August 13th, 2008 GregDDC
Base Drunk (bās drəŋk), n., pl.-drunks. a drunk applied before the main drinking of the day. Typically applied in the mid-afternoon, it allows for an easier to attain and more sustainable drunk later in the day. Can also be used to save money at expensive bars.
A few years ago my friend Derek and I were looking to go out drinking. We knew that the main event was happening much later in the day but our thirst was insatiable. So we parked in front of the TV and began our adventure. A football game or two later and we were pretty messed up. It was still the middle of the day and we only had plans for that evening. It was at this point that we ran out of drinks. Instead of going out to get more we simply let the drunk play itself out. Eventually we reached a level of sobriety that was a very close cousin of dead-sober.
Later on in the night we went to a party. We found that our drunk (which had been all but extinguished by time and food) easily reappeared. It was a miracle. We were able to enjoy the drunken level we had attained earlier in the day without any of the work. Thus the “base drunk” was born. I don’t remember who coined the phrase, Derek or myself, but I do know that it is both apt and apropos. And that, my good friends, is the story of the “base drunk”. Use this knowledge wisely.
August 12th, 2008 GregDDC
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One of the most prolific science fiction writers and my favorite authors has show his true colors. Orson Scott Card has recently written an article in the Mormon Times about how we, as a nation, should rise up and overthrow the government to prevent gay marriage from becoming law. It’s more than a little shocking to see this kind of rhetoric coming from such an (otherwise) brilliant man. I believe he may have what is clinically referred to as “asshole, stuck in his ways, old man syndrome” or (SIHWOMS).
How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.
It’s upsetting to think that someone as creative and open-minded as Orson Scott Card can be a closed-minded bigot with little remorse for a group of people who have not only haven’t harmed him but have been lining his pockets by buying his works. Overthrow the government over something as benign as gay marriage? You crazy, you crazy. He needs to get off his pulpit and go back to writing about how one idea can change the world for the better, not how it can destroy it.
It is an exceptionally narrow view to think that allowing gays to marry will be the downfall of marriage.
The pretext is that state constitutions require it — but it is absurd to claim that these constitutions require marriage to be defined in ways that were unthinkable through all of human history until the past 15 years. And it is offensive to expect us to believe this obvious fiction.
Homosexual behavior has been around for a VERY long time, much longer than the Mormon Church. It has been celebrated for centuries and has only recently become vilified. Same-sex marriages have been recorded all the way back to the Romans and have been thought to exist before recorded history. Applying insular ideals towards people you don’t even know is not Christian, it’s wrong. Christianity is about love and hope, not advancing your own agenda.
I believe that Michael Swaim has said it best.
What would Jesus do? If you can answer that question with anything other than “shower the world with endless love and understanding, then flip a wicked ollie on a flaming skateboard,” then you and I have a very different understanding of the man.
–Michael Swaim
I hope to continue enjoying his works, but it will be with a giant asterisk. This is as bad or worse as when Bradbury said Fahrenheit 451 wasn’t about censorship (You can’t apply your current morals to your past morals in a revisionist way Mr. Bradbury. You can’t.). I hope that he will change his stripes. I’ll wait a long time.
August 7th, 2008 GregDDC
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This is great. I think they should turn this into a commercial for KFC and Pizza Hut. Also, this link was recommended to me by the lovely Jamie Sue. Thanks dahlin’, you’re swell.
PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) — A New York man who pleaded guilty to murder in Oregon in exchange for buckets of fried chicken will get calzones and pizza to go with his life sentence.
Tremayne Durham agreed to plead guilty to murder — but only if he got a break from jail food.
Tremayne Durham agreed to plead guilty to murder — but only if he got a break from jail food.
Tremayne Durham, 33, of New York City, admitted last month that he fatally shot Adam Calbreath, 39, of Gresham, in June 2006. Durham wanted to sell ice cream and ordered an $18,000 truck from an Oregon company. He later changed his mind, but the company wouldn’t provide a refund.
The would-be ice cream man came to Oregon and killed Calbreath, a former employee of the company, while looking for its owner, authorities said.
Durham agreed to plead guilty to murder — but only if he could get a break from jail food. The judge agreed and granted Durham a feast of KFC chicken, Popeye’s chicken, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, carrot cake and ice cream.
After Wednesday’s sentencing, Durham was to get the rest of the deal — calzones, lasagna, pizza and ice cream, his defense attorney confirmed. They will pay the tab.
Durham also got married Wednesday in a civil ceremony at the Portland courthouse. The wedding to Vanessa Davis, 48, also of New York City, was not part of the plea deal that will give Durham a chance for parole after 30 years.
Deputy District Attorney Josh Lamborn said Multnomah County Judge Eric Bergstrom made the right call in allowing the unusual plea agreement because it saved the expense of a trial and possible appeals.
August 4th, 2008 GregDDC
I thought it would be a bit cooler here in Norman now that I’m back from the sweltering death that is Houston. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed myself; it’s just more that a little hot there. We posted up at a number of places. My favorite was the Houston Dynamo game. We did a bit of tailgating before and after the game. There was beer, burgers and hot dogs. It was pretty fun. We went into the game and it was a blowout. The Columbus Crew didn’t have a prayer against the mighty Dynamo. I’m pretty sure my beloved Reds would stomp them into the ground though.
That wasn’t the only event on our itinerary though. Before the game we went to the St. Arnold Brewery for a brewery tour. There were several hundred people there and we were all thirsty for sweet refreshing beer. It was a mild 105+ degrees in the brewery and public sweatiness was the norm. We didn’t come as prepared as some of the veterans of the brewery tour though. Those bitches has sandwiches!
Continuing with my time-reversed portrayal of my Houston trip we ended the night before the Dynamo game by going to a super-awesome Ume concert. The first thing that you should know about Ume is that they do not fuck around. They are quite the sight to see. It will rock your sensibilities to the core seeing the smallest and cutest girl in the world smashing your brain with pure liquid rock. She has killer legs too. Whee!
Ume - Manic
We visited the Houston Aquarium. It was both awesome and air conditioned, a double plus. There were lots of critters there. We made friends with a sting ray we named Vernon. I’m pretty sure he wanted to drink my blood. Tara promised me that he was just trying to jump on me so I could take him home, not to drink my blood. There are two white tigers at the aquarium “because tigers like to play in the water”. They were very pretty and VERY big. There is also a tunnel-shaped aquarium that is filled with sharks. It was a pretty sweet facility.
During the hottest and most impressively disgusting day I have had the honor of experiencing in a very long time we went to Space Center Houston. Shit, it was hot outside. We went because of the (seemingly) awesome Star Wars exhibit. The video makes it seem FUCKING AWESOME. It is, in fact, not FUCKING AWESOME. Not even close. Not even one bit. This video shows every single bit of the exhibit. Now you don’t have to go, lucky you.
We did take the tour of the Space Center. It was ok, but with the heat it was probably not the best idea. We had to wait in line for quite a while in the blazing heat. It was lovely, look at the pictures. You can tell how much fun Lulu and Tay Tay are having. The Saturn V rocket exhibit is crazy awesome. You open the door and BAM! that thing is all in your face. It’s an experience. Lulu also had some astronaut ice cream, it made my mouth taste like sludge.
Finally we spent the first night eating and drinking. We posted up at the pool and set to drinking. Fun was had.
Thanks again for letting us post up with you Tara. We’ll have to do it again sometime.
**UPDATE** Tara has made a post about this trip as well. Be sure to “post-up” over there and check it out.
July 25th, 2008 GregDDC
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I love religious tracts. They’re one of my favorite things in the world. You might know them as those short and wide pamphlets the crazies are always handing out. You know the ones! They might tell you that you’re going to hell and will get AIDS for having pre-martial sex. Maybe they’ll tell you that all homosexuals have AIDS and are going to commit blood-terrorism! Perhaps you were wondering “Who murdered Clarice?!” Liberals are turning good Christians into social pariahs for not loving teh homogays!
Don’t think that Catholics get out of the sight of the wise and knowing eye of these tracts. Did you know that Mary cries whenever someone prays to her or that Catholics aren’t even christians? It would seem that the Eucharist is a Death Cookie! Even COMPLETE LOSERS LIKE JIMMY can be redeemed. Also, don’t put your faith in Presidente Carlos for in doing so you turn your heart from the lord.
The Holocaust was a Roman Catholic Inquisition against the Jews. No true Christians would kill anyone in the name of Jesus. God commands us to love the Jewish people.
–Holocaust
Needless to say, these people are insane. But they don’t know what real horror is! I present to you the best religious tract of all time, The Cthulhu Tract. This is singlehandedly the greatest piece of literature on religion ever created. That’s not conjecture, it’s fact. Give the whole thing a read. If you do not you will not be aware of your hopeless existence of unendingly painful insanity in the face of the cosmic truths of the universe which your puny intellect can’t possibly fathom!
No merciful, paternalistic “god” looks down on you from the heavens - just an endless, frozen void that cares nothing about the fate of a collection of insignificant bipedal microbes at the hands of vastly more powerful beings whose motives their puny minds cannot even comprehend!
–Cthulhu Tract
July 24th, 2008 GregDDC
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I was reading an interesting article about young men getting vasectomies along with using condoms for birth control. The article puts it as a way for “men to take more responsibility for birth control”, a way of controlling the reproductive consequences of sex. It’s an interesting idea. I was immediately reminded of a funny story I read a few years back (sorry for the long quote, it’s worth it).
I’ll try to sum up a funny story that happened a few years ago: I got a vasectomy. I met a girl soon afterwards. She was nice and attractive but with a selfish streak that raised a big red flag. She was 32 at the time and I could practically HEAR her biological clock ticking. Regardless, she was a good lay, easy on the eyes, and reasonably good company.
I did NOT tell her about my vasectomy and I always used a condom with her to protect against STDs. She assumed, obviously, that the condom was only used for birth control. Silly girl.
We date for a few months. I never made any move towards commitment but she brought it up ocassionally. For me, this was a casual but pleasant relationship. For her - as I was to find out - it was part of life-changing series of events that she was planning very carefully.
Four months into dating, I get the “I’m pregnant” talk. She’s going on and on about how the condom must have broke and now we really need to think about getting married “for the baby”. She’s positively giddy. She has a baby in her and she thinks she’s gonna have a good meal ticket (me) to go along with her new 7lb annuity.
At this point, I’m just as giddy. I get to pull the reverse “oops” on her. I figured that she slept with some bad boy and got knocked up. Good thing I was using condoms! Better still that I have a serious mistrust of women who can’t think beyond their own uteri.
So I wait a couple of days to “think about all this.” I meet her again. I say I don’t want kids and that she should have an abortion. I know where this is going and sure enough it goes there. She goes completely batsh*t insane on me. There were the usual insults about my manhood. There were threats of legal action. It was all very ugly and I was loving every minute of it.
Well, I let her stew for a few days. She leaves me nasty messages on my phone. She sends awful emails. I’m laughing hysterically.
It was time to drop the hammer. While she was stewing I was busy. First I get a notarized copy from the urologist who performed the vasectomy. Next I get a notarized copy of the TWO test results indicating a “negative test result for sperm” to show I’m sterile and shooting blanks. Finally, I get a letter from a shark attorney stating he has seen the other documents and is prepared to litigate against this woman if she continues to communicate with me in such an unpleasant manner. Also, the letter states that we will insist on DNA testing to show that the baby is not mine. I’m ready.
I meet with this woman at her place. I bring flowers and a small bit of jewelry to show I am willing to reconcile and assume my responsibilities as a new father. I also have stuck in my pocket the documents I have prepared.
She’s all giddy again. Her plan is going perfectly - or so she thinks. We talk about our future. We have some pretty good sex. Then, as I am about to walk out the door, I ask her the $64,000 question. “Are you sure that this baby is mine?”
Well, she goes batsh*t insane again. Hell, she ought to. Her plan could completely unravel if there is ANY question about my paternity. Oh, she’s really screaming now. How dare I question her morals. Do I think she’s a slut. I’m just trying to weasel out of my responsibilities… blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda.
