obfuscated.org

DUDE: This is quite a pad you got here, man. Completely unspoiled. TREEHORN: What’s your drink, Dude? DUDE: White Russian, thanks. How’s the smut business, Jackie? TREEHORN: I wouldn’t know, Dude. I deal in publishing, entertainment, political advocacy, and… DUDE: Which one was Logjammin’? TREEHORN: Regrettably, it’s true, standards have fallen in adult entertainment. It’s video, Dude. Now that we’re competing with the amateurs, we can’t afford to invest that little extra in story, production value, feeling. He taps his forehead with one finger. TREEHORN: People forget that the brain is the biggest erogenous zone. DUDE: On you, maybe. He hands him the drink. TREEHORN: Of course, you do get the good with the bad. The new technology permits us to do exciting things with interactive erotic software. Wave of the future, Dude. 100% electronic. DUDE: Uh-huh. Well, I still jerk off manually. TREEHORN: Of course you do.

Alex and The Kid, juggling
Originally uploaded by corey_porter.

Lindsey, Alex, The Kid and I went apple picking (photo set) with some friends this last Sunday. It was a nice, sunny day, and a good time was had by all.

While my parents, sister and sister’s boyfriend were in town, we had our traditional poker night (photo set). Per usual, it was great fun. The Kid ran away with the game, winning hand after hand after hand, rarely even knowing what he held. It was truly remarkable. The game would have been over within half an hour with him holding all the chips if we didn’t keep stealing them from him and redistributing them to the rest of the family.

Easily the most amusing moment of the evening came when Lindsey and Alex were involved in a big pot. Alex had Lindsey — who did not want a call — covered. You can see the results of the hand below.

The Kid, carving (close up)
Originally uploaded by corey_porter.

Lindsey, The Kid and I carved jack-o-lanterns (photo set) yesterday. It was great fun, and we got two rad jack-o-lanterns and a big bowl full of roasted pumpkin seeds out of the deal. Yay!

Ignignokt: Fryman, we’re full of religion now. Everyone, please bow your heads and pretend to be serious. Err: Do it or I’ll bow them for you. Ignignokt: You have deeply offended us and our God, and our God is a god of vengeance. And horror. Err: And action. Ignignokt: Our god is an Indian that turns in to a wolf. Err: Man, that’s Wolfen, man. Ignignokt: Well, the Wolfen will come for you with his razor. Meatwad: Guys, did you say that it would be easy to get whatever I want… like a ten-speed, because that’s what I really want. Ignignokt: Getting it is easy. Filling it with illegal substances and sending it across the border is not. Err: Yeah, see those dogs, they can smell anything. So you got to kick them in the throat! Meatwad: He now, guys, look. I do not wanna do anything illegal here. But I would kill somebody in front of their own mama to get a ten-speed. And if anybody testifies against me, I’ll gouge their eyes out. Err: Let’s go get drunk and rip off a ten-speed. Meatwad: We’ll get a basket and a horn on the handle. Err: We’ll set it on fire and wreck it into children… and laugh at their parents. And then we’ll get on the… Oh, man, I’m toasted! Ignignokt: The innocent shall suffer. Big time. Err: Come on, let’s go while I’m feeling it.

Kitsch
Originally uploaded by barbfi.

In high-school I went camping in New Mexico with my Boy Scout troop. We would hike anywhere from five to fifteen miles every day over some really beautiful mountains. It was a lot of fun.

About an hour after we went to sleep one night, I heard some noises outside of the tent. My tent-mate, Stephen, looked over at me, as he clearly heard the noises as well. Panicked hand gestures started flying in the tent. Somehow, we managed to communicate without sound that we both agreed that there was a bear just outside the tent — clearly not a good situation.

The first thing you have to understand about North American Black Bears is that they’re possibly the most lazy creatures on the planet. If they have to lift a finger to do something, odds are that they won’t do it. That considered, the most common prescription for dealing with aforementioned creatures is to make as much noise as humanly possible, letting them know that whoever you are, whatever you’re doing, you’re trouble and that maybe they should go on to deal with something easier.

We screamed. At the top of our lungs, we yelled and hollered and whooped and carried on. We stopped and listened, and it was still right there, outside of our tent. Again, clearly not a good situation.

We took a second go at screaming. Equally loud, but with a fire that we simply didn’t have the first time around. That’s what we needed — fire — to make the bear go away. Otherwise it would rip open our tent and eat us.

