“OK, new topic. Do you think I could get elected President?”
“Yes, but we’d need to raise a lot more money somehow. TV ads aren’t cheap. Maybe someday there will be a cheaper way to reach millions of voters.”
“What is the best way to raise money for an election campaign?”
“Giving exclusive speeches that only rich people can afford to attend is a common method. Book deals are another. There are other legal, yet dishonest methods, like selling art through an intermediary. It’s basically money laundering. The good news is 18 presidents were US representatives first. 20 were governors before becoming presidents. Those are the top two previous jobs for presidents, besides being a lawyer.”
“Should I try to become a governor? Or seek some other experience?”
“The longer you stay in Congress, the better your chances are. If you get offered a cabinet position, I’d take it. Same goes for an offer to be someone’s running mate as vice president. You have a solid place on a powerful committee. Try to become in charge of it. The chair of the Appropriations Committee is the second most important representative after the Speaker of the House. That’s another office you could aim for in the future.”
“And you…what are your plans?”
“I’m not ambitious anymore. When I was young, I thought that maybe I could become a general or some other great military leader. Later, I was convinced I would die in battle in my 20s. From my perspective, I have already reached Valhalla. I climbed all the mountains and killed all the dragons. Now all I want to do is live quietly in peace, help you with your endeavors, and watch our kids grow up.”
“There’s an air of sadness in your words; a taste of unfulfilled dreams.”
“Maybe. That’s your perspective. From my point of view, once you’ve cheated death enough times, you start to feel sorry for the Grim Reaper.”
“You’re never too old for a new adventure. Keep an open mind. For me.”
“Roger, good copy.”
Given the demands of parenthood, I didn’t want to stray too far from home. I decided to spend my free time reading the classics and writing poetry. It was a nice change of pace from writing military articles. Many men have written on war, yet poetry has had a greater impact on civilization. I particularly enjoyed Kipling and his famous poem If. Here it is:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Kipling was a soldier himself and had a reputation as a patriot. His only son was later killed in battle during WW1.
Another poem that spoke to me strongly is Invictus. It was written by a man who had a leg amputated because of tuberculosis and then had to have the other leg amputated a few months later.
Out of the night that covers me
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul.
The poems of Kobayashi Issa also spoke to me. His pen name means Small Forest One Cup of Tea. Despite a life full of tragedy which included the death of his mother, wife, and children, he remained optimistic and often funny. He wrote thousands of haikus, often about animals. My two favorite poems of his are below:
New Year’s Day—
everything is in blossom!
I feel about average.
…
O snail
Climb Mount Fuji,
But slowly, slowly!
I had lunch with the helicopter CEO today. He was intrigued by my idea of applying vortex generators to main rotors, which is something that has never been done before to the best of my knowledge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_generator
That time the CIA tried to frame Green Berets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJxdOq2Lu9Y
How are you doing little buddy?
Been doing OK.
Have a new francophone pen pal on Facebook, so that’s nice. My goal is to be fluent in French and Spanish in addition to Arabic and Swahili. The helicopter CEO said his wife is a professor at UF, so the two of them will try and get the word out about my math and chemistry tutoring.
I applied to be a math teacher at the first school in Florida to hire and fire me. Whoever they hired last quit, I guess.
Lockhart’s book Measurement was a good read, but he didn’t write a word about probability and statistics in it. Shame, he has a knack for explaining math.
Two more installments of I, Soldier left. After that, I think I’ll go back to weekly satire. It’s good for my creativity and mood. I was thinking something about drones and how all the experts and gear we have to counter them are in Ukraine right now.
Tomorrow, I’ll buy a bamboo staff from the Kanapaha Garden. That will complete my yamabushi outfit.
Today I learned that there are bees that make purple honey:
https://www.honeybeesuite.com/purple-honey-the-real-thing/
That honey looks red to me.
Purple honey: First thing that pops in my head is raccoon/opossum shit. When muscadines are ripe critters gorge on them and leave piles of purple shit. There may be enough sugars and cyanids in the poop to attract the bees. He should check around and see if there are any abundant sources of red/purple/black fruits in his area.
*A friend of mine had a contract to set his bees out for a couple of hundred acres of tabasco peppers. The honey was…very interesting. Just a little bite in the taste.
Also…there is some Himalayan honey that will get you quite stoned. I am not sure what flower that is gathered from.
Sorry for OT but with both Germany and transit on the brain today… behold the German vernacular for “fare evasion”. There is some bafflegab in the article how very wrong it is and well… I saw it depicted (with graphics!) on a bus in 1985 and even I was taken aback.
The etymology says it comes from “black” as in nighttime, or smuggler’s “blackface”. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Never apologize.
I’m surprised that it isn’t called Judenfahren.
They got rid of that Juden problem in the 40s.
Meh, same idea as “black market” or “black ops”.
Surprised Zwarte Piet is still a thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6cGqxaAems
Yeah, I don’t sense anything sinister about it.
Only when viewed through ‘Merican eyes.
Razor thinks the United CEO assassination stinks to high heaven.
When he stops wearing a jacket made out of that sofa he killed on trophy hunt maybe people will take him serious.
I don’t share the sentiment of ‘arriving to Valhalla,’ but I understand and appreciate the emotion of someone who felt like they have. Were I an enlisted Roman, after my 20 I’d be VERY busy doing absolutely nothing resembling soldierdom. My ambitions would involve being as ensconced in comfort and pleasure as much as possible.
I like all of those poems, fairly rare for me. Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘assignment’ to kids was to write a short poem for no grade, but it must rhyme. — I agree the forced structure fosters the inner thought process. Then again, I’m oddly drawn to Issa’s two shorties w/o structure, especially the first for its humor/truth. That’s sorta how Life be. (It’s also fun to see ‘knave’ out there. “Knave’s” my literary name for the dominant side of my personality, joined by Nicole, named after my brother. (Both are just our names mixed around, each with an extra letter. Knave just adds a k to mine, and he gets an extra e. I purposefully penned them to be childish, but happenstance had ’em fit quite perfectly.)
I am a poetic basic bitch. There are a handful of exceptions but I want rhymes otherwise my eyes glaze over.
There once was gay man from new york
He got sick of it and moved up north
when he got there he felt forced
to complain about poetry
but was too lazy for a soliloquy
Solid.
This is just to say
blow me
Not my thing man, sorry.
‘My ambitions would involve being as ensconced in comfort and pleasure as much as possible.’
I don’t think you’d make it 20 years in the legion.
I thought the Legion retirement package was:
“Congrats. Here’s a farm in the provinces. If you want to eat, get to work.”
That is fairly accurate RC. Accurate not just for the Romans but most people at a certain level of ‘civilization’. For the ones not quite up to that level, i.e. most of humanity for most of history, being put on a nice ice floe was the retirement plan.
Peanuts from Heaven,
Celebrate ubiquity with obfuscation of the secondary envelopment,
Laugh at darkness a pray for SMOD,
Nuking from orbit isn’t always the correct path,
A sense of self dwarf is only matched by the irrelevance of the rarified air in which we inhale.
A crisp blue winter sky overmatched by tornado activity.
Uncomfortable footwear for the systemic task ahead.
I like black shoes
Rockets are cool
Plastic is friendly
I freeze below 55 degrees
I am not a lizard person
CONSUME
OBEY
DRINK
I’m almost finished with my peanuts characters, just in time for Christmas, I’ll report back in a few days, this is turning out good,
https://photos.app.goo.gl/anEgk1aXGb92fx6bA
My favorite is Pigpen.
He’s the favorite by far, I’ll have 7 of them, Woodstock and The Tree, I’ll show you in a day or so.
Thanks!
👍
One Adam 12…
“He’s a pig, isn’t he?”
/A cop on campus, vintage 1969
Plus ça change…
lol If this wasn’t a perfect representation of college life in 2024 I would have to say this was ridiculous satire, complete with radical prof stirring shit up.
“Asked by a reporter whether the suspect was transgender, [Madison Police Chief] Barnes said he did not know and “quite frankly, I don’t think that’s important at all.” He added that he doesn’t “think whatever happened today has anything to do with how she or he or they may want to identify.”’
Good on you, Barnes. To be fair to the reporter, Mojo’s link’s source brings it up cuz it’s strange. The boyfriend, who had never MET the chick, but had an online relationship (I legit get it), said he’d always known her as Samantha and it was just a thing Samantha, born Natalie, just did.