I’m not really mad. I’m kind of embarrassed for her. But since she won’t shut up and the neighbors can hear all of this, I ask her to step back inside and sit down. She sits on the sofa and calms down a bit. She is glaring at me with all the moral self-righteousness that only a woman can muster up. She thinks she has me trapped. She is 100% convinced her plan has worked. Oh, the tangled web of lies and deceit she has wrought around herself and I am about to hack through them with a few pieces of paper.
I reach into my pocket slowly. I extract the three pieces of paper and unfold them slowly and deliberately.
I tell her simply, “You’re screwed”.
Her look doesn’t change. There is no way she can fathom what I have prepared.
I continue. “I am sterile”
Her look changes just a bit. Something is beginning to sink in. Naturally, she reverts to women’s logic. “You’re full of sh*t. You’re trapped and you know it.”
I hold up the letter and the test results. “Three months before we met, I had a vasectomy. Here is a notarized letter from him stating what I had done. Here are two test results showing that I tested negative for the presence of sperm. Blanks. I am shooting blanks. That baby inside you is simply not mine.”
This woman is not to be swayed by logic and clear documentation. “Bullsh*t, those are fakes.”
I was ready for that. “No, they are real. This last piece of paper is from my attorney. It’s a simple letter to you that states if you pursue any kind of legal action against me for child support that I will insist on a DNA test to prove paternity, that is, to prove that your baby is not mine.”
I give the woman all the documents. She reads them slowly, deliberately. With each passing second she can feel in her soul that she has made a very bad mistake. With denial swept away, she started to cry. It’s a small cry at first. Then it becomes deeper and more painful. By the time she gets to the letter from the lawyer she is sobbing.
I had no sympathy for her. I turned and walked out the door. Even after I closed the door I could still hear her sobbing.
Epilogue -
I never heard directly from this woman again. I did hear through my friends that she did indeed have the baby. I also heard that the real father was some guy in a band she had met. I assumed that after 30, women stopped going after musicians, bikers, criminals, and thugs. Silly me for thinking the best of American women.
The Moral of the Story -
Get a vasectomy but keep it a secret.
Ha ha, 7lb annuity, that’s awesome.
Now this isn’t to say that all girls are biological clock watching baby mongers, far from it. The simple fact remains that if you have a child your life will change (either for the good or for the bad). These men are simply taking their reproductive future into their own hands. That can’t be that bad.
A guy can tell an angry grandfather-to-be ‘Look, here’s money to take care of this at the clinic right now instead of dealing with this mistake for 18 years. But only the woman’s opinion matters. And some guys are sick of that.
–Doug Stein, a doctor in Florida who has performed more than 17,000 vasectomies over the past 30 years
Now I’m sorry for more quotes, but there was some really interesting stuff in the comments of the main article and I want to give them voice.
Justcontent
Jul 23, 2008 11:31:15 PM
Gentlemen, notice how the harpies that have chimed in make no distinction between promiscuous sterilized men that don’t use condoms, and promiscuous sterilized men who do use condoms.
This is because the no-condom issue is a front for what is TRULY boiling their black harpy blood: Men exercising their reproductive rights WITHOUT the consent or approval of a woman!
Reproduction is central to a woman’s identity -whether they want to be a bio mother or not. As such, women -consciously or unconsciously- have a twisted sense of carte blanche about the issue; to the degree that they view a man who autonomously makes a decision about his fertility as an infringement upon their reproductive rights.
Disgusting.
The fair and just equation should read as such: HER BODY, HER CHOICE.
HIS BODY, HIS CHOICE.
But what the harpies want is an equation reads: HER BODY, HER CHOICE.
HIS BODY, HER CHOICE.
Let the harpies scream bloody murder if they will.
As long as a man takes charge of his fertility, he need not be concerned with what a woman says or thinks about reproduction. At the very least he need not worry about being oopsed. ,
By the way gentlemen, know this: of those who would have you believe that oopsing is a
rare occurrence, the majority are, and will be -women.
ack78
Jul 9, 2008 1:32:25 PM
“Why should women be in control of when—and if—they have children?”
