Repost #7 The Dead Woman in My Truck

Recently the subject of cremains and what to do with them has come up on Facebook and it reminded me of this story. Obviously, this was written when my dad was still alive and I was still married, just to avoid any confusion.

Original post August 5, 2006

I rode around with Erna's remains in my truck for quite a while. I honestly didn't mean to. I would have liked to have dumped her somewhere, anywhere, rather than drive with her daily. But Erna, in death as much as life, was hard to shake.

I don't remember exactly when Erna became one of my dad's patients. He always had one or two little old ladies that depended on him completely. He'd go grocery shopping for them and take them to appointments with specialists. The first of these was Mrs. Wildt, who crocheted me a baby blanket that I have to this day. The last, and perhaps greatest, was Erna.

Erna was a little old Italian lady. I didn't know her age, but I'd guess she was in her late 80's. Her husband had been dead for years, and had probably committed suicide if she was half the woman then as she was when I knew her. She'd call at all hours of the night; a hypochondriac that was dying. There's no worse kind. It's not like you could just tell her to suck it up, you aren't really sick, because in reality, she was inching closer and closer to death. But her complaints were only tangentially connected to her illness. And she didn't care who knew about them.

"My vagina hurts!" she told me over the phone. Only she didn't pronounce it vagina, she said "ba-gina."

"Ok, Erna... I'll tell Dr. Joe."

"My ba-gina hurts! Get Dr. Joe. I think I'm dying."

"Ok, Erna... You have to get off the phone so I can call him. He's not here."

"Oooooooh.... I'm dying." click.

That's how most of our conversations went. I sometimes went with my dad to see Erna in her little mobile home. She had no sense of privacy about her body and would often partially disrobe with me in the room in order for my dad to check her heart with his stethoscope. There we'd be. Erna with her sad, wrinkled breast resting in her lap. My dad asking her to take a deep breath... and again... and hold. Me sitting on the couch wishing I was anywhere but there and the motheaten deer head watching forlornly over the whole affair.

When I graduated high school I forgot about Erna for a couple of years. I'd moved out of state, but when I came back she was still there. Still calling dad's office and home whenever she felt a twinge of panic.

Then dad had a stroke. They didn't expect him to live. It started one morning in his office. He didn't feel very well and when he tried to get up out of his chair, he found he couldn't. I was living in an apartment above his office at the time and going to UCF. When I got back from class, there was a note on my door from his receptionist that said to meet my mom at the hospital. They never have determined exactly what it was. One neurologist thought it was a clot, while another believed it to be an unnatural constriction of the blood vessels to his brain stem brought on by high blood pressure.

He survived, despite the poor prognosis. He was on a ventilator for months and does physical therapy to this day. He never recovered any of his fine motor skills and is unable to walk.

While dad was still in the hospital, Erna was still dying. Without my dad, I think she finally decided that she didn't want to live anymore and she passed away a few months after his stroke.

While he was on the ventilator, my dad and I communicated via an alphabet board. I would run my finger down the letters and he would blink at the correct letter.

E
R
N
A
D
I
E
D

"I know," I told him.

I
N
E
E
D
Y
O
U
T
O
P
I
C
K
U
P
H
E
R
A
S
H
E
S

"Ok. But do you need anything?"

N
O

So I went to the funeral home and picked up a small box with her ashes. She had declined even an urn. She wanted her ashes to be spread in the ocean.

I retrieved them, but I was still busy with dad. I'd drive several hours daily to stay with him during the day at the rehabilitation facility. After a while, it just became another object in my truck: a cd case, books, and a box of Erna.

When I moved to Massachusetts I forgot about her. I had to leave my truck in Florida while I drove the moving truck north. My brother-in-law drove it up a couple of months later. I didn't tell him about the box.

We came back for a visit and my wife insisted I bring Erna. It was a busy time, visiting with everybody... checking on dad's progress which had noticeably slowed.

Our last day it was raining, but Britton insisted that we get rid of Erna. She wasn't driving back to Massachusetts with her. I didn't know what the big deal was. I'd been driving around with her for a couple of years by then. We drove to the Intracoastal and Britton got out with Erna's box and let her go off a pier. According to Britton, her last word was, "Bloooop."

