The second Urgoth the Defiler story is now live, “Urgoth the Defiler: Deuce Ex Machina.” What’s a little flower theft among friends?

Having had a frustrating weekend as a result of my apartment, I got to imagining my dream house. It definitely does not take the form of a big-ass timber & drywall mansion. Maybe because I’ve lived in too many geriatric homes, like in the basement of a cockroach-infested Victorian-esque pile or the small farm house with a distinctly bowl-shaped second bedroom, but I don’t see bright, shiny new houses as they are. I always see them as they will be: decrepit, full of rotten wood and with a thousand niches opening up like so many vortices into an insect-filled plane, through which our six-legged enemies seep like water through stone.

Gross, in other words. And insects will always find a way into our homes. Hell, we like to live there, all warm and toasty and jammed with food so it makes perfect sense. But beyond building several thousands of inter dimensional highways into the Lairs of the Insect Lords, what repels me from standard construction is the sharp line between inside and outside. Even back when I struggled with the dynamics of figuring out why not to push on both bicycle pedals at once I felt a deep sense of longing after the day was through and I was hustled inside the house. Just like the toys that I’d pack up into my toybox, so I felt put away and dormant until I set foot out the door first thing in the morning. And unlike those toys, I didn’t even have a plastic, spring-loaded missile launcher molded onto my arm with which to entertain myself, just a whiny voice and an increasingly annoyed older brother.

So in the classic gambit of spending my adult life pursuing everything I ever wanted as a child (Hey Mom, guess what? I cook bacon at 2 in the morning just because I want some bacon.) I’ve been looking into homes that don’t come with the sharp black line of inside and outside so that I don’t have to put myself away at night, so I don’t have to “go inside when the streetlights turn on.” After scouring through architecture websites and magazines, I’ve also come to marry that desire with my emergent enviro-hippie attitude towards home building.

I’ve been researching low-impact homes, the sort so green that certain wavelengths are hurled away from them with such force that they make a tiny crunchy sound when they hit the cornea. I’ve stumbled upon earthbag housing (an article at Mother Earth News and a detailed book on the subject) which, although having some classic architectural elements (i.e. doors and windows) doesn’t make me think of being put away. Earthbag construction is just what it sounds like. The builders (i.e. me and anyone who can be lured with beer and pizza) stuff bags with dirt and build layers of them held together with strands of barbed wire, and put a plaster seal over the whole building, wall, or whatever they’re constructing. You’re living with the earth all around you and it also saves tons of pollutants from being produced. If you’re careful with construction you can even build the structure into a hill or create a living roof over it. Plus, you know, you get to play with dirt and fucking barbed wire.

Sure, it’s labor intensive and not everyone has the time to build them; and yes, there are still plenty of bugs surrounding the dwelling, but hell, at least I didn’t go out of my way to hasten the coming reign of the Insect Lords.

Seven years ago I was riding around in a beat-up old landboat, crammed onto a bench seat next to some girl that I’d met three days earlier.  Seven years ago I went with some girl that I’d met three days earlier and a bunch of friends to a shitty diner at eleven in the evening.  Seven years ago some girl that I’d met three days earlier told me a pirate joke and I proposed on the spot.  The joke?  This one:

A pirate with a peg leg, hook and eyepatch goes into a bar.  Bartender gets to chatting with him and asks “don’t see many peg legs these days, how did you get yours?”  The pirate says “Arrhhh, I fell overboard during a storm and a shark bit off me leg.”  The bartender sympathizes and says “well, how about your hook?  That’s quite an accessory.”  the pirate answers “yyaarrr, me hand got caught in some rigging during a storm and I cut it off to get free quicker to go help the lads save the ship.”  The bartender gives him some drinks on the house and then asks “so why do you wear that patch over your eye?  Another storm accident?”  The pirate goes quiet and the bartender asks again.  Finally, the pirate says, “Well, a seagull pooped in me eye.”

The bartender can’t believe it and says “why do you wear a patch?  Seagull poop can’t be that bad!”  To which the pirate replies…

“Well, it was me first day with the hook.”

About three years ago, I married some girl that I’d proposed to on a hot, gross June night because she told me a pirate joke.

My wife and I wanted to get away, so we decided waaayy back in February that a trip to Maine would be a kickass idea.  She’d been there several years ago and I’d never been to the east coast, never seen the ocean(s, either one but you’ve gotta start somewhere), and never gone camping.

I fixed this last week.

I’ve been trying to write about the trip for the past week, but it refuses to be transcribed.  The memories left claw marks on the inside of my skull from clinging to the bone while I yanked on their feet.  Then I gave up.  I can’t pen a breath-taking view, or the feeling of standing in the ocean for the first time, or my wife and I shouting at each other to keep moving so that the cloud of mosquitoes behind us can’t catch up while we went exploring.

But I do have a few pieces of advice that I gleaned from my road trip and several days camping in Maine.

1. Don’t piss anyone off in eastern Maine.  Your body will never be found, because it will be buried beneath the seven metric tons of crab bits washed up from the ocean every half-hour.

