Struggles With Ikea

Instructions with words? Bah, amateurish. A real company can tell you how to build a rocket with Bazooka Joe style imagery.

I like Ikea.  I know that makes me a slave to commercialism and consumerism and possibly communism (if you go by the average American’s assessment of Sweden’s “socialism”), but I keep going back to the big yellow and blue box in Burlington.

I accept that I’m buying furniture that is mostly paper and wood fibre and poor quality glue.  I know that I will get a blister on my thumb from trying to drive a 6-inch bolt with nothing more than an Allan key.  There is no question that the instructions will be like trying to follow a Japanese No play while someone is jabbing you in one eye with a chopstick.

But it’s cheap and convenient and most of the stuff fits in the back of my Corolla due to the wonders of “flat-packing” (a term that makes me think of stick people roughly doing things to each other (snicker)).

Lately, however, I’m getting the feeling that Ikea is extending too far beyond its original mandate of cheap, affordable, flat-packed (giggle) furniture and accessories.  I say this because I just installed an entire Ikea floor at my in-law’s house.

Yeah, a floor.

Ikea makes flooring now, and not just tastefully abstract throw rugs with names like “Kaarpit” and “Bürber.”  No, this was a stack of 10 boxes of “Tündra,” some kind of plastic/wood/adamantium laminate (available in 7 different colours) that the people of Sweden think is easy enough to install that they can sell it without written instructions.

Like most Ikea products, there is a brief safety blurb written in 29 different languages, usually going along the lines of, “Please do not eat this product or use the plastic bag as a sheet set for your infant child.”  After that, you had to puzzle your way through 63 cryptic line drawings.  I now know how Young and Champollion felt when first tackling the Rosetta Stone, except that their stone tablet didn’t require the following tools (displayed visually): a hammer, a bone saw, a power drill, and something that looks like a universal joint from a ’96 Dodge Caravan.

I think that my favourite drawing is still the first one, where you were instructed (I think) to determine the dominate direction of the light entering the room, so that the laminate pieces could be oriented lengthwise to the rising or setting of the sun.  Now, I’m no flooring expert, but that seems like the material is just a touch too environmentally sensitive.  Do I have to coo at it in a reassuring tone to keep it from getting depressed while I lay it?  Do I have to play up-tempo classic rock when I sweep?

And Ikea needs to make up its mind about what an exclamation mark (!) means.  In one picture it appeared to be a warning about hammering too hard while using the “Behnt” metal assembly tool (the hammer with small squiggles got a checkmark while the hammer with large squiggles got the exclamation (!)), and then in the next picture it seemed to be an encouragement to take your bone saw to the delicate fibreboard tongue and groove system.  I appreciate the subtlety of a continuum of values, from “Please Dö (!)” to “Dammit, Døn’t (!),” but not when I’m trying to understand how to snap together things on which people will have to walk, ideally without injury.

I’m sorry, Ikea.  I just don’t think you should go beyond anything more difficult than a “Billy” bookcase.  I see that you have appliances for sale now too, which makes me worry that when my in-laws buy a new fridge, I’m going to be stuck with a series of wordless cartoons cheerfully trying to tell me how to inject the R134a refrigerant into the reservoir using my “Hÿpo” tool kit.

How One Might Better the Act of Writing, and Such… (Part II)

For an article intent on convincing us that sloths only ever hang underneath branches and never climb like monkeys, this thing has a distinctly acrobatic simian look to it.

Here are further musings, assumptions, and outright appropriations of the wants and habits of the lowly sloth, courtesy of Parley’s Panorama: or Curiosities of Nature and Art, History and Biography (1849).

It must be observed, that the sloth does not hang head downward like the vampyre. When asleep, he supports himself on a branch, parallel to the earth. He first seizes the branch with one arm, and then with the other; and after that brings up both his legs, one by one, to the same branch, so that all four are in a line; he seems perfectly at rest in this position. Now had he a tail, he would be at a loss to know what to do with it, in this position. Were he to draw it up, with his legs, it would interfere with them; and were he to let it hang down, it would become the sport of the winds. Thus his deficiency of tail is a benefit to him. It is merely an apology for a tail, scarcely exceeding an inch and a half in length.

First of all, what tract on comparative zoology has ever used a vampire as an example?  I can only assume that they meant a vampire bat.  Now every time I see a sloth, I will be telling myself, “Remember, Nick: not a vampire.  You don’t have to fear that it will feast on your blood tonight.”

