Random Thoughts

[Matusalem]

G'nite y'all! Hittin the hay, it's 1:11 am EST,and I have to rise at 7 for work.

[The Chapman]

4:30 PM

So I've gotten no scanning done, but I did screw around on Pyracy Pub for most of the morning while working on image files. I've been eating all day, which is important for me, because my metabolism is so wired wrong from years of heavy physical labor, and then transferring into sedentary work; my weight will fluctuate by as much as 10 pounds a day (absolutely true; I've checked numerous times).

I left to walk to the coffee shop downtown around 2:30, and now I'm back. In the interim:

-Made it a block and lit a guy's cigarette for him. He was drunkenly hanging out on his porch (as is everyone else).

-Patted the head of a chihauhua that came out yipping at me.

-Gave an Hispanic man in a Ford Contour directions in broken Spanish (luckily he was asking for a numbered street, which involved my gesturing and pointing with my hands and saying, "Ocho.. Calle.. Aqui!).

-Got into a photograph with some people taking pictures of their kids in the park by accidentally walking in front of the camera due to my not paying attention.

-Relaxed on a park bench for a while and watched the world go by. Lots and lots of motorcycles, including an older Triumph Bonneville which was extremely clean (although not as cool as the WWII Royal Enfield I saw a middle-aged woman riding the other day).

-Went to the coffee shop and got a cup for there, with the intent of reading through either AGAINST THE GODS or PHANTOM ISLANDS OF THE ATLANTIC. The doors were open and it was pretty quiet, until...

-Some sort of female dance group from the nearby liberal arts college started straggling in, resulting in my not getting a whole lot reading done, as...

-I was distracted by the young athletic bodies in various states of (un)dress and the relative lack of underwear, combined with casual stretching and yoga posing while wearing not a whole lot of anything... although the best was the two extremely attractive girls piling on each other into an overstuffed chair, sharing a latte, and fondling and kissing each other.

-Struggled through some of PHANTOM ISLANDS OF THE ATLANTIC while trying not to appear to be the 39-year-old pervert I know I am...

-Marveled at the ignorance of the parents of the students. There were a couple of kids there with their parent(s) (it is a weekend), and the discussions were painful to overhear. Not because the kids aren't really knowledgeable (they're what? 19?), but the PARENTS, who are older than me, don't know jack! About anything! How can you get to be, like, 50, and be so empty? A lot of these kids are going on foreign work-study programs, and listening to the total ignorance of the (wealthy; believe me) parents was crucifying. The conversation about Chavez was almost more than I could take.

-Finally wrapped it up and walked back, along the route:

-Acknowledging every single person I passed or crossed with either an uptick of the head (acceptable greeting in street environments), a 'hey wassup' or some such. That's the thing about low-income street environments; you gotta be friendly and acknowledge literally every single person you meet or whatever. It's really a variation on the empty-hands gesture; you are establishing yourself as a friendly entity, and you are not going to, say, steal something or pull out a gun. Which reminds me; it's a beautiful day, and tonight's going to be just as nice. There will be gunfire.

-Patted a pitbull walking off the leash, when the owner informed that he was okay, having been 'raised around kids'.

-Walked past any number of groupings of Hispanic men lounging around in the front yards drinking, all of whom sized me up as I walked past. Street rules: Make eye contact, nod, don't smile. If the women are present, it's a family grouping and therefore safe. Smile and nod. Only men, be careful of macho posturing combined with animosity towards white people (which, by the way, is in my opinion mostly deserved).

-Helped a kid push-start his rusty old manual-tranny Camaro. He gave me a cigarette as payment. It was a menthol. Since I don't smoke pot, I don't smoke menthols.

-Patted yet another dog, a brownish mutt, this time on a leash, walking with an elderly lady, who also assured me her dog was friendly.

-Missed getting run over by a drunk woman backing out from between two houses at high speed, because I'm aware that narrow driveways between houses are deathtraps for the unwary.

....And now I'm home, and let the scanning commence!

And now I'm taking a break at page 55, and a break from playing solitaire while waiting for the scanner to punch in each image.

God, scanning is boring...

[Caraccioli]

-Got into a photograph with some people taking pictures of their kids in the park by accidentally walking in front of the camera due to my not paying attention.

Isn't that fascinating? Imagine if you could see all the photographs and video images you wind up being in? I've heard that the average person is captured several times a day on surveillance cameras (Was it 10 times? 11? I don't recall.)

This is why I never take many pictures on vacation. (Note: that's a blatant lie.) Someone else is taking pictures for me. Maybe I'll get to see them all when I die or something.

[The Chapman]

MY MONTSERRAT STORY

This goes back awhile.

I was partnered up with my friend Chuck in off-season residential remodeling, and we got this woman customer somehow, I don’t remember how she got ahold of us. Anyway, her parents, who were both university professors, had retired, and put their house on the market, and she was caretaking the thing while waiting for it to sell.

Now, this place was your classic old-farmhouse-dump. The property was great, but the house was a disaster, and for the whole winter we were getting calls from her to go fix various stuff at this pile: burst pipes; kids’ vandalism; foundation cave-in; just all kinds of stupid things. We advised her to dump the place before something REALLY serious happened.

Well, it usually took her a few days to pay us. She explained, “My parents are far away, and I have to wait for them to wire money into their account here before I can pay you guys”. This didn’t seem illogical, until the last two times, when we had to wait a little longer than we were comfortable with, and she ended up cutting us partials out of her own checking account while waiting for the P’s to reimburse HER. The last time we went to fix stuff it was several thousand dollars, I mean major water damage and such. She openly confessed when we were done she couldn’t pay us, as she didn’t have the money to, and she couldn’t get ahold of her parents. So finally we asked just where exactly were these parents. She says, “Montserrat”.

We says, “Hah?”

She says, “Montserrat. It’s an island in the Caribbean. In the Antilles”.

We says, “It’s in the… What? In the … Where? In the….WHO??!!”

She explains the whole thing. The parents live on this place. They have no phone. They transfer money sometimes to pay her back for expenses. They’re hard to get ahold of, etc.

We’re like, “Yeah, that’s great, where’s our MONEY?!!”

Well, cutting a long story short, she gets upset, invites us in for a couple beers (we were on good terms), and shows us some of the mechanic’s lien paperwork she can’t figure out. It turns out that: this dump of a crib is on the market for at least four times what it’s worth. AT LEAST. It’s been mortgaged a minimum four times. All their bank accounts are emptied. Everything they could cash out is cashed out. Their credit cards are maxed. Essentially, they’ve screwed everybody and bailed, leaving their own daughter holding their bag. The account they reimburse her with is in the Caymans. The whole thing screams FRAUD.

So we drank all her beer, told her, “Lady, you’re screwed, pay us when you can”, and left. She did eventually pay us most of our money.

A few months later we drove past the house; it had been bulldozed.

Now, this is where this would have remained, except for THE REST OF IT:

Some time later, I was lounging around in the evening at the house, and Chuck called up. He says, “TURN ON THE TV! PBS! TURN IT ON TURN IT ON TURN IT ON!!” I’m like, “Okay, already”, and turned on Channel 11 in time to hear the tail end of a BBC report, with a reporter announcing:

“A VOLCANO erupted on the Caribbean island of Montserrat earlier today; the British Government is declaring the island uninhabitable, and is evacuating all residents”.

I sat on the phone for a while until Chuck asked, “You still there?” I said, “uh….. Yeah”.

He yells, “Ain’t that some S—T!?” and started laughing hysterically.

