Gig Harbor schools limit use of security videos after girls shown kissing

Keith Nelson, dean of students at Gig Harbor High School, said he saw the students kissing and holding hands in the school's busy commons, checked a surveillance camera and showed the parents the tape because they had asked him a few weeks earlier to alert them to any conduct by their daughter that was out of the ordinary.

"They're paying good money for us to make their kids good citizens," he said. "Whatever that means to the parents, I'll do it."

Remember: girls who kiss girls are bad citizens. Zealous, asshole, anti-gay school administrators who overreact to girls who kiss girls are upstanding pillars of the community.

Okay, I just bought an emergency tent and set it up in a nearby park to seal the seams and I'm thinking...I have a lot of EOTW (End Of The World) equipment now...why not try it out while camping for a weekend?

You know, it's great to have all the stuff but it's greater to know how it all works or if it all works.

So I want to go camping.

Here in Washington State, we can reserve camping spaces online. These things are kewl! You back your car into the space, set up your tent on a sand tent pad, stoke a fire in your fire pit and lay out your goodies on your own damn picnic table! Ahhhh, roughing it!

I think we have a Coleman propane stove. I have a sleeping bag. I have plenty of flashlights. A cooler or two.

Hmmmmm... Who wants to go?

It's a black knife - including the blade - and it has aluminum handles that are filled with a very coarse and grippy substance to make it non-slip. It's an assissted-opening knife. This type has a cam and spring that cause the blade to flick out when the thumb stud is pushed up. I handled a new one in the mall knife shop on Saturday, just to see if I liked it, and the action was really stiff and uncomfortable. It took a lot of pressure to get the blade to move.

Happily, this one is broken in and snaps out with minimal pressure required.

It has a pocket clip on one side that can be reversed end-to-end (and side-to-side for lefties) so that you can carry the knife either tip-up or tip-down. I need to find a teeny Torx® bit so that I can move the clip to the other end and carry it tip-up.

I have vowed to never buy a knife I wouldn't use so this fits in perfectly with that philosophy. There'll not be any $700 "safe queens" in my future.

This knife can go $50-$60 new. I got this used one for $45, shipping included.

I have a couple of Swiss Army Knives coming soon. One is for the pic-a-nic basket as it has just a blade, a corkscrew and a cap lifter (it's a SAK Waiter). The other is a SAK Climber. Each is used and I got both for $17 shipped.

Woot! New knives!

I hate hot-dogging motorcyclists. Weaving and speeding and - no kidding - doing wheelies on the freeway, I've seen a lot of stupidity on two wheels.

I almost wish the WSP would let Darwinism work but I understand them not wanting to have to Shop-Vac 82 more riders off of the asphalt this year.

Now, if they'd just crack down on the biker's Spandexian cousin, the dirtbag cyclist, I'd be a happy man.

Motorcycle nears 140 mph, but can't outrun the eye in the sky

"This guys going to jail," Rudeen said. "He's getting booked for felony eluding and his motorcycle's getting impounded."

I'm taking most of the day off today. After my early-morning cleanup duties, I'm history baby.

I bought a pair of Bushnell waterproof binoculars last night. Being on the Seattle waterfront as I am, I've found myself wanting for a pair of bins a whole bunch of times. I really wanted a pair one day last week when a docked cruise ship drilled an evacuation. They used those yellow pod boats and everything.

If I can, I'm going to take pics of the single most interesting feature of the new waterfront sculpture park on my way home this morning. So both of you should stay tuned for that after the nice nurse brings your applesauce and you have a little nap.

There's things to do this weekened. The University District is having their street fair and there's a couple of other things happeneing that I can't recall. Maybe I'll go "do" one or two of them. Now that we're getting into the Goshdurn Nice portion of Seattle's weather (nine months of Goshdurn, three of Goshdurn Nice), my own activity should increase as well.

Oh, I sold my first eBay item. I'm trying to sell-off my Seattle World's Fair collector glasses on eBay, you see. Out of three listings, I sold one glass and made $0.47. [/eyeroll] I hope that the others will go for a bit more. I'd like to make a whole dollar one day...

What a fantastic choice! After all, we've solved our border problems!

U.S. border agents recruited to train Iraqis on securing their borders

The Space Needle greets 45-millionth visitor with one big surprise

It didn't pay to be first, but rather the 45-millionth.

This is so typically Seattle: the prize for something that happens at the symbol of our fair city is a free trip to a another one.

Why not a free week's vacation for four in a downtown hotel? Why not a free two weeks in the International District? How about a month and a half in Ballard?

At least the contest dreamer-uppers had the good sense to not send the winner to another city in the U.S. That would have been completely counter to the public realtions goal.

Besides, I hear Detroit is lovely at this time of year...

Ancient Coelacanth Caught in Indonesia

An Indonesian fisherman hooked a rare coelacanth, a species once thought as extinct as dinosaurs, and briefly kept the "living fossil" alive in a quarantined pool.

Justinus Lahama caught the four-foot, 110-pound fish early Saturday off Sulawesi island near Bunaken National Marine Park, which has some of the highest marine biodiversity in the world.

Yeah? WHOOP-DEE-DOO!

So he caught another fish many thought extinct for 65 million years! So what!

It was big, mean and didn't want to get in the boat at all! After three hours of fighting this beast, it still wouldn't quit. Jacob got it up near the boat and the mate and I took turns clubbing the crusty bastard on the head, trying to stun it (the bread, not Jacob). It didn't submit until the skipper ran over and pumped two slugs from the boat's .22 into the bitch.

I'll never forget that.

So, yeah. Prehistoric fish are nice but until you hook into a Saltwater Loaf, you ain't fished.

Jackie Poudrette.

I have this theory that there are a very few "types" in the world. That statement is going to be tough to explain without sounding like a gibbering lunatic but even gibbering lunacy on my part will be a step up in some people's eyes.

So.

I went school from the fifth through the eigth grade with a kid who had curly red hair and freckles. I have seen him in at least a dozen different carrot-topped gentlemen I've seen or met over the intervening years. Same general face. Same general voice. Same basic physical characteristics.

But it's not just him.

Sometimes I meet someone or see someone while I'm people-watching and I know how they will act and talk based soley on my having seen their "type" before. I'm usually right, too.

Sure, I could be reading my lunacy into them but I'm also a keen observer of people. That's a skill I've been forced to build on through a childhood of accidental fractures and an adulthood of deafness. I've had to watch things, be careful, be quiet and keep my eyes open my whole life. I see people and situations differently than most people do. Heck, I feel people differently than most people do.

So, for some reason saw Jackie Poudrette today.

Twenty-two years ago, I kissed Jackie Poudrette in the parking lot behind the Burger King in my hometown in New Jersey. Twice. We were friends. She was 17 and I was 22. We spent a lot of time on the phone, talking about her high school band experiences and stuff and we hung out at BK when our shifts allowed it. She had beautitful eyes.

Jackie was one of the girls whom, had I any damn sense at all, I could have dated. Lacking any damn sense, all we had was this awkward relationship complicated by these two kisses.

I saw her today but I really doubt that it was her. I have no idea what she looks like today or if she's even still alive. I know that's a morbid thing to say but I still don't know why I saw her face on someone on the street today. I don't know why I was compelled to title this entry "gasp from the past" when I was thinking "blast from the past".

I've learned that there is more in Heaven and Earth than my philosophy. More important, I've learned to not mock that "more" shit when I see it.

Google says she may have been a teacher in Tenafly NJ in 1997 but nothing else. She played the flute. She had a big butt.

She kissed real nice.

I hate Classmates.com!

Who the shit needs to be reminded of the thousand slings and arrows of teenhoodom?

I just went there to check on someone and found that Angela Rogers (nee Truglio) stopped by my page, entry - whatever - back in February.

The Angie Episode is one of those I replay in my head even now from time to time whenever I see something like it on some insipid sitcom or read something about peer pressure or hear the Rolling Stones sing "Angie".

I was a freshman in high school (maybe I was a sophomore - I'm dealing with a thirty-year old memory here).

Wait, okay? I didn't go to the right school...I mean I didn't go to the same middle school as most of the kids in high school did. For three school years, grades 5 through 8, I was bussed out of town to a school that had no stairs for me to fall down. For K thru 2, I went to one primary school and when another was built nearby, I transferred to it for grades 3 and 4. Okay?

So, I'm coming into this high school blinded to the prejudices that have built up in the mush minds of the majority of attendent adolescents. Got it? Good.

I forget how I met Angie. We both smoked so maybe I just met her in the courtyard (yes, Virginia Slim, kids once smoked cigarettes in the courtyard at my high school). Anyway, I know we wound up at a dance and we wound up together (thirty years, remember?). I know we took the "together" beyond that night because we walked home from school together, holding hands. She lived a few street up and a few streets over from me.

All right. I was a freshman (memory dump). I had to have been because this was before my Patty Period.

Angie was the first girl I ever held hands with. She was probably the first girl I had intimate contact with (not as in sex, you freak, as in being very close to in a physical way - hugging, kissing and the like).

I don't remeber her as being "sexy". I remember her as being sweet and nice to be with. I remember that I liked her face.

That day we walked home holding hands was the first and last though. My best friend saw us and after I said goodbye to her and she continued home, he came over and asked me what the hell I was doing.

Now, he was being a good friend. He was trying to keep me from making a big mistake by hooking up with someone who was...well, I never found out what was supposed to be wrong with Angie because I broke up with her like the next day. See, she had this bad juju about her that I missed because I didn't go to the same middle school as my best friend and her. She had a brother named Joe (I think) who was a "fat kid" and therefore dubbed a 'weirdo" by everyone so that didn't help (and it didn't help me that I didn't know or really care about Joe) but whatever was "wrong" with her, I was being "saved" from it.

I gave her some bullshit that I saw on TV about not being "ready" for a relationship.

Don't even get me started on Luanne Handelong, okay ('nother memory dump)? I actually thought she was okay but her reputation was horrendous in high school.

Fuck! Why are kids so mean?!

Okay, let me sew this refreshed wound up.

I can still see her face when she came up to me in the courtyard while we smokers were smoking and said, in tears, "I found out that it wasn't you who wasn't ready for a relationship, it was me." Then she walked away.

The face she wore still breaks my heart today, thirty years later.

But what do I do? Email her and tell her I'm sorry? How do you do anything like that, thrity years after the fact?

Fuck! I liked you Angie! I really did!

I'm sorry.

I've been trying to decide what to do this weekend.

By sheer luck, I missed being on-call (apparently sacrificing that unblemished ram worked - thanks Levi!) and so I am faced with not only a long weekened but a Memorial Day weekend with an unprecedented weather forecast of sun for all three days.

Folk Life will be held this weekend at Seattle Center. I usually enjoy Folk Life for its high hippie content. Hippies are cool. They may be even more hopelessly lost in our even more hideously greedy and self-centered culture than they were forty years ago but their hearts are in the right place.

I also enjoy Folk Life because it's the traditional forum for celebrating the Unwrapping Of The Bods in Seattle. After nine months of being hidden under sweatshirts and rain gear, the T and A of Seattle are released over the Memorial Day weekend to frolic and cavort with my rods and cones (that's ocularity, folks) and vivid imagination.

And there'll be taiko and I love that shit!

Monday will probbly find me face down in the...no. Monday will probably find me and Miss Significantly Other at the Japanese Memorial Day service at Lakeview Cemetery.

Other than a day at Folk Life and a service at Lakeview, I don't have much planned. Do you?

So Miss Significantly Other and me took a little ride on the wild side of Seattle (that would be the east side of Seattle, across Lake Washington even) to Carnation.

Carnation was named after the Carnation Dairy from whence the original Carnation Dilapidated Milk came from (which was dilapidated down in Kent). Actually, Carnation began as Tolt and changed its name when it found its cows to be contented. Apparently, this name change riled the cattle because Carnation changed its name back to Tolt in 1928. Not as content as its famed cows, Tolt changed its name back to Carnation (calling no takebacks this time) in 1951.

Anywho, Carnation is now home to not too damn much except Remlinger Farms (site will act weird in Firefox). So that's where we went.

Carnation is rural and as we sat at a table in the restaurant portion of RF, I began to spielify Miss S.O. with my "These are my people and this is where I'm from" routine.

Well, it's true. My mother's family is full of Leroys and Buds, a Spurgeon, Amoses and Rhodas, Rosemarys, Alices and Florences. Every summer when I was a kid was filled with trips to places in Sussex County New Jersey and East Central Pennsylvania that looked like sets from the movie "Deliverance". Essentially I come from cow shit, indirectly.

We had a couple of tasty slices of cherry pie and I had mine ala mode. Miranda was our server and she was really nice. I had asked for coffee and she had to come back to the table twice to advise me that it was going to be a while because the guy who makes it was on break. Don't you just love it? Something like that would piss me off in Seattle but out there, it was just kinda funny. Must be the people.

The area has a lot of what I call "side-Asians". The two white couples who sat at a table across from us each had an Asian baby. There were two or three Asian woman/white guy couples as well. Everyone elese was whitebread. So it was like whitebread with Asians on the side.

I was disappointed to see so many products on Remlinger's shelves that are 'Made exclusively for Remlinger Farms", rather than made by Remlinger Farms.

After pie we visited the North Bend outlet mall where I picked up some socks and a travel vest from Eddie Bauer. Normally, I won't shop at Eddie Bauer because, well, it's Eddie Bauer but they had some nice socks and a decent price on the vest. Now all I have to do is pick the stitches out of the logo block sewn on the left front pocket of the thing and discard it.

We passed Twede's which is a little restaraunt in North Bend, in the shadow of Mount Si, and which served up some "cherry pie and a damn fine cup of coffee" in the long-defunct but groundbreaking TV series Twin Peaks.

After that, there was a thirty-mile ride home...

Funny:

Also funny (but too big so click):

I became insanely famous yesterday. Only, nobody really knows.

We have this viaduct that runs along the waterfront in Seattle. After the last earthquake it was found that it just might fall down during the next earthquake. Since then there have been about 17 billion "studes" of the viaduct and the "Viaduct Question".

We were going to leave it up. Then we were going to tear it down and dig a hufuggingmungous tunnel. Then we were going to tear it down and build a bridge out of rainbows and lollipops that would span from our house to yours. Then we were going to tear it down and shuttle traffic down the length of the city on the backs of giant birds. Now we're not really sure what we're going to do but we're back to tearing it down and building a 6-lane boulevard that will act as the personal driveways of the 1.2 million rich bastards who buy the view condos that will spring up in the empty space that is currently below the viaduct.

Anywho - I was interviewed by a local radio reporter yesterday down on the waterfront (largely because I work there, I was the first sober person he found and because I didn't just make mouth-farts into his digital recorder).

And I made it on the radio. My heavily edited interview, along with some idle trucker's heavily edited interview, ran all day in the "Viaduct Reaction" segment.

So my dream of having thousands of people hear my voice on the radio has come true.

Next I shall turn my attention to realizing my dream of reanimating deceased razor clams. The sky is the limit when you're on a roll!

Oh yeah, I just want to add that while cleaning the roof of one of my buildings the other day, I didn't have the heart to destroy a seagull nest with an egg in it. I dislike gulls. Really. But I couldn't bring myself to do anything to that nest. Mom and Dad were nearby, raising Holy Heck and I was moved with compassion toward them.

I told them that if they behaved themselves while on my roof, I'd leave their nest alone until Junior Gull graduated High School (high - get it?). They sealed the deal by each spitting on one webbed foot and shaking with me. So I know they'll be cool.

So here I went to all of this trouble to remember my password so that I could blog from work today and I'll be damned if I have anything to say.

So far today I've scheduled an annual fire inspection and fixed a dishwasher.

And I'm not even supposed to be fixing dishwashers.

Woot.

Oh, and I followed the nicest pair of calves I've seen in a very long time up from the waterfront to First Avenue. I wasn't stalking, moron (nor was I following the herd). I was walking to my other property. The calves were in a tasteful knee-length skirt. Or should I say the legs were in that and the calves were sticking out of the bottom?

Whatever.

That's what I did so far in addition to eating lunch and solving Rubik's Tetrahedron while covered in canola oil and dancing the Hokey Pokey with a penguin named Bud.