U Rang?

I’m suffering from a brutal, unforgiving and particularly malevolent case of man flu. I am soldiering on of course, propped up with paracetamol and hibiscus tea – but I’m just giving you fair warning in case I trail off during this – I am at real risk of passing away here.

I’m even off takeaway food, that’s just how severe this shit is

Anyway, as a result, my sleeping – normally log-like – is compromised. It is currently 4.22 am on Monday morning, and I’m sat like a tit on a recliner in the living room (only way I can sit that doesn’t have me drowning in my own beak semen) bored out my tits, half delirious with the face/throat burning like I’ve been deep throated by an elephant. Again

Last night, at a similar hour, to take my mind of the painful death that is most certainly coming from this pox, I was just googling random stuff to read. You know how it is, you start off with some article, and in that article you find a couple of references to stuff you aren’t sure about, so you spin off into them, and before you know it you are reading about such delights as the Mexican midget porn industry etc

Well, I landed on an article that really made me think – absolutely positively nothing original or new – just a stop and go sort of “woah” moment.

It was an article about an incident from World War II. Nothing that stands out as particularly amazing at first – the basic gist is, the Nazis landed 8 agents on the East coast of the United States, in two four-man teams. The goal, as you can imagine, was to infiltrate into American society, and after a couple of months, start targeting designated objectives. Aluminium (or Aluminum if you prefer) factories, public areas to cause demoralisation, infrastructure – typical stuff.

Terrorists by modern definition – or Special Forces, depending how you take your propaganda in the morning.

Anyway, upon landing, they bumped into a Coast Guard fella doing a patrol, managed to bribe him to get away – although he went and alerted his boys. The Germans got away though. In fact, if it wasn’t for 2 of them shitting it and grassing in the rest, they probably wouldn’t have been caught at all; as it happened, they did grass up, and all 8 were apprehended in short order. Six were put to death, the two who turned informant repatriated to Germany after the war.

Why did this make me think?

Quite simply, technology. This was back at the start of the 40s. Computers as we know them wouldn’t be seen for decades, and what computers they did have were but bumbling idiots by comparison, working mechanically or at best with valves – and both huge, and non portable.

Think about that for a minute. Most of us can’t navigate outside our own towns or areas without Satnav these days. We have more computer power in our phones, than those guys could even conceive of – hell if you could go back in time and show them an iphone, they’d probably shoot you on the spot for witchcraft. Or just for owning an Apple product, since I do believe distaste for the trendy form over function ethos of the brand is genetically encoded into all intelligent beings…

Anyway, really think about this. They navigated all the way from Europe, across the Atlantic, in two shitty U-Boats, to successfully place their two independent teams right where planned. It would be a fair assumption to make to say that comms between the two boats would have been restricted, or downright impossible if trying to remain covert.

Think about your life today. Given the site I am posting this on, you are probably a bodybuilder, or some form of weight trainer. You probably read the forum regularly, you are probably never off Facebook. You most likely send multiple text messages per day as if its nothing, ditto phone calls. You could be one of those annoying pricks that shouts out that you are going to the gym – in the remote possibility that anyone gives a fuck – or posts a picture of every meal you intend to “smash” on the internet at any opportunity.

You might be in your late teens or early 20s – in which case its always been like this, you don’t know any other way.

For those of us a little longer in the tooth, we’ve seen it happen. We have watched the old Star Treks, and wondered “what if they really had communicators” – then seen them arrive, then seen them become every day disposable items that even young kids run around with.

Think if it was gone tomorrow. I honestly don’t know if we could roll back, there would be anarchy.

Yet they managed to send 8 guys successfully round the world without any of it, to land in darkness successfully.

And then be betrayed by their countrymen right enough.

I guess human nature hasn’t really changed much then, huh…

All of that “progress” – yet I can’t help thinking as much as the technology has advanced at a frightening pace – we have become retarded. Near as dammit all the good men and women who could just do this stuff, are dead. There is no one to fall back on now. All the people who could take a lump of metal, put it in a lathe or mill and make pretty much anything you like by raw hand input and careful tooling selection – gone, replaced by computer controlled machinery, which is great – until the power goes out.

And worst of all?

They still haven’t cured the fucking common cold – or at least say they haven’t (money making conspiracy?) – so if you’ll excuse me I’ll just fuck off and die then



For further reading on the WWII event mentioned,see here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pastorius

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Saboteurs-The-Nazi-Raid-America/dp/1400030420/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1392614565&sr=8-1&keywords=Saboteurs:The Nazi Raid on America