Monks Monk the Monkless (with Jesus)

A Little Bit of Sweetness Goes Straight To the Oven

Looking for a Holiday Gift Idea -- Try Kiva

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As all our belts grow tighter and we all get caught up in our own personal misery, sometimes it is good to think of others. For $25, you can change someone's life. Now that should be what the holidays are all about.

Go to!

That's the World of Warcraft That You Play!

A quick note about World of Warcraft:

Our whole family (myself, my wife, and my 11 year old son) have all gotten on the WOW kick now. Many evenings are spent pw3ning noobs, farming for epics, camping Horde, and wasting our lives. The game is highly addictive and it does, in its own special way, bring the family together. It gives us common goals, a hierarchical power structure, and a clear set of rules to follow. That, and believe it or not, it ROCKS! Remember when the family all sat around together playing Monopoly? Well, this is sort of the same bonding experience, except this time your father won't make you cry when he wipes you out -- we're killing Hoard and running through instances TOGETHER!

All that, and after awhile you can get the following song stuck in your head:



And you will ROFLMAO to this Video:




So now it is time to put some Liferoot up for auction in Stormwind. As my son says, "Quick Robin, to the Rolfomoblie!" Then again, he says a lot of things like that after we have been playing for an hour or so.

So WOW, get on the horse (once you hit level 30 that is)!

In Eight Years -- Reed for President!

The Most Disturbing Video Game Ever -- "Bioshock" -- by Jack

The basic plot of this game is your plane crashes in the middle of the Atlantic in 1960. You find a lighthouse, swim to it, 17 fathoms later you find yourself at Atlantis on crack (also known as "Rapture") and you go around either saving or harvesting "Little Sisters" or young girls.



This game is not for the faint of heart -- like my dad. Seriously, this game freaks me out.

Yes, yes, yes!

It's official: Sex is good for you. Britain's National Health Service cites all sorts of health benefits.

In case you were, you know, looking for reasons...

Where was I? Let me continue....

I am a thick azure
And I breathe in time
With my wife’s gentle snore.

I descend into the shape
Of Mickey Mouse’s Ears.
A Dead Rat stuck rigormortis half out of his hole.

40.

The soft downy fur of the Firefly.
The snap pea apple tang of Eric Dolphy’s saxophone
Calling, a siren
And me, sitting on my son’s bed reading superhero comic books together
Milk to the left of me
Garlic Powder to my right
A Claw Hammer under his pillow.

I believe the dew on my wife’s upper lip is a reflection of her love for me
An indication of her embrace.

40.

I am the Ruby Cyclops
Lumbering through the ages
Pawing Potassium Pills
And Rocky Road ice cream
Into the Black Hole of my face

Turning my one bloodshot eye
Away
From the road.

Reflecting about the future

I come from a huge stack of old comics piled high in the corner filling the room with a musty smell that lingers long into adulthood.
I come from a pillow fort I built in the hour before my dad came home again and my mother braced to greet him.
I come from skinned knees, swollen lips.
I come from sneaking cigarettes in the backyard, getting dizzy, hoping not to puke.
I come from the Sex Pistols and the Ramones.
I come from a brother far bigger than I and angry twice as strong.

I come from the hope of escape.

I believe that in the mind anywhere is possible and that if you can muster the focus and lose the fear your feet can begin to move.
I believe a strong left cross trumps a solid right jab.
I believe we are all capable of the most enormous cruelty and it is only fear that keeps us from eating our own.
I believe that women understand the world better than men because they caress with their fingers while men poke with their thumbs.
I believe that while ignorance is bliss a true happiness is best found in a quiet conversation about ideas.
I believe photography is more true than real life because of its pace.
I believe in my wife.
I believe in my son.

I believe we are all in trouble.

I value quietness.
I value moving slowly.
I value thinking it through.
I value pillow forts and comic books.
I value my wife and I value my son.
I value their happiness as much as I value my peace.

And the future is like a glass drained recently of milk, clear insofar as you can make it through the film.

The future is truly thin, yet runny and it has been in my back pocket and I have been sitting for weeks.

The future is in the hand of my son and I worry because his room is such a mess.

Am I too old for Facebook?

Probably, but why should that stop me?

I've created a profile on Facebook. It's kind of fun. I'm probably outside the target demo by 25 years, but what the heck, right?

Come, check it out. Become my friend, because that's what we're all after, isn't it?

Praise (of course) Bob???

I don't know why I had pushed The Church of the SubGenius out of my mind for the past few years. I blame my rapid decline into normalization and genital failure. But lately I've been scratching the inside of my skull with a giant sequoia that I had wittled into a toothpick. Then I had a vision. A vision of something like the apocolypse, yet tart like a Granny Smith Apple. I didn't know what to do with myself. So I stuck what was left of the stump that was the stump of my own left index finger straight down my gullet with a guggle-guggle-guggle -- and I then cried out, "I knew that when you left me, I would be riddled with sores! I knew that without you life would turn savage and hard to envision! I knew that bereft of your kind gleaming cheeks I would remain walletless and unwarented." And then came the pipe. Then came the Bob. Then came the Subgenius.



But, of course, there is always the chance that the deviant and odd are shunned by society because they are deviant and odd, and not because the deviant and odd are actually better than everyone else which leads everyone else to shun them.

Nobody understands me, therefore I am better than everyone. Except you of course. I'll let you be better than me if you'll give me a job.

I'm hungry.

The balloon tank

Hans Hemmart's quite amazing balloon sculpture.

What about Russell Edson?

Russell Edson is a poet who speaks to you through your dreams. My friend, Dr. Fishbag, handed me a copy of The Reason Why The Closet Man is Never Sad and told me that this poet was actually me, but with better hand writing. Taken aback, I asked Fishbag "If this poet has better hand writing, will he be more profound?" Fishbag looked me dead in the eye and said, "Of course." And that made all the difference.


The Wounded Breakfast

A huge shoe mounts up from the horizon, squealing and grinding forward on small wheels, even as a man sitting to breakfast on his veranda is suddenly engulfed in a great shadow, almost the size of the night . . . He looks up and sees a huge shoe ponderously mounting out of the earth. Up in the unlaced ankle-part an old woman stands at a helm behind the great tongue curled forward; the thick laces dragging like ships' rope on the ground as the huge thing squeals and grinds forward; children everywhere, they look from the shoelace holes, they crowd about the old woman, even as she pilots this huge shoe over the earth . . . Soon the huge shoe is descending the opposite horizon, a monstrous snail squealing and grinding into the earth . . . The man turns to his breakfast again, but sees it's been wounded, the yolk of one of his eggs is bleeding . . .

And it only gets better the longer it sits in your lap. Edson turns our nightmares into beautiful pieces of succulent melon. He understands that everything in our lives, from the trip to the mall to a bowl of cereal, is fraught with the absurd. As we desperately try to make meaning of our lives, Edson points out clearly that it is a fool's game and ultimately we will be swolled by randomness.

The Family Monkey

We bought an electric monkey, experimenting rather recklessly with funds carefully gathered since grandfather's time for the purchase of a steam monkey. We had either, by this time, the choice of an electric or gas monkey. The steam monkey is no longer being made, said the monkey merchant. But the family always planned on a steam monkey. Well, said the monkey merchant, just as the wind-up monkey gave way to the steam monkey, the steam monkey has given way to the gas and electric monkeys. Is that like the grandfather clock being replaced by the grandchild clock? Sort of, said the monkey merchant. So we bought the electric monkey, and plugged its umbilical cord into the wall. The smoke coming out of its fur told us something was wrong. We had electrocuted the family monkey.

This sort of stuff doesn't just come from nowhere. This is a complex realization of how we interact with each other, but more importantly, how we interact with ourselves. Nothing points a finger in your own face more than an electric monkey, after all.

Do yourself a favor and go out and by The Tunnel, which is a collection of Edson's poetry.




Now kiss me on the head and tell me good-night.

A Taste of Walt

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."

You know, in High School, when I first was assigned to read selections from Walt's poetic opus, Leaves of Grass, I found myself confused and slightly turned off. Who was this Old Man from an Old Time using Old Words and what could it possibly have to do with my life as an awkward teen in Dallas, Texas full of romantic notions of Bukowski and Brautigan, Kerouac and Ginsberg? My ear attunded to the sound of fear, the sound of desperation -- beat, punk, down.

