General – Page 55 – The Daily Brief

Memo: Royal Families

07. May 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, History, Media Matters Not, Pajama Game, Politics, Rant

To: The Usual Media
From: Sgt.Mom
Re: Use of a Particular Cliché

1. I refer, of course, to the lazy habit of more than a few of you to refer to the Kennedy family, of Hyannisport, late of the White House, and Camelot, as “royalty”, without use of the appropriate viciously skeptical quote marks. Please cease doing this immediately, lest I snap my mental moorings entirely, track down the most current offender, and beat him/her bloody with a rolled-up copy of the Constitution. This is the US of A, for god’s sake. We do not have royalty.

2. We did, once, as an agreeable and moderately loyal colony of His Majesty, Geo. III, before becoming first rather testy and then quite unreasonable about the taxation and representation thingy, but we put paid to the whole notion of hereditary monarchy for ourselves some two centuries and change ago. There is a certain amount of respect and affection for certain of Geo. III’s descendents, including the current incumbent; a lady of certain age with the curious and old-fashioned habit of always wearing distinctive hats, and carrying a handbag with no discernable reason for doing so. (What does Queen E. II have in her handbag, anyway? Not her house-key to all the residences; not her car keys; not a checkbook and credit cards, not a pocket calendar or business card case, not a spare pair of stockings— I understand the lady-in-waiting takes care of that— handkerchief, maybe? In the case of her late mother, a flask of gin? William once had the chance to ask that question, I harassed him unmercifully for not having the nerve ). Oh, anyway, back to the subject: royalty, or why we, a free people, should feel any need to grovel before the descendents of particularly successful freebooters, mercenary businessmen, and social climbing whores of both sexes.

3. We do still have all of the above, BTW, but locally grown. Sort of like the Kennedys, come to think on it, but without coronets and courts. Considered in that sense, perhaps they could be construed “royalty”; descendents of an energetic and ambitious and wildly successful (and not too scrupulous) progenitor, given to hubris, excess, degradation and (with luck) an eventual downfall, usually a drama that takes place over centuries. But around here, unless the descendents are competent and careful, and wily, or failing that, in posession of an enormous trust fund that they can be kept from frittering away, without the aid of a political structure that enforces the power of an hereditary aristocracy and monarchy , our native versions tend to fade away after three or four generations, sort of like we hope Paris Hilton eventually will.

4. We do have, however, in many places and professions, certain old and established families. There are business and banking families, show business families, military families, even newspaper families. Over generations, they produce more of the same; entrepreneurs, bankers, actors, generals and newspaper magnates, some better known than others. There are also regional “old families”, those associated with certain towns or counties, prominent in a quiet local way, sometimes wealthy, most often not. Describing any such as “royalty” ought to be punished by something painful, as a grim offense against small “d” democratic ideals.

5. There have also been from the very beginning of this nation, political families: Adamses and Rooseveldts, continuing to this present with Bushes, Gores… and of course, the Kennedys, who were pungently described by humorist PJ O’Rourke some years ago as “ sewer trout (who) managed to swim upstream into our body politic”. How they ever got to where they did is as mysterious as Joseph Kennedy, Seniors’ business dealings. We can be sure of it involving brutal ambition, lots unsavory back-room dealing, and a lot of money, though. If the whole Kennedy saga were one of those operatic, generational tele-novelas, what we have seen working out ever since is the result of an implacable curse old Joe earned on himself for wronging some old gypsy witch in the 1920ies.

6. I do not care for the Kennedys, the whole Camelot thing, the whole lot of manufactured glamour and I mean glamour in the old, fairy-tale way; an elaborate fraud practiced on the American people, with the aid of journalists and intellectuals who should have known better. Just about everything about JFK was a pretense and fraud, from the state of his health to the state of his marriage. He was a handsome showboat, with a court of paid lickspittles, whose’ political ascension was stage-managed by his father. The rest of the clan has been coasting on that bought reputation, and shreds of illusion ever since.

7. They are not royalty; they are only a rich, recklessly self-indulgent political family, with a predisposition to think that consequences are just something that happens to other, lesser people. Get up off your knees, and shake off that old Camelot spell. You’ll feel all the better for it.

Thank you for your attention to this matter
Sgt Mom

(Slightly edited at 5:3o PM to make some sentances a little clearer.)

What Fresh Weevil Is This?

04. May 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, Fun and Games, General, Pajama Game

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.

the Immigration Question

04. May 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General

Lt Smash put a comment from one of his readers on his front page. The writer is a naturalized citizen who immigrated from Russia 17 years ago. He says the problem is assimilation, or lack thereof.

It’s interesting reading, and I’m curious as to what the rest of you think about it.

Reminder- Moderated Comments

03. May 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General

Just a quick public service announcement:

Comments at The Daily Brief are moderated, due to the high volume of spambots that troll the blogosphere. This means that you will not always see your comment appear immediately after you hit “submit.” There are several of us moderating the comments, but even so, we’re not always as timely as could be desired.

Please be patient with us – all valid comments will eventually be posted.

Rites, Rituals and Legends #18: The Club

03. May 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Air Force, Fun and Games, General, History, Military, Pajama Game

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.

Linky, Linky

01. May 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Air Force, General, Site News

Former long-time contributor to TDB, Kevin Connors has taken up solo-blogging, at Westpundit, and is now blogrolled in appreciation.

More Thoughts on United 93

01. May 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General

Mostly because I need to hear what others think.

When I told people that I had seen United 93, the general reaction was first “what movie is that? – Oh, the one about the airplane…” usually followed with “I don’t think I could see it.” or “It’s too soon.” or “I think it’s wrong to exploit the families like that.”

I even got all of the above reactions from one person, over breakfast on Sat morning. This friend (and she is a friend, or we’d not have been going to breakfast together) also said that not only was it too soon, it was *way* too soon. As evidence, she trumpeted something she had read somewhere, where the writer had listed out various attacks and how long it took for them to come to film. In all cases, it was well over five years.

