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| Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, San Diego, CA (Source) |
Given the demise of my favorite drummer last weekend, I've been remembering other losses over the years. Lex springs to mind immediately. For those wondering about the opening photo, that's where Lex was interred ten years and change ago. Nice view from there of Naval Air Station North Island, I rather wish I didn't know that, but I guess every cloud has a silver lining, be it ever so small.
I've been rereading a number of his old posts via the Wayback Machine. If you go to the Pages category over there on the sidebar and select Neptunus Lex Archives, you'll eventually get there. You probably won't see that if you're accessing the site from a cell phone, unless you select Web View or its equivalent depending on what device you use.
The man was an incredible writer, I probably spent a good three hours over there rereading his posts. He left his mark, although his website went defunct (and is now owned by some pack of assholes who spend their time buying up domain names hoping to sell them back at a premium) you can still read a lot of his stuff via the Wayback Machine. (Hell, you can read just about any old blog via the Wayback Machine, even mine! I checked it out, got to see some of the old blog headers I used to have. What is the Wayback Machine? You can read about that here.)
What inspired me to go read some of Lex's work? Well, I listen to a lot of Foo Fighters music, damned near every day, and it struck me that though Taylor Hawkins is gone, his work on the drums will live on. When I had that thought, I decided to go "reread some Lex." And I'm glad that I did.
And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. Matthew 24:6 (KJV)
Yeah, pretty much a truism there, there's always some conflict going on somewhere. You only hear about the ones the Western media wants to tell you about, and only if supports some agenda which you and I are seldom privy to.
Speaking of war ...
I get a lot of my Ukraine news from a fellow who goes by the name Operator Starsky on YouTube. (You can check out his channel here.) He's a member of Ukraine's Rapid Response Brigade (so I gather) and is what you'd call, the man in the arena. Interesting stuff.
He's not my only source mind you, one of many. One place that has had some interesting reports, they actually have reporters in country, is Channel 4 News, a British outfit. Do I check any U.S. sources? Back in the day we, in the military, relied heavily on CNN for news. I don't know about now, but I have discarded them as a source of news. Anything they say has to be cross-checked against multiple sources before I believe it. They have an agenda and, I believe, they are in league with the enemies of the United States. (Do I listen to Fox News? Nope, they too are biased. When will our thrice-damned news agencies report news? Not opinions, not rumors, but actual news.) But enough about that.
Growing up, the Soviet Union was the boogie-man. For fifteen-plus years in my Air Force career, the USSR was the enemy we trained to fight. What about China, or North Korea, or any of the many Communist nations which used to pollute the surface of the Earth, what about them? Small change compared to the Russian bear. (I know, technically the Soviet Union was made up of multiple nationalities, but the Kremlin is in Moscow, which is in Russia. So we tended to call them "the Russians." Even Stalin wasn't Russian, and Hitler wasn't German, but ...)
My point is, over time the Red/Russian Army have shown themselves to be tactically inept with an overreliance on artillery and sheer numbers to overwhelm an enemy. True in WWII, true in every other place the Russians have thrown their weight around. That is showing again in Ukraine. Remember, this is a nation where initiative and independent thought aren't really encouraged, in the Russian military these things are actively discouraged! It shows in their doctrine, it shows in their tactics in the field.
As Paweł pointed out yesterday, they don't really learn from their mistakes.
But enough of that.
I am cognizant of the whole "Will Smith smacks Chris Rock" affair and have come to the realization that I don't really care. Hollywood has never really impressed me as a place to which we should look for our moral behavior. It is the antithesis of that in reality. While I do like some of the movies they put out, that "some" represents fewer and fewer of their offerings as time goes by. YMMV
I think that's enough musing for one day.
I'll be back ...
Grandkids + gelato = bring WetWipes Sarge. One good thing about The InterNets is that stuff can last forever or until someone decides to remove it. Thanks for the two links regarding Ukraine, the more info sources one can peruse the better in my book. The less said about Hollywood....well.....that's good.
ReplyDeleteSound wisdom on the wipes. Might need to put a tarp down as well.
DeleteWelcome to use my place as a pit stop/half way house, should the Lushes care to visit the beach.
DeleteGood to know!
DeleteI stumbled across Lex’s blog a few months before he died. Learning of his death was a sad day.
ReplyDeleteEvery news source is owned or operated by somebody with an agenda. Has been since newspapers were invented. TV news got that wsy when the networks realized that, by catering to one side or the other, they could make money on the news. Before that, broadcasting the news was thought to be a public service. That’s one reason why documentaries went away.
Good point, CM. Always follow the money.
