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, 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 »
… and would it ever happen? Good thing I am not holding my breath.
(link courtesy Belmont Club, via Austin Bay)
So, I would have sat down and written something bitingly sarcastic about the Oscars this year…. but realized I just don’t care, all that much. And this guy beat me to the sarcasm part , anyway. Well, I am curious as to who will have the most cringe-making acceptance speech, and which actress will be wearing the most hideous dress… (Honey, you mean you looked in the mirror just before you stepped out the door, and decided to go, anyway? Dressed in that??!!!)
The only nominated movie I saw anyway was “Curse of the Wererabbit”.
Wake me up, when Hollywood starts making movies for everyone else, instead of just each other.
To: Gary Busey, Billy Zane
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Your Next Career Move
1. I assume, of course, that you will still have one in movies catering to mainstream American audiences. You know, America… that country of which you are both ostensibly citizens? The one where a decreasing number of people with disposable income and an inclination to be amused by well-crafted entertainment at the multiplex are in fact declining to report as commanded by the lords of the entertainment industry to be sliced, diced, insulted and lectured on the most recent cause du jour? Yeah, that country. Feel free, though, to cast your lot in with whoever’s movie industry floats your personal boat… this place is still, although you might get some argument among the entertainment wheelers and dealers, a free country.
2. So, guys, how do you feel, after having participated with apparent glee, in what looks like (from this admittedly distant perspective) the 21st Century’s version of that hateful Third Reich propaganda crap-fest “The Eternal Jew”? Full of that nice warm glow that comes of having stuck it to “the man”, I presume. How very daring of you. I do hope you were well paid, as that paycheck might have to last for a while.
3. So, as working actors…
(“Blondie, sweetie, have we ever seen a movie starring either one of these goofs?”
“Billy Zane was the baddie on “Titanic, Mom.”
“I think he was in “Memphis Belle, too. Maybe that’s where he got to be a pacifist.”
“And Gary Busey… who’s he?”
“I think he played Buddy Holly, ages ago… you do know who Buddy Holly is….?.”
“S**t, Mom, you were a DJ, you trained me well… he was killed with Richie Valens… wasn’t he in Point Break, with Keanau Reeves? Oh-oh-oh-oh… Billy Zane was the the “Phantom”… he wore lavender spandex, for Ch****t sake!”)….
It looks like we shall in future be seeing rather less of you two than before… one way or the other— either the free markets’ choice or ours, as consumers.
4. I would also venture a guess, that any future American big-screen production that you have a major role in… will probably not show in an AAFES theater, not once word about this little movie escapade gets around. It’s just a guess, mind you, but I do have an instinct about these things. Military members have a long, long memory about movie actors who either mouth off about the military, or play very prominent roles in movies which defame the military. I know lots of people who have been boycotting Jane Fonda for decades. Of course, that duty was made less onerous when she barely made any movies for decades— interesting coincidence, don’t you think?
Sincerely,
Sgt Mom.
PS: Please don’t do any interviews in which you lament the unflattering way in which Americans in general and the American military in particularly, are seen by foreigners… seeing that you just now, and a couple of decades of Hollywood efforts before you have contributed so much to that state of affairs. We owe so much to you all, for generally portraying Americans as brutal, racist, crude, uncultured, ignorant and generally benighted. Thanks for all your sterling service in that regard.
PPSS: Rremember, make that paycheck last!
Amusingly, that lugubrious old talking prune, NPR’s Daniel Shorr was coming out on the side of being all sensitive and being responsible about “using the power of the press” as regards the Matter of the Danish Cartoons. (Doesn’t that sound like a very dull Sherlock Holmes adventure, or the worst name for a war since the “War of Jenkins’ Ear”?) Just like the pet professor of international relations whom my local paper keeps on hand to drivel on about the Moslem world and international relations, and how the US must…must…zzzzz… oh, sorry. Dozed off there for a moment. I do that when reading the gentleman’s editorials, but so do probably most of his students.
