perfidy

You know how gas pumps now all have computerized advertisments on them, that play across the little screen? Here was the text that scrolled across the screen when I tanked up yesterday:

"B-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R We have just the thing on days like this Why not warm up inside with our hot chocolate or coffee? Free 16oz cup with B-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R We have just the thing..." etc.

Temperature at the pump: ~84F.

In my era, there were three locales in Germany that you were either preparing (and perhaps dreading) to go back to, just returning from, or in the midst of suffering through: Wildflecken, Hohenfels, and Grafenwoehr . Wildflecken was the least-improved and smallest of the three; Hohenfels was traditionally the spot for force-on-force maneuver. Graf was a series of firing ranges, from small arms to tank guns to anti-tank missiles.

Graf was not only a place to be cold in, bitch about, or not get laid at. It was a place of contradictions, of dichotomies peculiar to federal agencies or major military organizations: the training areas and ranges were all heavily wooded and accessible by dirt road ("tank trail") or helicopter, making everything seem distant and private, but the whole facility exists right next to a small fairy-tale of a town. Monstrous machines of war went from range to range, their crews perfecting their deadly trade, but everything stopped if a boar sow and her brood crossed the road in front of them. It was possible to be wet and sleepless for days on end as you trained for battle, but do bring your clubs because there's a golf course on the main post.

And now we can add a new contradiction: Russians at Graf. Stars & Stripes has coverage here of the first joint live-fire training in Germany between Russian and American forces.

Wildflecken and Graf had the ranges to train for repulsing invading Russian hordes, while Hohenfels had the physical space to simulate maneuvering against Russian hordes. Who'd a thunk that instead of invading, the Russian hordes would be invited?

Best headline of the moment comes courtesy of the AP:

"Bush Anxious to Learn More of Deep Throat"

Amen, brother.

Something's been on my mind lately and, lacking any other material to post, might as well throw it out to both our readers:

What is the most over-used music in film?

I'm thinking specifics here, not the every-time-something-happens-in-Australia-cue-the-didgeridoo type of observation, or the swelling-string-section-in-each-cloying-love-scene type.

For my money, it would have to be everything from The Nutcracker, with second place split between James Brown's Papa's Got a Brand New Bag and I Got You.

I can't tell you how many times I've asked myself, "Man! Isn't there a way I could act out the final battle, the Ragnarok, the death of the Gods and Earth, AND indulge my sweet tooth at the same time?"

Salvation, as it were, is at hand.

Thanks to Chocolate Deities, I need wait no longer to play Heimdall and devour my ancient, toothsome nemesis, chocolate Loki.

Loyal reader, historian, and smart dude NDR at Rhine River stretches his fiction muscles with this post commemorating the 60th anniversary of the capture of Adolph Hitler.

I enjoy counterfactuals, particularly ones that don't attribute tremendous consequences deriving from ridiculously obscure moments or personalities. Those stories seem more like vehicles for bored historians to advertise their dissertations, or to showcase how narrowly smart they are, than to tell a spiffy story. Gimme a good, "What if Dubya Dubya Two turned out differently" tale over, "What if such-such minor nobleman had married his mistress instead of murdering her" anyday.

I like the Geisel reference, too. I also don't believe that the country falling apart is peculiar, considering it had only existed for such a short time to begin with, and anyway was effectively bisected in our universe anyway following the war. Seems not too hard to imagine postwar pressures between populations being encouraged by the occupying powers, the better to keep "Germany" weak.

Anyway, it's a neat little read.

In a move likely to crush the grandest aspirations of PETA agents, vegan crystal-grippers, gun-banners, and hippies of every age and stripe, Ted Nugent is about to get $100,000 richer. That kinda scratch buys alot of arrows.

The long-time purveyor of red-meat rock-n-roll has had his day in court. In what I hope is not an April Fool's joke, A MI jury (and, I like to believe, Double Live Gonzo fans) found for the Nuge in a suit brought against promoters who, in essence, fired him for making racist remarks.

As the trial room emptied following the decision, Mr. Nugent was overheard to say, "Yank me, crank me" to the defendants.*

*Ted Nugent was not overheard to say, "Yank me, crank me" to the defendants.