DeleteHaving an agenda isn't inherently bad, but these MSM companies now don't seem to care about the truth and will lie obfuscate and bend the truth to fit their agenda, which not only wanders into the unethical arena but criminal as well. They don't seem to want to put out the truth nowadays so they're no better than Pravda during the Cold War.
DeletePrecisely.
DeleteGelato. I suggest that you conduct a number of GSRMs (Gelato Sampling Recon Missions) prior to the arrival of the children. That way your can insure food safety by using yourself as a test dummy.
ReplyDeleteIn the words of Corporal Hicks, "It's the only way to be sure."
Well, if I wasn't going to be on the ship ten to eleven hours a day, I might.
DeleteBut yeah, what Hicks said.
Regardless of what autocrat is running Russia, going back for centuries, the culture always remains the same. One of the predominant parts of the culture is corruption. Every man for himself in a morass of basic Darwinism. This effects their military also, commanders steal from their men and the state. What they say they have in terms of men and materiel is whatever they can get away with. Stalin's purges in the late 30s removed a cadre of train officers, but it also, temporarily, broke up the corruption connections and put the fear of God into whoever was left. In the long run, this was beneficial to the State.
ReplyDeleteThe Chinese are worse and haven't really had to fight any campaigns since Korea.
And that's really it, in a nutshell. People at the top might change, but as long as the culture doesn't, the nation won't change.
DeleteTrue about the Chinese, and their incursion into Vietnam in 1979 was only a month long. Their army's performance in that conflict was pitiful as I recall.
(Don McCollor)...A Russian tradition that goes back. There was the tragicomic deployment of the Baltic Fleet in the Sino-Soviet war in 1904. [The 'Voyage of the Dammed' http://www.hullwebs.co.uk/content/l-20c/disaster/dogger-bank/voyage-of-dammed.htm] when the Tsar sent the Baltic Fleet 18,000 miles around Africa to the far east to fight the Japanese. Unseaworthy warships, untrained crews, inept commanders that hated each other's guts, no friendly coaling or supply bases. Among other things, they fired on British fishing boats mistaking them for Japanese torpedo boats (on the Dogger Banks in the North Sea!) and almost started a war with Britian. Their best gunnery was on one of their own cruisers towing a target raft (more than once). It is hilarious...
DeleteAnd so typically Russian.
DeleteIt's a sad times when I can't take any US news source at face value because they are ALL working for someone/something beyond reporting the news.
ReplyDeleteVery sad.
DeleteIt's been that way since before the 2008 elections. Was getting better and more truthful info on Barky the Lightbringer from the UK's Daily Mail, which brought out the whole "I was born in Kenya" thing that came from his autobiography.
DeleteSigh.
Indeed.
DeleteSarge, one of the greatly humbling things is to read the ancient writers and realize that they themselves read other writers, writers who we know of but whose works not longer exist or writers we would have never heard of other than the references made. In time everything that is created simply disappears - 99.9% of it very quickly within a generation or two, the rest a little longer. But although their works disappear, the impact that they have on people and how they live their lives and influence others remains and goes on - in that sense, there is a sort of earthly immortality.
ReplyDeleteAmerican media is simply without reliability at this point. At best one can look to overseas, but also (thanks to InterWeb) the growth of the citizen journalist. Yes, I know there is the risk of being shut down, but as the meme statement from Firefly says "Tney can't stop the signal, Mal. They can never stop the signal."
I too remember when the Soviet Union was "the threat" and Communism the competing ideology (good heavens, I spent an entire semester on Communist policies and structures. That was time well spent...). The fact that Soviet Military Doctrine has apparently not evolved at all since 1991 is frankly shocking to me - and in the modern world, something that will simply not work. Human wave tactics are not what they once were, with the InterWeb.
Hollywood. Literally could not care less. More and more, like my science fiction, I find that by and large my interest (at least in American-generated movies) has completely expired in most movies and entertainment since the early 90's. There are a few I may still go see (Dune, as I understand it, is now on Southwest and I fly that often enough, and The Northman at least looks promising), but I just as much like to watch someone like The Critical Drinker rip the disaster entertainment has become.
It's important to recognize those who went before, as has been said before, we stand on the shoulders of giants.
DeleteAnd The Critical Drinker, thank you for that, guy is entertaining and makes many good points. I just watched his "The End Of The Movie Star." Outstanding!
Sarge, I have to admit that The Critical Drinker is one of my secret guilty pleasures. Originally I was amused because, well, there is nothing funnier than a Scotsman swearing. But as I watched, I found a first class critical mind that concisely assessed every movie as well as the industry in general. Do not just listen to the thumbs down reviews; take the time to listen to a thumbs up one. He is not impossible in his expectations, he just has high ones.