To which I replied: We’ve only been attacked on our own soil twice since the invention of movies. The first time was Pearl Harbor, and Frank Capra gave us the “Why We Fight” series very shortly thereafter, to help people understand what was going on in Europe and Asia. The second time was 9/11 (unless you want to count the 1993 bombing), and it took us almost 4 years for this movie.

She quickly back-pedaled, and said the article was about disasters, more than attacks, but she still didn’t think it was right, and that it irritated her that someone was going to make money off a film about 9/11. My response to that, of course, was did she think the film-maker should do it for free?

That’s not what she meant, she said. So then she said she did’nt think it belonged on the big screen. She goes to movies for entertainment, and this isn’t entertainment (I had to agree with her there. I would never call this movie “entertainment.”)

She said it should only be on television, not the big screen, and that ideally, PBS should be the ones to do it.

I chose not to respond to those comments, and we changed topics about then. Interestingly enough, other than a History Channel show on the engineering behind why the towers collapsed, I’ve not watched any of the TV shows/movies about 9/11, because I don’t trust TV to do it right. And I certainly wouldn’t trust PBS to give a balanced, non-partisan, non-judgemental show about it.

I agree with Sgt Mom – I’m not looking for flag-waving, “America can do no wrong” propaganda. But I would like to see movies that explore that day, and the days since. I’d like to see movies about our Marines in Fallujah, movies about pulling down Saddam’s statues, and building water treatment plants. Movies about Afghan girls going to school in public, instead of hiding their learning. Movies that celebrate courage and compassion, going ahead even when scared. Shoot, I’d like to see a movie about Friday nights at Fran O’Briens, and the differences it made in the lives of the wounded veterans.

How about a Rick Rescorla movie?

Movie Review – United 93

28. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General

(disclaimer: I had no idea Sgt Mom was also planning to attend this and write about it today)

I went to the 150pm show today (earliest showing at my local theater). I wanted to go to a weekday showing, so the theater wouldn’t be crowded. There might have been 2 dozen of us in the room – certainly no more than 3 dozen. I sat by myself in the very back row, directly under the projectionist’s window.

I’m just now getting home from all my other Friday stuff, but I sat in a parking lot about 430 and wrote my thoughts down, so I wouldn’t lose them. My thoughts/reactions are pretty much divided into 2 sections – the emotions I felt, and other thoughts.

Emotions first.

I remember the first time I saw the movie “HAIR”. I was in college, so probably about 21, and totally unfamiliar with the story. I knew it took place in NYC, and that one of my college roomies had been an extra in the Central Park scene. I also knew it was about hippies. I didn’t know it was about love. I didn’t know it was about friendship, and the sacrifices a friend will make. And I most definitely didn’t know how it ended.

I remember sitting in the campus theater, watching it end, watching time tick by inexorably, desperately hoping the blonde guy would get back from his date in time to trade places back with Treat Williams, who was pretending to be him. I remember watching Treat Williams marching onto the transport plane, knowing he couldn’t survive on eday in combat, and I remember his grave marker.

It’s been almost 25 years since I saw “HAIR,” and I’ve only ever seen it the one time. There are lots of details I don’t remember (character and actor names, for instance), but I remember the stunned disappointment – -no, it was grief — when the blonde guy didn’t get back in time, and Treat Williams went to war in his place.

I saw a movie today that left me with a similar feeling, even though I knew in advance how it would end.

I’ve known the ending of this movie for almost 5 years, and still, I sat there holding my breath at the end, watching time tick by inexorably, and hoping against reality for the happy ending.

There wasn’t enough time, not enough airspace, for United 93 to have a happy ending. They were too close to the ground, moving too fast.

The movie faded to black, and the theater was silent, as it had been throughout.

I had told some friends earlier this week that I considered it a movie about heroes and heroism, and it was.

But more than that, it was a movie about ordinary people, doing what they could in extraordinary situations. From Air Traffic Control to FAA to NORAD, to passengers and crew, it showed reactions to crises, both good and bad.

Yes, it brought back memories. Yes, I shed some tears. There was a point, early on, where it showed the 2nd plane hitting the towers, and I was back in 2001, watching it for the first time.

It reminded me of that horrible day, and the wonder I felt when I first heard about Flight 93’s bravery. It’s good to be reminded of that. I’m glad I went, even though it was a hard movie to watch.

I drove home in silence.

************************

Other thoughts:

I grew up in the era of disaster films. Poseideon Adventure, Towering Inferno, Airport 1 through 1,000,000, etc. I even have vague memories of some TV movie about a huge pile-up on some California coastal highway. And of course there was Jaws 1 through 1,000,000, as well.

In each case, these films of my childhood/adolescence worked hard to give you backstory, and/or build sympathy for the characters. And dont’ forget the music. Shoot, the music *was* Jaws.

United 93 did none of that (well, there were a couple spots where the soundtrack stole my attention from the film, but only a couple). Instead, it gave us a slice of life. There was no attempt to identify the passengers as they boarded, no recognizable stars (at least, none that I recognized).

We saw people sitting at a terminal gate, boarding the plane, etc., much like the flyers I see on my business trips. Much like the flyer that I was, back in 2001. Air Traffice Controllers, FAA personnel, etc., were never specifically identified, other than their location. We were watching people who knew each other – who worked with each other on a daily basis, and it was like we walked into a conversation that was already ongoing.

I’ll let the more knowledgeable folks comment on the NORAD scenes. I’ve not been in a command post since my first year in the Air Force, and that was only for one exercise.

It was a movie about facing the unface-able, a movie about coming together, about keeping going when you’d rather curl up in a corner and hide.

It felt balanced to me. It showed devout muslims who looked just like any other people – not monsters. One was a little more zealous than the other 3, and one a little less thrilled. All were nervous, and perhaps a little scared about what they were doing. It did not inflame my emotions, or leave me hating all muslims, or all Arabs (or our gov’t, for that matter).

Instead, it reminded me that we are handicapped by our imaginations. We had a hard time realizing/believing that the planes had been hijacked, because it had been almost 20 years since our last hijacking. We didn’t think about using planes as weapons, because we wouldn’t fly a commercial airliner into a civilian building, and so it’s hard for us to believe someone else would.

