Llamas have pretty eyes

That’s all.

Well … llamas also have pretty messed up teeth, but I’m not one to talk. (I’m being fitted for a partial next week and getting a bridge the week after that. Military was not good for my teeth … I kept leaving them in interesting places.)

Anyhow, I have a picture of Dian chatting with a llama that I’m going to post. Four of the prettiest eyes in the world.

Lion about

Dian and I have been, every since the weather turned warm enough, walking for a half hour each morning. We get up a little early, I make us a nice breakfast smoothie (a “four by six” recipe: four ounces soy milk, four ounces pomegranate juice, four ounces each of frozen banana, frozen strawberry, frozen peach, and frozen blueberries) and then we’d go for a nice walk.

We changed the pattern a bit the other week and started driving across town to the zoo. Y’see, one of the benefits of becoming “a friend of the zoo” here is that we can walk in early through the employee entrance. So, once we discovered this, we started doing our morning walks around the pretty much empty zoo, instead of around the neighborhood.

As a result, we’ve gotten to see some incredible things. For instance, this morning, the lions came racing out of their barn and went after the small flock of birds that were pecking in their habitat. Watching bloody huge critters bound and leap like kittens after butterflies was astonishing. None of the birds were caught, but one flew smack into the fence near us in a panic and the male was on him in a flash, with his daughter trying to wrest the corpse from papa.

Crunch, smack, burp … no more bird.

Then the male climbed the highest pile of logs and roared for a couple of minutes. The eldest female, either his or his mate’s mother, laid on the ground beneath him and echoed most of the roars with comments of her own … either something like “shut up, stupid; I’m resting” or “yeah, yeah, yeah … king of the beast … right.”

The other excitement today was a stray dog round up.

Sometimes strays manage to get into the zoo at night, either looking for somewhere safe to sleep or to grab a quick meal of baby duckling, and the zoo keepers mount round ups to catch them. (What they do with the strays is a matter of some conjecture between Dian and I, but we haven’t had the courage to ask so far.)

Anyway, the poor pup goes racing past us, followed by every keeper in the place, either riding those golf carts they use to get around or running. We were near the monkey house when it happened, enjoying watching the monks morning rips and commenting on how lively they are in the cool of morning.

Suddenly, a dog goes pelting by, followed by a dozen humans at speed … and the monkeys went a little nuts, hooting and swinging wildly around, and jumping up and down, and … and it dawned on me that they were probably doing the same thing that Dian and I had been: “Look! Human rips!” “Wow! They’re so lively in the morning, aren’t they?” “Yeah, they move so slowly during the heat of day … look at ‘em go!”

Seriously, if you have a zoo nearby and it has a “friends of the zoo” thing going on (preferably one that gives you special access like ours does), I cannot recommend this method of getting a little morning exercise strongly enough. A treat for the body, mind, and spirit.

Tea Bag Party

Y’know, it’s not that I totally disagree with the Tea Party. I agree that the people of the United States have to reclaim the government.

Government has become big business and the private plaything of the wealthy and privileged; it needs to become that representative body that it was intended to be, not a bastion for special interests and lobbyists.

However, that doesn’t mean that the Government of the United States has to be either conservative or liberal. We are a mixture of beliefs and desires, so our government has to reflect that mixture. Nor should our country or government be run on strictly Christian beliefs. Separation of church and state is one of the more basic tenets our country. We may be ‘one country under God,’ but so are all countries, if you think about it, and even if their religion is different, that doesn’t mean their God is.

No, I’ll take my government straight up, with no ‘moral superiority’ or ‘fundamentalist’ chaser … which seems to be the recipe that the Tea Party wants to pour for everyone. At least, on the surface.

Y’see, I’ve spent a goodly amount of time studying the various Tea Parties and their beliefs, and it seems that their conservatism is more of a gloss than anything else. A nice paint job to cover the actual machine underneath, rather like painting hearts and crosses on a tank.

What they seem more dedicated to than morality or conservatism is a return to a status quo that ensured that they continue to get everything they feel entitled to, without dilution or having to share with anyone else. A system that benefits them, first, before taking care of anyone else.

I was a cub scout as a child. It was fun and I really enjoyed it. Then a new family moved into town, one where the kids were all scouts and the father was a scout master, and they did their level best to take over our troop. Y’see, we didn’t run our troop like the one that they belonged to at their last place, where the father was the leading authority on all things scouting and his sons were the executive enforcers of his will.

