Blogs on blogs

Why a blog? What’s in it for me? Furthermore, what’s in it for you who read this tripe?

I do this because I’m part narcissist and part untalented starving artist. OK, I’m not much of an artist but I do like to write. I have so many thoughts and ideas running around in my head all the time and I wish I had the talent to order them and put them in some literary form. I keep saying I need to write a book of my life’s experiences. I suppose that this blog thing is maybe a springboard to something like a book.

I’m such a critic though that I let it get in the way of writing the things that come to me in their raw form. Perhaps I should take to opium binges or a dangerous Wild Turkey habit like some of the great writers of the past. Maybe I’d be able to pump out the occasional House of Usher but just like them, 99% of my writing would likely be pure shit.

Until I find the gumption to put my honesty and vulnerability out there for all to partake of I’m going to sit here poking my stick at the trivialities of life.

If 6 was 9

If the sun refuse to shine,
I don’t mind, I don’t mind,
If the mountains fell in the sea,
let it be, it ain’t me.
Alright, ‘cos I got my own world to look through,
And I ain’t gonna copy you.

Now if 6 turned out to be 9,
I don’t mind, I don’t mind,
Alright, if all the hippies cut off all their hair,
I don’t care, I don’t care.
Dig, ‘cos I got my own world to live through
And I ain’t gonna copy you.

White collared conservative flashing down the street,

Pointing their plastic finger at me.
They’re hoping soon my kind will drop and die,
But I’m gonna wave my freak flag high, high.
Wave on, wave on
Fall mountains, just don’t fall on me
Go ahead on Mr. Business man, you can’t dress like me.
Sing on Brother, play on drummer.

Does knowing the gossip really matter?

I often see friends allowing themselves to become very upset by gossip and minor drama that, when previously unknown to them affected nothing and meant nothing in their lives. But once they are made aware of the nonsense, and I call it nonsense because it is nonsense I’m talking about, they get their panties in a twist about things over which they have no control and that, in reality, don’t affect their lives one way or another.

First, let’s define gossip lest we disagree on the actual power it has to affect our lives. Gossip is generally defined as being idle discussion. Idleness has no value or merit. Idle means to be still, unproductive, wasteful, it’s worthless. Sure gossip can be damaging but that’s when it becomes slander/libel, and that’s not what we’re talking about here.

I can only speak of these things because I’ve been the subject of some really stupid and unimportant topics of gossip in my life. What do you do, meet it head on and let it consume you? Leave it alone and hope it dies? Let it fester in your bosom like a burning ulcer of anxiety? Or do you laugh at the stupidity of it all and continue to live your life as you were when you had no idea what was going on in the catty minds of the gossipers? What does it matter what they believe anyway? They’re the people who allow the nonsense to occupy their thoughts and hold them back from greater experience anyway. If we play with them then we let them play us. Let them have their fun on their own. Gossip has only as much power as we give it.

Some say ignorance is bliss (one of the stupidest quotes I hear over and over again). I’m not talking about ignorance, I’m talking about ignoring the nonsense. Ignoring unimportant and irrelevant issues may not be blissful but it certainly keeps us from being tied to the trivial silliness that can keep us from moving forward in our lives.

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things…
– Walt Disney

My heroes

These are 3 of my favorite people ever to live on this crazy planet. They are my inspiration for life, they give me motivation to live better every day and they teach me more than any textbook or classroom could. I love them and live for them!

Backing in, backing out…what’s the difference?

Before you begin reading this post you must understand that I am well aware that this post is possibly the most worthless drivel I have ever written. I’m making it quick and without too much thought. It’s pretty much a rant.

What is it about back-in parkers? This bothers the hell out of me, it shouldn’t but it does. There are times when back-in parking makes perfect sense such as at large event venues because all 15,000 – 20,000 people are leaving at the same time, or in the city where angle parking is required and darting backwards into moving traffic is not the safest move to make. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about people who back in at their offices, at grocery stores and malls or when they drop by their kids’ elementary school to take them their lunch money, crap like that.

Most back-in parking is done by penis trucks…I mean pickup trucks. It’s been explained to me (yes, I have asked) that backing these oversized phalluses into parking spaces makes it much easier to get out and helps avoid fender benders in busy parking lots. OK then, Captain Sporty Mullet, what about the traffic you have to navigate while backing your monster truck into your space? You’re not only backing into a parking space in a busy parking lot but you’re also backing in between 2 other cars. How in the hell does that mitigate the risk of hitting another car in a busy parking lot?

