My Town Stinks

Know why? Because there are a large number of skunks that have gotten hit by cars all over town. I have never seen such a mass-suicide in skunks before. They are running at cars kamakazi style in what seems like pairs. We went to Tulsa this weekend, and counted 14 of them in the road during the drive. The combined effect is making the whole town smell like skunk spray and rotting flesh. Yummy.

Thanks to everybody for well wishing going on all weekend. My birthday was marred by a sick child, barfing all over everything all weekend, so the celebrations were decidedly low-key. Jen took me to a very nice dinner, and out for a beer. It was relaxing, which was just what I needed. Poor Jack had to skip his friend Gavin's 1st birthday party. We got back on Sunday, and Jenn made me a cake.

That's about all I have right now.

-JP

Life and Times

Alright.
I have no sketch or anything for you today. Sorry about that. There should be a new NGV5 up tomorrow, so you'll have that.
I had a lovely three-day weekend. During the traditional celebrations, we decorated our Presidents Day tree with Boston tea bags and little fake copies of historical documents, with a light up star/capital dome at the top. Jenn wore leggings a powdered wig, and Jackson a top hat. We dressed up one of our small dogs as John Wilkes Booth, and let her chase Jack around for a bit, holding a dainty plastic derringer in her mouth. I decided that this year, I would dress a Teddy Roosevelt, and dug out my old circular wire framed glasses, and put on a false mustache. I then went into the woods behind out house and killed the first living thing I saw, which happened to be a tick. I was glad for that, as I don't own any guns, and would have had to beat a larger animal to death with just my bare fists and a heap of moxy.
President's Day also ushered in some mild weather that me and the fam took full advantage of, as we have not been able to play outside in weeks. Our pasty white skin turned red in a matter of minutes during the trip to the park. A few hundred trips down the slide were exactly what Jackson needed to get the heebie-jeebies out of his pants.
Um... Not much else going on. I have a birthday coming up on Sunday. I'll be 32, or freezing, were I water based. I suppose I am , really, but the carbon 14 is keeping me solid. We will be in Tulsey Town Saturday night, so if you want to help me celebrate, get in touch.

That is all.

Happy Heart day.

I have to say that I like this holiday. I like making valentines and being all arty. Even when I was single, I liked this holiday. I always saw it as full of potential rather than a day to mope and listen to The Cure (though if you choose this path, grasshopper, you will find that The Cure has a surprisingly large amount of love songs, and you will just dig that hole deeper).
Yet another holiday that the Roman Catholic Church used to distract people from, and dissuade them from celebrating a pagan holiday, in this case, Lupercalia.
Lupercalia was celebrated in ancient Rome:

"At this time many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy."

In this case, I fully support the change. I only know a few people who would like to be smacked with a "shaggy thong" by a naked rich kid. However, as Hallmark has bastardized this holiday for financial profit, I can see why some have labeled it "singles awareness day".
I remember, back in grade school, when we all gave out little pre-printed cards en masse to every person, male or female in our class. Dropping them into the paper lunch sacks that we spent the previous afternoon decorating, and then carefully taped them to the side of our desks. One year, I got one from the resident hotty of the fifth grade, that was signed "love, Rachel". This was a big deal back then, as grade schoolers rarely shared such deep feelings, and I set that one aside, because it was special, and I had convinced myself that I apparently had a shot with this girl, who every boy (and maybe even one of the girls), had a crush of sorts on. On the way home, while walking along with a few of my buddies, one of them produced an identical card with an identical signature. He was convinced that he had a shot with this girl, because of her emotional outpouring of two words. Then I pulled mine out, and then the third kid pulled his out, and we quickly realized that she had signed each card the same way. All three of us had assumed that our card was unique, and each of us had had the same feeling of requited affection for an entire afternoon, and I bet every boy(and that one girl) in that class felt the same way. I still kept that card for a while after than, just in case.

-JP

SB 21 - I wish I were Yuri-G

I was listening to PJ Harvey, and decided to draw a pic of Yuri Gagarin. I haven't done a ball-point pen picture in a while anyway. I don't know if Gagarin is the Yuri G mentioned in the song of the same name, but the song mentions the moon a lot, and even though Gagarin never went to the moon, he was the first human in space, and was closer than anybody had been before. The song seems to mention a voodoo doll as well. I don't know what peej is on about most of the time, but she makes good music and is so delectably weird that I can't help but like her. So, um, yeah.
Well, Turner Broadcasting has agreed to pay Boston 2 million dollars. 1 mil to cover the cost of dealing with the "mooninite scare" and 1 mil as a good faith money. The sad thing is that the two guys who put up the LED boxes are still facing charges of terrorism. Stupid. It seems like the most they could reasonably throw at them would be a vandalism charge, which would only apply to the ones not placed on private property, so they should really just drop it. They won't though. I can foresee it.
Last week, Jen was in Vegas having an awesome time celebrating Robin's birthday and playing craps and doing all the fun stuff Vegas has to offer. Well, hopefully not all the stuff, like going to whore houses. She had a good time, and she wishes me to extend a thank you to all those who made it possible.
Her being in the desert meant that I had the boy all to myself for a whole week. I loved it. I loved being that responsible. I loved picking out his outfits and packing his little lunch and taking him to school. We got to do what ever we wanted in the evenings, and we played hard so I could wear him out so he would fall asleep easier. I was very glad to have Jen back, though. I had fun, but I couldn't keep that up on my own for very long.
Not much else going on. We are excited to see Cookie's photography show in Enid, and hope to go there this weekend. I fully plan on buying something. Maybe the one of my kid that I hear is in there.
That is all.

-JP

Mooninite Panic

weenies.

I gotta say something about this, and the panic storm that has risen around it. This is an example of how much the media is screwed up. No, That's not correct. This is an example of how people use the media to retarded ends. I think the on the ground reporters are fine for the most part, they just report what they see. But in this situation, the anchors at the 24hour news channel are the ones who have turned this into a circus. They are the ones that blew this thing out of proportion by naming this thing a Terrorist Hoax, which it is not. It is an advertising campaign. A grass roots, guerrilla ad campaign that was actually pretty ingenuous. Just because somebody who grew up in the '70s and had some kind of Lite Brite trauma as a child took it the wrong way and overreacted, doesn't mean that the idea behind it was anything malicious. Now all these freaky-deaks are rattling their cages and saying that they want to put these guys in prison because some idiot was scared of a cartoon character.
You can actually see the progression into the downward spiral. These guys put these things up, somebody complains, some cop checks it out, and he calls the bomb squad just to be safe. People get word that the bomb squad is taking these things down, and it gets on the news. People who have noticed these things around town start to freak out, and call the cops. The news coverage continues, and the whole city gets shut down while they sort it out. Now once they figure out that the whole thing is basically a bunch of Etch-a-Sketches taped to phone poles, the cops and the bomb squad and the media types get embarrassed at their own stupidity and they get angry at the two little hiptser hippies that made them look bad. This couldn't be their own idiocy, right? Must be a fucking Terrorist Hoax! String 'em up!
This is the world that GWB has created. People are so concerned with terrorists, yet they cant tell one from a cartoon. This is what Wil Wheaton had to say:

"This is the result of politicians and the media creating and then exploiting a culture of fear in America.
Politicians use it to grab power and silence dissent, and the media use it to drive up ratings.
In either case, it's sickening exploitation." (more)

I do have to say that I love the reaction of the perps during their press release:




These guys get it. They realize what a fucking joke this whole situation is. I hope they keep talking about Mod haircuts throughout their whole trial. Better yet, I hope the Judge throws the case out, and chastises the prosecutor and the Media talking heads for wasting everybody's time.





-JP