Against the Use of "Whopping"

From a New York Times article about How Hard It Is To Get Into A Good School:

That is a whopping 50 percent increase in applications over seven years ago and more than 10 times the seats available in a freshman class of 1,150. (emphasis added with bold instead of italics)

"Whopping" - an unoriginal, informal, and generally worthless word - saps any statement's vitality. Besides its informality (and the irritating detail that "to whop" really isn't a thing to do . . . yet), it fails in its attempt to conceal the writer's hunger. A solution that is both more lively and more honest:

That is a hamburgering 50 percent increase in applications over seven years ago and more than 10 times the seats available in a freshman class of 1,150. (emphasis added with bold instead of italics)

Imagine a meat tenderizer wielded by a mighty stack of college applications (fifty percent larger than last year). The stack, clad in Roman body armor, cudgels, muddles, and pestles countless hapless applicants until they look like juicy patties. Then they get shipped off to Hamburger University to do the Roy Krocarena at frat-sponsored dance parties.

It's about time editorial bylaws showed some damn chutzpah. So look alive, confused bastards; there's a new style manual just up the block. Even if it is not yet very extensive, it isn't afraid to wage war, and its name rhymes with "blogger and meta-fables."

I'm Gonna Git You Sucka

Have you ever imagined a vampire movie where the vampire can't find anyone to prey on because he/she is worried about consuming the blood of questionable purity?

Movies, like, are like vampires, right? They don't exist. Or so you thought.

Discuss.

Red Dawn and Contemporary Military Strategy

VS



The Choice Is Clear

A previous post (the most recent one, actually) indicated the importance of remembering Red Dawn, going so far as to point to an article on cognitive neuroscience to help elucidate the memory processes and help readers get over the biological determinism of forgetting.

You see, Red Dawn posits the now-defunct Soviet Union as the greatest threat to the security of the American Midwest. Events of the late-nineteenth and early twenty-first century (the collapse of the Soviet Union, 9/11) have done a great deal to mitigate the possibility of a foreign invasion that can only be stopped by the efforts of a handful of high schoolers.

In the contemporary scheme of international violence, one rarely considers a conventional war on American soil as a remote possibility. Continued nuclear proliferation and the emergence of highly skilled, motivated, and funded terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda have greatly diminished focus on old-style military conflict. However, Red Dawn was prescient in one crucial manner; the use of teenage boys armed with automatic weapons--once an empowering masculine fantasy--has since been fully realized several times on foreign soil.

Despite taking Red Dawn's advice on the military capabilities of high-school aged young Midwestern boys, current and past administrations have made the strategic error of failing to recognize their key military use: in a defensive, conventional war against an invading power. If we are to believe the performances of Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen (as we undoubtedly should), it is important to acknowledge that groups like their Wolverines are best suited to defend their hometowns against the robotic machinations of conformist Commies. The current endeavors in Iraq and Afghanistan greatly overestimate the ability of paramilitary teens to preemptively strike countries hostile to U.S. interests.

It is not too late to correct this error, however. Highly trained militias can recruit and train young children in the ways of firearms and explosives to fight the real war we have on our hands: a defensive war on terrorism, whose principle targets have typically been airports and landmarks of great symbolic significance to the U.S. Deploying our corn-fed, bright-eyed teenage dudes (especially the varsity athletes) in these locations will help prevent another attack from what currently poses our greatest national-security threat.

Meanwhile, as Point of No Return clearly shows, hot babes pulled off death row to become assassins are fucking great at urban warfare. Ship em out in droves.

Red Dawn Trailer

I Was Trolling for Animals; Instead I Rolled up on Moby

The idea was simple, a joke about vlogging my dolphin, so I trucked over to YouTube for some cute videos of dolphins for a vlog. Instead, I wound up with a video of cute literal dolphins being actually flogged. [Warning this video is both graphic and HEAVY.]



Soundtrack by Moby. Narration by Joaquin Phoenix. Jokes about "flogging the dolphin" will never be the same. :'(