Blog Machine City

Trigun

I just finished watching the anime series Trigun (about twelve years late on that one), and since anime is SERIOUS BUSINESS, it inspired me to pontificate on the morality of killing – specifically, the morality of killing in defense of self or others.

The show is primarily about Vash the Stampede (blond dude at left), who travels around a desert planet, getting into various misadventures.

Vash practices an especially weird brand of pacifism, one where violence and even injuries are acceptable, so long as no one is actually killed. This sort of thing is obviously in the realm of pure fantasy, only made possible because of Vash’s superhuman capabilities (and a tremendously accurate revolver in .45 Long Colt). However, his behavior enables me to make a larger point about the notion of pacifism and nonviolence in general.

Towards the end of the series, Vash is confronted by a character named Legato. Legato has captured two of Vash’s friends and threatens to kill them – unless Vash is willing to shoot Legato in the head. Thankfully, Vash makes the right decision (sparing the show from utter failure) and puts a .45LC slug through Legato’s skull, but he’s tortured by his decision.Vash agonizes about killing Legato even though it was the only option to save Meryl and Milly (and himself). He complains that he’s no longer any different than his evil brother Knives because they both have killed people. This obscures the key moral difference between murder and self-defense: murder is immoral and self-defense is the opposite; indeed, there is no more moral act. Self defense is a fundamental human right, a basic biological imperative, and a crucial underpinning of both civilian and military law. While killing of any kind is regrettable, killing in defense of self or others is the only morally correct response to unprovoked lethal force.

Vash’s agonizing decision to shoot Legato and his subsequent self-flagellation makes no sense and turns an otherwise likable character into a morally repugnant fool. What alternative did he have? In his twisted logic, it would have been better for two innocents – and himself – to die, just so that he could maintain his absurd moral high ground. If he wanted to martyr himself, fine – but allowing two innocent companions to be killed for his principles? Unacceptable. Amazingly, Meryl never calls Vash to task about this, even as he whines to her about the horror of killing Legato. The scene would have had much more dramatic heft if she had done so, but maybe that’s too much to ask from my anime.

Ironically, the struggles of a supporting character, Nicholas D. Wolfwood, are much more interesting and his final episode is as close to real drama as I’ve seen in anime. Unfortunately, he ultimately tries to embrace Vash’s absurdity and dies alone as a result.

What do Enter Sandman, Eye of the Tiger, Sweet Home Alabama, and Jump (by Van Halen) have in common?

If you answered, “songs blasted across an empty field at 0530 on a Friday morning before running five miles,” you’d be correct.

Many units in the Army have “morale runs” on Fridays, where everybody gets together, some unlucky chump gets picked to carry the unit flag, and the rest of the unit follows behind, running really slowly (so as to maintain a “dressed-up” formation, since the main purpose is showing off the unit, rather than any fitness benefit) and chanting the same five cadences over and over.

Friday we were subjected to our first of these “fun runs” at the NCO academy. We were told that “formation was at 0500.” The problem with any time hack (particularly here but also generally in the Army) is that it’s never clear if a given time is the actual time of an event, or a pre-calculated time that already includes the assumed “ten minutes prior” factor. Therefore, I had to decide between the two, and I made the decision that almost everyone else did: better to be there ten minutes early, just in case. I walked outside at 0450; it was a pleasant 50 degrees and a near-full moon hung low over the SLC barracks (luckily, too, because almost all the lights on that side of the compound are broken).

Of course, we all guessed wrong, and spent the next hour shuffling around the field while the cadre tried to decide where to position us. Meanwhile, a crack team of audio experts set up a pair of loudspeakers, which prompted murmurs among the soldiers: “I thought we were going for a run, not having a speech,” one said.

All questions were answered when the familiar guitar intro of Enter Sandman began. I just laughed and someone joked about Eye of the Tiger. As if the erstwhile DJ was listening, that song played next. I asked if they were taking requests and one guy suggested Free Bird; he wasn’t far from the mark, as Sweet Home Alabama was next. Another then said, in his best TV announcer voice, “This album not available in stores!”

Eventually the commandant appeared and addressed us, spinning some incomprehensible tale of his recent trip to California, where it rained every day and a guy in a cardboard shack offered him marijuana on the beach (”I guess it’s legal there, you know, crazy!”) and he met with college educators who had developed some kind of talking recruiting robot for the Army that he hoped we’d be able to use in our future careers. It was totally bizarre and I was glad it was still dark, because we were all stifling laughs and looking at each other, wondering if he had lost his mind.

He called us to attention and more Van Halen began to play, and we marched off, about 200 of us in one snaking mass. We shuffled across Fort Gordon for the next ninety minutes, which included about six laps around the movie theater (God knows why), a lap through every parking lot along the way, and five or ten minutes of running in a circle, Ouroboros-like, while the sergeant major ran counter to us on the inside of the circle, chanting odd administrative things in cadence like, “be sure to update your personnel records” and “don’t drink and drive.” This part bordered on the tribal and I thought for sure that the human sacrifice would begin at any moment.

