How did you celebrate Valentine's Day?
Submitted by Stephen.

I went to the framing shop my sister works at to have a lithograph framed. The lithograph? It's a signed and numbered litho of the painting featured in this video:

I remember watching a replay of Evil Knievel's Caesar's Palace jump when I was a young boy. Even though he ended up a crumpled heap with a multitude of broken bones and a 29 day coma, all I could think of was "Cooool! Mom! When can I have a motorcycle?" Needless to say my mother never bought me a motorcycle, or a mini-bike, or anything with a motor in it for that matter. In fact, when she did buy me a bicycle, it was the two wheeled equivalent of an armored vehicle, and I'm sure it was her way of trying to keep those two wheels on the ground.

It didn't work. As soon as I figured out how to make a ramp it was over. That 60 pound wonder of a bike could get off the ground if you got it going fast enough. I have vivid memories of me and my friends sitting outside my grandparents house waiting turns to launch our fragile young bodies into the air. You also have to remember that this was before all of those new fancy BMX type bikes that those crazy X Games riders ride. No. no, no. We had bikes with banana seats. Seats that if you landed wrong, well, let's just say you'd be lucky to ever be able to have kids. Did that stop us. Hell no. We'd continue to launch ourselves in to the air with all of the aplomb of a gymnastics troop.

I remember the day that I not only got grounded from riding my bike, but also the day that ramp jumping was made illegal in front of my grandparents house (upheld by the mother police). Somehow I had convinced my younger cousin to lay in front of the ramp. A darwin award situation if ever there was one. I cleared her with not so much as a scratch on either of us. What I didn't plan on was my mother and my aunt coming around the corner from grocery shopping just as I had launched into the air. I landed, my cousin jumped up, and it was all over from that point. I got chastised for being stupid enough to try a stunt like that, and my cousin got chastised for being dumb enough to lay in front of the ramp. When I thought about it I felt bad, but I also remember that adrenaline rush. I knew why Evel Knievel did the crazy stuff he did. I knew why he launched himself into the air.

Here's to the man that taught me to take some chances to do some crazy stuff. Wherever you are, I hope they have some sweet jumps there.

What's your musical horoscope?  (Put your player on shuffle and write down the first 10 songs that come up.) 

1) Falling in Space - God Module
2) The Hand That Feeds - Nine Inch Nails
3) Plans - Bloc Party
4) Binary Love - The Rakes
5) The Gonk (remix) - Kid Koala/The Noveltones
6) Eye Over You - Haujobb
7) Napoli - Clive Langer
8) Keep Us Together - Starsailor
9) Swollen Summer - The Bravery
10) Bela Lugosi's Dead - Bauhaus

Um...what type of horoscope is that?

Ringtones: What's yours and how often do you change it? 
Submitted by enrico.  

All Cats Are Gray - The Cure

The only other thing it gets changed to is vibrate.

I don't know if it was Ray's post about Fuzzbox, or Lilia's post about Strawberry Switchblade, but all I could think about was Haysi Fantayzee. Enjoy.

A post about the environment? Hmm. I do my share to lower my damage to the environment. Such as: Installing energy efficient bulbs in all my light fixtures, recycling everything that our city will accept, a fuel efficient automobile, using cat litter that is more biodegradable than the average clay litter, and many other things. However, instead of patting myself on the back of what I do and what everyone should do for that matter, my posting is about a memory from my childhood that made me look at our environment in a whole new light.

When I was a gangly kid my family would go to a lodge in the White Mountains of Arizona every summer. Beaver's Head Lodge was the name, and it was traditional log cabins set back off the road, smack dab in the middle of the forest. It was like something off of a postcard, complete with a pond to fish in, an eccentric family that owned it, and a mean horse to scare the crap out of you. My cousins, the children of other lodgers, and myself spent many a summer wandering through the surrounding forest enjoying mother nature and doing what kids did before the invention of cable TV and video games.

The one thing that wasn't so great in that setting was the fishing, and that's just what my Grandfather wanted to do with his time at the lodge. We traveled all over the area to some of the larger lakes, but he always hated dealing with all the other fishermen. He was always on the lookout for "The Spot". The one place that had fish jumping right into your lap, or at least always biting. One year the lodge owner told him of a fishing hole that was just that. It was off of an old logging road, but he promised that it would be everything he was looking for.

The next day, my cousins and I piled all the fishing gear into the VW my Grandfather always drove, and we headed for the illusive fishing mecca. I can still remember the drive, and holding on for dear life down the roller coaster drops of the logging road. I'm sure I was scared as hell, but my cousins and I could not stop laughing. All of a sudden we leveled off and my Grandpa said "Here we are." We stepped out of the VW into a picturesque setting straight out of a movie. An undisturbed small pond with tree line all the way up to the banks, and not a soul in sight. My Grandpa was a little apprehensive. How could there be fish in a pond this secluded? Did the Forestry Service even stock this pond? The only way to find out was to set up the gear and start fishing.

I had never caught a fish in my life. I used to go out with my Grandpa just to spend the time with him and my family. My Grandpa caught fish all the time, and I had just written it off that fish could tell my line from his. So, I cast out my line, sat in my folding chair, and prepared to be sitting there for the rest of the day listening to my Grandpa tell tales from his childhood. I don't think 5 minutes went by when my pole jerked, and my line started feeding out. I looked at my Grandpa with a "What the hell?" expression, and he told me if I didn't start reeling it in, that fish was getting away. With some coaching from my Grandpa, and some perseverance, I caught my first fish. It was a beautiful rainbow trout, and after that fishing was different. Instead of sitting watching my Grandpa fish, I was fishing right along with him. In fact, in a matter of two hours we caught our limit, even my six year old cousin. My Grandpa dubbed the little pond "Our Secret", and we packed up the car and went back to the lodge to have a delicious trout dinner, and my Grandfather made sure the lodge owners were there since it was because of them we had all these fish.

That went on for four summers, and every year the little pond looked exactly how we left it, and that was one thing my Grandfather taught us: Leave nature the way you left it. Treat nature with respect and it will be there for you to enjoy. Every time we went to the little pond every piece of trash went back with us. On the fifth summer the lodge owner notified us that the state was taking back the land that the lodge resided on, and it was the last summer that we could spend there. I was crushed. I had hoped to spend summers there for the rest of my life, but that was not the crushing blow that would ruin our trip.

Since this was to be our last summer at the lodge we decided to make our trip to "Our Secret" a little early so we could spend the rest of our time enjoying the lodge for one last summer. My cousins and I packed the car the night before in anticipation, and the next day there we were again, holding on for dear life and laughing the entire time. When we rolled into "Our Secret" I knew something was wrong. I could tell by the smell. Our little pond always had that "foresty" smell. Trees, dirt, and water. Now, it smelled like a garage, oily and acidic. My youngest cousin, now 11, pointed to the middle of the pond. Floating in the middle of the pond was an old refrigerator. In fact, we started to notice that there was garbage all around the banks of the pond. The pond's surface had changed from one that I used to watch the sky's reflection in, to one that was covered in thick sheets of green algae. What thoroughly turned my stomach was the fish. There were numerous fish floating dead in the water. What was once a picture postcard had become the textbook example of illegal dumping. We all sat there staring at the pond and after a while my Grandfather told us to get back in the car. We rode back to the lodge in silence.

When we returned my Grandfather went to the lodge owner to get the number for the Forestry service. For the next hour or so my Grandfather chewed the ear off of everyone he spoke to about the illegal dumping that had destroyed the pond. He was promised many a time that someone would look into it. The event overshadowed the rest of our trip.

The next year we went camping, and my Grandfather and I decide to go back to the pond to see if anything had been done. The road to the pond had been gated off so we hiked up the road to see what, if anything, had been done. The garbage had mostly been removed except for a pile that looked like it would soon be taken away. The pond was even more overgrown now, so green it almost looked more like a swamp than a pond. We reminisced for a moment and then we made our way back to the car. On our way back a Forestry ranger was walking up the trail towards us. He asked rather gruffly what we were doing, and my Grandfather explained the situation. The ranger told my Grandfather that he had been one of the unfortunate enough to receive an ear chewing from him, and that he was overseeing the clean up of the pond. My Grandpa, being a doctor of agriculture, stated the obvious, "That pond is never going to be the same again." The ranger shook his head in agreement and walked with us back to the VW bug that had taken us there so many times before. My Grandfather and I drove back to our new campsite, and we never went back to "Our Secret".

As I look back on this story I'm sure it's not the pleasant tale that most may expect of "Blog Action Day". However, I see this story as a reminder of what we as a community, a society, a planet, need to do to make sure that we have a healthy, clean, environment to live in. This planet we live on may seem gigantic to some, but when it really comes down to it it's not that big a place, and many of those that are living on it are taking for granted that it will be here in it's current state until the end of time. The reality is pretty clear, if we as a society don't change the way we live, and in turn encourage change to our society as a whole, our planet will not be a healthy and clean place to live.

"Halo 3" was released this week - did you get a copy?  What are your early thoughts on this final installment of the blockbuster trilogy?

Halo

Audio: Share what you're listening to right now.

Here are the two extremes I've been listening to recently:

1) LOUD. Trust me, you may want to turn your speakers down a notch. Or two.

To Fix The Gash In Your Head

A Place To Bury Strangers

1 comment

2) Not so loud.

I'm On Fire

Bat For Lashes

You're the DJ: what are the next five songs coming up after the break?

Let's see. What have I been listening to?

1. Battles - Tonto
2. A Place to Bury Strangers - To Fix the Gash in Your Head
3. Underworld - Dark and Long
4. Combichrist - Without Emotions
5. Ministry - Scarecrow

That should get me banned from the airways for a while. Although, if I ran radio, there would be no "after the break".