The Orbiter.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Irrational Fear? IRRATIONAL?
The roller coaster in Montreal was plainly cobbled together from demolished lake-house decks and railroad ties. So although I waited for a half-hour in line with my comedian friends, I felt perfectly justified in stepping into the car, considering my options, and then stepping right on out the other side.
Oh, how they mocked. But my momentary cowardice still allowed me to retain a shred of dignity, and so was worth indulging. Because if I'd gotten on that ride, my friends would have actually heard me scream. Like a little girl. Like a little girl who just woke up because somebody licked her foot. Like a little girl who just woke up because somebody licked her foot, and then when she turns on the light there's an evil clown sitting in the middle of her bedroom, eating her pony.
There's no comebacks from the clown-pony scream.
I knew from experience this would be my response to the tracked hellion. Fredericton, New Brunswick had taught me that.
That time it was a fair, or an exposition, or whatever the hell you call the gathering where the Lottery villagers eat fried beaver tails, drink beer and compare brood mares and quilts before they select the heavy stones and pass 'round the black-spot bag. We were in town visiting my new bride's family. As we walked through the small-scale carnival rides, I made a resolution. I would not give in to my completely irrational fear of funrides. These Fredericton rides were tiny things compared to the whirling articulated skyscrapers of a major park. Lovely Wife adores funrides. I will man up.
The first one was one of those parachute sumbitches. Perfectly reasonable, two people sitting in a car suspended by some sort of ball joint. When it rotates in one direction, you get a bit of a centrifugal tilt out. Then, of course, they tilt the goddam thing to 45 degreees, so you're pushed to the side, and you're way the hell up --
-- but I held it together. Even when I looked into the center of the machine's axis, from my vantage point at the top of the arc, and saw that they'd replaced on of the gears with a radial tire.
That said, Ride A involved height, movement, a sickening feeling of "just about to be thrown out" and a dodgy looking safety bar. I figured I was in the clear. Ride B -- the exact brand-name of which I have never discovered -- looked to be cake. Low to the ground. No height factor whatsoever. Bigger cars, two sitting across from two, each car suspended from above to a radial arm. I thumbnailed out the operations in my head. The ride itself spun, wheel-like, and then the cars probably spun horizontally on some smaller axis. I should be able to handle that.
So, as Madonna's "Like a Virgin" echoed murkily over loudspeakers never designed to convey music, Lovely Wife and I climbed aboard. Bar down, two twelve-year-olds sitting across, piece of cake. Most of the riders on this one are kids. I am encouraged.
Gears grind, sparks fly, and we're off. Round and round, like a merry-go-round. No worries. Then our car itself begins to spin. Ah, bit disorienting, and there's that nasty "about to be tossed" feeling, but nothing I can't --
Then the individual arms begin to rise and fall. Well. Okay. This is --
-- and then the cars themselves tilt. They tilt 90 degrees. I am now spinning vertically perpendicular to the ground, and rising and falling, and spinning horizontally.
...
There's a moment in every Lovecraft story, when a feckless human catches a glimpse of Cthulhu, where said human's reaction is supposed to be some sort of sanity-shattering meltdown far beyond what you're capable of even imagining. This is a terror that kills. We struggle to visualize such a reaction and necessarily, as we are sane and live in an orthogonal universe, come up short.
My wife knows.
It's always a matter of debate, what was the most humiliating moment of my meltdown. I hold that it was when I screamed "I DON'T WANT TO DIE LISTENING TO MADONNA!" Lovely Wife prefers the bit where, legitimately concerned at my terror, she yelled "Hold my hand!"
At the prospect of loosening my white-knuckled grip from the safety bar, I screamed back at her, straight into her face: "FUCK YOU! YOU HOLD MY HAND!"
Afterward, the various twelve-year olds regarded me with pity. Pity. Do you know how far you have to fall in an adolescent's eyes before you drop below scorn? They're hard-wired for scorn. The evening ended with my wife actually taking me to the petting zoo for a bit, to collect myself, before we headed home.
The goats helped.
All this to give you some context. Because when I read this:
-- I need to inform you that blogging may be slow for a bit, as I will be under my bed, in a fetal position. For a while.