"Mr. Williams, sir, what do you hope will happen when I read this man's words," I asked.

"Something profound...."

It still resonates in my ear. Mr. Williams, my sophomore English Teacher, was like a god to me. This man took me and turned me inside out, causing my eyes to be filled with worlds I had never dreamed of in my quest for depravity. If Mr. Williams told me it was going to be profound, then I had to believe him.

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

What is it about Walt that makes me float above all my self-doubt, all my self-destruction, all my self-loathing? Walt uses the large words, the transcendent words. He makes you understand that the insignificant, the maimed, the downtrodden, the eagles, the ants, the leaves of grass are all part of the greatness that is creation. As we connect, we expand and fill the void. You can hear it in every word he drops on to the page.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

When I turned 40 I had every intention of tattooing Walt's words on my body. Money kept me from making it permanent, so I drew the following on my forearm with a black Bic pen (it is #52):

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,

It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,

It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,

I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

if you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,

And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you.

See what I mean... Everytime I speak it or read it or type as just now, I fall. And as I fall I am caught on waves of wind lifting me as I collapse upon my self.

I have a picture of Walt in my office. When the kids come in to talk to me, or they have been sent to talk to me, Walt looks them all in the eye before they begin. I wonder if they connect with him as I do?

I try to talk softly when I talk to myself outloud. It puts everyone else in a more comfortable position.

Daily YouTube: A bad day out for the lions

In this YouTube clip, a bunch of hunting lionesses display great teamwork in dragging down a baby Cape buffalo. However, things take a couple of turns for the surreal after that. You haven't seen this on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom!

Daily YouTube: Everest

Two videos from the same expedition: Summit Day! What a feeling it must be to be at the top, where there's no more "up" to be had.

An interesting way to look at it

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.
- George F. Will

Mark Cuban gets a colonoscopy

Mavs owner and chief whiner (but he's OUR whiner, dang it) Mark Cuban had his first colonoscopy this morning, and thought it worthy of a blog post.

While I doubt I'm ever going to write a post like this, I have had the procedure and have to agree it there's nothing to it. The "clean out" (yuck) is FAR worse than the event itself.

If you're that age, and you haven't had one of these, it really is no biggie. An it can easily save your life.

Daily YouTube: Race a train, will you?

BAD idea:

Top 5 70s kid activities

If you do the math, you quickly realize that I am a child of the 70s. That is, of course, if you’re interested in my childhood, math, or both. Which you are not. Well, maybe the math.

Whatever.

Since this blog is the Petey Show, it doesn’t really matter if you’re interested. As long as I am.

I digress.

So, child of the 70s. We got that far. I was reminiscing not so long ago (in fact, I believe it was in the “Deploying Windows Vista to the Desktop” session at Microsoft’s big Vista/Office 2007 Launch event at the Dallas Convention Center this past Wed) on the things I did as a little kid, and how different they are from my own kids’ activities. So, perhaps for my kids’ benefit, maybe for my own, here are the Top 5 (or so – I had to cheat again) Little Kid Activities from the 1970s:

5. Playing “Emergency” on our bicycles

The two cool kids would get to be the paramedics from Squad 51 (a little help on the names of the characters - I got nothing) the spares would be the guys from Engine 51. We’d just hang out on the front steps of someone’s house, trying to reproduce fireman-talk, until someone would honk out that annoying EEEEE-OOOOP-GAAAAAAA signal and off we’d go, pedaling our three-speed and five-speed Schwinns like lunatics, towards the scene of some made up disaster or colossal car wreck or somesuch

4. Baseball in the park

There was a drained wading pool in the park across the street, which, come to think of it, I never remember having water in it, even in the middle of the summer. That pool was a perfect infield, and, since ground-level was maybe two feet above the bottom of the pool, it was an easy jump up to the outfield. A wood bat, a baseball that had been white in the waning years of the Eisenhower Administration but was now only a slightly lighter shade of brown than the dirt, and my uncle’s glove which had been top-of-the-line when he got it in 1952 – I had all the gear. Amazingly, we needed only about three kids per team.

