Common Cents.

My wife buys fitness magazines for women sometimes, and the main articles always revolve around "5 simple secrets" or "one workout that will change your life" or "in only 10 minutes a day." Most of the time, the articles boil down to common sense.

In fact, I can sum up 90% of the contents of most women's magazines by simply saying if you want to lose weight and get in better shape, (1) eat less and exercise more, and (2) burn more calories than you consume. There, I've just saved you about $300 a year at the newsstands.

I recently saw this one lying on our coffee table, and it made me laugh.

Two days? Without reading this article, I immediately passed judgement on it. I did it because I know there is only one way to get a better body in two days.

I've outlined the things you'll need:

Day 1:

1. A tranquilizer gun or stun gun

2. Gag and handcuffs

3. Soundproof van

4. Map to Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Alba or other hot celebrity of your choice.

Day 2:

1. Time machine

2. Hacksaw

3. This guy

Done.

Also, I saw a picture of Elliott Yamin yesterday:

Is it just me, or does anyone else think he looks like he might have the body of a goat?

Ween.

On Friday I stopped at our local nursery to pick up a few pumpkins and I saw one of these creepy little "kid crossing" stand-up signs that they have now:

I'm not sure what it is about those things, but they creep me right the hell out. Maybe it's the round head with the beady single eye, or possibly the cloven hooves.

Just look at it - it even has a freaky little eyelid for god's sake.

For some reason, every time I see one of these, I expect it to slowly blink at me. I can easily picture an entire army of them, coming at me relentlessly, making some sort of squeaky noise that sounds like two pieces of styrofoam rubbing together.

It wasn't until I got home and downloaded the picture from the camera that I noticed the horrific thing behind him.

What the fuck is that? When I was a kid, I had an irrational fear of Uncle Wiggily, and now I know why. Maybe it wasn't irrational. Maybe he was a minion of the devil all this time. Now I'm afraid I'm going to wake up in the middle of the night because I smell pipe tobacco, then look across the room and see the glowing red eyes of this thing as it rocks slowly back and forth, back and forth...puffing its pipe and smiling its yellow, rat-toothed smile.

In other news, while eating breakfast this morning I was browsing a catalog that sold reproductions of old cast-iron banks. This one caught my eye and made me laugh.

It looks like The Count from Sesame Street is about to get a lap dance from Eddie Munster.

Happy belated Halloween, everyone. Hope you scored lots of Reeses.

Here's how ours turned out:

Vidna, you didn't even try, man. Yours looks like it should be made in China and have a plastic handle on it.

Mercury Falls is Here!

Well, not here on my blog, but here at Amazon. Most of you know Diesel (aka Rob Kroese) and his blog mattresspolice.com We have quite a bit of overlap in readership, so most of you probably know all about the book already, but I'm going to give you a brief review anyway. Any fan of Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series or Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide books should love this. Fun characters, great obscure references and lots of funny-as-hell dialogue. Everything I have to say about this book has already been said by all the 5-star reviews it's earned. Add this one to the pile, I guess.

For the three people reading this who don't have any idea what I'm talking about, check out the Amazon link up there and do yourself a favor and pick up the book. I read his original self-published version (with the better cover, in my opinion) while I was on vacation in Mexico and I have to say that at least a few times, my wife had to make me put down the book.

I even had to shell out my hard-earned cash to do this, because no matter how much I begged, no matter how much I pleaded, he wouldn't give me a free copy. Cheap bastard.

I'm buying a few copies to give to my friends as Christmas presents, and that has to tell you something. Mostly that I, too, am notoriously cheap, but that's neither here nor there. I can't wait for the sequel.

Congrats, Rob!

Hike on Hunter Mountain

My vacation time is rapidly coming to a close, and my recent month of working three days and taking four off will be sadly missed. Here's a couple of pics from my last outing (as always, click for the big version):

I've been madly editing and proofreading the alleged book all week, and I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I've got another post about half written, so if things go well, I'll be back tonight with a tale from long ago, when our parents took The Snitch, Houdini and me to Seaside Heights, NJ.

It didn't end well.

I'm rarely speechless...

...but I drove by this today.

I love Halloween, too - but holy crap.

The weather started getting rough.

OK, I promised you guys the story that went along with all those new sailing terms I've been learning, so here goes.

A few weeks ago, I had a Friday off, so my father and I decided to take the sailboat out and get some more practice. Our first few times out had been pretty uneventful, mostly because there hadn't been much in the way of wind. The last time out, we had done some very light sailing for about the first 30 minutes, and then when we were in the middle of the lake, the wind died completely. We sat there for another 30 minutes with our sails hanging slack like a pair of old lady boobs. I've never seen it so calm on this lake -- it was eerily still, like the whole lake was waiting for something to happen. A few other sailboats were also doing their best impersonation of ghost ships, all of us waiting in vain for any sort of breeze from anywhere. We must be wimpy sailors because when we started roasting in the sun we used the electric trolling motor to get back to the marina and eat burgers and drink beer.

On this Thursday night, however, the weather report for Friday morning looked pretty good. The forecast called for sunny skies and 5-10mph winds, which is just about perfect for a couple of noobs like us.

The lake is about an hour away for my father, and probably 30 minutes for me, so I got there first. I paid my parking fee and drove down toward the lake. I wasn't really prepared for what I saw. Clearly, our weatherman had been smoking crack again, because the wind was fierce. There was no way in hell it was 5-10 mph. I had no idea how hard it was blowing, but I knew that much at least. The waves and the whitecaps were huge. I don't think I've ever seen this lake so angry while the sun was shining, and I've been going there since I was a kid.

I called my father and told him the situation, but he was already almost there. When he pulled up next to me, he looked out at the water and just said, "Wow." It was a sunny day, so we decided we'd wait it out a bit and see how it went. About 30 minutes later, the whitecaps had let up a little, but it was still blowing pretty good. It was steady at least, and not really gusty, so we had that going for us. We figured we would get the boat ready and by that time we hoped it would have mellowed out a bit.

We stood around for a while waiting, and talking to a British guy who clearly knew what he was doing. He said that it was blowing around 15-20 knots. We didn't know what that meant in human terms, so we just nodded. I didn't have a good feeling about this, and neither did my father, but we both just stood there looking out at the water, asking each other, "So...what do you think?" Neither one of us wanted to call the game. After another 30 minutes, the whitecaps looked like they had abated a bit, so we decided to go for it.

