waiting for phish tix

waiting for phish tix, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

people have been camped outside the asheville civic center for a couple days now, waiting for phish tickets to go on sale at 10 AM today. they have a frisbee golf goal set up. i'm going to try to get tickets online, i'd love to see the show but i'm not going to camp on concrete in freezing temperatures for it. if i get shut out of tickets, i have faith that i know enough people who will be coming from out of town for it that one of them will need a place to stay and will be able to give me a ticket. this is probably delusional.

throw paint at a tree

throw paint at a tree, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

or pepto bismol vomit

repainting

repainting, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

we've been wondering will we ever know the truth, what it's like washing windows when you know that there are pigeons on the roof

as fast as they can paint this wall, there's graffiti on it

burn yer $

tea leaf green

tea leaf green, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

everybody in this picture is STOKED

go see live music

tea leaf green is rolling right now

War on Drugs: The Price Tag

from http://www.culture11.com/article/36438

War on Drugs: The Price Tag

America can’t afford marijuana prohibition – it’s a matter of dollars and sense.

By Anita Bartholomew, January 14, 2009



With our economy going to pot, President-elect Obama has promised a “top-to-bottom audit to eliminate spending for programs that don’t work.” So, here’s a sane, simple proposal to save the country billions of dollars a year: end the war on marijuana users.

This failed and counter-productive program is an assault on people who pose virtually no threat to themselves or anyone else, certainly no more than that all-American "Joe Sixpack" revered in our recent presidential election.

Yet, getting caught with a few seeds or trace marijuana residue on a pipe is enough in some jurisdictions to trigger an arrest. Most who favor continuing the war assume that law enforcement focuses on sweeping up kingpins and members of cartels. But, here’s a sobering statistic. Of the 872,000 arrests in 2007 for marijuana-related offenses, almost 90 percent were for simple possession of the dried vegetation in question. The typical arrestee is younger than 30. Think college-age kid caught lighting up a joint. Now, multiply that by 775,000 — that’s where a significant chunk of your drug war dollars are going.

The price of deploying an army of local, state and federal cops, prosecutors and guards to arrest, try and imprison the perpetrators of this non-scourge? Using data from 2000, Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron estimated it as $7.7 billion per year while a 2007 study, by public policy expert Jon Gettman, figured it closer to $10.7 billion per year.

Most of that money is eaten up by law enforcement according to Miron, with $2.94 billion going to prosecution costs in 2000, and less than half a billion toward incarceration.

Add in the revenue we’d eventually gain if marijuana were regulated and taxed like alcohol and tobacco (from $6.2 billion to as much as $31.1 billion per year), and you’re talking real money.

EX-COPS EXPRESS REGRETS ABOUT A FAILED WAR

David Doddridge took pride in his work for most of his 21-year career with the LAPD. But when, five years before his retirement, he got transferred into narcotics, he began to feel he was doing more harm than good.

Cops see the collateral damage done by the drug war, costs that don’t show up on anyone’s budget analysis and are paid, not just by those arrested for the high crime of preferring a doobie to a Bud Lite, but by their families: The father whose car is confiscated when junior gets pulled over by an officer with a nose for burnt herb. The daughter who tries to buy medical marijuana – because it’s the only medicine that relieves her parent’s chemotherapy-induced nausea – and gets arrested in the process. The children who get shuffled from foster home to foster home while mom serves time.

“One of the first things that struck me as a narcotics officer was the tremendous amount of damage we were doing to the social structure – homes, families, children, parents,” says Doddridge. “I look back and still see the faces of the people I arrested and threw in jail.”

He recalls a young mother he busted who had been working her way through college. “Her boyfriend left her and she was trying to make a better life for herself and raise two children at the same time. All of that was gone now. All of it was gone.

“I got to thinking, what are we doing? I’d been thinking it for a while but that just made it worse.”

When I ask him to give me the positive side of prohibition, Doddridge’s usually soft, thoughtful voice betrays anger. “It’s really helped out the drug cartels. It’s created lots of new jobs, building new prisons, hiring new guards.” Doddridge also decries how, under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the government has enacted laws that ignore the fourth amendment’s prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure.

And there are practical considerations even the fiercest anti-drug crusader should take into account. When law enforcement agencies allocate more time, money and officers to drug task forces, those resources aren’t available to fight crimes against people and property.

“The homicide clearance rate today is less than it was in 1950,” says Doddridge. “Today we have all the DNA and all the electronic stuff and CSI and all these other people. But we can’t clear as many because serious investigative resources, that could go into clearing homicides, rapes, robberies and other things are now being diverted into this war on drugs.”

After leaving the LAPD, Doddridge joined Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), the only drug reform organization representing those in law enforcement. LEAP, founded by five former police officers in 2002, now has 10,000 members, including current and former judges, cops, DEA officers, prosecutors, and others. By giving the law enforcement perspective in media interviews, in talks to groups such as Rotary, Lions, and Kiwanis clubs, and testifying before legislatures, LEAP has helped to bring about incremental changes in some state and local laws, such as decriminalization of possession of small amounts of pot. It’s one battalion in the army of reform organizations that includes NORML, the Marijuana Policy Project, the Drug Policy Alliance, and others.

Now one of LEAP’s spokespeople, Doddridge says he expected at first to get “a lot of hoots and howls” when he spoke to an audience. Instead, almost everyone has been receptive to his message.

“It’s almost like they’re waking up from a dream. You can just see them, click, click click,” he says, as the arguments against prohibition break through preconceptions.

Like Doddridge, Earl Barnett is a retired law enforcement officer – he was on a force of about 500 in Greenville, South Carolina – whose experiences soured him on the drug war. In his view, law enforcement needs to get out of the business of policing drug users. “The fact of the matter is, the large majority of the people who use drugs are not a threat to the community.”

Barnett, who is also a spokesperson for LEAP, points to Prohibition, the U.S.’s last failed attempt at keeping people from choosing their own intoxicants. “They preached that we would turn into a nation of alcoholic zombies if we repealed Prohibition.”

Today’s prohibitionists warn that marijuana legalization would lead to a nation of drug-addled zombies.

Barnett believes we should take the lessons of history to heart and feels frustrated that we haven’t as yet. “We are still enthralled with politicians who preach fear in this country. The only thing our country has done very well in the war on drugs is that we have created such fear, we’re reluctant to consider any alternative.

“There has to be a different way because what we’ve been doing has absolutely squandered our resources. And for what?”

PROHIBITION THEN AND NOW

On January 16,1920, the eve of Prohibition, the flamboyant evangelist Billy Sunday (himself, a reformed drinker), staged a mock funeral for John Barleycorn, complete with a grief-stricken Satan marching behind the casket. Sunday preached that demon rum was at the root of all crime and, without it, there would be no more need for jails. To an audience of 10,000 celebrants, Sunday proclaimed, “We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corn cribs.”

This belief, shared by many Prohibitionists, prompted some towns to close their jails and sell off the buildings.

Drinking and crime did take a dive for a couple of years but neither ended. By 1923, people were drinking more than they had in 1918 to 1919, prior to the passage of the 18th amendment that banned alcohol. Homicide rates spiked.

Prohibition had created a distribution vacuum that organized crime quickly filled, operating much like today’s drug cartels.

With the double-whammy of the Great Depression hitting at the same time Prohibition-associated crime was burning a hole in the law enforcement budget, voters clamored for repeal.

So will a deep recession lead us to reconsider pot prohibition? Jeffrey A. Miron, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics at Harvard, authored one of the many studies that calculated the billions we’d save each year if we stopped prosecuting marijuana users. In June 2005, more than 500 economists, including the late Milton Friedman, signed a letter in support of the study, urging repeal of marijuana prohibition.

