Output Stream of Consciousness

Link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=r_6vK_JSSTo

This ad for the Canadian Forces has been showing up on television of late.

I must say that the approach is intriguing. It's gritty, it's unglamorous, and it's tense, both in music, visuals and themes. One scene, if I don't miss my guess, even flashes by a homemade nail grenade, obviously not military issue. The forces are shown sneaking around buildings, throwing a flashbang into a room, rendezvousing quietly by boat, skydiving into an area, helping scared, injured and hungry people. The background noises sound like some of the creepier scenes in Half-Life 2.

The YouTube version of this is three and a half minutes long, which doesn't get the point across nearly as quickly as the television spot, but you get the general idea.

Apparently, recruitment is up in response to this, so the campaign seems to be working.

I'm glad we're stepping up our commitments in Afghanistan, though it does leave us more of an international target, in general.

CBC has some pretty good pages on Canadians' involvement in Afghanistan.