October 22, 2007 
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Had a blast. Big Bad John, Janette, Lizette, and I went (along with a few others) and enjoyed the day. John and I rode together and the others drove/rode separately. We saw them intermittently throughout the day. Here are some of the more memorable pics:
October 22, 2007 0 Comments
So I was watching the movie “Wild Hogs” the other day and realized, in my own nerdy way, that having a “gang” name for a friendly group of bikers is pretty damned cool. I wanted one.
So I talked it over with Big Bad John. Since we’re both in the software engineering field we humorously came up with the name “Binary Bikers.” It stuck, and defintely sounded better than “Hexidecimal Hellions” or “Octal Orangutangs.”
I created a possible back-of-the-jacket patch design today and wanted to share it with you and get feedback.
The name of our “gang” is on the image, but it’s in binary! It says “Binary” across the top and “Bikers” across the bottom, all in zeros and ones. John came up with the slogan “If you have to ask, you just don’t get it.”
So, here is the image. What do you think? Suggestions? Comments?
October 16, 2007 0 Comments
Cassiopeia is her name She’s a full bred Beagle puppy. I got her with my ex-girlfriend a few weeks ago. I think she pushed me into it to get me used to the idea of having a baby with her, but I LOVE Cassie. She’s a full-spirited, very loving and playful dog.
As Beagles go she is great but, like all their breed, very stubborn. I am still working on house training her, although I can get her to sleep through the night without peeing in her crate now.
She also is quickly learning good behaviors like sit, stay, come, and fetch. She doesn’t know her own strength yet and is a little rough with other dogs her size, but she’ll figure it out. Here are some pics of Cassie.
July 16, 2007 1 Comment
A couple of months ago I was in my back yard in one of my two utility closets. As I opened the door to walk in, a very large spider dangled in front of me. A large spider with a red hourglass on her belly.
For those of you who don’t know, I have a spider phobia. A justifiable spider phobia. When I was about twelve, living as a Navy brat on the NCT Annex in Orlando Florida we used to play “Potato Wars” in the wilderness surrounding the base.
On one especially hot Florida day I was immersed in a terrific Potato War unexpectedly. I was walking through a new stretch of the woods when friends (and bullies – why they formed an alliance on this day I’ll never know) jumped out of the underbrush and I was assaulted by a number of hard, vegatative, missiles.
I ran. It was what I was supposed to do. It was expected of me. I took off like the hounds of hell were on my heels, looking side to side for that tell-tell heavy-hanging branch that would indicate a potato I could pluck and use as a missile. I was so busy looking for a weapon that I neglected to watch where I was going. Until it was too late.
It’s amazing how fast the human body can stop from a full run when it needs to. At the first gossamer touch of web I stopped so fast that my clothes ran about three feet in front of me before they stopped – or so it seemed to me. It was too late, though.
I had run into a nest of Bannana Spiders. They looked like this:
In horror, I looked down and saw three of them crawling up my leg and one already in the center of my chest. I was paralyzed and couldn’t move. The little fukk3rs kept crawling all over me and when one actually touched my neck and chin, I freaked the fuck out.
I’m sure you can picture it – a twelve-year-old kid covered in monstrously-huge spiders, crying out, flapping his arms, and wildly smacking his arms across his body trying to dislodge the offending critters. Once I got them all off of me, I ran all the way home and although I don’t remember, I’m pretty sure I lay in the fetal position sucking my thumb for the remainder of the day.
So imagine my reaction when I saw the Brown Widow spider dangling in front of me. Not a Black Widow – but a slightly less poisonous cousin – the Brown Widow.
I screamed like a girl, slammed the utility door, and took off running. Strangely enough, I think I may have found a corner to lie fetal in and suck my thumb – but I won’t confirm that point unless forced to.
That was the end of that – I called my landlord, had him send out pest control, and breathed a sigh of relief. Until Saturday night.