I know that a lot of what they showed on the plane is speculation. But it felt believable. And even though I knew how it ended before the first reel was loaded, it still had me on the edge of my seat.

It was well-done, and worth watching. But if I had seen it first-hand, it would be hard to watch, if not impossible.

Also, if you have a hard time hearing movies in theaters, you may want to wait for the DVD and use the subtitles. I had a hard time hearing in some spots.

How Americans Die: United 93

28. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General, GWOT, Pajama Game, That's Entertainment!

Several years ago, I lamented on this very blog, how no movies had come out of Hollywood post-9/11 that told our stories of heroism in the ongoing war against the forces of militantly jihadist Islam. I can’t find that particular entry among four years worth of tri-weekly posts, since I can’t remember what I called it, but I remember pointing out that the dust was barely settled on our WWII defeats at Bataan, and Wake Island, before Hollywood had rushed out stories focusing on the heroic resistance, and our national resolve.

Where were our stories in this new war, where was Hollywood— did our current entertainment moguls feel above the vulgar business of telling our stories, and processing our heartbreaking experiences, defining who we are, and what we are fighting against? Of course, pace the Danish Cartoons experience, it might very well be that our movie moguls and stars are as fearful as anyone else of a car-bomb at Wolfgang Pucks’, or the oh-so-subtle gentlemen from CAIR parked in the outer office, and just as prone as the national big-media to surrender pre-emptively, and refrain from producing anything that would piss them off… or encourage the great unwashed American public to embrace their inner Jacksonian.

I felt obliged to go and see United 93, since it was exactly the sort of movie that Hollywood ought to have been producing; they should have done about thirty to fifty of this sort (well, counting TV movies and film releases together), and started at it three or four years ago. Well, it’s nice that someone in Hollywood finally gets it… a couple of years late, but better than not at all. I did not go to it, expecting to have a good time: the ticket-taker said automatically as he tore my ticket in half.
“Enjoy your movie,” and I replied
“Well that wasn’t exactly my plan.” Poor man, there is probably a picture of him next to the definition of “prematurely aged, hopelessly out-of-touch, fashion-challenged movie geek” in some vast cosmic dictionary.

The theater where I watched it was eventually half-filled. It was the mid-afternoon showing, on a day when most people in San Antonio have had a half day, or maybe the whole day off because of the Battle of Flowers Parade (explanation of this in another post— it’s just a local holiday, ‘kay?) No idea of it would have been a typical or atypical crowd, but I did notice that everyone was fairly quiet before the movie began, and near to silent when it ended. It’s not a movie you go to for laughs, jollies and temporary forgetting of your current problems.
It opens to the sound of Muslim prayers, in the darkness before dawn on an ordinary day. Only the unsettling image of the hijackers shaving and dressing themselves, and being extraordinarily diligent about their early prayers strikes any sort of ominous note— that and the image of four weedy, dark-haired men, sitting uneasily amongst the people they intended to murder— gives a hint of what happens next.

It’s all one of those prosaic, ordinary working days, people going to work, doing what they do every day of their working life, everything routine, banal, swapping the ordinary sort of work-related remarks, small stuff, chit-chat, all about work and what is expected during the course of an ordinary working day. The Air Force has got an exercise on, that’s the only out-of-routine thing happening. And everything is so ordinary about taking an early morning flight to the west coast, all those plain, unglamorous, lumpish people on the same flight. I had begun to think that Hollywood was incapable of making a movie with ordinary-looking people in it, but on this occasion, the temptation to cast the blindingly-attractive actor sorts was resisted, with the result that United 93 has a very documentary feel about it, with no one in it that you remember having seen in another role, and another show. (The air traffic control staff played themselves— which lent enormously to the documentary feel.) No one is really named, aside from the pilots, and some of the air control staff, and some of the Air Force people— there is no distracting back-story for any of the characters… it is all just the story of the morning of 9/11, quick and brutal and to the point.

It all happens in something very much like real time; all the ordinary stuff on an ordinary morning; sitting around in the gate area, until called to be seated, the cabin staff going by, towing their bags and laughing amongst themselves. If you’ve traveled by air in the last thirty years, it’s all familiar, down to being dragged to pay attention to the safety briefing, although it’s something you have heard a hundred times before, and that is the gripping part— we’ve all been there, we can see it happening, and to people very much like us.

It’s a very claustrophobic movie; there are very few outdoor shots, aside from some establishing views of airport runways, and a couple of long exterior shots of the New York skyline, taken from inside a flight control facility. Otherwise, it’s all interiors, very tight and very close, almost painfully intimate, as 9/11 starts to get very weird and very un-ordinary. The jolting moment when the air controllers watch the second aircraft slice into the WTC tower is shattering… just as shattering as it was—or so I have been told— as it was to people watching on that awful, shattering day. (I wasn’t one of them, I came late to the party, and was listening on radio.)

The last twenty minutes or so are very intense, extra-claustrophobic, in the confines of an aircraft cabin. (I may very possibly never fly commercially again. ) The passengers and surviving cabin staff huddle in the back of the aircraft, stealthily make phone calls, work out what has happened, deduce what will probably happen to them, decide to resist, cobble out a desperate plan; the last few minutes are a mad, disjointed frenzy, filmed on a shaky hand-held camera. A few grace moments: a middle-aged woman making a last tearful call to her family on her cell phone cuts it short, and hands the cell phone to the very much younger woman in the seat next to her, saying “Call your people”. An elderly woman on another cell phone calmly gives the location and combination of the home safe with her will in it, a married couple clinging to each other as the aircraft pitches violently— whatever happens at the last, they will be together.
And so it ends, as everyone who was paying attention that awful day would know, in rural green and golden fields— seen from the cockpit, growing horrifyingly more distinct, and a handful of passengers battering down the cockpit door with a catering cart. United 93 ends in a black screen and sudden silence, and then I realized how the tension had been ratcheted up to an almost unbearable degree. My heartbeat was hammering as if I had just done a 5 mile run with the Weevil, and the theater was entirely silent. No, this is not a movie you could be said to enjoy… but it is a movie with something to say… which is that when Americans die, and they are given sufficient warning, a fair percentage of them will choose to go down fighting.

