Wednesday, December 17, 2008

The Wisdom of Uncle Robert

A week or two before I was to head off to Basic Training at Fort Benning, I got a call from my uncle, Robert. He's my Mom's youngest brother, and travel for his job had brought him to New York City. He wanted to get together, buy me dinner, and give me some advice about what I was about to take part in.

So we went to a nice deli style restaurant, and enjoyed a companionable meal. The talk ranged over quite a number of subjects, but as we came to dessert, the topic of Basic came up.

Robert had a number of good suggestions for making my time in training as smooth as I could, but the most interesting thing came about because of a flip answer on my part.

"Look," Robert said in his deep, somewhat intimidating tones, "There are some things you never want to do..."

"Never volunteer, right? I volunteered to get in, and that used up my quota?" I piped up.

"No, not at all." He said after a moment of thought, "You just have to be smart about what you do. Use your head. For instance, at the end of our course in Basic, my platoon had to make a twenty mile march. Right before we left, they asked for volunteers for a detail, so I raised my hand and nudged my closest pal to raise his. When we got called out, he asked me if I was crazy. I reminded him that everyone else was about to walk twenty miles, and asked him what they could have us do that was worse.

"Sure enough, we loaded a truck, and drove out to the end point of the march, where we set up everything for the breakfast the guys were gonna be served when they got finished with the march. Then we sat around for a couple of hours."

Smart guy, Robert is.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

A Picture

I found a picture online this morning. Someone had chalked onto a paving stone, 'Real Life is Here'.

I've spent the last four hours trying to find out where the picture was taken, so I can go and see real life.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

There She Is

I like animation. Enjoy Studio Ghibli, loved The Incredibles, and Akira, and I've seen enough of Spike and Mikes Festival of Animation to want to check out each new one I hear about.

So I was pretty happy, a couple of days ago, when my perusal of the Intarwebs brought me to the site of a little gem called 'There She Is'. Its' the story of what happens when bunny falls in love with a cat. Not a girl from Playboy and a beatnik, but a rabbit and a feline.

The animation itself is a deceptively simple, anime style. A little on the cutesy side, but that's not a strike against it, especially as the true depth of the story unfolds. The hero, Nabi the cat, and heroine, Doki the rabbit, are drawn in a quite basic style, and it speaks to the skill of the creator that each shade of emotion is readily apparent for both of them, and the world they inhabit.

The story starts of quite simply, with Doki becoming enamored of Nabi, and follows them from their first meeting, through Doki's pursuit and Nabi's acceptance, and then begins to show how the wider world responds to the realtionship of these two disparate types. Each of the four available chapters of their story gives increasing depth to both of the protagonists and the world they share, all while eschewing any dialogue in favor of action and appropriate music.

'There She Is' is a gem of story-telling. The fourth chapter ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, and the fifth is not, as I write, available, but I find myself checking the website daily to see if it has. I'd urge you to take a bit of time to watch one or two, and as none of the four currently viewable are more than six minutes long, it is more than worth the time to experience them.

There She Is
http://www.sambakza.net/amalloc/tteotta_main.htm

Saturday, December 06, 2008

The Wisdom of Robert Heinlein

What did I want? I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, “The game’s afoot!” I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and Lost Dauphin. I wanted Prester John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and to eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be the way they had promised me it was going to be, instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is.
I had had one chance — for ten minutes yesterday afternoon. Helen of Troy, whatever your true name may be — and I had known it — and I had let it slip away. Maybe one chance is all you ever get.

— Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road

The Wisdom of Theodore Geisel

"Don't cry because it's over,
smile because it happened."

Friday, December 05, 2008

Mugshot

I've never had a mugshot taken, thank god. I've done my share of stupid and even illegal stuff, it's true, but somehow I've always managed to make it away from whatever situation came up without having forced some roly-poly cop to take a picture of me. Once, believe it or not, I actually managed to avoid it by sprinting away as fast as I could, which, for those of you who know me and my attitude towards moving faster than a slow mosey, is something of a miracle.

So I suppose that it's bad form of me to get so much enjoyment out of The Smoking Gun's weekly mugshot round-up, or this site I just discovered...http://mugshotdujour.com/

I'm really hoping there isn't anything to this Karma concept...

Monday, December 01, 2008

Wake-Up Call

So, I got assigned to drive an LMTV from Camp Manhattan, right on the Euphrates, to the Combat Outpost we were setting up near Ar Ramadi. It was an easy run, but for some reason, we ended up having to stay the night. There were about four of us driving the trucks, and a Humvee with one of the sergeants in it. It was kind of a pain in the ass sleeping in the trucks, especially for a guy my size, but it was better than being back at Manhattan, where the rest of the platoon was undoubtedly being pimped out on random work assignments so Lt. Nelson could look good for the CO.

Anyway, the night went by uneventfully, and, come morning, I got woken up by Dyer, telling me that the cooks had breakfast up. I pulled my head back under the blanket. It was a toss-up which was gonna be worse, chow cooked in primitive conditions, or an MRE.

Not a minute later, a mortar landed in the middle of the Outpost. About fifteen meters away from my truck.

'Jesus Christ!', I thought. 'All right, I'm up, I'm up...'