[DARISC]

I think most people assume SEAL stems from seal, the mammal. Not an illogical assumption, considering most people picture SEALS in the water and don't know that SEAL is the acronym for SEa Air and Land.

That's not fortuitous, I'm certain, because I have inside info that when they were first formed they were going to be called SALs, for Sea Air and Land.

But the Navy thought long and and hard about that and capitalized the 'e' in sea because otherwise most people would think SALs are a bunch of tough Italians with snorkels.

At first this decision was met with great consternation by the Italian community, which at the time actually were very tough, and no Italian would become a SEAL.

But the fact was that most Italians then didn't have a natural affinity for water anyway except a few of them who had recently emigrated to the U.S. from Naples, where they have a bay.

There were, of course, exceptions wherein the Navy was able to entice some Italians to become SEALs with the promise that they could mess cook and make pizzas.

This slowly changed over the years as more and more Italians learned to swim and learned that SEALs, being highly pampered in some respects, had 7/27 access to pizza.

Today there are as many Italian SEALS as there are of any ethnic group, with the exception of Latvians, about which issue the Navy remains silent.

To this day, more pizzas are eaten by SEALs than by any other group and, generally, SEALs love of pizza remains even after leaving the service or retiring.

Some, however, never want to even hear the word pizza again and to offer one of those SEALs a slice is like a pie in the face, so you better watch out.

It is important to know also that no pizza hating SEAL who has either left or retired from the service is Italian, so there is some value in ethnically profiling them when considering offering them a pie.

I'm sure that there are those who will say that this is a load of SEAL crap. But it's not and they would also not believe that I had a buddy who was Navy intel who, when stationed in Antarctica, broke his leg playing softball on the ice when he slipped on penguin shyte. He, however, wasn't a SEAL (I'm not sure if there are any SEALs in Antarctica).