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Friday MusingsI always feel like I’ve been a bit cheated after having a BLT for lunch. Bread is what holds a sandwich together, it is the indispensable handle of the sandwich. Bacon, lettuce and tomato? These are garnishes. Something’s missing. – I used to play golf a very great deal, that being one of my chiefest extracurricular passions. I was down to a 6 handicap at a couple of different points, even though I couldn’t reliably play to it. At that point, getting any better at all requires an amazing amount of practice in some fairly boring elements of play. So anyways, what with the premium placed on time, and everything else in my life, I just haven’t found much of a reason to play in the last year or so. Everything is changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born. – I believe I may have mentioned that I had a flight physical on Wednesday. One of the things that goes along with having a flight physical is a PPD injection in your forearm. I don’t know how ofter the average citizen is required to subject himself to a PPD shot. I suspect not so very often. It’s just a little pinprick as the song goes, but it necessitates you coming back a couple of days later so that the same 19-year old hospital corspman who shoved the thing into your dermis can determine whether or not you actually have tuberculosis. Curmudgeon alert: I’ve been getting PPD shots longer than most corspmen have been alive. But they cannot take my word that my arm has not erupted into a positive TB diagnosis. I have to come back and have them look at it. Because as a 46-year old captain, you just know that if I discovered that I had TB, I’d try to hide it from everybody. I mean, who’d know? – Apart from ending the threat of the Saddamite regime, the main reason we went into the land between two rivers was to change the middle eastern calculus, to re-order the foundational blocks. To stick a surgical knife into the cancer. Negotiating with Syria and Iran to end the violence in Iraq is like asking the arsonists to come help you with your brush fire. They might even do it, but you’re going to pay a much higher price than you anticipated for a questionable degree of reassurance. If the only way to “make things better” is to bring the mullas and thugs on board to be a part of the solution, then we’ve already lost and it’s time to ask for terms. Is all. – By the way, I decline to ask for terms. In case anyone was curious about that. – It has come to the blogger’s attention that certain well-intentioned comments are being sent straight to the spam locker rather than being held in moderation, like they’re supposed to be. He regrets that this failure on the part of the purely automated akismet spam filter is beyond his capability to repair. If any such as feel that they have been blocked inappropriately – the appropriately blocked folks know who they are – then please drop me a line through the contact box. I’d go through the spam filter with a little more personal attention if it wasn’t for the fact that a) it fills up with maybe 300 comments a day, and 2) most of the ones that don’t involve ringtones or drugs whose purpose I cannot imagine would make you blush just to look at the titles, if they didn’t make you feel like maybe you needed a shower. So I mostly block delete them. So you don’t have to. Which is just one measure of the things I do for you. – And speaking of which, a very thankful tip o’ the cap to a certain lady from the deep south, who saw fit to throw a kindess into the tip jar yesterday. It’ll come in right handy during the holiday season, especially if I keep littering the world with portable thumb drives which believe it or not they aren’t giving them away, but thankee kindly anyways. – Have a grand weekend and Beat Army! 
16 comments to Friday Musings |
 
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Copyright © 2009 Neptunus Lex - All Rights Reserved |
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Brings a whole new meaning to “Caddyshack”
N
Lex, you do a great deal for us – pithy political observations, witty repartee with trolls, needle sticks for the safety of the world, and Caddy Chicks. You are a man among men Sir.
Kinda makes me want to get the ol bag out of the attic, but for 50.00 an hour I hope to get at least a post round massage!
Concur on the BLT. Maybe one should consider it an appetizer, it being yummy but not very filling. I just wish they didn’t charge real-food prices for them.
Oh, BTW, thanks for a post on a subject about which we can all feel free to comment as experts. The inside-Navy stuff is fun to watch from a respectful distance, though.
Let it all flow!
Sir, to address your sandwich muse, during which you say “something’s missing.” It’s really a mayonaisse (sp?) sammy. “Slatherin’s” as Lileks might call them, “garnished” with B L and T. And the bread should be toasted (medium) to stand up to the pressure of being slathered. Slathered!
There was a big mayo/Miracle Whip/Nouveau-Miracle Whip debate around somewhere recently, too, I think. Not good at the linky thing or I would point you and yours there.
