Warning! Code Alert! Secondary Meaning to "Daisy Chain"

All this talk about a "New Pearl Harbor," I thought I'd better get right with the old Pearl Harbor first. On a recent trip to Oahu for a family wedding, a group of us spent a day doing the military sights. The Arizona was a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, the sheeple watching couldn't have gotten any better than while waiting for a turn on the skiff (or would that be called a launch?) But hearing Ernest Borgnine over-emote on the audio tour nearly drove me mad, as he had some facts, and all of his emphasis, wrong, but hey, it's my problem if I find dumbed-down McHale's Navy television gloss unsuitable rather than reassuring, given the gravity of the tour, and the present, repetitive circumstance, just reinforcing it's me and a few others against a marching 250-million strong sleeping phalanx--so what the hell?

Nonetheless, water was forced from my eyes, even before imagining the fate of the drowned and burned--nearly half the dead that day were on that one vessel. Then, as the women went shopping, the men continued on to the museum and The Missouri. Here is a picture of me wearing my Special Researcher tin-foil hat, sure I'd find something intriguing below decks. I'm with my Scott County cousins: beefy Dan, who has 200 acres in sod; Terry, who does community college stuff with seeds, even travels to the Ukraine on weighty seed business; and dear octogenarian Uncle Fred: horseman, gentleman farmer and retired builder--successful enough to haul 27 of his personal offspring and their descendants to a destination wedding in Hawaii. Ian Meyer must come from such good root stock as well, I'm sure.


Unfortunately, touring the Missouri, this magnificent ship of peace, built too late for action, was spoiled by an overbearing Dyke docent who kept going on about its firepower and its role in the first Iraq war, all the while saying, "You have no idea," how it was in the old days, and "You can't imagine" blah, blah, blah. I can image the fatalities using the 50-centimeter bore guns for a turkey shoot, as Saddam's forces left Kuwait on the single highway to hell out.

At least she was doing her part in spreading gender non-conformity--big time, which felt balancing after all the heterosexual privilege dished out and regurgitated at the wedding. Our $28 guide must have been channeling Lucy Brewer, the first woman in the Marine Corps, who disguised herself as a gung-ho man serving in the Marine Detachment aboard the USS Constitution during the War of 1812. Life is so unfair when it comes to lesbians--they get to do everything. I could disguise myself as Diana Ross (Pick grapes....sow oats.....pull taffy....those are the moves for Ain't no mountain high enough, ain't no valley low enough, ain't no river wide enough, to keep me from you!) and serve on a USO resupply wig ship, like in the old days, the days when a drill Sargent could knock a raw recruit around a bit, unlike the hands-off present. Well, dykes can't decorate, and I am a curious yellow.