Wise blooded, check it and see.

People seemed really hostile today, I had two weird incidents with people on my way to work. The first guy was comical enough, he was a wiry little Limp Bizkity looking guy wearing toboggan (a winter cap, as you call it here in the Pacific Northwest) with flames on it. He was out on a morning stroll with a docile looking pit bull. I smiled at the dog from far away and he didn't like that. Angry that the dog wasn't intimidating he started to walk faster and more hurky jerky towards me. By the time we passed his walk had practically become a ridiculous looking dance and he'd started rapping under his breath. This culminated in him yelling "HE WON'T BITE, IT'LL BE SELF DEFENSE" and letting out a high pitched "BWAAAAAAAHAHA" as he past me. His yelp sounded like you might expect, in a your dad said "Booo-Ya" because he heard it on Sports Center sort of way

The next guy was less fun. He was wrestling with his girlfriend while crossing the street. The girl almost bumped into me while trying to jump to the sidewalk to avoid oncoming traffic. I politely said "sorry" and the guy started yell at me to "back the fuck up, faggot" and continued to scream at me until I was a few blocks down the road. I don't like extended crazy that's coming at me from behind, so that actually frightened me.

Surprisingly, neither of those incidents happened on Pike where I've come to expect walking though a gantlet of maniacs in the morning. On top of that everyone just seemed a little off kilter today, did anyone else experience any weirdness from people or was it just me? Perhaps all the Flannery O'Connor I've been reading is making me a lightning rod for these sorts of things, or warping my mind into thinking I am.

The last frontier.

My trip to Alaska was a blast! My friend Brooke was recovering from an exhausting murder trial that ended less than a week before I arrived. She’s a public defender in Kenai, Alaska and all the surrounding little towns. Everywhere we went was like a crime tour of Alaska.







An example of an average Alaskan case would be like this one in which Montana Mike mistakenly shot Mephibosheth "Moshe" Wilkinsonin the eye with a .22-caliber Derringer because he mis-took him for world famous dreamcatcher maker Turkey Joe.

The main part of my job is talking on the phone and putting CDs into a database, so all of this was very exciting to me. I love hearing work stories that are completely foreign to me. I knew a stripper back in West Virginia, her boy friend and I worked at Amazon together. A bunch of us would be out at a happy hour bitching about work and she would jump in "Oh I know, I did a bachelor party where they asked me to pour honey on my tits and that stuff got everywhere! I've got it all over my car and my house. I’ll do chocolate syrup or whip cream but I will NEVER do honey again!” Brooke had some of the best "wow, I can't believe this doesn't sound crazy to you" stories since that; it did my poor heart good.

Conversation:

Brooke: Oh, that’s where Pistachio Paul got hit in the back with a hatchet.
Me: Out there in the woods?
Brooke: No, in that restaurant.

The highlight of my trip was the Ice Races. Ice racing combines the following elements: drinking, a frozen lake, crashing cars, and racing. Basically it’s demolition derby while racing on ice. God bless Alaska! It’s legit too; they have rankings, men’s, women’s, and teen divisions. At the end of the day they even have a spectator race which I planned to be in. Unfortunately, the car I signed up for wasn't long for this world. My modified mini-van made to look like a hummer was so busted up by that point it couldn't even race. Luckily, the winner of the last race was kind enough to let me take a few laps around in ‘USA Prime V8 Rumble’, the winning car!







We watched the Super Bowl at the bar that holds the Guinness record for having the world's biggest collection of hats and world's biggest clam.







A super fun trip. My only compaint is it was cold, twenty below some days. My little bald head dosn't handle that well! All my flickr pictures from the trip are viewable here .

I had an exciting weekend too. On Saturday I went to the latest installment of Leslie’s craft party and made crafts with weird shrinky dink printer paper that Pam brought. My mom called me that day to tell me my little nephew asked her if “angels can still hunt dear in heaven”. Awwww. Sunday, I went with Heather, Arlo, and Pam to a see 3D imax movie about the moon, the butterfly room at the Pacific Science Center, and A CAT SHOW at Seattle Center. Yes, that cat's wearing a cowboy hat.







Now I’m back at work answering phones and entering CDs into a database. I did talk to Kenny Rogers at work last week. How many strippers or lawyers can say that? Er, well lawyers at least.

Vacation responder.

Tonight I board an Alaska bound plane to visit one of my oldest and dearest friends, Brooke Browning. I don’t know how much I’ll be blogging while I'm gone but my flickr neglect should come to an end. See ya, back on the 7th.