Thursday, December 03, 2009 Purple Haze The book launch for Exodus, book 2 of the Ark trilogy is on, 1PM at Bakka Phoenix Books in Toronto on Saturday, Dec 12. If you can make it, come on down, especially those of you I never get to see. We use a lot of smoke in the army - we use it to cover movements, to mark targets, to call in helicopters. We're probably the world's largest users of smoke. If only because not many people find it very useful. Can you imagine finding some under your Festivus tree this Festivus? "What's this honey?" "It's a set of smoke grenades. Red and green. See, they're festive. And they have many uses around the house." "I want a divorce." So when you do your holiday shopping, you might want to lean in a different direction. However for those of us spending the twelve days of christmas practicing our medevac drills, smoke is a very important thing, because that's how the helicopter knows where to land and which way the wind is blowing there. So half a dozen times a day we set up an LZ and pop smoke for the helo. In addition, there's usually some smoke involved in whatever incident cased the casualties who need medevac in the first place, so there's a lot of smoke. And really it is pretty festive, big billows of red and green and purple climbing up into the sky and spreading out. Very pretty. Purple is my favourite, but only because of the smoke grenade scene in Apocalypse Now, and of course the Hendrix song 'Purple Haze.' Unfortunately we don't usually have time to watch it as medevacs are pretty frantic, plus we're usually in the middle of it, which makes things pretty confusing. I have no idea how much of it I've inhaled, but let me put it this way - if someone ever cuts a track called "Purple Snot", I'll be starring in the video. When turkey dinner rolls around, I'm still going to be tasting purple smoke. I just wish it had a better flavour. Cheers all! Paul :: add a comment :: Latest five blogs: Bullwer-Lytton 7/17/2010 The unnofficial army watch 2/20/2010 Finding the water 2/3/2010 All beach, no water 1/16/2010 All beach and no water. 1/4/2010 Archives: 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 ________________________________________________________________ hey! this post only arrived in my Newsreader today, over two weeks after the Grand Opening. If I'd known sooner, I'd have come. Bought a book (or two), got an autograph, reminisce over old times... What causes this RSS timewarp, anyway? Ontari-ari-ari-o, South of Toronto, posted on 12/31/2009 12:58:33 AM ________________________________________________________________ Purple Haze! I love it! CU on the 12! Jen, Toronto, posted on 12/4/2009 9:19:07 AM ________________________________________________________________