View Full Version : W3MIV: You're on the Couch!
Okay, Albi, it's your turn! Tell us all what we want to know!
I'm curious about your history with the gubberment.
W3MIV
10-31-2010, 08:08 PM
Fuhggeddabowdit!
If I were to tell you all about those years, I would have to travel out to the Left Coast, find you, and kill you. I like you, Carlo, so I would rather not.
Suffice to say, I went in the US Army in the mid-sixties. All of this was over forty-five years ago. I trained to kill with a bayonet :ugh: at Fort Jax, SC, then I was trained to kill with subtler tools :shock: at the US Army Intelligence School, Fort Holabird in Balto, MD. I was assigned to duty in Europe with a military intelligence detachment and sent immediately to the USA Intelligence School at Oberammergau, Germany, where I spent the winter of 1964/65 in the Alps 8) studying all things German, including intensive study in the language. Upon graduation (third in the class with a final of 92.7, I might add :bowdown:) I was assigned to duties as a counterintelligence agent attached to a division HQ in a CI section. :roll:
After a few months, I was promoted to SAIC of a resident office attached to an infantry brigade and div arty in another city (away from HQ), where I conducted investigations as ordered by higher HQ -- I had three "higher HQs" to which I reported. :nuts: Much of the work was routine, such as background investigations and physical security inspections, and other work was not. Some of it was sensitive. I was an inspector on IG teams on occasion, because I was cleared for a bunch of code-name programs. None of it is going to be revealed on a public forum on the internet. :sadwave:
My ordinary duties often involved liaison with German civil and military authorities, and I periodically participated in military field exercises in field uniform (fatigues) -- mostly I wore civilian clothes and lived in an apartment downtown after I was relocated to my new office. Prior to that, I lived in the BOQ shown in the pic on my QRZ bio.
I could have made a career out of it, and was urged to do so by a number of well-meaning and honorable friends. LBJ, however, was practicing some serious escalatio by then, so I opted for a ticket back to the land of the round door knob, where I re-established myself in my former graphics occupation and lived happily ever after.
Unusual for someone with that background to become such an outspoken liberal, Albi. That alone says much about you.
W3MIV
10-31-2010, 08:23 PM
I don't necessarily agree with that appraisal, Carl. A bit of insightful reflection should ignite for you a few torches in the darker corners of security work. Consider, for example, the kinds of personal profiles that might generate inquiries as to an individual's loyalty, and then extrapolate to the kinds of insinuations that might lead to a formal investigation. The "Army-McCarthy Hearings" taught the Army as much as they taught McCarthy.
suddenseer
10-31-2010, 08:32 PM
Did you ever wear civies and jump the fence and go to the east side?
I don't necessarily agree with that appraisal, Carl. A bit of insightful reflection should ignite for you a few torches in the darker corners of security work. Consider, for example, the kinds of personal profiles that might generate inquiries as to an individual's loyalty, and then extrapolate to the kinds of insinuations that might lead to a formal investigation. The "Army-McCarthy Hearings" taught the Army as much as they taught McCarthy.
I understand what you're saying but you have to admit there were hundreds--if not thousands--of other people with backgrounds similar to yours who have not seen the light, metaphorically speaking. That's what I meant when I said it says much of you. You were able to absorb a lesson that many others have not. Kudos to you, my friend.
kc7jty
10-31-2010, 08:37 PM
Tell us about you writing for Perdue.
suddenseer
10-31-2010, 08:44 PM
Do you still have a copy of "the art of war"?
W3MIV
10-31-2010, 08:49 PM
Did you ever wear civies and jump the fence and go to the east side?
I mostly wore "civvies," but my duties were counterespionage in nature, not espionage. As Tom Lehrer would put it, "zat's not my department sings Werner von Braun..."
W3MIV
10-31-2010, 08:50 PM
Do you still have a copy of "the art of war"?
