Army is stupid.
Allow me to rephrase that.
Army is fucking stupid.
As stupid as it is, however, it hasn't been all bad ; The bunk mates are pretty fine, the pushups have yet to snowball, I've yet to "drop the soap" and the sergeants have yet to transorm into huge, tentacled monsters normally saved for japanese porn. I will, however, say that everything I do now is going to be meaningless when I sit in front of a computer screen some nine weeks from now, keying in documents that will almost certainly never be read, or sit in a dusty storeroom all day, choking on dust and counting the hairs on my belly area and multiplying them with the number of mosquito bites on my left leg with an abacus.
In some ways, this is like VS all over again, just with a higher level of discipline, but not enough to contain the stupidity from the lowest levels all the way to the upper echelons where old men sit down, cross their legs and scream and random people.
Other points about the army :
1) To get promoted to a higher rank, your command of the English Language must fall. You must not be able to pronounce words more than three syllables or ten letters long, i.e characteristics as characterics, speak with a short tongue in broken English and have a vocabulary list that fits onto a square of toilet paper.
2) The older you are in the army, the more you like to hear your own voice. You keep hundreds of people waiting just so you can think of something to say which probably has already been said before, and they probably don't understand you anymore because of point #1. When someone makes you echo his commands ten times just so he can hear his words amplified, you know he likes his voice. Which leads me to....
3) The army is a place where the ugly side of the male ego is manifested. Insecure old men who are otherwise failures in life torture young souls in an attempt to mitigate their inner inability. Entire companies are made to wait just so one pompous oaf can come late and deliver a stale speech. People have to ask for permission to even carry on with punishments. No wonder they conduct training away from civilisation.
4) Rifle training is pretty dumb when we don't have to do it anytime in the future. Rifle training is dumber when all the rifles are outdated and rusty, and attempts to clean it are futile because people are apparently taught to locate dirt in an obscure corner of a rifle just so they can find fault in the people below them, related somewhat to point #3. Don't even get me started on grenade throwing.
5) Someone really needs to try his luck and declare a phobia or an allergy to vulgarities and get downgraded to PES F. There just isn't any running away from those things.
6) Autopiloting isn't as easy as I taught it would be. We have to be able to sense tantrums, remember to do a million different things in a minute, and in some cases, brush the dust away from the long-unused gaydar and put it on code red.
7) Going outfield is bloody troublesome. And Salabin is a good name wasted on a jungle.
8) Tekong food is damn boring.
9)One of the first things I did when I got back was to listen to music. Somehow, music sounds better when songs don't fucking echo back at you. Anyone who tries to sing Purple light or that crappy "training to be soldiers" "song" where every verse ends in a "YA!" outside of camp is not going to book in on Sunday due to sudden and provoked castration.
Other than that, however, it hasn't been as tough as I thought it would be, but incredibly boring more than anything else. Kind of like a holiday camp without the holiday.
---
My Army diary
Day 1 : Today I am shipped off to Pulau Tekong, a desolate land for desolate people. My head is going to be shaved in an attempt to strip me of all individuality. Whoever said communism was no longer alive knows nothing about the army. Everything is standardized, from the hard, rusty-springed bed to the dull grey lockers and the duller grey shirts on our backs. The grey is symbolic of the moral implications of a militant lifestyle. Someone has to be sacrificed unvolutarily, and the Istana has spoken.
Day 4 : Not much has been happening. They tell me to do stuff, I do stuff. I figure that if I keep quiet and keep my thoughts to myself I should be able to come out unscathed. Now all I need to do is shut my mouth. Which I don't have a good record of.
Day 6 : Fuck Cheebye officers make us wake up at midnight to check one missing bastard
Day 11 : Why was I writing in this again? My notebook should not be having any thoughts of my own, if this is found I will be
Day 13 : GARGLE GARGLE OOGA BOOGA MMF FLRRFF OOOEEEOOOEEEEOOOHHHH
---
Oh, and Babel is bloody boring. Or maybe it's just really subtle and poignant and symbolic, and the army just hasn't put me into a position to be even remotely intelligent.
Allow me to rephrase that.
Army is fucking stupid.
As stupid as it is, however, it hasn't been all bad ; The bunk mates are pretty fine, the pushups have yet to snowball, I've yet to "drop the soap" and the sergeants have yet to transorm into huge, tentacled monsters normally saved for japanese porn. I will, however, say that everything I do now is going to be meaningless when I sit in front of a computer screen some nine weeks from now, keying in documents that will almost certainly never be read, or sit in a dusty storeroom all day, choking on dust and counting the hairs on my belly area and multiplying them with the number of mosquito bites on my left leg with an abacus.
In some ways, this is like VS all over again, just with a higher level of discipline, but not enough to contain the stupidity from the lowest levels all the way to the upper echelons where old men sit down, cross their legs and scream and random people.
Other points about the army :
1) To get promoted to a higher rank, your command of the English Language must fall. You must not be able to pronounce words more than three syllables or ten letters long, i.e characteristics as characterics, speak with a short tongue in broken English and have a vocabulary list that fits onto a square of toilet paper.
2) The older you are in the army, the more you like to hear your own voice. You keep hundreds of people waiting just so you can think of something to say which probably has already been said before, and they probably don't understand you anymore because of point #1. When someone makes you echo his commands ten times just so he can hear his words amplified, you know he likes his voice. Which leads me to....
3) The army is a place where the ugly side of the male ego is manifested. Insecure old men who are otherwise failures in life torture young souls in an attempt to mitigate their inner inability. Entire companies are made to wait just so one pompous oaf can come late and deliver a stale speech. People have to ask for permission to even carry on with punishments. No wonder they conduct training away from civilisation.
4) Rifle training is pretty dumb when we don't have to do it anytime in the future. Rifle training is dumber when all the rifles are outdated and rusty, and attempts to clean it are futile because people are apparently taught to locate dirt in an obscure corner of a rifle just so they can find fault in the people below them, related somewhat to point #3. Don't even get me started on grenade throwing.
5) Someone really needs to try his luck and declare a phobia or an allergy to vulgarities and get downgraded to PES F. There just isn't any running away from those things.
6) Autopiloting isn't as easy as I taught it would be. We have to be able to sense tantrums, remember to do a million different things in a minute, and in some cases, brush the dust away from the long-unused gaydar and put it on code red.
7) Going outfield is bloody troublesome. And Salabin is a good name wasted on a jungle.
8) Tekong food is damn boring.
9)One of the first things I did when I got back was to listen to music. Somehow, music sounds better when songs don't fucking echo back at you. Anyone who tries to sing Purple light or that crappy "training to be soldiers" "song" where every verse ends in a "YA!" outside of camp is not going to book in on Sunday due to sudden and provoked castration.
Other than that, however, it hasn't been as tough as I thought it would be, but incredibly boring more than anything else. Kind of like a holiday camp without the holiday.
---
My Army diary
Day 1 : Today I am shipped off to Pulau Tekong, a desolate land for desolate people. My head is going to be shaved in an attempt to strip me of all individuality. Whoever said communism was no longer alive knows nothing about the army. Everything is standardized, from the hard, rusty-springed bed to the dull grey lockers and the duller grey shirts on our backs. The grey is symbolic of the moral implications of a militant lifestyle. Someone has to be sacrificed unvolutarily, and the Istana has spoken.
Day 4 : Not much has been happening. They tell me to do stuff, I do stuff. I figure that if I keep quiet and keep my thoughts to myself I should be able to come out unscathed. Now all I need to do is shut my mouth. Which I don't have a good record of.
Day 6 : Fuck Cheebye officers make us wake up at midnight to check one missing bastard
Day 11 : Why was I writing in this again? My notebook should not be having any thoughts of my own, if this is found I will be
Day 13 : GARGLE GARGLE OOGA BOOGA MMF FLRRFF OOOEEEOOOEEEEOOOHHHH
---
Oh, and Babel is bloody boring. Or maybe it's just really subtle and poignant and symbolic, and the army just hasn't put me into a position to be even remotely intelligent.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home