Promoting Lee Goldberg's THE WALK

Lee Goldberg has been very good to me lately. I've been privileged with receiving review copies of some of his works, particularly the JURY series of action-revenge novels and his new periodical pulp project, THE DEAD MAN. In return, he's been sure to post snippets of my reviews on his own web page, and as a result the traffic to PMP has always spiked around these review releases.

So to give Lee a hand, I'm passing along to my readers this promotion for Lee's book THE WALK:

"It was two years ago today that, at Joe Konrath's urging, I began my "Kindle Experiment" by making my out-of-print book THE WALK available as an ebook. I've sold close to 20,000 copies of THE WALK since then...and to celebrate, and in a blatant to attempt to propel THE WALK into the top 100 on Amazon for the first time, I am selling the book for just 99 cents for the next week.

But to make the offer even sweeter, and to promote my original ebook series THE DEAD MAN, anyone who emails me proof of purchase (at lee@leegoldberg.com) will get a free copy of FACE OF EVIL. That's two books for just 99 cents.

To pull this promotion off, though, I am going to need your help. I would really appreciate if it you would spread the word about this sale and, if you are really feeling generous, say a few kinds words about THE WALK and/or THE DEAD MAN series, too.

Here's a link to the eBook version on Amazon's web site.

Summer Action Adventure Movie: ZULU (1964)

Work has slowed down around here, and the weather has heated up. I actually had quite a good day at work yesterday, and managed to get out an hour early. After picking up dinner makings and some cold beer (Dos Equis is common here at Chez Badelaire in the summer months) I found myself flipping through my Netflix instant queue, and I found the perfect movie to kick off a good summer:


If you're too lazy to look up the Battle of Rorke's Drift, I'm not going to do it for you, and if you've never heard of it, then you're simply rubbish. So off you go then, lads and lasses, and no coming back until you've schooled yourself right proper. I'll be enjoying a pint over here until you finish.

Returned, have you? Brilliant.

To me, this is one of the great classic war movies. It deals with a relatively small, unimportant British military action, but it is really the stuff legends are made of, as attested to the 11 Victoria Crosses and other medals handed out to the survivors of the battle. The British killed or wounded close to a thousand Zulus, while taking around three dozen casualties of their own. And let's not forget they are fighting in some pretty snappy duds.

And for those of you who might be cringing at the idea of a war movie that may boil down into "white guys killing black guys", ZULU treats the antagonists very well. Yes, many of them die in droves, but the British are very respectful of their enemies, and the Zulus as a people and a culture are handled with a good deal of honor and respect. No stupid, bloodthirsty savages here; just proud warriors looking to prove themselves against a worthy enemy.

There are a number of clips out there, but some are of pretty poor quality. Here's a very good looking synopsis of the film:

Russian Filmmaker's COMMANDO Remake

One of these things is, well, EXACTLY like the other.

Apparently a Russian filmmaker has made a remake of Commando, almost shot-for-shot, as an homage to the original film.

Amusing that this was done when, apparently, someone else is looking to remake this action classic. But here's a bit more chatter about the Russian remake, also known as "D-Day" for some reason.

Whatever - I'll watch it when I can get my hands on it. I loved the original, and Russian filmmakers are a buncha nutjobs, so this can only end well...

Age of Heroes Film Portrays Ian Flemings 30 Commando

Apparently this movie landed in UK theaters (or is it "theatres"?) this week. It's a (very) fictionalized account of the formation and operation of 30 Commando. Although the junket for the movie keeps talking about how it is the "model for all modern special operations", we should keep in mind that Durnford-Slater's 3 Commando was created only weeks after the Dunkirk invasion, a year before 30 Commando.

What 30 Commando did during the war is to advance ahead of conventional units and gather intelligence, particularly maps, codes, ciphers, enemy intelligence documents and dossiers, the sorts of things that conventional troops might ignore or, worse, simply destroy. In this respect they are a lot like modern small unit special operations teams, such as the teams sent into Iraq during the first and second wars to pinpoint targets, observe and report troop movements, and so forth. Intelligence operations, rather than combat operations.

