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"If I were cool, I’d join the friggin’ Ranger Battallion and start talking shit about how I’m gonna try out for Delta or SEAL team six. In real life I’m a geek. I’ve never read Black Hawk Down. I miss the city and I just want to get back and finish school. This 'war on terror' crap has totally ruined my semester."

That's a blazing post from Jason Christopher Hartley's old blog he kept as an active duty soldier. As Hartley details in his memoir, Just Another Soldier, that blog got him in lots of trouble with the National Guard.

So how does one of the first so-called "military bloggers" feel about the current state of digital writing from soldiers? Well...

Welcome my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality conversations with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog:
In 2005, you told NPR: "Coincidentally, the [military] blogs that remain up are the ones, in my humble opinion, that are very insipid." Do you still feel like that? How has the military blog community evolved since 2005? Who are your favorite military bloggers right now?

Jason Christopher Hartley:
I don't read military blogs.  It's literally the last thing I want to do.  I have enough to think about with regard to the military; I don't want to clutter my already militarily-overdosed mind with more military slog. Continue reading...

In fact, blogs about politics in general (that's what war is-- politics gone bad) fill me with disgust.  I want to transcend all the nationalism and  patriotism and all the uninspired shit we as humans have to do to just keep from killing each other.  
You know what blog I read ever day?  Slashdot.org.  Science and technology inspire me.  Discoveries in mathematics get me excited.  Art and pure science are what interest me. The idea of reading a military blog makes me angry.  

Even Michael Yon-- who used to be really great at being the only independent reporter in Iraq with balls-- has become a Kool Aid-drinker and now I can't bring myself to read beyond his "The Surge Is Working" headlines.

Any military blog that is even remotely interesting will be shut down.  I can't say I've spent much time searching the internet to prove my point-- perhaps the internet is teeming with brilliant milbogs right now.  But I doubt it. 

Also, well-educated officers who know how to write are not an exception-- they bore me.

Intrigued? Pissed-off? Tune in tomorrow for more military blog debates and war writing advice...