I'm sure I've heard the story of Old Dog's second grade humiliation, and likely a few words into his narration I will smack my forehead and say, "Oh yeah that," Likewise Beagle's dabbling in sin at the age of eleven, but I just can't remember either at the moment, Have you ever noticed that your attention drops when the conversation turns to other people rather than yourself, or is that just me?
I've always heard that those ancient civilizations got too big for their britches and overgrew their environment, Makes you wonder what it takes for a civilization to stick. Seems like the Egyptians were always rising and declining and the Mesopotamians were always playing king of the mountain from whatever tribe happened to drop into the neighborhood. Alexander was kind of a flash in the pan,though I hear that he did spread the Greek civilization around, there was nothing in the way of an empire. I think maybe the Romans stuck. Well their empire fell, but then the church that they sort of copied from the desert people lived long and prospered and they came storming back into the mideast a little more than a half century later to grab the holy land, kill all the inhabitants, toy with it for a few hundred years and then drop it for lack of interest.
I don't think the mideast has been that warlike before the discovery of oil and the establishment of Israel. I mean not so much more than anybody else. Warlike is hard to define. I was unsure when I claimed that the US was the most warlike country so I did a little internet research and I came upon a website that claimed that we were at war 93 percent of our history, but when I took a look at their evidence a lot of it is Indian and banana wars and I don't see those as like real wars. What does make a real war? I don't know how you define a war anymore. Maybe there is the classic war where it is against a real country and both sides declare war, and the more common shit lately which is whenever your army goes somewhere and shoots at people.
I hadn't come across the term banana war before. It refers to all those ahem, expeditions into south and central America to adjust things there more to our liking. We don't remember them so well anymore. Or how about our occupation of the Philippines? That was a long bloody war that nobody speaks of anymore.
The Mongols and the Huns didn't come out of the Gobi desert, they came from north of there where it was maybe semi arid, but there was enough grass to feed their famed short horses.
I had to go back to my post to see what got me musing about war. Oh that's right genes. I was thinking that if you live in a rough neighborhood it's a good thing to have fighting genes, whereas if you live in a quiet neighborhood that kind of attitude will get you in trouble. I was trying to survey the family of nations to bear that out, but that just became too complicated.
So I am doing my laundry now, and there was this comforter kind of thing in the big dryer which is my favorite. It is now sitting on a table while my duds are enjoying the toasty twirls. But you know this happens all the time. I get down there around 5 and there are clothes just sitting in the washers and dryers obviously from last night, and I am wondering what the fuck, did all these people get drunk and not get around to taking their clothes out of the machines?
I used to drink a lot, and anymore I still drink a bit, and I have never, never, left my clothes in a machine overnight, so what kind of people are these? I expect the dawgs have had a little experience with laundry rooms and I wonder if they have any insights.
No comments:
Post a Comment