President's Day 2013

Well it's President's Day, another "Birthington's Washday" as my grandfather would say in other words Washington's Birthday. I thought now would be time for an interesting post disclosing something I've noticed, perhaps a parallel in American political appearance. Is it just me or has anybody else noticed the similarities between Jimmy McMillan (A New York Politician) and Chester Arthur (US President from 1881-1885)?

McMillan is best known for his platform line "The Rent Is Too Damn High!" and that also happens to be the name of his party he founded.

Arthur was considered the sharpest dressed president to ever live. I imagine they would have been playing ZZ Top's "Sharp Dressed Man" song if it had been available on phonograph, (super early release version, by Time Travel Recording Studios) instead of "Hail To The Chief"

The thing I notice is McMillan seems to have taken influence from Arthur for his trademark facial hair. To add to that, McMillan is sharply dressed. If I had to say, his style is a modern rendition of Arthur, which is pretty cool. In any other situation I suppose they'd get ostracized for looking like characters out of a Lewis Carroll or Charles Dickens novel, that or escaped members of some obscure but one time experiment in bizarreness 1970's acid rock band project.

All I'm saying is when I saw McMillan on TV, it was a "Wait where have I seen that before? looks similar.." moment that had me do a quick perusal through the history books for reference to confirm my suspicion.

"Nobody can top my level of swag, they'll still be tryin' well over a century from now. I'm the real OG (Orginal Gansta) from 1883, and all the other Chet Arthurs are just immitating!" - Chester A. Arthur in an 1884 interview.
Well alright, not his actual words, but that's what one might imagine I suppose in looking at this portrait.

"The rent is too damn high!" Exclaims Jimmy McMillan in 2010. - Yes these are his actual words, he really said that.. really.   

I'm Back.. With Dinosaurs? (Winter Road Trip Discovery)

Long time no writing. I apologize everybody for being away from this for so long. It's been around a month now. Much has happened, and much has not happened. For one I suppose I continued to recover from my surgery but was ailed by other problems such as succeeding infections I'm still trying to fight from the feet. At times I seem to suffer from forgetting that I have a blog as other events come about. I've been engulfed with some projects and a career change that's taken some rather unexpected rough turns for the worst yet I still endeavor to bring you the blog.

In this time out it's provided me with excellent solace to reflect upon my first time blogging and what I can do to make it better and improve it's structure. For one I'm considering creating several corresponding or sub blogs. I realize maybe when I get on here I write about such a wide array of ideas and concepts that it spans anything from fiction to non-fiction and though it's largely entertainment; It would be wise for me to dedicate a blog to each category. Still plan to keep this spontaneous and unrestricted and freestyle, yet give each category a sub blog or partner blog space now. Not certain what will be what but the adventures I take seem to be a popular subject so almost certainly there will be one blog dedicated to travels alone, another as just a drawing board for an over active imagination to indulge the zombie people (or a place to bounce some crazy ideas in my mind off) and maybe a third dedicated to cars, guitars or something. I'm also considering a photo journalistic or just photography approach blog (example, last summer's forest wildfires that I covered) as this may have many cross overs yet be in a field of it's own deserving a blog page. All this is to be determined, I'll do my best to keep my readers posted.

So I believe last time I left off somewhere promising to show you what it was I found on a trip in to a desert region of Wyoming, after the part with all the holiday wishes, festive food, and recovering from the surgery. So here we are back to the grind as usual.

What I found in Wyoming was not from the ghost town as I was looking for, I did determine it's approximate location however. Yet the roads proved impassable as they were gated off due to heavy snow near that one location, the routes that lead to dirt roads that could bring me to my intended destination. So like anything I got lost running around the general area looking for other access points just getting away exploring. I stumbled upon an old scenic back road, long ago state highway of some kind that was absent of snow and canyon that had enough wind and sun to remove much of the ground cover. I gently rolled my car along a long winding stretch of deserted pavement. An old grey ribbon of asphalt winding off in the distance, faded grey from years of Wyoming weather and sun, cracking with dried grass breaking through from last growing season. I never saw another vehicle on the road. I went through a canyon and followed a river (the river was snowy near the banks and iced over a bit, yet the higher areas were dry). I soon found myself in the bad lands and curiosity got the better of me when I saw some odd looking rock formations. I decided I best check it out in person and proceeded into wash out areas on foot, scoping the path through ravines. I had a heck of time negotiating a patch of thorny dried bushes. They were taller than me and it was like trying to get past barbed wire bushels.

At first I began snapping my photos thinking "These are some really interesting rocks" .. or were they rocks?

Strange rock with holes in it.

Wait a minute?.. lets go back to that strange rock with holes in it!

Here it is, the one on the right, it's a rock but there's something fishy about this rock.

Same weird rock, different angle.

Ok, now what rock has splintered fiber like material protruding from it?



In relation to my hand, this is how big this thing is.

Yeah, now there's something up with this boulder.

Some other rock element in here with the sand stone. Reminds me of jade but it's brown, at first I mistook it for being rusty old fragments of some long ago metal object, perhaps something to do with the 1860's ghost town out here I originally set out after on this trip.

Carefully feeling the grain with my frozen fingers, not adding any real pressure here as not to damage whatever this is.

Now, notice the cracks with the sunlight showing through? There is really something odd with this rock, as if it was never a rock to begin with. Now if I did not know any better this was some kind of organism at one time. Either a tree or animal. I've seen prehistoric wood and this is not exactly it, so this leaves animal. To me this seems like a skull.

Peeping holes.

These thorny bushes lay all around the rocks.

Lots of rock deposits on the ground of variety, amongst the worst thorny dry bushes.

Chiseled magnificence of nature.

After three in the afternoon, catching the waning sun near shortest day of the year, December 23rd, 2012.

The work of time, thousands, millions of years perhaps in the making.

Strange similar honeycombed hole patterns similar to the weird rock I discovered.

 

If I had to take a guess I'd say I discovered the skull of some sort of prehistoric beast. What of, I'm uncertain. This rock is really more of a boulder, the size of half a small car or more. I'd say it would fit snug in the cabin of a Volkswagen Beetle if all the seats were removed, excluding the fact it would easily crush the car from such weight strain. I'd estimate it's a good ton of rock. I'd say if it was a living creature, it would have to be prehistoric for one, and likely a dinosaur. I won't discount the chance that this was possibly a larger mammal such as a woolly mammoth sized creature, yet it almost seems too big for that. I'm no expert but from my limited budding knowledge of geology and paleontology, knowing many of these sandstone rock formations in Wyoming are Precambrian era or Cambrian aged, this could easily palce this in a time when Wyoming was part of a prehistoric ocean bed, slowly turning into a swamp. After gawking through books and the Internet at known dinosaur skulls, I suspect by the oblong shape of this skull and eye socket placement that this was some giant sea creature, a big dino fish if you will. I might be totally wrong but it's looking to me that what I might have discovered could be some prehistoric mega Sturgeon ancestor or something. To put this plainly, if time travel were possible, I'd not want to go fishing when this thing lived! I'd make but two simple easy bites for it, if that much. Either way I know where to find it and will probably contact Wyoming's paleontology experts at the university in Laramie and let them know I found something of potential interest to them, I'd be curious to hear what they say, or even take somebody who's an expert in this field to this and show them. I want to know exactly what it is as well. If I ever find out, you can count on me to make note of it on the blog here.