Brilliant.
Just the sort of story there should be more of in the news. Crazies doing crazy things.
A Washington state US Marine reservist was earlier this week cuffed following a lively Tuesday afternoon which saw him dress in a child's banana costume, indecently expose himself and wave a shotgun in the street while shouting "something or other about white supremacy". Carlton Jeffery Kohnert, 21, accompanied by Anthony …
I think I've hit my limit on doses of the totally random for the week. I am currently in the middle of building 20 routing/VPN/firewall/etc. VMs, configuring a bunch of new domain controllers whilst fighting with Certificate Services, Office Communications Server and what I think are some bad routes on my ISP's side.
There is something completely surreal about working intensely for 12 hours on that, (in a city that's covered in chokingly thick smoke from the forest fires a province over,) and then popping up for a breather only to read an article like that.
My entire conscious mind just threw up a parse error, dumped the core and rebooted. Now I have to run memtest to see if there’s a bad DIMM up there which will take all bloody nig---zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…….
..I've been fighting with Virgin Media lately because they seem to have completely ditched their subscription dialup service (a hangover from telewest/blueyonder days when it was called 'surfunlimited'). The 179 number exists and dials a POP, but username/password is refused and my VM webspace doesn't exist.
Oh, and they are still continuing to place a "subscription dialup" item on the bill, despite the service apparently not existing. According to the last-line engineer I spoke to, 179 doesn't exist either (uhm.. yes it does, try it from a cablephone). My account exists. My customer number exists, but for some reason the subscription dialup service has without any warning or reason that I know of, just completely disappeared and nobody at VM has a clue. He passed me back to some Indian customer services rep who wanted me to sign up to a whole new 12 month contract for broadband (plus a £35 installation charge) when I'm not going to be living here for the next 12 months and the household has been with Virgin ever since they were Telewest. I feel like finding the nearest VM offices and having a nice long shouting match with them but I've a feeling it'll be as much use as pissing into a hurricane.
Still, at least someone was brave enough to loan me a T Mobile 3G dongle, so I can still enjoy my Fridays.
Given the wasted human lives that have resulted from the American Wars in VietNam, Iraq and Afghanistan and the mediocre support they get from their military employers post deployment this type of behaviour is somewhat common in the U.S.A.
It causes one to wonder how the World War II military personnel survived up to 5 or 6 years, without home leave, whereas today's relatively pampered soldiers with regular rotations seem to be ill-equipped to handle the fighting.
...probably because the US watched what was happening for ~4 years from the side-lines so had a fairly good idea of who the aggressors were and then got their @rses kicked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbour so decided enough was enough and joined the Allies and help defeat the Nazis.
Having home territory attacked would be enough sufficient to motivate most people, added to that the 4 years of coverage in the media keeping the population informed.
Having political masters decide on a war that isn't a response to direct aggression, is based on some very dubious decisions, would not.
Seriously? That was pretty lame. I mean... actually it was -really- lame. I opposed the Iraq war, and have little time for the politics that fomented it - but I respect the soldiers who are there doing the job the civilian government told them to do.
That respect is apparently too much for you to muster; it was further remarkable to see someone respond to a post about a banana-clad, gun-waving nutball with political invective, ad hominems hurled at soldiers, and, to top it off, a "what's the matter with kids these days" argument, and a distillation of a "back in my day" Monty Python sketch. Well done, that.
WWII: You spent your deployment enduring all the horrors of war, then you and your chums were pulled behind the lines, sent to the nearest harbor where you waited for a ship to become available, after which you sailed home on a leisurely ocean cruise.
During the weeks all this normally took, you had time to relax, talk with other soldiers heading home, and prepare for the new life back home as a civvie while putting the trauma of war behind you..
Now (Vietnam to present): You spend your deployment enduring the horrors of war, then you report to a chopper (usually alone) that takes you to an airport where you're placed on a plane (usually civilian) within hours, and sometime the next day, you're back home with your ears still ringing from your last firefight, no time to adjust, relax, prepare, forget.
Which one sounds like a more traumatizing transition to you?
No, technically they are fruit. It's just that generally they don't contain seeds. Cut one in half and you can see where the seeds should be.
Some say this is because they have evolved not to need seeds because humans propogate them. Others say this is cock because evolution happens much too slowly for that to have happened.
Others don't give a toss and quite simply can't be bothered with all this crap. Seriously, I worked in a supermarket as a teenager and we actually got a letter of complaint from some dweeb requesting that we move tomatoes from the vegetable section to the fruit section.
I don't feel guilty about riding through town on my motorcycle, wearing nothing but chaps, a bandana over my face and a viking helmet..
The look on the old lady's face, in the rear view mirror, when she got a glimpse of my hairy buns was worth any jail time I would have had, had I been caught.
Thank GOD for the statute of limitations!