- Home
- About (New!)
- Vote for us!
- Email us!
Eight Hours of Recommended Reading
(But only if you're really slow.)
- PETA: The Worth of Animal Souls Is Great
- Celestial Roulette
- My Body is a Private Club for Members
- Label Maker
- The Fear of God and Spiders
- You Must Be Smoking
- Caffeine: The Devil's in the Drip
Eight Hours Worth
of other Blogs
I've been to too many blogs to list them all in this column, but you can see the list here.
At Least Eight Hours Worth of Podcasts I'm Not Supposed to Like:
August 2006
- Reason 423 Why I Haven't Been Posting Much
- The Blog Heard ‘Round the World
- A Bus Ride to Cajas
- Distracted
- ¡Guacala!
- The Room
- Welcome Feedster Users!
- Go Ahead. Ask Me What Kind of Week I Had.
- You Can Probably Still Kick My Ass
- Another Best Month Ever
Reason 423 Why I Haven't Been Posting Much
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
10:55PM
Ok, this isn't really why, but I did this today for the first time and thought it was pretty damn cool, even if the first jump did nearly scare the pee out of me.
Right about here it occured to me that this is a dumb
place for a guy to be if he's afraid of heights.
Good thing I decided not to wear a kilt today...
The Blog Heard ‘Round the World
Saturday, August 19, 2006
10:44PM
I have a guilty pleasure that I want to confess. Whenever I mention it, people always roll their eyes and groan. But I can’t help it—I love the movie Contact. Oh sure, I know the science is junk, but I can’t help but get excited at the idea of accidentally picking up a fax from another galaxy.
My first other-worldly contact came through a crystal radio in the Six Million Dollar Man’s backpack. Inside the pack were two wires—one ended in an alligator clip. The other had a small earpiece attached to it. It was easily one of the coolest toys I ever owned. Thanks, Mom and Dad.
$6 million just ain't worth what it used to be
I was only six or seven then, but I still remember the night my dad attached the clip to the kitchen sink and let me listen. The faint voices from a local news channel whispering in my ear carried me far away in a trance. It was better than magic! It was science, and even I could make it work.
A few years later, a friend of mine introduced me to short wave radio. Using an aluminum mess kit and an emergency candle for a stove, we cooked canned mushrooms in Worcestershire sauce as we tuned in to voices from around the world. There were dozens of channels to choose from, but for some reason one of the most fascinating was the Coordinated Universal Time broadcast. The nonstop ticks and beeps had an unearthly quality that seemed perfectly in tune with the vast dome of night and stars that surrounded us.
I’ve had an insatiable appetite for electronic communication ever since. I guess that’s one of the things I like so much about writing here. I’m saying what I want to say, and it’s getting picked up in places I never would have guessed. Here are the countries that have visited Eight Hour Lunch in just the last two weeks:
USA, Canada, UK, Singapore, France, Germany, Iran, Belgium, Spain, Japan, South Africa, Netherlands, Australia, Finland, China, Ukraine, Ireland, United Arab Emirates, Russia, Hong Kong, Portugal, Taiwan, Sweden, South Korea, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, New Zealand, Turkey, Senegal, Italy, and Peru.
Really—who would have thought that I could reach that many countries from a planet as far away as Utah?
A Bus Ride to Cajas
Thursday, August 17, 2006
9:30PM
July 25, 1989 was a Tuesday, and my mission district had gotten permission for a rare full day off. Opportunities for sightseeing were uncommon, so we got up early and caught the first ride to Ecuador’s beautiful Cajas National Park. Our expedition was like nothing I had ever experienced back home.
We rode up the narrow canyon on the luggage rack on top of a brightly colored bus that was at least thirty years old. That actually made the bus more typical than unique, but I had only been in the country for about thirty days. It would still be months before the gaudy paint faded and the loud salsa music became ordinary to me.
As the early morning sun trickled gently through the fragrant groves of eucalyptus trees, the wind made gentle waves in the tall grass that blanketed the hills around us. I sat transfixed by the cool Andean air blowing in my face and through my thick hand-made alpaca sweater. A small, traditionally dressed Otavaleña watched us pass by as she spun wool while she stood alone on a hill in the distance.
My mind soaked in the sights and smells around me, and it suddenly occurred to me that I had been experiencing them in the same way as you are now. I imagined how the words to describe my experience would appear on paper. In my surroundings I was surprised to find how naturally the words came. I fantasized about what it would be like to write for a living and how my readers would receive my work. And I did absolutely nothing about it.
Oh sure, I wrote hundreds of dreadfully boring pages in my journals and sent variants of the same letter home every week, but my writing was stifled— almost scripted. To be fair, I’m sure that at least part of that was my youth and inexperience, but I knew what I was supposed to say and feel. I was only writing to complete some impersonal divine homework assignment. And it’s a terrible shame, because for the first eighteen years I kept journals, that’s exactly how I wrote.
To this day, I can barely crack open my old journals for more than just a couple minutes before I’m completely depressed. It’s an uncomfortable and familiar place, and I’m more than glad to have it behind me. I think, or at least I hope that leaving it has changed my writing for the better.
Distracted
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
12:09PM
I really was working on a lenghty post last night, but then this happened:
Look for a longer post either tonight or tomorow. In the meantime, you can see the rest of the lightning shots here.
¡Guacala!
Thursday, August 10, 2006
11:27PM
Early in our marriage, Heidi and I used to get in gross out contests with each other. The idea was to take turns telling each other stories that would make the other person lose their cool. It didn’t last for long, as she soon discovered my fourth degree black belt in gross. I did most of my training in Ecuador. Let me just share with you a few of the joyful little things that have me scarred for life.
I’ve eaten a Guinea pig. I wanted seconds. I thought it was that good.
I’ve eaten cow tongue. The family that served it to us didn’t cook it long enough. It had the texture, consistency and taste of bloody phlegm. When I finished eating it, I exclaimed to my mission companion, “I feel sick. How am I going to tell the people back home that I just spent the last half hour French kissing a dead cow?”
A few months later in Milagro, I was teaching family in their front room while their toddler ran around naked with a worm hanging from his butt.
But the grossest story tonight comes from an area called Ciudadela Martha de Roldós. While working there I met a man who worked delivery for the large Coca-Cola factory nearby. I can’t remember his name for sure, but I want to say it was Jaime. He smiled a lot and was a true joy to talk to. Like a lot of people from the area, he lived with his mother, his wife and his adorable children in a small cane shack on the side of a hill.
One of the first physical things I noticed when I met Jaime was that he was missing his right index finger. After getting to know him a little, he offered to tell us the story of how it had happened. He’d been at work on one of his runs. Each truck had two workers, the driver and someone who rode on the back of the truck like a fireman. The trucks weren’t like the ones here—they were open air.
As they were making one of their regular stops, he jumped from the top of the truck to start his delivery. That is to say most of him did. His finger got caught in the tailgate, and as he descended, it tore off his finger and ripped out his tendon all the way down to his elbow.
As if hearing this weren’t bad enough, his mother finished the story.
“We saved the finger.”
“You..what??”
She stepped out of the room for moment and returned with a mason jar full of a dark, cloudy liquid. The first thing I noticed was a dirty fingernail that I found I was staring at in spite of myself. My eyes made their way up past the knuckles to the frayed and decaying flesh. From the center of the opening, the legendary tendon curved downward and spiraled around the bloated finger.
Beaming with pride she exclaimed, “We saved it so that when Jesus comes back, he’ll have it for the resurrection!”
“¡CHUSO hombre! ¡NO TIENIA QUE HACER ESO! ¡GUACALA!”
