KA-BOOOOOOM!

This is a video of a propane tank explosion that happened near (TOO NEAR!) my house today. The first 4 minutes and 10 seconds are pretty boring so feel free to fast-forward through them... but stop at 4:10.

Not Your Typical Dog - Postman Relationship

I guess this explains why there's a can of mace in his bag.

Venting!

Maybe I'm just hopelessly old fashioned, but I still think that some things are wrong.

I have a family member, for example, who is playing house and making a baby with another woman's husband. Sorry, guys... I don't think that's a 'mistake', I think it's wrong. Wrong as in, "not right".

When they first started living together, the story was that he was recently divorced and just needed a place to stay, so he was sleeping on the couch.

A couple months later, they announced that she was pregnant... apparently he wasn't sleeping alone on the couch.

A month after that, I was informed that he isn't divorced... he hasn't even FILED for divorce.

Now many months have passed and it's time for the baby they've made to arrive, my relative is in labor and will soon produce a bouncing baby whatever. Fine.

But this evening I got a call and, silly me, I answered it. It was my relative's mother calling to ask me to do a favor. "What's the favor?" I asked.

Turns out that the married guy needs to have his license tabs renewed and wants ME to dash off to the agency tomorrow and do it for him so he can be at the hospital when the baby arrives.

Now let's be honest here... I don't give a single measly damn whether he gets to be there when the baby arrives. Why the hell should I take time out of my weekend to validate him as a part of the family? Should I do it just because he's not smart enough to look at his tabs and realize that the expiration date and the baby's due date bear a striking resemblance to one another? Give me a break! The state DOL sent you a bright green postcard two months ago telling you that your tabs were going to expire!!!

Maybe if you ask really nicely, your wife will go get your tabs while you go to the hospital and watch your concubine push out your offspring.

I certainly won't!!!

And please... stop trying to act like you're part of the family. You aren't part of the family, you're just some married guy who's fooling around with one of our relatives. That doesn't make you part of the family... it makes you a sperm-donor.

Peace-out.

Police Bust Illegal Tomato Growing Operation

This was too good not to reprint. I hope the Pullman Police feel like a bunch of 'tards for not doing their homework.

By Associated Press

PULLMAN, Wash. (AP) - A Pullman landlord notified police about a grow lamp in a closet, and police got a search warrant for a drug raid.

Eight officers with guns drawn surprised three roommates in the apartment last weekend and discovered they were growing tomatoes.

Commander Chris Tennant says it's the department's duty to investigate all credible complaints regarding marijuana growing operations in Pullman.

That's My Girl!!!

Alright, it's St. Valentine's Day... so I decided to continue what started in my last blog and tell you about another friend of mine. This one's still alive, though, thank God!!! Everyone... meet Joanie, my wife of nearly 19 years. For that alone she qualifies for sainthood.

Isn't she beautiful?

Joanie's the sweetest person you could ever know. She keeps it covered, but on her butt there's a tattoo warning diabetics to avoid her because she's too sweet. You'll have to take my word for it.

She's a really good person to be in a foxhole with. No matter what battles are raging around us, she's almost always the calm one. She's the sniper who takes out the enemy with one shot while I'm still trying to figure out what the target is. She's the medic with all the right stuff when it comes to soothing all the hurts that life sends our way.

She likes flowers and all the girly stuff, but last year for her birthday she wanted a new case for her AK-47. She loves a candle-lit dinner and a cuddle on the couch... while we're watching a 'Shoot-'em-up, Bang-bang' movie with the volume up so the whole house shakes.

She hates working on cars, but she's probably better at it than I am.

I'm the luckiest man in the world because she picked me, of all the men out there, she married ME... and that part about, "'till death do us part"... she MEANT that!

Here's the obligatory quote from Mark Twain, on marriage:

"... it makes of two fractional lives a whole; it gives to two purposeless lives a work, & doubles the strength of each whereby to perform it; it gives to two questioning natures a reason for living, & something to live for; it will give a new gladness to the sunshine, a new fragrance to the flowers, a new beauty to the earth, a new mystery to life."

Happy Valentine's day, love... thank you for being mine!!!

Wish You Were Here

This is Dusty... he died about 8 months ago, though it seems like yesterday the way it feels sometimes. Tonight I really miss him. He was a really awesome friend. I can't tell him how much I miss him so I thought I'd tell some of you people a little bit about him instead.

See that goofy smile? I only remember one time that I ever saw him that he wasn't wearing some variation of a goofy smile. Dusty loved people and it showed... even total strangers. It didn't matter who you were, once you'd met Dusty, you were one of his friends.

I've never known anyone who loved life like this guy. Even when everything was piled against him he'd just keep pushing until the pile got the hell out of his way, and if life was piled against you, he'd stand next to you and help you push too. He wasn't the kind of guy who just walked out on a friend when things got difficult. Even the friends he'd just met.

I really didn't know Dusty as well as I'd have liked to... he'd come by the house from time to time and we'd sit and talk, or we'd meet him at the Roy Bar & Grill and have a few drinks together, but when he died, it left a hole in my heart that just doesn't seem to want to close up. Like tonight when I'd just like to sit and talk with him and ask his opinion on a few things. He was a good man and a good friend.

I'll leave you with another quote from Mark Twain.

When we think of friends, and call their faces out of the shadows, and their voices out of the echoes that faint along the corridors of memory, and do it without knowing why save that we love to do it, we content ourselves that that friendship is a Reality, and not a Fancy--that it is builded upon a rock, and not upon the sands that dissolve away with the ebbing tides and carry their monuments with them.

~Peace

Just a Stupis Quote

Today I was again reminded of a quote that I've had thrown in my face a lot lately. I thought it might be of some use to others.

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
                                       
                                                                                                ~Mark Twain - Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Honesty & Friendship

• We tell lies when we are afraid... afraid of what we don't know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us.  But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.  ~Tad Williams

• The truth needs so little rehearsal.  ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

• One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.  ~Mark Twain

• I am different from Washington; I have a higher, grander standard of principle.  Washington could not lie.  I can lie, but I won't.  ~Mark Twain

• If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.  ~Mark Twain

• A half truth is a whole lie.  ~Yiddish Proverb

• No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.  ~Abraham Lincoln

• Those who think it is permissible to tell white lies soon grow color-blind.  ~Austin O'Malley

• The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.  ~Aristotle

• The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted.  ~Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

• With lies you may get ahead in the world - but you can never go back.  ~Russian proverb

• The hardest tumble a man can make is to trip over his own lies.  ~Ambrose Bierce

• When you stretch the truth, watch out for the snapback.  ~Bill Copeland

• A lie has speed, but truth has endurance.  ~Edgar J. Mohn

• Truth is the most valuable thing we have, so I try to conserve it.  ~Mark Twain

• A lie may take care of the present, but it has no future.  ~Author Unknown

• Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom.  ~Thomas Jefferson

• The truth brings with it a great measure of absolution, always.  ~R.D. Laing

• The truth is more important than the facts.  ~Frank Lloyd Wright

• Like all valuable commodities, truth is often counterfeited.  ~James Cardinal Gibbons

• It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society.  When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. 
  ~Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

• Truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to tell it.  ~Emily Dickinson

• The truth is the only thing worth having, and, in a civilized life, like ours, where so many risks are removed, facing it is almost the only courageous thing left to do.  ~E.V. Lucas

Have you ever tried to base a real, intimate friendship on lies? I have... many times and every one of them has fallen apart. Lies just don't work when the goal is to grow closer to someone; whether that someone is a prospective mate or just a close friend, we don't grow close by putting walls between us.

That's why I don't have a lot of people that I call 'friend'. I could count them on one hand, as a matter of fact, because I don't call someone my friend unless I feel that I can be honest with them. Of course, that comes with a measure of responsibility as well. When a friend tells me something about him or her self I need to be very careful not to come over as judging them in any way. Jesus gave us a very good example when he was dealing with a woman caught in adultery. He told the crowd that was ready to stone her that the person who was without sin should throw the first stone. One by one, the crowd walked away... knowing that they were as guilty, in their own way, as the woman they wanted to punish.

Ironically, the only person there who was QUALIFIED to throw the first stone was Jesus, but instead, he looked at the woman after the crowd had gone and asked her, "Woman, where are your accusers?" When she told him that they had gone away, he said something like, "I don't condemn you either, go on with your life and stay out of trouble".

I've been on both ends of that little lesson. I've been the one who desperately wanted to cover up the thing I needed to be honest about and I've been in the crowd too... judging and condemning people as though I was somehow better than they. Sometimes I've handled it right and sometimes I've fubar'd it and have to spend the rest of my life regretting it.

The first and last quotes up there, are in those positions intentionally. They are the basis of an apology.

To my friends who I have lied to, because I was afraid that you would reject me... I'm sorry. I'm going to try and be courageous enough to speak the truth and try to draw us closer together instead of pushing us apart.

To those who I have judged unfairly... I can only say that I'm sorry. I'm trying to remember that I'm no better and no worse than you are.

We're all in this together...

~Peace