eclecticism

Paper number three for ENG101. On the one hand, as this was a ‘personal narrative’ essay, it was right up my alley — not only is it one of my favorite forms of writing (purely creative), but after the number of years I’ve spent babbling on this website, it’s one I have a lot of practice with. The downside, though, was picking a topic — after the number of years I’ve spent babbling on this website, I had to find something I hadn’t rambled on about already! Eventually, I settled on a story I’ve been meaning to tell for some time now: the last time I did any sort of illegal narcotics.

In the end, I got a perfect 4.0/100%, and JC asked for permission to hold onto a copy of the paper to use as an example of good writing in future classes.

Yay for drugs! Read the rest of this entry »

Back in the mid- to late-‘90’s, Anchorage used to have a fairly active skinhead community. I can’t say how they might have compared to similar groups in other cities, but as far as Anchorage went, they were well-known, and fairly “hard core.”

For a long time, I didn’t have a whole lot of contact with them. I’d see them around town every so often, but usually, that was about it.

A few years before, back in high school, a girl I knew was dating one of the leaders of the skinhead scene and I ended up having a couple chances to talk to him, as well as another skinhead a few years later at a party. Those conversations ended up being a lot more interesting than I expected them to be, too, as these guys weren’t your typical skinheads. They’d each gotten into it when they were younger for all the usual reasons that kids are drawn into any sort of gang culture: power, community, a sense of belonging, friends. For people like these guys, the racism aspect of the typical skinhead persona had little to do with why they joined.

In the case of the second guy, who I spent time talking with at a party, he never really developed the racist bent that so many others in the scene did, and instead delved more and more into the roots of the skinhead and nazi movements. Eventually, while he still carried the look and general presence of your typical skinhead, he ended up approaching it not as a reason or excuse to denigrate other races, but simply his way of recognizing the history and background of where he came from. He had pride in his family and his personal history, but he wasn’t racist at all — in fact, his girlfriend was a beautiful asian girl.

I wasn’t entirely sure why he chose to continue to wear the “uniform”, as there is certainly a very strong (and often not undeserved) stereotype associated with the skinhead look, and for whatever reason, he didn’t run with the SHARPs (Skinheads Against Racial Predjudice), but that was his choice. In any case, it was a very interesting discussion — while the skinhead stereotype generally tends to include double-digit IQs, some of them are amazingly intelligent. It’s how they choose to apply that intelligence that can make all the difference between whether they’re interesting or frightening (for a good example of the latter, see American History X).

Of course, all too often, people like that are the exception, and I ended up having a couple of memorable run-ins with the Anchorage skinhead crowd. Read the rest of this entry »

News from Oregon of a practical joke gone wrong…

A couple of guys in Oregon who started drinking early in the morning thought it would be funny to stage a murder scene.

But by the end of the day, they weren’t laughing. They were jailed and so was their friend, the subject of the prank. An alarmed Daniel Maerz told police he walked into the house and found 31-year-old Adam Vickers dead from a gunshot wound. He believed his friend had been killed by his roommate, Kyle Wisdom. After his emergency call, police rushed to the scene, ordering a lockdown of a nearby elementary school on their way. But after realizing their house was surrounded by police, Vickers and the roommate decided they’d better go outside and explain it was all a joke intended to scare Maerz. Vickers and Wisdom were jailed on charges including initiating a false report. Maerz was also arrested, on a charge of methamphetamine possession. But police said he was happy to learn his friend wasn’t dead, even though he was upset with his friends for pulling the prank.

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p>This reminded me of a couple stories I was told by a teacher I knew in high school — he wasn’t one of my teachers, but he was friends with another friend of mine, so we hung out a few times. The man had a somewhat odd sense of humor and a fondness for pranks, which landed him in trouble from time to time — and to be honest, I’m somewhat surprised he never got himself fired.

There were two stories he told us that I still remember (names have been changed, of course).

The first was actually somewhat similar to the above reported story. The teacher was a science teacher, so there was an auxiliary room attached to the classroom used for holding supplies.

One day he invited one of the students in to help him get some supplies, and then once they were in the room, he quickly explained what he had in mind. The two of them immediately started staging a huge ruckus, yelling at each other, banging on things, and generally making sure to get the attention of as many of the kids in the classroom as possible. After a few minutes, things got really quiet, as the student stretched out on the floor and the teacher doused him with some fake blood.

Unfortunately, when he opened the door, expecting to shock the group of students gathered around…it was the school’s principal of security who was the first to greet him.

Obviously, this didn’t go over very well. This wasn’t the worst unexpected outcome he told us about, though.

During one of his classes, he had a student that was apparently completely unable to stay awake during class. Whether she’d been out partying too late the night before, or just hadn’t had enough sleep, or just didn’t care enough to pay attention, he kept seeing her nod off. After seeing her head droop one too many times, he stopped the class for a moment and asked to talk to her.

“Look, Rachel, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m tired of seeing you falling asleep, and I don’t want you to do it again. But I want to make sure the other kids pay attention too…so we’re going to have some fun with this.

”After you go back to your seat, wait a few minutes, then start to nod off again. I’ll throw a fit, threaten you with detention, and you’ll promise not to do it again. Wait a few minutes, then start to droop one more time. This time, I’ll make sure none of the other kids are watching, come over, and pretend to slap you across the face to wake you up. We’ll have some fun, freak the other kids out — and then I want you to pay attention from now on, okay?“

She agreed, and went back to her seat.

A few minutes later, her head started to droop. Mr. Nolan immediately blew up. ”Rachel! Dammit, I’ve told you too many times, I want you awake for my class! Now if you can’t stay awake and pay attention, I don’t want you here, and I’ll flunk you out. Do you understand me?“

Rachel nodded, and they went back to their lesson…for a few minutes.

Sure enough, not much later, she was nodding off again behind her book, and Mr. Nolan went nuts. He slammed his book down on the desk. ”Goddammit! Everyone! Page 356, now. Heads in your books, and I don’t want to see any of you looking at anything else.“ As the kids scrambled to find the right page in their books, he stalked across the room to Rachel. ”Look, I’ve told you before — Richard, eyes in your book, now — you’re in my class to learn, not to sleep. This is my classroom, and you will do as you’re told!“ With that, he slapped his hands together, and Rachel went tumbling off her chair and onto the floor.

The classroom went dead.

Mr. Nolan turned and stalked back to the front of the room. All eyes were on Rachel as she shook herself off, got up off the floor, and sat back down in her chair. Mr. Nolan reached the front of the room, turned back around, and glared across the class room.

”Well, Rachel? Have you learned anything today?“

Rachel sat straight up in her chair, and looked her teacher dead in the eye.

”Yes, Mr. Nolan.

“Pain turns me on — do it again!”

“Feed My Hungry Soul” by Lords of Acid from the album Farstucker (2000, 4:19).

My parents gave me my first car, in my family’s usual style. For my birthday that year, mom and dad handed me a wrapped present, about the size of a shoebox. I unwrapped it to discover the expected shoebox, took off the top — and found a stuffed bunny with its eyes X-ed out with yarn.

A little confused, I raised my eyebrows. “A dead bunny?”

“Close. A dead rabbit.” And dad handed me the keys to his 1981 VW Diesel Rabbit, currently parked out on the street awaiting brake repairs.

I loved that car. I’d learned to drive in my friend Rod’s VW Cabriolet — basically a convertible Rabbit — so I was quite comfortable behind the wheel of that little car. Bright yellow, five-speed manual transmission, a sunroof — and diesel powered, which at that point, was truly a beautiful thing. No emissions tests to worry about, no spark plugs to struggle with, and gasoline was under a dollar a gallon back then.

Now, being a diesel, speed was not high on the list of features on this car. I think the best I ever managed to coax it was around 85 mph, heading downhill (the big run down into Eagle River from Anchorage, just before you cross over the bridge, for all you Anchorage-area readers) with a tailwind. Realistically, this was probably a good thing, as I really enjoy driving, and if there’s a good song on the stereo…well, having a fairly low top speed probably saved me a few tickets over the years.

However, as fun as high speed can be, it’s often no real contest against someone who knows how to drive and how to handle their car in various road conditions.

One winter day, I was sitting at a stoplight in Anchorage, heading down Northern Lights Boulevard towards the airport, when a guy and his girlfriend pulled up beside me in some fancy little go-faster. I looked over, and apparently he took my glance as a challenge, as he looked somewhat disdainfully at my little Rabbit, and lightly gunned his engine.

Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.

So I gunned mine. He revved his engine up, and I did the same. After a moment, the light changed, he stomped on the gas — and went absolutely nowhere as his tires spun wildly on the icy street. Meanwhile, I lightly touched the gas and pulled forward, handily making it through the light before he had even managed to coax his little sports car into movement.

He caught up just in time for us to hit the next stoplight, and he started revving his engine again. I laughed — once wasn’t enough?

Apparently not. My little Rabbit beat him off the line three stoplights in a row. He was getting more aggravated with each attempt, and I was getting more and more amused.

Eventually, we made it to the intersection of Northern Lights and Minnesota. This being a more major intersection in Anchorage, the streets weren’t quite as icy, and by now he’d actually started to figure out what he was doing wrong. We sat at the intersection, watching traffic move by in front of us, each of us occasionally glancing over to the other car.

The crosswalk light switched from “WALK” and started blinking “DON’T WALK”. Engines revved up a bit.

“DON’T WALK” turned solid, and the traffic light on Minnesota went yellow.

Red light. Engines were gunned — this was it.

Green.

He pulled out, this time keeping control and starting slowly, letting his tires gain traction. I did the same, pacing him for the first half block, then starting to fall behind as his more powerful car started to gain speed. At the end of the first block, as he started to pull noticeably ahead of me, we hit the crest of a hill — and while he let his car leap forward, using the downhill slope to give him one last advantage, I tapped my breaks, let myself fall behind him, and watched his car go flying down the hill.

And a few minutes later, I gave him a jaunty wave as I passed by him one last time. I must say, those pretty little white sports cars do reflect the red-and-blue lights of the police cruisers quite nicely as they sit by the side of the road, waiting for the officer to write out their speeding ticket.

(This was inspired by The wrath of the Evil Elle~Noir.)

In the early 1800’s, as settlers moved westward across America, a dispute arose between the Americans and the British over ownership of the Oregon Country, land covering much of today’s Pacific Northwest, stretching from Oregon through Washington and up into British Columbia and parts of Idaho and Wyoming. While the territory had been declared to be in joint possession of the two governments, as more and more settlers moved in, the British claimed that land ceded to them in previous treaties and through the work of the Hudson’s Bay Company was being encroached upon.

After a few years of slightly strained tensions, in 1846 the Oregon Treaty peacefully resolved the dispute, setting the 49th parallel as the upper boundary of the United States. As the 49th parallel cuts directly through Vancouver Island when extended westward, it was determined that the boundary line would extend “to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver’s Island; and thence southerly through the middle of the said channel, and of Fuca’s straits to the Pacific Ocean.” Unfortunately, that wording proved to be unclear enough to set the stage for another conflict.

The difficulty lay in that there were two straits running southward through the islands — Haro Strait and Rosario Strait. As each country wanted the most advantageous boundary line, each claimed that the boundary ran through whichever strait would grant them the islands, with the British running the boundary line through Rosario Strait and the Americans, Haro Strait.

Over the next few years, both the British and the Americans started utilizing San Juan Island, with each group assuming that the other group was there illegally. By 1859, the British Hudson’s Bay Company had both a salmon-curing station and a sheep ranch operating on the island, and the Americans had about eighteen settlers living there also. Tempers were short, but things didn’t come to a head until June of 1859.

On June 15 of that year, American settler Lyman Cutlar discovered a pig rutting through his garden. He shot and killed the pig — which belonged to his neighbor, an Irishman employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company. When Cutlar offered to pay for the pig, his neighbor claimed that the pig was a champion breeder and demanded $100 for the loss. Considering this high price to be unreasonable, Cutlar refused to pay. British authorities, already considering Cutlar and the rest of the settlers to be illegal squatters, threatened to arrest him. The American settlers, none to happy about these British who refused to leave their island, petitioned for U.S. military protection. On July 27th, a 66-man company of the 9th U.S. infantry, commanded by Cpt. George E. Pickett, landed on the southern tip of the island and set up camp.

The British governor of British Columbia’s Crown Colony, angered by the arrival of U.S. troops. answered by sending in his own forces — three British warships commanded by Cpt. Geoffrey Hornby — with instructions to remove Pickett from San Juan Island, but to avoid any actual hostilities if at all possible.

Over the next few months, each side continued to send in reinforcements, until by the end of August, “461 Americans, protected by 14 cannons and an earthen redoubt, were opposed by three British warships mounting 70 guns and carrying 2,140 men, including bluejackets (sailors), Royal Marines, artillerymen and sappers.”

Incidentally, the construction of the redoubt at the top of a hill in the American camp to let the cannon oversee the water approaches to the island was supervised by engineer Henry Martyn Robert. Later in his military career, Robert discovered a fascination with parliamentary procedure, and went on to author Robert’s Rules of Order.

Thankfully, throughout all of this territorial saber-rattling, saner heads prevailed, refusing to “involve two great nations in a war over a squabble about a pig,” in the words of British Rear Admiral Robert L. Baynes. Eventually, U.S. President James Buchanan dispatched General Winfield Scott to resolve the affair. Scott was able to broker a treaty, with each country reducing their forces — a single company of U.S. troops, and a single British warship — allowing the island to continue under joint occupation until a more formal resolution could be reached.

This situation continued for the next twelve years, making the Pig War the longest single military conflict on U.S. soil — even if the only casualty was a hungry pig. Eventually, during the signing of the Treaty of Washington between Britain and the United States, Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany was asked to arbitrate in the matter of the San Juan Islands. He referred the matter to a commission, and after a year of deliberation, the commission ruled in favor of the United States on October 21st, 1872. British troops withdrew from San Juan Island within the month, and the last of the U.S. troops left by mid-1874.

Sources:

• National Park Service: The Pig War
• Todd Matthews: The Pig War of San Juan Island
• Rocky Mountain Books: Pig War on San Juan
• Discovery Inn: The famous Pig War and Other Adventures
• John Stang, Tri-City Herald: San Juan Islands overflow with adventure

Body piercing is something I’ve never been terribly interested in, on a personal level. I have no problem with it on other people, and often find it quite attractive, I just have never felt any need nor desire to do it to myself. For quite a few years, I used to joke that I was a “freak among freaks”, as I was the only one in my group of friends who was “unmodified” — no piercings, no tattoos, no body modification of any sort. Once I got my tattoo that was less true, but I’d still joke about it from time to time.

One night, the club I was DJ’ing at had just closed down, and our group of late night rabble rousers had found our way over to our usual post-club breakfast spot, “Vinyl” (Village Inn, Northern Lights — VINL). Most of the wait staff there had gotten used to us, generally we were liked, or at least tolerated. A bit rowdy, to be sure, all amped up on sugar and caffeine, but as the club was a non-alcoholic all-ages dance club, at least we weren’t drunk and rowdy.

We were being especially energetic this night, and at some point when the waitress came by, one of us apologized to her for being so raucous. “Oh, don’t even worry about it,” she assured us. “You’re not that bad, and besides — working the bar rush shift, I don’t think there’s anything that’ll surprise me anymore.”

Oooh — a challenge! Marc and I looked at each other. To this day, I have no idea where the inspiration came from, as I don’t remember us discussing this in the least. One way or another, though, our Muse was with us.

“Excuse me — miss?”

“Yes?”

“I bet we could surprise you.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yup. Tell you what. If we can come up with something you’ve never seen before — that won’t get us kicked out or arrested — we get our breakfast for free, okay?”

She laughed. “All of you?”

“No, no — just us two,” I said, pointing to Marc and myself.

“Well…what’cha got?”

We grinned. I grabbed the Dr. Pepper she had just brought me and set it between us, and Marc took the straw and placed it in front of him on the table. Sticking out his tongue, he calmly unscrewed the ball of his tongue stud, dropped it in the empty coffee creamer dish, then slid the post out and put it in the dish. He then unwrapped the straw, brought it up to his face, and slid the straw into the hole in his tongue until his tongue was halfway along the length of the straw.

“Okay,” said the waitress. “The straw is a little freaky, but I’ve seen people play with their tongue piercings before.”

“No worries,” I said.

Marc then leaned over, letting the bottom end of the straw drop down into my Dr. Pepper. I leaned over, took the top of the straw in my mouth, and proceeded to take a few big sips of my Dr. Pepper, though the straw, right through Marc’s tongue.

We got our breakfast for free.

(Inspired by Nate’s Household Items I can fit in my Piercings post)

Early fall, 1997.

James, Richard and I had just gotten out of a late showing of that year’s Sci-Fi/Horror film, “Event Horizon”. None of us had known quite what we were in for when we decided to go, aside from the most basic premise of “something creepy happens in space,” but it looked fun, so off we were.

We had a blast. The movie itself, if you haven’t seen it, is either really good or really horrible, depending on how you look at it. As a horror movie, it’s pretty good — as a science-fiction movie, it’s horrendous. That night, though, we just had a lot of fun with the horror movie part, sitting in the dark in a huge theater, jumping at all the cheap thrills and loud noises, and thoroughly enjoying it.

Leaving the theater sometime after midnight, we were so jazzed on adrenaline that we were bouncing off the walls, so we stopped off at the local grocery store for some snacks.

“I like it here,” commented James as we walked down the aisles. “It’s warm…the lights are on…there’s air…. Can we stay?”

We got to the checkout counter, and I started skimming the tabloid headlines as James and Richard paid for their goodies. “Hey guys,” I said, and held up the latest Weekly World News. “Alien’s Last Words!”

James just looked at me and deadpanned, “Ack. Ack ack. Ack ack ack ack. Ack.”

Eventually we headed back to my apartment. Once we got there, James decided that he was still too amped from the movie to have any chance of going to sleep. In order to relax and calm down, he decided the best thing to do would be to watch a nice, calm, relaxing movie.

Like Aliens.

True to form, he was asleep before the movie ended.

I’m a cat person. Not a dog person. Definitely not a dog person. Slobbery, stupid, smelly, far-too-eager-to-please, those dog creatures. Cats, however, are great. We are merely guests in their private little universes, there to please them whenever deemed necessary (be it through food, petting, or as a substitute for a scratching post), and they spare no effort in letting us know that that is the case.

I can deal with that.

Only once have I ever met a cat I didn’t like. Unfortunately, that cat was my brother Kevin’s cat — George.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been thinking about the weddings I’ve been at or involved in lately — James and Stacey’s last month, Casey’s tomorrow, and possibly two scheduled for next summer. It got me thinking back to one of my favorite weddings that I’ve been part of — which, unfortunately, led to more problems than I ever wanted to have to deal with.

It was all about Travis and Lana…

Read the rest of this entry »