Auto Da Fe

Now this is my kinda heatwave!

Greg:

The South has risen again, right on the west coast of Washington, where we are sweltering under an Al-Gore-nodding-his-head-with-I-told-ya-so-smugness heat wave of nearly Orleanean proportions. (And then the author was crushed under a falling stack of modifiers. -Ed.) I have been forced to leave my windows open each night, which has done a great job of welcoming in (and amplifying) the hoots and bellows of the sweating, gleeful Chinatownians. Somehow the 90-degree temperatures and giant flapjacks of 100% humidity falling from the sky bring out their best. Under such conditions, they are wont to expound loudly and at length upon their personal virtue, the size of their man-parts; the fecklessness and moral turpitude of their enemies, as well as their enemies' significant others, parentage, etc. - late into the steaming, acrid night.

Fawk. This is not just a heat wave. This is a trial - a trial by fire which I have failed egregiously. I have proven myself to be both a pisser and a moaner. Can you mail me something that I can stab myself with? They don't let me have sharp stuff because I'm "depressive", if you can believe that. I have to shave with a cat's tongue and cut my bread with that one magical word from Dune.

As you can plainly see, the heat has made me go completely mad. But it's not the heat, really. It's the lack of sleep. And the fact that I feel like an old man because I'm whining about the heat. Just last weekend, I was laboring - laboring, I tell you! - with a pack at nearly 9,000 feet at 87 degrees F. And did I whine? Nay. Perhaps because I couldn't summon the breath. But more likely because I was in the toolies, huffing the pine-rich air, frolicking with Don Lagarto and his pals by the shores of Crater Lake. I've found that stunning natural beauty can make you choke down a shitload of heat without complaining.

So that is why, dear brother, I have decided either to a) stab myself in the whoknowswhere (not likely) or b) purchase myself a piece of dirt somewhere up in the high pineys whereupon to swelter joyfully in the summer months. The heat has driven me to it. Spending summers withstanding blazing sciroccos of dumpster stench is not as appealing as it once was, and the tonic effects of nature are too self-evident on my heat-knackered corpse to ignore.

To that end, I have alerted John L. Scott Emerald-Award-Winning agent Gloria Lee of my intentions, and am arranging viewings of 20-acre parcels within the Olympic National Forest. I've found one that seems to be unbelievably cheap, so she is going to do a little research to find out exactly how much nuclear waste is stored on the premises, exactly how much anthrax is still living in the soil, and whether the ancient Salish curse in those parts applies to this particular piece of land. Those issues resolved, I plan on first completely freaking out, and then second, crapping out the largest stack of $20s I can muster for a down payment. Then I'll march up there, throw down a double-wide, and subscribe to Guns 'N' Ammo.

I'll let you know how this one turns out.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

David W. Miller Junior Of Somewhere In Michigan - We Thank You!

Could David W. Miller, Jr. of Somewhere In Michigan be one of these
merry, banjo-plucking coots? Perhaps we'll never know.

Greg:

I don't have much time, so I gotta make this short. Just got back from a 4-day vacation at Crater Lake - details to follow in a later installment. The remainder of this epistle is brought to you by:

[Drum roll!]

DAVID W. MILLER JR. of SOMEWHERE IN MICHIGAN who, for God knows what reason, purchased an EYE-SCORCHINGLY GREY "SQUIRRELS GRABBED MY NUTSACK" T-SHIRT from THE GREGMART! Thanks to D.W. Miller, Jr., The Gunn Family has now skyrocketed into a tax bracket that is $2 (American) higher than the one we were in before DWM-JR five-fingered his dad's credit card and illegitimately procured the finest garment in the whole line of GregMart's NutSackWear(tm). Why he purchased it, I have no idea. He's not on my direct mail list, nor does his name sound familiar.

(Hey wait - isn't he David W. Miller's kid? You and I are both from Michigan, after all. Maybe it is someone we know. Is it that Miller kid from over on Elizabeth Lake Boulevard who was always trying to get us to touch the dog - oh never mind. Probably not him. He'd be an old man by now.)

Perhaps he went Googling for keyword: nutsack. Perhaps we will never know. But we will be happy in our ignorance as we peel back one...two...two whole pictures of George Washington (or Barbara Bush, if you like), load them into the ice cream vending machine, retrieve our Lil' Giant Ice Cream Sandwiches from the lower tray, and thrill at the happy clinking of our two bits in change - which I will promptly donate to the first hobo I come across. I am already dizzy with my future largesse.

Now stay close because we're gonna move quickly through the rest of this, okay? I'm going to put bold headlines on this stuff so you can assimilate it easily. Here we go:

[Clog roll!]

WHAT YOU ARE READING IS NOT A BLOG. Surprised? Some were. The word "blog" is of course a truncation of the words "Web" and "log", neither of which accurately describes what you see before you here. This is correspondence from me (Thaddeus) to you (Gregory), after all. The fact that it is read by hundreds of others is a happy accident arising from the fact that I put it on the Internet, and then invited hundreds of people to read it. Who'd've thought they actually would? Anyway, if it's a log of anything, it's a log of correspondence, or a "correspondence log" which makes it in fact a "clog" - which is exactly how it will be referred to in the future. "Hey, have you seen Greg's clog?" Has a certain snappiness to it, don't it?

[Fudge roll!]

FACT: FUDGEPACKERS ACTUALLY PACK FUDGE. "Fudgepacker" - a slanderous epithet which you no doubt use with alarming frequency - is not what you thought it was either. Hiking in Crater Lake National Park last weekend, I saw the definitional paragon of fudgepacking, and it is this: two oxygen-starved, Hush-Puppy-wearing nerds at 8,500 feet on the side of Mount Scott, overwhelmed by the abundant beauty surrounding them, threw down their book bags (yes, book bags) and their jumbo-sized, Crater-Lake-Blue Gott bigmouth cooler jug with EZ-grip handle (yes, cooler jug - not pictured here), and tearing their button-down shirts from their chalky, chalky flesh, nearly flung themselves off a cornice and down a snowfield whilst shrieking in paroxysms of einfüling. In the melee, the entire contents of their luggage spilled forth onto the pumice trail - exposing, yes, an industrial-strength bag of chocolate fudge. Crapping you am I? Nay, I am not. If that's not fudgepacking, and if they're not fudgepackers, I don't know what is and what are. Now you can stop badgering the people over at See's Candies with those silly crank phone calls.

[Plug roll!]

THIS CLOG HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO YOU BY DAVID W. MILLER JR OF SOMEWHERE IN MICHIGAN.

[Cheers roll!]

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

Goal Achieved: Complete Whoredom

Chock Full O' Nutsack: Own the grail of Dear Gregory
schwag, the limited edition "Squirrels grabbed my
nutsack" 100% ceramic mug. Suitable for coffee,
tea, or - Greg's favorite - frosty cold absinthe.
Nab one now from The GregMart!

Greg:

Yes, that's you on a mug. Yes, it says "Squirrels grabbed my nutsack" on the side. Yes, I'm selling them. Yes, for money. But wait - before you start, let me say this: if Satan had given me a tail or the Power of Flight or the Ability to Smell Invisible People, I would've used all of them for good. However, He did not. He gave me a job in marketing instead. Therefore I had to put my marketing skills to good use somehow (he said, bending the definition of the word "good" until it made a twanging sound). It was inevitable. I had to create Dear Gregory schwag. And to sell that schwag, I had to open an online shop called The GregMart. The stupendous comedic power of your elementary school picture behove it. And that item came into my possession through no small amount of lies and world-championship-caliber wheedling, let me tell you. I mean, just look at it! Christ Jesus, it looks like you had to eat through a cowcatcher! Who would believe that picture after seeing you now? Answer: no one. Thus, it had to be made real and public. In short, if The GregMart did not exist, it would've been necessary to invent it. (-Voltaire.)

At this moment, GregMart's sole ware is this handsome ceramic mug with its priceless portrait and squirrel/groin-oriented humor, guaranteed to raise a smile on the face of the most hardened of Human Resources professionals. But as Jesus once said, pricelessness has its price, and that price is Only $12.99!

Certainly in the coming weeks - nay, days - I shall find more ways to capitalize on your - I mean - spread your face and fame worldwide. And you shall benefit! Hundreds upon dozens of people shall pour into Barney's Casino, Rib Shack & Whorehouse to hear your band and its unmistakably sloppydrunkrocknroll stylings. Tens of five persons will meander into Coldwell Banker Village Realty to purchase from your lovely wife Marie even the smallest piece of dirt whereupon you have trod. And you? You will bask in the glory of the buying public whilst sipping your morning brew from a mug which bears your own visage -just like the Queen of England does each and every day!

Yes, I've caved in to capitalism and I'm due a vituperative reading from any passage of Mao's lil' red book that you choose. But at the end of the day, what buys those frilly woolen under-drawers that you love so dearly better than cold hard American cash?

Yes, that's right - cord hald Japanese Yen.

Next in GregguMart! Crazy bucktooth gaijin say Eskwerrus grabbu mai nuttu sakku!

Sainthood For Calhoun!

Saint Haystack Calhoun
(dba Dr. Brian Graham, DC)
shown here giving the what-for to another
soon-to-be satisfied customer. If you support
sainthood for Calhoun as I do, please feel
free to circulate one of those Internet petitions
that are ever-so-popular these days. I would,
but I'm way too lazy and it's sunny outside
right now. Thank you. -TRG

Greg:

Okay so while I was mewling and puking in my last letter and saying that I hate my birthday, I forgot to mention one little thing and that is that I actually love my birthday. It's the anticipation of a horrible day based on a long-past event that should've been resolved long ago. It counfounds me every time. As the Dalai Lama says, "Fuck it". And so I shall. (See "Dalai Lama drops the f-bomb" in...uhh...I think it's the San Francisco Examiner or something. Anyway, I was there when it happened. -Ed.)

As an aside, my birthday turned out to be OSSUM, and featured one of the burliest pies I have ever seen in my life. I believe it was Bulletproof Rhubarb or something like that. I think the crew here at work purchased it at the local ironworks. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a bad pie. Much to the contrary. It was - how you say - robust. Imagine if you will, a tender rhubarb filling - not too tart, not too sweet - armored in foot-thick multgrain cookie, and latticed with an artfulness usually reserved for Islamic balconies. Now that's good eatin'!

And now, on to the digressions:

Sainthood for Calhoun! Sainthood, I say! He and his crack duo of International Health & Wellness Ninjas (Dr. Mark "Drop And Give Me 20" Grovan, and masseuse Sinithia "The Good Pain Train") have relieved an agony so immense, words like "ohmigawdmyfreakin'backjustkillmekillmekillmeplease!" cannot begin to describe it. I was on the verge of letting Senator Ted Stevens himself open my lower spine for drilling until Calhoun & Cohorts threw down the indescribable whammy that restored me to the spritely-stepping youth you see before you. (Video portion of this letter not available in all areas. Consult local listings for details. "Stepping spritely" may not be legal in certain Red States.)

So here's the deal. The Catholics are loaded up on saints, right? And they're unlikely to introduce a new one right now, what with all the red-hats filibustering to canonize dead-ish former pope John Paul ex-post-haste-o. However, the Episcopalians have no saints whatsoever (do they?), at least none that I know of - none that weren't purchased from SaintMart, the Catholic Saint 'n' Martyr Supply Store. So that means there's an opportunity for us to give the Episcopalians their own original saint: St. Calhoun, patron saint of chiropractors. All we have to do is get Dad to don his clerics and ply key members of the diocese with Christian Brothers Sherry. It's a slam dunk, Mister President! Hand Calhoun a robe and and a nimbus!

And speaking of nimbae, it's a completely spotless day in Seattle - 70 degrees and sunshine - which means the hordes of dysthymic locals are pissed to the gills, and the tourists are slobbering on themselves while they power-dawdle every crosswalk and pathway in the city limits. Time to find a rock to sun myself on before the sky slams shut again.

Cheers, give my best to Marie, and have a happy 4th.

-Thaddeus

Screw My Birthday Already, Part 2

A detail of one of forty-eight tiles from my son Aaron's project titled
"Take Eon Home". Acrylic paint on pressboard. Most awesome
Father's Day present I ever got.

Greg:

It's my birthday. Fucking hell. I've said it once before and I'll say it again. I hate my birthday. Screw it.

Well actually, let me clarify that just a little bit. What I don't like is the one day a year that has an infinite potential to make any one of us feel completely forgotten. Although I'm sure my wife would never let that happen, the dread of that possibility is - I don't know how else to say it. It makes me angry. I get angry because the possibility even exists, and that I have to be reminded of it every year. And if this whole thing is making me angry because of that bullshit-anniversarial-recurrent-past-whatever-it-is that my ninth birthday went by completely unnoticed, that seems downright maudlin and retarded and a self-centered pity party and why shouldn't I just get over it? I am a grown-ass man. I have grey hair, fer crissakes. I have an adult child whose job it is to forget my birthday just like I forget our Dad's birthday every year. (What is it - December 13th or 4th or something? I always get it confused with Sgt. Rock's birthday, and by the time I've sorted it out, both of their birthdays have passed and it's Baby Jesus' birthday, and God knows I can't fuck that one off or I'm doomed.)

So let me just leave that for the time being and get on to a cheerier topic, like the beating that you witnessed the other night.

Man. I don't even know what to say. Watching someone get beaten within an inch of their life is a hard thing to witness. It's even worse when it's a fight between two people that you've been close to for the past four years. As you know, I've studied agression and empathy a great deal, and I still don't know what to say about it other than I'm sorry it happened. I don't doubt you one bit when you tell me were it not for the intervention of several people, someone would've been beaten to death.

There are all kinds of things that I could tell you about aggression, like the fact that both the perpetrators and the victims of abusive violence sustain psychological damage from it. That still doesn't explain away the sickening mass that you have to digest when you witness these things, or the sheer helplessness you must've felt that night in the presence of a seemingly unquenchable force.

I know how it feels because I was the only kid in the family who didn't get hit. Growing up, I watched all my siblings take beatings - including you, of course - but I never got one. I've been in counseling for 25 years now. I must've gone through the whole "survivor's guilt" talk with a over a dozen counselors by now. While it makes intellectualizing the subject more comfortable, as Anthony Burgess once said, “The scientific approach to life is not really appropriate to states of visceral anguish”. That "sick" feeling never seems to go away, no matter how much I try to explain it to myself. I've written a paper and read thousands of pages on the subject of aggression, so I can tell you everything about the how of it. Although I'm a full grown man, I still have the cold stomach of a terrified child in the presence of that maddeningly unanswerable question of why.

