Stone Riley's Blog: Stone Riley's Shoebox - Posts Tagged "surprising-book-and-film-reviews"

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The Seth Material

{ first-posted on 03-18-2018 by hiredwriter loop-now 03-18-2018 }
Great!
So this is provisionally number eight in our series of essays called “Surprising Book And Film Reviews”.
I must report a slight disruption. The number designations of these essays are undergoing reconsideration and have – in fact – become entirely provisional. I realize I could apologize for that, but on the other hand it does logically follow that you can consider this episode to be an advance copy.

So, what is Seth?

Not a day goes by but somebody comes up to me on the street and says, “Hey you, person on the street, what is the Seth Material?” And I will always say to them, “It's science fiction! That's what it is, science fiction!” Except it has a plot twist claiming it is true. So is this advertisement a “cult” like some others that also make the same old tired claim? I could frame up a brief argument pointing either way on that and even quote a variety of Testaments for you. But actually I'm saying the Seth Material is a science fiction literary cult.

“We live in a science fiction universe.” “Science fiction tells the truth.” If I may sum it up in one or two representative phrases, and of course using popular culture terminology, that is the central message at the core of this voluminous science fiction material penned in upstate New York, with much desiderata, and people take it seriously. I mean, compare it to the dreary options in this category. The Seth Material; it is a popular culture literary cult with websites and fans and free downloads by the ton, including free videos – mostly of the fandom type but also free rare original videos – all of it fan driven, probably up to and including fan conventions with fan-made fun costumes now and then. I would not be surprised by that at all. But it is a popular culture science fiction literary cult which embraces mystery in the sense of the Ancient Greek Mysteries which also claimed to be true. That is my carefully considered opinion and I am an expert in this field.

I am also, specifically, a student, and maybe a junior scholar, of the Seth Material, a set of unusual books and much supporting bulk that has reached us through American popular culture in the 1970's and 1980's.

The Seth Material. Among its treasure heap of supporting bulk (which is perhaps metaphorically heaped behind some treasury bulkhead, with the treasury imagined as lying prone as though perhaps a sleeping god or a robot dragon) there lies a kind of anthropology field observation film, if you piece it together, a few scant fragments of paleo-tech original video with a kind of fine grained significance for the history of modern ideas, something in advance of Muybridge in my considered opinion, and a separate heap of expertly scribed unique voluminous notes observed first hand, notes from a very lengthy psychic phenomenon intersecting with ours, a heap of rigorous notes which may rival even the famous Library of Paracelsus – a great anti-fascist pharmacist suspected of Pythagoreanism – if that famous collection of working notes is ever found. Their original archive and temple was open Wednesday evenings, a cheap apartment in the small city of Elmira, New York.

The Seth Material. Books and supporting bulk produced by Lady Jane Roberts {pagan-title} and a small group of friends in the 1970's and 80's, with one friend named Seth – a non-god teacher – working from its home in a distant sector of the continuum. They had no particular god. They saw, instead, Creativity as titanic beyond all gods. And they were optimists. We Sethians are supposed to be optimists.

The Seth Material. That was Upstate New York, Lady Jane Roberts was previously a science fiction writer, therefore they are Spiritualist books for a new generation. And you can cite me as your authority on this syllogism.

The Seth Material. Let me try a metaphor. In this metaphor let's say Ursula K. Le Guin and Albert Einstein, between them, will symbolize all of the world's most intelligent science fiction writers. Einstein because we recognize his famous thought experiment of riding on a light beam to be a very excellent fiction and it won a major prize. Le Guin for her understanding of our human lives. Then let's say together they have a love child. From there we want to devise some denouement where our two symbols of the world's most intelligent science fiction writers (we are dragging in communicative scientists too) somehow debouch a universe that turns out to be the universe which us human beings actually live in, and also is the universe of the Seth Material. Let's say it is a one volume novel. Here's a promising thought: There are many ancient Chinese stories were the infant – always a product of some transcendent love – leaps from the womb spouting pro-human philosophy and becomes a hero. But this won't do. The Seth Material is a story about a titan – a being worthy of poet Blake! – the titan Creativity in all its infinite forms, so it is not a tale of deities and heroes really, to any large extent. That stuff all spreads around instead. So this metaphor will not do. Ignore this paragraph.

But please let me try again. I think we need something familiar to the reader that can symbolize titanic Creativity. Are you with me? Metaphor #2: Ursula K. Le Guin and Albert Einstein making love, somewhere in a jungle cave perhaps, or in a rude stone cabin high among high mountains, or lying in each other's human arms in a breezy canvas tent on a rocky ocean shore with clouds billowing above, where that high mountain range comes down to water. Albert Einstein and Ursula K. Le Guin making love, sharing their human bodies, maybe on the canvas cot in that breezy canvas tent, or where the wind outside moans around their mountain cabin, or else in that jungle cave where there has to be an ancient bed of blooming parts from some famous herbal plant of immortality, or else a grassy woven bed that has been waiting there in that jungle cave since first used in the intercourse of ancient peoples. Ursula K. Le Guin and Albert Einstein making love, gasping lips to gasping lips and pressing thighs, wild in passion, young together in strength yet somehow old in soul and mind alike, the wisest of the wise, a Couple Creating human love. And for discussion let's suppose their mutual climactic frenzy is somehow the universe which us human beings actually live in, and also is the universe of the Seth Material.

There is lots of good source material available for research. Re the ancient Chinese stories mentioned above, for which I suggest Professor Joseph Campbell's fine book “Creative Mythology: The Masks of God” which I have in its 1970's popular Penguin edition from New York, a popular edition which went through 8 reprintings in 7 years, a paperback book which is quite compact and yet still, admirably, a quarter of a foot thick. It is a must for aspiring Pagan intellectuals just as the title would suggest. This paperback's front cover has a fantastic Southwestern Native American design motif but then also, somehow, a wonderful Chagall painting that has always looked beautiful to me. Now you can find it conveniently located in many third-hand miscellany stores. A popular book.

The Seth Material. Here's a funny story. I once portrayed the Roberts-Seth party in a novel as a lightly comic trans-time travel party of Pythagoreans in Ancient Greece, attending the Great Rites of Eleusis in a certain selected year, the year selected by their calculation, and with the two portrayed as married lovers, and she their party's mathe­matician / navigator. (They were supporting characters in that novel, with a fantasy version of myself playing lead.) How did this come about? You see, I have a poor excuse.

Puck did it. Puck made me put the Seth-Roberts party in that novel, and as a time-traveling troupe of Pythagoreans. Puck, being Shakespeare's supreme Ancient Greek god of wild mischief, and always in a jolly mood – and therefore previously called by me for help with planning the novel's story – Puck put that ridiculous idea in my brain, and also me as male romantic lead. But there was more to it.

You see, a decade or more before that novel, my plan to study the mysticism of the Ancient Greeks had been diverted by Joseph Campbell toward an intervening period instead, diverted especially by some of the drawings in those thick 1970's popular paper­backs of his mentioned above. I even left off studying Campbell for this lead he gave me into the intervening period of European classic Occult literature. I even set aside my itching curiosity about the Seth books, which were coming out new in that time, in order to broach an entry into European classic Occult literature, lured by some of Campbell's pictures, and on that rich ground I would meet again with one of my all time favorite thinkers Carl Jung. However, I had at least cast long glances into the Seth Material before I turned away, making the lame excuse that the Seth Material might not be interesting after all. Each succeeding Seth book, each publishing, lit my attention dimly like a far off street light outside a door.

The European classic Occult thinkers kept busy reconciling several sources in their time, but mainly they were Greek de­scendants and largely Pythagorean. I think the European classic Occult literature provides the best extant fragmentary and suggestive evidence for what Pythagoreanism probably was, it being – in its own preceding time – the most mysterious of the Greek Mystery doctrines. And it must be added that Campbell provides examples leading to this opinion, and states this opinion explicitly from a different view­point.

And my novel was planned to be a post-modern science fiction story set in Ancient Greece, a romance, a complicated love affair, set amid a great festival parade on a pilgrim road to a very famous temple, with sexual intercourse, with one of my favorite deities scheduled to appear, supposedly set in a year that is con­junct with our own continuum sub-sector now somehow, through an astronomical or numerological or geographic phenom­enon that is vaguely sketched somehow, and with the writer as the guy who gets the girl. “It needs some gravitas,” I thought.

Just then, in our continuum sector, I married a lady who treasured the Roberts-Seth books as a portable guide to life, the universe and every­thing. So with the lady's tutelage, I rediscovered mystery and found delight. Because it turns out that the Seth-Roberts books (while framing everything with the current body of popular metaphor and terminology) somehow – by way of unknown logic – closely recapitulate the European classic Occult litera­ture but all neatly summed up. Thus pro­bably I think, Pythagoreans! Arrived in popular culture! A big success! I was delighted with this startling trans-time magic trick! Plus, Puck said it was a good idea, so that's how they went into my novel.

The Seth Material. What were we talking about? Quan­tum physics! (Einstein finally agreed with quantum physics after leading a valiant resistance to it, earning several new degrees.) Was it data structures for the Seth Material? Or did I just now make that up?

But isn't this whole effort at analytical apologia only like after you eat an apple from the mythic Tree Of Knowledge? Like that myth says, isn't Knowledge (maybe same as Information?) a titanic force beyond the power – thus maybe behind the view­point – of any god or me? Like the Roberts-Seth party say Creativity is? Or like those same two, fictionalized, in my Greek novel, where they're on an amazing ten year honeymoon and busy making the logical case for titanic Love.

What am I talking about? You may well ask. Have I said enough?

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Advertising Campaign Idea

This is directed to the Workers of the beautiful cannabis dispensary I visited last week. If your board of directors is composed of Workers, I respectfully suggest that you also tag this for your board of directors to see. If you post this on your bulletin board and send me a photograph, I will personally come around and kiss somebody on the cheek at your location, and you can take photographs of that, but maybe not.

Look, I'm not going to bother you here with the usual shit-stupid running joke “Good Idea” which I am typing into the other episodes of this essay series. (This essay series – this one here that you are reading – yes, this one you are reading now – is called the “Surprising Book And Film Reviews” essay series, in the top of which I always have a dumb running joke, a dumb joke at the front, a Sethian science fiction joke, in case that word means any­thing to you.) I'm not typing in that stuff here just because I know you are going to like this material that I'm presenting here instead of that, perhaps, so do please enjoy.

In other words, Do please continue watching this episode. Thank you.

You see the title of this episode? Well, my idea might surprise you, my big idea. I want to advertise dope. Yes, I want to advertise dope (in this series of essays, “dope” is always taken to mean “good weed hemp” as defined in the ancient Roman herbals) as an actual art project, an art project about how to advertise dope, an “official” resistance training film about how to advertise dope or some other subject, a tutorial, with a website and all of that web back-up shit which I am quite familiar with, by the way. Maybe gardening. Even a logo. Maybe we start the campaign with an earnest but humorous 10-minute public service video about weed that is filmed on the premises of your business, cheaply made, and cancel the campaign immediately if that doesn't work out. That is my idea, my big idea. It could be low- or high-budget.

You understand, I am a leftie experimental artist here in this region – and I am the most radically competent Socialist experimental artist this fine New England region has to offer, this same fine New England region where your fine hemp-related company has recently opened shop. I understand that you folks in your fine company would produce and direct and do all of the other shit in this advertising campaign, except that I am the “Managing Artist” in this advertising campaign, whatever the fuck that title means. And I would actually get paid by you for doing this. And this is currently the only big idea that I am offering.

I am a professional New England leftie experimental artist. Professional because I have earned the entirety of $100 dollars in my long and impressive career doing this – dissenting from the Liberal establishment who govern tightly here – and I have the paperwork to prove it. I won that paper check for $100 as the best (and only) piece of sculpture in an annual city sponsored show, won the prize for one of my few good pieces that is a sculpture, which I had entered beside a truly decent painting that was routinely ignored again, like all my other paintings are routinely ignored here, and I was even a dues paying member of that state sponsored gallery, won this $100 state sponsored prize because that was the only piece of sculpture entered for the state sponsored annual show. And I have the paperwork about this, which I am considering varnishing to a wooden box, along with my Vietnam Era U.S. Army court martial papers.

“Drone Strike In North Waziristan” – my best anti-war painting, painted as part of the Occupy Movement – had its world premiere showing at a weekly church basement meeting of the Worcester Unemployment Action Group in the spring following Occupy. (This is documented by a photograph on the painting's website which you can probably find by web searching for the painting's name.) I have formed a practice of showing that painting along with an anti-war artist talk. The first of those artist talks was given for my fellow WUAG members at that church basement meeting, who evinced a lively interest, and I have also done that artist talk / plus picture showing at pro-human political events as far away as Washington DC and Syracuse.

