fairbanks

did my usual shit at work today.
talked to a few people.
i'm starting to figure out if they give you a little information, you can build a whole conversation out of it.
before they'd say something at it would just be, "oh yeah" from me, or go deathly quiet.

this woman today mentioned she was from alaska, i pounced on that shit.
she's from fairbanks.
so she roughly knew the place where i'm going to be, which is between there and delta junction.
she said the weather should be fairly nice.
apparently to her the summer is best spent up there.
she said the thing to watch out for though, isn't bears, like most people warn me about, but fire.
poop.
she didn't mention bugs either, but said i should have a wonderful time.
...other than the fire...
hopefully i will...

one more fred shift, two more pool shifts.
then wedding shit.
THEN i'm off to get dirty in the last frontier, or whatever the shit it's called.

broken mammoth

i go here.
damn. alaska looks huge on that map.
i guess it kinda is.
but i've always heard that greenland (pan right a little) is about the size of mexico.

you should also switch to satellite and zoom in a bit.
check out the frigid-ass river.
dun frozened-over.
as is Clearwater Lake just above Delta Junction.

scuba

this is why i want to scuba.
...and also take underwater photos.

sifu power

arturo, my sifu (see-foo), took me on over to where he takes his lessons, to his sifu.
it's this tiny-ass place near downtown redmond.
the guy works out of his house.
he's got a store-front kinda place, with a small room in front where he does all the paperwork. then you go out back, which is actually just a long garage (like amidy's: it fits two cars longways, not side-by-side).
so when there's more than like 3 people, he takes the classes out to this drive-way area where the pavement is really bumpy and you have to watch for the occasional passing car.
goddamn, i'm glad we have our upstairs "ballet" room at the pool. that place blew.

so i watched arturo's sifu's students. they all sucked.
yeah, they know the forms. and they know more than i do in quantity, but their quality sucks ass.
they do the moves with such weak ambition that you can't feel the power in the movement.
it's almost like a waste of time. you know how to do it. but you don't know why.
so it's rather empty.
arturo, when he teaches, he makes sure you know the application and tries to point out the difficult subtleties. he'll say.
"throw a punch."
and when you do, he kicks your ass with the move.
it's actually probably the best demonstration possible because it can help you form your movements when you know the objective.
but these students lacked that. it's almost like they're drowning, flailing for no real reason.
if they got in a real fight, their moves would be like a limp-wristed bitch slap.
no power.

so i was very skeptical of the teacher. but after everyone in his class was done, and they all left. the sifu had me show my set. the first one i learned.
arturo said he was very impressed. because i have arturo's vigor.

he did have a few pointers for me. and that's when i realized that he actually knew what he was doing. i don't know why he doesn't pass this knowledge down to his students. maybe he's lazy. maybe he doesn't care. maybe he's been doing this for 30 years. and for somethings, maybe he doesn't know.
for arturo, kung fu is his life. it's his passion. he masters every move with wicked amounts of repetition.
for this other guy, kung fu is his means of support (however he did once appear on stat trek: TNG, he's got picutres).

i think what it comes down to is this. star trek guy knows quantity, arturo knows quality. this guy could show you any set, but arturo could kick your ass with any single move.

i'd so rather be arturo's student. there's meaning behind the moves.
so as i said i showed the guy my moves, but i got nervous. cuz i don't know him.
and when i get nervous, i don't breathe.

after the fact arturo gave me one of the best compliments i've ever got.
he told me,
"i could see that you put everything you had into those moves. and even though you couldn't find the power you needed becuase you were holding your breath, you kept looking for it. that shows your true personality. you may be shy, but when you need to overcome something, you put everything into it. and you got through it before you turned blue!"

what'd i tell you? this guy is everything a sifu/sensei/guru could be... with a sense of humor.
so my hat's off to arturo. i didn't want to go see that guy all the way over in redmond, but now that i have, i'm greatful for the experience.

NBA

i watched the beginnning of Game 6 of the NBA playoffs.

in the intro when calling out the players, they were playing The Undertaker's theme song. you know, the WWE guy.
i thought it was kinda funny cuz at the point in the song where the Undertaker would come out from backstage with an explosion, they had the explosion in the song and the lights went out like the Undertaker was about to appear.

no such cameo though. dissappointing...

survival

yup. still reading my hippie book.
some of the stuff's really interesting.

i mean, i know people are just out to get a dollar, but to some extent it's simply wasteful and ignorant on how they go about it.
sometimes all people need is a fresh outlook on a subject.

take cattle for instance.
people in want to find a niche and make a living.
in south america, namely brazil, people are turning to cattle ranching.
in doing this, they must burn the forests and turn the land into something my botany class called a primary landscape. meaning grasses and things that easily grow in barren landscapes, as opposed to trees and large bushes that grow in secondary landscapes.
nonetheless, they do this, and one would think that with all the mickey D's around the world that this would be a profitable venture. well. it is, but not because the it makes a lot of money selling the beef, but because it's highly subsidized by its governments. in just over a decade, starting 30 years ago, the business received over a billion dollars to compensate. it's been claimed to be the "biggest known subsidy in history for ecological destruction, unrelieved by economic gain."

i guess clearing forests only gets you about $1,000 per hectare (2.5 acres) and $3,000 anually from the cattle themselves, minus costs of weeding, feeding, and animal care. all for that tasty royale with cheese.

now. if these guys were thinking, and kept the trees or used the land for fruit and rubber plants, the annual income from that is $7,000 per hectare, AND it doesn't leave plots of land devoid of life.
but since you want your damn hamburger (and i do too), brazil ends up burning down $40 billion of forest, which is one-third of the country's foreign debt. hm. it could eventually pay itself off with a renewable resource, or i could have fast food.
...First World needs win out.

so if you're still in meat mode. you need your protein fix.
well there's another solution:
Iguana is starting to catch on in tropical locations. apparently, like everything, it tastes like chicken.
...wouldn't know...

but, for every hectare, these green bastards will produce 20 pounds of meat per year. this is compared to the larger, but more needy cow at 13 pounds of meat per hectare per year.
ontop of this, iguana don't dessimate the landscape, and within 3 years you can have your own iguana farm, and in 5 you can have them eating off your fruit trees that you've planted.
renewable sources, and you still get your steak.

it's time to start looking for new ideas before we kill off everything.
there's so much shit out there.
where we use about 20 common plant species for our subsistence, there's been an estimate of about 35,000 plant-food possiblities out there.

tropical jungles that we're raping contains so much that's unknown. the guy who wrote The Future of Life, Edward O. Wilson found on one peruvian tree in the amazon 43 species of ants. that's about as many as there are on all the British isles. ... just one tree.
and now cures for cancers, diseases, and potentials as natural pesticides are all being burned up or paved over.
i'm not too sure how they classify every species, but the books claim is that every day 54 tropical species are lost, and every year 20,000 species will never be seen again.
plants like rosy periwinkle which is now used to combat leukemia cures 4/5 patients, where the disease used to claim 4/5 lives before rosy periwinkle discovery.
there are 6 species of this periwinkle, 5 are unstudied, and one of the 5 is facing extinction due to the deforestation of Madagascar.
right now, 99% of tropical plants haven't been screened for medicinal purposes, but i guess it time that percentage can drop as the number of plants do.

so i can preach all i want, but what can i do?
i don't know. there's that shit called peace corps, but i finally met someone who as the same apprehensions for signing up as i do.
no, not cuz they'll ship you off to albania or some other hole in the wall, but because they're self-serving.
all they're out to do is to westernize the rest of the world. not necessarily better their situation using their original lifestyle.
i sat back as turi explained her own feelings on the matter. i said nothing til after she was done. finally. someone else who thinks they're full of shit.

but how else do you get out there to help?
this book lists off a few NGO's: Friends of the Earth, National Wildlife Federation, Environmental Defense Fund, World Watch Institute, Rainforest Action Network, Third World Network, and then the ones you might recognize, World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace.
but all these guys seems to only want donations or letters to the government.
...political action. i guess that's how they thrive/survive.

and damn does the world need it.
the third world gets fucked over.
they get all the poisons that are still being created, but no one else wants.
the US itself exports 200,000 - 300,000 tons of pesticides. 25% of those pesticides aren't even allowed to be used, or are strictly restricted in the US.
that's 50,000 - 75,000 tons!
it reminds me of when i was in guatemala and this older woman in our group who lives on a farm in ohio sticks her head out of the moving car to get a better whiff of the air.

"oh that's pesticide. somewhat similar to DDT. they haven't allow us to use that for 40 years."

crazy that shit we knew that was dangerous 40 years ago is still being used in guatemala.
crazier still that she could identify it by its smell.
i guess smell is the thing closest linked to memory...

anyway. not only are pesticides pushed on the Third World, but they're also being pushed to take our toxic waste.
waste disposal in the US runs $1,000/ton.
hm. let's check with Africa: $40/ton.
ok. let's ship west Africa 24 million tons in 1988 alone.
problem solved.
oh. you guys are now pissed about it?
um. you're still poor, even after the "$960 million" we gave you in 1988.
(i'm sure some of that got "lost.")
grow us more coffee.
where?
you've got more backyard without erroding toxic waste barrels. go plant!

but now the western governments are figuring out that we're kinda fucking up the world.
and in doing so, we're now trying to impose factors on the rest of the developing countries because of our mistakes.
take China and India. both developing.
both see refrigerators in every home as a sign of industrialization.
but this was right around the CFC scare, where a fat whole was found over Australia in the late 1980's.
so Western governments pushed these two developing nations to wait on this plan until a sufficient alternative was available.
at first India and China were pushed to foot their own bill, but they stood up for themselves and eventually got a fund that would help the research and also keep the patent-rights to the CFC-free technology.
wouldn't it suck after all that prodding by the West to wait only to get fucked over by having to pay for higher prices for the new technology that these two countries didn't want to wait for or invent in the first place?

says Chinese environmental commissioner, Liu Ming Pu:"CFC's are indespensable for the daily life of the masses. China needs CFC's for its economy."

but no one would really do that, would they? take advantage of poorer countries? pull profit right out from under poorer countries' noses?
oh wait. not only have they been doing that for centuries, but the US is doing it to India right now. they've put a patent on the neem seeds which has been known to have pesticidal uses for hundreds of years. and now the US wants total control of that market.

in both these cases each country is just looking to bolster their income and image as a growing nation.
in china's case, you'd think that they'd be ignorant at this time and age to not care about the causes of CFC's. but there's been other cases, like back in the 1930's where egyptian currency had images of smokestacks simply because they saw that as something to strive for in becoming an industrialized nation.
thank god they changed the egyptian pounds to pictures that better represents their culture: pyramids, temples, sphinx, etc.

so everyone wants to industrialize and be like the First World.
but the First World unfortunately find their past mistakes and needfully, but selfishly, impose corrections on everyone else.
i guess the good thing that came from it is that there are now CFC-free refrigerators.

but i guess that's the way it's always gotta be. somebody on top.
and when there's money to be made, all the shit (pesticides and toxic wastes) will run downhill.
in 1989 the world needed its 157 billionaires, 2 million millionaires.
who cares about the 100 million homeless and the 400 million malnourished.
well, i don't really even know what to say to that.
if everyone lived like we (i) did, we'd be sunk.
it's just kind of a bitch that so many people have to take the heat for some to live luxuriously.
like say, what if everyone in China and India also decided to use toilet paper.
2 billion asses to whipe.
how many forests would that whipe out?
(i couldn't figure out how to leave it on a good question to ponder, so this is all you get.)

FFM

do you have your rewards card?
i fucking hate saying that.
i say "fred meyer" card even if people correct me.
many people also think i'm trying to push it on them, which i'm so not.
i just don't want to get yelled at.

it's so fucking stupid.
this is only a way to see what people buy.
it doesn't change prices like people would expect.

and you know how i know this shit is a total waste of my time?
well, we do these things called "read & signs" where cashiers are caught up with changes around the store or reminded about stupid shit like who i can sell alcohol and tobacco to.

the last one i signed the other day was about the rewards card.
it gave stats of 900, 000 people with the card and 350, 000 receiving a rebate.
...the whole reason you get the card.

so if i do my math right, for only about 38% of the people with a card does it mean anything: money back. otherwise the other 62% of the people could just throw down their card, pull down their pants, and piss on their cards infront of me. it would do just about as much good as if they didn't have the card at all.

but isn't that just shitty. for every 60 of 100 people with the card, i'm scanning it for nothing.
i mentioned this lame fact to a coworker who said that people would catch on.
the thing is is that you only need to spend $38 a week for 3 months to get any sort of rebate.
so if you don't plan on spending $500 in 3 months, throw that card out.
i'm really upfront about this with people. especially the elderly.
i tell them if they don't spend a lot at fred's, then fuck it.
...or something along those lines.

