Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for March 03, 2011

Ray is on a drug. It’s called … CHARLIE SHEEN!

Wow, just gotta say, I been following this strip since Joanie was a libbie teaching nursery school and I was too young to get the joke, but I am really impressed and amazed with all the places this strip has gone. Yay Garry.

Ray is WINNING.

How do you go from a situation where you’re “on” 24/7, where you have to be ready to burst into action at a moment’s notice, where someone is trying to hurt you all the time – and then just turn it off?

I mean, it takes time to come down from a simple adult league hockey game (or baseball/basketball - take your pick) with nothing on the line. So intensify that by a bazillion and imagine what returning Vets deal with. Probably wouldn’t hurt to let them know they’ll have a tough post-military life before they sign on the dotted line.

Recruiter told me I was going to meet alot of girls in SE Asia. 18 years old, where do I sign?

Yes, Lewreader. My recruiter had the same line, but he neglected to mention the girls’ hourly rate…

Poor Ray – he’s basically been turned into Jason Statham in Crank …

Clearly a sensitive subject - but now for something completely different. Its snowing in the strip! Which I guess is what is still happening in New England & Walden - but down in the South we can feel the arrival of Spring. I love NE but I can’t hack the winters anymore.

You’re now the Army’s dream soldier, Ray. You choose to keep going out for duty, until hopefully you’ll die in combat and save them the trouble of paying out benefits or finding you a good therapist.

Indeed, Lewreader and pkampso… or the fact that most of the girls were under 15, and a lot of them weren’t really girls…

If I remember Ray’s wife correctly, It’s not as if home was an oasis of dull domestic tranquility.

As I said yesterday, I am not sure Ray is fit company, even in a combat zone. I would be scared he might go off on one of the other guys in his unit and take him and some others out in a fit of rage. Ray needs some serious help.

Poor Ray… He’s been living the “combat life” for too long. He can not handle a “moment of peace”…

But at least he knows something’s wrong. And he has the right person with him to push him in the right direction.

cdward - how do you come off 24/7? You don’t. At least not in a short time. It took me 5 years to get off the top rung of the ladder and in the last 40 I am about half way down.

Due to illness a few days ago I had a series of ‘backs and night terrors that nearly killed me. Literally. 9 days in the medical tent. The physical ailment was a big part but the terrors helped by keeping it in place.

There are drugs for this ya know. Not alcohol. Either that or give him a testosterone blocker for a while.

Apparently Ray also has a problem with wearing his seat belt.

used to be boxers weren’t allowed to get in fist fights because their fists were Lethal Weapons. a Nam Vet friend got into an altercation with a young man over a parking space and was afraid he would kill him. alternating fears of jail and the nut house oppress him - and then there’s the sleep deprivation, years and years of it, the fear of any therapy that might force him to relive the horrors, the presence of his dead friends, around him always like ghosts, urging him to LIVE when he can’t yet balance his checkbook - more real to him than we his friends are. Talk about the kind of suffering which is in itself heroic, nemmind the cost of his behavior on those who love him.

The best parody has such versimilitude (look it up) that one has difficulty identifying it as parody. For instance, recall Rep. Claudine Schnieder”s joke about Dan Quayle’s return from his visit to Latin America, where he said that he wished that he had studied more Latin in high school so that he could better have communicated with his hosts.

I may just be dense, but I am unsure as to whether Chikuku is in fact exhorting us to come to Jesus, or whether (s)he is merely mimicking what Jesus people would say. (Although I suspect the latter is correct) Good job!

One of the things this comic makes clear is that the military command cares not at all about remedying the damage done to people who serve, nor about the civilians who love the vet and want nothing so much as to bring him/her back into the family left behind. My vet husband had night sweats, extreme anxiety, did not trust himself with a rifle, horrible nightmares, etc. When he finally passed away, it put an end to his suffering inflicted on him by an uncaring military driven only by political objectives.

Ray should go into MMA, he’d get an adrenaline fix and get paid for it too.

Hey Ray, If 151 and a bottle of white wine don’t help the VA has better drugs than sickbay

pksampso,,, 25 cents for a “short timer” is too high?

Looks like another candidate for the support group.