For That Hard to Buy for Woman

I first heard of this new gadget over on the Criminal Brief blog.

Yep, it is exactly what it looks like. A new, personal experience for the woman who REALLY gets INTO her music. I'm sure it is merely a coincidence that the thing is priced at $69. By the way it is called the OhMiBod and like Leigh Lundin, the blogger I found out about this from I can't think of a better song to play with it than the Beach Boys Good Vibrations. So what other songs would you guys suggest?

Guess It's Better Than Polka Dotted Penis

Would you eat this?

Yeah, me neither.

I spotted this fine product in a store called World Market which sales imported goods from all over the globe. They have everything from wine to bedding. But this one raised my brows and made me realize a few things.

1) No wonder the spotted owl is endangered. This harvesting program has to be brutal on their mating habits.

2) How many owl hootus's does it take to fill a can this size?

3)What is Heinz not selling enough ketchup these days?

Okay all fun aside the can says this is a sponge pudding with raisins and plums or something along that sort. Who knows, it might be good, but couldn't they have at least called it Spotted Richard?

So have any of you tried any spotted dick?

My Duct Tape War

Just thought I'd give you an update on my running battle with my coworker. I still haven't decided on what to do inside the locker but when I came in and found the lock on my locker duct taped I decided to fire back a bit.

I didn't start out with the intention of making my creation phallic of nature -- it just turned out that way. The protruding blue digit is the middle finger on a latex glove and it was very intentional. I should have taken pictures in stages. Inside the duct tape is a locking canister for a power plug. It is bolted together with a locking nut. Inside of that is a multi hasp lock with six bolts of varying sizes all with locking nuts. Through that is his lock which has about twenty zip ties on it. The best part of this is he will need tools to get inside. His tools are in a roll around toolbox which is locked. And where does he keep his key? In his locker.

If he gets in within thirty minutes, I'll consider him to be the second coming of Houdini. And that's after he borrows tools.

A Call To Arms

Okay, this is my plea for help, and since a know for a fact that a good many witty and devious souls visit this blog I figured this would be a perfect place to acquire a devilish scheme.

I work with a fellow who insists on playing one practical joke after another on me. Now I consider myself a pretty fair practical joker. I've always subscribed tot he idea of getting ahead rather than even, but currently I am losing the war. This fellow has added tot he name pained on my work locker. It did read ERWIN for my last name and he added the letters NEV to spell out never win.

He has used black electrical tape to cover the stripe on my time card so that I stood at the clock like an idiot trying to swipe my card. He has left numerous witty notes that have gotten more laughs and reaction than anything I have done so far. I have however procured the combination to his locker and I'd love to leave him a little surprise in their, but it has to be good. Any suggestions?

By the way I offer up a picture to prove that normally I win these battles. Several years ago I was taking a lot of heat from Texas Longhorn fans here ate work. They added horns to my roll around tool box. Left a variety of newspaper articles where I would find them, and so forth. But when they shoe polished my car and tied orange streamers and balloons to it I decided to show them what I was made of. Here is what I accomplished with a lawn mower and eighteen cans of red spray paint.

The N stood about sixteen foot high and was thirteen or fourteen foot wide. Before I painted it I scalped his grass as low as it would go so that he couldn't simply mow it off. I did this in broad daylight and the neighbor came out about halfway in and asked what I was doing. When I said making a Christmas decoration he simply shrugged, said don't get any on my yard, and went back into his house.

The guy who own this house watered heavily and raked the ares for over a week until you couldn't see the N anymore. This was mid December. Come spring he had provided so much car to the one area that he had a huge green N that did not blend in with the rest of the yard until mid summer. I also told him if he messed with me again I was going to climb on his roof and dump five hundred pounds of feed corn down his chimney. No one has shoe polished me since.

That's what I need now. The equivalent of that BIG RED N. So what y'all got?

A church where every woman has a smile.

This one is for Duck the founder of this here amalgamation. I have seen a few similar pics on his regular site.






I hope you can decipher the message, but if not this church sign reads -- TRAIN YOUR TONGUE TO OFFER COMFORT



I spotted this message while driving down a busy street. My wife missed it at first so I told her what it said as I circled back to snap this pic. She said. I'm sure they didn't mean it that way. I agree but still people need to think these things through ...



Or am I the only one whose mind hops right in the gutter on this one?

Show and Tell

Friday afternoon I came home to find this little critter crawling up the side of my house. So I did what ever good father should. Caught the thing stuck it in a five gallon bucket until I could round up a large jar. Then I sent it off with the kiddos for their show and tell.

For those of you who might not know this is a Texas Brown Tarantula. Long about this time of year they start migrating and are a fairly common sight if you live out in the boonies like me. Contrary to the myths they are fairly harmless, no worse than a bee sting unless you are allergic or something. They do not normally crawl up houses and such but we have had a lot of rain lately and I guess this one was sick of having wet feet. I hate when my feet get wet and I only have two.

Liar Liar, Pants on ...

Hello, my name is Travis and I make stuff up. I could have used a different word, but liar comes with such negative connotations, but isn't that what fiction authors do?

Lie for a living. Tell you fabulous, but totally made-up stories for your entertainment?

Now let me tell you first and foremost I call myself a writer, not an author because at this point I have yet to sell a single one of my novels.(But I will someday because I'm too stubborn to quit) I have this crazy notion that to actually be an author you must have a book with your name on the spin sitting on a shelf in some far, distant bookstore.

Now I have had a few short stories that have been accepted for publication including one I recently sold to an E-Zine. It will be available to read in November and I'll pass on details then. But my real goal is to be a novelist, so until I reach that point I am merely a writer.

So what does that mean? Being a writer? It means I miss a lot of sleep, I often talk to myself, at any given time I have half a dozen different voices whispering in my head, I spend lots of money on postage, printer ink, and paper. Also I have one gnarly, kick-ass collection of rejection letters.

But writing is my escape, I do not see it as tedious, laborious, or futile, and despite the constant questioning of well- meaning, but clueless friends who ask daily, "Have you sold you book yet?" I do not think my goal is futile. The process is slow and difficult and no one but fellow writers understand the entire business moves at glacial speeds.

I do have a few supportive non-writer friends but for the most part people are excited and a bit impressed when they first find out I write, then months later -- when they have yet to see my name on the New York Times Best Seller list, they say things like. Whatever happened to that book you wrote. Or Don't tell me you are still writing. But you don't have a thing to show for all that time and work?

But I'm not gonna focus on the negative today I'm going to talk about the positive side of writing. People think of it as an arduous task and really it's not. Over on my regular blog, One Word, One Rung, One Day, I try to make Thursdays my day to talk about the craft of writing, but I decided to pop on over here to this fine creation of Duck's and post it here instead.

First off, everyone is a writer, just most people never seek publication. Don't believe me? You say I've never written anything. To which I say, BULL! Everyone has a written a scene along these lines.

You're sitting there at work minding you own business, doing you job. Okay, maybe you are pretending to care about the new productivity numbers while scoping out that new hot chick(or dude if you prefer) they hired in accounting. Then your arch rival, Mr. Conceited catches you. And then he saunters over and laughs right in your face the says, "I saw you eyeballing the new babe. Well give it up retard because I already locked up a date with her this Friday." Then as the jackass is strutting away you say something lame like, "Like I care. I wasn't looking at her anyway."

Then the writer in you kicks in and all day long you rewrite the scene. You'll think, I should have said, "That's okay, I'll be busy with your momma come Friday night." and then you'll think about of a retort Mr. Conceited would have came back with. Then you'll add another witty line from yourself. By the end of the day you'll have an entire imaginary scene written out.

Am I wrong? Don't we all do this. Writing a novel is no different. Take a years worth of scenes, string them together and you got a novel.

Okay now you're gonna say but that's just adding to something that really happened. I could never just come up with something out of the blue. Again, I say BULL! But I've rambled enough for now, so you'll have to pop on over to my regular blog next Thursday if you want to hear my take on creating story ideas and sparking your inner muse. And if you like football, read my weekly, Tales of the Yellow Flag every Sunday. They are humorous, true stories about my time as a high school football ref here in Texas.

PS - Sorry Cher, no time for pictures today.