We didn't start the fire

I love Canton , GA. I like it because it's a small town. And it helps that it's near a big town, but definately far enough away to forget about Atlanta if I choose to. Canton brings me delights that only a small town can bring. I drive about a mile to work. That's really nice. A short while ago i was looking at this 65 Honda 65 motorcycle. Yes, both the year and model is 65. And it was determined that if i got this motorcycle i would only have to put about $4 of gas into it. . . per year. But let's face it, I need a motorcycle like Sonny Bono needs skis. (what? too soon)

Only in a small town will i have to break and wait for the chicken to cross the road. Yeah, too many jokes, I'll eave that one to you guys. But i really do have to stop and wait for this chicken to cross the road. It's not everyday but it's often enough for me to know that if it were a dog it would be in the pound many times and the owners would have been slapped with a fine. But not in this small town. We just wait. I sometimes like to give it a name and a back story.

Colonel Cluckers is a decendant of General William Tecumseh Sherman's chicken, General Cluckers. During his march across Georgia, Sherman stopped in Canton for some tea and biscuits. Well, He didn't realize it until he was getting closer to Atlanta (probably the Smyrna area) that General Cluckers was no where to be found. He had lost his beloved chicken. Sherman was saddened by his missing pet so he sent a message to Atlanta.

"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. . .unless you return to me my beloved poultry."

Well, the people of atlanta frantically searched for Cluckers but could not find him. Unknown to the fine people of atlanta, General Cluckers was basking in the cool waters of the Etowah river near downtown Canton, no more than a block or so from tea and biscuits.

Well, needless to say, the people of atlanta couldn't produce the chicken and thus atlanta was burned to the ground.

The Clucker line has stayed in Canton ever since. So there he is, in all his glory, Colonel Cluckers, keeping watch over the people of Canton. Standing in the road as if to say, "Don't you know who I am? You will stop and wait for me! You give me any lip in your black Ford ranger and i will see to it that your place gets burnt down next.

I love this small town

-greg-

I think i can, i think i can, i think i can. . . get a snack

If you haven't read my blog entitled " We didn't start the fire" i would suggest that you stop now and go do that. Don't worry, This will be here when you get back.

So not far from where Colonel Cluckers stands prodly everyday there is a Train track and a little further down is a train station. No doubt this is the only reason the city of Canton exists.

The tracks cross over Waleska street between my office and my apartment so every once in a while i get stuck havinbg to wait for the train. This makes a 2 minute trip into a 4 minute trip. Sad, I know. It's actually nice. Reminds me to slow down.

One day i was on my way to the office when i got to the train tracks. I probably could have made it before the gates got down but i decided to take it easy and stop for the train. Well, i see the train coming. And it begins to slow down toalmost stopping and i think, "well, I'm not the only one who's not in a hurry." then the train stops. It hasn;t even made it to the crossing yet. And then the train reverses. This is actually common for trains to have to stop and reverse and then go ahead again. I've seen it many times in many places. so i am assuming that he will proced forward. well, the train just stops, no motion for at least 5 full minutes. 5 minutes seems like a long time when your not doing anything. So here i am, waiting for a train thats still 20 yards away from the road and not moving at all, but the gates are down so theres nothing i can do. Then i see the conductor hop out of the train, walk around it, and proceed to go to the quickie mart that he is now parked next to. The gates are still down. 15 minutes go by and finally the conductor returns to the train and proceeds to cross over the street and and finally leave. it took me more than 20 minutes to got to the office that day. the office that is only about 1.1 miles from my apartment.

I say we make all trains automated so that we don't have to wait for some dude to get his RC Cola and a Moonpie on.

-greg-

Only My Friends

So this is old and some of you might have heard this story before but for those of you who haven't. . . here you go. But, You have to really imagine what was going on. Put yourself there.

I went to the moves a while back with two friends of mine. Jeremiah and Tom. Tom is my Vietnamese American friend and Jeremiah might be what some woman believe is the perfect man, physically. He is 6'8" ish. Tall, dark, and handsome. He works out almost everyday. Incredibly good looking man. And he's also incredibly manly. He likes football and beer and things men like. The movie we went to see was a Mandy Moore movie called "A Walk to Remember."

Now in the row was Jeremiah to my Right and Tom to my left. So picture the three of us in a row, watching "A Walk to Remember." No girls with us or anything. Three guy's, catching a chick flick, by themselves.

Well, the movie gets to a point that would cause most people to call this movie a sad movie. Apparently the boy finally turns to his father, who he cut off a long time ago, for help for his girlfriend (Mandy Moore). Well, during this sad part of the movie I decide to look around. I look to my left and Tom is sitting there with his hand over the right side of his face so we to his right cannot see and he is disguising the fact that he is crying. That's right, Tom was crying over a Mandy Moore chick flick. This, being the funniest thing I have seen in years, prompted me to turn to tell Jeremiah so he can laugh with me. But when i turn to Jeremiah He is sitting with his hand over the left side of his face because he is crying too. Him and Tom, Just sobbing.

So there we were, Tom leaning further left and Jeremiah Leaning further right. Both trying to hide the fact that they are crying by cover their faces from the other two of us. So during this incrediblly sad part of the movie I just start laughing. Laughing hard. Laughing so the entire theater can hear me. Because most of the theater also recognized this as a sad part in the movie, they snear at me for being the heartless jerk that laughs at other misfortune. In this case the misfortune of a poor cancer/luekemia stricken girl. I WASN'T LAUGHING AT THAT. I'm not that heartless. I was laughing at my MEN friends who were balling during a chick flick.

Who Doesn't Want One?

Probably a year or so ago a friend of mine got an iPod. Me, knowing this joker is broke all the time wondered where he got it. After politely asking "Dude, you owe me like twenty bucks, where's your broke self get an iPod?" he told me it was from a clever little marketing idea from the Gratis nework called www.freeipod.com. Well, cool. I want an iPod too. So badly i could scream. Just not quite badly enough to rake out the dough for one. and why should I pony up the cash when these folks are giving them away. So I signed up and the deal is this: You sign up for some offer like blockbuster online, or BMG music, or Napster, or some tooth whitening gel, and then get five friends to sign up for some stuff as well.

Well, the point of this story is that i must have no friends. Obviously I've lost a few friends with this blog. I mean, No way the Canton Police Department folks are going to sign up for anything and I don't think my pals over at blockbuster will either. And, I haven't even begun to talk about Cingular. OH my gosh, Cingular! I hate myself for capitalizing cingular. No more. So is it just that no one likes me and wants to help me get an iPod. Must be because I have 4 out of 5 people signed up. That means I only need one more person. I have only needed one more person for 5 months now. Five months I've been waiting for that last person to sign up. That joker i was talking about now has an iPod, a MacMini, and a PSP all from this site. I've got nuthin'.

So to make a long story short, be my friend, help me get an iPod and get on your way to getting your own iPod as well. Be number 5. To the person who is number 5 I offer you this. I will put any song you choose, so long as it is under 10 minutes in length, and put it on my iPod. I will never skip past it. I will never avoid it. I will listen to that song everytime it comes on, all the way through. Even if people start looking at me funny, I will listen to it. My hill's will be alive with the sound of music if that's your choice. I'll listen to the Barney song till the cows come home, if that's your choice. I don't care. I will do something I vowed never to do and listen to Creed if thats what you want. Although i plead with you not to make it Creed. Really. What do you say. Just follow the link. And make sure you use this link because it has my referance code in it and if you don't, I will not get credit for it.

http://ipods.freepay.com/?r=15339073

Does it Look Like I Need Air In My Tire

I Dunno. I was leaving my office earlier today and I thought my car looked a little differant. Do I need some air in my tires. Somethings just not right. Oh Yeah! There's a boot on my car! Now that doesn't belong there. But that's only my opinion. According to the Canton Police Department this is precisely where a stinkin' boot belongs. But I Know what you're thinking. "Greg, If you don't pay your tickets, they will boot your car, it's not there fault. You can't get mad at them." WATCH ME.

I do understand that school of thought and I will spell it all out for you right here. Why don't you take a walk with me and we will go back to what the root of this problem is:

I get parking tickets. All of the parking around my office is two hour parking, just like any other downtown district. And I forget about the timing. So I deserve to get the tickets. And I know that. So I have planned to pay the tickets. But bear in mind, I am a freelance artist. I dont have a steady stream of money coming in. I have to do a project and then I can get paid. But projects aren't steady and even when they are, payment isn't steady. I have one outstanding invoice that is out right now and should have been paid some three months ago. That's what the real world looks like, not so pretty all the time. So I fully planned on paying my tickets, no biggy. I'm just waiting to get paid. The Canton Police Department leaves this little envelope on my car with a note in it that says if the tickets aren't paid they will immobilize my car (i figured i had at least a 30 day window). A threat that I didn't really beleave. Which was my own fault. If theres one thing I should know by now is that the City of Canton Police Department has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO. This tub of goo police officer comes around every day, every two hours with clockwork accuracy. I wish this cop caught me doing somethign illegal. I would just run away from him. Theres no way captain donut could catch me. I would actually run backwards part of the way just to taunt him. So he obviously isn't a real cop. More of a glorified meter maid. He just doesn't have to wear the meter maid outfit. He get's to wear the big boy police uniform. Two words: Meter Maid. I digress.

The Police Department here is almost a joke. If it weren't for the the real law inforcement agencies (GBI, FBI, ATF) combined with a rather excellent Cherokee County Sheriffs Department, the city of Canton would be out of control. It already is to a large extent. I have never in my live been to a place where narcotics were so rampant and easy to get. Heck, in the past year we've had two elected officials arrested for drugs. I mean. rediculous. So our CPD has nothing better to do than issue tickets. The big boys of law enforcement just won't let them do real law enforcement. They put their hands on the foreheads of the CPD and the CPD just keep swinging and missing like a little boy trying to hit his big brother. So I was way out of line not taking their threat seriously, my bad.

I hope that doesn't come off as a confession to you though because it's not, although I acknowledge needing to pay my tickets, I just dont feel like these are warented. Why? Because it's downtown Canton for crying out loud. It's not some huge bustling metropolis. Heck, its not a small bustling metropolis. There is almost NO retail stores areound here. Nobody here needs two hour parking. The two hour parking limit is a joke. All the businesses around here are pretty much lawyers offices and they spend most of their time with their clients across the street at the courhouse, not in their offices. So the city of Canton puts in this two hour parking limit so that we can feel more like a crowd attracting, retail district, because that's what we want it to be. "Come See Historic Downtown Canton". No, you come to see "historic downtown Canton" if you screwed up and you need a lawyer or an accountant to get you out of tax trouble. You dont come here for shopping and eating. So to make a long story longer, I think that the two hour parking is bologne. That's right, I said bologne, and I meant it.

Oh and remeber how I said that the officer comes around with clockwork accuracy, thats not even sarcasm. I wish it was. I parked one day and set the alarm on my phone for two hours. I went to work. The alarm went off a short two hours later. well I get up to go move my car and figure I have just a bit of time to make a restroom trip. I do exactly that. Flush. So I procede to getting downstairs and moving my car. I had a ticket on my car. That means this joker had to right down my license plate as soon as I parked and timed his menial life so perfectly that he could get back around exactly 2 hours and 1 minute later. I mean, for cryin out loud. Rediculous.

It was only a $25 fee (which means even the CPD thinks it's rediculous, anywhere else in the world and it would have been $60 -$600 to get the boot off.) But they know it's stupid. We all do.

Oh, and by the way. I was totally parked legally when they booted my car. That picture you see there is all day parking.

Facebook, I Hate You!

Okay guys. I am not that old, but I am out of college, which exempts me from facebook (for those of you who don't know, facebook is an online community for college folk, to insure you are in college you have to supply a college email adress to sign up). What a bunch of a-holes. "Sorry, you can't be part of our club because you graduated college in a reasonable number of years." I mean, does facebook really offer a whole lot that myspace doesn't? No. Bastards. But they do have a bunch of "going on my eighth year of college to get my associates degree" pedifiles. Sorry I dont have a college email address. Why you may ask. Well, I'm not in college. But even when I was in college I didnt use my college email address because it was for getting homework from teachers only. Not socializing. That and no one wanted to write down gregmathewsykes@students.armstrongatlanticstateuniversity.ga.edu .

So I hate you facebook. And I would like to encourage my facebook using friends to leave it behind as well because I love you guys and I want to keep up with you guys. And with facebook I cannot do that. If facebook were a person I would smack him right in the face. . . with a book, and then laugh at the irony.

What Happened to you BLOCKBUSTER

My wife and I have been subscribers to BLOCKBUSTER online for quite some time now. It started off like any other relationship. I am a boy so i will use a boy meets girl, movie scenario.

So you're minding your own business one day. You've got like, candy on your mind or something and your just day-dreaming about candy. All of a sudden you see this really cute girl across the park. Did i mention the boy here is walking in a park? Well he is. So thi ssute girl from across the park see's you too and eventually you cross paths. Well, you pretend to trip in fron of her to get her attention and you know every girl is a sucker for a dorky boy. You start talking to this girl. You flirt a little. She flirts back! Yeah boy. Now your onto something. You get this girl's phone number and your on your way. Well, you give her the 3 day waiting period that's outlined in the "Secret Code of Man-ual" You start dating. You have good times. She starts to get clingy and looses her mind. Now your not hanging out with the guys anymore, you have pink doilies hanging from your toilet and your eating vegitables. Well, you just can't take it anymore. So you have to find away to break up with her. But she's got all her crap over at your place and breaking up would just be a huge hastle. Do you just bend over and take it liek a man or do you man up and get the heck out of there.

You see, we met BLOCKBUSTER online a while ago and we fell in love. It was so good to us. We asked for movies, it gave them to us. We don't have cable so the BBO (BLOCKBUSTER online) was a great alternative. We're watching so many movies that BBO probably isn't making a ton of money off of us. It's as close to perfect as we could get. Streaming Blockbuster directly into our brains for free would be perfect. But it's an amazing service. We're telling all our friends about it. We couldn't wait to see that yellow and blue envelope in our mailbox. Well, we were waiting for 50 First Dates and ELF and we got 50 First Dates in 5o Sharp Pieces and ELF wasn't ELF at all. It was Charmed, Season 1, Disk2. Well, Everyone makes mistakes and when you get into that relationship, the honeymoon period wares off and you start to see the flaws. So we call BBO and the immediatly sent the correct DVD's out which was good, we only had one night really ruined. And to say sorry they sent us 2 free in store rentals. Kind of like buying us flowers after they said somethign mean about our mother-in-law or accidently hinted to the fact that we look a little "husky" in a certain pair of jeans. So it was all good. . . THEN SHE WENT CRAZY. BBO sent us this email explaining ways to keep this stuff from happening and dared to say that "The option is yours. Please understand that if an unusual number of issues are reported, your account may be placed on hold while we investigate." OMFG. Thats right. It was so absurd i had to use AIM lingo (OMFG). So like any other person i responded:

__________________________________

I am writing to respond to a very disappointing email i have recently received from my "friends at BLOCKBUSTER online." In the past, my service from BLOCKBUSTER online has been good, with quick response times and whatnot, with a few (three to be exact) exceptions. When we first signed up we never got the first DVD's sent to us. any number of things could have happened and we don't blame anyone. so we changed or mailing address with BLOCKBUSTER online and have seen more movies than i care to admit since then. We have enjoyed BLOCKBUSTER online's services. Recently (last week to be exact) we had problems again with the BLOCKBUSTER online services. Inside the envelope for "ELF" was the second disk of the first season of "Charmed" not exactly a useful DVD. Even if i had any sort of interest in the television series "Charmed",
disk 2 would be of no use for me because i would be wondering how this whole show started. i would never really know what was going on now would i? if you were going to make such a mistake, could you at least send season one, disk one, so we can start of on the right foot. In addition to the "Charmed" mishap, the movie "50 First Dates" showed up broken in half.

Now then, according to your email recently sent to me. I could have wiped the back of both DVD's with a lint free cloth and run a DVD cleansing disk through my DVD player but that wouldn't help a disk that had been shattered into pieces work and it certainly would not have helped the series "Charmed" to not suck. I have done everything i was supposed to do in the event that BLOCKBUSTER not hold to it's side of this deal. The morning after incidents have happened i have responded
to this customer service and help center. A place that i have seen way too much of.

This last email is worthless to me. none of these tips are anything that i can use. Not to mention that it is quite accusational and that is wildly inappropriate. I cannot for the life of me see any sense in you sending out an email like this to someone who has recently had such poor service from the BLOCKBUSTER service provider. "The option is yours. Please understand that if an unusual number of issues are reported, your account may be placed on hold while we investigate." Lets do this. If BLOCKBUSTER online screws up again, and BLOCKBUSTER online decides that their way of fixing the problem is to place my
account on hold while it is investigated, then just go ahead and cancel our account ASAP so that we can start our account with netflix. It is incredible to me that after our sub-par service recently you would send me this letter. Please understand how I feel when a service i pay for does not fulfill their half of the deal and then sends me an email like this. I can't describe how angry i am in email. I at one point told people how much i like this service and how much i recommend it. i have sent emails out to people suggesting it. now they all have to hear how angry i am because of this email. keep it to yourself next
time.

Your Friends at the SYKES household™
_______________________

Well, if that wasn't enough, We get an email today telling us that the are raising the price some $3 a month. thats 20% of the original price. You can't just up the price 20%. Dangit BBO. What the hell is the matter with you. You have lost your mind. Am I not giving you enough attention. GET YOUR FREAKIN' DOILY OFF MY TOILET!!!

I'm not an angry man but how much should I take. BBO. . I think it's time we broke up. I think i see some girl with a netflix t-shirt across the park. Either that or you better loose some weight and lay off for a little while. Be the best damn BBO girlfriend you can be. Instead of waiting 3 days for a movie. How about overnight. Maybe from 3 to 4 movies out at a time. You better think of something cause you walking away from an engagement ring really fast.

The Water Calls Me

So this past weekend my beautiful wife and i finally found / made the time to go kayaking. We have two necky touring kayaks. Some people might even call them sea kayaks. Not us, we hardly ever have them out on the sea so we call them touring kayaks. The touring kayak is designed for one thing, distance. One can travel farther, faster, and use less energy than a standard recreational kayak. A Rec kayak is about 6-10 feet long. Our touring kayaks are both about 17 feet long.

Well, I think this last weekend we might have pushed it a little bit. We kayaked for about 10 miles saturday. Not a big paddle. We've done it a dozen times and will do it a hundred more times before our kayaking days are over. Sunday however we decided to do a stretch of the Etowah River between My parents house and our apartment. Well, because the river snakes back and forth a dozen or so times on the map it is hard to measure distance. As the crow flies the trip should have only been about 10 miles. We did the trip and went home exhausted. When we got home and looked at the map we realized that it had to have been a bit longer than 1oish miles. I took a piece of thread and traced it along the Etowah River on the map and then straightened the thread out over the distance key in the corner. To my surprise, it seems we paddled some 22 miles. So over the entire weekend we probably paddled 32 miles. Well, Jess wasn't feeling well the next day do to an ear problem and i was just beat so we took monday off recuperated instead.

We learned our lesson though. Before any outdoor adventure make sure that you have done all of the appropriate research. especially if it is a trail or river or excursion that you have never done before. We will not make that mistake again any time soon.

Well, I haven't mentioned it yet be we didn't plan on pulling the kayaks out Behind our apartments. We planned on going all the way to Lake Allatoona. We only went half way. So we pulled our boats out in the middle of the woods. There was no boat ramp nearby. We ended up dragging both of out boats up, one at a time, about a 10 feet bank. I stood on the bank with a rope in my hand and my vest and spray skirt still on my body to be used as armor for the thick brush we were hiking through. My wife stayed by the waters edge. Every three seconds I would pull as hard as i could while Jess pushed the boats up the ledge. We then drug our boats one at a time through about a hundred yards of brush and trees. We couldn't pick the boats up and walk them out, it wa just too thickly wooded. Then we carried the boats another hundred yards through some trails that we knew were back there. We hid our Kayaks in some high grass and got my truck to get them out.

We hurt. . . Bad. . . We will do the other half soon.