|
At 10 PM promptly, we kicked off the official 1997 IHOS season
with the playing of the IHOS national anthem - Flashlight by
Parliament (a classic IHOS inaugural standard.) Things went downhill
from there. There were multiple sightings of spiders throughout the evening
which resulted in strained leg muscles due to the inordinate
time I spent with my feet in the air. Val killed two for me.
One got away. The rest were smart enough to stay just outside
of killing range. I fear that I will have to do something since
most were just babies who will eventually grow up to be adult
spiders wielding shotguns. |
|
20 May 1997 We had to deal with sporadic rain this evening which put a damper on IHOS for tonight. I felt like Galileo who, on March 11, 1610, first spied the rings of Saturn then had to put up with two cloudy nights following his monumental discovery. It was nonetheless warm and we at least kept the front door open...at least until the cold front came through and I started freezing my butt off. |
|
Got in some decent afternoon IHOS time today in the warm sunshine, but I still haven't gone to get any gas for the grill so there was no food. And I hate cold fronts. After a beautiful day, a cold front came shooting through and dropped the temperature to the low 50s by normal IHOS opening (normally about 10 PM.) Rather than fight the bitter cold, we decided to stay indoors tonight and play thermostat wars. That is where my wife gets warm in Antarctic-like weather and turns on the air conditioning and I freeze. So I sneak in and set it on Sahara till she wonders why she is starting to sweat. I used to be able to simply tell her that the AC had apparently frozen up, but she has caught on to that trick. So the war continues... We did have a Little Bunny Foo Foo update, though that you might be interested in. |
|
23 May 1997 IHOS was closed last night and tonight in honor of the impending marriage between Katherine Thayson and Chris Waldrup. In other words, I had to drag my tired butt to bed early so that I could wake up and drive to Charlotte in order to look like a penguin while participating in the merger, uh union, of those two lovely young adults. Prior to crashing, we made a quick Harris Teeter run to get some indoor food. I ran into some bimbos and encouraged them to attend so that Mikey could partake in their nachos, but they didn't show, or if they did, it was well after Mikey had given up hope. We tossed him out anyway when he got so engrossed in the newsbabe on NBC that he started to drool. By the time we got back from Charlotte (this is known as an entry retrodiction - figure it out on your own,) I was far too tired to actually drag the grill out and do anything. Combine that with the fact that there is no food in the house (though we do now have gas) there was no real reason to do anything. the parking lot is empty anyway; everyone has gone home for the Memorial Day weekend. Mikey is sleeping. Marty is watching Jeff play Quake. Josh is on his way back to Georgia. In general, no one is here. Mad TV was a rerun. Jim report: No Jims |
|
24 May 1997 Got back too late to do anything, a fact that was duly noted prematurely in the previous day's IHOS report so any further recitation would be redundant. There was an email to the Foo Foo line that I will dutifully reproduce here for your consideration (it is from Marty who apparently is far too concerned with the issue of the Foo Foo for his own good): *********************************************************************** Well, since Steve conveniently left town with Val this weekend, the three of us over here at Digimaginations were left clueless about what to. So, we decided to sit out on our driveway (we don't have a porch) and talk aimlessly for a while. We voted Marty SANE unanimously, and also unanimously voted Steve insane. It was also discussed that Val has more skill than Clover at cooking steaks. (Incidentally, we wound up eating nuked hot dogs, since that was all the food we had). For this weekend, the relocated IHOS was renamed the IHOC, International House of Clover. We had some gas, but no grill, so it was ugly. (Note to self: steal Steve's grill). Also discussed were the demerits of the Apple platform and the vast superiority of xNIX, IRIX was picked as the favorite, because SGI is just cool :) Also, the lyrics to little bunny foo foo were agreed upon as Marty's version, and Steve was once again voted insane. *********************************************************************** Now, I'm not one to take particular exception to another's opinion about myself, but I just want the police to know that I really have no idea of where the bodies may be buried. If y'all would, please say a brief prayer for Chris who by the time this is written will probably be on his way to Maine for his honeymoon and most likely will be torn apart by Katherine at some point this evening. IHOS opens tomorrow in full color... |
|
30 May 1997 IHOS has a good run today. It started out in the early morning when hot dogs were in order. Ball Park all beef franks, of course. A raging discussion broke out as to whether they actually went plump prior to opening the grill lid and it was decided that quantum effects did not hold on a macro level with respect to hot dogs. The evening brought the official purchase of bug goop, better known as cirtonella. We purchased three new tiki torches to go with the three existing ones and two citronella buckets. They were duly filled and strategically placed throughout the yard then lit. When the fire department finally left. we were able to settle down and enjoy the evening. Hooter-babe (who does not want her real name told since the statute of limitations has not yet run out) and Russell joined us this evening, not only in celebration of finally moving back to Raleigh, but also for Hooter-babe's birthday; the wench is now...well, we couldn't get it out of her, but she is holding herself rather well and has only a minimal amount of body sag occurring. Conversation tended toward varied sexual adventures in the Netherlands and Montreal; don't even ask about the tryst on the roof top. The mere description thereof is banned in 37 countries. Another thing we learned is to never invite anyone from the Netherlands to come visit you in the US. They have a tendency to eat you out of house and home while staying for four weeks. If it were me, they would have lasted about four hours. The day is not over, though. With a low temperature expected of only 65 tonight it looks like IHOS is open for its first all-nighter of the season. It has been officially determined that sinks have urinary tracts. Slug report: no slugs |
|
31 May 1997 Jim Dropped in for a little bit this evening, Unfortunately, he had to leave when Dave came over. You see, Dave is getting married sometime later this month and he had some critical things to take care of...namely, installing a new door handle on his manufactured home. I was somewhat concerned that he was leading his future wife, Kim, into a life of trailer trash, but he assured me that the trailer was not in a mobile home park; rather it is located on about an acre and a half of land that he bought in Graham. Same difference, but it's a moot point now since it's a done deal. Personally, I feel that Dave and Kim should stay in Raleigh, but Dave wanted to move to the west side of the Triangle, presumably to be nearer to Three Flags Over Greensboro. So much for taste... Jim left a present for IHOS in the form of a three-horned lizard with large teeth that is now hooked to the umbrella pedestal, but will soon be sunning itself on a rock in the garden. It is a nice addition to the neighborhood. Other than that, it was a slow day and slower evening. Though temperatures were in the 70s tonight, the night was moist and there was just enough wind to get some real transpiration going. We spent the night (until sunup) alternately sitting outside till we got nippy, moving inside to warm up, then going back out again. The weather does not look good for the the next several days because there is a persistent cut-off low hovering over the Southeast that threatens to bring rain on and off for the next several days. We will persist with the grill, though, through all sorts of weather. Jim report: one Jim |
|
We had a very special visitor this evening - none other than Jill Asher, the Jillster herself. Microsoft engineer and expert on NT systems. We made a valiant attempt to get Chad to come down (our resident NT geek) but he would not answer his door. He probably caught wind that an NT engineer who was actually female was at IHOS, got scared, and hid himself behind one of his machines. He snooze, he lose... Dave made a rare appearance, still not having any ass to speak of. His wallet, though, was making a stunning lump, sticking out of his bony butt somewhat like Diamond Head jutting from the blue Pacific waters. Marty called about midnight to tell me that he was back from Charlotte. I have no idea why he felt that he needed to tell me such, but nonetheless he refused to come over. He slurred something about his being too tired; he will be here tomorrow. It was decided by unanimous consent that the three-horned lizard with teeth needed to sit on top of the outdoor speaker rather than on the rock. It appears to be much happier. And speaking of speakers... There was a minor uprising this evening due to a temporary lack of tunes. It is fully my fault when I loaded a CD that had only ten tracks into a slot that I thought had a CD with 16 tracks and tried to program the tune order. Obviously it would not take and I spent some 15 minutes trying to figure out what was wrong with the CD changer until I realized that I was an idiot. But as soon as that was sorted out, we went to a Philadelphia Sound motif for the rest of the night. We decided that we needed a concrete animal in the front yard. I want to put a moose in the bush. Val did not like that idea. Dave is willing to steal a large bull, but we decided against that since the one he had in mind is 16 feet at the shoulders, 30 feet long, and would be a bit obvious. An alligator was mentioned, but summarily dismissed when we decided that a moat would be necessary to maintain the illusion. I'm in no mood to build a moat. If anyone has any ideas, please let us know. Jim report: one Jim |
|
2 June 1997 Bad day for the table. Rain all day, though we had some serious thunderstorms. Made me happy to watch all those amps. Did you ever wonder what would happen if you could take all the Joules in a good sized thunderstorm and pack them into one electron. Imagine something the size of a softball moving at the speed of light, ripping through space/time. A new friend from England, DaLizard, checked in remotely to IHOS and graced us with his pithy saying, to wit: "Hey, man you gotta understand..." Well, we don't understand. We don't understand at all. All is hidden; all is dark...oh wait, Gothic Night is next week. Sorry. Marty also emailed to complain that we are always picking on him. We thought about our attitude for a moment then decided that we were behaving appropriately under the circumstances. The Jillster checked in with an obligatory phone call to let us know that she was too tired to come over anyway. Just as good since it left us more meat to eat. Jim report: no Jims |
|
Rain, rain, and more rain. Along with cold, a northeast wind, and volcanic eruptions in the front yard. Well, OK...maybe no eruptions, but is it cold and wet. Far too cold and wet to grill today. That's why we will wait till tonight. Of course, this is mine and Val's second wedding anniversary, so it really isn't any business about what we do today. It is our day and our day alone. Not yours, unless you are also celebrating anniversary today, or perhaps a birthday, or the fifth year that the lithium has been effective. Got a note today from Jonathan Stokes today in which he expressed his extreme confusion. Here is the email he sent: Pithy saying? First give me a definition of pithy. I went to public skool here in Jaksunville, and we ain't learned those words. Seriously, my good friend Jill Asher (a/k/a the Divine Miss A.) told me to check out this web site. So I did. I hope that you will make note of my visit, 'cause the Jillster will probably ask me about it, and I better have an answer. Since we realize that Jono probably suffered a massive head injury last weekend while opening an Icehouse, we will define said term for him. |
|
7 June 1997 The Table it still wet. The table is still cold. We are not amused. |
|
The timespan of June 8-11 Basically closed for business, although there was some random grilling during that time - mostly involving hamburgers and such at 5 AM. It has been a tad too cold for a true IHOS gathering. |
|
12 June 1997 This is it...history in the making. Not only did IHOS set a record for the most number of people gathered at one moment (though not even approaching the record set last September the night after we were clobbered by Hurricane Fran - though that figure represented traffic throughout the entire evening,) but it was also a mini-GeekFest. The evening started out with Gurk and crew showing up with steaks, meat that we allowed Gurk to cook himself even though he has had absolutely no prior experience with a grill. The virgin did well; he did have a bit of trouble with the tongs, however. Then Greck showed up with an IHOS virgin - his roommate Jason - who steadfastly denied ever having spent the night in bed with anyone present at the table (at least those present at that particular moment.) Finally Marty the Magnificent from Digimaginations showed up late with meat in hand. It was good meat, too. There were so many pithy sayings flying that all I can do is enumerate briefly the more pithy of the lot: Marty - "Ian did not rape the ironing board."
Marty also commented later that a tattoo logo of his company's
name, Digital Imaginations, aka Digimaginations.com would extend
down an entire human leg. IHOS, of course, could be easily tattood
on a good-sized cornea if necessary. Jim report: one Jim (though not the usual one...) |
|
13 June 1997 This has been a night to remember. This morning we set up our Litter Maid, an electric litter pan. But some background is in order... We have two cats - Mystery and Scruffles. They are both long-haired, muted Calicos who do nothing but eat, excrete, sleep, and barf up hairballs. Typical cat stuff. About six months ago, Mystery somehow forgot how to use the litter pan properly. Scruffles, being the younger and more impressionable, followed suit and forgot how to use the litter pan herself. That left us with the need to implement drastic measures. To make a very long story (with Pavlovian implications) short, we finally got them to do their thing on newspaper that the litter pans sat upon. Then we noticed a trend. They would pee or poop once in each litter pan at which time they would begin to use the outlying newspaper. So a potential solution was in order that involved changing the litter pan each time they used it. Now, keep in mind the list of abilities that those cats possess (as detailed previously.) Eating is number one followed closely by excretion. Obviously changing the litter pans several dozen times a day would not cut it. Then we discovered Litter Maid. It is a device that one fills with clumping litter and plugs into the wall. When the cat does its thing and steps out of the box, a rake slids over the litter, picking up the now self-contained clump, drags it to the edge, opens a cover, and dumps it in. The cover closes, trapping the offending clump while the tines then return to the other side of the litter pan, evening out the litter for the next round. Well, we put this contraption into play this morning. Then we waited. For the first time in their lives, both cats had simultaneous shut downs of their entire excretory systems. After five or so hours, I was getting somewhat concerned that someone had inserted corks into the cats. A quick check yieded no corks. Then Mystery made her move. She walked over to the Litter Maid, eying it suspiciously, and made her first tentative steps into the litter. The urethra opened; the flood began, and the litter clumped. She stepped out of the box and we turned it on (yes, I know it is automatic, but until they get used to it I want to monitor things lest a cat get a rake shoved up its butt by accident.) The clump was swept into the side box and the pan was cleaned. After that, they pee'd about a half-dozen times...but no poop. About 1 AM, Jim and I are sitting out at IHOS when from the inside of the house we hear, "We've got poop!" It was Val making the grand announcement that someone had laid down a turd in the Litter Maid. We ran in to check it out. The turd was properly encased in clumping litter. We turned on the Litter Maid. The rake approached the turd. And then everything worked as intended. The clumped turd was swept into the little box and the litter was smoothed out ready for the next load. We are all very happy. Mystery will have to get used to the clumping litter, though; it sticks to her wet nose and she doesn't really like it all that much. Scruffles doesn't care because she's far too stupid to notice. Jim report: one Jim |
|
The weekend of 14-16 June 1997 First of all, I am well aware that the 16th was actually Monday and not technically part of the weekend, but this is IHOS time we're speaking of here and we can declare any scheme we choose. As such, we declare that this week will actually be only three days long; on what would be the 18th of June we will start August for one day then move back to June on the 19th. The weekend will be four days long beginning on the 1st of August and extending to the 23rd of June (which may be extended by a half-day if we opt to make a day 36 hours instead of 24; we have not made that decision yet.) But beyond that, it was a slow weekend with many of the neighbors taking off for parts unknown (which is something we should have done ourselves but we really have to watch the miles we put on the car right now. We have only 1500 miles before the warranty runs out and I need to scrape up $1200 for the extended warranty before it does. But that's a different story.) Plus the fact, it meant that we had all the meat to ourselves. It is turning into true IHOS weather now with highs pushing 90 and the lows only going down to the upper 60s at worst. Soon we will have lows that stay in the mid-70s and I will be truly happy...until the slugs come out in full force. Speaking of which, we are going to call the Horticulture Department at North Carolina State University this week to see if they can genetically design a variety of flowering plants that can withstand high concentrations of salt. That way we can save substantial portions of the Garden while also listening to the sweet screaming of slugs in the still night. Ahhhh, just the thought of that sound brings back fine memories of the SlugFest of 1995... Jim report: no Jims (he is at the beach this week...) |
|
17 June 1997 Bill from upstairs dropped in to IHOS for the first time since he and Katie moved in several weeks ago. We actually can divide the evening into two parts. The first occurred prior to 9 PM. Almost immediately after sitting down, several people wandered across the front lawn on their way back from the pool. Among them was (by general consensus) one of the most awesome women on the face of the planet. Imagine a cross between Gloria Estefan and Anna Nicole Smith (before she put on enough weight that PETA would keep trying to toss her back into the ocean when she was lying on the beach.) We all then decided that it was obvious that she lived nowhere within 1000 miles of here since no one that looks like that actually lives in the neighborhood. Then the thunderstorm hit...We suffered minor damage mainly to the tiki torches which got so wet that they would not light after the storm was over. We dried off IHOS and resumed activities about 10:30. One of the primary tasks was to cook an well-deserved meal for Katie who, after having gotten only about 2 hours sleep the night before, after having attended two morning classes, after having worked at her job as a lifeguard until the early evening, and after having gotten home in a foul mood to begin with... decided to change her hair color. Uh, excuse me...slightly lighten it. Katie was not amused. Bill was amused, but in no way could express that emotion to Katie until much later...say, November 1999. Anyway, we cooked her up some t-bone steaks and Katie was apparently in a better mood since she promptly went to sleep after eating at which time Bill came back down and we spent until 4 AM talking about philosophy, world political events, the business of sports, and the incredible babe that strolled by earlier that night. Very little time was spent talking about philosophy, world political events, and the business of sports, though. Jim Report: no Jims |
