Segregation?

There were three basketball games happening at the same time in the gym at school a couple days ago. One game had all white players, one game had only black players and the third was made up of all Asian players.

I read the above out loud and it seemed like a punch line should follow but there isn't one.

Doolittle

Senator John Doolittle’s house was raided by the FBI today. I am from his district in California and a big fan of the beautiful American River Canyon that he tried to destroy.

Thanks to all the people whose photos I stole for this post.

Guest Post: Chuckie V

The songbirds sing their songs of praise while flowers I only wish I could name all display their vibrant hues. That reminds me...beyond a rose and maybe a daisy, I've never been able to identify various kinds of flowers. Same thing with birds and trees. I know how to tell a pine from an oak and an oak from an ostrich, but I would never be able to point out the difference between a cedar and a ponderosa, or a jeffrey pine and a bristlecone, or an ostrich from an emu. A douglas fir looks an awful lot like a white fir, which looks an awful lot like a red fir. None of them, by the way, are furry.

The thing is, everyone I know who knows how to correctly label plants or birds or insects are loony. (I realize this argument doesn't hold much water coming from a guy who likes to walk thousands of miles.) They recognize hundreds of different species but every so often one comes along that they cannot identify, one that absolutely stumps them. This is when their true looniness shines. They suggest things like, "Hmmm. You know, that could very well be a yellow-breasted yipper yapper, but then there's the off chance it might be a loose-necked crane snatcher." They know they don't know and they feel duped because of it, like Oprah Winfrey believing James Frey's tall tale.

Show an entomologist an insect he or she cannot scientifically name and I'll show you a miserable biologist. The same thing can be said for ornithologists. For sure, bird lovers are the worst. My friend Jon Sadler, the same guy who first introduced me to the PCT, is a bird watcher extraordinaire. He's been an Audubon Society member since he was nine. He has built his own aviaries. He carries binoculars everywhere he goes. He even---and I'm not kidding about this---listens to gigabytes worth of bird calls on his iPod. Nerd alert, let me tell you.

Anyway, every so often, Jon the bird nerd witnesses a feathered friend he cannot put a name to. "Chuck, you better come check this out," he whispers, as if we were brain surgeons in the middle of something work related. "I think I see a red-necked sapsucker. Well, maybe not..."

When this happens, as it tends to, he sulks around in shame for weeks. He hits his field guides harder than ever and studies as if he were going to be tested on the matter. Indeed, he is. There are thousands of species of birds and Jon only knows a few hundred. It's a sick self-inflicted sort of torture I tell you! And that's coming from someone who knows all about Sado-Masochism.

Methinks you needn't know the name of a particular plant or animal to appreciate its raw beauty. Hell, ninety-nine percent of the women I've ever lusted toward have remained nameless. It's better that way. I don't find them any less attractive just because I don't know their name. In fact, I usually find them more attractive. (Incidentally, please disregard that the English call women 'birds'.)

Anyway, as I walk by fields of blossoming flowers, I know that what I see, whether I know what it is I see, is attractive or not. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, not in his or her (bird)brain.

Quick

If you could read the bumper sticker on the back of this van you would see that it says:

I MISS IMUS

Book Review

This is a great book. It is full of drinking and sarcasm - my two favorite things. They are often having drinks first thing in the morning and breakfast in the afternoon.
When I am done I am going to
Send this to one of our boys in the armed forces.

Stain

This was until very recently a cup of tea. If the tea stains the cup so fast, imagine what the ten to fifteen cups a day I drink does to my teeth?

Oldster or Oldspace

When I was young we had this thing kind of like Friendster or Myspace but less, um, sophisticated I guess. What would happen was you would meet someone at school or in the neighborhood and you would start talking and then eventually, if you got along, you would hang out with one another. Usually there was no need to ask (request, invite) the other person to be your friend – it was less formal. If it turned out that you and this person or peer got along well, a friendship just sort of happened. In some ways the “Proto-Myspace” was less effective - at least numbers wise. For example, if you made 3 or 4 good friends that was considered successful, but with these modern, friend-meeting websites, it is not uncommon for teenagers to have hundreds of friends. There are pluses and minuses to both the old style and the new style. The old method suited me better because I wouldn’t know what to do with hundreds of friends.

