Answer #167 - Bleaux Me

I inexplicably came up with a snippet of a pirate song a while ago - about barrels of whiskey washing over the decking...  Baffling.

And then it all came clear, suddenly, over the weekend, and I ended up using the snippet as inspiration for a friend's birthday.

He has a boat.  The Bleaux Me.

So, since the original pirate song washed whiskey over the decking, to the sad dismay of the drunken captain, so did this one.  To the tune of an old Scottish folk song -

Captain, we should head for shore
the storm is threatening disaster!
Bleaux that! My scotch has fallen overboard
and damned if I'll be swimming after! 

It just gets worse from there.

But still, just goes to show - there's a reason for everything.

Even pirate songs.

Yo ho!

What Did the Captain say to the North Wind?

Aargh. Not enough coffee...

Answer #166 - Yes, Adventure Boy fights Hornets in a Bee Suit

White faced hornets. The kind that can single-sting knock over a horse.  They were nesting on the side of the barn, near the open window which leads directly to the Assistant Engineer's apartment, said Assistant Engineer being among the few folks who swell up and possibly die once stung by a stinging insect.

Eradication was called for.

Hence, Adventure Boy pulled out the bee suit and the duct tape and attempted said eradication.

Oh God Oh God Oh God, what are you doing?  I ask, panicked.

Don't worry! I read on-line that you might get 3-5 stings in the seams of the suit, so I've got duct tape. And then you drive up near me, in the car, and keep a can of hornet killer handy, and then if things go pear-shaped, you can roll down the window and spray me down. No need to kill the hornets if I can just walk the nest into the woods!

Oh God Oh God Oh God, I repeat, more panicked, though I love Adventure Boy's respect for life in all forms.

Um, I need to interject that if you're surrounded by 500 stinging hornets and things go badly, we'll be well past the point of hornet spray.  However, I've brought my camera, says our visiting friend - who's visiting simply because the hornet eradication is happening.

Did you bring the camera so you can put the clip on Jackass?, asks another friend.

I laugh, nervously. Or for the coroner, or the police, er...?

But we go outside, Adventure Boy in the bee suit, me, nauseous, in the car with the camera man and various onlookers.  He's tentative at first, as the hornets begin hitting him like BBs from a BB gun.  Eventually he makes his way, slices down the nest and, in a tornado of hornets, walks it to the woods.

We captured it on film.

Damned hornets are rebuilding on the barn.

Damned hornets.

Answer #165 - I angered the Dark Side by compulsory do-gooding

The waking dream.

This is a phenomenon that shakes me at its most crystalline - when the dream of being awake in the room in which you're sleeping is so real and detailed that, upon actually waking, you can't be entirely sure that, this time, it's true.

It's never inane conversation in the waking dream though, not like in real life. It's always, for me, something other-worldly or surreal - something out of context involving animated articles of clothing or cheap pottery that emits eerie sounds. Or wisdom, in the voice of James Earl Jones. whichever.

Maybe we always live at the crossroad between here and there. Some of us keep a shaky grip on one plane - while others bounce around and mutter to ourselves on southern California beaches.. or in the dark corners of pubs.

A waking dream has scared me from sleeping for 3 nights running. I don't want to go back to that plane, wherever that plane is. I know, I know. It's only a dream. But face it, you don't really know what the dream state is anymore than I or any other Mr. Science walking this big blue ball might. It's not as if I'm worried I'll get trapped in some imaginary mindscape, like Leonardo DiCaprio -
(incidentally, I saw Inception at the IMAX in NYC last week. Thoroughly enjoyed the big fun & eye candy of it) -

It's just that I don't want to live in a world where the day's discarded clothing stands up and dances, as if controlled by puppeteers...

Wait, part of me kind of does want to live in that world.

But that's not the point. The point is, the pottery was creeping me out, and Why oh Why is there always some Unseen, Unnamed Dark Dread that, for some reason, wants to drag me into the Dungeon Dimensions? I mean, seriously.

What did I ever do to the Dark Side?  Except thwart it on occasion by some act of do-gooding, which is less intentional than compulsory if you happen to prefer the Side that isn't in support of the whole world being ruled by a gigantic flaming eyeball.

Wait.

Maybe too much information. And besides, I just answered my own question.

Still.. 3 nights of no sleep later.. I can't entirely be sure that James Earl Jones isn't living in my Dollar Store vase.

Answer #164 - Yes, you are utterly alone

It's like being a trucker.


You stop thinking about the distance driving in the way that other people think of it. Which leads me to the the rhetorical question:

Is every single human experience utterly unique and existing only in the realm of individual perspective?

Which is rhetorical and even silly to commit to the written word - but think about it.  You get 'used' to driving vast distances.. it stops being the exhausting, grueling, minute-by-dragging-oh-for-the-love-of...let-me-get-there-already experience.  It starts being just another day.

Of course, the implications are that there are never any true shared experiences, shared emotions, shared.. anything.. maybe an occasional ice cream cone, but even that experience is unique to the individuals involved.  Kind of sad, really.  Unless you get more licks.

But for me, seriously, being in the car 10 hours or out of the car 10 hours - no real difference anymore.

Perspective shifts. The paradigm is that I drive alot.  It's no more tiring than any other thing I've ever done.  Which means it never actually was gruelingly exhausting. I only perceived it that way.

And that's the truth, except that I'm less stressed on the way to shows, as there's only so much you can do in a car.  At home, in the office, in front of the computer..  the work is incessant and endless.  In the car.. it's just me and the ipod that now contains many audiobooks.  I affix it to the steering wheel and between that, the control panel in the Prius, my cell phone in the cup holder, the GPS on the dashboard - it's like being on the Bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Depending on what I'm hooked into on audiobook, I can actually BE on the Bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise.  Although that would require me listening to the Star Trek series on audiobook, and though I have more experience with Star Trek (series, spin-offs and movies) than I'd like to admit, there's not a day dry enough for me to launch onto that voyage.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so, says Shakespeare (and then, much later, Lincoln).

10 Hours to D.C.  No big deal, I say to my passengers.

They didn't buy it then, and having arrived, are not buying it now.

I know someone who recently returned from a 2-week trip to Europe and needed nearly a month to recover.


It's all in perspective, because that's the lamest thing I ever heard.