This is 30 Commando's connection to writer Ian Fleming; as a Naval Intelligence Officer, he would pick targets likely to possess valuable intelligence assets, and have elements of 30 Commando attached to conventional units that would then strike (or be striking regardless) those targets, allowing 30 Commando (at this point known as "30 Assault Unit") to snatch up all the valuable intelligence and send it back for analysis. The movie trailer seems to make it out as if Fleming is the creator or leader of the unit, which is wrong; he was merely the man (or rather, one of the men) who picked their targets and planned out their operations.

One of the more pondered and notorious activities attributed to units like 30 Commando (it is not unique in its operations by 1944, with the creation of the even more notorious "T-Force") is the seizing of German technology secrets; many conspiracy theorists and speculators think units like 30 Commando and the Target Force procured top-secret Nazi "Super-Weapons" and other advanced technologies before the Russians could get to them, or before the Germans could hide or destroy them. Apparently, Fleming wrote his character James Bond into such a unit during World War 2; a suitable unit for a spy who would go on to deal with all manner of technologically advanced villains over the course of his career as an agent.

In any event, here is the trailer for Age of Heroes (2011):

What WW2 Allied Weapon Is Right For You?

Over the last month or so I've been reading and watching a lot of World War Two material; The Sergeant series of action novels, plus HBO's The Pacific and I'm re-watching Band of Brothers, as well as watching The Longest Day and other WW2 movies. In addition, I've been working on and off on a pen-and-paper role-playing game focusing on WW2 Commando operations.

This has gotten me thinking about WW2 personal arms, everything from pistols and knives up to light machine guns, bazookas, mortars, and the like, and what I would want to carry with me were I to find myself suddenly fighting in Europe or the Pacific theater. Would I want to be a rifleman, a machine gunner, a mortar man, a sniper, or some other kind of combat trooper, and what would I want to carry with me?

Considering all the Allied weapons, what would probably suit me the most is the M1 Carbine. It's compact, light weight, fires a reasonably powerful cartridge that has good range and accuracy within "combat distances" (~200 meters), it's semi-automatic and has a fifteen round magazine capacity, and you can carry a lot of ammunition without a lot of weight or bulk. I don't see myself as a "in the teeth of it" sort of soldier, so a weapon that provides me with a lot of defensive and modest offensive firepower with minimal encumbrance appeals to me.

So, what WW2 Allied weapon is right for you? Do you see yourself as an SMG-toting commando or hard-bitten NCO, or the sort who carries an M1 Garand on the front lines? Are you lurking about in a sniper's nest with a scoped SMLE or 1903 Springfield, or are you laying down some firepower with a BAR or Bren Gun? Or perhaps you'd like something a little more exotic, like a 12-gauge combat shotgun or the DeLisle Commando Carbine? Let's hear your choices and the reasons why.

Book Review: The Sergeant #9 Hammerhead by Gordon Davis

Just a quick Monday morning book review here, folks. I read Hammerhead in about two days, very fast, lots of action, and a fitting wrap-up for the series, although it's a shame that the books don't see us through to the end of the European battlefront.

In this book, Master Sergeant C.J. Mahoney makes it back to his division after taking a detour to Bastogne for a while (of course), to discover that he's got a new Platoon leader, the stiff-necked Second Lieutenant Woodward. Woodward is your classic "all theory, no practice" West Point graduate, the sort of guy who'd get himself fragged in the middle of the night were he in 'Nam around 1969. He's a jerk, he's all about the chickenshit details, and as soon as he runs into Mahoney and his reputation for being a total badass, Woodward decides he needs to break him like some sort of wild stallion, only without the obvious homoerotic overtones that phrase might imply.

While Woodward is no coward, he and Mahoney come into conflict time and time again, and eventually Mahoney does something that earns Woodward's decision to see him court-martialed. Unfortunately for Woodward, about five minutes after that, Mahoney performs a company-saving act of bravery that earns him a Silver Star, making the chickenshit court-martial almost impossible, especially since Woodward is about the only officer in the Division who doesn't think Mahoney is the son of Ares himself. Even so, Woodward tries to get the drop on Mahoney and tace care of business mano-y-mano, with hilarious results.

All the while we've got a sexually depraved nurse, an equally sexually depraved Nazi officer, the sexually depraved Mahoney up to his old skirt-chasing ways (are we noticing a pattern here?), and some good old fashioned people-getting-blown-away World War 2 combat action. And if you thought the use of bayonets in the first Sergeant book I reviewed (No. 6) was nuts, it's even more ridiculous here; practically every firefight boils down to both sides shooting off their loads (no pun intended) in the first few seconds of the engagement, then charging in and battling it out with fixed bayonets and rifle butts, no one ever bothering to hunker down for a moment and reload. Nor do we see the guys with Thompsons or M3s just cutting down Germans with empty rifles and fixed bayonets; such folks aren't to be seen at all. Still, the overuse of bayonet combat does make for some grisly and varied death scenes, for both the bad guys and the good guys.

