Pet Peeves: On Smart Phones, Kampfgruppe Peiper, and the Daily News
Wow, it's been a huge week. Crazy stuff. I don't want you guys (all 13 of you) to think I've abandoned this blog. Nothing could be further from the truth. There's just a lot of exciting stuff going on in my life. Exciting and time-consuming stuff. Unfortunately, it is also stuff that I can't yet announce, so... just stay tuned. I will, however, throw down a couple of pet peeves this morning.
Smart phones: Look up, people. Smart phones are awesome, we all use them to navigate, get news (see below), text, etc. But there is a time and place. Put them down at meals, enjoy your company, that goes double for every twenty-something dude I see eating with a beautiful young lady. Here's some advice, guys. Hang on that young lady's words. Live your life. One last kick at this lifeless pony: I don't want to see us old-timers nodding sagely when we read this. We are as
bad as anyone with the smart phones, maybe even doubly so. We have the power to teach our kids to put them down.
SS soldiers on the cover of American war games: Really!? Recently bought a Battle of the Bulge type game off of eBay. The cover features soldiers from Kampfgruppe Peiper. For those who are unaware, soldiers from Peiper's contingent murdered 80 American soldiers at Malmedy, Belgium on December 17th, 1944. The Americans had surrendered. The German soldiers lined them up and machine gunned them. Seems odd to glorify these SS on the box of a game.
News: Why we sweat the news (or at least what we are fed for news), I'll never understand. I guess it is so we will seem "well informed" to our friends. Want to seem well-informed to me? Read a book, play a game, see a good movie, learn a song. That's the stuff I want to talk about, not 50 nose-picking senators sweating a team mascot.
Maybe I'll see you tomorrow.
Mark H. Walker is the author of World at War: Revelation, a creepy, military action, with a love story, alternate history, World War Three novel thing. It's available from Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing right here. Just $3.99. Give it a try. What the hell?
Smart phones: Look up, people. Smart phones are awesome, we all use them to navigate, get news (see below), text, etc. But there is a time and place. Put them down at meals, enjoy your company, that goes double for every twenty-something dude I see eating with a beautiful young lady. Here's some advice, guys. Hang on that young lady's words. Live your life. One last kick at this lifeless pony: I don't want to see us old-timers nodding sagely when we read this. We are as
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| G.I.'s murdered at Malmedy. Lest we think Memorial Day is just national BBQ day. |
SS soldiers on the cover of American war games: Really!? Recently bought a Battle of the Bulge type game off of eBay. The cover features soldiers from Kampfgruppe Peiper. For those who are unaware, soldiers from Peiper's contingent murdered 80 American soldiers at Malmedy, Belgium on December 17th, 1944. The Americans had surrendered. The German soldiers lined them up and machine gunned them. Seems odd to glorify these SS on the box of a game.
News: Why we sweat the news (or at least what we are fed for news), I'll never understand. I guess it is so we will seem "well informed" to our friends. Want to seem well-informed to me? Read a book, play a game, see a good movie, learn a song. That's the stuff I want to talk about, not 50 nose-picking senators sweating a team mascot.
Maybe I'll see you tomorrow.
Mark H. Walker is the author of World at War: Revelation, a creepy, military action, with a love story, alternate history, World War Three novel thing. It's available from Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing right here. Just $3.99. Give it a try. What the hell?
Comments
Peiper later talked about how he simply had no way of handling these prisoners. His "solution" was as lousy as his black heart turned out to be, but it's kinda hard for me to sit back and really judge guys who have been to Hell and back. I'm guessing that whatever humanity he had was burned out of him somewhere around Kharkov in '43.
The more heinous war becomes the less likely we will be to indulge in it. It was war. Peiper did what he thought was necessary to complete his mission and serve his country. He've he suceeded in his mission and turned the tide of the war by capturing Antwerp and Germany had overcome - he'd have been considered a hero by the Germans and the loss of 80 US soldiers would be a mere barely notable footnote of history instead of the oft remember atrocity it was.