Growing up, I remember hearing the phrase a right to be angry over and over again. I can understand a person feeling that they should not be denied the opportunity to express themselves. That's one thing. What I disagree with in that phrase is the idea of rights, which is a different issue entirely. Anger is a state of being, just like other emotional states. Logically speaking, right and entitlement have nothing to do with it. It's like saying that ice has a right to be ice. The concept of rights implies an entitlement to practice an ethic or carry out a certain action because it is morally or legally fitting. So if you have a right to be angry, then you can use that as an ethical basis for or defense of - hell, you name it. He made me angry, I have a right to be angry, my right entitles me to visit harm on the source of my anger, therefore I - beat my kid, kicked that guy's ass, killed dozens of unarmed civilians in an open field. I am acutely aware of the self-justifying properties of anger from both a cognitive and a neurological perspective. That's why I'm so careful with my own.

Man oh man, where does all this cheer come from? What merry little bird sings so sweetly within my soul as to produce these lilting phrases from mine own lips? I swear if I go on any further, this letter is going to become as dire as a Chekov comedy. "But wait. Here's the funny part: he dies."

Anyway, thanks for listening as usual. I know you don't drink much if at all, but one thing I'd like you to do in honor of my birthday if you would is to get drunk as a lord on several Ketel One 'n' cranberrys. Give 'em a twist of lime as well - which I believe would make them technically a Cape Codder. I'm quite a fan of the Cape Cod style of architecture. Likewise, I was once a world-class alcoholic who often dreamed of being drunk as a lord inside my very own 2-story Cape Cod dwelling, so I believe that would make a birthday libation in this style utterly appropriate.

Cheers - and I mean that - and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

Happy Farter's Day!

How we practice Tough Love at the Gunn household.

Greg:

You are no doubt smitten by my waggish play on "Father's Day" in the title of this letter. My reasoning: what is more memorable about fathers than their boyish glee at All Things Digestive - to wit, bodily noises - and jokes thereabout? Who doesn't think of "father" without thinking of "Hey, c'mere 'n' pull my finger!" Who does not hear the word "father" without recalling such ribald classics of the comedy genre as "didjahearthewunnabout the lady water-skier who fell offa her skis an' got a medal in the hunnert-yard DOUCHE!? Har-hur-WHEEZE!" So yeah, Father's Day, the day when men all over the world are reminded to not grow up. If men actually grew up into men, what a tragedy that would be, no? Or if not no, then yes? Which is my point exactly. Wait for it. It'll come to you.

I am so drunk on sugar right now it's unbelievable. The pie in the commissary here at work has got to be at least 96.6% sugar. But as they say, the first rule of Pie Club is: nobody talks about Pie Club. So I shall shamefully continue to eat my pie in the dark while the room begins to spin, and I shall cry not for help, tho' the sugar-beasts torment me.

Which brings me to my son, without whom I would not be a father, but just some random strange guy who kept calling him to ask him how he was, if he was eating enough, and if for the Love of Baby-fawking-Jesus he was going to mow the fawking lawn before Henry-fawking-Morton-fawking-Stanley sticks his limey neck out of the boscage and doffs his fawking pith helmet at me. He makes me proud, the boy does, with his penchant for enterpreneurship, even though he's in the midst of learning some hard lessons at the moment. No one can fully fathom the capacity of the human soul for unmitigated feats of douchebaggery until one has gone into business for oneself and had a bad client. I know. I've had 'em. To use the words of a certain character from a certain movie, "they f*ck you and they f*ck you and just when you think it's over, that's when the real f*cking begins!" Not only do they cause you grief, they cost you thousands of dollars as well (but only thousands if you're lucky). I've been commiserating with him on the phone, reminding him that as much as he's been genuinely aggrieved, and as much as he'd like like to punch this guy squarely in the "c", punching people squarely in the "c" is specifically proscribed by the Revised Code of Washington. As satisfying as it may be, it will not get you your money. It may, on the other hand, get you a free stay at the Gray Bar Hotel, along with a complimentary Hoovering of your pockets. I must say this though - he's learning lessons at 18 that I was learning at 30. He's way ahead of any curve that I established.

And now I'm reminded that our own dear Dad was also inclined to the enterpreneureal, what with the gas station and the bed and breakfast business, of course with a little cash to fill in the cracks from Jesus, Inc. And you and the wife hanging out your shingle as Genuine Nevada Dirt Peddlers - there's some of that enterpreneureal DNA at work right there. Not to mention John and Tom's foray into the Peddling of Augmented Cognition as further evidence of genetic expression. Don't we have some innkeepers and storekeepers and enterprising boozehounds back there in Retford, Nottinghamshire as well? And didn't our ancestor Charles Ives sell insurance or some damn thing? So as I continue to wax nostalgio-patriarchal, it seems the boy has plucked a long and noble cord that runs back to the day our first Scottish ancestor pinched his first farthing, and I say weell doon, laddy. 'T'a'in't easy 't'all, but if you make it, the glory's all yours. And if not, well - I can still offer to hold his head while he pukes.

And now - drunk on sugar and nearly in an insulin coma - I will leave you with this short and pointless story. I went camping in The Most Beautiful Place On Earth last weekend. As you know, I am completely manic when it comes to coffee. So suffice it to say, I took great pains to transport a very exacting amount of my own special grind out into el quinto piño. Heaven forfend that I should miss out on my morning coffee. Me without morning coffee is a frightening prospect, even to a bear. So here I am, in the bosom of the wild wood, with my precisely measured, perfectly ground beans sitting in the bottom of my brand-new space-age (wide open) French press mug (with the top off)...and I'm watching the morning glow illuminate the long strands of moss and listening to the music of the mountain jays and the chipmunks and the tiny, tiny bears, and listening to the thudding of my contented heart...and apropos of nothing, I'm possessed by a completely stonerrific thought - hey man, I wonder what's written on the bottom of this mug? So I turn the mug over forthwith and pour the precious, precious coffee onto my foot. One word: fawk. Second word: retard.

All of nature and several hippies exploded in unbound mirth at my gaucherie. Fin. Credits.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

I Heart Satan

Waiter! Two glasses of Chardonnay, please - with
ample space between them!

Greg:

What the hell happened to all the decent Satan worshippers in the world? Seems to me that when we were young, there were scads of them. Remember in 1970 or so, right around the release of The Exorcist, how Satan-worshippers were piled up to the eaves of every house in suburbia? Or was that just in our neighborhood? Or was that just the formerly dry-as-emery-toast Episcopalians trying to drum up business during the charismatic movement?

Speaking of Satan, I was deeply saddened when my television informed me that the Masons - contrary to popular myth - are not cat-buggering Satan worshippers. (However, it seems that certain members of The Royal Navy are.) I had so hoped that they were. According to The History Channel, which in my household is also called The Unimpeachable Voice of Truth, the Masons are nothing of the sort. They were originally a sort of labor union, and then they morphed into a secret society of free-thinkers trying to avoid the ire of the church and the monarchy. Now they're a bunch of well-meaning, bespectacled old farts who couldn't even stab a tuna sandwich in fit of rage.

That's too bad. It would be weirdly comforting to me to know that events such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq were the handiwork of an evil, multinational cabal and not the result of the nexus of blind zeal and staggering incompetence. It would be so much nicer to believe that the NeoCons were genuinely pernicious and not just a bunch of dumbasses with really big guns.

