Note: This is a long rant, so start reading at your own risk. If anything offends you, it is your problem.

I entered the military during the era of the draft, so there was a diverse crowd in my basic training flight of 65 intentionally bewildered souls. [Come on, you didn’t really think that it was an accident that transportation to basic training sites was timed so you would arrived at night, be taken to eat an absurdly large meal, and set to bed, only to be awakened after a couple of hours by a fire drill?]

While the majority were probably Protestants, we had a Sikh, a Nigerian Muslim with tribal scars, a nominally Catholic Mayan, a Sephardic Jew from Morocco, no few “none of the above”, among the subgroup that bunked around me. It’s not like you had any privacy in the barracks, so you learned this in passing, because you didn’t openly discuss religion or politics in the military. You were warned about this in classes on rules and regulations. The foreign guys were building a profile for immigration as their student visas were running out.

When I watch what has been going on in the military under the Hedgemony, it is totally foreign to my experience as a “military brat”, and during my own time. The rules haven’t changed, they are simply selectively enforced. A primary example of this is Lieutenant General William G. Boykin:

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Yes, it’s Friday the 13^th again. The 13^th falls on a Friday more than any other day of the week, so get over it. It’s only valid in in English and Portuguese speaking countries, so go visit a Spanish-speaking neighborhood for the day.

If you want to blame someone, it’s the calendar of Pope Gregory XIII that created this imbalance. [He obviously didn’t have a problem with the number on any day.]

Chilly Reception

Who me?

[Editor: This is Tip’s brother on a rare foray into the family area. He is almost never outside, as he adopted a neighbor. He actually has a tiny white tip on his tail, but at the time of the picture he was a bit concerned about the attention the other cats were beginning to show towards him.

Friday Ark