Satan’s Garden

Cobert clearing the confusion.

This is simply painful. Just painful.

I wonder if her mom drives an SUV here in Utah.

It finally happened. I have finally witnessed the most unbelievable display of ass-hat driving that I could have possibly imagined. Oh, I can certainly ponder a slew of slapstick automotive events which could grace the filler of a Jackie Chan film, but what I’m referring to here was real. Very real. Yet, unbelievable.

In short: as I was riding up the mountain on my way home the other night (quietly snickering at the fact that my GoldWing still had acceleration going up a mountain side, nearly as much as on the flats) when I rounded a corner and spotted an SUV, facing the wrong way on the opposite lane of the road. Note, I said “facing” the wrong way, not traveling the wrong way. The vehicle was traveling in the correct direction for the side of the street it was on, it was just facing the wrong direction at the time.

Though not at great risk of being hit, I swerved far to the right as I went past and took a peek inside the vehicle. A dark haired woman was in the driver seat. She was talking on her cellphone while gesticulating with the other hand. As she was talking she was looking at herself in the center mirror from a distance of a foot or so, either inspecting her makeup or counting pores. In any case, her attention was on anything but driving. Dumb as a rock, that one.

I rode past and tallied up the score: this woman was rolling down a mountainside in an SUV, backwards, no brake lights on and accelerating, paying attention to her phone and her face, but oblivious to the road. Easily 100 points out of 100 for stupidity, with 20 extra credit points for being totally ignorant of the situation. I crap smarter than this.

I rounded the next corner and lost sight of her. I was tempted to turn around, but I was actually worried that I might get hurt in her spasms of attempted correction. Better to hear about it on the radio than to be part of it.

I saw no signs of an accident at the bottom of that run when I went into work this morning. I would hazard a guess that she became aware of the fact that she was rolling backwards down the mountain at some point during her phone conversation and took steps to correct the situation. I have to wonder which side of the road she was on when this happened.

I’ve talked about it a few times in this blog and I’m sure many readers are sick of it: but I feel it is my civic duty to warn outsiders about the dangerous conditions in Utah. Seriously, I’d rather take my chances in the desert without water for a week, or the flash flooding through the slot canyons during the rainy season, than to challenge the overwhelming stupidity of the average Utah driver.

If you’re visiting Utah, consider yourself warned.

The World of Warcraft clans are probably well aware of this site, but it was my youngest who pointed it out to me. He knows I’m a fan of comic and anime art, and an old D&D player, so the theme of the comic would fit into my interests.

There are a handful of somewhat stereotypical characters, in a somewhat stereotypical plot at times. For me, it’s the noble, honest and good hearted efforts of the character named Richard, which appeals the most. After all, anyone who dedicates their ambitions for the honor of ponies is hard to dislike. Plus, he has a way with children.

Check out Looking for Group if you have some time and a few trolls to kill.

I caught an episode of Nova on PBS tonight concerning Irish bog bodies and it had me a little more than irritated with the lack of logic I saw with various explanations as to the how’s and why’s.

Here’s what we know from the hard evidence at hand: the bodies found were of well to do individuals, who had manicured nails, styled hair, a good diet and other signs of wealth. They were found almost void of clothing. A few trinkets were found near the bodies, but not much. The bodies showed signs of torture and brutal deaths - from garrot strangulation, to an ax in the face while the victim was kneeling. One even showed signs of a knife wound to the chest that he tried to prevent with his arm, which was wounded in the process. The bodies showed signs of having been staked down in the bog with plant bindings, as not to float. Some of the bodies were hacked apart first, then staked down in the bog.

That’s the hard evidence we have. The soft evidence backing up various theories presented include some medieval writings (centuries after the fact) describing religious rituals and some work from Tacitus, speaking of various religious practices of the Celts. However, none of this soft evidence, this hearsay, has any backing by the hard evidence found.

In spite of this, the theories postulated by the various investigators on this show, all surrounded unproved ideas that the Celts viewed the bogs as a limbo between the after-world and the living world. (Not even Tacitus spoke of this, so I have no clue where they got this romantic crap from.) Theories of ritual torture and sacrifice of the the wealthy as a spiritual offering for the good of the tribe abound. It was a ritual to appease the gods. It was a ritual to bring good crops. It was part of a festival held in the region. On and on and blather and blather. Druid this and Celtic that. No evidence actually supports any of these postulations, but its the conjecture of the hour, repeated over and over again.

I have another theory about these bog bodies and I’m going to use a little common sense and only the hard evidence to support it.

They were murdered for their money.

Bogs are not a fun place to be in. They are dangerous if you don’t know the territory and how to navigate it - and they are a great place to hide things. Keeping this in mind, bogs would be a great place for a gang of thieves to hide in.

Roads often pass near these bogs, more often than not. None of the bog bodies found so far have shown signs of being poor or otherwise bad off - well manicured, hair done up with French pine pitch (obviously imported), et cetera.

Thieves don’t rob poor people, as the take usually sucks. Robbing wealthy people is risky, because if they can finger you, what law there is in the land will come down on you like a ton of bricks.

However, if you kill your wealthy victim and stake his body down in the bog, where no one can find it, then there is no risk that they are going to be able to summon any kind of retribution for the crime against you. What trinkets they had which might be identified by others, as a tribal symbol or identifying standard - or that which is just useless to you, you dump in the bog with the body. Keep the rest.

As for the torture, well, criminals have never been known to have a little sport with their captives, have they? (Note: that was sarcasm for the humor impaired.) A man showing wounds of an attempt to defend himself from a knife to the chest, doesn’t appear to be much of a willing religious sacrifice either.

No religion needed. No rituals involved. These people were sometimes bound and tortured, always murdered and the bodies were dumped in the bog - because no one was going to go digging around in there in an attempt to find them.

It’s a simple theory and it only has hard evidence to back it up - but perhaps I should just bow down to the experts and go with their unsupported Celtic ritual sacrifice ideas, instead of thinking rationally about this?

On second thought, I’ll stick with Occam’s Razor.

I stumbled onto this band by accident through a news site, of all places, and found the music to be refreshingly interesting: all because of a rant by Bill O’Reilly against a video that Bastard Fairies made with the intent of tickling his ego. Ah, the irony.

Not for the kids, Yellow Thunder Woman’s lyrics are more than a bit caustic and the music is an odd blend of simplistic, sometimes even childlike quality, which somehow just seems to work with the intent of the message. Not for everyone, but check it out if you’re into the indie scene. You can download 12 of the 17 songs featured on their latest album, “Memento Mori”.

Bastard Fairies website.

Short article about the Bastard Fairies in LA Weekly.

There’s a new fad in New Zealand among the Vegan population there, which is bound to catch on in California and other insane asylums; “Vegansexuals”. That is, Vegans refusing to date or otherwise have intimate relations with an omnivore. This is according to an article in the “Daily Mail”.

Christchurch vegan Nichola Kriek has been married to her vegan husband, Hans, for nine years.

She would not describe herself as vegansexual, but said it would definitely be a preference.

She could understand people not wanting to get too close to non-vegan or non-vegetarians.

“When you are vegan or vegetarian, you are very aware that when people eat a meaty diet, they are kind of a graveyard for animals,” she said.

If this talking compost heap wants to avoid anthropomorphic animal graveyards, so be it. As an omnivore, I wouldn’t want to suffer the endless criticism concerning my lifestyle, which is apt to spew from this sort of mindset every time I grilled a steak. Like attracts like, after all, and in this festival of metaphorically laden hyperbole, I find myself having difficulty being attracted to a cow. Give me a wolf, any day.

I’m all for Vegansexuals, actually. It’s a winning situation for human evolution. Considering that Vegan’s represent less than 1% of the planetary population, we’re starting with an isolated number of individuals with which to breed and continue the Vegan lifestyle. With the potential for reproductive problems and thyroid disease from their heavy use of soy products, the herd is further culled. Net result – probably fewer Vegans than before, while the more diverse omnivores continue to flourish.

It’s been claimed by many a Vegan that the smarter people in the world turn to vegetarianism and Vegan lifestyles, because they posses the capability for empathy with the animals in question – with the implication that us omnivore dumb asses are utterly stupid in our thinking for not taking into account the feelings of the animals, or simply cruel for being able to kill such animals irregardless. Perhaps that is the case.

It may also be that grazers are simply unable to come to grips with the nature of nature itself – understanding, but unwilling to embrace the simple concept that life eats life – and choosing to ignore two million years of evolution making us unmistakably omnivorous, over what amounts to a phobia of eating anything with a spinal column. Perhaps Vegans are merely chordata bigots?

With such well thought out arguments like this one, with everything from global warming to the end of the world being the fault of eating animals, who could possibly refuse to turn to Veganism?

To each their own and I hope it works out for them. I just feel sorry for their cats.