Continuing my glance throughs of of the kiddy sections of government websites, at the Defense Intelligence Agency children’s website they don’t even try to offer an explanation on what they’re about to inquiring children. There are no whats, hows, whys. One gets straight to the games, a soldier in camouflage fatigues standing in front of a map of the world (USA center), asking you to help them out by selecting a mission to pursue from the Mission Control Panel.
The missions offered?
You can put together jigsaw puzzles of Soviet military machinery such as the nuclear-capable 122-mm self-propelled howitzer. “Why cold war Soviet military machinery?” I wondered.
“It doesn’t look like a children’s area,” said H.o.p., who has become annoyingly caught up with online gaming and is like to drive me nuts with it.
One can play the Hangman game and spell out “Defense Intelligence Agency” over a background image of a tank. Considering the uhm unfortunate outcomes of the recent hangings in Iraq, seemed to me that the Hangman game was one the DIA would have immediately taken down from the website. But, hey, that’s just me and what I’d have been inclined to do. (The net can build such odd random meaningless links. After looking at the DIA kid website I went over to DeviantArt and visited some of the galleries of today’s select Deviants. In one is a come-hither Czech model fashionably strangling herself with a noose to the tune of glamor soft lighting, but at least it’s a woman scarfing herself right? and so can attract no “Spinal Tap” slapdowns on leashed boot-licking sexism, because it’s the woman herself having a good old time with the self-drawn noose, which she really wants, really. And I only mention it because then I found in another gallery a fun picture of a too anxious 3d caterpillar taking off from the end of a leaf with the help of a blue set of constructed wings [didn’t I tell you they were forcing me to the realm of cute], an image I still had open when I checked Tild’s page, saw a link to a place called Linda’s tutorials, and just to see what they were offering in Photoshop I clicked on a basic free tutorial and with that first click brought up a caterpillar in the same position perched at the end of a leaf. Random generation of meaningless echos. People like pictures of caterpillars. The DIA hangman has nothing to do with sexy fun with a noose has nothing to do with the fraternity hazing confused with torture. But I still think the Hangman game is a poor choice for the DIA kids website. It’s just too…well…up front.)
Back to the DIA kids website. In Maze Collision you try to beat your enemy to the helicopter. You are green. Your enemy is red. If you’ve played the first-offered Jigsaw Puzzles then you’ve already encountered the term “red army”. A meaningless echo? I dunno.
Some other games are Simon (recall of sequences of colors over the DIA emblem), Memory (match-up pics of different military vehicles), Document Sort (drag speedy papers into a folder and rise through the ranks) and Air Combat (shoot at planes shooting at you).
The closest you get to learning anything about the DIA is via the Word Search game in which you find a selection of given words in a puzzle, the categories offered being DIA Terms, Operations, DIA History and Vehicles.
DIA History words are coldwar, cubanmissile, vietnamwar, sovietinvasion, dominoeffect, grenada, nicaragua, counternarcotic, justcause, earnestwill, gulfwar, diabadge, embassybombings, nittearms, usscole and waronterror.
DIA Operations are iraqifreedom, frequentwind, eveninglight, earnestwill, eldoradocanyon, justcause, promoteliberty, desertshield, desertstorm, restorehope, providepromise, upholddemocracy, desertstrike.
Never mind some of these names, but they will certainly say something to the children, just as they are meant to guide our own thoughts on the matter. Wouldn’t you like to Restore Hope? Provide Promise? Have Just Cause and Earnest Will? Frequent Wind is not so enticing. I don’t believe I’d like to have that because it sounds more like an embarrassing problem.
H.o.p. played Simon and Air Combat but was not so impressed that he wanted to play them more than once, and not longer than a few seconds, and not so impressed that he wanted to play anything else. Just fine by me. He wandered off to draw.
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