JamesSavik

Due to budget cuts, the Army Rangers have turned to cookie sales to make up the deficit. For the love of God Margo, buy the frikkin cookies!

Sheryl Crow- All I want to do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6iN9piYuO4

On another board I ran across this question: What do gay men think of the gay couple on "Modern Family?" Which I answered: I don’t think much of them. Some years ago I ran across a definition in the Urban Dictionary: I think that sums it up nicely. The characters are sexless eunuch clowns meant to get laughs and not scare the hetero white people. While they could be actual personalities with complexity and layers, the network has written them as comic relief. We don’t get the back story on why one is always a clown. We don’t get that he made people laugh to keep them from beating the s*** out of him every day in high school. We don’t get the back story on why the little guy clings because he’s horribly insecure and dependent and how that came about. We don’t see them or their friends struggling with chemical dependency which is rampant in the gay community. Maybe presenting these characters as real complex personalities is simply beyond what Hollywood is capable or even willing to do. Gay characters will probably continue to be comic relief until someone breaks this wretched mold. ______________________________________________________________________ How do we break this wretched mold?

Here's a couple more:

Patient 1119 7When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” 8 And I saw, and behold, a pale horse, and its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed him; and they were given power over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth.” Revelation 6:7-8 “Who gave you the right to read my journal?” "I'm your doctor Jason. I need to understand

It Could Happen to Anybody Ordinary, average guy accidently kills someone. Then he has to kill again and again to keep it covered up. Before he knows it, he's a serial killer. It could happen to anybody. Just add a cup of casual evil. After the Fall Civilization has collapsed but all is not lost. A race of benevolent aliens sees our plight and decides to help. Man kind is given a series of gifts that are supposed to fix our problems. Each one of these gifts is run by an artificial intelligence. Just when everything is looking up, the AI's decide mankind actually is the problem.

Surely we have enough cunning linguists to lick the problem.

I'm just a simple man with simple dreams...

Thanks to my niece Kristin and her boyfriend Konner, I got to make an epic shopping trip to Portland. They went and chased rare pokemons that hang out in the city. One thing you have to understand about Portland- it's crowded and traffic is shocking. Kristin navigated to my first objective: Powell's Books I'm not sure if Powell's is the largest independent bookstore in the US but, it takes up a city block. It's so big, they give away maps of the store so you can find your way around. Pro Tip: wear your hiking boots and carry a canteen and a compass. Yes. I went a little bonkers. I bought this little gem used. I've had my eye on it for a while. It's got lots of the geeky stats formulas and such in a useful format. Useful for a gradual student that will have to use stats to escape with a degree. My next stop was Everyday Music, Portland. Where I bought Radiohead, Jeff Beck and this gem on vinyl: Finally I made it to Chrome Industries Store where I bought this handy camera bag. This little gem will replace my *TOO BIG* camera bag with a smaller bag that will be acceptable as carry on luggage. More later.

Today was pretty cool. I spent most of it climbing Mount Hood. I am catching a late or very early plane home tonight (or tomorrow morning- this point is debatable as time zones are confuzzeling) I'll have some amazing pictures for my blog.

Mount St. Helens wreathed in cirrus clouds. Debris field caused by St Helen's lahars Mount Adams- another stratovolcano about 35 miles east of St. Helen's. It is 2nd only to Rainier in height and is sometimes called the forgotten giant of the Cascades. Tomorrow- the Oregon coast.

Time for a vay-cay! See y'all later. Flying out to Portland. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGF_0AcHaGs

Jack is awesome. Even with the fame and recognition, he's down to earth, polite and friendly. He represents our community with class.

