Call of Duty: Modern Boredfare

The latest bizarre little sticky-note from the WTF-desk of the Department of Defense was the wholly-unsurprising information that the DoD (or several of its civilian contractors) were paying for various professional sports leagues to give the armed forces a little shout-out. James Fallows has a short summary of the NFL end of the arrangement.

I've become accustomed to the constant tongue-bath the pro sports leagues give the armed services to the point of pretty much tuning the business out. But when my nose is pushed in it it still irks me. No, there is no connection between getting paid to play a kid's game and getting paid to kill people and break shit, and to pretend otherwise is fairly skanky at best and truly loathsome at worst.

That said, I can't find anything near as ridiculous in this whole sports-leagues-military-lovefest as the way the business of killing people and breaking shit looks like in videogames, something I'm very familiar with because I have a 12-year-old son who lives for them.

They're...well, you know what they're like. "Hyperkinetic" doesn't begin to describe them. My most vivid image is The Boy literally bouncing up and down as he works his controller trying to blast the "enemy" pixels while not becoming a mass of "dead" pixels himself. The action so constant and frantic as to be almost a parody of actual armed combat which IS often pretty goddamn frantic (and frightening, exhausting, and often confusing as fuck, but obviously that's hard to convey in a videogame).

(Mind you, back in the day I had the luxury of "combat" - at least the simulated combat that was as close as I came or wanted to come - from several thousand meters away, seeing that artillery's whole purpose is to lend a little tone to what would otherwise be a sordid and vulgar brawl. And, yes, you've seen that Finley cartoon here before; I love the guy's goofy take on the various branches and apparently you can still get your hands on them here. Nice!)

Here's the thing, though.

What irks me more than anything about all this, both the silly purchased patriotism of the sports leagues as well as the hyperactive mayhem of the videogames is that neither one comes anywhere close to the single most distinctive thing about soldiering:

Boredom.

Soldiers, from hoplites to helicopter crews, spend an amazingly huge amount of time doing absolutely, utterly, brain-warpingly nothing. Not a fucking thing except sitting (or standing, or lying) around waiting. Or performing incredibly, mind-numbingly repetitive tasks that would be reviled as insultingly simple-minded by a hamster.

There's a reason that GIs play cards a lot and especially quick games like tonk a lot. Because cards are supremely portable and you can knock out a bunch of rounds of tonk in ten minutes, or play a marathon over a couple of hours. And you can be damn sure that you're going to HAVE those minutes or hours (or days, or weeks) doing fuck-all but wait and play cards.

If I had trouble with my guys, back in the day, it wasn't because of too much excitement or adventure, it was because they were bored out of their skulls and found ways to entertain themselves that weren't exactly what their (and my) chain of command felt were...appropriate (and yes, I'm looking at you, Blackie. NOT cool, man. Not cool.)

So if I were to write code for a first-person military videogame the objective would be for the player to find ways to entertain himself whilst hanging around the motor pool - but not get nailed doing it by the motor sergeant (or, worse, the First Sergeant for some epically awful detail).

I dunno how well it would sell. But it sure as hell would make me happy. Yep, boys and girls; it's ain't flags and cheerleaders and cool camouflage uniforms. That's how it is. That's how we roll. THAT's how it really plays.

Squirtle Unchained

The grandparents are here this weekend, so it's been all socializing and entertaining and doing things that will produce grandchild adorability to entrance grandparents. So you can imagine how little of "everything else" I'm getting done.

One thing that did occur to me while I was doing all this kid-and-grandparents stuff.

I really hate the hell out of Pokémon.

You're familiar with this kid thing, right? It's basically a card-combat game that has franchised out into movies and television. There's about a gajillion versions of Pokémon crap; cards, books, movies, and a television show. The Boy is a semi-regular Pokémon consumer. He "plays" the card game tho he cheats like a goddamn investment banker (he just ignores rules he doesn't like) and he watches the movies and the television show.

It's not the incoherent "plot" or the ridiculous characters that get me about this silly thing; it's the entire premise.

Which is about enslaving fictional animals and forcing them to fight each other.

Sound nasty? That's because it is.

I've mentioned this to the Boy who agrees, shrugs his shoulders, and goes off to watch another episode. He gets that this is a goofy Japanese anime' series and geez, pop, quit being such a derp.

But the whole Pokémon macguffin drives me kinda nuts.

The premise, if you've never encountered it, is simple, as the Wiki entry says:

"...a Trainer that encounters a wild Pokémon is able to capture that Pokémon by throwing a specially designed, mass-producible spherical tool called a Poké Ball at it. If the Pokémon is unable to escape the confines of the Poké Ball, it is officially considered to be under the ownership of that Trainer. Afterwards, it will obey whatever its new master commands, unless the Trainer demonstrates such a lack of experience that the Pokémon would rather act on its own accord."

And what these mooks command is that these critters fight each other.

So this is basically Spartacus only with freakish little cartoon monsters. To make it a little more palatable the little buggers don't fight to the death; they are "knocked out" - by getting blasted with lightning or fried with fire. Tell me that you get your ass zapped by a Pikachu lightning bolt and see how "knocked out" you feel.

