Subject: CU CHI Cooties

From: zosodada@aol.com (Zosodada)
Newsgroups: alt.slack
Date: Thu, Apr 3, 2003 6:19 PM

Stang, " * THE CU CHI TUNNELS did not get much theatrical release in the U.S. .
. . The director is MICKEY GRANT."

There are a lot of excellent European films that aren't available in the
states. I think I may have even been given a credit as a driver on one of 'em
-- Michael Glowager's 1999 "Megacities." It's distributed in benelux by Paul
Thiltges http://www.ptd.lu/catalog.htm. They're trying to get a DVD
distributed here by September 2004.

Those Viet Cong were really snappy dressers.

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Subject: Re: CU CHI Cooties
From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>

It took over a year to see GRASS distributed in the U.S.. I saw it in
Blockbuster the other day though.

It's always a thrill to see one's name in the credits of a movie,
however swiftly it scrolls by in a tiny font. Ufortunately, 99% of the
times that I see my name in movie credits, it isn't me but one of the
False Smi with my human name.

> Those Viet Cong were really snappy dressers.

That documentary involved footage of so many one-armed people talking
at length on-camera that I started to develop a "thing" for skinny
one-armed Asian women.

Got over it when I moved on to cutting a 12-episode nature documentary
series about unusual squids and bats.

For THE CU CHI TUNNELS Mickey talked the Vietnamese government film
people into giving him a shitload of footage that their troops shot
during the war on wind-up plastic French movie cameras... Bolex-like
things... plus some footage they CAPTURED, from American cameras! And
we got the most LOVELY cockpit-view historical bomb run footage from
the Air Force.

It is some scary shit.

It was very grim for me, seeing (and reading translations) these drunk
old Cong geezers laugh about killing Americans. Also hard to hear
people talk about getting maimed by Americans. War is fucking hell from
all reports.

The last thing I read, BBC guy in downtown Baghdad, he said it was
overwhelmingly "SURREAL" there right now. SURREAL. Surreal is good
compared to hellish. Maybe it can hover at surreal and not go to full
tilt full-time all-out hellish.

That would be a lot to hope for but hey.

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Subject: Re: CU CHI Cooties
From: Joe Cosby <joecosby@SPAMBLOCKmindspring.com>

On Thu, 03 Apr 2003 19:52:37 -0500, "Rev. Ivan Stang"
<stang@subgenius.com> wrote:

>The last thing I read, BBC guy in downtown Baghdad, he said it was
>overwhelmingly "SURREAL" there right now. SURREAL. Surreal is good
>compared to hellish. Maybe it can hover at surreal and not go to full
>tilt full-time all-out hellish.

The only difference between surreal and hellish is in the latter you
wake up, but it's still surreal.

--

"The coolness of the weapons helps take the sting out of
having one's airports police-stated." -- Rev. Ivan Stang

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Subject: Re: CU CHI Cooties
From: iDRMRSR <idrmrsr@subgenius.com>

Surreal? I'll tell you what is surreal.

Here we are blowing the shit out of a country the size of California.
Yet stateside here, with 300K prime wage earners not working, companies
are still going belly up and canning the workforce at an amazing clip.
Gasoline prices, despite the fact that X tanks burn Y gallons per MILE,
are falling. Million dollar boom booms are being dropped by the tens of
thousands.

Yet, this is ONLY making a dent on what we already HAVE in the
stockpiles! It's not like other wars where ladies had to turn in their
fat cans so that explosives could be made or guns lubricated. Not like
other wars where the workforce remaining here in the states actually had
to work THREE shifts to build MORE shit to blow up because there weren't
enough laborers to put all the stuff together.

And I would submit, compared to PEACE, the armed forces are only maybe
spending a few percent more than they would have just training people ad
nauseum right here in Fort Shithole, Ark. We've had all these toys
right here at home to play with all these years, soldiers to pay and
feed, pilots to criss cross the skies on training flights. Probably the
biggest new expense was shipping the stuff and people over there, a one
time expense.

Why aren't the factories hiring thousands of people to make bullets and
planes? Why aren't we rationing gasoline and meat and rubber? And why
the hell are the airlines begging us to fly our asses all over the place
to get them out of the hole, when the usual wartime cry is to think "IS
THIS TRIP NECESSARY?".

