I love being sick.  Every time I get sick, which isn’t that often, I whine.  A lot.  Today I have the congestion in the sinuses and the lungs are producing that yummy green rubber cement stuff that we all like.  It’s sort of funny because a little over a week ago, I was laid out with the night sweats and shivering and headaches and oh man, I’m gonna die.  And I am.  Some day.

I have decided that that illness was due to an allergic or similar reaction to an air freshener that I’d bought a few weeks prior.  I came upon that conclusion because A) I had headaches and body troubles, but no chest/nasal symptoms and B) as soon as I identified and tossed out the air freshener, I started to get better.  So there you have it.

But now I have the wonderful chest and nasal congestion and wouldn’t you know it, the weather is finally turning into what resembles Spring.  Great.

At one point my mom told me to take a peek at the whole swine flu phenomenon that is being shoved down our throats right now by the media.  Did you know that you’re doomed and that you’re going to die?  You will.  Some day.

Did you know that less than 200 people have died from the dreaded swine flu and that something like 20,000 people a year die from the non-dreaded normal flu?  In the U.S. alone?  Uh oh…we’re all gonna die!!!  Some day.

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It’s that time again, folks. I got tired of the previous theme and decide to change it up. As always, it’s a work in progress, bear with me, etc…

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Folks, it’s true…the economy is tanking.  Seems like yesterday that I was able to frivolously spend money on luxury items like…toilet paper and soap.  Don’t believe me?  Well take a look at this, courtesy of The Onion.

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I had a dream about Eric last night.

My mom and I were visiting with Tim (Eric’s father) in his hotel room.  We were going to go get dinner somewhere.  Tim showed me an album with a bunch of pictures of Eric in it, and in there I saw this movie clip.

Eric and I were in a train yard or something and we were sneaking from one train car to the next.  Whatever we were doing, we weren’t supposed to be there.  At one point, we saw a tank car that was boiling over with crude oil, or something else that was highly flammable.  No, it was explosive.  At any rate, Eric turned to me and said something like, “Watch this!” and he pulled a grenade out of his pocket.  I started to protest….”Hey dude, that’s not a good idea” when he pulled the pin and threw the grenade right into the center of the spouting column coming out of the tanker and we RAN!!!!

Next thing I know I’m looking at Eric and there are small chunks of molten lava raining down around us.

And that’s all I remember.

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As we were talking yesterday, Dave and I came up with Friday’s (today’s) plan.

Fart around all morning and then screw around in the afternoon.

It seemed like a good plan at the time, and now that it’s 4pm, I’ll say it worked out just wonderfully.  We did a little bit of work and actually got stuff done that needed to be done, but Dave’s already made himself a margarita, and I might have him make me one as well, since he’s a pro at that sort of thing.

At any rate, I’m done farting around and screwing around cuz hey, work is done for the day, and now it’s time to mess around for the rest of the evening!  So…here’s a video from Steve Vai, courtesy of himself from the official Steve Vai YouTube channel. Enjoy!

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I believe I did.  My good buddy Dudeman was at out of town on my birthday. After getting back to town, he recently was at a swapmeet, when he noticed this thing and decided that it would be the perfect gift. I agree. Let’s just say that it’s the perfect grocery-getter, or the perfect barley-blaster, or the perfect festival-finder, or even the perfect parade-pedaler.  Read ‘em and weep…

I’d go ahead and say something silly like, “My shoes for the other bike are more expensive than this bike.”, but let’s face it…pretty much any of the supplemental gear that I use for the main bike is going to be more expensive than Mr Nutter Butter. Even brand new it might have been $50. Dudeman paid $15.

That’s one pair of socks.

After rebuilding it from the ground up, I’m going to see about putting ONE really expensive item on the bike so that those who know will see that it’s a serious ride seriously stupid ride, as far as beater, swap-meet bikes go.  I can’t tell from the picture (I haven’t actually taken delivery of it yet) some of the specifics of the various parts, so I’m not certain if it will take 9/16 or 1/2 pedals, but if I can’t get a $200 pair of pedals I might have to look into a $100 saddle or a carbon seatpost or something.

I’m psyched!

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I grew up in Alaska. As such, I grew up around deer, bear, porcupines, and the occasional wolf. Sure, there were plenty of fish and birds (eagles and ravens and crows! Oh my!), but the sea and air animals don’t bite one as often as a land-bound animal might, so that’s what we’re going to deal with here.  Land animals.