I know what you're going to say. You're going to say that it's a thin-to-nonexistent line between ignorant and evil. Agreed - but! I say that if you're gonna be evil, don't do it by the default of your own ignorance. If you're gonna be evil in my dream world, I want you inverting pentagrams and slamming ham on the altar of St. Mark's Cathedral during a first communion celebration for deaf children. I want you to derive your wickedness from a pure source. I want you to drill down 'til you hit Beelzebub himself. Don't just get put into "office" in an "election" or be "appointed" by the "president". That's the "pussy way out". (FACT: quotation marks are actually a typeset representation of the Hex Against The Evil Eye, but NOT the International Mullet-Wearer's Salute, which is shockingly similar. So for instance, when you say pussy way out or any other quotationally-ensconced phrase, you must, by Washington State Law, make with The Sign already. FURTHER NOTE: making The Sign with one hand is perfectly legal and acceptable if one of your limbs has been lopped off and replaced with a hook or a chainsaw or a garage-door opener or something.)

I don't have much else to say on the subject of evil, so I'll leave you for now with this exhibit of journalistic evil. These two blurbs appeared exactly in this order on the front page of the online edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. I crap you negative. You cannot make this stuff up.

Study: Millions have 'rage' disorder
CHICAGO -- To you, that angry, horn-blasting tailgater is suffering from road rage. But doctors have another name for it -- intermittent explosive disorder -- and a new study suggests it is far more common than they realized. Update · 2:00 p.m.

Man attempts to blow up house
A man apparently attempted to blow up his South Seattle home with natural gas after a standoff with police Sunday. Update · 12:02 p.m.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

The One Thing Big Oil Can't Beat

Killin' stuff has never been so fun!
Want your kids to grow up "green bonded"?
Get 'em the new Deer-Killin' Barbie!

Greg:

Hi, it's me, your dirt-hugging tree-licking brother. You and Marie sell dirt, right? ("Real estate", okay, whatever.) So I imagine you guys are out in the toolies every once in a while selling psuedo-ranches and mini-mansions to jodhpur-clad horse-weenies - people who consider themselves "outdoorsy" because they circumnavigated Lake Tahoe in their Escalade. Okay, so, tell me what you think of this. I was recently introduced to the term "green bonded" by a writer from The Mountaineers. In the piece I read, he posited that people who spend time in the outdoors become bonded to nature and the outdoors, and are thus more likely to back ecologically-minded legislation. Interesting thought, however I believe there needs to be an allowance made for the way in which you become bonded to the outdoors. For instance, do you become bonded to the outdoors through hiking and backpacking, or through chasing down pregnant caribou with a snowmobile?

I get catalogs from a whole slew of outdoors outfitters, among them REI and Cabelas, which is just like REI except that it's outdoor gear for people who like to kill stuff. Take both catalogs, put them side by side, and turn over the idea that both sets of folks are "green bonded". By the way, believe it or not, I don't have anything against hunting (except that I wouldn't do it). I do have a problem with leghold traps and high-powered rifles. I say that if you're of a mind to eat some deer, you oughtta at least be able to physically dominate it. At least be able to beat it at leg-wrestling. That's all I ask. Speaking of physical domination, certain Great Plains tribes used to get two guys to chase a deer down until it dropped from exhaustion, and then they'd hold a bag over its head until it smothered. (It can be done. Deer are built for short bursts of speed. If you get one boxed in between two Kenyan long-distance runners, the deer'll be sucking wind and crying uncle in no time.)

Which brings me to global warming (didja see how I did that - pulled a logical flea-flicker?), and how I hear the Big Oil is running a campaign to discredit my most beloved green-bonded tree-hugging brother, Al "Stiff As A Larch" Gore. Short story: Big Oil (or Greasy Bastards as I like to call them) is running some TV ads to say that the science behind Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth" is turds. So yeah, they're fuckers. Not surprising. They think that people will just go "Oh - I see. It's turds. Lemme go back to flaming off this thirty-gallon barrel of sweet light crude I've got in the backyard."

Here's why this smear campaign will never work: COGNITIVE SCIENCE. The brain is really interested in self-preservation, so much so that it is impossible for any living thing to suppress its own startle response. S'a'fact. You can't do it no matter how much weed you smoke while watching "Gilligan's Island". Believe me, I've tried. As organisms, we're way into staying alive by way of staying alert. That's why news stories of danger and tragedy are so engaging and compelling to the human psyche. We believe that we have somehow avoided danger by being informed of it, even if it happened on the other side of the globe. Add to that the fact that every bit of weather we get is now underscored in common conversation by "because of global warming", and you have an indelible connection. Hurricane Katrina? Global warming. Floods in France? Global warming. Pizzlies invading Los Angeles? Global warming and photo op with Al Gore. So yeah, so Greasy Bastards, Inc., will spend all this money saying, "It's poop-science!" and then the next big storm we get (which will be about twenty minutes from...thousand one...thousand two...now) will completely erase from every human mind whatever Big Oil was blathering about. There is not a single goddamn thing anyone can do to stop humans from being afraid of the weather.

Don't get me wrong. That's a good thing. People should be afraid of the weather, considering how many people get killed by it every year. I believe that "green bonded" or no, folks who were otherwise uninterested in the outdoors will become keenly interested in the short-term future. For the first time in modern history, they will come to understand that their personal survival depends on that vast expanse outside their window.

I'd like to hear what you think of all that. Oh yeah! Totally off the subject, but only marginally related: a zero-energy home that doesn't look like a spaceship piloted by stinky hippies AND only costs a buck-two-ninety-five to build! Smoke that, Big Oil!

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

My Sole Literary Ambition

Let's make some noise! Avant garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen
(pictured here, preparing to kill everyone) gets paid to
make music out of train wrecks and ostrich farts. Why can't I make a
living with my obsession?

Greg:

Got your message. Heard you were going to be out until Monday. What do you have to do that's so all-fired important that it's going to keep you away from the telephone for that long? Are you camping out for tickets to an Imax film about the history of the slide rule? Or is the Nevada Whores Orphan's Symphony mounting a retrospective of the works of Karlheinz Stockhausen? Whatever it is, I hope it brings you joy, and that you return to the telephone with your voice intact. I know how you like to shout yourself hoarse at Stockhausen concerts.

Which brings me to my next point which is things that bring me joy. Correction: "the" thing that brings me joy. It's just that yesterday while I was revising my profile to say "My sole literary ambition is to write these letters to my brother Greg", I realized that my sole literary ambition is to write these letters to my brother Greg. So it's the joy of self-actualization, one that you are keenly aware of being a musician and all. It seems that those who are aware of exactly what their self-actualizing gig is - the one thing that they do with their own hands that gives their life purpose, meaning and direction - are understandably the ones who feel the constant frustration of not being able to do just that one thing all the time.

Some folks might say that's just the way life is, that you don't just get to entertain your obsessions, artistic, scientific or otherwise. I say that's a load of hooey - you don't get to entertain your obsessions if you can't make money doing it. But this is America, dammit! There's a way to make money doing just about anything!

So what predicated my assertion of letter-writing as my sole literary ambition was a recent compliment I received from one of my co-workers. Patrick Kevin, a marketing - wizard? junkie? stylist? seargent? - anyway, he came into my office, apropos of nothing, and asked me in (what I took to be) abejct flabbergastration, "What are you doing here?!" At first I thought he was implying that I blew off a deadline by sitting on my hands or playing Frogger or something.

Clarification and amelioration: I do, at times, sit on my hands and/or play Frogger. I do not, however, blow deadlines. Why? Not because I have a good work ethic. Because I'm as neurotic as a hamster on meth, and believe that I'll be stricken with boils if I'm dilatory. This digression has been brought to you by GlaxoSmithKline, makers of both Dexedrine and Paxil.

