Various Interesting Things About The Napoleonic Era Part II

Ah, you thought I'd given up on this dusty topic that can only be of interest to people who collect ascots and have an enduring love of Coronation Street. How wrong you are.

Killing - On Land
Whereas now all you need is a few billion dollars worth of laser guided ordnance dropped from tens of thousands of feet lit up by an elite military team that has more hours training in Killing The Enemy With Dental Floss than I have spent being alive, in the Napoleonic Era, killing was all about cojones. Not that modern day or soldiers in Korean and Vietnam and WWII etc etc didn't have cojones. But in the Napoleonic Era that's ALL there was. No real tactics perse, or situational awareness, it was more or less a gigantic game of chicken.

You had three main groups in a land battle: cannons, cavalry, and infantry. They work in a sloppy rock papers scissors fashion. Infantry can beat infantry, cannons soften or beat infantry. Calvary can, in certain circumstances, destroy infantry, but in other circumstances, the reverse is true. Calvary, from what I can tell, tries to stay out of the way of cannons altogether. Then you have different grades of calvary (lancers, heavy cavalry, cuirassiers, oh god you're falling asleep already), and different grades for the other two roles in the army. But we won't get into that.

But we were talking about cojones,and games of chicken. In that time, there is no 'spotting' the enemy, finding the ambush, looking for IEDs. The enemy is wearing some ridiculously garish uniform, marching in a very large group (column or line) right at you. They are marching at you because muskets are only accurate (for generous definitions of 'accurate') at about 50 yards. I think you're at about 50/50 for whether the musketball will even hit you. So the enemy marches at you, you can see your likely death walking in cadence.

Behind them are their cannons firing iron balls (between 10 and 24 lbs) at you. You have to march at them, doing the same thing, hoping that an cannon ball doesn't find you and decapitate you or cripple your or disembowel you in a shockingly sloppy manner. I mean, the cannons will most LIKELY not hit you. Unless the gunners are good, and learn how to graze the shot, meaning the shot hits the first line, then bounces, but not too high, and keeps doing carnage all down the column.

And all the while you march, and your best friend gets his legs removed at the pelvis and that annoying bloke who still owes you 10 shillings cops it some upper crust officer is yelling at sergeant to yell at you to close ranks. That's right, fill up the space left by the careening ball of death that just left guts and viscera all over your already garish uniform.

And then you finally get in range. You all move together. Present arms, fire, load, veeeeeeery slowly. A really well trained infantryman could fire 3 shots in a minute. After the first or second volley there's smoke everywhere, you can't actually see your enemy are are just firing into smoke, hoping that the smoke is parted for a musketball coming from their side to you.

That, I'll humbly submit, takes cojones. Loading, firing, staying with your platoon.

At some point, the calvary might charge you. Big, massive beasts, trained to trample and bite (although, what with the trampling, I'm sure the biting doesn't worry you so much), and ontop, some enormous fellow from the upper crust who has had better food and better training than the poor fellows he's about to ride over. Infantry. Usually peasants or thieves or murderers, the general trod-upon of society.  So this upper crust fellow is knee to knee with his fellow calvary men, charging you, swinging an enormous cavalry sabre to cut across your face or to sever your spine.

But remember that thing I said about 'in certain circumstances'? Well, there was one thing the infantry could do, which was form a square. Outer layer of soldiers put their muskets to the ground, bayonets facing out, the second and third ranks fire. Horses, for some inexplicable reason, will not charge into pointy sticks.

And, here again, cojones comes into play. If you hold the square, with your mates, you're ok. You're safe. If you panic,if you all start to break and run, well. That's what calvary is made for. Running down broken and scattering infantry. Complete slaughter.

Next post, Killing on the High Seas.

Kevin Clash is The Man

Photo from Eleanor Traubman who wrote an excellent interview with the man behind Elmo.


I try not to post single links to YouTube. It's kinda cheap and not at all what this blog tries to be: original, amusing pieces froms scratch.

However, sometimes videos come along that are so superlatively funny, so rupture-your-colon and slightly soil yourself in paroxyms of giggles, that I'm compelled to link them (previous videos I've linked to are Patton Oswalt and Terry Tate: Office Linebacker).

What makes this link so awesome is that Kevin Clash has to riff off Gervais while in character, without making Elmo too, uh... NSFW. Cute is hard to do without alienating anyone but kitten-poster loving cubicle lifers or 3 year-olds with early onset diabetes. I think he does a pretty damn good job of cute and funny, while staying in character, while improvising against Gervais. See for yourself.

Creative Insults

You have all the wit of a lascivious sea-slug in heat.

You have a face unfit for radio.

Entire branches of science have sprouted from the study of your alarming personal hygiene and weapon-grade body-odour.

Your conversational skills are slightly better than a day seminar on Latin grammar.

The very image of naive optimism is you, buying an engagement ring.

You're like the poster child for Roe v. Wade.

Sorry for interrupting, I was just wondering how much I owe you for curing my insomnia?

My mother told me to never speak ill of people. So, let me just say you are a marvellously articulate chimp.

You make a strong case for wars of attrition.

It's not that I find you boring. It's that you are.

My friend bet me I'd never find someone who looked like a pair of donkey testicles, dangled over a raging chemical fire, then doused in brine, scrambled in horse urine, and peppered with the sweepings from a rather large state fair. He owes me twenty bucks.

I'm so sorry about your acid accident.

Well, I think it's brave, going about in public with such a heinous birth defect like that.

Just think, when your dead, Michael Jackon will pay a fortune for your corpse!

Slogans

I'm alarmingly adept at slogans. 

Lemme rephrase. 

I'm alarming adept at slogans that no company would use. 

Slogans are like the poetry of humour. Short, fast, and whoever takes it seriously insists there's much more craft in it than say, writing a 1200 page historical fiction novel about physics, the financial derivatives market, and the rise and fall of Cromwell. 

Er, but I guess that analogy falls apart, because at one end, they're paid quite well, and at the other end, the poor sods end up paying other people to publish it. Or read it, for that matter. On the other OTHER hand, there are no Nobel prizes for slogans.  

Here are some slogans I made on the spot for a fictious tech company:

Meganaut Corporation : almost completely unfraudulent

Meganaut Corporation : lawsuits pending and unfounded.

Meganaut Corporation : what, it's 'high tech'.

Meganaut Corporation : it's impressive because we make our own acronyms.

Meganaut Corporation : tell your friends!

Meganaut Corporation : most of our shit is almost ready for production.

Meganaut Corporation : settling out of court since 1973.

Meganaut Corporation : doesn't support child labour (for certain values of 'child')

Meganaut Corporation : sure, let's just call it a dongle.

Meganaut Corporation : supplying small militias and puppet state dictators for over 30 years.

Meganaut Corporation : so eerily above board we have no need for our interrogation room.

Meganaut Corporation : we put the ethics back in 'definitely not insider trading'.

Meganaut Corporation : almost better than getting cockpunched by an ex-boxer holding a roll of quarters and taste for the sauce.

And a few for company's that are less fictious:

Republicans : Yes, we're evil, but hey, lower taxes!

Democrats : Sometimes we hem, sometimes we haw.

Libertarians : We are mostly right about some things, horridly wrong about others, but have more smugness than an Apple Convention.

Microsoft : Evil, ubiquitious, and not crashing nearly as much as we used to.

Apple : We wrap old ideas in clean lines and minimal design and charge your first-born for it.

Nike : We need their tiny hands for the fiddly bits.

Ford : Quality Schmality, It's AMERICAN!

Wal Mart : Gutting Small Town America Has Never Saved You More!

Starbucks : Coffee for the price of a reasonable lunch.

Rolex : Ostentatious.

DeBeers : Conflict diamond  means more drama.

Volkswagen : Shocking Decline In Quality

Carlyle Group : We do some evil stuff, but it's too complicated to worry about.

Enron : Trust us.

Phillip Morris : A family of nicotine delivery systems.

Monsanto : We control what you eat, and why you eat it.

Blackwater : Mercenaries For Hire, kinda like the A-Team.

Union Carbide : It's not our fault natural selection works so slow.

Pfizer : You want a cure to cancer or vigorous coitus into your 80's? Yeah, we thought so.

Job Description :

It's been my experience, that jobs that are advertised in the classifieds (or anywhere, come to think of it), are guaranteed to be spectacularly over-sold. In a world of sanitation engineers, office managers, and periodical canine companion cardio-vascular coaches, this probably shouldn't be surprising.

So I can't help but imagine what flurry of copywriter bravado sucked certain people into their jobs.

That Guy With The Church's Chicken Sign Dancing On The Street:
Do you thrive on solo projects? Do you have a natural ear for rhythm and the ability to engage customers in the smallest time frame? With your Bachelors (Marketing), and a drive to succeed, a growing multinational restaurant chain is looking for you! Apply today with the subject line "Dynamic Hands-On Motorist Marketer Opportunity".


The Mall Security Guard With The Dead Eyes And Expandign Midsection Holding All His Frustrated Hopes and Dreams:
Aegis International is looking for driven professionals proven to provide the best in high-profile, high-risk collateral protection. If you rise to the occasion, and are familiar with firearms (training will be provided), this might be the elite outfit you've been looking for. Featured in Ammo and Guns Top 3000 Employers To Work for 1983, Aegis International only hires the best. Because we are the best. Are you?


Dude and Dudette Selling Cell Phone Plans While Trying Desperately to Look Hip and With It:
Wanted - urban lifestyle mavens and players who know the pulse of the youth. If you go to the hottest clubs, and hang out at all the coolest release parties, and have an eye to join the field of Marketing, Ramjet Worldwide might have a spot for you! As a Principal Senior Field Marketer, you'll be responsible for the accounts of hundreds of urban professionals, committed to a NOW! lifestyle! If you have what it takes, drop us a line!

Ah the ... :

There are a few running jokes that Mrs. Owl and I bandy back and, ad nauseum. They might not be terribly funny to most people, but they are HI-larious to us.

First, a little backstory. We do enjoy the ultra-popular mega-mass-marketed ultimately low brow comedies that are just 'too popular' to be any good. Yes, I'm talking about 'Friends'. While most hipster-elites turn their noses up at TV in general (or if they do watch, it's either only watching the Bravo Channel or 'Arrested Development'), we embrace things we find amusing.

I know, shocking.

So, in this one episode of Friends, there is this zoo janitor, who makes charming bylines for zoo animals (e.g. "Ahh, the bat. Ambassador of darkness, flitting out of his cave like a winged messenger, sightless spectre of the macabe."). I mean, that's gold.

So that's what we do now. Er, or what Mrs. Owl goads me to do. Some couples do macrame, we do this. Examples,

"Ah the mall security guard, sentinel against retail crime, protector of the fashion consumer, WHITE KNIGHT in the crusade against shoplifting."

"Ah the backyard, gathering place for a neighbourhood community, nexus of social interaction, crossroads in which familial and societal ties are formed and strengthened."

"Ah the pool, great vat of chlorine treated crystal clear leisure, dominion of the life jacketed toddler and awkward adolescent, the modern re-imagining of Romanesque bathhouses.... AH the pool. "

Random Wikipedia Article : Jiffs

Oh, you just KNOW you are running out of blog post ideas when you decide to write about a random wikipedia article. This week's article will be about Jiffs.

This is apparently a perjorative term used by the British Intelligence toward the Indian National Army. I'm not sure why sides in a battle always decide to think of slang terms to 'put down' the enemy. It's not like the other side cares. It doesn't affect their ability or willingness to kill you with whatever weapon that their government has trained them in. It's a little like throwing marshmallows at the State Puff Marshmallow Man. I mean, it's kinda, oddly ironic and everything, but the Marshmallow Man doesn't really care.

And isn't there that whole spiel about sticks and stones? I mean, it's one thing to use names and words that have been taboo in your community and society for generations. I can understand (even if it is still, on an intellectual level, absurd) how one might get riled up about that. But someone who's job it is to kill you, calling you a name they had just made up? It kinda takes away the sting.

Some might point out that it's a way of dehumanizing the enemy. Of putting a false face on the other teenagers who are about to riddle your body with inconvenient holes unless you do the same thing to them first. I mean, you certainly wouldn't want to start calling them by their real names. "Oh yeah, I sure shot Hector up good there. Good and dead. And Johnny too, plugged him before he did that military objective thing that his high command -- that has never met him -- just ordered him to do." Yeah, I can see how that might be a bit creepifying.

That just might be an interesting defensive strategy. Give all your soldiers clearly defined named tags with a few factoids. So when they die, the enemy has to read out their name, and perhaps the fact that Mark here really liked the Rolling Stones but nothing from the Steel Wheels tour.

Man, that would sow all sorts of conscience within an army.

Uncyclopedia Entry That Is Sure To Be Deleted: Pete

== Origins ==
Of Gaelic and Micronesian origin, the term for a flightless albino bird standing 3 meters tall which killed its prey with a prehensile tail. Specifically, it was in reference to both the bird, as well as the bird's method of killing (to pete, or peteing).
Over time, it has also taken on the following definitions, depending on the context, tone, and the speaker's preference to the colour blue:

• flailing during a Siberian Autumnal Feast thinking that one was under the power of the hallucinogenic and sacred mushroom Halafrestum. When in fact the one has only eaten a dried up and slightly trodden upon oyster.
  


• singing out of tune in jest.


• walking.


• a mulit-tiered, fully automated gun turret defense system that was officially designed and implemented by the Nazis late in WWII. It fell out of favour when "fully automated", meant it shot and killed everything in sight until it ran out of bullets.
  


• the definitive clicking sound made by Master Lock combination locks serial numbers 840912840-8JNS83-5667 through to 840912840-8JNS83-5668.

== Current Usage ==
It has since fallen out of favour internationally, and is currently in use, and then, only sporadically, on the Pacific Coast of North America. Formally it's meaning is "to lose one's appendage to a rabid, townhouse/condo defending dog of questionable temperment". Informally it's slang to denote an undefined action taken upon an unsuspecting, if irrestibly alluring, animal.