My favorite nephew's lovely baby girl

Isn't she a lovely little baby?

Finley is her name. I actually like her, she's a hoot.

And with eyes that stunning, she's going to go far as an actress. I bet she gets a lot of roles in Science Fiction and space operas like the Star Wars movies or the next Star Trek Movie.

By the way, GO SEE THE NEW STAR TREK MOVIE IN THE THEATER.

That is all, now needs must I drift into the arms of Morpheous, or the sandman or whatever creepy deity/horror our brains makes up.

I want to dream about a snake wearing a vest rolling a donut around the inside of a bowling ball. It's all part of the grand trolling motor of life and the thrill of being both truculent and effusive.

My Nearly Indestructable Mother is Home

My mom's fine, and pretty amazingly tough. She called 911 on Monday morning, pretty much collapsed from passing blood due to a tiny ulcer, went into the hospital in Rhinelander and by Wednesday was home and looking pretty good.

They did an endoscopy and found the ulcer, then put her on prilosec and pumped her full of fluids with an IV for a few days.

By yesterday morning she was working with me in her yard, telling me what to do and helping me plant vegetables and flowers in her raised beds.

If the second doctor says it's OK, she's going on a trip to Ireland next week.

She's got some pretty amazing healing abilities, even more so considering she's 82. In the last ten years I've seen her bounce back from rotator cuff surgery, the first set of bleeding ulcers and a whole bunch of setbacks like my sister having a series of strokes.

She must have good genes, I hope I got some of them.

She chased me out yesterday, told me I could go home about a half dozen times, I think after three days of having an IV and blood drawn every four hours and being in a beeping, nurse filled sleep deprivation inducing hospital she wanted some alone time. I can understand that. I hate hospitals. But folks in Catholic hospitals like little old ladies better than big scary queers like me.

TED Talk: Ten things you didn't know about Orgasams

Via Boing Boing:

Mary Roach's TED Talk, "10 things you didn't know about orgasm," will have you scratching your, um, head, in amazement as you learn the particulars of pig-wanking, the delicate matter of explaining foreplay to royalty, and the business of measuring the human penis's muzzle-velocity.

My Mother's Ulcer

Has made a repeat performance, landing her in the hospital after a long spell of being not a problem. So I'm off to the Rhinelander hospital to check in on her, hopefully to take her home and take care of her for a few days.

For being 82 years old, she's in damn good shape, so I hope this one is quick and simple to fix. But she's going to be really bummed out if she doesn't get to go on her tour of Ireland next week. I think she bought trip insurance. I hope so.

Up Mt. Everest 19 Times

A Nepalese Sherpa guide has once again broken his own record, scaling Mount Everest for the 19th time, mountaineering officials said Thursday.
Apa, who like most Sherpas goes by one name, reached the 29,035-foot (8,850-meter) peak early Thursday, guiding foreign clients and accompanied by several other fellow guides, said Ang Tshering of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.
Tshering said Apa and members of the team are safe and returning to lower camps after spending a few minutes on top of the world.
Apa, 48, first climbed Everest in 1989 and has done so almost every year since. His closest rival is fellow Sherpa guide Chhewang Nima, who has made 15 trips.

Wow, 19 times. That's pretty amazing. I'd love to breathe sea level air with lungs like that. You'd feel like you could kick Superman's ass.

One thing about Mt. Everest that I find funny is that almost never do you hear about a party of white guys doing it without a Sherpa crew.

White folks climb it with a shitload of help from locals, who carry huge loads up the mountain for them. Then, after they reach the summit and get back down, they brag about it, write about it and act like they're some kind of super powered human. But this guy's been there 19 times now, and he's finally getting noticed?Of course, Sherpas more than likely don't fuck up and lose fingers or walk of cliffs or die on the mountain like the rich weirdos who hire them.

No Surprise

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/v-print/story/68456.html

Via Digby at Hullabaloo.

Speaks volumes about rich folks, doesn't it?

Money is a lubricant, a way to keep or get things moving. A paper promise that sooner or later reverts to the value of what it's printed on once enough rich people start pulling the levers of government.

Somewhere in the last thirty years the money cult become it's own mega religion, and the current banking crisis is the best example.
Trillions for bankers, but little for the folks who could use a bit of a hand climbing up and out of the bottom.

Quote of the Day:Talking Snakes, Cosmic Jewish Zombies

“(Christianity) …the belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree…”

Middle Eastern Supreme Court Judge?