The interplay between Mahoney, a seasoned and skillful combatant who carries rank but is often challenged and stymied by less experienced, but higher ranking officers, along with the mention of how Mahoney "just happened" to get stuck in Bastogne last book (one I need to find now), makes this series even more of a favorable comparison to the Sharpe novels written by Bernard Cornwell. In fact, the idea that the main character has these running enemies on both sides of the lines who he much constantly deal with and defeat is very much in the spirit of the Sharpe novels, where the main character was always in the shithouse with some peacock of a senior officer who tries to get Sharpe killed or disgraced, only to find himself defeated in the end. In addition, the way Cornwell would "write in" the arrival of Sharpe and some of his men into a historical engagement in order for the author to write about it, seems to be a common theme in the Sergeant novels as well.

I have acquired the first of the Rat Bastards series recently, and I hope to give it a read in the next month or two. It'll be interesting to see how it compares to the Sergeant series, especially since they were supposedly written by the same author under different pen names.

Gettin' My Commando On

Colonel John Durnford-Slater was the commander of No. 3 Commando, the first fully established British Commando unit (No.s 1 and 2 were formed slightly later, I believe because of their training regimens). 3 Commando saw a lot of action, from the first raids against German occupied Norway and France right through to the Normandy invasion and the end of the war.

Because of its long service record and the number of engagements it took part in, I've decided to use it as the mother unit for the characters in my forthcoming World War II action stories. There's a decent amount of information out there for the unit, and the British Commandos themselves are very well documented, but I was especially pleased to discover that Durnford-Slater had written a memoir of his experiences and the battles and adventures of 3 Commando.


Although I've got a few other books on deck at the moment, I hope to get into this one as soon as possible. It looks like a quick read, with some good maps and photos, and it will really help flesh out my research on the unit as I prepare to begin my first Commando adventure.

The Longest Day - Assault on Quistreham

So I finally got around to watching the D-Day Invasion epic The Longest Day (1962). This is one of those massive Hollywood epics that you probably couldn't make nowadays, not for any technical reason, but because you couldn't pay all the stars their contractually obligated wages, since this movie is almost a Who's Who of veteran tough guy actors.

I had only seen parts of this three-hour long war extravaganza before, snippets on TV or online. Last night was the first time I sat down and watched the whole thing from beginning to end. In my mind, despite being made almost 50 years ago, this movie stands toe-to-toe with Saving Private Ryan or any other war movie made after it's release. Yeah, maybe the "special effects" are dated, and yeah, maybe guys clutching their chests and spinning to the ground when killed isn't as "cool" as a CGI explosion of blood and gore out of someone's chest, but this movie is a MASSIVE undertaking; there were over 23,000 extras in the production of this film, and with a budget of ten million dollars, it was the most expensive black and white movie made up to that point (and the highest grossing).

One of the scenes that really stood out for me is the Assault on Quistreham by the No. 4 Commando, and especially the 177 men of the 1st Batallion of Fusiliers Marins Commandos who were part of No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando, who were given the honor of being in the first wave to assault Sword Beach, coming home to defend their country and drive out the Nazis. This scene, with it's almost two-minute long single aerial shot of dozens of commandos fighting and dying along the riverway of Quistreham, riddled with machinegun fire and bombarded by shells, is as "epic" a war moment as anything in SPR, Lord of the Rings, or any other "big battle" war movie. If you've never seen it, here it is:

I think come June 6th I'd like to do another post about The Longest Day, but for now, I'll leave you with this clip to whet your appetite.

Crime Is A Disease. Meet The Cure.

I love this movie. It is a ridiculous, gratuitous mess, but if I get a chance, I'll stop everything and watch it. Just thought I'd share that this morning, since I don't have much else to report other than I'm halfway through Able Team #7 (that is a fast read) and about halfway through the second-to-last chapter of Killer Instincts. Throats are being cut, crime family estates are being infiltrated, and there's a satchel full of frag grenades just itching to be tossed. Stay tuned...

