The Pulsing Heart of SAC, Slim Pickens & Me

Last Friday, I found a link on The Kansas City Star's website regarding this story.

Air Force film was a Cold War attack on ‘Dr. Strangelove’

By STEVE EVERLY
The Kansas City Star

A recently discovered Air Force documentary took a more sober approach in deriding the notion of an unauthorized nuclear strike.

“Well boys, I reckon this is it: nuclear combat, toe to toe with the Russkies.”
— Maj. T.J. “King” Kong

More than 45 years ago, actor Slim Pickens delivered those words in “Dr. Strangelove,” a seminal Cold War black comedy.

In the film, a rogue Air Force general, Jack Ripper, convinced that fluoridated water is a communist plot, orders a nuclear attack on the Soviets, triggering Armageddon.


It’s a tad late, but the United States Air Force has more to say on the matter.

“SAC Command Post,” an 18-minute film made in 1963 belittling the possibility of such an unauthorized U.S. nuclear strike, has been unearthed at the National Archives in College Park, Md.

The SAC film also countered “Fail Safe,” a 1962 novel that would be made into a movie in 1964. It was about an attack order accidentally sent to a SAC bomber, which carried out a nuclear strike.

A couple of years ago I blogged about living in Mulvane, KS in 1962 when my dad worked at the Boeing Overhaul Base in Wichita. The vast majority of the planes being overhauled were SAC B-52s.

I've always loved that SAC Crest! You have the blue sky and clouds in the background, and an ARMORED FIST in the foreground holding both the lightning bolts of war and the olive branches of peace.

The message to the enemy was "I can destroy you, or I can protect you. What's your pleasure motherfucker?"

It was generally understood at the time that SAC had B-52's loaded with live, armed nukes in the air, 24/7. That particular weapon was always loaded, aimed and cocked at all times, just waiting for the president to pull the trigger.

During periods of heightened alert, like during the Cuban Missile Crisis, you even had crews of fighter pilots, in their fully armed jets, on the runway, engines idling, just waiting for the wave of an arm to hit the afterburners and go to war.

It was an exciting time to be 7 years old. Nothing concentrates the mind of a child like knowing you and everyone you know and love could be dead in 20 minutes. Maybe that's why I tend to live in the moment and kinda suck at planning things. I'm a child of the Cold War.

But what I think you will find most interesting about watching this Air Force movie is the level of the technology. SO primitive!

This was the absolute state of the art, bleeding edge of technology in 1962. This is what we relied on to protect us from nuclear destruction. Rotary dial telephones. Analog circuitry. Switchboards. Teletype machines. Mechanical switches. Sealed paper envelopes.

It's a miracle that it all actually worked.

"Besides obscurity, the SAC film had another problem: Its assertion that “the expenditure of nuclear weapons against an enemy” could be ordered only by the president wasn’t exactly true."

"Fred Kaplan, in his book “The Wizards of Armageddon,” tells about Daniel Ellsberg and a midlevel government official taking an afternoon off in 1964 to see “Dr. Strangelove.”
Ellsberg, the man who would later leak the Pentagon Papers, had been a RAND analyst and a consultant at the Defense Department. As he left the theater, Ellsberg turned to his colleague and said, “That was a documentary!"

The human race has never come closer to complete annihilation and extinction as it did between 1960 and 1965.

So I guess you'll have to forgive me if I'm not all that anxious to give up all my freedom and privacy so Jack Bauer can protect me from some lunatic fucktard in a suicide vest.



Terrorists? That all you got?



Try again.



Oh, and just as a little sweet desert, here I am sitting next to Slim Pickens (Maj. T.J. "King" Kong) at the bus stop at LAX.



You can find the story behind that picture here.

Enjoy! Goodnight!

Ted Kennedy's Senate Seat Goes Republican

Several things happened here.

The Massachusetts Democrat Party assumed that any Dem they ran would win and no further effort was necessary. That was a huge fucking arrogant mistake and miscalculation.

Health Care Reform was Ted Kennedy's passion.

The irresistible catnip of disrupting the Dems health care reform plan by replacing Teddy Kennedy's Senate seat with a young, inexperienced, hunky, Playgirl centerfold Republican was a Perfect Storm of grass roots mobilization. Massachusetts Republicans and Independents saw an opportunity to send a message to power-drunk Democrats.