Some might call it laziness... or indifference... or even passive aggressiveness. But I think my failure to let her go was something deeper. Maybe I was holding on to a time when my dad cared for people and wasn't cared for, a time when he was the most important person in the world to someone else.

A Press of Incredible Provenance

Once upon a time I entertained the thought of starting a private press using an old school letterpress. Let's be honest... I still do. So much so that I drove to Syracuse to pick up a Chandler & Price 10x15 letterpress, and later, a Pearl press.

Both of them now sit in my ex-wife's garage collecting dust.

Today I received an email which made me wish I was independently wealthy with plenty of ground floor studio space, or at least a loading dock and freight elevator. Jeff Dwyer is selling a press owned by the people who made me love letterpress and the black arts.

When I moved to Massachusetts, I answered an ad in the paper for a picture framer at R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton. I figured it was the type of job that I could work around my school schedule. When I arrived for the interview, I took a quick look around the gallery and settled in front of shelves filled with some of the most amazing books I'd ever seen... books the like of which I'd had no idea actually existed. They were hand made art books, printed on letterpress in velvety ink crushed into the paper such that you could feel it as much as see it.

It was this chance encounter that introduced me to the world of printmaking... a world I sadly don't spend as much time in as I'd like. I was also able to meet the people who created these books, two of whom were Leonard Baskin and Barry Moser. The first I only knew briefly and never got to work directly with him. The second became a mentor and friend.

Vandercook & Sons, Inc. No. 2 Proof Press

This press has a long history of ownership and use by some America’s most accomplished fine letterpress alumni. After being manufactured in Chicago around 1935-36, it’s a mystery who owned it and where it was used for the next twenty years. Around 1958, Richard Warren, the owner of Metcalf Printing & Publishing Co. in Northampton, MA gave the press to his friend, Leonard Baskin when Baskin moved his Gehenna Press from Worcester, MA to Northampton. In the summer of 1958, Baskin employed Harold P. McGrath as his pressman for the Gehenna Press, and McGrath continued using the press at Gehenna until 1976. While the press remained in use by McGrath, under his guidance probably more than a hundred young apprentices studied the craft and learned to print. In 1976, the press was moved from Gehenna to its new home at the Hampshire Typothetae at 30 Market St. in Northampton. For the next ten years, McGrath and Barry Moser used it for Moser’s Pennyroyal Press productions. When the Hampshire Typothetae closed and Pennyroyal Press assumed ownership of the Typothetae printing equipment, the press traveled to Linseed Road in West Hatfield, MA. Around, 1987, Moser sold all of the Gehenna/Typothetae/Pennyroyal printing equipment to Alan James Robinson and the Vandercook moved yet again to Easthampton, MA. Harold McGrath followed the equipment out the door, and he continued to use the press until 1998 when Robinson sold it to Elizabeth O’Grady. She moved it to New Hampshire where it has rested quietly. At some point during the years on Market Street, the cast iron drum handle was broken and a welded repair was made. The press is available for $2,500.00. It weighs approximately 675 pounds, and professionals should move it. This price does not include moving or shipping costs. Additionally, also available for $500.00 is a twenty-four-drawer type bank with assorted sizes of Caslon foundry type. Pictures of the press and type bank are available. Contact Jeff Dwyer at (413-5840761) or e-mail at: jpdwyer@dwyerogrady.com


I hope it finds a good home with the kind of person who understands just how many wonderful things it has seen. Good luck, little Vandy.

On Turning Five

A fifth birthday is unique. It's the birthday when you truly start becoming who you will be. On your birthday I give you five things to carry with you the rest of your life. They are for when I am no longer here to guide you.

First is a piece of coquina rock. It is to remind you that you will always be, like me, a Floridian. We are different and special. Look at this rock and remember my stories, and those that my father told me.

The next two things you will find are a pencil and a pen. The pencil, in order to write down those things that will change, and the pen to write down those that are constant. You will be tempted to use the pen. You will hold it in your hand and set it to paper often. Always use the pencil.

The fourth thing you will find is a length of string. It is long enough, trust me. The string is to gather up that which is scattered... those things for which you search and find only rarely. You will use it bring these things together and make them useful to you.

The fifth, and final thing you will find is a prism. It's to remind you of beauty which is hidden in plain sight.

Superstition

I'm not superstitious by any means, but when I'm taking eye pressures, and the patient is a pain in the ass, I'll record 13 mm Hg if it is 12 or 14.



Image courtesy RootAtlas.com

An observation at brekkies

This plate makes everything taste like sadness and ketchup.

Father's Day Prize

Mystery bag from Fletch



The card: Dinosaurs, planes...



and bugs.



He certainly knows what I like.

Also, it appears I've won an award.



I'm glad I have the chance to spend the day with the best kids in the world.

Specs

Blythe was squinting a bit.



Just as I thought. She needed glasses too. So instead of four, she now looks fourteen.

Glorious, Glorious Day!

I missed this story when it broke on Wednesday, but thought I'd pass it along.

Many of you know my absolute hatred of Thomas Kinkade and the schlock he calls art. I'm not exactly sure if I feel sorry for the gallery owners in this case. They were, after all, complicit in fleecing customers out of money for what were essentially posters of bad art. But to see how he manipulated the market against his own dealers in order to buy out his own publicly traded company just proves he truly is Beelzebub.

In its February 2006 decision, the arbitration panel said Kinkade and other company officials used terms like "partner," "trust," "Christian" and "God" to create "a certain religious environment designed to instill a special relationship of trust" with the couple.

What the company didn't tell them, said their attorney, was that they would have to sell Kinkade's works at minimum retail prices while the artist undercut them with discount sales, some of which he made himself on cable television.It was part of a plan, they claimed, to lower the value of the publicly traded company before Kinkade bought it in 2004, at steep losses to many investors. Hazlewood and Spinello put their $122,000 savings into galleries in Charlottesville and Fredericksburg, Va., that opened in 1999 and 2000 and closed in 2003.

An arbitration panel voted unanimously to uphold an earlier finding of fraudulent activity on the part of Kinkade and restored an award of $2.1 million to two gallery owners put out of business.

So, fewer Kinkade galleries and he owes $2.1 million. That's a win-win situation, right?

San Francisco Chronicle

Treasure Hunting

My dad was, for the most part, a sane and rational man. Actually, I use "sane" rather loosely, but he was not one to dwell on intangible things. He did not go to movies or read fiction. He was a pragmatist.

So his one real departure is rather ironic. He believed unflinchingly in hidden treasures.

Florida is full of treasure, or so one is lead to believe. Growing up I was spoonfed stories of people finding Spanish pieces of eight on the beach after a hurricane. John Dillinger supposedly buried money from a bank robbery in the yard of a house where a huge beachside condo now stands. Plantation owners buried literal pots of gold before the Seminoles came through and burned their sugar mills to the ground. It was this Florida that my father grew up in and he spent a lot of time with a metal detector and entrenching tool in his hands.

We once bought a house in New Smyrna all based on a second hand story told to him by a patient who had worked on the house. The story was that the man's father had been the cook for a bunch of outlaws in North Carolina, I think. They all got killed or thrown in jail and he took off with all the gold. They buried it in North Carolina somewhere and the man's son eventually moved to Florida in the 1920's, bringing the remaining loot. My dad's patient had been hired to put bars on the windows of the house.

For me, two questions would have immediately popped up:

First of all, why would someone who is putting bars on his windows be dumb enough to tell someone the story?

Secondly, why would someone who had that much money choose to settle in a ratty little house in the middle of nowhere?

But those particular red flags were never raised in my dad's head. We bought the house and began using the metal detector as inconspicuously as possible around the yard.

Inconspicuously, I said. A middle aged white dude and his son digging holes in the yard of a house in the middle of the poor, black section of town. There were these two ancient guys across the street that would just sit out on their porch and watch us.

When we'd gone over the entire yard several times, we figured it was time to start on the house. Over the course of a hot Florida summer, we proceeded to completely demolish that house by hand and cart it away, a dump truck load at a time. The two guys across the street just watched us and shook their heads at the things crazy white people do.

We never did find anything of value. I can't say I was all that surprised. But my dad never seemed disappointed.

And looking back, I guess he gave me a little nugget to carry with me.

Solo

In the past two days I've had two instances of people questioning the appropriateness of something about which I've written. One was here... the second, today, caused me to shut down my other blog, The Skinny Reeve.

It was with great disgust that I chose to delete a story about something that happened 14 years ago. Something that, from my perspective, was fairly innocuous. But because it caused a friend grief from a family member, unjustified as it was, I compromised my integrity and removed it. It was a hard decision, especially since it was precipitated by a chickenshit lurker... like a schoolgirl tattling on boys for smoking behind the gym.

