A Morning Giggle

This one made me giggle, so I thought I’d share:

Two Nations

Two Arabs boarded a flight out of London.
One took a window seat and the other sat next to him in the middle seat.
Just before takeoff, an American sat down in the aisle seat.
After takeoff, the American kicked his shoes off, wiggled his toes and was settling in when the Arab in the window seat said, “I need to get up and get a coke.”
“Don’t get up,” said the American, “I’m in the aisle seat.
I’ll get it for you.” As soon as he left, one of the Arabs picked up the American’s shoe and spat in it.
When he returned with the coke, the other Arab said, “That looks good, I’d really like one, too.” Again, the American obligingly went to fetch it. While he was gone the other Arab picked up his other shoe and spat in it.
When the American returned, they all sat back and enjoyed the flight.
As the plane was landing, the American slipped his feet into his shoes and knew immediately what had happened.
Why does it have to be this way?” he asked.

“How long must this go on?
This fighting between our nations?
This hatred?
This animosity?
This spitting in shoes and pissing in cokes.”

Kurt Vonnegut and Other Things…

I’ve been reading Kurt Vonnegut recently, and it has me off balance. When I say reading and recently, I should add that I am almost done the second book by him that I have read. It is called “Timequake”. The first I read was “Breakfast of Champions”. The reason that I am off balance is because Kurt (can I call him Kurt?) is writing in first person about events that have aparently happened to him. He tells of his history, his family, his brother who aparently exists given the picture of him on the back cover, his children and so on. He also tells of this being the year 2010. As far as I know, it is not yet the year 2010.

I checked.

I’m really getting a kick out of these books because they are original. I have not read anything like this before. There are not many authors that I have read that I can say that about, and I’ve read enough to know.

So if you have not read Kurt’s work I’d definitly recommend it. I think it’s fun to read and I am still not sure if he’s serious or not. Don’t write and tell me if he is or isn’t though, because I want to find out for myself. I’m hoping that I do, because if not I am probably not smart enough to know and I don’t deserve to find out.
That may seem a little harsh, but if you had had the kind of last Thursday I had you would be a little down in the self esteem department too, but that’s a story for a never time.

Nightmares

Okay, you know what a cicada is right? Huge, monster demon bug that makes that NOISE all night? Sonja, my dog, just comes running into the house after being outside to pee and I hear that NOISE go running past me, through the dining room and right into my bedroom. That horrible demon screaching noise. My dog has this huge, satanic bug in her mouth and she turns around with it screaming and BITES DOWN.

The screaming stops.

She drops it on the floor. It’s easily 3 inches long.

My dog, who licks my face when she’s happy to see me, looks right into my eyes for a moment. She bends down, picks up this spawn from hell and starts to chew. She finishes every last bite, goes and has a drink of water and lays down.

Look, everyone has their thing. Some people are afraid of mice. I love mice. They can play in my hair if they want to. Some are afraid of dogs. I love dogs. I’ll go up to any dog and it’s my buddy in 10 seconds. I don’t do bugs. Any bugs. I hate bugs. I might never sleep again.

If that isn’t enough to convince you, take a look at this incredible picture Scott took of a bug getting ready to totally kick his ass.

Endangered species my ass.

UPS Sucks

Status: In Transit
Scheduled Delivery: Aug 8, 2003
Shipped to: SHAWNEE MISSION, KS, US
Shipped or Billed on: Aug 5, 2003
Tracking Number: 1Z 159 XXX XX XXXX XXX 9
Service Type: GROUND
Weight: 1.00 Lb

Package Progress:

