Myspace.com

I signed up for myspace.com My brother is really busy on this thing all the time, so I thought I would get in on the action too. www.myspace.com/nukethewhales13 is the address. Mike's girlfriend put the backround on there. It wasnt my chose, but meh I dont care. Im happy my brother has a girlfriend. I geuss there at the making out stage. Wow I didnt get that far until after high school. Speaking of women, there are two girls I have my eye on. One works at the bank were I drop my works deposit off in the morning. I was flirting with her when I drop it off last saturday. It turns out that her sister works at a kwik trip that my roommates dad used to run. Small world huh? Next time I see her there I think I might ask her out. The other one is at the bank in town where I have my checking account. She's a reall looker too. I mean what's the worst thats going to happen when I ask them out? The most there going to say is either no or they have a boyfriend. What do I have to loose? nothing. I think I am going to ask the one in town out tomorrow. So wish me luck faithful I'll let you know whats happens later.

John Engrav

We've pushed 'em back

Well it wasnt so bad. It was busy 'till around 3 p.m. After that it slowed down, same thing for the next day only it died down after 3. School is going alright, kinda busy wit working retail during the holidays. I took some funny pictures for my brothers my space page here I'll post them for y'all. I went shopping before I went to work last friday. I bought 4 cd's(Jimi Hendrix, Black Sabbath, Green Day, and Go Betty Go) then my brother used his discount at BestBuy and got me a really nice laptop backpack. Well I got work tomorrow and Ill post soon. Cya later.

John Engrav

Help! we're being overrun!

Well tomorrow is the day after Thanksgiving. The "big sale" is every were. Tom my brother is working at best buy from 11-8. I hope he is ready to deal with some real nasty customers. I work from 1-730. So its not that bad. I am almost done with Harry Turtledove's The Great War: American front book. It takes place during world war 1. But the twist is it's were the south won the civil war and is allied with france and england, and the north is allied with germany. So it's and alternate history series, its really god I highly encourage everyone to at least give it a shot. After that I with probably finish up my Garrison Keillor book and then start reading my Mike Hammer P.I. books again. I will probably be so tired after work tomorrow I wi'll probably just go home and eat supper have a pint and chill. I am listening to the Mahones. Their and Irish punk band. Their kinda like Flogging Molly which is also a really good Irish punk band. The title of the somng was "Drunken Lazy Bastard", it had the same beat and rythm as Flogging Molly. I think anyone that likes Flogging Molly would like The Mahones. Well I better get to sleep, I am going to have to tame the crowds tomorrow. I wonder how riot control cops feel? must be fun shooting tear gas and waiving a billy club around. Oh well talk to you later y'all.

John "The Bruiser" Engrav

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving all!! I hpe you all eat alot of turkey and sleep well today. I know I am going to. Here is a picture of my dog Winston the Duke of Winchester. I hope you all like him. He can run so fast and he likes to snuggle up in your lap too.
talk to you later y'all

John Engrav

Newcastle Brown Ale

So another weekend of deer hunting is over with. Thank god. There are guys in our hunting party that do this all week. They love this stuff. I take my hat off to them because I know I couldnt do it. I got a deer, and my brother got a deer. I came back and I was so tired. This morning I woke up at 7 a.m., for what reason I dont know. I guys its my internal alrm clock. I usually wake up at that time for school. Speaking of school, I decided to skip my geography class today pon account I was so tired from deer hunting. I had my math class at 11 so I left for school at 10:15. I came home and had some food and took a nap for and hour and 45 minutes. Tonight I made a beer run because we were out at my place. I got a 24 pack of budweiser, and a single bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale. I thought the newcasle tasted like water. It didnt have the beer taste that I thought it would. Not that I hated it or anything, but I dont think i would buy it again. Well I have tomorrow off from school and work. So I am going to do laundry and clean my room some more. never ending job. Later y'all

John Engrav

TIme for a pint of the dark stuff

I really dont like her. I mean I really don't like her. I have tried to be nice to her. I have tried to do things her way. It doesnt work, she constantly finds something wrong with the way I do things. Today I had to laugh at what she wrote. 2 things. First, she wrote on the mirror in the bathroom that said "please shut the shower curtain" She had underlined it and put explnation marks all over it. Then She put on the white board "Please do not let teddy (their dog) out during the day, because he has to learn to be in the kennel for long periods of time." Well first of all they dont let their dog out in the morning. So I do because the dog has to pee for being in the kennel for 10 hours. So if I didnt the dog would be in the kennel for over 16 hours without going to the bathroom. Why she wants to do it that way I dont know. I am so tired of giving me crap about little things like this. It didnt bother me before, I usually just let it roll off my back. When I went out of my room today to go releave myself, she was coming up the stairs and as soon as she saw me she says "oh shit". That did it. i officailly do not like Liz. Like I said I have tried to doing it her way, but she hasnt given me a chance so you know what. Fuck it. Later y'all.

