North

Heading up north to the Bay Area this weekend. My 80 year old aunt died and I’m going up to comfort my mom. They were really close. 2 of my out-of town sisters will be there also. It will be nice to see the family and tread the home turf.

It’s interesting. My Aunt was a nun ( Sisters of the Holy Names ), so the funeral was closed to all but immediate family, such as brothers and sisters. She became a nun in 1947, just a kid. It’s hard for me to imagine being part of one thing for that long a time. She and my Mom used to fight all the time because my Mom was (and is) an arch conservative Catholic, and my Aunt was a member of a very liberal order. One Halloween, when I was in High School, I dressed as a nun. My aunt was visiting that night and I went down to show off my frock (FAG!) Anyway, my Mom had a coronary and would have forbade my going out in that blasphemous outfit, but my Aunt interceded, saying that it was both hilarious and harmless.

Anyway…I might drop in on good old San Francisco if I get a chance. On Monday, I plan on going back via the 99 so I can stop to visit Paul

 

I

McCain fever!!!

 Catch it!

 hat tip to Bob Cesca’s Goddamed Awesome Blog! http://www.bobcesca.com/

If the American Masses took a survey….

This would probably be the result:

..And the parade of stupid marches on!

Grandmother arrested for having child sit on car’s roof

The Associated Press

 

MARATHON, Fla. –

Authorities say a grandmother was arrested for driving around the parking lot of a Marathon grocery store with her 3-year-old child sitting on the roof of the car.

 

Monroe County Sheriff’s Office deputies were called to the Publix store Tuesday and arrested 54-year-old Brenda Bouschet after she was driving around with her three-year-old granddaughter on the roof of her car.

 

 

 

 

 

(a recent snapshot of Bouschet)

Bouschet was released from jail 15 hours later.

Bouschet said Thursday she would never let anything hurt her granddaughter. She says she was driving at “snail-speed” and holding the child’s leg.

Authorities say Bouschet told police she was giving the child some air and letting her have fun.

She faces charges of child abuse. The child is back with her mother.

Excuse me…calling Stephen King?

Have you heard about this? It happened last week and nobody that I’ve talked to has heard about it.

 It happened in Canada, so I know some of you know about it (I’m looking at you, Scoundrel)

WARNING: This is some sick, sick shit.

From the AP:

One moment, the quiet man near the back of the bus was minding his own business. The man hadn’t talked to anyone around him, and seemed to pay no attention to the younger fellow sitting next to him, who was listening to music on headphones.

The next moment, witnesses said, the older man stood up, still quiet, and repeatedly stabbed, then beheaded his younger victim.

“We heard this blood-curdling scream and turned around, and the guy was standing up, stabbing this guy repeatedly, like 40 or 50 times,” Garnet Caton said Thursday from a hotel in Brandon, Man., where he and other passengers had been taken to rest.

“There was no rage or anything. He was like a robot, stabbing the guy.”

Caton said the bus stopped and everyone scrambled to get out while the attacker started methodically carving up the victim’s body, not paying attention to anyone else.

Caton and the driver shut the bus door from the outside while they waited for police to arrive.

“We put our bodies up against the door, waiting for him to come out … and he went back and brought the head to the front and pretty much displayed it … and dropped it on the ground in front of us,” Caton said.

“All very calmly. He was wearing sunglasses. It was no big deal to him.”

Fellow passenger Cody Olmstead from Kentville, N.S., also recalled the chilling scene.

“The guy came to the front of the door with buddy’s head in his hands, decapitated. He dropped the head and went back and started cutting the body back up,” Olmstead said.

Then, the crazy fuck started eating him.

E A T I N G    H I M.

There’s more:

Caton said he heard a “blood-curdling scream” and turned around to see the attacker holding a large “Rambo” hunting knife above the victim, “continually stabbing him in the chest area.”

“He must have stabbed him 50 times or 60 times,” said Caton.

“Like, just everywhere, arms, legs, neck, chest, guts, wherever he could swing it, he got it,” said Olmstead.

“It looked kind of like a scuffle or an argument, you know, and then somebody’s, like, ‘Knife! Knife! Run!’ so I was running up the alleyway, slapping people telling them to get going, move, get off the bus. I got pushed over, some lady got pushed over, I was just making sure everybody was OK, and we all got off the bus,” said Olmstead

As panicked passengers fled the bus, “the attacker was over top of the victim … continually cutting him. I think the victim was gone at that point,” Caton said.

Trio tried to check on victim

Caton, the driver and a trucker who had stopped at the scene later boarded the vehicle to see if the victim was still alive.