|
1 August 1997 Slow night, but what do you expect for the first of August. Temperatures were in the upper 70s and it was seriously muggy (the night was moist...) Mikey came over and he, Val, and I sat around shooting the breeze. Well, there was no breeze to shoot, so we improvised by setting up a fan which was necessary because the AC unit was blown and it was hotter in the house than it was outside. We are beginning to see the first appearance of mosquitoes. Or shall I say, Val is beginning to see the first appearance since only she is affected by them. When she ends up stumbling into the house because the bite welts have swollen her up to the size of the Titanic, we are all sitting around perfectly happy. But we give her a quick transfusion and she is fine from that point on. There was a major sexual event that kept us occupied for quite a stretch of time. Two large, black beetle-like things were doing the nasty at the edge of the garden. Very energetic little buggers. We debated for a while as to whether they were screamers or moaners, but gave up that discussion for some reason which none of us can remember. Jim report: still no Jims |
|
19 June 1997 Still warm, but at least the AC is fixed. David came over and fixed the AC at about 10:30 PM after it had been fixed earlier in the day. Unfortunately, the pin-head that came out to initially fix the AC unit fixed the wrong one and left before I realized what had happened. We fed David a hamburger and he was happy. The balance of the evening was spent with Mikey, moi, Val, and Chad (on and off) discussing the relative merits of NT versus Mac technology. We, of course, won. The Mac side, that is... There were two black beetles humping furiously for most of the night. We are not sure whether they were the same two who made their appearance last night or if they were different ones. We probably should have marked them somehow. On the other hand, it is bad enough to sit and watch something with that kind of stamina (tends to lessen your self-worth a bit) for a single night let alone consider that it was the same two that might have been going at it for over a day. Maybe we could capture them, crush them up, and sell them to a group like Scientology? We spent a lot of time listening to the water crackling off the citronella candles and I tried to talk Val into letting me get a major bug zapper since it make a similar sound. Mikey vetoed that idea after last years experience with a halogen lamp and a moth. I though it smelled rather good. Jim report: no Jims |
|
20 June 1997 Have you ever experienced on of those nights where things are so quiet and peaceful that you can hear a cricket fart...until someone decides to do something really stupid? Like shooting off fireworks in a residential neighborhood at 4:30 AM? Mikey and I were sitting at the Table when we saw two cretins slink out of their apartment, slither to the middle of the parking lot, lay down two roman candles, and light them. Now, don't get me wrong. I like roman candles. However, I like the ones that don't make an ear-piercing screaming noise for two minutes and issue forth semi-loud explosions. Any way, these things go off and it looks and sounds like Mt. St. Helens in full bore...did I mention it was at 4:30 AM? An unexpected event like that is a good test to see who lives in various apartments. Or rather, to determine the national origins of those living in said apartments. You see, we live in a college community where many of the apartments are occupied by students from all over the world. Now, the mere setting off of fireworks obviously bothers no one who was born in a democratically controlled country very little. The worst that happens is that a bit of sleep is lost or, on the up-side, one wakes up quickly enough to potentially enjoy the light show. Those folks who are escaping various regimes, though, interpret explosions, blinding colored showers of sparks, and dense smoke that smells of gunpowder somewhat differently. The Koreans handled it rather decently; apparently they are either young enough so as not to remember the 1950s or they live a considerable distance from the DMZ. The guys from Cambodia did not fare as well. As far as the folks from Zaire, uh the Congo, were concerned....well, I'll spare you the details. Let it suffice to say that a prayer in whatever language or from whatever religion still sounds like a prayer. The apartment I was really interested in - the guys from Iraq - were either in a deep sleep, were out of town, or were having trouble engaging the firing pin on their missile launcher; they didn't budge. There was a brief discussion relating to a food processor, the human penis, micro-surgery, and planeria whose total length exceeded three miles...but I'll spare you the details. Jim report: no Jims |
|
21 June 1997 Tonight was truly reminiscent of Deliverance. It was the first Night of the Yahoos for IHOS. A couple of neighbors decided to invite over all their rowdy friends who arrived in pick-ups, four wheel drives, and various machines that definitely did not come out of the factory like that. All night long they ended up parking on the street and waddling like ducks though my front yard in order to get to more beer. And the bimbo count was absolutely astounding. There were bimbos of all shapes and sizes, most of them ready for any adventure that anyone might have suggested. One of them was a rather modest bimbo, though. She had on a tube top and some pants that not only were so tight that she was creating harmonic output when she walked, but were also riding way down on her hips. Every three or four steps, though, she would adjust her tube top and pull up her pants (as if they were going to stay on for more than 30 seconds or so anyway after the first Yahoo call of the wild issued forth, to wit, "Show us your Tits!".) The varied groups finally dissipated about 3 AM and we quit worrying whether certain venereal diseases could actually be contracted via airborne transmission. There were no obvious creatures in the genus vomitus disgustus, nor was there any apparent use of the bushes for various bodily functions (though we were not privy to the interiors of several apartments where I assume that parts of the floor never intended for excretion were used for such.) Summer is finally and officially here. We sacrificed a slug in honor of the event. We wanted to slaughter an ox, but oxen are somewhat difficult to come by in an urban area as we have discovered. Jim report: no Jims |
|
Jim finally got back from the beach today. Actually, he was back yesterday, but got tied up at the wedding of Dave and Kim who, as the nation's first family of Trailer Trash finally tied the knot in a ceremony that Val and I unfortunately missed. They were intent on getting married on a Saturday morning, the sight of which I have not seen in years. Hard as I tried, there was just no way that I was going to get up that early. And the way Jim tells the stories of significant events, I had no real need to be there anyway. One thing Jim brought back from the beach with him was about three pounds of skin. Well, he had the skin all along; he simply opted to deposit three pounds or so at IHOS during his stint in the Jim Chair. It could be said that he was a bit sunburned. Then again, it could be said that fish swim in water. Both are absolute truisms. And speaking of fish... There is no way I am ever going to believe the fish stories that Jim told me concerning things he allegedly caught during his beach adventures. No way...no how...if nothing else, a carbon-based life-form is incapable of growing that large and still maintain circulation to every cell within the organism. We decided that we need an IHOS vulture. Our only problem is figuring out how to attract and keep a smallish colony of the things in our neighborhood. The street where IHOS is located is not generally know for harboring random carrion, nor would it be wise to create our own (as demonstrated last summer when the guys next door decided to have a pig picking and then threw the carcass into the bushes. For several days it was not pleasant around here.) If anyone should know how to attract and maintain a small vulture colony without the deposition of dead things as an attractent, please let us know here... Jim report: one fried Jim |
|
23 June 1997 Tonight was an average IHOS night. Complete and utter derangement. The greater part of the evening involved Marty relating varied stories of lust and adventure on the high seas to the rest of us who sat their in awe, wondering if what he was saying was even based in reality or if he has been reading way too many of the Penthouse letters. To do justice to the night would take an IHOS entry in excess of the hard drive space available, so we are forced to limit this entry to a single tale. Jennie is into leather, does not eat meat except for chicken, shaves her upper pits religiously, and dates an artiste named Bob whose presence in Jennie's life creates conflicts involving misplaced sexuality. (I will say no more on that count since we do try to keep IHOS at a PG level.) It came out that one of Jennie's defining characteristics is that she finds red meat particularly evil and shuns it at all costs, except of course on a night like tonight, when the blood moon is rising above the eastern horizon -- on those nights when the air is still, it is time for Jennie to eat meat. Jennie could not come out tonight and eat meat, though, because of a pre-occupation with Bob, her main squeeze and purveyor of all things evil since he works at the enemy camp - Harris Teeter - home of fine meat. [It is now necessary to skip the next three hours of conversation because of the nature of the discussion and our high standards that we maintain at IHOS. Needless to say, the prime topics revolved around Catholic schoolgirls, people named Cat, people named Kit, actual cats, bug-eyes, Gwen (unrelated to Bertha and unable to properly rollerskate,) trips to London, the care and proper hygiene of the armpit (previously alluded to,) and a heavily debated discussion of the proper application of the Hat Trick to interpersonal relationships.] Marty then went home, leaving Val, Mikey, Jim, and myself to wonder in speechless contemplation of these things and ask if they were a genuine sign of impending Armageddon or if the whole thing was simply the twisted musings of someone who drank altogether too much frappiccino at Starbucks using hastily clipped free frappiccino coupons. Jim report: one Jim slightly diminished in size due
to the loss of peeling skin. Interim Report The cretin who offered the Vulture Update last night has struck again. Here is his or her posting: "Do you people have any brains or inkling of intelligence
at all? 100 miles is close enough to do damage here.... So, let's analyze those statements one at a time. for starters, there are indeed two fault lines in North Carolina of any significance. The first is found near Brevard in the mountains and has the potential (however remote because of its age and stability) to some minor damage to non-braced structures. The other is located indeed in the Winston Salem area. Actually, it begins in the Triassic Basin near Danville, Virginia and extends through the Piedmont to near the Silverhill region of North Carolina. Due to its age, stability, and depth, it is estimated that one could expect seismic activity from that line every several million years that could even begin to be felt by a population and only then under ideal circumstances. Hence, the claim that there is a fault line near enough to Raleigh to do any damage is firmly grounded in (once again) liberal ideology - just another excuse to stop progress. Then we have the spelling flame of the word "Tail" in connection with our dear Jennie. It should seem fairly obvious to anyone whose IQ was greater than that of a rock that there is something called the pun, a major form of which constitutes the use of a homonym to connote an alternative intended meaning. It is painfully apparent that the birdbrain who made the statement above is so deeply entrenched in his or her own delusions of grandeur that he or she is unable to cognate sufficiently to see something as obvious as that. Finally, we have the plea to assure him or her that Jennie is not real. She is indeed real and living within the corporate borders of Raleigh, though her influence extends to the far reaches of civilization. I may point out that there is no fallacious statements made at IHOS. It is not allowed. And if a statement is made that needs to be verified, the maker of the statement is called on the carpet (as was such with the ridiculous fish stories told by Jim, stories that we will never believe in a million years or until the next earthquake flattens Raleigh.) Post Interim Report: IHOS received a response to our response to a response to a query concerning Vulture Tricks. I'll let this one stand on its own.... "why don't you just kill all of the ignorant attendees of the IHOS, especially the one who does the table page. it would do the rest of us a great favor. eat red meat and die!" And I just wondered if that person actually has a measurable IQ at all? It appears to me that to measure an IQ, one needs to somehow interface with the individual whose IQ is intended to be measured. Obviously, such would be impossible as the pin-head has about as much ability to socially interact as a lump of partially melted Jello. Now Jim, would you please reel in our catch? |
|
24 June 1997 Please forgive the inordinate delay in this evenings posting to the IHOS table. We had a major crisis last night and I have yet to completely recover. The evening began in a very pleasant manner with a warm breeze blowing from the south and a very dark moon rising in the east. the charcoal color of that moon should have been an immediate tip-off that something evil was about to happen. Val, Mikey, Jim, and I were sitting around the table when I looked over at Val and her eyes were bugged out while at the same time she was making wheezing noises. Nor normally such an occurrence would not have concerned me at all since Val is known to mix up her esophagus and trachea on a regular basis when drinking Diet Dr. Pepper, but this time her arm was fully extended and pointing at me. Well, not exactly at me, but just beyond my right shoulder. When I turned around my eyes bugged out as well and I went into respiratory arrest. There, on the wall of the garden, was the largest spider to have ever assembled DNA in the history of arachnia. That spider was easily six or seven feet across as was carrying something that glinted in the then, bright moonlight; I think it was a switchblade, but he put it up far too quickly for me to actually discern clearly. Wait, I have no idea why I referred to that creature from hell as a "he", it was a "she". And how do I know? As big as that thing was, the back end of her was made even larger by an entire colonial habitat of offspring clinging on for dear life. They ware mostly hanging on to the support nets and guy-wires, but some were actually embedded into their mom's very flesh (if spiders could be said to have flesh.) What followed is somewhat fuzzy. It involved a spray can of oven cleaner, a half bottle of Cutter insect repellent, a tiki torch, and a wide-mouth Mellow Yellow plastic bottle. Unfortunately, that is all I remember. I really wish I could fill in the rest, but the next thing I remember was waking up the next morning with the after effects of the willies. Jim report: one Jim who made himself into a hero by
killing and capturing the monster. |
|
25 June 1997 The most amazing occurrence happened tonight. Jim was listening to Parliament on the IHOS tunes port and suddenly was overcome by funk, exclaiming out of nowhere, "Power to the People" for no particular reason. About thirty seconds later, he fully recovered and was normal thereafter. The Bimbo report was so extensive this evening that we are compelled to incorporate it directly into the Table text. Matt, our Neighbor to the North, was throwing a party this evening. From the general traffic that developed in the path from the parking area to the Matt-abode, there were dozens of free range bimbos and very few guys. And the bimbos ran the whole gamut. There were tall ones, short ones, fat ones, skinny ones...(whoops - gotta quit listening to Sly...) There was one particular one who was tall and willowy. She got our of her car along with a companion bimbo and removed a large cooler from the trunk. the two of them proceeded to drag the cooler by means of a large handle along the bimbo path toward the Matt-abode when the cooler tipped backward and spilled its seed upon the ground. though no bottles were broken, there was a devastating loss of ice, the recovery of which proved impossible. The cooler was hastily reassembled prior to the arrival of the 1:05 truck and the bimbos moved on. Matt actually dropped in for a moment this evening to say hello, but was called away by two bimbos along with one guy who had a bimbo attached to his hip. Catherine and Chris, uh Data, also dropped by earlier in the evening to say hi after their honeymoon adventure in Maine. As hard as we tried, we could not pry any of the more sordid details out of them. Perhaps some other time. Jim report: one Jim still in full peel and now farting,
producing enough methane to qualify as a volcano |
|
26 June 1997 Total wash out. Rain...heavy rain...all night long. Worms and slugs galore. No way was I going out there... Jim report: no Jims having dozed off at 9 PM finally
to awake late the next morning |
|
27 June 1997 Aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh................ Slug report: help me mommy... |
|
28 June 1997 A bit nippy tonight, but we pulled it off anyway. And we did a rather good job of it as well. Jim, Val, and I spent the evening making fun of people driving by. We also decided that it would probably be an excellent idea to string a three-quarter inch, braided steel cable across the road to catch those semi-drunks who are flying down the road. We decided against that, though, when someone pointed out that such an act would probably constitute a felony. There were seven yahoos in a pick-up truck that kept driving around the neighborhood. It seems that they had set themselves up with a mobile keg party. We waited for someone to do a keg stand while the pick-up was turning a corner, but it never happened. Katie came down this evening bringing deep-fried, fan tailed shrimp as an IHOS offering. We thanked her perfusely, but politely declined since she looked hungry and we had just finished stuffing ourselves senseless. Her official Bill report indicated that Bill was to continue to be in Charlotte power washing buildings for several more weeks. Chad dropped in four times during the course of the evening. He kept running back to his apartment because he was building a computer. We kinda kept wondering just what type of computer he was building that he could apparently leave it on auto-build while he dropped in. I think I'll stay away from his place for a while until the green glow subsides. Slug report: one slug - on the table no less. |
|
29 June 1997 A quite night with just Val, Mikey, and myself contemplating the fact that the humidity is really high this time of year. The evening ended early when we started to get so wet from the fog that we all started to smell like goats, except for Val who started to smell like a carp. Jim report: no Jims |
|
30 June 1997 IHOS was closed tonight in mourning over the Hong Kong turnover to China. We watched news reports of gigantic celebrations and fireworks displays. It's too bad that the kids who were celebrating do not yet realize that within two years many of them will be either dead or in re-conditioning camps. |
|
1 July 1997 Rain. Not happy. |
|
2 July 1997 (early report) No rain. Very happy. Another hot night for IHOS, at least in terms of temperature. Slow night, though. Most folks are gone for the holiday weekend (for those of you not in the United States who are not familiar with out holiday schedule, the Fourth of July is the day when we celebrate kicking British butt back in 1776.) Anyway, we are getting ready for the celebration, a celebration that involves cooking food on the grill, laying in the sun, listening to various patriotic-music bands do their thing, and watching fireworks. Jim report: one Jim for a very short period of time.
