Small potatoes

I don't know if I served the nation by mopping the floors of Herrin Hospital.

Well, I say you did.  You got drafted and played by the rules and didn't try to game the system, like acting crazy or pretending to be gay.  I read that Ted Nugent, a rock & roll right-wing nutball, crapped his pants during his physical and was rejected.  You accepted the responsibility and Nugent shit himself; I have no doubt which was the more honorable act.

A little bit past halfway in my junior year of college I was burnt out and decided not to come back for the senior year and graduation.  The draft was in full swing and I knew I would get nailed, this was before the lottery and 50,000 guys my age were getting called up and I didn't want to go.  I gave a lot of thought to becoming a conscientious objector, even spending a lot of time getting counseling with the campus chaplain, who was quite supportive.  Most of the literature came from the Quakers as I recall, but deep down I knew I didn't oppose all war so I took a different tack and enlisted, picking a school that would be unlikely to land me in a combat zone.  And the plan worked, so that was that.  But did I already tell that story?

It's funny that Uncle Ken mentioned the VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against the War).  I was on their mailing list while I was overseas and this one particular sergeant would nearly blow a gasket during mail call and told me not to read it while on duty.  I subscribed to a couple of comic books and Art Forum magazine, too, but he had no problems with me reading those on the job.  Good times.

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Mr. Beagles and I have already discussed The Good Place and I'm slowly catching up but I don't know if Uncle Ken has given it a peek yet.  Critical response is great but the ratings are still so-so.  Since I watch it online I don't see the commercials and I wonder who the sponsors are and what demographic the program is aimed at.  For a comedy, I think it must have a very niche audience.  Consider these lines of dialogue from a recent episode where the characters were going to attend a party:

Parties are mere distractions from the relentlessness of entropy.  We're all just corpses who haven't yet begun to decay.

Not what I would call a knee-slapper, but in the context of the scene it was funny.  Another line from the same episode gave me a chuckle while the characters were discussing life and death:

Searching for meaning is philosophical suicide.

That's what I call comedy!

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No need to lend me your copy of Chaos, Uncle Ken.  I didn't plan on reading it again, and it may still be hidden in my archives, possibly in the basement storeroom.  I've forgotten what I have down there besides a lot of obsolete crap and floppy disks but I'm not in a big hurry to go digging through it.  Another possibility is that I loaned my copy out at some time in the distant past and forgot about it.  Once I loan out a book I don't expect to see it again and hope that it stays in circulation and gets passed along.

George Carlin once did a bit on "Stuff" and I have way to much of it and sometimes I wish it would all just go away.  I delude myself in thinking that I'll ever find use for all my crap but you never know, do you?   I always seem to need something about two months after I get rid of it and then have to get another copy of whatever I tossed.  The Universe is fickle.

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The Saudis are up to something with their new young Crown Prince.  First, they're allowing women to drive.  Then they have some kind of trillion-dollar megacity planned that will be adjacent to both Egypt and Jordan, covering hundreds of square miles.  Finally, there is talk of having an IPO (Initial Public Offering) of Aramco, their state-controlled oil company, and putting it into a stock market.  They value the company at over two trillion dollars, which isn't small potatoes at all.  Maybe they've been reading Daniel Burnham.  Make no small plans...