Bearshirt Ramblings

Kill Your Cat

2006-01-13T10:19:00.000-08:00

On December 28th in Redmond, OR a one-eyed kitten was born. It lasted for two days before it died. The owner still reportedly has the corpse of this monstrosity in her freezer in case science is interested. Look at it. Does it freak you out? It freaks me out. Bad.

That is why I'm....no seriously stop looking at it and pay attention. Thank you. That is why I'm now asking you to kill your cat. It is obvious that this is merely a test kitten, a first step if you will, designed by the Cat Leaders. I have known for some time that the Cat Leaders have had it in for us. They have been biding their time, waiting patiently on the hood of my car, for the perfect moment to strike. But they have commited a critical blunder now. It's made the news and the jig is up. Their plans to create an army of cycloptic cats has been uncovered by an unwitting woman in Redmond, Oregon of all places. In her freezer lies all the proof we need that the Cat Leaders are now dabbling in the realm of God by bio-engineering their own breed of one-eyed monsters, viewed as completely expendable by their two-eyed feline overlords who view themselves as superior with their bifocal vision.

One look at this, this abberation gives us a few clues as to what the Cat Overlords are planning. It has one eye which from the picutre obviously shoots some sort of death ray, prehaps even something akin to the sinister abilities of Medusa herself, we cannot be sure until the corpse is studied in detail. Also this cat has been designed for some sort of marine warfare as it has no nose, leading to the obvious conclusion that it has no need for oxygen. I don't think it would be considered overreacting to alert our naval fleets to be on the lookout for any kittens who have been born in secrecy already and raised to maturity and schooled in the dastardly martial arts which only cat know. Perhaps even notifying the cruise lines would be in order. We should also keep a sharp eye to the trees. Cats, already good climbers, would benefit greatly from some cross-breeding with simian stock, and as you can tell from the picture this kitten obviously has some monkey-blood running through its veins. Imagine the stark terror you would feel if a small squad of, say, 15 of these horrors dropped out of a maple tree onto you and set about with their rending teeth and sharp talons. I'm sure I don't have to go into detail about how they would eat you. If you don't believe that they're cross breeding with apes, let me direct you to this video, obtained by spies, where a disgusting chimp give a cat a sensual bath in preparation for their unholy union.

I hope I have driven home the dire urgency of our situation here. Now I implore you, go kill your cat. The Cat Overlords and their agents have been allowed to monitor our activities too long. Their intelligence network is second to none. They know too much! Kill your cat now before it is too late! Kill it! Kill it, I say!

Tim Inspires, Draws Out My Inner Artiste

2005-12-14T09:27:00.000-08:00

Tim, self-proclaimed master of the pwns joo system of martial arts, modified his profile picture for the holidays. It made me laugh. In doing so he has inspired me to do the same. So sit back and enjoy the Holiday Berzerker in the upper right. Maybe he'll come down your chimney to spread holiday cheer. Thanks, Tim.

Barndoorisopenophobia

2005-12-01T21:32:00.000-08:00

Yeah, so I have this recurring fear whenever I'm in a public place that my fly is open. It is something that crosses my mind nearly every time I step out of my car or enter a building for some reason. I get nervous and try to check it as nonchalantly as possible. Several times a day.

Today I was in one of my favorite eating establishments . I had both my hands in my pockets and I started thinking to myself, "if my fly is open, having both hands in my pockets is only going to increase the amount of tension in the groinal area of my trousers and I'll look like...Mr. Menzel."

As far as I know, right now my brother and sister are the only ones who will understand. So let me fill the rest of you in.

I grew up in the booming metropolis of Turner. Okay, maybe not a booming metropolis. It was more like a dying timber town whose economy revolved around the death throes of Burkland Lumber Mill while I was growning up. For some reason I have very few memories of Turner that don't involve it being very wet to the point of nearly flooding. Moss grew everywhere and the biggest thing that happened in the town was the annual Turner Lamb Festival, where people came to show off their sheep and, um, other stuff I guess.

So from first through sixth grade I attended Turner Elementary School. It was a small school. To give you an idea of how small let me give you an example. Each year (while I was there, at least) there were two classes for each grade. Two first grades, two second grades, two third grades, you get it. My class was different. There were only about twelve to eighteen of us any year so they would only have one class that year. Teachers would say, "oh no, you have the big class this year." The main part of the building was built in the twenties and if you go to the link above you'll see a picture of the main entrance. And also let me just say that the principal while I was there had a lot more in comon visually with a mustachioed Yoda than the woman on the web page.

At Turner was a member of the staff named Mr. Menzel. He would take the dumb kids out of the class in groups of about five per class and give them extra help in a very small room on the third level of the school. In fact, his room encompassed the entirety of the third level of the school and it was about an 8' x 8'. He would also take small groups of smart kids out starting in fifth grade and try to teach them advanced math. I say try because I really don't remember any of us getting it, but I may just be remembering the fact that I didn't get algebra until junior high (yeah, we didn't have middle shcools in our district).

Mr. Menzel looked a little like a supporting character in the Blondie comic strip. He had male pattern baldness, Coke-bottle glasses, a mouth that never completely closed and what seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of ugly sport coats with those stupid elbow pads that always reminded me of the inside of the reinforced knee of my Toughskins jeans.

Mr. Menzel also drove the bus whenever one of the three regular bus drivers was gone. The other bus drivers were Ed, Mr. Woelk, and Louie. Ed and Louie were the janitors and Mr. Woelk was one of the sixth grade teachers who also happened to participate in monster truck tractor pulls. We always knew we were in for a ride when the bus door opened and Mr. Menzel was behind the wheel. I had the opportunity to be on the bus for three accidents and Mr. Menzel was behind the wheel for two of them.

One of my more vivid memories of fourth grade was entering the school through the main entrance one morning and heading up the stairs (fourth through sixth grades were upstairs since apparently they were worried the Turner kids couldn't figure out how to use stairs until well through the third grade). These stairs were, if my memory serves, about fifteen feet wide and the steps were only about two inches high, resulting in approximately 120 fifteen-foot-wide stairs. Each morning the upstairs teachers would stand at the top of the stairs as the kids came into school. There they would stand, make small talk and drink bad coffee out of styrofoam cups to fully charge up their coffee breath attacks which they used to stun us into submission on a daily basis.

On the day in question Mr. Menzel was at the top of the stairs being his charming self and chit-chatting with Mrs. Wolnick, an unfortunately horse-faced woman of moderately bad temperment who had the misfortune of being my fourth grade teacher. She was no beauty queen but when hung up next to the other two female teachers upstairs I guess she was not all that bad. Ms. Woods looked like Roger Ebert and Ms. Scholian looked a little like Harry Dean Stanton.

As we were all plodding up the stairs to our fate for the day it was immediately obvious that Mr. Menzel had forgotten to XYZ. His fly was wide open and the tighty whiteys made a stark contrast to his green plaid pants. What made it worse was that he had both hands in his pockets, causing the aforementioned tension so as to create a large white triangle of what should remain unseen.

The image was so strikingly wrong that to this day it is still burned into my memory and could be the direct cause of my barndoorisopenophobia which has been clinically diagnosed. Amazing the things that are indellibly scrawled across our grey matter during the formative years we spend in elementary school, isn't it?

Rise up, oh mighty Geeks

2005-11-23T14:18:00.000-08:00

Some time back Jason sent me a link to The Geek Test. I have taken it twice and for some reason scored differently twice. I think it's due to the fact that I didn't do the Bonus Round last time. The official reading when I took it today was 61.34122%, or Extreme Geek. I truly believe that I was pushed over the top by the fact that I had seen every movie they listed and own more than just a few of them as well as the fact that I once was in a fan club for a certain Real American Hero as a kid. I really feel that if I were more computer literate I would be able to totally dominate this test as those boxes I didn't check were related mostly to computer programming.

Leeeerooooooy Jennnnnnkinnnnnns!

2005-11-23T14:09:00.000-08:00

Okay, Eric sent me this link in my e-mail this morning. Apparently this has been around for some time, but I've never seen it. It's been around enough that it was actually a question on a college episode of Jeopardy! sometime last year. This really does hold up to multiple viewings, and in fact that is what I recommend. This will only be funny if the sound is turned up. Click on the green Watch button and enjoy. Be warned, if you have incontinence problems, you may want to sit on a tarp. I was crying by the time this was over.

Leroy Jenkins

New Narnia Trailer

2005-11-18T16:14:00.000-08:00

A new trailer for the upcoming Narnia movie is here.

I've Given This A Great Deal Of Thought

2005-11-15T22:54:00.000-08:00

So I'm watching TV tonight and it kind of dawns on me that there's something missing in my life. Something that is keeping me from being whole. A thing whose absence is like an electric fence between me and real happiness. Something that would complete me. That thing is a sword.

Yeah, that's right. I need a big, sharp sword.

There's probably some people who will read this and absolutely not get it. These are people who have never known true yearning. They will think, "what in the name of Sam Hill is this guy going to do with a sword?" These people think that a sword is something to hang on a wall like a picture or a singing fish. Well, I can tell you that these people are fools.

A sword is something you would need if there was, say, a zombie outbreak. Sure I've got all kinds of shootin' irons, but I plan on living a long, long time after the initial outbreak which means that ammo availabiltiy might become an issue. A sword never needs more bullets.

What if you awoke one night and there was all of a sudden a magic portal into another world where you're toilet was? Well who's to say that all the laws of physics we use as a crutch in this dimension will still apply in said other world? A sword is affected by only one universal truth: no one wants to be hit with one. And that applies no matter what dimension you hail from.

And can you just tell me what you would do if you were cruising along in your red '85 Firebird and down a filthy alley you spy two guys swordfighting? Jump out and try to fill the big one with lead out of your MAC? No, that's a bad idea. But if you had a sword you could just chop his head off while his trying to enjoy The Quickening.

Now I'm not talking about some wimpy, girly-man rapier or even the annoyingly ubiquitous samurai sword. No, I'm going on about a real man's sword. A blood and guts sword. I'm thinking a post-migration era Viking sword.

If I had one of these, I could really impress my wife. I'd go out and do something really cool with it like kill the Nidhogg, or chop down the Yggdrasil tree, or slay the Midgard Serpent and free the Rainbow Bridge or even chop the head off the Fenris Wolf and end the age of Ragnarok. Yeah, that'd really impress her. She'd be all, "show me again how you ended Ragnarok" but we all know what she really means.

But back to what really drove me to thinking I need a sword. I saw one of those creepy freaking Burger King ads. This dude is out in the forest and he chops down a tree. The tree falls over and guess who's standing there with his I'll-Swallow-Your-Soul smile? That's right. The unreasonably disturbing King guy. I still think the worst one is the one where the dude (not to be confused with The Dude) wakes up and that thing is just laying there in bed with him.

I'm sure that The King is somehow impervious to gunshot wounds or he'd be dead by now. So what's the next best thing? Hit that freaky bastard with a sharp piece of steel.

Here's a few images to sway those who are still numbered among the unbelievers.

If the sword happened to be magical (don't laugh, it could happen) I'd use it to transport myself into the TV and slay everyone in the next picture. I can't really decide if the King is more disturbing than what happened to Hootie and the Blowfish or not. What self-respecting black guy wears an outfit like this? Does he look like he's on the verge of suicide to anyone else? I swear that ad was like some really extra creepy H. R. Puffnstuff episode.

Ask Yourself A Question

2005-11-15T14:10:00.000-08:00

Okay, read this and then ask yourself just how real it is if they use writers.

The Do's and Don'ts of the American Dream

2005-11-08T15:51:00.000-08:00

If you have the basic skills necessary to read and a naturally inquisitive nature, you will probably have read my profile. In there I tell you what I do for a living. If you haven't read it, too bad because I'm going to ruin the surprise and tell you that I'm a real estate appraiser. For the uninitiated, when someone want's to know the value of their house they hire someone like me. That someone like me (only in the vaguest sense) then rubs magic valuation dust on themselves and goes to your house. Some notes are scribbled down, some pictures are taken, some non-commital statements regarding the value are made and I leave. The rest is done in the office. That's what I do, day in and day out. Oh, the tedium (hey, that kind of looks like Ted-ium, like some new element or something).

Actually it can be a fairly interesting job. Most peope, aside from repairmen and burglars, have no idea what it really is like to go in and out of other people's homes all day long. This summer I was busier than I've ever been, which was the main factor in the, um, slight slowdown in postings. All members can expect a full refund for the months of no posting.

While I was working it occured to me that many of my readers fall into the current demographic of home buyers, i.e. people ambulatory enough to walk into a loan officer's cubicle. So here's a post giving you a few bits of advice gained over the past thirteen years.

* I have to call you on the phone to set up an appointment to inspect your home. I have never met you so if you have some goofball name, don't get all huffy if I screw it up. If your name has more than three letters in a row which are not vowels, calm down and just tell me how it's pronounced. If your name does not match your genitals, sorry, I didn't name you. How am I supposed to know that there are women named Jeff and Jon and men named Kim? Don't act like I'm the first person to make this mistake, it gets us off to a bad start.

* Tie up your stupid dog. Dogs have a set of very specific rules that all dogs adhere to and me coming into your home violates at least three of those. I don't care how cuddly you think your Rottweiler is, he has teeth and God made sure he knows how to use them. Also, don't say his bark is worse than his bite. Everyone says that and you can be more creative than that. I know you can.

*Tie up your cat. This is not because I think he'll try to attack me, though it has happened (in thirteen years I've had only one dog get serious about eating me as opposed to three cats). This is becuase I don't like cats and I'll try to kick him when you're not looking.

*Go ahead and take some initiative and BE AWAKE! Loser.

*I don't want to see your porn, so hide it. I am constantly amazed at how many people leave out their dirty movies and magazines. One guy even had several years worth of Hustler in binders with the volume and date listed on the spine out on a shelf below which were well over 100 VHS tapes (this was before the DVD was even heard of). Some of the titles I've seen are amusing, however. Two of my favorites are "Pull My Hair And Call Me Stupid" and "...But Can She Type?" I don't look in drawers and under beds, but I do look in the closets, so there's a couple of ideas for you.

*Ladies, and even you guys, don't shower while I'm there. It's just weird.

*I very rarely make an appointment less than five hours from the time I call you. This gives you ample time to take care of the calls of nature so the pipes are clean before I show up as well as while I'm there. There is nothing worse than walking into a bathroom that has just had the bejeezus used out of it. What's worse is when the user acts like nothing is up.

*If you must use the bathroom, please flush.

*Get rid of your birds. This really has no impact on the value of your home, but I think birds are noisy, annoying, and they stink like hell. You don't notice it because you live with it, but I've got news for you - everyone else smells it and it sticks to your hair and clothes when you go out. Plus, and this may come as a shock, one sign of wierdo-ness is ownership of either a.) more than three of any type of bird, or b.) ownership of at least one bird you payed more than thirty bucks for.