The queasiness of my irrational fear's sudden gripping return is leavened somewhat by the "ah-ha" of "I KNEW it", but it's a hollow moment. A bit like your irrational fear of zombies being validated by the appearance of actual zombies at your window.
In the comments, your completely irrational fears. The ones that end you.
Oh, and here's the "Tower of Power" in question:
(NOTE: This post is driving a fair bit of traffic. If you find anything interesting or amusing here at KFM, please consider donating to our Charity of the Month, Fisher House. You can read more details on how to help out wounded servicemen and their families here.)
Oh, how they mocked. But my momentary cowardice still allowed me to retain a shred of dignity, and so was worth indulging. Because if I'd gotten on that ride, my friends would have actually heard me scream. Like a little girl. Like a little girl who just woke up because somebody licked her foot. Like a little girl who just woke up because somebody licked her foot, and then when she turns on the light there's an evil clown sitting in the middle of her bedroom, eating her pony.
There's no comebacks from the clown-pony scream.
I knew from experience this would be my response to the tracked hellion. Fredericton, New Brunswick had taught me that.
That time it was a fair, or an exposition, or whatever the hell you call the gathering where the Lottery villagers eat fried beaver tails, drink beer and compare brood mares and quilts before they select the heavy stones and pass 'round the black-spot bag. We were in town visiting my new bride's family. As we walked through the small-scale carnival rides, I made a resolution. I would not give in to my completely irrational fear of funrides. These Fredericton rides were tiny things compared to the whirling articulated skyscrapers of a major park. Lovely Wife adores funrides. I will man up.
The first one was one of those parachute sumbitches. Perfectly reasonable, two people sitting in a car suspended by some sort of ball joint. When it rotates in one direction, you get a bit of a centrifugal tilt out. Then, of course, they tilt the goddam thing to 45 degreees, so you're pushed to the side, and you're way the hell up --
-- but I held it together. Even when I looked into the center of the machine's axis, from my vantage point at the top of the arc, and saw that they'd replaced on of the gears with a radial tire.
That said, Ride A involved height, movement, a sickening feeling of "just about to be thrown out" and a dodgy looking safety bar. I figured I was in the clear. Ride B -- the exact brand-name of which I have never discovered -- looked to be cake. Low to the ground. No height factor whatsoever. Bigger cars, two sitting across from two, each car suspended from above to a radial arm. I thumbnailed out the operations in my head. The ride itself spun, wheel-like, and then the cars probably spun horizontally on some smaller axis. I should be able to handle that.
So, as Madonna's "Like a Virgin" echoed murkily over loudspeakers never designed to convey music, Lovely Wife and I climbed aboard. Bar down, two twelve-year-olds sitting across, piece of cake. Most of the riders on this one are kids. I am encouraged.
Gears grind, sparks fly, and we're off. Round and round, like a merry-go-round. No worries. Then our car itself begins to spin. Ah, bit disorienting, and there's that nasty "about to be tossed" feeling, but nothing I can't --
Then the individual arms begin to rise and fall. Well. Okay. This is --
-- and then the cars themselves tilt. They tilt 90 degrees. I am now spinning vertically perpendicular to the ground, and rising and falling, and spinning horizontally.
...
There's a moment in every Lovecraft story, when a feckless human catches a glimpse of Cthulhu, where said human's reaction is supposed to be some sort of sanity-shattering meltdown far beyond what you're capable of even imagining. This is a terror that kills. We struggle to visualize such a reaction and necessarily, as we are sane and live in an orthogonal universe, come up short.
My wife knows.
It's always a matter of debate, what was the most humiliating moment of my meltdown. I hold that it was when I screamed "I DON'T WANT TO DIE LISTENING TO MADONNA!" Lovely Wife prefers the bit where, legitimately concerned at my terror, she yelled "Hold my hand!"
At the prospect of loosening my white-knuckled grip from the safety bar, I screamed back at her, straight into her face: "FUCK YOU! YOU HOLD MY HAND!"
Afterward, the various twelve-year olds regarded me with pity. Pity. Do you know how far you have to fall in an adolescent's eyes before you drop below scorn? They're hard-wired for scorn. The evening ended with my wife actually taking me to the petting zoo for a bit, to collect myself, before we headed home.
The goats helped.
