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Journal cyranoVR's Journal: On Current Events 20

Journal by cyranoVR

A Story

When I was but a Lad, I learnt of an animated television show concerning a soldier named "Joe," who battled against an incompetent, reptilian terrorist with an irritatingly high-pitched, scratchy voice. I had never seen this particular show, and so I resolved to ask Mother if I might watch an episode.

So, during our drive home from school, I gently raised the subject.

"Mother," I inquired in my affected, aristocratic accent, "all the of my chums are speak highly of this fellow 'General Issue Joe' and his televised adventures. If I might be allowed to peruse a single half-hour of this program after completing my addition and subtraction tables, I would be so very happy."

With this question my Dear Mother's face grew ashen; and she did not reply.

I grew worried. "Mother!" I pressed, "have I said something wrong?" Still, she remained silent as we drove. Perhaps I should mention the educational component of the program? According to my classmates, one could learn the secret to winning "half-the-battle."

Finally, we reached our estate. We passed through the Gates and brought the car to a halt in our driveway. For several minutes, Mother sat very still - in solemn reflection or building rage, I was not sure which. With each passing moment, I grew quite anxious; and I felt the Great Chill.

Finally, she spoke - a seething pronouncement that is burned in my psyche to this very day:

"You're not allowed to watch that show, because that's what Ronald Reagan wants you to watch."

And so I never did see even a single half-hour.

Damn you Ronald Reagan.

All the other Boys got to witness GI Joe(tm) humiliate Cobra(tm) each and every weekday. But thanks to your reckless military budget, I - alas - could not.

No, it would be 20 years before I would finally stumble upon reruns airing at 3AM on Cartoon Network, and by then the animation seemed dated and the script amaturish and - frankly - embarrassing.

Damn you.

Another Story

When I was a still a lad but a little bit older, I often found myself parroting to my Dear Old Grandmother the crude witticisms concerning Our President that my Parents were quick to utter.

My Grandmother would justly point out - and require me to concur - that One must show proper respect towards One's President - whether or not One agrees with Him - because, after all, "He's the President."

On the other hand, my Grandmother also voted for Clinton because he was "handsome" and "reminded her" of "Elivs."

Go figure.

RESOLVED: Breakdancing Transformers Kick Ass

Further resolved: if anyone has a mirror of above-referenced Flash video, please do the right thing.

A Statistical Analysis

How utterly predictable. The Poor Guy's corpse is barely cold, and already Internet Blowhards have tarnished His Name by comparing him, The Great Communicator, to that guy currently occupying 1600 Penn.

Which brings us to my weekend project: I realized it would be Fun and Challenging to code a small app that analyzes speech transcripts for recurrent patterns and such. I'm keeping the source proprietary for now, but here is some sample output - I think you'll be pleasantly suprised!

BTW - Reagan was a "hack."

Speaking of El Busho, the crackpot cyber-tabloid Capitol Hill Blue reports that Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides. Wow, who reads this stuff?!

More Lite Reading of Interest

For those of you too young to remember the Reagan presidency, Rotten.com has an impressively comprehensive summary of his political career. Did you know that Reagan swept the electoral college in '84 because everyone felt sorry for him after the failed assasination attempt in '81? It's true! Defitely worth the time investment - I know I learned something.

Meanwhile, Slate.com has a great article pointing out how when it came to battling Big Government, Reagan was all bark and no bite. Choice quote:

Fittingly, the Ronald Reagan Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, completed 10 years after Reagan left office, today houses 5,000 government employees and is the largest government building in Washington.

Heshootshescores!!! Fun Fact: Reagan's political hero was FDR. Hehehehe Reagan was a liberal! Shhhh don't tell the Bushies!

Well, that's one thing "they" obviously know from experience: letting Hollywackos get involved in politics is a recipe for disaster.

Pre-Emptive Strike

But what's that? Do I hear someone ranting about a "Democratic Congress" "spending" "out of control?" Well, gentle reader, pay no heed to such rash words and instead consider this morsel: Exhibit A.

Wow, things just got really quiet in here!

Funny, that.

Something for the Military Folk

Understanding Fourth Generation War by William S. Lind

Choice quotes:

Aviation has replaced artillery as the source of most firepower, but otherwise, (and despite the Marine's formal doctrine, which is Third Generation maneuver warfare) the American military today is as French as white wine and brie. At the Marine Corps' desert warfare training center at 29 Palms, California, the only thing missing is the tricolor and a picture of General Gamelin in the headquarters. The same is true at the Army's Armor School at Fort Knox, where one instructor recently began his class by saying, "I don't know why I have to teach you all this old French crap, but I do."

and

...Humiliating the defeated enemy troops, especially in front of their own population, is always a serious mistake but one that Americans are prone to make. This is because the 'football mentality' we have developed since World War II works against us."
Read article

"Football mentality." Heh, that's awesome.

GET CANCER

This discussion was created by cyranoVR (518628) for Friends and Friends of Friends only, but now has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

On Current Events More

On Current Events

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  • I have to agree with you about the Transformers. They were always my favorite, with the possible exception of Battletech. At least it was sci-fi, and reasonably good sci-fi for the time and the age level of the target audience. GI Joe, however, always sucked ass even when I was 10. My dad, a raving hippie, let me watch it because he didn't believe in censorship, and all I learned is that the military mentality is cheesy and lame. This may or may not be true, I don't know, I've never been in the military, bu
    • all I learned is that the military mentality is cheesy and lame.

      A detail I left out of the story: I tried telling my parents that GI Joe "wasn't really that violent" because the Joes only "punched out" badguys, nobody ever got shot, and pilots always jumped out of planes before they blew up (Ok, ok...I did see a few episodes of the show while over at a friend's house). Somehow, it didn't win over my parents though...
  • the Marines, during the invasion of Iraq, were the only force to demonstrate 3rd generational maneuver warfare fighting technqiues. Their command station was a pair of hop-scotching command posts within x miles off the front line. Their OODA loop was tightened and they were able to march up the landscape, overwhelming all forces by sheer speed in decision making while the Army slowly trudged lockstep.

    I'd suggest reading DNI [d-n-i.net] for anyone interested in Generational/Asymmetric Warfare, John Boyd, OODA, etc.
    • I remember seeing some good 3rd-gen tactics from the Army, too, at least at the divisonal and corps level. The fact that General Norm I-can't-spell-his-last-name is a moron shouldn't take away from his corps commanders. =p
      • That's the interesting thing with the military: you have a generation of 21st century military thinkers who are ready to take the reigns. It's just the nature of a hierarchy that they aren't going to steal control away.

        But I think the US military will come to its new tasks wonderfully, just as it had through the last century. One thing the military scholars know is what happens when you fail to adapt.
        • Yup. The biggest problem is that we've got a lot of 2nd-generation idiots still in the JCS and Pentagon, because all the guys who know 3rd-gen tactics are also insubordinate enough (it's a requirement, practically--part of 3rd-gen is that you take action when the opportunity is there without waiting for HQ to make a call) that the staff pukes get promoted over them.
    • I was under the impression that United States air superiority bombed the living fuck out of Iraq's army, essentially making the battle over before it started. Any maneuvers were after-action skirmishes, etc.

      At least, from reading several chapters of this book [amazon.com], it seemed clear that there really wasn't much shooting at all during the ground war phase (well, aside from friendly fire).
      • That was dealing with Desert Storm which was air power, Tomahawks, and Abrams tanks with the Iraqi army playing runaway.

        The current war (and the one I was talking about) was an actual conflict: two armies meeting with contrary goals (hold/take, advance/repulse). In Desert Storm, the US drew a line across the middle of Iraq and as long as Saddam's army was running north of it, the US ignored them. It was more like the "war" over Yugoslavia.

        The invasion in 2003 forced the necessity of actually breaking a

  • Your beginning story about G.I. Joe was hillarious. The rest was incoherent as usual.

    8/10

    • You didn't like my chart [cs.com]? But I worked so hard on it!

      Ah well...

      The later portion of the JE is incoherent because I'm having an imaginary argument with an unseen/unheard Reagan supporter, if you hadn't figured out.

      • My ADHD kicked in and I missed the chart. That is also good stuff.

        Watching all these great historical speeches of Reagan sure makes me miss having a great speaker as President. I've been hearing snippets all week long, and then just today I heard Bush speaking and I was like, "What did he say?"

        Anyway, good chart and thanks again for the Transormers link. Like Dayton said, that's a permanent bookmark.

        • If you can figure out how, I would save it down somewhere...it's sure to get farked in the coming days

          • Yeah, unfortunately they had to use Flash, which makes things difficult. I've never been able to successfully save off a Flash file from the web. There is probably an application that would do it.

    • I'd been meaning to look at the rest of those since I first saw that one from Buffer-Overflowed's (IIRC) JE. Bloody brilliant stuff.

      But I only realised just now, looking at the merchandise page, that it was supposed to be "Body Massage" [fenslerfilm.com], and not "Bottom Massage" (Heh, good old American accents). I'm not sure how much better that is, though...

      My God, did that smell good.

  • ... you went straight for the articles defaming reagan so you'd have ammo to fire at anyone that said anything good about him. I hate partisanism so much....
    • I do have to wonder about the astrology. That is odd. But then again, I would need to see some sort of reputable source, possibly print, or a research paper to back up those opinions.

      jason
    • Eh. The Rotten article was pretty tame compared to the other stuff that's out there. No curse words, no accusations of racism, genocide, etc. Ditto for the Slate.com piece. If you want to see some really partisan, defamatory stuff, try checking out the links currently circulating over at blogdex.com [blogdex.com] Wacky, wild stuff. Some people out there with real, vile hatred. Not my scene, man (I'm more into the satire thing, if you hadn't noticed).

      On second thought, maybe you shouldn't...

      Anyway, I'm sure Reagan ha
  • The evils of grapes and GI Joe? All things I was blithely unaware of all through my childhood and well into adulthood until you explained the evil hidden messages. Who knew that I was oppressing migrant laborers and promoting destroying the sandinistas with my childhood grape eating and cartoon watching?

    But that's one of the joys of marriage, that we can bring together highly diverse experiences and meld them into one. I can only look forward with anticipation to what our kids are like as a result of these

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