The Bawdy Cloister

My sabbatical is over. Let the infrequency of blog posts begin.

I just finished posting more pictures on Virtual Tourist. Greece & Turkey are now complete. Click here to see.

My Evil Little Brother

My Evil Littl.....er, "The Captain" just posted his first blog entry...isn't he cute!

"Proving, once again, that the internet is the answer to, and cause of, every problem you ever had, I introduce you to this blog." --John Behan, 2/18/05

Thanks to John Behan, from The Commonwealth Conservative for getting the word out about the Reliquary!

For those of you keeping up with the search for Denver Jackson, here are some newly discovered photographs from 1996:


Denver in the Professor's Kitchen



Denver Barbecuing in the Rain.

These photos were shot at the graduation party in May 1996...funny, because I didn't remember him there! I thought he disappeared after not showing at the Pantheon, but that was summer of 1995. That means these are the last known pictures of him.

As always...if you have information regarding Denver Jackson, especially his whereabout, let us know.

UPDATE: I just found an old invitation which reads in part:


Denver Jackson, well-known Jeopardy whiz and occasional student of the classics, has agreed to cook most of the food. Angie Pitts, interdepartmentally-renowned chef of continental haute cuisine, will see to the vegetarian fare.

Come and bring a friend if you have one....There's even a possibility that we'll pull out the tattered copies of Doug Parker's pristine, Calvinist translation of the Lysistrata and read a few of the more edifying scenes....

Does anyone remember if this ever actually took place? If so, this means Denver was actually around throughout the 1995/96 school year. How and why have we all forgotten? That's just creepy. Anyway, I don't have any pictures of this event.

It does not appear that Denver attended this, similar event, for which I do have photos:

I promised ELB I'd update, so here's an update.

I opened an account with Virtual Tourist...so far I've posted pictures from Central America and Peru...there will be more to come.

If you want to see, go here.

Last night Mrs. Theologian and I watched The Grudge. Let me state first, I am not a fan of horror flicks. We rented it because it was set in Japan (Mrs. T's homeland.) I knew we were taking a risk because although some movies shot in Japan are good, others are disastrous. Once I saw Ryo Ishibashi's name in the credits though I had hope; I really liked him in Suicide Club.

Anyway, I didn't log on to talk about movies. The Grudge just triggered a memory from my stint in Japan that I thought I'd share. This is a picture of an apartment complex not too far from where I lived. I apologize for the angle, I took it from a moving car...but can you make out the name of the place?



"Liver Flats"! I love it. I can just imagine the poor folks who live here and have this on all their address labels.

I tried to submit this picture to Engrish.com once, but they never posted it.

UPDATE: Before anymore Totebaggers email me regarding my disdain for Lost in Translation, let me explain. I am a working man. As such, I find it utterly impossible to sympathize with some guy's mid-life crisis when he's getting paid a ridiculous sum of money to drink whiskey in Japan for a week.

As most of you know by now, the late great Ray Charles won big at the Grammy Awards this year...and that reminds me of the time I ran into him at Albertsons about 15 years ago.

Actually, I wasn't running. I got in trouble for running in stores when I was young. I stopped running by the time this meeting took place.

Also, I really didn't meet Ray Charles himself, just his likeness. But I always figured meeting someone's likeness was better than not meeting them at all. He was selling Diet Pepsi in the dairy department.


Ray & Rowdy circa 1991.

I just conducted a little experiment. I took the first sentence from The Catcher in the Rye and translated it into Japanese using the Google language tools, then I took that result and translated it back into English. Here's the result:

Original Text:
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll* probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't* feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

Google Translation Result:
There was I where you whom you really probably would like to hear concerning that probably would like to know truth, the kinds all crap of the Copperfield of the デイヴィッド**, like the thing where I enter into that you are not moved, but, it could withstand my lousy infancy period before, some way first the fact that you perhaps would like to know how my parent was everything, to be it could occupy me, time,.

NOTES:

* The translator didn't like contractions, so changed them to full form.

** デイヴィッド = David

Looks to me like there's work to be done...

UPDATE: Pulled from the comments because it's worth a look...this truly is reminiscent of English As She Is Spoke . Thanks for the tip J-Go.

"Comrade Che, I have returned with the supplies you requested."

"Trotsky, you fool!...."





"I specifically asked for lemurs!"






UPDATE: To see the previous episode of Rowdy's Finger Puppet Theater click here.

Earlier this week I downloaded a trial version of Keyhole. I flew around a while and found a number of landmarks, including Tokyo Tower...


Then I got to thinking, my brother would really enjoy this. Afterall, he is a pilot and is accustomed to viewing the world from 36,000 feet. So I give him a call, he downloads the program and takes a second to figure out how to navigate.

After a few initial exclamations (including "Sweet!" "Dude!" and "This is pimp!), he told me to follow him and he'd take me for a ride. He's one hell of a tour guide, within seconds we were at...


Abu Ghraib prison.

Smile! BlogExplosion is about to capture an image of this site for its directory!

I just wanted to tip my hat to the good folks at...




They have included The Reliquary among their Burger links.

As requested by McPan, here are pictures of my greatest wood shop creation!

My cedar stool...

Notice the well sanded edges...

Three legs are much more stable than two, a sure sign of quality craftsmanship...

Dark stain helps mask the nails (or "fasteners" in Shop parlance.)

And can you believe I made this without design instructions! I thought that alone was worth extra points for creativity, but my teacher didn't think so.

I know I'm not the greatest artist in the world, but be sure to check out the painting I made of my best friend, Joe.

(After linking, just sit back and watch your computer recreate my masterpiece.)

UPDATE: This is an inside joke...for all you newbies who didn't get it click here.

A little known fact about me, that I'm only revealing because I'm under duress, is that I used to play the tuba. See...I still have my mouthpiece.

But why is the monkey sad? Well, my tuba playing days only lasted a semester.

You see, Mom is the one who forced me into band to begin with, I hated band. Half way through the school year we moved to a new city, and as fate would have it, Dad took me to register for classes at my new school.

Counselor: Are you in band?

Rowdy: Yes, but I don't want to be.

Dad: Really?

Rowdy: I hate band.

Dad: I never cared much for your music practice in the house anyway, always sounded like you were strangling a Moose in your room.

Rowdy: So I don't have to stay in band?

Dad: How about Wood Shop?

To this day Mom hasn't forgiven Dad for that, but I am forever grateful.

For those of you who like to relive your childhood memories you must visit The Imaginary World. What an archive! I remember at the grocery store, it would take me (seemingly) hours to decide which Funny Face drink mix to get.

Among the bazzilion other items on this site, there's quite a collection of Burger Chef memorabilia. (The link to which is now permanently posted in The Reliquary.)