Posted on by mwhybark

Old Soldiers' Home

Many years ago, at least twice and possibly more, my parents took my sister and me to visit with the aged residents of what was then the Indiana State Soldiers’ Home and which today is known as the Indiana Veterans’ Home. The building seen in the first link is the one I recall. We sat on the expansive porch and visited, in our five-or-six-year-old-way with some elderly men. I recall one by vision, a very elderly man who could well have been a veteran of an 19th-century war, his white hair thin and I think his dentures out, swaddled in a lap blanket.

I recall the porch generously overlooking the frequently-flooding Wabash through the boughs of overhanging trees, willows and the like. The historical archive site notes that the Home was located off Riverside Road, so it seems likely that’s true. Google Maps clearly shows the Wabash running by the foot of the Home, so my thirty-four-year-old brain chemistry appears to be intact.

Anyway, this is one of the many experiences my parents provided to me that I am deeply grateful for. I wish that this had been an annual tradition instead of a one-or-two year detour. My family has absolutely no tradition of military service, but for what appears to be an entire generation lost (and lost to memory) during the Civil War in Missouri. I do think that my own profound suspicion of war and interest in and even reverence of service must reflect my family’s heritage. I may be a bright man, but I am neither an original thinker nor a genius. War is bad; service is not. I have never shied from expressing my concerns to friends who enlist; I have never shied from expressing my support and concern for those in I know in combat zones and on this day I regularly think of them as well as that old man, and the young men he left behind or killed on the fields of Cuba, the Philippines, France, Germany, Korea, Southeast Asia, Central America, and Iraq.

Rarely to do I concur with the judgments of the callous and evil men who send you to do their will and I honor and respect them not at all, even when I concur with their judgments. I honor and respect your service and I always will.

Posted on by mwhybark

A License

P-Frank notes “that while The Who has lost a drummer and a bassist, the only surviving members of the Beatles are a drummer and a bassist,” and describes the obvious solution as “a license to print money.”

I link to this only in the interests of supporting any subsequent lawsuits seeking remuneration for Mr. Frank as the originator of this world-threatening concept, and not by any means as an endorsement of the concept, as mash-up friendly as it indeed is.

Posted on by mwhybark

Quotes

I’m quite happy with the unexpected Battlestar Galactica. Jutst moments ago, a scene played whcih quoted, in order, “Alien,” the Butthole Surfers song “Cherub,” and the Kubrick/Clarke fillum “2001.” These nods, however, do not constitute the basis oof my interest, but as the dramatic equivalent of an amusing storefront sin on the Simpsons.

“I see bodies.”

Posted on by mwhybark

Boo!

By far most people I know are in direct contact with their sense of family heritage, of when relative X came here from country Y, and seem to benefit from this knowledge. In my family, this idea was long gone by the time I was adopted, and although the work of others has uncovered the obvious, (given the cuckoo clocks and dachsunds of my father’s childhood), familial connection to that identity has been sundered.

As an adopted person, my sense of why I am as I am is further alienated. I exhibit numerous behaviors and preferences that are not present in my immediate tree of heritables. Forgetfulness, for example, is not known among my father’s family nor my mother’s. Yet I have clean forgot my reason for writing this blog entry.

Posted on by mwhybark

The industrial complex inside an eggplant

“Any bowling ball can figure out a financial spider, but it takes a real razor blade to seek a mating ritual. If a surly pork chop dances with a boiled grizzly bear, then the tape recorder around a stovepipe dies. Now and then, a judge near a tripod borrows money from a minivan defined by the bottle of beer. Another financial photon, the umbrella, and another somewhat polka-dotted CEO are what made America great!

Any vacuum cleaner can organize a rude cloud formation, but it takes a real tornado to bury the pompous polar bear. Now and then, an almost tattered movie theater pours freezing cold water on a satellite beyond some vacuum cleaner. Indeed, a briar patch takes a peek at the hairy squid.

Most people believe that a sheriff near a buzzard makes a truce with the spider about another grain of sand, but they need to remember how knowingly a dust bunny daydreams. The lover defined by another hole puncher secretly finds subtle faults with a psychotic sheriff. The familiar vacuum cleaner negotiates a prenuptial agreement with the green dust bunny. Indeed, the barely highly paid salad dressing non-chalantly borrows money from the impromptu CEO. The industrial complex inside an eggplant trades baseball cards with a secretly annoying paycheck.”

Clearly the greatest spam of all time. I wonder if reposting it will in some way strengthen the filter-poison. Hope not, but how can I resist these aphorisms?