So I says to him I says, "uhhhhhwwWWwhhhhuhhhh?" And he surprises me by telling me that he's been reading my blog and why am I not making big cash dollars writing screenplays or something instead of writing junk - excuse me, opt-in email when all the writing he sees out in the world can't touch mine with a three-meter pole and so on. I know that Patrick knows his way around good writing from our conversations. And I could see he was really serious about what he was saying by the way he was stirring the air in my office with his right arm and then his left, as though he were making peanut brittle and trying to make good and goddamn sure it didn't scorch before it reached the hard-ball stage. (That's a little confectionary insider joke.)

I have to tell you honestly, it was the best compliment I've received on my writing since PEN/Faulkner and National Book Award Winner T. Coraghessan Boyle called me "a fine and pithy writer who won't miss any more classes." (Emphasis: his.)

So anyway, yeah, that about made me stammer and blush. But it also made me think about why I'm not making big cash dollars writing screenplays. Then I remembered how I've already written six or so screenplays, ranging in quality from "sucky" to "unbelievably sucky" to "unforgivable", and that I really didn't like the whole film culture (oxymoron?) or writing screenplays. It also occurred to me that I might write a novel or something, but coming home mentally knackered after a hard day at the email factory left me precious little motivation to even press the start button on the TiVo, let alone coordinate the mammoth task of creating an ampersand by way of pressing the shift key.

Then I realized that the one thing that taps into a boundless well of desire to write is the simple thought of writing to you. There's nothing I'd rather do than gab to my brother Greg on paper every gol-durn day. Honestly, I can only - and do often - converse unceasingly with you on subjects as diverse as game theory, The Funkadelics, my cat's ass (aka The Brownstar), and the hubristic hegemony of the right wing. Watch, I'll prove it. I can say, "Fast and bulbous, The Mascara Snake!" And you'll automatically say, "Also a tin teardrop!" And I bet you even said it before you read that sentence. Why? Because you get it, and by extension, you get me. And there's nothing more affirming and comforting in this often confounding and heartbreaking life than being understood. It's the one time you're sure that you're alive.

Thanks for being my brother, and thanks for giving me a reason to write.

And if you enjoyed this, please send $75,000 and full medical coverage to my home address.

-Thaddeus

Jaco And The Corn Flakes Box

Greg:

I wanna tell the people who read your mail that one story about Jaco Pastorius. Hold on. I'll be right back. And try not to butt in!

Hey You Guys:

You may not know this about my brother Greg, but he has many talents other than being a genius inventor and loveable old crank. He is also a very talented musician and luthier, so he not only plays basses, he makes 'em, sometimes from the remains of old Chris Craft cabin cruisers, sometimes from fine endangered hardwoods, and sometimes from crap that's just laying around the house.

Take the time he made a bass with a Corn Flakes box for a pick guard. Way back in 1984, he had this piece of shite '62 Fender p-bass reissue that he wanted to turn into a fretless jazz bass. So he took a pair of needle nose pliers one day and yanked out all the frets and filled in the neck with plastic wood.

(Greg: Oh I did not! Me: Shut up! I'm telling the story!)

No, honestly the thing looked like hell. And it didn't have a pick guard. So he just up and cut the shape of one from a Corn Flakes box (those were MY Corn Flakes, by the way, you breakfast stealer!) and then just freakin' poured Verathane or whatever the hell it was all over it right there on the kitchen counter...and spilled some, too, thank you very much!

(Greg: I cleaned it up! Me: Like hell you did! You thought you could make it dry up by blasting it with my blowdryer - which died, thank you - and that didn't even work. So we had that gummy patch on the counter forever. And you guys over there, stop snickering about the blowdryer. It was the 80s. Men had blowdryers. And Greg, I never got my deposit back on that apartment, either. Greg: That's because our roommate Kelly burned the kitchen down. Me: Well, that's another story.)

So yeah, so now he's got this petrified Corn Flakes box cover that he screws to the beat-to-shit body and multifariously-pigmented neck of this Frankenstein of a bass of his. Then he put a different tail piece on it and some different pickups or whatever. Actually, he coulda put curb feelers, chrome spinners and ermine mud flaps on it for all I know. I don't know much about stringed instruments.

(Greg: I'll say. The only thing you can play is the stereo. Me: Shut up!)

Okay, so then he gets accepted to the Musician's Institute in Hollywood and goes down there and is all wowing 'em with his amazing musical prowess - and LO! Who should come to the Institute for a bass clinic but JACO PASTORIUS. Okay, a bunch of you in the front row are scratching your heads, so let me spell it out for you: Jaco is considered far and wide to be the greatest bass player who ever lived. No, seriously. 'S'a'fact. And so Jaco sees my brother over there playing his bass, going Bow-bikka-bow-bikka doodley oodleyoodleyoodley - bweeeewuuuwweeewuuuuh! on his FrankenBass, and he's all like, "Hey man, you're a pretty bitchen bass player, and that's a pretty freaked out bass you got there." And Greg's all, "Yeah I made it out of groceries that I stole from my brother."

(Greg: I did not! Me: Shut up! I'm telling the story! You wanna tell the story, go get your own blog, call it How My Brother Ruined My Jaco Pastorius Story dot Blogspot dom Com, and friggin' tell the story yourself. Greg: I'm going to punch a sheet of my stationery as hard as I can. Then I'm going to put it in an envelope and mail it to you. When it arrives, take the sheet of stationery out of the envelope and apply it to your nose.)

So then Jaco's all, "Hey man, can I play the FrankenBass?" And Greg's all, "For a dollar. PSYCHE!" And Jaco's all, "Check out your razor-sharp wit, man!" And then Greg's all, "Here you go, knock yourself out." And he hands Jaco the bass.

What happened next is history.

So then Jaco is like, "Hey man, that's the best bass I've ever played. Can I have it?" And Greg goes, "No." And Jaco's like, "Why?" And Greg goes, "That box of Corn Flakes was the last one that Kellogg's issued with the planar-geometric rooster illustration on the front. It's, like, priceless." So Jaco whips out a Sharpie and signs the pick guard. Later, Greg busts out some more Verathane and ruins another apartment when he laminates over Jaco's autograph.

The really sad part of the story is that although Jaco was a musical prodigy, had serious troubles with drugs and alcohol, not to mention mental illness. On September 17th, 1987, outside a club in Ft. Lauderdale, Jaco was beaten to death by a bouncer when he tried to get in without paying.

My brother Greg, on the other hand, came down with a strange illness that afflicted his hands. Now he can only play the bass and dial the telephone, but somehow inexplicably cannot answer correspondence. His hands just curl up like that witch's feet in The Wizard of Oz - you know, the one the house fell on - whenever he tries to pick up a pen. It's called gregorian hand-withering syndrome. And it must be stopped in our lifetime. Send donations to: GHWS, 40 Knucklebone Lane, Sho' 'Nuf, Shackabama, 24242.

(Greg: Retard. Me: Corn Flakes stealer. Greg: Tooth jockey. Me: Low-charisma. Greg: Mountebank.... )

Screw The Internet Already, Okay?

Camp Coot-In-The-Woods: you can almost smell the crankiness.

Greg:

Screw the Internet. Screw it. It hasn't improved anything. If anything it has made life more difficult. Oh sure, it has its upsides. You can buy stuff that you didn't need faster, and porn comes right into your home almost unbidden. Sure, you get to hear the good opinion of millions of people that you might not even pee on if they were engulfed in flame. Plus, you get bushels of email from other folks that you can tolerate even less and would pay American money for the opportunity to massage with an enraged tom cat. Not to mention that the NSA is able to read all your email completely unhindered by any part of the Bill of Rights, and brew up charges of witchcraft against you by using your own words. But aside from all those benefits, what the hell is it worth?

