Comments on: A Star is Reborn

By: Herr Doktor Bimler

Herr Doktor Bimler — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 21:24:53 +0000

someone used a frozen chicken in the gun. This was a bad idea.
See, [names of worried family members go here], all this time spent reading S,N! is not wasted at all. I’m learning important lessons about life.

By: Chairman Meow

Chairman Meow — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 20:18:26 +0000

Longman’s a genius. A real spaghetti-puller, in fact. I can imagine that whenever Iraqis are being fired upon and bombed, the first thing that occurs to them is potentially participating in 5% annual GDP growth. Because, you know, the soldiers firing on them while trotting gruntingly to their destinations would gladly lay down their arms to recruit new participants for the U.S. economy.

That whole post was a big bag of Huh?

By: Nancy in Detroit

Nancy in Detroit — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 19:48:56 +0000

Herr Doktor:

I vaguely recall something from my automotive days where someone used a frozen chicken in the gun. This was a bad idea.

By: Miss Emily

Miss Emily — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 04:49:43 +0000

The dropping pigs thing, I dunno, reminds me of the flying turkeys episode of WKRPâ€¦.

‘As god is my witness, I thought pigs could fly.’

By: Smiling Mortician

Smiling Mortician — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 04:45:33 +0000

May I just point out how much I love being diggity-diggity-dared?

By: Schwag of Tulsa

Schwag of Tulsa — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 03:30:25 +0000

I’ve read that first sentence five times. I still can’t make any sense of it. I just get dizzy…

By: RobW

RobW — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 03:07:06 +0000

Now youâ€™re losing sight of the real enemy â€” the pelican. One of those jihadi suicide-bomb pelicanazis took out a B-1 in 1986, costing approximately two magoogal* dollars to replace.

Well, you’ve really gone right to the heart of the matter. I was trying to be politic and only target the turkey buzzards, but you and I know that the distinction among them is meaningless. They all want to destroy America and are intensely jealous of our freedom, not to mention our supersonic flying capability.

It’s time to just eliminate the avio-fascists once and for all. That’ll teach ‘em.

By: mikey

mikey — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 02:03:58 +0000

How bout “mikey of Cartoon”?

mikey

By: Rover

Rover — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 01:20:33 +0000

Kitchener of Khartoum

Gordon of Khartoum seems the far, far more appropriate example at this point.

By: Smiling Mortician

Smiling Mortician — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 00:29:22 +0000

Is that more or less than a gogzillion?

By: Herr Doktor Bimler

Herr Doktor Bimler — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 00:20:39 +0000

We need to wipe out all the turkey vultures with overwhelming force and leave none alive.
Now you’re losing sight of the real enemy — the pelican. One of those jihadi suicide-bomb pelicanazis took out a B-1 in 1986, costing approximately two magoogal* dollars to replace.

* magoogal (noun). Enormous but poorly defined sum of money, with many zeros it, the number of zeros tending to increase as one looks at it more closely. Usually encountered in the context of airforce procurement budgets.

By: Indy

Indy — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 23:23:00 +0000

Shorter Andrew Longman:

“Have you ever… been… with a woman, Mandrake?”

By: RobW

RobW — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 22:25:27 +0000

The service logs about 3,000 bird strikes annually. Topping the Air Force’s hit list is the turkey vulture, which–although only responsible for about 1 percent of incidents–causes 40 percent of the damage.

“They’re very big, ugly and nasty birds with bad personal habits,” said Kelley.

I found the good Herr Doktor’s chicken gun on wiki, then followed to find that money quote at FODnews.com. Awesome.

Obviously, turkey vultures hate America and should all be wiped out. This whole idea of building stronger aircraft canopies is just Democrat defeatism. It is a weak approach, putting the USAF on a permanent defensive footing.

What’s needed is total war, an aggresive advance to take the fight to the enemy. We need to wipe out all the turkey vultures with overwhelming force and leave none alive.

It’s the only thing they understand, for they are all bloodthirsty animals.

How about a Phish tank that fires hippies from its main gun?

By: Smiling Mortician

Smiling Mortician — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 21:46:55 +0000

Herr Doktor, if you need someone to read early drafts, you know, someone to give you that invaluable feedback that’s described so movingly on the acknowledgments page . . . well, you know where to find me.

By: Herr Doktor Bimler

Herr Doktor Bimler — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 20:21:22 +0000

Catapoultry, people:
“The Chicken Gun is designed to simulate high speed bird impacts. It is named after its usual projectile: a whole dead standard sized chicken, as would be used for cooking. This has been found to accurately simulate a fairly large bird. The test target is fixed in place on a test stand, and the cannon is used to fire the chicken into the engine, windshield, or other test structure.”
Perhaps the technology does not scale up to pig-carcass size.

At any rate, when I finish future civil-war fantasy, several important plot twists will involve chicken guns. Don’t worry, war-porn readers, I will throw in no end of detail about calibres and exit velocities. Not to mention ‘fish tanks’, which fire actual fish. Why, yes, it is a surrealist novel. How did you guess?

By: David in NYC

David in NYC — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 20:07:10 +0000

Needed in Iraq: 28% more John Wayne

Aside from all the other batshit-insane ravings in Longman’s piece, I am really curious as to how he came up with 28% more John Wayne. I mean, why not 27% or 29%? Is there a margin of error involved?

Well, as a wise man once said, you fight your wars with the John Wayne you have, not the John Wayne you wish you had.

By: Darth Vegas

Darth Vegas — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 19:30:27 +0000

Any sight revered by a terrorist insurgent should be pulverized with a very American bomb and, preferably, a C-130 full of pigs dumped on it from a few thousand, splat, feet.

so that whole “we are there for the brave Iraqis yearing for freedom, hearts and minds” stuff is out teh window again? Good to know. Good to know.

By: Karl Rove II

Karl Rove II — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 18:14:58 +0000

Shorter Andrew Longman:

“If we simply killed everyone in Iraq, we would win.”

By: Ben

Ben — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 18:05:48 +0000

What I like about Longman’s idea is that it’s based on a proven model. Ruthless force against civilian populations of occupied countries worked so well for the Third Reich! They completely vanquished their enemies and saved Western civilization in Europe to this day!

By: Sarcastro

Sarcastro — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 17:58:02 +0000

Kitchener of Khartoum crushed the Sudanese insurgency and brought relative calm to that country for 50 years by opening up with the British naval guns on the tomb of the revered Mahdi, utterly leveling it. Any sight revered by a terrorist insurgent should be pulverized with a very American bomb and…

1. The Sudanese “insurgancy” had held the country for decades.
2. Kitchener didn’t purposfully destroy any other monuments. In fact, he rebuilt all the mosques damaged in the war and forbade Christian missionaries from entering the Sudan.
3. Kitchener realized that followers of the Mahdi and followers of Islam were not necessarilly one in the same.

Gods above, I can’t believe I’m defending Kitchener. He was a racist war-mongering imperialist shit. That said, he was a better man than anyone in the modern Republican party.