Semi-literate Gunny won’t stop saying 'demure'
MIRAMAR, Calif. — Gunnery Sgt. Tom Bluto reads at the third-grade level and won’t stop saying the word “demure,” sources confirmed today.
Data reflects that he peppers the phrase into 37% of sentences, almost always using it incorrectly and sometimes pronouncing it “duh-moor.” The suspicious behavior began last week, leaving his Marines baffled as they tried to figure out where the knuckle-dragging Philistine might have picked up the strange new habit.
“Ay, Devil! Supposably, you think it’s sat to be slimin’ around on my grass, smokin’ and jokin’, eck-setera, all demure. Aye Gunnery Sergeant?” Bluto told one private on his way back from the food court. “Irregardless, for all intensive purposes, it would behoove you to belay my last, as you were, cut the daggone demurity and stand at parade rest, motivator. Trackin? ‘Rah.”
Defense officials say Bluto, an adult man who can’t spell “Sergeant,” does not possess the breadth of cultural knowledge to understand the etymology of modern language. And he most certainly does not use TikTok, Instagram, or X.
“I’ve seen his Facebook,” Lance Cpl. Ashley Whittaker said, referring to her boss, whose favorite Olympic sport is professional wrestling. “Ever since the divorce, he mostly just vaguebooks or posts blurry selfies of his face way too close up. Occasionally, he shares hard-o ‘sheepdog’ quotes with pictures of the Peaky Blinders in the background.”
Insiders say that the mouth-breathing dingus, who thinks that Fast X Part 1 is the pinnacle of Western cinema, often verbally molests the Queen’s English with such abominations as “orientate,” “liberry” and “nucular esplosion.”
After Bluto, who believes his zodiac sign is a Punisher skull, heard that Pfc. Diego Rodriguez went to college, the gunny regularly started pulling him aside to ask questions like “what happens to the sun when it rains?” and “where do dreams go when we wake up?”
“During last Friday’s safety briefing, he slipped in ‘demure’ 17 times and then ‘piggybacked’ off himself for another five quick ones,” Rodriguez said of Bluto, who is known around the office as the target demographic for men who drunkenly buy their ex-wife Tammy AI-generated, punctuation-less T-shirts that read “Good men still exist I know because I have one his name is Gunnery Sergeant Tom Bluto He has anger issues and serious dislike for stupid people but I am his queen he is my whole world I love him forever and always yes he bought me this shirt.”
Weighing in from the East Coast, famed barracks lawyer Lance Cpl. Cornelius Williams III, the Marine Corps’ leading Gunnycologist, explained his theory of how “demure” came to be a load-bearing pillar of Bluto’s vocabulary.
“Gunny Bluto’s is not the first case of ‘demuritis’ I’ve witnessed in Marine Corps E-7s this week, though it might be the most severe,” the bespectacled, tweed-clad Williams mused in a British accent, swirling a chalice of Monster Energy, the sweet scent of cotton candy flavored tobacco emanating from his pipe.
“Gunnies communicate like the fruit-bodied members of the genus Agaricus, that is, ‘mushrooms’ to the layman. Every so often, a new filler word will arise, and unbeknownst to its fungal host, will spread like wildfire through the root system of the ranks, subconsciously presenting in each Gunny as a nonsense verbal tic.”
When asked for comment, Bluto said told reporters: “Getchyer demure booger hook off the bang switch, ya soup sammich. Erah. I wouldn’t take that demure, Mickey Mouse BS downrange. Fix yerself! Trackin’? ‘Rah.”
Roger Wilco is a pilot, writer, and stay-at-home astronaut.