Category Archives: Idle Chit-Chat

5000th visitor, and Vegas, Baby!

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As soon as I post this and get supplies, I’m on my way to Vegas. There are several reasons I might not be able to post while I’m there, but in the end it boils down to this: Once, long ago, at one of the bacchanals, I lamented that I had no camera. Jesse shrugged and said, “Some people make history, some people record it.” My time in Las Vegas will be about making history. I’ll let the local news channels record it.

Moments ago we had our 5000th visitor to the site! Wow! At this rate of growth I’ll be slightly famous by the year 2012. Look out! I had hoped that V5K would be someone I recognized, but alas the person arrived here on a search for “Hampton Inn Temecula” (or so it seems—when I reloaded their search I didn’t see a link to my blog.)

Sunscreen at the ready, I now head into the desert.

Thanks!

Suicide Squirrel Threat Level Meter

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I have realized that as I sit atop my media empire I have a responsibility to the community I serve. Having originally broken the story of the Suicide Squirrel Death Cult, I must take on the mantle and continue to monitor this nefarious and fuzzy organization. Therefore I have spent my precious afternoon putting into place the Suicide Squirrel Threat Level System. I will now be monitoring suicide squirrel communications activity (“chatter”, we call it in the biz), and based on that and other less tangible data I will periodically update the Suicide Squirrel Threat Level indicator on this site. Please be sure to check back often. Remember, preparedness is their worst enemy!

The threat levels are:
RED: psychotic
ORANGE: peeved
YELLOW: sick and tired
BLUE: ready to jump
GREEN: peaceful, easy feeling

Note that blue is where we would expect the greatest suicidal activity. Please pay close attention to the current threat and adjust your duct tape stockpiles accordingly. There may be times when the threat level seems arbitrary, but please be assured that this public service is backed by 100% USDA choice Science.

If you want to be part of the Suicide Squirrel Alert System, simply paste the following tag into your page. Your page will instantly update with the correct image:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://homepage.mac.com/vikingjs/blogstuff/ThreatLevel.js”></script>

Thanks in advance for helping with this serious problem. If you do choose to become involved, I’d like to hear about it, either through the comment system or using the trackback thingie below.

squirrel_all.gif

Update! WordPress users can now become part of the network simply by dropping in a widget! Go, Team WordPress! Let’s take this battle to the next level!

Thanks!

Requiem For A Machine

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Alert but lazy-headed, stretched out on the sofa, I hear the moan, the sound of a mule’s ghost, as Amy pulls out to go to work.

Just the day before I had watched Amy force her laundry basket through the glassless pukey window, and I thought about the coming winter. I thought about rain. In the coming months there would likely be some. “Normally, when it rains,” she explained to me, “I just carry a big towel with me and only half of my back or half of my ass gets wet. It’s OK. But what does suck is when the rain gets in the driver’s window and it just falls down all by itself. You keep having to push it back up. Just try smoking a cigarette like that.”

Moments after she leaves, my phone rings. “Amy Cell Calling” the readout says.

A 1995 Ford Escort (“Gee Tee” Amy reminds me, swinging her hips with the letters), Purple, the BarneyMobile, the Purple People Eater, the Purple Beast, but lately simply “bitch”. Only the AM radio works, the seatbelts don’t work, and “the airbags don’t work or they would have deployed a long time ago.” Arrayed across the window are countless parking stickers for colleges.

Car Shrine “My car just took a fucking dump on me,” Amy says over the phone, “I’m in the middle of Riviera and people are about to hit me.” She describes the symptoms. Transmission. Probably shot.

“Almost ten years,” she told me over coffee one day. “The longest relationship I’ve ever had. I drove up to New York in that car. I was with my boyfriend. At one point I was driving and I sniffed my armpit and said, ‘I need to shower.’ I found out later he had just farted.” It’s funny the stuff you think of when you’re saying goodbye. Something that was lost almost forever is suddenly right there, never gone. A laugh, a shared fart, a moment in life.

“I’ll be right there,” I say. I scrounge up fresh socks and schlump out to my wheels. The passenger seat is filled with travel debris and luggage, but I decide that time is important if the bitch (I’m referring to the car, of course) is in the middle of the road.