Anyway, predictable, dull, predictable… oops, did I say that already? Anyway, both these prize examples of overpaid old media had pretty much the same take… the cartoons were horrible! Vile! Insulting! And the major media had done a Good Thing by not putting them out in front of us proles so we could make up our own mind… which is that they are only a little more tame than a Dick and Jane grade school reader. Poor, innocent and clueless Mr. Shorr also alledged that said cartoons were very difficult to find and view… at which statement I can only shake my head in pity and hope that someone in the NPR studio will either enlighten him about this internet and search engine thingy, or hand him a box of Kleenex to wipe off the senile drool.
And besides, if the Danish Cartoons were the far end in vile insult to Islam in general, then a great many parties are in for a most awful shock. Oh, yes, in accordance with my call to comic arms of several years ago, we have just begun to take the piss, point the finger, and laugh, laugh, laugh.
(The Dutch website would, of course be far more amusing to those who actually can speak Dutch, but some of the entries are in English… and some of them are quite understandible, as well as being not work-safe, in the strict meaning of the word. I really have to admire the mad Photoshop skilz, though. Thanks to Rantburg and Silent Running, and the Instapundit, whose thunderous tread shakes the whole blog-world.)
So, is this Mr. Stein, of the LA Times the designated piñata of the month, for the blogosphere to freely thwack, belittle and otherwise abuse? Now that the joys of flogging “Professor”* Ward Churchill are a thing of the past, we have all apparently moved on. I as usual, am late to the all-blog pile on, since the by now the egregious Mr. Stein has been filleted, sliced and diced by sharper minds and more accomplished writers than myself. I just did not receive the Dark Lord Rove’s latest memo, ‘kay?
*** pouting prettily***
I just must not be on His Darknesses’ primary AIG distribution list. (Quick, can anyone tell me, are we an army of digital brownshirts this month, or just an electronic lynch mob? I hate to be inappropriately outfitted; my jackboots are this very week out being new-soled, but the pitchfork and torch are ready and waiting…. Oh, thanks. Lynch mob it is then… right. Thanks for the light. Non-smokers are always short of a light, have you ever noticed?)
Frankly, Mr. Stein is pitiful meat, after the never-ending buffet that was the many-talented Professor Churchill. The only thing to marvel at is that what used to be a reputable newspaper paid him (presumably a lot of money) for these vapid dribblings. I would rather advise everyone to stand well back, point a finger at him and laugh, long and heartily. Please, for the love of heaven, don’t stuff his email inbox with any more flaming communications. We’re just setting ourselves up to listen to him whine, with lip all a tremble, about those horrid hostile hate-mongers, when all he did was innocently mosey down the lane, excercising his rights of free speech, man!
And don’t, please don’t write a righteously wrathful letter to the Times, threatening to cancel your subscription — even if you are really one of those rapidly diminishing number who actually have a subscription. For the love of all dead fish and bottoms of parrot-cages in the world, something has to serve as wrap and liner! A newspaper is supposed to be representative of the community it serves, after all, and the management just might realize that the whiney, insular yuppie twat demographic is way over- represented in their newsroom/editorial staff, and fire his clueless ass. Thereupon, he would slink off to work for Pacifica Radio, or the sort of extremely judgmental lefty local alternative free paper almost entirely supported by ad revenue from gentleman’s clubs, alternative lifestyle bars and pathetically awful personals… but before he did, we would be treated to Mr. Stein wobbling all over NPR and others as a martyr to free speech. I have a low nausea threshold, and I would far rather keep him where we can point to him and giggle, heartlessly.
After all, he didn’t want to advise spitting on military personnel returning from a war zone. Which, I guess, is progress of a sort.
PS: Cpl/Sgt. Blondie finds it awesomely incredible that he knows no military people first hand. It sort of reminds her, says she, of the kids in her 6th grade class in Ogden, UT, the ones who had never, ever been beyond the state line, or even out of the city limits, and were absolutely boggled to discover that she had been born in Japan, and lived in Greece and Spain for most of her life after that. She advises that Mr. Stein get in his car, and drive south for a little bit, to Oceanside, or San Diego. He will meet a lot of military people there, just by hanging around.
