Ways to Simulate Navy Life at Home

Lock all friends and family outside. Your only means of communication should be with letters that your neighbors have held for at least three weeks, discarding two of five. Surround yourself with 200 people that you don't really know or like: people who smoke, snore like Mack trucks going uphill, and use foul language like a child uses sugar on cereal. Unplug all radios and TVs to completely cut yourself off from the outside world. Have a neighbor bring you a Time, Newsweek, or Proceedings from five years ago to keep you abreast of current events. Monitor all home appliances hourly, recording all vital information (ie: plugged in, lights come on when doors open, etc.) Do not flush the toilet for five days to simulate the smell of 40 people using the same commode. Lock the bathroom twice a day for a four-hour period. Wear only military uniforms. Even though nobody cares, clean and press one dress uniform and wear it for 20 minutes. Cut your hair weekly, making it shorter each time, until you look bald or look like you lost a fight with a demented sheep. Work in 19-hour cycles, sleeping only four hours at a time, to ensure that your body does not know or even care if it is day or night. Listen to your favorite CD six times a day for two weeks, then play music that causes acute nausea until you are glad to get back to your favorite CD. Cut a twin mattress in half and enclose three sides of your bed. Add a roof that prevents you from sitting up (about ten inches is a good distance) then place it on a platform that is four feet off the floor. Place a small dead animal under the bed to simulate the smell of your bunkmate's socks. Set your alarm to go off at ten-minute intervals for the first hour of sleep to simulate the various times the watchstanders and nightcrew bump around and wake you up. Place your bed on a rocking table so you are tossed around the remaining three hours. Make use of a custom clock that randomly simulates fire alarms, police sirens, helicopter crash alarms, and a new-wave rock band. Have week old fruit and vegetables delivered to your garage and wait two weeks before eating them. Prepare all meals blindfolded using all the spices you can grope for, or none at all. Remove the blindfold and eat everything in three minutes. Periodically, shut off all power at the main circuit breaker and run around shouting "Fire! Fire! Fire!" and then restore power. At least once a month, force the commode to overflow to simulate a "black water system" boo-boo. Buy a gas mask and smear it with rancid animal fat. Scrub the faceshield with steel wool until you can no longer see out of it. Wear this for two hours every fifth day especially when you are in the bathroom. Study the owner's manual for all household appliances. Routinely take an appliance apart and put it back together. Remove all plants, pictures and decorations. Paint everything gray, white, or the shade of hospital smocks. Buy 50 cases of toilet paper and lock up all but two rolls. Ensure one of these two rolls is wet all the time. Smash your forehead or shins with a hammer every two days to simulate collision injuries sustained onboard Navy ships. When making sandwiches, leave the bread out for six days, or until it is hard and stale. Every ten weeks, simulate a visit to another port. Go directly to the city slums wearing your best clothes. Find the worst looking place, and ask for the most expensive beer that they carry. Drink as many as you can in four hours. Take a cab home taking the longest possible route. Tip the cabby after he charges you double because you dress funny and don't speak right. Use fresh milk for only two days after each port visit. Keep the bedroom thermostat at 2 deg C and use only a thin blanket for warmth. Ensure that the water heater is connected to a device that provides water at a flow rate that varies from a fast drip to a weak trickle, with the temperature alternating rapidly from -2 to 95 deg C. Use only spoons which hold a minimum of 1/2 cup at a time. Repaint the interior of your home every month, whether it needs it or not. Remind yourself every day: "It's not just a job, It's An Adventure! Mix kerosene with your water supply to simulate the de-sal plant on the ship picking up jp5 in the intake -- if a lit match thrown into your coffee pot doesn't ignite it, add more kerosene. Stand outside at attention at dawn and have the poorest reader you know read the morning paper out loud. Be sure to have him skip over anything pertinent. Every four hours, check the fluid level in your car's radiator. Check the tire pressure and replace air lost from excessive pressure checks. Be sure to place red tag on ignition stating "DANGER: DO NOT OPERATE" while you perform these checks. Inform your neighbor as to the results of these checks, have him tell you to repeat the checks because he did not see you perform them. Paint your house gray (exterior) include windows except for rooms you do not frequent, paint your car gray, paint your driveway a different shade of gray. Clean your house until there's absolutely not a speck of dust anywhere. Call on a stranger to come inspect your house. Ensure stranger sees dust that has collected in the time it took to find him. Stranger cannot leave until he finds irrational fault with your house/belongings.

