When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
...For all these years of quick changes and rash decisions, which I once rationalized as adventurous, exploratory, and living an “original life,” I have nothing to show for it. I have no wealth, and I’m now saddled with enough debt from all of my moves, poor decisions, and lack of career drive that I may never be able to retire. I have no career milestones and don’t care for my line of work all that much anyway, but now it’s my lifeline, as I only have enough savings to buy a hotel room for two nights. I have no family nearby, no long-term relationship built on years of mutual growth and shared experiences, no children. While I make friends easily, I’ve left most of my friends behind in each city I’ve moved from while they’ve continued to grow deep roots: marriages, homeownership, career growth, community, families, children. I have a few close girlfriends, for which I am grateful, but life keeps getting busier and our conversations are now months apart. Most of my nights are spent alone with my cat (cue the cliché).
...
If you want to build a life with a partner, and have a more satisfying career, and maybe have children, you need to treat yourself like a treasured child starting today. If you had a daughter who was 35 years old and felt like all of her traveling and moving was a giant mistake that embodied everything BAD and shortsighted about her, what would you tell her? You’d tell her she was wrong. You’d say, “Your life is just beginning!”
Learn to treat yourself the way a loving older parent would. Tell yourself: This reckoning serves a purpose. Your traveling served a purpose. Your moving served a purpose. You’re sitting on a pile of gold that you earned through your own hard work, you just can’t see it yet. You can’t see it because you’re blinded by your shame.
It’s okay to be in debt and worried. It’s okay to feel lonely and lost. It’s okay to feel tired of trying. It’s okay to want more and wonder how to get it. You’re just a human, this is how we feel a lot. It’s not irregular or aberrant to feel despair. This is part of survival. Your shame is forming your despair into a merciless story about your worth. Don’t let it do that. Build something else from your shame instead.
....
All you have to be is a human being, Haunted. That’s success. When you’re a human being, life feels satisfying. Everything adds up. Every little thing matters. Look at what you have. This is where it all begins. All you have to do is open your eyes.
Geez. Those guys were already doing double cycles. Talk about a bladder buster. What's the head like on the E-2?
A bit of light Googling provided a less-than-flattering description:
Liquid waste is handled through relief tubes, one per pilot and one for the operators in the Aft Equipment Compartment (AEC) — care must be taken to check for presence of a vacuum, though. Solid waste is addressed with a chemical toilet in the AEC, which is better described as a metal stand from which a plastic bag is suspended. Many crews dispensed with this option all together due to its general unreliability.
Definitely high on the list of objects to be secured prior to landing.
Sam, please tell me that this is actually on the checklist.
The chemical toilet was tossed years ago... I think late 90's when some new system boxes took up the floorspace. I actually have one of them I found in an old storage barn on Mugu that they were going to demolish. I was going to turn it into a grog bowl and use it at Dining In's.
Tactical aircraft usually have a relief tube installed... just a plastic funnel with a trigger that dumps overboard. The trick is to hold down the trigger for a few seconds and let the warm cabin air warm up the inside of the tube because at least a small section of it is exposed to the outside air, which is -50'ish at altitude. Plenty of bro's have found out what happens when your **** flash-freezes the end of the tube closed and you fill up the tube and the funnel and **** all over yourself... and the Hawkeye wasn't the smoothest of rides.
Pissing really isn't a problem, but taking a **** can be. I have a custom ****-kit that I've never flown without. I've also never used it. Understand that taking a **** in a plane is never a clean ghost-poop or one-wiper. If it was, you could just wait. It usually comes on rather suddenly and shown no mercy. It's not that the food on the carrier is bad, it's that you're stuck inside a giant metal shell with 5000 people living under conditions that your average migrant caravan person would bitch about. People get sick a lot, can't be helped.
****-Kit Contents:
heavy duty 55gal trash bag
2x 30gal kitchen trashbags
1gal Ziplock
Wet wipes
First, you set a record taking off all your gear... survival vest, torso harness, boots, flight suit (God help you if you're in a dry-suit), undies... NUDE UP! Then you climb inside the 55gal bag.
Then you pull the 30gal bag over our *** and assume whatever squat position you can manage inside the equipment compartment and go for broke. When the storm has passed, you wait in that position another minute or two just to make sure, and then very carefully close up the 30 gallon bag and put it inside another 30gal bag. (DURING ALL OF THIS, YOU ARE DOING YOUR BEST TO REMAIN COMPLETELY INSIDE THE 55gal TRASHBAG). Then you twist and knot the neck of that one to make an air-tight seal. Then you start with the wet-wipes and toss them in the gallon ziplock. When complete, you just step out of the 55gal bag and close it up with all the trash inside and twist-knot the neck. Then you get suited back up. Then you take the whole thing and stick it in the way back of the aft equipment compartment up against the pressure bulkhead (this space is not air conditioned but the air stays above freezing due to all the equipment) where it will freeze up against the bulkhead that is exposed on the other side to ambient. Then after you land, you go throw it over the side and walk into the Ready Room where a new list of callsigns has already been written on the board for you.
Shitstain
Skids
Dirty
Chad
Brownie
Ziplock
SHALTTTT (**** himself and lived to tell the tale)
... the list goes on and on
Tactical aircraft usually have a relief tube installed... just a plastic funnel with a trigger that dumps overboard.
For the record, relief tubes are sexist.
They were dispensed with on Hornet's and we were all issued "piddle-packs" instead. This consisted of a zip-lock baggie with a sponge inside. Even though the term "sponge" has feminine overtones, I still think the piddle-pack is sexist. I have no idea how a woman in a single-seat fighter could use one. I suppose ze could identify as male to solve the issue.
The back of most blackhaBl variants is fairly easy.
You always assume the maintainers have plugged the end of the telief tube, so just skip it and aim for the bottom rear crack in the door.
It only took one instance of holding a urine filled funnel on a mountain X to find an alternative.
I had to google this one, as my initial assumption was that the headline was misleading, or over-stating the issue, or somehow not being entirely factual.
Turns out it's completely true, and has been reported on by numerous credible mainstream outlets.
This is both shocking and completely unsurprising.
Actually, I think I'm offended by the fact that Australian universities consider sarcasm to be a form of violence.
Yes, definitely offended, and actually I think it's giving me PTSD as well.
12-11-2018, 08:50 AM
0
