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Category: Well I thought it was funny!
WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency released information on a new North Korean aerial penis art program, in which MiG-23 Floggers fly in patterns that appear on radar screens as giant penises pointed at South Korea. The provocative practice is raising regional tensions.
“It’s a total dick move,” said CIA spokesperson Thomas Tallywacker. “Kim Jong Un poked the bear earlier this year by drone flights over South Korea. Now he’s waving sky schlongs at the South. It’s a pretty limp joke, but there hasn’t been this much meat pointed at Korea since the Marines landed at Inchon.”
Aviation experts say that the aerial penis art requires intense pilot concentration and tight control grip on the stick with gentle changes in thrust.
“Most pilots have the basic skills for sky dicks, but the expert level is tough to grab,” said Tallywacker, “Now North Korean pilots are so good at dork drawing, it indicates that they practice joy stick control day and night.”
Military sausage expert Abe Froman said that boner drawings have been a military tradition since antiquity. North Korean leaders have long desired a military weiner program to demonstrate military parity with the West.
In the 1950s, North Korean soldiers copied US soldier dong depictions found in captured latrines and trenches.
“Marines at the Chosin Reservoir left them some high-quality ice dick sculptures,” Froman said.
But according to Tallywacker, ground-based dicks present only tactical threats by angering low-level leaders who are overly fixated on rules, like sergeants majors and fifth grade teachers; with vulnerable egos, like field grade officers; any “anyone who refers to themselves an ‘alpha male.’”
“Aerial dicks are usually waved at flag officers or national leaders,” he said. “That’s strategic-level embarrassment.”
North Korea’s program was flaccid until Kim Jung-Un took a more hands-on approach in recent months. Then, aerial dick development rose to prominence over missile programs, another not at all phallic power projector.
“Kim became totally fixated on sky boners,” Tallywacker said, “almost like all the blood rushed out of his head.”
Asked for comment, former CIA analyst Regina Coolotta said, “Good lord. In a world full of actual war, you ass-hat men are fixated on dicks again. Call me when you guys leave adolescence and want to talk about a real issue.”
Bull Winkle is also a certified phrenologist and is available to solve world crises or make your next wedding, birthday or corporate event super fun.
There’s certainly nothing intrinsically funny about forest fires. However, one
particular conflagration back in the early ’90s did let me meet some very nice firemen.
Photo: Sippakorn Yamkasikorn
I have thus far inadvertently instigated three proper forest fires. This is indeed not the sort of thing about which one should boast. However, they all ultimately ended well.
I was stationed on a sprawling Oklahoma military base home to the Field Artillery. Everything from small arms to sky-splitting Multiple Launch Rocket Systems tore the ranges asunder night and day. However, the firing of personally owned automatic weapons on the post ranges was strictly verboten. For a young buck with a pair of transferable machineguns, what was a brother to do?
My sweet bride’s solution was the birthday gift of a year’s membership to a nearby civilian range. So long as I was safe, they didn’t care if I ran my machineguns or not.
Some shooting buddies from college came up from Dallas for the weekend. We had planned this outing for months and had stockpiled a prodigious quantity of ammunition in support. We also brought along half-a-dozen milk jugs filled with water to serve as crude reactive targets.
This MAC10 sub-machinegun set me back $650 back in 1987. M158 Star Clusters
sell for about $75 online these days. I once inadvertently incinerated a modest
fraction of Oklahoma with such a trinket.
Tactical Riverdance
I planned to kick off the day’s festivities with a GI-issue M158 Star Cluster rocket. How I came by the thing doesn’t matter. Suffice to say, the statute of limitations has long since expired.
Star Clusters are as cool as Steve McQueen’s sunglasses. This tidy little folding-fin rocket comes packed within an aluminum tube. To fire the thing, you remove the cap from the top and slip it onto the bottom. You then hold the unit facing upward in the left hand and strike the base vigorously with your right. A firing pin inside the cap detonates the solid propellant.
The Star Cluster rocket rises about 250 feet before expelling five bright illuminant assemblies. Total burn time is six to 10 seconds.
The little rocket roared to life and burst at the prescribed height with prodigious vigor. As we had a robust headwind, the rocket then drifted over our heads and fell back behind us. We all had a chuckle and took up our favorite stutter guns to get the party started in earnest. At that point, I hazarded a glance over my shoulder and noticed the tiniest wisp of smoke.
Deleterious curiosity not being confined solely to the feline, we young men climbed out of the depressed range space to investigate. The burgeoning grass fire was by then perhaps 15 feet across. We commenced to stamping about like a Riverdance troupe on crack.
For the briefest moment, the battle teetered. We retrieved our milk jug targets and began emptying them along the expanding perimeter of the blaze. We had maybe half of the conflagration controlled when there arose a mighty wind. That’s when things got real.
Vermin Exodus
The grass thereabouts was perhaps waist deep and speckled throughout with isolated cedar trees, several of them a couple dozen feet high. When the hot Oklahoma wind added its mischief to the mix the blaze blossomed like Trump’s temper. When overcome, the trees exploded like bombs.
It is simply breathtaking to appreciate how many small creatures call your basic patch of Oklahoma grassland home. A modest dirt road bisected this enormous prairie, but the fire cleared this impediment with ease. I got to this failed firebreak just in time to see a veritable horde of rats, mice and similar displaced vermin running for their lives.
One rangy rat of simply epic proportions stopped in the road not 10 meters from where I stood. For a pregnant moment we just stared at each other. His beady little eyes said flatly, “I really, really hate you, man,” before he scampered off.
At that point we had a decision to make. We could load up our vehicles and make haste, all the while fabricating some plausible cover story to use when the next day it was determined we had incinerated the preponderance of the American Midwest. We opted instead to do the right thing and fetch the Fire Brigade.
While awaiting the professionals, I waded into the conflagrating grass and single-handedly rescued the range facility’s port-a-john from a certain fiery doom. I would be reticent to use the appellation hero myself in describing my actions that fateful day. However, I would not much object should others choose to do so.
The pumper truck made short work of the carnage. I ultimately incinerated maybe four acres. Nothing of substance was destroyed, though I did struggle to explain the liberated GI-issue rocket flare to the firemen. They sighed, and I didn’t go to jail. A grand time was had by all … except for the rat. His day kind of sucked.
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James Cameron’s The Terminator is one of Will’s favorite movies. Perhaps
because the Terminator wields AR-180s one-handed?
Imagine you were invited to participate in a groundbreaking clinical trial. This isn’t testing out some radical new hair growth formula or Viagra knockoff. This is something important. Some hypothetical DARPA scientist is offering to turn you into the Terminator.
Yeah, THE Terminator. This guy will take your brain and transfer it into a Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 from the esteemed 1984 James Cameron movie. You’d weigh 600 lbs., and draw power from twin redundant miniaturized nuclear reactors. You’d be human flesh grown around a hyperalloy combat chassis. You’d be bulletproof, fast and immensely strong. Your sex life would undoubtedly take a hit, but you’d look like Arnold Schwarzenegger circa 1984. Would you do it? Think it over. I’ll wait.
Heck, yeah, you’d do it. We all would. It would be worth whatever pain, social stigma or operative risk just to stroll around your local Walmart looking terrifying. Just imagine how it might transform your typical workday. How awesome would it be to lean forward, my red mechanical eyes glowing behind a pair of killer shades, and say to the little old lady in the exam room, “Tell me about your hemorrhoids,” in Arnold’s unique Austrian patois?
Sadly, technology has not yet advanced far enough to transform me from a skinny 56-year-old, maturity-impaired gun writer into a hulking mechanical killing machine. However, I can still taste a bit of that Terminator ambiance. All you need is access to a fairly well-seasoned gun collection.
The Israeli Uzi helped save the burgeoning nation of Israel. Though heavy,
the Uzi was relatively easy to manufacture and remained quite reliable.
The fire selector on the Uzi is a left-sided thumb switch.
The ArmaLite AR-180 was simpler to produce than the AR-15 and incrementally
more reliable. It orbited around a pressed steel receiver that could be produced
economically by semi-skilled workers.
The Movie
The Terminator was a low-budget sleeper hit in 1984. The movie returned $78.3 million off of a $6.4 million budget. It also launched the careers of several well-known cinema personalities.
James Cameron wrote and directed it before going on to such epics as Titanic, True Lies and Avatar. Michael Biehn subsequently starred in Aliens, The Abyss, Tombstone, The Rock and Navy SEALs. Arnold Schwarzenegger eventually became, well, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Cameron’s original vision for the narrative differed substantially from what we saw on the big screen. Biehn was originally cast as the Terminator, while Schwarzenegger was supposed to be the soldier from the future sent back to stop him. Per the original vision, the killing machine was an infiltrator designed to blend in. While patterning the Terminators off of hulking Austrian bodybuilders might not have made the most tactical sense, it certainly produced a superlative action movie.
