Just One of Life's Little Mysteries

I was just watching Superman and wondering about something that I've pondered from time to time. Why the hell was Clark Kent so taken with Lois Lane? She's probably the most abrasive, obnoxious, and annoying female character ever and yet he seemed so smitten with her. Was this the feminist ideal of the 70s? I remember seeing this movie at the Kadena AFB theatre when it first came out. I thought she was annoying then too and I was probably five years old. Some things I'll just never understand.

Arugula-Eating Bad Asses: Tough Bo-Bo Sends War Veteran Scurrying for Cover

I just read what might be one of the most absurd quotes of this election. When his patriotism and commitment to success in Iraq was questioned, Obama said, "John McCain doesn't know what he's up against."

John McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton when the junior senator from Illinois was starting kindergarten. When Russia invaded Georgia and Obama got his 3AM call he said, "I'm going body boarding." He couldn't be bothered to yank himself away from his Hawaiian vacation to salvage his flimsy foreign policy image. I'm pretty sure John McCain knows what he's up against.

Olympics

I abandoned my principles--I broke down and watched the Olympics. I was at the Ford dealership getting my car fixed and the TV in the waiting room was turned to the Women's 50m Freestyle . I couldn't very well say to the other people there, "Excuse me, but due to China's ongoing persecution of political dissidents, Christians, and Tibet, I insist that we change the channel."

So I watched. In spite of the fact that the Chinese, in their standard Asian commie creepiness, had one little girl lip sync while another sang because the singer wasn't deemed sufficiently cute enough. And in spite of the fact that they had "16-year old" gymnasts who could only be 16 if they were forced to smoke, drink coffee, and sleep in a short bed, which knowing China wouldn't be outside of the realm of possibility and the fact that the Beijing Olympics has been the biggest Potemkin undertaking since Pyongyang. I watched and it was pretty damn good.

Bees!

In addition to your garden variety news items, I can always count on Fox News online to have some distasteful, titillating, or absurd tidbit of news. News items such as, “Weenie Dog Gnaws Off Sleeping Owner’s Toe” or “Hillary Duff Puts Scorpion Down Her Pants” regularly scream out from Fox News’ homepage. It’s the kind of news that’s deliciously tacky and brings no end to the pleasure of everyone. One headline that I’ll remember forever is “Truck Overturns in Canada, Releasing 12 Million Bees on Largest Highway.”

I know that bees make honey and do all kinds of lovely things for the world, but I don’t want to have to associate with them and the idea of 12 million bees loose in one place is horrifying to me. To put it simply, I’m afraid of bees. Lots of people are afraid of snakes, but I’m not overly concerned about snakes. Snakes generally leave you alone unless you make it a point to poke them with a stick or otherwise threaten them. Snakes don’t want whatever it is you’re eating and they won’t swarm together and chase you down just to bite you. It just doesn’t really pay to be afraid of snakes unless you live in India or Africa.

It was with great satisfaction that we paddled up to a beautiful beach after an outstanding day of kayaking. It was truly one of the most perfect beaches I’ve ever seen. The weather was about 85 degrees and sunny. After we pitched our tents, a few of us decided to take dip in the sea to clean off. I had taken great care to ensure every hygiene product I brought with me was biodegradable. What I should have paid better attention to was to ensure that they were unscented as well.

After I cleaned off, I decided to rinse out some of my clothes using the same almond-scented soap. I hung them over the tent to dry and wandered off down the beach. When I came back to the tent, I found it surrounded by a cloud of bees. Not only did they block the entrance to the tent, but they had taken up residence in my open water bottle. I was beside myself. It dawned on me that they might have been attracted by the smell of the soap.

A few yards away, I spied an extraordinarily long stick. I figured if I could get the clothes off the tent and deposit them further away, the bees would leave the tent and I could collect my clothes after dark. Gingerly, I attempted to lift my clothes off the tent frame with the stick. Serena spotted my efforts and came scurrying over telling me not to agitate the bees. “They won’t sting unless you make them mad.”

Serena emptied the bees from my water bottle and told me to just wait until dark unless there was something I absolutely needed from the tent. I decided there was nothing I needed that badly.

The bees continued to follow me along the beach, drinking in the overwhelming almond smell emanating from my hair and trailing along like dorky, hopeful, and eager to please teenage boys after a homecoming queen.

Serena continued to assure me that the bees wouldn’t sting unless enraged and that they were attracted to moisture. I tried to keep that in mind as everything we ate and drank was surrounded by bees. Thankfully, darkness came quickly enough and I was able to go to my tent. I got my partially dried clothes inside and packed absolutely everything I could for a hasty take down the next morning.

Sure enough, I was awakened by the sun and an unmistakable whine--BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! I was packed before everyone else was awake. I was up in a flash, packing my sleeping bag and throwing stuff sacks and dry bags out of the tent as fast as I could. Everyone was impressed by the speed with which I was able to take down my tent and pack my kayak.

