lickety jackblog: May 2004

In other news:

This is totally real, and I thought you all might like to know.

Dudes!

After much hemming and hawing, I recently committed to joining our Polish Jackass friend out west in a cross-country bicycle trip. I'm flying out on June the 18th, and spending perhaps a day to carouse with the locals before we embark. The trip will make use of one of three general routes from the west coast to Chicago or further south, and it may continue on to New York (Greg has to be in NYC by around August 18th to prepare for legally supporting the demonstrators at the Republican National Convention).

To make the trip slightly more productive, and to focus what minimal energies we'll have after riding between 60 and 100 miles a day, we've decided (in part due to a suggestion from the Cold Cowboy) to interview people along the way and to get their opinions on the upcoming election, the state of the union, and to generally feel for the pulse of the U.S. of Type A.

However, the trip is very soon, and in some ways I feel ill-prepared-- at least with regard to the journalistic portion of the trip. There is no doubt in my mind that we will have an easy time talking to people. I've talked to others who have done similar trips in the past, and in many of the Podunk towns we pass thru, we will be big news. Two stupid kids trying to ride their bikes across the country are certain to raise eyebrows, and to get people prying. But I wanted to solicit some feedback about how we can best capitalize on the interest of the locals. How can we best engage them? What sorts of questions should we ask, and how should we try to focus this as an actual project?

I'd like to find out a little history about each of the towns we pass through, and include tidbits when I write about the whole thing, and I'm hoping that that in itself will help focus what bent it'll have. But I wanted to ask you dudes for any advice you're willing to give in that arena.

Also, I'm not sure she's definitely committed yet, but our own Penttilatron may be flying out to meet us mid-trip. We've booked a ticket with an airline which will drop her-- girl, bike and parachute-- out of a plane so that Greg and I needn't even slow our pace. She'll come in at roughly 60 mph, and hit the rode with a lot of momentum. But her fancy orange mountain bike has got great suspension, so none of us is worried about her ability to continue the trip unscathed. My 1982 Schwinn Traveller (which I bought for $30 bucks from a friend who bought it from a guy at the scrapyard) isn't built for such Spyhunter-inspired showmanship.

Let me know what you dudes think.

Not a lot of action on the barn this week...

But it's Friday now! Damn Fridays.

The Dunk

I was coming home from school
When this dude who looked so cool
Said "You look like a mighty fool!
Let's play some basketball!"

I'll suffer not this injured pride
His challenge could not be denied,
His b-ball jersey named him "Clyde"
On mine was printed "Gil."

So I laced up my hoopin' shoes
and promised Clyde that he would lose
Instisted he: "Bitch, you're confused!
I'll take you straight to school!"

Suffice to say the game was hot
We matched each other shot for shot.
But in the end all was for naught
When Clyde unleashed The Dunk.

He juked me right and then went left
His movements catlike, slick and deft.
My weak side rendered me bereft
Of means to stop The Dunk.

I'd received the rizzle-razzle
Left me on my heels befrazzled
Lost, and dizzy, dazed and dazzled
A victim of The Dunk.

The shriek of rending steel bespoke
Of all the might Clyde's dunk evoked
And when I saw the rim had broke
I learned to fear The Dunk.

The sound of loss rang in my ears.
Clyde's moves had made real all my fears
My skills, my moves were second-tier
When matched against The Dunk.

The game was over, I had lost
Into the garbage bin I tossed
My hoopin' shoes, my dreams. What cost,
What fee The Dunk had charged!

whew. friday morning poetry is going down the chutes...no more b-ball poems, i promise.

from the jackmaster with love:

just a friendly reminder to jackbloggers that while nobody's going to delete comments posted anonymously, you might as well attach a name to it. should you prefer to remain as such, why not at least try make it a throwback to some circa 1990 Scholastic Book Bus novel for young adults, such as "incognito mosquito"?

You know what morning it is!

Friday Morning Poetry time!

Happy's Party

Happy hemmed me in,
Said: "My friend Philip made a sin."
"Made but did not do.
I think he named it after you."

And I was thinking
About slinking
T'ward the exit, t'ward the door.
Racing after
All the laughter
Happy'd sworn to find once more

Happy said "Oh no,"
Said: "You've got jobs before you go."
Said, but didn't say
That she and Phil would wed this day.

