I know I know!

But I've been busy OK? Mom finally bought a house so I've been helping her out with the particulars there. She wants all sorts of work done including putting wood floors (floating, thanks be to the gods) throughout, which I'm expected to do. She also has a backyard cottage that she wants made over. Most of last weekend was spent at Home Depot and Lowes deciding on what all she needed. So for the next month I'm going to be tearing out crap plywood walls, insulating and putting up new drywall, tearing out carpets and re-situating all sorts of cabinetry. Worth it for me though so she won't complain when I store all my crap at her house instead of paying 50 bones every month for storage when I leave for OR.
Also I've been on a diet the last few weeks which meant more time devoted to exercise, most of which I have to wake at the buttcrack of dawn or wait until late evening to do or face death by heat stroke. In the midst of my peanut m&m withdrawals I somehow decided now would be the best time to totally quit smoking as well and I got on the patch. Suffice it to say I've been a smidge on the cranky side.
However, I've already lost an official 7lbs. Hooray for me. To reward myself I've used my saved smoke money to buy this....



It was on sale.

I want these to go with...



Hey that would make a good super hero costume. =P Unfortunately I can't get the boots right now, unless someone wants to buy them for me...anyone? Anyone? Paul? Nah didn't think so. I'm still pretty stoked though.

That should keep some imaginations busy for a while, heh. Yes i'm evil.

A New Recruit

It seems yet another innocent has been sucked into the behemothic blog vortex. I've "known" Paul a long time now, in fact he's the totally inappropriate love of my life, (*sigh* so many missed opportunities) being both far too young and far to attached. Anyway, I know that his writings will be of interest to anyone who might enjoy the stories of an impetuous english youth's abuse of alcohol and persistant pursuit of debauchery. And hey, who doesn't love impetuous english youths? There's the fighting, the shaved heads, the olympic level cursing! I predict that older men will heave heavy sighs remembering their lost youth, feminists heads will explode and it's very likely we'll all reach orgasm.

Therefore, please welcome to the blogosphere the preeminent professional of prodigious profanity, without further ado, I give you....

Home of the Plastic Existence and Misspent Youth

Almost Ready to Move

I've been kind of distracted lately with the business of moving. Trying to figure out what needs to go and what should stay in storage. I guess I am a little saddened to think of leaving though I didn't believe I would be.

In summers most of my mornings are spent scrambling to finish whatever needs to be done in order to quickly escape into air conditioned comfort for the rest of the day. But this weekend was a busy one and left me doing chores with the humidity draining my energy for whatever free time I had left. If it were not so warm here I think I might have considered staying.

Right now, the day hangs a humid haze. Cicadas drone, aphids swarm in their dancing clouds creating different shapes. The slight disturbance in the leaves of kudzo leaden trees only foster the stagnant aura. There is the lap of lakewater against a rotting boat. A distant farm carries soft sounds of impatient horses and the cooing response of the farmers patois, which for all my high school french I understand very little of. In my mind I can almost imagine some faint and slow zydeco like fiddle as I sit surveying this mornings green nothing from my porch. All combine into a gentle din that I will now and forever associate with near intolerable heat.

Thankfully, there is the smell of relief in the air, a heavy gray sky seems to bring a hush of anticipation. It feels as if everything is waiting for the first thunder. Rain is welcomed and often wished for from every creature here I think.

I will miss it, I like it here though it's not quite the same as New Orleans which I love beyond any other place i've been. It holds some of the same eccentricities and surreal qualities that after nearly a year I have only just begun to take for granted. But the heat? That will most certainly not be missed but hopefully, blissfully forgotten in Oregons cooler climate.

Raiders of the Lost Ark, Hope No Ones Face Melts Off

So I've read through the grapevine that through the copper scroll, Vendyl Jones, (yes "Dr. Jones") thinks he has finally deciphered the location to the ever elusive ark of the covenant. He plans on going to the location and digging a hole large enough to lower a camera in and broadcast the event live to the world as it happens.

Anyone who knows me or has read through my journal knows that my lifes interest has been archaeology and my college major was anthropology. And Vendyl Jones or rather "Indiana Jones" the movie character is after all largely responsible for my transition from child paleontologist to seriously studying for a career in Anthropology. I have great respect for the man despite any differences in ideals merely for that reason alone. While I've tended to purposefully focus my attention away from the biblical facet, even I have to be extremely excited at what would turn out to be the most significant archeological discovery attained to date.

This find ranks in the top 5 along with the absolute missing link, the holy grail, discovering the true Atlantis and comfirming M theory. In the archaeology community it is very roughly equivilant to winning the national lottery on your 18th birthday.

Despite my excitement I can't ignore the possible rammifications of such a find that I'm not sure most people are fully able to grasp. Far be it from me to begrudge an old man from the very completion of his entire lifes work, but should he manage to not pull a Geraldo here and really find this thing it could mean a major change in the world as we know it now.

For someone like me, it is merely another historical artifact created by men and the discovery of such an artifact probably won't shed any light on it's potentially metaphysical origins. The problem is, for purposes of propoganda, the power and profit groups will try to limit our acces to and interpretation of it. Also if we take their discoveries seriously based on some sort of assumption that science and research and logic can gives us accurate and useful information from the ark that can be used to advance the cause of humanity then, they should also feel compelled to yield to our discoveries like evolution, stem cells, birth control, etc.

Splintering the multi-hued mirror of human discovery and invention into shards and fragments of competing ideologies is what created the need for the ark in the first place. If you read the Hebrew scriptures, god always desired a relationship with his people. He initially asked them to come to his mountain, all of them, and that he would walk among them and be with them. They decided to send Moses instead, put god behind a curtain, asked for laws instead of justice and made faith into an oppositional and secluded type of anti-intellectualism. By they I don't mean jews, although I would include them in this. I mean all of us.

If the ark is severely limited then people will run away with their own ideas as has been done for centuries with the bible, only for many this will be the ultimate confirmation and excuse to go ahead with some very foul and sadistic dealings. Those of us who like our freedom of will, could find ourselves fighting for that right (some of us feel we are already).

Also, I don't like the idea of god being in some object or some location that can be put behind glass and people can pay seven dollars (five for students) to rent multi-lingual headsets where James Earl Jones bellows on about the budding staff of Aaron. I just envision a scene that is a constant circus of fundamentalists, salesmen, crackpots and government officials swarming around outside of some Ark amusement park with a ride that parts the Red Sea and a virtual reality room to experience the biblical plagues of locusts and raining frogs. It's Holy Disney folks, come one come all, take a tour of King Solomons mines, pay $10 for your Moses burger and 39.95 to get a Queen of Sheba costume for the kiddies.

If this is legit, and Dr. Jones is correct or this isn't merely the Ark copy, it poses limitless social, political, historical and I guess ultimately spiritual significance. Let us hope the powers that be and humanity keep a level head.

Hmm I wonder if they'll try sprinkling goats blood on Yom Kippur? Anyway, heavy subject for my first day back eh? The next will be more comical I think. Thanks to those of you who worried about me, you're really sweet. =)