Author: TeRRY

the three items necessary in this life (not necessarily in this order):

[1] a gun. in this case, a masterpiece arms 9mm mac mini defender (model mpa930).
[2] an lp of johnny cash’s live album johnny cash at san quentin. (the live johnny cash at folsom prison lp is also acceptable. in a pinch, other cash vinyl might be a marginally acceptable substitute. temporarily, of course.)
[3] a bible. this particular one is an niv study bible. the nasb is also a good choice.
(those of you who know me, know i’m joking. sort of.)

monday evening i watched the aristocrats. i was kind of worried about what i was getting myself into, but the concept of the documentary seemed interesting. wow…that was…something. there were definitely funny parts, but the kind of humour i like generally doesn’t go too far down the path of sexual and scatological matter. seeing as that was sort of the central point of this documentary, i was in for a ride. i think the worst part was learning what sexual actions are tied to certain phrases tossed around these days. i didn’t realize how innocent and naive i was. i mean, i had imagined what they might mean, but i wasn’t really close. *shudder* let’s change topics…
i realized not too long after i bought the mountain bike that blue jeans and cowboy boots aren’t really the best choices for riding. not that i tried it — i came to this realization via purely mental exercises. (i’m smart like that.) i actually own some cargo pants and doc marten sandals too…still not so good for riding a bike. if you’ll recall, i was on a quest to procure some new jeans since most of mine are threadbare these days, so on tuesday i decided to drop by the sears at main and 59. that place is sort of…run down and ill-manned. so why that sears? well, it’s nearby, and i was looking for some dickies. while there, i noticed a lot of their shorts were on sale. remembering that i needed some stuff to ride a bike in, and being aware enough of my body to know i shouldn’t be looking at spandex riding shorts, i decided to go the cool mountain biker look route and picked up a couple of pairs of camo cargo shorts. and i picked up a pair of black dickies for work. i’ve never worn dickies pants before, so this is sort of an experiment to see how i like them.
[aside: why is it a “pair of pants”? is one leg a pant? i mean, it’s called a “pant leg” i guess. but the object in its entirety is called “pants”. did people used to wear just one leg at a time, so if you wore a left pant and a right pant you were wearing pants? because a shirt has two sleeves for your arms but you don’t call a shirt a “pair of shirts” or “sleeves”. of course, you don’t call the sleeves “shirt arms” either i guess. if only there were some way we could collect known information and then make it searchable through some kind of searching interface or something. that’d be pretty cool.]
at this point you may be saying to yourself “okay TeRRY, i understand the camo cargo shorts — but do you really think they go well with cowboy boots?” good question! no, i don’t think they do. that’s why on wednesday after work i dropped by soundwaves to check out their shoe selection. and to pick up centro-matic’s fort recovery cd. i looked through their array of shoes and they had some pretty slick stuff. realizing i’m not 15 years old (note how self-aware i’m being), i decided maybe i shouldn’t try to pull off wearing some new shoe branded by some skater i’ve never heard of. so i made the only logic choice — i headed back to the shoe of my late teen youth: vans. not just vans, but the vans old skool model. here i must admit i diverted from tradition, as i used to wear high tops and now i was looking at low tops. one particular color scheme struck my fancy, but they didn’t have it in my size. another i liked they had in a half size bigger than i normally wear, so i tried them on. they were nice, but i decided to wait.
so, of course, i later came home and started doing google searches. i found a number of different varieties, but most of them were only on one or two sites and most of the time they only had very large or very small sizes left. fortunately for me, the one that caught my eye at soundwaves is common, so i was able to find a pair (see? there’s a reasonable use of the word “pair”) for a good price. i found another site that had one pair left in my size of a style i saw on no other site, so i went ahead and bought them. there were a couple of other color schemes i liked, but i never could find them in my size for sale on sites in the u.s. (japan, germany, holland, etc. though…). both pairs should arrive at my house next week sometime.