Well, we had a nice troop, with lots of activities and camping trips, and nobody really wanted to change it. I mean, so we had a few scouts who didn’t have a full uniform and others who weren’t really all that interested in merit badges … but so what? We had a good time and everyone learned something every week; what was the harm?

In the end, the father actually petitioned the scout council to disband our troop in favor of a more “proper” one run by himself.

Now I know any political party exists almost exclusively to change the system to better reflect what they believe is right, but the Tea Party reminds me of that family of scout nazi’s from my youth. They really didn’t want to improve our troop, they just wanted to ensure that it was a mirror image of their old troop, with their needs and desires taken care of and everyone else would come to realize that it was really better that way. Hell, they might have even been sincere in their desires and totally ignorant of how it seemed.

Me? I’m for taking back the government … but I’m also for civil rights, all civil rights. I don’t care what it says in your Bible, friend; marriage should be for everyone who loves. (And, frankly, if you really believe that two guys getting married somehow weakens your ‘blessed union,’ then I have to wonder just how strong it is in the first place.)

I’d like us to stem the tide of illegal immigrants, but only because – by very definition – they’re ‘illegal.’ Hell, none of our forefathers had any more right to come here and I’m pretty sure that the original settlers hadn’t filled out the proper forms with the then official governing natives of the country … so what the hell do any of us have to feel superior for? I like the idea of a simple program in place to promote citizenship for those here illegally, but I also support the deportation of anyone who refuses to apply for that citizenship. In short, follow the friggin’ rules or get the fuck out.

I’m for a woman’s right to choose, but also believe that birth control should be mandatory until a certain age. You want less children with children? Well the entire ‘educate them on the consequences’ plan sure ain’t working, shipmate. Instead, make it mandatory for both boys and girls to have a contraceptive implant in place until their of legal age.

You want to get rid of abortion?

Fine, come up with something more reasonable from all angles, not just the ‘abortion is murder’ chant. People aren’t adopting those in orphanages and the wealthy will go to Russia to ensure they get a white infant, instead of taking the ‘mutts’ available here. You want the government to raise the unwanted kids? Really?

Willing to pay the taxes needed to do a good job of it, amigo?

Listen, I’d like all of you to realize that I know exactly what this country needs to return to greatness, and for all of you to do exactly what I say to achieve that … but I’m a known nut who’s spent time on a mental ward. Hell, I don’t even do everything I want me to do, so why on Earth would I expect you to?

On the other hand, as a famous enough dude once said, “It doesn’t take a great actor to recognize a bad one.” I’m sane enough to see the insanity that others are pushing and more than crooked enough to realize that their ultimate goals are not those found in any Bible.

If you believe, truly believe, that the government belongs in the hands of the Tea Party, then – certainly – go ahead and vote for whomever they endorse. But take the time to research and truly understand that they are, ultimately, just another bunch of opportunistic politicians saying whatever it takes to come out on top. As a group, they are no more likely to be honest or true representatives than either Democrats or Republicans.

We all get the government we deserve, so take the time to actually study the various candidates and parties. Find out which person has voted for what, or who has experience and who is just a strawman puppet propped up to front for some other group, which person will actually do what they say and which are just saying what they think you want to hear to get into office.

Take the time and make the effort, and end up with the government you want, not just the one you deserve.

In the meantime, remember that the unofficial front woman for the Tea Party is Sarah Palin … and act accordingly, okay?

Inception

Dian and I saw Inception.

I think.

Room secured!

So Dian’s out on the road and I’m spending the night at home alone, just me and our little tomcat, Tiger.

I’m downstairs in the workroom, on the computer (and trying to find a way to finish the damn Atlantis story), and Tiger’s asleep on the mommy rug (a sheepskin rug he’s in love with) next to the table.  After a bit, I notice that he’s awake and creeping across the floor, staring intently at something I can’t see.

Which is typical cat behavior, right?  They are forever staring intently at something no human is ever able to see; either it’s too small, too far away, or is a magical entity that only their feline senses can detect.  Whatever it was, Tiger was not only staring at it, he was stealthily creeping up on it.

I turned on the table lamp and aimed it in that direction.  Astonishingly, I could see what he was sneaking up on.

It was a spider.  A brown and black spider, about the size of a quarter, that was walking (rather foolishly, as it turned out) across the floor.  Tiger covered the last few feet and stood up to take a better look at the spider.

The spider immediately reared up, waving it’s two tiny front legs or pincers or whatever in a threat display.

Tiger sat down and simply regarded the spider for a few minutes, waiting to see what it would do next.  The spider did not back down, nor did it attempt to run away; it held it’s ground and kept the threat display going.

