Q: Once a year, Marines go out on bivouac, and qualify on their weapons.
A: Every Marine is a rifleman, first.
Q: They like to pit band nerds against admin pogies.
A: Yes. A band nerd is even lower than an admin pogy.
Q: How would you define an admin pogy?
A: A clerk. With thick glasses. GI-issue, birth-control glasses.
A writer is a bookworm.
Think of Stephen King. His nose always buried in
a book.
Scribble, scribble, scribble--eh, Mr. Gibbon?
Q: Hunter S. Thompson was an admin pogy. Writing sports news for the base paper at Eglin AFB.
A: Yes. Bukowski was a failed admin pogy. If he had gone into the service he might have been a clerk.
Q: He couldn't get a clerk job. He had to unload frozen sides of beef
from semis.
Letter carrier is a physically demanding job. You're on your
feet all day. Not sitting behind a desk.
A: That job will wear you out. I was a Christmas casual, one year. The year Balder graduated from boot camp at Parris Island.
Q: You were a Form 5 clerk and aircraft dispatcher at B-25 and F-86 Operations. An Air Operations Specialist.
A: That was a desk job.
I had time to read.
To read Bukowski.
And Charles Willeford.
This was before Bukowski and Charles Willeford.
I read Eric Hoffer and Philip Wylie.
The True Believer and Generation
of Vipers.
Q: Thompson wrote Generation of Swine.
He was a diatribe
writer, like Wylie
A: Like me. I'm like Philip Wylie and Hunter S. Thompson. A diatribe writer.
Q: No, you're like Bukowski and Charles Willeford. You work in many forms.
A: Thank you. Thank you very much.