I wish he’d added ‘it’ as well, but I (sorta) respect the discipline. I DO think the Chief of Police has quite a bit of Fuck You latitude in a two victims, three dead shooting. I’d like to think I’d have puked all over that line and added a “Xe..xhe…xhi…zhickso-shamalam!”or similar onomatopoeia-d phrase. <– That word is piss-off hard to spell. I ain't memorizin' it. At least I've learned to spell "Accommodations" unlike hotels+ back in the day/now. I still misspell receive every single time. Like then. Stupidly, my brain thinks its remembering that word (and many) don't follow the old 'i before e' bullshit.. and it results incorrectly.
Yuck. Semi-possible, not-far-off SciFi tech: Install/code a trigger to shock you when you do an old behavior you want to stop. My misspell, maybe reaching for a lighter; alcohol absorbing through your tongue; any little physical habit you want to 'correct.' Ya do it, ya RECEIVE a shock. (Yay, ev!) Or a sensation like ya touched a hot stove, etc. Pain (often sadly) is a powerful way to force behavior. Its inventor would make a ton of money, and gotta say, Musk's neurolink is baby steps towards such. If it can be invented, it will be used. The fun parts always get adopted first, and even painful ones like these, and then always expanding into the shitty shit. (Google maps is really fucking helpful and convenient. Esp in Korea, but here too.) Maps being able to track everyone's location and pattern data is… uh. Well. It's out there and being used by everyone. China's all up in our shit as well, no question.
Evan,
When we visited Korea a few months ago, Google maps was useless. We were told that because they wouldn’t host map servers in Korea (and in Korean) so Google Maps cannot be used for real time navigation.
My wife used an app called T-map and I used Kakao Map. They were both OK. We did run into one situation where both the Korean map apps sent us to a place that was about 500 yards from the hotel we were looking for. We found the hotel by using Google Maps. It put the marker in the right place.
Scuttlebutt is the Lions are washed up because of injuries.
The are doomed because they play in the same division as the Vikings! PURPLE PRIDE!!!!
If they meet in the playoffs, it might be the first time in NFL history that both teams manage to lose.
Both teams lose in weeks 16 and 17. Packers win out, and the Detoilet/Minnesota game ends in a tie.
Packers win the division.
The Bears still suck.
Mornin’
🌄😏✊
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aqP4-dUMkMc
🎶🎶
Is it?
He only said “Mornin'”. He didn’t say anything about it being good.
Neither did UCS.
Well, it’s not afternoon where UCS is.
Now it’s morning.
Good morning, Sean, U, Ted’S., Teh Hype, and homey!
How goes?
I’m a bit concerned. My boss is scheduled to have a medical procedure today to try to correct his occasional irregular heartbeats. It will probably go fine, but there’s always risk involved, and there’s no telling how long he’ll need to recover.
He DID do all his direct reports’ evaluations yesterday, including mine. It was very good, and he was exceedingly generous with the raise (and year-end incentive) he gave me.
How are you?
Today is full of conflicting meetings. An all-day work session, and a doctor’s appointment.
I hope the appointment is routine and gets you out of a big chunk of the work session.
Yes and no.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/svetlana-dali-delta-air-lines-stowaway-arrested-flee/story?id=116848909
When did the U.S. turn into a roach motel?
question assumes we were ever not.
How hard can it be to sneak into Canada? Just visit a small town on our side, take a short day trip to the woods, and walk right the fuck across. Oh, and don’t try to do it riding a bus.
“The person she was staying with in Philadelphia discovered the bracelet cut and alerted authorities.”
I thought the bracelets alarmed automatically if cut off. You mean you can just cut it off and go about your life?
And why are we trying to keep people who are here illegally from leaving, anyway.
This Dali woman…what did she do to get in trouble the first time? Just stowing away on a plane? I assumed she is running away the first and second time…because?
Apparently they’ve run out of windows in Russia.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/17/europe/russia-bomb-kills-nuclear-protection-chief-intl-hnk/index.html
suh’ fam
whats goody
Hey from West Virginia
TALL INBRED CANS!
Still on the cruise, had enough Tall Cans for everyone last night. Feeling it. Dune buggy tour today.
Ooh, lotsa bumpy motion for the hung over guy.
I’ll toss cookies for everyone later, too!
I’ll toss cookies for everyone later
I suppose that’s better than salads.