This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Claymore

  • Maybe the Curse of the Bambino was justified

    Bosox fans…I’m not exactly sure what your official position is on the following, but I’d imagine there might have been a news conference or perhaps a public event disavowing the persons responsible for the crime against baseball that I’m about to relate.  Allow me to explain…no…it is too much, allow me to sum up:

    It was late.  My wife and I were bored.  We wanted to watch a movie.  And this digital abortion was free.

    The suckage to which I refer is the 2005 movie, Fever Pitch.

    I heard Steve Jobs begged to have this scene cut for fear of it ruining Macbook sales…hey…it’s what I heard.

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  • Thank you, please drive through…

    Through the use of delicate internet technology NOT pioneered by Algore, and in common use with all of the major VRWC cells in operation throughout the US, I’ve intercepted the following planning session held yesterday.  I offer it here for your perusal, unedited or redacted.

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  • Raised White Letter Liars

    My dad has a little problem with the truth. Always has. Not exactly sure why or what caused this colossal break in basic human interaction, but of all his flaws, I think I’d put this one at the very top…above wearing polyester coaches shorts over the top of sweatpants…above him wearing a “Vietnam Veteran And Proud Of It” hat when during the war he sat his ass behind a desk at Grissom Air Force Base in the middle of Godforsaken Indiana…no, those pale in comparison to the string of lies he has trailing behind him.

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  • I’ve lost Artoo!

    The new Terminator movie premiered Friday. Yeah…I sort of figured that whole thing had played out around the time Linda Hamilton turned into Mickey Rourke with breasts. But apparently, in keeping with Hollywood’s penchant for recycling old plots by hiring the cast of Hannah Montana and throwing an Obama-load of money into CGI, killer robots are back, sans Governor Arnold Taxandspender.

    9v battery and 5.56mm link belt not included
    9v battery and 5.56mm link belt not included

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  • Nobody puts AK-47 in the corner

    Ah, the fabulous 80’s. It’s the decade that gave us MTV, skinny ties, parachute pants and a virtual cornucopia of memorable movies. I fondly recall films like Ghostbusters, Weird Science and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1961 Ferrari 250 GT Spyder California anyone?). I remember taking a date to go see the first Nightmare On Elm Street movie. My date spent the entire time with her face buried in my shoulder, so I’m not sure how much she saw, but there was this one unforgettable part where this black dude sitting in front of us literally ran out of the theater after Freddie killed his first nubile teenager…that brotha had moves that Lawrence Taylor would envy, but I guess he’d need some half melted white dude in need of a manicure to get the same velocity. But I digress.

    Yeah, there were tons of cheesy movies too and knock-offs of the more successful ones, but one in the bunch springs to mind when you start looking at movies that sort of defined the era. We were still in the grips of the Cold War, the Soviet Union was still a very real threat and at times we were being told that Europe was in all kinds of political turmoil. It was so bad, I remember a friend of mine doing a Civics class report on the number of warheads the Soviets supposedly had in stockpile, and that due to our proximity to the Savannah River Site, our little community had at least a couple of them pointed directly at us. Nice. So it came as no surprise that when the movie Red Dawn came out, more than a few of my friends and I felt compelled to see it.

    It was 1984, and we’d had almost a full term of Reagan under our belt. As most will recall, Ron wasn’t the biggest fan of the Soviets, and frankly, the sentiment was mutual. It was under this cloud of unease that Red Dawn made its premiere. For those who’ve been under a rock the past 40 years, the basic plot goes like this:

    – Commies are all over the place, in Europe and in Central America, stirring up shit.
    – Famine has hit the Soviet Union due to a poor harvest, and living on vodka isn’t working out so well, so they invade Poland (jeez, why does everyone pick on those guys?). NATO won’t do shit (natch), and the UN can’t do shit (double natch) so we’re spiraling into WWIII.
    – Flash to Colorado where kids in high school watch an amazing demonstration of Russian and Cuban joint military operations.
    – People get rounded up. Some get killed. Gun registration schemes get the worst PR boost ever and a handful of quasi-teen stars from most of John Hughes’ movies escape into the mountains…but not without first pissing into an overheated truck radiator.

    This is quality stuff, gang…and only within the first 15 minutes! Imagine an impressionable 15 year old kid watching this…I mean, really…who could piss into a radiator with all his friends standing around? The horror!

    From here, the story revolves around how these kids, now joined by two hot chicks, turn themselves into an elite guerilla unit, embarrassing the shit out of the Russians and their Cuban flunkies. Taking the mascot from their high school team, they call themselves Wolverines…totally…frickin’…cool. The Russians send Spetznaz after them, and Mi-24 gunships and all kinds of other shit. But they fight on, despite the odds and without the benefit of a single Depeche Mode song playing in the background.

    In all seriousness, the movie at the time was an interesting reflection of the fear that many of my generation had. Its underlying foundation was very real, and scarily plausible. In relating the depth and breadth of the Soviet joint assault, the character of Lt. Colonel Tanner outlined the strategy employed…it had its roots in actual Soviet doctrine; infiltrators from Cuba, disguised as illegal immigrants acted as sappers, attacking vulnerable bases in the Southeastern US. This was coupled with an airlift of elite Soviet paratroopers in transports disguised as commercial airliners…add to this the nuke strikes on all of the US’s communication centers and ICBM facilities and you had the nation on its knees. From Mexico, the Soviets with their commie pals from Cuba and Nicaragua, swarmed into the plains states, while an invasion force from the Alaskan peninsula gobbled up everything in the north. Tanner relates that virtually all of Europe folds to Soviet pressure and abandons the US, with the exception of the UK…and curiously enough, China decides to counter attack the Russians, losing nearly half their population in the process. To a kid who slept through most of his Social Studies classes, this wasn’t just a movie, it could have been a real life documentary or a devastating prophesy of things to come. It evoked all manner of feelings, from anger and disgust at the collaborators, to sadness and dismay that while our nation was being attacked, 99% of our European “allies” didn’t do jack shit. Each death of a major character was like a kick in the stomach, knowing that there wasn’t anyone rushing in to replace them in the fight. In the end, the sacrifices of the Wolverines serves as a catalyst for a rising resistance movement, which according to the epilogue, eventually kicks the Russians out but I remember walking out of that movie feeling drained and strangely angry. I honestly believe, in retrospect, that Patrick Swayze may have contributed to my current political leanings…and that ain’t just pissin’ in a radiator.

  • Front Toward Enemy

    To those who don’t know me, I’ve been messing around on political forums for the better part of 10 years now, including 5-or-so years as a moderator/admin on one very popular forum owned by some skinny blonde chick…Ann something or other, but I digress.

    During that time, I made a practice of lurking on opposing forums, mostly for material, but also for the sheer sake of trying to decipher what these people were thinking…and I use that term loosely. One of my favorite, most target rich environments for my recons was The Democratic Underground, profoundly referred to as DU, earning it’s denizens the title of DU’ers. In many cases, what was posted on DU could hardly be held out as fiction, much less categorized as an argument (last time I checked “fuck you” wasn’t exactly considered thoughtful debate), so I would package up these little nuggets and post them on Ann Whatsherface’s forum and we’d all get a pretty good chuckle out of them. Nice. Whatever.

    The bulk of these DU crossposts were harmless, amounting to a significant number of echo chamber rants, lithium fueled diatribes, endless bitching about Bush and Cheney (to which they had all manner of interesting nicknames) and some of the lamest attempts at humor seen this side of a Kathy Griffin “show”. On occasion, however, there were some rare gems, like the one from a particular DU poster named Magic Rat, who according to him, had his “girlfriend” up in his bedroom, her clothes half-off, when he suddenly decides that taking the tube-bus to Tuna Town wasn’t in the cards that evening…his bewilderment on why she suddenly left was comedy gold.

    Then there was the “guy” who got mad because all the chicks in his office would run out for lunch on Friday to his favorite pizza joint and wouldn’t invite him…or the epic “Liberal Historian & Nighttrain” hook-up, where DU’ers actually pledged gas and motel money via PayPal, only to have good ol’ Nighttrain bail when he figured out that his Dodge Omni probably couldn’t handle Jabba The Historian’s considerable girth. These were some of the better threads, chiseled into the internets for all time.

    But with the coronation of the Teleprompter-in-Chief, these outlets have changed a little…or have they? A quick DUmpster dive this morning revealed a significant number of threads dedicated to prosecution of Bush administration officials related to the “torture” memos. There were a few posts about the flu (and the magnificent way St. Barry is handling the crisis), but there was one that stood out:

    formercia (1000+ posts) http://journals.democraticunderground.com/formercia
    Tue Apr-28-09 07:40 AM
    Original message

    I was threatened again yesterday. They did it by threatening my 8 year old son. They’re such cowards that they sent a boy almost twice his age to do it. he’s still a minor, thus pretty much untouchable.They were sending me a message that they may not be able to get to me directly but my son is fair game.
    We’ve turned into a Third World country where the inmates are in charge of the asylum.

    I had to keep him home from school today because he’s suffering from anxiety. He’s borderline autistic and has enough trouble functioning at school as is, but this just pushes him over the edge. I complained before but nothing gets done.

    Ok…at face value, it’s a fairly reasonable response to someone having their kid bullied, but then again, this is DU…the thread continues:

    HarukaTheTrophyWife (1000+ posts)
    Tue Apr-28-09 07:42 AM
    Response to Original message

    1. Since you know who did it, just call the fucking cops

    formercia (1000+ posts)
    Tue Apr-28-09 07:46 AM
    Response to Reply #1

    3. They won’t do anything. I even complained to the FBI a couple of years ago.

    They’re a bunch of Bush Gang connected Dominionist, Joel’s Army types. Their local gur-preacher is a State Senator who likes to push his weight around.

    Hm. Ok, so we’ve gone from our kid being bullied to the FBI and a state senator being involved. Interesting. But there’s more:

    HarukaTheTrophyWife (1000+ posts)
    Tue Apr-28-09 08:08 AM
    Response to Reply #3

    9. Wait, so this has been going on for years? Why are they doing this to you?

    formercia (1000+ posts)
    Tue Apr-28-09 08:11 AM
    Response to Reply #9

    10. It’s Bush Gang revenge. I screwed with one of Poppy’s operations when I worked at CIA. This has been going on for decades.They can’t attack me directly, so they attack my son.

    Yeah…totally worth the wait, wasn’t it? To recap for those in the cheap seats, what we have here is an anonymous poster on a leftwing whack-job forum who is complaining that their kid is being threatened by teenaged FBI agents, and their state senator (who is also a pastor…gotta get that anti-Christian bias in there too you know), due to some clandestine operation they thwarted during Bush 41’s presidency while they were working for the CIA. To their credit, some of the DUmbasses have the audacity to question our intrepid hero’s veracity, which doesn’t go over too well:

    formercia (1000+ posts)
    Tue Apr-28-09 08:28 AM
    Response to Reply #12

    18. What is the ‘kool-aide’ reference? Are you trying to insinuate that I’m under-medicated? They already tried that attack. The shrinks say I’m ok.
    I do have severe PTSD as a result.

    Looks like IVAW could have a potential spokesperson here! But wait, it gets even more intense:

    formercia (1000+ posts)
    Tue Apr-28-09 08:20 AM
    Response to Reply #15

    16. They have been ‘messing’ with me for decades. I’ve been shot at, poisoned, electrocuted, assaulted. I spent a year and a half in rehab recovering from one of their ‘pranks.’

    Sounds like he’s been to Gitmo. I kid…I’m a kidder. No seriously:

    formercia (1000+ posts)
    Tue Apr-28-09 08:44 AM
    Response to Reply #19

    27. It’s not paranoia. I’ve heard your meme many times. I would have taken offense to it at one time, but I’ve heard it so often, that I just write off such statements as ignorance. This has been going on for decades. It began when Poppy was VP and in charge of the Central America Program.

    I was one of the CIA Officers that worked on the mining of the harbors in Nicaragua program. In January of 1982, I notified my superiors that I felt the program was illegal. Apparently, Poppy took great offense to this.

    My quote:
    “You people are out of your fucking minds.” “When Congress finds out about this, they are going to cut our balls off.”

    This is what I said to my Division Chief, in front of his whole Division. (OTS/SAD)

    Rebubula (481 posts)
    Tue Apr-28-09 08:55 AM
    Response to Reply #27

    39. So…for 27 years the CIA (an organization that routinely kills people in manners that seem natural or simply disappears them) has been pissed at you for transgressions against them?

    Sorry…if this is true (and honestly I doubt it), this (Democratic Underground) is NOT the forum. You should (as another poster mentioned) contact Leon Pannetta’s office (he seems an honorable man) and some of your old CIA friends (you should still have at least one friendly contact there) to get everything on the table.

    If this is true, I apologize and wish you the best at getting out from under these assholes.

    If only Jack Bauer were here…he’d know how to handle this…or Chuck Norris, but since he’s a fundie Repuke, maybe Ward Churchill? I hear Bill Maher is pretty tough as long as he can use his mouth:

    14. Can you move far away? Not worth risking your, or your son’s health.

    formercia (1000+ posts)
    Tue Apr-28-09 08:23 AM
    Response to Reply #14

    17. I’m safest in plain sight. They have too many tentacles to hide from.

    Google ‘hentai’ for more on these wayward tentacles…on second thought, don’t do that.

    And so this is how it goes. These are the folks that can nullify your well informed vote. These are the people who parade around in pink attire demanding peace at all cost. These are the morons who think that the preamble to the Constitution says “generally promote Welfare” instead of “promote the general welfare”. These are the idiots who join the military for “college” and then shit themselves when the Army has the audacity to actually deploy them into harm’s way. They are the ones who would be more than happy to sell out your grandkid’s future as long as they can sit in a women’s studies program for 10 years on your dime…and they all think you’re the one who is the problem. And hey, thanks to Janet Napolitano they have Federal justification for that opinion.

    Which brings us to the point of this rambling mass of whatever…battlefields are no longer limited to far flung shores, or wind swept sand dunes…they’re in your face. They’re in your neighborhoods. They’re in your kid’s school, and more importantly, they’re embedded in the collective psyche of those who command the reins of power. Think of that next time you see our Fearless Leader, his flawlessly vetted speech scrolling on his best pal, the teleprompter and think of this; on a claymore mine, it has printed in large text ‘Front Toward Enemy’. The question is, who has the clacker.

  • Rock Out With Your Glock Out

     

    I like guns.  Virtually any kind too.  I like revolvers, pistols, rifles and shotguns.  I even like blackpowder weapons of nearly every make, model and description.  Truth be told, if I were to hit the lottery or get a fat stimulus check from my pal Barry, next to hiring Van Halen to play at my birthday, I’d probably buy a couple million dollars worth of the damn things.   

    Buying your first gun is a lot like getting your first car, or drinking your first beer; it’s a rite of passage, at least if you happen to live south of the Mason-Dixon Line.  It’s different than when you shoot your first firearm (.22 LR Remington Nylon), mainly because while plinking the crap out of an RC can is fun, nothing beats doing it with YOUR gun.

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  • The Battle Of Miramar Drive

    I remember it like it was yesterday, man.  No…really…I mean it this time.  It truly seems like it was yesterday for me, when  I, like most red-blooded American males who weren’t into showtunes and poetry, enjoyed wargames, elaborately planned and executed within the confines of our backyard.  In almost all cases, these were recreations of some unknown war involving any combination of nations (real or imagined), based on what we could scare up from the bottom of our collective toy boxes.  In the Claymore Defense Forces, it wasn’t uncommon to find HeMan and Battlecat fall into formation with the likes of Lando Calrissian, Cylon centurions and the true backbone of any credible modern fighting force, the ubiquitous Green Army Man. 

    Actual size, mofo!
    Actual size, mofo!

    Green Army Man was the foundation.  You didn’t show up to a neighborhood war without at least 20 or 30 of these plastic warriors in your arsenal.   The backyard warrior ethos dictated that any kid who showed up and tried to draw ranks without Green Army Man in his Nike box, was to be shunned…unless he was the kid who brought all of his dad’s old WWII tank models to the fight.   Green Army Man were commandos, rangers, snipers, sappers, engineers and most importantly, casualties.  It didn’t matter if the dude had a mortar stuck to his leg, or was in a perpetual hand-to-hand bayonet charge, Green Army Man was the shit.  The Real Deal.  He could swarm a foxhole full of Stormtroopers, beat the shit out of Smurfs and then lead the assault past the swingset, flank the opposition near the Strawberry Shortcake bicycle and strike deep into the enemy cinderblock bunker.  And while GI JOE gets all the props for being a “real American hero”, with his flocked beard and “Kung Fu Grip”,  the 1970’s Joe looked like he’d be more at home at a Village People concert than putting imaginary rounds into Stretch Armstrong’s jelly-filled guts.  No…it was Green Army Man who was boots on ground, kicking the tan army’s ass all the way back to the flower beds where they effin’ belonged. 

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