Coming up with 500 words to say about this is really a bit of a challenge. It’s one of the few things in life that speaks for itself.

Other than the picture that’s being created in this video, if you listen closely to the artist, just about every thing this guy says can be interpreted on a number of levels. Massive metaphor action going on. Really really COOL stuff (in my opinion)

By the way, having a 500 word prerequisite for posting videos is silly as far as I can think - which isn’t usually farther than my point of view, which, at times, can be exhaustingly narrow, limited, misguided, and whatever else (I’m trying to fill the 500 word minimum so I can just post this friggin amazing video already). Fuck 131.

The best things in life have NO words attached to them – that’s why I personally, genuinely and passionately from the very depths of my (rather shallow at times although occasionally a little bit less than shallow at others) heart - Goddamnit – 172. ARRRRGGGHHHH!! – really would like to get that 500 word requirement reduced.

I guess I could try to be all smart and perceptive and actually make an intelligent (or at least attempt to make one) observation of this really incredibly delightfully unusually completely and utterly surprisingly cool video, but I was looking at this video on another site (not youtube) and every single person that commented said less than three words…and in fact, not many of them were actually words per se, but rather, exclamations. ( please Jesus, let me be at 500 words….pretty please because I’m getting really fucking tired of saying nothing about something that is (in my opinion) beyond words….hold on – let me check…..(drumroll)… 291. Shit.

All right fine…I’m no quitter. Fuckit. So this video starts out slow, and you might be tempted to simply shut it down, but if you get past the part that begins to look like a cheesy ad, you very well might be pleasantly surprised with the knowledge of what some people do for fun. I love this guy. Makes me want to take a trip down under (and I’m not talking under the covers or anything else here, although….) Anyways. Hold on one more tiny little second…Damn hell – only 380.

That minimum really should be shortened to 250. Some of us are visual people as well…Can you imagine if they put an essay beside each work of art in museums…? I mean – it kind of ruins the point. But anyways…..423 – wait a minute – that was four hundred twenty three words according to Words wonderful wordcount tool. Love that tool. Yes I do…Alright god Damnitt…where are we at?

So here’s the deal – if you survived reading the shit I just posted in an effort to meet my quota – which I hope to hell you have because this video IS COOL – then good for you…and sorry about all the bullshit…. 491. Close enough (almost)….Thank GOD – one more word. Enjoy!

(Damn - after all that I hope this video shows up in the post)

Sand Dancer

Jokes made by David Letterman about Sarah Palin’s recent trip to New York have caused heated responses from Palin, her husband and her supporters.

In case you didn’t watch Letterman’s “Late Show,” here are the “Top 10 Highlights of Sara Palin’s Trip To New York City.”  10. Visited New York landmarks she normally sees from Alaska.  9. Laughed at all the crazy looking foreigners entering the U.N.  8. Made moose jerky on Rachael Ray.  7. Keyed Tina Fey’s car.  6. After a wink and a nod, ended up with a kilo of crack.  5. Made a coat out of New York city rat pelts.  4. Sat in for Kelly Ripa. Regis couldn’t tell the difference.  3. Finally met one of those Jewish people Mel Gibson’s always talking about. 2. Bought makeup from Bloomingdale’s to update her slutty flight attendant look.  1. Especially enjoyed not appearing on Letterman.

Letterman also told jokes about Palin’s daughter. During his monologue, Letterman referred to Palin’s appearance at a Yankees game and joked, “There was an awkward moment in the 7th inning when Palin’s daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.”

Letterman ended up apologizing to Palin. He also invited Palin and her husband to appear on his show. Do you think an apology was necessary?

I only thought 3 of Letterman’s jokes were funny and some of them were downright lame. But what really bothers me is the hypocrisy of the criticism by conservative media. On Fox T.V. today, conservative Republican, Laura Ingraham appeared on the Bill O’Reilly show and criticized Letterman for mocking and making fun of Palin. It seems to me, it wasn’t that long ago, when Ingraham was criticized for mocking and making fun of John McCain’s daughter. Conservative comedian Dennis Miller regularly appears on the O’Reilly show where he often mocks and makes fun of Democrat, Nancy Pelosi. And O’Reilly always cheers Miller on.

I must admit, I’m not a big fan of Sarah Palin. She’s way too conservative for me. I’m not a big fan of Nancy Pelosi either. She’s way too liberal. I’m glad the percentage of us independents is getting bigger. Perhaps if we had three political parties instead of the two lousy ones which have been ruining the country, we would be better off.

As far as political humor goes, newspaper cartoonists have been making fun of politicians for hundreds of years. What’s the big deal. We’re supposed to have freedom of speech. Humor about politicians often contains valid criticism and reveals certain truths an informed public should know about.

As long as politicians in both parties get roasted, I don’t see any threat to democracy. Letterman doesn’t just make jokes about Sarah Palin. I don’t watch him very often - But I’m sure I’ve heard him make jokes about Vice President Biden and other democrats. I prefer to watch Leno and he always makes jokes about the president, no matter what party is in the White House.

In fact, Leno still makes lots of jokes about Bill Clinton’s infidelity and George Bush’s lack of intelligence. And they are usually pretty funny… Nice try Dave.

You can see more photos by Mountain Dude at:  www.dporterdvd.com

Next month analog television will come to an end and the era of digital television takes over. God, I really wish that didn’t make me so cranky.

For a little over a year I have been watching all the networks advertise the deadlines for the switch to digital television. The ads about the conversion have been on longer than that but they really upped their obnoxious factor in the last year. They have told me my good, old analog signal will go the way of the dodo bird and in its place I will have more channels, better sound, and a picture so good I’ll be able to see every pore on the faces of the news anchors. In theory, it seems like a veritable Xanadu, improved network television arriving in America just in time for a recession when millions of Americans are reassessing their home entertainment budgets.

And this would all be lovely. If it worked.

Call me cynical, but I have my doubts about how well this conversion will actually work. On the plus side, unlike the failed metric conversion the digital conversion is reliant on our deep affection for entertainment rather than our ability guess whether kilometers are more or less than a mile or what we should wear for 26 degrees centigrade. My concern is not that people won’t buy ridiculously expensive new televisions, subscribe to cable or satellite services that raise prices faster than a Vegas loan-shark, or that the rest of us poor slobs will be able to get our mitts on converter boxes. No, my concern is that digital television won’t get any better than it is now, ‘cuz so far the experience is not stacking up well with the hype.

Armed with a not-new television, a converter box, and a very intelligent person to help me, I am now receiving the much hyped digital television signal. It sucks.

Adjusting and setting the damn thing up is, apparently, just the first step. I have found that despite being in a prime location and being set up correctly, the digital signal is very finicky. The adjustment that gets me a clear picture during the day doesn’t always work at night. If the wind is blowing at all, forget it. Half the time I’m doing a cross between the wave and tai chi trying to unfreeze the screen when it glitches up.

Tonight I was watching the season finale of American Idol and it sounded like all the performers had a stutter because the channel was glitching out so badly. Oddly enough, that actually worked in Rod Stewart’s favor. His voice is not what it used to be. When I watch CSI I am constantly surprised at who they cuff at the end because with the way my crystal clear picture freezes and cuts out the vastly improved sound I miss half the plot.

But my frustrations with how digital television affect my viewing fall largely into the category of annoying. What scares me is how this signal, that cuts out when there is a slight breeze, will do during severe weather when I’m hoping the National Weather Service will tell me whether there is a large funnel cloud barreling toward me is going to redeposit me in Oz.

And it would be nice if my poor set up was the only one afflicted with a bad case of the glitches, but I have seen it happen even with new televisions. My dad spent roughly what it would cost to buy a kidney on the black market for a sleek-looking glitch factory. I made the dire mistake of walking into the room while he was watching it and it took him 15 minutes to get the picture back.

I’m all for progress and scientific advances in the cause of mindless entertainment, but this looks a lot more like a lateral move from where I’m sitting with my pixilated picture. Makes me want to click my heels together and say, “There’s no place like analog.”

