sounding the fury

As promised, interesting stuff from the Pentagon:
1. A sign, five minutes into our wanderings, declared in red text on a yellow background: “We are an Army at WAR!” Ok, then.

2. There is a mall inside the Pentagon. It is a tiny, small-town seeming mall with a crappy women’s clothing boutique, an eyeglass store, a flower store, it’s own DMV (!), and a gift and knick-nack store. The food court is nearly bigger than the mall. The mall is painted, in keeping with the small-town crappy mall feel, in a garden theme. Outside the flower shop, small girls with straw hats are painted wrestling with large pots of sunflowers in front of a painted picket fence.

Since this is the Pentagon, the putative home of an Army at WAR!®, I have written a letter to my Senator demanding that the Pentagon add to this scene a painting of a Viet Cong soldier slowly decending upside-down from a rope, a knife clenched in his teeth, towards the little girl who is hopping down from the fence. Charlie’s in the trees, Betsy! Look out!

3. The Pentagon is flush with neat soda machines containing a wide variety of drinks, including Mellow-Yellow. I want things to be mellow at the Pentagon – you don’t want anybody getting too excited outside the bread displays (see number 5). I drank some Diet Cherry Coke from one. It had MIND-CONTROL drugs in it. That’s probably why I wrote the letter I just mentioned.

4. In the center courtyard, there were large (over-sized, really) adirondack chairs. In the center of the center courtyard was a octagonal building with a pewter owl perched at its peak. The gentlemen showing us the facility remarked that the Soviets (back when there were Soviets) thought that it was a missile silo. I am sorry, comrades; it is a snack stand. It is the critical Philly Cheesesteak gap you must worry about, although not too closely, because they have stopped serving the Hawaiian cheesesteak. I don’t know what that is.

5. There are many odd displays. Displays as in exhibits. For example, there is the office supply exhibit, which is not only fun but also doesn’t containing much of anything that is probably not on my desk right this second. Next to the office supply exhibit is the bread and napkin exhibit. This contained napkins with “clever” sayings encouraging its user not to reveal classified information, as well as bread pans used to bake bread before they started, you know, buying it. The pans impressed the word “Pentagon” on the sides and bottom of each loaf. There was what appeared to be actual bread from that time period still in the pans. I am still a little grossed out.

6. Also in that center courtyard was a duck. That was pretty neat. He was not military, although Chelsea said he drank loudly.

7. There were scooters and scooter parkings and posted scooter speed limits. Not actual scooters, but “SPVs” or self-propelled vehicles, of which there seemed to be two varieties: golf carts and Rascals.

8. They don’t allow cameras, but they do allow cameraphones if you don’t take pictures with them. If you do, they will take your phone and look through all your pictures and mail it back to you (or so the guards say).

9. A placard installation detailing the renovation of the Pentagon made it clear that it is in serious disrepair. Also, there are showers, and you can buy razors from vending machines, as well as hot noodles. Different vending machines, though.

10. Pretty much the mall and vending machines were the exciting bits. And the mind control drugs. THAT IS ALL. END TRANSMISSION.