House of Eratosthenes

…but something wonderful has happened, along with with something terrible. I care a great deal about what went wrong, and about what went right, well, I’m just not that much into it. So I’ll try to keep my bad humor out of this. And I really should be doing that, because I owe a lot of people big-time and I don’t want to be urinating all over the fine china and furniture while I’m supposed to be expressing gratitude to them, they deserve better.

On with it.

We have real important stuff down in the meat of the article, so if you’re pressed for time and can’t abide any foolish nonsense please click here. Your assistance is desperately needed. Thank you.

This blog, which nobody actually reads anyway, has been going through high-cotton lately. That means, for something nobody’s supposed to be reading, there’s a whole lot of nobodies. In blogging parlance that means we got a lot of “hits.” By “lately” I mean over the last week or two. It is pretty much sheer coincidence that this happened. We are not a “traffic magnet.” We don’t try to attract readers. We like to make new friends…a lot. We lean somewhat in the direction of making people feel good, but just barely. We just barely go that way. We prefer making people feel good to making them feel bad, and that’s only because we don’t like to try to make people feel bad. Part of that whole “don’t be an asshole” rule. The one thing this blog is absolutely, positively against, is shaping the content of it’s pages in anticipation of attracting a broader audience. Which is done quite a bit in other places, we notice.

Girl in bikini We don’t do that. We put up pictures of girls in bikinis, which attracts traffic…like you wouldn’t believe…when we want to look at girls in bikinis. But anything that goes up, has to please us before it pleases the audience. We aren’t in a Nielsen ratings race, and are not going to be in anything resembling one. We talk about what we want to talk about. Period. If we get a zillion hits, that’s great. If we get zero, that’s just as good.

There’s an important reason for this. You can’t prostitute yourself a little tiny bit, we think. Can’t go halfway on that. Stray outside the girls in bikinis and other things we personally find interesting, just because we think our readers are interested in something else — before you know it, we’d be saying some pretty outlandish stuff. This, we think, is why there are people out there dribbling a bunch of crap. Like for example, “our own government might have been directly responsible for the (September 11) attacks themselves.” That is exactly what I’m talking about. Selling out your opinion to get extra attention, is an all-or-nothing proposition. We prefer not to even start down that path.

This blog is based on the fundamental principle that only through this determined apathy, can a “blog,” or any other informational resource, remain faithful to truth and logic over time. Let me put it this way. Now and then, an older relative or other acquaintance will ask me how to start a blog, and my first words of advice are always these: You need to figure out the purpose of your new blog, before you put it up — is it a glossy magazine or is it a scrapbook? In other words, is there some mission that has been failed if you one day find out no one reads your blog? This blog…the one you’re reading now…is decidedly a scrapbook. We’re plumb pleased you’re here, of course, but overall we really don’t care if “nobody” reads it and we’re not going to care.

Well, care or not, we have a lot of new readers. And of course we’re plumb pleased to have you too. How many new readers? Well, over on The Truth Laid Bear which is like the Who’s Who of blogs, we’ve been a “slithering reptile” since last year sometime. Over the last several months — we hadn’t been peeking, remember? We’re “The Blog That Nobody Reads” — somewhere we got demoted to the next lower status of “crawly amphibian,” which meant we had been representing ourselves falsely because we had this goofy-looking snake in the sidebar to show off our slimy reptile status.

Well, we’ve been talkin’ smack about Hillary Clinton, and pointing to really cool photographs taken by other people, and giggling over fashions in the 1970’s, and you know what happened today? Remember the wonderful thing that we don’t really care about that much? Well…we pole-vaulted over the reptile, over the flappy birds, over the adorable rodents, and plunged headlong into the ranking of marauding marsupial. This is a little unexpected, even if the nature of the scrapbook “Blog That Nobody Reads” makes it trivial in some ways. Like going from butterbars-2nd-Lieutenant to full-bird-Colonel. Or trading in your ’82 Datsun on a new BMW Z4.

And it’s been a slow burn, too, so that implies a little bit of permanence this time. I guess when the nobodies come around to not read the blog nobody else is reading, they like what they see and keep coming back. Or not.

But could that have a purpose? None that I can see…until…later that same day, something awful happened which is far more meaningful to us. Something’s heap-big busted, folks, and very wrong. We have an opportunity to fix it and make it right. But the key word is “we”; I can’t do it without your help.

Project Valour-IT of Soldiers’ Angels, is going to miss it’s goal.

Soldier's Angel Valour-IT is a wonderful program that provides laptop computers to soldiers who have been wounded. I’m going to let the project’s “About” page do the talking here…

Every cent raised for Project Valour-IT goes directly to the purchase and shipment of laptops for severely wounded service members. As of October 2007, Valour-IT has distributed over 1500 laptops to severely wounded Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines across the country.

Valour-IT accepts donations in any amount to support the purchase and distribution of laptops, but also offers a sponsorship option. An individual or organization may sponsor a wounded soldier by completely funding the cost of a laptop and continuing to provide that soldier with personal support and encouragement throughout recovery. This has proved to be an excellent project for churches, groups of coworkers or friends, and members of community organizations such Boy Scouts.
Originally Valour-IT provided the voice-controlled software, but now works closely with the Department of Defense Computer/electronic Accommodations Program (CAP): CAP supplies the adaptive software and Valour-IT provides the laptop. In addition, DoD caseworkers serve as Valour-IT’s “eyes and ears” at several medical centers, identifying possible laptop recipients.

The laptops, should the injuries demand it, are capable of speech recognition. You know, think about it…think about I.E.D.s, think about what an explosive does to human flesh, think about burns. Think about a young guy or lady away from home for the very first time, hands in bandages, wanting more than anything to let Mom and Dad know that they’re whole, or relatively whole, but unable to type. This is as good a cause as you’re likely to find anytime soon.

About this time every year, the project holds a fundraiser and puts the various branches of our defense against each other to buy these laptops. It’s a pretty sophisticated operation filled with fun stuff like gas-gauge controls comparing how each branch is doing, the good-natured inter-service joshing among real vets that goes along with that, clicky-buttons that patch directly over to secure donation sites…and you know what…

…it’s just not getting done. The report on fundraising, is not good. The report on inventory-on-hand, is even worse. I’m kind of unhappy about it. Actually, I have some negativity to put in, and maybe I should keep it out, but I gotta get this one off my chest. I’ll try to keep it in measured doses.

I keep hearing around the web and on the news, “of course, we can disagree about this war but we all agree on one thing, we support the troops.” Well, I don’t believe it. What’s the nicest thing you could say about one of those “troops” if you oppose the war effort? Remember, this is 2007. We don’t have people who “oppose the war” and just leave it at that. You’re supposed to throw in inflammatory buzzwords like “illegal” and “unjust”…what the hell does that say about these troops you support? That they’re a bunch of stupid patsies? Okay you’re entitled to your opinion. But you’re probably not going to skip too many fancy iced coffee drinks to buy a laptop for a disabled stupid patsy, are you.

Another thing I keep hearing about is how scandalous it is that we “all” aren’t being called upon to “sacrifice more.” I think this is a crock. I think the country’s been slipping for awhile, and it’s being taken over by socialists…or whatever you call socialists nowadays. I know that makes me sound like the crazy old man in the plaid shirt with the drool stains. Pardon me, I’ve just spent half a lifetime listening to people babble on about the glory of “sacrifice,” people who, once you inspect their thoughts more deeply to the extent you’re able, don’t appear to recognize any goal higher than that sacrifice. In short, they seem to think it’s noble when people throw themselves away. I don’t believe that’s what America is about. America is about accomplishing wonderful things that may demand sacrifice…it is about offering profound and heartfelt respect to individuals who have proven themselves willing to endure that sacrifice…we don’t worship the sacrifice itself. This is a surgical-precise distinction to muck around with, but I think it is an all-important one in this nation and it’s culture. We worship the objective. We don’t worship our own self-destruction, even though in desperate times it may be necessary for reaching that objective. As George Patton said, no damn fool won a war by dying for his country, he won it by making the other damn fool die for his.

So you like to bitch about not enough people sacrificing, do you? Or being called-upon to so sacrifice? I call bullshit. Why is Valour-IT having a tough time of it, then. People who wail about this, don’t care about achieving what the sacrifice is supposed to win for us…they care about the sacrifice itself, which is a completely different kettle o’fish, and doesn’t fit my definition of “American” at all. I think these people just complain about whatever they think will win them the most favorable attention in that long line at Starbuck’s, blame a few tidbits of nonsense on George Bush, cuss out the poor lady who has to take their money and serve them their sissy frothy foo-foo drink about how long the line took this morning…and move on. Living the rest of that day for their own sake. Next day, they’ll be back again to spend another $6.50 on another fancy drink, bitching up a storm about gas prices and health insurance and what a lean Christmas they’re going to have to endure because of this expensive war. With nary a thought about how to share this unshared “sacrifice.”

