Who Are You? What Do You Want? Where Are You Going? Whom Do You Serve – And Whom Do You Trust?!
Winners on Monday.
Please Note: Due to the traditionally low number of posts between the contest and the winners, winners will now be posted on this post vs on a new, seperate, post on Monday.
Other caption Blogginess:
Winner:
Bill From Iowa: “Body english won’t fly that UAV, mister. Pull out! Pull out!”
When I was whiling away a couple of years at Cal State, earning a professionally useless but amusing degree in English, my classmates and I used to entertain ourselves by working out what certain towering figures in literature would be doing, if they were professionally functioning in the arts and letters of the present- or just the last quarter of the 20th century. What would they be writing, and what sort of writing— and given that movies and television would be in the mix— what variant of creativity would be within the scope of time-transplanted literary talent?
There aren’t any definitive answers, of course; the only requirement is to be able to extrapolate amusingly. Herewith some of the proposed 20th-century career paths:
William Shakespeare: Actor turned writer; the movies, of course. Wildly popular, prolific and all over the map, quality-wise, over a long, long career.
Mark Twain: Reporter and writer of very fine magazine articles on popular culture and commentary, and the occasional book. Pretty much what Tom Wolfe, or PJ. O Rourke does now.
Henry James: Still a novelist, producing exquisitely wrought and finely detailed novels. Very high-brow, lots of literary prizes, but not very widely read. Never an Oprah Book Club selection.
Edith Wharton: Ditto.
William Thackeray: Witty, roman-a-clef novels, about people on the fringes of power in various establishments. The public is vastly amused with every one, trying to figure out who they “really” are about. Threatened with legal action on occasion, which just boosts sales figures.
Charles Dickens: Writer and producer of very long, and involved, and wildly popular TV series/miniseries. All of them have long story arcs, many eccentric characters, and enough turns and twists to keep the audiences’ attention riveted for years.
Rudyard Kipling: Also a newspaper reporter turned novelist, poet and short story writer, and entertainer. Doing what Garrison Keillor does now, even to the radio show.
Sir Walter Scott: Enormously popular writer of historical adventures based on historical figures. James Michener, only shorter.
Louisa May Alcott: Empowering chick-lit. Frequent Oprah guest, and Book Club selection.
Jules Verne: Science fiction, of course— but through the medium of interactive video games.
And to cross over into classical music, Richard Wagner would be doing movies too: very elaborate, special-effects laden, Kubrick-ish blockbusters, with thunderous musical scores and eye-catching set-pieces. They would be very popular, and the critics would come away from press showings bubbling over with ecstatic praise, even though they wouldn’t quite understand a lot of it.
Add your own, elaborate on or propose alternatives for mine: just be creative and above all, amusing.
(The following is one of those e-mail things that go around: it just seemed to be an interesting coincidence that a friend sent it to me, just when Timmer’s Miko re-appeared, and my own Spike and Percy seemed to be fast becoming very, very good friends… not that there’s anything wrong with that!)
EXCERPTS FROM A DOG’S DAILY DIARY:
8:00 a.m. Oh, boy! Dog food! My favorite!
9:30 a.m. Wow! A car ride! This is a blast
9:40 a.m. A walk in the park! Ate some crap…Delicious!
10:30 a.m. Getting rubbed and petted! I’m in love!
12:00 p.m. Lunch! Yummy!
1:00 p.m. Playing in the yard! I just love it!
3:00 p.m. Staring adoringly at my masters…they’re the best! I’ll wag
my tail in joy.
4:00 p.m. Hooray! The kids are home! I’m bouncing off the walls!
5:00 p.m. Milk bones! Great!
7:00 p.m. Get to play ball! This is too good to be true!
8:00 p.m. Wow! Watching TV with my master! Heavenly!
11:00 p.m. Sleeping at the bottom of my master’s bed! Life is soooooooo
great!
More »
This thread over at FTTW got me thinking. (And post your first concert experience while you’re at it.)
How many different bands/songwriters have ripped off Neil Diamond?
The first one that comes to my mind is “What I Like About You” by The Romantics. I remember a DJ at “Crackers” in Vegas (great rock barn) back in ’85 used to fade “What I Like About You” right into “Cherry, Cherry” and my roommate freaked when he found out that was Neil Diamond. Actually, now that I think about it, my MOM freaked when she found out “her” Neil wrote “Cherry, Cherry.”
But I don’t know how many times I’ve heard a song and said to myself, “Wait a minute, that’s a Neil Diamond riff.”
So what else can you think of?
Going to be a crazy day tomorrow so thought I’d kick this off early.
Winners on Sunday. Might even do another on Sunday.
I know I normally do mil-related photos, but this one begged to be captioned.
Other caption blogginess:
Oh just leave a trackback for goshsakes.
Da Winnah!
Sgt Schultz: C’mon Pamela and Paula, do that again.
Yes, I’m posting the winner on the original post now. There’s just not enough cyberspace between the two to justify seperate posts.
This week was tougher than most.
1.) SgtFluffy: “Pvt Englands next assignment didn’t go to well either.”
2.) Paul: “It was about this time that Capt Hypoxian regretted having that 5th cup of coffee. Luckily, the suit was yellow and no one would notice if he…ahhh”
3.) AndrewV: “Out at Area 51 Airman Jones is escorting the alien prisoner during its’ daily exercise.”
Get this video and more at MySpace.com
Timmer, you’re the best. So I give you this tribute.
Other Caption Blogginess
OTB.
Bravo Zulu.
Wizbang (who promises to catch up this weekend on the last two contests).
Winners on Monday.
Other Caption Blogginess
OTB.
The Gone Rick Motel.
Wizbang.
Bravo Zulu.
And if you go to any of those sites they’ll point you to more. There are a LOT of caption contests these days.
1.) Our own Detailed Recruiter: “Now why didn’t you go BEFORE you put on the suit? You know how hard it is to get to the zipper.”
2.) Geeky Star Wars Caption: Patrick Chester: “TK421 why aren’t you at your post?!”
3.) Rodney manages to make it topical with:
“Didya hear who finally quit smoking?”
“Al-Zarqawi”
See ya Friday for more Caption Fun.
Also, if you ever find a military photo that screams, “CAPTION ME!” please send me a link.
Winners on Monday.
Other Caption Blogginess:
1.) And winner of the ewwwwwwwwww award: Rodney Dill: “Jees Ed, I wish you’d learn how to use the community urinal without all the back-splatter.”
2.) Sgt Schultz: “Urinalysis monitor this!”
The “I don’t get it.” award goes to John Jenkins for: “So this is what they do to people who don’t close their tags!”
Winners on Monday.
Other Caption Blogginess:
OTB.
1.) Just John: “Much as other soldiers suffered from the lack of bullets during practice due to budget cuts, The Al Gore Memorial Photojournalist Commando Squad was forced to do without cameras for several weeks.”
2.) Rodney Dill: “Mine Sweeping School – “You put left foot in, you pull your left foot out…””
3.) Adjustah: “Now, raise your hands in the air like you just don’t care…” (Edited for accuracy to the lyrics, but it cracked me up.)
Get this video and more at MySpace.com
“You know when you talk,” says one of my co-workers with some exasperation, “Sometimes it sounds to me like the parents and teachers in those “Charlie Brown” cartoons… you know, just ‘bwah-bwah-bwaw’? I know you’re saying something, but I can’t understand a single word of it!”
My bad, making an allusion to a 19th century poem in casual conversation, but then I grew up thinking Osbert Lancaster was hilarious (especially “Here of All Places” which permanently warped my tastes in architecture and descriptions of same ) . She probably won’t get much from the funniest take on the Da Vinci Code that I have read so far… but perhaps some of you might… especially if you took a class where the prof insisted on playing recordings of Old English readings.
(link found through Manolo)
Since our company got involved in torque sensing for F1 racing a few years ago and the divorce between Champ cars and Indy cars played itself out, the only open wheel racing that I follow outside of F1 is the Indy 500. Before it was televised, I remember listening to it on the radio even as a child, having lived in a family with a long history of involvement in stock and super-modified racing throughout NY, PA and New England in the fifties and sixties. Women drivers have been an on and off presence at Indy since 1976 (previously Janet Guthrie, Lyn St. James, and Sarah Fisher), but, in my view, were more of a novelty than a serious trend.
