The final countdown. Oh, wait. Zero.

It's time to let Period of Useful Consciousness go.

I know, I know... I'm expecting a flood of seven emails begging me to say it isn't so. I can't answer you all, of course, so let the following be enough.

I've been a good blogger. Reasonably. Less banal than oh-so-fucking-many others. Yet too self indulgent. Too edited. At times funny, yet many other times presuming people actually gave a shit about my life. But that's like conversation, except for here, there's no place for, "Enough about my appendicitis, tell me about your colonoscopy..." We have blogs to express our wounds. (And with some of my pictures you know 'expressing wounds' was not out of bounds.)

I learnt in the early days - one of the earliest - not to write about particular people in particular ways. Shit travels downhill, and in this case it traveled all the way down under. I know not how, yet it did, and it was wrong. True as the truths written may have been, I wrote some things that were just angry and spiteful.

There are, of course, other Contributing Factors.

The parrots I've been training - the ones in the submarine - have taken more of my time than I had hoped they would. Progress has been terrific, and I expect there will be news, public news, international news, the kind of news you don't have to put out press releases for, breaking soon. Will it be worth the loss of this outlet? Probably. As they say, "any press is good press." And this will soon be tested.

My children have all grown by now. All the ones we joke about that we don't know if we ever had. Well, I really don't. But if there are any, they're all legal now, since I stopped having orgasms during intercourse about 19 years ago. Intentionally of course. (Discipline is a crutch. I have two. A perfect emotional cripple.) I expect to be in court or on Oprah or being heralded and feted soon for my excellent sperm. One of those things.

My creative juices once flowed freely here. It's not that I've run out of them, they're just different colors now, and of different viscosity. No longer bloggable in this wee chasm. (My other blog will remain alive and well. If you've ever been invited to enjoy it or perhaps you're even a moderator, you know that it's a great, fun tool of abuse of the many by the gifted few. It will continue, I vow on my current wife's grave.)

Words are tools. 'Tools' are now, colloquially, clueless retards. 'Retards' are not Politically Correct. Political Correctness is blessedly dead (P.C. was made dogma by 9/11, yet clear retribution to it was resurrected, phoenix-like by George W. Bush). It is a new enlightenment of the post dogmatically pre-re-P.C. awakening. Hence Words are Dead.

Yet I continue to write.

Rhetorical dogmatism lives on like a dada-istic cat tire within the sphere of shampoo hatpins, thank the gods.

Jesus. If only I'd written like this the entire time this blog was alive... I wouldn't feel the need to drag the razor blade up its arm as it sits in the digital bathtub of my discontent.

It does, however. I've made the subtlest mentions of an End Coming. It's been stewing for some time. The meat was done some time ago, the carrots, the celery, dammit-I-should-have-left-the-mushrooms-for-last, it's lost some liquid and thickened nicely. Let's just call this a mixed metaphor, a boy in the plastic bubble (you know the little bastard is going to die), frayed rope end, last car to get on the last ferry of the evening, in the bottom of the ninth, and on the seventh day I created a final countdown that goes something like

3
2
1

End of Blog

Spoiler alert

He crashed.

Fossett crashed.
He's dead.

I'm really sad about it. I'm not kidding.

But he's dead.

Please prove me wrong. Please? I've dreamt I'm wrong. Please prove me so.

Seahawk

Hilary and Gail and I found this Osprey (or sea hawk, or hawk, or whatever it turned out to be) at Chelan. It was on the road coming down to my place, and a neighbor had warned us not to run over it.

Eventually, before I shot it for just being wounded or sick or whatever, we got help from animal control. Hilary said, "call someone. Anyone. You don't have to just shoot it." She was right. They came all the way from bloody Leavenworth to pick it up. I was really surprised.

Magnificent beast, even thought it couldn't even walk.

I hope they saved it.

Lookin good

Random shots from a day here

Odds and ends from a day at the lake. You'll have to pardon me - I just got the new version of Adobe Creative Suite. So I'm commitin' some art... click it and it gets bigger.







































Good GOD.
That's enough tongue to feed a Scottish family for a week.
Make a nun blush.

