K-9 Andy, originally uploaded by Army.mil.

An U.S. Army military working dog, Andy, searches among rubble and trash outside a target building, during a joint operation with the Iraqi army and U.S. Soldiers of 5th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, in Rusafa, eastern Baghdad, Iraq, on Feb. 28. The Soldiers are searching for weapons caches and targeted insurgents.

[thanks jwz]

OF WARS & WITS & POWER 02

Stunning bookcases by Daniel Loves Objects; your tomes encased in the silhouettes of towering missiles balanced on the backs of golden, AK-47 toting toy soldiers, frozen in time as they march off to face the enemy. I’m not sure how functional something like this would be, but then again I don’t particularly care, either.

DANIEL LOVES OBJECTS! [coroflot] : core77

This was going to be included in a Saturday Morning Cartoons post but really, it deserves to be seen alone, in “high quality”, not shoved inside some standard quality SMC playlist. And while it it has already spread across the tubes, it deserves to be enshrined here.

Cat Shit One — Apocalypse Meow in the U.S. — was a Japanese manga that came out in 1998. It followed the day to day routine of an American recon unit in Vietnam called, yes, Cat Shit One. The various nationalities involved are represented by different animals: Americans are rabbits, the French are pigs, the Australians koalas and so on. Interestingly, the final chapter of volume 1 is titled “Dog Shit One” and features humans.

The proposed series takes place, not in Vietnam, but in Iraq and features turbaned, terrorist camels and “middle eastern music”, which consists of women wailing in a musical way. This makes the moment when the terrorist camels gun down a kidnapped rabbit especially poignant.

Whether or not this is meant to be serious at all is unknown but I have a hard time imagining it as such. It has as much to do with the animals as anything else I suppose; the gravity of the situation undercut as it is by images of a bunny firing an RPG into a truck as camel-terrorist fly through the air with A-Team-like aplomb; and close quarters combat looses some of its oomph when Mr. Flopsy is the one wielding the M4A1. Still, we can perhaps look forward to scenes of hooded camels hooked up to electrodes. That will be fun, won’t it?

Cat Shit One Movie Trailer – The Animated Series [YouTube]

Armet of Henry VIII known as the Horned helmet. Austrian, Innsbruck, 1511–14.

Made for Henry when the king was twenty-three, it is all that remains of a full suit of body armor that was decorated with etching and silver-gilt fretted panels by an anonymous Augsburg goldsmith. It was made for Henry by Konrad Seusenhofer of Innsbruck as a gift from the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. A second, identical suit was made at the same time for the Emperor’s grandson and heir, the future Emperor Charles V. This second suit survives. It was rumored that Henry was nearsighted which would explain the glasses.

The Horned Helmet [Royal Armouries] : Dark Roasted Blend

Wilhelm II, the last German Emperor and owner of one of history’s greatest moustaches. Remember “W” is for “Wilhelm.”

Dapper Kaiser [vintagephoto]

Starting off your Saturday on a bit of a down note, Ectomo presents Isao Takahata’s Hotaru no Haka, Grave of the Fireflies, based on the book by Akiyuki Nosaka of the same name. Released in 1988, with animation production by Studio Ghibli, Grave of the Fireflies tells the story of Seita and his younger sister Setsuko, orphaned after the loss of their parents in World War II; their mother in the fiire-bombing of Kobe, and their father who served in the Imperial Japanese Navy. Forced to live with a relative, who treats them as little more than a burden while selling their mother’s kimono’s to buy rice for herself, they eventually leave and take up residence in an abandoned bomb shelter.

Grave of the Fireflies is a tough film to watch, and a movie which begins with the death of the young, main character was probably not what many audiences were expecting to see when it was released in Japan as a double feature with Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro. It is also the only Studio Ghibli movie the Disney does not have the rights to distribute in the U.S., meaning that it has not seen the same, widespread release here. It is a film that should be seen at least once, whether one is a fan of animated features or not, remaining just as powerful now as it was 20 years ago.

Saturday Morning Cartoons XLIV: Grave of the Fireflies [YouTube]

Some wars are timeless, their beginnings receding into the haze of aeons past. None are so bitter as the ages old feud between the regal unicorn and the gentle Monodon monoceros. Here, now, a final battle is to be fought, upon hallowed ground to which both claim as their birthright. Can anyone stop these two foes before the annihilate one another? Will Cecily and her trusty dragon-steed Windstar, make it in time to broker some sort of peace between these two? Why is Cecily’s boyfriend on a date with some other girl? The answer to these questions and more lie within Unicorn vs. Narwhal!

Unicorn vs. Narwhal [YouTube]

Admiral ‘Spike’ Blandy and his wife celebrate the success of Castle Bravo, the detonation of the world’s first practical hydrogen bomb — and the largest nuclear explosion ever set off by the United States — at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands on March 1, 1946. The fallout plume spread dangerous levels of radiation over an area over 100 miles long, including inhabited islands.

Records showing fallout levels from the cake are unknown. However, testimony from those who attended the event depicts a frosting that was nice to look at, but inedible otherwise. The raspberry filling was said to have been delicious. Five people fell ill, though this was attributed to excessive amounts of Scotch.

Update: Christ, have I been doing a lot of these lately or is it just me? Anyway, as wile_e_quixote points out in the comments, this photo does not depict the celebration after Castle Bravo, but a previous exercise involving atomic bombs. We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

Nuclear Cake [a near life experience]

Newsweek has a letter, written by Kurt Vonnegut and dated May 29, 1945, from a new collection of the late authors writings entitled Armageddon in Retrospect. The letter details his time as a P.O.W., which would become the basis for his most famous work: Slaughterhouse-Five; or, The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death.

On about February 14th the Americans came over, followed by the R.A.F. Their combined labors killed 250,000 people in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden—possibly the world’s most beautiful city. But not me.

After that we were put to work carrying corpses from Air-Raid shelters; women, children, old men; dead from concussion, fire or suffocation. Civilians cursed us and threw rocks as we carried bodies to huge funeral pyres in the city.

Reading the letter in its entirety it was interesting to note that, even in his personal correspondences, he employed the repeating “tics” that can be called a hallmark of his work.

Slaughterhouse 1945 [Newsweek] : growabrain

Sonic Blaster, 1966

The Mattel Agent Zero M Sonic Blaster 5530 fires compressed air with a deafening blast. Our measurements top out at 157 dB–above a level that can do permanent damage to the hearing of an adult. We rate the toy Not Acceptable.

1960-1969 Archive [Consumer Reports] : Laughing Squid

Some examples from a British game, circa 1940, called “Vacuation”; the object of which was to “complete evacuation by discarding every card in the hand.” The packaging reads:

Vacuation
TOPICAL AND FASCINATING
BRITISH MADE
THE GAME OF THE MOMENT
A GAME FOR ALL AGES.

Fun for the whole family!

Vacuation Card Game [Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Cary Playing Cards Database] : Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities

Some pages from a 1950s pamphlet entitled “Protection from the ATOMIC BOMB” which outlines the proper procedures when a nuclear cataclysm occurs. This is easily my favorite page. Indeed I was previously unaware that, should I witness a flash of light brighter than the Sun, I should immediately do a face-plant and stay down for one minute because really, once your retinas have been seared by an atomic explosion, there’s not much else to do. After that one minute though, you should be able to get up and go about your business, safe in the knowledge that you’re too smart for those Communists.

Atomic Bomb pamphlet [Vintage Ads]

The gasmask is an integral part of any space-hobo’s fashion arsenal, and while there’s a nearly infinite number of stylistic permutations from which to choose the mask that best suits you nearly all of them are drab militaristic affairs. Hardly surprising considering they’ve never been intended as anything other than tools to avoid taking lung-fulls of poisonous gas or air swirling with microscopic debris during a siege.

Thankfully an enterprising designer, Diddo Velema, saw the gaping couture void in post-apocalyptic style and decided it needed a good filling, creating high fashion gasmasks, studded in diamonds and logos, thus cementing her place in the annals of fashion history.

Personally I prefer the understated elegance of the Vuitton, but if gaudy is your thing there’s more than enough Gucci analog to go around. Hit the jump for larger versions of the masks.

