It's the end of the world as I know it

Double-tagged, and by two people whose writing I really enjoy:

First by J.D. Carlucci and immediately after that by Cormac Brown.

It's called

"The End of the World" meme.

You wake up tomorrow and every person on the planet has vanished. What do you do?

I'm going to go with Mr. Carlucci's slightly less corpse and rat-ridden vision of the end. He said "every person on the planet has vanished", not "every person on the planet has dropped dead and is now rotting away in place" thank God.

Day One: Spend an hour or so making phone calls that won't go through, checking TV channels that have gone off the air, stuff like that. Spend most of the morning in stunned disbelief. Get in my car and drive around for a little while checking things out, convincing myself everyone is really gone. Drive to the police station where I work to see if there are any clues in the form of teletypes or official notices that might give me some clue as to what happened.



Load up a department SUV with ammunition and an extra couple of rifles. I wouldn't need much more in terms of guns (got plenty) just ammo and spare parts. With all of humanity vanished I'm not sure why I'd need more guns and ammo, but I'm a paranoid bastard and I've always figured it's better to have a gun and not need it than the other way around. Stop at church and pray, and light some candles, and then steal some liquor on the way home. Cry. Let the dogs sleep in bed with me for the first time.

Week One: Set about looking for a living woman to mate with in order to continue the human race. Then I'd remember I had a vasectomy, and that whole continuing the human race thing was just a lame excuse to try and get laid to take the edge off. I'd feel like a fraud, and feel extra guilty because I survived and my family didn't. I'd probably go get more guns and booze at that point. I'd go through and pack up family photos and favorite books, including all my bride's books on small farming and gardening. Pause to regret not printing out all those family pictures saved on the computer that I'll never get to see again. Cry.

Stop and loot Walgreens to load up on antibiotics, dental care supplies and medicine. PAINKILLERS. Steal a good bicycle and lots of extra tires and inner tubes. I'd also hit the local REI and grab a few sets of good technical clothing, boots, water purifiers and backpacking food. I'd hitch up a trailer full of water, non-perishable food, gasoline, stove fuel, a generator, and start driving south to a more temperate climate zone. I don't want to be stuck in the midwest when winter rolls in. Last thing I'd do was leave a note and a map with my planned route.

Month One: Convince myself that, yes, everyone really IS gone as I drive south. Get far enough south that hard freezes won't be too much of a problem, probably somewhere in south/central Kentucky or Tennessee. Find a good house somewhere near or on a river. Continue looking around and hoarding.

Year One: Work on gardening and raising animals. Write in a journal every week. Shoot guns off at random and scream at God. Hug my dogs. Take road trips, a week at a time (wouldn't want to spend more time than that away from the homestead--the orchard needs to be tended, food harvested and canned, animals fed and tended to), just in hope of running into another human being. Wonder why I was left alive.

Christ this was depressing. But fun!

Four things

I saw this over at Cormac Writes and thought it looked like fun. It's been a while since I did any lists. I'm curious as to how they start, why one number is chosen instead of another, and why so many of us feel compelled to list things about ourselves.

4 movies you would watch over and over again:

• Casablanca
• Apocalypse Now
• Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas
• Caddyshack
  

4 places you have lived:

• Louisville, Kentucky
  
• Teaneck, New Jersey
  
• Yardley, Pennsylvania
  
• Chicago, Illinois
  

4 TV shows you love to watch:

• No Reservations
  
• Iron Chef America
  
• Metalocalypse I love this show. My youngest got me the first 2 seasons on DVD. I watched it all in two days after Christmas, and then couldn't fall asleep properly because I kept hearing the theme song in my head.
  
• South Park Hard to believe this show is more than 10 years old.
  

4 places you have been on vacation:

• The Florida Keys
• Las Vegas
• New Orleans
• Ireland
  

4 of your favorite foods:

• Sushi
• Buzzard's Breath chili This is more or less the recipe my chili is based on. Mine is better, I think.
  
• Raw oysters
  
• Gumbo "You can eat a lot of gumbo" is what MizBubs said when I mentioned this. Gumbo z'herbes, chicken and andouille gumbo, seafood gumbo, duck and oyster gumbo...
  

4 websites you visit daily:

• Chicago Now If I may self promote, this is where my cop blog Arresting Tales is located.
  
• Salon
• Second City Cop
• Fark
  

4 places you would rather be right now:

• A cabin on a lake in Minnesota
• The French Quarter
• My backyard (I'm sitting here because I came down with a wicked cold last night, and I'm still trying to clear my head, and it's a beautiful day outside.)
  
• Driving somewhere out west to someplace I've never visited
  

4 things you want to do before you die:

• Own a small farm
• Drive around the USA for at least a couple months
• Do a through-hike of a major trail like the Appalachian or Pacific Crest
• Scuba dive
  

4 books you wish you could read again for the first time:

• Under the Volcano
• Anything by Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammet
• In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead I have read all of James Lee Burke's novels featuring Dave Robicheaux, but this one made the biggest impression on me.
  
• The World According to Garp
  

Tag 4 people you think will respond:

Why stop at 4? If you'd like to do this, consider yourself tagged!

Ow, my eyes

What Splotchy asks for, Splotchy gets.

Consider yourselves tagged, you primitive screwheads. Let's see those peepers.

Better random and late than never random at all

During the frenzy of activity that was Nora's romp through the Fangoria spooksmodel semi-finals, I left many things undone around here. What with the bank of computers running sophisticated statistical projections, and the walls being covered with butcher paper for all our brainstorming notes, and the empty Chinese takeout cartons and pizza boxes everywhere...you get the idea.

One of the things I left undone was this tag from Utah Savage. So here it is:

The Rules

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

1. I am, at the moment, the perfect picture of the disheveled blogger sitting around in his pajamas and accomplishing nothing.

2. I constantly plan trips that I will likely never take. I usually have fairly detailed plans of places to stay and visit for a number of different destinations. Right now I've got files on Nashville, Denver, the Florida panhandle, San Antonio/Austin, and Boston. I always have current files on Las Vegas and New Orleans.

3. I have changed the way I eat and drink since driving home from a Superbowl party and feeling like a bloated, queasy wreck. Since then I've lost 15 pounds, mostly by cutting back on booze, the deep fryer and meat, and adding a lot more water and fruit. The last two nights were fat, meaty exceptions, and I am already correcting that.

4. I'm having more fun at work than I've had in years.

5. This is the first time in years I haven't played at least one or two relatively well thought out April Fool jokes. There's still time for a hoax, but it won't be up to my usual standards if I do.

6. I feel a profound sense of relief that this tag only calls for 6 things, and is not the excessive 25 things that seem to be demanded of Facebook users.

And now, the tagging. I have committed a number of tagging blunders before, and I'm feeling a little tentative about identifying specific taggees by name...so. Let's do this by telepathy. If you hear a voice inside your head telling you, no, compelling you to respond to this? Well then, you're one of the six people I mentally tagged.

Only Eight?

I won some major recognition the other day, from literary figure Cormac Brown. Cormac is one of the people out there in the blog world who I've emailed back and forth with about a few things and hope I can meet one of these days. He shares my love of all things noir, but then cranks it up a notch by being a pretty kick ass crime writer himself. He's good at the twist ending.

Turns out I'm considered to have a "well-written and amusing" blog. I'm a little suspicious of my nomination, since I am, in fact, totally interested in self-aggrandizement. Here's the deal with this meme-a-rino:

“These bloggers are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award.”

"Deliver this award to eight bloggers..." Only EIGHT? Oh well. Some of the people I'd tag have already been tagged, but I'll do the best I can.

Here goes:

Melinda June
Coaster Punchman
Lulu
Tenacious S
Johnny Yen
Splotchy
Doctor Monkey Von Monkerstein
MnMom of Happy to be from Iowa

Everyone who participates gets this fabulous award:

Six random things

Newly-rebirthed blogger, former Illinoisan and current Georgia peach Lisa of That's Why snuck up on me while I was busy obsessing about naked people and hit me with a tag. Here's the dealio:

The Rules

1. Link to the person who tagged you. Done right here.
2. Post the rules on your blog. Well, here they are.
3. Write six random things about yourself. Stick around, I'll get to that.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them. Hmmmm.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up. Okie dokie.

1- I like to sidle up to family members and quietly hum irritating pop tunes or TV theme songs while they're busy doing something else, so that later on in the day they can't shake some hit by the Carpenters or the theme from I Dream of Jeanie from their head, and they don't know why.

2- I got in trouble in 1st grade for bringing a Playboy centerfold to school (circa 1968) because I thought the lady in the picture was really pretty.

3- My parents were called again later in 1st grade and asked to get me to stop telling stories about ghosts and monsters to my classmates, because I was scaring them.

4-I am almost totally indifferent to what kind of car I drive, and have in the past 17 years driven a monkey shit brown 1980 Mercury Monarch, a white 1990 Ford Festiva (I don't like white cars), and a badly rusted out 1995 Plymouth Voyager minivan. Now I drive a thoroughly functional but nondescript 2007 Hyundai Elantra, the nicest car I've ever owned.

