I don’t make the rules… I just follow them.  So should you if you know what’s good for you:

Open up your music player application of choice, please.

“…… k.”

Now, in the search box, type in the following common words and see what you get (if more than 5, select your favorites). Likewise, some words may come up that are part of a longer word. Those are fine, too:

1) Love (total: 676 songs found):

• Feel Like Making Love by Bad Company
• Cradle of Love by Billy Idol
• I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song by Jim Croce
• Let My Love Open the Door by Pete Townshend
• Nobody Love Me (Massive Attack Mix) by Portishead

• Honorable Mention to:  I Don’t Believe in Love by Queensryche & Rhythm of Love by Scorpions, both song of which I’ve heard more than the others combined, they just didn’t come fast enough by artitst in the line up.

2) Hate (total: 42 songs found):

• Hate Me by Blue October
• Wasting My Hate by Metallica
• She Hates Me by Puddle of Mudd
• She Hates Me by Richard Cheese (spoof of the above and awesome!!!)
• I Hate Everything About You by Three Days Grace

3) War (total: 226 songs found):

• This Means War by AC/DC
• War Pigs by Faith No More
• War on Sound by Moonbabies
• The Dogs of War by Pink Floyd
• War? by System of a Down

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Momma phant and baby phant have been reunited.  One of the sweetest things I’ve ever heard is the lil’ fella crying out for love in the video below:

http://www.kgw.com/video/video-index.html?nvid=275784&shu=1 

Here is an updated link to the video of the birth mentioned below.  They were gracious enough to remove the curb stomping but you can see that poor lil’ guy swarmed by zoologist who ultimately had to help him get to his feet.

http://www.kgw.com/video/index.html?nvid=275646&shu=1 

Still quite adorable.  And in other news not mentioned, the mother and calf have been calling for each other but 24 hours later they still haven’t been re-introduced.

Yesterday one of the elephants at the Oregon Zoo in Portland gave birth to her first calf.  The zoo had several webcams on the elephant pen so that zoo patrons that happened to be visiting another part of the zoo exhibit could watch.  Also, the local news channel had a crew there to watch to crowd of mostly children.

The crowd goes bizzerk with joyful screams as they witness the rear legs emerge from momma-phant on the live feed.  Soon the happy screams turn to gasps as momma-phant wildly kicks her legs and moves her body in an effort to deliver her child and then spooks and starts to stomp on the newborn.  Normally there is a bit of gentle kicking and nudging to coax a newborn to move or breath but this was a full-on elephant curb stomping.

The zoo handlers were able to rush the pen and shoe the mom away from the confused lil’ guy and the zoo quickly cut the live feed.  The whole thing was kind of creepy to see on the news that I just can’t imagine what it was like to be there live and viewed through the eyes of a child.

A spokesperson for the zoo released a statement that they think Rose-Tu spooked because she had never seen a live birth, which is kind of a sad side effect of being an animal born in captivity herself.  The little guy appears to be fine and they zoo hopes to reunite mother and child.  He’s a cute lil’ fucker.

News story:
http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_082208_zoo_baby_elephant_labor_.9a587d.html 

The mystery has been solved, but I don’t know if the outcome is any better.  What I mistakenly though was a dead half-torso on the stretcher was in fact the full body of a 5 year old child.  The kid lives / lived (??) up the street from me and feel out a second floor window first hitting a truck and before hitting the driveway.  It is my understanding that he feel out the window head first.

The reason there were were no sirens was because there wasn’t an issue with traffic as Brenda correctly deduced.  The house is three blocks up my street and not intersected by a major road and the evac site was an additional block behind me.  No one else will understand this, but Bev, this was the house next to the mint green house up by the stop sign.

This is the 9th child to fall out a second story window in the Portland area this year.  It is really maddening with all the publicity this summer that accidents like this tend to happen.  The thing that kills me to no end is that the my neighborhood was built by the same builder in the early 1990’s.  The home in question has the same generic no-name brand of windows that are used in my home… *AND* the windows which slide open left or right (depending on intall) have a built in saftey latch that pops out of the frame at the top and bottom which have to be defeated to open the windows more than 2-3 inches.  I feel this accident was completely avoidable.  The window design was proper, the builder, isn’t at fault, the homeowner is to blame and yet there is already some buzz on my block that the family wants to sue.

Let me just add that the family moved into this home sometime in either May or June and it is hard to say how many people are living in the house.  There are no less than 4 cars parked there at all times and half the time there are additional cars parked on the boulevard and not in the street.  I don’t wish bad things to happen to people and I’m truly sorry the kid was injured.  I do wish him a speed recovery but still have the pit in my stomach from knowing this was preventable and as insensitive as this may sound, I also have a feeling something like this was Karma rearing its ugly head to those home owners.

Here’s the only local news I’ve found about it:

http://www.katu.com/news/local/27133954.html

Last Thursday – Saturday we had plus 100 degree weather.  Sunday was upper 90’s, yesterday (Monday) the high was 72 and today the high won’t event hit 70.  Due to the mostly moderated weather, we rarely see lightning but each of the hot days brought some of the best lightning storms I’ve seen… ever.  It reminded me of the kind of stuff seen in the midwest as the lightning started on one end of the horizon and zapped about 20 miles across the sky.  It is probably a good thing that I was working those nights so that I wasn’t tempted to set my my camera and tripod and become a lightning rod.  I’m not sure how this is measured but according to the local news channel there were 2500+ lightning strikes per hour statewide which clearly means it was both air-to-air (heat lightning) and air-to-ground.  Either way it was spectacular!

And then yesterday came along.  I’m only about 3/4 of a mile as the crow flies from the local commuter airport.  Other than the airshow which occurred the previous weekend the noise from the close proximity isn’t bad.  I don’t notice planes throughout the day despite being near the approach for the primary landing.  Although the airport could support commercial traffic, it the homebase mostly for corporations and sports teams; Nike, Intel, and the Portland Trailblazers to name a few.  There is a helicopter flight school and the local news stations and air ambulance companies base craft there as well.

So yesterday I’m having a nap on the couch (big surprise, eh) when the noise and downdrafts from a helicopter in very low flight over my house wake me up.  The dogs were freaking out, of course.  I put on my shoes and head outside to see an air ambulance coming down fast.  Rather than run out the yard to chase it I jump in the truck and realize that it is landing at the elementary school playground that is one block from my house.  This strikes me as funny because there is a fire engine and police car there, too.  I’m thinking equipment malfunction and that it couldn’t make it the last 3/4 of a mile to the school and had to declare an emergency.

I’m stop and pull to the shoulder of my lane as a ambulance approaches from behind me with lights, but no siren.  The flight crew disembark and run to the ambulance now parked directly in front of me.  The doors open and out the paramedics pull out the stretcher/gourney.  And then I saw it.

There was something on the gourney and it wasn’t taking up all the real estate.  It didn’t make sense to me right away.  As soon as the flight crew transferred the the victim into the air ambulance, the paramedics returned to their rig surrounded by a cop and three fireman.  On parmedic sat down on the step/bumper and then completely tossed his cookies in front of us all.  It didn’t dawn on me until that moment that it wasn’t a child on the gourney, it was the upper torso of legless adult.

It was both sad and creepy.

Sometimes I think people of faith are a bit out there.  I struggle with my own beliefs and whatnot but make no bones about it, I’ll never say my religion is better then your religion.  What I will do is make fun of those out there who make ridiculous videos using science (in this case using acid found in a pickle to conduct electricity) and equating the results to how the spirit of Jesus flows through us all like said electrified pickle.

Below is the link to the video in question.  I encourage you to watch it before reading the rest of the post for my conclusions.  Pay attention to what happens when the light is turned on with about 15 seconds remaining on the video counter.

http://www.googlyfoogly.com/videos/Electric-Pickles-For-Jesus-.html 

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I think it’s been a couple of years since Isaac Hayes quit doing the voice over for “Chef” on South Park.  And while I can’t say I was a huge fan of either Isaac Hayes the musician/actor or South Park, the Chef character always made me laugh when I did catch the show.  He was found dead laying next to his treadmill which is just another reason why I’m comfortable being a fatty.  Working out can kill you!!!

Since it is already after dinner… I do hereby proclaim tomorrow, August 11th, 2008 as… “Salisbury Steak Day” in honor of “Chef”/Issac Hayes.

“Good-bye, Children!”

Today is… well… was, Bev’s birthday. If you were to ask her she would tell you she’s 29 years old. When we first met in person years ago she was 28 years old. This either means that she’s a damn liar or that the US/Canada exchange ratio is still not on even par. Who am I kidding!? Both answers are correct… especially the first answer.

I called her this morning around 3am my time to wish her a happy birthday. I had hoped to caller an hour later when it would have been 08:08:08 on 08/08/08 but my work schedule didn’t permit. Needless to say she sounded very hoarse and probably still wasn’t sober from the night before. Tonight wasn’t going to be good for her either as Becka is in town and tomorrow is Becka’s birthday.

In case you didn’t plan birthday gifting in advance or were looking for suggestions I’ve taken the liberty of registering both Bev & Becka for new livers…

When I was in elementary school I remember going grocery shopping with my mom and middle sister.  My sister need tampons and was completely embarrassed when we weren’t able to form some sort of human pyramid to reach the box she needed.  She was completely mortified to go to school the next to because we had to call for Jerry (one of the bagboys who was also our paperboy) to reach them for her.  As embarrassing as that was for a teenage girl, it created a situation where I knew right then and there that I’d never buy tampons for anyone. 

Fast forward to my sophomore year…

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