The Unbearable Bobness of Being

The Things She Sees

She sleeps in my arms and I watch her in REM. I hold my cellphone camera above and try to frame her for a sweet sleep pic, then just as I frame, she smiles and as fast as I can I press the shutter release button to grasp the picture.

She giggles and grins in her sleep.  Most certainly not gas smiles. Her giggle is a high soft trill. She is three weeks old. I want to believe the giggles and smiles are in preparation for the emergence of conscious social smiling at six to eight weeks. A rehearsal in REM.

No, that is a lie.

I really wish to believe babies possess dream worlds they visit to see the remarkable events and experiences that await them. In this dream world of their future, only things of love, magic, wonder and joy surround and appear in glimmering and gauzy forms, in air that sparkles, by a sea that sings to them with the faint, rhythmic echoes of womb music, of heartbeats, of a rising melody of their new world just beginning to form shape and gain tone.

When she awakens, her little eyes open wide and she looks at me and into the room. My left arm aches from holding her still during her sleep travels. We are both quiet for a few moments. I rock us in the soft recliner chair by the wood stove - the embers seem to whisper its warm enough, it's warm enough, it's warm and perfect.

Alaska, Diamonds, Alaska, BABY!!

If the search string fits: Somebody from Wasilla, Alaska searching for "hookers on cruise ships" landed on my blog. I think it is my favorite new euphemism for their former mayor and brand new public supporter of the crazed "birther" conspiratorial movement, the lovely and quite untalented Governor-Quitter Sarah Palin. A hooker on the Cruise Ship America. As an aside, I've never actually blogged about hookers on cruise ships and know nothing about either. I think they landed on one of my ethical dilemma posts, the one about the sinking lifeboat. Go figure.

I can't even keep up with the whole Tiger Woods stuff, he's apparently up to 3 girlfriends now and his wife has a new prenuptial promising her the planets Saturn and Jupiter, several newly discovered diamond mines in British Columbia and two precious metal bearing asteroid belts to be named later??

I'm flying home tonight to Spoklahoma in the Basalt Transition Zone-Rocky Mountains Precursor Area 51 instead of driving. I have to have some activity on my Alaska Air mileage plan at least once a year and I haven't used it since March 2008. So yay I get a break from endless miles of monotonous horror punctuated only by brief moments of bladder spasming terror as over-methamphetaminized truck drivers drift across the lane stripes as their bodies slowly convulse and their sweaty hands slide off their steering wheels. 

I wonder what's different in airports these days? I wonder if they still make you take your shoes off? Is belt removal now mandatory like it is when you walk through the metal detector at Spokane Co. Juvenile Court? Or is it still optional based upon a relatively subjective assessment of the metal weightage and surfacing of the buckle and studs if you got em. I think, quite frankly, if you wear a belt with studs or spikes you might as well just pull it off for two reasons, one, it's probably not going to clear the magnetonometer and two, the TSA security officers are going to make you just because it's studded and/or spiked and  looks messed up and three, because studded/spiked belts are acts of fashion terrorism.

Anyway, my flight is godawful late out of SeaTac as it was the cheapest mileage fare (15K round trip) and I will probably sleep the whole way to Spokanistan and miss the entire 38 minutes in the air of magnificent nocturnal wonder sights of miles and miles of pretty much effing nothing.

But the cool part of all that late night flying over the treacherous hell-lands pregnant with doom of the Evermean state is first thing Saturday morning, I will be ensconced in the soft and comfy recliner-rocker in my family room with a fire roaring and a cup of fresh french roast coffee and a little tiny cutie bug sitting on my lap and watching me with her big eyes as I'm talking all kinds of silly and making all kinds of goofy faces.  Can't wait.

Why Proto-Humans Formed Deeply Bonded Family Units and Smashed Sabertooth Tigers in the Head with Clubs When They Came Too Close to the Family Cave

 

My kiddo finally sent me a photo! We are back on track. Whining works, even if it is a bit unseemly and tragic.

I love how newborns look kind of like aliens (E.T. in particular) and as they quickly age into infancy they start resembling little hairless monkey babies. I adore monkey-people babies! Soon her cheeks will fatten up, her face will round out more and she'll get the full bore fully human baby look we all love so much with social smiling and burbling and cooing and spit drooling down her chin.

