Last of Eighteen 2013-03-27

[zachariah]

The presense of the A-10 makes this hard to justify if they are on a dig at the Dead Sea.

Now if they were on a dig at Babylon in the period after Desert Storm this would make a lot of sense.

The Hog has been around for a long time due to it capability for close ground support. The US is still using them as it has yet to develop anything better at it's job. Many other countries have copied them. It would not surprise me that Israel has some of its own either. There are no markings on the plane which means it is not an official US Warthog. Even in combat US planes carry US markings, it would be against regulations to fly them without. So this is not one of the US's. Maybe covert forces from any one of several countries at that time who had access to those planes. The Dead Sea is probably the accurate location.

[jeffepp]

And why is the helicopter still aiming at the site, instead of going after Katherine?

It is (was) shooting her. It shot off part of her hair in the first panel.

As to the time of this event, it would have to be in the 1990's. catch comes of as a little to young for Desert Storm era. And we have known her to long for the post millennium period.

[Opus the Poet]

The 'Hog was what made my job in the Army possible at the time I was assigned to it. My MOS during that period was 26LO Tactical Microwave Communications repair, we fixed everything from field telephone switchboards to satellite ground stations, but mostly what we did was set up radio vans that connected field telephones to each other and the civilian land line system at the time (pre-cell phones). In order to do that we had to be pretty close to the front, about a 30 minute tank drive away, in what was a semi-trailer with 1/8" aluminum sheeting as "armor". since it took a minimum of 40 minutes to stow our antenna to leave if we were in danger of being overrun having something that would keep the armor off our butts was required if we were to be able to do our jobs. The A-10 was that "something".

Also the 'Hog has 1 confirmed and 3 unconfirmed kills on helicopters during Desert Storm, and one of the "objectives" of the game "A-10 II" was taking out a chopper that had been harassing troops near your patrol position. In the game if you chose the cannon there were vectors you couldn't use to attack because of the danger of hitting the ground troops, the equivalent of "clearing your background' for non-combatants when fighting urban warfare. If you chose the Sidewinder you usually missed, but at least you didn't get "dinged" for endangering troops you were supposed to be protecting.

[Yamara]

What is all this op geek talk of Warthogs and antitank weapons? That chopper is being taken out by a sphinx.

People see what they want to see.

[Jay-Em]

Kat is "in her forties" so, slightly post '91 Iraq war, seems logic.
Still. Who would use kiowa's against archeologists in a country that's decidedly nót Iraq. Technically it could only be Jordan, or Israël. (Or my geography is severely messed-up)
Both choices seem odd.

This is pure speculation:

I wouldn't be too surprised when there were 2 factions within the MIB. One for controlling/culling the surfacing of "unpleasant artifacts" and another that wants to slowly get the world getting used to a different history than had been propagated in the MSM and schools.
Maybe it's even a sort of feud between governments ( =local) and the MIB ( =international). I dunno. Something doesn't add-up here.

Nice onomatopee for the A10's 30mm burp-gun, though. From the Youtube vids, they, indeed, sound like "VRRROOOMMM"

Another thing:

One person was "quite perturbed" by the amount of colorful gore we got served the last days, and he/she wasn't pleased, to say the least, and afraid of being flamed.
In this forum, that's not going to happen. Cess-pits like Facebook are for that. Overhere, the "grown-ups" ponder and consider options. So, don't worry.

On the gore itself: i feel it's appropriate, and it isn't even as gorey as it can be in real life. This burst of violence and nastiness is imho neccessary for the narrative. There is nó PC-correct covering-up of the ugliness of violence here, no soothing-over of horrible things. It's a cold, ice-cold splash of water, to wake-up the complacent "violence is OK when there's little, or no blood to be seen".

The narrative here, shocks us into sudden awareness, an awareness that's not there when Paul would only have stated (through Kat) "I was in a dig, and people got killed by a rogue faction of xxxxxxx"

Storytelling, art, all have the potency to jar someone into the ugliness of reality, and as such, make us aware of the bizarre circumstances of our lives. It even can make us critical of certain "accepted truths" like "people get killed in wars", which is actually a distancing observation, that just keeps floating somewhere on top of our capacity to accept reality. Un-dangerous, unable to impact our false sense of security. Our nice little blankets of fairies and rainbows.

I admit, only focussing on the ugly sides of life, war, violence, is a sure-fire way into a depression. We exáctly use our coping mechanisms to keep "reality" at an arms' length, and prevent ourselves from coming apart at the seams.

