The Gremlin's Wings

I’ve seen a few articles around the Internet, and people going off and saying that people should pull out of Afghanistan, and I feel the need to comment on this. Why? Well, you’re on my site, right? I believe what is said here needs to be said, and needs to be said now, before someone does something stupid.

Out of all the military actions that have happened over the past few years, in my mind there has been only three I have ever supported:

• Operation Desert Storm – the first tango in Iraq was completely warranted, for many years beforehand and should have been done earlier, right after Saddam Hussein gassed his own people and then threatened to do the same to Isreal.
• The campaign against Yugoslavia – Genocide of ethnic Albanians? Yeah… no.
• Afghanistan

Why Afghanistan? Well, there’s any number of reasons that I could list; the most popular ones are routinely listed by world leaders. “Al Qaeda could still be there! The Taliban is evil!” And so forth. I, however, differ from this opinion, and I would like to go through in a few details why there should be troops in Afghanistan.

Before I do so, a small history lesson.

Back in the 80′s, when the Soviet Union was still in power, Afghanistan did some stuff that really pissed off the Soviets and they decided to do a full-scale invasion of the relatively poor country. Their campaign lasted a while, but thanks to the efforts of some very familiar names working together, the Soviets were ground to a halt and their campaign ultimately failed. Those names? Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, and the US government, whom supplied them with weaponry and technical training in how to fight in guerilla warfare tactics, successfully using the same strategy that defeated the US in Vietnam in the 70′s.

Afghanistan has never been a real “country” in the modern definition of the word. Rather, it was a rather loose association of tribes that fought as often as they were at peace with each other. But because world leaders said it was a country, bam, it was a country.

Sometime later, the Taliban came along, overthrew what little government was there, and began making the population follow an fundamentalist Islam teaching that basically turned back the clock on social progress in that country by about fifty years. I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty, because people have different customs and different views on religion than I do. I’m not here to dictate religious views to others on this planet, just express my opinion.

Anyway, they offered bin Laden protection, blah blah blah, WTC bombing in 2003, Clinton firing cruise missiles into the mountains, yadda yadda, 9/11 and the “war on terror”…  most of this stuff you know. Anyway, history lesson over with.

Now, we’re eight years into whatever we are doing in Afghanistan. Have we won? Sort of.

Unlike previous wars that have been fought in the area, the US and their allies did something smart that saved allied lives: they bombed the crap out of main Taliban fortifications, then let the local insurgents do the grunt work of clearing the area. Now, note I say “save allied lives” instead of “saved lives”, because the losses amongst these people are impossible to account for. Anyway, relatively quickly, the main Taliban forces were crippled, and they abandoned the government and fled for hiding, and really, this is when the conventional war stops and the guerrilla warfare starts.

Oh, look, remember that training I mentioned earlier by the US? It’s now coming back to bite them on the ass.

It is technically still a war – damn you dictionary definitions of war – but guerrilla warfare is not fought and won with conventional troops and tactics, which is something the military has forgotten. They have become reliant on technology too much to “save lives” and “reduce cost” that they forgot what type of warfare they are fighting against.

Ask any survivor of Vietnam, and they will tell you what it’s like.

Anyway, I got kind of sidetracked here. Let’s go over why I support the continued presence of troops in Afghanistan. No, the primary reason is not because my leaders tell me to, or any of the main reasons they list. Here it is:

• Opiate farming

One of the ways that the Taliban, al Qaeda and other groups have been raising money for the past few years is the illegal opiate trade. It is ironic that they wish to end Western regimes while being financed by a farm crop that they primarily sell to the Western world, albeit illegally. Yes, great way to vow to destroy your own customer base.

Opiates are used to create heroin and morphine, among other things. In my opinion, this production should be stopped, or, even better, controlled by the Afghani government (once it actually gets off its ass and controls the place) to supply the worldwide medical field with less expensive morphine and methadone than what’s available now. Hey, look, an economic base for the new government! What a twist!

• Humanitarian

I am a very firm believer in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. I believe that everyone should be granted to the same access to food and shelter that Americans, Canadians, and other countries’ citizens enjoy on a daily basis. Even those in Afghanistan should get it… if they want help from us in establishing this, that is. If they want to do it themselves, I’m OK with that. But the Afghani people deserve the right to choose how they get their basic necessities – food, water and shelter from the elements.

• Prove the propaganda wrong

Too often has the rest of the world shown the Afghani people that anyone there is in it for themselves and confirming the propaganda that they’ve heard for most of their lives: “any foreigners are evil and only wish to destroy you”. Americans and their allies are cast as devils in this play. The George W. Bush administration did nothing to help in dispelling this – in my personal point of view, he hurt the American image abroad more than any other President, including Nixon and Reagan – and right now, it should be the goal of the allied troops to not just fight the insurgency, but to also prove their rhetoric wrong.

• Get Afghanistan their own functioning government

This might sound weird, but democracy might not be right for these people in this area. Democracy in any Islamic country is a joke – as evidenced by the Iranian elections this year – and really depends deeply on religious leaders advocating for the politicians. The Taliban ruled these people for years since the Soviet Union fell, and gave everyone a strict Islamic law. Change, unfortunately, does not happen overnight, and needs to be gradual.

Unfortunately, one of those other gradual changes also means that the government has to be left alone to find out what works best for the Afghani people. Western influence kinda doesn’t help that, but I understand in this case.

• A return on investment

Speaking strictly on a business standpoint, which I am known to do every once in a while, what kind of returns have the Americans, Canadians, British, or any other force in Afghanistan received by being there? Has it stopped further terrorist actions? No. Should it? Probably not.

The returns I’m talking about are more people-based. Have the people of Afghanistan started rebuilding their infrastructure? Can they start sustaining themselves? Can this happen without their own security forces?

• Freedom

The price of freedom is not measured in dollars, but it is measured in the vigilance of men and women whom chose to defend that right for others. No amount of technology or equipment can replace that simple fact. The peacekeeping troops there aren’t guarding just our freedom, but the freedom of the Afghani people as well, whom deserve a shot at it, just as much as we do. To take away those troops is to remove their freedom again, as the Taliban will return and then we’ll have the entire situation start all over again.

(While we’re on the subject of peacekeeping, a shout out to the father of modern peacekeeping.)

I think I’ve gone on long enough. The point is, we really shouldn’t be there just to hunt for someone whom has the unnatural ability to slip away better than Cobra Commander, or for a group of religious extremists that harbored him. They will battle against conventional forces, using the resources they have: their people. Instead of hitting them directly, hit their resources: their people. You don’t do that with tanks, you do that with words and peaceful actions.

It’s the one resource that’s not as fancy as modern warfare, but it helps a lot more.

I spend probably an unhealthy amount of time online.

This revelation comes as no shock to anyone who knows me at all, as even at work I would not engage too many people in conversation and just write and read a lot on the computer. I barely know what a book is anymore – though I will definitely NOT complain if/when the Kindle actually becomes available in the “frozen wastelands” that we call Canada. I don’t even have cable TV, which is a very unusual pattern for anyone in North America. You get different reactions from different people, where some refer to it as “makes sense” or “kind of cool” to treating me like a diseased leper because I do not watch any TV, which I think highlights one of the reasons why I am glad to not be drawn to a TV. I may get into this subject deeper down the road, but for now… I have a different thing on my mind.

Since I spend so much time online, I tend to see a lot of different names that people choose to represent themselves (unless you’re looking at 4chan’s boards, where everyone’s Anonymous), and I can see a lot of different things about people. The same is true in the gaming world, really. There’s a lot that will just use their own given name – really says that they are a casual Internet user, maybe even a first-time user. Nothing wrong with that at all, I like people who are like that. Then you have people that seemingly have random text strings as user names, but 99% of the time it makes sense to the user as sort of an inside joke with themselves or their friends. You also have nicknames that they are given in real life, by others around them. Some people use ones that refer to their birth year, or a celebrity. And then there are others that relay hobbies of the person behind them. Some even create whole new personae – they are named Bob, but they go by John online.

Then there’s those that just come randomly, and that is where mine comes from.