All this to give you some context. Because when I read this:
A girl's feet were cut off Thursday when a free-fall thrill ride malfunctioned at the Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom Amusement Park in Louisville, Kentucky, police said.
-- I need to inform you that blogging may be slow for a bit, as I will be under my bed, in a fetal position. For a while.
The queasiness of my irrational fear's sudden gripping return is leavened somewhat by the "ah-ha" of "I KNEW it", but it's a hollow moment. A bit like your irrational fear of zombies being validated by the appearance of actual zombies at your window.
In the comments, your completely irrational fears. The ones that end you.
Oh, and here's the "Tower of Power" in question:
(NOTE: This post is driving a fair bit of traffic. If you find anything interesting or amusing here at KFM, please consider donating to our Charity of the Month, Fisher House. You can read more details on how to help out wounded servicemen and their families here.)
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Kiss Me, I'm Sadr-ish!
Via the Washington Post:
To be fair, General Petraeus was probably discussing specific counterinsurgency investigations, which the Brits would pursue to the ends of space and timne itself. It's one of the reasons they're so very good at catching terrorists now.
But now that we've been fair, let us proceed to mock this statement. Allow me to don my County Roscommon accent and wave my Grandfather's shillelagh about -- yes, yes, good heft -- okay then ...
Well that's encouraging!
No, seriously. Now at least we have a working model. The whole problem up to this point was the weird operating procedure in which the Bush Administration ignored every historical precedent for nation building and insurgency fighting. Facts, reason, and historical context .. thats atheist thinkin' right thar, pardner.
The only question is:
Does Petraeus mean "the nine or ten years" right after the Potato Famine in 1849 when a million or so died primarily not from famine but from asinine foreign administration, and millions more fled the country? (Hmm, there is a comparison ...) Granted, it was a full thirty years later Fenians blew up Scotland Yard and nearly nabbed the Queen at Jubilee, but after that there was nary a peep, really 'til --
-- the"nine or ten years" after those wee troubles on Easter 1916 (hey, partition! we can try that too). After that there things really settled down to --
-- the "nine or ten years" later, the late 40's into the early 50's, when the S-Plan brought Irish bombers onto British soil for the first time. (I don't know about you, but I'm sure looking forward to that historical parallel catching up with us.) But ignoring the bombings during the 50's in the border territories, maybe he means --
-- the "nine or ten years' of the 60's! In 1962 the government of the Republic of Ireland officially refuted terrorism as a means of gaining reunification -- after a scant forty odd years of terrorism. Once the Maliki -- er -- Republic government refutes terrorism, then plainly there can be no further Troubles ... whoops, looks like the British Troops are sent back in in 1969. Oh. But maybe he means --
-- the "nine or ten years' of the Swingin' Seventies! Once you got Bloody Sunday, The Coach Bombing, the House of Parliament bombings, the Birmingham Pub bombings, and the assassination of Lord Mountbatten (remember, most of that's just the fun happening on British soil) out of the way, Petraeus is perfectly right to say those "nine or ten years" resolved things, as the --
-- "nine or ten years" of the 80's was positively tranquil. Except for when they got Tynan Abbey and blew up a hotel to kill Maggie Thatcher. And the dozens of other smaller scale bits of nastiness. That said, it's not like the next --
-- "nine or ten years" of the 90's weren't, finally, dead quiet. Particularly dead quiet for Ian Gow, the people of London, Manchester, Warrington, and positively catatonic at 10 Downing Street when the mortar shells landed in the back garden.
What have we learned by following General Petraeus' illustrative path into the radiant garden of comprehension?
Well, first we may now understand why the Brits didn't lose their bottle after the 7/7 bombings and generally regarded us with scorn as we wept and gnashed our teeth in sympathy.
Second, at least now we know what we can look forward to. Knowledge is always our friend. Bet you never anticipated Bush's "South Korea" model for Iraq would be the good version, eh?
Only fifty years? We'd be getting off lucky.
Note: The first idiot who attempts to use this history to explain why we need to stay in Iraq to stop al-queda must then proceed through three distinct steps.
a.) Explain how Sunni al-queda will somehow create a "Caliphate" in Shiite-ruled Iraq. Because the massive Shiite majority is gonna be psyched to fold under an oppressive Sunni minority again. They can't wait.
b.) Explain away the fact that the only success we've really had in Iraq against the local AQ franchise is when we cut loose the highly competitive Sunni tribal leaders who see them as interlopers. The Sunnis deal with AQI ... quickly.
c.) Get punched in the neck, by me, for being a fucking ignorant memechimp.
