Goodfellow AFB Squadron Rips Off the Angry Cactus On Purpose

SAN ANGELO, TX — The iconic plastic cactus that adorns the top of the Angry Cactus West Texas Bar and Grill, 1 W. Concho Ave., became more infamous this week when a squadron at Goodfellow Air Force Base incorporated it into their version of a “kraken.”

Supporters of President Donald Trump’s stolen election may remember the kraken when Trump lawyer Sidney Powell promised to “Unleash the kraken” on the rigged election of President Joe Biden. A kraken is a fierce octopus and also a cryptocurrency exchange… as was SBF’s FTX. There are so many not-politically-correct references here that the woke U.S. Military may decide to put the designer of Goodfellow’s kraken logo in the brig.

So far, however, top brass at the base have praised the effort.

The designer is 17th LRS Vehicle Maintenance General Purpose Mechanic, Mr. Kendanny Stevenson, who obtained permission from the Angry Cactus restaurant to use the plastic cactus’s likeness in a design of the 17th Logistics Readiness Squadron, or LRS, mascot and patch.

“The Kraken, not only symbolizes the functions and support offered by LRS, but highlights the tightly knit bond of Goodfellow and San Angelo,” Goodfellow AFB’s public affairs airman exclaimed in an article on the base website.

“This squadron takes care of so many different aspects of base operations,” said Stevenson. “We facilitate deployments, mobilization, vehicle maintenance, and so much more. LRS is like a Kraken with many different tentacles that hold many different functions.”

Stevenson’s squadron commander, Major Jose Quintanilla, gave the new patch and kraken mascot high praise.

“When I got here, I saw other squadrons had a mascot so I wanted the LRS to have one too,” said Quintanilla. “It’s important for units to have an identity.”

In true military fashion, the patch and mascot were the task of an ad hoc committee formed back in July.

“I’m proud of the efforts of the LRS Mascot Development Committee in creating a mascot design that is truly indicative of our squadron with strong connections to our wing at Goodfellow and the San Angelo community,” Quintanilla said.

The Angry Cactus guy, Tim Condon, is proud too. The cactus kraken will provide Condon another controversial milestone in the continuous development of the Angry Cactus mystique.

Back in 2014, the City of San Angelo demurred approval because the Cactus statue looked like another kind of symbol. If you want to know exactly what that was, click here. Then they said the Angry Cactus was too big. You cannot make this stuff up. Finally, during the final days of the Cactus statue’s bureaucratic blessing process and the nut-cutting was almost complete, they said the Angry Cactus appeared to be too angry. It took Condon about a year to get the Cactus approved after 500 t-shirts were sold that asked the City to “leave my Angry Cactus alone.”

Now the Cactus is also a kraken and with that all sorts of additional metaphors and cultural references can emerge.