the fewer cards out there, the easier my life is.

nostalgia

ah.
more nostalgia.
i posted twice for leschi.
apparently it was too much to fit into one post.
must be good enough for a return visit...

oh. btw. this is kinda disconcerting.

orwell revisited

i was trying to find my last year's post of leschi.
instead i came upon an exerpt i took from orwell's 1984.

it was powerful to me then, and continues to be so.
so i think i'll repost it to keep it alive:

"The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labor power without producing anything that can be consumed. . .In principle the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population. In practice the needs of the populatoin are always underestimated, with the result that there is a chronic shortage of half the necessities of life; but this is looked on as an advantage. . . War, it will be seen, not only accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labor of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a heirarchical society."

couldn't have put it any better myself.
war squanders resources all-the-while maintaining a large schism in the existing heirachical society. whereas it could be used in some arbitrary cause to strengthen a culture's belief in it's leaders, war, for the most part, already demands that fealty.
granted it can spawn leaps in technology, but it also creates a population decline. i'm not sure which way i want to lean on this topic. whether this is good or not. populations stabilize, more often than not, the less educated are rid of, but cultural and genetic richness is to be lost.
especially with modern wars where one side greatly overpowers the other.
however, i think his greatest point is that this is an acceptable way for those with authority to squander resources without being questioned.
well... nowadays it's not so much the case, but i think there are enough ill-educated, brainwashed people out there where it can be stood for by a nation.
go patriotism in all its glory...

snork 2.5

snork 2.5: solo trip-o

went solo on a snork journey today.
took my gear on down to waverly park.
it's pretty damn tiny.
but i wanted to go on the off chance that my dad's glasses might still be there after 10 or so years. i didn't realize it had been that long til i started now thinking about it.
as you might guess, they weren't there.

the park itself has a dock that has a loop and a projection that goes out a bit further on the south end. inside the loop is the designated swimming area.
fuck that. i'm not about to go into the lake to be caged in.
but on all of the area outside that puny kid's area, there's "NO SWIMMING" painted on the dock.
undeterred by this i plop down by one of the ladders outside the area and don my fins.
as i'm doing this, i recognize a familiar boat.
one with "SHERIFF" written in large letters on the side.
although i'm nowhere near 50 feet away from the dock if i splash down right next to it, i'm still a bit leary about last week and another possible encounter with the law.
so i sit there and wait as they patrol by.
float, float, float. i know you can go faster than that.

eventually they were within an acceptable distance and i splash down into the 68 degree water.
still a bit chilly, but much more managable than that 62 and 65 from the previous weeks respectively.

the water was much more clear than last week. i could easily see the bottom.
however there was a warning sign cautioning the eating of fish. they're most likely contaminated, it says. awesome.

so i check out around the dock. nothing really at all.
a crapload of tiny clams. each only about an inch long. nothing like the monsters at the top of the lake.
there weren't even that many beer/coke bottles/cans around. maybe they clean up there.

got bored and went north through a shitload of milfoil (manuel says that's the name of all that seaweed shit).
that shit gets about 8 - 10 feet tall at most. and at 15 feet deep, they stop growing and the lakebottom went steeply sloping downward.
saw a few larger fish chilling there. i chased them a bit, but they're too deep to have any fun with them.

further back inland, where the weeds were less dense, there were more dead fish.
they ranged from a couple of inches to about 5 inches.
one of the 5-inchers looked a little too shiny to be dead to me.
his eyes were still intact and that mucusy slim had yet to grow on it.
but this guy was just laying on his side. unmoving.
i waved my hand over the fish to disrupt the water around it.
my movement caused the fish to stir.
it seemed a bit groggy and not too wary of my presence.
so i reached my hand out and pet its side. very bony.
it wriggled on maybe 10 or 15 feet and returned to its halibut-like state.
but this was no halibut.
looking online, it seems to most resemble yellow perch.
it had those bright orange fins.
i thought that maybe it was only this one guy that was retarded, but about 15 minutes of swimming northward revealed another fish of the same species doing the same exact thing.
catching some Z's or playing dead.
not sure which. although i can't imagine what kind of predators it might have under there. maybe i don't want to know.
very peculiar. and it only cares enough to get away from you so it doesn't get prodded again.

i passed maybe 4 private piers and only one of them really had a bunch of bud and coke cans.
there were tires and wood planks too.
between two of them i found a red and white bobber.
attached to it was lure. no hook.
it was stuck in the sand with the bobber floating about 3 feet up from the bottom and maybe another 8 to the surface.
i gave it a good tug and it popped out. maybe the hook stayed stuck under the sand. fine by me, i wouldn't want to fuck with that anyway.

OH! and always, i'm 3 for 3 now this year, i found a golf ball. this fucker was in the middle of nowhere. i really don't know how they get out there.
ok. i do (i've seen seinfeld), but they're still so random.
later on i thought i found more golfballs, but they were both actually birds eggs.
maybe a quarter of the size of normal chicken's eggs and a bit more leathery.
probably due to the amount of time spent under water.
they were pretty much fucked, so i tossed one against a pier. same kinda orange shit as the one manuel broke at madison.
i bet the seagulls and crows hanging around will love to clean that up.

so. with nothing really exciting, and being in for just about a half hour, i decided to head back.
nothing exciting on the way back until i got the the last private pier just before the public one at the park.
i went out beyond the milfoil and found a metal folding chair.
at the time i didn't have the balls to huck it up onto the pier because of last week and also the fact that i saw movers moving into that house when i rolled up (that house and waverly park share the same parking lot).
so the pier had two projections on its piling that perfectly held the chair.
even with the massive wave action of passing speedboats, it held on.
ok. not so daring.
i was heading back to the waverly dock when i happened to come upon a trash can! now that's something to show off.
the fucker was heavy.
it was one of those oscar the grouch styled ones.
it was green on the exposed side, and still metallically shiny on the other.
with some help of the wakes created by passing speedboats i was able to hurl the trashcan up on their pier. right-side-up.
eat that!

i quickly booked.
as i approached the pier. maybe 50 feet out, i saw something was up.
crap.
there were three men chilling at the farthest extent of the pier in blue dress that seemed somewhat professional/authoritative. one of them even had a lifeguard rescue tube.
crap!
so i ducked down and swam to the dock all the way underwater.
good thing i practice that shit at the pool.
and i'll tell you it's a lot easier with fins on.