thursday evening i decided i should take my bike out for its maiden voyage. i didn’t have any good shoes yet, but i had the shorts and i figured i could get by with my clunky leather sha-sha’s this time around. holy crap. i came to a few realizations. first: i feel completely awkward on a bike these days. i’m sure part of it is the different geometry of a mountain bike, and this one is pretty light — but i felt unstable. i didn’t think i’d have to learn how to ride a bike again. second: i’m not just in horrible shape, i’m actually in no shape. i probably rode it maybe one or two miles, just to get my feet wet with it. it was humid and hot, and i was going fairly fast, but that’s no excuse. i came back to the house and i felt like i was having a stroke. i came in and plopped down and immediately drank a bunch of water. jeebus! i guess i’ll be taking awhile before i can ride with anyone.
since i was sitting on the couch not moving anywhere so i could make sure i wasn’t about to die, i went ahead and watched one flew over the cuckoo’s nest. wow. it was really good. not jaw-dropping good, but it was really good. (and i don’t think i thought that because i’d just had a near-death experience.) i’d seen bits and pieces over the years, but hadn’t seen most of it and never at once. there’s quite a few known people in it, which i didn’t recall. it raises some interesting issues, and does a really effective job of making you dislike the head nurse. you should watch it if you haven’t seen it.
later kevin texted me to let me know they were heading to the house of pies around 11:30pm. i met up with kevin and jo, as well as amy, mark, brian, and sarah (not sure if i spelled those right, but you get the idea). i’d already eaten supper with the potts at lupe tortilla’s around 6pm, but i went ahead and had a couple of eggs, some cottage fries, and an english muffin.
i ended up not going to bed until around 3am, so i wasn’t real excited about getting up in the morning for work. i let them know i was running late, and took the time to take a shower and take care of some stuff at frost bank. which brings me up to my social butterfly friday night… (next post)

sunday i got a quechup.com invite from a friend of mine. him being a net-savvy mover and shaker, i figured it might be something i should check out. as part of setting up the account, it asked me if i wanted it to scan my address book for friends already signed up. “three things,” i thought, “first, i don’t have many friends; second, i don’t really keep up an address book; and third, my mail is mostly read in pine.” plus it was asking for a username and password so it could check online address books and i wasn’t too excited about giving them that. (not being the hip online scenester, i wasn’t aware several of the prominent networking sites now do this and it’s generally an accepted practice.) so i didn’t let it, and i finished signing up. it didn’t add the person who invited me to my friends list, which i thought was odd. i then got another invite from a guy i do the radio show with. i won’t give out his name, but his initials are jay lee. to be honest, i wasn’t seeing why everyone seemed so excited by this site. i poked around a bit on it and quickly lost interest.
a day or two later i learned what was going on. through vague wording not really explaining what they are doing, behaving differently than other networking sites that do similar things, and doing things even when you cancel or tell them not to, they were quickly building hatred toward them by the online world. (well-deserved hatred, i might add.) when they looked in your address book for people already on their site, they also sent out e-mail invitations appearing to come from you to every address in your address book. for people who have thousands of addresses, professional contacts, exes, etc. in their address book…well, you can see it’s not a good thing. people didn’t even know what quechup had done until they started getting responses and bounces from lots of people regarding their “invitiation”.
quechup basically took advantage of trust and expected behaviour, and they burned a whole lot of people. don’t believe me? try google searching their name. remember that radio host whose initials i mentioned? he, along with another host (dwight), blogged about it and were linked to from boingboing. the duped host even came up with a name for people taken by the site: quechump.

i followed joe and kelly back to the beach houses…dang, i didn’t know galveston island was so long! i’d never gone much past the main part of the seawall blvd. these beach houses were past jamaica beach. we got there and jack was outside. (i’m guessing he’d just beaten us there. sue had gone back a couple of hours earlier with the tired children in tow.) at this point, i was somewhat tired, but when i was getting out of the truck something fell to the ground. i looked down and it was part of my skull wallet chain. evidently my fears were true, and it’s somewhat delicate. i’m assuming my sliding on it across my bench seat was enough to break a couple of the weld points on the skulls. oh well, i picked up the pieces and i’ll just have to shorten it a bit. i went in and sue and the kids were already asleep. joe and kelly were going to come over, but kelly went into the house they were staying in and fell asleep, so just joe came over. we hung out and talked until maybe 2:30am or something, then he headed off. i turned everything off and hit the couch. it’s kind of funny, i actually had a dream joe was in, but i don’t really remember anything about it.