So, in the summertime, I’d ride my bike around with my friends, looking for trouble and fun stuff (one and the same, pretty much) to go do and find.  It being The Wilds Of Alaska, we were in the woods a lot and you just got used to having one ear open for unexpected playmates, as well as being able to make a lot of noise while playing with your buddies, so as to let those unexpected playmates know that you didn’t want them to play with you.  Come to think of it, I never really found Hide n Seek to be that fun a game.  Imagine playing a game where you had to  be quiet in a place where you really shouldn’t be quiet.  Not only do you have to worry about your human playmates finding you, but also about non-human ones who might find you to be a worthy sparring partner, or a meal or something else just as uninviting.

Fast-forward to adulthood in the Lower 48.  One time I was out camping and we’d been playing in water all day, as it was quite hot out.  Back at the campsite, I found a suitable bush to hang my watertoy on and let dry out.  And no sooner had I done so, I heard The Rattle.  After cleaning my soiled shorts, I came to the abrupt conclusion that I like big game much better than creepy-crawlers.  Oh sure, the idea of being mauled by a bear is right up there with taking a 12ga shotgun blast right in the crotch, but at least I know how to deal with big game.  It’s simple:  Don’t go near them!  But with creepy-crawlies, you don’t know where they are until they’re pointing a gun at you and saying, “Don’t take a single step closer, or I’ll blow your fucking brains out!  I’m serious, I’m crazy…I’ll fucking do it!”

Spiders, scorpions, crabs and snakes….no thank you, they’re all creepy, stabby and ill-mannered.  I’m outta here!  And last weekend, I found another species of snake to add to that list.  The Plumber’s Snake.

Found in households and hardware stores across the world, the Plumber’s Snake slithers its way through the plumbing in your house to help you rid yourself of sewage clogs so that you don’t have to call the Plumber himself.  They don’t bite.  They don’t make that pant-shitting rattle noise.  But they are dirty, and they are stinky!  I mean raw sewage, did-that-come-from-MY-body stinky.

Last Thursday I came home and started getting ready for the next day.  I was a bit tipsy and when the toilet didn’t flush with its usual alacrity, I went to it with the plunger.  After about 10 minutes I wasn’t having any luck, so I decided not to worry until the next morning when I might have more RAM in my skull to deal with something out of the ordinary.  Later in my readying process I remembered that I needed to pull my pedals off of a mtn bike I’d borrowed and put them on my road bike.  It was in the middle of that task that I noticed that there was a puddle in my kitchen.  ???  After a bit more brainstorming, I decided that that too could wait until morning.

Cut to the morning and I had called my boss/buddy/co-worker/mentor and told him that I had a problem and needed to deal with it.  He was fine with that, so I cleaned up what I could and called another friend to see if I could borrow his snake.  He delivered it to me and I went to town on my toilet with no result.  After leaving a msg for the landlord, I told the roommates that we had a plumbing problem and we couldn’t use any water until further notice.

The next day I was informed that the landlord was out of town, so I called a plumber, who brought out his Industrial Sized Plumbing Snake and HE went to town on my toilet.  After $350 he found that we had roots growing into the sewage line and that was what had caused our little problem.  I also found that he was a Boston Bruins fan and he kind of sniffed at me when I mentioned that I was a Red Wings fan.  Whatever, dude, fix my shitter and prepare to lose the Stanley Cup.

And that’s how I found that, in addition to the rattly kind, I also hate Dirty Stinky Snakes as well!

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I don’t know how I feel about this.

When you watch the old Disney cartoons (you know, the original witty, well-drawn, beautiful ones) you can see how painstaking the work was that went into making all the perspectives and angles and movements look as life-like as possible.  Costumes and curtains and fabrics actually draping and moving with the character’s bodies, camera angles moving around with the scenery moving in sync with them, and movements of characters that didn’t look like they were moon-walking along the surface that they were walking on.  I love the old classics like Jungle Book, Cinderella, 101 Dalmations, the Aristocats…the list goes on.  They all had a wonderful and organic look to them that made you appreciate them as fine art in their own right, along with being good stories with memorable characters.

So when I was alerted to this, I was of two minds.

On the one hand: The work that went into these animations was painstaking and took thousands of man-hours to put together, so it doesn’t surprise me that they’d use some animations as templates.  On the other hand, however: It seems that this goes a bit beyond that, with complete and entire sequences being used for more than just one or two different projects.  And this video is just from what this one person did the research to find…there may be more examples throughout the Disney catalog, in fact I’d bet that there are many more.

So, sure, nobody is going to lose a house or their job because of this finding, but I am a bit conflicted in my own mind about this.  My brother told me last December that he only liked the old classics and he hated the new, computer-generated animated features that are being put out.  I know that mostly it’s a case of him being a cranky curmudgeon and “They don’t make ‘em like they used to!!!”, but it illustrates something doesn’t it?  They DO make them like they used to, with assembly lines and bottom lines and pencil lines and worry lines and all that.

Whatever, it made me spend 20 minutes writing about it.   See for yourself.

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