Veteran's Day

It's hard to believe that our citizens have been fighting on foreign soil for five years now.  So many brave men and women gone. Tens of thousands more wounded.  All of them fighting to protect our country.

Cozi and I are wargamers.  We push around bits of cardboard on maps, roll dice, develop strategies, watch our pieces win their victories and suffer their defeats.  You would think that we might feel cavalier about war.  That we glory in war.  That because we play games about war, that real war is just a game to us.

I think the opposite is true.  Wargames have made me acutely aware of what war costs.  Every piece that is tossed into the "dead pile" represents the price paid for victory.  In even the most decisive victories, there is a cost.  On the gaming table it's a "division" or a "battleship".  In the real world, it's tens, hundreds, thousands of brave men, fighting for what they believe in.  Men with families.  With hopes and dreams for the future.  Men struggling to protect those they love, or, as is the case in Iraq, to help people with whom they have no kinship live free from oppression.

My daughter and I read "All Quiet on the Western Front" recently, and it struck me that, in every age, whether or not you agree with the goals of your government, the men and women on the front lines are ordinary people doing extraordinary things.  I'm proud of America's soldiers. They're my soldiers.  They're fighting for me and my family, risking their own happiness and that of their loved ones.  

So, on veterans day, to every veteran reading this:  I honor your service and wish you safely home.

"We must be ready to dare all for our country.  For history does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."  -Dwight Eisenhower, 1953

A momentous day in America.  I won't add my thoughts to the outpourings of greater minds, except to say how it makes me feel to see this man lifted to leadership by a stricken but hopeful country.  I feel good.  Incredibly good.  Some comments by friends:

"It's taken me a couple of hours to figure out what emotion I was experiencing with Obama's victory.  I feel like I'm living in the future." - Dan

"I know Americans are meant to hate it when non-Americans poke their noses into the US electoral process, but CONGRATS, man!  We cheered aloud when we heard, even though it was the early hours of the morning." -Mike

"What began twenty-one months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night.  This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change.  And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.  It cannot happen without you." - Barak

It's a good day to be an American.  Even a small, furry, half-blind one.

Imagine what you could create, in the darkness, the painterly details you could forge with a teeny tiny little brush made from the whiskers of moles? Surely, these horrifying creatures, covered in boils (yet pleasingly pallid in colour) must be fiendishly terrifying to gaze upon! Nay, they are but 1" tall. Small even to a mole.
Hardly from his childhood, these gems were painted by Cozi during the peak of his power (which continues to this day), in 2002.

Cozi's Clipper

Just discovered in a seldom visited tunnel in Luristoplier's warren is this companion piece to "Chip the Plates", dated 12/14/1979.  The Brothers would often wait until the last minute to complete their Christmas presents, a habit that has continued into their adulthood.  Note the realistic detail of the leaping dolphins.  This is a characteristically "Cozi" touch... that little bit of nature in everything.  I'm impressed by the perspective on the boat and sails.  Pretty good for a 10 year old, nearsighted, drooling, burrowing rodent.

Mole Spotting

As in any family, there are over 27,000 photographs of the Mole Brothers in their natural habitat.  What is perhaps unique to the Brothers is that all 27,000 of the images are catalogued and filed by name, date, place and dozens of other data points.  It's a little known fact that the Mole  Brothers have been the subjects of one of the most tireless longitudinal research studies in history, conducted by that most objective of scientists:  their father.  Curiously, while their lives have been recorded in excruciating detail, he remains the most elusive of subjects.  Infrequently,  he appears as a shadow in one of his photographs.  Sometimes his battered, tan stetson can be glimpsed over the top of the car (his wife infrequently assisting him in his Herculean efforts).  Today, Luristoplier and Cozi would like to salute this titan of the documentary arts, by offering up two samples from his encyclopedic collection.

LEFT:  Luristoplier and Cozy at Cape Cod (date unknown, probably late '90's or early '00's)

RIGHT:  Luristoplier (5) and Cozy (2) gamboling in some sort of wooded environment with unknown molebearer in the background (possibly the maternal caregiver, 1968).

The Phantom!

Today Luristoplier bought a new bike.  He is so in love with his bike that he had to post a picture of it to his blog.  He went on the trails today with it, and celebrated his new acquisition with twelve miles of glorious fall colors, cool fresh air and a tingling sensation in his derriere (thanks in part to Chamois Butt-er, don't ask).

His daughter suggested he name it.  After a brief deliberation, he named it after his favorite haunt:  The Phantom.

The Luristoplian Method of Tie Tying

The old Mole stood before the cracked mirror with his dewy-eyed son beside him, and said "Son, this is how you tie the Windsor Knot."  The small brown mole-child had watched his father tie such a knot every day before going off to General Electric, without knowing it had a name, much less such an aristocratic one.  He swore that, when he grew up and worked at a huge, soul-less firm like General Electric, he too would fasten his tie with the ancient knot of the Windsors.

Years passed, and the child grew into adult-hood.  His career rarely... no... never required that he wear a tie.  He spent his days painting pictures in rumpled, spattered sweat pants.  But every once in a while, he would go to a wedding, or an opera, or Thanksgiving dinner at his grandparents' retirement home (coat and tie required), and he would cast back in his mind to those hazy days when he stood by the mirror and watched his father tie the Windsor.

This is his approximation of that famous knot.

McCain Thinks We're All Racist, Too

YouTube - McCain Accidentally Agrees with Murtha

Unlike the politically disinterested Cozi, Luristoplier is a ferociously liberal, partisan creature, and will post his diatribes here occasionally.  For now, he has chosen simply to share this delicious YouTube bon-bon.  It features John McCain responding to a statement by Pennsylvania representative John Murtha that western Pennsylvania (Luristoplier's stomping ground), is a racist stronghold.   

Brüderlings

Look into their eyes.  Can you see it, glimmering?  That mysterious compulsion to climb out of their natural environment, into some wider, brighter world?  Lesser minds see only the blindness of the furry rodent, missing the courage, the daring, and the willingness to rise to greater things.

Luristoplier (left), Cozi (right)

Wham!

Tom Wham games could not be overplayed. We tore the cardboard stock maps gleefully from the innards of the newest DRAGON magazine, carefully cut apart the chits, then played them until they began to fray.
Oh, but in the next step lay true our genius. In our impatience we could not wait for the next game; our young minds abuzz with late nights, sprite and hormones, we modified our worn and well-loved games. Witness above, several of the original "arms" chits from Tom Wham's Search for the Emperor's Treasure, alongside several of our modified chits. Truly, genius work.

Chip the Glasses

A placemat, created for the Maulwerf family dinner table, sometime in the late 1970's (precise date unknown).  Attributed to Bro. Luristoplier, due to the characteristically strange rendering of the dwarves' knees.  Pencil on paper (laminated).

The Shadowy Past

It was in the hazy, drug-filled atmosphere of the mid-1980's that the Mole Brothers first found their voice.  It was the voice of the poet.  Of the artist.  Of the finger-snapping hipster.  From deep beneath the loamy turf, the brothers rose, like Megalon and Baragon, their tiny eyes glistening with the hot moisture of imagination.

Their reign over the artistic community was short, but their influence so great that the masses rose as one to demand their ouster:  "Voices will never be free until the Mole Brothers are tossed out!"  The howls came from all sides... the baying of the mindless mob.

Fearless, the brothers raised their bewhiskered snouts in disdain.  Never would their voices be stilled.  Were they martyred, they knew, their thin, reedy cries would echo down the ages.

A legend was born.

Earthy Cheeks

So it is, with earthy cheeks, that we push ourselves out of the earth. If just for a moment. Who says we can't see? I can dimly see the sun through my squinty eyes. My teeth are huge. If I burrow, it is because I choose to do so. Perhaps I will instead run across the surface of the earth. My eyes will adjust. And my teeth are huge. Huge!