DeleteI shall.
DeleteTNX. I sorta 4got you offered the Neptunus Lex Archives link. I found Bill Brandt's opus some time back - for those who might like to re-re-read:
ReplyDeletehttps://thelexicans.wordpress.com/2016/09/23/index-the-best-of-neptunus-lex/
Bill didn't start The Lexicans but he has certainly kept it alive and organized it over the years. (I was one of those who help start that place up, though there were many of us, Bill kept it alive.)
DeleteWell, Glad you had a safe trip and had time to visit Lex.
ReplyDeleteI'm of two minds with regard to the "Fight". Much like you, I couldn't care less about Hollywood and its people. Haven't been to a movie in years and I'm very selective on what TV I watch,. (Currently going through STNG again. That should serve as a good example.) That having been said, should someone be making fun of my wife, and continued after I'd asked him to stop, well...
Course there's the theory going round that it was all a setup to get more attention to the Oscar Ceremony. The only fact that lends credence to that theory is that Smith slapped him. Had it been me, Rock would have been bleeding and missing a few teeth.
Do good things to the ship and get home ASAP.
I shall endeavor to do my duty to God and my country.
DeleteThere was a time in my life when I dreamed of winning Tonys and Oscars (you would not have seen me, these would have been for lighting design, sound recording, camera platform invention, staging design, ... geeky technical awards they sometimes show the titles of in that high-speed crawl at the end.} Ah well. The behind-the-scenes workers are usually "good folk"; if they got the praise and adulteration the "names" do, they might become ruined people, too. Some of the famous are so (good folk), I've met them, worked with them, have an occasional twitch of memory "I could have" that goes away (also fighter pilot, Simon Templar, Willy Garvin, .... ) Their consciousness of that dangerous temptation is a shield they pull you behind. Others ... throw that shield away, they want the exposure.
ReplyDeleteCharacter is both role and trait. Choose carefully.
I was a minor reporter, of sorts, in the '60s. Reporters took the handouts (to get the correct spellings of the names and positions) and started asking questions. The handouts were what the politicians were trying to sell, that wasn't the news. Now the handouts are accepted as "The Truth", no meaningful questions are asked.
I've fallen into rereading Robert A. Heinlein. "Expanded Universe" is a collection of short stories and novelets from the 1940s and 50s interspaced with his musing about his "Future History". It's terrifying how he was predicting then what we're doing now.
And like Cassandra, he was ignored
Who is today's Cassandra? Who is warning us of the dangers of the woke, the greens, the population, the death of Earth as we know it?
(If you have a spare eleven minutes, youtube video titled "energy slaves".)
Interesting ...
DeleteHTom - Thank you for the recommendation on Expanded Universe. I have seen it but never perused it before. I like Heinlein and will give it a look.
DeleteMoi aussi.
DeleteWe did much traversing of the San Diego region at the end of our last cross-country trek.
ReplyDeleteFort Rosecrans and the Cabrillo National Monument were paramount.
Unfortunately, I was unaware of any gelato dispensaries, or I’d have sampled the stracciatella.
We did find a shop in New Orleans.
So far, the best was at San Giminiano, in Tuscany.
As to your last… no comment
DeleteSkip #1 - I've been to San Gimignano, concur on that being the best gelato. One of my favorite places on the planet.
DeleteSkip #2 - Yup.
Delete"...assholes buying up domain names" I'd call them carrion-eaters but that's insulting buzzards.
ReplyDeleteBoat Guy
Roger that.
Delete"Lower than an internet domain squatter" is one of the worst insults I've heard since the turn of the century.
DeleteOuch! But appropriate.
DeleteThe Wayback Machine is incredibly useful for many things.
ReplyDeleteIt is well worth visiting the Neptunus Lex archives there. While Rhythms, and many of Lex's most important posts have been saved and moved to the Lexican site, there are many, many more in the archives. His output was simply stunning, often multiple posts a day, on matters important or trivial; haunting or amusing; personal or global. Not only his posts, but also the comments from the original band of Lexicans are worth reading, and not reproduced in the other places where Lex posts have been resurrected.
As for Hollywood, they exist in the same void where the NFL and NBA lurk, which I refuse to waste my finite time viewing. Eff them and their woke nonsense.
Enjoy the family time, and the opportunity to recharge from the nearness of Lex. And, thank you for your contributions to making the fleet better prepared.
Hope the Muse is having fun, and will return to work eventually, but we are patient.
John Blackshoe
I need to revisit the real Neptunus Lex from time to time. Keeps me grounded.
Delete