Bears Just Wanna Have Fun

i dreamt last night that i was salmon hunting (no i wasn't a bear; it just seemed like a clever title...). It was spawning season, and in the context of the dream, while they were swimming up stream they were more suicidal-- they didn't fight back as much. i caught a few of them, but some of them were small and i tossed them back. i think that i caught two large salmon-- with my bare hands.

After the salmon were upstresam, they got feisty and were harder to catch. once again i was in the water catching salmon with my bare hands. The two that i caught-- they bit me first. they came close to the riverbank, lifted their mouths out of the water, and BIT ME as i tried to catch them. But it was the biting me that made meable to catch them.... they clamped onto my hand, and i flung them to the earth... HA! Four more salmon! Suffer the bite to WIN!

Wisconsin Death Trip

i just uploaded on to my computer some pictures of my cats from my digital camera. i can save the ones that i like and delete the ones that i don't (the ones that i "don't like" just simply mean that Ludo wasn't looking at the camera, so he just looks like a black pillow or shadow or something...) A few months back i was describing online a compound bow to a friend... And i stopped what i was doing and said "hang on, let me e-mail you a picture). She lives in Atlanta and got to see the bow over a thousand miles away in an instant.

Even my cell phone has a camera-- i didn't buy it for that feature and i rarely use it, but it is still there.

But back in the 1800's photography was so rare and expensive, many people were not photographed until... they were dead. i saw a photo of an entire dead family; mom, dad, three/four children, dead of TB (or "consumption"), all propped up in chairs and their Sunday best, eyeballs painted on their eyelids... And this wasn't Crime scene photography, this was family portrait stuff. Little Susie just died? Well, the family is all here; this is a good time to take a family portrait with little dead Susie in the middle.

In the late 1800's post-mortem photography was quite an art form...Okay, maybe calling it an "art form" is a stretch, but it was morbidly common and not taboo. Some of these photos were taken more realistically with the subject laid out to rest in their coffin. Often a person would only have one or two photos taken of them in their entire life. If one hadn't been taken in life, well, one would be taken in death...

Photography is so commonplace in this day and age that it has lost its permanency. Add to that Photoshop and other digital enhancing, and you might not even be able to believe what you see anymore. But then again i guess a little paint on a dead child's eyelids is just a primitive form of Photoshop...

(oh, and for you non-Wisconsinites, Wisconsin Death Trip is the title of a book that came out about 20 years ago that happens to include some post-mortem photography. don't want anyone to think that it is a suicide reference...)

Sponsored By...

For those of you that have been visiting my site over the years you'll notice something different about it-- all the damned Google ads. Yes, *I* put them there. The hope is that they will generate enough revenue so that this site is self sufficient; this site costs about $45 a year to keep on the air, which is not bad. i got the idea from my friend, Steel Buddha (www.steelbuddha.net)

The way the ads are supposed to work is that they read the text on the page and pick online dealers that match the text content. The matches are pretty OK...

i earned my first $1.50 in the last few days, so at this rate the site will come close to paying for itself.

i guess that is what i like about NASCAR-- they are upfront and blatant about their sponsorships. They know that without the HUGE sponsorships, the sport would not exist. The cars and drivers are rolling billboards, and they don't hide it. They know who writes the checks...

Dances with Aquanet

So, why does the white woman in Dances With Wolves, Stands With a Fist, why does she have a very white, very 1980's hairstyle, even though she's been living with the Lakota for upwards of thirty years?. She would wear it like the other woman in the tribe-- all long, possibly some braids, not feathered bangs....

it is one tiny little thing that would add so much more credibility to this film. But instead, Stands With a Fist blow dries her hair every morning before beating laundry against a rock...

By the way, the ship sinks at the end...

So, i watched Titanic for the first time ever tonight, and it was pretty good. The love story was pretty cheesy, but hey... Something that pissed me off (not VERY pissed...) was near the beginning when she's threatening to jump off the back of the ship, and Leo talks her into not jumping... Kate has that moment where she slips a bit...

COME ON! Don't bother playing film-maker games like that with us because we KNOW that she's going to be just fine! The movie has barely started, and we know perfectly well that her character not only survives that little slip, but survives the FUCKING TITANIC SINKING...

'Tis the Reason for the Season

The Clapper.

Commercials have started for the things you would never buy for yourself but "make a great gift!" when i was at the grocery store earlier today, they had Clappers, and they are $20! Most appliances in this day and age have remote controls, even my air conditioner came with one. Hell, a lot of car stereos have remote controls, and you're no more than a foot and a half from the thing while you're driving...

So, the commercial for the Clapper ends with Grandma turning off her ancient black & white TV with a Clapper. Come on, you cheap ass grandkids! The least you can do for Grandma is buy her a decent TV! Then she won't need the Clapper AND she can actually change the channels as well! Get her a VCR as well; they are almost as cheap as the damned Clapper. It's the thought that counts? "It's the thought that stinks!"

*I* want to be a Millionaire

i am watching "Who Wants to be a Millonaire" and a woman just wasted TWO lifelines on a question i knew before they revealed the four answer-choices. *I* need to go on this show...

