I went canoeing with Papa Alchemist, and I'll post the pictures I took if I ever use up the last 9 shots on this camera. I got burnt up pretty bad in the sun, and I'm all red now, but it was a good time. My car stalled out a few times on the way home, but that always happens when I do a semi-lenghty drive, especially if Fectin's in the car (he wasn't today, but as with his apparent absence on the blog, he is at least always with us in spirit).

Then, later, I went to the park with my friend, and we went hiking. We climbed a really steep hill towards the end of our trek, steep enough that we had to use our hands at parts to pull ourselves up, then once we were up it started getting dark quick. Instead of backtracking all that way in the dark we worked our way down the other, less steep side of the hill in low visibility, then made our way down to the creek bed. Now, the creek seperates the woods we hiked through from the main part of the park where there's a road and a bike path. Since I wasn't looking to stumble my way over hilly paths in the dark, we crossed a log there that was about a dozen feet over about a two foot depth of creek water, so kind of a nasty drop if you fell. We made it across okay, but very cautiously. From there we just followed the bike path back to the parking lot in the dark. So, a pretty full Memorial Day for me. Hopefully y'all had good times as well.

Oh, and can't forget this: thank you to all our current servicemen and veterans, for their sacrifices and their willingness to sacrifice.

Haven't been online very much the last week or two. Part of the reason is that I'm trying to keep my phone line open, since I had a job interview last week that I'm hoping to hear back from. Also, a friend hooked me up with a Super Nintendo emulator, so whenever I am on the computer I'm spending my time on that (holy shit, it's awesome!). I am still reading everything that gets posted, but I have a ton of distractions at the moment, and just haven't been able to commit my self to even a brief amount of typing. Hopefully you're all still reading. I'll probably post some stuff soon, but every time I get on here I can't remember any of the shit I want to post.

UPDATE: MIA = Madness In Alchemy?

I was trying to close the upper left hand drawer on my desk at work and it wouldn't close because of the crap inside. And I started moving stuff around to try to get it to close and realized it was a pair of sunglasses keeping it from shutting. Except it wasn't a pair, it was 11 pairs. Because every time I forget my sunglasses at home I buy another pair at the 7-11 and stick it in my desk just in case. And it finally got to be so many that I couldn't close the damn thing.

I'm throwing out about nine of them. I wonder if when I haul them out whether I'll find pieces of Jimmy Hoffa underneath them. Please donate generously to Pack Rat Syndrome relief agencies.

Updated! While trying to put them temporarily back into the drawer, I found five more pairs. Help me.

Updated! I think I'm keeping the Malcolm-X style ones with the turquoise colored tortoise shell. You never know when you'll need something like that to complete an overcoat and feather boa ensemble.

Updated! Has global warming killed us all yet?

Updated (by Mad Alchemist)! Global warming has now, officially, killed us all. You may continue about your business.

I was hanging out with a friend last night, who I've been friends with for pretty much forever. To give you an idea, the first time we met he was wearing a Ninja Turtles T-shirt and his sister was wearing a New Kids on the Block T-shirt. For as long as we've been friends, I don't think I would exactly call him a "good friend." I mean, we get along like friends, pretty much any rancid turd that randomly drops out my brain and falls from my mouth I am safe to say around him, but he's also one of those people who kind of makes you sit back and contemplate the sorry state of the human species. High school drop out, spends too much money on cigarettes, alcohol, and pot even though he's always broke (I'll point out right now that I pretty much never drink, have never got so much as a buzz--er, I don't think I was buzzed last night, though I did have a rare sense of euphoria, but I think that was from playing a ton of SNES games I haven't played in like a decade--,and have only ever smoked second-hand). In fact, he just sold me like 10 of his CDs all for $5, I think for cigarrette money. Anyway, his life is pretty alien to me, as someone who was raised Christian (not raised Christian particularly well, mind you, at least since my mother passed away, but raised Christian none the less). Oh, and this is also the friend I blogged about before, who when I asked him where Israel is, despite him being of very Jewish descent, thought it was in South America.

So, okay, my friend has a really hot Hispanic girlfriend in New Jersey. I have no fucking clue how he hooked up with that, but he did. From what I can gather, this girl seems to have more baggage than the overhead compartment, so that may be a contributing factor, but she seems like a sweet enough girl, despite the whole craziness. Anyway, my friend played some video of her he had on his cellphone (at the time I thought it was just an audio file since he was holding the phone the other way), and just had me listen to the audio and guess what was going on. I couldn't hear what was going on at all (I'm not deaf, but have kind of shitty hearing), so I asked him if I could hold it to my ear. He said "Ah, fuck it, I don't care, here" and just showed me the video. It was his girlfriend, lying nekkid on her back, in bed. Hard to see with those cellphone videos, but I think she was masturbating. The weirdest part is, he was just going off earlier today about how some asshole she knew from Catholic school in 8th grade I guess asked her if she'd do modeling for his porn website, and my friend was righteously pissed off just that this guy had asked. I suppose because he's known me forever, and knows that (potty mouth and Angry Stick-figure Man cartoons aside) I'm a pretty wholesome guy (and I suppose I'd say I'm somewhat chivalrous in my view of women), he didn't really have a problem with it. But still... kinda weird, man. Kinda weird.

Every girl crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man.

Or run to your grocery store. Doom is upon us! The banana may be extinct tomorrow. Then what will we eat - bratwurst splits?

Doom!
Doom!
Doom!

I don't feel like updating! You're mean!

We're finally the #1 Google entry for 'Alchemy for Dummies', ahead of all of those RPG nerd sites (if any of you RPG nerds stumble across this don't be offended, we're plenty nerdy around here, in our own way). Hooray for us!

Contemplate.

Got a surprise for you all.

I thought it was supposed to be today, but apparently not. I wanted to watch me some of that.

In the sexual harassment prevention class they made me take at work they said organization goals included preventing behavior that would embarass other workers, annoy them, or make them feel uncomfortable. Like those are bad things.

That's close to my whole repertoire. I wonder if I can still just walk up to people and say "YOU SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK" without someone getting all bent out of shape by it.

Last week at school I saw a bumper sticker that said "I Can't Wait until 2008," and the 'W' had a red circle around it with a line through it, making the 'No W' sign so you know what they're talking about. I found it kinda funny, since W would still be president for the entire year of 2008. It's not until the year ends that he actually leaves office. So... 2009 would be the actual year you would look forward to.

Anyway, it's finals week, so don't expect much better than this post from me.

The lovely Michelle has a list up of 90's nostalgia, and there is a ton of stuff on there that I actually remember. Some older people I know send around circulating e-mails talking about cultural nostalgia specific to the 50's, and I have to wonder if our generation is going to be sending around e-mails like this when we're old. Anyway, check out the list and go remember some stuff.

I found out one of my aunts died yesterday. My mom is from Sao Paulo, Brazil, so I haven't seen most of her side of the family since I was 7, when my mom died (of cancer, like her sister who died yesterday). This aunt's son came up to the United States back when I was in high school, so I did seem him quite a few times then, but it's been a very long time since I've seen his mom, and I feel pretty bad because I talk to them on the phone every so often (can't say a whole lot, since I stopped using Portuguese when my mom died, and now can barely speak a word of it), and all of my aunt's from Brazil love my brother and I well more than we deserve, even though they haven't seen us since we were snot-nosed little kids. Another of my mom's sisters married a guy up here in Ohio, and lives fairly close to me, and she is the one who told me about what happened. She started crying a little over the phone, and it bothered me that I was unable to show the emotion that I know my aunt deserved, since I haven't seen her in about 16 years, and that was when I was still a child. I remember at 7 years old being devestated by my mother's death, but you're an entirely different person as a child, and not only do I have very little memory of my mother, but the memories I do have were through the perspective of a very different person than my current self. I've never been the type of person to show much emotion to begin with, so it's always a bit akward when I'm in a situation that I know deserves it. I suppose it's very common in this world for good people to be deprived of a full life. Unfortunately, it's gotten more and more difficult for me in recent years to be confident in any conviction of the existence of God and/or an afterlife, but at times like these I especially hope an afterlife does exist, so that people like my mother and my aunt who were deprived of full lives could be granted the more compassionate existence they deserve. I know my mom believed in that, and I hope she was right.

