Government Pork

I think that all the military posts used to sell their garbage to local hog farmers, and maybe they still do.  I have been on both ends of this transaction.  I worked on a pig farm for a month or so when I was in Alaska, back in '63, and we used to take in garbage from a nearby military post.  When I joined the army less than a year later, we had to keep our edibles separate from our inedibles at all three of my posts: Fort Knox Kentucky, Fort Gorden Georgia, and West Berlin Germany.  

Did you ever wonder why the banana peels went into the inedibles?  That's because banana peels are toxic to hogs.  Silverware and the odd coffee cup are not toxic to hogs however, they just eat around them.  On that farm in Alaska, we used to go out and collect all that stuff from the troughs after the pigs were done eating.  The guys on the military post would trade us either coffee or sugar, pound for pound, for all the utensils we returned to them on the next trip.  I don't know how that stuff got into the edibles, and I don't think we had a problem with that in Berlin.  

Almost Memorial Day

The last post didn't elicit the response I expected so here's something a little different.  How about a shot of a lamprey eel taken a little while back during a visit to the Shedd Aquarium?  Quite a neat place, a lot different than the last time I saw it more than sixty years ago.  Even had a chance to pet the sting rays they have swimming around.

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My street address is: (REDACTED)

Oh, now you've done it Mr. Beagles!  The hordes that follow this blog will, no doubt, be sending all kinds of unwanted stuff to your home address.

I liked that little Vietnam story of yours, sent me down another memory rabbit hole.  After all these years I find it curious that so much of the military experience has stuck with me and that I am reminded of it so often.  Every time I wash dishes after preparing a meal, all I can think of is the three days straight of KP during the time at the Reception Station.  We were only supposed to get one day of that duty but our squad was the only one that was issued uniforms; quite a shortage during those heady days.  I'll never forget the cooks yelling "Outside! Outside! Everybody outside!" when the trucks came to deliver food, which was often.  Couple of hundred young guys could sure work up an appetite.  Did you have two kinds of garbage cans, one for edible and the other for non-edible garbage?  I think the mess sergeants had a clandestine deal with the local pig farmers, or maybe it was an official program, your government at work.

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Am I the only person who thinks Memorial Day should still be observed on the 30th?

Ricola!

Sure, I could comment on previous posts but not now as I enjoy the sublime pleasures of the idyllic environs of The Geezer Chateau.  Really, where else can you see a live concert of Alpine Horns?

 

My Favorite Vietnam Joke

 This bunch of Marines had finished its basic training, and each guy was being given his orders for his next assignment.  When Jones saw that his assignment was Vietnam, he broke ranks and ran off into the woods.  He was crying when his sergeant caught up with him, and the sergeant told him that he was a disgrace to himself and the Corps for being such a coward.  Jones replied that he was not afraid of fighting or even dying, he was just afraid that he might shoot some innocent Vietnamese peasant by mistake because he had been told that the enemy didn't wear uniforms over there.  The sergeant said that he had been to Vietnam twice and would teach him how to survive over there without shedding innocent blood.

"Say you're walking down the road, and you see this unidentified Vietnamese walking towards you. What you do is hollar out 'Ho Chi Minh eats shit!' and hit the ditch.  If he starts shooting at you, then you know he's a Viet Cong, and you can shoot back."  Jones was comforted by this information and said that he was no longer afraid to go to Vietnam.

About six months later, the sergeant saw Jones in a military hospital, all busted up.  "What happened?" he exclaimed, "I thought I told you how to survive over there."  Jones replied, "I did just what you said, Sarge.  I saw this Vietnamese coming at me and I hollared 'Ho Chi Minh eats shit!' and he hollared back 'Yeah, and Nixon's a cocksucker too!'  Then, as we stood in the middle of the road shaking hands, this truck came along and ran over both of us."

