Listen!

I know we never post, and I know nobody reads this blog! But, nonetheless, this: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/28/iron.lung.death.ap/index.html?eref=rss_us is one of the craziest news stories I have ever encountered. It is simply unimaginable.

west of sumas, wa; 27 january ‘08

a civilian’s woodchipper purred in the distance.

the air was thin and sharp. i couldn’t feel my toes. the ground crackled and split beneath my feet.

fisher had decided to approach back, from my left, as i crouched behind a neatly organized stack of empty ammo boxes. i looked up the hill, and back at my comrade, dressed completely in black, who stood still awaiting action beside an arrangement of emptied oil barrels.

ahead of us, a mere forty feet away, was a camouflaged young man, maybe 20 years old. he stood behind a tree, breathing white, as he waited for his enemy. his back was turned to us.

the ak-47 dangling from my neck strap, resting against my chest, was warm as i brought it to my right eye. i breathed in, and i breathed out. i held my breath and then a stream of fire left the gun barrel as i pressed the trigger, each bullet visible as it cut through the brisk afternoon air. the first couple of bullets missed the young man who quickly turned in response – just in time to catch four or five of them directly in his chest. immediately, his gun fell from his hands.

to my left, one of the fallen soldier’s own sprinted through a short clearing. i tracked him with the gun barrel while shouting for fisher’s attention. i fired through the trees, trying to anticipate his steps, but he evaded the bullets. not until then had i noticed my heart rate had jumped. my best hope was that fisher would make the kill, as my position left me compromised should i attempt to emerge and spot the target amidst the thicker trees.

my patience snapped under the strain of nerves and a poor night’s sleep, and i glanced around the corner to try and visualize the enemy. immediately, eight bullets flew directly at my face – i could count them, one by one, bearing towards my eyes. i could see them but i could not move out of their way.

clack clack clack clack clack clack clack clack.

in the distance, i heard fisher scream. he was dead. i was dead.

****

and so went my first air soft experience. ken has not one or two but three different guns, all to specifications – weight and dimensions, all of metal – matching their namesakes. i had used an ak-47 this past sunday; ken had used an mp-5 with a grenade launcher and silencer; and in the trunk was a virgin thompson submachine gun, still yet to witness combat.

we’d arrived at the property around 1300 and made our way to the field. some guy named [mike, joe, john, or something] owns this acreage with two fields on it for paintball and/or airsoft [the two do not play together]. after paying five bucks as an entry fee, we waited in their “dead zone” for the airsoft players to finish their match so we could join. ken was wearing all black, including a vest to hold extra clips, and i was wearing some shitty jeans and an old jacket. i was not aware of what to expect, and if i had formed any expectations about the seriousness of these competitors they would have been blown out of the water by the real thing.

the first person i met went by “nurse betty” but his real name was travis. maybe 19 years old, or a boyish 20, he was completely outfitted in matching fatigues, combat boots, a camouflage scarf, goggles, and a camouflage vest onto which he had attached an authentic-looking name strip imprinted with “nurse betty”. he was holding what appeared to be an m-16. travis introduced himself to us and was quite friendly – all of these guys were, in fact – and soon after he had done this others started to file in.

the pace of the game quickly stocked the dead zone with these pseudo-soldiers, each in his own brand of american combat gear. the guns varied greatly, as did the names: zephyr, redneck, xavius… i felt foolish introducing myself as plain old vanilla bryan but i sure as hell don’t have a gamer name to pull out in such situations. it was obvious that ken and i would have our asses handed to us simply based on the lack of camo – these men were dead fucking serious.

we quickly organized into teams for the next match, and i was abruptly killed lying prone behind a solitary oil barrel. i knew i should have dropped back but, god dammit, it’s hard to think while you’re under fire. once again, the dead zone filled quickly and soon we were on to another game. that’s when i lit up zephyr, as above – my first and only kill, and a prize at that, as he appeared to be the field’s “king shit”, having arrived earlier in his beamer, proclaiming himself as the organizer of the sunday meets since “way back when all they had were spring-loaders.” he appeared to be about 19 years old but claimed he’d been playing for 6 years.

the other players’ dedication to the realism of airsoft was at first intimidating but afterwards quite intriguing. no doubt these were much different folk than me, but in the same way i have my own eccentricities and strange interests that would no doubt cause them to wonder what exactly the fuck is wrong with me. i suppose we’re all a bit fucked up.

i must say that since leaving that sunday afternoon, i feel the call of battle, and the need to kill.

and i will. soon.

an oldie, but a goodie!

I apologize for my prolonged period of silence. I’ll, uh, post more or something. Check this out:

http://www.thewebshite.net/nickelback.htm

cough syrup.

so i have had a shit ton of cough syrup and a couple beers and i feel fucking fantastic. nip/tuck has once again blown me away with another phenomenal episode. watching sean and christian twist along another crazy plot line got me in a tizzy, boy i tells ya. it doesn’t hurt to have a body high.

the ingredient in cough syrup that gives this high is dextromethorphan. the body high is part of the dissociative hallucinations that occur when taken at high doses. this chemical holds the high honor of having its structure tattooed on the back of a patient’s neck I had seen a few months ago. not kidding, he had this tattooed:

addiction, here i come. ha. just kidding.

DAMN YOU BEAR GRYLLS!

As I have completely given up on trying to make my own category tags, I have decided I will only write things that can be related to the existing tags. Thus I have started this entry which is related to trees. And urine.

I had been a huge fan of the TV show “Man vs. Wild” on Discover, a reality-type survival TV show which featured one man, Bear Grylls, dropped into the middle of nowhere with only a knife, flint, and water bottle. His goal in each episode was to (a) not die and (b) make it back to civilization. It was a show during which a man could scratch his balls, sniff the pungent yet slightly arousing ball sweat off of his fingernails, drink a beer, and imagine that he, too, was drinking his own urine in a rare hypermasculine scenario when drinking one’s own urine was somehow acceptable.

One day I had some spare time and tried to find any upcoming episodes of the program when my TiVo told me “There are no episodes currently scheduled”. Fearing something had happened to the fearless host, thus knocking his hit show out of syndication, I turned to the premiere source for up-to-date information – Wikipedia.

Like a ton of bricks, I read the first damning statement: “After a series of exposés by the Daily Mail, the show was put on hiatus while Discovery reviewed claims that it deceived viewers.”

My heart fell, in the gut-wrenching, tear-jerking fashion it did when Santa Claus turned out to be an impostor.

“One of the allegations is that while Grylls claimed to be sleeping outdoors, he was allegedly sleeping in hotels….British television’s Channel 4 has acknowledged that in at least two instances Bear has stayed in hotels during filming.”

Hotels? WHAT A FUCKING PUSSY. True, it’s gotta be rough out there, but hotels? I might somehow understand having a tent brought in on a really tough night – but fucking come ON. Your name is BEAR for Christsake!

And the embarrassments keep on comin’. Flotation devices. A prefabricated raft dropped off along his route. Domesticated horses brought in and passed off as wild. Smoke machines brought in to simulate poisonous sulfur dioxide smoke over lava. Being hoisted into a tree wearing a parachute to imitate landing in the tree. Even HIRING A MAN IN A FUCKING BEAR SUIT TO “TERRORIZE” HIS CAMP.

At this point it’s beyond the Santa Claus comparison. It’s more akin to walking in on Daddy in the shower to find he’s only packing roast beef between his thighs. Not only does it ruin one’s image of him from that point on, it taints every memory. So, that time I crunched potato chips along with you crunching into a raw wild bird’s egg, Bear? Ruined. That time in my living room I took my shirt off, peed on it, and wrapped it on my head like you did to keep yourself cool in the desert, just to try to be as cool as you? Ruined. That time I brought home a bag of scorpions and cobras, let them loose in the house, and slept on a bed of pine needles to simulate the risk I thought you put yourself in just for the sake of my entertainment? Not worth the $15 cab ride to the ER, dick. Thanks for nothing, you weak-ass pile of shit. So what if you were in the British Special Forces and almost died from a broken back while serving. So what if you were the youngest Brit to summit Everest. So what if you took a paraglider over that same peak, beating the previous altitude record by nearly 10,000 feet? How can I respect you as a man’s man when you bunk up in a Ritz-Carlton overnight while I’m lying on my couch watching, fully convinced you’re shivering your ass off in a hand-dug snow cave? Thanks for the good times, Bear, but fuck you for ruining them. Fuck you for ruining US.

THE SPIRIT OF GIVING

While getting my oil changed today, I was waiting in the cramped, stinky “lobby” of the ineptly named “xpress lube” and was surprised to find a high-class Economist magazine among so many other issues of Nascar Review and US Weekly. I quickly grabbed for the mature rag (no doubt pilfered from a dentist’s office) and flipped past thirty pages of British critique of Bush and Company to find an article reviewing the psychology of giving. This article was both fascinating and depressing.

***

Early in my psychology studies as an undergrad I came across the “social exchange theory”. This bastard child of pessimistic research nerds tries to gratify their anti-social traits by attributing every social relationship or seemingly altruistic action to a simple “we give to get” premise. In other words, this theory states we only interact when it is in our own self-interests. This makes no exception for casual conversation, token gifts, or random acts of kindness – all of these things are done to score points to be cashed in later for some specific purpose. Thus, when I go out to my porch whenever I smell cigarette smoke, hoping to find one or both of my treasured neighbors outside sucking down some sweet nicotine and pining for two minutes of conversation, I am really going out there to put a few coins in the Hatch and MJB banks to gain their favor in case I need something from them later on – and they put up with my nearly incoherent ramblings about the damn cat because they want to invest in Bry should they run out of beer and want to bum one from me.

Having sifted through my fair share of psychological teachings, and being a logical person, I understand this theory at its core. It makes sense on a basic level, but who the hell would want to admit or believe that their friendships are based solely on the intrinsic value to be extracted from them in a time of need? That, my friends, is truly depressing, and is something I am not willing to subscribe to.

So how does the oil change article relate? It stated that men only perform selfless acts (volunteering, donations, etc.) in order to show off to the opposite sex as part of a larger courting ritual. Specifically, men want to exhibit how well-off they are by making it clear they have enough excess to be able to throw some of their time and money at things women will appreciate. A study cited by this article showed that men would not donate anonymously nor would they do volunteer work that gave them little to no exposure as they would not be getting the attention and admiration from women that supposedly motivated them in the first place.

As the article asserts the social exchange theory, it puts another nail in the coffin and in short made me feel like a real douchebag. I started to wonder, do I act this way? Do I give only in order to receive? I like to think not, or at least I like to think I know when I am doing so. While I have done things that felt, at the time, to be selfless and altruistic, I can look back and see how I might have done those things due to a subconscious realization that I had something to gain. What about you?

shot after shot, shot after shot

Another in my barrage of terrible music posts. Since it is Kelly week (why not?) I just spent about twenty minutes unsuccessfully attempting to change my voicemail message on my phone to the hook of this song:

http://www.zshare.net/audio/2040124c3fc92b/

Enjoy. I mean it.

so get ready… this is chapter 13

Oh shit!

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20048961,00.html

This clip insprired a random Tianaism, an entirely new term. Nidget. (Oh god, I’m sorry. I swear, she said it!)

my music collection exposed

I’m not quite sure why I’m doing this, but I feel the need. I want the world to know (okay, the three of you that might read this) exactly what the current contents of my (rather conservatively-sized) music library are. This is not a cry for help, or a plea for attention, this is just me exposing myself… err… my music collection. The good, the bad, the ugly. Guilty pleasures and all.

The Album Leaf – In A Safe Place
The Album Leaf – Into The Blue Again
The Appleseed Cast – Mare Vitalis
The Appleseed Cast – Two Conversations
Arcade Fire – Funeral *
Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
Band Of Horses – Everything All The Time
The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds
Benjamin Gibbard – Home Volume Five
The Blood Brothers – Burn, Piano Island, Burn *
The Blood Brothers – Crimes
The Blood Brothers – Young Machetes
Blue Scholars – Blue Scholars
Brand New – The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me
Brandtson – Dial-In Sounds
Broken Social Scene – Broken Social Scene
Broken Social Scene – You Forgot It In People
Cam’ron – Purple Haze
Clipse – Hell Hath No Fury
Coldplay – A Rush Of Blood To The Head
Coldplay – Parachutes
Copeland – Beneath Medicine Tree
Copeland – In Motion
Counting Crows – August And Everything After
Damien Rice – O
Dashboard Confessional – The Swiss Army Romance
Death Cab For Cutie – Forbidden Love
Death Cab For Cutie – The Photo Album
Death Cab For Cutie – Plans
Death Cab For Cutie – Transatlantacism *
Death Cab For Cutie – We Have The Facts And We’re Voting Yes
Earlimart – Treble & Tremble
Elliott Smith – Either/Or
The Fall Of Troy – Ghost Ship
The Fugees – The Score
Grizzly Bear – Yellow House
Iron & Wine – Our Endless Numbered Days
Iron & Wine – The Shephard’s Dog
Jimmy Eat World – Clairty
Justin Timberlake – FutureSex/LoveSounds
Lucero – Tennessee
The Mars Volta – De-Loused In The Comatorium
Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On
Matt Pond PA – The Green Fury
Matt Pond PA – If You Want Blood
Matt Pond PA – The Nature Of Maps
Matt Pond PA – Several Arrows Later
Menomena – Friend And Foe
Mewithoutyou – Brother, Sister
Michael Jackson – Thriller
Nas – Illmatic
Nick Drake – Pink Moon
Norah Jones – Come Away With Me
Of Montreal – Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
Owen – At Home With Owen
Owen – I Do Perceive
Owen – No Good For No One Now
Pedro The Lion – Control
Pedro The Lion – It’s Hard To Find A Friend
Peter And The Wolf – Lightness
The Postal Service – Give Up
Radiohead – OK Computer
Ratatat – Ratatat
Rocky Votolato – The Brag And Cuss
Rocky Votolato – Burning My Travels Clean *
Rocky Votolato – End Like This
Rocky Votolato – Light and Sound
Rocky Votolato- Makers
Rocky Votolato – Rocky Votolato
Rocky Votolato – Suicide Medicine
Ryan Adams – Heartbreaker
Sigur Ros – Takk
Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Spoon – Gimme Fiction
Stars – Set Yourself On Fire
Sufjan Stevens – The Avalanche
Sufjan Stevens – Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lakes State *
Sufjan Stevens – Illinois
Sufjan Stevens – Seven Swans
Swords – Metropolis
T.I. – King
T.I. – T.I. Vs T.I.P.
Third Eye Blind – Third Eye Blind
Thrice – The Illusion Of Safety
TV On The Radio – Return To Cookie Mountain
Waxwing – Nobody Can Take What Everybody Owns
Wilco – Sky Blue Sky
Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Yann Tiersen – Amelie

*Denotes one of my five favorite records.

That’s it, really. This post really is that self-indulgent. I just want you to know what I listen to. That’s all.

others feel the pain

I know I’m a little behind the times on this one, but… give me a break. You’ll like this. I promise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwTZ2xpQwpA