Balloons I'm filling
Always spilling
Boundless joy upon the floor.
Inching always
Upwards, sideways
Crawling to the liquor store.

Happy said "That's great."
This room looks excellent, first-rate.
Streamers, glitter, booze-
Yes you can go or stay, you choose."

So I went trudging
Always budging
To the wind and to the word
And often wondered
If that blundered
Union lived, if bells were heard.

Happy said it had.
Penned in a letter, sounding glad.
Wrote that all was well
Together they had shucked the shell.

So I am smiling
Whistling, wiling
All the days away in peace.
Looking backward
Falling upward
Laughing Laughing endlessly.

hmmm...not the greatest Friday morning poetry has had to offer. Sorry.

Required reading: This morning I ran across a thesis written at the Institute entitled "A Critical Study of Imperatives."

Sounds important.

Have lovely days!

more on the Scandal...

the original blog archives have been reposted with the original acronyms. i'll assume with you that "MD" does not stand for "Mike DeWine". so you see, working on capitol hill is totally awesome.

Labels: congress

the Bostonienne writes:

Today was sex day in the library. everybody wore prosthetic sex organs and I was paid $42.00 for writing a 200 word essay describing the color of DD's urine. Hey, what's a girl to do, right? Gotta pay the bills.

then i ate a bunch of sex-themed pastries in the sexeteria and scoped out JM's exposed butt crack while he bent over to retrieve a piece of barbecue chicken from under his table. then he ate it. but sexually. and nude. I just want that JM so bad, but why won't he reply to my inter-office sex memos? I just don't know...what a douche.

So then I came back to my office and my army of sexbots had returned from their conquest of the Harvard, but none of them had even nearly emptied their hydraulic K-Y dispensers! What's THAT about? Don't these Harvard losers now how to get down with sexbots? What puritans!

JM just gave me a the number for a psychiatrist and told me I had a problem. But i was too busy having sex to listen to that, so whatever! He's a loser and won't have sex with me just because I have the clap. Loser. I mean, I'm hot! My bikini is mighty!

Anyway, I think i'm gonna have a taco or something.

Here's to success!

-the Bostonienne

Labels: gays

Scandal!

it has struck ohio's beloved, cross-eyed senior senator. And you know what that means.

Springer for Senate in '06 ! !

Labels: ohio

I want to pose a question to all of you that I recently posed to the Swish. (This question was inspired by the statement that the prisoner abuse photos from Iraq were posed.) Why in the hell would you think it was a good idea to take those pictures in the first place? How is that at all useful or funny? Any ideas?

(only 'unreal' answers are expected)

Labels: iraq

This is for all you bleeding heart independent music lovers. I hope it shrivels your stomachs, and makes your eyes bleed. KY's favorite sons 'My Morning Jacket' are now featured on a low-carb beer commercial. It's called 'Aspen'. Based solely on the ad, I think it proves to be less intese, and a little less fit than the old 'Michelob Ultra'. The target audience must be the well-to-do twenty something bluesy bluegrass folksy crowd who're too busy drinking the beer and jammin' on their keyboards and banjos 'til the break-a-break-a-dawn to hit the gym for seven hours a day. Amen, to aerobic fitness and rock solid buttocks born of the perfect union between Kentucky fried charm and a cold-filtered draught.

last night i explained and showed my friends the atari games 'volleyball' and 'breakout.'

their reation:

a tumultuous uproar, followed immediately by uncontrolable laughter in between gasps of 'what IS this??!!!!'

my conclusion:
there was no atari in japan.

I once heard the Sarge comment, "I'm going outside, because cigarettes are my only real friends."

This notion hadn't really occured to me until recently when, after a couple months without spending time with these old comrades I was feeling a bit low and decided to give them another chance. Suffice it to say that they gave me nothing if not a warm reception.

It's true they make me vaguely nauseated and irritable at times, but what friend doesn't at some point or another? Thank you, smokedogs, for losing none of what mystical companionship I had been after all this time.

Shit.

time to get wacky

enjoy these comic gems from the official platform of the republican national convention in 2000:

"The arrogance, inconsistency, and unreliability of the [Clinton] administration's diplomacy
have undermined American alliances, alienated friends, and emboldened our adversaries."

