Ask a Moron

I’ve been getting a lot of hits from a lot of places. Given that the purpose of this moronblog is to help “translate” the Army into something civilians can understand, what are your questions? Yeah, you, in the back row! Ask away.

19 thoughts on “Ask a Moron”

  1. One of my Drill Sergeants was very fond of saying, “That’s as ate up as a soup sandwich” And I always wondered (but never asked) what the #@$% is a soup sandwich and why sould anyone eat it?

  2. It’s kinda like a “football bat”, an idea so utterly bad on its face that no one but an idiot would try it. Don’t feel to bad about not getting it. There were lots of things my Drills said that I didn’t make sense of for a long time.

    Back in 85, the kinder, gentler basic training was just getting started. Drills could no longer curse at recruits. I had one that kept calling us “Igmo.” It took me nearly the whole cycle to figure out that was shorthand for “Ignorant MotherF**ker.”

  5. Do you have a box of gird squares? Do you know where a PRC-E8 is? Could you get me some reverse lights for a Humvee? Also could you find the keys to the indoor mortar range?

  9. Xbrad,
    Let me know when you find someone that good!

    BTW,
    you do not do stories like them, but if you weren’t a moron blogger I would check in every day. You are that good, but different.

    Thanks,

    V

    I regularly read 90% of your blogroll.

    I could double it with good reads. But you have good taste.

  10. Vmax, no good excuse for not blogrolling BT, just sloppiness on my part.

    There’s tons of great blogs out there that I haven’t blogrolled, including several that I read daily, but are not in the Moronosphere, or outside the scope of this blog. I try to keep the blogroll down to a manageable size.

  12. MikeD I know the soup sandwich one it’s an old saying over here. Although we don’t say ‘ate up’ which I’m guessing must be an American equivalent of ‘messed up’

    I’m sure you know what soup is and the idea of a soup sandwich is of course a myth. Imagine (or if you’re really serious make it) a soup sandwich. It’d soak through the bread run all over the place and fall part.

    So this is just a saying about something being very sloppily done or a disaster.

    Hmm so many sayings. ‘Head like a robber’s dog’ is another. A robbers dog is there to defend the robber against other dogs or angry owners. Namely the idea is the face is mangled from all the fighting. ie ugly.

    Anyway Questions sure i can think of a few.

    1) If a soldier is ordered to perform a duty which is unlawful how does the soldier deal with it ideally and in reality?

    2) Why does the military make it difficult for gays to serve the country?

    3) How difficult is is really for those that exit the military (in it’s various forms and ways) to obtain gainful employment and a comfortable life? In my father’s case in Aus the military was no real gain or loss to his blue collar living, he just returned to his previous field of work. The only other cases I know of for sure was a very screwed up guy here who was incapable of work and John who seems to have leveraged it into fairly decent contractor work.

    4) How much defence value would civilians (some of whom might be ex military) with small arms or other commonly distributed weapons be in the case of a real invasion given the attitudes and behaviours of those people.

    5) Why are women not permitted to serve as combatants (apart from law).

    6) Is the perception of say a supplies person lesser than that of a combatant? ie are the roles all respected equally?

    7) I see a great deal of snarking between military fields ie navy, army, air, marine etc. How much real respect exists between them? Do they really see their own branch as superior or is this some kind of competitive game which is overall positive?

    8) Why does the military allow soldiers to be used as guinea pigs for experiments against their will?

    9) Why is the pay level so low?

    10) Does the soldier serve their country or their chain of command?

  13. Aaron, these are all excellent questions, and pretty much what I was looking for. Forgive me if I defer answering them until tomorrow, and doing so in their own posts.

  15. Pingback: And the Moron answers… « Bring the heat, Bring the Stupid

  17. Back in 85, the kinder, gentler basic training was just getting started. Drills could no longer curse at recruits.

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHA… AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Heh. Heh heh. HA!

    No longer allowed to curse. That’s a good one. I knew exactly one Drill Sergeant who didn’t curse, and that was because he was a Baptist Minister and didn’t believe in it. Everyone else? Well, let’s just say my vocabulary expanded from Basic Training onwards.

  18. Mike, it wasn’t so much they couldn’t curse, but rather, they could not refer to us as “maggotyshitstainsthatyourmommashouldhaveabortedandsavedusboththeheartache.”

    Like many new rules, the implementation was flawed, to say the least…

  19. Generally in 92 (when I went through) if the platoon was out in the ranges, we’d be allowed to use the ‘salty’ cadences, but pretty much everywhere if you screwed up, you were anything and everything imaginable but a child of god. But now that you mention it, I don’t recall anything like R. Lee Ermey put forth in Full Metal Jacket directed at us. Never thought of it that way.

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