshot of the exact moment the pain first hits your brain, before any of the nerve endings have had time to dissolve or burn away. *That* is about the worst pain I can imagine.
But whenever they ask me, and I say, "Um, let's say... 3?" they, subconsciously or consciously, dismiss it somewhat. So I've had to adjust what I say, because when they say "the worst pain you can imagine," they don't really mean it. They mean, "the worst pain you can imagine, within normal reason." Maybe breaking a leg. (I've never broken my leg- oh, wait, I did, but I don't remember what it felt like- so I don't know what that's really like) So I say "Um... maybe a 4?" while clenching my teeth and furiously massaging my leg, and they look at me funny.

But honestly, it's not the pain in itself. I've suffered worse pain than this. A momentary snapshot at the peak of a bad surge of the nerve pain isn't as bad as a snapshot of several other moments in my life. This, I can deal with.
What's hard to deal with- and I mean: *HARD* to deal with- is having it constantly. Knowing that, if you sit down with the intention of relaxing and letting your stress just melt away, you're only going to be able to do part of that: you can sit down, but relax? Yeah. Fucking. Right. Not happening, bitch, because this? This is motherfucking *game*time*!
So you sit down, and just when you're easing into the chair, *BAM*!! And you jerk and hold your leg and your body seizes up, and you rub and massage it, and you hiss and curse and bite down and screw your eyes up and can't really talk for a moment.
Nerve pain doesn't relate to "real" pain. At least, what I have doesn't- I have reason to believe that this isn't what most people experience. Not because I think I'm special; just because I can't imagine people really going through a normal day with this pain and not doing what I do every so often: seize up, freeze, tense, and wait for it to pass before trying to do anything.
When I lie in bed now, I lie in a figure-4 position; my right leg is sideways, and bent at the knee so that my foot rests on my residual left leg below its knee. I do this because with that foot, I constantly massage and rub my leg. It doesn't make any goddamn bit of a fucking difference, but it makes me feel like I'm doing something. Just like hiding under your blanket doesn't make you safe, but it makes you *feel* safe. Except that in this case, you're stubbornly clutching the blankets around your head even as the monster drags your weak ass out and eats you, piece by piece, leisurely. Because rubbing doesn't help. It doesn't. Fucking. Help.=

Often, when you have a highly uncomfortable pain- like this nerve pain- just some kind of crawly, tingling, sharp pain- you tend to tense something unrelated. You flex and clench something repeatedly- for most people, it's their fingers. You grip something tightly; you flex your hands open and closed. Random things that react because your body is tense. For me, with this pain- I've never done this before, but now I do- I flex my toes. I mean, my whole body will react if it's a bad surge of pain, but my foot is constantly working. I might not visually react, might not clench my teeth and ball up and grip my leg like I do when it's bad, but I'm still getting pain, and my body wants to react to it somehow. Well, since I'm usually wearing a shoe and whatever healthcare provider or family member or friend or whomever can't see inside of my shoes, I tend to flex my right foot. Specifically, I cross my big toe over the second toe and bear down, usually making the big toe slide over it until the finger kind of flicks out like a spring.
Okay, here's an better description you might be able to understand: You know when you get some uncomfortable pain, and your toes curl? Pain, pleasure, horrible noises, etc.; your toes curl. My toes curl and flex and strain while this pain crawls through my leg. And my big toe tends to curl on top of the second toe. That's all.
So, since I have this pain constantly, I do that a LOT. And recently, it was an issue, because I did it so much that I literally created a blister on the top of my second toe. I didn't notice the blister until it hurt because I'd opened it by curling my toes again and again and again.... So I had a raw, open, circular patch of skin on my toe for a few days. (I just noticed yesterday that it has closed)

It's hard to know that it's going to hurt. It's hard to go through day after day of this. Just constantly this weird, crawling, electric-shock-cum-hand-fallen-asleep-tingling stabbing into your leg. I keep saying "crawling" to describe it- because that's kind of what it feels like. Picture a movie where there are some nasty arachnid things; that clicking/skittering noise they make when they walk? Yeah; picture that as a physical sensation, instead of an audible sound. That, in electric-shock/tingling/stabbing. It's.... 'icky' and unpleasant. And it fucking sucks.

Constantly.
When your alarm goes off, you roll over, turn it off, and it hits you.
When you get dressed, it bugs you.
While you shave and brush your teeth, it keeps interrupting.
Eating breakfast with breaks every so often as it surges randomly, and you can't keep eating with both hands clenching your leg. (again, not because it helps- because you want it to help)
Sitting down, playing a video game, just trying to relax and let the day's stress drain away... while pausing the game a few times because you can't focus through the pain; your fingers are tense and jerky because your whole body is tense.

