Terminal Lance #469 “Endless Conversation”

An interesting phenomenon occurs in the lower ranks of the Corps where Marines can talk to each other literally 24 hours a day and never run out of shit to talk about.

Think about it this way: Marines live in very close quarters with each other, they go to work together, and most often spend their weekends together. Marines are never apart from each other in any practical sense, yet still they can’t seem to shut the fuck up when they’re together. Every topic is up for grabs and every topic becomes intrinsically interesting upon intellectual dissection and discourse.

Marines will spend their hours talking about everything from (most commonly) the women they have slept with (and how each of their respective vaginas differed from each other), to the difference between soft drinks being called soda or pop.

It’s soda, by the way.

Married couples don’t even talk to each other the same way that Marines do. I suppose when you’re isolated in a shitty situation together, pretty much anything is a worthy escape.

In other news, if you’re in LA this weekend, come by to the Los Angeles Festival of Books and come see me talk about my book and war literature in general with some other really awesome guests. I’m super cool in person and I will sign anything you put in front of me.

Here are the details! See you on Sunday.

As for Starkiller base, I have issues.

First off, how the fuck does the base get close enough to a star in order to suck it up into the gun? The earth is roughly 90 million miles away from our sun, and it’s fucking 90 degrees outside today here in LA. There’s no way a planet could get that close to a star without boiling its atmosphere off and murdering everyone on the surface.

Second, does the planet have hyperdrive capability? We never see any “engines” on the damn thing, how does it move around the galaxy and suck up stars? Can an entire planet travel through hyperspace?

Third, how do the beams move across the galaxy so fast? Traveling at the speed of light, it would take beams of light 4 years to reach the nearest star system to earth (Alpha Centauri), yet somehow this shit leaps across the galaxy in an instant.

Fourth, how could you possibly program a beam weapon to “seek” a target? We see it bend toward the planets in the film and it makes no sense.

At least the Death Star was believable.