As we hauled the kayaks away from shore and out into the water, I felt like the family in Poltergeist, fleeing as quickly as we could, abandoning the island to be consumed by bees.

I never got stung, but the afternoon we got there after my encounter with The Swarm, Serena ended up getting stung by bees--twice.

Stay tuned for Part V: A Hole is to Dig

Bye Bye Cantaloupe, Hello Cold Shock

I’ve always been prone to motion sickness. It runs in my dad’s side of the family. It managed to skip a generation, leap over my dad, and land squarely on my head, while leaving my brother relatively unscathed. Kind of like a terrible barf tornado.

I’ve gotten sick in airplanes, movies in which the camera moved too fast, and of course long car trips. Every summer of my childhood, we drove marathon distances from Omaha, Nebraska to visit grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins in either Alabama or Pennsylvania in our 1980 Ford Fairmont. Every one of those car trips involved projectile vomiting, instigated entirely by me. My brother James was a sympathetic puker. The combination of long distances in the back seat, Brach’s Pick-a-Mix candies, and the overpowering smell of coffee from my dad’s giant thermos made my stomach churn. The first time this happened is forever etched in my memory. I vividly recall looking at the front of my pink t-shirt as semi-digested apples exploded downward. I looked over at James. With a look of horror and disgust I’ve never seen on a two-year old before or since, he quickly followed suit. Sometime later in Iowa, the Ford Fairmont screeched into a gas station with my dad screaming, “I gotta get out of this Puke-Mobile!”

Growing up in a landlocked state, I haven’t had much opportunity to bounce up and down on the ocean. So while I can honestly say I’ve never been seasick, it’s only because the opportunity never presented itself.

To say the weather was a bit choppy the first two days on the water in Baja is like saying that if you poke yourself in the eye with an ice pick, it might hurt a little. When we started out, the skies were sunny and the zephyrs light. We loaded the boats and were out on the water in no time. We’d been blessed with three extremely wonderful, patient, and capable guides, Serena, Caleb, and Edgar to lead the way. We were in tandem kayaks and being the lone, unattached person on the trip, I ended up sharing a kayak with Edgar the first day out. I’d paddled in the rain up in British Columbia, but substantial winds were a novelty for me. We saw ominous looking grey clouds in the distance, but Serena assured us, “It never rains in Baja.”

The further we paddled, the greyer the sky got and the higher the winds blew while Serena continued to let us know that it never rained in Baja and when the sprinkles began coming down, she reassured us, “It’s not raining.”

It never really did pour down rain on us. I’ve always heard that the Inuit have some hundred odd words for different types of snow. Maybe folks from British Columbia have varying degrees of rain.

We weren’t out on the water long enough on the first day to feel the full effects. The second day out, the sun was shining. Unfortunately, the wind hadn’t abated. We were about halfway across the water on our way to the island we would be spending the night on. I’d eaten cantaloupe for breakfast along with something else I can’t recall. As our kayaks pitched on the waves, I could feel breakfast sloshing around in my stomach and was worried about what might happen next when my digestive system presented a much more pressing concern--I had to go. And I had to go RIGHT NOW. I mentioned this to Serena and she said, “Okay, just jump into the water and go.”

This took working up some nerve since I’d never jumped into the middle of the ocean before, but I finally jumped out of the kayak into the sea.

About two months prior, Sea Kayaker magazine ran an article about the dangers of cold shock and swim failure. Deep down I didn’t really think this would happen to me. I was in Mexico and it was eighty degrees outside after all. I will say that once I jumped into the water, my priorities were swiftly redirected. It was like coming across a bathroom at a Cenex gas station in Arkansas and realizing maybe you don’t have to go quite so bad after all. If I hadn’t had someone to help me back in the boat, I don’t know that I would have been able to make it back in at all.

I was grateful to finally be back in the boat and shivering with cold, the source of my unpleasantness changed its point of origin. Pitching around on the choppy water for over two hours had finally taken its toll and half-digested cantaloupe began spewing into the ocean coming from guess who. Poor Caleb, who had been so patient with the flabby abs, chicken-armed woman he was sharing a kayak with, remained so throughout the entire time I spent retching over the side of the boat. He told me about being seasick on a fishing boat off the coast of Alaska. “Oh Jennifer, seasickness is so shitty.”

He continued to paddle while I barfed into the sea. We finally made it to our campsite and I couldn’t have imagined a more idyllic and beautiful place to spend the night. Even in my state of physical and mental misery, I had to appreciate the turquoise water and relatively sheltered beach as we paddled to shore.

I grabbed my dry bag with my clothes and quickly stripped down behind a bush to change. It was another hour and a half before I remembered that I still had to go.

Stay tuned for Part IV: Bees!

I'm a New Aunt

In my last entry, I mentioned how my sister-in-law was ready to give birth any second. It turns out I was right! Literally, she was squeezing out the kid as I typed and I didn't even know it. So now I have a niece. Her name is Cosette and she has a head full of dark brown hair. My parents are racing out to Iowa City first thing in the morning. I'm dying to see her. My brother says she's adorable and since that's a word I've never, ever heard him use, she really must be. She's going to be a daddy's girl.

Drink the Kool-Aid, Baby Parsons

When I was deployed, I found a souvenier that I just had to have. It was one of those cheap-o trinkets that can be found at fine souvenier establishments from Abu Dhabi to Damascus. It's a stuffed camel that when squeezed, plays a freaky sounding Arabic children's song and--get ready for this--has eyes that light up red. Yes ladies and gentlemen, a toy obviously marketed for children that would scare the hell out of pretty much every child in the western world. My cousin received a Tickle-Me Elmo for her birthday. She was terrified of it. Some caring, thoughtful relative searched high and low for an overpriced toy that was at a premium and Raven will have nothing to do with it. When I mentioned the camel to my aunt, she said Raven probably wouldn't go for a toy created for Rosemary's Baby.

My brother on the other hand was delighted with the prospect of such a freaky toy. He and my sister-in-law are expecting their first baby any second now. He didn't see the sense in wasting time when we could go ahead and warp the baby as early as possible. This is the same guy who went through a Nightmare on Elm Street phase in which he was fascinated by Freddy Kruger--during daylight hours. Eventually, all Freddy Kruger memorabilia mysteriously ended up buried deep in his bedroom closet, under the bathroom sink, or tucked away in some other odd, out-of-the-way place in the house where there was no chance that the Freddy Kruger doll, poster, or trading cards could ever climb their way out of the toybox or off the wall and shred his face to ribbons while he slept.

Of course I ended up buying him the demon camel. It's the kind of toy that in most of North America would be in a bedroom closet with a chair against the door to discourage any sort of aspirations the toy might have for nocturnal animation and possible escape. Maybe kids in the Middle East aren't worried about a camel with creepy light-up eyes. Then again, maybe it's all relative. They have children's shows that show giant rabbits getting their hands cut off for stealing and bumblebees that teach them how to be suicide bombers. With all that to worry about, maybe a stuffed camel isn't that scary after all.

Who's My Neighbor?

I just got my copy of Outside magazine in the mail the other day. In the August issue, there's an article by Patrick Symmes about Burma just before Cyclone Nargis hit. Symmes left Burma a day before Nargis came to town and relates the details of a corrupt military dictatorship driven by superstition and such profound greed that not only robbed the Burmese people of desperately needed aid from foreign NGOs, but punished local citizens that attempted to alleviate suffering. No one in Burma had a clue about what would happen until hours before the cyclone hit.

Symmes' article detailed the Orwellian, Pyongyang-style creepiness of the junta's dictatorship. I spend my days at work at a computer reading about evil, oppressive governments and dictators with freakish proclivities and bizarre personality flaws. Stuff like this doesn't shock me anymore, although that doesn't make it any less horrible. The thing that jumped out me from this article was something seemingly more mundane.

Last September, Burma experienced what's now known as the Saffron Revolution. Thousands of Buddhist monks led pro-democracy protests across Burma. The junta put a quick end to the protesters. The official body count puts the death toll at 31, but human rights groups claim the number was in the hundreds.

After the cyclone, the only truly effective internal relief came from Buddhist monks who led truck convoys into the Irawaddy Delta to offer food and shelter to victims at village temples.

I don't believe that all worldviews are equally valid or all roads lead to heaven. Following that idea to its logical conclusion is saying that the ideas of Nicolai Ceaucescu or Stalin are just as good as Gandhi's or Mother Theresa's. Most people would agree that's completely silly.

However, I do think that everyone is responsible for using the truth that they have. Certain ideals are transcendent regardless of culture. Theft, murder, and greed are universally condemned, regardless if someone is Christian, Buddhist, or Jewish. If the Burmese generals don't have some sense that what they do is wrong, they wouldn't have anything to fear from the Buddhist monks and they wouldn't work so hard at hiding their actions from the rest of the world.

And as for the action taken by the Buddhist in the wake of the cyclone, if they didn't have a sense that there was a right thing to do, they would have only been concerned about saving themselves instead of taking care of their homeless and hungry neighbors. I highly doubt that Campus Crusade ever showed up at their doorstep to hand them a pamphlet on the Four Spiritual Laws and pray with them to get "saved" and there are the born-again types who would say that if they don't fill that Sinner's Prayer square, they're going to hell. I don't buy that. Only God really knows what's inside a person. Christ used the parable of the Good Samaritan to illustrate that actions speak louder than the appearance of piety or the letter of the law. Samaritans at that time were despised by the Jews because of their partial pagan ancestry and the fact that their religion wasn't in line with the teaching of mainstream Judaism. They were considered unclean. The Buddhist monks were the ultimate Good Samaritans who didn't have to ask, "Who is my neighbor?" I find it hard to believe that there won't be a place for them in heaven.

Cat Found

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Soapbox of the Day

I'm starting to think that OKC is run by some secret cadre of socialists. I'm a big believer in minimum government. Some things are better if they're centralized--roads, trash, national defense, etc. and obviously the money has to come from somewhere, but too much busybodyness by Big Brother kills initiative and creativity. Laws should exist to protect citizens, not to fill the pockets of city officials. My own lovely birthplace of Bellevue, Nebraska is notorious for this.

Only proponents of maximum government interference would make it such a pain in the butt to own a 45-lb. piece of plastic and float it on the water.

I went to renew my sticker for my kayak today. The first time I tried, I forgot my card that I got in the mail so the Tag Agency wouldn't take it. Okay, fair enough. So I left work early to go home and get the card. I went to another Tag Agency and they said, "We don't accept debit or credit cards for anything under $25."

I pointed out that the card I got in the mail didn't specify that. In fact it very clearly states that I could use my debit card. All she said was, "Different Tag Agencies have different rules. Sorry." I was really irritated.

I found out not only do we have to pay excise taxes and register kayaks (including inflatable kayaks), you also have to pay taxes even if you made the boat yourself. That's just too silly. I think the people that came up with that are just being greedy, little bitches.

On a separate yet equally annoying note, the first time I bought a bottle of wine in Oklahoma City, I walked all over the liquor store looking for a corkscrew. I finally had to ask the guy at the register where the corkscrews were at. He told me they couldn't sell anything that people could use to open the bottle on the way home. WHAT?! I have a bottle opener on my knife and I could pop open a beer in the car, but apparently I'm much more likely to uncork a bottle of Pinot Grigio and get s@#$-faced on the two-mile drive back to my house. He thought it was silly too, but he didn't make the laws. Also they don't sell wine or liquor in grocery stores, although when I lived in San Angelo, Texas they didn't even sell it within the city limits. Everybody knows that people don't get drunk off of beer, right? All these holy roller blue laws and yet they still manage to maintain one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in America. It goes to show that you can always try to legislate morality, but it usually doesn't work out too well.

ORE Nightmares

I know all this ORE prep is getting to me now. Last night I dreamed that we had a recall and I didn't know about it, so I showed up to work wearing a wetsuit and Neoprene paddling boots. I don't know why I would show up to work dressed like that even without a recall, but it was a dream, so it doesn't have to make sense.

Drink Some Water

For some reason, I must look like somebody who doesn't drink enough water. I don't know what it is. I'm starting to wonder if I have some giant scarlet letter on me that's invisible only to me--a big "D" for dehydrated or something. In addition to the standard issue mom-nagging about the need to drink water throughout high school, I've had numerous people throughout life, including strangers tell me to drink more water.

From a friend back home: "You need to drink more water."

From a coworker: "You don't drink enough water."

From a sales lady at the mall in Abu Dhabi trying to sell me facial spray: "You have wrinkles because you don't drink enough water." (Or something to that effect. English wasn't her first language).

During my Baja trip: "Jennifer, do you have enough water?" (Repeat 57 times)

Every time I go paddling: "You're face is red. Have you been drinking any water?"
"You're face is really red. Drink some water."
ME: "Could I please have some water?"
RESPONSE: "Here are five bottles. Drink up."

I've noticed a pattern developing and I'm starting to think that maybe I really don't drink enough water. It's just so hard to do. Just sitting around drinking water doesn't really appeal to me. Flavored water usually leaves a really gross taste in my mouth and I have to drink regular water to get rid of it. When I went through OTS, we had to drink four glasses of water at every meal. That just seemed excessive. I had to pee all the freaking time. I started cheating and only filled the glasses halfway, sometimes only a quarter of the way.

So today, I realized with great annoyance that my one piddling bottle of water wasn't going to last for a 15-mile bike ride, especially with the wind blowing as hard as it was. I don't know what made me think one bottle would last 15 miles to begin with. Fortunately, I saw the OKC Kayak trailer. They always have water and they did this time too. I ended up downing three bottles. I'll have to stop inwardly rolling my eyes whenever somebody tells me to drink some water.

Beer, Bubbas, and Firecrackers

Nothing brings out the bubbas like a holiday involving beer and the the opportunity to blow things up.

I went on a really cool paddling trip last night to watch the fireworks from the Oklahoma River. In addition to the public fireworks displays (which were awesome) lots of private citizens were setting off fireworks by the river. Apparently, the private setting off of fireworks is illegal in Oklahoma City, although you'd never know it.

As we were paddling, I saw something that will always me etched in my memory. It was a Darwin Award waiting to happen. On the banks of the river stood a woman holding a Roman candle IN HER HAND as it shot off. She appeared to be aiming towards those of us who were paddling. I don't know what was scarier--the fact that she was doing this in the first place or the fact that she was a woman. You would expect stupid stuff like this to come from a dude. Being in the military, I've seen some crazy, scary women, but this bubbette was something else.

