iPhucked

I'm back from three weeks in New York city. Manhattan. 42nd St. It was nice. I enjoyed myself quite immensely. Lots to write about, starting tomorrow.

Right now, I'm still pissed.

The night before I leave, my iPhone won't charge. The morning before I go, I head off to the apple store with my now dead phone.

More dead than I imagined. Can't charge it. Also can't retrieve data from it.

data such as: PICTURES!

Gone... all gone.

Statue of Liberty - gone

From the top of the Empire State Building at 1am - gone

The Cloister - gone

The Museum of Natural History, The Museum of Modern Art, Madam Tussuad's, Snow in Central Park at midnight - all gone.

Bright side: I got a new phone at no charge.

If you have an iPhone and you take pictures, back that bad boy up every night on your computer, otherwise...

Gone.

Empty House

This blog is my homepage. That means every time I log onto the internet, this is what I see first. Usually I click through as fast as I can, off to one of my links... Drudge Report, The Cheese Aisle or Boudicca's Voice. It makes me sad to see it sit, but it's been hard to restart and reset. The political climate in this country has me stressed to the point that my last post was a rant of such violent vitriol that someone who cares about me asked me to take it down. Sad part is, after I did, I realized she was right.

My 100 word muse seems to have stayed in Texas without me. My day to days seem to be unremarkable, even to me, I've been to four of five Pirate games, but can't even seem to bring myself to do game day reports... So, here it sits.

I think about some of the blogs that I loved so well that now sit idle.

For example: Bellerophon Chimera, who took a break and never returned, nothing to be done about it and Gut Rumbles, that went dark when Acidman was taken from us long before we were ready.

At least someone tried to keep Gut rumbles alive after Rob died, but it was an exercise in futility.

They sit like empty houses... structurally intact, but lifeless. I can go by, and look in the windows, but the words and thoughts are the same as the last time I looked, gathering dust and cobwebs in the form of spam in the comments... Even were I to open the door and walk through, the absence of the owners is palatable. My footsteps echoing through the old posts and any comments left are as useless as whispering to myself.

I don't want that to happen here, but I seem powerless to prevent it.

Several people have told me that when they see a girl with a tattoo they think of me. Some miss my stories. Some just wonder what happened to me.

When I click through, I hear this Tom Waits song in my head and it makes me sad.

There's a house on my block
That's abandoned and cold
Folks moved out of it a
Long time ago
And they took all their things
And they never came back
Looks like it's haunted
With the windows all cracked
And everyone call it
The house, the house where
Nobody lives

Once it held laughter
Once it held dreams
Did they throw it away
Did they know what it means
Did someone's heart break
Or did someone do somebody wrong?

Well the paint was all cracked
It was peeled off of the wood
Papers were stacked on the porch
Where I stood
And the weeds had grown up
Just as high as the door
There were birds in the chimney
And an old chest of drawers
Looks like no one will ever
Come back to the
House were nobody lives

Once it held laughter
Once it held dreams
Did they throw it away
Did they know what it means
Did someone's heart break
Or did someone do someone wrong?
So if you find someone
Someone to have, someone to hold
Don't trade it for silver
Don't trade it for gold
I have all of life's treasures
And they are fine and they are good
They remind me that houses
Are just made of wood
What makes a house grand
Ain't the roof or the doors
If there's love in a house
It's a palace for sure
Without love...
It ain't nothin but a house
A house where nobody lives
Without love it ain't nothin
But a house, a house where
Nobody lives.

Tied To The (Whipping) Post

As I am out and about doing things (drinking, dog park), I keep my eye out for pretty girls with body art. Sometimes I use that approach just to meet pretty girls... Sometimes it's actually all about the ink. My Introduction usually starts the same way... "What's your ink?"

It's an innocent enough inquiry to put them off guard, and we can talk for a while before I try to get them to let me take a picture or two... Especially if said picture involves adjusting or removing clothing.

I've taken over 40 pictures so far, and only been turned down 2 maybe 3 times, so I feel like my approach is a good one.

I explain that I don't show faces. I don't use real names (Hell, I don't even use my real name, much less the name of an innocent). I'm pretty much ungooglable. Even if you happen to know my real full name, it's like I don't exist, so I try to keep my Sunday Ink Girls ungooglable as well.