in the morning i woke up and jack was already gone, but lots of other people were around. i think it was around 9am. kelli’s mom was staying in the house i was in, and she remembered who i was after i reminded her where we’d met. joe and kelly came back over and we talked some more, then they headed off. (i forgot to menton, at the reception i actually let joe take a picture or two of me without me covering my face in some way. that’s a pretty rare event.) sue and the kids were up and were heading to the beach, so i agreed to go with them.
as i said to sue while i was down there: “i just don’t get it.” the beach holds absolutely no interest to me. it doesn’t seem pleasant, or relaxing, or fun — and only holds mild levels of curiousity or novelty for me. she explained how it was so wonderful to hear the waves, lay out in the sun and get a tan, see the vast amount of water, be in the sand. my response: “nope, i’m just not buying it.” i seriously just get no pleasure or enjoyment out of it. i don’t even like things with nautical themes.
we headed back up to the house, where i watched some pokemon marathon with the potts’ kids, then i started helping to clean up some. eventually everyone left except me and kelli’s mom. i mean it. no one else. i was sort of trapped because she’d parked behind me, but i also felt like someone should be helping her finish cleaning up. i’m sure as the mother of the bride she had already dealt with plenty of stress over everything. plus her husband was sick and had barely been able to make it to the wedding, so he wasn’t there to help. it’s kind of funny though, since i’d really only spent the one night there after the wedding. i hadn’t even brought a chance of clothes or anything. right as we were done and started to get in our vehicles, it began to rain like crazy.
i drove back into galveston and met sue and the kids at a quizno’s for a late lunch. afterward, traffic was slow on i45 so i thought i’d stop at the gap in baybrook mall, but it started raining so i changed my mind. i figured some coffee would do me good since i was operating on somewhat low amounts of sleep so i headed to coffee oasis. they closed early for labor day. *sigh* so i headed back to houston.
so thus ends the wedding trip. normally i head to brady for labor day weekend. it’s the weekend they have the world championship bbq goat cookoff, and the last few years i’ve made it a point to be there. this year was also a big reunion year for me, but evidently my class didn’t plan anything. but i needed to stay here. the goat cookoff happens every year. as with most weddings, it’s kind of a bittersweet experience for me. i’m happy for the people getting married and i wish the best for them, but it also reminds me of what i thought i had and what is gone. (gotta end it on an up note. 😉

before i left for galveston, i tried to go ahead and put my new inside door handle and window crank handle on my passenger side door. unfortunately, what i learned was that the mount points have evidently both been too stripped to hold the new handles. so now it looks like i’ll be purchasing some more parts. ah well. it’s such a nice feeling to be okay with spending money on fixing a vehicle.
i made it down to galveston and found the place without any issues. i managed to get there about 30 minutes early. they had the wedding at an old house (mansion) on broadway (what i-45 turns into) at 24th street — ashton villa. it was a really nice location. the wedding was held outside in a courtyard with a large open rotunda, while the reception was held inside in the grand ballroom.
the invitation requested black and white casual dress attire, but i couldn’t really pull that off with my normal wardrobe. instead, i wore a dark grey long-sleeved pearl snap shirt, blue jeans, and snakeskin boots. to help sort of fit the invitation request, and to class it all up a bit, i wore my black leather western-cut suit jacket. i think it looked decent enough, but it was kind of a lot for outside in late august/early september.
i walked around for a minute or two and ran into a couple of people i knew, as well as seeing a lot of people i’ve either met in past or have seen before. i headed over to jack and he asked me if i wanted to go inside with him to mess with the projector. we were headed that way when i ran into joe levander. i don’t know why i hadn’t thought about him being there, since he and brad were roommates for several years, but i hadn’t. i hadn’t gone to his and kelly’s wedding as it was in tennessee (several years ago), but i always really liked both of them and was quite happy for them when they started dating and then decided to get married, so it was a very pleasant surprise to run into him. joe was a groomsman. he and i talked and jack eventually continued on with his work while joe and i were talking. sue and the potts’ kids, minus simcha, walked by while we were talking. joe said kelly was there too, so i went back into the courtyard and eventually found her. she was with simcha, and soon sue and jackson, dietrich, and calista showed up.
the wedding was very nice. the attendance was very good, and a lot of people managed to handle the requested dress code. mirroring the requested dress code, and the dress style of the wedding party, the ceremony was pretty informal, with a good mix of both traditional and non-traditional elements, and brad and kelli seemed to both enjoy and find meaning in the whole process. although it’s irrelevant these days, i like to imagine my wedding had a somewhat similar feel to it. after the ceremony everyone headed to the front entrance of the main house to go to the ballroom.
