:: Subliminal submergence ::

Tuesday, January 13, 2004

I had a dream last night that I led the team in charge of visually documenting the construction and testing of a frigate-bus hybrid. I'm not sure what the intent of this fusion was, but it looked as if they'd welded any ordinary city autobus onto the bottom of a Perry-class US Navy frigate. The whole design was a disaster, because few modifications were made to the standard municipal city bus in use and, not being hermetically sealed, it filled with water when submerged. This was a constant problem, since the bus could not support the weight of the ship on land, thus ensuring that the Frankenstein would never leave its maritime confines. Nonetheless, our documentary was awesome.

A note on why I know what a Perry-class US Navy frigate looks like: as a kid I bookshelves overflowing with military factbooks. I was a glutton for any print literature involving vehicles of war. Until a few years ago, that particular mini-morland trait scared the bejeezus out of me (and at the time I'm certain my parents were frightened stiff), but now I recognize it as an idle boyhood fascination with machines, albeit shaped by Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiatives and bloated defense budgets. Some kids spent all their time with noses buried in comic books or sports almanacs, memorizing lists of mutant superpowers and RBIs. I stuck with devouring Jane's. When my family visited Washington, D.C., I insisted we spend a day at the Pentagon. Guns, knives, and infantry fighting never interested me in the least - not like aircraft carriers, A-1 Abrams' and A-4 Intruders - so I've been able to come to terms with the fact that I was not a budding sociopathic militia separatist, just finding my own Tonka trucks to scrutinize. It passed suddenly after 5th grade, and I'm no longer able to recite chronologically the codenames of each Soviet submarine class since WWII, though I do recall some sounded really cool to the pre-pubescent ear, like Alpha and Typhoon (the fictitious submarine in The Hunt for Red October was a Typhoon-class vessel... when the US first received intelligence photographs in the early 80s of these craft they thought it must be a hoax because of their sheer size and because unlike other submarines designed as mobile launching stations for short-range nuclear missiles - of which there are way more than you'd like to know - Typhoon subs had their missile tubes in front of their con tower instead of behind... they are still the largest submersible self-propelled vehicles ever produced). I still wonder sometimes though if my past habits have me flagged in certain databases, or if I had Asperger's syndrome. We can safely rule out the latter though, as my social skills have always been perfectly nor... oh crap.

Posted by morland @ 07:04 PM

:: Comments ::

I think you mean *have* not had.

Posted by: Anna on January 14, 2004 07:10 PM

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