I think I said some of those lines. Not 100% sure, but pretty sure. No matter though. Anyway, funny article.

It's interesting that the pagan practice of animism can be found alive and well in the military. To help us identify with a group, and bond as a team, the group is given a name, usually of some animal with predatory or dangerous proclivities. The primitive savage within wants to be associated with the strengths of the chosen animal totem, and so works hard to live up to whatever standards it takes to be a good... choose your animal. In Basic I was a Viper and a Cougar. In AIT at DLI I was a Dragon. I've been a Nighthawk twice at two different units, and at PLDC I was a Stallion. My wife thought that was cool.
Among the more intellectual, this practice doesn't work as well. There is not as much desire to bond, and identification with an animal totem is seen at best as a shallow effort by those in charge to create an artificial link for group bonding, and at worst as trite or even insulting.
If you find yourself having a problem identifying with the animistic totem chosen for your group, you can look deep inside, try to channel the killer ape within, ask yourself: "If I were a primitive savage, how would I feel about this?". Of course, the primitive savages that animism would most appeal top aren't generally much given to introspective reflection, so probably, if you gotta ask, it isn't your thing.

actually this only referrred to the warrant officer's office area.

I am kinda lost on this one..... Are they calling the WO office "the wolf den"? Here at my unit we are called the "Wolf Pack" (Kill as a Team is our motto). I dont understand why every unit has to associate themselves with an animal. Gay, I tell you.

Yes, this only referred to the Warrant Officer's office area. The "Warrant Officer Liberation Front." Interesting that Houseofstone says:

Among the more intellectual, this practice doesn't work as well.

And then it is revealed that the enlisted soldiers here haven't identified with a totem, only the higher echelon of the Wakeel Dibaat.

The pirate thing kinda fell flat too.

Once "Ripper the Skipper" and his *ahem* "first mate" left the immediate area (and consequently, our monkeysphere)? Yeah, pretty much bye-bye to the pirates.

Except for Monobrow. He still says, "Arr" on a fairly regular basis. You know, some pirates are missing an eye, or a leg... he's just missing an eyebrow. And he likes wearing those poofy shirts, so...

Except for Monobrow

he is just in it for the rapine.

OK....the pirate thing was just stupid. I cannot believe that he had that much time on his fucking hands to come up with names for everybody in the platoon. And you wonder why nothing was ever organized......

Well, generating the names didn't take as much time as it could. He found at least one online-pirate-name-generator. The only ones he had to work up by himself were ones that were duplicates (apparently easy, as the generator did a simple mathematical function on the name input, and there weren't too many different outputs), and ones that were *highly* inappropriate (Two Fisted Dick?). Besides, he had plenty of help doing the write-ups for them; some of the stories were done entirely by other people, and he only "fixed" some elements (you know, grammar and spelling : P ).

No he had the grammar fixed by his wife (then Fiance). So EL was right on with her comments. As ND said it always comes around to homosexual piracy lol.