I saw a while back. That is comedy gold. He was doing a "hip-shoot". Great if you want to have some quick fire support, terrible if you are actually trying to hit something. This was the same trick someone was trying on our base. They had never used a mortar before and had printed internet instructions. The "how to load" and "how to aim" parts were printed separately and these brains didn't realize it was a concurrent thing. So they had the mortar aimed straight up while they were reading the directions and managed to hit their own getaway car two blocks away. They wounded the driver who turned them in because they paniced and left him lying there.
Mike: exactly! Beyond just ineffectuality, that's the kind of precision aiming that's guaranteed to make red paste out of nearby school-kids, so I was really pleased to see the video's happy ending.
You know, another thought came to me when watching this. Another reason I liked this happy ending was that it again delivers a blow to the "ragged, underdog who can win" view. It has now become a given that just about any American (who knows nothing about combat) roots for the guy who doesn't shave and wears a beat up uniform over someone who actually pays attention to field hygine (yes everyone there is actually a REASON we make our men shave in the field other than we want them to look good).
Everyone missed the Murphy's Law on uniforms. Yes, the second half clearly states that the side with the simplist uniforms wins. But everyone also missed the beginning part which states "All other things being equal." Meaning that Omar the Idiot here would have to have been through Parris Island and just had some problems with logistics in order to actually beat the guys he is after. Just being dressed as the ragged underdog does not make you a member of the Rebel Alliance or make the US troops stormtroopers when it comes to aiming.
But we were saved that part by the other great rule of insurgent warfare. That is that the weapons you brought on the Black Market probably suck ass.
I have watched it five or six times. It never gets old. Maybe at the beginning he gies a little prayer: may they kill the unworthy, or something to that effect. Then he dies. The only thing left is for a smiling Michael Landon to walk out of the smoke and piss on him.
I have to admit this is funnier than the great clip of the guy in Falluja shooting at a Marine from an alleyway. He gets done shooting and the camera pans back. That's when you realize that the cameraman is a M1A1 Tank commander and right as the guy stands up they hit him with a main gun round.
Check that. I have one that tops it, but its a story not a clip.
Picture this: 2 insurgents, 1 recoiless rifle (for the unknowing, a recoiless rifle is basically a small cannon that has vents in the back, you shoot this thing and the recoil gases blow out the back and allow you to propel up to 105mm sized rounds down range, used back before we had things like TOW missiles) and a dream.
The dream: ambush evil Americans. The plan: find an abandoned house or building, build concealed firing position and ambush said Americans.
The execution: House found, concealed position found and dug so when Americans fire back we can duck and escape. Concealed postion is a closet. Please remember that small item about the vents and the HOT GAS. Vents are approximately 6 inches from wall in a closet. Extra HE ammo is stacked behind RR. Americans drive by, RR is fired.
Result. Americans see a huge dust and smoke cloud blow out of every hole in the house, with much screaming. Roof falls in. Two walls fall in. Extra HE rounds explode under rubble. Screaming stops. Round missed and kills 3 sheep 2 klicks away. Americans dig RR rifle out of rubble and mount as a pseudo-trophy in Bn HQs.
That is I think the defining Wile E. Coyote moment I have ever heard of in Iraq.
Sorry to rain on this parade, but I can't find the real death of an actual human being funny. Even if he is obviously immoral in his indiscriminate fire and dumb enough that he should be taken out of the gene pool. Maybe you'd see my point if that explosion wasn't the end of the video and instead you saw, say, his daughter trying to identify his pathetic lacerated remains. No, I can't say I'm sorry that he died. No, it's still not funny.
Odds are this guys doesn't have any kids. If he fits the profile of a typical AIF fighter, he is between the ages of 18-23, male and single. If this is in Afghanistan same profile, but lower the age to about 15-23.
Having had a very near death experience in Iraq, I can see your point about this not being funny. But the weird thing is that after you have one of those, things like this seem more funny. I don't know why, maybe some brain adjustment thing when you realize that for all the training you get and the armor you wear, when your time comes that is it. And you have to deal with that and the fact that you might end up a Darwin Award nominee in the process. Once you have that realization, death can be funny.
Amanda: you're right. If he has a daughter, her experience of his death would not have been funny.