But for now she raises her tiny eyebrows and opens her eyes wide and reaches out with her hand as if to say "wow this is one interesting world I'm now in and I hope my grandpa gets an earlier flight home on Friday, because he's a blast (although he could learn some new lullabies and I don't care yet he's so off key)!"

You Never Write, You Never Send Me Pictures Anymore, I Guess You Don't Care About an Old Man Alone in Rainytown, You're Too Busy, I Understand, I Won't Be a Burden, Just Let Me Know When She Graduates High School, I'll Send Her a Card, A Gift Too.

I ask my daughter "please text me a photo of grandbaby every day while I am in Rainytown" and she does for one week. But then she stops and I have to go pilfer them off her Facebook page. Is it too much to ask a busy daughter with her first baby to send me a photo each day? No. Modern cellphone technology makes this easy and simple.  Should I have to jack them off her Facebook? No. I should be happily surprised each day when my cellphone buzzes with a new photo. Doesn't grandbaby look cute in her pink jacket and hood and car seat? Yes. She is cuter than a bug in a peach basket.

I know what you're thinking, you're thinking "man you've lost your edge here in the bloggo world, no more post apocalyptic hell visions, no more effing disturbing examples of the loathsome and evil creatures of the natural world, no more bizarrely constructed ethical dilemmas, no more of what causes us to slow down on our morning fast commutes on the bloggo highway and stare at the flaming six car pile up and associated carnage of your blog, man.  Yes, I'm afraid it's true (and I warned you) I am becoming a cranky and whiny old grandpa in bloggo world. I am losing my once raggedly sharp machete edge and morphing into a butter knife with big globs of peanut butter and honey on it.  Oh well, just wait until I start coming up with cute nicknames for her. You.have.no.idea.

:-)

On Holding Babies (Part 1)

Not how we hold babies. America eventually grows disgusted with politicians who refuse to hold babies correctly.

There are only a few basic ways to hold and carry a flaming battle-axe when being swarmed by rageful and deadly Visigoths or Huns as one defends one's castle or goat farm against them. Two handed or one handed, generally shoulder height or above, perhaps side armed or even under armed if attempting a return hack following a chop down on one's opponent. Holding and swinging a flaming battle-axe is certainly different, for many important reasons, than holding and carrying an infant.

For infant packing, one must first be aware of the infant's preferences and attempt to match to those, so if a baby prefers a cradling in the crook of the arm carry that would be the one most undertaken, realizing that in many cases it can change depending on various factors, e.g. infant comfort, carrier comfort, need or not to have a hand free, etc.

Some babies, if colicky, might prefer to ride up high against the shoulder facing behind the pack human, staring at a world in reverse, a world that reminds the baby that at such an early age everything is forward motion, little is history or to be reminisced, and the tummy pressed against the shoulder may gain relief from the colic as the pack human motates forward, perhaps even walking up and down stairs or over objects, e.g. curbs or boxes of baby wipes, causing some tummy ache relief. Or that might be the worse possible position for symptom amelioration requiring at least a moderate ability by the pack human to be flexible and attempt other carrying positions which may be more comfortable and relieving.

It should be noted that positions where the carrier can obtain and maintain an eye contacting gaze with the baby are, to my mind, preferred, so that the key social cueing and messaging and most importantly, pack human to human baby bonding, may most optimally occur.

In future blog posts, I will share what I have deemed effective holding and carrying strategies and methodologies per the phenomenological context of me and my little grandbaby. And I may even share how I discovered that she can be soothed when fussy, by being cradled in my arms while I run the bathtub faucet full blast and sing, horribly off-key, to her.

The Day After Tomorrow

Today is Tuesday and it is one day away from Monday and yet it is one day closer to next Monday. This is the Sisyphean horror of what it means to be a working person.  You flee from the gaping maw of one furious hellbeast and into the razor sharp teeth of another. It is the cycle of futility. The wheel that breaks you upon it over and over. The optimist is the one who chooses to believe that Saturdays beget more Saturdays.  The pessimist accepts this only to the degree that Saturdays are a cruel trickster who hands you a perfect golden banana when you are starving but brains you with a rock while you hurredly devour it. The optimist/pessimist yin/yang balanced zen-ranger believes Wednesdays are the chalk drawn start lines of the hopscotch game of life, that Wednesdays allow for a midpointing of extremes and in Wednesday's tepid spit water we can engage the endless repetition of work in a bearable manner. Me, I don't know. I do know that this Thursday is Thanksgiving, and with a little sweetie girl of a baby granddaughter in the house who has the name of a Roman princess and who will undoubtedly one day command her grandpa and her two strapping uncles to shine her chariot and bring her her ponies and we will race each other to do so, that I will not only stuff myself with turkey and a million other foodstuffs but I will shout in my head "thank you!" at least seven times.