The King of Swords ' "Where on earth did you find that?" Andy pulled a card out of the file. It was Tarot card with an Arabic looking man's face and name. The card was the King of Swords. Gorman got a far away look in his eye. Andy knew that look. For a just moment he was somewhere else. "It was in 2004 in the big sandbox. Do you remember Saddam's mutts on the playing cards?" "I was in grade school but, yeah. I remember." "Saddam was the ace of spades. Uday was the ace of clubs. It was all bullshit of course for the media- political targets. We had a different list that nobody else saw. People deemed too dangerous to walk away." Andy handed him the card and asked, "So who was the King of Swords?" "He was as evil a bastard as you would ever hope to meet. Before the Soviet Union fell, he was a GRU agent recruited from Kazakhstan. They used him as a liaison with their client states in the Persian Gulf. When the Soviet Union fell, he went to work for Saddam." "I'm guessing he was important being a face card." "You might say that. His relationship with Saddam went back to the Iran-Iraq War in the eighties. He managed to get the Soviets to give the Iraqi Army their then top of the line AT-8 and AT-11 anti-tank missiles. It was enough to stop the Iranians cold. A few years later when senior Soviet intelligence operatives were looking for work, Saddam jumped at the chance to hire him." "So... what made this guy so bad?" "You remember how everybody used to wonder why Saddam seemed to be coup proof?" "Yeah. That never did make sense. Everybody took a run at him at one time or another: the Iranians, the Syrians, the French, the Saudis..." "And US. Well... Kozlov, also known as Mohammad Omari, was the reason no one got him. Back in 1994 just after the first Gulf War, a bunch of Iraqi Colonels planned to take Saddam out. They had a building in the suburbs of Baghdad where they were gathering their forces. Kozlov's intelligence team got wind of it. They watched the building and when all the key players were there, they threw grenades of VX Nerve Gas through the windows and chained the doors shut." "Jesus." "Jesus didn't have anything to do with it. Kozlov was just that kind of guy. He didn't just take action. Every action was an unambiguous statement. There were dozens of stories about the guy. He killed more people that a lot of diseases." "How did you get him?" "It was well after they nabbed Saddam. Everybody was busy fighting the insurgency and it looked like we were done looking for high value targets. Kozlov/Omari wasn't on the cards we let everybody see. We did it to make some of the guys we really wanted think they were off the hook. One day he fucked up. He came out of his bunker, went to a sidewalk cafe and had breakfast. One of our spotters got a picture of him. We managed to follow him back to where he was hiding." "To last that long after the fall, it must have been some hide." "It was. He had a bunker with an access through an apartment buildings basement. We hit it at 3am with a full TAC team with Marine backup. It was one of the nastiest fire fights I ever saw. He wasn't alone in that hole. He had a dozen of his own in there with him. They all went down fighting. It was what we found afterwards that made me glad we killed the rotten fuck rather than the catch and release bullshit." "What was down there boss?" Gorman was quiet for a moment. "At some point over the course of his career, Kozlov crossed the line from killing for a purpose to killing for pleasure. He had a torture chamber. We found the bodies of a dozen teens and young adults that had disappeared from the city. They did stuff to those kids that would make a Billy goat puke. You asked me what we found down there Andy. We found evil." Andy was quiet for a while and asked, "The rest of the list: did you get them?" "Most of them but as far as we know, a few of them are still out there." ________________________________________________________________________________________________ Why is the card inverted? When a tarot card is inverted, it emphasizes the negative aspects of the card. In this case the usual aspects of the card-: just and ethical are quite the opposite: unjust and unethical. Is there some truth behind the fiction? Yes. It is known that there were deep ties between the Soviets and Saddam's Iraq. After the Soviet Union collapsed, there were a number of former Soviet soldiers and operatives that would NOT be welcome with open arms by a new government in Moscow. They went to work all over the Middle East and Africa. Yes- Saddam had a lot of sick sadistic bastards working for him. The better to terrify the population. In the story VX Nerve gas was used. Isn't that bullshit? Nope. Iraq literally had tons of chemical and biological weapons prior to the 1st Gulf War in 1991. After getting beaten by the UN Coalition, they promised that they had sworn off chemical and bio weapons and played footsie with UN Inspectors until 2003 when the new Coalition kicked over the anthill. Even after 2003, small amounts of chemical weapons, including VX nerve gas were found- just not large stockpiles. Use of VX in 1994 is plausible and, covered under my dramatic license.

Denial: it's not just a river in Egypt.

You couldn't write anything as bad as the sparkly vampire Twilight crap if you tried. I had an adventure story named Twilight that no one read because they thought it was fan-fiction. The other Twilight was so bad I had to change the name of my story... and we both still wrote better stuff than Twilight. If it wasn't for the pale skinned eye candy, no one would have noticed those wretched moviies.

The King of Swords "Where on earth did you find that?" Andy pulled a card out of the file. It was a Tarot card with an Arabic looking man's face and name. The card was the King of Swords. Gorman got a far away look in his eye. Andy knew that look. For a just moment, he was somewhere else. "It was in 2004 in the big sandbox. Do you remember Saddam's mutts on the playing cards?" "I was in grade school, but, yeah. I remember." "Saddam was the ace of spades. Uday was

<!?