My online name over the last little while has been “Flying Gremlin”. People shorten that to FG, Gremmy, idiot, sarcastic bastard… you know, the good stuff. One of the questions I get asked a lot is where the name came from. Rather than explain it each and every time, I will just write it here, then link anyone to this explanation.

About a decade ago, I started on the Internet. I was still in high school, and my parents got cable internet. Of course, this was before wireless internet, and the Internet only ended up being in one room of the house – my mother’s office. So I was stuck with a computer – a pretty good computer for the time, actually – that was a standalone box. I would be able to get online every once in a while at school, but because my mother worked at home a lot, and when she wasn’t at home I wasn’t allowed to go in there and use the computer because I had my own, I was without it.

The one class I had at school that allowed me to use the Internet a lot, I actually finished the coursework about two months early, and I found myself sitting in front of a computer for 77 minutes a day with nothing to do BUT to surf the Internet. A friend of mine had introduced me to a game called Dominion that I just found out is still running – way to go Ross! I played Round 4-11, I believe is when I left. I had been playing this off-and-on when I could, but then with my accounting class in high school so far ahead, I could play this a little more regularly. Once I realized that it only took about 15 minutes to finish that part… I got bored some more, until I realized that Grand Theft Auto 2 was on the teacher’s computer, and I learned how to beat the first level in under an hour – didn’t really help that he had a program on those computers to wipe the computer’s hard disks clean every night and restore them to what they were when I entered the room, else I would have beat the game.

Once that became boring, I started to go back to the Internet and back onto Dominion, where I noted they had a delightful message board. Ooooooooh, people to talk to that I didn’t know. I registered there with the name “OneBadMonday”, because I had been having a bad Monday at that point, and I didn’t have anything better to put down as my name. I started to talk, and then slowly became part of the community. Even after that class ended and I moved on, I tried to keep up as best as I could. Life got in the way o f me participating in the forums for a bit, but I came back and said a few things. People even noticed my absence and stuff, which was nice – to be honest, I don’t get that a lot in life – and I continued on.

Now, with the name “OneBadMonday”, a couple of people were reading it as “OneBadMonkey”. I see now what that was about, and now it seems slightly silly to say, but I used to hate it when people would just shorten my name to monkey. Could have something to do with the fact that throughout my entire school life, I was made fun of for my last name, or just called by my last name instead of just by my given name. It depressed me a lot when I was younger; I guess you could say that I was emo about it before emo was created. So I went looking for a new nickname.

Unfortunately, as with all creative processes in my brain, I hit up against writer’s block.

I was stuck! I couldn’t think of any different names for myself, no matter how I tried. I wanted something that wouldn’t talk about my name at all – I’m still really paranoid about my real name getting out and identity theft, coupled with the fact that I hated how people, when they find out my last name, just refer to me by my last name – and I wanted something unique. I spent a good week debating on names, when finally, I just picked something at random.

I was watching TV when there was this Midas commercial that came on and it just got stuck in my head. Unfortunately, I can’t find anyone who thought to save it – YouTube, you have failed in your duties! – but I can at least describe it. It was one of this guy telling about a new service – I think it was a car inspection or something – and then he went in to a story where there was this one person’s car had this one problem that stuck out in his mind. Camera cuts away, and the guy’s poking his head out of the hood of a car and he just simply says: “Flying gremlin.” The people in the car stick their head out the window and are confused, but then, sure enough, a CG flying gremlin pokes his head out of the hood and starts flying around and knocking things over, and he is subdued by the mechanic hitting him over the head with a wrench. Then it cuts back to the original guy staring at the camera and he just says, “Well, actually it was just a stuck hose, but you get the idea.” For some reason, that particular ad stuck with me… and still does, since I just described it in its entirety.

UPDATE: Thank you to the guy in the Klingon armor: http://adland.tv/commercials/midas-flying-gremlin-2002-030-usa

Anyway, I had my new nickname just because of a random TV ad that no one saw but myself, because I ask people, and others are still confused when I tell them about it. It’s an odd coincidence that I got my Internet name off of a TV commercial, but I right now have not had cable TV for a year and a half. I got myself a new name, then introduced myself as Flying Gremlin over on the Dominion boards. I didn’t get made fun of unless I wanted them to make fun of me, which is what I wanted.

