What's Wrong With This Picture?

I was thumbing through the latest ESPN Magazine (which started showing up mysteriously with The Girl's Mom's name on it - She denies any involvement) when I found this:I added the annotations in green for clarity.
Damn, homeboy had some serious bang-bang riding shotgun (but, oddly enough, no shotgun).

For a more extensive account of the nonsense click HERE and scroll down to the bottom of the wiki.

Carney Shots

I feel that it is my civic responsibility to inform the blogosphere that Jimmy has a fucking-awesome Flickr page. Be sure to check out the wedding dress and Forbiden Fate shots - Priceless.
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Speaking 'o' Flickr: I put up the first batch of pics from IL up on my page - more to follow.

Entering the Home Stretch

We're in Pennsylvania on the way back to DC. We should make it back in 4 hours or so.

Tomorrow it's back to work, so I'll be sure to get some stories up on the blog.

- Sent From Blackberry Handheld -

Into the Unknown

I'm on the Southside waiting for Elise... Waiting for Elise to go to a
fucking Sox game (to be more specific). God help me.

I'm in deep cover (pic to follow), and hopefully I can pass undetected.
If that doesn't work I'll have to resort to 'plan B' which involves
removing my shirt, jumping the fence, and beating up the 1st base coach.
Let's all hope it doesn't come to that.

- Sent From Blackberry Handheld -

Holding Pattern

The Girl is out here in IL now & we are just enjoying being 750 miles away from DC. No big plans, but we'll be out & about.

On a related note: We're holed up at my wi-fi sanctuary in Plano (Saxby's Coffee Shop) and The Girl just said out of the blue: "You're right; shooting guns is fun". I think we've got another convert. She'll be out Saturday for the 'Shoot Yer Shit' housecleaning party.

Sunday

Whatta day:

EdP's first Cubs game - The Cubbies lost at the top of the 1st, but it still was a great time (except for my sunburned kneecaps)

Wrigleyville shoppin' w/ The Girl

Drinkin' with Gunderson

Home early (No MOTO - except for on the stereo on the ride back)

And The Old Dog's sage prophecy: "Josh's last words will be -Sent From Blackberry Handheld-"

- Sent From Blackberry Handheld -

Updater

I ended last night with one less bag and one more speeding ticket than I started out with. All and all, not too bad.

I woke up around noon and ran to Wal-Mart to refill my lost prescriptions. Now I'm out at the O'Hare Oasis waiting for the Girl to land.

I should have some time later to give y'all the sorted details of last night.

- Sent From Blackberry Handheld -

Fuck Me

I just got pulled over by Johnny Law on the way back from EdP's.
Jedi powers don't fail me now.
Time to put the moneyhole to work.

- Sent From Blackberry Handheld -

What I Learned Today

There are few things in this world as depressing as a small town
greasy-spoon at dinner time on a Friday night.

- Sent From Blackberry Handheld -

Adventures in Idiocy

It's pretty 'goth' out today - All grey and drizzly. Perfect hangover weather, and I've got one.
If you hit L&E earlier today you got to catch a drunkenly vague mobileblog post before I thought better and deleted it. Here's the rundown:
Last night the Big Drag fellers were kind enough to invite me to drink Old Style fan-cans in ChrisB's basement. I left Sugar Glove with a decent buzz a-goin', but (since I'm an idiot) I decided to hit the townie hook-up bar in Sandwich. I figured it would be good for a laugh and a few dirt-cheap shots. Bad idea.
I got there and downed a couple of $2 Jagerbombs and a couple of $1 Buds. I found the jukebox and loaded it up with the dozen tracks on the thing that didn't totally suck ass. I found a lot of old country (Cash, Cline, Coe, etc.) and a few old punk tracks (Clash, Ramones, Misfits) - It was coming up on last call so I figured that I could coast out the night with some good tunes in the air while I watched the inbreds pair off.
Two songs into my set some local shitkickers came in and started snaking my set with a shitload of "make mine first" plays on the jukebox. For those not in the know, the "make mine first" is the most evil invention in Jukebox history. For 3 credits you can break up an awesome set with your vapid crap. It makes my blood boil.
Anyway, these cowfags start in with the Nashville American flag and pickup truck songs, and a couple of crappy hay-ballads. I'm pissed so I start up a conversation with everyone within earshot about how modern pop-country is soulless corporate dreck aimed at repressed homosexuals. Seriously, the stuff is awful and has about as much to do with "country" as N-Synch has to do with "rock". I fucking can't stand it.
So I start getting an audience and my whiskeymouth was in full force. A bunch of guys stood up to me and a good old-fashioned shoving match ensued. One guy took a swing at me and I tripped him and gave him a good kick in the ass. It was about that time that we all were covered in bouncers. I'm not invited back.
Now the real question is: What kind of idiot goes on a drinking binge and decides to pick a fight with an entire bar the day after undergoing extensive eye surgery?
I are stupid.

