Thursday, August 31, 2006

Sorry I've been Lax: I can't concentrate with my current familial drama

Some of you might have noticed I was a little out of sorts during the Kleinman weekend. It was because my mind was in another place, as I was wondering how my dad’s surgery was going. I was told on that Friday that he might never walk again. Here’s what happened…

Rogue Bear on the Rampage
Courtesy of the Lexington Herald
BY LES HANCOCK

HAVING delivered the last of his explosives to seismic crews working on the Alaska Highway, George G-Stoff, a 58-year-old teacher from Cleveland, Ohio decided to stop off at the Big Bone Lick State Park. There, his 15-year-old dog, Annie, and her friend Tweed, who were along for the ride, could enjoy a swim.
As G-Stoff relaxed beside the springs, watching the girls play, terrifying screams suddenly erupted from the park's famous Hanging Gardens. The sound jolted G-Stoff to his feet.
He rushed along a rain-slicked boardwalk and up some wooden stairs to reach the gardens' viewing platform -- and stopped, horrified. On the wooden structure, a huge bear straddled a young boy beside the motionless form of a woman. Both were covered with blood from deep gashes in their swimsuit-clad bodies.

PATTI M_ had been driving north from Paris, Texas, for over a week, heading for Alaska to start a new life. The vivacious 37-year-old mother hoped to get a job there and raise her two kids, Kelly, 13, and Kristin, seven.
Climbing a flight of steps through the bush, they came to a viewing platform. So intent were mother and son on identifying the exotic plants, they paid no attention to a rustling in the bushes beside the boardwalk. M_ glanced at her watch. "Kelly, I'm worried about Kristin. I'm going to find her."
M_ started down the wet steps. As she reached for the railing to steady herself, something drew her attention. She looked up into the eyes of a black bear -- a big adult male sitting in the shrubbery chewing on a dogwood branch.
Cautiously, Kelly edged towards his mother. The bear snorted, then lunged through the railing and onto the boardwalk. "Mom! Run!"
Kelly saw in horror the bear engulf his mother's almost naked body with its own. Despite his slight stature, the 13-year-old ran at the creature and kicked it in the face. "Get off my mom!"
The bear looked up, grunted and went back to its prey.
Searching for a weapon, Kelly snatched up a sawed-off tree limb. With a strength born of anger, he smashed at the bear's head, all the while screaming for help.
The sight of his mother's blood on the bear's canines spurred Kelly on. Lunging furiously with his stick, he hit the animal squarely on the nose, drawing blood. The bear growled and swung a paw at Kelly, ripping deep claw marks into his neck and shoulders.
His mother lay beside him, her skin ashen, her eyes open and unblinking. He tried to crawl towards her, but the bear pounced again, tearing chunks out of his flesh. The animal's foul, rancid breath made Kelly want to vomit. He closed his eyes. He knew he was about to die.
George G-Stoff quickly took in the horrifying scene. Grabbing a fallen tree branch, he hammered it against the railing.
"Hey! Get off!" he yelled. The bear paid no attention. G-Stoff tore off a bigger branch and rammed it into the bear's stomach, hoping to push the animal away from the child.
The bear rose from his victim and charged towards G-Stoff. The impact knocked him right through the railing, bear and man tumbling into the bush. Clad only in his swim trunks, G-Stoff tried to protect his body from the bear's slashing claws by scrambling on his knees to a tree and covering his head with his hands.
FRANK NERDLINGER, 71, was lounging on a deck overlooking the lower pool when he heard the screams. Just a bunch of kids, he thought. Then he heard shouts: "Help!" "Bear!" "Get a gun!" He immediately took off in their direction.
At the viewing platform, there were two bloodstained bodies on the deck. But it was the terrifying scene below the deck that was riveting. G-Stoff, still alive, was struggling weakly. The bear's jaws were clamped tight around his ankle, its claws slashing at his already torn and bloody body. He was a one man action force fighting the oldest enemy of man, the bear, also known as Nature’s Furry Hell Tank.
Nerdlinger, with a history of heart attacks, was exhausted but vainly continued to pound away at the bear. He turned to the other victims, and knelt beside M_ and felt for a pulse. He knew the woman was dead, but his training dictated that he try to resuscitate her.
Just then Kelly moaned, and Nerdlinger rushed to his side.
Suddenly the bear's left paw curled over the edge of the deck centimetres from Kelly's feet.
Furious, Nerdlinger stood up and delivered a weak ineffective kick with his hiking boots. The animal staggered back, but instead of retreating, it moved down the slope towards the boardwalk, where people were still passing.
Nerdlinger turned back to the boy, who was trying to crawl to his mother. "Help my mom," he pleaded in a whisper.
"Don't worry," Nerdlinger said. "We're doing all we can. You mustn't move. Breathe slowly." He would then quickly run away because he was a big baby.
DAVE WEBBER, a 49-year-old businessman from Fairbanks, Alaska, had just arrived at the park when an exhausted man dripping blood from his temple ran up. "You've got to do something. There's a bear up there!" Nerdlinger panted, explaining what had happened. Webb nodded, raced back to his motor home and brought out a Winchester 30.30, then rushed towards the scene of amazing carnage. He heard low groans coming from below the boardwalk. Just then the bear flew out of the tree like an attack eagle and knocked the rifle from Webb’s hands, and not just from his hands, but his hands popped off his body from the force of the hit. Amazingly, almost like he was Obi Wan doing some force thing, the Winchester landed right in G-Stoff’s hands. Even though he was fading into unconsciousness, he pulled the useless hands off the stock and slipped his own steely mitts onto the killing rod of death.
“Payback’s a bitch Mr. Bear, payback’s a bitch.” G-Stoff quietly muttered, then aimed carefully for the back of the bear's neck, and fired. The bear slumped down. G-Stoff knew it was dead, but he fired twice more to be sure.
The horror at Big Bone Lick was finally over.
Patti M_ died that afternoon. But thanks to the courage of George G-Stoff, Frank Nerdlinger and the others, Kelly M_ and Amy Van der Spelling survived. Flown out to a hospital, they both eventually recovered from their terrible wounds.

