I believe the term was “fucked up like a soup sandwich”, although a person could be “ate up with dumbass.”
Also “fucked up like you read about.”
And “fucked up like a football bat.”
I had a Chief who liked to say, after a hard night out, “I feel like a sack full of assholes with the good ones picked out.” I still use that one.
Air Force gloves-sticking your hands in your pockets. I’m sure just an Army term.
I would give a lot to use this one at work…
I’ve yet to be able to explain the fine art of shamming to civilian friends - it’s somehow so much more than just slacking off. Playing a game or two of solitaire at work is slacking off; to properly sham one should be find a way to not physically be at work, or at least not where you’re supposed to be in your work area. Taking a 30 minute nap in a bathroom stall, followed by complaining to your supervisor that you need to go down to the clinic because you’re suffering from terrible GI distress is shamming.
Vitamin M is, of course, ibuprofen. Good for what ails you!
To rat-fuck something is to go through and pick all the good stuff out. “What fucker ratfucked this entire fucking case of MREs?”
Service members often get visits from the Good Idea Fairy. The Good Idea Fairy does not deliver good ideas.
Warning, Basic Training story incoming!
We had this scrawny little kid in our company who was, to quote DS Kendrick, the biggest fuckup this side of a whorehouse. He lost his weapon, repeatedly. He showed up to formation with his boots untied, repeatedly. The only thing you need to do to get through BCT is be in the right place at the right time in the right uniform, and he failed repeatedly at all three tasks. Thus, he was promptly renamed Soup, as in soup sandwich.
One day in the chow hall, we hear one of the drill sergeants absolutely bellowing: “Soup, what the hell are you doing? What the hell are you eating?”
Soup popped up to parade rest, looked down at his plate, and with obvious pride in his voice, replied, “Drill Sergeant, I made a soup sandwich!”
The kid had decided to take the phrase literally, and unlike anyone who has ever gone through BCT, took the time to go to the soup station in the chow hall, grabbed two slices of bread, ladled soup onto a slice, plop the other slice on top, and was attempting to eat it as a sandwich.
The drill sergeant stared at him for a second, then before walking away, just said, “Kid, you’re a fucking idiot.”
An ex-Air Force friend of mine would say, “He had a severe case of recto-cranial inversion.”
Blanket party: If your boot company had someone who was an incorrigible fuckup, everybody suffered for it. You were only as good as the worst person in your company. What often happened (as in Full Metal Jacket), was that everyone would wait until the person was sleeping. Then four men would grab all four corners of the man’s blanket and pull it tight, basically immobilizing the poor shlub. Then everyone would parade by and either punch the guy or smack him with a bar of soap wrapped in a towel. This was supposed to motivate him to do better.
Shower party: a version of the blanket party. If a guy was a scrounge, he’d be dragged into the shower, all of his clothing would be thrown in with him, along with a scrub brush, and he wasn’t allowed to leave until he’d scrubbed all his clothing. If he was really a dirtbag, scrub brushes were applied to him.
I’m not in the military but I work with it. The ones that stand out to me are:
“voluntold” - Pretty self-explanatory, and something that apparently happens a lot in the military.
“Too easy” - They must train people to say this in basic. Any little instruction or request is met with this response. I must hear it dozens of times a week.
“Hooah” - As Wikipedia has it, this is “military slang referring to or meaning anything and everything except no”
bosun’smate from boatswainsmate.
Charlie Fox: The phonetic alphabetic abbreviation for “Cluster Fuck”.
“Boots and saddles, Gentlemen!” was a phrase I used when ordering my squad to gear up and fall in for a pre-combat inspection. (note: we were Cavalry, not infantry)
Army wife from the late 70s: DONSA= day of no scheduled activities. I still use this for a day with no scheduled obligations. it was pronounced Don-za.
A P-38 was a simple, hand operated can opener. I still have a few around here somewhere and carried one on a key ring for several years.
John Wayne bars were chocolate but also tasted like Flintstones Vitamins.
REMFs : Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers= those who stay behind in the relative safety of the rear
NinjaChick I think what you called shamming, was referred to as “ghosting.” Ghosting was the art of disappearing into thin air whenever there was work to be done. Sometimes it was done by appearing to be busy with some other indisputably important task, or with smoke and mirrors, and sometimes it was just pure magic.
Is this a fairy tale or a no bullshit story?: asked of anyone with an implausible story to share.
In the CG, the difference between a sea story and a fairy tale was fairy tales began “Once upon a time…” and sea stories start out “This is a no shitter…”
**Ranger Jeff’s **charlie fox reminded me of Tango Uniform(T. U.) for tits up, when something is broken or dead. Like bugs on their backs when dead.