On a similar note; Tonight is the last "id" night I have before my "superego" catches up with me tomorrow afternoon. Oh crap, I'm using Freudian psychobabble - I must be hungover.
Anyway, as I was trying to say; I'll be out in force tonight in D-Town if anyone cares to join me. The Girl gets into town tomorrow, so I won't be able to make a COMPLETE ass out of myself for the rest of my visit. Now's your last chance to witness the train-wreck that is me and bourbon.
Catch it if you can.

Blog Drag in a Non-Floating Basement

Tonight I get the rare honor of sitting in on a Big Drag practice.
I'm gonna play Yoko and convince the Old Dog to join an improvisational barbershop quartet. Just after I finish this Old Style tall-boy

- Sent From Blackberry Handheld -

Eye Update

Just got back from my follow-up exam. My eyes feel fine, and I have 20/20 vision in my right eye & 20/40 in my left.

Woo-Hoo! Lasik rocks (unlike stupid Ohio).

Everything You Wanted To Know About Lasik, But Were Too Smart To Ask

It's now 6 hours since the laser surgery & I'm hangin' tough (like a New Kid). Those guys at Hauser-Ross nailed this bitch. I can already see clearly (without glasses), and aside from some minor irritation, I'm doing great.

The whole procedure for both eyes only took about an hour. Here's the run down:
1) Sign in and fill out the last set of forms (in a series of about 538) that they make you sign
2) Go to the prep room and jump into a sporty robe/lunch-lady hat ensemble
3) Warsh yer face
4) Go through the obligatory Blood Pressure/Temperature tests
5) Someone asks if you want a Valium - Say "Two Please"
6) Wait for the fun drugs to kick in - Talk to the anesthesiologist about what's wrong with the Cubs this season
7) Go into the operating room and submit to a couple more vision tests
8) Get anesthetic eye-drops
9) The doctor draws dots on your cornea with a marker - Remark that you've woken up with Sharpie all over your face, but this is a first
10) You get to lie down in the cool-ass B&D/S&M looking chair with the head restraints
11) They tape your eyelashes back to your forehead and cheek
12) They insert a cool Clockwork Orange style brace under your lids and crank that bitch open
13) A suction machine is used to pull your eye partially out of the socket - Everything goes grey
14) While the eye is being sucked a teeny-tiny saw comes in and cuts a 250 degree incision across the base of the cornea
15) The machine gets tired of sucking your eye and lets go - You can see again
16) You get to see tweezers dip in and fold back your cornea
17) You have to stare straight at the HAL 9000 light - If you don't, you're fucked
18) The zappin' begins - It smells like burnt toenails
19) The doctor folds back over your cornea and flushes the eye with a VERY cold fluid
20) Sit and wait while the doctor wipes off the blood from your eye (right eye only)
21) Go back over to the exam area and have operated eye examined
22) Repeat steps 7-21 (except #20) for left eye.
23) Leave the office and have a smoke
-end-

I managed to stay calm and totally relaxed through the whole procedure, but that was some weird shit (for sure). I'd credit my many many hours under the tattoo needle for instilling the importance of remaining perfectly still during extreme discomfort.
The craziest part of the whole experience is the many pamphlets/videos/forms that they make you go through. Every single one lets you know that if you proceed with Lasik your eyes will most likely fall out and be eaten by vultures. It's all a liability issue, but for someone (like me) who insists on reading everything thoroughly, it's a fucking head-trip.

I walked out of the operating room with blurred vision, but (even fresh off the zappin') it was noticeably better than it had been an hour earlier.

As soon as I got home I chewed a Vicodin and took a shot of Knob Creek. I was out within 5 minutes, and slept for a good 2 hours. I even remembered to put on my 'sleep goggles' which loook like something Oakley would design for Parliament/Funkadelic - They rock.

Me Rockin' The Sleep Goggles

After I woke up, my vision was markedly improved - I was very impressed. And now (2 hours later) my vision is almost as good as it was with glasses/contacts.

