respond with humour :)

ozoneocean wrote:
respond with humour :)

Plenty of sites with all kinds of collected witticisms and quotes for all occasions. Almost like having Bob Hope's gaggle of gag writers at your beck and call.


Said I, quick with the repartee. (quoting the character of Major Hogan in the Sharpe series as played by Brian Cox)



Truly obscure references are not recommended unless they make you look really, really smart or oh-so-cultured. Nothing goes over like a lead zeppelin than to attempt to make light conversation by sharing a witty anecdote about Soviet film maker Sergei Eisenstein. (Huh? who? what?) The assumed knuckle dragging rube in the military uniform had to explain the reference by the pretentious library science major to the rest of the table at a friend's wedding.

bravo1102 wrote:
Truly obscure references are not recommended unless they make you look really, really smart or oh-so-cultured. Nothing goes over like a lead zeppelin than to attempt to make light conversation by sharing a witty anecdote about Soviet film maker Sergei Eisenstein. (Huh? who? what?) The assumed knuckle dragging rube in the military uniform had to explain the reference by the pretentious library science major to the rest of the table at a friend's wedding.

If I'm not supposed to use witty anecdotes about Sergei Eisenstein, I have being flirting ALL wrong.

@Bravo
How the devil did you know I was rewatching the Sharp series Hogan??? o_O

I though Battleship Potemkin was horribly transparent propoganda when I saw it, and really hard to watch because of that. Some good early use of techniques though.
Then I later read about the real incident and the film didn't seem as arch anymore… They really treated those people pretty badly. Also, it was pretty cool they had the actual ship in the movie!

ozoneocean wrote:
@Bravo
How the devil did you know I was rewatching the Sharp series Hogan??? o_O

I can read minds.

I though Battleship Potemkin was horribly transparent propoganda when I saw it, and really hard to watch because of that. Some good early use of techniques though.

October is far worse as far as propaganda. But it is facinating as far as a historical document while studying the Russian Revolution.

Also, it was pretty cool they had the actual ship in the movie!

It was actually the derelictDvenadsat Apostolov. (The Twelve Apostles)The Potemkin had been scrapped in 1923. Conversely the cruiser Aurora that appeared in October still exists in St Petersburg.

I was the only one at the table that had seen all of Eisenstein's movies and didn't want to embarrass Ms. Pretentious by flaunting it though my freind and I briefly discussed Alexandr Nevsky.

I thought I read on a battleship site that they used by he actual ship? Maybe it was only the conning tower or something like that…
I've never seen that particular movie Bravo but looking it up I saw the Teutonic knight helmets looked like Thulsa Doom's helmet in Conan the Barbarian… Only to read that part of Conan was actually based on that film, Hahaha, there are no coincidences…

Speaking of which I've been reading The Hussar, a book about a trooper's experiences as part of Hompesch's hussars. Their uniforms are almost an exact match for the 95 rifles… But looking up the wiki entry on the 95th they make out as if that uniform was the genious practical idea of some smart fellow developed just for them… I call bullshit! I'd bet anything it was based wholly on Hompesch's hussars because the officer like the look of it, and then they discovered how practical it was afterwards. That's usually how those things went.

You are indeed correct. The uniform adopted for use by Hompesch's Chasseurs and mounted rifles was the one eventually used by the first rifle troops which were the 5th Battalion 60th Foot. The cadre of that unit was made up of troops formerly of Hompesch's Chasseurs and Mounted Rifles and continued to wear their uniforms. That uniform became the model for the Experimental Rifle Corps which then became the 95th. They just changed the facings to black.

Hompesch raised several units, Hussars, Chasseurs, Mounted rifles. The Hussars were sent to Haiti and wasted away and were dispanded within a few years. The Mounted Rifles served in Egypt until 1802 and the Chasseurs became the cadre of the 5th 60th foot in 1797. It can be confusing as the Mounted Rifles and Chasseurs were both called Chasseurs so often one will appear as the other in articles.


The uniform of Hompesch's Hussars was typical hussar wear and featured red breeches, something that was not found in rifle uniforms. It was green and red, colors used by hussar regiments in most armies. The 95th officer uniform was simply a green hussar uniform. In fact the officer's shako of it's predecssor the Experimental Rifle Corps had a detachable peak like a militon (though lacking its flamme: the trailing tassled swatch of cloth often wrapped around the militon for a splash of color) It was typical in period armies for officers of light corps to adopt whatever hussar features into their uniform that they could get away with. For an example Rifle regiment officers' pelisses weren't offical or stipulated in the regulations. They were a flamboyant addition because every officer wanted to look as mcuh like a hussar as they could.