What is it that has my a wrench in my ass? I've been trying to plan a vacation this summer, that's what. I somehow imagined that I could get all my summer holiday plans put together with a few clicks on Expedia. (No, I'm not linking to those squidgy fuckers. No way. Nope. Why? Because Expedia lies like a ten-year-old.) All I wanted to do is get some airfare and maybe a hotel or something down at Crater Lake. Thirty-six hours and eighty-five hangnails later I got dick. Expedia tells you there are two choices: Crater Lake Lodge and Mazama Motor Inn. But because of the magic of the Internet, now every fat granny, weiner dog, and freelance bung-pounder who can pilot a Cheechako Box has clogged the bookings until September ought-twelve. Wanna stay at the Crater Lake Lodge? You're SOL because a retired crap merchant from Delaware named Porky J. Visa McMastercard (+ his weiner dog) has it stolen it with a click of his mouse. This "ease of use" bullshit has made it impossible to do anything you wanna do. It's like living in downtown. Everything you ever wanted is only four blocks away, but you have to drive there and it takes you half an hour. (And of course there's no parking when you get there.)

Hateful Sidenote: I have booked with Expedia in the past. The results? Hotel rooms that share a wall with the roaring counterweights of the elevator. Hotel rooms that look out onto a clattering rooftop industrial air conditioner. Rental cars that either don't work or don't exist. Airfare twice as expensive as I could've got by going directly to the airline. And being misled to believe that Tucson has only three hotels.


Wilson's Cottages are conveniently located between BFE and
Ozymandia in the heart of a vast forest in 19th century Oregon.

So contrary to what Expedi-fucker tells me, there are more than two hotels in the vicinity of Crater Lake. How did I find this out? Total accident. I used a map. Remember maps? Those things with the multicolored lines and wrinkly topographical relief that remind you of gramma's leg after she got impetigo? Yeah, so, there's a place that I found that has been run by cranky old coots since the 1930s, and it's called Wilson's Cabins and they DON'T FUCKING TAKE CREDIT CARDS! Thank you, Jesus. What this means is that in an age where Porky and his ilk can click a mouse easily enough, but would sprain their tongues if they licked a stamp, places like Cranky Cabins has vacancies! Yay! But it's a really strenuous ordeal to secure lodging with them. You have to do things like "call" them with a "telephone" and "mail" your deposit with a "check" that you "write out" with a "pen". Added bonus - they don't have telephones or televisions, either. And you have to share you bed with a pizzly. But it's only one mile from the south entrance of Crater Lake National Park.

So yeah, I'm doing my vacation the old-fashioned way, including the part where I get the kids out of bed at 3AM and stuff them in the back of the car for an eight-hour drive to Bumscratch. I couldn't be happier. I am going to hike the SHIT out of Crater Lake, by the way.

I know I sound like a complete Luddite or Philistine or New Englander or whatever it is you high-falutin' well-educated liberal dilletantes in Nevada call folks like me. (Wait - maybe I've mistaken Nevada for someplace else. Isn't Nevada the place with the maple syrup and the colleges and the Canadians? No, wait, that's Nevhampshire. Nevada is the place with the whores 'n' stuff. Never mind.) Were it not for the fact that Mark Keeney said to me one day, "Hey, you oughtta have a blog", (to which I replied, "Whatsablog?") I would still be sending you these epistles on Crane's 1830s-era 100% cotton rag stationery via US MailSherpa. (Side note: it is because of Keeney's suggestion that I refer to him as The Blogfather.) With Baby Jesus as my witness, when I retire, I am going to completely unplug from this whole "Internet" fad and step back into that magical land that is redolent with the aroma of mimeograph juice and carbon paper. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to pick up my flint axe and musket and go slaughter something for breakfast.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

Meet The New Boss

My God, it's a city of pizzlies!
The grizzly/polar bear hybrid will be able to swim,
climb, track humans as prey, and perform
long division. He will also bird-dog every
ho in the hizzy.

Greg:

You know how I hate to cover current events in my letters to you. I figure that if it's in the news, there are enough people blabbing about it already. What new angle could I possibly add to the conversation by saying, "Yeah - Bush is a crook!" Or "Yeah, gas prices are really high!" Or "Yeah, the world will eventually be ruled by pizzly bears!"

Wait a sec. I'm the one who said that the world will eventually be ruled by pizzly bears. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it. That also deems the subject fair game (no pun) for this epistle. So here's the deal:

You may have recently awakened on a public park bench and pulled the newspaper off your face to be confronted by the CBC news story "Strange bear was grizzly-polar hybrid, tests show". If not, then let me inform you of this astounding new taxonomical development. The story goes like this: Roger Kuptana, an Inuvialuit guide from Sachs Harbour, Northwest Territories, took Jim Martell, a 65-year-old honkie from nowhere special, on a hunting trip during which the aforementioned honkie shot and killed a mottled brown-and-white bear. The bear, as DNA evidence proved, had a grizzly bear for a father and a polar bear for a mother.

As a former resident of Alaska, I'm sure you're agape. As a former resident of Alaska, so am I. Your first thought was probably, "Oh dear Lord! It wasn't enough for the grizzlies to be at the top of the food chain, have a lucrative auto parts endorsement deal, and be at the center of the California State flag. They had to up and start bird-dogging the polar bears' wives and girlfriends! Daaaaaamn! That's some cold shit! They done gone and messed wif' de kid now!"

I heartily agree. It is cold-blooded. What do a hard-workin' polar bear gotta do to keep two-thousand pounds of wild-born woman satisfied? Sheeeiiit.

But I'll tell you who is to blame for this: GW. That's right. Global-muthafuckin'-Warming. Here's why. The male polar bears are drowning because of a lack of ice. The females are moving south into - you got it - grizzly country. And the male grizzlies are all like, "Chicks! Sweet!" Bada boom bada bing you got pizzly bears.


Planet of the Pizzlies: Jillions of years in the
future, gigantic pizzlies will make a snack out of
Chuck and his silly boom-stick!

Don't be fooled. The pizzly bear that the geriatric honkie shot is not a one-off. Pizzly production is happening all over the Great White North and it will continue to happen apace until you have to walk on pizzly heads just to get to the 7-11. But that's not even the scary part. Silently freak out over this, my man: polar/grizzly hybrids will have the best of both bears. Not only will they be the biggest fur-bearing land mammal since the mastodon, they will be able to both climb and swim, and will track humans as prey (a trait particular to polar bears). So the worst news about global warming is not that we'll all have to sprout gills and become accustomed to the taste of saltwater martinis. It is that when we return to our spawning grounds each year, a good number of us will wind up as pizzly snacks - that is if we survive being preyed upon by bears the size of Pavarotti's sofa and actually get a chance to evolve.

All kidding aside, this sort of thing gives me hope. When I first heard that polar bears were drowning because of receding ice, it truly saddened me. I spent a lot of time meditating on the dukkha of transformation. Whether it is the disappearance of the polar bears or the disappearance of my own face in the mirror, constant change in inherent in life. Clinging to the status quo breeds suffering. However, it still troubled me that the disappearance of the polar bears is a phenomenon that has a lineal connection to the avarice of man, and is thus a subtractive change that is happening needlessly.

Seeing that picture of a pizzly bear restored my hope, though. It made me believe that everything's going to be okay. Nature, the consistent favorite of Father Time, will always prevail. And that gives me hope - even if it means that pizzlies will make dessert out of my descendants.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

In Praise Of Jim Bergman

Jim Bergman can out-drink Immanuel Kant, out-play
Les Claypool, and out-swim Stephen Hawking.

