I have found what was missing from my Christmas tradition: Krampusnacht. I don't know how I didn't know about this before and I don't know how my parents never found out about this. This one is by far the coolest way to keep your teenage son involved in the family Christmas festivities. I have been doing some research and what I have found goes along these lines. In Austria, Northern Italy, and as far as I can tell the entire Tyrol region of Europe with a tradition in the western church, December 5th (the day before St. Nicholas' Day) St Nicholas comes around visiting all of the households and asks something like "Are there any good children here?" And then he gives the good kids candy.
St. Nicholas does not come alone; he comes with his friend Krampus. Krampus is, well, he’s scary, he has horns and hooves and a obscenely long tongue he’s black and hairy and reminds me of most of the nightmares I had as a kid. While St. Nick shows up with candy and smiles, Krampus comes with an arsenal of willow switches, chains, cowbells and, holding with older traditions the wide world over, a big sack to carry off the really naughty kiddies. The gist of the Krampus story is that when St Nick shows up for the good kids, he brings Krampus along for the bad kids. What I love is that Krampus will actually act on the advice of parents and go after the children with sub-standard behavior and scare the daylights out of them. The tradition is that St. Nick would come through with Krampus chained up to show that he was under the control of the Saint and no harm would come to anyone. In my research, there seems to be many testimonials that indicate that the old man had a loose control over Krampus, if any. There are many stories about Krampus permanently psychologically scarring the particularly bad kids. The best of these was a guy who pointed out that he now masquerades as Krampus every year for his friend’s kids and the cycle continues. Not only does Krampus scare bad little children, but also he is a walking cautionary tale for young adolescent girls. It seems like the damage Krampus inflicts is more psychological than physical, though, and the guys that dress up are basically in it for the costumes and the drinking. Did I mention the drinking?
The thing that I like about this tradition is that it is old school. As in, hey, we are adopting this Christianity thing and we need to incorporate it into our midwinter festival old school. It has edge and it is not fluffy or cute. The real issue here is not that we don’t incorporate Krampus into our Christmas traditions. We don’t really incorporate anything with any bite into any of our traditions here in America today. So next year don’t just get the kids ready for Christmas, get them ready for the larger world, let them know that St. Nicholas is coming and he’s bringing a friend.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
The Role of Modern Artillery on the Battlefield and in Religious Law
The US Military refers to artillery as "The King of Battle." This moniker arose for a number of reasons. First in the early stages of the formation of the American Army, branches began to apply association with the various pieces on a chessboard. There was a huge scramble to be the first to lay claim to the most desired icons; it came as no surprise that the infantry was the first to adopt this iconography by self-labeling the branch "The Queens of Battle." Then there was the Quartermaster branch's declaration that they were "the third pawn on the left next to the one that Transportation took." The Signal Corps took the rook because they thought that it looked like the safest place to be; their argument was something about needing to wave flags from a high point. By the time, that the smoke had cleared the only piece left was the King. It is ironic that the artillery, like the king is the largest and most impressive looking piece on the board, moves very slowly, if at all and all of the other pieces, including the pawns must defend it. It only contributes to the actual action under the direst circumstances, usually just before someone beats you.
The history of the artillery in combat dates back to the Napoleonic Wars. There were a number of units infected by the desire to be the first to fight and they would practically run from battle to battle. This was quite upsetting to the units comprised of out of shape frogs who wanted nothing more than to swill wine and sit around coming up with even more outlandish hats to compliment their outlandish uniforms. It was for this reason that a particularly fat lazy officer was looking at the miles between his unit and the next battle on a map when the officer had a brilliant idea. “Hey Jacque, look at this map. What if instead of each of all of us carrying a little bit of lead and powder all the way over there, we only went half way, combined all of our powder and lead, stuff it into a tree trunk and shoot those guys from way back here at a safe distance.” This idea not only gave birth to the artillery, but the first recipient, albeit posthumously, of the coveted artillery honorific ‘Order of St Barbara’ Award. Saint Barbara became the patron saint of the artillery because the infantry had snatched Saint Maurice or Maury as the liked to call him in those days, right after announcing that they were the Queens of Battle. Today the artillery plays an important part in any good army. If you want respect as a nation, you have to be able to show that you have an economy strong enough to support entire units of poorly engineered virtually useless weapons and fat slow soldiers to operate them, poorly. There are two types of artillery pieces, howitzers, and cannons a howitzer is a cannon with a German accent. An interesting side note, even the smallest sovereign nation on earth, The Vatican, has a canon and they have a complex set of rules for firing it called The Canon Law. I tried to call The Holy See to ask about their artillery, but the priest I spoke with became very frustrated after some discussion, I think that it is classified, because he kept denying that they had any artillery at all.