My father backed the trailer into the water, and I tried to push the boat off of it. It wasn't deep enough, so I walked a bit farther in and he backed into the water a little more. This time I succeeded, but just barely, and my plan for not getting my underwear wet went south when the first cold wave slapped me in the nuts. I held onto the boat while he pulled the trailer out of the water, barely missing my foot with the trailer wheel. On this particular lake, the water level is lower than normal this year which means the dock next to the ramp is about 3 feet above your boat when it's in the water, so it's very hard to control it from the dock when the waves are coming in hard and the wind is blowing like a bitch. I climbed out of the water and tried my best to keep the boat from bashing itself to death on the dock. That was the first problem.

My father finally returned from parking the truck, then stripped down. Off came the boots, the socks, and then the pants. He tossed them inside the cabin and climbed in the boat. I can't for the life of me figure out why the hell he can't just get undressed at his truck, or for that matter, just drive to the lake in his bathing suit. Instead, he always puts his pants on over his suit, so it looks pretty funny when he starts dropping trou right there on the dock. It's like he's doing some kind of disturbing old guy strip-tease. That might very well be considered the second problem, but I'll leave that for you to decide.

The next problem was that the wind was blowing from North to South, and this marina is at the south-most end of the lake. We only have a 47 lb thrust trolling motor. Normally it can move us along at around 6 miles per hour if there's no wind, but this time it was barely strong enough to get us out of the launch area. Before we were completely clear of the launch and into open water, we put on our life jackets, because we may be dumb, but we're not stupid. Using top speed, we were eventually able to put a little distance between us and the boat launch.

We were getting slammed around pretty good, and my father looked at me and said, "I think we're a little out of our depth here." I agreed, but we weren't going back without giving it a shot. We dropped the rudder, and then I attempted to put the sails up. I discovered it's a lot harder to climb around on the front of the boat raising sails when the boat is bobbing around like a cork. Somehow, when I was hoisting the mainsail, it got all jammed up and I had to drop it down again and start over. Of course, while I was doing that, the damned wind was trying like hell to blow us back to where we started, and mostly succeeding. So we cranked up the motor again, and put a little more distance between us and the shore and tried one more time. At this point the waves were so big, the trolling motor was coming out of the water because of the chop.

As soon as I raised the mainsail the wind grabbed it and slammed us around. "Rounding up" I think it's called. Whatever. I call it suck. Next, I raised the jib and as soon as I did that, we started moving. When the wind first caught the jib, it snapped it over so fast I thought it was going to rip it right off the boat, me along with it.

I crawled back to my seat and things started looking a little better. My father ran the tiller and I worked the sails. We were mostly in control, and we finally had a chance to raise the trolling motor and get it out of the way. We headed in a direction that was not South for a change, and the first thing we realized is that we desperately needed some weight in the front because every time we hit a wave the whole front end of the boat slammed down into the water. It sounded like someone beating the shit out of a stand-up bass with a croquet mallet. It was bad, and I even though I knew we built the boat to be strong, I kept expecting pieces to start falling off of it at any second.

We finally figured out which direction we needed to sail in to surf the waves, rather than chop through them, and we started making some progress. We were perhaps three miles away from the marina and heeling over pretty good when I noticed one of the port shrouds (the cables that hold the mast up) looked a little funny, in that it was no longer connected to the boat and was instead just sort of waving in the breeze. I yelled "HOLY SHIT!" and in answer to my father's questioning look, I pointed at the cable. At almost the same instant, we both looked up to the mast to see if it was listing to one side, knowing the sort of stresses that we were placing on it in this kind of weather.

"We have to get the sails down!" I yelled. "If a second one goes, we're screwed!" Afraid the second cable on the same side might snap, I handed the mainsail line to my father and climbed back up toward the front of the boat. As I was climbing, we got hit by a gust and the boat heeled over so quickly that my father did the only thing he could do, and that was to let go of everything and hope the boat didn't turtle. I remember slamming my knee and seeing water about 6 inches from my face, and then I scrambled back to the high side of the boat just in time to watch the entire rope slither out of the boom. The mainsail was now just swinging free, threatening to slam back and forth and it needed to come down fast. I climbed back up front, and I dropped the shit out of that sail. I was going to drop the jib too, but the damned thing didn't want to go. The bad thing about this gaff rig design is that when the sail is down, it basically falls right into the cockpit. If you've ever seen a cartoon where someone gets all tangled up in a parachute, you know what we looked like. The entire cockpit of the boat was now full of boom and sail.

When we finally bundled everything up and were no longer in danger of capsizing, I took a look at what had happened. It was the fault of that shitty hardware store cable and those cable clamps. I determined that what had happened was mostly an issue with the vinyl covered cable. The clamps were tight, but when under this sort of stress, the wire came out from inside its vinyl covering and worked its way out of the clamp.

We couldn't really effect repair on the water because we were getting tossed around too much, so we decided to head back. I dropped the trolling motor, preparing to motor back, when I realized that we were moving much faster than the motor was capable of propelling us - because the jib was still up. Luckily the wind was blowing in the right direction, so we used the jib to sail back. Of course, even though the lake was pretty much empty, four other boats decided at that exact moment they needed to be out of the water too, and since they were power boats, they blew by us, and now we had to try to circle around and wait until they were loaded up and out. We couldn't do that with the jib flying, so that meant another monkey climb over everything to drop that.

We finally made it back in, and that was another disaster. The wind was still blowing so strongly that there were huge swells. Apparently, between swells the water was low enough so our rudder could hit bottom. Since the boat wasn't moving forward so much, instead of the rudder popping up, it hit vertically and lifted the entire rudder, tiller and rudder box off the boat. Now we had no steering because the entire steering mechanism was currently floating away.