I don't really have a problem with this. Sorry to disappoint.

I think that either party having a filibuster-proof majority is dangerous.

Our Democratic-Republic is best served when both parties have equal sway.

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely" is a cliche because, like all cliches, it's true!

Obama had a year to ram through what he could. He did the best he could. The next 7 years will be politics as usual.

Prosthetics for Haiti

I know that the immediate need in Haiti for the past week has been just food and water. The medical need was urgent, but you had to keep the injured alive long enough for medical treatment to arrive.

But there is a long term need that will need to be addressed as a result of the past week.

Injuries that could have been treated rapidly and successfully with an intact, medical infrastructure have gone days without treatment. The injuries became infected. By the time medical help arrived, the only way to control the infection was by amputation.

According to a news story I saw tonight, doctors have been performing an average of about 70 amputations a day.

I have no idea how the numbers play out, but I can easily imagine that in addition to being the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti could also wind up with the highest number of amputees per capita in the world.

Prosthetics are expensive. Each one is custom made to fit the patient. The patients need to be trained to use the prosthetics.

There will need to be a huge humanitarian effort to provide prosthetics and physical therapy to the quake victims.

I don't know how to set up a fundraising effort like that and I'm not responsible enough to lead it even if I did.

But if any of you can suggest the best venue for channeling funds to this very specific cause, I would support it and promote it in every way possible.

Showoff

Haiti

As we all know by now, a powerful earthquake struck Haiti yesterday completely destroying the capitol city of Port-au-Prince.

Already the poorest nation on the planet with virtually no government, building codes or infrastructure, it is now a pile of rubble and casualty estimates range from 50,000 dead to 500,000 dead. In truth, we will probably never know how many died.

Assistance from the United States started pouring in immediately!

The Coast Guard, Navy, Marines, Army, Air Force all have units on the way. There are aircraft carriers, amphibious units, C-130 cargo planes, hospital ships all headed for Haiti as quickly as they can get there.

A local group of physicians, Heart to Heart have people on the way with medical supplies.

The University of Miami sent a chartered plane full of students to perform triage and evacuate as many critical patients as they could.

The American Red Cross is already in place and providing aid.

Bill Clinton, who was appointed the U.N. Ambassador to Haiti has been very active coordinating the response.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates canceled trips to Australia for annual security talks so they can continue overseeing relief efforts following the earthquake in Haiti.

The World Bank and Ted Turner's United Nations Foundation have both pledged millions of dollars in grants to Haiti to help with the rescue, recovery and rebuilding efforts.

Social Media nerds like me, donating just $10.00 by sending a text message donated hundreds of thousands of dollars within hours.

Oh, and then there were these responses.







This is why the Conservatives aren't in charge any more and never will be again.

Because they are simple-minded idiots.

They believe in supernatural forces and ridiculous Communist conspiracies.

They are totally detached from rationality and reality.

In some clinical arenas, that would be defined as insanity requiring hospitalization.

But here, we just laugh it off as crazy politics and Opinion Journalism.

They are doing NOTHING to help.

Fuck Sports

I've always been a big guy.

Over 6 feet, over 200 lbs.

High school coaches always bugged me to try out for football and wrestling.

I always told them to go fuck themselves.

Every coach I've ever known have been like Frank Martin or Mark Mangino.

They were either an overly-aggressive Alpha Male whose only desire was to dominate young boys, or an over-weight athelete-wannabe who has never competed but thinks he knows shit from book-learnin'.

They are all single-minded idiots in charge of meaningless games. They represent the most trivial aspect of society. Nothing, NOTHING, is less important in this world than who wins a football, basketball or baseball game.

I hate every form of organized sport.

I hear KC may get a World Soccer event of some kind.

I could give a shit.

I am against any attraction that would result in even a minutes delay in my commute from work to home.

An Epiphany!

I live in a "town home". In New Jersey we called them "patio homes".

It's a lot like a duplex, except it's a fourplex, it has two floors, includes a garage and in some cases a basement or patio.

