Walking down Main this afternoon during my lunchtime constitutional, I was accosted by the usual crew of vagabonds hoping for a hand-out: the crazy, filthy guy who wears insulated ski pants year-round, regardless of the temperature (which is in the high 90s today; needless to say, it isn’t always your sense of sight that first detects Ski-Pants Dude); the pair of young buskers who manage to play their violins well enough to avoid giving passers-by the nails-on-chalkboard squirmies; and the overweight, greasy-haired woman who’s been claiming to be homeless and pregnant for about 18 months now.
But I also saw a new face along “panhandler’s row,” a youngish guy with no shirt, probably about college age, who looked fairly clean aside from a goatee that more closely resembled a shubbery than an actual beard. He sat on one of the large, decorative planters that line the street in this area, totally at ease in the shade of the tree overhead. Like so many others, he held a scrap of cardboard with an entreaty for cash scribbled on it in Magic Marker. But this guy, unlike so many others, went for humor instead of pathos. His sign read:

Running 4 Mayor. Campaign contributions welcome.

I had no change to give him, but I made eye contact and said, “That’s a good sign, at least.” He smiled back and nodded, like he was letting me in on some kind of secret…

I love this one:

UK military spokesman Major Mike Shearer said: “We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the [Basra] area [of Iraq].

Man-eating badgers? There’s a bio-weapon I haven’t heard about…

I’ve mentioned before that I still live in the house where I grew up. It’s an old home on an old street, so naturally it’s surrounded by massive old trees. For instance, the box-elder that stands at the center of the Bennion Compound was fully mature when my parents moved in 38 years ago; my guess is that it’s 60 years old if it’s a day, possibly more. It’s a huge tree, composed of three separate trunks that diverge out away from a thick base in a sort of triangular configuration.
When I was a kid, my dad built me the coolest treehouse anyone in town had ever seen, with three levels nestled between the triple trunks and connected by gangway stairs, a fireman’s pole and a rope swing, and, on the top deck, a good-sized shack with a shingled roof, an electric light, and an old car radio for entertainment.

At some point in the tree’s long life, someone wrapped a chain around its base; the tree eventually grew around and absorbed the chain, so that the end of it emerged from the bark as if it were a perfectly organic and natural thing. I recall an occasion when Dad attached a come-along to that chain and fastened the other end to a wrecked car; he did the same thing on the opposite side of the car, running a cable from a second come-along around another tree that used to stand behind the house. Then, bit by bit, one click of the rachet mechanism at a time, he put that car under tension until the twisted frame gradually straightened. By the time he was finished, the car was as good as new.

I mention these anecdotes to illustrate how that box-elder has always symbolized eternal strength in my mind, unbudging and resolute, the Rock of Gibralter of trees. If I’d bothered to think about it, I probably would have told you that since it was there before I was born, it would most likely be there after I’m gone.

So imagine my surprise and confusion when I got home from work on Friday evening and saw this:

All that greenery there on the ground is the eastern-most of the three trunks; it snapped and fell at some point during the day, probably not long before I got home, judging from how moist and green the leaves still were. That orange thing you can see in the midst of it all is my dad’s little Bobcat tractor; there’s also a couple of those portable canvas garages under all that green, one of which contains a 1957 Chevy.

More photos after the cut.

Continue Reading…

It’s been a crazy couple of days leading into tomorrow’s holiday, and I haven’t been able to come around this place much. (You may have noticed. Or not. Probably not, but I like to delude myself that people hang on my every word and miss me when I’m not pontificating.) I’m just about to shut down Ye Olde PC and head out for a party, but I wanted to quickly mention that my good buddy Mike Chenoweth, better known in these parts as “Chenopup,” has decided to give this blog thing another try. You may remember that he toyed with blogging once before, only to get distracted by so-called “Real Life” and give up on it after a few entries. Hopefully, he’ll be able to find more of a balance point this time around.