Continue Reading…

As you know yesterday was Brownlee’s birthday which meant that today I had to take an extra long shower. It’s no use though, no matter how long I scrub I just can’t get clean. In any event here is a nice little animated sandwich of spoof-tastic Fox Kids and Kids’ WB cartoons between two, moist slices of anime. I hope they will entertain you, our loyal readership, and I pray that, perhaps, they will help me to repress the events of last evening. Please, God…

• FLCL: We’ve entered the final half of this spectacular mini-series, and only two more to go. Will you just look at those eyebrows.

•Eek! The Cat and The Terrible Thunderlizards: Eek! did a number of film spoofs during its run and the two that stand out, to me, are “Lord of the Fleas” in which Eek is trapped in a shopping mall with some penguins — one of whom hysterically exclaims “Shut-up, Piggy!” — and this episode entitled “Eekpocalypse Now!, which thoroughly hits upon every major joke one could make about Coppola’s film. This one is for the adults, unless you were an eight year-old who loved movies about Vietnam. The Terrible Thunderlizards was its own show but was later merged with Eek! to create a variety show more like our next two entries.

•Tiny Toons: “A Quack in the Quarks” is the second episode of this seminal show and features a loose parody of Star Wars and a plethora of fourth wall shattering humor. In this episode Plucky Duck is kidnapped by aliens to Planet X to save it from the nefarious plot of Duck Vader. This was the beginning of a real golden age of Warner Brothers cartoons in the late 80s/early 90s that include Animaniacs, Freakazoid, and the Animaniacs spin-off Pinky and The Brain. Oh, and a Watchmen reference!

•Animaniacs “Super Strong Warner Siblings” is a brilliant send-up of the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers which always marked the end of cartoon time. Animaniacs also did an Apocalypse Now parody which, while excellent, did not follow the plot as closely as Eek!. Next up is one of the many “Good Idea, Bad Idea” clips followed by my favorite, Pinky and The Brain. In this episode, entitled “Battle for the Planet”, Brain once again acknowledges his Orson Welles influence by attempting to fake an alien invasion ala the Mercury Theater’s broadcast of War of the Worlds.

•Paranoia Agent: Someone has some unpleasant secrets…

Saturday Morning Cartoons XXVI [YouTube]

As a child you may remember the moments of abject terror that you felt between the time when the lights in your room being switched off and when you passed out from sheer exhaustion. Those minutes stretched themselves into hours as you huddled, alert to even the slightest sound, under your blanket, its protective shell broken only by a small opening in order to allow fresh, cool air to enter so that you could breathe. Wrapped in your cloth cocoon you were safe from Closet Monsters, Boogeymen, and Dire Otters.

Fast forward and you have, hopefully, outgrown your fear of the dark. Certainly, such ridiculous fears like being torn apart by over-sized aquatic mammals are best left in the hazy land of childhood. You know now as an adult — older, wiser, and with a trail of life experiences behind you — that such fears are totally unfounded, especially when cast in the light of real threats like Natural Disaster, Terrorism, and People — No Doubt Minorities — Coming To Take Your Stuff.

We’ve profiled other bedroom protection accessories before but they pale in comparison to the level of protection offered by the Quantum Sleeper, a device that takes the protective blanket and replaces it with a bulletproof shell, complete with a bevy of features from a rebreather and “Biochemical Filtered Ventilation” to a refrigerator, microwave, toilet system, and DVD player. That is to say that the Quantum Sleeper is not so much a bed but more like a smaller, safer house inside your house, that also happens to be a bed.

The inventors of the Quantum Sleeper are quick to point out that they developed it before September 11th, lest you think they are merely reactionaries or overly paranoid when, in fact, they are just being practical. Unfortunately this fantastic contraption is unavailable as of today, the inventors are still looking for funding. They estimate that a unit would cost somewhere in the area of one hundred, thirty-five thousand dollars to manufacture. They do, however, have a demonstration model that they made from wood, a decidedly less fire, tornado, chemical, and machine-gun resistant material than advertised, but capable nonetheless of giving prospective investors an idea of the device’s real world attributes and that is, at least, one step forward for your peace of mind. Isn’t it?

Quantum Sleeper [Product Page] : Warren Ellis