Mr. brain comments

Mr. brain is asking mr. body to type this tonight. Mr. brain has almost had enough of this shit. Mr. brain has been riding around in the cranial cavity supplied by mr. body for over 60 years now. Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed the ride and the places I've directed mr. body to take me. And, tonight, mr. body (and by the way, my god you've let yourself go down there!) mr. body has dutifully gone to the kitchen and has imbibed enough gin to satisfy my need for the soft, quieting, gin-induced fog through which I can exist after another day in Kansas.

We're all basically our brains. Without them, the body just lies there like a suit of clothes waiting to be put on for the day. Nope, brains make you breathe, eat and do all the things that enable support, energy and transportation for the brain. We are really just wrinkled, grey cortex matter with sensory equipment to relate to one another.

My brain is in Kansas right now and wondering just how much more it can take watching the bodies and talking heads on Fox News babble and bluster WITHOUT brains guiding them in their endeavors. It's like watching beheaded chickens running around the barnyard. How did they come to lose their brains and what in god's name is propelling them? My brain has watched this for several days now and is puzzled beyond measure.

No! my brain isn't superior. far from it. But the body called what-? - Hannidy or something like that? My god, it's from some other planet.

Mr. brain would go on but the transport device has expended itself for today. More tomorrow.

Failure as a Lifestyle

Big game day. Three codgered architects meet at the alma mater to view another drubbing of our football team. We have attended one of these games every year now for, what? Going on for 12 years or so. We expect our team to lose, and they seldom disappoint. The game isn't so much as important as getting together. We went through architecture together, through the 'Nam' years together in the Army National Guard, and through our careers - since the internets anyway- via daily email. Friends with as much history (44 years) are fairly rare. But the strongest glue, the common thread, the salient element in our relationship is our sharing of three things that are designed to beat you down into the dust of utter failure - architecture, military and K-State football. And we have excelled in it. The fact that we are also men and, moreover, husbands also helps this formula for disaster. Let's face it, no man, much less husband, can ever hope to amount to much of anything. Add to that architecture, military National Guard and KSU and, well, we stand proudly accused.
So it was with bittersweet aplomb that we watched our team self-destruct today before our very eyes. Unravel. Implode. Weave all over the field and, yes, fart itself to death. Good Lord!
We will soon go to Kansas City for our annual Failed Architects Reliving Traditionally Expected Disaster (F.A.R.T.E.D.) dinner, departing to our failed lives the next day. Stay tuned.........

Driving to Wichita

Nothing really cool to report from the heart land today. Drove down to Wichita to pick up our kid and her hubby. Driving in Kansas requires: cruise control, 4 feet of rope or cord, long range army field artillery binoculars, small battery powered alarm clock with a suction cup attachment for the dash. (No, the rope is too short to use as a suicide noose, though I suppose it has been tried). Use the rope to secure the steering wheel after achieving a straight path at 74.2 MPH. When the vechile is stable, check the road ahead with the field binoculars. If the road is clear alll the way to the horizon - in YOUR lane- set the alarm clock for about 15 minutes and take a short nap. This works generally each time and you can get your much needed sleep 15 minutes at a time. You will need sleep, due to nightmares from Fox news in EVERY TV in your house 24/7.

Hitting a cow or some other 1,500 pound object will seriously disrupt your nap and possibly damage the alarm clock, so make sure there are no cattle near the road on the horizon. (and, hope Clem, the guy in Newton, has completed his daily trip to Piggly Wiggly across the highway for snacks, pork rinds and diet pop.)

You shouldn't try this at night, for obvious reasons. It's when the blind folks drive.

Family history

A Kansas trip would not be complete without family dysfunction. It's why one goes to Kansas to begin with. Family. No other good reason to be here. My mom is a saint. And my brother and his wife are right up there. They care for her. She's been through the Great Depression (which has now returned), WWII, Post war boom and all that reckless hope everyone had, 3 husbands - now with their maker - 2 boys, one successful and one an architect, and the 88 years that have left her wondering why the hell Mr. Maker has left her here with this fucked up body.

Oh, did I mention the families of husbands 2 and 3? No, I didn't. Husband #2's family, once inherited by SM (sainted mother) consists of one dead kid (eye-out in beer bottle fight, death via alcholism), another obeise and soon-to-be dead kid, now fat, also drunk and living on the State dole, two other normal kids, just greedy and fucked up otherwise.

And did I mention the families of husband #3, recently dead? No, I didn't. Well, these clowns top old hubby #2 head and shoulders. Hubby #3 inhereted about $1M bucks from wife #1, dead from emphysema, kept the money, gave it out to the needy (Yes, by god, Mr. Maker is proud of this one for that at least). Well, hubby #3's family couldn't stand the codgered old fucking dick so when SM married him they all shouted allelieua and said how WONderrrrrful SM was for taking care of him. Geezus, she all but saved him from certain neglect and death had the kids anything to do with it. Give the old Tonto a fucking blanket, a skin of water and banish him out on the prairie - worked for the indians.