i came up under the dock. there was little room to spare.
i maybe had a foot between my head and the bottom of the pier.
the motorboats were still doing their thing and the water was really choppy.
i was kinda scared of getting tossed against the top, but it didn't happen.
however. when i'd go under the support beams, i kept hitting my snorkel.
i kept my hand above my head to cushion it if i was to hit it.
i kept a good distance, so i was safe.

i popped out in that enclosed swimming area and swam to standable depths.
after getting off my fins, i turn around to see an ambulence parked illegally at the mouth of the parking lot.

what the hell's going on?

i throw my shit into my car to be a bit more conspicuous and i go back out on the pier. another aid-car is parked below a "no parking anytime" sign near the house where i left oscar's home.

i went back out to the dock where i noticed the three guys i had seen before.
they all were watching with folded arms and walkie-talkies as this motorboat was hauling something behind it.

for a second i got a glimpse of what they were towing: a roughly 8-foot sailboat that had capsized. it was turned over for an instance but must have still been waterlogged and couldn't keep it's bouyancy and once again floundered.

i almost went up to the medic guys to see if i could offer my services, but i was kinda cold by that time.
eventually that same sheriff boat trolled up and offered assistance.
i never saw if they righted the boat.
but i'm sure the sheriff would know what to do.

and thus ended snork 2.5.
i'll save snork 3 for manuel's return.
i did have bottle wars with myself out there.
it was awesome cuz i won every time, but yet lacking the appeal.

stats:
max depth dived: 15 feet.
ave. depth dived: 10 feet.
temp: 68 degrees.
dive time: 1 hour.

i think next week, if i got time, we're going to go back to leschi.
we went here last year.
it was the time where we met this black dude fishing off one of the piers.
however, his fishing pole had no line.
we found a fishing pole WITH line and gladly gave it to the guy.
he seemed greatful. along with the beach chair and bike.
i kept the fillet knife.

til then...

update

check out page 7:

11.08.010 Swimming.

Swimming in the waters of the city shall be confined to:

A. Restricted swimming areas; or
B. Within a distance of 50 feet from the shore or a pier unless the swimmer is accompanied by a watercraft (KCC 12.44.210);
C. A violation of this section is an infraction with a maximum penalty of $250.00. (Ord. 709 § 8, 1997; Ord. 606 § 15, 1994)

so i guess we got off fairly easy with our $66. however, i'm still kinda bitter.
i'm sure manuel is even moreso with the loss of his mask and new snorkel.

i drove by the area of the lake where the barge usually sits the day after we got detained.
GONE!
i wonder what they did with it.
that thing's been there for as long as i can remember everytime i bothered to look for it.
maybe it has a regular moving pattern that i haven't noticed, or maybe they did move it because of us. who knows.
i guess we'll just have to see if it returns in a few days.
the bouy that we used to climb up on it is still floating away out there.
it looks a ways out there, but not the half mile that we were quoted.

definitely more than 50 feet though...

life = work

12 hours of work yesterday.
12 hours of work tomorrow.
4 hours of sleep last night. a potential of
7 hours of sleep tonight.

this is what life's all about.
sleeping half as much as you work.
or something...

overreacting

god. i'm still getting flack for this incident at the pool.
this kid was bobbing in the shallow end.
then for some reason, his mom freaked.
maybe the kid swallowed some water.
the mom told him to get out of the water.
he was still just bobbing.
the mom pulled up her adidas workout pants and realized she couldn't reach her bobbing kid from the second step.
so she goes in waist-deep holding the rail with one hand and grabbing the kid with the other.
she pulls the kid out onto the pool deck where he rubs his face a little.
the mom and kid then eventually head to the locker room.

ok. now during that whole incident, i was within about 10 feet of the kid.
i was watching as he was bobbing.
there was no coughing.
there was no sign of hysteria or struggle.

why did the mom pull the kid out?
maybe she saw him swallow water.
other than that, i couldn't really say.
another onlooker thought that the kid just wasn't listening to the mom's demands to leave the pool.
she was the only one to see trouble.

after getting on the pool deck, the kid didn't cough once.
like i said he rubbed his face and went on his way.

but now i'm getting shit for a mother having to "rescue" her own child.
if she had waited 15 seconds, the kid would have bounced on over to the steps and exited himself.
the kid had full responsiveness.

now my boss and her bitch, Rob, are both coming down on me.
yeah i slack.
yeah i talk to people.
yeah. maybe it's not my complete undivided attention,
but i do leave a watchful ear and eye on the pool when kids are present.

i don't know.
it was kinda coincidence that i was standing right there when the whole thing happened, but what bugs me the most, is that Rob, who was sitting in the hottub when the whole thing when down was accusing me of negligence and talking to other people over by the steam room.
i don't deny that that doesn't happen.
but i was right there for this kid if he needed it.
the problem was, he didn't need my help.
unfortunately, neither of my bosses will listen to me.
that's just their style with everything.
one idea of how things passed gets into their head and it's all over.
today they took away my stool.
i realized today how little i use it anyway.
i felt kinda bad when karina showed up and wanted it.
my "punishment" shouldn't be put on everyone else.
i looked in the usual rob hiding spots, but i never found it.
bummer.

so i'm trying to think now.
if i was nowhere near the kid when the mom took the plunge,
would i still try and find some way to defer the blame?
i dunno. that kinda seems like my style.
i'm just bitter that i get shit for something that could have potentially been put on me, but coincidentally it shouldn't be my fault.

it kinda feels like office space too.
where when you fuck up, you've got multiple people coming down on you.
after one bitching i learn my lesson.
really.

voice and cowl

ok. i couldn't put this in with the review.
the only things that bothered me about the movie were:

1) christian bale's batman voice was kinda weak.
maybe after keaton did his thing, no one could match it.

2) christian bale's face doesn't fit into a cowl that well.
his cheeks are too fat and he doesn't have too defined of a chin.
or something to that effect. i can't put my finger on it... you?