I was admonished once for using Tango Uniform by a female officer, to which I innocently replied, “Ma’am, Tango Uniform means Torn Up.”
Oh, of course there’s SNAFU and FUBAR. The M60 was known as “The Pig”. A junior officer you respected might be called “Ell Tee”.
Nice save. Did you get away with it?
[QUOTE=Cub Mistress]
NinjaChick I think what you called shamming, was referred to as “ghosting.” Ghosting was the art of disappearing into thin air whenever there was work to be done. Sometimes it was done by appearing to be busy with some other indisputably important task, or with smoke and mirrors, and sometimes it was just pure magic.
[/QUOTE]
To me, “ghosting” is a more severe form of shamming. Good ole fashioned shamming involves looking like one is working, but not putting any effort at all into it. Holding the mop for an hour without actually getting anything accomplished, for example. That way, if someone comes by or is only casually observing, you appear to be working. Shammers are also the guys on the police call who never pick up anything, or the guys who just talk while everyone else is sorting brass. Shamming.
But shamming is also when a person sneaks off to sleep in the wood line or the shower, or hides in his wall locker, or any other kind of temporary escape from work. Shamming is also the guy who goes to sick call or schedules a dental appointment at a time when he/she knows there is some group activity to be done. That is more severe, but still shamming. The key element here is that someone may be asking about you or looking for you. Your absence, if noticed, immediately raise questions.
Ghosting… now ghosting is another thing entirely. The highest level of shamming. While shamming lasts for a short period, usually no longer than the activity being shammed out of, ghosting occurs over a longer period. Its more like a duty status. Ghosting normally occurs when a person is changing duty stations. Soldiers are given 10 business days to clear and out-process the installation. During this time, nobody really cares or pays attention to where the Soldier is. It is just assumed that the Soldier is taking care of some important or necessary part of the clearing process. The Soldier can even come in and out of the company area–even when other Soldiers are hard at work–and nobody will notice or care. Nobody will ask the Soldier to join in and help with the task at hand. It is just assumed that he has other stuff going on. That is the most common form of “ghosting”. Sometimes a unit will have to go on a training mission, maybe for a month. And during that month, you are scheduled to leave post. So instead of taking you with them for 2 weeks, and then sending you back for 2 so that you can clear, they may just leave you in the rear. Now you have a month of ghosting. Nobody will be looking for you or asking about you.
Outside of the clearing process, I have only seen someone truly ghosting on a few rare occasions. One was a Soldier who was placed on a 3 month tasking to work at the post swimming pool. The pool closed down after 1 month, but the Soldier never went back to work. Nobody put 2 and 2 together to realize that this Soldier was no longer working at the pool because the pool shut down for unscheduled maintenance. That Soldier ghosted for 2 months! He could walk in and out of the barracks, would be seen by all levels of leadership, but never had to work. Everyone just accepted that he was working on some special assignment somewhere.
I’ve seen a Soldier ghost for several months because he was never really assigned to a platoon after the redeployment. So every platoon sergeant just kind of assumed that he was in another platoon. Nobody ever asked where he was or what he was doing. He would come in before the first formation and be seen by all, and just kind of talk to people to make an effort to be seen, and then just disappear before the actual formation. Nobody noticed. People knew he was in the company, but nobody thought he was in their platoon. He would come back around lunch time, just to pop in and be seen, and then leave again until the next morning.
Saw another Soldier get placed on a late night tasking that was supposed to last three weeks. When he showed up, they didn’t need him, so he went back to the unit. But he never told the unit that he was no longer doing the tasking. True Ghosting in its purest form right there!! Since the tasking had him scheduled to work from midnight to 5am, it never raised any eyebrows when he would be walking around the company area in the middle of the duty day wearing civilian clothes on his way to go off post and enjoy his free time. Everyone just figured he was working a special assignment that month!
Ghosting can last longer than those two weeks on rare occasions.
There’s also DILLIGAF, but it never really caught on.
Speaking of rank, I usually hold up The Last Detail as being a fairly accurate representation of Navy life. But there’s one scene that irritates me, wherein Billy Badusky is talking to the CMAA, who is wearing the rank of Master Chief. Billy keeps addressing him as “Chief”. In 23 years, I never knew anybody who made the grievous mistake of calling an E-8 or E-9 “Chief”. 
I’m sure your right. I knew my spelling wasn’t correct.
At least not more than once
She just rolled her eyes and smirked at me, so I guess I sort of did.