Apparently he left early to reflect on the freedoms found in
the United States. Either that, or he got tired and went home. 2 July 1997 (late report) One night closer to the Fourth of July. You may be wondering why we get so psyched over this particular holiday. I mean, it celebrates events that happened over 220 years ago and which do not really affect us directly - except, of course, though the heritage established by those events. The attraction is directly due to the Triple Witching Hour that occurs - even more so since the Fourth falls on a Friday this year. For the benefit of those not living in the US, there are four things which are coming together on this weekend that do not necessarily occur at the same time. The first (obviously) is the Fourth of July itself. One thing I neglected to mention in our last entry is that the Fourth is known for the heavy consumption of beer and other adult beverages - somewhat like the tradition surrounding New Year's Eve. Now combine that with the fact that not only is the Fourth on a Friday (and hence a day off of work,) but the following day is Saturday, normally a day off of work. Then add in the fact that it is very hot and sultry with low temperatures only in the mid-70s, high humidity, and highs during the day pushing 100 - all factors in raising the irritation level of most of humanity. Now we can add in one more factor.... It is Welfare Weekend. For those of you not aware, Welfare Weekend is the first weekend after the third day of the month - the day welfare, disability, and Social Security checks hit. Under normal circumstances and for normal humans who are truly in need of such government assistance because of dire circumstances, age, or true infirmity, those checks are their lifeblood and most definitely needed. But for those who are living scum, awaiting their next round of checks solely for the purpose of being able to purchase more alcohol and drugs (by our reckoning, a substantial majority of those receiving said payments - particularly those who are under 30 and there are many,) Welfare Weekend represents an almost infinite amount of fun for us. Now put it all together. We have Welfare Weekend, very hot and humid weather, a national holiday already known for drinking falling on that weekend, and the indiscriminate misuse of fireworks - themselves representing a disaster waiting to happen - and we have all the ingredients for a real good time on Friday and Saturday night. But you may still need further explanation... You see, I have a police scanner hooked up to the stereo whose signal is pumped into the speakers mounted on the exterior walls at IHOS. We sit there on Welfare Weekend and listen to the living scum get drunk, then shoot, stab, rob, kill, set fire to things, and generally make social terrorists out of themselves. On a good Welfare Weekend, we can pretty well count on several dozen or so of the utter scum of the Earth being either permanently removed from society or arrested for committing such a heinous felony that they will spend much of the balance of thier lives in prison. That makes us happy. We do feel sorry for those caught in any collateral damage resulting from the drive-by shootings, armed robberies, or arsons, but such is life when the police do not have the authority to shoot people on sight who are in the process of committing said felonies. So we settle for second best which is long jail terms. It ought to be so much fun this weekend, particularly Friday night, that we have considered going to the local trauma center and watching the parade of morons who have been stabbed, shot, and had limbs blown off as the result of mishandling fireworks while they were drunk or stoned. We may even temporarily disassemble IHOS and relocate to the parking lot of Wake Medical Center for awhile. Jim report: no Jims |
|
3 July 1997 Brace yourselves folks....this is going to be a long entry. Many things worthy of note happened last night. The evening started off potentially as the Night of the Yahoos - Part Two, but never materialized with quite the numbers of sloped-headed, knuckle-dragging, cretins necessary for an official proclamation. Not to say that there were not a considerable number of Neanderthals cruising up in pick-up trucks in an effort to reach some kind of party going on around the corner; hardly...the assortment was indeed spectacular for its genetic non-diversity and the almost linear nature of the particular family tree represented within this small gathering. Among those with closed eyebrows were two bimbos -- well, actually one bimbo and something in a long peasant dress, carrying a rose, that appeared to have wandered out of the 1960s. The other one was a true bimbo wearing very loose overalls with a black bikini underneath that was having trouble staying on underneath the very loose overalls. There were also two dogs, apparently unassociated with the refugees from Deliverance, one of which was very large and gray and the other small and very nervous (possibly due to the presence of the large dog, but more likely due to its proximity to the refugees from Deliverance.) Since he was not a member of the sheep family, though, he really had no need to be concerned. The next moment worthy of note occurred when Pete dropped in. Pete is an IHOS virgin who was not the one we all assumed escaped from Folsom Prison. That was apparently another person who lived very briefly in the apartment currently occupied by Pete. Pete spent the next 20 minutes or so telling us about the nature of the people living next door to him, people we had only seen at a distance, but have never heard from. And that is probably a very good thing. They are complete liberal weenies. Long-haired freaks of nature whose idea of a good time is cleaning the trash out of a leech-infested stream bed. Mind you, I did not say that was their idea of a worthy time; that is their idea of a good time. There is a difference. Later that evening, several of them were seen literally hugging the trees in their front yard. We at first thought they were playfully climbing them, but realized that it was some sort of pagan worship ceremony that was occurring. It is quite possible that one of the female weenies was actually grazing on the lower branches, but we were afraid to get close enough to actually determine if she was eating the leaves or just licking them. Then the excitement started. A siren pierced the night from the other side of the facing buildings, turned left onto the street that runs adjacent to IHOS, then turned left again and approached IHOS itself. It was a Raleigh Police cruiser in hot pursuit of a fleeing vehicle. The occupant of the vehicle had a significant problem, though. Under the best of circumstances it is unwise to try and outrun a police cruiser (you can potentially outrun one car, but you can't outrun a radio.) Her (yes, her) problem was that the car she was driving was, shall we say, not well suited for street racing. In fact, her car was not well suited for passing inspection. She tried to punch it right in front of IHOS as she was approaching a slight grade in front of her, but the pinging and knocking of her little Japanese snot-box was so intense that the tree-hugging weenies across the street were actually thinking about spontaneously protesting the blight to the environment caused by her car. She got about 100 feet before the thing just simply gave out and was promptly surrounded by police cars coming in from three directions. It didn't help her cause that she was in a neighborhood that has only three exit points which, from the description given above concerning the number of police cars converging on her location, seemed pretty well covered at the time. We were hoping that the police would tear her out of the car and beat her senseless, but we had no such luck. Apparently the Raleigh Police have been too well trained to engage in such antics, making for a friendly and courteous police department, but a very boring end to a vehicle chase. It was confirmation, however, that Welfare Weekend had indeed begun. In the next moment, Andy came running over, having just arrived in his car. Mikey wondered if asking him a question while he was trotting in our direction would constitute a Gallup Poll; we decided it would. Anyway, Andy (who had been an IHOS virgin only hours before) took a seat as natural as could be and quickly got into the swing of things. The conversation was moving splendidly when Andy suddenly blurted out, "I'm impressed. Y'all have no bugs out here." Apparently he was not a qualified enough chemist to immediately recognize the smell of a mixture of metaldehyde, Orthonex, N, N-diethyl-meta-toluamide, (butylcarbityl)(6-prophlpiperonyl), [cyclohexene-1,2,dicarboximide]methyl-2, and salt. We chuckled at his ignorance, but marveled at his perceptional skills. We also wondered if he was susceptible to chemically-induced seizures or had some sort of sensitivity to neurotoxins. I decided to contact my insurance agent on Monday to up my liability coverage just in case. Katie then wandered in. Actually, I should say stumbled in. Katie had been to Marrz. Not the planet, but the local nightclub for bimbos and preppy studs who think they are worthy of female attention (which they are generally not unless the female is wearing a very loose overalls with a black bikini underneath that is having trouble staying on underneath the very loose overalls.) Katie had been imbibing large quantities of adult beverages throughout the course of the evening and remarkably made it down the sidewalk to IHOS. She took a seat and immediately began acting as cute as a button which instantly garnered the full attention of Pete, Andy, Jim, and Mikey (who, try as he might, had a failure of his Cutie Field and promptly became a point of non-attention for Katie.) Katie mentioned that she was on a strict fish diet when asked if she would like some food and we all wondered why. She then stated that she needed to lose 20 pounds because her clothes no longer fit and we all wondered what part of her body did she intend to remove those 20 pounds from. To present you with an image of Katie after having lost 20 pounds, conjure up the image of an Ethiopian refugee on crack. It was decided that Katie did not need to lose 20 pounds and also decided that no man in his right mind would kick her out of his bed even if she did. Katie, even emaciated and on her anorexic death-bed, would still look like a Semitic Goddess, move like a Burmese python, and purr like a Siamese cat. And that's on a bad day. Pete and Andy, who had never before seen Katie, were mightily impressed. Jim was speechless and Mikey blew a fuse causing his Cutie Field to fail. Later that evening, Mikey was so distraught that he misjudged the angle of his chair and fell over backwards, breaking the chair and causing intense pain and bleeding from his hand which Val promptly bandaged. Slug report: no slugs |
|
Happy Birthday, USA. Since everyone was out doing things this evening, and we decided to stick around the hacienda to avoid the crowds - and particularly the small children which are looked upon with utter disdain - it was a somewhat slow night at IHOS. (For an indication of what we use to ward off small children, check this out...) We did have some visitors, though. Andy dropped by first with bimbo in tow. Her name was Leslie and she attends Florida State University. Even though she lived in Florida, Leslie was still amazed at the set-up we have at IHOS. That made me feel rather pleased that we could do a better job of wasting time, lounging in a created oasis, than a resident of Florida. We must be doing something right... We then had four people wander up requesting the use of a bottle opener. Normally, such an event would not have even raised an eyebrow except that we had no idea of who these folks were -- or at least that's what we first thought. As it turned out, one of them (Will) was a former student of mine. (Mind you, I used to teach observational astronomy so I saw my students every two weeks for two hours in the dark.) Once that was cleared up, they joined us for several hours. Along with Will came Kris (business associate of Will, both of whom design and create custom stained glass windows,) Matt (ex-military holding the job of a tank-mechanic at Fort Benning, Georgia along with a tour in Korea under his belt,) and his main squeeze, Amanda (another Florida native hailing from Pensacola, but now living in Greensboro and working as a secretary for a lawn care firm.) Amanda was not a bimbo. That needs to be duly noted. She was actually a rational human being with a lot of class and a great sense of humor. Jim and Matt also got along together well, spending the balance of the evening talking about old war stories (both having served in the job of blowing things up and killing people.) All four are welcome back anytime. During a significant portion of the evening we had a spectacular lightning display on our southern horizon. The storm stayed to our south, though, and did not interrupt the evening's events, events which included a large bevy of morons up the street who somehow came into possession of every scrap of fireworks unsold by midnight. From the turn of the day until 4 AM, they shot off continual fireworks of all types and entertained us greatly. Only one truly bizarre thing happened all night long. We saw what may have been a she-male. Yes indeed, there were four people who wandered down the street, one of whom was a definite bimbo, two of whom were definitely decedents of Cro-Magnon, and the last of undefined genetic makeup. Note that we were not confused merely by the creatures sexual orientation -- s/he was strolling with one of the Cro-Magnon guys. No, we had no idea as to the actual sex of the creature. To speculate any further would be pure unsubstantiated conjecture. Jim report: one Jim |
|
5-6 July 1997 Just brief appearances at IHOS for the past several days. I've been working on our taxes and am ready to join an armed revolt against the Internal Revenue Service and all the yahoos who support that stinkin' organization with their legislation. We really do need a flat sales tax without all the deductions, exclusions, adjustments, or other games they play with us. |
|
7 July 1997 Ear ache...both sides...sore throat...festering pustulous sores...death and destruction...raging anthrax infection with bubonic plague...ebola...hurts bad...I need a doctor... |
|
8 July 1997 Update Went to the doctor this morning. It turned out to be a minor ear infection that was a result of allergies getting out of hand. They put me on Biaxin, an antibiotic. Neat stuff. Everything's coming out looking like it was produced by an albino. And if snot were a marketable commodity, I could have retired this morning. Val and I got into a discussion of how men and women react differently to illnesses versus injuries. When men get little colds, we whine and insist that we are about to die a horrible death with our internal organs melting into oblivion. But we can get our arms cut off with a chainsaw and we react as if it were only a superficial wound. Women, on the other hand, can get attacked by flesh-eating bacteria and infested with neurotoxins and they don't think twice about it, but just let them stub their toe and us men need to carry them around on our shoulders for a week. I'm feeling much better now and IHOS will be open this evening. And if I get lucky, maybe Val will still feel sorry for me in the morning and being me chicken noodle soup in bed. Yum... |
|
8 July 1997 We had a double de-virginization this evening. First there was Alex, brother of Andy, and winner of the Freak of the Week Award. He is also known as "Crack-Master" for his ability to produce cracking sounds with every joint in his body -- including his spine (a frightening prospect at best.) Then there was Cameron, roommate of Andy, also known as "Naked Guy" stemming from the time that his roommates came home significantly earlier than expected to find Cameron and his girlfriend in the living room. Oh...Cameron was wearing nothing but a sock covering his sausage. And that fell off in the ensuing excitement of discovery and hilarity. Anyway, they are now initiated. We also met Heather, Not Heather, and Beth, neighbors of Andy, Cameron, and Pete (who also put in a brief appearance before mumbling something about having to work in the morning and wandering off into the night.) Not Heather actually has a name, but I couldn't remember it, so she is now formally Not Heather. Presumably if I were not married I would have had a much easier time remembering her name since she is a hot, blonde vixen who oozes erotica even when she was discussing the time she got way drunk and vomited all over someone's front lawn. But all three are hot babes and will soon be the target of the neighborhood Hound-Dogs. We are all hoping they will come to IHOS one night, but we think that we made them nervous. Now, I must present you with the following scenario. I will relate the facts and only the facts, not drawing any conclusions; I will leave that to you... At about 3 AM, a car pulled into the parking lot across the street. There was a guy driving and two blonde (serious) bimbos in the back seat. (It should be obvious to all that we were dealing with major bimbos when it was that obvious from simply seeing their heads in a car at night.) There was no one in the front passenger seat. They park and get out of the car. As they were walking to their apartment, a very drunk guy comes stumbling down the street and joins them in the parking lot. The drunk begins arguing vehemently with the driver while it appears that the two bimbos (now in full view and wearing all black and all white, skin-tight bimbo suits respectively) try to drag them into the apartment. I should note that the bimbos were the visitors and the guys actually live there. They almost make it to the apartment door when the major league yelling begins. That goes on for about five minutes and the bimbos finally drag the guys into the apartment. Ten minutes pass then the police come. Two cars pull up to the front of the apartment and go in. They are in there for about fifteen minutes. Then the two guys and the two bimbos come out of their apartment and get into their car. They drive off. The police get back into their car and drive off. Five minutes later, the two guys and the two bimbos return, park, and go back into the apartment. That is all the information we have and we can not for the life of us figure out two things. One, what may have transpired while the police were in the house and two, why did the four people leave then immediately come back? If anyone has any ideas, please let us know here. Jim report: one Jim |
|
9 July 1997 Very slow night this evening. Mostly Val and I just sitting out and enjoying the night air. There was only one highlight. Late in the evening, Jim dropped by along with Andy and Friend of Andy who was so non-discript that no one seems to remember his name. About 2 AM, Katie and Leslie come rolling in from one (or several) of the local night spots. Katie, of course, was three sheets to the wind while Leslie was reasonable stable, though somewhat quiet. Actually, I think she may have been mute since she didn't say a single word. It became obvious after a couple of minutes that Katie was extremely unstable and about to undergo core meltdown, so we instructed her to go home. Leslie seemed pleased at that prospect because I think she did not fully comprehend the whole concept behind IHOS and was getting nervous. Jim report: one Jim still trying to figure out why
women use so much toilet paper |
|