After about five minutes, Tiger leaned forward, looked at the spider a little closer … and then thumped it a good one with his right paw.

When the spider didn’t move for a full minute afterward, Tiger ate it and looked around to see if there were any more.

Here’s the thing:  Dian sews in the workroom and her side of the room is forever covered in loose threads.  I vacuum twice a week, but – somehow – the threads manage to reappear with almost supernatural ease immediately afterward.

So Tiger, just to make sure, went around the room, checking and thumping each loose thread that even slightly looked like a spider … which, if you know discarded loose threads on floors, almost all of them do.  For the next few hours, he’d peer at them, thump them a good one, then sniff at them … and then move on to the next one.

If he hadn’t been having such a good time pacifying the room, I would have broke out the vacuum.  As it was, he was happily and gainfully employed for the rest of the evening.

Welp, that’s a win?

One of the few computer games I play is Quake III: Arena.  I’ve always enjoyed the Quake games and this one sorta combines the best of the previous games, but makes it a little more pure fun.  If you have the game, you’ll know what I mean and if you don’t … well, never mind.

The point is that I’ve come up with a method of winning, every time, at the Nightmare setting, one of the more difficult levels; The Longest Yard.

The Longest Yard is set somewhere in space, on a large, multi-tiered, platform.  There is a smaller platform located well in front of the main one and another small platform hovering over the main platform.  All the tiers, as well as the smaller platforms, are reached via jump pads, which are sorta hyper-trampolines.

The battle is a three on one skirmish free-for-all, with various weapons and armor boosts located throughout the platforms.  Everyone is created (and respawned, over and over again, for the duration of the game) with machine guns, but there are several rocket launchers and shotguns scattered over the main platform.  The smaller platform in front has an energy weapon that is just wicked for sniping and the smaller platform overhead has the much valued 4X damage icon, which gives the player mucho firepower for thirty seconds.  There are also health icons scattered about for boosts and a couple of portals that will move the player somewhere else in an emergency.  (There is, however, no portal on the smaller platform in front, so the only way to reach it is to jump to it, and the portal on the smaller platform overhead only has a one-way, exit, platform, so you have to jump for that one, too.)

Okay, the idea is to stay alive and kill the others, trying to reach 20 frags first.  Each time somebody is killed, they lose a frag.  One is killed when one’s health drops below zero or one steps (or is pushed, shot, or catapulted) off of a platform into space.   A perfect game is one where you win and are not killed once.

I’ve had a great deal of success simply leaping out to the small platform in front, grabbing the energy weapon, and spending the game as a sharpshooting sniper.  Upside:  They either have to snipe back at me with smaller weapons or fire rockets from the large platform … or jump out and we call that skeet shooting.  Downside:  Quite often, after a few sniper kills, the other players get a little pissed and all of them fire rockets at me … and I only have two health icons out there, which take quite a while to reappear once used.

However, I have managed a few perfect games from my sniper nest, with respectful marksmanship accuracy totals.  (My best was around 80 percent.)  More often, however, they either kill me or run me off the platform by force of numbers, and I’m right back in the fray.

So this last weekend, playing the game and killing some time, I stumbled upon the perfect sniping nest and turned a really challenging game into one of the more boring target shooting scenarios I’ve ever played.

To always win with a perfect score, just follow the following steps:

Step 1:  Get the energy weapon by leaping out to the small platform in front.

Step 2:  Leap back to the main platform and run over to the first jump pad that leads to the small overhead platform, the one with the 4X icon and the one-way portal.

Step 3:  Hit the jump pad right so it bounces you to the second, mid air, pad that sends you on to the small overhead platform.

Step 4:  Squat a few feet in from the back edge of the small overhead platform and pick off the other players as they try to jump up to claim the 4X icon.

That’s about it.  They can’t fire at you because they’re beneath you and no weapons can breech the platforms.  They can fire at you as they jump towards you, but you can pick them off way before they can target you.  The only hard part is reloading.

Reloading steps:

Step 1:  When the energy weapon runs dry (after ten shots on a single charge), step through the one-way portal.  It will deposit you right in front of the jump pad to the small platform in front.

Step 2:  Follow the steps listed above all over again.

Step 3:  Repeat as necessary until you have 20 frags.  Ideally, it should only take one reload.

See?  The only dangerous part for anyone with any sort of aim is reloading, which happens so quickly and suddenly, that it’s not very.  Follow the steps carefully and winning with a perfect score is about as hard as running up an old Lady Pacman machine.

