Oh Q.

Dang, what I wouldn't give for a Flux Capacitor right about now...

Sound Advice?

I bought a banana the other day at Whole Foods down in the Pearl. I was hungry, it would do the trick, and it's the only place you can get a banana that wasn't picked and put in the produce aisle 3 months before it was ready to eat.
So I was eating it out front and some tweaker-type guy (you know the type: 45-years old on a kids BMX bike, perpetual greyed whiskers and a cigarette in the mouth, mesh cap, some faded and crusted t-shirt) was unlocking his child bike and looked at me and said, "Never let your father see you eat a banana."
I just looked at him, half a mouth of unchewed banana in my mouth. I had no idea what he was talking about. Did he think my dad had a potasium allergy, a phobia to the color yellow, a... OH!
Then it struck me as he pedalled away. All I could offer as a come back or a resonse was a stupefied, "Huh?"
It was a slow day. If I were quicker on the draw I could have thrown back the fact that he probably sucked on a cigarette more than I chewed on bananas. Let's hope I never get into a line of work where I have to deal with hecklers.

Not merely "WTF?" but a Full Blown "What the Fuck?!"

Man, I have seen some bloody, effed-up movies before but this one trumps them all. If Eli Roth and Sam Peckinpah had a love child, this would be it. And when it emerged all covered in afterbirth, blood, and shit it would turn to its two fathers (Eli Roth would be the one with the womb. Even he would agree.) and call them pussies and walk away from them with a look of disgust on its face, never looking back.
This movie had me tilted back in the desk chair, donning a look of mortification at every turn during the last 40 minutes or so. It was rude. More blood than a Minnesota slaughterhouse. Really. The thing goes from drama to thriller to splatter to a brief whiplash-inducing turn to "rage virus/zombie" film.
The French have been on top of the game these days, from the incredibly disturbing Sheitan, a film filled with more truly uncomfortable moments than I have ever seen before, and which gives Deliverance a run for its money.
Also, Them (aka Ils) was a great thriller, edge of the seat, alone in the country and things go white-knuckle and shitty-type film. And, sadly though predictably, I saw a preview for an American version with Liv Tyler that will probably be OK, but looks way to obvious as it appears to ditch the element of unknown that the original wallowed in. But hey, tormentors in masks are better than tormentors you can't see, right?
Anyhoo, go rent Inside. Just don't try to eat while watching it.
And all said, for all of the blood and wrongness, it doesn't come off as excessive or unnecessary. How they did that, I haven't the foggiest.

DEAR DIARY: The Deleted Scenes

-February 15, 2008-
I am struck with the urge to go out and paint the town red, but not really. The fact of the matter is that out of the blue the phrase just pops into my head. I don’t understand the saying, literally. Yeah, I get the meaning but the origins of the phrase confound me. And besides, it has never been a saying that I have been fond of, aesthetically speaking. It just sounds, well, lame.
But it sticks, regardless. Sadly, being an introvert pretty much guarantees that bringing this late night urge within the boundaries of reality is an impossible notion. I don’t even really know what one would have to do, when you get right down to it, to paint a town red.
What I do do is this:
I go to the garage, lured by hazy memories of some forgotten paint cans in a back corner. Yes, there is a red one… well, maroon really, but let’s not be sticklers.
I can paint myself red.
On second thought the paint looks old. What are the possibilities that it is lead based? And I do have to work in two days. I doubt that I could adequately remove a coat of paint from my body by then. So, in light of that, I opt to paint my hand red instead. Well, actually I just dip it into the can after prying the lid off with my house key—my only key. I feel like I can make excuses for bringing a red hand to work.
The paint is thick and cold and I have to push through a skin that has formed on the surface, like when you heat up milk on the stove.
Now I have a painted hand. How long is this going to take to dry? I go out to the lawn and whip the excess paint off of my hands. It looks more brown than red.
After two minutes of blowing on my hand I get bored and I get the urge to search for a Ron Popeil infomercial on the T.V.
My hand is still wet so I stick it in a plastic grocery bag and go inside.
My room came with a T.V. and I have never turned it on. It has been plugged in for the 6 months that I have been here but has been transformed into a piss-poor version of a shelf that has a knack for dropping the things I put on top of it all over the floor…usually when I am asleep.
It boasts a set of antennae of the telescoping variety that I fear will one day put out an eye. I turn on the television and it responds with a spray of static. No amount of antennae manipulation will get me anything more than a hazy representation of the local FOX affiliate.
Does Ron Popeil even do infomercials anymore?
Maybe on Nick at Night?
It has become apparent that I probably don’t get Nick, night or day—or at an unreasonable time of morning, as some would refer to this particular moment in time.
What now?
I go back to the garage, following the paint drippings from my first dunking back to the scene of the crime. I dunk my other hand because it is 3 AM and I have nothing else to do. Taking the bag off of my other hand I find the paint tacky and splotchy so I re-dunk it and then go sit on the patch of grass between the sidewalk and the street to dry and think about what it is I have become.
I wake up at dawn cold and shivering, hands covered in grass clippings and small bugs. It would appear that I rolled from the lawn to the sidewalk, in the process covering myself in maroon paint smears.
Paint the town red, indeed.