Big as the Sky

 

Grandbaby falling asleep pictures. In case you're wondering, yes, this blog will likely become a grandpa blog with endless entries about my granddaughter written in a deeply annoying manner in which I appear to believe I'm the first grandpa in the world.  And since she and her mom, my daughter, both live with me and I'll see them every weekend when I drive back home from Rainytown, you can only imagine what an enriching and exciting experience this will be for all of you.

I am holding her in what I call the Modified Sitting Buddha Baby Position. Note the placement of the thumbs as they support her in front and back - holding her in a sitting stance and supporting her head in a midline position and maintaining her in a non-, what I like to call "floppy" position.  What you can't see are my palms and fingers expertly holding her back up and keeping her head from rearward floppage. It is the perfect position for her to scan her world and stare endlessly at her goofy grandpa as he chatters baby chatter and makes silly faces.

She is so alert and wanting to gain mastery over her world, looking around, moving her hands and arms in what appear to be very uncoordinated ways but grow more targeted and directed daily - she can already grab her hands together in front of her, and although it still looks a bit accidental when she accomplishes it, I have no doubt she will be applauding her world soon. She has a powerful rooting instinct and we all swear she was trying to smile at us yesterday.

I don't doubt the careful and gentle reader has already noticed the pizza sauce stains on my sweater. Me and my kids had a Papa John's Delivery Special Lunch Adventure yesterday and I was a bit messy as I ate and balanced baby in the Modified Sitting Buddha Baby Position and I know I'm going to have to clean up my act once she is high chaired and spooning big glops of green pureed stuff into her mouth, as I must model neat and tidy eating behavior for her.  Perhaps I should procure a grandpa bib to wear whilst eating messy foods.

My grandbaby is now one more person I will miss when I leave Basalt Transition Zone Land and drive back to Rainytown each week. And although she is tiny in size, she is as big as the sky in missing.

Holding Babies

The first time I held my grandbaby Sophia, adjusting the crook of my elbow to support her neck, holding a baby again felt novel and fragile, like I hadn't held a baby in a million years and needed my muscle and heart memories to reemerge and they did reemerge, my movements became smooth and sure and my heart strings twanged and thrummed and plucked and bowed into rolling crescendos of heart song, and not long after a few holds and carries I was nagging instructing my daughter on making sure to keep baby's head in-line and not let it angle too far forward or back and telling my son to not prop her up that way unless he supports her better.

As I held her some more, I felt I was carrying my own babies back in their hospital rooms all those years ago, then, just as suddenly, my babies seemed so long ago and I struggled to remember what holding them had been like. Experiencing this instant melange of then, now, all the intervening years, and the years to come for baby Sophia, was disorienting and melancholic entwined with warm and comforting. Smiling. Sighing. Time felt like a circle not a straight line.

And now, Sophia is our magical china doll baby possessing a fineness and delicateness about her none of my babies ever did, my kiddos were all very robust neonates in weight and height. Sophia seems tiny. She has such long fingers.  She sleeps in the arms of her rambling and overimaginative old grandpa. She makes time shift.  Oh the world has changed in wonderful ways because of you, little Sophia, look at what you've done!

She'll be a star basketball player of unrelenting grace and power AND a heartbreaking cellist of unspeakable beauty and feeling!

Baby Sophia the Coolest Grandbaby in the Whole World

My First Full Post Since Becoming a Grandpa

Damn kids. I catch those rotten neighbor kids cuttin cross my lawn again on their damn shiny bikes their spoilin moms and dads bought em, something's goin to happen! Dammit. I work too hard on rakin up the damn leaves this time a'year and let me tell you I'll never use a damn leaf blower like those idiots down the way, makin all that commotion and stinkin up the place just to blow leaves around! Damn fools.