Ponder the following for a bit when condemning the realistic representation of horrible things in art/comics/literature/etc.

-There áre moments that the coping-mechanism is counter-productive. Ask ány vet that has seen action, lost friends. Ask ány partner of a vet, and You'll see there are two kinds of "coping"

1-the tough guy/gal. Stiff upper lip, but nightmares that make them scream in the night, never èver sleeping well, but refuses to admit that he/she is only human. I got 2 examples of those in my direct family..

2-the perceived (!) not-so-tough guy/gal that has the advantage of accepting he/she isn't able to cope alone, and immediately accepts counceling, to help him/her accept the reality of what happened, and give it a place to settle, without festering.

In the end, to me those that go for option 2, are the réal tough guys/gals. The really strong ones, accepting their fallability, accepting that they, themselves are not an island, and that -in the worst case- if they do not act upon it, could become detrimental to every loved one in their direct surroundings.

The central word here is "accepting". Accepting there is a lot of ugliness in the world is quite different from stating "people get killed in wars" and then demanding that we be kept from being confronted.

So, in the end, those that complain about viscerally being dragged into reality by "Art" in whatever form, are willfully denying a part of that reality, but in the same breath, are denying others some valuable insights that could come from being confronted by reality.

And to be brutally honest, I have a bit of a problem with that attitude. It reeks of censorship. A puritan "we know best"

And thát is about as "Flamey" as I get.


Jus' mah 2cents

[jwhouk]

What is all this op geek talk of Warthogs and antitank weapons? That chopper is being taken out by a sphinx.

People see what they want to see.

Yanno, Yamara MIGHT be onto something here.

HOW-ever.

We know from Pablo this was about 20 years ago - but that doesn't mean it was exactly 20 years ago.

Coulda been in early '92, when the war was still mildly warm. Around the time frame of the movie "Three Kings."

[analyst]

Crazy implausible speculation: This also explains her nudism, disrobing to deal with the desert heat of that day permanently etched into her subconscious by such a horrific ordeal.

I can see her losing clothing to disassociate herself from the gore/last remains of her friends and co-workers. She is pretty splattered. (She's pretty most of the time, but that's beside the point )

[Julie]

Another thing:

EDITED: Long, well thought out post on why the violence in these sequences have a purpose.

Jus' mah 2cents

This...precisely this. *says the woman who occasionally needs to be smacked upside the head by reality to "get it"*

Well...today didn't resolve things the way I'd hoped. I guess I'll just have to play catch up to find my happy resolution in a week and a half.

See you guys later!!

[DilyV]

Kat is "in her forties" so, slightly post '91 Iraq war, seems logic.
Still. Who would use kiowa's against archeologists in a country that's decidedly nót Iraq. Technically it could only be Jordan, or Israël. (Or my geography is severely messed-up)
Both choices seem odd.

This is pure speculation:

I wouldn't be too surprised when there were 2 factions within the MIB. One for controlling/culling the surfacing of "unpleasant artifacts" and another that wants to slowly get the world getting used to a different history than had been propagated in the MSM and schools.
Maybe it's even a sort of feud between governments ( =local) and the MIB ( =international). I dunno. Something doesn't add-up here.

Nice onomatopee for the A10's 30mm burp-gun, though. From the Youtube vids, they, indeed, sound like "VRRROOOMMM"

Another thing:

One person was "quite perturbed" by the amount of colorful gore we got served the last days, and he/she wasn't pleased, to say the least, and afraid of being flamed.
In this forum, that's not going to happen. Cess-pits like Facebook are for that. Overhere, the "grown-ups" ponder and consider options. So, don't worry.

On the gore itself: i feel it's appropriate, and it isn't even as gorey as it can be in real life. This burst of violence and nastiness is imho neccessary for the narrative. There is nó PC-correct covering-up of the ugliness of violence here, no soothing-over of horrible things. It's a cold, ice-cold splash of water, to wake-up the complacent "violence is OK when there's little, or no blood to be seen".

The narrative here, shocks us into sudden awareness, an awareness that's not there when Paul would only have stated (through Kat) "I was in a dig, and people got killed by a rogue faction of xxxxxxx"

Storytelling, art, all have the potency to jar someone into the ugliness of reality, and as such, make us aware of the bizarre circumstances of our lives. It even can make us critical of certain "accepted truths" like "people get killed in wars", which is actually a distancing observation, that just keeps floating somewhere on top of our capacity to accept reality. Un-dangerous, unable to impact our false sense of security. Our nice little blankets of fairies and rainbows.

I admit, only focussing on the ugly sides of life, war, violence, is a sure-fire way into a depression. We exáctly use our coping mechanisms to keep "reality" at an arms' length, and prevent ourselves from coming apart at the seams.

Ponder the following for a bit when condemning the realistic representation of horrible things in art/comics/literature/etc.

-There áre moments that the coping-mechanism is counter-productive. Ask ány vet that has seen action, lost friends. Ask ány partner of a vet, and You'll see there are two kinds of "coping"

1-the tough guy/gal. Stiff upper lip, but nightmares that make them scream in the night, never èver sleeping well, but refuses to admit that he/she is only human. I got 2 examples of those in my direct family..

2-the perceived (!) not-so-tough guy/gal that has the advantage of accepting he/she isn't able to cope alone, and immediately accepts counceling, to help him/her accept the reality of what happened, and give it a place to settle, without festering.

In the end, to me those that go for option 2, are the réal tough guys/gals. The really strong ones, accepting their fallability, accepting that they, themselves are not an island, and that -in the worst case- if they do not act upon it, could become detrimental to every loved one in their direct surroundings.

The central word here is "accepting". Accepting there is a lot of ugliness in the world is quite different from stating "people get killed in wars" and then demanding that we be kept from being confronted.

So, in the end, those that complain about viscerally being dragged into reality by "Art" in whatever form, are willfully denying a part of that reality, but in the same breath, are denying others some valuable insights that could come from being confronted by reality.

And to be brutally honest, I have a bit of a problem with that attitude. It reeks of censorship. A puritan "we know best"

And thát is about as "Flamey" as I get.


Jus' mah 2cents

From someone who has been in combat and has lived what Paul has rendered in real time, I have to say that it took me back... I don't like to remember those times... but seeing this past three days helped me in a way. It helped me understand that while I paid a huge price in Iraq, I survived. Some didn't. It made me remember that in all things, even Paul's comic... there are always forces larger than ourselves at work.

[kingklash]

It was either a A-10, or the Autobot Powerglide.

[Jay-Em]

@DilyV
Good for You. You seem to have been able to give the horrors a "place" which is the most important step imho.

I am from the "Srebrenica-generation" some of my close friends were involved in that mess. Being shot at by snipers, seeing collegues suddenly "deflate" and just "drop" , getting chalk shards spat into one's eyes because the guy on the other side og the wall wanted you dead, but luckily was a rotten shot, having to watch helplessly when some asshole with a dragunov deemed it funny to take pot-shots at civillians, the sheer anger and rage that invoked, the inability to dó something about that, the undignified way innocent people died because of the grudges of some out-of-hand gang etc. etc.has had quite the impact on them.

The ones that could pick-up their "normal lives" were the ones that, indeed, accepted there were higher powers at work and they had no say in it, but refused to let that define their being, despite not readily knowing what to do with it. They happily accepted counseling.

The ones still struggeling, are the ones that "don't want to think about it". Marriages have fallen apart for them, they live in constant fear. New year's eve fireworks are sheer torture for the hubby of my BFF. F.i. He's the "I'm not crazy, I don't need psychiatrists rummaging in my head"-type..... Heck! He can't even hold a cup of coffee when stuff goes "bang" somewhere.

I have to be honest though. My Sis' is a psychologist with a degree in neurology, and has specialized in PTSD for military people, as well as abused kids, women, men.

So, I know a bit of what these victims of PTSD go through, if only through her accounts of the harrowing things people live through, and hów those things affect EVERYTHING in their lives afterwards.


Viewed in that light, Kat's peculiarities aren't thát strange.

[sheik]

The A-10 is used exclusively by the U.S. AFAICT.
What this says to me is that we're witnessing a covert war fought, in this instance, over an archeological dig.
Someone, perhaps the MIB or even just the USAF, could have diverted the A-10 from it's SCUD hunting routine to deal with the heavily armed helicopter which was probably _not_ authorized to fly in Israeli or Jordanian airspace.
Neither Israel nor Jordan would condone the slaughter of unarmed civilians in any event, and the A-10 might have already been monitoring the helicopter and held it's fire to see what this bozo was up to.
I hope Paul will treat us to Kathrine's debriefing so we can find out just WTF just happened.

[Jay-Em]

My ideas are in the same vein.
Some inner struggle in the MIB or MIB and "unknown" agents.

There must have been something pretty damn important at that dig.

[Fairportfan]

The A-10 is used exclusively by the U.S. AFAICT.

What about Greg Gates at Area 88?

In fact - maybe this is some sort of fringe action from Area 88...

[Jay-Em]

Oh noes Tvtropes...

Vade retro satanas. Don't bring me in temptation...

(Several hours later) ugh... Again I couldn't resist..

[DilyV]

@DilyV
Good for You. You seem to have been able to give the horrors a "place" which is the most important step imho.

I am from the "Srebrenica-generation" some of my close friends were involved in that mess. Being shot at by snipers, seeing collegues suddenly "deflate" and just "drop" , getting chalk shards spat into one's eyes because the guy on the other side og the wall wanted you dead, but luckily was a rotten shot, having to watch helplessly when some asshole with a dragunov deemed it funny to take pot-shots at civillians, the sheer anger and rage that invoked, the inability to dó something about that, the undignified way innocent people died because of the grudges of some out-of-hand gang etc. etc.has had quite the impact on them.

The ones that could pick-up their "normal lives" were the ones that, indeed, accepted there were higher powers at work and they had no say in it, but refused to let that define their being, despite not readily knowing what to do with it. They happily accepted counseling.

The ones still struggeling, are the ones that "don't want to think about it". Marriages have fallen apart for them, they live in constant fear. New year's eve fireworks are sheer torture for the hubby of my BFF. F.i. He's the "I'm not crazy, I don't need psychiatrists rummaging in my head"-type..... Heck! He can't even hold a cup of coffee when stuff goes "bang" somewhere.

I have to be honest though. My Sis' is a psychologist with a degree in neurology, and has specialized in PTSD for military people, as well as abused kids, women, men.

So, I know a bit of what these victims of PTSD go through, if only through her accounts of the harrowing things people live through, and hów those things affect EVERYTHING in their lives afterwards.


Viewed in that light, Kat's peculiarities aren't thát strange.

Surprisingly enough, I've been to Sreb, Brcko, Vares', Mlici, Doboj, Priboj, Tuzla, Sarajevo and a host of other crap holes where some idiots on both sides of the fracas thought that Genocide would be a good idea. I was there in the 2000 time frame and while we didn't have people shooting at us, or each other for that matter, we were required to stand guard over those digging up the mass graves that were found as a result of the above mentioned genocide. The movie "Behind Enemy Lines" has a scene where the downed US pilot finds himself in the midst of one. That scene was childs play compared to what we saw. The up side of it was that by the time we hit the ground in Iraq, those of us who were in places like the killing fields of Bosnia found ourselves thankfully pre-sensitized to the carnage we found there.

[ziggy78eog]

Well, thank you very much, Mr. A-10 Warthog, for your timely arrival. But where were you, say two minutes ago, when everybody else was literally getting shot to pieces with high caliber, anti-armor, machine gun fire?

[TheDOCTOR]

Thank you for your Service all of you who have been or still are in Holes like this. And Thanks to all you NCIS/CSI's out there who can tell what caliber was used to blow the crap out of all those collegues of Katherines. Myself like a few others only noticed how "Lucky" Katherine was only losing a lock of hair, and I hope it didn't graze the back of her head. Now I ask....What is she stareing at now? More Armed Troops? More Choppers?
Now I see why she became so protective of Atsali when the Helicopters came.

[Jabberwonky]

Just a couple of pics I found looking for something else...
A-10 vs P-51 size-wise:

A10 v P51.jpg (53.38 KiB) Viewed 8520 times

A-10 main weapon(the nose cannon) vs VW Bug, size-wise:

A10 gun 65.jpg (100.99 KiB) Viewed 8520 times

The ammo for said same weapon(not me in the pic):

me-bullet-711123.jpg (49.77 KiB) Viewed 8520 times

It fires those depleted uranium rounds at a rate of 3900-4000 per minute...
(A quick Google says they weigh 1.6 lbs each)

[KnightDelight]

1-the tough guy/gal. Stiff upper lip, but nightmares that make them scream in the night, never èver sleeping well, but refuses to admit that he/she is only human. I got 2 examples of those in my direct family..

This why I live alone and will for the rest of my life.