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camwynSomeone once wrote a very cranky comment about Nena's song "99 Luftballons" (a 1980's 'eek, nuclear war!' song) to the effect of 'I'm so sure a 'bug in the software' would cause military hardware to mistake a bunch of slow-moving balloons for incoming nuclear missiles'. I like the song's English version myself, mostly for the sound and instrumental bits, but listening to the lyrics enough leaves me wondering about a few things...
Okay, so, this chick and someone else, I assume her boyfriend, buy a package of balloons at a toy store. That's fine. But they then go on to inflate them and let them go. Since the balloons are 'floating in the summer sky', I would like to know where she got the helium tank from.
I would also like to know why she thought releasing ninety-nine balloons at once was a good idea, given that even in the 1980's environmentalists were getting upset about balloon releases. Something about popped balloons getting swallowed by animals, sucked out to sea, things like that. Given that Nena was, as far as I know, a German, and that Germany has a fairly strong Green party, I have to wonder about why this was supposed to be viewed as a cute or acceptable act. That's a lot of latex being released for no good reason, not even a 'write back to this address pls kthx bye' school project.
Furthermore, if the balloons are still travelling in a coherent enough unit to turn up on a military base's radar screen, then she's obviously releasing them somewhere very near the base. This is not the Great Oceangoing Plastic Toy Mass; no group of balloons holds together all that long. One would think that people in general would know better than to send anything large into the sky near an airbase. Hell, we always had to be careful about flying kites on really long strings at Flushing Meadow Park, and that was only in the vicinity of a civilian airport.
So a group of balloons moving at typical balloon speed is grounds for Germany to bomb the living !&*()& out of itself? I mean, who else would be reducing the city in the song to dust? If the military complex in her area is that stupid, they deserve to auto-Darwinate, although it's a pity they didn't take the bloody balloon-releasing bimbo out too. . . Anyway, one would think that the more likely response to an airgoing threat would be to attempt to engage it in the air. And, unless I am greatly mistaken, as of the 1980's it was generally accepted air combat doctrine to be able to, I dunno, see what you were shooting at. So the local military is not only sufficiently stupid as to blow up their own civilian populace based solely on a computer report, but doesn't bother getting visual confirmation. Buh?
Frankly, it's up there with the fact that "From A Distance"- you remember, Bette Midler performed it and it got played to death around the time of Gulf War I- is much more disturbing than I think Bette and the songwriter ever intended. Go on, go find the lyrics - I'll wait...
Okay. Now that you've seen them, tell me something. Things look beautiful from a distance, right? Blue and green world, everyone has enough, no one is in need, no bombs, no guns, no world hunger, etc. "From a distance you look like my friend, even though we are at war. From a distance I just cannot comprehend what all this fighting is for." Etc. This is the view from a distance, according to the verses. According to the chorus, "God is watching us, God is watching us, God is watching us... from a distance."
So if God is watching us from a distance, then God is seeing the view from a distance, right? God is seeing a world where there isn't any hunger or guns or disease, where the environment is still pretty, where everyone looks like friends, and so on. God has no incentive to intervene if the world is that nice. The song, despite what the writer probably intended, is essentially saying "you know what? God is too distanced from everyday human affairs to actually participate in them, so we're worshipping a distant, alienated deity who has no idea why we do the things we do and probably won't bother to come along and help us if we ask."
I haven't been able to listen to that song without cringing since. I cringed before that, too, but that was because the radio stations in my area played it approximately every fifteen minutes during the fscking First Gulf War. yeesh.
Okay, so, this chick and someone else, I assume her boyfriend, buy a package of balloons at a toy store. That's fine. But they then go on to inflate them and let them go. Since the balloons are 'floating in the summer sky', I would like to know where she got the helium tank from.
I would also like to know why she thought releasing ninety-nine balloons at once was a good idea, given that even in the 1980's environmentalists were getting upset about balloon releases. Something about popped balloons getting swallowed by animals, sucked out to sea, things like that. Given that Nena was, as far as I know, a German, and that Germany has a fairly strong Green party, I have to wonder about why this was supposed to be viewed as a cute or acceptable act. That's a lot of latex being released for no good reason, not even a 'write back to this address pls kthx bye' school project.
Furthermore, if the balloons are still travelling in a coherent enough unit to turn up on a military base's radar screen, then she's obviously releasing them somewhere very near the base. This is not the Great Oceangoing Plastic Toy Mass; no group of balloons holds together all that long. One would think that people in general would know better than to send anything large into the sky near an airbase. Hell, we always had to be careful about flying kites on really long strings at Flushing Meadow Park, and that was only in the vicinity of a civilian airport.
So a group of balloons moving at typical balloon speed is grounds for Germany to bomb the living !&*()& out of itself? I mean, who else would be reducing the city in the song to dust? If the military complex in her area is that stupid, they deserve to auto-Darwinate, although it's a pity they didn't take the bloody balloon-releasing bimbo out too. . . Anyway, one would think that the more likely response to an airgoing threat would be to attempt to engage it in the air. And, unless I am greatly mistaken, as of the 1980's it was generally accepted air combat doctrine to be able to, I dunno, see what you were shooting at. So the local military is not only sufficiently stupid as to blow up their own civilian populace based solely on a computer report, but doesn't bother getting visual confirmation. Buh?
