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My boredom and Research Addiction is trying to fill in the blanks on my Hackett Continuum history and world setting. The results so far...
INCLUDED
* Firefox and Firefox Down
* The Hunt For Red October
* First Blood and Rambo: First Blood Part II
* Missing In Action
* Uncommon Valor
* Blue Thunder (the movie AND the TV series)
* Airwolf (through the second season)
* Deal Of The Century
* Team Yankee
* 007: For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, Never Say Never Again and View To A Kill
I think I want to include Best Defense as well, but want to see it again first.
EXCLUDED
* Commando
* Iron Eagle
* Top Gun
* Red Dawn
* Invasion U.S.A.
* Spies Like Us
* The Fourth Protocol
I'm on the fence about some "properties" simply because of their relevance or timeframes.
INCLUDED
* Firefox and Firefox Down
* The Hunt For Red October
* First Blood and Rambo: First Blood Part II
* Missing In Action
* Uncommon Valor
* Blue Thunder (the movie AND the TV series)
* Airwolf (through the second season)
* Deal Of The Century
* Team Yankee
* 007: For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, Never Say Never Again and View To A Kill
I think I want to include Best Defense as well, but want to see it again first.
EXCLUDED
* Commando
* Iron Eagle
* Top Gun
* Red Dawn
* Invasion U.S.A.
* Spies Like Us
* The Fourth Protocol
I'm on the fence about some "properties" simply because of their relevance or timeframes.
Armies Of The Unreal, Explained
Jan. 2nd, 2012 12:12 am
I decided to go the route of invented factions with my wargame armies partly because of a general disgust with the purely historical paradigm (partly boredom and partly hatred for the horrors of the politics involved) and my ongoing need to do something creative and self-authentic. Besides, if I have pieces in, say, Nde Nation markings, they are far less likely to be stolen from a big convention as, for example, ones with Wehrmacht Afrika Korps colors.
Who Is What:
Balance Corps. Colors: Woodland/Temperate Brown. The "hero" faction of the Hackett Continuum, their insignia is intentionally based on the compass rose sigils of NATO and the Central Intelligence Agency.
Nde Nation. Colors: Grassland/Zebra-Tiger Stripes. This is a tongue-in-cheek concept from Hollywood and anime given a serious twist. The return of the Apache tribal nation as a modern militant force, with contemporary weapons and technology.
Royal Sealand Guards. Colors: Nocturnal Gray/Black/Deep Purple; Stealth. The shield is the same as in the actual micronation's coat-of-arms. The Royal Guards is a real organization; in the Hackett Continuum they are one of the main military forces backing Balance Corps.
Misfit Brigade. Colors: Arctic Gray/White. Based on the movie of the same name and the Weird War Two game concept that followed, these are renegade Germans in a WW2 or Cold War setting.
Trigon Federation. Colors: Forest/Jungle Green. The Aggressors from the Cold War U.S. Army exercizes.
Freikorps. Colors: Desert Tan. Real history given some steroids. The Nazis attempted to turn Allied P.O.W.'s to their cause, but never got enough of them to send them into combat. And worse, the Freikorps was easily penetrated with Allied double agents! See also Kurt Vonnegut's novels Slaughterhouse Five and Mother Night.
Metal Victory Army. Colors: Bare Metal and Black/Iron. Invented for the comic books I was writing in the 1990s, they would evolve into one of the antagonist forces in the Hackett Continuum.
Cuerpo Sangre. Colors: Marine/Blue. The other main antagonist force, they are co-belligerant competitors of the MVA.
White Army. Colors: Urban/Ghost Gray. Like the Misfit Brigade, only renegade Russians and Eastern Europeans rather than Germans.
Oh, The Timing!
Jul. 4th, 2011 01:57 amThis past week on PBS, POV's documentary, "My Perestroika" was about the last generation of Russians to grow up under the Soviet system, who witnessed the fall of the Union and the subsequent confusion, desperation and strangeness that followed and continues for them.
Meanwhile, TH¡S had shown the William Hurt/Richard Burton version of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. I've never read the novel, but I own a copy of Gyorgi Dalos' 1985: What Happens After Big Brother Dies and a Scholastic weekly magazine that has a condensed drama script version of the Orwell story.
I'm sure you're wondering where I'm going with this train of thought.
I'm not sure myself.
I think America is approaching the kind of historical crossroads that many nations have faced over the centuries. Perhaps by this time six years hence, we'll be talking about the Former United States of America...all a nation has to do to fall apart is for its citizens to doubt the premise that the system to which they have been born is morally superior to all others in existance. Maybe the falling-apart has already begun and the majority doesn't see it happen. Perhaps they'll wake up someday to empty Wal*Marts, no burgers at MickyD's and TV footage of tanks on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Or the opposite happens--the masses see their predicament, stand up...and the shotgun sings its song. And the United States stays what it is, in name only, for some generations.
Either way would be a nightmare.
Meanwhile, TH¡S had shown the William Hurt/Richard Burton version of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. I've never read the novel, but I own a copy of Gyorgi Dalos' 1985: What Happens After Big Brother Dies and a Scholastic weekly magazine that has a condensed drama script version of the Orwell story.
I'm sure you're wondering where I'm going with this train of thought.
I'm not sure myself.
I think America is approaching the kind of historical crossroads that many nations have faced over the centuries. Perhaps by this time six years hence, we'll be talking about the Former United States of America...all a nation has to do to fall apart is for its citizens to doubt the premise that the system to which they have been born is morally superior to all others in existance. Maybe the falling-apart has already begun and the majority doesn't see it happen. Perhaps they'll wake up someday to empty Wal*Marts, no burgers at MickyD's and TV footage of tanks on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Or the opposite happens--the masses see their predicament, stand up...and the shotgun sings its song. And the United States stays what it is, in name only, for some generations.
Either way would be a nightmare.
Moar Planez En Philm
Apr. 18th, 2010 02:07 pm( Ginas From Italy )
Found while searching for elsething. Also on Youtube is the movie Forza-G (released dubbed in America as Winged Devils) about the Italian Air Force aerobatic team, which had Ginas as their jets for years.
Found while searching for elsething. Also on Youtube is the movie Forza-G (released dubbed in America as Winged Devils) about the Italian Air Force aerobatic team, which had Ginas as their jets for years.
The local NPR station produces a music history program called Echoes Of The Golden Age, and tonight's show was about drinking songs in opera. So that concept sparked a discussion between myself and Mum about her knowledge of drinking songs, and she told me a story...
...Back in college she took German langauge and for her second year, her teacher was an actual German woman (as opposed to a science teacher who had taken the job the previous year by default). Well, after one particular class, as everybody was leaving the classroom, some of the class cut-ups were serenading everybody else with a drinking song they had made up in German, and Mum recalled how funny the German teacher thought it was. Teenage boys who had never set foot in Germany making up a German drinking song about the Rhine River.
And then I told her that because of all those American soldiers being stationed in West Germany over the course of the Cold War, country & western music is relatively popular in Germany even today...and there are probably German kids writing songs in English about American landmarks.
History works both ways.
...Back in college she took German langauge and for her second year, her teacher was an actual German woman (as opposed to a science teacher who had taken the job the previous year by default). Well, after one particular class, as everybody was leaving the classroom, some of the class cut-ups were serenading everybody else with a drinking song they had made up in German, and Mum recalled how funny the German teacher thought it was. Teenage boys who had never set foot in Germany making up a German drinking song about the Rhine River.
And then I told her that because of all those American soldiers being stationed in West Germany over the course of the Cold War, country & western music is relatively popular in Germany even today...and there are probably German kids writing songs in English about American landmarks.
History works both ways.
War Reenacting Turns A Page
Aug. 18th, 2009 02:09 amNews Item: Enthusiasts Are Now Bringing Back "The 'Nam".
Had to happen sooner or later. In fact, Michael Moore and some Civil War reenactors lampooned the Fall of Saigon on his TV Nation program some years ago.
In the article they say that the public is kept out of some of the events because "when we make it like how it happened, there's nothing to see." My buddy Aleks was CIA Recon along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and he could probably attest to that.
At this rate, in ten years we'll have Grenada, in fifteen Desert Storm, and in twenty or so Iraqi Freedom and the NATO intervention in Afganistan.
Had to happen sooner or later. In fact, Michael Moore and some Civil War reenactors lampooned the Fall of Saigon on his TV Nation program some years ago.
In the article they say that the public is kept out of some of the events because "when we make it like how it happened, there's nothing to see." My buddy Aleks was CIA Recon along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and he could probably attest to that.
At this rate, in ten years we'll have Grenada, in fifteen Desert Storm, and in twenty or so Iraqi Freedom and the NATO intervention in Afganistan.
Firefox. (No, Not The Web Browser)
Aug. 5th, 2009 08:45 pmGot the 1982-vintage Clint Eastwood movie on DVD from the Big Lots bargain bin this evening. Just saw the end of the third act. The effects...have not aged well. The photographic grain is overmuch, the perspectives on the miniatures are unconvincing and they could have been smarter with the interfacing of the elements. But then again, it WAS 1982. A revolution has happened in the years since.
For the record, the Firefox story (if not all of Craig Thomas' pre-1984 technothriller novels!) is CANON for the Hackett Continuum.
For the record, the Firefox story (if not all of Craig Thomas' pre-1984 technothriller novels!) is CANON for the Hackett Continuum.
Western Communists Who Went The "Other" Direction Through The Iron Curtain.
I always wondered what happened to Dean Reed, the "Red Elvis". He was an American rock musician who went Communist, moved to East Germany and became a big star--partly by playing villainous CIA agents in propaganda movies. 60 Minutes did a profile on him back in the Seventies or Eighties...
I always wondered what happened to Dean Reed, the "Red Elvis". He was an American rock musician who went Communist, moved to East Germany and became a big star--partly by playing villainous CIA agents in propaganda movies. 60 Minutes did a profile on him back in the Seventies or Eighties...
While Seeking Elsestuff...
Apr. 15th, 2009 10:58 pmHadn't seen this when it first appeared...but it was kind of related to something I'm doing later.
Writer's Block: Revolutionary Thought
Nov. 7th, 2008 03:05 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]
Pop Culture. I'm living proof. Remember, the term "fanatic" comes from the people who used to hang out at the temples even on days when no services were planned. All fandoms, whether they are of sports or entertainment or games or other forms of amusement, come from this cultural root.
Pop Culture. I'm living proof. Remember, the term "fanatic" comes from the people who used to hang out at the temples even on days when no services were planned. All fandoms, whether they are of sports or entertainment or games or other forms of amusement, come from this cultural root.
Writer's Block: Day of German Unity
Oct. 3rd, 2008 03:29 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]
In the words of Thugs on Film: "No. No. No. No. No! Bleeding NO!"
It was just as unstable then as now and don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Nobody likes a nuclear arsenal on a hair trigger...and we had two of them in the Eighties and I'm glad they're gone.
In the words of Thugs on Film: "No. No. No. No. No! Bleeding NO!"
It was just as unstable then as now and don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Nobody likes a nuclear arsenal on a hair trigger...and we had two of them in the Eighties and I'm glad they're gone.
Tags:
Mao Lives! America Is Doomed!
Nov. 18th, 2005 08:59 pmhttp://www.china-defense.com/forum/uploads/post-11-1132344465.jpg
http://www.china-defense.com/forum/uploads/post-11-1132344529.jpg
The two pictures above are current, Chinese People's Liberation Army troops in the "Aggressor" role playing American G.I.'s. The tank is a Chinese Type 69 converted to look like the M1A1 Abrams. (PS: I tried to do a direct link but ran headlong into the Great Firewall of China...)
The commercial TV networks swept GWBush's comments lauding Taiwan at the expense of Mainland China this week under the rug of other stories, but the Chinese have heard loud and clear...and are rehearsing amphibious landings operations.
I'm thinking of getting a "Blood Chit" for the back of my leather jacket. It may become a collectors item.
FP
http://www.china-defense.com/forum/uploads/post-11-1132344529.jpg
The two pictures above are current, Chinese People's Liberation Army troops in the "Aggressor" role playing American G.I.'s. The tank is a Chinese Type 69 converted to look like the M1A1 Abrams. (PS: I tried to do a direct link but ran headlong into the Great Firewall of China...)
The commercial TV networks swept GWBush's comments lauding Taiwan at the expense of Mainland China this week under the rug of other stories, but the Chinese have heard loud and clear...and are rehearsing amphibious landings operations.
I'm thinking of getting a "Blood Chit" for the back of my leather jacket. It may become a collectors item.
FP