Bess's Cat Does Research, Their Dog Is Nervous

The lovely and Talented Bess sent me this.

Her roommates are going to Vet school.

Her roommate's dog seems nervous these days.

Wrong Tool for the Job!

Via RiotClitShave's fine photo page. Her page is in my links. I have no idea who took the photo.

Folks, never, ever use a microwave to cook something this large.

I prefer a large grill for something this big and tender.

Slow roast it, and be sure to remove any flammable objects first, because you don't want to be eating fireproof clothing residue. That would be wrong.

Quote of the Day:
"Whole nations depends on technology. Stop the wheels for two days and you'd have riots. No place is more than two meals from a revolution. Think of Los Angeles or New York with no electricity. Or a longer view, fertilizer plants stop. Or a longer view yet, no new technology for ten years. What happens to our standard of living?... Yet the damned fools won't pay ten minutes' attention a day to science and technology. How many people know what they're doing? Where do these carpets come from? The clothes you're wearing? What do carburetors do? Where do sesame seeds come from? Do you know? Does one voter out of thirty? They won't spend ten minutes a day thinking about the technology that keeps them alive." - Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Lucifer's Hammer

The new garden space at Lisa's house

I'm gonna be busy as hell.

Lisa offered up her backyard, which was trashed by trucks this spring, so we decided to till it into a garden plot.

Then a pal of hers on a mission showed up and tilled the whole damn thing.

I'm gonna plant a ton of flowers, a ton of veggies and share the booty with Lisa.

And I'm doubling the number of tomatoes. I'm puttin' in fifty five!

Gonna make so much salsa and tomato sauce I'll be giving it away.

Oh, wait. I already do that. Never mind.

Quote of the day: Lincoln, Abraham

Photo by the amazing Dorthea Lange from the WPA projects of the great depression.

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and cause me to tremble for safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic destroyed."
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, letter to Col. William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864

Gutted and Smelly

The rebuilding effort just goes deeper and deeper into a complete gutting.

We ripped out the seats and carpet, then the cabover sleeping area, now I'm finding myself rebuilding the walls and part of the cieling.

One thing I have noticed, it doesn't smell as baaaaad as it was, all smoke and musty 1987 vintage carpet.

I'm regluing the panels, some in situ, some like this side piece out in the shop.

I think if we don't road trip in this thing when it's done I'm just going to move into it in the driveway.

I can't decide if I should paint it all stripey like Eddie Van Halen's guitar, or paint it up like a stucco looking tropical color scheme, or do it in leopard skin. Then again, I may skip the "search me at the border" paint job and just go with bland light colors.

False Advertising!

This is not made from baby humans. Imagine my disappointment.

My Band's Rock Video

So, I'm 51 years old, and finally, I get to be in a rock video.

They say the camera adds five to ten pounds, but I swear I look a lot more glam and skinny here.

Must be the lovely Mr. MikeF-7'd camera work.

He really busted buttocks to finish and film this one.

Rotten Teeth, Rotting Motorhome

One of the drawbacks of being nearsighted is that when you take your glasses off, things that are very close to your eyes become very, very sharply focused.
Like that dentist in the mask with the needle leaning over you. You know, the one who's giving you your fifth or sixth crown.
Today I realized how skinny my dentist is, and how many wrinkles are in his neck.
He's a handsome dude, though, for a sixty something guy. I just hate that feeling you get when he jabs you with a needle full of a mix of Novocaine and epinephrine.
You do know that a shot from your dentist gives you a jolt of speedy drugs, right? The epinephrine makes the area around the shot squeeze up and stop bleeding, but it's for me, it's like taking a hit off a crack pipe.
My heart races and I want go into fight or flight mode.
I'm just glad he's got nitrous oxide pumping into my nose, although he could crank that stuff up higher. The gas and the LOUD headphones (if you want them that way) it takes a lot of the fear factor out of dentistry.
Of course, it also helps to do a shot of everclear tincture of herb before you go in for pain, too.
I still got all my crappy Northern European teeth. Barely. Better than my dad's. He lost all of his before he was forty.
I been busy. My garden and my rotting motor home have absorbed my brain.
And my handsome pal Lisa just rototilled her back yard, and I have to plant the whole damn thing. That seems daunting and really fuckin' fun.
nuff' said. Garden pictures to come, and more ugly RV fun all week. One of these days I'm actually going to build a guitar again.