And how does one tell whether a sloth is “at rest” or agitated.  They’re sloths.  They don’t move too quickly in either state.  It’s in the name.

Finally, the tail.  The author has no business judging the “apology for a tail” on the thing.  Does size really matter to the sloth?  Do you think that sloths spend nearly as much time obsessing over and comparing the size of their appendages the way that we do?  And how the bloody hell do you know that a sloth with a tail wouldn’t know what to do with it?  This writer may have created a new pseudoscientific field that I will call “Speculo-Anthropomorphizing Biological Crapbaggery.”

There is a saying among the Indians of Guiana that, when the wind blows, the sloth begins to travel. In calm weather, he remains tranquil, probably not liking to cling to the brittle extremity of the branches, lest they should break with him, in passing from one tree to another; but as soon as the wind rises, the branches of the neigh­boring trees become interwoven, and then the sloth seizes hold of them, and pursues his journey in safety. There is seldom an entire day of calm in these forests. The trade-wind generally sets in about ten o’clock in the morning, and thus the sloth may set off after breakfast and get a con­siderable way before dinner. He travels at a good round pace; and, were you to see him pass from tree to tree, you would never think of calling him a sloth.

I believe the actual saying by the Indians of Guiana is, “When stupid whitey in his pith helmet arrives, it’s time to start making up stories to appear more quaint, thus luring him into a sense of smug cultural superiority before we poison-arrow him and send him downriver tied to a log.”

“One day, as we were crossing the Essequibo,” says Waterton, “I saw a large two-toed sloth on the ground, upon the bank. How he got there, nobody could tell. The Indian said he had never surprised a sloth in such a situation before; he would hardly have come there to drink, for both above and below the place, the branches of the trees touched the water, and afforded him an easy and safe access to it. Be this as it may, though the trees were not above twenty yards from him, he could not make his way through the sand time enough to escape before we landed. As soon as we got up to him, he threw himself upon his back, and defended himself in gallant style, with his fore legs. ‘Come, poor fellow,’ said I to him, ‘if thou hast got into a hobble to-day, thou shalt not suffer for it; -I’II take no advantage of thee in misfortune.  The forest is large enough both for thee and me to rove in; go thy ways up above, and enjoy thyself in these endless wilds; it is more than probable thou wilt never have another interview with man; so fare thee well.’

“On saying this, I took up a large stick, which was lying there, held it for him to hook on, and then conveyed him to a high and stately mora. He ascended with wonderful rapidity, and in about a minute he was almost at the top of the tree. He now went off in a side direction, and caught hold of the branch of a neighboring tree; he then proceeded towards the heart of the forest. I stood looking on, lost in amazement at his singular mode of progress. I followed him with my eye, till the intervening, branches closed in betwixt us; and then I lost sight forever of the two-toed sloth. I was going to add, that I never saw a sloth take to his heels in such earnest; but the expression will not do, for the sloth has no heels!”

Who the hell is Waterton?  Did I miss something about the man earlier on in the article, or is this a name that was tossed about in 1849 like everyone knew him, like Ellen, or Oprah, or Sting?

I suppose he is a forward-thinking man for that age, since I think most white explorers would have shot the sloth and then had it mounted into a threatening pose for a display in their den.  He is incredibly condescending to it, though.  My guess is that the sloth dropped a contact lens and was scrounging around for it when “Waterton” showed up and “rescued” it.  Now the poor thing gets headaches every time it reads.

Probably the greatest travesty in the whole mess is the thought that there are probably thousands of people that have had to listen to this story when Waterton got drunk on brandy and imperialism.  I can picture them all standing around in the great room, women in bustles, men in coats with tails, while he reached the climax of it for the third time that evening:

“I was going to add,” he bellows, face red as a colonial officer’s jacket, “that I never saw a sloth take to his heels in such earnest;” (dramatic pause held about three beats too long) “but the expression will not do, (fnar snicker fnar) for the sloth has no heels!”

“Ha ha.  Good one, Waterton.  Say, is that the time?”

How One Might Better the Act of Writing, and Such… (Part I)

Parley's assesment of the lowly sloth. I have a feeling that no one involved in the writing of this article ever saw a sloth in real life.

My mother gave me a wonderful book by Orson Scott Card called How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy.  While I am always excited to read anything by Card (since Ender’s Game is still one of my absolute favourite novels, and has been since I was 11 years old), there is still something a bit backhanded about getting a book like that.  (Imagine how you would feel if someone handed you The Big Book of Oral Hygiene.)

