Cat's Out of the Bag

Heh! Ok, I'm not going to climb to the summit of Everest. That is $30,000 and extra appendages that I don't have to spend.

However, a friend of mine and I are working through all the mind-numbing paperwork and details and headed to Tibet. Once in Lhasa, we'll be heading to Base Camp, and very likely from there, Advanced Base Camp.

Now, we'll be on the less crowded side of the mountain (North Col/North Ridge Route). This is the route the George Leigh Mallory attempted in 1921 - 1924.

I love climbing, love-love-love the mountains and will never have enough respect for Everest, but sitting behind a desk all week and paying porters to carry my crap up while I suck bottles of oxygen that I'll leave as litter on the mountain isn't exactly what I'd call good climbing form--at least for me anyway. I'm going to be content sitting at the bottom of this beast looking with my own eyes at the actual, literal top of the world.

I've been so excited, I can hardly sleep at night! I'll pretty much be gone the entire month of May.

More later...

Big News

I'm not ready to divulge the entire story yet, as the details are being worked out, but I am getting ready to embark on a HUGE adventure.

What's that? You want a hint?

Ok, hereya go:

I'm Jack's Raging Bile Duct

I reserve the right to reverse my earlier claim of refraining from writing politics. Well, then again, I've pretty much refrained from writing in general, and from what I hear on the street, that has been very welcome. But really, it wasn't that I was making a promise, it is just that I was bored with about writing about it at the time.

However, over the past few months, I've grown increasingly frustrated by our adolescent culture--I don't care if you are on the Right or the Left, most of the behavior and discourse about the central challenge to our way of being has been about as serious as a Monty Python skit and about as deep as a water-hole in middle of sub-Saharan Africa.

Blame, blame, blame. Not-a-one who takes responsibility.

Everyone is finding fault with everyone else but themselves. Meanwhile, our troops are slugging it out in Iraq and Afghanistan with some of the most evil bastards to ever walk the face of the earth. They continue to fight, and fight well, while our public continues to be more interested in discoursing about Britney's snatch, or the Donald vs Rosie. Our press and our media feed it, sometimes through negligence, and sometimes through outright ideologically, partisan nefariousness. This is particularly dangerous because not only do these people speak, the speak LOUDLY, 24-hours-a-day.

Our Congress--Republicans and Democrats before and after the mid-term elections--are more interested in securing enough votes for the next election and have postured the war to the death. Insight hasn't historically been Congress's strong suit, but their actions have been purely selfish in a time where a little discretion and self-control is needed while our troops are in harm's way.

In the middle of this, we have a Commander and Chief who, for no reason I can substantively see, has NOT been the cowboy his critics claimed he was. For the life of me, I haven't figured out why he didn't just embrace it and scare the living hell out of every regime in the Middle East that has declared proxy war on us since the 70's. We are not in a war against Iraq, we are in a war in Iraq against al-Qaeda, Syria, Iran and various other elements of radical Islamism that continues to collectively form the biggest threat, not just to the West, but to the entire World. Iraq is the epicenter, but for some reason, this idea is not being communicated from the White House, even though there is enough evidence out there that demonstrates that the President understands this.

There is plenty of blame to go around, and I wholeheartedly accept my decadent and lazy attitude in this. However, I'm officially on the record as being heavy with disappointment with how we have responded when "the going got tough." I'm not Andrew Sullivan-like, emotionally disappointed, I'm geniunely aggrieved that we are going to retreat before any of the real fighting has even started. With history as my guide, I'm certain that the real fight will happen; the only question being a matter of "when."

I wish Patton was still alive, so he could take his gloves off and collectively slap us in the face as we sit sobbing in our self-pity while good men and women are fighting in the front of this battle without hesitation or complaint.

God Bless the troops who continue to carry our cause on their backs, because we sure as hell aren't going to do it.

Imagine 2.0

The ability of human's to imagine and dream is one of the many, many reasons that our species stands apart from the rest here on Earth (and for that matter, all those non-living bastards on the moon, Venus and Mars too). These capabilities are amoral, and I'm not going to write about that, since we all know from our history books that dreams and imagination gave us the Sistine Chapel along with Concentration Camps.

My topic is a little more user friendly. Sometimes, imagination and dreams can interfere with everyday reality.

Case Study

Today, I was talking with a co-worker about the intricacies of Monte Carlo Simulation; or we were talking about the price of Happy Hour Beer at John Collins, I can't remember. Regardless, at some point during this conversation, my mouth, which is normally a willing and eager participant in the process of drinking coffee, gets a little lazy. Now, because of this stumbling, semi-hot, but mostly lukewarm coffee ends up dribbling down my face and onto my hand.

