That Toiletship Rucksichtslos ...

[Dave Monroe]

... well, just about outta here for what's left of that Labor Day (hey,
here's a suggestion--jbor Day!  See, a gesture of Good Will ...)
weekend, maybe even take in a bit of that traditional drag racing
("Sunday! Sunday! Rocket-powered funny cars!"--well, there you go ...),
but ... but, well, did go back and reread that Toiletship Rucksichtslos
("Reckless") episode (V448-56/B522-32), which is Very Interesting Indeed
(so t'anks again for the suggestion, jbor!  A veritable Milkman of Human
Kindness) ...

Playing on a few German stereotypes here, perhaps.  "The real stacked
and more racially golden tomatoes" on the officers' "hand-cranked peep
shows" (leaving one hand free, one supposes ...) vs. the
"un-Teutonic-looking women in the enlisted men's machines" might reflect
"some of that Nazi fanaticism," perhaps, but "The Rucksichtslos itself
is the issue of another kind of fanaticism: that of the specialist," not
an unstereotypically "un-Teutonic" fanaticism ...

But the very construction of a specialized "Toiletship," "intended to be
the flagship of a whole Geschwader of Toiletships," well ... see Alan
Dundes, Life is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder: A Study of German National
Character through Folklore, and keep in mind Norman O. Brown's comments
on that privy upon which Martin Luther recieved that "thunderbolt" of
inspiration which led to the Reformation (Life against Death, p. 202 in
that Wesleyan UP ed.).  Except here, seems that toilet is foregrounded,
rather than elided ...

"[General, or maybe Admiral, laughter]"--good one ...

Now, here's where it SHOULD get interesting for me, and it DOES, but ...
well, that Operation  Backfire, Operation Paperclip thing, "intellectual
reparations," that Allied (esp., American) appropriation of Nazi
scientists, not to mention research, patents, equipment, after the
surrender (see, e.g., John Gimbel, Science, Technology and
Reparations).  "Lucky the Bolshies didn't get it, huh, Charles?"  Well,
we've discussed that competition for Nazi scientists and scientific
apparatus amongst the US, USSR, UK, France already, so ...

But what I was suddenly struck by was the GE thing.  Not sure about what
their status was in WWII (though see
http://www.albany.edu/history/histmedia/Hq.html in that regard, note
those "shoe-pac'd young fellas from Schenectady"), but General
Electric--"We Bring Good Things to Life"--was notoriously a military
contractor throughout the Cold War, and, esp. during the Vietnam War
(and remain as such, esp. in re: thermonuclear weapons).  Seemed an
interesting choice, given all the possibilities here.  But note also the
specific reference to "the bolshies," to that nascent Cold War,
seemingly underway at LEAST from the moment the Germans surrendered
(reacll Patton's desire to just keep going ...).  Charles' perhaps Cold
War paranoia, "Charles' colleague here, Steve, has forgotten about the
Russians," which seems to be of some concern, at least to Charles ...

And then, a musical number, with a recitative of sorts, ostensibly about
"Texas mosquitoes" on "Buf-falo Bayou," but ... "Why, there's boys just
like you wanderin' around, you may've seen one in the street today and
never known it, with the mind of an infant, just because the mosquitoes
got to him and did their unspeakable thing."  Torture?  Brainwashing?
Note that "Poked his head up, under her dress" above as well ... but
here's the particularly interesting bit: "And we've laid down
insecticides, a-and bombed the bayous with citronella, and it's no good
folks."  Napalm?  Agent Orange?  "They breed faster'n we can kill
'em"--all sorts of Yellow Peril stereotypes in play here--"and are we
just gonna tuck tail and let them be out there [...] the loathesome
behavior of those--things, we gonna allow them to exist?"  Remind anyone
of a certain Police Action that the US hadn't quite tucked its tail out
of ca. 1973?  And, again, boats ...

And I haven't even gotten to the German Rocket Scientists here yet,
though that talk of the Tolietship, history, as "a wind tunnel's all it
is" (V451/B526) reminds me, not only of Walter Benjamin's angel of
history (see his Illuminations, though Kai had helpfully posted a
translation of the passage I'm thinking of some time back), but also
that I still have Peter Wegener's The Peenemunde Wind Tunnels: A Memoir
(Wegener's currently an emeritus professor of Engineering at Yale, by
the way--"look among the successful academics" [V749/B874]), or that
Guidance thing, "guidance, warhead, propulsion" (V456/B532), very
cybernetic, very ICBM (reminds me, that "Radiant Hour," perhaps a
reference to that Doomsday Clock on the cover of the Bulletin of Atomic
Scientists?) ....

So, hey, thanks for reminding me about this littel episode, jbor ...