A "call sign" is radio transmission tradition; it's a nickname or code used to designate the speaker (either as a particular person, location, or vehicle).
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| Like "14 Aelous Umbra", which still mystifies me. |
Truckers with CB radios use call signs (or, as they call them, "handles").
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| Like, "Razorback". |
Ham radio operators use(d) them.
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| Like the discoverer of life on Mars, W6XRL4. |
They remain popular in aviation, particular military aviation.
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| Like USAF aviator Captain Hal "Highball" Jordan. |
I, for one, however, find Hal's call sign ambiguous and inappropriate. Most people think it has something to do with Hal being a drinker. But really the only credible evidence for that is the slurring of his Filmation voice actor, Gerald Mohr.
"Eazhe ofph, To'-omm...."
In fact, it's certainly from the other, more obscure meaning of "highball": "to go at full or high speed", which you could easily imagine as applying to Hal as an aviator.
But I think DC really missed the mark when they chose "Highball" as Hal Jordan's call sign. Hal "Head Injury" Jordan would be asking for too much, I suppose.
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| "Headstrong"; I meant to type 'Hal "Headstrong" Jordan'. |
But watching Hal in the old Filmation cartoons made me realize there's another better call sign for him...
"Captain Obvious".
At the risk of repeating myself, Hal is handsome but dumb. He's almost a stereotypical dumb jock, which is honestly why he's so ineffective at wielding one of the "greatest weapons in the universe." He's damn near incapable of lateral thinking. I'm not sure if he was always that way or if it's cumulative head injuries.
ReplyDelete"I was being attacked by a yellow bulldozer so I smashed through the windshield with my head and head-butted the driver until he was unconscious." "Uh, couldn't you have used your ring to lift the ground under the bulldozer and throw the whole thing into the Pacific Ocean without suffering head trauma?" "Oh, well, I guess that would have worked too."
Bryan - I grant you Hal is a big ol' dummy, but "damn near incapable of lateral thinking"? The only thinking he's capable of IS lateral, and it's usually so out there that it saves the day, while people burdened with good sense are still trying to form a coherent plan.
ReplyDeleteThat said, GLs are generally not big on lifting the ground under a thing, and I don't know why that's the case. Notably, Xanshi got blown up because the blink bomb was painted yellow and John Stewart didn't know how to react. (The other side of it was that the scene was written with a goal of making John screw up, but even so, it "happened" so I can't ignore it.)
- HJF1
Speaking of ham radio operators (something I half aspire to becoming), I finally figured out a way to remember Morse Code. I came up with a word or phrase that has the same scansion as the corresponding letter; for example, "A" is dot-dash, which matches "ahoy". With that in mind:
ReplyDeleteahoy, Bob Odenkirk, Casablanca, dog catcher, eat, Fibonacci, green bean soup, hootenanny, icky, Jafar has lice, kill the lights, Lothario, Morse Code, noisy, Omaha, protect my butt, quick find a towel, revolver, Sierra, tea, uniform, vitamin D, Wakanda, X marks the spot, you're a big jerk, Zagnut City.
- HJF1
That's... ingenious.
DeleteThanks! I have an unhealthy love for Morse Code, even if I've spent 50 years being unable to get a handle on it (until I figured out my little trick). I have to respect any communication system that you can implement over any technology capable of producing dots and dashes. Occasionally there's a TV show where they can't get a message to the aircraft because their radio is down, and someone gets the brilliant idea of a bright light and Morse Code and it saves the day.
ReplyDeleteAmelia Earhart probably wouldn't have disappeared if she didn't consider her Morse Code antenna "dead weight" that she didn't take with her on that fatal leg of her journey. Some friendly Morse Code operator could have signaled her, "we can hear you but you can't hear us", or "tune your direction finder to a low frequency you ninny, at high frequencies it bounces off the atmosphere like a house of mirrors". Morse Code will save the day, if only you let it.
- HJF1
Krypto used to use it, I recall.
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