Shawn's (Highly) Motivated Life

Batty: Its not an easy thing to meet your maker.
Tyrel: And what can he do for you?
Batty: Can the maker repair what he makes?
Tyrel: Would you.. like to be modified?
Batty: Had in mind something a little more radical.
Tyrel: What.. what seems to be the problem?
Batty: .... Death
Tyrel: Death, well I'm afraid that’s a little out of my jurisdiction you-
Batty: I want more life, fucker
Tyrel: ... The facts of life,....but uhh, this, all of this is, academic. You were made as well as we could make you.
Batty: But not to last.
Tyrel: The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and you have burned to very very brightly Roy....
Batty: I've done, questionable things-
Tyrel: -also extraordinary things, reviled in your time.
Batty: Nothing the God of Biomechanics wouldn't let you into Heaven for

If it ain't live it ain't me
I'm too def to move a step, too shy to slip or slide
I'm too hard to fall apart, I'm too cold to get old
I'm too hip to drip
I'm too man to try to handle
I'm too bad and loaded for you to hold m'
Too tight to out-write, too strong to out-song, too much to out-bust
I'll talk shit and cuss, foul-dog rimp and duck and walk the walk: talk shit and crush
The paper towels and toilet tissue, start your engine set the table
Clean your plate and wash the dishes
Can I please get a sauce cup?

Thanks Michael Tyler aka Mystikal for keeping me motivated.

From fluffymcdeath:

Bye Bye Blue-fin.

My announcement is premature but perhaps not by much. Up until a couple of months ago the blame was on fishing and particularly Malta. With the blue-fin getting rarer and the price for a fish up around a third of a million bucks it would hard to imagine that fishermen would stop going after this lucrative prey.

However, it seems that BP will strike the final blow. Giant underwater dispersant and oil plumes are creating huge dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and ... that's where blue-fin tuna spawn - and it's the ONLY place they spawn.

So go buy a couple of tins and put them away somewhere cool and maybe in 50 years or so we can try to recreate the blue-fin from canned DNA - or just eat it when you get tired of soylent green.

I made it as far as Bermuda. A little further actually, flying on an almost brand new aircraft- a Boeing 777- across the Atlantic. It's been a busy two weeks for me, with friends and family in Murka, and I was looking forward to getting back to Bavaria, taking the weekend to catch the jetlag, and relax. Hefeweizen and some Playstation, maybe a drive in the south German spring.

Instead at about 11pm eastern the pilot came over the intercom and told us why we were taking that hard, hard right: back to Atlanta. We were three hours away, at the decision point, the last flight in the entire world to be cancelled. It took nearly five hours to cover the lost ground, over the heart of the Bermuda Triangle.

Three in the morning and we're the first off a bus at a strange hotel with a worthless "voucher" in hand, a Skyteam t-shirt and a best of luck with an 800 number that called nowhere.

I don't know where I'm gonna go when the volcano blows. Twenty-four hours later, and I'm still watching the ash cloud.

Shoot straight. Drive on.

I suppose that writing is like everything else: it's not something that you are really supposed to think about. By doing it repeatedly you learn how to do it on command; and since I haven't done it lately, it's a bit difficult for me.

As much as I'd like to say some cool and profound shit about my upcoming participation in the Battle of Kandahar, I really don't have much for words. I'm torn on the entire thing. I like my life here, and I love being with my wife. And I really, really don't want to get shot in the face-- it's been a few trips now, and I think I'm pushing it.

Kandahar though. It's the center of it all. The eye of the whole damn thing. It's where the Russians were broken. What a great opportunity...I can't wait to start counting coup on these guys. It's almost as if the entire war so far built up to this moment (when really it was just complete ineptitude and lack of focus or setting of concrete goals), and shukur khodai, I get to be there for the Main Effort. As tired as I am of these seemingly endless campaigns, it's hard--as a warrior--not to be excited about this chance to get involved.

At my age and rapidly deteriorating health, it feels like this may be the last time I get in the saddle. Time to ride.

Shoot straight. Drive on.

The Germans and the Russians have a lot of bad blood, but they decided to bury the hatchet, or at least call a Christmas truce.

And now I have some Russian Vodka.

saltdawg wish you were here.

Saw in the newspaper this morning that the census worker found hanged a few weeks (months?) back with a sign around his neck that said "FED" and his govmint ID taped to his neck was actually a suicide!

Also, we're on our way to Tuscany.

Shoot straight. Drive on.

The other day at lunch I was burning my precious spare time reading Tell Me How This Ends in our furniture store. Nearly forty pages focus on Companies A and C of what was the First of the Twenty-Sixth Infantry. Ms. Robinson uses the Blue Spaders to tell the story of the Battle of Baghdad in 2006-2007 because Adhamiyah was the center of the storm.

I really thought that I had that burning Bradley out of my mind. It's really odd to read about it in a book. See peoples' names in print, and quotations of the people that were there. Chaos and dust and fire, and arguments, and some men screaming for vengeance. Zike about to roll on the ground with our boss, right out there in front of the locals and the troops. And that exhausted quiet of those guys that had it happen to them just a few weeks before. The whole goddamn vehicle, and a weird rhetorical question: Would you rather be burned beyond recognition or turned into a pile of unrecognizable body parts?

I mean fuck, we have to stay here until the damned thing stops burning. And how did I ever get to the point that I can look at my friends and comrades like that and just see pieces of meat?

Shoot straight. Drive on.