THE PENTAGRAM "SCREWS UP"

March 27, 2008
Recently, the Pentagon was found to have mistakenly shipped a bunch of nuclear fuse trigger devices to Taiwan instead of the helicopter batteries they had ordered.
My first impulse is entirely conspiratorial. A box marked “Helicopter Batteries. THIS SIDE UP” was packed tightly and loaded onto a B-29. A lifelong Wyoming military colonel filed the bogus paperwork and on the other end, a small group of Taiwanese Intelligence Operatives delivered the “Batteries” to an unmarked warehouse where they were installed and tested as part of Operation Dry Clean Mainland.
My gut tells me this “mistake” was probably intentional.
My brain tells me the facility housing the Pentagon’s shipping stock probably has a few knuckleheads spending way too much time in the bathroom before and after the break truck chugs into the parking lot. Ah-OOOO-Gaaaaa! Ah-OOOO-Gaaaaa!
A filing system of such vast numbers of seemingly and yet intentionally disjointed parts must be daunting to manage. One can only imagine the hardship involved in sorting, pricing and mislabeling such items as the Nuclear Override Patchbay #32245 (labeled as “Humvee T-12 Alternator Relay”) and the Daisy Cutter Targeting Motherboard (labeled as “Sweatshop Time Management Software V 1.2”)
Here, the Nuclear Fuse Triggers sent were for Ballistic Missiles.
Aisle 271, Bin 23, Slot 5.
The Helicopter Batteries are located in Aisle 217, Bin 23, Slot 5.
One can easily see the error.
Take into account also that on the day the mistake was made two forklift operators were out sick, the Order Mis-Picking Supervisor was battling a recurring case of gout and it was Wednesday. Humpday.
The Taiwanese, to their credit, pointed out the error immediately. “These batteries suck!”
On our side, we were obviously really slammed and somewhat annoyed by their sheer lack of appreciation. We kept about our business of shipping and handling for another two full years.
With the Nuclear Triggers sitting on the Returns Desk for so long, a couple of the more ambitious guys decided to take them apart, scrutinize, replicate, reverse engineer and test them. They worked great. Better than the original as would be expected. On a tiny island off of the West coast of Wang-an, a mockup of the total annihilation of the Island of Sodor was conducted. Harold the Helicopter was retrofitted with nuclear tipped missiles and the idyllic home of creepy-faced trains was reduced to a sub-oceanic valley. The Taiwanese You Tubed it all. It went viral. All the while we shipped and handled. Everyone here thought it was some smart assed kid with a Mac Book Pro.
The Chinese were screaming. In Chinese. Being constantly exposed to waitresses aisle chatter in Chinese restaurants, we did not hear a thing. Thought they were just having that laugh at their own Western Hemisphere inside joke of not including a knife in the silverware on the tables. The Chinese threatened the Taiwanese with invasion (yawn) and expressed, through an interpreter, “strong displeasure”. Something akin to fantasizing about Dick Cheney.
On the cusp of a Paris Hilton nipple exposure, the story broke quietly.
Pentagon statements to the press were made. The usual. “Unaware at the highest level”, “Internal investigative matter”, “Completely isolated incident” and any recurrence past, present or future “Categorically implausible”.
In other words: We’re looking into not looking into it.
And where the hell did Sodor go?
Call Langley immediately.
Why the hell won’t this helicopter turn over?
BOOM