<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
	<channel>
		<atom:link href="http://www.reconsnipergroup.com/rss/?id=4" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
		<title>Latest Article Topics</title>
		<link>http://www.reconsnipergroup.com/forum/</link>
		<description>List of the latest topics from our public Article.</description>
		<item>
			<title>Mjolnir Viking Bar Sydney Australia</title>
			<link>http://www.reconsnipergroup.com/forum/thread/5/mjolnir-viking-bar-sydney-australia/</link>
			<description>https://www.broadsheet.com.au/sydney/food-and-drink/full-lowdown-eau-de-vie-teams-new-underground-viking-bar-and-carvery</description>
			<content:encoded>https://www.broadsheet.com.au/sydney/food-and-drink/full-lowdown-eau-de-vie-teams-new-underground-viking-bar-and-carvery</content:encoded>
			<guid>http://www.reconsnipergroup.com/forum/thread/5/mjolnir-viking-bar-sydney-australia/</guid>
			<pubDate>Sun, 17 Sep 2017 18:31:43 +0000</pubDate>
			<dc:creator>John Craig Taylor</dc:creator>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>An Honorable Life</title>
			<link>http://www.reconsnipergroup.com/forum/thread/3/an-honorable-life/</link>
			<description>Hundreds of people gathered in a library in Maryville Tennessee to honor the fallen. There was even an Iwo Jima vet there, along with a number of othe...</description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[Hundreds of people gathered in a library in Maryville Tennessee to honor the fallen. There was even an Iwo Jima vet there, along with a number of other veterans. I was there out of respect for a man I barely knew, but his actions in life affected me deeply.  

His name was Mike and he used to come around the shows with his buddies, back in the days when I was still playing on Trash Two Street. It was impossible to miss the table full of jacked dudes and their hot girlfriends. Then, they punched out to the sand box. 

At the end of another uneventful day of walk and knocks, Mike made entry on a mud hut in the middle of nowhere. Just a quick look around and maybe they could make it back in time for hot chow. The ensuing gunfight went on for most of the night. Mike never came back. 

A few days prior to making entry on that mud hut, he found out that his girlfriend was pregnant. So he married her by proxy from the sand box and was looking forward to being a husband and a father.  

Of course they held his wake at Paddy Macs and they asked me to play. During a break in the set, his brothers borrowed the makeshift stage and mic to say their goodbyes to Mike’s spirit. I was in the corner, still holding my guitar. Witnessing their grief, made me feel like an imposter. I was overcome with emotion and quietly fumbling along with some chords. Later, that night, those chords and that feeling became the song “Always Beside You.” I was able to meet Mike’s dad on Oki, which led to his son little Mikey being co-author of the song. 

I put it out on album in 2010 and nobody really gave a shit, which is pretty normal. I do what I do and write the way I write. I only write sad or angry songs and I only do them fast or slow. So, if you’ve heard one of my songs, you’ve heard half my work. One night, I was looking through old video and I discovered I had some footage of Mike from a story I did on his platoon. That eventually became a video for the song. I would run into Mike’s widow and his son in the PX and it was uncanny how little Mikey looked just like his dad. I got to know Mike’s parents a little more when they came to the island. I saw and felt the sadness in their eyes. I realized how heavy the weight of sacrifice really is; how it has a way of just knocking the wind out of your sails. 

At some point, before I retired, I began to grasp the concept of an honorable life. I would get inspired every time I saw some ripped dude with a ruck on, running out towards NTA on that back road outside of Schwab. I began to comprehend how grateful I was to just be alive. Better men than me taught me how to be a brother, a friend and a warrior at Schwab so long ago and those lessons continued to ring true in all aspects of my life. A sense of absolute gratitude crept into my soul. I no longer had to carry the weight; I could watch from my mini-van as a new generation rucked up for the next mission and it was OK. I taught my son about men like Jeff Starling, Horsehead, Alan Rowe, Cid Baez and Mike. I made him memorize their names and I explained to him what they had done for their brothers. By doing that, I began to understand what honor and remembrance really meant. 

