Man Kills His Girlfriend

Its the age old story; boy meets girl, girl likes boy, they start going out against their parents wishes, girl jilts boy, boy savagely murders the girl and hides the corpse.

So whats the story here? Why do we care? Quite simply, because it just doesn't add up.

From those amazing chaps at NPR who brought us This American Life, we have a new show, a weekly updated serial, called Serial, that instead of being a self contained hour of interesting stuff, continues from week to week.

In my mind, this is in the finest traditions of story-telling, going back to Chaucer's tales which flowed into one and another, or to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, where there was one chapter a month in a magazine. Books could, and did, go on for years!

In 'Serial' Sarah Koenig reports on different aspects of the murder, the way the case was handled, the things that were missing from the trial and tries to jog peoples' memories, 15 years after the fact.

It truly is an interesting series and one that I cannot recommend highly enough.

As always there are those who would try to take away from the hard work, and they are quite funny too! Why not make up your own mind by downloading the series so far here and listening to it on your non-brand MP3 player?

You can also see maps, letters and photos of the story so far - here.

kthanxbai!

Jumblerant

Post publish prose: Further reading about the Serial serial can be found here on Mentalfloss and on Mashable

Its Payback Time

There have been a few pretty awesome short films shown in my Facebook stream recently. My favourite is the 3rd one. Which is yours?

1. Meet the Meat


MEET MEAT from GOBELINS pro on Vimeo.

2. Why King Arthur pulled the sword from the stone


FOL'AMOR from GOBELINS pro on Vimeo.

3. Payback Time



4. Epic Nerf Battle





kthanxbai!

Jumblerant

Some Great Reads

I like me some Vietnam stories. I don't particularly enjoy the fighting part of it, generally I don't believe half of what I read. I do like reading about the helicopters over there and how these guys went into the breach, time after time.

Image by colincookman via Flickr

There aren't many instances that I can think of where you get to see the same events but through different sets of eyes. Even 9/11 with photographers and videographers and eyewitnesses didn't see things significantly differently.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled upon 2 books in my personal library (ooh, doesn't that sound fancy?!!) where a pair of slick pilots had flown together, got shot at together and had told the tales differently.Image by javaczuk via Flickr

'Lest We Forget ' by William Meacham is a fantastic read about Huey pilots in The Nam doing a wide variety insane and ridiculous operations to save their buddies on the ground. Meacham was an enlisted man and worked his way up to become an officer which probably explains his rather more rigid and focused views on certain matters within the book.

What blew me away was that he brought W T Grant up to speed when he first arrived in The Nam. W T Grant wrote his book 'Wings of the Eagle' about those first flights and those very hair-raising (aka insane) missions.

Its not just me who is raving about these books, I'm just a few years behind the others!

I strongly suggest you get your hands on one of these books - they are well worth a read. Or two.




kthanxbai!

Related articles

• Hanoi Jane and QVC (howgoesthebattle.com)
• Visit to Army Heritage Center in Carlisle reunites Vietnam pilot, his chopper (pennlive.com)
• The End of Days - or Just The Beginning? (jumblerant.blogspot.com)

Doug Hegdahl's POW story

People ask me why I blog and I really don't have a valid answer. And then I find an amazing true  story like the one over at Nobody Asked Me and I realise just what it is that keeps me sharing and caring on the interwebs.

Its a story I've never heard before about a POW in Vietnam, how he got there and how he got out. Here is a short excerpt from the tale;

In trying to get people to accept early propaganda releases, the Communists would have some "good cop" interrogator like the ones we called the "Soft Soap Fairy" talk to the prospect and sound him out for pliability. They got Doug one day and asked what we eventually learned to be the lead question: "What do you want more than anything else in the world?" The answer of the weak and willing was : "To go home to my family." Doug thought for a long time, then cocked his head with a smile and said "Why, I'd like a pillow, Sir." This was not an unreasonable response since we had no pillows on our cement pads or bed boards. However, the response sure confounded the enemy. They eventually came up with a name for Doug amongst the guards and interrogators: "The Incredibly Stupid One." His original resistance ploy had paid off.

Because they thought him stupid, they would let him go out in the cell block courtyard during the siesta to sweep up the grounds period monitored by only one sleepy, peasant guard. I thought that was great since it kept him from skipping and I could get some rest. However, curiosity got the better of me and I started to watch him through a peephole we had bored in the cell door. He'd go sweeping and humming until the guard was lulled to sleep. Then Doug would back up to a truck, spin the gas cap off the standpipe, stoop down and put a small amount ("Small, because it's going to be a long war, Sir.") of dirt in the gas tank and replace the cap. I watched him over a period of time do this to five trucks.

Now, I'm a liberal arts major who shot himself down, so all I can do is report what I saw. There were five trucks working in the prison; I saw Doug work on five trucks; I saw five trucks towed disabled out of the prison camp. Doug Hegdahl, a high school graduate from the mess decks fell off a ship and has five enemy trucks to his credit. I am a World Famous Golden Dragon (VA 192) with two college degrees, 2000 jet hours, 300 carrier landings and 22 combat missions. How many enemy trucks do I have to my credit? Zero. Zip. Nada. De Rien. 0. Who's the better man? Douglas Brent Hegdahl, one of two men I know of who destroyed enemy military equipment while a prisoner of war.

So go here and read the whole story. And tell the Old NFO that Jumblerant sent you.

 kthanxbai!

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• The man who refused to die (americablog.com)
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Live & learn

As the immutable Lazy Bum that I am, I try to learn from my mistakes, and from others'. Wirecutter at Knuckledragging My Life Away has shared with us a list of what his father imparted to him.

Image by papaija2008 via Flickr

As he states in his blog, his father:

is a retired Army Warrant Officer, came up through the ranks, did 3 tours in Viet Nam, the whole bit. He was raised up poor (the son of a lumberjack) the grandson of a gambler/lawman/outlaw from Arizona. Let's just say Pops is hard. And he raised me the same way.

So what can we learn from him? His language is not the most 'poetic' - you have been warned!!

Here are a few from the 20 on his list:

1) Family comes first. Period. Unless it's your mother's side of the family. Fuck those assholes.

6) Never hit a woman. While it may be permissible to shoot one on occasion, hitting one is not an option. Ever.

9) A good steak should only be turned once.

18) Respect your elders. There's a reason those fuckers are still alive, they're tougher than you.

20) The world does not owe you a living. Either work or die. I'm not supporting your ass forever.

kthanxbai!