As skewed a sense of perspective as there ever was.

You want a sense of respect for sacrifice? Here, I’ll explain it to you in terms of what it means to me.

Three years ago the war in Iraq was just a year old. I had some business to take care of at Walter Reed AMC, as well as a few other places, and this involved a lot of travel over a very short period of time. Well, parking at Walter Reed fills up pretty quick. I had ambitions of taking care of everything before eight in the morning, and because of some delays with some stupid thing or another it just didn’t happen. I barely reached the place by nine, which turned the parking situation upside-down for me.

So I showed my credentials to the guards, found a parking spot as best I was able…which wasn’t fun…and slithered into the lobby with my fancy suit on and a zillion other places to go after this one, feeling all abused and put-upon.

I reached the elevator just ahead of a little toe-head tyke barely half my age, and politely stepped aside to let him board first. I was glad I did, when I got a better look at him. See, he was young. He still had acne scars, and a couple of fresh zits just like what I had in my junior year of high school.

And he’d never pick any zits again.

He politely addressed me as “sir” and insisted — INSISTED — on pressing the buttons on the elevator with his own hooks.

There’s a paradigm shift for you. Three years on, I see lots of talk about an illegal and unjust war, oh but we all “support the troops” though…I hear a lot of complaining about the sacrifices some people have to make, with the knowledge that not enough other people are being called upon to do any sacrificing…people love love LOVE their foo-foo coffee drinks, their pizza deliveries, their movie rentals, their tattoos, their tabloids bursting at the seams with stories about Britney and what-not…

…and Project Valour-IT is sailing into it’s Veteran’s Day deadline reaching not even twenty-five percent of it’s goal.

What can I say, folks? My rant is done here. On the positive side, I feel truly blessed that The Blog That Nobody Reads, has for the first time an audience that is far-flung and wide-spread and (somewhat) voluminous…and loyal. We’ve had more readers-per-day before, but those were flash-in-the-pan things. Now we’re a Marsupial, and the stats and incoming-link counts say we’re somewhat deserving of this…for now…and here’s a situation where we can take that traffic and do some good with it. Make a world of difference to a lot of people who desperately need it, and richly deserve it.

Today’s payday Friday. You’re probably reading this on a Saturday morning. We’ve tried to post fun things on Saturday mornings for our Saturday morning audiences…we’ll probably be skipping that this weekend. You probably got paid yesterday. Midnight has come and gone. The funds are available. Your help is needed.

If you’re finding out about Buck’s place for the first time from this plea, do consider bookmarking him. All he’s really doing is keeping a running diary of his retirement, and it’s ended up being one of the more interesting places on the web. But if you can spare a few bucks today, do hit that Valour-IT jar. See if you can close that gap, will you?

And if you can spare more than that, fer chrissakes if the phrase “give until it hurts” ever had practical meaning, it is now. The young men and women you’re helping, have done exactly that for you.

[…] Update 11/9/07: Welcome, My Pet Jawa readers and all other new readers. I apologize in advance for welcoming you with such poor form, it can’t be helped because time is of the essence. Could you please consider donating to a worthy cause? Thank you. Share This Article With Others:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 11/09/2007 @ 22:45
Wow, Morgan. Thank you. Thank you very much.
- Buck | 11/09/2007 @ 22:53
[…] but something wonderful has happened, along with with something terrible. I care a great deal about what went wrong, and about what went right, well, Im just not that much into it. So Ill try to keep my bad humor out of this. And I really should be doing that, because I owe a lot of people big-time and I dont want to be urinating all over the fine china and furniture while Im supposed to be expressing gratitude to them, they deserve better. On with it. We have real important stuff down i source: Not In It For The Attention, Mind You XII, House of Eratosthenes […]
- Not In It For The Attention, Mind You… XII — Books Discussion and Rating | 11/12/2007 @ 01:33
[…] Regarding the fundraiser for Valour-IT I mentioned Friday night, please know the deadline has been extended through today. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 11/12/2007 @ 11:39

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Not In It For The Attention, Mind You… XIIFriday, November 9th, 2007

Not In It For The Attention, Mind You… XII
Friday, November 9th, 2007