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Archive for the 'feature' Category

Mar

A guide to eating a “delicious” MRE

Categories: fun, military, food, feature and war

Ah, the MRE. That portable, “tasty” meal eaten by US troops in the field, or when one’s unit doesn’t have anything else with which to feed people. As someone who has been in the military, I’ve eaten my share of them. They seem really cool at first, but that coolness factor wears off after about your second or third MRE. That’s when they start tasting the same.

A few years ago, my Air National Guard unit went to South Dakota for a two-week training exercise with the Army. During that time we had three meals a day: one hot meal and two MREs. Because we were in the Air Force and not the Army, we weren’t too keen on playing Army games and pretending we were at war. So we would leave our compound and go to McDonald’s or something similar for one of those meals. This resulted in a large collection of MREs for myself. After sitting in my basement at room temperature for the last three years, a good friend of mine really wanted to try one. So, I decided to document his experience for you all to see.

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Mar

Incredible graffiti covered building — 5 Pointz in New York City

By FraudWasteAbuse 182 Comments

Categories: art, travel, photography, urban exploring, feature, New York, vacation, offbeat, outdoors, graffiti, New York City, Philadelphia, subway, urban exploration and street art

In July 2006 my wife and I took a trip to New York City. She had to go to Philadelphia for a few days for something job-related. I met her there when she was finished and we spent a day in Philadelphia and took a train to New York.

I had never been to either Philadelphia or New York City before, so if was neat to see the landmarks that we all see on television and in movies. When it comes to sightseeing, I am somewhat of a dud, and I never really get that excited about seeing famous stuff. We went and saw the Liberty Bell while we were in Philadelphia. I looked at it for about two seconds and I was ready to move on to better things. There had to have been at least twenty people crowded around the bell, taking pictures of it, and a few people were even filming the bell with their camcorders. Seriously folks, what are you expecting the bell to do?

When we got to New York, we got in plenty of sightseeing. We did and saw all the important stuff: the Empire State Building, Times Square, Chinatown, Little Italy, Grand Central Station, bought fake designer bags in Battery Park. Yet none of that stuff really excited me. Throughout my life I’ve always been drawn to the weird and strange things that most people I know have no interest in. But on the last day of our trip, I got to see something I personally thought was very cool.

My wife knew someone in Queens, so we were lucky enough to be able to stay with them during our vacation. Every morning we would take the number 7 train from Flushing to Times Square and do our sightseeing until it got dark. Every morning on the train we would pass this large building that was totally covered with graffiti, and a lot of it looked really cool. I had to see it up close.

I got my wish on the last day of our trip. The building itself looked like a warehouse or factory of some kind. Unfortunately I didn’t take pictures of every side of the building because the neighborhood didn’t seem the nicest and there were a few shady looking characters around. I still managed to take a ton of pictures and I’m posting some of the best ones here for your enjoyment.

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