Um, maybe because they are the ones who have to carry the kid around for 9 months and deal with the nausea, weight gain, and aches and pains, not to mention the excruciating birth, and they are the ones who will most likely have to raise the kid alone if their father decides to bail. If these guys are so “sick of it”, as your article claims, maybe they should wear a condom (which, by the way, also protects against STDs, unlike the quickie vasectomies you’re advertising as though it’s a trendy thing to do). It takes two people to make a baby, not just a woman trying to trick a man.
BittyMonkey
Jul 15, 2008 9:08:15 AM
Um, men use condoms because they would not be liking the STDs that result from unprotected sex, not because they want to ride bareback all the time. Way to make men sound like idiots.
Seems to me a guy taking control of his own fertility is being completely responsible, not irresponsible.
Oh, and newsflash, writer: Michael Scott is not real and where are your stats citing that men will “regret” it?
vciaccio
Jul 16, 2008 10:28:05 PM
I was interviewed for this article.
Safe sex is unrelated to vasectomy. I have no doubts that when a man is speaking to his doctor about the procedure, his doctor emphasizes this point. I know mine did.
Many of the commenters here seem to be thinking only of single, completely unattached men having casual sex. This completely ignores committed relationships, a situation in which safe sex becomes less of an issue (assuming monogamy) and pregnancy becomes the bigger threat.
I have known I did not want to be a father since my late teens. The prospect of accidental pregnancy was an ever-present threat, making sex far from enjoyable and by no means spontaneous. My sex life with my wife is far better than it would be if the specter of accidental pregnancy was still hanging over us.
July 23rd, 2008 GregDDC
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This is wonderful. A guy named Matt Harding has been traveling the world. When he arrives at a place he then dances with the people there, usually in front of iconic landmarks. It’s hard not to feel a little closer to everyone else in the world while watching this video. Everyone can’t dance, just like me (except those Indian Sari dancers, they know what they’re doing). I am more than a little jealous of his adventures. He even got sponsored by Stride Gum! Free travel! Maybe if I ever get to travel again I will think of something equally as clever to do.
July 16th, 2008 GregDDC
I have finished upgrading this blag to the new and totally fancy Wordpress 2.6. It was a mostly painless upgrade but it was not without its problems. The categories that I use to divvy up my posts were almost completely lost. I had to dig right into the database and repair them manually. I’m guessing that most WP users are not going to be able to do that. The basic gist is that when wordpress upgrades the database it puts everything from category tables into term_taxonomy tables. The conversion process loses the names of the categories in the changeover process. Hopefully the wordpress can fix this one issue on their otherwise wonderful install process.
July 14th, 2008 GregDDC
It’s been a while since I have been unable to decide if I liked something or truly loved it. I’m on the fence. I hope to hear what you all think about Busted Wonder. There are several other projects on this page that are really worth your attention. My favorite of the others is “Something’s Wrong” followed by “Exterminus“. All of it is hard to explain so you’ll just have to eyeball it for yourself.
July 10th, 2008 GregDDC
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I knew that Wikipedia was full of information… but damn. There is another list of ethnic and religious slurs too. I enjoy the (quite in-depth) article on the word “Cracker” and “Swamp Yankee”. Ha! These lists are ridiculous!
A few years ago my friend Derek and I were looking to go out drinking. We knew that the main event was happening much later in the day but our thirst was insatiable. So we parked in front of the TV and began our adventure. A football game or two later and we were pretty messed up. It was still the middle of the day and we only had plans for that evening. It was at this point that we ran out of drinks. Instead of going out to get more we simply let the drunk play itself out. Eventually we reached a level of sobriety that was a very close cousin of dead-sober.
Later on in the night we went to a party. We found that our drunk (which had been all but extinguished by time and food) easily reappeared. It was a miracle. We were able to enjoy the drunken level we had attained earlier in the day without any of the work. Thus the “base drunk” was born. I don’t remember who coined the phrase, Derek or myself, but I do know that it is both apt and apropos. And that, my good friends, is the story of the “base drunk”. Use this knowledge wisely.