(see Osprey MAA 119 Wellington's Infantry 2 and MAA 328 Emigre Troops in British Service, For additional notes regarding hussar uniforms see MAA Napoleon's Hussars, Prussian Cavalry of the Napoleonic Wars 1 and Historie and Collections 5 French Hussars #1 From the Ancien regime to the Empire)

Excelentenly explained and referenced Bravo! Thanks for that. It's just the info I wanted but fining that online is a real pain.
All the peices of the puzzel fall into place and it makes perfect sense. :)
Readin about the poor Hompsech's Hussars is interesting… Hompsech sold the poor bastards to the Britsh to work as marines basically, they went off to the West Indies to fight the French there and keep plantations in order, defending against rebel slaves. It never realy occurs to you how global the Nepolionic wars actually were!
THEY were the real first world war. With conflict related to it in the Americas, in the west indies, in North Africa… with troops on stanby defendin ports even in Australia! Probably in South east asia too… I dunno.
I once heard an American historian refer to the nepolionic wars as the “European civil war”, (must have been the history chanel), and the shere idiocy of that statement has stayed with me ever since.

Maybe the French Revolutionary Wars could be termed a European civil war but not the conflict after 1800 or so once Napoleon was head of state.

As far as the true FIRST World War? Try the Seven Years War (The American French and Indian War) It started in America then extended to Europe and fighting took place in Africa and Asia especailly India. You saw a major conflict in America at the same time as Frederick the Great fighting Russia and Austria and the British in Flanders and a siege of Gibraltar. Even the American War of Independence can lay claim to world wide fighting once France, Spain and Holland joined the war.

It's ridiculous how American History often removes Europe from the equation after 1783 and especially after 1812. It somehow thinks that American history was unique and the Monroe Doctrine and Washington's no entangling alliances somehow made the Atlantic Ocean an inpenetable wall of seperation between the continents. The Napoleonic Wars had an American element and the War of 1812 should be considered a part of them as the American Quasi War with France was part of the French Revolutionary Wars.

We've got the old URL back! All drunkduck.com links now redirect to the new url.

I'm starting to quite enjoy doing the top ten every week. I don't know how much attention anyone else is paying to it at this point, but it's fun seeing what comics are gaining attention. Every week Anathema, Heroes Alliance and Monster Soup duke it out for a spot. :)

You'd be surprised- some people DO have their eyes on that list! It's great to see some movement on there now! ^_^
I can't beleive we finally have Drunk Duck back! Waaaa! FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!

@Bravo- I was thinking more of war that was related in the comonality of the foe; the French and their allies in this instance. Was that the case with those earler conflicts?
The nepolionic wars were pretty unified in purpose… Though if I think about it, the earlier wars with the Spanish, French, English etc were pretty wide spread around the world.

———-

I was SO sick yesterday. Vomiting up spaghetti is once of the worst things… Strings of spaghetti hanging out your nose… OMG so effing gross!!!!!!!! It hides between your lips and gums… everywhere. UGH!!
The extreme hot weather evaporates all the liquid from the mucas in my face and that damn stuff clogs the poorly developed sinus passages in my cheek like gluey corking filler, then swells and gives me terrible sinus pain and then the lord of all migraines with unrelenting head pain, vomiting and nausea.
The only saving grace was that it was relatively short lived, unlike my usual migraines.

Currently making sure to prevent a reoccurance, taking sinus med and snorting saline water. Take that you sinus bastards!!!!!!!
It was 44C yesterday… that's 111.2 F. Not nice. That's solid dry, oven heat, which can feel a bit easier on the body initially than the solid humidity type heat, but it's worse in other ways in that it physically dries out your body very fast, which is quite dangerous.

So while North America is dealing with the polar vortex thing, the land down under gets to deal with a heatwave?

The sidewalks here are covered with two inches of thick solid ice sheets. I think it is called black ice.

—-

On the plus side, McDonalds Happy Meals are now offering Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figurines. I was so excited about it, I ended up getting Raphael. Now that I think about it, the turtles personalities do not match at all with the original Renaissance painters.

In the original song: Leonardo leads; Donatello does machines; Raphael is cool, but rude; Michelangelo is a party dude.