I may not look it, not fit the profile, but deep within me beats the heart of a rabid football fan. Don’t let my affection for Jane Austen books and goat cheese fool you, I mark time by training camp, preseason, regular season, and off season. After the Superbowl and Pro Bowl, I go into a football withdrawal marked by generalized depression and loss of interest in life in general until the NFL Draft in the spring. And the object of all my affection is the Minnesota Vikings. What can I say, I love not too wisely, but too well.

So today, on May 14, 2009, my soul is on edge. Too melodramatic? Okay, I’m apprehensive. The fate of the famed Williams Wall is on the line in court today and I’m desperately trying to understand why the hell no one thought to organize a candlelight vigil for them last night.

Today the StarCaps saga that started when several NFL players tested positive for bumetanide last summer, is hitting another milestone (a.k.a. the fan) as they argue in a hearing in St. Paul. I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that Judge Paul Magnuson rules in favor of the players.

Last season Vikings fans held their collective breath and feared the worst when it came out that Pat and Kevin Williams, our Pro Bowl defensive linemen, tested positive for a banned substance that is associated with masking steroids. The Williams boys and three players from the New Orleans Saints were slapped with a four game suspension by the league and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell preened like he was a bad-ass mamba-jamba, talking about the league’s zero tolerance policy for steroids and related substances. Bumetanide, associated with masking steroids in drug tests, was found in the players’ drug tests and they were guilty.

More than once I found myself whining “Say it ain’t so!” and saw my team’s season swirl down the crapper. The affable, hard-working Williamses were dopers. It was like a veil had been drawn over the sun. But I had underestimated the umbrage and tenacity of the Williams Wall–and just how screwy the whole scandal was. Kevin and Pat Williams were determined to clear their names. Not known for caving under pressure (as anyone who saw their brilliant goal-line stand in their home game against Chicago last year can testify) they felt they were in the right and decided to fight for their reputations. They claimed they took StarCaps to lose weight and had no idea that bumetanide was one of the ingredients. Had they known that the supposedly all-natural StarCaps contained a banned substance they would not have taken them. However, since the league knew and did not tell the players, it was on.

I have gleefully imagined that moment when Roger Goodell, at home reclining in a leather chair and swirling brandy in a Waterford snifter to the strains of Mozart, finds out that the linemen lawyered up and are going to fight their suspension. In my fantasy version of this revelation, Goodell throws the snifter into his fireplace in a fit of rage, and storms around shouting about how they are just big, dumb linemen and who do they think they are coming after him. They’re linemen, they’re supposed to do what I say! However, that is just the work of my overactive imagination. More likely, Goodell had to know this would be messy.

And, so far, it hasn’t disappointed. Shoot, this is the legal equivalent of some good, old-fashioned mud-wrestling. St. Paul judge Paul Magnuson gave the players a temporary injunction that enabled them to finish their season, a season that saw my Vikings on top of their division for the first time in a long time. The Vikings’ success was made possible in large part by a defensive line that was one of the stingiest in the league against the run. Now that the season is over Pat and Kevin Williams are back in court to hash it out and prepare for trial.

Having avidly read about this from the start, I’m really hoping that the NFL gets smacked and it isn’t just because my imagination conjured up a snide Roger Goodell in a smoking jacket as the villan. The NFL knew, KNEW, that StarCaps had bumetanide in them as early as November 2006 despite the fact that bumetanide was not listed anywhere in the ingredients. Dr. Brian Finkle, an NFL toxicologist, discovered the bumetanide present in StarCaps and had toxicologist Dennis Crouch of the University of Utah further test StarCaps for the presence of bumetanide. The findings showed that not only was bumetanide present, it was in concentrations high enough to meet or exceed the prescribed dosage.

This is the part that I found especially interesting—bumetanide is prescribed by doctors to patients with congestive heart failure and renal disease. We’re not talking about a caffeine tablet here, we’re talking about a prescription drug with serious side-effects used to treat life-threatening disease. I realize that I’m not a toxicologist or a physician, but it seems to me that when you discover that a popular weight-loss supplement, claiming to be natural, is spiked with dangerously high levels of a prescription drug, that is the kind of thing that should be made known to players, not in vague, broad, nonspecific language, but specifically and explicitly. Anything less seems like gross negligence with regard to player safety. That’s right, this is a matter of player safety so the league’s bitchy little line about it being the players’ responsibility to know what they were putting in their bodies seems waspish and petty—especially when there was no way for the players to know the supplement contained bumetanide. After all, it isn’t as if bumetanide was on the label, or players who called the league hotline were told not to take StarCaps because they contained bumetanide, or the league made the research they had about StarCaps containing bumetanide available to the players.