I walked on my front porch and spotted not one, but SEVEN Brown Widow spiders on my porch. SEVEN of the little bastards. I had my kids with me so, although my legs were screaming for a fetal session and my thumb really wanted to be sucked – I knew I had to brave it out and rid my porch of these pests. I even managed to snap a few pictures of them:
As you can see, these were the real deal. So I killed them with Ant and Roach spray. Took them a LONG time to die and I swear they all crawled AT me once I poisoned their asses. Notice that last picture – the little shit had climbed a chair and was spinning a web to trap me in. It’s like they knew they were dead so they decided take out the white boy while they were still living.
I hid inside and peeked out at them as they died. I’m positive they got out a distress call though, and I’m now living in terror of waking up and having their little twiddlers waving in front of my eyes as the last thing I see before they get revenge….
February 27, 2007 0 Comments
Some mornings are more weird than others. This from a random IM conversation as I was trying to get my day started this morning:
[08:47] Sparks: The Silver Surfer / Fantastic Four preview rocked
[08:48] Code Monkey: yeah man – that is going to be cool as hell
[08:49] Sparks: Wonder what Galactus will look like
[08:49] Code Monkey: my left nut
[08:49] Sparks: Your left nut wears a helmet, devours worlds, and creates semi-powerful spawn that hunt for prey?
[08:50] Code Monkey: You didn’t know?
[08:50] Code Monkey: And it’s purple
[08:50] Sparks: All I know is that when I was a kid in Health class they made me watch a video called “Your Testicles and You”
[08:50] Code Monkey: That’s when I discovered its true power!
[08:51] Sparks: You know you’ve taken your Marvel fandom waaaayyy to far when you paint Galactus on your coinpurse.
February 22, 2007 1 Comment
It’s a horrible tune that commercial television seared into my consciousness as a young teen back in the 1980’s. A freaking square of chocolate covered vanilla ice cream wrapped in silver foil with a polar bear on it.
The commercial would come on and you’d see seemingly normal people doing outrageous things for this frozen dairy treat. The commercial would play all day long and between every episode of the A-team and Knight Rider there was at least two commercials for this fattening indulgence.
What would you do…for a Klondike Bar?
I can’t get the fucking song out of my head. For over a decade not a single week goes by where I don’t hum the damned tune out loud at least once.
I never realized how traumatized I was by this commercial until last week I hummed the first few bars of the tune out loud and both of my kids, exasperated, hollered from the back seat…”FOR A KLONDIKE BAR!”
Damn you, you cheap Eskimo Pie knockoff! I need help. I even tried singing the chicken dance every day for a week to rid myself of the dreaded Klondike tune, to no avail.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klondike_bar
I think I need a 12-step program…..
February 14, 2007 2 Comments
Happy Manufactured Spend-Your-Money Day, people…
Let me spend a moment telling you about my two lives. The absolute best thing I did when I split with the ex was to insist on split custody. My two boys and I are closer now that we have ever been.
Every moment I have with them now is more precious than I ever thought possible. Now that my time with my boys has been cut, literally, in half each moment becomes twice as important. When I was a married man I saw my boys every day and it was . . . routine. I suppose I took a lot of things for granted back then.
So – that said – you begin to realize how deeply I love my boys and how heartbreaking it is when I send them back to Mom. Seven days with my boys. Seven days without.
I live a schizophrenic life, people. On the weeks when I have my boys I work and spend time with my kids. That’s it. I take my boys to the movies, read books with them play video games, teach them how to cook, work out, wrestle, talk, and simply enjoy the company of my children. Sometimes we go see family like my grandparents or my parents.
Then, on the weeks when I don’t have them, I find other ways to occupy my time. I work more hours. I go out with friends. I drink. I party. I have friends – I’m a social butterfly and a workaholic.
My two lives. Single father of two one week. Single man the next.
It’s really weird, people. I can’t seem to reconcile the two lives. With only a couple of exceptions the activities and associates from one week are not the present in the other. Sometimes I resent that – imagine how hard it is to start and maintain ANY life in 7-day alternating increments.
None of my friends have kids or are family-oriented. Not a single one of my wonderful friends have indicated that they DON’T want to see me on the weeks when I have my kids – but our standard activities are not kid-friendly. Drinking, partying, riding motorcycles, etc. Things I can’t do with my kids.
I suppose I enforce this schizophrenic lifestyle by not inviting my friends over when I have my kids. I just never stopped to think my friends would come over and or do kid-friendly things with me on my kid weeks.
I have a schizophrenic life, people. Now you can officially call me crazy. 
February 5, 2007 0 Comments
So I’m driving home from work today. It had been a rather stressful day at work – as Monday’s usually are. I was tired, and more than a little irritated because I knew I couldn’t just go home. I had to go to my mom’s house because my sister-in-law’s brother was going to detail my car (yes, the car that I hate).
So I’m on the phone chatting with SavageSeas when I look to my right and see the most unexpected sight.
Next to me on I-4 as I was passing the Millenia Mall was an immaculately clean Corolla. Driving the car was a young and pretty twenty-something professional. Her hair was perfectly parted and combed. Her business suit was dark navy and pressed into crisp seams, even at the end of a long day at work. Her eyes were bright and she had a bluetooth headset in her ear.
She was the very picture of a Young Urban Professional. A Yuppie.
And then I saw this hanging from her rear-view mirror:
The image was so unexpected that I just had to laugh. It’s amazing the things you see when you stop and take the time to look around you. People are strange in such wonderful ways.
February 5, 2007 2 Comments
Chris Parker
“What?” asked the creature, perhaps taking a moment of umbrage at Ernie’s slack-jawed reaction to its presence to breathe. Through nictitating membranes in its eyes.
No. No, days of driving over dead bodies… that was weird. Days of making his own food in restaurants filled with the bodies of the dead that don’t, for whatever reason, decompose or begin to smell—that was weird. This breached some sort of universal etiquette on the amount of mind-blowing weird anyone should put on any one person. Ernie, for the first time in his entire miserable little life, put his back up, stuck his chest out, and got a little mad.
“What do you mean, what? A bipedal… lizard-thing wearing a Flava Flav necklace follows me for three days and then just pops into my car and it’s somehow my problem? MY PROBLEM?! Everyone on the fucking planet is dead and somehow I’m rude for slamming on breaks because there’s a goddamn dinosaur in the back of my car? No. You’re an asshole. No.” Wait, do lizards have assholes, in the strictest sense? Doesn’t matter.
To its credit, the lizard man stood, patiently waiting for Ernie’s tantrum to subside before proceeding.
“Yeah, well,” it said, “ya hurt my back a little. And I’m not a lizard. I’m not really a dinosaur either, unless you’re an ape, still.”
Ernie was, of course, not a scientist. He wasn’t even formally educated, unless two miserable weeks at Adult Education Eckerd College building counted. It probably didn’t. That said, he was pretty sure, from some desultory neuron firings in his lower hippocampus, that dinosaurs became extinct some obscenely long time ago. Like, several thousand years, at least.
“Uh.” Replied Ernie.
“Listen, um, guy? What’s your name? I will, but I don’t really wanna call ya guy the rest of this trip.”
Trip? What, the lizardman was coming with him?
“Ernie.”
“Ok, good, Ernie. Here’s the deal, man. I’m supposed to hook up with my tribe in Nevada before we head down South. I usually just hide underneath the semis and such, but since your people are all dead, figured I could ride in style. And yer headed west, I’m headed west… probably startin’ to get a little crazy in the head, all this drivin’ over yer people and bein alone. Company might do ya some good.”
Ernie considered that a moment. He was, for lack of a better word, a solitary guy. Not hard to pull off. Most folks tint their interactions with Ernie with a heavy dose of pity. Or disgust. Mostly disgust, actually, now that he thought about it. Anyway, solitude was an easy thing to pull off when you’re a fat video game nerd whose sole, daily physical activity is seeing what foods can create the nastiest smelling shits.
But now that everyone was dead, Ernie was starting to rethink a few things. For one, he’d always assumed that when he got around to losing weight or changing the way he did his business, people would, you know, be there. That they weren’t anymore was depressing in a way he couldn’t quite come to terms with. Or maybe just didn’t want to. That settled it, he thought. I’m going to join up with my reptilian companion. I’m going to get something out of this life before I join the rest of humanity, I’m—
A low, grumbling and horrid smelling flatulence cut short his renewing self-pride.
The lizard-man grimaced. “Nice. Ready to go?”
Ernie nodded, “Uh, yeah. Let’s. That’s… really awful. Sorry.”
“Just… leave the windows down. Christ, boy, you ever eat a salad or anything?”
February 2, 2007 3 Comments
In fact, aside from how hugely boring Texas was, it seemed the same as every other state he had driven through on I-10 so far. There had been one bright spot in his journey through Texas so far; the Austin Zoo.
He had stopped on a whim because he wanted to see a lion up close and personal. Which would be easy since it was dead. He had read once that every zoo in Texas not only had the name of the animal on the cage, but a recipe on how to cook it. Lion-burger was on Ernie’s menu! He was disappointed that there were no recipes on the cages, and when he realized that skinning and preparing ANY animal, let alone the golden-maned king of the concrete jungle, was quite beyond him he was further disappointed. Dejected, he wandered the zoo looking at dead animals and kicking dead people as he passed them. This cheered him up a little.
Then he stumbled (literally) upon a dead child (this made him sad for some reason he couldn’t explain even to himself) and he saw it. A pinwheel. He hadn’t had a pinwheel since he was a kid. Gingerly prying it from the child’s hands, he spent the remainder of the afternoon running (OK – walking fast) to make the pinwheel spin. No one was around to make fun of his gait. He knew from experience that his run made people laugh. He ran exactly like a one-legged duck wouldn’t.
Grinning and panting to himself, he got back into his car and headed south back to I-10.
The only thing getting bigger in this exceedingly boring and normal state was his feeling that he was being followed. He was almost certain of it now. Every once in a while, in his rear view mirror, he would catch a glimpse of movement. He would turn quickly, swerving the car dangerously as he did so, only to see nothing behind him. Now that the sun was setting, the feeling of being followed and watched was positively spooky and he started imagining what could be on his tail.
Ghosts were what came to mind first. After all, everything was dead except him and the grass. That’s a lot of dead things. He could be seeing the ghosts of those who had passed. The thought simultaneously scared and angered him. Ghosts were scary – but it pissed him off that after a lifetime of being ignored he was now getting attention. Unwanted attention at that. Dimly, he understood what Betty Granger must have felt when he followed her home every day in ninth grade. Until her father had called the cops. Her ninth grade. Not his. He had been twenty-one.
Well, he thought with satisfaction, her father was dead now along with the cop who had tasered him. But so was Betty Granger. He wondered how long it took a body to decompose, but a sudden movement distracted him. THERE! He saw it – a flash of red and gray right behind him.
He slammed on his brakes, breathing heavily, and was shocked to hear, and feel, a thump against his seat.
“Christ on a Popsicle stick,” a gravelly voice sounded behind him, “Why the hell did you do that?”
There was once a man in Chicago who broke all speed records for getting out of his car when he realized a bee was in the car with him. This man was not only deathly afraid of bees, he was also deathly allergic, so he can be forgiven for exiting his vehicle with such haste and running 100 yards in less than time than it takes the average man to zip his fly before he realized he left his baby in the car. After all, his baby wasn’t allergic as far as he knew. What can’t be forgiven by the normal person, all of whom are dead by the way in case you haven’t been keeping up, was the he left his car in gear and his car crashed into a topless bar. What can’t be forgiven is that for some reason his child grew up to be an alcoholic pole dancer before she, too, died.
Ernie broke that man’s record, easy. He unbuckled his seat belt, opened the door, and ran so fast his jeans started smouldering from thigh friction. When he was what he judged a safe distance away, about thirty feet (that’s all he could run without stopping for breath), he turned and looked at the car.
The door slowly opened and that’s when Ernie first saw him. It. whatever.
Something besides himself had survived. And it wasn’t human. It was a four-foot lizard wearing khaki shorts, a baseball cap, and a gold chain with a clock on it.
The Binary Biker 