Short Rounds

Wherein I issue short communiques on the nature of my internal discourse:

1. The other day I was driving to work and saw a National Guard 5-ton truck towing a 155mm M198 howitzer. The Guardsmen were probably going to the local dragstrip, where the National Guard displays (among other things) towed field artillery as recruiting tools. It made me smile, watching this truly immense truck with equally immense howitzer wading through the massed ranks of SUVs and raised pickups. I wonder how many egos it bruised. I see that an M198 costs about $550,000 at the bulk government rate. I'd probably have to come up with about $750,000 to buy one. I imagine a modern field piece parked in the front yard would make the county just a tad nervous, not to mention the neighbors.

2. I just watched Monday Night Football and witnessed another remarkable collapse by the Arizona Cardinals. I live in Arizona, and even I thought it was funny how fast the wheels fell off the cart. Mind you, I don't watch a lot of football. Or even much football. I hardly ever watch football, actually, and my immune system seems to be very efficient at wiping out the football fever virus. There's too much relentless self-promotion in football these days for my taste.

3. I see that the name of the new stadium for the Arizona Cardinals, built and paid for by the taxpayers of Glendale, Arizona, is now named the "Univeristy of Phoenix Stadium." The hell??? It should have been named the "Sales Tax Increase Stadium" or the "Thank You Taxpayers Stadium". I'm glad I don't live in a part of Arizona that was taxed to build said stadium - knowing that I paid for that stadium where the Cardinals humiliate themselves would make me yearn for strong drink. Another good reason to live in an unincorporated area - I'm not taxed so a rich sports team owner can get even richer. I'll gladly refuse the illusory improvement in my "quality of life" in return for not having to help pay for the stadium.

4. I watched "V for Vendetta" the other day, and it was better than I expected. I had to watch it for some twenty minutes before the ridiculous Guy Fawkes mask stopped making me laugh, but once I got over that, it wasn't bad.

5. I recently built a 1/72nd scale Emhar Mark-IV tank, the old Great War rhomboid dinosaur. Very nice kit, I have to say, with nice detail and even better decals. The unditching rails were fiddlesome and I came close to scuppering them a couple of times, but on the whole, I was quite pleased. I'm starting to develop a taste for 1/72nd scale armor (as opposed to the more mainstream 1/35th scale).

6. Wheldon complains that the investigation of his doings is "politically motivated." Once again, I have to say, the hell??? Last time I checked, the director of the FBI was Robert S. Mueller III, appointed by President Bush. Yeah, there's your liberal conspiracy for you - a conservative appointed by a conservative investigating a conservative. He'd have as much luck trying to convince me it is a UFO conspiracy what is bringing him down.

7. But maybe it is UFOs. I recently read that "a majority" of Americans are convinced of the "reality of UFOs". They didn't quantify "majority" nor did they define the "reality of UFOs" but nevertheless, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Mostly laugh. I'd be surprised if it turned out we were the only sentient species in the universe, but I'd be even more surprised if other sentient species were visiting us. My sense is that if we were being visited, we'd know for sure and wouldn't have to rely on wide-eyed and entirely uncritical "documentaries" on the Sci-Fi Channel, or the testimony of people whose UFO contact stories always seem to involve largish quantities of Jim Beam.

8. My friend's wife is having her baby this week - or should I say, they're both hoping she has the baby this week. I wish them the best of luck, but I also dread that moment when they tell me the new arrival's name. I confess that I prefer solid, established names that don't kowtow to fashion or some yuppie's demented urge to be unique. I find trendy yuppie made-up baby names silly, but when they mangle the spelling of existing names to make them "yuneek" I have to choke down a horse tranquilizer to avoid screeching at them like the Pod People in Invasion of the Body-Snatchers. So here's hoping A) that baby and mother come out of this experience healthy, and B) when they tell me the baby's name, it ISN'T something like "Madycen" or "Gessikah" or - Heaven help us - "Nevaeh". Yes, I know it's Heaven spelled backwards, and no, I don't think it's kyoot or yuneek or spayshul at all. Mostly, it's cylly.

9. I'm kind of a language snob and most neologisms rub the wrong way (unless, of course, I coined the neologism in the first place. I'm a language snob, and a hypocrite too). So a few days ago I was walking through my workplace en route to nowhere special and saw a big poster on the wall that spelled out our mission statement. I'm used to the term "mission statement" these days and it hardly fires any neurons at all in that part of my brain that handles tragic irony. But appended to the mission statement was something new - a "Burning Platform." Gagging, I returned to my desk and Googled "burning platform" and read this:

When the oil platform Piper Alpha in the North Sea caught fire, a worker was trapped by the fire on the edge of the platform. Rather than [face] certain death in the fire, he chose probable death by jumping 100 feet into the freezing sea. The term 'burning platform' is now used to describe a situation where people are forced to act by dint of the alternative being somewhat worse. The crisis may already exist and just needs to be highlighted.

So all of a sudden the desperate, agonizing decision to jump out of a burning rig and face quick death on impact with the ocean instead of lingering death on a burning rig has turned into an atrocious piece of management-consultant lingo. What's worse is that there was already a perfectly good word to describe this situation.

Dilemma - A forced choice between courses of action (usually two) which are equally unacceptable.

But I guess "dilemma" just isn't hip in that glib, corporate way so cherished by suits and consultants. If I were that poor guy on the Piper Alpha rig, I'd haunt every last corporate insultant who used the phrase "burning platform" to describe anything other than a platform that happens to be on fire.