10 July 1997 Busy night this evening. We got set up early and ate dinner at the table. Then about sundown, Jim rolled in first followed by Andy (who promptly left to attend to Pete who was slime-ing all over Victoria.) Then Kerry came over with Robert in tow. Kerry was the Best Babe at our wedding. No, not the Maid of Honor, but the Best Babe. Kinda like a Best Man, only different, though actually serving the same role. The minister and much of the congregation were a mite perplexed as to why there was a hot blonde in a slinky, black dress standing on the groom's side along with the groomsmen, but they recovered rather quickly. Anyway, it was the first time at IHOS for both of them so we chalked up the devirginization of two more (formally) innocent individuals. Then two things happened almost simultaneously. The first involved Andy and his friend Eric from New York. It seems that the two of them had gone over to someone's house and that person gave them a ride home about 1:30 AM or so. As Andy and Eric were walking to the door, their friend drove off into the moonset, blonde bimbo in tow (who was in the car to start with and not just some bimbo randomly picked up from the parking lot.) Several seconds later, Andy remembered that he had left his keys over at his friends house. They spend the next 15 minutes or so throwing rocks at the windows trying to wake up Pete, Cameron, or Ben (Andy's roommates.) No dice. Pete had passed out big-time at about 11, Cameron was not home, and Ben was suffering from exhaustion after having....well, after having a strenuous evening. So Andy and Eric did the only thing that was left to do; they wandered over to IHOS. Repeated phone calls to their own apartment and to their friend's house proved fruitless. I suggested that they use the ancient Chinese technique of throwing their weight against the door frame to cause the door to pop open, but they wouldn't fall for that. Too bad; it would have been interesting to watch them clean up a splintered door frame for the rest of the night. Their friend finally arrived back at his house, got their repeated phone messages, and came back over with the keys. In the meantime... Katie slimes back in from another night out on the town. I am in the process of walking around to the front of our building to see if Chad is still awake, Katie is out of her car and crossing the parking lot, when all of a sudden she got this ashen look on her face and sucked in a boatload of air. At first, I thought she was getting ready to hurl right then and there, but she bolted off to her door yelling something about her cat. Seems that Bill had gotten back in from Charlotte earlier that evening and let out the cat who was sitting by the door scared to death since the cat has never been outdoors and had no idea of how truly dangerous it is out here for indoor cats. The next several seconds were a bit blurry since they happened so fast, but in what seemed to be a single move, Katie picked up the cat, opened her door, screamed at Bill about letting out the cat, and slammed the door shut. I figured that it would be a bad time to drop in and say hey to Bill now that I knew he was home. Apparently everything turned out just fine because both Bill and Katie wandered down to IHOS to say hello, Katie somewhat fixated on the fact that she had gotten sprayed with pepper gas earlier while the cutie she had attached herself to at the bar proceeded to get in a fight with another yahoo. After the fight and the subsequent spraying, Katie decided that he was no longer a cutie and abandoned him to some dog of a woman. Bill, on the other hand, related a few stories about his cousins from Arkansas and their sexual activities. For some reason, I think the two incidents were related, but I can't quite pin down how... Jim report: one Jim |
|
11 July 1997 Busy night in terms of visitors. In all, the following dropped in for varying lengths of time: Chad - still rambling on about NT servers
As soon as it was determined that Katie did not actually have to be rushed to the hospital, Bill brought her upstairs and put her in bed. Slug report: no slugs |
|
12 July 1997 After the past couple of days, we were prepared for a quiet evening. Mia had joined us for a bit. Mia lives up the street and is a retired woman who shares a love of flowers and gardening. We discussed the progression of our garden and she caught us up on the latest doings of the neighborhood cat gangs. When Mia left we were still hoping for a quiet evening; it was not to be. The night started with a Nigerian taxi driver chasing a very drunk frat-boy across the front lawn, the driver yelling that the frat-boy was a thief and yelling to call the police. OK...interesting start to the evening. As it turned out, the Nigerian taxi driver had driven the drunken frat-boy to Raleigh from Greensboro without getting any cash up front and as soon as they got to Raleigh, the frat-boy jumped out of the cab and bolted. The police came, but they got here about 15 minutes too late and the frat-boy was long gone. Uh, wait. The night actually began with a large, muscular guy walking through the front lawn on his way to parts unknown who was a rather pleasant fellow, stopping for a brief moment to say hello and advise us that he has had much success warding off mosquitoes by using Off Candles. He was very well-dressed and well-groomed. He then walked off into the night. This incident will become important in a moment. Then Marty showed up. As you may remember, Marty is IHOS-renowned for relating personal events that have occurred in his life (and the lives of his friends.) Well, tonight was no different. Let it suffice to say that there were three primary stories, the gist of which were, one...a blind date gone bad, two...a good friend lost, and three...he is very tired. Of course, those three stories took about two hours to tell since Marty is the King of Digression. It is worthy to note that when three marines who have picked up three women, all three of which accompanying Marty to one of the hottest pick-up bars in Greenville, state that they (the marines) are losers and that Marty does not want to be with them when it is Marty who walked out of the bar sans bimbo...well, I'll leave it at that. At some point during the middle of the Marty-fest, Katie wandered down in one of her rare sober moments, which was just as well since the ensuing confusion resulting between a drunken Katie and a rambling, digressive Marty may have been too much for me to take. Katie was very pleased with herself since she found some potato chips that she liked since she was looking for Ruffles without the ribs in them which kind of defeats the purpose of calling them Ruffles, but somehow made sense within the recesses of Katie's mind. And as she was in the process of devouring a bag of un-ribbed Ruffles, we heard the moose. At least we think it was a moose. There was a noise that creased spacetime which hurtled out of the night. It sounded exactly like a moose in heat, the noise one would hear on those animal programs that detail the mating rituals of various creatures. Since there have been no known moose sightings in Raleigh recently, we were forced to presume that it was actually something else, but hold open the possibility of a rogue moose wandering around the city. Now, remember the nicely dressed guy from earlier in the evening? He wandered back towards IHOS. This time he was barely able to walk and was wearing a ratty t-shirt and shorts, different clothes than he had on before. His only statement this time was, "How'd you get an end apartment like this?" Which was an appropriate statement since IHOS is at an end apartment, but was completely out of context. Without waiting for an answer, he stumbled back off into the night. We would love to know what happened to him, but he was in no condition to tell us at that moment and probably won't remember this night when he wakes up tomorrow sometime. It's a shame, too, since it was probably a great tale of drunken debauchery. Bill returned about 2 AM from the horse show he had been at all day long and smelled like he was at a horse show all day long. We let him stay since he was warding off the creeping things. Then Derrick showed up. Derrick is Katie's primary squeeze and she made squealing noises as he approached. Almost like the moose noise, except about three octaves higher. Katie and Derrick left forthwith. I went inside for a moment and when I returned to the screen door, about to walk back out to IHOS, I noticed that Bill's hand was on fire. Bill had come up with the brilliant idea of seeing whether a potato chip would burn. They do. Explosively. As soon as we put the fire out we tried a Pringles to see if it would burn better than an un-ribbed Ruffle. It did. Peanuts do not burn to any significant degree. Jim report: no Jims |
|
13 July 1997 One of those perfect nights that reminds one of New Orleans. Hot...muggy...still...and with mosquitoes big enough to stand flatfooted and screw turkeys. For the most part, it was just Val, Jim, Mikey, Bill, and I sitting around deciding the best way to conquer the planet Venus as an IHOS outpost. For some reason, Val did not find that subject interesting enough so she went in and worked on accounting stuff. She has no life... We had two visitors. Will and Friend of Will stopped in for a moment to introduce themselves. Will lives up the cul de sac and has seen us out here from time to time. I should actually state that Will came by to introduce himself; he forgot to introduce Friend of Will. We found out somewhat later that Friend of Will's name is really Shannon. Shannon is a cutie...no bimbo there at all. Andy also popped in for about 30 seconds a bit after 3 AM then left. I'm sure he did so only to make an IHOS page entry, but I will not give him the satisfaction so I refuse to even mention Andy's name in this entry. The gall of him... The only point of note all night was when Jim, Mikey, and I decided to take an IHOS field trip up to Katie's apartment. Katie was entertaining and we thought it would be a good idea to disrupt the proceedings for a brief time. We walked up, knocked on the door, and upon being invited in, sat on the floor in front of the couch and stared at them without saying a single word. Katie was confused. Her friend got nervous. Then we left. Bill did not go with us since he has to live with Katie and suffer the potential Wrath of Katie if things had gone amiss. They did not. Jim report: one Jim |
|
14 July 1997 It is truly a wonderful world in which we live when folks like Chad can exist without being routinely tortured. Let me, though, give you a bit of background... As you know, Chad is genetically incapable of engaging in human conversation that does not involve some aspect of the NT operating system. Well, this evening Chad came down and started right up with the NT discussion. We generally ignored him as we often do while he wistfully rambles. Except this time there were some new people here. Two of them were our other upstairs neighbors, Kristie and Kim. Kristie was sitting outside with us while Kim was inside playing with the Web on my computer. She had inadvertently wandered into some of the more forbidden sites of the Internet and got very excited over her discovery. In fact, she was so excited that she came to the door and exclaimed, "Don't you want to see naked people on a computer humping and everything?" We all decided that we had outgrown that semi-pleasure after our first 30 seconds of the initial encounter and declined, but that led into a discussion of pornography on the Internet and pornography in general which led to a discussion on 900 numbers and phone sex. It is at that moment that Chad stated, "Who needs phone sex when you've got Mickey Mouse ears?" He then resumed his normal conversational posture. After Chad left, we all decided that he is dangerous. Andy, Pete, and The Crackmaster dropped in for a bit along with Katie who was wearing some sort of Polynesian dress thing since she had gone to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. We still do not understand the logic behind that one, but such is Katie. The Crackmaster led much of the conversation on a discussion of insects and how they have been discovered lurking on various parts of his body and clothing over the years. We decided that Praying Mantis's are not well suited for traveling in cars. Slug report: no Slugs |
|
15 July 1997 We almost abandoned IHOS this evening and moved to Northern Canada. It was still over 80 degrees at midnight and the humidity was overwhelming. And that was just the official air temperature. That doesn't factor in the heat coming off the building's brick wall abutting one side of IHOS; factor that in and the temperature was equivalent to Dante's sixth layer of Hell. A couple of people dropped in throughout the night, but I was too hot to really notice who they were. One of them looked like Katie -- can't be sure, though, because I've never seen a human being drag like that. Mosquitoes were passing out on the table and the black bugs were trying to stay in under the cooler plants. Unfortunately, they are generally too stupid to know what a plant is and kept dropping from dehydration on the sidewalk. Slug report: no slugs. Not even any signs of slugs.
Not slime trails. No rustling of the bushes. No murmurings of
slug-attack plans heard from the garden. We think we finally
have them under control. |
|
16 July 1997 IHOS is temporarily closed until Sunday night to general traffic. We are hosting a four-day marketing seminar and folks are coming in from all over North America for the seminars, tutorials, and bull sessions. Now, that does not mean that IHOS itself is closed completely; it simply means that the attendees (until Sunday) will be rational and normal human beings. If, however, that proves to be in error, we will immediately report any unusual occurrences. In fact, one thing did happen that was pretty bizarre in the context of a business meeting. We're in the middle of a rather heated discussion on marginal effectiveness of marketing saturation and Chad comes down all pissed off that he did not have an original copy of some Disney movie. What was even more unusual was that most of the people at the table fully understood his plight and sympathized with him. Very surrealistic. Jim report: no Jims...we are beginning to get worried. |
|
17-18 July 1997 Well, I got through the weekend seminar without killing anyone. That is a plus. The downside is that I now have to put everything back together again. No, not the house, but the regular attendees of IHOS. Jim is going through withdrawal and Chad is completely beside himself with boredom. The upside is that everyone left a day early so we get to open IHOS tomorrow instead of Sunday. |
|
19 July 1997 Completely back to normal. Marty stopped in and graced us with a handful of Jennie stories, most of which involve illegalities that may or may not be covered under the statute of limitations so they won't be repeated. Will dropped in sans Shannon who was at mom's house, presumably shopping furiously over the weekend. We expect a fashion show when she returns. We do have a potential problem, though. Some new neighbors moved in across the street and set up shop on their back patio. They have a very rudimentary set-up with minimal chairage, mere portable tunes box, no visible grill, though they do apparently attract bimbos. Indeed, we are not yet sure whether two guys moved in and attracted four bimbos or if four bimbos moved in and attracted two guys. Time will tell. Needless to say, we are somewhat concerned that they intend to potentially outdo the real IHOS and establish an outpost. We can not let that happen. Our primary plan of attack at this point is to play ABBA continuously until we drive them back inside. Jim report: no Jims since he is still undergoing treatment
for IHOS withdrawal. His therapists did not want him to jump
directly back in thinking that the shock of total immersion after
a three day absence would be too much for him to handle. |
|
20 July 1997 Well, we found out where Pete has been since last Tuesday. He has had chicken pox. At 20, you would think that he would have already contracted the dreaded Pox, but he managed to somehow escape. Nonetheless, he managed to come through his illness with flying colors none the worse for wear. He isn't even cratered. Mikey, Val, and I generally just sat around most of the night still recovering from the past weekend. It was a Blood Moon again and we briefly thought of Jennie, but abandoned that image when we all realized that it was far too nauseating to think about. Mikey brought over some video tapes of his favorite episodes of Reboot and we watched them. For those who do not know, Reboot is a computer-generated animation series done in Canada that features several people who live inside a computer. It is their job to get actively involved in games that the User plays in order to make the User win all the time because if the User loses, there is big trouble in Computerland, or Mainframe as it is called on the show. I had to sit there and watch two episodes complete with a running commentary by Mikey, all the time telling him to grow up without letting on that Reboot is really cool. Tough assignment. Jim report: no Jims...this is becoming intolerable. |
|
21 July 1997 Good night. Katie's folks - Lamar and Mahvash stopped in and graced IHOS with their presence (along with Bill and Katie in tow, Bill just having arrived back in Raleigh after pressure washing the entire city of Charlotte.) They are truly fine individuals which is probably why Katie was continually insistent that she has absolutely nothing to be ashamed about. By the way, did I mention that Lamar works for IBM, carries his fully-connected laptop with him at all times, and really likes the IHOS site? Talk about keeping up with your kids... hehehe... Pete dropped in and finally brought Victoria with him. Victoria had made a tentative appearance at IHOS several weeks ago, but we mortally embarrassed her just prior to her entrance and she left. She has finally calmed down enough to return, though she still seemed a bit red in the face. Pete also informed us that he apparently did not have chicken pox, but rather some sort of bizarre reaction to an insect bite. We now believe that the original diagnosis was contrived solely to elicit sympathy and our feeding him peanuts in the shell in an effort to make him feel better. It's a good thing that he didn't claim to have had anthrax or we may have fed him a rib eye. Jim got on some weird discussion of semi-disgusting combinations of foods, citing a mix of peanut butter, bananas, and mayonaisse as one of his favorite combinations - presumably as a sandwich, though we really never defined such. The strangest thing I have ever eaten was chocolate icing on a hot dog (rather good actually.) Val's offering involved something that none of us could get a handle on since it is Mountain Food and involves things grown in the wild and whipped up by traditional Southern grandmothers. After considerable discussion on this topic, the phrase "gag a goat" was offered as a pithy saying to reduce time spent in a discussion of the relative merits of bizarre food combinations. We also received an email from The Jillster who, in a state of being severely pissed, chastised us for not being here Saturday night when she dropped in. We had got caught at a business dinner and arrived back about an hour after she had left. She was not amused. It was bad enough that she verbally tried to shove a mainframe up our rectums for our inconsideration, but then she rubbed salt in the wound when she told us what she had done with the New York Strip steaks she brought over -- she gave them to the new folks across the street to cook up. That is an act of treason and we are thinking of a way to get her back for doing so. And speaking of the new competition to IHOS, we have decided that there are only three solutions to the problem. One is to attack and take no prisoners. Two is to ignore them and hope they go away without further threat. And third is to force their assimilation into IHOS itself through abduction and reconditioning. We are still debating the issue. What do you think we should do? Jim report: one Jim - not happy since his car got ticketed
and his side view mirror broke. |
|
22 July 1997 Rain...big rain. We actually got IHOS open for about ten minutes when we thought the rain had finally ended, but then it started raining again. When I went to sleep, it was still raining. When I woke up, it was still raining. As I went through my day, it continued to rain. And the remnants of Hurricane Danny have not yet arrived. We are building an ark and hopefully IHOS will not wash into the Atlantic Ocean between now and Friday morning. |
|
23 July 1997 Serious rain. The remnants of Danny finally passed directly over us and we ended up with about 7 inches of rain on top of the 5 inches or so from yesterday. Major flooding, though Crabtree Valley Mall did not flood like it did during Hurricane Fran. We were disappointed. |
|