In reference to the Renaissance: Donatello leads (he was born one century before the other three painters); Leonardo da Vinci did machines; Michelangelo was cool, but rude; Raphael was a party dude.

ozoneocean wrote:
@Bravo- I was thinking more of war that was related in the comonality of the foe; the French and their allies in this instance. Was that the case with those earler conflicts?
The nepolionic wars were pretty unified in purpose… Though if I think about it, the earlier wars with the Spanish, French, English etc were pretty wide spread around the world.

The earlier wars were all united in purpose. One alliance against the other with the main players being France, Spain and Britain. In fact the unifying element of the the French Revoultionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars was Britain against France. Everyone else came and went and even switched sides but it always remained Britain versus France just like the Seven Years War and American Revolution (which the French considered a re-fight of the Seven Years War to restore their own dignity after their horrible defeat. And ironically(?) the Seven Years War and Napoleonic Wars share a unity in British leadership; father and son Pitt as Prime Mnister and George III as monarch albeit with the Regency offically after 1811)

I was SO sick yesterday. Vomiting up spaghetti is once of the worst things… Strings of spaghetti hanging out your nose… OMG so effing gross!!!!!!!!

The last time I threw up (twenty-five years ago now?) It was spaghetti. Never forget that. So much I vowed never again. I really feel for you.

Climate Change equals = severe intense weather events in both hemispheres. Not just warming up. Global warming is a misnomer because it ain't just warming, that's a global trend but not the whole story. Yeech. There can even be intense fluctuations in the polar ice sheets like thick pack ice in summer on one pole and little pack ice in winter at the other. We're missing the whole picture saying global warming. It's worse than that.

Pulled my bike apart todaymanaged to put it most ofit back. Not able to get most of the grease stains out of my hands.

Our links – our beautiful, beautiful links will work again.

Woot and YAY: Were officially Drunk Ducks once again!

ayesinback wrote:
Our links – our beautiful, beautiful links will work again.

Woot and YAY: Were officially Drunk Ducks once again!

Not… quite… yet… I still want the old name back too. :)

Awesome sound effect Ayes! ^_^
Lonne- We'll always be drunkduck to us!

Bravo- I think the fact that the overall climate change is on a warming trend is what causes all that other stuff to go haywire. So it's not a misnomer, it's just that people wrongly associate “warming” and “climate” with weather, which is only a tiny subset of climate.
A little like creationists confusing evolution with the origin of life in a way.

——

I vomit now more than I used to when I get miragines. They get worse as I get older. Could be time to see about getting the sinus drilled out… If that stops the pain I get I don't mind risking my sense of taste and smell.

ozoneocean wrote:
Lonne- We'll always be drunkduck to us!

Now THAT is most certainly true. :)

Warning: girly rant following.

Man, boobs suck sometimes. I was at a botanical garden with my family during the summer and just wearing a casual sundress, and of course now in the nice family photos I feel like I'm showing too much cleavage. Seems like I basically have to wear shirts right up to my neck to avoid that, which is not flattering or comfortable in real life (especially in the summer).

HippieVan wrote:
Warning: girly rant following.

Man, boobs suck sometimes. I was at a botanical garden with my family during the summer and just wearing a casual sundress, and of course now in the nice family photos I feel like I'm showing too much cleavage. Seems like I basically have to wear shirts right up to my neck to avoid that, which is not flattering or comfortable in real life (especially in the summer).

Just some “disturbing” evolutionary biology I learned long ago about “boobs”. The more primitive primates present themselves by showing their rear ends to each other. Apparently that part of the modern female human's body evolved itself to look just like that to attract more males…

Yes, I'm an insane old guy (even though I'm supposedly only 43 years of age this year).

Still, I'd be a pain to deal with all that weight in the front. Don't know how true this is, but I remember reading some famous tennis star who wanted a reduction, but a lot of her male fans were crying out against it. Ugh…

Insomnia and Narcelepsy are both hitting me… Insomnia when I'm not at work, Narcalepsy while at work. Or is it my body trying to force me back into a more “natural” sleep schedule? I do work graveyard after all…

And for those who do cooking, I have one question…. When making fried chicken, why do they keep sticking to the pan? And how do I keep it from flailing about while I'm trying to fry it? (don't worry… the flailing question is a joke as I'd never do that to a living chicken). :)

“Man, boobs suck” hahaha! My brain orders those words differently ^_^

I saw Anchorman 2 the other day and it was a hue disapointment! Very bad movie. Just a series of comedy skits mainly, not a well structured movie. Most of the scenes seemed to have been larely improvised and done badly. It reaminded me of the old “airplane” movies when the sequels started to get really shit because they just threw too much in there hoping some would stick.
The structure is loose, flabby, and bloated…

The only good parts were the critique of he 24 hour shit news and what that did to news as a whole (but that was almost lost in the mediocrity of the rest of the movie), and the rehash of the fight of he news stations… though I think that whole concept was stolen completely originaly from a spoof series on Youtube about Yacht Rock bands… but it was the best part of the film regardless.

