Send in the Fremen,

for I should like to beat them to death with the current weather. People who have adapted to survive on a planet where going outside without wearing a rubber suit to reclaim your body's water is fatal would CHOKE AND DIE in the atmosphere we have today. It's just barely above the freezing point outside, temperature-wise, it's raining, and there's snow still on the ground from last week. Atreides, ya might have the toughest bastards in the galaxy when it comes to hand-to-hand combat in a dry climate, but I seriously doubt your Fremen would be able to handle themselves in the kind of mud and ice that's accumulating out there. Hell, we're due to get around an inch of ice - an inch, and that's ice, not snow - in my home county tonight. Huang Laoshi called to cancel my Mandarin class because the school won't risk people coming in with that kind of mess on the ground. Let's see your sand rats handle that! I could take them out with a battalion of Finns on skis if they invaded at this time of year. Your people are very, very specialized and have much endurance, but one good patch of black ice on Interstate 280 and they'd be rolling around in their suits like overturned turtles.

Finns on skis and snowshoes, with rifles and flamethrowers. Even in shields your boys need oxygen exchange across the Holtzmann barrier. Napalm and the business end of a flammenwurfer do a right good job of sucking the O2 away. Have fun trying to get your shufflestepping legions to understand the mechanics of turning the crawler through ninety degrees at 20 kph without hitting the barricade along the side of the road, or trying to get the orni to take off when the entire launching area is a sheet of ice because y'all have forgotten the use of our friend, the salt crystal. My Suomi will ghost in out of the trees and KICK YOUR SORRY OVERBRED ASS. All the presicence in the world can't make up for the fact that there ain't no such thing as snow tires, ice crampons, or good winter boots on Arrakis.

... sorry, it just sort of bubbled up out of nowhere. I've always wondered just a bit how desert warriors were supposed to be the most kick-ass thing in the Galaxy when the Galaxy included worlds that might well have looked like Dagobah or worse. It'd be one thing if Paul used orbital weapons and held planets to blackmail, but the implication was that the Fremen in hand to hand combat were his primary means of overwhielming everybody. Dude. C'mere, got a little surprise for you, it's called Hoth and I stocked it full of angry Finns. Now suck it, breeder boy.

Odd experience yesterday

SCENE: Kean University's New Academic Building, one of the second-floor computer rooms.
TIME: Around 7:45 PM, waiting for class to start.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: My friend from Hebei Province and myself.

Friend: So... you got more classes? Or just this and yesterday?
Me: Just this and yesterday.
Friend: And Chinese! And cooking! (swats at my head)
Me: . o O ( Okay, we've been over this before. I only took three cooking classes on Saturdays. I'm not in an ongoing cooking class. Guess it didn't translate well. ) No, no, Chinese isn't part of Kean. It's not even a college class. I'm taking it somewhere else and it doesn't count.
Friend: Chinese on... Thursday, right?
Me: No. Chinese Wednesday, karate Thursday.
Friend: (blinks several times) Karate?
Me: Yes.
Friend: What's. . . karate?
Me: . o O ( She doesn't speak Japanese and my pronunciation stinks anyway, so...) Japanese hitting people.
Friend: You learning to do this? You know how to hit people?
Me: Well, I'm learning to. I only ever really hurt one guy, and that was by accident.
Friend: (rolls up sleeves) Show me!
Me: What?
Friend: You show me! How strong you are? You hit here, it should not hurt - show me!
Me: . o O ( Holy cats, the kung fu movies are true! )
The movie in question, The Buddhist Fist, has been reviewed most ably by Andrew Borntreger of the United States Marine Corps. I am thinking here of his statement "People in China must be constantly on the alert, because evidently a friendly greeting involves attacking someone to test their kung fu."
Friend: Come on, try-
Me: (brings hand down on friend's forearm, grabs forearm, holds it immobile) That's the bone edge. That's going to hurt a lot more than if I hit the fleshy part. Plus, there's this. (stands up)

I'm a full foot taller than my friend, despite being the same age, and I'm about a hand broader in the shoulder than she is. The fighting foo went by the wayside at that point as she loooooked up and started laughing, but still - for one brief and shining instant I wondered if I'd wandered into some RPG or movie universe, instead of having the RPG or movie universe leak into mine.