So today I’m thinking of Pat and Kevin Williams and I’m admiring just was how gutsy they were to tell the NFL exactly what they could do with that four-game suspension. It would have been so much easier to quietly take a suspension and put this all behind them, but they felt that their reputation was more valuable. Go Pat and Kevin!

* Facts for this post were taken from articles in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Brian Murphy is brilliant.

Why is it that when I go to well any public place I’m just assaulted by groups of people that piss me off. Here are a few

The New Age Family - These wonderful groups of people are the people that have to make sure that everything they buy is a reflection of their family’s values and all I want to do is scream in their face “IT’S A PACK OF FUCKING OREOS! IT DOESN’T SAY SHIT ABOUT YOU! MAYBE THAT YOU LIKE COOKIES!” Or at the very least not hold the family meeting in the middle of the aisle so that I can get by please.

The Ultra Religious Family - I’m fine with these people’s beliefs, I just don’t care. The only thing that I ask of them is to 1 not hand me a pamphlet for any reason. 2 Would they please refrain from singing “Jesus loves me” while they’re shopping for tube socks, it’s creepy.

People that stand there and look at simple basic things for 20 minutes. I’ll give you an example the dorky guy that looks at something like Peanut Butter or Eggs for 20 minutes. Don’t you just want to run up to them and scream “It’s peanut butter it all tastes the same! Buy the one you bought last week or buy the one on sale!” That’s how I make my decision when I buy beer. either Budweiser, Michelob or Coors will be on sale. Guess which one I pick.

The Family that all dresses the same. You’ve seen these people I’m sure. Usually they’re on their way to a family reunion or some event and they stop for let’s say Noodle Salad. While their standing in line i want to walk over and say you know you guys look like four jackasses with you “Miller Family Reunion 09″ t-shirts and the 8 pounds of noodle salad from a grocery store. Why couldn’t you just put the shirts on when you got there. You know put them over your normal everyday t-shirt save yourslef a little humliation.

I think there’s going to be a part two

That’s all for now

Warcorpse

On May 1, millions of people all over Europe enjoyed a festive day of traditional merrymaking in celebration of May Day. In the United States, most people missed out on all the fun thanks to our puritanical pilgrims. While May Day had been celebrated in Great Britain for over a thousand years, the American pilgrims discouraged celebrating the event because some traditions focused on ancient fertility rights and paganism. Although the pilgrims created Thanksgiving, when it came to robust celebration of May Day, the pilgrims were a bunch of party poopers. Again and again prudish puritanical influences in this country have put a damper on fun activities and squashed the joy out of life in ways we have never fully recovered from.

With the constant stream of bad economic news, swine flu, political bickering, and lots of other depressing stuff, Americans need to cheer up and just celebrate being alive. Screw the puritans. Stop listening to political bullshit about the economy. It might be too late to celebrate May Day this year but it’s not too late to shake off the blues and dance. It’s time to eat, drink and be merry.

(If you liked the maypole photograph, you can see more photographs by Mountain Dude at www.dporterdvd.com)

I am in dire need of a camping trip. Right NOW I need my favorite camping spot and a tornado. I’d settle for a good, hardcore thunderstorm though. There’s nothing like camping in flat line winds – or a tornado – to level out your mind and put things in perspective.

And right now nothing is in perspective. I’m tired of politics. F**king pirates now? Gee and I was just getting comfortable with the idea of terrorists. I’m tired of the economy. I’m tired of this country. I’m tired of all the stupid f**king people running around acting like stupid f**king people. I hate every politician that ever lived. I hate paying taxes. I hate feeding those fat pigs’ faces. Even Obama. I’m tired of stress, tired of bills, tired of problems, tired of laws, tired of cops EVERYWHERE, tired of people, tired of myself, tired of putting out fires, tired of EVERYTHING Damnitt and I DON’T want to pay my car insurance. Bastard insurance companies. F**king bastards from hell, all of them.