"Captain Dipshit, your ship has arrived, sir!"

So, I cordially excuse myself, and somewhere during the 16.5 second walk to the kitchen sink, I start thinking about how I am going to run through the meeting I'm about to have in an hour. Naturally, I'm dreaming about how I will coordinate the greatest meeting in history, which would leave the participants stammering and thumping their chests as if Winston Churchill had walked in and told his War Cabinet about his latest plans to whoop some Nazi ass. I think I even managed to fit a guitar solo in this imagined meeting as well.

When you have left reality and entered your mind, your body clicks into autopilot. It remembers the last thing that you consciously told it to do and starts filing through the many, many iterations of various scenarios it has been put into in the past, offers a conclusion as to what your conscious intentions ought to be, and if you haven't regained full consciousness yet, executes this conclusion. Normally, this is very helpful. We wouldn't be able to drive a car down the block without the ability to function while disctracted.

However, this isn't always the case.

As I was dreaming about ripping a shredding guitar solo that would not only get me promoted to Director of Badass, but also get me the phone number of the little hottie who insists on wearing jeans that look more like body paint, my subconsious had remembered that I was going to sink to wash my hands, but the results of the simulation determined something a little different.

Within .005 seconds, I realized that I wasn't a) lifting the cold water handle on faucet and cleaning my hands, or b) lifting the hot water handle on the water purifier to fill my Korean Ginseng Tea for the first of typically three trips during the day. At this point, the sensation from my hand, which felt like a thousand piranhas mistaking my flesh for, well, someone else's more tasty flesh, was the sensation of BURNING! HOT! SCALDING! WATER SOAKING INTO MY SKIN!

There will be no guitar solos today, only 1st degree burns and the knowlegde that the modeling software in my head really needs to upgrade to 2.0. Either that, or I could just snap out of my head and pay attention.

A Grim Milestone - From the Roaring Twenties, into the Dirty Thirties

Sure has been quiet around here.

Welcome to 2007 everyone. I've enjoyed this year so far, and unlike quite a few stories that have been pettled in the press that I've been reading, I didn't have any ill feelings towards 2006--it was personally a great year for me. The world might be going to hell in a handbasket, but I've got my lunch packed up, my shoes tied tight, just hoping I don't get in...a...fight...

So, its been a week of lists and milestones, and keeping in the general spirit of season, I've got a big milestone that I'll be reaching tomorrow. I will be turning Thirty (aka 30, XXX, |||| |||| |||| |||| |||| ||||) years-old.

I debated the self-indulgence that comes with announcing one's own birthday. Thus I'd avoid exposing my readership to any obligatory offerings of congratulatons and bad singing, along with any associated guilty feelings about not remembering to buy me that 1968 Telecaster that I've wanted for five years. Then I remembered that I'm a propritor of a blog, which is by its very nature self-indulgent, so my feelings of false humility were smashed and quickly replaced with anticipation as I hoped, HOPED, that one of you out there might just have enough means to bring that six stringed mermaid to my eager and ichy ten fingers.

Did I say mermaid? I meant guitar.

Anyway, how do I feel about kissing my twenties good-bye?

Good riddance. Your twenties are filled with insecurities, foolish endeavors, cheap booze, loose women and piles of laundry that only get done when you can't shut your closet door. I'm glad that the accumulation of ten years of experience, and the residual procurement of more resources, have helped me to securely engage in more insanely foolish, but deliberate endeavors, consume more expensive booze, interact with loose women who have brains, beauty and a future, and to have gained the awareness of wash-and-fold cleaners.

It is about figuring how to somethings well and then doing them better.

It is also about using more commas in run-on sentence that would create a mess in your English teacher's stomach that could also be done with 6-day old sushi and gallon of milk.

As my twenties now close, I can look in the mirror and stand proud. I'm feeling better than ever and it is time to celebrate. There is going to be a rather rowdy party commemorating this event, and if you can find someway to get yourself out here, you are coordially invited. Please make sure that you do your absolute best to be on your worst behavior and that you'll thoughtfully consider donating a 1968 Telecaster to the Ten Fingers, 6 Strings Fund.

If you can't do that, a merma...I mean, a shot of whiskey will do.

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UPDATE: Due to the multiple festivities celebrating this milestone, it might be about sennight for me to return to writing here. In the meantime, know that I love you ferociously and will see you soon.