A Brief History of Time

11/26/07

As you may or may not be aware, I am taking online classes in a desperate attempt to carve out a better life for my wife and myself. I really rather like the History class that’s just wrapping up, and my final project is to do a 3-4 page paper concerning my family tree and any interesting characters several generations back. Prior to this exercise, I might as well have hatched from a giant space-egg for all I knew about my ancestry. Fortunately, several years ago my uncle took it upon himself to research the Jett family, and I had to do minimal investigation since he just emailed me all the information. It seems I have a rather…interesting family history. I suppose it should surprise no one that a man who thinks taking and sharing pictures of himself, naked, perched atop a stool is funny, would have a somewhat bizarre and really rather fucked up genealogy.

That, my dear readers, is the coat-of-arms awarded to the first known “Jett,” a Bavarian by the name of Sir Johan Van Jett, for his service in the first Crusade (1095-1099). So…great. My premier ancestor went to war because people keen on Jesus decided to kill a whole lot of folk in order to “reclaim holy land.” Also, the plundering was good back then. It seems some of the Jett line stayed in that region, evidenced by the same coat of arms above used by Baron Jett zu Munzenberg of Prussian Bavaria in 1701, and another portion went to England. I am totally going to start referring to myself as Baron Jett.

The first Jett to hop the pond, and to whom my uncle has been able to directly link us to, was Peter Jett. He came over to Virginia with his wife, kids and another family, in 1663. Where half of them were promptly killed in an Indian raid. Things are quiet for a few generations, and then it seems in the latter 1800’s our family has a rather embarrassing and loony brush with history. You may remember a feller by the name of John Wilkes Booth who shot Lincoln, spouted some gibberish, and leapt from a balcony to disappear off into the night. Booth injured his leg in that jump and, after ferrying across the Potomac, chanced across three former Confederate soldiers. One of them was Private (or perhaps Captain, the history is vague) William “Willie” Jett. He was sympathetic to Booth’s plight, and led him to a friend’s farmhouse by the name of Garrett where the assassin holed up for a few days. Jett was eventually found and questioned and, when threatened with a serious hanging, gave up Booth’s location. Fun!

I don’t have the specifics on hand, but I hear tell that the first Jetts to come to Missouri were horse thieves, which was punishable by death in those days. Then again, looking at a man sideways in the 19th century was tantamount to anally raping his mother, so…

Oh! One more fantastic journey down Jett lore: This gentleman is also not directly related to me, but there was a Curt “Bad Curt” Jett who received a life sentence for killing Attorney J. B. Marcum in Jackson, Kentucky, and shooting his cousin, Marshall Jim Cockrill from a courthouse window in 1902. Jett was apparently a “feudist,” which is a fancy way of saying his family didn’t get along with people. He was pardoned for reasons not entirely clear to me some 20 years later. It is, I suppose, kind of neat to have a relative with a nickname in quotes, but I think I could have been more creative than “Bad Curt.”

So…what have we learned? Well, I am descended from thieves, murderers and treasonous abettors. Wonderful. On the up side, my mother’s side of the family is so fucked up that she just found out after his death that the man she thought was her half brother was really her real brother, because her mom banged her ex-husband while married to another man. And my maternal grandmother spoke 3 languages, was a fantastic artist, abandoned her family for weeks at a time, and thought she talked to the Devil. Also, kind of a racist.

It’s a blue-eyed miracle I’m not either in prison or the booby hatch…the latter being not nearly as fun as it sounds.

Pray for Falling Pianos

11/15/07

If nothing else, I can at least rest assured that should a bolt of lightning strike any one person in my department, it will kill everyone else too because they’re standing elbow-to-elbow looking at a goddamn snow pattern that’s supposed to be a fucking sonic picture of something the size of a sonuvabitching pinto bean.

Yeah, that would be a pretty good day. Gods bless Acme.

On The Right (Am)Track

11/10/07

Just an update on yesterday’s post concerning the potentially poop-laden story about a Japanese tourist being carted off an Amtrak train for taking pictures out the window. I contacted Amtrak about the matter, and by “contacted” I mean I emailed their customer relations department since my level of apprehension concerning using the telephone to contact persons unknown to me approaches real phobia. I asked if they were aware of the story and if it had any validity, and information on their…photo-taking policy. Here is their response:

Dear Ryan,

Thank you for your recent email.

As
information, amateur photography that does not interfere with passengers or crew
is permitted on board trains. Regarding the recent article you referenced,
Amtrak is investigating the matter. While the results of investigations
involving our employees are confidential, please be assured that Amtrak is
committed to customer service and any appropriate action will be
taken.

We appreciate your interest in Amtrak and hope we can serve
your travel needs in the future.

Sincerely,

Amtrak
Customer Relations

As you might imagine, this interaction left me less than satisfied. It was, however, more than I had expected. I’m not sure whether they knew of the alleged incident before my contact, but I like to think not. Their rather vague response leads me to conclude one of several tantalizing possibilities:

1. Amtrak had never heard of this and even as we speak a crack-team of internal investigators is swooping down upon the matter like a falcon on a barn swallow.

2. Amtrak has heard of this and is in the process of punishing the offending conductor who possesses delusions of godhood.

3. The story is so patently ridiculous they won’t even bother to look into it and are merely pacifying me.

4. Amtrak has heard of it, is investigating it, and it will turn out to be false.

5. Amtrak has circled the wagons in a desperate attempt to cover up their dastardly plan to form their own sort of “Travel Gestapo,” loosely affiliated with the soulless demons down at the Department of Homeland Security.

For sheer, blogging mileage out of this story, I certainly hope it’s either #1 or 5. Honestly, it’s probably #4.

I love the fact that I have single-handedly created several tasty new phrases in this post alone that will hopefully worm their way into the American lexicon. Namely, “blogging mileage,” and “travel Gestapo.” You’re welcome, America.

Programmers: We Give Up

11/9/07

You know those awful little flash games where you get to slap a fat man’s belly or pump up a tire or shoot some chickens or something faster than a computer competitor? And then your prize is that you get some dumb ass ringtone featuring Ashley Simpson or a cat screaming or something equally awful? Yeah, MySpace is a good breeding place for this. Well, I have come across definitive proof that the programmers of these little games have done run out of ideas. The other day I saw this hilarious monstrosity:

That’s right, dear readers; you are looking at a game where you are Batman…and your goal is to punch out the Terminator. You know, as insane as it is to play a game where you attempt to shave more hair off a woman’s legs than your automated rival, at least it makes a sort of sense in the encapsulated universe in which it exists. I mean, this is just slapping two completely unrelated fictional characters together to punch each other so you can have In Da Club play whenever grandma calls. What I propose next? Strawberry Shortcake shooting Jem and the Holograms with a paintball gun.

Feel free to make up your own wildly ludicrous flash games, ladies and gentlemen. There’s a No-Prize in it for the best one!

Episcopal B.S.

11/8/07

Good gravy. Has it really been a month since last we spoke? Well…then let’s get to it.

Normally I’m one known for always enjoying a good, scathing tale about how loony the right-wingers are in this country. But there is on thing I despise worse than a barrel full of Bill O’Reillys, and that’s bullshit. I have no tolerance for untruths, whether they be conscious or whether the person spreading them is just too lazy or disinclined to healthy skepticism to check whether something is based in reality before spreading it around. The only downside to the internet is that it has made this practice infinitely easier in the form of endlessly forwarded “did you know” emails that are pretty much just full of outright lies. Whether these messages are fanciful creations by the left or right is immaterial; I would never want to influence anyone to my point of view through blatant dishonesty. Personally, I’m far too conceded to tolerate ever being wrong, so I check out my sources and make damn sure I know what I’m talking about before I impart any information. Snopes.com, people; it’s a winner.

There is a story that has been circulating the blogosphere that I suspect, suspect, may be complete and utter malarkey. You can read the whole thing here on the Episcopal Café site, but I’ll summarize:

The posting is a first-person anecdote by Joel L. Merchant* but the website appears to actually be run by some dude named Joel Naughton. In the story Mr. Merchant is riding on an Amtrak train in the picturesque Northeast. There is a Japanese tourist snapping pictures out the window because, you know how it’s a genetically imperative that Asians hold cameras. The conductor sees this and informs the tourist, “Sir, in the interest of national security, we do not allow pictures to be taken of or from this train.” Wait for it, the story gets better.

The tourist of course doesn’t speak English and the conductor character, who may or may not be lifted entirely out of a Spike Lee movie, becomes enraged at not being understood and threatens to confiscate the camera. At the next stop the police enter the car (this time characters lifted from an early “talkie”) and through the use of a translator, inform the man that they are detaining him and will put him on the next train if he turns out not to have sensitive photos of…cows or whatever the shit they grow in New England. The tourist complains that relatives he hasn’t seen in forever are waiting for him in Boston and there’s not way to contact them. Because, I can only guess, the Japanese family, the most tech-savvy people on the planet, have no cell phones. Oh, and land-based phone lines to the Boston train station have yet to be invented. Also, email doesn’t exist, and apparently the rider for the Pony Express is passed out down at Ye Olde Taverne.

Naturally there is some grumbling by the other passengers, overheard, we presume, by Mr. Merchant. This one is my favorite: “An older traveler reflected, “I witnessed this personally in police states during the war in Europe.”” Yeah, because people talk that way. And there’s nothing like invoking the Nazis during “the war in Europe” to make a point. Subtle, Mr. Merchant.

At any rate, this did not happen. I don’t know if anything even remotely similar happened, but this story did not. It’s simply too perfectly illustrates the author’s point of view to be real. It seems to be an emotionally-charged cautionary tale about the dangers of overzealous security, but king of comes off as…literally unbelievable. Note the use of a sympathy-inducing protagonist; the only way the sweet, photo-snapping Japanese man could be more lovable is if Mr. Merchant had put him in a bunny suit.

An author whose work I enjoy a great deal (Terry Goodkind) once wrote that people believe things either because they want to believe a thing is true, or because they are afraid what they’re told might be true. In this case Mr. Merchant’s audience falls into both camps. I’m not saying this is bald-faced fucking bullshit, but it certainly has a faint whiff of manure.

This reminds me of the countless cautionary tales both from the government and religious institutions. You know, Frankie Everyman bangs Sally Sweetcheeks out of wedlock, gets a “social disease,” and they both die in a murder/suicide. Also duct tape and plastic wrap can protect you from a chemical attack.

The most disturbing part is that people seem far too ready to just take this story on face value, according to the comment section. The ingenious thing about telling a personal anecdote like this is it’s almost impossible to disprove. Even after one commenter went so far as to contact Amtrak and was informed that, yes, of course passengers could take pictures, they only say that the conductor was way out of line and the cops were overzealous. There was even an engineer and conductor trainer who commented that Mr. Merchant should have gotten the conductor’s badge number and that they are not permitted to act like that. C’MON! What’s more likely, that the entire train’s employees are lunatics and the cops at the station have delusions of being in the S.S., or that one man is an exaggerative and creative writer? I was unable to find any outside verification of this besides other blogs re-posting it. I am in the process of contacting Amtrak to see if they have heard of this and will let you in on the results, ladies and gentlemen.

Have healthy skepticism, dear readers.



* According to the Episcopal Café, Mr. Merchant “is a teacher, business consultant, and essayist. He is currently working on "The Other Side of Time; Letters to My Daughter" at a-reminiscence.”

I Like My Eggs Fertilized

10/9/07

I’m pretty sure most people are brain damaged. How else can you explain the reaction human beings have whenever someone announces they are having a baby? Naturally the most vocal on the subject fall into that most disturbing of categories, the unwed, middle-aged office lady who is way too attached to her pets. These people are so rife with unrequited love that, were you ever to actually allow their drooling insanity within spitting distance of your child, you’ll have to keep a close eye on them to make sure they aren’t sprinting for the parking lot with your progeny.

Why is the announcement of your very average and normal ability to fertilize an egg a cue for automatic congratulations? I mean, I get it if you’ve got like one ovary, have been trying for a year, or have been using hobo sperm and a turkey baster or something, but what precisely is interesting about the fact that you fucked and wound up preggers? Shit, stray dogs and poor people do that all the time, and they don’t seem all that impressive to me. I’m pretty sure something almost anyone can do is not grounds for immediate congratulations. And I can understand if you are the sort of baby-crazy psychotic who has been keeping your coworkers constantly updated with the status, cycle, and consistency of your uterus for the past 6 months. But other than that, it’s just weird. It’s like congratulating someone on their birthday. Hey, good work! Way to keep breathing this whole year!

Now I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be excited if someone in your family gets knocked up, (providing their not say, sixteen and really into knives,) but to be thrilled about a person you are forced to spend 40 hours a week with and never even think of unless you need to borrow some White-Out is venturing into Lunatic Land. Hooray! More people who will probably buy lottery tickets and go to Eddie Murphy movies and drive an SUV and cause me to repeat myself and just generally clog up the planet and judicial system while contributing nothing to society! Rejoice!

I guess I can give the women who are breaking this earth-shattering news a break; after all, you will eventually figure out that they are swelling to abnormal proportions, so it sort of makes sense for them to tell people about it. But there is no excuse for male coworkers to bring this up, given that we don’t know your wife/girlfriend/one-night-bang, don’t care about the fact that your nuts work properly, and can’t possibly imagine a situation where I would have to be privy to information about the spawn that fell out of your partner’s vagina. Great job with the sperm and everything, Carl, but how about we just go on pretending that we all wouldn’t rather be somewhere else and leave your germination skills out of the workplace, okey-dokie?

Wow. I must be in a particularly spiky mood this afternoon. Clearly, I’m advocating eating babies.

10/7/07

My friend Andi showed me this last night. All I can say is "awesome."

Check it.

Gerbils and Caterpillars and Moths, Oh My

10/4/07

Is that a gerbil in your pocket, or are you just some weird pervert?

First of all, sad days, ladies and gentlemen; my goldfish of some five years finally croaked and went belly-up on us. Despite my reputation as a bit of a procrastinator, it took me a mere 2 days to actually fish him out of there and throw it away. My wife’s constant urging over the two weeks that followed to actually clean out the empty, stagnant and rapidly algae-blooming aquarium, was probably just her way of dealing with the grief. I finally succumbed under threat of abstinence and we were left with this empty tank staring us in the face every day. What to do? Clearly the best course of action was to fill it with rodents.

Disturbing sexual urban myths notwithstanding*, Hanni and I decided to get a couple of gerbils. We finally settled on two males from Pet Warehouse, mostly because they were the only place within a 20 mile radius that fucking had gerbils. I don’t know if there’s recently been a run on the tiny creatures, but Springfield is certainly uncontaminated with them, ladies and gentlemen. Here are the lucky winners:

We ended up naming them Alexander and Hamilton, ‘cause I roll Founding Father style. They are slightly cuddlier than a fish, and more entertaining to watch. I just hope to Christ we didn’t make some egregious error and actually ended up with a male and a female. I’m not really into swarms of rodents. Should that be the case, we may have a new promotion here at Drunken Ramblings: Read the blog, get a free tiny mammal!

That’s not the only life Hanni and I have cultivated in the last few months, either. My mother brought me a parsley plant one day that ended up having like 6 of these guys stowed away inside it:

After some research and a hastily-assembled and spartan terrarium, I determined they were Black Swallowtail caterpillars. The really fun thing about them, aside from their wicked-awesome coloring which I’m considering copying for a suit pattern, is a little orange, fleshy fork that comes out of their head. Yeah, they totally rock a stink gland.

You would, by the way, be astounded at how much a caterpillar can poop. Fed steadily for several days on a staggering amount of parsley, the guys soon climbed the makeshift sticks and settled back into these kick-ass silk hammocks.

For whatever reason, I always thought caterpillars spun silk into a chrysalis, but that’s not the case. In fact, they attach themselves with silk, but the actual pupae is the result of a molting which we were lucky enough to watch on one of these guys, though sadly we didn’t get it on video. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen and only takes about a minute for them to complete. Here's a pretty good simulacrum of the process through a little Monarch time-lapse, y'all! -

About 10 days later here’s what we got:

Pretty, huh? We also found a caterpillar of a different sort in some corn we bought at the farmer’s market. Not quite as stunning, is the corn worm.

Also, they turn into perhaps one of the god-awful ugliest moths I’ve ever seen. But, you know, we can’t choose our species, I suppose.

That’s all the news from Jett’s Wild Kingdom, dear readers. I’m thinking our next animal project will be rearing and training a massive hoard of loyal spider soldiers to unleash upon my foes. BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!




*Stuffing a gerbil, shaved or not, lubed or not, into one’s asshole is clearly physically impossible if you just think about it for a few seconds. Essentially what you’d end up with is a slippery, crushed gerbil corpse acting as a terrifically inefficient and bloody dildo. Leave poor Richard Gere alone.

I Like Tortles, Too

Just in case anyone out there in cyberspace hasn't seen it yet:



Me too, kid...me too.

C-O-2-Times the Pleasure

9/17/07

There are seemingly endless reasons to hate the Wal-Mart Corporation. I could probably do an entire series on the slew of evil practices in which the largest company in the world engages. Not since the roaring days of the African slave trade has the world seen such unfair and rampant distain for common workers, whether it’s the fact that managers illegally adjust overtime off of an employee’s timecard onto the next week, or the fact that Wal-Mart counted 28 hours per week as “full-time,” or the fact that, in an effort to squeeze every delicious drop of profit at the expense of human decency, Wal-Mart has installed a rolling work hours where employees are just sort of “on call” 24 hours a day with no set schedule. And don’t even get me started on the fact that Wal-Mart offered a health care plan so staggeringly expensive that they knew employees wouldn’t be able to afford it, and then encouraged them to go on welfare and Medicaid instead, effectively passing off responsibility to the US government. And, of course, there’s the fact that Wal-Mart gets huge subsidies from local government to come into a town and drive all small business to bankruptcy with lower prices that are immediately raised after all competition has been killed. No, forget all that. Today I want to talk about something near and dear to my heart: meat.

I enjoy cooking a great deal. Point of fact, other than booze pretty much all of my disposable income goes to food. Fortunately I’m a pretty good cook so my wife pretty much leaves me to my own devices where culinary decisions are involved. I think she would rather be blissfully unaware whenever I spend $6 on a single ounce of saffron, or $12.99 for a single, dry-aged steak. This information would just cause her mind to recoil in horror. But if you want quality, sometimes you just gotta pay for it. This is a principle with which Americans are terribly uncomfortable, which is why Wal-Mart is so popular. I will concede that it is terrifically convenient to get all your shopping done in one place, but at the end of the day all you’re left with is a little saved time and a cart-load of cheap crap. Shirts that dissolve immediately upon contact with water, lights that burn out if you’re so careless as to turn them on, pots and pans with the heat distribution properties of a moldy tangerine, and, well, moldy tangerines. This is not good stuff, dear readers. But the single most abominable sin against humanity Wal-Mart affects is what they have the unmitigated gall to call “meat.”

It looks pretty good, doesn’t it? Long rows of brilliantly red beef of all cuts merrily sitting inside large plastic containers; what could be better? Well, not all cuts, since Wal-Mart no longer employs butchers in favor of pre-packaged meat imported from gods know where except that it’s not from American farmers. So you can’t get anything cut to order; what you see is what you get. But that’s just peanuts, here’s the butter: The reason the meat looks so good is because it’s treated with chemicals to retain that ruby-red color pretty much forever. It could be as spoiled as Paris Hilton beneath that taught plastic wrap but it would still look like it was cut this morning. They way this is accomplished is by using low-oxygen atmospheres and treating the meat with carbon monoxide. I know, it sounds delicious. That’s why the packaging is so puffed and tight like that; it’s a specific atmosphere inside the packaging necessary to keep it looking good. So essentially that ribeye could have sat in an unrefridgerated truck in Death Valley for a week, then delivered its payload to the store and you would never be able to tell the difference.

Wal-Mart claims that it doesn’t use CO2-treated meat anymore, but independent tests have shown that, as of last year at least, they were still selling meat treated by carbon monoxide. All of that aside, if you’ve ever tasted Wal-Mart meat, the point is really moot. I won’t say it has all the flavor and texture of a coconut husk, but it’s close. Yes, it is a little cheaper, but only by a very slim margin more than overshadowed by its similarity to shoe leather.

According to the company’s facts page, “We made the decision to expand our case-ready meat program to better serve our customers.” If anyone out there believes that, I have a bridge in New York I’d like to sell you. They fired all their butchers (they were dangerously close to unionizing) and went to pre-packed, hermetically sealed foodstuffs because it’s fucking cheaper for them, period. They are also particularly terrified of letting you know where the meat comes from, heavily lobbying against country of origin labeling (COOL). Their reasoning here is that “COOL applies costs to the system and provides zero benefits to the consumer.” That’s according to an exec in an interview with Beef Magazine. Yeah, I don’t want to know where my meat comes from either. Are any of the cleaning crew mysteriously missing?

I’ve pretty much boycotted Wal-Mart for this and many, many other reasons. I’m not asking you to do the same, but in the interest of decent food, please consider a goddamn grocery store that at least has people who’ve touched the meat they’re selling. Good day, ladies and gentlemen.


Sources:
http://www.consumerfed.org/pdfs/CFA_Wal-Mart_CO_statement_5.16.06.pdf.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/14/122225/59
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_4839.cfm
http://www.walmartfacts.com/articles/2462.aspx

The Pub Crawl

9/6/07

I should tell you that the Annual Billings Pub Crawl is in no way organized or sanctioned by the City of Billings. It apparently started when a few people decided it would be fun to go to all three of the town’s bars in one night. Last year I went with Hanni and there were about 30 people. This year, intermittently, I think the number may have been closer to 40 at the highest tide. The only thing that urks me about Hanni's crowd is that they all seem to operate in the “Matlock” time zone, meaning their functions start around 7 in the evening. Which, any sane person will tell you, is so early in the night as to be ridiculous. There is no call for falling into unconsciousness at the tender hour of only 1 a.m. on a weekend night, ladies and gentlemen. But I digress…

We started at the VFW, which is far and away my favorite of the three, if not high in the running for my favorite bar ever. Although, they did lose points because between last year and this year they removed the shuffleboard table.

I believe I discovered why the drinks are so fantastically cheap; apparently the Billings VFW exists in a time-warp and we were paying 1986 prices (see picture below). Seriously, though, $2.50 for a 7&7? Bacchus be praised! Even at $1 tip each I still made out swimmingly, and the barmaid was quite generous with the liquor-to-Sprite ratio.

Hanni and I played some spectacularly bad pool. I think there was one game where our team didn’t sink a single ball. Except for maybe the cue ball. I am powerfully happy that I married someone as dangerously un-athletic as myself. Whenever we vacated the place all that was left were a bewildered bartender and one relieved-looking old fellow at the bar.

A scant few blocks away, “The Bank” is a quasi-tavern situated inside—what else—an old bank.

I have to say I do dig the outside façade. The inside is roomy and they have somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand songs on the juke. The only negatives about The Bank are that it’s privately owned and keeps no set-in-stone hours, and they only serve beer and wine coolers. I had to make due with Corona, but the heroic amounts of spirits I had consumed at the VFW made sure I was in no danger of sobriety.

Come to think of it, none of the bars and precious few of the shops and restaurants in Billings keep rigid hours. They seem to operate more on a “whenever we feel like it” opening and closing time which is the sole dominion of mom-and-pop businesses.

Earlier in the evening I was promised that we would not be frequenting Billings’ third watering hole. I was lied to. I hate The Oasis. Hate it. I hate this bar with the fiery intensity of a matador afflicted with gonorrhea. Hanni’s brother Peter is a fire fighter, and was a first responder in Billings. He recalled with disgusted amusement that nary a weekend used to go by when they weren’t called out to Oasis because someone had gotten beaten with a crowbar or something.

Imagine, if you will, a dodgier, less-classy version of Patrick Swayze’s Roadhouse. Now add shit-kicking karaoke and a smattering of people who count the time they got a sloppy yawn* from a girl in a vomit-covered Skynyrd t-shirt their sophomore year in high school as the high point of their life, and you’ve just about got it.

This year for whatever reason The Oasis wasn’t as bad as last year. There was a smaller crowd and less republican sing-a-longs, so it was tolerable. All in all it was a good night. But goddamn…I hate that fucking bar.




*Sloppy Yawn: aka – a blowjob.

Fair Game

9/5/07

Long time readers of my blog will no doubt remember last year’s post concerning the 2nd Annual Billings Pub Crawl. Well last weekend it was that time again, and this year it coincided with the annual Billings Fair. All this and Labor Day weekend? Good gravy, however did I survive the revelry? In deference to our out-of-town and international readers, I should explain that Billings, Missouri is a tiny little town about 18 miles outside of Springfield, with a population of around 1,100 souls. It’s the type where you can see the “Thank You for Visiting” sign from the “Now Entering” sign, and it is from this sleepy little burg that my dear wife graduated high school. I can’t decide whether being there reminds me more of Children of the Corn, or Doc Hollywood, but there is something quaintly creepy about the place, not the least of which being the fact that my wife is related through some convoluted buggery to 9 out of 10 of its residents. It’s a nice place to visit, I should say.

Two years ago the village elders or whoever it is that makes decisions about these things decided that having rides at the Billings Fair was somewhat superfluous. Thusly, you get all the enjoyment of eating bad food and playing crooked, cheap games for even cheaper prizes while breathing exhaust fumes from the “tractor pull” without any of the distraction of actual fun that rides would bring. Oddly, it seems you don’t need carnival rides to attract carnies; they are just sort of drawn to the place like flies to a cow pie.

I’m pretty sure this guy is trying to shove a funnel cake into his mouth while shotgunning a giant Slurpee. I’m pretty sure he had pork cracklins in his pockets.

