- Via Unc: The "Elite Tactical Advantage Devastator Shotgun". We have officially crossed the mall ninja marketing buzzword event horizon. Either that, or this is Poe's Law in action.
- In discussing musical nostalgia, I mentioned listening to The Church. Ed Foster went old school on me by saying he was breaking out "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" on 8-track. Thinking on this for a second, I realized that Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell came out in '77, and Of Skins and Heart by The Church was released in '81. Funny how, back in high school, one was "Classic Rock" and the other was "New Wave" but, looking back from 2011, '77 and '81 are practically the same year.
Books. Bikes. Boomsticks.
“I only regret that I have but one face to palm for my country.”
> looking back from 2011, '77 and '81 are practically the same year.
ReplyDeleteToo true.
It's all about measuring intervals as a percentage of your life.
That delta was something like 40% at the time ... now it's more like 10%.
I note that WWII and the US Revolution seem to get CLOSER with each passing year. When I was 10, in 1981, WWII was 4 lifetimes ago. Now that I'm almost 40 in 2010, WWII is only 2.5 lifetimes ago...and one of those 2.5 is the one I've live through.
When I'm 80, I'll have lived through 70% of the time since WWII... it will seem closer yet.
> looking back from 2011, '77 and '81 are practically the same year.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. I had a burn wound that took that entire time to heal properly.
My son and I are fixing up a 1970 Cougar; he's mentioned several times he wants to install an 8-track player and CB. I think he is joking, but I'm not always sure. The main source for 8-track is fleaBay (where they are surprisingly cheap for a "classic" item). But did you know you can still buy new CB radios? With BLUETOOTH!!!!
ReplyDeleteSamsam von virginia
Damn, and I remember friends installing 4-track players in their cars.
ReplyDeleteMore time has elapsed from the release of "Synchronicity" to now than elapsed from the release of that album to Elvis joining the army.
ReplyDeleteSigh.
You were in high school in 1981?
ReplyDeleteExurbanKevin,
ReplyDeleteTo a kid graduating high school this year, Trent Reznor's Pretty Hate Machine is as far in the past as Meet the Beatles! was in my senior year.
perlhaqr,
ReplyDeleteNo, but close. Class of '86.
RE: SuperdooperDevastatorTacticullShotgun
ReplyDelete"Each 9 pellet, #00 Buck round is the equivalent weight as eight .223 rounds, and have the diameter of thirteen!" ..... and at North Hollywood Shootout distances, penetrates body armor less than ZERO of them!
"In high stress return fire situations it is not advantageous to try to be hitting multiple assailants, possibly in the dark, with the less than 1/4" diameter bullet of the AR-15."
This is the slick P.T. Barnum marketing to the innumerate that launched the Taurus Judge to "Handgun of the Year!!!11111!!" status..... only now it is ostensibly targeted at LE Agencies. Ostensibly. I can't see any of our local guys hauling that out of their patrol cars......
RE: Time ..... it is all about perspective ..... High School was 4 years of drudgery and social uncertainty punctuated by moments of .... stark terror. Basic Training (taken between my Junior and Senior year) was a vacation! It could not have seemed longer if I had been in a dentist's chair getting root canals without anesthesia the whole time. Conversely, my first 4 years in the Army flew by, as did my next 4 years ..... I got out and returned from Europe and felt like Rumple Stiltskin: Everthing had changed back home- like I had been gone 100 years. The school I had grown up in did not even exist, and the town around it had withered.
1.
ReplyDeleteCouldn't they work Digital and DevGru in there somehow?
2. Jim Steinman is a genius.
' The "Elite Tactical Advantage Devastator Shotgun".'
ReplyDeleteThat is a joke. Right?
It's so hard to tell these days. I mean, between Christwire and Jack T. Chick, could you pick out the spoof if you didn't know ahead of time?
ReplyDeletePractically the same year, you do need to get so much older -- it is all just after WWII and before the Second Gulf War. I have been playing in the Family Tree, and some of these folks were Old and way back. Some of them died just before I got adult enough to listen to their stories.
ReplyDeletewv peirisse (how Google spells Paris in the Spring)
I spend 1977 to 1981 in Germany, missing the joy of the Carter years (except the high inflation rates which drove us off the local economy into our US ghettos).
ReplyDeleteI suggest that #1 buckshot in many circumstances may be superior to #00, as you still get through and through penetration, and for a 3 inch magnum, you have 25 each .30 caliber projectiles per round. That is 25 chances to cut your enemy's spine, or to scrape nerves off where they leave the spinal column.
Not saying that #0 or #00 are bad, because they are darned good, but you might get some marginal advantage by dropping to #1.
Yahbut, 70's is Old People Stuff and 80's is Little Kid Nostalgia.
ReplyDeleteThere's a difference, dammit!
;)
The left out the up-and-coming mall ninja buzzword, "Operator". At the moment, it only appears on three pages on their site. That is unacceptable.
ReplyDeleteFor a product to have any hope of being taken seriously, its literature needs to read like a Michael Bay script.
"practically the same year"
ReplyDeleteStar Wars, then Empire. Yup.
can't stop laughing...
ReplyDeleteNorth,
ReplyDeleteESB was '80, dude.
Dammit. I knew I would be corrected...
ReplyDeleteNorth,
ReplyDeleteKein Problem.
Somehow, I remember it as '81 as well...probably because I happened to see it in the theater that year.
Still the best one of the bunch, by a long way.
Agreed. SW and then ESB and I thought it could only get better. Then Lucas lost his mind and decided to infest the movies with "cute" things. The movies should have become more mature, not less.
ReplyDeleteSorry Tam for the hijack...
