How to Simulate Navy Life at Home...

Zaphod

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1) Buy a dumpster, paint it gray, and live in it for 6 months straight.

2) Run all of your home's pipes and wiring on the outside of the walls and ceiling.

3) Pump 10 inches of sewage and oil into your basement. Wait two hours. Pump out the basement, clean it up, and then paint the floor dark gray.

4) Every couple of weeks, go the scummiest part of town and find the most run down, trashy bar you can find, pay $10 per beer until you're completely hammered, then walk home in the freezing cold.

5) Perform a weekly disassembly, cleaning, and inspection of your lawnmower. Log the results.

6) Every other day, dial your water heater up to 210°F. On the remaining days, turn it off.

7) Once per month, declare to your family that they’ve used too much water and that all showers are secured for a week. (Use paper plates and cups during that week.)

8) Raise your bed to within 6 inches of the ceiling.

9) Have your neighbor come over each day at 5 a.m., blow a whistle in your ear, and shout "Reveille! Reveille! All hands heave out and trice up!"

10) Have your mother-in-law write down everything that you’re going to do the next day. Each morning at 6 a.m. stand in the back yard and have her read it to you.

11) Eat an entire box of Ex-Lax and drink a bottle of Tabasco. Hang a sign on your bathroom that says "Secured-Contact A Division at X-3053", then lock yourself out of the bathroom for 12 hours.

12) Submit a special-request form to your father-in-law asking if it's all right for you to leave your house before 5 p.m.

13) Invite 300 strangers to your home, then board up all the windows and doors. After six months, take down the boards, wave at your friends and family through the front window, but don’t leave until the next day; you have duty.

14) Require your family to qualify before operating any appliances in your home (i.e. dishwasher operator, blender technician, etc.).

15) Walk around your car for 4 hours checking the tire pressure every 15 minutes.

16) Sit in your car and let it run for 4 hours before going anywhere to ensure it is properly "lighted off".

17) Empty all the garbage bins in your house and sweep your driveway three times a day whether they need it or not.

18) Repaint your entire house once a month.

19) Cook all of your food blindfolded, groping for any spice or seasoning you can get your hands on.

20) Use eighteen scoops of budget coffee grounds per pot. Allow each pot to sit 5 hours on high before drinking.

21) Have your neighbor collect all your mail for a month, read your magazines, and randomly lose every 5th item.

22) Spend $200,000 on a satellite system for your TV, but only watch CNN and the Weather Channel.

23) Avoid watching TV with the exception of old movies that are played in the middle of the night. Have the family vote on which movie to watch and then show a different one.

24) Have your 5-year-old cousin give you a haircut with goat shears.

25) Sew back pockets to the front of your pants.

26) Spend 2 weeks in the red-light districts of Europe, then call it "world travel".

27) Spend 5 years working at McDonalds without being promoted.

28) Needle-gun the aluminum siding on your house after your neighbors have gone to bed.

29) When your children are in bed, run into their room with a megaphone and shout at the top of your lungs that your home is under attack and to man battle stations.

30) Make your family menu a week ahead of time without checking the pantry and refrigerator first.

31) Post a menu on the refrigerator door informing your family that you are having steak for dinner. When they finally get to the kitchen, tell them that you are out of steak, but you have dried ham or hot dogs.

32) When baking a cake, prop up one side of the pan while it’s in the oven. When it’s done, spread the icing so the top of the cake is leveled off.

33) In the middle of January, place a podium at the end of your driveway, and have you family stand rotating four-hour watches.

34) Lock yourself and your family in the house for 6 weeks. Tell them that at the end of the sixth week you're going to take them to Disneyland. When that time rolls around, inform them that Disneyland has been canceled and that it will be another week before they can even leave the house.

35) In your grim, gray dumpster (refer to #1 above), with 300 strangers (cite #13 above), and regardless of gender, suffer through PMS five times a month.

