Calamity Cove

It’s been two days, and almost half of the original images have been sponsored (and nearly all of those are actually paid up). There are more orders, but they came too late–I have to disappoint some people with e-mails after I finish this update. It makes me feel terrible, so I wish I’d had the time to implement an actual claims system, but bills are bills and they come when they do.

Thank you so much to everyone. I’m absolutely amazed at how many people responded to PlunderZOO, both with purchases and with RTs, blog posts, and other signal boosts.

All of this really makes me appreciate technology more than before. If it wasn’t for the fact that we can open up a dog and put pins and wire into its bones, my puppy would be literally crippled for the rest of his life, walking and acting like an old dog before he even finished growing. It wouldn’t even matter how much money anyone had, or whether or not they would put it toward what he needed. And if it wasn’t for the free information on the Internet, I wouldn’t know how to draw (seriously). And most importantly, if it wasn’t for the way people use the Internet, the way we take cold, hard code and use it to build warm, sharing communities, not nearly as many people would know about my venture or have the means to join it.

Our zoo is going to look so cool when all those animals are captured, folks. (: Thank you for being a part of this.

Our pet landshark when he was a wee little beastie! (Before we had him.)

I attended a writing retreat at the end of July called Writers Weekend which is being renamed Cascade Writers. I have some photos for you, and an exhortation to attend if you have the chance.

In 2010, the retreat managed to continue the “family reunion” atmosphere of the two prior years with the presence of strangers–we didn’t all know each other this time, and yet it felt like we did. We split into two groups for the critique part of the workshop, and I was impressed by such unexpected professionalism in the analyses of my work. This people aren’t all pros yet–but they’re going to be. If I have the cash, I will definitely attend in 2011.

And now, on to the photos:

...Starting with Seamus, Hanzo, and me. Apparently in 1948, before they invented color.

It looks like a stock image in a paranormal YA book cover

I like imagining Hanzo as a were-pitbull a la the old Buster Wylde webcomic.

And the next image in the series is entitled, "Randy Shrugged."

Just kidding. There’s no next picture.  Randy Henderson is still there on the beach, holding the moon and shivering. He was yelling, “Come on you guys, someone else do it now–seriously, my arms are getting tired,” but we all laughed and climbed the excessive number of stairs and went to bed. I bet he really has to pee.

When I'm crapping myself in a nursing home, this is one of the things I will remember.

…So before it slips too far behind, I’d like to photographically chronicle a recent hike I took. We went on Excelsior Pass. I gotta tell ya, that hike is a pain in the ass. I had to crabstep sideways during long stretches because it was uncomfortable to take a forward step when it meant my foot was going to be at a 45 degree angle to my shin.

You can see, though, that it was worth it. Not just to lay in a waterfall, with hot sun on my belly and face and cool mountain water soaking the sweat out of my t-shirt. There were lots of tiny details to enjoy.

They must be poisonous, or there'd be more than one bite taken out. hehehe

One of those photos you take because you know it'll make a good LOLcat some day...

Favorite photo I took on that hike.

We didn’t make it up to the top because of time and heart attack constraints, but we’ll go back again some time. I know this because we need to dangle a camera down The Hole.  Neither WTA.org nor Google can tell me what this mystery hole is for or how it came to be.

John threw a rock and it made noise for a long, long time.

He eats everything he can fit in his mouth, plays in mud, and LOVEd these little guys. I think he's a pigbull.

Hanzo saw the piglets from about twenty feet away and perked up, wagging his tail, just like he does for other dogs. We took him up to the fence and he touched their noses with his, then licked their faces like he does with people. He was pretty happy to just sniff and lick, but the piglets of course have a different agenda. They’re only curious until they find out whether there is food involved; Hanzo didn’t feed them, so they became disinterested and wandered away. Hanzo uttered a heartbreaking whine, just the way he does when there’s a dog he likes behind a fence he can’t play with, or a child in a stroller he can’t lick.

It was one of the most adorable things I’ve ever seen.

Hanzo has a condition called “luxating patella,” or “kneecap fell out of place and is floating around like a kid with an illicit hall pass.”

(Dark as the inside of my dog's leg...)

Usually, this happens to small breeds like Yorkshire terriers or pomeranians, in which case it’s congenital. Sometimes, it happens to larger dogs, especially active jumpy ones like our spazzy little pitbull. We don’t know how it occurred. It could have been trauma that we didn’t witness (or that we underestimated the impact of), or it could have been uneven development in his hind legs that stretched out the ligament. Apparently sometimes dogs with muscular legs get a slightly bowed bone as they develop, and that creates sideways pressure on the patella.

He’s going in for surgery tomorrow morning. If I understand correctly, the vet is going to deepen the groove in the femur (top white blob) where that little bean-shaped thing (patella) is supposed to go, then stuff it back in, and attach the loose ligament to a pin in the tibial ridge (poky bit on the right of the bottom white blob)  so it doesn’t come loose again. Captain Jumpytron will have to remain quiet and mostly still for six weeks.

Because if he doesn’t, he’ll have to have surgery again, and then be still for twelve weeks. (As you can see below, that is going to be impossible without a boatload of tranquilizers.)

Poor Hanzo.

Photo by John Poor

I didn’t look much like Lady Gaga, but it was close enough for most drunk people to figure out who I was, and then holler encouraging nonsense at me from blocks away. They were only excited because they didn’t see this photo:

(You don't want to know. But you can probably guess.)

However, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. At the beginning of the evening, I looked like this:

Click the jump to see the rest of the step-by-step process! » Continue Reading…

At about 9:30 p.m. my boss calls to let us know that there’s been a string of robberies in the past few days. The perpetrator was a Caucasian male in black clothes who told the clerks he had a bomb hidden under his clothes; alternately, he would show them a butcher knife.

Good plan.

Now, I don’t actually tell my co-worker about this, because I don’t want to worry her, and what are the chances this goon is going to pick our store? Right? We’re as prepared as we always are. We have a selection of panic buttons, two phones, state-of-the-art security cameras, and we’re double-staffed.

Half of an hour later, this clown shuffles in wearing an outfit his big brother must not have wanted and insists he has a bomb hidden…somewhere. He flails around on an explosive Easter egg hunt inside his own pants, and while to us this just looks like public masturbation, he clearly thinks this indicates he has a Looney Tunes-sized case of TNT in his jockstrap.

The way he walks and talks sounds like he really hopes he’s the bad guy in a low-budget blaxploitation flick. If you’re going to use the M.F. word as punctuation, and you want me to be threatened by it, you better sound like you mean it at least as much as Samuel L. Jackson does. Especially when you have sweaty withdrawal skin, googly Cookie Monster eyes, and you’re hiding half of your face like an Old West bandit.

I think the poor robber was just trying to hide his messed up meth teeth.

Him: “I have a bomb! Give me all the money!”

Me: “No. You don’t. We already got a call about you.”

(This is the point where I suddenly realize my coworker ‘Tasha actually thinks there might be a bomb strapped to this nervous wreck’s genitals. Oops. Prooobably should have told her.)

He isn’t stunned for long, but his next brilliant move is to pull out his butcher knife… Which is still in the sheath, with two snaps holding it there. If I was the kind of idiot who refuses to give money to an armed robber (I’m only the kind of idiot who tells them they’re a liar), I could have made it to Miami and been sitting in a wicker chair sipping a freaking maitai by the time his shaky hands got that thing loose, and even if he tried to chase me,  he would have tripped over his floppy pants and stabbed himself in his penis. (I don’t know how his junk managed to get out of our store in one piece.)

Also good plan.

Me, as I reach toward the button that opens the register: “Okay, I’ll give it to you. But the police are already on their way here. We hit the buttons.”

Him: “You’re [Redacted]suckers. [Redacted] this!”

He throws a plastic bag on the counter and storms out just as awkwardly as you’d expect from someone who is trying to walk inside of a camping tent. He was a two-second wait from getting several hundred dollars. And he left.

Robber: 0. Me and 'Tasha: Plastic bag.

In conclusion,

1. My retired police officer father is going to kill me when he finds out I sassed a robber after the stories he’s told me and

2. This guy is just lucky he didn’t spill anything on ‘Tasha: