HAWSEPIPER READS: Marko Kloos' 'Terms of Enlistment'

Other than using too much salt, reading is the last guilty pleasure allowed me while I’m warming a thumb in the rare bit of downtime we get at work on board our big floating fuel tank. The downside to picking up an engaging book is that it can lead to bad reading discipline, resulting in me reading through much or most of my off-watch time, leading to sleep debt. On the one hand, I get to enjoy some hopefully uninterrupted time with a great book. On the other, I wake up from a short nap, groggy, and do things like pour a can of diet pepsi into my oatmeal.

  If that example sounds oddly specific, that’s because that’s exactly what I did when I stayed up too late reading Marko Kloos’  ‘Terms Of Enlistment.’

     Terms of Enlistment is a sprawling story, concisely written- It’s a military-centric sci-fi novel set in a future that sounds damn probable, following one military recruit from a favela style housing project as he wins a slot at boot camp and gets molded into a useful member of the military, though not the branch he wanted, and seeks out a place for himself in strange company while trying to adapt his dreams and desires to the reality he faces. The book is meant from the start to be a serial- as stand-alone stories go, it’s rewarding and readable and damn well written- the language and tone are suited to the situation; to me, descriptions of boot camp and the gun tech reads at times like a dispassionate report in a personnel file, and that’s exactly what makes the book a good stand-alone read- your feelings, empathy and receptiveness to the storyline evolve with the story.

… and it’s a hell of a storyline. Sprawling, as I said, and written in a linear fashion. The author has made fertile ground of the book’s world, and I’ve picked up only the most vague indications of which avenues he will explore or cast off in subsequent novels.

                Have no doubt, this is very obviously a storyline that can go somewhere, and I’ll be curious to see if Kloos can evolve the plot enough to do justice to the potential- the most significant plot twist left an odd combination of questions unanswered, and I’m hoping this will be borne out without going all Larry Niven and being hit-or-miss in the next installments.

 I’m excited to read something unique and suitable to my palate, and I like how the book contains some payoff material but overall makes me ask “where’s he going with this?” I’ll be happy to find out when the next part comes out. This book reads quickly- As I said, I burnt up a couple of off-watch periods that should have included more sleep.     You should read this. 

You can learn more at Marko Kloos' blog "The Munchkin Wrangler" here or on the sidebar. 

God Damn My Critical Thinking Skills!

HOME!   And it is wonderful. It's strange coming home to an empty house, but I rolled in at oh-dark-thirty, and didn't pick up my boy at his aunt's, so I woke to an empty house, and took immediate advantage of the solitude by eating breakfast over the sink in only my underwear while watching Fox News on mute with Ace Frehley's solo work on the speakers. And it was nice. Then I soaked my float coat (a winter coat that is also a life jacket) in Simple Green and disassembled the vacuum cleaner. My wife clogs the damn thing, and I have to periodically purge it. Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife has thick jet black hair that hangs 3/4 down her back. I swear to God she sheds. Every 3 months I pull out enough hair to weave a full set of placemats from the vacuum's innards.

I don't know why I'm sharing that. I have no tolerance for booze anymore, I guess.

       Being reunited with my boy was awesome. I picked him up from school, and when he shot out into the parking lot and saw my truck rather than his aunt's little minicar, he lit up like a Christmas tree. Big warm fuzzy all 'round.


I took the time to clean my truck and go for a quick 2 mile hike in the Blue Hills today. I fucking hate the Blue Hills. It's the largest tract of undeveloped land in eastern MA, but it's also the best homosexual meet-n-meat area in the Boston 'burbs, so there's always some friendly gentlemen about more than ready to strike up a polite conversation and engage in Desire Under The Elms, and while I don't begrudge anyone the opportunity to keep loneliness at bay, I go to the woods to get away from strangers, not get blown by them.  But I got my walk in, and tripped over a root and wrenched my already funged-up hip, causing some aggravation to my foul-weather gimp.

       Fast forward to tonight... my boy and I celebrated with dinner at a restaurant, and on the way back I stopped at a CVS and among other sundries I bought a 5-lb bag of aromatherapy-grade epsom salts. After we watched some cartoons and a little 'Duck Dynasty' he knocked off and I dropped a bunch of salt in the bath.


        So I'm sitting in the bath- I brought 2 strong beers in with me- and I'm sitting and smelling the eucalyptus smell from the salt for about 5 minutes, then it's gone, and it's gone gone, not like I habituated to the smell, it's gone. I can feel the nice emollient slickness of skin on skin when I rub my feet together, and then it hits me: this is more snake oil bullshit.


        All the Rescue Remedy, Homeopathic, Allopathic and Complementary medicine you may encounter is unified by one thing- it works only via the Placebo effect. I don't know why I didn't make that connection between Epsom salts and aches- Epsom salts isn't magic. It's magnesium sulfate, and wonderful medication that is only effective in heroic doses taken internally... as a laxative, not as a muscle relaxant.
    Well fuck, what's the point? I just wasted $4.99 and I'm pissed because I had a blind spot to a perfect example of snake oil being sold as medicine and I just caught it now here at the ass-end of my 38th year. It's a fucking placebo. All epsom salts can do is make a hypotonic solution that alters the diffusion pattern locally in my epidermis. That's it. Well, that and create a nice emollient feeling on my skin while it's wet. It doesn't do anything else. More importantly, it doesn't have magical properties, just like all the amazingly well-packaged over the counter bullshit people buy in lieu of burnt offerings to baal. I got suckered for Fi' bucks, and it was a cheap lesson at the cost.
 Next time I'm taking the Fi' bucks and buying a box o' wine to brink with me into the tub to treat my sore hip. That shit's like 40% rubbing alcohol, and that has documented medicinal properties, unlike goddamn throwing a bunch of pool chemicals in my bath.
...and this makes me sad because having had my blinders ripped off by reality, I can no longer rely on magic to make my sore leg feel better. I have to rely on a 6-pack of Bud Light Platinum. If you're aware that feel-good non-FDA-approved claims to health are full of shit, the Placebo effect is also null and void. 

 Screw it. I'm a go watch some more Duck Dynasty. Goddamn if my skin doesn't feel silky smooth though, from the 3lbs of salt I dumped in the tub.

NOW HEAR THIS

Common sense and experience are not enough, even when combined, to justify not taking the time to consider hull stress when loading a tank vessel. Seriously, they've computerized and cross-referenced cargo loading programs to measure stress, strain and the acceptable bending modulus- why in the name of Rock Hudson's stained mattress cover would you not completely and utterly master your stability program if your name is signed on the goddamed DOI and load plan?

 A former co-worker's chief mate broke his ship's back last week. This is in the third world, where they're just going to sister the broken stringers and reflag the little tanker through Belize, who doesn't worry about such things, but even so, this just cut the service life of this ancient vessel by a good 5 years.

 I've tried and failed to model a load plan where I cracked my own hull, but to do so I need to do insanely stupid things and then get holed in the bow and fill up my forepeak (the empty compartment behind the bow of a tank vessel)... and even then it would have to be a real shit sea state. Here at HAWSEPIPER's Afloat GLobal HQ/house of style, we're not quite riding on the proverbial Brick Shithouse, but it's still pretty good.

 But, all the same, let's see some examples of what I'm talking about.

This last one was a heartbreaker. The "Prestige" wasn't horribly misloaded, just old and poorly cared for. When she got her balls stove in in a storm, the resulting hull fracture was very fixable, but Europeans being Europeans, and always ready to endanger or outright kill people though both action and inaction in the name of sacred Gaia, wouldn't allow her safe harbor to make repairs, and, as a result, this.

New blogs and stuff

My seabag is packed, and I'm waiting for a tugboat to come and get me. A couple of weeks at home will set me right as rain.

  I've got a couple of new blogs for you to check out too- I've been reading these for a few months, and I'm sometimes slow to update the blogroll, but here's what's good:

CAPTAIN CAPITALISM
- is Aaron Clarey's blog- a thoughtful, clever and very thorough economist with real-world experience, Aaron isn't quite the same type of captain that you'd normally see linked here, but like a good maritime officer, you find yourself listening and nodding. Aaron's also a proponent of the Men Going Their Own Way movement- something I'm not part of but have heavy respect for.

THE RED PILL ROOM
      - is a good place to dive into the manosphere and see the growing Men's Rights movement at work. Whether you agree with it or not, the Red Pill room applies logic to situations where logic is often lacking.

THE WILDMAN PROJECT
       - is a clearinghouse of resources for men- this is where I got my eyes opened to the subtle and non-so-subtle backlash created by feminism when it gets out of control. This is a VERY thoughtful place to go and see how a supportive environment can help men be better fathers, husbands and adults.


 While I was writing I learned that I will have to wait 2 more hours for my ride to show up and get me ashore. Crapola.

March Madness: Women of Brazil (semi NSFW)

I almost forgot to drive up blog traffic put in this month's ladies from Brazil! Just a few more days and I get to see my own girl from Ipanema... Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife will be returning home at the end of the week, and I wanted to share that same feeling with everyone here- people say that the anticipation is often better than the payoff, but I say bullshit, and here's a good example of why I'm correct- thanks to everyone who reads my stuff in between these types of  posts, btb...

what I'm doing...

With 3 1/2 more watches to stand, I'll be starting the tour wrap up some time this evening after I sleep this morning/afternoon. Business-related paperwork is mostly filed- a few logbooks to annotate as the need arises, but the deskwork is hopefully about done.

          Currently about to turn over a quick cargo. Load oil at one dock, load diesel at another, then pump both to a ship this afternoon. Hopefully it's that simple.

 I'm a little peaky this morning, it being 3am and all. I stayed up too late reading Larry Correia's alt-noir book "Hard Magic" which is a real sleeper hit- I had no idea how much I'd enjoy it.

         With my wife down in South America, I've taken the time for a little more non-fiction reading, too. I've taken an interest in the Manosphere, the section of the web that deals with men's issues; specifically, dealing with marriage, children and bolstering the concept of a positive, alpha masculinity in a time and place that offers much social denigration for men who are unapologetically male.

 I'm a guy- something of a man's man, in many respects, and I say that slightly shamefaced, which I absolutely shouldn't, and that's the whole nature of the problem. I'm well-educated and relatively articulate, and spent enough time on the periphery of academia to know that I'm not being paranoid when I say that as a group, men are being herded away from our natural inclinations, and the resultant decline, or, more accurately, resultant failure to thrive, is of direct consequence. Men are failing and flailing, by my reckoning.

 My 9-year old boy is inundated with efforts to indoctrinate him into a sense of his own self as a second-class person by virtue of his gender and natural inclinations. He's criticized regularly for being aggressively competitive in academics and persuing only leadership in group situations... my kid doesn't like to not be the boss if he thinks he knows what he's doing. I will not quash that, and thus, I am a bad person, a caveman, and my poor wife has to field most of the teacher-interaction, even though my boy's teacher still hasn't figured out that my foreign-born wife has no idea what the woman is saying, just that she talks a lot.

 It ain't easy, as we all know, and no one is perfect, so I've been looking into ways to undo the subtle reframing of my natural inclinations and instincts that happened (without positive result to yours truly, btb) in college, and even as far back as the all-female teaching staff of my Catholic education... Magnifying the positive, discarding the negatives- you get the idea. I've come to the conclusion that I personally have dealt with enough shame-as-a-substitute-for-discussion when it comes to that sort of thing. I like being able to tap into the innate capacity for violence all men have, and being able to discern when and when not to do exactly that. I just don't want to agonize over who I am when I basically like who I am, and that's exactly the part of the innate male psyche that is under threat, in my opinion.

 So, if you're a guy, and any of that resonates, or if you think I'm full of shit... or both, please check this out:

"The male brain is also built to solve problems and end sufferings, from the cleverness of the hands to the wiring of the brain, when confronted with a problem, the male brain limits empathy so it can do what needs to be done to end pain or fear. It is built to take risks heedless of pain. The male brain is wired to find bodies intoxicating: a glimpse at someone attractive sends the male brain into a euphoric trance. The male brain feels crisis when it doesn’t know how to sort its relationship to another person.

Beneath the wiring and physical machinery we have the deep psyche of the man. In it there is a cast of characters, heroes, monsters, wild men, and saints gathered around a meaningful darkness. Man is built to wield the power to harm and to kill, as well as the power to protect and nurture. Man is built to accept pain, injury, dismemberment, and starvation – even to be able to choose these things, without his whole self-image being shattered."


     Thoughtful stuff, and that's what's got my brain ticking over.




http://wildman.newworldscoaching.ca/?page_id=23

Congressional Pork at sea: LCS- The Porkening continues

As I mentioned last week or so, The US Navy's continuing policy of awarding shipbuiling contracts to the highest bidder located in the same state as CERTAIN congressmen continues to deliver stillborns and abominations that are being called our next generation of warships.

 Take the Zumwalt class of destroyer- an escort ship meant to be zippy and responsive to act as a screening element (AKA missile fodder) to our capital ships- These tiny little toys cost almost as much as the aircraft carriers they're meant to protect, defeating the purpose entirely. This one was so egregiously bad that even congress, who is most unashamed of their enthusiastic 9 months-a-year marathon of masturbating in front of a full-length mirror, couldn't stomach this one and pulled the plug on the program, deciding to invest in a double handful of proven cruisers with superior electronic suites at the same price.


 I have watched with loathing as, predictably, the Littoral Combat Ship (fancy talk for 'destroyer') evolved into an orgy of congressional pork for two shipyards that were faced off against each other like a multi-billion dollar version of "American Idol" where whoever turns in the best ship for the money wins- Well, they both won, and America lost double. The ships have been an unmitigated disaster on wheels... so the Navy ordered more, despite the inability of the vessels in question to have EVER successfully completed a voyage without breakdown. Oh, also, they've been determined to be 'non-survivable' in combat. And, since they're made of aluminum, and prone to horiffic corrosion, we can expect Christmas to come early and often to the shipyards who get these repair contracts. Maybe we can give them to BAE to repair- at least the Brits can build a ship that can go from A-to-B, with allowances for icebergs, of course.

 What pisses me off is that our Navy is shrinking badly- shipbuilding budgets are tight, and while the rest of the world is having a giggle at it, we're trying to  build a cold-war fleet of multi-billion dollar ferry boats that would get crumpled by a bump at the dock. After suffering through failure after failure, the Navy is sending one of these floating abortions to the far east, presumably to make the Chinese feel less threatened... or perhaps some congressmen's kid has the fucking tow contract for whoever has to go and fetch this aluminum white elephant when it has it's inevitable FOURTH power loss in this most recent sea voyage.

http://www.oldsaltblog.com/2013/03/uss-freedom-limping-toward-singapore-the-us-navys-sorry-lcs-saga-continues/