It was still so rough that it was almost impossible to keep the front of the boat from slamming on the dock, and the entire boat kept wanting to turn sideways in the launch area. I tied a rope to the front and back, and then jumped for the dock. I barely made it, and immediately sat down and started hauling on the rope. I managed to get the boat straight again, and it was finally under some semblance of control. I brought it close to the dock so my father could get out. As he stood, ready to step to the dock, a big swell hit the boat and he lost his balance -- he reached out to the remaining shroud on the port side to steady himself and that one came apart like wet tissue paper. It was a good thing we dropped the sail when we did, and didn't try to sail back with just a single shroud. At the very least we'd probably have snapped the mast. At worst, we'd probably be renting scuba equipment to retrieve our car keys.

At least I was able to keep us from the complete embarrassment of washing ashore sideways.

We finally got the boat back on the trailer, retrieved our tiller and rudder, and called it a learning experience. The first thing I did when I got home was to order real stainless steel cable, real sailing turnbuckles and real swaging.

Sometimes you have to learn not to cheap-out the hard way, I guess. But on the flip side, what's life without adventure?

Still, I think I'll invest in some sailing lessons next year. Or at least a helmet.

Probably not one of my first choices.

A three hour tour.

For those of you just tuning in, for the last 9 years I've been building a boat with my father, and it's finally done. You can go here to see the original story of how I ended up building a sailboat when I have absolutely no idea how to sail.

Sailing people you meet at the boat launch are weird. They're a helpful and friendly bunch, but they sure like to talk about themselves a lot. I think I just haven't been indoctrinated into the club yet. So far, almost every conversation I've had at a launch began with "Well, I've been sailing for XX years, and I....blah, blah, blah..." and I have to stand there and listen to them tell stories and give advice when I really should be trying to prevent my boat from washing up on the shore and killing a dog or something.

I'm pretty sure that how long you've been doing something doesn't necessarily equate to how good you are at it, but I don't think sailors will admit this. I've been playing drums for a long time, and I reached a certain skill level that I never surpassed -- it became a limitation of both my time and talent. In reality, as much as they won't admit it, sailing is like sex. When you first start doing it, you suck at it, and your goal is to not kill or embarrass yourself. After you get the basics down, you practice up and get better and learn a few tricks and eventually you spend a decade or two at the top of your game. After that, you begin the inevitable slide down the other side of that bell curve.* Sailors deny this slide, and eventually they just end up hanging around the public boat launch wearing a strap-on and telling lies.

Take knots, for instance. Apparently, they're more than just those annoying things you get in your shoelaces at the exact moment you're trying to romantically rip your pants off -- they are also some bullshit measure of speed you are forced to use when you become a sailor. Miles per hour isn't good enough for Sailors. Noooo, they have to have their own personal unit of measurement.

In fact, in the short time I've been doing this, I've learned that almost every single aspect of sailing has its own unique terminology. The first thing you are forced to do is learn some of it, because you'll need to be familiar with those terms in order to ask intelligent questions of other sailors. For example, you might need to know the correct terminology to be able to accurately describe exactly what was happening the instant before something hit you in the back of head and a wall of water came up to meet your face.

You can't say things like "It was really windy and there were some big-ass waves, and we were sailing kind of with the wind when the cable on the left side holding the mast snapped and my father let go of the rope and the sail went whipping out at a right angle and pulled all the rope out of the boom pulleys, and when it did, we took off like a bat out of hell. Then the other rope holding the top of the sail up came loose and the rope slid up the mast and the top of the sail collapsed. It was a total clusterfuck."

Instead, you have to say, "The wind was blowing at about 15 knots due north, kicking up a fresh breeze** and 3 foot seas. We were on a broad reach when the port shroud snapped off the chainplate and my first mate released the main sheet when she started to heel, and the sheet ran out of the boom blocks, and when it did, the mainsail hit the starboard shroud and we started running. Then the peak halyard sheet uncleated and ran up the mast and the sail spilled air and started flogging. It was a total clusterfuck."

OK, some of the terminology is the same.

And that's only half the problem. When you finally figure out the correct terms required to actually phrase your question, the experienced sailing person to whom you ask this question will generally give you an answer that contains 20 new terms that you're not familiar with.

"Yeah, you're gonna need some 17x9 SS, double-swaged to a 1/8" thimble. Throw a Harken double on the peak, pick up some sea dogs, and ditch those horns and get cams. The brass horns are pretty but they don't work for shit. Better yet, just get some fairleads and run the jibsheets back to the cockpit. And pick up a fitted gooseneck and maybe think about a boom vang. Oh, and with that gaff rig, a topping lift would definitely make your life easier."

Your job as a new sailor is to simply stand there and nod your head and pretend you understand what they are telling you, even though deep in your brain stem, you feel the same panicked, naked dread that you felt the first time you saw one of those math word problems with no numbers in it on the SAT.

Then you go home and look up 37 different things on Google.

A few weeks ago, we decided to take Constant Sun out because the weather report said the winds were going to be 5-10mph and we figured it would be another easy day of practice. (You can't just say "the boat" anymore either. You have to call it "her" or by her given name or the Sailboat Police will come to your house and tell you how long they've been sailing.)

Someone once told me "It's a good trip if you come home with all the big pieces" so technically this was a good trip. I'm a little short on time this week, and this post is far too long already, so I will tell you the tale of our adventure*** in my next post.

* so I've heard.

**on the Beaufort scale.

*** or, to use the correct nautical term, Total Clusterfuck.

Stop by.

Three things I learned from this old postcard.

I sent this to my grandparents my first year at Boy Scout camp:



So one, I wasn't always averse to bringing a radio into the woods.

Two, I was either an entrepreneur or a crook, depending on your point of view.

Three, I was all about conveniently located retail establishments.

Man, I don't even know the young me anymore....

If a log falls in the forest and no one hears it..

I guess it's not camping season unless I find something disgusting in the woods. In the past, I've found some pretty diverse things, and this time out was no exception. Before that story, though, I have to mention something I thought was sort of cool.

Two weekends ago, when we pulled up to the parking area at one of our favorite places to canoe, it was very crowded -- perhaps the most cars I've ever seen in the parking lot. The lake itself has perhaps 8 or 9 campsites in total, and we figured our chances of getting one of our favorites was pretty slim. We were right. We were a bit worried, because it was a Friday morning, and our friends Vidna and Pootie were meeting up with us the next day. We were beginning to think we'd be waiting for them in our car because as we paddled the length of the east side of the lake, it appeared that every site was taken. Finally, as we reached the end of the lake and turned to continue our search up the opposite shore, we saw one that looked unoccupied, so we paddled in for a closer look. It was empty, and we moved in immediately. Even though it wasn't great, it was a site and that's all that mattered.