The Terminator typically wields his Uzi submachine gun one-handed.
Not recommended for those of us made from 100% flesh.
Will and his kids made this adorable little guy out of a 21st Century Toys action figure.
Terminator’s Weapons
Only flesh will pass through the time displacement equipment, so you come through time naked and bereft of weapons. As the Terminator is encased in flesh, he gets to pass. For those of you who haven’t committed the dialogue to memory, as have I, here’s a rundown of the guns in the film …
The Terminator makes a beeline for a California gun shop, shoots the proprietor and leaves with an Uzi submachine gun, a Franchi SPAS-12 shotgun, an Armalite AR-180 rifle and an AMT Longslide .45. Per the backstory, the Terminator takes the Uzi and AR-180 back to his apartment and somehow converts them to full-auto.
The Franchi SPAS-12 is the U.S. Tax Code of guns. No kidding, that big hook
is so you can support the thing one-handed while firing it out of a moving car.
Seems like somebody was watching too many action movies while they were designing it.
The Long Guns
The Uzi submachine gun hit the streets in 1950, two years after Israel gained her independence. Developed by Major Uziel Gal, the Uzi was the answer to Israel’s desperate need for a rugged, reliable and effective domestically produced combat weapon. Now 10 million copies later, the Uzi is the most-produced SMG in human history.
The GI Uzi fires from the open bolt and feeds from either 25- or 32-round magazines. The gun can be had with either a folding steel stock or the detachable wooden sort. The Uzi is heavy at 7.72 lbs., and cycles at 600 rpm on full-auto.
The Franchi SPAS-12 shotgun was a solution in search of a problem. Produced in Italy from 1979 until 2000, some 37,000 copies rolled off the lines. The SPAS-12 was as alluring as Raquel Welch circa 1962 and as complicated as the manual for your new microwave. Capable of being run in either pump or auto, the SPAS-12 weighed just shy of 10 lbs. and packed 8+1 onboard. The top-folding stock looked cool but remained fairly inefficient.
The SPAS-12 had two independent manual safeties and was absolutely festooned with switches. If you don’t do it right, you can jack the action while switching between pump and auto so badly the gun has to be disassembled to rectify it. Ask me how I know this.
The SPAS-12 sold for around $1,500 new even back in the ’80s. The gun takes an engineering degree to run well but is, in competent hands, effective enough. However, there are a lot of more conventional autoloading shotguns that will do the same thing for a fraction of the cost. Should you find yourself with a SPAS-12, check the polymer recoil buffer before you shoot it. They get friable and fall apart when they get old.
The ArmaLite AR-180 was Gene Stoner’s next-generation replacement for the AR-15. Designed in 1963 and released for service in 1969, AR-180 receivers were pressed out of sheet steel and could be produced more easily and cheaply than the aluminum AR-15 sort. The biggest difference between the two guns was the operating system.
The direct gas impingement system of the AR-15 consisted of little more than a length of hydraulic tubing. That of the AR-180 incorporates a short-stroke gas piston action that runs cleaner than the simpler, lighter AR-15. This same basic mechanism has been copied in the FN SCAR-16, the HK G-36 and the SIG M-5 Spear.
The Terminator ultimately wielded the AMT Hardballer Longslide because it looked cool.
It is indeed a nice gun on the range. However, the Longslide is a terrible pain to carry concealed.
The AMT Hardballer Longslide was a staple in 1980s-era gun magazines.
It runs just like any other 1911 pistol, only longer.
Terminator’s Pistol
The Terminator’s handgun of choice was the AMT Hardballer Longslide .45. This ballin’ hogleg was a regular staple in the Shotgun News magazines of my youth. I seem to recall they retailed for maybe $325 apiece back in the 1980s. These stainless-steel guns came as a standard Government model, a stubby concealed carry version called the Skipper and then the distinctive Hardballer Longslide.
The Terminator’s Longslide included a radical new laser sight that required 10,000 volts for activation and 1,000 volts for reliable operation. The power pack rode inside Arnold’s field jacket, while the wiring for the activation switch snaked through his field jacket for surreptitious operation by his weak hand. While lasers are ubiquitous findings on our modern tactical firearms, such stuff was radical indeed back then.