Last year’s Indy 500 was absolutely GREAT because Danica Patrick showed, finally, that a woman driver could mix it up with the best the IRL had to offer. Although finishing fourth, she led for several laps and showed a degree of cool fierceness that was lacking in those of the fairer sex who preceded her (Sgt Mom and Cpl Blondie, I am being careful here). This year she starts somewhat lower in the field (inside row 4), but I am confident she will put on a great show. Check it out (Sun. 1:00 CST)
Next week the Indy teams will race at Watkins Glenn, former home of the U.S. Grand Prix. Back in my day, I worked a food concession there all through high school and got to (sort of) see the Trans Am (Camaro, ‘Cuda, Mustang), Can Am (anybody remember Chaperral?) and F1 races from ’68 through ’72. What a dream job. After having been closed for a couple decades, Nascar has raced stockers and trucks at the Glen the last few years, but it will be great to see open wheel racing there again.
Also note that the Monaco F1 Grand Prix is Sunday morning – televised early on SpeedTV. I personally think that Monaco is the premier F1 event because of (a) the difficulty of the street course and (b) the decadent wealth that permeates the entire event (including the 100+ ft cruisers in the harbor).
See you at the track.
Radar
Other Bloggy Caption Fun:
Wizbang.
Outside The Beltway.
Venemous Kate.
Hook.
The Gone Rick Motel.
Winners will be posted on Tuesday so as not to make light of Memorial Day.
1.) Detailed Recruiter: “Not quite what I had in mind when I answered the online ad for two dominatrix in uniforms.”
2.) Sgt Fluffy: “Phyllis Diller and Jacylin Smith on the set of “No time for Sergeants II””
3.) MAJ Loggie: “Paging Mr. Powers, The new line of “FEMBOTS” have arrived for your inspection”
I’m home because one of my folks keeps ignoring me when I tell him, “Don’t come to work when you’re sick!” I swear he’s going to give a public health briefing at the next Commander’s Call.
Now excuse me as I sink back into my fluey, coughy, feels like I’ve been hit by a bus stupor.
Winners sometime Monday.
Other Caption Blogginess:
1) Just John: “And THIS medal is just for being so gosh-darn cute, you snookie-wookum cutie-pie!”
2) DemoMan: “Colonel Wingnut presents Meritorious Giddiness Medal to Emperor of Ice Cream as Band Director and Psychiatrist look on.”
3) Stacy: “The highlight of graduation at Lackland AFB was always the naming of Basic Training King and Queen.”
See ya Friday Night.
(Comments are turned off because some folks just don’t understand that once I’ve named winners, the contest is over.)
The Playstation 3 has been announced. In two versions, $499.00 and $599.00.
Five and six hundred dollars for a game box.
What the HELL are they thinking?
1. James: “Resistance is fu….”
“HYAH! Go AirForce!”
2. Just John: “Good job, soldier! But you let the blue Rockem-Sockem robot get away!”
3. Jeff Blogworthy: “Tune in next week for another exciting episode of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Extreme Challenge!”
See you on Friday with another one.
A very much older one than originally reported, it appears. The Weevil I Know Nothing Of is not “five weeks old”, but five months old. Blondie and I worked this out last week, after a close look at her “papers”, and a bit of searching conversation with the co-worker who acquired her at great expense over Easter, and then despairingly decided that an infant dog was just too demanding of his and his wife’s admittedly newly-wed time. After two weeks… God help these people when they actually have children. They handed her over to Blondie with an assortment of toys, a comb and brush, two prescription meds (she had a case of kennel cough) 3/4ths of a 10-lb sack of puppy chow, a packet of baby wipes, and a large parcel of puppy-piddle-training pads… and a long length of grosgrain ribbon striped in Easter-egg pastels. I suppose it was to tie a bow around her neck, on festive occasions. I set aside the ribbon, and Blondie bought her a tiny, black-pleather collar with miniscule silver-metal studs and spikes, and attached a bell to it, so we could hear her coming.
The puppy has been formally christened “Spike”, which is our sort of humor, and my sister Pippy, who also inherited a shih-tzu puppy from a co-worker, under similar circumstances, is probably still laughing. (Pippy’s shih-tzu is named “Scarlett O’Hairy”, by the way.) She tells us that the breed are endearing, appealing little dogs, bold and fearless, in their own hearts they are lions… but kind of high-maintenance. A look at some of the websites dedicated to the breed makes that very clear. Holy Hair-Goo, a look at some of the pictures of breed champions is enough to convince me that this is the breed for people who would otherwise have a My Little Pony fixation, but that they can’t stand plastic.
And after a little research, I am also in line to agree that yes, they are high-maintenance, with a potentially expensive assortment of possible chronic health issues, that as my sister says, they really are just a sort of barking cat, and that like poodles and Chihuahuas, their cuteness can be exaggerated to the point of inducing a diabetic coma. And there is the size factor, a la Crocodile Dundee: “You call that a dog? (brandishing a hellhound like my parent’s Great Dane, or Toby the half-lab, half mastiff) Now, this is a dog!” No, even considering This Fresh Weevil as any sort of personal protection— which is why Blondie saddled me with a dog in the first place— this is to risk falling into a catatonic state from laughing, as Spike would seem to be not just a shih-tzu…. But a teacup shih-tzu, at that.
Which means, she will never get any larger than she is at the moment, a whole five pounds and small change. She will never be able to hop up onto the sofa or the bed without help— she can, with a great deal of effort, make the step up onto the back porch, an altitude of about 12 inches. But on the other hand, once she has achieved the mighty heights, she is sensibly prone to stay there. Like the Lesser Weevil, she is not a stupid dog, but a pretty clever piece of work.
Dogs, I have read and know from observation are mission-oriented. That is to say, all the various breeds there are, all of them were developed for a certain, usually practical purpose, and the very best of them have internalized that to such a great extent that they are not happy unless they are actually fulfilling that purpose. Border-collies, and other herding dogs have to herd, it’s innate to them, and the urge to do so is so commanding that they are unhappy and neurotic unless they are able to. Close to my parents’ house in Valley Center was an establishment that kept a small herd of sheep, and functioned as sort of a gymnasium for the herding breeds; people would book an hour or so, for their border collie to run around and herd the sheep. It was their workout, and outlet, and so their owners said, the dogs were happy and well-adjusted for days afterwards. Dogs bred to be hunters have to hunt, greyhounds have to run, those bred to be guard-dogs or war-dogs, or to pull a sled through miles of icy wilderness have to do what they were bred to do. They just have to, it’s a need from the bottom of their doggy souls. The happiest and most fulfilled dogs I ever met were either the dogs who belonged to the shepherds who had grazing rights at Zaragoza AB (yes, there were a couple of shepherds who had grazing rights on the base, rights to everything except the lawns in the housing areas) and Spotty the SP detachments’ drug-sniffing dog, a lively little terrier whose greatest joy in all the world was to chase around the Girl Scout Hut (and any other venue) looking for the drug lure. (Yeah, I got to know Spotty fairly well, it was a small base and all the various educational venues were pretty well trodden. Ask Blondie how many times she went to see the local Coca-Cola factory. In one academic year she showed up in a tour group at the AFRTS station three times: school tour, summer camp tour, Girl Scout tour.)
The purpose of shih-tzus was, apparently, to be companion dogs to us humans; nothing more taxing than that. They love us, want to be with us (sitting in our laps, or next to us, sleeping on our beds and craving our attention), adoring, and worshipping, wanting nothing more than to bask in the sunshine of our regard, and to be pampered and adored in return.
But I’m not a total fool: Spike will have a short summer clip, none of this business of a tuft on the top of her head, tied up with a ribbon. Really.
A well-established military base, being that it has to be all things to all residents therein, contains all or most of the elements contained in any well-run established community, over and above the bare requirements of troop housing and mission fulfillment. Some of these I have written about before— the post or base exchange retail stores, the commissary or grocery store, dependents’ schools, family housing. Others I have not: things like base troop clinics and hospitals, and recreation venues like gyms and swimming pools, bowling alleys, riding stables and swimming pools, movie theaters, snack bars, package (or liqueur stores), and the economic engine that drives many of a bases’ recreational venues— the clubs. A long-established location like the Yongsan Garrison, the major American Army garrison in Seoul, ROK, will have all of these, plus refinements like thrift stores, a little theatre venue, odd little gift concessions and snack bars, being accumulated by accretion like one of those odd shellfish, adding a little bit of this or that to it’s shell. (Yongsan had a couple of bespoke tailor concessions and a bicycle-repair shop, to my great interest and mystification.)
The Clubs are official and traditional: classically broken down (with variations according to service, location and era) into Officer, NCO and EM (enlisted men) Clubs. Once upon a military time, (probably during the century before the last) one would be safe in assuming that the officer’s club would be the plushest, not to mention the liveliest, but actually that would all depend— depend upon sufficient numbers of officers to keep the O’Club in the style to which it was once and would like again to become accustomed. In practice, at most Air Force bases of my experience, the NCO and lower ranks clubs were where the numbers and the free-spenders were, not to mention the women.
Lately, the trend in the Air Force seems to have been toward just one large consolidated club facility, with a central kitchen and various lounges, dining rooms and bars designated for officers, enlisted, or both. The Air Force, it would appear, has dealt with the potential indignity of a colonel’s lady, an NCO’s wife, and an airman’s girlfriend, all dealing with separate but similar over-indulgences and barfing up in adjacent lavatory stalls by deciding that everyone is an adult (well, mostly) and can just suck it up and move on. It’s not likely that anyone will remember on Monday morning anyway.
Again, in my experience— which was predominantly overseas— the clubs were a very mixed bag. The clubs in Greenland, for example were lively places, and the food was great. They packed them in, all the nights of the week that they were open… because, of course, there was absolutely bloody nothing out there beyond the base gates (not even any base gate, come to think on it, only the billboard outside the MAC terminal that said “Welcome to Sondrestrom, the Miami of the North!!), just thousands of square miles of rocky, ice-glazed tundra. What little competition there was came in the form of the SAS hotel cafeteria, and private and unofficial bar clubs focused around the lounges in the barracks buildings… very popular on those occasions when one wanted to party hearty and not run the risk of having to crawl outside on your way back to your barracks room.
Conversely, the Air Force NCO club at Zaragoza AB— what with all that lovely downtown competition— was lackluster and the food there thoroughly explored the narrow range of territory between the totally vile and the completely disgusting. I postulated the existence of a warehouse on base, completely filled with #10 cans of sludgy, salty brown gravy, as nearly every dish on the menu arrived from the NCO and O’Club kitchen swimming in a puddle of the disgusting stuff. The only time the Zaragoza clubs made any sort of profit at all was during the run-up to Gulf War I. All the troops passing through on their way to Saudi Arabia (otherwise referred to as “down-range”) were confined to base while laid-over… and the clubs had the best damn two or three months they ever had.
In Japan, the NCO/Enlisted Club was a lively and happening venue, the O’Club a gloomy and over-decorated establishment with wallpaper that would have disgraced a Tunisian cat-house, and appalling dining-room service: some friends of my friend Cheryl (who had a thing for guys in flight-suits) regaled us with an account of how they had gone in for dinner, one evening, placed an order… and then ordered take-out from the NCO club’s delivery service, to be delivered to room so and so, building so and such. Everyone was enormously amused at their description of the delivery-service driver, walking into the O’s dining room, laden with paper bags. The Club in Greece eventually was located in a rented tourist hotel high-rise in Glyphada, all of it and the swimming pool, transient quarters and barber shop, under one roof, guarded by armed, and flack-vest wearing Security Police. I was never able to decide if the sight of the SPS passing in front of the plate-glass dining room window was an unsettling or a reassuring sight.
It gets interesting when there are different services located close by, which affords an opportunity to comparison-shop, as it were, and for the Army and Marines to turn green-eyed envious at the comparative luxury of the Air Force enlisted clubs, and for the Air Force enlisted to appreciate the appallingly Spartan lifestyle lived by those who just couldn’t connect with an Air Force recruiter. The Marines on Okinawa took out their resentments by starting fights in the Air Force NCO club at Kadena AB and trashing the place, from which they were frequently banned. Sgt. Blondie tells me that the Marines do still have a go at the Air Force club now and again, but it’s become more of token bow to tradition, an occasional ritual for old-times sake. And rumor had it around Lackland AB, just before I retired, that the EM club at Ft. Sam was on the verge of being declared off-limits to Air Force personnel, due to the number of unsavory characters that congregated there… most of said unsavories being civilians, not Army troops, since Ft. Sam was an open post, pre 9/11. Only the thought of how this would look to civilians — imagine the horselaughs, an Army club being off-limits!— kept the command from actually doing it. (Or so the rumor had it.)
Your own recollections of clubs, fond or otherwise are invited in the comments.