There you go. That's all of the (too much) information you need (but didn't want) to know. Now if I can get through the next week without poking myself in the eye, I should be in the clear.
I'm doomed.

To See or Not to See

I'm at the Lasik place getting ready to get my cornea ripped back and my open eyeballs zapped with powerful lasers. Woo-Hoo!
I'll update everyone later today on the outcome.

- Sent From Blackberry Handheld -

L&E Endorsement #1

I wholly endorse the Iogear wi-finder.

Why, you may ask, have I stooped to cheap endorsements? Well this thing is idiot proof. Not so far as it's function (which is also idiot-proof), but this thing is GENUINELY idiot-proof.

I picked this thing up a few days ago, and took it out on the town to try and figure out some spots where I could find the internets tubes.
The next morning I was emptying out the dryer and heard the 'ping-ping' of batteries hitting the bottom of the dryer.
Fuck me. I washed AND dried my wi-finder.
I just pictured a twenty dollar bill with a halo and little angel wings ascending upward.

I figured it had to be ruined, but (just for the hell of it) I reassembled it and gave it a shot.
IT FUCKING WORKED. No shit.

If this thing can survive my stupidity, then this thing can survive anything. It works fine, and I just used it to find the signal (in the Annex) that I'm using now.
Whoa, a wi-finder that points me toward drinkin'. Maybe this thing is evil. That would explain everything.

Vacation Zen

I just realized that this blog has come to a screeching halt since I've been back in Illinois. I'm blissing out here, and really haven't had any reason to tangle with the interwebs for the last few days. If anyone gives a damn, here's my daily breakdown:
- Lots 'o' shootin
- Lots 'o' swimmin'
- Tons of good food (whenever I get around to eating)
- Near-lethal amounts of liquor
- Romping through nature

That's about it.

ChrisB's party kicked some serious ass. I made a point to impose on the hosts until the beer was dwindling, and they threatened to call the cops to get me offa their back lawn. It was great to see all of the e-pissers out in force.

I've had people out shooting over the last couple of days and it has been a fucking blast (literally). Any coconuts or cantaloupe that find themselves in the general vicinity should make their peace with God... Quick.
Everything is going great except for my two incredibly sore thumbs (Mossberg related), and itchy legs (bugs & poison ivy related). I'm rockin' it hard.

I need to find a place out here with a wi-fi connection to get my laptop a-goin', then I'll be able to get some pics and other fancy-crap up here. Until then, I'm stuck in dial-up land - Rockin out with my Glock out.

Ohio Does NOT Rock

I'm stuck in a huge fucking construction delay. This bites ass.

- Sent From Blackberry Handheld -

ePissy Service Announcement

Annex Friday

Be sure to finalize your wills beforehand.

Ready or Not...

Here I come.

I'm tying up all loose-ends in DC today, because this time tomorrow I'll be on the road to IL. Everything's packed, I've got a couple of bags of beef jerky, a cooler full of bottled water & red bull, a bottle of ephedrine, a stack of burned MP3 disks, a full tank 'o' gas, and I'm rarin' to go. 750 Miles - 12 Hours - No Breaks. Hell, yeah.

This also means that L&E goes native. Yup, it's time again for the wonder that is mobilebloggin' - the Jackson Pollock of the blogosphere. It's full of wild energy and barely coherent or discernible, but it's art dammit. Okay, maybe it's not art, but drunken misspelled ramblings from the bar still trump anything that hack Pollock did.

Gimme an "Amen", P-Dawg.

Writer's Blog

I've never claimed to be a writer (except when loaded; In that state I've claimed to be just about everything), but have been kicking out the prose at a decent clip lately. I've been working on a couple of things so that I wouldn't have to show up empty-handed at ChrisB's soiree, or (God forbid) read something re-hashed from my stupid blog.

The thing that's really cornered my attention lately is my story about the second-coming of Christ. It started of as a snarky page & 1/2 comedic piece, but it seemed flat, so I wrote an intro to it. I really got into the intro, and before I knew it the intro was longer than the story itself. The tones of the two were completely different, so I scrapped the original and kept writing in the tone of the intro. Next thing I knew I was at 12 pages (which is way too fucking long for a casual reading), so i trimmed off all of the tangential story-lines & got it down to 4 & 1/2 pages. The pared down version is still pretty rough, and I hope to get some time to polish it a bit before the reading.