Every library should have a copy. Clausewitz, too.
suddenseer
10-31-2010, 08:54 PM
Every library should have a copy. Clausewitz, too.I have a french copy, a bit more accurate.
Do you like gladiator movies? Have you ever seen a grown man naked? Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?
(Hey, if I didn't ask, someone else would have...)
W3MIV
10-31-2010, 08:55 PM
Tell us about you writing for Perdue.
Not much to tell. For the record: I did not write FOR Perdue; I wrote ABOUT Perdue. These were articles for Farm Credit for their quarterly magazine, The Leader. I also shot a lot of pix for Maryland Dept Ag's Soil Conservation Service of various Perdue operations. Chicken shit, mostly. Also bunches of dead chickens. And, flies. Lots and lots of flies. Big flies. Blue flies. Green flies. So many flies that you didn't want to open your mouth to gasp even though the pile of dead chickens just two feet in front of your lens -- this was summer on the Eastern Shore -- was a writhing mass of maggots and I can still smell it now ten years or so later.
W3MIV
10-31-2010, 08:59 PM
Let's take them one at a time...
Do you like gladiator movies?
No.
Have you ever seen a grown man naked?
Yes. Every time I shower I see one.
Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?
No. But I was jailed in Dachau once. Not the camp, but the city jail.
suddenseer
10-31-2010, 09:00 PM
Yeah, but you got paid to write, a privilege very few can enjoy. it shows. Wordcraftsmen have a style that I recognize, but cannot quantify.
W3MIV
10-31-2010, 09:00 PM
I have a french copy, a bit more accurate.
How is a French copy of a Chinese text more accurate? More accurate than what?
W3MIV
10-31-2010, 09:01 PM
Yeah, but you got paid to write, a privilege very few can enjoy. it shows. Wordcraftsmen have a style that I recognize, but cannot quantify.
Sure you can. Call it bullshit. We do.
suddenseer
10-31-2010, 09:18 PM
How is a French copy of a Chinese text more accurate? More accurate than what?The French lexicon contains many words that easily translate from Chinese that have no Anglo equivalent. I believe the first Western translation of Sun Tzu's classic was french. The English version was translated by the French version by a military chap named Calthrop.
I mostly wore "civvies," but my duties were counterespionage in nature, not espionage. As Tom Lehrer would put it, "zat's not my department sings Werner von Braun..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro
:rofl:
w2amr
11-01-2010, 04:09 AM
Do you like gladiator movies? Have you ever seen a grown man naked? Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?
(Hey, if I didn't ask, someone else would have...)Damn you,:irked:
Tell us about your education, Albi. It's obviously a good one.
N2CHX
11-01-2010, 10:32 AM
Heh, Albi rocks.
W3MIV
11-01-2010, 10:39 AM
Tell us about your education, Albi. It's obviously a good one.
Nope. Self-educated. Went no farther than high school, and that was a technical school in which I primarily studied art and graphics. Nine forty-five minute periods every day, academic studies in morning and vocational/technical classes in the afternoons. In my senior year, I wen to school in the morning and work in the afternoons -- what they now call "cooperative education" in such schools as Drexel and Northeastern (both former clients of mine -- or of the company for which I worked as a writer/account representative in the 1980s).
It was always a problem for me, professionally, because much of the work I did was for academic institutions. Among those I worked for were Drexel, Northeastern, Boston University, Boston College, LaSalle, Temple, Roosevelt, NYU, Tufts and Hahvahd. None of them could know that I was a mere HS grad and not a graduate of some post-grad program.
You here have been often exposed to the only BS I possess! ;)
Unusual for someone with that background to become such an outspoken liberal, Albi. That alone says much about you.
Not everyone in the military is a dittohead, Carl. My brother is a retired Army Military Intelligence Colonel, and he's pretty liberal, as were some of his ex-coworkers. Never stopped him from doing his job, especially in the '80's.