But reviewing such a book here (with my limited authorial clout) would be both presumptuous and dull.  I will offer a counterpoint in the form of another excerpt from Parley’s Panorama: or Curiosities of Nature and Art, History and Biography (1849).  Consider it a “How Not to Write Stuff” lesson.

The Sloth

This singular animal, which is confined to South America, is destined by nature to be produced, to live, and to die, in the trees; and to do justice to him, naturalists must examine him in his upper element. He is a scarce and solitary animal. He inhabits remote and gloomy forests, where snakes take up their abode, and where cruelly­ stinging ants and scorpions, and swamps, and innumerable thorny shrubs and bushes, obstruct the steps of civilized man. This extraordinary creature appears to us forlorn and miserable, ill put together, and totally unfit to enjoy the blessings which have been so bountifully given to the rest of animated nature. It has no soles to its feet, and it is evidently ill at ease, when it tries to move on the ground; and it then looks up in your face, with a countenance that seems to say, “Have pity on me, for I am in pain and sorrow!”

Maybe it was just the one sloth that seemed so miserable and miserable.  Maybe he was having a bad day.  I’ve seen sloths at the zoo, and none of them look clinically depressed that I could tell.  I also take offence to the idea that the thorny shrubs and bushes are intentionally obstructing the “steps of civilized man.”

And since when are all the other animals “bountifully” blessed?  Hyenas and camels are way uglier than sloths.  And if you are going to tell me that a platypus hasn’t been “ill put together,” I’m going to call you a liar.

Finally, I would love to know how the author of this article knows what a grounded sloth is trying to say.  Unless, of course, he is Dr. Doolittle.  I’m inclined to think that the sloth is more likely trying to say something like, “What are you looking at?  When I get back up in this tree, you better keep your mouth shut when you look up, ‘cause I’m gonna poop on you for staring.  Loser.”

The sloth, in its wild state, spends its whole life in the trees, and never leaves them but through force or accident. An all-ruling Providence has ordained man to tread on the surface of the earth, the eagle to soar in the expanse of the skies, and the monkey and squirrel to inhabit the trees; still, these may change their relative situa­tions, without feeling much inconvenience; but the sloth is doomed to spend his whole life in the trees; and, what is more extraordinary, not upon the branches, like the squirrel and the monkey, but under them. He moves suspended from the branch, he rests suspended from it, and lie sleeps sus­pended from it. To enable him to do this, he must have a very different formation from that of any other known quadruped.

That’s right.  Man walks (or drives).  Eagles fly.  Monkeys and squirrels climb.  Any switching around of these roles is a slap in the very face of God.  Think about that the next time you board a 747.

And how nitpicky a naturalist do you have to be to draw a hard line between the “above-branchers” and the “below-branchers.”  “Arboreal” must be far too loose a term for you there, expert.

Hence his seemingly bungled conformation is at once accounted for; and, in lieu of the sloth leading a painful life and entailing a melancholy and miserable existence on its progeny, it is but fair to surmise that it en­joys life just as much as any other animal, and that its extraordinary formation and singular habits, are but further proofs to engage us to admire the wonderful works of Omnipotence!

So we’re now blaming the sloth for passing on its wretched existence to its offspring?  Oh wait, we now can tell that it is neither “melancholy” nor “miserable.”  Turns out that hanging under branches is actually a peach of an existence and a miracle of creation, even if its “conformation” is still “bungled.”

I’m confused: does this author want us to think that God fouled up a few of the uglier animals (hyenas, camels, anteaters) or not?  Just when he gets finished telling us that this is the Chrysler Reliant K of the animal kingdom, the sloth is suddenly a bright shining arrow to Providence.  I feel that it is a less moving symbol than either the lamb or the lion.  After all, I have never seen a sloth stitched into a quilted wall hanging at church.  I saw a hippo on one, but I think that might have been a mistake.

Wednesday:  How One Might Better the Act of Writing, and Such…  (Part II)

Vampire Alternatives

Knowing that I will likely receive a lot of flack from this, I’m just going to throw these out for those of us not involved in the Twilight / New Moon hysteria that has taken over what was once an otherwise sane and discerning general population.  You are probably already familiar with these t-shirts:

For those who like their men pasty, controlling, and one accidental nosebleed away from marital violence.

