Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

…It's done and on its way to the printer. I ran 100 t-shirts in assorted dark colors (dark because the tiki head is printed in GLOW-IN-THE-DARK ink), so there should be some leftovers that will be sold in BMEshop for those who can't make it… I did the back up like a rock tour shirt, picking dates and locations from various BBQs that people have held this summer.

Anyway, they'll be available at the September 1st BBQ here in Toronto for $15 CDN ($10 US) and then the left overs (if any) will be sold on BMEshop — if you want one though, I'd strongly recommend that you get it at the BBQ or get a friend to get it for you to make sure your size is available.

My Jeep is on its way to the shop to get its clearance for winter driving (mostly just assembling a top out of whatever scrap is lying around the shop, but also fixing a minor electrical glitch) although I may add an electric heater if it turns out the factory heater isn't enough. Other than that today I have to do an image update… So… Before I go on to that, I'll tell a story. I thought I'd told it before, but in a search of my page I couldn't find it, so here you go (I'm trying to tell more stories than tell you about how the world is ending for those of you who choose to remain slaves to the corporate military nations).

OK, I'm sorry… I do want to draw your attention to two very important stories. First of all the Saudis have withdrawn between $100 billion and $200 billion from investments in the United States (from an estimated investment base of up to $600 billion). In addition, the oil prices are rising, both from fear of war and from the size of the US crude oil stockpiles, and are now past $30 (the first time in well over a year).

That means two important things:

• A weakening of the US economy, and potentially a severe weakening if other countries also diversify their investments and pull out or partially pull out (according to the Financial Times, they're seeing a 20% to 30% pull out rate). I suspect that the middle class will bear the brunt of this weakening, as the destruction of the middle class is one of the goals of the elite.
• An increase in profits for the weapons buying oil-producing nations of the middle east. The more they are able to charge for oil, the higher their profits are, and, in turn, the more weapons they are able to buy from US arms companies.

Anyway, I promised you a story.

When I was about eighteen, a friend of my brother and I (our neighbor as well) was having trouble with his family. He came from a real backwards hick family, and was one of these “diamond in the rough characters” — very bright and interesting and full of potential, but also very odd (as a child he'd gone deaf for over a year, and then mysteriously recovered; I suspect it was psychosomatic). Anyway, we'd decided that the best solution was that he move in with us, and the plans for that were confirmed.

About a week before he was supposed to move in with us, Corey walked into his house and saw his father carnally pounding his girlfriend doggy-style in the middle of the living room floor. When I say girlfriend, I want to be real clear that this was Corey's father having sex with Corey's girlfriend. Corey went into his room, his girlfriend followed him in, and there in front of her, he pulled out his twelve gauge shotgun and held it up to his head. A second later, Corey's head was in small pieces all over the wall and ceiling. Just a stump was all that was left — a frail limp body with a bloody stump of a neck and some shards of head barely hanging on.

His father took no responsibility in the matter. As far as he was concerned, this was Corey's fault, and he sought to punish him for doing it, even though he was already dead and from Corey's point of view it really didn't make a whole lot of difference. Corey was well liked overall, and it's not as if that many kids die in a rural high-school, so his funeral was well attended, and that's where his father got his final revenge.

The funeral was open casket.

Corey had no head.