It's a summer drink.
I am going to Central America next month. The health department warns that some of the areas I am going contain malaria-carrying mosquitoes. But since I don’t go to doctors I will not be vaccinated against malaria. I remembered hearing however that the British army used to give their soldiers (officers) who were stationed in Africa Gin and Tonics because the Quinine in tonic water fights malaria. So I started last night a drinking regime where I will have gin and tonics every day for a few weeks before I go and then a few weeks after I get back. Now the key here is to use good Gin, Tanqueray or Bombay Blue Sapphire are the ways to go. Tonic water must contain quinine (obviously). You want a tall glass, put 2 oz. Gin and 5 oz. Tonic plenty of ice and a little lime. Roses lime works great if you have no fresh lime. It's a summer drink. I feel compelled to wear a straw hat when I drink them.

CHP
I went over to check out the CHP so they could “inspect” my new Jeep before I tear it apart. The inspection guy was pretty cool but the others were total cops. I overheard one say, “Wow I just wrote a ticket without even having to leave the parking lot.” The other three were having a passionate conversation about which wood to have cabinets made out of. Cherry was the favorite although they spend a good twenty minuets looking all around the room trying to find things that were a similar color to the finished wood. If they hadden’t all had guns I may have jumped over the counter and beat them all senseless.It ended up passing though and there was no need to resort to violence. I am once again reminded that I don’t understand how we have come to a place where things are so rigid. How can we tolerate these guys who have the last word? What is going on that makes people able to stand this nonsense that we are handed? I don’t know if many or any of you are familiar with the author Scott Carrier who wrote the book “Running after Antelope”. I am a fan of his and of that book.

The Truth
Ok, I’m back at work. Needless to say I did not win the ten million. In fact I lost a few hundred. Looks like my gambling career will have to wait. That’s fine though now I think I won’t feel like going to Vegas every five minuets. I think I may have had unrealistic expectations about gambling due to an extremely lucky past history of gambling. I always won, whenever I went to Vegas and Laughlin I always came back ahead. That sort of made me feel like if I just kept going back they would just keep giving me money. I would see other people loose money and and think that they were idiots but now I have found out the truth: Some times you lose when you gamble.

-------$--------
ALL RIGHT! I am going to go have another spin at the professional gambling career that has yet to get off of the ground for me. I really dug the Laughlin trip because not only was I gambling with my money but because I rode my motorcycle 600 miles I was also gambling with my life. This time though I am going to. It is just faster that way. I would like to win around ten million but I will settle for winning about five thousand dollars. That seems realistic.I am fascinated with the idea of gambling for a living. Sure it seems immoral but why? Money seems immoral to me anyway but we (society) has embraced it and for some reason decided that it is bad if it is free. I have this great fantasy all worked out where I go to Vegas a few times a year and win enough money to live for a while. It really is not that different from hunter-gatherers who would come upon a cache of berries or a large animal. They would take what they could and go live for a while and then come back when they needed more. It certainly seems more natural than sitting by yourself in an office all day where it is artificially cold so that you can stand to wear all of these clothes in hot weather. Staring at a bunch of bright lights that make up my computer screen. It seems so weird. It drives me insane to think that this is what we have come up with. We can build space ships and space stations and split atoms but this is the best that we have come up with for society? Bullshit! That is just bullshit!Anyway, I think it would be cool to not do these kinds of jobs anymore.

the Metty
I remember now… there was this kid I went to elementary school with named Metty. Some people called him Mettsy by mistake but that was not his name, it was Mettsy. One day I heard form some other kid that Metty was going to kick my ass. “Huh? Who is this Metty kid and why is he mad at me?” Well it turned out that Metty was an angry boy and he often made threats to beat people up through third parties. I was not scared because I was bigger than him and I was pretty sure that if there were a fight I would win. But I was confused about why he had singled me out for his anger. I’m not sure that I ever really talked to him and there never was any violence. I just heard over the years that I attended elementary school that this kid Metty was going to kick my ass. It all seems so passive now. Like that series of events were on sedatives or something. The whole thing was slow motion. There was not a fight but I imagine that if there was it would be like a slow motion fight where there is no way anyone can get hit because it would be easy to get out of the way of the punches. I wonder if he still does that now at work. Telling some third party to go tell some other co-worker that he will kick their ass. Maybe he picked up that strategy from his grandfather who has been passing it down through the family. It was developed 300 years ago when his predecessor lived in the old country and would travel from town to town doing blacksmith work. When he got to town he would single someone out and have a third party tell them he was going to kick his ass. The third party was crucial because it provided an objective source the person he was going to get his ass kicked. Not only did Metty’s predecessor think it but the third party thought it too. Also if he just went up to the guy in person and told him the victim may just keep it to himself. The third party provided advertisement that Metty1 is in town and that he is an ass kicker. So watch out.

