This is blasphemous and looney – but my, oh my, is it funny!
Merry Christmas, indeed!
Okay, maybe I don’t hate him personally, but this guy sure did when he was a kid. I found this video while reading through my RSS feeds (Boing Boing) and got a good laugh out of it. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did…
Oh, and as a warning, there’s language that might be considered offensive to some people (yeah, you know who you are, fuckers) … so just be careful who’s within ear shot.
Forget the crappy things you can buy folks THIS holiday season, check out the predictions for the future…
Anywho… that article just gave me a good laugh.
It just seemed somehow to relate to my Stop! Receipt! post from yesterday.
Yes, you heard me right! Scuttlebutt is still alive and well… sorta. Hey, he’s still in his original configuration, just a bit dirty from smog and road grime. Anyhow, I’ve added a few more photos of the cute little fella to his photo set on my Flickr account.
We (Christine, Sam, Rece, & I) made a trip to the desert this weekend for some camping. It was just one night, but the whole trip was a lot of fun.
We started off at a corn maze in Temecula. I’ve never been to one of these and we ended up trying our best to get lost in it – which I was having trouble doing with my incredible sense of direction. I always knew exactly where I was. It was fun to be running around through a corn field trying to lose one another and then to try and find them again.
We drove to Anza-Borrego State Park through some peaceful mountains. At one point we were treated to a fantastic view of the Salton Sea from a turnout on the windy mountain road. Sadly we didn’t think of getting out our cameras at this point. Oh well, we saw it – sucks to be you!
We were able to set up camp very quickly. Having had camped twice earlier this year, we had plenty of practice! We toured the campground area and park, plus the visitor center. They’ve recently put a lot of time (and money) into the park and visitor center – and it really shows. This was a well-designed and modern center. Lots of excellent information about local plants, wildlife, and history. We enjoyed the slideshow presentation and exhibits.
The remainder of the afternoon and evening we spent relaxing by the campfire roasting hot dogs, playing cards, and laughing a lot. Later that night, when the fire had almost gone out, I turned off our lantern and we all sat back in our chairs and just stared up into the star-filled night sky. Being so far away from the city, we were able to see the Milky Way and many shooting stars. For Christine it was the first time in her life she had seen either.
The girls (Christine & Sam) were up bright and early the next morning. They took some fabulous pictures and checked out the tracks left by the coyotes we had heard throughout the night. Christine & I took off for town to pick up coffee and, letting our laziness get the best of us, bought breakfast burritos so we wouldn’t have to cook.
Camp was broken down about as fast as it had been set up and we went back to the visitor center to check out the things we missed the previous day (they closed before we could finish our visit). We then hopped into the car and headed for the Salton Sea.
Driving through the desert is rather interesting. At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be much going on. But if you pay attention, you’ll notice subtle changes in the terrain, a wide variety of very hearty plants, and a lot of geological formations. We had turned off the radio because of the poor reception and this helped us enjoy the drive even more, I think.
The Salton Sea is very large. It is also very stinky. We didn’t want to stay for long because of the smell. We snapped a few pictures and were right back out on our way along highway 86.
Christine really likes palm trees. Such an odd thing to bring up at this point, no? I mention this because along the sides of highway 86 you’ll find a lot of them… in fact they’re set out in large tracts… some might even go so far as to call them palm tree orchards. An orchard? Isn’t that for apples? Well, for lack of a better term (and because I’m too lazy to look up the proper word for it) these palm tree ‘orchards’ are where they grow dates.
After seeing so many of them, we decided to drive closer so Christine could check out the palm trees from a closer perspective. Lo and behold, we ended up at Oasis Date Gardens (I still prefer to call them ‘orchards’ thankyouverymuch). We toured the palm tree arboretum (orchard) and saw a variety of different dates and interesting ways of serving/preparing them. Christine’s mom conventiently loves to eat dates, so she picked up a package of the “Medjool” variety for her. I opted for a date shake – it was delicious!
After the excitement of the palm trees and dates we were back on the road. Our path brought us to the palm desert, where you’ll find fields of windmill generators… I call them windmill orchards. These machines are a curiosity, and since Christine is as fascinated with them as I am, we left the highway to check them out up close. You had to be there, really. They’re big, they’re spinning, they’re humming, they’re whining, they’re generating electricity, they’re cool. Shut up.
Back to the highway, with a planned lunch stop in Redlands. This is a must-do lunch place. Why? Because it’s cool. Shut up.
We ate at Long John Silver’s and ended up creating something funny and very cool: Scuttlebutt, the Hushpupper Fish antenna ball. Check out the pictures.
Scuttlebutt is a tough little fella. He survived the drive home and still rests atop my antenna – completely intact. I’m thinking of getting him shellacked – no, not with rum! – so he’ll last longer.
So there you have it. Another long blog about my weekend camping adventures. If you’re still awake, be sure to check out the Flickr photogallery from the trip.
Give Me a Chance
by Gabriel Tetrault
When I see you
I have to smile
Eyes so bright
I must stare awhile
When trouble came
My ear was there
I felt your pain
It made me care
Why the game
Why the dance
I’m not the same
Give me a chance
Let me show you all I am
Hear your thoughts and make a plan
Different worlds
Different places
Not so strange
Just different faces
We’re not so different
Yet not the same
There was no choice
No one to blame
Why the game
Why the dance
I’m not the same
Give me a chance
Let me show you all I am
Hear your thoughts and make a plan
There are no lies
Nothing hidden
You look at me
But I seem forbidden
What more is there
I need to be
cast away the shadow
so you can see
Why the game
Why the dance
I’m not the same
Give me a chance
Let me show you all I am
Hear your thoughts and make a plan
Just give me a chance…
So yeah… the drums… they’re calling me. I really want to get out and practice, but work, fatherhood, and various social engagements have kept me from actually getting the chance to do so. That’s an absolute cop-out, I know. See, if I say it enough, I’m hoping that I’ll actually start to place some amount of priority on it and eventually make it happen. The weather is cooling down, which is what I was waiting for, right? Yeah… gotta do it!