I don’t exactly know what “Flying Gremlin” makes me look like to anyone else, but in hindsight, I guess it does make sense. If I were to list my favorite video games of all time, I realize that there’s a significant amount of flight games listed in there, or games involving flight vehicles – I also happen to prefer sneaking in on people who don’t expect it and blow stuff up. I’ve always wanted to fly a plane, but never really had the money to do more than buy a plane ticket once a decade. Maybe a Cessna is in my future someday, but for now not so much.

For now, though… my name is Adam. Online, I am known as Flying Gremlin or just plain FG. Call me one of those online, and I’ll respond.

Outside of the Internet… getting called a Flying Gremlin is just weird. Just call me Adam. Please.

I don’t know if anyone who reads this has been following everything that’s been happening, but let me bring you up to speed:

• President Obama wants to change the health care system
• People are protesting in dramatic fashions

Wow. I just summed up the entire American system in two lines. Well, I’m outta here.

Just kidding.

Anyway, Obama wants to bring in this big health care reform for the United States. Some of the numbers are pretty staggering. Let me put up his weekly address because I know Canadians probably haven’t seen this video:

I’m going to comment on this video momentarily. I am not going to get into it right now, but I’m going to provide some resources first.

A couple of other resources I was able to find were:

• A report on health care insurance premiums
• A Wikipedia article on the difference in between Canada’s system and the US system

There’s a lot of rhetoric out there. While looking, I couldn’t find too much raw data compared to people yelling at one side and then the other side yelling back. Twitter’s trending topic of #obamacare is a source of consistent hilarity for me, because as I read down the list, the Republican’s “alternatives” are either keeping the status quo or part of the Democrat’s plan. The real question, I guess, is:

Is the system broken in the first place?

I know at least one person from America that will disagree with me. Her life was saved by experimental drugs that were only available in the United States, and given to er as part of a plan to keep her liver alive. Canada’s health care system doesn’t even have access to that drug yet – out of curiosity, I checked – and is far away from Health Canada acceptance. In one case, I’d say it was a good system. But is it right for everyone?

Is a universal system good for everyone? No, of course not. However, I’d prefer to listen in a rational voice and ask people whom have been through the health care system if they think their health care system is all right.

The way I see the health care systems of both Canada and the United States is kind of like the difference in between Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks (I’m going with Dunkin’ Donuts because most Americans have not discovered what a Tim Horton’s is, so if you’re Canadian, sub out the Dunkin’ with Timmy’s). In a Dunkin’ Donuts, if you want coffee and donuts, that’s the big-ticket items. Sure, there’s other beverages there, and if you want them, they are there, but the focus is on the staple product. With a Starbucks, the focus isn’t on coffee, its about options. Do you want a grande double-whipped no-fat macchiato, or the triple shot no-whip latte with white chocolate sprinkles? As soon as you walk in, you’re presented with 150 different ways that you can receive your a coffee that’s served to everyone. Then there’s different roasts, different flavors, different toppings, different blends… the list goes on and on and on. As a non-coffee drinker, I can’t say whether the choice and options are a good thing or not, but I hear those that can afford to have it every day enjoy it.

America is a lot like the Starbucks in my example when it comes to health care. You have choice of what coverage you have. But, like much of the world, the fine print is where the problem lies. In each plan, do you or your insurance company decide on which doctors you go to? Do they require you to get a second opinion for certain procedures? What happens when your insurance company ends your coverage plan? Is your choice a flavor that takes away the fact that you’re just drinking coffee in the first place?

Am I trying to make a point? Meh… probably. My brain is working in subtle ways today that I find to be… odd. What I would like people to do is come up with their own opinions based upon facts and not other people’s distortions of the facts. President Obama did have a point when he said that critics will try to distract you from anything to do with this subject because people who make money in the status quo want it to stay that way. Who knew that taking the people that didn’t have insurance and giving them a way to buy affordable insurance without forcing those already on insurance to quit theirs is being taken as: “You must take this plan or you go to jail.”

H-uh.

