Carolyn: "The big one in the middle was totally hissing at me. " ........ Clint: "ducks hiss?" ........ Carolyn: "Canadian geese do. Those things are mean. Ask Tabbitha."
Tabbitha, on geese:
“I am tickled that my pure and poignant hatred for geese (especially of the Canadian variety) has made enough of an impression on others that it can be referenced in a caption.
Geese are evil and must die. Fucking geese. I spit on you, flying oversized rodents. If only there were flying oversized snakes that could sqeeze the breath out of them mid-air and swallow their twitching goose bodies whole.”
“So many geese. So few opportunities to kick them in the head with my Doc Martins.” (more…)
[originally posted 3/25/2008] Because I am outspoken, have a powerful web presence, and have unpopular and unapologetic opinions, I tend to attract trolls from time to time. For example, the guy who argued that we must protest South Park — before the series even came out. Honestly, I might be the actual troll here, as I deliberately put some stuff up to bait people into leaving responses, which is the definition of trolling. But that definition usually applies to neutral forums, not to posting to your own forum. So I’ll go ahead and call the people who attack me on my own spaces “trolls”, in the “I’m rubber you’re glue” spirit.
This is in response to my “What Would Jesus Smoke?” blogposts HERE, as well as my What Would Jesus Smoke (and other Jesus) Flickr images HERE.
These pictures draw “Christian soldiers” from all over the place, causing them to hurl entertaining vitriol in my direction. I fucking love it.
I always thought “Ye who has not sinned should cast the first stone”, but hey, Christians don’t seem to know much about being Christ-like, just like Muslims don’t seem to know much about being Mohammad-like. (And if they did, they would all have 6-year-old wives like Mohammad.) My uncle Sean has already published, analyzed, and commented on this letter, and there are already a few comments over there on his blog. He is more calm and collected, and can say how I feel better than I can. :)
Anyway, this gets ugly. Very ugly. Read on to see the love God puts in all Christians’ hearts. (That was sarcasm.) (more…)
I saw someone else post a month-by-month list of their favorite pictures from the year. What a good idea! I shall jump on that bandwagon, too. So here are some of my favorite pictures of 2009, month by month, all from my flickr (but NOT all taken by me).
I’ll try to keep it to 2-5 pictures a month.
I also will be including New Year’s Eve (2008->2009 transition) as it’s own month, since I usually don’t get my pictures up in a timely fashion.
Click any picture to follow through to my flickr, where it will be explained in much more detail. Or hover over the picture for a [very] brief summary. (more…)
So yes — we went to another SubGenius event. The Baltimore Devival #2. This time, we actually got a friend to join us: Tabbitha! I’ve always considered her the most latent SubGenius out of all of my friends anyway. (I’d say John The Canadien too, but he’s already found “Bob”!) I wore my psychedelic / optical illusion shirt, pimp hat, green sparkling smoking jacket, and camouflage pants. Almost wore a space-themed tie, but decided against it, despite the cold, by assuming the venue would be too hot for a tie to be comfortable, and too dark for space tie to be visible.
refrigerator podium – to be used for preaching later
We got off to a late start due to generally being punk-ass slowpokes. Baltimore is a long way away; over an hour’s drive. And poor Tabbitha had to drive to our place in addition to that. Then there was the whole detour on the way back to pick up my car, but I’ll talk about that later. We managed to blaze in town just around the opening time, so technically we were 15 minutes or so late. There was one good sign pointing out that we were in the correct place: A huge projectedDobbshead, obscuring a woman’s health advertisement. It was a sign from “Bob”:
The parking itself was really weird. You basically had to park in a lot that said you’d be towed if you parked there. But it was pretty much empty. And this seemed like a quiet neighborhood. Not a good neighborhood; but a quiet one. Not so busy that tow trucks were on the prowl. And since Baltimore is a city full of douchebags (I got a ticket for not feeding a meter at 11:30PM on a Saturday fucking nite!), we weren’t sure if we could park there. We finally drove away, circled around, and came back a second time when we realized there was no where else to park.
Dammit Janet and Tangent were asking us — “Have you seen a power tools band before?” … I really was totally clueless when they asked that. I finally learned the meaning of “power tools band”, and it was quite literal. And the great thing is, since SubGeniuses hate rules… You could walk right into the sparks if you so chose. And that’s what I did (almost)… I eventually wound up right next to the “sparks girl”, where I could get a good vantage of the carnage. At one point, she lost her spark thingies (they flew forward from the force of the power tools), and pulled these aluminum squares from her pockets to spark up in an emergency!
Anyway, here’s some crappy (because my camera sucks) video of them playing:
(Yes, it’s 2 copies of the same video, one on flickr, one on youtube, just in case the other goes down.)
Anyway, beer was a consideration for us. The first Baltimore SubGenius Devival occurred in a church, which obviously did not have a liquor license. Tons of people were drinking (and thus huge lines for the bathrooms), but they all had the foresight to bring their own. Not wanting to repeat the mistakes of last year, we bought beer on the way — part of why we were late. We also enquired about the beer when we arrived. Princess Pisces was outside, and I asked her, and apparently it was a donation to get beer — like at Art-O-Matic. Except without fixed prices. (I always wondered how ArtOMatic could “cheat” this by “suggesting” a specific “donation”.)
And what is the most slackful donation to make? $1. This seemed to be fine with everyone. We drank a shitload for $1.
The place it was at – Load Of Fun – was a very strange warehousey kind of venue. Not much of it was properly maintained. There were 3 bathrooms, but one did not have a working sink:
The Worst Sink In All Of Scotland
There was a lot of graffiti in various places as well:
charming
I of course decided to explore. There was no security in any form whatsoever, other than various locked doors upstairs. I managed to explore every nook and crannie that could be explored without picking a lock. And there was some neat stuff… like… Stairs?!?!?!?!:
yes, stairs
There was all kinds of weird things up there… Including a dilapidated cart that really did not look safe to move any amount of actual weight on….
Once I got 2 floors above the main level, things got even more sketchy. The light was pretty much just the city light that came through the windows. There was a long narrow hallway and things were in such bad condition that I walked slowly to ensure boards didn’t break beneath my feet. Eventually I wasdeposited me into this strange area with caged books. I found it very odd, as well as a seemingly accidental social commentary on free speech in America:
free thinking has no place in modern america
keep the children safe
I also found a rogue “OH!”, this time not placed there by me:
OH!
The various bands (Motor Morons, Fat Free, Amino Acids) played, with various preachers (Rev. Ivan Stang, Princess Pisces, Rev. Carter LeBlanc) preaching in between:
Stang speaks!
Eventually, Susie The Floozy passed out candy fangs. These were arguably cooler than the candy eyeballs we got last year:
We of course ran into several of the friends we made at X-Day, including 808 and Christie (with the Gashlycrumb Tinies tattoo). They may be at Assateague this year. The Asian chick in the background might be the subject of the “scrambled naked girl” artwork that I took back from this devival and put up on my wall. I’ll have to ask Reggie Zus.
Carolyn, 808, Christie
Eventually, Tabbitha had to explore the 2nd floor as well, since 2 of the bathrooms were on the “1.5th floor” (kind of a half-floor between 1st and 2nd floor), and most SubGenii are way too fond of slack to go up an additional flight of stairs without konwing for sure there is a bathroom. Anyway, it wasn’t long before she found a sign to disobey:
Even latent SubGenii are possessed with an urge to break any and all rules.
Finally we went out for a smoke break in the alley behind the venue, and checked out some of the cool graffiti:
“There!”
It got cold, so we went back in and resumed watching the bands / preaching:
watching bands
Stang’s jacket reminded me of my own, only silver instead of green:
Stang’s shiny smoking jacket
Stang preaching
Carter LeBlanc preaching
The last band to play is always the Amino Acids. They pulled Carolyn and some other females onto the stage…
Anyway… A good time was had by all. We got to experience preaching, music, intoxication, unique people, as well as reconnecting with some of the cool people we had met at X-Day this year. Plus, Reggie Zus let me take home a piece of art that he had on display there. He said he printed it for free at school, so why not give it away for free? I don’t have a proper picture of it, but you can see it in the top of this picture, behind our cats playing with bubbles:
To view all my pictures (basically the same pictures as this posting) on flickr (in case you want to individually comment), go to my SubGeniusDevival20081115 tag on flickr.
Carolyn really wanted to go camping at least one more time this season so that she can take the kitties while they are still young. After being rained out a few weeks ago, Carolyn was determined to go no matter what. The forecast called for rain — but only 0.1 inch during the day (60% chance, and it didn’t happen). But there was a 70% chance of rain during the night — half an inch; significantly more (and that did happen). Carolyn was pissed.