(Which is, I hope, the message that Osama Bin Laden will take, when someone sends him a DVD of United 93, to whatever his current hiding place is. We’ve got your message, Wierdy-Beardy-Boy, and the answer is—no sale.)

Time Flies…

28. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General

The past two weeks have been whirlwind that has precluded any time spent on blogging. It seems like every year at about this time a number of work projects simultaneously reach critical mass, and this year has been no exception. The legal activity that brought me to Munich in February has the next important date in July, and everything takes ten times longer to reach consensus and submit filings because of the language differences. I will be also in D.C. in two weeks on a patent matter that has required tons of preparation. I am amazed by the fact that one can easily get patents for the most inane things (cf. U.S. 5,446,036 – Method of Exercising a Cat – claims using a laser pointer to stimulate Fluffy), but have to fight the patent office for years to patent things that are actually original and useful. I do plan to take a day or two to actually see the Washington sights, with the Air and Space museum at the top of my list. I am hoping for an invite for dinner with GW and Laura. I hate to be so forward as to openly ask, but I am fairly certain that he checks The Daily Brief several times per day and he is so good at picking up subtle hints. It’s not so much that he is my hero or anything, but my letters over the past couple of years to certain blue state senators, while not bringing on the black helicopters, have most certainly eliminated me from their A list.

Speaking of stimulating Fluffy, we are presently battling a coon problem (again). It seems that Rocky and his clan have moved into our yard, and they have found nightly amusement in sitting just outside the bedroom screen windows watching our cats have apoplectic seizures. I have always aspired to a cabin-in-the-woods existence, so they don’t bother me as long as they stay on their side of the window. Real wife, however, takes a different view. So I called our local animal control officer who brought out a live trap and baited it with cat food (if there are a lot of neighborhood cats that can accidentally be captured, he confided to me that Fruit Loops will also work well). We had our first winner by 10:00 p.m. last night. Because the trap was by necessity located in the fenced portion where the dogs take their morning constitutional, I moved the prisoner to the area near the back door. Officer Rick (not his real name) came by this morning and removed the hapless creature. Unfortunately, this mean a death sentence because if you try to relocate them they (a) will return and (b) may transmit rabies or other diseases to new areas. I also suspect another dynamic at play because Officer Rick actually wears a uniform of sorts with patches and metal badge-looking insignia. He has indicated to me during previous coon purges that people in his position have certain authority with respect to firearm usage and game laws – not on the level of a Cliff Claven postal complex mind you, but still a little unsettling. Red Haired Girl suggested that a regime of vitamins and TLC might tame the bandit, and looking closely at it made the suggestion seem plausible as it seemed pretty calm. I have no doubt though that any attempt to give the critter a cuddle would have brought on an immediate change of temperament.

Well, the dogs are in for the evening so it is time to reset the trap. Tonight I am including a few grapes with the cat food, mostly out of guilt. After all, it’s just one more example of humans encroaching on native species’ habitat.

P.S., anyone from PETA, Greenpeace, ACLU, etc. that feels compelled to comment are welcome to try the approach offered by Red Haired Girl (cuddling, TLC); on the one condition that I get to watch that first special encounter.

Radar

Purrrrfection

26. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General

Sammy and Spike

Ain’t it adorable.

An Acute Shortage of Care

25. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General, History, Israel & Palestine, Pajama Game, Rant

So, one of NPR’s news shows had another story, banging on (yet again) about the plight of the poor, pitiful, persecuted Palestinians, now that the money tap looks to be severely constricted; no money, no jobs, no mama no papa no Uncle Sam, yadda, yadda yadda. (It’s sort of like an insistent parent insisting that a stubborn child eat a helping of fried liver and onions, with a lovely side helping of filboid sludge. You will feel sorry for these people, the international press, a certain segment of the intellectual and political elite insist— you must! You simply must! It’s good for you!) I briefly felt a pang, but upon brief consideration, I wrote it off to the effect of the green salsa on a breakfast taco from a divey little place along the Austin Highway. (Lovely tacos, by the way, and the green salsa is nuclear fission in a plastic cup. Name of Divey Little Place available upon request, but really, you can’t miss it. It’s painted two shades of orange, with navy blue trim.)

It may have been a pang of regret, barely perceptible, for the nice, sympathetic person I used to be. I used to feel sorry for the Palestinians, in a distant sort of way, the same way I feel about the Tibetans, and the Armenians, and the Kurds, and the Chechens (well, once upon a time, say before the Beslan school atrocity) and the poor starving Biafrans and Somalis, and whoever the international press was holding the current pity party for. Really, I used to be a nice person. I really did feel kindly, and well-disposed to those parties, and I wished them well, since all of them (and more) being victims of historical misfortune.

My appreciation of Palestinian misfortune didn’t diminish the way I felt about the state of Israel, particularly— like I should jettison my preferential feelings for the only state in the middle east with more than a cosmetic resemblance to a fully functioning democracy, the only one with a free press, the one hacked out and fought for by survivors of the 20th century’s most horrific genocide? Oh please. Yes, there are things to criticize Israel but it exists, it has a right to exist, don’t google-bomb me with comments to the contrary, I’ll delete them without a second thought. The right to ride a bus or cross a street or go to a grocery store or a pizza restaurant without running an excellent chance of being perforated by bits of scrap metal and nails coated with rat poison is one of those non-negotiable things.

And no, that really is one of those non-negotiable and bottom-line demands; right up there with being able to go to work on a sunny September morning, without having to make an unenviable choice between jumping from the 102nd floor or burning to death. Or being able to take your kid to school on the first day of the new term without being taken hostage, and having to watch your kid drinking their own pee in 100 degree temperatures. After a certain point has been reached, I really don’t give a rodent’s patoot about the righteousness and worthiness of your cause, or how much you have been persecuted and for how many centuries, blah, blah, blah. And no, I don’t want to argue about American hegemony, sponsored terrorism, or responsibility for x deaths in fill-in-the-blank-here because of our nasty/bad/counterproductive/policies here, there or wherever. Pay attention; the topic is me, my personal feelings and I, and that charming little body of international residents upon the world stage who describe themselves as “Palestinian”.
More »

Memo: Regarding the Recent Bombings in Egypt

24. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General, GWOT, Mordor, sarcasm, War, World

To: Osama Bin Laden
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Dahab Bombing

So, Effendi, how is that hearts and minds thing going in Moslim countries, these days?