Next time those kids come through lookin for a short cut to their damn public school fulla liberals and hippies teachin em to expect mollycoddlin' by the damn federal US government, I'm gonna seriously think a'stringin up some 80 lb test monofilament about neck high. Just like our boys did in the big WW Two when they flipped Gerries off their damn motorcycles and plugged em with M-1s! Except I do that and one of them damn poor dears gets a damn owie on their behind then I'll have the damn sheriff at my door, hasslin me, a law abidin and tax payin citizen, while them damn kids wreck yards and smoke their damn mary jane while poppin wheelies on their damn bikes or ridin skateboards in the middle of the damn street!

And I sure as h-e double damn hockey sticks won't be palaverin with no damn new neighbors just moved in with their butt ugly ski boat and noisy damn motorcycles, about no sittin down with these damn reprobates on their damn bikes and talkin no sense into them! Ain't my job that's a job for their damn parents. Straighten your own damn kids up!

That's all I got to say this morning I need to get off this damn dumb box here and go to down to Walgreens and get me some milk of magnesia and cascara, I'm backed clear up to damn Bonners Ferry. Damn it.

Grampa!

I am one! :-)

Could Use Some Duct Tape too ...

I haven't written one of these in awhile. From yesterday on Craigslist.

We found ourselves in a field near three ancient school buses floating in straw. Although ruined, the buses were still yellow as sunflowers. I said it was school bus yellow. You pointed to a honeybee and asked if it was school bus yellow, sunflower yellow, or honeybee yellow, except when you spoke, each word became a peasant woman and her child gleaning for straw . You said more but I could barely understand then I could not. After a time your tears flooded the field and the buses drifted away. The peasants made canoes of their straw and floated after the buses.  You laughed at the peasant children splashing the tear water.  We swam after the peasants as the clouds became flies and the sky grew dark with their sound. I asked if you remembered who we were and you said no, do you remember?  I said  if we don't get out of this water soon we will freeze. You said it felt warm, like when you are ashamed and your blood rises but cannot get out, can only heat the skin and flesh as it beats to escape.

 That afternoon we forgot the trepidations and scars, our minds clear as the bright empty sky not yet filled with flocks of migrating fowl, flocks like spear points drawn in the dirt by a child with a stick. You became an apple, a cloud, a clock frozen at midnight.  You said I dissolved in the unmoving air. I asked if you were frightened and you said the music was pretty.

The Levitational Toaster

I own the toaster of a dead man. Unlike my coffeemaker, it works flawlessly. Perfect toast all the time. I bought it at an estate sale of a recently (at the time of the estate sale) expired older gent. It isn't real old, but I couldn't tell you the age, as I am certainly not adept at toaster dating, maybe it is about a 2002. A simple toaster with two slots, not huge bagel slots but your basic bread slice slots. I acquired it because I needed a toaster and it was a great price and appeared to be in excellent condition. At the time I did not consider at all the fact I was buying an appliance of the dead. I had simply walked through the old fella's modest home perusing various items for sale and determined that the toaster best fit my needs at the time. And as I mentioned this toaster has never failed me, performing with an admirable uniformity of quality. Sometimes I wonder, though, if I fail my toaster, or more accurately, the memory and spirit of the deceased gentleman who owned it at the time of his departure from the corporeal plane. I mean, he may have been a horrid person, the type of cranky old man who kicks kittens and dumps out antifreeze for the neighbors dogs to drink and die brutal poisoned deaths. I don't know. He may have been the sweetest man ever or, like most of us, somewhere in between. I can only go by the operational dynamics of his toaster, my toaster, his used-to-be toaster, and as I've mentioned it works like a God - perfect, infallible, reliable, and demonstrating an absolutely stunning mastery of bilateral thermodynamics - leading me to believe that the fellow was also a highly transcended individual, perhaps one of the few standing at or near the pinnacle of Maslow's famous Heirarchy of Needs, breathing the rarified and dizzying atmosphere of the self actualized, the nirvana rangers, the pilots of the cloudships of the angels. It is not an accident he owned a pop up toaster and not a toaster oven. The pop up toaster launches the warm toast upwards, up to the heavens, out of the pits of flame, whereas the toaster oven traps the bread and burns it in an oven of the damned where only the intervention of man can withdraw it, and we all know the imperfection of man. So, I wonder sometimes, am I worthy of this enlightened and holy man's toaster? And even if I am not, and I believe I indeed am not, it would be acceptable to continue to deploy his toaster as my food preparation device because, afterall, how many of us are truly deserving of what Poseidon blasts upon the astonishing sea-stacked and driftwood-rimmed beauty of the wild Northern Pacific coast, yet we can visit and exalt in their stormy power and glory. No, it is something else. It is a stomach churbling fear that as the Angel of Death gently squeezed the hand of my toaster's father and lifted him, gently and perfectly, from his dying bed, that something went wrong, horribly awry, and my toaster daddy, infused with a majestic power that only the truly realized possess, was confused by the Angel of Death and as his spirit presence tugged away from Death's ruthless grip and wandered stunned and troubled into his kitchen that maybe he reverted to some long held routinized night time toast making behavior and put some bread in to make some peanut butter toast as his trusty late night edible hypnotic-sedative and during the insertion of the bread the Angel of Death caught back up with him and with his long bony fingers grasped this amazingly mortality-resistive and powerful old man, much unlike any Death had dealt with before in his earthbound existence-termination and soul-retraction tasks, and as he drew my toaster poppa away something happened - something like a little piece of the elderly man's soul was trapped in the toaster, perhaps a great fragmentary explosion occurred, a detonation of will, until the Angel of Death could reassemble the parts and complete his goal, that a little bit got left behind and that is what I sense and fear and respect and ultimately bridle under the impossibly tight yoke of perfection.  It is why I rarely make toast anymore, why I can't bear to walk by the frozen foods lockers at grocery stores with Eggo waffles of so many kinds staring at me through the quiescent frost. I can not have you, waffle! The making of you is too much to bear, too high of an ideal to wither under as I fail and fail again to meet his astronomical span of goodness and light.  These days I can only bear to live with the toaster as a testament to what man, or, and this is awful to contemplate, what only one man can become trekking along the  shining path to revelatory and supreme humanization. My raisin bran awaits me as if to say "it is better to be a king of a cereal bowl than a servant of a toaster."

