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Weakened Warrior
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4/25/2006
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I love fishing. After writing this, I really wonder why.
I'm not talking about putting a worm on a hook and sitting on the shore waiting for the cork to go under while banjos play in the background- I mean spinners, flyrods, gore-tex, felt soled this and that, standing in the middle of a river fishing like you know what you're doing. And don't tell me that fishing is not fishing without beer- if you need an excuse to drink beer, you suck.
I planned to go last Saturday, but the weather was a mess and the way my luck has been lately, standing waist deep in water with a nine foot pole in my hand just didn't seem like a plan. Sunday the weather cleared and I called everyone I knew to go with me, but no one likes me so I went by myself. If I fished with worms I would have eaten them on the way to the river.
At the top of the trail I had a little bit of a hike to the water. It was 8 am and the sun was rising as I strapped on the ungodly array of equipment I feel the need to take with me when I fish. Walking downhill is easy first thing in the morning, even if you're wearing 30 pounds of junk.
The river was murky and dark- a little unnerving because the water is about 38 degrees. I walked out as far as I could and decided to step off of a rock to see how deep it was. About a quart of water spilled over the top of my waders before I scrambled back onto the rock, reciting a verse from the bible about the icy taint of wretched loathing.
By the time the sun came up I had found a shoal about 150 yards wide and twice as long with fishies darting merrily this way and that. The first thing I did was snag a bunch of hooks under trees and rocks, snap the line, and tie on new stuff. That's part of paying homage to the water for the bounty it is about to bestow upon you. Screaming "fuck" and punching the air is also part of the ritual.
"O, mighty river, flowy, wet river, over rocks and logs. I hereby sacrifice my very last fricking. #18 Beatle-star Galactica nymph, leader, split shot weights, and favorite strike indicator to thee, pissing me off immensely. This brings my total to $12 for that profoundly poor attempt at casting, and depending on the strength of the Euro, you owe me a couple of trout. Please allow the sun to light my way as I attempt to tie all of this crap back on whilst perched upon a slippery rock."
By 10 am I had lost so much tackle I thought I was going to have to sell my house, but the sacrifice wasn't lost on the water. I tied on a size 16 hackleback beadhead crappleberry whateverbug and started catching everything swimming…except one fish that I could actually see. He just sat there like a douchebag with gills, looking up at me. I floated all kinds of crap past him and he stared back at me like I was the stupid one. Realizing that he was right, I jumped in the water and kicked where I thought he was. Imagine my surprise when the kick connected and the fish went flipping out of the water. Seriously. I kicked a fish in what I believe was the ass for insubordination.
I caught 26 fish by 3:30 pm, and I was ready to go home. No, I don't keep the fish I catch. Two reasons-
1. Grocery stores have fish with the guts conveniently removed for you
2. Courtney Love's vagina is cleaner than the Chattahoochee River. I wouldn't eat a fish I caught in her vagina, either.
Walking downstream is way easier than walking upstream. I had walked about 200 yards downstream, and now had to walk back upstream so I could get out. Anywhere from knee deep to waist deep, flowing slowly, but flowing. I got to the shore, but it sucked the whole way and at one point I dropped my fishing rod and had to chase it down like an Alaskan Grizzly during the salmon spawn. See how much fun you'd have if you went fishing with me?
Finally the bottom of the trail was in sight. To get back to my car I still had to walk up what might as well have been a vertical cliff covered with frozen snot, except on the return trip my boots and waders were soaked with water and now weighed eleven tons each. Keep in mind that I was not any fitter than I was when I arrived.
In fact, I vastly overestimated my physical prowess by assuming I had any at all. I'm not in the fricking army and I don't hike. I have had two operations on my lower back and I have a desk job. I am no longer out of shape, I am without shape. I seemed to think that getting back to my car would be downhill as well.
About halfway up I took a shortcut through the woods. In my exhaustion I completely forgot that taking a shortcut usually results in someone finding your rotting corpse slumped against a tree five months later.
The shortcut was apparently some kind of Green Beret torture trail. The ground was steep enough that they had installed "steps" about two feet high that were probably actually "retaining walls" to "keep the earth from collapsing under its own weight". I sat on the first one and caught my breath and tried to stretch my back, then discovered that by rolling backward and onto my side, I could save my back the agony of stepping up onto them. Soon a bunch of hikers came by and laughed at me. I told them this was how they do it in Nepal and they should shut up before I go Sherpa on their asses.
By the time I got home my back was too jacked up to even get my waders out of the trunk. I lay on the ground and rolled across the parking lot to my front door, falling asleep in my living room. I enjoyed the sleep of the dead that night and spent the next two days in agony as my lumbar muscles bitch-slapped me for being such a weakened warrior.
And I can't wait to go again this weekend. My friend Jim and I are all amped for Sunday morning and I'm actually having dreams about fishing already. What the hell is wrong with me?
 Dusty
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posted by Dusty at 5:20 PM |
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LOST
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4/18/2006
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Now that the second season of LOST is almost over, let me catch you up- LOST is a lot like 24- devastatingly addictive programming as long as you don't think about it too much.
It all began when a plane crashed on an island somewhere in an ocean. The tail section snapped off at altitude (probably 36,000 feet, almost no oxygen, temperature of about fifty below zero, moving at 500 miles per hour), so naturally there were dozens of survivors.
I don't remember the name of the airline, so I'll call it "Megastud and Underwear Model Airways", as the aircraft was completely filled with gorgeous people just like you see every time you board a plane. In a feeble attempt at realism they threw in the guy who sits next to me every time I travel- a 350 pound mouth-breather who is allergic to soap. Luckily he is pretty funny on the show, but here we are 50 days into it and he hasn't LOST any weight.
There is a Doctor with daddy issues who everybody sees as the leader and a rugged leathery outdoorsman who can hypnotize a wild boar using the sound of one hand clapping. A sassy brunette with a federal warrant, an innocent blonde, a rock star heroin addict with a sensitive ineffectual side, a spoiled bitch who fortunately gets shot in the face and dies as if in answer to my prayers, an exotic chick who used to be a cop (but looks like the kind of "cop" that shows up at bachelor parties), a rugged, devil may care rebel dude who just can't be tamed, and so on. Every conceivable lust is covered. At least the legal ones.
The cast isn't terribly believable, but it is television, so I'll let that part slide.
For the male survivors of the crash, a side effect of having hit the ground at 9000 miles per hour was that their beards stopped growing just when they got long enough to be sexy. As for the women, their makeup became permanent and their scalps now exude a shampoo/conditioner combination that always keeps their hair looking and feeling its best. Now they are starting to lose me.
Now let's throw in a monster that haunts the island and makes noise and knocks over trees. That's right. Something out there is seriously fucking up the vegetation every couple of days and they don't know what it is. Like the geniuses you'd expect them to be, they wander out in the jungle and run afoul of a couple of polar bears- poorly rendered polar bears with a taste for the displaced. For all of the excitement surrounding the special effects used in this series, I have seen more realistic polar bears in pop-up books.
Soon enough the writers dropped the polar bears and turned the monster into a cloud of black smoke instead. The survivors also found an immense underground bunker where they have to enter a series of numbers into a computer every two hours or else nothing will happen. There is also a group of other people (creatively named the "others") who have been on the island for forty years and have some kind of cult thing going on. Oh and by the way, there are all kinds of budding love stories happening here and there, and yes, they are just as irrelevant and annoying as the love interests in 24.
If you are being chased through the jungle by a monster made of smoke and ill will, I don't really care if last night meant anything to you. I still won't care tomorrow, so don't waste a whole episode trying to make me understand your strained relationship. You are actually stranded on an island, so logic dictates that everybody gets laid. Then again, nobody on the island has brushed their teeth in two months so there's not going to be much tongue wrestling going on. Plus, in an environment where you are always wet, can you imagine the condition your private junk would be in? Trenchtaint, anyone?
In the last few episodes, some characters have found Jesus, others have found random horses and children, and at least three have found a planeload of heroin packed inside statues of the Virgin Mary. I'm waiting for Jack Bauer and Tony Soprano to arrive on a raft and join the island of unwanted plot twists.
I know everybody thinks that all of these bizarre events are going to somehow morph into a satisfying conclusion, but just once I would like to see one of these series end with something absurdly anti-climactic. Like one day the Korean broad decides to walk down the beach past the next rocky outcrop and finds a resort hotel with tourists and a cruise ship. Roll credits. Or maybe in the middle of the season about ten minutes in to an episode a plane flies over and they all get rescued and go home, leaving all of the subplots agonizingly unexplored and forgotten. The final screen would be the word LOSER flying slowly toward the viewer. It would serve us right for watching it.
Yes, as completely moronic as I know it all is, I watch that show like my life depends on it. While every fiber of my being screams that it is ridiculous, I sit glued to the television, just dying to know who the "others" are and how they are being billed for their electricity.
Dusty
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posted by Dusty at 11:24 AM |
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Are you a Shitheadist?
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4/4/2006
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You may remember Cynthia McKinney from her starring performances in "The Most Embarrassing Person Ever to Hold Public Office Except Maybe Howard Dean", "Unfounded Claims of Racism Vol. 1-349", and "From the 11th to the 4th- Gerrymandering for a Clinically Insane Voter Base".
