I grew up with a story my mom told me about an old friend of hers from their college years. They would hang out, talk, whatever. And they were obsessed with The Beatles' song "Here Comes the Sun." This friend was killed in Vietnam and any time my mom heard the song after that, she would cry.

This was how I remember her telling the story anyway. I found out within the last few years that I apparently wasn't remembering it all that correctly. Pretty much not at all. Yes, my mom had a friend she hung out with regularly and they did listen to music a lot and he did get shipped out to Vietnam. However, he was not killed there. And, now that I look at the release date for "Here Comes the Sun," I'm not entirely sure that could've possibly been their song since it came out in 1969, which I believe is after my mom finished her undergraduate work at college. Maybe there is something I'm missing. Maybe grad school friend? Maybe not even from school? I dunno.

However, despite these conflicting details, I still love the story and like to think of it as true because it holds a certain romantic appeal in a time of great personal and political upheaval.

I guess I should consider myself lucky in that I've never been personally touched by loss of a close friend or family member in any of the more recent wars in which our country has been involved. Yes, I know people who know people who... you get it. But in terms of one degree of separation between myself and a person who was killed in action, I know no one.

My grandfather was supposed to be a pilot in the Army Air Corps in WWII, but that never quite panned out. My dad enlisted for Navy duty in Vietnam and was sent on a tour of the Med instead. My uncle joined the Marine Corps right around the time that 'Nam was fizzling out so I don't think he was ever deployed. And I've had some friends in the most recent Gulf War and all made it back intact.

I do think I'm lucky in this regard.

But not everybody is quite so blessed.

AmyD is a fellow blogger who I've known about for some time but only started reading yesterday after being guided there by Avitable and Sheila. Amy's on a quest to help her uncle find an old friend who he lost track of during the Vietnam War. Here's the information from her site and you can feel free to click on through for more information about the search.

Gene Bishop is looking for Charles Stevens. Here’s all the info I have on Stevens:

Charles R Stevens- Indianapolis, Indiana (from there)
Marine Corp
2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, Echo Company, Da Nang, August 1966-1967
Weapons Platoon, Machine Gun

Graduated from Camp Pendelton and served in Da Nang with Gene Bishop. They trained and graduated together, and spent 48 hours in Okinawa awaiting transit together. They were separated upon arriving at Da Nang Air Force Base, Gene Bishop and Stevens served together until Bishop was wounded in Operation Stone, in 1967 and shipped out to Guam, and then Oakland Naval Hospital in the States.

If you have any information please email me (amy AT amysmusings DOT com) or my mom (mkgssong AT yahoo DOT com). Thank you!!

Anything that you can do to help is greatly appreciated by Amy and her family. Even if it's just passing on word of this search on your own blog. The bigger the audience, the better the chance of reconnecting.

I'm posting this because I realize how strong a community the blogosphere is and I think it would be fantastic if someone who's reading one of these sites that's posting about it actually has some information that could help. Here's hoping!

Our second canine charge in as many weeks has taken up residence in our house. Peanut, again of quite ambiguous breed, is significantly larger than Lilly. I would fathom a guess at about 15-odd pounds, a lot of which is tightly curled off-white fur that looks like justification for the creation of Eli Whitney's cotton gin.

Aside from size, the other big distinction between Peanut and Lilly is neediness. Both are needy dogs, sure. But when Lilly required attention, she would just leap up in your lap and start slathering your face with her tongue. I'm not sure if Peanut is unable or just trained too well to jump up on furniture, but because of this reluctance, he will whine when he wants attention or run around in circles like a madman. Another method is to start scratching on the edge of where your sitting.

So far, no permanent damage has resulted save for our sleep patterns. But I will admit one thing... Katie was dead on in her assessment of dog ownership. Short-term is the best way to go. Take them for a few days to a week and then hand them back to their owners. I think we are so over wanting to own a dog. But we will certainly continue to dogsit, so long as there's money involved.

A funny observation I've made comes from these dogsitting episodes compared to when I was a cat owner. Both dogs, after maybe an hour of pining for their owners, quickly forgot about them and would treat us as though we were just as good as the originals. Then, in the case of Lilly anyway, when the real owners would show, she subsequently forgot about us entirely. 100% shift in loyalty at the drop of a hat.

Cats, though, take work. If you gain the trust of a cat, it lasts for a lifetime. It didn't matter who would drop by my parents' house to take care of Meatball and Jinx, if it wasn't one of us, they would look at you and you could tell they were thinking "Asshat, who the fuck do you think you are? Leave or I shall hiss you to bits." People (mostly dog owners) think cats are standoffish. Not so. They are just very selective in who hey love. If you aren't receiving the love, consider yourself "unworthy." Clearly someone else already has.

Totally Unrelated Aside (TUA): I know I'm a bit late to the game on this one as a couple of my fellow bloggers have already written about it, but I just started watching Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Freakin' hilarious. Highly recommended.

I would like a Captain Hammer T-shirt though.

I can't remember if it was yesterday's ad for Circuit City or Best Buy, but one of them was having a sale on all video games that were tied in to summer movies. Wall*E, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, The Dark Knight, etc. It blew my mind to see how many games had been made to accompany movies.

That's when I started to wonder who made the decision as to what movies get greenlighted as video games. I also started wondering why some movies, that are seemingly born to be made into video games, are not.

So I began pondering what movies would be great games. And it hit me... JUNO!

The game is played as Paulie Bleeker and the goal would be to bed as many of your classmates as possible. This is a strategy game, first and foremost. You have to scout your school to find a person whose intimacy levels most match yours. It would be like comparing Playboy centerfold profiles. Obviously, your levels will be very low when you start playing for the first time. However, you can create a savable profile and build your levels up. Eventually, given enough time and skill building, you can achieve the Dancing Elk o' Intimacy level and be able to bed anyone in your school, including teachers and administrators (if you manage to get your superintendent in bed, the game will self destruct and you will forever be remembered as the Minnesota Mastodon o' Love).

Once you scout your target, the next step is to woo them. This would be done using the guitar controller that comes with Guitar Hero. You have to show your mad strumming skillz and make them swoon for you. As soon as you do this, you have to then use the Wii Fit Balance Board to prove your sexual prowess. Rock, roll, sway, whatever it takes to bring them to the brink of ecstasy.

Money can be earned by winning track meets and these are run by jogging in place on the Wii Fit Balance Board. While it may sound unnecessary as the goal is to get in bed, this money is necessary so you can purchase energy boosts in the form of tangerine Tic-Tacs and Hot Pockets. You can also improve your running by purchasing deodorant that can be used as leg lube as well as progressively showier shorts. Given enough money, you might be able to afford the Cadillac of running outfits... Velcro tear-away shorts. This purchase would benefit you both on the track and in bed.

However, there is a catch... if you do successfully woo a classmate but you subsequently fall flat on your face in bed, your name and details of your inadequacies will be posted up to a pseudo MySpace profile and you will have to start over from a level below where a normal person would start the game. Also worthy of note, if your guitar skills are not up to par, you will wind up using the Wii Fit Balance Board to run in place to work off your sexual frustration. These runs will not earn you money as they are not school-sanctioned track meets. And you will not be able to move on to another target until the frustration level -- as determined by the immensity of the peer rejection and negative comments on your MySpace profile -- is worked off.

I can see this game being HUGE! Bigger than Ellen Page's belly!

Anyone out there with programming skills want to work on this one with me?

I wonder what other movie tie-in games I can come up with?

I'm going to hell, aren't I?

Totally Unrelated Aside (TUA): Okay, "Semi Related Aside." Katie and I broke out the Connect Four board last night and started playing. I wish I had a Web cam running because it was funny to watch as the game started friendly, but quickly became a study in human competition. After just a couple rounds, we started playing it like it was some city park speed Chess game... just slamming the checkers into the grid square with no time between for play consideration. It was fun! Well, save for Katie throwing a checker or two at me. I think I wound up sleeping on one last night.

There are some things I truly hate about the summer. The biggest of which is the fact that it seems that we have something planned every weekend. So far as I can tell, our lives are pretty well "on reserve" through the end of August.

The reason why this is such a big deal is that now we can't do spontaneous things we find out about at the last second. For example, this coming Saturday there will be a program hosted by the Geneva History Center called "Wooden Bats & Iron Men." It's a baseball game between the Geneva Rovers and the Midway Marauders.

The catch is that it's not your standard, everyday baseball game. This is old school here. They play by 19th century rules and use the uniforms, equipment, and lingo from the era. Here's the text slug from the flyer we received in the mail...

The Rovers & Marauders play by the rules of 1858, when men were men and gloves were for sissies. Learn the wildly different rules and cheer on the Rovers as they defend the honor of our fair city.

This is about the coolest thing for a guy like me who loves not just baseball but 19th century history (I've always been a freak for Civil War history). And, yet, we've got plans for most of the day on Saturday. I hope I can find video of it all somewhere.

Totally Unrelated Aside (TUA): I like when people in a customer service sort of role take a little time to get to know you or have some fun with their job. Katie and I took her car in yesterday for an emissions test. After it was all over, the guy who was helping us said, "Well, I'd tell you both to have a nice day and drive safe, but screw it. Go out there, drive erratically, and hit some people!"

Katie: "SWEET!"

Service guy: "Yeah! And when the cops pull you over, blame it on a few too many at the beer garden!"

Me: "Because we all know that overconsumption of liquor is a viable excuse for vehicular homicide!"

Service guy: "You know it!"

I like that he felt comfortable enough to know he could joke around with us a bit. Made for a fun afternoon... at an emissions testing station of all places. Who'd'a thunk it?