Sincerely,

Sgt. Mom

So….

24. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, General

Just when things are getting really complicated, that’s when you can depend on the Great Bird of the Universe to turn the gain up to 11.

Through a series of interesting circumstances, involving an Easter-time acquisition of a pet by a newly-wed couple not entirely comfortable with having to pay any attention to another small being, a bit of total soft-heartedness on the part of Sgt/Cpl. Blondie (and a lot of soft-headedness on my own part) I now have another dog, in addition to the Lesser, but Known Weevil.

So much for sticking with the Known Weevil, in preference to embracing the Weevil You Know Nothing Of.

The Weevil I Know Nothing Of is a tiny, pure-bred, black and white shitzu female puppy, of the sort that my sister Pippy always described as a “barking cat”. She is about five weeks old, very affectionate, and a little bit clingy, but as clever as a cat about doing all those winning, “awwwww!” moment moves.

The Known and Lesser Weevil is intrigued, not hostile, but has a predisposition for pinning down the puppy with one great clumsy paw, and trying to play— she tries this with Percival and Sammy, and they just bash her in the nose with a barbed paw, but the puppy does not have this retaliatory capability, and yelped piercingly. Until the puppy is older, and more worldly wise, their playtimes will be closely supervised.

The cats are still adjusting, although Sammy has just pissed on the floor. But that may be because the litter-box is in a most insalubrious condition.

Oh, and the puppy has been ceremoniously christened “Spike”, in order to give her something to live up to. Do they make those metal-barbed collars in a size to fit a shitzu, I wonder?

Dog Posting

24. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General, The Funny

Ok, I just have to share this, because it made me laugh out loud.

I have an old italian greyhound, Jessie. She’s estimated to be about 13 (I’ve had her for 2 years this month, she lived with her previous owner 9 years, and is probably a puppy mill rescue, meaning she was most likely 2 when she went to the previous owner, so I’m estimating her age at 13, having arbitrarily assigned her a Jan 1 birthday).

Anyway, the poor old dear is half-blind thanks to cataracts, half-deaf thanks to old age, and on prednisone and enalapril thanks to liver problems and a heart murmur. The cataracts obscure almost the entire eye, and Doc says the prednisone probably exacerbates them. Last summer we decided she was half-blind. This spring, I’ve noticed that she doesn’t seem to notice me if I’m more than three feet away, so I’m figuring she’s probably 3/4 blind at this point.

Her meds make her terribly thirsty, but if she drinks too much water too fast, it makes her vomit. So I try to limit her water intake, while also making sure she gets all the water she needs. She’s also a greedy-guts.

So I was just watching her walk over to the water dish and start to drink. And drink. And drink. Sometimes it seems that she doesn’t even stop to breathe, she just keeps lapping it up. So I walked over, picked up the water dish, and put it out of her reach. She looked at me when I came over, with that slightly worried, quizzical expression she does so well, and as soon as I sat down again, she lowered her head to where the water dish had recently been, to resume drinking.

Maybe you had to be there, but it was so cute (and somehow sad at the same time) to see her sniffing the area where the plastic bowl had used to be, trying to figure out how the water had magically disappeared.

It really did make me laugh out loud.

Always Remember

24. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: A Href, General, Military

Americans are often accused of thinking we are the only warriors in a battle – we know we’re not, but sometimes we forget to say that out loud.

If you’re on the other side of the international date line, it’s ANZAC Day. So thank you to the Aussies and Kiwis who fought (and died) for freedom. The battle for freedom didn’t end in 1918 – it’s on-going and never-ending, and the Aussies and Kiwis didn’t hang up their rifles then, but have continued to join the rest of Freedom’s allies around the globe.

If you’re not sure what ANZAC Day is, or why it matters, you can read more about it here. And I’m sure that we have readers who could enlighten us further, as well. For now, here’s a brief quote from the linked page:

What is ANZAC Day?
ANZAC Day – 25 April – is probably Australia’s most important national occasion. It marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War. ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The soldiers in those forces quickly became known as ANZACs, and the pride they soon took in that name endures to this day.

As you take a moment to remember the brave souls from Australia and New Zealand, pop over to Rude1’s RamPage and read his take on why it is our duty to remember our combat veterans.

Update: I was just re-reading Rude1’s post, and thought I would share a portion.

It is not the job of the combat vet to remind society of what they did, it is the responsibility of society to remember the sacrifices of the combat vets and to honor them. The combat vet doesn’t want sympathy. All he wants is acceptance and possibly a thank you.

Reading that reminded me that I had the privilege and the honor last week to say “Welcome Home” to 2 VietNam vets who were attending the class I was teaching. I love it when I get the chance to do that.

h/t Shayna (from the comments to this post about her friend Eugene)

Bibliothek

19. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Pajama Game, World

Of all the American towns and small cities I have ever had much to do with, two stand out as interesting hybrids of America and the European homeland… well, three if you count Savannah, the other two being Santa Fe, and Fredericksburg. All three are, to be honest, a little self-consciously touristic with the charms, a touch too dressy for the occasion and location… but charming.

Fredericksburg is the smallest and the least-known of these three, and of course it is the one I am the most familiar with, although there are other Hill Country towns just as pleasant— Comfort, Wimberley, Kerrville— tucked into the limestone hills and steep valleys braided with that dear commodity in South Texas— clear, cold streams of water. William and I sat in a small courtyard this last weekend, sharing a bakery cinnamon roll, and marveling at how it had a definitely European feel— a sort of cloisterish ambiance, sheltering buildings along four sides, well and fountain in the middle, nice comfortable benches, stone paths and all… but three of the sheltering buildings around this small courtyard were the generic Texas clapboard and metal-roofed structures, only the fourth building had any claim to stone and mortar permanence.

