Jer started this fun little game called "Who Am I" where you are given pictures in the style of the Concentration game show that represent a celebrity. They are kinda like rebus puzzles, pretty much my favourite type of puzzle ever. He has been using celebrity names that have three parts (ie James Earl Jones), but I thought I would make some that make names with just two parts. A couple of them use three pictures, but all of them are only first and last names.

Can you figure them out? They should be fairly easy.

If you have any of the solutions, type them in a comment for this post.

Enjoy!

This is a warning to you all lest you would turn out like this lady…

Alright, as I was getting out of my vehicle (I drive a sexy, little 1993 Saturn sedan, but that’s not important), I noticed a very pregnant woman yelling at her two young girls perhaps about how much they annoy her and that she cares for them as much as she does maintianing a civil demeanor (which would be zero). I could see that she was holding a Bic ballpoint pen, which I supposed she implemented for marking down infractions relating to a child "driving her crazy" (i.e. drawing her attention to themselves, asking questions, etc.). I thought, "Is that really what it is like having a child? I breed them into existence only to be forced to care for them, teach them, and entertain them when necessary? If that is what would be required of me, no thanks!".

Anyway, as I pulled my pestilent plastic Fred Meyer bag from my alluring automobile, I heard the lovely mother of 2.5 children yell "We’ve been out of the house for less than 5 minutes and you’re already driving me crazy!". Then she lifted the ballpoint pen to her lips, flicked the lighter in her other hand, and…...lit up…....the…..pen?

This is why I think I generally hate people. Some, not most.

Well, I have some disappointing and uh…..appointing[?] news about my awesome new lacing method described in my previous post. I sent an email to Mr. Fieggen of "Ian’s Shoelace Site" telling him about my lacing solution, but he emailed me back today to tell me that this method is actually the standard lacing method of the French, Dutch, and German armies because it keeps the crosses from holding the sides of the shoe down, allowing the shoe to flex more easily.

That was the disappointing part. However, the use of locks on the top lace is not a standard part of this lacing, so that part is my own brilliant innovation. Also, Mr. Fieggen sent to me an attachment showing an exclusive sneak peak into his shoelace book that will be released at some future date. The jpeg shows the layout for the "Army Lacing" page as it will appear in the book, but I don’t want to describe it so that it will remain a secret. You will just have to buy a copy when it comes out. Oh, he also like the picture of my Macbeths and will have it appear on the site when he adds the "Army Lacing" page as well as some others.

Anyway, I’m out…....to do some shoe shopping!

I have a pretty severe shoe fetish. I assure you that I do not have foot fetish, but merely a shoe fetish. There is a difference. A shoe fetish is a one that deals with what is worn over a foot, while a person who has a foot fetish believes that it is what’s inside that counts. This is not me, however both of these concepts will be true in regard to my jeans fetish whenever a female is the jean-wearing party.

To continue on the subject of shoes, I also enjoy lacing my shoes in ways that they are not commonly done. Usually this is for style reasons, but sometimes I may also consider functionality. A couple months ago, I finally acquired a sweet pair of hemp Macbeth Elliots. They are great, but when I laced them in the usual criss-cross pattern (just to check fit before prescribing the proper permanent lacing) I realized that the ends were going to be way to short to tie, and there was a bit of heal slippage. So Tim decided that a new strategy would need to be enacted if his acquisition of these new kicks was to be a success.

After recalling some of my previous lacing types and consulting with Ian’s Shoelace Site, I came upon the perfect solution: The Inverted Bow Tie. This would be a combination of the Bow Tie and Lock Lacing, but the Bow Tie would be done from under instead of over. This would definitely lengthen the laces and create extra leverage for my heel. I had already used the Lock for a pair of Camper Pelotas, and it actually did the trick.

I’d give some boring instructions for this lacing that I invented, but I’ll just post some pictures instead.

As you can see, you basically just cross lace from underneath, skip straight up one hole, cross, skip, cross, etc. Then when you skip straight up into the last eyelet, the ends are crossed then pulled through that last loop, and you finish by tying ‘em up.

People always ask me, "Tim, do you enjoy a tasty pie?". My answer to that will then be "Yes, I do enjoy a tasty pie.". What comes next is typically the obvious follow-up question, "What is your favourite kind of pie?". My answer to this question usually comes with some hesitation, a pause, and then some silence as I ponder this quite-a-bit-more-difficult-than-the-previous-question question. The silence will break as I (usually) utter these words; "Well, crap. I guess pumpkin, blueberry, and banana cream.". This answer will do a quick and decent job of giving the inquisitor a good idea of my most substantial preferences in the world of pies. However, I do like other pies. Below is a chart to show comparison of how much I like each of my favourite pies, plus a couple others that I heart just slightly. For the "miscellaneous pies" section, I would suppose that key-lime would make up perhaps one quarter to one third of that slice. Also, cherry would most undoubtedly be one of the greater presences there. As for the others, I am open to suggestions.

A couple weeks ago, or maybe it was a bit more-it’s not important anyway-I was coming home after a day of fun, work, play, or some combination of the three. As I unlocked the door, I heard something behind me so I turned to see what it was. Behind me was a squirrel staring at me as if he would like to ask me if he could find some cozy shelter inside my flat, but he didn’t utter a single word and I just went inside.

Today, Jer told me that he thinks it may be mating season for the cute little rodents. Crap! If I had known this, I might have offered some dinner and fine wine by candlelight, then…....who knows what might happen. I could have been introduced into the world of sweet squirrel love. Next time I will be prepared. Actually…perhaps I ought to do some squirrel hunting this weekend-as long as the weather improves enough to tempt some into coming out from their little squirrel homes. Anyway, I will get my nuts ready for you, my little rodent companion.

Black Pepperjack Doritos™ and a good French red wine from the Rhône appelation is my treat of the week.

Alright! Here is the [now imagine a grand, reverberating voice} Word of the Week!

This week’s word is – "incongruous"

Say it with me now….innn-k-kaahhnnn-greww-uusss.

Very good!

Incongruous means not harmonious, incompatible, not conforming, disagreeing, unsuitable, or inconsistent within itself.

Now let’s place incongruous in some sentences that we might say…well, pretty much any old day of the week…...

Yesterday I wore a pink shirt and lavender velour track pants, which proved to be a rather incongruous ensemble.

Of course, if I had been part of a gay pride parade at the time, my clothing would not have been so incongruous.

However, being part of a gay pride parade would have been completely incongruous with my morals and lifestyle.

I hope that saying I would never be part of one of those parades doesn’t make my words seem incongruous with my kind demeanor and civility towards homosexuals…or anybody else who is vastly different from me.

I certainly believe that I don’t live incongruously with anybody who is different from me in any way.

However, I do find it difficult to enjoy spending a lot of time around people who’s lifestyle, habits, and interests are completely incongruous with my own, rather than people who do share some of those things.

Well….........being late for church would be incongruous with all of my previous efforts to be a faithful devotee to the congregation, so I must go.

Wasn’t that a lot of fun!

Be sure to use incongruous in your daily life this week…...and whenever the opportunity presents itself in the more distant future.

I will be creating a new category for the Word of the Week later today (or maybe tomorrow…okay, let’s be honest…probably tomorrow).

I need to start posting more crap here, so I think I’m going to bring back something that used to be featured in my old livejournal days…..the word of the day week.

However, I must go do some editing work right now. In that time, I should be able to come up with a good word to launch this new feature here at crapstack.

Last night, I was involved in a youth event that was modeled after the tv show "Amazing Race". I never have seen it, but apparently it is a scavenger hunt type thing where the contestants travel to different places and perform tasks instead of trying to hunt down random objects like a traditional scavenger hunt.

My assignment for the evening was to be at Ester Short park in downtown Vancouver along with my partner, who was my sister Andrea, and two other chaps that were to hand out their own tasks and clues to the students. All of us had on different costumes. The first one- Rob Williams as the "Task Master" was dressed like a homeless person and laying on a park bench, which was pretty hilarious because everyone was scared to approach him, thinking he really was a scary, drunk homeless person. After receiving their first task, they were to come to me and Andrea who were the "Dance Instructors". Our task was to teach each group (of which there were ten) how to do the macarena. After us, the last stop in the park was with Matt Butenschoen as the "Drill Instructor". He was dressed in some fatigues and had a chewed-up cigar to look the part. For his part, he was to force each group to do some physical activities such as push-ups and marching. Apparently, some nearby folks got really pissed off from all of the noise because there was a play going on in a building at the southwest corner of the park. Oh well.

Anyway, it was a blast. Andrea and I dressed up like scene/goth kids for our part. At first, we were going to be old people, but it takes much more work to pull that off. The thought of dancing the macarena while looking all goth seemed pretty amusing though. I don’t have pics of both of us (some other folks did get some), but I took a few of myself. I was fairly short on time and money to really go nuts with the look, but I modeled myself somewhat after the first goth icon, Peter Murphy of Bauhaus. When taking the pics, I tried to do my best to imitate the photographic stylings of scene kids that can be found on myspace. Here are the results –


















If I had more time and money, I would have bought a half dozen steel or pewter rings and some neckwear. Also, I completely didn’t think of it, but I should have painted my nails black with a Sharpie™ or something.

Oh, and one funny story…....

Before entering the park, we hit up Starbucks for some eight dollar cups of coffee. The employees seemed to be pretty excited to see two Portland-xcore-scene-types in the shop, but the funny thing was when some girl approached us. She said that she saw us come in and really wanted to invite us to her church. Looking back, I wish that I had played the part of a non-conformist, naturalist, anti-deist, but instead we told her that we do go to church and were actually involved in a church activity accross the street. It turned out she is from the Church of God, which is-in my opinion-the group that falls between Lutherans and Jehova’s Witnesses in what they believe and their practices.

The end…...and Happy Veterans Day

I got all dressed up in platties resembling those of Alex The Large of Clockwork Orange this blessed Halloween. Here are some pictures…...

I feel that I was pretty accurate with my resemblence of the original costume Malcom McDowell from the 1971 film. It’s too bad that my eyes are poop brown…and I chickened out on buying some colored contacts…otherwise I think I got it close enough on a fair budget. I suppose a falic cane-sword also would have helped, but I wasn’t willing to spend the $130 they wanted for one over at the Vancouver Mall Excalibur. Proberly big eyelashes are not easy to get either. In the film, they are more bold and long, but I could not find anything so huge so I got the ones I thought would be the closest match.

Oh, and the codpiece is low in the pics, but I had my sister tighten it right up to the proper place and I was fixed up real horrorshow after that.

In case you haven’t heard the news already, Tim was killed this morning.

Of course, Tim had always vowed to live on as a zombie after his death, so don’t be alarmed if you see him walking around sometime. Furthermore, you should do the right thing and show him some respect by allowing him to snack on your brains.

Hmmmm…now that I think of it….....if ever there was a good time to be a zombie, the end of October would be it.

Okay, so it’s been a month since my last entry. I’ve been busy with some stuff (which maybe I’ll cover on a later date), and have been generally lazy about writing even when I think I have a goodidea or story to share.So…...here’s a short little story that may or may not be too amusing. It’s something odd and surprising that happened to me recently.

A couple weekends ago, I attended our church’s fall retreat as a staff member. Part of the festivitieswas a "counselor hunt", which is basically a hide-and-seek game. The adult-like leaderish types find a clever hiding spot while the not so clever students make an attempt to hunt down and kill, er simply discover the hiding folks and give them a wet willy. Tyler Butenschoen, my mate from a renowned, but soon disbanded cheese-loving musical crew (being once again reunited a new lineup under the handle "T-bone and the Ribeyes") and I decided to hide together and cuddlein the cool October air. Actually, it was so we didn’t get bored while we remained unfound for a long time in our amazingly clever hiding spot. Okay, okay. We just wanted to cuddle. Anyway, none of this really pertains to the story I want to tell, but I thought I should set the scene in case you wondered what the heck I was doing or whatever.