A little bit of tangent here, sorry to steal your thunder Albert, but this whole concept of the military being made up of mostly right wing leaning people makes me think we need to reinstate the draft, without deferments. This would give a true cross section of society in the military, instead of the right leaning group we have now.
W3MIV
11-01-2010, 11:21 AM
A little bit of tangent here, sorry to steal your thunder Albert, but this whole concept of the military being made up of mostly right wing leaning people makes me think we need to reinstate the draft, without deferments. This would give a true cross section of society in the military, instead of the right leaning group we have now.
No theft involved, Dave. I agree totally.
One of the reasons Charlie Rangel was -- and remains -- a hero to me is that Rangel knew this at the gut level. Every new Congress, Rangel would introduce legislation to restore the peace-time draft. Most people misunderstood this, and Rangel always suffered bad press at the hands of both liberals and loonies.
What Rangel understood so clearly was that without a draft, war is detached from the public. It becomes a sort of "private matter" among the politicians, the defense industry and the professional military -- three groups that never saw a war they did not like. Unless the casualty lists are being nailed up on that Civil War monument down front of the courthouse, people have the opportunity to ignore whatever killing is taking place. After all, it is just a few "isolated" families here and there who lose a son to death or maiming. Unless the risk is shared generally among the whole public, the killing continues.
This nation has been in a constant state of war since 1947, when HST sent US troops into Greece. Since that time, US kids have been put in harm's way every year, by every president or either party. With the notable exceptions of Korea and VN, most of the actions have been small -- that is, they were small until the idiot Bush Dynasty valued oil above US lives.
Had the draft still been on the books when the Bushes began their oleaginous crusades, VN style demonstrations and mass incidences of civil disobedience may have saved some of the lives that were sacrificed to stupidity and greed. That Obama continues this evil tradition does not give me any satisfaction.
kc7jty
11-01-2010, 04:10 PM
This would give a true cross section of society in the military, instead of the right leaning group we have now.
Why? Let those who can see through it all be spared the Bravo Sierra. Efficiently providing shot off asses for those bone headed enough to suck God, Wall Street, and their corrupt, money is everything, politico masters.
kc7jty
11-01-2010, 04:17 PM
That Obama continues this evil tradition does not give me any satisfaction.
anyone who dreamed otherwise hasn't the sense god gave geese.
Let us return those, who wish no part of it, once again into the flesh grinder in a hope that somehow it will reign in our completely insane and out of control government fits me as quite morbid.
W1GUH
11-01-2010, 04:42 PM
While I agree with the notion of the peacetime draft, there's a problem with that. The time lag between the grass roots saying NO!!! in a way that sticks with the powers that be means that many, many people will needlessly die in an individual's (Can you say LBJ?) military adventurism. Way too many of my friends came home in a box (well, two -- but that's two too many.) Any draft age male during Viet Nam (and especially including veterans of that huge mistake) simply can NOT accept the government's FORCING of anybody to die because of that kind if mistake.
OK...that's off my chest. To the thread, I can only say, Albi, however you came upon your great, outstanding, delightful way with words, I'm sure glad our paths have crossed on the 'net. Thanks for you outstanding insight. And, someday I hold the hope that we'll hook-up through the aether, too!!! Damn the awkward hop between my haunts and MD. We WILL overcome that someday!
WØTKX
11-01-2010, 05:07 PM
If we had a national service draft, with a volunteer army drawn from that? :dunno:
Putting a bunch of kids to work would stimulate the economy...
kf0rt
11-01-2010, 05:44 PM
Albi: What drove your desire for the vernacular? Your background seems to defy reality on this. And, NO, I'm not complaining. Rather enjoy it....
W3MIV
11-01-2010, 06:49 PM
I don't know the answer to that question, Rob. I seem always to have had a penchant for language. I love words for words sake. Stepping outside of the ordinary phraseology has always been a source of fun for me.