John Engrav

Bass Ale

I am drinking a bottle of Bass Ale right now. Every time my buddy Jon and I go to the liquor store I usually get some Guinness or some Bass Pale Ale. I dont now what it is about the beer I like. It could be the taste or that its a foreign beer. I dont know. I am so tired again tonight. Not like yesterdays tired though. At work tonight we had our district manager come in and we were working our tails off. She decided that we needed to take an entire shelf row down. So that took about half an hour. Then we had to clean all the crud that was underneath the shelves. Then she said we had to put all the extra shelves and frames up to storage. She said she needed someone strong to bring it up there, when she said that she was looking straight at me. So Raulie and I hawled the crap up to storage. But you got to remember that storage is on the other side of the mall, almost next to Marshall Fields. So then I watched the front for another half hour and then went on break. Then I did magazines and trash and surprisingly that was my night. I didnt stop moving until I went on my break, then the last 10 minutes the store was open. But it sure went by fast though, which is always a good thing when your at work. Then this storm is hitting us. I knew it was coming but it still sucks anyway. I go deer hunting this weekend. I dont mind hunting but I dont like getting up at 0430 and sitting outside in the freezing cold until 0900 and go back to the lot were all of use hunter hangout. I just hope it doesnt rain and/or snow this weekend. I have been outside when there was flurries blowing in the wind. That's tollerable. I have heard stories that my dad has told to the group when he remembers one year. It had blizzarded outside and they still went hunting. Gosh that's got to suck. Oh well shit happeneds. I cant control the weather so I guess I should shut up and do it. The wind is howling outside hard. I can hear it hit the house. Oh Dawn if your reading this Diana wants to know if you can work some shifts this season. Another girl is leaving to work at old navy so were going to need another person. Well it was just a thought. Talk to you guys later.

John Engrav

My favorite band

Here's a picture of my favorite band the Dropkick Murpheys. The are Hardcore Irish Punk based out in Boston, Ma. I urge everybody to listen to their "Blackout" album or their newest album "Warriors Code".

So tired

Boy am I tired today. I got to my first class and read my book during the whole period. I read it on my break that was about 50 minutes,then went to my math class. I started to pay attention, then I started to get real tired again. I was paying attention for like the first 10-15 minutes then I zoned out. I then realized it was 12:46 and was the end of class. It seams like that alot of days now. I dont sleep anymore. I come from my parents house and am tired when I leave, but when I get to my place I am not tired anymore. So usually I surf the net and study. I dont go to sleep until 1-1:30 and wake up at 7:00a.m. I am seriously done with school, I am so ready for this semester to be done with. I dont know if im burned out or what but I am just done with school. Im ready to pick up and leave, not sure where, but you know anywhere but here would be great. I also got alot of info on the UofM campus in the cities. All the schooling to be a teacher and get a major in history is going to be alot of work. Another 3 years does not appeal to me. I talked to my buddy thats in Iraq right now, online last sat. and he wants to move into a apartment in the cities somewhere when he gets back. That would be so much fun, unfortunetly he doesnt get out for another 1 1/12- 2yrs. So I got to wait a while. But the good news is he's coming home from Iraq before Christmas and will be back in Minnesota sometime in feb. or march. Doesnt anybody get the feeling that they repeat the same day over and over again? I know I do. Oh well I got no homework and nothing to study for at the moment. My buddy just called and were going to go to a pub. So Im going to go have a pint of Guinness and feel better. Well talk to you later y'all

John Engrav


P.S. I swear i'll publish another poem on here soon!!!

Vetran's Day

Here is a good article in Newsweek about Veteran's day:
The Wages of War
Old soldiers know the human price of battle. What history teaches us about how vets truly think.


By Jonathan Darman
Newsweek
Nov. 14, 2005 issue - Italy, late May 1944. The Allied Army advanced on Rome and suffered a brutal counterattack. Hunkered down near the beaches of Anzio, a 23-year-old Army private from Oak Ridge, Tenn., sent a despondent letter home. "Take a combination of fear, anger, hunger, thirst, exhaustion, loneliness, homesickness," Paul Curtis wrote to a younger brother who wanted to know about war, "and you might approach the feelings a fellow has." Nothing can ease his depression, not even the prospect that the war might end. He is certain that war will "rise again." After all, he writes, "peace will be settled by men who have never known combat and ... hold no dread of another war for they don't know."

Old soldiers have always led America. They've shown us how to love our country, revere our military and honor our war dead. More softly, they've warned of the dangers of wishing for war. "It is well that war is so terrible," said Robert E. Lee, or else "we should grow too fond of it," and soldiers have echoed him from Antietam to Iraq. Now, as we celebrate another Veterans Day, we welcome home a new generation of soldiers. If history is a guide, only a few of these new veterans will join antiwar movements; most will proudly support their country in any future entanglements it may face. But many of those returning from Afghanistan and Iraq will doubtless join a tradition of brave veterans who quietly hate war. They can teach us why war is never romantic, but may sometimes be worth fighting all the same.