the ballroom was packed to overflowing, and with all of the seat wrangling, talking, moving, etc. i started feeling sensory overload. i excused myself and went outside. i spent some time walking around looking at the mansion and the grounds, then eventually i went back in. it was still packed and there was an incredibly long line for food; however, it was nice to be in the a/c so i stood against the wall for some time. eventually i went and got a glass of water and went back outside. i sat down in the courtyard area on a concrete bench and started smoking my pipe. after awhile i went back to benches closer to the ballroom, and eventually some smokers came out and started joining me. joe came out and sat down and we talked some more, then kelly came out and we all talked some. sue and the kids came out for awhile, then went back in.
after it seemed like a fair number of people had left, i ventured back inside. they were playing loud music, but there were no lines and plenty of seating. i sat down with joe and kelly, and jack sat down to eat some while he took a break. i didn’t actually eat any of the mexican food they served. i ate a handful of raw baby carrots and had a slice of the german chocolate cake (which was very good). as we were sitting, brad’s mom came by and talked to kelly for awhile. i didn’t really say much, as i didn’t figure she’d remember that i’d stayed at her house back in the summer of 2000 for a day or two while tamara and i went with brad to cornerstone. i’d seen kelly’s dad earlier, and he actually remembered who i was, which was cool. i met him about a year ago i think, at brasil. he rides, and remembered i rode with brad and kelli. eventually the dancing came to end and it was time for brad and kelli to leave.
outside, they handed out a bunch of little water guns for people to spray them with as they headed toward the car. i kind of stayed back a bit and didn’t pick up a water gun, not too excited about getting wet. as everyone waited, suddenly brad and kelli showed up from a different direction in rainsuits with big supersoakers and started spraying everyone. it was pretty clever, and funny. they hopped in the back of their ride and were driven off.
joe and kelly and i decided to try and help do some clean up with the people tearing down, so we stacked and loaded chairs, cleaned some , etc. sue had offered that i could stay at the beach house they were staying at (brad and kelli’s families had rented three beach houses for wedding party folk and guests and such), but i figured i’d make up my mind at the wedding. i decided i’d go ahead and spend the night.

saturday evening i headed over to main street. first, i stopped by sig’s lagoon and picked up a centro-matic cd he’d ordered for me. it’s their latest, the operation motorcide ep. it’s unreleased cuts from the fort recovery sessions (which i will probably purchase sometime in the near future).
from sig’s i went next door to tacos-a-go-go, where i had the taco plate. my selections were the picadillo and the pollo guisado, both on corn tortillas. both were good, but the picadillo (seasoned, ground beef) was excellent. while there, some amazing flashes of lightning started — a precursor to the rain that lasted pretty much the rest of the night.
after the meal, i walked next door to the continental club. there i saw whiskey river revival, followed by scott biram. i liked whiskey river revival. kind of an alt-country act in the vein of maybe hank iii but with more Texas music influence, they had dan johnson on steel. (that guy gets around!) i wasn’t sure what to expect from scott biram. he does a one-man show with an impressive amount of gear onstage surrounding him. he uses a road case (from what i could tell) as a bass drum, and sings through what appeared to be several mics, which had what sounded like varying levels of vocal effects. he was pretty crude, drank, cussed, etc. it was interesting, but i guess overall it’s just not meant to be for me. i stayed until about 1am and then headed back to the house. i guess i should also mention this was the first evening of the city smoking ban. the continental had a big red “no smoking” sign on the front door. there were some interesting conversations throughout the evening about the ban, as well as various smokers standing under the front awning trying to smoke and stay out of the rain.
sunday morning i planned to sleep in, since i was going to miss church to go to brad and kelli’s wedding in galveston, which i had put in my calendar as being at 1pm. my body managed to wake me up earlier than i’d set the alarm, so i contemplated going to church but decided it’d be cutting things too close. i took my time getting ready, and as i was leaving i realized it’d probably be a good idea to have the invitation to look at. it was then i realized the wedding actually wasn’t until 7:30pm. oops. i had already missed 30 or 45 minutes of church, so i decided to not show up for the ending of it. but i had a lot of time suddenly.
