Shiver Me Timbers
Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 19 Sep 2005 12:00:00 GMT
#
Today is
Talk Like a Pirate Day. Avast. Arrrrr. Drink hearty, mateys. Arrrr.
# The Spoof! - Bush Tapped for Nobel Honours - for "Catastrophe Management". Hehe. [brianf]
In the citation to be presented to the American president in January, the Commission noted unstinting dedication on Bush's part "not only to the facilitation of Catastrophe through an almost preternatural inability to assess threat levels and take precautions against imminent danger," but also "his clear resolve to extenuate damage and suffering beyond all imagineable parameters following the actual catastrophic events."
The Commission noted with appreciation Bush's indifference to the petitions of 9-11 victims' familes for redress of grievances, his disregard for the lives of innocent civilians in Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003, et.seq.) and above all "his apparent mastery of diversionary strategies in the aftermath of Operation Act of God (Hurrican Katrina), described by the Bush administration as "the first real test of the nation's security and disaster preparedness." "Actually," said Mr Silliman, "Bush deserves much more than this prize can afford. He deserves to be known as The Catastrophe President."
# ExtremePumpkins.com - Carving with a .22 Rifle - 150 rounds of .22 were fired through this pumpkin. Simple design. Unusual carving method. Many more pumpkin carving photos on the web site. [clairefiles]
# Fred Reed - A Grand Adventure: Except That it isn't - Fred tells young men who might be thinking of enlisting in the military to consider the gory reality of war and reconsider. Begins with a graphic bloody image. [clairefiles]
In talking to recruiters, you need to understand what you are up against. You are probably nineteen or twenty years old, full of piss and vinegar as we used to say, just starting to know the world. Which means that you don't yet know it. (Do you know, for example, what countries border Iraq?)
You are up against a government that hires high-powered ad agencies and psychologists to figure out how to lure you into the military. Over many years they have done surveys and studies on the weaknesses of young males to find out what will get them to join. They know that young men, the ones that are worth anything anyway, want to prove themselves, want adventure, want to show what they can do. Everything a recruiter does is carefully calculated to play on this. They go to recruiting school to learn how.
"The Few. The Proud." You don't think that came out of the Marine Corps, do you? These phrases--"An Army of One," "Be All You Can Be"--come from ad agencies in New York. Nobody in those ad agencies, I promise you, was ever in the Marine Corps. New York sells the military the way it sells soap. It has no interest in you at all.
