The Fart Soundboard…

Notice that there is a Lead Article, as well as Featured Articles below it.  Those will be the most recent Lead and Featured Articles in chronological order, but know that not all posts will be Lead or Featured, so if you just want to see most recent posts, then click the Recent Post tab above this window.  This Lead Article window is supposed to have an image attached to it, but I haven’t used the specific code that makes it all work, so I’m working on getting it up and in place.

I hope to start posting more regularly, since I am now a year into my new career as a web developer and I suppose I should start becoming more cyborg-like if I’m to fully wrap my head around the culture and thus become a more rounded and experienced professional web dork.

Stay tuned!

You can tell a lot about how familiar two people are with each other, and indeed their perception of their social standing within each other’s circles just by how they greet and/or say goodbye to each other.  For example, with my inner circle of friends, if I haven’t seen you in a while then I’m likely to give you a hug as a greeting.  If I have seen you recently, then I may shake your hand on arrival, but I may still hug you on my or your exit.  If I see you all the time, then you’re just as likely to get the finger as a quick high-five or even a fist-bump.  Each of these gestures mean the same thing: “Hello friend of mine.  I value your friendship highly and enjoy spending time with you.  Please be at peace with yourself and to show you that I mean all of these things, here is a little physical contact to cement those emotions.”

The funny thing of all this is when shit gets lost in translation.  I’m almost 40 years old and I have friends who range in age from their 50s and 60s down to their 20s.  When I greet people older than myself, it’s all about the ‘old guard’ and ‘respect’ and whatnot, so a simple, firm handshake does the job.  But when I run into buddies who are 10 years younger than I am, shit gets all awkward and hilarious.

…oh shit, I gotta leave soon cuz I have to work early in the morning.  There’s Francois, and I’m gonna have to let him know I’m leaving, but I have no idea how he’s gonna shake my hand!  Is he gonna give me the standard shake?  Is it gonna be the homie handshake?  Is a fist-bump involved, and if so, does it come at the head of the shake or the tail end?  And what happens if I’m confronted with a grenade or a twizzler or a Cleveland Steamer?  Oh shit, what the fuck do I do???

These are the kinds of things that run through my mind when leaving a dinner party and quite frankly it’s terrifying.  I don’t care about appearing to be unhip or old or some crap like that, I just don’t know how to accurately convey my heartfelt and sincere gratitude for the camaraderie and fellowship that was shared during the preceding few hours.  I don’t want to seem cavalier or disingenuous, due to my inability to “shake like the kids these days”, so a lot of angst and trepidation is involved during those moments just prior to leaving a social event with friends of varying ages.

Take a look at the video here and ask yourself, “How, exactly, did that one evolve?”  Imagine leaving a swanky dinner party sponsored by the Golden State Warriors and running into this guy on your way out the door.  I think I’d pass out from sheer fright.

Notice that not only does he get his shake on with one of the venue’s staff, but he’s able to pull of that handshake while NOT EVEN PAYING ATTENTION! He’s yelling at some other guy the whole time, not even looking at the guy he’s shaking hands with.

Good on ya, mate!

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.”

Firstly, we’ve had some cold-ish weather recently, and one night, when there was a good temperature inversion and it was foggy, I took some pictures of the sky.  That was fun.

Then, a few days later, Whitty had a birthday.  The whole deal was this:  He was turning 40 and since he grew up in AK where men are Men, and since you should be a Man by the age of 40, well he was going to have a Manly Birthday Party!  So he and a friend of his and I all decided that we were going to be Manly at his birthday party.  And we all went Redneck Style for whatever reason.  Knowing that the wardrobe is limited, I decided that I would up the bar a little bit.  So I shaved my head to look like male-pattern baldness.  OH YEAH!  Here are the photos of the party.  Please to enjoy…

I had no idea, cuz I’d been drinking when I entered the contest. So tonight as I was cleaning up my junkmail inbox, I came across an email from the guy who had set up the contest, and he was needing my address so he could mail my prize to me.

Well, howdy doo!  Details here.

However, a 66% disapproval rating kinda confirmed it for me.  Time to change it up.  Wordpress has had some neat additions and widgets and abilities come along in the recent months, and so I’m still playing with some of that.  There will be a link to my Twitter page, which I’m learning to use, and there will be a link to my Flickr page, which I’m trying to be more active with.  And then there are the “featured” posts, much like with the last theme I was using where there will be more images and general flashiness.  Not too much, mind you, just enough to get you, the reader, all twitterpated.

