Because Toast wanted me to post this. Not as funny as it might’ve been, and I didn’t ACTUALLY call Nappy a loser, but oh well.
Marechal:
What a life Napoleon led. One day he is an underpaid foreign officer without an appointment… then he was a European Emperor ruling from Lisbon to Warsaw, Vienna, Paris, Rome, and all of Europe at his feet and a million soldiers under his banners…. and then he’s a lonely, poor old man on a God-forsaken rock in the south Atlantic. Wow.
Me:
And of those, one is a good career goal. :P
Marechal:
Just … amazing story. Two human stories, above all else, fascinate me. The story of our Lord Jesus Christ and the story of Napoleon Bonaparte. I never tire of those two stories.
Incidentally, I bought this 8 hour triology on Napoleon from A&E … it’s actually…. quite well done …. I’ll end it to you sometime. Does a nice job showing the colorfully uniformed troops stomping around in rigid formation. Honor and glory and all that went with battle in the age of Napoleon. =D
Me:
What about the raping, pillaging, looting, and freezing/starving to death parts?
Marechal:
These banners and flags were really quite ornate pieces of work. I don’t know if you’ve ever done a close look at them, but wow. Lots of effort and pride went into those flags. Gold lace and fringes, the list of battles the regiment had fought would go on there. And then there were the imperial eagles. Those golden eagles Napoleon bestowed to all regiments. Men fought and died to save those eagles from the hands of the enemy. Those flags fluttering in the breeze on the day of battle. And those amazing military bands. Drummers in every regiment. Bands playing in the background.
Me:
No, in other words.
Eagles! Way to rip off Marius!
Marechal:
Seeing as how his legions and his empire rivalled the greatness of Ancient Rome, I should think it a fairly appropriate symbol of his majesty and greatness. =)
Me:
Bah. Nappy’s empire had nothing on Rome. Absolutely nothing. Non-sustainable empires…bah.
Marechal:
In ten years he built an empire to rival the size and majesty of that of the Roman Empire that had taken generations to build. I say, “Bah”.
Longevity wasn’t Napoleon’s problem. His situation was too far removed from that of Rome’s during Iulius’ day and the subsequent regimes. Different ballgame.
Me:
And then it fell apart. While Rome lasted for over a thousand years. Two thousand, even. Nappy lasted for, what, 20? 20 is pathetic. Everyone but the Nazis lasts for 20. The godless red Communists in Russia lasted for 40, more if you count pre-WWII. England lasted even longer. Nappy’s an amateur.
Marechal:
This conversation has ended.
Marechal:
Napoleon was one man. He built an empire in a decade. Rome could never have matched that. They had a whole succession of emperors and generals of varying talent. They had Hardians and Julius. Napoleon was one man. One. And the empire took generations to build. And in it was in the age of barbarians. Not that they were pushovers… but it was Roman civilization armed against hordes of Germanic heathens. Napoleon fought hundreds of years worth of Western civ and established monarchies. Put the hurt on them, so to speak. One man.
Me:
With modern tech. And it promptly collapsed right after he left, too.
It’s sort of like saying that Nazi Germany is one of the best empires of all time simply because they conquered a huge swathe of Europe.
Marechal:
But Nazi Germany was lots of peoples. Rommel. Goering. Goering? Ha. Oops. Umm… damnit… those tank commanders in Russia… what were their names? … argh …
Me:
With a lot more guys, we note, needing a lot more people to run things. Way different scales, and such.
Marechal:
Right. Napoleon ran everything, you see. That was part of his greatness. He was the one man empire-builder. Bah. You must read more about the greatness of Napoleon. You must come to accept him as your master.
Me:
You should’ve been Tonto_Napoleon.
He could afford to run most everything. Scale, and all that. And even then, he didn’t run EVERYTHING, now did he? Every little army detachment and such. Noooooooo.
Marechal:
Bah. You need to have your values rearranged.
Napoleon is top dog. Period. Everyone else is playing second fiddle or benched. *gazes into the Nappy statue in front of him on the shelf*
Me:
*Marius statue pushes Nappy statue off shelf*
Marechal:
So yeah… anywho.. you’re still wrong about Nappy. He was the closest thing to God-on-Earth we’ve had since Jesus Christ. Hrm. Careful with my idolatry here… *is smitten*
Everybody who reads this except Whir is probably a Tonto and can see it for themselves anyway, but I happen to think this is freaking hilarious. Absolutely hilarious. Go Blackadder.
“Hanse Davion is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me shoot down CCAF troops in green pastures, he recons the enemy beside quiet waters, he restores the Federated Commonwealth. He guides us with pathfinders for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no Capellan, for the AFFC and his mercenaries are with me; your AC and your Hatchet, they comfort me. You prepare a secure LZ before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my ammo bin overflows. Surely victory and pacification will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Fox forever. Amen.”
Now man your DropShips. Next stop: Sian.
—Paul Bowman, rec.games.mecha
So, it works out, as I mentioned, that not only do I have fall term to populate with classes, I have winter term as well. And then spring will look good and I’ll be in England.
Well, sort of.
Checked my little sheet of stuff I need to graduate, and I’m at 135 credits, need 180 to graduate. And 33 of 60 upper division to graduate. I had in the past totally forgotten about the 180 bit. So I THOUGHT I could take it easy. But no. So we rework fall’s schedule, and come up with…
TR9:30-11AM HST 315 EUROPEAN MILITARY 1400-1815
TR12:30-2PM HST 474 JEFFERSONIAN & JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY
TR2-4PM PS 204 INTRO TO COMPARATIVE POLITICS
TR5-6:30PM ANTH 210 COMPARATIVE CULTURES
And just for fun, I have a 12 credit winter term, of which 2 classes are pathetic lower divisions, one is a random upper division, and one is my writing intensive, but it’s on Abraham Lincoln instead of Women in Modern Europe. This is good. Then in spring, I go to England hopefully and take another 16 credit term. Life can be good.
