Geek Rock

Ya know, Crackerdog, I'm no big fan of LOTR imagery and only a lukewarm fan of cheesemetal, but put the two together and it's a lot of fun! Thank you for introducing me to Within Temptation. This must be who Evanescence wishes they were.

Bye bye Jerry!

Oh, and fuck you, you worthless shitbag. Love, the Immoral Minority. As usual, Rude Pundit expresses my thoughts o so much better than I could.

Chuckanut

Excellent kayaking today, drove the very long way to Larrabee State Park and met my friend Abdul-Kareem-Al-Habar-Muhammed-Ghengis the Jihadist for a paddle around the bay, then Caesar salad and sushi at The Big Fat Fish Company. Eclectic menu, too many cuisines on one page, with plenty of questionable items like Halibut Puttanesca, but damn was that sushi good. The Hefeweizin wasn't too bad either. Still no shots of my own, so here's some I stole from somebody of where we were paddling. Oh, yeah, Dad's in the psych ward. Yay!

$100 more every month

The landlord is raising the rent. It's a nice place, though. I don't want to leave it, but in the winter I won't be able to pay rent and heat.
Sigh.
Good kayaking today, no new pics, so here's some old ones.

Bald-Faced Hornets

Some of these enormous beasties have been flying in through my permanently open doors and windows. (My friends say "Why don't you lock your house?" I say, "If I get burglarized, why replace a broken window too?")
The smarter ones do a u-turn, but of course 51% are complete idiots, just like voters. Those ones bang angrily on the window until the cat hears about it. Then I gotta kill 'em. While looking up info on these giant pain inducing insects from hell, I came across this really fun page on the subject. The author never mentions killing them or destroying their nests. Great images, too!

No comment.

Do Not Mow.

And here's why. Plant these and sleep every summer afternoon in the hammock with the birds and surviving bees serenading you as you swing in the light breeze instead of pushing a cancer spewing machine around in the hot sun. Fuck mowing, it's stupid.

Coinkidental

Astronomers announced the find of a possible "near earth" type planet the day before Stephen Hawking experienced zero-G. So cool...

Sis, this song's for you and me today.
Jen, click the top video to the right.

Texas Stranger

Chuck Norris blames violent media for Virginia Tech massacre. Wait... what?

Good bye Aunt Ginny....

Our family matriarch is dying. Virginia is 86 years old. She is the most gracious, gentle soul in the world. I spent Sunday with her, talking about everything under the sun, except for the elephant in the room. The capillaries in her hippocampus have turned porous. Not something you bounce back from. I might have had the good luck to be half of the last conversation she ever had. At the end of dinner Sunday night, she was chewing on her crippled right hand and when I asked her what the trouble was, she replied, "My hand doesn't work properly now. I seem to have gotten very old. Why am I so old?" Like I said to mom the next day, there doesn't seem to be a word in English for something so heartbreaking and adorable at the same time. "Bittersweet" doesn't cut it, it's more of a menu description. The next morning, the only communication from her was disjointed words from her mostly unconscious and clearly uncomfortable state... "Oh, man, oh man, bye-bye everybody" and such. I'm gonna miss her so much.

Venus Ramey, Miss America 1944, blasts thief's tire with snub-nose .38

After confronting a man she said was stealing from her Kentucky farm, Ramey pulled out a gun and shot out a tire on his truck so he couldn't leave, allowing police to arrest him and two others.

"He was probably wetting his pants," Ramey said Thursday from her home in Waynesburg, about 140 miles south of Cincinnati.

Ramey was on her Lincoln County farm last week - "Friday the 13th, apropos date, isn't it?" she noted Thursday - feeding a horse when she saw her dog run to a nearby building where she stores old steel-shaping machines, lathes and other equipment.

"This stuff is over 100 years old," she said.

For some time, thieves had been breaking into the building to steal the machines to sell for scrap. She hadn't been able to catch anyone in the act until last week.

She drove over to the building and blocked the truck sitting there.