3) i wouldn't have noticed it but somebody recently mentioned to me that katie holmes only uses the majority of one side of her mouth to talk.
you don't really notice it (or at least i didn't) til the end when her and batman were talking all intimately-like.
i missed a lot of that dialouge cuz i was too entraced with her hint of bell's palsy.

ok. so all superficial shit.

micheal caine wasn't feeble enough, but was funny enough as alfred.
gary oldman wasn't as cop-looking (round) as i would picture gordon.
but both of these might be just because it is the beginning.

too nitpicky. i'll stop.
gotta work tomorrow for 12 hrs starting in T-minus 6 hrs.
crap.

i'm batman

man. if you liked the first one, you'll like this one.
with a myriad of prequels out there recently, this one may even surpass the original.
it for damn sure blows the recent attempts out of the water.
batman begins had everything you would want from new batman movie.
characters that haven't been recently explored, cooler toys than ever before (as the previews will attest to), and a plot that's slightly ridiculous but not totally preposterous.

i have to admit i've never read a batman comic, but i was a big fan of the animated series, and i was glad to see them draw from there. (which probably drew from the comics.)

oh. and the guy from 28 days later was in this movie. anyone notice?
that had to have been the last movie that i fully enjoyed.
oh. maybe shaun of the dead too ...when it comes to comedy.
maybe i have a special place in my heart for zombie movies.

but back to the movie.
i think they fucked themselves in the ass in one aspect of the movie.
...or maybe i just missed something.
talk to me when you've seen it.
maybe i'm wrong.
they could also possibly be re-writing all the batmans.
that would be interesting...

linky

as promised, if you were too lazy to click on manuel at the top of this page,
here's him and i in snork gear. i especially like the knife.
(that's what's strapped around my calf.)

then we've got manuel's fins and one of our finds, along with our fine.
(same picture)

surprise

i actually surprised myself at work today.
there's this guy at the pool who is a landscape artist for the rich.
like fuckers over in medina.
but he's an anthro/geology buff on the side.

we've talked before and he knows about the shit that i'm interested in.
so he brought up an article in this month's smithsonian (which i can't seem to find online) that tells about the theories that native americans came from more than just the bering strait but also europe.

i threw out some site names.
he thought they sounded familiar.

he said how they give linguistic and genetic data that prove their existence.
i told him how languages can't be easily followed over time and mtDNA doesn't have a known mutation rate.

i told him all the shit i know about special cases of ancient people in america that doesn't match up to what scientists think should be.
i told him what interests me the most and if i had the ability, what i'd like to do to further our knowledge of the subject.

i could tell he was in over his head.
he started talking about the yucatan meteorite crash and how it affected the flora and fauna, including people... ok. maybe not.
possibly he got confused with a volcanic explosion in indonesia from 78,000 years ago vs. that 65 million-year-old crash? maybe not...

but what i did realize is that i do have some knowledge in my field. it's just unfortunate that, as of yet, i can only add to this base knowledge and not really utilize any of it.
right now, i'm forced to sit back and watch people swim while i daydream about what it would be like to be useful.

it's a BOY!

oh! i forgot to mention.

my coworker, irene, had her baby at 6:57 pm on June 11th.
it was a little boy. they named him Garrett Matthew.
his due date was July 6th, so he was a bit premature but still a healthy 7 lbs. 7 oz. and 19.5 inches long.

i was at the hospital when she was in labor.
i got to see the little guy when he was about a half hour old.
very cute.

they let me hold him.
he was put into my arms.
i couldn't breathe. they told me i could. but i couldn't.
...couldn't move.

he opened his jet-black eyes and checked me out.
then he did a little tongue dance.
i guess he wanted some nip.
not my department.
so i gave him back and he suckled like a champ.

this is the first and youngest newborn i can remember interacting with.
i went to my sister's preemie hospital, but those didn't hit home at all.
those were alien-looking anyway they were so damn small... and transparent.

snork 2

snork 2: a lesson learned(?)

manuel and i went out for a second round. i decided on a location: log boom park. on the map, for some reason, they call it tracy owen park.
it's right up there at the top of the lake.

we donned our shit and headed out.
the water temperature had risen from last week by 3 degrees to 65.
it was still ball-wrenching, but slightly less so.

just looking at our initial entry off of some docks sticking out there, i thought the water was exceedingly deep.
but diving down, we found that its only about 6 to 8 feet deep.
the water here is just really fucking murky. you can barely see past an arm's length. going out further, to where the depths get to be about 20 feet (which was our max depth), you dive down into the brown muck, brown turns to black and the temp probably drops 10 degrees, then BAM! you're about 6 inches from ramming your mask into the silty bottom.
visibility gets a lot better at that last foot for some reason. its almost like a cloudy oil-slick floating from about 1 foot from the bottom. once you penetrate it, you're good to go.

all that was down there was a shitload of seaweed. i hate calling it seaweed, cuz i know its not the ocean, but i don't know what else to call it. maybe i should do some research. anyway. that shit grows to be about 6 feet tall, when the waters got deeper than, say, 10 - 15, all that disappeared and it was just 4 inches of gross-ass silt that prevailed.
but here and there you'd see divots punched out in the silt. at first i couldn't figure it out, but then after a few dives i realized...
clams.
most were about 4 inches long. some rested on the silt, others only had about a half-inch of the pointy side of the shell exposed. the divots must either be from clam movement or removal by clammers.
i snagged one. manuel held onto it for the rest of our journey.

and, as always, my ass had to find a golf ball.
i tell you, that shit just happens. don't know why.
i didn't even find any beer bottles this time around.

so the murkiness kept us from fully enjoying our trip out there. my guess is that the flow of the sammamish river (refer to the map) keeps things all mixed up.
that factory might have something to do with it too.

so shitty visibility prompted us to check out the rusted, abandoned gravel barge that's been sitting at the top of the lake for as long as i can remember.
i tried to find a link to it on the ol' internet for those of you whose memory needs prompting, but i came up emptyhanded.
maybe i'll get it in a couple of days and post it.

manuel and i took a swim out to the barge and realized it was mountable.
on the northside facing the shore was a steel-wire tether that held it a-ground.
with a bit of persuading, a rather large bouy, also floating alongside the barge was pushed up to the the vessel, where we shimmied up on the rusty beast.
we rounded the stern where there were 2 6-volt batteries and a grape gatorade.
other than that. nothing but rust and birds.

but i have to tell you the formation of the barge.
the port and starburd sides had walls about 8 feet high.
the walls ran all the way around the ship with a 15-foot door opening on the starburd side. inside the walls there was nothing there but remnants of gravel that may have been formerly transported up and down the lake. but now, it looked like a tennis court.
when outsdie the walls, and walking on the sides, there were buttresses that we had to fling our fins around while holding onto the buttress. we wanted to check out the aft, cuz there was a lifepreserver sticking up over there, so we started around the buttresses. i led the way.
at about the third buttress, i look up to see a boat slowly inching out from behind the barge's aft. i see "eriff" and go, "fuck".

i yell and wave to manuel, "GO BACK! GO BACK!"
but it was too late.
the kenmore sheriff's speed boat was now in full view and the two men on the boat were flashing their blue lights at us.

personally, this felt like something out of the movies.
where you have a bank robber trying to escape out of a window.
and just as he gets out onto the window sill, BLAT! the searchlights go up and the fucker's caught with his back to the wall.

that's exactly how i felt.
crap.

the sheriffs asked us how we got up there.
"we climbed up(, dumbasses)"

they had us jump down into the water. maybe a 15-foot jump.
manuel splashed down first and i followed.
we climbed up onto the boat by the motor.

they had us go into the cabin where they sped off about 50 feet from the barge and idled.
here came the lecture...

"you know what you look like out there with only your heads sticking out of the water?"

"no."

"ducks. you know what people in boats like to do when they see ducks?"

"no."

"they like to drive at them and watch them fly away. but i doubt you two will be able to do that."

blah. blah. blah.
more shit spouted.
warnings of propellor lacerations, hypothermia, crampin up, and whatever the hell else you can think of.

so apparently we did two things wrong.
1) you're only lawfully allowed to swim 50 feet away from the shore unless accompanied and supervised by someone with a boat.
2) trespassing. that barge is owned by some dumb motherfucker, and we should know better than to climb aboard.

fuck that.

so they leveled with us:
we give them all our correct information and they only slap a fine on us for being too far out in the water.
otherwise, when they radio our shit in, and it doesn't come back with good results, they'll take us to jail for a day.
i had to work in two hrs. so it wasn't much of an option.

so we gave them what they wanted to hear.
although they did fine us $66 each, they weren't total asses.
they did try to give us options where we could explore the lake within 50 feet of the shore.
and he did say there's good diving spots out there.

it was kinda funny though. they asked us if we knew how cold the water was.
"yup. 65." (i looked at my watch.)
they told us it was too deep out there.
"uh. only 20 feet." (i looked at my watch.)
owned.

the guy that wasn't driving the boat seemed like he was just on a ridealong and trying to be a know-it-all.
so i gave it back to him. ha!
he was nice though.
manuel was freezing his balls off by the open cabin door so they gave him a towel.
after slapping the infraction on us, they dropped us off at the docks that we started out at.
...they thought we couldn't have handled the swim back.
i'm not saying that their ride wasn't appreciated, but i think we could have made it. bitches.
so 66 dollars poorer we headed back home.
my bad, manuel.
if there's a next time, you get to choose.

manuel did happen to take some pictures before our run-in with the law.
i'm sure he'll get them posted up in due time.
i'll link to them when i get the chance.

ecological disaster

It's a Matter of Survival is the book that i keep referring to as my "hippie book."
but it's got a lot of crazy/interesting facts.

a major point that these canadians are trying to get across is that, yeah, there's an explosive population boom over in third world countries. and yeah, education, promotion of good health, and maybe a bit of charity is a proven way to decrease the amount of children per family. but ecologically, this is not the problem we need to worry about.
the real problem isn't in the third world, it's with those who are better off.
the average north american (they're canadian, so they don't go by US stats) uses 10 tons of coal per year.
the average Bangladeshi uses 220 lbs of coal per year.
they pick this country, because as of the time the book was written, this country had one of the highest population per capita increases.
so comparatively, you have your average 3-child family in north america.
once growing up and doing their own thing, driving their SUV's, running their fridges, TVs, air-conditioners, these 3 little brats do as much damage as would a 103-child Bangladeshi family, just because they do damn-near everything via manual labor. so from the perspective of energy spent and pollutants emitted, we're more to blame than those poor bastards.
i guess that goes with the stat that Edward O. Wilson gave in his the Future of Life book, where if everyone in the world lived a lifestyle like we Americans and Westerners, we'd need six earths full of all its resources to accomodate for everyone's needs.
so our pampered asses should take a majority of the blame for a dying world, but it's a lot easier to put that blame on those who look stupid by popping out kids that they can't afford to feed.
and the kid after kid that these 3rd-world-country families poop out are actually for a purpose. firstly, they're the parents sort of pension.
when they get old, they got somebody to take care of them.
also when they are younger, they have people to do chores for them.
third, if even one of these kids gets enough of an education to get a job in the city, they can usually, alone, afford to feed the whole family.

but even though there may be these reasons, it's not really that good of an idea to fill up the world with people that it can't fully support.
at the time of the book's writing (1990) the pope was against contraception (are catholics still?) stating, "If the possibility of conceiving a child is artificially eliminated in the conjugal act, couples shut themselves off from God and oppose His will."
(why does it seem like the catholic church is the ruler of the third world country and all those ignorant? it promotes the multiplication of mass amounts of people in poor lands that can offer cheap labor as their only service. clever bastards.)

but what El Papa doesn't realize is that by not promoting contraception, a majority of those conceived, or their descendants will die off anyway of a lack of resources/food. the piper must be paid, bitches.

but even now as the population crisis is coming to the forefront in some developing countries, cultural problems arise that keep people from doing what is necessary to provide a better future.

Asian and European countries fear the growth of muslims in and around their own countries and don't want to be drowned out (this, i guess is just an opinion of the author or opinion told to the author. but really, who wants to be a shat-on minority? unless you can figure out how to keep the power. apartheid, bitches).

in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, a federal limit (seemingly liberal) of 4 children per family caused an outrage. apparently a woman's group protested on the grounds that this will only further promote the common practice of polygamy.
go men.

so with a world population growth of 3 people per second, and the loss of 24 billion tons of topsoil per year, something's gotta be done.
over here in the US (and Canada) we may not be pumping out the kids, but we're raping the environment and fucking it up for those around us (it's like a smoking/non-smoking restaurant. or at least a shitty one like IHOP. you go to non-smoking, but when you leave, your clothes still smell like cigarette smoke. fucked). the author really hasn't covered what we can do yet, but general conservatory actions are probably a good start.
also, a study done in the late 80's showed that on that given year, 6 billion people could be fed on a completely vegetarian diet (this was before the world population reached that point).
a 35% meat diet would only feed 2.5 billion people.
so every 10% of meat that people would cut out of their diet would reap a benefit of 12 million more tons of grain annually.
it's a good thought in theory...

as for third world countries, the best thing that can be done for them is to provide an education.
a study done in Kerala (a state in northern India) where in almost a communistic fashion, mother's, their small children, and school-aged children were given food, people were given communal plots of land, and the children were educated to the point were 75% of the state was literate (versus below 50% for the rest of the country), the average life expectancy jumped to 68 from the national indian average of 57.
being healthy, educated, and having a bit of land makes anyone's life better.
maybe that's one of those things that are obvious but needed to be stated to be thought about and realized.