My own memories of the car don’t stretch back so far; tonight I have seen pictures of the car when it was new, and honestly it’s hard to connect the two. For me it will always be the pile of loosely-stacked metal with seats somewhere in the middle. Death Trap. Cop Bait. Moving Violation. It is no more. Tonight we pulled out all the miscellaneous crap that had built up over the years – lighters, CD’s, tapes (no tape player for the last five years), empty packs of smokes, kitty litter, and an endless list of odds and ends.

A shrine stands on her coffee table, heavy with the symbolism of her first true love.

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Thanks!

Alert! Alert!

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Right now, as we speak, Dr. Pants is drinking shitloads of beer and updating his blog after each one. But he’s running out of steam! Jump over and leave a note of encouragement!

Thanks!

Google me baby. Google me all night long.

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This list was actually compiled over a longer period than my previous search engine episodes. I used something called “planning” and wrote down interesting (to me) search phrases as I encountered them. As usual, I reserve the right to use pig latin when I don’t want to change future search results.

  • lots of searches about blimps – hopefully they read the comments while they’re there, or they’ll miss out on BASSCAR and ISBA.
  • Mira Mesa Night life – I expect I come out high on the search because no one thought to mention “Mira Mesa” and “Night life” in the same sentence
  • Several searches related to sex, of course, the ones that stand out for me were x-ray beach pictures, butt pitchers, bison ass pictures and the best of all, what is a grilled cheese when it is talked about as sex term
  • bars across the western US, most frequently but not limited to Amsay’s Aceplay Akelay Ahoetay, illionmay ollarday owboycay arbay, uaulay arrylay’s and spenaay oungelay (how do you do pig latin when the sord starts with a vowel?)
  • HAPPY++2TH+++BIRTHDAY++++TO++++BABY – I doubt they found what they were looking for here.
  • ramblings about chicks – that, I have plenty of, another coming soonish
  • how to make a lombardi trophy – who cares? Anleystay upcay is etterbay.
  • various searches concerning squirrels and violence
  • “gravity hill” sagan – links to my Get Poor Quick category page as a result of the reusable space vehicle episode.
  • bowling balls darth vader – I’d like to hear any ideas you all might have for why someone would search on that.
  • “trumpet bells” picture – linked to the coaxial trumpet episode
  • sporstman who would take alcohol – that search seems to imply that there’s another kind

Of course, there were lots and lots of people looking for cooking advice. I get several people a day on that one, and this week someone finally left a note of appreciation over there. Hooray! Elevator ocelot rutabaga made a comeback, my name led someone here, as did a search on the single word “soonish”.

Thanks!

Sadness

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I was talking to a friend today. I have not mentioned her often in these pages, and certainly you have never read a comment by her. She is there, nonetheless. She is loud and brash but if you know where to point the x-ray gogs you will see the sadness.

When we part, I don’t say goodbye. We have our own ritual, and some nights I can see what it means to her. Tonight she needed a boost. I haven’t been around lately, so tonight I elaborated a little bit, cluttering our parting with words, until it came down to the key transaction. I dropped to sign language, swish, bang, and she smiled at me.
You Rock.
Thanks. I needed that.
I wish I could do things so right more often.

We share a sadness, a feeling you have to have to see. She is loud and happy; I am reserved but optimistic. Under it all, for both of us, is a dark desperate solitude, a certainty that we cannot be known. A gut-wrenching fear that we might be known. We don’t even know ourselves.

But there is something we have. Some time ago I was sitting at a bar after a softball game with Melinda and Kelly, and my inept love life became the topic of conversation. It came out that I had a soft spot for bartenders. Kelly asked why. “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose they have to listen to me. My way with women is to wear them down over time.” Kelly thought that was hilarious. Fine. She had a girlfriend at the time. I think Kelly has the sadness too. That’s why she laughed at my jokes.

When it comes down to it, everyone I know has the sadness. Different people show it differently, but somewhere in every soul I’ve met is a terrible yearning, a tiny chamber deep inside reserved for thoughts of what might be, but will not be. Thus we are separated from the brutes of the field. No other animal has the ability to ask “What if…?” and no other animal knows sadness.

But “what if” fills my life. It is a constant reminder of things I could have done, could have said, but didn’t. And every day I create new what-ifs, more questions than I will ever be able to answer.

What if, tonight, I had not signed you rock? After all these years it could have become a meaningless phrase, but it hasn’t. There has never been any doubt that I am completely sincere when I tell her she rocks. Some nights, like tonight, she really needed to hear it. Could I have said something more? No. Not without breaking what we have. Not without changing the meaning of “you rock” forevermore. How could I do that, when I’ve seen what it can mean to her? So instead I will stand resolutely proud to be her friend, and I will be sad, for I have the imagination to know what could be, and the intelligence to know it cannot be.

I will taste the sadness, and embrace it, and in my quiet heat I will savor it.

Thanks!

I Am a Beer Cheese Soup Genius

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Location: Callahan’s

I was sitting tonight, writing, when my table was most welcomely crashed by Melinda and Tom. Tom spent an hour or so at a different table with some potential coworkers while I was left to entertain Melinda. Fortunately she’s easily amused.

Tom joined us and after more alcohol was sent on the liver trip we decided it was time to order food. The past two days I had sat next to people eating the jalapeño beer cheese soup. One of those did so at my recommendation. It’s a good soup. Tonight I ordered it for myself, but there was a thought slipping through my brain. A way to make it better. I asked for a dash of Angustoura Bitters.

They weren’t sure how much to add, so they brought me the bottle. I had no idea how much to add either, so I hoisted the pup and gave it a few shakes.

Sweet holey moley it was good. I’ve always liked that soup, but this time it was, dare I say, exquisite. No one (except Tom and Melinda, who I forced to taste my new flavor sensation) has ever known the pure bliss that is “Jer’s Callahan’s Bitter Cheese Soup”. You could build a restaurant chain on the stuff. I couldn’t, but you could.

Thanks!

Pup Report

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Warning:
This is the type of blog entry that is the bane of the Internet: The Pet Story. The power of the Internet has given people who used to bore their friends to tears with tales of how fluffy responds to the sound of the can opener a new, larger, and even more disinterested audience. The Pet Story in a blog is a sure sign that you are dealing with someone who has nothing of interest to say to anyone. Sadly, the stories these people tell about captive mammals are often more interesting than their stories about themselves. That said, a dog falling on its butt in the dirt is kind of funny.

First, since I made mention that one of the dogs was not well, I’d best explain. Spike pulled up lame the other night. I didn’t see what happened, but he wasn’t using his left rear leg. He kept it pulled up way under himself. I couldn’t see any obvious injury, but when I tried to straighten his leg he snapped at me.

One thing I learned is that Spike is decidedly a right leg lifter. His tiny little dog brain struggled with how to raise his right leg while keeping his left leg up as well. He didn’t succeed in peeing at all on our first outing, even with me trying to lend what support I could. I’m kind of glad he didn’t let loose during those experiments; it could have been messy. Just picture a gimpy dog trying to hold up both back legs at once, and a concerned idiot trying to help.

On one occasion, though, he did manage to hold a handstand for about a second. With training and practice, we could be in the circus. More often, he just seemed to forget about his left leg and drop right on his ass when raising his right. Circus of the stupid.

So Spike’s on some kind of anti-inflammatory (for a 4.6 pound dog, I had to cut the pills in fourths) and is starting to put his leg down occasionally and he has learned to pee the other direction, but you can tell he’s not comfortable with that yet. Lefty, on the other hand, was sitting my my lap yesterday when I noticed a big ‘ol cactus thorn sticking out of his leg. Lefty seemed oblivious to it. He was playing and squirming as always. I tugged on the needle. It was really stuck in there. I tugged harder. No release. Lefty jumped up to find a toy for me to throw.

The next time we were out back, Lefty ran into another cactus while chasing a bird. (He hasn’t worked out yet that he will never, ever, catch a bird.) When he hit the prickly pear he yelped and jumped back. This time the needle wasn’t as deep and seemed to bother him more. I pulled it out and gave another tug on the first needle. No luck. It seemed like pulling it out was going to cause more harm than leaving it in. Finally last night I just cut the needle off to keep it from being driven farther in and decided to let Lefty’s body handle getting rid of the rest of it.

Other than that, the dogs have been having a great time exploring the wide open spaces in Northern New Mexico. But then, they’re dogs. They lack the imagination to have a bad time. Every moment is the best it could possibly be.

