09:07 – Last night we were looking for another series to start watching on Netflix streaming, and came across GRΣΣΚ in our queue. I’m not sure how it ended up on ABC Family, because the only thing it has to do with family is that the two major characters are brother and sister. Well, that and that the fraternity and sorority members refer to each other as brothers and sisters, respectively. The PTC must positively hate this program.
Within the limitations of network television, it’s a reasonably realistic depiction of college life, at least as I remember it. Granted, there’s not as much drinking, nudity, sex, and vomiting as I remember from 40 years ago, but they’re all there, at least in broad brush. The series was canceled, but there are 74 episodes, so we’ll probably continue watching it.
11:09 – All governments make contingency plans for possible events, including extremely unlikely ones. The US government, for example, almost certainly has plans in waiting in case we go to war with Canada, and Canada almost certainly has plans for war with the US. (France also has such plans for wars with numerous countries, but those plans are all the same: surrender immediately.)
But governments also make contingency plans for events that are considerably more likely to occur, and this falls into that category. Yep, the UK has plans for what to do if (when) the euro collapses. And not just economic plans. The UK has a duty to evacuate British citizens who are trapped in other EU countries that become embroiled in turmoil, rioting, and (potentially) full-blown revolutions. And these plans are not merely diplomatic, but include the possibility that UK military forces will have to get involved. I have no doubt that London is coordinating with Washington on this, and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that both the UK and the US are pre-positioning carriers and other naval assets for emergency evacuations of US and UK citizens, particularly from the southern periphery. If/when the euro collapses, things are likely to get very nasty very fast in Greece certainly, and very possibly in Italy, Spain, and Portugal.
Fricking right, we’ve got plans! So you guys just watch out! ‘Course, our carrier is a log raft with a beaver on it, but still, we’ve got our eyes on you!
Just so
When I was at the Command & General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, we trained making battle plans into Canada and Mexico all the time. Just to practice planning in different climate and terrain scenarios, of course,eh, Si.
Just the fact that they named a show Grssk, rather than ΓΡΕΕΚ (or even ΗΕΛΛΑΣ) is enough to keep me from watching the show. Why not appeal to that very small % of the public who are at least quasi-educated? It seems to me that advertisers would pay a premium to select such an audience. Of course Hollywood would then be forced to come up with actual plots, dialog, etc.
I’d suspect that the group of even quasi-educated people would be less interested in advertising than the average consumer. When I was a kid, I noticed one friend whose refrigerator and freezer were more full of name brand products than the one at home. Ironically it was the friend with the poorest and least well educated parents.
Calling the show GRΣΣΚ appeals to the same demographic as would get a tattoo of Chinese hanzi without being able to read Chinese (or at least going to the effort of finding someone who can read Chinese). Or, worse yet, getting their girlfriend’s name spelled out in Chinese hanzi which allegedly have a 1:1 mapping to the English alphabet.
I know a guy who has something very rude tattooed on one arm and some meaningless gibberish on the other. And my wife saw one oh-so-pretty, oh-so-hip girl with “I am a pig” on her back. (And in Chinese, that means a different thing than it would it English or German. And it’s much more offensive.)
RBT wrote:
“The US government, for example, almost certainly has plans in waiting in case we go to war with Canada, and Canada almost certainly has plans for war with the US.”
And I happen to know that Australia has well advanced plans to invade Alabama and liberate all the beautiful young ladies there with those wonderful accents and bring them back here… 🙂
Er… I thought it was the Australian babes who had the sexy accents. Perhaps we can work out a trade, in the spirit of international cooperation.
I wish they all could be North Carolina girls…
I will say this about girlz: in the warmer climates there is a lot more to see. Up here in the cold months, which to them is most of them, they might as well be wearing burkhas, so bundled up are they, as though this was Siberia or Antarctica where it really does get cold. Here for me it is t-shirt weather. Some dope on the radio just now told us (it is now about 40) that it will turn “sharply colder” in the next few days and I was thinking, whoa, like single digits or something, dude? Naw, the twenties. C’mon, loser radio guy, move to Florida or something but don’t tell me that is sharply colder.
I well remember my tongue hanging out of my mouth back in the days I worked for Uncle in Texas and Kalifornia, and also on my two short visits to Florida. I assume the same holds true down in Oz, which we hope to visit someday.
As for Canadian military forces, I reckon they don’t match up real well with ours, but whose do? We have a lock on the power that it would take to blow the planet to hell and our mil-spec budget dwarfs everyone elses’ combined. And meanwhile we have people telling us that this is not an empire and that the next Presidents over the next ten years better not even whisper that word. Bullshit. It’s an empire, pure and simple, a corporate fascist oligarchy, and the people who have been ruling us for a while now think nothing of lighting off another world war if they see fit, which would make the first two look like a day at the beach. But I ramble.
We have a young cousin in the Canadian Forces serving as a helicopter avionics tech and he loves it. We also note that our wonderful Brit cousins saw fit to send the Canadian forces in first during the early days of The Great War so they could enjoy the first fruits of German mustard gas. And we recall that we tried to invade the buggers back during what we call our War of 1812 and the whole thing was a total mess and fiasco.
Other than that, they along with our wonderful Brit cousins, and the rest of the former Commonwealth of Nations have been our allies for a long time now, and furthermore, during the week of 9/11, a bunch of our civvie airliners got diverted to gorgeous Goose Bay, Labrador, and those saintly folks up there took them in and took care of them. One more factoid: when the ship blew up and destroyed Halifax, Nova Scotia, Maffachufetts sent up tons of food and meds and doctors and nurses, and every year since then, those buggers send Boston its Christmas tree.
We will never forget.
Even though youse guys talk funny.
My grandfather Roy Grigg was serving with the Canadian forces at the second battle of Ypres in 1915, when they were gassed by the Germans. He was one of the few who survived the chlorine gas, though they figure that was what weakened his heart to the point where he died of a heart attack at age 52, just two months before I was born in 1959. Coincidentally, he was shipped off to war just two months before my father was born in 1914. He went on to fight at Somme and Vimy before being wounded at Passchendaele and didn’t get back to Canada until 1919.
Halifax and Boston are quite closely linked, as many of the early residents, such as my own family, originated in the Boston area. We followed along with Robert Monckton to take Fort Beausejour and decided to stay. Which helps explains why so many of us talk funny.
Steve F wrote:
“Er… I thought it was the Australian babes who had the sexy accents. Perhaps we can work out a trade, in the spirit of international cooperation.”
Yeah, some of them have nice accents, but I still think Alabaman is the nicest accent in the world, followed by Scottish, Welsh, Irish and southern English.
“Somme and Vimy before being wounded at Passchendaele…”
All three being absolute horrors. And it is instructive to meditate on the many more casualties that resulted from all the wars many years after those wars ended, from what your grandfather suffered, from what they called shell-shock back then, from being shot to pieces, burned, bayoneted, etc., and still around until the last handful died in the past few years. I remember the Memorial Day parades when I was a kid and seeing vets from that war, the Spanish-American War, WWII and Korea, of course, and then marching myself in one such parade out in Kalifornia as one of the color guard, back when all they wanted was real tall manly guys doing that gig. My parents remembered vets of the War Between the States marching in parades.
I was unaware that so many Halifax families had originated in Boston; and is the city in New Brunswick named after that dude? I’d check myself, but Google is wicked slow again tonight, as is everything else on the net; due, possibly, to another 100 million homo sapiens sapiens suddenly playing with their new IPads, tablets, cell phones, and other such gizmos and gimcracks.
BTW my grandfather was 62 in 1959, not 52. Fat fingered typo and no way to correct!
Quite a few British colonists moved north to displace the Acadians, and yes, Moncton NB is named after Monckton. Fort Beausejour was just a few miles from there.
And I happen to know that Australia has well advanced plans to invade Alabama
Just ask, we will give you Alabama if you promise to take New Orleans and Al Gore in the deal.
And if you act within the next 30 minutes, we’ll throw in Washington, DC, for the low, low price of only $9.99. And you can interpret that as American dollars, Australian dollars, Canadian dollars, or even Confederate dollars! How’s that for a deal?
They can have DC only if they leave the Smithsonians. Too much cool stuff there for it to walk away.
Ray wrote:
“Just ask, we will give you Alabama if you promise to take New Orleans and Al Gore in the deal.”
Tell ya what, we’ll meet you half way. You keep New Orleans and we’ll take Al Gore. The lovely Alabaman ladies will get a new life in sunny Australia and Al Gore will have an unfortunate accident at 30 thousand feet over the Pacific, and be buried at sea.
Lynn wrote:
“They can have DC only if they leave the Smithsonians. Too much cool stuff there for it to walk away.”
If you want us to take DC you have to throw in the Smithsonians (and the National Zoo), the best things about DC IMHO.
“I still think Alabaman is the nicest accent in the world, followed by Scottish, Welsh, Irish and southern English.”
I knew this girl in college, who could turn her “southern belle” accent on and off like a switch. When she turned it on, you could watch all of the guys (myself included) melt into the floor…
Well, once or twice a young woman from Alabama taught a SAS course that I attended. She had my undivided attention the whole time, and not just because she was very attractive.
“The US government, for example, almost certainly has plans in waiting in case we go to war with Canada, …”
Well, if so, they’ll surely be hoping that the third time is a charm…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Canada#American_Revolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Canada#War_of_1812