President Trump Visits der Schiffkraftwerk! Part I

So yesterday we found out, via company email, that the Shipyard is going to be hosting President Donald Trump on Thursday.  As of blog time not too much is known about the visit other than he will be on the as yet to put to sea USS Gerald R. Ford and he expected to say...something.  Probably.

"Will he bringing donuts with him?" was my first question to upper management.  I still maintain that no amount of donuts would get me to vote for Donald Trump...at least for now, based on the first 40 some odd days of his administration.  But it would still be pretty cool if he was out there at 5:30 AM, handing out donuts and shaking hands.  I know I would appreciate that.  Unfortunately, based on what I know of the man, he stays up late watching cable news to see how he himself is viewed by pundits and people, and it would probably be difficult to get him up quite so early in the morning.  So much the better.  "Trump Triumph's over Adversity; Awakens early to Deliver Donuts" would be a great headline.  And it would be a great story to tell your grand kids someday, about what life was like before the war.

But more important for Trump, no doubt, is the optics of the whole thing.  How do you make someone who has heretofore served almost no cause other than himself look impressive while humbly serving at the behest of the peoples?  How do you convey to everyone that this man is the real dope shit?  How do you convince everyone that he is Big League? Simply strolling out onto the flight deck or a hangar bay might have worked for George H.W. Bush, because as a veteran of World War II and a long time public servant he already had the necessary gravitas.  But for Trump it simply will not do.  Gravitas must be upgraded into solid gold plated magnificence.  

So I imagine, in a great flash of brilliance, he looked around at his aides over lunch and said "Wait a minute now.  It's an aircraft carrier, right?"

"Well....yes sir, it is, technically."

"Why don't we put an aircraft on it?"

So hence we have Option 1, shown in Figure 1 below.  In this option, Trump lands on the flight deck of Gerald R. Ford aboard Marine One, perhaps flanked by a couple of V-22's or maybe even some Harriers, which would just be wicked awesome.  Consider your most greenest, pacifistic, cupcakey liberal alive who would just as soon take our carriers and turn them into giant floating carbon neutral hemp co-ops; I'll wager if you put them in the vicinity of a Harrier doing a vertical take off or landing, that even they would have to utter "Oh my God that is just....it's just so fucking cool!"

Figure 1:  Trump Arrives on Marine One, with Musical Accompaniment.  Harriers and/or V-22s not shown.

And of course some kind of music would be playing.  Maybe the theme from Air Force One or the opening music for "Glory" with the choir and the drums and such, while the people picked for the event stand on the flight deck with their flags and an honor guard waits at attention.  It would all be quite grand and stirring, reflecting on the magnificence of Trump, his administration, his incredible election victory, and his beautiful (and sizable, he might add) hands.

The irony in this is that Marines, piloting Marine One, Harriers and/or V-22 Ospreys, would be the first to land aircraft aboard a Ford Class Carrier, something that I am sure the Marine Corps will never let Naval Aviation ever, ever forget.

But there are some aides that remember the last time a sitting President landed on an Aircraft Carrier, and how that President's latest and greatest feat of arms devolved into a god awful shitty mess shortly thereafter.
So we have Option 2, as shown in Figure 2, in which Trump actually jumps out of Air Force One and parachutes onto the flight deck with a huge American Flag flying as various fireworks are zinging and banging through the air and the 1MC plays some variation of  "Rock Flag and Eagle" by Charlie Kelly.  Maybe with the Flying Elvises, maybe not; their loyalty to the present administration remains uncertain.

Figure 2:  Trump Arrives via Parachute and Musical Accompaniment.  Flying Elvises Not Pictured

If you question the wisdom of letting a 70 year old man jump out of a perfectly good airplane, let me remind you that Trump is in the most magnificent, most excellent health, perhaps the best health of any President ever.  Lincoln?  Constipated.  Horribly, horribly constipated.  Trump?  You can set your watch by him, like a grand old clock. He may be 70, but he feels like he's 39 (not 40 mind you, but 39, as John Oliver noted in a recent issue of Rolling Stone).  So no worries.  Trump's got this.  Just like he's got the Country.

But even parachuting out of a plane just may not be enough to really show us Trump's vision of our nation in the world.  So we at last come to Option 3, in which the mighty ship is raised out of the James River by Trump's incredible mind power, kind of like Yoda only better, and placed on a Hyuge Transporter, and wheeled at the end of a Triumphant Trump Triumph parade, with a statute of ol' "Fire on the Uproll" Trump on the bow, in full naval regalia (including the hat!), saber drawn, leading us into war and onwards to eternal victory.

Figure 3:  Trump Triumphant!

Against whom?  That, my friends, is the question, though I think I remember Bannon saying the South China Sea is awfully nice this time of year.

I'm sure excited.  As for me, my money is on Option 2.      

In Which Nick Answers 40 Stupid Questions About Himself

There is always some sort of "answer questions about yourself" thing going around on facebook, because your friends obviously don't know enough about you as it is.  Leave no stone un-turned!  Let everything come to the light!

I usually don't go for them, but I saw one today and I figured what the heck?  I've been looking for something to write about lately that isn't books or Trump, so why not myself?  It worked for Montaigne.

So, without further ado....

1. Do you like Blue Cheese?  Only if it's Blue Cheese dressing, and then only if its being dipped into by a buffalo wing.  So I guess the answer is....no, not really.

2.  Do you smoke?  About once a year I will have a cigar, provided I have forgotten they taste like shit.  About half way through I will begin to regret my decision, and wonder how I could have been fooled yet again into thinking that smoking a cigar would actually be a pleasurable experience.  So....no, not really.

3.  Do you own a gun? Maybe I do, maybe I don't.  Knock at my door at 2AM and see.

4.  What flavor Kool-Aid?  Grape.  I used to drink grape kool-aid all the time on the Appalachian Trail, double strength, enough to make YOU want to run through walls and say "Awwwww Yeah!" or whatever that dude said.

5.  Do you get nervous before a Doctor's Appointment?  Not usually, unless there are needles involved, or we are going to talk about depression and suicidal thoughts (which is never easy), or my ears are about to be irrigated, or I have to get any blood drawn, or if the visit involves dropping my pants in anyway.

So....yes.

6.  What do you think of hot dogs?  You should never put ketchup on a hot dog if you are over the age of 12.

7.  What is your favorite movie?  Well, I would normally say Master and Commander, because I find it is a movie I can watch many times and not really get tired of.  I like the feel of it, and the look of it, and the general plot.  Though the more I watch  it the more I find little things that about it that annoy me, like how the actors are trying to fake playing the cello and violin and just a couple of hitches in the acting that I think are awkward and hokey and silly.

Now, if I was judging things on purely cinematic merit, I would have to say Braveheart, which is probably the greatest movie ever made in a technical sense.  But I've soured on Mel Gibson...

Tom Hanks is always good.  Saving Private Ryan is an excellent movie, though very hard to watch.  Forrest Gump, now, my Dad thinks that is the greatest movie ever made and it's hard to disagree.  But that's HIS favorite movie and I don't really want to have a favorite movie that someone else has...it should be more unique.

So I am going to go with One Crazy Summer, where a bunch of kids fight to keep developers from building on top of their grandma's house or something like that.  Or is that Happy Gilmore?

Hmmm...

Let me get back to you on that one.

8.  What do you prefer to drink the morning?  Scotch.  Or Coffee.  But never at the same time.

9.  Can you do a push up?  I can do like 13 of them bitch, all in a row.  24 if I let me knees touch the ground.

10.  What is your favorite piece of jewelry?  I am rather partial of my wedding ring.  I got it because the pattern reminds me of the texturing in Van Gogh's paintings of Cypress Trees that he did while he was in a mental institution near Paris.

What that has to do with marriage I don't know.

11.  Do you have a hobby?  You're looking at it bucko.

12.  Do you have ADHD?  This would be a good time to insert a joke about how I am writing my answer but am then distracted by something shiny or a squirrel or something like that.  But I won't give you the satisfaction.

Though interestingly, did you know that Germans have a really tough time with the word squirrel?  It's a fact!

What were we talking about?  Oh right, I....dammit!

13.   Do you wear glasses?  Mmmm hmmm.

14.  Who was your childhood idol?  Roberto Clemente, outfielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates, 3000 regular season hits.  Died trying to save others.

