Took this in Little Italy. Can I get some free wifi here? Fuhgetaboutit.

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I think the title explains it all.

Generally I pride myself for having a high threshold of tolerance for many things in life that other people would normally make their pet peeves. Politics, however, is not one of them. Indeed, the mere suggestion of anything even remotely passing a positive remark about Captain Anus (otherwise known as Mmm Mmm MMMMM, Barack HUSSEIN Obama) would cause me to explode in a fiery violent rage that would put even the Incredible Hulk to shame.

I’m beyond discussing this crap now. These days, I would simply resort to violence as I quickly look around for a blunt instrument to beat you to a bloody pulp with just for having the AUDACITY of not sharing my political worldview. Besides, this stuff gets old in a hurry. Everyday the news could be summed up with “Obama creates yet another clusterboink guaranteeing the premature destruction of the United States.” Eventually it gets stale.

Look, I get it. We need to be diligent and continue to pressure and basically harass the scum sucking America-hating politicians until they either flee office or get their love biscuits handed to them in the next election. That’s why I vote and donate, and even plan to attend rallies (although that third part has more to do with finding like minded hot babes than supporting grass roots political movements.) But hey, I’m there aren’t I, and that’s all that matters.

But honestly, listening about how Obama continues to bend over like a willing goat for terrorists and abortionists and Pelosi and peopled named Ahmadinejadaadgeasdgddfd just gets stale after a while. I don’t want my blog to be a sounding board for everything that has gone wrong with this country, but rather a respite from all that. So if it seems like I am blissfully ignorant of today’s current events as I continue to blog about my everyday travels around the world with my teddy bear, I do so willingly with my head buried 6 feet deep into the sand.

But not only that, I suspect also that my readers need a respite as well. A place to get away from it all and laugh a little at my expense as I try to grope my way through the darkness that is life, and maybe read something that would also remind them of some of the reasons why this country still continues to be the greatest in the world (minus my home town of course.)

Tags: america, barack hussein obama, blog, pet peeves, politics, rage, respite, travel, travels, United States, worldview
Categories: Politics and Poker
 
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Yesterday was my last day off before I had to head back to work, so I decided to make the most of it by doing a relaxing afternoon of geocaching. First one I found was at a park where I once worked as a camp counselor, bringing back fond memories of getting jumped and beaten by a bunch of 10 year old snotheads 5 days a week. Ah yes, memories.

The next one was hidden in a what used to be a creek, long since dried up. The area was now a public plot of land that cut through an entire neighborhood and eventually ended at the grounds of a local high school. After checking the coordinates and looking around for a few minutes, I finally located the hidden cache at the guardrail that separated the park from one of the streets. It was a perfect day, the sun shining and warm enough that no jacket was needed. I felt myself relaxing and enjoying the good weather as I opened up the cache to sign the logbook.

Suddenly, a whale mountain of a hag beast Dede Scozzafava lookalike materializes out of nowhere.

“EXCUSE ME, DO YOU WORK FOR THE TOWN?

“Me? No, just taking a walk here, enjoying the weather.”

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, ARE YOU SCOPING OUT MY HOUSE?? WHAT DID YOU PUT IN THAT GUARDRAIL???”

“Um, no, I’m not scoping anything. Don’t worry about this either, it’s just a geocache.”

“A WHAT? WHAT IS THAT?”

I cheerily explained the concept of geocaching to her. “It’s like a box that contains little trinkets and a logbook. People hide them all over the world, post the coordinates to them online, and then you use a GPS to find it. Sort of like a hi-tech treasure hunt. It’s really fun.”

She didn’t say anything much after that, and went back into a house nearby, so I thought that was pretty much the end of that. I signed the log and went to return the cache.

Then the land whale materializes again.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE??”

I tried to explain geocaching again a few more times, including how you use a GPS device to find caches.

“I DON’T WANT THAT THING HERE. TAKE IT WITH YOU NOW.”

“I don’t think I’m allowed to take it, but I can let the owner know if you feel really uncomfortable about it…”

“THEY’RE SPYING ON US, ELLE!!!” She yelled out to someone apparently standing at the door of the house nearby.

“WHO DO YOU WORK FOR???” The lady apparently named Elle yelled out to me.

I explained who I worked for, which in hindsight I’m thinking was probably a mistake. Because when you combine GPS, satellites, and then the revelation that you work for a government agency, that’s not really a good combo to have when trying to explain a harmless pastime to someone, who for all attempts and purposes was acting like a paranoid schizophrenic.