I don't know why it doesn't stop me from driving. I've had small surges hit while I'm driving, but never so bad that I couldn't keep driving relatively easily, and they happen less often. For a while, I thought that it must just be that I have to distract myself; I have to be so engaged in something that my mind isn't free to make up some pain. But no, because I can't find anything which will consistently do that: video games, movies, TV shows, books, card games, board games, studying, working out, walking, lying still, meditation, controlled breathing, audio "hypnosis" tracks, those tracks in conjunction with controlled breathing techniques........ Nope.

It's not something I can push through. This isn't normal pain. Normal pain you can ignore. You *can* get through pain. If it's just pain, not a message that something is wrong, you can keep going. If, for instance, your leg just hurts, you can run on it. If the pain in your leg is telling you that it's broken, or that you tore your ACL, then no, you can't really ignore it and keep going. Well, you kind of can, but it's better not to.
I can't claim to be immune to pain, but I think I can tell the difference. Ten years of playing soccer, doing Tae Kwon Do for four years, going through Boot Camp and MCT, spending time around Marines as a Marine; I think I can tell when I'm *hurt*, vs. when I'm *injured*.
This, I can't ignore. It doesn't matter what I'm doing- it's not like I can take weight off of it and it will stop, like you would with a sprained ankle. It doesn't change. There isn't anything I know of which stops it.

Okay, I think I've whined enough. I could keep writing for an hour or so, but this pain hasn't changed, and I'm tired of just sitting here while my legs dance and flex and my toes curl and I try really hard to just keep typing.
Fuck.
This.
Shit.
Goddamn, I'm tired of this.

Snow! *CRASH*

This says it all: 

 

 Except that I'm not sure it's just Maryland drivers who feel this way. I don't have a lot of experience driving outside of Maryland or Delaware, but from what I can tell, people are just fucking stupid.

I said in a post a while ago that there should be a mandatory driver's test to renew your license. I think it should be every 5 years, when you renew, until you hit age 50, at which point it should be every other year. Or maybe every year.

But even leaving aside old people, who are just dangerous most of the time they're behind the wheel, almost ALL drivers are idiots. I've seen this more and more being near DC, although I had a sense of it before: people have NO idea how to drive in any sort of inclement weather. I clearly remember being in Delaware (a hotbed for truly awful drivers) and watching cars literally slide through intersections- in the rain. Not snow and ice, just steady rain.

Now, me, I can tolerate dangerously-fast driving if the driver knows what they're doing. Knowing what is going on around you and being mindful of other traffic is vital at any speed, in any situation. Driving intelligently is paramount to driving safely- for all parties involved, both the driver and other drivers around them. If you're doing 85 down a small road, but I'm confident in your abilities and if you're comfortable, I'm usually OK. However, too many people *think* that they're okay, and that everyone else on the road is an idiot, and they're right. (no matter what they're doing) I have been in a car several times while someone yells about some idiot driver pulling some stupid maneuver in front of them, and then watched them do the same thing- or something similar, or much more dangerous- without batting an eye.

Yes, you're probably thinking I'm being very hypocritical. However, I know that I'm not perfect. I pay attention. I try to keep out of the way of other drivers, stick to what I know, and get through every drive without having a horn blown at me. I don't always succeed, but we're human (i.e. horribly flawed) and things happen. I try very, very hard not to be dangerous on the road, to make allowances for weather and especially for other drivers and their horrific habits.

So now, back to everyone else:

Simple things which would make the road so much safer are just ignored. Turn signals make everything so much simpler and safer. If you signal your intent to everyone who can see you before moving, and you don't leave the signal on for an unnecessary amount of time, then people *know* what you're trying to do, and they can give you space.

That's another thing: I say I make allowances for others. That means that when someone is in an unexpected "Exit Only" or "Turn Only" lane and they're trying to merge into your lane, let them. If people stopped thinking of ways that *they* can feel like they're moving faster, and instead focused on making the *traffic* move smoothly, they would end up getting to their destination more easily. When the signs say, "Lane ends, 500 feet", MERGE. It's not that complicated! It's telling you ahead of time that you HAVE to get into the other lane- so DO IT. But no; everyone stays in the lane until it ends, and then they jam themselves into the moving traffic, causing people to tap their brakes, which causes the people behind them to press their brakes, and suddenly traffic isn't moving. Do things you're supposed to do; there is a reason why they are thus.

And weather, to get back to the beginning of this post: When it's raining, all you have to do is start braking earlier; don't cut turns so sharply; slow down and smooth things out. That's all. You don't need to be paranoid and act like there are sheets of ice all over the blacktop. Calm the fuck down, and drive intelligently.

Maybe it's just asking too much for people to be smart. You don't have to be a fucking Nobel Laureate; just don't be so goddamned stupid! It's not hard; just THINK before you do things.

Our future. (or "Our death"; maybe the same thing)

Let’s think, for a moment, about some of the scientific ‘endgames’ in mind for this planet:

1.                We’ve destroyed this world’s ecosystem, and it cannot sustain us.

2.                We’ve nuked the shit out of the planet, and we can’t live here anymore.

3.                Population is too high, and we are out of room for everyone, and we are out of resources to eat/build with.

Now, the answers I always hear to these conundrums:

1.                We build gigantic spaceships, and either do circles in space until the Earth rebuilds itself, or move the entire population of Earth to some new planet(s)!

2.                Some people escape into space and form new colonies and survive!

3.                We build spaceships and start building colonies on asteroids and planets, and use them to both sustain life on Earth and to hold our overflow population!

No matter what apocalypse comes, for whatever reason the Earth is rendered uninhabitable, we seem to always fall back on space travel. Space is our safety valve.

Now, I’ll admit that I AM NOT AN EXPERT in any spacecraft technologies; I have no professional position from which to lecture on this subject. I’m simply speaking from what I think is current available technology.

So, let’s think about this, this idea that we’ll all hop on spacecraft and zoom away to a new planet which is perfect for us. Or maybe it’s not so perfect, but we overcome it with our incredible technology: terraforming to shape the environment to one hospitable, or at least habitable, to us; upright walking machine-gun-armed exoskeletons to protect us from the vicious wildlife; some way to extract pure water from rocks; etc. Totally plausible, right?

Um, how close have any such giant exoskeletons actually come to fruition? I believe that the hilarious failure videos Tony Stark showed in ‘Ironman II’ were more accurate as to our current technology than the behemoths in ‘Avatar’. I don’t believe we have yet discovered a way to make pure, or even potable, water from… well, from “not water”. And terraforming? It’s a great idea, and I’m sure there are people who have hypotheses about how it could actually be done and how it would work, but a hypotheses does exactly jack shit for you when you’re sitting on a black, airless rock, starving, freezing cold- or literally burning hot- and running out of the bottled water and PB&J in your backpack.

Oh, I’m sorry; is this a little unfair? After all, with the way technology is progressing these days, those will all surely be attainable someday, right? I do believe that if our technological prowess continues to advance with such speed indefinitely, terraforming entire planets and making food and water from raw waste materials will be not only possible, but easily accomplished- someday. The problem is that we don’t need it “someday”; we need it tomorrow.

I constantly hear new theories postulating how and when the world will end. A third of responses to the claims are proclaiming them outlandish, saying that they’re totally unrealistic, and that “such-and-such” proves them wrong. (“such-and-such” often being another theory like the one they’re declaiming) A second third are calmly saying, “yeah, that’s about right- we’re all going to die soon!” And then there’s the last group, who are the half-optimistic thinkers- the people who say that, yes, the world will end if we continue as-is, but that the technology which is coming ‘soon’ will make that particular doomsday irrelevant and easily avoidable.

But we keep getting closer to the day they’re predicting to be “the end”, and we keep saying that we have revolutionary, world-saving tech coming soon. Bitch, ever seen “Space Odyssey 2001”?! Okay, so I haven’t, but I know that it’s about a bunch of people in a futuristic spaceship, flying through space, with a fully-functional and sentient AI computer running the fucking ship. Oh, that’s pretty common tech these days, right?

To quote Leo McGarry (from “The West Wing”): Where’s my jetpack? My colonies on the moon?!”

We, as a species, as a society, are not close enough to rationalize, to reasonably expect, an exodus to the stars. And if we aren’t going to run away to the safe arms of space, (can you see the sarcasm dripping from that sentence?) we should probably get our lazy asses moving on some stop-gap measures, some way(s) to preserve our life here. If it sucks, like population limits and the requirement to have a job applicable to sustaining life (farmer, industrial worker, etc), then so be it. I’m sorry, but either we die as a species, or people get the fuck over having their wittle feewings hurt!

OK, I’m done. For now.