Show him some support and go check out his shiny new web site, won’t you? And have a happy Fourth of July, too! Throw another brat on the barby for me…

Wired.com has a short interview with Patton Oswalt, who voices the lead rat in the new Pixar film, Ratatouille. Oswalt, whom you may recognize from the TV sitcom The King of Queens, is a self-proclaimed geek who is proud of the fact that his midlife crisis consists of taking up Dungeons and Dragons instead of buying a sports car. I like how he differentiates between nerds and geeks:

A lot of nerds aren’t aware they’re nerds. A geek has thrown his hands up to the universe and gone, “I speak Klingon — who am I fooling? You win! I’m just gonna openly like what I like.” Geeks tend to be a little happier with themselves.

Based on his definition of the term, I think I’ve finally reached the geek stage. During the past ten years, it seems like I’ve been constantly debating non-geeks and even fellow fanboys over the things that matter to me — for example, you can search this blog for my entries on Battlestar Galactica and read the comment-war I had with a detractor of the original series — and I’ve finally reached the point where I’m sick of feeling like I have to defend the stuff I love. I love the crap that I love. I admit it, and I’m not so worried about trying to justify it anymore.

Patton is right: I feel much better now…

Man, the crap just keeps on coming today! Hope Cranky Robert is around, especially for this next item:

I myself seem to be immune to the allure of this particular device — I can’t help but think of how greasy and icky that nifty touch interface will get after you hold it up to your face to make a call on a really hot day — but I know some people around my place of employment who are salivating like Pavlov’s infamous pooch.

As usual, click the pic for a better view…

Interesting… just out of curiosity, I ran Simple Tricks through that blog rating thingie again. I’m a PG now. Apparently using the word “whore” bumps you up a notch on the offense-o-meter:

Several people have asked me in the past few days how Shadow, the Bennion Family Dog, is doing with his cancer treatments. It sounds kind of stiff to say it like this, but I want to thank you all for your concern and interest. It really means a lot to me and my folks. The short answer is, he’s doing surprisingly well.

Continue Reading…

Just some things that have occurred to me in the past couple of days:

1. When you go shopping for pillows, they come in three categories, for those who sleep on the backs, those who sleep on their stomachs, and those who sleep on their sides. What are you supposed to buy if you tend to sleep somewhere in between two categories?
2. Why is Pat Benatar’s most enduring song (based on how often I hear it on the radio compared with her other hits) “Love is a Battlefield”? If we’re talking kick-ass songs about feminine empowerment in the face of male ass-hattery, I much prefer “Treat Me Right.” If we’re talking just plain kick-ass songs, then “Shadows of the Night” is my vote. And if it’s that mushy, mid-80s, proto-new-agey vibe, then I’d rather hear — god help me — “We Belong.” But “Love is a Battlefield”? Really?
3. Finally, why do Jedi dress like Tatooine moisture farmers? Or is it that Tatooine moisture farmers are a bunch of backwoods posers who dress like Jedi in hopes of seeming slightly more sophisticated? (The real-world answer, of course, is that Ben, Luke, and Owen all dress like the feudal Japanese characters in the Kurosawa movies that G. Lucas wanted to reference, and the look was retained in the prequels for the sake of continuity. But who’s interested in talking about the real world?)

That is all. Discuss amongst yourselves and get back to me…

Driving home from The Girlfriend’s tonight, I could see a pair of wildfires burning on the mountain ahead, the one which separates the Salt Lake Valley from Utah Valley to the south. It’s a sight I’ve seen just about every summer for as long as I can remember — hot weather combined with a careless cigarette butt or a dry lightning strike is a simple equation — but it never loses its eerie, unworldly quality. That particular mountainside hasn’t been developed yet, you see, so there are no street or house lights up there; it’s effectively invisible at night, except when there’s a fire. Then there’s a glowing orange smudge that seems to float in the sky, or sometimes it backlights the hulking shape of the mountain itself. Geek that I am, I can’t help but think of Lord of the Rings whenever I see this effect. All the image needs is a psychic vision of a flaming eyeball and a creepy, growling voice telling me that it sees me…

Of course, I was listening to “Every Breath You Take” tonight, so maybe that’s close enough to the Voice of Sauron to count. That always seemed like such a nice romantic tune back in the Awesome ’80s, before we all noticed the unnerving stalkerish overtones that linger underneath the catchy bass line like the stink of burning sagebrush…