3. (tie) Doing anything in the basement

Our tiny little house had one huge redeeming feature – a basement. One half was unfinished and held the washer and dryer, the furnace, and dad’s tool bench. The other side was finished and was kid-land. We had a 19-inch (or so) Zenith black and white TV which got about two channels, an enormous German (WEST German, if you can remember back that far – very confusing for a kid) console hi-fi that dad had brought back from the Army days, a couple of chairs, and a table or two down there. I vaguely remember Lincoln Logs, Hot Wheels track, and a wooden train set, but it was imagination that made the place run.

3. (tie) Buying ice cream from the Good Humor man

Back in the day, the ice cream man drove a clean, white truck and was generally a clean, white guy. I’m sure half of them were child predators, but remember, this was in the days when a kid’s place was outside, away from the house, as much as possible, because there was NOTHING to be afraid of, except maybe the psycho Irish kids on the next block. Whatever. The nice, clean, white Good Humor truck (or one of the competitors, I can’t remember any of their names) would come up the street by the park, with that annoying little jingle-bell music going – it sure wasn’t annoying to a six-year-old, it was the World’s Greatest Sound – and would pull up right there by where we were doing our kid bit. As soon as you heard the music, you dropped whatever you were doing and ran your ass off to the spot where he always stopped. He’d come back to the big window on the side of the truck, wearing his nice white Good Humor uni, the white hat with the shiny black brim, the silver change dispenser clipped to his black belt, and one at a time, we’d ask (hell, scream) for our favorites. I remember Fudgsicles, Dreamsicles (orange ice with some sort of cream inside), and multi-colored rocket-pops. I’m sure there was much more to choose from, but that’s all that pops into my tired old brain now. Great stuff. No ice cream on Earth tastes like that now.

3. (tie) Listening to my AM radio late at night

I got a little, white AM clock radio when I was a little kid, and the world completely changed for me. I stopped sleeping and turned into a radio junkie. I’d lie awake, turning the tuning dial and pulling in clear-channel stations from all over, catching ABA games from exotic places like Dallas and Richmond, hockey games from Madison Square Garden and the Nassau Coliseum. I discovered country music (really strange for a first grader in New Jersey), sports broadcasting, news (clearest memories: Vietnam and Northern Ireland), the wacky radio contest (I was sure I was going to win a Thanksgiving turkey on year), and all sorts of other stuff. A formative experience.


2. Playing “French Resistance” around the neighborhood

The boundaries were basically the four or five contiguous houses on our side of the street, and the rule was if you got “shot”, you had to count to 30 before you could rejoin the game. This was good for HOURS of entertainment. We’d play from morning til late late in the day, when the light got long, the green of the trees and grass got deeper, the ground got cool. By the time we quit, it would be so dark you couldn’t tell if the kid who just came around the corner of the house was on your team or not until you got 5 feet from him. The funny thing was how we’d all drop the toy guns the instant an older kid stopped by. I didn’t understand why we did that (I still don’t), but we all did without anyone having to say anything.

1. Swimming ANYWHERE

We had a pool in the yard when we moved to Texas. Before that, it could be a pool, a lake, the ocean, a deep puddle, it didn’t matter – going swimming anywhere was the coolest thing you could possibly do. It didn’t matter if you could swim or not, just being in the water was awesome (an aside: I can’t remember what adjectives we used them; “cool” was still a hippie word and we’d have needed a dictionary to tell you what “awesome” meant – I totally cannot remember what we’d call something really good). Even the backyard kiddie pool was a treat, as long as there were lots of plastic boats handy. And it was always a fight when it was time to get out.

Some other activities that pour out in a stream of consciousness:

- Flipping baseball cards
- Throwing the football with dad in the park
- Saturday morning cartoons, of course
- Trying spinach because Popeye ate it, then wondering what the hell was wrong with that insane sailor
- Bug hunts, especially for fireflies (remember those, from the days before Dursban?)
- Board games – Monopoly, Clue, and The Game of Life were biggies
- Riding my bicycle up and down the street for hours
- Bowling
- War movies
- John Wayne
- Staying up really late to watch Saturday Night Live and Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert
- Passing notes back and forth in school – IM in the pre-computer days (and the first school-related memory – what does that mean?)
- Sleeping over at friends’ houses, trying to get their family vibe down, then sneaking out at 3:00 in the morning to do some petty vandalism. The first time I stayed up all night was probably 5th grade and it almost killed me