so i got in element and headed to border’s to use a 25% off coupon i had. i was originally hoping to use it on a bear family box set, but the two i was interested in (the 2nd bob wills box and the sarg records box) weren’t available in the warehouse so i had to improvise. i ended up using it on the rhino rockin’ bones “1950’s punk & rockabilly” 4-disc set.
from there i headed down kirby to the bike barn in rice village. if you recall, a number of months ago i’d gone and looked at mountain bikes, but ended up dropping it before i made a purchase. i even test rode one then. i ended up talking to the same guy this time, although i doubt he remembers me (and i didn’t mention he’d talked to me before). he talked with me a bit, but then i ended up talking with another guy. we talked for quite a bit, and he had a much more low key personality and i enjoyed the conversation and information. i also didn’t feel rushed or pressured by him at all. i eventually decided i might as well go ahead and jump in, so i bought a bike. he didn’t try to do much in add-on sales (which they evidently are supposed to do), but i ended up asking about various things and bought a few accessories. one thing i did not buy is a helmet. i don’t wear a helmet on my motorcycle, i don’t wear a seatbelt in my pickup — i’m not going to suddenly switch and wear a helmet on a bike. but enough on that. the bike i bought is a gary fisher mountain bike — it’s the 2007 hoo koo e koo (specs).
my hope is that the price i paid will force me to use it, then i will realize how much i enjoy it. because honestly, biking is about the only form of exercise that seems in any way enjoyable. running? ick! walking? boring. weights? painfully repetitious and horribly boring. etc. plus, off-road bike riding has always seemed like it should still be fun. i used to love riding my cheap huffy bmx bike around when i was a kid, i used to ride trail and dirt bikes (motorcycles), and i love riding my cruiser — so this seems like as good a fit for me as any.
from the bike barn, with my newly purchased bike in the back of my element, i headed across the parking lot to fuzzy’s pizza. apparently this one is moving soon, but i managed to get to them before they did. after that, i headed to the gap to try and use a $10 off coupon i had for jeans. unfortunately, nothing both struck my fancy and was available on the shelf in my size so i left empty handed.
i came back home and dropped off my bike, then jumped in the pickup and took off for galveston, and brad and kelli’s wedding.

friday night i watched jarheads. i was somewhat interested in it when it came out, but i heard enough negative reviews complaining about it being blatantly anti-war and such that i lost some interest. having watched it now, i’m not sure why there was as much complaining about it — excepting of course the knee-jerk reactionary conservatives who can’t help but spew vitriol towards anyone not toeing the rhetoric line. the movie seemed like one person’s experience, and seemed to combine world views of war, military, politics, personal relationships, etc. in what seemed to be a reasonable and realistic way. in fact, i rather liked the film. i feel like it pretty accurately portrays what a lot of people feel and go through (not having gone through it myself, of course — i even decided against going forward with the air force and army rotc scholarships i had applied for when i was headed to college).
people can try to turn everything into a black-and-white, good-and-bad, right-vs.-wrong dichotomy, but the real world simply is not that way. doing so to the real world distorts and manipulates the reality of things, and many times can force you to make incorrect judgments and have incorrect perspectives because your simplified sifting mechanism just can’t handle the diversity and complexity that actually exists in the world. sure, someone like me can slip into cynicism and negativism just as easily as someone else can slip into blind allegiance and unquestioned trust and faith. the key is to try to be who you are while maintaining a balance that keeps you from falling too far in one direction or another. consider the situation, mull over the facts, listen to what the other people are saying — even if you don’t agree, there may be some truth there, or something you can learn to help understand why they believe what they do. you don’t have to agree in order to respect and understand. and you can use their information to create a better built and more accurate perspective for yourself.
after watching the movie i jumped on second life for awhile, then i went over to poison girl for about an hour. whoever thinks i’m too picky about being attracted to women obviously hasn’t been with me in places like that. it’s chock full of the kind of girls that make me swoon. (unfortunately, almost all of them smoke and drink a lot. …just a second…is that being picky?) i was slack-jawed by a girl who looked amazingly like jennifer (the girl my heart beat for over so many years), except with jet-black hair, a bettie page/alt girl attitude, and a top that accentuated an impressive…uh…personality. if only somehow the two of them could be melded into one person. oh. my. L-rd. my brain would explode. *sigh* but there were plenty of other sites to see. all the alt chicks in black with tattoos and piercings, the indie girls, the trendy alt girls (not so much my cup of tea, but you never know.)
not being a conversationalist, or particularly outgoing, or filled with the slightest bit of confidence or optimism, i was content to play out the awkward meetings followed by dismissals and brush offs in my mind — thus cutting out the middle-man (or middle-woman, as the case may be) and saving myself some time and embarrassment. i can’t decide if it’s better to be ignorant that such places exist, or if it actually gives me hope that maybe out there somewhere there is someone who would match up with me. (although tamara was a rare girl who matched more of the list in my mind than most…and look how that turned out. maybe i don’t know what my match really is.)
saturday i headed to saint arnold’s brewery for their saturday tour. it’s the first time i’d been there since they started charging $5 a head. for years it was free, but it was getting incredibly crowded. even charging, the place was pretty packed. i was somewhat surprised. i forgot to take the six-pack containers i’ve had sitting around for months now (you can turn them in for glasses, shirts, etc.). of course, they still didn’t have any glasses with their logo in black, so maybe it’s just as well i forgot the cases. (i’ve got two of the black logo glasses and have been wanting to make a set for awhile now.)
the reason i went up there was to meet up with kevin and jo, who are back here visiting from seattle. (kevin’s blog is linked from mine, over on the navigation on the right.) after partaking of saint arnold’s fine crafts, i joined the group in eating a late lunch at onion creek.
on the way back home i stopped and got my pickup inspection done, so i’m good for another year. it’s so nice not having to get an emissions tests — cheaper, faster, easier.

i went by sugarbaby’s cupcake boutique a weekend or two ago. it’s near shepard and richmond, on shepard. i found out awhile back before they were open that it is owned by a couple that goes to kaleo (the church i go to). i’d been planning on dropping by, but it seemed like they were always closed when i was around. i finally went up to the door and their current hours are 10am-6pm tuesday through saturday. which would explain why they’re never open when i’m around on weekdays. (as i found out while there, they are planning on staying open later but need to hire people for the later shifts.) so on a saturday afternoon i dropped by. both of them were working, so i had a chance to ask them how things were going and some stuff about the store. i knew from previous conversations the process to open the store had taken way longer than they’d ever dreamed it would. i had two cupcakes: a german chocolate and a red velvet (i forgot their names for them). they were both really good. they make them fresh from very simple and very real ingredients. and the recipes come from family recipes. i also picked up a vanilla bean with vanilla icing and a chocolate with chocolate icing for jack and sue. if you like cupcakes you should check out the store.
a couple of weeks ago jason isbell and centro-matic were playing at walter’s on washington on a wednesday night. i thought about going over after the radio show, but decided not to. i was interested in jason because he’d been in the drive-by truckers for a while and recently gone solo. i like the drive-by truckers quite a bit. i’d never really heard of centro-matic that i could recall, but i checked out some stuff online and i thought they sounded really good. they’ve evidently been around a long time. anyway, i was impressed by their sound, from what i heard. but i didn’t get to see them.
this past friday night at the continental club i saw the weary boys‘ “last show”. officially they are going on hiatus, and they were playing a double set at the continental club in austin the next night. before the show i ate at tacos-a-go-go (barbacoa taco = very good, tex-mex frito pie = eh). i also dropped by sig’s lagoon and bought jason isbell’s cd.
when i was going around town buying up the boxers with skulls, i bought a tie. why? i don’t know. it’s not like i ever wear ties, even though i have quite a few. it was on sale and i thought it looked cool. i used to wear ties from time to time. i used to enjoy dressing up sometimes. i haven’t done that in years and years. i was on the debate team in high school and we had to wear ties…maybe that’s why.
i let my sirius subscription die. i signed up for a year during my road trip bringing my newly purchased pickup back from new york. i really never listened to sirius very much. part of it is that it wasn’t very convenient to get it all hooked up and going in my pickup. in fact, that may be most of it. but i never moved it to the element. and i can’t really use it on my motorcycle. the model receiver i bought wasn’t made to be hooked up in the house. but that’s okay because the digital satellite in the house i’m renting streams sirius channels, so it’s like i still have them at home anyway. plus after hearing some of xm’s programming, i think i probably prefer it as far as americana/country. or let’s say i prefer willie’s place (xm) to outlaw country (sirius). but i’ve got plenty of cds, and boot liquor on soma fm.
