Usually when I’m unsure of what to write about I cruise the sundry social news sites, such as Digg, Reddit, Fark, and eBay, looking for ideas buried in the news, and hoping someone on eBay will have a muse for sale. I actually found this on eBay tonight, but since it wasn’t exactly the kind of muse I had in mind I kept on cruising.
I initially thought about writing about America’s embarrassing reaction to Mahmoud Ahmadnejad’s visit to the U.N. in New York. Just wasn’t feeling that one. Then I thought about Rush Limbaugh’s “phony soldier” comments, Nancy Pelosi’s complete lack of a spine, Bill O’Reilly’s ignorant assishness, or the fact that when Thomas Jefferson contemplated Shay’s Rebellion he thought that “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing. ”¦God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.”
Then I read this story about a Blackwater plane crash in Afghanistan. I knew immediately that I’d found my subject.
In 2004, a twin-engine CASA C-212 crashed into a rock wall of a canyon in Afghanistan, killing three Blackwater employees and three U.S. soldiers. Blackwater, as we all know, is a group of trigger-happy, sociopathic mercs private security firm, hired by the U.S. government to rape and pillage brown people assist U.S. troops overseas. Apparently Blackwater flight training consists of marathon viewing sessions of “Star Wars,” because the flight recorder of the plane recorded a passenger saying to the pilot “You’re an X-wing fighter Star Wars man.”
How did the pilot respond? By stating, “You’re fucking right. This is fun.” The pilot then continued to sweep and zoom his plane through a “low-level” mountain valley. Eight minutes later: BAM! Flame and flutter all the way to the valley floor.
I guess flying a CASA C-212 isn’t like targeting womprats in a T-16, huh?
I’m sure there are a dozen variations on this joke, but in Texas it goes like this:
The National Transportation Safety Board recently divulged they had covertly funded a project with the U.S. auto makers for the past five years, whereby the auto makers were installing black boxes in four-wheel drive pick-up trucks in an effort to determine, in fatal accidents, the circumstances in the last 15 seconds before the crash.
They were surprised to find in 49 of the 50 states the last words of drivers in 61.2 percent of fatal crashes were: “Oh, Shit!” Only the state of Texas was different, where 89.3 percent of the final words were: “Hold my beer and watch this!”
Nothing puts a bigger smile on my face than when Fate decides to skim the gene pool.