Tag: cracked.com

Come, look upon the face of your failure.

To quote Cracked.com, “He’s like 8, and this already makes him a more accomplished adult than us.”

Kid version of the Ferrari* sells for 97+ grand; Italian model costs… well, everything, by the end.  But a part of you will never regret the price.

Moe Lane

*Not an actual Ferrari.  People would buy ’em if they were actual Ferraris, and then tell their kids to shut up and wait their turn.

It’s bad when Cracked.com invokes Azathoth…

…only halfway through one of its posts (“The 7 Most Terrifying Rejected TV Ads“).  No matter how necessary:

Would it sell?

Your question is meaningless. The Horror With a Thousand Heads passes through this world, devouring children’s hearts to spare them the horrors yet to come. You will be ground to meat-pulp, and your lucre shall rot for a thousand times a thousand eons, its meaning lost upon the scurrying, mad cockroaches as they whisper chirring songs to Azathoth. All existence is ashes, and the Bloated One its High Priest.

Yeah, this was one of the special ones.  Try not to read it if you’re recovering from surgery.

Trust me on this.

Via @Ben_Howe.

I wonder what ads from our time…

…will be mocked sixty years from now.  Not to be a buzzkill or anything, but the US military was so heavy-handed about treating/preventing syphilis and gonorrhea during World War II for the following reasons:

  • Both diseases are easy to catch and hard to detect in their initial stages.  Syphilis, of course, eventually drives you crazy and kills you; gonorrhea can be transmitted to children via the mother and make them blind (I didn’t know that one).
  • Like it or not, prior to AIDS prostitutes were generally more likely to have STDs than the general population*.
  • Conventional treatments prior to WWII involved silver nitrate for gonorrhea, and arsenic compounds for syphilis.  Yes, they were highly unpleasant.
  • Antibiotics?  Sure, they had antibiotics.  Sulfa drugs, too.  What’s more important: that private with the clap, or that private with the gut wound?

Hence the propaganda.

I wonder about Cracked.com sometimes.  Surely they contemplated what that ‘procurable’ meant?

Moe Lane

*I am given to understand that this has abruptly changed in the USA after the rise of AIDS, but I cannot confirm this.

This has nothing to do with the fact…

…that I despise the so-called ‘movie*’ called ‘Starship Troopers.’  It’s actually a hit on Cracked.com, who is doing its best to make that ‘movie’ a prophecy of the War on Terror.  Here’s the part that stuck in the craw: it’s the attempt to equate the first Bug attack (a debacle for the ‘good guys’) with Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan…

Operation Anaconda was the first major engagement of the War On Terror. The idea was to attack a force of around 200 Al Qaeda soldiers in the Shahi-Kot Valley from the west, causing them to flee into the waiting arms of more US soldiers in the east, in what’s known as a “Hammer and Anvil” strategy.

Just one problem: Al Qaeda did not flee, but stood their ground.

Just one other problem: There were not 200 enemy soldiers in the valley; there were up to five times that amount.

Just one further other problem: the US military planners had assumed the enemy were armed with machine guns; they actually had mortars, rifles and rockets, and the planners assumed that Al Qaeda were in the valley, (they were in caves in the mountains surrounding the valley), and a convoy broke off from the main “TF Hammer” force to reach an observation point they’d been assigned to. And an AC-130, which was supposed to be providing firing and recon support during the battle thought they were an Al Qaeda convoy and attacked them. This friendly fire battle resulted in the first casualty of the operation.

The rest of TF Hammer came under heavy mortar fire from the prepared and entrenched Al Qaeda, and their air support turned out to consist of six bombs, and their attack didn’t actually make it into the valley, meaning that TF Anvil, arriving via helicopter, did not close the trap as had been intended, but instead found a trap closing around them, as they were attacked by an enemy who was better prepared, better armed, in greater numbers, and from a better-fortified position than they expected.

…nice recap of Wikipedia, there.  But Cracked.com forgot the punchline: Continue reading This has nothing to do with the fact…

And what do *I* know about movies, anyway?

OK, here’s the situation…

…My parents went away on a week’s vacation!
And they left the keys to the brand-new Porsche;
Would they mind?
Ummmm, welllllll, of course not!
I’ll just take it out for a little spin
(And maybe show it off to a couple of friends!)
I’ll just cruise it around the neighborhood
Well maybe I shouldn’t
Yes, of course I should.

Parents Just Don’t Understand

Err… right.  Where was I? Continue reading And what do *I* know about movies, anyway?