“If you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.”

So here goes…

If you can think for yourself, this post ain’t for you, and you can move right along and go Create Things and Be An Individual.  But if you’re an MTV viewer, then please keep reading.

For those of you who don’t know me, you will find that I’m definitely a function-over-form kinda guy.  However, I do realize that we each develop a certain aesthetic that we adhere to in our lives, which is what gives us each our own style and makes each of us a little bit different.  And as we all know, variety is the spice of life, right?  And I’m okay with the pre-teen who is trying to dress themselves rather than just wear what Mom put out for them.  We all have to spend some time finding what we like, and that route invariably takes us through the realm of All The Same Old Cookie Cutter Clothes That Everybody Else Is Wearing, hopefully to another realm.  Some make it through this treacherous forest, and some don’t.

Folks… I’m talking about Uggs.  Have you seen these things?  They look like you shoved your foot up a tauntaun‘s butt and then cut the rest of the tauntaun off with a lightsaber.  Yeah, go running around with these things on your feet and act like Couture Barbie.  Now I realize that they were originally designed as an apres-ski boot, and as such, they’re probably highly effective, but nobody wears them for that purpose.  They are worn as a desirable piece of fashion, and you know what?  That’s not even what pisses me off about them.

What pisses me off about Uggs is that you first saw them (years after they were actually used for apres-ski purposes on the ski hill) on brainless L.A. types with those Paris Hilton cum-blocker shades, walking down the street in 90-degree weather!  Now I don’t automatically hate on peeps from the SoCal, or the OC or whatever…but if you prove to me that you are hard of thinking AND you’re from The Land of Plastic as well, well then I think we have a winner, folks!  Or, a…whatever.

So if your feet have been mercilessly incarcerated inside a pair of ill-fitting ski boots for 8+ hours, then by all means, you go wear you some Uggs.  But if you don’t know the difference between red and green wax, then the following formula will apply to you.  It goes  a little like this:

Males in our society look at women and rate them on the 10-scale, with 10 being the highest.  Swimsuit models, Italian actresses and Kevin’s Mom all qualify as 10s.  By way of comparison, nuns, Croatian powerlifters and Zeno all qualify as zeroes.  Now here’s where Uggs come into the equation.  If you are wearing Uggs as a fashionable article of clothing, then you lose 4 points right off the bat.  (If you wear Uggs, I’d guess you’d lose points for saying things like “like” and “totally” all the time as well, but that’s another post.)  If you are above average in looks and might score a 7, but you’re wearing Uggs then you’re now a 3.  If you’re completely surface-of-the-Sun hot and capable of causing hair to grow on mens’ palms from 100yds away, guess what?  If you are wearing Uggs, you will never be a 10.  It’s that simple.

“Sweetie, you may have walked into the shoe shop a 10, but you left a 6.”

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As I’m digging myself back out from underneath the rock I’ve been hiding under, I am remembering things that had an effect on me in recent months.  Two are as follows:

Cpt Pearson sent me a link a few months back that he thought should go on my site.  He was right.  Let’s go back a few years…

I think it was 7th or 8th grade when I first saw Iron Maiden on MTV.  I was hooked.  Why?  Well, my dad was a high school English teacher and in his syllabus, Greek mythology was featured.  He taught the creation story from the ancient Greek perspective as a teaching tool, and so I’d been hearing it most of my life and as a result, I thought (and still do) that Greek mythology was cool as hell.  (Don’t tell anybody, but all my computer devices have names deriving from the Greek pantheon [geeks do that - have a theme for naming all the devices in their network])

Okay.  So by 7th or 8th grade, I already had an interest in Greek mythology and one day I saw a video on MTV.  This video was for a song called Flight of Icarus.  ?!?!?!  WHAAAA????  What’s this?  Imagine my surprise when the lyrics actually accurately adhered to the subject matter, which I already had taken an interest in.

That’s why I took an initial interest in Iron Maiden and I must say, they haven’t disappointed.  Well…the 90s sucked for them, but the 90s sucked for a lot of viable music, so what do you do?  At any rate, I’ve always loved Maiden ever since then and so what’s my long-winded point?  It’s this:  Anything (in this case, Maiden) + Star Wars = AWESOME

Now…having said that…as if that wasn’t even enough… Peter, who sometimes goes by the name Meatbucket, recently turned me on to another phenomenon whereby somebody out there on the Internets tried to answer the question “What happens when you make Rush a doom metal band?”  Well, I’d have to say that Total Awesome is what happens.

Enjoy your day.