When I was a kid, I wanted nothing more than a college education. My father died when I was eleven or so. A neighbor across the street (we lived in row houses -- now called "town houses" by yuppies, but they were houses that were stuck together in rows of about fifteen or so)... at any rate, this guy was a bachelor who lived with two spinster sisters. They all had retired, and for some reason they kind of "adopted" me. One day he gave me an entire set of encyclopedias that was a few years out of date. He had ordered a new one, and I was delighted to get the old one. It opened wide vistas for me.
I knew that I would have a difficult time getting to college -- my mother refused to go to work so long as I was in school, and she and I lived on the meager survivors' benefits paid by the SSA. I finished parochial school and went through high school, but I knew damn well that she -- she had not gone past the seventh grade -- thought that a HS diploma was as good as a PhD. Work beckoned; I had to pitch in to share the load. My first job out of HS was at a rate of $1/hour for a 35-hour week. The take-home was $29.60 -- and she took $15 per week in room and board. Sounds harsh, but she was a veteran of the Depression, tighter than a young tick on an old hound, and those were the RULES. She once told me she had no objection to my enrolling in Baltimore Junior College -- just so long as I could find a job and pay the weekly board.
At any rate, I worked and haunted the library. I devoured that old encyclopedia. I discovered the "Great Books" of Western Civilization, and somewhere along the way I fell in love with words, with language, with bullshit for bullshit's sake. I wrote; I never published. I managed to scrounge up an old, black Underwood (which I wish I had now! -- but that, too, disappeared into some junk bin when the old lady moved to an apartment). I taught myself how to write -- and the guy across the street became my editor and my harshest critic. For the first time, I found that he had been in the newspaper business, and he had an eye for good copy.
True story: When Uncle Sam's first greetings came in the form of an invitation to be probed and palpated by the medicos prior to being pronounced fit as cannon fodder, I elected to take a battery of tests to find if there might be any form of military service that I could honorably render that did not involve having my ass used as a target. Among these exams was a test called the ALAT, if I recall the acronym properly. I took the test along with all the others, and after finishing them I was called into the presence of some fat, old major who asked me where I learned Esperanto. I asked him what was Esperanto. He reddened, thinking I was being a smart-ass. For once, I was not. I had never heard of it. The entire test was written in Esperanto -- which I thought (being a good, Irish-raised Catholic altar boy) strongly resembled Latin. Turned out that I scored 26 out a possible 28 on a test in a language I had never heard of. Landed me a seat in Oberammergau at the language school. (At that time, Monterrey was loaded to the gills with students being crammed with Viet and Indochinese dialects.)
After being hired by a publications firm specializing in college entrance materials in the mid-seventies, a project materialized that stumped several of the account executives (all of whom were writers of the materials published); I was interested in the topics and found that I knew more about most of them than did they. I asked if I could take a shot at doing the writing for the main prospectus, and they were only too happy to have the help. It was a big score for me, and I was promoted to VP and given a stable of accounts on which to assist the Senior VP.
After leaving that firm, I was hired on at another as Senior VP and Manager of Account Services. All of this was based on no formal education, which did not bother my employers or my associates, but likely would bother hell out of the clients, since their entire rationale is that business cannot function without MBAs, and the world will stop spinning if the steady flow of BS and BA candidates for post-graduate study were suddenly interrupted. Higher education had become little more than a big business boondoggle at many of the larger diploma mills. Assholes like I were looked upon as threats.
I finally dropped out and went into business for myself and spent the last twenty years of my career paying twice the FICA taxes and sweating from where the next check would come.
Long reply for a short admission: I have no idea. It's something you have or you have not.
WØTKX
11-01-2010, 07:02 PM
Man, I'd enjoy a Vulcan mind meld... to swap our reading lists. We could start a book club. :yes:
http://static.squidoo.com/resize/squidoo_images/-1/draft_lens2323042module12926651photo_1228604510min d_meld.jpg
Great story, Albi. I knew you were the best choice to be next on the couch!
kc7jty
11-01-2010, 10:26 PM
I'm thinkin it's that Irish/****** blend that has some propelling force into the field but it will only get me into trouble so, I'm not gonna say it.