36) Sleep on the shelf in your closet, replacing the closet door with a curtain. Have you wife whip open the curtain about three hours after you go to sleep, shine a flashlight in your eyes, and mumble "Sorry, wrong rack."

37) Renovate your bathroom by building a wall across the middle of your bathtub and moving the showerhead down to chest level. (Make sure you shut off the water while you soap down.)

38) During a thunderstorm, find a wobbly rocking chair and rock as hard as you can until you become nauseous. (Having your wife blow cigarette smoke in your face is a plus). Keep a supply of stale crackers in your shirt pocket.

39) Fill your humidifier with motor oil and set it on high.

40) Leave the lawn mower running in your living room eight hours a day.

41) Once a week, blow compressed air up your chimney, making sure the wind carries the soot onto your neighbors house.

42) Every other month buy green or red marine primer and put it in a paint sprayer. Spray it over the roof of your house and onto your neighbor's car.

43) Lock-wire the lug nuts on your car.

44) Buy a trash compactor but use it only once a week. Store the garbage on the other side of your bathtub (Refer to #37 above).

45) Get up every night around midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on stale bread.

46) Set your alarm clock to go off at random during the night. Jump up, get dressed as fast as you can (making sure you button the top button on your shirt), and stuff you pants into your socks. Run into the backyard and uncoil the garden hose.

47) Install a fluorescent lamp under the coffee table. Call it a library.

48) Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of all your doors so that you either trip or bang your head every time you pass through one of them.

49) Every so often, throw the cat into the pool and shout "Man overboard! Starboard side!" Then run into the house and sweep all the pots and dishes off the counter. Yell at the wife and kids for not having had the kitchen secured for sea.

50) Put on the headphones from your stereo set, but don't plug them in. Hang a paper cup around your neck with string. Go stand in front of your stove. Say "Stove manned and ready" Stand there for three or four hours, then say "stove secured". Roll up your headphones and paper cup and place them in a box.

51) Fill your gas tank directly from a tanker truck while both vehicles are going down the highway at 25 mph.

52) Have your neighbor deliver your groceries through your window via clothesline.

53) Hang a brick around your neck and stand in your backyard for four hours.

54) Don’t do your laundry until you have used each item for at least a week.

55) Paint your house number on the garage door in six-foot-high white digits. Paint your family name across the back wall of the house in two-foot-high grey letters. (If you’re at war with a neighbor, paint the numbers in black.)

56) Label the contents, pressure, and direction-of-flow for every pipe in your house.

57) Repeat verbatim any request you receive from someone else. ("Pass the salt, please." "Pass the salt, aye.")

58) Find a room in your house that has no windows. Paint the walls and ceiling black, and install dim blue lights. Set the air conditioner to 15°F. Install 25 CB radios, set their volumes on full, and write down everything that’s said over each of them.

59) Throw your trash over the backyard fence into your neighbor’s yard. Make sure it’s heavy!

60) When telling time, add 12 to the hours after noon, while adding a zero in front of the hours before noon.

61) Disconnect all the telephones in the house. Communicate only via CB, ham radio, flags, or flashlight.

62) Arrange with the local newspapers to receive your papers six weeks after they’re published.

63) Have your children wear only blue jeans and light blue shirts. You and your wife get to wear only khakis. Everyone can wear blue ball caps.

64) Replace all the furniture in your house with plastic, metal, or otherwise non-upholstered furnishings.

65) Apply non-skid to the floor on each side of every door in your house and at the top and bottom of every staircase.

66) Whenever you hear a police or traffic helicopter, yell, "Flight quarters! Flight quarters!"

67) Every time you open a fuse panel, take off anything that contains metal, put on rubber boots, rubber gloves, and face shield. Have your wife stand by with a rope tied around your waist.

68) Every time you come home or leave, have one of your children ring a bell four times and announce your arrival or departure.

69) Stand on the roof of your house for four hours using binoculars to stare at the horizon.