I want to go camping in a tornado. Everyone should try it. I’ve actually never been camping in a tornado, but one touched down just south Afton State Park when I was there last summer. Oh my God it was INCREDIBLE. It’s hard to describe the experience of being that close to the fury of nature. When it gets TOTALLY still and heavy and and black and you’re all alone on that high plateau…and all you can think is, “Oh my God this could be a tornado.” Just me and the tornado, all alone to hash out matters of life and death face to face. (I almost peed my pants). I almost hid in the portapoddy, (when I finally reached it after running frantically for what seemed like hours trying to find my way back to the campsite). I’m glad I didn’t. I would have missed one of the most beautiful thunderstorms I’ve ever seen.

And then there’s the time at Lake Elmo Park Reserve when I happened to pitch my tent right in the path of flat-line winds. I didn’t know there were going to be flat-line winds. They just sprung up out of nowhere. (Had to sleep in my car that night.) My tent disappeared just three minutes after I ditched it for the car. I turned on the radio to one of those call-in programs, heard someone calling in from St. Paul saying he just saw his neighbor’s roof come off, and then my tent was gone. There’s nothing quite like seeing your tent right there, and then seeing it gone. No scooting-across-the-campsite-on-it’s-way-to-somewhere-else. Just…abracadabra gone. I had some pretty heavy stuff in that tent too…a cooler full of beverages…Crazy. I swear to God that wind almost blew my car away. It was shuddering violently from the blast of it. And it was a damn volvo station wagon. Not some wimpy little plastic thing on wheels. I finally had to take some Tylenol pm. I figured if I was going to die it was going to d*mn well be in my sleep.

Well, I lived and the next day I counted at least ten trees – some of them a foot in diameter or more, snapped in half. If you’re stressing about paying a bill, believe me, you won’t be in flat-line winds.

I don’t know. I just want to turn the page and be somewhere else. I’m tired of this page in my life. It’s getting really hellish, boring and stressful. Turn page, damnitt. NOW.

One of the nations biggest bra makers stated that three years ago, the most common size in the country was 36C. In 2008, it was 36D and will increase to 36DD in 2009. Wacoal won’t even venture a guess as to when or where the increases will end.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (yes, the government had to get in on it) blames the increase in breast size to obesity but does conceed that it also might be due to women being fitted with the correct size. Women, especially teenagers, selected a bra one size too small, to show off what they have. Being fitted for a bra instead of just selecting one off the rack took off after Oprah (The Queen of talk) devoted an entire show to buying the correct size.

Breast augmentation has kept up with inflation (no pun intended) as more women, for unknown reasons, seek to improve on what they have. Not only in the United States but in other countries as well. A Texas woman, who shall remain anonymous, had to travel to South America to finally get what she wanted, two pounds of silicon in each breast, giving her a 48KKK bra size (custom made no less. Back brace not included). It appears that Texas has a law regulating just how much a woman can improve herself and she had reached the limit.I also heard that Pamela Anderson wanted to donate her implants to the Smithsonian Museum but was turned down. Will they show up on Ebay?

I don’t consider myself a prude, I’m past 60 years old and spent 10 years in the Navy traveling southeast Asia, so I think I’ve seen it all. I went through the Flower Power and Free Love society of the 60s and 70s and saw just what a young woman would go through, or so I thought. Men burned their draft cards, women burned their bras. Watching women take off their bras in downtown Long Beach, California and tossing them into a pile was a sailors delight. There were more teats hanging out than at a dairy farm.

Any scientist can tell you that breasts are only meant for one thing, breast feeding the young. Try tell any raging harmone teenager that and see what answer you get. Breasts come in all sizes; big, small, well rounded, pointed, soft, firm but as someone once told me, “Anything more than a mouthfull shouldn’t be wasted.” Also, one size does not fit all and that’s where bra fitting comes in, a job any man would kill for. Victoria’s Secret probably has the lock of sexy bras, the ones that are there but can’t be seen, barely more than two band aids, and tease the male to no end.

Personally, I like something left to the imagination, something like unwrapping a Christmas gift on Christmas day.

I know what you’re all thinking (half of you). “The best exercise in the world is watching TV…”

The other half is thinking something along the lines of “Hmmm, what designer wear should I put on to go down to the gym?”

Let’s face it, none of you give a crap about exercise. You just do it to show off your fancy clothes. Minnesotans, I’m writing to you now because first of all, I got attacked by a designer-gear wearing freak at Willow River State Park last winter, for walking on the wrong part of the path. All I was doing (besides exercising) was trying to stay as far off the path as I could, (to let the cross-country-skiers pass), and this designer-clad stress-basket went off on me for being in his way. How was I supposed to know that those park pathways are friggin’ freeways in the wintertime, with their own set of driving, sledding, walking, skiing, and snowshoeing rules? (On a side note; I can’t believe people actually snowshoe for fun. There’s something wrong with that. I mean, don’t you have to walk with your feet spread about two feet apart in those things? Is that enjoyable? I can see snowshoeing if you were starving and you had to go hunting back in the olden days in four feet of snow in the middle of winter to feed your family, but for a pleasant walk through a state park, where the snow has already been well-packed by all the psycho skierboys in tights? What is up with that? Anyways…not the best exercise.)

There are a large portion of people all over the world who believe that shopping is the best exercise in the world. I disagree. Shopping is too d*mn stressful to be good for you, and I believe that fundamentally, exercise should be good for you. I used to consider shopping meditation, but here (where people plan everything from their meat buying to their campsite reservation a whole YEAR in advance, shopping could very well give you a heart attack, and it is not fun at all. I know a girl who buys meat twice a year (by the truckload) because she gets a better deal. Whatever. What she saves in meat per pound I’m sure she more than makes up for in her electric bill. Not to mention paying off that massive freezer that she put on her credit card. And who the hell plans a camping trip a YEAR in advance? Are you people crazy? I am a camperaholic and I don’t even do that. How can you bloody well know you’re going to feel like camping on this particular weekend exactly one year from today???

Minnesotans, you’ve ruined shopping for me. Even if it was the best exercise in the world, I can’t keep up with you.

Which leads me to the original question: what exactly is the best exercise in the world? Before I answer that, I’ll name my criteria for any exercise to even be considered to be do-able (let alone the best).

1. It has to be fun. If it’s not fun, I’ll never do it.

2. It has to be challenging. You have to be able to improve your skills over time. This eliminates walking. Walking is walking. No one can get better at walking, unless they’ve lost their ability to walk and have to start from scratch. But that’s a whole nuther deal.

3. It HAS to de-stress you and leave you feeling happier than when you started. This is the whole point of exercise, as far as I’m concerned. To feel better, happier and healthier. This eliminates pretty much everything that is considered exercise (with the exception of walking, which I’ve already eliminated).

4. Running should be against the law. This has nothing to do with anything, but I just felt that it needed to be stated.

5. It should require no special talents or skills. Anyone should be able to do it.

6. It should not require designer gear (or any gear whatsoever). This eliminates swimming and anything that requires purchasing gear (as in skiing, biking, snowboarding, tennis, badminton, baseball, football, etc etc etc.)

So what is it? Ok. No one laugh. This is not only the BEST exercise in the world, but it’s the MOST FUN thing to do. It will make you feel GREAT when you’re doing it and even better when you’re done. It’s great cardiovascular, great for every muscle group, impossible to do without laughing, and allows you to improve and develop your skills over time.

Without further ado, I’d like everyone to put on a pair of sweats or jeans (you don’t even have to change out of your work clothes if you don’t want to) and run, (or drive) down to your local park, playground, or back yard, and swing!

Don’t forget that you can pump with both your legs and your arms, (interchangeably) for a full body work-out, and DON’T forget to try to jump off in mid-air, starting out slow and safe, and work up to the highest point that you can reach. And when you’re done swinging as hard and high as you can, for as long as you can, then flop down in the grass on your back and stare at the sky until your heart stops pounding.

That’s it folks: the BEST exercise in the whole world is swinging! And don’t let the fact that you’re an old fart get in the way; no one cares, and if they do, to hell with them!