From The Mailbag

“Dear Philosopher Sarge,

I’ve often heard the phrase “it’s like explaining a color to a blind man”. Can a color really be explained?

Your Friend Joe”


Dear Friend Joe,

Sure! Sergeants can do anything. How about this;

Blue; is the color of calm, of logic, and of peaceful reflection
Red: is the color of passion and blood
Green: good green is the color of the ocean’s power, while bad green is the scent of court buildings, hospitals, and police stations; the kind of buildings that people don’t want to be in.
Purple: is the color of awe, and tremendous power held by an individual
Yellow: is the color of warmth, and the scent of nature
White: is the color of cold
Black: is the color of nighttime, and the color of nighttime fun
Orange: is the color of the scent of citrus
Brown: is the color of the scent of dirt
--------------------

“Dear Philosopher Sarge,

Can you explain why men become lustful at the sight of a woman’s breast, even when they don’t know the woman, or why women tend to melt when they see a baby, even when they don’t know the family?

Thanks,
Marcia”


Dear Marcia,

No.

Hunter/Killer of the Hands-On Type

When I was 12 or 13 I went moose hunting for the first time with my Dad and our neighbor. We lived in Alaska, we were cash-poor, and we hunted and fished and crabbed and grew vegetables in order to survive. I had (finally) graduated from garden-drudge to hunter/killer with responsibility for the family larder. It was a clear step toward manhood, increased status in the eyes of the community, and as it was the November season it was an excellent opportunity to freeze my hodingus’es off.

Anyway, Dad and Mr. Danby figured that there were probably moose hiding in a thick stand of alders, so they would circle around and make some noise, and when the moose came out I would shoot them. We set up firing lanes (so as not to shoot the noise making men) and I hunkered down in the snow {Hunker: to lower your redneck ass in preparation for a burst of activity} to wait. Damned if they weren’t right. Four moose came ambling out of the alders and I shot them all. Five shots, four moose down. At $.11 per round, that made the winter red meat supply for two families cost about $.40 a ton. The problem was that there were only three of us, and I had shot four moose. Dad had to whip back into town to get Mom’s moose tag so that all four were legal kills. Mr. Danby supervised me in gutting and skinning and quartering the moose while Dad was gone, then we started the first of many trips pulling a toboggan-load of meat up to the truck.

I hunted every season until I joined the Army and usually got a moose for the table. I also caught halibut on trot lines (although the damned crabs got more of them than I did), salmon and trout, and I worked in a crab cannery so I got to bring king crab home. I ate so much crab that I got sick of it and have never eaten it again. And graduation to hunter/killer didn’t get me out of garden-drudge duty. We had a brutally short growing season but we put up potatoes, carrots, cabbage, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, turnips, and greens every year. And we grew flowers that were gorgeous.

So; good story but what’s the point? Well, my wife, the totally and completely beloved Barbara, was born and raised in Washington, D.C. and knows for a fact that food comes from the supermarket. She fully recognizes that there is a work-for-food requirement in life, but the proper type of working for your supper is assisting the flow of money (while skimming a bit for the effort), or information, the forcible management of other peoples lives via judicial activity, or the manufacturing of one product out of another and the transportation of said product to someone willing to trade work units for it. This life view is common in our society, but to me it makes her functionally a Communist [from each what they can (or what I can take), to each what they need (pretty much), and please stay in your lane]. Of course when I mention this to her she disagrees somewhat forcefully. About 350 MPH forcefully. But it should not surprise you to know that my beloved is a Democrat.

So; good story, but what’s the point? Well, if the government was disrupted to the degree that made it useless to the common family (stop that. We are not already there) and the freeways were unusable due to traffic, lack of maintenance, or because they were free-fire zones (stop that. We are not already there), could you survive? If the supermarkets are burned out or closed or there is no fresh food, can you grow/hunt/kill well enough to feed your family? If you can, you probably vote for the most limited government possible because you don’t need it and it’s damned expensive. Over the past 30 years, that has been the Republican Party, although that principle appears to be in transition right now with an unknown destination. If you cannot, then you probably vote for a more comprehensive government that may not give you the best of items, but does guarantee a basic subsistence level for most folks, in return for a significant portion of individually earned work units from fewer folks. That has been and remains the bailiwick of the Democratic Party, although quite a few Republicans are kicking at the Enormous Goddamned Government door.

So, good story, but what’s the point? Well, if you live in the coastal areas of the United States, there is very limited land in which to hunt or grow enough food to feed even a small minority of the people living there. More useable land is available as you travel inland from the coastal areas, increasing in availability as the population decreases. So you have coastal populations who depend on government to maintain the flow of fresh food and vote mostly Democrat. And you have the interior populations who provide the food and depend on the government to interfere with the growth, preparation, and transportation of that food while taking money from them to give to poor but active voters in the coastal regions, and these hunter/killer/grower folks vote mainly Republican.  There is a basic survival lesson there. Think about it, because when it comes time for the quiz, it’s gonna be a mother bear.

The Penis Whisperer

The other day I was muttering to myself and the totally and completely beloved Barbara asked me “What?” so I said “I came over here for something and I forgot what and now I’m standing here with my dick in my hand” which is a crudity commonly used in the Army to describe a failed effort to obtain something. She burst out laughing and asked me if men always thought about their penises. I said “no, not after finding a soul mate who completes them, opens multiple new channels of communication and becomes the other half of their soul. But before that, sure.” So she’s laughing and says that women don’t think about their vagina, at least to the point where they bring it up in casual conversation. So I had to try one more time to ‘splain to her how it works:

A man of hormonal years (11 – 95) who has not completed his search for the perfect mate can be doing something totally innocuous, such as building a bird house to hang on the front yard tree. He’s whistling and building and enjoying pastoral life when his penis will say “hey. A woman just came out of her house 3 blocks away and is headed for her mailbox. Go stand by that tree at the curb”. Some guys will just stand up and go over by the tree and flex for a moment. More mature men will argue; “she’s three blocks away and that’s Mrs. Jones. Why should I stand by that tree?” and their penis will answer “you’re right, that won’t work for Mrs. Jones. Lift the tree out of the ground and put it in the street.” And the guy will say “I can’t lift that tree out of the ground!” and the penis will say “Oh. How about now?” and the Prepare To Launch alarms will sound and chemicals will flood the man’s system and he’ll go lift the goddamned tree. It probably won’t come out of the ground, but I guarantee the roots will be jiggled a bit. And Mrs. Jones won’t notice at all.

“And you must understand,” I said to the completely and totally beloved Barbara, “this will happen to any man regardless of education, social position, profession, or golf handicap. We each of us have a penis whisperer built in that controls a significant portion of our lives until we find someone upon whom we can bestow the title of “Completely and Totally Beloved”. And then we live happily ever after."

Well, my friends, she hugged me and gave me a little kiss and said “Bullshit” and went to finish the bird house.

Its cascarone time!

It’s cascarone time in Texas, and what a wonderful time that is. Cascarones are colorfully painted eggs filled with confetti, or candy, or sometimes even egg. The tradition is to holler gaily “Cascarone!!” and crack one over your head. This is the moment when you find out what’s inside your cascarone.

Cascarone time is the traditional Texan celebration of the fertility of the Cascarone family, which as we all know is the ancient Mayan predecessor of all great crime families, such as the Corleone family of Long Island. Or something like that. I think I left out the rabbit.

Who Dat I Say, Who Dat?

I had what might be termed a personal medical adventure yesterday. I woke up at my usual time (‘bout 0330), made a pot of coffee and was just sitting down with the first cup when I heard sounds. Inside my head.

I wasn’t hearing voices, or receiving rays from the aliens of Gamma Beta IXV, but I was hearing bursts of static in the top left quadrant of my skull. It sounded like 8 gourd shakers were in perfect pitch and rhythm, and it would come and go, not fade in and out. At about the same time, something happened to my vision, and I got disoriented. I was having slight problems with my balance, and I was more than slightly anxious. I had no idea what was going on, but I thought ‘this is weird’. Then I felt my brain just stop; I have no idea how to describe that feeling, but I knew instantly that this was not a good thing. It kicked back in after an instants hesitation, and then the static started up again. My brain stopped again, and then restarted. This went on for about an hour, and I was feeling a bit peak’ish so I took my meds about 0700. The totally and completely beloved Barbara woke up and I told her about it. She says I was agitated and I know that somewhere in the four hours between my awakening and hers I had dug up some weeds in the yard, took a wire brush to some crud that was building up on the deck, and updated a couple of recipes I have been thinking about. I have a fuzzy recollection of all that, but the evidence is that I did indeed do them.

Anyway, she made me eat something, but told me to first check my blood sugar. The first check came back at 307. I knew that was wrong so I checked the coding on my test strips and sure enough I had it wrong. I corrected that and re-checked my sugar about 20 minutes later. Now it was 342. I ate but was still feeling like I was moving underwater, so I laid down for a bit. I told Barbara that if I passed out she needed to call 911 and let them handle me. She was silent so I asked her if she could deal with all this; she was still quiet. I told her it might be a good thing to call my Mom, so she called over to my sister’s house where Mom is staying while her house is updated. I called my doctor’s office right after they opened and explained what was going on to the nurse-practitioner who told me to get over there. Mom drove us, and they hustled me into a room and did all of the usual tests. By this time it was 0945, and my blood sugar was down to around 145, and the fog was starting to lift from my mind. The doctor came in to see me at 1100, and I was feeling much better. She checked me out, listened to what had happened, and recorded her diagnosis as ‘one damned weird morning’. And next I’m getting an MRI and some echo testing to find out what’s really going on.

I suspect that I had what’s called a TIA, which is either a blood clot in the brain or carotid or a small aneurysm that burst up there. For some reason my mother’s family is blessed by a lack of pain generators in our heads, so I’ve never had a headache. I think the noises I heard were the equivalent of what in normal people would be pain receptors firing off. Or it coulda’ been gas. Who knows. What was really heartwarming was when I came out of the examining room and saw my beloved Barbara, Mom, and my sister Kim all sitting there with worried looks on their faces. I told them that I actually had not learned how to fly, in spite of what I had told them earlier, and that they would just have to live with the disappointment. I felt okay, but I was exhausted, so I came home and slept. I was delighted to wake up in the same mortal dimension I had left, and am still soldiering on. But last night I updated my “Just In Case” letter so that if something happens to me Barbara will know who to call for what, and have a reminder of just how much I love her. And I included a pretty good joke. Hope she doesn’t get to open it for years and years and years.

All Snarl, No Whine

It’s been awhile for blogging; I’ve been a bit under the weather, and fighting insurance and corporate disability battles every day. I’m in an (objectively) interesting position; omniscient Cigna says that according to their test results I can occasionally use my left arm and occasionally walk. Ergo, I am not totally disabled and deserve nothing from their ‘profit pool’.  {My concept is that their profit pool is that big-assed chunk of money they receive through corporate and/or individual contributions as insurance premiums. If they can deny disbursement, it becomes profit for some more deserving group, like, well, them!}

So, I’m not disabled. My parent corporation of whom I am a very, very small owner requires one to receive a doctor’s release prior to coming back to work. So I got one, citing the exact limitations that omniscient Cigna listed on the denial letter they sent me. SAIC, my most pragmatic corporate brethren, told me that I was way too medically limited to do any work, and would I please “give them a call when I was fully recovered, and accept their heartfelt appreciation for the hundreds of millions of dollars that my efforts added to the revenue stream.” Full recovery just ain’t gonna’ happen unless the believers in reincarnation are right. And I don’t think SAIC is going to look favorably on the parents of a newborn infant knocking on their door and saying ‘look! He’s back! Isn’t that great? Give me money!’ assuming of course that I came back as a human, and not a bedbug or something.

So, I’m too dented and dinged to work, and too darned (occasionally) functional to receive disability benefits. Now my options are

1. Go away and Die; or


2. Sue the shit out of everybody; or


3. Combine the two previous options in a fashion that at least garners enough for my wife to live after I die.

We’re loading our ruck, buckling our shoulder harnesses, girding our loins (we need a small course of instruction for loin-girding, but it’s on our checklist), and cleaning our litigation-based virtual weapons. If G_d really is on the side with the most battalions then we’re screwed, but we can at least go down with a snarl on our face rather than a whine.