A Rogue HNT From Washington

i discovered this picture recently. unearthed is more like it. and this is not my normal start to an HNT. but i thought i had lost this picture a long time ago and it is one of my favorites from a high school long covered in the dust of history. this picture is of five soccer players for the Sanger High School varsity team. This is the only year in the history of the school (to this day) that a soccer team won the league championship (and did it undefeated). from the left is Mitch (my defensive wingman who actually scored a goal once from the 50 yard line), Sean (nasty midfielder with a penchant for being in front of the opposing goal in order to score the "garbage" goals and punched out an opposing player the year after i graduated), Matti (my Finnish exchange brother who had talent we'd never dreamed of and never hesitated to show it to us while laughing...i got a lot of free beer and pot from the other players for having him live at my house once we won the championship), Ed (um, he sat a lot waiting for the game to get out of reach before being put into the scrum), and me (short skinny fullback stopper whose favorite past-time was knocking people down for no better reason than they were closer to the ball than me and checking my hair to make sure it was winging out properly). but the true beauty of this picture is threefold. one: you can see we're all happy as can be. we're having so much fun succeeding and hanging. two: the innocence. three: the hat. what a hat. mitch finally did get sent home from school for the hat (like i did for a sex wax shirt, a hussong's cantina shirt and a sleeveless shirt that i had worn in the honor choir's year end public medley. and all of mine happened in one day). what a fucking hat. almost as good as my Campus Life football jersey with the number 69 on it. almost no one got it. um, Campus Life was the come to god social group at the time. most of us used it to meet chicks from other schools. school pregnancy could probably have been cut by 1/3 if that group had been banned.

let's move on, shall we?

also in this group of pictures i found was this little gem. now, most of you are used to seeing my ass or some other provocative piece of my physical ensemble, but i looked at this photo and realized that this is about as naked as half-nekkid can get. i mean, this is probably the most nekkid i can get. this is Dork personified. it was the sadie hawkins dance and the girl with the 200 i.q. asked me to go (no figuring there). i'm wearing tie pants for crying out loud. and, yes, the bow ties are real. and she did try to use the key on my pants later on. now, why did i go to a dance with a genius nerd? i don't know other than i was involved with all of the school groups (i.e. geniuses, jocks, greasers, gang members, geeks, losers and misfits). i was a renaissance man who didn't care who you were so long as we could hang and have fun. and this chick (we'll call her...sharon) was fun. until we got on the dance floor. i had never to this point been exposed to modern dance. at the time, i was rather embarassed by her technique. in hindsight, she was madonna in a cow town.
and we're moving on.
if you can't read it, it says "not afraid". it is a website created in response to the 9/11 attacks. my friend lecram came over, shot this and then "fixed" it on photoshop. this is the quintessential me living in the 'No. back yard, plants and flowers everywhere. a beer, a smoke, The Hat, the hair, and nothing but time. and fading beauty. i truly am the bette davis of the flabby, single heteros.

and i just love this negative of my favorite tattoo. and that's all i got to say about that. Happy HNT and go Rogue, you magnificent bastards!

No Title Really, Just A Long Post That Goes Nowhere

“reject confrontation in favor of accommodation”
what the fu...? it's better to accomodate criminal activity than to confront it? and, yes, this is criminal activity. flagrantly so. congress created a law to stop presidents and spy agencies from doing exactly what the president and one of his spy agencies are doing right now. so, the word on the street is that the republicans are going to try and pass a new law that loopholes the last law, because it's their guy in the oval office. and what's the loophole? simply creating a subcommitee that bush has to report to about his illegal spying. and the makeup of this subcommitee? 4 republicans, 3 democrats. someone should tell them to beware abusing power in this manner. the next election just might put a democrat in and he or she would have all of these neat, new ways of endrunning laws. and the republicans would have only themselves to kick in the ass. not that they could it in the first place if there wasn't a lobbyist around to point it out. not that a lobbyist would be that stupid...unless, of course, he's under indictment and hoping to shave years off of his sentence.
if y'all been reading my blog for some time, then you might remember me talking about the possibility of vote machine rigging in florida and a man who exposed a congressman who attempted to buy software that would change vote counts. here is an interesting essay (complete with lots-o-links) that speaks to the national scandal no one wants to touch.
wow. this is not what i would have thought to find: the majority of americans believe god created adam just as described in the bible. no news, however, if eve came out as expected. now, before y'all go off on a rant about how atheistic i am, let me just tell you that this is not a religion bashing note. i like god. i like the idea of a supreme being fucking with the petri dish. i just don't buy into organized religion and i definately do not get on with literalists. i have my church and my sanctuary and my place to go for confession and meditation. and none of those are within a square light year of people who think tithing and sunday church are the golden ticket into heaven. they have their place in the stucture of normal society, but they are balms for the soul, not guarantors of redemption. but anyway, to read that more than 50% of us think adam was made from clay in a day astounds me. perhaps, though, the real truth is that most people just don't want to think...or add...or go to a museum.

have you ever noticed that when waterloo by abba comes on the radio you just want to stop what you are doing and groove to the music? or is it just me? i think muriel's wedding corrupted me. but, man, do i get my groove on. sometimes i think i'm a gay dancer in a hairy hetero body.

so, tomorrow my vacation begins. i catch the train at 10:30. 6 glorious days of not being at work and getting to hang out with some old friends. but not so fast. i had to make the decision to go into to work at 6 in the morning tomorrow so as to calibrate a new hydraulic compression machine so that my lab bitch can run it while i'm gone. fuck me with a swizzle stick. we just bought out two labs and my lab got some neat toys. that's the upside. the downside is that through poor planning my boss waited until the day before i go on vacation to actually go get the equipment. so, i get to find the proper speeds by which we break concrete and grout cylinders of various sizes when i should be sleeping in. trust me, though, i will not be charged a day's vacation for coming in (gotta love being on salary, i walk in for five minutes, sneeze and go home sick and i'm paid for the entire day and tomorrow will be one of those days).
also, i now have an oven that goes to 1500 degrees faranheit (yours only goes to eleven) and will burn oil out of asphalt, tell me how much organic material exists in a sample of dirt and calculate pi to the nearest parsec. ain't that cool.
two amazing toys. if i could bring them home and make love to them i would. and never leave the house again. reminds me of an alteration to a cat stevens song i once heard:
and if i could ever suck my dick
awayyyyyy ayyyy
i'd never leave the house.
but tomorrow i get on the train for a 24 hour trip. and i will need to find the porter who smokes and keep an eye on him. some stops are long enough to get off and have a puff. and the porter knows every one. amtrak no longer allows smoking in the beer car. understandable for the most part, but overnighters like me should have a safe area in which to do our nasty deed. otherwise we tend to fire weapons indiscriminately. and if i had my compression machine with me i just might put the conductor's head in it to check his skull's ultimate psi. anyhoo.
so, this is it. in a day i'm in californighaye and hanging with the heathens.

Rogue At The Piggly Wiggly

wanna see some cool ad space for the Rogue? aughra over at bad news blonde did a collage for the festival at my request. check it out. she totally rocks.

oops. dick cheney is less popular than o.j. simpson and michael jackson. the good news is that he's still slightly more popular than paris hilton (huh? she could be my veep anyday).

now, you know i looooove anonymous commenters. especially the ones i can identify through my magical powers. so, i'm down with someone not wanting to post a real name (hey, none of us do!) for reasons of security. in new jersey, however, a politician is attempting to force anyone on the internet to include their legal name if they wish to make noise of any kind. "bringing civility back into the discussion" or some such nonsense is how he puts it. check it out.

ooh, bad moon rising. don't piss off the scientists on their own turfizzle. some of the pencil necked geeks are taking it to da man (that would be bush and his (cough) appointees).

and again. gay penguins cannot be trusted. do not open the door for them, even if they are holding morman pamphlets. turn off the porch light, hide the eggs and call 9-1-1. you people don't seem to realize just how serious this is. if gay penguins are allowed to adopt and have books written about them, then no human child is safe from their "turn all human children into sissies" agenda. and this is evidently what the gay penguins have in mind. it's not enough that they've convinced male pandas to not have sex ever again (repeat after me: eucalyptus leaves yummy, female pandas fat and stupidly inscrutable). it's not enough that gay penguins are the reason for the dodo bird's demise (little known fact: penguins and dodos once fought for breeding territory. you do the math). some scientists will try to convince you that penguins are not gay, they're just extremely nearsighted. which is a fact. and some anthrpologists will tell you that when two male penguins are kept in captivity since birth and have no females around they may feel the need for a little good-ol-boy fun. but i'm here to tell you that the gay penguin agenda is also a fact. and they're everywhere. did you know there are penguins in australia? a country that doesn't know snow. a country that touts its manliness 24/7 with movies like crocodile dundee and rugged actors like russel crowe, guy pearce and hugo weaving. a continent of great white sharks, poison spitting lizards and really big beer. you might be saying right now, "no. penguins in the outback? totally nuts. how can this be?". yet, they are there. and some of them have to be gay and looking to adopt. look at the numbers: if, on the average, one out of ten humans is gay and we outnumber the penguins by like a lot (many researchers put the ratio at 10:1), then it just proves that one out of every penguin must be gay. makes you think twice before visiting the zoo.
and don't get me started on puffins and sea otters.


-does this need anything said that's not said already? just look at the coifs. clinton's all over that. not to mention the chino eyes. clinton had the humboldt, bush mistook ecstasy for aspirin. boooooring. plus, he gets no pie!

"We should fight the enemy. We should not fight each other". this was said in defense of a committee vote to not investigate illegal eavesdropping. remember, there is a law in place since 1978 ( i believe ) that orders a president to ask the court for permission to eavesdrop. the court has turned down 4 ( i believe ) requests in a lot of years. this can be asked for almost three days after surveillance starts. if it's turned down, then no one is allowed to talk about what they saw. not too shabby. but some congress people are thinking that even that much intrusion into the administration's machinations is an invasion of policy. i mean privacy. and what i think is that government privacy should be held to the same standards as piracy on the high seas.

and "the poopdeck is closed" means the poopdeck is closed. don't know why i wrote that, but poopdeck is a really funny word. what the hell goes on on a poopdeck? or in? or near? is pop really poop? is poop slang? i know it's on a ship, so deck must be accurate, right? whatever poop is it's happening on one of the decks.

The Oscars In Dyerama-vision

hey, what the heck? enough politics for one week. let's take a break and watch the Oscars! of course, i can't watch without commenting:
1. gay jokes STILL don't get much mileage from the politically correct (great western montage).
1a. guessing on george clooney for best supporting actor. don't know why. just feels right.
2. reese witherspoon continues to prove that midgets are not only a viable social minority, but sometimes really hot. it's good to have hope. keep looking up!
3. dolly parton got collagen shots? she's almost got mick jagger lips!..speaking of which , that would have made a good theme drink for tonight's festivities: collagen shots.
4. george clooney...good acceptance speech. nice poke in the eye of right wing blowhards. but did he HAVE to bring up the sexiest man thing? most of us are still hating him on that.
5. ben stiller needs to get laid...or a job. notice how he and owen wilson aren't doing much together anymore? and owen is en fuego.
6. i hate cartoon nominee announcers. and, no, i'm not rehashing #5.
7. russell crowe has a nice hairdo. looks unkempt and handswept. cost $1000. hand sweep extra. lock on the forehead looked like a big C. or a curly L.
(by the way, 40 Year Old Virgin is the funniest movie from last year)
8. rachel weiscz for best supporting actress. that's just my guess. but, eventually, catherine keener must be attended. amazing actress. amazing improver.
9. taking a guess on narnia for makeup.
10. stewart's pulling down Oscar and starting democracy in hollywood was right on...and not really gotten by the crowd.
11. morgan freeman is the epitome of coooool...
12. lauren bacall's moment on stage reminded me of frank langella in Dave when he starts out with a room full of supporters and ends up alone with a limp banner in his hand. sorry, lauren. get back into acting.
13. have i mentioned yet how hot keira knightly is? no?
14. keira's hothothot!
15. the quickest way to fuck up an Oscar nominated song is to choreograph it for the show. ooh, burned out car and fog. um, what was the song about?
16. cool. sandra bullock and keanu reeves finishing the Speed trilogy as nominators. he embraces an Eastern philosophy that doesn't fuck with making millions of dollars from two dimensional characters ans she marries somebody not me. i think i'm going to miss this segment if you don't mind.
17. sandra is goooooooorgeous. and the winner of art direction stepped on her dress. keanu..well, he looks good in a tux, but what gay penguin doesn't?
18. samuel jackson epitomized himself in Sphere. other than the pulp fiction cheeseburger moment, what's he got?
19. wow. the Oscars just went full tilt boogie on politics. left coast style. a little pissed off about being represented as "left coast" when it wasn't doing much to earn it? a bit miffed about being branded "out of it" and "not in the mainstream" and "typically liberal"? go get 'em, bitches!
20. the Oscar president is talking about sharing a movie experience in a cinema with complete strangers. he hasn't been to a cineplex lately, has he? if i want to experience people eating with their mouths open, talking on their cell phones, shushing their children, rolling their empty beer bottles down the aisle, complaining about how they wanted to see the other film, kicking the back of my seat, or needing to pee every fifteen minutes, i will pay $9. if i don't want all or any of that, i will wait until it's on netflix or the local second market movie theater. and, guess what?, very few cities and towns have second market theaters. ed emmanuel had the right idea: save up your money until you can build a private theater and pay for first-run movie reviews.
21. selma hayak is hot. even when she had no vagina in Dogma. very good movie.
22. jessica alba is hot. and Sin City is too. watch this movie. it's not nominated for anything. jessica made me think of it. hot hot movie.
23. lily tomlin and meryl streep talking about the altman montage. wow. look for the clip. not here, but somewhere. either so well rehearsed that lecram would cry or such inspired improv that...well, lecram would cry.
24. robert altman's acceptance speech is good and ends with a gotcha.
25. then a house party broke out. then it won an Oscar. woof.
gotta go. the cat needs grooming.