Alrighty. The insanely clever hiding spot was at the new "amphitheater" structure with a firepit and benches’n stuff. We found a blue tarp covering some of the wood for campfires and decided to curl up under that. It was pretty sweet. Tyler brilliantly placed some logs halfway under the tarp, sticking out the sides so that it looked like there was nothing but wood underneath. Oh, and we also found an axe that could be used to frighten any kids that might take a peek under the tarp. Nobody did look under there to discover us, but one group of middle-school students did walk directly beside us, even kicking up a bit of dirt against the part of the tarp that covered my back.When the bell was rung to announce the end of the night game, Tyler and I got out from under the tarp and started to walk back to the middle of camp.

After about 20 yards, my hands were feeling a bit cold so I put them into the pockets of my hoodie. I was successful in getting the right one in, but when I slipped th left one into the pocket, I felt something hard and scaley move aginst my fingers. I quickly removed my hand with a gasp and stood with a puzzled look. Tyler asked me what was wrong, but I couldn’t quite find the words. He told me later that he thought I found a stain or something on my sweatshirt because I was pulling at the pocket trying to look inside. I’m not sure if it was shock, dread, or disbelief that there somehow seemed to be a live snake in my pocket, but I couldn’t utter muchmore that an "What the heck? Um, I don’t know. There’s something in my pocket.". I decided that I should try to be a brave little toaster and just reach in and pull the poor little fella out in one super-quick move. So that’s what I did. As I dropped the bugger onto the ground, he started running around in circles all freaked-out-like. Niether of us had a light so we couldn’t quite see what it was at first, but then we could see that it was a salamander. I don’t know how that thing crawled into my pocket. I thought I pretty much stayed resting on my left side as we were hiding. Maybe Tyler put it in there, but I’d have to say that I was pretty flustered.

This is the first entry in the new "Shoeaholic" category. The idea was inspired by a text message sent from Jer in which he blamed Jake for his recent shoelust. His idea was simple; he would include pictures of his recent acquisitions, things he is lusting after, and notices about notable upcoming releases. Because he is perfectly aware that I am also a shoenut, he suggested that I could contribute with some content of my own. So here i am.

My first entry will be my Steve Madden "Brooklyn" slip-ons. I think they have a fantastic look to them, and though they are not the most comfortable shoes I wear, they are still a fairly cozy home for my feet. They are stylish enough to make up for what they lack in comfort. They seem sturdy as well. The material and build quality is very good and should keep up for a good long time.



My intention for the future is to exhibit some of my skate shoes, which makes up majority of my footwear collection, and show some of the shoes on my want list as well as upcoming releases of eventful pro models. Because that is my forte and is not the main focus of Jer’s interest in footwear, we should be able to cover a pretty broad selection of men’s footwear (which is not so vast a sea as women’s fashion). So, from now on you will most likely not see another pair of shoes that has much in common with the Maddens above.

If you know me and see me fairly regularly, you may know that I like shoes. A LOT!

Well, I recently have been looking for non-traditional, decorative, or just plain odd lacing schemes for my cornucopia of footwear. I always traditionally lace my shoes, but with one twist-I always tighten them on my foot enough so that they feel snug (but will still slip on and off) then knot the ends against the top holes and snip off the slack.

Today I purchased some sweet forrest-green Pumas that came with one set of ivory and one set of black laces, so I decided that I absolutely had to try out some lacing pattern other than the boring criss-cross method that would take advantage of the two different colored laces.

I found a site that contains instructions for some of the two trillion lacing methods with pictures, comparisons, user ratings, etc. After scrolling down a bit, I decided that I would try what they have declared the winner of the lacing method popularity contest-The Checkerboard Lacing Pattern.

It proved to be fairly simple to lace and weave the pattern, though it was a bit tricky trying to get both sets of laces tightened properly so that one didn’t meddle with the other by pulling it out of position. I think it turned out pretty well, but not quite as nicely as some of the example photos on the site. You can check out my new kicks down there ↓