I am the best and most competent New England artist who can make this impressive boast: “I can walk into any art gallery that is in business in New England and be unknown to every person there.” And yet I have a thin steady following both regionally and worldwide.

Are you interested in my idea to make a mega-hip artistic New England advertising campaign for “good weed hemp” as the ancient Romans supposedly called marijuana? (Endorsed by Ancient Romans!) I am mega-pro-human myself, and I would be the project's “Managing Artist” and you would pay me but selection of the political hipness level of the content of the advertising campaign (I mean precisely that), is maybe up to you. And I also think it would be best for this advertising campaign to be decently fair to all of your competitors.

But you control everything else about the project, and you will be personally solicited by me for your personal labor on this project, and many different skills might be needed. This request for consideration is directed to the Workers of your good company, you fine crew of Workers who have recently opened shop here in our beautiful region, a beautiful shop that I enjoyed visiting last week.

One key aspect of my visit: All of you Workers there listened to me. Me the Patient. You even listened to my impromptu training exercise that I put your cashier through invol­un­tarily. (Training about accessibility for visually impaired patients.) Yes, even that was respectfully and efficiently received at your store: The brief impromptu expert training session I involuntarily administered to your cashier in your bulletproof booth who controls your entry door; yes! even that was well received. This is especially beautiful because your cashier and I seem to share a solid street-conscious style of doing courteous and efficient first-hand business. (I'm from Eastside Houston.) Your cashier is a fine man by everything I saw of him. Then also two others of you good human beings took a very competent interest in my medical care, and then a very kind interest in a bit of divination blessing that I did when leaving. It was a lovely visit. Do you even offer tea?

Are you interested in my idea to make a mega-artistic New England advertising campaign together with your company? High- or low-budget, mostly made pro-amateur. Yes, I know you are California people and these will be largely New England ideas that are presented. There will be many weather jokes. I definitely know this.

But this is New England here where we are now and I have come to know this place pretty well. I got here many years before you, chasing a skirt. I think the central unifying string of this campaign could be perhaps a mock lecture – also genuinely pedagogical – about various facets of weed, its history and culture and chemistry and so forth, what it's like to be (like me) a patient in the state system, maybe alchemy if requested by the audience, and plus the Ancient Roman gag. Plus a big bouquet of supporting material. Artistically managed by the very same writer who is writing this letter you are reading now. Are you folks interested in this?

Bright wishes always, Stone Riley.

…the main box is running… SRiley(C)2018

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New War Story
{ first-posted on 03-24-2018 by staffprojectionist loop-now 03-24-2018 }
Fine! So this episode is labeled on its digital packaging like this: “First of the Brighter episodes – Surprising Book And Film Reviews” so please, if you remember what that means please let us know. Personally, I'm only saying it was worth it. We freaking won, you old cunt chasing bastard (labeled divino), we freaking won. And it was worth every goddam bit of every thing we freaking fucking did because it was freaking GOOD so it was therefore worth it. By Fuck! Let us know if you can contribute in any way at all to the community discussion that we expect this episode will provoke.

Shall I start the episode?

I have a new Viet Nam War story now that I did not have just three hours ago when I was doing nothing else but innocently setting out in my car for the grocery store. Yes, this is true.

There was an old freaking bastard, right there at the grocery store, at their front public door, old bastard taking signatures for a whole fucking bag full of fucking petitions, on the large hard clipboards. Now this bastard is exactly my race, exactly, right up to the insignia featured on his excessively embroidered baseball cap, on his cap up there, a military cap insignia that I could freaking read if he would freaking stand still, the shit. Although I did not recognize the 3 digit number at the visual center of the cap insignia, the rest of it, wild embroidery and all, was plain as day to me entirely. This pissed me off. I don't see any of us old bastards around here much.

We were on different sides in that war, this fuck shit bastard, he and I, but no hard feelings huh? My side won that time so fuck you huh?

But wait, does this make any sense to you at all? I thought I could talk freely here. Do you even fucking know what I'm fucking talking about, you shit head? You reading. You. Fuck off. Fucking Viet Nam Fuck War Fuck Veteran. Old Fucking Soldier Fuck. Fuck off. Which side were you on?

Now look, this asshole at the grocery store could have been me under completely different circumstances. Definitely. I'm sorry if this here what I'm writing now is hard for you, sir, to understand where you are, sir. Fuck off.

This man was not me, perhaps, or certainly not, but I was beginning to suspect I would tell this man he is my brother within the next few succeeding minutes. It was as if I had seen him before and it is actually possible that perhaps I have, although unlikely. He may be the very person whom I met on a summer day of great beauty, after our war, in Common's Garden in Boston, long ago, on a high stone footbridge at the center of that garden's elements. It was a kind of human male dance we did that time. (You can find this poem story in my Big Book near the end, if you have it.) It was as if I had met this fellow man before and instantly recognized him then, when we met before, at the beginning of the current period of this life, and I was instantly struggling to remember more about him now, and about our other brother who was killed. He even quickly slipped into his Modern Texan voice accent as I was slipping into mine.

So this asshole's story is unique. It is fucking unique. You will not believe me now, as I'm saying this, but this guy “guarded all the gold in Fort Knox” as his assigned duty in the Viet Nam War. I can tell you, his tone of voice was absolutely dead true convincing and I think it is true. And he actually put it to me in those words, his voice like it is the kind of thing he says a lot. “I guarded all the gold in Fort Knox.” I call him an asshole, because he is, him standing there with a whole shoulder bag full of petition clip boards, and every one of those fucking petitions being a petition for some different local unknown fascist fuck jerk politician to run here for local office here. I had asked and he had told me this, explaining the shoulder bag of petitions, at the very start of our conversation. Asshole.

To explain myself to you, it's like this. I see this old fucking bastard with his military veteran's souvenir hat, a fucking souvenir hat, the kind of hat that is a souvenir of your own regiment where you served, and shit like that, one of those military veteran hats, and I can fucking read it. So I come up on him from the side, while he's looking at something else far away, looking out across the busy New England parking lot somewhere, and I says “You've got petitions?” And he shouts “Yes!” Asshole.

So he explains it to me in a jovial kind of way – his bag full of fascist politicians – a lightly comic, imitation self-sardonic, offhand sales talk by a person who is a good public speaker, but is now genuinely speaking to me off the cuff and interested in my reply. (A good Druid riddle contest opening move.) And I call him an asshole, to which he has actually no reply. Yet he is still seriously interested in hearing me. So I am suddenly thinking maybe he has just been performing his sales talk for me to see, for me to see what he is doing nowadays, as if perhaps he does remember that previous meeting after all. Or perhaps he is displaying his moral wound for me to see, from his Fort Knox service.

I don't give a shit. Fuck him. Greedy bastard. To explain myself, a second time to you

…the main box is not on.thank you.here it comes…

Being quiet when you're told to listen, that was the fatal failure of the fucking fascists. And speaking boldly, talking up while standing in formation, saying what the fuck is on your mind, that was the whole main strategy of we who defeated them. I have processed my memories of this life more fully than I had then, in the preceding paragraph of this essay, and I now endorse the sexual component of our current general understanding about the fascists. They did not know how to fuck. We are correct in thinking that fascism, as we experienced it our time, was primarily a sexual deviation. Hitler was (in actual fact) an artist, which was (in actual fact) a key component of his nature piu Hitler's three big essays in fascism piu Hitler's military campaign, which conquered much of the world piu or Hitler's political campaign, in its own time as big as the Marxist campaign piu or Hitler's book (for I have studied it since then, and I can tell you) Hitler somehow produced one of the books that must be examined by every serious scholar. piu and so Hitler's sexual obsession was artistic: he really really wanted you to listen to him. And he really enjoyed making you shut up and listen to him, happy to make you enjoy shutting up and listening to him, happy to force you by any cunning means that might be in his hands. The most typical moment of Hitler's life can perhaps be pinpointed, I guess, and my guess for it is this: Night, inside a really nasty cheap apartment but somebody's somehow procured and dragged in a professional paleo-video box, a big wooden box in the little apartment's tiny dining room, maybe the floor is sagging, the tiny dining room table tossed away out in the stairway hall, and the pictures are being shown on the dining room ceiling. Got the picture? So there's Hitler, the true war veteran still got his favorite army hat still shoved on his head, wearing shirt and suspenders and horse riding pants, barefoot, standing too close to the projection machine so the moving pictures are all wrapped around him and his waving arms and wrapped around the tiny apartment's tiny dining room's ceiling and walls, and strangely inter-wrapping with the pattern of the thick cheap drapes that hide this apartment from its dirty window, and the moving pictures flashing in the party goers' eyes. Someone is singing something with a standard German triumphal march air while the moving pictures warp and woof and the party's celebrants have all somehow shoved in around him, every one, the singing voice from a paleo-audio box in the other room, but every one of the party goers are crowded in around him ever since the light in the machine was switched on, and they are speechless wide eyed staring and they are reverentially silent while he tells the story of that bright day, full of pictures and flashing gestures. Hitler is trying to yell over the music without yelling so loud as to be understood by the police battalion, out in the city night, who surround this cheap apartment. In fact, this drunken party has degenerated from a formal debriefing of the inner circle that was supposed to happen, this is the party's inner circle dans deshabille, and this is the night after their party's triumphal march where Hitler has been brought from city jail, a triumphal march where Hitler has ridden like a cavalry officer in an actual calvary command car, him who was a few years previous a stinking senior private in a stinking field, that day triumphantly returning from city jail to the party's headquarters. This dirty apartment is the upstairs back of the party headquarters, a tenement building, and tonight is the inner circle's victory party night. In my opinion, that is the best candidate we have for Hitler's most typical moment. So I am endorsing this, our current general understanding of Hitler as a degenerate artist. And from that we also learn a key thing about fascism: When we obviously accept that art is a gift from goddesses, we can then say fascism is one of the actual sexual deviations.