Uhh...

If I was writing a dictionary, and I needed a picture for the "creepy" entry, this would be it.
I promise to write something for the next blog spittle.

Excerpt...

So I just finished an internet book called John Dies in the End. It was pretty damned good, full of just the right amounts of riduculous humor and left-field horror/weirdness. The writer, David Wong writes for Cracked magazine, of all things. Anyhoo, it's good and if you don't have $16 to spend on the book, and care nothing for your eyesight, and have a sweet ergonomic chair, I would recommend it. I just started his unfinished sequel and thought I'd give an excerpt as I can do nothing but agree 1000% with his words here. This bit really has nothing to do with the story... I mean, it does, but it doesn't relay any pertinent info. It is just a great passage that resonated with me as he put into words something I have always thought, but never sat down to actually scribble out before, and had I, it would have not been nearly as accurate as this.

As you may guess from this, I have a deep-seated terror of any spider that weighs in at over half-a-pound:

There exists in this world a spider the size of a dinner plate, a foot wide if you include the legs. It's called the Goliath Bird-Eating spider, or the "Goliath Fucking Bird-Eating Spider" by those who have actually seen one. It doesn't eat only birds - it mostly eats rats and insects - but they still call it the "Bird-Eating Spider" because the fact that it can eat a bird is probably the most important thing to know about it. If you run across one of these things, like in your closet or crawling out of your bowl of soup, the first thing somebody will say is, "Watch it, man, that thing can eat a fucking bird." I don't know how they catch the birds. I know the Goliath Fucking Bird-Eating Spider can't fly because if it could, it would have a different name entirely. We would call it "Sir" because it would be the dominant species on the planet. None of us would leave the house unless a Goliath Fucking Flying Bird-Eating Spider said it was okay.

So, go read it, and watch out for big fucking spiders...

Better Late than Never

So, I spent Christmas in Kenya with some friends and friends of friends. We made our way to the coast and had an amazing time that was packed with beaches and beers and sea food and laughter and the tragic death of a kite... a kite surfer's kite.

All was well and we were only aware at this point, in Malindi, that elections were taking place, looming, and there was a minor possibility that things could go quickly to shit.

But we weren't concerned with that. It was all sand and sun and pineapples and avocado sandwiches. The mess didn't break out until after Christmas, which led to the space betwixt Christmas and New Years being spent in a few different hotels in Kenya's old capital city, Mombasa, wondering if we were ever going to be able to get back to Nairobi, and from there, back to Uganda. All transport was shut down and the streets were dead. Lots of Scrabble was played, lots of news was watched, and lots of beer was downed as we watched everything go to shit.

But...BUT, Christmas day in Malindi was another beach day and driving on some bumpy little dirt track that went from the paved road to the beach we passed up this place, Scary McNasty's. Everyone agreed upon seeing it that if we did not stop there for a Christmas drink then it would be an unforgivable offense.

Turns out it is a hotel/bar that some Scottish guy opened up. How he came up with the name we will never know. T'was a nice little place though with an above-ground pool that I would never go in and the place had a gate that was tended by some guy in full Masai gear. The bar was panelled with squares of dead and abandoned flip-flops which there is no shortage of from what I have seen in the 5 African countries I have been in.

So here it is, Scary McNasty's. Thanks to that crazy Scot, and thanks to Sarah, Jenny, Craig, and Carly for making this a most memorable Christmas.

Love you all and I hope that all is well wherever you may be.

Cheers!

WTF?

So I was walking down Greely the other day, a fairly well-traveled stretch of road that gets crowded during rush hour. I make better time than cars whilst walking home, sometimes passing the same car three or four times (see Amanda, didn't use the dreaded numerals...) in a 15 (whoops, dropped that ball pretty quick) block stretch as they get through a signal and get jammed up at the next. This road wasn't meant for such traffic, but as Portland gets bigger these small two lane roads surpass their intended capacity as commuters find "short cuts".
What I am trying to get at is that this is no quiet, secluded length of road where weird things can lay unmolested in the middle of the street for hours or days.
Which is where this weirdness comes into play. I walked past these wings in the road, saw them, took a few steps, then stopped as what I just glanced at registered in my brain.
This is why I travel with my camera.
As rush hour traffic crept by, right off to the side of it on the asphalt was something that would be more at home in some goth kid's room or an art exhibit, lovingly situated and then photographed in black and white.
Disembodied pigeon wings, or more appropriately, a pigeon minus the body. Is it just me or does it look like it got hit by a car at such a high speed that it knocked the whole fucking body off of the wings? I know there is some obvious explanation, but a lot of the weirdness came from the fact that this was sitting on such a busy road. If it were a sleepy path I would guess that some bored kids scavenged an already dead bird, or iced one themselves as kids are prone to doing before they take that leap into serial killing, and posed it on the sidewalk.
Whatever the case, it caught my eye and threw a bit of oddness into a typically two-dimensional work day.

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Listening to:
We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
Modest Mouse