Guests Behaving Badly 

Karee loves our new apt. 

Um, you missed a spot. 

I love watching someone watch the Olympics! 

This show just hasn't been the same since Martha went on vacation to Club Fed. 

I've always wanted to have friends over and then make them sleep on the floor. That means we had a really good time. 

I Thought I'd Be Something...Nicer

Nemesis

?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
brought to you by

This Has Got to be a Coincidence

You're chocolate. You're the old soul type, people
feel that they have known you their entire
life. Many often open up to you for they view
you as thoughtful and trustworthy. Although
people trust you, you have a hard time trusting
them. You prefer to keep your feelings bottled
up inside, or display them very quietly. It is
alright to open up every once in a while.

Which kind of candy are you?
brought to you by

Still More Lady News

I found out last night that our very own Seattle Art Museum Store carries a book about the Lusty Lady. It's on a low shelf where kids can get at it. I want to look through it, but, um, there's vaginas in there...

The Lady Has Spoken

Two new phrases over at the Lusty Lady...
(you know you have been waiting in antici..........pation)

Pane Before Pleasure

Love is in the Bare

Last Night @ The Croc

Matt and I went to a tribute to The Clash, which was in conjunction with No Vote Left Behind, a group dedicated to regime change: getting Bush out of office. Pretty interesting group: http://novoteleftbehind.net. Essentially, the cover price to see the bands is a donation to the organization. Wow. And the bands, holy crap. They kept getting better and better. It's so wacky to hear a contemporary band performing these songs that are, by many, considered to be classics. The crowd was way digging it. I was holding out for Radio Clash, my favorite Clash tune. Sadly, no such luck. But every other song was awesome anyway. One group blew my mind: Optimus Rhyme, which did covers with a straight-on hip hop flavor. Dynamite. I think I am going to have to check out their album. http://optimusrhyme.com

Small World

Today I meet a man who had just gotten out of the Army after 6.5 years of service. We got to talking, and I mentioned Tim, who's in Ranger School, and then the guy presented his own Ranger Coin (which I accidentally dropped--I am an asshole!). He asked if Tim was up here at Ft. Lewis, and I said no, Benning, and he said, oh, 3rd bat, he should transfer. Which I would love love love. Anyways, I helped him out, and he eventually bought a membership, and then he thanked me and handed me a piece of paper money: an Iraqi dinar! I was totally amazed. A little souvenier, he said. I'll say. Totally awesome.

The Reflecting Skin...

...is the WORST movie I have seen in a long long time. It may just be the worst ever, and I don't say that lightly. Watched it last night while my friends Tavys and Lam were here visiting from San Luis Obispo--it was recommended to them by another friend, so we journeyed to Scarecrow Video in the University District, the best video store ever (and I do mean ever). So we picked it up, along with some anime porn (disappointing) and some Ilsa evil warden stuff. Yeah, I don't even know how to describe the schlockiness of this flick. I almost want to say to go and see it, because it is so awful. But then you really shouldn't see it because it is so awful. So many stupid stupid things. I was thinking also that there were something like 10 different movies trying to be put on the same film. Let's leave it at this: the main character, a 9 year old boy, finds an aborted fetus in a barn, and takes it home with him and talks to it and holds it. Yeah. And that Lord of the Rings guy, uh, Peppercorn, er, Aragorn, or whatever, he is hot and stuff but moves and talks like he's smoking opium or something. Ugh. I don't want to devote any more space to this total tripe.

Museum Patrons

Two people I want to mention...

A man in a wheelchair, with only one arm to his name. No legs, no left arm. Middle-aged, actually very handsome, very kind, very funny. I joked with him that he and his friend were not allowed to have fun or laugh. Which just caused more laughter.

Let me preempt this description with a standard lead-in: "Get this..." A young woman with her male friend, very, um, alternative, or mod, or some such other lame label. She has her lower lip pierced twice right next to each other. And tattoos on her arms that I didn't really look at because I was distracted by the one on her chest--in very large, dark script across her sternum, the solitary word: Vegan. I really have nothing else to add, becuase that pretty much tells all there is. Wow. Tattoos are great.

Even More Lust

Other sign outside the store of sin:
Hot Show
Cool Place

And the tiny motto, ever-present, underneath:
Have an Erotic Day! ;)

Yes, there is a smiley-face included.

There is another lame Seattle "event" that no Seattle-ite would ever be caught dead doing, and that would be the "Ride The Duck" tour that starts across the street from the god-awful Experience Music Project (where I have also worked). The "Duck" is an amphibious vehicle of large size: it can drive down the street and then "swim" through the water (of Lake Union). It looks like the tour boat from the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland, only it fits more people. It is horrible. And the tour-guides all have the same "script" that they recite over a loud-speaker about the landmarks and oh-so-interesting history of our beautiful city. Guaranteed you will hear them playing "Rubby Duckie" as they zoom along at the break-neck speed of 15 mph. The silly tourists will wave frantically at anybody they see standing on the street while they blow through these horrid kazoo-type things that are supposed to sound like a &*@#! quack. And here I get to the point of my story: Several times a day these Ducks pass in front of the museum, and the guide points at SAM and the Hammering Man, and ooooooohhhhhh, look at the building with the art inside! And then comes my favorite part: the guide chuckles and says, "Now this is a reminder for all the men on the tour that the art museum is on the right side of the street. Please do not look at that pink sign on the left." And then he (yeah, the tour guides are always plays the Oooohhhhhhhhh Yeahhhhhhhhh from that Ferris Bueller/Twix ad song of the 80's. I can't believe I know this tripe.

My "Funny" Army Stuff Post

Pretend You're In Iraq

Want to pretend that your are deployed to Iraq? Here is a list of things you can do right in your own home:

Sleep on a cot in the garage.

Replace the garage door with a curtain.

Six hours after you go to sleep, have your wife or girlfriend whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble, "Sorry, wrong cot."

Renovate your bathroom. Hang a green plastic sheet down from the middle of your bathtub and move the showerhead down to chest level. Keep four inches of soapy cold water on the floor.

Stop cleaning the toilet and pee everywhere but in the toilet itself. For a more realistic deployed bathroom experience, stop using your bathroom and use a neighbor's. Choose a neighbor who lives at least a quarter mile away.

When you take showers, wear flip-flops and keep the lights off.

Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and dump dirt on your head. (OK, for those of you who don't get this one - the idea is to simulate the effects of nearby artillery And the outgoing is even louder then the incoming!)

Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it on "HIGH" for that tactical generator smell.

Don't watch TV except for movies in the middle of the night. Have your family vote on which movie to watch and then show a different one.

Leave a lawnmower running in your living room 24 hours a day for proper noise level.

Have the paperboy give you a haircut.

Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store up garbage in the other side of your bathtub.

Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a saltine cracker.

Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your food cabinets or refrigerator. Then serve some kind of meat in an unidentifiable sauce poured over noodles. Do this for every meal.

Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it goes off, jump out of bed and get to the shower as fast as you can. Simulate there is no hot water by running out into your yard and breaking out the garden hose.

Once a month, take every major appliance completely apart and put it back together again.

Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for five or six hours before drinking.

Invite at least 185 people you don't really like because of their strange hygiene habits to come and visit for a couple of months. Exchange clothes with them.

Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.

Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of your front and back doors so that you either trip over the threshold or hit your head on the sill every time you pass through one of them.

Keep a roll of toilet paper on your night stand and bring it to the bathroom with you. And bring your gun and a flashlight.

Announce to your family that they have mail, have them report to you as you stand outside your open garage door after supper and then say, "Sorry, it's for the other Smith."

Wash only 15 items of laundry per week. Roll up the semi-wet clean clothes in a ball. Place them in a cloth sack in the corner of the garage where the cat pees. After a week, unroll them and without ironing or removing the mildew, proudly wear them to professional meetings and family gatherings. Pretend you don't know what you look or smell like. Enthusiastically repeat the process for another week.

Go to the worst crime-infested place you can find, go heavily armed, wearing a flak jacket and a Kevlar helmet. Set up shop in a tent in a vacant lot. Announce to the residents that you are there to help them.

Eat a single M&M every Sunday and convince yourself it's for Malaria.

Demand each family member be limited to 10 minutes per week for a morale phone call. Enforce this with your teenage daughter.

Shoot a few bullet holes in the walls of your home for proper ambiance.

Sandbag the floor of your car to protect from mine blasts and fragmentation.

While traveling down roads in your car, stop at each overpass and culvert and inspect them for remotely detonated explosives before proceeding.

Fire off 50 cherry bombs simultaneously in your driveway at 3:00 a. m. When startled neighbors appear, tell them all is well, you are just registering mortars. Tell them plastic will make an acceptable substitute for their shattered windows.