Obama’s statements about how long it’s been debated in the US is a very odd sentiment. Sixty years to try to come up with this. Wow. I guess the differences are only starting to show now, but the problem is really with propaganda. How does one get their message across when there’s ninety different messages being broadcast louder, with twice the emotion?

Is his plan good? I really couldn’t tell you. It has good points, but I’m not an expert. I would just be pointing out my opinion.

Is Canada’s system good? I would have to rate it as an A-. It’s pretty good, but there’s places it can improve as well. The only times I’ve needed hospitals, I’ve come out in better condition than I left in. I’ve had an MRI, three emergency room visits, several doctor’s clinic visits, and twice when my kids were born. (It wasn’t me getting admitted, so they get separate listings.) Ambulance response and billing for services are two big things I have a problem with… but my trifles with that are probably nowhere near an American’s.

The one thing I’d like to ask any American that yells about Obama taking away their health care, or their right to choose… all I ask is that you take a moment and look at the facts yourself. Create an informed opinion before either praising or criticizing the plan. Actually do some research. Please.

It is all I ask, and your life could depend on it.

With a start, James woke up in a cold sweat, eyes blinking at the cool twilight light of the morning around him. A shiver ran down his spine as the cool air of the room mixed with the liquid sweat over his body served to chill his already aching body, telltale signs of the dreams he was having the night before; the nightmares had consumed him in fear, as he could tell by the thumping sound of his heart bouncing around his chest.

He was upright in bed, and not to disturb his wife, he cautiously slipped out of the covers and walked quietly into the dim hallway that led to the living room. They were not rich, but the apartment suited their needs… and the large bay window in the front gave them a great view of the city lights. It was among these that he began gazing, eyes falling on the numerous lights that he could see just from his window, trying to clear his head of the terror that befell him just moments ago.

Dreams were always hard on him, he had to admit to himself. Tonight he had dreamed about some creature trying to eat him, chasing him around and around the city in his car. He had awoken when in the dream he was about to crash the vehicle into a concrete barrier. It wasn’t there one moment, and then it was.His mind raced over the dream and kept trying to decide whether it was a mistake or not on his part. Dream or not, in his solitary contemplation staring out that bay window, he was going to arrive at the truth.

Observing the world at six in the morning had some unexpected results. As James’ brain came to its own conclusions, his eye wandered over the windows that he could see. Not being a voyeur, just curious about his surroundings and the people he hadn’t met (and probably never would). Are their lives better than his? Are they worse? It somehow calmed him to do so. Maybe it was the constant digest of tabloids in supermarket lineups or newsstands that got him into this habit, but he would do this every once in a while.

In one, he could see a person, what he assumed to be a female from the colors the person was wearing, was busy in the kitchen preparing herself for the day. He couldn’t see the fine details, but the way she moved around the kitchen, she looked like she was experienced with it. Whether this woman was happy or not in her daily routine or not, James didn’t know.

James’ eye wandered to another window, where a man sat at a table with food and reading a paper. He was quite still, and James could tell that he was particularly engrossed in the subject on the paper. James couldn’t tell what he was reading, of course, but the act of reading the paper must have been particularly interesting: the entire time James watched, which was less than a minute, he hadn’t moved or changed the page.

After a brief glance around, James’ eyes came across another window, where he saw two people embracing in their living room. They looked like they were dressed up, maybe just getting home from a night of partying, James guessed. Whatever it was, he didn’t know. Suddenly, they separated, and one led the other away to another room and the lights shut off. James just smirked for a moment and then looked around again, looking for the next moment of humanity he could see.

The next one was dark save for the eerie light of a television casting shadows across a room, playing across the face of the person watching, who James could barely see. Perhaps this person was a little too engrossed in his show, or not, he couldn’t tell. It made James think of his own television, sitting on the stand facing the couch in the living room. How many hours had he wasted away just watching the device, or thinking about what was on it.

As James’ mind wandered, so did his eyes, eventually to another window with a curious sight there: a man was standing there, dressed much like himself, and he was looking out the window at other places around that he could see. James’ heart raced as he saw this man, thinking he might just be like him. In his mind, the man was trying to search for peace himself, taking comfort in the surroundings of concrete, metal and glass that made up the city, and searching for signs of life to affirm his own is not alone in the world.