70) Insist that everyone stop using the terms “bathroom”, “wall”, “floor”, “ceiling”, “door”, “stairs”, “left”, and “right”, and start using the terms “head”, “bulkhead”, “deck”, “overhead”, “hatch”, “ladder”, “port”, and “starboard”.

71) Before changing lanes on the expressway, ensure that you have an accurate maneuvering board solution.

72) When giving your wife driving directions, use standard rudder commands and compass courses.

73) Install Windows 95 on your computer…in 1999.

74) Pick any weekday at random. Get up early, kiss your wife goodbye and go to work. Later, have your boss's wife call yours to explain that something has come up and you'll have to stay at work for 3 weeks. Act as though this is normal.
 
Or you could just live in Bancroft Hall and some of those already apply :D
 
28) Needle-gun the aluminum siding on your house after your neighbors have gone to bed.

I laughed outloud and scared the dog on this one. What memories!

36) Sleep on the shelf in your closet, replacing the closet door with a curtain. Have you wife whip open the curtain about three hours after you go to sleep, shine a flashlight in your eyes, and mumble "Sorry, wrong rack."

How true, how true!! Thanks for the laugh Zap!
 
Obviously a black shoe list.

Have the neighbors go up on the roof with a bunch of chains and a load of 2x4s and randomly toss them around all night.

I have always seen a version which combines your '45', '53', and '69'.

Get up every night at midnight. Go to the kitchen and demand a 'double-double' slider from the wife, get a glass of bug juice, dump a little JP in it, then hang a brick around your neck and go up on the roof and stare at the horizon for 4 hours.
 
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20) Use eighteen scoops of budget coffee grounds per pot. Allow each pot to sit 5 hours on high before drinking.

Also, the pot must never be cleaned.

There is something else to it that I cannot figure out. I have tried for the last 20 years to duplicate this at home and cannot even get close.

Wait, I just had a brainstorm. Where can I get some JP-5?
 
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Also, the pot must never be cleaned.

There is something else to it that I cannot figure out. I have tried for the last 20 years to duplicate this at home and cannot even get close.

Wait, I just had a brainstorm. Where can I get some JP-5?

JP-5 is probably too clean for your needs, I think you probably need some bunker oil to get the real taste.
 
Zap

Must have taken more than a few minutes to work out that " NAV-CIV" conversion! You need to add one of my favorites:

Once every two years, all the neighbors gather in the middle of the neighborhood, dressed in their fanciest white clothes, on the most sweltering day in July, so that the old "Boss Neighbor" and the "New Boss Neighbor" can tell each other how great the other is and promise to increase the dedication of each of the neighbors so that "Our Neighborhood" will win the best of neighborhood award. Then we all get to march in a circle and salute. Two things that we are least capable of performing well since we've been locked in the grey dumpster for the last six months.
 
JP-5 is probably too clean for your needs, I think you probably need some bunker oil to get the real taste.

Ah, you kids. Such undeveloped palates. Bunker oil is so assertive. Someday you will be able to recognize the fine bouquet of a vintage JP. The je ne sais quoi of a bug juice au flambeau after an exquisite meal of s*** on a shingle. Some day you will learn to appreciate the finer things in life.

On the old Midway class carriers the overboard dumps for the JP tanks were right in front of the evaparator intakes. So everytime they either dumped ballast or scrubbed the tanks, the smoking lamp was out in the showers, wardroom, and mess decks. You haven't lived until you have toasted the ChEng with a round of flaming bug juice.
 
On the old Midway class carriers the overboard dumps for the JP tanks were right in front of the evaparator intakes. So everytime they either dumped ballast or scrubbed the tanks, the smoking lamp was out in the showers, wardroom, and mess decks. You haven't lived until you have toasted the ChEng with a round of flaming bug juice.

USNA69 I salute you with my own flaming glass of bug juice. Having served on the USS Midway I can verify your statements. Nothing like that sweet tang of JP-5 with your evening bug juice. Nothing more invigorating in the morning than the tingle the JP-5 gave to your gums when brushing your teeth.
 
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