The Toy Phase, The Weapons Phase

It has been said that for Americans, war is a proxy for sport, while for Europeans, sport is a proxy for war… and I couldn’t help but feel that when the cruise missiles rained down on Baghdad and the people on the warships watching it on TV were shouting “WOO WOO WOO” and whirling their fists in the air, that they did indeed think they were watching some sort of game.

That they were winning. On the TV tonight (in New Zealand) there was a clip from the US where a reporter, breathless with enthusiasm described how video game controls could be used to control weapons in the future, followed by a report of UK football, where feuds going back to the 12th century are played out by knights in shining armour kicking a ball around, while the two sides yelled blue-bloody murder at each other across the pitch. The Scots don’t care who wins, so long as England loses. It’s all quite good-natured now though. When England plays Germany the English sing the dam-busters song and the Germans laugh and take photographs of them. The hooliganism has drifted East.

So anyway. Methinks there is a continuum of sorts… and this will probably become more pronounced as the years go by.

What would Robot-Wars be like if there were no rules? Bloody brilliant if you ask me – and this is what’s kindof unfolding… unfortunately it’s unfolding outside the arena, in actual-reality, and there’s an ugly side, but lets not worry about that now.

Exhibit 1:

Someone’s got a remote control helicopter, and attached a gun to it. Why not? It’s the first thing you’d think of etc. It’s just like a real video game, but you can shoot real cardboard boxes.

And just to confirm your faith in human nature

A chainsaw bayonet… Good for defending yourself against trees and such. I’m fairly sure this isn’t an entirely original idea, but one which has been copied from the video game Gears Of War.

And I’m not really sure what’s going on here.

looks like he’s attached an AK47 to a petrol-driven weed-eater, and there’s also a handgun taped to the front of the AK47 in case them weeds get feisty.

Back to helicopters. This one’s a nice one, on account of it having a fairly original design. It shoots rockets.

And where would the blurring of the weapon/toy line be without a mention of paintball? Here’s a clip where a proper live (ninja) bow has been turned into a paintball gun. Looks cool. Still… modern bows may look all macho etc, but they’re actually 1/2 to 1/3 less powerful than the wooden ones they used in the middle ages.

Still, it’s rare these days to need a paintball that can penetrate plate armour.

A home-made movement-tracking bb-gun. Cool. All you need now is to swap that with a real gun, and you can defend yourself against aliens just like they defended themselves against the aliens on Aliens.

The trouble with Asimov’s laws of robotics, is that they’re completely and utterly 180 degrees wrong. Weapons are the first thing robots are used for. Ok… not true entirely… they start out as toys, then become weapons, but people have got so bored and fucked up and detached from reality that they can’t tell the difference any more. And besides, a toy is so much more exciting if it is actually a real weapon (as any child can tell you).

Whateva. This one’s pretty cool if you know what it is…

a toy robot that not only has a rail-gun (as seen in various video games) but ALSO HAS LASER SIGHTS. Genius.

Actually the scope of this is too big to fit in an single blog post. There are thousands of examples of this going in all sorts of different directions. In Copenhagen, there’s a weapons shop filled with every conceivable medieval weapon made out of rubbery stuff… so you can batter your mates etc. You can buy life-size working (ok, not life-size, but still 6 ft tall) trebuchets. You can get flashlights so powerful they can set fire to things.

All for fun. And now the ugly side:

America! Fuck Yea!!!… and at the end the guy says, “If you’re a terrorist” ,”the Kriss, is one weapon you don’t wanna cross”.

Err? What terrorists? Because there aren’t that many of them are there? … and the last time that I can remember there WERE terrorists attacking America was 2001 and unless I’m very much mistaken, the US didn’t even scramble its fighters.

The guy’s living in fucking fantasyland. His audience is living in fucking fantasy land… and that would be ok, but his government are carrying out attrocities and selling them to the people based upon their take of reality which appears to be based upon the tv program 24.

Meantime trillions are spent on all this wonderful weaponry, which they use to fight wars which (more often than not) they lose. Who are you thinking you’re going to fight with all this stuff? Mars? You can’t even beat the Taliban and they have beards and live in tents. They fight with left-overs and knock-offs and home-made things that they’ve cobbled together themselves… just like various vids on this post, but a bit more serious.

Weapons need to be confined to a memosphere. They need to be put back in the arena. We’re too big now, not to be playing.