semordnilap dog

Recently I read two books about a familiar and controversial subject. God. Though they had the same protagonist the books were nearly polar opposites. The first book seems to be quite popular.

Quoting from Wikipedia, "within a week it had reached #2 on the Amazon bestsellers list and reached #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list in its third week." Written by a journalist who has changed his religion several times, once in order to marry a woman whose family were very devout. He now proclaims that he is an atheist and was trying to disprove the existence of a God.

He very effectively listed numerous instances in which people behaved very badly, "in the name of God". And used their religious beliefs to as justification for committing atrocities. Genocide, torture, human sacrifice, terrorism, the Spanish Inquisition, ethnic cleansing and the holocaust. List goes on, etc. etc. etc.

But when trying to prove the nonexistence of god he did poorly. It is very hard to prove something is not there, somewhere or any where. The author fell into same logical fallacy that those who want to prove He exist get trapped in. He repeatedly made statements which have not been proven and probably cannot be proven. And then used those statements as if they were known facts and that they were evidence of a nonentity.

"God is so man like that he had to created by man." I doubt he ever met God so where is the proof that god is "manlike." The bible says man was created in god's image. And most of what people say about God is second hand information or wishful thinking. So he proves what we already know, people distort what they hear and try to make everything "manlike". It only proves man's ego will triumph over man's intellect. Anthropomorphism. Our mass media is crowded with mice that talk, rabbits that wear vests with watches in their pocket and misplace their white gloves. We read about trees that throw apples and turtles who fight crime and crave pizza.

In the next book the author claims to have the ability to talk to God through the mechanism of automatic writing. In the proses of automatic writing, a person holds a writing instrument and the hand seems to write without conscience effort. This person would write questions or comments to God and the answers would appear, the authors hand guided by some unseen and unknown force.

Some of the silent statements made by this supernatural pen were quite interesting. Saying that "HE" made "us", "His" creation and gave us free will. There is "No right and no wrong. No shoulds and shouldn'ts." "He" wanted "His" creation to be free, no rules. And then "HE" states that "HE" separated parts of "himself" so that could they could remember that they are "Him" and find their way home. The purpose of this exercise was not explained. But he did promise that we would all get home again. Mothers and Fathers. Salesmen and movies stars. Mobsters and muggers and rapists and thieves. Congressmen and congresswomen from California.

So I'm reading these words and thinking to myself god wouldn't say that. And god wouldn't do things like that. Actually having read most of the bible and listened to endless monotonous monologues about the book, most of them bearing little resemblance to the other soliloquies, I feel like I know less with every book I read and every sermon I hear.

But then I don't know anything about god. Does he exist. Is he good or evil or both or neither. Is every word I utter dutifuly recorded in a large gilded book. Does he punish the bad people. Will he put golden halos on the crowns of saintly souls. Does he play tennis or prefer bridge. What is he's real name? Does he have brothers and sisters. Did he attend your child's bar mitzvah. What does he look like. Is he eternal, has he always been here. Not since the beginning of time, because time did not begin. Can god make a rock so big he can't move it?

My conclusion is that I know nothing about god. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

"All I know is what I read in the papers", Will Rodgers.

Please tell me what you know about God, second hand accounts not accepted.

OWL

March 9, 2009

2y(3x)/2=(3)(xxx)/x)

Back in the sixties we started hearing about women's liberation. Into the seventies more and more feminists began using terms like: equal pay for equal work, women's rights, sexual harassment, equal employment, the right to not see obscene material or hear offensive language at work, ad nauseam. And equality. Many women claimed to be equal to any man. And then demanded laws to end discrimination against women. Laws were passed to insure fair treatment at work, to protect women from discrimination in employment, to be free to go to work and not see or hear anything they felt was offensive.

In the spirit "equality"!


