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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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5'6", 110 lbs, and she doesn't even slightly pull her punches. I'm in no position to retaliate, driving, in traffic, I can see opportunity a mile away but there's no safe way to wind up, when finally I get a good one in her eyes tear up, she accuses me of hitting her too hard, she's of course under no such restraints.
The game is, of course, "Punch Buggy, no return", for every VW Bug (or modern equivalent) I receive a bruising punch to the shoulder. One doesn't hurt, but try driving through Calgary, downtown, rush hour and see how many you get. I've got a callous. And add to this the hundreds of peripheral rules, an added "Banana Slap" if it's yellow, there's an added "chop" if it's a convertible, and another pinch or punch if it's a vintage bug...
These rules, they're carefully withheld, one needs to enquire after specifically brutal outbreak to find them out, they're then presented as matter of fact and of course I should have known this...
And there are the misidentified cars, she preemptively punches me upon sight of a VW logo, her eyes are better than mine, worse when the car comes to pass, a Jetta, Golf, Lexus even, if the color is right, so many mistakes I'm forced to add in penalties...
These games, they're her revenge for every empty country road and prospecting misadventure I've ever taken her on, and it crosses my mind that if Humbert-Humbert suffered a cross-country road trip with his 14 year old Lolita than he doubtless got what he deserved...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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Twisted, Saturday night, daughters on a sleepover and I haven't been out forever, head off to Twisted.
I shouldn't have, really, wasn't in the mood, couldn't seem to get in the mood, too much on my mind, and the amusing inanity soon became boring, trite and overdone. Dancing, by myself, with others, a well dressed young black man, forefinger down, beckoning me over, this forefinger thing, I've just noticed it, everyone, it seems, is demonstrating their inner "Alpha Male" with it, the new gesture of "power and arrogance", he's ornamented his with a thick gold ring, making sure it's seen...it seems innocent enough, until he begins squeezing his nipple at me and covering me in imagined milk, licking his lips, there follow increasingly desperate attempts to gain my attention, dancing, my gaze held off into the middle distance, pretending not to see...
...there's the doorman, vampire white, muscular, shorter, an air of brutal savagery about him, he's never seen the sun and something about him, his piercings and tattoos, shaven head, reads "Serial Killer"...
...there's Superman, a T-shirt with the superman logo, dancing, twerking, dancing with his reflection in the mirrored pillar, arousing himself, clutching his engorging member, undoing his shorts to clutch himself closer, only to reveal his Superman underpants...
...and the latin lover, straight, 40 or 50 something, preying upon the drunken girls, lifting his shirt, placing their hands on him, dancing, bending them over then affixing his lips of incredible suction to theirs, some don't resist, too drunk, their friends laugh, take pictures, this will be facebook hell, the story of the "latin" lover disproven by photos that really should ensure she never, ever drinks again...after the photos the friends pull her from the dance floor, latin lover still attached to her mouth, he's not letting go, holding on with his lips, she can't breathe, the friends grow less amused, gently pulling him, harder and then harder, from his prey, men step in, no uncertain pressure, release her from his clutches, he's oblivious, dancing again, looking for another victim, there are abundant choices here...
I'm not in the mood, perhaps made myself a little too regular here, this is a twice a year place at best, that, or perhaps I need merely to up the dosage...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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And this, because I had to try on his sunglasses and for a moment pretend to be that fashionable, and the pun just wrote itself...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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The first leg of the prospecting vacation (less prospecting, more reconnaissance, too many places to dip a pan and the daughter won't stand for it, no one would, really, it's insane, I know, I know...). Edmonton, Peace River, Grande Prairie, Grande Cache, and then a long dusty wind along the trunk roads back. It's a big country, and these places I've not been for 30 years, awed by the scale of the coal mining, the Oil and Gas development, by the sheer impossibility of prospecting a single region of it, a full 4 months of summer would only touch upon a single area, I have easily a dozen to check...
The rest of the vacation, well, short notes beneath the images...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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The jeweler was less than impressed with my diamonds. Took a look, another look through the loupe, tweezered a couple, thought they were topaz...
Tells me the thermal test (they passed) was only one, lots of stones would pass the thermal test, to be sure you needed to do the thermal and the electric, what I needed to do was immerse the stones in Hydrochloric acid, (Muriatic acid), or Hydrofluoric acid, those that didn't dissolve would be diamonds...
There's no getting hydrofluoric acid, but Muriatic Acid I picked up at Rona. Hydrofluoric acid, by the way, for those of you who watched Breaking Bad, while without a doubt the bad-ass of acids, is not quite what Walter White cracked it up to be. Yes, it'll eat through everything, but no, it's not as great as those cracked articles or TV shows would have you believe. No, it probably wouldn't have eaten through Jesse's Tub. The Muriatic acid, it cleans the stones, fizzes on the metal in the sink (there goes the damage deposit), dissolves a few pieces of limestone for the daughter's amusement, but in the end the stones are still there, Adamantine lustre and all...
While I have no doubt the jeweler was right, there's simply no easy 1-2-3 test to determine if I've found diamonds or not. The obvious diamonds, that demonstrate great crystal shape and form, those you can tell, their crystal structure, the double terminated pyramids, twinned crystals or cubes or Ballas diamonds, but these are the rare exceptions, and not the commonly found stones, and I'm back to square one, with all of the finding still ahead of me and no way to tell when I've arrived...