Human meat

Yellow Jackets, or meat bees as they are often known, are a plague at the Lake this year. Kelly's hardware says they can't remember a summer when they sold more traps. Three weeks ago I put up the trap in picture below. Quite a mob.

I have always thought meat bees only bite - they don't sting. Because of this belief, I have always been pretty fearless about swatting them. They're not like honey bees or bumble bees - which will, if you take a shot at them, come at you with the single intention of stinging you. In the act it rips the stinger and venom sack out, and kills the bee.

This morning I have learnt that Yellow Jackets do indeed sting. If you are holding the food they want (in this case bread for the ducklings), they will sting you to get it out of your hands. It worked.

Having held this "bite only" belief since I was a youngster, I found it very hard to believe I'd just been stung. But I googled, and there it is... They sting. And not just that, YJs can sting unlimited times - it doesn't kill them. At least not directly. Indirectly it does. Because I, eventually, will kill every single one of the little bastards.

I can tell you that it doesn't hurt as much as a wasp or a bee, and the sting is mostly gone in about ten minutes. That, however, does not lessen my now sworn blood vengeance. Yellow Jackets are on the shit list.

Like something out of a Stephen King novel.

August in Seattle

Many people are bitter about the short-sheeting we got on summer this year. Yesterday, today, tomorrow... all more reasons for the bitterness.

It's usually some cheery older person who says, "rain in Seattle - think of it as liquid sunshine!" Which is one of the most inane sayings imaginable. Insult to injury. A slap-able offense - "think of it as a hand kiss!"

I'm going to Chelan.

Walt Whitman is 90 stories tall

Click to make it big

More dog blogging - click pics to embiggen

Sweet, sweet Murphy. At least when he's being sweet.

Look closely: there is a blackberry inside the maw of Jazzy.

Pursued by the hounds of hell.

Friend in China

I've got a friend who goes to China on biz a few times a year. His is pretty rough and ready travel, usually, but not this rough. His email just now, from Qingdao:

Dude what's shakin'? This trip has been full of firsts.
First lost bag, took 3 days to get it from Vancouver.
First hour delay in the plane on the tarmac, no AC, 110 F. And very nearly a riot. The guy next to me was skimming the sweat off his bald pate with a magazine, got some on the guy in front of him, very nearly a brawl. I went to my Zen place and did not commit murder or suicide.
First genuine flood as Qingdao and Shandong province set a 50 year record for single day rainfall. It was epic. Four drowned, mud and rock slides everywhere.
First mule and bullfrog meat that I know of. Ah travel! So grand.
Plenty of delightful moments as well, (the Italian national sailing team is staying at the hotel, lots of fit, tan young women traipsing about town), but on balance I'm ready to head home.
Got a free day tomorrow for the Qingdao Beer Festival then home on Sunday.
Dave

Go eat some berries. Man they're good. It's now or never.
The very Bitch that is September is right 'round the corner.

Preaching to the converted

The conversation about who the Democrats are going to run for President all seems geared to who the liberals like. But every single liberal is going to vote for anyone who's not a Republican.

The real conversation needs to be about who some portion of the conservative voters would vote for. Because they're the ones who need to get on board. Give them a distasteful option, and they'll keep voting for their own - no matter how bad that person happens to be. (To wit: GWB.)

"You don't need to make peace with your friends. It's the other people who are the challenge."

What? What?! No, I haven't been doing anything. At all. Why do you always blame me?

Goat, passive. Pit bull... you must have a fetish.

Man accused of goat sex charged with cruelty

Associated Press story

TACOMA — A man accused of having sex with a goat has been charged with animal cruelty.

Charging papers say a witness saw 63-year-old Arthur Lawton having sex with a goat May 8 in a barn at Eatonville's Pioneer Farm Museum.

He's the second person charged in the county since the Legislature made bestiality a crime in response to the fatal injury to a man having sex with a horse in Enumclaw.

A man accused of having sex with the family pit bull dog was acquitted in May.

(Acquitted, yes. He plead down to just Heavy Petting.)