I digress. My main complaint is not against people who drive trucks since they have an argument that at least makes some sense to them. My main complaint is against these drivers with sports cars and even worse, balding, pudgy sububanites who drives mid 90s Honda Accord or mini-van type vehicles. What’s their deal? Are they preparing for a speedy getaway? Maybe that’s all the excitement they can find in life is looking forward to a quick and stealthy exit after a long and mundane work day that is occasionally interrupted by a fleeting hope that just maybe this evening their frigid wives will give in to 30 seconds of passion.

Sure, I’m being a total ass here, but that’s what I do best. I still want to know what the deal is with backing in cars that are certainly small enough to fit into, and back out of any parking stall. Maybe I’ll never know. Maybe I should give it a try. What if once is enough to get me addicted? What if I just shut the hell up and concern myself with more important things in life like who clogged the office toilet with four 10 inch turds or why there are no nacho cheese Doritos at the concierge desk…or how someone would have room for four 10 inch turds in their intestinal tract (I can only hope I don’t get bored enough to start blogging on the subject of poop). Or maybe I should just keep barfing these inane thoughts out of my fingertips since I’m blogging in America and I can say whatever the hell I want, as long as I’m not threatening to kill the President. Did I just say “kill the President”? Do you think I’ll get hits from the Department of Homeland Security now?

Maybe I’m the one with the mundane, boring existence for blogging this nonsense! At least I don’t have a frigid wife to go home to. She’s now wasting her life with some moronic redneck who drives a giant Ford pickup truck with a flare-side bed and dualie wheels. The only thing missing is a sticker of Calvin pissing on a Chevy symbol. And no, this rant was not spawned by that union. But, come to think of it, her choice to be with him is another reassuring indicator of how fortunate I am to be out of that relationship. Was this about back-in parking or my ex-wife?

Back-in parkers unite!

Pandora’s Music Box

Music lovers around the world need to know pandora.com. What is Pandora? It is a project created by a group of musicians/technologists known as The Music Genome Project©.

This site is literally the greatest online music smorgasboard ever created…and it’s free. They have been able to stream all these different genres of music without charging the users, although there is a paid subscription option that I haven’t tried yet.  There are quite a few restrictions on the playlists for the free version.  Check the FAQ site for more info on that.

The quality is great, the music is great and these guys really know how to put together playlists. You simply select a musician or band you’d like to listen to and Pandora starts a stream of songs within the genre of the band you started with.

One of the best features of this wonderful musical tool is quite simple, but genius, and allows you to click on each song that plays and tell them whether you like it or not. That way, if you have a genre you’d like to build a playlist for you can click the thumbs-up or thumbs-down icon to keep the good stuff and dump the crap.

For example, I like to listen to Lou Reed and the music that fits his genre (which is another discussion since he doesn’t really fit a genre) but occasionally The Dandy Warhols show up on the playlist (Lord almighty I hate those morons) and I immediately click the get-this-shit-off-of-my-playlist icon, and I don’t have to hear their dumb asses anymore.

Give Pandora a spin, the element of surprise is what makes it such a great toy and the ability to skip the shit makes it even better.

Who are you feeding?

This story is as old as time and has been told in many different ways. People like the wisdom of old Indian chiefs and for some reason Cherokee seems to be the preferred tribe when telling tales of wisdom.

And as a side note, word has it that I come from a Cherokee blood line, although my family never kept and genealogical records so I have no idea how much injun I have in me. Evidently I have enough to keep my hairline securely fastened to my forehead…I can only hope I have some of that old Cherokee wisdom in my genes — stereotypes…sheesh.

An old Cherokee was teaching his young grandson about choice. He said to him, “A battle is raging inside me … it is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The old man gave his young grandson a firm stare and said, “This same fight is going on inside of you.”

The child thought for a moment and asked, “Which wolf will win, grandfather?”

The wise old Cherokee replied, “The one you feed.”

Grin, grin. Snap, snap

I like to take pictures. I’m no Ansel Adams or Annie Leibowitz but I do OK. I need to take some photography classes because I have no clue what I’m supposed to look at or look for, I just point and click. I got a pretty nice camera at a screaming deal of a price from my pal E. The hi-res pictures are obviously better looking than the shrunken for blog post versions but here are some shots I have taken that I like.

Did the Ripstick break my leg or what it the ground?

