She's got a smile that it seems to meReminds me of childhood memoriesWhere everything was as fresh as the bright blue sky.

Now and then when I see her face
She takes me away to that
Special place.
And if I stared too long,
I'd probably break down and cry.

Which is almost how I feel right now.
Because I no longer get emails from my friends. My wife gets tons of them. Nice, detailed emails, filling her in on the goings-on and asking after her. But, oh yeah, she doesn't have a blog to relay everything happening in a one-way communication format that her friends can read and then use as a basis to ignore her. And more's the pity.

But me?
Nada. Well, almost nada.
Word to the good people at Netflix. Shout out to Netflix, for letting me know you received Arrested Development Disc Two! Keepin' it real.

But, as for the rest of you voyeuristic bastards who check here every damn day to be entertained by the Duder... Zip. Zilch. Bubkes.

You know who you are.

Oh, I know you're checking in. Don't play coy with me. That little hit counter at the bottom of the page tells me that the Dude Abides had 100 unique visitors today. You erstwhile friends of mine are coming here in droves.

I am watching you, Fockers.

And I will take you down.

I will take you down to Chinatown.


--
OK, enough with the desperate self-pity. Let's get to the good shit. (But if I don't feel sorry for me, who's gonna?)

Did you know that the reverse barbs of a porcupine quill can cause it to work its way through your body, say from your foot and come out your knee?

Cool. Chiggity-check it out.

--
Um, I'm really glad I have pepper spray now.
This dude is a Bozeman native who got mauled by a bear. (Obviously)


His friend saved his life with pepper spray, so he started a pepper spray company.

As his marketing pitch, he just tells his story and shows the pictures.

Incredible. Thanks to Nessie for the hook-up with that link.

--

Guilty confession: I love the song "Bust a Move." The fact that Flea played bass on the song lends a faint whiff of credibility to my guilty pleasure, but still... I'm a 35 year old, white, Montanan-by-way-of-Wisconsin product of the '80s. Whaddya want from me?

--
Regarding the Harrier Hawks, I thought that, as George Harrison said, "This bird has flown." There has been a lot of work in the meadow-cum-100 acre park lately, as they are doing some excavation on one of the fishing ponds. I had not seen them for a while. Alas, I have found my dive-bombing friends, alive and well, 2 miles north and east along my running route in another field. The four bird family unit is still intact, but, damn, those kids are getting big. They are probably hassling dad for the car keys as we speak.

--
I received an email from one of my two remaining FRIENDS that had a hilarious quote in it. I lifted it intact:

"Speaking of which, I have read lately that the libido of a 45-year-old woman is roughly equivalent to that of an 18-year-old man. That Mother Nature? She's one funny bitch. A few years before menopause and she deals the trump card."

--
Iraq... I have some new names.

Operation Un-Fuck It? Operation Ooops? Operation Say We Won and Let's Go Home?

--
And as for you non-emailing, non-calling bastards, may you inhabit a circle of hell reserved for musical theater, replete with campy props, wink-wink nudge-nudge humor, lavish orchestration, over-acting beyond Shatner, and an eternity of down-on-one-knee Jazz Hands.

I don't need you.

All I need is this thermos.

And this paddle.

And this chair.

And this ashtray.

I don't need you.

"We gotta go back." When he said, "Why?" I said, "We gotta gobecause I left my wallet in El Segundo."

Yesterday was a fabulous day, during which I managed to accomplish a whole lot of nothing. I read from three books: Diary, by Chuck Palahniuk, Sunset Limited, by James Lee Burke, and a reference book about bonds and bond markets, specifically, U.S. government debt. I can highly recommend the first two to anyone, with the caveat that Palahniuk can get weird with the best of them, but the last book is not for the faint of heart. In fact, I have omitted the author and title for your own protection.

I had on ESPN Classic for background noise, and they were showing Bird vs. Magic all day. It was fantastic. The short shorts, the cheesy moustaches, the clutch jumpers, the uncanny, how-did-he-do-that passes, Kareem being a whiny bitch, McHale brutally clotheslining Rambis, Worthy being better than I remembered and, best of all, Bird and Magic being Bird and Magic. My memory of their skills has faded through the Jordan-Shaq era, but they would have been superstars in any era.

It was great to watch. They just hated each other. You got the feeling they would be trying to rip each other's throats out to win, even if they were playing on a playground with nobody watching. I guess that is why the NBA has lost so many casual fans... the players don't seem to care about winning as much.

--

Earlier this weekend we went out for sushi. I thought all along that I loved sushi, but I realized that I don't even know if I like it. India asked me about the different kinds- yellowtail, ahi, crab, crawfish, shrimp- and which I liked best. I didn't know. I couldn't even really identify one from the other, and was unable to say with certainty what I had just eaten.

See, I can't say that I have actually tasted the sushi itself, because I always put an insanely large dollop of wasabi on each piece. The sushi exists only as a wasabi delivery vehicle, which metaphorically acts as a shotgun blast into my mouth, blowing off the back of my head. Seriously. I can feel it in the back of my head. My eyes water; I take deep breaths; I sweat; I wince with pain; I sit back in my chair and wonder why I did that. Then I do it again. It is really painful. But really good.

I could probably save a lot of money if I just slathered the incendiary, green goodness on rice, and skipped the sushi.
--
We watched The Jacket, with Adrien Brody, last night. It was really good. It was a trippy mystery about amnesia, murder, mental institutions, sadistic treatments and time travel(!). Netflix it. You won't regret it.

--
And, finally, by popular request, I leave you with some random hiking photos: