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Pup Report
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.
Programming note: Recent Comments!
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.
En Fuego!
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.
Another Muddled Milestone
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:
- Another Czech story marks a family milestone and discusses beer
- Bar Curse covers a variety of topics, including squirrels
- Oooohh, My Head discusses hangover cures
- and of course, the classic: Suicide Squirrel Death Cult
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!
New Poll!
Hunt it down and kill it! In the last two days the beard demise lobby pulled off an upset victory after trailing for the entire poll. Therefore, I will be going to Las Vegas clean-shaven. Just when I was starting to like it, too. Maybe I’ll grow it again in Prague.
The new poll reflects the loss of momentum I’ve had on The Monster Within. I know there are several people looking forward to reading it, and hopefully feedback from you guys will give me the boost I need to finish the thing. On the other hand, it will be a much more enjoyable read (i hope) after I fix some obvious problems. (There are whole chapters that have to go. They have their good points but overall don’t add to the story, and in one case there is a major continuity problem.)
So anyway, for those of you out there interested in giving an unfinished work a read, which would you prefer?
90 days
Yesterday marked day 90 of Jer’s Homeless Tour. When I left San Diego I told people that I would be back in “A couple of weeks” to finish my business there before heading east and eventually overseas. Weeks have become months, and here I am in Bozeman Montana, freeloading off my cousin John and flirting with bartenders.
I thought of doing a retrospective of sorts for this commemorative episode, or a discussion of lessons learned, or something like that, but you can just go back and read your favorites anyway.
I will say this, however: America is awesome. Canada is great, too. Wherever I’ve been, rural or urban, I’ve done cool things and met great people. I’ve visited bars in six states and two provinces, and I’ve enjoyed myself in each one. There’s always someone there or something going on that makes it worthwhile. I’ve seen beautiful scenery and had adventures. In 6000 miles I’ve had my share of highs and lows, but with thousands more miles to go my only questions is “How can I get someone to pay me to do this?”
Alas, what is suffering is my writing. I need to get a better balance in that aspect, and I need to get Jer’s Novel Writer into a true public beta.
Finally, thanks to all you guys for your support and for how fun your comments make this blog. I bet I have one of the highest comment/viewer ratios in blogdom. Keep up the good work, everyone.
New Poll is Up
Jesse put in a comment:
I think you should start a new poll
on how you should chase this Nicole
we’ll say, “start the hunt!”
or, “give up and punt”
come on man! give us control
on how you should chase this Nicole
we’ll say, “start the hunt!”
or, “give up and punt”
come on man! give us control
There you go. Vote early, vote often. Maximum ballot box stuffing rate is once per day, I’m afraid, unless you have multiple computers.
As I said before, I’ll abide by the decision of the public. I’m only going to be here a few more days at most, I think, so this poll will close pretty quickly.
Thoughts from a Bar
Don’t blog while drunk. That’s lesson one.
You know how when you’re at a party, and you’ve had a couple-three brewskis, and you want to tell everyone just how special they are to you? “I love all you guys!” you holler. You start throwing around hugs. You mean it. You really, really, want everyone to know how special you think they are. You wake up the next morning with a headache and a vague sense of embarrassment.
First, I want to apologize for the brain slap when you were reading about some guy getting his buddy drunk and suddenly you were reading about my personal life. I don’t know what happened there. It was a shitty trick to pull on my friends. I blame the beer. It put me in a maudlin mood, thinking about Chris and his evil imaginary girlfriend conundrum. Damn that Chris! He coulda just had a beer or two and saved the rest of us the drama. No excuse for me, I passed it on.
I dropped by The Cannery tonight. I knew Nicole worked today, but I was too late. She was off minutes before I showed up. I wanted to see if she had read what I wrote about her. Another result of drinking and blogging. When you’re with your buddies and you drink too much and vomit up your soul your friends scrape off the bile and pat you on the back, all agree that ‘you needed that’. That’s one thing, nice and private, and closely held among those that respect you and what your lapse represents.
I want to assure new readers that things aren’t generally so sappy around here. Really, they aren’t. It’s just that, well, things got a little out of hand the other day and these attempts to put things back like they were is likely to cause other trouble as well.
When I asked about Nicole, Molly, another fine bartender, asked me, “Are you suiting her?” Charmed as I am by the phrase, I am not suiting Nicole. Soon enough I will be gone from here so any suitor-talk would be dishonest. That’s not going to stop me from chatting with her, however, unless she gets that restraining order. I am struck by her happy and fetching ways–and you would be, too–but that just means she’s a good bartender. You already know I have a soft spot for bartenders. Especially pretty ones. I just can’t help it. Please forgive me when I get a little sappy about one.
Be careful what you ask for…
Why looky over there! It’s a poll! Just like pL asked for. Well, except for the dumb question. I decided since it’s free, what the heck, I’d give it a try. Unfortunately Pollhost does not think stuffing the ballot box is cricket, so at most you can vote once a day. Remember, it’s not just a right, it’s a responsibility.
I’ll try to come up with a new question every week or so. Whenever the whim catches me, really. If you have ideas for a poll question, let me know! If you think polls are a frivolous waste of valuable Internet resources, well, be sure to let me know that, too.
Site maintennance under way
Doing some experiments. Disregard any messages you might see about needing a new browser (unless you’re using IE for windows). Please stand by… making progress… wait for it…………………………………….
