Dr. Harl Delos's blog

It was the eleventh month and the eleventh day, just shortly after the eleventh hour, when it happened.

He bent over the campfire. A hand grenade came off his belt and fell into the fire. After serving a couple of years with Germans shooting at him and coming out unscratched, he died by his own grenade.

If, that is, that's what really happened. Aeschylus, the greek dramatist who lived from 525-456 BC, said (in greek) that "In war, truth is the first casualty." They didn't call it "fragging" until 'Nam, but it occurred in earlier wars - and what better time to get even with an officer whose harsh discipline kept you alive than when an armistice has been signed, and he no longer is critical to your survival.

So "Uncle John", as the family remembers him, didn't come back from The World War. The first one wasn't numbered, of course, until there was more than one of them; it was supposed to be the war to end all wars.

I won't post his picture here, although I could. He was dashing and handsome; his mother must have had a more appealing milkman than my mother had, for neither of us look like the majority of the family.

But I'll let you imagine what he looks like. Chances are, you'll fill in the details with the soldier, sailor, or airman that you know best, and that's what I really want you to do.

Mr. Bush declared victory more than five years ago. The greatest honor we can pay to our soldiers' memory is to not waste any more lives.

We're praying that "our" soldier, a young naval aviator named Danny, comes home in perfect physical condition, just as he was when we entrusted him to Uncle Sam. But at this point, we'll settle for getting him home alive. Several times a month, we hear about a local soldier returning home in a bag. No mas.

It was as nice a day as you might ask for a picnic. They had Maine clams on sale this week, 50 for $6, Florida roasting ears for $3 a dozen, and they had Turkey Hill for 4 for $10, so we were even set for dessert.

"Does this month have an 'R' in it?", Blondie asked me, and I said, "No, but I bought the clams on Saturday, so they were probably harvested on Thursday or Friday, and all three of those days have Rs in them." Blondie wasn't sure my answer had much validity, but the clams tasted OK, and 50 out of 50 opened when I steamed them, so I don't think it was much of a problem.

Marie loves the back yard. She always barks harshly at the dog who lives across the alley, until that dog stands with her feet on the hurricane fence and barks back. Last fall, she barked in a more friendly manner, and it was the other dog who barked harshly, but Marie got up to the fence, and suddenly yelped and ran back towards our house.

Her ear had a little notch bitten out of it, hardly anything to see unless you were looking for it, but I imagine it was rather painful. Since then, she only goes out on a cable so she can run all over yard except within a couple of feet of that fence.

A blogger I follow had a recent problem concerning her dogs, and I wanted to get Marie's thoughts on the situation.

Jen went over to her sister's place. Her sister has a zillion-inch television, and a VCR, but can't figure out how to press the "record" button, so part of the reason for going there was to carry along the latest American Idol, recorded on Jen's Mac.

"That was the first mistake," Blondie said, and I agree; I don't like American Idol, either. If I want to hear someone being rude to others, all I would have to do is to turn down the television, and listen to the neighbors fight.

Anyhow, where Jen goes, her two dogs go. Marie suggested that was a good idea. She insists on going with me, every time I leave the house, and would like it if Blondie took her along when she goes to work, as well.

When Jen gets to her sister's house, the dogs go into the back yard. They're not allowed in the house. Marie wasn't sure a about that as a policy. Back yards are wonderful, she said, but why should dogs be banned from a house? Why bother even having a house, if you're not going to have dogs?

Marie stood up and went to the far end of the yard and barked. It wasn't the harsh barking she gives that other dog, but a friendly, "Hi there, sailor!" bark, at someone who was walking into the park. Humans exist, in Marie's mind, primarily to talk to her, to pet her, to scratch her forehead, and to groom her. Sometimes, there's a doggie treat involved, but that's a bonus. It's the petting that's critical.

When she got back, I continued with the story. My friend was halfway through American Idol playback when her niece came running in, crying about her pet bunny. The brother-in-law led the race to the back yard, where there were two dogs, grinning like fools, and tufts of rabbit fur all over the yard.