I’ve always been in love with the karmic symmetry of that. I mean, these two people rob literally everyone and everything in sight, and bail out leaving their OWN DAUGHTER to deal with the heat. So what happens? They run off to their island paradise to Jimmy Buffet it up on their ill-gotten gains…. just in time to get blasted off the planet by a volcano nobody knew was active.

…And if that’s not cosmic justice, I’d like to know what is.

[Red Cat Jenny]

I remembered something..on the train on the way home...oddly it was like inverse deja vu..it was a memory of somewhere..but I don't know when I was there...moreover it had nothing to do with the train...wierd.

[Blunderbuss]

i agree there should be a 99p coin

[Salty]

On centering a beer....... when throwing a pot the first thing you do is center teh clay on the wheel. one exercise that was a joke in my class was centering a beer or other shaped bottle to get a feel for it.

life is like that exercise only at the end if the beer is not gone its flat as hell.

yep completly random thought on my mind

[The Chapman]

I'm centering a beer right now.

[Red Cat Jenny]

My thought are often random

[Surfer Joe]

I try to avoid random thoughts when I'm meditating -- trying to reach the Zen state atop a wave.

[The Chapman]

I was in a bad mood the other day and posted this on my blog, not dreaming in a MILLION BILLION YEARS that it had already happened! Check out the link.

Unbelievable.

" I know what I'll reenact!

A Balkan paramilitary!

I'll swagger around in shiny combat boots, camouflage pants, and a black T-shirt with a skull on it that says, in English, "Kill'em all, let God sort 'em out". I'll wrap a bandanna around my head and have a Bulgarian Marlboro dangling from my lip. My T-shirt sleeves will be rolled up to hold a pack of aforementioned Bulgarian Marlboros, ala James Dean, and all the better to show off my tough guy tattoos.

Let's see; I'll get high on Turkish hash, drunk on rakija, and pop fistfulls of cheap speed. I'll carry a Zastava M70 and a gymbag with a Chicago Bulls logo on it stuffed with spare magazines. Let's not forget the belts of ammo for the squad Sarac looped across my chest.

I'll drive around in a Zastava 101, with its top torched off, loaded with looted small household appliances and televisions. I'll whimsically slaughter some things and people in my path, but not others, depending on how I feel at the time, all the while listening to bootleg tapes of Megadeth on my stolen Walkman.

Oh, the fun I'll have! The friends I'll make!"

http://www.croatianforces.co.uk/gallery.htm

[Ransom]

You forgot to add to your kit, one religious medal for good luck, an aging tank, and what appears to be old US army castoff fatigues.

Interesting that so many guys like to play in military reinactment groups, but don't like to join the military. Guess the fun goes out of it when you might actually get shot. I've also seen guys dressed up in either Green Baret kit, or German Nazi uniforms, that you know would barely qualify for the Boy Scouts. Mostly I see these guys at gun shows. The idea of these wannabees with a gun, I find very scary.

[Red Cat Jenny]

Aye Ransom...add to that the idea of wannabes running for office

[Ransom]

Oooo, let's not even go there!

[Red Cat Jenny]

Agreed..

[Patrick Hand]

Interesting that so many guys like to play in military reinactment groups, but don't like to join the military.

I did my four years ..... U.S.Army Infantry... two years at Fort Stewart GA. two years in Pan Mun Jom Korea......(Security Guard in the DMZ)

Without going into that....

I always thought it was kinda funny how everyone wants to be "special" units (not the ones that had to wear funny helmets...... HEY.... they did wear funny helmets...)

OK... I was going to get into WWII reenactments.... but all the units were Ranger or SS.... So I wanted to reenact Bill Mauldin cartoons.... the average soldier..... the guys that realy won the war....

Maybe that rolls over into my reenactment of Pyracy.... I'm not the Captain... nor the Gun Captain... or any officer..... I'm just a part of th' scummy crew.....

Nothing more special than just being me........

[Silkie McDonough]

Nothing more special than just being me........

Well Patrick, that's rather special no matter how you look at it.