Latest Lab-Grown Penis News

WASHINGTON - Researchers have engineered artificial penises in rabbits, using cells from the animals, who then used their new organs to father baby rabbits.

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A Mug in the Hand

My coffeemaker is the slowest coffeemaker in the world. But it isn't consistently slow like a garden slug making its slime trailing way across a brick patio after feasting on some gladiolas, no, it starts the brewing at a normal coffeemaker pace but after filling a couple inches of the pot with rich, dark coffee liquid it decides to almost completely stop. The red light is on, the partially filled pot squats over the hot plate waiting, waiting to be filled, yet the furnace and cistern, the very crucible of caffeine alchemy, do nothing. I am tormented as I wonder - is it dead now? Should I partake of what it has offered unto me before its premature expiration? I am thirsting for hot coffee, I need my caffeine, I need my morning routine to be preserved in a world of constant upheaval and random acts of horror, I need my steaming mugga! I get what I can. I take the coffee that exists rather than yearn for that which yet does not. After taking my cup,  the machine again, a few moments later, reinstates the brewing algorithm, reboots, and resurrects the blood of the bean. It will finally finish the cycle of life and death and rebirth. I wonder, why must it be like this? Does my taking of the early sacrifice, seizing the first heart tore out of the chest of an Aztec sacrifice and running with it still beating into the jungle somehow infuriate the machine to stab and dig again and again? How can I attribute these sentient emotional and cognitive qualities to a simple appliance, why cannot I just accept its eccentricities as falling within the normal limits of rational and logical electromechanical processes? The machine does not emote, it does not do this with a boiling malice and forethought to vex and annihilate my morning purpose. It is only a machine. Only a machine.

Ethical Dilemma: Saving Carmen Ollapi

We had landed safely in Orchid Zone - Alpha Zulu on Jungle Planet z-890.89 in the Gemmy Belt of Outer Horatio. Me and my crew disembarked and stood panting on the steamy, humid surface of Jungle Planet z-890.89. 

As Captain, or as I liked to call myself, "Admiral Bucky Top Dog of the Seven Heavens," I was responsible first and foremost for the safety of the landing crew. Unfortunately, in almost no time flat after setting down, a giant cattleya lueddemannniana maximus jungle orchid, displaying behavior very unorchid like, swept its flower head down and gobbled up my Weight Transfer Management Engineer IV (i.e. Maynard Sandak) just like that. We all started screaming as nobody expected these peaceful jungle flowers which had been seeded on all the Jungle Planets in the Gemmy Belt of Outer Horatio as they were steamy carbon dioxide rich planets with suitable soils for massive fertilizer bomb attacks as well as favorable gravitational dynamics and hydrological metrics, to be quite so, unruly.