I was curious whether “Italian Charms” meant charms from Italy, or charms made by Italians, or perhaps charms to keep away Italians...

Turns out it means cheap crap with a nice dose of passive-aggressive racism:

And just what the fuck is going on here?

I shuddered each time a child crawled out of the Giant Smurf Vagina tunnel. It was like watching a log flume of alien births...being clitorally stimulated by a humping dolphin. Great balls of greasy fire.

Worst. Ring toss. Ever:

That day would have been a great time to be a thief in Billings, as the entire police force was at the fair. There must have been some vile terrorist plot to explode the bouncy castle, because they even had some guys in black t-shirts that said “Police,” complete with handcuffs and all, who claimed to be “police volunteers.” I didn’t even know that existed. I’m pretty sure “Police Volunteer” just means you like hitting people with sticks and wearing a mustache.

A dry burger, one jar of pickled watermelon rinds, and a fantastically delicious funnel cake later, we departed the fair en route to the first stop along the infamous Billings Pub Crawl. Tune in tomorrow for that tale, dear readers!

When Things Seem Just a Bit Too Normal

8/31/07


I’m going to be thirty years old this Halloween. And you know what? I’m glad.

Life seems more magical and fascinating as a child, mostly because it just plain is. Of course things were fascinating, how can they not be when you’re constantly encountering stuff the likes of which you’ve never seen before? As adults just about every single experience we have can be compared to ten other similar instances. "Yeah, that’s a pretty good apple pie, but I’ve had better." That sort of thing. Every smell, every taste, every day like something else we’ve had before, most likely before we reached our twentieth year.

No wonder people have mid-life crises; it’s not that you think you haven’t done anything with your life, it’s that you’ve done so much that nothing seems wondrous anymore. All the things you knew you wanted have arrived; they’re here. And now they have become that worst of dream killers; normal. So you have to strike out for the new and get back some of that magic you had when you were sixteen and you still thought the world was yours for the taking. But all too often this perfectly healthy desire for new experience manifests itself in the most ass-way possible and one morning you realize you’re just a balding douchebag inside trendy jeans and a Corvette. For whatever reason it seems people want to hang onto their youth forever nowadays. “Oh, thirty is the new twenty!” Jesus, really? Well that’s depressing. I like my age. I like that I don’t have to forever experience the turmoil, insecurity and downright goofiness of upper adolescence anymore. I like that I’m boring and un-cool and don’t speak in lingo that a fifteen year old finds comforting. Though, strictly speaking, I was never "cool." I like responsibility...to a point. But what’s wrong with being an adult?

Besides, new and amazing and totally-unlike-anything-in-the-world things still happen. The moon landing, for instance, buying your first house, saying “I do,” watching your baby being born, actually believing in a politician. All of these are wholly unique and un-imitatable. It seems they get fewer and farther between the older you get. Is that such a bad thing, though? If they didn’t thin out your poor old psyche could never survive past age 30. But try to imagine—or better yet, even remember—what it was like going to a county fair for the first time. Sure, they’re routine and some of the shine has come off the apple now, but what if you’d never seen one before? Maybe there’s a two-headed calf in the oddities display! Who knows what could be around the next corner; you don’t know! The sound and presence of the crowds, the burnt sugar smell of cotton candy and a not wholly unpleasant tang of large barnyard animals and hay, the taste of staggeringly sweet root beer in those tiny plastic jugs, the stomach-dropping tickle of a rickety rollercoaster run by people you wouldn’t entirely trust to tend a goldfish. The bizarre, cheap games on the midway that even then you knew were rigged. The sheer, blissful pleasure of being out on a warm summer night, allowed to stay up to the deliriously late hour of ten o’clock, and having all the endless eternity of life stretching out into the horizon ahead of you. Can you hear it? Can you smell it, dear readers?

And that’s just a shitty little county fair. Think about your first love, huh? It’s an impossible thing to bottle, that feeling. You can’t keep that sort of shiny new tingle any more than a puppy can keep from growing into a dog. And that’s okay. It’s okay that as we age some of the magic goes out of things. As long as we still remember, and keep ourselves open to it when a pale version of that magic shows up, it’s okay. Because nostalgia is the butterfly version of childhood magic. And that tastes pretty sweet, too. Go ahead, act your age, you’ve earned it.

A Tangle of Hot, Wet, Torrid, Buttery Thoughts

8/30/07

The internet has plenty of sure-fire entertainment, providing one is amiable to gutter humor, or drunk, or sort of dumb, or bored enough, or some combination of these. The magic that is CraigsList is one such site. No matter what you’re looking for on craigslist, invariably you will end up reading the categories of strange people seeking other…strange people. The romance categories are like a black hole, inexorably pulling your cursor to it as you flip through page after fluid-soaked page of the most bizarre, sort-of-frightening-to-be-living-near-them people the primordial ooze has ever spawned.

Last weekend Hanni and I found ourselves perusing the “Men Seeking Women” portion; always a gold mine of loneliness with just a hint of sweaty desperation. The prize for the saddest thing I have ever seen goes to this guy, who kind of looks like a broke-ass David Copperfield:

This fella, Dave, we’ll call him, as most of the characters on craigslist, fancies himself a bit of a ladies man. Forgetting for the moment that if that were true he wouldn’t need craigslist, not only is Dave courteous enough to give priority to those females who provide a picture (no fatties!) but he also gives you lucky ladies a taste of his romantic flavor with a staggeringly strange bit of prose torn from the pages of Penthouse Forum. If this is any indication, the flavor of his romance is probably liver. It’s long-ish, but I just couldn’t bring myself to cut any of it. For those of you with short attention spans, I have highlighted some particularly wonderful sections in bold.

This is me and you...

The soft supple skin of her leg brushed against the torrid firmness pushing hard against the Diesel denim of my pants. It was a simple movement where she lifted her leg and strattled mine as I sat on the chair in that dimly lighted club. It was different then usual, I was not in control. The scant sighting of the soft lace of her ruffled panty, just barely covering what would be heaven to me, brushed past my cheek as she straddled me facing me on the chair. The classy so perfect way she moved almost cat like, Her eyes screamed at me to take her hips and pull them tight against that torid hard pressing persuasion of hormones.

Her legs taunt, felt warm on each side of my waist. Her hands a rapid blur pulled the belt from my jeans and undid the buttons allowing all of me to press past that pretty white ruffled honey dipped fine lace, into her tight hot wet enveloping butter sweet softness of her peach tasting heaven to me. I was bad! I didn’t wait! I came hard! I so could not help my self. She had teased me mercilessly. I clenched down hard! I gave everything to her. Each clench of mine was met with a clench of hers her eyes holding mine the whole time, taking all of me and squeezing me tight pulling every bit of my soul out of me into her. All those times I had dreamed about her, I had traced the lines of her lethal curves in my mind. It was so good! It was more then I could hope for. Her softness pressed so firmly against me her smell so inviting, God I so wanted her. The single thing running through my mind .. I am in her! I am so in her! She is letting me be in her! SHE SO ROCKS!!!

My Words if you let me, will tangle your soul and push the envelope of adventure. What do you want to explore?! Where do you want to go today!? Whose world will you rock today?!

Know in your mind that every one that gets to experience you! Your world gets a treasure that they should hold onto and cherish forever! For all those who have gotten to experience being one with you, I know deep in my heart that It would not be a moment I would easily forget nor would I toss it aside! I would cherish the moment forever as I do you in my life.

So…basically he’s describing a fantasy where he fucks a stripper. Wonderful. “I am so in her”? Ye gods, Chandler from Friends has gotten desperate. And what the shit is up with the part where he starts talking in advertising phrases? “Where do you want to go today?” That’s the Microsoft slogan circa 1995, friends and neighbors. Cruising the internet for emotionally crippled women with no self-respect I can understand, but poorly-constructed whacking literature I cannot abide. However, Dave gets the prize for Author Least Willing to Cut an Adjective with this: “…pretty white ruffled honey dipped fine lace, into her tight hot wet enveloping butter sweet softness of her peach tasting heaven to me.”

Want to contact our friend here? Want to be Mrs. Creepy Copperfield? I got the hook up:

ATangle of thoughts
(http://springfield.craigslist.org/m4w/398281531.html )

Thank You for Coming

8/29/07

You know, I almost feel sorry for Republican Senator Larry Craig from Idaho. I’d be a lot more sympathetic if he wasn’t so hilarious. Recently a round of homoerotic innuendo stemming from his arrest in the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport for “lewd behavior” toward an undercover cop has put the brakes on his reelection bid for ‘08. Apparently that particular men’s room is well known to be a good place for a little pinch-and-tickle. Craig pled guilty to the lesser charge of “disorderly conduct.”

“Under stress” from newspaper investigations into his sex life was the odd excuse Craig gave for pleading guilty to the charge, in what was probably the most defensive, oddest press conferences ever yesterday. (See it here) He also said that he “overreacted” in copping a plea, whatever the shit that means. Craig claimed that he “did nothing wrong,” and actually spoke the words “let me be clear, I am not gay, I have never been gay.” It was about that point where I lost my shit and nearly crapped with laughter. If the phrase “methinks the man doth protest too much” has ever given you trouble, watch this spectacle and I think you’ll understand.

With every assertion Craig got consecutively more rainbow-colored. By the end of the speech he might as well have been wearing watermelon lip gloss, leather chaps and a baby t-shirt tied just under the nipples, bellowing to the crowd that he loved him some pussy! I am continually dumbfounded by people who feel the need to constantly attest to their stalwart straight-ness. Craig might as well be saying it around a stiff cock, because people who are really straight don’t often get accused of oral sex in the men’s room of Washington’s Union Station (2004), cruising for men at an REI store in Boise (1994), rumored to have had relationship with House pages (1982), and whispers of…something in his college days. Read all about it here. Craig’s response to the 1994 allegation was priceless as well:

“I’ve been in this business 27 years in the public eye here. I don’t go around
anywhere hitting on men, and by God, if I did, I wouldn’t do it in Boise, Idaho!
Jiminy!”

Normally I would consider Craig’s sexual proclivities his own damn business and nobody else’s. He has a right to privacy and I think forcibly “outing” someone is one step above pushing toddlers into traffic. I couldn’t care less that he likes wiener and frankly I am saddened by the fact that he is so consumed with self-hatred and guilt that he has to troll for dick in men’s rooms. I can even sort of forgive the fact that he’s diddling around behind his wife’s back. What I cannot abide is a hypocrite. Not only is Craig a Republican (and we all know how friendly they are to the gay community) but whenever Clinton got busted for Monica, Craig was all-too willing to wag his finger of shame. Craig felt Clinton would be getting a “slap on the wrist” if all he received for the affair was censure, and went on to say,

“The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy, a naughty boy.
I’m going to speak out for the citizens of my state, who in the majority think
that Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy.”

Although let’s give credit where credit is due; let it not be said that Senator Craig resorts to gutter language. His vernacular is so clean it squeaks. I don’t think I’ve ever heard an actual human say the word “jiminy” in conversation.

This comes at a particularly bad time for the party of the elephant, as many of them are coming up for reelection and the Republicans are terrified Democrats will get an even stronger majority in Congress. Craig is, let’s be honest, probably unelectable to retain his seat. But, given that a Democrat hasn’t been elected to the office since the early seventies, just about any Republican can probably win in Idaho. Well, any Republican who doesn’t play for the pink team, that is. Because nobody cares if you’re taking lobby kickbacks or chalking the administration with unqualified cronies, but kissing boys? Well that’s just fucking gross.


Sources:

Ain’t gay and won’t quit, says Senator Craig – Daily News Washington Bureau

Larry Craig: Still Not Gay – Washington Post

The Fall of the House of Jett

8/23/07

I realize things have been a little hushed on my old blog front, ladies and gentlemen, and I apologize if any of you are going through withdraw without long-winded, rambling columns from yours truly. I started taking online classes at OTC last week and am still getting acclimated to the system they use, as well as getting back into the role of a student after twelve years distance from school. Nevertheless!—I wish to impart an experience upon which my wife and I embarked last weekend: Plummeting thousands of feet through the air for no reason other than modern Caucasian life has become far too predictable and pedestrian.

Individually Hanni and I both always wanted to be able to check “Skydiving” off our imaginary lists of Life Experiences. It’s nice when our lists overlap like that, since I sincerely doubt “Indulge man-crush by hanging out with Bill Shatner” and “Create an army of paper maché warriors” rank anywhere on Hanni’s aspirations. So when the opportunity arose for us to accompany her friend Rosanna and this fellow Will to throw ourselves at the ground, we quickly accepted. The trouble was, we accepted a full three weeks before the jump, so we had plenty of time to just sort of sit around and grow ulcers over the thought of plummeting 10,000 feet at 120 miles per hour.

Truth be told I wasn’t terribly nervous about it. Skydive Missouri has never had a fatality in its 30-year operation, though they were a little vague about what constituted a “serious injury.” Also, I figured that either things would go swimmingly, or I would be dead; either way no worries. My dear wife, however, experienced the kind of nervous trepidation and white-hot terror usually reserved for people under heavy artillery bombardment.

On your first ever jump, you have to go tandem. Essentially this means you have someone who actually knows what they’re doing strapped to your back in case you get up there and turn into a large, quivering mound of pudding.

Now, I said I wasn’t scared or nervous and that’s true, to a point. The closest to being intimidated came when we got 2 miles up, threw open the door of the tiny Cessna, and stepped out of the bloody plane onto a platform the size of a shoebox. At this point the only thing holding us up is the instructor’s grip on the strut that holds up the wing, and we’re whipping along at 85 miles per hour. I lean my head back and, as instructed, shout “Ready! Set! GO!” and we’re off!

I can attest that earth’s gravity works spectacularly well, dear readers. What is skydiving like? Well I tell you this, it’s nothing like a roller coaster, or even going over a hill in a car, you know where your stomach drops out from under you? None of that. It really doesn’t feel like you’re moving at all. Best I can say is it’s like standing in front of an enormous fan blowing hurricane-speed winds. Also, the ground is rapidly leaping up to meet you. The instructors say that freefall is supposed to last for 40 seconds, but it felt no more than twenty to me. The next thing I know I’m looking at the ultra cool altimeter strapped to my wrist and it’s reading “6000 feet.” I signal to the instructor that I’m ready to pull the cord (you have to signal, it’s way too loud to speak) and reach down to find…nothing. That’s right, despite how many, many times I practiced it, I cannot find the damn ripcord. Never mind that the pull is the size of a salt shaker and bright, bloody orange; I can’t find it.

I don’t panic; I know we have at least ten seconds before the situation becomes critical, so I just keep looking for it and just as we rocket past 5000 feet I find the cord and—

Ba-WHOOM! The canopy balloons above us as my instructor yanks his cord, having noticed I was having trouble finding mine. That’s the only thing I regret; if given another second I could have pulled our chute but, alas, it was not to be.

The 5-minute canopy ride down was amazing. It’s totally silent up there and you’re just drifting over the land like an airship outta Final Fantasy. And they let you steer the chute, so that’s awesome. We pulled some tight spirals on the way down and landed with nary a stumble. It cost a whopping $90 per person for pictures and video so I opted not to get them, but you’re in luck, ladies and gentlemen; Hanni got both and you can see all the photos here on her page. Bear in mind that winds at that speed sort of make the human body look like an elfin mummy.

I would point out that I went this entire post without succumbing to the urge to use any combination of the phrase “jump out of a perfectly good airplane.”