And then I will be done.
And for the record, my summer is drawing to a close. Move into dorms 9am Sept 23. Classes begin Sept 29. Soon. Soon.
But wait, there’s more. Check the bookstore to see how books are going to be….
20 books. Holy. Shit. Looks like I’m gonna be all up into reading next term.
So, life is good. Did some digging about going over and spending a couple terms in London next year. I THOUGHT I had to spend Winter/Spring there, which meant I had crammed fall term’s schedule with a bunch of things I didn’t want to take to get them done with. Turns out that I wouldn’t be going until Spring, which means I can spread out and take the classes I wanted to take in Winter instead. This is good.
Getting whipped in Civ, though. That sucks.
Not getting whipped in HRE, though. That’s good.
It’s been a good weekend, we note. The parents are gone at the coast. The bowl of pasta I didn’t quite cook right is nonetheless good. Cole came over and we played a ton of Civ and some MWDA. This is good.
Watched Gods and Generals tonight. Reviewed it a bit on Tonto, will do more here. On a plot level, it sucked. Skipped around a lot, tried to cover too much, and should’ve stayed focused on Stonewall Jackson the entire time. The token black folks needed a LOT of help. Jackson the religiously fanatic military man who loves his family and such a lot was interesting. Watching random guys march around on battlefields for 4 hours, not so much. Needed to be shorter, needed a plot.
Watching it, I’m also reminded how amazingly…dim a lot of the generals were back in the day. Or rather, I can see with a lot of hindsight how many mistakes they all made. Frex, the delayed entry of rapid-fire cartridge arms into the Union forces. Or, watch in G&G when the Union troops march into Fredricksburg. How their nice little columns get all cut to hell. Sure could use some effective squad-level infantry tactics there.
Ah well. Going back in time to direct the successful Union victory in 1863 over the South is going to need to wait until after I finish Le Mort d’Arthur and watch Zulu, I’m afraid.
Holy crap am I tired. But more on that in a sec.
Wednesday was MWDA night, of course. Liao Incursion xpack is now out, and we had a sealed booster to get in, which meant $30 and a random army because you could only use what you drew in the boosters you bought. So I get a pair of uniques out of my first two boosters. There’s, I dunno, 5 or 10 uniques per case, like 50 boxes a case if I remember all this right, and I got 2. Rock on. But it shortchanged my army, which meant I got stomped hard – 1 kill all night and it was a defenseless scout chopper. But I cleaned up on trading. One of the uniques went for two more. Some other stuff for some rocking infantry and a couple mechs I wanted. One of my other uniques for a bunch of stuff. *beegee*
And Griselda apparently decided I needed a book to read, so she passed one to Rema for me. Much obliged.
Anyway. I’m tired because I spent the last couple three hours setting up Regina an MT install, so she too can have her very own Alsherok blog. MT is a real PITA to install – and the docs SUCK. But I think I did it. Yay.
The other big news of the weekend is that the parents are out until Sunday night. Woot.
Which means I can sleep in with no problems now. Which I shall now do.
Much to say. For starters, Epic 32 is up over in the Civ section. Much funness. Now on to Epics 35 and 36. Also playing some HRE, and it’s going…harshly. Byzantine rampages, the French… bad times. Bad times.
Also, a few Tonto blogs to advertise. Some of you with blogs already read here, so no use advertising to you, but…
Regina, as has been noted, has started a fad.
On another note, I FINALLY[1] finished Norman Davies’ The Isles: A History today. Overview of the UK and Ireland from earliest times to 1999. It’s a good read, does just what one expects it to do, though it misses a few gaps here and there, but it’s only a 1-volume 1,058 pager. You expect that. Except when he gets up to post-1707, he pretty much leaves out all the political history. Lots of good social history and such, but lacking the political backing to it all sort of kills it off. But before that, it’s not bad.
[1] – Finally, you ask? Finally. I originally started reading it about a year ago. Got the book for Xmas. Read off and on through the early year. Finally, I finish.
So Laurent, Laura, and I got together for the “Have fun in Europe, Laurent you lucky bastard” farewell tour. Watched Chasing Amy, which means I have now seen every Kevin Smith movie. This is good in one way, bad in another. Kevin Smith needs more movies. At any rate, I’ll say that it’s a good movie, without dwelling on that because I haven’t quite figured it out yet. In any case, it’s a romance and I’m a guy, thus if I like it something must’ve gone right, I imagine.
Also spent the time dwelling, as I often times do when I’m tired and have a headache for some reason, as I do now, on the fact where my friends and I have almost nothing to say to each other anymore, thus leading to my being very very quiet most of the time. My fault, their fault, combo, I dunno. Sucks, though.
And that headache has come back with a vengeance, so I shall go sleep it off now.
So a day or two ago I was like “Dammit, enough of this computer game crap. I need a NOVEL.”
This after watching the Star Wars Ep II commentary in lieu of an actual movie. I know. I know. Really.
So I eventually decided on a McCullough. Morgan’s Run, as it happens, which I had thought was pretty decent the first time around, and decided to make sure.
It’s pretty decent. It is, however, not an action-packed book. It’s only a marginally suspenseful book. And you can tell that McCullough likes Richard Morgan perhaps a tad too much. But that’s ok, really. The cool bit is the descriptions of everything. Prisons, Norfolk Island itself… Everything. McCullough’s always been great at it. If nothing else, the book is worth reading just for that.
Less than a hundred pages left in my history of the British Isles, too. Review on that soon, too.