“Look I have an ID here if you’re that concerned, but I really think you’re overre…”

“IDs CAN BE FALSIFIED. I CAN MAKE A FAKE ID TOO WITH MY PRINTER! I WANT THAT OUT OF HERE NOW!!”

“YOU PUT THAT THERE DIDN’T YOU!? ISN’T THAT A TRACKER??”

“Err no, it’s just a simple keyholder with a logbook inside.” I showed it to her.

Soon another neighbor walking her dog passed by and stopped to see what the commotion was about. It wasn’t 30 seconds before she started glaring at me as well like I was Ted Bundy reincarnated.

“Should we call the police?” She casually suggested. “It looks like he’s littering so they could arrest him for that.”

“I am not littering. And I don’t think I’m on private property either. This area here is a public area right?

“IT DOESN’T MATTER, I CAN SEE YOU FROM MY HOUSE!”

“YOU TAKE THAT THING WITH YOU, AND I DON’T EVER WANT TO SEE YOUR FACE AGAIN, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?? I SWEAR IF I SEE YOU HERE AGAIN I WILL GET MY SHOTGUN AND BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF! GET THE #%^$ OUT OF HERE NOW!”

“Ok, can I still take a walk in the pa– you know I think I’ll just leave now.”

I quickly walked back to my car, looking over my shoulder every now and then to see if she was in fact going to go back into the house to get her shotgun. Suddenly there were neighbors everywhere, all murmuring and staring at me like I had just landed here from Mars. They continued to glare at me with steely eyes of raging, foaming hatred. I had never seen anything quite like it.

I still had the cache with me, but no way was I putting it back now. I got out of there fast. Afterwards, I pulled into another section of the park area far away from Miss Nightmare on Elm Street, and hid the cache in a guardrail there.

Once upon a time I had gone to school here (not by choice), and I had always known something was just a little “off” with the locals, which is why I minimized any contact with them. They just weren’t… rational, ya know? But I never realized just how bad it really was until now. To be treated like a criminal and have my life threatened, this despite the fact that I was in a PUBLIC park and was parked legally, and so, what, I’m a threat because she saw me from her house from 50 yards away? Seriously? And then to talk about calling the police and working out how they can get me arrested WHILE I’M STANDING RIGHT THERE?

You know, even now I still have a naivete when it comes to befriending people in real life. I always think once I explain things and show I’m not a threat to them, they learn to relax around me. You would think logic and common sense would prevail in the end, right? Well…

The irony of it is that I when I had gone geocaching in Pennsylvania, people had warned of a similar scenario about a cache hidden at another local park there, and how if you parked on the street, one of the neighbors would have a fit and tell you off for parking in front of his house.

But see, that actually makes sense in a way. Here, I’m not merely parking in front of a house to the chagrin of the homeowner. No, I’m actually an agent for the government looking to place a tracking bug in a guardrail so the aliens can come later to murder you in your sleep. Because see, that just makes so much more sense.

Honestly, the more I travel, the more I realize just how badly growing up here had adversely affected the way I see people. I notice everyone around me is batty cracknuts out of their minds, and I assume that’s just how it is everywhere. People are paranoid, hostile, and will spit in your face just for daring to pollute their existence. They will be friendly one day and then come after you with knives the very next. In fact, I’m pretty certain that if I came back to that same place this weekend, they would all be quite friendly to me. Although, I think I’ll refrain from putting that theory to the test.

I should have paid attention when I took psychology at one of the local colleges here, and the professor mentioned that we had one of the highest ratio of mental hospitals than anywhere else in the country.

Now I know why.

Tags: camp counselor, geocache, geocaching, gps, neighbor, neighbors, parked, parking, Pennsylvania, world
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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So yesterday I took a trip to Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown for the day. Why you ask? Because I just like to do stupid, random crap for no particular reason at all. Plus I hear the babes like that sort of thing, so consider this my way of practicing.

My first stop was at a local park that offered a magnificent view of the Tappan Zee Bridge. They had an awesome boardwalk literally next to the Hudson River, making for a lovely and quiet morning walk. That is, it would have been a lovely walk had I not run into this:

Yep, that pretty much sums up my life.

I could have hopped the fence, but this was me we’re talking about. Anybody else, they’d do it, have a smoke and a beer on the boardwalk and be none the wiser. I do it, and 15 minutes later I’ll be calling Mommy in a state of panic because I’m only allowed to make one phone call.

Still, I managed to get some purdy shots off where I could:

The awesomest thing was finding a… cherry tree? I think that’s what it was, but it was a tree unlike any tree I had seen before:

Mmm, now to find a tree that grows the Reddit Whip.