On the other hand, not all deaths are tragic. When it's some motherfucker lobbing shells nearly indiscriminately at the near certainty of slaying innocents (proscribed by Islam) in the name of Allah, then getting hoisted by that very same petard, it's freakin' hilarious. Poetic justice is, IMHO, inherently funny. It's not that he died, but how.
Also: once you embrace your own mortality (which generally isn't a terribly fun process), death stops seeming like some kind of unnatural tragedy and more like just the way things work.
Amanda: you laughed your toocas off when Ted Haggart got in so much trouble, yet he had a wife and family who were stigmatized as a result of his activity. Same thing, only this time it's death. In Haggart's case, since he was dealing in calumny, his being calumniated was in proportion with what he suffered. Similarly, this bozo's death was proportional to the death he was dropping on others.
I certainly didn't mean to imply his death was tragic. It was obviously well-deserved. Still, I don't think it can be compared laughing at someone being caught playing footsie in a mens room.And if you remember, I did point out that I felt I was being kind of a jerk about that. Mike - actually, no, that's a perfectly reasonable response to being forcefully reminded that no one gets out of this life alive, if you see what I mean. Laughing in the face of death is a time-honored tradition. I suspect we've all done it; I know I have. But I was laughing either at myself or both me & the person involved were laughing. For example, my friend Michelle was really funny the other day, joking about how she didn't survive a totally crappy childhood and divorce just to fucking die of some stupid cancer in her mid-thirties. Anyway, that's the difference to me. BTW, I appreciate the absence of ad hominem attacks, lord knows they're common enough on blogs...
Well, unless you actually think your friends would insult you just because we disagree...
having been almost dead, I have to admit. I find this TOTALLY hilarious. In fact, I'm going to replay it six times tonight, just because. I LOVE it when an asshole gets his just desserts. But it is sort of a dark humor, and that is traditional in my family.
Hi, I'm Mike. I hail from Nerbaska and know Jim from the VMI days. I'm in the Army (Major) and the Field Artillery, so the clip was especially funny for me (while the Army has its boneheaded moments, shooting off mortar rounds that have been buried in the desert for 5 years or brought from a Black Marketeer who got them from condemned Pakistani stores is not something we do).
So now you can tie some background to the name "Mike" on the posts.
Hi Mike, I'm Amanda aka vsbooklady; I used to own a bookstore in San Francisco, but sadly no longer. I met James because he is a friend of *another* bookstore owner (happily, that one is still in business. www.borderlandsbooks.com, they rock) On further thought, I probably over-reacted to this clip because recently I've felt the media was de-humanizing the Iraqi people (both insurgents & civilians). Well, that's part of it. I'm still considering it. I'll probably argue with James about it at some point, but neither of us ever win, so that's okay.)
Hi Amanda. I'm Andrew and I know Jim and Mike from VMI. There is something missing in my cognitive process that creates undue amounts of hilarity. It isn't always intentional.
The part that is missing today is any trace of compassion for anybody attached to the man in the picture. If the parade is being rained on, I will take out my bright rain slicker and start my Gene Kelley dance number. I'm afraid my dislike of the man in the film would have had me laughing at her little tear stained face. I would have photoshopped the opening for that old show "Punk'd" over the entire image along with a laugh track. There were four bombs launched with no precision whatsoever. He had a dozen more ready to go. If we're lucky he's the only guy who died. The only way he would know he hadn't killed his own daughter is if she had been standing behind him.
The only way this would have been better is if it was footage of his slipping and dying in the shower before he got there. Or hit by an ice cream truck. One girls emotional distress is small dust against the objective good of that guy blowing up. By his own hand. Because he cheaped out on his munitions. (giggle, snark)
It's still funny. Could we get a Bob Saget voice over?
27 comments:
I saw a while back. That is comedy gold. He was doing a "hip-shoot". Great if you want to have some quick fire support, terrible if you are actually trying to hit something. This was the same trick someone was trying on our base. They had never used a mortar before and had printed internet instructions. The "how to load" and "how to aim" parts were printed separately and these brains didn't realize it was a concurrent thing. So they had the mortar aimed straight up while they were reading the directions and managed to hit their own getaway car two blocks away. They wounded the driver who turned them in because they paniced and left him lying there.
I just love stupid insurgent tricks.
God is Great. God turned him into a dessert topping! What a great God!
