alien abduction ???

I just recently lost an entire day people! how does a person lose an entire day? I was working on my computer and I looked at the clock, it said Thursday, later I went to bed and when I woke up and sat back down at my computer to do my morning emails, I looked at my computer clock again and it said Saturday 10:37am!! what happened! where did Friday go? I don't know, but it freaked me out. I can only speculate mental affliction or alien abduction. I mean seriously, who loses a whole day they can't account for? any theories? perhaps I have become mentally ill, they're always the last to know, are they not?

the caveman olympics

Many moons ago, when I was working in Yosemite, Me and the most excellent group of miscreants I used to hang out with used to engage in all manner of wonderful activities. One such activity was dropping acid and going for midnight hikes through this vast and surreal valley on full moon nights. The moon light would light up this valley fairly well and there would be a jumble of crazy silhouettes and half lit up trees. There was a river that ran right through the center of it and at some point, crossing the river was a wooden bridge with mini log wooden railings. The whole scene was movie beautiful. At some half baked juncture we were crossing that bridge and my friend Rich had picked up a thick stick, and somewhere around the middle he took this stick and struck the railing and it made an amazing hollow thump sound as it echoed through this valley reverberating like an explosion in a bell jar. We were all like, do that again! So he started thumping it in cadence like a row master beating a drum in a galley. It was incredibly incredible (yes the redundancy was necessary), it brought us back to primitive days and put us into some kind of Neanderthal trance which was broken when I suggested that we all go find sticks and play that bridge like a drum. Every one thought this was a good idea, so we went off in search of sticks. I believe there were six of us that night. We were down on the bank of the river on our stick search when I came across a dead tree about 20' tall right on the bank of the river. I was screwing off (as usual) and I gave a great primal shout which of course echoed through the valley and everyone was looking over at me so I took a couple of steps towards the tree in the manner of what I imagined looked like a cartoon cave man and gave the tree a swift kick with the toe of my boot. Unexpectedly the whole tree slowly ripped free of the bank and fell into the mighty flowing river. The whole scene looked so ridiculous and unlikely (plus don't forget, we were frying on acid) that we all just started laughing so hard that we laughed until tears were streaming down our faces. All the while My friends were like "dude, you seriously are like a fricken cave man", which spurned on more caveman jokes, which begot more laughing. Then my friend tom came up with the idea "we should host the caveman olympics" It was born! I said "but what about the bridge?" and someone said "opening ceremony". So we all went back over to the bridge and we all chose a place and then tom yelled into the valley welcome! (echo echo echo)...to the caveman (echo echo echo)...ooolym-pics!! (echo echo echo), which I punctuated by giving two stirkes in quick succession to the rail BOOM BOOM (echo echo echo) . One of us then started a very cool primitive beat and the rest of us joined in one at a time. Another amazing discovery, striking different places on the bridge made different sounds, so every drum beat sounded unique. when I was younger I played drums in the school band and later in a couple of punk bands, so I was a pretty good drummer and so was tom who was mostly a flute player but had some drumming in his background. So me and him did the more complicated beats, but every one seemed to be able to keep rhythm. Yosemite was full of the musically inclined. My point is, this was an awesome primitive tribal beat that could have easily been in the jungles of deepest darkest Africa my friend, and the massive reverb as it echoed through the valley was indescribable. It sounded so surreal and hypnotic that we got into a serious groove that lasted at least twenty minutes. Although we were a fair stint away from the campgrounds and lodges, I imagined that all of the people staying in Yosemite that night stayed up on guard because the great drums penetrating the night in the distance were a sure indication that the natives were restless. When we finally stopped Tom yelled "let the games begin!!" We walked back down to where we were and we made up events as we went along. There was one standing rule, you had to grunt/yell like a caveman with each exertion. We had the boulder toss, where we tossed the biggest rocks we could into the river to see who could make the biggest splash. we had the stick throw to see who could chuck a stick the farthest, we had the rock kicking championships....and a couple of other events I'm hard pressed to remember. oh yeah the "this rock to that tree" foot race and....At any rate it was oodles of fun, mucho laughs, lots of grunting, kicking, crass moving about and caveman sign language and caveman speak and good times were had by all. Oh yeah, we also tried to kick some more dead trees over, but the trees weren't having it, they thwarted us at every kick. We declared the America's caveman team the winners and awarded ourselves the highest medal you can receive at the cave man olympics...rocks! It was a proud night for cavemen americans everywhere, we rocked the crust that night. This was all about 18 years ago???? maybe...plus I was whacked, so I don't necessarily remember all of the details, but you get the picture. If anyone happens to read this that was actually part of the cave man Olympics feel free to add details and by all means contact me. In retrospect I feel lucky we didn't get attacked and or eaten by bears on one of those late night hikes of which there were many. Yosemite is full of bears. that would have been a very bad trip. What can I say, I was young and foolish...now I'm old and foolish. If you knew some of the things I am planning right now, you very well might admonish me if you had any school marm in ya at all. What can I say, I am a gloriously defunct human being. I could be part alien....seriously.

life is a garden, dig it!

Shit I love:
music: punk, jam bands, folk rock, alternative, reggae, electronica, oldies, 60's, old timey and 1920's jazz.

At home: RPG's, scrabble, web surfing, video making, reading, writing, making music, playing guitar, and tinkering

outdoors: hiking, biking, rafting, kayaking, swimming, boating, shooting video, and kicking back around a campfire with others.

TV: dead like me, battlestar galactica, eureka, freaks and geeks, carnivale, firefly, south park, ed the socks night party, my name is earl, boston legal and the riches.

movies: Orgazmo, the Big Lebowski, Killer Tongue, Tideland, anything Jackie Chan, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, LOTR, Matix, saving silverman, employee of the month (the one with steve zhan, not that other no talent piece of crap), box of moonlight, 13 moons...really to numerous to mention, I love movies.

places: the movies, concerts, the library, scifi, RPG, and anime cons, junkyards salvage and surplus stores, book stores, coffee houses and cheap diners.

other stuff: treasure hunting; at yard sales, thrift stores, junk yards, auctions, flea markets, dumpsters, weird little shops and of course the great outdoors. buying & selling, pranks, hoaxes, happy hour buffet's, dancing, sneaking in to hotels to use their pool, jacuzzi's and facilities, pretending to be part of a group function to get free food and drink, traveling, the ocean.

Things that give me a most euphoric feeling: #1 - being on a boat/ship on the ocean during a raging storm (crazy I know), jumping from a high place into a river or lake (not to fucking high though), exploring abandoned buildings, caves, and other strange places, car chases, hanging out and sex with someone I'm really into, really great movies and hanging out with really good friends having a good time.

It all really just touches the tip of the iceburg as far as dear old Jack is concerned. So maybe this will give you a well rounded picture of who I am and maybe it won't, but if you like a lot of these same things, feel free to comment. It would be cool to hear from other people who like the same things I do and if you have your own blog, I'd like to read it.

nickname in highschool: Mr. Kamakazi (devo reference)
nickname in college: stripe (gremlins reference)

geek salad, ADD AD&D punk rock and beer

Some would say we were geeks. A true geek is a side show attraction, it means; a person who bites the heads off of chickens. I have never preformed this action, but the term geek has evolved, and in the modern sense of the word some would say I am indeed a geek. I am definitely into a lot of the things that are the very embodiment of geekdom. I love science and technology, sci-fi, fantasy, hacking and of course the pinnacle of all geekdom, RPG's. When me and my friends were younger we would spend every friday night sitting around playing AD&D, drinking beer and listening to punk rock. It took us a long time to get through a campaign because we spent the majority of the time joking around and screwing off, but man that was some fun shit. Those were the salad days of role playing and I am quite sure I will never forget them. We also played a space game that I don't even think exists any more. It was called Star Frontiers and it was a great game as well, but the best thing about it was it's incredible rules for space battles (I think we tweaked and added to them a little). Sometimes we would just have giant epic space battles on this big ass old medieval octagon table my uncle had built. It was unbelievably cool! This all took place in the early eighties (81 thru 83), and what a fine time it was. That was back when we were first getting into punk rock and we were listening to great bands like the sex pistols, the clash, the adolescence, devo (not really punk rock, but still kick ass party music), black flag, the descendants, fear, the plasmatics (again not really punk rock, but who can deny Wendy O'williams?) and one of our all time favorites the vandals. I want to be a cowboy! We went through a small period of time when we would just play the vandal album over and over, that was some great shit. I still like all of the aforementioned music if the truth be known. What can I say, I am still a kid at heart. At any rate we had these ADD AD&D all night marathon sleepover punk rock and beer parties for at least a couple of years where we would play AD&D and listen to punk until we passed out from drinking beer, but eventually we became suddenly somehow attractive to other people and we discovered parties and girls (who suddenly seemed to like us a lot). We all decided to party every weekend instead of play and eventually we partied nearly every night. Those were some good times though. I haven't played in a lot of years, but I really wouldn't mind finding a group to get together with once a week to play. When I sell my house here in Douglas AZ, I will be moving up into the city of Portland Oregon, so if their are any people in Portland who would be down with an RPG night let me know, that would be cool. I haven't played RPG"s in a while though, what are the best games out there now? if anybody has suggestions, I would like to hear your comments. PEACE!

hockey golf

I used to own a hideous orange and black striped leisure jacket. I wore it every where for awhile, I had a ass ugly carrot pin I wore on the lapel. people would always ask me what the pin was for, I would always tell them that it was a one carrot jacket or that it was given to me by a playboy bunny or other such non-sense. Generally people got a kick out of it or just thought I was really strange. At one time during this period I had my hair dyed jet black but had decided to shave my head as I occasionally do. My cousin wanted me to let him do it and I was like, cool. He started shaving it and then thought it would be funny to give me a burt cut like burt and ernie from sesame street. You know like one long round tuft of hair sticking straight up off of the center of my head. It looked hilarious! He then suggested we go and play miniature golf so we could screw of and freak people out. yes we were asinine bones back in the day, but what great fun we had. So we go to this place in downey right off the freeway called ...golf & stuff???? maybe. We rent some clubs, and start playing and this family is looking at us, but would look away every time we looked their way and then started playing faster to get several holes ahead. The people directly ahead of us started a conversation, they were cool, thought we were funny. But the highlights of that night, as I recall them, were hockey golf and a fight with a jerk living in a tree house on the miniature golf course who tried to throw his waste at us.
hockey golf- Me and my cousin were always screwing off back then and I don't really remember what prompted it, but at one hole we decided that whoever got his ball in the hole first got the point. So we would run up at the same time, put our balls down and hit them as fast as we could, then run after them pushing and shoving each other and frantically clubbing our own balls and each others......hmmm...that sounds pretty fucking wrong doesn't it? but you get the picture. We more or less spent several holes injuring ourselves and each other whilst inevitably whacking each others balls off into the water (stop it!...don't think that way), and going back to the consession stand to ask for ball after ball. The girl thought we were terribly funny and gleefully gave them to us. It was unquestionably the most exhilarating and adrenalin fueled game of golf I ever played! In all fairness though I only have played real golf twice in my life, once drunkenly against a semi-pro golfer in which I could do no wrong. I beat him horribly and he through a tantrum right on the golf course where he through one club and broke another all the while screaming at me and calling me a liar (referring to the fact that I had never played golf in my life), and once completely sober and I couldn't hit shit that day. I played so badly that some random old man called me a retard.
The tree house guy-
When we got near the end of the course some jack ass through a five gallon bucket of shit at us! he missed, but he did get me with a little shoe splash. We yelled at him and he told us that we were a bunch of losers and that was his piss and shit he just through at us. We told him a loser is some one who hangs out in a tree house on a miniature golf course and shits and pisses into a five gallon bucket. He went on to tell us that he was on his third month or something to break a guiness record for the person to live the longest in a tree house. He told us he was the king of the golf & stuff and that he didn't like riff raff and that we should grow up and get jobs and try and act like real people. We were like "YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING TREE HOUSE!". The irony was lost on him. after awhile of arguing he started trying to spit on us, so we threw our cokes at him and tried to spit back (I can hock a lugie practically across the street), This pissed him off more and then he tried to pee on us, we picked up rocks and started trying to hit him in the dick. He yelled at one of the employees to call the cops...that pretty much ended the night. We ran away laughing, he laughed maniacally into the night. All in all it was quite hilarious, but one thing we never did was stick around for the cops. A lot of cops in LA would just go all Rodney King on our ass. This all actually pre-dates rodney King, so we didn't know what that meant back then, but it definitely happened to us on a number of occasions.
mean cops, mean cops, whatcha gonna do? whatcha gonna do when they beat on you!
never did find out if that tree house moron beat the record.

THE BASTARD SONS OF ST. JOHN

Me and my brother, when we get together next, are planning on making some music under the name "The Bastard Sons of St. John Green". The reason for this is of course that we are the bastard sons of St. John Green. St. John Green is our fathers psychedelic acid rock freak band from the sixties. They played mostly in biker bars and unconventional venues, and put out one album of the same name. Strangely it sold in the blue chip stamp book (for those of you who remember those) and then was shipped to other countries to be sold in order to avoid paying me dear old pappy royalties. It still sells today some places on the internet and in goldmine records magazine. I also found the album cover in a book at Costco titled "60's psychedelic album covers"...but I digress, why are we bastards? We are actually half brothers, same father different mothers, both raised by our mothers, neither knew our father until we were well into our teens. Nor did we even know each other existed! It was like a fricken miracle, surprise! you have a brother and he's 17! what what what! so anywho technically we are not bastards, since a bastard is
1.a person born of unmarried parents; an illegitimate child. or
2. a vicious, despicable, or thoroughly disliked person
neither of us was born with unmarried parents, and neither of us is thoroughly disliked or despicable. But we were without married parents for the majority of our lives, and we are occasionally bastards or at the very least have been called bastards on occasion. So with that combination, in my mind, which is undoubtedly the one that counts in this particular instance, me and my kick ass half brother are indeed bastards. Not just any bastards, but

THE BASTARD SONS OF ST. JOHN GREEN
ROYAL AND SOVEREIGN CITIZENS OF THE UNIVERSE

We also have a half sister Jessica, who I would really like to know some day, and somewhere out there another long long lost half brother who I expect I will never meet. Pappy was a busy man! a metaphorical Jonny apple seed spreading the gospel of germination through the magic of fornication. He added his own special sauce to Americas melting pot every time the cook wasn't looking and then scurried off into the night as if his ass was on fire...and for that I am grateful. He was a innovator, a harbinger of the worlds future. A vaginal visionary he was, perhaps we should all follow in his cooch steps? it's as if he was on a combination pogo stick turkey baster bounding across America frantically squeezing the bulb, juice flying everywhere in a mad capped game of semen roulette. "who will get the magic bullet! who's gonna be the lucky sinner tonight...red number seven! we have a sinner!" The mans schlong was like a heat seeking vagina missile. a virtual rainbird of life. Have I gone to far? is this rant over? It probably should be, but I start writing and this shit just flows out of my mind...what kind of person thinks of shit like this. I may be seriously demented.
PEACE!

MOO MOO COW!!!

Every time I get together with various groups of old friends, the Moo Moo Cow story invariably comes up. Apparently it is one of the most memorable memories of your dear old Jack Swag in the eyes of many. Really it's quite silly and in retrospect, was kind of mean...of course I was a lot more thoughtless back in the day. So for the poor guy it happened to, who was probably just a schlub trying to get by in the world, I apologize. Now onward with the hilarious antics.
Once upon a time Three punk rock dorks, me being the biggest dork, were in a liquor barn in downey Ca. purchasing a few cases of that o' so nasty swill known as lucky lager, when I did spy one of those goofy sophisticated types perusing the wine section. You know the type, golfing cap, corduroy jacket with leather elbow patches, ivy league pipe hanging out of his yapper, psychologist beard, an air of extreme self importance. I went over to my friends Dave and Joe and was like "dude, check this guy out". we watched him for a minute as he inspected the bottle he was holding, and then he holds the bottle under his nose and waves it back and forth while he takes big sniffs of it like some wine connoisseurs do to catch the scent off of the cork....only this wine bottle had a screw on cap! priceless! It was to hilarious. I was like "oh my god, I have got to wreck this guys reality, watch this shit". So I started walking towards him, now keep in mind that I am a fairly beefy guy with bright magenta pink hair, a dress shirt with the sleeves cut off, a pair of dickies and some big ass firemen s boots, still not really an acceptable look back in the early eighties, I was like a human cartoon. As I approach him I act like I am gonna just walk past him, but when I get to him I step right up next to him face to face, no doubt invading his much desired personal space, start vibrating my head in a seizure like motion, then dip my head chin pointing down as I stretch my neck out while swooping back up to the chin pointing to the sky position (just an inch from his nose, all neck muscle bulging from the strain, face shaking like a vibrator, mouth like a snapping turtle and in a very loud cartoon voice I say "MOO MOO COW!!!". The guy freaked. He stumbled backwards with a look of horror on his face and started stuttering "ya-ya-ya-ya-you're insane! There's something mentally wrong with you!!" of course he was right, so I told him so "nothing could be truer". and I walked away with a goofy look on my face as he stood there with his mouth agape and his eyes agog in a state of utter disbelief as he watched me jounce merrily out of the store. My friends (actually it was my friend Dave and My cousin Joe) were of course laughing their asses off, and if I remember right, the guy gave them an obligatory "hey, that's not funny"...it didn't stop the laughing. Amazing how a simple act of giving someone a big fat moo moo cow is still remembered, what is it? 20 years later? crazy. anywho, now you to know the infamous story of the moo moo cow. Charming aren't I?
I will try and make a video of myself doing the moo moo cow and link it to this blog so that all may witness it's miracle and magic. The moo moo cow has spoken.
Thank you for indulging in my asinine parade of blunderhood, treat yourself to a nice long blumpkin today, you deserve it.