FKIN
May 5, 2015 12:05 PM   Subscribe

Fucking Inappropriate. No matter what I do, it always ends this way. The money gets spent. The whiskey runs out. The hangover always comes, and the show is always over. TW for graphic discussion of combat, PTSD, pretty much everything war-related. posted by mrbigmuscles (13 comments total) 31 users marked this as a favorite
 
Thanks that's some fine reading for me there, I'm enjoying it; though that adjective isn't quite the right one. I'd also highlight this, though all three I've read so far have been right. I'm struggling with the right words to describe these. The writing is good, the subject matter is quite painful in some of them; but I understand some of them immensely.
posted by diziet at 12:25 PM on May 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


"It’s not that he couldn’t get over Korea – it’s that he couldn’t get over a country full of people who couldn’t rouse themselves from bed to save their own lives."

I'm not sure I can say it's brilliant writing - it sounds like one of my friends talking - but it definitely hits me in the feels.
posted by corb at 1:02 PM on May 5, 2015


The end of the piece "The Baser Beasts Part II" is very…powerful? Affecting? Damn. It's very good writing, kind of like "Generation Kill" without the quips.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:35 PM on May 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


The line "But in many it’s just fucking hard for a real warrior to return to the inconsequence of regular American life." reminded me a lot of the general sentiment of Colby Buzzell's My War: Killing Time in Iraq.

I'm disturbed over some of this, which is kind of the point, but I'd like to have a little more background on the writers. I have just this inkling of too ... something ... that makes me wonder if the writers really were there.
posted by straw at 2:04 PM on May 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


sometimes the tags for a post almost say it all ...

combat
war
ptsd
alcoholism
violence
military


glory, glory ...
posted by philip-random at 2:05 PM on May 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm not sure I can say it's brilliant writing - it sounds like one of my friends talking

We're not typically trained to write in a conversational voice. Writing in that sort of voice can often be a very deliberate act. Far as I'm concerned, that makes it good writing.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 2:21 PM on May 5, 2015 [3 favorites]


I agree, this is great writing.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 4:40 PM on May 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


Unsurprisingly I have followers in common with him on twitter. This is as if the last psychiatrist was in special forces
posted by Divest_Abstraction at 5:50 PM on May 5, 2015


... and because it's become a "thing" for me of late, obligatory note that we need to start replacing the word "war" with "failure" whenever possible, because even when it's somehow necessary (as I believe war sometimes is), it's still the worse thing that we humans do.

The Great Failure
World Failure Two
The Third World Failure
The Failure Machine
The Masters of Failure
The Failure to End All Failures ...

and so on ...
posted by philip-random at 11:45 AM on May 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


ALCON,

A friend shared a link to this thread with me. Until yesterday, I'd never used Metafilter. I wanted to say thank you for the kind words.

.max
posted by Max_Black at 3:59 PM on May 6, 2015 [6 favorites]






I reposted an old piece: http://ow.ly/MPzxQ

I took the Afghanistan content down after I got home. I didn't want to look at it.

The context to that post . . . our higher headquarters was changing out. They pulled the Reaper I had laid on. I was still drawing the feed. I watched a Green on Blue attack happen. Live. Helpless to stop it.

Two Soldiers were killed. "Code Hero". "Dark Horse" came on station and blew the tower they were cowering in off the side of the outpost. But they had already slipped out.

They didn't make it far. They strolled leisurely down a dirt path before an Apache turned them into warm paste.

The piece "In and Out of War", that was posted above . . . Was on the mark:

"I no longer enjoyed the game, mainly because the Rumsfeldian contumely, the shenanigans of ideologues, and the short-term memories of clownish officials were all getting people killed in a mindless war."
posted by Max_Black at 7:41 PM on May 11, 2015 [3 favorites]


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