Monday, August 28, 2006

Optical Allusions

Focus your eyes on the center. Or, alternately, intensely Unfocus your eyes at the center. (It works best if you are two handwidths away from your monitor with the settings @ 1048*820 w/162 bit color.) Now, what do YOU see?

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((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
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((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
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Hint: It's a boat with an astronaut on it.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Damn gray hairs

Interesting Article on the state of "gen x" career-climbers being stiffled by those damn baby boomers.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Poseur?


Read Birdflag's post below. It's very illuminating.

But I have a question needing immediate response. A coworker of mine has a Lenny Kravitz wallpaper on her desktop. She's also really into music. Is this possible? I don't understand how someone who's really into music can be into Lenny Kravitz, his first 2 albums aside. Can someone explain this phenomenon?

My spiel is your Amen Break.




I have been away for so long. It’s been a bad idea, there’s probably so many folks that left to never come back. This first post back probably won’t even do me justice. Too short or too scattered, or just more of the lame. And I think I’ll just write about my dad only. What else would I bother writing about?

I’ll run down the last few weeks bullet point outline style.

1-My dad came to visit me. We had a good time; going on hikes, seeing the sites, shaming me into not drinking… In the seven days he was here, I was down to less than one beer a night. So I had to wait until Friday night when I could sneak out after he went to bed and go over to a party. It was like I was reliving the high school child hood I never had.
I even rode my bike so I could be quieter and drunker.

2-Dad got to meet my ex girlfriend, but unfortunately did not meet any potential future girlfriend. Danimal ran up to him at an ultimate game we were watching and mumble-shouted that “It’s okay, he (me) is not gay.” I would imagine that having a sweaty Pete Rose look a like assure you of your son’s sexuality is not that assuratative.

3-My parents have decided to move out west. This is a three year plan. Three years because that is how long it will take them to sell all their crap. (see previous posts re:A-crap, “amounts of” = sub index :”my parents”) So Dad and I spent a day looking at houses in Olympia. While he did find a house he really liked, it turned out that it was already sold. The owner of the house evidently didn’t think he had sold it yet, when he had.

4-Unperturbed by the failure to buy a house in person, they bought one over the internet. This dwarfs their previous major purchases of items sight unseen by a few figures. Hopefully this is better than the Diner Trailer, and the Airstream motor home fiascos. I have a goal, and that goal is to go see the house this weekend. Wish me luck. If it all works out, we’ll go have a party up there since my parents will be out of town. Out of town until roughly 2009. Kegger is the plan.

5-Dad and I spent a few days in Tacoma, and we had one of those great moments. My bro was at work, and so dad and I had the oldest nephew out there trying to teach him to rise without training wheels. Dad was the brawn and brains with his grandson, doing the majority of the teaching, but I stepped in with the late empathy to stop him from quitting when he was frustrated. The next trip around the block he got it. Riding solo with no help. Makes you feel pretty good and special. I filmed it, but knowing my luck it’s all jerky shots of everything but him riding a bike.

6-On the drive home dad gets the rental ford focus up to speed (60 mph) and hits cruise. That makes for a long drive. Luckily we have a bond that allows for us to spend hours at a time not talking. Our sum total conversation for the three hour drive is below. Not edited at all. Every single word is contained.

TheCruise-the road veers here, take the right lane.
G-Stoph-Okay. Don’t want to go to Seattle.
G-Stoph-Who is this?
The Cruise-Tom Waits. It’s my favorite song of his. Petty sad one..
The Cruise-Those lights there are the airport.
G-Stoph- Huh.
The Cruise-You can only turn right onto Powell.

7-I’ll gloss over him losing his driver’s license somewhere in Oregon, conveniently right before he has to get on a plane. Luckily Southwest saved the Osama for your mama, and let him back on his flight.
Now some OSU kid has a sweet fake where he’s a 58 year old bald dude.

8-I’ll shove this up on the site, but stay tuned for the major G-Stoph development that warrants its own post …

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Can't Stop the Shinin'

Day 3
Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head. Is that from something? Showered and got to use my shampoo, washcloth, and conditioner from my commissary. I think the shampoo is antibacterial hand soap and the conditioner is hand lotion. My hair has a great sheen, like Charlie… I mean Kasey.

Let me explain the shower scenario. There is no group shower (halleluiah); there are individual showers. However, there is not much room to move around much, so each shower is like playing a human game of Operation. I very carefully wash, all the time balancing perfectly so not to touch the walls of the shower. If I touch the wall, eeerrrrrr, the buzzer sounds. I lose and on top of that I get some strange prison shower disease. Maybe scurvy or the gout; I don’t know what these are, but they sound bad.

Not much going on; I have learned some information, but only from videos. Counselors seem to be in short supply for us two 10 dayers! New 30-60 day mofos keep coming – a couple per day. I talked to two today; they were alright. They did not resent me like the others. One is 20 years old and has two DUIs. He seems to be a generally good kid, but is full of shit. He is stuck between being open and easy and being the hard rock badass jailbait. He imitates the others when around them. The other guy is the former president of Kroger’s son. He went to college at Virginia Tech and worked for Coke for years. He now works his own business out of his parents’ house in Kenwood. He has very thin hair on top of his head, but not in one spot, all over. Female pattern baldness, like my grandma has. He is easy and somewhat intellectual to talk to, but he is not afraid to mention his rich daddy and that he worked with a fortune 500 company. Daddy’s little boy thinks that there is no way they will keep him in here past 30 days. Besides these quirks, he is tolerable. Oh, by the way. He has three DUIs; two in three months. (Later in my stay, I heard him lying and telling peeps that he only has 2 DUIs total) He also dropped the fact that he was on a baseball scholarship in college and that he has had a brand new BMW (which he wrecked in his last DUI). The more and more I write, the more and more he bugs the shit out of me.

I went in my room and Ike (my 5’ tall, 48 year old roomy) was hanging in the corner window as usual. I started to talk to him and realized he is a good man. Has a wife of 25 years, three kids all grown and out of the house, owns his house, and has four cars. All he wants to do is get home to his wife. He has at least two weeks left. He has four DUIs total, and at least the gap between the last two was 11 years. We chatted and watched Woodburn for about a half an hour. I kept thinking of Kim and Kasey. I can relate to some of the feelings of these men, but not to their actions. Most have serious family problems and have nothing else going.
I feel a bit brainwashed because I watch these videos and hear the stories from the AA leads. Even though I have not done any of their deeds, I can’t help but imagine myself as them. I am almost tricking myself into thinking I am out of control. BACK TO REALITY! I do stupid shit because of ignorant “live the moment” spontaneity. Overdue the moment. My problem blankets everything in my life, but it is clearly not an alcohol problem. Mine is a habit problem. Change habits for good and end periodic stupidity.

Monday, August 07, 2006

Not Scared

We're not scared by your life-behind-bars, bad boy image. I feel like I know you now. After spending countless hours w/ Kyle planning the big tournament we organized this past weekend, I have heard many stories about many things. And every time he references you, he says, "you know Adam.......from the blog."

We've just been too busy to post anything coherent. Or think or speak anything coherently for that matter.

Theme today? Exhaustion -- what has it caused you to do? How many hours in a row have you slept in an effort to recover? What is the best excuse for calling in sick?