*Don't try to scare the appraiser. One time I was at a house and the owner said he had to leave. I asked him if he was sure he was comfortable with me being in his home alone. He said he would be where he could keep an eye on me. I thought that was weird. Then as I doing the inspection I noticed several pictures of this man (who had a very, very Hebrew name) in some sort of desert environment. In every picture he had a scoped bolt-action rifle of some sort. In two of the pictures he was wearing a t-shirt that said Isreali Sniper Team. After I finished my inspection in a serpentine fashion I began to wonder why the Israeli Sniper Team had their t-shirts printed in English, but it still freaked me out.

*If you have brain damage, say so. It is a lot nicer than you standing in my personal area and staring at me for an uncomfortable length of time then asking if I want to join you in doing the maze on the back of the Corn Pops box you're finishing off at three in the afternoon.

*Don't lie to the appraiser, especially if you a bad liar. Once I was at a mobile home in a rural area. A little ways off from the house was a large rectangle of excavated soil. I asked the homeowner what it was and he just said he was trying out a new piece of farm equipment that had a bucket on it. I'm thinking, yeah, right. I walked over to it a little later and saw that he had dug down to his septic tank. This time I asked him (back inside the house) if he had any septic problems. He said, no. I go through the interior of the home and in all three of the bathrooms the bowl was filled to the rim with nothing good.

*I don't want a copy of The Watchtower. Neither does anyone else for that matter.

*Go ahead and clean the place up a little. If I step in dog crap inside the house, it is a reflection of your housekeeping skills and I'm going to tell everyone who will listen.

*While we're on the subject of things pets do to ruin your home, if you have fleas, get rid of them. I don't want them on me or in my car, office or house. Scumbag.

*This may seem like something you shouldn't have to tell people, but don't let your kid play frisbee in the front yard with the dog using a hubcap while I'm trying to get pictures of the front of the house. It just looks tacky.

*Alert the appraiser to any wierd pets. Pirhana, monkeys, iguanas that aren't kept in cages, indoor goats, whatever. It is a little unnerving to open a bedroom door and have a pot-bellied pig charge. There's actually a pretty good story about a house we were in when a monkey started trying to have sex with its teddy bear that deserves its own post.

*If you notice that old familiar twinkle in your significant other's eye, hold off until the appraiser leaves. I don't need to see anyone laying in bed with less clothes than it takes to get into a restaurant smoking a cigarrette.

*Pick up your freaking nasty, dirty underwear!

*Make your adult son get a job.

*Don't tell the appraiser your problems. We have our own problems that don't involve your husband's inability to do housework or the extra weight your wife has put on since she had kids.

*If someone has taken weird pictures of you, take them down while I'm there. I don't want to see your lingerie glamor shots. For those of you out there wondering, but what if she's hot? She never is. One time I was out with dad and there was a framed series of the lady of the house in various tasteless outfits. Dad and I are laughing at them and then he goes to look in a closet. The door is stuck a little so he puts more oomph behind it and the door pops open. The force of opening the door causes all the outfits depicted in the photos which were hanging on the inside of the door to swing out and hit him in the face with their various straps and buckles.

*Don't take offense if the appraiser doesn't care about your collection. I will never understand why people collect plates. I have seen just about everything on collectible plates. Star Trek, NASCAR, professional wrestling, John Wayne, Elvis, Wizard of Oz, you name it. If you have a collection that takes up an entire room of your home, you do not have a collection, you have a problem that can likely be treated with medication.

*Make sure your Scarface shrine is looking good. For those of you who don't know, one in five men under the age of thrity have some level of shirne to the movie Scarface. This usually includes a still print from the movie at least 3' x 5' depicting Tony Montana either firing off his little friend or sitting down with his wounded arm in a sling and pointing that silenced pistol at the dirty cop and his boss. If it's been a while, feel free to iron your Scarface tapestry or adjust the thumbtacks holding it in the wall. You want it to look nice and crisp. Dust your Scarface shot glasses. If you have directional lighting for any of your Scarface memrobilia, make sure it's properly adjusted.

*Don't cook fish within 24 hours of the appraiser's arrival.

I could probably think of a lot more if I took a little more time, but that's all I feel like writing for now.

Coming attractions

2005-10-31T14:39:00.000-08:00

*Cue movie preview guy voice*

In a world where most blogs are boring and have really bad grammar, one man stands between you and blogosphere boredom. And that man has a Bearshirt.

*End movie preview guy voice*

Returning November 2005

Summertime, When The Living's Easy

2005-06-30T23:03:00.000-07:00

Well, June sure went fast. I didn't get anywhere near as many posts of stupid crap my dad has done as I wanted. I'll wrap it up with three summer stories.

Number One:

When dad was a kid he grew up in Silverton. He did lots of stupid stuff. One story he has told only twice is one I like quite a bit. About the time he was in Jr. High one of the Silverton Police officers was shot and killed. This was in late May. By the beginning of June all three remaining officers had quit. There was apparently some concern on the part of the remaining officers that they would be shot also and they just up and quit. The result is that for most of June Silverton had no police.

Nowadays Silverton tries to sell itself as a nice, clean town with several Bed & Breakfast establishments as well as that money pit every tax payer in Marion County is on the hook for - The Oregon Garden. Back then in the early fifties it was nothing more than just another Oregon mill town.

Dad and his friends were out riding their bikes around, with .22 rifles strapped to the front handle bars. They came upon a bridge. The bridge was over a small ravine with a creek about 20 feet below. The bridge connected the driveways of about fifteen houses with a county road.

So what do you do when you're twelve, it's summer, there's a bridge in front of you and there are no police? You and your friends get some 2x4s and a large pry bar and you tear down the bridge. That's right, they worked for about an hour and slid the county road end of the bridge along the shoulder of the road until the angle was too much and down into the ravine it went.

Hahahaha. Good times. Good times. Let's go buy some fireworks.

Three days later they went back and the bridge was back up. This was completely unacceptable to the set of values held sacred by all twelve year old boys and these boys had no choice. Back to work and an hour later it was back down at the bottom of the ravine.

The following weekend the boys went back and (you're not going to believe this) the bridge was back up.

Now a twelve year old boy can only be pushed so far before he pushes back. One of these guys said, "hey, my dad has some dynamite at home. Let's blow this piece of shit up once and for all. I'm tired of all the work we keep putting into this." No one present could argue with logic this solid. Off they went.

Within an hour they had two sticks of dynamite stuffed under the county road end of the bridge and the fuse was lit. They all raced off down the hill like demons on thier Schwins. They were down the hill and around the corner when it blew. Dad said it was one of the largest explosions he ever heard before he got an all expense paid trip to southeast Asia in the early sixties.

I asked him what happened to the bridge. To this day he doesn't know. Not one of these guys had enough guts to go back for over a year. By then a new, more permanent bridge had been built.

Story Two:

When dad was in grade school my grandparents bought him a big bag of fireworks. This is back in the day before Oregon went all pyro-Nazi on us and you could still buy stuff like roman candles, bottle rockets and M-80s. Dad was out having some completely unsupervised fun with his fireworks when a Big Kid came along.

You all remember what it was like to be under driving age when someone more than three years older than you showed up. They were a Big Kid and you did what they said or you'd get a pounding. At least that's the way it was in Silverton in the forties (and Turner in the eighties for that matter).

So a Big Kid came along and asked what fireworks my dad had. Dad gave him some deliberately vague answers. The Big Kid said he had some exploding gravel. Wha? Exploding gravel? Nu-uhn. So the Big Kid produces an entire jar of otherwise normal looking gravel. He takes out a few pieces and puts them on the ground then takes the cigarrette out of his mouth (hey, it was the forties and everyone was expected to smoke, even kids) and somehow lit the gravel. Dad says he wasn't sure exactly which part of the gravel had been lit since the Big Kid crouched down to light it in a way which obscured Dad's view. The Big Kid stepped back and BAM! the gravel exploded.

It was at this point that Dad got the offer of a lifetime. You see, as it turns out the Big Kid needed to get rid of all of his exploding gravel since an entire jar of it weights quite a bit and he still had to walk all the way home. Then out of the blue the Big Kid got a crazy idea. What if Dad traded his nice, light bag of fireworks for some of the exploding gravel. Dad was a little leery. Then the Big Kid, in a move of Corleonian wheeling dealing, made Dad an offer he couldn't refuse. How about that little, tiny bag of fireworks for this whole big jar of exploding gravel. Well dad was no fool and he jumped on it.

Dad spent the rest of his afternoon in my gradparents' driveway trying to set gravel on fire.

Story Three:

When we were growing up Dad was never stingy about buying us fireworks. But since we live in Oregon our choices were fairly limited. This was the late seventies and early eighties and all of that whistling, screaming crap they have now wasn't really around. But you could buy all the smoke bombs, sparklers and those stupid snakes you wanted. Remember those snakes? Do they even sell those anymore? So one Independence Day we were outside wanting to light off some fireworks. Dad said, "no, wait until it gets dark." So we waited. And waited. And waited. Finally it was dark enough.

Dad loaded up a bunch of matches in his shirt pocket and grabbed a box of sparklers. We each got a sparkler and Dad lit them all. Whee! We thought that sparklers were the best. You could wave them around in the night and leave green, fading marks in the night which were actually just the light from the sparkler burning a hole in our retinas.

Now these were the old-schools sparklers that were sulphur, phosphate and magnesium compounds wrapped around a piece of wire. Did you know that when they burn, these old sparklers get up to 1,500 degrees? Good old fashioned fun.

So dad lit our sparklers and sat back. Somehow, and no one knows exactly how, the match in Dad's hand didn't go out and came into contact with his pocket which now had not only the remaining matches, but also the box of sparklers.

If you think that one sparkler being waved around in the dark to make the letters t, e, and d is a breath-taking sight, then you should see what happens when a man in his late thirties has a shirt pocket and goes from 98.6 degrees to 1,500 degrees in a matter of seconds. Mom had always told us that Dad never danced. Mom's full of crap.

Important Message from Tyler

2005-06-30T11:02:00.000-07:00

Ben, get your lazy blog reading ass back to work.

I Peed My Pants. But Just A Little.

2005-06-28T13:27:00.000-07:00

I was both excited and more than just a little skeptical, but now I'm just excited. Makes me wish I knew who the hell has my VHS copy of the 1933 original. If you have one of the ones that roars when you push on Kong's chest and don't know where it came from let me know. I haven't seen mine for a good many years and I can't remember who borrowed it.

King Kong

Bobbing for Apples

2005-06-17T16:37:00.000-07:00

My dad is an appraiser. He does a lot of farm work and always has since he started in the late sixties. In this part of the country, there are a lot of dairies. Every dairy has certain things like a milking parlor, feed storage and a manure lagoon. Didn't know that? You do now. Go get a glass of milk and I'll wait to finish my story.

Back already? Good. Well dad was doing a lot of foreclosure work in the very early eighties and he got a dairy foreclosure assignment. The owner was, of course, not all too happy to see dad show up and was a little less than friendly. They were out walking around the property and dad asked what was the best way to get to the upper pasture. The owner says, "follow me."

They head out across a paved area and toward the manure lagoon. The owner heads up the little rise and to the concrete edge of the lagoon and just keeps going out into the manure. Dad sees this and thinks that either this guy is the crap pope and just performed a crap miracle or the manure lagoon isn't any more than just an inch or so deep, since that's how deep this guy's boot are going into the manure. Dad gets up to the side and doesn't even slow down, so confident is he in the depth of the lagoon. First step and in he goes up to his freaking neck in forty degree liquid hay. Gloooop!

Apparently there was a concrete wall down the middle of the lagoon and the dairy owner was following some lag bolts sticking up above the crap so he would know where to step. Since they were rusty dad never even saw them. He pulled himself out quick enough and the dairy owner said, "there's a creek over there," between bursts of laughter.

Dad headed over to the creek, completely drenched in bovine feces right up to the shave line on his neck. The creek was apparently pretty small and dad just went and laid down in it for a while on both sides. He said that the only reason the creek wasn't frozen was because it was moving and he thought the water was somewhere in the twenties. Brrrrr.

He then finished up at the property and drove home in cold, wet clothes to the fading sounds of a dairyman's laughter.

No Surprises Here

2005-06-16T15:19:00.000-07:00

I came across this

What Handgun Are You

I came in as a S&W 629. Like I said. No surprises here. Heck, I already own one.

Next post will be more stories about my dad.

Duck, Duck, Goose!

2005-06-14T11:04:00.000-07:00

A few years after we got the Tit Nipple Pink Boat we got a nicer boat. It was a Beachcraft with an open bow and a nice inboard/outboard powered by a Chevy 350. We took it all over the place. One really helpful feature that both the boats had was a "Fishfinder."

It was, I think, a Hummingbird brand. Basically it was just a little sonar transmitter/reciever that you screw to the rear of the boat and it is wired to a little black and grey LED screen that gives a two-dimension image of what's under the boat. It showed the bottom and gave a depth reading as well as showing little dots here and there that the sonar bounced off of which were assumably fish so you knew where to cast your line.

We never did much fishing off of either of our boats, come to think of it. We did do a fair amount of salamander killing, though. Green Peter had a ton of salamanders and we'd usually take our pellet guns on the boat with us. If we forgot our pellet guns, we'd just cut a green switch off of a tree on the bank and whip the salamanders as they'd come up for air. Without too much effort you could open them right up. But the story I'm trying to tell has nothing to do with this.

We used the Fishfinder primarily as a way to tell where the bottom of the lake or river was. One time it came in very handy.

We were on Detroit and had gone to the far east end of the lake near where the Santiam feeds into it. We had previously had some luck fishing here because it was often where the Fish and Wildlife Department employees would dump the trout from fish farms. If you got lucky and got there the day they dumped them you could just scoop them up with a net. But then, trout tastes crummy and has more bones than an elephant graveyard, so big deal, I guess.

So out near the east end of Detroit it gets fairly shallow. There are large areas where you can stand on the bottom. The Beachcraft only needed about two and a half or three feet of water to float and only about six inches more to put down the propeller, so that was more than enough. The fishing was no good that day, i.e. no fish were jumping into our boat full of people too lazy to try to fish. Dad got an idea as some ducks went by.

Dad is looking over the side at these ducks that were all over the place. Then he goes, "Eric, Ted, pull up the anchor. Let's chase some ducks!" That Chevy small block fired up and we were off.

Eric and I were up in the open bow giving directions of which way the ducks were going, dad was driving and mom was on Fishfinder duty giving depth reports. We were trying to run over ducks with the boat and not having a whole lot of luck since the ducks were fairly quick. What's really funny is that the ducks would only try to swim out of the way. They never once tried to take flight. I guess they just assumed that the boat would chase them into the sky, since dad had already proven that he could get a boat up into the air.

As Eric and I were calling out very specific directions ("no, the other way" or just plain pointing) mom was calling off depths while dad was picking up speed to get those evil ducks.

"Five feet. Six feet. Ten feet. Five feet. Eleven feet. Twelve feet. Five feet. One foo-" The boat came almost to a complete stop and felt like something kicked it from below because it came up out of the water about a foot (not completely out of the water, just that it was taking only a foot and a half or so of water). Eric and I were almost dumped in the water over the bow and the motor died immediately.

We recovered quickly and dad pulled up the propeller. It was missing one complete blade and two others were far from intact. Just under the surface of the water behind us we could see a large tree stump that looked like it had just been through some sort of industrial accident.

Luckily dad knew enough about himself to keep an extra propeller handy and we jumped in the water and switched out the propeller like a cross between the A-team, Navy SEALs, and white trash. We were back on the water in no time and heading home.

A Three Hour Tour

2005-06-13T17:12:00.000-07:00

My dad has always liked boats. I can remember as a kid going to marinas and showrooms with him to look at boats. We eventually got one in the late eighties. It was a real tub, with an outboard Johnson that didn't go very fast at all. It was this faded pinkish brown color that was somewhat reminiscent of a chocolate Necco wafer. My dad has always refered to it as The Tit Nipple Pink Boat. It smelled bad, too.

A few years before we got The Tit Nipple Pink Boat dad took the whole family to the beach. We wound up at Newport Bay (not the overpriced restaurant) where someone in our group decided that renting a boat and some crab pots was just the ticket for a family outing.

Dad and mom had no credit card due to some poor choices and had to pay cash for the rental fees as well as the deposits. The boat we managed to rent was probably what you would picture if you thought of a rowboat. With dad, mom, Eric, Melissa and me in it the thing had about three inches of freeboard, assuming everyone stayed in the middle of the boat and didn't try to look overboard. Eric, curse his hide, could not keep from looking over the freaking side, and everytime he did the boat would come precariously close to taking on water to the sound of mom and dad yelling at him to get back in the middle. Dad also rented two crab pots, undoubtedly with visions of how good that fresh crab would taste, made even better knowing that he had been crafty enough to snatch them from Old Man Ocean himself. Off we went.

Now for those of you who don't know, the bay at Newport is a functioning bay. I mean they get some big freaking boats in there. Big enough that most people would call them ships. We had a nine foot open boat with an outboard engine that was probably rated at less than one horsepower. Probably it was rated at one doggypaddle or something like that. Rules of the road state that the little boat is suposed to look out for the big boat. That rule is made under the assumption that the little boat is slightly faster and infinitely more nimble. Ours was not.

We only had one instance where a large boat was coming our way. It was probably nothing like I remember it. But for an example of what I remember, watch the third Indiana Jones movie. There's a scene where a little boat gets chopped up by the propeller of a big boat. That's just a little more severe than I remember.

We finally got out to where dad thought all the tasty crabs were and we tossed the crab pots over. Then we sat there. In the middle of the freaking bay. It didn't take long for someone to suggest we pull up the pots and check them, no doubt hoping that they would be teeming with tasty crustaceans and we could get the heck of the ocean and far away from any chance of ending up in Davey Jones Locker.

Dad agreed and started to pull up the pots. They didn't come up. They didn't even budge. They were stuck fast. Eric thought maybe we had caught too many crabs. I figured it was stuck in the mouth of a great white shark. Mom could see that we were in trouble and offered her best help in the form of ceaseless nagging.

I clearly remember dad saying, "I've got a $75 deposit on these shitty things and I'm not leaving them at the bottom of the ocean."

Dad had had enough and tied the line for the crab pot off on a cleat and fired up the engine. Once he had gotten the pull start to work he gunned that mother. The boat took off as it pulled the slack out of the line and then a terrible thing happened. The front of the boat lifted up out of the water. That's right. Our boat was doing a wheelie (not sure what the nautical term for that is). Now if you don't think this is scary, try to picure a nine foot boat with five people in it in single file front to back with the front end of the boat about three feet out of the water.

Mom screamed, "Oh God, Jack!"

He somehow had enough sense to let off the gas. At least I like to think that's what happened and not him letting go of the motor and grabbing hold of the sides for dear life. When the front of the boat splashed down something happened and the crab pot broke loose. We got the hell of the bay after that and it was one quiet trip home.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

2005-06-07T23:02:00.000-07:00

When I was in high school there was little that interested me. My parents worried terribly about this. Okay, mostly my mom worried about this. Dad on the other hand found something that would catch my interest and get me involved in a hobby. I started making my own "fireworks." Mostly these were short lengths of the cardboard tube from the coathangers used by dry cleaners combined with duct tape, cannon fuse and a nice high quality smokeless powder. The cannon fuse was purchased from gun shows, a ten dollar bill would buy 25 feet of it and it was waterproof. A good buy. The smokeless powder was a black powder substitute used in reloading ammunition and the brand we used was mainly Pyrodex.

We were also, for some ridiculous reason, left home without any supervision on a regular basis. One day Eric and I were home alone and we were asked by dad to keep the fire going. We let it go out as usual and then were trying to start it frantically before mom and dad got home so the house was warmed up. Eric, always the one possessed of an edgy inventiveness came up with an idea.

We both knew that pouring gas in the fireplace inside was a bad idea. But what about some Pyrodex? So we put in some kindling, wood and a liberal coating of gunpowder. It didn't work too well, but we eventually got the fire going. Mom came home and decided that she needed some groceries and headed to the store, Eric going with her. Since something really important like Voltron was on, I decided to stay home. Dad got home a few minutes after they left, walked in and asked, "who's been burning Pyrodex?"

Now Pyrodex makes a very distinctive odor when burned, as well as a fairly large volume of white smoke. The smell is a little like what you get from your standard Fourth of July smoke bomb and a boiled egg fart. If you have smelled it once, it's hard to miss it a second time.

Now I knew that the burning of Pyrodex without permission was strictly off limits and I didn't want to see anyone get in trouble. So I quickly answered, "Eric."

Dad says, "oh yeah?"

Then he walks over to the fireplace and sees the can of Pyrodex on the floor. That's right we were smart enough to keep the gunpowder real handy by leaving it very near the open flame. Dad picks it up, screws off the lid, and shakes in a little.

Shake. Poof!

Shake, shake. Poof, poof!

Shake, shake, shake. Poof, poof, poof!

Pour. Ka-FWOOOM!

From my vantage point in the recliner next to the fireplace I could easily watch the fire burn up the gunpowder, just like when Wiley Coyote makes a little trail of it. And I can tell you that stuff really will burn uphill. It's like magic.

Anyway, the can was about two-thirds full and it all burned in a fraction of a second. The can split down the side (it's made of hard plastic) and shot across the room and hit the wall on the other side of the living room. But neither of us knew that since the room (it's about 15 x 22) instantly filled with thick, white smoke from the ceiling down to about three feet off the floor.

June Kickoff

2005-06-01T10:41:00.000-07:00

To celebrate June's big holiday, Father's Day, I will be dedicating at least the majority of my posts to my Pa. The first one is going to be quick since I'm super busy at work. Without further ado, here we go.

It was probably the summer of 1989 or so. I think I had at least a learner's permit, but maybe a license, so it was either 89 or 90. Eric, Dad and I had gone over to Christmas Valley to shoot small animals along with dad's brother Raulle and our cousin Ryan who is Eric's age. That is to say that Raulle and Ryan went with us, not that we shot them along with small animals. We had pulled off China Hat Rd. outside of Bend and found a side road to drive down for a stop. We got to some shade and got out some drinks (the youngsters only had caffeine, while dad and Raulle were doing their best to support the descendants of Adolph Coors). Dad suddenly declared that he was in desperate need of some privacy so that he might liberate himself from the bondage of an oppressive lunch. He headed off over a little rise to take a dump. He was gone for about five minutes when we heard several shots from his direction. He had gone off with his (now Eric's) Ruger Single Six and we figured he had been accosted by some squirrels of obviously low moral fiber and was forced to defend himself.

In short order he appeared from over the rise with a big, dumb grin on his face. Eric was the first to ask if he had shot a squirrel. He replied that no, he had actually shot his own crap. He was now quite a bit closer and Eric, who has phenomenal vision, asked, "What the hell is that on your shoulder?!" Dad looks at his shoulder and, you guessed it, his lunch had decided that it was not so easily disposed of. He had crap on his shoulder, a little on his chest, and a glob in his hair.

Stay tuned all month for stories of Ted's dad.

Fun With Punctuation

2005-05-26T15:05:00.000-07:00

What if you put an apostrophe in Bars in the headline so it reads "Bar's"?

Headline.

The Times They Are A Chaaangin'

2005-05-23T12:41:00.000-07:00

So I was talking with Jake the other day and we were discussing our early childhoods. Mostly we were focusing on our fathers. I think it's safe to say that both our dads had a similar level of (or should I say lack of) impulse control.

We both remember vividly driving down the road with our dads (in seperate cars of course, since our dads have only met a time or two) in the very early eighties (both Jake and I were born in '74). No seat belts, windows down, speeding, kids goofing around on slippery vinyl seats. When we were talking about this, we both could remember a certain chain of events which happened with such frequency as to be considered a normal part of an afternoon drive. It went a little like this (told from Ted's point of view):

Driving down the road, Melissa up front minding her own business, Eric and Ted in the backseat doing everything they can to bother everyone. Mom was at home because she had a hard time putting up with Dad, Eric and me. We had stopped at some fast food place, usually Taco Bell, and ate the food on the way to wherever we were heading, usually either G.I. Joe's, Bi-Mart or Fred Meyer since my dad figured that anything that couldn't be bought at those three stores wasn't worth buying. Halfway home everyone was told to get their garbage from lunch and any other bits of trash together put it in the Taco Bell bag. Then dad would just pitch it out the window. If this was done after three in the afternoon, there was also at least one empty beer can in the bag. That's right, just throw your trash out the window. Who cares, it's just trash, is something I remember him saying. I also remember his reaction to Melissa coming home one day from third grade or so and saying that littering was wrong. It was something to the tune of, "not everything you learn in school is true."

I think today you would have people follow you home and yell at you to go back and pick up your trash. But that may not be true since my dad still pitches his trash out the window from time to time.

Author's Note: I would have included a link to Melissa's blog, but she never posts anything.

What You Do Not Smell Is Iocaine Powder

2005-05-11T14:18:00.000-07:00

So on Wednesday before we went to the hospital to pick our son up from the stork, Trisha and I went to the Elsinore to see The Princess Bride, one of her favorites. While watching it a thought occured to me - both Wesley and Forrest Gump are deeply in love with the same woman. Continuing on this train of thought, I started to wonder who would win in a battle between Forrest Gump and The Dread Pirate Roberts. I have a fairly good idea myself of who would emerge the victor to claim the hand of Ms. Jenny Buttercup, but I'd like to hear what other people think. I want a winner and your reasons. Now.

Go Suck It Sony

2005-05-10T09:49:00.000-07:00

Detatchable 20 gig hardrive. Three, count 'em three, 3.2 gig central processors. Wireless controller from the getgo. Looks like you loose, Playstation.

Read all about it here.

The name needs work, though.

I Am Amazing

2005-05-09T22:22:00.000-07:00

So, what do you do for the woman who has borne your children, listens while you talk, always looks beautiful, and never laughs at you when you're naked?

I'll tell you a question like that has made the blood of men run cold for centuries. Finer men than I have pondered this question for a lifetime and produced no fruit. Universities have dedicated entire departments to unlocking this mystery. Philosophers have gazed toward the heavens hoping for a sign. All have failed.

I have just this weekend broken the code, hacked the system, completed the puzzle, solved the mystery, answered that question.

You ready?

Here's what you do.

You buy her a cool new pair of Danskos.

Mr. Man and the Fairy Princess

2005-05-08T22:56:00.000-07:00

So Thursday morning Trisha and I went to the hospital. We came home today. Along with us came the newest addition to the list of reasons why I don't sleep worth a crap, all 8 pounds, 14 ounces, 21-1/2 inches of him. The balance of power has shifted. Now there are as many of them as there are of us. Check it out.

Funny Story About the Treefarmer

2005-05-04T16:33:00.000-07:00

Okay, so my friend Tyler is a tree farmer. He was working down by Alsea doing some fertilizing yesterday and got to the property line where the owner had erected a barbed wire fence consisting of about 8 strands and totaling a mighty four and a half feet in height. The most notable feature of the fence is that an elk had tried to jump the fence and didn't make it.

The elk had intead gotten his front leg caught in the fence. But that was not the end of his bad luck. It got worse when someone came along and shot him in the head and then gutted and quartered him and left with the edible parts. They left the leg, though.

So, stuck in this fence was an elk leg (drumstick?) cut off at the shoulder joint. Tyler said that the fence had cut down to the bone in a few places and the leg had been there for a while. That's right, there was a big, nasty elk leg just sticking up in the air like some UFO had nailed the elk with a disintegration ray. Fshhhhhhht! Nothing left but the leg.

A lot of people might not know this, but Tyler is possessed by an innate inquisitive nature which at times has been his undoing. Like this time.

Tyler went over to the leg and gave the hoof a bit of a poke with his finger. That was all it took. The pressure was released enough that the leg flipped around and hit him. In the face. With the nasty, meaty, gamey elk knuckle.

His brother, Nate, said, "dude, you got some....um, I don't think that's mud, dude."

This Post Will Not Apply To Everyone

2005-05-04T10:34:00.000-07:00

Hey, if you're one of those smart-asses who thinks that France is so swell and that America should be more like France, check this out.

A Big Shout Out To Tim, Eric, Gorillas, and Texas

2005-04-29T09:46:00.000-07:00

Thanks to both Tim and Eric for making me think of this story.

A good few years ago I was having to sit through a class. This is one of those classes that people have to take to maintain a professional license. You know, the kinds that count toward continuing education and cost several hundred bucks a pop so you wind up paying money to not work for a day and make no money. I wound up this time sitting next to some dude who used to live in Texas and had moved here after hurting himself on the job and thought he might like to be an appraiser. That actually is fairly common. For a long time there were a lot of ex-loggers in this business who couldn't lift anything heavy.

Anyway, for some reason I can't remember we were talking about zoos. Go figure. He said that in Texas about a three hour drive from his house a zoo got a gorilla in the mid-70s. It was the first zoo in some distance to have a gorilla and it was on the news and everything. He thought that being one of the first people in Texas to see this gorilla would be cool so he got in his van (I added that part since I like to think of everyone in the 70s driving vans that have fold out beds and Sammy Johns playing on the hi-fi 8-track) and headed for the zoo. He got there and made a bee-line for the gorilla exhibit and wound up standing in line for several hours.

Apparently they had the gorilla inside a building where there was a sort of moat (without water) and low fence between the gorilla and the feeble-minded humans. Since the gorilla was such a draw they really packed people into the gorilla viewing area, and this guy said that people were stuffed in so that he had people directly to his left, right, front, and back and he was touching all of them. Comfy. And he said it wasn't air-conditioned.

The people had been given very clear instructions not to take any flash pictures. Well, someone either didn't listen or acted like a Texan and did whatever the hell he wanted. The flash went off and Bobo (I named him for the purposes of this fine story) freaked. Big time.

He started running back and forth pounding his chest and making those gorilla noises. Then he got right to the edge of the moat reached out back and heaved a havana right into his hand and flung it out into the crowd.

The Texan who was telling me this story said that he could feel the whole crowd move back and forth and side to side very quickly and the only sound anyone made was the scuffling of sneakers on the concrete floor. Tension hung heavy in the air, stretching out what was only a fraction of a second into what seemed much, mcuh longer. Then a woman near the back screamed as she got a steaming banana daquiri hair treatment.

A Good Example Of Cultural Differences

2005-04-27T23:35:00.000-07:00

Read this.

Now, I'm not sure where this paper is based, but I'm guessing it's not this country since we don't use the term "bootnote." So now you've read how this man handled the situation, and undoubtedly his actions were based on his cultural biases and his upbrining. Here are a few thoughts I had while reading this, which assuredly have their roots in my upbrining and the culture where I live, a sunny place I like to refer to as Tedmerica.

1.) "It was about the size of my hand." In Tedmerica if there is a spider the size of your hand, you kill the damn thing with at least a hammer, or preferrably a gun. Remember, people look at crabs that size as a food item.

2.) "I went to try and pick it up and it bit me again." In Tedmerica we don't "try and" do anything. Sometimes we try to do something, but not very often as Tedmerica is very laid back.

3.) "I went to try and pick it up and it bit me again." In Tedmerica if a spider the size of your hand bites you, you never, ever try to pick it up. If a speeding Buick hits you on the street, do you try to jump into it again? If a grizzly bear hits you with his giant, claw-laden paw, do you try to hug him again? No, you darn well don't.

4.) "It landed in the freezer which stunned it." In Tedmerica there is no stun setting on anything used to deal with spiders the size of your hand.

5.) "Stevens then grabbed a quick pic on his mobe as a keepsake of the encounter." In Tedmerica if you have a phone, you throw it at the spider which is the size of your hand which just bit you. Twice.

6.) "Hospital staff had a shufti and sent Stevens on his way with a quick 'go home and keep an eye on it'." In Tedmerica we don't have shftis, dervishes, or anyone really who wears a turban. These people are trouble and in Tedmerica we're not afraid to say so.

7.) "Go home and keep an eye on it." In Tedmerica the response to this is (in a voice that sounds like a little girl who has skinned her knee), "blow it out your ass, doc! I'm dying here! Fix me!"

8.) "Stevens was discharged the next day." In Tedmerica this retard would not be allowed to leave the hospital. After watching Logan's Run repeatedly, our government decided that not everyone has earned the right to draw breath indefinitely.

For more information on the Brazilian Wandering Spider, including warnings about not keeping it as a pet, go here.

I Didn't Believe It Until I Actually Saw The Picture

2005-04-26T22:20:00.000-07:00

Amazing what you can do with a picture of a grizzly bear's head, a chimpanzee's body and a curled up chihuahua.

Check it out for yourself.

Maybe Uncle Rico and Deb Will Show Up For Series II

2005-04-23T10:52:00.000-07:00

McFarlaneToys has announced that they have acquired the license to produce some sweet toys based on one of my favorite flippin' movies, Napoleon Dynamite. They have announced a release date of October of this year. The first series will include Napoleon...Pedro...Kip.....lucky! Read the press release here. Hopefully McFarlane toys won't go with their customary habit of making their toys horrific, maggot-covered, blood-drenched mockeries of themselves.

Clarification For Response in Earlier Post

2005-04-19T21:41:00.000-07:00

In a response to an earlier post, Jason made reference to Mitch. I felt like writing a little bit about him to give some clarification to those who may not be familiar.

Right after high school, Jason's dad bought a house and rented it to Jason, Jake, and me. We decided that one of the best things to do was spend a ton of time being the biggest geeks you ever saw. In between watching TV, skipping class, and being skeptical about Jason's wild claims that this thing called the "internet" would be anything more than a way for Amiga users to share dirty pictures, we played a lot of D&D. Yeah, that's Dungeons and Dragon. Yes, I'm a geek. If you don't like it, go read another blog.

Anyway, Mike Thompson was sleeping on our couch a lot and he joined in with a lot more enthusiasm than any of us would have guessed. It was only a short time before his older brother, Josh, started showing up as well. Soon, Jake and Mike both went into the Marines, I moved out and, eventually, so did Jason. But the D&D kept going with different people moving in and out of the group. One of those to move through the group was Mitch. Mitch came, I think, as an acquaintence of Josh.

No matter how he got there, Mitch soon became the target of Josh. Josh was one of those people who needs someone to target with jokes or he feels that a little bit of himself is missing. Soon Mitch was only known as Mitchgay, a name that Josh came up with for him, and a name whose creativity Josh was quite proud of. It seemed like no time at all before everything that Mitchgay said forced Josh to mock it. Josh had no choice, he was helpless. It really didn't take Mitchgay too long to have enough.

After he left the group, calling someone Mitch or Mitchgay, was a sign that you had just said something of utmost stupidity. Josh one time said something stupid and either Gary Barker or Scott Bates said, "you're his name." This was considered by all to be a fairly creative way to say, "you're being Mitch." Josh immediately countered with, "you're his name, on a belt." We all busted up. There was no coming back from that.

When Jake and Mike came out of basic, Josh wanted to throw them a party, because the best way to show your younger brother that you're proud of him is to put him in a position which could lead to him being awarded the highly coveted Minor In Possession medal. Mitch's parents managed an apartment complex and he had access to the commons building, so that was a perfect place. I remember leaving the party with Jake shortly after it started. Most everyone else who was actually invited left within a few hours, leaving only a large group of people who showed up already well on their way to alcohol poisoning. Sometime after midnight Mitch decided that all these people needed to go. There was some sort of debate between Mitch and several large men. Mitch managed to get himself thrown through a sliding glass door.

Film Provokes Deep Contemplation

2005-04-18T13:13:00.000-07:00

Last night I borrowed The Bourne Identity from my brother. It's been a while since I'd seen it. In fact, I think the last time I saw it was in the theater. After we put The Fairy Princess to bed we started watching it. We got to the part where they are outrunning the French police in a clapped out Mini (you go France). At one point in the chase they drive the Mini through a plate glass window being carried across a sidewalk.

It was at this point that it occured to me that those in the glass industry must lead terribly exciting lives. These guys always seem to be in the middle of a car chase somewhere. The level of stress at this job must be off the charts, since you have to be holding the pane of glass just right so the car passes between you and your partner. I would expect that on life insurance actuarial tables these guys must be in the same category as owners of fruit carts and people who frequently eat at restaurants and choose outdoor seating, but at least one category below dentists.

But I also began to wonder if they become jaded to the excitement of their chosen trade and begin to seek thrills elsewhere. I can't imagine that this is not a problem at some level within the industry. I hope that the GCU (Glass Carriers Union) is sufficiently serving the needs of their membership.

You Have To Check These Guys Out

2005-04-05T09:46:00.000-07:00

Okay, I came across a new band that I'm becoming nuts about. They're a Portland band called Hillstomp and describe their music as Mississippi punk blues. Check out the samples from their album, one word. It's two guys, one plays guitar (slide mostly from the way it sounds) and sings using decades-old microphones for a real sound and the other guy plays "drums." Drums is in quotes since they are made from all kinds of things like plastic buckets, barbecue sauce cans, a Webber grill lid, cardboard boxes with all of them duct taped together. The result is music wich by their own description "will make you want to stomp your feet, shake your ass, and love your neighbor." The first two are right on, but until I quit digging up cat turds in my yard the jury is still out on that last one. I would die a happy man if these guys would do a cover of Zepplin's Bron-yr-aur Stomp from III. That would be cool. Anyway, if you don't check it out it's your loss. Lefty's plays their stuff between sets of other bands and they recently played there. They also play all over Portland, though they are apparently planning a larger tour. I hope they don't tour so they can just go record a new album.

This Just In

2005-04-05T07:25:00.000-07:00

Dit dit da da dit da dit da dit dit dit da dit da da da

Pope still dead. We will continue to monitor the situation and update you with any changes.

Matthew Dazzles All With Verbal Skills

2005-04-04T17:03:00.000-07:00

Thursday morning I was in a truck with three other guys for about five hours. Matthew was in the back seat and started eating cookies that Tyler's mom made. He got into the first one before we hit Stayton. By the time we got to Bend he had put down well over a dozen of them and possibly twice that many.

Apparently these cookies were very rich. As a result Matthew's tummy-tum revolted against its master. The result was a series of some of the worst farts I have ever smelled. These were real wallpaper peelers, people.

We were well past LaPine on Highway 31 nearing Summer Lake and Matthew rolled down his window and apologized. It seems that even he could not handle what he was producing by this time, as he had dumped several Cokes down on top of the cookies. As the window was going down he said, "sorry guys, I just took a fart."

Yeah. Took a fart. While I'm sure Matthew was not intentionally creating new uses for words, he subconciously perfectly described what he had done.

While most people can decribe their flatulent actions adequately by saying they "let" a fart, what Matthew was doing was so much more than just farting, but it was not quite crapping.

So in the future, dear readers, when you have a terrible problem and let loose and it is certainly more than a fart, but a little shy of a crap, feel free to use this new and exciting term.

I'm Really Not Quite Sure What To Say About This

2005-03-23T08:58:00.000-08:00

I can't believe that this is actually a contest. A contest that has "competitors" from across the nation. What's worse, as I was reading it I was thinking I had a pair of white Vans slip-ons between 8th and 9th grade that would have killed the competition and made me $600 richer.

Stank Foot

The Funny Thing I Saw Today

2005-03-16T10:54:00.000-08:00

So this morning I'm sitting in my truck letting it warm up a little while I ate my breakfast of organic animal cookies since the butter was all cold and rock hard and I didn't want to destroy an otherwise fine piece of toast trying to spread it. Yep, my usual breakfast is toast. Kiss my butt Dr. Atkins, and while you're back there you may want to notice that my colon is not impacted. In fact, the thing works like a charm. But I digress.

So as I'm sitting there I notice in my rearview mirror that across the street my neighbor, Rick, is walking his dog. Actually it looks like they're just getting back from their walk. Rick's dog is named Truckie and he is a large Airedale. Truckie is big for an Airedale, about the size of a healthy German Sheperd. Each morning Rick and Truckie go for a walk.

Rick's a good guy. He and his wife have lived in the house across the street from ours since they were married. Their kids are all adults now and they paid off their 30 year mortgage five years ago or more. Rick walks Truckie using a peice of rope that's about 25' long. This allows Truckie to actually be on the opposite side of the street from Rick occasionally, which makes for a pretty good show if you are trying to drive down the street. During the walk if Truckie drops his payload, Rick always picks it up using the hand-in-the-plastic-bag technique. Like I said, Rick's a good guy.

Well this morning as I watched them returning from their walk Truckie was jumping up and playing with Rick. Apparently Rick's new aftershave packs quite a punch because Truckie soon started doing more than just jumping up. Rick started pushing him away, but Truckie was now focused on one thing only - trying to hump his master.

Now where I come from, that is behavior that gets a dog labeled as "bad." Can even earn a dog a good hard kick in the ribs. But like I said, Rick's a good guy. He just kept pushing Truckie away. Truckie jumped up and gave Rick's arm a big "special" hug. This somehow got Rick a little off balance and he dropped the doodie-bag. Truckie was really going to town and didn't let go. Rick had to take a few steps to right himself, resulting in him stepping on the doodie-bag.

For some reason, if I'm not directly involved, I find dog crap funny. Wierd, huh?

Tardometer

2005-03-15T20:18:00.000-08:00

Today I was hitting the rattiest convenience store that is in the neighborhood of my office. I like it because when I buy a Coke there I tend to more often win a free liter of Coke product.

Anyway, as many of you know the weather around here has been awesome for March. Several days in the seventies and no rain anywhere. It also didn't rain in too much in February. Plus it hasn't frozen in a like a month. Hoodoo closed for the season a week ago and most of the other ski areas plan on closing this week or next. The freezing level has been over six thousand feet for all of March.

So I'm walking out of the nasty AMPM and there is some retard backing out and it sounds like he's driving on bubble wrap. Yep, this mouth-breather has studded tires. If it is seventy degrees outside and feels like May, perhaps you should take those studs off your car and cram them up your out-door and set fire to them so they make a black smokey mess in your BVDs.

As he backed out, in the background I could see the gas sign listing a gallon of gas at $2.119. It occured to me that a portion of that princely sum is dedicated to taxes which go to support projects whose purpose is to repair road damage resulting from half-wits driving around in the months after spring has sprung tearing apart our roads which were capped by the lowest bidder over the original road which was built by the lowest bidder. Gah! I attack, grab a 20-sided and prepare to defend yourself!

I honestly believe that not only should I be the only citizen allowed to own an RPG, I should be required by the government to use it with impunity. Oh, and I should have a dune buggy.

Have I Found It?

2005-03-15T12:47:00.000-08:00

Is it possible I've found the funniest blog and greatest time-waster all rolled into one? Check here and let me know.

Crime Doesn't Pay In Wenatchee, WA

2005-03-15T11:24:00.000-08:00

This weekend I went with my wife to Wenatchee, WA for her grandmother's 80th birthday. As part of the celebration people got up and shared memories about Valena. Trisha's Uncle Jim got up and told a story about how one time in the late sixties or early seventies Valena was cleaning up around the house and picked up his sweater. A little bag of what appeared at first to be oregano fell out of the pocket. Valena was no sucker and she knew right away it was the ganja. She was certain that her oldest son was hooked on the wacky tobacky so she took it along with him to the police station in Wenatchee. She marched him inside and they went to the front desk which was manned by an officer. She presented him with the bag of dope and reported that her son had been in possession of marijuana. The officer looked at the bag closely, plying years of crimefighting experience to the situation. He looked up at Valena and asked, "what is it?" She answers, "it's marijuana." He asks, "what's that?" She tell him it's a drug. He asks, "What is it again?" She says, "marijuana." He says, "never heard of it." She asks him what she should do now. He tells her he doesn't care. On the way home Jim asked if he could have his pot back. Valena threw it out the window into the cold, cold Wenatchee night.

Looks Like She Might Have A Chance

2005-03-15T11:09:00.000-08:00

Well, the Iditarod sled race is well under way. This year a young lady from Bend, OR has entered the race. Her name is Rachael Scdoris and what's special about her is that she is blind. Before the mushers took to the starting line all were ranked, like any athletic event. Scdoris was ranked 67th out of 68. How would you like to be the guy who is ranked behind the blind lady? What's wrong with him? Did he not get the rules and show up thinking that dogs would be provided and now he's just hoofing it? Who knows.

Now I don't want any blind people who may be reading this to get the wrong idea here, which you could do if you just took a cursory glance. If you read this I'm sure you will see that I'm trying to show everyone that even though blindness may look bad, it doesn't hold you back.

Does Their Evil Know No Bounds?

2005-03-10T07:24:00.000-08:00

Russel Crowe, Australia's Marlon Brando in the making, announced that in 2001 he was the target of an al-Qaeda kidnapping plot intended to destablilize America's culture. Ask yourself how America's could have gone on in the wake of September 11th if we hadn't had Russel Crowe to show us the way? What if he wasn't around to play in his "band" Thirty Odd Feet of Grunt? What if he wasn't there for us in films like Mystery, Alaska and Proof of Life, showing that he really is an irreplaceable part of American life. I'm glad that American tax dollars were spent protecting Mr. Crowe, and really all Americans. Attacking America's culture indeed. If that was their intent they should have bombed McDonalds, rigged the Super Bowl with explosives, or hidden all our TV remotes. If you give a crap you can read more here.