They got to chase a bunny, and they caught it? Boy, that sounds like fun! Marie seemed to think I should get her some more bunnies. Now, I said, the dogs are no longer welcome at all, and it's put quite a chill on my friend's relationship with her sister's family.

Why don't they just get some more bunnies? That way, the girl could have one of them for a pet, and there'd be more for the dogs to chase. Marie always has a good solution for problems. My friend's sister said some unkind things about dogs in general, and about these two in particular, something about "They're hunting dogs, for heaven's sake," or something like that.

All dogs are hunting dogs, Marie said, even herding dogs like me. I asked her if the little handful next door was a hunting dog. I'm not sure that thing qualifies as a dog, Marie replied. I've seen cats with more sense than that thing. That was about as nasty as Marie ever gets. She things cats are untrustworthy - and given her experience with trying to be friendly with cats, I can't argue the point.

Blondie suggested that the girl needs to learn to take care of a pet. You don't put a bunny outdoors, without supervision, and without a cage to protect it, unless you have a very good fence, running at least 18 inches below ground, and you have lots of places like drain tiles, where a bunny can hide and predators can't follow.

Aw, dad, Marie insisted, bunnies are made for chasing and catching. It's a game. They deliberately tease me. And squirrels are even worse. But squirrels are more successful at it. The squirrels climb a tree, and they're safe, and they continue to taunt the dog. Rabbits, they shake their tail to get the dog interested, but once the dog starts chasing, they end up leaving the yard. And in the case of last year's baby bunnies, they stay out of the yard.

"So did she say what she's going to do," Blondie asked. "I dunno," I responded. "I guess her sister with the big TV either has to learn how to press the record button, or will have to go over to Jen's to watch the little TV."

"We can't pick our families," Blondie said, "and there are sure a lot of people who can't get along with their siblings." It's been over five years since we've seen Blondie's sister, or talked with her. I feel sorry for her, but her sister is one of those people who lives as God would dictate, if only God were aware of all the facts. If I had the choice of being around someone who constantly beat me up, emotionally, I think I'd choose not to answer phone calls from her, too. But that doesn't mean that it isn't a shame.

On this Memorial Day weekend, let us remember not only the Indianapolis 500 race, but also those who have died for us, whether soldier, civilian, or rabbit.

Dick Martin: How about coming up to my place?
Girl: Are you going to try anything fresh?
Dick Martin: Nope. Same old stuff.

Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In was the most popular show on television during the 1969-1970 season.

It made stars of Lily Tomlin, and of Goldie Hawn.

The show was originally aired as a one-time special on September 9, 1967 and was such a success that it was brought back as a series

Dick Martin: Hey, listen, Cathy, uh... Why don't we go up to my place tonight? You know, I'm a marvelous cook.
Cathy: Really? What's your specialty?
Dick Martin: Breakfast.

Dick Martin, age 86, died tonight of respiratory complications. "He had had some pretty severe respiratory problems for many years, and he had pretty much stopped breathing a week ago," family spokesman Greenberg said. He had lost one of his lungs as a teenager, and in recent years, had been using oxygen for several hours a day.

Dan Rowan: Say good night, Dick.
Dick Martin: Good night, Dick!
Dan Rowan: Good night, everybody!

Rowan and Martin teamed up as a comedy team in 1952. They were friendly when they split up in 1977. Dan had diabetes, and his doctor said, "Cool it."

About a decade later, Dick took up directing, at the suggestion of Bob Newhart. He was soon he was one busiest directors in TV, doing many episodes of "Newhart", "Archie Bunker's Place", "In the Heat of the Night", and "Family Ties."

The sixties were a pretty rough time for this country. Did Laugh-In helped the country chill out? You can bet your Funk & Wagnalls it did!

Good night, Dick!

Did you see that clip on YouTube? It doesn't matter what "that clip" is. There's always a "great clip" on YouTube that's making the rounds, embarassing someone or another.

They warn us all that in anything you say online is probably archived someplace or another, and may come back to bite you thirty years from now. They also tell us that it's possible to walk from Boston to Washington DC without ever being out of sight of a security camera. Everybody, everywhere, over the age of 4 seems to have a cell phone and most cell phones have cameras.

