Morgan: Real Fear Relived

Princess Bride was such a great movie, with excellent writing. How can we ever forget the Cliffs of Insanity or Rodents of Unusual Size. I really loved the "bad guys" Fezzik, Vizzini and the sword fighting Inigo Montoya. Its hard to believe that movie is 20 years old and still delivers every time I watch it.

This weekend I took my wife and son to the movies for her birthday...we decided to see a horror flick based off of a graphic novel, 30 Days of Night I'm not a big fan of scary movies, well because I get scared. This movie was based in Pt Barrow, Alaska and the town was preparing for their annual 30 days of night. Unaware that a whole posse full of zombie like vampires was about dine on them. Without spoiling the movie lets just say cut off from civilization the town gets devoured except for a handful of survivors. I was nervous and tense through out the movie and my wife was clutching my arm and hand the whole time, she claimed she was cold.
At the conclusion we drove home and critiqued the movie on the way home as we usually do. It was then that my wife revealed how scared she really was. She had even contemplated walking out of the theater. She said she was clutching my hand out of fear and wanted to know what was wrong with her. Normally she has enjoyed horror movies, yet this movie scared her so much, and she was wondering why? Was it because she was getting older? Was the Movie really that scary?
I told her I thought it was the hopelessness of the (movie) situation and how it may have been difficult for her because she's always trying to protect her family, and the characters could not.
Not to mention Pt Barrow has got to be the most depressing place in the world to live.

She started remembering her harrowing experiences in 1980 trying to escape Vietnam aboard a coal freighter. She described how they were put into a 12 foot cargo hold with 300 others. There was a total of 5,000 people on the the ship and as soon as they got off the coast, the UN informed them to return to Vietnam, they would not be accepting refugees from Vietnam anymore. They were stuck, no one wanted them. They had nowhere to go. Living conditions worsened daily, she described how she had to climb out of the hold to get 4 ounces of dirty water every three days. While she would be climbing up the ladder people would be climbing down. Chaos reigned. People started dying from dehydration and starvation. Every time someone would die they would ring the ships bell and dump the body overseas. She still considers herself lucky.

Sorry I know I have talked about this before. I guess we wont be going to any more horror movies for a while...

OurGirl: EHPAAAAHHH!

Iñigo Montoya: You are using Bonetti’s Defense against me, ah?
Man in Black: I thought it fitting considering the rocky terrain.
Iñigo Montoya: Naturally, you must suspect me to attack with Capa Ferro?
Man in Black: Naturally… but I find that Thibault cancels out Capa Ferro. Don’t you?
Iñigo Montoya: Unless the enemy has studied his Agrippa… which I have.

another life ago i fenced in college. at this point, usually someone asks, oh—what did you fence? did you ever get caught?

rim shot.

i fenced foil. it was one of those snap decisions i've made that ended up being the start of something really great. i think that whenever you have a immediate visceral reaction to something, you should not ignore that reaction, but act upon it immediately. i loved everything about fencing. i loved the drilling and the awesome legs that came from lunging up and down the gym. i loved the parry-riposte practice—the back and forth, quick-quick until someone's timing slipped and a hit to the chest would stop the drill. oh, and those hits. i loved, loved, loved holding a foil (italian grip), hearing salute, en-garde, fence and then starting that rhythm—that testing of each other with advancing/retreating, a feint or a quick beat attack. it was all about working the time and then striking with an off-tempo move—a disengage attack, a swift attack out of time or even a quick lunge, straight forward attack. and then, landing that sweet hit—sinking the pointy-end extension of your arm into someone's chest. satisfying? completely. utterly. satisfying.

the closest i get to that feeling now days is when my marine friend puts the arm guards on, holds his arms up either side of his head and allows my girl and me to wail away for a 60 seconds. that's our rest period and then we peel off the gloves and collapse into pushups or sprinting with kettle bells. hitting him as hard and rapidly as possible is very satisfying

but i digress from fencing.

often, when an experienced fencer lands a satisfying hit she/he exclaims, EHHPAHH! sort of a "it is there" expression. my second fencing coach, hassan, would shout: allah akbar! whenever he scored a satisfying touch. both of my fencing coaches were patient in their instructions, but during the drilling they would get bored at a certain point.They both would try this very tricky move where they would parry 7 my blade out and whip their blade back and out and over to touch a hit on my back. ugh. embarrassing. i learned to watch for the tell tale signs. it was hard to figure out a response to the parry. finally, one day, i figured out how to defend and then counter attack. Parry 7s are hard to carry off, so when i would see the blade start its vertical and across descent, the effective solution was to rip my blade up, pushing my coach's blade up and then quickly thrusting in to their belly. the defense worked a few times.

you should try it next time, to see for yourself.

Morgan: Civilian Life Observations

Riposte? What is that French? Am I supposed to speak french now? ahhhhh! Non. I refuse. I don't remember that rule. Now we got rules...great. Seems like we weren't supposed to blog about work either...but Byrne seems to bend that rule.

Lets talk about work. The hardest thing is dressing myself in the morning. After 21 years of military life and the utilitarian uniform which I was proud to wear, now I find myself staring at closet and scratching my head each morning. What should I wear? Khaki's or dockers. Should I tuck my shirt in or wear it out? Why are these pants so tight!
After much criticism from my wife for being a casual Jeans and T-shirt guy for so many years, I find myself trying to dress better, but its very difficult to cleanup this farm boy. I find myself wishing for a fashion makeover. Then there is my local dry cleaners who seem very adept at shrinking all my shirts so small I can barely squeeze into them.

My Commute is a blessing...decreased by third of what I was driving this last year. I thank God every day my commute is so short! about thirty minutes both ways. Sometimes I even have time to stop for coffee.

Ah, sweet Coffee! the elixir of life, nectar of the gods...I'm definitely not a gourmet when it comes to coffee. I will drink anything 7-11, MacDonalds, Starbucks or Bobs Swill....Just give me caffeine.

Returning to work has been surreal. Like the prodigal son returning. Everyone has been very nice and welcomed me back into the family. I really enjoy Illustrating and doing graphics, I try to do a good job...I find the work very satisfying at the end of the day I can look back and say...I did that. Me.

PS unable to load pictures...will fix tommorow

OurGirl: Purposefully Loving Writers Blog

mind you, walsh never reads this blog. he's too busy. really. however, somehow he divined enough information about my recent posting to point out i haven't been riposte blogging.

riposte blogging was a convention we set up at the beginning of morgan and byrne in order to weave some kind of threaded context between our posting. we could post about anything as long as it related somewhat to what the other had posted (i'd like to point out puns are accepted). that, and we would open with a quote and a pic and then end with a pic and quote.

note as time wears on we are wearing down and forgetting our basic rules. soon we will resort to ASCII art.


on second thought, that looks way too hard.
: P

my college course is fiscal administration. yeh. i want to talk about it as much as morgan wants to talk about senior seminar. i find the following blogs a source of comfort during long stints of searching OMB's A-11 circular (don't lobby congress for more money than the president want you to have. big no-no.) or the OMB site itself to determine the budget classification of the Fish and Wildlife Federation (Natural Resources and Environment [301]).

enjoy!

the benefit of work is the pleasure of knowing people like stew. the only thing better than reading stew is talking to stew. i'm glad he's on the mend.

love, love, love corporate self help books. its a sickness. but when you are immersed in grad studies, you don't have the time for the full read. penelope gives it to you in under a page. sweet.

seriously, clark aldrich. makes me want an instructional design degree and help bridge that gap between boomers and gen x&y, man!

as walsh says: giddyup.

Random thoughts...fighting Writers Block

So I was surfing when I should have been doing schoolwork and came across this sweet deal. A deactivated missile base for sale. Only 1.5 million dollars! It has numerous buildings underground and thousands of feet of interconnecting tunnels. Think of all the things you could do with a missile base...and its infrastructure...OK never mind. Bad Idea, probably in South Dakota anyway.
http://www.themissilebase.com/home

Christopher (my Son) made a CD of music for me to play in the Grey Ghost...Plenty of ACDC, Metallica, and Ozzy. Every song was perfect...It was the nicest present I had received...today. Man I love that kid.

I'm taking my last class for my BS in Computer Networking. Senior Seminar is all about writing a fictional Proposal to design a computer network...gay, right? My proposal is to design a network for the Dunder-Mifflin Police and Fire department. Do you really want to hear more?
Its boring me as we speak. Honestly though I am glad its almost over...the one thing I have learned from all these classes, is...I am no tech person. Shame it took me so long to figure out.




My addiction with Second Life is officially over...something about Linden dollars...left me feeling empty. The constant crashes and slow rendering graphic became to tedious. I knew it was time to move on...Maybe I'll go back and visit my avatar occasionally. He did have some pretty cool dance moves. My latest vice is Stolichnaya Vodka. Not much, don't get alarmed, just a glass or two before bed...it really helps me fall asleep...go figure.




My other guilty pleasure is a online cartoon called Penny Arcade. Its the success story of two buddies drawing and blogging about the gaming industry and making money at it. Most of the content is beyond my comprehension, but I do admire their clean and fun style.

OurGirl: Walsh's Despair

i know there are those of you out there that refuse to believe there is a Walsh. that's just a name we tack up on our masthead to pathetically make believe we are more than who we are. blogger morons! others of you check in periodically—hope and heart in hand—looking for a post, a comment, some sort of sign of the longed-for Walsh.

Walsh does exist, but he can't come to the phone right now. he's my BFF (knock fists together). we share common blood type (just found out today! wee!), love of howard stern, quote shrek, and have the same religious background. he, along with my brother, is a trusted partner in crime and the best audience for which anyone could hope. oh, i mean it. i've watched Walsh. he's truly fascinated with the stories all of us bring in. he never feigns interest and when he laughs (and he often does) you really feel you scored something. he really cares about people and works hard to coach them along. it works—we all try ridiculously hard to impress him. he's has that got it together/life according to plan/genuinely great guy air about him.

he also has a wickedly twisted sense of humor that i dig.

www.despair.com

he sings its praises. he revels in it. he truly gets the message and best of all wants to share it with others. however, walsh's life gets in the way. so i thought i'd help him out and post for him. check out the golf shirt copy:

		Executive Despair Logo Shirt From the celebrated Cubavera� family of executive leisure shirts comes this polynosic masterpiece- a silky soft microfibre sport shirt with birdseye knit collar. Luxurious almost to the point of eroticism, this shirt adorns the wearer in an invisible cloak of certain potency. TS-217 $59.95October Sales Special! Size: SMLXLXXL(+5.00) Quantity:
		Hipster Despair Logo Shirt What do you get when you combine the nation's premiere purveyor of fantastically comfortable hipster threads with the world's foremost commoditizer of cynicism? What are you, stupid? LOOK AT THE PICTURE ABOVE. That's what you get. What a beets. TS-216 $29.95October Sales Special! Size: XSSMLXL Color: AsphaltPlum Quantity:

heh. invisible cloak of certain potency. thanks, walsh!

Bob Slydell: I'd like to move us right along to a Peter Gibbons. Now we had a chance to meet this young man, and boy that's just a straight shooter with upper management written all over him.