I saw the movie "Braveheart" again recently for the first time in a looooong time, and after rewatching Mel Gibson give that famous speech where he shouts "They make take our lives, but they will never take... OUR FREEDOM!!!," well that whole spiel got me to thinking. So you're the commander of an army, and you're giving this grandiloquent speech to fire up your men, and they're all lined up in front of you, like literally thousands of people packed onto a piece of land roughly the size of a football field or two. Does anyone else see anything wrong with this picture? How the hell are these thousands of people supposed to hear what this one dude is saying? I mean, this was obviously WAY before microphones had been invented, probably even before the reverse cowgirl position had been invented, so we're talking a prettttttyy long time ago. I mean seriously, sometimes I even have trouble hearing people on the phone, or when I'm driving and someone says something to me from the backseat. And these men who are about to go into battle are supposed to hear something being shouted to them from a football field's length away? Yeah, forgive me for having my doubts. Even at my college's Division 3 basketball games, which are indoors in an enclosed space with maybe two or three hundred people in attendance max, the person singing the Star-Spangled Banner before the game still needs a microphone for people to hear him/her. And there's a reason why when you go to any music concert, even for someting as inherently loud as heavy metal, they have those giant ten-foot-high speakers mounted on the stage, cuz it's a given fact you can't hear for shit what a lone, single person is saying/singing to you past like a 50-yard distance. I'm not sure how they got around this not-so-minor logistical snag in the 13th century. Did pre-battle speeches in movies like Braveheart not actually happen in real life because it was just physically impossible for most of your army to hear it? Or did the commander just say "Ahh fuck it, I'm giving this speech even if only 1% of my entire army actually gets to hear it"?

          This phenomenon was even more blatant in the third "Lord of the Rings" movie, when King Theoden was giving this awesome speech to an army of *tens* of thousands of men on horseback about to charge the enemy lines at Minas Tirith. I mean, the speech was pretty awesome, and I get goosebumps everytime I watch that scene in my DVD of "Return of the King", except there's just one small problem Mr. King Theoden, THE MEN IN YOUR ARMY DON'T HAVE A "RETURN OF THE KING" DVD THAT THEY CAN POP INTO THE DVD PLAYER AND HEAR YOUR SPEECH IN CRYSTAL-CLEAR DOLBY SURROUND SOUND LIKE I CAN. IT'S PROBABLY ONLY THE ONE HUNDRED OR SO PEOPLE DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF YOU CAN ACTUALLY HEAR WHAT YOU'RE SAYING. Must've sucked to be in the back, you're missing out on this amazing, rousing speech that will go down in history, all because you arrived a few minutes late to the battle site. I know for me personally, if I was in the back, I wouldn't even be trying to listen to the speech. I'd probably just be picking my nose, thinking about having sex with my wife when I get home, and trying to do that trick where you tap the person in front of you on the shoulder and hold your pointed index finger over their shoulder so their cheek hits your finger when they turn their head to see who tapped them. Man, that trick is awesome.

          And man, the more I think about it, the more those pre-battle speeches in war movies seem like total bullshit. I doubt most of the troops were even trying to listen to the speech, I bet most of them were probably just scratching their balls and thinking of ways to stay out of the action and not have to really fight anyone, so that they can live to go home and have sex with their wife (or secret male lover, for all my male homosexual readers). I guess in a way, it makes sense that only a handful of people at the very front and center of the formation could actually hear what the commander was saying, since they are probably the most likely to die, and they're probably already pissing their pants anyway, so if you're one of the unlucky few up there, might as well listen to a really awesome and manly speech before you get a sword shoved through your face within the first five minutes of the battle starting.

          Man, I hope I never have to fight in a war or go to battle like that, but if I did have to, that would be a pretty awesome way to die, by getting a sword shoved into my stomach. Then I could be really badass and grab the sword and shove it even further through me and start laughing really crazily and make the guy who stabbed me start freaking out, right before I go into shock from the pain and fall to the ground.

That is my idea of a perfect death.