“We’ve got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad,” the report quoted a Defense Department investigator as saying.

The center said young civilian extremists are encouraged by adult leaders to enlist in the military to gain access to weapons and training and to recruit other military personnel.

“The reasons are obvious: soldiers are trained to be proficient with weapons, combat tactics and explosives, to train others in their use, and to operate in a highly disciplined culture that is focused on the organized violence of war,” the center said.

Its report cited examples of military personnel belonging to groups such as the National Alliance, whose founder William Pierce wrote the race war fantasy novel “Turner Diaries.”

The Defense Department investigator quoted in the report said he has identified 320 extremists over the past year, only two of whom have been discharged.

Investigators also uncovered an online network of 57 neo-Nazis on active duty with the Army and Marines, spread across five military installations in the United States, the center’s report said.

CNN.com.

The complete Brickshelf gallery is here.

On Fridays, I get into the Franchise at four pm as the “early rush” driver. Old Man Frank, who is the opening driver, and I, are in close competition to take the delivery of one of our regular customers — “Franz.”

Franz is everything we like in a customer. He reliably orders once a week, on Fridays, usually between four and five. He lives very close. He tips very well. It takes less than five minutes to deliver him his pizzas and get back to the store, and often with a $5er in the pocket for the trouble.

His is one of the homes affected by the Exxon leak in Jacksonville. Exxon put a monitoring station in his front yard, then paid for some landscaping, fencing, and repaving to disguise it — when I deliver to him, we joke that when Exxon pulls out their equipment, he’ll have a ready-made fort for his kids to play in.

Franz stiffed me, once. I didn’t even realize it until I was back in my car backing out of his (long) driveway. I wasn’t even upset about it. He tips so consistently well that I knew it was an honest mistake on his part, and we’ve all made those. He was back to tipping the next week.

Over the last three weeks, OMF got Franz’s order twice — because Franz changed things up and ordered earlier in the day! It’ll be a toss up today to see who gets his tip — the big deciding factor will be if OMF is already on a delivery when I get in. Four to five is typically slow, so if I’m first up, I’ve got the best shot at snagging him.

The dude’s got two packages on the porch when I knock on the door with his pizzas in my hand. He opens it — teen, boxers, bulging gut with stretch marks. “You’ve got two packages down here,” I remark to him as I hand over the pies.

He cracks up. “I’ve got another one, too!”

I refrain from kicking him in his package, but feel very dirty driving back to the store.

For the longest time, the Franchise has closed at ten pm on weeknights. When I worked at the competitor across the way, we were open until eleven, and while we did little post-nine business over the winters, I remember the summer nights being constantly on the road until past closing. I argued long and hard with Greg and Steve to keep the store open later over the summer, and I finally won my way, and just about two weeks ago — for the summer only — we started keeping the store open until 11 Monday through Thursday (the store was already open that late Friday and Saturday).

Last night, at about 9:30, Greg and I got into an argument over the intelligence over that decision. Some girl came in Monday night after ten to order a pizza because our competitor was closed. Part of the crux of my argument was that by closing before this competitor, we were essentially giving them business that could have been ours. Now, that store has always been run shittily — and worse in recent months, from what I’m given to understand. It’s possible that what laughingly passes for “management” there could have made the decision to begin closing at ten. It’s more likely that the staff that night was lazy and closed up early.

In the time we’ve been staying open past ten, we’ve had moderate business in that additional hour. I’m usually rewarded with an extra delivery on my closing shifts. The business hasn’t been spectacular. “Nothing to write home about.” Greg asserted last night, angry in his (misguided!!!!) belief that I’d misled him about the truth of our competitor’s operating hours, apparently. “There’s no point to this,” he continued when I inquired if we’d keep the store open until eleven over the fall.

And then ten o’clock rolled around. And the phones started ringing. And before you could say “Bill’s My Uncle!”* I was shifting gears, flooring the accelerator, and taking deliveries, then rushing back to the shop for another. One kid ordered, ate it, his friends came over, and ordered again. Tipped $5 the first time, $7 the second. What was a shitty night — nine runs at ten — turned into a decent one. The whole week has been slow — residual fallout of the holiday, I guess. Hopefully this will portent a better weekend.

*And he is. Twice. Because I have two uncle Bills.

I’ve had the first occurance of (unsanctioned) bandwith thievery that I can recall! Dashboard’s Incoming Links showed up an unfamiliar blog when I got home from work, and try as I could scanning it — it’s a recently created blog — I couldn’t figure out where the link was coming from. Then I figured it out — oh, that photo looks familiar. Sure enough. She even writes, “(thank you google image search)”.

Anyway, good thing she’s cute, or I’d've swapped out the image with a penis or something. Trishie, I tried sending you an e-mail, but you don’t have an e-mail posted ANYWHERE! I left you a comment I hope you saw — I’m not upset, really, I’m just not above not making fun of you — but, really, flickr? Good stuff.

If you didn’t read the comment … here, in a nutshell, is what it says (when you do find it). The issue isn’t with the photo. It isn’t even my photo to begin with. Someone else took it and posted it onto the internet. The problem is with you directly taking the image from my blog — by deeplinking the way you are, you’re using my server’s bandwith to display the photo on your blog. What you should do when you’re using a photo on your blog that you’re taking from someone else’s blog or website is to right click the photo, save it to your computer, then upload it to a photo-hosting service such as flickr. If I was a mean spirited grinch, I could go into my server, replace the rowhome photo with a penis photo, give it the same URL, and you’d have people commenting on the penis photo on your blog.

Have fun rowhome hunting. I stopped looking when I realized I can’t afford one. We can trade e-notes, though.

I recieved this comment on this post today, from someone claiming to be an ex-coworker. It reads:

This has nothing to do with this particular post. Just wanted to make sure you saw this. I can’t believe you are still at [Franchise]! You should have left that place when I did. And Zebulon is still there?! Wow, that must suck. I only have two questions. Who is Ghetto Boy and who am I?

I see it. Yes, it sucks. Good question - who are you? I can’t tell from the e-mail address and you didn’t leave a name I can identify you with!

(Sorry, I sent you an e-mail, I just wanted to make fun of you on the main page a bit. Seriously, sign your e-mail!)