Feelin' Mighty Toasty

It seemed pretty warm outside today. Sure enough, it's in the 50s. Yay! I looked at the weather forecast...and this is what I saw. 374 degrees for the LOW on Tuesday. I better go get my asbestos underwear ready to go.

Some Days It Just Doesn't Pay to Read the News

I'm sooooo torked today. Two very different stories with two very different reasons to be torked. The first: Anti-gay fury mars funeral of a soldier in Anoka. If the link doesn't work, here's the story in a quick quote nutshell, "The six (protestors at the funeral) are members of a church in Topeka, Kan., that espouses the belief that God is killing American soldiers because they fought for a country that tolerates homosexuality."

Ummm...yeah... Six sick f*cks who hide behind "God" to espouse their beliefs to people in mourning. Apparently these sickos are going from funeral to funeral. WTF?! I'm anti-war, I'm pretty dang liberal and now I'm livid. I just want to attend a funeral when they're in mourning and just scream at the top of my lungs, "Ya'll are sick, small minded, socially inept idiots who obviously are masking your own homosexual desires." Along side me, I'd like a whole band of guys who will be screaming that they slept with the sickos and ENJOYED IT. Or something like that. :-)

NEXT

Midwest Oil fined for selling gas too cheaply -- Again, briefly, the state of Minnesota is fining Midwest Oil for selling gas cheaper than the legally set "threshold price." What an idiotic law! Sure, the state loves making money off of gas tax (I mean, who wouldn't?), but seriously, there is no logical reason in this day to have a gas threshold price. A quote from the article: "Defenders of the law say it's critical to protect small and medium-sized stations.They note that unlike large chains, those stations often can't cushion below-cost gasoline with sales of other merchandise." hehhehe. THIS tickles me. In our homogenized-Walmartized country, I think most people would be hard pressed to even think of a gas station that isn't owned by a large size chain. I can't even think of one little mom&pop gas station. When I was a kid, yup, I could name at least three. No longer. They're all BP, Chevron, SA, etc, etc. What's the sole reason for keeping this law on the books --- well, it's related to the previous article -- the lawmakers are in bed with the gas companies. Pure and simple. Oh, and yeah, they like it.

Lost in Utah...

..and want some awesome Mexican food?

Don’t miss Café Rio. Oh. My. Gosh. You can’t beat the Pork Barbacoa salad. It’s not just a salad…it’s a salad and pork dessert rolled into one. Always fresh and nummy! While I wouldn’t call it “authentic” Mexican food, it is awesome, awesome, awesyum!

If you’re looking for a bit more of an authentic place, give the Red Iguana a try in Salt Lake. Yummy too!

Both places are often super busy, so plan on a little bit of a wait. Café Rio is a cafeteria style place where you order your food and take it to a table or home. Red Iguana is a pleasant, often crowded yet festive standard restaurant

A couple of things from my trip to San Diego/Las Vegas...

Worthy of note:

• While being seated at a little hole-in-the wall restaurant in San Diego, the host says, "Have you been here before?" Ivan, answering someone else in our party says, "Yes." Host says, "Huh, I don't remember seeing you before." Apparently, said host lives 24-7 at the restaurant and has a brilliant memory.
• Odd jewelry still amuses me. While at the antique bottle show, I came across a woman selling vintage jewelry. We spotted a vermeil fish pendant from the 30s. What makes it odd and cool? The thing is 3-D and the tail moves much like a real fish does. Also the mouth opens and closes shut. Hard to explain, really. Suffice it to say that whomever designed it had a keen sense of architectural integrity and a love for the odd, much like me. Yeah, so I *had to* buy it.
• Money enters slot machines easier than it comes out.
• The Point Loma cemetery in San Diego made me think that there are far more dead people than alive and yet looking at a military cemetary of this magnitude makes me wonder where all of the bodies are. I mean, the cemetary is HUGE, but in reality it's a drop in the dead body bucket.
• Big Things are hidden everywhere. I did some research and asked on web boards about BIG things in San Diego and between SD and Las Vegas. No one mentioned the giant fireman hat in Barstow. We just accidentally found it while looking around the town. Yay! I love finding the little known ones. Kinda like finding hidden treasure.

Illustration Friday - Song

Yet another Illustration Friday installment. I'm pretty pleased with this one on the whole. I started it while trying to avoid my losing streak in Vegas. I sent myself to my hotel room as punishiment for losing so frequently at the slots. Good things often come from bad! Click here or the image to the left to see full size.

Illustration Friday - Chair

Just a simple hand done drawing with some filters applied to prove once and for all that I have no hand-done talent! :-) Click the image to see full size!

