Thinking About Ink

For anyone who was curious, these are the fanboy-inspired Captain Marvel designs I was thinking about=)
Like I said, maybe as a second tattoo… perhaps on my shoulder=)

Ink Concepts

As the people who are close to me know, I’ve been looking for a tattoo design for a while now and have had no luck whatsoever with my search. All the tattoos out there on the net seemed too silly, too vulgar, too impersonal or too generic. Nothing leapt out at me and hollered, “Me! Me! You want ME on your back forever!” With d-day approaching and an agreement between Evan and myself looming over me, I finally decided that I needed help. The problem was, I didn’t have the first clue what I wanted. I knew I wanted something reflective of myself, a simple design without pretension that was symbolic of some of my core values. (It should be noted here that the author, in a nerdiness fervor, nearly convinced himself to scrap the whole ‘symbolic values’ motif and simply get the symbol of Captain Marvel tattooed on his back. THIS is precisely why you should NEVER decide on a tattoo whilst drinking… it still sounds very kewl to him tho, possibly for a second tattoo)
Salvation came the other day though when I roughed out a crude representation of what was floating in my head and gave it to my artist friend. He took the cave drawing home and promised to put some thought into a design and we would figure it out from there. Then last weekend while we were playing cards at my place, my artist friend starts sketching out a design right there. And it clicked. That was it! Well, the beginning of ‘it’ anyways. With that bit of inky magic set more firmly in my mind I was able to cobble together this rough photoshop design that is very close to what I want and with a little more work it may be perfect. As always, any comments or advice are welcome=)

More Than Meets The Eyes (pt. 3)

Mr. Bay, if you f-up this movie I will harvest and eat your candy-filled soul.
...I mean it.

Porn-Star Haircut

The other day my friend Evan and I were talking about getting into shape and vanity in general. It seems to me that any type of exercise outside of every day activities or for the maintenance of health and utility is simply narcissism. After a bit of discussion I decided that I’m comfortable with that. After all, we (for the most part) spend so much time telling each other and ourselves that we are defective in some way and that defect keeps us from being beautiful. Whether we obsess openly or in the closet there seems to be some aspect of ourselves that we wish we could change. But is the act of trying to change that aspect vanity, particularly when you are content/happy in every other aspect? Well, in my case, yeah it is. And I’m okay with it. I like that I tan to dark reddish-brown. My wife seems to enjoy it as well. I’m also thankful that providence dropped the 2 pieces of workout equipment that I would need to help improve my doughy physique right in my backyard. With a little help from our friends we may actually reach our goal of fighting ninja-jedi-robots this year. Now, that’s gotta be a good thing.

There is a downside however and I’m not talking about that stoopid strained elbow I got or even the chance of melanoma. Nope, this, like so many of the dumb-ass things I’ve been involved with, is entirely my fault. After it was decided that vanity was a-okay with me, I decided to do something about my tan-line. You see, there is now a stark difference between where I am tan and where I am not. Okay, the solution seemed simple enough: sunbathe with less than the accustomed pieces of swimwear. But before this could happen, something had to be done about the pasty-white area underneath. You see, on men, this area is rather ugly and often hairy. Well, there was nothing I could do about the ugly, so off I went to take care of the hairy. Nothing too radical, just what’s referred to as a porn-star haircut. All seemed to be going well until… well, let me just say that there are some places on the human body where mentholated shaving cream should NEVER be applied.
Sigh… well, we live and we learn, ja? Stoopid vanity.

Yay Boobs! Pt. 2

Above is an artist’s rendition of my dear friend Sierra discovering herself. At least, this is what it looked like in MY mind. And, you know, if she were also a super-hero=)

Yay Boobs!

At long last, my curvaceous friend Sierra has posted a body-shot on her blog. What makes this interesting to me (besides the brobdingnagian proportions of the body parts in question) is the fact that she seems genuinely astounded by their size, as though they had somehow snuck up on her=)
Rest assured, Sierrra, that this is a surprise to no one who has worked with you… as a matter of fact I remember many times as we talked in your office I would force myself to look at something else (ANYthing else) to keep from staring at you like the deranged pervert I am. This was not always easy, as your office is small and between you, me and your boobs it often felt crowded=)

Nerd-meme

How sad that this upsets me=) NG Elf Ranger-Monk indeed.