With that deletion and closing down of my blog came the resolve that I would never do another collaborative writing project, not that it ever really ever got off the ground. I refuse to be put in the position again where my judgment about what I write is questioned and I cave for someone else.

As for the first... it also appears to have been outed in a rather dubious way, and was expressed to me through an uninvolved third party. Perhaps the hope was that I would take it down of my own volition without being directly prompted.

Let me be absolutely clear. This blog is mine... all mine. And the things that I write here will stay.

Because my words are all that I have.

All That Matters

my darling girl
my darling girl
you’re all that matters
in this wicked world
all that matters
all that matters



my darling boy
my darling boy
all of my sunshine
and all of my joy
you’re all that matters
all that matters



well, i can’t stop the pain
when it calls
i’m a man
and i can’t stop the rain
when it falls, my darling
who can?



my darling girl
my darling girl
you’re all that matters
in this wicked world
all that matters
all that matters



my darling friend
my darling friend
all we’ve got going
is love in the end
it’s all that matters
all that matters

Mark Knopfler
Shangri-La

The Identity Project

My portrait from Leonard Nimoy's The Identity Project that I posed for and helped shoot for the documentary.

I'm not letting on about my "secret self"... suffice it to say, I don't dress like this often.

My Inbox Today

I was feeling rather down today, as might be evidenced by my previous blog entry. When things looked blackest... when I was sure the brain cloud was here to stay... I received this email:

Hi Joe,

I recently moved back to Ormond Beach and I have tried connecting with a few old friends. How are you doing?

L----l

To which I replied:

Dear L---l,

I'm GRAND!

Considering the fact that I now demark my life into Before L---l and After L---l periods, (BL and AL respectively going forward) I can tell you unequivocally that I have no interest in connecting with you in any manner. I'm not even certain how I would qualify as a friend to you. Perhaps you've forgotten the circumstances under which we last had any interaction? Thirteen years ago you singlehandedly set about destroying several people's lives, starting with mine, in a manic bid to become the incarnation of Shiva.

So no. No thank you. Take your friendship elsewhere, point it at someone else and pull the trigger. I've had more than my fair share.

Let me make it abundantly clear that I would like the AL portion of my life to remain sociopath free. Any further contact after this point I would characterize as harassment.

Kindest regards,

Joe

Overkill?

Not if you know L----l. This is a person so evil that we don't even speak her name, lest we wake the demon.

On a bright note, I felt better instantly.

It Never Ends

I can still remember as he lay on that cold, stainless steel table. I bent down to give him one last kiss on his grand head and smelled the ghost of skunk that still lingered.

Soft, soft ears.

From Arthur

I love you.

Precious Moments

I'll have to defer to my teacher for confirmation on this, but I think it was my kindergarten year when I was in a certain school play. My role was that of a young homeless boy that lived in a box. For the posters advertising the play, students copied an image from Precious Moments to depict me. This was just after Precious Moments really hit it big in the late 70's.

My five year old brain didn't quite grasp the concept of older students co-opting this imagery to illustrate my character. I just assumed that they drew me. Leading me to believe, for several years, that I was the inspiration behind this national phenomenon of ubiquitous doe eyed children on everything from t-shirts to coffee mugs.

The Photoshoot

Several months ago I was asked if I would like to pose for Leonard Nimoy's (yes... Spock) next photography project and help shoot documentary footage of it. I'd worked with Leonard on a couple of shows in the past and jumped at the opportunity.

The project was to capture the subject's "secret self".

From the R. Michelson Galleries website:

In November 2008, Leonard Nimoy was at R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton, Massachusetts, to begin his latest photographic journey: The identity Project. We gathered 100 subjects from all walks of life: artists, clergy, politicians, business owners, and asked them the question, Who do you think you are?

As Mr. Nimoy wrote: I am hoping to be surprised and delighted by what shows up in front of me. Anything from full costume to nudity, and I would encourage all of it. The "Secret Self" is the most provocative idea. Do you have a secret self?

Each subject was videoed as Mr. Nimoy interviewed them and created a portrait of their “alternate identity.” The results will be revealed in a major exhibition beginning in the summer of 2010 at MassMOCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) in conjunction with R. Michelson Galleries.

