This post is well overdue, and I've been hemming and hawing about whether or not to just scrap it, or to just go straight to the best parts for one big post covering the time that I haven't been blogging over the past couple weeks, but I guess I might as well give it the full treatment, despite the fact that it's completely lost its steam..
I mentioned in my last post that I was going camping at Pillsbury State Park in New Hampshire, the State Park service having kindly fucked me out of $20 for using their website. Anyway, the camping trip itself was a much pleasanter experience than I would have been lead to believe if I had only used the internet. At least they didn't try to steal any more of my money. They did, however, strictly enforce a 15 mph speed limit on the campground, which sorta cramped my style. But it was "for the children" as the camp manager informed us every time she spoke.
M&D and I arrived at the campground early in the morning Saturday after about a three hour drive and we were to meet up with M&A and A&M for breakfast before going on a hike for the day. One of the highlights of breakfast, for me anyway, was some leftover pizza they had saved for me the night before. Even though it sat outside over night in the box out in the woods "decomposing." I am notorious for eating old pizza, so they knew that I would eat it, and why wouldn't I, because how can you not fucking love day-old pizza?? They all think it has germs and shit, but I say fuck that, I eat as many germs as I can to keep my immune system strong.
Our real breakfast was actually composed of eggs, homefries, chocolate chip pumpkin bread, and a shit ton of bacon, which I found to be particularly tasty when layered on top of the bread, because as anyone knows combining two awesome things like bacon and chocolate makes them exponentially more awesome. With fuel like that, we knew we would be ready for the day of hiking. We packed up some sandwiches, fruit, and water, covered ourselves with bug spray and sunscreen, and set off on the dusty trail. Actually it was more like a muddy, watery trail.
The hike was comparable to the Trail of Tears, Lewis and Clark's expedition, the Oregon Trail, and the Fellowship of the Ring's journey into Mordor, combined. It was hot, sunny, grueling work, we had no map and had to navigate plenty of puddles, save salamanders from the trail, and we even saw a snake eating a frog. After about an hour or so, we stopped for lunch, only to find that the mayonaise on the sandwiches had warmed nicely while packed in our bags, much to the chagrin of the greedy bastards who had packed two sandwiches.
After lunch, we hiked on for about another hour before we lost the trail and decided to turn back. On the way, we passed a little stream and decided to take a dip, after much discussion of leeches and giardia. I, of course, jumped in face first, like a real man, howling at the top of my lungs because the water was effing cold. I encouraged the other boys to splash the water on their balls first to help them get used to it, but as it turned out, they were significantly wimpier about the cold water than I was.
The swim had to be kept short, as there had been rumors of rain, so we hiked back to the site, got tents set up and cooked dinner. Everything was going fine, we were drinking beers and eating rare steak with our hands, when it suddenly started to downpour and we had to move everything under the gazebo, where we hung out the rest of the evening.
Eating commenced to drinking, which means Apples to Apples was played, and I actually won the game, since I am awesome. Considering it was raining about 2 inches per hour, spirits were high and it was mentioned more than once that what might be a better idea than sleeping in the tents would just be to drink up all the beer, and then when it was out, or when it started getting light out, to start drinking coffee.
That didn't actually happen, as later tents and cars were slept in, but the most important discussion of the evening took place after some 'Would you rather' questions. One of them was, Would you rather poop diamonds, or poop gold nuggets? Naturally, it was necessary to break down the relative merits of either side, considering size and pain to contrast with value, as well as having to wade through one's own feces to extract the gems. A. made a comment that she often sifts through M.'s poop, to which M. replied that he swallows little treasures for her to find when she sifts through his poop. That was when I realized what true love really is. It's like in the story 'The Gift of the Magi,' only it is about poop. When you love someone so much that you will sift through their poop, or someone loves you so much that they swallow gold or diamonds for you to find when they sift through your poop. I can only hope that one day I will find a love like that. And that some day, Hallmark will make a card that expresses such a beautiful sentiment.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
Dreams and Anger
This is really my first real post, besides the test. This blog is basically going to be dedicated to my dreams and things that make me angry. I plan to blog pretty often about my dreams at least, which are very frequent and usually weird. I've been wanting to start writing about them and thinking about them, so if you don't like that, you probably won't like my blog.
Other than my dreams, I am also going to relate humorous anecdotes of things that piss me off. On this subject, I will probably also be posting quite frequently, as a lot of things really chap my ass, and I've got a lot to say about it most of the time. I'm also going to warn right now that it is entirely likely that I will eventually stop capitalizing 'I' in my posts, mostly because I just don't care. I am not a prescriptivist grammarian, and I appreciate word play and absurdities, as well as accepted colloquialisms, especially ones that pertain to the web.
Anyway, with such a prelude taken care of, I feel it is appropriate to get my first post out there so my thirsty readers can finally be satiated. One point I feel I must mention is that lately I have been rereading 'Pride and Prejudice' by Jane Austen, and I have found myself making my own writing much more formal in accordance with her style from that time. I especially appreciate the impenetrable wall one can create with language simply by altering the syntax slightly, and stepping up the vocabulary. However, recently, it made me feel pretty silly when I was confronted by a frustrating situation. We are going camping this weekend at Pillsbury State Park in New Hampshire, and I was entrusted to make the reservations online, since we were informed that it was impossible to make them over the phone. The reservation system is overly complicated, and after some time, I finally figured it out and reserved two campsites for this Saturday night. As it turned out, I had actually reserved one site for next Saturday, and one site for this Saturday, which it actually took a couple days for me to realize. Of course, this would not do, so I looked to change it, only to realize I had no option but to cancel the reservation. Come to find out that they charge a ten dollar cancellation penalty if you cancel with MORE than 5 days notice, and 15 dollars if you cancel with less than 5 days notice. Also, on cancellations they still charge you the 9 dollar transaction fee. I paid 32 dollars to reserve the campsite and have the reservation blocked online for a couple days, and then I was refunded only 13 dollars when I cancelled my reservation. Needless to say, i was fucking pissed off. I was exasperated. I wrote to A. (names of people/friends involved in my posts will henceforth be abbreviated by first name, I've just decided, to protect their identities) an email that I just could not express how angry I was that I got fucked out of 20 dollars just for using the website. I then went back to the NH state park website and to submit a complaint to the customer service department and I wrote this , which it took me about 0.23 seconds to realize how ridiculous it was and how much influence reading Jane Austen was having on my writing:
"While I realize that reservations on this website comprise one of the ways that the state park service generates revenue, I feel that it is utterly ridiculous to charge transaction fees AND cancellation penalties for canceled reservations made on the website. How can either be warranted? I made two reservations and one came back to me inaccurately - not only did I have to pay IN FULL to reserve the site, but I also had to pay 20 dollars NOT to have the site. This is outrageous to me. I believe this website reservation system to be quite inconvenient and not at all advantageous to be used, considering the penalties and transaction fees, and if I believed it would be worth my effort, I would pursue having my money refunded in full for the cancellation."
Even though I even work in a department similar to the one where this message is received and I know that if I ever received an email like this I would laugh and talk about how much of a fuckbag the person that wrote this was, I still sent it. It almost felt good. I even got an answer back, although the only answer they gave me was that if I didn't feel the website was convenient, I could make reservations by phone. I just hope they think I was an old, crotchety man, which I am, but I am not old, really.
So that happened. I am still looking forward to the camping trip even though I am a little bit afraid that they are going to continue to try to fuck us out of money. Can't trust those state parks..
Last night I also had two dreams that belong here. One was of a similar thread of dreams that I have been having lately in which I am being threatened with physical violence for money/material objects. In this incarnation, I was living in some sort of weird neighborhood that was fairly rural, but still sketchy. I was out for the day chasing around some sort of animal that was like a cat but more like a squirrel or monkey, or squirrel monkey if those are real animals, but it seemed to be my pet. I eventually ended up following it back to my house, where I realized I had left the garage doors open, and the hatch door of one of my cars was open. I waded through the large puddle that was in front of the garage, closed the hatch, and decided it would be a good idea to shut the garage doors, since it was already lucky that they had been open so long and I hadn't yet been robbed. I turned and saw that three large men were coming towards my garage, and I started to shut the doors. The motorized doors were closing, but I hadn't locked the regular doors, and even though I tried, they pushed their way in. The largest guy was approaching me and he looked to the side where some golf clubs were resting on against the wall. "I'd like to buy this golf club from you," he said, taking a small wedge out, which actually appeared to be some sort of child sized club. I said, "Okay, make me an offer," but then, thinking better of it, I said, "Wait a minute, I don't know too much about golf clubs, so I need to do some research to figure out if your offer is any good." The club was actually breaking in half in his hand as I said this, but he looked at me and said something like, "It's okay, you won't need to," and suddenly he was choking me. He wrestled me to the ground, but I also had my hands on his throat, squeezing as hard as I could. Somehow, even though he was larger than me and clearly would have had longer arms, I was able to continue choking him while his choke was not as effective. I punched him in the face a couple times and he got a better grip, but I was still able to choke him better, and all I was hoping was that I would be able to kill him before he killed me. Before either of us died or anything else happened, I woke up. I'm not really sure why, but lately I've been having similar dreams where I am being threatened with physical violence and they usually end with me reluctantly killing the other person in order to save my life or maintain my property. I have been finding them rather disconcerting, because the deaths have been rather graphic.