Miron isn’t sanguine about the war on weed ending any time soon, but he believes that, in a free society, the government has no business protecting us from ourselves — especially when it makes arbitrary choices about which risks it’s going to prevent us from taking.

“Any argument one could make for keeping marijuana illegal would apply at least as strongly for tobacco and alcohol and many other things which carry risks,” says Miron, “driving on a highway, downhill skiing, Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, you name it.”

THE POLITICS OF POT

Why do we spend billions per year on enforcement, judicial costs, and imprisonment of people whose only crime is to prefer a relatively mild, non-government-sanctioned intoxicant over more addictive, more health-damaging government-approved ones? Why is the government so intent on protecting me from me – and you from you? Isn’t its rightful role to protect us from outside threats against our persons and property?

Drug czar John Walters heads the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), a federal agency that establishes drug war objectives and priorities throughout the U.S. I made several attempts to reach Walters, or a representative, so I could ask these and other questions, but was unsuccessful.

So, we’re left to public statements made by Walters and others in his office, such as those from a press conference in September, when Walters was campaigning against a ballot initiative to legalize medical marijuana in the state of Michigan, which has since passed. Walters claimed that marijuana is “dangerous” an “addictive substance” and that proponents of legalizing marijuana for medical use are promoting “poisoning on a wider scale.” A blog entry from the office of the drug czar suggests that marijuana use leads to schizophrenia.

How dangerous is pot, really? There are no records of anyone having died from smoking marijuana, ever, nor has anyone overdosed on it, or been poisoned by it, unlike over-the-counter remedies such as, say, aspirin and similar pain relievers, which kill approximately 7,600 people per year. Medical researchers tell us that the potential for marijuana to be habit-forming is equal to or less than the habit-forming potential of caffeine. But we haven’t outlawed coffee, tea or chocolate. In the seemingly endless search for some justification for the war on weed, researchers have looked for a cause-and-effect connection between marijuana and schizophrenia.

And they did discover that those with schizophrenia are more likely to smoke marijuana than are other people. However, they also found that those with schizophrenia are even more likely to drink alcohol. No one’s suggesting we again ban alcohol.

When all else fails, the drug czar’s fallback argument is that marijuana is a “gateway drug” that leads young people to try more potent stuff. The Institute of Medicine is a non-government body commissioned by the drug czar’s office in 1999 to weigh the value of marijuana as medicine. It found that “most drug users begin with alcohol and nicotine before marijuana” and that “marijuana is not the most common, and is rarely the first, ‘gateway’ to illicit drug use.” In other words, the drug czar’s last, best argument had been debunked by his own office before Walters took over.

Ordinary people are getting wise to the realities and pot won’t be our boogey man forever just as demon rum has lost its ability to instill fear. As it was before the repeal of alcohol Prohibition, average Americans of all stripes are ahead of the politicians on the learning curve. A Zogby poll of 4,730 people nationwide, conducted in September 2008, found that 76 percent surveyed believed the war on drugs was a failure. And 54.4 percent overall believed that the solution to drug abuse should not be law enforcement-related, but either education/treatment, legalization of some drugs, or ending the war on drugs all together.

Twenty-one states have now decriminalized marijuana possession for personal use, medical use or both, most often by ballot initiative — demonstrating that a majority of voters favored relaxing the law. On Tuesday, November 4, 2008, Massachusetts’s voters became the latest to decriminalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana and Michigan voters legalized medical marijuana. Both measures passed with more than 60 percent approval.

But as long as there are any criminal penalties attached to marijuana use, we will continue enriching the violent cartels and gangs that grow, harvest and distribute pot. They thrive for the same reasons the Al Capones of the alcohol Prohibition era thrived: prohibition throws all the business their way.

As long as marijuana is illegal, we’ll still be directing billions to enforcement, prosecution and incarceration. And we still won’t realize the revenues that regulation and taxation can bring.