I was at the park with my kids and saw some young hipster cruising around on a 2 wheeled skateboard. It looked fun, and dangerous and much like something that would possibly snap an ankle. Of course, having been plagued by ankle injuries all my life I had to find a new way to hurt myself and this looked like the perfect device for injury and pain.

I loaded the kids into my tiny little Japanese 4 banger and headed over to the local Kiddie Crack House better known as Toys R Us. There I found something called a Ripstick. I promptly dropped $99.99 on the counter after giving my home phone number to the checker and took everyone home to watch the “how-to” video. It looked pretty easy but I knew it looked much easier than it actually would be to get on top and stay on top. After 4 or 5 attempts I was able to get going about 10 or 15 feet and soon I was cruising around the tennis court. The kids didn’t want to try it, they stuck to the 4 wheels of a skateboard that day.

It didn’t take long and they were rockin’ the Ripstick better than dad…of course I had a broken leg so that helped.

My 8 year old son on the leg snapper

I took it to my office where I rode it on the finished concrete floor in the warehouse. Finished concrete is very slick, turn too tight and BAM! My hands got some pretty major bruises and my knees took some abuse as well.

My girlfriend at the time took a liking to the Ripstick and we went out one night to the local tennis court to ride together. I had been ripping it up (not really but it sounds good) for a couple of hours and decided it was time to dismount, and dismount I did. I went to step off of the thing and the board went left while my body stayed stationary, I lost my balance and all of my weight came down on my left foot. I heard crunching and I felt it too.

I had sprained (and probably broken from time to time) both ankles over and over again, I’m talking countless times, through the years playing basketball. I know a sprain before I even hit the ground. I can tell the moment I hit the ground the severity of the sprain, if I’m going to be able to finish the game, have to sit out a few or if I’m off for a couple of months. Well, this time I hit the ground, grabbed my foot, looked up at my girlfriend and said, “I broke my foot”.

She laughed and said, “Let’s go”.

I said, “I broke my foot, take me to the ER” and let go of it just to show her. It flopped to the side and she believed me.

It’s funny how different a sprain feels from a break. Sprains are extremely painful, the pain just lingers and lingers until you’re reduced to a quivering ball of sobbing jelly. The break was more interesting. It just snapped (much worse than I thought after we saw the xrays) and didn’t really hurt at all. I just kind of thought, “Oh shit, how long is this going to take to heal?.

I crawled about 100 yards to the car and pulled my gimpy ass up into the passenger seat and we went to the hospital. They took me in for xrays and then I waited for the results. The doctor walked in the room and looked at me, looked at my girlfriend, looked around the room, then looked at me again. He said, “Are you Vaughn?”.

I told him that was me and he asked, “How old are you?”.

I thought he was referring to the fact that I was riding a skateboard when he was actually referring to the fact that my xray looked like the ankle of a 65 year old man all riddled with arthritis and bone spurs. When he told me that I said, “You should xray my right ankle. This is my good one.”

He told me it was time for surgery and we scheduled a return trip for the next morning and they gave me some kind of shot in the ass that made all my furniture very comfy then slapped a big ugly boot on my leg to hold it steady for the night.

I went into surgery, they fixed me all up with a titanium plate and 9 screws and 25 staples to hold it closed. I sat in the hospital overnight with a morphine drip and all kinds of monitors hooked to my body as though I was in danger of slipping into cardiac arrest at any moment, drank a lot of ice water and slipped in and out of drug induced sleep.

The recovery sucked, crutches suck, bathing sucked, I couldn’t play with my kids, barely get down the hall to take a wazzer or nuke a burrito and I missed quite a bit of work. After about 4 weeks I was able to get around pretty well and at the 8 week mark the doctor told me I could sleep with the boot off. Being who I am I took that as the green light to dump the boot so I started walking without it.

I was warned by folks that it wasn’t a good idea but today I’m doing fine. I still have pain and a massive scar. The pics below are at the 4 week point when we saw the incision for the first time and they removed the staples. Enjoy the gore.

Removed the boot, here’s the wrap

Unwrapping

Revealing

Man that’s nasty looking, all atrophied and stinky

Closeup

Oxygen Peroxide bath before the staple removal

Nasty toes with antiseptic stains

Staple removal – It felt like a massive itch was being scratched finally!

Pretty dang clean work I’d say

Post removal Oxygen Peroxide bath

The bottom of my foot. Nice bruising, huh?

Post Xray – Putting that damn boot back on

Nice coccyx
This is what Napoleon’s grandmother broke at the dunes

Here’s what my leg looks like today after several months of gimping around on crutches and trying to recover without paying for physical therapy. It looks pretty good, much better than the first time I saw it!