After much convincing, we ended up below our six-person quorum, but still had a good crowd, with Tabbitha, Eli, Carolyn, Clint, and even a surprise Evan! Good times.
Unfortunately, it did rain on us. Eli set up Carolyn’s small tarp with some help from Evan and Carolyn, and we spent a good amount of time huddled underneath it. But this was only at night time. And it didn’t rain hard — you could go potty without an umbrella and stay relatively dry.
Eventually we all realized we couldn’t keep our eyes open. We made a pact to take a 1-hour nap, and we all went to our separate tents. When Carolyn woke up several hours later, she heard the rain was still at it, and decided not to try to wake anyone up.
Tabbitha apparently got up really early and somehow got really soaked. She was mostly dry by the time everyone else woke up. She hung out in the path, with no trees overhead — apparently a lot of the water falling was from the trees, and it wasn’t *really* raining so much if you stood in a path with no trees over you.
Because of the rain, most of our pictures are from the next day.
The next day was dry, beautiful, and we spent quite some time (8:30AM-2PMish) there. In the end, we were there for 27 hours, and only awake and being rained on for about 4 of them. Sleep was 8 more hours, and the other 15 hours were awesome! We ate like kings and had more fun than if we’d stayed in!
Oranjello, Lemonjello – in the car
Driving on the way up, the kitties found a nice place to nap. Nice, but not necessarily safe. With their help, Clint did manage to flip the car into neutral once.
martian pineapple – delapidated
Upon arriving, Carolyn sought out the fungus thing Gene had discovered last trip, which Clint christened Martian Pineapples. The stuff had turned black! What’s up with that?
Oranjello, Lemonjello – in the firepit
The kitties explored the fire pit for the first time together. So far, they’re batting 0 for 2 (car gear shifter, firepit) with finding safe places to hang out. We were glad there wasn’t a fire made already. Fortunately they’re not so stupid as to walk into an open flame.
Oranjello, Lemonjello – by the firepit – Oranjello de-tangling
One thing we learned camping: Lemonjello is the smartest kitty when it comes to his leash getting untangled. He will actually try to untangle himself by walking different directions — sometimes systematically (for a few seconds anyway, which is as long as cats’ attention spans last). This includes walking backwards. He would do this until he either untangled himself, pulled hard enough to knock over what he was tangled on, or discovered that he was truly trapped with no hope for escape — at which point, he’d start meowing at the top of his lungs. But he never complained right away; he always tried to work it out on his own.
Carolyn, Oranjello, Lemonjello – tying rope around tree Oranjello is a big kitty now, and he has no fear. He was started to wander too far, and further tests indicated he would have definitely wandered completely out our eyesite if left unchecked. So Carolyn decided to tie him up so she wouldn’t have to worry about him getting lost.Meanwhile, Clint‘s solution to deal with tethering Oranjello down temporarily while Carolyn ties the rope to the tree? Tie Oranjello’s leash to little Lemonjello’s leash. This did indeed slow Oranjello down, keeping him from wandering off (even slowly)… But this solution would work much better with two equal-sized cats. Lemonjello was being pulled all over the place, and was quite miserable due to being dragged around by Oranjello. But it only lasted a couple minutes, and Lemonjello got to wander free all night, while Oranjello got to be tied down — tangling himself over and over and over again all night long. Who really won?
Chill kitty face:
camping – 169-691Lemonjello, Oranjello – on lap
These cats like to stay on your lap at times. Here they are chilling on Carolyn’s lap.Oranjello has the most relaxed cat expression ever! “Whateva’, man!”
And Carolyn’s favorite picture is this one, due to how funny I look:
Clint, Eli – give me trailmix Carolyn thinks this picture is hilarious. Clint‘s reaching out like, “Gimme trailmix NOW!”, and Eli is looking very sly.
Now, Oranjello gets the full-cat leash, and Lemonjello gets the kitten leash:
Clint demonstrating how Lemonjello can just hang from his leash without being choked — something essential for cat leashes. His tail looks sooo pathetic.
Of course, cats were still a bit freaked out at times. But nobody was as scared as Misfit was when he went:
Oranjello – hanging out in tent Oranjello took shelter in the kitty tent. Look how alarmed he is !There was also a really funny moment when he was behind the tent, and tried to jump through the rear screen ‘window’ of our tent. Twice. That was LOL-inducing.
