Warren Jason Street: September 2010

World War I is Now Over

Position of the carriage of Marshal Ferdinand Foch during the armistice negotiations of 8–11 November 1918, Clairière de l’Armistice (The Forest Clearing of the Armistice), Compiègne.

Incredible:

The final payment of £59.5 million, writes off the crippling debt that was the price for one world war and laid the foundations for another.

Germany was forced to pay the reparations at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 as compensation to the war-ravaged nations of Belgium and France and to pay the Allies some of the costs of waging what was then the bloodiest conflict in history, leaving nearly ten million soldiers dead.

The initial sum agreed upon for war damages in 1919 was 226 billion Reichsmarks, a sum later reduced to 132 billion, £22 billion at the time.

The bill would have been settled much earlier had Adolf Hitler not reneged on reparations during his reign.

Hatred of the settlement agreed at Versailles, which crippled Germany as it tried to shape itself into a democracy following armistice, was of significant importance in propelling the Nazis to power.

I had no clue about this. To think that the Germans have been paying this off for decades--that's something I did not know. It shows you just how little history I can actually command right now. This old dog needs to hit the books.

Max Weinberg Bails

Can you blame him?

Conan O'Brien's longtime bandleader Max Weinberg isn't following him to TBS.
O'Brien confirmed Monday that Weinberg won't be joining him on "Conan," his new late-night program set to debut in November. Weinberg had been O'Brien's musical sidekick for 17 years, on both "Late Night" and the "Tonight Show."
"Max has been a huge part of my life for the past 17 years and he is an incredible band leader and musician," O'Brien said in a statement. "I hope he can find time to stop by the show, sit in with the band and pretend to find my monologue funny."
Weinberg, who's also the drummer for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, said his time with O'Brien and crew was "a deeply rewarding experience" and that he does "look forward to dropping by."
Guitarist Jimmy Vivino will take over as bandleader, a "Conan" spokesman said.
While I am not naive enough to think that Mr. Weinberg is in dire need of a steady gig, you have to point out that the man is a genuine talent (and, yes, I have met him in person--what a wonderful gentleman) who classed up the Conan show. There were nights when I would actually watch Conan just to hear Max Weinberg play. He knows what quality music is. Weinberg turns sixty next year; he has a lot of years left to play. He's younger than all of the members of the Beatles and all of the Rolling Stones who are still alive.

Compare what he does to the bleating, squeaking trash of Paul Shaffer. Oh, I know it is rude to compare one musician to the next. But, bandleader to bandleader, Paul Shaffer torments people and forces them to endure some of the most god-awful atonal racket ever devised. His music is EMPHASIS then CRASH then BLEAT then SQUAWK followed by the ha-ha! isn't that funny, we did something ironic move.

Max Weinberg just plays.

General Fox Conner

As we get closer to the one hundred year anniversaries of the First World War, please allow me to highlight certain people and certain things that I think are remembering. One such person worth remembering is a general by the name of Fox Conner:

Even without a published monograph, this intelligent, insightful and competent officer was held in the highest esteem of his contemporaries. He was not only a competent military historian, but also a brilliant military war planner and strategist as the chief architect of the American victories at Saint-Mihiel and the Argonne in 1918. A serious military science intellectual, Conner's series of War College lectures in the 1930's integrated critical yet sagacious observations of lessons learned by the AEF in the Great War and some that the army had yet to learn. While proposing a structure that an Allied military coalition for the future must resemble in order to be successful in the coming European conflict that he often predicted, Conner established a theoretical and constructive framework not for an Allied Generalissimo but a Supreme Allied Commander. He was the chief advocate and a founding father of the inter-war re-configuration reforms of the modern American infantry division that eventually marched into Europe a second time, long after he had retired. Concomitantly the General spoke forcefully against the inadequate replacement system of the Peyton March period, and successfully won the necessary reforms that saw service in the Second World War. Not only does MG Conner's critical role and achievements while serving on Pershing's staff deserve long overdue recognition, moreover his personal dedication and influence supporting the career development of many of the new breed of army officers who would become household names as they later fought the Second World War. His most notable pupil was Dwight David Eisenhower. Upon further reevaluation, MG Fox Conner emerges as the most influential officer intellectual in the United States Army during the inter-war period. Conner's contributions to the United States Army can be evaluated in three capacities. First, as G-3, chief of war plans and operations on the Allied Expeditionary Forces staff in the First World War, Conner was the senior architect of the Saint-Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne offensive. Secondly, as the general commanding the Army's most important inter-war assignments; and, thirdly, as instructor, military scientist, lecturer and personal role model for younger officers in the lean army career years of the 1920s and 1930s. According to Eisenhower, "Outside of my parents, he had more influence on me and my outlook than any other individual, especially in regard to the military profession."

Eisenhower would later deem as prophetic Conner's poignant observations regarding Allied political decisions that allowed German military forces to march back to the Fatherland, unmolested following the armistice, carrying their arms with bands playing and flags flying. Conner predicted that a myth would be born inside Germany that the Imperial German Army had never really been defeated by the Allies, but rather been traitorously stabbed in the back at home by fifth columnists. This was indeed the myth that Adolph Hitler and the National Socialists would expeditiously exploit in order to seize power. Conner, said Eisenhower, warned that a lasting peace had been doomed at Versailles by accepting the principle of a negotiated peace rather than a dictated peace and "in the not too distant future the whole job would have to be done again." Conner was dismayed at the determination of the allies in 1919 to exact a punishing revenge on Germany within the terms of Versailles Treaty, and yet, fail to foresee dire consequences ahead. As Conner told Eisenhower in 1922, "You can't take the strongest and most virile people in Europe and put them in the kind of strait jacket that this treaty attempts to do."

That's a good bit of history right there. It's too bad we never seem to remember the right history.

Morgan's Medieval Download Haven is Still Up?

Dating back to the year 2000 is this gem. Do you remember what websites were like back then? Do you remember how people could create a free page on some server or with some service and then they would abandon it or lose control of it or move on and do something else?

How much do you want to bet that this site still brings in revenue and traffic? Not bad for a site that is ten years old.

As far as I can tell, none of the links work anymore, but the page is still there. Enjoy sifting through a piece of old Internet archeology.

The Age of Napoleon

I've already read this book, and I'm revisiting it again.

Two quotes by Napoleon do stand out, and might come up in the context of this project:

"In my youth, I had illusions. I got rid of them fast."

And:

"Among so many conflicting ideas and so many differing perspectives, the honest man is confused and distressed and the skeptic becomes wicked...Since one must take sides, one might as well choose the side which is victorious, the side which devastates, loots and burns. Considering the alternative, it is better to eat than to be eaten."

The Difficulty of Color

Creating a color scheme for your "comic strip" is like nailing yourself to the floor and wondering why you can't run.

When I created this color key, I knew what the colors on Nathan (yellow hair, third from left) and Farmer Butt (the farmer on the far right) would be. Those were easy. The cat in the box, Gooseberry, is always in a tan box, shyly hiding from view.

Abbott, on the other hand, has somehow gone blue, green, purple and a host of other colors:

Never just "tan" with red shoes.

I suppose there are advantages to locking in characters, but I'd really just rather put them in different ones and let the thing breathe a bit.

Since I don't work conventionally, why fall into conventions that are outdated anyway? I am not working at a very high level--this is amateurish fun. But I don't see why I should worry about a slick, professional look when something rougher is a lot more interesting to me to draw.