24 July 1997 The Ark has set down on dry land and we are back in business as soon as we clean up the dove poop. IHOS started early this evening since everyone was a bit antsy to get caught up. Pete dropped by first and almost immediately left because he was tired. Wimp. Then the evening got rolling... We had a big crowd with Andy, Will and Shannon (the babe, not the bimbo,) Bill, Katie, Mikey, Jim, Val, Chad, and I basically trying to outdo each other with strange stories. After a short time, we tossed out Andy and forced him to go home when he started coming down with something and coughing like a pig with a hairball. The last straw came when he coughed up a lung on the front yard and we watched the TB bacteria scatter looking for new hosts. We discussed my former earache for a bit as a result of that stunning example of the collapse of a human body and I once again felt like my childhood was a bit sheltered. Apparently there is a Southern Old Wive's Tale that dictates the insertion of fresh urine into the ear canal to heal an earache. I had not heard that one, nor do I intend to ever try it for any reason. Though that brought up an interesting point of mortal embarrassment that we, of course, are obligated to pass on. It appears that Will's little brother, Josh, used to do something real strange when he was a baby. When they took his diaper off, it was a cue to pee. And pee he did. It seems that for some reason the instant air hit Josh's little Johnson, a stream of pee would launch and invariably hit him in the eye. Josh's eye, not Will's. And Josh made it though infanthood without the usual case of pink eye so there may be something to the Old Wive's Tale, though not a strong enough correlation to test further on ourselves. We were assured that Josh no longer has that reaction and we decided that he is welcome at any time to IHOS - provided he does not get neked because we don't really want to find out the hard way that he may have not outgrown his magic tricks. Jim, Mikey, and Val spend considerably time throwing a frisbee around the front yard. The rest of us commented on the relative waste of energy that went into that endeavor. And it is dangerous. Well, throwing a frisbee itself is not particularly dangerous, but when there is a world-class Holly bush in the playing field, things can get interesting. Particularly with this specific Holly bush. Though we have yet to see them, there is apparently a group on gnomes that come out periodically and sharpen the leaves, attach razors and pins to them, and re-orient them so that all the sharp edges point outward and at face level. Mikey came close a few times to diving into the bush face first. We decided that he would be better served at Wake Medical Center rather than Rex Hospital since Wake has a full trauma center even though Rex is closer. We also saw a UFO. Yes indeed, there was an unidentified flattened object in the street. No one wanted to get close to it because it was not there at the beginning of the evening and no one saw it being deposited (even though we did have a drive-by trashing about 2 AM.) We got nervous. Jim report: one Jim, back in full form |
|
25 July 1997 IHOS occurred in two rounds tonight. The first round involved Val and I, Bill, Katie and Derrick, Kristie and Kim, Pete, Will and Shannon. Kristie and Kim were forced to leave because of an infestation of Japanese beetles that gave them the willies. Will and Shannon had to leave because of prior obligations to relatives. Pete had to leave because he is a wimp. Katie had to leave because she drank like a fish the night before and was about to hurl all over the table whereas Derrick had to leave to help Katie leave. Bill got hungry. Round two saw Bill come back, Marty drop over, Chad wander down, and Mikey slid in. Marty brought donuts which were promptly consumed in an effort to maintain Krispy Kreme quality control measures. Mikey, anticipating the potential assimilation of the babes across the street, even conditioned his hair. Mikey also needed to demonstrate to Marty exactly how one is supposed to eat a cream filled donut. It seems that Marty chomps down on the end opposite the one where they inject the cream filling and said filling squirts out at everyone within 20 feet of the donut (also called the donut consumption radius - similar to the steak preparation radius in a Japanese steak house.) We also decided that donuts needed a conceived-on dating label so that one can be assured of the very freshest donuts. We decided against born on dating fearing legal retributions from Budweiser, but that led to a problem. If the consumer of a donut ate only a few bits of a donut marked with conceived on dating then tossed it out, would that constitute a donut abortion since technically the donut was not yet officially born? It is a perplexing question that we will continue to ponder over the coming weeks. We also had a visit from Ozzie, the maniac dog who has consumed way too much crystal meth in its lifetime. The owner finally tracked it down while it was in the process of drooling all over the table and led it away. It was cute, but it smelled like a goat. Jim report: no Jims |
|
26 July 1997 A night to surpass all nights in the annals of IHOS. For starters, we shattered a record for the number of attendees. Then the most bizarre thing that has ever happened in the collective memory of all those in attendance happened. But first, the roll call... Val and I, of course. Then there was Kim, wife of Dave who is growing concerned that her cleavage is deepening and Dave himself. Bill, keeper of the Katie followed by Katie who is in tremendous pain having strained virtually every muscle in her chest heaving two nights ago. Will and friend of Will, Jason, popped in for a moment on their way to a party. The P.J. himself, former roommate of Jim and Dave who now lives in Charlotte though he has never been pressure washed by Bill. Marty, of whom we don't even want to go there. Kristie and primary squeeze Steven whose presence created Steves in stereo - a first-time occurrence at IHOS. Andy for just a moment in order to get his name recorded in the IHOS chronicle. Will returning with Shannon, the babe not the bimbo, staying only for a short time before Shannon helped Will back to his apartment since by that time Will was completely incapable of finding his apartment on his own. Jim, with Leigh finally in tow, but not yet ready to disclose the nature of the budding relationship other than to state that Leigh was found by Jim at the beach. And finally, but instrumental to the magnificence of the evening, Kara. We have not yet fully introduced Kara since, up till now, she has been an IHOS virgin. You may remember her, though, from a brief discussion of her primary hunk, Al, whose domestic duties include walking Ike, the dog. Well, shortly after 2 AM or so, several police cars pulled into the parking lot immediately adjacent to IHOS and the commotion began. Several people then currently attending got up to see what was going on. No answers were found. So I, in an effort to maintain accuracy in reporting, wandered up myself to determine whether a crime had been committed. Indeed one had. ******Warning****** The following paragraph is not to be read by those under the age of 18 under penalty of law. Kara was standing out front of her apartment kind of shaking. I walked up to find out what had happened thinking that possibly Al had been forced to walk Ike one to many times and he had snapped. No, as it turned out Al wasn't even there. Rather, there was a very drunk Mexican sitting handcuffed in the back of one of the police cars. My next thought was that the Mexican has in some way accosted Kara in which case I would be forced to kill him right where he sat, but even that was no where near what had occurred. It seems that the very drunk Mexican had wandered over to the front of Kara's apartment where Ike had been placed on his tether in order to do his thing. Instead of Ike doing his thing, the drunken Mexican had pulled down his pants and (shall we say this gently) caused Ike to do the Mexican's thing. Now, Ike is a real cute dog and everything, but one would have to be extremely drunk to even think of engaging in sexual acts with a dog let alone actually carry those fantasies out. Well, that was one drunk Mexican. As the police cars were pulling out of the parking lot, it was at that moment that Will and Shannon, the babe not the bimbo, were pulling in. We related the details of the Ike molestation to Will whose only comment was to wonder whether Ike was still available. No one really wanted to carry that further and we all just assumed that Will was making a joke. He was pretty drunk, though. For the time being, we will give him the benefit of the doubt, but if he goes out and buys a dog tomorrow we're gonna have to have a real long talk with him. And if this evening weren't perfect enough...After everyone had left and Val and I were winding down for the night at around 4 AM, some cretins in the next parking lot started shooting off some very nice fireworks. It doesn't get any better than this... Jim report: one Jim still not divulging the intimate
details |
|
27 and 28 July 1997 Two very slow nights. No one stayed more than about 30 minutes (just to say hello) and almost no one dropped in. I suspect that this past weekend resulted in total IHOS burnout for many participants. The only point of note was when Marty stopped by just long enough to eat a pizza. I am rather upset over the lack of traffic since I just purchased a very large bug zapper that will provide us with an infinite amount of pleasure. The thing is zapping continuously and bugs by the thousands are frying. It has always been said that immolation is the sincerest form of flattery and we are proving that with a vengeance. hehehe Jim report: no Jims either night |
|
29 July 1997 IHOS has a new pastime that is destined to be elevated to cult status -- Cow and Chicken. Cow and Chicken is a cartoon on the Cartoon Network that features (are you ready...) a cow and a chicken. Cow and Chicken is a must watch for all. Beyond that, we had Bill and Katie drop in early only to complain how tired they were and then promptly leave. Will dropped in on his way to watch the fights on TV, then returned to watch Cow and Chicken. Jim came by and blew bubbles all over the front yard until Cow and Chicken started. Val rested in the Val Throne, then stopped to make popcorn in anticipation of Cow and Chicken. The next episode of Cow and Chicken is on Friday night, 1 August, at 8:15 PM on the Cartoon Channel. We expect everyone to watch, following which there will be an IHOS discussion of Cow and Chicken. Later on in the evening, our neighbors from across the street dropped in. No, not those neighbors, the other babes that live on the far side of the parking lot... specifically, the roommates of Heather and Not Heather, Beth and semi-roommate Joy (with friend Mills in tow.) Beth is a genuine cutie who is completely ignorant when it comes to technology, but really wants to learn. Joy is an aspiring actress who is completely disgusted that you have to be in a union to work in pictures, but you have to have worked in pictures to be in the union. We tried to explain to her the meaning of Catch 22, but by that time in the discussion she had caught somewhat more than a six-pack and was having trouble comprehending Joseph Heller. And right before we shut down IHOS for the evening, Brad and John (the neighbors to the right,) came wandering back in from an all-night binge with Tye (their dog) in tow. Tye is a really nice dog with very large teeth and more snot than an animal should rightly have. In the 20 minutes or so that they were here, Tye must've dumped 30 pounds of dog snot on the lawn; I'm amazed he doesn't dehydrate and die. Jim report: one Jim |
|
30 July 1997 We have a genuine crisis on our hands. A cold front came though today, bring rain with it. Yet, beyond the wet stuff, there is also the specter of cold (probably why they call it a cold front.) The low temperature tonight is supposed to go to the low 60s, which is bad enough given that we are rained out anyway, but tomorrow night is supposed to dip into the 50s. Uh, excuse me... but this is summer. We're talking a season characterized by low temperatures in the low- to mid-70s. So I'm sitting inside all night, camped up against the space heater while Val is prancing around enjoying the (so-called) perfect weather. The next problem we have is that accompanying the cold front and its abnormally low temperatures is also a dramatic change in humidity. To give you an idea of how low that humidity actually is... all that rain that fell during the day and into the evening had completely dried up by sunrise. Birds are dropping like, well... like birds, completely dehydrated as water is being sucked out of their very feathers. Snakes are going back to get the skin they have shed because it is more moist than what they are currently wearing. I even watched a swarm of mosquitoes attack a dog only to pull away quickly, spitting dust. OK, maybe the latter didn't actually happen, but you get the idea. We will try to get IHOS opened tomorrow night for August Eve, but I am not too hopeful. |
|
31 July 1997 What a way to end the month of July. We liked to have frozen. The temperature was in the 50s and, though we tried on several occasions to actually sit outside, our efforts proved to be futile. It is supposed to warm up a bit tomorrow and we'll try again. |
|
18 June 1997 For starters, you may be wondering just what happened to August 1st. If you need to ask that question, you haven't been reading closely. Go back and try again. In the meantime, we needed to bug out at about 1:30 AM when I reached a point where...well, look at it this way. Have you ever jumped into really cold water and wondered if you would ever be able to have children? It just got too cold. But beyond the fact that we were hovering around 60 degrees, there was no humidity so every time you moved a body part and created a slight breeze, water was sucked out of your body. That resulted in cooling through transpiration and we all started to turn blue. Bill and Katie had to bail even earlier than we did citing some sort of thing involving waking up early in the morning. They are just wimps, though; couldn't even make it to the mid-60s before they caved. We did, however, find out that Katie owns a screwdriver she has named Bob and that when her dad called her the other night his first question was, "How are your ribs feeling?" It gave us a warm feeling to know that IHOS can bring families together like that when distance separates them. Don't worry Lamar...we'll keep her safe and sound for another five days then you can deal with her. Dave dropped in for a bit looking mighty pathetic. He is Kimless for the weekend, Kim having gone home to mommy's to shop furiously. Since Kim and Dave just got married, I will forgive his transgression for the time being, but he really needs to learn the rules of the game. Using conventional wisdom, it is not particularly appropriate for a husband to attend a shopping frenzy with his wife and her mother -- major breech of marital alignment. That does not mean, though, that said husband should not be in the general vicinity. For, you see, by being close to the action, the husband then sets up the perfect opportunity to hang out at other stores so that he does not get in the wife's way, but he can still be available to carry her packages back to the car. Now, those stores in which a husband may hang out could be things like Radio Shack, Sears, Lowes Hardware, or other appropriate retail venues where a husband could never possibly get himself in trouble. And since he is responsible for the shuttling of packages to the car, he also obviously retains control over the trunk of that car -- the optimum opportunity to load that trunk up with essential stuff while the wife is preoccupied. Did you know that, properly packed, you can fit a lawn mower in the trunk of a car and still have enough room left over for a 300 watt amplifier and a new toolbox? Leigh came back over again with Jim and I finally realized just how tiny she is. Of course, she may not have appreciated my pointing that out in stunned admiration, but she took it all in stride, particularly as she strode across my face. (Note to self....short people really don't line the song "Short People".) Jim report: one happy Jim who is now in possession
of his very own toothbrush holder created in the likeness of
Taz |
|
2 August 1997 It started out as an uneventful night at IHOS, as all IHOS nights typically start out; the level of bizarreness usually waits till a bit later in the evening to settle in. And on this particular night we were not disappointed. Things started out then Bill and Katie dropped in, Bill for the long haul and Katie just temporarily in anticipation of a night out with Susan. The very thought of Katie coming back at 2 AM completely sloshed was enough to keep us going for the rest of the evening, but then things got interesting. Marty came by with two IHOS virgins, namely Kayt and Kat. Kat, or Dr. Kat as she prefers, is a junior at Johns Hopkins University (leaving us a place to crash when we go to Baltimore.) As her moniker implies, Dr. Kat is in pre-med and intends to go into some kind of medical field. Will hopes it involves something in urology, but that is yet to be seen. Kayt is a dark-haired beauty that crashed cutie fields for miles around. She is an incoming freshman at NCSU who, though a bit young for many of us at the table, is built like Anna Nicole Smith only better. We like her very much already and both Kayt and Kat are welcome back at any time -- two more IHOS virgins come crashing down... Marty told a series of typically disjointed tales only this time Kayt and Kat were there to embellish as well, seeing that they were privy to many of the Marty Incidents related. Since none of those tales are suitable for submission to the IHOS chronicle, I will not go into gory detail. Let it suffice to say that Marty spent a greater part of the evening trying to determine the sex of varied stuffed animals. Anyway, we may have been taught something very important tonight. Marty brought some meat with him and cooked it up, screwing it up in the process as only Marty combined with a grill can do. After he finished the bulk of the meat, he asked if anyone would like the scraps. Keep in mind that what was left over were trimmings that few other people in their right minds would eat anyway; that is why they are called scraps. Nonetheless, Will lives by the principle that if something is on a plate, it must then be edible so he horked into said scraps with a vengeance and appeared to have enjoyed them considerably. Jim report: no Jims |
|
3 August 1997 We had three IHOS virgins stop in tonight. The first was Matt, room mate of Will, who picks strawberries professionally during the summer when he is not immersed in the pursuit of a higher education. Matt, room mate of Will, was accompanied by Matt II, friend of Matt, room mate of Will, who is from Long Island and has a green card that allows him to live temporarily in the south. Finally there was Graham, friend of Matt II and Matt, room mate of Will, who hails from New Orleans (Slidell to be precise.) They only stayed a moment since they were on their way to an evening of debauchery, but long enough to devirginize themselves. Bill spent much of the night either scratching his back on the wall, making bizarre convulsive motions with his right arm due to a hand cramp, and farting. He really needs to cut back on the Mexican buffet or we will not let him come back to IHOS. Katie stopped in for just a sec since she was busily involved in studying for final exams. We tried to tell her that if she did not know the stuff by now, she would never learn it by morning, but she insisted that she continue. Wimp. On the other hand, being in such close proximity to Will (who really blew the math part of the ASVAB exam earlier in the day due to (allegedly) no fault of his own may have resulted in a info-suck from Katie's brain, rendering her a complete idiot and unable to find the room in which her final exam was being held let alone pass it. Jim brought over some new toys. We now have a lizard, a cobra, and a black horned-beetle to sit in the garden. And everyone at the table wishes to thank Marty for bringing over the 12-pack or Sunkist Orange soda the other night and forgetting to take it with him. Jim report: one Jim |
|
4 August 1997 IHOS was partially closed this evening. It rained for most of the late afternoon and early evening and by the time it stopped, it was real late anyway and the night was very moist. So we decided to move things indoors for a bit and catch up on television. Now we remember why we don't often watch television. Bill dropped in for a moment and Mystery, one of the cats, immediately demanded scratching; Bill immediately accommodated since if he hadn't, he would have had his skin ripped off. Then Chad dropped in for a bit. Chad has been up for way too long what with field trips all weekend on top of his final exam this morning. For about 30 minutes, he was rambling incoherently and giggling; someone really needs to make sure that he gets his medication on time from now on. Grill report: two hot dogs and one rib eye in spite
of the rain |
|
5 August 1997
|
|
6 August 1997 Big scare this evening. We had a close encounter with a screeching, flying thing. We now know that those things are actually bats, but we didn't know that for some time since they move much faster than the typical bat and they are much larger than one would expect a bat to be. One of them apparently thought Bill was a potential meal and came swooping down out of the sky, making moves that would make Michael Jordan snap his neck off trying to follow, and actually swooped into the table. It missed the StarScreen umbrella by inches and missed Bill by about the same distance. Bill sat calmly throughout the entire incident; the rest of us got very nervous. Bill tried to maintain his composure by making small talk afterward, but we all knew what his real problem was -- he was in shock and was unable to utter complex sentences. Shannon, the babe not the bimbo, is finally home and Will is happy. Very happy. You would never know that she had just returned from Hawaii, though. Getting her to tell Shannon stories was like pulling teeth. From what we could venture, she spent much of her time in an airplane flying over the Big Island. She didn't even bring us back anything, though she did steal a lava rock from an area that was designated as a felonious rock-stealing zone. We are watching for the Rock Police to take her away any moment now. Oh...almost forgot. The highlight of her trip (at least from our perspective since the following was the lengthiest story she told) was when she was in some kind of raft thingie on the Pacific Ocean watching dolphins do their thing. Shannon had to pee really bad and they were somewhat far away from land so the guide told her to hop in the water and do what she had to do. Shannon jumped over the side, but was so nervous about getting eating by sharks that she couldn't pee. She ended up getting back in the raft thingie and holding it till later. We also had three IHOS virgins this evening. The first was Guido, friend of Bill, who until recently was a sports medicine person with NCSU. Guido is from the Great State of Pennsylvania and comes complete with a large (though non-drooling) dog named Harley. Harley really likes her butt scratched as Chad found out when he scratched same and ended up with a Harley butt in his lap for about five minutes until Harley was sated. The other two were none other than Derrick, room mate of Will, and his main squeeze, Ellen. They drove up in separate cars tonight so they both were out of their vehicles in under 30 seconds after parking and dropped in to visit. Will has informed us that Derrick is supposed to be a master of pithy sayings; time will tell. Ellen is just plain cute as a button and has been elevated to babe status since she actually talked to us after we embarrassed her unmercifully last night with the Standing "O". Mikey also dropped in, though we did not think he would actually make it this evening. You see, Mikey picked up his new car this afternoon and has been on a BabeHunt ever since. He claims that he has been only driving around for hours testing out the car, but we all know the truth. It is a good thing that school is not in session yet or we may not have seen him for days. Of course, no one wanted to tell him that all the babes are at the beach right now since then we would not have seen him for weeks. Jim report: no Jims and we are starting to get worried
again. |
|
7 August 1997 Unfortunately, I don't have much to say this evening. Not because things didn't happen, but because I am still somewhat stunned at what happened during the early part of the night. It was frightening and will probably end up adversely affecting me for 50 or 60 years to come. The Jim-car pulled up to the front of IHOS as usual, stopped for a brief moment as usual, and turned into the driveway to park as usual. Then the most unusual thing happened. Someone got out of the car. It was obvious that the individual who got out of the passenger side was Leigh; it was the person who got out of the driver's side. It looked a bit like Jim in the backlight of the street lamps and, as it approached, it smelled like Jim, but it was not. Rather, it was someone who was wearing dress pants, a white shirt, a tie and a vest. And suspenders...did I mention the suspenders? This person sat down at IHOS and stayed for about an hour, chatting away as if he were Jim, but we know better. Then he and Leigh left. About an hour later, Jim actually showed up and we spent the rest of the evening wondering... Chad dropped in for a moment and starting rambling so we told him to shut up. He left and we spent the balance of the night being waved at by the babes across the street who were surrounded by a bevy of hound dogs in heat. Jim report: definitely one Jim later on in the evening. |
|
8 August 1997 We were almost afraid that this evening would be a slow one. Most everyone is out of town and it is obviously not the most appropriate time to expect large crowds. Then the Raleigh Police Department came through for us. They set up a major road block/license check point just around the corner from IHOS. The stop came complete with large flood lights, four police motorcycles, and a couple of dozen police. So we decided that it would be a very good time for an IHOS road trip. Mikey, Jim, and I (I told you it was slow) grabbed three chairs and walked around the corner, placed our chairs on the lawn right in the thick of the action, and watched the events unfold. Many people were pulled that night including one person who spoke French. It was entertaining to watch a Raleigh officer try to tell that drunk Frenchman that he had to do a field sobriety test and even more fun watching him perform it. Other people got pulled, but unfortunately no one was ripped out of their car and beaten mercilessly. I was almost disappointed. At one point, a world-class, major-league bimbo pulled up to park on the street and the three of us immediately turned our chairs in her direction. She also got the rapt attention of many of the police officers scattered along the roadway. She went to her trunk, got out a bunch of stuff, and walked up to the apartment complex. As soon as she walked out of sight, all three of us simultaneously turned our chairs back to the street. The officers got a kick out of that. We also saw some very large flying insect things that looked like Luna moths, but were built differently. Jim suggested that they were of a species that exists only in the Amazon region of Brazil. Mikey claimed that they were swallow tailed platymoths. One went to ground, but was run over by a car before we could get to it and examine it further. At about 2 AM, things slowed down and we bugged out, coming back to IHOS where we consumed peanuts until we started farting. IHOS closed shortly thereafter. Jim report: one Jim |
|
9 August 1997 A most unusual night, as if you expect anything less. We had a whole series of hit and run visitors this evening. It started out with Val, Bill, Mikey, and I just sitting at the table having a quiet evening without much fanfare. Then Will and Shannon, the babe not the bimbo, came down. Shannon was somewhat upset with us since, from her perspective, it seems like we spend an inordinate amount of time discussing her urinary habits. We reminded her that the only reason we keep discussing such is because she keeps bringing it up. That kept her quiet for awhile. Then the yahoos showed up. It started out with two bimbos, Lauren and Beth. Both are friends of Will and Shannon who were attending a small gathering at Will's apartment in honor of the return if Shannon. Beth was nice, but definitely a bimbo, whereas Lauren was just a complete freak. She came complete with pierced tongue and other assortments of alterations upon herself. But to fully understand, you have to realize that those two were in the company of Sean and Randy, their respective primary squeezes, both of whom were in the Marines. They came wandering down from Will's to pop in for a moment. There is nothing quite as frightening as two drunk Marines. One never knows exactly when they will explode in an effort to convince everyone on the planet that they can kill mere mortals with their bare hands. Fortunately, they stayed for only about 15 minutes before taking their wenches in tow and making their way back to Will's. In the meantime, two more friends of Will arrived and stopped in at the table before following the Marines back to their place of conquest -- Adam and Jill. Adam did not say much and Jill crashed quite a few cutie fields as she sat down. From reports after they left (I note that they are only reports since she was sitting in such a manner that Jim was between her and myself,) Jill was wearing a skirt with an incredibly long slit and apparently not much else. I was not privy to that view, though Bill indeed was which explains why he was not able to utter a single word while Jill was sitting at the table. We have decided that her name is now to be "Legs" and that she is welcome back anytime she pleases. At about 1 AM, Ty the drooling dog, dropped in to say hello followed about 10 minutes later by Greg who was waiting for John to come pick him up and take him out drinking. John didn't showed up until about 3 AM so that was a moot point, but it gave us the opportunity for Bill and Greg to discuss common references since they are both from Charlotte. Jim report: no Jims |
|
10 August 1997 Myself, Val, Mikey, Bill, Will, and Jim. It was so slow that the only thing worthy of note was when Mikey suddenly burst out with "Lifestyles of the Bizarre and Mundane" while we were all sitting around watching a candle melt for two hours. |
|
11 August 1997 As if y'all didn't think it could get any slower...myself,Val, Mikey, and Bill got so bored that we turned the table around so that the melted blob of wax is now on the side facing the Val Throne rather than at its former position where Mikey, Jim, and Will fight for occupancy rights to the chair on my right. |
|
12 August 1997 It really can't get any slower, or so we thought until the candle finally melted its way into extinction. As the last flickers of the candle that has provided us so much amusement for three days now withered into flame oblivion, we realized that we now had literally nothing to do. Bill, Val, Mikey and I sat there wondering what was next. We did have a couple of visitors who lifted our spirits a bit. Jim's roommates, Derrick and Jak (bassist of the band Nine Pounds) dropped in. Although they stayed for about three hours, within about 15 minutes after their arrival they were inflicted with our boredom as well and we all sat there wondering if the candle would perhaps spontaneously re-ignite. We decided that such would not be possible and all started acting like the vultures in The Jungle Book. Oh, there were two other people who dropped in as well. Two bimbos who are friends of the babes across the street dropped in to say hello, but they were so boring in their own rights that we don't even remember their names. Jim report: no Jims and we are starting to get concerned
again |
|
13 August 1997 This is getting unbearable, but there are only two days left until 27,000 students descend back in Raleigh for the start of the fall term. Statistically, about 45 percent of them are female with about 85 percent of those being bimbos. In the meantime, we will watch another candle melt. Jak came back tonight and brought four CDs of Real Funk for us to jam to. Without that, the only other thing we could have done is to sit and watch the grass grow. Jim report: one Jim |
|
14 August 1997 Only one more day till the Great Move-In. And we are very glad that we are a mere 24 hours away from some sort of activity. Between the heat and the utter lack of things happening, we have been reduced to staring at the level of haze in the air. Not to say that can't be tons of fun particularly if the haze is doing something, but haze doesn't really do anything significant. It was so slow tonight that literally no one came by. Val and I held down IHOS by ourselves. The highlight of the evening was when we cleaned up the mess left by the melting of three candles. At one point, we thought that Bill had wandered down, but it was only a shell of Bill carrying a fan because his air conditioning is still not fixed. He never really made it to IHOS itself and, hence his appearance does not count. Jim report: no Jims |
|
15 August 1997 We have reached new lows for boredom. Not only was IHOS not open this evening, but it was closed because we overslept. I finally woke up at about 1 AM, Val didn't make it till about 4 AM, Bill apparently passed before the sun went down and slept through the whole night, Will got so sloshed that he may have well been asleep, and everyone else was out of town for the weekend. But Tomorrow will be different. We are already seeing stirrings as people move into apartments and dorms in anticipation of the Fall term. The big crush comes in a matter of hours when all the dorms open for move-in and tens of thousands of rats place their stuff in their rooms/apartments and go out roving to see who else has arrived. Saturday night out to be a good one. Jim report: no Jims since it is Leigh's birthday and he is appropriately busy |
|
16 August 1997 Magnificent. Simply magnificent. We have been waiting all week for this night and it did not let us down. There were slathering bimbos and drunken yahoos wandering all over creation until the wee hours of the morning -- hundreds of them. And that was but a glimmer of things to come for next weekend. Walter and Terrie Davis from Ashmor.com in Richmond dropped in to say hello and share some meat. And fine meat it was. The grill is happy and we are happy. Then the regulars started flowing in. First came Chad who finally returned from a six day golf outing at Myrtle Beach, red as a beet and not talking about NT servers all night. We think he may have gotten too much sun. Bill wandered in next and took up residence in the Bill chair, which at that moment happened to be immediately next to Terrie. Terrie began to get nervous. Then Jim plopped in after a several day absence during which he had been abducted by Leigh for purposes unknown, but we think it had something to do with breeding. And if that weren't enough, Marty and Dr. Kat made their appearance. Mikey made the table complete. Now, that may sound like an interesting and rational group of people, but then Jim started farting. Now, I don't really slight Jim for having intestinal problems considering what he had been eating yesterday, but these things were ripe. And considering that at 11 PM it was still over 80 degrees with high humidity, we were in trouble. In the meantime, Marty was telling one of his stories, only this time it was even more disjointed than normal. Not even Chad could follow what Marty was trying to say. Dr. Kat, meanwhile, is sucking the cream out of the middle of King Dons in the manner which only she and a handful of porn stars can do. In the meantime, Marty mentioned something about himself running naked and that was about the final straw. Walter and Terrie got very nervous. Walter backed up his chair about three feet. We are still not sure whether that was in reaction to Marty's stories and a need to back off Marty in the event that Marty were to get violent, or if the chair shuffle was in reaction to Jim who by now was getting real ripe. Terrie just kinda sat there more stunned than anything else, but appeared to be enjoying the excitement of two hot air masses, one from Jim and one from Marty (though emanating from different orifices) clashing over the table. All the while, we had been watching bimbos and yahoos arrive by the legion, sorting out to their parties at many different apartments scattered throughout the complex. But at about 1 AM, the real fun began because now those formally sober bimbos and yahoos were completely trashed and trying to find their cars. In many cases, they were also trying to find the people they came with; some of them apparently abandoned that quest as they were seen sucking on the faces of people they did not come with and, in a handful of cases, with people who they could not at that moment remember their names. And then we had our first public barfing of the fall season. A cute, little bundle of sexual energy apparently got too energetic over in one of the dark spots just off the street and the overconsumption of alcohol combined with some sort of gag reflex set in and set her off. There was nothing particularly projectile about the heave, nor were the associated noises nothing to write home about, but the fact that it was the first of the season made it memorable. In light of the Barfing and given the sheer number of bimbos wandering the neighborhood, Val suggested that the plural of ho should be hordes. We all concurred. Mikey then went philosophical on us and suggested that the last digit of Pi must be a three because he believes Pi to be a palindrome. On that, Marty left with Kat, though Kat returned in a few moments sans Marty. She really appears to enjoy our company. Either that, or she is majoring in Abnormal Psychology at Johns Hopkins and we are going to be her doctoral thesis. Then Jim, still farting, decided to tell the story of something he had seen on one of the animal channels on cable. It involved a giraffe giving birth to a baby giraffe. Something was mentioned concerning a drop of six feet and a placenta. Then Terrie noted that she knew of a person who had named her child Placenta. Walter took the opportunity to void his bladder for the thirty-seven thousandth time that evening. And the drunken bimbos still continued to wander back to their cars. A very good night... Jim report: one Jim with a major case of acute bronchitis. |
|
17 August 1997 Oooooohhhh...not feeling well. Sore throat. Malaise. Congestion. Fever. Must kill Jim... Terrie report: Walter sent me an email that said Terrie was mighily impressed with Jim's ability to fart. We like Terrie. |
|
18 August 1997 No energy to kill Jim. Getting worse. Ebola. Must remember to kill Jim... |
|
19 August 1997 Feeling a bit better. Apparently not Ebola. Still gonna stay in one more night to get enough energy to kill Jim. |
|
20 August 1997 Feeling much better today. Unfortunately, it is raining, though that is probably a good thing because it stopped me from sitting out all night long until I was really better. Jim called and tried to disavow all responsibility in passing this cold around. As soon as I am feeling fine again, I intend to torture him into admitting it is all his fault -- then we can kill him. |
|
21 August 1997 I decided to stay in one more night just in case I were to sit out and contract pneumonia or something. Not that it would have mattered even if I wanted to open IHOS because I fell asleep early and didn't wake up until about 6 AM. Therefore, moot point. |
|
22 August 1997 Now, this is pathetic. All I've been doing for two days now is sleeping. Apparently the fever broke because I was sweating like a pig for about six hours and all sorts of stuff was bilging out of me, but I'll spare you the gory details. Val happened to look outside while I was sleeping and Jim was just sitting at IHOS like a lost puppy. He apparently was truly pathetic. She assured him that IHOS would be back in full swing tomorrow night for the Great Brent Road Party and that I was feeling almost my old self again - a state which should be a cause of concern for all involved. It's been a long time since a cold or flu has put me out of action for a whole week. |
|
23 August 1997 I am truly glad that I was well rested and ready for this night. The events surrounding the Great Brent Road Party amazed even myself, not to mention a host of IHOS virgins who were placed in our grasp. To start, the de-virginizations... We had many virgins stop by this evening, some known and welcome, others dregs of the Earth who can die a horrible and pus-filled death as far as we are concerned. First, the nice ones. There was Richard and David, brothers of Bill (keeper of Katie) who came in from Charlotte to attend the festivities. There was some considerable dispute as to who worked for whom within the context of the family business (pressure washing the entire city of Charlotte and outlying areas on a regular basis,) but it was all in brotherly jest and the scars will hardly be visible within a decade or so. David is a motorcyclist who rides what, in the dark, I thought was a Harley. It turned out to be a Suzuki or some such thing, but we will not hold that against him. He is also an ex-Ranger so he can basically do whatever he wants anyway. Richard is a major darts person, elected president of the North Carolina Killer Darts Association or some such thing, but we will not hold that against him either since he is far larger than most of us at the table. The next group of virgins were Jay and Kay. Jay is a computer engineer and Kay is involved in some sort of Tellurian Mind Control, uh...educational field. They are to be married in November and we wish them well because both of them know Mikey who, by the way, was in attendance at IHOS. Jay immediately endeared himself to the IHOS crowd when he noted that the offspring of frogs and pigs should be called frigs. The proximate cause of that comment involved a large wooden pig in varied entwined positions with a rubber, squeaky frog, both of which Jim brought to IHOS. The frog stayed; the pig is to be bolted to Jim's car as a hood ornament. We are worried about Jim again. Most of the not nice virgins are not worth mentioning since they involved dozens of yahoos, drunken bimbos, and other assorted cretins and dregs of the Earth, but here are a few which stood out. One was a moron who wandered up at about 3 AM and asked us if we had a ladder. He apparently had locked himself out of his apartment. He also had difficulty understanding why I, living in a ground-floor, single-level apartment, would not have a ladder capable of getting to his second floor window. We dispatched him with ridicule. He wandered off into the apartment complex to continue his quest. About five minutes later, he came back with a ladder and let himself into his apartment. We do not want to know where he got the ladder from. Then there was Carmen. We didn't actually meet Carmen directly, but rather was introduced to her via some moron she was with who wandered up for no apparent reason - and that holds true even after he left. While that blithering idiot was trying to actually communicate in a language that humans could understand, Carmen decided that she had to use the little girls room. Problem was that there was no little girls room near where she was standing which at that moment happened to be under a street light on the corner right next to the street. Did I mention the scores of police that were actively patrolling the area all night because of the Great Brent Road Party? Well, since I had not then you would not have yet known of their existence. Carmen, on the other hand, had been drinking heavily in the midst of the Blues all night long yet didn't care. She dropped the pants then and there and proceeded to water the lawn. Not wanting to see her hurt herself due to the darkness underneath her (the street light was directly above her and was casting a rather nasty shadow at her feet,) we hit her with the Billion Candle-Power spot light. It was so bright that I believe we singed the hairs off her ass. And, of course, for her valiant exercise in showing us various portions of the female human anatomy and demonstrating some of its functions, we gave her a full ovation when she was done. The rest of the pin-heads who wandered by mostly comprised hordes (the plural of ho,) drunken yahoos, free-range bimbos, and many folks who looked much too young to consume adult beverages yet were continually on the verge of barfing their guts out. There was stumbling, weaving, and slithering going on all night long. But one thing kept coming up over and over again. Actually, two things. When the evening started, it was still in the mid-70s. By the time most people started wandering back to their cars, it was in the mid-50's. And it appeared that thin, cotton, halter tops are all the rage this fashion season. There were so many headlights wandering around that the city could have turned off all the street lights and saved a bit of our tax dollars. Then there was the one, single bimbo that made a particularly deep impression on me. Have you ever seen a six thousand pound hog stuffed into a size three Spandex jumpsuit? Neither had I until last night. The only reason I was so impressed was that I am fascinated by the science of stress analysis; there was more stress on that fabric than one would find on the inside of a high-pressure steam boiler. Late that evening, we heard what sounded like an explosion or a very loud backfire; personally, I think it was only Hog-bo getting undressed. And not to make short mention of the others who were at IHOS last night, we had an appearance by Chad (who is still very confused,) Marty (who confuses everyone around him,) and Katie (who is not confusing, but makes you want to.) Greg and John stopped by with Ty in tow for a bit. Ty drooled all over the yard and managed to get Jim soaking wet for the most part. Greg had to bolt after only a few minutes of attendance because there was a party at his house next door that was plainly getting way out of hand; he apparently was afraid that they would drink all the beer before he returned so he returned quickly. I also have to mention the drop-in by Kara who gave us an Ike update, or rather a drunk Mexican update. As we all remember, Ike was sexually assaulted by a drunk Mexican several weeks ago. Well, the felony crime against nature charge was reduced to a misdemeanor because there was no actual evidence of the canine hummer and Ike was too embarrassed to bark about the details. The case has been continued and we will keep you posted. Jim report: one Jim |
|
24 August 1997 Are you kidding me? Didn't you have enough from yesterday. I'm getting too old for this... |
|
Correction We have received a letter from Jay pointing out an error in the Saturday IHOS entry. It appears that Kay was the one who came up with the term frigs. It is to Kay to whom we are indebted. On the other hand, Jay also reminded me of something else which I had forgotten. It was jay who led the discussion on a methodology by which we could track bimbos as they wander back and forth. There were so many of them Saturday night that it became impossible to determine if a given bimbo had previously passed by or how many time said bimbo had done so. Jay suggested that we tag the bimbos as they pass and even suggested how we would entice them to the table in order to tag them. Simply offer them a beer. When they come and get it, we tranquilize them and replace one of their varied body piercings with a small transmitter. That way we can track them through the neighborhood. And if we could figure out how to tag the yahoos, we could even do some actual scientific studies on the feral mating habits of homo sapiens drunktomuch. |
|
25 August 1997 The only thing of any excitement happening last night was sitting around watching the grass grow. That was somewhat unsuccessful since it was dark and we couldn't see the grass anyway. Everyone is still trying to recover from Saturday night and no one seems to be venturing out for fear of seeing a random beer can which would trigger the heaves all over again. We will be patient. Jim report: one partial Jim in a drive-by to pick up
Dave who forgot to bring Kim along |
|
26 August 1997 Today was a most joyous day in IHOS land. The babes in the apartment across the street finally came over to visit. Actually, only three of them came over; the fourth was in the process of playing hide the salami and, as such, was busy. But there were three - Sarah, Nikki, and Jan. Sarah is the quiet one of the group, who spent much of her time wrapped around Jay, the current occupant of Sarah (at least for last night.) Nikki is like a verbal Labrador Retriever who never stops talking and is always fidgiting in the chair. At least what she has to say is intelligent and worthy of discussion. She has fairly nice hooters also. Then there is Jan. The best way to describe Jan is through the use of the term Goddess. No, that doesn't really come close. Perhaps ambrosia, manna, and dew-covered moss is more appropriate. Not to say that Jan is mossy, but that she moves like velvet. Fortunately, it was only Mikey, myself, and Val at the table. My cutie field held well since I have nothing to lose. Val remained uninterested. And Mikey, as usual, self-destructed. Actually, Mikey did well in that he did not fall over into the garden. Jim report: no Jims |
|
27 August 1997 Rather slow night since everyone was still trying to recover from the Great Brent Road Party. Will stopped by after a considerable absence and informed us that he is actually joining the Air Force. He will be reporting for advanced torture on 29 December. Between the philosophical reflection of joining the Air Force and his pining for Shannon, the babe not the bimbo, who has returned to UNCG, he spent the evening dipping his finger in hot candle wax. Not to say that he was in to some kind of S&M or something, but he was trying to accumulate what appeared to be an elongated booger on his finger. He got it about two inches long when it broke off; attempts to re-attach it were unsuccessful so he just continued to dip it in the hot wax until he made this little ring like thing on the end. When the ring closed back in on itself, Will was content and sacrificed his creation back to the candle. The only other highlight of the evening was an IHOS field trip to the apartment across the street. Mikey, Jim and I wandered over there to see the mirror they had built and hung on the wall by themselves. Sarah and Nikki were awake, Shallon was out boning, and Jan was already asleep for the evening. Eventually the yahoos got back from the bars and started pouring into the Babe-Nest like rats, so we decided to leave rather than see who was going to win the alpha male contest that evening. Jim report: one Jim |
|
28 August 1997 What a waste of a night. Not even worth mentioning. |
|
29 August 1997 Slow night again what with Labor Day Weekend approaching. Though one would think that will all those women in labor for an entire weekend, a lot more would be happening. At least the sound of screams in the distant night. The evening began very well as Dave and Kim came by for dinner. Yes, Dave actually remembered to bring his lovely bride to IHOS so that we could partake in her wit, intellect, and charm while we scoped out her hooters. Dave doesn't bring Kim around nearly as much as he should. They left before IHOS really got going for the evening; something about being tired and having to drive back to the living hell-hole of a rural slime pit on the edge of nowhere. At least they have running water now. Anyway, Mikey, Val, and I sat around as random people dropped in to say hello. There was Katie who went out because she was bored since Bill is up in Sarriecuse watching us kick some OrangeMan butt. She managed to actually go out with friends and not slurp down an entire bar; Lamar will be proud. John dropped in very late with two friends who I know, but can not for the life of me remember their names. If I remember, I will give an update. We had a random and drunken frat boy drop in unannounced and unwanted so we called the police on him. His semi-drunken friend managed to remove him before the police got here and/or he vomited. Actually, the police call was not so much a result of the drunk himself, but rather the drunk removing and trying to destroy a municipal road warning thingie with blinking light just before he got here. Jim report: no Jims |
|
30 August 1997 Saturday and the night was moist. And that's all it was. Labor Day has really put a crimp in the activity around IHOS. Everyone is gone and we are just sitting here doing nothing. Perhaps it will pick up tomorrow. Actually, it's good that we didn't have anything major going this evening since Greg Fishel (the WRAL weather Hunk) really blew it this weekend. We ran to the grocery store at about 1 AM and by the time we got finished shopping, it was pouring big time. We were not amused. Jim report: no Jims |
|
31 August - I September 1997 Well, there is some stirring in the neighborhood. John came over with Ty who proceeded to drool all over the yard. Bill is back in town and gloating over the NCSU miracle win over Sarricuse. Katie is burned out completely. Kristie is exhausted as well. Jim has once again been abducted by Leigh. Will is in Greensboro. The four babes across the street have arrived home and went promptly to sleep. Nothing going on, but at least we know where everyone's at. Perhaps next month will be better. Which, by the way, you may have noticed that this IHOS report actually appears to span two months - all of August and the first day of September. We have decided that since the first is Labor Day, and that Labor Day is properly part of summer, we did not feel right in starting out a new month with September 1st so we placed it in August. |
|
2 September 1997 Quiet night with Will and Jaq in attendance. The discussion between Jaq and myself revolved around music while Will spent the bulk of the evening watching a candle melt. Will does not have much of a life since it appears that watching candles melt is his favorite past time. Will did give us a Shannon report, though. Shannon is in Greensboro which is no more than what he told us the past several Shannon reports. Jim report: no Jims |
|
3 September 1997 Since I spent most of the night dealing with a client who could not FTP something if his life depended on it, this evenings report will be issued by Val, who was at the table for the bulk of the evening: I think one story encompasses all of the strangeness at IHOS for the evening. Jim's Dream: Okay, as I recall it, Jim and some unknown female girlfriend type go into a house that is being demolished in the near future to see if they can steal some antiques and the like. The house is basically abandoned, but Jim and his girlfriend find the picture of a small boy lying on the floor. Jim and his girlfriend are looking at the picture when the top of it catches fire from Jim's cigarette. As they are putting out the flames, both notice that the boy's face has gone from smiling to frowning. FREAKY! There is a room on the second floor that you can see from the outside of the house, but as Jim and his girlfriend walk through a curtain into the room, the windows that you could see from the outside are boarded up and painted black. Turning around (probably to run out), they see that the back side of the curtain has the same image of the boy with the top burnt off. This time, the boy is pointing at them as if to accuse them of the mutilation of his head. Frightened, Jim and his girlfriend find some cloth and patch up the curtain image as best as they can and open the curtain to leave...... There in front of them is the little boy from the picture and the curtain with bandages upon his head. Naturally, Jim and his girlfriend run out of the house screaming, get into their van and speed off, BUT the car slides out of control and wrecks, killing Jim's girlfriend. As Jim gets out of the car, he turns and sees the little boy laughing out of the second story window. Enraged, Jim summons all of his powers and sends a surge through the ground which destroys the house and, presumably, the boy inside. Who is this boy? Why is Jim and his girlfriend stealing antiques? Why can't Jim recognize his girlfriend? From where does Jim derive this destructive energy? Your interpretations are welcome. Jim report: one Jim in need of therapy. |
|
4 September 1997 Penguins. Polar bears. Mastodons thundering down the street in advance of the glacier. Snow. Ice. Sleet. 5,000 year old frozen dead guys pulled out of the rocky crevice. It's just plain cold. We set a record low at 44 degrees. We are not amused. Jim report: no Jims since he is hopping around somewhere
trying to extract his frozen nards from his abdominal cavity. |
|
5 September 1997 Simply amazing. Another night where the temperatures dipped down into the 40s. This is insane. At this rate, I expect to see snow by Monday. We opted for a Wal-Mart run which turned out to be an Al-Mart run since the "W" was burned out on their sign. Saw Jak there as well and we're looking forward to hearing 9Lbs tomorrow night. |
|
6 September 1997 Now, isn't that a crock. We've been waiting all week for 9Lbs and we slept till about 3 AM. And then by the time we got up, it was too cold out to do anything. Well, we'll catch them next time they play in town. Fortunately, it is warming up some from the past couple of days and we should be back to normal by tomorrow. YEAH!!!!! |
|
7 September 1997 This is Val again. I will be narrating for the next three or four weeks due to Steve's activities this evening. You see, Steve is banned from cleaning, from doing laundry, from straightening (he tends to just make piles), etc. There is only one thing he is responsible for - the garbage. To try and get out of performing this last duty, Steve decided he would take out two bags of garbage (without even being threatened.) To show me how he is unable to perform garbage duty correctly, he tripped himself over the chair and impaled himself onto the concrete. For effect, he broke the right pinky finger, dislocated the right ring finger, bruised his head and knee and tore things in his right foot. Then he has the audacity to claim it was an accident. Needless to say, it has worked thus far. He is banned from taking out the garbage until everything heals properly. Sympathy can be sent to either myself or to Steve. Bone report: one breakage requiring cast on arm for a month. |
|
8 September 1997 Beautiful evening. Finally back in the upper sixties and lower seventies with a nice breeze. It was Steve and I until Jim showed up and then it was Steve and I and Jim and Godzilla and Pegasus and the Pig and the Octopus. If Jim gets anymore toys, he'll need to rent storage space at IHOS. The food for this evening looked, sounded and tasted rather disgusting (even though I prepared it.) We, or shall I say, they had white rice maggots smothered in tomato soup accompanied by the official beverage of IHOS and Gatorade. We all wimped out pretty early. Steve's Toradol kicked in and the whining began. Jim report: one Jim. |
| 9 September 1997 |
|
10 September 1997 Massive rain. Very wet. Glub...glub...glub... |
|
11 September 1997 We have a frog. And two hummingbirds...on a steeeeeeck. Walter and Terri from Ashmor sent us a package today with some really neat things in it. One thing is a real large bullfrog that goes croak when it detects motion. We are using it to ward off rabid beavers. Then we now have two hummingbirds with moving wind wings on sticks. We are using them to attract vultures. Since there are no rabid beavers in the area, we have to presume that the frog is working. It is too early to tell about the vultures, but anything is better than leaving the antelope carcasses out in the yard. Other than that, it was a relatively quiet night with Me, Val, Mikey, and Bill eating large quantities of food. Jim report: no Jims |
|
12 September 1997 You may have noticed that there is no entry for the ninh of September by now. There is a reason for that. We experienced flashbacks from Hurricane Fran that occurred shortly before that date one year ago and were cowering under the bed covers all night long (it took abouit four days for the trauma to actually set in.) At the same time that the wind died down last year (about 4 AM) we went on an obligatory Al-Mart run (the "W" is still burned out) to get candy and a Bag O' Rats which are now strategically placed around the house. Jak report: one-half Jak who was seen at Al-Mart dragging
around an empty pallet truck for several hours. |
|
13 September 1997 This was a mixed bag this evening. It started off when Dave and Kim popped in for a bit. I was feeling lousy since I had been stretching out my fingers all day and threw them out of IHOS so I could sleep. Sometime around 1 AM, the thing holding my hand together fell off while I was sleeping. I rolled over onto my broken and battered hand, letting out a whoop noise that made the cats' hair stand on end. Well, that woke me up fairly well. So I did the only thing that I could do at that hour and under those circumstances - I went to the party next door at John's and Greg's house where there were many drunken bimbos in attendance. Two of them actually got in a fight complete with hair pulling and scratching of eyes. It was magnificent. Then all hell broke loose. Apparently (and I say apparently since no one can really figure out what happened) this mountain appeared out of nowhere. He was about six foot, six and weighed maybe 300 pounds. For some reason not known, he decided to join the fight...not break it up mind you, but join it. Well, there was another guy in attendance at the party who was not quite as big, but who apparently had an extremely high tolerance for pain being the rodeo type who goes around trying to prove how macho he is by nailing his hand to a piece of lumber on a bet. Those two started fighting and they were off to the races. No one really remembers how it broke up either. Personally, I think it was when the two of them realized that they were both indestructible and mutually gave up. In the meantime, many of the other guys were beginning to wander back towards the babes gathered on the fringes, bragging how they were instrumental in breaking up the fight. Perhaps they were speaking of some fight between a couple of hedgehogs that was taking place in the bushes; they certainly were not talking about separating those two mountains. But it got a couple of them laid as their babes were mightily impressed at their prowess so I guess it worked out for them. Jim report: no Jims |
|
14 September 1997 A field trip again. This time Mikey and I went over to the babes across the street. They told us many titillating stories of adventures that we can not repeat here because, one, the stories were not told at IHOS therefore we can not be absolutely sure that they were not gross fabrications and two, repeating most of them would result in felony charges against us. Let it suffice to say that Shallon is now placed in the same strata as Jan, having been proclaimed as a World-Class Babe. They have invited us over tomorrow night so you may not hear from us for a while. Kat report: she has apparently settled in well at Johns Hopkins and we will be seeing her in a matter of weeks. We will be bringing cream filled donuts. |
|
15 September 1997 Well, we learned one important thing tonight...never give Bill a high-powered flashlight. He spent about an hour shining it at moths while intoning in some Satanic guttural voice: Come to the Light. Once he figured out that the moths would actually come to him, he tried it on some groups of bimbos that were wandering through the parking lot. That didn't work. Bill also had the hiccups. That becomes important to know when you get this image in your head. Bill was sitting in the Chair of Instability when he leaned to his left. The chair went over backwards, dumping Bill on the dew-covered lawn and taking down two other chairs with him. He then laid there with the hiccups, getting wet from the lawn while we had a rather good laugh. Once he got up and recovered we debated whether Bill's Cutie Field Failure was on par with the one Mikey suffered a month or so ago. We decided it was not since Bill did not break a chair nor was he bleeding. Too bad; it was a nice move. Jan and Shallon wandered over...OK, we threatened to kill them if they didn't come over. Shallon showed us her tattoo again (which has turned into nothing more than a thinly-veiled excuse to look at her ass just one more time) and Jan was in her form of perfection being Jan. They had to go when Jan got so cold that if she had possessed nards they would have been sucked back up into her body. Fortunately, she does not have nards. Jim, in the meantime, spent a lot of time playing with Godzilla and making farting noises. Uh, well...he was not just making noises - he was farting. And in rare form he was tonight. Terri would have been proud. Chad stopped by for a moment and left quickly, probably because of Jim's farting, though he was too Southern and cultured to tell us that. Oh, one more thing. We found a pit. The apartment people removed a very large bush that had overgrown a 15 foot sewer access pit probably 20 years ago. The crew that removed the bush didn't bother to cover up the pit, though, so we decided to do some preliminary exploration (hence the initial appearance of the high-powered flashlight.) The pit is big - real big. And there is some kind of shaft at the bottom which leads toward the street. We intend to throw a bug bomb in there, wait an hour or so, and go explore the pit in the next day or two. Jim report: one Jim |
|
16 -17 September 1997 OK, so I haven't made an entry in two days. Shoot me. My sleeping schedule has been a bit weird the past couple of days and I actually had to be awake during the day and sleeping at night. Val opened IHOS in spurts the past couple of nights, but nothing really was happening anyway. Apparently there have been a lot of tests this week over at NCSU and everyone has been studying (though it took them two or three days to actually sober up enough to read.) Things will pick up tomorrow. |
|
18 September 1997 Big crowd this evening. We had one de-virginization...Amy came by and sat down. Amy owns a design firm here in Raleigh called Cybersan and decided to drop in to say hello - finally. She has been promising to come over for months now. Amy spent several hours and managed to survive with limb and psyche intact. She is welcome back anytime. Amy got here somewhat early and was worried that she may be the only one to show. That was not to hold true. In a short, Dave, Kim (the keeper of Dave,) and Jim rolled up in rare form. Kim was very proud of her new sports bra and showed it to everyone. We were happy. Then it got busy. We got Shallon to trot over this way as she was running out to somewhere. She did not feel like showing her tattoo again (I think she is on to us.) In all, Bill, Mikey, Greg (along with Ty and Cat,) Jak came by (Kara stopped in as well, but more on that in a moment.) Now normally that could have been dealt with in fine order, but they were all here at the same time and Jim was farting again. Between that and the mulch that was thrown down on the new bushes, it was a ripe evening. All was proceeding rather calmly until Greg went to ground. While sitting in the Chair of Instability, Greg suddenly tipped over and splayed himself out all over the front lawn. Literally. You see, Greg looks a lot like Hoss Cartwright except larger. Greg is a moose; Ty wished that Greg was not a moose because Greg took out Ty when he went to ground. Ty was fine in the aftermath, though I'm sure that he had a flashback to the time he was hit by a car when he was a puppy. Now Kara... The Ike trial is over. The drunken Mexican pled not guilty and was promptly found guilty by the judge. He was ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment, was placed on a one-year supervised probation, and required to pay a one hundred dollar fine plus court costs. He is also under a restraining order to not go near Kara or Ike again. Ike is now a lot less nervous. Val, Mikey, and Jim decided to form a racquetball team and go on a world tour. This ought to be interesting. Not that they are going on world tour, but to see them all play together. Mikey would do the Zen thing and try to control the ball with his mind. Val would swing randomly at the ball then start screaming at it. And Jim would just get pissed off at the whole thing, pull out a shotgun, and shoot the ball. Then again, they might just win the world championship by default because everyone else would be terrified to get on the same court with them. Jim report: one Jim |
|
19 September 1997 Slow, but interesting night at IHOS. Val, Jim, and I spent the majority of the evening watching a large party across the street form, foment, and wither as hundreds of yahoos and bimbos drank themselves senseless. There were tons of bimbos in various stages of seductive dress including one that was wearing a dress with large black and white chevrons emblazoned across the front. She looked like Shamu the killer whale, but apparently thought she was cute. Apparently so did many of the yahoos since they followed her around like she was in heat. Unfortunately, the crowd let us down somewhat since no major fights developed. We were expecting at least one as is customary out of that particular crown when they get ripe. It's really a shame, too, that we can't just shoot them and put them out of our misery when they get riled up as they usually do. It seems that the university and local police take a dim view of executing morons whose IQ matches the number of liquid ounces in their bottles. Bill actually dropped in as well, but he came just moments after IHOS had closed for the evening. He was disgusted since he had intended to stay up most of the night. Jim report: one Jim |
|
20 September 1997 Very busy. Chad, Bill, Katie, Val, and I held down the table while loads of people floated in and out. We had a visit from Russell and Tina who came with two friends from Roanoke in tow. They could not stay since the friends from Roanoke wanted to be shown a good time during their visit in Raleigh and Tina was not accommodating to their wishes. That forced them to hunt like dogs for alternate sources of female-types. Greg and John also kind of dropped in all night long, driving by in the GregTruck, and whooping it up over and over. The Babes across the street kept coming and going in their cars, waving each time they wandered in and out of the parking lot. And there was an almost continuous stream of bimbos wandering up and down the parking lot. Now, we have some bad news. There is a cold front coming in tonight that is supposed to crash the temperatures into the 40s. Those temperatures are supposed to moderate a bit by mid-week, but along with the slightly warmer evenings, we are supposed to get two or three days of rain followed by a big temperature drop off. This does not bode well for the 1997 IHOS season. Since the weather in North Carolina can be very variable, we hold out some strong hope that this is only a temporary aberration and things will warm up enough to squeeze out a few more weeks. We'll keep you posted. Jim report: no Jims |
|
21 September 1997 Cold. Real cold. We made a couple of feeble attempts to brave the elements and sit outside, but we were driven back in by arctic winds howling in from the north. This lower 40s just does not cut it. I wonder if it is possible to cause state-sized landmasses to migrate south for the winter? |
|
22 September 1997 Even colder. This is completely insane. It was too cold to even have our autumnal equinox party in which we sacrifice yak to the spirits of the Slorr. Jim was very disappointed. |
|
23 September 1997 Jim stopped in for a bit this evening, but it was a bit nippy and moist to hold IHOS for any significant period of time. The next several days hold cold and rain. We, again, are not amused. |
|
24 September 1997 Rain and more rain. |
|
25 September 1997 No rain, but very wet, foggy, and cold. |
|
26 September 1997 What can I say. There was a major party across the street that got broken up by police. It was rather strange that they did so since all that was accomplished was scattering several hundred drunks all over the neighborhood where they started promptly to interact with other small parties of drunks in a not so pleasant manner. Seems to me that if the police had just let the big party continue self-contained that they would have saved themselves a lot of problems. But that paled in comparison to what else happened tonight. Richard, brother of Bill (keeper of Katie) is in town this weekend to participate in a darts tournament. He came by. That in itself is unremarkable, though not to say that he is not welcome at any time.) No, it is who he brought with him. Her name is Kim. Kim is a purebred Amazon from Kansas. Now, to explain what an Amazon is... We at IHOS grade the members of the female persuasion as need be to make identification in the future possible. The lowest possible grade someone can get is that of a ho (the plural of which is horde.) The ho is followed closely by the slut, the only difference is that the slut is monogamous at least on a night to night basis. The slut is followed by the bimbo (which is truly a term of endearment and not intended to be disparaging. Mind you that the bimbo is a transitional state from which a decent female can descend to the level of a slut or ho, but also ascend to a babe depending on her chosen actions.) Then comes the babe. Above the babe we have the world-class babe, followed by the goddess (of which Jan is a fully qualified member of that latter class.) At last comes the Amazon. (The only class above the Amazon is the rare class of which females like Anna Nicole Smith are members of - there are perhaps a dozen of the very top level in the entire world.) Anyway, Kim is an Amazon of major proportions, so major that we are considering creating a special class between mere Amazon and Anna Nicole Smith simply to elevate Kim's status further. It is impossible to describe in mortal words what she looks like; perhaps in a more descriptive language such as Greek such could be accomplished, but my Greek is a bit rusty. Let's put it this way...there were many other things that happened this evening, but except for the hundreds of drunks (who were difficult to ignore) no one remembers anything else that occurred for the time Kim was at IHOS - and the only reason we even noticed a party at all was because the real action involving the police and further altercations occurred after Kim had left. If that had not been the case, there probably could have been multiple shootings in the parking lot and we would not have noticed. Even Val was in awe. And to top it all off, it was Kim's birthday. We are honored that Kim chose to spend her birthday at IHOS. She is also coming back tonight to join us again before going back to the Kim home. We are thinking of doing something worthy of her presence. Some of the things we are considering that would be worthy of her presence are:
Yet, even if we do all that it will probably go unnoticed since Kim has already announced what she is wearing tomorrow -- namely black Spandex and a new push-up bra. Paramedics will be standing by to deal with our reactions. Jim report: one Jim who is having difficulty remembering
his name. |
|
27 September 1997 Rain...drizzle...cool...windy...nasty....but we are invigorated by the report that Kim actually came back wearing her black Spandex. Since it was so nasty, we decided to go over to a friend's house and participate in the feting of Jay and Kay. Not that we wouldn't have gone anyway, but with the promise of Kim coming back it turned out to be a far more difficult choice than initially anticipated. Anyway, by the time we got home, Kim had come and gone, though we knew she was here because we could feel her residual presence. That and the fact that there were a lot of guys wandering around the parking lot like zombies. Perhaps next time... |
|
28 September 1997 A couple of aborted attempts at sitting outside in the "not raining, but it is really damp anyway" table. It was generally unsuccessful. |
|
29 September through 3 October 1997 It's been fairly cold this week. And everyone was busy anyway so IHOS was essentially shut down. The one highlight was on Thursday afternooon when Val, Mikey, and I went to get some food. By the time it was over, we had a full-fledged IHOS road trip under our belts. We ended up eating dinner in Washington, DC. We were hoping to go to Roma's, but unfortunately after 70 years as the finest Italian restaurant in the world, they closed a mere six months ago. We were stunned. So we went to Tom Sarris' Orleans House and ate like pigs. Finally got back in about 5 AM and passed out. It's supposed to warm up starting tomorrow. We shall see if we can stretch IHOS a bit longer for the 1997 season. |
|
4 October 1997 Well, it was warm tonight; at least it was warm enough to get the table open for a bit. In case you are wondering what happened to 1-3 October, you will find it tacked on to the end of September since the last couple of days of September and the first few days of October were identical. I actually woke up about 11 PM and Val, Jim, Kim, and Dave were already at the table. Actually, Kim was not there since she had eaten something with milk in it and was using the bathroom to play butt-volcano. I think that is what woke me up. By the time I wandered outside, Kim and Dave had gone to the store, only to return a few moments later after not having found any pharmaceutical relief for the massive milk-farts. It then started getting a bit cold. so we took it inside just in time for Twister. Bill came by about 30 minutes into the picture and Mikey joined us as well. Kim continued to bloat on the couch and the cats started to throw up hairballs. Jim kept complaining something about the only movie worth watching was Apocalypse now (with Deliverance a close second.) Val ate an entire vat full of Peppermint Patties. She has so much peppermint in her that she is giving me heartburn just being in the same room with her. After the flick was over, Bill and Jim retired to the table outside for some semi-frozen evening conversation. About 15 minutes into their quest for intelligence, Jim called me outside; he said to hurry so I did, expecting to see a bevy of large-breasted bimbos wandering through the neighborhood. What I found was almost as good. Across the street, some Freakozoid had passed out in the parking lot and he just laid there. We watched for a moment wondering if he was dead, and then he moved. He was not dead. Either that or the red ants are far more prevalent across the street. We went over to see if the freak needed any help, but by the time we got there, the freak had raised up and wandered off. Bill was disappointed that we didn't get the chance to roll him. |
|
5 October 1997 Just Val and I sitting out enjoying the evening. Nothing special in the neighborhood, but thankfully quiet for just one evening. Jim Report: no Jims |
|
6 October 1997 Another quiet evening. Perhaps IHOS is actually winding down for the season. You can actually start to feel fall in the air. The State Fair is coming in two weeks. We have decided that regardless of weather conditions, the close of the North Carolina State Fair will represent the official season close of IHOS. |
|
7 October 1997 I spoke too soon. What has been calm and quiet evenings is no more. The night started off as it has the past several days with Val and I enjoying the early evening at the table. Then Dave and Kim showed up. Followed by Jim and Bill. Will was next to come over. Mikey then took his place at the table. Then Greg. For starters, Greg's truck is dirty. He keeps offering some lame excuse that he has been hammered with tests, papers, and senior projects that were all due this week, but we know better. There is no excuse for a dirty truck. Greg only stayed for a moment, though, because he was on his way to Thee Dollhouse for the purpose of engaging in male bonding (revolving around someone's birthday) and to look at hooters. We wished him well and gave him some quick pointers. Bill is no longer Bill. Bill is now Thumper. You may take this opportunity to write Thumper and ask him personally how he got that name. I am amazed at how many peanuts that a relative handful of humans can eat when we all get going. And we found an amazing, deformed peanut. It was a regular peanut with a small peanut grafted onto its shell like a Siamese peanut. The most fantastic event of the entire summer happened this evening as well. Nikki, one of the babes in the apartment across the street, has dumped her boyfriend. He will not go away and Nikki is getting (shall we say) somewhat perturbed that he will not go away. It turned into a screaming match tonight. Well, actually, Nikki was doing all the talking, or screaming, as it was. She was very impressive in not only her vocalizations, using many words that no one had ever before heard, but her very posture scared all of us as well. Then, at what appeared to be the end of their "conversation," The Event happened. Nikki called her ex to turn back toward her. He did. Then she snorted, reared back, and hocked a real, live lougie. Not just spit -- but a true lougie drug out of the sinuses from hell. We were about 60 feet away and the thing was clear as day as it arched towards the putz. Unfortunately, our angle was just off to the point where we could not determine if the lougie actually hit him, though I think that it did not because a lougie that size would have rocked him back at least two or three feet and he didn't move. I take that back. He did move, but on his own and with great speed back toward his apartment; no man in his right mind would have stayed there on the off chance that Nikki was preparing another one of those snot oysters. Jim report: one Jim |