Upon rapidly reembarking in the landing craft and wondering out loud what hellish monstrosities had we awakened in our highly paid career trajectories working for the giant florists of Alpha Centauri Florists and Gifts Inc. trying to determine the most suitable extraction technologies for all the now mature and, as we were quite suddenly made aware, robust specimens of former gorgeous earth flowerosities, I realized to my sudden horror that not all of us had reentered the craft and that our Soil Density and Hydrological Surveyer Trainee, Carmen Ollapi, was still in the jungle in Orchid Zone - Alpha Zulu. I attempted to summon Carmen on my radio but heard nothing. Then there was banging on the door of the craft, banging with a tool,  likely metallic, I guessed a Soil Density Probing Auger by the ring of it, and before we could open the door to bring Trainee Ollapi in, the ship began to shake and shimmy as huge orchids and bougainvilleas and vines and many other kinds of plants encircled and attacked the landing craft!

I had a command level decision to make in that very moment, do I risk all of our lives, in the few seconds we had to restart the craft and blast out of there before we were ingested by insanely evil mutant jungle foliage, to save Trainee Ollapi who, I must now confess (although the crew knew it all along, the bastards) was my space squeeze, my interstellar love thing, and who was, at that very moment, tugging and stretching my heartstrings as though they were strings on a Zorakian Skin-Lute, as she pounded desperately, furiously, maniacally with her Soil Density Probing Auger against the only door in or out of the landing craft if you don't count the escape pod bay release hatches below, easily opened from the outside or in. There was, according to the post-incident administrative investigation exactly a 32.98% chance of successfully retrieving Trainee Carmen AND taking off.

What would you do? What do you think I did? 

Your Orange Juice Glowers

One day you wake up and the whole world around you has changed. What were once cloudless sapphire skies are now dirt brown skies with frowning clouds, what was once a glass of cold, frosty milk is now a mug of steaming mud-lava, what was once a refreshing shower in the morning is now an acid rain you hide from lest it scald the skin off your very body, what was once a happy, embracing family is now a bitter tribe of deadly foes.

What does it all mean? Probably that you've accidentally slipped through an interstellar wormhole and are now on an alien world.

Hurry Up, Baby

Any day now I will get the call. The call that my kiddo is in the hospital (or more likely, en route) to have her baby, my first grandchild and the first great-grandchild of my parents. I'm only 39 so it's kind of unusual for someone of my obvious youth and vigor to be a "gramps" and my folks are only in their 50s so you can imagine what it will be like for them!

I'm very excited and you should be too, because I know how many of you surf the rising and falling of my tides. Or maybe more like go clam digging on low tide. Anyhow, I'll keep you posted.

Winging It

Finally, a bat science story that isn't effing disturbing. Well, in a way it is, but mostly if you try to visualize the act or watch the YouTube, but just the notion of fruit bats using oral sex (fellatio) to prolong the sex act and being the first critters outside of humans to do so, well, it kind of makes the whole universe seem a little less random and monstrous. A little more orderly, a little more WELL THAT MAKES SENSE, MAN.  And, as always, I quote:

Now scientists find the short-nosed fruit bat (Cynopterus sphinx) routinely engages in oral sex, the first time fellatio has been seen in adult animals other than humans. The researchers argue the act likely has evolutionary benefits.

and from the Dept of Obviousities:

"We did not expect fellatio in fruit bats at the beginning," said researcher Libiao Zhang, a biologist at the Guangdong Entomological Institute in Guangzhou, China. "We were also surprised at how often it occurred."

Surprised because it's like so rare in humans? Well, maybe long term married humans, but I mean overall. OF COURSE THEY DO IT A LOT.

And how do they do it?

The investigators took digital videos at night of the bats having sex, with males keeping a tight grip on the females from behind by holding thumbs on the females' wings clamping down with their mouths on the females' necks.

Naturally, the bats copulated hanging upside-down.

Intriguingly, the female lowered her head to lick the male penis during 14 of 20 copulations recorded on video. The licking typically went on for some 19 seconds, or roughly one-twelfth the average time of copulation. The male never withdrew from the female when she performed fellatio.

