Plebe's Creed

There is a very well written piece of Army hooah-ness called the Soldier's Creed. It sums up the awesomeness of the profession, and it is one of my favorite bits of info I have memorized. It goes as follows:

I am an American Soldier.

I am a warrior and a member of a team.

I serve the people of the United States and live the Army values.

I will always place the mission first.

I will never accept defeat.

I will never quit.

I will never leave a fallen comrade.

I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough,

Trained and proficeant in my warrior tasks and drills.

I always maintain my arms, my equipment and myself.

I am an expert and I am a professional.

I stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy the enemies of the United States of America in close combat.

I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life.

I am an American Soldier.

That is pretty awesome, and I mean no disrespect towards it, but I felt that as plebes at the United States Military Academy, we needed our own version, sort of an addendum serving in addition to the Soldier's Creed: the Plebe's Creed.

As follows:

I am a West Point plebe.
I am a student and a member of my class.

I serve the students of the Corps of Cadets and live a rather strange life.
I will always place the detail first.
I will never accept failure.
I will never get enough sleep.
I will never leave a fallen dessert.
I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough.
Trained and proficient in my student tasks and drills.
I stand ready to wake up, study, and complete the homework of the dean in ESP.
I am a guardian of the interior on Saturday nights.
I am a West Point plebe.

Not what your country can do for you...

So today is Saturday, and we had a pretty big inspection, which was rude because I wanted to sleep. I slept in anyway till shortly before breakfast formation, but whatever.

In the boring time that is the inspection, there is very little to do, so between reading a book for English class (crazy, I know) and staring blankly at the beige walls that provide a very nice relief from the gray environment I live in, I decided to read the news.

One of the articles, from the San Diego Union-Tribune, was a big rant about how angry some Marines were about not being able to use their military ID cards as valid proof of drinking age in the state of California.
I guess that's kind of legit, but then the writer went on a tangent about how horrible it is that these young men could go to war but not get a drink.

The mayor called that ironic.
Don't get me started on how much that doesn't make sense.

It's the laws and the constitution that those of the armed forces (and cadets like myself of the kinda-but-not-really armed forces) signed up to protect.

Silly people, tricks are for prostitutes.

Interesting Development

Look at me go... updating and things like that. I wonder how long this will last.

Part of me wasn't sure if I should even rant about the following topics since they're mainly controversial or political in nature, but I came to a couple realizations:

1) This isn't exactly a widely read website.
2) It's my blog, so I can say what I want! Freedom of speech, darnit!

So here... we... go.

Let me start off with saying that being a member of the military... sort of... that whoever the Commander in Chief is, he's my boss, and it's my job to support what he's doing and the whole "serving the people of the United States" and defending the constitution concept, and I'm all for that.

Now that I've declared where I stand (even though I'm sitting at the moment,) I can rant with no, or at least few, caveats.

I've been on Facebook a lot because I have no life to speak of, and I am friends with a person who always has a status about how amazing it is that Barrack Obama was elected because he's black. Last I saw her status was something to the effect of "counting down the days until a black man is president."
My roommate was watching the news and there was a whole thing about how it was so fantastic that there was going to be a black president.
I may sound a tad bit racist, but I promise, I'm going somewhere with this.

Now I may be completely unfounded in saying this, especially because my exposure to the outside world is rather limited, but I think that as great as it is that our country has elected a black guy to the head of the nation, it would be about a million and a half times more important if there was no big news about the race of the candidate.
When everyone, of all races, can finally talk about how it's so great that Obama was elected because of his merits as opposed to the color of his skin, that will be a milestone worth ranting and raving about.

In current times, who really cares if the candidate is an African-American? As far as I'm concerned (and I know that means relatively little,) the African part isn't necessary at all!
When I talk about who I am, I am an American. That's it. I don't go around ranting about my German-American pride, or how I'm a proud Dutch, French, English, Scottish, Irish, or any other kind of American.
I'm simply an American.
I can't help but wonder what the difference is.

I think I'll stop there for now.

Grammar Mini-Rant

Woah! Two posts in as many days! Crazy, I know.

I've ranted about grammar before, and Lord knows that I make many mistakes when I'm writing, but I can at least say that I hit the spell check before I post things, and sometimes even re-read things to make sure I don't sound like a complete and total moron.

Evidently not many people do...

I was reading the news today because I'm a good little plebe, and I noticed a lot of typos in news articles.
Oh well.
Not really going anywhere with that.

Acronyms and abbreviations are great, don't get me wrong. I use them all the time in conversation but I make sure I know what they mean.
Lets take "ttyl" for example.
One of the more common acronyms on the interwebs, it stands for "talk to you later." I explained that because evidently that is not common knowledge.
Today someone told me "ill ttyl to you later" and I wasn't really sure how to respond...
Part of me wanted to call them out on their stupidity, and part of me kind of wondered if she really was that stupid as to actually go around telling people she would "talk to you later to you later."

I had another thought.
And I lost it.
I feel that this post is somewhat less for that.
Life goes on.


HAHA!
Irony.
My favorite.
I hit "post" before I used the spell check.
Outstanding.

The Spirit and Other Miniature Spurts

While I can assure you that this little piece of ambiguous frustration will not have the eloquence of any of Miguel's rants, I still feel the need to type with my angry face. Grr (The noise my angry face makes [Yes, my angry face makes a noise.])

Where to start.... The movie The Spirit...

Well starting at the beginning... It started with cats.
What's up with that?
We joked that the cats were a bad sign.
Sadly we weren't joking.

Next came the random soliloquies.
I can understand a random aside, even Shakespeare used them, but he did something that the writer of this movie did not do: He made sure that they were appropriate for the situation. My favorite was when the protagonist was riding an elevator, and he was giving an excellent monologue to a villain that wasn't even present!

Towards the end we were shown the mentally-questionable detective with an assault rifle with about ninety-seven flashlights on it. I hope that was meant to be funny.
Just before the marvelous display of arms was the swarm of 50s-era police cars supported by about two platoons of Apache attack helicopters... Maybe I'm the only one who has a problem with that....

My favorite The Spirit comment...
A character's name was "Sand Serif" unless my ears deceive me. I am convinced the characters all called her Sans Serif.
Had a new character introduced herself as "Times New Roman" I am fairly sure I would have caused damage to the theatre...

All of my remaining comments today can be surmised in one phrase...

"Emo Safari"

And one picture...