Featherweight

The good thing about being lighter than I have been since the tenth grade is that I can now wrestle at a lighter weight class, which should be an advantage.

Science

Did you hear that they discovered a “faith gene?” Apparently there is a gene that allows some people to believe in a supernatural creator. Some people have and some don’t. Kind of like how some people have an enzyme for digesting lactose and some don’t. So, some people have what could be described as a predisposition for religion.
Now, let's pretend I wrote this on April 1st.

Boise

Do you remember I mentioned an interview a while back? Well, I got the job. They said it was because I was clean-shaven.

For those of you struggling with your weight, I know how you feel.
I weigh less then I ever have in my life. When I was born, I weighed a little over 7 pounds. Now I am just over six. I am exaggerating slightly for effect. Either the scale in the locker room is wrong or I weigh less than I did when I graduated from high school – and that was in the eighties. We were all pretty big then, spending all that extra money we had courtesy of Reaganomics on rich, high-fat foods.

Migraine?

I think I had one all night last night. I suppose saying, “I think I had a migraine,” is something like saying, “I think I had an orgasm,” you'd know it if you had one. But last night I had a strange visual presence occupying my peripheral vision. It actually scared me so I went right to bed. I slowly became aware, in my half sleep, of a headache developing. It was going strong by morning and only started to let up after my morning ablution.

Stuff

Someday soon I would like to take all my possessions and drive them to a central location, perhaps an airplane hanger in Wendover, Utah. And then I would like to spread the items out and commence to categorize them into “Must Keep,” “Want,” “Should Keep,” “Donate,” “Dispose.” If I am missing a category let me know. That is my idea of a good time. This undertaking would require the renting or barrowing of a large vehicle of trailer to fit my considerable belongings. It would also require picking stuff up from the East coast, the Midwest and the West coast. A partial list of the stuff includes: clothes, blankets (or blanket), dishes, letters, bits of paper, iPod, laptop, pencils, pens, inkpads, rubber stamps, change (pennies, nickels, dimes and so forth), some foreign money, passport, drivers license, fishing license, school ID cards, year books, shoes, books, a chair, sleeping bag, tent, camping stoves, oil, bicycles, bird nests, three or four hummingbirds, a Scarlet tanager, a bat, a cat head, a Barred owl, some carpet squares, (there is a woman sitting on the floor who appears to be drawing my portrait), two watches, records, CDs, two battery operated record players, two record players that do not take batteries, cameras, negatives, binders, slides, super 8 projector, regular 8 projectors, rocks, minerals, skulls of unknown small mammals, fingernail clippers, fireworks, ice skates, (I think the woman really is drawing a picture of me), phone charger, cell phone, rice cooker, steak knives, egg slicer, potato ricer, pocket knife, .22 rifle, sunglasses, fishing rods, reels, lures, hooks, weights, flies, measuring tape, two hammers, hex wrenches, receipts, three cowboy hats, bike helmet, three belts, two bags of sand, a pickup truck, Marshall Oils, grooming kit, two tooth brushes, magazines, three bike pumps, an old tube radio with phonograph, skateboard, photographs, slide viewer, light-box, rocks, minerals, three backpacks, a canvas bag with shoulder strap.

Library

Whispering may be more distracting that talking out loud.

Idaho

New York

Art is where you find it. Or is it?

Hair and Hares

My barber, Lori, told me not to towel-dry my hair. She told me to imagine each hair as a segmented toy snake and that the hairs get damaged when tousled by the towel. It’s best to pat my hair dry. *I’ve been towel drying my hair for years, apparently causing “frayed” ends and breaking my hair. Lori also told me where to start shaving my neck in relationship to my beard (two fingers width below the jaw-line). I do not have a beard at the moment but it will come in handy when I do.
Lori told me one of her customers brought her two snowshoe hares that she is going to make fricassee out of this week. She showed me a foot from one of the hares. It was about the size of a baby's hand - a 2 year old baby.

The Votes are In

and most of you voted for handlebar moustache!

Please Advise

I have an important interview next week. My question is, should I keep the beard or shave?