Comic Tuesday

Today on Comic Tuesday I'm featuring much more than just a comic, I'm featuring an entire cultural icon. Gord, and his true stories: Acts of Gord, about running a game store, enjoyed minor fame several years ago. Organized into books and chapters, Gord's stories are funny, ironic and sarcastic, and very well-written. The site hasn't been updated in some time, but there is plenty of content there to enjoy.

Gord's stories inspired comic artist Ryan Estrada to create a series of comics featuring Gord. He's produced 4 'books' of this inspired nonsense, which makes a lot more sense if you're at least familiar with Gord's stories, but each also stands on it's own. The comic captures the tone and content of Gord's stories in a very funny way, and the art is fantastic. They are our Comic Tuesday feature this week, and clicking the images for each book takes you to the book in it's entirety. You can also navigate all the books from the archive, here, which is recommended if you have bandwidth issues.

At some point, Gord got tired of running a game store, and moved to South Korea as an English as a second language teacher. He started a message board to discuss his adventures in Korea, and the thread about his experiences there was well-illustrated with photos. The thread provided a nice glimpse into life in South Korea. I haven't kept up with Gord, so I'm not sure what he's doing now, but his legacy continues, and he's active on the message board.

All-in-all, one guy's stories about running a game store occupy a pretty large space of internet culture, considering. It goes to show you that good writing is in demand, and rewarded with attention. Enjoy the comic, and be sure and read some of Gord's stories, either on the message board, or the original Acts of Gord, if you get a chance.

Acts of Gord comics on Whidbey Island.

Wow. Just, Wow.

This selection of 21 great mugshots is outstanding. It's hard to argue with the premise: 21 Best Mugshots Evar. How great are they? Let me put it this way: the mug shot above didn't make the list.

Found at Othercrap.

Get your mug to Whidbey Island.

Country Music?

I was pretty dismayed when country music devolved into a bunch of long-haired guys with electric guitars, and again when country music swallowed whole the notion of patriotic devotion without question.

Last night, however, country music really confounded me with the performance by new cutie Taylor Swift. It's a wonderful performance, she's truly a gifted performer. But to call her music 'country' truly stretches the definition. I guess if you put the right 'twang' to it, any pop music can become 'country'.

It seems to me that the boundaries of music genres are either stretching or disappearing. Not that I mind, good music is good music, no matter the genre. We get a wide variety of live music here at Rockhoppers, in fact this coming weekend we've got a country performer. Anthony Easterwood will be here at 7:00pm on Saturday. If you like music, and particularly if you like country music, come and support live music on our island.

Happy 18th birthday Taylor, and happy 25th, David.

Country music on Whidbey Island.

Oreo Truck Crisis

Horrendous accident on the Interstate: Tens of thousands destroyed.
Tens of thousands of Oreo cookies, that is. Quick! Somebody get some milk -- lots and lots of milk!

I just love to dunk Oreos, either in milk, or in coffee. I also like our Rockhopper special delight, the Soaker: a coffeecake muffin, in a bowl of our great drip coffee. Yum!

Dunking our desserts on Whidbey Island.

Animals

I must have some farmer genes in me. Since I have been living on ten acres of land, I have found a number of reasons to raise different animals.

One year a friend of mine & I decided to raise some chickens and turkeys. We figured that we could have some really good chicken, and a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. The local feed store had a deal in which they would give you free chickens based on how much money you had spent. Of course, included in that money would have to be chicken food. We went in, bought chicken food, and I got rabbit food (which I raised at the time) and ended up between the two of us getting about 30 chicks. Another man at the counter had just bought a bunch of fencing materials, but didn't want his chicks, so he gave them to us, another 25 chicks. So we left, proud owners of 55 chicks and 6 turkey chicks.

As time passed, the chickens grew. (For those of you who might be squemish, now would be a good time to skip on to the next post!! ) It came to be time to butcher the chickens. No longer were they cute fuzzy things! There were so many, we decided there was no way the two of us could get the job done in one day, so we only did the biggest ones, about 10 or 12 of them. As it turned out, each time we went to get started it was the same routine, pick the biggest chickens to butcher. I put 25 whole fryers in my freezer, the smallest of which weighed 6 pounds, the biggest...12 pounds. Who needs a turkey when your chicken is 12 pounds?

What happened to the turkeys, you ask? Well, several of them died, we ended up with only two, and then my friend had to move from the house she was in (she raised all of the birds at her place). During the process of moving, apparently someone saw two unattended turkeys and decided it was time to get their Thanksgiving bird. So the smaller of the two went missing. That left the final turkey, which I picked up and took home with me. The plan being to get together once my friend got settled in her new house to butcher the turkey. Time passed, the turkey continued to grow. He got so big that when he stood on the garden hose you couldn't move it! When at last we were able to coordinate a time to get together, we decided there was no way to fit him in the oven. We opted to take him instead to the deli where I worked to have him smoked in their commercial size smoker. They had to cut him in half to make him fit! He weighed 47.5 pounds! That's a lot of turkey! We served him up for Christmas dinner, as well as for Rene's Day after Christmas party. I'll tell you what, there's nothing better than home-grown!

Turkeys on Whidbey Island.

Rockhoppers Presents Adam Shults

Tonight we had Adam Shults playing his mix of classics and his own music, all in his inimitable style. I recorded his show in two sets -- he had to take a break between sets because of the heat.

Live music on Whidbey Island.

Each Grain of Sand a Work of Art

Update: New photo above courtesy of the artist. Thanks, Gary!

With all the agate and other beautiful rocks we find on our island beaches, I bet Whidbey Island sand is just lovely. This article from Discover magazine makes me want to go out and buy a 3D microscope. The photographer's official site, with lots more photos, is here.

Sand from Whidbey Island.

High-Speed Train

California is looking to build a high-speed train system from San Diego to Sacramento, with stations in Los Angeles and in San Francisco, and all along the route. I note that they expect the system to cost only $40,000,000,000.00 (40 billion), and that it will be 800 miles long.

If California can build a high-speed train for $5 million per mile, then we can build a tram on the island for the same, or less, I'm sure. This puts my idea for a Ferry-to-Ferry tram at a very reasonable $200 million dollars.

I've already heard objections to my idea, based upon concerns about growth, and I'm planning a post on that subject soon. Anything else we should be thinking about?

Images from NC3D

Trains on Whidbey Island.

Working with Seniors

So here we are finally getting some wonderful weather. It feels more like summer than spring though since it is in the high 80's here. So hubby has been bugging me about posting and I looked at the posts and realized it has been a while since I posted. So I figured it was time for a story. I guess this story is more of some small antidotes rather than a short story but here goes....

For those of you who know me you are probably aware that I used to work with senior citizens. I called them seniors and I never had a single person say they hated that reference. On the other hand most of my groups were very vocal about what they wanted to be referred to when it came to discussing their generation. These titles included elderly, wise ones, senior citizens, geriatrics, and our elders. They also were not wild about any thing generians either. So I referred to them as seniors. They thought of high school and I knew what I was thinking so we did well with this reference.

Anyway, I need to go back a little ways to my mother and Pearl Harbor. When my mother was a small girl, my grandfather belonged to the Navy and they lived in Pearl Harbor. Grandpa was a doctor who worked at the Naval hospital there. When Pearl Harbor was bombed grandpa was working at the hospital. There were only 29 Japanese aircraft that were destroyed during this bombing. One of those aircrafts flew into the side of the hospital that my grandpa was working in. My grandfather announced the pilot dead. In each of the Japanese soldiers pockets was a small container that held pictures, private info and info that needed to be returned to the country they belonged to so the families could be notified of their death. The plane that hit the hospital was shot down by 5 different men who all dived for the same fox hole and started shooting at the plane. 3 of those men used their own weapons because they were holding them when the bombing began. (2 of the men said they were cleaning them, and one said he had just finished cleaning his and was putting it away.) All 5 of the men were given awards of valor for shooting the same plane down.

Forward to when I was 17 and began working with the elderly as a nurse's aide. One day I was helping a senior into bed. He was a really nice man and he and I had developed a report. I loved his stories and he enjoyed talking with me. Anyway one night we happened upon the subject of WWII. I mentioned that my grandfather and my mom's family had been in Pearl Harbor when it was bombed. Through his story I was able to find out that he had been one of the men who was awarded for shooting down the Japanese pilot. My father later met another man who was also awarded the same award and later when I moved to California with my family I met one of the three men in an Adult Day Health Care that I was working at. These three men knew one another when they were in Hawaii but lost track of each other throughout the years. Unfortunately we were not able to get all three of them together again. The computer was not around then and by the time I was able to contact the man I met in Spokane, he had passed away. Dad could not remember which of his customers was the one from Hawaii and the man I knew moved shortly after I met him. This short antidote has no real point. I just find that serendipity is really interesting when it is included with history that happened many many years in the past.

As I got more experience working with seniors I became an Activity Director. I worked in a variety of homes and settings for the elderly and was honestly honored to have met so many incredible human beings. I was the butt of many many jokes though and I have to admit that one of my favorite jokes was about a phobia of mine. When I was in Ohio working as an Activity Director, I met a small group of women who played the ultimate joke on me. I had mentioned in a small discussion group that there were a variety of things I was not fond of. I also mentioned that snakes scared me to death! I mentioned almost running over my pregnant girlfriend to get out of the way of a very small (5-6 inch garter snake) and that one of the things I hated about Ohio was that the poisonous snakes in Ohio did not rattle. The ladies looked at each other and then piped up that yeah they did not rattle but if you smelled while you were walking you could tell they were around because they smelled like celery. I fell for it hook line and sinker. It was not until we had been walking out on the property that Dan noticed me stopping and smelling the air about every 5 or 6 steps. He had a good laugh at my expense when I told him why I was stopping. Did I mention "I Hate Snakes!!"

So I have posted about a few friends I made along the way. They are all dead now I am sure but their memories live on with me and so do their stories. I will have more in days to come, I am sure.

Stories on Whidbey Island.

Crazy Commercial

Maybe I'm going to have to do a series on crazy commercials! This one is great -- try and guess what they're advertising. I think it would have been more effective filmed indoors. Must be some wild folk stories in Thailand.

Found at The Presurfer

Ghost lights on Whidbey Island.