Eyebrows In Afghanistan

From a page 1 article in the Wall Street Journal on 13 Oct:

Emerging amid the camouflage and crewcuts is the latest in combat chic: male soldiers with eyebrows professionally shaped into slender arches."I just wanted them to shape up my eyebrows," explains Private First Class Richard Guillemette, whose job is to call in artillery barrages from the front lines.

....

These threaded, plucked or shaved young soldiers are proving befuddling to an older generation of bushier warriors. Army regulations are silent on the subject of male eyebrows, except to say that one's hair must not reach so far south.

In 2007, however, the Marine Corps added a line to its grooming regulations stating that "excessive plucking or removal of eyebrows is not authorized, except for medical reasons." The Marines left open the question of what constitutes a pluck too far, though the Corps did make a half-hearted, circular attempt to define what would count as eccentric and faddish (bad), compared with conservative and inconspicuous (good).

This article just tickled me, though I can’t put my finger on exactly why.  Maybe it's seeing "the man" squirm a bit uncomfortably.  Or the juxtaposition of a harmless cosmetic procedure being done to, well, young men who in their day jobs are trained killers (not being judgmental here, just recognizing that the end product of the military is arguably death and destruction).  Or just the fact that this seems to be a classic case of gallows humor, where people in a potentially lethal situation turn to diversions, any diversions, just to keep their sanity.

Regardless, this trend could almost make me enlist, except I'm too old.

  

Jane...and Ultrarunning

I could almost write the following para in my sleep:

As usual, the Writer's Almanac doesn't disappoint.  This is a free daily email with a literary bent (did I mention that it's FREE?).  I'm going out on a limb here, but the fact that you are reading Mister Tristan (the blog, not the 3-year old human being) tells me that there is indeed a literary bone in your body.

From 9 Oct, a post about the fate that awaits many of us, even though we are young and healthy and Ultrarunners, for Christ's sake!  And I know--in a sentence that I also could write in my sleep--that when many of you see poetry you can't hit that DELETE key fast enough.

But read it anyway, OK?

Jane, the old woman across the street,
is lugging big black trash bags to the curb.
It's snowing hard, and the bags are turning white,
gradually disappearing in the storm.

Jane is getting ready to put her house on the market
and move into a home of some sort. A facility.
She's just too old to keep the place going anymore,
and as we chat about this on the sidewalk
I'm thinking, I'm so glad this isn't going to happen to me.

It seems like a terrible fate, to drag out your trash bags
and then head for a facility somewhere.
And all the worse to be old in a facility. But then,
that's the whole reason you go there in the first place.

But the great thing about being me, I'm thinking,
as I continue my morning walk around the block,
is that I'm not going to a facility of any sort.

That's for other people. I intend to go on
pretty much as I always have, enjoying life,
taking my morning walk, then coffee
and the newspaper, music and a good book.
Europe vaguely in the summers.
Then another year just like this one, on and on,
ad infinitum.

Why change this? I have no intention of doing so.
What Jane is doing—growing old,
taking out her ominous black trash bags
to vanish terribly in the snow, getting ready
for someone to drive her to the facility—

that may be her idea of the future (which I totally respect),
but it certainly isn't mine.

"Jane" by George Bilgere.

Oh, and the connection to Ultrarunning.  None of us, repeat, NONE OF US, gets out of here alive.  All we can do is to forestall obsolescence somewhat, and there nothing better than Ultrarunning to help with that.

But notice how I used the word "forestall."  Not cancel, not eliminate.  I'm still gonna die, as will you. 

The question is, will what you did in your life fill you with memories and satisfaction when it's time for assisted living or nursing home care, as in Jane's example above?

Ultrarunning lets me answer, "YES."

 

Toy Trains...and Ultrarunning

Via Boing Boing, we see that Walt Disney liked toy trains.  Oh, and it seems that Salvador Dali did also.

I love me my O-gauge tintype Marx sets from pre-war thru the 1950s--and so does Mister Tristan (the 3 year old human being, not the blog).  See here and here for previous posts with photos of some of my collection.

Anyway, I'm getting interested in what are called "garden trains," where you have a larger gauge set-up outdoors, running thru your landscaping.  I'm just at the reading-about-it stage.  If I proceed, my scale would not be as large as Walt's above, but I can see this being a lot of fun.

The connection to Ultrarunning is that I would try to model some of my favorite trail running sites.  For example, the Annapolis Rocks site along the Appalachian Trail in MD.  Also Chimney Rocks along the AT near my home here in PA.

 

You Won't Come Back From Dead Man's Curve

My older brother is a smart *ss (and I love him dearly!).  He can find humor in tragedy, not because he is callous, but because his mind examines the entire spectrum of all possible reactions to a situation.  Then, unlike most of us, he is willing to give expression to those dark thoughts that everybody thinks but nobody says out loud.


He recently sent the bride a newspaper clipping about a man in California who drove off a road and into a ravine, in late September.  This was a national news story covered by the AP.  The man survived a week until his kids found him alive. 

Coincidentally, his car landed beside another car that had gone off the same curve 10 days earlier...only that car's occupant was dead.

My brother's reaction:

With respect to the refrain of the 1964 Jan and Dean song, Dead Man's Curve, that you "won't come back from Dead Man's Curve," they were only partially correct.  Apparently, your chances of coming back from Dead Man's Curve are 50%, that is, if you have a persistent family.

Fear...and Ultrarunning

Ran across this list of phobias in The Bathroom Trivia Book (subtitled Nuggets of Knowledge for America's Favorite Reading Room) and was struck by how many of them had a connection to our favorite sport.

If you have any of these fears--taken to a debilitating level, of course--you could be SOL on the trail:

          Batophobia (walking)

          Homichlophobia (fog)

          Keraunophobia (thunder)

          Mysophobia (dirt)

          Ombrophobia (rain)

 Arguably, some of us actually turn to Ultrarunning because of these fears:

          Ergophobia (work)

          Gametophobia (marriage)

And my favorite fear in real life as a reason to take to the trails:

          Tropophobia  (making changes)

Your mileage will vary, of course.

 

Gay Marriage, Ho-Hum

John Cole at Balloon Juice passed along a cool graphic that I also must share.  Unfortunately, beyond crediting John, I can't discern the original source, otherwise I'd want to thank them and shake their hand:

 

Cats in Art: The Sleep of the Infant Jesus (Le Brun)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. I'm using some ideas from the coffee table book, The Cat in Art, by Stefano Zuffi.

Image credit Artfinder, here.  Charles Le Brun, The Sleep of the Infant Jesus, 1655, Oil on canvas, 34" x 46", held by The Louvre, Paris, France.

 

Zuffi comments:

 

A big, placid white-and-gray striped cat seems to have fallen asleep by the warmth of a burning brazier; however, it is not quite asleep, for its ears are pricked up.

 

A cat is always aware of its surroundings.  In this case, the cat is probably thinking, "I don't care if he is deity--Baby Jesus better not try to pet me."

 

 

Debunking The Myth Of The Wealthy Job Creator

Back in July, I think, Avedon Carol pointed me to Thom Hartmann and a great discussion of the myth of the wealthy job creator.

The conservatives keep reciting--to me, reminiscent of the mob of zombies chanting "Imhotep" in the first Mummy movie--that tax cuts for the wealthy are the best way to create jobs and stimulate the economy.  In fact, I think they actually believe it.

But it makes no sense.  The cart is not only before the horse, there seems to be no horse.  Let's try this for some logic:

The way jobs are created is through demand for goods and services.  I need my car worked on, so I take it to a garage.  If enough additional people like that particular garage, eventually the owner will need to hire another mechanic to meet the increased demand.  Merely giving more money to the owner via tax cuts--in the absence of increased demand--will not cause him suddenly to say "Aha!  Now I can hire that mechanic!" The new mechanic will be sitting on his hands because the cars are not lining up outside.  Why? People in a fiscal crunch are doing more of their own auto maintenance or deferring it.

Nope, it's D-E-M-A-N-D, in the form of spendable money in people's pockets, that will create jobs.  It's always been a bottom-driven process, never a top-down, trickle-down effect, despite all the lockstep chanting.

Duh!