A picket pin.

My friend Brad went insane out in Wyoming a few years ago. He got a job working on a ranch, but he was out there alone on the outskirts of the badlands long enough that his senses packed up and fucked off. Brad thought he had known boredom, but this was a whole new extravagant explosion of nothingness.

Out on the ranch there lived some form of rodent that Brad called a picket pin, which research reveals to be a nushagak ground squirrel, or gopher. That aside, the story goes that these rodents were running rampant. So rampant where they that if Brad left his cabin door open, they would wander in and have a look around while he was reading. After a few of these instrusions, Brad decided to catch one.

He let one wander in one night, lying very still on his bunk. The picket pin sniffed around, becoming more confidant. Finally, it came farther into the cabin. When it had gotten in far enough, Brad sprang out of bed and slammed the door, trapping it inside.

There followed one of those man-to-rodent/rodent-to-man looks which is clearly understood by both parties to mean “It’s on, now.”, then a tangled ruckus of overturning beds and chairs. Brad exposed the picket pin, but it scurried to and fro.

Finally he was able to capture it with the help of a pair of leather work gloves he had handy. The thing bit the gloves for a while, and then just sort of looked up as if to say “Well, ok, I give up. Eat me.”.

But Brad didn’t eat it. He put it on a leash. By this time, some of the other ranch hands had arrived for the season. He paraded the picket pin around on a rope leash for everyone, but the girls on the ranch were so horrified at this display of cruelty to a rodent that they made him agree to let it go.

Before he released it, however, he had the immense presence of mind to spraypaint its ass orange, so he would be able to spot it later on. This fact was widely held as bullshit by the other ranch hands for quite some time, until one of them spotted the orange-assed beast in the hills. Thankfully, Brad’s integrity was restored among his coworkers.

Brad later discovered that the ranch had a .22 rifle which he began to take into the hills on his days off. He hunted the picket pins, but it quickly became so easy to kill them that he lost interest in it. In the process, though, he gained a reputation around the ranch as an incredible shot and a great hunter. Some more sporting ranch hands began to take bets on how many Brad could bag in a day. He always made the number and won their money, so they had to up the stakes.

They sent him out with a broom one day, and he got one. “I hit it with the handle,” he told me. Next they sent him out with a large soup ladle. He came back with a battered, but very dead picket pin. He was beginning to make some decent pocket change from the betting pools.

Finally, one of the hands bet that he couldn’t kill a picket pin with only a table spoon. Brad didn’t know if he could do it, but not being one to back down, he took the bet. He put the spoon in his pocket and headed off into the hills on the first day of his weekend off. He found a picket pin hole and sat beside it to wait, spoon at the ready.

After a span of time he claims was approaching 24 hours, one of the things emerged. Brad whacked it on the head with his spoon, but it ran back in the hole. Seasoned hunter that he was, he patiently waited for another opportunity.

As he was sitting there, one of the newly-arrived visitors to the ranch walked by on a tour of the grounds with the ranch’s owner. The visitor spotted Brad, dusty and rumpled after hours of crouching over the picket pin hole. The visitor turned to the owner of the ranch and said “Don’t you feed that boy?”.

Brad eventually killed a picket pin who wandered out of that hole, and it was his last. It had just gotten too easy. I suppose there are only so many times a man can spend the night in the desert, hoping to bash the shit out of a picket pin with a table spoon.

For Brad, that number of times was one.

Our back door, photographed in night mode.

I have had my digital camera for a number of years now, but have only recently really begun to enjoy it, and it’s all due to discovering the “night mode” of the camera.

Shake, rattle, and CHOKE! HACK!.

On the night mode it takes a timed exposure with an auto-set aperture depending on available light. It’s rather neat.

The only thing is that people have to hold still or they are blurry. Sometimes that’s neat, though.

I’m late for a gig!

The beast eyeballing Mossimo

Today I narrowly escaped certain death at the hands of a vicious beast known to his victims as “Squirtle”. He is the “pet” of my new roommate Katie. When I say “pet” I mean “Lord and master”. Let the record show that I observed him attacking the hapless Italian Mossimo earlier today.

Luckily I arrived in time to photograph the dog’s nuts and save Mossimo.

Some cynical or skeptical members of the reading public might ask how a photograph of a dog’s nuts would cause him to break off an attack. This is a very valid question, and my reply is: Shut the fuck up!

Exhibit A: The nuts of EVIL!

As you can see, the beast has a prodigious nut bag, which only adds to his fearsomeness. His favorite method of torture is what I like to call the “45 second bark cycle” in which he emits a bark once every 45 seconds or so. It’s like chinese water torture, only without any water or chinese.

Anyway, I got a photo of his nuts and saved the day, but he spotted me!

You lookin at me? Well, I just shit my legs.

Look at that glare. You are staring into the very eyes of death! The eyes of a depraved killer!

Ok let’s face it, they are the eyes of a retard.

Katie saved Squirtle from a family who rarely fed him and regularly beat him. Now Katie lives at our house, so Squirtle does too. He’s a little wierd, and has problems moving around without falling over, but he’s nice enough. I just think he’s treated like a bit of a pansy by Katie and my girlfriend, so I want to try to build up his self confidence by telling people he’s a vicious killer.

Here you can see him being coddled by my girlfriend.

She’s lucky he isn’t eating her face.

Now how the hell am I going to get him feeling like a warrior again with this shit taking place. Also, I’d like to change his name to The Fearsome Nutbag or something like that, but I have a feeling that’s not going to go over very well.

When he first got here no one knew what his name was. Troy called him Scooter. Mellie called him Reesie Cup. I called him Shakes. He plotted revenge.

REVENGE, MOTHER FUCKER!

Francisco has a habit of raising his voice when trying to communicate something to Mossimo, because Mossimo doesn’t speak English very well. Francisco speaks Spanish, which he says is very close to Italian, but not close enough, because they still try to hash it out in English.

We stopped for burgers on the way to Tuscaloosa on our road trip a few weeks ago. After we finished eating the burgers, Francisco looked seriously at Mossimo.

“In one hour”, he said, carefully, and in his loud translation tone, “You will take a big shit.”

There’s a squirrel who lives on the east side of the house who is missing part of his tail. I lamented the state of affairs to my girlfriend. Namely, that we live in such a ghetto neighborhood that we can’t even get a whole squirrel.

His name is Stumpy.

Truthfully, there’s a whole squirrel who lives on the west side of the house and a few more who live in the front yard, but the reality of the squirrel population is much less funny than the ghetto squirrel concept, as I have just illustrated by going into detail.

You take the good with the bad, people.

I waited until the last minute to fill a gig tonight and it almost bit me in the ass, but I ended up getting a guitar player I met a few months ago to do it and he gave it hell. He’s also doing a gig I have tomorrow afternoon, so he’s helping me out there too.

Also, I guess either some financial siesta has dropped off the bottom of my credit report, or the financial district is populated entirely with bowls of insane pudding, because I have begun to get offers for pre-approved credit cards in the mail once again. Some of the financial blunders I made when I was a younger man and a bigger idiot precluded me from credit card offers for a number of years, but apparently I am a functioning member of society once again. Who knew?

So, it seems, everything works out in the end.