HippieVan wrote:
Warning: girly rant following.

Man, boobs suck sometimes. I was at a botanical garden with my family during the summer and just wearing a casual sundress, and of course now in the nice family photos I feel like I'm showing too much cleavage.

As far as cleavage? Shawls. Keep it down onthe shoulders for comfort (and don't want freckled shoulders do we?), out comes the camera and it's a modesty cover-up.

Then there's you friendly neighborhood photo editor. I've been tasked with editing my family pictures lately because my sister will always have her eyes closed. So I've been painting in eyes for her. Fun. And with all the techniques to avoid redeye it's made a come-back with these cell cameras. Its like going back to whe worst of Polaroid cameras because it has to be instant and you can use my phone… and why are all the pictures crappy? “I have Photoshop and can fix that…”

What you want me to carry around my nice camera and waste valuable space on family pictures? No I have a webcomic to do dammit! I don't care if no one reads it! I have pictures to take…

Painting eyes? Soooo hard to avoid Mont Python Terry Gillain animation eyes that way :(
I tend to cut a similar eye from another pic and mod it for purpose instead.

Rewatching the Sharpe series some things occour to me. Repetative thematic problems-
- it's pretty mysongynist. Women are always victims, even the few strong characters. There backstories are usually full of rapes and beatings and their present is usally full of that threat. Women are ususally simple domestic creatures, ingenues who need protecting, or scheming bitches. There's only one or two exceptions.
- Sharpe gets more “northen” as he goes… talking like some sort of primitive farmer at some stages…
- The continunity is uneven, with Major Ducco and Henry Simerson coming back from the dead.
- All English British officers apart from Wellington and his spys are 100% useless, evil, stupid, incompetant, foppish idiots unless they're junior to Sharpe and he can knock that out of them, and when he does they always die heroically shortly afterwards.
-Any superior English British officers that Sharpe likes are always bastards who betray him.
-All women automatically want to have sex with him on the spot.
- The class warefare stuff is played up on and on and on again. I know that WAS an issue back then and it is still even now but this is fiction and Sharpe's character doesn't change in response to that preasure, it's just the same thing repeated over and over.
- Add to the class and uselss officer problems: ALL uperclass English people are evil and all lowerclass are good honest salt of the earth who say what they mean and have hearts of solid gold… unless they happen to be evil sergents. Sergents are always evil.
- Scotish people are always absoloutely great at everything.

Henry Simmerson doesn't come back from the dead. He was never killed. Most of the changes were done for TV production. They really made everything black and white while dramatizing the books. They also cut several American characters and most of the good officers that are in the books. The only good officer they kept was Frederickson and that's because the actor agreed to come back. They also cut the allies of the French in the Penninsula. Those lancers in the first episodes were actually Poles.

And the misogyny is endemic in many historical dramas. Can hardly get away from it.

But many of the generalizations are… (gulp) borne out by the historical record. They were common occurances but did not happen every time as in the series. Read Wellington's dispatches or the Horse Guards reports or the musings of his staff officers as well as Rifleman a book about the 95th Rifles and any number of histories of the Penninsula wars. Yeech, it's all verifiable and in the historical record, even every Scotsman being kick-ass cool… well maybe not that far, every other Scotsman being kick-ass cool…

To read Wellington's dispatches one would think every officer was an idiotic class driven fool and all officers from the ranks too to drink because they couldn't get anywhere but that's only his Lordship's penchant for hyperbole says I ever quick with the repartee…

As for Sean Bean's Yorkshire accent it caused the entire origin of Sharpe to be adjusted in the books. He was originally a Londoner, but it changed to a Northern orphan who ends up in London. It was just too popular. Even his hair color was changed in the later books to match Sean Bean.