He and his crazy-ass mother had a good laugh as she took the bottle back to the kitchen. We soon ended our visit and went back to our apartment. At least we knew it was his finger. I’m surprised I don’t have recurring nightmares about that stupid thing. Of course now that I’ve said that…
The Room
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
6:13AM
The Room is the working title for a story I'm developing and want to share with you all as I write it. It's pretty long, so I'll be adding a fiction section to the site and posting it in installments. If you enjoy it, please share it with your friends. For that matter, share it with your enemies. As they say, there's no such thing as bad publicity.
***
Chapter One
Ian made his way through a sea of well-dressed men and women. They politely took drinks and appetizers, politely spoke to people they didn’t know, and politely clapped whenever the live band finished a song. He shook his head as he looked at them in the reflection of the large glass door on the back of the house.
Everyone outside seemed to be enjoying themselves. The food, wine, the guests and the music were all a perfect match. Every aspect of the gathering seemed fit together as if by divine mandate. The only thing that seemed out of place was him. Why had he even been invited here in the first place?
Ian had a good enough job and quite a bit better than average pay. He drove a sports car that he knew most people couldn’t afford, and yes, he was single. But that didn’t change the fact that he didn’t know anyone here. He wasn’t even sure he had heard of the host. Still, when he received an embossed invitation to a posh summer party at one of the largest homes in the city, he jumped at the chance.
He looked through the large sliding glass door. It would be rude to nose around his host’s home uninvited, but what did he care? There was still a lot going on outside—surely no one would notice if he looked around for just a minute? Hell, if someone caught him, he’d just pretend he didn’t know there was a bathroom outside by the pool and then coyly ask for directions. Quietly, he opened the door and slipped into house.
The fading evening light illuminated an open course through expensive lamps and fat brown leather sofas. He walked across the room and sat his drink down on a coffee table. After hesitating for a minute, he decided that leaving the lights out would be best. He could still see well enough to gawk at the plush surroundings. It was like going to a freak show, except that it was beautiful. How much money did these people have?
He wandered across the room to the top of a long, curved flight of stairs. It was dark enough that he couldn’t see to the bottom, but he descended anyway. Near the end of the flight, the stairs fanned open into a large, open space. The dark golden glow of dimmed incandescent lights softly detailed a cavernous room full of strange and expensive treasures.
Along the walls and on shelves, there were dozens of statues and paintings that appeared to have been gathered from all around the world—except that they were like nothing he had ever seen. The sculptures were mostly small human figures made of dark, heavy woods. All of them looked brand new, and yet each evoked feelings that were unsettling and undeniably ancient. Each face bore a unique expression, none of which was pleasant.
At the far end of the room, a smaller flight of stairs led to a narrow balcony from which he could see everything. Around him were dozens of strange wind and string instruments. He took particular interest in one that looked like a medieval cross between a bass guitar and a banjo. His eyes followed the long neck of the instrument down to a hollow drum on the other end. He plucked the strings. To his surprise, he discovered he could easily play percussion and strings at the same time. The music was warm and beautiful.
Quite pleased with himself, he continued to play until he had completely lost all track of time and his surroundings. An hour had passed, or maybe two. The room had grown darker and darker until the only things Ian could see were his hands and the instrument before him.
He was relaxed nearly to the point of falling asleep when he became vaguely aware that the room was filling with the sound of droning tribal chants. The voices were hard to discern at first, but as he listened, they grew louder until they were nearly unbearable. A single voice emerged above the others. It didn’t shout, but it stood out clearly against the chanting. As it spoke, the remaining voices echoed the same words back loosely in unison.
“Ian, you have now been granted the fruits of your first choice—pleasure. You will be allowed to select only two more items. Take what you will, but know this—there are only three types of spells upon the items from which you will choose: entertainment, defense and escape.”