Everything went pretty normal... at least by Northampton standards. I'd missed the first day when the woman came in with her sheep.

The way we had it set up, my friend Luke was on the main camera for a wide shot and I was using a handheld dv cam to the right of the subject for close ups.

So when one of our artists showed up with her assistant for her turn, I planted myself about three feet away from her, just out of the shot. Mind you, this artist does sweet little hand painted engravings, usually Judaica themed.

Karla set up an easel with paper on it and placed her assistant on a stool directly in front of her, ostensibly to draw her. I was kneeling on the ground and blocked Karla and the assistant tight in the shot. I paid no attention to what was actually on the paper, or I might have been prepared for what came next.

The assistant hikes up her skirt to reveal... everything. And I'm there... staring straight up into it all and feeling like I was on the set of some soft core porn flick. At this point I'm kind of committed to the shot as well. So I roll with it.

Then Leonard's wife, who helped direct the photoshoot, starts yelling out, "Show more of your vagina."

It was also at this point that I heard my wife and kids arrive on the other side of the curtain which separated the prep area from the shoot.

So... if you'd like to see how it came out, here's Karla's secret self... and a link to some of the rest of the photos.

By the way... the naked dude with the dog? My friend Barry Moser from the prior blog.

Mine hasn't officially been released yet, although I have it. I'll post it when I get the go ahead.

Repost #6: My Dad's Contribution to Biological Warfare

Original post: February 7, 2007

I bet you think this is a joke, don't you?

It's not.

With all of the emphasis that's been placed on biological weapons and terrorism since 9/11, there has been a renewed interest in the U.S. government's forays into bio warfare. While my father was in the army, he was a participant in biological warfare experiments at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, home of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. I caught a show on PBS the other night about Operation Whitecoat, which reminded me of his participation.

Operation Whitecoat was the U.S. Army's solution to dealing with conscientious objectors and the perceived threat of biological warfare by the Soviet Union. My father was one of the conscientious objectors that became a human guinea pig.

Many of you know that I was raised a Seventh-Day-Adventist, which probably explains a lot about how screwed up I am. My father was also raised Seventh-Day-Adventist and like a number of others during wartime, felt a duty to serve their country, but were opposed to killing. Many, like my father, became medics. During the Viet Nam war, medics were often sitting ducks. They were inserted with slow flying helicopters and were often targets of the Viet Cong. When the U.S. Army needed human test subjects for their germ warfare experiments, they asked for volunteers from their ranks of Seventh-Day-Adventist draftees. The top secret experiments on humans were given the code name Operation Whitecoat.

My dad's experiments involved Q fever. He was exposed to the bacterium Coxiella burnetii, which usually manifests itself with flu like symptoms that last between one and two weeks. As far he knew, this was all he was ever exposed to, but you never know when it comes to this type of experimentation. In most of these experiments, the scientists would fill a 40 ft. diameter steel sphere called the Eight Ball with the particular virus or bacteria that they were studying. The volunteers would attach gas masks which had been hooked up to the Eight Ball and breathe the infected air. Then they would wait. When they began showing symptoms, treatment would be given.

I think my dad was one of the more fortunate ones. Some of the other things to which volunteers were exposed were rabbit fever, anthrax and black plague, significantly more serious diseases. Of the 2300 volunteers, none died, although there is evidence that some did experience health problems related to their exposure for years and even decades after. Operation Whitecoat came to a formal end in 1973. In 2003 on the 30th anniversary of the end of Operation Whitecoat, my dad was sent a medal for his service. It now hangs in my studio.

One surprising conclusion to which the PBS show came was that Operation Whitecoat most likely had a direct effect on Richard Nixon's decision to ratify the 1925 Geneva Protocol which prohibited the use of chemical and biological weapons in 1969. Work at Ft. Detrick continues to this day, revolving around defense against biological weapons and infectious diseases. It is also home to the National Cancer Institute.

Repost #5: Things We Did As Kids

Original post: September 26, 2006

Kids like to throw things... especially at other kids.

Before the freezes of the early 80's, just about everyone I knew whose family had lived in Florida for more than one generation had at least one orange tree in their backyard. This would inevitably lead to orange fights. It was usually a free-for-all, but most everyone agreed for their own self preservation to not use green fruit. a. It's just bad form and b. They are super hard and hurt really, really bad when you get hit with one... especially in the head. Parents generally frowned on using fruit picked right from the tree too, unless you had more than you can ever eat, or give away to friends and relatives in a season.