We could use those lost billions right now. Estimates of the combined savings from legalizing marijuana, and revenues from taxing it like alcohol or tobacco, range from $13.94 to $41.8 billion per year. That’s enough to pay for all or most of President-elect Obama’s proposed ten-year, $150 billion alternative energy investment. Or it could contribute roughly one-fifth to one-half of the $75 billion per year estimated cost of Obama’s proposal to extend health insurance to all.

We can’t know yet where an Obama administration will take us but, Candidate Obama gave a few clues about how President Obama may look upon the war on weed. Obama and his spokespeople have said that he would respect the medical marijuana laws passed by local and state governments and end the Clinton and Bush era DEA raids on medical marijuana providers.

It’s less clear how receptive he’ll be to either legalization or decriminalization. Although he backtracked once he became a presidential candidate, Obama agreed with decriminalization in 2004. And, like the majority of Americans polled by Zogby, Obama has called the drug war an utter failure.

It’s a start. Alcohol Prohibition didn’t end all at once. At the dawn of Prohibition, doctors lobbied to retain the ability to prescribe liquor for medicinal purposes. Toward the end, low alcohol content beer was re-introduced. And with economic collapse and bootleg alcohol gang violence out of control, the U.S. reached a tipping point; the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th.

It’s time to reassess marijuana prohibition with clear minds, the way that our ancestors eventually viewed repeal of alcohol Prohibition, to get past the fear-based and moralistic misinformation. Do we really want to keep spending insane amounts of our dwindling government funds on tracking down, arresting and imprisoning the hundreds of thousands of hapless Harolds and Kumars who then can no longer contribute to our faltering economy by overeating at White Castle? Is this where we want to focus our law enforcement resources when we’re entering a deep recession that’s likely to produce an increase in property crime?

Going back to President-elect Obama’s promise to “eliminate spending for programs that don’t work,” it’s clear that the war on marijuana users hasn’t worked. It’s not just a failure, it’s a disgrace, on every level, and it’s time to end it. Not only to save money or to stop punishing non-criminals, but to fulfill a promise made long ago, about inalienable American rights to liberty, the most basic of which is, quite obviously, the freedom to do what you choose with your own body in the privacy of your own home.


[Editor's note: This is one of three pieces Culture11 is publishing on the War on Drugs. See Radley Balko's piece on collateral damage in the drug war here, and David Fredosso on the case against legalization here. And see David and Radley debate their respective pieces here.]

new day

new day, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

sunrises that don't involve insomnia are pretty sweet

change

now is the time

the temperature is

snow dog, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

6

creepers

to the people who inch up on me at the grocery store self-check out..QUIT IT! can you not wait the extra 5 seconds for me to take my bags, receipt, change, and basket out of the way? must you move up and breathe down my neck while i'm finishing up? wait your damn turn. next one who does it is going to get snapped at like a barking maltese.

black widow murder

rolled with the duct tape

sprinkled hydrant

sprinkled hydrant, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

the world goes around. this is supposedly the most depressing time of the year. it's all in our heads. i'm going to see tea leaf green this weekend. a year after milky chambers left, reed mathis is their fulltime bassist now. things are coming together. i added a new link on the side to their ultra comprehensive lyrics site. it's about to get freezing cold for a few days here. long johns weather.

crime scene

crime scene, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

i wonder who could have unzipped a pocket on my golf bag, taken out my golf glove, and eaten the fingers off it.

snoopy song

snoopy song, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

Theres a snoopy (snoopy)
he is so cute don't even think
of shoot! I LOVE
HIM! yahoo!
repet 3 times

running the picket fence at them

a slight communication gap leaves vintage vantage headless for this week - the two guys who know what is going on are 1) hiking argentina for a month and 2) on jamcruise in belize this week. and they left me in charge 2500 miles away.

instead of redemption and winning the game and blah blah blah i have sent a few emails starting with "again, i'm sorry, i have no earthly idea..."

but i was able to hack an email account to find a purchase order and got confirmation that the order was shipped. at least i haven't been caught watching the paint dry.

happy birthday dgold's radio show

streaming live on the radio tonight:

The latest Honest Tunes radio LINK: http://dgold.info/radio/webcast2009/music405

Tune in for a birthday celebration of the music of Michael Houser on Honest Tunes radio webcast, this Tuesday January 6th.