INTRIGUINGLY! That line gets my nomination for "Best Use of an Adverb in an Online Science Story" award.

And like all good scientists they attempted to develop a mathematical formula, an algorithm, to determine the licking to sex effect and came up with the soon to be famous 1:6 ratio of licking to copulation.

The researchers found the longer the fellatio went on, the longer the bats often had sex, with each second of licking adding roughly six extra seconds of copulation. The bats spent almost twice as long copulating when oral sex was involved than when not.

"It was difficult to provide some hypotheses for the function of the fellatio behavior," Zhang said. "We held many meetings to discuss the functions."

They held "many meetings to discuss the functions." I can only imagine.

What I See At the Ryegrass Summit

After so many miles across the sagebrush scabbed desert of Central Wa, I begin to create images in my head, out of the boring, same, bleakness of miles and miles of highway and brown.

I see zombies yoked in a circle to a (formerly) horse drawn pump. In front of each zombie is a human head full of rich, tasty brains hanging from a hook. The zombies march forward trying to get to the brains, much like the carrot hanging in front of the horse. They shamble, grunting and moaning, so hungry, so very hungry, and move the pump wheel around and around.

For hours without end the zombies stagger and shuffle for the brains always out of reach. The pump pumps and into a deep irrigation ditch flows a sweet and crystalline water from cool vaults far under the basalt and volcanic topsoil. Flows and flows. Shamble and grunt. The undead creating life in the scabland. Then I stop in Ellensburg to pee and hit the McDonalds for a Big Mac Meal.

Eventually I arrive and put my stuff away in my studio apartment. The raining has stopped. It rained like hell going over the mountains. From the sun to the rain and here again.

Silicon, Plastic and Meat, Oh My

There are really only two kinds of people in this world besides

• those who group people into two kinds and those who don't
• those who keep ERTPs at home and those who don't
• those who will stand against the rails on the outside decks of a Puget Sound ferry and those who won't

and that is those who think it will be a sad and beautiful thing when future humans are enslaved by a race of robots made of silicon, plastic and meat and those who won't.

Mark me up as one who won't be thrilled or wistfully taken with self generating robot amalgascum arising out of landfills and back alley dumpsters with brains made from old discarded computer components and ennervated by found batteries and broken pieces of solar panels, with bodies made from plastic and slathered and chunked with meat to give a loathsome and terrifying form and shape, to make themselves in the image of man but with horrifying, misshapen results.  They will form the Lumpenrobotariat and will crash their metallic hate whips upon our human backs. But some will find them deeply affecting, robots making themselves of the predominant substances of mankind in the postmodern world, that is to say, painting their self portraits with the primary colors of silicon, plastic, and meat upon canvases of pain and stupidity.

The Lumpenrobotariat will be admired and appeased by many but not by me. I will chop barrels off plasma charge hunting shotguns and saw the stocks into pistol grips and arm myself with the guns of resistance, I will create bombs made of plastic and meat destroying explosives like TNT or that gunpowder stuff, and I will blow these monstrous creatures straight to robot hell. I will resist this future with all my might if it like happens while I'm still alive. If not, then it's only an intellectual exercise at this point.

If after reading this you stroke your chin and gain a faraway look in your eyes and say to yourself "oh gosh ... sad robots creating themselves out of the detritus of the 21st century meltdown is so completely special and sweet ... plastic, silicon and meat! omfgz" then all I can suggest is wise up, buddy.  Get a clue.

Words I made up in this post just for you: Lumpenrobotariat, amalgascum

Me and Lindsey Buckingham Riding the Kingston Ferry, Sitting in my Truck, LIstening to Tunes and Eating Jalapeno Slim Jims

There are really only two kinds of people in this world, besides those who group people into two kinds and those who don't, and those who keep ERTPs at home and those who don't, and those are people who will stand against the rail on the outside decks on a Puget Sound ferry and those who won't. I most definitely will not. Part of it is related to my stomach quaking fear of heights and, more relevantly, most of it is related to my terror of falling into a deep, dark, frigid and bottomless sound of water teeming with vile, predatory life, octopi the size of fleets of school buses, sharks of every type, jellyfish with enough venomous nematocytes to glob onto entire gentle, cow-like herds of back floating, sunning sperm whales and paralyze them and drag them down to the loathsome and hell-like seafloor to slowly nibble away at their brains and leaving the rest to rot for a thousand frozen years.