Dear Penthouse, you'll never believe this, but....

every once and awhile you'll hear stories on the news of online predators that seek out vulnerable children/teens who post VERY personal info about themselves through forums such as this one that i am using right now. every once and awhile i will get instant messaged by total strangers and i always wonder to myself, "what is this person trying to get from me?" well, they don't get ANYTHING from me unless they tell me why they sought me out (i've been contacted in this way by relatively legitimate-sounding people, but i still always assume that no one is who they say they are).

i know a couple people that have abandoned their blogs because they got themselves into trouble by posting info that was too personal. and not that they were abducted and raped due to postings, but "so and so lied to me, so and so repeated the lies i told here, so and so was hurt by the lies i told..."

come on, people. blogs are a VERY PUBLIC FORUM. if you want to keep something secret but for some reason feel the need to write it down, write it down in a notebook and then burn the notebook, scatter the ashes in the ocean and then never speak of it ever again...

ugh, now i'm bored.

Stand and Deliver

so, Wisconsin just passed Conceal and Carry for Wisconsin. with training and a license a person can carry a concealed firearm. personally, i don't get the "concealled" part; woudn't it make more sense to KNOW who is and who is not carrying a weapon?

i'll probably get the permit-- and then carry nothing but an unloaded blackpowder pistol...

in sickness and in health

i'm home sick with a bit of a cold... my apartment is so dry that i was up all night hacking my lungs out. i've been boiling water all day to humidify the apartment... i think that it is helping. i spent most of the day sleeping and i have tomorrow off anyway. but i have soup...

Same as it never was

So i just got done watching some old puppet-mation Christmas special, and i know i never considered this one in particular one of the best of the season... But WOW watching it all these years later i find it, well, terrible. i watched the second half of Rudolph last night and THAT one is still just as good, and i'll drop whatever i'm doing any time of year to watch Charlie Brown Christmas...

the animation style is identical to all those other puppet ones, and Davey & Goliath... oh, this one was Santa is coming to town. Nothing even remotely clever about it.

but what i REALLY don't get is, with fruitcake being SUCH a widespread joke, why would ANYONE give a fruitcake as a gift? Unless there are people out there that truly like it. The kind that my grandmother would give us was more of a whitebread with candied fruit in it and a bit of icing on top. Every year i'd try it and every year i would never finish my slice...

i hate subtle

ha ha ha... izzy wants a happy christmas, and i don't have any blood-relatives that i talk to enough to expect xmas presents...

one thing that i want is this http://www.meerschaum.com/images/rc453.jpg cuz i'm all about the pipes these days...

looks like the Yahoo Utilikilt group is going to be buying me a kilt (or actually, helping to buy me a kilt; i still have $50 Kilt-Bucks from my time volunteering at festival booths) i don't want anyone to think that i am freeloading for a kilt, but i'm still pretty psyched that ANYBODY chipped in to help me (shout out to "you know who you are"!)

maybe someone will read this and make my xmas dreams coem true...

Flying With Scissors

The TSA is thinking about lifting the ban on carrying on board pointy objects such as scissors, screwdrivers, and pocketknives, all within "appropriate" sizes. It would be standard sized sewing/crafting scissors, smallish screwdrivers, and mini pocketknives, you know the kind that are small enough to go on a keychain.

Lighters will still be banned, and the rules on matches are still spotty, but thank GOD i will be able to fly with my toe nail clippers in my carry-on again!

i had a stubby flathead screwdriver (about 2 1/2 inches long) confiscated on my way home from Ft. Lauderdale in October of 2003. i had my shinebox as a carry-on, and usually i am very good at "proofing" my carry-ons for anything that might be questionable. i had the screwdriver in my shinebox to open my Huberd's Boot Grease cans (they are like tiny paint cans) and i just wasn't thorough proofing my carry-on this time. i'm OK with them confiscating it, it's their job. But they made a HUGE deal about the fact that i had it at all. they could have left it at "you can't have this on board" and i would have said "oops, my fault, my loss." i feel lucky that i wasn't strip searched for it or anything. not that they would have found anything (and i won't even joke "they would have found my bomb" because i KNOW from shared experience that you don't joke with customs) but getting singled out as "a potential threat" would have really sucked. but it would have made a great story. and i'm also grateful that i doidn't screw up with something VALUABLE, but i tend to leave valuables at home.

Statistics say that flying is safer than driving based on the vast number of people who do NOT die, or are even involved, in plane accidents. i myself have flown thousands of miles even in just the last couple years and i have never crashed or been sliced to bits with chunks of shrapnel that used to be the drinks-cart.

Now, in that same vein, how many airplanes have been hi-jacked with knitting needles, screwdrivers, or even box-cutters? Despite what the current administration would like us to believe, few airplanes (statistically speaking) have actually been hi-jacked. i'll be the first to say that even ONE hi-jacking in all the history or commercial aeronautics is one too many hi-jackings.

But, purely statisically speaking, you have more to fear from faulty mechanics and drunk pilots than you will ever have to fear from people with disposable razors and grandmas with crochetting needles. or bootblacks with stubby flathead screwdrivers.