My garage is fairly small and it is lined with my old crappy bookshelves filled with tools and sealed Tupperware storage containers housing my old darkroom equipment, GTO's family heirlooms and such.

When I pull in, I actually have to be cognizant of which side of the vehicle I need to unload stuff from. Inches matter.

Tonight, I was especially aware of these constraints.

I thought to myself "this spring". This spring I will separate the wheat from the chaff. I will throw stuff away, I will have a garage sale, I will move stuff up to my attic.

Yes, I actually have some accessible attic space just off of my 2nd floor walk-in closet that leads to some impressive storage.

I could make my garage a lot more useful if I moved a lot of that crap into my attic!

But I can't do it by myself. That shit is heavy and the access to my attic space is small.

But then I remembered.

My daughter, young Galadriel Tanqueray Onassis, has a BOYFRIEND now!

He's 16 years old.

I'm the father of his girlfriend!

That gives me some leverage!

I can get his eager-young ass over here to help me haul shit from the garage to the attic! He'll be happy to do it!

But wait! There's more!

Why should I have to do anything? He has friends!

I can get "Jimmy" and his friends over here to clean out my garage, haul heavy shit up stairs to the attic, and I won't have to do anything but make a batch of tacos.

But wait! There's more!

My dad and step-mom in Olathe have a sleeper-sofa they want to give me. It's in their garage. All I have to do is come and get it.

But they live in MORDOR, I don't have a truck, and even if I had a friend with a truck willing to make the trip, I don't know that I could handle my end of the sofa to get it up a narrow flight of stairs to the spare bedroom without blowing out my already compressed disc. Those hide-a-beds are HEAVY and AWKWARD!

Jimmy! I bet you have some friends with a pick up truck!

Mwahahahahahah!

Do The Right Thing, Jay

Leno retired from the "Tonight Show" and bequeathed it to Conan O'Brien years ahead of time in order to avoid the dramafest that ensued when Johnny Carson retired without naming a successor.

That fiasco resulted in the Leno/Letterman sausage fest that sent Letterman to CBS (The Hospice Network).

But Leno didn't want to leave TV and NBC didn't want to stop milking Leno's financial tit.

So they put a lame-ass, truncated version of what they considered to be the best parts of Leno's Tonight show in the last Prime Time slot EVERY FUCKING NIGHT. In a time slot where most viewers were used to seeing smartly scripted, well acted, Emmy winning (but EXPENSIVE TO THE NETWORK) dramas.

It was a COLOSSAL FAIL! Local affiliates rose up like rabid teabaggers because Leno's crappy show drove viewers away from their nightly news broadcasts.

Studies have shown that if you go to bed with a network, you tend to wake up with a network. With most families being dual income families, the daytime demographic is negligible.

The local affiliates have a few hours in the evening and even fewer hours in the morning to make money off of you. Probably 7 out or 24, tops. For NBC, Leno was killing 5 of those hours and everyone was PISSED!

So NBC's proposed solution? A Mulligan! A redo! Put Leno back where he was and make everybody, O'Brien, Fallon, the NBC viewers all pay for Leno's failure to attract viewers.

WRONG, NBC! WRONG!

I'm not a Leno hater, but he has clearly run his course. He's done. He's not a charity case. He has bragged about the fact that he has not spent a dime of his Tonight Show money ($15 million a year for how many years?). He lived off his stand-up routine money! So, he's gonna be OK. He won't be homeless anytime soon.

The ratings are quite emphatic about the fact that he no longer has anything to offer NBC.

So let him go! Fire him if you have to. Let him do 20 years of "unscripted" walk-ons like you did with Bob Hope and his life-time contract. Whatever it takes. But put the fucker out to pasture and let O'Brien and Fallon chart the future.

Quit being a dick, NBC.

And if NBC won't quit being a dick, then Jay Leno needs to quit being a dick and do the right thing.

You have a lot of fucking cars to work on. Get busy.

P.S. I apologize for the lack of links. But I have one more post I want to squeeze in tonight and don't have time for my customary due diligence. So go google my shit.

My Gadgetriffic 2010!

Enough talk about death! Let's talk about toys!

Here is the short list of shit I'm going to be getting with my tax return in what I like to call Gadgetriffic 2010!

