Duel In The Somme – Page 22

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24 Responses to “Duel In The Somme – Page 22”

  1. Omikron says:

    Well, that settles that. Also, Kelso cements his need for a comeuppance even more.

    On the off chance that there are any female readers, tell me my instinct that taking a girl to Hooters is incredibly tacky and not the way to impress her?

    • "gunner" says:

      i'm not female, but i've had some years dealing reasonably successfully with them, and i'd say you're right. taking a date to hooters is tacky, she might forgive mcdonalds, or burger king, but not hooters.

      • John Gardner says:

        He's taking the entire team. Also being a frequent guest of Hooters I've noted it's not just us guys who like to go there.

        • erom says:

          Back when I lived in the city, the girls in my social circle used to be big Hooters fans. They went once a month or so, without the boys. It was funny when we came along, all the waiters knew their names. So it depends on the girl. I wouldn't pick it as a "date" spot, but as a social event for the whole team? Totally fair game.

        • Geoffrey Kidd says:

          Sure. Humans are pack hunters. Guy packs. Girl packs. And Hooters et. al. for neutral hunting turf. :)

        • Wolf says:

          While he IS tacking the entire team, that does not keep it from being a poor choice. And speaking as a female, at least the Hooters around my home, give really awful service if there is a female in your party. My husband claims they give great service to he and his boss, but the two time he took me and our son, glowing about how amazed he was that it was actually very good food and amazing service, we got crummy service and cold food.
          Bringing a girl into Hooters is not just bad because it is tacky. It is bad because the waitstaff assume there is a max to your "allowed" tip and treat you accordingly.

    • Asterai says:

      As one of the females in the audience - and not only that, but a female in science & engineering - I don't care what percent of your team is male, taking the group to Hooters is a severe faux pas. The kind of mile wide faux pas that anyone with a social consciousness would avoid. Part of the problem with it is that it excludes the females in the audience (look, some women may go to Hooters, but either they're gay or they got dragged there by their boyfriends; it's not a place most women want to be at all, and certainly not with men they want to be respected by as colleagues), and the other part is that women are still a painfully distinct minority in most science & engineering disciplines. So doing things that discourage us from participating in the group dynamic is bad form on a variety of levels.

      • John Gardner says:

        Respectfully I must disagree, I have been in Hooters all over the Southeast, I have taken girls there, I have seen girls in groups and with guys. Some might have been lesbians, but I did not ask. Your assumptions are based on bias not fact.

        • Respectfully, I must disagree. Asterai is quite correct: smart women do not go to Hooters with men they want to be respected by as colleagues. It's belittling. Would you go to a restaurant staffed by the Chippendales dancers? If you would, are you absolutely sure your female team members would still see the professional "you" when they looked at you -- and not just another potential half-naked dancer?

  2. Maestro says:

    I think he's taking them to hooters for the team, not for Lorraine (a weekend getaway with her was the "prize" in the contest after all). He's probably taking them there to celebrate because the team appears to be mostly male.

    • Omikron says:

      Yeah, but Lorraine will be there as well. I guess it is one thing to take a group of "associates" to Hooters, though I cannot imagine doing so as a workplace incentive if there are ANY female employees. That is just to close to sexual harassment for comfort (not that it is anything like real sexual harrasment, but in the workplace, if you have to ask you are going to far).

      Regardless, Mr. Kelsuck is actively wooing Lorraine (though if she were really interested she'd have agreed to the Bahamas thing right away). So, ts not just a takeout.

      • Maestro says:

        Well, Kelso's seems to have a rather high "macho" thing going, so he probably doesn't care what Lorraine would think about going to Hooters, or (more likely) simply didn't stop to think about it because he's drowning in too much testosterone. ;)

        Kelso comes across as a macho jerk all around to me, so this really isn't surprising behavior.

  3. Geoffrey Kidd says:

    Tom(What does Lorraine want?) shows again he's a truly class act. And the barnyard animals visibly panicking and scattering was a superb contrast to the high drama of his salute.

    [walks off lighting incense and muttering fervent prayers for justice]

    • Colin Howell says:

      Here's a thought on the justice angle. Rather dark, I suppose.

      I can understand why someone with Kelso's personality, full of arrogant confidence, might turn out to be a good stunt pilot if he has the reflexes and skills to match the confidence, but if he doesn't learn to reign in that confidence, he's going to end up in an early grave, dug with his own airplane. The line "there are old pilots and bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots" comes to mind.

      • Rens says:

        In fact, isn't that more or less what happened to the original Red Baron? I'm not as up on WWI trivia as the average KEI employee, so.

        Also note the rather horrified expressions on the faces of the onlookers. /THEY/ are concerned about if Tom's doing okay given how he just threw up. /Kelso/ is too drunk on his own testosterone to notice it in any way other than another way to denigrate his rival.

        • Colin Howell says:

          No, the Red Baron's case seems much more complicated. He did end up violating some of his own rules on his last flight and apparently got into a case of "target fixation". But he was inherently playing a numbers game. If you keep going up in an arena where other skilled people are doing their level best to kill you, sooner or later you're going to lose.

          He kept doing this not out of a sense of invulnerability, but out of duty. He had already been nearly killed once when a bullet clipped his head, causing him to black out temporarily and lose control of his airplane. While he did regain consciousness and managed to land the plane, he had to be hospitalized from the wound. But when the German government suggested grounding him, fearing the morale effect of his dying in combat, he refused, saying that the average German soldier had no choice in his duties, so he himself would continue to fly.

          Indeed, there's evidence that his head wound from this previous episode led to permanent brain damage. His personality changed, and he afterward often suffered from post-flight headaches and nausea. Some have suggested that the effects of that wound played a role in his eventual death.

        • Chromatix says:

          The articles I've come across after reading this comic point out that Richthofen had suffered a severe head injury some time before, and this had changed his personality sufficiently to suggest brain damage. This would have affected his judgement considerably.

          There were also unusual circumstances, such as the wind blowing strongly in the opposite direction to usual, which could have thrown off his navigation - not to mention that the front line itself had (unusually for WW1) started moving recently. Thus he may not have been aware of his proximity to the front-line ground gunners. Apparently he was usually very careful to stay out of their range.

          By contrast, Kelso is just an arrogant prick.

      • Colin Howell says:

        This just reminded me of an example of a real pilot's Kelso-like arrogant overconfidence and the resulting fatal consequences, described in the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Fairchild_Air_Force_Base_B-52_crash. Unfortunately, Bud Holland's mistake ended up taking several good people with him. :(

      • "gunner" says:

        true that colin, "karma can be a bitch" and "what goes around, comes around". "when wyatt earp gets done playing that piano..."

      • Geoffrey Kidd says:

        Both Neil Armstrong and Chuck Yeager are, at last report, alive. Therefore there are "old, bold pilots." However, I agree they are difficult to find in the wild.

        • Colin Howell says:

          True. Like many such sayings, it's a bit misleading, since test pilots have to be bold by the requirements of the job. The saying was obviously coined because "bold" rhymes with "old", but they really mean something closer to "foolhardy".

          Still, the boldness of men like Yeager and Armstrong tends to be tempered with a strong measure of care and caution, otherwise they wouldn't survive. It certainly doesn't seem to match that of Kelso. Armstrong's personality, in particular, seems as far from Kelso's as you can get.

  4. Wolf says:

    Two pages left and I am hyper to find out what comes next

  5. Kamatu says:

    Amusingly enough, if he had just stuck in a commercial flight sim, with all that real world flying expertise, Kelso would have gotten the wrong feedback (AFAIK stunt planes don't do fly by wire). That is why I hate "real life" activity sims, when you are cutting around a curve at high speed you can feel the rear starting to come unstuck through your entire body. In a sim,..just hit your marks, perfectly, every time and stay just below the true power curve. Of course, it would also throw Tom off as he instinctively tried to fly by wire from his own experience.

    Of course, the second issue I can think of would be Kelso trying to pull stunts that would rip the wings off WW1 paper kites, which it appears he didn't. Of course, all that feedback might have helped him there.

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