Meanwhile, interest rates are still sinking, and the government is
showing no signs of selling War Bonds to finance our "boys" "over
there".

That's POSITIVELY surreal.

Heh, heh, but it will become even more surreal when Saddam lets loose
whatever form of Corbomite Device he has there to be used as soon as our
troops cross the Welcome To Baghdad - If you Lived Here, You'd be Home
signs. He certainly isn't putting up more than a cluster Bitch Slap of
a fight so far.

Maybe, due to the suicidal nature of the Islamics, he will do the
surreal thing, and be the first enemy to blow up his entire evil country
and the ones that surround it...SAVING US THE EFFORT!

In any case, this whole damn thing better wrap up fast because it's been
TWO WEEKS for crying out loud, and our media soaked attention span
cannot be held more than a few nanoseconds longer. I mean, I tune in to
the CNN feeds live from Baghdad and find myself saying "Oh, geez, that
is SO last WEEK!". Baseball has started again, May will be another
sweeps month, and Americans will soon be paying more attention to the
greenness and weediness of their front lawns than to "oh yeah, THAT
war".

That's SURREAL!

I cried for a man with no peace, until I met a man with no war.

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Subject: Re: CU CHI Cooties
From: Shining Path of Least Resistance <shinpath@osb.att.ne.jp>

The Cu Chi caves are a great Vietnamese tourist trap.
I got to visit them in the early 90s. There are a couple
of old vets who show you a giant diorama with the 1st, 2nd
and 3rd levels, pinpointing the defense caves, supply caves
and the hospital, cooking and theatre areas. Important was
an escape passage leading to a secret sanpan dock on the
river. Then they take you down into the cave. The guide
walks up to an innocent looking tuft of grass and pulls on
it, revealing a secret hatch and then down you go. You
go on your hands and knees for a little bit and then you are
in a regular room with smooth clay walls. It's a political
meeting room and you can get your picture taken sitting
at the commanders table. Then it's on to the kitchen cave
the medical cave and sleeping cave. They don't show you
one of those 'spider holes' where you could fire at the enemy
on the surface. They just show you a third level passage
but they don't take you down it because too many tourists
freak out and get claustrophobia at this point. You come back
up to the surface and they ask you if you want to go shooting.
Out at the rifle range it's one dollar a bullet to fire an AK-47, SKS
carbine, an M-16 and an M-1. I blew 30 bux trying to blam away at
a balloon at 100 paces, finally hitting it with an M-16. I told my
girlfriend she had to shoot too. The guide and I agreed the M-1
was good for a girl and she got up and shot off five rounds. The
best part was a sumptuous fish lunch at a riverside restaurant
where we watched a boy ride his water buffalo in the big muddy.

If the Vietnamese can forgive us after what we did to that country
then there is hope for the world.

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Subject: Re: CU CHI Cooties
From: nenslo <nenslo@yahooX.com>

Shining Path of Least Resistance wrote:

> If the Vietnamese can forgive us after what we did to that country
> then there is hope for the world.

I was twelve at the time. I had nothing to do with it.

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Subject: Re: CU CHI Cooties
From: "nu-monet v5.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>

Rev. Ivan Stang wrote:
>
> It took over a year to see GRASS distributed
> in the U.S.. I saw it in Blockbuster the other
> day though.

That movie really frustrates me. I swear, back
in the late 70s, someone made a documentary also
called "grass". I remember big chunks of it and
thought it was a winner. I saw it at my local
underground theater.
But I can find no mention of it. Not in IMDB,
not anywhere. It is the documentary that never
was.
I even remember that they showed it in a double
feature with "Reefer Madness", and at first the
theater was filled with smoke; but as the paranoia
set it, the air really cleared up.

Damn. And it was really funny, too.

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Subject: Re: CU CHI Cooties
From: nenslo <nenslo@yahooX.com>

"Rev. Ivan Stang" wrote:
>
> The last thing I read, BBC guy in downtown Baghdad, he said it was
> overwhelmingly "SURREAL" there right now. SURREAL. Surreal is good
> compared to hellish. Maybe it can hover at surreal and not go to full
> tilt full-time all-out hellish.

I think it's rather queer that the only thing people nowadays call
SURREAL is REALITY.

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Original file name: CU CHI Cooties - converted on Monday, 21 July 2003, 13:45