“Ryan, you have absolutely no reason to worry about graduation. All you need is this pre-modern European Hist….wait, you know what? Screw that. Take 6 hours of History classes and 6 hours of whatever else you want and I’ll clear you for graduation.”
“Are you serious?”
“Enjoy Australia!”
Needless to say, I’m more giddy then a schoolgirl right now.
It’s events like this that make me wonder sometimes why we don’t have a group like the one proposed in Tom Clancy’s book Rainbow 6, but I’ll get back to that in a minute.
The Chechen rebels fight the hardest of all fights – the one for freedom. There is no harder struggle then that for one’s independence. The context alone already puts you at a disadvantage since you are fighting a stronger, dominating, and possessive force. Otherwise, you’d already have your freedom. Screw a strong backbone – you’ve got to have balls of steel that would make William Wallace look like a pussy. When you say you’ll do something unless your demands are met, you must follow through with your threat. Nothing is more weakening to a cause than a hollowed threat that you’re too fearful of fulfilling.
And with that being said…..
When you turn to taking hostages, committing executions, and then pull innocent children into the mix, you’ve crossed the proverbial line. You’ve lost all credibility and forsaken your people to not only a much longer and harsher battle, but likely failure. You rile and ruffle the feathers of not only the entire nation you are fighting against, but those of the world as well. You’ve just handed the Russians a blank check and you’d damned well not act surprised when the whole weight of their military comes crashing down upon you. You think you have it bad with the few thousand Russian soldiers in your providence now? Just wait another week as President Putin responds to your craven, cowardly, despicable act.
If the terrorists who committed this act truly were Chechen rebels, then they have just set their cause for freedom back at least 20 years and sentenced thousands of their own people to death. What good they thought could have come from this, I have absolutely no idea.
And back to what I was talking about earlier with the Rainbow 6 idea. For those of you who haven’t read the book, the basic premise is that to help combat terrorists, especially those who would be considered “professionals”, the U.N. puts together a crack team comprised of the best of the best who basically train just for situations like the one in Russia. Therefore, when a situation arises in a country with a horribly trained military, like, say……oh…..Russia…..then these men are sent in to take over the military aspects of the operation. I could get a little more into the logistics of the process and how they would all be worked out, like the damage control on a country’s ego for basically saying their military sucks, but you get the overall point.
The Russian military and government has consistently botched one hostage crisis after another. Take for instance that standoff back in 2002 where rebels took over a theater. The Russian solution? Pump mysterious gas into the building three days later that not only kills all the captors, but hundreds of the hostages as well. The government didn’t help matters any by refusing to release the name of the gas, which limited doctor’s ability to treat those who lived since they had no idea what to treat them for!
I understand money is tight and their economy has never been strong since the collapse of the Union, but seriously, I find it tough to believe that this is the best they can do when it comes to special operation situations. I doubt you are in danger of being invaded anytime soon. Divert some of that basic military training money and invest a little in some spec. op. forces. Whether you want to face the grim truth or not, you are waging a Civil War and have been for over a decade now.
How many more innocent schoolchildren need to be shot in the back as they flee before you understand that?
I’m bored. How much longer until 9:00??
The current cam picture to the left is of my British History book. Booooo that damned book.
I’ll be in Spartanburg for a few days this weekend. If anybody else will be as well, give me a call.
I’ll be putting up a poll here on Shyzer asking for some reader input. Please take the time and answer the questions truthfully for me since I’m obviously not putting it up for my health or anything.
Well, that killed three minutes for me. I’m now three minutes closer to 9:00.
I’ve never been one to keep myself excessively busy. It’s just never been my style. For me, it used to be that whenever I had some free time, I would just hang around and relax. It was peaceful. It was unwinding. It let me mind run free.
Which is where things have gone wrong. My mind wandering like it used to seems more of a liability now then an asset. It always leads me to places I don’t want to be and to thoughts I don’t want to think right now. It did nothing but agitate and foment these feelings inside of me, so I started doing the only thing I could think of to stop it. I made sure that I stayed busy.
It’s crazy how busy I am now. Before, somebody would ask me what I was doing next weekend and I would laugh at them and let them know that anything over 10 minutes away was too far in the future for me to plan. Now I have virtually every weekend for the next month slammed with things I agreed to do. I think I’m looking most forward to next weekend when the famously dubbed “Swagger Party” is being held in our building. Maybe, just maybe, Shyzer might get its first drunken post in its history that night. I said maybe.
Chong is coming down this Friday for the Jackson Crossing show (Friday night, 9:00 PM, @ Delaney’s folks. Be there.) and then in just 10 short days after that we are heading up to Charlotte to see the Packers take on the Panthers. The game might not be exactly how I envisioned it happening, but at least this way I still get to go and Alex and I get to make good on that age-old promise we’ve always had with each other: Seeing Brett Favre play in person. I honestly couldn’t be more excited about the game and trust me, there will be plenty of words spent on that evening in a future post.
I’ve been carrying on with my training as well. Living with Fellner means I have a partner to go running with every night and that brand new gym down the road, which is free, has just been screaming my name lately. I’ve played more games of pickup football during the past month then I think I have in my entire life and Softball season is just around the corner. I had forgotten how far I could push my body physically and now that I’ve reminded myself, it feels great.
Tomorrow I find out a good chunk of information about whether or not I’ll be able to do what it is I want to do next semester. I seriously pray that everything will work out like I want it to because frankly, I need it. If all is well, expect a post in the near future about it.
But in the end, I still feel as if there is more I should do. I keep pushing myself further and harder to try and accomplish things and I can already hear that little voice in my head slowly saying “Just keep this up you idiot. Sooner or later it’s going to catch back up with you and you’ll come crashing down in a flaming heap.” Maybe he’s right. But until then, I’m sticking with what works.
Last Comic Standing 3 started airing this week and will be shown on Tuesday at 8 from here on out. It’s Season 1 vs. Season 2, which more importantly means that Dave Mordal from Season 1 will be back. Not driving down to Atlanta this summer to see him is probably one of my greatest regrets from the past year. I dare anybody to watch him and tell me you don’t think he’s one of the funniest comedians you’ve seen in the past 20 years.
Sadly though, I think Season 1 is going to be crushed. John Heffron, Alonzo Bodden, Todd Glass, Jay London, and Gary Gulman are easily the 2nd-6th funniest comedians on the show and they are all on Season 2. In fact, if you take Mordal and Rich Vos off of Season 1, it wouldn’t even be a match. That’s how funny Mordal is. He carries the entire team.
I’m just waiting for his CD to come out sometime this year.
In Shyzer news, I’m currently working on a few new features for the site. I’ll clue you all in to what exactly they are later on this week and maybe even hold some type of voting system to see what changes people actually think would be cool, want to see, etc. We’ll see.
