Brain Has Performed An Illegal Operation...

...and must be shut down.  So here's a picture of a picture of some seafood.

That's all I've got right now.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:23 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 27 words, total size 1 kb.

F1 Update!: Belgium 2011 Not Coming Tonight

...and I don't care.  I'm not in the mood to write about the 2011 Grand Prix of Belgium.  I may never write about it.  Seb Vettel won, Hamilton crashed, Slappy had a great race and finished 5th.  I'm tired, I'm irritated, and to be blunt, I just don't feel like spending two or three hours trying to create a coherent narrative about the race right now.  Here's Hamilton obliterating an advertising panel... enjoy.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 06:35 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
Post contains 80 words, total size 1 kb.

Still Another FARK Greenlight!

This one was low hanging fruit, but I plucked it first!

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 28 words, total size 1 kb.

F1 Quals: Belgium 2011

I still haven't watched Quals, so here's the provisional grid with a minimum of conversation:

Pos	Driver	Team	Q1	Q2	Q3
1	Sebastian Vettel	RBR-Renault	2:03.029	2:03.317	1:48.298
2	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	2:03.008	2:02.823	1:48.730
3	Mark Webber	RBR-Renault	2:02.827	2:03.302	1:49.376
4	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	2:05.834	2:04.507	1:50.256
5	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	2:05.091	2:03.723	1:50.552
6	NKOTT	STR-Ferrari	2:05.419	2:04.561	1:50.773
7	Bruno Senna	Renault	2:05.047	2:04.452	1:51.121
8	HWMNBN	Ferrari	2:04.450	2:02.768	1:51.251
9	Sergio Perez	Sauber-Ferrari	2:06.284	2:04.625	1:51.374
10	Red Menace	Renault	2:05.292	2:03.466	1:52.303
11	Sebastien Buemi	STR-Ferrari	2:04.744	2:04.692
12	Gandalf Kobayashi	Sauber-Ferrari	2:07.194	2:04.757
13	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	2:01.813	2:05.150
14	Rubens Barrichello	Williams-Cosworth	2:05.720	2:07.349
15	Adrian F'n Sutil	Force India-Mercedes	2:06.000	2:07.777
16	Rabbi Maldonado	Williams-Cosworth	2:05.621	2:08.106
17	Heikki Kovalaineninnie	Lotus-Renault	2:06.780	2:08.354
18	Paul di Resta	Force India-Mercedes	2:07.758
19	Jarno Trulli	Lotus-Renault	2:08.773
20	Tim O'Glockenspiel	Virgin-Cosworth	2:09.566
DNQ	Custard d'Ambrosio	Virgin-Cosworth	2:11.601
DNQ	Vitantonio Liuzzi	HRT-Cosworth	2:11.616
DNQ	Daniel Ricciardo	HRT-Cosworth	2:13.077
DNQ	Slappy Schumacher	Mercedes	No time
	Q1 107% Time		2:10.339

Guess what?  It rained at Spa; go figure.  As a result, the grid is a little jumbled.  NKOTT in 6th?  Bruno Senna 7th?  Button 13th?  Lap times in the 2-minute range?  It must have dried out substantially for Q3, though.

Slappy had a run-in with a wall early in Q1, which is why he's got a "No time."  He'll surely be allowed to race, though.  Lord only knows if the three other DNQs will be allowed to participate, though considering the weather I suspect they will.  Rabbi Maldonado qual'd 16th, but he's received a five-spot grid penalty for intentionally running into Lewis Hamilton after Q2 ended, after an altercation during the session. 

Oh, look!  Vettel is on pole.  Who'dathunkit? 

Race in the morning.  I have no idea when the F1U! will go up.  It might be Sunday, maybe Monday, maybe a week from next Tuesday.  We'll see.  Keep your eyes peeled, though... I've only missed two writeups in six years of this stuff; one of them was because of a bad thunderstorm, the other because of That Terrible Weekend two years ago.  A flooded bookstore shouldn't stop me.  See you soon.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:55 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 370 words, total size 15 kb.

Ofergawdssake...

So I got up at 8am, all set to settle in and watch what I was sure would be an exciting Quals for Spa.  As I'm brushing my teeth, my cellphone rings.  It's the Regional Manager, saying that I need to get to the Duck U Bookstore as soon as I can... seems something happened involving some water, a leak of some sort, and I needed to let people into the store.  This has occurred in the past, no big deal... though it hasn't happened since they fixed that pipe. 

Shrugging, I threw on some clothes and drove into Duck U., cursing my luck.  After all, today was my first day off in two weeks.  I get there, walk into the building the Bookstore is located in... and THIS is what I see:

Ah.  I'm just thinking that this isn't a good thing.  But if we've got an inch of water in the hallway, what do we have in... the... store?
more...

Posted by: Wonderduck at 06:32 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
Post contains 274 words, total size 2 kb.

F1 Practice: Belgium 2011 (take two)

If it isn't raining at Spa, it's getting ready to.  It's a F1 cliche, but cliches get to be cliches by being repeated, usually because, well, they have basis in fact.  So guess what it did today during the two Friday practices?

If you guessed "rain", you win the no-prize.  There were about five minutes at the start of the first practice where it wasn't raining.  The track was slowly improving through the afternoon practice until, just as the teams put on dry tires, it began to pour again.  As a result, nobody got much data other than figuring out just exactly where the driver would stick the car in the wall.  So, short day on track all around.

However, there's a couple of big news items to discuss.  The first is that Renault has unceremoniously booted Grizzly Nick Heidfeld from his drive.  Team boss Eric Boullier said "I think it didn't work.  His leadership didn't work in the team and when you are sometimes slower than (Red Menace) Vitaly (Petrov), in fact most of the time slower than Vitaly, it is difficult for him to push the team and to settle himself as the team leader."  In reply, Grizzly Nick said "I have a valid contract, I want to drive," and filed suit in London's High Court to regain his seat.  There's something smelly coming from Renault, and it isn't the cheese.  I'm sure it's only a coincidence that the Bearded One was being paid €250000 per start and Renault is reportedly desperate for funds, not only for this season but for next.  Of course, The Red Menace brought a metric farkton of sponsorship money with him for his seat.  But who has replaced Grizzly Nick?

Ladies and gentlemen, may I reintroduce Bruno Senna, last seen driving for HRT in 2010.  Somewhere, Grizzly Nick Heidfeld was pointing at the monitor and laughing.

The other bit of news is that this weekend is a major moment in the career of one of the F1 legends, for this is the 20 year anniversary of Slappy Schumacher's debut in the sport.  In 1991, he was drafted into service for the Jordan team when their regular driver, Bertrand Gachot, was imprisoned for two months for spraying a taxi driver with teargas (and really, who amongst us hasn't wanted to do that?).  He proceeded to qualify the Jordan 191 7th for the Grand Prix of Belgium, making his more experienced teammate, Andrea de Cesaris, who qualified 11th, look awful.  Slappy would be forced to retire on the first lap of the race with a gearbox full of neutrals, but it was the start of one of the greatest careers ever.  This week, Slappy is wearing a special commemorative helmet.

Say what you want about Slappy, and believe me, I have, he's one of the best.  Was one of the best.  Something like that.  Whatever.

It's supposed to rain during Quals... that should be fun!  See you in the morning.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:31 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 501 words, total size 3 kb.

Harry's Life

There are times that I hate blogging.  Trying to come up with interesting posts, spending the time to bring them to fruition, then realizing that it was an "eh" idea in the first place.  Then there are the days that you can't come up with anything good at all, and you resort to posting pictures of rubber duckies or cartoon girls or music videos.  There are days where you just feel like chucking it all and walking away.

And then there's days like today, when the perfect idea for a story falls into your lap.  Like this one, which I'll call "Harry's Life."

Harry lived and worked in India before The War To End All Wars.  A newspaper reporter, he surely could smell the coming conflict, but he was of the age where one has no fear of one's own mortality.  It could never happen to you, it would always happen to the other guy.  Once the Great Mistake (pt 1) began, Harry didn't give staying out of the fray a second thought. 

Harry was never a tall man.  He did have the air of the rake about him, however, with hair that Clark Gable could only envy.  He occasionally grew a dapper mustache, but it never stayed around for long.  His eyes had the cool, appraising look that were the mark of a good newspaperman.  In truth, he didn't look the part of a soldier but when War began, he immediately enlisted with the nearest British regiment... well, almost.  Instead, he joined the Ghurkas. 

"If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or a Ghurka."  This quote, from Field Marshal Manekshaw, tells you all that you need to know about the fighting spirit of these legendary soldiers.  Amongst them, Harry felt at home.  He learned and truly understood the war cry of the Ghurkas, "Jai Mahakali, Ayo Gorkhali!", which translates to "Glory be to the Goddess of War, here come the Ghurkas!"  When his regiment was called to France, Harry went along... to the Battle of Loos.

In a war full of mass casualties for little gain, Loos would barely rate a mention... if it wasn't for the futility of it all.  Ammunition shortages limited the pre-attack artillery bombardment.  The British used poison gas for the first time, releasing 140 tons of chlorine gas... much of which was blown back over their own lines.  Then, at 0630 on September 29th, 1915, six divisions of troops charged out of their trenches... into the face of German machinegunners unfazed by the weak bombardment.  As they charged across the open plain between the trenchlines, the Ghurkas discovered that much of the German barbed wire was still in place, unsevered by artillery.  Undaunted, Harry found himself in the forefront of his company's charge into the enemy trenches.  With kukri and grenade, he helped cause one of the first substantial breakthroughs of the war, leading to the taking of the town of Loos.  Three days later, the Germans counterattacked and threw the British back to their lines.  Over 20000 men lay wounded or dead after three days of stiff fighting.  Harry was one of them, the victim of a German artillery shell.

Riddled with shrapnel, he was invalided to England to recuperate.  While there, his Regiment of Ghurkas, used up by battle, was sent back to India, surely kicking and screaming.  However, Harry wasn't done with France yet.  Once up and around, he joined The Duke of Cambridge's Own Middlesex Regiment and returned to the trenches.  Except this time around, he was an oddity.  His kukri by his side, he knew his ways around the muddy passages and the fields of death around him.  His experience made him valuable to his company, and he quickly became a trusted squad leader.  One dark night, he led a handpicked team across no-man's land, returning with prisoners and intelligence. This brazen mission earned him a mention in the regimental dispatches... and a Croix de Guerre with bronze star.  He only just was told of this honor when his old nemesis, the German artillery shell, found him again and left him with a bellyful of shrapnel.  And back to England he was sent once again, back to hospital.

While there, he caught the eye of a pretty nurse.  Certainly there wasn't a whole lot he could do with his abdomen wrapped in bandages, but his good looks and witty repartee certainly stood out amongst the other soldiers there.  In some ways, leaving hospital was one of the tougher things he'd ever done... after all, he was leaving the pretty nurse behind.  Much to his surprise and delight, she made sure he knew how and where to reach her when he could.  For once again, the warrior in Harry sent him back into the fray.  But this time, he would make sure that the German artillery could not get him.

As early as his time at Loos, Harry would look up and see the birds of the Royal Flying Corps soaring high above him and marvel at their grace and serenity.  During his second recuperation, he petitioned for a transfer to the RFC, and to everybody's amazement, he was accepted.  Perhaps 'Bloody April' had something to do with it.  In any case, Harry found himself posted to RAF Station Marham, flying the Sopwith 1-1/2 Strutter.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, he tended to fly the way a Ghurka fights... take no prisoners and all-out, nearly in a frenzy.  Also perhaps unsurprisingly, in 1917 he somehow managed to make his bus fall eight hundred feet out of the sky and into a cabbage field.  The result looked something like this...