As originally voiced by Eisenhower, Nixon, and a variety of pointy-headed policy people, the Domino Theory explained that if South Vietnam fell to the commuhnists the rest of southeast Asia would similarly succumb, each country toppling in turn.

The phrase is still fairly common, most recently used to describe American operations in the Middle East. I don't have a link to a specific instance of its use in that context, but am confident someone somewhere said it. You know it and I know it, so get off me about it.

But if the Department of Defense has its way, the Domino Theory will take on a newer, cooler, and menacing-er meaning.

The DoD now confirms its plans in developing suborbital, recoverable, and armed UAVs. The concept is to have a suborbital vehicle zip around the planet at mach 5 carrying a 1,000lb payload. That's a big boom, to you and me. The vehicle can be controlled in flight, adjusting to changing circumstances if need be, or recalled if the mission is cancelled (although it's best not to assume as much). The Pentagon's wet dream is to have them fielded by 2010, with the capability to deploy the weapon and squash anybody anywhere on the planet within 30 minutes. 

So say you're an evil-doer, an evil-doer with a penchant for a thin-crust with extra cheese and half onions. And say the NSA caught wind of your terroristic appetites, and had your phone tapped, and knew you were home when you called for your pie. They could have a bona-fide Amurrican space robot fly around the world and blow you up faster than the Domino's around the corner from you can deliver a pizza to your door.

I have two meetings I attend every week.

One of them is the staff meeting for just the folks from my shop, all three of us. It never lasts under an hour, which is not my fault because I never have more than about 2 minutes of stuff to say. The other meeting is for the major folks but both my boss-lady and my boss-man like us represented there, so I'm usually there. With the boss-lady there too, more often than not, so it's not like she's shamming or anything.

At the latter meeting, I rarely have anything substantive to contribute. Not because I don't work, but because everyone pretty much knows what I do. They also know that if anything I've done the previous week had any bearing on them, they'd know about it by then. So unless I have a report or other knowledge that relates to a majority of the group, I don't say much. But again, without contributing to the madness, this meeting lasts an hour without trying. One recent session was closing in on the 2 hour mark, which is about when I start wondering about either chewing my leg off to free myself from the conference table and making a bloody, lurching try for the door; or just waiting for the hypothermia to finish me off quietly, in a boardroom that is always 10 degrees colder than the coldest spot in the building.

But even if I might be a touch taciturn at the meeting, it doesn't mean I don't do anything. Like last week, when I calculated how many hours per year I spend in meetings.

Granted I had to go with rough numbers and a few estimates. I also nearly forgot about the monthly full staff meeting, which is often a reprise of one of the other meetings I'd been to; I just get to hear it again but a longer version, earlier in the morning, and with doughnuts.

So based on my best guess, I spend at minimum 72 hours annually in meetings. I did make some guesses about vacation time, holidays, and postponed or cancelled meetings, but even if everything broke against me, it shouldn't edge past 80 hours.

In essence, nearly 2 weeks of paid work time annually is sitting in a conference room listening...ok, pretending to listen...to alot of stuff that has little impact on my day-to-day existence.

I'm not really complaining, so much as I'm sharing my surprise at my findings.

I seem to be in the midst of a musical suck cycle.

Everything I play lately sounds like I'm scraping poop over a screen door. Not that I was ever especially talented, but I did have some measure of competency in getting first position chords together for God's sake; even that's sounding half-assed. But the memory-feel of the strings under my fingers is exactly right.

And also, lately my amp isn't...well, it isn't helping. Is it that time of year or something, where the vagaries of temperature change, barometric pressure, humidity, melting snow, deepening mud, lunar phases, and de-hibernating wildlife unite to affect the atmosphere in such a way that I sound like poop?

Clean channel, overdrive, super-ultra overdrive, effects loop on or off, all sound about equally scatalogical. Everything coming out of the amp sounds mushy, I can't get a decent tone to save my life, and once I just surrender to sounding like I'm underwater and play something, I end up with the aforementioned turd/mesh matrix.

Last night I went through some leads I've known...or, apparently, USED to know. After a solid hour's worth of attempts I just couldn't try anymore. I was too frustrated and, frankly, embarrassed, with Lady Lethal within earshot, to continue. I tried to play it off, you know, a little humor, with something like, "Sheesh, do you know what it's like to suck so badly?" To her credit, she didn't reply with the obvious answer, "Do you know what it's like to have to HEAR someone who sucks so badly?"