Shakin'

I just had a run in with two dogs. They came into our yard and killed our chickens. (The cute little things wander our yard eating bugs, seeds and whatnot.) I confronted them to try to get them to stop and the one pit-bull-mix dog came at me. SCARY. I went as quickly as I could back up the stairs into our house and called 911. Animal Control came pretty quickly, but not until after all of our chickens were missing/dead. Pretty sad, really.  What’s pretty bad is that Animal Control said that the dogs were in custody yesterday for destroying a chair or something in someone’s yard. They’re repeat offenders!  Luckily, the pit-bull-mix dog is apparently the “nice one” of the two, so I wasn't in too much danger. Although if you were going to tell me that at the time the thing lunged at me, I would have told ya bullsh*t! The other one is a collie mix that’s apparently a very bad seed.  Turns out that the Pit bull mix is illegal in our city, so it won’t be back. The collie mix will probably be back at its home ready to do more damage. Grrrr.

"Rage Spreads Over Cartoons"

Just the headline alone makes me go “huh?” You know, if I took myself too seriously, I would have had to kill thousands of cartoonists over their lampooning ( and often harpooning) my fat self.

People spend too much time worrying about symbology and it’s worthiness in their lives. For instance, so many people vehemently oppose burning the US flag. It’s a freakin’ symbol. If you see a flag burning it doesn’t effect your personal views, does it? No, you believe deep inside what you want to believe and nothing external should be able to sway that. To heck with what others think of your own personal views. Also, to heck with what you think of their view.

The same goes with religion or other closely held beliefs. There’s a big hullabaloo in Utah about an atheist group filing a lawsuit against the state for using crosses to mark highway points where police officers were killed. It’s a symbol, people. Just because you don’t believe it, doesn’t mean it’s going to take away your rights to believe what you want to believe. I see a cross and I see a cross marking a death. I don't see a cross and then see Jesus upon it. The atheist group in town sees a cross and suddenly sees oppression. Personally, the group in question is giving atheists a bad name.

Now we’ve got the Danish people under attack by a bunch of overly sensitive Muslims. It’s a set of cartoons, people. Cartooooons. Political or not, they’re one man’s comic view of life. You might find it funny. You might find it touchy. It might make you think. Or maybe not. But, let’s get real, it’s not worth killing. It’s just a cartoon. Now, if said cartoonist takes out a gun and starts pickin’ off Muslims in Denmark and the Dane government supports him, have at ‘em! Take ‘em down! Until then, let cooler heads prevail.

Frisco, Utah

We went back to Frisco. This being our fourth time there. This ghost town is HUGE. The first three times, we didn't even see half of it. This past Saturday, however, we made it to the main mine area, saw the collapsed mine, some of the mining structures and a whole bunch of additional home structures. I like the different types of home construction used at Frisco. Wood, rock, metal and brick, and various combinations of those. It seems none can fully withstand degradation due to nature's wrath or vandals. The western portion of town that we viewed on Saturday is further away from the road and thus, less hit by vandalism. There was much to see! I'm attaching a few of the pictures I took to this post. Click on it to see full size. I can't wait to go back! I ran out of disk space on my CompactFlash card and missed a lot of photo ops, including the spooky cemetary.

Self-Heating

If you like science, and I know you do, check out the new self-heating coffee from Woflgang Puck. Don’t buy it for the coffee. It was pretty blechy. What’s awesome is the self-heating science experiment at the bottom of the can. To activate the heating, you push a bladder of greenish liquid into a hidden chamber. That liquid sets off a chemical reaction in the base of the can that starts the heat for the coffee. It says it gets up to 140 degrees F in about 5 minutes. All in all, pretty awesome. The downside is that the 10 ounces of coffee costs about $4.00. But think of the science of it! I remember hearing about some companies in Japan using it for cans of soup. It’s awesome that one can find it stateside now. OH! When writing this, I decided to look up the product. On the WP site I found this video that describes the technology. Fun!

Good Lookin', Wrong Continent

Ok, why does it always seem that eye-catching fashion-forward looks for fat chicks can only be found in Europe? Look at this. Look at the jacket details. or the skirt details? Do you ever see something like this in Ulla Popken's USA catalog? No wayyyyyy. No, we're not soffistikated enough for it. Dang! Anyway, for ya'll hanging in the "old country," consider yourself lucky! http://www.ullapopken.fr/

Hormonal Flux

I'm currently in a bad mood. Yeah, it's "that time" of the month. Normally that time comes and goes without note. You know, it's a little annoying, a little messy, but all in all, smooth sailing. This month, however, I'm a wreck. Odors/scents of pretty much anything annoy me. In fact, they make me want to puke. Food doesn't taste normal. In fact, it makes me want to puke. People annoy me. Their faults, now magnified, make me want to puke. The other day, I got done with work and NEEDED to take a nap. 6 hours later, I still wanted more sleep. My eyes and mouth are drier than normal. Heavy flow. Yuck, no more mention of that. Yeah, so, icky, icky. Get in my face...I'll bite your nose off. Or at least tell you why you're so very, very wrong. You know you are...'cuz right now, for SURE it's not ME! Hehehe.