Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Next Time Pray For Sunny Skies


Woman Hit By Lightning While Praying

POSTED: 2:52 pm EDT May 30, 2006
DAPHNE, Ala. -- Worried about the safety of her family during a stormy Memorial Day trip to the beach, Clara Jean Brown stood in her kitchen and prayed for their safe return as a strong thunderstorm rumbled through Baldwin County, Alabama.
But while she prayed, lightning suddenly exploded, blowing through the linoleum and leaving a blackened area on the concrete. Brown wound up on the floor, dazed and disoriented by the blast but otherwise uninjured.
She said 'Amen' and the room was engulfed in a huge ball of fire. The 65-year-old Brown said she is blessed to be alive.
Firefighters said its likely she was hit by a bolt of lightning that apparently struck outside and traveled into the house yesterday afternoon. She was found lying on the floor by her 14-year-old granddaughter.
Fire officials think the lightning likely struck across the street from the couple's home and traveled into the house through a water line. The lightning continued into the couple's backyard and ripped open a small trench.
A family member said he will no longer assume it is safe to be indoors during a lightning strike.
Dime-sized hail and wind gusts of up to 45 miles-per-hour moved across coastal Baldwin County. As much as three inches of rain fell in some areas in three hours.


There's no need to even comment on the previous story other that to say, It's about time.

Monday, May 29, 2006

Fishing With The Dark Prince


I spent Sunday fishing with Eric and Joe. Funny how two people can have such different memories of an event.

Joe sent this email to another friend who was unable to go with us.

"You really missed it.

I had wondered off from Kurt and Eric to check on a pool of fish I had thought I spotted from the car as we pulled up to the stream. When the pool didn't turn out to be anything special I thought it would be best to return to the location of Kurt and Eric. I'm glad I did.

As I round the bend, I see Kurt and Eric both trapped, no wait, cornered by a huge grizzly with a few of her cubs behind her. I had no time to be scared or think of my own safety Carey or else it would have been curtains for my two friends.

I picked up the closest thing I could find which was a stick about three feet long and about two inches thick. With stick in hand, I threw myself between the bear and my friends, who by now were crying and huddled together about to be bear food.

What ensued, was not pretty.

For the better part of an hour the grizzly and I tussled, russled and scuffled.

I'm not proud of killing that bear with my bare hands in front of the baby cubs Carey, but I did what I had to do to save my friends.

As for the foster cubs, I have them, at my condo now. I'm nursing them with baby bottles I bought at the store and warm soy milk. I think I will raise them and this is based entirely on the huge amount of guilt I have for killing their mother (with my bare hands, the stick broke).

The reason behind telling you this is twofold.

1) Your friends, my friends, Eric and Kurt, are alive and well. They will live on to take more news photos.

B) I have chosen to name the bear cubs. At first their names were to be Eric and Kurt, but I noticed one of the cubs was a girl-cub. So, I have now decided to name one of the cubs, the girl-cub, Carey. In your honor. The second cub will be named after my favorite baseball player of all time, Yogi.

I'm sorry you had to stay home Carey. Next time?"


Joe "papa bear" Hollak


And now, the truth.

Wow, I've always wondered what it would be like to walk (or hike) among the mentally disurbed but now I know.

First off, Joe spent the entire drive up the mountain popping pills and filling the cab of the truck with talk of devil worship, pornography and the joys of shopping at Wal-Mart.

Eric and I just pretended to go along, knowing full well that it's best just to let these things play themselves out before taking action.

We said nothing when, after arriving at our first destination of the day, Joe jumped from the car, stripped naked and covered his body with a thick layer of Vaseline. (Memo to Joe: get that thing on your chest checked by a doctor. I don't care what you say, that thing is NOT a nipple, in fact, I swear I caught it winking at Eric when his back was turned)

Eric and I gathered our materials, bibles, prayer cloths, annointing oils and portable confession booth etc, and headed for a nice meadow to do God's work for the day. Joe, or "Damien" as we'd taken to calling him by then, seemed to be happily occupied by throwing rocks at a group of disabled, albino children at a nearby camp.

Eric and were nearing our second hour of praising Him and sharing the Word with some Romanian pilgrims we had met earlier when, from across the meadow we heard a horrible screeching sound that reminded me of the time I saw a naked lawyer fall into a pit of rabid sandcrabs.

We turned and looked and saw "Damien" charging across the meadow toward us, yelling in what was clearly some ancient form of a dark language, understood only by those who've undergone years of horrible and highly secret ritualistic workshops.

We barely had time to react, he was moving much quicker than a man of his carriage should have been able to and he was carrying what appeared to be a large tree branch. It was only later, when the mace kicked in that we were able to get a close look at the weapon and see that he'd been trying to carve the branch into what appeared to be a crude pitchfork.

For some reason, he headed right for the Romanian men, who were paralyzed with fear. He began clubbing the poor bastards over their heads and then tried to wrestle them to the ground. The men fought like champs and as Eric and I tried to tear him from his prey I remembered the can of mace I had in my pack. It's always a good idea to carry protection with you and the can of "chemical billly club" did it's job. Within seconds, Damien was curled up in a ball with the dry heaves, sobbing like a girl scout.

As the mace began to subside, we heard Damien croak out what sounded like a dying man whispering the word "Grizzly, grizzly, must kill grizzly".

It tooks us a while to figure out what the poor, gasping heap of evil was saying but then Eric figured it out.