Luckily I was wrong, and we wrapped up the run at about 0715, marching back to the start point while Queen’s We are the Champions played. Once again, I had to laugh – this kind of thing only happens in the military, which is why I simultaneously love and hate my job.

Guaranteed not to jam the tiny type bars inside your phone!

I’m now a proud owner of a QWERTY-keyboard-equipped cell phone (pictured at left). It strikes me as odd, however, that it’s the second decade of the 21st century and we’re putting keyboards designed in the 1870s on our pocket phones for the purpose of saying stuff like “OMG 2 cool meet me @ the mall!!!”

Legend has it that the QWERTY keyboard layout was designed explicitly to slow down early typists to prevent jams, but apparently this isn’t true. The placement of keys was intended to prevent jams, and any typist-slowing effect was merely a byproduct of the key placement.

The Dvorak keyboard layout is widely considered to be a superior alternative to QWERTY, because of its placement of letters by frequency of use, supposedly making for faster and more ergonomic typing. Of course, most people don’t even know what a Dvorak keyboard is – and, according to some, the advantages may not be as great as have been claimed.

The longevity of QWERTY on the computer keyboard makes sense – there are billions of keyboards and typists out there already. The advantages of Dvorak – whatever they may be – simply aren’t significant enough to warrant a switch. But why QWERTY for phones? It’s not as if I’m going to touch-type on that tiny keyboard; I’m only using my thumbs, anyway. Even the holy iPhone (blessed be its name) only has the option for a QWERTY keyboard layout, even though the keyboard is implemented in software. I guess it doesn’t matter what layout the keyboard has, since no layout is going to appreciably increase your speed when typing with your thumbs on keys the size of dust motes.

By now, our class has settled in to a comfortable rhythm of raking, mopping, sweeping, and answering phones at all hours of the night. We are generally being carried along on the tide of stupidity here like flotsam, just temporary visitors until the current draws us away, inevitably, to (hopefully) brighter shores.

We’re no longer the new class, since a group of noobs arrived yesterday; this means that our status has immediately been elevated to that of semi-crusty veterans (not fully crusty, of course, since there are two classes ahead of us). This means that the spirit of vicious retribution against the innocent has been kindled anew in the rest of the platoon. The noobs hadn’t been in formation for more than five minutes before everyone was plotting how to offload all our extra duties upon them. Staff duty? Put ‘em on it! Flag detail? Their classroom is right across from the flagpole! Phone watch? Fuck ‘em! It’s a little shocking that we would look upon fellow soldiers, NCOs, signaliers, with such sadism and naked cunning – since the only difference between them and us is six weeks on the calendar. Then again, it’s an inevitable consequence of the utter disorganization and casual, institutionalized disrespect displayed here, an environment that is the prime breeding ground for the old cliche, “shit rolls downhill.”

The senior SGL tried to say that the new class should be shielded from extra duty during the supposedly-critical Cisco phase of the course. This suggestion was met with howls of indignation, since we received the same empty promise upon our arrival, only to have mops and rakes and the flag thrust into our hands instead of keyboards. We were late to our own final test because of flag detail, because the SGLs told us the flag had priority over any of our academics! So we’d be damned if we were going to let anyone else get out of extra duty. Like a bunch of beaten children, we in turn look for our own set of victims, just so we can claw our way up the hierarchy that exists only in our fevered minds.

This reflects a larger truth: that much of status in the Army (and I would imagine, in the other services as well) is about comparative suffering, the notion that he who has seen the worst/most ridiculous/lamest shit is entitled to high status, I guess by virtue of having survived with mental and physical capabilities intact. That’s a whole other post, though…

There are a number of cemeteries scattered throughout the back forty of Fort Gordon; I saw the signs for them as I rode my bike on the Range Road loop and wondered what they looked like. A couple of weeks ago, I investigated two of them – pictures are below.

Cemetery #6 sign

Grave at Cemetery #6

Cemetery #12

Graves at Cemetery #12

Confederate marker from Chicakmauga

Coming here, I didn’t know what to expect for the Christmas holiday period. Since Christmas falls on a Friday this year, I figured it’d be a nice four day weekend and that’d be it. As it turns out, there’s a two week “exodus” period, from the 18th of December to the 2nd of January, and you have to take leave. This presented a problem for me, since as a member of the National Guard, I have no leave to take. The alternative was to request a four day pass for the Christmas weekend and another one for New Year’s weekend. I took that option, planning to only go home for Christmas, with the New Year’s pass just being a covering option to keep me out of sight for the weekend.

(This is a long one – for the punchline, just scroll to the bottom if you don’t want my long-winded explanation.)

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That grass isn't going to rake itself

This picture pretty much sums up my activities here. There’s grass to be raked, dirt to be raked, sand to be raked, rocks to be raked – if it’s a horizontal surface and it’s outdoors, it’s getting raked. If it’s horizontal and it’s indoors, it’s getting swept, mopped, and waxed. Also, you can see by looking at the picture that it doesn’t matter if there is anything to actually rake up – the shit’s going to be raked.

At least it’s winter so we don’t have to mow the grass.

