Storm Large: 8 Miles Wide

Just go watch it. Words fail me.

More Carved Heads

Tired of working on the motorhome, I returned to carving heads and did my first head with a torso included.

Many people ask me why I like to carve cyclops and pinhead figures.

Some surmise it's a deep internal weirdness, others think because my twin sister had multiple birth defects, I am obsessed.

Others offer conjecture that that traumatic childhood event with the Jehovah's Witness Circus clown with one eye and 12 toes warped me for life.

But they're wrong. It's because I have a four inch disc grinder, and it's hard to make two eyeballs fit when you can only carve a four inch eye on a six inch wide slab of wood.

Plus, a pinhead cyclops can be dead sexy. Oooo la la!

Cabbage, Savoy, Rocks.

I picked this a week and a half ago, and it was damn tasty.

My cabbages are really, really happy this year.

My tomatoes are too, although they're coming on slow.

My potato towers look great too, I hope they work out. You're supposed to be able to grow 30 to 40 pounds in one three foot round by three foot tall wire tower, and it sure looks like it's working.

Might be a record year for hops and grapes, too. And last weekend, Kori and I picked a five gallon bucket full of cherries at our lovely pal Shannon's house, pitted them all and froze them. All but the gallon or so we gave away at EVP after picking them.

Next up, kale, garlic ramps and grapes.

Baby Photo of Gollum

A rare baby photo of the young Gollum, before he went on to infamy, shame, wretched despair and death.

A Summer with a hole in it

For the first time in a long time, this summer seems boring, hot and sort of empty.
Maybe I need a new crop of musician pals, a lot of the old ones are moving on. But it seems like a lot of work and I think it might be time to take a break from it. We ended the MF7 on a high note at least, although I suspect we'd have had a good long run if Michael wasn't being pulled west.

Fry and I might work something up, but for the first time in a long time I don't feel like there's any heartbeat left in my musical mojo. And I miss Bess's fiddle playing, a lot. She's taken up gutiar playing and pretty much stopped playing fiddle. I miss the energy she pumped out of that violin when we were on. I'm happy she's found a new interest, but wish it hadn't pushed out so much of what we were doing I grooved on.

Everything else is marching onward, my two gardens are going great, the motorhome is about half done, and even though it's been hellish hot for a while, I still have AC in the bedroom and the workshop, and Kori's still got a regular paycheck, and we might even get a month this fall to hit the road if it works out for her work schedule. We're both healthy and got no major issues.

But I sure am missing our usual crew and the music we did, and Sunday dinners and my art /music mob. They're all much busier or loaded down with kids who take an insane amount of energy and time. Or they've drifted away as friends do. One thing you learn after fifty years or so is that nobody stays where you found them or is where you left them.

Burn Notice, TV that doesn't suck

I want to be Fiona when I grow up. Really.

I tend to find most TV pretty stupefying. I never loved Raymond, no matter how much they said everybody did, and never found much to connect with with Sienfield, and missed whole decades of pop culture references after I ditched my cable and started wasting huge chunks of my time on the internet or playing sloppy music on my noisy guitar.
But I tried out an episode of Burn Notice a few months ago from Netflix, and it's a fun ride. Good writing, a lot of sexy as hell adult actors over thirty, and clever writing make it worth checking out. They're doing good things with the story arcs the actors are gliding through, and I am a sucker for anything with Bruce Campbell in it.
I just hovered down most of season two in a week, and it's worth watching. I even love the minor characters like Barry the money launderer, Seymore the arms dealer and the regulars playing the long suffering FBI agents. And I want to be Fiona, the trigger happy ex girlfriend when I grow up, even if I'm feeling like I'm old enough to be the Sharon Gless, the former Cagney and Lacey actress who plays Michael Weston's mom.
It's worth checking out if just for the McGyver style action and the whip smart voice overs.
Think Travis McGee meets James Bond meets Jason Bourne with some B movie chins and you've got the picture.
I've been sort of lost since Deadwood, Battlestar Glactica and Carnivale when off the air when it comes to having my brain riveted down and sucked out by the boob tube. This one's fun.