My street address is: 3470 LaLonde Road, Cheboygan Mi. 49721

Goings on among the Fellows of the Institute

 I'm blushing over Old Dog's comments on those two kitty paintings.  Like I said I didn't do any prep work on them at all.  Actually I was thinking of them as sketches for a bigger painting to come later so without the pressure of creating yet another masterpiece I just slung the paint around carelessly, and when I set down my brush and examined by work, I thought damn, that looks pretty good.  Well of course I often think that, but then the other people in the class, who often do not appreciate my genius, stopped by and said, "Damn, that looks pretty good."  And when I put them on FB I got more than the usual polite comments.  Wow, maybe I was becoming pretty good.

Since then I have tried to replicate it, but now, having some sort of aim, and not being as splashy dashy as on the first two, things are not going nearly as well, as evidenced by my next two paintings on fb and on the watercolor blog.

I'm glad to hear that Old Dog is noodling around on a keyboard.  I am always interested in his projects, like the Asian cockroach and the plants he was growing in miniature, and am looking forward to hear about his keyboard experiences.  Any chance we could get an audio sample?  And I would like to urge Beagles to pick up his instrument and just fool with it a bit, just slapdash playing and see if he gets any pleasure out of it.

Have to tell you I am not a big fan of aphorisms, generally a little to clever by half, and kind of simple so they can be interpreted in many different ways.  But I will comment on a couple of them because is that not what we do here at The Institute?

I am a big fan of:  "Perfect is the enemy of good"  Also may I add of the pretty good, and the good enough, and of my personal favorite, good enough for gummint work.  Some people think we should take care of this big mess (whatever it is) for once and for all, but I think that is too lofty and hard to do.  I prefer muddling through and making things a little better here and there.

I agree with 3 of the  4 things that aren’t worth it in life  But I disagree strongly with the one about politics.  One, I find them very interesting.  The same way that true sports fans are interested in the play of a game even when their team is not involved.  Two, I remember very long ago in my hippie days I had a friend who was back from Nam, as us cool kids called it, and he would laugh about the political stuff in the newspapers and say it was all a bunch of garbage and would never mean anything to him, and I am thinking Dude, you just got back from Vietnam.

But I am not going to get into politics today.  I remember once Old Dog went on to some length about his ice cream machine, and I went off on some stupid rant about why was he wasting all my time writing about that stupid machine, and he wisely said something on the order of it's my post and I will write what I want, if you don't want to read it, don't read it.  So you can expect to hear more political rants from me.  But not today.

It does piss off Uncle Ken.  LESS IS NOT MORE, IT IS LESS, MORE IS MORE.

Well I am disappointed to hear that the freehold is not as isolated as I have been thinking.  And I think I remember hearing that there are no bears and no cougars, but I am glad to hear that you can still romp about in your altogether.  Some years ago you sent us your address and I was pleased to wander the semi wilderness through google maps.  I wonder if you could send it again.  And I'll cross my fingers that I won't see any little pink blobs between your house and your mailbox.

Ah, Wilderness!

 I actually live about a quarter mile outside the city limits of Cheboygan, but it's the East Side of the city, which was never built up like the rest of the town.  Still, I'm only a few miles from the stores and the malls, although it's true that I could run naked around the grounds without disturbing anyone's sensibilities.  I have a few neighbors within a hundred yards of the house as the crow flies, but only the crow could observe their houses and ours at the same time because of all the vegetation between them.  When I was a kid, I thought I wanted to live in the wilderness when I grew up, but my trip to Alaska cured me of that.  Here we have the best of both worlds.  We have plenty of privacy, but our neighbors are close enough to come to our rescue if we ever have a serious crisis.  