Taxes, Taxes, Bo Baxes

2005-03-08T22:33:00.000-08:00

Trisha and I just got our tax information back from our accountant and just like every year I have the same question.

Now I know that not everyone is in the same situation as me, tax-wise. I am self-employed, I own my home, and Trisha and I have been blessed with the opportunity to invest a little bit. As a result I don't prepare my own taxes.

Here's a few things some people might not know about being self-employed: 1.) you have to pay quarterlies. That means that four times a year I send off 1/4 of my estimated taxes for the year. It's usually somewhere between several hundred and a few thousand dollars each quarter to the Federal government and a couple hundred dollars to the state (yes, in Oregon we have state income tax). 2.) I have to pay the full amount for Social Security. If you are employed by someone else your employer pays the same amount to the federal government as you pay for Social Security. Depending on your point of view, I either pay twice as much as you or you pay half as much as me for Social Security. 3.) If you get a return and you are happy about it you are a first-class sucker. You are giving the government an interest-free loan. They are taking your money and giving you nothing in return. Places like H&R Block and computer programs like TurboTax use the absurd belief that everyone should get a return as a major marketing point. My accountant tries to get it to where I only have to pay a couple hundred dollars and that's fine with me.

Each year when I pay I wonder what would happen if the federal government did away with withholdings from employee paychecks. That means that each time you (who are not self-employed) get paid, you get all your money. You would keep the gross. Sounds good, doesn't it? You get all your money. You could live off what you live off of now and invest the remainder, or even put it in a savings account and make 2% interest and still be well ahead of what the government pays you in interest. Like the sound of this? But how would the government get their taxes, you ask. Well, on April 15th, everyone would be required to write one check for the full amount owed for a year's worth of taxes. Look at your W-9. It lists what you paid in taxes and Social Security for a year. What would you think if you had to write a check for that amount once a year? Would you begin to ask yourself what that money buys you? Would you begin to think that perhaps you're taking it in the shorts?

Now in America today we are notoriously bad at saving money. In fact, many (most?) Americans are upside down. They owe more money than they have, they have a negative net worth. Almost all mortgages anymore include pre-payment of property taxes in each mortgage payment you make, assuming that you cannot save enough to pay your property tax, forcing the state to sieze your home and taking all the security for the loan you were given. In my scenario it is likely that most Americans won't have the money at the end of the year. They would likely have spent it, along with additional money they put on a credit card in some cases. So what do they do with the bill from the IRS? Probably pay some lesser amount and get an extension. But how many people would flat out refuse to pay that much money? How many would say, no, that is a ridiculous sum and you are not entitled to that much of the money I worked hard to have, much harder than you worked, Uncle Sam?

Here's another thing this scenario would bring about: the government would have to manage its money. No longer would money come to them throughout the year. Instead they would get an entire year's worth of revenue in one day. That sum would then have to be managed effectively until next year. But what if the government had all the tax revenue for a year sitting somewhere? What would be the best way for that money to be held until, say, day 251 of that year when it was needed? Perhaps it should be invested in private markets. Perhaps it should be loaned to Americans. Perhaps it should be loaned to foreign governments for interest. Yes, I know they do that now, but on a much smaller scale than what I am picturing. What if the US used a portion of that money each year to buy gold. How long before the price of gold was in the stratosphere, and then the reserve of gold now held by the US could then be introduced back into circulation at a controlled rate.

Anyway, it's getting late for me. This is really just a dumb idea anyway. Almost as dumb as people who say things like, "I just did my taxes and I'm getting back more than I thought. Whooohoooooo!" Retards. These people probably ate cat turds when they were kids.

A Funny Thing Happened To Me At The Gun Show

2005-03-07T12:53:00.000-08:00

On Saturday I went to the Albany Gun Show. It's held at the National Guard Armory in Albany. It's a pretty good show, but small. Well, I had to use the facilities while I was there. This is usually something I try to avoid like physical labor, due to the fact that most gun shows have an abnormally large proportion of middle-aged and older men who have eaten a heavy breakfast and have been drinking coffee for hours and are now walking around. It's trouble with a capital T.

So anyway I had to go and there was no avoiding it. A piece of toast before leaving the house and a Coke and a Hostess Blackberry Fruit Pie on the way to the dump before meeting at Tyler's house to leave for the gun show does not a good combination make. I broke away from the group I was walking around with and went in.

To my surprise the can at the Albany Armory is well above average in both cleanliness and modern conveniences. I selected a comfortable stall and went about my business. Much to my chagrin, once I finished up I reached out to where there should have been an ample supply of pillowy soft toilet tissue only to have my hand come back with a full load of nuthin'. That's right, true believers, there was no paper at all.

Now trust me, I have already been admonished enough by my travelling companions for not checking before sitting down. But, as I told them, sometimes there's just not time to go taking a full survey, and this was one of those times. So anyone who wants to post some crap comment saying anything along the lines of "you should have checked for butt wipe first" can look forward to having their post deleted.

Back to the story, I was in some luck as the ass gasket I was sitting on was not the last one in the dispenser. I then went about the clean-up duties with that darn-near-wax-paper free cowboy hat, which did a surprisingly good job, considering the circumstances. It was at this point that things got weird.

I then heard a voice from the stall directly to my left saying, "excuse me." Well, at first I thought perhaps the man had broken some rule of bathroom etiquette that I missed during my near panic over the toilet paper situation and was now apologizing to all present. Alas, this was not the case. His voice came through the stall wall again, "excuse me, I think you're on my suspender." To my own embarrasment I was standing on this poor soul's wayward suspender which had somehow found its way under the stall wall and into my territory and then under my foot. I apologized and moved my foot. The suspender slid away back under the stall and was gone.

I do wonder what type of person allows his clothing to lay on the floor of a public restroom only to use said clothing again immediately. I would throw away anything of mine that touched the floor, excepting shoes, even if it meant leaving a public restroom with no pants.

I'm sure that we would have spent more time discussing this, but we were still very taken with the story of a guy who got his balls chewed off by a chimpanzee at a birthday party.

This Story Is Nuts

2005-03-04T12:30:00.000-08:00

Okay, here's a story that made me laugh all through lunch today with Eric and Matthew.

Here Lies Proof That The Next Star Wars Movie Will R-O-C-K!

2005-02-28T10:28:00.000-08:00

I was looking around on the internet this morning while waiting for some jackass to call me back. I came across irrefutable proof that the new Star Wars movie will totally rock and is not going to suck. Ready? Are you sure, because it will blow you mind. Here it is. Yep, Skeletor will be in the new Star Wars movie. What I am wondering now is if Anakin is really He-Man. Let's look at the facts, shall we?

He-Man's alter ego is named Prince Adam, Anakin's name is Anakin. Sounds pretty similar doesn't it?

He-Man has a magic sword. Anakin has a sword that is made out of a lazer. Almost creepy, isn't it. Read on.

Prince Adam has a cowardly tag-along named Cringer. Anakin has a cowardly tag-along named C-3PO. Can you barely believe it? Just wait.

He-Man has Orko, Anakin has Jar-Jar. Stupid is as stupid does.

He-Man scores with Teela. Anakin bags Amidala. You're right, neither one of them is Princess Leia in her Jabba's Palace outfit.

He-Man is a cartoon. Anakin acts worse than a cartoon. See?

He-Man can pick up heavy things. Anakin can lift heavy things with the force. But can either of them lift the sagging thing that is the Star Wars franchise? We shall see. We shall see.

He-Man rides Battle Cat. Anakin rode that buffalo-lizard in Episode II. The resemblance is uncanny, isn't it?

There you have it, undeniable proof that Anakin and He-Man are the same person. I can now hardly wait to see just how they will reveal this new information in the movie. It is gonna be so cool to hear Anakin mutter in his deadpan delivery, "I have the power!" Maybe he can do it while using his angry/conflicted/scary face that he uses in almost every scene where he is supposed to be "acting." Ooooooh. Chills, baby, chills.

Helipopper

2005-02-23T16:33:00.000-08:00

Didn't General Electric's slogan used to be "we bring good things to life" or something like that?

Did they have something like this in mind?

(In light of a few previous topics, I would like to take the opportunity to say that the above link does not include anything unsavory in nature)

Who wants Spam?

2005-02-23T16:13:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the slow down in posts, I've been a little under the weather.

In my bulk mailbox today I got a message that said only "Big Meaty Sausage Special." I can think of no less than four different things that might be for sale, and I want none of them. But the subject line did make me laugh. Is there some type of sausage that is not meaty? Is a butcher somehow involved? Would you buy pork products online? Is it some sort of train (I took the Big Meaty Sausage Special redeye to Cleveland). Wait, that parenthetical phrase I stuck in there sounds even worse than the original subject line.

Why in the world can't a guy use the freaking internet in peace?

Creepy Little Bastards

2005-02-17T00:19:00.000-08:00

I read this in the paper yesterday. Apparently some dude wanted to see how much punishment a cockroach can take. Maybe we need a new superhero called like Roachguy or something. Here's what he tried.

EXPOSE TO VACUUM : Roach agitates violently as the air is removed, then is still. Vacuum is applied for 10 minutes. Upon return of the air, roach comes slowly back to life, appearing normal after 2 minutes.

DUNK IN WATER: After 10-minute submersion, roach revives. No max dunk time yet established.

DUNK IN HYDROCHLORIC ACID: Dies in 30 seconds.

APPLY AIR PRESSURE OF 20 ATMOSPHERES (300 POUNDS PER SQUARE INCH!): No visible effect.

FREEZE IN LIQUID NITROGEN: The roach chills out for good. Minimum survivable temperature yet undetermined.

PLACE IN 100-DEGREE CELSIUS (212 F.) OVEN: Takes a while, but then its goose is cooked.
MICROWAVE: No effect after 1 minute.

EXPLOSION: Roach barely 1 centimeter away from an exploding M-80 survives.

RADIATION: Roach unfazed by prolonged exposure to X-ray beam from 40 kW rotating anode source; human flesh so exposed is completely inviable after 1 second.

CRUSH BETWEEN SHOE AND FLOOR: About 29 N (6.5 pounds) of force is required to squash the exoskeleton, known scientifically as the "crush point."

Amazing that man discovered the most effective way to kill these things long before we invented microwaves or x-ray machines or discovered a way to obtain liquid nitrogen, isn't it?

Coming Attractions

2005-02-16T22:57:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday Disney is releasing Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. This is the first anime created by Hiyao Miazaki. I first saw parts of it in the 80s when we would rent the VHS tape of Warriors on the Wind from Atkins Thirftway in Aumsville. This was a version of Nausicaa that had over twenty minutes chopped off of it and resulted in Hayao Miyzaki swearing off American distribution of his films until the mid-90s when Disney promised to release them uncut and with good dubbing.

Even though it's restored to the original 117 minutes, the film version is only about a third of the total story from Miazaki's manga, Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind. I have all four volumes of the Perfect Collection version and it is incredible. I tend to avoid most japanese animation and comics which seem to be either outlandishly vulgar or just too wierd. The first two thirds of the story is really good, but then it just turns into a "man is bad because he has hurt the earth" message that is really fairly heavy handed. But the art is amazing, though black and white manga isn't for everyone, I know.

Anyway, I'll be spending a little of the birthday scratch I got yesterday on this and anyone who wants can borrow it after I've watched it a few times.

Apparently Hollywood Hates Me

2005-02-16T16:26:00.000-08:00

There's a movie I like. It's not a great movie. Heck you could make an argument that it's not even a good movie. It's called Vanishing Point.

The story is about Kowalski, the last free man on Earth. Now Kowalski, we discover through a lot of flash backs, is an ex-cop, ex-racecar driver, ex-motocross racer, ex-medal of honor recipient and is fairly smoothe with the ladies. But he's fallen on hard time. So he takes a job driving a stolen 1971 Dodge Challenger from Denver, Co to San Francisco, CA in a matter of hours. How does he achieve this, you ask? Well, that's simple. He gets himself way messed up on meth and drives with the tach on five grand the whole way. Along the way he meets a ton of weird people, gets into a lot of races and also attracts the attention of the police, oddly enough. He eventually is aided by a blind DJ who broadcasts where the cops are over the FM radio waves. In the end Kowalski and the Challenger bite the dust. This movie is 70's existential road-trip at its best and is in my opinion better by far than Easy Rider which seems to get all the credit in this genre.

Now here's the problem. Here we have a direct to video remake starring Aragorn and one of those Nancy-boys from 90210. "The speed limit is floorboard?" Good grief. I just don't even know what to say except, "why? Why Hollywood? Why do you hate me?"

Dog Lovers May Want to Avoid This One

2005-02-15T12:55:00.000-08:00

I was thinking a few days ago about this story my cousin Ryan told me some years ago.

Ryan lives in Lebanon and when he was in high school he worked for a short time for this old guy who did landscape work. They would go around in this old beat-up pick-up with a small riding lawnmower in the back. Most of their customers were senior citizens who could no longer take care of their own lawns as easily as they once were able to.

One day my cousin and his boss found themselves at this old lady's house. We'll call her Hazel. Hazel had a small dog. As my cousin and his boss were working, the dog would come out and bark at them, especially when the lawnmower was running.

They were about halfway done when the dog started making high-speed bark strafing runs at the lawnmower. The boss made a turn and the dog did not anticipate the change in lawnmower trajectory. There was a collision.

The boss felt a light bump and heard the engine cough slightly. He stopped and looked behind him expecting to see a high area that had been chopped down to the dirt or some such thing. What he saw was a small dog that looked like Chef Tony had taken after him in a drunken rage.

The bossman did what any reasonable sixty year old man from Lebanon, OR would do. He walked over to the pick-up, got a piece of 2x4 out and bashed the dog's head in. Then he took the dog and tossed it in the back of his truck. He walks over to my cousin and says matter-of-factly, "hey, I just killed her dog. I have to go dump it in a ditch. You finish up here. I shouldn't be long."

The truck was just pulling out of the driveway when Hazel came outside. She tells my cousin, "I just thought I would tell you to be careful of my dog, he likes to bark at lawnmowers."

My cousin is apparently not a fast thinking man. He told Hazel, "we know, my boss just hit him with the lawnmower. "

"Oh no," gasped Hazel.

Now my cousin's brain actually kicked into gear, but it was really a case of too little too late. "My boss is taking him to a vet," he lied, hoping to ease Hazel's obvious concern.

"Oh, which one, I should be there for Peaches." Doh! Busted! Caught in a lie, my cousin tried his best to get out.

"Um, I wouldn't worry about that. I don't think he's going to make it." Ryan was apparently trying to let her down easy.

Hazel went back inside. Ryan finished mowing the lawn and his boss pulled up just as he completed the last pass. They loaded up their equipment and left.

The moral of this story is, no matter how bad you think your job sucks, I'll bet you never killed a dog while you were on the clock.

Gemmell pt. V

2005-02-13T22:58:00.000-08:00

Whew! Just finished Waylander this afternoon. Gemmell wrote this after Quest for Lost Heroes. I have two copies which use a different font, but they’re both right around 320 pages.

Of all Gemmell’s books, I would say that Waylander is the most character driven, with the main character being, of course, Waylander, the Prince of Slayers. You could call Waylander an assassin, but that just wouldn’t do him justice. This guy has the badass factor kicked up to an easy 12 on a scale of 10. But don’t worry, Gemmell doesn’t take his character into Punisher/Wolverine/Dirty Harry territory with the anti-hero crap.

Waylander starts off several hundred years before the events in Legend and opens with a source priest being tortured. The men torturing him happen to have made one very bad mistake, they also stole Waylander’s horse, an offense which according to the law of Waylander is punishable by death. After wiping out the bad guys, Waylander, against his better judgment, frees the priest and stitches his wounds. Thus kicks off the first sixty or seventy pages which are filled with the priest and Waylander having conversations about religion, faith, the merits of mercy and a few other topics. These conversations are really debates bordering on outright arguments.

The Drenai are currently near destruction at the hands of the Vagrians, a people based somewhat on the Persians. The king of the Drenai has been killed by an assassin and there are only two leaders left: Egel, a general who is trapped in Skultik forest and Karnak, another general who is not only out to beat the Vagrians, but to also become the leader of the Drenai once that is done. The man who killed the king is Waylander and the person who hired him, Kaem the Cruel, general of the Vagrians, double crossed him. Now he is being hunted by the Dark Brotherhood, a fraternity of evil warrior priests as well as the entire Drenai army. Waylander is on the run and completely ashamed of what he has done.

The character of Waylander is a little different than the conventional one man army anti-hero character. We have the usual guy-who’s-family-gets-destroyed-so-he-kills-everyone story. What’s different is that all happened long before the story starts, not at the beginning of the story as usual. Early in this story Waylander shows mercy to a person in need and that one act changes him profoundly. Initially Waylander thinks this makes him weaker, and in a sense it does, but he eventually finds it makes him better.

In contrast, the priest he helps and who inadvertently changes Waylander, Dardalion, finds himself also changed and he spends much of the book questioning how he and his actions will be accepted by his god upon his death.

There are also the myriad secondary characters in this book, and a recurring theme among them is the question of whether one good deed can outweigh a lifetime of evil and redeem the sinner. Gemmell also spends a fair amount of time on the question of just what is a miracle.

All this is set against the backdrop of ruthless violence, acts of heroic bravery that make The Princess Bride look as dull as someone else’s high school yearbook, and another Gemmell signature siege.

Most Gemmell books are pushed along by the action. Waylander is pushed along by the characters. But Legend was moved by both.

A plus is that as far as I know Waylander has never been published with a crappy Royo painting on the cover.

I Know That This Will Never Happen

2005-02-11T23:34:00.000-08:00

So back August my neighbor Nicholas bought a new house, some of you may know it as the old yellow house across State St. from The Dragonfly Cafe. When he moved we were pretty bummed because he was a really good neighbor. Never any problems, we got along with him to the point where we call him our friend, and we could count on him to always show up when we were working on some project or to offer to watch our house when he knew we'd be gone for a while. He didn't sell his house though.

Instead he is renting it out. Several years ago he finished off the upstairs and made a seperate unit out of it and has been renting it since. Now he has a family of sorts renting the downstairs. The original rental agreement he had with them was that the people renting it were to be an 18 year old girl and her mom. The mom is considered disabled by both the State of Oregon and the Social Security Administration due to some mental deficiency. The daughter was about six months pregnant at the time. Both the mother and the daughter accept assistance from both the state and federal governments. Oregon's welfare department sees them as two adults and they recieve full benefits. The mom gets disability from Social Security and the daughter recieves a stipend as she is the mom's caregiver. The daughter's boyfriend was never on the rental agreement and Nicholas told them he wasn't comfortable with him being there mostly because he didn't want people living there who weren't on the agreement and didn't have any financial reason not to wreck the place. After about two months of the boyfriend staying there every night, Nicholas added him to the agreement. The girl had her baby sometime around Thanksgiving, so now there are three adults recieving aid as well as an infant.

Now you have a rough idea of the situation. Here's my problem: none of these people work. They sit in front of their TV from about 10:00 in the morning until sometimes as late as 3:00 the next morning. Even though it is starting to sound like I'm some sort of self-appointed neighborhood monitor, I am not. I have a two year old daughter who's only fault is her inability to sleep through the night and I am often awake sometime between 2:00 am and 5:00 am several times a week. Putting her back in bed often takes me past at least one window that faces their house. It's not hard to tell when the TV is on as they are "why turn on the lights, the TV makes plenty of light" people. Both the 18 year old and her boyfriend are perfectly capable of working. He says he would like to work as a mural painter for residential projects, like painting a kid's room. The problem with that is people always want licensed characters and then he would have to pay licensing fees, so there's no money in it. The mom who is supposedly disabled is, as close as I can tell, merely odd. She walks, talks, smokes, collects pet cats just as well as anyone else I know. She just has an odd habit of staring at you. A lot. I am not kidding at all here, these people do nothing. One thing they are extremely capable of is consuming. They get more than one delivery from Colortime per month. If you don't know what that is, it's a place that rents furniture and home electronics. They have food delivered something like two to five times a week from restaurants. I know this because they tell the delivery guy to just use the driveway next door (mine) when they drop it off. They have no car, so a taxi pulls into my driveway and honks one or two times a week.

What I think will never happen is this: I would really like to see the State of Oregon mandate that anyone who recieves any type of assistance be required to successfully complete a personal finance course. I'm not looking for people to learn global macroeconomics, just have someone show them that when you rent a TV for a year, you have spent more than three TVs would have cost had you purchased them outright. Or they could show them the benefits of opening and maintaining a savings account. It really bothers me that someone can be given what is basically free money and there is no accountability as to how it is handled. I have to be careful with my money because it is finite. I choose to be careful with my money because I know what it takes for me to get more. Perhaps in the process some of the people would discover that in this country a little bit of knowledge combined with even the crummiest of work ethics can take you farther than accepting hand outs (or hand ups or whatever they call them) ever could.

Hunh, this really sounds like some sort of whiny rant.

What Is That Husky Silence I Feel?

2005-02-09T09:27:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I was goofing around on the internet and came across a ninja site (be sure to take the ninja test and also look at all the ninja lessons and ninja vs. stuff). Now of course this one was done with tongue firmly planted in cheek, but as a kid I was so into ninjas it was ridiculous. I mean, I didn’t just think, “ninjas are so cool.” No, it went way farther than that.

One of my earliest ninja memories was getting into a heated debate with Stevie Carpentier over which throwing stars were actually dangerous and which ones were for phony ninjas. I was a staunch supporter at the time that the only throwing star that could kill a man was the moon star. Stevie agreed, but also believed that other types, given proper placement and enough force could take a man’s life. Yeah maybe, I’d argued, but could it kill him silently?

Blowguns were another item from the ninja arsenal that we as kids spent a lot of time familiarizing ourselves with. We were pretty sure that you could silently kill a man using it if you got him in either the eye or the heart. Just how exactly you were going to produce enough thrust to punch a dart into someone’s pericardium, I’m not quite sure. One time my dad mentioned in passing that if you put a dart into a head of garlic anything that got hit with it would develop gangrene. Why an adult would mention something like this totally off the cuff to a pubescent boy who had access to blowguns, darts and garlic is something you will only understand if you know my dad. Not surprisingly, we tried it and in fact the blowgun dart that Bryan Smith hit me with had been stuck in a head of garlic. I managed to pull through without developing gangrene, undoubtedly the result of my ninja healing factor.

Another ninja goodie that we learned to use, some more adeptly than others, was the butterfly knife. We’d buy these things at gun shows, usually from white supremacists who would cut you a deal if you were a white kid and would take some of their literature. I’m not trying to brag, but to this day I can pick up a butterfly knife and do some fairly cool stuff.

Another essential item in any ninja’s arsenal was the nunchaku, commonly referred to as “numchucks” here in the States. I got somewhat familiar with the use of these things. Not wanting to look like a nancy-boy I skipped the step where you learn the basic moves using those foam rubber ones. No sir, I got a cool pair from some dude at a gun show that were wooden with a ball bearing chain. I’m of the opinion that if you nail yourself in the head with a good heavy pair of wooden ones you’ll learn soon enough. I still have them and can do some show-offy stuff, but I was never a real master at using them.

One thing a ninja needs is a good ninja suit. Notice I used suit, not “costume” as my mom repeatedly referred to it. I ordered mine out of Ninja magazine. It came with everything you needed – pants, shirt, mask, hood, gauntlets, tabi socks and tabi boots. What was so remarkable about this is that at the time I was often referred to by my mom and grandma as “husky,” and I really marvel now that I was able to order one in my size. I do remember, however, that the pants didn’t ride as high as I would have liked and as a result I was one of the few ninja in Turner, Oregon running around with my pasty white ass hanging out of my midnight black ninja suit. But hey, with all the ninjas running around a fella had to have some sort of trademark to set himself apart from the pack. This suit saw far more duty while I was TPing someone’s house than on any assassination missions.

The bo staff is a weapon that it really pays off to be good at, mostly because a rudimentary bo could be fashioned out of just about anything. We used shovel handles, tree limbs, car antennas, a broom, even a toilet plunger at one point, though that would really be more of a jo staff.

There were a few things I never got my hands on. I never got even one, let alone a pair, of kama knives. I never got a kusari-gama. Worst of all I never got the holy grail of assassin equipment, the ninja sword. There was one I had my eye on, though. It was offered through the fine folks at Sportsman’s Guide at the time, the catalog where you could buy legitimate, albeit cheap-ass, hunting and outdoor equipment along with things like dart guns (I got one and was supremely disappointed in its performance), butterfly knives, jerky making supplies, ninja equipment, and this weird spherical crystal that you rub in your armpits to eliminate B.O. without the use of deodorant. Anyway, this sword appeared to be your average, run of the mill, mild mannered ninja sword when subjected to a cursory glance, but upon closer scrutiny its true beauty became obvious, for one who knew what to look for, anyway. The tsuba, or handguard for you gai-gin out there, separated and became a moon-star. There was a dagger hidden near the end of the sheath, a secret compartment in the handle and the scabbard. If I remember, hidden in a few other places were “throwing darts” which is ninja-speak for needle-sharp pieces of cheap spring steel. As I’m sure you have figured out by now, a tetanus shot was mandatory for any young man wishing to pursue a career in the arts of ninjutsu.

Another indispensable piece of equipment from the ninja’s toolbox was Ninja magazine. I don’t know where other ninjas bought theirs, but mine came from the magazine rack at Atkin’s Thriftway in Aumsville. Ah, but weren’t those heady days. Ninja magazine had articles on the black arts of instant death, which was a discipline which taught a man, or eleven year old boy, how to kill a man with one well placed strike. There were also articles on how to move around completely unnoticed, whether in broad daylight or cloaked by the ninja’s only true companion, the darkness of night. Mostly though, Ninja magazine was a delivery system for companies which would sell dangerous objects to males not yet able to drive, unless of course they lived in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, or California. God only knows what young boys in those states did to pass the time between the ages of nine and fifteen.

No ninja could call himself so without having spent a large amount of time studying under the tutelage of a master, and I was no different. I spent some time in the early eighties studying under Lee Van Cleef by watching the TV series “The Master.” But soon I grew too powerful and sought a new master, one more powerful. I found this master in the man known as Sho Kosugi. I watched every Sho Kosugi movie I could get my hands on at Stayton Video, American Family Video and later Spotlight Video who were the first ones to go completely crazy and let you keep the movie for two whole nights. Oh, and that guy who claimed to be Sho Kosugi on an episode of The Master who got his ass handed to him by fat old Lee Van Cleef must have been some other Sho Kosugi.

But it seems that this blog is dragging on so I will end it now. I leave you with this warning, if you happen to find yourself alone at night and you hear a noise, don’t look for me in my ass-baring ninja suit. I don’t make noise. Not a single husky noise.

Gemmel pt IV

2005-02-07T22:44:00.000-08:00

So last Wednesday I finished Quest for Lost Heroes, Gemmell’s third Drenai book. Gemmell wrote it in 1987 and its 304 pages.

Quest for Lost Heroes takes place some decades (at least three) after the events in King Beyond the Gate. The Nadir have swarmed over the Drenai and their neighboring nations. The known world is now under the control of these savage people as a result of the leadership of the now late Tenaka Kahn. During his conquest of the civilized nations, he suffered only one defeat – The Battle of Bel-Azar, where four heroes held off his entire army from a little tower in a lonely outpost at the far reaches of the Gothir nation. Gothir is located to the northwest of Drenai and seems to be based on archetypes from both pre-renaissance Italy and Medieval Russia. Like most other nations, Gothir is allowed to keep most of its infrastructure as well as a puppet monarchy while it is occupied by the Nadir.

The story centers on a young Gothir villager named Kiall whose village was raided by slavers. They took only the women, and among them was Ravenna the pig breeder’s daughter, Kiall’s love. Kiall is the only villager who seeks to rescue the stolen women. Shortly after he begins his quest to rescue the girl, Kiall manages to gain the aid of Chaeros the Blademaster, one of the heroes of Bel-Azar. With the help of Chaeros Kiall’s quest seems not so daunting. Soon after this, Chaeros is reunited with Beltzer the Axeman and the archers Finn and Magrigg. The four heroes of Bel-Azar are once again side-by-side and Kiall’s quest is certain to succeed.

But there has been much time since the battle of Bel-Azar. Chaeros seems as dangerous as ever, though he is haunted by why he went to Bel-Azar and the failure of that quest. Beltzer is the most scarred from the battle. He is constantly haunted by his lost glory. The songs sing of the golden-haired hero Axeman, but in reality he is drunk, fat, smells bad, and has a personality that is even more repulsive than any assault on the senses his body produces. He is also the most pitiful, and perhaps heroic of all the characters in the book. The archers Finn and Magrigg have taken to the mountains to live as hermits, hating civilization more and more as time goes on.

Now like most of Gemmell’s books, this one has a plot that follows some really stale clichés in fantasy. In this one we have a young man dashing off to save his beloved from the men who stole her to sell as a slave. Gemmell takes this and makes it slightly more realistic. So guess what? It turns out that Ravenna doesn’t love Kiall. Later when the heroes travel to Kiall’s village they find out that the villagers who have been left behind are not at all anxious to have the women back.

The heroes of Bel-Azar are portrayed as more than just a little world-weary and are sharply contrasted by Kiall, who is a daydreaming, innocent romantic. While the cynicism of the older heroes never seems to wear off on Kiall, his naïve idealism seems to bring them closer to his level.

This one has seemed the most tragic of the Drenai books to me. I don’t think it has that much higher a main character body count than any other Gemmell book, but those who do meet an untimely (or are they perfectly timed?) death seem to be much more of a loss, perhaps because they all die in the service of their brothers. But not all is bleak at the end, as two characters find what appears to be love. Also, the very end of the book has the start of a new chapter of the Drenai that is absolutely begging, no screaming, to be told. Perhaps when Gemmell finishes his next two books (said to be a two book run of historical fiction set in either ancient Rome or Greece) he’ll take up this story.

Oh, and once again we have another crappy Royo cover. Bleh.

Time for Some Input

2005-02-05T23:20:00.000-08:00

I was talking with Trisha earlier today about our soon to be born son. I was saying that I'm going to have to get some movies for him to watch between the ages of six and twelve. Here's the ones I really liked:

Star Wars - how could any list not have this. I remember my dad taking me to the first one when it was re-released right before Empire came out. I would be a total liar if I said that these did not have a huge impact on me in regard to what I find interesting even today.

Dark Crystal - It's been a while since I've watched this one, but I remember seeing it as a kid and being completely blown away, even though one of the main characters was a smelly old girl.

The Neverending Story - Even though I make a lot of jokes about this one, I really liked it the first time I saw it. But I do remember vividly just wishing they could have left out the whole part about the kid reading the book in the real world. The "person from our world being magically transported into a fantasy world" theme shows up way too much.

Labyrinth - Am I the only one a little disappointed that Jim Henson's Monster Factory only made two real movies?

E.T. - I remember seeing this one with the whole family in the theater and on the way home Eric theorized that E.T. was made out of dog crap because he turned white when he was left outside too long.

Princess Bride - One of Rob Reiner's two movies on this list.

Scarface - Just kidding.

Stand By Me - This is Rob Reiner's other movie. I will say that I don't think this one should be seen until at least 12 years old.

Sinbad - He's so funny. Yeah right. There's three of them plus Jason and the Argonauts and from the time I was five until today I think I've seen each of them around thirty times.

Godzilla - There used to be this thing on Channel 2, I think, called Monster Theater on Saturday afternoons. They would run all kinds of stuff, like Them!, Tarantula, Creature From the Black Lagoon, It Came From Beneath the Sea, King Kong, etc. Every other week just about they would run an old Toho studios rubber-suit classic Godzilla. I think it's probably one of the things that has lead to such good relations between the United States and Japan. We all love/fear Godzilla.

So I'm sure I've left off quite a few, but what movies did you dig on when between your sixth and twelfth birthdays?

Gemmell pt. 3

2005-02-05T23:15:00.000-08:00

I finished the third Drenai book, King Beyond the Gate, before I even began writing this series of posts. King Beyond the Gate was written shortly after Gemmell finished Legend and it’s right at 300 pages.

King Beyond the Gate opens roughly a century after the events in Legend and focuses on the character of Tenaka Kahn, the half-Drenai/half-Nadir grandson of both Regnak and Ulric, making him the rightful heir of the leadership among both the Drenai and the Nadir. Growing up, Tenaka was shunned by both races for being a half-breed. He was sent away from the Nadir to live among the Drenai in his teenage years and was awarded a position among the Dragon, an elite military unit of the Drenai. Among the Nadir and the Drenai, Tenaka had few friends at best, but he rose up through the ranks of the Dragon based on his abilities as a warrior and a general. The Dragon vanquished most of the enemies of the Drenai and a time of peace was known. It was during this time that Ceska came to sit on the throne of the Drenai. Eventually he disbanded the Dragon.

Shortly after the Dragon was scattered, Ceska’s true character began to show itself. He proved in short time to be a tyrannical leader and an evil man. Word spread among the members of the Dragon that they would overthrow Ceska. It was a man named Baris and Tenaka who convinced the members to stand down earlier when the Dragon was disbanded. Now it was Baris who lead the Dragon against Ceska. Tenaka refused the call, living as a rich mercenary general in neighboring Ventria. The Dragon was destroyed by Ceska and his new elites, the Joinings. Joinings are half-man half-beast hulks created by Ceska using technology left behind by an elder race. The Dragon is wiped out almost completely with only one survivor, Ananais.

Hearing the fate of the Dragon only weeks after the death of his wife, Tenaka swears vengeance on Ceska for destroying the only family he had left. Knowing that he will not survive the task he has placed before himself, Tenaka sets out to assassinate Ceska. This is where the book opens.

Like Legend, KBtG is the story of a group of men attempting an impossible task which is agreed by all involved to fail, but since it is necessary for the task to succeed if good is to triumph, these men will take their best shot. KBtG’s central themes are duty to friends and the increase in the value of life when love is introduced.

I have read this book only once before. The first time I had a much lower impression of it, though I will say that this book has the weakest narrative of the Drenai books I’ve read and has a lot in common with Gemmell’s later Rigante series in this way. I was impressed during this reading with the side characters that Gemmell introduces into Tenaka’s quest. They are entertaining to say the least.

More than any other book in the Drenai series, save Waylander, this book spends much time on debates between characters as to the existence of a God and to what extent his involvement plays a part in the toils of man. This centers mostly around the character of Decado, the Ice Killer and his abbot. Decado is a former member of the Dragon and one of the few who, like Tanaka, did not answer the call to ride against Ceska. He had foresworn his previous life as a fighter to be a monk. The monastery he chose, however, was the one occupied by the current order of the Thirty, the spiritual warrior monks from Legend. Decado’s abilities only manifest themselves when he is in battle, making him nigh-unbeatable in combat, but a poor member of the Thirty, whose main assets to the battles they take part in are their abilities while not in battle (i.e. their powers of healing, their ability to travel outside their body as well as into other realms, and their power to speak telepathically over great distances). The fact that the blessings bestowed upon him by God only appear when he is taking life makes him question his faith almost constantly.

Had you asked me which Drenai book was my least favorite two weeks ago, I’d have said King Beyond the Gate. Now that I have read it a second time, I’m not so sure. Also of note is another crappy Luis Royo cover that makes no sense. I cant even figure out who some of the people on the cover are. I’m starting to wonder if anyone even gave this poor guy a copy of the book before he started painting.

Totally creeped out here

2005-02-04T13:50:00.000-08:00

Okay I found a website that supposedly tells your fortune. It says it's different for everyone so I tried it. It's like creepy accurate. I went back three times and got the same fortune, so I figured that it had set a cookie on some random fortune that by coincidence was accurate for me. To test this I had my mom come over to my computer (she works in the same office) and just had her click on the link to the fortune and hers was completely different. I hit the back button and then clicked it myself and got my original fortune. We answered no questions or anything. Just clicked on the link. I had three other people try it and everyone got a different fortune. Before the last two people tried it I deleted all my cookies and internet files. They still got different fortunes, which according to them were accurate. After they clicked on the link and got a total of four fortunes for different people I followed the link one last time and it came up with my fortune again. I am totally wierded out by this because I don't know how it can be different for everyone, but not just a random thing. You guys try it and tell me what you get. Here's the link.

Legend

2005-02-02T14:17:00.000-08:00

Here’s part two of my posts on David Gemmell’s Drenai books, and it will focus on Legend. Legend was originally published in 1984 and has remained in print since. It was David Gemmell’s first book in the Drenai series as well as his first published novel. It dials in at 345 pages.
Legend focuses on two main characters, Regnak and Druss, the captain of the Ax. There are also a slew of secondary characters which are fleshed out more than the main characters of many books. The story follows Regnak as he makes his journey from cowardly deserter to general of an entire army. During this, Druss makes a journey of his own to a battle that can’t be won for no other reason than to die. The battle is fought from the ramparts of Dros Delnoch, the greatest fortress ever built, against a horde of uncountable Nadir.
The story begins with Regnak leaving a small inn planning to get as far away from Dros Delnoch and the inevitable battle with the Nadir. He is by his own admission a coward. He believes that the day of the Drenai is over and that the age of the Nadir has dawned. The Drenai nation finds itself in this position due to complacency borne of their over-confidence of their own greatness. Most Drenai see the coming battle with the Nadir as the last entry in the history of their nation.
This last entry is to be written from the walls of Dros Delnoch, undoubtedly based on the fortresses of Tolkien’s world. The Dros is made up of six walls built across a narrow pass leading into the lands of the Drenai. Wall one is the widest spanning the entrance to the pass. Wall two is some hundred yards behind wall one and considerably narrower, due to the narrowing of the pass. The walls continue like this until they reach wall six which only some hundred feet long. From the attacking side the walls are one hundred feet tall, but from the ramparts to the ground on the defenders side is only six feet. All the walls are constructed this way forming a sort of staircase where the enemy must buy each step with their lives.
The Drenai have not been challenged in over a century and as a result the Dros has been converted by its inhabitants from a military fortress into a marketplace where travelers between the lands of the Drenai and the lands of the Nadir pass. When news of the Nadir invasion arrives the Dros is found wanting in the area of man power. Because of this the commander of the Dros sends out his daughter, Virae a warrior-woman, to seek out the aid of The Thirty. The Thirty are a monastic order pledged to follow the Source (God) in its battle against Chaos (Satan). They study the art of war and harness abilities that allow them to wage their battles in the realm of the spirit. Each generation of the Thirty must find a battle that can’t be won and fight on the side of good. In her quest for the Thirty, Virae meets Regnak and they eventually fall in love (yeah, I know, a little mushy for one of the most blood-soaked, battle-focused books I have read). Now that Regnak is Virae’s husband he is committed to defending the Dros.
About sixty pages into the book we meet Druss. He is the man known among the Drenai as the Legend. He has traveled to countries all over the world and fought in hundreds of battles. He is also in his sixties. Time has not been overly kind to Druss. He is not as strong or as tough or as quick as he once was. He has arthritis in his knees and he can’t see as well as he once did, and senility is creeping in. He has no desire to die alone in his mountain cabin as a befuddled old man, so he makes his way to the walls of Dros Delnoch to die in a battle which cannot be won.
So now the stage is set for one of the greatest battles I have ever read in any book. The defenders get trained by Druss and battle with the ferocity of men defending their homes and their loved ones. They last far longer than anyone could have imagined with the leadership of Druss and Regnak and the aid of the Thirty.
But the story is not told from just the defender’s point of view. A good portion of the story is told from the attacker’s viewpoint, giving us some insight into why they are attacking, making them more human.
The action comes at an amazing pace once the battle begins, and Gemmell’s writing is extremely violent. For me, though, that is not a drawback. Gemmell switches the point of view often. Personally I like this and don’t find it distracting, though I know that some people get annoyed by it. This book is not serious literature and never pretends to be. Gemmell knows exactly what he’s writing and never gets pretentious or full of himself (*cough*Robert Jordan*cough*). I will admit that the ending is just a wee bit contrived, but I really don’t care. By that time I’m so into the book that it only sticks out when you sit and ponder it, which is something that this type of writing is not meant to stand up to anyway.

The Begining of a Series of Posts on My Favorite Author

2005-02-02T11:02:00.000-08:00

Well I have decided to start reading through David Gemmell’s Drenai series again. I’ve read all of the books but the two most recent, White Wolf and Swords of Night and Day. I bought White Wolf right before Christmas at Powell’s and am holding off on Swords just because it’s not yet out in paperback, and I detest the hardcover format. I was originally hoping to have gotten myself through the entire series up to Swords by the time it came out in paperback, but that date is early March, and I don’t think I’m going to make it.
If you’re not familiar with Gemmell or his Drenai books, (as far as I know only Eric, among the regular readers here, has read any) let me enlighten you.
David Gemmell is an author from England. His first book was Legend, the first of the Drenai books, which was originally published in 1984 and has remained in print since. He has two other series, The Stones of Power books and his Rigante series. Among these are also another eight or nine stand-alone or two book cycles. There are five Stones of Power books and four Rigante books. The Drenai series currently clocks in at an impressive 11 books. That gives Mr. Gemmell a grand total of just under thirty books in 21 years (Robert Jordan and his now unreadable Wheel of Time books only wish they could do such a thing). His books average around 300 pages and most, even though they may be in a series, are stand alone and can be read without necessarily reading any of the other books. Gemmell can be counted on for one book a year almost without exception. Not many authors can make that claim. For those who are interested, Gemmell professes to be an Episcopalian, and in many of his books there is a strong influence of these beliefs, particularly the way in which man is portrayed as both fallible and capable of great deeds and mercy. Also, while his characters are not always black and white, there is both evil and good in his books and the delineation is clear and correct and one’s actions always have consequences. Another note is that most of Gemmell’s books could easily be called tragedies. I have yet to read one where at least one main character doesn’t die in the end. What makes this tolerable is that the deaths of these characters are the great cost of victory for good. His books have the pulpy fun of Howard’s Conan books and Jordan’s better Conan books. What makes them great is that at least one character has a moral compass oriented to true north, as well as the books having a warrior zen philosophy similar to a melancholy warrior-poet samurai realist. Though there is tragedy and fatalism in every book, I have yet to read one that doesn’t end with some sense of hope for the world and the characters of that book.
The Drenai series centers on the Drenai (duh), a people of Anglo Saxon archetype who have founded a politically and militarily powerful nation. They are both warlike and cultured and among their histories the heroes are many, much to the reader’s gain. To the north of the Drenai live the Nadir, a nomadic barbarian people based on the Mongol hordes of our own past. Throughout the series the Drenai resemble very much the nation of Israel around the time of the book of Judges. They rise up and defeat evil forces which have been given power over them, only to let weakness of leadership from within lead them once again into peril. Every Drenai book has a siege. That is something most readers expect in his books and rightly so. I have read no other author who can take his characters into such overwhelming situations tactically and bring them out in a win like Gemmell. The Drenai series covers several centuries of this nation and its struggles to be free and prosperous. The only thing I will complain about in this series of books is there is no map of the Drenai world until White Wolf, and frankly it’s not very good. I started reading Legend again (fifth or sixth time) in September on a trip to San Diego with Trisha and Lisel. I usually don’t take several months to read a book, but, well, darnit, I’ve been busy. I am now more than 200 pages into the third book and it is going quickly. I am reading the books in the order they were written, though within the chronology of the world, they are really all over the place. So in the next few months I’ll be posting my own reviews of these books in hopes that one or two of you will give them a try. If you like your fantasy with low magic, a lot of action and more than just a little philosophy, Gemmell might be worth a little of your time

Do I feel old

2005-02-01T20:45:00.000-08:00

So the other day I was watching the news and they had a story on the artists who recorded We Are the World. TWENTY YEARS AGO! I guess I'll just break out the walker and dentures now. Crap.

Don't Worry, Donny, These Men Are Nihilists. They're Harmless

2005-01-24T22:17:00.000-08:00

Good news, everyone. The Sam Peckinpah classic Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia is coming to video March 22. I have only seen part of this movie as it has been largely forgotten by the passing of time. Of all of Peckinpah's films, this is the one that is shown on cable the least, even less than the total turd Convoy which Peckinpah made through a haze of cocaine and gin near the end of his life.

What is most notable about Alfredo Garcia is that it is the only one of Peckinpah's films that had absolutely no studio interference. If you want to see what Peckinpah thought of the world, this is the place to see it.

The movie was made in 1973 and released in 1974, just like me. It stars the late Warren Oates who played one of my favorite characters in Peckinpah's best known film The Wild Bunch, Lyle Gorch. Like The Wild Bunch, Alfredo Garcia is the story of ex-patriat Americans in Mexico living lawless lives. I wish I could say why this theme appeals to me so well. Maybe someday if I figure that out I'll tackle the issue of why the "wife-gets-killed-and-husband-then-kills-everyone" theme is also a sure thing for getting me in the theater.

The story of Alfredo Garcia revolves around Oates who plays Bennie, said ex-patriat American employed as a piano player in a dive in Mexico. The film opens with a Mexican drug lord beating his daughter to discover who got her pregnant. She finally lets out that it was Alfredo Garcia. The drug lord then tells his lackeys (all the good drug lords have lackeys don't they?) to "bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia." Two of his most unsavory lackeys track Garcia down to the grimy town where Bennie works and head for the bar because, well, that's what unsavory types do in Mexico when they are looking for someone they are going to kill. Bennie overhears them and talks with his prostitute girlfriend about it. Turns out that Garcia used to be her pimp and she knows where he is. Bennie smells some quick cash and approaches the two lackeys and makes a deal. They promise him a fraction of what the drug lord promised them and that is more than enough for Bennie. Here's where things start to go bad. It turns out that Garcia has been dead for some time and to retrieve said head (said head, that's kind of funny) Bennie must exhume that body and chop off the head. The two lackeys see no reason to share the reward with Bennie and his girlfriend so they plan to kill them and take the head. The problem with that plan is that Bennie kills them, but not before they kill his girlfriend. So now Bennie is mad and he decides that the best plan of action is to deliver the head of Alfredo Garcia to the drug lord and then kill everyone in sight. And that's how it plays out.

I can think of no good reason to like this movie, but that doesn't change the fact that I do. Wierd.

Another Terrible Story

2005-01-21T22:27:00.000-08:00

Well a story was told to me last night. The person in this story is known of by some of the readers of this blog and I think a few of you might have met him, so I will change all the names in this story to protect the innocent as well as the guilty. According to "Nayr," I am the only person related to him that he has told the story to, since he doesn't believe anyone else in his family would understand. I have also been sworn to secrecy, another reason for the pseudonyms. I'll tell this story as accurately as I can, but I'm sure a few parts have been messed up in my memory since I was laughing so hard when this story was told to me.

At the time this all happened, Nayr was living in a house with six other guys. As a result there was some level of tomfoolery going on at any given time and one person in particular had been pulling an inordinate amount of pranks on the others in the house. We will call him "Little Feller."

So one day Nayr and one other roommate were sitting around wondering what kind of a prank they could pull on Little Feller. The musings got more and more ridiculous until Nayr decided to see just how far he could push the envelope and said something along the lines of, "do you dare me to take a crap in his room?" Well, who among us would be able to honestly not take that action, and a dare was struck.

Nayr and the third roommate went into Little Feller's room. They were the only two home at the time. Nayr put down a plastic bag and then a paper towel, so as not to ruin a perfectly good carpet. Then he dropped his laundry and assumed the position. He produced what he called "a big ol' crap" right on the paper towel.

At this point another roommate returned home. Nayr and the co-conspirator roommate ran out of Little Feller's room, Nayr with his pants still down as there had been no time to do even the most preliminary of clean-ups out back. They closed the door behind them. Nayr ran to the kitchen for some reason. When I pressed this issue, he said that he thought some paper towels would take care of his very pressing hygiene problem. Well he was trying to mop up when the roommate who had come home in mid-prank walked into the kitchen with Nayr trying to wipe his butt and his junk all out in the kitchen. Nayr said it was at this point they decided to bring in this roommate because the truth was probably better than anything this guy's imagination was coming up with. Then everyone took a deep breath and calmed down.

About three hours later Little Feller came home and headed for his room. Nayr said not laughing at this time was one of the hardest things he'd ever done. Little Feller came running back downstairs and goes, "why is there a crap in my room?!?" Nayr said he did his best to act indignant that anyone in the house would think to crap anywhere besides a proper receptacle. They all followed Little Feller upstairs to his room, which after three hours of being cooped up with Nayr's spoor was described as "so bad."

Little Feller was the one who eventually took the crap out of his room. He had to pick it up, using the plastic bag which had been thoughtfully provided by Nayr, and take it outside. Little Feller threw it over the fence into the neighbor's yard.

Little Feller eventually found out and as of yet no retribution equivalent to the original crime has been visited upon Nayr.

Now please, everyone who reads this try to keep it to yourselves. Nayr made me swear to secrecy and I don't want to be labeled as a person who can't keep a secret. So, mums the word.

You Must Choose One

2005-01-18T22:44:00.000-08:00

If it were 1066 and you found yourself at the Battle of Hastings, would you rather have an axe, a sword, or a bow? Quickly now, your life depends on it. I won't answer until after a few others have so I don't unduly influence anyone.

Magnum Power, Baby!

2005-01-18T16:38:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I'm sitting here farting around on the ol' net while waiting for something to print. I go over to my friends at Cold Steel who provided me with a great Christmas gift for my brother. For roughly 15 dollars American I bought him a practical little Two-Handed Machete. This is one cool piece of equipment. It comes straight out of South Africa, a country that knows what a machete is supposed to taste like. The thing looks like some huge butcher's cleaver used for breaking bones. We took it out right after he opened it and started hitting things. We nailed a Pepsi can that was about 1/4 full with a horizontal chop that left the bottom of the can sitting there and the top about 15 feet away in the lawn. What was most impressive is when we took it against a front fender of a mid-80s Chevy pickemuptruck. Hole in the fender, minimal damage to the machete. What damage there was could have been fixed with a file. A bench grinder and some fine work with a stone would put an edge on this thing that would scare the Wally Burrito I had for lunch today right out of me.

Well anyway, while I was on their site I came across this. Now when Eric and I were kids our dad didn't really see a need for anything even remotely resembling restraint in the area of what to buy us to keep us out of the house. We had among other things a couple of blowguns. This would have been somewhere around the time that I was 10 - 14 years old. Ahhh, that magic age where anything is possible and nothing is permitted. Well the blowguns we had were of the .38 claiber style maligned in the promotional literature on the Cold Steel site. We had a lot of fun with them. In fact, my friend Bryan and I one time were at his house with absolutely no supervision and decided to play a game of our own design called, "you run down the hall going from room to room and I'll stand here in the living room and shoot at you with this blowgun." I, being the gracious guest that I was, offered to be the first runner. I made it two bedrooms and was about to cross the hall into the crapper when he nailed me in the forearm. The dart went right through my shirt and stuck in my arm about 1/8". I can tell you that it hurt like the dickens. That also pretty much ended the game.

So now as I wax nostalgic, I am beginning to think that a 7' blowgun with those broadhead darts would be a lot of fun. Also, I am having a hard time not laughing at the thought of "stunner" darts. I'm a total sucker for any advertising that is worded like the stuff on their site. I see myself in Africa taking Cape Buffalo with a freaking blowgun. I may be an idiot, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't have a blowgun. Plus, I live in town and I don't get a lot of opportunities to target practice with anything.

You Can Help Determine the Course of the Future

2005-01-18T10:23:00.000-08:00

Well once again I find myself sitting here musing about what my next gun purchase should be. Mmmmmmm, guns, arrahghghgh. I really don't see myself buying a gun anytime soon since Trisha is working only half-time now and there's another kid scheduled to hit the ground in early May, but a boy can dream, blast it all!

So now I put out this query to you, faithful readers: what should Ted's next gun be?

Here's what I'm looking at right now:

1.) I take a lot of heat because I don't own a shotgun. One of the problems here is that my tastes run the entire gamut of shotgunnery and I have no clear preference. I like side by sides only if they have external hammers. The problem there is that now the ones manufactured with external hammers are all made for that Cowboy Action crap where fat old men dress up in drag, and as a result have only extractors, not ejectors. Part of the fun of a double is busting it open and watching the shells rocket over your shoulder, preferrably into Eric's face. I also like pumps. There's nothing like that sound to let someone know that all negotiations have been unsuccessful. I like both the old and new Winchester 1300 Defender. Mossberg's 590 is a nice looking gun and they're easy to work on. The ubiquitous 870 is a good choice just because they're everywhere and easy to find parts for, both factory and aftermarket. My real pump preference, though, is that Winchester 1897 knock-off coming out of Red China. These have an external hammer and have the added bonus of "hold-down-the-trigger-and-pump-away" fire capability. Also, the original 97s were what Pike and the boys used in The Wild Bunch to waste all those Mexicans at the battle of the bloody porch. Real dream shotgun would be a Winchester 1887 in 10 guage with an 18" barrel, but that is a pipe dream. The ChiCom 1887s are all going to be 12 guage with barrels over 20" and none have hit these blessed shores yet. An original 1887 in 10 guage that is capable of being fired just with black powder shells is a rare, rare thing and well out of my price range until I win the lottery and can buy guns in the $5,000 and up range without Trisha caring.

2.) Tyler and I have been talking about each getting a .223 of some sort for pop-opens in CV. The debate rages at this point between a good bolt-action and an AR derivitive of some sort. Both of these sound good to me, but right now I'm leaning toward the AR for reasons I don't know.

3.) I wouldn't mind having a S&W 617. This is a stainless (well all Smiths are stainless these days) .22lr revolver with 10 round capacity. I'd go for the 8-3/8 barrel. I'm confident enough in my skills to say that I could give this thing a great trigger and scope it and not be too demanding to expect something under an inch at 50 yards.

4.) I have for some time longed for a Marlin 1895 in .45-70. I was holding out hope that Marlin would have the good sense to chamber this ultra-tough action in the fairly new .500SW, but they have released their 2005 catalog and, alas, no such thing. Furthermore, the 1895 in .480 Ruger/.475 Linebaugh is remarkably absent. I never saw one of these anywhere and they were only listed in their catalog for about six months. What gives?

5.) This.

Well, let me know what you think. I know Eric will chime in, mostly based on what he thinks I should get for him to shoot.

Blog Name Origin

2005-01-17T15:33:00.000-08:00

So in an earlier post I was assaulted in print due to the fact that I am a virile man. That virilty manifests itself in an unusually high level of body hair. It grows on my arms, legs, chest, feet, shoulders, back, areas where my bathingsuit covers - all the usual places. I tell myself it's not that bad since it does not yet grow conspicuously out of my nose or ears.

I was once on a boat with my wife and two other couples. We were going to water ski. The guy of one of the other couples (for those in the know it was the then-boyfriend-now-husband of Molly's cousin Heather) had gone on about how hairy he was. He said that his chest was really hairy. It was something that he kept bringing up over and over. So when zero hour arrived and this loudmouth took off his shirt most everyone was a little curious to see just what he'd been making such a big deal out of. My wife was the first to comment by saying something along the lines of, "I thought you said you were hairy." I then told her a comment like that was rude and that he had possibly been through a recent surgery that required he be shaved down like a pink newborn mouse. Later on it was my turn to try my hand at water skiing. I took off my shirt only to hear this pasty redhead exclaim, "holy shit, dude, you really are hairy."

Now I'm not one of those guys who looks like he's got a sweater on. It's not that bad. In fact, it's really nothing more than just a soft, tasteful coat of attractive manfur. It does not encroach into daylight except in areas where it is acceptable for a fella to show a little manfur.

But I digress.

The Bearshirt in the title of my blog comes from the argument around the origin of the word berzerker.

Popular belief surrounding the image of a berzerker is a crazy, bearded man running across the battlefield naked, axe in hand, and occasionally with his head set aflame. This was likely the result of the word baerzark being translated as bare-shirt, or a man with no shirt. This translation is possibly incorrect. Those few souls cursed with the blood of the baerzark are often portrayed in Scandinavian art as being armored. One of the most popular is a piece from a chess set where the berzerker is not only wearing armor, he's also carying a shield which he happens to be chewing on in his uncontrolled battle lust. In the sagas of the Scandinavians, berzerkers are often also referred to as shapeshifters. Their alter form of an animal was occasionally a wolf (such as the grandfather of Eigel Skallagrimsson whose name was Skeldulf, or Night Wolf, who was also rumored to be either half-giant or half-troll), but more often than not it was a bear. Now when one was overtaken by his battle lust it was said that he put on the shirt of the bear, or bearshirt. In this state the man was nigh unstoppable, possessed of superhuman strength, immune to weapons of iron, and just as dangerous to his friends as he was his enemies. This leads to a convincing argument that berzerk, taken from baerzark, is bearshirt, not bareshirt.

Terrible Story From My Brother-In-Law

2005-01-17T14:48:00.000-08:00

My sister's husband works at a local HP plant. He has one of those jobs where you have to wear a big suit, like the ones worn by the guys that quarrantined Elliot's house in E.T. They have what they call a "clean room" where you change from your regular clothes into your E.T. suit. Well one day last week a guy showed up a little early and was the first one there. He started to change into his super-suit when he noticed something on the floor. Something....strange.

As he approached the misshapen object laying in the shadows, a true sense of fear gripped him. What should not have been, what could not have been, was. There on the floor only mere inches from his feet laying in repose among the dust bunnies and discarded gum wrapers was a large, corn and peanut infused turd.

Quickly realizing that something must be done lest the fate of humaity which teetered in the balance be pushed irretrievably toward darkness, the nameless HP employee grabbed the phone and dialed the one number he knew would tip the balance in favor once again of law, order and good taste. He did not call maintenance. He did not call his supervisor. He did not call the commisioner. Instead he called the only number where he knew his report of scofflawry would be taken seriously. This man, no, this hero, called security.

His voice surely quavered with unused adrenaline as he spoke the words no security guard wants to hear in the morning.
"Yeah, I'm down here in the clean room. We've, um, got a problem."
"What sort of problem, sir?"
"Well, there's a, um, well, a...."
"What is the problem?"
"There's a poop on the floor." And with those words, the great juggernaught of HP's security forces plied their combined might against the common enemy laying in silent evil on the floor of one of HP's clean rooms.

Security arrived in short order with no less than five officers to handle the situation. The scene was secured and the investigation began. The officers started off photographing the scene, no doubt using superior HP digital photo technology. As a reference for size, one officer held a pencil near the pile of used food while a second officer took a photo. After all of the evidence had been collected the security team labled the incident "A malicious act," with possible domestic terrorism ties.

Later, after the regular employees were allowed back in, some of the workers noticed that one of the pieces of the aparatus they work with had been badly burned by electricity. This piece was described to me as being like a large switch handle that is moved back and forth between two settings. If it is not properly grounded between movements, it can arc badly. And that arcing can leave a burned/welded spot on the handle about the size of a doughnut. And also the level of electricity passing through the handle, and consequently the person holding the handle, is enough to cause the bowels to evacuate their contents according to a tech my brother in law spoke with. And this "evacuation" likely would have innocently rolled out onto the floor of the clean room by way of a loose pant leg. But I'm sure that's all just a coincidence as this was undoubtedly a malicous act perpatrated by some domestic terrorists sending us a message about the unacceptable treatment of wafer boards at HP.

First Rambling

2005-01-02T22:16:00.000-08:00

Well here's my first entry ever on a blog. Not very monumental for sure as I'm fairly new to anything like this. I'll try to make it as entertaining as I can, so, um, enjoy I guess.