Nexus One (the Google phone) $180.oo for T-Mobile customers like me.


Just introduced today! I'm finally going to bite the bullet and get a 3G phone. I'm especially intrigued by the voice recognition and the integration of built in GPS with Google Maps. Just tell it where you want to go and using your current GPS position it will map out a route for you. Fucker will even show you the Google Maps street view of your destination when you get close. Email, Internet, 5 mega pixel camera, MP3 player, all kinds of shit. Rumor has it, you can even make phone calls with it! Fuckin', sweet! I'm gettin' one.



250 GB Sony PlayStation 3 $350.00


I originally just wanted a Blu-Ray DVD player, but my friends convinced me that I would get more digital bang for my buck with a PS3.

Product Features

Next-generation gaming
Opens up new worlds of high-definition gaming intensity with astonishing graphics and audio.

Lighter, slimmer design
Fits easily into your home and your life to expand your entertainment horizons.
250GB internal hard drive
Provides massive storage for games, music, videos and other media.

Built-in Wi-Fi
Makes it easy to connect to the Internet for exciting additional entertainment options.

Blu-ray Disc player
Delivers pristine picture quality and an incredible high-definition viewing experience.

DVD up scaling
Brings your favorite DVDs to life on screen in high definition, so you can enjoy them in a new way

PlayStation Network membership
Gives you access to a wealth of online services, including free online gaming, game, movie and TV show downloads, music, movie and photo streaming, text and voice chat and more.

DUALSHOCK 3 wireless controller
Puts high-intensity gaming power into the palm of your hands.

HDMI output for 1080p resolution
Ensures that visuals come alive with incredible depth and clarity on your high-definition screen.

7.1 audio
Envelops you in the sound of your favorite movies and games, immersing you fully in the viewing or gaming experience.


Boxee Box Under $200.00

"As described in D-Link's official press release, "The Boxee Box by D-Link reinterprets what TV should be. The Boxee Box delivers movies, TV shows, music, and photos from a user's computer, home network, and the Internet to their HDTV with no PC needed. Additionally, Boxee's core social features make it easy for friends to discover new content from each other through social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and more.

Some of the entertainment destinations that will be available as apps on Boxee will include Netflix, Pandora, Last.fm, and Next New Networks. And just like the Boxee software for your computer, users can add RSS feeds, XML feeds, or install other apps onto the box of their favorite Internet entertainment destinations."

VIDEO:
Adobe Flash 10.1
H.264 (MKV, MOV)
VC-1
WMV
MPEG-1
MPEG-2
MPEG-4
AVI
Xvid
Divx
PCM/LPCM
VOB

AUDIO:
MP3
WMA
WAV
AIFF
FLAC
AAC
DTS
Dolby Digital
Ogg Vorbis

PHOTO:
JPEG
TIFF
BMP
PNG


So for less than $750 I am going to be wired and networked to the fucking gills! Anything I can access from my 3G phone, DVDs, home computing Wi-Fi network or the Internet I can access from my big ass HD TV!

Awesome!

Upon My Death...

I've been thinking about death a lot lately.

But not in a bad, morbid way.

In a good, proactive way.



One of my highest priorities for 2010 is to make sure that I have my Will in order and funeral arrangements taken care of. Not because my death is immenent! Nothing is wrong with me. I plan to live forever, bitches!

I'm doing this for a couple of reasons.

Number 1 is that the last Will I had on file was during my 2nd marriage and it basically left everything to my wife.

Okay, you can just go ahead and put that on The List of Shit That Ain't Ever Gonna Happen.

My new Will is going to leave everything to my daughter.

The other reason I'm doing this is that I promised my BFF I would get this funeral shit taken care of so neither her or my daughter would have to deal with it. In fact, I thought I would have things wrapped up this weekend, but things don't always go according to plan.

Now, in typical, over-the-top, grandiose XO fashion, my first funereal choice proved a bit too challenging.

I wanted my body to be cryogenically frozen, put aboard the most powerful rocket human technolgy could build, and sent spiralling towards the core of our Milky Way galaxy.

The goal was for my beacon to be detected by an advanced alien civilization who would thaw me out, cure what killed me and give me eternal life. I could then spend eternity exploring the cosmos and banging green skinned alien babes!



After a rough approximation of the cost involved, and some extraordinarily brief conversations with my employers HR department, my friends and family, this option also got added to The List of Shit That Ain't Ever Gonna Happen.

What I know for sure is that I don't want a ridiculously expensive arrangement with embalming, prepping, dressing, flowers, visitations, weeping, processions, pall bearers, internment, tombstones and maintainence.

And I sure as fuck don't want some hired minister I don't know spouting platitudes about an afterlife I don't believe in from a book that I view as a very poorly constructed work of fiction.

All that's really required is some way to dispose my inanimate meat puppet and a way for my friends and family to come together and acknowledge my passing.

After I determined that my friends and family were too fucking cheap to cough up the cash for the spaceship, I started researching cremation.

Much to my amazement, fire has become quite expensive over the last 10,000 years.

In many parts of of the world, it is still a simple thing.



But today, in America, burning your corpse to it's constituent elements, stuffing the ashes in a jar and handing it to someone now costs thousands of dollars! WTF?

The actual cremation isn't expensive, it's all of the funeral home add-on costs for transportation, "professional services" and shit that add to the expense.

But my BFF's mom started talking about how her sister was going to donate her body to science and how they would pay for the cremation and send your ashes back home.

Check this out!

"The generous gift of body after death is a compassionate alternative to a traditional funeral. MedCure covers all costs associated with donation including: transportation, cremation, two certified copies of the death certificate, return of cremated remains to family in a heart-shaped urn within three weeks or a memorial scattering at sea."

In other words, instead of paying thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to a funeral home to host a maudlin weep-fest, all my survivors need to do is make a phone call. Here's how it works.

"Donation Process

1.MedCure is Contacted.
A Donor Coordinator will discuss donor suitability with a family member and/or medical professional. A highly trained and compassionate Donor Coordinator will assist the donor's representative throughout the entire donation process 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

2.Local Funeral Home Transport.
MedCure will arrange for a local funeral home to provide transportation from the place of death to MedCure at our expense. MedCure has contracted funeral homes throughout the U.S. that are familiar with our donation process. MedCure will make all necessary arrangements with the funeral home to care for the donor. Please do not contact a funeral home before contacting MedCure – this assures there will be no costs to the family.

3.Donor Received by MedCure.
The medical history information is obtained. MedCure tests donor for HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis B and C. Organs and tissues are recovered and matched to meet the needs of medical educators and researchers.

4.Cremation.
Cremation takes place. Family chooses to have cremains sent to them in a heart-shaped urn or a memorial scattering at sea. A notification letter precedes the registered return of the cremains or a memorial certificate is sent which details the date, time and location of the memorial scattering, for more information click here.

5.Two Certified Copies of the Death Certificate Issued. Certified copies of the death certificate will be issued to the family in about four weeks depending on the state or county processing time.

6.Letter of Donation.
A letter describing the medical research and/or educational needs your donation fulfilled can be sent to your family if requested."

Again, there is no cost whatsoever to the donor or the donor's survivors.

Another benefit I see is there is no rush to hold a funeral/memorial service. The funeral home isn't charging a daily fee for keep the corpse refrigerated until the visitation.

Friends and family have at least 3 weeks before the cremated remains are returned, if they even care whether the remains are present. There is as much time as they wish to arrange a venue for a service, send invitations, make travel arrangements, whatever they want to do. This also gives them time to grieve in private and come to term with things before coming together publically to celebrate the life of the recently departed.

Finally, it supports my position that even a little bit of science contributes more to human existence than all of the religions and supersticions that have ever existed.

So I'm pretty sold on this.

Hell, I even plan on writing my own eulogy and obituary!

Nobody knows me better than me and I can make that shit funny!

I just need somebody who can get up there, deliver my money lines and sell it without getting all weepy and shit!

I'm looking at you, Lee Ingalls!

If you're unable to donate your dulcet tones to my demise, I'll be forced to go with Tom Arnold.

He's orders of magnitude down the talent food chain from you, but he'll work for buffet food and punch.

Whatever the details, 2010 will see me with a plan in place that relieves my family and friends of expense and stress at my passing and allows them to celebrate the memory of the fun we had together.