Vintage Able Team and The Rat Bastards Arrived Today

Thanks to Amazon's used bookseller connections, I'm able to find a lot of old titles you can't seem to find anywhere else. After reading a couple of volumes from The Sergeant series, I decided I needed to hunt down The Rat Bastards, which is apparently written by the same guy who wrote The Sergeant, just under another pen name.

I also decided I needed to get more of the early Able Team novels. Truth be told, my love affair with "Post Modern Pulp Fiction" began when, as a junior high school student, I discovered that a small lot of Able Team and Phoenix Force novels were tucked away in our junior high school library (I cannot even fathom how that'd be possible these days). I started reading the Able Team novels, and was immediately hooked. I remember giving a book report on one of them, and let's just say if that had happened today, I'd probably have been kicked out of school, only to find myself in a counselor's office the next day. Thankfully this was the late 80's, no one had yet heard of Columbine, and I could enjoy the blood-soaked adventures of Ironman, Politician, and Gadgets to my heart's content.

Once I finish the current novel I'm reading, I'm going to have to dive into that Able Team title. I'm fairly certain I read Justice by Fire back in the day (I believe it was volumes 4 through 8), but it's no doubt been at least 20 years. Good times, good times...

The Hatchet Force eJournal Is Gaining Support

Just a quick update for my readers.

This week I announced my intent to create an eJournal dedicated to the sort of serial "men's adventure" action fiction popular in the 60's through the 80's, books like The Executioner, Death Merchant, The Guardians, Black Berets, Vietnam: Ground Zero, and so forth. The journal will contain reviews of books, movies, and television shows, as well as interviews, editorials, and essays, plus short fiction and excerpts from larger works.

After some struggling to find an appropriate title for this journal, I settled on Hatchet Force, a term that hearkens back to the days of MAC-V SOG operations in Vietnam. Hatchet Forces were large assault teams of SOG commandos leading indigenous troops against enemy strong points in quick, brutal lightning raids.

When I had the idea to create this journal, I e-mailed a number of bloggers who covered similar topics, and the result was largely positive; a good number of them agreed to send me materials for review. Several of these individuals have already submitted articles, and now that I'm past one of my deadlines for work, I'll be digesting these in earnest.

More surprisingly, I've already had several unsolicited offers for articles, which I feel is a sign that there is definitely interest in a periodical of this nature. Many thanks to both those who I contacted directly and those individuals who contacted me on their own initiative; your support is essential for this project to get off the ground.

Right now, I'm setting a semi-firm submissions deadline for the end of May, and I'd like to get the first issue of Hatchet Force out the door mid-June. Since this is going to be an eBook and not a print magazine, a lot of the layout headaches I'd encounter with print publishing will be a non-issue; formatting is intended to be "low drag" so it can be compatible with the greatest number of e-readers.

I intend to sell the eJournal through Smashwords first, then push it to the Kindle as soon as I know things are up and running. The price for the first issue will be $0.99, although I don't know if it'll stay there for later issues; time will tell.

And that's where we stand so far. I've received at least half of the submissions that will go into the first issue already, with others shortly to follow. I'm guessing the last articles to be ready will be my own. If anyone is interested in submitting an article for review, please feel free to e-mail me (my address is located in the "About Me" page).

Thanks again, and I hope to hear from many of you soon.

The eJournal Project Now Has A Name

So around 1 AM last night, tossing and turning and unable to sleep, I was contemplating a name for this new eJournal Project. I wanted it to be something that sold the project, something that told the reader what they were getting into right away. I thought of titles like:

The Post-Modern Pulps Review Journal

or

The Serial Action & Adventure Fiction Review

But you know what? These are the sorts of convoluted title structures that you'll see on peer review medical journals that talk about skin disorders, or ecology periodicals talking about the life of the mealworm. That is not our kind of journal, no sirree.

This is a journal for people who love to read about automatic shotguns spraying terrorists with storms of high-velocity steel, chattering Uzis stitching drug dealers across the chest with streams of hollowpoint slugs, and karate kicks to the groin so powerful they shatter a bad guy's pelvis and send them into lethal shock.

