I’m presently reading Short-Timers, a novel about the Vietnamese war by author Gustav Hasford.  Director Stanley Kubrick based his movie Full Metal Jacket on this book.  I loved the movie but it pales in comparison to the book.  Powerful?  Well, you be the judge.  Here is a short passage about what happens to a dead soldier being shipped home in a cheap metal box, to give you a taste:

“You’re friends from school and all of the relatives you never liked anyway will be at your funeral and they’ll call you a good little Christian and they’ll say you were a hero to get wasted defeating Communism and you’ll just lie there with a cold ass, dead as a mackeral.”

This book is not for everyone, but neither is war.  Powerful?  Read it and you’ll get a real feel for seeing the person beside you take a bullet through the heart and then bleed to death on your boots.

http://www.ericwilder.com  http://www.gondwanapress.com

I just watched some video shot from a helicopter over tornado-ravaged Florida.  I could not believe the destruction.  Oklahoma, as everyone knows, has its share of tornadoes and the category 5 tornado that struck Moore and Oklahoma City several years ago wreaked its share of damage.  Still, I wonder what manner of storm produced the massive destruction in Florida.  Was it a group of several tornadoes, or a single killer twister?  Whichever, I have great empathy with the poor people in Florida that lost their homes, and in some cases their lives.

http://www.ericwilder.com