You know, I'm not quite sure why, but as far back as I can remember there has been a heavy emphasis on naval and sea-faring advertising aimed at children. I mean, during my childhood, these particular ones were major influences on me:



OK, maybe they didn't influence me at all and were just my favorites, but still! It wasn't just them trying to sell me on a life of swabbing the deck, either.

There was also:

Charlie the Tuna
The Gorton's Fisherman
The Love Boat
Old Spice cologne
Flipper reruns
Charles from the Match Game (when he wore his sailor's hat)
Yosemite Sam
My Dad who was a career Navy sailor in real life

..to name just a few!!

Oh, and who can forget these two icons of the time:


Haha, yeah!

I'm telling you, if that stupid "In the Navy" song wasn't playing on the radio or being performed live by the Village Dorks on American Bandstand, Mary Poppin's infamous Admiral Boom was always on the Saturday afternoon movie.

I loved Admiral Boom, really.

He was cool the way he was always firing off his cannon like clockwork and pissing the neighbors off like clockwork, as well.

I should do that to MY neighbors, they deserve it.

Frigging George.

Ugh!!

Anyhoo.. the one naval related thing from my childhood that did have the greatest impact on my life (well, besides all the tours of the ships and submarines that my dad sailed on and the fact that for most of my childhood we were living on a different Navy base) was the game, "Battleship":

Oh yeeaaaah.

I frigging LOVED that game!

Because I kick ass at that game.

My one brother loved it as much as I did, if not more, so we indulged each other and played it constantly, but it really did ruin my childhood and turned him into a raving lunatic but hey, how the hell was I supposed to know that he had the propensity to become like my other brother was with CLUE??

I mean, OK, fine, I maybe should have noticed that this brother was the type that couldn't handle losing at anything and bawled over everything:


Ugh.

He was always my not-so-mentally-stable mom's favorite, too.

Of course, I loved playing Battleship too much to stop kicking his ass at it every single time, and he loved it so much that he kept letting me kick his ass at it, so eventually it became quite the viscous cycle and it was pretty routine at our house to hear these two phrases at least twenty seven times a day:


Yep, I really and truly sank his battleship every single time, too. I never lost, not even once.

Don't give me that look, it's true!

Hey, I can't help it that being the evil genius that I've always been that I had the foresight to use my erector set, a half-dozen 8mm home video cameras and a Commodore 64 computer to rig the entire house with a complex remote viewing spy system so that I always had a bird's eye view of his board!

What the hell did you expect me to do, let him sink MY battleship?!

I mean, war is war and the whole point was for me to sink his battleship!!

The rule book never said I couldn't use a complex, remote spy system to do it, either.

Ugh. You never believe me.

Yes, I checked the rule book to see!!

Anyhoo... it really damaged me psychologically to get punished for doing my patriotic duty by sinking his battleship all the time, too:


Heh.

That's right!

Well, really, I guess I shouldn't complain too much, because he's the one who became obsessed with it later in life. I mean, I forgot all about that stupid game after I was disowned by my father for marrying a wealthy, America-hating Russian Naval officer and we moved to Moscow!!

My psycho brother is the one who joined the U.S. Navy at 18 and sailed off to sea:

I know, what a dork!!

He's also the one who is convinced to this day that I had something to do with the very 'accidental' sinking of each and every one of the battleships he served on, coincidentally by the Russian navy, of course:


I know!!

As if I had that sort of power!!

For some odd reason, he also blames me for getting him kicked out of the Navy just because I hacked into his ship's satellite system from my underground bunker in Moscow to obtain his locations and to keep sending uncoded messages telling him to hurry up and steal secret documents that would help the Russians 'accidentally' sink more American battleships during the Cold War.

Heh, at least he was able to find naval related work after he was dishonorably discharged and got out of the brig after 12 years:


Wellllll... except his dream job only lasted a few months, but that was NOT my fault.

OK, fine, so maybe it was since I may have gotten him fired from and banned for eternity from every Old Navy store on the planet.

Hey, how was I to know they'd get so pissed when I pretended to be him and hacked their computer network and stole all of the CEO's identities and ran up massive debt in their names and embezzled millions of dollars and funneled it all into a secret Swiss bank account then mass mailed them as well as the local police and all the news channels in the country with a fake confession from him?!

Haha, yeah.

I thought it was funny, too!

Between you and me, at least the whiny little bastard can be thankful that I let him stay in the house I had built for him and my crazy mother out of the money I stole from Old Navy!!

I only charge them double the rent because it's such a unique house!

Well, and technically, he should be somewhat grateful that since no one else will even speak to him for being a traitor and a thief that once a year or so I fly out from Moscow in my private jet to challenge him to a round or twenty seven of our favorite game:


Hooyah.

Yep, I still kick ass at Battleship!!

:)

I could sink every battleship over at humor-blogs.com guaranteed!