Mike Vick should have to fight a pitbull

MORON

Mike Vick pleaded guilty to involvement in an illegal dogfigthing ring. That's cool. At least he owns up to what a low life he is. This is kind of funny. I googled Mike Vick to get a picture. In the list of hits, I saw his official website. This is what it looks like:

Bandwidth Limit Exceeded

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.
Apache/1.3.37 Server at www.mikevick.com Port 80

Looks like so many supportive fans have flocked to his website that it just couldn't handle all those hits! Oh well.

I was thinking about this whole situation and I would feel really bad if Mike ended up in jail. First, think of all the other criminals that are in jail for offenses like drugs and rape and murder. There's nothing to do with them except for keep them in jail. But Mike Vick doesn't need to go to jail. His only crime was to inhumanely disregard animals by torturing them and forcing them into violent, deadly fights.

I have a better solution.

First, Mike should have his ears cropped. Cropping a dog's ears is an unnecessary, painful surgery for cosmetic purposes...or to prevent the dogs from getting their ears from being ripped off in a fight. I'm not unfeeling, so I think we should do at least as much for Mike as he did for his dogs. We don't want him getting his ears ripped off, plus once they're cropped he will look like a Keebler elf.

Once Mike's ears heal, I think we should inject him with steroids and use harsh conditioning techniques on him. He's a football player, so he's got to be pretty tough. Ok, so he's just a quarterback, but even quarterbacks are tougher than your average dude. However, it couldn't hurt to hurt him a little more, make him a little angrier at the same time.

Did I mention that Mike will be staying in a little wire cage most of the time.

Once Mike's all ready it will be time for his big day!

We'll lead Mike into a dark and unfamiliar garage and into a 14 square foot enclosure. Then, we'll place bets.

Then we will unleash a real, fight-trained pitbull on that douchebag and see if he likes being tortured as much as his dogs did.

Here are some interesting dog fighting links. They's don't include pictures or video - any decent person should be able to deduce that dog fighting is bullshit without the added shock value.

Animal Law

Humane Society of the United States

Going for the Throat - from Newsweek

Bessie Got Back

We saw this unique sign for an adult cabaret on our way through Payson, Arizona. Draw your own conclusions.

Utter implants? Stripper tipping? No, there is no logical amalgamation of cattle and strip clubs.

There is an Arab proverb that says, "Sunshine all the time makes a desert." Apparently the Arab who thought up this axiomatic gem was an observant fellow. Unlike the Middle East, the East Valley happens to be conveniently situated in an area of great geographic diversity. Therefore, when we have had too much of a good thing (the desert, for instance) we can head off to the mountains to spend sometime in a very different environment.

Last weekend Erin and I did just that. On the spur of the moment, we headed north up route 87 and did some camping and hiking in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. After a bit of a fiasco involving finding a campsite and a bit of a fiasco involving forgetting about mosquitos and driving 20+ miles back to Payson to acquire insect repellent, Erin and I were in good shape.

We picked up some insect repellent for the women at the contiguous campsite and were rewarded with smores. It was about 10 to 20 degrees colder in the mountains than in Tempe, so it was a nice break from the heat. The trees consisted primarily of ponderosa pines with some aspen and the occasional oak. The park is part of Tonto National Park, which quite large. The mountains we hiked in were along what is known as the Mongollon Rim, an area northwest of the White Mountains and Southeast of the Grand Canyon. We only camped for one night.

The most memorable part of the camping experience was the coyote alarm clock. Just as the sun was coming up, a coyote that sounded very close to our tent went off, prompting replies from dozens of his comrades throughout the area. It was very loud and occurred three times. It was pleasant to find that these Arizonan coyotes sound much more like dogs than their brethren in the northeast. Back home the coyotes sounded like dying babies. Creepy. We didn't catch sight of any coyotes, but the next day during our hike, evidence of their presence surrounded every puddle along the path.

Elk frequent the same puddles as the coyotes. Other notable animals that live in Apache-Sitgreaves are bears and mountain lions, though I hear mountain lion sightings are exceedingly rare.

We started our day by heading the Mogollon Rim visitor center where a very nice lady from Maine took our picture.
We decided to hike in an area near Willow Springs Lake. It was a nice hike, but, as usual, I had trouble with my feet and needed readjust my shoes frequently. The scars on the backs of my heels from club feet surgery as a baby are unyielding and always end up as blisters. Here I am trying some sort of McGyver technique with bandaids that ultimately failed.

The entire hike was just under 8 miles, a bit ambitious at an elevation of 7700 feet. For the first hour or so we both yawned constantly until we adjusted. The first half of the hike, about up to the lake, was great, but the second bit followed some boring powerlines in a very straight, hot, unshaded path that paralleled the road. By the time we were done, we were beat. After a stop at Del Taco, we headed back to Tempe.

Here are some other pictures we took along the trail.

To the right is Willow Spring Lake.

Sean Flanagan could tell you that this is a swallowtail butterfly (a tiger swallowtail, I think).

This fellow (to the right) is a tree lizard (Urosaurus ornatus). I looked that one up. The little guys below looks like a short horned lizard.

I looked that up too.

So there is our first Arizona hiking trip! It felt great to get out of the city and see trees and mountains. In other news, Erin is currently in Connecticut at training seminar for her new job. I am alone with the cats. We are misbehaving. We are staying up late, eating extra catfood, and playing spin the bottle.

Also, Sarah and Damien are engaged, as are Jaimee and Greg! Congratulations! I just happened to be reading a bridal magazine the other day and I learned that the #1 wedding destination in the United States is (insert sound clip of crowd simultaneously drawing in breath with anticipation)... Tempe, AZ! What a coincidence that it just happens to be where we live, not where you guys live! Yeah...and...uh...they said that there's a huge waiting list to get married on Hayden Butte...

Ah, Hayden Butte, every bride dreams of the day when her father can walk her up a rocky pile of dirt in the scorching sun to start her new life with the man she loves in teh shadow of a telecommunications tower.

Think about, you'll come around...

This is why I'm hot...

I suppose I'll get it over with and begin with an obligatory cacti picture...
This is our first post in awhile. As you can tell from Erin's last post in January, blogging can get you down when you feel there is nothing to write about. However, at the provocation of Kevin and others, we have decided to return to the blog as a way to fill everyone in on our happenings in our new home, Tempe, AZ. We arrived here a little over a month ago. We stayed with our friends Jane and Andy in a little town called Sun Lakes, which is a bit south of Phoenix. From there we found an apartment in Tempe and moved in.


One of the first things we learned is that Tempe is not pronounced as good American English would suggest. Instead of the accent falling on the first syllable (tém- pe), it is pronounced in a more spritely manner (tem - pé). I routinely mispronounce the name, which I suppose is cosmic payback for the all the times I scoffed at the folks who called Worcester "Worchester".

People in Arizona like to talk about the heat. They also like to comment on the humidity. The heat is invariably high, the humidity is always low in comparison to other parts of the country. The idea of dry heat is something that is kicked around, but doesn't matter when you are riding your bike and it's 114 degrees. You think that they would get tired of talking about the heat, but they don't.

No one here is from Arizona. In over a month I have only met 2 people who are native to the state. I think Erin works with a few people who are actually from Arizona. Everyone here is from somewhere else, which is cool. It's definitely a melting pot, pun intended.

Which brings me to what we're up to overall. Erin works for Traveler's in Phoenix. She no longer handles bodily injury for auto claims - she now handles general liability, such as slip and fall accidents, food poisoning, faulty equipment and so on. She is contemplating law school at ASU.

I am finishing up a teaching associate preparation seminar at ASU and I begin work on my Ph.D in literature August 20th. I have met several really cool people so far and I'm really excited to get started on my degree. Oh ya. I also ride a bike everywhere. I don't own a car, so I bought a mint Trek and that's how I get around. It's great when it's not super hot out.

Here's a story. I got my wallet stolen when we were moving into the apartment. I freaked out because it had my driver's license, credit cards, and some money in it, but I could not remember if my Social Security card was in there or not. I didn't think I was enough of a dumbass to carry my SS card in my wallet, but I couldn't find it anywhere, so I had to prepare for the worst. I canceled my bank account and credit card accounts, got a new SS card and license and filed a fraud alert with the credit bureaus. Luckily, I later found my SS card in a box.

Here's the cool thing about having an Arizona license - it's good until you're 65. My license expires in 2044.










Another disappointment occurred when we unpacked the truck. There was a hole in the roof and some of our stuff got wet and other stuff got ruined. It really sucked. We thought the computer was a casualty of this mishap, but it has somehow miraculously recovered and I am using it right now. Here is a picture of the hole in the roof of the truck.





Ok, so I know that you are all probably saying to yourselves, " Enough about you and Erin already! What we want to know about is how the cats are doing!" Well, I am happy to report that Ishmael and Rasputina are adapting very well to their new home. They had kind of a tough trip since they left Worcester. First, they had to live in Erin's room in Douglas, so they were cramped up. They didn't get along with Belle and Sammy. Then they had four days in the car and in hotels as we drove out here. Razzle was a good girl in the car, but Ishmael kept crying and his shitty cat food breath made us sick. Then they had to live in Andy and Jane's laundry room for a week, a situation they were none to pleased with. Finally they arrived here and are happy to be right at home.


Here are some picture from our cross country trip.

Me driving in Texas. Note the cool windmill behind me. They had literally hundreds of these in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico.






This cross was also in Texas. There was a sign that said it's the biggest cross in the western hemisphere and that seeing it would be a truly spiritual experience. We passed the same cross in Illinois.




Razzle in the crate.







Ishmael riding on the passenger seat floor.







Some flat lands outside a rest stop in Texas.







This, of course, is the Leaning Water Tower of Britten. It's one of America's most iconic landmarks, after the biggest cross in Texas and the humbler cross of the same size in Illinois. If you're not familiar with this water tower, you're a communist pig.





Well, I'm going to end this blog here. Last weekend Erin and I went camping and hiking in Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, an excursion that which will occupy the focus of our next installment.

Here's the another obligatory cacti picture...