Fair warning.
Oh, and dibs on "memechimp."
Claiming steady, albeit slow, military and political progress, Petraeus said the "many, many challenges" would not be resolved "in a year or even two years." Similar counterinsurgency operations, he said, citing Britain's experience in Northern Ireland, "have gone at least nine or 10 years."
To be fair, General Petraeus was probably discussing specific counterinsurgency investigations, which the Brits would pursue to the ends of space and timne itself. It's one of the reasons they're so very good at catching terrorists now.
But now that we've been fair, let us proceed to mock this statement. Allow me to don my County Roscommon accent and wave my Grandfather's shillelagh about -- yes, yes, good heft -- okay then ...
Well that's encouraging!
No, seriously. Now at least we have a working model. The whole problem up to this point was the weird operating procedure in which the Bush Administration ignored every historical precedent for nation building and insurgency fighting. Facts, reason, and historical context .. thats atheist thinkin' right thar, pardner.
The only question is:
Does Petraeus mean "the nine or ten years" right after the Potato Famine in 1849 when a million or so died primarily not from famine but from asinine foreign administration, and millions more fled the country? (Hmm, there is a comparison ...) Granted, it was a full thirty years later Fenians blew up Scotland Yard and nearly nabbed the Queen at Jubilee, but after that there was nary a peep, really 'til --
-- the"nine or ten years" after those wee troubles on Easter 1916 (hey, partition! we can try that too). After that there things really settled down to --
-- the "nine or ten years" later, the late 40's into the early 50's, when the S-Plan brought Irish bombers onto British soil for the first time. (I don't know about you, but I'm sure looking forward to that historical parallel catching up with us.) But ignoring the bombings during the 50's in the border territories, maybe he means --
-- the "nine or ten years' of the 60's! In 1962 the government of the Republic of Ireland officially refuted terrorism as a means of gaining reunification -- after a scant forty odd years of terrorism. Once the Maliki -- er -- Republic government refutes terrorism, then plainly there can be no further Troubles ... whoops, looks like the British Troops are sent back in in 1969. Oh. But maybe he means --
-- the "nine or ten years' of the Swingin' Seventies! Once you got Bloody Sunday, The Coach Bombing, the House of Parliament bombings, the Birmingham Pub bombings, and the assassination of Lord Mountbatten (remember, most of that's just the fun happening on British soil) out of the way, Petraeus is perfectly right to say those "nine or ten years" resolved things, as the --
-- "nine or ten years" of the 80's was positively tranquil. Except for when they got Tynan Abbey and blew up a hotel to kill Maggie Thatcher. And the dozens of other smaller scale bits of nastiness. That said, it's not like the next --
-- "nine or ten years" of the 90's weren't, finally, dead quiet. Particularly dead quiet for Ian Gow, the people of London, Manchester, Warrington, and positively catatonic at 10 Downing Street when the mortar shells landed in the back garden.
What have we learned by following General Petraeus' illustrative path into the radiant garden of comprehension?
Well, first we may now understand why the Brits didn't lose their bottle after the 7/7 bombings and generally regarded us with scorn as we wept and gnashed our teeth in sympathy.
Second, at least now we know what we can look forward to. Knowledge is always our friend. Bet you never anticipated Bush's "South Korea" model for Iraq would be the good version, eh?
Only fifty years? We'd be getting off lucky.
Note: The first idiot who attempts to use this history to explain why we need to stay in Iraq to stop al-queda must then proceed through three distinct steps.
a.) Explain how Sunni al-queda will somehow create a "Caliphate" in Shiite-ruled Iraq. Because the massive Shiite majority is gonna be psyched to fold under an oppressive Sunni minority again. They can't wait.
b.) Explain away the fact that the only success we've really had in Iraq against the local AQ franchise is when we cut loose the highly competitive Sunni tribal leaders who see them as interlopers. The Sunnis deal with AQI ... quickly.
c.) Get punched in the neck, by me, for being a fucking ignorant memechimp.
Fair warning.
Oh, and dibs on "memechimp."
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