I've had a number of jobs in my life. And at some of them I was harassed by the other workers, they made me the butt of jokes, I had my manhood and ancestry questioned. Some times I was paid less than other workers doing the same job. More often I was paid more. I would start at equal or less pay. Then within a very short time I would get a raise and after a while another raise. Because the boss soon realized that I was doing a better job than my coworkers. And in my innocence I let the others know my rate of pay. Some of them got huffy about it.

Other men from the beginning of time have been subjected to all of the mistreatment's that women were complaining about. Different men dealt with these problems in different ways. Some would ask the boss for a raise or to be transferred to a friendlier position, some men just put up with it, some quit. Some would sucker punch the first homophobe that raised questions about their sexual orientation. Forming labor unions was a common method for insuring fair treatment.

Some women who claimed to be equal to men wanted laws to mandating equal treatment. They wanted government protection of their equality. They even went so far as to try to make the ERA, the Equal Rights Amendment a part of the Constitution of the United States of America

I don't understand this. If you are equal then you can do the same thing that men have done for years. If your not as capable as a man then you might need a law for your protection.

If I apply for a job the employer can decline to higher me for what ever reasons he wants to. Maybe he did not like the way I looked or expressed myself. He might think that I am not tough enough to handle the rough guys he usually hires. Or he might suspect drug use or alcoholism. He may have been told something negative by my former in employee. Or he might have found out that I was turned down for unemployment benefits and appealed the decision and won. Employers do not like workers with a propensity for litigation. Perhaps he ran my name though Google and didn't like what he found there. He may think I am under qualified or over qualified and would quit as soon as I found a job with higher pay. I would have no recourse but to apply for a different job


However if he rejects a woman's application for the same reason he rejected mine he could find himself in court defending himself against a law suit claiming "sexual discrimination".

Employers have many things to consider when hiring and setting rates of pay. How do you determine if two people are doing the same work? Job title doesn't mean any thing. Do you follow instructions well? Are you capable of taking charge and making sure the job is done on time? Are you a team player? Are you willing accept the situation and terms of your employment. Or are you the type who runs down and hires a lawyer when you believe you have been mistreated?

In a free society employer needs to be able to hire, pay, and fire workers according to their performance on the job.

Laws ensuring equal treatment for equal pay, create an artificial evaluation system and interferes with the free enterprise system which was a very big factor in the success of our great nation. Women have proclaimed their equality and took jobs that where predominately done by man. And once they did they wanted to change the way men work and make it more suitable to them. It seems that women don't want equal to men. They want men to be equal to women.

So what is it ladies. Are you equal to men and can handle work place problems the way men have done since paid employment began. Or are you the "weaker sex" and therefore need special protection under the law? You can't have both ways.

OWL

September 5, 2008

Fit the first-LC

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". The first right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights is freedom of religion. The founding persons must have given this great importance. The establishment clause has been interpreted to mean that the government cannot make laws favoring one religion over other religions. All religions must be treated equally by publicly funded groups and organisations, and all branches of government.

I have tried to explain this to people but they just seem to not understand. If you post the ten commandants in the courthouse we'll have to post the "The Four Noble Truths and the Eight Fold Path" of Buddhism. If the teacher leads the class in christian prayer he will also have to lead then in a reading from the Talmud and the Qu'ran, etc. I tell people this and they say "No you wouldn't". I ask, "Why not?" and they just give me a blank look and say "You just wouldn't." They don't seem to understand why, they just know it's true.

Maybe I was missing something. I had been wrong before. Or a least I thought I was wrong, it turned out I was mistaken.

I decided to take a closer look at the "First".

"Congress"- that group of fools and miscreants that we chose the represent us in Washington. Usually because they promise to make our lives better by spending more and and taxing less.The chief body of the legislative branch of the federal government, the branch that makes the rules.

"Shall make no"- That phase is straight forward and doesn't require explanation.

"law"- the collection of rules imposed by authority binding upon human society.

"respecting"- with reference to or concerning somebody or something:

"an"- again this word common enough that I don't need to elaborate on it here.

"establishment" - to bring into existence, the act of forming, to create.

"of"- denoting reference to a thing; about; concerning; relating to.

"religion".

So basically what this comes down to is that the men and women who we vote into legislative office, can impose taxes, make treaties with other nations, declare war, regulate commerce and vote themselves raises. But they can't form a religion or tell you what to believe or even tell you what religion is.

But they didn't need to, by 1789 the year the Bill of Rights was written, "Religion" was well established, and most people had some idea of what religion was. This is where things get complicated and confusion pokes its head in through the gaps of human misunderstanding.

Lets look at few definitions of the crucial term, religion. I am not sure which if any of these definitions were what the signers of the Bill of Rights had in mind. I am more concerned about what many people believe today.

American Heritage Dictionary: Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.

Unknown source c. 1200 AD: Conduct indicating a belief in a divine power.

Cambridge Dictionary of American English: the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or any such system of belief and worship.

"The belief in and worship of a god or gods."

At last count, according to my reliable sources, the number of existent gods is one. One true God, ergo true religion is belief in or worship of that "one true god".

Any thing else is paganism, heresy, idolatry or popular fiction. False religion is no religion all.

The first gives you the right to worship god as you please, as long as you are in fact worshiping God.

The first Amendment continues, "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof (religion)". So you can gather freely at a church or house of worship. Get down on your knees and pray. Sing songs and speak in tongues. Read whatever version of the bible you choose, get cured of hemorrhoids and inoperable brain tumors and petition god to smite the homosexuals, the Yankees and the liberals.

But to genuflect to a false god, be it Shiva, Yahweh, Yoni, Elvis or money, is a false religion and therefor has no protection or right to equal treatment under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America. The architects of our system of government did not intend that you, me or Joseph Smith could just make something up, call it "religion" and use that as a basis for flaunting the law or evading the April 15th dead line.

For many years now we have been told that Buddhism, Confucianism, Shinto, and nature worship are "religions". And in today's Politically Repressed atmosphere no one is going to stand up and say "Hold on just a dang minute."

I don't agree with this thesis, but at least I now understand the ill logic behind it. It is a matter of opinion. And you have a right to your own opinion. If you would like I can give you an opinion of your very own.

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." –Bill Clinton, during his 1998 grand jury testimony on the Monica Lewinsky affair.

OWL

Oct. 30 2009
"

outside-in

I suffer from depression. I've been on medication for about a two and a half years. It helped a lot but it stopped working about Christmas time. I felt like crying all the time. After a couple months my therapist Black-eyed Susan decided something had to be done. She talked to my doctor and he prescribed a different anti-depressant. But that caused another problem, a problem of a personal nature often associated with the use of anti-depressants by men. So we tried something else, and then when tried yet another prescription. It worked.

By then it was late June. April and May had been the driest ever recorded in California. I was feeling pretty good, but got upset one day and decided to get away for a while. By myself. I jumped in the car and drove up in to the mountains to the small resort community where I lived and worked for many years. It was a nice warm sunny day when I left but by the the time I got up there, a rise in elevation of three thousand feet, the sky was overcast and a light rain began to fall. I got wet. And there was lightening. Lots of lightening.

Lots and lots of lightening. All over northern California. Nearly 8000 lighting strikes over northern California the weekend of the 20th. But very little rain. So there was lots of lightening hitting the ground, extremely dry vegetation and no rain. The result was lots of wild fires. Somewhere around 800 wild fires. Most of them small and in remote areas of the forest. Which made them hard to put out. Some of them were in the high country where there is little fuel so they spread slowly or not at all. Some of the fires lower down spread quickly and have become a threat to homes and communities.

Then the air got thick with smoke. The light of the sun grew dim. Breathing was difficult, the air had a foul smell. It was warm and very humid. The haze cast an evil shadow over the world and everyone felt it.

My mental state had just cleared, I was optimistic for the the first time in months.

It felt as if my depression had sliped out of my mind and into the very air around me. What had been a personal internal perception slipped out became a part of the environment and was now affecting the whole society.

And they say the water contains prescription medications.

OWL

July 4, 2008

Tom Brokaw

My grandfather, DW, was an American hero. I lived with him and my grandmother on and off during my childhood so I had privilege of hearing about some of his history. Born of mixed ancestry in 1898 in the San Fernando Valley, the son of a farmer, at a time when the valley was nothing but bean fields. He was to young to fight in World War I or The Great War as it was known up until WWII came along. By then he was to old to join up. So he never wore the the uniform of an American service man, put on a helmet, drove a tank, carried an M1 rifle or had a metal pinned to his chest.

He wore blue jeans, long sleeve gray work shirts and a hard hat. He drove a tractor and carried a shovel. Grampa was a farmer most of his life. He grew barley, wheat, corn and cotton. All of this was just as important to our national security as guns, battleships, heavy artillery and fighter planes.

Most of his life he was a farmer in the San Joaquin valley. Farming is intense labor with very little time off and carries with it a unique sets of risks. A single bad crop can cause a person to lose their entire life's savings. Even a bumper crop, which forces the market price down, can mean that a farmer will have to take a loss on the years harvest. And farm work can be quite dangerous. Tractors, harvesters, combines can be deadly. The herbicides, pesticides and can be harmful if used properly. Lethal if mishandled. My grandfather encountered a unexpected hazard. He was of cheated out of his farm by a con man.

He was not always a farmer though. He worked whenever and whereever it was necessary to feed his wife and five children. During the great depression he worked as a rough neck. Drilled for oil in the Ketlleman Hills in California. Drove wildcat wells, drilled in places when no one was sure if they we're going to find oil or not. They found it. Ketlleman is not a large oil reserve as oil fields go, but during WWII every little bit was of vital importance for the war effort. And drilling for oil is really risky business. In eighty years that have past improved safety procedures and the introduction of volumes of safety regulations have improved the life expectancy of the average rough neck. Way back then it took a special type of man to get on an oil rig.

Grampa told me about seeing an accident when two drilling pipesw with three foot long wrenches attached suddenly spun in opposite directions. A man was cut in half cleanly as if sheared with an over sized pair of scissors.

Oil. Gas. Corn. Wheat. Barley, (armies need beer). And cotton, an important fiber not just for clothes and tents but a major ingredient in high explosives. DW and millions of hard working men and women didn't go across the sea to protect our freedom, they supplied our GI with every thing they need for the allies to prevail. And they insured those returning home from Europe and Asia came home to a same America they had gone off to protect.

Our military personal deserved to be remembered and honored. But next time you thank a soldier remember the forgotten heroes that made their victory possible.

These men and women don't want a monument in their honor.

An occasional heart felt, well deserved thank you , would be appropriate..

OWL

May 28, 2008

You say?

Al-Qaeda in Iraq?

The setting, an opulent palace, with marble floors and gilded walls, some where north of Baghdad. Uniformed guards, armed with automatic weapons, patrol the high walls, topped with razor wire, surrounding the compound. Saddam Hussein, dressed in a business suit, sits behind a massive oak desk once owned by the king of France. On the desk in front of him a box of the finest Cuban cigars, a decanter of vintage wine and the latest issue of Hustler magazine. Gifts from his sons Uday and Qusay. Saddam is busy going over a hit list of dissident citizens, enemies and people with annoying habits. The weekly report of his personal profits from the illegal export of oil awaits his attention.

His personal secretary, who's natural attractiveness has been enhanced by medical intervention, interrupters his reverie.

"Your Surpremness, a mister Bin Ladin would like a word with you."

"I'll take it on the speaker. Salom."

"Hussein, my old friend, may Allah bless you and your family. Praise Allah. Lets us give thanks to.."

"What do want Osama?"

"I need money, millions of dollars. And weapons, machine guns, bombs, rockets, even nukes. And land, thousands of acres of land. And safe haven within your country."

"What, you gonna start your own private army?"

"Yes, exactly! We will kill the infidels. Rid the earth of Satan's servants."

"You're going after the Americans, great!"

"Yes Hussein. We will start with the Americans, but we will not stop there. We punish with death all of those who dishonor the beliefs of Islam. The evil dogs who have abandoned our noble traditions. All those who no longer wear white rodes and turbans. Those who dare to look on the naked bodies of women. Those who defile their bodies with tobacco and alcohol. These who exploit the natural resources of the middle east for their own personal profit. Those who live in extravagant luxury while our people suffer. And especially those who harm fellow Muslims. We will kill them all."

"So Bin Laden, if I give you everything you want you will take orders from me and attack only those who I tell you to."

"No my good friend. I will take orders only from Allah!"

"Ahh, eh, okay Osama. I'll have to go over the numbers and see what I can do for you. It's been a rough year and all. I'll get back to you."

"Praise, Allah." Click.

Taking a solid gold pen from the jewel encrusted holder on his desk, Saddam Hussein quickly adds the name Bin Laden to the list.

OWL

March 2, 2008

SOB

Go out in the woods and listen carefully. You might hear a tree falling and then silence. Where you once would hear a babbling brook, the sound of running water, there is nothing. There is group out there clearing trees and damning up free flowing streams and rivers with wild abandon. They do not care how you feel about it or what you think about the preservation of our natural resources. They don't have to. They, because of special laws, can construct dams without permits, environmental impact reports or public input. They are not required to submit plans, do studies or seek approval from local, state or federal government. And if you or your property happen to be in the way that is just to bad. If they decide to build on your land, tough. You're stuck. You will have no right of appeal and no court will issue a restraining order.

And they are unceasing in their efforts. So determined and unrelenting are they that their very name is used as byword to indicate industriousness.

Why? Why do they build dams? Many of which either slit up, turning in to mud holes, or fail due to the poor choice of materials and lack of proper engineering. To continue their own damn existence. They seem to lack any concern for the environment or for our rights as citizens of The United States of America. Self preservation is their only apparent motivation.

Who? Who is perpetrating this massive injustice? Flooding thousands of acres of public and private lands every year. Destroying forest and the habitat of untold numbers of wild animals, upsetting the balance of nature. The Army Corps of Engineers? Tennessee Valley Authority? BLM? A massive coalition of power companies and energy corporations? No, this is a group that is not even fit to be called "human".

They must be stopped. Send your dollars and sense to "SOB" and help "STAMP OUT BEAVERS!"

corduroy

I was walking through the parking lot when I noticed a sock laying on the ground. That is not unusual, the laundry room is at the end of the lot. Later that day DW and I were at the store and there on the pavement was a sock, the same colour and size as the one I had seen earlier. It even seemed to be in the same position.

I realized it's true what homemakers, what we used to call housewives, have been saying for decades. Dryers are a space/time porthole! The seemingly ordinary appliance eats socks and sends them through another dimension, to who knows where, never to be seen again. At least not by their rightful owners. Makes sense, maybe. In the tumbling confusion and noise the universe "sees" the two identical socks and gets confused. It appears that one object is in two places at once, deifying the laws of physics and violating the natural order. Desperate to set things right the cosmos sends one of them somewhere else in time. Anywhere so long as it is not "now".

In the distant future, after years of intense research, the leading scientists of the day will finally build the worlds first time machine and send a man into the past. Or future. And the machine will bare an uncanny resemblance to a 1965 Whirlpool Deluxe Home Three Temperature Dryer, with end of cycle buzzer. Only bigger with more circuitry. And it will work much the same way. Just as your mother's dryer ate holes in the fabric of her fine linens, the Whirlpool Time Machine will eat holes in the very fabric of space and time.

Mankind will be able to experience history first hand and glimpse the future. There will be drawbacks though. It will only work for one member of a pair of identical twins and only if they enter the porthole together.

And it will be a very rough ride.

