You know how life is often like that time you were baking a chocolate cream pie in your range at 400 degrees and you forgot how to make the coconut and mango frosting so you are looking in your messy drawers for that cookbook as seven Goblin-Kings all of a sudden show up in your dining room starving to death and angry that there is nothing befitting their exalted yet hideous status in the pantheon of trans-dimensional portal creatures that really don't belong on this particular version of earth yet there you are with that pie and the Goblin-Kings want some big legs of elk and mushroom salads to gorge on and you're completely out of elk (you've never actually ever had elk in the house) and the closest to a big bowl of tossed mushrooms is some Ragu mushroom and something spaghetti sauce and you're thinking a whipped up pot of spaghetti and Ragu mushroom tomato something sauce isn't going to satiate these horrifying little monsters and right then you hear a crazy bubbling sound in the oven and you've completely lost track of time and what you thought were only seconds were now moments and there is now an imminent risk of pie failure and as you scurry to save your pie you hear Frosty, your little Rat Terrier/Dachshund barking like crazy at the Goblin-Kings who are now singing some Goblinesque war chant in frightening voices and you start calling little Frosty to come in the kitchen and stop barking at the bad Goblin-Kings when, in your multi-focused rapid transfer attentional environment you burn the holy shit out of your hand on the mysteriously opened oven door (you don't even remember opening it) and you stare at your hand which is covered in a molten chocolate explosion sauce from the pie which burst a massive chocolate sauce bubble like a freaking birthday balloon stabbed with a pin by a freckle faced red-headed bratchild and as you gape your mouth to scream in soundless fury and agony you realize in a dizzying melange of frustration, pain, anger and humor that the fucking Goblin-Kings are singing the Winkies' chant from the Wizard of Oz and Frosty has barked himself into an actual grand mal seizure and nothing is impossible but sometimes you wish more was.
Shrimpy and Uncle Dead corkscrewed our once potent economy into the ground with insane warfaring and bankrupt domestic policies and an appalling lack of interest in the backfiring and clattering engines of our way of life and now the wingnuts are shrieking IT'S BEEN 100 WHOLE DAYS SINCE OBAMA SIGNED THE STIMULUS BILL HOW COME THINGS AREN'T BETTER HUH HUH. Wow. A whole 100 days! 3 months plus a week roughly. Because something as massive and multi-leveled and globally linked as our economy should recover from core and fundamental failures in LIKE NO TIME. Give me a break. We're just very fortunate that at this point in the gathering stormclouds of the Coming Econopocalypse that we aren't murdering each other on the streets with sharpened sticks to steal clothing and roasting pit bulls and spaniels on spits over backyard and alley bonfires. Now shut the hell up wingjerks and let the grown ups fix things. Go outside and play in traffic you WATBs.
When I was a dark ops military adviser with the 101st SubMitTacSniSquad (Submarine Mitigation Tactical Sniper Squad) stationed at a secret Naval base on Lake Pend Oreille, me and the boys used to go into Sandpoint, Idaho on Tuesdays for open poetry mic night at one of the local watering holes.
Invariably we'd get drunk on awesome local beer and ales and the guys would egg me on until I got up, swaying and burping, to read one of my poems to a crowd comprised mostly of hippies and other local North Idaho dirtbags.
Sometimes, right in the middle of a reading, I would be seized with a stunning gestalt, a brain ninja shrieking his brain ninja assassin's cry HAI HAIEEEEEEE, and realize that everything in this entire world consists not only of matter - made up of all kinds of particles and obeying very specific laws of science, but that there coexists an entire world of something else, it permeates everywhere and is impossible to weigh or measure except in very indirect fashions, yet, even though diffuse and non-corporeal it can be more powerful than the most explosive volcano or thundering wall of tsunami'd seawater. We all possess this and we all use it to varying degrees of efficacy and effectiveness in our immediate and cumulative lives.
Then I would catch my breath, narrow my bleary and unfocused eyes at the dark smoky bar's patrons listening intently to my poem and I'd give my inner psyche a shoulder shrug and figure oh what the hell tomorrow me and the boys are gonna start the day off with a 5 mile swim capped off with some fun speargunning of big fat Kamloops trouts. And so it goes.
I'm glad she gave Alaska back before she could break it. She is a horrible person and shouldn't be in charge of anything bigger than a margarita shaker. I do bid her farewell with some mixed feelings - she actually made me ad money in blog traffic and got me a teevee interview on Anderson Cooper 360 following this famous entry. Goodbye Sarah and the rest of your Wasillabilly clan of backwoods salmon gutters, baby makers and snow machine tuners, it's been real fun.
One of the biggest homeowner nightmares is to have your house catch on fire. Imagine my surprise and anxiety when I received an urgent call at work in Rainytown from my youngest son last Wednesday telling me the house had been on fire. There I was 350 miles away and hearing that my south wall had burned, my powerbox had melted, a fence section was gone, but fortunately nobody was hurt.
The good news is the claims adjustor was out the next morning, I've had an electrician in to replace the outside box and inside breaker panel and I'm powered up again as of yesterday. We spent Thur - Sun at the lake (which isn't a bad place to have to stay when one's house is down). The bad news is along with the smoke damage and fence and siding repair, apparently the melting powerbox surged a blast of electricity that cooked my dishwasher, two tv's, my hot water heater, and two cable boxes. At least so far. I still need to have the restoration crew run their ozone machine to get rid of the smoke smell in parts of the house. There will be walls painted and carpets cleaned also. What a hassle, but the Fire Examiner told me I was very fortunate with this fire. He said 15 more minutes and it would have been in the eaves.
The fire was first spotted by a neighborhood kid (who I've got to find out where he lives to thank him) who grabbed a neighbor's hose (mine was melted through) and started hitting the flames while another neighbor called 911. My awesome neighbors also gave me a card yesterday with a collection of money to help with some of our immediate expenses. They are very sweet and nice people and make me glad I've been here for 19 years.
Anyhow, I've been computer and internet free since last week so that's why there's been no postings.
As for the Fourth of July - it rocked. I'll spare the narrative and just share some pics.
And on the Fifth of July, me and J and Britt went to thank the Statue of Liberty for giving us the best godamned country in the whole fucking world!
I'm telling J how I used to train Navy Snipers at Lake Pend O'Reille on submarine mitigation tactics (SubMitTac). J is laughing with me not at me. She is too!
You are hosting a big Fourth of July fun-o-rama at your lake place. You and your friends and family have been swimming and boating all day, the weather's been perfect, everyone's having a blast. You've grilled some absolutely awesome steaks and corn-0n-the-cob and other grill-worthy foods and feasted and now dusk drapes its darkening backdrop for the mighty fury of the fireworks display you've so carefully arranged. Every item purchased from a local indian reservation and taken illegally off the sovereign property of the rez to be lovingly stored in cardboard boxes until this moment. You've arranged the firing sequence from less to more, each item of ordinance ordered to lead to a bigger one and a bigger one until the exciting crescendo of sparks and fire and eardrum rattling booms culminates in the biggest one of all, the biggest you've ever purchased, the one you had to ride 3 miles on a bumpy and dusty road in a pickup with a big indian named Rex to a little storage shed tucked deep into the ponderosa pine and aspen forest to buy an item SO illegal and So dangerous that the tribe will not risk a raid by a black suited squad of federal agents dropped from hovering combat helicopters. Rex sells you the Holy Grail of unsafe and insane deadly home fireworks items: The Weeping Blister of God Sun Flower Rain Fire!
OMG.
You've only heard of this one from the muttering of other guys who like to blow shit up. After the usual lamentations over the difficulty in procuring hand amputating M-80s and cherry bombs someone will invariably mention The Weeping Blister of God Sun Flower Rain Fire and everyone will hush and gasp audibly sucking in air out of excitement and fear. All of you guys know of it, nobody's actually ever seen it although it's not uncommon to spread stories, suburban myths if you will, of what this incredible firework can do. A forest was started on fire in Northern California! One tipped over on a raft and blew up a 30 foot Chris Craft, blew a hole through it like a torpedo! Some dude lit the fuse wrong and went to check and it went off and they found his head and upper tors0 THREE MILES AWAY and his flesh was burned CLEAN OFF.
Now you possess the legend. The neighbors blowing crap up on their docks on each side of you have no idea what you have in store this year. Although they've learned that in the unspoken competition for best dock displays you are a man hard to beat. But they've stepped up their game over the years, they definitely are bringing it.
Your display proceeds as always, great mortars and canister shells blowing up in the sky, flaming balls shooting out of a variety of roman candles and ground launchers. The kids and friends and family all oohing and ahhing. The neighbors politely applauding some of your better ones. You and yours returning the golf clapping. Then finally, the explosive denouement arrives.
It is time. All the ordinance is spent except for the granddaddy of them all, the Terminator storming through the police station with the Predator on his shoulders and Godzilla following closely behind, the thermonuclear celebration of America's power and might - The Weeping Blister of God Sun Flower Rain Fire!
You excuse yourself to go up to your truck. Everyone is wondering what is going on. You can not help but smirk as you walk up the pathway to the drive. This is gonna be so damn cool.
As you carry your atomic firework down to the dock you see everyone shudder and gasp and then like slowly rising fat rainbow trouts miraculously imbued with the brains of a table full of boat salesmen at a strip club - hooting and hollering with pure lust for a visual display of pyrotechnic sensory fulfillment.
You carry this massive and heavy firework out to the dock. You set it down. The neighbors are staring. My God what has this man brought out? Oh dear Lord. Get me another beer hon!
As you position the The Weeping Blister of God Sun Flower Rain Fire in its final firing place you hear someone walking quickly down the dock ramp towards you. What is this? Who dares interrupt the Bomb-Master?
It is your youngest son's friend, Johnny the Dog Boy. Poor Johnny, he was born with a furry tail and a long dog like nose and erect pointed ears. His skin is covered in dog like fur. When excited he is known to emit a barking like noise. He is sort of a pet to the family, ever since your son made friends with him in daycare. Now why is Johnny the Dog Boy interrupting at this critical juncture in the most massive display of dock fireworks ever to be seen?
"Can I lights it arf!"
What? Johnny the Dog Boy wants to light this the most expressive, deadly, and massively impressive firework ever known to man? The item that if caught in your possession means 10 years hard time in a federal Supermax prison in Colorado? What the hell?
Johnny stands before you in rapt anticipation. His tail is wagging like a chopper rotor. Round and round. How does he do that you wonder? You are dissociating and your mind is drifting. NOT NOW DON'T GO TO YOUR HAPPY ISLAND PLACE NOW! you scream in your head.
You glance at everyone on the beach. The looks on their faces. OMG. They all want you to let Johnny the Dog Boy torch this sucker off. You can't believe it. Johnny's hands are half paws! He'll burn himself and probably mis-light the fuse, the scarily short fuse as a matter of fact. And will he be able to get away in time, what if when you and Johnny are racing down the dock to get some space from this behemoth of bombage you trip on his tail and he yelps and you both fall down and get ignited in the detonation? So many things to go wrong. Plus, this is YOUR moment, your house mortgage payment spent on a single massive memory, a moment in the chemistry of a million suns lighting up the lake night sky. The Fourth of Fucking July! Yet everyone nods silently and sends a thousand nonverbal messages to give the cherry red tipped punk to Johnny.
"Yeah dad, let Johnny!" your son exclaims. Heads nod.
What do you do? Do you let Johnny the Dog Boy steal your thunder? Even though he can't really safely grip a burning punk? Or a lighter or a match? You can make this dog boy's sad life happier by a power of eleventy gabillion. Can you do it?
As I mentioned in the prior post, fireworks were purchased by yours truly on Saturday. Serious bombage and sparkage and rainbow bright skyflowers blooming in the inky garden of the nightage. The hated and deadly Haiku-Ninjas are pretty damn lucky I did not transport any of my ordinance here to my shoebox sized studio in Rainytown, Pugedopia, Kingdom of the Mushroom People, USA because I would be so tempted to engage them in a final showdown, a last fight to the metaphorical death, a titanic man to Haiku-Ninja struggle for the dominance of this miniscule abode. And no, I would not be shooting off 80,000 gram canister shells in my apartment as that would be both dangerous and highly illegal. No, I would lure the sneaky little bastards out to an open field, even though there are technically no open fields in the greater Rainytown, Pugedopia, Kingdom of the Mushroom People, USA area, unless by "open" you mean "full of nasty assed and hyperallergenic death shrubs known as Scotch Broom, tangles of spiky and vicious Blackberries, and other green stuff that seems to suck the very wet out of the air and ground to grow in a wild abandon heretofore known only to a race of sub-sentient slavering mine-tunnel trolls in thrall to the Neo-Warlords of Zorakian Prime IV. But if I had some open ground and my nemeses the Haiku-Ninjas to pursue, me armed with roman candles and mortar tubes, they with their tiny dark little hearts and accoutrements of night attacks with bounded verse and little sharp things, I think I could bring a conflagrant and furious end to this seemingly never ending conflict of little Shurikens flung into my toes while I sleep, of hastily scrawled 5-7-5 syllabical structure, I HATE THE SEASONS AND WATERFALLS AND MOUNTAINS AND CHERRY BLOSSOMS AND FROGS now, by the way, thanks to these hideous enemies of mine and their incessant haikuologizing on life and weather and shit. Enough. I am so ready to get this over with, I am even imagining epic warfare using my beloved and treasured fireworks so much more treasured for dock launchage and crowd pleasin on Saturday, the Birthday of the Greatest Nation in the World. I need to develop some new tactics and strategies. Perhaps involving traps. Yes, traps. I am so going to trap these H-Njas and end this virulence, this verminous invasion, this vituperative clash banging of seemingly endless intent. Just you and me, dudes. Out in the open. Come out, come out, wherever you are.
What an excellent weekend. J and I and Brittany went to Hoopfest on Saturday am to see one of J's friends playing. The crowds were ENORMOUS. What a ton of people. I played in the first three Hoopfests and it continues to amaze me what a gargantuan 3 on 3 tournament this is (biggest in the whole galaxy). After Hoopfest, J lived up to her boast that she could kick my ass at H.O.R.S.E. We went to a park and she beat me three games straight. Excellent mechanics and range, she just doesn't miss. It's kind of a psychological game for her, she breaks your confidence by forcing you to make short range shot after shot. I later beat her in my driveway, nobody NOBODY H.O.R.S.E.s me in my hood. NOBODY.
She met my kids (and didn't flee in terror) and we all went to the CDA rez and bought like a million pounds of fireworks. Mostly flaming ball shooters and some 80,ooo gram canister shells that can knock low earth orbiting satellites down. Later we had Cuba Libras Libres at the Elk where TOWPGLAG met us for appetizers and to complain about his roomies.
Yesterday = lake. It was so incredible out there. Windy and warm, the sky pure blue and the sun turning the water into a sea of diamonds, it was bliss. We boated and bbq'd and hung out and freaked Bob out because he had a really bloodshot eye and Brittany kept bringing it up. I ended up going to the ER last night (dx: Conjunctivitis, likely cause: scratching my eyeball because of allergies). We head back out to the lake this Friday for the Independence Day weekend.
There is nothing that helps soften the blow of a coming work week than a Sunday spent at the lake in the warm breezy winds and grilling meat smoke of summertime. Well that and it's a short week.
What are you folks doing for the Fourth? Blowing your own shit up or watching others blowing their shit up?
What a shocker. Another right wing GOP mouthpiece for repressive sexual and societal policies gets caught with his pants down. And leaving his four young sons home alone on Father's Day while he's getting some with his Argentine lover, how pro-family is that? It continues to fascinate me how few Democratic Party politicians do crap like this compared to these bloviating moralistic windbag Republicans. I wonder what that might say about politically imposing puritanical and repressive beliefs on society and being a raging hypocrite with one's own choices and lifestyles?
I seriously don't know how these types live with themselves. Sanford, as a congressman, voted for 3/4 of the articles of impeachment against President Clinton. Sanford has been a consistent opponent of civil rights for gays, a real shining beacon of social conservatism. Sanford claims he spent his last five days of his seven days love junket (taxpayers paid for his trip!) crying in Argentina. Good. You were once considered a presidential prospect for your sad little party in 2012. Now you'll be lucky to finish out your term as Governor.
Neanderthals, while not exactly high cuisine artists, did make Mammoth jerky and probably died of TB and other crap us homo sapiens gave em.
I went to the beach last night for a change of pace to my active and always fun-packed evenings after work here in Rainytown, Pugetopia in the Kingdom of the Mushroom People. It was colder than shit but you gotta love the ocean. You know, the ocean is the loneliest place in the world yet you always see single people there, alone, wandering the beach or sitting in their cars. Ever wonder why that is? I think it's because at the ocean you can kind of drown out your thoughts (but not emotions so well) with the desolation of the sea and the rhythmic pounding of the surf. And I think the sheer vastness can overwhelm one in both positive and negative ways. Single people always say they "love walks on the beach" in their singles ads but I think it's mostly they love the ideas of walks on the beach with someone else. But as I drove away from the beach, I saw a tent pitched in some dunes, mostly exposed to the cold wind and being buffeted like a flag and I thought I could totally stay in that tent with my friend from Tennessee and cuddle in sleeping bags and talk and talk about what Neanderthals must have thought when they discovered ocean beaches and how squid jerky has never really taken off in the states and how she and I never have to communicate in minimal effective responses (MER's) like a President who admits to only an occasional non-daily cigarette after a 30 plus year smoking career when anyone who has ever smoked knows he's probably hauling down a pack a day. And then we'd burrow deeper into our down filled sleeping bags in our unglamourous yet highly functional tent and hear the wind driving sand against the fabric and then hear only our heartbeats and the jealousy of gulls.
I was passed the other day by a pickup truck with a fake antler stuck on the outside of the driver side window with a suction cup. I think Ed McMahon would have chuckled at this but I'm not sure why. I would love to see deer wandering along highways with fake fat beer bellies stuck on their antlers but then it hits me - I am anthropomorphizing deer as possessing some sort of appreciation of irony and that's entirely incorrect and then I realize I could probably skip the manual paint scraping of my southern exposed crappy T-111 sided house wall and just blast it with a power washer.
Another fun weekend in Spokatopia. Lake with the kids on Saturday, got a dirt bike ride in and found granite bald top mountain top! Bizarre mountain face of broken chunks of granite or some type of rock. Nasty assed steep mountain road of washed out dirt and mostly rocks to the top. Isn't it weird looking?
The building at top, covered in high tech antennas is undoubtedly a secret military installation from the Cold War, with nuclear missile guidance relay controls and perhaps a prototype Reagan era "Star Wars" missile defense system laser cannon.
Had an awesome weekend with my friend from Tennessee. She forced me to again close down a bar with her, this time it was one we randomly walked into while walking downtown back to my car and found it was closing for good that night! We closed a closing bar. The bartender made a free wicked good drink for everyone at the bar to to toast the joint's closing. Cool place but I forget the name, Caravelli's?
So after she made me close up another bar (last week = The Swamp), we hung out all night at her place with no sleep as usual because we are creatures of the Spokane night and do not sleep.
We had started out Friday evening at Rock City for the margaritas and food, then went to the Globe where we met her friends, who were very funny and cool and kicked out asses repeatedly at pool, then we went to the Peacock Room at the Dav but they'd last called it, so we wandered back and found the joint on its last night of business.
Then after a night of next to no sleep we went for a hike to rid our bodies of the aftermath of alcohol! I took her to a sweet riverside trail from the Meenach bridge west to a cool place where the Spokane river bends and becomes fairly placid. It's a mostly singletrack trail I used to mountain bike on, like 10 years ago, and hadn't been on since. I don't remember often seeing anyone on it back in the day, but we passed a few hikers and a few mt bikers. But mostly had it to ourselves. Nobody was at the river where we went. This trail is fascinating because it goes through some very verdant, shaded, thick riverine forests (maples, firs, pines, tons of thick shrubs and shade and bog plants) but breaks into the drier more locally dominant ponderosa pine forests. Wildflowers (and domestic invaders) were in full bloom and were gorgeous. It was a great way to get out, breathe some fresh air and exercise (exorcise) the fermentation elves out of our bods. Then I had to show her the World Market on Division and go get a greasy post-hangover protein replacement therapy lunch at Dick's. It was truly a Spokanocentric weekend.
Now it is Monday and the work life again commences. I love my super packed weekends even if they rocket by, they've been the best in a long time.
As my few regular readers left can attest, I occasionally blog about going to the bathroom. Yesterday while sitting in a stall at work and texting someone, I realized how interesting the feng shui and stall preference patterns in this particular restroom were. There are four stalls with doors. Three are equal sized and one on the far end is for disabled folks and is the size of Texas. The clear favorite stall for a sit down is the third one down, it is contiguous to the living room handicapped stall. The favorite stall has a door that sticks shut so it always looks like someone is using it, so you must walk down to it to glance through the cracks to see if it is occupied. If it is, the general move is to the handicapped stall although some will reverse field and use one of the first two. The problem, as I see it, with the first two is the first one adjoins the stand up urinal row. So even though a wall separates you, you are still next to the urinators. It is noisier and feels less relaxing. The issue with the middle stall, is of course, it is a middle stall and is adjoined by stalls on each side. If you are in there because the preferred third stall is being used then you have to sit next to someone and listen to their thundering discharges and look at their shoes and pants cuffs and try to guess if they are a coworker or not. Our restroom serves several different departments at work, so you just never know. Also, if you are in the middle and a third person shows up and takes the first stall, the one next to the urinators, NOW YOU ARE SURROUNDED. I've had that happen when the middle stall was the only one open. It reminded me of some horrifying experiences in airport restrooms, not Larry Craigesque experiences, but more like being stuck in a cacophonous cattle stampede in a thunderstorm while bouncing along in a horsedrawn shitwagon.
But back to the stall preferences - I used to avoid the disabled stall. Mostly because of guilt and fear. Guilt for using such a large and expansive stall when it was designed for folks who needed the extra room for wheelchair maneuvering and positioning. Why should I use such a big stall when I can still walk? But I generally have enough other neurotic entitlement issues that I could usually get past the guilt one but the fear of being caught inhibitor could really mess me up. I would sit down in the disabled person's stall and worry that I'd hear the main door to the restroom open and the unmistakeable sounds of a wheelchair coming in and wheeling down to the stall and I'd be like OMG, NO, and the person in the wheelchair would try to open the stall door and realize it was locked and have to push back and wait and I'd be like straining to hurry up and finish and hope the wheelchair person didn't start talking to me like "hey, man, I hope to fuck you are handicapped and not some lazy assed person wanting the big roomy stall to read their newspaper in, man, because I'm dying here , I'm gonna explode." And I'd feel all this pressure to hurry up and finish the Sports Section and get out and then, and then I'd have to open the door and expose myself to the wheelchair guy as normally abled and mutter something like sorrymanallthestallsweretakenandallsorry and hustle out of there before suffering any more of his disdain and loathing. Probably only taking one sheet of paper towel from the infrared vision robot paper towel dispensers instead of the more luxious two just so to gain a more rapid egress.
So what is the point here? Just that even the most mundane and simple bodily functions and associated environmental cues and structures have patterns and meaning, that everything in life has dominant themes with secondary tones and hues, that even a typical work lavatory is, in effect, a psychological laboratory to examine why we pick the third stall from the end, the one right next to the disabled persons stall, and not the one by the urinators. I find these small treasures of self exploration both worth digging for and even more truly cherished when held up to the bright and yearning searchlight of the human condition.
I challenge each of my few beleagured readers left to find something in their normal routinized daily experience and ask yourself, no, challenge yourself to understand why. Why do I always pick the shopping cart from this row? Why do I always kiss my husband on his right cheek? Why do my kids always drink from the milk carton in the fridge and not pour it into glasses? And so on. Feel free to leave me a comment about what you discovered in this collective journey to self awarness I am inviting you all to partake with me. Let's take a trip to Insight City together!
Then county probation officer Susan Ranger testified in August of
2007 that Sakewitz had a rabbit in her home in June, had canceled
counseling sessions and refused to open the door for unannounced visits.
Ranger said she found no rabbits when she finally got inside but did
find a half-empty 10-pound bag of carrots. Sakewitz was sentenced to
three days in jail.
The obsessive bunny lady has been bopped again. It's sad, sick and funny at the same time. Like much of life. Like this blog for chrissakes. I can only wonder what being surrounded by bunnies does for this lady and why she's willing to risk her freedom for rabbits. I want to believe when she has her rabbits she is flooded with great waves of dopaminergic euphoria, that she giggles and laughs and has not a care in the world when she's got her hoppers. But who knows.
Problems for Sakewitz started in October 2006 when Hillsboro police
found and confiscated nearly 250 rabbits in her home, including about
100 dead ones in freezers and refrigerators. America, at this time and place, cannot allow a woman to own 250 rabbits and a 10o dead ones in freezers and refrigerators. It disturbs our zeitgeist, yanks at the threads in the seams in the very fabric of our collective aesthetics and humanity. Maybe one day it will be different and bunny ladies can live a life unfettered by limits and laws. But bunny hoarders will never draw the ire and disgust that the cat hoarders often do.
Bunnies are cute and bring forth visions of crazy happy women laying on hotel beds in utter bliss as their bunnies hop on and around them, the hotel room tvs droning on to unlistening ears and unseeing eyes. Cat hoarders, on the other hand, summon up images of muu-muu clad old women in nasty old fuzzy slippers walking through several inches deep cat shit on the rotten floors of their horrifyingly toxic old homes, hundreds of insane and starving cats meowing and hissing and gnawing on the carcasses of the latest litter of hideously inbred kittens.
I can't think of a cuter animal to hoard than a bunny. Can you? If you were an animal hoarder what would you hoard? (unicorns for me)
My left hip is killing me, I can hardly walk. I went hiking and my left knee was bugging me so I may have overcompensated with my hip somehow trying to protect it. I have a busy day and this is going to suck. But on a happy stomach note I did buy a Fred Meyers Black Cherry Pie, my favorite commercially available fruit-based pie ever.
Dog count on hike: 4 leashed, 2 unleashed (one was a scary looking wolf-husky demon hybrid)
I am tempted to phone Olympia City Parks and Rec and bitch about unenforced leash laws. But how do you enforce it? Cops? No, that wouldn't be cool.
I think I'm going to start photographing all unleashed dogs with my cell cam and posting them on a new blog I'm going to call "Stupid Fucking People's Unleashed Dogs at Priest Point Park, Olympia Wa" I am sure I will get weird looks or even comments and I will quite calmly explain "this park has signs that clearly require dogs to be leashed, it is a public park and I am free to photograph what I want. I am photographing all unleashed dogs I see here and posting them on an internet web site called "Stupid Fucking People's Unleashed Dogs at Priest Point Park, Olympia, Wa." Congratulations you will be in the next update!"
Think it will work? I may get a few lippy dogowners but oh well, I'm fed up with em anyhow, I'm not going to be a victim of fear any longer. Time to start shooting unleashed dogs.
Dear Lady driving the late model Chevy Yukon on I-90 Friday evening somewhere between Moses Lake and Ritzville,
There I was, I mean there we were, me in the passing lane my cruise control set at 76 mph, you in the right lane a million miles behind a semi, oh gosh it was so far in front of you it hardly counted as being on the same planet, barely the same solar system!
Do you like math? Physics? Speed and time and velocity and mass X the orbital gravity of a dissected frog? I bet you do, I bet you LOVE math and hard science, but not so much to follow the rules, I think you have long left the rules behind, I think you are a renegade of math! an outlaw of physics!
Why else would you be cruising along with your cruise control set at 69 mph and several hundred feet behind a semitruck determining that you could not wait 7 seconds to let me pass you, considering you were only 4 mph faster than the semi that was a lifetime away and you could clock your approach time to the semi's ass end with A FUCKINGFREAKING SUNDIAL ON A SHADED DAY?
But no. No, you couldn't wait because even though simple triangulation occurring in a perceptual place in your brain using your eyeballs and not one single conscious thought because this shitcrap happens way way down in scorpion brain parts, would tell you I would whiz by you like a motherfuckingshrieking meteorite through a humid July night sky at 8000 mph before you even actually had to consider flicking an ash off that cigarette of yours you were smoking and flipping the turn signal and letting your Yukon at 69 mph computer controlled cruise rate gradually move on over to the lane I would have vacated like a century ago. But no.
You swing your Yukon over right in front of me causing me to hit my brakes at 76 mph, lose my cruise, and ride up on your stupid ass. Unfortunately, before I could pop on over to the right lane where you should have been, a car that had been stuck behind you zoomed up and blocked my egress. So I had to follow you, you stunningly thick Yukan't, for miles until you finally passed the semi who was traveling at 68 mph set on his stupid assed cruise control.
I hate you. I hate you for making me follow. I had visions of using a cool highway patrol high speed PIT (Pursuit Intervention Technique) maneuver to take you down, to spin you right off the fucking effing interstate to watch you roll over and over through the basalt, the sagebrush, the furrowed wheat fields, even the old defunct weigh station. Enjoying the vision of your Yukon throwing sheets of sparks and pieces of body sheetmetal and plastic exploding off in chunks of shiny gray shrapnel, blasting over the heads of shocked coyotes and red-tailed hawks, you praying like crazy as your airbags deploy and squish you and you imploring your God to let you live and you will never never ever not one single time fucking do something as mindlessly stupid as cut off a man in a Honda Ridgeline in a rush to get home to Spokane after a long assed week.
But then I remembered that you are a wild renegade of aerodynamics and physics and an outlaw of arithmetic, or something like that, and can't help yourself, so I just sigh and pop in a hits of the 80s cd and listen to Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me with Science" and realize my calculus may not match yours and that even though you totally suck brontosaurus shitturds through a garden hose heldkinked and twisted by squatting hell trolls, you are merely on this earth to test my patience. And baby, that day, you were a fuckinggoddamned essay.
Yours in Five Hour Energy Shots and Asphalt Nightmares,
My chunk of wood kickstand at 4000 feet underneath the granite top mountain I've been trying to find a way up to for years.
It was an amazing Saturday yesterday. Did so much. Took the kids and their friends to the lake and ski tubed them and swam and watched Shane snorkel and spear sunfish underwater. He is deadly with his Hawaiian Sling. He can put it dead through the middle of a little sunfish. Went dirt bike riding way up in the mountains and finally found the holy grail trail, the one to the weird bald granite top mountain. Still haven't gone all the way up, but I'm in the ballpark now. Plus, I think the area is rich in huckleberries, will check it out late July/early August.
I can't say how much I love dirt biking, another sport I'm awesome at but quit for most of my adult life because of money and kids and a hell-bitch of an ex wife. But I can dig it now. The long ride down was epic, I totally had the bike slotted in on great lines through curvy and rough bermed mountain trails and logging roads, I was throwing the bike around in tight corners like a pro. It was all muscle memory and almost no higher level verbal thought. Animal time.
After the lake day I went out partying with my new friend, the Cherokee-Irish Princess who is tall, sexy, lean, bright and an INTJ profile on the Meyers-Briggs, the 1% of the general population rare profile that guess who else has? Yes. Me. So we sit and drink and laugh and read each other's minds.
I had so much fun with Cherokee-Irish Princess INTJ Girl as we hung out and closed up the Swamp Tavern, a wild and weird hipster and roughster Browne's Addition bar. It has a cool outside area with a firepit and great beer. We were quite entertained by a near brawl between two lippy and way drunk women. One a hipster type and the other a roughster type from the wrong side of the tracks. The special money shot moment was when roughster's weird and creepy boyfriend who was also slinging the cuss words at the drunk hipsters, knocked over a hipster's Specialized road bike. He faked it like it was an accident. I was completely disappointed to not see hipsters rising angrily from their tables, like members of an outlaw biker gang would if someone knocked over a patched member's harley. Hipsters are way too mellow. We were also amused by some really drunk and friendly guys in that really drunk and friendly bordering on menacing kind of drunk guy way, and laughed at how stupid and simple guys are. This was an excellent joking theme later at Cherokee-Irish's apartment. As was my revulsion and rejection of all food items from the Seafood family of nasty lower order food that lives in water. In her soft and sweet southern drawl she continued to express her incredulity that I could reject every item from a major food group. I asked her if she ate bugs. She ignored that. I repeated and elaborated that bugs are a major source of protein and food and I bet she refuses a tasty thorax or two. It didn't work. She's an INTJ and I cannot fool her.
I had a wonderful day and wonderful night that poured (literally) over into early Sunday morning. I am now back in Rainytown, Pugedopia, the Kingdom of the Mushroom People and am quite fatigued. I will sleep like a mewling newborn lamb tonight. And dream of apartments without furniture and Stella Artois beer that never stops flowing and drunken chicks really pounding the shit out of each other and breaking tables and stuff until the cops show up.
Dear Dog Owners I hiked past last night at Priest Point,
I am so glad you also enjoy the hiking trails along Ellis Cove at Priest Point Park. They are wonderful and awesome at the same time. They are wondersome! Nicely maintained (except for that big hole and blown over tree) winding through an amazing remnant rainforest protected from the howling bark of the chainsaw monster all these years. Why it's positively a throwback to another time.
And here we are. Me hiking up the trail doing my loop, getting some mental and physical health time in, and there you are. The both of you. Your three dogs too. And look, only one dog is leashed and the other two are bounding down the trail, still soaked from swimming in the cove, and neither of you are to be seen yet.
So I stand still as I always do when strange unleashed dogs come running towards me and I hold the pepper spray I always carry because of the near 99% probability I will meet up with at least one unleashed dog per hike.
Are your dogs friendly? Well, I have no idea. All I know is they are medium to large sized and rapidly running my way!
Oh hey, there you two are. Smiling, seemingly oblivious to your loose dogs. Oh now you call them. Perhaps it is because you see me, all six foot three and 240 lbs standing rock still holding my pepper spray (discretely and at my side).
You both walk past me with one of your dogs at my legs staring at me but not growling or threatening. I walk past you and your three dogs. You, Mr. Dog Owner, smirk at me with that 20 something year old uberironic self referential hipster dog owner smirk. You, Ms. Dog Owner, kind of smirk too.
Well, I think, have a good hike dogfuckers and if your piece of shit unleashed curs had so much as growled at me I would have pepper sprayed them in their eyes and kicked them so high and so far over the steep hillside to the cove, you'd still be sobbing at how they whined and whimpered as you dis-impaled them from jagged fir tree branches and carried them broken and bleeding to your car (bet it's a Prius) and the long traumatic drive to the Vet's office.
Because here's the thing, dumbasses, when I see unleashed dogs, be it skinny assed mongrels like yours or massive penis replacement pitbulls for young punk g's, I see weapons. Yes, weapons. Your dogs are potential weapons that can hurt me. When I hike in an area that requires dogs on leashes, why I bet that's for a reason! A good reason. Just like keeping guns in holsters. Why don't you two think about how enriched your hike would have been if I'd been trotting up the trail with a .44 magnum pistol in my hand at the end of my outstretched arm, just swinging it around and aiming at your faces. You would have dug that huh? Me with my big loaded gun wildly swinging and me with a big smirk on my face as I hiked past the two of you. Don't worry, I don't need to holster it, I trust this gun! It's never shot anyone yet and I think the safety is on! This gun just wants to be petted, man! It loves people! A gun is man's best friend! Look, it's wagging it's barrel at you!
Later as I loop into the rainforest, I pass the two of you again, with your three dogs now on leashes. Apparently my cold, baleful stare made an impression. Good. Because my knees are sore from going up and down timbered stairsteps and steep trails, and frankly I could probably only kick one of your dogs flying before I blew my ACL or something.
Have a wondersome hike, dogholes.
Yours in pepper spray and size 13 Scarpa hiking boots,
Bob
PS: I was hiking in the Dishman Hills last weekend and a huge mix ran up to me, his owner holding the unconnected leash in his hand and calling fruitlessly to his dog to come. I stood still again, waiting, holding my spray and finally the big, dumbassed owner got his dog leashed. As he was leashing his mutt, I told him "dogs are required to be leashed up here, if I ever see your dog unleashed again I'm calling the Sheriff" and walked away. He muttered "nice to meet you too" as he walked down the trail. Do I like copping this attitude with dogowners and their unleashed dogs? Not really. But I hope that my pissoffedness and lack of positive social signaling causes them to think twice before turning their dogs loose in hiking areas that require leashing. There are, you know, dog parks for that unbearable need to be in the outdoors with one's dog(s) unleashed and unbridled from the constraints of modern society. Dogs running free with their happy and loving owners!
Another right wing hothead, deranged by hatred, commits an act of domestic terrorism. So far this spring, we've endured the murder of the abortion doctor by a crazed pro-fetus wackjob and now the guard at the Holocaust Museum by a right wing separatist.
Are these terrorism attacks a portent of continued acts by right wing hate groups? I fear they could be. I think the fringers are completely unhinged by President Obama, or by the mere thought of him, I doubt his policies are even considered by most of these derailed conservatives. They continue to fret and obsess and grow increasingly unhooked from reality over their insistence that Obama is not a legitimate president because of their loony birth certificate conspiracy theories. Even bloggers from the right I once enjoyed reading are now engaged in monotonous death marches into the hot, steaming and incredibly stupid jungles of Obama Derangement Syndrome (ODS), posting relentlessly about some imagined slight or overwrought hypothesis about President Obama and his administration, even endlessly whining about David Letterman's joke about their idiot-queen Sarah Palin (it was obvious David Letterman confused which Palin daughter he was joking about, only humorless and thick wingnuts don't get that). Here's a post by some deranged wingnut on his deranged wingnut blog:
I think that by way of apology, raping Letterman with a baseball bat
live on his own show might be a bit much. Maybe just his fugly wife.
But hey, wouldn’t Palin actually be doing Letterman a favor by knocking
out those nasty teeth? I mean, the ones in her vagina?
Again, the desperately marginalized and deeply ignored right wing hate groups are reduced to proposing terrorism tactics against celebrities. Raping David Letterman's wife with a baseball bat.
I worry less about most of the bloggers from the lunatic right, although the rape threat blogger should probably get a mental status exam and a questioning by FBI agents, as most of those cheeto chomping basement dwellers are too obese and mother-dependent to actually follow through on their Dr. Pepper and Red Bull overdose inspired rants, plus, they have their silly little blogs to vent on, but it is growing increasingly clear that the right wing of this country grows more and more desperate and dangerous in their ODS inspired loneliness out there in the socio-political wilderness to which America has wholeheartedly and enthusiastically banished them.
I will note that Von Brunn, the Holocaust Museum killer, has a web site, which is currently blocked froma access, and was a frequent and well known commenter on the seriously unhinged conservative website and forum freerepublic.com, where no doubt he has many fans and defenders now posting endlessly insane apologist and supportive comments.
Although I fear a summer of continued terrorism by the right, I hope America is paying attention and that the federal government is willing to engage the Patriot Act fully to protect its citizens from homegrown terrorists who are so full of boiling avarice they really don't care to be civilized anymore and are snapping and barking like hydrophobic hate curs. Time to start monitoring their hate sites and tapping some phones. If conservatives can't simmer down and follow the law they need to be confined. The US Constitution is not a suicide pact. We don't have to let these assholes kill any more innocent Americans.
I think that horrid, yet ubiquitous internet social networking hive, "Facebook," is killing blogs. Pre-Facebook I post on becoming a gramps and I woulda got 30 plus comments, easy. My readership and hits are down and I blame Facebook. Well, Facebook and perhaps my less than scintillating writing these days. This morning is the first morning in a long time I'm considering shitcanning this blog and throwing in the towel on trying to think of crap to write about every morning while drinking coffee and waking up for work. Or not. Maybe I'll blog about my burgeoning reproduction toy robot collection or something. Something like that!
I'm not whining as much as observing. I'm whining a little, I guess. Facebook, as a social networking site, is less narcissistic than a blog in concept, in execution maybe not much different, but it is certainly egalitarian and exclusive at the same time. Maybe that is what the internet cruiser and content producer wants these days. Who knows. I'm going on a one day at a time program with this blog to see if I stay engaged or just give it up to the droning beehive of the Faceborg Collective.
Has the family's big feet :-) I am going to be a gramps this fall. My daughter is going to have a baby girl. I AM SO EXCITED. I love little kiddos and to have a new one in the family is just mega-awesomeness. I can already see the day I have her on my lap and we'll be at a keyboard and staring at a monitor and I'll be saying "ok, kiddo, this is how you REALLY PISS OFF wingnuts on their stupid right wing internet forums ..."
Deer rudely awoken by two visitors to the Finch Arboretum. The John A. Finch Arboretum is one of the great secret undiscovered places in Spokane. I have no idea why it is so underused but it is truly a gem with the best little rhododendron glen in Spokane.
I had a wonderful weekend with a new friend. Here are some impressions of a few of the other places we went:
Bluz at the Bend: Blues bar just below Hillyard. I always wanted to check it out because I'm a big blues fan. So is she. Unfortunately it's kind of a meat market for the menopausal and middle aged. I can't even find the words for the horror that alliterative sentence now invokes in me. Short men in their 50s with tight t-shirts and crisply ironed wrangler and 501 jeans with cell phones strapped to their belts like pistols, strutting through the place eyeballing the ladies and creeping the shit out of me. Ladies wanting to turn back the clock to their wonder days of night clubbing in the 70s and 80s. The clock doesn't turn back that far anymore! Fake bikers. Gray braided ponytails eeew.
New West Billiards, The Onion, The Globe: All not creepy unlike Bluz at the Bend.
Riverfront Park: We walked through, just looking at the Harold Balasz sculptures mostly. I think I've always liked his abstract sculptures because they remind me of the doodling designs I draw on my note paper at boring meetings.
Boo Radley's: Novelty gift shop in Spokane and a must stop when wandering downtown around Riverfront Park. I bought the youngest a Yard Gnome air freshener strip for the jeep and bought me a robot toy! Mr. Atomic! I'm beginning a toy robot collection. I've decided, after going to a nephew's graduation dinner Saturday night and seeing the huge collections of stuff my brother and sister in law have, that I need to collect something and everyone knows how much I love robots.
Auntie's Bookstore: Spokane's only independent bookstore of any note. Due to my horrendous backlog of unread books I managed somehow to avoid buying one more new book. Very cool store although it seems their inventory is down a bit.
Great weekend. Really reminded me of what a cool city we have in Spokane. Also did tons of chores Saturday and Sunday mornings, which do not rise to the level of bloggability, and I NEGOTIATED A HOSTAGE RELEASE WITH A KIDNAPPED YARD GNOME!
Liberated yard gnome safely seat belted in my truck and being driven home to a tearful and joyful reunion with his rightful owner, my youngest son TOWWSG.
He was surreptitiously snuck out of the house Saturday night by TOWWSG's older brother PGLAG who wanted it for his Browne's Addition apartment. Upon awareness Sunday of this gnomenapping by a heartbroken and deeply upset son, TOWWSG, I contacted the other boy and quickly negotiated the release upon exchange for ransom:
Me
I'm coming to town, I want TOWWSG's yard gnome back. We know you snuck him out in your backpack.
Him
Whatever. When?
Me
In just a few minutes. He's very upset you know.
Him
Bring me my guitar.
Me
You are IN NO POSITION TO TELL ME TO BRING YOU YOUR GUITAR!
I mentioned in my previous post about lumbering through the woods in a run-like gait due to a fear of a lightning storm. Lightning is one of my sort of phobias. I blame my mother for this phobia as her irrational fear of lightning was demonstrated frequently to her herd of impressionable children. I don't know if any of my sibs have lightning phobia but it sure fucked up my head. I can recall with a chilling horror when I was 6 and in New York City with my family in some hotel in Times Square and a summer lightning storm hit (we were there for the 64 World's Fair) and her making us GO INTO A CLOSET because of the scary scary lightning. She was having a panic attack and I'm telling you that shit messes up a kid's head. Anyhow, mine isn't nearly as bad as that, I was in a hotel in Mobile Alabama a few years ago when a nasty June thunderstorm hit and the whole building swayed (I was on the 10th floor or something) and I thought it was pretty cool. Well, what I saw of it from under my bed.
I also have a bad fear of heights - guess where I got that? Yup, from the mom. When I walk over a high bridge, like the ones in Riverfront Park in Spokane over the river, I gotta stay straight down the middle and not stop. I can't look over the edge. Edge lookers freak my shit out. Are you people crazy??? You could fall!
However, I am not afraid of spiders or snakes or weasels. I didn't know I had a weird type of claustrophobia until I was hiking inside of a huge ice cave in a glacier in the Cascades. It was massive, bigger than an airplane hanger, and I got about halfway in and completely freaked out. I mean, I didn't scream or anything but I had to turn around and leave my hiking party as all of that ice above me felt like it could just instantly collapse and crush me like a bug. I grabbed my daughter, who was two-ish at the time, and hauled her out with me. I left the ex with the others in the Ice Cave of Doom.
Fear of flying? Mom. But I got over mine which was never extreme-phobic, know how I got over mine? Well, I had to fly a LOT for work years ago and I knew if I didn't get over it I'd be miserable. So, at first, I could not even look out the window because I'd get instant vertigo from my preexisting fear of heights issues, so I'd try to read something or nap. But what I discovered was if I used progressive muscle relaxation and deep breathing techniques combined with mental imagery involving carefully inspecting an airplane with a team of highly rated airplane mechanics and we'd go through every single nut, bolt, screw, fuse, avionics unit and they would show me how everything was perfect, how everything was copasetic and that paired with a state of deep relaxation allowed me to overcome my flying phobic. Just kidding. I'd get drunk in the airport lounge before my return flights.
Deep water = phobia. I don't know if mom gave me this one, but if I think about how deep the water is under me while on a ferry ride or blasting around in a speedboat it kinda phobes me out but maybe not a classic phobia because it doesn't keep me from being on the water and enjoying the water and it's a very rare event except now that I've written about it it'll probably torture the shit out of me next time I'm boating. Actually I think the last time it happened was briefly on a ferry ride across the sound when I was imagining the ferry sinking and the lifeboats unavailable and what it would be like to try to tread water in the bitter cold and impossibly deep Puget Sound.
Mice! (mom) Honest to God I used to snicker at the very stereotypical notion of people being afraid of mice until one day in my garage, one bitter cold January day, I'm taking the garbage out and a mouse runs in front of me and I completely squicked out. Man, talk about some sort of verminous vestigial fear blast. That shit instantly bypasses the neo-cortex and trips some fast fuses in the old limbic hotbox. No thinking just freaking. What else? I don't know. I think that is enough.
Do you have phobias? Which ones? Do they interfere with your life, your functioning or are they just annoyances you generally work around or avoid?
I am in an un-air conditioned apartment on a freakishly warm and humid May evening after a rousing yet brutal and sweaty hike through the deep forest and right now, this very minute, the storm is breaking here and cool wind is blowing in my open windows and hitting my still sweat coated body and this is heaven. Fucking heaven.
I had the best hike. I tend to view the world and everything that happens as phasic, as consisting of progressive or regressive stages. My working out every night after work by at first walking on a fairly civilized crushed gravel track around a lake to now hiking through a very hillish, woodsy Middle Earth like landscape is part of the first phasic change, from The Grind Phase to The Fun Phase. I am having fun, I had fun today. I ran part of my hike up and down winding trails along a cove and through thick verdant rainforest because the storm was threatening and I let my mind wander into a state of pending thunder and lightning fear and it spurred me to run. I have not run like that in forever. I am a Clydesdale. 235 lbs on a six three frame. With crappy knees from too much basketball. I thunder and stomp now. But godammit I ran. I lumbered up steep stepped hills and enjoyed the knee grinding pain and breathed and gasped loudly like a dragon loading up to flame a village of fairie-elves and unicorns. And I was having the best fun.
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