* As always, viciously skeptical quote marks
Later: Problem preventing comments from being posted is fixed. Comment away! – Sgt. Mom
Ever get one of those words in your head that just won’t go away? Or a tune that keeps on running through your head, and you can’t banish it no matter how hard you try? This long word did it for me. After seeing the GEICO Insurance commercial with the word in it for several thousand times, I just had to know what it meant. Yep. It’s a real word, for sure. A noun, the meaning is that it is a nothing word. Each element of the word has a meaning of nothing, or intense triviality. This leads to the word meaning something of really low importance, or low/no use. That gives floccinaucinihilipilification a humorous overall meaning in the context of the commercial and the product they are trying to sell. I really got a good laugh out of it when I looked it up in an online dictionary.
So there! Getting the new year off to a rousing, “my head hurts” post, we who are about to go back to bed salute you!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
How pathetic is this… with all the riches of the wealthiest nation on earth (supposedly) at our command, and our culture alleged to bestride the known world like a colossus… but there is still not much on the TV broadcast channels to amuse me on a regular basis. The weekly TV guide is beginning to depress me, almost as much as actually having to buckle down and watch the resulting many-times-digested-and-regurgitated pap, piddle and trivia. I am only grateful I don’t work as a TV reviewer, and would have to watch it all, as a condition of employment. But at least, I would be paid for having done so, which would take the edge off, somewhat. Having a lobotomy might also do the trick… might this be passed off as a business expense for TV reviewers?
My local TV listings in this year of our lord 2005 leaves me wondering of this operation has been performed on those who have a responsibility for the programs gracing (if that is the word that can be used) the broadcast channel schedule. It is almost immediately apparent that all originality, creativity, and genius has fled to the cable channels, the ones that are bundled into a package that I can’t … or won’t pay to get, not if they come at a premium. I just can’t justify to myself paying more than 45$ a month for fifty channels, not when I am interested in only watching two or three of them. I think I’ll just save the money, and buy an interesting series on DVD down the road a ways.
But I do have the basic minimum broadcast channels, and oh, what a depressing prospect that is: wall to wall doctors, lawyers and cops… lots and lots of cops. Whatever interesting concept there once existed about any of those has been wrung dry of originality by copy-catting years ago. Old doctors, young doctors… young lawyers, prosecutors (who the hell cast that woman on “Close to Home” as a prosecuting attorney— she looks like a particularly earnest Brownie Scout, not a law school graduate), defense lawyers, private investigators, military lawyers and psychic investigators, crime scene investigators, military investigators…I don’t wanna even think about the CSI episode which aired last week, about the guy who ate himself to death. Who the hell programmed that for Thanksgiving evening? I damn near barfed! Grossing out the audience is not a good long term strategy, although maybe a collection of CSI autopsy scenes might work as a diet aid.
I will give a tiny cheer to “Cold Case”, though… for the really quite expertly crafted excursions into the past. See, you can do different eras quite convincingly on a weekly TV series, how come we are all stuck in the present, which we know all too depressingly well!? And next season, according to Drudge, the flav of the upcoming broadcast TV year is post-apocalyptic America, after some unfortunate series of events. Gee, one wonders if that cheery and disastrous prospect—picturing Middle America all gone to chaos and anarchy—isn’t giving certain coastal elites a woody of sufficient strength and duration to support a couple of concrete blocks and an small anvil. (Note to the bicoastal cultural elites— Middle America is the place where they have guns and tend to know their neighbors. Word to the wise, ‘kay?)
Shit, doesn’t anyone else in TV land have an original, interesting, non-medical, non-legal, non-law-enforcement job? I can’t even bring myself to watch the reality shows: an assortment of people coping with a bizarre collection of real-world and artificial challenges, showing off for an audience and either allying with or backbiting each other— I thought that is what the blogosphere is for. As it is, about the only show where I can’t see plot developments coming a mile away is “Lost”. I just hope that the creators and writers for that show have a seriously planned and mapped story arc in mind, and that all these odd little incidents do have an eventual point, and aren’t just thrown in every week on a whim; weird for the sake of weird, as “Twin Peaks” eventually turned out to be. Like, why the heck does Jack have a seriously military appearing tat, and where is the tree-trampling, air-crew snatching monster these days? I eagerly await any explanation of these matters; secure in the confidence that it won’t be anything I would have worked out already… which is why I keep tuning in, every week.
To see something different, surprising, amusing, unexpected… entertaining, even. That’s what I watch TV for; to be entertained, and not to be bored, insulted or nauseated. And that I am bored, insulted and nauseated on such a regular basis… well, I can only think that perhaps the broadcast channels don’t really want me to watch. And I am happy to oblige. I have enough good stuff on tape or DVD to go for the next couple of seasons. Think on that, major media sources, when you are trying to sell advertising time.
To: Ms Sheehan and Friends
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Thinking Ahead
1. It seems that there are a lot of you out there with an enormous, throbbing hard-on to recreate those golden days of yore, those glorious patchouli-scented, Ho-Ho-Ho-Chi-Min chanting, drug-addled, socially-conscious days of freewheeling protests, days of rage and nights of long-haired hippy chicks getting it on with equally long-haired, sensitive draft-dodging musicians. OK, fine, everyone needs a hobby, but most people that in love with the past eventually hook up with a re-enactors group.
2. I will, however, accept that you mean well, and are acting from the best of intentions, but cannot help recalling the proverbial paving materiel of the access route to the infernal regions.
3. Should you be successful in infantilizing our volunteer military, and returning them from Afghanistan and Iraq to the bosoms of their families, from whence they were ripped by the brutal, unfeeling minions of the BushhitlerchimpAshKKKroftEvilOverlordRove conspiracy, repercussions in Afghanistan and Iraq will in all likelihood mirror those events which followed upon withdrawal of American troops and American support from South Vietnam.
4. In the interests of effective long-term planning, I urge that consideration of a refugee resettlement project become part of your “bring the troops home” campaign.
5. A comprehensive listing of those Iraqi and Afghan citizens who would be most endangered by an American withdrawal should be drawn up, to include (but not limited to) members of the current government, members of the military and police, the intelligentsia, minority clergy, employees of the American military and civil establishment, and their families. While the actual evacuation plan would be contingent upon actual events, and would probably fall to our military in any case, consideration should be made of where to position the initial reception camp. Ideally, it should be in-theater, situated in the territory of a friendly country.
6. Your input is also solicited on where to site the main refugee camps within CONUS, and on the processes for resettling families permanently in cities and towns across the USA— ideally in locations which as of this date, do not have good Persian or Afghan restaurants. Volunteers will be needed both at the grass-roots level, and to lobby Congress to set aside the funds for a refugee resettlement effort. This is a responsibility which should not be shirked, although it probably will, if past performance is any indication. At least you can say afterward that you tried.
7. Finally, if it is all about the $#%*#@!! oil, why did I just pay 2.53 a gallon for mid-grade last week, when I filled the tank of the VEV?
Sincerely
Sgt Mom
OK, so reading the scathing comments here and there about “Over There”— the drama about the war in Iraq which is supposed to be ripped from the headlines— are amusing enough; Hey, Mr. B, dude, if you are ripping stories from the headlines, let’s rip them from the right decade, ‘kay? The description of one of the main characters as a serious doper, though… An active-duty member of the military today, smoking rope on a regular basis? Yeah, shu-r-r-r-e. Right. I have two words on that for Mr. B.; two words and a Bette Davis-sized eye-roll…. And the two words are “Golden Flow.”
Yes, back in the day, there was a lot of smoking of the eeeevvil weed. There were legends from my early service days, about how to baffle the drug-sniffing dogs by mixing cayenne pepper into the floor wax, about small marijuana plants growing among the shrubs underneath the barracks windows, from so many people throwing their stash out the window shortly in advance of a shakedown search. I personally saw the stash kept by one of my tech school classmates under the passenger seat of his POV— so as not to implicate his roommates in the event that someone got off their ass and searched the dorm rooms. One of my own roommates indulged on occasion, although the two of us who did not asked her very nicely to keep her stash out of the room, and us in ignorance of her pot-consuming. Even in the late 1970ies, being busted for possession was grounds for being thrown out. And yes, I know what the stuff smells like, and I had friends who indulged, although Blondie was completely horrified to find out this, she being the product of a Catholic education, DARE and every other sanctioned youth drug-abuse-prevention program, and six years worth of AFRTS substance-abuse spots.
Which brings me to my next point, which is that DOD began landing like a ton of bricks on the consumption of pot and other illegal substances, especially at overseas locations. A part-timer at FEN-Misawa was busted by the Japanese cops with a shopping bag-full of the local stuff, and implicated so many other people when he began to sing like a demented canary that the unit he was assigned to had to shut down operations for a couple of days while everyone in it trooped obediently in to the local gendarmerie to be interrogated. He also fingered half of the FEN staff as well. I wasn’t one of them, fortunately— as MSgt. Rob elegantly elucidated, I was so notoriously clean-cut I probably gift-wrapped my garbage. The stuff grew wild in Japan, and the temptation was too much for some. It was to the point where the base Security Police offered a certain courtesy service: if you had just bought an automobile, they would have the sniffer dogs go over it, just to establish that any traces of dope they found in it could be held against the previous owner.
I am not sure exactly when they began to do regular random urinalysis tests on military personnel, and am too lazy to thresh through the mountains of data to pin down the date, but it must have been by the early 80ies, because I clearly remember being escorted to the hospital at Hellenikon AB, and asked to fill a small plastic cup; the nurse who proctored did so from the other side of a restroom stall door. That courtesy had gone by the board by the mid-80ies, when I was tasked with proctoring piss-tests ordered on members of the unit at EBS-Zaragoza, as the senior female assigned. I had to eyeball the stream of urine as it left the body and filled up the cup. How degrading and personally embarrassing this was for me, and for every female junior troop who worked for me can be imagined. One poor airman had bashful kidneys; we would be guaranteed to spend at least three or four hours waiting in the hospital waiting room, with her swilling soft drinks, and me telling her silly jokes and inwardly fuming, thinking of all the things I had left at work that I should be doing, except that the Air Force thought this was a much more important use of my time. A male Senior Airman at EBS was busted cold by one of these random tests— he was demoted back to E-1 and out of the Air Force in about six months, and the fact that he had been a sterling citizen, and otherwise an ornament to the unit had no effect at all on the mills of justice. He was out. From his account, he had only smoked it once, inveigled by his girlfriend, a fair Spanish maid and in bed after a rewarding evening…. No, it was plain and clear to the most clueless that polluting the temple of your body whilst in service to Uncle Sam with illegal substances was not only ill-advised… but a short-cut to all kinds of unpleasant outcomes, beginning with a bust in grade, dismissal from service, et cetera, et cetera. And the piss-tests were supposed to be legally iron-clad, and very, very sensitive. Hell, I have even been careful about what I baked and took in to work: nothing with poppy seeds. (I really didn’t want to count on the government lab being able to tell the difference between opiate derivatives… and lemon-poppy-seed tea bread.)
The subsequent investigation of anyone busted by a random urinalysis would take in a whole range of other parties; not just their friends, but their unit, known associates, everyone they had ever talked to, or even thought about talking to. This is something that everyone in the military culture post 1980 knows: a doper will be caught, sooner rather than later. When they are caught, they will bring grief down on every known associate, which has the result of dopers being about as popular as child molesters. The military of the late 1990ies was most emphatically not the military of thirty years before; in a lot of ways it was much more puritanical. I cannot, for example, imagine any of the practical jokes the broadcasters played on each other at FEN-Misawa in 1978, being even considered at AFKN-Seoul in 1994.
I do not think the Army has changed their corporate culture all that much in ten years. Sometime in 1994, AFKN pulled an exercise recall of all their staff, at 4 AM, ordering everyone to report for duty at once… and as soon as we signed in, the Readiness NCO handed us a lidded plastic cup and directed us to the lavatory.
“Oh, you sneaky, conniving bastard!” I told him, as I took the cup. They tested every one of us, in one fell swoop. No, I cannot see a doper lasting for more than a couple of months in the military as practiced today. I may have been out for eight years, but the kind of corporate culture instilled for two service generations… sorry, Mr. B. It doesn’t pass the smell test.
It also doesn’t look like anyone in Hollywood reads milblogs. Pity about that. Lots of good stories there, too. I am doing the best I can— you can lead whores to culture, but you just can’t make ‘em think.
It seems the “gentlemen’s agreement” reached by the alleged “gentlemen” of the US Senate does not hold water. In fact, instead of leaking like a sieve, it apparently elicits waterfalls on its own!
On Thursday evening, just days after a group of Senate “moderate centrists” patted themselves on their backs, (breaking at least five arms in the process) congratulating themselves profusely for having saved the empire union from certain destruction by elimination of blusters filibusters, Senate Democrats totally surprised the entire world by breaking the agreement and blocking a cloture vote on” Mr. Nice”, John Bolton, the President’s pick to kick ass represent the US at the UN – or something like that! While Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was receiving medical assistance in the cloakroom (or was it bathroom?) for having passed out in shock over the event, Majority minority leader “Dingy” Harry reid was grabbing every microphone in the corridor, while his associates and acolytes rounded up all the TV camers so he could gloat assure all of the rest of us that this was not really a filibuster.
Mr. Bolton will now have to go back to the end of the line to await his turn, and recess may be over by then, so he may not get to play at all.
Sorry for all the strikeouts, Nurse (sister) Jenny kept hitting me on the hand with a ruler.
To: Various
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Newsweek/Koran Desecration
1. Newsweek writers Michael Isakoff, and John Barry: Sooooo, an unnamed source who thinks he saw something about it, but can’t really pin it down is good enough for a “professional journalist”* to run with? Say, can I get paid for relaying water-cooler gossip and speculation?
2. The unnamed source: Nice going, a**hole. You flapped your lips to a “reporter”* and more than a dozen people are dead, and even more may be in danger.
3. Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker: Ummm, in this age of cable news 24/7, the internet and satellite communications, the purpose of a general weekly dead-tree digest of news and stuff would be— other than to consume so many thousands of acres of wood-pulp, and to save your phony-baloney job— what, exactly? At worst, your take on the news is a week old by the time it hits the newsstand or mailbox. Fresh fish and fresh news go stale at about the same rate… and I don’t buy either, at a week old.
Checked your circulation figures recently?
4. The so-called “Islamic street”: Do you guys ever get tired of being played for saps? Try some exercises in critical thinking, next time someone tells you some wild story. I realize that the 21st century may be a bit of a leap, intellectually, politically, and technologically, but the 19th century would work for us… for choice, the latter half of it. Realize that your actions make it really difficult for the spokesman for CAIR and other American Islamic groups to go on insisting that “Islam is a religion of peace” with a straight face. Some of them must be very close to OD’ing on Botox, by now
5. The Afghani and Pakistani Mullahs: No, we shall not be turning any personnel over to you for desecrating the Koran. Now, you might get the detainee who ripped up a copy and tried to clog a toilet with it— does that count? In turn, we would like you to turn over to us: The murderers of Nicholas Berg and Daniel Pearl… and those Palestinian cruds who desecrated the Church of the Nativity… plus a number of others to be named at a later date. Thanks for your consideration and attention to this matter
6. DU and the Kos Kiddies: (wow, what a name for an alternative band!) No, the evil US gummint did not force Newsweek to retract their story. Tell you what, I will throw out something for the paranoids to chew on: Just suppose the unnamed source was throwing Isakoff and Barry a totally bogus, BS story, just to mess with their heads, and see if they would be so foolish as to swallow it whole… and look like complete dickheads when it was disproved. How’s that for eeeeevvviiil? Destroy the credibility of mainstream media by feeding them tales which are easily disproved a week later! (Bwahhhh-hahhh-hahhh!) Don’t bother to thank me, kiddies, I live to serve. You want a couple of rolls of paper towels to clean up the mess from all the exploding heads?
7. *As always, those are not “scare” quote marks— they are “viciously skeptical” quote marks.
Sincerely,
Sgt. Mom
Am I the only one who finds the Olympics boring since the demise of Soviet Union?
My family is in the TV room watching the opening ceremony right now, and I’m, er, well, you know…