Eli coming meant the quality of our food was better than if we went to a restaurant…
camping – 169-692breakfast cooking Eli‘s cooking FTW! We also ate excellent pig butt (which really means pig shoulder) the night before. Excellent.
Meat to KILL for. (Somebody killed that pig!)
Lemonjello – leash ears = murderous intentions Clint gave Lemonjello leash ears. He did NOT like that. Notice how he looks like he is plotting Clint’s imminent murder.
I can be cheezburger?
We had some leftover buns that we decided to throw into the woods for the birds. When Clint got his, he got a great idea to make Lemonjello into a cheezburger.
And of course, this disgusting but very neat and interesting thing came by:
One of those evil-looking caterpillers came around. Oranjello was very interested. The caterpiller had some nasty spikes that he would curl up and point at Oranjello, and Oranjello did get poked a couple of times by getting his nose to close to it.
The group picture this trip came out rather weirdly. Parts of 3 different pictures were incorporated:
I’ve wanted to blog about a lot of crap, but I always have crap to do. Even with no job. So anyway, this is my new year’s catchup post. LOTS OF PARTY PICTURES INCLUDED!
Thanks to everyone who came out: AE, Ben, Bunnelanie & her horny-for-Mark sister, Carrie & husband, Chris Y, Christian & Shannon, Dan & Erin, Darren & Debbie, Eli, Evan, Gene & Heather, Greg & Nicole, Jason, Jason & Anna, Jay, Jeremy, Joe, John The Canadien, Jon B, Justin, Mandy M, Mark, Melanie S and her couple-friend, Parthena & Peter, Sammy, and Tabbitha, and a couple random people who’s names I don’t remember (that’s about 41 people, counting Carolyn & I). (more…)
Ryan reviewedRobo-Rally on his blog. This is a great game! So great that it used to be $300 on Ebay! Fortunately, it is now back in print for about $50, with some slightly improved rules. I have played this game with people who have played it for 20+ years (Jason), people who like board games, and even with complete non-gamers (Tabbitha won!) — and it has always been liked. It hurts the brain a bit, too. Actually, it hurts the brain a LOT. (more…)
Well, we all went camping this weekend, and it was nice to know we actually succeeded. Last April we tried to set up camping trip “2006 #1” and it became canceled three times due to people backing out (almost always unnecessarily) due to the weather. It was nice that this camping trip worked out in a single try! (more…)
I mean, it was a surprise. John The Canadien was planning on coming over, and I expected Kipp and perhaps Mark. We were there to potentially celebrate Tabbitha’s birthday. I didn’t expect Jesse & Melanie to come over, or Bunnelanie (Melanie B). Then Glen C called, and pretended to be Jesse, and severely messed with my head to the point that I felt threatened. He’d never come over before, and brought his friend Jess, and they both chilled at our place for awhile, and it had been quite awhile since we’d given a “house tour”. Tabbitha and Laszlo came over once they were done with their movie (but not before Glen & Jess had left). Mark, Jesse, & Melanie left shortly thereafter. We had 10 people at once, 12 total.
We played a few games of Werewolf, among other things. The 10-player games were definitely a lot more interesting than a minimum 8-player game. It was a bit strange springing the game on Glen & Jess who not only had never played, but had never been to our place or met any of our friends.
Carolyn got REALLY DRUNK and somehow decided that we had to talk about and listen to Sabbat’s 3rd album, which I have labelled as “crap” on the local harddrive. I sold the CD to her, I think, because it sucked so much. John The Canadien felt compelled to blog about this, and his headline is hilarious:
We finished the evening up with 5 episodes of Metalocalypse. A few people slept over, and Kipp & I played a 2-player game of Culdcept (Carolyn was still hung over) the next afternoon. Then we proceeded to the Saturday stage of Tabbitha’s birthday festivities, which included Eli & Evan & Kristin S coming over, and lots of Guitar Hero 2 by Laszlo. And I mean lots. They even unlocked the Metalocalypse (Dethklok) song that is in Guitar Hero 2!
So, camping went well this weekend. We actually had 9 people, maybe a bit more than average. There were 11 total, but Jesselanie (Jesse + Melanie) did not stay for the night. Pictures of the trip are HERE. (more…)
[originally posted 3/25/2008] Because I am outspoken, have a powerful web presence, and have unpopular and unapologetic opinions, I tend to attract 
Ryan reviewed
Claire's blog 