Trouble Brewing?

Uh oh. I think we might have a situation on our hands.





Or a sponsorship deal waiting to happen. I'm not sure which.

Oh, and dude with the top hat? Seriously - rethink that shit.

And maybe the sunglasses, the white jeans, the boots, the silk shirt, the sword, the porn 'stache....you know what? Just rethink this whole photo, really. You'd be better off finding a brick wall or some train tracks.

hey, hand me that jesus light, will ya?

We have a lot of power failures where I live. I'm not sure if it's due to a crappy infrastructure, or just the fact that there's a lot of trees up here to fall on the wires. Regardless, it seems that we have more than our normal share. I bought 2 five-gallon gas cans and filled them up on the way home -they'll feed the generator for a while. While I was running this errand, I passed this sign:



Now, I'm not sure if you are at all familiar with the light of jesus. If not, let me explain a few thing about it. Allow me to...enlighten you, if you will.

The main thing to remember about jesus light is that it's not like regular light. And by that I mean it most definitely is not energy in the form of electric and magnetic fields that vibrate at right angles to the direction of movement of the wave, and at right angles to each other. You will still need the candles or the generator during a power failure, because similar to jesus himself, you also cannot actually see his light.

Personally, I imagine it's sorta like UV, except it doesn't make your Hendrix poster glow.* In other words, when I'm banging the shit out of my shins on the coffee table and walking nose-first into the edge of half-open doors, the jesus light really won't do squat to help me not do these things.

Other things you cannot do by jesus light:

(1) Read.
(2) Wire up a surround sound system in an entertainment center.
(3) See if the Office Space dvd fell behind the TV.
(4) Scare off bears when you are camping.
(5) Hold it under your chin and tell ghost stories.
(6) Signal your extraction team from behind enemy lines.
(7) jack-light deer.
(8) jack-light trespassers.
(9) B&E

Of course, just because I have not personally seen the light of the j-man, that doesn't mean it can't or doesn't exist.

I suppose it's possible that if jesus were to appear, he could conceivably have visible light-emitting qualities. A holy glow, if you will. And if jesus IS the light, as the sign says, then my guess is that he would probably have some sort of god-like control over the level of his brightness. In fact, I'm willing to bet that he'd be infinitely variable by body part and he wouldn't have any of that crappy "low-medium-high" three-way bulb stuff going on, because that's not how he rolls.

I guess what I'm saying here is that if he (1) exists and (2) manifests himself unto me, he could totally help me hook up my surround sound.

Then later on we could go jack-light some deer.


*I'm not saying that jesus couldn't make your poster glow, because of course he could, being all powerful and what not. But he probably would have to do it on purpose, instead of as an unconscious by-product of his holy light.

Why buy the cow?

I was on the way home from work Friday, and I needed to stop for milk because we were almost out. Miraculously, what do I see in front of me? A deal too good to pass up:


I mean, who doesn't love free milk -- am I right?

I check my schedule, and it turns out that I have nothing planned. I decide to follow this purveyor of free cow juice and score me a 1/2 gallon for later. Maybe even a gallon -- I have no idea what size the driver is giving away today, nor how far I will have to follow him to get it. Even a pint would be good, but only if I have to maybe follow him for a few miles, tops.

About 20 minutes later I realize I am in this for the long haul. He owes me at least a 2-gallon jug. There's a few cars in between us, but I am a pretty good tracker. Plus, he has a giant truck. He finally puts on his blinker to turn in here:


I think he might be pulling over to give away the free milk, so I wait for him to stop. Instead -- even though I'm flashing him with my high beams -- he laughs at me, flips me off and just keeps going.

No, I'm just kidding. I don't think he knew I was after his milk.

I wait for the two cars in front of me to go straight, then I take the same right-hand turn. I stop quickly to snap the above picture, then immediately get stuck at the stop sign and lose sight of him for a few minutes. I continue driving down the lane, and come to this sign:



Hmmm. I figure that I need either "pick ups" or "customer service" because I want to take free milk, not deliver it. And "purchasing" is out of the question because this particular milk is free, goddammit. I take the left.

I drive around for a while and find the truck again, but instead of disembarking and giving me my free milk, the driver backs his truck into this thing:



I can only assume that the truck driver is either disgorging his sweet, sweet bounty, or loading up with more milky goodness to give away to all his followers. I seem to be the only one camped on this truck, so I think my odds are pretty good of scoring some milk.

A few minutes later, the truck pulls away and I start following him again, but it's getting late and I really need to get home. I know I need milk, but this is getting ridiculous. I realize it's free and everything, but I'm beginning to think maybe I should just stop at the store and buy a quart. I decide to stick it out a little longer. After about a half hour of driving on back roads, he pulls into the driveway of a small house, with a pretty giant garage:



I figure I'll hang around until he leaves the garage, then I'll jump into the back of the truck, get my free milk and head home.

I kill the engine and wait. A few minutes later he drops the garage door and goes into the house. I sneak around the outside of the garage, looking for a way in, but the steel cannister defeats my screwdriver, the only meager B&E tool I have with me. I go back to my car to see what else I can find that might help, but the pickin's are slim since I wasn't planning on this. That'll teach me.

It didn't matter, because even if I had bolt cutters, a drill and an acetylene torch, there was no way I was getting into this dairy products fortress from hell.

A few seconds later, I hear his front door open. He comes out and walks over to a Toyota Celica parked in the driveway, jumps in and pulls away. For a second, I think I should maybe follow him to get my milk, since the sign on the truck said "Follow Me" but I figured that only applied when he was driving the milk truck, so I let him leave. After all, I knew there was milk here -- I was so close I could almost taste it. The guy who drives the milk truck has to have milk, right?

There was only one thing to do.



It didn't take me long to find the kitchen, and consequently the fridge.



After all that, it was skim. I took it anyway.

I took his butter and egg-beaters too.

Hey, don't judge me. They were free.

Marketing gone wrong.

I saw this sign at the local BBQ place near my house:



I believe animals were put on this earth to be eaten by other smarter and/or stronger animals. Even so, this sign creeps me out a little.

I'm guessing maybe people don't want to be reminded of the sound their delicious dinner used to make before it became their delicious dinner, so it's probably not the best way to lure them into your fine establishment. Also, I don't speak pig, but I'm pretty sure that sound doesn't signify "approval."

So I got the half chicken dinner instead. Mmmmm.

Buckle Up.

I was thumbing through a mail order catalog the other day, marveling at the sheer magnitude of crap that is available for purchase, when I see this:

Now, you may call me a pervert or degenerate or whatever other insulting but accurate term you feel like using, but with copy that reads "put it out there, front and center, giving it the spotlight treatment it deserves" -- the first snapshot that occurs to me is not a picture of my truck or my house.

In fact, am willing to bet my next paycheck that nobody is going to buy this and think to themselves, "You know what? I think I'll put a picture of my kids in this thing." You'd end up arrested before you knew what hit you, especially if you happened to have young daughters.

I can almost see some redneck dropping in a picture of his sweet '73 Camaro or something, but that's about it. I don't think gay guys would actually wear something like this, since belt buckle fashion is not their forte and is usually left to the NASCAR crowd, but that's the only other market I could envision for this thing. They could just put an actual photo of their junk in there and save themselves some time at the bar. I don't know a lot about gay culture other than what I read, so I could be wrong.

Anyway, because it's what I do, I got to pondering.

In my opinion, it might be more effective to just stick with the written word. You know how it's almost impossible to not read a T-shirt someone is wearing? The same thing applies here. I came up with a few other possibilities.

For the pervert:



For the blessed:



For the safe sex advocate:



For the gay man looking for a serious relationship:



Anyway, I obviously have one on order. I think I'm just going to keep it "as is" and see what sort of comments I get.

