start.

Alright.
Let's begin, okay.

...
Is there anyone out in the hall? Can you check? Thanks.
(ahem)

Okay, fine, fine. Sit down.

I'd like to direct your attention to this:
http://www.military.com/soldiertech/0,14632,Soldiertech_XM8,,00.html
What is this? This is the wave of the future, a possible candidate for the new American assault rifle.
No, i don't intend on posting a lot of bloody pictures of guns. This isn't that kind of blog. I'm not a high school student (or adult equivalent). What i'm getting at; just take a look at the picture.

The Xm8. Notice how the slanted letters suggest thrilling velocity.
It looks like a goddamn nerf gun. Look at the faux-ergonomic curves. If you scroll down on the little military factoid page you've found yourself on, you'll notice the gun also comes in yellow. jesus christ. This ratchets up the surreality factor several notches, in my mind at least. The ability to change the colour of your gun is supposed to be for camouflage purposes, but look. I have never met an environment that came in skidoo yellow or L.L Bean evergreen. It's like I'm reading about this in the goddamn Mountain Equipment Co-op catalogue.
Now, the manufacturer is Heckler & Koch, so this could be some sort of German practical joke. Look at it! It looks like a volkswagen beetle. Y'know, the first prototype of the beetle was presented to Hitler as a birthday gift. So practical. This was before he lost his marbles. You can almost see it; if you care to. The ubermensch family, driving back from the rally on a Sunday afternoon, bubbly schnitzel asses crammed into a bug-eyed, fuel-efficient car, passing barbed wire fences through the country and post office buildings with some silly Romanesque Imperial facade. The same family, getting fatter, driving their hysterically fuel-efficient car, Forever.
There is something in the aesthetic ambitions of empires that can be, i dunno, chilling and really really funny. I have a sneaking suspicion that dictators begin their careers doodling uniforms, flags, crests, palaces and planes on the margins of their homework. The ulitmate product of their ambitions end up seeming, well, juvenile and silly. Until they shoot you and dump you in a ditch.
Look at the Xm8, the wave of the future. I'm sorry, it's not German, it's American. It was designed somewhere in an industrial park in California, by a guy who maybe drives a Hummer and maybe wears a pair of Ray-ban sunglasses when he drives that Hummer to Denny's for lunch. And from that industrial park, maybe you can imagine the parking lot city goes on forever. Because in your mind, it already does. Hummers and ray-bans and extremely fashionable guns. And the other guy is embarassed to be toting around last century's AK-47, the wood-panelled station wagon of the weapon world. Remember when military spin doctors were labelling the Iraqi insurgents "die hard elements of the old regime?" They were "fighting yesterday's war", they were "holding back Iraq's bright future?" Just look at those guns. They're fighting with yesterday's guns. Fashion holds a firm grip over the American perception of reality.
What can I say? In this society, form and function have collapsed together. Lies and reality have common value, depending on which "plays" in the press. This is what academic call 'post-modernism.' I believe it now. There'll be more on the subject soon.

Alright, I'm played out. Hopefully you've gotten a taste of what to expect on this blog; plenty of cynicism, some casual political analysis, nothing too wordy, i hope.
I can't promise it's going to be very reassuring, but, y'know.
...these are interesting times.