[The Chapman]

Well, actually, my outfit consisted of this:

-Croatian Rockport shoes

-Genuine American Levis (not Turkish knockoffs)

-Black button-down shirt (no T-shirt)

-Slovenian wool sportcoat

-Swiss Army cap

-East German surplus coat

-and yeah, a Serbian Orthodox cross on black thread around my neck

-Black wool scarf

-small round green-tinted sunglasses

-American Tourister carry-on bag, made of Kevlar, with a sheet plate inserted in the bottom, with the 'American Tourister' logo ground off

Personal effects:

-Digital promotional watch from Burger King, with Michael Jordan on it, that I found in the parking lot of the Catholic Church across from my apartment

-Paper cutout of the Archangel Michael in my passport case

-Ten-dollar 35mm camera from Walgreens with never more than two rolls of B&W film

-Maps

-Drina cigarettes (or Bulgarian Marlboros) and matches

-Notebooks for directions, translations and, well, notes

-Swiss Army knife

-A couple pages from phrase books, cut out of the books to save space and weight (I threw those away later, I didn't need them)

-A paperback copy of Joseph Conrad's NOSTROMO.

[The Chapman]

I should mention: I am also very thin and have crooked teeth. This made people endlessly confused, as I obviously couldn't be from the United States, as everyone knows all 'Americans' are well-fed and have perfect white teeth! (In England, later, when I was resting and getting the energy to come back to the US, I was so embarrassed by the behavior of US tourists I started lying to people and telling them I was Canadian.)

When I was asked where I was from, and I answered 'Chicago', the response was (waving AK variant), "Oh, so you're used to this sort of thing!" with 'Rat-tat-tat' sound effects.

I learned that the two most famous Americans there were Al Capone and Michael Jordan.

I nearly got my head blown off over what I thought was an innocuous comment about Mickey Mouse.

We were sitting around drinking, and this guy asked me if, being from Chicago, I knew Michael Jordan. I tried to explain that Michael Jordan was such a famous person he was almost fictional, and asking me if I knew him was like asking me if I knew, oh, Mickey Mouse.

The guy went apeshit, pulled his pistol and was going to shoot me, and the host restrained him, hustled him out the door, and I was sitting there with no clue as to what was going on.

Later I learned that under the UN sanctions, intellectual property was embargoed, including all Disney products. The flow of goods from the Magic Kingdom was stopped, except for black market stuff. Now, something else I learned is that Mickey is about the closest thing to a national mascot the FRY has; he is a national icon. Pulling Mickey from the country was considered a huge insult, so much so that the FRY government commissioned illegal cartoons of Disney characters to print for the kids. After the sanctions were lifted Disney Corp sued the FRY for copyright infringement and wanted damages.

So, my comment was taken a little bit the wrong way...

[The Doctor]

Waiting around for people to finish testing stuff sucks!

[The Chapman]

Mad jack, I love your signature.

[The Chapman]

Been working on woodcut drawings... The style turned out pretty well here. Next up is a ship picture...

[The Doctor]

Holy screaming shyte!! I'm watching "Most Haunted", and Yvette's hair is bloody terrifying!!

She didn't just tease it, she friggin' pissed it off!

[Red Cat Jenny]

People mowing at 7am should be tortured..by having to stop mowing, blowing, edging, trimming, sawing, clipping etc untill after 9:00

on a Saturday!!!!

[Hester]

They must be related to the people who started digging up the sewer pipe next door to me at 8 a.m., and the other people 3 doors north who revved up their masonry saws at 8:30, to continue building their decorative retaining wall. They've been at it continuously for two hours so far this morning ...

... on a Saturday morning ... of the first holiday weekend of the Summer!

Good thing I didn't actually expect to enjoy a quiet weekend out in my backyard. Oh, wait, yes, that is exactly what I had planned to do this weekend. Bugger!

Where's my blunderbuss for Goddess' sakes?