OK, I think I’m done (for now) with the changes that will really cause trouble. Any messages you see about your browser are the result of your browser not rendering graphics according to standards. Make the Web a better place; don’t use a browser that makes its own rules. If you see the message above, go post-haste to
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
There are probably some other good alternatives as well, but that one I know is completely painless to install and works very well.
Ooohhhh….
This is what happens when inspiration strikes in the middle of the night. Well, I haven’t gone and read over what I wrote last night, so I hope it’s not too incomprehensible. I’ll clean it up shortly. Last thing I remember was typing “Sweet Saints of Symmetry, Batman!” There’s a phrase you’ll be able to search on in a few days.
I’m looking into a couple of comment-related features for this site that might be possible. One is to have links on the right-hand side to the blog entries with the ten most recent comments. By the way, I’m pretty sure if you have a news reader you can get a list of the ten most recent comments by pointing it at http://www.haloscan.com/members/rss.php?user=vikingjs. If anyone tries it, let me know if it works. You can also use a news reader to check the blog itself. I’m told that going and checking for updates vis the Web is so 1990’s. I just tried it and it seems… OK.
One more thing – the limit on comments will soon be raised to 3000 characters. Get your typin’ fingers ready!
OK, off to fix the worst of that Whacked-Out, Nut-Assed post from last night.
A Brief Explanation of Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas
It’s not such a big deal, really – I woke up one morning and realized that what I was doing was’t what I wanted to do. Five years later I did something about it. This is me clearing my throat, trying to find my voice. Some days I get close.
Other days, well…
It’s a strange conceit to think that people I don’t even know will give a rat’s ass what I think. I’m OK with that. There aren’t too many ‘dear diary’ entries here. I’m just looking for things I can write about. When I find them, I try to write about them well. My goal is to be interesting, or at least amusing. I almost had thought-provoking once. Maybe with practice I’ll get there. I know you don’t care what I had for breakfast. I don’t even care about that and it was my breakfast, unless there was something at breakfast that inspired me to write.
Like eggs. Mmmm… eggs.
Still, we do have fun here. If you know a great way to get poor quick, or if you happen to be a Belgian Buddhist Kung-Fu/Brew Master Monk, this is the place for you. Don’t forget to read the comments; there are people who hang out here who are much smarter and more articulate than I am. Chances are, you are, too. We cover a huge range of topics, so don’t form your conclusions based on one or two entries.
Things we have discussed here lately:
- Space Launch Systems and Lunar Vacations
- People in bars
- What a government is and what it should do (and the best beer to use to buy votes)
- Suicidal Squirrels
- Bars
- The Road
- Rutabagas
There is also a running story, Feeding the Eels, which is in the style of an old detective radio series. I mostly do it for simile practice when I don’t feel inspired to do so-called real writing. Still, it’s fun—at least for me.
Also, please be sure to leave a guest haiku! Just leave it in a comment somewhere; I’ll find it.
two times out of five
haiku writ by someone else
a breath of fresh air
Finally, it’s worth noting that the look and feel of the site is definitely – and perhaps permanently – in flux. So far I’ve been mucking primarily with the main page, so the other pages seem fairly ho-hum in comparison. I have decided not to go too far out of my way to deal with all the quirks of Internet Explorer – IE is the biggest impediment to progress on the Web, and I’m not going to let Microsoft hold me back. You shouldn’t either.
Leave your mark in the sand before you move on.
Obvious flaw in the plan
You see the result. It’s another friggin’ novel. I’m not well-known for my sparing use of words. The thing’s not even finished. The most important sentence of all is missing – the one that gives the whole thing the proper mood. Put on your x-ray gogs, kids, because the font is getting smaller! Wahoo!!!
Coming Soonish
Unless I decide to write something else.
Hey, you know what would be cool? I’d be cool if I was driving along somewhere, or more likely sitting in a bar with my laptop, and someone said, “Hey, are you that Homeless Tour guy?”
That would be cool. It’d be like being a rock star, except without all the money and chicks.
The real reason I’m posting right now is to warn both of you out there that I’m going to be messing with the site for a bit tonight and probably into the morning as well, so at times it may just fly apart. I’ve decided I need a better header. It’ll still have the name of the blog up there, but in some yet-to-be-dertermined artsy style. More important, it will have a short explanation for new visitors about just what it is they’re getting into.
As long as I’m sitting here bleary-eyed and weary-fingered, I just want to say thanks to all y’all for posting so many comments. It’s funny, some things I write I expect to get lots of comments, and nothing. Then, out of the blue, wham! Comment-o-rama. If you haven’t been pulling your weight in the comment department, it’s not to late to start. You know who you are.
But hey, if you just like lurking, that’s fine, too. Just don’t let it turn into stalking.
Addendum: Anyone know where I can find a font that looks like a typewriter that hasn’t been cleaned in 30 years, so there are blotches of ink everywhere?
Additional Addendum: This additional addendum is to call your attention to the additional addendum (labeled Additional Addendum) in the post “Great Googly-Moogly”. I wouldn’t want all that typing to go to waste.
You can see the progress I’m making on the header – the idea in my head far exceeds my ability to execute. The image is a PNG with an alpha channel, and I haven’t tried looking at it with any Windows browsers yet. If you could take a moment and let me know how it looks on yours, I’d be grateful. That Flowery font was just a placeholder, but now it’s kind of growing on me. You can see that the typewriter part is far too clean. I had the & cradling the H really nicely in a previous version, but the I made the & bigger so it could drop out of the dark blue area and break up that line. We’ll see how it goes.