I haven't done anything with my music in years.  I don't know why, I guess I just got it out of my system.  Same thing with verbal communication.  I used to be well known as a man of many words, but now I'm not.  It seems like I have already said everything I wanted to say, most of it more than once.

catching up

 I'm sorry, I have been way remiss.  I've been meaning to respond to Beagles for sometime now, but have run into several time-consuming crises lately.  Having one's rug cleaned would seem to be no big deal, but when it comes to an old guy moving his crap around AND disentangling (and re-entangling) the gordian knot of cables and wires and cords that power the tv and computer of my Control Center, it becomes a big deal.  It becomes an even bigger deal when in the course of the event the big table that holds all my art crap loses a leg and I have to order from photos on Amazon and then they are not as advertised, and I have to look up how-tos on YouTube led by jagoffs who think their comedic stylings are more important than what connects to what, well that takes a lot out of an old guy.

And then there was the Eggstravaganza, and Easter, and adopting new cats who then hide out in my nooks and crannies so that I think they must have snuck out somehow and that leads to slipping notes under my neighbor's doors, and much trauma.

But just to let you know it all turned out fine, and yes, those are the sisters of those paintings that the usually taciturn Old Dog has admired.

I am often struck by the difference between the residences of myself and Beagles.  I live in the middle of a big city in a tower holding about five hundred other people.  Even in the deepest night there is a hallway light shining in under my door and if I look out my window there is the Lake Shore drive bridge at the edge of the lake teeming with teeny weeny autos whizzing by on important business I assume.

And four hundred and four miles a bit to the east and mostly north at the tippy tip edge of Michigan stands The Freehold.  I'm guessing about thirty miles from the four thousand souls of Cheboygan.  Thirty miles into the wilderness, nothing but deer and, I don't know, badgers or something like that, lonely but free as a bird.  When I poke my head out my door to get the paper I need to put on a robe, but Beagles can hop out of his door bare naked and do the hula all the way to the mailbox by the road.

Not an image I care to dwell on.  I was just thinking of the hassle of arguing with Amazon about the length of my table legs compared to having to remember not to doze off lest the cooking stove do you in.

I admire your grit Beagles.

Twenty minutes to sunrise, and I must get about my day.  I will get to Old Dog's post, and thrilling kitty stories after the weekend.

May Day

Or, depending on your interpretation of current events, MAYDAY!

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All is well at The Geezer Chateau and, since no news is good news, I imagine you guys are both doing okay.

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I've been following Uncle Ken's adventures on his watercolor group site and for the longest time I was thinking he was just dicking around, not getting anywhere.  But since it gives him pleasure, if not outright joy, I can have no valid criticism but something happened, a barrier has been breached.  Was it not using a reference grid?  Whatever it was, the last two kitty pics are profoundly better than anything done in some time, in my opinion.  So let me heap a couple of buckets full of praise on Uncle Ken and say "Yup, now you're on to something!"

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Mr. Beagles, do you ever haul your guitar out and noodle around trying to see what kind of tune comes out?  I ask because I picked up a new toy, a little electronic keyboard, and it's been very therapeutic, so far.  I always have some kind of random tune running in my head, the kind of thing you hum while you're doing some kind of task or project, or maybe just sitting around, watching the Earth revolve.  Anyhow, the little box makes plenty of nice noises and is a swell way to pass the time.

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I'm trying to do a little housecleaning with things I've saved from the many rabbit holes I've explored.  No comments necessary, just some stuff I thought worthy of the Institute.  Enjoy, or not; this is very likely stuff you already know.

"Art is never finished, only abandoned." -Leonardo da Vinci

"Perfect is the enemy of good" -popularized by Voltaire

"Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it."  -Confucius

(from some forgotten website)
4 things that aren’t worth it in life
--Consuming political news. Cut it to 5%. Or better yet zero.
--Worrying so much about your finances unless you are in truly dire straights. Keep things in perspective.
--Worrying so much about people’s opinion of you. Be nice. But unless they’re your boss or loved one, they shouldn’t consume your mental energy.
--Investing yourself in toxic people that don’t add value to your life.

(from another forgotten website)
We use stories to make sense of the nonsensical.

Finally, just to piss off Uncle Ken, LESS IS MORE!