Frankly, it's up there with the fact that "From A Distance"- you remember, Bette Midler performed it and it got played to death around the time of Gulf War I- is much more disturbing than I think Bette and the songwriter ever intended. Go on, go find the lyrics - I'll wait...
Okay. Now that you've seen them, tell me something. Things look beautiful from a distance, right? Blue and green world, everyone has enough, no one is in need, no bombs, no guns, no world hunger, etc. "From a distance you look like my friend, even though we are at war. From a distance I just cannot comprehend what all this fighting is for." Etc. This is the view from a distance, according to the verses. According to the chorus, "God is watching us, God is watching us, God is watching us... from a distance."
So if God is watching us from a distance, then God is seeing the view from a distance, right? God is seeing a world where there isn't any hunger or guns or disease, where the environment is still pretty, where everyone looks like friends, and so on. God has no incentive to intervene if the world is that nice. The song, despite what the writer probably intended, is essentially saying "you know what? God is too distanced from everyday human affairs to actually participate in them, so we're worshipping a distant, alienated deity who has no idea why we do the things we do and probably won't bother to come along and help us if we ask."
I haven't been able to listen to that song without cringing since. I cringed before that, too, but that was because the radio stations in my area played it approximately every fifteen minutes during the fscking First Gulf War. yeesh.
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Uhm....
Date: 2003-10-03 08:52 am (UTC)I don't recall the lyrics suggesting an air force was involved at all.
We had something back then called the Soviet Union. They were prone to reacting with panic, though they never went quite as far as to launch missiles. But we came within inches of the scenario in 99 Luftballons several times during the Cold War. Most noteably over a flock of Norwegian geese.
Re: Uhm....
Date: 2003-10-03 09:00 am (UTC)99 Knights of the air
Ride super-high-tech jet fighters
Everyone's a superhero.
Everyone's a Captain Kirk.
With orders to identify.
To clarify and classify.
Scramble in the summer sky.
As 99 red balloons go by.
So, um, despite having orders to identify the threat they still bombed the living crap out of the region? "Base, this is Alpha Foxtrot Tango, we have visual confirmation - it's a bunch of balloons." "It's a Soviet trick! Destroy them!" "Air-to-air missiles away-" "NO! Use the bombs!" "Er?" "The bombs! Blow up the city!" "Um..."
Re: Uhm....
Date: 2003-10-03 09:10 am (UTC)Re: Uhm....
Date: 2003-10-03 09:20 am (UTC)"Sir... um... I'm getting a weird radar blip."
"What is it?"
"Thirty pigeons, I think..."
"So?"
"Moving in perfect formation. At Mach two."
Re: Uhm....
Date: 2003-10-03 09:08 am (UTC)The closest I’ve gotten to an authoritative source is one page referring to Major General Lee Paschall describing the incident in congressional testimony in (I think) 1973, but it leaves out his actual description.
Anyway, how do you define “within inches”?
99
Date: 2003-10-03 08:52 am (UTC)Just curious...
Date: 2003-10-03 09:38 am (UTC)Why? Because the U.S. had an impressive number of military there (still does), and so did the Soviet's, all of which were separated by a little wall (ok, and probalby some barbed wire, and a no man's area).
Now, given the close proximity of everything....
Just curious.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-03 09:45 am (UTC)Tim Cavanagh
"99 Dead Baboons"
(parody of "99 Red Balloons" by Nena)
transcriber unknown
Hey, have a lot of you heard the new song by Nena - "99 Red Balloons"?
You know, I heard the German version of that song first, and I really
liked it. But then I heard the English version, and I was really
surprised to find that what she's singing in English and what she's
singing in German are not even close. Uh, I ended up buying the
record, and I listened very closely to the German version, and I've
come up with a new English translation that I think is really much
more accurate, much closer... I have to admit there are a couple of
lines in this new English version that I'm not real sure about, but I
think it's a much more accurate version. Now this is the new version,
"99 Red Balloons".
Hello Bobby my old friend.
It's good to see you once again.
How's your mother, how's your aunt?
How's your father's skin diving suit?
(That's one of the lines I'm not real sure about, but it goes something like
this.)
I've got something you should see
Back at my place; come with me.
I've got some brand new furnishings,
Plus 99 dead baboons
99 dead baboons
Sitting in my living room.
Not too functional it seems,
But quite a conversation piece.
This one's Jake, that one's Dinah,
There's big Ned in my recliner.
No it's not a lazy boy.
Can't you see it's a dead baboon?
Dead baboons, dead baboons.
Dead baboons, dead baboons.
How they got here I'm not sure;
Woke up one day, there they were.
Luckily I've got a lease
Allowing pets if they're deceased.
I'm just thankful they're not apes,
'Cuz apes would clash with the drapes.
No more napkins at my parties -
Wipe your hands on a dead baboon.
Dead baboons, dead baboons.
Dead baboons, dead baboons.
Dead baboons are lots of fun;
Playin' water balloons I've always won.
You can keep your dead giraffes and swine,
I'll take dead baboons every time.
There's just one problem I have found:
It's finding Purina Dead Baboon Chow.
But what a happy snorkelling device...
(That's another line I'm not real sure about, but it's somethin' like
that)
With 99 dead baboons.
Dead baboons, dead baboons.
Dead baboons, dead baboons.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-03 11:07 am (UTC)