I Am A: Neutral Good Elf Ranger


Alignment:
Neutral Good characters believe in the power of good above all else. They will work to make the world a better place, and will do whatever is necessary to bring that about, whether it goes for or against whatever is considered 'normal'.


Race:
Elves are the eldest of all races, although they are generally a bit smaller than humans. They are generally well-cultured, artistic, easy-going, and because of their long lives, unconcerned with day-to-day activities that other races frequently concern themselves with. Elves are, effectively, immortal, although they can be killed. After a thousand years or so, they simply pass on to the next plane of existance.


Primary Class:
Rangers are the defenders of nature and the elements. They are in tune with the Earth, and work to keep it safe and healthy.


Secondary Class:
Monks are strange and generally not understood by the world at large. They live apart from people, and follow strict codes that restrain their behavior and lifestyle. They have an exceptionally calm outlook on life, and generally do not resort to violence unless absolutely necessary. Even when they do, their code of conduct forbids the use of all weapons - except their hands. As such, monks are extremely skilled at hand-to-hand combat, and no other style.


Deity:
Mielikki is the Neutral Good goddess of the forest and autumn. She is also known as the Lady of the Forest, and is the Patron of Rangers. Her followers are devoted to nature, and believe in the positive and outreaching elements of it. They use light armor, and a variety of weapons suitable for hunting, which they are quite skilled at. Mielikki's symbol is a unicorn head.


Find out What D&D Character Are You?, courtesy ofNeppyMan (e-mail)

Blog-wise

I have a bit of time this morning so I thought I would catch up on all things bloggish while I had the chance-


Yesterday I temped for FedEx and while it wasn’t unpleasant, after the first couple of stops, it became apparent that nobody likes brown strangers in their yard. I know, I know, it was my first reaction… my knee jerked into skin-color mode when trying to figure out what was going on. It went down like this: FedEx gave me a bunch of crap to deliver around hick towns like Corning and Orland and they told me to do it in my own car as they would pay mileage along with a wage. The only symbol or proof of my relationship with the company was a pair of door magnets with the FedEx logo on them. That and the packages themselves, ya?

Knock-knock
Them: (eyeing me suspiciously) Who are you?
Me: (being brown) FedEx! Is this (insert address here) ?
Them: (reaching for the shotgun behind the door) That’s what it sez on the mailbox.
Me: (making no sudden movements) Fabulous, I have a package for such-n-such person, could you sign here?
Them: You one of them Al Qaedas?
Me: No.
-at this point the doorguard has to make a choice: Either remove his hand from the shotgun so he can unbar the door or he can shout, “Git ‘er done!” and open fire on the evil courier. Thankfully I rolled 20’s yesterday and so lived to tell the tale.

The most interesting thing invariably happened at the end of the transaction, after I had delivered the package and bid them a good day. I would then amble back to my car to fill out paperwork and decide where to go next (with thx to my sweet wife and her quick use of mapquest) all the while with the package’s recipient still watching me from behind the safety of their storm door. I ask you, what was the rationale behind their suspicions? That I was pretending to be a FedEx courier so I could drop off anthrax-laced packages? These people have GOT to stop watching Fox News.

Ready For My Closeup?

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

I love these 40+ question ‘tests’ that are somehow able to distill your personality down into a simple, contrived and yet kitschy ‘lil package=) I, apparently, am an aging silent movie star… my guess is this must be the result of singing Erasure songs at the top of my lungs=)

Mexican Apple Thief

It must be summertime… the little hairs on my arms are bleaching white, the smell of cocoa butter lotion is in the air and I have my first sunburn of the season=) Indeed, my coloring is now to the point where my wife looks at me hungrily and calls me her Mexican apple thief. Hmmm... perhaps now would be a good time to head down to AZ and wander the border trying to find people for the ACLU to sue... Anyways, I had been harboring an irrational hope that God, in Her infinite wisdom, would somehow shrink my waist when I started putting on my summer skin. This is born from the (obviously media-induced) idea that He would not allow a bronzed-beach-boy-of-the-summer to exist with a doughy physique. Pacific Islanders and other specific ethnic groups notwithstanding when was the last time you saw a fat, tanned guy or gal on TV? The TV wouldn’t lie to us, now would it? Feh- another foolish, quasi-religious belief bites the dust.