the weekend before last i went to ikea and bought a desk. yep, i finally gave up and bought something. it’s pretty simple and was only around $160, so i can use it until i find a better one and then figure out something else to do with it. it looks okay though, and it’s better than having parts of a garage shelving unit as a makeshift desk.
i saw raj and kiera a while back. they were in town for awhile. it turns out raj had gotten in a wreck (in mississippi, i think) driving back from d.c. to houston. one of his tires blew out and his car went off the road, scraped a tree or two, then the back half slammed into a tree. both he and their dog were mostly okay, but the car was totaled. kiera was still in d.c. and got a call that raj had been in a wreck.
last saturday i dropped my charles daly .45 off at the gander mtn near 290 and highway 6. this saturday i picked it up. they said nothing was wrong with it. he fired around three magazines worth through it and had no problems. i guess i’ll take it to top gun here soon and see if it seems to be behaving better for me. i may end up just chunking it and getting something else.
saturday afternoon was calista’s birthday party. they had it at a public park that has some water stuff for kids, in addition to the regular playground stuff. it was kind of hot until the sun got lower. overall it was cool, and i think the kids had a good time — and that’s what’s important, right? of course, as we were leaving there were some goobers smoking pot. in a public park. brilliant.
saturday night i stayed up way too late talking on second life. sunday morning i did manage to get up and go to church. immediately after which i had an emotional meltdown. i mean, i completely flatlined. i left fairly quickly and went home. it’s weird how overwhelming emotions can be at times. i’m still feeling the after-affects or emotional residue or whatever at times on some level from that event. (maybe i’ll discuss and analyze myself at some point in the future.) after a couple of hours i got out and went to the gun show. i managed to keep from buying anything this time though. i got close to buying a beretta cx4 storm .40 cal, and/or a kel-tec 9mm collapsible rifle. i also thought about getting a 9mm glock. but i held out. i’m hoping my next gun purchase may be an ak-47. i just don’t want to buy a questionable or shoddily built one.
i’m beginning to work toward having information up on the army of Texas website.
a few days ago i got an order i placed with dennis-carpenter.com. they make parts for old fords. i picked up a new accelerator pedal, inside door handles, window crank handles, and 4 key blanks. should be nice to have tight fitting and properly functioning passenger-side handles. and a gas pedal.

i’ve actually managed to go through some of my netflix queue.
i watched the last part of wishing stairs. the previous copy i’d had months ago kept pausing and stopping. if you don’t recall, it’s an asian horror film. it’s set at an all-female private magnet school. the story is, there are these stairs that have a certain number of steps, but if you count them going up and you count an extra final step then you can make a wish and it’ll come true. it’s sort of a mix of a story about ambition, friendship, betrayal — and the unknown power and methods of spiritual forces. i didn’t think it was all that great. asian film in general seems to employ what i see as overacting…kind of making things cartoonish, a caricature of the most important aspect(s) of someone’s personality or actions/reactions. watching the extras on the dvd actually made me appreciate the film more, but i still didn’t think it was great. of course, i didn’t watch it from the beginning and it’d been months since i’d seen the first part so that may have made it more difficult for me to appreciate.
i also watched the corporation. it’s a documentary about the history of the corporation. how it came to exist, how it came to be what it is today. i’m no fan of corporate culture, and i think the idea of a corporation being treated as a “person” by our legal system is pretty stupid. but in the extras the creators seemed to want to pitch it as if they tried hard to be impartial and give corporations a chance to state their position — but it’s pretty obvious from the editing, timing, topics, etc. that there is an agenda and an opinion. i thought some of the conversations in the extras were better stated and had more meat than the film itself, but the film does make some interesting observations and provides some good information about the history of the concept of the corporation.
next up is annie hall. i don’t think i’d ever even seen parts of this movie. i’ve never been much of a fan of woody allen, and don’t recall ever being around people much who were. or at least who shared it with me. although i know there are people who are huge fans of his films out there. the only one i ever liked much is one i saw part of on tv and don’t even know the name of. oddly, it seems like i should like woody allen. i could easily see how people could compare some aspects of my general worldview or personality with what he portrays on the screen. as far as annie hall specifically, there were some things i like about it but overall i was just okay with it. i still have a tendency to compare movie relationships to my experiences with tamara, so that always puts an interesting spin on things.