That kind of journal needs a title with a little more bite, so to speak. Short, sharp, and to the point. Like a bullet punching through a bad guy's x-ring, or a blade biting into flesh. A title that resonates both with the sorts of titles we're dealing with, titles like The Executioner, Able Team, Phoenix Force, Black Berets, Hard Corps, and The Death Merchant. Something that pulls us back to the Vietnam-era roots that define, for me, the genesis of what I call Post-Modern Pulp Fiction.

A title like Hatchet Force.

Short, sharp, and to the point, indeed. It also hearkens back to the MAC-V SOG days, which I think is critically important when you're talking about a sub-genre of fiction that owes its genesis to the Vietnam War.

So now our journal has a name, it has contributors, and content is coming in. I will provide future updates, but I hope to get issue #1 out the door some time in mid June.

Again, many thanks to all of you who have provided your support - I literally couldn't do this without you guys.

Possible Project: A Post Modern Pulps Review eJournal

Blogs are great. I read at least a dozen of them regularly, and probably check in to another two dozen or so on an intermittent basis. The power that Web 2.0 has given the individual to express themselves and reach out to other like-minded individuals is extraordinary, and while there is always bad mixed in with the good, it has allowed people to form communities and share resources in ways that twenty years ago, you'd never believe were possible.

Part of the problem with blogs, especially blogs that are frequently updated, is that the content goes by so fast that you might just miss it if you're not paying attention. A lot of bloggers out there have scads of content in their "back issues" so to speak, but if a reader doesn't see it in the first couple of weeks, it will likely go unread thereafter, even if it is technically still available. This is somewhat mitigated if your blog is niche enough that a Google search of a certain topic will place your article at the top of the search listings, but that is a relatively rare occurrence.

The other day I was contemplating ePublishing and thinking of various ways and means to dip my toe in the water, and it occurred to me that one experiment might be to put together a simple, cheap, no-frills eJournal of blog content written by myself and other like-minded bloggers, sold through Smashwords and/or Kindle. I've seen other niche interest groups put together blog-inspired journals before, and the reception has actually been quite positive. It allows the buyer the chance to read content by people they might not have encountered before, and gives new life to old, but still relevant content that is sitting on the Internet, mostly forgotten.

So I am now in the process of putting out feelers to bloggers who have a strong interest in the men's adventure novels of the 60's through the 80's, what I term "Post-Modern Pulps". If anyone is interested in sending me materials for this journal project, please e-mail me (my address is available in my "About Me" page) and let me know. I'd love to see book reviews, movie reviews, even TV series reviews (Airwolf, A-Team, Knight Rider, etc.), essays and editorials, and even short fiction or excerpts from longer works.

I am considering about a dozen articles, each somewhere in the 1,000 word range, but this is a flexible word count. If I get more articles - great! If the interest is there, I can always put together more issues. My ideal would be either monthly or once every two months, depending on how much content I have to work with and the turnaround time for putting these eJournals in the pipeline.

If the project is a flop, well, c'est la vie. But if it is a success, I think it'll be able to bring bloggers of a similar interest group together, and introduce readers to writers they haven't yet discovered.

The Sergeant #9 Arrived Today

Although this is the last of the books in the Sergeant series, I'm really looking forward to reading and reviewing another Mahoney story - lots of butt-kicking, bayonet-stabbing, cussing and whoring adventure to be had here.

I ordered this book through Green Earth Books, a used bookstore that promotes "recycling" of books by buying used. Although we don't really think about it much, buying used books, as well as borrowing from the library and loaning to and from friends is a good way to save a tree, as is buying eBooks and reading them on a portable device or your home computer. While I'm far from being the best role-model for living a sustainable lifestyle, I think it's important that books don't just get read once and shelved forever. Books are meant to be read, not collect dust, so if you've got books you don't plan on reading again, consider selling them, donating them, or loaning them out to someone else who would appreciate them as much as you did.

Oh, and sadly, while this book was in rather excellent condition when I received it, in an attempt to remove the bookstore's ID sticker, I damaged the front cover. I'm kicking myself for doing that now, but I'm always annoyed by stickers and such on my books. C'est la vie, I suppose.

I hope to get you this review sometime soon, but my dance card is filling up fast. When I'm done with it, y'all will be the first to know.

Book Review: THE DEAD MAN #3 Hell in Heaven

One of Robert E. Howard's original Conan stories was "The Phoenix on the Sword", and this story was later re-written into a Kull story called "By This Axe I Rule". The basic gist of both stories is that Conan (or Kull), having slain the former King and usurped the throne, is now stuck with the task of ruling over a bunch of petty, scheming jerks who keep trying to manipulate him into making decisions that only further their personal agendas. Essentially, lobbyists.

In the Kull story, Kull gets fed up with all this "civilized" nonsense, because his chamberlain or seneschal or whatever keeps telling him he needs to rule according to the laws written down on some ancient stone tablets gathering moss and dust in the corner. After some lobbyist jerks try killing him in his bedchamber (he doesn't like pork-barrel politics much), Kull is sick to death of these laws because they keep staying his hand from making decisions as he sees fit. So, being the sort of "to the point" guy who usurps thrones for a laugh, Kull calls for one of the tablets (that which forbids slaves to marry) and then smashes the tablet into bits with his axe, declaring "By this axe I rule!". If he's the king, then he makes up the rules, period, end of discussion.

So yeah, what the hell am I getting to by talking about Conan and Kull? Am I one of those reviewer jerks who just rambles on but doesn't actually review the book? Well, what I'm getting to is, THE DEAD MAN #3: Hell in Heaven is a direct spiritual descendant of the sorts of awesome pulp action adventure tales that the greats like Robert E. Howard loved to write. Its got magic, its got evil, its got murder, its got beautiful women and grotesque violent freaks out for our hero's blood. It's even got axe-fighting and law-giving and a general tone of complete badassery. I won't give away any plot spoilers, but I will say the story ends in a much different way than you might expect when you read the first couple of pages.

After I received my review copy from Lee Goldberg, I burned through this story in one sitting and was grooving on the Sword & Sorcery vibe the entire time. The direct Conan references the main character makes, rather than coming off as corny or annoyingly self-referential, just make you nod and say "Hell yeah, dude!" and as I write this, I have not one, but two Conan Frazetta prints hanging over my writing desk. That's just how we roll here in Chez Badelaire.

By tapping into the sort of stories written by Howard and Leiber that I feel defined the 30's Sword & Sorcery pulps, and a generation later the post-modern pulps of such writers as Gardner Fox and Karl Wagner, Hell in Heaven further cements THE DEAD MAN series as a crossroads of pulp action, a storyline open and flexible enough to accommodate any niches or sub-genres. This means that as each new author comes in to write the next volume in the series, they have the artistic license to approach the story from the angle they find the most comfortable, ensuring a lot of variety and quality in these stories for a long time to come.

How I Figured Out WTF Is Up With Seal Team Six

So apparently it's all over the news now that "Seal Team Six" was responsible for "Operation Geronimo", the raid to take down Osama Bin Laden's compound. I first learned about ST 6 while reading Richard Marcinko's biography, "Rogue Warrior". Marcinko was the Commander who established ST6 as the Navy's specialized counter-terror force, and created "Red Cell", the Navy's specialized faux-enemy infiltration unit, created to test US Naval facilities' ability to defend against elite hostile penetration teams.

So apparently things have changed a lot since the last time I did some digging. Here's the Wikipedia article on the US Navy SEALs, their history and organization. Notice that "Seal Team Six" isn't part of the organizational chart anymore; instead, it has been formally replaced by the US Navy Special Warfare Development Group.

"DEVGRU" is one of two "Tier One" Joint Special Operations Command operational units, the other being the more famous 1st Special Operations Detachment - Delta, aka, "Delta Force". Here's the article detailing the Tier One / Tier Two breakdown; I don't know if this is a truly formal designation or just a naming convention that gets used to separate the Black Ops forces from the more public special operations units.

So to me, it appears now that ST6 / DEVGRU stands apart from the conventional SEAL teams in the same way that Delta stands apart from the other Green Berets - members are recruited from those parent units, and are still ostensibly part of those units, (i.e., a ST6 member is still a "Navy Seal" and a Delta operator is still a "Green Beret") but operationally, and I imagine to some extent culturally, they stand apart. I knew this was the case for Delta, but I wasn't aware that ST6 had moved so far away from its association with the other Teams.

EDIT: See Jack Murphy's comment below regarding Delta membership. Thanks dude!

So, there we go. This is what we learn when we're bored at work and haven't been doing our SOCOM homework lately...

I Think This Is Thematically Appropriate For Today

I try to keep this blog as apolitical as possible. On the other hand, I've got a Spec Ops Boner the size of the Florida Panhandle right now, so without further ado: