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MP

True story, circa 1996: The Rail Cart

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So back in college, one of my group of friends’ pastimes was riding the rails. Hobo style. We had many crazy adventures… in fact, possibly the most miserable I’ve ever been IN MY ENTIRE LIFE was captured in this photograph after a particulary grueling 2-day ride:

(picture coming)

That story will have to wait for another time. This story is about something else.

We kept track of our miles– because tracks have definite starting/ending points, it’s easy to do this, unlike with freeways. By the time I stopped, I’d gone on 50+ rides, and had logged about 1500 rail miles. I finally quit riding the rails not because I didn’t want to, but because I graduated and moved, and our normal route (beautiful 11-mile loop through the hills) was therefore no longer available to me. I WILL do it again.

But here’s the meat of this blog: the RAIL CART.

During this era, my friends– creative guys that they were– built a homemade rail cart. Using bicycle wheels and iron pipes. It fit on the tracks perfectly and was gravity-powered. They’d bring it up the hill in a truck, and launch it down. It had two seats and a speedometer (the cart maxed out at 23mph), as well as a wire barbecue brush rigged to ride on the undercarriage and tell by the voltage across the tracks when a train was on the next block. (Did I mention we all went to a tech school in a small town and had few creative outlets?!?)

The main guy who built the cart put together a music video of rail cart footage, set to “Welcome to the Pleasuredome”– and although it wouldn’t be immediately obvious, the song lent itself perfectly. “We’re a long way from home…” Thanks to modern technology, this video– which I thought was lost– can be seen on YouTube.

Except for the video footage in the video below, we only rode it at night, with flashlights, because it was HIGHLY illegal. I was on the rail cart for its final ride. We ran over a possum (we rolled over it completely– high clearance, but boy was he scared). Shortly after, we derailed, and the wheel got bent sufficiently that we couldn’t ride it any more… we had to put it on the track and kick the thing uphill, then ditch it in the bushes until we could come back for it. Sadly, it perished in Meier’s garage fire soon after, along with my giant telescope.

So here’s the video. I’m not in it, but it’s still a hoot to watch– I’m so happy to see this video again! So enjoy. It’s 8:41 long; if you can’t sit through the whole thing, the best clear shots of the cart itself are at 4:30-4:45.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORNukrG1QMM]

Nerd hilarity. -or- Why I love volunteering at the planetarium

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Today I had my biweekly volunteer shift at Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland. My days there are always an endless parade of people running the gamut from really annoying to really interesting.

I’m fairly knowledgeable about astronomical things, but I don’t even remotely pretend to be an expert… it’s humbling to be around some of the amazingly smart people there who put in far more hours than I do, and for no pay. Still, I’m pretty knowledgeable about the subject matter… but that seems to only guarantee that the proverbial socially-maladjusted geek will come along and try to one-up me (or one of the other volunteers).

Today, there was one who came and skulked around for a while, spouting off about various scientific topics to some of us volunteers and two even more geeky guys who appeared to be, essentially, his sidekicks. He talked and talked. He was easy to tune out, but I caught the tail end of what he was talking about because he delivered his final words with such conviction. Or more correctly, arrogance.

The end of (whatever point he was trying to make) was:  “I’m 45 years old. I plan to retire at 47. And in my career I’ve amassed enough personal wealth that I can.”

And as he said this, there was but one thought in my head, which I regret now that I did not verbally state, despite the beauty in its direct simplicity. And that one, single, bemused thought in my head was this:

“Dude, you are wearing a wizard costume.”

“Hello dude, your sausage is really small” …and other verbal emasculations

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Part of my job is to answer customer emails… and we, of course, get tons of spam. Much of it gets filtered out, but not all of it does.

Because “viagra”, “cialis”, and other variants of those (like “c1 AL1s”) are commonly caught by spam filters, I guess spammers have had to employ a bit of cleverness to get around email defenses.

That, plus a blatant appeal to the combination of male pride/insecurity always helps.

With that, I present to you some of my favorite email spam subject lines that my company has received lately.  Yo comrade with small prick!
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–Girls prefer real things, not toothpicks
–Fucking a man with a small dick is like fucking a rabbit.
–lol man, why your one-eyed monster is so small? ;))
–Small meat not big problem anymore!
–Take your Award – Mr. Smallest ramrod 2006 😉
–We can double your one-eyed monster size
–Where did you get so small sausage?
–Size of John Holmes in a few days
–+5 inches or money back
–Adding few more inches to your weenie
–Are you still with short member?  😉
–Yo comrade with small prick! 🙂
–Why your prick is so small?  🙂
–small ramrod not big problem anymore!
–Why so small weenie man?
–Don’t want no short sausage man
–Could you reply why your Johnson so short?
–I salute your smallest meat of the year
–Hello dude, your sausage is really small
–is your Dick not stand up? your girl doesn’t like it?
–With Penis Enlarge Patch all your underwear will be too tight for you.
–The ability to look at smaller meats

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I was having a triumphant morning commute– sun out, moonroof thingy open, stereo turned up loud (Rick Fuckin’ Springfield, thank you)– and my mind wandered to a random thought:  of any and all compliments I’ve ever received over the course of my life, two stand out in particular. (I’ve lost count of the insults.)

So please allow me a little ego love fest here. (It IS my page, after all.)

The first one:  “He is the most unpretentious person I’ve ever met.”  –Steve Domingo (roommate), to my mom– circa 1994

The second:  “It must be fun to be you!”  –Froggy, 2002.

The best part is that neither of them knew it at the time, and neither of them probably remember it now.  But these two sentences have a permanent residence in my head. Which is something.

Mormon-ah-ma-nah. –or– the Missionary Position –or– here, let me show you to debasement

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So as I’m settling into my new digs (way out there– 42nd x Lawton), I am increasingly eager to go explore the new turf. I thought I’d post a random Craigslist ad to see what sort of wacky responses I might get from this simple question:  what are good places for a new person to go to out there– anything and everything from restaurants and cafes to bars to hardware stores? What all IS out there?

To date, I have received only one response, which I copy here in its entirety:

Go to church at 22nd/Lawton. There’s a singles ward at 12:30 on Sundays.
Pull up mormon.org for answers to your questions.

Further evidence that you, my esteemed readership, can run but you can’t hide.

This could be amusing, though… why should I limit my query to physical locations that I can sully by showing up, when there are entire corruptible GROUPS of people to defile?!?

“Oh sorry, I thought you said SINGLE SWORD.”

Consider the following. –OR– I ♥ NY(e)!

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A short anecdote in which Mig basks in the presence of a great personage. Please, dear readership, allow me to cluck about it for a moment.

A few Saturdays ago, I was doing my usual biweekly volunteer shift at Chabot planetarium in Oakland. Chabot was due to have a special guest that day:  Bill Nye, the Science Guy. I correctly anticipated that they might bring him out to the telescope deck, where I usually work, so I had the camera in my pocket just in case.

I had the solar telescope set up and there were sunspots and solar flares to show a neverending stream of people. My shift was actually busy enough that I’d temporarily forgotten about any impending sci-lebrity encounters… when suddenly I saw The Man himself.

Not only did I get to (excitedly and giddily) get to meet him, but I got to show him the solar scope and the goodies that were visible in it. He was dazzled and amazed and had never looked through something like that before.  (It’s quite a  feeling to impress Mr. Science with something… scientific.) And he happily posed for a picture with me– a treat that only one other person was afforded as the Chabot Secret Service hustled him around.

He later gave a very interesting talk that I got to attend… Sadly, they didn’t get to me in the subsequent question-and-answer session, because I had the best question ever teed up:

Where do you go tie shopping?

A nice start to the year. I think the rest will be accordingly awesome.

Combustible flatulence: a quick study in perception differences between genders

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The other day, I was at Spec’s for Mynx’s birthday. I was sitting with Hanford, discussing various things; we would occasionally have words with the table next to us, who had moved over to give us their other table.

As they got up to leave, one of the girls looked at us and said to us (and her friends): “I farted and lit a match.”   (Spec’s certainly brings out the best in people, in many senses.)  In reply to this, her female friends giggled and said, “well duh, you needed to cover up the smell!”

We present males, however, got all excited and immediately demanded to know:  “did it work?!?!!!”

To me, you look more like number two, if you know what I mean.

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I was relating this story earlier today, and I share it with you, gentle reader, so that you might derive some amusement from it as well.

There was a girl I knew in the dorms in college, named Katie.  (Note: this is not to be confused with kick-ass Katy whom I also knew in the dorms.  Different person.)  This story is about Katie with an “-ie”.  I don’t remember her last name.

I knew Katie my second year in college. 1991-1992. I lost track of her after that year but I remember her very well because she is in a few pictures I have of a dorm Xmas party where I am wearing– I will admit this to you because I like you– purple muscle pants.

Anyway, that year, my dad gave me a book at Xmas called “How to Shit in the Woods”.  He found that amusing.

Sometime a few months later, I was walking around the University Union and ran into Katie. She was sitting in one of the marginally comfy maroon couch/chair situations that are undoubtedly still there (and undoubtedly not since cleaned). She happened to be reading that exact book– “How to Shit in the Woods.” It turned out that she was actually reading it for a class of some sort.  Being that it was a rather obscure book, I was surprised and said “hey, I have that book too!”

The point here is this:

Sixteen years later, I still think of this girl every single time I take a crap.

And I wonder how she’d feel if she knew.

-mig.

Guard your children… for I am now officially “scary.”

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I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly scary person.  And you, gentle reader, probably know me enough to know that I’m better described by a lot of other words.  Some such words are more complimentary than others, but still, “scary” probably isn’t one that would first come to your mind.

Yet that’s how I came across to someone this weekend. I was out riding my bicycle through the mean streets of San Mateo, just kind of exploring around, seeing where bike trails go, etc.  It was a beautiful and blissful day, and I decided to do a lap around a playground and community pool that I’d come across.

For a public park on a sunny Sunday, it was quite empty.  On the playground were two kids, their parents at a picnic table not too far away.  I was just kind of pedaling slowly, not even really looking at them, and of course doing nothing threatening.  But as I passed on the bike path about 15 feet from them, the girl stated to the boy:

“That guy is scary.”

I’m quite sure her fear didn’t stem from my bicycle-related attire.  Nope, I’m pretty sure that this pronouncement was thanks to the Copycat Luke Littell Biker Mustache that I’ve been cultivating.

Now if only I could scare the kid neighbors’ bratty-ass friends away in the same manner…