180 - Looking for Native American Spiritual Shirt Double Pinwheel Joe Peschi? I found him.

I took the kinder to lovely seaside festival the other day. They had a troupe of pirates lead the assembled kids on a treasure hunt featuring a real buried chest in the beach. But I found an even greater treasure! Rrrrrread on!


At first I was just shooting the charismatic pirate king as he took the kids on the treasure hunt. 

I marveled at how unusual the pirates looked on the beach in all their finery.

But then I noticed Native American Spiritual Shirt Double Pinwheel Joe Peschi and I thought, "who's really the unusual one here?"

 

The answer was never in doubt.

179 - My hair looks awesome, please plan your days accordingly

Just FYI, my hair looks amazing today. I look like the host of some insanely salacious talk show in a language you don't understand. Please plan your days accordingly.

178 - Required reading

I sat reading this article in office bathroom so long that the motion-sensitive lights turned off on me. Surely, in the modern world, that is the greatest testament one can make to a writer's skill.

177 - I fantasize about murdering my kids' toys

Some day, when Rody's feeling all sweet and happy and orange, I'm gonna slip up behind his always-left-out, trip-you-in-the-middle-of-the-night ass and bleed him real quite like. And no one's ever gonna know what happened to ol' Rody. And I'm just gonna be grinning like all getout.

176 - A day not wasted

Chris Connolly

My assignment Thursday was to write a story about this bridge that supposedly had a huge hole in it. I got a couple calls telling me 'someone's going to die driving into that hole,' and 'it's going to cost the town a lot more to settle a wrongful death suit than it will to fix that hole.' So I went down there, got the story, found out about the repair history of the bridge, etc. Then I went to get a picture of the bridge and... no hole! It had already been repaired. I did take this shot over the edge of the bridge though, so, not wasted.

175 - Akin didn't say one damn thing he doesn't actually think

Image lifted from http://jlestrange.deviantart.com. Love your style!

One of great core differences in the conservative and progressive movements was brought to the fore by Todd Akin's comments on questionable reality of rape. When arch conservatives give voice to their actual views, they render themselves unelectable. Akin, and his partymates, aren't suddenly looking to change their thoughts about women, they're only looking to mitigate the damage done by someone who was unguarded enough to speak them. That sucks!

The republican party is now in the hands of a group of people whose main mandate is to think one thing, but say something else, because their real views are so beastly they must-not-be-named. This holds true socially, of course, where their brute, stupid notions regarding equality read like middle school playground myths. But it's likewise true economically, where they have to pretend that, WOW!, the very economic stances that benefit them personally, also happen to be in the best interest of the voters they need to get elected. 

Liberals may come off as weak and "kindergarten-y" when voicing their views, but at least they can say what they actually think. The conservative hunt for a replacement for Akin won't be for someone who believes differently, it will only be for someone who hasn't been stupid enough to say it. 

174 - Long Island Hidden Histories and Mysteries 3

The final installment of my series Long Island Hidden Histories and Mysteries is now online. Read it here: Long Island Hidden Histories and Mysteries 3 - Baldwin

173 - Reports from an alien anthropologist watching my house

In the world of humans, the most sacred religious rite is the daily Finding of the Shoes. This dire ritual is performed every morning and at scattered other times throughout the day. It typically involves the young humans standing in one spot, issuing fluids from all the openings of their faces (humans have four,) and bewailing the impossibility of ever finding shoes. These prostrations build until a crescendo is reached, whereupon a familial elder either smacks the child in the back of the head or threatens not to take him to Bailey’s birthday at Chuck E. Cheese's on Sunday. The ceremony serves to reinforce among the young the idea that the world is an unforgiving place of impossible complexity. It also ensures that the adults are transformed into shambling, vengeful hulks of murderous rage before they take to the planet’s highways.

172 - Future = Bright

They give you these shades if you have 4 years perfect attendance at meetings of the Sun's Out Gun's Out Society.

171 - Where did all these geese come from?

Geese and humans honk at one another.                          photo by Chris Connolly

Have you ever wondered where the millions and millions of geese currently pooping on your lawn came from? Oh snap! Me too! I wrote about it for the Long Island Herald. You can see the story here.