Undercover in Old Town Afghanistan-dria
Friday, December 28, 2001
- TITLE: "Undercover in Old Town Afghanistan-dria" This column is, at best an homage to "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" James Thurber's 1941 classic short story; or, at worse, plagiarism.
Afghanistan-dria is a pun on the name of the town, Alexandria.
- "… citizens band radio craze …" CB radios were, in the early 1970's, the toy of choice for every person of the male persuasion I knew. Every car in town sounded like a New York City taxicab. The standard channel was channel 19 - that's where everyone hung out. So the words, "Breaker-breaker one-nine" are seared into the memory of anyone caught up in the fad.
- "… S-O-S …" This was a famous ploy by Viet Nam POW, Admiral, and later U.S. Senator, Jeremiah Denton. On May 17, 1966, as an American prisoner of war in Vietnam, he was featured in a nationally televised interview. While answering questions from a North Vietnamese reporter, Denton blinked his eyes in Morse code, repeatedly spelling out T-O-R-T-U-R-E -- the first confirmation that American P.O.W.s were being tortured.
- "… Kitchen range …" I know I could have lit it with a match, but the image of Dick Gephardt's eyebrows kept popping into my mind.
- "… the Suits …" The Suits are the civilian equivalent of "The Brass" in the military.
- "… Silly Putty …" Do you really not know what this is? It is a plastic substance which had some unique properties. It would pull like taffy if you pulled it slowly; it would snap like plastic if you pulled it quickly; it would bounce almost like a Superball; and you could flatten it, put it onto a comic strip in the newspaper, peel it off, and the image would transfer to the Silly Putty. It looks like C-4.
World War II Poster
- Mullings' Catchy Caption of the Day:
Captured al-Qaeda soldiers perform their famous
"I Feel Pretty" dance
as part of the annual
Pashtun Christmas Pageant .
( REUTERS/Pavel Pavlov)
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