Thursday, February 18, 2010

Too soon?

This 1928 painting by Franz Radziwill illustrates the long history of suicide aeroplane attacks on Internal Revenue offices.

23 comments:

mikey said...

Indeed.

But clearly it was from a time when such attacks were commonplace. For while the IRS redoubt is undefended in all its red brick solidity, the neighbor, recognizing both his structural vulnerability and his proximity to the target of deluded private pilots everywhere, has had the good sense to lean lodgepoles against his house in hopes of deflecting the plummeting plane of perniciousness before it could damage his home.

I salute him, but would have recommended good ol' Ma Deuce...

Smut Clyde said...

to lean lodgepoles against his house
I took those to be cloud-buster orgone cannons but I could be wrong.
Cigarettes were much bigger then, judging from the size of the packet strapped to the back of the guy on the road.

Hamish Mack said...

One appreciates modernity and all that (flush toilets etc.) but there appears to be a Transformer walking along the road leading to to the Railway crossing. I'm not sure that this is a warranted intrusion.
Also the sky is black proving that extinctions of the sun are no new thing, Stephen Colbert!!!

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

you're all wrong. Mr. Neighbor was OBVIOUSLY in the midst of constructing a Jambalaya Trebuchet when the tragedy occurred.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Heck, I was going to take google luigi logo and make one of me patented paintshops depicting the tragic events in Vanc00ver.

Too soon?
~

mikey said...

Not gonna offer an opinion on the timing, wouldn't be prudent.

But god DAMN thunder, I'd like to at least get a look at that bad mother..

Sebastia said...

Newly uncovered research is that the Nazi's, along with reversing the Swastika, built a special version of the Stuka dive bomber to carry an AUDITOR in the passenger seat. Polish armies were overtaxed at the beginning of the war and quickly collapsed in sea of red ink. Carefully uncovered historical records show that the Nazi's brilliance in tax accounting completely overwhelmed the Soviet forces in the early days of Operation Barbarossa. It wasn't until Stalingrad when Marshall Yeryomenko sent in crack squads of highly trained cost accountants skilled in the art of double entry book keeping that the tide began to turn on the Eastern Front.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

actually, now that I look at it again, it seems to me that the neighbor's contraption is a FULLY FUNCTIONAL BATTLE TREBUCHET, and they have commenced hostilities by flinging a propane-laden drone glider toward the adjacent house...

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Trebuchets are the mangonels of Liberal Fascism.

Smut Clyde said...

He liked to throw planes at the Feds,
Because he thought they were Reds.
The missiles' trajectory
took them over the rectory
Where they took out some old garden sheds.

Q.: What is the appropriate mediaeval siege machine to use for flinging live m00se into the enemy stronghold?

A.: A mangonelk.

Hamish Mack said...

Don't get out of the boat for the mangoelks. The are too deer to buy anyway.

Smut Clyde said...

Trebuchets are the mangonels of Liberal Fascism.
No, no, Woman is Onager of the World. John Lennon said so.

a FULLY FUNCTIONAL BATTLE TREBUCHET
There are surprisingly few non-battle applications for a trebuchet.

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Maybe that Texas Teabagger really meant to write:

Congress=Slave Owner
Taxpayer=Onager

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

There are surprisingly few non-battle applications for a trebuchet.

Silly person. Of course there are.

Jambalaya delivery, for example.

fish said...

There are surprisingly few non-battle applications for a trebuchet.

short track relay

lawnguylander said...

For "nighttime" suicide missions, a prop plane is your only man. They're much more reliable if you need to fly through the black air. Prop planes can easily scatter before them, and render harmless for their purposes, the volcanic particles, coal by-products and vegetable dyes that make up what we call "the dark." Jet engines suck them in as they go and make them part of the combustion process. A very dodgy and unsanitary way to go if you ask me.

Substance McGravitas said...

I support the use of planes. The problem with zeppelins is that you can see 'em coming a mile off. Then they bounce off the bricks, which is kind of embarrassing, but LOOK OUT if your IRS office is of straw or sticks.

mikey said...

As near as I can tell from my teevee, trebuchets are primarily used for reducing the surplus population of pianos.

Hamish Mack said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Hamish Mack said...

The aardvark and the onager were stabled at my sepulchre.
Apparently, and although there is no mention of a trebuchet in J.K.Baxter's "Song of the years" there is one implied.
The answer to the bouncing and humorous Zeppelin attack was to lead line it but this made the airship very hard to steer and lead to crashes notably in Kashmir and Misty Mountain.

Smut Clyde said...

Hydrogen helps. I recall that there is a suicide zeppelin attack in Varley's "Demon".

Smut Clyde said...

trebuchets are primarily used for reducing the surplus population of pianos.

There are many more humane ways of dealing with the problem. If you chill them slowly by putting them in a glass of water in the fridge, they just go painlessly to sleep.

Hamish Mack said...

The picture of the plane flying in the "Dark" of course shows a piano advancing on the trebuchet, a sworn enemy of pianos throughout history. Whilst inside their red brick fortress crack Ubertaxenschartz (Hitlerene)17th Feildenestimarten accountants are blissfully unaware of the approach of poverty stricken Count Manfred von Richthoffen "The In-The-Red Baron"