Remember what I told you to forget

Every time I click "remember me on this computer" I believe for a second or two that Blogger might actually remember me, but no. It's a blatant lie. Still, I click it every time I log on in the hopes that maybe this time, it'll stick. And I'm not clearing any cookies. Also, if anyone can tell me wtf is up with the spacing after a paragraph I would be forever grateful. I'm tired of publishing a post and then seeing that there's 3 inches between paragraphs. It's driving me batshit.

Nothing much doing this weekend, so I figured I'd just share a few nuggets of common sense with you all, based on our excursion downtown yesterday afternoon for some shopping and lunch.

(1) If you ride a motorcycle, please wear pants that don't expose your hairy ass crack to everyone walking/driving/eating behind you. It's disturbing, disgusting and you're gonna have a serious sunburn issue if you don't cover that shit up somehow. Here's an idea -- find a chick to ride with you. Preferably one without a hairy ass crack.

(2) When you're sitting at an outdoor cafe and the tables are so close together that you could reach over to someone else's table and steal food from their plate without actually getting out of your chair, don't start trying to configure your cellphone exactly the way you want it while you are waiting for your food to arrive. Although you may think you have some pretty sweet ring tones, when you sit there and cycle through all 300 of them multiple times it makes me want to snap the stem off my wife's wine glass and stab you in the neck with it.

(3) muscle relaxers and vodka don't mix, unless your goal is to fall asleep every time you stop moving.

Also, in case anyone reading this happens to like to paint on random stuff and you've run completely out of old saws, slabs of barn wood, cast iron pans, velvet, small children's faces or other assorted crap, here's something else you can try:



Let me know how you make out.

Jewels of denial.

Let's talk about my neighbors.

I know some of you picture me living in a cabin in the woods, and you probably expect that when I run out of Lucky Charms, I have to make a 3 day trip by horse and wagon to get another box, but that's not the case. I do, in fact, have neighbors. Granted, they are not of the "right-on-top-of-my-ass-all-the-time-can't-you-keep-your-kids-out-of-my-yard-for-a-single-goddamn-day" sort that I had in my last house, but they are there nonetheless.

Our nearest ones happen to be roughly 300 feet away. I can just about make out their house through the woods. My wife and I have lived here about 11 or so years now, and I've spoken to my neighbors literally dozens of times, so obviously we are very close friends.

The man of the house is an older gentleman, and quite the outdoorsman. As far as I can tell, he and his wife live alone in the house with a dog and/or cat. I'm not entirely sure.

I have two concrete reasons why I am comfortable with the outdoorsman label I have so nonchalantly slapped on him, and they are as follows: (1) The first time I met him, he was dressed in full camo, and (2) he regularly shoots guns off his back deck.

I am OK with that. I have been known to do a little plinking off the back deck myself, and since he does it, I know I am not bothering him when I do it. Win-win.

While I've heard some shooting recently, I am very thankful that I haven't heard the other thing. The thing that screams and howls at dusk. The half-mad piping of blind Azathoth, encircled by his flopping horde of mindless and amorphous subjects; charnel pit demons, feasting upon I-know-not-what.

Well, that's what I used to think it was anyway. Until I snuck through the woods one night and found out that he was trying to teach himself to play the fucking recorder. I imagine it sounds a lot like someone violating a goose. (I said "I imagine," so shut it.)

Anyway, that gives you a little background. It doesn't fully set the stage for this, because frankly, there are no words to describe what I am about to show you. While they are very nice, albeit slightly eccentric folk, their taste tends toward the um, gaudy end of the spectrum. Think: full-sized chainsaw bears and lots of whirligigs and lawn ornaments.

Two days ago, I drove past their house and I noticed there had been a subtle change to their mailbox. Whereas before it had been a normal, everyday, white mailbox with perhaps a few fake flowers hanging on it, it had been somehow altered.

I couldn't put my finger on it, but perhaps you guys can help me out. I took this picture for you:



p.s. - I promise I will take another picture in a few weeks when that stuff starts falling off in chunks.