“When we came back on the bus, it was visible at the end of the bus he was cutting the guy’s head off and pretty much gutting him up,” said Caton.

The attacker ran at them, Caton said, and they ran out of the bus, holding the door shut as he tried to slash at the trio.

When the attacker tried to drive the bus away, the driver disabled the vehicle, Caton said.

“While we were watching the door, he calmly walks up to the front with the head in his hand and the knife and just calmly stares at us and drops the head right in front of us,” said Caton.

“They did an awesome thing, holding him in there, because if not, what would have happened?” said Olmstead.

Update~ A Trip I really don’t want to take…

I‘m sitting here waiting for Dave to call. We’re suppose to hit the road at 10am and drive up to Delano, which is above Bakersfield, close to Fresno, and in the middle of 118 degrees of broiling nothingness. We’re going there because a very dear friend of ours, and the first man Who took me in and made me feel welcome in Los Angeles almost eight long years ago, is dying in the regional hospital there. Paul is in the final stages of A.I.D.S.. We’re still hoping that he’ll rally. He’s been in intensive care there for three weeks. I just found all this out on Sunday. You see, Paul dropped into the crystal meth hole 4 years ago and never really came out of it. It was after the breakup with his longtime lover of 8 years. He just lost it and went down hill from there. First the crystal, then the erratic behavior and addiction, then job loss, home loss, paranoia. He one time two years ago or so confronted me at the eagle. It was a crowded Saturday night and he started yelling at me that nobody understood him and his pain. he was wild eyed and raving. I told him to fucking cut the pity act and get help. he came after me and on the back porch steps on the back patio, in front of everybody screamed “fuck you, you selfish fucking ASSHOLE! and spat full in my face.

Everyone saw it.

Oh well. Water under the bridge. we reconciled, and Paul declined in health.

Now, he’s 3 weeks in intensive care. Pneumonia. Kidney failure.

It’s a three hour drive up there, so I hope Dave gets here soon.What a way to spend a vacation day. And I can’t afford the gas cost rightg now. But what can you do?

I’m afraid of what I’ll see.

UPDATE: Thank you for all of your kind words! Paul is rallying! evidently, when he went on the cocktail last month, his body was already so weak that he couldn’t handle the AIDS drugs. I was mistaken about the pneumonia. there is none. His kidneys shut down, he hemmoraged internally and would have died were it not for his housemate, who found him face up and glassy eyed on the bed and rushed him to the ICU, where he’s been ever since.

When we got there, he was very coherent, his color was good, in his face he looked much the same. They had just yesterday morning took him off the respirator. The doc says that his body is slowly coming back. It’s still touch and go, but people do come back from the brink and live years longer.

I can’t tell you, if you’ve never been through it, what it’s like to visit a close friend in the hospital who is dying, not of a car wreck or other such reason, but of an insideous virus which is killing him before your eyes. It’s so amazingly awful.

We were there with him at the hospital for about 2 hours or so. The car trek was 3 hours there and 3 back.

It was strange for Dave and I driving up there. Delano is off the 99, the road we take to go up to the Kern River to camp. In fact, it’s 20 miles fom there. As we were emerging from a familiar roadside restaurant, where we’d stopped many happier times before, Dave quietly said “Wow, we’re not going up tho the river. We’re not on vacation, having fun. We’re going to a fucking hospital”

charlie (left), Paul, and Greg, 2002

Weekend shots

UPDATE: all these pics and more can be found HERE: http://s152.photobucket.com/albums/s167/richc764/BATMOBILE/

So on Saturday, I took my new toy (literally) -a 1/18 scale (about 1 foot long) replica of the 1966 t.v. Series Batmobile out for some photos. There’s a great location in theh parking lot of Gold’s gym in North Hollywood where I can get some great perspective shots of miniatures, and it provides a great depth illusion that makes them look like fullsize originals instead just a replica. Afterwards, I remembered that the real Batmobile is  only 6 blocks or so away, so I went  over to George Barris’s shop to take some pics of my replica with the original Batmobile. George Barris built the batmobile in 1966 out of the Ford Futura concept car.

Below is a comparison picture of the replica with the actual batmobile. Pretty close, huh?

Barris wasn’t there when I stopped by, but if he’s there, he’ll usually let you sit in the batmobile driver’s seat. He’s a really, really nice guy.

This picture below was taken in Century City, where they shot all of the “Gotham City” scenes in the t.v. show. Note those distinctive lampposts in the background could always be seen in the shots. In fact, that citibank building in the background was used in the “Batman” movie as the United World building.

 

Here it is in my display case at home.

HACK

Graph of the day ( from GraphJam.com)