easier than writing by hand…

now u guys know wtf i was talking about.

d went to some kind of deep water aerobics tonight, and nobody was around to get dinner, so i walked down to ballard to get Phß at than brothers.  on the way down a lady got out of a car at a church and crossed my path.  after smiling at her, she turned around and walked in front of me down the sidewalk.  it took me about 2 seconds to recognize that she was a man.  she turned and went in the door of the church.  i was kinda wondering about that.  it sounded like some kind of sermon was going on, but i kept on going.  after dinner i walked back by the same place and there was about 8 transsexual men in modest drag, of varying size and age and casting varying degrees of feminine gestalt standing outside the church talking and smoking cigarettes.

that’s ballard for ya.  and seattle in general and its the reason i love living here.  a city of tolerance and understanding.  except during marti gras.  then we kill each other.  i never really thought about it until tonight, but that has to be an interesting dichotomy to have to live.  if strict doctrine isnt to fond of homosexuals (ang and george, feel free to correct me), i cant imagine what it must be like to be gender confused and be a christian.  fortunately, not falling into either camp, that’s not an spiritual/self identity crisis that i expect to have to rectify.  at least not any time soon.

i was gonna finish the car post tonight, but my crotchety old neighbor complained again about the dirt on her side of the property line, so raked up some of the yard and cleaned her windows instead of pulling a wheel off to take a picture of the suspension.  i think i’m gonna build a tall fence on that property line so i dont have to deal with her.


mom, i saw a older mercedes with a university of chicago sticker in the window on the way to work today. 

i had two nightmares last night.  the first was apocolyptic.  the world was being enveloped in water.  we were on a boat, myself and a little girl, watching in the rain as a long cylindrical object that looked like a bolt threaded itself through the wispy clouds over a green, tropical mountain.  somehow, i knew it was an alien ship of sorts and that when it made it though the clouds that the world would be destroyed.  so i held the girl and her teddy bear (which was mine) somehow knowing that i wouldnt die and trying to figure out what to do next.  what i remember next was being in sand-colored stone or adobe rooms, underground, damp but away from the rain, with the girl and some other people that i apparently knew.  some discussion took place which i cant remember.  then they were dead, all drowned from the rooms filling up with water, although the rooms were dry.  you know how dreams are.  non-linear, inconsistant.  at this point, i was no longer experiencing this first hand, but watching as this person that i was, came back into the room to discover the corpses.  it was as if it was hundreds of years later, but they all looked the same, completely preserved and not decomposed or shriveled.  my mind supplied the reason that when the aliens had come, they had destroyed ALL life on earth, down to the bacteria and fungi that would have eventually decomposed the flesh on the bodies.  then this person realized that he was completely alone on the planet, with eternal life but no other living things.  at that point he became death, the one who had cause his own isolation.  there was a circular feeling to it.  he would have to wait for 15 million years and then start over, but in reality it was going back in time, forever trapped in an endless cycle of misery.

the second one i had was much more bizarre and it happened in the 10 minutes between two snooze cycles on my phone.  it involved friends i havent seen in years, relatives i havent seen i almost two decades and relatives that passed away.  we were in silver city, NM, a place i’ve never been in a house that i have never seen, with several stories and rooms.  all sorts of things happened that i cant really remember the order of.  i went around and woke up my grandmother who was there (my mom’s mom).  i saw my cousin emma who i havent seen since she was probably 4 yrs old, lying in a green sleeping bag on he floor asleep.  she looked like the only picture i’ve ever seen of her that was on my grandmother’s dresser 6 years ago.  i gave her a kick and told her to wake up and get ready and went back into what i suppose was my room that had a futon mattress on the floor and a floor-to-ceiling glass wall that looked out onto a small covered courtyard.  i couldnt breath, and i saw myself from the outside sort of standing inside/behind this big green machine that looked like it was used to pull plastic film across something.  it took me a few minutes to figure out that the plastic was going across my mouth and keeping me from breathing, but when i pushed it away, the machine pulled more across.  eventually as i began to panic, i watched myself calmly figure out how to extricate myself from the machine and i could breath again.  i started changing my clothes and there was a knock at the door.

i opened the door and roland, my old roommate from germany, was there, although he looked different.  i was thrilled and so was he,  but he said he was there for business.  he came in and did something with the plastic wrap machine with some other ppl dressed in uniforms.

apparently we had moved here and had jobs or something.  i said to danielle, “why are we here?  i dont want to work here, let’s go back to seattle, or at least portland!”  at some point i transistioned to walking along the edge of an industrial park.  i was going somewhere, probably to where i was supposedly employed and i ran into a person who i somehow recognized an old friend of mine named jason.  i walked with him and some other faceless guys, dressed in baggy jeans and old, white t-shirts, behind old brick building and followed them into a dark doorway that had a old, narrow screen door with white paint flaking off it and that was hanging from its hinges.