It's not quite logical that every single English British officer who is superior to Sharpe is garbage, not historically correct either, or Britain would be France today and Wellington would be dead in India.
I believe you that the class and what not was an issue, I've read that myself, but they were certainly not all universally completey useless. The TV writers were recycling a trope there and using it for Sharpe's class warfare angle.

That was very interesting info on Bean's influence on the written version. He really does change to be a lot more northern and old fashioned as he goes.

Simerson is badly cut up and gutted by the Irish priest in Sharpe's Sword, where he also admits to betraying them to the French fort. Later in Sharpe's Regiment (I think it's called), he's healthy as if nothing happened in Britain and welcome at Horse Guards… Major Ducco is killed by French deserters in the episode where he captures Sharpe after a clever plot…
But he's back alive again in the episode where Sharpe captures a castle with Frederickson in Bordeaux.

But Sir Henry wasn't killed. He was toyed with and humiliated but not killed. And since he has those powerful friends willing to cover up for him, they did. One of his friends was probably that thorn in Wellington's side; Banastre Tarleton. Now that was one facinating career. There should be about a year between Sword and Regiment where Sir Henry got to recover. But the TV series really compressed the time.

Ducco is slippery enough that one could believe he'd find a way just short of dying and connive his way out. Of all the parade of actresses (After Assumptia Serna) in the Sharpe series only Alice Krige gives as good as she gets. But that juicy part was cut short from the way it was in the books.

What is really sad about the series is the short shrift given to Thersea (Assumptia Serna). Her entire marraige with Sharpe vanishes in the ellipses of the time compression in the TV series. In the books there's Talevera in 1809 and lots of other stuff. The series has Talevera in Sharpe's Eagle and then compresses every other episode into 1813. Almost makes me want to just watch the first four movies then to skip Honour and Sword and then to Waterloo. Bernard Cornwell expressed a similar preference when iterviewed on the History Channel about the series on Movies in Time.

The idiocy of the British officer corps in the Napoleonic era was often the result of hyperbole in Wellington's reports. But then you figure most everyone in Britain in the early 19th Century was an idiot compared to Wellington or at least it really looked that way once he stepped into the room. Is it that he's so much smarter or is it that everyone else was so much dumber? But then idiotic upper class British officers ia a huge cliche across everything British from Python to Black Adder so maybe we can see the jibes the Sharpe series takes at them as more of the same.

Well the TV version didn't do a very good version of showing him not killed…

Theresa was a truly great character in the show because that actor was fantastic! I agree with you, skipping past everything all the way to 2013 feels a bit flat… and Sharpe seeming to rocket straight to major rank so fast because of it really takes away from that really difficult achievement. He struggles to get confirmed as Captain and just making captain is a huge deal in the show, but blink and he's a major.

I like the self critique by Evelyn Waugh in his semi-autobographical account of expereinces of WW2 in his Sword of Honour Triology. His proxy, Guy Crouchback, is the quintessential useless upperclass Britsih officer who's given command anyway, due to his connections.

ozoneocean wrote:
Well the TV version didn't do a very good version of showing him not killed…

Nah, you just did a really bad job of watching. I looked all over the fan and wiki about Sharpe and there's no mention of it only that he was humiliated.

Did you notice that the rifles commander killed in Rifles comes back as the Prince Regent in Regiment? How about the parade of actors who went onto do other bigger stuff later on including Elizabeth Hurley, James Purefoy, Paul Bettany, Alexis Denisof among others. Rewatching Sharpe's Waterloo there was Paul Bettany doing “silly billy” (bare arse and all) and do pretty well on a character that Bondarchuk's Waterloo nearly totally ignores (he appears in the background at the Duchess of Richmond's ball and that's it) James Purefoy really nailed Spears in Sword. And then there's the sexy Alexis Denisof as Rossendale. I remind female friends of this and they rush off the see the series. Especially Sharpe's Waterloo where Sharpe makes him wet his pants at the Duchess of Richmond's ball. By the way the portrayal of the Ball is far more accurate in Sharpe's Waterloo than in the Bondarchuk movie though it is doubted by some if Wellington ever admitted to being humbugged. One theory was that he actually said he was buggered and it was changed to humbugged to clean it up.

Let me just tease that I have one full script and several ideas for a Sharpe tribute comic. I have figures for most of the primary players like Thersea, Sharpe, Harper, the Chosen men and a selection of South Essex and Froggies (including hussars) so who knows The Duck may see Bravo doing Sharpe's Dragon…