Thanks!

Programming note: Recent Comments!

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Unfortunately, the list of the last ten is as much as haloscan provides in the RSS feed. Most days there are many more than ten new comments, so you’ll still have to look around, I’m afraid. I do wish you could bring up all the comments in a single window the way I can, but alas, it is just not to be.

My ultimate goal is to provide a list of the entries most recently commented upon, instead of just the comments themselves, but that, alas, will require considerable effort on my part unless Haloscan decides to help me out.

Anyway, enjoy! I’ll be working on the formatting over the next few days.

Thanks!

Googleicious!

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  • pictures of nice cheap cars in orem utah – very specific, nothing to do with me.
  • buffalo milk shot catalina cacao – that’s the second hit on that recipie, so I went back and corrected it.
  • blimp races – this may have been an insider, who else would search on blimp races?
  • touring california in a winnebaggo – bad spelling meets pun
  • driving from san diego to bozeman – almost relevant!
  • czech girlfriend blog – I hope they enjoyed my homage to Marianna
  • “best trophy” sports – Lord Stanley’s Cup, of course!
  • “wait to be seated” sign – pointed to the regularization episode
  • Pacific Solarium Homepage
  • every name on the stanley cup – I’d be interested in that, too
  • crazy license argeements – linked to my EULA episode, of course
  • megan smells – linked to my extremely important discussion about the proper use of perfume
  • pictures of graves – I have a few here, but I don’t know if the searcher found them
  • Pictures drawn of trumpets – linked to my old coaxial trumpet get-poor-quick scheme

As usual there are tons of people looking for cooking advice. It doean’t appear to be the same people over and over, at least not on the same day, and why would someone come back repeatedly and read only that entry? All I can figure is that there is a real demand for assistance with chicken ova and for some reason I’m coming up higher in the search results. I need to rant about improperly prepared dishes more often. People came to my page for searches on four different bars, from Wyoming to San Diego.

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Random stuff

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My parents have been married forty-five years. That boggles my mind. It’s longer than I’ve been alive. (Wait for it… wait for it… bingo. You get it.) They’re planning to whoop it up for their 50th, and why the heck not? Turns out there’s an eclipse just then, so the party will be off the shore of China. Count me in! My parents are very good at being married. They’re so good at it that they are constantly working to get better at it. They are the Tony Gwinn of marriage; they take batting practice every day.

Does a one-eyed dog dream in 3-D? Does a blind man dream in color?

My cousin John opined (if you knew John, you would know that ‘declared’ is a more appropriate verb) that the electric guitar is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. It sure made protest music louder. When the man has a microphone, turn up the amps. When the man has a media empire, no amp will be loud enough. The Internet is the next electric guitar. Carry on, Dr. Faustroll! Carry on, Dr. Pants! Médecins Sans Sanités! The fate of the republic rests on your shoulders! Oh, yeah, and I’m a candidate for president. (Note: that was mock French. The actual phrase for sanity is not as graceful.)

I just heard Transvision Vamp on the TV radio. I think that’s the second time I’ve heard them when I wasn’t playing the music myself. It was Baby I Don’t Care (not to be confuesed with the You’re so Square song by some other band), which is an OK tune, but further over on the pop side of the spectrum than the tunes I like the most. If I figure it out, I’ll give you a little slice of the love with a music posting á la Pants. If only learning weren’t such hard work.

I’m thinking that perhaps blasting East to hang with Jesse in his pre-fatherhood, pre-travel days, then working my way back west might make sense.

I am stunned, flummoxed, and amazed that anyone still wants George W. Bush to be president. Are you not poor enough yet? Do you not realize that being in debt is the same as being poor, and that government debt is your debt? Aren’t you tired of the billions and billions he’s spending on his war ending up in the pockets of his buddies? Have you not noticed who benefits from high oil prices?

The Czech Republic has now played hockey for exactly 1/3 of the time they’ve been on the ice. Now they’re going to have to play all 60 minutes to get past Sweden or Finland. At least the ice won’t be the slush pile it was in Prague. Those guys were wading, not skating. With so many NHL players the Czechs should be comfortable on the smaller ice, but they’ve built a team almost exclusively of skaters, and a fast rink can only help them. I really missed the mikes down on the ice while watching the Czechs demolish Germany. None of the voices of the skaters, none of the smack when stick strikes puck, and none of the crashing of skulls into boards after a good check. And, the best sound in hockey, the sound of the puck bouncing off the pipes.

