I Tried To Warn Y'all

That's right, the Army Men are at it again. You just never know when they'll break out and start something. Since it's their nature, one must be prepared. I thought this time I'd let 'em go for a while and see what happened.

Let's meet the playas:

From left to right:

First is the gung ho leader. "C'mon," he says, exhorting his troops to battle. Let's hope he has some sort of communications device as well.

Second is the "I'm here cuz I gotta be - got my rifle, but I'd rather have some coffee and some warm food" guy. Can't blame him.

Third is the "I think I saw something and I'm getting ready to shoot at it" guy. Was a Boy Scout as a teenager - always prepared.

Fourth is the "I'm lining up a shot right now" guy - he's gonna snap off a shot for sure.

Fifth is the "I'm lining up a shot right now, too, but this is a more stable shooting platform. I like to hit what I'm aiming at" guy. He grew up hunting, and if he could go prone he'd be on the ground.

Sixth is the "I've got a bazooka and someone is gonna get it" guy. Very important man to have on your squad.

The field of honor - we can see all the combatants and their initial strategies.

Of course these are Our Good Green American Guys - flying the flag and ever so proud, arrayed like they're playing electric football or something. They are ready to take on all comers and defend our way of life. Our heros.

Well, I think we all know who these guys are. They are letting their ideology cloud their strategy, I think. Of course, they are Nazis. WWII Nazis. Bad Nazis should know they lost once already, but Army Men Nazis never learn.

Of course, we've seen the armies at rest, apparently awaiting the outcome of peace talks. Maybe they'll just pack their stuff and go home.

Check out the rocket launcher in the Nazi utility vehicle.

Oh my, sneak attack! The bastards! Well, that did it. This means war.

Oh man, the tanks cut loose. Things could go either way, our jeeps only have spotlights and not rockets like the Nazis had. This could get ugly.

But wait, spotlights? And even though the two point leader guys got rubbed out, there were others in the formation. One of them has called in air support.

What? Just because the Nazis are WWII vintage doesn't mean Our American Good Guys in Green can't avail themselves with modern technology! Au contraire mon frere! Lessee how those dastardly Nazis like a little State of the Art American stealth high tech knowledge right up their tailpipes! Hah! Bet those Nazis didn't see that one coming! Nuttin' like a little F117 smackdown to ruin their day!

Well, its a sad time for Our Green Guys - they lost some valuable and well loved members of their unit today thanks to the perfidy of those nasty ol' fascists, who all perished in agonizing pain. Justice was served, after all. So, hoist one for Our Guys when you get the chance - they just saved us all again.

Oh, and I need to mention: the idea of blogging about Army Men was inspired by Laura and her dinosaurs. Cuz dinosaurs are awesome.

Infested

Everyone is getting their bowels in an uproar over bedbugs in motels. There are various theories as to why the pests are making such a comeback - but that isn't my mission here. Sometimes, there are dark forces at work that make bedbugs seem mild.


After I checked in and hauled all my crap inside the room tonite, I stepped into the bathroom. This is what greeted me.


Then, I saw these guys guarding the phone.



I started to lose it when I saw the remote was guarded. Sorry, but you just don't mess with a man's remote. I was starting to get peeved.



Then, I noticed these characters on duty covering the alarm clock. The previous lookouts/guards were green, but I, with a keen eye for detail, noticed the brown color of the antagonists. This was across the room from the green guys. A pattern was beginning to emerge.



A lone brown sentry guarding the coffee machine. Granted, I rarely drink that stale crap, but the idea that it may not be accessible should I desire some only added to my aggravation.



Looking at the bed I could see several sentries arrayed against each other on the high ground of the pillows - for strategic advantage, no doubt. Well, I'm here to tell ya, I'd about had enough.



Ripping the covers back revealed what I feared - the room was infested with Army Men. Army Men At War. The brown guys are clearly some sort of Commie soldiers with that non descript flag and their brown uniforms. It's also clear that they don't have much discipline in the ranks - why, some of them were lying down on the job. Nope, not dead or wounded - just slacking off.


But, the green guys were a different story. Americans, they were. Look at how well they are arrayed, plus they set out a rear guard to deal with any of those a$$holes from the alarm clock or coffee maker who might get froggy. Green Army Guys are Good - like growing things. Brown Army Guys are like bull$hit - fertilizer for the Good Green Stuff, whatever it may be. Just sayin', is all.

I felt a little better about the invasion of my personal space because supporting Our Green Guys is just something a patriot like me does. But, I knew I'd be getting very little sleep if I left them at it, so I swept 'em up in separate piles and bagged 'em. They didn't like it and I felt the sting of several minuscule bazooka shots and the pin prick of tiny rifle fire.

So, they're idle for now. I'm sure they'll get out and cause some sort of mischief in the future. It's their function in this ol' world. Righteous cause or not, I'm gonna get some sleep tonite.

First Aerial Photography

Wilbur Wright und seine Flugmaschine

This flight demonstration of American aviation pioneer Wilbur Wright was of a special historic nature: it involved images from the first camera aboard a plane! The two-seater plane with Wilbur Wright at the helm did a lap before an audience of photographers, army men and noteworthy moustached men and just avoided the cameraman on the ground. Then the plane started up again, followed a launching pad and took off: the camera was fixed for the first time on the ground that gave way…and the emotion was there, so great you could almost touch it! The image was as unstable as the cabin of the plane flying at low altitude, flying over the countryside and gradually approaching a town.

Click here and watch the film! If there was an embed code available, I'd have posted it here. But, Europa Film Treasures seems to want you to watch it on their site. It's worth a look.

H/T Nunkle Kim

I Don't Care Who You Are

This video is awesome. Y'all know I like army men. I like ginger cats, with a particular affinity for one who is no longer with us. So, as you too will see, this clip was amusing as all get out.


link

H/T Ace of Spades

Refreshing

 

Captain Dale A. Dye. We mostly know him for his consulting work and appearances in films and television through his company Warriors, Inc., rather than his military record - which is pretty impressive. The man "got around." His Wikipedia page shows his military awards, headlined by a Bronze Star (with V for Valor) and three Purple Hearts among the many others you can see in the picture above.

So, when I start hearing "stars" give their political opinions and such, I'll tend to believe someone like the Captain on military matters far and above someone like Sean Penn or Michael Moore. It just so happens he has a blog at his Warriors, Inc site. Here the Captain expounds on the mission to assassinate Osama Bin Laden:

Its been a while since that infamous scum-sucker Osama Bin Laden assumed room temperature and was consigned to sleep with the fishes. With the exception of repeated self-congratulatory references to it by a certain high-level politician running for reelection, the raid carried out by Navy SEALs and Army SOF aviators on 2 May has slipped below the media radar to be replaced by more pressing stories...like a narcissistic congressman tweeting phone-photos of his man-meat. So maybe enough time has passed for me to weigh in with relative objectivity on a few elements of Operation Neptune Spear that got short-shrift in the hoopla surrounding the long-overdue whacking of the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks and the titular head of Al Qaeda worldwide.
Looking back on all the breathless reportage immediately following the raid, what strikes me initially is the wild-eyed hyperbole involved. It's as if all the deadline-frazzled journalists in the world googled "daring, dangerous and audacious" and then shot-gunned every synonym they could find into their copy. It was all designed to make readers and viewers do a pee-pee dance, read more and keep their sweaty hands off the remote. That's the nature of the highly-competitive media beast these days, I guess, but it's also an unfair overstatement of the facts involved in the OBL mission. Neptune Spear was anything but a cobbled-together strike with high-speed, low-drag operators slapping mags into their weapons and launching off into the night with knives between their teeth and devil take the hindmost.

He goes on to say how well planned it really was plus how it was because of failures in the past that this sort of preparation came to breed success. He does not pull punches. Pee-pee dances indeed.

Neptune Spear put all of that into the deep, dark background and that's as it should be. What the media has so far ignored is that this OBL strike mission was definitive proof-of-product for our special operators. Where our operators, door-kickers and shooters of the SOF community have screwed the pooch in past operations, they have learned hard lessons and applied the knowledge to current tactics, techniques and procedures. And chief among those lessons was the extraordinary cooperation demonstrated in the OBL raid between the alphabet-soup intelligence organizations and the active forces that rely on vital, perishable information to carry off a successful clandestine operation. On Neptune Spear all the horses were pulling in the same direction and the internecine, bureaucratic walls that keep information from flowing back and forth to and from the people who need it crumbled. Those things are crucial in understanding how capable we really are in the longest, most difficult war America has ever fought.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't fire a few rounds downrange at the current administration and the voracious media that insisted with high dudgeon that they should be given every specific detail of how the raid was conducted so they could score political points, boost circulation or score audience ratings without the first thought of how all that brag and blather might affect future operations against our nation's avowed enemies. Imagine for a moment that we'd simply acknowledged that a covert operation was conducted and a high-level AQ member was killed; nothing more, and to hell with the screaming minions of the press. We might have had a real, workable chance to exploit and act on the intelligence our operators policed up within OBL's compound. And the AQ network would be sitting out there wondering what we knew and what we didn't rather than presuming that all their secrets were now compromised.
If the administration and the press had been willing to play it closer to the vest, we might have wound up hitting OBL's entire chain-of-command and eliminating much of their infrastructure before they had a chance to react, change codes and implement their own version of Plan B.
Like it or not - depending on your political and patriotic - bent there are things that the public does not need to know. Every time we ignore that or demand full and unfettered access to any and all military information, we tip our hand to the enemy and put the lives of our special operators in jeopardy.
Politicians, pundits and press weenies...how copy my last?

I'm with him here with reservations - sooner or later we the general public should know what happened. Immediately after? Obviously that was a political decision solely to bolster the image of a militarily ineffective Commander in Chief. Damn straight the covert ops could have made some serious hay if the mission wasn't publicized.

Here he takes on the politically correct movement controlling the military:

Somewhere along the twisted, constantly shifting, joint-service route that too many senior officers have had to traverse from bars to stars they've become uniformed politicians who succeed not by charismatic leadership but by going along to get along and allowing their soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen to become lab-rats for advanced social studies. Leaders bred to be Pattons and Halseys have morphed into placid bureaucrats. So where are the fire-breathing rifle company commanders, bone-in-the-teeth destroyermen and hot-stick fighter jocks now that they've gained flag status? Nowhere that I can spot. I'm painting with a broad brush here but the picture is bleak and deserves attention. It seems in order to merit stars and thus a say in our national military policies, senior men and women are required to wash off the war-paint and fall meekly into lock-step with politicians who hold both the defense purse-strings and the rubber-stamp required for promotion.

Those politicians - most of them without a day of military service in their padded resumes - come to the game with varying social agendas and see the military as a captive, easily-manipulated population they can use to work out the bugs before they launch legislation to dump the entire nation into one big Petri dish where they can grow the sort of American culture they desire. There's nothing especially new in all that. It's been going on for years in the guise of bringing the military in line with civilian social standards and practices. What's new is that it's being quietly allowed by senior officers who don't have the guts to fight back and preserve the special elements of military service that has kept America a force to be reckoned with by tin-pot dictators and wannabe world conquerors for decades.
The timing for all this could not be worse. Our military forces are holding a shaky line in Iraq, busting their collective butts in Afghanistan to get something meaningful done before a looming withdrawal deadline, coping with a confused and fumble-footed situation in Libya and watching a growing number of protesting populations in Middle Eastern countries that could easily spill over into more American military commitments. In the face of all this unrest, our military forces are increasingly being employed as a diplomatic arm of the U.S. State Department. No one at the highest command levels seems to be bitching very loudly if at all about that. It would be a dead-certain career-killer to do so. It would also be a display of courageous leadership and loyalty to the troops they command.
I'm confident our men and women up close to the pointy-end of the bayonet can handle those challenges. They've been the capable, guiding hand on a rudderless ship of state plenty of times in the past. What bothers me most are the distractions they are going to have to deal with while they try to keep us all afloat through this current mess. While our military people and their families are coping with a dizzying drumbeat of constant combat deployments and humanitarian missions in disaster-stricken areas like Haiti and Japan, they are also watching the warrior fabric that keeps them motivated being frayed by meddlesome, mandated social change that could easily be left to take a natural course after the operational pressure eases a bit. Need some examples?
How about the recent study ordered by Congress that reports a lack of diversity in our military leadership? It seems the proportion of minorities and women in our uniformed leadership is inadequate and will require immediate " affirmative action." That action will be ordered by politicians who believe only they know what's good for our military and are stone blind to potential consequences. Race, creed, sex or sexual orientation will inevitably become factors in accelerated promotion. The days of selecting the best based on proven performance may well be over in our military and that will lead to a closed loop that includes diverse careerists and excludes the warriors most skilled in the brutal business of killing the enemy and bringing our troops home alive.
Do the generals and admirals have their star-studded skivvies in a knot over this? Not that we are hearing or seeing in testimony before various Congressional committees. It's all good if you believe what you hear and our military will suffer any disruptions in silence as penance for past social sins. Yes, sir or ma'am, diversity and social sensitivity is going to make everything better and if those Neanderthal warriors don't like it, well, they can just take a hike.
The failure to rail against all this reminds me of Army Chief of Staff General George Casey's reaction after that nut-bag Muslim in uniform shot up a bunch of his fellow soldiers down at Ft. Hood and the Army was looking for a scapegoat to blame for the actions of a guy who had clearly telegraphed both jihadist leanings and violent intentions. Fearing knee-jerk reaction in the ranks, General Casey simply said we must be sensitive to diversity. All the soldiers I've asked said the more appropriate response would have been a drumhead court-martial leading to a firing squad.
Now, I'm watching sailors, Marines and airmen putting their lives on the line in yet another commitment of manpower, money and equipment to maintain a no-fly zone in Libya, a mission that is both without clear objective and a political hot-potato for a current administration that can't decide how much we are willing to do and for whom we ought to be doing whatever that turns out to be. While they deal with that turd in a political punchbowl, placid leadership behind the lines is issuing orders for the full and unfettered recognition of homosexuals in the military and preparing for a virtually inevitable mandate to open direct combat assignments to females. That situation will likely sort itself out by natural selection but the timing of such a ground-breaking departure from the warrior ethos is aggravating at a time in which more aggravation is the last thing we need in our military services.
As a guy who spent a large chunk of his adult life in uniform, I'm no stranger to the fact that there have always been homosexuals in the military and most of them have served honorably in both war and peace. I'm also aware that no amount of sensitivity training is going to thoroughly erase prejudices that have been invested and nurtured in the minds of many heterosexuals long before they joined the military. There's going to be divisiveness, unrest and a fairly long period of adjustment before it all sorts out so why force it on an over-stressed military right now? Assuming we survive the worldwide challenges facing us on battlefields around the world where cultures are clashing and our military people are struggling to defend our right of choice, do we really need to burden them with turbulence in the ranks?
Can we catch a break here?

He's not saying anything I haven't heard before, but he's saying it clearly, short, and sweet. The time to force the military to overcome the childhood prejudices of their members is not when they are at war.

He's got several other posts, and if you are interested in a military man's point of view, I highly suggest you check it out. Captain Dye is well spoken as well as provocative. Being politically correct is not in his genes, and I find that refreshing.

It's Movie Time!

Am I entertained? Been home for a week and DirecTV's offerings have become pretty bland, so it was time to break into the DVD library here at The Poor Farm.

Did I decide to watch something educational and/or worthy? Perhaps a study of Fellini, for film technique? Perhaps something historical, like World at War? Maybe a Ken Burns documentary?

Oh, crap no. You don't know me very well.

Tonight's entertainment was the cultish movie The Warriors, directed by Walter Hill in 1979. It was supposed to depict gangs in NYC and it was

Loosely based on Xenophon's "Anabasis", the account of an army of Greek mercenaries who, after aligning themselves with Cyrus the Younger in the battle of Cunaxa (401 BC) in his attempt to seize the Persian throne, found themselves isolated behind Persian enemy lines.

Okay, so maybe there was a bit more culture involved here. Sorry 'bout that, apparently my gratuitous violence is of a higher order than I thought. The story involves a gang leader (Cyrus) who calls together ten representatives each of all the NYC gangs at the Bronx zoo to discuss taking over the city. Cyrus is a member of the Grammercy Riffs, the largest gang. Luther (portrayed by David Patrick Kelly and perhaps better known for his role as "Luther" in 48 Hours),leader of the Rogues, shoots Cyrus on a whim and blames Cleon, the leader of the Warriors, for the killing. So, the story is about the Warriors trying to get home to Coney Island without being killed themselves, since all the gangs are looking for Our Hapless Heroes. The Riffs want them, and want them badly.

The various gangs are mostly from Walter Hill's imagination. The Baseball Furies were apparently based on a real gang - Second Base. They, however, do not run around in whiteface looking like mimes dressed like Yankees. Wikipedia says they were created because of Hill's love for baseball and the rock group KISS. Another notable gang was the all girl "Lizzies." Actually, most of the gangs were very stylized.

I can remember when this movie came out - the media was expecting violence at every theater it was to be screened. If I remember correctly, it was on the cover of Time. Of course, nothing of the sort happened. This scene is the fight between the baseball Furies and the Warriors:



direct link

I really enjoy the music score here - that is the main "theme" song whenever trouble is brewing for Our Guys. The character Ajax (James Remar) also has one of the movie's best lines in this scene - I'll shove that bat up your ass and turn you into a popsicle. Actually, Remar has a lot of kewl lines.

Hill used a lot of relative unknowns in this movie, and unfortunately for them, most of them are relatively unknown now. Mercedes Ruehl, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, Michael Beck, and the aforementioned David Patrick Kelly would be considered the "stars" today. This movie just didn't elevate the unknown ensemble.

Of course, Luther and his Rogues need for the Warriors to be dead, since they know he was the guilty party responsible for Cyrus's death. They, too are searching the city for The Running Men (and one woman, as it turns out), plus they know where the Warrior's home base is. The Rogues find the Warriors just as they reach the boardwalk at Coney Island, and Luther calls them out:



direct link

Oh, man, the bottles clinking and the singsong Warriors, come out to play eee aaay! Thar's movie writin' that'll stick to your ribs. I'll not spoil the finish if you've never seen this show, but I thought it ended rather well.

This particular movie probably isn't going to make a one hundred best list thirty years from now. It is about as far from being a chick movie as is possible. It is a weird sort of fun, kick ass, stylish for the late seventies flick that really has no "message" preached at us, or any really redeeming characteristics for a serious film buff. It's a greasy hamburger in a world of gourmet cooking. I happen to like greasy hamburgers, thank you very much! Call it a guilty pleasure, or call it genius disguised as camp, I don't care. I just get a kick out of it.

Someday, I might even review Circle of Iron or even Army of Darkness, both right up there with Big Trouble in Little China and Escape From New York. French fries and milkshakes to go with greasy hamburgers.