Fighting soldiers fall quickly out of love with war. Living in cramped quarters, stripped of their individuality, they find their youthful dreams of glorious war alien and strange. "I once had a dim notion about the 'romance of a soldier's life'," wrote a Union soldier after the first Battle of Manassas. "I have bravely got over it since." In World War II, "anybody who was involved with killing and being killed was disillusioned from the start," says the war historian Paul Fussell. "You can't go through that kind of combat without becoming disillusioned."

Some veterans voice their feelings clearly. Gen. William T. Sherman's admonition that "war is hell" is often remembered for its irony (Sherman was the cruelest prosecutor of the Civil War in the South). Forgotten is Sherman's audience, a graduating class of military cadets. Seeing hunger for war rising among his listeners, Sherman offered simple advice: "Suppress it." Adults can be equally susceptible to romantic notions of wars. "The intellectual community is apt to say we have to 'do something'," Gen. Colin Powell wrote in 1995. "But in the end, it is the armed forces that bring back the body bags and have to explain why to parents." Some even give up all illusions of noble service. "Never mind about the glory of a uniform," a Korean War veteran wrote to a friend considering enlistment. "There are too many dead & maimed glorious & honour bound boys."

Other old soldiers are always hungry for a fight. Theodore Roosevelt was in love with war when he stormed San Juan Heights and never lost his romantic sense of combat. Even at the death of his son Quentin in World War I, Roosevelt was triumphant: the boy had "had his crowded hour." ("My other boys are just as daring," Roosevelt bragged when responding to a letter of condolence. "If the war lasts, they will all be killed unless they are so crippled as to be sent home.") As a young lieutenant colonel in World War I, George S. Patton came under heavy fire in the St-Mihiel offensive. Remembering his grandfather, a fallen Confederate general, he concluded it was his noble destiny to be "another Patton" who died on the field of war. (He lived and went on to command campaigns on two continents in World War II.)

Other military families are less eager for combat; still, if it's war, their sons will fight. Some think it dangerous to dwell on war's horrors. Man's "destiny is battle," said the thrice-wounded Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. "If it is our business to fight, the book for the army is a war-song, not a hospital-sketch."

Veterans who speak openly of war's evil, though, say honesty can help us in future fights. History may be on their side. Combat had no romance after World War I; a generation had been lost for nothing but the dreams of dead kings. But when darkness fell again in Europe, the weary West stood up to fight in World War II. "We are all conscientious objectors," said the English writer Rupert Croft-Cooke, "and all in the war."

It is the privilege of the old soldier, then, to speak realistically of war, and idealistically of peace. Another privilege: speaking for those who did not live to speak for themselves. At the end of his letter home, Paul Curtis, the downtrodden Army private, ventured that "all new men" shared his hatred for combat. He wondered if old men felt differently and if someday he would feel differently, too. We cannot know. Three days after writing his letter, Curtis was struck down in combat, just south of Rome.

© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

May we never forget what they did for us. Hopefully one day terrorism will be wiped off the face of the planet.

John Engrav

Coffee Shop

I am siting in a coffee shop. I feel like such a yuppi. I am with my brother with our laptops and ordering coffee. Wow, this sure feels different. Well I have nothing important to do today and you know it feels great. I have to work on my math take home tonight. I probably said earlier that I was off to do it. Well to the people who know me know that I usually wait to the last minute. I just got done with johnny Cash's When the man comes around. Wow thats a good song. Its about the apocolypse. I tell ya it sure gives you goose bumps when you listen to it. I also have to look for political cartoons for my research class. We are studting fallicies and our group are pretty much trashing bush. But before some of you get your pitch forks and torches, we have a pro bush person in our group. Or least was a pro bush person. He said he cant believe he voted for the idiot again. That was his exact words. I went to Brit's pub in Minneapolis this last weekend, boy was it great. I love it there. Its an old wood style british pub run by a old British guy. It has such an awsome atmosphere, anyone in the metro region should go to it. I think there website is justwww.britspub.com. I got a pint of this beer called Fullers London Pride. It was delicious. Not bitter, not to strong, it was an ale. After that I got the traditional pint of Guinness. Boy was that a good night. I have to get going tom has to work at 6 tonight and I have to drive him home. And in the words of Garrison Keillor "Be well, do good work, and keep in touch"

John Engrav

I know I know

Okay so I havnt updated in a week. i have been uber busy. I have had two tests last week, and one today. My brother got his first hickey. My mom who is going through empty nest syndrome right now is saying that its disgusting, and wants me to talk to him. I started to laugh and of coarse my mom wasnt and said that it wasnt that funny. Well I said to her that was why it was funny. Mikes going to grow up sooner or later and there is now way you can stop that. Its a badge of honor to a guy. I know how that can sound but its true. The Liz front is pretty stable now, she was even nice to me one day. I dont know were came from. It's like the DMZ with north and South Korea. It could erupt at any moment. stupid analogy huh? oh well I have to get packing up so I can get to school and finish up on my math reveiw sheet. Later Y'all.

John Engrav