It's The Spirit Of Truth, Beeyach

Are you down with the Holy Spirit, motherfucker? You goddam right. Shiiiit.

{ Thanks to Joe Mammy }



(But, then, I should really just shut my bloody trap. Shouldn't I.)

I'm from Fresno

Ahhh, it's so nice when divergent cultural threads collide.

Enjoy W on Myspace.

-Joe

Explosion Proof Regrigerator

{ Thanks to Christopher George }


(But, then, I should really just shut my bloody trap. Shouldn't I.)

"Need a Hand?" -- (Odd dream . . .)

I dreamt last night that I was doing something on the farm with my dad and his hired man (who was not, in fact, my dad's hired man, but instead a huge fat guy who seldom spoke), and somehow my hand got cut off. I kept telling my dad it was no big deal, that I was fine, but he was quite upset.

Then . . . I think it's like I wake up (in the dream, that is) to find that I've got a replacement hand -- a real human hand, but it's not mine. The hand is fat and old, with huge thick fingers covered with callouses and a puffy boil on the palm, and the fingernails are black with dirt and chopped short, deep into the tips of the fingers. In short, it's sort of repulsive, and it's like the fingers are so fat I can't really bend them very well or make a fist or anything, and it feels really strange because it's so different from my left hand -- but, it works.

Turns out the hired man gave me his hand. Just volunteered to have his amputated and donated it to me. He's got his left stump wrapped in cloth. Says, since he's left-handed, he didn't really need it that much anyway, or something.

He's getting in the back of a truck to go home (?), and I can't stop thanking him -- I think I hug him, too. Then my dad and I start arguing about the Iraq war, and I get really pissed off and start ranting and raving at him about it . . . This seems to upset the hired man, and I think maybe he's going to ask for his hand back. But he doesn't say anything.

And that's all I remember.

THE END


(But, then, I should really just shut my bloody trap. Shouldn't I.)

Gay Super Heroes

I bet Super Heroes who wear sequins get beat up a lot.

I, for one, feel sorry for them.

Humility and Grace

And the answer to life's important questions is . . . 1/2

See, I used to be smart.



I'm a pack rat -- to the point of it being something of a pathology, I would say. Thus, I have boxes filled with things like pieces of rope, toy musical instruments, wigs, broken glass, the insides of broken computer and stereo equipment, doll parts, door knobs, a bag filled with pairs of eye glasses . . . (Stuff to some day make "art" with -- or so I tell myself.) And thus I also have things like my "Applied Calculus" text book from freshman year of college, along with all my notes, etc. -- which I came across once again today while packing shit up and throwing shit away.

I've been pretty brutal this time around -- even threw away all the old notebooks filled with my writing. (Some day I need to move into the 20th century and actually TYPE shit, instead of writing everything in notebooks first.) Granted, the average person would still look at the box of "garbage" and the box of "stuff to keep even if I have to pay to keep it in storage" and not be able to tell the difference.

But.

At any rate, it's hard to believe that these hieroglyphics actually made sense to me at one time. (I even got an "A" in the bloody class.) It's sort of nostalgic, I suppose -- and also made me wonder if I should have read through all those old notebooks . . . What if the stuff I wrote 5 or 10 years ago is actually better than anything I write now, or in the future?

My ACT scores were good. My GRE scores were utter shite. By an objective measure, I actually become STUPIDER in college. (Case in point: is "stupider" a word? -- No, I kid, I'm aware that it's not. My brain might be rapidly decaying, but I'm still an English major.)

Actually, maybe all this REALLY suggests to me is that high schools should perhaps place less emphasis on math and more emphasis on, gee, I don't know . . . ANYTHING ELSE? Art, Theater, Creative Writing, Psychology, Philosophy, Critical Thinking, Music, . . . . . . .

Anyway, I'm not sure what the point of this is.

So, good evening, and thank you for watching.




(But, then, I should really just shut my bloody trap. Shouldn't I.)

Ahh, the Beauty of Nature

Behold, the "Ampulex Compressa":

"'The wasp slips her stinger through the roach's exoskeleton and directly into its brain. She apparently use ssensors along the sides of the stinger to guide it through the brain, a bit like a surgeon snaking his way to an appendix with a laparoscope. She continues to probe the roach's brain until she reaches one particular spot that appears to control the escape reflex. She injects a second venom that influences these neurons in such a way that the escape reflex disappears.

From the outside, the effect is surreal. The wasp does not paralyze the cockroach. In fact, the roach is able to lift up its front legs again and walk. But now it cannot move of its own accord. The wasp takes hold of one of the roach's antennae and leads it--in the words of Israeli scientists who study Ampulex--like a dog on a leash.

The zombie roach crawls where its master leads, which turns out to be the wasp's burrow. The roach creeps obediently into the burrow and sits there quietly, while the wasp plugs up the burrow with pebbles. Now the wasp turns to the roach once more and lays an egg on its underside. The roach does not resist. The egg hatches, and the larva chews a hole in the side of the roach. In it goes.

The larva grows inside the roach, devouring the organs of its host, for about eight days. It is then ready to weave itself a cocoon--which it makes within the roach as well. After four more weeks, the wasp grows to an adult. It breaks out of its cocoon, and out of the roach as well. Seeing a full-grown wasp crawl out of a roach suddenly makes those Alien movies look pretty derivative.'"

{ Thanks to The Sharp-Edged Blog }

Mahna Mahna

{ Thanks to Joe Mammy for the link. }



(But, then, I should really just shut my bloody trap. Shouldn't I.)

Kids are fun insane people

I rarely post about anything about me, or actual real-life stuff.

So, enjoy!

Playing with Kari's nieces and nephews the other day, . . . And they enjoy "performing surgery" on me, which is always enjoyable (usually amounts to one or two of them holding me down, while the third sticks a block in my eyeball).

But then Joe (age 5) hands Danny (age 3) a stethoscope, and says, "Here, use this. You can read his mind!" And Danny (with complete comprehension, apparently) applies the stethoscope to my head and says, "I'm reading his mind."

?????

Funny, precocious, brilliant lads.

And also dangerous . . .

Today, I had to flee . . . (There was a "Lord Of The Flies moment" when all the kids were yelling in unison "Get him! Get him! Get him! . . ." and chasing me down the stairs [not that I didn't want to be dressed up like a girl and have makeup applied to me, but because they were trying to A.) cut my hair and B.) stab my eyeballs with a scissors.) See, normally Danny just tries to poke my eyes out with a wooden block (doesn't work so well). But TODAY . . . he had a scissors in his hands. And, was smiling maniacally. . . .

That is all.



(But, then, I should really just shut my bloody trap. Shouldn't I.)