Seanachai

Lies, trickery and deceit. Is that what it's come down to? I demand that Boo undertake a Quest as Penance. Justicar! Shuffle your aged and decrepit self to the fore, and bring the full weight of your feeble wits to bear upon this matter of import. I DEMAND PENANCE OF BOO RADLEY, WHO HAS MIGHTILY DISPLEASED MY MIGHTY SELF! Nothing major, perhaps a 1,000 point set-up, nothing in the fecking desert on some sandy pool table, and the tip of the pinky finger from his off hand (from the first knuckle on). Oh, and Boo, send it with dry-ice in the package. It's summertime, and the mailman freaks out if the package smells of rotting flesh.

I was just flipping channels on my television set, and I'm extremely confused. For some reason, Victoria Beckham seems to be living here in America. Have the Brits regained the right to use this country as a penal colony?

What is wrong with Leeo. Why is he pissing on the heads of many States? I mean, where could he be headed? Has he been deported?

GODAMMIT, BOO! I KNOW YOU'RE OUT THERE! YOU'RE PRETENDING TO BE OFF-LINE IN MESSENGER, AREN'T YOU?!

Well, I guess it was only a matter of time. Ladies and Loathsome Creatures, I send you to this link, to witness the Woodsy Glory: <a href="http://www.rei.com/online/store/ProductDisplay?productId=48143450&storeId=8000&catalogId=40000008000&color=BLUE&img=/media/e/1139363.jpg&view=large" target="_blank"> Welcome To the Jungle</a>

Yesterday I paddled on the Minnesota River. It was wonderful. I was slightly put off, however, that Boo was not waiting at the take-out with a large, cooling glass of beer.

Hey that sounds cool, can I be one of those? </font>

You know, it occurs to me, as I berate Lars and revile Dalem, while emailing Peng and talking to Berli on the phone between cursing you all, that the Combat Mission Forum and the Peng Challenge Thread has filled me with the desire to make that grand old Scottish toast: "Here's tae us; wha's like us? Damn few, and they're a' deid" Goodnight, and may flights of angels fly up you bums, tickling your prostate glands and causing you all to give a high-pitched titter of pretended discomfort. Except for the Ladies of the 'Pool, of course. And goodnight to you, Minnesota Joe, wherever you are.

Watched it all, it was surprisingly excellent. When you going to loan me the second season? </font>

Oh, please, Nature. Let there be sharks.

Ah, you remind me. I haven't spoken with Joe in a while. The most of you piddlers, avert your eyes. Your Betters are going to talk over the tops of your heads. SHAW! I demand an accounting of your stewardship, here, in this vile and vulgar place! For the enlightenment of those too fecking stupid, drunk, or clueless, let me remind you of The Compact. The agreement between you, the Justicar, and the Olde Ones of the Peng Challenge Thread. The Compact clearly states that you shall have the right to pontificate, carry on like a dementia afflicted nursing home resident, befoul yourself while bemoaning the fact that no one understands the troubles you've seen, demand accountability from people that I'd simply run my car over rather than talk to, and posture like a cut-rate pope with a mitre bigger than Satan's... sins. And take with you to the grave the title Justicar of the Peng Challenge Thread. In return for this grant of powers/personal affliction, you have made Compact with the Olde Ones of the Peng Challenge Thread. You have repeatedly assured us that 'You stand on guard for the Peng Challenge Thread'. How very nice. I'm sure that, somewhere, there's entire groups of Guardian Spirits, Temple Dogs and Landvaettir doing handsprings and forming pyramids in celebration of your diligence. You've required Rules, insisted on Challenges, Monitored, Policed and Imposed Coventry. You've studied the Heraldry of the Peng Challenge Thread to the point of actually creating it. You have maintained hierarchies that would make the fascistic feudalism of Heaven look anarchic. You have measured applicants with calipers, and gone mad and foaming in private emails, asking to be released from the burden of Believing in the Thread. You're pretty much completely insane, at this point. If you were a pet I owned, I'd have you put down, just to be kind. And now, in return for the Vast Powers That We Have Afflicted You With, you must acknowledge your allegiance, and fulfill the duties of The Compact. You must tender a list of all Malefactors, with recommendations. You must report on the State of the Thread. You must acknowledge that you shall acknowledge no authority before that of the Olde Ones, and commit an act of serious Weirdness in acknowledgment of that fact, as well as to acknowledge that the word 'acknowledge' has been used excessively. Also, you need to sing me a song. You know how I love songs. Or a poem. I am a lackadaisical and forgiving figure of Despotism. We are not always with you, Joe. But know that the Olde Ones sit eternally in the Wasteland. Chivy the sheep on towards us. The constantly approaching horizon of idiocy and creation keeps us up and doing.

Humorous. Years ago, when I was a much younger creature, over the summer I went to visit my then girlfriend in her home town, Platteville, Wisconsin. Yes, it is every bit as dull a place as it sounds. She came from what we could only describe as a family of 'Religious Professionals'. Her Father was a Reverend who'd given up his church in order to get a teaching degree, and was teaching Religion at the University of Wisconsin (Platteville). She had three older brothers, one who was in the Seminary, one who had just graduated from college and was about to begin at a Seminary, and another who was getting his BA in religion. On Saturday afternoon, during my visit, she, I and her oldest brother were chatting amiably in the living room, and the doorbell rang. He went to answer it, and standing there was a young, cheerful, somewhat vapid looking 16 year old girl. She said 'Hi! Could I talk to you about our Saviour, Jesus Christ?' He smiled and responded 'Yes, if you'd like'. And she said 'Do you believe that Jesus was the Son of God?' He replied, and I have to admit that I can only paraphrase, all these years later 'Well, I guess it depends a great deal on whether you believe that Jesus was spirit, flesh, or...' and then he headed off into the intellectual blue of spiritual erotica. She listened to him for several minutes, blinking diffidently and looking more uncertain and out of her depth by the second, and finally, when he paused politely for a reply, she said 'I think I'd better go get our senior coordinator'. She scurried off, and returned a few minutes later with a guy in his 40s, who looked slightly puzzled, and after a few minutes of conversation with the Seminary student from an academic family, took her gently by the shoulder and led her away, saying 'I think we should just assume that this house knows about God.' I can't even describe it as cool as it happened. It totally beats the hell out of my normal approach, which is to simply tell them 'Jesus?! He never loved me. Oh, he says he loves me, but some Saviours will say anything to get you into Heaven. I'm not that kind of sinner.'

Ahhahaha! Jorge el Curioso! La Puta will haben gedankst!

I actually saw some very nice size bass in the water as my kayak ghosted over them. Impressive. And yes, it is a 'wee river'. But by the third 'get the kayaks past the multiple obstructions' encounter that 'wee river' would have dropped your drunken, out of shape arse to the bottom of the channel with a coronary. Oh, and I left my copy of the first season of 'Rome' at your house. You better have been watching it, Bucky. Because I'm going to want it back soon.

I was attacked by a mink. A baby mink. It was unnervingly like being on the receiving end of your wit. I'd tell you the whole story, but it will have to wait until tomorrow night. I had to stop and toast a friend's birthday tonight, and I'm knackered. It was my friend Jen, who, as the Mother of Small Emma has contributed more to the betterment of the world than all of you lot put together. Small Emma and I watched a weird DVD of old Gumby and Pokey animations that a friend sent me a while back. I remember watching the Gumby animations when I was young. What I didn't remember was that the damn things were unspeakably bizarre. I am talking Schedule I Drugs bizarre. But Small Friend loves them. She watches them with rapt and all too apparent incomprehension. When I ask her questions about what she just watched, it's clear that she's been taking in the claymation version of String Theory. But she demands that we watch the next one, and views them over and over. I shudder to think what strange, psychic message is being passed on, here.