Never Try to Give a Cat a Bath...

...just leave it to professionals. Or else have lots of Bactine on hand.

Welcome to the ORE: Morale Stops Here

We're getting ready for an ORE. It's the sort of thing that makes me wish for the apocalypse, I hate it so much. It means sitting in chem gear in 100 degree heat. Of course it's practice for the real thing and if the real thing ever comes I'll want to know what to do, but that doesn't make it suck less.

We've been sitting in weekly ORE meetings (Motto: Chipping away at your soul one meeting at a time) that are very slow, tedious, and horrid. It's like being bitten to death by butterflies. Last week they said that the most important thing to remember was to "have fun!"

I try to see the best in things, but some things just aren't fun no matter what. There's no point in pissing and moaning about it--everybody's in the same boat, but that doesn't make it fun.

My favorite part is when we're in the middle of the ORE and somebody reads off a dramatic, new piece of message traffic. They'll say "Exercise exercise exercise. North Korean special ops forces have just gotten onto the base and the wing building is destroyed. Exercise exercise exercise."

There is always that one person that says, "Oh my God! REALLY?" Yes, really. That's why we're all sitting around eating tacos while North Koreans overrun an Air Force base in the middle of the continental United States.

It just occurred to me that it really could be worse. I could be at Minot right now in the wake of their major nuclear surety inspection failure. I'm pretty sure there's not a worse place in America in any branch of the Department of Defense right now than Minot AFB. I'll try to keep that in mind for the ORE.

Part II: The Buzzards of Baja Await You

Our squadron deployed last year to a place that was far enough away from the shooting that we could visit the most decadent cities on Earth, cities with so much money, they were still trying to figure out how to spend it. However, we were still close enough to the shooting to accumulate obscene amounts of tax-free combat zone pay. After two weeks in the desert, we faced the same dilemma that our host nation faced, namely “what should I do with all this money?”

Unlike our host nation, we didn’t have enough for Bentleys or Lamborghinis, but we did have the money for plasma TVs, and iPods.

It also became clear that a great deal of that money was going to boost the economies of various countries in the form of tourism dollars and I was determined to do my part to help. I finally decided on a paddling trip to Baja. I’d been kayaking for almost a year and bought my first kayak that previous spring. My first time paddling was in the Johnstone Strait in British Columbia, so I wasn’t embarking on this completely unskilled. I was just embarking on it at previously unheard of levels for someone whose lion’s share of paddling experience took place on Lake Hefner.

Undeterred by my utter lack of sea kayaking experience and encouraged by the promise that all skill levels were welcome, I signed on for a six day paddling trip on the Sea of Cortez.

I called my parents to tell them my post-deployment vacation plans. I halfway expected by news to be met with lip-biting concern. Whenever I’d previously expressed my desire to visit Mexico, my dad would send me the standard announcement from the State Department warning people to flee for their lives from the state of Oaxaca and avoid any town near the border. I assured them that Loreto was very safe, very small, and very far away from the drug cartels. I registered my trip with the US Embassy. The only caveat was that my dad made me promise I wouldn’t drive. I made a mental note to cancel the rental car I’d already reserved. It was only after I got to Mexico, that I realized he may have been on to something.

The trip started out from the town of Loreto. I went to the Loreto website and looked at the photo gallery. One picture stood out. It was a picture of some large birds overlooking the water and the caption beneath stated, “Vultures await breakfast amidst a golden sunrise at Juncalito beach.”

Maybe buzzards don’t have the same connotation of impending death in Mexico that they do in the US, but I’m not sure how a picture of carrion birds waiting for capsized, dehydrated, and hopeless paddlers and anglers serves as a great tourism pitch.

When we first started out, the weather was beautiful. We were told by our guides, “it never rains in Baja.”

Of course wind was another matter entirely. On day two, I began to think Baja’s turkey vultures might be eating like kings by the end of the day.

Tune in for Part III: Bye Bye Cantaloupe, Hello Cold Shock

Collared Lizard

I was on a hike in the Wichita Mountains when we came upon a collared lizard. If he'd had the cognizance to know better, he would have felt like Paris Hilton. We were snapping pictures like crazy.

Part I: In the Beginning...

My parents were never “camping” people and we never took “outdoorsy” vacations. They were Howard Johnsons/Holiday Inn people and since we were also a military family with a history buff as the for a dad, most of our vacations involved driving 1500 miles to visit relatives, interspersed with pit stops at Civil War battlefields. It’s not that my mom and dad didn’t want to get out in the sun and fresh air, but the bottom line was that at the end of the day, they wanted a toilet that flushed and to be in close proximity to a Bob Evans. One day during the summer, we went on a family outing to one of the state parks and packed a lunch to take with us. Immediately, we were beset by bees. I still have a picture somewhere of my dad trying to swat the bees away with a loaf of bread. Bugs and filth were fine for a day, but they didn’t see any point in turning it into an overnight adventure.

There is one notable exception to this. It was the summer of 1987 and my dad was away on a TDY. My mom got a seedling of a thought that germinated into a full-blown bad idea. Platte River State Park was about thirty minutes away from where we lived and in addition to the very nice, well-appointed cabins, they also had for rent—get ready for this—teepees. A novel way for suburban families of the Eighties to experience what life was like for Native Americans if Native Americans had built their teepees on carpeted platforms and made them from canvas instead of buffalo skins and had sleeping bags, hibachis, and flush toilets across the way. You can probably guess where this story is headed. My mom decided to rent a teepee for two nights and take my brother James and I camping. This necessitated the proper attire. She wore a denim skirt. It made for outstanding comfort and ease of movement when she had to push our stuff to the campsite with a wooden cart. The first night, the weather was hot and windless.

None of us slept a wink, which put us in the proper frame of mind for quality family time the next day. When we woke up, the first thing my brother and I did was pick a fight. What it was about, I have no idea, but it couldn’t terribly substantial since I was thirteen years old at the time. Whatever it was, it was enough to make my mom burst into tears. Nothing puts a damper on a good fight like making your mom cry. What could we do? James and I stared at each other, at a complete loss for words. Mom spent about 15 minutes boo-hooing and wondering aloud what she’d done to raise two such selfish, ungrateful urchins. She finally regained her composure and we headed up to the arts and crafts center where we spent roughly forty dollars making God’s eyes and painting ceramic unicorns (a stellar example of fauna indigenous to the Great Plains region).

While we were at the arts and crafts center, it started to pour down rain. Now, before we left the campsite, the sky was overcast, so my mother made it a point to ensure the top of the teepee was closed up tight. What didn’t occur to us was the roughly two inches of space between the base of the teepee and the ground. When we arrived back at the campsite, the top of the inside of the teepee was nice and dry, but the wind had blown the rain under the base of the teepee. All our belongings were soaked. We gathered our things and left immediately, marking an end to the Parsons family camping extravaganza. It’s the stuff memories are made of.

I went camping again some ten years later with a bunch of friends. The night we got there, we experienced golf ball-sized hail. A childhood friend managed to one-up me though. Her family owned a camper and she related an anecdote of how they had to run from a tornado while they were at Adventure Land, a low-grade theme park in Des Moines with overpriced food and a giant lion as a mascot. She told me how she and her two brothers were out enjoying the fun park and in her words, “having a good old time”. At the end of the day, they went back to the camper. Then the storm clouds rolled in and the tornado sirens started wailing in that special panic-inducing way that causes people living in unstable structures to flee to the nearest ditch with only the clothes on their backs and if they have any presence of mind, a video camera to record the whole thing. My friend said that they fled from the camper shrieking and running through the rain and hail, while her older brother screamed, “Run your asses off!”

They ended the day by drying their sleeping bags under the hand dryers in the bathrooms of Adventure Land.

I did eventually have a relatively successful tent camping experience in Sparks, Nebraska. I went canoing down the Niobrara River with a gaggle of friends where we spent two nights in a tent. Everything went reasonably well. It didn’t rain a drop. The only regrettable thing was the smell in the tent after two nights. When we left, we looked like extras from the set of Braveheart.

While my parents didn't engage in camp out pursuits themselves, they didn't see any reason to deprive me. They were thrilled to have me go off for a week at time, even if it was just to make me scarce for a ten hour period at day camp. I attended summer camp every year between kindergarten and the seventh grade. My first experience was at the Camp Pokamoke in Crescent, Iowa. The only thing I remember about it was that they had a pool and that I experienced the chagrin of having a sensible mom who packed lunches with peanut butter sandwiches, apples, and a thermos of Kool-Aid while other kids had Fritos and pop.

The next year, I started going to Girl Scout camp and by about the third grade I was going to sleep away camp in Fremont, Nebraska, which I’m sure delighted my parents to no end. It was an outstanding camp with cabins, horseback riding, and a pool. Every year, each church in the synod sponsored a week long camp in which they gathered a bunch of grade school kids and about thirty horny pre-teens and brought them out to live in the woods for a week with a bunch of other grade school kids and horny pre-teens. It was a fun-filled week of swimming, horseback riding, night hikes, learning the fine art of wood burning on viciously splintery plywood, mean-girl drama, and week long relationships that everyone just knew would last forever and ever and ever. Camp was only a week, but I would have stayed all summer if my parents had let me. I had gotten accustomed to daddy-long legs, snakes, dirt, and stinging nettles

In light of these personal experiences and since it had been almost eight whole years since I slept outside for three nights without showering, I decided the next logical step was to try this all over again. Only I didn’t go at this half-assed with a trailer, teepee or cabin at a state park. I went at it whole-assed by signing up for an eight day paddling trip down to Baja, Mexico. This was a full-blown, knock down, drag out, crap-in-the-wilderness adventure. It also included yoga.

