The King Cake is believed to have originated in France around the 12th Century. In European countries, the coming of the three wise men bringing gifts to the child Jesus is celebrated twelve days after Christmas, called the Feast of the Epiphany, or Little Christmas on the Twelfth Night, or King’s Day.

The most popular custom is the baking of a special cake in honor of the three kings… a “Kings Cake.” These cakes were made in a circle shape to portray the circular route used by the wise men. This route was taken in order to confuse King Herod who was trying to kill the Christ child.

In early European king cakes, a bean, a pea, or a coin was hidden inside the dough and the person who got the piece was declared king for a day, or was said to have good luck in the coming year. The Latin Americans; however, put a small figure inside the cakes representing the Christ child. The tradition has now evolved that the person who gets the baby is expected to carry on the carnival festivities by hosting the next king cake party. Starting the twelfth day after Christmas, king cake parties continue until the first day of Lent, ending on Fat Tuesday, also known as Mardi Gras day!

These cakes are carried by many stores such as bakeries and groceries and are eaten at this house just for the hell of it, no “party” needed as they are that good!

Many of you have signed up for different clubs and lists to help generate traffic to your blog, and some do help quite a bit, like Blog Explosion, but you have to sign up and then surf to earn display hits or purchase hits to get your blog in the rotation. Blah, blah, blah. How about something that you do not need to sign up for and no surfin’ or any real effort on your part? Why not display this flag on your blog to show your patriotism and that you are either an american yourself or are pro american and believe in the power of our great country. Or just to show your support for unity, or our amazing troops or whatever your favorite american cause may be! I certainly will not fault you if you choose not to display it, because that is up to you (terrorist bastards) It’s a free country! Simply right click the flag and save to your HD and then upload to your favorite server. Or copy and paste this into your sidebar and add the left and right pointer html tag on each end and it should load directly from the Google server i put it on:

from here–> img src=”http://photos1.blogger.com/

img/243/2467/640/flag2.jpg” <--to there

and don’t forget the pointer tag on each end

United Bloggers of America

I created a whole new blog dedicated to the purpose

of spreading this flag to anyone who wishes to use it here.

If you decide to make the flag itself into a link have it point to

ourflag.blogspot.com

NEW!!! Go the flag blog and leave a comment that you “stole”

the flag to use on your blog and get a link to YOUR blog from there!!

It has come to my recent attention that other people are also writing blogs. Yes you, you people, the people reading this blog. This is not a good thing people, this is an act of blogging attrition, a strategic blogs race, an escalation of nuclear blogging power to the nth degree. If you do not cease and desist I will be forced to spend even MORE of my time defending the ground that my forebloggers sought to keep as their sacred and holy cyber space. I vow to put forth whatever I deem necessary and with out regard to spending limits from my national blogging treasury. You must realize that in time of need that I have the will and shall without worry or doubt send the dogs of war upon you, with complete disregard for the evil beings you truly are! No one shall be innocent of these crimes against this cyber space, not even myself, and we shall all go to hell together if need be. It is not too late for reconciliation, so think and come to the right decision, our blogging lives just may depend on it.

So what are you guys up to this weekend? hehe

I have been tagged by Celti, a sweet, blue eyed beauty with a killer tattoo gallery, to do a little quiz of sorts that consists of 3 random questions. hmmm, here we go :

3 names you go by:

1. big dog

2. BFD

3. asshole

3 screen names you have:

1. alpha

2. seven

3. biteseven

3 things you like about yourself:

1. my new haircut, short and spiky.

2. i lived

3. i quit smoking

3 things I hate/dislike about myself:

1. my skin gets too dry

2. i blog read too much

3. i curse too much

3 parts of your heritage:

1. French

2. Irish

3. Italian

3 things that scare you

1. horses

2. falling to my death

3. nothing else

3 of your everyday essentials:

1. bloggin

2. brushing my last tooth, lol

3. messing up my pc’s

3 things your wearing right now:

1. grey T-shirt

2. levi’s

3. nothing else

3 of your favorite bands/artists:

1. Godsmack

2. ZZ Top

3. Lacuna Coil

3 of your favorite songs at the present:

1. “I Stand Alone” by Godsmack

2. “Heaven’s a Lie” by Lacuna Coil

3. “Sickness” by Disturbed

3 things you want in a relationship

(love is a given, and i will add in great sex and honesty):

1. Intelligence

2. Respect

3. Humor

2 truths and a lie (no particular order to keep you guessing):

1. I was a junky

2. I have never been arrested

3. I have been married twice

3 physical things about a love interest that appeal:

1. dark or black hair

2. great smile

3. kind eyes

3 things you just can’t do:

1. whistle thru my fingers

2. bite my nails

3. turn my music down

3 of your favorite hobbies: (blogging isn’t a hobby, it’s an addiction):

1. hot rodding my pc’s (i have 4 running at this very moment, lol)

2. recording music to cd’s

3. living

3 things you want to do badly right now

1. eat breakfast

2. eat lunch

3. read more blogs

3 careers you are considering:

1. build choppers

2. computer technician

3. author

3 kids names (either boy or girl)

1. Jason

2. Lee Ann

3. Kid

3 things you want to do before you die:

1. have great sex with Sandra Bullock

2. have great sex with Kate Beckinsale

3. have great sex with Morgan Webb (of G4 TV/ Xplay fame)

3 people who have to take this quiz now:

1. Trashman (very trashy)

2. Lauren (very blunt)

3. Reama (turns tricks)

so there ya have it folks, the lowdown on the dog!