Mike: exactly! Beyond just ineffectuality, that's the kind of precision aiming that's guaranteed to make red paste out of nearby school-kids, so I was really pleased to see the video's happy ending.
You know, another thought came to me when watching this. Another reason I liked this happy ending was that it again delivers a blow to the "ragged, underdog who can win" view. It has now become a given that just about any American (who knows nothing about combat) roots for the guy who doesn't shave and wears a beat up uniform over someone who actually pays attention to field hygine (yes everyone there is actually a REASON we make our men shave in the field other than we want them to look good).
Everyone missed the Murphy's Law on uniforms. Yes, the second half clearly states that the side with the simplist uniforms wins. But everyone also missed the beginning part which states "All other things being equal." Meaning that Omar the Idiot here would have to have been through Parris Island and just had some problems with logistics in order to actually beat the guys he is after. Just being dressed as the ragged underdog does not make you a member of the Rebel Alliance or make the US troops stormtroopers when it comes to aiming.
But we were saved that part by the other great rule of insurgent warfare. That is that the weapons you brought on the Black Market probably suck ass.
I like it when God shows us that he is not only good, but that he also has a very highly developed sense of irony.
I have watched it five or six times. It never gets old. Maybe at the beginning he gies a little prayer: may they kill the unworthy, or something to that effect. Then he dies. The only thing left is for a smiling Michael Landon to walk out of the smoke and piss on him.
Yep. Still funny.
Here's your lunch money. There's the bus. No go to hell, you little scamp.
I suppose in retrospect I shouldn't take joy at the death of another human being. Not giggling, snickering, smiling like a Tex Avery cartoon.
I feel this sorry for him.
http://www.brandonbird.com/anguish.html
I still wish Michael Landon would have walked out and pissed on him. "Gums are on fire. Here you go. And I was thirsty and you gave me drink!"
I have to admit this is funnier than the great clip of the guy in Falluja shooting at a Marine from an alleyway. He gets done shooting and the camera pans back. That's when you realize that the cameraman is a M1A1 Tank commander and right as the guy stands up they hit him with a main gun round.
Now THAT'S Tex Avery.
Check that. I have one that tops it, but its a story not a clip.
Picture this: 2 insurgents, 1 recoiless rifle (for the unknowing, a recoiless rifle is basically a small cannon that has vents in the back, you shoot this thing and the recoil gases blow out the back and allow you to propel up to 105mm sized rounds down range, used back before we had things like TOW missiles) and a dream.
The dream: ambush evil Americans. The plan: find an abandoned house or building, build concealed firing position and ambush said Americans.
The execution: House found, concealed position found and dug so when Americans fire back we can duck and escape. Concealed postion is a closet. Please remember that small item about the vents and the HOT GAS. Vents are approximately 6 inches from wall in a closet. Extra HE ammo is stacked behind RR. Americans drive by, RR is fired.
Result. Americans see a huge dust and smoke cloud blow out of every hole in the house, with much screaming. Roof falls in. Two walls fall in. Extra HE rounds explode under rubble. Screaming stops. Round missed and kills 3 sheep 2 klicks away. Americans dig RR rifle out of rubble and mount as a pseudo-trophy in Bn HQs.
That is I think the defining Wile E. Coyote moment I have ever heard of in Iraq.
Mike: that one takes the "WTF were they THINKING?!" award big time!
Sorry to rain on this parade, but I can't find the real death of an actual human being funny. Even if he is obviously immoral in his indiscriminate fire and dumb enough that he should be taken out of the gene pool. Maybe you'd see my point if that explosion wasn't the end of the video and instead you saw, say, his daughter trying to identify his pathetic lacerated remains.
No, I can't say I'm sorry that he died. No, it's still not funny.
Odds are this guys doesn't have any kids. If he fits the profile of a typical AIF fighter, he is between the ages of 18-23, male and single. If this is in Afghanistan same profile, but lower the age to about 15-23.
Having had a very near death experience in Iraq, I can see your point about this not being funny. But the weird thing is that after you have one of those, things like this seem more funny. I don't know why, maybe some brain adjustment thing when you realize that for all the training you get and the armor you wear, when your time comes that is it. And you have to deal with that and the fact that you might end up a Darwin Award nominee in the process. Once you have that realization, death can be funny.
Boy, how freaky do I sound?