Stay tuned for Part II: The Buzzards of Baja Await You

Just Say No to Lead-Filled Computer Monitors

I've been doing some housecleaning and I went to take a computer monitor to the Goodwill. The sucker was mondo heavy and I think I lost a few years off my life just carrying it out to the car. So imagine my feeling of utter dismay when I showed up at the Goodwill's back door and was told by the Goodwill, "I'm sorry, we don't take computers." When I asked her why, she said, "Goodwill has gone green and computers have too much lead"
What? I mean, WHAT THE FREAKIN' CRAP?! I'm not asking them to dump it in a landfill or grind it up and stir it into paint. And it's just a monitor, it's not like they have to upgrade it.
So now I have this ginormous CRT in the backseat of my car until I can find a place that will take it or someone who wants a free monitor.

Loogee Man

There's this guy in my water aerobics class. In Water Aerobics Land he would be an arch-villain and his name would be Loogee Man.

He never misses a class. Ever. And during every class this is what we hear...

Ungh, Ungh, UNGH AARGH! Whark, whark, whark...P-TOO! plop (sound of goober hitting water).

He starts off with lots of grunting and straining, which sounds like he's either suffering from severe constipation or he's passing an elephant. He works up to the loogee hawking, and finally makes his deposit in the pool. If he does it once, he does it 75,000 times. Woe to the unfortunate person who happens to drift Loogee Man's direction during deep-water aerobics. They spend roughly ten minutes vainly trying to swim away while holding water weights.

I've learned a very valuable lesson from all this--don't ever fall into a swimming pool with your mouth open.

Bye-Bye McDonald's Fried Pie

You know really fills me with a sense of loss and sadness? McDonald’s no longer sells fried pies. They still have pies, but they’re baked. I was thinking of this the other day when I got one of their lukewarm apple pies.

The old fried pies of the 80s were crispy, greasy, criminally unhealthy and if you weren’t careful when you took the first bite, you could end up with second-degree burns as cherry filling streamed from your lips to the bottom of your neck. However, upon completion of the pie, you were filled with a deep sense of satiety. It made me smile. It made me forget my problems. Those were some good, damn fried pies.

So now the pies are baked and I’m sure it all has to do with marketing a healthier product and not wanting to get sued by people who claim they got fat because McDonald’s didn’t warn them that eating five fried pies everyday and not exercising would make them blow up like a whale. Or maybe McDonald’s didn’t want to get sued when some crybaby exploded hot filling down their shirt. The pies now have holes in them as well, quite possibly to counteract that filling spewing problem. Then again, maybe they just wanted to stay ahead of the Trans Fat Government Nannies who would eventually make them get rid of the fried pies anyway.

Convenient stores remain a Mecca for unhealthy food. When I lived in San Angelo, Town and Country still sold fried pies.

I just think it’s sad that the fried pies have disappeared from the health-conscious mainstream and are now relegated to the fringes of society and gas stations out in the sticks. Oh well, off to Buffalo Wild Wings. At least something good still remains untouched by the fat cops.

President or Savior?

So, we're in the throes of electing the future leader of the free world. The thing that amazes me most about elections is that people think that if a candidate doesn't fall in lockstep with every single issue that they hold near and dear, they must certainly be the anti-Christ.

During the Nebraska primaries many years ago two individuals were vying to be the party's gubanatorial candidate for the November elections. One guy was party base's wet dream. The other guy was more moderate. When things started going south for Mr. Perfect Candidate, his campaign sent out a scurrilous mailer with all kinds of silly accusations on it. One accusation that I recall was, "Mr. Moderate Candidate wants your children to have access porn in public libraries!" It was patently B.S. and it didn't help Mr. Perfect Candidate's campaign. In fact, his political career pretty much tanked after that. I ended up voting for Mr. Moderate Candidate. So did most Nebraskans--he ended up winning the general election too.

We're just trying to elect the best person to lead the country, not the Savior of America. No candidate is going to fit in whatever box, the special interest groups have made for them. We all have things we wouldn't want the public to know, we all have stupid friends, and we all have clay feet. Why should politicians be any different?

Is Anybody Out There? Part II

Any Sunday school-going American kid could probably sing Jesus Loves Me--it's one of the standard little kid Sunday school ditties. We know the words by heart and as we get older we learn more. I eventually learned The Lord's Prayer, the Twenty-Third Psalm, and the Apostles Creed which I had to learn for Confirmation.

Here's the thing--SETI sits at a telescope and searches the sky for signs of intelligent life, other people toy with Ouija boards, and still other people search for solace in the religion of their choice, so the real question in everybody's mind isn't "Is anybody out there", but the root of the search (at least in my mind) is "If there is somebody out there, do they care about me?"

I never felt like I could sing Jesus Loves Me, because I could never be sure that Jesus loves me. He may love us collectively, but there's got to be what, something like 6 billion people on the face of the Earth and I keep thinking that to God we must look like ants on a sugar cube. I'd like to feel like more than an insignificant speck whirling around in the universe.

Wanted for Murder

Meerkats are generally altruistic little creatures, but they've been known to kill the offspring of senior members in their societies in order to advance the position of their own offspring. Kind of like mothers of cheerleaders.

I'm sure the one meerkat isn't dead, just resting--or is he...

Is Anybody Out There? Part I

Many years ago, around Christmas time, I bugged my parents for a shortwave radio receiver. Under the tree Christmas morning, I found a world band radio waiting for me. I thought being able to get radio stations from the other side of the globe was just Way Cool. (Yes, I know I had bizarre ideas about what was cool--that's how nerds are). I'd turn the analog dial ever so carefully, my ears straining to pick up broadcasts from Finland or Australia or Japan for anything in another language. Usually when I got something, it was Tex-Mex music or some Latin American religious broadcast and if I got really lucky, I could pick up Deutsche Welle. That didn't deter me from trying to find more, however, and sometimes I would even listen to the static, trying to discern a voice or a tune--anything that would indicate some sign of life in the chaos.

My all-time favorite movie is Contact. The protagonist, Ellie Arroway, is an astronomer whose passion is the quest for extraterrestrial intelligence. She's dedicated her entire career, much to the incredulity and scorn of the scientific community, to proving that the human race isn't alone in the universe. She's staked her reputation on it and just as she's about to lose funding for her study something extraordinary happens--the message that humankind has been sending out in the form of television transmissions is repeated back to Earth from an extraterrestrial transmitter array orbiting Vega. As more is learned about the message, Ellie is vindicated in all her years of study. In the beginning of the movie and interspersed throughout, we see scenes of Ellie as a young girl, speaking into a ham radio and waiting patiently for an answer to her question. It's the question at the heart of Ellie's ultimate pursuit and it's what every human being seeks to resolve by some means or another. Is anybody out there?

To be continued...

Look at Me! True Confessions, Naughty Pictures, and Letting it All Hang Out

I recently read a book called Mortified: Real Words. Real People. Real Pathetic. by David Nadelberg. It's a collection of embarrassing childhood diary entries, love letters, pictures drawn, and dirty stories written by twelve year-olds and adolescents with only a notional idea about sex. Anybody that reads these and remembers anything about stories they penned as a kid will be instantly pricked with a sense of mortification as a long-forgotten, unwelcome memory comes flooding back to remind them of how ridiculous they actually were sometimes.

I recall a time when I was three or four years-old and I went through a phase where I kept drawing "anatomically correct" bunny rabbits. I can't imagine what my preschool teacher must have thought. I don't know what made me fixate on this subject for my pictures, but likely it was something rather mundane. At that time, my mom had bought me a book about the human body written for younger children. It was illustrated in bright colors and had a few pages dedicated to human reproduction. Of course the book was written for a younger child--not enough detail to tell you how IT really happens, but enough to let you know that you weren't brought by the stork. IT still had that aura of mystery. Looking back, it all seems so Freudian. How weirdly ironic that as a four-year old I connected the most basic human act with an animal known primarily for its prolific reproduction and in bygone years, a pregnancy test.

When I was in high school, I discovered that my mom had saved these masterpieces, I was horrified. I begged her to throw them out. I was certain I would have died of embarrassment if anybody had ever seen them. Never in a million years would I have posted them where people could see them. That's the way diaries and secrets used to be and there used to be a term for pictures of people in compromising positions: blackmail photos.

So why do people these days feel compelled to post their deepest secrets and humiliating pictures on the web for the world to see? It's coming back to bite them in the butt. A young woman who graduated from teacher's college was denied her teaching certificate by the state when they discovered compromising pictures on her blog. She's not the only one. Employers commonly look for potential employees' blogs and websites and they're not hiring people who post pictures of themselves in their most risque moments.

It's not just blogs either. We live in a voyeuristic society. Look at the glut of reality shows. In spite of their different formats they all have one common denominator--LOOK AT ME!

In spite of the fact that we have more information at our fingertips and more ways to connect with the world around us than ever before, we're more cut off from each other than at any other time in human history. I walked into Panera Bread one day and witnessed three or four people sitting at a table together. They were all working on their own laptops completely disengaged from each other. Together, but still alone.

Not only has cable TV, video games, and the internet contributed to a society of sedentary couch potatoes, they've made the world a lonely place. We now have a generation of people who have no idea how to connect and desperately want to. People want to be known and the only way they think they can make that happen is through message boards, forums, and blogs. That's hardly a suitable substitute for real relationships. Now we have a world of people screaming LOOK AT ME!

Bad Moon Rising

I was mooned by a skate at the Oklahoma Aquarium today.

Fish Head, Fish Heads, Eat 'Em Up, Yum!

I finally took the plunge and bought a digital SLR--and this is what I took on my first day out. I went to the Oklahoma Aquarium. It's some kind of eel sticking it's head out of the sand. It made me think of the Fish Heads song.