Stay tuned…work in progress.

• Buckethead is an interesting fellow.  He releases something silly like 5-10 albums a year.  Granted, they all start to run together after a while, but it’s still infinitely better than listening to the radio.  It’s as though he has only 5 albums to date, but they each have 276 songs apiece, and were each released slowly and simultaneously over a 20 year span.  Tonight I’m cooking a chicken and as it cooks, I’m trying to decide how I’m going to deal with the cooked bird after it’s done.  As always, a beverage and some music while I go into Zen-cooking-activity mode and I thought, “Why not Buckethead for repentance  and inspiration?”  And I made it so.
• Speaking of “making it so”.  Here’s some of the funniest stuff I’ve ever seen in a LONG time.  “Happy in Paraguay”.  What some folks do in their spare time.  I love teh internets!
• Today the Seahawks played at home.  I had planned on riding down to the general area of the stadium and meeting up with a couple buddies down there.  However, it was pretty cold and I didn’t want to have to deal with ice anywhere on my bike, so I decided against that.  Normally, it’d be a done deal and who cares, right?  Right, but in addition to that, I’d already made plans with my buddy and he was going to bring a GPS unit for me to borrow, and at that point Project GPS was Go Mission and I was obligated to get there somehow.  As it happened, I ended up driving down in my girlfriend’s rig and retrieving the unit.  She had to get to work still, so I was kinda wondering the best way to get to the freeway from over by the two stadiums, because hey, I ride a bike usually, I don’t know about traffic.  Not only traffic, but during a ballgame and in a section of town I usually don’t party in?  Oh great…this will be fun.  And then it dawned on me.  Uhhhhh….you just picked up a GPS unit from a friend.  Uhhhhh….USE IT!  OH YEAH, that would be AWESOME!  Whew…disaster averted!
• I had strange dreams last night.
  • At one point, I was in the Anchorage airport and I couldn’t find my bags.  I remember in my dream thinking REALLY hard, “Do I have just one bag, or two and what the hell do they look like?”  Needless to say I had a hard time trying to locate my luggage.
  • Another time, I was in the woods.  The woods were very like Juneau, wet and mossy and temperate rainforesty…  I stop in the trail because a full on Fuck-you-I’m-from-Africa lion is running like hell to save its life through the woods across the trail right in front of me.  WTF!  Flash to me and Veronica kinda jogging through a clearing in the woods, trying to get away from something or to some specific place and we are in a hurry, but we’re tired so instead of sprinting we are more like loping along.  Oh yeah, and it’s winter.  I don’t know where our destination was, but we went into the base of a huge tree that had fallen over  toward a cliff face and the inside of it was hollowed out, and we were going to use that as a way to climb up to the top of the cliff and keep going.  In typical Hollywood style, as I boosted Veronica up into the inside of the log/tree, I looked back and about 100 or so yards back, here comes this damn lion and he’s on our trail.  And it’s winter.  He’s a damn lion.  In AK.
  • At another point, Veronica, and I were at a Burger King inside an airport or a mall or something like that.  I was hungry and she wasn’t, so I ate while she used the waterslide that he had at our table.  For our exclusive use.  I think each table had its own waterslide.  Hmmmm…
• My buddy Dave had to put his dog down last month.  That was a bummer.  Pimba was a red heeler, and as such, she was a really intelligent dog to the point of being a pain in the ass.  She thought for herself and if you told her something she didn’t like, she would growl at you and let you know she thought you were full of shit.  Anyway, she’s now taking a dirt nap and we all miss her.
• I’m getting tired of basting that chicken, but only because I don’t have the squirty baster thingy.  I’m having to use a ladle and tilt the pan and all that, so I’m whining a bit.
• Dave also went to Australia and New Zealand last month.  It was my job to make sure his bunny and his cat were fed and dealt with appropriately.  That was weird, since Pimba wasn’t there, being a pain and nipping at the kitty at every chance.  The point here is that while he was gone, I had his car.  In the 2 weeks he was gone, the weather went from coldish and wettish to Frozen Nuggets in Spandex!  I rode my bike in to work for the first time in two weeks last Friday and I thought they were going to fall off and shatter in the shoulder of the road.

Okay then, I’ll post more and oftener and I’ll post a post about that very thing here tomorrow.

Remember:  Happy little trees!