In the middle of two wars, I left the community after 14 years to be a reporter for the suck. It wasn’t an overnight decision; a lot of things happened to bring me to the point where I was ready to leave. It was an ugly split. The men in my last platoon considered me the worst kind of quitter. The fembots running the show in my new job couldn’t understand why the hell I would want to leave the community. Pogue life looked good from far away; they always look so clean and dry. I had no idea what I was getting myself into and it became a six-year-long nightmare. 

I was in the PI covering yet another bullshit story and I met a kid named Mark John in a small village near Ternate. He was the son of a whore and he was practically thrown away at birth. He was dumped on the streets as a toddler and a poor woman, with her own kids and problems, living in a thatched roof hut, took him in and named him Mark John so he could be blessed by God. 

He was dying. He had somehow managed to contract Tuberculosis in his spine. I was there to cover the medical visit to the village. I was just trying to get footage of smiling brown kids getting shots and their rotten teeth yanked out by barely capable fat-assed black shoe Swabbies. I needed to finish the visual abortion by writing some canned nonsense that vaguely touched on whatever talking points were being preached in the general’s meeting and bam! Another AFN masterpiece would be born. The doctor in charge was the one who told me about the kid. The village elder apparently thought my piece of shit Sony PD170 camera, along with my notepad, qualified me to be some kind of CNN savior for the ten-year-old dying boy. 

They didn’t know what I knew. Mark John was definitely going to die. Sure, a week in a real hospital with some serious meds would probably save him, but the son of whore wasn’t worth it. Don’t fuck with the narrative Gunny or your fitrep and career will reflect. At AFN we can never tell the truth and we don’t even cover real news. We spew propaganda and bake sale information to an audience that knows better and doesn’t give a shit. I was there to tell a bullshit feel-good story about helping people and not one word about a dying kid. Otherwise, I’d quickly find myself spending my last eight months in the suck working the PA desk in Barstow for that notorious retired, holy-rolling Jesus freak that hated swearing more than he hated white people. I practically had orders there already; the bi-sexual, wife-swapping nut jobs running Pee Ghey Ohh were just looking for an excuse to hit me with a Peter North sized load of orders to Barstow. All in in the name of God, Country and Corps, of course. I dutifully followed the village elder to Mark John’s hut. Even though I knew better, I filmed him anyways. 

Chickens scratched in the dirt and filthy children clamored around me. Mark John just stared at me through my lens. He was already too weak to walk. The doctor figured he had a couple weeks left, maybe. Then that barefoot, tired old woman, in the gaudy bright blue polyester dress, with the too-tight pink t-shirt spoke up. Her eyes were too wide apart, her teeth too shitty and crooked. I could almost smell her zoo breath from ten feet away. I remember glancing at her huge saggy tits, that were almost spilling out the bottom of her t-shirt, as she loudly quoted John 3:16 to me. She just stared at me after she said it and burned a hole in my eyes with her look. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Mark John looked almost through me as well. I’ve never gotten his look out of my head. 

Before I retired, they put me on the happy pills. “We have to put you on something gunny.” I had quit the bottle long ago and was worried about addiction to pills. I thought I had been through some shit, but that was just my ego. I really believed I would play the game for six months, then get off the pills and move on with my life. Next thing I knew, it was four years later, I was thirty pounds fatter, on even more pills and not feeling any better. 

After I retired, I fell into the island contracting world. I found myself working at Range 16 for a piece of shit that had done four years at Third more than two decades ago. He didn’t even go to BRC and spent most of his time in the dive locker because his platoon hated him. He got out and stayed on Hansen. He hadn’t filed taxes in 20 years. His stateside license was long gone. He was trapped on that island and the island is filled with worthless people just like him. I lasted three years with him and then went to work for another fucking retard. A guy who we called “Sloth” back in the day. He was in my old platoon for a couple of years in the late 90s. We would already have the house cleared and doing SSE, but Sloth would be wandering around, with his helmet cocked sideways and a dumbfounded look on his face. Barry screamed at Sloth a lot. We all kind of did. He got fapped out a lot. Somehow, he managed to do 22 years and not pick up gunny. Only Sloth could do some shit like that. Then one day, he was my boss at Starling Hall. He still wore his helmet all fucked up and he still had that same stupid look on his face. 

I could never explain to my wife (I tried many times) what it felt like to work for Sloth. I would grip the wheel of my Oki van and bite my lip and puff on my fat cigar while I downed gallons of coffee. My knuckles would be bright white from the hatred in my soul as I drove onto base every day to work for Sloth. I was barely there three months when Sloth thought it would be funny to let me think the contract was ending and I was getting cut. That was the same day, I was deciding whether or not to buy a new car on the island through a local dealer. 

But, the day I stood in front of an R&amp;S class I had offered some help to, and listened to a ten-year gunny operator explain to the students that “These civilians (me) have never really done this shit before,” I knew it was time to move on. I know it’s hard for guys to comprehend, but eventually the BDC will change like that as well. It’s inevitable; the new blood brings their own shit to the table and we all know how ruthless we can be to people we don’t know. I just saw on the BDC that a ten-year-dude was asking who Hak was. The funny thing is Hak would just laugh.  

We had to deal with a ten-year-old boy, from the good Christian private school we sent our kids to, who tried to get with my six-year-old daughter in her bedroom. The kid was on something that made him stay awake all night long and then drive on like it was nothing. He had huge dark circles under his eyes and manic energy. To me, there was nothing but gerbils eating his brain behind those stark eyes. It was terrifying to witness. His dad was a terminal SSgt fighting to stay in. I didn’t even want to know what the fuck was wrong with that family. I didn’t care, I just got that kid the fuck away from my kids. 

When we had to deal with the good Christian teacher choking out a kid in my son’s third grade class, I decided it was time to no-shit pull the trigger and move the whole family back to the land of the big PX. For civilians, there are only two real options for American/English schooling on Oki; pay 24 grand a year per kid for the DODs bullshit or pay about ten grand a year per kid (from all that awesome contractor money) for the good Christian school that takes all the kids who get kicked out of DoDs school. The good Christian school also has a hard time keeping decent teachers because they don’t pay them shit. Administrators lean on that whole “do if for Jesus” thing. It has to be difficult to see all the rich mainland Japanese housewives picking up their kids in new imported BMW, Audi and Benz cars. Maybe that shit got to the crazy lady that taught my son’s third grade class. It doesn’t matter anymore. 

If our kids just went to local Japanese schools on Oki, in the little village we lived in way up north, they would have grown up happy. But, they would grow up in an unrealistic, idyllic bubble that only exists on little islands like Oki. It’s a bubble of innocence. It’s why so many of those local girls get married and move back to the states, but then years later they end up back on Oki with their kids and no husband to found. They just can’t handle real life in the states. I wanted my kids to have options. America is the place for that. The town we decided to move to had the first public Japanese immersion school in the country. Seemed like a nice soft landing for my half-Japanese kids. 

We saved as much of that “awesome contractor money” as possible and just left. We left behind a brand new car and a house we had bought years ago. We were fucking established, but I saw that we were just as trapped as the rest of the fools who stay on that island; sooner or later, all Gaijins are just passing through Oki. Off and on, I had spent sixteen years’ total on that island. I’d had enough of the Masons and the uptight bible thumpers at building one. I’d had enough of lock downs, paid protestors, obnoxious Chinese tourists and the endless namby-pamby bullshit that comes with life on that place. All my kids knew was that island; it was their whole universe. It was a leap of faith to move to place we had never been before and try to follow my dream of making money being creative. I also used the move to get off the happy pills once and for all. 

Day one, I went right to a legal dispensary and loaded up on medicine. Weed helped me get off the fucking pills, but there was price. It made me feel again, and sometimes it’s been overwhelming. Weed influenced and inspired my music and writing in ways I’ve never experienced before, but if I talk openly about how great it is, I sound just like all the other stinky hippies in this town. I also get some of those side-long glances from “established and refined” people, so I shut my mouth. I still don’t drink and I still can’t sleep without a fucking handful of Ambien, but I definitely feel better. Weed might be legal here, but all the decent jobs still have a piss test. So it goes. 
Once I got back to America, I tried to honor some unspoken obligations. I went to Flash’s thing; to honor how he helped me. I played for the guys in Chicago; I hated to even ask for money for the flight, but as the money got tight, the fights with the wife about money got worse. When I hear my son telling my daughter “We can’t buy that right now because we don’t have the money,” I tell them that we’ll make money again someday. I tell them it’ll be fine even if I don’t believe it. 

I was supposed to be past all this. Struggle was supposed to be for my younger years, when I was lost in throws of alcoholism and barely hanging on, seriously contemplating eating a bullet. I was at 2nd Force back then and my own Vietnam Veteran Marine father didn’t believe I was in the community. He had me bring him to the barracks at felony creek and meet some of the guys. He saw the float board on the wall, but didn’t really believe me until he met the first shirt. 

I naively thought that after 20 years of pain and agony in the suck, that I would not have to struggle again. That I somehow deserved not to struggle. I had to get my ego squashed back down to reality. We’re never above struggle; struggle has a short memory and no conscience. You don’t get to put good intentions in the “do-gooder” vending machine and get good karma back. The throbbing veiny weenie of struggle comes sniffing for all of our assholes whenever it feels like it. 

As the struggle tightened around my neck, I found myself in that library; listening to a brother open the ceremony by reciting the creed and I cried like a little fucking girl. Somebody up on the podium mentioned living an honorable life as a way to honor the memory of the fallen and it brought me back to reality. My own words also came back to me; things I’ve told others who were struggling before. One foot in front of the other, be a part of the solution. Live an honorable life. It looks bad right now, but you are forgetting about God. He can turn shit around in an instant. It happens all the time. 

I recently got approached by Donny O’Malley. He’s the current internet darling with his silky hikes, his funny videos and his book, which reads like Tucker Max in the suck. He’s got a new Vet TV show coming out soon. At first, I really thought he was asking me to help him create content or maybe he wanted to use my music for something. I got so excited and sent him a bunch of skit ideas. He liked the one called, “If your friends were the drugs the VA had you on.” But, he wanted me to basically be a PAO guy for him. I couldn’t do it. 

I thought it was really funny that he had no idea that 14 years ago, I was the current internet darling, with a famous web page and two movies coming out. But, it’ll never happen to him, or the guys in Terminal Boots or Terminal Lance or Article 15, or Ranger Up, or any of the many others who are creating really interesting content. Somehow, they’re actually going to find a way to make money at being famous on the net. The struggle is for somebody else. It’s always going to be awesome forever and everybody is going to back you a hundred percent and you’ll never lose your internet fame. 

It does not matter what the struggle is up to; all that matters is that I stay the course and try to live an honorable life. For me, it means doing what’s right even when nobody is looking. An honorable man knows that courage is the acknowledgement of fear. An honorable man stays committed simply by trying again, no matter how many fucking times the struggle kicks you in the balls. Try again. 

I am alive and I can kiss my children goodnight. My son and daughter tell me they love me and it melts my heart. With that alone, I am rich beyond words. My woman understands as best she can and that’s good enough; I can be right or I can be married. I like being married. 

For me, an honorable life is one filled with joy and gratitude, no matter what the fuck the struggle is bringing my way. I try to have a smile and handshake for all. I still read the Bible and I do not hesitate to thank God for everything I have. I will do whatever I can to help. I will be part of the solution. I will forgive whenever I can and I will try to forget the wrongs done. It’s not easy and some days are better than others. An honorable man faces the struggle one more time, and does the best he can. Because, when the struggle finally gets fisted by the cactus hands of God, it will make success that much sweeter. 

All of this has boiled down to a few things I tell my son almost daily. Be smart, be safe and be humble. Live an honorable life and hold dear the memory of men like Mike.]]></content:encoded>
			<guid>http://www.reconsnipergroup.com/forum/thread/3/an-honorable-life/</guid>
			<pubDate>Thu, 22 Sep 2016 04:56:25 +0000</pubDate>
			<dc:creator>Jimmy Stare</dc:creator>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>Off Topic Section</title>
			<link>http://www.reconsnipergroup.com/forum/thread/1/off-topic-section/</link>
			<description>Hey can we add an off topic and general discussion section of everything? You know the usual sections found in a forum?</description>
			<content:encoded>Hey can we add an off topic and general discussion section of everything? You know the usual sections found in a forum?</content:encoded>
			<guid>http://www.reconsnipergroup.com/forum/thread/1/off-topic-section/</guid>
			<pubDate>Sun, 21 Aug 2016 03:50:10 +0000</pubDate>
			<dc:creator>Tulsa Jack</dc:creator>
		</item>
	</channel>
</rss>