"Gerrymandered congressional districts are an affront to democracy and an insult to the voters.
We oppose that and any other attempt to rig the electoral process."

"Nor should the intelligence community be made the scapegoat for political misjudgments."

"The current [Clinton] administration has casually sent American armed forces on dozens of
missions without clear goals, realizable objectives, favorable rules of engagement, or defined
exit strategies. Over the past seven years, a shrunken American military has been run ragged by a
deployment tempo that has eroded its military readiness. Many units have seen their operational
requirements increased four-fold, wearing out both people and equipment."

"The rule of law, the very foundation for a free society, has been under assault, not only by
criminals from the ground up, but also from the top down. An administration that lives by evasion,
coverup, stonewalling, and duplicity has given us a totally discredited Department of
Justice."

"Sending our military on vague, aimless, and endless missions rapidly saps morale. Even the
highest morale is eventually undermined by back-to-back deployments, poor pay, shortages of spare
parts and equipment, inadequate training, and rapidly declining readiness."

Friday Morning Poetry Time!

Plato Fun Factory

At noon today I paid a
Visit to my dearest Philo-chap.
I found dear Plato waist deep
In a pile of tools and boards and scrap.

So baffled was I that I
Asked him "What's with all the carpentry?"
Said he "My friend, I'm building
Here a plant, a joyous factory!

With which to manufacture
Smiles and shouting laughs and mischief grand!
Assembly lines of workmen
Turning out such fun for all the land!

I asked him why he'd build it,
What would make a learn-ed man so toil?
He answered simply "Sorrow
Rules us, but now I produce it's foil!"

So knelt me down and grasped a
Hammer, pounded nail and sanded board
Whilst my friend Plato spoke of
Anamnesis, and it's joyous hoard.

Said he "We'll make a silly
Product, perfect for the human head
To recollect that fun is
Fleeting--it shan't linger if not fed."

I saw then that his mind had
Tricked him, that the plant was doomed to fail.
He'd make some footballs, maybe
Toy trucks, finger paints and sandbox pails.

But they could not return the
Mem'ries, never would the pails unearth
That grain, that kernal, all that
Knowing, rarely seen, for all it's worth.

The factory, though fun, would
Bankrupt my dear Plato, CEO
And he would go from riches
Back to rags, that more befit him though.

But still I weathered all the
Splinters, hammered, sanded, board and nail,
For yet a grin was pasted
To his mug, too big for me to quail.

Happy Friday!

What does spermtophore mean to you?

i am now rocking this jawns.

Time to dumb it down:

I was just working on an order for somebody who requested a thesis by a dude named Ray Jackendoff.

Jackendoff.

that is too rich for this bumpkin.

drinks are on me

seems 'round about 9 months i been sashayin' around our nation's capital sans real job--one where you're called somethin' besides "paid employee". one where you get you some hill cred. one where, if somebody cuts you, they send you to the hospital rather than the gutter.

my. seems those days are over.

i'm in the big time now, lady and gentlemen. time to upgrade the cowboy's business cards, give 'em a little sass n' sparkle. throw a raised congressional seal on there. paint it in goldleaf.

only catch is this: it's all on indiana's dime.

but know this, slags: though my paycheck from indy comes, my heart shall always be of purest buckeye-fruit: hard, two-tone, and poison to the tongue.

one day, i shall return.

Friday Morning Poetry!*

*Being an Ode to His Toaster Oven, in the Style of the Sonnets of Petrarch (that's right Snavely, PETRARCH!)

Your job, though simple, brings great happiness,
That morning smell of burning toast, of dawn,
My Toaster Oven brings the new day on.
Where you honed your craft I cannot guess.
Your womb bursts forth with warmth at my request
To cook me hotdogs, warm my old won tons,
To bake a chicken breast, all whilst I fawn
And swoon, because for cooking, you're the best.
So glow, you orange bars, to warm my heart,
And cook the food, Italian, Greek Chinese
All carried out with grace from god above.
Fear not Toaster, for never shall we part
But Always seek for food prepared with ease
And sprinked with a burn-ed crust of love.

lovely friday to all.

and Friends was devastating. just wolfing.

dan

sirs (& lady-tron) --

i want to alert you all to a thing that happened in our fair village on tuesday night. i got a mysteriously call from a familiar voice round supper time. i asked who is was, only to be chuckled at. the voice urged me to arrive at "da pj's" at 22:00, video camera in hand, "for the reckoning".

being a sport, i did so. i bought a water and sat in the commons area, waiting for the man in the red shoes to tell me what was what. what was was this: a "freestyle rap battle" between our fair noah applebaum and our private punching-bag, gary "mission man" milholland.

i can't tell you how satisfying it was to see two grown white men spar verbally in the white-tiled dining area of papa johns, but i can tell you that i did get it on tape and that unedited copies are going to go for at least $80 on ebay.

goodnight.

Labels: mission man

Well, people, I've hit rock bottom. After a long dry spell, I finally succumbed to my urge to go on a bloody dungeon crawl. Really, that's not the bad part. The bad part is, I don't have many friends around here. None of them are remotely interested in hearing about a campaign to disrupt orc slave routes, or kill a dragon, burn its body and piss on the ashes before hauling off his gold in a big-ass bag of holding. Nor would they want to engage in such a campaign. That leaves me with two options. I can go to the game store and play magic the gathering with high school dropouts and homeless men, or I can rent a video game.

I'm sure you'll be disappointed to hear, I rented a game. Champioins of Norrath, by the people who brought us Dark Alliance. It was going reasonably well, (though I can't say it's as much fun playing alone) until I got to the Underworld. Now, my character at this point is a 12th level dark-elven knight. Keep that in mind when I get to this next bit. The game's pretty simple: wander around slaying evil things, and ocassionally someone will ask you to help them complete a mission. Well, I wound up in a gnome village. It was there that I met Mayor Froes (er, something). He was distraught, pulling his hair wringing his hands distraught, about his missing daughter, Tenya. It seems young Tenya had wandered off to the underworld. The good mayor was quite worried about her well-being, as I've said, and asked if I would retrieve her (in exchange for treasure of course). Being the kind-hearted dark elf that I am, I agreed to bring the young Tenya home. Off I went to the Underworld, where I soon found the lass. She couldn't have come any higher than my bejeweled and enchanted elven codpiece, but she had the nerve to refuse her father's order to follow me home. Not only that, but she insisted that I stay in the caverns, and search for her lost kittens(I shit you not). Now, I'm a fairly wealthy dark-elven knight, and if I had the choice I would have lopped off her head and told her father to shove his "treasure" up his chapped ass. Well, it's a video game, so I had to go along with it. I slew countless undead reptilian humanoids, and destroyed an entire army of skeletons, all for five kittens and little gnomish girl. I've never been so humiliated. I'm such a whore.

okay, to begin with, an apology to anyone who doesn't care about what's going on with Friends. but Jamey wants to know, and this message was too long to fit in the comment field. Otherwise I would have spared all you who are "too good" for fine comedy and heart wrenching beauty of spirit. And Matt LaBlanc.

here we go Flynn:

Oh Jamey, I can always count on you to be with me on the Friends. Okay, my viewing this season has been a little spotty too, but here's a brief rundown:

Phoebe got married to Mike (Paul Rudd), and that's pretty much it. as far as I know she's not leaving NYC for any reason, but she's married now.

Chandler and Monica, having successfully adopted a child, are now moving into a house in the burbs. great sadness ensues as the apartment is abandoned.

Rachel is asked by...Louis Viton (sp?) some french fashion place, to come work for them in Paris. Ross doesn't want her to go, but she really wants to, so because he's a good guy who loves her, he encourages her to take the job. (i missed the episode when she was actually offered the job, I guess the plan is that Ross will keep the kid in NYC and this Louis Viton place will fly them both to paris whenever they want to visit.) However, in the last episode, Ross laid the big make out on Rachel, and she was down, so we'll see what happens with that.

Joey is, of course, living as fat and sassy as ever, getting ready to live the awesome life of a crazy spin-off man.

my predictions: Joey gets crazy new neighbors in Monica's apartment to set up the new show, Monica and Chandler move to the burbs as expected, Phoebe just kind of fades out, and Ross ends up going with rachel to France.

but I'll let you know.

dan

anyone else hear about the EU expanding today? if you blinked, you missed it, because there was scant coverage in the national news. after all, if it isn't celebrity scandals or updates from the war, why bother reporting it?

lickety jackblog

Sunday, May 30, 2004

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