2. Don’t drive length-wise through upstate New York.  It’s pretty like a desert – great to look at for the first hour but there’s too damn much of it and after a while you start to hallucinate.  Especially at night.  Especially as you plunge up and down the hills and watch the city lights blend with the stars until you’re not sure where the ground ends and the sky begins.  Especially when you’re half-mad from twelve hours of driving.

3. Out-of-control-truck ramps are both thrilling and terrifying.  The mountains that require them even moreso.

4. The sand on the beaches was mostly mica.  It created a beautiful, shimmering beach, but if you dug about an inch down in the sand you got a nostrilful of rotting ocean stench.

5. If you grew up with computers, and then spend a solid week without using them, you have a hard time typing when you come back.  It’s a good feeling.

6. Seagulls and island critters love to pull crab takeaway out of the garbage and scatter it all over the path.

7. Campers love to buy crab takeaway.

8. New Hampshire has a “state liquor store” that’s open on Sundays.

Pictures are forthcoming.

Instead of our usual Dungeons and Dragons game, (most of) the crew decided to head up to the Oriental Institute Museum. I remembered to bring my camera and filled it up full of hawt piccies of Really Old Stuff. It’s humbling, in a way, to be able to see these artifacts from thousands of years ago. Experiencing them in person makes me feel both completely different and completely alike the people who took the time to make these objects, whether decorative or mundane.

Onwards with the photos!

This guy looks surprised at the size of his nuts.

This shot is using a MySpace angle.

There are so many duck figures at the Oriental Institute. Duck Hunt!

This bowl is like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cereal bowl I once sent away for.

Look at the animals they used to have!

He's not happy about you being in his gallery.

Gaming equipment. The d20 is an advent of the modern age.

I think this photo turned out really well.

Not sure what the lion is doing, but it made me feel like a voyeur.

I always enjoy museums (which I think is obvious from my stories). Despite the problems that they face and the sometimes dubious decisions they make, I think they do an amazing job of capturing slices of the human experience and preserving them in the face of a consumerist, right-now attitude that permeates a lot of decisions made. No, there isn’t a lot of economic worth in preserving a scrap of broken urn from two thousand years ago, but it’s undeniable importance helps point out that we cannot just measure our society in dollars, yen or euros.

That said, I bought a nifty ring and a “make your own papyrus” kit from the gift shop. From what I can tell, the latter requires lots of days and lots of fussing.  I’m looking forward to making the finished product, and then I’m going to grab a quill and ink and write out a message in lolcat speech, before giving mysel a fatal paper cut as a service to the world.  One less douchenozzle.

Did several Left 4 Dead speedruns.  Protip: your bones will turn into fillet knives inside your skin if you jump from too high a height, and you’ll pwn yourself.

Played Dungeons and Dragons with the gang.  Everybody was in a giggly mood, I assume because of the Faux Spring we’re experiencing in Chicago, so we said screw it and just hung out.  Although Moebius was covered in spiders during our brief game, so I consider it a certain amount of success.

Cooking up a rich, delicious root-vegetable soup.  I intended it to be vegetarian but I remembered that I had an unopened pack of bacon.  I fried it up, added the bacon to the soup, then fried slices of potatoes in the grease, then added both the potatoes and grease to the soup.  Yum!

I need new undapants.

In this new year I’ve decided to stop shopping at big box stores, like Bullseye and Walstore, as much as I can avoid it.  Their prices are cheap, their products are cheaper, and it makes me feel like a hypocritical shit when I buy stuff there, because I know that I’m only doing it because I’m lazy.

I need new undapants.  But I don’t want to be lazy.

Another criteria, I decided, was fair wages to the workers, or at least something approaching fair wages.  I also would prefer union labor because in my past life as a history student, I learned how much good they’ve done for both men and women (before the email deluge: there are a lot of oligarchic unions out there, but that doesn’t invalidate them all).  Also, Rosie the Riveter?  Hawt.  I’m talking about the Norman Rockwell version, where she’s eatin’ her sandwich and is all like “fuk u Nazis.”  Oh man.  She can totally rivet my undapants anytime.

I need new undapants.  But Rosie the Riveter has to be involved.

Checking online first for “american made clothes,” I clicked through store after store that only carry clothing that Sarah Palin would’ve worn before the GOP got their hands on her wardrobe.  And the undapants, woof.  Tightie-whities, several pairs of which were off-white and looked like someone had already run twelve marathons while wearing them.  I didn’t see any lined with Confederate flags, but then again, that may be a special available only to returning customers.  “Enter the code ‘MYTHOFNOBILITY’ at checkout to swaddle your freedom-bags in the Stars ‘n Bars!”

I need new undapants.  But my wife has to watch me stumble around in them when I wake up, like a sleepy leviathan emerging from the deep.  Tightie-whities that reach up and touch my nips make her gag and shatter mirrors.

Same thing with most clothing that’s stereotyped as “socially conscious.”  I do steam punk, jeans and shirts with buttons that make me look like a toolbox, not ponchos and raggedy cargo pants.

A search for “fair trade clothing” got me on the right track with plenty of links to start with.  I’m not going to include a bazillion links but I did want to call out No Sweat Apparel because they have Rosie the Riveter on the front page.  Bonus!