Ma Nature wasn’t up for it.

What you ask?  Lawn bowling.  Today, well technically yesterday if you look at the clock you time-nazi you, the rain kept the lawn too wet to bowl on.

I’ve been out there every year employed, and the last three of four years it’s rained.  This is the first year it was rained out completely.

Dammit.

But it was for the babies.  I can’t begrudge Mama Nature that.

Unless it goes to a fourth year.

At least I got drunk.  I was drinking for the babies, ’cause they can’t lift a pint themselves!

Hey — before anyone criticizes me on that, I was a gawddamn March of Dimes Baby.  I survived the first three of four months of life because they PAID FOR A BOX FOR ME TO SURVIVE IN!!!  IT KEPT ME BREATHING!!!

Suck on that.  I’m tired of hearing crap for that line…

Having fun, readers?  I am.  I’m drunk, with a blog-posting auto-spell-checker.  It’s all good.

Skåll!!!

My driver-side rear shock died two months ago and was rattling something fierce, and since Minneapolis cannot keep their streets smooth I’ve been praying every drive that it wouldn’t fall apart and make me die in a firey wreck of sparks and mayhem.

A bolt head snapped off last weekend, so my father decided to enlist some help.  My Great Uncle (not just in title either, the man is awesome,) and two of his friends came over with welding torches and sledge-hammers for a garage-party this weekend.

They took turns heating bolts and banging them out.  By 19:00 Saturday three of the four bolts were out and everyone was sick to death of my Pontiac, so they disbanded.

Yesterday my Great Uncle (henceforth abbreviated G.U.,) came out and they got the last bolt out and the new shock in.

My G.U. came in for coffee and we started talking.

I knew that a few years ago he tracked down the namesake for this site to the town “Pelly” in Saskatchewan, Canada.  He always told parts of the story, but never went into detail.

This time he did.

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This is a short post ’cause I’m hung-over. 

June 15th is my 30th birthday, party on the 16th.  Celebrating the fact that I’m now firmly in that category of “old farts” to all them damn kids.  I’m someone to look up to or some crap like that.  Well, 20-somethings will believe anything, I guess.

Shit, I might get beaten for that last comment…  I was just kidding!!!

I played video games on an original Atari, Commodore 64, Tandy…  The first computer my family owned was an IBM PS/2 running DOS-Shell on floppies (no hard drive), and CompuServe dial-up Internet…  When I was little, cable wasn’t up to 900 channels, it was still in the thirties…  Cassette tapes were new, stereo was an option, AM/FM was a selling point…  Gas wasn’t yet above $1.50 a gallon, much less the $3.00 it is now…  Winters snowed in November, didn’t wait until February…

Yeah, I’m old.  Fuck off. 

For everyone that I didn’t offend, have fun!

Skåll!!!

Edited: 2007/05/21 11:58, see the end of the post. 

You ever dream of all your personal, deep dark regrets in one night, crowning with the one choice and regret of your life that hurts the most at the end, thus being burned into memory as you wake up suddenly? 

Then on the drive into work the radio plays song after song after song that reminds you of that regret? 

And you see people all through the day, on the street or at work or even pictures online that look like people involved in that regret?

I don’t regularly dream, and when I do dream it’s usually quite obtuse and surreal.  I usually look forward to dreaming.  The last one involved mermaids and not needing to breathe and chasing down whales in an underwater game of tag.  Oh, and the swimming was in crystal clear water lit with moonlight.

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“Let them hate, so long as they fear”

— attributed to Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus
more commonly known as Caligula,
Emperor of Rome from 37-41

He was described as insane, tyrannical, evil…  Hard to say how much was exaggeration because there is so much of history that is fragmentary from then, and also evidence of the invention of “yellow journalism”, but there had to be some level of insanity and some level of cruelty there as a cause for the stories.  Something to hang that on.  And the Romans weren’t really known for their niceness, especially their emperors.

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