Then I tell them "I have a web page, or a blog. I don't write on Sundays, so I use Tattoo pictures as filler."

It seems I don't write through the week anymore either. It's been a month and a half since I posted anything but pictures... and a short piece about the statistics of the pictures.

Some of you out there think the Ink pictures are creepy... Or that I'm creepy for approaching women that way.

Fine. I'm sorry you feel thus. I enjoy it, and I get to talk to a lot of pretty girls. I'm still gonna continue with it.

Some of you like them, even if it's a morbid type of curiosity (Bou) or a lusty man thing (walrilla).

A lot of the bloggers I know and read have taken a hiatus or sabbatical in the last year or two. Some never came back. Some actually announced their retirement.

I've been here for four years come July. Four long years. I may be just phoning it in right now, but damn it, I'm still here.

Lot of changes to my life in that time. I'm hardly the same human being anymore. I gained a lot of wonderful things... I had some of those things ripped away from me.

Just in the last year I lost 50lbs. That's half a human being. In that same year I very nearly lost my job. Not to mention bringing Jack (crazy blue dingo) into my home as a member of my family.

In the four years of writing I have been abandoned by my political party, and watched the country that I love dearly take the tenants that made it strong for 200 years and abandon them in less than 200 days.

You would think that all would be blog fodder, but I just feel overwhelmed and tired.

I have started a lot of posts only to delete them as inferior or rambling (like this one is).

My 100 word muse seems to be on vacation at the moment.

I set up the Sunday Ink pieces to autopost every Sunday, sometimes up to a month in advance. I told a few of my friends that if I die, most people won't realize for several weeks until the pictures stop coming.

So, to those people I say, "As of 12:30 June 13th, 2009... I'm not dead yet."

When the words come back to me, I'll forward them to you. Maybe this is the start of that.

If not, try to enjoy the pictures.

Death Throes Of The Real Man

This isn't a new subject. I've mentioned it before. A few years ago I mentioned the resurgence of what the girls at the pub called the retrosexual, the comeback of the real man. Well, I misjudged. It's not going to happen. I don't think it can happen.

There are a few of us left. Real men. There aren't very many, and our numbers will shrink until the last real man will be on display in the Smithsonian... A stark reminder of when we thought for ourselves, and did what was right, not because it was expected, but because it was right.

The resurgence I mentioned failed. Why? It failed for lack of role models. It failed because women these days don't understand us enough to appreciate us and boys don't know how to become us.

Real men have been replaced by the male sheeple... It's all postureing and posing, or they have been replaced by the thug... Trying too hard to be tough to think about anyone but themselves.
Who am I to judge, you may well ask. Well I'll tell you.

Am I a real man because I have steel toed boots and a leather Jacket? Because I ride around in a Jeep with the top off and rode motorcycles for years? Because I can handle myself in any fight? Because I know guns and can shoot? Because I think a glass of good bourbon and a great cigar are proof that there's a God?

No.

Nor do I believe I am a real man because I like good wine, own a tuxedo, like theater and the ballet, can cook and sew, shine my shoes and like fine art.

I am a real man because of how I think, and how it translates into how I act.

Am I a caveman on occasion? Yes. Brutally honest and loud about it.

Am I too shy sometimes? Sure. I've missed more than a few opportunities because I didn't speak up in time.

I am a real man because of the middle ground. I am a real man because I will fight when I have to... and walk away when I need to. Because when I do something right I expect no praise, and when I do something wrong I accept the consequences.

Men today have been treated to do-overs and taught the blame game so much they don't understand personal responsibility anymore, and women are drawn either to these shiny, shallow empty husks with egos, or to the brutal neanderthal with no thought but sex and food.

The real man has no place in the modern world anymore. We are a dying breed, and we will be reformed and reeducated and replaced.

We already have been.

Go Phish

Does anybody fall for these phishing scams anymore? Really? Even my 80+ year old mother who isn't all that computer savy isn't going to give anybody her bank account number in an e-mail nor on the phone.

How can it be profitable enough to even bother anymore?

I even had someone phish me on my cellphone today. I got a text from "unknown" which read:

Eppicard##AUTOMATIC NOTIFICATION#Your EPPICard account is closed due to unusual activity,please call 1.7869752381 to restore your access.

Exactly like that with the odd caps, punctuation and bad spacing. I have no eppicard, but I was curious as to what I would find, so I called from my work phone. The automated system instantly asked for my 16 digit debitcard number. Now I may have been born at night, but it wasn't last night. So I punched in 16 random digits. Invalid. I punched in 16 more. Invalid. I did that a few more times until it kicked me out of the system. The original message was an American accent, the voice that read back the digits sounded south african or some british variant. I did a reverse directory search and it's a land line in Miami, but that's all I could find out.

I wanted more so I could screw with them for a little while, but no such luck. I wish I had an old closed bank account number or canceled credit card number to give them so they could waste some more time and get nothing for it. Bastards.

Hot Stuff

I got home yesterday and my AC is out. Texas is having one of the hottest springs in a long time. (Damn global warming) I walked into a house that was 92 degrees. I went for my walk, opened up all the windows, took a shower and lay down with a big ass fan blowing directly on me. It wasn't too bad to sleep, but this sucks.

Isn't this what happened to Charles Whitman? Oh, wait, that was in August... Nevermind.

Don't You Own A Mirror

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. -Oscar Wilde

I was at The Belmont on 6th last night and I noticed that the most beautiful women were wearing the most hideous clothes. (I had noticed it before, but it seems to have become the vogue)
All these 20-40 year old women were wearing these tops and dresses that gather right below their breasts and then drop down like a circus tent.
OK, so it shows off your shoulders and accentuates your breasts. It also makes you look like you are entering your third trimester.
Why? Why would you do that?
There was one woman there who was extremely stunning. Tall and lithe, dark hair and hazel eyes, long shapely legs extending from her white dress, the dress that was gathered around her waist and made all the girls wearing the other type of dress look like short fat trolls.
Not that I am the paradigm of high fashion in my black t-shirt and jeans, but gals... I mean, really?

Hold Your Water

I rent a dog from time to time. Not really, but I have a friend who is a student and a bartender, and rather than have the poor mutt locked in an apartment all the time, he stays with me a few days a week.
Why not? I don't have time for a dog of my own, I have a decent sized yard and he's pretty good for a Heeler mix puppy.

Sometimes he plays over at my neighbor's house with a Pitt Bull mix the same age as him. Sometimes I take him to the park at Auditorium Shores and let him run with the dogs there. He always barks at the Stevie Ray Vaughn statue.
Sometimes we just hit the east end of Town Lake at the Colarado River Park near my house and hang out there. It's mostly hispanic families and not many dogs, but if I'm in one of my moods, no one tries to talk to me... Not in english anyway.
The east end of the lake (The lakes are not lakes, they are just dammed up portions of the Colorado River... Not THE Colorado River just the Colorado River...) is the ass end of the park. Past the dam there the river bed is almost devoid of water.

Water.

Oh, Yeah! Water... This post is about water. Not river water... Drinking water. When taking the dog down to the park at the east end of the lake I started to notice the trash.
Austin is a very liberal city. Lots of hippies, vegetarians and vegans, greenpeacers, save the planeteers and global warming nutjobs.

Because this park is the end of the line, so to speak, this is where the trash ends up. Now, I'm used to seeing beer and soda bottles and cans carelessly disposed of... Smashed up coolers, candy wrappers and the occasional shoe.
What shocked me was the plastic bottles. In particular plastic water bottles. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.
Evian. Deer Spring Park. Aquafina. Desani. Ozarka. HEB brand. Fiji.
Liter bottles. 20 oz bottles. 16 oz bottles.
It's disgusting. Small coves entirely harbored by little plastic water bottle ships. Oh, the irony of polluting the water because you want to carry a bottle of unpolluted water around in your fist.

It's not like I live out in the middle of the west Texas desert. Austin is a city with over half a million people in it. In most of the park you're rarely more than a short walk from a food retailer. In some places there are even water fountains... Even dog water fountains if yours is too prissy to drink directly from the lake. Nobody is going to dehydrate and die in the middle of the park in the middle of Austin in the middle of the hill country in the middle of Texas. The idea that someone needs to haul around a bottle of water is ludicrous.
These are the people who have a "fun run" or bicycle race or charity event for every little minor ill the world encounters. Save the Barton Spings Salamander!
All that is aside from the fact that every third Prius here in Austin has a "No Blood For Oil" bumper sticker on it. How about a "No Blood For Water Bottles" sticker. Plastic is a petroleum based product.