Yesterday, someone broke into my dad’s place, but whoever it was didn’t steal anything, thanks to the booby traps. Cleaning up the mess must have made him contemplative, because he sent the following:

Booby traps are interesting. They have no conscience, they work around the clock for free, they don’t take breaks or leave for an hour for lunch and they are very dedicated to doing what their job is. The trick is to make them look like they actually belong there so they are not obvious. It’s also fun to make one thing distract the person from seeing the actual threat, and then when they are reacting to the first threat, they fall prey to the second. It’s always fun to try to re-enact the scene afterwards to try to figure out what happened to the “victim.” I can almost hear them, drugged up or not, screaming from surprise. Stuff like that ought to make the newspapers, but then there would be no element of surprise afterwards would there.

Continue reading “Trap Philosophy…”

Yesterday morning SS, a former vice president of a local bank, apparently murdered his wife and four children then committed suicide by driving his minivan into a sign on I-80.

People get paid for writing some crazy shit, man.

Surge, when used in reference to the Surge^TM^, has very little correspondence to the general definition of the word, surge.

I’m Moby Dick, and we’ve got three or four members of Congress who are trying to cast themselves in the part of Captain Ahab—so, they’re going to keep coming.
—Karl Rove

The American Society for Civil Engineers rates 160,570, or 27% of US bridges, including a third of all urban bridges, as structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

“Pagans have promised to conjure some “rain magicto erase a figure of Homer Simpson which has been painted next to the Cerne Abbas giant in Dorset.

Checking bibliographies sucks.

On the other hand…

Ice today, snow tomorrow; I hope this is the last big storm of the winter.

My supper was better than yours.

It would appear that Tom Cruise has been named scientology’s messiah.

I know you’ve always wanted to know how to apply 2 Samuel 6:1ff. to the eucharist.

Sarina Brewer does some wicked fantasy taxidermy.

(If your kids are around—even though I did leave out the more gruesome images—you probably shouldn’t click through.)

Continue reading “Fun with Carcasses…”

As if it didn’t echo in my ears every night just before I drift off to sleep, the E-mail I got from mom today was, to say the least, incredible:

I told your Grandmother that J— and I were making plans to live together soon… she did the “I hope you plan to get married” routine and then remarked that since “Greg hasn’t given you any grandchildren, you are getting him a baby sister for Christmas.” Could be true…

Continue reading ““I'm beginning to wonder, do you have sex?”…”

Owls, and a cat courtesy of Margaret Atwood.

Sometimes it’s necessary just to quote Dylan.

A selection of portraits on display in Los Angeles.

All OK, cats included. Checked into hotel for tonight. Calling family now. Will update later. Final update posted.

there are some crazy ideas out there!

Last night I had nose hair, which creeps down the nose like ivy creeps up a wall, peeking around the corners of my nostrils, so I determined to do something about it.

In which my readers flee to the mountians like the galley slaves freed by Don Quijote.

In which we begin our tour of nineteenth-century American landscape painting.

On Frey and a killer octopus.

I am certain you have spent much of today thinking wistfully of the days when, not so long ago, we indeed were an octopus of mayhem.

Kilauea. Lava. Ocean. Steam. Cool. Heh heh. Shut up, Beavis! This is important!