The Battle of Endor: A Treatise on the Empire's Last Best Chance, Brought to you by the Nicholas Marickovich Center for Intergalactic Military Stuides

I admit, Return of the Jedi has never been my favorite Star Wars movie.  I'd rank it after Episodes I and II, but its a far cry from Episode IV, V, or even III.

Sure, sure, we have in it the climatic battle of good and evil inside of Anakin Skywalker's heart.  We have a series of cunning traps, the most visually impressive space battle of the franchise, and Carrie Fischer shows some skin much to the delight of 12 year old boys everywhere.

But you got to take all of that good stuff with a healthy dose of furry fun: those damn lovable Ewoks.

A Particularly Cute Ewok

They bother me.  They really do.  And the most troubling thing of all is that they manage, in the course of the film, to defeat a legion of the Emperor's finest Stormtroopers.  I have always asked myself how could this be? How could a bunch of pagan Teddy Bears defeat a modern army unit equipped with blasters and artillery that walks around on two legs like a chicken?

Well, after pouring over the footage on my limited edition DVDs and spending a few hours drawing maps, I think I finally have unraveled the tale. 

The Battle of ENDOR

Background

Eh.  You all know the story.  Empire loses first death star.  Darth Vader and the Emperor devise a cunning trap to capture Luke Skywalker and turn him to the dark side.  That fails.  So they think of a better plan and this time they'll also destroy the main rebel battle fleet to boot.  They let some plans leak out and the trap is set.

The key to the second part of that plan (i.e. where the rebel fleet is destroyed--this treatise will largely ignore the spiritual warfare taking place inside the Death Star between Luke, Darth, and Popo, as he was affectionately known to a few intimates) is that the force field around the Death Star remain intact during the rebel assault.

The emperor knows that the rebels know about the force field power station on the planet Endor, and he assembles a task force to ensure that those rebels are captured and the power station is protected.  He knows as well that they can only get an old shuttle past the screen of Imperial frigates, meaning only a few squads can be landed at best.  The Emperor therefore sends an overwhelming force, in all 300 men and 4 AT-STs, led by General Avondale.

It's a full proof plan.  Luke can't possibly resist the Dark Side.  The rebels can't possibly overpower the garrison to take the power station.  The Imperial Fleet will not lose in a general fleet action. The Rebellion will be destroyed.

But ol' Popo overlooked one critical factor.

An Army of Fuzz-Balls: The Ewoks

To be fair, Palpatine had no reason to really believe the Ewoks would play a part in the defense of the power station. The Empire purposefully kept a small footprint on Endor so as not to disturb the fragile forest eco-system or its furry inhabitants.  Palpatine hadn't decided yet if he would blow up the planet when the Death Star was complete or use the infrastructure to build a new one, but for the moment a live and let live arrangement existed between the imperial garrisons and the Ewoks.  Yes, a few times foraging expeditions strayed into Ewok territory and there were rumors of a very bizarre sex trade that flourished near the Imperial camps, but for the most part Ewoks and Imperial troops left each other alone.

What the Emperor did not forsee was that C3-PO would be worshiped as a god (specifically Tak-Tak, who every December 25th would fly through the air and deliver delicious meats and cheeses to good Ewoks whilst severely punishing naughty Ewoks).  This key development swung the Ewoks into the rebel camp.

A council of war was held between the rebel leadership and the Ewok Commander in Chief, General Yub-Dub, to develop their plan. The Rebels, who had traps set against them in three different movies, had a feeling that they might be walking into yet another trap.  General Yub-Dub, crafty as as fox, figured he would set a few clever traps of his own.

The Ewok army was all volunteer, organized in "Battalions", each of which had about 100 Ewoks.  More than 2 battalions constituted a Brigade (General Yub-Dub's Brigade was actually made up of three batalions).  Leadership of the battalions was based on a mix of seniority, merit, and penis size.

Ewok battalions were mixed armaments, with most soldiers in an Ewok battalion using clubs, spears, and the ever trusty rock.  A few Ewoks in each battalion were archers, but Ewoks had not yet figured out how coordinate disparate elements on the field and so those archers were tied to the battalion itself. Ewok tactics dictated that the archers would fire their arrows at the beginning of any engagement until they were gone, and then the archers were to fling their bows to ground, pick up a good rock, and start bashing some heads in.

There are some scholars who feel that the archery doctrine of the Ewok force shows that the Ewoks, honorable little fuzz-balls that they were, felt the bow and arrow to be a low brow weapon.  Much as the British thought the submarine was damned unsporting, it is believed the Ewoks felt it was downright unbearly to fire weapons from a distance, preferring the honor of the close up, face to face kill.  Therefore, it is not a leap to assume that they viewed their adversaries, with their blasters and their artillery, with some contempt.

An Army of Pros, Clones, and Stones: The Imperials

The Imperial force that went down to the power station were elements of the 12th Legion, specifically companies E, F, J, and the 12th's company of Grenadiers.  They took with them 4 AT-STs.  They complemented the force already in place, which consisted of one company from the 1st Jager and Alexander Puttie's Blackshirts.

While not exactly the "cream" of the Imperial Army, the 12th Legion had a sterling reputation and remained a unit of free, non-clone volunteers as opposed to the cloned factory troops.  They had, however, lost a lot of men during the campaign to bring the Darjeeling System back into the trade commission and secure the flow of space tea to all the corners of the empire.  They were replenished with new volunteers but many of those men had only just finished basic training when the 12th was stationed on the Death Star and called into action.    Their combat effectiveness was severely reduced, but they still represented a potent fighting force.

The units they joined at the Power Station were less so.  Company C of the 1st Jager, once an elite unit of light infantry, was at the time of the battle of Endor a unit of factory cloned troops engineered for forest service.  They were part of the class of Imperial Year 28, and had seen little real service in their 5 years.  The genetic code was a copy of IY27, which in turn was a copy of IY26, which of course was based on the excellent vintage of Imperial Year 25 soldiers.

This copy of a copy philosophy to cloning troops diluted the combat effectiveness of the troops year by year until a fresh code could be developed (the next new code was in IY30, but those excellent troops were heavily engaged in General Howe's Long Island Campaign as mercenaries).  It was a risk that the Empire's military planners were willing to accept, as it allowed most of the Empire to live in relative ease while cloned soldiers fought it's many wars. IY28 soldiers tended to be over zealous and undisciplined in battle, caring more for glory than the completion of a particular mission.

Alexander Puttie's Blackshirts was one of many paramilitary outfits encouraged by the Empire to spread their message of...what, hate?  Capitalism?  Trade?  Not sure...their message of whatever it was the Empire stood for throughout the galaxy.  Puttie's Blackshirts in particular were formed by a hard core of Red Star Belgrade Ultras.  They were vicious, vicious men, but they were more at home cracking bottles over heads after a nil-nil draw then they were fighting anybody in an organised fashion.  Why they had been posted to Endor is anybody's guess, but many feel it was an error of the massive Imperial Bureaucracy.

The professional soldiers of the 12th Legion resented serving with their cloned and hooligan comrades in what they saw as a backwater, and specifically a rivalry developed between Captain Haversham of the 12th/J and Clone Captain 000736129 of the 1st Jagr/C, which would have important consequences.

Leadership based on penis size:  General Yub-Dub

General Yub-Dub had risen through the ranks of the all volunteer Ewok army by virtue of his merit, his sharp pointy teeth, and the progidicity of his plums and carrot.  He was a stern leader, quick with the lash, but also quick to reward his troops with honey and grubs for a job well done.  He cared deeply for his bears, and it was said after the battle of Mak-Tak, where the Ewoks defeated the dreaded Sorlaks from planet UGH, that he openly wept at the carnage before proceeding to eat the defeated Sorlak Leader.  He earned both the fear and the respect of his bears, and it proved to be a potent combination.  They'd follow him to hell.