Because of this, the weapon of choice was usually one that had fallen from the tree already and was in some stage of decay. There is a fine line between rotten enough to cause the person getting hit to gag, and so rotten that you can't even pick it up without gagging. The best ones were covered with mold like the one above and infested with fruit flies. That way when you hit someone, they exploded in a cloud of mold, fermented juice, and bugs.

We sometimes threw grapefruit, but they're big and you could screw your arm up pretty good after heaving a couple of them. Tangerines were even better than oranges, but we didn't have as many trees and often ate most before they fell. They had a thicker skin that helped them stay together long after the inside had really turned.

Good times.

Quite the Salesman

In the gallery where I used to work we had an unofficial award that we bestowed when someone sold a particularly unsellable piece of artwork. It references one of the most amazing feats in sales I have ever seen.

One day, the gallery owner, Rich and I were in the gallery and a woman walks in and asks about one of our illustrators, Barry Moser. He happens to be a good friend, and has given me quite a few of his paintings. The gallery represents a number of well known children's book illustrators in addition to the fine art. Anyway, she asks if she can look at Barry's illustrations and mentions that she was looking for paintings of cats. So Rich pulls out a couple of pieces and she loves them. Then the question...

"How much are they?"

Most of Moser's full page illustrations start around $1000 and go up to $5000, which was way out of her league. She was budgeting at most around $350. Rich tried to find smaller pieces that might work, but there was really nothing that she liked. That's when he found it... at the bottom of the box of illustrations he did for a book about a dog and cat.

It was a full page illustration of a cat, from the rear, consisting of a tail, two legs and a very prominent, puckered anus.

She bought it... overjoyed that she would now own an original illustration by her favorite illustrator.

And thus was born 'The Cat Ass Award'.

Repost #4: The Royal Ontario Museum

Another that many have heard about my last trip to Toronto. Edited slightly.

Original post: August 7, 2006

I have a dear friend from Canada named Deb. She, like many Canadians, think quite differently from Americans. You go to Subway and they ask you, "White or brown?" not "White or wheat?"(or at least they did before having a half dozen different kinds of bread) They can't give directions. Canadians, on average, are a mixed up bunch.

Which is why when I went to Toronto to visit Deb, I should never have asked for anyone's assistance. She left me to my own wits in the mean streets of Toronto, fending off teenage busquers playing "music". Here we call them talentless hobos looking for a handout, but I digress. She'd given me directions from her office to the Royal Ontario Museum. She said I couldn't miss it. Queen's Park, you're there. So I start walking.

I walked a long way. I walked so long that I figured I was in Ottawa, wherever that is, so I turned around and started walking back. I asked directions, but everyone gave me conflicting advice. Obviously I was lost... I found myself going in circles. I walked the length and breadth of Toronto.

That's when I found it. Big and museumy. I walked right in with a group of suits. Looked like they were there for some fundraiser or something. In the lobby area there were a couple of pathetic little displays showing how rocks are different in Ontario and not like rocks anywhere else. This place sucked. I vowed to yell at Deb as soon as I saw her for making me go to the shittiest museum on the planet. I saw some people getting on an elevator so I figured I'd go up as well. The second floor couldn't be any worse than this.

The elevator doors opened and that's when I realized this was not the ROM. There were about a hundred members of the media: print, television, radio... all waiting outside the chambers of the Ontario Legislature. I had somehow managed to get into the press corps of the Legislature. That's when all the members of the Legislature exploded from the chamber. I was in the middle of the Provincial Parlaiment, breathing my American germs on the Canadian governing body.

I figured I was going to be arrested. But, as easily as I got into the situation, I got back out. I hopped on the elevator, through the lobby, past the guards and out the door. No RCMP, nothing.

I eventually got to see the ROM. It was pretty good. I also got on Breakfast Television while I was there. That's like talking to Al Roker, I guess, but I sure as hell didn't stand around for hours with a stupid sign trying to get on tv. They came to me. From walking all over looking for the ROM I got shin splints and had trouble walking for a couple days, spending a lot of the time on Deb's couch.

That's what it looks like, if you're lost... and you're a bird.