WØTKX
11-01-2010, 11:16 PM
What? How disappointing, 'cause you always fly'n yer freak flag.
Why so reticent?
kc7jty
11-01-2010, 11:47 PM
"freak" ...yes I must agree, but I did say unwilling.
W3MIV
11-02-2010, 06:44 AM
I'm thinkin it's that Irish/****** blend that has some propelling force into the field but it will only get me into trouble so, I'm not gonna say it.
Associating "Irish" with "Bullshit," will get you in no trouble with me, Bill. Loquacious fits my heritage like a kid glove. I can handle it.
It ain't the Bohunk/Jewish side of me that gives song to my emotions or a bit of prolix to my prose. That side of the family resembled nothing so much as a team of undertakers standing in back of the church waiting to take charge of the corpse.
kc7jty
11-02-2010, 09:03 PM
Associating "Irish" with "Bullshit," will get you in no trouble with me, Bill.
You misjudge me Albi, I was thinking the gift of gab associating with Irish. (I'm 25% or better, known Irish)
It ain't the Bohunk/Jewish side of me that gives song to my emotions or a bit of prolix to my prose. That side of the family resembled nothing so much as a team of undertakers standing in back of the church waiting to take charge of the corpse.
Tiz those of Jewish blood who have accomplished more than any other given their percentage of the population. Do not so eagerly discount this fact for it is clearly evident.
My sister's first husband (and a good friend of mine back when) whose name was Miles Brennan, could talk a starving dog down off a meat truck, and the Imperial Master was a gentleman named Peter Brennan who I found in a bus station in S Florida when I needed someone to drive my car (with me in it) back up to Philadelphia due to my agonizing back pain.
The guy was amazing. You knew you were in the presence of the best. We drove up without spending a dime. All meals, gas, and lodging were gained from this guy's incredible gift of gab. We were in the car in downtown Annapolis, MD looking for a free place to spend the night when I told him there was a cop behind us. We came to a stop light, he puts on the parking break, jumps from the drivers seat, runs back to the cop and talks to him for 2 full cycles of red and green on the signal with a big string of cars behind the cop.
He finally gets back into the car armed with the knowledge of all the best freebies in town. I never laughed so hard other than the two and a half days I spent with that guy. He was from R.I. with the appropriate accent.
KG4CGC
11-02-2010, 09:28 PM
When using the term, "delicious irony," is it proper to wring one's hands in glee?
When using the term, "delicious irony," is it proper to wring one's hands in glee?
Not only is it proper, it's mandatory.
LOL!!!!
Hmmm.... isn't it about time for a new subject on the coochie???
kc7jty
11-07-2010, 02:06 AM
Is Albie done?
Is Albie done?
Yep, it would appear so. Stick a fork in it, Albi, and pick a new patient.
WØTKX
11-07-2010, 01:27 PM
Exsaaaaaaaallent...
http://www.phawker.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/excellent-mr-burns.gif
Albi.... you're being paged... who is next on the couch??
W3MIV
11-12-2010, 10:01 PM
I'm thinkin'........
kb2crk
11-12-2010, 10:05 PM
I'm thinkin'........
we can smell the wood burning..lol
W3MIV
11-13-2010, 02:44 PM
KB2CRK -----------------> Assume the position.
KB2CRK -----------------> Assume the position.
:rofl: :rofl:
Serves him right.
kb2crk
11-13-2010, 08:47 PM
yes it does serve me right......lol
ask away.
Gotta start a new thread.
I think someone already did.
Yep--go here:
http://forums.hamisland.net/showthread.php?14451-Albi-sezzitz-KB2CRK-on-the-coochi!
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