He grew fed up with the Army. He had put in 25 years, but the last five had been totally discombobulated, one snafu after another. Everything was FUBAR and he grew wholly disgruntled with it all. He knew it was time to go, to bail out, and no one tried to stop him, to change his mind. He shipped his uniforms off to Goodwill, grew a beard. He learned to speak vernacular English again, not the military version with its own weird argot. He would be happy, he knew, with this new life. But he wanted more, he wanted to be gruntled, to be fully combobulated, to hell with Merriam-Webster who said he couldn’t because they didn’t exist.
I have decided it is now time and I am establishing a new field of study that blends mathematics and political science, which I have named idiometry.
Simply put, idiometry allows one to measure just how close one can take the statements or promises if any politician and square them with the actual facts.
Then you repeat this for all of the statements of that politician and you inevitably find the square unattainable, there simply are no perfect squares yet achieved in idiometry, for no politician ever seen on a public stage hews perfectly to facts, always veering off into self interest or blatant ideology, so perhaps idiometry isn’t worth it, telling us what we already knew full well.
He said he sent God an email but got no response until, after three days, he got a bounce back saying the account had been closed for lack of payment. A few hours on the internet yielded a heavenly website, and after another hour digging down into the site map, he found a tiny hot link to the Contact Us page, and there a phone number he immediately called. What could be better than asking God directly, he figured. He should have known better, and did when on the third ring the phone was answered and the recording began, “For Jewish, Press 1; for Catholic and most Protestants, Press 2; for Muslims, Press 3; For atheists and non-believers, Press 4. He pressed two and was told the office was only open for calls on Sunday from 6 AM until noon, and occasional Saturday afternoons. Unsatisfied he called back, pressed 1 and learned the phone would only be answered Friday night or Saturday, though he doubted anyone worked then. He tried 4 on the next call and was transferred to a line that seemed to be answered in Norwegian by someone who he thought said was in the branch office in Stjordal in Nord-Trondelag. The afternoon was growing short and he realized he didn’t really care about the answer, wasn’t sure he’d believe it anyway.
With knowledge comes something but I cannot remember what my mother told me it was, or perhaps it was a teacher who said it, but I can’t hope to tell which one it was, I cannot remember some of their names or in what grade it might have been said. I don’t think it was in college or graduate school since by then it was assumed we knew what came with knowledge.
So I am left to look around me, and see what the knowledgeable have wrought and consider that perhaps with knowledge comes chaos for we have quite enough of that, or a lack of compassion, we’re big on that one, so maybe with knowledge come a hidden key to making this all right, but I cannot for the life of me find it.
Someone declared it Star Wars Day, but that is not fair to the progenitors of that series of films and countless spinoffs. Imaging Captain Kirk engaged with a Klingon in a lightsaber battle, Mr. Spock standing by and commenting “illogical.”. And for that matter, why not imagine Gort looking down at Klaatu and saying, “No, I am your father.” On forty-second thought, let’s leave things as they are.
In our time of never-ending war, punctured by the briefest lulls we now call peace, someone, someones more likely, will talk about whom will be the victor, to whom shall go the spoils. Bierce, that perpetual cynic, reminded us that peace was a period of cheating between two periods of fighting. But no one pauses to consider that in any war there are no true victors only the victims unwillingly offered up in sacrifice to delusion.
I would love to work for the Postal Service. I don’t want my own route, and I certainly do not have the right temperment for working at the counter. The health insurance is good, and the retirement would be something to look forward to. But I want one job in particular. I want to the the man who sits all day with the micrometer and measures the mail to see if it is over a 1/4 of an inch thick, so he can send it back for additonal postage.
an old writer and his words 