Well.

As some more astute of you 'Smokians might have noticed, I have been gone of late. Seems like real life intrudes upon Echoland more and more (please excuse the rambling...reasons to be forthcoming soon...).

Anyways.

*You Smegheads*.

I was called to a bizarre and remote location (of which the CIA and the FBI DO NOT want me disclosing) to do a little land raping and petroleum extracting. I was _supposed_ to be there for a week only.

Only a week.

Well, the locals had a different idea.

Seems that they were _most_ interested in some of the Western cultural artifacts we possessed; such as potable water, smokeable tobacco and good booze (scotch was definitely _not_ on my list of provisions). So, the day I'm supposed to leave for the warm and relatively civilized climes of Humidity Valley (a.k.a., the Fungal Jungle, a.k.a. Houston) the locals had a bit of a "going away party" planned.

The Agaves (the local indigenous folks) swarmed into our compound and decided to abscond with whatever they felt was necessary to live in this modern world.

I took particular exception to them wanting to liberate my field notebooks and Brunton Compass ("A geologist without a Brunton is like an Immunologist without his scotch..." -A Famous Person).

The upshot (a painful pun, as you will see) of this was that I took the equivalent of a .45 slug in the leg.

THAT really irritated me.

I lost about 2 liters of blood, my drink, and most of my stock of Pisco cane sugar liquor.

Damn.

That really pissed off me.

But, the local military finally showed ("Hut, hut, hut!"), and I was medivacked to a hospital, where a nurse, who would have warmed the cockles of Herr Comrade Docktor Glodbreg's heart, administered the 1901 equivalent of triage.

Well.

I survived.

And I'm really pissed off about the Pisco.

And I wish I was off "Soma" so I could drink this all away.

Fuck.

Hey. Did you see that Godslove.gif won a Pulitzer?

The Houston Post even gets to Caracas.