For those who like their men hairy, aggressive, and prone to piddling on the carpet.

As an option, please consider the following:

Say it loud and proud.

Lestat beats Edward. Armand beats Jacob. Even Louis de Point du Lac could take out the Volturi single-handedly, and he’s a wuss.

I’m pasty, skinny, and rarely seen in direct sunlight. Does that make me a catch?

The original. The best.

For those that take offense to ham-fisted names that couldn’t be any worse if Stephenie Meyer had called her “Stalking Victim.”

When there’s no one left to like, love the ones that everyone loves to hate.

Bread, Babies, and Biological Imperatives

I am Doctor Frankenstein. My counter is his workbench. My yeast is his lightning. My flour is his... severed human remains, I guess. My bread is his monster.

There is bread dough rising on my countertop.  I made it by hand.  I do not use a breadmeaker.  I do not use a mixer.  I take flour, honey, yeast, salt, and water, and I mash it together and bake it until it makes bread.  The whole process takes anywhere from 4 to 6 hours, depending on the type of bread, and it inevitably makes a complete mess of the kitchen.

Why bother?

There isn’t much to pick between my bread and the artisan stuff from the Italian bakery down the street.  It might be marginally cheaper to make it, but not if you factor in electricity and labour.  I guess I have the option of personalizing the loaves, like making them into animal shapes (my giraffe always looks like an amoeba, and if you can tell my three toed sloth loaf from my two toed sloth loaf, you have a better gastro-zoological eye than mine).  I can also add random things in from the fridge to spice it up (the pickle bread was good, but the gravy bread was fantastic).

And there is always the brag factor.  There are few better feelings than proudly declaring that the misshapen lump you just handed to someone looks that way because you made by hand, not because the bakery hired a man with no arms to meet their disability requirements.  Since no one seems to make bread anymore, it has that certain “lost art” cachet that fits in the same category as being able to press your own paper and making your own ink by surprising squids.

In spite of those things, it still doesn’t actually make much sense to bake my own bread.  It eats up an entire day, ties me to the stove (or at least hearing distance to the timer), requires a solid half-hour of cleanup, and I rarely get to eat the bread myself anyway (it always ends up as my contribution to a dinner elsewhere).

Again, why bother?

I think that my bread shares its reason for existence with most other things that I do.  It is like my writing, my drawing, my building, sculpting, or assembling.  As a man, I must make things.  I must create things from other things.  I must take things that once looked like nothing special and make them things that make women swoon and men nod appreciatively (we don’t often swoon).

My wife has a person growing in her.  It is a very small person right now, but it is definitely a person.  Her heartbeat makes its heartbeat work.  Her belly feeds it.  Her warmth keeps it from getting cold.  My wife is making something more intricate and delicate and amazing than anything I could hope to create in all my years on this earth.  I bake bread and write worlds and draw monsters in a desperate attempt to add something infinitesimally small to creation.

All the while, my wife is creating life.

Dear Bad Driver…

Well, I guess it isn't "double parking" per se...

Dear Bad Driver,

My name is Nick.  I was driving behind you in Burlington on Saturday, so you probably didn’t see me, since you would have had to use your mirrors.

My wife and I were discussing how Burlington is a dangerous place.  Now, it isn’t because of its proximity to African Lion Safari and all the large predators that it keeps.  Nor is it the recent infiltration of popular street gangs (the Crips now control all the big box stores east of Guelph Line, while the Bloods prefer the more eclectic west side, particularly the Indigo and Michael’s craft supplies).  Rather, we were discussing all of the congested, poorly signed, narrowly laned, streets.

Now, I am not about to absolve you of your personal stupidity (we’ll get to that soon enough), but I do have to hand some of the fault to Burlington itself.  It’s as though they built the road infrastructure for exactly half of the expected traffic on a Saturday afternoon.

Yuppies come in their BMW crossovers, looking for leather accent pillows for their mini-mansions and knitted yak-hair sweaters for their dogs.  Oakville suburbanites, desperate to escape their never-ending fields of townhouses, hit up the Ikea for all the Billy bookcases and “fÿrgeni” hot plates they can fit in their Honda Insights.  And the country folk will make their way down to the Walmart to get a new Nascar-based outfit for a fancy night out at Burger King.

Now even someone as stupid as you, Bad Driver, can see that things will get busy on shopping days.

But does that excuse your behaviour?  As my wife and I watched, you decided to drift from your narrow lane into the one to your right, a lane that was occupied by another vehicle.  Now, everyone has a lapse in concentration from time to time, but did any of the following things catch your attention before you lovingly caressed the other vehicle with your passenger-side door?

• Those white lines painted on the road (they were painted there to show you where your space ends and the next person’s begins, much like the space between couch cushions).

• The two-ton metal object at 3:00 o’clock (or are you one of those people that can’t tell time unless it’s digital?).

• My anxious honking (that was the noise behind you, barely audible as you and your passenger sang a rousing duet of “The Girl is Mine”).

• The sound of your side mirror snapping off against the car next to you (that’s usually the point where people head back into their proper lane).

• The panicky shouting of the people in the car you are gently pushing into the curb (believe it or not, they don’t really enjoy being forcibly merged).

It would seem to me that you should at that point accept your stupidity and pull over to assess the damage that you have caused.  But you didn’t do that, did you?  No, you instead had your passenger roll down his window and yell at the driver of the other car for getting in their way.

And then you drove off.

Now, I could have called the police, since you were leaving the scene of an accident, or I could have written down your license plate number and sent it to Crime Stoppers, but I chose instead to do the right thing.

While you were waiting to turn left a few moments later, you may have noticed a string of profane, insinuating remarks Dopplering past you.

That was me.

All the best in your continuing quest to endanger the lives of everyone else on the road,

Nick Stirling

Ps.  That last bit that you might have missed as I drove past you was “…with a big spiky stick covered in red ants and salt.”

The Monsters in My Head

This image includes the following characters: Big Pinky, Spidros, Lurkin' Furkin', Smokey Liza, Lord Swineface Pottery Barn the III, Swizzlestick, Gary Gapface, Tentacular Bob Jones, Venus Venus, Tiny Spazmouth, Asymetrical Clawhand, Torch, Flappy Flapperson, Allan, Freyr Fawnfoot, Hairy Blue and Purple Midget Hippo, Jackaconda, Ignatius Invertado, and xyhhh6!tppt. I will give a prize to anyone that can match up all the names to the pictures.

“I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.”

Richard Wright, American Hunger, 1977

You try to explain why you do it, and you can’t.  You want to believe that you have been put in this position to be a writer, but those echoes are so faint that you’re not sure that they are even there.  E. L. Doctorow says that “writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia,” and you fully believe him when you read that.

When you write, it is a declaration that you will give public forum to the voices that cry out in your head.  Rather than silencing them (the socially expected response to their presence), you encourage them, ask them to talk amongst themselves, poll them for settings and plot devices, label them, categorize them, exalt some and demean others.  You give them license to live.

And those who know you and forgive your gross inadequacies such that they call you a friend, those ones perhaps wonder why the stories you tell them are so wild in detail, so rich in metaphor, so filled with characters that seem ready to leap into the room and drink your wine.  They wonder why your mood is so fragile and your highs and lows so bright and so dark.

They wonder, but there is nothing you can tell them of the need to sit before a blank page, your mind roiling and desperate to pour out its stories before the voices take you over completely.

If any of this applies to you, you have my sympathy.

Waiting to Meet Baby

Baby was not cooperating yesterday.  The doctor was trying to get a good look at him/her with the ultrasound and he/she wouldn’t stop moving.  First kicks, then punches, then something resembling a jump, and an attempted barrel roll that left him/her facing the wrong way for a decent picture.  The end result was a printout of something that looks vaguely like a smudge on a field of carbon paper:

Ultrasound at 13 weeks with an uncooperative baby. The smear in the middle of the page is either the baby or a pirate ghost. You decide.

Like my wife, Baby is stubborn about getting pictures taken.

But we’ve been spoiled so far with seeing Baby grow.  Because we have been going to a fertility clinic for the last six months, Erin has had many an ultrasound done on her.  It’s all part of the process of trying to “help things along” with getting pregnant, something we have needed since it took us some 17 months of trying to get it right.  While many people would have to wait until 16 weeks in for an ultrasound, we had our first at 5 weeks.

At five weeks, Baby looks like this:

Ultrasound at 5 weeks. Baby is bounded by two small X's and looks like nothing more than a bean.

If you are having trouble spotting anything, it’s because Baby is 2.7 mm long in this picture.  He/she is nothing more than a smudge with an itty-bitty heartbeat.  Even so, it was very exciting to see that little heart pumping away, somewhere deep inside my wife.

At 10 weeks, Baby looked like this:

Ultrasound at 10 weeks. Baby or Munny?

He/she spazzed-out a bit for us, then settled down so that we could see the growing heartbeat, the two halves of the brain, the arms and legs wiggling away.  At least he/she was starting to look something like an actual tiny person.  My friend Kate pointed out that it also looked something like a Munny:

Was the Munny designed after itty-bitty babies? We might never know.

I think she’s right.

At twelve weeks, Baby looked like this:

Ultrasound at 12 weeks. Baby in profile, tucked in for a nap.

Again, Baby was not very cooperative.  The ultrasound technician was trying to measure some things on him/her and Baby was having none of it.  It was just more jumping and kicking until settling back down in an inaccessible bit of my wife’s internal anatomy.

I think I’ll just have to accept that Baby will likely be stubborn and uncooperative.  Both of Baby’s parents are known for their digging in of heels, and I have a feeling that it runs deeply in our family.

And I know that I should be treasuring this time right now.  I have been told (by many that know all about it) that I should be getting my rest in now, since I won’t be getting any of it when Baby gets here, and that I should enjoy my free time, and that I should not wish for these days to go by any faster.

But if I could speed up time and meet Baby face-to-face tomorrow, I would do it in a heartbeat.

Bench Pressing and The Undying Need to Teach

It’s been quite a while since I have taught anyone anything.  My innate need to educate is causing me to lose sleep these days.  This is the result.

I should also point out that this stems from numerous arguments I have had on YouTube where people fall all over themselves praising bodybuilders and powerlifters, while I tell them that they are idiots.  I could have just posted more comments of 500 characters or less, but this seems more forceful.

Hearing the Bomber

The Mighty Lancaster Bomber. This one is at the Aviation Museum in Ottawa.

We had just moved in to our first home the first time that it happened.  I was in the kitchen, marveling at the wonders of counter space (our old apartment had four square inches of it, if you included the top of the microwave).  Because we back on to a highway, I was getting used to the sound of the occasional air brake or police siren, but the thrumming roar that suddenly rolled over the house was unlike anything I had heard before.

Because men are stupid and tend to run in the direction of loud, scary noises (instead of running away from them), I rushed outside to see what was going on.  A moment later, a massive, four-engine bomber sailed overhead, low enough to spot the markings on its fuselage.  When it had passed by, I quickly ran downstairs to look it up in my warplane reference guides (nerd!), and incorrectly identified as a Liberator (it was a good guess at the time).

My wife and I soon realized that this was the famous Lancaster bomber making its rounds.

One of the last operational Lancasters in the world is kept about ten minutes from my house, at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum.  It was the dominant heavy bomber of World War II, a massive workhouse that was the only plane large enough to carry the 22,000 lb “Grand Slam” bombs needed to bust through concrete fortifications like U-boat pens.

The really cool part of the above specifications is the word “operational.”  The thing is still flying more than six decades after the war ended.  And its flight path goes directly over my house.

Since then, the Lancaster has become a common sight at my place.  Most weekends it passes over at least once, always at low altitude, the four huge Merlin engines throttling away like the wrath of God.  My wife has often commented on how loud they must have been when they flew, hundreds at a time, over Germany; she and I try to imagine the fear one would have experienced knowing that there was nowhere to run as the sky filled from horizon to horizon.

It’s passing overhead right now, no doubt part of the Remembrance Day ceremonies in the area.  There are about four other vintage planes flying about as well.  I love living in Ancaster.

In his Zero Punctuation review of the WWII game “Medal of Honour: Airborne,” Yahtzee Croshaw asks the question of why we (specifically the US, but equally true of Canada and the UK) keep harping on the Second World War.  “Well, probably because that was the last war in which they did any good, when they had a clear win over an unambiguously evil villain that posed a genuine threat.”  And while I would never minimize the contribution of soldiers in any other war, I do understand what he’s saying.  It’s part of the reason why so much of today’s focus is on the last World War.

The other reason is that there are so few people left to tell us what it was really like to be part of that conflict.  As a child, I took it for granted that I could hear about the war first-hand.  My children (one on the way right now) will likely never have that opportunity.  Those veterans will be gone.  The ones that are left will be the products of wars that were far less clear-cut in their goals, far more manipulative and politically driven than global mobilization against fascist expansion.

I wonder what my child will hear from the veterans that tell them stories on November 11.