PRESENT-DAY MILITARY SLANG

Here's a glossary of twentieth/twenty-first century military slang:

• CGU-11: seagull. Used in US Navy prank (cadet/middie has to report sighting of a "see gee you eleven" to officer on duty).
• SNAFU: Situation Normal, All F***ed Up
• FUBAR: F***ed Up Beyond All Repair/Recognition (worse than SNAFU)
• TARFU: Totally And Royally F***ed Up (worse than SNAFU and FUBAR)
• FIGMO: F*** It, I've Got My Orders (the attitude of a by-the-book and know-it-all officer)
• BOHICA: Bend Over, Here It Comes Again (an adverse situation is repeating itself)
• AWOL: Absent Without Official Leave (euphemism for "deserter")
• POW: Prisoner Of War (neither slang nor modern day, but still crops up in my production)
• BLAM: Big-Lipped Alligator Moment (not from the military, but from narratology. A Big-Lipped Alligator Moment is an utterly irrelevant, superficial, and never-spoken-of-again episode in any work of fiction [examples would be the flowers' dreams in the Third Story of The Snow Queen or the pink elephant musical number in Dumbo]).