The controls on the Longslide were oversized, effective and left-side-only. The gun fed from standard seven-round magazines. The Longslide ran just like any other M1911 pistol, only longer.
As I really wanted to pack heat like the Terminator, I dropped the Longslide into a proper IWB holster for a long day in the clinic. Carrying the gun is like shoving a yardstick into your pants, but the inimitably crisp M1911 trigger helps make up for it on the range. Magazine changes set the standard for everything else. My Longslide has been uniformly reliable with everything I’ve fed it.
Recoil is more a shove than a snap, and the extended sight radius enhances control and accuracy. The gun’s weight and its elongated snout help keep recoil and muzzle flip in check. After a little trigger time, I can see why the Terminator chose it.
When life gives you lemons…make up a story about saving pretty girls from a tiger.
Unsplash photo. Attribution appreciated but not required. Photo by Keyur Nandaniy.
Though Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbour. Exodus 20:16
One of ten seminal directives issued directly from the mouth of God Himself, the ninth commandment against professing falsehood represents arguably the most foundational metric of human character. A willingness to lie, while an apparently necessary skill in the world of law or politics, is generally derided as a negative thing. However, when skillfully wielded the surgical application of subterfuge can indeed be a combat multiplier.
Our hero was a 12-year-old from a nearby community who presented to the children’s hospital with a ruptured appendix. He lived maybe 45 minutes from the modest city where I plied my trade. For sake of this tale we’ll bestow upon him the nom de guerre Bailey. Bailey was just sick as stink.
We took Bailey to the operating theater, cleaned out his belly, and put him on the floor of the hospital to recover. Given the sordid state of his entrails, his sojourn in the hospital would be about five days. As soon as he was lucid post-op I informed him that he needed to come up with some cool story to tell his friends to explain why he was in the hospital, something cooler than his appendix ruptured. He assured me he would indeed do so.
Five days later I went up to discharge Bailey and queried as to what he had contrived. He said he was vexed. He couldn’t come up with anything. I said, “Well, how about this?” Every syllable that follows is true.
“How about you tell your school buddies that your parents took you to the local zoo? While at the zoo the Swedish Ski Team was debuting their new line of designer swimwear, a bunch of gorgeous Scandinavian babes in bikinis, but you didn’t care because you were twelve.”
“As you wandered off to check out the monkey cages there arose a mighty commotion. It seems a tiger had escaped from the zoo and was attacking these gorgeous babes. Everybody was paralyzed in fear, everybody but you.”
“You leapt into action and engaged in mortal combat with the snarling jungle beast. With great difficulty and at tremendous peril to your person you wrestled the massive cat back into its enclosure, incurring this modest wound on your side. As a result you were committed to spending five days in the hospital recovering.”
“When your friends voice skepticism as there was no mention of your exploits in the local newspaper you explain thusly. The zoo used their influence with the paper to cover up the story. If word got out that tigers were escaping from the zoo, nobody would go to the zoo. What do you think?”
Bailey looked at me like I had three heads, so I just shrugged my shoulders, signed his paperwork, and bid him farewell. I thought little else of it.
Three weeks later I had another kid come into the hospital from Bailey’s little town. I went up to get to know the young man and innocently asked if he had ever been in the hospital before. He replied, “No, but there’s this kid in my school who was attacked by a tiger…”
He went on to relate the whole story to me. He told me about the girls and the tiger and the conspiracy with the newspaper to suppress the story. I responded, “Yeah, Bailey, the tiger attack guy. We couldn’t take care of him for all the hot Swedish chicks up here smooching on him all the time.”
A grand time was had by all. More than two years later I was working in a local Orthopedic clinic. A guy I didn’t know walked into an exam room and lit up like a light bulb. He went on to explain that I had made his son famous.
This was Bailey’s dad. He said they had passed that story all around town whenever well-meaning folks had asked why Bailey had been in the hospital. That outlandish tale earned young Bailey quite a bit of notoriety thereabouts.
So, I’m not encouraging you to wander about lying to people. Rather, just make the best of a bad situation. If you find yourself in the hospital or in some similarly dire straits just make up some cool story to justify it. If your friends don’t believe you just have them call me. Folks will believe any fool thing a doctor says. It’s like having a superpower.