08:46 – It’s Veterans Day, which is also my mother’s birthday. She was born 11 November 1918, the day WWI ended, and would have been 96 years old today.
I need to get a tabletop photography area set up downstairs so that I can shoot a bunch of images for the prepping book. I’m going to use white background paper with two lights on the front corners of the work surface, each angled in at 45° and angled down at 45°. Because I may be using small apertures and correspondingly long exposures, I’m going to hang my Colt 1911 Combat Commander as a weight on the center column of the tripod. The reason I’m being so specific is that I intend to file for a patent on this method. I’m going to call it the 45/45/45 method. And if Amazon comes after me, I intend to re-purpose one of those 45’s.
Happy Armistice Day!
And a big welcome home to my fellow veterans!
It is sweet, being back here in The World, ain’t it? I almost kissed the frigging asphalt when I got back from my second tour at Travis AFB, Kalifornia in March of 1975. And both me and Mrs. OFD are sorely tempted to do that every time we come back across the border from O Kanada.
Yep, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the war to end all wars ended. What a relief for those poor bastards in the trenches, eh? And knowing *their* kids would never have to fight another one. Or their grandkids. Or their great-grandkids.
Gorgeous day here with sun and blue skies and temps in the 50s all week, maybe some rain tomorrow. Extremely windy, though; gusts of 40 MPH. We have not had a frost yet; no temps below 38 or so thus fah.
I see Drudge has at least two stories about elderly vets being robbed and beaten, etc. today. This probably happens every day somewhere in North Murka but it’s so special to read about it on Armistice Day. Imagine surviving the Good War and/or Korea and/or Vietnam and ending up beaten almost to death in your wheelchair decades later. I plan to have mine rigged with explosives; if I can’t manage the AR or shotgun or handgun, I should at least be able to squeeze a button or lever and blow us to Kingdom Come.
Happy Armistice Day, Matt!
Happy Veteran’s Day! I still believe our troops are heroes.
Of course they are. It’s their upper chain of command that should hang its collective heads in shame.
It’s their upper chain of command that should hang its collective heads in shame.
Don’t forget the politicians. They need a lot more than shame.
Rick in Portland
I occasionally do very close macro photography and these bulbs are great:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000RWWTQO
Not all troops are heroes; some are, and some are scum, and the majority are average, just as in any other occupation, including cops and firefighters and nurses. As it is, only maybe 10% of the armed forces in any given war actually see combat anyway. I knew drug dealers, murderers, smugglers, rapists and thieves during my time in the armed forces, and several more of same during my time with the cops. I also knew a couple of genuine heroes, one of them a MOH guy. To blithely claim every single swinging dick in the armed forces, active or out, is a hero, is to trivialize and denigrate that MOH soldier’s accomplishment.
YMMV
Pax vobiscum
I take “troops” to mean the folks on the point end, not the PHBs in uniform. My respect extends only to those who have risked getting their asses shot off, whether they actually ended up being shot at or not. And that includes supposed non-combatants that do stuff like driving in convoys on roads with IEDs.
Others with northern European ancestry might enjoy this, especially if you have higher than normal mathematical abilities: The Neanderthal correlation
Speaking of Europe, I wish we honored Veterans with more than a day like every other, except bearing a name. Europe still shuts down most everything on holidays. But here, even Wall Street is open today.
Some holiday.
I don’t doubt a lot of us with northern Euro ancestry have some Neanderthal DNA, whatever. Hey man, we’re all the same, ain’t we? 99.99% exactly the same, just a hair’s difference between us and chimps and really, isn’t that just wonderful nooz, peepul? And caint we all jus git along? Amirite?
“…I wish we honored Veterans with more than a day like every other, except bearing a name. Europe still shuts down most everything on holidays. But here, even Wall Street is open today.”
Hey man, it’s the start of the Xmas shoppin season; get on board, dude! Didja check out all the Vets Day sales goin’ on? What a blast, man!
All gummint orifices closed up today, apparently, so that’s counted as a good thing by my reckoning; was/is that supposed to be some kinda threat or scary chit or sumthin when one or the other half of the War Party threatens to shut down the gummint???
I worked at a gas station for a time and it was near an AFB and every once in a while some serviceman would get bent out of shape about prepaying for gasoline, “Can’t you see the sticker on my windshield indicating I am in the military?!” I’d respond something to the affect of, “So, you’re saying people in the military don’t steal? Really? Are you that naive?”
As for the country’s tendency toward soldier worship: I appreciate the sentiment and I like where their heart is at, but not every soldier belongs on a pedestal.
If I was on a pedestal it would be a pretty scary thing to see. Luckily, no danger of that at all, least of all from me.
The definition of “hero” can be pretty dodgy; mine is fairly strict; i.e., someone has to go outta their way to do something, well, heroic, at great and immediate risk to their own life and limbs. Merely signing up and then being placed by the military in a position to be shot at or witness Ground Zero of a nuke test at only a mile away or being on those endless convoys delivering steak and ice cream in and out of the Green Zone does not qualify. You wanna see heroes in the military just look at the citations for what guys did that ended up getting them the MOH, Navy Cross or Silver Star. On the other hand, I don’t think Teddy Roosevelt or Dugout Doug shoulda got the MOH.
Like I said, it’s dodgy. So to just blindly call them all heroes like the media and politicians do just ain’t right. I saw plenty of non-heroes, to say the least. Some of them belonged in max-security or the electric chair. And one other note; a goodly number of these heroes coming back to The World don’t say anything about their war experiences not necessarily because it’s so heart-rending and heroic and they’re bashful, but because they did bad shit to people and now they’re ashamed of it or just don’t wanna have anyone else know.
Just my 2 cents; YMMV
“The genes for red hair and pale skin didn’t match well enough to show a correlation, but I found a correlation for genes linked to other traits. There’s a gene cluster linked to advanced mathematics skills, information processing, logic, analytical intelligence, concentration skills, obsession–compulsion and Asperger’s syndrome. That cluster correlates very strongly. I can trace some genes back to the interglacial around 450,000 years ago, and others back to another burst of evolutionary innovation during the Eemian interglacial about 130,000 years ago.”
Hmmm. I’ve always known I had a significant Neanderthal component in my genome.
I take “troops” to mean the folks on the point end, not the PHBs in uniform. My respect extends only to those who have risked getting their asses shot off, whether they actually ended up being shot at or not. And that includes supposed non-combatants that do stuff like driving in convoys on roads with IEDs.
Exactly, Dr. Bob. Mr. OFD is spring loaded to cynical, but I think he got gist also.
“Mr. OFD is spring loaded to cynical, but I think he got gist also.”
Correct on both counts.
No clue on why so cynical…a puzzle…a conundrum…ya think???
Off to the VA for a group hug in the morning and a nice chat one-on-one after lunch. I bitch about my hard-ass life problems and then I listen to a couple of the guys in that group; one was a jarhead at Khe Sanh and is now all messed up with physical/medical ailments and the VA has him jumping through endless hoops and medicos don’t return his calls, etc., etc. Walks with a cane and can barely turn his head. Another guy’s wife has a terminal illness and he just retired and they have nine kids, one of whom is a problem child in her 20s. Another guy getting chemo, younger than me. Damn. My chit don’t seem so bad after all. Not to mention the guys in the Vietnam Combat Group; chit there makes even my hair stand on end sometimes.
But the woman at the weekly one-on-ones is good and knows her stuff; she’s worked with combat vets for years now, first down in Boston and now up here.
Any of y’all out there having serious issues and they’re causing major problems in your life and family, get some help before it’s too late and/or feel free to contact me off this board; Dr. Bob has my email. Full disclosure: I was a hardcore substance abuser before, during and after the period when I was Uncle’s hired gun, and I caused a shit-load of damage to myself and others and almost died during an alcohol withdrawal seizure, where I lost consciousness for 45 minutes and woke up in blue jammies and EKG thingies stuck all over my chest. Luckily for me one of the guys in the group I was in at the time was a former Seal; another guy had been a 10th Mountain Division medic. They got me to the ER in record time; without them, like out on the street or even at home, I’d be dead right now. Get help, homies, and God bless you and yours.
Oh yeah, and Happy Armistice Day!
Three hours in the dentist chair today. Fillings and 1/2 of deep root cleaning, to deal with the gum line problems the dentist of my teenage years predicted I would eventually have. When I regained feeling, there was not one bit of pain, although I can feel some swelling where the needle went to deaden things — no pain there, however. That is the most deadening I have ever had; I could not even feel my nose. Strangely I had an itch on the edge of my nose, but there was no feeling whatsoever there, so scratching did nothing.
More depressing rain on the parade from OFD, who you can always count on for same, this time from three of my fellow veterans, pilfered from Lawrence Vance’s column today at lewrockwell.com:
Veterans Day brings some mail from veterans after reading my article, “Worship the Veterans Day.” Here are the comments of three veterans:
I don’t stand, identify myself or even tell people that I am a veteran- I’m no one special, I’m just another human being, it’s embarrassing when someone says ” thank you for your service” it’s embarrassing when I see 600 veterans waiting 2-3 hours for a free 10 dollar meal at sizzler- really? Do you really need that much attention? I always tell my kids that being a “Veteran” in 98% of the cases means you learned how to obey orders and fold t-shirts, that’s it- nothing special.
I’m a two-tour veteran of Vietnam (’65-66 and ’67-68 when that little shitstorm was at its bloody height (with a 60% VA disability to show for it), 5th Special Forces Gp, and I find the current worship of veterans and the military one of the most vomititious displays of phony patriotism yet. “Thank you for your service.” Translation, “So I and mine don’t have to go.” (But we’ll cheer for you!)
I get the “thank you for your service” often, as people find out that I was an Army officer during the Vietnam War. People either forget or don’t know or don’t care that I returned from Vietnam with an anti-war attitude. Of course the tiniest segment of the American sheeple never have experienced war first-hand and their indoctrination by the state is pretty much total, so it is pretty depressing to hear even my family express unhappiness with my viewpoint.
2:17 pm on November 11, 2014
Few things are more shameful than this country’s treatment of the Vietnam veterans as they returned from war. Most soldiers returning from war receive a heroe’s welcome, but the Vietnam vets got a cold shoulder and the occasional hippie spitting on them or throwing bags of feces at them. It’s sickening.
My father did two tours. USAF 20th SOS (Green Hornets) as a gunner on UH-1Ps flying into Laos and Cambodia from bases that “didn’t exist.” He took his own life in 2008 as is becoming a disturbing trend for men in that age group.
I’ve always said modern Homo sapiens have some Neandertal genes. The Neandertal women probably looked almost as good to Sapiens guys as their own women, and as I quoted the Dr Hook song some time ago: “Girls can get it anytime they want.” (To which our host replied: “Guys can take it anytime they want.”)
I think the gene for Cystic Fibrosis in European humans predates the arrival of anatomically modern humans there, meaning it evolved in Africa and came with the band that moved from Africa to Europe, or came from the progeny of Sapiens matings with Neandertals.
I feel your pain Chuck.
I had a root canal about 10 years ago. I think it took six visits all up to do it. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
As I’ve also said several times, if you saw a pure Neanderthal walking down the street wearing modern clothing, you wouldn’t think twice about it. They just didn’t look much different from us.
Yeah, I’ve read that in a creationist pamphlet, of all places, so it must be true… 🙂
You read creationist pamphlets? That explains a lot.
A Neanderthal in clothing would look like a red-haired chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
I used to be a creationist. Seriously.
I have, amongst others:
The Genesis Flood
The Origin and Destiny of the Earth’s Magnetic Field
Scientific Creationism. Public School Edition
Evolution? The Fossils Say No!
Evolution and Christian Faith
and a few others, including the Chick Book (hi OFD) Big Daddy? and a Gish comic Have You Been Brainwashed?
I drifted away from creationism in the late Eighties/early Nineties.
“A Neanderthal in clothing would look like a red-haired chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”
In other words, Leonid Brezhnev with dark hair.
I think, at most, anyone who say a pure Neanderthal walking down the street would probably think, “that guy must work out.”
I am a creationist. But I am not a young earther.
The Bible is a user manual, not a history book. I have noticed that most of the young earthers tend to be legalists.
Creationists can read? Who knew?
Sorry Lynn, but old earth creationism is wrong too. The data doesn’t fit any of the creationist theories.
“My father did two tours. USAF 20th SOS (Green Hornets) as a gunner on UH-1Ps flying into Laos and Cambodia from bases that “didn’t exist.” He took his own life in 2008 as is becoming a disturbing trend for men in that age group.”
I am very sorry to hear that, Chad. I did much of the same thing he did, only in the Second Indochina War, again around sites and bases in Cambodia and Laos that were not supposed to exist. I was in the 56th SOW out of Nakhnon Phanom RTAFB, Thailand during my last six months of active duty. I wish I could have talked with him. We have several guys in our “Vietnam Combat Group” at the VA up here who are suffering a lot from PTSD and at least two who are admittedly seriously suicidal. Every fucking day is touch and go with these men. I used to have idle thoughts about how better off I and everyone else would be if I was dead, especially after my first marriage ended, but time passes, different shit happens, and hopefully we can get past thoughts like that. I am so sorry your dad didn’t/couldn’t.