Date Time Location Activity

Aug 14, 2003 2:19 A.M. HODGKINS, IL, US DEPARTURE SCAN
2:02 A.M. HODGKINS, IL, US ARRIVAL SCAN
Aug 13, 2003 12:22 P.M. SECAUCUS, NJ, US DEPARTURE SCAN
Aug 12, 2003 11:46 P.M. SECAUCUS, NJ, US ARRIVAL SCAN
10:25 P.M. FARMINGDALE, NY, US DEPARTURE SCAN
7:21 P.M. FARMINGDALE, NY, US ORIGIN SCAN
5:17 A.M. FARMINGDALE, NY, US DELAYED IN UPS ORIGIN FACILITY;FORWARDED TO DESTINATION
Aug 7, 2003 1:32 P.M. LENEXA, KS, US ARRIVAL SCAN
Aug 6, 2003 2:37 P.M. SECAUCUS, NJ, US DEPARTURE SCAN
Aug 5, 2003 11:45 P.M. SECAUCUS, NJ, US ARRIVAL SCAN
10:23 P.M. FARMINGDALE, NY, US DEPARTURE SCAN
9:19 P.M. FARMINGDALE, NY, US ORIGIN SCAN
9:02 A.M. US BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED

The Flash Mob That Wasn’t

Tonight myself and some fun lovin’ pranksters organized a flash mob down at the Plaza. The instructions were to meet at the north side of the J.C. Nichols fountain at 7:03pm wearing a black shirt for more instructions. At 6:45 there was a news van parked on the side of the road. At 6:50 there were two and cameramen with cameras taping anyone wearing black. Soon after that the first cop car pulled up. Not content to watch from the sidelines he drove over the curb, down the hill, across the park and hid behind a tree. The second one took the southwest corner and also hid behind some trees. I couldn’t see the snipers, but then, you aren’t supposed to.

“Don’t put your black shirt on till 7:03pm”, and people didn’t. You could tell though. They looked excited. They looked at everyone’s eyes. They looked like they just might be wearing one more shirt than you normally would in the dead of summer. I talked to my cohort, “Bill”, on my cell,

“What do you think man?”, I said.
He laughs. Shocked at the outcome. I am too, and scared, to be honest.
Another cop pulls up alongside the curb.
“I’m gonna walk away.”, I said. I have some stuff I wanted to finish tonight and being in jail would really hamper that.
“Hold up. Let’s at least wait till the time. If you are uncomfortable, just don’t approach.”
“Cool, cya.”

A girl walks up and sits down next to me. She’s got a black shirt balled up in her hands. She says she was just talking to a group of 5 and they have decided to leave. Scared off by the cops.
I pull a piece of paper out of my back pocket. I’ve got another 50 there.
“So I guess you don’t want one of these?”
“Oh, I do. I’m in.”
“Awesome.”
“Those guys were just videotaping me.”
“Yea, I can’t believe it.”

The two cops in the park drive off and generally circle the place. There’s an awful lot of people milling around now. Let’s do it. I approach Bill and we walk a little further north and sit down. People start to come over and sit down with us. We all know why we’re there and we just chat happily. Take some pictures of the news crews. We’re already past the time the instructions say to do our thing, so we start pushing it back. We end up with about 20 people hanging around, with some more obviously afraid to approach.
“Okay, 7:30 instead of 7:10. Let’s go.”
Bill is in charge of team A, I’ve got team B. We start handing out instructions. As soon as the papers come out a few more people walk over. We all disperse and I hand out a few more flyers as I walk around the plaza. Catina takes a handful and does the same.

I’m wandering around nervous as hell. Suburban boy causing a ruckus. 5 minutes to go. Everything looks clear. The news packed up and went home. The cops have left.

1 minute left. I start to walk over to the spot. Two cops come around the corner and pull up next to the curb across from me. I don’t see the other two around the corner till after I leave. Catina says, “We’re not doing it. Bill just said. Too many cops.” I see him across the way, wave, nod and walk away. I’m walking with her back to the car and we walk past a cop in his car. He’s got our instructions in his hand and he’s on his radio. Woops.

Bills calls me as I’m driving home. He says the goateed guy milling around works for The Star, or KCTV or something. Someone gave him a flyer and he gave it to the police. Bill says when he left there were cops all around our spot, and three videocameras. We talk about what went wrong. Too public. The next one will be invite only, email only, tell the friends you trust. No web site, no Yahoo group, no publicity. Hopefully no one will know about it till it is over and we’re having a beer.

I don’t have a lot to say about the police presence. I wish they weren’t there, but it’s not unexpected. Their job is to keep the peace, and we were gonna make a little noise for a few minutes. We learned our lesson. They just won’t know about the next one.

It was The Flash Mob That Wasn’t, and it was a hell of a lot of fun. It didn’t even happen, but it was exciting, thrilling and all around very cool. I can’t wait till next time.

If you want to be emailed, drop me a line and let me know. I’ll add you to the list.

Catina took some pictures, and I took a few. Check them out here.

Brush Creek

I took the camera for a walk down at Brush Creek late last night to see if it would see anything interesting. It did, and here are my results. I took my tripod with me and walked around looking like a big dork for a few hours. Unfortunatly, it turns out, the tripod didn’t help very much at all. I trashed probably 75% of the shots I took because they were all blurry. I can’t really remember now if I was keeping my hands on the tripod as I exposed the pictures, so I guess next time I just need to pay more attention.

My tripod doesn’t seem to be terribly stable, compared to others I have used. I imagine this is because I spent $49.99 and others have spent $200.00+. To get the camera up to my eye level, or even close I have to crank up the center post quite high (almost maxed, really) which detracts from the stability. So off to get a new tripod soon, I guess.

The walk along Brush Creek is really beautiful at night, if you can get over the smell. It’s a sewer, and it stinks sometimes. If you hold your nose though, it’s quite beautiful and there were plenty of couples peacefully making out on benches.

Right after I walked down onto the sidewalk I passed a bench with three girls chatting and smoking. As I passed, they said, “Please scare the rat away”. Now, I am like Mr. Suburb and have been most of my life. I don’t spend much time in cities, and even less near giant meandering sewers so I had a little bit of confusion over this. “Rat?” said I. They pointed and there, in all it’s glory, was the first giant city sewer rat I have ever seen in my life. I was pretty happy about it really. I’d never seen one and I’ve always read about “rats the size of small dogs” and so on. This one was more like the size of a large rat, but it was still cool and I said so. “Oh, cool!”. I guess they realized at this point I was not going to be their heroic savior so they switched tactics. “Take his picture!” and I said, “You know, I think I will.”

All my gear was still bagged up and such so I sat down on the grass to dig it all out. This of course scared the rat away so I guess mission accomplished. “You were too slow.” The rat ran right over to the girl’s bench and then took off down the sidewalk. They shrieked like girls should when a rat comes near them and I giggled and walked away.

As I am walking I come across an area where I can see the moon in the clouds and I think it looks great, so I stop to take some pictures. There is a couple making out on the wall 50 feet or so away, and I think they thought I was taking their picture. I felt a little weird about the whole thing but I couldn’t come up with a good way to tell them I wasn’t taking their picture without sounding like a fool so I just sucked it up. Some of my friends who are photographers have no problem taking pictures of people without asking, or seem to, but I am pretty shy and that doesn’t work for me. All in all, I bet if I had asked they wouldn’t have minded if I did take their picture, but I was just there for the moon baby.

The rest of the walk was pretty laid back and mellow. I really need to spend more time outside when the sun is down. It’s a lot more relaxing than sitting on IRC (irc.fazed.net, #fazed) and trying to make Unicode work in id3lib. At around 11:05 I stolled over to The Cheesecake Factory to utterly destroy my diet. After successfully communicating that I wanted a slice of cheesecake to the mexican girl cleaning up the cheesecake area she told me they were closed. “No more. No open.” Of course, people were still dining and presumably had the right to order desert, but whatever. No cheesecake for me.

So all in all, a nice night. The Plaza area was very calm and peaceful around 10ish, which probably everyone but me already knew. I probably should have left the camera at home though. It was barely worth it. So much to learn 🙂