The modern artillery is a highly complex branch, comprised of highly complex equipment that is dependent on the ability of its operators to perform precise mathematical calculations under extreme conditions in order to be accurate and effective. For this reason, the US Department of Defense has decided that there was no one better suited to instruct the warriors of tomorrow in these precision techniques than United States Marine Corps Officers. The US Army’s Artillery school at Ft Sill OK is practically swimming with instructors whose test scores would not have gotten them into any other branch of service, including the Merchant Marines and no one even knows what they do. The watchword of the Artillery instructor is precision, not as it relates to artillery. Any artillery instructor will tell you that artillery is so imprecise that there is an entire job in the military dedicated to correcting artillery fire; even then, it still takes three or four shots to get it right. However, for precision in the classroom, no one has better penmanship on a whiteboard than an Artillery Instructor; you should see the lettering those jarheads can make.
“The mission of the field artillery is to destroy, neutralize, or suppress the enemy by cannon, rocket, and missile fire, and to help integrate all fire support assets into combined arms operations.” The most important thing to realize about this mission statement is that it gives the artillery a lot of wiggle room, which is important since the whole basis of the artillery is the probability of error. So much so, that part of the calculations done whenever firing artillery are for ‘probable error’ as in “someone is probably going to error and we are going to miss and hit a bunch of those infantry queens or someone’s farmhouse in Gatesville, but at least we keep the guys who correct our fire in a job!”
There are a number of other calculations before firing the big guns, Metro for instance. Metro is something that you cannot see and cannot touch, but there are varying levels of metro. Ranging from one: not very metro, moustaches and in need of a bath, all the way to eight: we not only manscape, but exfoliate and moisturize every inch of ourselves. Metro is one of artillery’s dirty little secrets; there are even guys who make metro their jobs. The artillery tends to put these people so far away from them and everyone else that they serve no real purpose, but they have their grooming tools and lint brushes and no one seems to mind the arrangement.
So there you have it, the history of artillery concisely, accurately and on time on target, and if it is not right, someone will give me a call and I should get it within three or four tries.
The history of the artillery in combat dates back to the Napoleonic Wars. There were a number of units infected by the desire to be the first to fight and they would practically run from battle to battle. This was quite upsetting to the units comprised of out of shape frogs who wanted nothing more than to swill wine and sit around coming up with even more outlandish hats to compliment their outlandish uniforms. It was for this reason that a particularly fat lazy officer was looking at the miles between his unit and the next battle on a map when the officer had a brilliant idea. “Hey Jacque, look at this map. What if instead of each of all of us carrying a little bit of lead and powder all the way over there, we only went half way, combined all of our powder and lead, stuff it into a tree trunk and shoot those guys from way back here at a safe distance.” This idea not only gave birth to the artillery, but the first recipient, albeit posthumously, of the coveted artillery honorific ‘Order of St Barbara’ Award. Saint Barbara became the patron saint of the artillery because the infantry had snatched Saint Maurice or Maury as the liked to call him in those days, right after announcing that they were the Queens of Battle. Today the artillery plays an important part in any good army. If you want respect as a nation, you have to be able to show that you have an economy strong enough to support entire units of poorly engineered virtually useless weapons and fat slow soldiers to operate them, poorly. There are two types of artillery pieces, howitzers, and cannons a howitzer is a cannon with a German accent. An interesting side note, even the smallest sovereign nation on earth, The Vatican, has a canon and they have a complex set of rules for firing it called The Canon Law. I tried to call The Holy See to ask about their artillery, but the priest I spoke with became very frustrated after some discussion, I think that it is classified, because he kept denying that they had any artillery at all.
The modern artillery is a highly complex branch, comprised of highly complex equipment that is dependent on the ability of its operators to perform precise mathematical calculations under extreme conditions in order to be accurate and effective. For this reason, the US Department of Defense has decided that there was no one better suited to instruct the warriors of tomorrow in these precision techniques than United States Marine Corps Officers. The US Army’s Artillery school at Ft Sill OK is practically swimming with instructors whose test scores would not have gotten them into any other branch of service, including the Merchant Marines and no one even knows what they do. The watchword of the Artillery instructor is precision, not as it relates to artillery. Any artillery instructor will tell you that artillery is so imprecise that there is an entire job in the military dedicated to correcting artillery fire; even then, it still takes three or four shots to get it right. However, for precision in the classroom, no one has better penmanship on a whiteboard than an Artillery Instructor; you should see the lettering those jarheads can make.
“The mission of the field artillery is to destroy, neutralize, or suppress the enemy by cannon, rocket, and missile fire, and to help integrate all fire support assets into combined arms operations.” The most important thing to realize about this mission statement is that it gives the artillery a lot of wiggle room, which is important since the whole basis of the artillery is the probability of error. So much so, that part of the calculations done whenever firing artillery are for ‘probable error’ as in “someone is probably going to error and we are going to miss and hit a bunch of those infantry queens or someone’s farmhouse in Gatesville, but at least we keep the guys who correct our fire in a job!”
There are a number of other calculations before firing the big guns, Metro for instance. Metro is something that you cannot see and cannot touch, but there are varying levels of metro. Ranging from one: not very metro, moustaches and in need of a bath, all the way to eight: we not only manscape, but exfoliate and moisturize every inch of ourselves. Metro is one of artillery’s dirty little secrets; there are even guys who make metro their jobs. The artillery tends to put these people so far away from them and everyone else that they serve no real purpose, but they have their grooming tools and lint brushes and no one seems to mind the arrangement.
So there you have it, the history of artillery concisely, accurately and on time on target, and if it is not right, someone will give me a call and I should get it within three or four tries.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Ask me anything
I have decided to give the world the benefit of my expertise. Please, ask me anything. Please email me your questions and I will provide advice and guidance on, but not limited to, the following subjects:
16th and 17th century British Literature
Aging
air combat
alchemy
anatomy
artillery
aviation
Ballistics
Brewing
Broadway
Carbon dating suggestions
carpentry
catching things
child bearing
child conception
child rearing
clandestine operations, household
clandestine operations, neighborhood
clandestine operations, international
coli form bacteria
Dating suggestions
dentistry
diet
Distillation
driving, defensive
driving, offensive
dying
East Asian culture
engineering, locomotive
engineering, mechanical
ethics
extreme sports
finance, personal
Fire
firearms
Fishing
flower arrangement
fluoride
Garden parties
Gardening
Geology
hand puppets
Hunting
husbandry, general
husbandry, large animal
husbandry, small animal
Incantations
Incarceration
Journalism
Jousting
Judaism
Kashrut Law
Knighthood
Knives
land war in southwest Asia
Landscaping
lashings (n.)
lashings (v.)
laundry techniques
law, Covert's
law, domestic
law, international
law, sharia
law, Vatican
Marriage
Meditation
money laundering
Monkeys
Narcotics
non-pyro techniques
otamatapia
outdoor gear
palm reading
Parasites
personal fitness
psychology
pyrotechnics
quick fixes
Rashes
reading
Reggae
regular logy
relationships, international
relationships, personal
relationships, spatial
religion
Sandwiches
scary things, imagined
scary things, real
Scientology
scrap booking
Sewing
sexual techniques
shaving
skiing
South West Asian vultures
Spirituality
Swaddling
textiles
the common cold
the environment
throwing things
troop arrangement
underworld organizations, criminal
underworld organizations, secret
wardrobe, men's
wardrobe, women's
water purification
Wealth accumulation
wilderness survival
woodworking
writing
xenophobia
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