According to Sam-I-Am Lujan, Rio Arriba County is where rookie state troopers are sent. “They’re all rookies. They don’t know crap.”

I still haven’t deleted the epilogue from The Monster Within. It has nothing to do with the rest of the story anymore; there are characters that don’t show up anywhere else, and obviously some history of events that never happened, but I like the way it feels. It’s a nice way to exhale at the end of the run. I guess I’ll discuss it in more detail over at the hut forum so I can put spoilers in.

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Thanks!

En Fuego!

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I discovered quite by accident while looking at where my visitors come from that my brother has started a blog called Fuego’s Place. I put its link over there in the “fun things” section. I’m not sure he wants anyone to know about it yet, because he hasn’t actually told anyone about it, but too bad. Go take a look. If you like it, send him some bourbon.

Thanks!

Googling for Goggles

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For those of you new to this game, every once in a while I look back at the search phrases that have brought people to this place in the last couple of days. Occasionally in the list I will use pig latin to make sure that subsequent searches still go to the correct article, rather than coming here. On with the show!

  • regularization – found by the Korean Google; nestled among all the mathematics is my discussion of bars.
  • urinate in public pictures – ugh. I don’t really think they were looking for a description of me walking the dogs.
  • In the last day, people have found me while searching for three different bars. I won’t name them here to prevent future search confusion
  • beach girls – I was on the 27th page of the search results, but after going that far someone clicked me
  • beach bar – once again deep, deep in the results
  • beach pictures girls – the moral of the story here is to mention the word “beach” and the words “babes” and “girls” often
  • weblog babes – as of this writing, my place has been usurped by Dr. Pants
  • ocean beach happy hour – bar related but worth noting
  • a pair of brown eyes – using the title of a folk song for a blog episode has its advantages
  • serbian beers – links to my two beers episode
  • goodbye poem to coworker – really doubt they found what they were looking for here, unless the coworker likes Scotch.

It’s worth noting that all the “beach babe” searches came from different places. As usual, there have been in the last two days many people looking for cooking advice. No squirrel searches, though, and La Dolce Vida has vanished from the Google Consciousness. X-ray gogs brought two hits yesterday.

Thanks!

Another Muddled Milestone

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This blog has reached a milestone that I think few other personal blogs could boast, and of which I am very proud. You, faithful readers, should be proud also. Not long after Keith became visitor 2000, Jesse posted comment number 1000.

To me, that is a tremendously big deal. It shows that this is our site, not my site, and that’s cool. It certainly helps keep the place interesting even when I’m not, and it adds a rewarding extra layer to the site; there are stories hidden beneath the surface, collective ideas, and nuances that cast the top layer in a new light. That and an increased level of goofiness. (Suicide Squirrels and Kung Fu Brewmasters springing to mind).

A couple of my favorites, for different reasons:

I was going to add others (politics has a couple of good ones, for instance), but that was starting to turn into effort. What were your favorites?

Note: as I was digging into the past, I found episodes that I could have sworn had comments before but no longer do. I’ll look into it, but it may mean that in fact there have been WAY MORE comments than I thought when I started working on this episode. You guys rock!

Thanks!

Programming Note

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For those who enjoy literary criticism, I recommend Writing.com. It’s a place where writers post their work and others give constructive criticism. The quality of the work is all over the map, but some is quite good. If you decide to sign up, I think I get points if I refer you.

I thought I had killed Baghdad Burning – as soon as I added the link she stopped posting, but it appears to be on the air again.

I stumbled across a site called blogshares (the logo at the bottom of the sidebar will take you there). It’s an interesting idea, but I don’t know if I have the time to play at it. You invest in blogs, and as other people create links to the blog its value goes up. There are all kinds of other pseudo-financial plays you can make, but I haven’t figured them out yet. It may be a good way to find interesting blogs to read, since it is easy to spot active blogs which have been linked to by many people. Apparently someone did a play on MR&HBI a while ago, pumping up the stock and dumping shares. Take a look if you like that sort of thing.

Thanks!