Manly Toys

Ben's great Aunt Debbie gave Ben a sword today. It is made in China from a company called Manley Toys. Kind of ironic isn't it? I wonder what other things Manley toys makes for little children. Guns? Trucks? Kinky sex toys? I think that the sword will likely disapear mysteriously. They usually do. Swords tend to get him excited.

Ben also informed me that the blunt plastic swords come from the kid toy factory but the metal sharp swords come from the grown up toy factory. I explained that his sword came from China which he thought was neat. He was curious about toys from Egypt. I told him that I'm sure there are toys in Egypt but I have never seen any. I told him most toys come from China. I think I lost him at the part about trade deficites.

Duct Tape

A poem by me:

They say duct tape can fix anything,
If that is true, then how does it fix my heart?
If duct tape really fixes everything,
I've got a roll, where do I start?

They say duct tape can fix anything,
If that is true, then it must not be just a token,
If duct tape really fixes everything,
I've used up a roll, so why is my heart still broken?

They say duct tape can fix anything,
If that is true, then what should I do?
If duct tape really fixes everything,
I've got another roll, do I just tape myself to you?

Happy Thanksgiving

I'm thankful for several things this year. I figure I ought to mention a few in no particular order.

My family, especially Ben. He's so cute and smart.

My Mom, who makes it possible for me to survive as a single parent.

A girl who will stay up way past her bedtime to talk to me on the phone. Thanks Sarah.

School. The ability to get educated.

Finally being off graveyard shift. I'll actually have contact with the real world again. Yippy!

President Hinckley's Book of Mormon challenge. I've never read so much. I better keep it up even after the New Year.

My friends, even though I'm usually too busy (or awake at the wrong times) to see them. Sarah fits in here too.

A free country where I can exersize my rights, participate in government, and not worry about car bombs.

I really do have a lot to be thankful for. Thanks!

Salt Lake Library

I meant to blog about this earlier but I forgot until today as I was passing the library on my way to school. The Salt Lake City Public Library has a large collection of zines. In fact it was the first public library to have such a collection of amature produced zines in the world. Unfortunately it is poorly indexed right now but it is cool. Some of the zines are works of art.

Also for those interested, the second Monday of each month is WWII night at the library. WWII vets bring their gear and stories between 6 and 8 pm to anyone in the community with an interest. They have machine guns, M1 Garands, and cool stuff like that. I would have stayed for it when I was at the library for school but I couldn't. My time on the parking meter was running out and I didn't have any loose change to give me more time.

Cool stuff at the library! Check it out.

Muses

I stumbled upon an interesting web comic about a troubled girl's journey through her own subconscious. I wouldn't call it entertaining (although it is) but though provoking. It made me think of who I am and how well I treat my muses.

Creativity is quite active these days. She is the impish little elf girl in my head. Always thinking up new stuff. She has helped me write a few short stories recently (which I should publish or something).

Romance has been inprisoned by work and school. He is the dashing musketeer who helps me woo the ladies. I think Creativity has a school-girl crush on him. It's poor Sarah who has probably suffered the most from Romance's incarceration. Not that she needs me or my romance. She is quite independant and capable on her own (one reason I like her).

Adversity(she also goes by Suffering) still inspires Creativity quite a bit. It must be strange that a chained and beaten woman on the verge of death would be a source of that impish elf's inspiration. Adversity was a constant companion of mine during my troubled marriage. She tells Creativity to create dark tales of suffering and misery. Somewhere in the eternal darkness is the hope for a better tomorrow. Every drop of blood she sheds, leads to my growth.

Cunning has been getting a little out of shape. Normally she is a fit and dangerous huntress. She likes to go paintballing or play wargames with me but once again, I have been too busy to let her exersize. The poor girl.

Her fraternal twin sister, Inteligence, is doing well though. She is the woman with the glasses and lab coat, always with her nose in a book. She is having a delightful time going to my classes with me at the UofU.

So I have a bunch of girls (and a boy) running around in my head. I guess that is a sign that I'm a healthy straight guy (not that I doubted that). A trip through my twisted mind would be a strange journey indeed. My muses haven't complained about the accomodations though. But then again, sometimes I think they're nuts. Oh, they just informed me that I'm crazy ...something about any lunacy on their part is merely a reflection of my own insanity, as they are merely figments of my imagination. Go figure.

Paintballing

I went paintballing yesterday. I had a good time. I met a first timer and let him use my A5 for a game. He liked it. I hope he got hooked enough in the sport to keep coming back. I tried to get Paul Robinson to come but I couldn't track him down. So I went by myself as usual.

I did see a minor equipment change I may want to do as I go into the winter/indoor season. My current red dot sight requires both eyes open, one sees the dot and the other sees the target and the two images get joined by the brain. That is good except for when one of your eyes is blocked by the bunker you are hiding behind to limit exposure. Then you only see the dot.

The sight was fine during the summer when most of my games were in woods where both eyes could be used. In speedball/indoor, I have to tuck in extra tight to avoid getting hit. I only want to expose one eye. There are red dot sights that can work with one OR both eyes. Maybe I should spend the $$ to get one of those for speedball.

What's nice about my current one is that it uses one of those fiber optic rods that gather ambient light to make the dot so it doesn't have any batteries. The see through one or two eye dot sights require batteries so that's one more thing I have to monitor and replace periodically.

Then there other players who think sights are pointless on paintball markers altogether. They just walk the shots in and tend to use accuracy by volume. That's not my style. One game I played was a one on one with a kid. He fired off about 40 or 50 balls at me. I took him down within 10 balls. I was firing my standard 2-3 shot bursts which equated to about 3-5 bursts all together to take him.

Maybe that's enough rambling about paintball for now. Most of my readers (hi family) don't even play the game.

To think that I saw it on Mulberry Street

Dr Seuss wrote a story about a boy coming home from school. His father asked him what he saw. The boy saw a cart and a horse. I'm always seeing the stranger things than that on the road, and I don't mean the furry roadkill you can't tell what it is any more.

For over a year there was this gallon milk-jug of some brown liquid on the winding ramp from I-80 to Bangeter Highway. Every day I passed it on the way to work, always wondering what was in it. Was it apple juice? Automobile oil? Beer? Who put it there? Why? It sat there on the side of the road for a year before it finally disapeared. Now I'll never know.

On the way home from work, there is this fence line that looks like the mountains as you go by. The top of the fence is all crooked and cragly. It took me several minutes of driving by it to realize that it wasn't the mountains at all but a fence.

One time I saw a fender on the side of the road. I wonder what happened for some car to lose its entire fender and only the fender.

Last week I was driving home in the rain and saw a car on the shoulder facing the wrong way. It must of have slid out of control and spun into the shoulder. The car looked undamaged. Ben and I had a simillar experience back in the early spring except our car faced forward and stopped perfectly between two other cars that had also slid off the road. I know how lucky the driver must have felt.

Each object along the side of the road has a story. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks of it but I wonder what that story is. There are a lot of objects in the road. That means there are a lot of stories.

Holiday Musings

Halloween has come and gone. Ben had a good time and was nice enough to share his candy. That means he will eat less of it and maybe have more healthy stuff. He had a good time being batman. The weather was actually nice this year.

Now we're already racing off to Thanksgiving and Christmas. I'm still largely clueless as to what to get everybody for Christmas this year. I imagine Ben is still young enough to be happy with whatever. But he's already started pointing to things in catalogs and saying he wants it, not insistantly but still... Its all down hill from here. The sad thing is I probably deserve it because I was just as commercial and gimee-gimee at his age. Maybe I was worse.

Anyway Happy Thanksgiving everbody! It'll be here and gone before you know it!