Yesterday I achieved another small victory in the pool wars – through hard work, chemistry and the wonders of the internet we are now able to see to the bottom of the pool! Yay! Before now, the best we could get was a really nice shade of Martha Stewart blue and about 3 feet of visibility- now I can see clearly all the places I’ve been missing when I sweep! Yay progress. Muchas thank-yous to Shel for that great site on pool maintenance=)



(The Bronze Beach Boys by PasCal)

Come on let's go
Let's not talk about tomorrow
Today
You know who I am
And I love what you wear
Those gilded garments kill my sorrow!
So, come on let's go
(We'll) discuss it all tomorrow
But today…
We're gonna go out
Slap the day in the mouth
Like Bonnie Barker and Clyde Barrow!

Come on let's go, come on let's go, c'mon let’s go

We can be leaves pushed by the breeze
Towards the mountains or toward the sea
Or just out to eat
Please leave your notebooks at home
You can write all about it in the morning
Not today
We should go and catch air
Let the sun dye our hair
Like the bronze beached boys of the summer

Come on let's go, come on let's go, c'mon let’s go

We can be leaves pushed by the breeze
Towards the mountains or toward the sea
Or just out to eat

Come on let's go, come on let's go, c'mon let’s…
We can be like bees up in the trees
Fly over mountains and catch the breeze

Or we can sing strange romantic airs
Like those that flow through Aeolian harps
That caught Shelley's ear like…

Ba ba ba-ba ba ba, ba ba-ba-ba ba ba ba-ba ba ba




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The War Has Begun…

Just imagine me saying that in my best Ian McKellen/Magneto voice. A while back I facetiously suggested that an American ‘muttaween’ would emerge to actively police immigration issues and other pro-national nonsense. Honestly, I was prognosticating with only half a heart simply to bring into stark relief something that was wholly alien to me. Well, my Cassandra-like ability to predict ass-hattery comes through for me again (no, never the lotto numbers… always just warnings for boots and rain slickers) with the Maricopa County’s 250-man posse. These intrepid folks began their ‘round-up’ last week with the intention of incarcerating any illegals they find rather than deporting them. When I first heard about this I asked myself, “Why?” I mean honestly, what’s the point?
-Is it that the illegals gobble up too many of our national resources? Dragging on our national healthcare (lol) and the like? If that’s it then isn’t it more expensive to warehouse them… where they would get among other things… free healthcare?
-Is it a national sovereignty issue? That sort of flies in the face of the whole “Bring Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Day-Laborers” thing, doesn’t it?
-Could it be a national security issue? If that’s the case, I’d say that not only has the horse left the barn, the whole frickin barn has taken off as well. As was recently proven, whenever security has been tightened to the point of, lets face it, inconvenience, desperate and ingenious people will find will find a way around it… or, in this case, under it. Lets all hope that Al Qaeda can’t use a shovel.

Aw, ferget it, I’m gonna fool with my pool=/


By-the-by, the first night the 250-man posse was out doin their sacred duty, guess how many devious illegals they caught… just 1. Now, THAT’S an American bargain=)

My Kind Of Meme

Not dead either! Just sort of tumbling around, doin’ the family/j-college thing. Truth be told, I’ve been immersed in dice-rolls, graduations, the Sandman (awesome, just frickin awesome) and my pool for a while. Recently I came up and saw a neat meme on my friend Trav’s sight that I thought I’d share.

It goes like this: go to wiki and type in your b-day (minus the year). Find 1 death, 2 births and 4 interesting facts about that day… here’s mine=)

Death-
1973 - Pearl S. Buck, American writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1892)

Births-
1968 - Moira Kelly, American actress
1619 - Cyrano de Bergerac, French soldier, poet (d. 1655)

Stuff-
2006 - South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds signs a bill into legislation that would ban most abortions in the state.
1992 - The Michelangelo computer virus begins to affect computers.
1981 - After 19 years presenting the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite signs off for the last time.
1857 - The Supreme Court of the United States rules in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case.

meme, anyone?

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Your personality type is RLOAI

You are moderately reserved, moderately moody, moderately organized, moderately accommodating, and moderately intellectual, and may prefer a city which matches those traits.

The largest representation of your personality type can be found in the these U.S. cities: Oklahoma City, Albuquerque/Santa Fe, Indianapolis, Reno, Greenville/Spartanburg, Cincinnati, Memphis, Chicago Area, Pittsburgh, Orlando, Louisville, Providence and these international countries/regions Czech Republic, Guam, Austria, Luxembourg, Philippines, Iceland, Indonesia, Portugal, Taiwan, Hungary, Israel, France, New Zealand, Slovenia, Canada

What Places In The World Match Your Personality?
City Reviews at CityCulture.org

Memes are the hors d’oeuvres of the blogging smorgasbord. Some are savory, some are crisp and light and some are just what you would think they are: filler. This little cutie caught my eye today. The results, for me anyways, are probably (sadly) accurate=/

Ah-well, at least it sez I’d be welcome in New Zealand=)

Getting Lost

Every so often (once or sometimes even twice a month) ABC will air a new episode of the television show Lost. For reasons of varying neurosis I have started waiting until my TiVo has 2 new episodes on it before I sit down to watch them. This means it has been over a month since I’ve seen anything happening on the island and this is becoming less of a loss as time goes by. When I was first introduced to the show I was fortunate enough be able to rent the first season and watch them back-to-back. It was, by and large, very satisfying. The interesting coincidences, the tenuous connections, the mysteries and the character development were all very appealing, very compelling, particularly in the wake of 4 years worth of reality-TV crap. Now, because of the way it’s constantly interrupted for reruns or the uber-insulting recap show I’m starting to look at the series in a different light. The bloom is off the tropical orchid, so to speak. Normally I would simply be losing interest but I think because of my initial investment and high-hopes for an interesting, intelligently written fantasy drama I have instead started transferring my disdain onto the characters. Last night the wife and I watched our 2 episodes back to back and I found myself actively rooting for the bad guys to hurry up and finish them all off. Except for Hurley. Every time someone would make an inexplicably bad decision, every hackneyed characterization, every time there was a woman on-screen with perfect make-up, hair, fashionably low-rise pants and the physique of Kate Moss on a nose-candy diet I would hope and pray for a polar bear to bound out of the jungle and eat them.
Bah, perhaps it will all seem better if I avoid the rest of the season and wait for its release on DVD.


ps, sorry about the creepy Serpent and the Rainbow picture being up for so long=)

…to ashes

It’s Ash Wednesday again and you (may or may not) know what that means: yup, today is the day when the charcoal bunny hops to the houses of all practicing Catholics and smears an ashy cross on their foreheads. This is an ancient custom in which we are exhorted to remember that we all come from ashes and to ashes we shall all return. The visual effect of this is something akin to the zombies in “The Serpent and the Rainbow”. To me it has always looked a little creepy. Today also marks the beginning of the Lenten Fast, or Lent where traditionally Catholics abstain from eating red meat until Easter weekend. While this obviously means different things to different folks (or nothing at all to some of you) to me, I tend to think of it as the last mass celebration of faith that hasn’t been commercialized to death. Yeah, I know, major chain restaurants are gonna start pushing their fish and poultry menus, but, other than that, you’re probably not going to hear much about it. That, by itself, was enough to catch my attention – particularly in a culture where political correctness dictates the how and why of mass-market holiday cheer and trendy, conglomerate churches close their doors to the faithful on Sunday because it was also Christmas morning… and no one wants to go to church on Christmas, right? feh

In any case, my personal religion (and interpretation thereof) is fairly fluid; not a strict set of doctrines and laws but rather a loose set of guidelines that I use in my personal relationship with God. It’s in this vein that I participate in Lent by giving up for 40 days something or things that I like. This year I have a veritable laundry list:
-1. I will give up smoking. (yikes)
-2. I will give up beer and malted beverages. (Wine and liquor are okay, its just beer that is not good at all for my doughy physique)
-3. Unhealthy snacking. I will be allowing myself a day of celebration every week where crap-foods are allowed. Remember, moderation in all things. Except smoking. That’s right out.
-4. I will give up fast food. Yup, this one is gonna kill me.
-5. Pornography and all the happy stuff that goes with it. I shan’t elaborate=)
-6. Lastly, I will be giving up a bit time each evening to sit with my boys, perhaps with my guitar, and quietly interact with them.

So there it is, my contribution to spiritual harmony during this holiday season.
LaChaim!