Eight Feet Deep

An e-mail from Classmates.com came today reminding me that this was my 35th anniversary of graduating from high school. They needn’t have reminded me.

I have no trouble remembering that I graduated from high school in May 1974, or that I enlisted in the Navy in July 1974, or that I started college in May 1980, or that I graduated from college 25 years ago come this May.

The truth is that milestones kind of become more irrelevant after time. Time itself is a like some kind of cosmic fun house in how it lets one see the past during one period as if it happened just yesterday and other incidents seem like they were oh so long ago. If this self-reflection took place in a seemingly logical manner — where each and every time the things happening long ago seem like a long time and more recent events appear as if they were only but days ago — it would hardly be worth one’s while to ponder it. But that isn’t how one always views memories.

Each time I hear the Zombies’ “Time of the Season” I am carried back almost 35 years ago. I have just reported to Navy boot camp. It’s a pretty hot July day at Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes Naval Training Center, Illinois. I think that it is the day after the night we arrived at O’Hare from Houston and after checking in on the base got to bed at midnight (excuse me, it is 2400 hours now boot!) only to be rudely awakened at 0500 by a bunch of racket for something called “reveille.”

“What’s your name (what’s your name), Who’s your daddy? (who’s your daddy?) He rich? (Is he rich like me?)” sings Zombies’ lead singer Colin Blunstone, as I wait in what will seem to be millions of miles of lines before my enlistment ends four years later. This line is to get measured for and receive uniforms. I’m going to look like a real sailor … eventually. I don’t really know why I remember that particular instance. Perhaps it is when I first felt inertia. I don’t know.

Flash forward to a couple of months ago. Actually, I tried to flashback to a few months ago earlier this week. It happened when my supervisor on my part-time government job asked me and my colleague why we were not satisfactorily meeting a particular milestone for work. The work I do, however, tends to happen in a cyclical fashion and even though I suppose I would be smart to keep hard copies of every schedule I work with on my computer, I feel it’s kind of pointless in striving for a paperless workplace. Thus, no copy, no memory.

Both of these instances — one long ago but feeling like yesterday and another figuratively yesterday and feeling long ago are not earth-shaking events like when I thought I was going to be blown up fighting a gasoline truck fire, or graduating from college. The point is that time is just as arbitrary as life itself often seems to be, or is, depending on your point of view.

After a certain point in one’s life every day feels like a milestone and not a bad one at that.

***It’s true. Time holds quite a fascination for me. I think it was the visit to that clock museum in New Zealand 31 years and four months ago that did it.

Although political discourse is getting to be rather tiresome being it a 24/7 activity it normally falls into what most people consider the realm of sanity. And then, there is Glenn Beck.

What is so unnerving about the Fox TV and talk-radio pundit is his slipping from a calm and reasoned demeanor into a rapid raving lunacy that makes Rush Limbaugh look like Beaver Cleaver. Beck’s most recent spark of madness is his claim that FEMA is building concentration camps for an Obama totalitarian rule.

There could be one little grain of sand that gives Beck this over-the-edge right-wing thought but it is geological time away from Big Brother Obama throwing all of us into camps.

Apparently some of the money FEMA has owed states from disasters such as Texas following Hurricane Ike last September is finally being paid back. FEMA sent some $60 million to Texas for what the government owed after Ike and some of the money will supposedly go toward needed facilities such as ambulance staging areas and shelters for hurricane evacuees which hopefully will be located a safe distance from the coast. Our great, good-haired GOP Gov. Rick Perry, who refused some of the federal economic stimulus money for unemployment, thankfully has no problem with these funds. But nothing is mentioned about funds for concentration camps. Sorry Glenn.

My understanding is the hurricane shelters will help alleviate evacuees being spread over Hell and Half of East Texas as they were during Ike. I recently read that some local officials in places such as Lufkin, about two hours north of the Texas coast, are happy about money being made available for large central facilities to house evacuees as they were forced to stay wherever a space was available be it a school, church, public building or whatever.

I firmly believe that if Mr. Glenn Beck knew the folks up in the East Texas Pineywoods as well as I do, he wouldn’t have to worry about the federal government fencing in these shelters for instant concentration camps. Folks in that neck of the woods view the Second Amendment as a firm right to bear arms. So, as far as Texas is concerned Mr. Beck, you needn’t worry about concentration camps being built.

I do strongly suggest though that Beck look into Prozac or some other pharmaceutical wonder available from his shrink. And if he doesn’t have a shrink, perhaps now is a good time to get one.

This is great news, he said sarcastically.

Thousands of veterans are reportedly at risk for HIV after receiving colonoscopies using apparatus with unclean water pumps at both the Miami and Augusta, Ga., VA hospitals. The Miami Herald reports:

“The hospital discovered March 4 that the pumps — which are attached to the tubes used in the procedures — were being rinsed but not disinfected. This, (Miami VA chief of staff John) Vara said, creates the slight chance that back-flow from the pumps could lead to serious or potentially deadly infections.”

The revelation comes after almost 6,500 veterans in “Murfreesboro, Tenn., were urged to get blood tests after the VA discovered there had been improper handling of equipment used for colonoscopies,” the Herald article by Robert Samuels went on to say. This happened back in February.

You can only guess how safe that makes me feel after having a colonoscopy a few months ago at the Houston VA hospital. Even though it isn’t one of the hospitals mentioned, something like that shaves off a little confidence. What the hell is going on with these folks anyway? Getting a colonoscopy isn’t a great bundle of fun as it is. VA Secretary Gen. Eric Shinskei needs to kick some butt, no pun intended.

The ignorant class — all upper, middle and lower — can find all kinds of reasons to hate “government.” This is even though those same people can’t seem to find reason if was implanted into their brain and written inside their eyelids.

Government. Bad. Bad government. Big government. Big, bad government. They want to take your guns and your money. They want to make you wait in long lines. They want to ruin your day that big, bad government.

Well I tell you what, pal. It isn’t always so good from here among us who work for the government, even part-timers like MemyselfandI. The government expects its employees to divine all its policies. Ignorance of the law, or the rules, is no excuse. The government doesn’t want you to work when you are not supposed to be working. Wink. Wink. But if you don’t work when you shouldn’t how is the work going to get done?

It’s time to take a breath after a day of fighting. I wasn’t fighting a person or persons. I was/am fighting a big brick Berlin Wall of frustration called government. That same government the ignorant class so despises until they need something from it.

All hail the ignorant class.