{"id":776,"date":"2008-10-23T17:15:37","date_gmt":"2008-10-24T01:15:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/23\/stealth-bomber-made-in-china-detail\/"},"modified":"2008-10-23T17:15:37","modified_gmt":"2008-10-24T01:15:37","slug":"stealth-bomber-made-in-china-detail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/stealth-bomber-made-in-china-detail\/","title":{"rendered":"Stealth Bomber – Made in China (*detail)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Stealth Bomber – Made in China (*detail)<\/a>
Originally uploaded by Wordyeti<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n

I knew even before I flipped this cheap little plastic toy over what I’d find on the bottom. “Made in China.” It was so predictable that the only surprise was how easy it was to confirm the cliche. <\/p>\n

I’m not sure that I’m up for some crypto-nativist screed on how we should have factories churning out stacks of shoddy extruded-plastic junk… but I really do hope the Air Force guys have something else up their sleeves for air & technological superiority. ‘Cause this design is pretty much public domain right now, y’all. <\/p>\n

When I first moved to California, my first big assignment took me out to 29 Palms. It was something straight outta Raymond Chandler – an assignment that turned out to be a set-up, one that me and the photographer barely escaped from.<\/p>\n

But that is a long and dark story for another time. <\/p>\n

The relevance to this is that as I drove through the night with the top down on the first convertible I’d ever driven, still shaking with adrenaline, I looked up and saw all kinds of crazy lights in the sky chasing each other around. I thought I was hallucinating from the stress and shock, but overhead, it looked like there were UFOs straight outta Spielberg’s Close Encounters wheeling, stopping, starting, going straight up and spinning around. <\/p>\n

I pulled over to the side of the road, alarmed, and wondering if someone had slipped something into my drink when we were waiting for the “source” to show up, or if I’d been poisoned or hurt somehow when we made the mad sprint to our cars when the ugly truth dawned. <\/p>\n

But overhead, the lights just kept on moving around, and nobody else seemed to be paying any attention. Off in the distance, the giant wind generators flailed. <\/p>\n

It was, of course, the Stealth Fighters, Bombers and other experimental aircraft buzzing around in the dark, secure from the eyes of spies or Office of the Inspector General auditors.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stealth Bomber – Made in China (*detail)Originally uploaded by Wordyeti I knew even before I flipped this cheap little plastic toy over what I’d find on the bottom. “Made in China.” It was so predictable that the only surprise was how easy it was to confirm the cliche. I’m not sure that I’m up for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1],"class_list":["post-776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}