My mother always said, after visiting the Hill Country, that it looked more like Pennsylvania… not just geographically, all rolling hills and oak treks… but because it was settled by the same sort of people; stolid Anglo-Saxon or Germanic farmers, devoted to hard work but the higher things as well…learning, free-thinking and libraries being amongst them.

The public library in the town of Fredericksburg is on Main Street, right next to the Gillespie County Courthouse, on an open green square— the Marketplatz that is the heart of town. The police and fire departments have a building along one side, most of the old, major churches are not far away, the Pioneer Museum and the Pacific War museum are in walking distance, and one can happily while away an afternoon just walking around and looking at lovely old houses, and shops and sampling local foods and wines. I have done so many times, since I moved to this area ten years ago; William is very fond of the place, and it is only an hour or so drive from my house; we drive up in the springtime, enjoying the fields of wildflowers on the hillsides and highway verge, and a nice meal and meander through some of the shops. (William also takes the opportunity to check out any interesting developments at the War Museum. He is a docent and man of all trades at an air museum on the West Coast— and it is always good to see what is going on in the field.)

The library presents a most arresting appearance— pure and lavish late 19th Century Beaux Arts style, all porches and tall windows, steep-domed towers, ornate iron lacework along the roof ridges and balconies— the whole effect being something that one can imagine would be the Addams’ Family local public library branch. It is all the more amusing, since the courthouse next door is one of those severely 1930ies Moderne efforts, like a table radio of the era, made large. I’ve never been inside either building, but I just know that the courthouse has WPA murals and industrial linoleum floors, and both of the buildings must and should have those heavy, blond oak tables and chairs that used to be an institutional staple before Bauhaus-style clubbed us all over the head and left us all aesthetically the poorer for it. But the library… ah, the library must have something more special.

It must have shelves, and shelves of books, and not on those nasty modern industrial metal-grade bookshelves that dent as soon as you look at them, with shoddy adjustable shelves. No, the Fredericksburg Public Library should have heavy, bespoke built-in shelves, as solid and permanent as the building itself, none of those laminate moveable shelves that will begin to sag after a decade or two under the weight of books and books, and books, and more books. This library should have odd little nooks and corners, with window seats and carrels built into them, where a child could curl up with a book and become lost in another world for hours, given access to a place where every volume is a doorway and a passport to that magic land of imagination. Such a perfect place to read, and read and read, all those wonderful worlds accessed through books.

I told William that the Fredericksburg Public Library would be the perfect venue for a kids’ adventure book. It looks from the outside as if it could contain every one of those elements for a perfectly ripping yarn, juvenile division. A secret room, or hidden passageway, a benevolent ghost, a hidden treasure, a mystery… a story that should encompass friendship and adventure and a sense of the wonderful things that lurk just beyond this all too prosaic world… things that are just barely imaginable just beyond the doorway of a place like the Fredericksburg Public Library… or any other public library, any other town in this seemingly unimpressive but potentially magical world of ours.

Caption This One Winners (060414)

17. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General

(U.S. Air Force photo/Tech. Sgt. William Farrow)

1. Sgt Mom: “Look, it says right here in the second paragraph from the bottom of page 1,542 section 2-A of the instruction manual… insert tab A into slot C…”

…which is just a nicer way of saying:

2. Joe: “Well whaddaya know, you CAN put that part where the sun don’t shine!”

3. Rodney: “Put the manual away a man only needs two tools, WD-40 and Duct Tape. If its supposed to move and doesn’t use the WD-40. If it moves and isn’t supposed to, ya use the duct tape.” …mostly because that’s really the way most any maintenance is done in the Air Force. Feel better?

Host Nation Sensitivities

17. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Military, sarcasm, World

So, it seems from this article, there is a push to get Americans to behave more… well, to blend in more, when traveling overseas. Sounds like more of the same that the military audience used to get, and no doubt is still getting; speak softly, don’t get into discussing politics, avoid certain places and situations. It was all very good advice, especially since there were places where it might save your life, never mind the social embarassment of being— oh, the horror!— snubbed.

After a couple of years of being lectured about host nation sensitivities, and how to play down your service status and nationality, and all that, some of us used to try and work out the most offensively possible one-liners; a line absolutely guaranteed to get straight to the point of pissing off any member of our various host countries to whom they might be said.

So, without further ado, here are the top three…. More »

Protests

14. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Home Front, Military

While the majority of the nation was watching the actions of a mixture of illegal aliens, their supporters, and various international socialist and communist organization, a different type of protest took place on the University of California Santa Cruz. This protest featured a couple hundred students who didn’t want their peers to be able to evaluate all the career options open to them.

Any sort of a career fair can be sketchy for recruiters. I’ve been fortunate in never having any large scale protests, and only a handful of spontaneous, small scale events happen. However I’ve never had a table set-up happen which wasn’t visited by a couple of people who made it very clear they felt I was singulary responsible for the war in Iraq. As if stopping me at a poor performing community college will make the Army grind to a halt.

As a military recruiter I fully expect to run into people who don’t want me to do my job. However, I wonder how the other 60 employers at that job fair felt as they saw that mob outside? They still had a good turn out of prospective employees… 545 if I recall correctly. But I wonder how many stayed away because they knew the protest was going to happen, or turned away when they saw it. That’s a loss right there for companies. Not just in the loss of a prospective employee, but it’s a loss of money. Those tables cost cash, sometimes a whole lot, and you expect to get so many people out of an event like that. The fewer people who show up, the less likely an employer will be to get their money’s worth out of the event. Those sorts of things will play into the decision for those companies next semester when they do the next job fair.

Seeing the photos of the recruiters leaving the facility, going through a gauntlet of protestors and being escorted by police made me think of something I’d seen years ago. The photos reminded me of the pictures taken during the Civil Rights movement of the first black students admitted to once all-white colleges. I’m not equating the protest of military recruiters with the violence, threats, and courage of those people at the bleeding edge of the fight for equality, I’m just relating my initial reaction to the pictures.

