pics

25 Years Later: Chernobyl

Tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of the tragic disaster that ruined Chernobyl and affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. I’ve read the story many times over the years, fascinated by the insane breakdown of events that put them in that predicament, and it gets more interesting every time I read it. But it also depresses me greatly.

The greatest weakness in the system was humanity. We caused the catastrophe. Humans are a stupid, self-serving, arrogant bunch. And that arrogance changed Chernobyl and the surrounding towns – basically making them unlivable for the next thousand years. That’s when it will be safe to move back. But there will still be radiation for up to seventy thousand more years.

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  • Reading time:4 mins read

Area Man Refuses To Grow Up

So I had a birthday party Friday night. This isn’t very peculiar. However, there were a few items of interest that do make that list labeled peculiar. First of all, as most of you know, I’m almost thirty now. So let’s just for ease of conversation, say that I am “twenty-seven” now. And then allow me to elaborate on those items I found peculiar.

First of all, I had a birthday party. That in and of itself should not be viewed as out of the ordinary. I wanted to have a few friends over, listen to some music, stand around and drink beer and tell each other war stories, and compare tattoos. Without necessarily taking our shirts off. It’s not even really all that odd that there would be a cake for me. I mean, well, actually I specifically told Haycomet not to make me a cake. But she wouldn’t have any of that. “If I make one for everyone else, of course I’m going to make one for my partner in rhyme.” She does have a valid point. So thus, I had a cake at my party. No candles, of course. But there was a cake. A ridiculously extravagant cake, no less. A Cake. Capitalized. One that someone might have paid perhaps upwards of a couple hundred dollars for. So what was so odd?

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  • Reading time:6 mins read

I just got my FACE rocked off.

Seriously, dudes, I have to tell you about our night Friday night! Okay, well – okay, well hang on. Let me catch my breath. It’s Saturday morning here – well, feels like morning, it’s actually well after noon – but I got my damn face (and most of my ass, neck, thighs, back and arms) rocked the hell off last night. Son of a bitch. Okay, let me back up a little though.

I was sitting at my damn desk at work when the HR director came up to my desk and said, “Hey, yo, Space. I got these tickets, dude,” and gave me four tickets to Nickelodeon Storytime at Verizon Theatre. And yes, they spell it with the tre instead of the ter. Idiots obviously don’t know the difference in the definitions. Anyway, yeah, we took the girls to the theater to see the Backyardigans and Dora the Explorer on stage and all that. They loved it, of course.

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I have the beat wife ever.

The title of this column was based upon a Facebook message my wife left me yesterday, for our anniversary. You know how hard it is to type messages on a cellphone when there is no real keyboard? Yeah. Well perhaps tomorrow when Haycomet and I get together for our Bacon Talk, we’ll have something to say about cellphones. Anyway, yesterday, as a lot of you may or may not know, was my red-haired wife’s and my first anniversary. Yes, friends, what that means is that we have been married for most of a year. Or close to a year. Something having to do with a year. And, as the title suggests, she is the beat wife ever.

You see, she says some things like that sometimes, when there are not even any keyboards around. She misspeaks and they become terms of endearment, naturally, for me. Like how she says, “Chipolte” instead of Chipotle. Or she’ll call me her “Knight and shining armor”. You know, cute things that red-haired wives do that make us smile. But yesterday, for our anniversary, she did what was perhaps to go down in history as one of the awesomest things anyone has ever done for me. She got me a lunchbox.

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Things sure have changed around here.

Welcome back, friends, family and – well, and I guess you too, foes. Welcome to another edition of the Daily Brew. Or at least Weekdaily. Unless I get lazy and don’t write anything, which most of the time, someone else steps up and knocks one out real fast, in which case you don’t (hopefully even notice anyway), wait, where was I going with this? Oh yeah. Welcome back. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.

CatinaThis here is Catina. Say hi to Ca- — wait. Where the hell did she go? Well actually, I’ve never met her, you see. But I’ve known her for almost twelve years. And what makes Catina so important that she should be introduced here? Well, she’s been here a lot, lot longer than you. Catina has been reading this site since 1999.

When Catina started reading the site, it was still Moon’s Crater. That was the first domain name under which we all wrote. And this site has been through many phases, changes, color schemes and domain names. Well, she’s been here through all of it. And I think that’s pretty damn cool.

So what is your earliest memory of the site, Catina?

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  • Reading time:7 mins read

The Sunset Beach Diaries, 2010

We made it back. It took twenty-four straight hours on the road, but we did indeed make it back. Man, that’s a lot of driving. We never stop into hotels or anything, what with having several drivers to switch out, we can just catch up on sleep a couple at a time while the others are pulling shifts. We even let the kids drive for a while when we all got too tired to carry on. The closest we came to actual stopping down was this morning around 04:30, we pulled into a rest stop and just leaned the seats back for a few hours. Tampa Bay to North Dallas is just under 1200 miles though. And like I say every year, next year we’re flying.

We had a great time. We got rained out the first few days, so a lot of our time was spent up on the deck at mom and dad’s, or at Ka’Tiki Bar, where you’re basically outside, just covered with palm fronds. It’s nice, the Ones are Cold and there’s always live music. Not all of it is great, but it’s all at least tolerable. Not like the guy who plays the keytar at Caddy’s.

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A New Forum for Old Taste

I’d like to draw everyone’s attention to the links over there on the right side of your screen. The little orange ones in the box titled ‘Navigate’. If you haven’t noticed, there are two new links there. Stories takes you to the short stories page, which is something I will be concentrating on pretty heavily over the next few weeks. And Forums is a brand new project. I opened up the SpaceBrew forums so people have a — well, a forum in which they can rant, rave or just read. When the comments section of a column isn’t enough, go open a new thread in the forums.

There are two categories right now on the board; one is the Discussion area, and the other is tentatively titled Media. I may or may not keep that one in place. But for now, it’s there. Inside the Discussion, there are three forums. Your Dose of Humanity is the main one. This is a place where you can post a new topic about anything you want, and get your own responses and interaction going. It’s pretty much an open forum to post whatever topics you want. The SpaceBrew Review is a home for site discussion. If you have something to say about a column someone wrote, or about the technical and design aspects of the main website, this is where you post. The third is Your Chance To Shine, which is a place for those who would like to try their hand at writing.

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A Very Young Space

I thought I would post some old school pictures of me when I was growing up, just to reminisce, if you will. But mostly because almost all of these photos are laughable in some way. And in a lot of them I’m in some sort of costume, though none of these were Halloween costumes or photos.

But in digging through old photos, I found these and thought some of you would get a kick out of seeing what I looked like when I was young and innocent. After a week or two, I will move this post over to the photo journals archive, so it won’t be listed in my archives or anything, but you can always get to it through the “links” link. Anyway, hope you enjoy.

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Let’s recap the weekend.

It was quite a busy one. You probably know by now that I didn’t get a tattoo on Friday, so that won’t be included here. So let’s start with Saturday. I ran out to Shift’s place to catch some college football and a few Cold Ones. The Ones are always Cold at Shift’s place.

Then we walked over to the Blue Note to catch the Tech game, where we sat across the bar from a bunch of losers rooting for Mizzou. Wrong state, assholes. Since I was at the bar already, and Shine lives in the area, I figured I’d call her and get her to join us there for a little football action. So she showed up in her costume (she was on her way to a costume party), which was an autograph book. She was the autograph book. Clever, eh? So I grabbed a marker from the bunch and found the only blank spot left on her shirt by that time, as you can see in this first picture.

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Paris Hilton Eat Your Heart Out

While in Houston, Shift and I were waiting on our friend Khris (I think that’s how she spells it) as she tried on suits in Macy’s. We were in Macy’s too, you see. We were waiting on a woman. And there’s a Sunglass Hut right there inside the Macy’s. So, being bored, we decided we’d shop shades a little bit.

Space HiltonMy eyes almost immediately went to the ridiculously large Paris Hilton shades on the top shelf of the case. They were men’s shades, but just huge. Like something that would have made Eric Estrada proud back in his Chips days. Seriously, they were that big. Well, you know me, I had to try them on. So the lady got them out and I put them on, and magic was made, y’all.

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