General Yub-Dub

Yub-Dub's leadership of his various combat team leaders was not especially democratic.  He rarely listened to advice, often sleeping through councils of war much as Russian General Kutuzov had while defending the Motherland against Napoleon in 1812.  He made quick decisions and expected all to follow them, and when challenged he would lay his Jack Johnson and Hooblywooblies on the council table and bare his teeth, daring his lieutenants to mortal combat where leadership of the army was at stake.  No one ever took him up on it.  Mike Ditka, leader of the 1985 Chicago Bears which anchored the Ewok left during the Battle of Endor, was so impressed by this method of leadership that he employed it on several occasions during the Bear's 1988 run to the NFC Championship and routinely uses it to ensure he gets first dibs on donuts while on the set of ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown.

leadership based on fortunate connections:  General Avondale

General Edward "Ed" Avondale got his start thanks to connections in very high places.  Edward's father, Alistair Avondale, was a golf cart driver who became Emperor Palpatine's caddy after he introduced him to Moon Pies.  He eventually became a trusted adviser to the Emperor, often couching his advice in golfing colloquialisms.  It was Alistair's relationship with Palpatine that secured young Edward, a youth of middling ability, a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the 13th Marine Battalion.

It was a hard life for the Imperial Marines.  These were the Stormtroopers stationed aboard cruisers who would board captured starships to enforce Imperial Shipping Rules, a dangerous job.  The 13th Marines had the particularly hazardous duty of fighting pirates in the Tollhouse system who sought to extract concessions by strangling the intergalactic baking supply trade.

General Avondale, Cookie in Hand

Lieut. Avondale was a brave fighter, and won the respect of his men in many a combat, but after a few years began to feel that to remain in the 13th Marines was a death sentence.  He applied to his father for help, who managed to wrangle him an appointment to the Imperial Staff School, or ISS, where he learned basically how to implement the Imperial general strategy of setting grandiose traps and making gallant full frontal assaults.  He then joined the 12th Legion as a Captain during their years long campaign in the Darjeeling system, where he applied both trap making skills and ruthless attacks with great aplomb.  When General Schweinsteiger lost his life in the penultimate battle of the Darjeeling Campaign, Avondale was appointed General personally by the Emperor in honor of the late Alistair Avondale, the greatest damn golf caddy in the galaxy.

Ed Avondale was young for a general, and his years of ruthless combat had given him some idiosyncrasies, first among them being his love of cookies.  There was a never a meeting he attended where a big plate of cookies was not placed before him, and even in battle he would often have a baker standing by with a plate of cookies on a silver tray, upon which he would munch even as he himself led his men in the assault.

The rivalry between Captain Haversham of the 12th/J and Clone Captain 000736129

Historians have long debated on the rivalry between Haversham and Clone 000736129.  Most of the speculation centers on a Starbuck's Barista on the second Death Star.

Don't be too surprised.  The Empire had a need to improve morale among their troops by providing something to drink besides blue milk, and Starbucks saw a need to expand their own culinary empire throughout the space-time continuum.  It was a match made in heaven, and the second Death Star proudly brewed Starbucks coffee.  Many feel that if the Emperor had merely offered Luke a double mocha latte with soy no whip he would have gladly joined the dark side.  He simply did not understand the power of a good espresso.

By offering double overtime and hazard pay Starbucks was able to recruit enough baristas to man the Emporer's coffee-shops, and many believe that one of these baristas captured the heart of both Captain Haversham and Clone Captain 00736129.   The evidence is scant, but it is said that as Captain Haversham lay dying in a rebel prison camp he repeatedly asked for a Pumpkin Spice Latte, and in the throes of delirium spoke of a beautiful coffee lady with chopsticks through her hair and a diamond stud through her nose and huge....tracts of land.  It is possible that this unidentified woman, who was probably just trying to pull enough money together to fund her third term at Bernard, brought down the entire Empire.

The Battle:  Initial Dispositions

You've seen the movie.  The battle starts when the rebel squads sent to destroy the force field get captured, are paraded outside and, surprise surprise, they have walked right into a trap.  Not unexpected.  General Avondale had drawn his units into a square to keep the rebels from escaping.

The initial disposition of Imperial forces shows the premium that the Imperials put on people as valuable sources of information from which to set additional traps.  Here the mission isn't people, it's the defense of the Power Station.  Avondale seems to have forgotten this.

General Yub-Dub has set his army up to practically encircle the Imperial forces, basically placing them on the ridges that ringed the power station, hiding them on the far side of the ridge line so that the Imperials couldn't see them (much as Wellington would do repeatedly during the Peninsular War to the French).  His goal was to draw the Imperial units into an attack, falling back constantly towards a series of clever traps that Yub-Dub and his Ewoks had set, specifically designed to neutralize the Imperial AT-STs.  In addition to the traps Yub-Dub had placed half of his brigade at the traps to counter-attack the Imperials.  A smaller set of clever traps had been placed behind the Yogi Bear Combat team, and was based on the same rudimentary principles of smashing AT-STs or making them not walk so well.

In a bold move, Yub-Dub used C3-PO and R2D2 as bait to kick things off.  Many of Yub-Dub's lieutenants thought this was a horrible idea, as they believed that C3-PO was actually the god Tak-Tak, and usually it is a bad idea to use a god as bait.  General Yub-Dub knew better, knew that C3-PO wasn't a god (many think he actually believed there were no gods, for he had seen too much), and so he didn't care if the protocol droid lived or died.

When Avondale spots the droids he figures he's hit the jackpot;  there must be enough information in those droids to set divers clever traps against the Rebellion.  He hastily orders a squad of the 12th/F to capture them....

But it's a trap!  As the squad is bludgeoned to death the Ewok Battalions advance to the ridge lines and fire their arrows into the masses of Imperial Stormtroopers.  The Imperials immediately begin to return fire and advance.  Meanwhile the rebel prisoners overpower a stunned half company of Grenadiers and take a position at the power station.

The Imperial Assault and the Loss of Alexander Puttie's Blackshirts

The big advantage for the Imperial army was communications.  Avondale was in constant contact with all of his company captains and he immediately devised a plan of action on the fly.

All companies were to attack.  12th/J and 1st Jager/C were to directly assault Yub-Dub's brigade, which Avondale correctly perceived to be the main Ewok body.  They would be flanked by AT-STs which would push away any Ewok units from joining Yub-Dub's bears.  Meanwhile, he himself would lead the 12th/F against Ditka's 1985 Chicago Bears, and after defeating them he planned to slam into the flank of the Yub-Dub brigades.  Meanwhile the remaining company of Grenadiers would pin down the rebels and keep them from attacking the rear of any other units, though they were not able to prevent 8 foot smelly fuzz-ball Chewbacca from escaping.

The assaults by 12th/F and 1st Jager/C were seen to be successful, as the Yub-Dub Brigades slowly fell back. AT-STs smashed into the Battalion lead by Snuggle Bear and kept them from linking up with Yub-Dub's brigade.  The Yogi bear combat team, somewhat under strength, was similarly driven back by a single AT-ST, though the Fozzie Bear Battalion, not really noticed by the Imperial forces, was able to fall back towards the clever Ewok traps unmolested.

Alexander Puttie's Blackshirts, while preparing to assault the Snuggle Bear Battalion, suddenly came under intense attack from arrows to their left.  Perceiving the unit made up of Grumpy Bear's marauders, Puttie asked permission for his Blackshirts to assault this as yet unseen unit.  Avondale, who at that moment was in the huddle crafting a play for 2nd down against The Bears, gave permission for the assault and ordered E company to support.

Puttie lined up his men and they marched off singing the anthems for Red Star Belgrade, which none of the men really understood but were nevertheless deeply ingrained in the lore of Puttie's Blackshirts.  It's impossible to know exactly what they sang, but it may have been something like:

Где је почело,

Ја не могу да почну да се кновин '

Али онда знам да расте јака

Да ли је у пролеће

И пролеће је постао лето

Ко би веровао да ћеш доћи заједно.

Руке, додирнуо руке

Дохватам, додирнуо ме, додирнуо си

Свеет Царолине

БАА БАА БАА!

Добра времена никада није изгледало тако добро

Ја сам био склон

Бум Бум Бум!

Да верују да никада неће

Али сада ја ..

Which loosely translates into something like:

Where it began,
I can't begin to knowin'
But then I know it's growing strong

Was in the spring
And spring became the summer
Who'd have believed you'd come along.

Hands, touchin' hands
Reachin' out, touchin' me, touchin' you

Sweet Caroline
BAA BAA BAA!
Good times never seemed so good
I've been inclined
BUM BUM BUM!
To believe they never would
But now I...

Grumpy Bear's bears steadily watched as the Blackshirts advanced on their position.  At the last moment Puttie's Blackshirts broke into a charge and wielded their bottles of Slivovitz, losing their shape, anticipating a good old fashioned ass-kicking like their forefathers had engaged in after a Champions League win.  But the Ewoks held their form, hurled their rocks, and in two's and threes took down the Blackshirts in short order. To the horror of the supporting 12th Legion Company E, Grumpy Bear's Marauders proceeded to eat the Blackshirts with their nasty, sharp, pointed teeth.

12th/J and 1st Jager Assaults

As noted previously, the initial assault by the 12th/J and 1st Jager/C put pressure on the forward half of Yub-Dub's brigade as they started falling back.  The 1st Jager, due to their genetic flaw, began to press home the assault too far and started to lose unit cohesion.  Captain Haversham of the 12th/J grew concerned that his romantic rival, whose cloned hands he feared had so recently caressed the very organic and uncloned breasts of the Starbuck's coffee girl, was going to steal all the glory from the field.  Not to be outdone, he pressed his own men harder and they too began to lose cohesion.

High Water Mark of the Intergalactic Empire

The 12th/E rallied to the attack and drove Grumpy Bear's Marauders from the field.  The men were enraged by the Ewok atrocities and wept over the bodies of the mauled hooligans, but Captain Jefferys rallied the men and prepared them for a flank assault against the retreating and isolated Snuggle Bear Battalion.  "The Best way to avenge our friends is to fuck those furry bastards in the ass, my fine fellows!" he was heard to say.  "Prepare to attack!"

Unbeknownst to Captain Jeffery's Chewbacca had just captured one of the Imperial AT-STs and was about to swing the tide of the battle in a major way.

In the Imperial Center the 12th/J and 1st Jager/C had finally blundered their way into the clever Ewok traps. The AT-STs supporting from the flanks were destroyed.  "As the AT-ST to our left exploded between two logs I just had this incredible sinking feeling", recounted a survivor of 1st Jager Company C.  "We became isolated.  In front of me there rose a line of Ewoks waving their spears and they started running towards us. It was then that I had this horrible feeling that we were fucked.  It's not dissimilar to the feeling I am sure the Virginia Tech Hokies felt when Logan Thomas threw his fourth interception in the closing minutes against Duke at home.  In both cases all was lost, though I am sure what they felt was far worse.  We were beaten by bears and men died and all that, but those bastards were beaten by Duke.  At home! Cor!  It really puts things into perspective, you know?"

Meanwhile Avondale himself lead a complicated 3rd and long against the Chicago Bears, who blitzed! Avondale saw the blitz coming but the Master Sargent missed his blocking assignment, the QB was put under pressure and the pass was thrown incomplete.  Avondale was forced to punt, and wasn't sure he was going to have enough time to get the ball back.  But Yogi Bear's combat team, no longer being pursued by an AT-ST, was preparing an attack of their own.

The Imperials are Eaten by Bears

Everything had fallen apart in the center.  Small isolated units of Imperial Stormtroopers found themselves in a general melee with Ewoks commanded by Yub-Dub and Fozzie Bear.  A few of the larger groups tried to form square but it was far to late and without artillery support they were easily overtaken by wave after wave of Ewoks, their cute little faces streaming with the blood of their comrades.  It was too little too late, as one unit after another was encircled.

On the Imperial right, the 12th/F had just lined up for a punt when Yogi Bear's combat team slammed into their unguarded flanks, overwhelming them.  Mike Ditka and his Chicago Bears looked on in horror as Yogi Bear himself beheaded the gallant General Avondale and stuffed his head into a picinic basket.

The last hope for the Imperials was that the 12th/E could rally for their flank attack on the Snuggle Bear battalion.  It might have yet still been possible for the Imperials to overtake that battalion and maybe open an assault on the disorganized Ewoks in the center.  But just as the 12th/E was getting ready for their assault Chewbacca's captured AT-ST blew the shit out of the remaining Imperial Walker, and the Snuggle Bear Battalion rallied.  By the time the 12th/E began their attack Snuggle Bear and Chewbacca's AT-ST were moving forward to attack the Grenadiers in the rear.  E company did make an assault but morale collapsed when they saw that one of their guns had been captured and they were easily brushed aside.

It was all over.  Survivors from E and F companies melted into the woods, some of them struggling for years in the wilderness against the Ewoks, long after the conflict was over.  Other Imperial troops actually surrendered to the Rebel Forces still holding the Power Station, deciding that their chances of surviving the dreaded Rebel prison camps were far better than their chances of surviving being mauled by hungry Ewoks. The remaining Grenadiers, caught between Rebels to their front and Ewoks to their rear, also threw down their weapons and asked to surrender.  In one of the most horrific atrocities of the war, Princess Leia herself condemned the Grenadiers to the slaughter, refusing their requests to surrender and leaving them to the blood lusting Ewoks of Snuggle Bear's Battalion.  Captain Haversham of the destroyed J company swore he saw the Princess herself taking part in the macabre celebration, with her shirt half open and blood running down her chin.  Han Solo reportedly just shook his head and said "That's my girl.  Don't get on her bad side".

Aftermath and Analysis

The Aftermath of the battle is clear.  The shield generator was shut down, the rebel fleet was able to break off from the Imperial fleet, and the attack on the second Death Star was successful.  The Empire was brought to its knees.

Imperials made several key mistakes during the battle.  Some things among many that they could have done differently:

1.  Shoot the rebels.  Han Solo and Princess Leia had been a consistent thorn in the side of the Empire for several years running.  With all due respect to the Imperial regard for human life and their premium on intelligence for setting traps, the Empire would have been far better off if they had just shot all the rebels at the outset of the engagement.  This would have ensured that there was no Chewbacca to take an AT-ST and also would have freed up an entire company of Grenadiers for an assault. Had the Grenadiers been available Fozzie Bear's batalion may not have been able to link of the rest of General Yub-Dub's brigade and the attack in the center may have succeeded.

2.  The Imperial Army should have, perhaps, not attacked in the first place.  At the outset of the engagement the Imperial forces were already arrayed in a square, with artillery on the flanks in support.  AT-STs could have been brought inside the square for additional defensive support.  In such a square, with AT-STs able to fire in any direction, the Ewoks would have had a very difficult time dislodging the Imperials and regaining the power station.  They would also have had to move their clever traps up, which would have taken considerable time.  It is doubtful the Ewoks would be able to do much of anything against the AT-STs, and the garrison would have been able to hold the station until the fleet action above was over and reinforcements could arrive.

3.  Given that the Imperial forces DID attack, they surely should have done so in a more organized fashion.  It is not surprising the 1st Jager/C failed to stay organized due to the flaw in their genetic engineering, but there was no excuse for Company J of the 12th Legion.  These were seasoned troops who had performed with great discipline in the past.  The failure to reign them in lies squarely at the feet of the late Captain Haversham and his jealousy.

4.  F company failed to exploit a weakness in the Bears secondary.  Defensive Back Stick Stickley had been injured earlier in the day, when QB Jim McMahon bet Stickley he couldn't play an accordion while riding a unicycle on a tightrope.  Stickley was an honorable fellow and he gave it the old college try, but McMahon was right:  Stick Stickley could do no such thing, and he broke both of his legs trying.  Ditka had to work very hard to ensure the Ewok medics didn't eat Stickley.  In the place of Stickely they put in German Fussbal legend Franz Beckenbauer, who had never played a snap of American football in his life.  He was clearly clueless out there, but F company had had no time to study the Bear's weakness.  Instead of throwing against Beckenbauer the F company QB threw the ol' pigskin repeatedly into the teeth of determined Bears defense.  One wonders what may have happened if F company had managed to go down the field, score a touchdown, and then turn into the flank of the Yogi Bear's outfit.

The moral of the story

The moral of the story is probably best summed up in the immortal words of Napoleon who wrote to his Josephine concerning his confidence in supreme victory on the eve of Austerlitz::

"...Well, I guess maybe I fear one thing.  Bears.  Those horrid creatures, with their nasty claws and sharp pointy teeth. 

Rumors have been circulating around my camp that the Russians have a whole legion of Bears armed with pointed sticks.  This scares the ever living crap out of me.  You don’t fuck with Bears, Josephine.  You don’t fuck with them."  ~Napoleon

The Group of Death!!

Today I was taking my daughter back to our seats at Joe and Mimma's Italian restaurant when something caught my eye.  It was Alexi Lalas face.  It looked....sad.

I'm no friend to Mr. Lalas.  I don't wish him harm, but if I see him walking down the street and he looks sad I won't bother to say too many comforting words to him.  But today was different.  Today was the World Cup draw and, aside from the death of Nelson Mendela, there is only one thing that could actually make Mr. Lalas sad.  I knew instantly what it was.

"Oh no!" I exclaimed to my daughter.  "We are in the group of death!!"

On the way home from the restaurant, my daughter asked "What is death?"

I answered candidly.  "It's what happens when someone dies."

She considers this for a moment, and started to whimper.  "I don't want to die!"

And then I realized it.  She thought we, my family, were literally in some kind of group of death, and we were now all going to die.

"No no no," I said.  "You see, Elizabeth, the USA has a soccer team and they will be playing in the World Cup this summer.  We've been drawn semi-randomly into a group with Germany, Portugal, and Ghana.  All of those teams are pretty good.  Only two will make it out.  Since the group is so hard, it is called the group of death."

"Well that is stupid!" she said.

"Aye, it is a bit of an exaggeration."

But wow, that is a tough tough group.  It will be hard for them to get out.  But do not fret, dear friends.  Crisis in America means....well, okay, it means Wolf Blitzer is coming and you should head for the hills with a crate of MREs and all the virgins you can find.  But in other cultures I have heard it said that crisis and opportunity mean the same thing.

What a great thing it would be if the USA could beat Germany!  If they could shut down Christiano Ronaldo!  If they could get revenge on the Ghanans for kicking them out of the last world cup!  My friends, Mr. Lalas, this does not need to be the doom of the United States.  Perhaps as a nation we will look at this time of strife many years from now and say "Huh?  What?  The world cup?  That's like hockey right?  What?  The USA has a team in the World Cup?  So that's like DC United right?  They can't get to the world cup?  What do you mean they can't get to the world cup?!  Why are you laughing?"

USA! USA! USA!

Some Thanksgivingnukkah Thoughts

I found out about the whole Thanksgiving - Hanukkah thing a little too late to make a big deal out of it.  I feel like I should have done a little more to mark the passing of the day that will not happen again in 78,000 years and, as I can't conceive of the human race surviving for another 78,000 years, we may never see again.  I mean, sure, maybe humans will still be around 78,000 years from now, but I have to believe that there will be some kind of apocalyptic event that will change the culture entirely.  I believe in that, I think, more than I believe in Christ himself -- though maybe he comes back to save the day.  That hope is what Christmas is all about.  I read it in a book.

Ah, but let's not be so glum.  It was Thanksgiving, a time to be thankful.  Here is a brief list of things for which I am thankful:

Pomegranates.  I love me some pomegranates.  At work you will often find me at this time of year standing in our office kitchenette, carefully separating the ruby red tendrils from the rest of the fruit and putting them into a bowl.  I'll sit at my desk all day and eat them with a spoon.  Nobody else at the office does this -- they think I am kind of weird.  Can't imagine why.

The end of Black Friday.  I know a lot of my friends and my parents are kind of upset about the fact that a lot of stores opened up Thanksgiving night at 8 PM.  I was too, until I hit the Toys R' Us parking lot the day after at 8 AM and found it to be relatively empty.  There were signs of the great frenzy that had occurred the night before: the half empty boxes, the spattered blood, the bombed out Tiger Tank in aisle 5.  I had avoided all of it.  If it wasn't for the people who have to work at the stores on Thanksgiving day, I'd have no problem with giving the people what they want.  You can keep Thanksgiving in your way, I'll keep it mine, and if it means I can just walz into any store I want on my day off and take advantage of some killer deals, well, so much the better.  

I am thankful for this cock and balls sweater.  Wear it at your Church's next holiday mixer, and may the odds be ever in your favor.

Fun.

Rocky IV. Surely the greatest of the bunch. This movie teaches us about American Greatness, and also what it means to love.  It's also worth noting that this movie came out in 1985 and in just six short years the Soviet Union had fallen.  I'm not daft enough to believe that Rocky IV singlehandedly tore down the Iron Curtain, but surely it was the last nail in coffin.

Mannheim Steamroller.  Actually, no.  I really, really don't like Mannheim Steamroller.  I appreciate their musical ability, but I find their Christmas music to be too dramatic.  Christmas music should be about a little baby in a manger, or chestnuts roasting on an open fire, or about how people you love make it feel like Christmas even when things go wrong;  by contrast, Mannheim Steamroller is probably the kind of Christmas Music that Luke Skywalker would be listening to as he skimmed along the circumference of the Death Star.  

I don't like dramatic things.  This is why I don't particularly care for Dr. Who.  You'd think it would be perfect for me, because it's British.  But it's just so dramatic.  The world is always going to end and things are always trying to exterminate other things and there is a lot of shouting and screaming and it's just....it's just too much.  I vastly prefer an understated drama where a sexy woman drinks a cup of coffee and stares out a bunch of snowy pine trees thinking about Dostoevsky and no one talks.  

But back to Mannheim Steamroller.  The other thing I don't like about them is that you can just tell they are super-stoked about the music they are making, like in an over excitable Dwight Schrute way that is hard to put into words.  In their defense I suppose I'd also be super-stoked about anything that made me as much money as they have producing over dramatic Christmas music, but I don't know.  It just makes listening to their music worse, because they think its so cool, and now its Christmas and I am attacking the Death Star AND It's supposed to be totally cool.  And it's not, because it's war!  A few weeks ago I was just a country bumpkin living on Tatooine, buzzing wamp-rats in my piece of shit T-16.  Now my aunt and uncle are dead, that cool old Hermit is dead, my new friends are all about to die...I'm living in a sea of death! And to make matters worse I'm really confused about that Princess Leia chick.  On the one hand those hair earmuffs, I mean....wow. You never see anything like on that Tatooine. They just make you want to....and yet I don't think I can.  It's like I know her from somewhere.

Mannheim Steamroller.  At any rate, I saw these jokers riding a float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and, as I expected, they were super-excited to be there.  Surprise surprise.  

Friends and Family.  Woe be unto me if I don't mention the one thing I am actually truly thankful for.  Except for the pomegranates.  I really do love pomegranates.  And these guys.

    

...And Our Lady Hubris Strikes

So after making a rather self congratulatory blog post on how I was the greatest thing since sliced bread because I helped launch an aircraft carrier, even as I recognized that Our Lady Hubris is a vengeful mistress, my daughter was violently ill.  Like really violently ill in a way I've never really seen but always feared.

So Garrison Keillor was right. I should have said "Launching a Carrier is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick" and left it at that.  But no.  I had to be bombastic.  Well, I have learned my lesson.

Ah well.  Just goes to show you how life can turn on the head of a pin.  So it goes.

You're Hanging out with the Crazy Croat on WAMF "The Fuzz".

Sports talk?  Yeah.  I think I could do it.  Here's why:

First of all, I have just helped launch an aircraft carrier today at work.  If you are having a crisis of confidence I'd highly recommend it. Seeing 90,000 tons slip out into the James River and knowing you had a hand in it, that you were a fairly important player in its preparation, makes you FEEL like you can do just about anything.

I understand, of course, that I am actually quite limited with regards to my abilities.  Still, if you came up to me right now and put a scalpel in my hand and said "perform a tracheometry on this 65 year old man...who, by the way, is Sir Arthur Cunningsford, CBE, 11th in line for the throne and 3 time victor of the Newcastle Pie Festival Pie Eating Contest.  He is extremely important so don't fuck it up," I'd at least for a moment say "yeah, I've got this.  I can do it."

Now like any good Lutheran I understand that is a fool hardy thing to suck upon the alluring but sour teats of Our Lady Hubris, and I know my comeuppance is probably right around the corner, but right now I feel pretty good.

Second -- I don't know, I mean, how hard can it be?

I mean, this guy can do it.  How hard can it be?

Sure, being a radio or TV personality takes an innate talent that you probably either have or you don't.  But assuming I have that, what is sports talk really?  As far as I can tell, its just a bunch of guys (and a few women) using a sea of facts and stats and their past experience to try to make sense out of the reality that is playing out before them on the field, or on the court, or in the arena.

That's pretty much what you and I do everyday with regards to everything else, only we don't have to scream them out over the objections of a rather agitated Michael Wilbon.

In the end, I think its a series of just well-informed opinions. Give me three years to study up and watch as much sports as I can, give me some time to work out in the gym so that I could be TV ready (or just put me on radio and be done with it), and I think we can do this thing.

So yes, I think I could do it.  I think a great many people have the mental acuity to do it as well.

But I don't think I really want to do it.  I mean, I'd have to start tweeting and I'd have to travel all over the place and I'd have to eat at Permanti Brothers when I went to Pittsburgh because that's what you have to do when you go to Pittsburgh with any sports talk franchise.  And I would probably die from it.

Oh, and I am sure I'd have this caller, Rick "The Wing King" Jackson, who would call me every week and talk about how the road to the Super Bowl goes through Denver and Jason Campbell is going to take the Browns down that road to sweet sweet victory.  And I'd have to try to prove to him every week why that can never happen, even though at the end of the day I'd have to concede that mathematically it was still possible.

Strange, that we should use one of the most objective expressions of our reality to come to an agreement on something as inherently meaningless and chaoticc as the success of a football team.  But as I have said before that's the kind of thing that all of us do everyday.

Eh.  It's fun.  Anyways, I suppose I won't be on SVP and Russilo anytime soon.  Too bad America. But sometimes you get the sports commentator you need, not the one you deserve.  Wait a minute....reverse that?  I don't know.  It's complicated.

The Senator's Shoes

Ladies and Gentlemen, for your approval, I give you the Christening of the USS GERALD R. FORD:

Nov. 9, 2013: With one swift swing, Susan Ford Bales, daughter of President Gerald R. Ford and sponsor of the aircraft carrier bearing his name, smashed a bottle of American sparkling wine across the bow to christen the ship. Also pictured (left to right) are Capt. John Meier, commanding officer, CVN 78; U.S. Sen. Carl Levin; and Newport News Shipbuilding President Matt Mulherin. Photo by Chris Oxley (HII-NNS)

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, for your approval (though not your pleasure -- for those of you trying to log into www.croatianfootbondage.net I can only surmise that your Google is broken), I give you feet:

Of course, these are not just any old feet, mind you.  They are privileged feet, important feet, feet that will command a ship, that have lead an industry, that have carried the burden of Presidential legacy, that have trod the corridors of power in the Senate.  

So I got to ask:  What's up with the shoes, Mr. Levin?

It is perhaps unfair to even ask, as there are plenty of perfectly good reasons why Mr. Levin's footgear is not up to code.  He may have a foot condition that requires him to wear sneakers all the time.  He may have forgotten his good shoes at home.  He may prefer sneakers because they let him sneak around in the Senate cafeteria galley looking for cookies without being detected, as it is a well known fact that the clackity clack of well shod feet upon a hard kitchen floor is not conducive to absconding with macaroons.  

It could also be interpreted as yet another moment where we see how human these people are.

The best example of that, maybe even better than Levin's shoes, are the remarks that Donald Rumsfeld gave at the Christening. Now, if you were to tell me at the beginning of the day that his remarks were to be my favorite of the many, many given on the day, I would have laughed in your face and said "surely, thou art shitting me heartily."  But when his voice broke as he described how he and his wife went to visit President Ford on what was his last Thanksgiving I felt my heart break a bit as well, and I was reminded that whatever my latent disagreements with Mr. Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush Administration are (and there are many), I also was reminded that Donald Rumsfeld is still very much a person.  I might even find him to be a very good person, if I got to know him.  It was a valuable recapitulation of an oft forgotten fact in these divisive times.   

So likewise there is Senator Levin in his crappy shoes, just trying to get through the Christening as comfortably as possible, just as any of us would.  

On the other hand....

Look, I am the last person who should judge someone else on his footware.   Every night  Van Gogh's ghost knocks on my door, pleading with me to let him paint my battered old brown shoes in a heavy impasto.  

Still, if I learned that I was to be up on that podium with Mrs. Susan Ford Bales, standing at the leading edge of one of the mightiest symbols of American power ever constructed, I reckon I'd probably pull the good shoes out of the back of the closet and I'd probably shine them up too.  

But that's just me.

Simply Having a Wonderful (and Early) Christmastime!!

Like the errant zombies or first cases of mystery plague foreshadow the oncoming apocalypse in a B horror movie, the first Christmas carols and movies of the season have signaled the coming onslaught of the Holiday Season.

It caught me off guard.  I just sorted through my daughter's Halloween candy this Thursday (and, just between you and me, I have been pilfering from it ever since).  Then on Saturday I am flipping through the channels and see that the Hallmark Channel is already showing its particular brand of Christmas movie (i.e. the ones that are so sweet they make you yak) 24/7, and today at Subway over the din of people ordering sandwiches I heard a ghostly 1990's version of Neil Diamond -- a Neil Diamond well past his prime but still with the power to fill the Roanoke Civic Center with adoring middle aged women and their abashed husbands -- wishing me a Merry Christmas in musical form.

I should have known, of course.  I and millions of others have noted for quite some time that Christmas comes earlier and earlier each year; it seems that we have finally reached the "All Hallows Eve Asymptote", the line that Schrodinger postulated the beginning of the holiday season might approach but not cross whilst he was taking a break from looking for his cat.

Admittedly, I am something of a humbug when it comes to the Holidays.  Christmas in of itself is okay, and its good to spend time with family and friends, and I admit I do enjoy a good Creme Brulee late.  Oh, and on Boxing Day there is always a full set of EPL soccer matches, which is a great way to spend the day after Christmas.  The British certainly got that one right.

But the Humbugs are many.  There are endless days of meaningless and often uninspiring College Football games. There is the crass commercialism.  There is the bad music -- Christmas may have produced Handel's Messiah, but it also produced "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer".  But most of all, I'd say my problem with the Christmas Season is that I find it impossible to sustain the much expected good cheer over its long length.

Look, as it is, I can store up enough happiness to maybe last three days.  After that, external factors come into play.  I generally have to avoid books and music.  The brunette who works at the Park Lane Tavern on Wednesdays can't call in sick.  The Browns have to lose all their football games.  Wolf Blitzer needs to keep his beard carefully trimmed at 3/35ths of an inch lest the increased gravitation pull of his whiskers throw off the delicate balance of the moon, wind, and tides, thus varying the progression of ocean waves as they crash into the shoreline while I sit on the beach writing bad poetry.  I prefer my waves to have a period between 22 and 29 seconds;  anything outside that range can send me slipping into a melancholy of moderate intensity.

So my happiness is a tenuous thing -- too tenuous to last for a couple months, too tenuous to last for the whole Christmas Season.

Ah, but if you look up there are an awful lot of "I"s.  Perhaps I have forgotten the....*sigh*.....the true meaning of Christmas.  And that is that we have been put on this Earth to "Be Excellent to Each Other", that the fullest lives are those lived in compassion and love for others.  Such things may not lead to the happiness that a new I-pad or a Trek road bike or the full set of Aubrey/Maturin novels might bring (hint hint), but it might just be enough to sustain a person for more than three days, and maybe even the whole damned Holiday Season.

  

Must Love Dogs

So this week Arizona representative Brenda Barton noted in a facebook post that:

“Someone is paying the National Park Service thugs overtime for their efforts to carry out the order of De Fuhrer… where are our Constitutional Sheriffs who can revoke the Park Service Rangers authority to arrest??? Do we have any Sheriffs with a pair?” 

When asked later to explain her comments she stated:

“It’s not just the death camps. [Hitler] started in the communities, with national health care and gun control,” Barton continued. “You better read your history. Germany started with national health care and gun control before any of that other stuff happened. And Hitler was elected by a majority of people.”

Okay, Ms. Barton.  Three things of note.

First of all, how many times do I have to tell you its "Der Fuhrer", not "De Fuhrer" by which I think you actually meant "Die Fuhrer"?  "Fuhrer" is masculine and requires a masculine article, not a feminine one.  F over!  Try again.

Secondly, a quick spin around the interwebs at various sources show that your history is debatable at best.  It looks as though strict gun laws were put in place in Germany as part of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, well before Hitler came to power in 1933.  Hitler's gun laws of 1938 actually seem to have increased access to guns for most Germans, Jews excluded.  National medicine was also already under way in Germany before Hitler came to power.  And even if Hitler was a stern advocate of these two policies, it was hardly the lynchpin of his rise to power or the rise of the Nazi state.  There were many other key factors and I don't think it particularly matters what Hitler's health and gun policies were.

So my third thing, Ms. Barton, is a question.

Do you love dogs?

I'm going to bet the answer is yes, because even if you don't there are thousands of registered voters in your state congressional district who most certainly do, and you don't want to alienate them in any way.  So you love dogs.

Well guess who else loved dogs?  This guy:

Hitler loved dogs.  You probably do too, Ms. Barton.  That doesn't mean you want to invade Canada to make more living space for our retirees to hang out in during the summer, and it doesn't mean you want to throw all the red heads in a concentration camp in the name of American Purity.  No.  It just means that you happen to have something in common with a horrible, horrible person.

Matters of policy may be more important than dogs, but even so if Hitler and Obama had similar gun policies it would mean only that they have one thing in common and little, if anything, else.  To suggest otherwise is as insane as suggesting that you are a Nazi because you love dogs.

I do tire of this whole comparing politicians to Hitler.  Rather than remember him as a representative for how low the human race can descend, Hitler has been made into something of a boogieman lurking in the closets of our nation, representing its most irrational fears.  We really should cut it out.  But sensible government is in short supply these days, so I see no end in sight.

Though perhaps there is one politician we can compare to Hitler....

Happy Happy Happy All the Way to the Bank

Usually on Wednesday's around 10 you'll find me sitting in front of the television with a grin on my face, watching the Robertson clan do anything but sell duck calls.

I started watching the show during the fall of 2012, in the midst of the second season (though I wonder if we need a new word for television season.  Calling it a run or a set might be better, but la da di da dee) a wee bit before it became a thing.  I admit the first time I saw it I didn't like it, but a few weeks later I gave it another chance and I watched Si Robertson go to the eye doctor.  

I was hooked.

It was only this past summer, walking around the Virginia Beach Aquarium in the midst of a family vacation, that I noticed people walking around with Duck Dynasty t-shirts.  In short order I learned that you could get Duck Dynasty garden gnomes, and towels, and calenders, and greeting cards, and Duck Dynasty sleep pants, bed sheets, socks, hats, boots, contact lens cases, chia pets, sleeping bags, christmas lights, cookbooks, coffee mugs, and so on and so on forever and ever, Amen.  

The merchandise didn't bother me too much, though I wasn't about to buy any.  It made me a little sad because it left me with a feeling that the show would collapse under its own weight, that the banal and casual brilliance of seasons 1-4 is simply impossible to sustain.  Maybe the Robertson family understands this, and that's why they are grabbing the lime-light while they well and truly can. 

But then there is the planned Duck Dynasty Christmas Album, due in stores on October 29th.  I think that's the last straw for me, a commercialized reach for a bridge too far, and my interest in the show is diminishing.
  

I'm not even sure why it matters to me.  I mean, it's not like I went to see Starry Night at MOMA Queens and there was Van Gogh himself trying to sell me a Paul Gauguin bobble head doll.  This is a show about some rich rednecks who rather enjoy hunting ducks and blowing stuff up, so who cares if it gets mired in commercialism just like everything else in this country does?

I would argue that in a world where most "end of men" sitcoms and movies suggest that the lest vestiges of manhood are merely a crass, unwavering interest in large breasts, it was nice to actually see something relatively wholesome that is nonetheless funny, featuring characters who meet a changing world by sticking to values of faith, family, and ducks.  It will be interesting to see how fame fits into that list.  For me, once you make a commemoration of a phenomenon by putting an old man's face on a t-shirt (as well posters, wall paper, key chains, cumberbunds, physics textbooks, regulation NFL footballs, and Roman Abromavich's bemused soccer watching smile) it loses some of what made it special in the first place.

Yeah, they exist.

Shutdown!

I can only watch about 30 seconds of CNN right now.  This is stupid.  Our great country, our wonderful country, is led by stupid people.  

My daughter tells me I shouldn't use the word "stupid".  But she is asleep now, and I don't care.  

 

Who do I blame for all this?  Naturally I blame the House Republicans and their insistence that Obamacare be repealed.  I've admitted previously to not be a huge fan of Obama, but this time I'll close ranks and simply agree with the sentiment that in the past -- what, three years? -- every effort to defeat Obamacare by repeal, or litigation, or a change of government has failed.  

There are times when great leaders fight to the last tooth and nail -- or at least promise to.  Senator Ted Cruz invoked Churchill when he said that he would fight with every breath in his body to defeat the law, going so far as to say "As Churchill said, we will fight on the beaches, we will fight on the streets".  

I would argue that Churchill is probably the greatest war time leader of any nation.  He gave the actual "fight on the beaches" speech as Britain awaited invasion by a German military machine that had just broken the will of France -- an easy thing, you may say, but if you've never actually read about the Fall of France I would encourage you to do so.  It is an epic tragedy and war had never been envisioned on such a scale before that time.  

It was a bleak moment, but Churchill was basically asserting that he would fight to the last breath in his body. If Britain was taken he would even continue the war from the far flung reaches of the British Empire, and his wartime strategy shows his desire to anything, ANYTHING, to prick and scratch at the Germans, even if it be only with a pin.  

I think it is clear that imminent invasion is rather different than the passage of a bill you don't particularly like. But I suppose there are those that feel that Obamacare does threaten the Liberty we enjoy and therefore threaten the very core of our national values and identity, and therefore must be fought to the last.  

Still, I have to believe that sometimes great leaders have to recognize when they are defeated, when they have reached their limits, when they have exhausted all their viable options.  The Republicans are there.  If they were to accept the fact that our Democratic institutions did -- albeit narrowly -- spring forth Obamacare and they therefore must live with it, maybe work to make it better, then I would give them immense credit.  It takes a great deal of character to accept defeat, sometimes perhaps more than it does to fight on to the last.

Getting back to Mr. Churchill, I wonder what he would have thought about all this?  I'm no expert on Churchill, but if his first volume on the history of the second world war is any indication he was a man who had an English Public School morality, a sense of fairness and right and wrong bred on the rugby fields and polo grounds of his youth.  He believed in the rule of law and international institutions.  Indeed, when Hitler overstepped his bounds in the mid thirties by re-arming and later reoccupying the Rhineland, Churchill felt that a vigorous international response sanctioned by the League of Nations was called for. 

Based on that admittedly slim argument, here is a man for whom the law was paramount -- provided the Germans weren't bombing the shit out of his country, in which case perhaps it wasn't.  Still, if Churchill had been handed a political defeat such as the Republicans received with regards to Obamacare, I think he would respect the institutions of the law, accept his defeat with magnanimity, and seek to move on in the business of governing the nation as best he could.

Or maybe he wouldn't.  The Winston Churchill I have my in head though, he certainly would have, even if he never really existed.

I wish our Congress would do the same.

Though I must say, it would be interesting to see Senator Ted Cruz and his band or renown fight Obamacare on the beaches.  I imagine it might look something like this:

  

Make ready the baked goods, and let fly!

It is the most foreboding sound in all the world;  the sort of sloppy swissssshhhhh that occurs as a tapioca pudding pie, flung at great speed, hurtles towards its mark on National Tapioca Pudding day.

And just in case you were curious:  yes, there really is a National Tapioca Pudding day (July 15th).

Why is it especially bad on National Tapioca Pudding Day?  Because if it isn't National Tapioca Pudding Day it means that the sound of the pie moving towards you at incredible speed may have fallen out of a window, or be part of a Christian outreach bake sale gone bad, or any one of a number of pie heaving possibilities. There is still a chance that the pie about to make contact with your head was in fact launched in error and without great malice, a horribly random occurrence in an otherwise beautifully ordered universe.

But if you hear the sound of a tapioca pie advancing upon thee at tremendous velocity on National Tapioca Pudding Day?  It meant that that pie was baked for you.  The pie crust was made just strong enough to ensure the pie stays fully together upon launch but then breaks into a number of pieces on contact with your face.  The pudding is not grandmother-grade Tapioca, the kind that really sticks to your ribs and makes you thankful that National Tapioca Pudding Day comes but once a year, but rather it has been made runnier than average so that it might relocate uncomfortably under the shirt after impact with the headular region.  If the person who pied you is a coward it will run down your back;  if the person is bolder or perhaps has a tapioca pudding fetish it will run down the front and perhaps somewhat delightfully over the nipples.

In short;  the feeling of dread that accompanies the sound of a well thrown tapioca pudding pie is only heightened if you are actually its intended target.  Though different by many, many degrees, I imagine it's not a dissimilar effect to hearing bullets whizzing by on a field of battle.  In the old old days, when men stood in dense, long lines with incredibly inaccurate muskets and shot at each other, you might at least find cold comfort in the fact the shots, though fired in anger, were merely fired in your general direction and not at you per se.  Fast forward three hundred years and a bullet snapping the air as it flies by may have the extra unwelcome characteristic of actually being fired at you personally. Somebody actually took aim at your noble visage and fired.  Both sounds are dreadful, but the later surely must be more unsettling.

Ironically enough, they say you never hear the tapioca pudding pie that finally gets you...

A Twerk? That's when a Tweet's been left in the sun too long, right?

So this morning, after working for several hours, I finished my second cup of coffee and go on CNN.com.  I do this everyday to make sure the world isn't ending, because if it is then there's no point in getting that third cup, yeah?

Things abroad are pretty bad (if you are in Syria, your world is likely ending for the 15th time in the last two years), but here at home all was pretty quiet.

But soft!  Before I went to get that third cup so that my day could continue I saw the following headline:

          Miley Cyrus Twerks, Stuns VMA Crowd

To which I said:  what the hell is a Twerk?

A quick Internet search soon put me to rights, and then I recalled that The Diary of Samuel Peyps' contains what may be the first written record of a twerk in all of human history:

November 9, 1664

Up, and to the office, much immersed in Business. Thence by barge to Deptford, where  I didst meet with my lady mistress Bagwell.  She did the most extraordinary thing today. She didst position herself with her back towards me and then placed her hands on the insides of her thighs. Then she didst thrust out her bosom and arch her back until her prodigious rump did hover about my person like a randy round butterfly, though she didst not quite touch my noble personage with it and this did arouse within me the greatest of excitement, almost more so than if I were odscay eepday in her ugehay itstay¹. Then – zounds!—she did gyrate her bottom with the most wicked and vexatious rhythm,, bouncing it betwixt the firmament above and the devil below at a rapid speed. Such a thing hath certainly never before been seen in England, and I doubt even the King himself doth know the measure of  joy that I hath found in my Lady Bagwell and her incredible arse. After a while I could speak:“What is this glorious thing that thou art now doing?” I asked.  “Tis  called Twerking, my Lord,” she answered. 

Where Lady Bagwell learned to shake it so well is one of history's great mysteries.  Still, some twerks are clearly better than others.  I did find Cyrus's performance over of the top and wholly out of place, but I am not going to clothe myself in self-righteous indignation and criticize her from a moral standpoint.  It's nothing I haven't seen before, though I think in most places where I would have seen that sort of thing I'd have been obliged to slip a $5 bill into that bikini of hers out of sheer politeness, if not necessarily appreciation.

My only real problem with this would be that it seems like to take the stage at the VMAs should be a vindication of one's hard work;  thinking about the years of effort on the part of musicians and back up dancers and stagehands alike, the accumulation of "talent" that built up to such a horribly vapid performance as the one seen last night, is just depressing.  The best bands seem to value highly the opportunity to perform on the biggest of stages  and take such things as seriously as their image will allow.

On the other hand, it would be stupid of me to forget rock and roll's Rimbaudian penchant for flipping the bird and saying "fuck you" to the governing conventions of the day.  If Cyrus is doing that (even though she's found a damn conventional way to be unconventional) then I guess one could argue that she might be given a pass, though I have yet to hear anyone do so.  More likely she is simply saying "Hey, look at me, I used to be Hannah Montana and now I'm not anymore", and she really doesn't deserve another thought.

Note:
1.  Those who have come to grips with Peyps know that while his diary was extremely frank with regards to every aspect of his life -- including his regular philandering -- he did at least have the decency to cover the naughty bits with a veneer consisting of foreign languages, usually a mixture of French and Latin.  I know neither, so you will have to settle for pig latin.  I hope those of you who are familiar with the diary (all five of you) appreciated that little joke, though I apologize for the language.  Still, I wouldn't put it past Peyps to say such a thing.

The Bell Tolls for Thee, Maverick

This is no bullshit:  I witnessed the death knell of the naval aviator.

In you case you didn't notice amidst all the hooplah over the Zimmerman trial, the Northrop Grumman X-47B, an unmanned air vehicle, was successfully landed on the deck of an aircraft carrier in front of the CNO, SECNAV, divers admirals and press, and moi on July 10.

Well, I kinda sorta witnessed it.  I happened to be in a different compartment of the ship which had a flight deck video feed, so I was able to watch it from there.  So I didn't see it with my naked eye.  Of course, because I require glasses or contacts I never see anything with my naked eyes, or if I do it is extremely blurry.  Plus, consider that, my eyes are only providing me with information on the light bouncing off of different objects, so even then its subjective.  I mean, what if your red is different from my red?  Does that mean that "red" doesn't really exist?

Is your conception of reality starting to fall apart?  Take a deep breath, a shot of whisky, and pull it together.

Better?  Okay.  Let's crack on.

So if I didn't actually see it in person, at least I was on the USS George H.W. Bush when it happened. I was on the ship for a few days, as part of the Newport News Shipbuilding Engineer to Sea program, where 10 engineers get lead around the ship by knowledgeable peoples to learn more about how all the pieces and different departments fit together on an aircraft carrier.

Me on the Flight Deck of CVN77

Most of those engineers actually did fight their way up to the Island, past the press, some admirals, their ceremonial cookie bearers (don't laugh - it is one of the perks of office), and the CNO himself to get a view.  I passed on the opportunity so that I could get a tour of the reactor compartment in hopes that I would soak in enough radiation to gain super powers.  Unfortunately the plants on the CVN77 are shipshape and Bristol-fashion, so I still lack the ability to leap tall buildings with a single bound or open soda cans with my mind.

There was much rejoicing over the success.  That night in the smoking sponson all the men and women who were present in support of the X47-B, a seven year project which finally culminated in proof that an unmanned vehicle could indeed be launched from and recovered on an aircraft carrier, were all smoking giant stogies in celebration.  No doubt some of them would have preferred to get rip-roaring drunk, but such things are not allowed in today's navy, at least aboard ship.  Perhaps, feeling a little loose, they decided to mix Orange Soda and Grape Soda together in the wardroom, or have an extra bowl of ice cream after dinner.

I don't imagine everyone was happy.  My good friends Ted and Tank down in Pensacola told me they went out to a bar frequented by naval aviators that night and a few tears were shed as they tapped their brown shoes to "You've got that loving feeling" for one last time.

I myself have mixed feelings about it. I've watched pilots land F/A-18s on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, and its probably just about the coolest thing I've ever seen -- definitely cooler than Didier Drogba slamming home the final PK to lift Chelsea FC to Champions League Glory, but probably not as cool as when in senior year I finally got to see Maxime McGulligan's birthmark, which bears a startling resemblance to Pitt the Elder and has the additional benefit of being in a fairly private place.

E-2 Hawkeye Landing on the deck of the CVN77 during Carrier Qaulifications.  

The romantic in me thinks it would be a sad thing if no one landed planes on aircraft carriers anymore. Watching the X47-B trap probably stirred feelings in many hearts -- my own included -- that were probably not dissimilar to a Captain Jack Aubrey watching a steam engine or naval gun demo.  You can't argue that what you are seeing is progress and it's probably not a bad thing;  and yet at the same time you know that things are going to change and some of the dash and daring of life is going to go away.

Setting one's emotion aside, it is clearly better to take the pilot out of the seat.  If John McCain had been flying a drone instead of an A4-E Skyhawk when he was shot down over Hanoi in 1967, he would have shrugged his shoulders, gotten his ass chewed out by his commanding officer, grabbed a cup of coffee from the coffee mess and comforted himself with the fact that tomorrow he'd get another chance.  As it was he ended up spending 5 and half years at the Hanoi Hilton being tortured to within an inch of his life.  The more we can  avoid that sort of thing from happening again the better, and its hard to pit any romantic feelings against that.

But all those Top Guns drowning their sorrows should not fret just yet.  The drone has its place, but currently it is unable to replace a top-notch fighter and is only capable of delivering limited weapons.  It is more likely than not that in the near future naval drones will spend hours above the battlespace gathering intelligence. Sure, they might take a pot shot at somebody or something if the opportunity presents itself (though I am not sure I agree with our current tactical regime for the drone, as sadly we seem to have a knack for striking weddings in countries we are not at war with just as much as we actually use them to kill terrorists), but more than likely they will just be directing those good old brown shoes towards a target so they can finally have the chance to fuck up someone's day and then request a fly-by back at the carrier, which will be denied, but they will do it anyway because they are hot shit.  And then the CAG will get really, really mad at them but send them off to Top Gun School anyway, because he has to give them their shot!  And so the pilot will end up trying to outdo another Top Gun student who looks like Val Kilmer and he'll get to show his aeronautics instructor some really cool chess openings over breakfast (and no, that is not a euphemism for sex, bur rather a recognition that it just so happens the instructor also really enjoys chess and so they meet at a coffee shop on Sundays with a board to discuss the merits of the Lewinsky Gambit and the Hermoine-Snape Defense), but just when things are looking up Goose dies and the kid goes into a tailspin of regret because it was his fault -- or was it??  But he (or she!  Remember that now females can be fighter pilots too!) drives around Pensacola on a motorcycle and she (or he!) finds it deep within him (or--a, fuck it) self to carry on and he passes the class and goes on to be a really great pilot.

Then one day he finds himself administering medicine and medical advice to cranky 80 year old Serbian Americans, because only someone who has landed a fighter pilot on the pitching and rolling deck of a carrier at night has the nerves of steel and ice of blood to actually be the primary care physician for those crotchety, old, angry people.

And I ask you: if we don't have naval aviators anymore, who will actually be able to do that?  Who will help them?  I don't know -- it is becoming clearer that the real losers in all of this are the 'viches of our Happy Republic.

Life is a vich and then you die.

PS:  Those naval aviators should take additional heart by the fact that the X47-B only completed two out of four landings.

Gettysburg

There's been a lot in the news recently - and actually for once a lot of it is worthwhile.  The death of Arizona firefighters, the reverberations from a historical Supreme Court Session, yet another round of protests in Egypt. It's little surprise that, at least from where I am sitting down here in God's Country, the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg has been something of an afterthought.

Of course the fact that I live in Virginia may explain some of that...

I had the very good fortune to spend two days on the battlefield with my dad about 12 years ago.  Civil War scholarship is a hobby of my father's, though I am not 100% sure why.  He spends the second half of each year reading about the Civil War or people associated with it -- though there are those years where the book he chooses is so detailed and he is otherwise so busy that he can only make it through one text in 6 months, if that -- and when we went to the field Gettysburg had been the focus of his studies for several years.  He knew the order of battle down to the regiment virtually everywhere, and in a few places even down to the company.  No need for a tour guide that time.

It was a memorable trip, but the highlight for me, the thing I will never forget as long as I live, was walking Pickett's Charge.  For those of you deciding not to click on the link, Pickett's Charge was the assault by Confederate troops on the Union center on the third and final day of the battle.  Lee, after assaulting the flanks of the Union line on the previous day, decided that he must attack the center based on the principle that do the same thing over and over again and expect different results is a sign of insanity, so obviously something else had to be tried.  The Union center was the only option left.    

No, that isn't strictly true.  Though his intentions, target, and the wisdom of the charge are all hotly debated, it seems his goal was to break the Union center and pour troops into the breach and roll up the Union lines while using a cavalry assault from the rear to exploit the gap.  A massive artillery bombardment would pave the way by destroying Union artillery and demoralizing enemy infantry at the focal point.  As it was the bombardment was ineffectual, and while some Confederate troops did break the Union line there was not enough of them and they were easily repulsed with a counterattack by Union reserves.  

Why my dad and I were so keen to walk it I am not so sure.  In this hyper-political day and age, where an act as simple as buying a chicken sandwich can taint a person with the stain of intolerance, it seems like only those with some affinity for the South and her cause would dare walk the charge at all.  But that was certainly not the case with us.  I'll admit we had some admiration for some of the South's generals and soldiers as fighting men, but we had no illusions of the odious institution of slavery that lay at the heart of the Confederate cause (see postscript for more on this) and we had (and have) no wish to see the south rise again as some people, inexplicably, still do.  We walked the charge because it seemed like something worth doing, and it certainly was.

We started out at a monument to James Longstreet (who ironically was not in favor of the charge) and headed towards the copse of trees, the oft quoted but still debatable visual target for the charge. We walked toward the Union lines at a small distance apart from each other, not speaking, each lost in our own thoughts.  We were nearly to the angle in the stonewall under the copse when it happened.  

I looked over to my left, and I swear to this day I saw a host of Confederate soldiers clothed in their tattered butternut uniforms with their battle flags flying, the men shouting to keep their spirits up.  When I looked forward towards the slight ridge and low wall that defined the Union line I saw a pair of men with slouched caps and the muzzle of a cannon.  There was a flash from the cannon and I felt -- and heard -- the thud of a ball of canister shot hitting me in the chest.  

I was dead.  

And then it all disappeared.  I was back in an empty field, my father now somewhat ahead of me, on a rainy summer day in Gettysburg.  

I can hear you all reaching for the bullshit flags right now.  There are those who would say that in some past life I probably died at Gettysburg fighting for the South, but in spite of that experience I don't believe in re-incarnation.  The more astute of you would probably also tell me that the Union artillery were behind the line of infantry in position at the stone wall, so I couldn't have possibly seen a cannon -- my vision or whatever you want to call it was historically inaccurate.  Others would remind me of the biscuits and gravy I'd had that morning for breakfast, northern biscuits and gravy that were not sitting well in my southern stomach, and quip that there was more gravy than grave about the visions I saw.

Just so.  Still, rational though I am (often to a fault), I reserve the right to believe in things supernatural, things that simply cannot be explained.  

I believe that is quite possible that in places like Gettysburg, full of so much death and violence and ideal and elan, some kind of imprint gets left behind that can manifest itself later.  It's like that feeling you get at night when you don't feel quite alone, that some specter from the past is hanging around in the living room, meaning no harm, maybe not even cognizant of itself, but just passing through like a chilly mist on a way point to somewhere else, an etching from a previous life.

It makes sense to me, then, that the visions I saw were an etching, a remnant, of the men who died in the throes of our nation's great and tragic crisis.  It is my hope in relating this story to you (aside from it being a pretty neat story) that you might pause to remember those who died in that struggle, and mull over the words that one of the greatest of men would forever immortalize in their honor:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.


But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

~Abraham Lincoln                                                                

PS: Let the Gettysburg Address sink in for a bit.  I am about to ruin the moment.  Go get a glass of water or something.

You back?  Excellent.  Let's crack on.

So, when I was in the Boy Scouts and we could stop thinking or talking about girls long enough to focus on something else we used to actually discuss if slavery was THE cause of the Civil War or not, if it was rather a battle over states rights.  As I grew up in Southwest Virginia there were plenty of us (myself not among them) who argued that slavery was not the cause of the war, and one of the crutches holding up this precarious argument was the rumor that the great James I. Robertson Jr., Civil War historian and a professor at Virginia Tech, had said so.

The man, and the class he taught, are justly legendary.  I was told that the course had a waiting list years long, and he would flat out tell you that slavery did not cause "The War Between the States" or "The War of Northern Aggression" or (my favorite) "The War to Prevent Southern Independence".

You can imagine my horrible, self-satisfied, smugfuckingly smug smile when one of the first sentences to be drawled by Professor Robertson in his peculiar Danville accent when I did take his class (no waiting list, by the by) was "Make no doubt about it:  Slavery was the cause of this war."  Clearly, he realized his reputation proceeded him.  

Though I will say one thing about prof. Robertson to his detriment:  he was the historical consultant for the movie "Gods and Generals", and he was extremely proud of this, told us many times that it was a fine film.  

Well, I saw that movie in the theaters, and in my opinion it was horrible.  It was some 4 hours long, and during the intermission everyone in the crowd, all eight of us, asked one another if we should struggle through the rest or if we should just call it a night and try to impress the coffee girls at the local hippie bakery by showing them how we had mastered a whole slew of asymmetric chess openings.  We all decided to hang with the movie based on principle, and I believe all of us regret it still.