(so maybe in poorer, failing, overpopulated areas/countries, maybe communism is the best way to promote good living [as opposed to the usual genocide: russia, cambodia, guatemala, argentina, rwanda/burundi, etc.]. but where do you draw the line? eventually some will become more rich and powerful and then once again everyone below them will get fucked over. but if everything is federally maintained at a mediocre level, then maybe everything will be fine. however you still have the ruling class and the inability to prove self-worth or rise above anything but what everyone else does. maybe communism could be a good transitory period from a failing government to something a bit more stable.
god. i need to read marx or something. he'll set me straight.)

snork 1

Snork 1: return of the Snork!

if you read manuel's blog, you know we went snorking.
but i gotta get in my 2 cents as well.
a recap that will look much like his, but still i gotta:

so we went on down to the ball-numbing waters of madison park.
we walked to the pier staring into the choppy water.
neither of us wanted to go.
manuel bit the bullet first.
jumping off but grabbing onto the edge of the pier just after his balls broke through the water.
...what's the point now? balls have re-ascended.
so he let go and dropped in, looking like a scared, wet dog making his way back to shore. a snokel-muffled scream came with every breath.
(sorry manuel, but it was funny as shit.)
i laughed.

fuck. i still had to go.
so i took the plunge. jumped straight in.
there came the duet. both of us were now screaming in unison about the frigid tension being put on our shrunken nutsacks.
the water remained a bone-chilling 62 degrees, but we eventually got slightly used to it.

once acclimated we headed north. there were a string of 3 houses on the waterfront before we got to the condos that extend out over the water.

last year manuel and i found this 4-foot piece of plastic(?), maybe siding, that was about 2-inches wide at one end and ended at the other to form a triangle.
we fucked around like we always did and liked to show off our "trophies" from down below. so last year, manuel stuck this piece-of-whatever into one of the pilings from an old pier, where the serrated end of it was maybe only half-a-foot out of the water, making our glorious find known to all.
as we were swimming by it this time around and reminiscing about out mischevious past, a woman in the middle out flings open her push-out windows as i'm hanging on the piling with our artwork.
she yells at me, "what is that?"
i shrug my shoulders.
"could you take that out? it's been bugging me for a while."
i pull it out with ease smirking about the fact that this bitch has been staring at that shit for a whole year on our behalf.
i hope her neighbors enjoyed the clothes iron that we put on their deck last year as much as she enjoyed our present to her.

moving on.
i got this dive watch. it's badass. tells temp, depth, time you've been out, time you've been down (if i had air on me), and how long you can stay down at the depth you're at. i'm sure there are even more functions than the ones i've discovered. oh, and when you're approaching the surface too quickly, it beeps at you to slow down.
that's what manuel kept hearing.
i figure however, that i'm not coming from depths much beyond 20 feet, so rather than dying from too much carbon dioxide and lack of oxygen, i'd rather return to the surface as quick as possible and ignore the all-knowing watches warning of the impending bends.
no problems yet.

visibility was pretty shitty. when we first jumped in last year, i remember finding the dumpster almost immediately. granted this time around i was more concerned about my balls, but i couldn't even see the bottom from the edge of the pier, we had to dive down at least a body length or more. so visibility was roughly 6-10 feet. pretty bad.
but we eventually did find the tipped-over dumpster. still nothing living inside it, which is actually somewhat frightening to discover. the only thing that had changed was the amount of grime that had accumulated on it. manuel and i differ, but i remember it being almost without growth last year.

out around the condos to the north, i picked up a lawn chair that scraped the fuck outta my thigh upon a near-death struggle to the surface. thank god manuel had my back or we'd either be chairless or travisless. either would have been awful.
at this point, remembering from last year, we decided that the area around the condos was too deep, so we just decided to tote this great find back to the pier we started out on.

as usual. our glorious find presented for all to see.
can i just say how much of a bitch that is to bring something so water-logged out of the water even with two people?
art is such a struggle...

after a breather, we hopped back into the lake. with wet bodies, it seemed colder on the pier than in the water, but i doubt that was the case, or possibly the temps were roughly the same.

with the north explored to our fullest desires, we headed south. through the swim area that's open during the summer.

here, i was swimming through the reeds as manuel searched for things dropped by fat kids as the cool their hippo-esque bodies over the summer.
no great finds. same old shit. beer bottles and cans. (ok maybe those weren't the product of fat kids, but i can see them there during the summer.)

back in the reeds, i feel uncomfortable. you're missing a good majority of visibility not because of the murkiness, but because of these plants. in this area they ranged from about 2 feet to maybe 5 or 6 feet. that's a lot of unknown below you.
looking down i saw what looked like a possible shell, a clam, as it was white. but it seemed a lot larger (3 inches wide) than the fingertip sized ones around the area.
so i dove deeper. that's when i realized it was moving!
attached to this 3-inch bulb was the body of a slender, snake/eel-like animal.
the body beyond the white was maybe 5 inches long and only about an inch thick. it was almost transparent but greenish. kinda jelly-like.
the front of it's body wiggled more for mobility rather than its back that just sort of dragged. the white end was more than just a bulb, it had a small projection on the end. like a single, thick hair about an inch long.
what the hell that could be for, i have no idea.
but it's eel-likeness scared the shit and air our of me so i had to make my way back to the surface. when i caught my breath and i returned below, it had dissappeared into the vastness of the weeds.

we ventured further south to another set of condos built out over the water.
among the pilons, we found a 40' measuring tape. what else can you do with this but unroll it to its furthest reaches around one of the pilons and tie it off?
so we did. took about three times passing each other with either end til we tied it off. yellow flakes from the corroded tape flying everywhere. i love my lake.

past the condos were more condos that were set at the waterfront. here manuel found a bunch of dinner plates that we promptly shattered to bits.
bottle wars with a twist. i'd hold one, he'd hold one, and we'd smash them together underwater until one of them broke. good times.
we found beer bottles around the same area and continued with true bottle wars.

the eerie part about this outing was the amount of dead fish.
the majority of them were only about an inch long, but there were others that were up to about 4 inches long.
but what the fuck?
last summer you'd see the occasional dead fish or fish parts, but here, there were whole schools!
with shitty visibility i counted in the dozens from just turning my head side to side.
what gives? was it a harsh winter? is that their normal life cycle like salmon? is the water polluted? is there a high mortality rate for fish that small at this time of year?
who the fuck knows?
all i know is that it was disturbing.