i followed them down several long, steep and narrow flights of concrete stairs like the ones in fire exits.  instead of walking down them, i would jump up, kick my legs out against the walls and slide down to the next level.  it was fun.  the last one ended 8 or 9 ft above the floor of a small concrete room with pipes and valves on the walls, a drain in the floor and a single door for an exit.  several of them were already down there.  something wasnt right, but i climbed down the wall anyways.  then they all blocked the door to keep me from leaving and jason told me that i had to work there, that they wouldnt let me insult them, the city, or the company and leave.  then they jumped me as i tried to get out the door.  at that point my view changed and i watched as someone that was probably myself fought off two or three of them before they got my legs off the ground, pinned me to the floor and beat the crap out of me.  one guy told jason they were going to try something different and they started sticking needles through my hands.  at this point my memory gets kind of fuzzy.  they let me go or i broke free or they dissapeared.  the needles they had been using were actually styli like the ones in my smartphone.  i pulled my phone out, but it was just a thick round disk like a pocketwatch, with a buffed, stainless steel face that i couldnt open.  i started sprinting up the stairs and out of the basement of the hotel/ship or where ever i was when my phone actually rang.  i answered and it was danielle telling me that they had her.  they had her pinned down in a dentists chair and that that they were hurting her with the needles (i had images in my head).  i turned around and started frantically running back down the stairs to find her but i couldnt remember the way back.  i would see signs or doors that werent what i was looking for to get to that stairway that ended above the ground.  i went up a flight of steps and suddenly i was in a hospital lobby with several ppl sitting around on the couches waiting to be called.  my friend laya from class was there and i tried to tell her that they were hurting danielle.  then i saw a short, stout blond guy with broad shoulders, stubble and a wifebeater sitting behind them that i recognized as one of the guys from the basement.  i jumped on him, tried to force him to tell me where she was and started sticking needles in his hands to get him to tell me, but nothing i did seemed to cause him any pain.  i looked at my hand and i was holding several styli and rusty galvanized needles in between my fingers.

and that’s when i woke up, spontaneously on my own.

the thing about dreams is, i can try and describe them, but the imagery never comes through, just the story.  no amount of obscure adjectives can fully explain the pictures that dance around in my head at night.  in fact, most of the time they make them sound silly instead of magstic, frightening, or awe inspiring.  or intense.

sitting here typing this stuff out, i can see where at lot of the imagery came from and what was happening externally as i slept that cued certain elements of the dream.  the rainy, watery landscape was similar to the mountains at the end of waterworld.  lots of things like the stairs in the hotel/hospital were probably from a game called silent hill 2.  or the federal building in juneau.  when i couldnt breath in the dream, i probably had my face mashed into the pillow, and when the phone rang, that was my phone alarm going off the 1st time to wake me up.  and matt is currently sleeping on the living room floor in a green sleeping bag.

i dont really have recurring dreams, but sometimes places show up more than once.  or i’ll have a dream and years later, i’ll pick up where i left off and continue the adventure.  there are also three recurring themes or actions i guess that show up every once in a while.  the first is trying to run and not getting anywhere.  i was always a runner and would dream about running fast across open spaces, trying to get somewhere for various reasons.  sometimes though i cant run no matter how hard i try.  i’m moving, but its like straining against water.  running in the surf or swimming pool.  usually when that happens, i wake up and i have completely wound myself up in the covers to the point where i cant move.  my theory is that i’ve been trying to move in my sleep and it transfers to my dreams.

the second is kind of similar.  i often dream that i move around by skating across the ground like i’m on speed skates, but in my normal shoes.  i kick up to get speed and then glide accross the floor or ground, lean into and kick around corners, spin around and go backwards, etc.  it happens on sidewalks, in malls with polished wood floors, on stone, etc.  i feel the speed.  i feel the forces in my legs and feet when i corner.  i can loose it and crash into things from going to fast.  the weird thing is, i dont rollerblade or iceskate or anything.  that happened at the industrial park in the last dream and the skimming down the stairs was kinda similar.

the third is fighting things that dont stop when i hurt them.  the guy at the end of the dream is kind of typical of that because although it he couldnt do anthing when i had him pinned, hurting him caused no reaction.  often, i’m fighting monsters or the undead or ppl.  i kill them and they keep coming.  i get more and more brutal, doing things more and more hideous to them, eventually chopping them into small pieces, but the pieces keep wont die.  the one that i can always recall was me as a kid and with my brother, defending ourselves against vampires or ghouls.  of course at that point there’s usually some running involved.

i like to psychoanalyze my dreams, but i’m not gonna today because the carpel is kicking in already.  freud would have fun with me…

so the other day i was driving home from work in the FC.  i got on the 1st ave bridge and started north towards home when i got passed by this trickedout, green-gold metal flaked, 2005 civic coupe with a 3″ exhaust, 17″ wheels and a little hispanic guy driving it.  we sparred back in forth for a while up onto the viaduct, passing ppl left and right, driving pretty fast, but not really much faster than normal, never really visually acknowleging each other.  then at one point we got close enough that i was able to read his license plate.

it said “FLUFFER“

i never, ever, ever have a damn camera handy when i really need it.  ok, seriously tho, wtf?  3 questions sprung immediately to mind when i read that.