I don’t recall caddies charging by the hour, but by number of bags (1 or 2) and by nine holes or a full loop. That one asking for $50 per hour (figure a 5 hour round) and driving a cart is pretty enterprising.
I was in golf course management for quite a while, caddies are something of a rarity since the introduction of carts. Brings to mind a caddy issue when I was at an extremely exclusive club. The grounds maintenance buildings were situated adjacent to the helicopter pad, something the grounds crew disliked because invariably a copter would show up just when the crew was outside eating lunch.
One day a black S-76 with TRUMP painted on the sides arrived, kicking up all sorts of dust. Yep, out popped “The Donald” for a round. He was quickly wisked to the clubhouse to change but there was a pretty good delay before he started his round. Seems he was known as a very poor tipper and they couldn’t find a caddy for him…BTW, that hairdo is incredible. He walked 18 holes on a hot, sticky, steamy summer afternoon and that hair never budged.
On the other side of the hair issue was Joe Pesci, an avid golfer and friendly guy who was obviously comfortable with who he was and didn’t care one whit about his bald pate.
Lex, I admire your six handicap, but being in the business I never could fully get “into” the game.
I found the simplest possible captcha utility for my wordpress site. It has been up for 14 months, and I have not received a single comment spam entry.
You really don’t need even that. If can script in a simple question like “Type the words ‘Go Air Force’ in this box:” followed by a text box, then that alone stops 99.9999% of all comment spam.
Lex,
A six handicap? I had always thought that meant that you had already spent an unholy amount of time practicing the fairly boring aspects of the game. Oh well. I suppose I am gonna shoot for a 13 and have a little leisure time on the side.
On another note, I have only been in Annapolis for a month and am already telling all of my friends and family back in Oregon that they need to watch the Navy/Army game… and root whole heartedly for Navy. I live just a block from the stadium, and am quite sad that the game isn’t going the be here… Again, oh well.
Good to see some Friday Musings again.
Please, folks, let us agree not to play golf on golf courses, lest The Donovan and myself sneak out there into those places and plant some anti-personnel mines. (Neither he nor I would actually *do* such a thing, of course, but you betcha I at least have given the idea some thought.
I don’t want anybody I like to be badly surprised by a loud noise and a sharp sensation about his tootsies!
Eschew golf! Instead, exercise with your weapons!
(I think there was a king of Scotland who got all grumpy about his subjects playing golf on Sundays when they were supposed to be doing military exercises with bows,swords, etc
Golf is wrong! It is not, of course, completely and absolutely wrong, but wastes human intelligence and energy on achieving very silly worthless goals.
I, myself, have played golf a time or two, and it was kinda fun.
IT WAS NOT IMPORTANT. AT ALL!
Western Civilization is falling down about our ears, and too many of us, ’specially in Southern Florida where I live, are doing nothing but playing golf. The county in which I live has more than a gross of golf courses and only one shooting range. That’s just wrong.
Think I will just stick with Golden T and use the 4 plus hours to spend on my boat….
Lex, BTW, some of your links I don’t dare open at work….just don’t know how they will be received by Big Brother. Yeah, the caddy thing is tame. Just the same, man…
“Our caddies must pass a golf etiquette test before they can accept reservations.” There’s a perfectly good blond joke in there somewhere, just looking for a way out.
Las PPD I had, post-deployment, HMC says “call me if it does anything strange or scary, if I don’t hear from you by Thurday, it’s negative.” Whether that was a Chief thing, or an effort to thin out the great large number of Seabees inching through demob, I couldn’t tell you.
“By the way, I decline to ask for terms. In case anyone was curious about that.”
The thought never crossed my mind either, CAPT Lex.
Wish I was a golfer. Left handed, insufficient leisure time, myopic vision. More into reading actually. And those caddies don’t look like they would agree to a Braille reading. Wishful thinking I guess.
Subsunk out.
I never feel cheated when I eat a BLT, but then I figure that I’m entitled to 1/8 to 1/4 lb of meat in a sandwich, regardless of what that meat is. Throw about 6 or 8 slices of B in that BLT and your opinion may change.