Uh, no one did that, Mord. Well, except you. What everyone you were showering spittle over was saying was that it's a game, the unit markers are unit markers, and that the endless arguments for death animations is a bore. It's boring, Mord. Boring. I guess we should thank you for hopping about, raving with your pants around your ankles, and shrieking hysterically like a little girl. It injected a moment of drama into what is, otherwise, an eternally tedious discussion.

Ah. The Dalem School of Versification. Except that most of it rhymes. Some of it doesn't scan worth a ****e, but at least this halfwit is in there pitching. I might have to notice him in the future.

That was as fine a set of turned phrases as I have seen here in many a long day. Three different sources, all of them classics, and one of them quite probably a form of self-satire. Goddamn. Send me a set-up, you neo-con whore.

Yes, I spent this last weekend kayaking the Rum River (gods, could anything be more apropos?!). And we camped. We put-in and paddled 7 miles to the DNR campground. A short paddle on a river, but we figured to make camp early, cook a great meal, have a couple of strengthening glasses of wine (but only two, because wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging), and enjoy the beauty and by the gods loveliness of the river. We did not, of course, count on the fact that the 3 mile stretch of the river before the campground would present multiple occasions where the channel was completely blocked by newly fallen trees. Have you ever hoicked up a 42 pound kayak laden with 30 pound of gear and carried it over a sandbar around a fallen tree to get back to deep water? Well, yes, everyone has. But have you ever lofted the sodding thing over a two foot thick log lying just touching the water between 8 foot high banks while standing in water up to your thighs with a rushing current, and shot the fecking thing over the top, then caught it on the other side before the current could sweep it on down to the next log jam? Well, you may have. But have you ever done this with a 56 year old friend with skinny little girl arms who regards camping as a form of de-evolution performed by men in order to justify not having killed someone in a war? I think not. Of course the best part was when we finally got to the DNR 'maintained' campground to find that it was at the top of an 8 foot embankment with no shoreline or shallow water, with the narrow steps that had originally been placed to reach it collapsed and washed out, and the campground clearly overgrown and inaccessible. So, when we got there, my friend looks at me and says "So what do we do now?! And I told her 'We go to Plan B. We keep paddling down the freaking river until we find some place that we can actually set the tent up, and if it's private land and someone shows up to complain, we apologize profusely, and explain why we're camped on their property. If necessary, we mention Lars's name, because that redneck bastard probably has a cousin living somewhere nearby, this being backwoods Minnesota.' And that is what we did. Hey, Lars, Deputy Carlson from the Isanti county Sheriff's department says to tell you 'Hi', and that you still owe him $20 from that time you bet you could drink a pint of Everclear and still shoot a crow on the wing while wearing your underpants on your head. Thus endeth Part One of my camping/paddling story. Look for Part II tomorrow night.

I have returned, as I always, somehow, eventually do. Even when I don't want to. Even when I decide that my life...no, sorry, when My Life has gone elsewhere. I wish I could quit you, Peng Challenge Thread. But perhaps not. Perhaps I revel at that moment, Peng Challenge Thread, when you and I slip into that tent in the middle of nowhere, with no one to see what we do but God, the Powers That Are, the Old Ones, the Justicar, the Ladies of the 'Pool, the Senior Knights, the Knights, the Squires, the SSNs, the Cheery Wafflers, the Outerboarders, any number of lackwits who did a Google search and mis-typed 'arse-bandits', and some drunk Finn who keeps insisting that he's trying to sell Hollywood on a Baltic Sea remake of an old television show to be re-titled 'Mikhail's Navy'. Maybe I long for that moment when someone like Abbott runs his eye over my words, and, after a shudder of loathing and self-disgust, finds he's reached forward to lovingly type out a reply, reassuring himself about his purpose by showing my words to his wife so that she knows how hateful, vile and disgusting I am before he settles down to caress me with the club of his disapproval. It's okay, Abbott. I like the pictures of your trucks. I really do. They're sleek, and intriguing, powerful and are clearly meant for cruising around town to attract the attention of other men. When I looked away before, and mocked you, and tried to deny their inherent sensuality, and what you were trying to show us all... Well, that wasn't me, Abbott. That was a man who wasn't comfortable with the way those trucks made him feel. That was a man who didn't realize what those trucks said about the needs of their owner. That was a man who didn't realize what it meant to you to keep showing us your 'trucks'. But I've grown, Abbott.

