Everyone around here hunts. And they all are always asking everyone else about hunting... " Did you hunt... are you going to hunt... where do you hunt..." or its " this one time at hunting camp..."
For the non-hunters, like myself its quite an awkward and annoying time, because eventually the conversation comes around to you. When you admit that you're NOT a hunter and you're amongst hunters it can only go one of two bad ways. They either think that you don't approve or hunting and they start getting argumentative and defensive. The other option is they just think your a big deer humping pussy.
Its taken about 35 years, but I've finally figured out a means to coping with this issue. As soon as I see the conversation going that way I ask..
" When you shoot something, does it give you an erection ? Because the main thing that keeps from hunting is the fear that the rush of killing something will give me a boner and I'll spend the rest of my life associating sex with killing things....and that's a long dark road that I'm not quite ready to head down at this point in my life"
No one talks about hunting with me anymore.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
how bout a Fresca ?
After a brief break I decided I'd give online poker another try.
This time however, I figured I'd waste all my time for goodness instead of badness. I've decided to donate half my winning for the next year to a small girl in Africa who's name I got from the local church.
Yesterday afternoon I won the girl a goat.
After a couple of vodkas last night, that was downgraded to a pair of sandals.
Hey, to a barefooted girl a pair of sandals is as good as a goat ! Anyway, what are you doing ?!
This time however, I figured I'd waste all my time for goodness instead of badness. I've decided to donate half my winning for the next year to a small girl in Africa who's name I got from the local church.
Yesterday afternoon I won the girl a goat.
After a couple of vodkas last night, that was downgraded to a pair of sandals.
Hey, to a barefooted girl a pair of sandals is as good as a goat ! Anyway, what are you doing ?!
Monday, October 12, 2009
couple of random thoughts
* Steven Wright has a joke where he says, " you know that feeling where you're leaning back in a chair...and you go a little too far and you start to tip over...and at the last minute you recover ?.....I feel like that all the time"
I just had that feeling after twice punching in the wrong security code for mac-card with one of the old ATMs where the card goes inside the machine and then eats it on the third mistake.
Of course the first millimeter where your ass was supposed to touch the toilet seat that was left up in the middle of the night always qualifies as well.
* I had a great discussion with a guy about the evolution of the nerf basketball hoops. Somehow, without the benefit of the internet, coaching, playgroups, or classroom aides, kids all across America figured out how to play basketball in their bedrooms. Amazingly enough the natural evolution of the game seemed to have occurred regardless of geographical location or economic background.
- It started with a half opened door making a space between the door itself and the wall of the closet, with any round object slightly smaller than the triangle formed would work.
- The upgrade was the coat hanger shaped in the form of a hoop, with a balled up pair of socks serving as the ball. The catch here was the attempt to affix the coat hanger to something, usually a doortop. Duct tape was the universal choice, but still then, with the weight of the socks always exceeding the tensile strength of the wire hangar, the rim needed constant attention.
- Eventually, that Christmas, someones Aunt would breakdown and you'd find yourself in the big time with a full on Nerf hoop-set. For the life of me I don't know why, but I have the guttural feeling of love for the nerf basketball that is evenly balanced by my disdain for the nerf rim. There must have been something about that rim suppressed that might necessitate hypno-therapy. Then again, maybe some things are left well enough alone.
Some people played standing up, others on knees. Acceptable forms of dribbling include both the palms up flat handed tap as well as holding the ball palms down with a simulated dribble. In either dribble case, a flinch or a pause meant that you lost your dribble and had to shoot or pass.....passing of course was achieve by throwing the ball against any wall and inciting a scrum.
There usually always was some sort of line of demarcation, sometimes officially enumerated, sometimes through loose, unspoken agreement, where the offensive player could take an uncontested shot. If Princeton funded a study of my childhood bedroom, I suspect they'd find that the universal shooting for shots taken at the far end of the second curtain rod was exactly 50% uncontested. That might go slightly up for kids over 11, but could be easily regulated by feinted punches to the groin or the random barking of incoherent insults.
* That nerf/hoop conversation lead the the curious case of how "Jingle Bells Batman Smells" made it East Coast to West Coast, North and South...with consistent lyrics, in just 10 short years from the TV series inception until my first recollection of the song in the winter of 1976. But perhaps that a blog post for another time.
I just had that feeling after twice punching in the wrong security code for mac-card with one of the old ATMs where the card goes inside the machine and then eats it on the third mistake.
Of course the first millimeter where your ass was supposed to touch the toilet seat that was left up in the middle of the night always qualifies as well.
* I had a great discussion with a guy about the evolution of the nerf basketball hoops. Somehow, without the benefit of the internet, coaching, playgroups, or classroom aides, kids all across America figured out how to play basketball in their bedrooms. Amazingly enough the natural evolution of the game seemed to have occurred regardless of geographical location or economic background.
- It started with a half opened door making a space between the door itself and the wall of the closet, with any round object slightly smaller than the triangle formed would work.
- The upgrade was the coat hanger shaped in the form of a hoop, with a balled up pair of socks serving as the ball. The catch here was the attempt to affix the coat hanger to something, usually a doortop. Duct tape was the universal choice, but still then, with the weight of the socks always exceeding the tensile strength of the wire hangar, the rim needed constant attention.
- Eventually, that Christmas, someones Aunt would breakdown and you'd find yourself in the big time with a full on Nerf hoop-set. For the life of me I don't know why, but I have the guttural feeling of love for the nerf basketball that is evenly balanced by my disdain for the nerf rim. There must have been something about that rim suppressed that might necessitate hypno-therapy. Then again, maybe some things are left well enough alone.
Some people played standing up, others on knees. Acceptable forms of dribbling include both the palms up flat handed tap as well as holding the ball palms down with a simulated dribble. In either dribble case, a flinch or a pause meant that you lost your dribble and had to shoot or pass.....passing of course was achieve by throwing the ball against any wall and inciting a scrum.
There usually always was some sort of line of demarcation, sometimes officially enumerated, sometimes through loose, unspoken agreement, where the offensive player could take an uncontested shot. If Princeton funded a study of my childhood bedroom, I suspect they'd find that the universal shooting for shots taken at the far end of the second curtain rod was exactly 50% uncontested. That might go slightly up for kids over 11, but could be easily regulated by feinted punches to the groin or the random barking of incoherent insults.
* That nerf/hoop conversation lead the the curious case of how "Jingle Bells Batman Smells" made it East Coast to West Coast, North and South...with consistent lyrics, in just 10 short years from the TV series inception until my first recollection of the song in the winter of 1976. But perhaps that a blog post for another time.
Friday, October 09, 2009
ABSURD
Here was the competition...
Denis Mukwege, a physician in war-torn Congo who opened a clinic to help rape victims.
Hu, a human rights activist and an outspoken critic of the Chinese government, was sentenced last year to a three-and-a-half-year prison term for "inciting subversion of state power" ahead of the Beijing Olympics.
Cordoba, who leads Colombians for Peace, an organization whose aim is to facilitate peace negotiations between the government and the country's leftist FARC guerrillas. She has been at the forefront of efforts to peacefully end her country's half-century-old conflict, which is rooted in deep social divisions.
bin Muhammad, a philosophy professor in Jordan who advocates interfaith dialogue in the Middle East, a region shot through with sectarian violence, and Samar. She currently leads the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and serves as the U.N. special envoy to Darfur.
Wei Jingsheng, who spent 17 years in Chinese prisons for urging reforms of China's communist system.
And the award went to OBAMA !?!?!?!...for....
"his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."
REALLY ????!!!!
Listen, I voted for the guy. I was happy to have him in there instead of McCain, and would have given myself paper cuts of the scrotum if that's what it would have taken to get Bush out of office. But WTF has Obama accomplished in THIS country, let alone, in the efforts of world-wide peace ? Basically, in the 10 months the guys been if office he really hasn't done jack shit. Thats fine. But don't give the guy a cookie for it.
You think they'll present him with the award at Guantanamo, when he finally gets around to closing it ?
Denis Mukwege, a physician in war-torn Congo who opened a clinic to help rape victims.
Hu, a human rights activist and an outspoken critic of the Chinese government, was sentenced last year to a three-and-a-half-year prison term for "inciting subversion of state power" ahead of the Beijing Olympics.
Cordoba, who leads Colombians for Peace, an organization whose aim is to facilitate peace negotiations between the government and the country's leftist FARC guerrillas. She has been at the forefront of efforts to peacefully end her country's half-century-old conflict, which is rooted in deep social divisions.
bin Muhammad, a philosophy professor in Jordan who advocates interfaith dialogue in the Middle East, a region shot through with sectarian violence, and Samar. She currently leads the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and serves as the U.N. special envoy to Darfur.
Wei Jingsheng, who spent 17 years in Chinese prisons for urging reforms of China's communist system.
And the award went to OBAMA !?!?!?!...for....
"his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."
REALLY ????!!!!
Listen, I voted for the guy. I was happy to have him in there instead of McCain, and would have given myself paper cuts of the scrotum if that's what it would have taken to get Bush out of office. But WTF has Obama accomplished in THIS country, let alone, in the efforts of world-wide peace ? Basically, in the 10 months the guys been if office he really hasn't done jack shit. Thats fine. But don't give the guy a cookie for it.
You think they'll present him with the award at Guantanamo, when he finally gets around to closing it ?
Thursday, October 08, 2009
words of wisdom
Whenever I get asked to fix someone's computer and the error message on the screen includes the phrase "....xxxxxx.dll " I preemptively smash my balls in a desk drawer and plan on having lunch delivered.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Sore subject
I'm sore every day.
One year, almost to the day, I decided to stop being a fat bastard. For one year, I've diligently exercised, I've lost a bunch of weight, I've taken better care of myself.
And for one full year, every day, I'm sore.
And I'm pretty f-ing sick of it.
Now to make matters worse, I did a 10 mile trail run a week ago while fighting off a cold and ended up spending 4 full days in bed.
Yesterday I went and did a light 3 mile jog ( mind you in the last 2 months I've completed a half-ironman, did well in a 3+ hour adventure race, muddled through a hard 10 mile off road run, and trained average of 12 hours a week)..anyway...I did a light 3 mile jog, I was winded, and I woke up today sore as hell.
Shit, I threw darts last night with the boy and my arm is sore.
So I'm starting to wonder if perhaps there's some environmental condition in my home that's slowly poisoning me, is there really what I have to look forward to for the next 30 years (or so) I have left on this planet ?
See I like being fit, but I don't remember every being this miserable when I was a drunk fat bastard.
One year, almost to the day, I decided to stop being a fat bastard. For one year, I've diligently exercised, I've lost a bunch of weight, I've taken better care of myself.
And for one full year, every day, I'm sore.
And I'm pretty f-ing sick of it.
Now to make matters worse, I did a 10 mile trail run a week ago while fighting off a cold and ended up spending 4 full days in bed.
Yesterday I went and did a light 3 mile jog ( mind you in the last 2 months I've completed a half-ironman, did well in a 3+ hour adventure race, muddled through a hard 10 mile off road run, and trained average of 12 hours a week)..anyway...I did a light 3 mile jog, I was winded, and I woke up today sore as hell.
Shit, I threw darts last night with the boy and my arm is sore.
So I'm starting to wonder if perhaps there's some environmental condition in my home that's slowly poisoning me, is there really what I have to look forward to for the next 30 years (or so) I have left on this planet ?
See I like being fit, but I don't remember every being this miserable when I was a drunk fat bastard.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Tyson
I watched the Mike Tyson documentary Tyson last night. The movie is very well done and I'd recommend it to non-fight fans as well as boxing enthusiasts.
The movie is a long form interview of present day Mike Tyson interspersed with fight footage, home movies, and interviews from the past. The movie isn't really at all about boxing, but rather a look at the evolution of Tyson as a man.
I think the thing that has always made Tyson a captivating character is the contrast of him as the most vicious and deadly powerful fighter in the ring against his childlike qualities outside of the ring.
Self-admittedly, Tyson has limited capabilities in dealing with the world, but this movie shows that he's hardly stupid. If anything he's overly self-aware and honest to a fault. While much of his behavior is inexcusable, taken in full context of his life's story, its at least understandable.
At 19 years old Mike Tyson was the greatest fighter in history. Period.
By 30, he was washed up.
Now 40, he has the tired reflective tone of a 80 year old.
And all through it, he's never lost the emotional weakness and vulnerability of a 12 year old boy.
I can't help but think of the parallels between Tyson and Michael Jackson...the difference, at least as shown in this movie, being Tyson's attempts to address his demons. At the end this 90 minute piece, you get the sense that he'll always be the underdog in that battle, but you still can't help yourself rooting for the champ.
The movie is a long form interview of present day Mike Tyson interspersed with fight footage, home movies, and interviews from the past. The movie isn't really at all about boxing, but rather a look at the evolution of Tyson as a man.
I think the thing that has always made Tyson a captivating character is the contrast of him as the most vicious and deadly powerful fighter in the ring against his childlike qualities outside of the ring.
Self-admittedly, Tyson has limited capabilities in dealing with the world, but this movie shows that he's hardly stupid. If anything he's overly self-aware and honest to a fault. While much of his behavior is inexcusable, taken in full context of his life's story, its at least understandable.
At 19 years old Mike Tyson was the greatest fighter in history. Period.
By 30, he was washed up.
Now 40, he has the tired reflective tone of a 80 year old.
And all through it, he's never lost the emotional weakness and vulnerability of a 12 year old boy.
I can't help but think of the parallels between Tyson and Michael Jackson...the difference, at least as shown in this movie, being Tyson's attempts to address his demons. At the end this 90 minute piece, you get the sense that he'll always be the underdog in that battle, but you still can't help yourself rooting for the champ.
Monday, October 05, 2009
cyclingnews - thumbs down
This is old news, but I've just gotten around to being pissed off enough to mention it. Cyclingnews.com redid their site and it sucks.
I had been a regular customer back when I was on dial-up and they were called Bill's Cycling Pages. At one time I was a paying advertiser on the site.
I've lived through a couple of site revamps without complaint, but this latest change is just terrible. And I'm not alone, their forum is filled with threads of people complaining. The site loads crappy, the results are difficult to find and mislabled, and its really cumbersome to navigate.
What I find most ponderous is the fact that despite everyone's displeasure, they're continuing to stick it out with this current format.
The only one that seems to really like the new format is Velonews.com , Their readership is up 30%.
I had been a regular customer back when I was on dial-up and they were called Bill's Cycling Pages. At one time I was a paying advertiser on the site.
I've lived through a couple of site revamps without complaint, but this latest change is just terrible. And I'm not alone, their forum is filled with threads of people complaining. The site loads crappy, the results are difficult to find and mislabled, and its really cumbersome to navigate.
What I find most ponderous is the fact that despite everyone's displeasure, they're continuing to stick it out with this current format.
The only one that seems to really like the new format is Velonews.com , Their readership is up 30%.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)