They Don't Call it the High Country for Nothing

When I lived in Breckenridge, the diviest dive bar in town was a ramshackle, crooked old barn (it was, literally, an old barn, and it was, literally crooked. If you stood across the street and face it, the entire building had a noticeable list.) called Seamus O'Toole's. It was dark, it smelled bad, the regulars had about seven teeth between them, and it was one of two bars in town where you could go in during ski season and not have to be polite to tourists.

The downside of living in a town whose economic engine is powered by tourism is that you have to interact with tourists. At least in a ski town you only have to do it for four or five months of the year.

Thus, Seamus's.

On Friday nights during happy hour, the bar would be crowded with locals pounding Coors Lights (to drink aything else was heresy), until about 7:30. Around that time, a guy on a giant Harley would roar up to the bar, stroll in, look around, and stroll back out. Ever so slowly, the regulars and locals would follow him out the door, like an ebb tide, until you noticed that the bar was practically empty.

That guy, come "up the hill" on his hog, was of course their dealer. Duh. It took me a few visits to realize.this.

Now I read this -- that poky (in the off season), pop 3000 Breckenridge might legalize pot!

Think of the boom this would bring to their economy. It could be locally grown (though I don't know if marijuana will grow at 9500 feet), packaged, and taxed. Breckenridge would become a little American Amsterdam.

When I was there Breck had the biggest halfpipe in the world; legalizing pot would make it even more of a snowboarders' mecca. Not to mention a year-round destination or relocation spot for people who need medical marijuana to treat their "anxiety" yet who don't want to live in the Land of Douchebaggery (aka LA).

I may need to move back, even though sadly, Seamus's was sold in 2002 to some local community theater group.

Humming John Denver now...

Look at This

The creationist wackadoos who go to that museum that has the dinosaurs with saddles can flap their gums all they want, but if this photo isn't evidence that we are far closer to apes than something divine, I don't know what is.




To read the story of this amazing photo, go here.

And if it doesn't bring tears to your eyes, you are one stone-cold son of a bitch.

You Tell Me Which is More Terrifying

I'm feeling a little better today. Sometimes all you need is a good cry to clean out the plumbing. I don't, however, recommend reading about Baxter the dog if you're feeling the least bit emotionally fragile. Don't Google! I swear, don't do it!

Have you ever played "Which Would You Rather?" If you ever spent any time in a dorm room at college drinking beer out of a beer ball and smoking weed from a Coke-can bong, you probably have. It's one of those stupid stoner games in which you ask someone to choose between two distasteful yet unrelated things. "Which would you rather? Be trapped alone on a desert island forever? Or have two-inch legs?"

Today's "WWYR?" comes to us courtesy of Delta airlines.

Which would you rather? Book a flight on which the two pilots either get distracted or fall asleep and somehow manage to "wander" 150 miles off course, losing radio contact with ATC for nearly an HOUR AND A HALF, causing them to call the pilots of other planes to ask them to try and raise them on the radio, and finally leading the FAA to consider scrambling fighter jets to intercept, or...

Would you rather book a flight from Brazil to Atlanta on which a member of the flight crew becomes ill, and in the resulting cockpit cleanup the rest of the crew misses the runway altogether and lands the plane ON A TAXIWAY?

Both true stories. Read about them both here.

There are so many levels of scary here I don't know where to start. Didn't the flight attendants on the wandering plane wonder what was going on? What about the passengers? Why did it take the FAA so long to even think about srambling jets for a plane that had gone silent for 78 minutes? Does anyone in that agency remember what happened eight years ago when they were caught flatfooted when a bunch of planes went missing? And what about the people on the flight from Brazil? What did they think when an incapacitated navigator or first officer was brought into the main cabin? Did the guys in the Hartsfield tower totally shit themselves as they watched that 757 land in the wrong place, then immediately become believers because there were no other planes on that taxiway?

Note to self: don't fly Delta. Clearly their financial problems are causing some serious trickle-down shit.

Weltschmertz

Isn't it a great word? I'm not sure why I like it so much. Maybe because it so perfectly captures a state of mind in a way that no pedestrian English word can. The German language does have a couple of good words after all (one of my other no-equal-in-English favorites is "schadenfreude").

World sadness.

Perfect for me right now. Maybe it's all this economic uncertainty, or residual jetlag and exhaustion from a nine-day business trip. Maybe it's that I just can't believe that it's been two years since Dad died and I still sometimes feel so terribly sad. Maybe it's because I'm waiting and watching for my old cat to curl up one day and just let go at last (I can't even think about having to make the last ride to Dr. Felton with the Sherpa bag without crying. Poor old man. I can tell myself he's had a good life -- no, he's had a GREAT life -- but that doesn't stop me from being sad when I watch his bony blind self bumping along the furniture to get to the food bowl. What will be worse -- having him go to sleep one day and let go, or having to appoint myself the Mambo Death Panel and put him to sleep? Put ME to sleep, please.)

This will pass, it always does, but for now I think I just need to go through it to come out the other side. I was thinking today -- what must life be like for people who feel like this all the time?

One more thing about the word: I also really, really like it because it's the only word I've ever seen with six consonants in a row.

Oh, no they dih-int!

Really, South Carolina Republicans? Did you really go there?

Next up, John Boehner compliments that boy in the White House for being articulate and clean.

Oh, wait, Biden already did that.