In other news: I’m going bungee jumping this weekend. It’s one of those things I’ve said that I’d like to try some day and the opportunity came up and I took it. I’m really looking forward to it, even if it is rather scary. It will be 2 jumps. My boss said that I could borrow one of his many digital video cameras to document the journey – so look for an eventual YouTube link of it here, hopefully within a week after I take the plunge.
So far, my life seems to be rather tame since the divorce. I’ve worked towards simplifying things in my life: finances, relationships, etc. since my divorce. Most of it has been good, which is all I can really hope for.
What I’m now working on seems to be something of a quandary. In the past I would tend to fall back on what I know works for me. This means repeating some habits, good or bad, because they were known or at least manageable for me. At this point in my life I’m doing what I can to turn away from the habits that I know, especially the ones that seem to eventually cause me trouble. I have a couple of friends that really understand me and who, to a great degree, I can trust to tell me things that they observe about me – even if I might not want to hear it. This is a good thing, since they have my best interests at heart.
Of course at the risk of sounding rather vague, right now I’m focusing on the relationships part of my life and trying to break the usual patterns I’ve adopted over the years. This means having to prune my list of friends a bit and only focus on those that are either like the ones I mentioned above, or those that are a stretch for me – people that I wouldn’t ordinarily gravitate towards (probably from my own insecurities or preconceptions) so I can find new people that I might have missed along the way. So far it’s been interesting, to say the least. Things seem to be coming to a head with a couple of them and I’m at a point where I’ll need ascertain if the relationship is ultimately positive or negative to my life.
Mostly what means the most to me revolves around inclusion and the intentional pursuit of being a friend. Being that I tend to be a giver in most regards (aside from material things) it can sometimes mean that I can get used by others. Either by not seeming to find me worthy enough to be included in their lives – not just sectioned off as just a little piece of it, sorta off-set and in a box only to be pulled out when the need arises or a one-sided deal where I’m there for them, but they’re not really there for me when I could use a friend.
A good friendship means a reciprocal exchange where value is placed upon the person enough to include them and bring them into the mainstream of their existence. You talk about and introduce them to some of the other friends you have. You encourage them to join you in the fun activities you share. You engage them in conversation and try to really know them, working towards building trust and rapport in as much of a balanced way as possible.
Not all relationships will fall within this, which can be just fine. This probably means more of them being a loose friendship but not really a bonding one… possibly just an aquaintance that you may see or talk to on occasion, but it’s more of a superficial type of thing. There is a place for these people in one’s life, but it should probably be to a lesser extent than those who truly place a priority on being a friend to you.
So this is where I am right now. Some of my relationships seem to be defining themselves rather clearly. The pruning has begun, so we’ll see who sticks around and who I have to let go of in order to open up room to allow time for me to find other friends who care about me as much as I care about them.
Last night I attended the “Back to School Night” event at Rece’s school. We initially gathered in the gymnasium (which was a very cool old-school, if you pardon the pun, style gym) where some of the faculty went over basic school info and some of the various groups and clubs (PTA and the likes) got to speak about what they do. Pretty standard stuff. After this we were on a school schedule where we got to visit each of our student’s classes in the order they would during their school day. We were given 5 minutes to get to each class and each teacher would then talk to us for 10 minutes – this was complete with school bells indicating when that class visit time was over. I thought it was a pretty cool way of doing it.
7th period was wood shop. In both junior high and high school I had taken wood shop and remembered having a great time learning how to work with tools and creating things with my own two hands. Heck I still have the scar on my finger from when I got it caught in the jig saw. Anyhow, Rece’s shop teacher told us that he had been doing this for a very long time. During his talk, he mentioned that there were now only 3 shop classes left in the entire Newport/Mesa school district – 2 wood shop classes (one of them his) and an auto shop class. This struck me as very odd, as I can easily remember the shop classes always being the most difficult ones to get into back when I was in school – they were always the most popular, especially with the guys. Beyond their popularity, the classes taught us that we were able to fix and create things from raw materials. We learned how to use tools and how to use them safely. We were given a chance to create something useful and often times in a creative way – my mom continued to use a chess board and cutting board for over a decade after I had made them!
I stuck around after the other parents had started to leave and talked with him for a couple of minutes to discuss this trend. He told me that this was not just the case in our school district, but also much of the other districts in the state. This was quite a shock to hear. He did mention that this seemed more the case with schools in California than with schools in the midwest – where there still appears to be a good amount of “industrial art” classes going.
Why this affected me so much still puzzles me now, but it just seems sad that so much has been eliminated from schools since I was a kid. Some of the art/music classes were already being cut back when I was in high school – and now seem almost a bygone era. Why is this? Why are our schools so focused on only academic topics and turning away from a more well-rounded collection of learning? Don’t they understand that the world isn’t all about numbers and writing and history?
I thought I had more of a point to this, but I can’t seem to articulate it very well. It bummed me out to see how the schools have changed so much since I was that age.
Finally! Somebody out there put something together that helps illustrate how rediculous it is to worry about dying from terrorist attacks…
So folks should stop changing their friggin’ lives over something happening to them that’s more remote than dying just walking down the street!