I’m very proud of my fellow recruiters though. Despite a crowd of people insulting them, threatening them, and calling for their removal from campus they kept their cool. None of the confrontations involved the recruiters and the protestors. All the bad behavior was from one side of the fence, and it wasn’t the side where the military was. In a world where the media was impartial, or at least interested in reporting news, the story would have been about the student protesters of UC Santa Cruz acting like a bunch of screaming howler monkeys and the military left the campus to help defuse the situation before it turned ugly. And not how a unified peace movement was able to force the military off campus.

As recruiters events like this are lose-lose really. When we behave like the professionals we are it simply encourages more of the same. If we were to take the opposite approach and go out swinging, well, it makes for a lot of photographs of people in ACUs pounding on bleeding students. It would be good stress relief, but it’s a very bad idea in the short, medium, and long runs.

Being a recruiter requires a very thick skin and a very sharp wit. You’re going to take a lot of insults and abuse as someone trying to support the defense of our great nation. Some places are worse than others. The community outside of Ft. Benning, GA is far more supportive of people joining the military than the communities around Boston, MA. Usually, when someone walks up and says something stupid, a quick, well aimed retort will usually leave them getting laughed at by their friends.

Anyways… it’s Friday. The Astros are playing the Diamondbacks and I’ve got tickets just off the line in right field. Hope everyone has a super Easter and that Cadbury replaces the Cadbury Bunny with a Cadbury Ostrich.

Thoughts of Summer

14. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Pajama Game

This posting is brought to you live from The Patio, my second home during the warmer months. Some 20 by twenty-five feet, screened on all but the side that adjoins the house, and with a view of the south end of my dominion, it is indeed a nice summer hangout – topped off with wireless internet and a stereo. Just to the east is a fifteen-foot square concrete pad for the smoker and grill, with an adjacent smallish shed that houses the freezer, golf clubs, etc. The previous occupant kept a hot tub in the shed, which she offered to sell to us at a reasonable price when we bought the house in ‘94. I am not a hot tub person, but Real Wife thought it would be splendid indulgence. That was until said previous occupant, a dowager well into her seventies, confided to us with a sly grin that she and a few of her friends from the local dowager club enjoyed spending time with hot toddies in the hot tub together – nude. Real Wife and I agreed that we simply could never bring ourselves to use it with those images in our mind. I still have nightmares. More »

Imperial Muslim Redux

13. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General

The whole commentary process to the original post has come unhinged. EVERYBODY STOP! I have been totally occupied by other matters since the original post, but plan to try to get the discussion on a more constructive tract tomorrow. This is a passionate issue that affects differant countries in pretty much the same way, albeit with differant circumstances. Big surprise – enlarging economic markets and the movement of economic production to formerly third world countries creates a paradigm shift. The corrupt leadership in most Muslim countries only amplifies the effects of this shift. Similarly, bringing current technology to those who felt left out during the the last half century of progress enables vengeance previously unavailable. The Muslim religion is polluted by not only this set of circumstances, but by the fact that the the most radical of Muslim nations and entities are characterized by leadership that has sold them out, both economically and in terms of nation building. No wonder the masses are pissed. Similarly, we grapple with the same problem with Mexico. I know I am paraphrasing, but I do not abide by the notion that any foreign entity should have even the remotest of oppotunity to make this country other that it was prescribed in 1787.

My original point was to say that I will feel much better when I hear a message from American immans that Islam in America is contingent upon adherence to our constitution. The events of last week bring me to the same challenge to the Hispanics. Is that unreasonable? If so, then there will be civil war down the road.

Radar

Attention to Orders

12. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Site News

Daily Brief contributor Kevin Connors has resigned, as of this week. We remain grateful for his contributions over the years, and wish him success in his future projects, blogging and otherwise.
That is all— carry on.

Cavalleria Rusticana

10. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, General, Pajama Game

On Friday, I had a sort of minor shake-up experience…pretty minor in the grand scheme of things, but it started me thinking about a number of things… masculinity, pretty-boy actors, Lucille Ball, Women’s Liberation and the science of automobile maintenance, which is pretty weighty stuff to spin from a flat on the I-35, but bear with me, I do have a point and I will eventually get to it.

It started in the most prosaic errand— I went over to the local everything-you want-we have got local grocery store on my lunch hour, to load up on the usual sort of stuff, most of which would stay in the trunk, but the bags of perishables— milk, eggs, an assortment of meats and veg. (less my luncheon deli sandwich) would be stashed in the break-room refrigerator until the end of the day. Hey, lunch hour— too precious to actually spend all that time to eat your lunch—in my world, you do errands or a brisk workout walk for 45 to 50 minutes, and eat a sandwich, salad or cup-o-noodles at your desk in the remaining 10 to 15 minutes.

In the height of the morning rush hour there had been the most awful accident on the I-35 South, the sort of accident that closes two lanes on a seriously major interstate. Attention had been paid, I took a couple of alternate routes, and went by the accident site on the access road next to the highway, after everything was over except the shouting, cleanup and the lawsuits. When I finished my grocery shopping, I came back on the highway— and as soon as I drove by where the accident had been in the morning, I started to feel something very strange in the VEV’s steering, a curious and wobbly feel to the wheel, and an odd noise and vibration that grew steadily more intense. I had already begun to slow down and pull off onto the verge, as soon as I noticed it. That the sound, the feel, and the vibration were getting worse every second, so with visions of having something awful happening to the… oh, what is it, the thingus that controls the… umm, thingummy… those whatsis that have something to do with the steering, those… ummm, boot thingummys that you have to make sure are intact and lubricated always, lest they break off suddenly and you find yourself and your car sliding down the highway at 70 MPH with the off-side wheel broken away and underneath the car… well, Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers on Car Talk have very dispiriting things to say about this kind of scenario, so I held my breath, and pulled off to the side, and set the brake and the hazard lights, and went for a quick superficial check around the VEV, just short of the exit by my workplace.

Oh, thank god, it was immediately obvious and uncomplicated— the left rear tire— in shreds and tatters of rubber and steel mesh. I was amazed I had managed to go a couple of hundred yards on it, in that condition. I had been warned about that tire— both of the rear tires, when I bought the front tires last year. They were next to bald, good for only a couple of months, so said the tire place salesman when I had to replace the front tires. At that point, with my steady employer only good for about the same time limit… well, I could only afford to see to the immediate and urgent, and pray for the rest. I was just seeing to the immediate (still shaking slightly); opening the trunk and fishing out the jack, and the lug-nut wrench thingy, when a late model SUV pulled into verge head of me… which marvelously, contained my immediate supervisor, and the president of the company I work for these days. They immediately assessed the situation, bundled me and the groceries into the SUV, telephoned ahead to the office and sorted out which of the guys there would bring me back and change the tire. Chivalry may be on the rocks in a lot of places, but not here in Texas.

I’ve never been stranded by the side of the road with car trouble for longer than about three to five minutes. Another female NCO, a supremely competent and organized sort— but quite uninterested in automobile mechanics—- once remarked to me that all you had to do was pop up the hood and look helpless, and guys would be hitting the brakes, dropping out of trees, and rushing up breathlessly with their toolboxes at hand, begging to be of assistance. It’s a rather endearing feature of the male of our species, this urge to fix things. In point of fact, both of us knew very well how to change tires, and oil, and stuff like that…but guys seemed to get such an ego boost out of doing it, you might as well just let them.

Ages ago, I wrote in a comment on another blog, where the concept of masculinity was under discussion, “Real men take responsibility for what matters in their lives. And fix things. Everything else is quibbling over habits and hobbies.” The proprietor of that blog was quite taken with that statement, and emailed me, asking permission to use it as a tagline, which he did, for quite a bit; it seemed like I did hit on something very deep, very resonant in a pretty off-the-cuff statement. Real men fix things; they are capable and confident when it comes to those skills they value. It would only be logical that competence should have been attractive to a potential mate, over and above the physical stuff. Real men are competent and reliable… they fix things…

…and of course so do women, and I wonder how it ever got to be thought that helplessness and haplessness was attractive, endearing, and even sexy. A lot of TV viewers did love Lucy, after all, even if watching the classic show of that name did (and still does) drive me to paroxysms of exasperation— desperate incompetence was just not funny. It was not endearing, not even amusing to me (even when I was a child, watching the reruns at Granny Jessie’s house); seeing Lucy and Ethel bollix up some grand plan beyond all human experience was more an exercise in masochism, than amusement. And watching a male as a butt of that kind of comedy is hardly any more amusing.

My daughter has a screen-saver on her computer, of one of the current heartthrob movie idols; he is quite devastatingly handsome, as these matters are judged… but he is a boy .He is pleasing to look at… but alas, as I judge them, he is a boy, an ornamental boy. He does not exude that air of reliable, solid and adaptable competence. He plays that sort of person in whatever drama offers him a salary… but I cannot imagine him swapping out a blown tire on the verge of the I-35 south, without a lot of drama about how it would adversely affect his fingernails.

Real men— they are there when you really need them, they fix things, and they are good at it.

War Protestor makes good in Military

09. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: A Href, General

I was wandering by Blackfive’s blog this morning, and ran across an interesting post.

Seems there’s a Hungarian immigrant, one Andras Elder, whose parents escaped to the US with their two kids back in 1980 (you remember – when Hungary was a communist country). Young Andras grew up, went to college, got a double Masters’ degree in Latin & ancient Greek literature, and “carried protest signs denouncing the Operation Desert Shield in 1991.”

Now he’s a Navy Corpsman, and recently received a battlefield promotion to Petty Officer 2nd Class.

It seems that somewhere along the line, he realized that he was a peacenik without really understanding what war was, or what it entailed, and so he needed to experience it. Accordingly, he called a Navy recruiter, who wanted to make him a Supply Officer. He called back and said he’d rather work with the Marines.

“I just thought you have to put your foot where your mouth is,” Eder said. “I had to experience war. Now when we talk about war, we can be more serious. We can now understand what peace is because we understand war.”

Three years later, he’s got two tours in Iraq under his belt.

I love what Eder said about his Marines.

“These guys are just as intelligent and smart as anyone I know,” Eder said. “When I first came to the battalion, I felt like the dumb one. It was a hard thing to convince them they were the smart ones in the fellowship.”

It’s an interesting article, and I agree with Blackfive – this Petty Officer is someone you should know.

Controlling Grackles The Natural Way

08. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Science!

I don’t give much thought to grackles; as I mentioned last summer, they aren’t a big problem here:

Here in California, we thankfully experience these loud, annoying birds only occasionally. But, when they move in, they seem to displace about every other bird in the area – save for the equally aggressive seagulls, and the hawks, which likely find them rather tasty.

But then there was Sgt. Mom’s post from a couple of days ago, comparing Jackson Pollock’s trash to multi-colored grackle poop. And I just saw a short blurb on Fox News Channel about using trained hunting falcons to control “sparrows and crows” at the Kremlin:

They’ve been doing this for quite some time; check this 1987 Discover article, which focuses on bioacoustics, but also mentions their use of falcons. So I thought, “hey, they should be doing that back east.” And, indeed, they are:

FORT WORTH – Jeff Cattoor found what he was looking for after midnight Friday morning at the northern edge of downtown Fort Worth: Hundreds of grackles squawking and making their customary mess of the sidewalk from the trees around Chase Bank.

Perched on Cattoor’s right hand, Blackjack, a chestnut-colored hawk with inch and half long talons, watched silently.

Then suddenly…WOOSH.

With a startling flap of his wings, Blackjack darted into the trees, followed quickly by a cloud of grackles exploding from the branches.

Too late. Blackjack quickly has a large male grackle pinned to the sidewalk, already dead.

“Once he goes, it doesn’t take him long,” Cattoor said, walking quickly to take the dead bird before Blackjack eats him and fills up. “He knows what he’s doing.”

Cattoor and Blackjack are part of No Grackle Left Behind, the latest effort to rid downtown Fort Worth of pesky, noisy grackles.

So Sgt. Mom, perhaps you might suggest this to the SA city council? Oh, and btw, a lot of people believe hawks prey on housepets, this generally isn’t true.

Calling All Car Guys

07. April 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Technology

If you aren’t already checking out Mark Tapscott’s Carnival of Cars every week, check out his new one now. It’s getting better every week – there’s even a link to this post by your’s truly. 🙂

The Daily Brief