I redid my profile page again and realized no one will get the joke.  Here's the story behind it.  That picture of Mom and me is from summer 2004 near her house in New Mexico. 


We (Mom, BF, and me) were up on the top of Sandia Peak. 



The moment was just before we started along a trail along the side of the mountain that skirted a couple hundred feet below the ridge.  The trees were beautiful and green.  It wasn't too warm even though it was July.

A while down the trail, a summer storm rolls in.  With lightening.  Mom's trail blazing along with the idea that we're headed away from the storm.  Eventually the BF is starting to stress, and we all three get off the trail to find a little bit of shelter.  I was a boy scout and knew we were supposed to find low ground where you were not the tallest thing, nor near/under the tallest thing as that's what lightening would hit.  But we were in the middle of a fucking forest, and getting away from trees was like getting away from salt while swimming in the sea.  As we all three were sitting there, a bolt of lightening crashes.  I have no way of judging just how close it was to us.  They say when you see lightening, you wait for the thunder and each second between the two is a mile of distance between you and the lightening.  Just then, the noise and the light came at the same time.  I can't say the lightening lit everything up.  No.  The world went white.  Through closed eyes.  Everything was white as a virgin's wedding gown.  We could smell burnt air, like when an electric motor gets fried.  Our ears were ringing with the noise.

Shortly thereafter, the lightening stopped and the rain turned to a sprinkle.  We got out of our hovel and walked back up the buildings at the top where the tramway is.   There was even a brief snow flurry while we were waiting for the next car to come up the side of the mountain. 



It wasn't until we were there, in safety, that it started to strike Mom and me that we were in actual danger.  We both reacted clear-headed, fast-thinking, and without panic. It's nice to know I'm that kind of person; and Mom too.

A friend of mine is in the running for the first ever "Blogger Idol" through the blog of some guy in San Diego. 

He's got it set up so you can vote multiple times, but have to refresh the page in between.  This must be making his hit counter go through the roof!  And it makes me wonder, does he have sponsored links on his page?  Does the amount they pay depend on the traffic?  That scenario is akin to sweeps week in television.

For anyone who has nothing better to do, you can vote for my pal WAT at http://www.greggoconnell.com/
Vote for Wat Central.
If you want to know what you're voting for, his site is http://srgtpepper.blogspot.com/

I will not be moving.
Someone rented the wall.

I've been meaning to take a picture of the wall that was for rent and to plan my decore for moving in.  However, I was in Holywood the other day walking along and having a very heavy conversation when I stopped dead in my tracks.  I said, "Somebody rented the wall!"  And sure enough, the wall for rent was gone; just a backhoe sitting in the back of a parking lot remained. 

A lost opertunity for sure.  Makes me ponder all those othe missed opertunities.  Like the one for me to write this in Word and use spell check. Sorry y'all: you get the rough draft tonight.

I live in a mixed neighborhood in North Hollywood, and most days, not one but two different ice cream trucks drive up and down our cul du sac.  Most days, the Fat Kid Across The Street comes out and buys something off the truck. 

They know the routine, turn up the music as they turn onto our street, drive slowly down to the end and turn around (there are kids in the end houses too) then drive back up and the Fat Kid Across The Street will be waiting at the curb with money in hand.  It's funny, and I watch it from working in my yard or from the kitchen window when I'm home. 

The two truck: one is a Latin guy, the second is an Indian guy with a turban on his head.  The Indian one always makes me think of the movie "Bubble Boy"

with the kids running after the Ice Cream and Curry truck, with 5 white kids yelling "ICE CREAM, ICE CREAM" and one little Indian kid with money in his fist over his head yelling "CURRY, CURRY,"  which sounds more like "CURD-DY, CURD-DY."

Yesterday, I almost gave myself a hernia suppressing laughter.  The first truck (the Curry truck) went down, turned around, and PARKED in front of the house across the street with music going.  OH MY GOD.  After about 2 minutes, he gave up, turning off the music as he gets to the end of the street.  I though, " Good for The Fat Kid, maybe he's trying to be good, get in shape. Maybe he has a girlfriend now."   But an hour later, the second truck comes along and he's at the curb as the ice cream man gets to the house the second time.  Goodness.  All this while I was tending to my iris beds.  I almost died.

  
And yes, "The Fat Kid Across The Street" is his name.  I have no idea what his real name is, even after two years.  I was mentioning this to my sister on the phone one day feeling a little bad about it and this was the conversation:

Sis, "Do you ever talk to him?"

Me, "No."

Sis, "Then why does it matter?  No one would know who you were talking about if you said 'Julio,' but everyone knows who you're talking about when you say 'The Fat Kid Across The Street!"

  
She has a point.  So that's his name.  I wonder if he knows?

It is human nature to search out meaning; so much so that we will look for, and find/assign meaning often when there is none.

Being human myself, I partake in this exercise.  A fun and harmless one (as apposed to people who invent gods and religions) is making non-personalized license plates mean something.  Maybe it's wrong to post people's license plate numbers, but you drive around with it for the world to see, so f-it

I saw one yesterday the read "2CTY666"
2 = To
CTY = City
666 = Satan
Ergo: "To City of Satan" or "Highway to Hell"
How cool is that to be issued a plate that means "Highway To Hell"?  She's one cool middle-aged lady and doesn't even know it. 

What's worse are the ones who do it on purpose like one I saw a few weeks ago the read
"I(heart symbol)VODKA"  Hmm, what could that mean?
Although there was a pink Ford Probe used to drive around Thousand Oaks back in the day with the plate, I forget the exact sequence, but basically read "PNKPROB"  Now a Pink Probe is not in my book a car; it is a phallus.  The girl was driving around in a great big dick.

See, fun game.

The other great variation is the find some obscure meaning in the plate, then speed up to see if who's driving fits the image. My mom crashed her station wagon doing something similar when I was in high school.  There was a military truck on the road and she just knew there was a black guy in fatigues driving it. She was looking over to see when she rear-ended someone who panic stopped.  Mom was so distraught.   So of course I had to ask, "Were you right?"  She was.  Which makes it all worth it.

I can't speak for women, they have their own issues with this, but why is male body hair the way it is?  I think somewhere in the switch from ape to human a gene got switched. Where ever adult male humans have hair, it seems apes have less: faces, chests, underarms, around the junk and the butt. 
Why is there hair around the butt-hole?  I mean really.  Every dog, cat, mouse, etc. I've ever looked that closely at has a tight pucker with almost no hair around it.  It makes sense!  The only benefit of having hair there is that it may muffle an occasional toot, but that it slows down the exit of everything else is simply uncalled for.  Don't tell me it was to keep in heat.  No way, I don't buy it.  It's not enough for that.
If humans were being manufactured today as a new product, they'd be recalled.  That concept calls for a whole new blog.  Can't promise I'll ever get to it though. Don't even get me started on the design of the knee.  And why don't we have opposable toes?  I want opposable toes.  That would just be cool.

I usualy like to add all sorts of pictures to a blog, but I think the mental pictures are far better (or worse) than anything I might find on Google,

My mom is visiting this week with her very cool black Lab Magic. 

Last night, Magic chose to sleep with me.  She has this method of leaning against you in the night so that you move, inch by inch, away from here while asleep.  I woke up in the middle of the night diagonal across only the top corner of my bed with from mid-shin down hanging off the bed.  The bitch (Magic is a girl) is sprawled across the middle of the bed.  Heifer!  I pushed her out the way and the whole thing started again. I never did fall off though.  Mom says at home (and she has a king size bed with no other human in it) that some nights she has to get out of bed and climb in on the other side as the dog has shoved her nearly out of bed.

Today on my way to work I say a pick-up truck on Sunset.  It was for sale, and like many vehicle owners he had sprawled a telephone number across the back window in white vinyl letters.  But instead of just "FOR SALE" it read "DIVORCE SALE".  Damn my cheap camera phone: it wouldn't focus on the back, only the side of the truck.  Guess he'd rather sell the truck than let the bitch get it!

So I accidentally got high on Saturday afternoon.  Really.  Honestly.  It was an accident!  God, I feel so blond telling this story…
I was working out in the yard and suddenly I felt like I had taken three Benadryl and almost couldn't stand up any more.  No, I didn't take Benadryl because of my allergy to emotion.  It was freaky. I had no idea what was going on.
I laid down on my bed with the door open, and when my house-mate walked past I called out to him.  I tried to explain what was happening.  "It's like I took Benadryl. Or like I took two huge bong hits…….Hey wait a minute!" 
Turns out what they say about Morning Glory seeds is true- they have a hallucinogenic effect. 

I was harvesting seeds from the dead vines in the side yard, crushing the husks and allowing the seeds to fall into a bowl.  I had the great idea of separating all the dry husks from the seed by blowing into the bowl a few times, scattering the lighter husks and leaving the heavier seeds behind.  It worked great.  I just happened to inhale something that I guess I am very sensitive to.  I was still feeling the effects (though slight) 10 hours later getting ready to go to bed.  

After laying down for about a half hour longer, I got up and was totally relaxed.  The closest thing was the feeling after a two hour yoga stretch class, where your back muscles are tingling because they finally turned off. I had intermittent slight dizzy spells, but never the LSD-like episodes they say you can get from them.  I didn't really let myself enjoy it though, there was so much I wanted to get done.  I probably shouldn't have, but I pruned the tree out front including climbing up on the roof. It really is annoying to find yourself in an altered state against your will.  Next time I'll plan accordingly.
Now, I know this story is contrary to most of the online stories out there. The closest is to what one writer says the Indians reported.  My only guess to the apparent potency  is that these were not commercially processed seeds that have been cleaned for appearance sake.  These were fresh from the vine, sitting in their own powder for 3 months, inhaled straight to the brain seeds.

Sorry all, I soaked and planted the seeds.  We'll have to wait until next season to see if this was just a fluke.

There's this wall in Hollywood.  Just a plain brick wall- the side of a building- 3 to 4stories tall.  It faces a parking lot.  On the side is a sign thet reads "Rent This Wall."  Somehow I have images of renting it and moving in.  Of having these series of leges with a stove, a bed, a toilet, a claw-foot bath tub- all right there on the side of the wall, open for all to see.  It just strikes me as funny.

Oh, the potential!  It's all about the height.

I was eating an early dinner at The Counter today with a girlfriend and had a sighting of a former B-List Celebrity: Santino from Project Runway Season 2. 

I'm excitd because this is the only reality show I watch.  Screw 'Idol" or 'Loser' or 'Survivor,' Runway required creativity and moot. (Moot- German for courage- I'm referencing the play "Master Class" but that's a whole 'nother story.)  It took everything I had not to call out in a Tim Gunn voice, ..:"What happened to Andre?"

If you didn't watch it, well, it's just not funny.  Such a fun show though- and Andre was so adorable, or course Nick and Daniel V were vying for most do-able in my book.  I think it would have been like when you go to a bar with a friend, and you both order the Mojito, but at different times...and you know they must taste different, so you taste one, then the other, then go back to the first, then the second, and back and forth for several sips of each until you decide how they're different and which is better.  I think that would have been my in that shared apartment in New York.  Camara men go home!