Next stop: The cemetery! I hadn’t realized it, but Washington Irving was buried here after all. I got to see the Irving family plot, and his original grave too:

Dude, seriously, could you stop throwing change at me? I'm not a wishing well.

We chatted for a while, and Irvie provided some helpful tips to improve my writing. Try as I might though, I couldn’t get him to understand the concept of blogging. Ah well. I paid my respects and moved on, eventually discovering Andrew Carnegie’s grave:

Ironically, Carnegie's grave here is just a stone's throw away from Samuel Gomper's, the founder of the American Federation of Labor.

Not sure he liked the idea of a unionized worker prancing around on his grave though, so conversation was minimal at best.

I have to admit this was an interesting and pretty cemetery. Lots of picturesque views to be found here, but then of course, my hated arch-nemesis that is poison ivy just HAD to go and announce its presence much to my chagrin:

*Shudder* Good grief, they were EVERYWHERE, vines jetting out wherever I walked, like willowy arms stretching forth from the very bowels of hell itself, reaching out to pull me into its itchy darkness from whence there is no return.

I tried to put those thoughts behind me though, and drove around again until I came across Rockefeller’s grave, a mausoleum bigger than even the biggest house I’ve ever lived in:

Look at meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

This was actually William Rockefeller, the younger brother of John D. Rockefeller. He was supposed to be the nice one from what I heard. Still, this mausoleum was arguably the biggest one in the entire cemetery, roughly in the middle and on top of the highest hill, so that Willie can continue to lord over all, even in death. And… the mausoleum was locked too. Dweeb.

I moved on and eventually discovered even William Chrysler was interred here:

Would this be a bad time to tell you I drive a Hyundai?

I was nice enough to spare him the gory details of what’s been happening with his company lately, but I couldn’t resist telling him I drive a foreign SUV.

All in all a fascinating cemetery, with some humor here and there to boot:

Now there's an appropriate name.

Whoa... bad omen, dude.

I then moved on to another nearby park, offering even more magnificent views of the Hudson and some rare trees as well. While I was walking I happened to notice this one atop a hill, which stuck out like a sore thumb because it was the only white birch tree around:

Ok, yeah, so I'm white. You got a problem with that?

And what’s Sleepy Hollow without its trees too? This was another one of the rare specimens I’ve found, again a tree unlike any tree I had seen before:

You were awesome in Lord of the Rings by the way.

It provided an umbrella covering and almost felt like you were walking around in a room instead of around a tree. Really beautiful, the kind of scenery that made me wished for a minute that there had been a special girl right there with me to share a romantic moment with, and some side order of playing suck face too. Ah well.

Eventually I turned back and went into town, getting pizza, a coke (and this came in the traditional hourglass bottle too!) before moving on for a “quick” half mile hike into the woods.

Sometimes I wish I were hiking on a yellow brick road instead.

That actually wasn’t too bad.. until it started going up a steep incline. After gasping for breath and sweating even from my eyeballs, the ground finally leveled off for a bit. Then I saw some movement in the bushes and just about had a heart attack. Coyotes! The Headless Horseman! OMG ImgonnadieImgonnadieImgonnadie!!!!

But no, it was a deer. Whoooooooooo…

It just kind of looked at me curiously, then started prancing around. I was too tired to prance along with it, so I just kept going. Then I saw more movement: a figure shaped much like a velociraptor from the movie Jurassic park. What the…

Then again… fast as lightning, circling around me. Ok dude, seriously, I’m not cool with this. Deer I can handle, but I, sir, am an urbanite, and my idea of the great outdoors involves nothing more than an outside table at Starbucks. I mean people do this for FUN? Really? Camping amongst poison ivy and deer ticks and coyotes and little baby raptors running around waiting to sink their teeth into me and eat my face off?

More movement, and then a strange gurgling sound. WHAT IS THAT!??!?

Then I finally recognized it: wild turkeys. Not baby raptors ready to gnaw my face off, just a few scared turkeys jutting around me.

Whooooooooooooooo… Breathe boy, breathe…

By this time it was starting to get dark, and even though I was dead tired from the half-mile hike, I suddenly found I had more than enough energy to run like a thief in the night back to the parking lot, convinced that after the deers and the turkeys, the coyotes would soon follow, and THAT was not something I wanted to see right now.

Day quickly became night as I arrived back at the parking lot, hugging my car like a long lost friend.

Well! That was fun! Let’s do that again, like say, never? Well maybe I will try it again, if I had certain… motivational incentive to do so…

Tags: cemetery, death, deer, graves, hiking, park, poison ivy, sleepy hollow, tarrytown, tombstones, town, trail, trees, wild turkeys, willow
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Hanging out here in White Plains to wait out the bad traffic.

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