Given that one of our fundamental rights, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, is based on "a reasonable expectation of privacy", one has to ask, is there anyplace where one may reasonably expect privacy these days?

One thing bringing this to mind is the presidential campaign, of course.

I really don't think Senator Clinton is praying for someone to assassinate Senator Obama. It's pretty obvious that she really wants the presidency, though. Her team's explanations of how that happens were strained a month ago, and now they're pretty much banking on invasion by little green men. Boy, wouldn't you love to play poker against her? You could get really rich, really quick, playing against such a fool an optimist.

But Senator McCain and Senator Obama have had their YouTube moments, too. Nobody has escaped scrutiny.

Blondie and I were listening tonight to Elton John "Blue Moves" album. She really likes his current stuff, but she doesn't care much for his recordings from the early 1970s.

After "Blue Moves" came "Abandoned Luncheonette". I only ever had listened much to one side of that LP, but there aren't any "sides" to digital music. I got a lot of songs I'm not familiar with, and frankly, I'm not too fond of. There's a reason why certain songs went on the "B" side. They had to put something there, but they put all the best material on the "A" side, since that was what would be played the most.

"I told you," Blondie said, "that they went to my high school, didn't I?" I had, but I didn't interrupt her. It's a bad idea, in general, for a guy to keep a woman from talking. Even when it's a rerun, though, I like hearing Blondie talk. I didn't marry her for the sex; a single guy can get that anywhere. You marry the woman you want to listen to, all night long, and for the rest of your life.

She said she'd heard them on the radio, but Dana told her who they were. You mean Five-Dollar Dana? She nodded. I should explain here that the first time I met Dana, we had lunch at a restaurant. She ordered a $7 meal, a $3 side, and a $2 beverage, excused herself after eating, because she had lost track of time and had an appointment, tossed a $5 bill at us, telling us to apply her change to the tip.

We had a disagreement, Blondie and I, because Blondie said Dana didn't realize that it was too little for her share of the check. I said she pulled the stunt deliberately, because she was cheap. It wasn't much of a disagreement. Blondie thought about it for two minutes, and remembered other stunts Dana had pulled, and decided my assessment might be right.

In any case, Five-Dollar Dana told Blondie that she used to go over to the garage and listen to Hall & Oates practice, back before they had released any records. I don't know if that statement was full of euphemism or not. Five-Dollar Dana had gotten a new job every 3-4 years in her adult life, and always fell in love with - and started sleeping with - her boss. She seemed to have a number of other boyfriends as well.

She went to see the dean at the parochial school where her daughter was attending classes, over some behavior problems, and ended up seeing him four or five times. It being a Roman Catholic school, the dean was a priest. As is Five-Dollar Dana's style, she fell in love with the priest, or at least fell in lust. She ended up leaving a note on the priest's windshield.

Sadly for Five-Dollar Dana, it turned out to be the janitor's windshield. The janitor read the letter, realized that it wasn't for him, and passed it on to the intended recipient. At the next meeting, the priest gave her the letter back, saying how he had come into possession of it. Oops!

Although it seems that Five-Dollar Dana tried to sleep with anything with pants on, that really isn't fair. She wasn't slutty. She simply fell in love easily, and never, ever, found the love she was searching for. Blondie's Law says that "nobody has ever been loved the way they wanted to be loved." Although that sounds brutally pessimistic, I've never found an exception to her law, and she says she hasn't either.

So I don't know if she was going over to the garage to listen to music, or to get laid. Maybe she didn't know, either.

In any case, we're getting off-track here. When Five-Dollar Dana told her who Hall and Oates were, Blondie went through her old yearbooks. Oh, THAT is who they were.

They were thugs.

Not the crowd your mother would want you to associate with. For that matter, not the crowd you would want to associate with. Blondie said that girls would make efforts to avoid the sections of the hall where the thuggish element congregated.

It's been a couple of hours since Blondie went downstairs, and I've been thinking about this.