His training set back by the injuries sustained by this wreck, he only managed to fly a few milk-run missions over France before the war came to an end.  One would think that'd be the end of the tale of Harry's life, but in some ways the best was yet to come.

After the war, Harry tracked down the pretty nurse, courted her and eventually married her.  Amongst other things, he somehow eneded up working for St Dunstan's, the UK's national charity for ex-servicemen that had suffered blindness due to the war.  There, he taught various vocational skills and discovered that he himself had a hidden skill at laquerwork. Late in his life, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II came to St Dunstan's, where he presented her with one of his laquerwork trays in celebration of her visit.  It was one of the high points of a busy, and unique, life.

A wonderful story, and I'm glad I came up with it... except I left out two details which make it even more amazing:

more...

Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:56 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 1351 words, total size 8 kb.

F1 on SPEED!: Belgium 2011

...and we're back!  The F1 Circus' summer vacation is over, the motor homes and carriers have converged on a little town in the Ardennes Forest, and the crew of F1 Update! has awakened from their forced hibernation.  Ladies and Gentlemen, it's time for Formula 1 to return to Spa!

For most of the world, going to a spa for the weekend means a calm, relaxing experience, sometimes involving mud getting into places it shouldn't and fish nibbling dead skin off your toes.  For Formula 1 drivers though, going to Spa for the weekend means excitement, tension, stress and danger lurking behind every corner of this 4.35-mile long circuit, arguably the best on the F1 calendar.

One cannot speak of Spa without referencing the track's signature piece, the combination of Eau Rouge and Raidillon.  The run from La Source to Eau Rouge is downhill, but at Eau Rouge the track suddenly climbs steeply uphill.  Indeed, the vertical direction change is so abrupt that you will hear what sounds like the drivers pulling their foot off the accelerator.  Nothing could be further from the truth; what you're hearing is the engine suffering from the compression resulting from the sudden changes.  Meanwhile, you also have a horizontal direction change as you negotiate the blind third turn.  THEN you have another change of direction at Raidillon, the site of some of the most dramatic, violent accidents in F1 history.  In the old days, saying that you took Eau Rouge flat out was a sign of a driver's bravery.  In today's F1 cars it's not quite as difficult to accomplish, but one never, ever, takes Eau Rouge lightly.  In fact, news came down today that DRS is not to be used through the turn during practice and quals.

The other signature piece of Spa is the weather.  It's practically guaranteed to rain sometime during the F1 weekend, and one can probably count the historical number of totally dry races on the fingers of both hands, and it's likely you'd have a digit or two left over.  This year, rain is expected on Friday with chances on both Saturday and Sunday. 

All of which can be seen on SPEED!  Yes, the Legendary Announce Team will be back in all their glory, providing us with their usual sterling coverage.  Here's the way the schedule breaks down:

Friday: 3a-430a Practice 1 (streaming).  7a-840a Practice 2 (live).
Saturday: 4a-5a Practice 3 (streaming).  7a-830a Quals (live).
Sunday: 630a-9a 2011 Grand Prix of Belgium (live).  230p-5p race replay.

All times are, as usual, Pond Central Time.  The F1U! crew will be all over the weekend... or at least as much as we can be, considering that Friday will be the 12th day of work in a row and the 18th out of 19.  There is a chance we'll not have much in the way of Practice coverage.

But F1 is back!  All is right with the world... or something along those lines.  See ya then!

Posted by: Wonderduck at 08:38 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 499 words, total size 3 kb.

Saturday Night Tunage IX

The original plan for tonight was to write up a post on the PBY Catalina.  I've discovered instead that I don't have the mental oomph to tackle that the way it deserves.  Today was move-in day for the first-year students at Duck U, and our first really busy day of Fall Book Rush.  It was also Day 6 of 12 in a row for me.  I came home, had something to eat, and fell asleep in my comfy chair.  But what I do have the mental oomph for is some Tunage!