1. does this guy have any idea what that means?
2. if he does, is that his actually profession?
3. if it is, which particular genre, if u will, of the industry does he work for and who is he fluffing?

and maybe one more.  who would hire him for it?  the guy was not the most attractive individual i’ve ever seen.  in fact… he was pretty damn funny looking.  not that i can talk mind you.

then, in what was vaguely anticlimactic, i saw this thing parked in a church parking lot right around the corner from the house.  i slammed on the brakes, pulled around and snapped these

hard to tell from this pic, but that car is lavender

note the emergency lights.

lessee… caddy hearse with flashing lights on it… i think SOMEBODY was inspired by ghostbusters on this one.  it is a pretty inspirational movie after all.  i can quote it from beginning to end.  it drives danielle nuts.

not that this is important, but there was a psychobilly band in phx called curse of the pink hearse.  they were pretty horrible actually, but they were lead by this cuban guy with a pompadour 6 inches high who slapped the hell out of his upright base like… like… like it was a sub paying him to dominate it.  i talked to him after a show once and asked him if he had ever seen the infamous lifted pink hearse of west phoenix.  one day when i was a sophomore in high school, jay guthrie and myself (and possibly case) were driving to the indoor soccer arena down on indian school rd when all of a sudden, we saw this car.  it was a full length, carnation pink cadillac hearse with a 3 foot lift, huge 35 inch mickey thompson mud tires and the coup de gras, a set of gigantic bull horns on the hood.  it was going in the opposite direction and was gone in less than a second.  it was like seeing the ghost in the lincoln bedroom. 

the legend DOES EXIST!

The attachment provided represents the average age of death as a function of age at retirement. As you can see, after the age of 55, if one does not retire, his/her age of death creeps ever closer…….

hard to read.  says the study was based on the number of boeing pension checks claimed

this is my company’s contribution to national  health studies.  i said as much to richie when i replied to him.  this was his response.


I recommend that you retire next year so that you can live till 160 yrs.

…

best advice i’ve gotten all year!

last month, for the last ASME meeting of the season, we visited the shell puget sound refinery up in anacortes.  it was a pretty cool tour and the members that were nice enough to help set it up and give us the background presentations were great.  i had to get up there early to order pizza and buy soda.  just like in college, the best way to ensure that ppl show up for these things is to offer free food!  when i came out from buying 16 2L bottles of soda, i found some jerk parked next to me like this.

nice parking job.  bastard…

of course, the driver’s side keyhole is screwed up in the FC, so i unless i leave it unlocked, i always have to open the passenger side door and lean accross the interior to unlock the driver’s side.  this is kinda difficult when somebody is parked that close to the door.  i woulda made a bunch of noise about it, but the truck was being guarded by this ferocious fellow.

grrrrrrr….

totally docile.  i had the ringer on my phone turned on, so it made a noise when i took a picture.  everytime it clicked, he’d turn his head arround to see where the noise came from.

thursday was the our anatomy final exam and the last day of class for the year for us.  afterwards, the whole class went to the red robin down the street.  i ordered the extremely manly and macho, blue ribbon burger with a turkey patty and an orange dreamsickle smoothie, which was promptly brought out to me in this horribly emmasculating, feminine glass.

like somebody cut off my testicles

notice the wavy curves.  i’ve gotten this damn drink at least 7 times before and they always bring it out in a regular old, tall glass like they use for the sodas.  no orange slice, no cherry, nuthin!  all i can come up with is that somebody there took a shine to me and felt i deserved something a little special.  the rest of the evening was spent making jokes about my foo-foo drink.  fortunately, i am at least reasonably secure in my masculenity.  reasonably…

finally, we have this gem i saw putting down the road on the way to work the other day.

is that a KIA RIO???

u know… we all love our cars and we want to do something to make it look cool.  maybe sound cool.  possibly enhance perfomance.  considering all the money i’ve dropped on the FC lately, i can definitely understand.  but i mean come on!  it’s a RIO!  but… more power to him.  at least he’s unique!

notice i took this while driving.   a L33T skill to be sure.

somebody just dropped off a handful of salt and vinegar potato chips on my desk… do i dare???

wtf?