I just can't do the outside deck thing, I remember doing it as a kid and being kinda scared shitless but wanting to appear brave and resolute mostly because my siblings were such a pack of hateful, howling wolves and any weakness, I mean, ANY WEAKNESS, was exploited with a vicious intent and deeply deadly engagement that can scarcely even be written by me, today, all these years later, without causing an involuntary fear-shudder to rumble through my body like a massive Lahar blasting down the sides of Mt. Rainier after its next volcanic detonation.  No, when I am on a Washington State Ferry as it plies the doom and dread-filled saltwater of the Puget Sound I can abide the inner decks and seating or to just stay in my effing car.

Did you know that there is a sub-species of halibut that lives in the Puget Sound and follows ferries for the garbage thrown off, and, most importantly, for the odd suicide or toddler that isn't watched closely enough? Yup. They are a mean and angry halibut and the local fishermen know there is a specific, highly specialized manner in which to bring one into a boat if you don't want YOUR FACE RIPPED OFF.  The Puget Sound is likely the most deadly stretch of ferry navigable water in the world. It is a killing pool for the unsuspecting, the unprepared, the unaware. There is nothing wrong with staying in one's car during the ride, except if the ferry starts sinking then you want to be upside near a life raft, but since these things almost never sink, play the odds, man. Play the damn odds. Remember, in Greek mythology you didn't enter Hades by swimming across the River Styx, or by rope swinging off some big oak tree and landing, giggling and screaming, on the soft sandy beaches of the underworld, no, no, no, YOU RODE AN EFFING FERRY with a ferryman guiding you across. Try to remember that next time you hop a ferry to the San Juans or whatever.

Now Testify, It's Right Outside Your Door, Now Testify

There are really only two types of people in this world, besides those who categorize people into broad types and those who don't, and those are people who keep emergency rolls of toilet paper in their homes and those who don't. And let me be clear, when I say "emergency rolls of toilet paper" I don't mean toilet paper for emergencies like you cut your finger off while chopping up elephant garlic, because a Brawny paper towel would be a better call but a big old bandage and bandage tape would be even better, no, I mean people who have the foresight and organizational abilities to separate out a roll of toilet paper from the others and set it aside, preferably in a place where someone won't grab it thinking it is part of the normal rotation of toilet paper. Think of it not as one of the regular pitching bullpen, warming up, getting ready to come in to the game and throw some hard balls, but as the relief pitcher ON THE OTHER TEAM that you wanna snag before the trading deadline.

So anyhow, you know if you're an emergency toilet paper roll kinda person or not. I, most definitely, am not. I have used coffee filters (not very absorbent but provide a nice sanitary shield to your hand), paper towels, napkins, David F. Oliveria newspaper columns and probably a few other paperish things when I've run out of TP. And I ALWAYS BAG THEM in plastic bags, tightly tied, and toss em into the garbage, I don't ever flush non-TP wipe down the toilet but that's less about me being environmentally sensitive and more about me not wanting to have my septic tank pumped out prematurely because it's clogged with coffee filters and clots of paper towels. Once I get the sewer hook-up this spring or whenever, it might change.

But the point is you should never have to use toilet paper substitutes if you're the kind of person who keeps an emergency roll aside for the occasions when you forget to pick up a big package of TP at the grocery store. I will say since I started buying my toilet paper at Costco it's less of an issue just because you almost never run out of those pickup bed loads of toilet paper, but there is a risk in becoming complacement just because you purchase 848 rolls per Costco package and don't have to replace them but seasonally.

So, the real question is, if you aren't a person who keeps emergency rolls of toilet paper can you become that type of planful person? Can you change? Sure, people are more malleable than they give themselves credit for, it's just as simple as getting up RIGHT NOW and walking to your toilet paper supply and separating one wild toilet paper pony from the herd and corralling him somewhere. Do it! Seriously, if I get hit by a lightning bolt flung angrily to earth by a God who's just had enough of my blasphemous and irreverent ways and am instantly incinerated into smoking ash in a hole in the sidewalk and I never blog again, at least I can know I changed someone. At least I can know that next time you run out of TP and are desperate and considering coffee filters you can go "OH SHIT I HAVE AN ERTP (EMERGENCY ROLL OF TOILET PAPER) in the TV cabinet!, thank you Bobness, restinpeace." Tell someone else too. Change the world.