Yep, hubby #3's dead 'n gone...kids split with the cash (Yes, it WAS legally theirs), and SM hasn't seen hide nor hair of 'em since. (except the one still poor one who lives nearby). Hey, thanks for taking care of 'Dad'. yeah, we all sure meant it. We ain't giving you one fucking dime of this and moreover, ain't replacing the carpet in your house on which the old fuck snuffed out the nearly 575,980 cigarettes he smoked in there.

Well, tomorrow's another day.....

What the Hell is the Point?

A trip to Kansas is always, well, always. I have a couple of old friends that I usually visit. Pen, he's living near where I am on the west coast and Bert still lives in the college town where we all three first met each other, nigh on 45 years ago.

We usually go to a foot ball game, engage in a tailgate party, watch our team lose, sometimes have dinner, then go home. Pen and I usually stay overnight in Kansas City, then he and I go back to the left coast and Bert goes back and we spend the rest of the year on email complaining about how our team did THAT day and the rest of the year. Other teams are always better, not so much because they ARE better but because we are bad. We suck, in fact.

That brings me to the first point I suppose, if there is a point. Notice the use of 'we'. We have learned to associate our entire net worth, our self esteem, our very sacred honor (that's the shit that was in the declaration of Independence I think)...yes, all that on the success, or lack thereof, of our football team. I have been trying to figure this phenomina out all my life - a considerable time now - and have no answer with which I am satisfied.

two days and a wake-up to game day. to be continued....

Flotsam and Jetsam

Internets, I went down to my basement today to sit. Just sit. Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits. Well yeah, we've all seen that poster. Friend of mine came over today and visited our office. It hasn't appreciably changed in the five or so years since she worked here. Got me to thinking as I was showing her all the stuff that was still there, piled up like so much flotsam against rocks in a stream, that I too was becoming flotsam. Flotsam. Piled up. Stuck. And, instead of willing myself out or doing something I remain, complaining loudly. Annoying. And, yes one could say a stick-in-the-mud.

I have enjoyed being an architect. But oh God, the price. Ain't rich. Far, far from it. In fact if it weren't for my spouse I would be living in a cardboard box somewhere. I absolutely do not have shit. And somehow by the Grace of God I have not been sued - successfully. Plenty of threats and still plenty of liability out there waiting to be exploited by a junk dog lawyer, should one come trotting down the alley. I fear them. The attorneys who are dogs. You know who they are. Many are indeed knights representing fairness - but there are the dogs.

Some days I feel strong and good and some days I can just pour out creativity and it feels good. But those days have dwindled. My creativity now finds other outlets. Music. Art. I suppose architecture is art. Been told that alot. I suppose art can be architecture too. But I have to say I'm so tired of wringing myself out, pouring my soul out, trying to create things for people who just flat do not give one shit about aesthetics, beauty or quality of life. Just money.

I am pathetic I suppose to think this way. Look at how I've been blessed. I have no right, no right whatsoever to be this complaining, whiny grumbling edifice of humanity but yet I am.

Don't know why I'm sharing this with you, internets. I'm just yelling in my basement.

Tomorrow I'm going over to sell some of my art so that the proceeds can go to thirsty, miserable people in Africa who need water wells. Hooray! Pin a little shining star on me. G'nite.

A WWII Story

2nd Lt. Richard Carl Nethaway, drafted in the Selective Service drawing in July 1941, sworn in at Leavenworth Kansas, 15 July 1941. Yeah, it was before Pearl. That did come along later that year.

I’m going to tell you a little about my part in WWII. It was a small part. Although most GI’s said that. Everybody had a small part. A small slice of it that was maybe inconsequential. Maybe not. Me, I flew airplanes. Transport airplanes. In China-Burma-India. The ‘Hump’.

There were lots of other jobs to do in WWII. You could go across North Africa, up to Italy. You could be an armorer, mechanic or cook or a sailor deep in the bowels of an aircraft carrier. Under attack, the decks above would be on fire, explosions every minute. Sheer terror. You fight fires, close watertight bulkheads, secure munitions, Hold a sailor’s hand as his life slowly ebbs out in a pool of blood. You could be on a submarine with depth charges death rattling your small fragile encased world of light and oxygen fathoms below water’s surface. I could have been one of those guys in the Normandy invasion, seasick, landing with bullets whizzing past, seeking to enter my body and end my life in agony. Then the hedgerow fighting, man-to-man, day upon day. Cold. Wet. Never dry. Never clean. Months. How can you not stand in awe of these men?

But like I said, I flew airplanes, had hot meals, slept in barracks.

For what it’s worth, let me tell you what I did.

To be continued -