Saturday, May 30, 2009

Do you know Frank? (the answer is no)


You don't know Frank. If you think that you that you know Frank than your probably wrong because I don't think you do. Unlike you, I do know Frank. Frank is 82 years old (as he pointed out he is the opposite age of me 28). I know Frank from estate auctions. I've been going to auctions for 10 years and he has been going for, well, a lot longer than that. Frank and I talk a lot at auctions. 99% of the stuff sold is of no interest to either of us. Here is the story that he told me today.

"After the war I stayed in Japan for a while rebuilding stuff. I was in charge of 50 men. Every morning I would got to the Japaneses prison camp and pick 50 guys. They would all come out and stand in perfect lines and I would pick the ones I wanted. We had guards but we didn't even really need them. These were trustworthy guys. Some of them were just kids. You know the Japanese had kids fighting for them? They always wanted me to pick them for my group. You know why? Because they knew that I went fishin. Yep, every night I would steal a duck. You know what a duck is? It's one of those vehicles that can go on land or water. I don't know how they didn't hear me stealing that thing every night. It was huge, and loud. They had to have known. Anyhow, I would always take a few of the prisoners with me. We would take that thing out on the lake and throw in a stick of dynamite. Then, the guys would all jump out and get the fish. The dynamite usually killed the fish and they would float to the top. If their bladder bursts they start to sink so you have to be quick. We started off just using one stick but after a while we got up to using a whole case every night. We got a lot of fish that way. Those guys would be throwing fish up in the boat left and right. It was good fish."

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Cultural Differences

After talking to a couple of Brazilian girls I have discovered a few things. Here are my findings.

- In Brazil they speak Portuguese, not Brazilian or Spanish. In fact, there's no such language as Brazilian. (Portuguese is very close to Spanish though)
- Men do not get Brazilian waxing done, not even in Brazil. Well, perhaps gay men do but not straight men.
- In Brazil all of the women are beautiful. That's great for the guys who live there but not so great for the girls.
- Brazilian men are not to be trusted. American men are, well, no real difference there.
- In America everyone farts and belches whenever they like and all they have to do is say excuse me. In Brazil if you fart in public you will turn red and apologize. No one farts in public in Brazil.
- In Brazil a guy can live in his parents house is entire life and no one thinks that's strange. In America if a guy does that people think that there must be something wrong with him. (side note: My parents would not do well living in Brazil.)
- In Brazil people don't get married until their early 30s. In America your considered an old maid at 24. (This has led me to believe that I am in fact of Brazilian decent and not German like I had previously thought)

Vai chover?

Monday, May 18, 2009

Your Doing it Wrong!



Have you ever discovered that your doing something wrong? If you said no your lying. (either that or your God, a big shout out to God if he is reading my blog) I regress, have you ever discovered that your doing something incorrectly that you've been doing for a long period of time, like say your entire life? A few days ago I came to the realization that I may be walking incorrectly. I'm using both feet and I'm not dragging my knuckles so that part is correct. I do however have a tenancy to walk more on the sole of my foot and put almost no weight on the ball. When I'm standing still, more often than not, I stand only on the front part of my foot. It's almost like I'm always standing on my toes to get a better look at life. Its quite strange. So, I've been attempting to retrain myself to stand like a normal human being. Will it work? We shall see.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Why Do I Doubt?

It's very strange. I pray for things to happen and when they do my mind turns towards the physical and denies the supernatural. Perhaps it was just a coincidence, there's a logical explanation. I can always think of a logical explanation. The situation that comes to mind happened yesterday. For those of you who are unfamiliar with graphic design, let me give you a little bit of context for this miracle. In Photoshop you work with layers. Think of a bunch of transparencies with a different drawing on each one. When you put them all together you get a complete picture. Now, if you flatten an image in Photoshop you combine all of those layers into just one layer. Once you save that file your layers are lost forever. I flattened my image and I saved it and then realized that I needed to edit a layer. This is a terrible thing. I prayed that God would unflatten my image and wallah it was unflattened. I don't know how this happened but it did. So why is it that I try to explain this away? Why not just accept it at face value. It's a computer age miracle. God healed my file. Thanks God.