In my other dream last night, which was actually a pretty awful nightmare, I was involved somehow with an elementary school class that was participating in a mystery game that was being staged at a haunted house. The haunted house was put on, so it was pretty tame, and the mystery was somehow explained/put on at the first floor, and then answered/solved by the kids by going to the second floor. The third floor, however, unbeknownst to those of us running the game, was actually the site of a horribly grisly mass murder that was purpetrated by some wispy white spirits. Unfortunately, I found out that one small girl had gone up on her own to the third floor in an effort to solve the game. The girl came down the stairs from the third floor in a catatonic state and everyone freaked out; I tried to find out what happened to her, but all she could say was a whispered "THE WHITES OF THEIR EYES...THE WHITES OF THEIR EYES.." I ran up the stairs and saw a giant room full of dismembered bodies covered in blood and shit, and wispy white curtains or something at the windows. There was at least one corpse hanging up with its eyes wide open and teeth bared, even though the face was covered in blood or shit or something. I deduced that this was the reason she was saying 'the whites of their eyes' and I had some kind of vision of white wispy spirits and just gore in general, and then, luckily or unluckily, I woke up. I was freaked out and I tried to cover myself up with the blanket as much as possible, but I also saw my mirror, which freaked me out too because mirrors in the dark freak me out. But anyways. Now that I've freaked myself out by reliving last night's nightmare for your amusement, I am going to go to bed.
Other than my dreams, I am also going to relate humorous anecdotes of things that piss me off. On this subject, I will probably also be posting quite frequently, as a lot of things really chap my ass, and I've got a lot to say about it most of the time. I'm also going to warn right now that it is entirely likely that I will eventually stop capitalizing 'I' in my posts, mostly because I just don't care. I am not a prescriptivist grammarian, and I appreciate word play and absurdities, as well as accepted colloquialisms, especially ones that pertain to the web.
Anyway, with such a prelude taken care of, I feel it is appropriate to get my first post out there so my thirsty readers can finally be satiated. One point I feel I must mention is that lately I have been rereading 'Pride and Prejudice' by Jane Austen, and I have found myself making my own writing much more formal in accordance with her style from that time. I especially appreciate the impenetrable wall one can create with language simply by altering the syntax slightly, and stepping up the vocabulary. However, recently, it made me feel pretty silly when I was confronted by a frustrating situation. We are going camping this weekend at Pillsbury State Park in New Hampshire, and I was entrusted to make the reservations online, since we were informed that it was impossible to make them over the phone. The reservation system is overly complicated, and after some time, I finally figured it out and reserved two campsites for this Saturday night. As it turned out, I had actually reserved one site for next Saturday, and one site for this Saturday, which it actually took a couple days for me to realize. Of course, this would not do, so I looked to change it, only to realize I had no option but to cancel the reservation. Come to find out that they charge a ten dollar cancellation penalty if you cancel with MORE than 5 days notice, and 15 dollars if you cancel with less than 5 days notice. Also, on cancellations they still charge you the 9 dollar transaction fee. I paid 32 dollars to reserve the campsite and have the reservation blocked online for a couple days, and then I was refunded only 13 dollars when I cancelled my reservation. Needless to say, i was fucking pissed off. I was exasperated. I wrote to A. (names of people/friends involved in my posts will henceforth be abbreviated by first name, I've just decided, to protect their identities) an email that I just could not express how angry I was that I got fucked out of 20 dollars just for using the website. I then went back to the NH state park website and to submit a complaint to the customer service department and I wrote this , which it took me about 0.23 seconds to realize how ridiculous it was and how much influence reading Jane Austen was having on my writing:
"While I realize that reservations on this website comprise one of the ways that the state park service generates revenue, I feel that it is utterly ridiculous to charge transaction fees AND cancellation penalties for canceled reservations made on the website. How can either be warranted? I made two reservations and one came back to me inaccurately - not only did I have to pay IN FULL to reserve the site, but I also had to pay 20 dollars NOT to have the site. This is outrageous to me. I believe this website reservation system to be quite inconvenient and not at all advantageous to be used, considering the penalties and transaction fees, and if I believed it would be worth my effort, I would pursue having my money refunded in full for the cancellation."