When she asked a man what he was doing, he replied "scrapping," and said he would leave.

"I said, 'Oh, no you won't,' and I shot their tires so they couldn't leave," Ramey said.

She had to balance on her walking stick as she pulled out a snub-nosed .38-caliber handgun.

"I didn't even think twice. I just went and did it. If they'd even dared come close to me, they'd be 6 feet under by now."

Ramey then tried to flag down people driving by. When one stopped, she asked them to call 911. Eventually, three people were arrested - one at the scene and two others walking on a nearby road.

"They've been stealing from me for years. Those good-for-nothing slobs," she said.

Also, Nursing Home My Generation is the best YouTube vid yet.

For no reason, here's a good actor.

iPod?!?

I bought a fuckin' iPod. Gawd, I suck. In the past five years, I have caved harshly. After a lifetime of no cable, I got cable. Never needed a cell-phone, got one. Never used the internet, couldn't give a shit about high speed access, got it all now. And now, because I put it on a credit card I never needed before, I'll probably pay twice for this pricey little assembled-by-chinese-slave-children flimsy piece of shit. But, damn I likes it!!! So fun, so easy, this new material possession shall alleviate my ennui for hours, perhaps days. In three years, it'll be paid for. My favorite new singer to listen to on my new toy is John Eddie, doin' the bar circuit for years.
I only just learned of him from Pandora, lumped in with Slaid Cleves.
Some favorite lines:
"Well, I guess I'm fuckin' forty, I can't say that I'm thrilled, I never dated Winona Ryder and I probably never will...but Bruce Springsteen's fuckin' fifty-three and The Stones are almost dead..."
"Daddy hit the bottle, mama hit the roof, guess they hit it off, I'm livin' proof...Jesus cut me down from the family tree"
"Play some Skynyrd..."
Seriously, the music is only cheap-beer-vinyl-covered-barstool American country-rock, but the lyrics are genius! Check him out.

"What is radically new in 2003 is that my daughter, along with our president and Saddam Hussein and on and on, has inherited technologies whose byproducts, whether in war or peace, are rapidly destroying the whole planet as a breathable, drinkable system for supporting life of any kind. Human beings, past and present, have trashed the joint." -Kurt Vonnegut from In These Times, RIP 04112007
Vaya con Dios, Kurt.
I am very sad today.
And so it goes.
(h/t to Morganucadon for the article)

Best headline/ comment thread on Fark this week,
(Reuters) "Twenty dead, hundreds left sober after beer truck slams into bus"
(thread) "Kind of bad taste to joke about 20 random people dying."
"No, bad taste would be if bystanders arranged the corpses to spell "BEER ME".

Ugh. Me lose computer long time. Almost stop caring about online world, save 100 dollars a month. Thankfully, my machine came back from the shop just in time to reinvigorate my lagging interest in all things unimportant and rescue me from a caveman existence that surely would have involved leaving the house.
Now I know what Britney is paying Fed-Ex to go away, I know that Paul McCartney's psycho bitch gold-digger estranged spousal unit can gimp her way through a waltz, I know that Iran is... well, Iran.
Still not caring enough, I can tell. I can feel the lingering apathy. Am beginning to suspect John Prine never spoke truer words than his line in "Hello in There" that goes.... "all the news just repeats itself like some forgotten dream that we've both seen..."
Gotta go change dad's diapers in a few weeks. Not looking forward to it, obviously. Stupid reminders that life is messy and unpleasant seem far more frequent than those happy reminders that life is gleeful and shiny. Maybe I just need to approach the idea of complete dementia from a whole new angle.
Trying... trying... nope.
Just no use.
My living will is going to include the phrase "fucking put me down like a rabid dog."

OH, MY, FUCKIN, GAWD, HELL, YES!!!!!!!!!!

Hitchiking

It's properly one word. With one 'H'. A beautiful, lyrical, scary, adventurous word. The transcendence of time, where the minutes and hours that pass one by whilst one's thumb is extended matter not; the endless possible stories of the vehicles that zip past you... was that Greyhound full of divorcees and soldiers, destined to forge new lives together in Boise? Was that Cherokee brimming with Latinos ferrying one proud new papa to the orange groves of Florida? The freedom, the anonymity, the whole cast-of-the-die thing made hitchiking the perfect mode of travel for my blissfully misspent youth.
The wait for a ride was never boring, with the possible exception of Needles, California. I spent two days getting bit by supersonic midges the size of houseflies and drinking tepid canteen water for breakfast, lunch and dinner while thumbing with fading hope and increasing hunger in the desert.
The guy that finally picked me up was the scariest ever. Army Ranger, fresh from Gulf War 1 and vibrating at an identifiably dangerous frequency. 280 miles later, he woke me just to say "Get out." in a sibilant whisper. Yeah, I was so beat-dog-tired from two days in Needles I took a damn nap in creepy guy's passenger seat. He did not actually damage me for all that distance, so I stuck the thumb out again figuring I was charmed and free from harm.
While deep in what the canucks call "First Nations".
As I said, I was young.
The puce green Ford pick-up that swung around the on-ramp and squealed to a halt in front of me had a crew cab. I would be out of the wind and sun. It wasn't 'til I climbed into the back that I had a chance to peruse my benefactors.
Whoops.
"Waisichu! This is Running Bear, she thinks you're cute!"
The driver declared this, a thirty something in an oxford shirt and a stetson, clearly he was the leader here. The only one sober enough to even attempt driving. A gap-toothed 60 year old woman built like Yoda and ridin' bitch swiveled her head around and said,
"You want a beer, cute white boy?"
Well, what now?
Hell yes, beerwise.
Everything else, ohhhhhh.....shit.
To Yoda's right sat the meanest lookin' Indian I ever saw. He was wearing those gradient sunglasses that hide your corneas, but show your cheekbones. Those cheekbones were covered in knife scars. His cold, direct, appraising stare did not waver. The driver, Running Bear and I chatted. Did I like Indians?
(I like people)
Did I see Dances with Wolves?
(No)
Why not!?
(um... UHOH)
('Cause I hate Kevin Costner??)
LAUGHTER
(whew)
"Maybe we call you Kevin Costner, OK, waisichu?"
This from Mr. Scary Indian.
Damn if that ride didn't just keep getting jumpier. Clearly I was in danger, real trouble, but (yes, Ms. Running Bear I believe I'll have another.)
Sunset found me bumping over a dirt road on the rez, Running Bear wanted to show me her house.
Driver and Scary wanted to monitor my behavior to see if I merited killin'. Of this I have no doubt.
We drank more and I marveled at the 10x6 American flag that covered the wall over her bed. She said, "Thank you, that's the cloth that wrapped my boy when he came back from VietNam."
Grasping for safe territory, I admired the construction of her hogan, expressing envy at the solidity of her house and her remaining family and her community. I think my desperate show of respect and faux naivete saved my life.
We then drove to a bar on the edge of the rez and Running Bear cackled, "No white boys in here, cutie".
Scary lifted my pack from the bed of the truck and said, "This is all you have in the world?"
I answered with much truth, "Yup."
"Take it and GO. Now."
No further convincing needed, you psychopath.
Thanx for the afternoon's adventure.
With that, he marched into the bar and I hiked to a blank spot in the desert where I bedded down by the highway amidst the scorpions, ants and snakes. Best sleep I ever had, cloudless sky full of stars all night... the vermin let me be. (There wasn't a single bug in my boots the next morning. The trick is camping 10 feet up from the edge of an arroyo. No food and no water, off the beaten path for the creatures of the night.)
My first ride the next morning told me it was eight beers to Albuquerque and handed me a six-pack, saying I'd have to drink breakfast slowly. Sometimes karma pays off.
Bonus, he was on his way to work and had a cooler full of ice with four more six packs.
I love this country.