At first I didn't think I had ever camped there before, but after a bit of exploration I realized something. This particular site was only about 200 feet from the trail, and back in college, my best friend Paul and I had camped there before either of us had a canoe. It was the only remote site on the lake that you could actually hike to. It was kind of cool to be back after all that time, and to be visiting that site with Vidna, who had been as close to Paul as I had. So call it fate or my crappy memory, but either way it was sort of fitting that our first camping trip together with Vidna and his wife ended up being here.

This past weekend, however, it was just my wife and I, and we decided to go to the same lake and see if we could grab one of our favorite sites instead. When we pulled up, there were only two cars in the parking lot, and the lake was pretty much deserted. We paddled out on water that was glass smooth, the sky a brilliant blue:



So yeah, it was pretty gorgeous. We paddled to our favorite site, and it was unoccupied. We jumped out of the canoe and unloaded the packs. The site was in decent shape, other than some cigarette butts here and there and a bit of garbage in the fire pit. All in all, not too bad.

In fact, I posted about this particular site last year. For those who don't want to re-read old stuff, just suffice to say there's no outhouse on this site, and the results of that are sometimes not pretty. In fact, it's generally why my wife's camping diet consists entirely of cheddar cheese and Immodium AD.

Of course, after unloading the canoe, the first thing I wanted to do was check the surroundings for any hidden disgustingness, and perhaps take a walk over to the super duper grouper pooper to see if it was still there. Unfortunately for us, it was. It was piled a little higher and a little deeper, but was essentially unchanged. And by unchanged, I mean just as disgusting. I shoveled some additional leaves on it, and headed back to the camp site. On the way back, I noticed something else tucked away in a corner of the woods.

What hidden treasure did I stumble upon, you ask?

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I will show you this little gem from the brain trust:



Yep, that's exactly what it looks like.

A 5-gallon bucket of shit.

So what's the thought process here? I'm not sure, but I took a stab at it:

"Well....there's no bathrooms at this lake, so I could do one of two things. One, I could bring this trowel or maybe pick up a camping shovel for ten bucks. OR....I could bring this 5 gallon pail. On the down side, it's way bigger than a trowel, and it'll stink and draw flies, but on the up side, I can shit in that all week and then just leave it behind for someone else to deal with. Eventually, it'll just fill up with rainwater and the soup will overflow, but by then I'll be back to throwing lit cigarette butts out of my truck window and leaving empty twelve packs on the side of the road, so I won't give a fuck. Yeah, I'll just do that."

Was this the auxiliary back up crapper? The ladies room? What? I didn't know, and I didn't want to know. I just shook my head, called the person an idiot, wished them painful hemorrhoids, held my breath, and filled up the bucket with leaves and dirt. Unbelievable.

Later that night, after the wind died down, we started the fire. It was a beautiful night, and we were one of perhaps three groups on the lake. Unfortunately, the couple across the lake had decided that what the wilderness desperately needed was a radio, and they were there to help.

At first, we were treated to a medley of oldies and then a few hours later it finally it settled down to some Japanese flute music, which, under other circumstances, I would have enjoyed. We figured they'd run out of stupid eventually, but it didn't happen.

Unfortunately, when you're out in the middle of nowhere trying to get away from it all and enjoy the silence and maybe hear a loon or two, it's still annoying. Although as I mentioned to my wife, it was probably preferable to listening to them screwing from across the lake, which is what I assume the music was meant to mask. Either that, or someone told them that hungry bears especially disliked Japanese flute.

At one point there was a shotgun blast that echoed across the lake for about 5 minutes. My wife just looked at me and said, "You're kidding me, right?" I said, "Well, look on the bright side. Maybe one of the idiots hates flute music and shot the other idiot." We didn't hear any return fire, though, and the music didn't stop, so I'm thinking the one who liked the flute music was just making sure the other one didn't mess with the CD player.

At one point, I wandered down to the shore and it felt like I was in a ninja movie and I had my own sound track. So I did this, just because I felt like it was required.

After a few more awesome ninja moves, I decided to set up my camera and tripod and take a picture of their fire:



It's kind of pretty in a stark and lonely way. As long as you can keep your imagination from hearing Grace Slick, and picturing people screwing and then wandering off in the dark to shit in a bucket.

Oops. Sorry.

Today's news. And one more pic.

Where I work, we have a security requirement that all laptops being carried to and from the premises need to be completely turned off. No sleep mode, no hibernation -- it has to be stone cold. I guess that's the only way to engage the hard disk encryption, but it also means an inordinate amount of time is spent waiting for things to boot up and/or shut down. When I sit down at my desk in the morning, there's a period of almost 15 minutes where my computer is completely useless. That's because after it actually boots, I need to leave it alone for a bit so that it can do its daily updates and backups and tracking and whatever other raping and pillaging Radia has in mind for it that day. Usually the hard drive light is just on solid, and trying to do anything at all is an exercise in frustration. Sometimes I'll get lucky, and I'll be able to open a browser window.

While I'm waiting, I'll check voicemail and then sometimes I'll take a quick peek at the cnn.com home page to get an idea of how the day is looking. Today, it was looking like it kinda went off the rails.

In no particular order, here's what caught my eye:

First, a doctor was being sued for carving the name "Ingrid" on someone's uterus, like it was some kind of tree. At first when I read the article, I thought she was walking around with a branded uterus. My thoughts were as follows:

1. That's pretty cool.

2. At least he got the name right.

3. Maybe she has a point with this lawsuit thing.

And then I realized that it had already been removed when he tagged it. So really, why the fuss? It's not like he ground it up and sold it to the chinese as an aphrodisiac, or gave it to the cafeteria staff. I mean, I could see it being a problem if she planned to display it in a jar on her desk or something, and now it's just ruined, but other than that, who gives a shit? I think they just saw a way to supplement their retirement. This is the house on the beach that my uterus built.

Next, there was this story about some 29 year old semi-attractive chick (hard to tell from a mug shot) who stripped naked and stole a cab. First of all, someone please tell me why the hell this is news. Sure, it's mildly entertaining, but really, CNN? This is the top story in your "JUSTICE" section? Must be a *really* slow news day. Or maybe this is the start of an entirely different version of cash cab.

Also a hot story today, IHOP is suing some church called the "International House of Prayer" for trademark infringement, because obviously someone might confuse those two things. And God said, "Let there be light syrup" and it was so.

Lastly, there's this helpful story in the Heath section on what to do when body parts fall off.

My favorite part is this bit:

"If your eyeball becomes dislodged, don't try to put it back," Dankner warns.

Instead, they recommend getting to the hospital as fast as you can and "The doctor will push the eye back in and give you antibiotic ointment."

You've just driven to the hospital as fast as you can, like this:

And all you get is some antibiotic ointment.

What you should get is a fucking medal for not passing out, that's what you SHOULD get.

So that's a random sampling of today's news. It's clear that the 24-hour news cycle means the death of serious journalism. Either that, or CNN is just catering to idiots like me to boost their ratings.

Oh, and one more camping pic from last weekend:

This is a stitch of 4 separate shots, covering a 180-degree field of view. (click for larger image)

That's all I've got for today, so go out there and have some fun this weekend.

Remember, it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Then it's time to jump in the car and go get your ointment.*

*I'll bet you thought I was going to say, "Then it's just one game - Find the Eye."

Bear Chum. It's Better than Ex Lax.

You know what happens when you go on a canoe trip with friends and one of them is a photographer? No? Let me tell you. First, you let him prepare dinner, which he has affectionately (and appropriately) named "Bear Chum." It's basically hunks of chicken and pork sausage in some kind of spicy, garlic pepper sauce. After dinner, you sit by the fire and drink lots of Drambuie. When the Drambuie is gone, you drink lots of Yukon Jack -- and before you know it, it's 1 am and you have laughed your ass off for about 5 solid hours.

After the fire and the conversation die down, you stumble to your sleeping bag and close your eyes and your tent spins at exactly 45 rpm, which is fortuitous because you've got Van Morrison's Brown-eyed Girl stuck in your head, and somehow that always sounds more authentic with all the scratches and pops included. You don't actually remember falling asleep, but you close your eyes for a second to see how it tastes and the next thing you know, you're waking up because your buddy the photographer is clomping around outside your tent in the dark. Why? He's getting ready to take pictures of the friggin' sunrise, of course.

You sit up and the first thing you realize is that you still have your boots on. Then you realize that you are pretty sure you're still a little drunk and that you'd give your left nut to have slept through the headache that is now trying to escape from your skull via the back of your eyes. Your stomach revolts at the thought of breakfast, so you lie back down. 30 minutes later, you realize you have to piss like a racehorse and decide that the best course of action would probably be to get up and do so because you only brought one change of clothes.

You stumble out of your tent with your wife's point and shoot camera (just in case) and take pictures like this one over your shoulder while you look for a convenient tree:

Somehow, it almost (but not quite) seems worth it.

Here's one from someone who actually knows what they're doing.

Old rockers never die.

Well, that's not entirely true. When the hay bale of death comes for you, there's not much you can do except roll with it.

A few weekends ago, I surprised my wife with a road trip downstate to see a concert in Woodstock, NY for our anniversary. I didn't tell her where we were going or what we were doing -- I just told her to pack a bag for a quick over-nighter. I had booked a room in a B&B not too far from the Bethel Woods venue, and had paid a crazy amount of money for this package that supposedly included seats in the 3rd row, and a beer and wine party with the band beforehand. I got this "fan package" through an outfit called ILoveAllAccess.

The first thing that went wrong was that the B&B I had reserved a room with back in May somehow double-booked the room. Since we only had it for a night, and the other people had it for two nights, they won, and we got shunted to a different place, much further away and more expensive to boot. The lady who owned the first place did offer to let us hang out there on Sunday and use their kayaks (they're on a river) and offered to let us stay free at a later date. That didn't really help us out much that night, but at least she tried to make it right.

The band was REO Speedwagon. Yes, Illinois rock is alive and well, although perhaps a bit more wrinkly and arthritic.

The reason for this particular band and show? Our first date, way back when we were kids, was to an REO Speedwagon concert, and I thought it would be fun.

Before the show, we waited with a few other couples for the ILAA representative. Her name was Cory, and she escorted us to the a little pavilion outside the "administrative wing" of the Bethel Woods Center. They had some tables and chairs set up, a barrel full of beer and wine, and a few platters of sandwiches and chips. She did a few raffle giveaways of band merch, and gave us our "goodie bags" which were supposed to contain a concert T-shirt, and some other memorabilia.

It did, in fact, include a shirt, however it wasn't an actual shirt the band sold at their merch booth. Instead, it was this godawful red-sleeved baseball jersey that had some stupid ILAA logo on it, along with the band logo. I haven't worn concert T's as a general wardrobe item since I got married and my wife showed me the error of my ways, but I'm pretty sure if I offered this shirt to a homeless guy, he'd ask me if I had anything else. The other things were a keychain, and a concert logo fridge magnet that wasn't magnetized enough to support its own weight. Quality merchandise, in other words.

Next up, she explained to us how we were going to "meet the band." That's in quotes for a reason. She said it was going to be what was called a "managed experience." There was to be no hand-shaking. There was to be no autograph signing. There was to be no unauthorized pictures and definitely no hanging out and shooting the shit with various band members. I prefer to think this had less to do with the band's wishes, and more to do with the venue and ILAA not wanting to get sued into a smoking hole if some psycho went apeshit and started stomping on these frail old guys and yelling about how they sold out in '81 and how Gary Richrath got screwed.

What happened instead was this -- the band came out, and lined up against a wall. Each group of folks who had mortgaged their house for this "experience" would walk up to the band, say "Hi," stand with them for an official picture taken by an ILAA representative, and then go sit back down. Total time invested per group of people: 15 seconds. They could have accomplished the same thing with a few cardboard cut-outs of the band.

This was the first time I had done something like this, and it's probably going to be the last, although from talking to a few of the other people there who have done this before, this was not typical. These were the people carrying all the paraphernalia they were hoping to get the band to sign, so I assume they had to know what they were talking about.