By all the hairy, hoary, ancient weird-arsed gods, Leeo. When I did drugs, I did the Don Mexican Indio Shaman bit with relatively evolved mammals, and not the sea-going equivalent of an ambulatory pudding. You need to straighten down and walk left, Bucky. You need to get right with the various Powers that hold the mortgage on your tacky little soul, and pull up out of the lower animals. You are on the brink, lad, on the very brink, of going Australian yourself.

I already knew you were working at being able to not simply 'do', but also the much more difficult 'teach'. Will this be your first year teaching? Because if it's not your first year, then you're a whinging little big girl's blouse. But if it is your first year, you bugger, then good luck to you, and you probably will need the entire summer (what with having the whole 'family' baggage...). And for anyone who hasn't played Bauhaus, he's a fiendishly stupid and yet successful opponent. I don't know how he does it. Every move he makes looks like idiocy. And then he wins. I still wake up screaming, sometimes. As for anything else; well, let me just say this, Bauhaus. Stand up! You're going to teach. I salute you.

It's great to see the old classics like 'can the blood and entrails be turned up to 11' coming up again. Nothing makes me feel more light-hearted and reassured about mankind than the eventual demand for gorier representations of death in the Game. Because, you know, it's simply not possible to get your minimum daily requirement of graphic images of death from movies or the evening news or the internet. Doesn't matter that their only purpose in the game, especially given that they don't even represent individuals in a specific, pinpoint location, is to give the viewer that shuddery little rubber glove/proctal exam moment of either pathos or sadism. I imagine that one jackal or another will now be by, as inevitable as the dawn, to begin the argument about how 'the enhanced graphical realism of death and mutilation helps bring home the gruesome reality of war', while another hyaena makes inane remarks about the 'coolness factor of watching the little dudes get hammered into jelly', and some sententious halfwit pulls a long face and remarks that 'having the death of your small warriours represented more poignantly makes you more chary of their virtual lives, while seeing the righteous destruction of your enemies fills you with a glow of satisfaction'. For me? It's a unit elimination marker. It signifies a tactical resolution. For everything else, there's touching yourself. Oh, not that I don't gloat and glory in those elimination markers. It's just that I don't need the game makers to provide porn while I do so. Personally, I just keep some print-outs of Hakko Ichiu's "Grog Porn" classics by the machine, in case I have trouble achieving a happy ending.

Boo! As you love your god, my Lady, and me, let us to horse! There must be windmills I can tilt against with more substance than anything Abbott has to say. Or even strip-malls! Whatever. Hold my stirrup! No, not like that, you...look, just link your palms and help me...oh for the love of... Just get down on your hands and knees and let me step up on...bloody hell. Even on all fours you're too goddamn tall. Not to mention clumsy. Look, go back in the bar and call us a cab. What? Sod the horse. Animal Control will bring it by tomorrow. Just like always. Give me that flask. No, no, I'm not angry. But just once, I'd like to be able to vault into the saddle with the aid of my esquire, and ride off to glory. Remember what happened last week? When you tossed me right over the bloody horse and I cracked two ribs and smashed the windshield of that Volvo? Okay, yeah, that was pretty goddamn funny when that feck in the polo shirt came out of the Super America with his idiotic bottled water and energy bar and started screaming when he found me lying there on the hood of his car. And he whipped his cell phone out and tried to call his insurance agent, and got his mother on the speed-dial, instead? You know, his army of little wizards are still calling me, and trying to get me to sign a release?

At last, in these increasingly lengthy posts from the most laconic of posters, my triumph is clear. My work here is done. Let's ride!