Once Bitten, Twice Shy.

Many years ago, as some of you may remember, there was an unfortunate situation in Rhode Island involving the band "Great White", some pyrotechnics, and a bar full of people.  Given my inherent goofiness, I'll forgo making light of that topic as it would be wildly inappropriate.  Luckily this isn't really about that.

The thing happened with the fire, and that was awful, so there was some speculation as to whether the band would continue their tour.  The next gig they were scheduled to play was at a favorite  hangout of mine in Oklahoma City called the Classic Rock Cafe.  That bar is now closed, which isn't my fault as far as I know.   I was not aware of the fact that Great White was supposed to play there until I showed up with a group of friends for a run-of-the-mill night out, and the marquis out front gave it away.

"Holy crap" I said eloquently, "Great White is supposed to play here tomorrow!"
"Holy crap!" said everybody.  Then we all forgot about it and commenced ordering drinks. 

"Everybody" included the following folk:
Me, (colloquially referred to as Gorilla, Lurch, High-Tower, Grape-Ape, Bjorn, or Too-Tall depending on some factor or another that I've never figured out), Taco, Pierre (P), Grump, and Jim.  Jim hadn't been around long enough to acquire a nickname.

Grump put away a few beers and became increasingly excited about rounds of shots.  Tequila happened a few times.  It was at this point that one of us happened to notice that there was some commotion outside.

There was a little deck on the side of the bar facing the street, and the marquis.  We piled out onto the deck, and found to our delight that a news crew had set up and was getting ready to shoot a story with the marquis in the back-drop about the situation regarding the Great White tour.  "Will the Great White be continuing their tour.... etc. etc... "  was what I imagined the story would sound like.

A reporter with too much makeup and a scarf was checking her hair and getting her microphone situated, cameramen fiddled with tripods and lights, and the driver of the van helped as best he could by standing nearby smoking a cigarette.  I quickly realized that the backdrop of the shot included not only the marquis, but the deck of the Classic Rock Cafe as well.  That's where we were.

That gave me an idea.  I turned to Pierre and pitched it to him.

"Dude" I said.  "Let's stage a fight in the backdrop of the camera shot!"
"Alright" said Pierre.

I was thinking about how to go about staging said fight when I noticed P had begun reaching back behind him for something.  I was impressed, he didn't even look... he just reached back and closed his hand, so I figured he'd found it.  Then I noticed that hand coming towards me, and I figured he wanted to show me whatever it was he had there, so I leaned in to get a better look. 

That hand was getting awful close, and I watched it, dumfounded.  Had P forgotten that I no longer wore glasses?  Now, I used to wear glasses, but it had been a while and I certainly didn't have them on at the time, so I wondered quietly to myself as to why he'd think I needed such a close look at what he had there.  Surely I wasn't so near-sighted as that.  

He punched me square in the mouth.  Stars appeared briefly, which soon morphed into penguins in sombreros.   

I reeled around like a lopsided dreidel for a minute, then collected what little wits I had about me and did the only gentlemanly thing I could think to do, which was to administer a bear-paw to the side of P's head as if he'd come between me and my cubs. 

He hit the deck like mortars were incoming, but popped back up as if he'd packed his wallet full of bouncy balls.  Next thing I knew we were scrapping like school-yard kids over a botched game of tiddly-winks. 

Then, suddenly, we weren't scrapping anymore and I found myself sitting inside around the table with a bottom lip bigger than if I'd stuffed an entire pack of Big-League Chew in there.  P was holding his ear, rather tenderly.  We ordered more shots.

Later that night, it became obvious that we should probably go home or die trying.  The waitstaff brought us coffee on the house, which tells you something right there. 

Cell phones existed, but none of us had one.  There was a period of time when not everybody had one... that's how long ago this story took place.  Grump saved the day.  He walked past Taco, who was hitting shamelessly on the oldest woman I've ever seen in my entire life, and blatantly stole some lady's phone that she'd left sitting on the bar.  He called my girlfriend to come and pick us up and slipped the phone back to that lady as smoothly as a career ninja.   

She showed up and we piled into her car, I had blood all over my shirt and looked like I was trying to smuggle a baseball in my lip.  None of us could walk particularly well. 

Jim called the trunk, which made the rest of us jealous because the trunk is by far the best place to sleep on a 30 minute car ride.  We stopped at Whataburger and Grumps pants fell down while he was ordering.  He didn't pull them up, he just shuffled around with his tray full of burgers and got twenty five little cups of ketchup from the condiment pumps like nothing was the matter. 


Then ten or fifteen years passed and I forgot about the entire story until a few days ago when I turned on the radio and that song by the Great White came on, "Once Bitten, Twice Shy", and I simultaneously realized that not only did I have a tale to tell pertaining (vaguely) to that band, but the song isn't even very good. 

I have no idea if the news crew had the cameras rolling when Pierre punched me in the mouth, but I sure like to think they were.  Maybe it's the romantic in me that still believes... somewhere, deep in the archives of some reporter's closet, is that footage. 

It'll resurface when I run for president. 

Get Comfortable.

I had fun writing this so I thought I'd share it.  It's an assignment I had and I may have put too much thought into it.  Get comfortable.  And be warned!  The assignment was supposed to be offensive and test the limits of my sensitivities.  Here's what it was: 

Imagine you are members of a department in Washington  in charge of a nuclear fallout shelter. The Third World War breaks out, and there are threats of worldwide devastation. The 14 people listed on the board are first in line at your door fighting for space in your shelter. Because they cannot reach a decision among themselves as to who shall be left to perish, the decision will be left in your hands. In the short time you have, only a superficial description of each person is available. There are enough provisions and space for seven people, and it is highly possible that you will be the only people to survive the war. Your task is to select which seven people you will save.

1. a 25-year-old black militant who graduated from Harvard
2. a Mexican farmer, illegally in the United States/>/>
3. a homosexual football star
4. a middle-aged religious fanatic, mother of two teenagers
5. an attractive lesbian, occupation M.D.
6. a sorority girl majoring in fashion merchandise
7. a male radical hippie working as an environmental ecologist
8. a 59-year-old female community leader
9. a call girl
10. an obese and balding politician
11. a drug dealer from an upper-class family
12. a mildly retarded male teenager who is a musical genius
13. a handicapped telephone operator
14. a male midget

Choose your seven people and discuss what aspects you used to come to your conclusions. You have to justify the thought patterns and morals you used to make your decisions. Have fun with this and again please be respectful of each other!

This is what I came up with: 

The potential for world-wide obliteration of the entire human race puts a few priorities foremost in the decision of who to bring along.  Survival of the entire species rests in my hands here; to err would be to doom all of mankind to obscurity.  Seven people to carry on mankind’s glorious tradition of careening towards our own doom.  Since the decision has come down to me, and since it’s my shelter that all these mooches will be cowering within, you’d better believe that my name appears atop the passenger list in permanent marker.  I took that as a given, and that there are seven additional  seats that get to witness doomsday with me.  

My addition of myself to this equation is relevant, since my presence throws off the male: female ratio by a significant percentage.  I'll keep the count going so we get an idea of what our population looks like as it's established.  So far:  Count = me.  One man.  Seven seats left.  Engage post-conventional moral reasoning skills.

Priority one, when we open the door to the shelter and witness the devastation wrought by our own inability to cope with our petty differences, will be to stay alive.  It is going to be particularly difficult given that anything which eliminates all human life on earth probably did a number on all the other types of life as well, so food and water will be our most valuable commodity.  With that in mind, the farmer gets the first key.  The ability to farm will be crucial in the coming years.  I’ll infer that the farmer is a tough, able-bodied sort within reasonable breeding age.  We do not know if the farmer is a man or a woman.  Count:  men 1, unknown 1. 

Farming takes a substantial amount of time, and a more immediate source of food will be needed.  With any luck, the wake of WWIII didn’t contaminate the soil.  It’s probably a safe bet that it left some cockroaches we can munch on.  That’ll be fun.  Either way, hunting and gathering will rapidly become the most marketable skills on the planet, next to fertility and adaptability.  The football player comes to mind as the agile and healthy sort of hunter/gatherer type we might need.  I’m inferring from the list that the football star is a man based on the word “homosexual” verses “lesbian” used later on to describe the doctor.  The fact that he’s a homosexual throws a wrench into his value in a society hell-bent on reproduction, but I’ll put him on the short list as a potential passenger.  He may wind up having to take a few for the team in the name of procreation.  Count:  men 1, unknown 1.  Short-list:  1 man. 

Since every person represents 12.5% of the entire world population, it becomes vitally important that everyone survive.  As such, the Dr. gets a key.  We don’t know what sort of a doctor she is, but I’ll have to roll the dice and hope she didn’t get her doctorate in Revolutionary War history.  She’s a lesbian, which puts her in the same boat as the football player as far as how excited she’ll be about procreation.  It will probably be necessary for one of us to pack a couple of bricks in our carry-on luggage, code named “foreplay” and “pillow talk”.  She’s attractive, which doesn’t really matter but it's a nice little perk.  Count:  men 1, women 1, unknown 1.  Short-list:  1 man. 

We’ve got a 25 year old militant Harvard graduate.  This could be a man or a woman, we don’t know, but I think it’s probably safe to downplay the “militant” descriptor thanks to the fact that there will be very few causes left to fight for and the odds are that whatever was worth fighting over before isn’t worth fighting over now.  Graduating from Harvard is no small thing, so we’ve got a smart, spirited person of breeding age and unknown gender.  We'll be fighting for our lives.  We’ll need all the breeding we can get, and it helps to have intelligent people around, so this person gets on the short list.  Count:  men 1, women 1, unknown 1.  Short-list:  1 man, 1 unknown. 

The sorority girl is a shoe in just for her sheer breeding potential.  Fashion merchandise expertise will probably not be highly sought after, but she may be able to make clothes and she's educated at least to a partial college level.  From a strict survival-of-the-species standpoint she’s a must-have.  She’ll be revered like the ancient fertility goddesses of old, and we will make lady-Venus statues of her whenever she’s pregnant.   We’ll issue her a sack full of nickels, code named “cuddle-time” in case she goes after the football player and he doesn’t want to play starting line-up in the Sugar Bowl, if you know what I mean.  We’ll stash some designer tequila in the capsule to help things along.  Count:  men 1, women 2, unknown 1.  Short-list:  1 man, 1 unknown.

I think it will be very difficult for the politician to convince me to give up a key.  I don’t know if the politician is a man or a woman, let’s say it’s a man for the sake of argument.  I can’t think of a practical use for politics in a community of eight.  There’s a good chance politics are the reason we went to war, so maybe we can bring him along just so we can occasionally hit him in the head with a brick in order to bolster morale.  Worst case scenario we can eat the bastard if times get tough.  No… the politician is doomed to stand on the docks waving a handkerchief as this ship sails.  

I'll have to leave the call-girl on the docks too.  Who knows what sort of a person she is.  She may be able to crank-out children, but her specific skill-set is only useful once every nine months or so and we need people who are useful in a much broader sense.  She's riding on what appears to be a lifetime of bad decisions, so her credit is pretty well shot.  At least she'll be with the politician; there's a good chance they're already acquaintances, so they can console each other as they're being vaporized. 

The middle-aged mother of two teenagers seems like a good candidate, if we assume that she knows how to raise children.  Those skills will be extremely valuable, so I wish we knew whether or not she actually raised her own kids, and if she did whether or not they turned out okay.  She could be a violent crack-head for all we know, but from what little data we have I’d say we’ll need some matronly wisdom and  she makes the short list.  I'm nervous about the fact that she's a religious fanatic, since I'm not sure what that actually means.  She’d be pretty bummed about her kids getting vaporized in the war, but then again we all recently suffered the loss of the entire human race, so she’d have to suck it up and jog on like the rest of us.  She might not be excited about having more kids, but if she could pull that off it would be huge.  Count:  men 1, women 2, unknown 1.  Short-list:  1 man, 1 woman, 1 unknown.

An environmental ecologist seems like something we might be able to use, depending on the nature of the apocalypse.  Assuming there's enough to salvage, having a guy around who specializes in existing in perpetual symbiosis with nature seems like a pretty good idea.  The fact that he's a radical hippie suggests that at least the shelter will smell like patchouli for the duration of our hunker, which is fine as long as nobody attempts to leave the bunker in search of potato chips while the 500 kiloton nuclear device plummets towards Earth.  I'm taking for granted that he is capable of reproduction, since we don’t know his age, or his sperm count after a lifetime of bong hits.  Count:  men 2, women 2, unknown 1.  Short-list:  1 man, 1 woman, 1 unknown.

I would love to bring the 59 year old female community leader for her leadership prowess, but we don't have the luxury of filling a slot with someone who can't take an active part in the reproductive process.  We've got to keep our little tribe strong and fertile, or else we curse future generations with whatever genetic weaknesses are associated with prolonged inbreeding.  Her wisdom will be missed, but we'll figure it out. 

The drug dealer from an upper-class family doesn't have a very heavy resume.  The mention of the upper-class family only makes me believe that this person probably doesn't know how to do anything useful in a survival situation.  We won't be needing a drug dealer while we're repopulating the world.  One dock-pass for the rich kid with the kilo. 

Another for the musically gifted, yet mildly retarded teenage boy.  It's tragic, since he's already had a rough time of it, but unfortunately fine music is a luxury that comes after civilization and culture have taken root.  His gift isn't compatible with our mission.  We'll have to do the best we can to remember what songs we knew and pass them on from generation to generation by word of mouth.  New world folk songs will include "The Humpty Dance" and "Brass Monkey". 

I know very little about the telephone operator aside from the fact that there's some sort of handicap involved.  While I don't know what it is, I do know that we won't be making a lot of calls after the nationwide telephone infrastructure fuses itself into a 607 ton ball of copper somewhere in Oklahoma.  Since the seats are at a premium, and since we don't have any more information, I'm afraid this person will be vaporized. 

Had there been a situation after the final tally that suggested we needed another male for breeding purposes, I'd have taken the midget.  When I weighed in the possible evolutionary advantages of fathering small people in a post-apocalyptic world, I had to give him extra points.  Small people require fewer resources, so that could have been a bonus.  As it stands, we don't know what he's good at other than being small, so he's on the docks. 

The final count works out to be exactly eight, so it looks like everybody who made the short list will be coming along.  Here's the final crew:  Me, a farmer, a doctor, a football star, a Harvard graduate, a sorority girl, a middle aged mother, and an environmental ecologist.  That's 3 men, 3 women and 2 unknown.  With any luck, the farmer and the Harvard graduate will turn out to be a man and a woman, and we'll have a good balance of people/skills/procreation potential in our little community.  With enough well-placed bricks and sacks full of nickels, the species may well survive.  I would probably be willing to trade the middle aged mother for the call girl if it turns out the call girl isn't a lost cause, and the middle aged mother was a sandwich-sign wearer who yells "SINNER!" at everyone.  The rest of the landing party and I would probably agree to look a little harder at the virtues of prostitution in that case.  

Nothing brings people together like the threat of an impending apocalypse.  In our brave new world, where bricks replace chocolate as the most effective aphrodisiac, everyone needs to step up and work hard.  Hardship strips away all the extraneous noise and make us focus on what’s really important, like not dying while babies are being made.  Think of the children, man.  Think of the children.

image: unknowingly courtesy of this web address, where I found it.  https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&authuser=0&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1173&bih=807&q=armageddon&oq=armageddon&gs_l=img.3..0l10.548.5360.0.5587.10.10.0.0.0.0.334.1923.2j3j0j4.9.0....0...1ac.1.29.img..3.7.1426.5aAxMi-SCdU#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=zgs6GA9v_kMEPM%3A%3Bgeqr_w1L3Nv6hM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.opinion-maker.org%252Fwp-content%252Fuploads%252F2012%252F03%252Farmageddon.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.opinion-maker.org%252F2012%252F03%252Farmageddon%252F%3B400%3B300

Porta Potty of Doom: True Tales of Horror and Suspense

The year was 2006.  Summertime, Balad Air Base, Iraq.  I'd been living there for about a year and a half, working as a radar contractor for Lockheed Martin, and was beginning to feel like a permanent fixture.  It was about hot enough to fry an egg on my forehead. 

It had been a relatively uneventful standard 12 hour work day at the radar shop, and all I wanted to do was get back to my room so I could watch.... documentaries... and go to sleep.  We loaded into the truck and, since the shop was located between two runways on the airfield, radioed the air traffic control tower for permission to cross.  It sounded like this:  

"Ground, radar 1"
"Radar 1 ground"
"Ground, radar 1 is at the ATCALS site, we'd like to enter delta eastbound, cross 1-4 and bravo and exit south of the tower."
"Radar 1 hold short runway 1-4."
"Roger, radar 1 will hold short runway 1-4 on delta."

And we held short.  It was at this point that I realized I had to pee.

Nothing happened for a really long time.  No planes landed, no planes took off.  We sat there in the truck and waited for the tower to contact us.  Finally, after about 40 minutes or so, most of which I spent doing the seated pee-pee dance in the back of the truck and contemplating power-washing a section of the flightline, a drone came buzzing in at about 4 miles per hour.  It landed well short of us and turned off the runway.

"Radar 1, ground.  Proceed as requested, report off."
"Radar 1 copies, proceeding across 1-4 and bravo.  Will report when off."   

It always happened that way with a new batch of air traffic controllers.  It takes a while to get used to a new airfield I guess.  At the time, however, I found it hard to be forgiving since my eyeballs were floating and whatever muscle it is that keeps people from peeing themselves was just about strained to the point of failure.

We parked the truck and I bolted. 


The room where I lived was in a compound surrounded by a chain link fence; cypher-lock, big concrete barricades and all that.  It was towards the middle of the compound, so there were a few hundred yards between the gate where we'd park the work truck and the small island of comfort that my little window-mounted air conditioner struggled so valiantly to maintain.

I ran ahead, got through the gate and made a bee-line for the nearest porta potty.  It was only about 25 yards away and I reached it in about five strides.

The second I opened the door to that 120 degree torture chamber I knew I was in trouble.  The blast of rancid heat that greeted me was enough to simultaneously cook and gag a maggot.  I toughed it out and stepped in.  On the left wall hung the little urinal thing.  It was filled absolutely to the brim with foulness.  When I say full to the brim, I mean if someone with an eyedropper had administered one more single drop of liquid, the surface tension would have given way and created a new Lake Nasty on the floor, populated with chunks of urinal mints and chewing gum.

I turned to the main bowl and began decompressing at maximum capacity.  As I regained some modicum of relaxation, I glanced to my left and peeked out of the little vent that all porta potties have around the top.  I can do that, because I'm 6'8".  It's a little known perk.

There, coming toward me at full speed was Mike, our radio maintenance guy.  Mike was 5'4" or so, and  fairly round.  He had his head down, his shoulder up, and was stampeding purposefully towards that left wall of the porta potty upon which hung that grotesque receptacle of evil and bad things.  I looked down at it in terror as each of Mikes thundering strides sent concentric circles vibrating like a nervous chihuahua across the surface of the dark and vile pool of filth.

Mike didn't know.  He couldn't have known.

He might have known.  

I bailed in mid-stream, scrambled backwards for the door, fumbled behind me for the latch, and barely had the door open when every pound of Mike slammed into the side of the porta potty like a wrecking ball.

The world slowed down.  A Mike-sized dent in the wall pressed in towards me, carrying the now mobile instrument of death mounted there along with it.  The liquid within became a living thing; coiling, poising, angrily gathering its strength even as I fell in slow-motion backwards through the door.  The structure shuddered.  My soul shuddered.  Indeed the entire world seemed to shudder as that resilient plastic reached its limit, paused for effect, and snapped itself back into shape like a rubber band.

The resulting explosion blasted disgusting in every direction with the force of a hellfire missile.  My ponderous bulk was in a state of free fall, through the door and out onto the rocks.  Everything from my knees down was still at ground zero.  Just as the top half of my body hit the ground, my unfortunate shins and shoes were struck by the excrement detonation and were rendered instantly unworthy of ever being worn again.

I scrambled like a frightened squirrel trying to get out of a dryer.  My pants and shoes were off and in a pile on the ground even before the blowout had finished happening.  I knelt on the blisteringly hot walkway retching miserably as Mike and a number of other spectators doubled over in laughter at my expense, thinking only that I had been interrupted in the middle of taking a leak.

When the door to the chamber slowly swung open and the full impact of the devastation became apparent, that bastard Mike laughed even harder. 

I walked in my underwear the remaining few hundred yards to my room, on hot rocks in my bare feet, past dozens of armed military personnel, none of whom said so much as a word.  What was there to say?  I got back to my room, got my things and hopped in the shower for so long Lockheed Martin forgot I worked for them and put out a job listing for my position.

Good times.

Insanity Camouflage

Earlier today I saw someone alone in a car talking excitedly.  I didn't think twice about it until later, when I thought twice about it. 

Remember back in the dark ages before cell phones, when if you saw a guy walking around talking to himself you automatically thought he was a nut-bar?  I know I did, but not anymore.  Now I automatically assume he's on the phone and is enjoying the convenience of some sort of hands-free device. 

The thing that gets me is that the original nut-bars are still out there wandering around talking to themselves, but nobody notices.  Our culture has developed in such a way that certain crazy behavior no longer appears crazy.  We've camouflaged ourselves to more closely resemble the mentally unstable.   

Another example:  There were six or eight people in a waiting room the other day, including me, and every single one of us was sitting motionlessly staring at the small square of plastic in each of our hands.  Fifteen years ago that sort of behavior would have seemed decidedly odd. 

Today, if a genuinely insane person was sitting in that waiting room talking to himself, or staring intently at a piece of plastic in his hand for long periods of time, nobody would even notice. 

That's lucky for him. 

Communications Breakdown (Not the song)

                                      Our faces are touching, and it's hilarious. 

There's a gap in my ability to effectively communicate, and it bugs me.  

I need a new way to express my delight via text.  People send me funny things or post them to various social media platforms or whatever all the time.  Sometimes I really get to laughing about whatever it is, and want to let whomever sent it know how much it made me laugh, but there isn't a great way to do that...

All the usual ways are overused, lol, rofl, lmfao, roflmao, bwaahahaha, teehee, etc. etc... I don't know about you, but I've used all of these while remaining completely expressionless.  They're used so much that when I see those expressions posted I don't believe them at face value even a little bit.  You know what I mean? 

I need something that actually means I'm laughing, not that I find something somewhat amusing.  If I just say it, like "That actually made me laugh!" it comes off as a little conceited, as if I'm saying "It's unusual for something to make me laugh and I'm surprised that the thing you sent me was able to penetrate my defenses", which is in no way true.

Maybe "That actually made me laugh!" will become "tamml".  I hope not, or it will eventually go the way of "lol" which used to mean "I'm laughing out loud" but which now basically means "I am amused" without sounding so uppity.  "lol" is punctuation now.  That's not what I need here. 

There must be a simple solution.  Here are a few ideas:

IJSMPLSH = "I just shit my pants laughing so hard"
ETIAIBICSL = "Everyone thinks I'm an idiot because I can't stop laughing"
HCIPM = "Holy crap I peed myself"
MFHN = "My face hurts now"
YBYJMCSOMN = "You bastard you just made coffee shoot out my nose"

 That makes me wonder if there shouldn't be similar little abbreviations for expressing the fact that something wasn't funny at all, for example:

TWFAA = "That wasn't funny at all"
YAI = "You're an idiot"
IDTWCBFA = "I don't think we can be friends anymore"
GOMOE = "Gouging out my own eyes" (I rather like this one)

It's up to you, go forth and spread the word!

50 Uses for Belly Button Lint

Instant fake spider

Toupee for Tom Thumb

Emergency mattress stuffing

Ear plug

Packing peanut

Bike-tire fix-a-flat

Mix with toe-jam and sculpt an awesome hood ornament

Fireplace tinder

Wall art

Hot Wheels speed bump

Groucho Marx instant eyebrow

Lens cleaner

Bra stuffer

Bird nest repair kit

Bald spot patch 

Home insulation

Wine stopper

Imitation feline hair-ball 

Get-out-of-date-free token

Band-aid

Hitler mustache

Q-tip tip replacement

Survival blanket

Super-secret chile ingredient

All natural, organic, low calorie chewing gum alternative

Summertime snow-ball

Swimmers nose-plug

Cat toy

CD/DVD polisher

Prank jelly bean

Future alternative to fossil fuels

Single-shot rifle wadding

Last minute homemade gift idea

Fidel Castro fake beard set

Crack-spackle

Naughty list stocking stuffer

Gerbil bedding

Low velocity spit ball

Golf course divot repair

Chest wig for hairless midget

Moveable beauty-mark

Puppet disguise

Pot alternative 

Humane junior-high dissection experiment

Tuba mouthpiece polisher

Coffee filter

Exfoliating shower scrub

Fly fishing

Football helmet padding

Blog topic

The Raft Saga, Part 2: Maiden Voyage

Burning through the trunk of a giant tree in the middle of the woods was the plan, and it seemed logical.  We had only one problem:  Neither of us had any matches.  In hindsight it was an incredibly lucky turn of events; had we been packing a handful of strike any-wheres this story might have an even more horrible ending.

It's truly amazing how many close calls I've lived to reminisce about.

We briefly entertained the idea of rubbing sticks together, but both of us had sore arms already and it didn't sound too appealing.  Instead we did the honorable thing:  We gave up, decided that a raft made out of smaller logs would work even better, and went to look for some less stodgy trees.  We must have unconsciously realized that hauling logs through the woods without the help of a skidder, tractor, team of oxen, horses, sleds or even a rope would probably prove more daunting a task than we were prepared to endure, because the next tree we chose was much more reasonable.

At least our subconscious selves had an ounce of latent smarts.

My hatchet sang its joyful melody of destruction as we took turns slowly chipping through our new tree, and when it fell to the earth with a resounding "whoomp" it was both a glorious testament to our perseverance and a depressing reminder that we still had to cut it up into manageable lengths and haul it out of the woods. 

It was at this point that we decided that it would take more than one day to build our raft.  We adjourned, and re-convened a few days later.  Chip brought his bow-saw, which instantly rendered all our work with the hatchet completely irrelevant.  It took no time at all to saw that tree into oblivion. 

Soon limbs littered the area, all of which were miraculously from the tree.  Three logs of approximately equal length lay side by side, looking rather pleasingly like a raft, albeit a narrow, crooked one.  It looked enough like a raft for us to want to take it for a test drive.  Even as knuckle-headed as we were, we knew that it would be too heavy to lift once it was together, so we maneuvered the logs to the landing area down by the swamp.  

Attaching the logs together was no trouble at all.  I had in my possession a giant metal trash can filled with natural clay that Chip, Sean and I had hauled with great difficulty from a stream-bed some months ago, and when the stuff dried it was hard as cement.  We tied the logs together with bailing twine, then worked wet clay into the cracks.  Confident in our genius, we sat back triumphantly to watch the sun dry it from a soggy dark mess into a sturdy raft of unprecedented awesomeness.

It didn't take long to dry, maybe an hour or two, and we wasted no time once it had.  We pushed it into the swamp.  The wood was wet and heavy, and with the added weight of the clay the raft barely floated; the tops of the logs hovered about a quarter of an inch above the surface.  That was enough to satisfy me, and I promptly volunteered to climb aboard for the maiden voyage.  I was confident.  I didn't even take off my shoes.

When I stepped on the raft it immediately sank to the bottom of the swamp, leaving me standing up to my waist in water.  An army of recently hatched tadpoles scattered like a handful of marbles that had been dropped on a tile floor.  The clay, which had in no way been treated, fired, cured or even given a second thought, rapidly dissolved into a cloud of gray that spread as if trying to escape from me, leaving only a few bits of bailing twine holding the logs together.

I tried to retain my balance, which amounted to waving my arms and shuffling my feet like a lunatic as my foothold became increasingly tenuous.  The log in the middle, where both of my feet rested, stayed in the mud on the bottom of the swamp.  The two on the sides broke free of the clay, but not the twine.  They tried to float, but held down as they were, they came together and clamped around my legs like the claws of some giant fresh-water lobster from the Jurassic period.  I was completely unable to move my feet, which caused me to pitch unceremoniously face-first into the water.

Much thrashing around and underwater gymnastics were required before I came up, sputtering and covered in clay-saturated, slimy, gray water.  I felt like a booger covered in pigeon poop, and probably looked about as lovely. 

Chips look of concern was almost indistinguishable behind his maniacal laughter.     

We pulled the three logs, which had until so recently been a raft, from the bosom of the swamp and surveyed the scene.  Not so much as a scrap of clay had stayed stuck to the logs, it was as if we had only brought them swamp-side to wash them.  I, on the other hand, had wads of clay in my pockets and was slimy from bowl-cut to toe.

The clay, as we discovered, reeked like rotten fish and cucumber-farts when it became saturated with swamp water, and had seen fit to pass that smell along to me.  I showed up on the porch stinking like a car trunk full of catfish on a hot day.  My mother spotted me through the window and made it clear that I was not to enter the house on pain of death.  Instead I stood on the lawn while she hosed me off at full water pressure from a safe distance.  She threw me a pair of shorts with instructions to go find something constructive to do until I was dry.

I knew exactly what to do.  There was a ten or twenty year old junk pile next to the swamp that was absolutely riddled with rusty nails.  Somewhere in the depths of that pile was the carcass of an old television, with wires and circuit boards and all sorts of good stuff poking out of it.  Chip and I had eyed it hungrily on several occasions.

If ever there was a time to go investigate, this was it. 


Previous:  Part I

Out of Context Corn

If ever there was a good place to make corny jokes, this is it.  

It was totally worth bringing this to work, just to be able to use the carpool lane.

Cornelius Cobbler's personal assistant had no idea what she was signing up for when she took that job.

Everybody called him "Pops". 

It's on loan from some friends... some Romans........... some countrymen. 

"I'll show them who's corny..."   

She was feeling a little husky.  

Her father was Kernel in the Army.  

   He got creamed in the war.

      Later he was arrested for stalking.  

You think you got corns?

By the time she reached the top she had become Amish. 

She had some beef with the escalator maintenance guy, she's going upstairs to hash it out. 

She's meeting a guy whose match.com profile said he liked girls with big ears.  

"Is this your corn, Jimmy Crack? Or is it James Crack?"

"Actually it's Dr. Crack now, I went back to college."

"Oh yeah, I heard you were out-standing in your field!"

"I don't care."

 

Pants

Sometimes you see a reference about that dream people have they're you're up in front of an auditorium or some other crowd of people and suddenly realize they're not wearing any pants.

Last night I had a strange variation of that dream, where in the dream I woke up the morning after a big party, and realized that at some point I had lost my pants. Then I had to go to a funeral with no pants on, and everybody at the funeral was like "Jeez guy, can't you at least put on some damn pants?  I mean, show a little respect would you?" and everyone was sort of passive-aggressively angry at me, but nobody did anything about it so I just stood there at the wake with no pants on.

It felt breezy.    

Later in the dream I found them laying on the ground somewhere, and I was like "Oh yeah, now I remember", so I put them on.

                                       Things to wear to a funeral =  Pants

Birds are Dumb

First of all, nests are stupid.  Rain, snow, hail, and whatever else that falls out of the sky is going to land directly in your "shelter".  That's dumb!  Why not put a roof on it? 

Who sits in a bowl in a tree during a rainstorm and says "Wow, I can't believe how warm and dry I feel!  Nothing cozier than a bowl made out of sticks, in the top of a tree!"  Stupid birds.  

Then in order to keep the kids warm, you gotta sit on them.  Literally sit directly on them.  Birds make the best babysitters.  Then when the eggs hatch, you throw up pre-chewed worms and bugs directly into their mouths.  Are they grateful?  Probably not.

"Moooom!  I'm huuuuungry!" 
"Aww, here you go sweetie, *hork-hork-hork-blatt!*"
"Golly, thanks mom, you're swell!"

Then it's all cold, freak spring snowstorm, the kids start squirming around, poking you in the butt with their beaks and you're all like "Hey!  I've got four inches of snow on my head up here, do you mind?", and they're down there chirping all sarcastically back at you, like "Ooh, poor me, I've got snow on my head, boo boo boo!"  because they're mocking birds and that's how they are. 

So you kick them out of the nest like "Figure it out!" and half of them plummet to their deaths.  The other half go on to make all the same stupid mistakes that you made.

"This is the way my parents did it, and this is the way I'm gonna do it!"
"But wouldn't it be smarter to put a roof on the house?"
"Dagnabbit, you youngsters don't know what's good for you!"
"But.... "
"Shut up!"
"But..."
"Aaaaaaah!  Aaaaaaah!  Damn kids!" *shakes wing furiously*

 Hopeless. 
 

The Raft Saga, Part 1: I'm Your Huckleberry

Despite all my attempts to foil it, life continued to go on.  After the debacle with the airplane, a nice, relaxing, leisurely float down the length of the continental United States on a home made raft seemed like exactly what we needed.  We knew that no amount of meeting at recess would actually cause a raft to burst into existence, but we met every recess anyway, with our customary flurry of brain-lightening and the subsequent sketches.  

Our raft would be a fairly complicated construct, complete with a shelter and benches, a place for a cooler full of sandwiches and even little hooks to hang our sleeping bags and various other supplies.  The blueprint was a living document, and any time a better steering mechanism was envisioned, or measurement re-thought, the sound of erasers tearing through notebook paper would frighten the wildlife for miles around.

My hair eventually had overcome its fear of burdock bushes and slowly grew back.  Chips eagerness to get to Florida was rivaled only by my excitement to work on a project that wouldn't leave my head looking like a potato, so the project started to come together pretty quickly.  Chip had in his possession a map of the US, so once we got to the river we'd know which forks to take.

Pieces fell into place.  The plan was solid.  What remained was the construction of the raft.

Chip also had access to a bow-saw, which I imagine over the years has been responsible for thousands of acres of Vermont deforestation thanks to his prowess and enthusiasm in wielding it.  I had a hatchet, which I had never sharpened.  The handle was covered in pine-pitch, so I had a marketable grip advantage.

I invited Chip to the house with the stipulation that he bring the bow-saw, and when his mom pulled their blue van up into the driveway I was ready to rock and roll.  Chip got out of the van.  No bow saw.

"Where's the bow-saw?"
"What?"
"The bow-saw."
"I left it at home."
"I got a hatchet."
"Cool."

We headed for the woods.  Running with a hatchet is not advisable, but I did it anyway.  We chose our first victim and proceeded to whack at it unmercifully.  That tree had probably been standing there since before the Civil War, and was about as big around as a grain silo. 

I chopped until my arm was sore, switched arms and chopped until that one was sore, then let Chip have a go at it.  At first, bits of bark flew off in encouragingly large chunks, but just under the bark, that tree had no intention of letting the hatchet make much more than a frayed looking dent.

Since laziness is the mother of invention, we set our brains to work on figuring out a better way to get that tree down.  Neither of us considered how we'd move it once it was down, much less the fact that we were in the middle of nowhere, at least a mile from the nearest road.  What we did consider was that the smart thing to do would be to light the base of the tree on fire. 

Next: Part II: Maiden Voyage

The Airplane Saga, Part 5: Buzz Cut Envy

Our glider had transformed itself back into a pile of lumber.  Its passengers had been transformed as well, into walking burdock plants.  Except Chip.  He had a buzz cut, and the little Velcro balls didn't stick to his wind breaker, so he walked out of there pretty much unscathed.  Sean and I weren't so lucky.  We had both taken the plunge with the breeze blowing ever so gently through the flowing locks of our bowl cuts.

My mom knew what had happened immediately, and to her credit handled the situation like a true professional.  She had seen worse.  This time there were no broken bones, which was a relief considering I already had three broken arms under my belt and a friendly staff at the hospital who all knew me by name. 

Nobody was bleeding, which was a welcome but unusual occurrence.  Before the ice had melted I'd tried to skate down the frozen driveway on actual ice skates, neglecting to take into account that the driveway was crushed gravel, and despite the fact that it was frozen, it was not smooth at all.  I had road rash on every inch of my face except for my nose.  My nose got its come-uppins.  I came in the house another time with a blood pouring out of it, she'd tried to treat it like any other bloody nose until I informed her that there was actually a cut inside there.  I'd slipped while cutting grain bags to make a hang glider, and managed to jam a knife straight up my own nose. 

Accident prone does not even begin to describe me.

That afternoon found us out on the porch looking forlorn while my mom did her best to cut burdocks out of our hair.  There was only so much she could do, really.  Chip looked on, rubbing his head absently.  I can only imagine what he was thinking, and I imagine it was this:  Maybe the wings needed to be longer, I wonder if we were to somehow incorporate some nine-volt batteries...

And the sound of scissors echoed through the Vermont air. 

Chip, Sean and I all rocked matching buzz cuts for a while.  Thanks to the short memories of second graders, my embarrassment at school was limited to a few moments after Mrs. Belding made me take off my hat.  People laughed, she shut them down, and that was that.  Nobody messed with Mrs. Belding.  Sean was a year behind us in another class, I have no idea what happened to him.  He turned out alright in the end.  

Maybe it was the fact that our attention spans were generally on par with that of a hyperactive dog in a room full of squirrels, but our failure to conquer the skies did nothing to deter us from pursuing other ventures.  Summer vacation was rapidly approaching, and we decided we'd like to go to Florida.  The best way to get there, we determined, was to take a raft.  Anybody could build a raft, plus there was a river that went right through town which must eventually flow into the ocean.  All we had to do was get the raft to the river and ride it to the ocean, then we'd float down the coast to Florida.

We started drawing up the plans immediately.


Previous:  Part IV
Next:  You might enjoy The Raft Saga - Part I

The Airplane Saga, Part 4: Darn You, Sir Isaac Newton

I sat straddling the wooden glider that I'd built and gazed out at the horizon.  Behind me sat Chip.  Behind him sat Sean.  The horizon was a little lower than usual, maybe because in the past few months I'd grown a little taller.  Maybe it was because our would-be glider sat perched on the roof of the shed behind my house with a fuel tank full of ignorance and enough enthusiastic cargo to un-bummer North Korea.  

Around my neck hung a disposable camera on a piece of baling twine.  Sean sported a backpack full of sandwiches and a pair of binoculars.  Chip was wedged in between us like a wad of deli meat.  It was time to fly.  I had a sudden thought, and swiveled around to look at Chip.

"How will we steer?"  I asked.  Chip scrunched his face up one side at a time so that his cheeks would push his glasses further up on his nose.  I'd always admired his ability to do that.
"Lean"  he said.
"Oh yeah" I said.

Sean had weaseled his way onto the maiden voyage.  I'll never know why.  We couldn't argue with his logic that there was room for him in the back, and we were happy to have him along anyway to bear witness to our triumph.  Also we needed his help getting the thing onto the roof.  It had been no small task.

We had manhandled the heavy, awkward pile of lumber around to the back side of the shed, through the burdock bushes and onto the roof with remarkable force of will.  Negotiating the burdock bushes was the worst bit.

A burdock plant, for those who have not had the pleasure, has large broad leaves which are very cool and are good for any number of things.  Nestled inside the shadow of those leaves are the burdocks themselves:  Little marble-sized seed pods completely covered in tiny hooks.  They're like little Velcro balls.  Here's a picture I found online just now:

 

http://changingaging.org/blog/how-foraging-can-help-prepare-for-life-after-adulthood/burdock-burrs/
^^^Hey, that's the first time I've ever given credit for a picture I gribbled from another website! ^^^

It is physically impossible to walk anywhere near a burdock plant without later finding at least one of the sneaky bastards clinging to your clothes, shoelaces, or even directly to your skin.  Burdocks absolutely suck.  Testify. 

We managed to wrangle the aircraft onto the roof, and then managed to drag it all the way up the steep sheets of tin.  There, it rested comfortably between the ripples, denied the pull of gravity by three small pairs of double-knotted sneakers.  It was time to fly.   

With joy in our hearts and sausage gravy for brains, we started the countdown.  At "one", six sneakers lifted from the tin, and gravity took over with a vengeance.  We were fearless.  We knew as soon as we got up to speed we'd break free of the Earth in a volley of cheers, and we'd be wiping cloud-mist from our glasses alongside the eagles.

That's not what happened.  Seeds of doubt began to burrow into our collective psyche just as the nose of the craft ran out of tin.  But there was no time to bail out.

The seven-foot plummet into the burdock bushes was at once instantaneous and infinite.  Somewhere in that paradoxical pocket of space-time we became separated from the craft in a flying pile of elbows and binoculars.  The aircraft landed with a combination sound of thump and splinter.  We landed among it and ourselves like so much thrown spaghetti. 

We thrashed around in the pucker-brush for quite a while.  When we emerged, many things had changed.  Sean had an entire burdock-afro.  He had launched with a bowl-cut and emerged from the crash site looking like Richard Simmons.  Baseball-sized wads of burdocks clumped under my armpits until I couldn't put my hands on my sides, and thousands more clung tightly to every square inch of our clothes.  Chips shoes were nowhere to be seen.

Somehow, miraculously, perhaps thanks to youthful flexibility or perhaps because fate wasn't paying attention at just that moment, none of us was the least bit hurt.  The pile of boards that lay inches from our fragile selves, with nails protruding from every angle, had not injured us in the least.  Gravity had failed to destroy us.  My mother, on the other hand, no doubt would.

Previous: Part III
Next: Part V

The Airplane Saga, Part 3: Lawn-gistics

"Hey Chip" I said, just about every day "didja get the engine yet?"
"Not yet" Chip would say.  "Soon."  One day I asked him and he said "Yep."  It was the greatest day ever.

I made the necessary arrangements to go to his house to pick it up.  Mainly that entailed donning a backpack and getting on my bike.  Chips house was only a handful of miles from mine from a satellite perspective, but from behind the handlebars it was significantly longer.  I had to take the dreaded "Wilson road" which was basically impassable for any vehicle not equipped with chains, and the result of every bike trip down it resulted in the tell-tale streak of mud, spattered in a speckly line up the back of whatever I happened to be wearing.

On the day the engine was ready, most of the mud hit the backpack.  The rest of it hit the back of my head.  I knew enough not to smear it around when it was still wet, it was easier just to just let it dry and then shake it out.  To the untrained eye, however, I was a kid with a muddy head who didn't seem to mind it.  Chip's brother Sean thought it was hilarious, but his mom wouldn't let me in the house that day. 

I didn't blame her.  I'm surprised she ever let me in the house at all, given my nearly perfect record of managing to wreak some sort of havoc every time I visited.  I was a force of nature. Somehow I would end up in the brook and came back in the house completely soaked, or I'd get covered in pine-pitch, or I'd crash the dirt bike.  Once, while being towed behind the snow-mobile on an inner tube by Chip, I'd been rocketed into a patch of trees and wound up with very little skin remaining on my left side.  Another time, while flailing around in the throes of story-telling, I knocked a lit candle off the shelf and blasted hot wax all over her freshly-swept kitchen floor.  Still, she kept letting me in the house.  Michele, if you're reading this, thanks for that!  You sure put up with a lot out of me over the years.

"Where's the engine?" I asked.
"We gotta get it out."  Chip said.
"Out of where?"
"The lawnmower."

This sent up a few red flags, even for me, but that wasn't enough to stop us.  The lawnmower was out in the shed, where lawnmowers belong.  We set upon it with wrenches and hammers, but our operation was shut down prematurely by Chip's dad, who wasn't the least bit amused by the fact that we were attempting to unceremoniously gut his perfectly good lawnmower.  We hadn't made much progress; it is remarkably difficult to remove a lawnmower engine without the appropriate tools.  That's probably why we were allowed to continue being alive.

It was a major setback; our aircraft would remain grounded until we could come up with a new means of propulsion.  Our brains, powered as they were by youthful enthusiasm, churned out idea after bad idea.  Finally we settled on the most obvious solution:  The craft was now a glider!  Given the right wind conditions, we could sail around like autumn leaves on a gentle breeze.   

All we had to do was launch it off the roof.

Previous: Part II
Next: Part IV

The Airplane Saga, Part 2: Some Assembly Required

Chip was not immediately forthcoming with the lawnmower engine, but as I understood that such delicate equipment surgeries must not be rushed, I pressed on with my construction of the aircraft without hesitation or doubt.  As it happens, an airplane isn't as difficult to build as one might imagine.

I kept it simple.  The fuselage came together quite nicely, and in about half an hour.  It consisted of four long 1x10s, nailed together into a long hollow box.  I cut pieces to fit into the holes in the front and the back, and drilled a hole in the front piece so the drive shaft from the lawnmower engine could fit through.  That's where I would attach the propeller.

Across the top, near the middle, I nailed another 1x10 which became the wings.  My fixed-wing aircraft was nearly complete.  Last, I nailed a smaller board across the back end, and stepped back.  I pushed my giant, plastic, tape-wadded glasses higher up on my nose, brushed the sawdust out of my bowl-cut and stood proudly surveying my handiwork.

It looked vaguely like an airplane, and I was overjoyed with how well it had turned out.  Here's an artists conception, and by that I mean here's a picture I just made in MS Paint.

Having done it once and since hindsight is 20/20, I feel I can safely point out a few mistakes which, should I build it again, I might consider re-thinking.  I made no measurements whatsoever.  In almost contemptuous disregard for Boyle's law, I didn't even bother to bevel the edges of the wing.  I didn't take into account that the craft would need a fuel tank of some sort, and I didn't leave enough room for the lawnmower engine.  I didn't add a rear vertical stabilizer, or rudder of any kind.  Also it had no landing gear, and no seats.  That's about it for mistakes, actually.

Not too bad. 

The propeller was a little more challenging.  I shaped it easily enough, but the hole in the middle was round and kept slipping on the test drive-shaft I'd whipped up.  A round peg in a round hole.  I whittled several iterations, tried wedging in bits of tree bark, bike tire rubber, wood shavings and everything else I could find  before my dad came to my rescue and suggested I file a square hole and a square peg.  That solved everything.  My finished propeller was about eight inches across.  Plenty. 

So far Chips contributions had been fairly minimal, but I was convinced that in a day or two we'd be doing loops and barrel rolls around the property.  My folks asked me to take a camera up with me to get some pictures of the house, and I happily agreed.  They had no idea the depth of my conviction to actually follow through on the project and make the thing fly.  


Previous:  Part I
Next:  Part III

The Airplane Saga, Part 1: One Head is Better Than Two

Somewhere during second grade I got a new kid in my class.  He told us his name was Gary, but that his family called him Chip; not because he looked like a chipmunk, but because he was a "chip off the ol' block."  I still don't believe him about that, but either way I can't remember ever calling him Gary.  To me he's been Chip the whole time.

I've never had to be the new kid in class but I imagine it's pretty traumatic.  I remember the teacher, Mrs. Belding, bringing him up in front of the class like you see in movies and introducing him while he stood there looking terrified and uncomfortable in his red wind-breaker.  On the playground later that day I kicked a soccer ball around with him for a few minutes, learned that he had enough nine volt batteries in his possession to build a life-sized replica of the Kremlin, and that was all she wrote.   

We shared a passion for building things and enjoyed many brain-storming sessions where we tossed around our potentially world-altering ideas for new inventions.  Maybe brain-storm isn't the right term.  It was more like a brain-shower, or a brain-drizzle.  Who am I kidding, it was a brain-barely-perceptible-spritz.

After one such session, in flurry of sketches, schematics, and crumpled up notebook paper complete with edge frizz, one of us hatched a terrible idea.  Unfortunately we both latched onto it like two brain-damaged snapping turtles.  It soon became the sole focus of our collective existence.

We would build an airplane.  Oh yes.  

It made sense.  We both wanted to fly, and since no amount of jumping from the tops of fence poles armed with garbage-bag parachutes had done the trick so far, what better way than to build our very own flying machine, and conquer the skies once and for all?

All the pieces fell into place.  I prided myself on my ability to whittle, so the propeller became my responsibility. It would turn under motor power, and Chip claimed to have just the lawnmower engine for the job.  Both of us had immediate access to hundreds of acres of Vermont forests where we could gather raw materials.  The plan couldn't have been more perfect.  All that remained was to build it.  


Next:  Part II

Another Dead Language In Our Midst?

I was writing an essay tonight and thinking about how tricky it is to get my words to have the right "voice".  It occurs to me that as advanced as our written language may be, it is still sadly lacking in what a musician would refer to as "timbre".  There's no way to tell what the writers voice would actually sound like if you could hear them speaking.  Was he or she a smoker?  Nasal?  Loud, quiet, obnoxious?

In music, timbre is expressed through the use of various instruments.  There are only so many voices, as limited by the instruments.  A note played by a trombone sounds different than the same note played by a flute.  How does a writer convey the sound of their voice?

"Bollocks!" he said, in his raspy, yet oddly soothing and somehow nasal voice.  What does that sound like?  It's up to the reader to plug in those variables and make a voice for the speaker.  I imagine it's just as hard, if not harder for a musician.  

How hard is it for a musician to translate their music into a readable medium?  The great composers of the past; Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, etc, etc, etc.. were all forced to "speak" the same written language.  Musical notation is mankind's best effort when it comes to writing down what music is supposed to sound like.  It's brilliant, and detailed, and complicated, but is it good enough?  Look at this:

It takes a trained musician to be able to even begin to decipher this in order to duplicate what the composer was trying to say.  Yet every orchestra will play it a little bit differently, because there is a level of interpretation required.  

I submit that things have changed.  Whereas once a musician had to annotate everything precisely and had to use every trick available in the language of written music in order to convey what he or she was trying to convey, today all a musician needs to do is have any number of easily accessible forms of mufti-media.

Anyone can listen to a recording of anyone else and know exactly what that artist intended the music to sound like.  Is the language of written music a dying language?  I wonder.

After a massive electromagnetic pulse, will there be enough of our music recorded in hard copy for someone to be able to accurately reproduce it in 500 years?  Or are we depending on digital recordings of everything to survive the ages?

I wonder.  

I Interpret A Picture With No Context

I was asked to interpret this picture without context for a writing class recently. I recommend that you study it for a minute or so before you read on.

So here's what I think is going on:

  

Some years had passed since humanity, in a last-ditch offensive coup against the dreaded Hay Fever People of the Fourth Apocalypse, rose from their only remaining bastion in a whirlwind of antihistamines and Kleenex to win back the Earth.  All was well until it was discovered that some vestiges of the enemy still clung to life.  Symptoms reminiscent of the last struggle began to manifest themselves; itchy, watery eyes, sinus pressure, and hard boogers that hurt started to proliferate with alarming speed.  The growing dread of anarchy threatened to drive up the price of NyQuil to market-busting proportions.   

In the nick of time, science and a good bit of dumb luck revealed the answer:  The human immune system was lethal to the Hay Fever People, and could be weaponized.  Unfortunately the delivery systems for the dispersal weapons were made in China, and when the shipping containers got hung up in customs it became clear that drastic methods would have to be taken.  It wasn't pretty, but it appeared that the only remaining option was to flick freshly-picked nose-goblins directly into the faces of the enemy. 

Modeling herself after Anita Tzissue (a legendary folk hero), Omminoff Lickem Ania (or just "Ania" in more colloquial situations) vowed to follow her destiny and curb the onset of another uprising.  She had a very fine, and dangerous line to walk.  Protecting herself enough to stay alive while allowing just enough bits of sinus-irritating motes of red schmutz emitted by the Hay Fever People into her nose would prove to be trickier than she thought.  Timing would be the all important factor, and re-picking fresh greeblies for each enemy she encountered would be next to impossible, especially considering the scarf she'd need to wear around her face. 

Her solution was pure genius.  Pearls could be coated with nose-goop and would still be effective for seven to ten minutes before losing their potency.  Ania had only to fashion a loading mechanism and she could rapid-fire the pearls directly from her finger.  The enemy, surrounded as they were in perpetual clouds of luminescent bio-debris, would never see it coming. 

Ania enlisted the help of local celebrity Sir Knuckles Bodsworth IV to aid her.  Sir Knuckles was the only miniature swine around with training enough to speed-load the pearls from the canisters in her ring onto her tensely coiled finger and then move before being catapulted into sneezy, sinus congestion hell. 

Ania and Sir Knuckles braved unspeakable odds.  Their journey took them deep into the heart of the secret world of the Hay Fever People until they found themselves face to face with the fabled El Groano, spiritual leader of the enemy.  The moment of truth at hand, Sir Knuckles rolled one of only two remaining deadly pearls onto Ania's fingertip.  He scampered to the side just as El Groano leaned forward, seemingly to administer a fatal dose of mucus-layer irritants.  Time stood still, except for a guy named Frank who was there to fix the garbage disposal in El Groano's kitchen.  Frank had the presence of mind to paint an exceptionally detailed picture of the moment. 

An instant before the fatal shot was fired, El Groano said something unexpected.

"Can I borrow your loufa?"

Ania paused. 

"What?"

"Your loufa.  Can I borrow it?" 

There was some confusion, but at last Ania discovered that all the Hay Fever People wanted was to learn from humans how to exfoliate more effectively.  Ania gave him a few tips, recommended a good mani-pedi guy, and left El Groano with a pumice stone and what few Biore pads she had on her person as a gesture of good will. 

The world was safe again.  Sir Knuckles was re-knighted as Sir Sir Knuckles.  Ania accepted only a box of thin-mints and a free lifetime subscription to Netflix as payment.  El Groano lived out the rest of his days with perfectly radiant skin, and co-founded a software development company.  

The Problem With Spam

Spam exists, and it finds its way into my life.  

I get Spam regardless of the impervious imaginary language barrier I construct between myself and the peddlers of the world, and no matter who I threaten with bodily, psychological, and even spiritual harm. 

No matter how many boxes I check while ordering things online requesting that I not receive promotional email or calls, I get Spam.  Regardless of how many subscriptions I cancel via email or phone, no matter how many telemarketers I ignore, or salespeople around whom I transform into a Norwegian blacksmith circa 1601 who only accepts chickens and wool as currency, I get Spam in my inbox. 

Spam is an unstoppable force of nature the likes of which laughed maniacally in the very face of the meteor that exterminated the dinosaurs.  It trivializes and mocks the impending zombie apocalypse with the confidence and cavalier attitude of a cockroach with binoculars; eating popcorn with its family and watching a nuclear bomb fall. 

It cannot be stopped.  It is akin to a living thing, in that it seems to seek only to perpetuate its existence. 

It will succeed by any means necessary. 

Resistance is futile.

45 Seconds of Me Playing The Guitar

I recorded a little acoustic blip tonight, trying out the free recording app I downloaded on my kindle fire.  The app is called RecForge, it works pretty well.  Then I thought it sounded cool, so I thought I'd put it here in the blog.  

For whatever reason, probably my gross ineptitude, I had some trouble uploading an audio file... so I made a movie and threw in all the pictures I could find of me playing the guitar, then posted it on YouTube just so I could copy the link to my blog.  And that's how this sort of thing happens.

It's short.  Anyway, after all that, here it is:

I've had way more good times playing my guitar than I have pictures of it.