Book Excerpt: Do I still want to...

Charles Stross wrote:Do I still want to put my name on the active service list?  Join the Dry Cleaners, visit strange countries, meet exotic people, and cast death spells at them?  I'm not sure anymore.  I thought I was sure, but now I know it amounts to shivering in a rainstorm most of the time and having to watch people with worms waggling behind their eyes the rest of it.  Is this what I want to do with my life?

--Charles Stross
  The Atrocity Archives
  2004
  Fiction

I've only encountered Stross's work on his blog but I like his 'Scottish Socialist' politics. Here he is updating the famous Full Metal Jacket quote for the post-911 Cthulhu crowd.

Here's the original:

"I wanted to see exotic Vietnam... the crown jewel of Southeast Asia. I wanted to meet interesting and stimulating people of an ancient culture... and kill them. I wanted to be the first kid on my block to get a confirmed kill!" - Private Joker (Mathew Modine)

  
Like almost all anti-war movies Full Metal Jacket has been adopted by the US military as a darkly humorous pro-military film:



The original source of this is probably an old US Navy recruitment poster:



One reason I generally avoided working in a corporate setting is because 'worms waggling behind their eyes' describes about 80% of the management I've encountered.