In fact, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away when these guys were at the height of their popularity, we got to meet them backstage after a show, and it was a much more laid back atmosphere. The band was just sort of milling around, and I remember leaning against the wall talking to Neal Doughty (the keyboard player) for 20 minutes about the new synths he was using on stage. There was nothing "managed" about the experience, and it was fun. They were a bunch of really friendly guys, and I distinctly remember a few handshakes, too. Maybe their phalanges* are more brittle now.

The show itself was actually great. The opener was some fetus named Tyler Bryant. He and his band were actually pretty decent -- sort of a roots rock/pop thing. Good players.

REO was next on the bill. They've had the same lineup since 1990, and they still looked like they love playing live. They played the shit out of their hits, and seemed to know that's what people were there to see them do.

The energy was there too, and Kevin Cronin ran around on the stage like a 25-year-old. God bless him. He looks like animated beef jerky, but he still puts on a hell of a show. I took this shot from our seat:

Pat Benetar closed the show, and she sounded and looked good -- but I didn't like her music even when it was popular, so we only stuck around for a few songs and then hit the road back to the B&B.

All in all, probably not worth the money I spent to make it happen, but it was a fun trip down memory lane. Also, I got to see this dude romantically slow-dancing with himself, so that has to be worth something:

For your viewing pleasure (and to introduce the band to all the 20-somethings out there who never heard of REO and think Robert Plant is just some old dude who sings folk songs with Alison Krauss) --

Then:

And now, 30-odd years later:

It was good to see them play, and I'm kinda glad they're still around in one form or another. I find that I've reached an age where more and more of my childhood heroes are starting to take dirt naps.

On the way out, we did swing by the original B&B to get my deposit back and check it out, and ended up hanging out with the owner and a few guests for most of the morning. She's a really nice woman, and she has a beautiful hunk of property right on the river. Also, it's in some sort of eagle sanctuary, so we got to see an eagle devour a fish right across the water from where we were sitting.

Here's a shot I grabbed right after he finished eating:

I can tell you one thing -- eagles are a lot less regal when you watch them take a dump the size of a cocker spaniel. Hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend. I'm going to try to hit the woods a little bit this month, so I'll have some new adventures to talk about. Have fun!

Also, if you haven't seen it, this is the greatest thing ever.

*I think a good drinking game would be to watch the show Bones, and slam a shot whenever they say this word, or watch the show House and use the word Sarcoidosis.

Searching Eyes and Lowes.

Site Meter, you've been sucking lately. How am I supposed to make fun of something that just says "Unknown?" I want to know how people get here, dammit! Take your unknown and cram it. Lately most of my searches have been for the actual blog title, or "pee shiver." It's depressing. I'm going to be forced to dig into my sordid childhood past for more stories.

Since I'm desperately editing the stories I've already written and trying to work them into some semblance of order for what I laughingly call "The Book," I've been too busy to write anything original. So instead, you get this. I haven't done one of these in a while, so without further ado, here's the latest edition of:

(Not so) Fantastic Google Searches That Somehow Led People To My Site

Why do Lowes people in commercials look weird - I checked out some Lowe's commercials on youtube (why anyone would go through the bother of uploading a shitty Lowes commercial is beyond me, but there are tons of them) and they didn't seem that much different from just about everybody in every commercial everywhere since the dawn of time.

Just once I would love to see a commercial where the people in it weren't acting completely unnatural in every respect. Their voices, their body movements, their dialogue -- everything is horrible, and ridiculously fake. And that's the national brand commercials. It gets really horrible when you start talking about local commercials. I would have to say that's the one major drawback to giving up my DirectTV and going with Time Warner cable. I now get local commercials. There's one old guy in particular around here who sells cars, and I have no idea why or how. He's obnoxious, annoying, has a big mouth and he likes to say the word HUGE a lot. He thinks everything is huge. His deals, his sales, probably even his crank. He is most likely rich, but you just know it's the type of rich where he's got a gold-plated toilet, but doesn't wipe really good or wash his hands after he takes a crap.

The thing that bugs me is not that he has decided that his tag line will be the word "Huge" but that his version of the word starts with the letter "Y" and ends with the letters "AHH." He screams it the top of his lungs and it sounds like "YOOOOOOOOOOOOJAHHHHHH!" Just writing that makes me want him dead. OK, maybe that's a little harsh. I'd settle for permanent laryngitis. Seriously, I cannot dive for the remote fast enough when his fat ass appears on my screen. I would pay cold, hard cash every single day to be hog-tied with barbed wire and dragged to work behind a team of runaway horses before I would buy a car from him. Or anything from him. Anything at all. I'm sure I can't be the only one. How can this guy not be driving business away from his dealership in droves? I don't know. Anyway, enough of my rant. Back to Lowe's. The answer to your question is simple. Those people you see are failed actors, and that's the way failed actors look.

What would a good hypothesis for my friends who eat tasty food for lunch have the best eyesight? -- I'm not quite sure what you're asking. Are you looking for tasty foods to make your friends see better? Are you trying to weed out who among your tasty-food-eating friends has the best eyesight? Is this all hypothetical and you really have no friends? I need more information before I can help you. And also more tasty food.

Throat closes when eating prime rib -- I would say you're probably a good candidate for vegetarianism. The thought of eating nothing but beans and TVP for the rest of my life causes my throat to close up, so I'm compelled to think of another solution for you. After giving it 3 seconds of serious thought, I've come up with this: You might want to try a cheaper cut of meat. Try a McDonald's Hamburger - see if that causes your throat to close up. If you have a meat allergy, you'll probably be fine, since these burgers have very little actual meat in them. Move up the ladder from cheap cuts to more expensive cuts, taking note of your throat diameter after each trial. Find the one that causes your throat to begin closing up and then back it down a notch. I hope for your sake you make it to Sirloin, because that flank steak stuff is like leather. Keep me posted.

Nude lunch dating -- To me, this sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. First, there's the visual aspects of it. What if the guy at the next table (or god forbid, your date) looks like this? You'd spend your entire lunch just spitting imaginary hairs out of your mouth. And then there's the uncomfortable physical aspects to worry about. If it's too hot, your balls would be sticking to the vinyl seats, if it's too cold, there would be major shrinkage -- it wouldn't be pretty. I would suggest a fully-clothed lunch, and then if the mood strikes you, go somewhere else for the nude part.

Christiane Amanpour, Lesbian Bitch -- Is that her new title? I hadn't heard. Now that you mention it, though, I did see that she has that new show on ABC:

Pee shiver eyes water -- sounds to me like you may have a simple control problem. My advice is to grasp the penis firmly in your fist when you feel the shiver coming on, that way you will avoid getting urine in your eye. Problem solved.

Granny giving hand job on a trail -- You, my friend, are looking for some very specific porn. Not only grannies, not only hand jobs, but grannies giving hand jobs while on a trail. I think if you picked just about anything else besides trail -- car, roof, kangaroo (ok, maybe not kangaroo) -- you would have found a ton of stuff. The fact that you like dry, knobbly granny hands clutching around down there should leave you plenty of options besides "trail." Try working the term "tongs" in there somewhere. Tongs seem to be pretty popular with the grannies.

Is it normal to feel like you have lived in the seventies? -- My suggestion would be to check your birth certificate. Find the 4 digit number. If that number is smaller than 1980, then yes, it's perfectly normal for you to feel like you've lived in the 70's. If your 4 digit number is somewhere between 1940 and 1960, it's entirely possible that you lived in the 70's but just don't remember it, especially if you like the Grateful Dead. You might also want to check out some old pictures of yourself and note the hairstyle you had and the clothes you were wearing. That's how I found out.

Drugs in your asshole -- I'm not sure how you ended up here in your cavity search, but I've never had drugs in my asshole, so I won't be much help. Unless you count that one time when I was 7 years old and couldn't poop and my mother went directly to the source with something that looked like one of the Lone Ranger's bullets. I wouldn't recommend that.

The amazing world of 3D, plus some other random stuff.

Remember playing with your Viewmaster when you were a kid? I had a red one, and I loved that thing. You'd drop in one of the circular slides, and the pictures inside would come to life in glorious, full-color 3D. Scooby Doo, Gumby and Pokey, Batman and Robin...I had a ton of them.

At the time, I had no idea how they worked, but when I was old enough to understand it, I was fascinated that your brain was capable of creating a 3D image from a couple of pictures shot at a slightly different angle.

Turns out there was even a bunch of cameras in the 50's and 60's that could do this. The Realist was probably the most popular one. You'd send your film off in the mail, and they'd send you back your 3D slides.

My wife and I have a wedding anniversary coming up, and since she's impatient, she gave me my present early. She bought me this antique stereoscope, the precursor to the venerable Viewmaster.

Some of the old cards that came with it are pretty cool, and for almost a century, it was the way people who couldn't afford to travel experienced the world. I liked the old shots, but I really wanted to take my own personal pictures. (No, not that kind, although I'm really surprised that Viewmaster porn never became popular back before the internet.)

Here's my first one, taken using the decidedly low-tech "cha-cha method." You lean your weight on one foot, take the picture, then you lean your weight on the other foot (while still looking through the viewfinder and keeping it as steady as possible), and take the same picture again. Slap them together in photoshop and print them out. It works like a charm.

You can even view them just by crossing your eyes until the two pictures overlap and form a third picture in the middle. Here's a shot I took of our back yard (click on it for a bigger version):

I am still fascinated by this, even after all this time. I don't know why. I can't wait to take some more of these sort of shots on our camping trips next month. In my search for some sort of slider bar for my tripod, I found out that Fuji is making a digital camera that takes these automatically. I also stumbled on a company that makes a lens you can put on your SLR, I'm seriously thinking about buying one. The benefit to both of these is that you can shoot moving objects since both shots are taken at the same exact instant.

On a completely unrelated subject, this google ad was served up on my site today, and it caught my eye:

I clicked on it, because it intrigued me. Here's what I got:

It makes sense to me now, but honest to god, before I clicked on it, I was wondering why anyone would have so much spaghetti that they needed some sort of tank to store it in.

Also, I'll bet this was a highly contested debate:

"Hi everyone, and welcome. I'll be your moderator for today's debate. One my left is a group of surfers who support legalizing marijuana, and on my right is ... absolutely no one. Surf's up!"

And lastly, what the hell is up with this cover, Rolling Stone?

I opened my mailbox this morning and almost puked. I've never seen the show, but apparently they are very messy eaters.

Let's Make a New Everybody Else Record.

A while back I picked up this great power pop CD by a band called Everybody Else and was blown away. Energetic, upbeat, make-you-want-to-dance-in-your-kitchen infectious grooves that really get to the center of what -- to me, at least -- this kind of music is all about. Even when they're singing about mortality and lost love, they make you feel happy about it.

Power pop is my guilty pleasure, mostly because it's a lot of fun to play drums to, but I enjoy a wide range of other music, too. It all depends on my mood. The ability of music to make me happy, make me angry, make me sad...that emotional musical roller coaster is something that I can always count on. If I'm feeling a little down, I can put on some music that will change that. It works in reverse too -- sometimes I might want to dip down into the darkness a bit even though I know it's not in my own best interests, and the perfectly chosen album or song can do that as well.

With this particular band, there is a song on their debut CD called "Button For Punishment" that I thought was brilliant. The studio version is very sparse and hauntingly beautiful; basically just a guitar and a voice -- but tonight when I went looking, I found a version that was even more sparse. Seriously, if I could do this, I would never leave my...um, tree.

Here's what I'm talking about:



I decided to go see if they had anything else available, and I found out that they're an indie band now -- their old label went belly up and it's been a few years since their first release.

I also found out that they've been raising money to record their next CD using something called kickstarter.com. Kickstarter is a site that allows people to set up different projects to be funded by the public at large. If the project sponsor meets their money-raising goals, the project gets the go ahead as "fully funded." These guys need help finishing up their first indie release. There's only four days left on their project, so check it out if you get a chance. Call it the frustrated musician in me. I like to see people make a living doing something they're passionate about -- and extremely good at.

So many friends and acquaintances came so close to making it big, only to be screwed over by either bad luck, their own record label or the music industry in general, that this method of raising money to fund recordings makes perfect sense to me. I think it's a fine way to change the music industry landscape, and allow the artists to actually benefit from the money their fans spend on their music.

I think it'll cut down on piracy too, since the fans will feel that the cash they shell out for a CD is going to the band members instead of into the pockets of some fat, old record company executive who doesn't give a rat's ass about a band unless they have a mega-hit single right out of the gate. Nobody at the label hears a single? Well, you had your shot. Forget about anything even remotely approaching artist development. Consider yourself dropped.

Maybe you don't like power pop music as much as I do, and that's OK. Maybe you just hate the manufactured bullshit you see cranked out of the American Idol machine and its ilk -- and the idea of supporting independent music appeals to you. That motive works for me. Either way, just take a few seconds to check out their link here.

I gave them a donation for purely selfish reasons. I dig their music, and want them to continue making it. I know, I know, there's a ton of places where my money could be better spent, and a dozen charities come to mind, but I refuse to feel guilty for indulging the musical monkey on my back. I don't know about you, but I can only give so much to wounded vets, abused animals and the united way before I want to stop worrying about the fucking world for a few minutes and just ... I don't know... maybe find myself a rock and roll band that needs a helping hand, as the old song goes.

It can't hurt, right?

Stupidity cuts like a knife.

If you remember my post from a bit ago about the bullshit with which the esteemed Cyrus Vance Jr. is trying to prop up his career, you know that I carry a small pocket knife, and I have for many, many years. It's a Spyderco, and it has a clip and a thumb hole so you can open it with one hand. Because you can open it with one hand, and because it locks open, a cop in a bad mood could, using this new ruling, confiscate it at best, and haul me away in cuffs at worst.

So I decided I would go to the Spyderco web site and see what else they had to offer. There was a button that said "Legal in NY" so I clicked it. Turns out, they were having a fantastic sale on a particular non-clip, non-locking knife and touted it as legal in the UK, even.

It was a really nice looking knife and *very* cheap. These knives usually start at around $50 and go up from there. So I was very happy to see this incredibly low price. So happy, in fact, that I immediately placed an order for two of them. You can never have too many, right?

They arrived yesterday, and I wanted to share some pictures with you. Here's a shot of the packaging. Very simple, yet elegant. You can see the brushed stainless steel body, the "spyder" logo and the thumb hole for one-handed opening:

Here's a picture of the knife with the blade opened:

It's razor sharp, and that's no exaggeration. I was able to shave the hair off my arm with it. The spring has a nice amount of resistance to it, so even though it doesn't lock, it turns out it's not a problem.

I would say that in almost all respects, it's a very well made and attractive knife, and exactly what I wanted. I do have one slight problem with it, however, and it's really my own fault.

The problem I have is this:

In my defense, nowhere on their website does it say that this particular model is manufactured for leprechauns.

Whoa. My hands are HUGE.

On the bright side, I've learned something from this experience. One, just because it's called a "thumb hole" doesn't mean it's an actual hole for your actual thumb, unless you are a tiny mythical being with proportionally tiny mythical thumbs. Two, determining relative scale and reading the fine-print can be important, and might save you money. And three, apparently size does matter.

My wife is such a liar.

That's some good Tequila. Lets go to my place.

I would like to go back to the topic of badly named products for just a moment. I've been seeing the commercial below pretty much non-stop recently and I think it's just a really bad name for a supposed top-shelf liquor product:



The first and most obvious connotation is that this Tequila would make me horny. Whether it would make me more or less horny than say, Patron, I don't know. If I didn't have a dirty mind, perhaps Hornitos would sound more like the name of a kid's snack. Maybe some kind of Dorito-branded corn chip in the shape of a horn, like Bugles, only with more added Mexican flavor.

But then I figured that since I don't speak Spanish, maybe a Hornito was something I've never heard of that was tasty and smooth. So I looked it up.

While I was correct in that it was something I've never heard of, I was incorrect in the assumption that it would be something tasty and smooth, because a Hornito is "a small, beehive-shaped mound built up from clots of molten lava ejected from an underlying volcanic tube," and that is decidedly not smooth nor tasty in any way.

There's a place in Chile called Hornitos, but that looks pretty dusty and unappealing. Although I think if I lived there, I'd be hitting some sort of liquor pretty hard.

Then there's this ghost town.

So I am mystified. If anyone has an idea of why the hell they would name a premium tequila this, please let me know. Until then, I will continue to hate this commercial on your behalf.

My next recurring nightmare.

My friend Vidna took this picture last weekend:

When he sent me the pic, his only comment was, "What are those things sticking out of the front of his face? Guns?" He's totally right. Tell me that doesn't look like something that should be running around on Tatooine.

Or maybe destroying Tokyo:

Look at those claws. Those freakin' eyes. That has to be the ugliest bug ever. It was completely empty, and light as onion skin. Vidna had no idea what it was either, so I told him to send me the picture and I'd find out. I figured it was the skin left by the nymph stage of... well... something, but I had no idea what.

I know there's a few smarty-pantses out there who already know what it is, but I'll admit I had to google it. I started googling "clawed insect" and "crab claws on bug" and I was coming up empty. Then I googled "empty shell of bug with claws" or something close to that, and got a hit. Turns out it's a cicada nymph exoskeleton. Jesus. Just look at it. Could that thing get any uglier?

So I did some reading, and apparently being a cicada means you live a pretty shitty life. First, you're so ugly that you stay underground for 17 years sucking juice out of a root. That's like the bug equivalent of being unemployed and sitting in a crappy apartment with no TV, eating ramen noodles all day. For 17 years.

Then, you finally get up the nerve to come to the surface. You look around and see the butterflies flitting by, and think to yourself...soon.....soon I will be beautiful and free like them! You grab onto a tree and strain at your exoskeleton, and you hear it crack -- and you feel the cool, summer night air rush in. You finally emerge triumphant, ready to be all you can be, and ....

you look like this.

I guess as long as you stay away from mirrors, it's all good. Besides, the females look just like you so you know you've got a decent shot at getting lucky. You have to set the bar pretty low to be a loser cicada. So you suck it up, do your best impersonation of Brian Johnson singing a high C over and over, then you mate, and then you die.

17 years down the crapper so you can honk your vuvuzela for a few days and have sex with something that's as ugly as you are.

And if that's not bad enough, there's this final indignity.

What I want to know is, how does it leave everything behind in such perfect condition? Right down to the antennae and the legs. I wish I could get undressed like that every night. I'd never had to iron another shirt as long as I lived.