After a few perfect games, I’ve started skipping that level.  Oh, I could always ignore that there is a method for always winning and simply go back to the fray … but who in their right mind would do that?  Hell, just knowing that there is a perfect way to win every time sorta makes doing it any other way just an exercise in masochism and takes a lot of the fun out of the battle.

It’s a little like figuring out a wire puzzle or Rubic’s Cube … once you have it mastered, what good is it?

Who’da thunk it?

53 years old.

I don’t know if any of you will understand this, but I am actually somewhat embarrassed by the fact that I continue to grow older.  I was assured – by a medical professional, mind you – that I wasn’t going to survive to retire, much less make it to 53!

So I never planned on getting this old.  I never really thought about the next year, much less the next decade, and simply let it all happen, one day at a time.  As a result, the fact that I survived my military career by sixteen years is, oddly enough, rather mortifying.  I mean … really.

The only real planning I ever did was to get a vasectomy in my twenties.  I figured that, given how close I’d come to buying it on several occasions, it would be bad enough to leave my parents, siblings, and – with luck – a loved one (or two) behind … the idea of maybe fathering a kid and then dying in the line of duty terrified me.

As a result, I’m the only member of my immediate family who will not leave prodigy behind (which is, in retrospect, for the best; I mean, given my mental difficulties, it might have been somewhat cruel to burden a child with my dna), so those genes that make me uniquely me, die with me.  To the good side, I only have to deal with the idea that I might leave Dian behind (which saddens me beyond belief … as much as her passing would destroy me, I can only pray for the kindness that she might go first); to the bad, no spawn to succor me in my golden years.

Which seem to be coming, regardless of how I might feel about it.  Golden years … adult diapers, baldness, and a plethora of physical problems; what the hell is so damn golden about that?  I mean, the reward of living a healthy and sensible life is living long enough to need somebody to change your nappies again.

Of course, the alternative (what I like to thing of as the Jim Morrison option) is only superficially superior.  I mean, granted, one goes out in one’s prime … but one is still gone, isn’t one?  And leaving the party early, so to speak, is tacky.

On the other hand, had I died in service, I would have been spared Tea Party politics, Sarah Palin (who, by the by, has called me twice in the last week to try and convince me to vote for somebody I’ve never heard of … and if you think she sounds bad during interviews, you should hear her on the phone; alm0st like a recording), and Fox News.

One is hard pressed to locate how matters balance out, in all honesty.

And thus the years move on.  Hell, four more years and I’ll be a 57 year old man who was  born in‘57, which seems gaudy as hell, if you ask me.

The worse part is that my diet, which has become terribly important in my old age, doesn’t really permit me ice cream and cake!!  I mean, what is the p0int of birthdays if one cannot have ice cream and cake!?  Okay, I understand that after a certain age, pony rides and clowns are a bit creepy, but ice cream and cake … what the hell good is growing a year older if there can’t be friggin’ ice cream and bloody cake!!

“Where the hell did that come from?”

Dian and I make a point of becoming official “Friends of the Zo0″ wherever we live, at whichever zoo is closest.  Not only does it mean we can pretty much come and go as we please, but we also end up invited to all sorts of special events, which is seriously cool.  Not only due to the fact that we get a backstage (so to speak) look at the various exhibits, but because we get to meet and become friends with the keepers.

(Case in point:  One of the lion keepers just tonight invited us to come by around six, when he lets the big cats out, so we can listen to the male do his morning roar of possession.  I’ll take my video camera and see if I can get something to post.)

Being friends with a keeper, a young keeper named Karen, introduced us to Sherman, a six year old cougar, and taught me something I never knew.

We were chatting with Karen about the new areas for the big cats when Sherman, annoyed at being ignored by his favorite human, meowed at her.

Sherman is about 150 pounds, shipmates, so when I heard a meow, just a regular cat’s meow, coming from his cage, I moved to the side to see where the sound came from.  For a horrifying minute, I thought that a cat, perhaps a stray, had slipped in for a free meal.

Seeing nothing, I mentioned it to Karen, who laughed and walked back to the cage to confront Sherman.  She bent over and nattered at him the way one might address a favored tom and Sherman … Sherman meowed back.

She explained that the cougar is the largest North American (might be the biggest in the world, but she wasn’t sure) cat that still meows.  Not a meow that one might expect from a 150 pound cat (either a deep booming MEOW or a super loud MEOW!!! ) but just a standard house cat-type meow.

Crazy, no?

Love’s Labour’s Lost

Okay, let me start off by saying that there are only a scant handful of actors that I admire enough that I’d be willing to chance any movie or play simply because they’re in it.  There are a smaller group of directors who inspire such trust, but they exist.

Kenneth Branagh is the only individual who is in both lists.  I will gladly risk the price of a ticket if he’s in a movie or play, or is listed as the director.  When he is both acting and directing, then it’s all but guaranteed that I’ll like the production.

Then there is Love’s Labour’s Lost.

Love’s Labour’s Lost is one of William Shakespeare’s early comedies (which is often synonymous with ‘not very funny’) and it just might be one of his most intellectual plays.  In the classic performance, it simply reeks of literary allusions, puns, and extremely clever wordplay.  Unfortunately, it’s the very intellectualism of the comedy that made it one of his less popular plays, since the majority of contemporary audiences simply don’t catch much of the humor.  As a result, discovering a Kenneth Branagh production of Love’s Labour’s Lost at Netflix was like finding an unknown John Wayne western!

Shipmates, he did the damn thing in the style of a ’30’s musical!  He attempted to combine Cole Porter and William Shakespeare against a background of pending WWII.  Branagh is listed as the writer of the screenplay, which isn’t unusual (since most of the Bard’s work has to be edited for modern audiences), but  he sorta went a little too far this time, I think.

He incorporated  I Get a Kick Out of You, They Can’t Take That Away from Me, The Way You Look Tonight, Cheek to Cheek, I’ve Got a Crush on You, Let’s Face the Music and Dance (which he set as a sort of terrible erotic modern dance number, by the way, to replace the masked courting scene in Act V, scene II), No Strings (I’m Fancy Free), and There’s No business Like Showbusiness into the play, tossed out around half of the original material, and added the silliest ending that I’ve ever seen in a professional production of … well, anything!

Still, it had quite a few highlights:  Nathan Lane as Costard was a hoot and Timothy Spall did a hilarious Armado.  It also had a scene that, unique for anything by Shakespeare, had me laughing for a full minute.

Y’see, there is this line in Act IV, Scene III:  Biron, contemplating his situation, says, “By the Lord, this love is as mad as Ajax: it kills sheep; it kills me, I am a sheep: well proved again o’ my side.”  Okay, not a terribly funny line … hell, it’s not a terribly funny scene, in all honesty.

Branagh, however, setting the scene (and playing Brion) walked into a study and started his speech while walking over to a bust of Ajax with an arrow though its marble head.  When he reached the bust, he said, “By the Lord, this love is as mad as … well, as Ajax.”  Then, with one hand on the bust, he looked out the window at sheep passing by.  A subtle double take and the camera switched to a realistic dummy sheep, which promptly fell over with a lovely “bah” and the thud of a sack of cement hitting the turf from a ten foot fall.

Then he did the rest of the line:  “It kills sheep; it kills me.  I am a sheep, well proven again o’ my side.”

Dian and I howled with laughter and had to run the dvd back to hear the rest of the scene.

If y’all have a Netflix account and want to see what Branagh can do with only three weeks rehearsal and what seemed like a very light budget (around thirteen million, according to IMDB), then get the dvd and relax to a pretty interesting and often very funny film.  It might help if you think of it as more of a review and less of a Branagh Shakespeare … it did for me.

Quick, Robin! To the Bat-Couch!

That’s right, shipmates, it’s time for your favorite sailor to return to the couch!

2010 has been, for me at any rate, been a real pisser of a year.  Since January, I have lost major ground, ptsd-wise, and have even started having flash-backs again, something that I thought I’d put behind me back in ‘96.  So I called my local VA clinic and booked a reservation on their shrink’s couch.

I’ll be evaluated and start therapy by the end of next month.

Will they put me back on meds?  Will the shrink recommend another round of that high energy game, The Mental Ward?!?  Will some shadowy government scientist want to try something dangerously experimental on the Sailor, something that – due to a semi-humorous, yet tragic, event (something involving a cat, a beetle, and a small espresso I should think) – results in my becoming the first real superhero?!!?!!?

Well, actually: maybe, probably not, and -shyeah – in my dreams.

What will happen is several long and boring months of weekly or semi-weekly (is that right?  Bi-weekly means twice a week and semi-weekly means every other week?) sessions, perhaps combined with medication (which I will fight tooth and nail, but take if they absolutely insist that it’s necessary), and lasting for at least the rest of the year.  Been there, done that, got terribly depressed and smoked the tee-shirt.