…the main box is still sending…

Being quiet when you're told to listen, that was the fatal failure of the fucking fascists. And our only strategy – really our only weapon, and the weapon which defeated it – you understand I am speaking of the Vietnam War era – was to fucking say what's on your fucking mind. I mean, fuck them.

Yes, I was a 60's radical, and I am still, even after all this study. That person whom I was is still me. Praise hemp! Praise mighty good weed hemp, the bringer of strength and courage!

Should I replace the story that you're reading – my trip to the grocery store, so many years ago, with my fellow military veteran appearing, and I'll only tell the gist of that – or else I just shut up and let you read it? Or should I explain myself to you a little more? Is that okay? I hope it is.

Not being quiet when you're told to listen, that tactic summoned victory to me, in my tiny effort in the tiny place where my main active duty service in the Viet Nam War Resistance happened, in the active duty barracks with the windows flung open all summer, talking in those little trucks, in our winter tents, the barracks' old steam heat all winter, those cold days in a team in a tiny shed talking music for a winter week. What was my winning tactic in my small corner of our winning struggle? We, the active duty members of the Viet Nam War Resistance, even we of us who were half way around the world, we won that war inside America, yes inside the Pentagon. And we did it by essentially shouting “Fuck You Sir!” and telling each other the truth, evading jail when possible, and killing only when in self-defense.

I was almost four years deep in active duty, more than two years at a minimum remaining, when I finally found a good ground of struggle, and finally woke into it as though I were bursting from an acorn shell, a moment when I was a senior private and my battalion was full of shocked grief for a man's battlefield death. The battlefield was far distant from us. I personally, a good friend and coworker of the deceased, like him a senior private, went insane with grief and started talking truth, talking up in formation and talking among the privates too, and abstaining in my grief from weed's consolations, and would not stop and finally was jailed for a month then honorably discharged from U.S. Army again – for the second time – almost on time. Picking me up from their jail, shortly before my second honorable discharge, one of our battalion's sergeants and his corporeal picked me up from army jail in a little truck and they thanked me. Fuck them.

I had re-enlisted for the struggle. I am the only person whom I know who did that purposely and consciously. I reenlisted for 3 more years of active U.S. Army because I was honorably discharged from my first 3 years, Martin Luther King was killed, I got Malcolm X's book and ate it, I searched for the resistance out where I was in the street and did not find it there, and so I reenlisted to go find the resistance where it was. I was an infantry rifleman among other classifications. Reasonably, I expected to go participate in the siege of deadly battlefield mutinies that was beginning when I reenlisted for 3 more years. But I was brought to one of the Cold War stalemate lines instead. There I befriended the man who was soon sent away to Viet Nam and promptly killed in battle, awaking me, his friend. So 6 years and 30 days I served on active duty.

…the main box is running… SRiley(C)2018