Classic rock and New Wave...what are we to make of The Clash's Give 'Em Enough Rope, produced by Jack Douglas of Aerosmith fame?
ReplyDeleteActually, that is still one of my favorite Clash albums, not least because it's the first Clash I bought and the first thing I bought after Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols.
North,
ReplyDeleteNo, I totally agree.
The second was the best of them, from a purely critical standpoint, although they could have stopped with the first one and have made movie history. Instead, it's turned into a bloated 6 episode toy commercial.
ESB was SW amped up (as it should have been). RotJ was dumbed down. The JarJar Trilogy... *shudder*
ReplyDelete@jimbob,
ReplyDeleteAlmost as strange as your Rip Van Winkle moment on your homecoming is coming home and finding everything exactly the same as you left it.
Almost as bad is the people. You spend ages away; and when you meet one of your high-school buddies or friends from your past, and it's infuriating (to me at least) when you go, "My GOD, it's been ages! What's new?" And your friend goes, "Ah, y'know, same ol' same ol'."
WTF? After 10 years?!
You almost feel disappointed when things DON'T change. You've changed and gone through so much, it almost seems insulting when other things and other people don't do the same.
Now about the WonderWeapon. It's true that they didn't use "operator" nearly as often as they could, but they make up forit by their gratuitous use of the word "platform."
Easily puts them in the running for this year's Waffenposselhaft award (literary division).
gvi
"The Elite Tactical Advantage Devastator Shotgun: The Weapon of Choice for Elite Team Fighters"
ReplyDeleteMe? I'll wait 'til they come out with something for elitist team fighters!
Jenny, you are right, there IS a difference!
ReplyDeleteSamson: If you install that 8-track, don't ever use it.
ReplyDeleteUse destroys 8-tracks. Specifically, it's that aluminum clip the ties the ends of the tape together.
Eventually, a tape will break, and if you don't eject it and throw it out the window in time, that clip will jam in the deck and kill it permanently.
You used to often see streamers of 8-track tape on the road shoulders from people trying desperately to prevent deck destruction ...
Remington has a military? Hmm.
ReplyDeleteCIII
Re: the "Elite Super Tactical Ultra Advantage +1 Vorpal Tactical Devastator Decimator Defenestrator Did-we-mention-tactical Shotgun WMD,"
ReplyDeletenever before have I wanted to take a red pen and edit the grammar of a website. F-, mall ninjas, F-. Plus it looks like a Magpul catalog threw up on that thing.
I especially like how they talk about the North Hollywood Shootout and bodyarmor... and then just immediately start talking about buckshot and "total diameter of projectiles".
ReplyDeleteBuckshot ain't so good at going through body armor, last I heard.
I look at that thing, and I hear, "DRAAAAAAAKE! WE! ARE! LEAVING!"
ReplyDeleteThe Elite Tactical Advantage Devastator: When you absolutely, positively have to kill every xenomorph between you and your dropship, before taking off and nuking the site from orbit.
Mister_V,
ReplyDelete"Plus it looks like a Magpul catalog threw up on that thing."
That's one of the funniest things...
I mean, the guys at Magpul aren't 'tards; there's a reason behind most of the things they make. And the reason behind the AFG has nothing to do with parking it halfwat back under the foreend of a shotgun just to show that it's "tactical"...
Wait.
ReplyDeleteSo they set out to build the "ultimate tactical shotgun" and choose the Remington 1100 as the platform?
How many tactical cool points do you lose if your o-rings give out in the midst of clearing a warehouse of tangos or whatever it is the mall ninja kids do these days?
Ain't as tacticool as this item.
ReplyDeleteNow where have I seem that shotty before ...
It needs a bayonet lug.
ReplyDeleteWv: unfunbj
Seriously!
Bayonets actually make a certain sense on riot guns, as you're engaging at "Oh Shit" ranges with no time to reload. Also, it makes it hard for a low left bounce-up to grab your muzzle in a tight left turn and lousy visibility. At least if he wants to keep his fingers.
ReplyDeleteBut only if you actually clear houses for a living. With flash-bangs, not mops and brooms. What demographic are they really looking for?
Me, I'd feel a tad shiny if I showed up at the club with a scattergun and attached toadsticker, but...
Throw in the ergonomics of a railroad tie and it really does resemble a Mattel toy, with more unneeded attachment points than an erector set.
Is it just me, or does it really have a Transformers persona? Which might explain said targetted demographic.
Funny how old you thought people your now current age were in 1981 and how you don't feel that much older...
ReplyDeleteI was in Korea July '77 to Feb '81.
Well, I'm reserving judgement on this weapon until I can try it out in Call of Duty.
ReplyDelete"...looking back...'77 and '81 are practically the same..."
ReplyDeleteThe goggles of time do blur the details don't they? Point taken, but that particular span?
'81 was to '77 as '45 was to '41.
For people of a certain age during each of those windows, the contrasts are actually sharpened in retrospect.
All for naught, it would seem.
AT
"'81 was to '77 as '45 was to '41."
ReplyDeleteHeh. Too true.
Of course, not every post on this blog has a sociopolitical slant.
"...not every post on this blog has a sociopolitical slant."
ReplyDeleteOh but it does, innocent intent notwithstanding. ;)
We'll have to see what '13 is to '09...but I'm not terribly optimistic that the scales will fall from the eyes of this gen of electors, as happened to me when it was Morning in America...
AT
(and really, is there *anything* more sociopolitical than musical screenshots of times past?)
ReplyDeleteFinished my tour in former West Germany in '77 (MOS 45B, Small Arms Repair). Returned home to the West Coast. At the time, I remember feeling that not much had changed, but the word was moving on at a faster pace. I used to tell war stories---now I teach history :D
ReplyDelete