Anyway, if you took the time to read through this, don't feel compelled to make a sympathetic statement. I know I personally have trouble expressing such sympathies whenever another person finds themselves in a similar situation. It's awkward, and when you don't know a person there tends to be more an attempt at politeness than sincerity. Of course, if you do feel compelled to make a statement, like if something struck a chord with you here, then don't feel dissuaded from commenting either. I just felt that this event deserved recognition more than the kind of crap I usually post.

I can sort of address Rule #1 but doubt that I'll get far with Rule #2. So here are some things that might strike others as weird in the self-gossip category:

1. I learned to drive on a forlift. I think it was a Clark.
2. In the late sixties, I was involved in a scam my brother ran to hire me out to Psych students to take tests for them since none of these twenty-something college students could find kids to take tests. I don't think I ever saw any of the money he raked in from this. I don't remember seeing a cent of it.
3. I spent a year as an assistant miller in a peanut butter factory and lost some hearing to those damn mills (can't remember if it was the Bauer or the Urschel mill that was more like a jet engine). What other hearing loss I can lay claim to comes from aging and playing in bad rock bands.
4. I can't prove I graduated high school. I went to college for nine years and barely got to be a junior.
5. I'm pretty sure that Handsome Dick Manitoba could kick Eddie Vedder's ass in just about any kind of fight, with just about any kind of rigging of the odds in Vedder's favor. I'm pretty sure that the strategy Manitoba would use would be to wait until Vedder launches into some lame-ass political speech and then lay him out with a folding chair.
6. I missed only one math question on the SAT. I'm not sure what use that kind of math aptitude really ever gave me in the intervening twenty-something years.
7. I am eligible for membership in the Sons of the American Revolution through a conscientious objector to the Revolutionary War. However, unlike modern equivalents who sometimes use this title as a pretext to side with the enemy, this ancestor provided material support for General Washington and received a post-War commendation for provisioning troops out of his own wallet. One could begin to suspect that he was on the American side of the Revolution.
8. I learned in my thirties that the sad state of my little toenails was toe fungus and not a genetic trait. I have yet to do anything meaningful about it except occasionally to pull those nails off with a pair of needlenosed pliers and cover the open wounds until they stop bleeding.
9. I am aware that the last statement might have brought about some degree of disgust in a hypothetical reader, and can only point to this as an ever-present hazard of self-gossip.
10. The hairiness of those Madonna pictures that showed up in the mid-1980s did not disgust me.
11. And I'm not sure I have anyone to tag to comply with Rule #2 who C. D. "The Mad" Alchemist hasn't hit yet.
12. I have never attempted to cultivate mad rap skills.

Anyone who survived this morbidly-self-obsessed string of semi-solicited confession can consider himself/herself/itself/themselves tagged (Hopefully I covered all probable genders and conditions of being a cojoined twin).

I know lawyers like to hand-pick people for their ignorance, but come on!

Moussaoui, as he was led from the courtroom after the 15-minute hearing, said: “America, you lost. ... I won.” He clapped his hands as he was escorted away.

I sincerely hope the guards at his prison make it perfectly clear to everyone else in there exactly who this guy is.

The closest the jurors came to unanimity in finding mitigating factors was on two questions involving his troubled childhood. On the first count of conspiracy to commit international terrorism, nine cited his unstable early childhood including stays in orphanages and a lack of emotional and financial support, and nine also cited physical and emotional abuse by his father.

‘Tards.