The show will be both a marathon of music (more than 2 hours, up to 4), and will feature some jams that could be called Marathon Mike because he solos so relentlessly. The highlight of the show I have planned is a new mash-up of the 2 recently uncovered versions of "Humpy Galumpy" by Houser (one with vocals, one instrumental).

Tune in Tuesday, January 6, 2009, at 8PM Central Time on KXUA and http://dgold.info/radio/webcast2009/music405

I wanted to let you know in advance in case you have any avenues to spread the word to other friends who would be interested in hearing this program. Thanks for your support.

Dgold
Honest Tunes radio

postal nacho

postal nacho, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

his head is shrunken and he sits funny and has an overbite and red rocket but he's pretty cool

god's pharmacy

i got this email forward a couple months ago, and it has crossed my mind thousands of times since then, so i figure i should post it up here for posterity.

It's been said that God first separated the salt water from the fresh, made dry land, planted a garden, made animals and fish... all before making a human. He made and provided what we'd need before we were born.

These are best & more powerful when eaten raw. We're such slow learners...

God left us great clues as to what foods help what part of our body! God's Pharmacy! Amazing!

A sliced Carrot looks like the human eye. The pupil, iris and radiating lines look just like the human eye... and YES, science now shows carrots greatly enhance blood flow to and function of the eyes.

A Tomato has four chambers and is red. The heart has four chambers and is red. All of the research shows tomatoes are loaded with lycopene and are indeed pure heart and blood food.

Grapes hang in a cluster that has the shape of the heart. Each grape looks like a blood cell and all of the research today shows grapes are also profound heart and blood vitalizing food.

A Walnut looks like a little brain, a left and right hemisphere, upper cerebrums and lower cerebellums. Even the wrinkles or folds on the nut are just like the neo-cortex. We now know walnuts help develop more than three (3) dozen neuro-transmitters for brain function.

Kidney Beans actually heal and help maintain kidney function and yes, they look exactly like the human kidneys.

Celery, Bok Choy, Rhubarb and many more look just like bones. These foods specifically target bone strength. Bones are 23% sodium and these foods are 23% sodium. If you don't have enough sodium in your diet, the body pulls it from the bones, thus making them weak. These foods replenish the skeletal needs of the body.

Avocados, Eggplant and Pears target the health and function of the womb and cervix of the female - they look just like these organs. Today's research shows that when a woman eats one avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight, and prevents cervical cancers. And how profound is this? It takes exactly nine (9) months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit. There are over 14,000 photolytic chemical constituents of nutrition in each one of
these foods (modern science has only studied and named about 141 of
them).

Figs are full of seeds and hang in twos when they grow. Figs increase the mobility of male sperm and increase the numbers of sperm as well to overcome male sterility.

Sweet Potatoes look like the pancreas and actually balance the glycemic index of diabetics.

Olives assist the health and function of the ovaries.

Oranges, Grapefruits, and other Citrus fruits look just like the mammary glands of the female and actually assist the health of the breasts and the movement of lymph in and out of the breasts.

Onions look like the body's cells. Today's research shows onions help clear waste materials from all of the body cells. They even produce tears which wash the epithelial layers of the eyes. A working companion, Garlic, also helps eliminate waste materials and dangerous free radicals from the body.

i will never look at figs the same way again

starting gumbolaya

starting gumbolaya, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

just add shrimp, scallops, crab, oysters, and rice and simmer

son of a gun we'll have big fun

2009 has been stellar so far

the tar heels lost to BC last night but those scrappers deserved it.

'no country for old men' is a ridiculously good movie.

clamato + vodka + worcestershire = bloody clam = perfect breakfast

holden's mask arrived and he HATES it. of course. like he might claw his eyes out trying to take it off. looks like i'm not going to make him wear it 24-7 afterall.

peace on earth, goodwill to men

happy new year

sappy, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

i hate to be sappy but i hope everybody has a peaceful warm exciting refreshing inspiring cozy new years.

free love

someone who wants to buy condoms from ingles grocery store needs to ask a pharmacist to open a locked glass case where they're kept with nicotine patches and heart rate monitors. i imagine that could be an absolutely ridiculous deterrent. i'm sure it's to prevent theft, but jesus christ they should have free buckets of condoms at the front door for anybody willing to use one.

caught on tape - shoplifting dog

i tried to get holden to do this at a chapel hill harris teeter in about 1999. one night my friend jill and i put on sunglasses and took the white pole that hangs off horizontal blinds as a walking cane, and put the old navy dog raincoat onto which i had stenciled 'guiding eyes for the blind - dog in training' on holden and we let him out of the car near the entrance to the grocery store, hoping he'd run in & go to the meat aisle and take something out and cause some cute mischief. but holden just sat in the parking lot looking at us.

the dog in this video is my new hero.

not a chill to the winter

brick cross, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

once in a while you can get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right

the holidays are here and we're still at war

brett dennen's christmas carol:



lookin for someone to set us free
a king with fists like muhammad ali

merry christmas from the early 80's

xmas 82, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

me: flying reindeer! on my roof! tonight!

chris: presents! presents! presents!

xmas tree 82

xmas tree 82, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

may your days be merry and bright

footwarmers

footwarmers, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

i thought i hated cats. howard is henry's brother and a sweet kitten who likes to snuggle and doesn't act like a sneaky liar who is merely tolerating my presence. i would still run one over with my car to avoid an accident, but he's melting my lump of coal heart. they sat like this on my feet for an hour this afternoon while i read.

way happier

fluffy holidays from my cutest brother henry:


other good news - i am dogsitting another dog named henry this week & he is the same colors and a good boy too


other good news, holden will look like hannibal lecter with his cage muzzle mask and might turn from world's wussiest to more studly, he will at least look very scary

so fucking sick

holden is the worst dog in the world.

he threw up his dinner last night undigested

i stayed up all night convinced he'd eaten something cloth and deciding to put him to sleep

i can't deal with this

compulsively obsessive dog has to be watched every damn second

i took him to the vet when they opened & they x-rayed him & saw something in his stomach and not yet in his intestines, and gave him the amorphine shot and he threw up two fucking socks

i have no idea where he got them, they were not mine - i guess out in the yard.

$300 of dog puke later here i am

i am going to hell but i wish he had died

i can't deal with this anymore

does anybody want a free dog?

i am serious.

i can't afford a dog like this anymore. mentally i can't.

nacho dock

nacho dock, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

the days are getting longer again
that wasn't so bad

my face hurts squirrel

my face hurts squirrel, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

this was deemed "mucho mucho demasiado" for myfacehurts.com
but i don't think it's that terrible
they're bushy tailed rats
brains the size of a raisin
i went through a time in high school where i killed at least a dozen birds, squirrels, chipmunks with my car in the span of a month but haven't killed any in years.
i don't brake for them though. a girl i knew in college with a huge gash scar across her forehead and eye and nose from braking for a squirrel cured me of that. i see her face and don't brake. i brake for people, dogs and maaaaybe a cat if there was no oncoming traffic.

whiny notes

whiny note, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

somebody in my neighborhood had a duffel bag stolen out of his yard. he proceeded to cut up cartons and write melodramatic guilt-trip paragraphs and taped them to telephone poles. the person who took his bag wishes they had a grandma who would give them nice things. get real jackass.

just one step after the next

"Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow.

But of course, without the top you can't have any sides. It's the top that defines the sides. So on we go...we have a long way...no hurry...just one step after the next...with a little Chautauqua for entertainment. ...Mental reflection is so much more interesting than TV it's a shame more people don't switch over to it. They probably think what they hear is unimportant but it never is."

- Robert M. Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

hellllllo panty christ!

just in time for christmas! the lamb of god in panties!
check it out - here
as always coupon codeword - skippyhaha = 40% off everything at vintage vantage

howitzer christmas

howitzer christmas, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

the christmas scene in hickory, nc. that's a real world war I howitzer on the left. i want to know how many people it killed.

wise holden

wise holden, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

we have gotten so much rain in the last two days, but the skies cleared for a while this afternoon
holden hopes it keeps raining because we're still a foot low

saw this online somewhere in the last year, don't know where

would you rather be heard or listened to?



listened to or understood?



understood or challenged?

mannequin

mannequin, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

i just got a torso mannequin for some more efficient t-shirt modeling, and i think with dick cheney's head in the window it will also scare away would-be burglars, unless they think there's an armless dick cheney inside and break in just to kick him.

boys

boys , originally uploaded by skippy haha.

the snuggie

the only thing on my christmas list- a snuggie

prism

prism, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

roygbiv

my face hurts

dscn0017, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

myfacehurts.com
celebrating hysterical laughter and facial injuries

click on myfacehurts.com

coke adds life

coke adds life, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

has there ever been a torso better suited for modeling vintage t-shirts?

SamiSalsa rules.

hemipene

hemipene, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

what do you do when you're at a herpetologist's house for a ladies' potluck?

make her explain snake sex!

(hemipene - pronounced like hemi-peen - The bi-lobed male reproductive organs in most reptiles, kept inverted in the tail until needed.)

no worries

no worries, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

holden & nacho went for their yearly checkup and vaccines this week.

their report cards say:
holden is 10.5 years old, weighs 71.3 lbs, heartrate 110, very good range of motion in hips, he is doing very well for his age, call him mr. velvet ears

nacho is 5.5. years old, weighs 53.5 lbs, heartrate 100, bright, alert, responsive, good body condition, tortilla chip ears

crank

things take twice as long when i'm impatient

my general crankiness boils down to things being out of my control

i wish i could control weather

i wish i could click my heels and be in NY

i wish i could control the behavior of others

i wish i could control the irritability of others

i wish i could live in a cave full of labrador retrievers

"I DON'T EXPECT A THING"

holden, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

Holidays and birthdays, I don't expect a thing,
Everyone has a good birthday and all the holidays filled
with toys, gifts and joy. For me, whatever I get my heart is
overjoyed, I don't expect a thing.

The seasons come and go, sometimes I get real nice stuff,
Sometimes it's just so-so, you will never hear me complain and
I'm never disappointed, because I never expect a thing.

Someone said to me, "Why don't you expect some things
for holidays and special occasions?"
I have all that I need so it really does not matter, as long as
my folks are in good health, have food to eat, and money to
spend, I know my gifts will come in time my friend.

I don't expect a thing, so I always get surprised and no
matter what the gift, what really matters is what's inside.

I don't expect a thing and my life is quite all right.

I don't expect a thing and I always get treated real nice.

from Poetry of a Father Lover & Friend by William O. Johnson

don't be denied

don't be denied, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

having a good time...here today

panicsgiving is almost over & it's been grand seeing everybody and listening to everything

i got some squishy earplugs that take off the top part of what i can hear but what a difference today, no ringing. highly recommend.

leaf collectors beware

leaf collectors beware, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

i think this is a very kind and thoughtful and conscientious sign to hang - warning leaf collectors and passers-by that there is a black widow in the leaves. i am sure there are black widows in ALL asheville's leaf piles, but i applaud the neighborly effort here.

just ask an indian

just ask an indian, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

sure you can trust the government...just ask an indian

blinds

blinds, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

safe travels and chewing to all this holiday weekend

pilgrims killing indians aside, there's always something to be thankful for