This Wrench in My Gears, episode 145 of This Gun in My Hand, was maliciously wrecked by Rob Northrup. This episode and all others are available on Youtube with automatically-generated closed captions of dialog. Visit http://ThisGuninMyHand.blogspot.com for credits, show notes, archives, and to buy my books, such as Sisyphus, Eat Your Heart Out, available in paperback and ebook from Amazon. What do I use on slot machines to avoid developing a gambling problem? This Gun in My Hand!
Show Notes:
1. This episode was inspired by Mother Bone's posts about the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, released internally in 1944 by the OSS (predecessor of the CIA) and declassified in 2018. The concepts could be used today by anyone resisting an occupying force or authoritarian regime. Direct quotes from the manual appear throughout this episode.
https://archive.org/details/simplesabotagefi26184gut/page/n5/mode/2up
2. I have pocket knives with pictures of Tarzan and Lash LaRue on the handles. Here’s a picture of a colorful Hopalong Cassidy pocket knife:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1068482143/vintage-hopalong-cassidy-pocket-knife?dd_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
3. I thought I was being ridiculous imagining slot machines branded with 1930s comic strip characters, but apparently there was really a Blondie machine at some point, and just last year they released a video slot machine featuring The Phantom.
https://www.aristocratgaming.com/us/slots/games/the-phantom
4. Anachronism! Lash LaRue’s first film appearance was in 1944, and he only began to star in Westerns around 1947.
4. Anachronism! The comic strip Sad Sack was first published in Yank, The Army Weekly in June 1942. The generic expression “sad sack” may not have been common until after the comic strip became popular.
Credits:
Music in this episode came from three public domain films:
The Sun Sets at Dawn (1950), The Scar (aka Hollow Triumph, 1948), and Killer Bait (1949). Most of the music and sound effects used in the episode are modified or incomplete versions of the originals.
Sound Effect Title: Heels on Pavement.wav
License: Public Domain
https://freesound.org/people/B.Harkins/sounds/683658/
Sound Effect Title: School door with metal latch inside.aif by timonunderwater
License: Public Domain
https://freesound.org/s/532788/
Fair use brief audio clip of William Shatner taken from outtake of a recording session for the 1993 PC Game Star Trek: Judgment Rites.
The image accompanying this episode is a modified detail of a photograph by Horst Grund from 1943 titled “Sizilien, Reifenpanne mit VW-Kübelwagen.” Italy, Sicily, 1943. A flat tire on a VW-Kübelwagen, soldier with jack going to replace the tire. By Bundesarchiv, Creative Commons License Attribution-ShareAlike Germany 3.0. (Note that the CC Attribution-Share Alike license applies only to this image, not to the text or audio from this episode.)
Image Alt text: Color photo of a soldier in short sleeves and khaki shorts cranking a jack along the driver’s side of a VW Kubelwagen with a flat tire. The hood over the engine compartment in the rear of the car is open. The car is beige, dirty and worn. The background appears to be a large body of water or sea with hills or mountains rising over it. The photo was taken in Sicily, Italy, in 1943. I’m not familiar enough with military uniforms to tell if this is a German or Italian soldier.