Here's that intro (warts and all):
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They found the 7,327 bodies frozen on the Ronne Ice Shelf, off of the Orville Coast, at the Base of the Ellsworth Mountain Range. Antarctica – (77°00’00.00” S, by 77°00’00.00” W).

The specific details of how the ship, Liberty of the Seas, ended up ice-locked in the Weddell Sea (over 300 Miles North-East from where the bodies were found) still remain a mystery. The ship was chartered by the group, New Dawn, for a cruise from Florida to Rio de Janeiro, but evidence indicates that after the last stop in Rio the ship continued to head south until it ran into the ice shelf.

One thing was obvious; this was planned. The ship continued to pick up passengers along the route, and by the end the ship was carrying almost double the maximum passenger load. There was next to nothing carried in the way of cargo except for several hundred brand-new tractors and snowmobiles, that were used to tow the sleds (fashioned from the scrapped materials of the ship) to the site.
Add it up: no food, no luxury provisions, people sleeping on top of each other, and several tons of snow transportation; this pilgrimage was deliberate.

As the weeks unfolded, we began to get a picture of what was going on. Apparently, members of the group were consumed of visions of the rapture, and claimed to be visited by angels who promised divine ascension and eternal bliss in the arms of God. There was no leader of the group, and these visions were received by people from all over the globe.
5,000 people all spontaneously arrived in Miami on March 9th, and by the 11th, they had set sail.
No one has been able to track down any record of “New Dawn”. The payment was wired from a Bermudan bank, but that bank cannot find any record of the account ever having existed. It is widely rumored that the Cruise Line “donated” the ship and then fabricated the transaction. Nobody knows.

The whole episode became known as “Jonestown on ice”. It provided the late-night talk show hosts with an unending cache of glib jokes; it gave the 24-hour news stations an endless source of tragedy to exploit; and eventually it robbed millions of their faith.
Once those images and gruesome details started to flood the airwaves, it was over.

People started seeing video of a sea of frozen bodies littering the Antarctic wasteland. Young people, old people, obese people, emaciated people, black people, brown people, white people (well, blue people in the end, but…), people of all races and persuasions, of all backgrounds and classes – dead. Pictures of the dead flooded the lives of the living. The picture of the elderly woman frozen slumped over her walker; the picture of the two little black twin girls frozen together in an embrace of sadness and agony; pictures of corpses stripped of flesh, pictures of gnawed bones… pictures of a frozen hell. They became tattooed into our collective subconscious. It’s all we could see when we closed our eyes. It stopped being a media story – it became our lives.

Oddly, the thing that really started permeating the collective conscience were the phrases found carved into the ice, or more frequently scrawled into the snow with blood. After a few weeks you’d see graffiti everywhere and t-shirts that read: “All Hope is False Hope”, “Forsaken”, “Faith is Deceit”, and (most popular) “Angels Lie”. That last one was found scrawled in 20-foot tall letters into the ice, and then the letters were colored in with the writer’s blood…. Pretty fucking creepy, but that guy knows how to make a point.

The impending investigation ended up in the financial ruin of the Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, who was found in court to be complicit in the incident.
The CEO of the company hung himself about a week later. Turns out, he was one of the lucky ones. He didn’t have to see what happened a few months later.

Exactly 5 years to the minute after the time the New Dawners prophesied that Christ would return to Earth; He did… 8,670 Miles to the northeast from their final resting place.

Never trust an angel.
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Well, there it is. It was written to be read aloud after a few drinks, but you get the point. If you show up at Chris's you'll get to hear the following 2 parts.

Fuck it... I'll probably scrap it all, and just read a few bawdy limericks of my own invention. Give the people what they want.

Gunday, Gunday, Gunday!

In a selfless effort to bolster the economy of northern Illinois, I recently purchased a couple of guns manufactured by Geneseo, IL's Springfield Armory. They just cleared and I picked 'em up yesterday. Check 'em out:

Loaded Operator 1911-A1This is the 1911 .45ACP pistol that the F.B.I.'s tactical teams use. It was manufactured to their specifications, and is an all-around fucking sweet gun. It's also the only 1911 in production with an integrated mounting rail.

SOCOM II M1A .308


This is the big-gun of the US Military. It shoots .308 Winchester rounds, and is the rifle that the army turns to when the M-16 just won't cut it.
This gun is gonna put me in the poorhouse. After reading through the HUGE warning tags that came with it (3) I realized that this rifle has been headspaced for precision mil-spec ammo, and using my preferred cheapo rounds could cause this thing to explode. GI mil-spec ammo runs about $1.50 per round, so to shoot off a full clip is gonna run $30.00.
Fuck me.
Nobody said that superior firepower was cheap. This gun is gonna have to be saved for special occasions, and I'll rely on my M-4 and AK-47 for casual shootin'.