5- I hate heights if I feel exposed. I'm great on observation decks, tall buildings and scenic overlooks, but I get nearly paralyzed if I'm on a ladder more than 15 or 20 feet off the ground. I have no idea how I did all the stuff I did during Army basic training. When I go to Great America I go on all the roller coasters, even though it genuinely terrifies me to the point I can barely open my eyes during the ride.

6-I used to make my own beer back in the early 90's, and I plan on starting up again in the next month or two.

Now this next part is tough: the tagging. I lose track of which bloggers hate being tagged, and which ones embrace it. I'm used to barging in and being an inconvenience to people in my job, so I try and minimize it here. Plus a bunch of people I might have tagged have already responded. Oh well. Let's try:

MizBubs

The eldest (who turns 20 today and is no longer a teenager!)

Jin

Splotchy

Bacon Lady

The unofficial mayor of Chicago, Johnny Yen

This gift had balls

'Tis the season for tagging, it seems, and I've been tagged by Chris over at Some Guy's Blog.

Here's the dealio:

1. pick a crappy gift and post it on your blog.

2. pick 5 Bloggers that you think might want to open their hearts and pick a crappy gift.

3. link back to this post.

4. and if you really want to get into heaven, write "I POSTED A CRAPPY GIFT" in the comments section of Dr. Zibbs' original post HERE where it all started, so we can all see the crappy gifts you picked.

And my contribution to this endeavor?

Behold, the Bully Bag:



The Bully Bag is

"an actual scrotum from a bull... finished by professional "ballologists!" It's coated and sealed with polyurethane. The average size is approx. 5 x 6" and no two are alike. Solid oak stand is approx. 8 x 4 x 9 1/4"h. with suede top trim laces."

It is available from the truly wonderful Sportsman's Guide Catalog for $39.97.

Hmmm, let's see. I'll tag Jin, MnMom, Doc, Erik and Bacon Lady.

Dguzman infects me with the Splotchy virus

It's a pandemic. Splotchy's Story Virus (v3) is radiating outward, and the infected are running around in a frenzy, infecting other bloggers like the denizens of 28 Days Later. Now I've been re-infected by Dguzman:

The bus was more crowded than usual. It was bitterly cold outside, and I hadn't prepared for it. I noticed that a fair number of the riders were dressed curiously. As I glanced around, I stretched my feet and kicked up against a large, heavy cardboard box laying under the seat in front of me. (Splotchy)

I couldn't believe my eyes. Surrepticiously, I tried to establish, without giving it away, if anyone else had seen what I had. For ten years I had been looking for that box. What looked like an ordinary cardboard box to most contained something most precious. Only by the small golden "P" was I able to identify what I was looking at. (Freida Bee)

How the box got here, or how I happened to be on this bus with it now--these questions were immaterial. I just had to get that box. The bus slowed to a stop, so I steadied myself. Just as I was about to make a grab for the box, however, it moved. Someone else was picking it up to take it away! I had to stop her! (Dguzman)

What? This couldn't be happening--to get this close and watch some quick-footed little dwarf just up and snatch it away from me...no! I got up and just as I did the sweaty hillbilly in front of me stood up and stepped into the aisle. Moving like a bad mime imitating a man in a box he extended his arms and stretched, looking up at the ceiling as he did so. The dwarf with the box--I couldn't be sure if it was a man or a woman, but something about her seemed feminine--slipped out the front door and off the bus. I took a deep breath and slumped back down into my seat.

_____________________

I tag Dguzman, Freida Bee, Dr. MVM, and D-Cup.

Meme, redux.

I just did this meme the other day, but whaddya know, I've been tagged again--this time by Katie Schwartz! So I thought, hey, why not? Here we go.

Meme, redux:

1. Five names you go by:

a. Buzz
b. Dumbo
c. Bubs
d. El Martillo
e. Sarge

2. Three things you are wearing right now:

a. A very comfortable fleece bathrobe
b. Very comfortable plaid flannel pajama pants
c. A 2005 Shamrock Shuffle long sleeve tee shirt

3. Two things you want very badly at the moment:

a. To successfully resolve a beef I've got with the administrators of a medical flexible spending account I have through work
b. To get back to brewing our own beer this winter

4. Three people who will probably fill this out:

Forget my last answer. Let's see, MizBubs, the eldest and Lulu

5. Two things you did last night:

a. Watched the movie Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.
b. Slept like a rock.

6. Two things you ate today:

a. Pumpkin pie
b. Pecan-crusted pork tenderloin stuffed with apples and Maytag blue cheese

7. Two people you last talked to on the phone:

a. The eldest
b. My brother

8. Two things you are going to do tomorrow:

a. Meet with my human resource director about the beef I mentioned earlier
b. Attend the first of several work-related Christmas parties.

9. Two longest car rides:

a. Chicago to San Antonio--about 1200 miles, more or less
b. Chicago to New Orleans--about 950 miles, more or less
(well, neither of these things changed in the last couple of days)

10. Two of your favorite beverages:

a. Bourbon
b. Smoothies with yogurt and frozen berries. I make good ones.

_____________________

Stay tuned. Later this week I'll be featuring a new Germany or Florida amputee criminal holiday edition!

Post-holiday resonses to pre-holiday tags

Jin ran by and tagged me so quickly and surreptitiously that I almost didn't catch it, what with all the holiday hubbub and all.

1. Five names you go by:

a. Joe
b. Joseph
c. Bubs
d. Dad
e. Sir

2. Three things you are wearing right now:

a. Reading glasses
b. My 2008 Lincolnwood Turkey Trot long sleeve tee
c. Black Chuck Taylors

3. Two things you want very badly at the moment:

a. To weigh 20 pounds less than I do
b. To not have a painful bone spur on my foot

4. Three people who will probably fill this out:

Holiday season. No time for tagging now. Move on.

5. Two things you did last night:

a. Taught the palm-heel strike to my 4 year old niece.
b. Slept like a rock.

6. Two things you ate today:

a. Mi Xao Do Biên
b. Spring roll

7. Two people you last talked to on the phone:

a. My brother
b. Mizbubs

8. Two things you are going to do tomorrow:

a. Sleep late
b. Put up Christmas decorations

9. Two longest car rides:

a. Chicago to San Antonio--about 1200 miles, more or less
b. Chicago to New Orleans--about 950 miles, more or less

10. Two of your favorite beverages:

a. Ice water
b. Strong coffee with half and half

_____________________

Right around the same time Jin tagged me, I got hit with another one.

Tim Broderick, a really cool writer/artist who's a friend of Johnny Yen, tagged Johnny and I. Tim asked what movies we'd watch if it was just a dad's night--no mom around. You can see Mr. Yen's response here.

Depending on the time of night, and night of the week, we might just watch Metalocalypse on Adult Swim. The youngest votes for watching Eraserhead again, as soon as I replace the copy that got lost. The eldest votes for any awful exploitation movie that MizBubs wouldn't bother with. The final possibility would be to go with sentimental favorites from the girls' younger years: The Nightmare Before Christmas or Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Or Freaks.

I lack the will right now to tag others, but if you'd like to play, consider yourself tagged with either or both of these little exercises.

Enjoy your weekend!

I've Got To Run Faster... I've been tagged again!

Hello, everyone. Mizbubs here. I let my guard down, and Bubs caught me again! Samurai Frog hit Bubs with this. He also asked that any of the tagged please link back to the original post on Blog Cabins. So, here goes:

A- Animal Crackers - a New Years Eve must!

B - Blow Up - I first saw this on TV as a pre-teen. I was fascinated.

C - Citizen Kane

D - Double Indemnity - My Three Sons' dad was an actor?

E - Enter the Dragon

F - Face/Off - You've got to love the doves...

G - Grand Hotel

H - Help - more than a movie, it's a philosophy.

I - In the Heat of the Night

J - Journey to the Center of the Earth - I had a crush on James Mason for a while.

K - Kill Bill:Volume 1

L - Lord Love a Duck - Has anyone else ever seen this?

M - The Man with the Golden Arm - I'm strictly a pre-Rat Pack girl.

N - Notorious - don't drink glowing milk!

O - On the Waterfront

P - The Public Enemy - James Cagney was another early love...

Q - The Quiet Man - Can I be Maureen O'Hara when I grow up?

R - Rebecca - turns out I was actually thinking of "Laura" with Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews. Oh well.

S - The Shop Around the Corner

T - The Thin Man - My eldest daughter is named Nora. Need I say more?

U - An Unmarried Woman

V - Village of the Damned

W - Wait Until Dark - pretty scary for a movie with no blood!

X - X-Men

Y - Young at Heart

Z - Zulu - One of those movies you watched on Sunday afternoon when nothing else was on.

So, there you have a glimpse into my celluloid influences. (OK, some movies just start with the right letter.) Thanks for reading!

Alphabet movie meme

It's been a little while since I've been tagged, and I have to say the ego is happy to be recognized again.

This is pretty straightforward if you're any kind of a movie buff: go through the alphabet with movie titles. Samurai Frog hit me with this. He also asked that any of the tagged please link back to the original post on Blog Cabins so Samurai can be king of teh Googles. I tried not to over-think it, and I just listed the first movie that popped into my head.

Anguish: A creepy movie featuring a midget woman and a whole lotta eye injuries.

Bedlam: One of the movies that made a huge impression on me as a kid. Boris Karloff stars, Val Lewton produced, and it's set in Bethlem Royal Hospital--the psych hospital where people paid to come in and gawk at the mental patients.

Carnival of Souls: The original--a moody, unsettling little black and white gem.

Dawn of the Dead: I'm still partial to the original. I saw it at a drive in when it first came out with a bunch of other splatter films.

Escape From New York: "You're the Duke! You're A-number-one!"

Freaks: One of my youngest daughter's favorites. A morality tale set in a sideshow.

Goldfinger: Bond. James Bond. The real James Bond, Sean Connery, and Oddjob, and the best Bond theme song ever.

House on Haunted Hill: The original with Vincent Price, of course.

Intolerance: I know I saw this movie at Facets Multimedia, but I can't remember anything about it, and I have no idea why this was the first "I" title that came to mind.

Juliet of the Spirits: Fellini, but not one of my favorites by him. Again, no idea why this came to mind first.

Kiss Me Deadly: One of the great noir classics.

Longest Day, The: D-Day epic with a cast of thousands. I love this movie.

M: An absolute classic Fritz Lang movie starring a young Peter Lorre as a pedophile murderer.

Night of the Hunter: More noir. A truly terrifying Robert Mitchum as the psychopath posing as an itinerate preacher.

O Brother Where Art Thou: Goofy depression-era fun from the Coen brothers.

Pickup on South Street: Holy cow, I had no idea this list would be so heavy with film noir titles. Favorite line, uttered by Richard Widmark: "Are you waving the flag at me?"

Q: I like Larry Cohen. He also did It's Alive, God Told Me To and Maniac Cop (tag line: You have the right to remain silent. Forever.)

Repo Man: Plate o' shrimp. Plate o' shrimp.

Slapshot: I need to see this one again to find out if it's as funny as I remember it.

Touch of Evil: OK, last film noir title. This movie has the greatest opening credit sequence ever filmed. Plus you get Charlton Heston in tan makeup as a Mexican!

Unforgiven: I'm surprised this was the only western title that showed up.

Vixen: YEAH BABY. I think it's safe to say that discovering the films of Russ Meyer when I was 17 had a profound effect on my development.

Wolf Man, The: "Even a man who is pure in heart..."

Xtro: This was a schlocky little piece of crap that we saw at either the Riviera or the Bryn Mawr.

Z: By Costa Gravas. I know I saw this one during my serious movie phase, but I couldn't tell you anything about it now.

I tag Johnny Yen, Mob, Jin, Eric, MizBubs and our eldest.

Welcome to our clutter

The provocative and entertaining D-Cup recently showed off some of her and Mathman's refrigerator decorations, giving a nifty little glimpse into their family life.

She invited me to do the same:



There you go. Sure, the stainless steel could use a good polishing, but no clutter.

Not much of a glimpse into any kind of a life at all, is it?

Ok...let's see...how's this:

That there is the brain center of the whole household. Yep. Business cards, cell phones, coupons, ink pens, a calender, tickets to Nick Cave at the Riviera, it's all there. Look close and you can even see some political commentary, a gift from Johnny Yen's son:



I feel bad because I can't remember where the Day of the Dead skull magnet came from. MizBubs would know, but she's a decent, hardworking midwesterner so she's asleep right now.

_____________________

Let's scoot over a few feet to where the computer is at.

This is approximately 6' east of the brain center. These two points form the AXIS OF MISCELLANY. When this picture was taken I'd been working there, so this is my stuff. The latest Cheaper Than Dirt catalog is there (I was hunting for a gun locker) as well as a book I just finished reading, Keep it Real: Everything You Need to Know About Researching and Writing Creative Nonfiction. Somewhere under there is a set of photocopied mindfulness exercises I'm supposed to be working on that, in yet another moment that proves that the world is driven by irony, I had misplaced for several days. It was lost, but now it's found.

_____________________

Hey! I just realized it's Friday now. Time for a pre-dawn Random Ten:

Come To Your Tommy Now—Leonard Clark

Down The Reeperbahn—Tom Waits

All Apologies—Nirvana

I’m Gonna Sit Right Down—Frank Sinatra

Married Man Blues—Jessie Mae Hemphill

Beltane Walk—Mark Bolan

Neighborhood Threat—Iggy Pop

Black Stone Heart—Bauhaus

Today—Jefferson Airplane

It’s a Good Day—Peggy Lee

_____________________

I hope it's a good day for you.

It's a splotchy virus

Let me start by saying I am intimidated by any tag that requires any type of creative thought. Like this latest one from Splotchy. He's come up with another story virus, and it looks like he's coughed all over my salad bar and stuck his unwashed fingers in my soup. I have the virus now.

Here's a link to his original post, with the story virus recap.

This is the beginning of the story:

I had been shuffling around the house for a few hours and already felt tired. The doorbell rang. I opened the front door and saw a figure striding away from the house, quickly and purposefully. I looked down and saw a bulky envelope. I picked it up. The handwriting was smudged and cramped, and I could only make out a few words.

And now I continue:

_____________________

I looked up and down the street but didn’t see any delivery truck, or any car for that matter. No FedEx, no UPS , no creepy-looking porno'd-out conversion van with a half-assed delivery service sign taped to its side. Nothing. It's like delivery man just disappeared. I stepped back inside, re-set the deadbolts and took a closer look at the envelope.

Mentally I ran through the checklist of letter bomb warning signs. The handwriting on the envelope, smudged and cramped as it was, was laid out in a tiny, obsessively neat block lettering. It practically screamed recently-de-institutionalized loner with time on his hands. No ticking or whirring sounds, that’s good. No odd smells, no leaks or stains on the package. Check. Weight seemed evenly distributed, that’s good too. I decided to open it.

Inside I found a plane ticket to Pensacola, a business card for a lawyer in Niceville, five crisp $100 bills and a four page handwritten note. Well. This was different. I poured a cup of coffee, threw some meat to the dogs to stop em barking, and sat down to read.

_____________________

I now call on these bloggers to get down with the sickness:

Write Procrastinator
Katie Schwartz
SkylersDad
Splotchy
Grant Miller
Beckeye
Kirby
Dale
Justacoolcat
Bad Tempered Zombie

If you decide to get down, please link back to the original Splotchy post.

I'm it, baby

Tagged by Freida Bee, so here it is:

Ten years ago, what were you doing?

May 1998...I was working, a lot, as a detective (I got promoted in February 2000). Let's see, that was a busy spring. I was part of a newly-formed homicide task force as a forensic specialist, helping to set up a youth peer jury program, taking on more of the department's use of force training, and helping out with a sister city delegation from Ireland. In July 1998 I looked back on my schedule as I sat in an orthopedic surgeon's office. I was waiting to get my broken hand re-set. Anyway, looking back at my schedule over the three months before I went on vacation I noticed I had only had 9 days off in three months. That's days off without doing anything work-related, like court, training, overtime details or meetings. I will never, ever go back to living like that.

Five things on today's "to-do" list:

1) Start a 5 day fast and try not to go mental from lack of caffeine or fried food
2) Work on setting up a side job
3) Do laundry
4) Go to work in the afternoon, assign cases and arrange honor guard stuff for Memorial Day
5) Call my brother, whose beautiful wife is expecting their third child any time now

If I were a billionaire I would...

First of all, secure a big ass chunk of land with good water, and build a very green, energy efficient off-the-grid house somewhere down south. Set up the armory. Then breathe a sigh of relief once I had that done, and throw a big party for family and friends--the kind that involves chartering a plane and flying people in. Then I'd ask each of my family members what they had always wanted to do, but were afraid to, or didn't have the money for, and I'd help them do it. I'd sit down with MizBubs and my kids and figure out what charities or organizations to give money, and then I'd roam the earth for a while.

Three bad habits I have are:

Sloth
Gluttony
Wrath

Five places I've lived:

Louisville, Kentucky
Port Washington, New York
Teaneck, New Jersey
Yardley, Pennsylvania
Chicago, Illinois

Five jobs I've had:

Grocery bagger
Bookstore clerk
Shipping and receiving clerk
Catalog photographer
Cop

Anyone reading this, consider yourself tagged if you like!

These are, uh, five of my favorite things

I think I'll just jump on the tag bandwagon and do this "five things" meme that's been flying around. No one tagged me specifically, so I'll be like that loud guy at the bar who jumps into your conversation and starts talking and then won't go away. I've seen a few versions of this, but I think I'll do Melinda June's since it's the most recent one I've seen. I've also seen nifty entries from Dr MVM, and MNMom.

Here goes.

5 things in my bag

-a Glock Model 26 magazine with 10 rounds of 9mm ammo

-a Leatherman folding knife that MizBubs gave me

-a cheap LED flashlight from REI.

-a Northwestern University Traffic Institute binder and legal pad

-extra ink pens, each bearing the name of some company that gave them out for free

5 favorite things in my room:

-MizBubs, although she's not there at the moment

-the top drawer of my dresser, which is where I have some airline vouchers, my cufflinks, finisher certificates from the marathons I've run, my cufflinks, a collection of old family photographs, casino matchbooks and a bunch of other neat small things.

-a picture of me and MizBubs taken in 1984 at the UIC campus

-a picture of my girls taken at a cabin in Minnesota in 1995

-my black kangaroo skin Lucchese cowboy boots

5 things I have always wanted to do:

-hike the Appalachian Trail (or any other really long hike)

-learn to fly an airplane

-go to a culinary school (even though I know enough to not want to be a professional chef)

-live in the country

-visit every continent in the world and just roam around

5 things I'm currently into:

-procrastination and exhaustion

-researching a book that I have a vague notion of writing

-planning camping trips

-guns and shooting

-finding and buying local foods, and supporting more local agriculture

5 people I'd like to tag:

MizBubs, and then any other people who want to respond to this. I originally tagged my eldest and youngest daughters, but I've been informed that they don't "do" tags.

First tag of spring

The first tag of spring honor goes to Barbara from Bad Tempered Zombie. She got me good, requesting that I list 5 of my favorite websites. See, the thing is, she's Canadian, and they're just so darn polite that you feel like an utter shitheel if you don't respond.

I visit a lot of websites, and my favorites change pretty often, depending on what I'm interested in at the moment, or what I'm working on. If I'm planning a trip I become totally obsessed and can spend hours researching a destination. Here are a few of my favorite places this week:

Officer.com I usually check on this one a few times a day. I get ideas for training, lots of law enforcement related news, and the occasional freak story for re-posting here.

Real Clear Politics I just discovered this one a few months ago, and since it's an election year I stop by pretty often. They have a nifty feature where they average out the results from multiple polls. They've also got a good selection of articles and editorials from different sources and points on the political spectrum.

United Country Real Estate This is my place to daydream. I like to browse through the listings and imagine places I'd like to live in a few years. They have offices in nearly every state, and they have a special section for unique and historic properties.

Google News This is what I have set up as my home page on my work and home computers. I love being able to log on and get a snapshot of what's going on in the world at any given time.

Top Secret Animal Attack Files The name of this site speaks for itself. I'm a devoted fan.

Breaking the meme backlog

I have been a poor blog citizen these past few weeks. Not visiting your blogs, not commenting, posting lame-ass clown pictures for want of anything original to talk about. Compulsively saving news items and not posting them.

One of the results of this poor citizenship is that I am faced with a backlog of stimulating memes which I've been meaning to attend to, but have not. Until now.

Let's get started. I'll begin with the oldest tag first.

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First up is a punchy little meme from Franiam. I felt really bad about not responding to this because I just recently discovered Ms. Fran's blog and felt flattered that she had tagged me.

Rule 1) List three reasons for your blogging.

• My kids suggested it as a way to keep busy while I was recovering from a surgery.
• I am naturally blabberous.
• I like introducing people to things they might not normally encounter, and I like having the same done to me.
  

Rule 2) List the rules.

• Done
  

Rule 3) Tag three others with the thread.

• I will keep this one in the family: I tag Splotchy, Penny Pigtails and Dystopia.

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Next up is this name-based meme from Write Procrastinator. It's been rocketing around the interwebs and now it's landed here:

1. You have to post the rules before you give your answers.
   
2. You must list one fact about yourself beginning with each letter of your middle name. If you don't have a middle name, use your mother's maiden name, or your maiden name.
3. At the end of your post, tag one person for each letter of your middle name. Or don't.

S Sarcastic. When I asked for help from MizBubs, this was the first thing out of her mouth. I suggested that "swell" or "swanky" might have been a better choice, and she responded "well, yes, you would." She has a point, unfortunately, and I am more sarcastic with my family than I am out in the world. I'm working on it.

K Unfortunately cantankerous is not spelled with a K. Let's see...I like a well made knife, and I own three made by Ka-Bar.

I Interested. I'm interested in a lot of stuff--I consume a lot of news, I pick out a few books a year on topics I know nothing about, I love talking to people and hearing their stories. I'm also inquisitive, and I think it's made me a decent interviewer and interrogator at work. My kids are less thrilled with my interrogation skills.

L Loquacious. I'll talk your damn leg off.

E Egomaniacal. The very fact that I have this blog and am doing this meme is proof of that. I asked MizBubs if I should put down "eccentric" instead and she just laughed.

S OK, this time I am going to say swanky. I am pretty damn swanky when I want to be. I like to have as much swank as possible, in the form of swanky music, swanky food and swanky cocktails. And I like taking swanky vacations when possible.

I think nearly everyone I know has done this one already. But if you haven't, consider yourself tagged.

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Most recently I got a t-shirt tag from another fairly new blogpal, Mathman. Here are the rules:

1. Link back to the original post.
2. Describe two t-shirts that you own.
3. If you design your own vanity t-shirt what would it say?
4. Where would you wear your vanity t-shirt?
5. Tag three of your best blogging buds.

I'm going to go above and beyond and describe not two, but three shirts that I have, with pictures!

This is my favorite, from the Happiest Place on Earth--The Double Down Saloon in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada:

My eldest got me this next one:

And finally, another favorite. I got a great response when I wore this one at last year's ILEETA conference:


Up until now I've never given any thought to the idea of having a vanity tee shirt. And now I can't think of anything. Sorry. Maybe a catchy slogan like "Show us your guns, America!" Or maybe a clever promotional tee shirt that says "Ask me about Narcozoology".

I think I shall tag Johnny Yen, Doctor Monkey Von Monkerstein, and Samurai Frog.

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Wow. I feel like a new man, like someone who's just taken advantage of a library amnesty and returned all his overdue books. Thanks for stopping by!

Splotchy's Word Meme

Splotchy has slapped the last meme of January on me and a few others, having boldly proclaimed February to be No Meme Month.

His instructions: give 1 noun, 2 verbs and 3 adjectives you like. You can also provide an optional made-up word.

Here are my current likes, as of 10:32 AM, CST:

Noun: imbroglio

Verbs: exsanguinate, saute

Adjectives: impervious, jaunty, seamy

Made up word: blabberous

And you may ask yourself, well...how did I get here?

Ages ago (8 days in real time, 20 years in blog time) simian muckraker and presidential candidate Doctor Monkey Von Monkerstein tagged me and a few others with an interesting meme:

"The premise is: List five things that I never pictured being in my future when I was 25."

I've been thinking about this one. See, here's the thing--by the time I was 25 years old, I was pretty much on the path I've followed since then. While there have been surprises, my life now does not represent a total divergence from the life I would have imagined at 25. I was married, MizBubs was pregnant with our first child, and while I wasn't a cop yet I was working as a campus security officer and thinking about becoming the real police. So while there's undoubtedly stuff that I never pictured being in the future--the Interwebs, the GW Bush presidency and its open-ended war--none of the stuff that's ended up in my future is far out of whack from what I pictured at 25.

So the obvious thing to do is just change the rules of this meme. Instead of listing five things I couldn't picture in my future when I was 25, I'll list five things I couldn't picture in my future 25 years ago. Here goes:

• I didn't think that the union organizing drive I was involved in (at the now-defunct Kroch's and Brentano's bookstore) would lose. There's no way I would've imagined being involved in two more losing unionizing attempts 12 and 21 years later.
• No way I thought I'd ever do something like join the military, and I ended up doing that very thing just 8 months later, in early 1983, when MizBubs and I marched down Broadway to the neighborhood armory and joined the Illinois Army National Guard.
  
• If I had told anyone who knew me that I would become a cop they would have laughed their asses off. Not only did I do that, but I really liked the work and I'm now approaching my 20th year. I have a theory that much of life is driven by irony, and if you picture me at the age of 20, aimless, mopey, rebellious and hating authority, well...it doesn't get much more ironic than that. Now I'm not only an authority figure, I supervise other authority figures. I spend much of my time drunk with power, laughing maniacally.
• Own a house? In the suburbs?!? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... MizBubs and I were engaged for the first time, so we knew marriage was in our future, and we always knew we wanted to have kids, but we just assumed we'd be apartment dwellers for a long, long time. Back then owning a home was exotic enough, and the place we live now might as well have been Wisconsin, that's how far it seemed from Uptown.
• I never imagined I could be this happy or be having this much fun as a grownup. I wish somebody had told me this back then, so I could've enjoyed being in my twenties and thirties more than I did.

I tag MizBubs, Splotchy, Lulu, Tenacious S and Melinda June.