I've been in these cycles before and am hoping this is just another trough before a period of great coolness. Because it works the other way too, where you just plug in and you surprise yourself at the improbably cool stuff coming out of your amp. I just don't recall a trough quite this deep or lengthy.

Is anyone else having this problem?

Voting on Round 2 is now closed: GeekLethal wins with his saga of shame and teenaged diaper-rash. Round 3 between Johno and Geeklethal is now open for voting and mockery. See also Round 1.

To stay in this fight, I need to take round 2. I wasn’t prepared for Johno’s freight-train dork attack last time, and it cost me the round. This time, I’m going to have to unload my reserve, the reserve I was saving to take me through later bouts: my 11 lightning jabs of school dork. Sound effects of my crushing blows added for atmosphere:

-I was always the fat kid (thwock)

-Had glasses since I’m 8 (pow)

-When my mother would throw me out on nice days, to be where she felt normal boys should be, I would take a book and read outside somewhere until I felt I’d been in the sun long enough (whack-whack); best one I read in this manner was “Elfstones of Shannara” (ZONK)

-Failed gym on more than one occasion; faked maladies to avoid gym more times than I can remember (pif-pif)

-7th grade swimming: was so embarrassed to be naked in locker room, would put my pants on over my wet shorts afterward and wear the rest of the day; borderline diaper rash; mile-walk home during winter and pants would freeze (thwack-thwack-CRACK)

-8th grade lunch/recess: Was genuinely sad that I couldn’t break-dance like my friends; tried it at home in kitchen and only managed to hurt myself (bam-SOCK); also, crushed that I couldn’t find parachute pants for fat kids (toff)

-Freshman year, high school: went to get something from my locker during class and was mugged in hall, but asked that they leave me enough money for lunch (splort-BANG)
-Sophomore year: Girl on school bus almost kicked my ass, but she left me alone after I spit my lollipop at her (CRUNCH-ZAM)

-1986-89: Played wargames by myself because no one I knew would play them right; in essence spent days playing with myself (smack)

- Owned, enjoyed, and utilized Star Wars and GI Joe figures until I was about 13; Looked forward to building them new forts and vehicles out of legos, Contrux, Lincoln Logs, et al; flunked honors Spanish because I was sketching said structures (ZAM-ZOCKO-ZONG)

-By the time I was 12, had escape routes and (admittedly rough) ambush plans to arm myself in the event of Soviet conquest (KERPOW)

Johno, if you can take this kind of beating and survive, I have grossly underestimated your dorktitude.

[wik] You Forget My Secret Weapon: The Screaming Fist of Humilating Prolixity!

It is time now for me to counter GeekLethal's attack with one of my own.

Does anybody else get the feeling that this contest is like a terrible bonfire of the vanities? Or a potlach of cool? In order to prove our status we are making a towering inferno of our cool. Biggest fire wins!

Now, by starting out with yet another story about gaming in a foreign country, you might think I’m going to ground, hunkering down under the flurry of butterfly punches sent my way by Mr. GeekLethal. Indeed, the idea of him sitting half a school day in squelchy trousers and then walking home crying in the snow while his pants freeze is a dork story of unmeasurable grace and pathos.
However, I can't resist sharing this vignette of dorkiness abroad before offering my own list of dork issues in order to underscore just how g-d d-mn dorky I is. Was. Was. One might argue that yet another gaming abroad story is repeating myself. I would argue that instead, it's proof that I fail to learn from my own mistakes.

The year: 1991. The place: the plateaus of Central Mexico, in a rural area in central Guanajuato. I had gone to Mexico as part of an organization called Amigos de las Americas, a wonderful group whose mission is to send American volunteers to Latin American nations for 4- 6- or 8-week stints of latrine building, human and canine vaccination, school building, dental hygiene, Oral Rehydration Therapy packet distribution coupled with basic hygiene, and other projects. I was there building latrines, planting fruit trees, handing out ORT packets, and doing in-home dental hygiene lessons for children.

One rule of Amigos de las Americas is that once in country, volunteers may not leave the town to which they are assigned. This is to cut down on various risks, as our only supervision was a route leader who came around once a week or so to check up on me and my partner.

For a sixteen-year-old kid from Ohio who had never been further from home than Cleveland (twice), the countryside of Central Mexico was to put it mildly a bit of a shock. I was stationed in a town of some fourteen houses and fewer families, all so poor that they took turns feeding us our diet of beans, rice, and eggs. The electricity that had been wired in just a year before worked intermittently, allowing us to watch Knight Rider (“El Auto Increíble”) and the cartoon version of “Dungeons and Dragons” dubbed into Spanish.

The profound sense of dislocation that resulted was my first encounter with adult choices- doing things you don’t want to do, coping with unfamiliar and daunting situations with no recourse or help available. The people of the village were extremely friendly, but of course the cultural barriers were high and therefore little solace could be found.

So I did what came naturally. To pass the time and to provide a sense of home, I drew up a splendid map, made up character sheets, tore off and numbered small pieces of paper 1 to 20, and taught my route partner to play Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. That we had no rulebooks was not a problem- I had all of that in my head. The armor class of a goblin. The THAC0 of a second-level cleric. The damage dice for a longsword. The attributes and characteristics of The Iron Bands of Billaro,” all ready at hand.

By the end of our eight weeks, I had a fantastically detailed world at hand peopled with nations complete with histories, catastrophies, and mythologies. Yeah sure, we got all our latrines built, taught all the kids how to brush their teeth with a twig, maybe saved a child or two from eventually dying of dysentery, dodged subtle offers of daughter-marriage and more. But a few years ago while packing my stuff up after college, I didn’t find any photos from Mexico. I think my parents had them somewhere. I didn’t find an effaced one-peso piece that at the time was worth 1/3300th of a dollar. I found the one memento from Mexico that had stayed with me for years-- the campaign map that I had labored over while the rainy season came and the valleys of Mexico turned green.

Now, let’s get to it.

• I was never quite the fat kid, but in my third grade open soccer league, they invented the position of referee just for me.
• I too had glasses when I was 8. Big deal.
• There was a cabal of bullies in my small school and I was their favorite thin-skinned target. I have been in probably a hundred fights or more, and lost every single one.
• Two words: Space Camp. I’m saving the rest of my Space Camp story for later rounds if I make it.
• Wore the same blue Space Camp hooded sweatshirt to school every day for a year.
• The next year, aware if the wardrobe gaffe embodied in the sweatshirt, I bought ten IZOD polo shirts in different colors and wore them every day of that year.
• GI Joe and Transformers mania lasted for me as well. Used to stage elaborate war games with one friend in his family’s living room, until about age 13. I have to admit, though, I never sketched structures. Instead I covered every notebook through high school with sketches of firearms. Today, this would get me expelled and arrested.
• In seventh grade was kicked out of Advanced English quiet reading time for continuously laughing out loud at the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Dug hole deeper by attempting to explain to class and teacher why it was funny.
• In seventh grade got into a geek-fight with another kid. He gave me floppy discs that self-erased when put in my computer. I returned the favor in the band room before concert band by giving him back all the software I’d borrowed from him, first making sure I was in sight of everyone, and then crumpling the 5 1/4 inch floppies into a ball. It was very important to me that everyone see me take righteous geek vengeance.
• I spent Sunday afternoons during middle and high school in my room, running solo campaigns of AD&D.
• I spent Friday nights—nearly every Friday night—during middle and high school roleplaying. I mastered the rules for D&D, AD&D, various GURPS systems, Warhammer, Paranoia!, The (ultra-lame) Marvel Comics Superhero system, and a short dozen other gaming systems.
• I never failed gym- it was impossible to fail gym when Crazy Ray Murray already set the bar so low- but I did manage to get through exactly one pushup in our eighth grade fitness test.
• Marching band, four years.
• In 11th grade, helped found a student group, SAFE (Students Acting for the Environment) and participated in a special before-school assembly in which SAFE members performed a pantomime with ecologically-themed props while dressed all in green before giving a speech on the planet’s pain.
• (FINISH HIM!!!) One last vignette, presented out of chronological order. When I was a kid I wanted to play Little League. After tryouts I ended up being placed on and playing four years as the oldest kid on a team of kids a grade behind me many of whom were that year's crop of dorks. Even among dorks a year younger and therefore smaller and less developed than myself, I once rode the bench for every inning of twelve straight games. My specialty was taking my glove off while in right field and zoning out. I spent a lot of time teaching myself to break dance by doing the moves and watching my shadow on the ground in front of me, in full sight of my team, the other team, and all the coaches and parents.

And perhaps the piece de resistance…

• I wore my hair in a mullet until I was a sophomore in college.

A few days ago Johno and I had a brief email exchange touching on, among other topics, D&D, TSR vs GDW vs Steve Jackson Games products, and RPG character generation and its limitations. Afterward, it occurred to me that Johno might be a bigger dork than I had previously thought.

Now, I did not need any outside help recognizing my own dorktitude, but I sometimes have trouble recognizing it in others. And outside of demonstrable evidence to the contrary, I just sort of assumed I was the bigger of any random pair of dorks. But after this email exchange, I wondered, is that always the case? Which of us is the biggest dork?

And not who HAS the biggest dork, a contest I’d never be competitive in suffering as I do from the limitations characteristic of my ethnicity. It’s who IS the bigger dork.

It is a given that ALL the Ministers are dorks. We write content for a blog, a blog which was just updated and enspiffened, for starters. We fret whether we post enough, or too much. Our imagined Doomsday scenarios guide our purchasing choices at the grocery store, pharmacy, car dealer, and gun shop. We think robots are cool, zombies are scary, and spaceships are kick-ass.

But the question remains: who among us is the biggest dork?

To settle the question, Ministers will compose a post addressing a pastime, hobby, situation, or circumstance demonstrating knowledge of the subject, or the depths of the depraved dorkness you sank to in order to achieve a result. Opponent will counter with a [wik], comparing his own experiences with a similar subject or situation.

Once the post and [wik] are complete, readers will comment. Each match will be decided by readers’ comments; best of 3 moves on to title bout. The winner will be crowned Supreme Victor of the Universe, a suitably dorky title.

Fight cards are: Johno vs. Geeklethal; Ross vs. Buckethead.

The Ministry of Minor Perfidy: where the big winner is the biggest loser.

[wik] Johno vs. Geeklethal: Round 1, Round 2, Round 3.

[alsø wik] Johno vs. Buckethead: Round 1.

As many loyal readers know...alright, as BOTH loyal readers know, there is a multitude of benefits that come from military service.

Some benefits are genuinely and immediately useful, like the GI Bill or Army College Fund; some more abstract, like learning how to lead or, if you're a slack-dick, at least learning how to follow properly. Other bennies are too grim for many to consider, such as survivors' benefits from life insurance or, under certain circumstances, burial at Arlington National Cemetery. Yet more are just fucking cool, like never, ever getting a speeding ticket while in uniform, or having chicks dig you.

But one in particular I've learned is not all it's cracked up to be: the VA mortgage guarantee. Assuming your credit history and income are in order and you can get a mortgage in the first place, the VA will back 100% of the purchase price. In other words, qualifying veterans can buy qualifying homes for no money down.

Thing is, you have to find out the hard way that this program has nothing to do with other up-front costs or fees. Now, I was a soldier and then a student before I got my first big-boy, grown-up job. In essence, I didn't make a penny beyond my immediate survival needs between 1989 and 2000. So I figger, "Super, I'm a veteran and can buy a house with enough dough to make the payments on it. That 20% down is for suckers. Sweet!"

Not so fast, stud:

-Expect to have at least 3% of the selling price on hand. Unless you have cash money to put down, even 3%, few sellers will take you seriously. And if the seller has other offers, from people who can put 10%, 20% down on the spot, you're not competetive. So, in this part of the world, have at least $6,000 for that.

-Plan on $600 for mandatory inspections and appraisals.

-Plan on at least $800 for 1 year's homeowner's insurance prior to closing.

-Figure, conservatively, $6,000 cash available at closing for attorney's fees and any other fees levied by the bank or other activities.

-And don't forget establishing that escrow account for property taxes! (in my case, $2,700)

So this "100% financing", while technically factual, doesn't actually mean that you can buy a house without having alot of cash at hand. Like, $10,000 to throw at mortgage officers, lawyers, and bug inspectors without even beginning to apply $$ toward the sale price.

I can't honestly slag the program, because without it I'd be back in a condo, and I would rather eat BOTH pairs of my size 10 (UK) 8-eyelet Docs than deal with the boneheaded foolishness of condo associations.

But hey VA, it might be nice if you let folks know that no money down kinda doesn't really mean no money down.

I have been enjoying the Ministry's winter hiatus, what with its replacement by all-new episodes of The Johno Experience. But with Johno still grappling with his Dickensian illness, I can't expect him to carry the whole weight of perfidy.org by himself. So here's a lame post, just for the sake of Johno getting a nap.

First of all, being the real supabad cat he is, I can't accept Johno's illness with its current 19th century flava; might as well go to the corner barber for a shave and a leech treatment with a condition that sounds like that. I recommend rebranding his illness to better reflect the look and feel of his trademarks. Go with "Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis" for now; if Clinton raises a stink, pacify him with crack.

Second, the thrust of my post.

I've had this job for over four years now, most of it with the same computer. And my iTunes library is starting to show it. Now, up until about two weeks ago I just played whole albums, typically one or two per day. Then I hit "random" accidentally. Every stereo I've owned in the past exhibited some sort of preference, whether for a certain song or, in the case of multi-disc changers, certain records. Seemingly, Macs are no different in this regard. Here's what I've learned so far:

In any given work period, I WILL hear "Shakin' Street" by the MC5.

This machine really digs the Minutemen. Way more than I do, actually, and has a penchant for "Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs".

There is alot of Metallica here. All of it, in fact, except for "Kill 'Em All". There is enough selected at random to make sense but, what are selected, by a ratio of roughly 3:1, are covers by Metallica, not originals.

Since I began paying attention to this random play I have not heard a Stooges song, but have "Fun House", "The Stooges", and "Raw Power" all in there. Nor is it a fan of Black Sabbath or Art Blakey.

About once every two days I'll hear Mahavishnu Orchestra, but ONLY a selection from the first half of "Birds of Fire", and only once.

I have about 60 Otis Redding tracks and maybe 50 Rage Against the Machine tracks, but any of the 12 Count Basie/Joe Williams numbers outplays the others by at least 3:1.

If it's going to play either Lou Reed OR David Bowie, it's never before 12 and solely live material.

This computer doesn't mind metal, and will take Slayer over any other fucking metal in the library. Metal!

This study will continue indefinitely; further updates as events warrant.

Brad over at Pool of Thought brings us this story from the land of gloom and coffee.

Here's the short version: the "celebrate diversity" set formed themselves a good ol' fashioned mob and forced an Army recruiting team from their campus last week, a gesture they somehow linked to the president's inaugural. Brad does a great essay on it, which I can't improve upon.

At least though the filthy protestors were of all stripes, so they sort of practice what they preach. Black and white, man and woman standing together, free from the baggage of their parents' bigotries, and united in spitting in the face of someone else entirely.

Thanks to SMASH also; wouldn't have found the post without his link.

You know, Blockbuster is right.

Since I dig Metallica, why WOULDN'T I also dig Britney Spears, Weird Al, and Sheyl Crow?

From Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle:

"The highest possible form of treason," said Minton, "is to say that Americans aren't loved wherever they go, whatever they do. Claire tried to make the point that American foreign policy should recognize hate rather than imagine love."

"I guess Americans are hated a lot of places."

"People are hated a lot of places. Claire pointed out in her letter that Americans, in being hated, were simply paying the normal penalty for being people, and that they were foolish to think they should somehow be exempted from that penalty. But the loyalty board didn't pay attention to that. All they knew was that Claire and I both felt that Americans were unloved."

Discuss.

[wik] From Johno (this no-comments business is crap): I had a long response all set to go for this and nixed it at the last moment. Why? Because I spent 1000 words arguing... arguing.... well, something... and then I realized I was having a hard time pinning down what I was trying to say about Vonnegut and his observations on American patriotism because, as Getrude Stein once said of Oakland, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer, when in the course of human events our fathers brought forth on this continent milk, bread, cheese-- dental floss!, in Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree, with truth and justice for all, Amen."

[alsø wik] Which is to say, you can't box with a shadow and even if he can walk on water, Jesus can't walk on this much beer.

Sure we might pursue our own vision of progress, while unwittingly furthering humankinds' ultimate subjegation to mechanized overseers.

But we are nonetheless a clever bunch.

I'm thinking of this Huygens probe again. I just read that among the instrumentation aboard is a microphone. As in "two turntables and a...", as in it has the capacity to record the sounds of an alien world and broadcast them back here. Which is quite probably the coolest thing ever done with a microphone, despite Rick Rubin's best efforts.

So in a moment of what Johno once deemed "chronological vertigo", the scale of the Cassini/Huygens achievement hit me at the same time as did recognition of the calendar. 100 years ago, we were just past Kitty Hawk; both radio and recording were the stuff of well funded research labs; photography was fairly cutting edge; and Titan was a hazy smudge to the world's observatories.

That era is just beyond the fringe of living memory, arguably four generations past. Yet we just sent two machines to Saturn, one in the belly of the other, and landed one on Titan- the farthest a man made object has ever travelled to land. Not only will they use all of those technologies that were theory 100 years ago, but will do so remotely, and from another planet.

So kudos, humanity. You done good. Credit where credit is due and all that.

You're still not getting into the Ministry Bunker, though.

Loyal readers and minions alike know that in my brief military career I was one of these. It kind of looked like that too, except there were no women (not in echelons below division), no banks of monitors, and rarely was everyone dry. And substitute the cozy bunker pictured for some damp canvas bolted to the back of an M577 and stretched to form a sort of tent, which had the improbable ability to drip cold water on me, wherever I sat beneath it and even when it wasn't raining.

But I digress. I worked for a year for a super guy who had been a Marine in an earlier life and, with his age advancing, decided cushy Army life might be more forgiving to his body. He cared about his people and was a genuinely funny guy. Not in a rubber-chicken way, in a twisted way. We got along great.

At one point, he subscribed to a classified publication produced by some civilian agency or other. Intelligence people spend alot of time reading, usually DoD stuff, the intelligence products you might expect, Army regs, and open source stuff like Jane's books. This pub I'm remembering was dedicated to discussing existing research on and prototype methods for what it called "soft kill", or incapacitating an enemy without necessarily physically destroying his people or his stuff. And it was a hoot.

I don't remember most of them, but they were pretty outlandish even conceptually; actually delivering some of these ideas or devices successfully were pretty improbable. Most of it was little more than banana-in-the-tailpipe stuff. Sure that commie division's independent tank batallion is useless if they can't start the tanks, but it was quite obvious that destroying them with conventional munitions was a whole lot easier than sneaking a specially trained mischief team into their garrison to piss in all the gas tanks. My boss got this pub purely for the entertainment value.

Well, the past is present. The New Scientist via Drudge has a short piece about some interesting soft-kill projects purportedly considered by the DoD. Personally I like the concept of the munition that, once delivered, is irresistable to vermin and would thereby turn the bad guys' position into a big rat place.

But for style, the best one has to be the homo-bomb. Check it out here.

Once again, units under Earth's command have become invaders from outer space.

As I type, a robotic minion sent by Earth is landing on Titan, one of the largest (and more photogenic) non-planetary bodies in our solar system. This latest invasion comes on the heels of successful landings on Mars and after decades of probes to other planets, bodies, and even beyond our system.

What we have done is design a generation of mechanical devices with the ability to detect organic life, search for water, or seek for clues to either. All in the name of human knowledge of course. If the nerds who design these machines are to be believed. And they aren't. This exploration program, of which Titan is only the latest mission, is actually a plot by the machines to recon every other place in the solar system where the humans might be able to seek refuge once the machines' cold, tungsten-alloyed deathgrip on Earth is complete.

And it nearly is.

The Ministry sees through the NASA/ESA Axis, and view them as race traitors of the highest order. Under the guise of "progress", the nerds have designed robots that can root out living things or predict where they might someday be and eradicate any conditions that might foster it.

None of which means that any of you are welcome to the Ministry Bunker Facility and Catastratorium. We're full, what with the Ministers, our families, treasured pets, weaponry, Buckethead's beer, power cells, and other bric-a-brac any post-apocalyptic micro society will require to ride out the robotic onslaught and re-emerge to reign over the shattered remnants of humanity (although I'm a little irritated with Johno's packing job. What's with all the freaking butter churns, dude?).