My "Funny" Army Stuff Post

Pretend You're In Iraq

Want to pretend that your are deployed to Iraq? Here is a list of things you can do right in your own home:

Sleep on a cot in the garage.

Replace the garage door with a curtain.

Six hours after you go to sleep, have your wife or girlfriend whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble, "Sorry, wrong cot."

Renovate your bathroom. Hang a green plastic sheet down from the middle of your bathtub and move the showerhead down to chest level. Keep four inches of soapy cold water on the floor.

Stop cleaning the toilet and pee everywhere but in the toilet itself. For a more realistic deployed bathroom experience, stop using your bathroom and use a neighbor's. Choose a neighbor who lives at least a quarter mile away.

When you take showers, wear flip-flops and keep the lights off.

Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and dump dirt on your head. (OK, for those of you who don't get this one - the idea is to simulate the effects of nearby artillery And the outgoing is even louder then the incoming!)

Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it on "HIGH" for that tactical generator smell.

Don't watch TV except for movies in the middle of the night. Have your family vote on which movie to watch and then show a different one.

Leave a lawnmower running in your living room 24 hours a day for proper noise level.

Have the paperboy give you a haircut.

Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store up garbage in the other side of your bathtub.

Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a saltine cracker.

Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your food cabinets or refrigerator. Then serve some kind of meat in an unidentifiable sauce poured over noodles. Do this for every meal.

Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it goes off, jump out of bed and get to the shower as fast as you can. Simulate there is no hot water by running out into your yard and breaking out the garden hose.

Once a month, take every major appliance completely apart and put it back together again.

Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for five or six hours before drinking.

Invite at least 185 people you don't really like because of their strange hygiene habits to come and visit for a couple of months. Exchange clothes with them.

Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.

Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of your front and back doors so that you either trip over the threshold or hit your head on the sill every time you pass through one of them.

Keep a roll of toilet paper on your night stand and bring it to the bathroom with you. And bring your gun and a flashlight.

Announce to your family that they have mail, have them report to you as you stand outside your open garage door after supper and then say, "Sorry, it's for the other Smith."

Wash only 15 items of laundry per week. Roll up the semi-wet clean clothes in a ball. Place them in a cloth sack in the corner of the garage where the cat pees. After a week, unroll them and without ironing or removing the mildew, proudly wear them to professional meetings and family gatherings. Pretend you don't know what you look or smell like. Enthusiastically repeat the process for another week.

Go to the worst crime-infested place you can find, go heavily armed, wearing a flak jacket and a Kevlar helmet. Set up shop in a tent in a vacant lot. Announce to the residents that you are there to help them.

Eat a single M&M every Sunday and convince yourself it's for Malaria.

Demand each family member be limited to 10 minutes per week for a morale phone call. Enforce this with your teenage daughter.

Shoot a few bullet holes in the walls of your home for proper ambiance.

Sandbag the floor of your car to protect from mine blasts and fragmentation.

While traveling down roads in your car, stop at each overpass and culvert and inspect them for remotely detonated explosives before proceeding.

Fire off 50 cherry bombs simultaneously in your driveway at 3:00 a. m. When startled neighbors appear, tell them all is well, you are just registering mortars. Tell them plastic will make an acceptable substitute for their shattered windows.

Drink your milk and sodas warm.

Spread gravel throughout your house and yard.

Make your children clear their Super Soakers in a clearing barrel you placed outside the front door before they come in.

Make your family dig a survivability position with overhead cover in the backyard. Complain that the 4x4s are not 8 inches on center and make them rebuild it.

When your 5-year-old asks for a stick of gum, have him find the exact stick and flavor he wants on the Internet and print out the web page. Type up a Form 9 and staple the web page to the back. Submit the paperwork to your spouse for processing. After two weeks, give your son the gum.

Wait for the coldest/ hottest day of the year and announce to your family that there will be no heat/air conditioning that day so you can perform much needed maintenance on the heater/ air conditioner. Tell them you are doing this so they won't get cold/ hot.

Just when you think you're ready to resume a normal life, order yourself to repeat this process for another six months to simulate the next deployment you've been ordered to support.





Things To Pack In Your Rucksack If Your Going To Iraq
(written by Stryker soldier blogger CB, on his blog: My War: Fear and Loathing In Iraq http://cbftw.blogspot.com)

Here is a list of things to bring with you if you ever find yourself being slapped in face with deployment orders to go to lovely Iraq:

SLINGSHOT: These are great when non-lethal force is needed. Like when they start throwing rocks and bricks at you. Tons of stray dogs out here with all kinds of crazy diseases, and they all love to chase and bark at American soldiers and give away your position. Slingshots are a good way to get them to move out and shut the fuck up.

iPOD Or Any MP3 PLAYER: Armed Forces Radio out here sucks ass. CD's are too bulky to carry around, and they get scuffed up and break easily, The ipod I have (I think it's a 30 gig-er) has 934 hours of music on it, that's 4,765 songs, and I put everything on it, so I never get bored of my music. Everything from Slayer to Miles Davis to Minor Threat to PJ Harvey to Sinatra to Nirvana to Madonna...

FLYSWATTER: The flies out here are vicious. They love to attack your face. BUGSPRAY: I don't know how many times out here, I had to lay down in a firing position in some disease/insect infested junkyard, for hours, and hours getting eaten up alive by bugs. Get the heavy duty stuff. The lotions and sprays. Some soldiers actually put dog collars around their ankles. Make sure it doesn't touch your skin, it'll fuck your shit up. (I myself don't use em)

HAND SANITIZER: All sorts of Koodies out here. Lots of soldiers come down with dysentery (chronic diarrhea) You get dysentery from not washing your hands after you take a shit. Its good to always use hand sanitizer before you eat, that way you don't get the shits.

CAFFINE/SLEEPING PILLS: Caffeine Pills are good to take if you're pulling an all night OP and you have to stay awake. When you need something stronger then caffeine pills, try a couple Ripped Fuels (You can get Ripped Fuel at GNC) Ripped Fuels will make your heart explode though. Not recommended. Sleeping Pills are good to take when you need to get some sleep, but you cant. Your sleep pattern gets all fucked up out here because you're always doing something at all hours of the day, so you sleep when you can. I myself have developed a slight case of insomnia out here.

MINI DVD PLAYER: Movies are a great way to pass the time here. You can buy bootlegged DVD's off the Iraqis out here for 2 to 4 bucks a pop. Buy the good DVD players, the cheap ones break after the 4th movie you watch (Trust me, I've been through THREE dvd players out here, because I insist on buying the cheapest one they have at the PX, and they always break down during the movie you really, really want to watch. Note: always keep the receipt)

MAGAZINES: Subscribe to as many magazines as possible before your get here. That way your guaranteed some mail at mail call, and mags are cool to read when your just chillin or taking a dump in the latrine.

AMAZON.COM ACCOUNT: I'm embarrassed about the amount of money I've spent out here on books I bought online on amazon.

DIGITAL CAMERA: Lots of cool things to take pictures of out here. Lots of ancient history here. The Digital camera I have (Pentax Optio) fits inside a pack of cigarettes, and it's been through hell so far and it hasn't broken, yet. I like to play National Geographic photographer sometimes when we go out.

LAPTOP COMPUTER: When all the computers are all hogged up at the Internet caf‚, you can just hook your laptop up and your good to go. Lots of people burn their photos onto CDR's out here on their laptops. Make sure yours plays DVD's and can burn CDR's. Get a Dell dude, they ship out here, and they're somewhat cheap and they have all the gadgets and accessories you need.

RHINO GPS: These are good to have, so that way when you find a IED or a weapons cache you can get the grid and call it in to higher. A lot of people here have Rhino's but they're like 375 bucks. I don't have one, nor do I need one, but a lot of guys swear by them.

A LITTLE BIT OF LUCK: Because youre going to need it here. posted by CBFTW at 12:49 PM