More Ways to Simulate Navy Life at Home

Buy a dumpster, paint it gray and live in it for 6 months straight. Run all of the piping and wires inside your house on the outside of the walls. Pump 10 inches of nasty, crappy water into your basement, then pump it out, clean up, and paint the basement "deck gray." Every couple of weeks, dress up in your best clothes and go the scummiest part of town, find the most run down, trashy bar you can, pay $10 per beer until you're hammered, then walk home in the freezing cold. Perform a weekly disassembly and inspection of your lawnmower. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays turn your water temperature up to 200 degrees, then on Tuesday and Thursday turn it down to 10 degrees. On Saturdays, and Sundays declare to your entire family that they used too much water during the week, so all showering is secured. Raise your bed to within 6 inches of the ceiling. Have your next door neighbor come over each day at 5am, and blow a whistle so loud that Helen Keller could hear it and shout "Reveille, Reveille, all hands heave out and trice up." Have your mother-in-law write down everything she's going to do the following day, then have her make you stand in the back yard at 6am and read it to you. Eat the raunchiest Mexican food you can find for three days straight, then lock the bathroom door for 12 hours, and hang a sign on it that reads "Secured - contact OA DIV at X-3053." Submit a request form to your father-in-law, asking if it's ok for you to leave your house before 3pm. Invite 200 of your not-so-closest friends to come over, then board up all the windows and doors to your house for 6 months. After the 6 months is up, take down the boards, and since you're on duty, wave at your friends and family through the front window of your home...you can't leave until the next day. Shower with above-mentioned friends. Make your family qualify to operate all the appliances in your home (i.e. Dishwasher operator, blender technician, etc) Walk around your car for 4 hours checking the tire pressure every 15 minutes. Sit in your car and let it run for 4 hours before going anywhere. This is to ensure your engine is properly "lit off". Empty all the garbage bins in your house, and sweep your driveway 3 times a day, whether they need it or not. Repaint your entire house once a month. Cook all of your food blindfolded, groping for any spice and seasoning you can get your hands on. Have your neighbor collect all your mail for a month, randomly losing every 5th item. Spend $20,000 on a satellite system for your TV, but only watch CNN and the Weather Channel. Have your 5-year-old cousin give you a haircut with goat shears. Sew back pockets to the front of your pants. Spend 2 weeks in the red-light districts of Europe, and call it "world travel." Attempt to spend 5 years working at McDonald, and NOT get promoted. Needle gun the aluminum siding on your house after your neighbors have gone to bed. When your children have been in bed for 3 hours, run into their room with a megaphone, and shout at the top of your lungs that your home is under attack, and order them to man their battle stations. Post a menu on the refrigerator door informing your family that you are having steak for dinner. Then make them wait in line for at least an hour, when they finally get to the kitchen, tell them that you are out of steak, but you have dried ham or hot dogs. Repeat daily until they don't pay attention to the menu any more, they just ask for hot dogs. In the middle of January, place a podium at the end of your driveway. Have you family stand watches at the podium, rotating at 4-hour intervals. Lock yourself and your family in your house for 6 weeks. Then tell them that at the end of the 6th week you're going to take them to Disneyland for "weekend liberty". When the end of the 6th week rolls around, inform them that Disneyland has been canceled due to the fact that they need to get ready for E-cert, and that it will be another week before they can leave the house.

Even More Ways to Simulate Navy Life at Home

Sleep on the shelf in your closet. Replace the door with a curtain. Four hours after you go to sleep, have your wife whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes, and mumble, "Sorry wrong rack". Build a wall across the middle of your bathtub and move the showerhead down to your chest level. When you take showers make sure you turn off the water while soaping. Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and rock as hard as you can until you're nauseous. Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it to "high". Don't watch TV except for movies in the middle of the night. Also, have your family vote on which movie to watch, and then show a different one. Leave your lawnmower running in your living room for 24 hours a day for the proper noise level. Have the paperboy give you a haircut. Once a week blow compressed air up your chimney, making sure the wind carries the soot across to your neighbor's house. Laugh at him when he curses you. Eake up every night and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on stale bread. Optional: canned ravioli or cold soup. Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it goes off, jump out of bed, get dressed as fast as you can, then run into your backyard and break out the garden hose. Once a month take apart every major appliance and then put them back together again. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for 5-6 days before drinking. Invite 100+ people you don't really like to come and visit for a couple of months. Install a fluorescent lamp on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books. Raise the threshold and lower the top sills on your front and back doors so that you either trip over the threshold or hit your head on the sill every time you pass through. Every so often, throw your cat into the swimming pool, shout "man overboard, ship recovery!", run into the kitchen and sweep all the pots/pans/dishes off the counter onto the floor, then yell at your wife for not having the place "stowed for sea". Put on the headphones from your stereo (don't plug them in). Go stand in front of your stove. Say (to no one in particular) "stove manned and ready". Stand there for 3-4 hours. Say (once again to nobody) "stove secured". Roll up the headphone cord and put it away. When it rains. Get two empty coke bottles, tie them together, and hang them around your neck. Go outside and stand in the rain for four hours. From time to time look through the coke bottles and observe the horizon and lightning. Put on a clean white suit, then go change the oil in your car.

Last preventive maintenance on this page December 29, 2005.