Greg:

I have a certain troublesome neurosis, and I think it might be familial. See if you can relate.

I have friends. They're all really great folks. Problem is I just don't like to spend time with them. That sounds bad. Let me try to describe it a little better with an example. When I meet a friend for lunch, somewhere about halfway through, I panic and want to leave the conversation. I feel stuck. I feel like I left a stove on somewhere or a door unlocked - whatever it is needs my immediate attention. So that means when I think about making plans with friends, it always sounds like a good idea at first until I realize that about halfway through a conversation, I'm going to freak out and be overwhelmed by the need to flee. It's not their fault, it's mine. It's just plain bizarre. To say that I am as crazy as a shithouse rat might create resentment among shithouse rats.

Here's the flipside. I don't like being alone, either. I discovered this while I was camping solo in Port Townsend a couple weekends ago. I like hiking alone well enough, but I like hiking with Teresa better. I once described the situation to Teresa like this: if I'm home alone, I get lonely and have a hard time writing well. If I'm home and Teresa's nearby, I can't concentrate enough to write. However, if I'm at home in my room with door closed, but I know that Teresa's in the other room, I'm perfectly comfortable. (She's asleep right now, but when she gets up and comes into this room, my writing day will be over.)


This is your brain on Bergman.

Which brings me to my friend Jim Bergman, who was such good company on our recent hike up to Lake Serene that it made me reconsider this whole weird neurotic "trapped" feeling I get, and made me think that I ought to work more diligently on correcting it. Jim's boon companionship during the hike obviated what I had been cheating myself out of by maintaining this neurosis.

Side note: Bergman was incredibly impressed by your resume - the parts of it that I could recall, including the fact that you once were a luthier for Mike Tobias. How obscure is that?

Jim Bergman was born James Bergman somewhere in Washington State thirty years and some change ago. He has a brother and some parents. I'm making all this up because I don't really know. I do know that he holds a degree in Philosophy (with a minor in Cocktail Party Bullshitting, no doubt), and can throw down mind-bending Kantian dialectic with the best of them. Where I met him was during our tenure at AtomFilms. I was the Editorial Producer and he was woefully underpaid for some horrifically boring task that he performed gleefully enough in some rather Spartan accoutrements. I thought he was gay and Jewish. Wrong on both counts. (Or at least as far as I know, lo these 7 years passed.) He got fired - unjustly in my estimation - for exactly what I can't even remember now. Had to do with saying the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time. After that event, he took to relieving his frustrations by becoming a triathlete.

Bergman was also the bass player for a very fun and rather frenetic country band called Colville Melody, a group of unwashed acoustinauts that were a couple hogsheads short of a jug band. He left all that glory to strike out on his own as an enterpreneur, selling gear to his fellow triathletes. He concurrently worked for Roland keyboards, again probably performing some ponderously boring task for low wages in Spartan accoutrements. Then one day he decided to chuck all of that, sold his 1,200 square foot suburban Bellingham ranch for an embarassingly huge sum of money, and enrolled in massage school. And that's where he is right now.

You can't talk about Bergman without talking about drinking. The two are inseparable. It's also difficult to describe the manner of his drinking because the bouts don't last long enough to be describe as a binge, but on the other hand, explosion isn't all-encompassing enough to relay the short-lived incandescence and ferocity of each event. To wit, back in the day, I could out-drink Bergman if you're talking sheer volume, but I could in no way exceed his alcohol-fueled feats of personality-rending stupicifocity. You never knew how many beers it was going to be until the charming Henry Jekyll mask peeled off to expose the howling, pugnacious escapee from the boneless chicken ranch. We had to invent a whole new term for it. We called it "getting Bergmaned". It's no wonder that Bergman, charming and erudite though he may be while sober, holds the world record for alienating women.

With all his foibles, and probably because of them, Jim Bergman is my pal. Jim Bergman will make you laugh - hard. Jim Bergman is just plain loads (truly plural) of fun, just like the rest of my friends, and I should spend a lot more time with the lot of them.

Oh shit I left the stove on.

-Thaddeus

Mud Shoe Diaries: Bridal Veil Falls, Lake Serene & Mt. Index

Mount Index, seen from the shore of Lake Serene.
Two words: Oss. Umm.

Dear Greg:

Howya been? Don't say nothin' because I already have your answer: nowheres as good as me! Why the obnoxious-yet-self-assured overconfidence? Because I've been hiking, yo! And not just some lame-ass flatland hike in tiny, tiny bear territory. I've been up in the snowfields, ogling the waterfalls, huffing the mountain air, and gleefully causing myself all manner of trepidation and injury.

Last Sunday (April 20-something), me & the gang took USFS Trail 1068 up to Lake Serene at the foot of Mount Index with a side jaunt to Bridal Veil Falls. The round trip was 8.2 miles with an elevation gain of about 1,900 feet (which ain't so bad, until you figure that pretty much all that elevation gain happens within about 1.3 miles of trail). Thank God some burly-ass Washington Trail Association volunteers built stair frames (see photos at the end of this letter) to take the place of the nasty-dangerous dirt trail that used to go pretty much straight up.


Lake Serene with "just a little snow".

That doesn't mean it was easy. Oh mais non. I told you about the Hellclimber 3000 in my previous blog. Well, working out on it paid off in spades when it came to negotiating these stairs. There was also a wicked nasty patch where a gigantic blowdown roughly the size of your grotesquely Popeye-ish right forearm made us have to scramble through some really slick mud and roots. And then there was the snow which we had not anticipated - which was thoroughly my fault. You see, when it comes to outdoorsmanship, I am still what John Muir would call an "idiot". Or perhaps he wouldn't be quite that kind. He might've called me something like a fookin' penty-weest or even a flat-moufed basturt, nae bu' beef tae th' heels. I digress.

We didn't anticipate the snow because I had heard that the snow level was at something like 5,000 feet, and we were only hiking up to 2,500, so I figured... Well, snow level has to do with where new snow is likely to fall, not where the edge of the snowfields end, and since we've had a lot of late-season snow here, that means... Yeah, so, snow. Better still, I have snappy new traction devices for my boots as well as trekking poles, neither of which I had during my ice-and-tiny-bear encounter earlier this season on Mount Si. But did I bring my extra traction? Nay. And did I believe that sleekly-attired fastpacker we met on the trail who told us that there was "a little snow up there"? Aye.

Greg, never believe a sleekly-attired fastpacker. They lie and they're crazy. Subsisting on nothing but Nutella does something to their brains. They are the meth freaks of the outdoors. (Not to be confused with the meth freaks of the North Cascades, a brand of homonids from Snohomish county that cling to the undersides of rotting double-wides and paranoiacally swat at imaginary bugs.) We wound up smushing our way up, through, and over a snowfield for about a mile, at times having to balance on its treacherously rotting edge. But at the end of the trail, the gob-smacking, heart-rending beauty that you see in the photos above was enough to make one forget all about spandex-clad fastpackers and their falsehood-spewing mountebankery. And although the temperature at the lakeshore brought to mind adages of plumber's cracks, witches' bosoms, and the neutering of brass monkeys, the intermittent springtime sun was quite warm. I offered a prayer of thanks to REI for blessing me with black outer gear.