One of the jobs we had to do in the diving business was regrettably not a very easy task, we were often called upon to look for bodies in plane and helicopter crashes at sea. I remember one such job I was assigned to when I was 18 yrs old was to help a crew search for a downed helicopter. It had clipped it’s tail rotor on the edge of the landing pad where it was taking off from an offshore platform and crashed into the sea. It was in an area just south of the Mississippi river where the underwater current moved swiftly and the water was very muddy making it very difficult for the divers to do their job. Here is a picture of a platform, notice the helicopter deck at the very top edge.

The pilot and front seat passenger were able to get out and swim to safety when it hit the water but the two men in back went to the bottom apparently unable to get free of their seatbelts as we were soon to find out. We spent almost a week on the site sending divers down around the clock doing search patterns in a circle surrounding the platform in fairly deep water until we located the wreckage. It had been rolled along the sea floor by the strong underwater currents and was almost 400 ft away from where it had crashed. When you can’t see your hand in front of your face because the water is so muddy that is a long ways off. We were on board a 200 ft long ocean-going work boat tied along side the platform where we had all of our diving equipment on board, here is a picture showing just the front half of a similar vessel.

Thankfully the weather was decent at the time and it was nice to be on deck with the sun shining and the seas calm, perfect for shorts and sneakers. One very odd thing was the sighting of a waterspout, a tornado at sea not more than a mile away from us. Really strange and I understand fairly rare occurence. It was quite beautiful actually with the sky so clear and only a dark patch of clouds over the spout itself. We watched it churning up the sea throwing huge quantities of water into the air as it moved off away from us. Simply amazing. A remarkable thing about offshore is if there is a strong breeze blowing it will blow very steady and not gusty at all. You can actually lean your weight into a strong breeze and depend on it to hold you up.

After nearly a week of around the clock diving, we finally located the chopper upside down on the bottom. We were sent to recover both the the chopper and the bodies, but they decided to bring only the bodies on board and set a buoy on a cable to the chopper for later pickup with another vessel. I was unfortunate enough to be on duty when the first body was hauled in and I had to help pull him over the rail and get him on deck. I really don’t want to describe how the man looked after small fish had been eating on him for the past 4 or 5 days, lets just say it was quite horrible. We then tried to put him in a body bag but that was not easy as rigormortis had set in and the man was in a seated position with his knees up, like he was still strapped in to the chopper seat. That was one of the most life changing experiences I have ever had, and I would learn that working offshore could be quite deadly in the years ahead of me. Including several close friends being killed on the job, but, I will tell you about those later.

So for now, keep tha faith people and tell me how lousy you guys are doing on your New Year resolutions!

I have a new “Blog o’the Week” up! It’s from a young lady in southern Louisiana, yep, another crazee cajun! Give it a try, il est très drôle! It’s called The Blunt Harpoon. Also a link in my sidebar. Requirements for “Blog o’the Week” are here.

There was a supervisor at the offshore construction company that I used to work for who’s last name was Long. I can’t recall his real first name but he picked up the nickname “Shorty” when he was in the Navy. Why? Because he was quite short, maybe 5′ 4″ or so. It was one of those nicknames where people didn’t have to ask him why he was called that. He was likable enough but really quirky and had some odd ideas on how, and why certain things needed to be done. If you worked beneath him you automatically hated his guts even though he was very friendly to everyone. I didn’t have to worry about that because I was also a supervisor.

Once when I had been offshore for nearly 3 months I got a weekend break and got to go home for 2 days. That meant I would spend almost as much time travelling to home and back as I would get to spend at home, but after that long you will endure most anything to get some good luvin’. Even an 18 hour long boatride in rough seas where everyone is pukin there guts up from seasickness. Upon my return, Shorty, in his dumbass way, actually asked me if I had done any hunting. Now almost anyone would know that 3 months at sea would make you one very horny boy and huntin’ would be the LAST thing I would do, and besides I wasn’t a hunter anyway. I replied yeah, Shorty, I had done some great huntin! I was looking for some double breasted, split-tailed mattress thumpers while I was in and I had a great time. The man actually looked at me shocked like he could not believe that I wouldn’t have gone huntin’. What a dope. Everyone in the area laughed at him and he got pretty embarrased.

The man also had the worst luck of anyone I had ever seen. One day me and a diver friend named Mike were on our bikes and we stopped in at the diving yards to pick up some parts for his diving helmet. Shorty was there and he was admiring Mikes brand new Harley, and wound up asking if he could test ride it. Now I can tell you right off there would be no way in hell I would let that dumbass ride mine, but Mike felt like he couldn’t refuse, because Shorty was his boss on the job, and not mine. Anyway the area of the dive yards is heavily populated with some super heavy duty equipment like diesel generators and hydraulic power units that weigh tons. Well Shorty got on Mikes bike and revved it up and took off hard and didn’t go 30 ft and he slammed head on into a generator, and actually made the generator move! Needless to say he did lots of damage to the bike that he had to pay. He was lucky he didn’t kill himself to say the least.

Shorty was into fishing and hunting and had a nice bass boat and trailer. He got off one weekend and, yup you guessed it, he went fishing! That is sad all by itself, but he had some serious bad luck that weekend. He had a friend with him and they were cruising out in the boat when the steering cable broke and he wound up running the boat quite a ways up in to the swamps and got stuck. They wound up stranded there overnight waiting for someone to pass by that could pull them out and tow him in. When they got back to the boat launch he backed his car down the ramp and loaded the boat up and locked the keys in the car with the engine running right there on the ramp.

There were many people waiting to use the ramp and he ended up breaking a window out of the car to get in. Of course he broke the drivers window so he had to sit in broken glass on the way home. Now you would think that would be enough for most people but not for Shorty! Hell no, he backed the boat into his driveway and accidentally rammed the outboard motor clean thru his garage door! Many times when I feel like things aren’t going my way, all I have to do is tell myself, at least I ain’t Shorty!

This one is from a lady in Pennsylvania and has some interesting thoughts, give it a try.

Creatively Amusing also a link in my sidebar as well.

requirements for “Blog o’the Week” are here.

Back in the days when I used to work offshore in the diving business, I would be gone for long periods of time, up to 3 months. I was concerned about my wifes security while I was gone and so I thought a dog would be a great addition to the household. We agonized for a while over what type of dog we would get and settled on a Doberman Pinscher. Back then nothing said don’t mess with me better than the appearance of a dobie next to you, never mind if the dog was actually mean, it just looked mean as hell. We bought one and decided to train it well, so we purchased several books on training that breed. This is highly recommended by the way, as most dogs have a great capacity for learning almost anything, provided you know how to teach it in a way that is creatively fun for the dog. And yes, you can teach an old dog new tricks, provided you do it correctly.

We quickly learned we had a dog with some exceptional talent for being trained and proved to be the most wonderful companion everywhere we went, even to Europe. We named her Dana, short and easy to say, making it easier for the dog to respond when called upon. Dana eventually learned about 40 different commands, including hand signals and learned a lot of them in french as well, yep my dog spoke french! She also amazingly was a lip reader, if you got her attention she would watch for you to mouth the words silently and actually do what you said for simple words like sit and stay and come. Here are some of the fun things she did:

• She hated hats, if you put a hat of any kind on your head she treated you like you just beamed in from the planet Zylon and would bark at you like a fool, scaring you silly.
• Roach murderer, she hated roaches with a passion and would go out of her way to destroy it. She would lie in wait for a roach out of reach on the wall and when it came close enough she would pounce on it and bite it then spit it back out. Lots of fun first thing in the morning to find half chewed roaches on the floor, eww. Very fun to watch though, and she always got her roach!
• Restaurants in Europe allow you to bring your dog inside, and she loved to lie under our table like she was a queen, with her front legs crossed and watch quietly at everything going on. Waiters would usually bring a small bone or a small bowl of complimentary soup for her and she never failed to draw lots of admiring attention from the other patrons of the eatery. She was very dainty and never made a mess.
• Very possessive, we walked her in the park a lot and would let her roam free but she would never get out of sight. We would “hide” behind a tree or other object when she wasn’t looking and then when she looked and couldn’t see us would frantically search for us. When she “found” us she would greet us like we had been gone a week, stubby tail waving and everything. She never failed to do that!
• Crotch sniffing, the one thing she did that I never could break her from doing. She would do it so very quickly and unobtrusively so that I wouldn’t have a chance to rebuff her for it. She was good at it and did it to everyone she got close enough to.
• She scared the bejeesus out of a cop one day. He came to the front door to take a report on some items stolen from my garage and had a hat on when he knocked at the front screen door. She saw him and charged the door barking like a dog from hell with teeth snarling and he ran to safety outside the front gate, shutting it behind him. I asked him to remove the hat and suddenly he was her best friend and wouldn’t stop bothering him for attention.
• Loved alcohol, never leave an alcohol drink unattended, she would sneak some and not leave any sign that she had lapped some from your glass, she got tipsy very easily, and was fun to watch.
• Loved to play on stairs, she would run up and down them like it was a roller coaster ride or something and was lots of fun to watch. The first time she encountered stairs though, I had to physically carry her up because she refused to try it. Never heard a dog scream in fear before, but she quickly got the hang of it and ran them so much she drove me nuts!
• If I left any clothing laying about she would pick it up and sneak it to her bed at night and sleep on it, even dirty socks and underwear and she would get huffy if you retrieved your dirty sock or whatever she had stolen.

So now you’re saying finally a post about dogs on it’s a dog’s life! Needless to say I miss her very much and hope to have another like that someday.

Now, tell me about some of the cool stuff your favorite pet has done!