...and where there's Tunage, there's DJ Wonderduck!  Tonight, my children, in tribute to all the 18-year-olds spending their first night at Duck U., I bring you music from before they were born... mostly!  Let's get on with the show...
more...

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:10 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 972 words, total size 7 kb.

The Nightmare Begins

It started out small: one or two, here and there.  A trickle, really  But it was obvious that wouldn't... couldn't... last.

Soon, they were coming in ever-greater amounts.  The trickle became a stream, then a torrent, then an unstoppable horde.

Slowly they moved, but inexorably.  None could stop them, none could hope to contain them.  When the horde stood at the gates, all hope seemed lost. 

But just when it looked like the insane mass would run devour all in their path, four heroes stood in their way.  They faced the ravenous beasts and held their ground.

The staff of the Duck U Bookstore was ready for Fall Book Rush.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 08:53 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 113 words, total size 1 kb.

Random Anime Picture #66: Working On It

I'm getting annoyed with myself.  While I've turned out some okay stuff recently here at The Pond, more often than not I find that I'm more whining about work than writing about something interesting.  So, yes, I'm annoyed with myself.

Not annoyed enough to be able to stop whining, but annoyed.  So instead of moaning, kvetching and complaining (and I totally expected FireFoxy to give me the red squiggly line under "kvetching", but it didn't), instead I'm going to give you something to look at.  Here you go:

-High School Of The Dead, ep08

And really, that's all you need to know about HSotD... which I really liked.  One of these days, I'll get around to giving the show a full review... maybe an episodic one?... but until then, you'll have to be content with a lack of content.  Or something.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 06:49 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 148 words, total size 1 kb.

August 14, 1945

66 years ago today, Japan surrendered to the Allies, thus bringing an end to World War II.  The official ceremony wasn't conducted until September 2nd, and that's the day that we celebrate here in the US as the end of hostilities, August 14th was the date that the the announcement was made to the Japanese people.  August 14th was also the date the second-most famous photograph from the Pacific War was taken.

I wonder what the following 19 days were like for those on the front lines of the war.  Hostilities had ended, but it wasn't official yet... and surely nobody wanted to be the last casualty of WWII.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:18 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 112 words, total size 1 kb.

Saturday Night Tunage VIII: The Covers

I've wanted to do this theme for a while, and tonight, I'm gonna do it!  Run in fear everybody!

For some reason, many people hate cover songs.  They believe that there's no way a copy can be as good (or better) than an original work, that even thinking such a thing is an abomination.  Well friends, I'm DJ Wonderduck, and I'm here to say that such thoughts are hooey.  HOOEY, I say!

Let's get right to it!
more...

Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:30 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 1032 words, total size 9 kb.

Random Anime Picture #65: Ptui!

-THE iDOLM@STER, ep04

Work is the story of my life right now.  Pulled an 11-hour day on Wednesday, and rewarded myself by coming in only 20 minutes early today!  Woo!  Sunday is my last day off until August 27th, meaning I'll get one day off between August 8th and August 27th.  Double-yay!

Well, at least The Librarian came over tonight.  Lots of banter, no anime, which is fine too.  She's got the annual Anime Club Overnight + Pockypalooza event starting Friday evening, so she borrowed a few DVDs from me: the first four discs of Cardcaptor Sakura and Summer Wars.  Time for the kids to see what good anime is really like.  Oh, and there's Keroro Gunso, too... I gather Funimation donated the show to The Librarian's library.  Very cool of them, that.  Don't envy her, though... 13 or 14 hours of being cooped up with teenagers?  Yeesh.

Enough babbling.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:48 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 155 words, total size 1 kb.

The Muroc Maru

Over the years, practice targets have taken many forms.  Watermelons, poles stuck in the ground, human silhouettes, bulls-eyes, "black dots," on and on.  One of the most... unique... was finished in 1943. 

Army Air Forces Temporary Building (Target) T-799, dubbed the "Muroc Maru", was constructed on the grounds of Muroc AAF Base for the then princely sum of $35000.  Built out of 4x4 lumber and chicken wire, then covered with tar paper and liberally coated with ground-up chicken feathers, it was the spitting image of an Imperial Japanese Navy Takao-class heavy cruiser.  Sand berms were added to give the appearance of a wake.

Probably the largest single-structure target ever built at 650 feet long, the Muroc Maru was used for identification training, strafing and skip-bombing practice.  Unfortunately, the chicken feathers could not hold up to the hot winds and .50cal slugs and usually disintegrated or blew away.

Built at one end of Rogers Dry Lake on the Muroc base complex, it often gave pilots the impression of movement from heat distortion coming off the lakebed.  It also caused some consternation amongst drivers passing by to the north, to whom it looked exactly like a ship sailing in the desert.

The Muroc Maru stayed in position until 1950, when it was declared a flight hazard and taken down (sunk?).  Reportedly the Army engineers had quite the time of it from all the unexploded ordinance in the vicinity.  All that remains today are a few tons worth of nails and staples and some sand berms.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 06:40 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 256 words, total size 2 kb.

Name This Mystery Ship VII

Interesting one for y'all tonight...

Take a guess, get it right, win a post!

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:41 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
Post contains 19 words, total size 1 kb.

The Other Zero

Whenever a nation has more than one branch of its military, something of a cordial disliking will invariably spring up between them.  For example, here in the US the Army doesn't much care for the Navy, the Navy has a mild distaste for the Army, and nobody likes the Marines.  When it comes right down to it however, all three know they've got to work together and when the time comes, they set aside their rivalries and land on their enemies like a ton of bricks.

And then there was the Imperial Japanese military in World War II.  The Army and the Navy didn't cordially dislike each other, they flat out hated each other.  Each had their own plans on how to conduct the war and only deviated from them when they needed something from the other.  The only reason you couldn't say that, say, the IJN's main enemy was the IJA was that the two services didn't openly shoot at each other.  This open distaste extended to the designs of each forces' aircraft.  While the US Army Air Forces and the US Navy designed planes that were radically different, that's because each service had different requirements.  Strangely, the requirements for the IJN and the IJA were pretty much identical, save for the need for Navy planes to land on a carrier.

Both the Navy and the Army needed replacements for their front-line fighers, the A5M (Claude) and the Ki-27 (Nate), two very similar designs.  Mitsubishi won the design contract for the Navy with the A6M, the famous Zero.  Nakajima's design for the replacement of their own Ki-27 was the Ki-43 Hayabusa.

To say that there was a resemblance to the Zero would be something of an understatement.  Both fighters used the same Sakae radial engine, at least to begin with.  Both were slim, with slightly bent cantilevered wings.  However, the Zero was nearly 700lbs heavier at all-up weight.  This made the Hayabusa (Allied code name "Oscar") even more maneuverable than the already outstandingly nimble Zero.

Unlike the Zero, which passed its initial flight tests with ease, the Hayabusa was something of a dog right off the drawing table.  In fact, the plane was nearly rejected on the grounds of being rather UNmaneuverable.  Over the course of ten preproduction aircraft, the Oscar was modified with a larger wing, had its weight cut, and finally had a set of butterfly (or "combat") flaps installed.  This proved to be the fix the fighter needed, and it was ordered into mass production.

One can safely assume that the main weight difference between the Zero and the Hayabusa was that the latter did not need the sort of structural strength a plane requires to land on an aircraft carrier.  One drawback of this was that the Zero, which was never what one would call a sturdy aircraft, was by comparison to the Hayabusa carved out of a single block of iron.  Another way the Hayabusa saved weight was in the form of weaponry.  For most of the war, the Ki-43 carried only a pair of 7.7mm machine guns, the exact same armament as a Sopwith Camel from World War I.

At the beginning of the Pacific War though, this was enough.  In combat, the Hayabusa was nearly as successful as the Zero.  Being able to outturn and outclimb anything in the skies, once an Oscar got on a plane's tail, it could pretty much stay there at will.  It was only a tiny bit slower than a Zero as well.  All of this meant that it was a dangerous package.  It even had some armor for the pilot and rudimentary self-sealing fuel tanks to boot. 