Last week she once again impressed us all by hitting a Security officer on Capitol Hill when he stopped her from passing through a checkpoint because he didn't know who she was (and she wasn't wearing the Imperial Lapel Pin of the Congressional Bloodfeast that allows members of congress to bypass security).
My biggest issue with all of this is that a grown adult would react to anything by slapping or hitting someone. Who does that? Especially when the other person has a gun and a job to do- namely making sure that Joe Explodeypants doesn't get into the Capitol Building. What if the guard just let a bunch of people pass by and one of them had some crazy purple knockout gas with him? I'll give you one guess who would have wailed the loudest about the horrible lapses in security; her name starts with "C" and ends with "ynthiamckinney".
My next biggest problem- she thinks it is a race issue. Granted this is probably because she would have no political career if not for the word "racism", but based on what I have seen and heard I'm really going to need more proof that this isn't just more crying wolf from someone who needs attention.
Let's examine a few pieces of history from this champion of equality-
In 1996 she called Republican opponent John Mitnick a "Neo Confederate holdover from the Civil War", which was cute, but he is Jewish. She should have known that from the numerous times her father called him a "Racist Jew". This is the same Billy McKinney who lost his seat on the Georgia legislature after saying that the "Jews have bought everybody. Jews."
Good to know you come from a healthy background of racial tolerance, Cynthia. This helps the public understand that when you make a claim of racism it comes from a very honest and thoughtful place.
In any case, McKinney is said to have done something physical in response to being stopped in some way by a police officer at a security checkpoint, and if it's true, she should be charged just like anyone else would be. The reason I put the events in such vague terms is that they aren't sure if she hit him, slapped him, thumped his chest, grabbed his nuts, or threw her cell phone at him. They also aren't sure if he touched her shoulder, grabbed her arm, stood in front of her, tackled her, or yelled at her to stop.
None of the qualifiers in the preceding two sentences matter. In a pathetic attempt to make it seem important, she has escalated her description to "inappropriate touching and stopping of me...a female black congresswoman", as if the guy grabbed her by both nipples and screamed, "Hold it right there, Blackie McNegro! I can tell by the color of your skin that you are up to no good! Now go to the colored jail!"
If the cop was black, this wouldn't be a problem, right? Wrong:
As one radio show caller (and McKinney supporter, amazingly enough) eloquently stated, "It don't [sic] matter if the cop was black or white- the minute he put his hands on her, he's a white cop."
So we are colorblind until someone does something wrong, at which point that person becomes white? Holy crap I hope this guy was kidding. He went on (in the same call) to denounce racism as evil. I assume he then hung up and made himself some bullshit fondue and a cold glass of hypocrisy. She should consider going to his house and paying him not to vote for her. As far as I know, that is still legal.
So I offer my most sincere advice to Cynthia McKinney-
If a cop tells you to do something, the best choice is to do it and ask questions later. If you choose to do something else, like hit the cop, you will probably get the shit kicked out of you and go to jail, and you will deserve it. Please keep in mind that the cop doesn't give a sweet fuck what color you are or how important you say you are. There are consequences for poor decision making. In civilized society there are rules, and breaking those rules makes you "responsible for your actions". A foreign concept to you and most of your constituents, "responsibility" holds you and you alone accountable for the things you do, and it is a part of life that is not going away. The corrupt system did not hit the cop- you did.
As for your claims of racism, let's examine all of the other incidences of black congress members being accosted by security, of which there are five that I could dig up since 1993. Oh wait...ALL FIVE INVOLVE YOU. EVERY SINGLE INCIDENT OF RACISM WAS DIRECTED AT YOU AND YOU ALONE. So the whole thing started by the inappropriate touching and stopping of you, a female, black congresswoman...who happened to be named Cynthia McKinney. The race of the person consistently acting like an ass does not make a case for racism.
In fact, I'm going to give you a new cause- I'm going to coin the word "shitheadist" to define people who think negatively of shitheads. For example, I am a card-carrying shitheadist, and my shitheadism knows no barriers- ethnic, religious, or otherwise. I just don't like shitheads. If you want to make it excusable for shitheads to act like shitheads (which is really what this is about), then this is your calling. What you are doing right now under the guise of fighting racism is not helping anyone.
If you really want to do something positive for the community, stand up and admit that your reaction was uncalled for, pay the fine, and move on. Admitting responsibility and holding oneself accountable is a very integral part of being a leader. By acting as an example to others, you might accidentally gain a shred of respect, and you'll be amazed to see where that can get you.
Dusty
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posted by Dusty at 9:01 PM |
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