Side note - speaking of REI: the twice-yearly 20% off sale started this weekend, so naturally I had to expand my gear collection. Come to find out, I'm already geared up to about my eyeballs (which are also quite nicely outfitted), so I was hard-pressed to find anything that I actually needed. That didn't stop me from purchasing an MSR WaterWorks EX Microfilter, a ceramic and carbon water filtering system so effective it screens out Giardia, bacteria, viruses, tiny-tiny bear poop and poltergeists. To underscore its effectiveness, there's a photo on the package of a fastpacker in Patagonia using it to drink straight out of a cow's butt. It should come in handy some day when I go swamp stomping in 'Nam.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.
PS: Here's a whole bunch of photos that my friend and co-hiker Jim Bergman took of the trip. Enjoy.

-Thaddeus

Rage, Jesus, And The Hellclimber 3000

Hellclimber: die Treppe, die verwunden!
If it did not already exist, Dr. Josef Mengele would've invented it.

Greg:

I have to preface this letter by saying that a few days have passed since I wrote what appears below, and in that time, the rage of which I speak has ebbed, owing to the ever-changing landscape of the human psyche and certain interpersonal dynamics (misunderstandings, apologies, whatnot). You should understand. As I recall, you are as sweet as sugar candy most of the time, but also have inclinations to phlegmatism, biliousness, epithets, invection - not to mention acrid, acrid spite from time to time. Indeed, I recall times from our youth when local ne'er-do-wells would pelt your window with stones while you were napping just so they could see you rocket from the house in a purple rage. Glee ensued at your expense. Such is the burden of the perpetually peevish.

Well, I am no different, other than the fact that I've never been pricked to naked rage by the neighborhood wags. And I'm sure that Those Who Read Over Your Shoulder (TWROYS) will wonder was it I? Was I the one who pissed him off Grand Royal this week? To which I reply, "Dear Readers, in ways large and small, and in your own very special way, it was every single one of you bastards."

But let's be friends now! That was yesterday! Que sera sera! J'apologize! Today I have a clear and compassionate mind, a contrite heart, and a fresh load of Snapper Turtles. (Why Snapper Turtles? Read on.)

-TRG

Greg:

I don't look around for ways to suck at being Buddhist. I really don't. It seems that I contain a great deal of rage, and that is the crux of the "sucking at Buddhism" issue. It's hard to be enraged and compassionate at the same time.

I go to a Buddhist shrink. I talk to her about my rage all the time. The conversation goes something like this:

Me: "Boy am I pissed."
Her: "Is there anything wrong with that?"
Me: "Well...It limits the ways in which I can see solutions, that's for sure."
Her: "What if you were to say 'I experience myself as an angry person'? What if you were to say that?"
Me: (Internally: WHUH the FUH?!) "I guess...I...OK. I experience myself as an angry person."
Her: "Where do you feel that in your body?"
Me: "Ummm...mostly in the steam that is now jetting out of the holes in my exploding cranium."

Long story short, I've had rather a trying week at work so far and it's only Wednesday. The week didn't start out so bad, though. On Easter Sunday I went to St. Mark's Cathedral. To celebrate, the Episcopalians brought out what can only be described as the 40-Foot Holy Ribbon Dancer(s) and the ever-popular Cloth Butterfly On A Stick. All of this being so far removed from what I understood as the story of Holy Week, I decided to revise my understanding of the Easter story thus:

33 years ago, Peter Rabbit laid an egg inside a tomb in Eastern Hoosapatamia. After three days, the egg hatched and out toddled Baby Jesus. This miracle is repeated every year. Peter Rabbit lays literally millions of eggs each year, but only one - The Cadbury Prize Egg - is lucky enough to be laid inside the tomb. It is said that after Baby Jesus hatches, if he pokes his head out of his tomb and sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of Easter. If not, bring on The Rapture. (So far, so good on that whole Rapture deal.)

Yeah, so, church. Oh and further good news, I did not burst into flame. Afterwards we had a sumptuous feast of Fake Lamb Stew (which is so good, I can only guess that it's made from real lambs). Aaron, Marissa, Justin (Aaron's new roommate), Teresa, Elizabeth and I had a fantastic time. Many laughs were shared. It was the best Easter ever. EVER! Doubt me at your peril!

See? There it went again. The whole misplaced rage thing.

Which bring me to my next point, which is displaced rage. Or is it really displaced? You be the judge. This week we have a lot going on at work, and a lot has gone wrong (he said, for lack of a better way to not bore you with the details) as it is wont to do when we have complicated projects. So that means in turn that people get grouchy and pouty and vindictive so on - you know, the usual adult corporate behavior. Their behavior is not what's really troublesome to me. Nor am I trying to point the finger at myself and say that the situation would've been different if I had thought about it differently. No, bad behavior is bad behavior, period, and it's reasonable for me (or anyone else) to get angry over being treated poorly. What's troublesome to me is that my primary reaction to that sort of thing is absolute rage. In other words, excessive anger.

Don't get me wrong. I don't run around the office biting into jugulars. I keep a very cool demeanor for the most part. But the counterpoint to my outward serenity is the I Hope Your Fucking Eyes Get Fucking Devoured By Fucking Snapper Turtles, You Fucking Fuck mantra that runs beneath my calm exterior. It's distracting to say the least. Further (and perhaps more) troubling is the heart-bleedingly ardent Please Baby Jesus, Send The Snapper Turtles To Devour That Fucking Fuck's Fucking Eyeballs prayer that goes along with it. This, in my mind, is irrefutable evidence that at the core, I am not only a very bad Buddhist, I'm a very bad person.

So anyway, in the midst of wishing death to all four corners of the compass, an email to the entire consumer marketing division comes down from on high reprimanding us for - get this - playing too much ping pong, and directing us to limit our ping pong to 30 minutes or less per day. The reason given is that we're behind in our subscriber sign-ups for the quarter. (I'm sure you can hear the resounding WHUH the FUH already.) The email did not include an attachment that proved the linear connection between sign-ups lost and number of minutes of ping pong played. It would've been nice if there was an f(x)= -4/x thrown in there somewhere at least. And I have a creeping suspicion that if we're behind in sign-ups, the problem is much larger than ping pong. And I also need to remind you that a) I don't even play ping pong, and b) I'm part of a creative team. We don't stack bricks for a living, so more time spent at the desk does not equal more or better work done. Surely you know what I'm talking about. The downside of all of this is that there's really nothing I can do about it, so I'm left sitting here in my own bile.

So yeah, so then I'm freaking beseeching Baby Jesus to send an Army of Snapper Turtles such as the world has never seen. And I mean to the point of obsessive psychopathology. And I'm doing all kinds of counterproductive stuff. Losing sleep. Biting the cat. That sort of thing. So I decided that it'd probably be a good idea to work off that rage by going to the gym.

Au contraire. It was not to be. For on this day, I chose to work out my rage on the Hellclimber. I figure, "Hey, it's like walking up the stairs. How bad can it be?" Answer: It can be hell! It's awful! It may make you strong and give you the lungs of a teenage whale, but it will punish you mentally and physically. You climb and climb, but at the end of half an hour, you haven't made it to Somewhere Nice. You haven't even made it to the fucking landing of Somewhere Nice. You're still right there on the Hellclimber! For The Love Of Our Egg-Born Saviour, I say this thing is the primary tool of the Dark One.

Needless to say I was (and am) still enraged. The only thing that has changed is now the Hellclimber has been added to my Death List.

[If you'd like to purchase your very own Hellclimber, click here!]

So my point is this: what the heck do I do with all my rage when it becomes physically unmanageable? Is there some amount of rage that is either justified or to be expected? And finally, where can I get some ravenous Snapper Turtles?

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus