ruminations on various matters

[bedlamsbard]

I know I've been pretty quiet lately, but that's because not much is going on. I won my Supreme Court case in AP Gov -- Caminetti v. United States; I was Caminetti.

Uh, in other news, four ways to tell you live in the country:
1. "Hey, what'd you do this weekend?"
"Slaughtered hogs."

2. "You bastard! You didn't show up and I had to shuck all the hay by myself."

3. "Hey, mom, there's a dead deer by our driveway. I did not hit it."

4. "Hey, you want to go elk-hunting with me this weekend?"

All true conversations. Oh, Ellensburg.

Current NaNo wordcount stands at about 6K.

I have an eye exam Thursday to make sure my eyes aren't too bad for me to join the Air Force. Yes, I know, the very fact that I have to say that makes people want to quail and run away. Don't worry, I know my eyes are definitely too bad for me to actually fly; alas. I just need to know before I put in my application for an AFROTC scholarship, because otherwise it'll all have been a big waste of time and I'll be really pissed off at my damn eyes.

Why do I have the feeling that the thesis question for my senior project I-Search paper (yes, as if doing the project isn't actually bad enough, we also have to write a research paper) is going to be, "How do you get four branches of the Armed Services to work together in an intergalactic civil war, and who's going to kill each other first, the Marines and the Rangers or the enemy?"

I appear to have picked up a very faintly Southern tinge to my writing. This is in contrast to the entire time I was writing in CSI:NY, when all my writing was NYC-flavored.

Red Seas Under Red Skies is in my hands! I've had a hold on it for a week and a half, and it was due back a week ago, and it came in today. Hurrah!

I wrote a 160 word sentence, as I have fondly been telling everyone I met today. It has been met with, variously, "That's a pretty long sentence," "How many lines is that?", and "Faulkner wrote a sentence that was like 360 words."

The quarter ended Friday; only three-quarters of my senior year remain.

If my band doesn't start shutting up while we're practicing for the Veterans Day Assembly, I'm going to fucking slap someone. It's Veterans Day. You do not do that shit.

Comments

[mentalhygiene.livejournal.com]

"How do you get four branches of the Armed Services to work together in an intergalactic civil war, and who's going to kill each other first, the Marines and the Rangers or the enemy?"

...

Start a new branch, stat! ;)

re: Rural commentary; the deer one was not unheard of when I lived in Maine. Although we did not have elk; only moose.

If you did hit the deer in question, are you allowed (by law, not custom) to bring it home and dress it?

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Heh, that was the original plan! That's why the story has been the Spaceforce novel since the start; I ended up changing my mind and now it's currently in our four standard branches. It may yet become the United States Spaceforce.

Hmm, I don't know. I can ask my AP Gov teacher; he'll know.

[mentalhygiene.livejournal.com]

Well, is this a situation where the US has had time to develop a force, or is this a "Help me Obi-Wan Democracy, you're my only hope!" kind of situation? (like, they had to put this shindig together realfast?). I would say they might take the most useful/relevant aspects of all the armed services, starting with the Air Force, and funnel personnel into a -- like a sub-branch, I guess.

I think the law varies by state. Of course, law matters little if your parental unit says "oh hell no, not in my kitchen". ;)

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Well. Let me consider. There's this war, you see, where the U.S. was involved in trade relations with a sector of a foreign power (and by foreign, I mean "alien galaxy"), and that sector seceded. La la la, U.S. neutral, smash bang, attack by evil alien power, entire starcarrier murdered, U.S. enters the war. And ten years later, the branches of the Service involved are the Navy (shuffling everybody around on naval starcarriers), the Air Force (starfighter pilots), and the Marines (ground troops). The Army isn't involved; the Army's back on Earth entombed in Iraq. La la la, six starcarriers abandoned in other galaxy; that's the first wave. Flash forward three years later; rescue mission includes Navy, Air Force, Marines...and a company of Army Rangers, because the Pentagon figured, hey, we might as well give them some experience fighting in space too.

I mean, it's not like all the following wars are being fought solely in space; except for the naval carriers, it's all Air Force personnel out there. (Besides, Air Force mission statement actually says "Air, space, and cyberspace." Don't ask me about that last part.)

I don't think people butcher in the kitchen. *frown*

[mentalhygiene.livejournal.com]

Okay, so, the US already had the whole intergalactic basics down, and probably had at least some kind of rudimentary space-police-type setup. You could do it, I think, with all four branches, but you'd still need specialized training. But it sounds like that's the kind of concept they've already dealt with. You could have, I suppose, a space sub-branch of each branch, because I assume you still want to have some of your forces still back on homesoil, and not solely space-based. So do other countries have similar set-ups?

entombed. I like your turn of phrase.

No, I suppose not. But parental rule overrules law in terms of butchering critters anywhere on home property, I suppose. (I remember one of my friends saying the voc-tech school in New Bedford used to use roadkill deer for their cooking classes).

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Not -- exactly. This takes place very, very near future -- think next ten years or so -- so the U.S. is still basically throwing it together as they go. And I was overestimating the years slightly; looking at my timeline (which is no longer completely up-to-date because the plot changed slightly, but the basic historical stuff is the same), there's four years of contact before the U.S. gets involved in the war and then four years while the U.S. is actually in the war. And then there's not that many U.S. troops over there; I'd have to check current Iraq numbers to make a good guesstimate, but I wouldn't even say as many as we have in Iraq right now. And maybe a quarter of the Americans over in Rokasa (the other galaxy) are civilian scientists; it's half support and half research.