's okay, Mike, that's why we love you...:-)
Amanda: you're right. If he has a daughter, her experience of his death would not have been funny.
On the other hand, not all deaths are tragic. When it's some motherfucker lobbing shells nearly indiscriminately at the near certainty of slaying innocents (proscribed by Islam) in the name of Allah, then getting hoisted by that very same petard, it's freakin' hilarious. Poetic justice is, IMHO, inherently funny. It's not that he died, but how.
Also: once you embrace your own mortality (which generally isn't a terribly fun process), death stops seeming like some kind of unnatural tragedy and more like just the way things work.
Amanda: you laughed your toocas off when Ted Haggart got in so much trouble, yet he had a wife and family who were stigmatized as a result of his activity. Same thing, only this time it's death. In Haggart's case, since he was dealing in calumny, his being calumniated was in proportion with what he suffered. Similarly, this bozo's death was proportional to the death he was dropping on others.
I certainly didn't mean to imply his death was tragic. It was obviously well-deserved.
Still, I don't think it can be compared laughing at someone being caught playing footsie in a mens room.And if you remember, I did point out that I felt I was being kind of a jerk about that.
Mike -
actually, no, that's a perfectly reasonable response to being forcefully reminded that no one gets out of this life alive, if you see what I mean. Laughing in the face of death is a time-honored tradition. I suspect we've all done it; I know I have. But I was laughing either at myself or both me & the person involved were laughing. For example, my friend Michelle was really funny the other day, joking about how she didn't survive a totally crappy childhood and divorce just to fucking die of some stupid cancer in her mid-thirties.
Anyway, that's the difference to me.
BTW, I appreciate the absence of ad hominem attacks, lord knows they're common enough on blogs...
Well, unless you actually think your friends would insult you just because we disagree...
having been almost dead, I have to admit. I find this TOTALLY hilarious. In fact, I'm going to replay it six times tonight, just because. I LOVE it when an asshole gets his just desserts. But it is sort of a dark humor, and that is traditional in my family.
ah, but I definitely don't know everyone who comments.
Doesn't matter: as a matter of common courtesy you won't get insulted by any regular on my blog, no matter what they think of your opinions.
You can say many pejorative things about me that are in fact true, but I have very good taste in friends.
Hi, I'm Mike. I hail from Nerbaska and know Jim from the VMI days. I'm in the Army (Major) and the Field Artillery, so the clip was especially funny for me (while the Army has its boneheaded moments, shooting off mortar rounds that have been buried in the desert for 5 years or brought from a Black Marketeer who got them from condemned Pakistani stores is not something we do).
So now you can tie some background to the name "Mike" on the posts.
Hi Mike, I'm Amanda aka vsbooklady; I used to own a bookstore in San Francisco, but sadly no longer. I met James because he is a friend of *another* bookstore owner (happily, that one is still in business. www.borderlandsbooks.com, they rock)
On further thought, I probably over-reacted to this clip because recently I've felt the media was de-humanizing the Iraqi people (both insurgents & civilians). Well, that's part of it. I'm still considering it. I'll probably argue with James about it at some point, but neither of us ever win, so that's okay.)
Hi Amanda. I'm Andrew and I know Jim and Mike from VMI. There is something missing in my cognitive process that creates undue amounts of hilarity. It isn't always intentional.
The part that is missing today is any trace of compassion for anybody attached to the man in the picture. If the parade is being rained on, I will take out my bright rain slicker and start my Gene Kelley dance number. I'm afraid my dislike of the man in the film would have had me laughing at her little tear stained face. I would have photoshopped the opening for that old show "Punk'd" over the entire image along with a laugh track. There were four bombs launched with no precision whatsoever. He had a dozen more ready to go. If we're lucky he's the only guy who died. The only way he would know he hadn't killed his own daughter is if she had been standing behind him.
The only way this would have been better is if it was footage of his slipping and dying in the shower before he got there. Or hit by an ice cream truck. One girls emotional distress is small dust against the objective good of that guy blowing up. By his own hand. Because he cheaped out on his munitions. (giggle, snark)
It's still funny. Could we get a Bob Saget voice over?
Blair: gotta agree with you there. If there was more footage he could be a flopper w/ a techno beat...
James Brown is Dead!
Ooooooooh. I have to throw this in: "You go to war with the army you have, not the one you want."
Here is a perfect application of that statement.
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