The poor, satan-infected son of a bitch had mistaken the Romanians for grizzly bears. In his state of mind, the shirtless, hirsute euro-pilgrims looked exactly like giant, killer bears. He was trying to save us, not kill us.

Still, there was no way in hell we were carrying this crazy fuck all the way back to Fresno with us. Instead, we made a deal with the Romanians to leave him in their custody in exchange for eternal salvation.

So, if he's claiming he has them at home and he's "nursing" them, just realize that these are three, very hairy, slightly overweight eastern european railroad workers we're talking about.

Two more things while i'm at it.
1. When Joe aka Damien, says he's got fins, don't as I did, assume he means swim fins. He actually has fins on his back. My memory of high school biology is a bit foggy but I believe this is known as the dorsal fin.

2. I left a little "gift" in Joe's waders. It's a time release device so next time he slips into his rubber pants, make sure to stay upwind and away from any open flame.

Remember, it's Yawaeh, or the Highway...

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

A Grizzly Dream


I had a dream. In it my friend Tony was eaten by a grizzly bear. We were on some sort of outing in the mountains and Tony dove into the river like a Mexican sea otter. Just as he went under the water, a fucking huge grizzly bear stood up from the river and in one giant gulp, ate him.

Tony's wife and son were there as was my wife and all we could say was 'Wow, I diddn't know there were any grizzly bears left in California."

I don't have a picture of Tony handy but here's one of Edward James Olmos. It's the best i could do on short notice.

Monday, May 22, 2006

Bring back radio




Is there anything Bob Dylan can’t do? In addition to the genius that is his musical career, Dylan established himself as a great literary mind with the publication of his autobiography Chronicles last year and now he’s making a claim as a master of radio. His new weekly XM radio show Theme Time Radio is the best thing on the air.

Each show has a theme, the first three have been Drinking, Weather and Mothers (for mother’s day) with Dylan choosing the music and adding between song stories and jokes like “I read that drinking’s bad for you so I decided to stop reading.”


Dylan’s musical selections are eclectic. He’s played tunes by Judy Garland, Buck Owens, LL. Cool J, Dean Martin, The Clancy Brothers and Muddy Waters. He doesn’t just play the songs, he offers little tidbits of information about the artists that could only come from a fan and he frequently recites the lyrics as if they were his own.

It’s a real joy to hear and reminds me of how much I miss real radio. And by the way, If you don’t want to pay for XM radio just search the internet a bit for places you can download the shows. As I see it, the only flaw in this whole thing is that it’s not free. Unless you do a little online research.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

When Patriots Sell Their Shit



Thanks for telling us, because without the sign I'd just assume that you were selling the same soiled mattresses and used car batteries that everyone else sells in their front yard. And thanks too for being so proud of your nation's flag. I'll bet you love Jesus too.


...Why do people keep referring to the sex “act”? Act? What the fuck are they talking about? When I hear the word act, I’m imagining some guy balancing on one foot while standing on a red wooden chair and juggling frozen turkeys while a midget sets fire to a stack of children’s bibles with circus music playing in the background.

And if it’s an act there better be an intermission, programs for sale in the lobby and if the performance warrants it, a standing ovation.


...The fewer limbs a person has, the more likely they are to be religious.

...After a really good shit I sometimes feel like playing mumbley-peg

Friday, May 12, 2006

Hump This or Journalism Version 2006


In an effort to share some insight into the inner workings of news gathering I would like to tell you how I spent part of my Thursday.

One of my five assignments was to make photographs for a story about a family that held a birthday party for their one-year old at a local children's park only to find that the park was in need of repair and this upset them. In particular, the parents remembered a giant Humpty Dumpty from their childhood which was no longer on display. They decided to donate $20,000 to the park and just like magic it is a news story.

I met the family at the park and along with someone from the parks department I asked to see the Humpty Dumpty (from this point on to be referred to as Mr. Dumpty) which was being held captive in what they called "the bone yard". I explained that I wanted to shoot a picture of the family with Mr Dumpty but the guy from the park and the family insisted that Dumpty was in bad shape and that they really diddn't want their picture taken with him while he was in that kind of shape. One of those "We would rather remember him as he was, not as he is" things I guess.

I insisted on at least seeing Mr. Dumpty so I could at least get a mug shot of the poor guy and they led me into the bone yard. I made a few pictures of the giant egg and then out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of something even better. An abandoned tea cup ride with a pair of legs sticking out the top called to me. I began shooting which made the parks guy nervous. "Say, eh, that's not going to be in the paper now is it", he said. "I thought this was about the donation, let's go over to the sign in front of the park and get that group shot."

I told him the picture was for my Christmas card and shot for a couple more minutes before we all were herded out of the bone yard and I shot the family in front of the sign picture that will actually run in the paper.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

People keep telling me I should blog. I'm not sure I'll have the discipline to keep at this but for now I'll give it a try. The word blogging just sounds funny to me. It sounds like something that you would do after a bout with a dozen chili-cheese dogs and a six-pack of warm beer. "Dude, I'm having trouble walking today, I was in the bathroom all night blogging."

Speaking of skulls why is it that no one ever describes a persons physical appearance by commenting on their head? Just once I'd like to hear a guy describe a women by saying "That chick has the sexiest cranium I've ever seen. I' mean just check out that frontal lobe. Can you imagine what her medulla oblongata must look like?


Is it just me who thinks the crucifixion should come back in style?

Let's quit fooling ourselves and start making all toilet paper brown.

I need food.