by this time we'd been in for an hour (it's awesome having an underwater watch). downstairs we resembled pre-pubescent boys and our body core temperatures were dramatically dropping. so we headed back.
but not before we found two of those huge gallon-sized wine bottles.

one last bottle war. manuel won. i held onto his trophy.
we made it back to wading level where manuel found a whole chicken egg.
he smashed it against the surviving wine bottle to reveal an inside void of the usual egg distinction: yolk and white. this water-logged egg only had a single color: orange. and the consistency was something like that of a cadbury egg: creamy, but thick. very weird.

with the only thing in my hands being that jug as we exited the lake (oh, and a golf ball in my pocket [its almost essential to find one of those every time]), i stuck the jug on the 10 foot tall lifeguard chair.
thus ending our journey.

we dried off. poor manuel had to put all these clothes on to shelter him from the wind on his motorcycle, we snapped a shot of our great find, and i invited manuel on over to my pool's hot tub for some life-giving warmth.
we stayed in there longer than i'd ever been in that thing.
it was much needed.

next time i want to get in on the eastside. maybe waverly park, although it may not be that exciting. i just want to see if i can find my dad's glasses that he lost when we "disposed" of grandpa.
juanita beach might be cool. but it seems like it might be a cove of nastiness.
maybe that's just cuz i live here. everywhere else is probably just as contaminated.
that hippie book i'm reading is getting me concerned about all the PCB's and hard metals that are being pumped into our waters everywhere.

damn. ignorance was bliss.

kung fu

did some kung fu today.
honed my skills on the set i'm learning.
now i totally have it down up to the point i've learned.
before it was a bit sketchy.
i now know how to throw somebody across the room by their shirt.
it came at the expense of one of my many ratty in-n-out shirts.

in down time when arturo is helping other people,
little benjamin likes to wreak havoc by running around the mirrored room and having people chase him.
maybe you forgot what he looks like.
he's the small one.

anyway. we get to fighting. he throws his best hits to my stomach.
if i'm ready for them, it's no problem. if he catches me off guard, that's a different story.
he does most of the attacking, i do most of the blocking.
i think he likes it best when i squat down to his size and we exchange blows.
he calls me 'mini-you'.

when i get tired of getting beat upon, that's when the fun for me comes.
i'll do all the wrestling moves i watched professionals do when i was younger.
he's all of like 50 lbs or so, so i'll just toss him around:
back breakers, razor's edge, sidewalk slam, suplex, and other crazy shit that doesn't really result in pain but has him flung around through the air.
damn it would be fun to be a professional wrestler.

i get to take everything out on him and he enjoys it.
that's the cool part.
most kids get a little apprehensive when they're flying through the air, but this kid's all about it.
today i had his legs hooked around my arm and i was swinging him around like a helicopter.
good times.
then you just toss him around and he lands on his feet.

he's russian.
maybe we could get a monkey and do a gig for money.
cymbals should be incorporated somehow as well.

futbol

tonight was kinda kooky.
i worked 12 hrs, then went out with my co-worker from the pool.
just as kinda a backup for meeting people at this place on capitol hill called the capitol club.
she joined a gaelic football club (this is the chic that plays rugby), and she barely knew any of the people.

unbeknownst to me, i did know one of the people.
the person that kinda runs the club was ASB Secretary when i was a sophmore at juanita.
i wouldn't really have known or interacted with her if she hadn't gone out with one of my fellow swimmers, ryan farmer.
so i talked to rebecca fox for a while.
she went to boston, became a lawyer, but is unfortunately now unemployed.
go figure.

so i had to piss, cuz i was drinking, and i got directions to go downstairs and make a U-turn.
i did this, but i guess the wrong way and i ended up in a private room with a bunch of chix.
apparently it was a bachlorette party. whoops.
they were on somewhat of a scavenger hunt.
one of their things was a wash-board stomach.
now, i can pull of a 4-pack, but i'm still working on those last two.
but i guess i qualified and i got my picture taken with some hot blonde chic with a nose ring where i was exposing my abs.

crazy what a bit of alcohol will do to ya.
i think when i go out with people i don't know that well, i tend to mingle better.
probably has something to do with the fact that i can sit around and be comfortable with people i'm always comfortable with.
so in this scenario i was forced to meet new people.
it actually wasn't that hard.
i should do it more often.
it's just having the excuse to be out there is the problem.

so anyway. i got kung fu tomorrow, then i close at fred meyer.
speaking of the fu, i caught a bruce lee movie last night on AMC.
it was the one where bruce and co. have to fight their way upstairs to where they eventually have to fight kareem abdul-jabar.
the fighting was very slow-paced, but at least i got to see what they were doing.
at one point there were nunchucks. bruce lee would flip them around in some astonishing fluid movements, then *SMACK*, whap the guy upside the head.
this continued for 4 or 5 rounds leaving instant purple bruises on his opponent.
quite amuzing.
when he did actually fight kareem, all his jabs seemed to be directly at the man's nutsack.
kareem took the punches rather well for their placement.
its not that bruce lee was aiming for the sack, it's just that his jabs straight out from the shoulder landed on kareem's nutsack.
eventually a choke-hold ended the struggle.

hopefully my kung fu tomorrow will find some unsuspecting nutsack.
ok. maybe not.
but i at least enjoy the idea of sparring.

weather

sonofabitch.
we had really good weather for dan's wedding, then it comes time for my "weekend" and its shit.
i wanted to get out and snorkel at the lake, but the weather never got good.
i had tuesday, wednesday, and part of thursday off.
nothing.
i could have gone in the shitty weather, but what i found out last year is that sunshine makes all the difference in visibility.
if i'm going out, i'm going to make it worth my while.

hopefully sunday will be good weather.
i haven't conferred with my local meteorologists.

buen provecho

for some reason my appetite is failing me.
both times i ate today, it was a normal-sized meal.
both times i felt like stopping halfway through,
but i was persistant.

what the crap is going on?
you'd think with more exersize comes more eating.
i guess not for me.

also. i know it was hump day today, but my dog was a little excessive.
helping make dinner, everytime my back was to her, she'd take the opportunity to mount my leg.
usually it's a one or two time deal, but today she was going for the sixpack.

jogd

goddamn i'm tired.
i went for a seven-mile run.
then i went out to eat with irene (who's about to pop).
that mixture makes you all sorts of tired.

i may go do kung fu tonight as well.
i guess we'll have to see if i can get up from my soon-to-come, inevitable nap.