The rest of our camp took issue with our screaming in the middle of the night. They all had to wake up and hike ten miles with sixty pounds on their backs the next day and would like their rest, thank you very much. What on earth were we screaming for, any way?

“There’s a bear right outside our tent!” This seemed perfectly reasonable to us. Why not yell and hoot and holler in this situation? It was the correct thing to do.

We heard a tent unzip, presumably to get a look at the bear that was about to eat us alive. “Yeah, you sure do have a bear there. It must be six, eight point.” There was much laughing at us after that, but we went to sleep anyway, secure in the knowledge that the deer probably wouldn’t eat us.

Colors at "Park Merfeld"
Originally uploaded by Wattwurm’s View.

When I was a kid I use to go to Loose park in the winter with my mother and my sister to go ice skating on the frozen pond. It didn’t freeze over every year, and sometimes when it did the ice wasn’t solid enough to skate on. Those years when everything worked out perfectly were pretty cool, though.

One thing you could expect when the pond at Loose park did freeze over properly is a camera crew from the local TV news showing up to do a story. (This is what passes for *news* in Kansas City.) They would always want to interview the one kid who actually knew how to ice skate (there was always one) and the two kids pretending to play hockey. They mostly left the families alone, though.

I decided one year that I was going to be on the TV news from Loose park. I didn’t have it in me to learn how to properly ice skate — that’d be a whole lot of effort. I didn’t know anybody with hockey sticks, so that wasn’t much of an option either. The plan that I settled on was wandering back and forth on foot in the background of every shot they took, hoping that I’d make it in to something that they would show on the air.

At the end of the day, my strategy worked. I was on the far left side of the frame for a fraction of a second at the very end of the segment. The news coverage of yours truly was a bit underwhelming, I’ll admit, but it was nice to have set a goal and accomplished it.

Seattle’s symbol
Originally uploaded by Dean Forbes.

It’s a little-known fact that the Space Needle is the hub of all communications for the World Supergovernment-Alien Alliance. It’s true. I learned this when I was in Seattle for a conference a couple of years ago.

I don’t know if this is the best place to talk to the aliens. There are a lot of nerds in Seattle. Microsoft is up there. I think Google has a facility there as well. You’d think that with that many geeks around, somebody would have stumbled upon the such a vital link in the doomsday pact between man and alien. I guess not, though, because it hasn’t been on the news.

If it were up to me, I’d center all communications in one of three places: Madison, WI, Lawrence, KS, or Berkeley, CA. What do they have in common? Well, they’re all college towns, they’re all peopled largely by strangeo’s, and they all excel at manufacturing controversy. I don’t think anybody would notice a bunch of black helicopters arriving at a facility to transmit ultra-low frequency messages in to space. It would fit right in.

Hick On The Hill
Originally uploaded by aqui-ali.

I use to know a guy who had a truck like this. It didn’t run very well. Whenever it would rain he would have to sacrifice livestock to make it start. This was inconvenient because we lived in a city and livestock was hard to come by.

It’s handy that the truck was, well, a truck, because schleping out to the sticks to find livestock would be a bitch in a Civic. You couldn’t even fit a goat in one of those things without it tearing up the interior. I bet some people would try to put chickens in the back of a Civic — especially if it was a hatchback. That would be a mistake. They won’t stay there. What were they thinking, putting chickens in the back of a Civic?

We were never shot at while hunting for sacrifice-ready livestock in the busted up pickup. You’d think that being out in Erie and Newton and Hayseville with city slicker tags and city slicker clothes and city slicker attitudes in a busted up truck trying to coax a llama or an ostrich out of its yard would draw more attention and perhaps ire. It did not. Country folk just don’t care about morons in a broken down truck. They’re wise that way. The country folk, that is.

Most of the time we didn’t bring back any livestock. We’d drive around rural Kansas, not stealing things, maybe stop by the Quick Trip for a cool, refreshing Squantrum of soda (or pop: Kansas does not have a cola-nomenclature preference the way Chicago or Los Angeles does). When it would rain we’d have to take my car, which was much less exciting on account of it would always start, even in the rain.

One day, after a particularly good thunderstorm, the truck refused to start. My friend wasn’t in the mood for killing animals so he got a loan at the credit union and bought a used Grand Am. It wasn’t nearly as much fun as the truck, but it had a better stereo (with a tape deck).

Holy shit, we hired Tom Coates (of plasticbag.org fame). The ‘Hoo really does seem to be going after the social media rock stars. Flickr, the Yahoo Research Berkely folk, Upcoming.org, now Tom. Damn. Great news.