Ian clutched his throbbing ears and cried out in pain. One by one the voices died down until the only noise left was his screaming. He ran for a door, and pulled madly at the handle trying to get out. To his horror, he saw that his hands were now bound fast to the outside edges of it, and he could not let go. He twisted violently and tried to turn away. The harder he struggled, the more depressingly obvious it became that his hands were not coming loose.
Gathering his strength, he gave a last desperate pull. The door flew off its hinges and knocked him to his back. As he lay on his back struggling awkwardly to lift the enormous slab of teak that was now on top of him, he turned his head and saw a blinding orb of light growing out of the center of the room. The chanting slowly returned, growing louder now in a mad crescendo. Everything in the room, including Ian, began to shake.
The twisted statues rattled on their shelves and looked as if they were about to crash to the ground, when again the room fell silent. The wooden figures hovered ominously over their resting places. As he struggled to breathe, he could see in their dark silhouetted faces that their once hardened, wooden visages were becoming pliable. As each of their eyes took on life, they turned and glared at him like a dark and menacing school of piranhas.
In an instant, he knew that he had inadvertently made another choice, and the door wasn’t for escape or entertainment. It was for defense. As quickly as the thought entered his mind, Ian struggled to his feet and dragged the door in front of his body for a shield. The closest statue bared its teeth and flew at him headlong like a missile, hit the door and shattered into a thousand hardened splinters.
Before he could even assess the damage, there was another statue racing across the room, and then two, and then ten. The noise was deafening, and each impact knocked him back a little further. It seemed to be doing the job for now, but he could tell that his makeshift shield wasn’t going to last much longer. How many of these damn things were there?
With each new blow, he became acutely more aware of his mortality. The force pushed him back until at last he was pinned against the wall behind the battered remnants of his door. One at a time hardened splinters from the exploding carvings began to breach his final refuge. He cried out in pain again as they came through the door and pierced the surface of his skin like a living iron maiden.
Just as suddenly as it had started, the room again became still. Ian collapsed and the door fell from his hands. The jagged darts that had missed were piled deeply all around him. The ones that hadn’t missed covered the other side of the door like quills on a porcupine.
He looked at the blood on his arms and legs, and then looked around the room. The statues were gone, but he didn’t feel safe at all. There was still one choice left. No matter what he chose, if it wasn’t for escape, he knew he wouldn’t enjoy the consequences.
Welcome Feedster Users!
Saturday, August 5, 2005
3:26PM
Thanks for dropping by! And a big thanks to Feedster as well for featuring me as your Feed of the Day.
By golly that's me!
For those of you who are new who haven't heard of it, Feedster is a search engine for dynamic content sites. (Here in these parts we likes tuh call 'em blogs).
If you're new to the site, sit and back toss back a beer or two. When you get to three you'll be rapidly approaching my regular sober mindset. It'll probably help you understand what I'm writing better.
And speaking of writing, my better stuff is listed in the favorites section (on your right). The most recent favorites are on your left. If you like what you see, please send me loads and loads of money. No really. I really need to die fat, rich and lazy. Hell, I'm already two thirds of the way there.
Doug
Go Ahead. Ask Me What Kind of Week I Had.
Friday, August 4, 2006
8:43PM
Sometimes I just need the weekend to be a month long. :(
When burnout finishes what
male pattern baldness started.
Back to the top! | Or see the last time this happened.
You Can Probably Still Kick My Ass
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
9:45PM
But at least when you do, you'll be kicking the ass of someone who is trained in Hap Ki Do. Heidi, Brynn and I were awarded our yellow belts on Monday.
This picture was taken shortly after we kicked all the art off the walls.
Another Best Month Ever
Tuesday, August 1, 2006
1:06PM
Hey everyone—thank you for another highest month of visitor traffic yet at Eight Hour Lunch! There were 4,761 unique visits to the site in July. That's up significantly from 2,875 in June.
Now, I'd enjoy writing no matter what, but the fact you keep coming back (and apparently with your friends) is well, very flattering. Thank you.
Doug