…And I actually got back on the Ripstick. Screw it, you only live once and why let something like a broken leg, torn ligaments and 2 months of convalescing scare you into sitting around acting your age?

Everything but rap and country…with a couple exceptions

Ask most peeps these days, “what kind of music do you like?” and you’ll usually hear, “everything but rap and country”…unless they’ve been brainwashed into thinking there’s anything redeeming about the pablum puking money machines that produce today’s R&B and Nashvegas scenes. Good heavens that shit is deplorable in all its forms. Why, oh why would anyone choose that as a career and claim it as an art form? They only reason I can see is to whore themselves out to the world for the glory and lust of the almighty hundred dollar bill. Everyone I know that is involved in the Nashvegas meat grinder freely admits that they’ve been reduced to whoring their musical skills to pay the bills. Compromise is sad but required sometimes if you want to feed your family with art.

Did I start this post to rip the shittiness of today’s country “music”? Nah, but it’s fun. Do I even need to start in on the greasy, STD promoting, jiggly assed bravado that is rap “music”? I doubt it. What about the hippity hop music they call R&B — today’s R&B that is?   I’m not talking about the original rhythm and blues that was actually musical and soulful.  Most of the hippity hop music is equal in value to that rejectamenta that incites line dancing and Wrangler sales.

There are some exceptions to my disdain for what is labeled rap. I must admit that I do enjoy some of the old-school grooves by the likes of Public Enemy and Digital Underground. I mean (I hate when people begin a sentence with “I mean”) Flava Flave, TerminatorX and Chuck D…you got no complaints there…and Digital Underground’s Sons of the P was a friggin’ stellar album (yeah, I said album). I can’t honestly think of anything that is considered actual country music that I would choose to listen to while there are other genres within my reach.

As a side note, I do enjoy the Grateful Dead from time to time. I know, I know, they’re hippies, not country artists. But did you know that a huge amount of their performances were spent peforming hippified country tunes? They did pick some good ones to cover and I danced my ass off to them at the shows, and I should give it up to the original artists and admit that there are some amazing song writers in the country music world, but they, to be labeled as country artists, are required to perform those great songs in an incredibly distasteful manner.

Please, feel share with me your opinions on my shitty tastes and ignorant commentary. You’ll be wrong, but you’ll be right.

Committing Pseudocide

A few months back my company was tasked with the challenge of building a website dedicated to attracting potential students to educate themselves in the ways of criminal justice. In doing so they took on the duties of building an interactive website with graphic CSI style images. One image in particular was the murdered body of some mafioso fat guy, post public execution, laying in his own blood at the restaurant where he partook of his last meal. Because it was a real crime scene my company did not have license to use the picture, so they needed to take photos of a fake murder scene…that’s where I come in.

Some girl I used to date was the copywriter in charge of finding the victim. We took an hour on a sunny afternoon and went to the local thrift store to buy the appropriate apparel for a mob hit looking murder victim in which to pass away violently. I found the most uncomfortable, barber shop looking polyester, itchy, hot, stinky, tight goombah looking garb we could find and spent a whopping $3.97 on the outfit. I’m talking chocolate brown double knit permanent press slacks and white polyester…I can’t even begin to describe the shirt but we still have it as a souvenir. Then for the shoot we changed to black slacks and a blue button down shirt. It was still convincing but not as goombah-ish.

Our creative director did some experimentation and came up with a bloody concoction of chocolate syrup, raspberry and something else…I’m not sure what but it was the tastiest slurry I have ever had sprayed all over my head. We took a walk outside to the back of the building where our backup generator is enclosed by a cyclone fence and found that this would be the ideal murder scene. I laid down on the ground, feigned a dead-guy look and they began pouring and spraying this bloody mess all over my body until it actually looked like I was shot in the head and left for dead. Then they started taking pictures.

The website they did this for is www.mycriminaljustice.com and you can see my dead carcass by clicking on “CASE 3″. The site actually won a design award but unfortunately I have no idea what the magazine giving the award was, although I hear it was kind of a big deal. My dead stinky ass didn’t get paid for it but it was fun doing it, and I got to know Erica too…which was a bonus and makes any chocolate gooey mess worth it.

Here are some pics from the shoot(ing):

I made a full recovery and got that nasty stickiness off of my head, then went back to my desk and worked the rest of the afternoon. Who knew death could be so much fun?