Drink your milk and sodas warm.

Spread gravel throughout your house and yard.

Make your children clear their Super Soakers in a clearing barrel you placed outside the front door before they come in.

Make your family dig a survivability position with overhead cover in the backyard. Complain that the 4x4s are not 8 inches on center and make them rebuild it.

When your 5-year-old asks for a stick of gum, have him find the exact stick and flavor he wants on the Internet and print out the web page. Type up a Form 9 and staple the web page to the back. Submit the paperwork to your spouse for processing. After two weeks, give your son the gum.

Wait for the coldest/ hottest day of the year and announce to your family that there will be no heat/air conditioning that day so you can perform much needed maintenance on the heater/ air conditioner. Tell them you are doing this so they won't get cold/ hot.

Just when you think you're ready to resume a normal life, order yourself to repeat this process for another six months to simulate the next deployment you've been ordered to support.





Things To Pack In Your Rucksack If Your Going To Iraq
(written by Stryker soldier blogger CB, on his blog: My War: Fear and Loathing In Iraq http://cbftw.blogspot.com)

Here is a list of things to bring with you if you ever find yourself being slapped in face with deployment orders to go to lovely Iraq:

SLINGSHOT: These are great when non-lethal force is needed. Like when they start throwing rocks and bricks at you. Tons of stray dogs out here with all kinds of crazy diseases, and they all love to chase and bark at American soldiers and give away your position. Slingshots are a good way to get them to move out and shut the fuck up.

iPOD Or Any MP3 PLAYER: Armed Forces Radio out here sucks ass. CD's are too bulky to carry around, and they get scuffed up and break easily, The ipod I have (I think it's a 30 gig-er) has 934 hours of music on it, that's 4,765 songs, and I put everything on it, so I never get bored of my music. Everything from Slayer to Miles Davis to Minor Threat to PJ Harvey to Sinatra to Nirvana to Madonna...

FLYSWATTER: The flies out here are vicious. They love to attack your face. BUGSPRAY: I don't know how many times out here, I had to lay down in a firing position in some disease/insect infested junkyard, for hours, and hours getting eaten up alive by bugs. Get the heavy duty stuff. The lotions and sprays. Some soldiers actually put dog collars around their ankles. Make sure it doesn't touch your skin, it'll fuck your shit up. (I myself don't use em)

HAND SANITIZER: All sorts of Koodies out here. Lots of soldiers come down with dysentery (chronic diarrhea) You get dysentery from not washing your hands after you take a shit. Its good to always use hand sanitizer before you eat, that way you don't get the shits.

CAFFINE/SLEEPING PILLS: Caffeine Pills are good to take if you're pulling an all night OP and you have to stay awake. When you need something stronger then caffeine pills, try a couple Ripped Fuels (You can get Ripped Fuel at GNC) Ripped Fuels will make your heart explode though. Not recommended. Sleeping Pills are good to take when you need to get some sleep, but you cant. Your sleep pattern gets all fucked up out here because you're always doing something at all hours of the day, so you sleep when you can. I myself have developed a slight case of insomnia out here.

MINI DVD PLAYER: Movies are a great way to pass the time here. You can buy bootlegged DVD's off the Iraqis out here for 2 to 4 bucks a pop. Buy the good DVD players, the cheap ones break after the 4th movie you watch (Trust me, I've been through THREE dvd players out here, because I insist on buying the cheapest one they have at the PX, and they always break down during the movie you really, really want to watch. Note: always keep the receipt)

MAGAZINES: Subscribe to as many magazines as possible before your get here. That way your guaranteed some mail at mail call, and mags are cool to read when your just chillin or taking a dump in the latrine.

AMAZON.COM ACCOUNT: I'm embarrassed about the amount of money I've spent out here on books I bought online on amazon.

DIGITAL CAMERA: Lots of cool things to take pictures of out here. Lots of ancient history here. The Digital camera I have (Pentax Optio) fits inside a pack of cigarettes, and it's been through hell so far and it hasn't broken, yet. I like to play National Geographic photographer sometimes when we go out.

LAPTOP COMPUTER: When all the computers are all hogged up at the Internet caf‚, you can just hook your laptop up and your good to go. Lots of people burn their photos onto CDR's out here on their laptops. Make sure yours plays DVD's and can burn CDR's. Get a Dell dude, they ship out here, and they're somewhat cheap and they have all the gadgets and accessories you need.

RHINO GPS: These are good to have, so that way when you find a IED or a weapons cache you can get the grid and call it in to higher. A lot of people here have Rhino's but they're like 375 bucks. I don't have one, nor do I need one, but a lot of guys swear by them.

A LITTLE BIT OF LUCK: Because youre going to need it here. posted by CBFTW at 12:49 PM

Stripping on the brain

Man, I gotta do some research and start the Lusty Lady Funny Phrase Archives. The great thing about them is that all of these sayings are created by customers/fans--like, they write to the, uh, establishment with ideas and such! When I get to work today I will have to check, but I think one of them up there right now says "Rear View Window." I can't remember what the other one is. Always two at a time. The really great ones relate to current movies--for example the ones when Spiderman came out. But, um, I can't remember what they were. There is also a "branch" of the Lady in San Francisco, run by women, and I believe they actually went to court to get health benefits for their workers. Is that the case at the one here in the Emerald City? I don't know. What I do know is that there are some hot hot hot girls in there, and if you are a woman, and go in for a peep, and they can see you, you will get a better show than any man does. Oh yeah, and they might ask you out, like one girl did to me while she was pressing her ass up against the glass. Sigh. On a side note: after work yesterday, was waiting for the bus, and as usual, glancing at the Lady across the street. And there in the doorway, crouched down, was a couple. One of them was a female janitor from the museum, still in her work uniform. The other was a man also wearing a uniform--the uniform of the dudes who work either behind the "desk" at the Lady, or the other kind of janitor, the job you would never want: that of Mop Man. Yeah, think about that for a moment. They were rolling cigarettes, and smoking, and laughing, and...making out. Ah, love found among the sanitary supplies. Makes me feel all warm inside. Or something.

As I got off the bus...

at the corner of 1st and Union, I was noticing what a bright sunny day it was. I began to walk down 1st to University so that I could cross the street in order to get into the museum. There's a museum of a different sort that I pass in front of every day on my one-block walk: The Lusty Lady, the (in)famous $0.25 peep show directly across from SAM. There are always witty sayings on the marquee relating to current events, and of course, referencing what goes on inside. For example, Seafair is a big old festival here in Seattle that I have never participated in. There is a big parade, and a staple appearance is made by a group who call themselves the "Seafair Pirates", and they ride around on a float that looks like a pirate ship, blah blah blah. So one of the funny phrases in relation to them was: "Seafair Pirates Love Booty." Yeah, it's stuff like that, which I actually enjoy. Even though the place doesn't bother me (um, yes, I've been there as a patron before...ask me about the contact incident), I try not to look at it when I walk in front of it. It's interesting to see the type of men who go in the door--and the men who go in during the daytime are quite different from those that frequent the place at night. Anyway, as I was passing by the door, a man darted in front of me in order to go inside: a man with a big black beard and a white turban on his head. I could tell that the other people around were a little put off by his appearance at the Lusty Lady, and I myself was a little surprised. But why would people be shocked that a Middle Eastern man was going into look at naked American women? I don't know, but I've been thinking about this all day...

Please Be Mean to Me

I am continually amazed by the disrespect I receive as a customer-service provider. Let me make a disclaimer: most of my customers (museum members) are absolutely wonderful, and we do nothing but exchange happy smiles all day long. But there have been a string of people who have gotten so angry at me because I won't break the rules, and therefore have berated me, and been increasingly rude. AS IF BEING RUDE TO THE PERSON YOU WANT SOMETHING FROM WILL GET YOU BETTER, FASTER, NICER SERVICE.

Where I've Been...

Uh, yeah, it's been a while since I've written anything. What's been going on? Well, work mostly. Oh and I also moved last week...fifteen blocks from where I was before. Which is great. But I've been completely consumed with reading another blog, one called "My War: Fear and Loathing in Iraq", written by an infantryman stationed in Mosul. It is absolutely riveting--it is blunt, sarcastic, funny, sentimental, intelligent, honest...I can't seem to tear myself away from it. And I'm not the only one--so many other people check in everyday to see if he's written anything, and if he hasn't, everyone starts to get worried, myself included, since as of this post, he hasn't posted either. It makes me feel a little more connected to my brother, Tim, by reading what it's "really like" over there. I want everyone to read it: http://cbftw.blogspot.com It's absolutely amazing.