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Here I am, surfing the iPhone app store. I recently switched to AT&T so that I could start getting used to the iPhone, cuz Dave wants to write apps for it. So every day I try to think of what might make for a good app and then I search the app store at iTunes.

Recently I was looking for bicycle-related apps since I’m a bike dude, so I was searching terms like “cycling”, “bicycling”, “bikes”, “bicycles”, and when I typed in “cycle”, I found a bunch of apps concerning the ‘menstrual cycle’. WHOA!!! I mean, I guess that just makes sense, cuz that’s kind of a big deal for a number of reasons, all pertaining to one BIG thing that most young people want to avoid, so okay…there’s a bunch of apps for it. But you know…I got curious. So I downloaded one of them.

I feel like I just read my girlfriend’s diary or something! I opened some sort of Pandora’s box and it can never be closed again! This app is CRAZY!!! Okay, sure, you can type in the start and finish dates of your last period, as well as how long in between cycles it usually is, and then as time passes, it will become more predictive for you as to when your friend will next show up. That would seem to be standard fare. But delve a little further and it starts to make one (if male, like myself) feel a little crunchy, like I furnished a false password and am now in some place that I shouldn’t be. AND I’m about to be found out at any moment!

When you open the app, it asks you to furnish when you had your last period, and when you choose any specific date, there’s an option to choose whether you had intercourse or if your period started on that date. I chose intercourse. It then asked me if it was protected or unprotected! WHAT!!! Who are the dirty whores downloading this app?

Well, me, for one. But I digress.

When I went back into the setup portion (always start with a new program by setting up your preferences, it helps one understand just what the program in question is capable of) to adjust parameters, it asked me to input my Luteal Phase. Off to Google I went and found out what that shit meant. Then I was asked if I wanted my Fertile Days to be displayed. Uh, no.

So that was interesting to say the least. However, I was still doing research for the brilliant app that I have in mind and so I went back to the app store. I typed in more search terms and saw many apps that made differing levels of sense in my mind, from the idiotic-but-I-suppose-that-matters-to-some kind of apps to the (like the above-mentioned app) holy-crap-I-had-no-idea-because-I-don’t-live-there kind of apps. At one point though, and I suppose it just makes sense, I did stumble upon a couple of apps that were based on the sex-offender registry idea. Holy shit! If I know ONE thing, it’s Never Look Up Sex Offenders Online. Why? Because you’ll find out where they are! And they are in your neighborhood! Now…I don’t have children, so I don’t worry as much about this as some, but I don’t wanna know that shit! I’d like to think that the nice person walking their Akita at night in our neighborhood simply has that dog because it’s a beautiful animal, and not because they are fiercely loyal to ONE person and will fight to the death for them…and that maybe this person is a sex offender and they need that kind of protection. No thanks, I’d like to think otherwise as the dog (who is as big as a fucking horse) looks me right in the eye and silently challenges me every time I walk by. I’m stupid enough too, to fall for that shit…and I stare right back and the owner has to physically pull him along, cuz this dog ALWAYS wants a piece of me. Funny thing is…I KNOW that dog would rip me a new one too, but I can’t stop letting him know that I’m still higher on the food chain, or totem pole or pecking order. Whatever…try to light a lighter, pal. Try to hitch-hike. Not so easy with paws is it? Fuck you, I’m going to the bar!

Anyway, I learned something new today at the ol’ app store. There is always something out there for you, no matter what your taste.

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My brother and I went hiking around the Mendenhall Glacier last Thursday.  Here are some photos from that.  Some of them (maybe most of them) aren’t all that spectacular, but they are all icons from my youth, since I spent most days each summer riding my bike around there.  Anyway, please to enjoy…

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SURE, I’LL TAKE A BREATHALYZER.

Days 3 and 4, which were Friday the 3rd and Saturday the 4th, connect for this story because they were pretty much the same day, since I never did go to sleep.  Zeno came over to the house and he and I went to the store for supplies.  The plan was that while there was a boat cruise scheduled for that evening, we were going to bail on that since we were pretty much broke and didn’t feel like taking part in that particular activity.  So we went to the store and good food for the day to cook at home and we stocked up on that and Bombay Sapphire gin.  We both felt like we’d already had too much beer in the previous two days so we switched it up.  Gin/tonics on a warm summer day is always nice, and we were going to go see the fireworks that evening in a parking lot downtown, so were in that mood.  FYI: Juneau has their fireworks display at midnight the night of the 3rd because you have to wait forever for it to get dark and if they did it on the 4th, they’d actually be doing it on the 5th.  That’s my theory anyway.

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