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Friday, November 6, 2020


This is a "line crossing" initiation ceremony on board a U.S. Navy cargo ship.
Such festivities often involved nudity and ribald skits.  In the next section of today's 
double feature, we will see some cartoon sailors whose rivalry is legendary.

 

7 comments:

  1. My clothes were so saturated with rotten garbage and vomit when we crossed the line that I tossed everything into the sea and walked back to my quarters all starkers.

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    1. To be honest, it was underwhelming. I had heard about this for years, so I looked forward to it. We crawled through a every long gauntlet where we got whacked with bits of firehose. It made a loud noise, but didn't hurt (didn't hurt me, at least — our division officers ended up in sick bay). There were other shenanigans too, including the above-mentioned crawl through a chute filled with rotted garbage and vomit.
      I was expecting a lot more.
      Each ship is different, some were tamer than others.
      On the day before, they have a beauty contest of guys who haven't been across yet. The prettiest guy in each division is made up to look like a girl, and then they try to seduce the Captain and other high mucky-mucks. Ours was the flagship, so we got the Admiral in charge of the Vietnam theater — the Admiral was the hero of Leyte Gulf in WWII, who basically won the war in the South Seas for us when he was a young'n. When he was judging, some guys in the tiniest pube-bearing bikinis (they had tops on too) gave him the most obscene and hilarious lap dances trying to bribe him. He about died laughing.
      On my first year in crossing the line, the guy that one was a perfect Playboy bunny. Hilarious, and quite good at the whole act. He was the one who probably committed suicide when he was caught trying to seduce a straight man.

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  2. Mon traducteur me traduit "ligne", je suppose qu'il veut me dire franchir l'équateur?
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    My translator translates me "line", I guess he means to tell me to cross the equator?

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    1. Yes, Albert. "Line" is slang for Equator in this instance.

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    2. Yes, Albert. "Line" is Navy slang for the equator.

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