And don't get me started on Pikachu, the Vidkun Quisling of the Pokémon universe. He pals around with the TV series hero kid and helps him zap and beatdown the various people and critters he meets. He's a Judas Goat, betraying and helping his buddy Ash enslave new gladiators.

The entire notion squicks me out.

I won't put the thing off-limits, but I do try and make the point that the central idea of Pokémon is based on a notion that civilized people pretty much tossed into the trash heap of history hundreds of years ago.

He nods and smiles and ignores me completely.

I still want to think that there's some alternative Pokémon universe where Squirtle gives Ash the finger, kicks Pikachu's little rat ass and stomps off down the road vowing to fight for his own Pokédamned reasons or never again.

There and Back Again, Random Maundering Edition

My son recently discovered a game called Minecraft.

It's actually a pretty cool game. You have to run around this bizarre-sort-of-8-bit-looking cubic world assembling resources and building stuff. You are - depending on the level you play - menaced by creatures like "creepers" and "spiders" and confronted with the need to find food, build shelter, and sleep.

He finds this terrifically fascinating. I thought that it was a pleasant alternative to his usual digital enthusiasm, which is shooting the hell out of stuff.

Mind you; nature finds a way to defeat nurture. Tonight he was bludgeoning digital swine to death with objects ranging from a fishing rod through raw meat to a rose.

While his sister bounced on the couch chanting "Kill the pig! Kill the pig!"

Sigh. That's not the fictional place I really want them to go...

Anyway.

Nothing in particular on my mind tonight, so let's see if the spirit bloweth where it listeth.

Turns out that Richard Plantagent died about as hard as a man can.

That's his brain housing group up there. Note the big hole in the lower right rear; forensics people in the UK seem to think that was made with a damn big blade; a halberd, war axe, something of that sort. The other view is a depressed fracture of the skull, and he had about a total of six other facial wounds, including a swordcut straight-on into the face. Apparently there's some evidence that he was Gaddafied, too; some joker shoved a dagger up his backside, hopefully after the poor SOB was dead.

Hard death aside, years ago I had the occasion to read two books in the same year: Bill Shakespeare's Richard III and Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time. They're both fairly straight-up partisan tracts, one agin, the other for, the last Plantagenet ruler of England. Not sure which teacher assigned them, and whether they came as a set, or whether it was coincidence, or what. They're both good reads, though you'd never know they were talking about the same guy.

The one thing, though, that Tey brings up in her story that does make sense to me is the whole business of The Princes in the Tower.

You know that one, right? Poor little fellows, done to death by their wicked uncle Richard? Classic sort of bwa-ha-ha over-the-top mustache-twirling Bad Guy stuff that gives ol' Richard his eeeeeeevil rep.

Thing is, Dick (not being British and at this remove I think I can get away with calling the subject by his nickname) got to be king through an Act of Parliament titled Titulus Regius. You can read the whole thing at the link, but the nitty is that his brother's kids (and heirs) were legally decreed bastards. Not in the "You little bastard!" sense; no, actual bastards, illegitimate kids, because his marriage to their mother Elizabeth Woodville was bigamous.

So Dick takes over as the Plantagenet heir, stashes the kids in one of the royal castles, and goes on to get kacked in a pretty gory fashion at Bosworth.

His successor, Henry Tudor, has the Act repealed. And destroyed; every extant copy burned: "...said Bill, Act and Record, be anulled and utterly destroyed, and that it be ordained by the same Authority, that the same Act and Record be taken out of the Roll of Parliament, and be cancelled and brent, and be put in perpetual oblivion." One of the first acts of the new Tudor Administration was a "destroy without reading" for ol' Titulus Regius.

But...here's the thing; if you repeal that Act, then Edward Plantagenet - Edward V, the delegitimized nephew of now-dead-Dick - becomes king.

Kind of a good reason for Henry Tudor to make sure that young Ed never turned up...alive. No?

So while it appears that Dick WAS a hunchback and may well have been other things he might not have been the original Wicked Uncle.

...and then says "You know, this is going to hurt you a lot more than it's going to hurt me." and knees his balls up through his diaphragm.

You can learn from adversity.

But it doesn't make it any less painful.

Speaking of learning from adversity, my friend Talyssa over at the Hidden Thimble asked me about books recently. I have a very catholic taste and my reading tends to vary quite a lot, but I've been enjoying several of my gift-books lately, and they're

John Scalzi's Redshirts: If you haven't found Scalzi's blog Whatever you're missing a good thing. He blogs as well as he writes, and that's very well indeed. His latest story is a fascinating combination of science fiction, metafiction, the television business, actors and acting and screenwriting...and also a thoughtful look at love and loss, fate...what the author of Proverbs might well have summed up as "...the way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid."

Anyway, Redshirts is one hell of a good tale.

In something of a weirder and darker note is The Last Light of the Sun by a Canadian author by the name of Guy Gavriel Kay. It's set in a thinly disguised early medieval Wessex with scenes set in Wales, and in the norse lands to the east, probably Norway...but one where the legends of the spirits of earth and air are, well, not. It's not a particularly original tale, but one well-told and with a good eye and ear for the period.

And I've got Summers' On Strategy on the nightstand, again. I've been slagging off on him over at MilPub and need to re-read him to see if he is as louche' as I recalled. Ah, the things I do for blogging...

Hmmm...

Let's see if there's anything else rattling around in here.

Did I mention that we have a new team in Portland?

The Portland Thorns F.C. is our entry into the new women's pro league. The army is already sold on our Thorns, and with old favorite Chris Sinclair returning to Portland, exciting young players like Allie Long and Tina Ellertson, USWNT stalwart Alex Morgan and CWNT keeper Karina leBlanc we're looking forward to a hell of an exciting first season for the Rose City women. PTFC!

In "News of the Weird", Fourth Grader Edition, my Little Guy's best pal is leaving his classroom for our local Catholic elementary school this coming Monday.

Now I had a bit of exposure to parochial school as a kid and, generally, I have no real issues with the way the local diocesan schools work. There's a bit more religion but I never encountered the "jesus-on-a-dinosaur" sort of bone-stupid back-to-the-13th-Century sorts of instruction that the local fundie "schools" deal in.

But...my understanding is that the main reason is because my son and his pal both have one of the old-school teachers this year. Mister (Name Redacted) is a sort of crusty old guy who seems mostly concerned with keeping the kids sat down and working and, frankly, I think he's kind of burned-out. He's not a fun, bouncy, peppy, imaginative sort of guy which is what the boys have been lucky enough to have up until now.

But...the thing is...what I remember from parochial school were lots of that kind of guy. Not burned-out necessarily, but strict and all about the rules.

We're not talking Miss Dove here.

So...I really wonder what the hell is going on. Unless there's some sort of problem with Peep's Pal needing more structure...

I don't see how he's going to get more out of Our Lady of Pain Elementary.

And, sadly, the Boy is heartsick at losing his best pal. He knows what's going to happen, and though his mother and Pal's family have sworn great swears that Pal and the Boy will get lots of time together and can continue to be Best Pals, well...

He knows better, and so do I.

There's a special place in social Hell where friendships go to die, and I think my little man can smell the whiff of brimstone. I wish I could make him feel more optimistic, or at least more sanguine, but I can't. I moved too many times when I was little. Friends move, or go away, and never come back, and there's a special sadness there that can never be undone or made better.

Poor little guy.

Almost out of gas here. But, pictures! I got pictures. From deviantart, a "harajuku cat".

Well, okay, then!

And I love this one, from Amy Mebberson, all of the Doctor's "companions". I'm embarrassed to admit I only know Sarah Jane Smith and Leela, from the old Tom Baker version of the show...

Okay. I'm done. Gotta go home and see if my in-laws have been buried under immense snowdrifts.

Digital Wounds

The Boy wants an XBOX360 for Christmas more than I want to see my bride prancing around the Christmas tree doing the "Barbie Girl" dance dressed in her Star Wars boxer shorts.

So we went to the store today to look over the expensive entertainment and there I ran across this:

I stood beside the cardboard tower where the little plastic box with the crouching GI sat alongside racing games and Pokemon games and Cooking Mama 3: Shop & Chop and a shiver ripped up my back.

Look, I understand that kids have always played at war.

I realize that American kids and English kids (and German kids) put cookpots on their heads and fired broomstick rifles at their friendly "enemies" in 1916 and 1942. Hell, I'm sure Sumerian kids and Prussian kids and Aztec kids did the same. War has been the basis of a hell of a lot of art and music and, yes, entertainment throughout human history.

I'm not sure why this shooter game squicked me out so quickly and thoroughly.

But I think perhaps because this isn't just kids playing at war they don't understand.

Perhaps because this was created and crafted by adults old enough to understand that the digital soldiers the children and young men will be playing at fighting and killing are ghosts of the real living men and women really bleeding and dying in a distant land for opaque and byzantine geopolitical reasons.

I'll be the first to admit my own inconsistency. I have no problem watching or playing with my son the Star Wars shooter Battlefront or the WW2 shooter Call of Duty.

But somehow killing pixels of imaginary stormtroopers or long-vanished landser seems less sickening to me than making a game of what might happen to an Army brother of mine in the high cold hills of a land whose fate means less to me than the most trivial wound that young soldier might receive.

I know it's not logical or sensible but the very notion of playing Heavy Fire Afghanistan makes me vaguely ill.

Update 12/9: On the other hand, THIS is the real deal.

H/t to Leon for directing me to this hilarious spoof. But y'know what? One of the worst parts of "real" war is the gawdawful boredom coupled with the problem that you can't stop paying attention and relax except when you're completely out of contact - and then you often find that there's nothing to do; you've read every goddamn paperback on the FOB, the game system is hogged by a dozen guys from Bravo Company, and it's too fucking hot, or cold, or rainy to play outside even if you feel like it.

Wars just pretty much suck for anyone who isn't commanding brigades, and even then. Wars just pretty much suck, and I just don't see how you could make a first person shooter out of an ongoing war and sleep at night.

Kids, remember that Mister VX is NOT our friend...

(h/t to Armchair Generalist)