Even though I even work in a department similar to the one where this message is received and I know that if I ever received an email like this I would laugh and talk about how much of a fuckbag the person that wrote this was, I still sent it. It almost felt good. I even got an answer back, although the only answer they gave me was that if I didn't feel the website was convenient, I could make reservations by phone. I just hope they think I was an old, crotchety man, which I am, but I am not old, really.
So that happened. I am still looking forward to the camping trip even though I am a little bit afraid that they are going to continue to try to fuck us out of money. Can't trust those state parks..
Last night I also had two dreams that belong here. One was of a similar thread of dreams that I have been having lately in which I am being threatened with physical violence for money/material objects. In this incarnation, I was living in some sort of weird neighborhood that was fairly rural, but still sketchy. I was out for the day chasing around some sort of animal that was like a cat but more like a squirrel or monkey, or squirrel monkey if those are real animals, but it seemed to be my pet. I eventually ended up following it back to my house, where I realized I had left the garage doors open, and the hatch door of one of my cars was open. I waded through the large puddle that was in front of the garage, closed the hatch, and decided it would be a good idea to shut the garage doors, since it was already lucky that they had been open so long and I hadn't yet been robbed. I turned and saw that three large men were coming towards my garage, and I started to shut the doors. The motorized doors were closing, but I hadn't locked the regular doors, and even though I tried, they pushed their way in. The largest guy was approaching me and he looked to the side where some golf clubs were resting on against the wall. "I'd like to buy this golf club from you," he said, taking a small wedge out, which actually appeared to be some sort of child sized club. I said, "Okay, make me an offer," but then, thinking better of it, I said, "Wait a minute, I don't know too much about golf clubs, so I need to do some research to figure out if your offer is any good." The club was actually breaking in half in his hand as I said this, but he looked at me and said something like, "It's okay, you won't need to," and suddenly he was choking me. He wrestled me to the ground, but I also had my hands on his throat, squeezing as hard as I could. Somehow, even though he was larger than me and clearly would have had longer arms, I was able to continue choking him while his choke was not as effective. I punched him in the face a couple times and he got a better grip, but I was still able to choke him better, and all I was hoping was that I would be able to kill him before he killed me. Before either of us died or anything else happened, I woke up. I'm not really sure why, but lately I've been having similar dreams where I am being threatened with physical violence and they usually end with me reluctantly killing the other person in order to save my life or maintain my property. I have been finding them rather disconcerting, because the deaths have been rather graphic.
In my other dream last night, which was actually a pretty awful nightmare, I was involved somehow with an elementary school class that was participating in a mystery game that was being staged at a haunted house. The haunted house was put on, so it was pretty tame, and the mystery was somehow explained/put on at the first floor, and then answered/solved by the kids by going to the second floor. The third floor, however, unbeknownst to those of us running the game, was actually the site of a horribly grisly mass murder that was purpetrated by some wispy white spirits. Unfortunately, I found out that one small girl had gone up on her own to the third floor in an effort to solve the game. The girl came down the stairs from the third floor in a catatonic state and everyone freaked out; I tried to find out what happened to her, but all she could say was a whispered "THE WHITES OF THEIR EYES...THE WHITES OF THEIR EYES.." I ran up the stairs and saw a giant room full of dismembered bodies covered in blood and shit, and wispy white curtains or something at the windows. There was at least one corpse hanging up with its eyes wide open and teeth bared, even though the face was covered in blood or shit or something. I deduced that this was the reason she was saying 'the whites of their eyes' and I had some kind of vision of white wispy spirits and just gore in general, and then, luckily or unluckily, I woke up. I was freaked out and I tried to cover myself up with the blanket as much as possible, but I also saw my mirror, which freaked me out too because mirrors in the dark freak me out. But anyways. Now that I've freaked myself out by reliving last night's nightmare for your amusement, I am going to go to bed.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
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