Checking In

A Latrine in Indochina

A fictional short by Larry B. Lambert©

The latrine had been constructed of pine bracing and plywood. A two-holed, it sat suspended over two sunken fifty-gallon oil drums, its smell familiar, its lure driven by need.

He kept the rifle but dropped the ruck, walked in, unbuttoned his trousers, and sat on the flat plywood seat worn smooth through use. His M-14 rifle, wedged against a block of wood nailed to the door, provided the locking mechanism. “Occupied”

Someone had stenciled Property of the US Navy inside the door, reminding them who owned them and whose latrine this was. On ships they were heads, on land, no matter how much the navy tried to hold with tradition, they were latrines. The word latrine interlinked the sailors and the grunts on the ground in a way a head never could.

Privacy, a place to think, undisturbed. Flies bounced against screened windows trying to get in. Distant helicopter rotors chopped the air, muffled morning coughs, laughter, metal banging metal, and more light through the screened windows. A PBR on the river started its engine in the distance. A radio clicked on playing popular music through a cheap speaker that yielded a tinny sound. Martha and the Vandellas crooned, Nowhere to Run.

The latrine provided a bulletin board, and a barometer showing the mood of the men. As an officer sitting in the enlisted latrine, he read what the men were thinking and filed it all away. Careful! I sublet the basement to a gook; Ensign Turner can suck my dick; and there were also the unheralded poets, I come here to itch my balls, and read the writing on the walls. Some of the writing could be attributed to an author: Article Fifteen this, asshole — accompanied by a crudely drawn phallus, clearly the work of Machinist Mate Second Class Troy Nelson, recently hauled before a captain’s mast. Killing for peace is like fucking for chastity, Lieutenant Commander Atwood. Atwood, a ring knocker on his way to admiral, delivered a rousing “why are we here” speech two days before.

Having perused the angst and frustration of others who also sat and shat, he pulled up his trousers removed the M-14 from its position, and pulled the door inward, stepping onto the planking with heavy boots.

He didn’t think any place could top a reeking navy latrine, but he always knew that he erred when he stepped through the plywood door and let the spring pull it closed behind him.

Once out of the privy, the jungle surrounded him. Thick green in every possible hue. Growth and decay were backed up by jungle sounds that were quite apart from the human stain created by the navy’s presence. The smell of chlorophyll masking rot on the shore of a muddy river, languid as a mill pond. Itching jungle, wet, dripping tangled jungle, a maze that could swallow you forever without a compass and some idea of where you’d been and where you wanted to go. Giant spiders, deadly snakes, monkeys, and endless, thick swarms of blood-sucking insects…and beyond them, the war.

Bullet Points:

**Tucker Carlson, is back in action.

** The old saying, “With age comes wisdom,” was obviously written by some old guy.

** Go woke, go broke – “After much thought and consideration, we believe it is in the best interest of Park’s stockholders to materially reduce our current exposure to the San Francisco market. Now more than ever, we believe San Francisco’s path to recovery remains clouded and elongated by major challenges — both old and new,” said Thomas Baltimore Jr., CEO of Park Hotels, in a statement that could be applied to every other liberal-controlled US metropolis.

The 1,921-room Hilton is the city’s largest hotel and the 1,024-room Parc 55 is the fourth-largest, and together they account for around 9% of the city’s hotel stock. The hotels could potentially be taken over by lenders or sold to a new group as part of the foreclosure process, although it is unclear who would want to put even one dollar of equity into a property that will more than likely redefault within a few years.

That’s because there is no easy solution to San Fran’s long list of challenges which not only a record high office vacancy of around 30% but also concerns over street conditions (and the amount of feces covering them), a lower rate of return to office compared with other cities (because woke snowflakes are naturally entitled to work from home of course) and “a weaker than expected citywide convention calendar through 2027 that will negatively impact business and leisure demand,” Baltimore  Jr., said.

** Bring on the Brave New World – Nearly one-third of Generation Z says they’d be just fine with government-installed surveillance cameras in every household under the guise of reducing domestic violence and other illegal activity.

** Voting Fraud – Arizona – As revealed by new evidence and footage, none of the 446 vote center tabulators used on election day were tested by the Secretary of State or Maricopa County during Logic and Accuracy testing on October 11th. A test using only five “spare” tabulators that were not used on election day “was the only metric to ensure all election day ballots could be cast, counted, and reported accurately.” Clay Parikh told us, “They ignored 446 vote center tabulators that were used in the election. They had the wrong programming on them, which means they were misconfigured.”

** A Lesson on Cause and Effect – more ruin caused by Pedo Joe’s regime.

Identify the Aircraft (2)

Meme-of-the-Day

SPQR

The collapse of Roman authority in the island province of Britannia in the 4th and 5th centuries is a historical blind spot for which the extant literary evidence is slim to none. When the Western empire collapsed in the 5th century, historical literary traditions were kept alive by members of the remaining aristocracy, men such as Sidonius Apollinaris and Boethius.

Meanwhile, in the East, the historical narrative was continued by historians such as Zosimus and Olympiodorus.

Unlike today, a Roman historian was expected to have lived through the period he was narrating. Post-Roman Britain, the earliest historical source we have is that of the monk, Gildas.

Gildas was estimated to have written his version of events surrounding the end of Roman Britain more than a century after the fact. Added to this, his narrative was not intended to be historical but rather to provide context for the woes of his contemporaries.

Other medieval writers drew heavily from Gildas’s flawed story over centuries, and this lack of certainty has given rise to the myths and legends of British folklore. Classical civilizations of the Mediterranean world had long heard rumors of a mystical wintry island far off to the north inhabited by strange peoples.

Herodotus briefly described the wealth of tin in these mysterious isles. A century later, a Greek explorer, Pytheas of Massalia (modern Marseille in Southern France), a contemporary though not acquaintance of Alexander the Great supposedly circumnavigated the entire island.

Around this time, the Phoenicians established a trade route to the island, with Punic coins being found there dating to the 3rd century BCE. Britain remained a realm of curiosity to the civilized world which spurred Julius Caesar’s expeditions to the islands during his Gallic campaigns (58-50 BC).

Caesar had ventured to the island partly because it was harboring fugitives and supporting his enemies in Gaul, and partly out of a sense of adventure and for the political rewards he would accrue as a result.

Following Caesar’s political ascent, the Roman world was thrust into decades of political turmoil and transformation. This meant that Britain remained free of Roman domination for nearly another century.