Mel Gibson is an anti-semite. They asked him to change the script of The Passion of the Christ because it cast jews in a bad light, and he refused. I'm going to tell the truth, no more, no less, he said, and one has to respect a producer for that. But when he was stopped for drunk driving, he made some unquestionably anti-semitic statements.

It was "Mel Gibson Syndrome". Being drunk doesn't turn you against the jews. What it does is loosen your tongue, and what's inside your brain spills out.

Being tired at the end of a long day of campaigning, during a long season of campaigning, no days off, tends to loosen your tongue, too. McCain repeatedly makes "mistakes" about Sunni and Shiite and Al Queda. Bill Clinton repeatedly tries to pigeonhole Obama as a token black who needs to move to the back of the bus, since it's obvious that he couldn't possibly win the election. Hillary Clinton repeatedly makes "mistakes" in describing in great detail a foreign trip that never happened.

I told Blondie tonight that I feel sorry for Hillary. At some point or another, everyone has been caught saying something they shouldn't. Perhaps it was a white lie that blossomed as one attempted to cover it up. Perhaps it was a secret that they hadn't intended to blurt out. I'd like to think that as I get older, I do less of that. I try to tell the truth, partly because I'm trying to be virtuous, but mostly because I've learned that lies are too damned much work. I am lazy, of course. Lazy is one of the cardinal virtues of a programmer, the other two being impatience and hubris.

The thing is, our "Mel Gibson Syndrome" moments are going to come closer and closer together as time goes on, as more and more information on us is archived in digital form, where it's easily searched and retrieved 30 years later.

Some years ago, I read a short story, perhaps it was in Analog, about a scientist who produced an inexpensive electronic telescope that could see not only anywhere, but into the past as well. The further you got away, in either time or distance, the fuzzier the image would get, but you could look into the past and watch Custer's Last Stand, or watch Jack The Ripper. It was a great tool for historians, and with further development, it would be possible to pick up sound waves as well, by seeing objects vibrating from them.

But when does the past start? Well, a fraction of a second ago. Not only could you want yourself being conceived, you could watch your wife, effectively in real time, making out with the milkman. And you could watch the famous movie star undress and take a shower.

The characters asked each other, so how do we get our privacy back? It was a cheap device to build, and the plans had been made public. The answer, obviously, was that you couldn't.

I had an earwig the other day, of "Spanky & Our Gang" singing "It Ain't Necessarily Bird Avenue". I tried to tell Blondie about it, and she didn't remember the song, so I went looking on YouTube. Nope. I went looking for lyrics to the song. Nope. I went look for a torrent. Nothing from S&OG.

That's pretty rare. I had been looking, several months ago, for a digital version of Sammy Davis, Junior's album, "The Shelter of Your Arms", and couldn't find it, not on YouTube, not the lyrics, not a torrent. It's a pain to rip an album from vinyl, so I ended up buying a CD in order to have it in convenient digital form.

But there were other Sammy Davis recordings. There's nothing at all from S&OG. Wanna bet that this will be true in another year? I own a 78, original recording, of Gene Autry singing "Rudolph, The Red Nosed Reindeer" and some 78s of Spike Jones recordings. I wouldn't give any bets that they aren't freely available as digital downloads. YouTube is already using more bandwidth by itself, than the entire internet consumed five years ago.

And in the end, the legend goes, after everything else escaped from Pandora's box, the one thing remaining was hope. The reason it's called a legend is because it's fiction, a bleeping lie. There's no hope. It didn't take the internet for me to discover that Hall & Oates were jerks when they were in high school. All it took was a high school annual.

The internet is nothing to fear. I'm not sure we can say the same about the attacks on our individual liberties. It's time for the courts to officially recognize what everybody already knows: people lie, and if they aren't under oath when they say something, it ought not be introduced as evidence.

But until we get to that point, I want to point out that Anna Nicole Smith said I was a wonderful lover, and that her multi-millionaire baby is mine.

Hillary has reminded us all that it's possible to simply shoot candidates you really dislike.

As the most-hated candidate in the race, I don't suppose that's a very smart move on her part.