Dave H

Mistah Kurtz-he dead A penny for the Old Guy I We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion; Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us-if at all-not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men. II Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death's dream kingdom These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging And voices are In the wind's singing More distant and more solemn Than a fading star. Let me be no nearer In death's dream kingdom Let me also wear Such deliberate disguises Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves In a field Behaving as the wind behaves No nearer- Not that final meeting In the twilight kingdom III This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star. Is it like this In death's other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone. IV The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death's twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men. V Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning. Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life is very long Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom For Thine is Life is For Thine is the This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.

So third-rate insult vaudeville never died, it found a home here. For the love of God, please stop whipping the dead carcass of the once semi-tolerable MBT. You're all embarrassing yourselves even more than you did ten years ago, which is actually quite an accomplishment. RIP to the Penguins. With hugs and kisses from the late great Cheery Waffle. :D:D:D:D

I think I'm detecting a Eurocentric tilt here. I'll go out on a limb and submit the battles of Khalkhyn Gol in 1939 for your consideration. They changed the entire Japanese expansion strategy from a war with the USSR for the resources of Siberia to a war with colonial Europe and the US for the resources of the Pacific islands. Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the USSR, delaying their coming confrontation and sealing the fates of both eastern AND western Europe. This crushing victory over an almost impromptu Japanese offensive saved the USSR from fighting an earlier coordinated two-front war versus both Germany and Japan. It made a hero of Zhukov and made both him and the Siberian troops available to face the German invasion. How decisive? A Japanese victory could have led to a much earlier German invasion of the Soviet Union while leaving western Europe remaining in sitzkreig. A successful Japanese Army strategy would have probably eliminated the later war between Japan and the colonial nations including the US. There wouldn't have been much public sentiment for war with either Germany or Japan for attacking Stalin. Imagine a strategic situation facing western Europe and the US at the end of 1941 with the Urals as the eastern boundary of greater Germany and Siberia's resources securely in the hands of greater Japan.

I was a DOD cartographer at the time of Desert Shield/Desert Storm. I'm curious what this business about 1-dimensional maps was supposed to mean. If it was meant literally it sounds like it came from someone lacking knowledge of some very basic geometry. :eek: If not meant literally I wonder what features in the middle of the desert were supposedly left off. The camels?

Not even in your wildest dreams. With the sole exception of occasional visits from Mace, the Waffle Threads had a conspicuous lack of jabbering from the inhabitants of the so-called continent down under. This place is absolutely infested with them. QED. :D

Very restrained MasterGoodale imitation there Axe old buddy. I figured you had frozen to death during your eleven and a half months of winter up there in the Great White North. Still not sure what to think about CMBN yet. I've only played the training campaign and parts of a couple of QBs and I'm trying to decide if it requires more effort than I want to put into a game. If you're up for trying a PBEM I'm around. :D

Michael, a picture is worth how many words? You're applying logic to a truism which has none. :eek: :eek:

Only if the Heavy Cheery Waffle teams are able to run 5,000 meters without stopping, as they did on D-Day. From the transports to the beaches. :rolleyes:

Will Boeing get ahead of the curve and paint target rings on both sides before delivery?

I hope the optimism in this presentation is justified. I wasn't aware that online games were teaching the benefits of cooperation over competition. In WoW there aren't any fifty or sixty or seventy year-olds telling the gamers that they aren't qualified to participate. The real world is full of real people who defend their tiny fiefdoms of power and authority with the vehemence of rabid dogs. This will be a trend to keep watching over the next few decades as the gamers mature to see if this cooperative mind-set survives.

Is this a new record for an internet anecdote getting posted on the GF as if it was brand new? According to Snopes they collected it in 1997 and it was written 90 years ago.

I'll go out on a limb and say Titan is talking about CMBB. If that's the case I have to agree. The next generation of WW2 Combat Mission titles is going to have to be pretty amazing to surpass CMBB and CMAK. We all know these games aren't perfect simulations of WW2 combat but after all these years I haven't seen anything I like better.

I'm surprised nobody here has mentioned the novella "Call Me Joe" by Poul Anderson. Crippled human at a distant research facility is technologically linked to a manufactured alien body designed to live in a hostile environment. The human quickly begins to enjoy the freedom of existence in the healthy new body. The human eventually begins to have trouble remembering which existence, human or alien, is real and which is his "dream". Sounding at all familiar? Maybe this will - at the end the human consciousness is completely transferred to the alien body because the individual would rather live his life as a healthy being in the alien environment than remain in his damaged human body. As a result the human body is cast aside, or more precisely, the human dies. Did "Avatar" provoke any thoughts at all about what life really is? I think Cameron was presenting the possibility that we are energy/spirits who already inhabit our present human bodies as our avatars. I'm open to another explanation for an independent consciousness that is capable of transferring from one body to another. I must have missed this in "Dances with Wolves" since so many say that "Avatar" is nothing more than a copy.

I misinterpreted your post. You certainly didn't say you were playing boardgames, just that half of your boardgames were from SPI. My mistake. :o

As another old-timey wargamer I'd really be curious why you and and Michael have decided to return to the cardboard games. Is it for the social time spent with other gamers? The incredible diversity of the wars covered? The degree of control/micromanagement of your units they allow? Maybe just the tactile feel of the counters and charts and dice? :confused: :confused: :confused: I respect wargame grogs who have the time and attention span to deal with a zillion counters and maps bigger than my living room. Personally I thought Squad Leader and almost everything from SPI were hugely boring back in the '70s and I would never play them now with games like CMBB and CMAK on the computer. The only printed wargame I still own is Up Front because I liked it so much better than anything else available back whenever I got rid of my other 100 or so games. I can't remember the last time I played it.