The Hayabusa's main weakness was that it was ridiculously fragile.  While less prone to catching fire like the Zero, it tended to come apart under Allied gunfire.  Indeed, hits that even a Zero could shrug off were often enough to cause the Ki-43 to shatter like porcelain.  The hard part was landing a blow on the nimble little plane in the first place. 

Upgrades were applied to the Ki-43 over the course of the war.  First, a larger engine was installed that gave better performance at high altitudes, then the guns were upgraded to 12.7mm.  However, these upgrades were never going to be enough to keep up with newer Allied planes like the Hellcat, Corsair or Seafire.  Replaced by the Ki-44 (Tojo) and Ki-61 (Tony), it was never entirely phased out and stayed in front-line service for the entire war.  As with most other Japanese planes, it ended the war in a Kamikaze role, but not until nearly 6000 were built, making it the second-most popular Japanese fighter... behind only the Zero.  Every IJA ace got the majority of his kills in the Oscar, and one source in my collection even claims that the Ki-43 was responsible for shooting down more Allied planes than the Zero.  Not a bad record for a fragile, slow, undergunned fighter that was overshadowed by the A6M.

Today, only six Ki-43s are known to exist, and only one of those is in flyable condition.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:39 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 853 words, total size 5 kb.

Random Anime Picture #64: A Pleasant, Happy Show

In an attempt to distract myself from the ongoing saga of the Duck U Bookstore, I decided to watch something lighthearted, something innocuous, cheerful and fluffy.  Something like, oh I dunno...

-Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance
No, I'm not sure what I was thinking either, other than "I haven't watched this yet."  Unlike the first of the new movies, which was a faithful (but shortened) retelling of the first six episodes of the classic series, this second film strays far afield from the original source material.  It introduces a new Eva pilot, for example...

...then forgets about her for 45 minutes, brings her back in for a couple of moments, then misplaces her for an hour, but that's neither here nor there.  The movie also changes the personalities of the three main pilots.  Shinji is less whiny, Asuka is even more antisocial, and Rei... well, she actually has a personality.

The fight scenes are stunningly animated and amazing to watch.  They're also quite violent and brutal.  Blood, or what passes for blood in Evas and Angels, is spilled in copious amounts... and yes, the "wave of blood swamping the panel truck" scene is in here.

It appears that the Evas are "built" using Monty Python Black Knight Technology, as any wound suffered by the huge biomecha immediately begins spraying blood like a fire truck sprays water.  For example, there's one scene where an Eva is eaten by an Angel, the whole thing taken in one bite that severs the Eva just above the knees.  The leg stumps immediately begin spraying blood to the height of a 20-story building, and doesn't stop.  I don't know if Gainax meant that to be funny or not, but it made me laugh.

While there are some moments of intentional levity in Eva 2.22, on the whole it's a grim, dark, depressing film... pretty much like the original series, truth be told.  However, it's also much more tightly written, more engrossing, and less off-putting than the TV show.  I much prefer this "rebooted Eva" over the original, to be blunt.  We'll have to wait for the last two movies to see if they continue to be stronger than the series, of course... but if they are, well, Hideaki Anno will have made up for the horrible mess he made of episodes 25 & 26 of the TV show.

Oh, and Asuka gets her own version of the "toothpick scene."

Pen-Pen's gots the moves.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:12 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 441 words, total size 4 kb.

Failed Morale Check

The Duck U Bookstore probably won't get a manager until the end of August... after book rush is over.  And we probably won't get a "loaner employee" for rush, either.  Which leaves us understaffed and me doing the job of two people in the busiest time of year.  And I cracked a tooth.

Wonderduck has failed his morale check.

UPDATE:  Gee thanks, Brickmuppet.  Really needed that today.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:23 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 70 words, total size 1 kb.