Red Soldier

In the internet movie series Red vs. Blue, a series of Public Service Announcement and special episodes were made. One was a humorous exposition on how real world interactions differ from internet interactions. In one sequence outlining a common internet experience, a red soldier interrupts a benign conversation between two other people by shouting insulting, profane, unrelated comments at the top of his lungs.

This struck my brother and me as a very, very funny bit of real Truth. We now refer to the internet lurker who suddenly bursts onto a forum or comment field with something irrelevant and profane as Red Soldier. We have personified this phenomenon by saying that no matter what you're doing on the internet, Red Soldier is standing by. He is patient, and no topic of conversation is too obscure for him. He will find his way into the deepest, most uncontroversial recesses of the internet to scream about Angelina Jolie's enormous lips, to insult you and your family, or just to register his disappointment in humanity--usually with his caps lock key in the upright and locked position.

Lock and load, Red Soldier, lock and load.

Sailing to Hawaii

Geoff's Folly: My brother, for some time, has been proposing that he and I buy a craft of some sort (I hear they are called "boats") and sail it from California to Hawaii.

Why he would want to do this is beyond me. He does not sail. He has never sailed. He has "boated" in some sense, in that he has canoed. 20 years ago.

Our recent conversation went like this:

Matt: Let's plan a road trip the length of the Pan Am Highway.

Geoff: What about my long-standing request for sailing a boat from Cali to Hawaii?

Me: There are two main differences between a Pan Am road trip and a CA-HI boat trip:

A) we don't have the money to do the boat trip

B) neither of us knows anything about sailing...

...and by 'sailing' I mean 'anything at all to do with boating, sailing, boats, water, salt water, swimming, oars, engines, mechanical things, swimming, life vests, fish, night time, navigation, sextants, boatswains, swains of any sort, or Hawaii'

Him: But you are so doubtful about us that you start throwing in items like night time and life vests. I mean, you don't exactly have to be Captain Hook to know how to use (i.e., wear) a life vest.

Me: As I began to contemplate the many and varied ways in which we are spectacularly unsuited to the task of sailing to Hawaii, I got a little overwhelmed and even the night got scary.

Him: We do have one advantage over other complete novices, based on our bike trip: we know that it won't be fun. That is helpful in the sense that we can go ahead and begin the trip in a completely dispirited state, instead of having a crisis of morale part way in.

Me: Right, we can dispense with the crisis of morale and move right into the crisis of being eaten by something.

will draw anything for $2

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