20 Shots
Ok, so I stayed up all night last night. Watching for the oil thief from the cover of a hiding place. I brought with me:1 Thermos full of strong coffee (to keep up)1 Large bottle of Grey Goose vodka (to take the edge off)1 Bottle of Cran Raspberry juice (to mix with the vodka for the best drink EVER)1 Bottle of water (for when the dehydration sets in)1 Bottle of eye drops (for extended eye use)1 Notepad (to sketch a picture of the thief / draw while I waited)Here is my report:Between the hours of 3 and 8 pm a lot of people come home and stay there. Most of them arrive in cars though I did notice three people on foot.Drawing in the dark is hard.I like coffee.10 spoke wheels would look nice on my car.Between the hours of 8 and 11 pm it gets much colder outside.Drinking in the bushes is funny.When people see you they become uncomfortable and pretend they don’t see you.That is even funnier!Cats like to hang out under the cars at night.At eleven thirty plus or minus ten of fifteen min. people leave and them come back by around 12. They must be buying stuff for their own stakeouts… I should have tried to get one of them to bring me a snack because I am hungry.No one goes anywhere between 12:30 and 5 am.It gets even colder from 12 until 5 am.I am really tired.No one is stealing my oil.I am going to bed.In retrospect I have learned a valuable lesson: Don't stay up all night drinking if you have to work the next day. You may think that 20 shots of expresso will wake you up, and you are right, but we will see for how long.....

That's not an ashtray you asshole.
There was this group of people in high school who would ash on the side of their shoe. They would cross their legs so that one shoe would be up in the air and the part of their shoe where the arch is would form sort of a makeshift ashtray. They would do this to feign consideration for whosever house they were in. However the true nature of this would present itself when it was time to leave at which time they would just stand up dumping all of the ashes and cigarette butts on the floor. I have seen this many times and I am fascinated by details and implications of it.

engineering
A friend of mine and I have been pretending that we are engineers (not choo-choo engineers). We make lots of coffee and stay up real late solving engineering problems. We dress up in white button down shirts with short sleeves and imagine that we have short-cropped haircuts. Then one of us comes in and describes a situation that will require a safe solution at a reasonable construction cost and yet is pleasing to the eye. It is fun and totally pointless. A complete waste of time other than to take a vacation from ourselves for a few hours. Neither one of us would even want to be an engineer for a living and that is where the fun comes in. I realized some time ago that I don’t want to do anything that I really enjoy for a living. Insane? Maybe. I think that doing things that other people have to do is fun as long as no one expects me to do them. For example, I get to work really early and I like it. But if someone sad I had to I would be pissed. I like to make three dimensional models of objects in computers using polygons or NURBS surfaces. But when I did it for a living I hated it. It has taken me a while, but I now have a job that I don’t mind (most of the time). I don’t love it, but that’s cool, I don’t hate it either and I have ended up hating all of the jobs that were based on stuff I like doing.

oil?
I think someone is stealing oil out of my Jeep. I put two and a half quarts into it on Thursday and then on Sunday the dipstick was dry again so I added another quart and a half. I looked at the ground and there is no more than a tablespoon worth of oil and it does not smoke when I drive it. I can’t figure out where the oil is going. There are only two possibilities I can think of. 1) The jeep is hiding it somewhere, like inside the tires or frame. 2) Someone is stealing it in the night. I am going to put a new engine in it soon so I hope that problem goes away. I might stay up all night and watch for oil stealers tonight. Too bad I am not tiny and or invisible.