News: Pensions Are Available For Veterans

Giant Eagle in Stow, Ohio

Image via Wikipedia

If you served in the military during war-time and you are at least 65 years old, you may be eligible for a military pension.

The Old Soldier just found out that he is eligible for a military pension and you may be eligible, too.  Okay, let me tell you how I found out that I’m eligible.

The reason that I call myself the Old Soldier is because I really am old and I really was a soldier.  I served with the 1st Cav (Air Mobile) in Vietnam in a 105 mm howitzer battery, towed.

Well, because of the job market and other factors, after I got my MFA in fiction writing from the University of Pittsburgh in 2006 I found it tough to get a job.  Being 59 years old did not help me much either.  So, I struggled along until I was able to take early social security.  And with a small pension from Giant Eagle, I was able to keep my apartment and I thought what the hell I may as well become a full-time blogger.

To make a long story short, money flow is tight.  Real tight.

Enter my older sister whose husband fought in Korea.  She came across some literature about military pensions and she sent it to me.  That’s how I found out that I’m eligible for a military pension when I turn 65 in October.

Sweet.

I’m in the process of investigating this further, but this is the basic criteria as I understand it. 

  • You have to have served in the US military during wartime.  Even if you were not in a war zone, you are still eligible.
  • You have to be at least 65 years old.
  • You have to qualify under the income limitations.

What is really nice is that under the income limitations a veteran can deduct a lot of expenses and still qualify.

The phone number for the VA in Pennsylvania is 1-800-827-1000.

Also, the following site is full of great information.  Be patient and check the site out and you will find out if you qualify.  Just follow the prompts.  You want to end up at Compensations & Pensions: http://va.gov 

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News: Laurence Fishburne’s Daughter Does Porn

Laurence Fishburne's Daughter

It is no surprise to me that the 19-year-old daughter of award-winning actor Laurence Fishburne has just done her first porno movie.

Hello hello hello, my brother and sister bloggers, writers and Flash Fiction Fanatics.  Media reports have surfaced that Montana Fishburne has just starred in her first porn movie.  Her dad must be stunned.  And reports say that the award-winning actor is devastated, but I’m not surprised by what his daughter has done.  She moved out of the house when she was 18.

One source quoted Montana Fishburne as saying, “Being in an adult film is not a big deal to me.”

The Old Soldier is no prude, but I must admit that when I try to get inside the heads of all these young girls who voluntarily allow their bodies to be ravished I can’t make that transition.  Once, I did write a flash fiction story about a young woman who talks her boyfriend into making sex tapes and selling them on the Internet.  The only motivations I could think of giving this young woman were money, notoriety and just  plain exhibitionism mixed with plenty of youthful lust.  But from the vantage point of my age, 63, is that enough?  I guess when you’re 19 years old like Montana Fishburne it is.

I wrote the following news commentary about adult videos a few weeks ago.  Of course, I wasn’t writing about young girls with famous fathers.

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News: A Commentary About Adult Videos

Pornography was around long before the Internet.  It was around before the invention of writing.  It can be found in numerous scenes painted on the walls of caves by our ancestors.  The Internet has sent the production and consumption of porn into overdrive.  An ever-increasing number of willing young women are showing up in porn videos.  Why?

I have read reports that the porn industry makes more billions of dollars than the movie industry and the music industry combined.  I have no doubt that the day will come when the porn-industry lobby will be one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington D.C. 

The Old Soldier is no prude.  My own niece has been a webcam stripper since she was 19.  She’s in her early 20s now and makes more money each year than I ever made each year I was working before I retired.  She doesn’t do hard-core pornography…yet.

It is my belief that the stream of young women into porn is only going to increase.  Already, young women text pictures of themselves nude.  They make home videos of themselves having sex.  The logical next step is to get paid to do what they are already doing.  And if that means having sex with one or more strange men, so be it.

Being in a porn video does not carry the sort of stigma it use to for many young women between the ages of 18 and 25, many who are in college.  They use false names, withhold the names of their universities and then proceed to allow their bodies to be ravaged.  For so many of them, it’s naughty and very exciting stuff, all those aroused men and all those video cameras pointed at them, all those flash cameras going off in the background.  Often, the women have their own orgasms.  It’s easy money.

Like any industry, some porn sites are run better than others.  The smart porn sites make the shoots fun for the women. 

There is one site that interviews the women before the shoot.  The interview is done in an office, the women in their street clothes.  The guy doing the interview has a talent for making these young women relax, to feel more comfortable about what is about to happen.  The interview makes the women seem very human.  They are definitely not porn stars.  They are strictly amateurs.  This site only wants amateurs.  Many of the amateurs are articulate. 

After the shoot the women are again in their street clothes in the office for a final interview.  They are asked what they thought of the shoot, what they did and did not like.  You would be surprised at what many of them liked.  Let me put this as politely as I can.  A lot of them like the butt to mouth.  The male talent’s penis in the young womans’s butt then put directly in her mouth.  And the reason the young women give for liking this: “It’s so dirty.”  In describing the shoot the women often use the “fun.”

  A large percentage offer to come back and shoot another video.  They agree to do things in the next video that they did not do in the first video.  Some have such a good time in the first video that they end up recommending their friends to the site.  You can’t pay for that sort of publicity.  In this way, the site has a never-ending stream of willing young women to have in its sex videos. 

This can be easy money for the young women who do porn as a youthful experiment and then get out.  The trick seems to be not to end up on poorly run sites and not to become addicted to the easy money.

I can see the day coming when it won’t be unusual for a happily married woman in her 40s to be having a morning cup of coffee with her best female friend and to confide in her friend that she was pretty wild in her teens and 20s, that she did five porn videos from the time she was 18 to the time she was 26; only to have the best friend ask, “Did you ever see any of ’Mary’s Hot Gangbangs’?”

“You mean…”

“Yep, that was little old me.  I had the first orgasms in my life on those shoots.  The site kept bringing me back because they knew I wasn’t faking.  The guys subscribing to the site knew I wasn’t faking.  I ended doing seven gangbangs in all.”

“Does Steve know?”

“He would die.  Bob?”

“What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”

The End

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Here you will find flash fiction stories of sex, lust and love; stories of college students and Vietnam War veterans.  These are stories full of the life of our time.  Tell your friends about The Gazette.

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The Good News About Flash Fiction

What’s short and satisfying?  Well, sure, orgasms are short and satisfying but this commentary is about reading and writing flash fiction.  Flash fiction is short and satisfying.  Here on this blog you will find dozens of stories about life, love, lust, sex, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, veterans and college students and every one of these stories is short and satisfying.

So, kick back and enjoy yourself.  Tell all your blogging and writing friends about the Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette.

And the good news is, flash fiction is here to stay.  This is the Old Soldier reporting from the heart of the nitty, gritty city.

Download your copy of Compressionism: The Pittsburgh Stories today.

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