OWL

January 29, 2008

Red Queen

It is my job to keep an eye on things. Misses B. and I manage an apartment complex. One Monday morning not to long ago I was driving past the front of the property and I noticed the guard rail had been damaged. Really damaged. This is no light weight wood or tubular steel rail. It is your standard heavy duty, keep your car from going over the cliff, state highway, we not messing around, serious business, guard rail. Put in to keep stray vehicles out of the overgrown blackberries and the creek beyond. Something had hit the rail hard. It was pushed back two to three feet. And six of the big wooden post that held it in place had been broken or split. It must have happened some time in the night. No one here had seen anything.

It's incident report time. Take pictures and get information from local law enforcement. I call the city police. They had no record of any response to an accident at my location. The road itself is the city limit so the fact that they didn't respond came as no surprise. They suggested the sheriff's office. The SO informed me that traffic enforcement on that particular stretch of road was was the responsibility of the Highway Patrol.

I dialed up the local office of the state police.

"I would like some information about a traffic accident."

The nice lady asked when and where the accident happened. I explained that I knew where, but I wasn't sure when. She asked who I was and why I wanted to know. I identified myself and told her that the guard rail out front had been damaged and I wanted to be able to give a thorough report to my employer.

"What exactly do you want to know?"

I needed to find out when it happened, whether or not law enforcement had responded, who was involved, what type of vehicle could do that sort of damage, etc."

"Do you own the railing?"

This was a question I could not answer. I've only been here a short while. I wasn't present when it was built.

"Does it belong to the city or county?"

I think it is on our property but that is part the the city or county road system.

"An incident report will be sent to the owner."

I think that because I had said I wanted to know who was involved she had determined that giving me information would be a violation of someone's right to privacy. I felt I had a right to know at the very least whether or not the officers that work for the public had responded to an incident affecting my (the company's) property. Although it may of not damaged something belonging us it did happen on company property.

She seemed unwilling to give me any information what so ever. I did not feel like hassling about it. End of conversation.

It has been a similar story with other incidents that happen on the property. The police come out and take reports and arrest people for violent crimes. It is my job to know what goes on so that I can protect the residents from harm and the company from liability. When things like this happen I have to give the company an incident report and send corporate headquarters a copy of the police report if available.

When I request a report I am asked basically "What's it to you?". I tell them that I represent the owner of the property on which the incident took place. Someone down at the police station looks over my request for a report and tells me I do not have a valid reason for getting that information. All they are willing to give me is an "incident screen". It only says they got a call and came out. The CHP would not even give me that. People's right to privacy etc.

This privacy thing has given law enforcement carte-blanche to go anywhere, do anything and say to the public, "We are not going to tell you where we have been, when we were there or what we did while we were on your property." If someone wants to create a police state a major hurdle has been overcome. Police accountability to the public is a thing of the past. A happy memory of a better time when we were young and innocent and believed we had a right to know what our public servants were doing.

I don't usually add caveats to my post. In this case I must. I have the deepest respect our local law enforcement personnel. They have shown a great deal of professionalism and are always friendly and helpful. I want to thank them and all the men and women across the country who put on the uniforms and go out everyday to protect our lives and property. They deal with humanity at its worst. They get swore at, spit on, swung at and exposed to every sort of bodily fluid. They keep their cool under pressure, show good judgement and somehow keep a positive attitude. The next day they do it again.

It is not the various law enforcement agencies that have robbed the public of our right to know. It is the public itself and a misguided belief that "personal privacy" is the highest good that has forced us into a looking glass world of twisted logic.

OWL

January 20, 2006

halo

I had to drive my stepson to work this morning. The sun was just beneath the horizon in the east. A few wispy clouds in shades of pink lit the eastern sky. We came round the corner and saw the dark lines stretching across the sky radiating from where the sun was about to rise. Crepuscular rays. Shadows of clouds often a seen in sunsets. Very pretty.

More info on this and other phenomenon, often unnoticed, that put on frequent light shows above our heads as we go on with our busy lives to focused on the future to look up, can be found at,

http://www.atoptics.co.uk/

The camera was not in the car. When I saw the great blue heron feeding in a field at the apple ranch the camera was not in the car. I took a picture in my mind and recorded it here. But I don't want for you see want I saw. Go out and see for yourself....

OWL

January 17, 2008

solve for x

On Sunday, November 11, 2007, Veterans Day, Vice President Dick Cheney laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia. Several years ago the President went to the Tomb of the Unknowns on Memorial Day to observe the changing of the guard. I saw a television news report which gave a little information and background about the honor guard, The Sentinels of the Tomb of the Unknowns.

Among the qualifications to serve as a Sentinel members of the elite 3rd U.S. Infantry must posses an unblemished military record and be in superb physical condition. They go through a rigorous training memorizing seven pages of Arlington National Cemetery history and the location of the graves of three hundred veterans. They are tested on the manual of arms, uniform preparation and must learn the guard change ceremony. Those who pass the test consider it a very high honor to serve as a Sentinel and are awarded a Tomb Guard Identification Badge.

There has been an email circulating which gives many of the details of the how the changing of the guard is conducted and the prerequisites for serving as a Sentinel. And as usual throws in some stuff which someone made up. Like they are not allowed to speak during the first six months, they may not drink alcohol during their off duty hours and can have their Tomb Guard Identification Badge revoked if they ever use foul language, even after leaving the guard. These last two items stuck me as decidedly unmilitary.

And there is one more very important requirement for serving as a Sentinel. You must be between 5 feet, 10 inches and 6 feet, 4 inches tall. And be of proportionate weight. This is not email rumour or urban myth. It is straight from the official web site:

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.org/ceremonies/sentinelsotu.html

So a person can put on combat boots, hoist seventy pounds of supplies onto their back including, mess kit, shovel, sleeping bag, MREs, radio, tooth brush, razor, mouth wash and gum drops. Top it off with a helmet, sling an automatic rifle with 140 rounds of ammunition over your shoulder, sleep in the rain, get shot at and shoot back. The shooting part comes after six months of having a drill instructor with separation issues wake you up every single day at three AM in order to rudely compare you with fly larvae. But you are not fit to serve in the honor guard at the tomb of the unknowns because you are one half inch to short? Or to tall?

They don't want to hear about how you single-handedly saved four of your fellow soldiers. They don't want to hear about your good conduct medal, medal of honor, silver star, purple hearts, green clovers or yellow moons. They want to know how tall you are.

Doing some research on this I talked to an army recruiter. He told me he thought that the narrow height restrictions for the Honor Guard were in order to achieve "uniformity". Of course!

Here in the United States of America, a country that prides its self on its diversity, we honor our war dead with "uniformity".

OWL

Jan. 14 2007

dsl

pool glob of blue into a pool of yellow trainrushesby echoes
why? horizon waves layered sky crystalline trees
letters filling blank spaces move movements shadows
in time where did I begin again kaleidoscopic
memory every mountain grandmother watch. Colors
separate. thoughts repeat. Red. Here again.
Black. Echochambersofthemind. Yellow.
Want to play a joke? Trainrushesbyechoesred.
Interlocking lizardsruntogethercrystalinetrees.
Where did I begin again yellowthoughtsrepeat
echo waves white lightening bolt cuts acrossed
All things repeat red echo chamber of the
mind time stops on forever begin again train of
thought yellow white metronomic madness
Channel 0 full amplification thummbb. stisstck
Double Image. Doubles one train train train train
train play a joke Blue Tempura universe needs tuned
in vertical hold. 16 jagged edge glass mental fragment
white lightening bolt All things repeat echo chamber of the
mind. Yellow, train, Channel 0, full amplification
TTthhhuummmm play a Joke Red Thunder Shock
therapy 8 white thun maddness metronmic thunder
channel 0 full Double Double Red thhum yellow
trainlightening Black Begin again 4.. Red. yellow Black
White Red yellowblackWhiteRedyellowblackwhite.....

OWL

Jan. 10, 2007