15.  For some reason there is no question 15, at least on the facebook feed I am looking at.  So I am not sure how to handle this one.  Let's move on to the next.

16.  Three drinks you usually drink?  Coffee.  La Croix Coconut Water.  Gypsy tears.

17.  Current Worries?  I think, when I am sitting still, I can slowly feel my teeth shifting around in my head.

18.  Things I hate?  I fucking hate Mannheim Steamroller and Trans Siberian Orchestra.  And it's because of their Christmas Music.

Trans Siberian Orchestra Christmas music is the kind of thing you would listen to if you were celebrating Christmas by attacking the Death Star or assaulting Sevastopol (which the British did, actually, during the Crimean War, thinking the fact that the soldiers were fighting on Christmas would give them a little boost in morale).  But that to me isn't Christmas.

Mannheim Steamroller because I think their music is cheesy but when you see them in a parade or something they are obviously grooving on it pretty hard.  The fact that anyone could get down to that sort of thing, could actually listen to it and say "woah man, that's far out.  You know who wrote this?  I did.  Isn't it cool?" makes me lose faith in humanity for a short time.

Mannheim Steamroller.  You'd think, considering their great success, that they would be able to afford better shoes.

19.  Favorite Place to Be?  You kidding?  Whether it's coming in at 2 AM to launch a new submarine, standing out on the shop floor waiting for something to arrive so that something can be fixed so that maybe something will happen today, or sitting hunched over a keyboard staring into the depths of a thrice rolled over spreadsheet while I take a sip from a another cup of coffee that closely resembles bunker fuel, there is no where I would rather be than working at Newport News Shipbuilding, where we build the most kick-ass ships the world has ever seen and we have a wonderful time doing it!

Why yes, I did recently apply for a promotion.  Why do you ask?

20.  How did you ring in the New Year?  I was asleep.  I didn't even try to stay awake.  My wife and I called game over at 10:30.

21.  Where would you like to go?  I've always wanted to go visit the landing sites for the Invasion of Normandy.

22.    Name three people who will do this?  Well, I know Donald Trump likes to talk about himself so I imagine he will do one, if he can sit still long enough to focus and keep his eye off the telly.  I think Don Draper from Mad Men would maybe do one but then crumple the paper in the trash before posting it.  And my neighbor Suvatjana, who comes from Upper Malakvia and doesn't speak English so good.

23.  Do you own slippers?  Fuck no.  But in spite of the emphatic negative, I think I kind of wish I did.  At least in the winter.

24.  What color is your shirt?  It's dark blue with white lettering.  Many of my shirts, actually, are dark blue with white lettering.

25.  Do you like sleeping in satin sheets?  Yes, but only in the nude.  Otherwise what's the point?

26.  Can you whistle?  I can whistle extremely well.  Annoyingly well.  Most Marickovich men, actually, can.  I've got good range, and excellent pitch.  Not very loud -- I won't be able to call a dog or get your attention from across a grassy knoll, or even cat call a beautiful woman over the clatter of Smitty's jackhammer (but who does THAT anymore).  But if you want someone to whistle the main melody lines of Bach's 3rd Keyboard Concerto in D major, with a bit of counterpoint to boot, well, I am your man.

27.  Where are you now?  Home.  What kind of a question is that?

28.  Would you be a pirate?  Depends.  If you are talking modern day Somali type pirates, then the answer is no.  If you are talking more of the Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow variety, I'd be willing to think about it if you threw in an official pirate hat.

29.  What is your favorite color?  Blue....no, wait.....AAAAAGGGHHHHHHHH!

30.  What is something you are afraid of?  Cows.  They are big, stupid, lumbering beasts that step on your toes and shit on your lunch without thinking twice, and they just stare at you with those big black eyes, eyes like a dolls eyes, and chew their cud, completely unafraid of you.  And you just wonder....what are they thinking?  Do they know that one day I am likely to be eating one of them? Are they wondering perhaps if the tables could be turned, maybe how best to serve a fillet of Marickovich - medium rare perhaps, with a side of garlic mashed potatoes, washed down with a nice beer served at a bar by a strapping bull with a trendy nose ring through his nose?  I wonder....

31.  Favorite Foods?  One of my favorite things to do is take a tortilla and wrap it around some cheese and just stick in the microwave for about 45 seconds till the cheese is all melty.  Almost any cheese will do, except for blue cheese which I think we deduced earlier I in fact do not like.

Other than that, macaroni and cheese, and peanut butter.  Not at the same time of course.

Although....

32.  What's in your pocket?  My wallet, $5, and a knife.  Everything you need to have an interesting night out.

33.  Last thing that made you laugh?  Probably a joke my co-worker told me.  But I can't remember what it was about.

34.  What is your favorite Animal?  Boom.

35.  What is your worst injury?  I rolled over my pinkie finger once playing soccer, and pretty much broke it.  Didn't seek medical attention, just got a mountain man with beaver blood on his work boots to reset it after drinking a big slug of Canadian Jack Whisky.  It turned black but I just put a little bit of Dr. Carruther's Wonder Elixir on it and after a few months the swelling went down.  Oddly, it's never been the same since.

36.  How many TV's in your house?  In reality only one.  Though every screen is a TV these days.  So if you count the smart phones, the computers, the tablets, and the TV itself....6.  Not enough really for a man cave (especially as not all of those screens are mine), but its a start.

37.  Worst Pain?  See that?  See that?  Marie Ann Moffett....she broke my heart!

38.  Do you like to dance?  Only if I am at a wedding, because everyone will remember the bride and groom and no one will remember that awkward man strutting around with his limbs all akimbo and his hips gyrating in a disturbing manner, like he was some kind of wounded bird.  The open bar, if there is one, usually helps. Otherwise, I really don't like to dance at all, much to my wife's chagrin, who is a wonderful dancer.

39. Are your parents living?  Yes, and they are well, thank you.  Though they will probably not be happy with the amount of curse words I put in this one.  But as they used to say in the back parlors of 18th century Paris...

40.  Favorite Book?  I got a lot out of The Brothers Karamazov, which I think is probably the best book ever written.  Though for sheer readability I would go with Krakauer's Into Thin Air or Harbach's The Art of Fielding.  Also would put The Crimson Petal and the White by Faber on the list. These are books I could read over and over again, which is something I don't normally do.   

But if there was a best history book category the prize would go to Fred Andersen's book about the Seven Years War, Crucible of War, which was masterful from start to finish.  Even the footnotes were worth reading.

Books You May Not Like -- Steel Boat, Iron Hearts, by Hans Goebeler, with an assist by John Vanzo

This is the story of one man's (Hans Goebeler's) experiences in the Kriegsmarine as a U-boat crew member, specifically aboard the U-505.  The U-505 has some distinction, not necessarily for it's combat record but rather because it was captured by a US Hunter Killer Group (a naval squadron made up of carrier based aircraft and destroyers, created to run U-boats to the ground and sink them or take them a prize) and is currently at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.  It is one of the few boats to actually survive the war...and Hans Goebeler was one of only 8,000 (out of about 38,000) German submariners to survive the Battle of the Atlantic.

So Hans joins the Kriegsmarine in 1941 and manages to get into the submarine force by virtue of his skill, demeanor, and the fact that he was pretty short for a stormtrooper.  It's a pretty unflinching look at life inside a World War II Submarine.

I mean, imagine it...you and, oh, 55 of your closest friends are stuck inside a steel tube that is 200 feet long and (here is the kicker) about 14 feet wide, for about 3 months or so...maybe less if the shipyard workers of Lorient sabotaged the boat - which they did often.  You have no air conditioning, and you and all of your buds have to survive on the 64 gallons of water a day produced by the distillery units...enough water to cook and to drink, serve whatever mechanical needs are necessary, but not enough for anyone to shower.  Ever.

You like eggs?  I hope so.  You have to eat dozens of them before they go bad as all the food sort of starts to rot in the warm waters off the coast of Africa.  For the rest of your life, you will hate them; your love of eggs is the first casualty of the war, for you.

You play a deadly game of cat and mouse, your goal: to sink Allied merchant shipping.  But while you are hunting you are also hunted...allied ships ping you with acoustic sonar and try to sink you with depth charges, but even more frightening is Allied air power, looking for boats having to recharge batteries on the surface (U-505 was not equipped with a snorkel), which gets harder to avoid as the war goes on.

And so you patrol the seas, hopefully sink some merchant shipping, and pull back into Lorient with three months of stink and facial hair on you, victory pennants flying, your only thoughts of the companionship you will find in the red light district...

U-505 was not a lucky ship.  It had a couple moderately successful cruises, but its first skipper was relieved after sinking a sailing ship belonging to the President of Columbia (inducing them to declare War on Germany, which I am sure did the Allied cause a lot of good), and the second skipper never won the hearts of his men because he was a douche.  He wasn't very good at submarining either, and in over a year at the healm only sunk one or two ships.  But by 1943 the war was going against the Germans.  The U-boat fleet was subjected to incredible sabotage (I think almost through all of 1943 the U-505 only got out on an actual patrol once, where it was heavily damaged in the Carribean and yet still made it back to port...perhaps the most heavily damaged U-boat to ever make it back, a testament to the professionalism of the crew).  At last the skipper committed suicide on board, the only submarine skipper to do so while on duty.

And so it goes on.  Finally the boat is captured by the US in June 4, 1944, the first enemy boat to be captured by the US Navy since the war of 1812.  The crew spends the rest of the war in America, at a prisoner of war camp I think in Louisana.  Because the US doesn't want the Germans knowing the boat was captured, the men's families are not notified that they are still alive (a violation of the Geneva Convention!! or at least so says Hans).  But finally the war ends and they are allowed to write home again.  Hans and his crew were transfered to Scotland, where they broke rocks as penance until 1947, when at last they were allowed to return to Germany.  All were required to disavow the Government, but Hans, loyal to the end, jumps of the train and sneaks in to the country, loyalty intact.

And that is sort of the striking thing about this book.  Hans is completely unapologetic for serving in the Kriegsmarine during the war, and makes a point often of saying so.  I am not sure he really needs to be apologetic -- though most American readers will probably want to know how he reconciles his pride in serving in the U-boat fleet with the fact that he was fighting for Nazi Germany and what it stood for.  The answer is he doesn't, at least in the book.  I am not sure he mentions the plight of the Jews at all...he rather points out the devastation of the Allied air raids in Lorient and Germany, as well as the struggle against Communism which to him was paramount and got underway when he joined up in 1941.   As to his opinions on the many dark sides of the Nazi regime, well, we never are privy to those.

And if you also don't like a lot of "wink wink nudge nudge" here's what we did on the Rue Pastorale, you probably won't like this book.  Hans recounts his many adventures ashore with something a bit of "these were the best days of our lives" lavisious glee...though he never goes into the details (though there is one rather hilarious story that actually takes place on the boat when this guy, he...).  He had a very good time.  But I don't begrudge him that -- if you or I were young and single and had to spend two months or more in a steel tube with rotting food and shit in buckets, pulling boring duties punctuated with sheer terror, I imagine we might well behave the same.  I actually am sure I almost certainly would have.  After a while though, it does kind of get old.  It's like "yes, Hans, we get it, we get it.  You fucked a lot of women, and you drank a metric tonne of booze."  It's like the opening scene from Das Boot replayed many, many times over.  But hey, that's the way it was.

Before you write off Hans as a Nazi playboy, you should also know that he and his shipmates served with honor and devotion, or at least as much honor as one could under the circumstances, as most naval men always have. They made it a practice to cripple a ship and then make sure most of the enemy sailors aboard had gotten off before sinking it, after which they rendered what aid to survivors they could.  Not much, but a bit of food and water before slipping away.  He also moved to America after he retired from work in Germany, to Chicago to be with his beloved boat, and was instrumental in getting veterans of the U-505 and the men from the US Navy who captured the German sub together, where none showed any will will towards the other, even though its not unlikely that the men sitting across the table from Hans killed some of his friends on other boats.  The kind of binding up, that sort of coming together, is a lesson to us all, I'd say, as is Hans pride in his service.

So yes.  If you are interested in what it was like to be on a World War II submarine, this is a rather good book.  It's a quick read, a straightforward account, and it gives a different perspective on the war in total.