Saturday, December 16, 2006

Braaaiiiiinnnnnssssssss.........

ZOMG Survival Guide


I received 'The Zombie Survival Guide' as a most excellent Christmas present from Gold today. If indeed the dead will one day walk the Earth, it is good to know that I will have the necessary knowledge to survive. You might be tempted to assume that a book - such as this one - filed under 'humour' would be unreliable at best. Well, insofar as Zombies are concerned, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information, but the tactics and survival methods discussed within are solid stuff, which is why this book is worth two ordinary survival guides: How many wilderness survival guides have detailed analyses of weaponry, both melée and ranged? Of course, fighting things which are not zombies requires vastly different tactics, but thanks to Gold, I have that covered with 'How to Survive a Robot Uprising'. For a complete set, though, someone needs to write a How-To on survival in warzones, because both of the volumes I currently own are pertinent only to non-human hostiles. I'm sure any military, secret service, or even terrorist training manual (the latter having the creepy, fanatical pages removed, in the interests of efficiency) would work just fine. You might be worried that these manuals are very good at instructing a person on how to kill, maim, and destroy the living, undead, and robotic alike. What you should be worried about is any situation where it would be necessary to do so.


Stéphane Dion is a P'Tagh


There can be no 'Honourable' withdrawal from Afghanistan for Canada. It's bad enough that Gilles Duceppe wants the current mission to refocus on re-construction over combat, now the Liberals are jumping on the bandwagon. Let it please the court that it was a previous Liberal government which sent Canadian soldiers to Afghanistan in the first place. Doubting the current mission is all well and good, but what makes these politicians think that the Taliban will just magically disappear if we conveniently decide to put our troops out of harm's way? I don't buy this as anything but concern for these politicians' own futures.


Afghanistan does not have to be another Iraq, we can be smarter than the US was. That will require a few things which are not currently in place. These are:


1) Defined goals (ie. Eliminate or severely reduce the Taliban's capacity to wage war upon the people of Afghanistan, Secure rights for citizens, establish self-sufficient nations/tribes/etc.)


2) A timeframe and predicted budget for said goals, in terms of money and lives.


3) A comparison of the costs to our government with the value of gains by the Afghanis. These should be very close together, if at all possible (of course, freedom is hard to put a number to, so this may be meaningless)


4) A strategy for eventually leaving the country in a state where it may function as a prosperous, or potentially prosperous country.


5) Strategies to eliminate or reduce Civilian Casualties.


The above are not listed in specific order of priority.


Without any of these, the current mission is doomed to become meaningless, which is something Canada cannot afford. We complain that Canadian troops are questioned in our own war museum (if you have read the Citizen of late, there has been a small shitstorm on the issue), but when they place their lives on the line for a cause that is relatively good and just, few speak up to defend what we are doing. Suppose we had asked for our troops to be pulled out of the Holland liberation effort, back in WWII. Today, the graves of Canadian soldiers are maintained by Dutch school children. The Tulip Festival in Ottawa is a yearly reminder of their gratitude to those who gave their lives that Holland might be free. That 60 years (and counting) of gratitude is a powerful reminder of how much freedom means to people. If Canadians want to be seen as a major player in the Global arena, what better way to do it than be seen as a generous, and noble country? What better way to do it than to give to others the same freedom we wish for ourselves?


Stéphane Dion, you are a P'tagh.


Old-School


Due to time being short, and writing on the computer being not entirely my style (I have a bizarre half-on-paper-then-finish-on-computer thing going most of the time), I think I'll serialize the sci-fi story I am writing, most likely on a weekly basis. This means I might actually have time to write properly sized chapters, and carry on an actual plot, rather than whatever happens to jump into my head.


I kinda like the idea of doing serialized writing. It seemed to work for...was it Dickens?

I think so.


Aright, that's all for now. Tune in sometime next week for the thrilling first real chapter of Alice's saga....and sooner for all the wack ramblings you know and love.

1 comment:

DuWayne Brayton said...

Sweet, I have never clicked on the NEXT BLOG at the top of my blog before - yours was the third I clicked, the second in English.

I loved The Zombie Survival Guide. It makes me feel much more, umm, secure? I can't wait to learn about surviving revolutionary robots. Cause' I'm terrified of machines attacking.

Please, be smarter than my country has been. It's really not hard.

Serials rock. I have several years of Ellery Queen mystery magazine and a few years of SF and Fantasy. The serials are the biggest fun. I actually have all of the SF and Fantasy already, but a friend is still sending me the Ellery Queens, once, sometimes twice a month if there are serials in a run. It is a blast getting more excited about new installments of a written story, than anything on television.

BTW, I am reading Chapterhouse Dune right now. I am finishing my first run through all of the Dune novels, in a couple of years. Are you a fan of other Frank Herbert, or just Dune?

Some Rights Reserved

Creative Commons License
This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.