What to do while waiting for the collapse, Via Club Orlov

Things are getting weird. Anybody paying attention sees it. There are a lot of people out there in the media blowing smoke up our collective asses, saying the green shoots of a new growth in the old economy are on the way.
But record numbers of people are losing their jobs each month, the auto manufacturer's wave of shit has yet to really hit, and California's about to go bankrupt, yet still we bail out the IMF and Europe's banks and all the crooks in our own banking system.

So here's a bit of wisdom to consider from kollapsnik at Club Orlov, go read the rest if you want a new perspective.

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/



So what are we to do in the meantime, while we wait for collapse, followed by good things? It's no use wasting your energy, running yourself ragged and ageing prematurely, so get plenty of rest, and try to live a slow and measured life.
One of the ways industrial society dominates us is through the use of the factory whistle: few of us work in factories, but we are still expected to work a shift. If you can avoid doing that, you will be ahead.
Maintain your freedom to decide what to do at each moment, so that you can do each thing at the most opportune time. Specifically try to give yourself as many options as you can, so that if any one thing doesn't seem to be working out, you can switch to another. The future is unpredictable, so try to plan so as to be able to change your plans at any time. Learn to ignore all the people who earn their money by telling you lies.
Thanks to them, the world is full of very bad ideas that are accepted as conventional wisdom, so watch out for them and come to your own conclusions.

Lastly, people who lack a sense of humour are going to be in for a very hard time, and can drag down those around them. Plus, they are just not that funny. So avoid people who aren't funny, and look for those who can laugh at the world no matter what happens

The Last MF7 Gig

We really did tear the roof off and burn it down to the waterline.

The club is sort of lame, a former Mexican Restaurant made into a generic lounge, bad acoustics and an indifferent crowd of regulars, but I got 22 of my pals to show up for our last blowout.

Mikey hit it hard right out of the first song, his amp and his head cranked up. We didn't slow down until the third set, and even that set, played to a rapidly emptying bar was pretty wild.

There were lots of vocals shouted through megaphones, plenty of his stylish manic preacher rants and half the time the songs didn't end where they usually do, instead oozing into another song or rap pulled from his monkeybrain.

Fry and Jonathan were pretty damn solid and more than a little on fire, too. It was sad thinking this might be the last time we all played together, and I don't think anybody held back anything all night.

I love Jonathan's drumming, he's got a great ability to morph one song into another seamlessly, and Fry's right there on his throb, solid as hell and fun as hell to watch, the pole we all do our dance on.

I blew myself out, wrecked for two days afterward. Michael hurt his knee, and I still haven't heard from Fry since we kicked him out of the house at four am on Sunday morning.

At one point in the evening I found myself jumping around and tripping over my guitar cord, disconnecting Michael's amp and nearly falling head first into the wall.

Thanks to everybody who bought me beers, shots and came out to The lazy oaf. It meant a lot to me to see you guys, and that bar is in one ugly ass stretch of nothing, across eight lanes of busy road, both East Washington and Hwy 151. Not an easy place to bike to, but a lot of you guys did. You all rock, my pretties.

Fourteen Years Ago Today I Fell In Love

Me n' Sweetie riding the Ferry to Bremerton a few months after we met. Some days I miss Seattle. In that photo I look like a cross between Janis Joplin, Ozzy Osborne and a demented elf. Kori looks like a red haired goddess with a dash of Joni Mitchell thrown in.

She walked into a room full of people, sat down behind me and that was all she wrote. Quiet, long red hair, strong and with a low voice, she really struck me as a wild creature and sucked me right in.

After the meeting was over, I asked her if she wanted to go get a burger, she said yes. We walked over to a Kidd Valley burger joint, and I talked at her for three hours in that plastic seated, brightly lit fast food joint.

I walked her back to her car, got her number, gave her a hug and headed home. About five miles in the wrong direction later I realized I'd hit the edge of the Puget Sound and headed back east towards my shithole basement room north of Green Lake.

We went on two more dates, on the second of those I jumped her bones, and we've never spent another night apart since unless we were in different towns.

And we've never gotten in a fight in 14 years.

How damn lucky can one get?

Sick, a short film by my Michael my bandmate

Mikey showed me this the other day. He's a sick fucker, in the best sort of way one can be twisted. Watch it, my pretties.

And come to our gig this Saturday, or I'll never make you another sandwich again, or fix your piece of crap guitar for free again, as I will tear out my Mr.Nice Girl roots and pour salt and cesium on them and become a full time curmudgeon capitalist money grubbing every body's gotta pay and the world owes me sort of creep instead of the gruff yet nurturing asshole I am.

Note: Living in Canada, being off in California, being pregnant or having some other lame ass party plan is not an acceptable excuse. Show up, or nice girl gets two in the chest and one in the head, old school Soprano gangster style.

Self Portrait, because it's my blog and I can

Not bad for a fifty one year old.

Yesterday whilst buying parts for the RV project at Menards, a cute little girl of about eight with her dad looked at me and said, "Daddy, she's strong".

I found this amusing, and almost accurate.

Speaking of the motorhome, I need to stop muckin' about here and get back to it.

'nuff said for now.

Tips on how to be an asshole

Some fine tips here on how to be a creep and a jerk.

While I don't pretend to be a first rate asshole, I do enjoy someone who is good at it. Until they're better at it than me, anyway.

http://www.corrupt.org/blogs/martin_regnen

Be prepared to face the consequences. Someone might punch you or you might have to go looking for another job. Always be ready. The life of an asshole is always interesting with higher highs and lower lows than the life of the wuss.
Practice your laugh. You need to be able to both smirk and cackle obnoxiously without coming off like a B-movie villain or the fat kid from the Simpsons. This is very important. You don't want to be a gloomy miserable asshole who never smiles, but a happy asshole who loves being better than everyone else.
Pick your targets. Don't be an asshole to your grandmother or to small children. Don't be too much of an asshole to people you have actual power over. The best people to use your full range of asshole skills on are your bosses and attractive young women.
Have standard go-to lines. Here an example of a great line with a good story behind it: If you're going to be a dog, be a Rottweiler. If you're going to be a bitch, wear a skirt. Don't necessarily steal that one, but have a few like that which can be called upon in a variety of situations.
Be proactive. If someone denies you a favor, reacting with insults just makes you look like resentful loser. Be an asshole before you ask them for the favor, and if they deny it continue acting the same way you did before.
Be confident. You want people to know that you're an asshole because you're so great that you can get away with it. Confidence is key. Without confidence you look like an angry basement-dwelling loser who might as well be an asshole because no one ever liked you in the first place anyway.
Confuse and confound. Directly and openly state extreme things to get people off-balance. If asked who you voted for in an election, say you did not vote because you oppose democracy. People are used to supporters of other parties and know how to react to them; they are not used to those who despise all political parties.
Escalate. Many people are comfortable trading barbs, especially indirect and subtle ones, but will be cowed by anything direct and blunt.
Practice, practice, practice. Take every opportunity to say inappropriate things for little reason - tell dirty jokes around women, mock short people etc. That will make it far easier when you need to tell your boss something he really doesn't want to hear.

Our Last MF7 Gig This Weekend

Too soon our musical freakshow is ending, with our combo's gristly beating musical heart motoring off to San Diego next month. But we have one more gig this Saturday at The Lazy Oaf up on Stoughton Road near East Washington.
Michael, Fry, Jonathan and I have had a short but insane and throbbing time, making a four backed musical beast that has left me amazed at what can happen when four people who listen to each other get into a monster creative groove.
There will be blood, sweat and tears as we bash out our last set with all four of us. That's our body fluids I'm talking about, not the moldy oldies band, by the way.

I'd love it if a lot of you showed up to give our band a good send off, since I suspect we'll be pulling out all the stops (and the megaphone and all the oddly stylish hats)for the last show.
And I doubt I'll ever have such an amazingly good bunch of folks with this much energy to play with again any time soon. I hope we can be what Michael tells me every time I ask him what he wants me to play on any of his songs we do:
"be brilliant"
We're playing three full sets, starting around nine thirty as far as I know right now, and there's no cover.
Here's a link with a map.

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/venue/480779

Pregnant Women Are Smug

Pregnant Women are Smug from Erika Lindhome on Vimeo.

Somebody else thinks almost the same thing as I do.

But babies are wonderful!

So is composted manure, though.

Peaches - F*ck the Pain Away, sung by Miss Piggy

Somehow I don't think this is what Jim Henson thought his muppets would be doing.

I like Peaches. She's rude.

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.