“James?”

The voice startled James out of his thoughts and he turned to face his wife. “It’s early, and you don’t have to be up,” he replied in a cracking voice. His vocal chords hadn’t woken up with him, it seemed, and he cleared his throat.

His wife shook her head. “I felt you get up, and I came out to see if there was a problem,” she explained, followed by a yawn.

“I…” James started, glancing back out the window again and trying to find the man that he was looking at not a few seconds before, but James couldn’t locate him, lost in the sea of glass and concrete set before him. “I was just…”

“You had a bad dream again?” his wife asked.

James’ only reply was a nod.

He felt a hand touch his back. “Come back to bed, and let’s talk about it,” she was saying, gently guiding him back to the bedroom.

With a last glance out the window, James nodded and allowed himself to be led away. He threw one last look out the window at the coming day, and then came with his wife into the bedroom.

“What were you looking at, love?” his wife asked, curious at the glance

James paused for a moment, then smiled. “Just looking through windows at big city life,” he said. “And realizing you can be surrounded by people and not know a thing about them.”

You know, I had this great post lined up to speak about today. I was going to talk about humanity’s stagnation over the past ten years, and how we as a culture (the “Western World”) are headed into the vast abyss of thoughtlessness and uncreative culture. I had something so clearly written in my head… and now it’s missing. I’ll probably return on this subject at a later time, but for now…

Something happened in the meantime that got me thinking on a completely different track. I’m sort of flying by the seat of my pants on this one, but for all that do know me… it’s something that I do quite often, with mixed results – usually good ones, but that may be just tooting my own horn.

Anyway…

A friend of mine approached me recently and told me her dog died. No, not just died… poisoned. Someone fed her dog a wood stain, killed it, then proceeded to taunt her and her family via phone calls – including a twelve year old and a seven year old – that the dog was dead and not coming back, laughing at their reactions, and repeating this process. Yes, they were familiar with the person that did it… but my God.

Humanity is made up of people on all sides of the cruelty spectrum, from the people who wouldn’t harm a fly to the people who would commit genocide without batting an eyelash. We all coexist within a strange little world, where we interact with each other in a way where we can hurt others by doing some of the cruelest acts that can be imagined, if our minds are put to that test. I’m not citing any facts there, this is just my opinion on it, from human observation and just what I have seen. A good way to tell how cruel a person is is to figure out how cruel they are to those that are more vulnerable than they are.

I know, I am not perfect. I get mad, I lash out. It’s just something that I do, and I regret it instantly when I do. But still, it pales in comparison to those that would murder for entertainment value, or to those that would mistreat small animals so that they can feel a sense of power or control. I understand why they do psychologically… but I don’t agree with it.

I’d do more on this subject, but I think it’d better be left for when I am concentrating properly. For now… I’ll just let my outrage at these people stew as I plan a very nasty and vile way of dealing with the people who did this.

I finally did it. I installed a WordPress blog for myself. Well, here’s to only having about three readers of this area. Well, not really, but you get the idea.

For those of you that are unfamiliar, welcome, salutations, etc. For those that are visiting from, say, Facebook and may know me personally, hi, how are you? For those that don’t, I guess you’re wondering what the Hell you’re doing here. Frankly, so do I. Who am I? Who are you? Stranger danger! Keep away!

At any rate, I’m just going to post a few things here and there – upload some pictures to share with the world, post them here. Motivational posters, poems, random writings, reviews, rants, you name it. You are entering a world where you get a window into my brain, and trust me, it’s a little cluttered and unorganized in there. Not easy to see too much in there.

Might as well give a shout out to my sister, who might end up showing up here once in a while. Who knows, I might even let her post a thing or two, because I am such a nice brother and she does some fantastic anime art. Some day, I hope she gets good enough that we may write a webcomic that I have had saved up in my mind for a while. I can’t draw well, but she can, and I can write circles around people.

Other than that, I guess I am out of things to say for a first post. Thanks for visiting, and stuff like that.

Oh, right…

FIRST POST

(I would never be able to forgive myself if I didn’t put that in the first post.)