I'll have both of these bad-boys back in IL next week, so if anybody wants to come out to BFE for some shootin' you're more than welcome. Get yourselves some.

Ben Weasel Don't Like MySpace

Mr. Weasel just put up a hilarious rant against MySpace. He hit this one right between the eyes (& out of the park):
...I hate it. I hate people I don't even know calling themselves my "friends." I hate the site design, which looks like something you might expect from a cat-lover's Geocities page circa 1996. I hate the interminable loading times. I hate that almost half the profiles I visit (in a feeble attempt to feel like I'm not adding total strangers as friends) crash my browser because yet another pitiful goof had to load up his page with stupid band and celebrity photos and videos that he mistakenly thinks make him look more interesting than he is...
Click on the above text to read the rest of this exceptional diatribe from Chicago's favorite (or least favorite)* rock&roll curmudgeon.
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*Depending on who you talk to, and/or what Steve Albini has said recently.

Asian Arert, Motherfuckers!

It's been awhile since I've gotten around to doing an Asian Arert. I'm going to make up for that void by overloading your senses with a super-ultra-happy-fun mega post here chock full 'o' fishy Asian goodness.

The Girl sent me a bunch of You Tube videos and threatened me with grievous bodily harm if I didn't get 'em up here. Looking over these I realized that the Japanese advertising culture is exactly what American advertising would have looked like back in the 1950s if everyone in the industry was whacked out on lysergic acid diethylamide. It's some good stuff, to be sure.

This is an ad for green tea:


This one's for a bath-powder of some sort:


If you wanna find some wacky-ass commercials type "pretz" into the You Tube search box. This one's my favorite.


And to top it all off, I present the best footage in the history of television (as seen on Countdown with Keith Olbermann):


Wow, watching all those Asian videos made me hungry. I could really go for a sandwich right now.

Ummm... nevermind.

Meet the Beetle

Last week this little guy tried to help The Girl with her Prince of Persia game. She trapped him under an ashtray and kept on a-playin'.
About a half-hour later I went downstairs to see what provoked the latest ear-shattering obscenity stream and furious pounding/smashing. I saw the ashtray on the floor, picked it up, came face-to-face with this agitated razor-pronged beastie, and yelped like a kicked puppy. The Girl paused her game to laugh at me.
So, I did the one thing I could to restore my magnificent masculinity - I gingerly picked up the beetle, named him Mr. Pincers, grabbed my camera, arranged some props, set up some external lighting, and gave him a super-fabulous photo shoot.

I just got around to throwing up his Glamour Shotz on my Flickr page, along with the Cupboard Pope and some other random photos. Check 'em out.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderbird

I'm going against the world on this one, and speaking up IN SUPPORT of Mr. Mel Gibson. It's not because I'm an uber-religious sort (I'm not), not because I have something against Jews (one of my best friends out here helps run the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs), not because I have something against the cops (nope, have a several police friends). It's because I (personally) know what kind of crazy shit people say when they're loaded.

I'm the king of whiskeymouth - While loaded I've said some of the craziest, most offensive shit I could imagine just to get a rise out of people. It's that little imp of the perverse that keeps whispering the worst thing I could possibly say at any given moment into my ear - And then I say it. If i'm bored I'll just start picking verbal fights for the hell of it, and if I don't like someone I'll start spewing filth until they get fed-up and leave. I'm a dick, but I'm an entertaining dick, so most people let it slide.

I also know that the "police" wildcard just ups the crazy level by a factor of 3. Showing a badge to a drunk is the social equivalent of pulling a pin on a grenade - something weird and ugly is gonna happen (ask any cop & get ready for some stories). I've known several people who've gotten tossed into the drunk-tank for verbally sparring with the men in blue; these aren't my rowdy friends (they know the dance), but (mostly) normally timid girls that just lose their shit at an inopportune moment.

Add this shit together with a movie-star ego, a father with anti-semantic beliefs, the heat, and shake. I'm amazed that no one was shot.

There's my two cents, for what it's worth*. If you don't like it, you can go suck off some syphilitic homeless Jew, Sugartits.
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*'my two cents' redeemable for 1/1000 of a cent