It’s Friday, January 22, 2010 and I knew it was just a matter of time before someone blamed the earthquakes in Haiti on the US.
I had money down that it would be North Korea’s Beloved Fruitcake Kim Jong or Iranian President Mahmoud (Chock Full O’ Nuts) Ahmadinejad. Instead, it was Venezuelan Loon Master Hugo Chavez. He’s apparently in possession of a report from Russia’s Northern Fleet.
Now, I have no doubt that he has the report. I likewise have no doubt that it came from the Russian navy. I give hereby award a lifetime supply of Hand Salutes to Russia’s Northern Fleet for this brilliant prank. Here I was, thinking myself all that for getting the mayor of Belbrook Ohio to take a picture of herself pointing a stick at a picture of Hat Stomping Dan. I thought bored Air Force cops were a danger, but whoa! These Russian swabs sure pulled off a good one.
I myself have been the victim of a prank by Russian sailors, so I feel Hugo’s pain.
I n 1994, I was stationed at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. The Mediterranean resort of Silifke was just a couple of hours away and we spent a lot of time there. Silifke is just outside of the Mediterranean sea port at Mersin, so there were people literally from all over the planet here.
During one of our little min-vacations, we met up with some Soviet merchant sailors who very much wanted American Levis jeans. As luck would have it, we just happened to have a quantity of them with us and were willing to work out a trade. In exchange for 6 pairs of Levis, were received three cases of some reddish color liquid that the Russians claimed to be a rare and premium grade of vodka. We made our exchange and stashed our new booze in the rented van. The next day, we made our way back to the base, anxious to try the new liquor. We were already pretty drunk and had decided not to sample it until we were again in full control of our faculties.
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After signing back in (You had to sign out on leave if you were to remain off base for more than two days. If you came back and had created no international incident, the orderly room clerk shredded your leave form so we were never charged leave for these excursions. I’m sure it was a violation of some regulation, but the attitude was “What are they gonna do? Send you to Turkey?”) we sat down and filled out our contact reports. This was during the height of the “Cold War” and any contact made with a citizen of a Soviet Block country had to be reported.
After reading our reports, our ops officer demanded tribute of five bottles of the “red vodka” in exchange for not asking a lot of fool questions about what (if anything) was traded for it. Our reports indicated that we’d won the booze as a bet on a game of volley ball. After returning with our bribe “administration fee” we were dismissed and went back to the dorm to sleep off the rest of our drunk and prepare for duty the next day.
We held off until the end of our six-day duty cycle, so we wouldn’t run the risk of being obviously drunk on duty. Word had spread of our acquisition and by the time we were ready to break it out, we had about half of our 60-man flight gathered to share in our spoils. The five of us who were actually involved in the acquisition went first. With much ado and flourishes, my roommate poured our shots and offered up a toast: “Gentlemen and members of C flight, I give you the Soviet Merchant Marines! Da sveedaneeya!” (Which actually means “Goodbye”)
Oh, my God! This stuff was horrible! It was booze to be for sure, somewhere in the 150 proof range, but it tasted like fermented mud and was well outside the boundaries of things I could swallow. The rest of our flight didn’t buy our gagging, choking and retching act and demanded a taste. After 20 or so attempts at the vile liquor, no one, not even our most revered alcoholic could choke this stuff down.
Clearly, we had been had!
As was our ops officer. Being a teetotaler, he had made gifts of the five bottles in his possession. Rumor had it that the deputy base commander had put a hit out on the captain, but as it turns out, it only resulted in his getting assigned to a weather station above the Arctic Circle.
It turns out, that this vile substance was in fact a kind of vodka. It was made from beets, which gave it the red color and somewhat “earthy” (like a mouthful of mud is earthy) flavor. It’s not particularly coveted in Russian (as we had been lead to believe) and is consumed if and only if no other form of booze (including turpentine) is available. Being singularly disgusting in taste, it is supposed to be mixed with something to dilute the flavor. Alas, even a thimble full in a tall glass of 7-Up was enough to turn the stomach of even the most devoted boozer.
We finally got rid of the rest by trading it to some guys from the 101st Airborne for a sleeping bag, three canteens and a collapsible shovel. Fortunately, I boarded a plane for home the next day and didn’t have to fret over the wrath of a bunch of pissed off rangers.
As you can see, Russian sailors are pretty good at pulling pranks.
In other news, Fortune Magazine just released its list of the 100 best places to work. Not surprisingly, Montana don’t have any of these:
Likewise, the outfit I work for isn’t on the list either. Also no huge surprise. But to see Starbucks on the list, along with Aflac insurance is making me think this joint ain’t much longer for me. I like helping people solve their problems and I’m finding myself doing less and less of that and more and more clerical shit. Yeah, I get to work around smart, cute chicks and this is a plus, but there’s something else going on here, a disturbance in the force that I can’t quite put my finger on.
In other news, my neighbor across the street called at 1:47 in the blessed AM to ask if there were cops at his house. He and his wife had moved out and into an assisted living complex and thought they heard their old address on the police scanner. So, rather than call the police, he calls us.
Needless to say the wife was aggravated. The problem is that the guy is a WWII and Korean conflict veteran and despite the fact that he’s convinced I’m in the navy, he’s a pretty impressive (even if thoroughly insane) old dude. He has the Alzheimer’s so anything I do to annoy him will be forgotten within minutes. Still, I gotta try:
A.D. 2101: War was beginning…
FRED: Hello?
ME: What happen?
FRED: What?
ME: Somebody set up us the bomb.
FRED: Bomb? Who is this?
ME: We get signal!
FRED: Who?
ME: Main screen turn on!
FRED: Who is this?
ME: It’s you.
FRED: It’s who?
ME: How are you gentlemen?
FRED: I’m fine. Who is…
ME: All your base are belong to us!
FRED: Who?
ME: Giggling
CLICK
Yeah, he forgot about it ten minutes later, but it’s the principle of the thing.
In other news, I’ve taken the first step toward trying to generate some dough from this blog thing. I’ve had enough people tell me that I should do this for a living and I’m hoping they’re smarter than they are kind. I’ve applied for a Google AdSense account and hope to be approved and making millions by this time next week.
And monkeys might fly out of my butt. One thing that does intrigue me though is that AdSesne is supposed to analyze content and deliver ads targeted to your content. Cay poe sowen with a centuries time, it been a long, long day.
Amazingly, other than “poe” and “sowen” being misspelled, MS Word grammar check finds the previous sentence grammatically correct.
In other news, looks like we have a big winter storm plying its way across Montana. Lots of snow and blowing/drifting, but none of the sub-zero temps. With the wife working this weekend, this looks like a good weekend to curl up with a good booze.
I think I’ll push this up a tad early. Everyone have a swell weekend. Be safe and stay warm, hopefully with someone you dig.
Tune in Monday for some big, big news!