A Most Unusual ACACIA Sighting

ACACIA is a goofy name for a fraternity which still makes no sense to me but I suspect most regard it as Animal House.  This hadn't reached the full maturity of the John Belushi version but it had all the potential for it and the place was definitely headed that way (i.e. running out of money, etc).

That's where I met the Cadillac Man and he actually got fully-initiated into the fraternity.  My behavior might have been a little less than responsible so my grades were enough to keep me in school but mostly I was getting high and playing a guitar as much as I could.  The Army was in-between the first half of uni and the second so this was about as unusual as it gets.  For me it was another Universe when I came back and it's partly because you're distant and a lot of stuff goes past.

Let's play this cagey since I seriously detest using real names and here are some clues for the Cadillac Man.  There is news about the nurses from Deaconess dorm and I know two have been married continuously ever since then.  I can tell you her name when we talk but for now the one on Facebook is the girl I was seeing.  That led to news about our red-headed partner in collegiate crime and his dark-haired girl who became his wife.  Unknown how much of this you may know but I will call soon.  Best time is probably tomorrow night so hopefully good for Cadillac Man as well.

A sighting!


In "Hurt," Johnny Cash sings how everyone goes away and it's heart-bustingly tragic as he sings it but that's been the nature of my life.  This isn't a lament but an observation because it's a different lifestyle.  During key years, my parents moved at five-year intervals and that was followed by the Army so there was never any continuum but rather disjointed realities with different people in them.

This is seriously not a sad song but "Hurt" made me think of it.  Life is like a blazing fast slide show for me because nothing stays the same and it never has.  You can try to keep track of people but you probably won't be able to do it for long, not if you keep rolling along.  For me it's willingly moving but sometimes not and the result is it has never stopped.  The only stable time was when I was married and the stability is probably what undid me or, more accurately, I undid myself.

No worries.  I'm not going to analyze it.  One thing I think Kannafoot respects about me is I had known him in ten years in RL before Facebook and had said to him once, you have never heard me disrespect my wife and he knew it was true.

There are two things which will never stop coming back through my head on a constant parade:  the shoulder-smasher bike crash and the divorce.  Call it PTSD if you like but I don't think it's even unusual.


Maybe that lifestyle is why it doesn't feel all that lonely now.  People always did go away but some didn't and now it's kind of a cozy perspective on a twisted life.  Repeat, this is not a lament as a lot of it has been spectacular and more than for cool views or good skiing.


The Queen Bee may have one of the best angles on this as an almost life-time job working for an airline means she has traveled everywhere.  I'm not sure of the motivation but I doubt it's only to see big bridges or some such.  Half of the family defines autism but the other half is highly-gregarious and they are some hand-shakin' mofos.  That would be Queen Bee and I imagine she knows people around the planet and what a gift of life, huh!  The perspective on what people are would be exquisite so, yah, I'm highly envious of that.

She dedicated her life to doing that (plus raising a family) and that's a remarkable dedication when the job probably wasn't pushing her intellectual cockles anywhere near a redline.  The payoff in enrichment around the world had to have been really extraordinary and I have no doubt it was or she would not have kept doing it.  You can see on Facebook, she's definitely Miss Clifton and she has a ball with that with a riot in pictures she posts with some frequency.

The stuff they do is whacked.  They went tooling around the runway in a big commercial aircraft, all dressed up in costumes, for some kids, I think handicapped in some way, and maybe they were taking them to the North Pole.  I'm not sure if that was exactly it but definitely it was something of that nature.  Completely nuts and apparently completely diggin' it.


Usually there has to be some potential for glory or Frasers won't do it (larfs).  I love traveling and it wouldn't have been tough to tempt me to take a job like that.  Who needs all the fookin' pressure from corporate IT.  Yep, I think I would have done that airline job too.

The only part it misses is the distance stays as it was almost a year in Greece and that was a deep to the soul experience.  Australia is the same thing and "Waltzing Matilda" will get me misty even now because that vibe runs so deep.  I will love the bouzouki until I croak in the same way, it goes right back to Greece.


Something I'm so diggin' is the idea of Lotho and Mrs Lotho going to Europe and I so hope it's A&A style in which they can stay for anywhere they like for long enough to get to know people.  Right now they can only guess how much their lives will change but I would easily put a five star guarantee on it.  Both of them love to talk and going for cafes rather than hotels guarantees you will talk.  You wonder how but people find a way.  If you learn the words for manners in as many languages as you can, you're already halfway home to making friends.  It's such a profound exhilaration when you communicate with people and really have no idea what each other is saying but you work it out.  Those may be the biggest smiles you will ever know.


But there's stuff just because it's beautiful




The fo' real inspiration for Disneyland, the Castle Neuschwanstein.  The back story is it was an absurdly frivolous thing to do and I believe the one who did it was the last King of Bavaria, not all that long ago.  It seems he croaked in the lake behind but it doesn't seem exactly clear how it happened.

Note: just figured how it works with saying 'noyshwvanstine' as the 'shvahh' sound is first with bringing your front teeth down to your lower lip for the 'shv' and then open to blow it out with the 'ahh.'  Yah, I really was sitting here trying that to figure out what moves my mouth makes to do that.  It gets worse, some people have words for each part of that.


It will be a tough call whether you spend all your time tooling around looking at cool stuff because there's cool stuff everywhere.  The other choice is getting hammered in a small French cafe and taking your dinner for hours and hours.


Hmm ... Lotho comes up to the age when I did it.  Time to get a move on, son!  (larfs)

Note:  I skipped the aggressively opulent things of Europe because I was being an asshole Socialist and there's mixed regret on that.  I could have strolled about Versailles with a self-righteous contempt, right?  (larfs)

But ...

Then there was the French sandwich shop and my French is for total rubbish while they spoke almost zero English.  We did figure it out and it was complete Marx Brothers.  No chance I would want to trade that for visiting Versailles.  Yes, the sandwich was great!

Yah, tough call (larfs).

If you go into it willing to adapt then you will be fine.  That and a smile and you're in.