then we have paper clips. this is a documentary about a school in rural tennessee. the administration decided they wanted to do a program to give the rural, almost completely white, conservative, christian kids exposure to different culture and life experience. they decided to cover the holocaust and nazi germany. when brainstorming for an idea for a project, they decided to collect paper clips for each of the jews killed by the nazis. the project started off slowly, but they got in the news and things snowballed. the documentary does a wonderful job of both giving information about the holocaust and how it affected people, and also how this project took over the school and affected the kids, the teachers, and the community, as well as the participation of people who found out about the project. i really suggest taking the time to watch it.
i also watched my bodyguard. it’s a film from 1980 that tells the story of a kid who moves from private school into a public school and finds out he’s supposed to pay protection money to the school bully. he thinks not, and ends up hiring an outsider kid everyone is scared of (adam baldwin…”animal mother” in full metal jacket) to be his bodyguard, by doing so giving all the kids power and hope, befriending the outsider in the process, and everyone learns something about themselves and life in the end. the movie was…eh. the best part was seeing a very young matt dillon play the bully. the main character’s loopy grandmother was played by the lady who played maude in harold and maude. it makes me wonder if she got typecast, because it’s pretty much the same role. george wendt (norm!) also has a very small one scene job. who else…oh yeah, a young joan cusack plays the awkward high school girl.
and finally we have rock school. this is a documentary about paul green’s rock school in philadelphia. basically, paul created a school to teach kids how to play and perform rock music. the documentary follows him and a number of his students, while also building toward the public performances they are working toward. i don’t think the documentary was great, but it was interesting and sometimes funny. paul comes across as an interesting guy, as far as his perspective of himself, the kids, and the world. i liked will o’connor and his personality and takes on things. and watching c.j. play guitar as well as he did at that age was an experience.

in my “i’m the firestarter” entry i mentioned getting a new wallet and ordering a couple of wallet chains. the wallet i bought that day came with a wallet chain, but it was maybe 12 inches long and generic, with a satiny finish. i quickly realized it wouldn’t do.
i spent a number of hours over a couple of days looking around online for cool wallet chains. surprisingly to me, i found very few sites that had cool wallet chains. (and yes, i searched quite a bit.) i finally narrowed it down to two sites. my favorite (www.walletchain.net) had much cooler choices, but they were in south korea and their english wasn’t so great. it made me a bit worried about their legitimacy. i was getting ready to go with my second choice (www.amigaz.com), then i saw that walletchain.net was selling their wares on ebay. they had a lot of positive scores and comments and very few negatives or neutrals, so i decided they were probably legit. i went to their website and ordered my two favorite choices. (i did choose to use paypal instead of giving them my credit card info, just in case.)
after a couple of weeks, the package arrived from south korea. each piece comes in a zip bag with “you are a hero”, a skull and crossbones wearing a crown, and “walletchain all the best wish you! from: genghis khan” printed on it. both chains looked as good as or better than i’d expected them to.
the first is a very heavy, double-linked, antiqued pewter chain, around 31 inches in length. on the site it is called “executioner”. here it is on my person:

the second is an antiqued silver chain alternating between skulls and simple circle loops, around 23 inches in length. on the site it is called “bad man”. here it is on my person:


i haven’t been wearing them too long, as i only got them a few days ago — but i am happy with the style and look. we’ll see over time how i like the quality. anyway, i don’t know how many people might be looking for cool wallet chains, but consider buying from these guys. the prices are a little better if you buy directly from them instead of through ebay too.
oh yeah…and i have managed to purchase 5 pair of the exact same skull boxers i mentioned in that same earlier post. i’ve always thought it’d be cool to have a number of the same pairs of clothes (pants, shirts, etc) and always wear the same thing — that way when anyone saw you, you’d always look exactly the same. it’d be sort of like being a peanuts character. so far, the closest i’ve gotten is having about 5 or 6 of the exact same black gap knit polo short sleeve shirt. but i have lots of other shirts and i rotate through things. G-d bless steve jobs for getting it down to two outfit options.