Ostensibly, ALC is technical training for mid-level NCOs, giving us the next level of MOS-specific knowledge above that which is provided during initial entry training. In reality, the curriculum is very similar to the initial MOS training that we received, so much of it is review (especially for me, having just attended the excellent reserve component course last year in Sacramento). This is good, however, since it seems that the technical curriculum takes a back seat to the laundry list of other requirements.

This includes the aforementioned raking and other cleanup duties, but also other strange activities: a class breakfast, community service, a “class project,” and an FTX (field training exercise).

The class breakfast is odd since, in whole or part, we eat together as a class three times a day, five days a week (and often on weekends too). Apparently we also need to do this off-post, at our own expense, as a team-building exercise or something.

Community service is pitched as “giving back to our community,” which is strange since almost none of us are stationed here, so it’s not really “our” community. The objective is laudable, but it feels forced, especially since it’s up to each class to figure out what to do – which is difficult, since none of us are from the area and don’t know what the local situation is. The whole thing also has a little bit of “sentenced to serve” feel to it as well.

The class project is the most onerous extracurricular requirement. Basically, each class has to spend their own money (or raise it somehow – maybe by panhandling on the streets of Augusta?) to purchase some kind of shiny object to put somewhere on the grounds, so that we can “leave a legacy” at “our NCO academy” (in the words of the deputy commandant). Examples include planting a tree, a statue, a flagpole, a mural on a wall of the classroom building, etc. Of course, none of us want to be here, and none of us will ever return here (God willing), so who wants to invest major effort in that kind of thing? Someone in our class saw a Signal Corps rug at the PX and suggested we get our names put on it. It’s $40 – sounds perfect. I’d prefer a toilet seat cover, but a rug will do, I guess.

The FTX is tacked on to the end of the course like some kind of vestigial thing, like they couldn’t envision an Army school without a trip to the field. It’s sold to us on the PowerPoint slide at inprocessing as a 6-day event. It’s blocked out as five days on the training schedule, but, judging by the classes ahead of us, it’s about two days – if it happens at all. Some classes are doing other activities to get out of the field trip, so hopefully we can fall into that category.

We also are “required” to purchase plaques for our distinguished honor graduate and for some other award. And guess what – our SGL (small group leader) just happens to know a guy who makes plaques, and he’ll “hook us up.” What’s that in the NCO creed about not using your “grade or position to attain pleasure, profit, or personal safety”? I guess you get an exemption if you work at the NCO academy.

There’s a great compilation of quotes from reality TV shows on YouTube:

Luckily, Advanced Leaders Course, or ALC (nee BNCOC) isn’t really like that – it’s not a competition, for one thing, and for another, most people in the Army aren’t quite so vapid. In fact, in schools like this, where nobody seems to know what’s going on and everyone is apprehensive about upcoming events, the opposite effect occurs. Like a bunch of ungulates, we quickly form herds, so that we can have as many eyes facing outward as possible to see threats while we chew our cud good Army chow.

Despite the fact that I’ve been here for five days, nothing has really happened yet. My master plan of arriving early (Wednesday evening instead of Thursday) backfired spectacularly, since the night staff duty NCO couldn’t give me a room in the barracks after hours. I had to go off-post and stay in a hotel, only to return the next day at 0700 (as directed). This also proved to be a red herring – nobody was ready to receive us then either (by now, there was one other early arrival, who I’ll call Vic Viper), so I had a whole day to kill. That was fine, really, since I had to unpack, clean my room (which was filthy), and purchase various equipment from the item store, as befits the beginning of any quest. Items included toilet paper, garbage bags, laundry soap, and internet service (no free internet for the Signal Corps!).

Friday was the usual inprocessing jive, beginning at 0530 with the classic company first sergeant comedy routine, which consisted of funny anecdotes about past classes as examples of what not to do, as well as a lot of defensive talk about how we shouldn’t criticize how things are run here, because none of us come from perfect organizations either, so shut your mouth. I guess since no other organization is perfect, we can’t strive to improve this one, either. Obviously he gets a lot of complaints about various things. The rest of the day was spent waiting for various briefings to start (there seems to be a problem with scheduling around here), as well as sussing out the other class members. Everyone in the class is active duty except me, which means that I might as well be from the British Army, so different are our organizational cultures and experiences. As the sole National Guard representative, I spent most of the time shedding light on the mysterious world of the Guard and my Clark Kent-like dual life as a military technician.

The day ended with a view of the fate that awaited us: another class was sweeping the leaves out of the parking lot and raking the grass. We walked by, looking at them, and they looked back with a mixture of hatred (why aren’t you doing this too?) and despair (please save us!).

Saturday was mandatory fun – another class was having a fundraiser and a cadre-vs-class flag football game, so we were forced to attend. We did our minimum time, then “popped smoke,” as they say.

Cisco training starts today, and presumably, our tenure as janitors.

Today is Veteran’s Day, nee Armistice Day, the 91st anniversary of the end of World War I, the war that was supposed to end them all but of course did nothing of the sort. Now the holiday commemorates the veterans of all of America’s wars. Unlike Memorial Day, which honors the fallen, I think Veteran’s Day is for both the living and the dead, for while the dead have paid the ultimate price, the living pay a price as well.

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From the Onion, a true simulation of the hell of battle:

Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks