In honor of moving to Webster (which is essentially Clear Lake).... I made up a new word:

hotard (ho' tahrd, from Eng. whore and Fr. retard) One who is sexually indiscriminate and measures two or more standard deviations below the average IQ of 100; or, and moreover, just acts like it to get some. Not to be confused with those of normal-or-above IQ exhibiting excessive manipulative, ingenious, flirtatious behavior, or skin, to get some.

Dogs, Dogs, and More Dogs...
This is Brit's dawg, Gus. He likes you. A lot.

Keep Galveston Clean - Move Out!

Life at school has mostly returned to normal... Smells Like Teen Spirit, and loud as hell. Yay. I saw the maintenance staff posting the word "LAST" on the marquee today....

Some of my friends say they read my blog fairly often, possibly some strangers do, too. But they don't leave comments. It can't be cuz it sucks, cuz if it sucks, I'm sure they'd love to say so!
So it must be
a) they think they have to sign in or be a member (you don't, I accept anonymous comments now)
b) it is way too long to read most of the time (can't be helped, and I can live with that reason)
c) they don't know me (doesn't matter)
d)they're chicken
or,
e) they just don't feel like it.

If A-D fits you, at least leave an an "X" once in a while, ok?
CTT

No Lies today.
I am always amazed at the extreme ups and downs of life, and how close together they can occur. It's hard to believe such an excellent weekend of Hashing could be followed by this particular Monday. A kid greeted me with a newspaper at the door of the school today. He said he was telling all the teachers the bad news, and showed me the story about our seventh grader who was shot and died early Sunday morning.

The rest of the day has been grief counseling and damage control, with many kids jumping to conclusions about the unapprehended shooter. Many threats of misguided retaliation. To add fuel to the fire, the air conditioning was out all day. Whew. Tomorrow can only be better.

"FOUR!!!"
My friend, John SOf*ckincool (that is almost exactly his real name), cannot be trusted on the dance floor. But he made Geronimo's Cadillac himself. That's him escorting the bride. He loves women, metal, and fire, and is always building something BIG. The seats are real horse hide, and I have actually putted around on the roof in moving traffic. He never goes anywhere without a bottle of sotol and a jug of homemade, hand picked petalla cactus wine. Once you get past the pricks, it's all good.

I love this picture of Liqeuer Hard and Choo Choo when I met them in October '04. Figured I'd post it to commemorate her move to Afghanistan today... Moments before this shot, she proclaimed me a "Natural Born Hasher".

Thanks, LH! I felt welcome from the start, so I continued through five events during my first eight days of hashing. My first run was a Saturday Galveston H3, followed immediately by Liqueur Hard's Oktober Fest H4 Hash (ononon pictured here). The rest of the week included the OTR Halloween Drag run, a Full Moon run, a Happy Hour at Hairy Bellyfonte's house, and whatever the following Sunday offered... On On, LH.

Loose Threads...
Howdy. Allow me to introduce my Dawg, Catfish. That is not her Hash name, but she has one. More on that in a minute. I plan to digress. A lot.

Note that Catfish is one of very few dogs that can sit demurely with her feet crossed under 25 lbs. of BBQ without even begging, and she hashes commando (leashless). I found her Under A Bridge Downtown in Presidio, Texas, about the same time I met Twinkie up the Butt, aka Laura. I didn't know about Hashing then, and had to believe whatever Twinkie told me. She's in the photo below, standing on a star in Alpine, Texas, the day before her wedding to the infamous Mr. Spleen. That's not a Hash name, either, and it predates Mystery Men. I introduced them.

Anyway, the day I pulled the last wild louse off of my new canine, I went out to eat with my friend Tim, an ex-dreadlocked, crew-cut, bearded Goddamned Drunk paramedic raftguide from Terlingua, part time Presidio resident when on ambulance call. We were in the middle of the Godforsaken desert paradise, and as I scanned the menu, I was shocked to see catfish listed there, so I exclaimed, (strangely enough) "Catfish?!" just as Tim was asking me what I was gonna name my new puppy. He said, "Catfish?! That's a stupid name!" and being the defiant so-and-s0 that I am, it stuck. Tim went on to become an infamous smoke jumper, tobacco spitter, Old Crow swiller, and writer of country-western songs about drunkeness, debauchery, homosexuality, and necrophelia:

"Three days dead,
Stiff but not stinkin'
She don't worry 'bout my lyin' or my cussin' or my drinkin," etc...

or,

"Now here's the moral of the story
and you can serve it on a platter
If you can't tell the difference
Sometimes it just don't matter.
So don't you travel,
no don't you stra-a-ay
down the Hershey Highway"

He sang these songs and more at Twinkie's wedding. My apologies for any mistakes if you ever read this, Tim. Don't sue me.

So I met Laura (to me) in her role as Presidio's School Nurse and kids' Catholocism instructor, while I was teaching down there. Tim, Laura, Mr. Spleen, and I immediately began a series of Friday nights over the local border in Ojinaga, smoking cigars with the whores as they told stories about the bullet holes in the bar, and cast spells on lesser gringos. One day, after the quinceanera of the daughter of Blanca, one of our favorite prostitutes, we went bar hopping and there was droopy lettuce draped all over our favorite local ,The Bar Monterrey, or "Squirt" Bar, to us, because of the dominant soda advertisment painted on the building, and the passtime of the clientele. It was the kind of establishment with a tiled trough that drains around the base of the bar, so the patrons don't have to get up to piss.

The lettuce covered everything from the open cash register to the jukebox, to the frame of the portrait of the naked blue lady swimming in the muddy stream - very Star Trek. There were several glasses and jars filled with water and whole limes over the entrance and arranged throughout. The Ladies were unusually solemn that day, and we came in after a few tequilas, ready to cut up (knife throwing was standard entertainment). We tried our best to charm our friends with more cigars, but finally the jefa just looked at us and slowly shook her head. We left. I figure someone got killed there the night before, but I sure as hell wasn't gonna pry.

We rolled on down the street, hit a few lower-class spots, as well as the curandera shop for some preventative Snake Oil for the earlier bad ju ju, got our standard bottle of Presidente, and went back to Laura's (Twinkie's) place to dance the night away to Cosmic Thang. We always did. Mr. Spleen (aka her future husband Chuck) stripped down to his boxers and climbed up in a tree outside, just before the police arrived to quell the noise. Chuck was dangling from a weak branch like a sloth, trying not to laugh out loud, and almost fell on one of the cops, but they never saw him.

So, back to Catfish's Hash name. It is "CatDog". Equally as arbitrary as her Nerd Name. One of the last naming legacies of this year's H4 Religious Adviser, McPisser. He's been known for his judicious and humorous use of RA power in various namings, and this proclamation never even made it to the circle's the discussion stage. Of course, H4's circles aren't exactly known for their adherence to Robert's Rules, with our most common quote being "Shut the F*ck Up!!"... As it was, it shall be. When asked for a quote, CatDog wisely had no opinion on the name whatsoever.

Can't Touch This = me. Finally found a way to steal back my photos from Kodak gallery... The girl Standing on the Star is my best friend, Twinkie up the Butt, of very early Austin hash Days. She says she was there on their 7th run. She's the one who finally got me hashing.

Mystery of the Creepy Things in the Pond...
So, yesterday I was out pre-scouting trail from my truck, getting ready for my last Galveston H3 haring as a local. I'm moving to Clear Lake to let a new set of criminals have their fair shot at my stuff, and I'm trying to break some new ground on the well-worn 30 mi. X 2 mi. island before I go.

Anyway, after cruising by a lot of funky wooden beach shacks and bait shops, I ended up near the gulf on this old, deadend driveway down the middle of a swampy pond - a man made isthmus in decay. The pavement used to go to some cheesy burned down motel, and now it ends at a locked, rusty gate just before disappearing into the muck. It's narrow, so you have to back out once you get down there. High grass, weeds, cactus, and oleander grow up on both sides of the asphalt between you and the water. Just the kind of place for a live Scooby Doo episode, and perfect for the On In, if my cohare likes it.

I climb down to get a better feel for the place, and as the truck engine dies, I hear multiple bodies sliding into the water... Not the careless plop of turtles off a bank, much smoother and more deliberate. And bigger. Gators? No, not the straight line descent of a bunch of gators. More of a tight swirling eddy behind each one. It creeped me out, and that is not easy to do.

Keep in mind it's broad daylight, but I'm about ready to leap back in the truck, sure that something's about to wrap around my legs, when a couple of these Things resurface out in the dark water. Their heads are about 7 inches long, and I can just make out their furry bodies through the murk. They move fast, until one decides to stalk me, about 10 feet off the asphalt. I lunge at it, trying to scare it, and it treads water to stare me down. I didn't have my binoculars, so all I can say is their snouts were less pointy than a rat, or even a dog, and if they had ears, they must have been tucked back. With tails included, they appeared to be about four feet long. There were at least six of them swimming around, just while I was there.

I know it's virgin Hash territory, so I'm still willing to have Circle there, but it damned sure won't be after dark.

I'm ba-a-ack... The firewall must have burned down. So Tunnel "tagged" me, and since I'm short on time, I'll make the answers this week's blog.

Six wierd things about me. Compared to who? The rest of You All? These are gonna have to be downright bizarre to even rate.

1. I made an entire Jackie O. style suit out of duct tape, and wore it to work at the San Fran stock exchange. Hat, dress, jacket, and boots.

2. I used to have elaborate sleep walking episodes. Once, I rearranged my album collection into alphabetical order. Another time, I drank a bottle of shampoo.

3. In spite of better than 20/20 vision, my depth perception with strung ropes and wires sucks - clothelines, etc. are not my friends, so if you hash with me, please tell me where they are.

4. I can lift 95% of the people I meet. I know, 'cuz I try. I did not say "pick up".

5. My brother foreshadowed my hashing days by chasing me through the swamps of Florida with a machete.

6. When I had a fever, I learned I could play drums to myself with my teeth, and that Mayans lived between my ribs.