Art

I drew that Thursday. I'm pleased with it, but i wanna give all the props to God for giving my the talent to draw that.
I think i've said it before that i went into art because i was bored throughout school and doodled constantly. This drawing illustrates why i should have gone into engineering instead of art. I can draw a motorcycle in detail, but can only manage the most basic cartoony faces. Here's the whole picture so you can see what i'm talking about. I understand machines and electronics, but don't really GET humans in the same way. Sure, they cannot BE gotten in the same way, but i guess i'm just not intuitive when it comes to human and what makes them tick, whereas i can intuitively understand machines and electronics. Thank You God!!! Especially since i function okay in my interpersonal relationships.

I told the kids at work to write me a poem about Duct Tape, the best poem earning its author a pop. They follow... vote by commenting.
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Henry Potters

Or whatever...

I just read book 3 of Harry Potter, and there's this one class... Oh, wait. For those who have not read the book or seen the movie, there are mild spoilers ahead, so only read on if you want to find out minor plot points that happen.
The reason i chose that picture is because Harry flies around on a broomstick, that that's a fly.
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amateur photography

One of the kids at work wanted to take pictures with my camera today, so i gave her free use of it for about 1.5 hours. The results are fun to see! A few examples follow, on the rest of the post.
In the meantime, check out this whole tutorial about Tetraspace. Four dimensions!!! Eric thinks Heaven may end up being four dimensional, and if we look at Plato-esque ideas in the Bible (down where it says "Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face"), we see that heaven WILL be a whole lot MORE than what we experience now. And a 3D "realmspace" could hang on a 4D universe wall, and swing back and forth, scraping the wall as it goes. So 3D is just as flat to 4D'ers as 2D (mirror or painting) is to us 3d'ers.
A three-legged stool would ALWAYS fall over in a four dimensional universe.
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God...

We've already established that God is not an old white guy.

Nor is he a dog like Graham...

Here's what i think God and His universe is like. On the Playstation2 there's NBA Jam 2004 or whatever, right? And there's this Ben Wallace inside the game, and he has some sort of existence. He can catch the ball when it comes to him, shoot, rebound... and some equations govern his range of choices, but he has some "free will" in the form of random deviations assigned by the PS2's rocessor.
If Ben Wallace inside the game were complex enough to be sentient and tried to imagine who his creator was, he'd probably imagine a person. However, he would never imagine a PS2.
God is not a computer. But he is not a human. Being made in God's image is not being made in the physical likeness of God. He's a spirit, and has no this-universe body that we can understand. God's image in us is our minds, creativity, love, spirit, language... everything that is good about being a human is God's image in us. If God's image is something physical, that we can claim that physical attributes are more or less Godly. Maybe that lie is where the superiority complex of certain races comes from. Like Nazi Germany or the KKK. We could then justify all manner of evils like euthenasia of the handicapped. Or, you know, genocide.

By the way, Bobby Fischer, who was detained this month, denies that the Holocaust happened.

Show Off Post

Okay, this will be my image filled show off post from YL camp. I will, however, start with some stuff about our little kids :)
Katrina and Houston and Graham and I went for a long walk today, to get a bagel and toothbrush. Yeah, i guess going on a long walk to get a toothbrush is easier than unpacking... and my old worn out toothbrush (the one i didn't take to camp) is just too old and worn out to use anymore.
Houston is really a brave kid. We stopped on the bridge that goes over I-196 to look at trucks, and he was perfectly happy to walk along the concrete barrier that is right next to the chain link fencing that seperates "safe" from "certain painful death". He even grabbed the chain link with both hands and pulled his feet off the concrete! And he wouldn't even have needed to hold my hand if i had not been totally insistant!
He started saying "Look Daddy!" He was watching The Emperor's New Groove, and was hitting the space bar, pausing the playback, and would laugh and say "Look Daddy!" if it was funny.
Katrina is a perfect little angel. She peeped not once on our whole trip to the bagel and toothbrush shop, unless it was at strangers or the mirror. She was in the front-carrier thing we got from my mum, i think...?
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Still tired

So i'm gonna try to post early, then go RELAX, reading an actual hard copy of Harry Potter 3. You know, the kind on paper with dark markings on each side... weird.

I'm gonna be milking those camp pictures for a while. They are pretty cool, and i haven't unpacked my battery charger yet, so i have a dead camera until i do that. Once i do the whole image-filled show-off post, i'll quit using them.
While at camp, we taked about the difference between Race (skin color and other hereditary traits) and Culture (learned behavior patterns). American culture is - nevermind. Katrina is still awake, and she's just the most adorable little girl ever, so i'm gonna go read my book in front of her so she can coo and smile at me! Maybe i'll continue this post later if my compulsion to stay awake ridiculously late takes over.

YL Camp... PART the FIRST!

Hey, not much time to write today, so i'll not go into that detail. I'll just slap that picture up, and say with all humility that i'm the tallest guy there. The girl on the right had just really interesting, sweet hair that would have locked up very nicely. Although it was beautiful the way it was. Mike, the guy in the middle (the short one) was really friendly, and had blue hair. He dressed all goth, but was not obviously afraid of social contact with "normals" like most goths i know - a cool guy. I didn't get to know the green-haired girl, but she's gotta be cool with green hair. And you know me. I was the only caucasian with dreads at camp. Well... famous Shon would let a few dread-like braids escape from his ever-present trucker's cap on occasion... but he seemed semi-non-caucasoid. Who cares about ethnic background when you can land this, right?
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Sorry! Broke!?!

Okay, i WENT to camp, and now i'm back, but i've gotta write a post about that, and in the meantime, you can read all five posts that were SUPPOSED to show up here BEFORE... when i was gone. It didn't work. They are all about Karen and my relationship before, you know, NOW... so if you're bored, or if you are Houston or Katrina reading this when you're a teenager.... read (or remember reading) those posts. Here's a pic of the boyz we took, mostly to let ya'll know at a glance that the site has been updated.

Here's a pic from last year.

It occurs to me that i won't be around tomorrow at all to do a post, so i'll do one now.
Pray for me while I'm at camp. The whole (convoluted and expensive) mission of Young Life is to reach kids for Christ, and that is where my focus MUST BE. There will be lots of really cool people there to impress, and plenty of things to distract me from talking to the boys i'm taking, and showing them what it's like to live for Jesus. Pray that the Spirit will be with me, that the Spirit will MOVE THE KIDS!
The fact that i get to go to camp and get paid (well) is tragically unfair. All the other leaders have to take vacation time, and foot the bill for camp themselves; around $300! So...
Karen, i'm gonna miss you SO MUCH! And the little ones! I'm already sad. I hope somebody has a laptop with internet access i can check out the site. I'll comment.
I've got my toothbrush and foamy paste in my mouth and need to spit it out, rinse my brush and put it in the suitcase! Then i'll be done packing and can go to bed.

Day V

Karen worked as a waitress at The Olive Garden (Tog, or The OG) while i delivered pizzas. We were both part time, and the tips rocked. Our apartment was a little goofy “one bedroom studio” which meant there was only a door to the bathroom and to the outside, with stairs seperating the bedroom upstairs from the rest of the living area downstairs. It was tiny, the walls were white, the office-style carpet was glued straight to the hard floor... and we ended up with cockroaches migrating from apartments around us (eew...) but it was home. We even had most of Karen's family visit at one point. That must have been cramped!
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Day First Non-Prime

When Karen and i were seperated for those two years, we wrote endlessly to each other. Writing letters turned out to be enormously valuable to us. We could learn about each other's beliefs and personalities deeply and thoroughly. I could ask and respond to the deepest questions with a thoroughness i'd never be able to in conversation. I could draw quirky things all over my letters. We discussed religion, marriage, kids, cars, art, love, God... it had drawbacks, doubtlessly, but the advantages were such that i would do it again.
The longest letter was over eighty pages. That's forty pages front and back.
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Day Tré!

Karen was a much better letter writer than me, so my mailbox was laden with four or five letters before i'd managed to send off a letter of my own. She'd used the Love and Logic approved technique of letting me know what choices i had. “You can write back, and i'll keep writing. Or you can not write back, and this is the last letter you'll get from me.” That was all this dude needed to get out that Bic and lined paper and scrawl a few lines. The first letters were small affairs, but always finished with “Love ya!” or the more serious “I love ya!” but not the very serious “I love you!” that would follow.
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Day (B)

Our first year at Dordt College was filled with adventure, as all first years of college are. Karen and i managed to avoid taking up smoking or drinking as pastimes, but did spend grade-eroding amounts of time hanging out with our friends. We remain close to those people, with whom we'd sit around the piano and sing Ruhythm and Ruhyme songs. Karen went from being one of the three girls who seemed to hang out (her, Melissa and ... Kristy or some crap) of whom i could not remember the name, to being my favorite girl on campus. What first attracted me to her besides her pretty smile was the fact that she had a real stereo with an actual five band graphic equalizer (now in our basement) and she had lots of Far Side books (now on the bookshelf). Anyone who liked The Far Side enough to own several of the books is worth getting to know better.
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Day One

I'm off to camp this week, so in order to keep this weblog updated. Something like inertia... i'm afraid that if i don't keep posting, i'll get lazy and just kind of let it go unposted to. And that would not be cool. More than a narcissisticly self-aggrandizing site, (which it may be...) this is a site for Houston and Katrina and Philemontay (our first-choice next kid's name) to read about us, them, and what it was like when they were babies. It's even interesting for me to read the first weeks worth of posts.
So, if you want, you can read this week just to get more information about the cult heroes that are KAREN and JUANITO!!! (they are such underground, such exclusive cult heroes, only their friends and families have heard of them!)
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bustin' dreads

There's a mostly totally legal picture of the dreadlocks i made in that one girl's hair. Let's call her Beulah. There is NO wax in them yet, and wax definately helps with the fuzziness, although my camera has this weird thing where one of the lens elements gets knocked out of place causing the vignetting you see off to the left on that pic and accounts for a great deal of the fuzziness... But that one time it turned out pretty cool.

Today is a two-picture day, and this is why:

Beulah's hairdo took over eight hours, so i ran out of time. Karen worked today right after me, and brought Katrina and Houston for me to take home. Tomorrow i'm leaving for Young Life camp. Beulah needed the dreads busted, so i took the little ones outside so i could keep working on them. Houston had a fun time feeding the ducks, (and totally impressing Beulah with his politeness; please, thankyou, throwing a mushroom he picked up into the garbage can when he was done with it) but then he found The Black Tar.
There's a fourth law of thermodynamics (closely related to the law of entropy, also known as the law of increasing chaos) which states "Any little kid's body is attracted to any mess in proportion to the severity of that mess and that mess' proximity". Houston was drawn inexorably to the freshly laid tar, (on a sidewalk? come on!) and had a blast getting filthy. Karen will be overjoyed to hear that his clothes are completely unstained. Don't know how that happened. Thank you God!

And here's the one-liner of which i'm most proud. I made it up.

"I was arranging my desk the other day and the Entropy Police gave me a ticket for disturbing the chaos."

the little [h]

Yesterday Houston and I went to the store to buy marge and jerky, and while i was looking at the men's belts, Houston pointed vaguely and said "I hear nin a SAX-A-FONE!" This means "I'm hearing a saxophone!" but i thought he was saying he saw a saxophone or something, espeically since he was waving towards the men's belt section, and... well, who knows. But then he repeated it, despite me saying "no, Houston, those are men's belts". I then decided to actually pay attention to what music was playing, and turns out it was Kenny G or something, with a SAXOPHONE playing!!! Wha??? Houston knows both how to pronounce saxophone, AND he can recognize the sound???? Karen says she told him one time what a saxophone was. Dang, genious baby.
And then playing with a cheap knockoff of Lincoln Logs today, (with colorful plastic Cowboys and Indians complete with sihooters, bows and arrows, rifles and tomahawks - SO non-PC) Houston found an Indian with a rifle, and he went "pow pow", clearly making the Indian shoot. I was shocked. We try very hard to keep violent images away from Houston, but he somehow picked that stuff up. HUMPH.

Finally, i never did the "party" or "bar" scene. I'm so glad. I had to detour through downtown tonight, and saw all the people going to clubs, and was saddned by the same-ness of all the clubbing clothes. SO BORING. I see people wearing cooler clothes at the mall. Maybe it's the fact that most people i saw are mid twenties or thirties, thus out of the prime of cutting edge fashion. And maybe (probably) it's because we live in the city which consumes the most Spaghetti-O's per capita in the world. GR seems devoid of interesting culture to me. Oh well. That's not why we live here.

cars...

I saw a billboard for the new Dodge Magnum.

That's not it, of course. That is a Chevy C150 or something, while the one in the foreground is a Ford Econoliner. Both horrendous vehicles. Aweful.
But that Magnum... what a cool looking car. I am relieved that something is being released that seems to have all the real benefits of a Sport Utility Monstrosity (besides "seeing over traffic"), but is more efficient and safe and fun to drive! It's a good thing. I hope we see similar vehicles being released by Ford and Chevy. And Toyota, Honda... whatever.
Karen and i often talk about what we'd do if we had a million billion dollars. When it comes to cars, i can't imagine spending huge amounts of money on something just for status or prestige. Cars are a horrible investment. So we'd probably just get something "nice and good" like a Honda or maybe an Acura. I'm thinking of a hot rod Civic, while Karen thinks about a minivan. We'd spend the extra on missionaries or the poor or... some crap like that.

hi!

Not much to say at the moment. Houston and Katrina were really good. Karen's post has more to say about that. Work was cool. A situation arose when the word "philosophical" was being said repeatedly. One of the kids said "phil-AHH-sofical" which was just so funny. At the moment... hmm...
And i've started dreading that girl's hair. It's gonna look pretty sweet. Yeah, that's about it. Bless God for keeping my life peaceful enough to have little to write!

tuesday

We went to the mall today. That's where this picture comes from. ChinaMax is this Chinese restaurant in the local Temple of Americonsumerism... oops... Rivertown Crossings Mall, and it's cheap, yummy, and mostly healthy! We get a three-item plate for, like, seven bucks, and it feeds the three of us. I was impressed by the unashamed use of ginger and the fresh mushrooms in the Mushroom Chicken. And Houston was eating the food as fast as we could put it on his plate! Cute!

I was reading my buddy Aaron's Xanga site today, and he talks about worship styles and what it is to be a church-going Christian. We're lucky to belong to a church we both love. The worship style is great, and i know pretty much all the songs, and the leaders are skillful enough, but seem to direct the glory to God. Except maybe this one dude who was cracking me up playing the guitar - he was TOTALLY showing off. I've only seen him twice, but he's really enthusiastic and animated, whacking the strings on his acoustic with tons of energy, and really doing a fantastic job. He can also pluck flawlessly. But this one time they were playing a song that involved lots of bar chords, and he'd be flaying along, come to a strategic silence where the drummer would go "budda-bum" or whatever, and he'd take his hand totally off the neck of his guitar, then SLAM it back on, and GET THE BAR CHORD RIGHT!!! I was laughing with delight, observing his skill.
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Funny pic

Karen pointed out the other day that i didn't take many pictures of her. Well, like a dork, i said "hey Karen, lemme take a picture of you!" and then blasted her with the photon death ray that is the flash on my little camera. She said "ow!" and rubbed her eyes like that, trying to make the purple spots go away. Sorry honey!
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Fun!!!!!

We just came back from camping. It was really pretty fun. I have never looked forward to camping as much as i did this time - not sure why - but i did. And it was fun. Our campgrounds were the nicest i've stayed at. The sandy ground allowed us to sleep without an air mattress and only get a little bit sore, and Houston had a whole sandbox to keep him entertained (and filthy).
My sandals spontaneously disassembled themselves, and during an enthusiastic leap from the swings, the triple-A's in my plam pilot became dislodged and i lost my eBooks i was reading. Those were the only two things that bummed me out, but the amount of bummed-outness that happened was far overshadowed by the fun, so it worked out great.
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Gonna Camp!

Of course, there'll be no updates until MAYBE sunday night, so everybody who sits in front of their computer hitting F5 or the refresh icon as fast as they can will be wearing out their keyboard or mouse button...

Mmm, french style green beans. Very low calorie snack. And eating them cold from the can has some kind of effect on people. It's rewarding to see them look at you like you're crazy. I get that when i eat my oatmeal with salt and pepper and no nutritionally vacant simple carbohydrates and processed fats (you know, sugar and margerine)..
A girl at work wants dreadlocks. She has long hair, and may end up getting permission, and of course i'm the one who will be helping her. It'll take me a LONG time, she'll have incredibly cool dreads, and i won't be able to take any pictures. This is might end up being pretty unfulfilling. Oh well. Maybe i'll be able to build a good relationship with her or something.

LewZer

First thing i lost was last night after i'd written my post. Three and a half minutes into my shower, when i customarily start washing my hair, i looked for the shampoo. It was lost. I've never heard of anyone losing something in the shower. See, i'd picked up the shampoo wondering how much was left, and absently put it on the sink. I remember hefting it, thinking that there was enough to last a while, and clearly remember placing it in the bathtub. I guess not. I've been known to lose tools mere seconds after putting them down.
Then, on the way home tonight, i looked in my rear view mirror and saw the grill of the S-10 pickup truck wiggling up and down pretty fast. By the way, there was a sticker in the back window proclaiming XXTREME - WOW even more extreme than just leaving the e off, REPLACING IT WITH ANOTHER X!!!!! Anyhow, i didn't know what to think of the wiggling grill since it was dark and i couldn't see the grill clearly enough to certify that it was indeed wiggling. Then i passed a big LED sigh that proclaims banalities like "ON LAND AND SEA, DRIVE ALCOHOL FREE". Looking in my rearview again, it was totally and clearly wobbling up and down. Having seen those signs do weird things before, i accepted it as a glitch until i checked my side mirror and found the sign to be staying put. Hmm. Am i losing my mind? No, but i'm not gonna tell you why. You gotta figure it out. Hint: i still haven't fixed my muffler.
Finally, i lost my grip on my handheld and it fell on the road with a crash. The batteries fell out and i nearly lost my info, but i ran inside and found new batteries.
But i haven't lost anything else, i don't think. Okay... both basketball games i played today.
I just used my little Cool-i Art Pad that Karen gave me for Christmas two years ago to make that picture! Pressure sensitive!!!

Custom art

Yeah, so i didn't even get my camera out today, even though i did some fun stuff with the little H. So i made a self portrait with the GIMP. Sweet program, that.
I just started the final book in the COMPLETE Asimov Robot Empire Foundation series, and it's been a satisfying read. Even though i went for nearly a year in there without reading it at all. Something to do with my PDA getting thrown down the stairs and the batteries coming out and it losing its memory at the same time that i reinstalled windows and didn't think i could get it back like it was. Or something.
So now i'm thinking, "I say, what should i read next, old man?" I think of myself as "old man" sometimes. Maybe the Harry Potter series? How about some Robert A Heinlein? Maybe Philip K Dick? Hmmm, i've been reading sci-fi for long enough, i guess, so i'll read the Harry Potter books. Suggestions please?

funny sunglasses

Hey, check out those shades! If Houston had stayed awake for a few more minutes, i'd have taken a pic of HIM wearing them, but he fell FAST asleep in the car. Poor fella. Once again today he didn't nap. So now it's just 7:30, and i've got two sleeping kids and a messy house begging me to clean it up. Mañana.
Speaking of which, procrastination is a legendary trait in my family. My mother calls us "last minute Moores". In my case, i am nearly always content. To a fault. Maybe it's complacency, dunno. So dissatisfaction, which may motivate lots of people rarely motivates me. Another problem is my ability to learn fast and accomplish things quickly. So i have a job, and think to myself, yeah, that'll take ten minutes. So ten minutes before i have to be somewhere, i'll start the project (like cleaning the entire first floor of our house), and i'll realize that stuff takes time. And then there's the fact that playing on the computer sort of sends me into a time warp world where i'll only discover that two hours have passed because all of a sudden my bladder will be full again.
Maybe since it's only eight, i'll go clean the living room and watch a movie or something.
Oh yeah... Karen's mom says she used to wear those glasses. Styles sure do change, don't they? I guess the time will come when face-dwarfing glasses come back in vogue, and i'm sure i'll think they look somewhat cool.

Happy 100th of July!

Binary, of course.

There's my honey working on today's post. So i love the smell of fireworks. And what's up with not washing our shoes? I mean our feet are among the smelliest of body parts, and we wouldn't dream of wearing a white t-shirt for weeks on end without washing it, even if somebody DID invent something like armpit-socks we could throw in the laundry every day. Somehow since our feet are farther away from our noses we think it's okay to stick them into airtight leather envelopes where they can swelter in a bog of humidity and bacteria? Where they were just sweltering yesterday?? And they sell spray for them??? Like, it's okay if i wear these boxers for the fifth day straight as long as i spray them out!!! To think - locker rooms get washed more often than shoes!
Eeew, i'm grossing myself out, and you'd best believe i'm washing my shoes tomorrow.
I love our kids. Katrina and Houston came into the service at Mars Hill today - Karen was at work, so i was on my own. Katrina slept the WHOLE time, precious little angel that she is, and Houston laughed at my little jokes (you don't need your pacifier!!! was the most funny), stroked my "pokey chin" and flirted with the college girl behind us. It was hard to concentrate on the sermon, but it was still cool. They are the best!

Props

Props to the highway engineers who built the freeways and roads to be passable even in torrential downpours! I usually take good roads for granted, but i remember from when we lived in Peru, when it rained, you figured that you'd be walking anywhere you really needed to go, since any other transportation was going to be unreliable. Four wheel drive? Big aggressive lugged tires? Nature scoffs at all those!
I wonder if the predominantly Mexican trend of putting fifteen inch rims with a deep offset and passenger-car tires on your (Chevy) pick up truck comes from a cultura ideal that never needing to drive on rough roads is a status symbol? Hmm, i wonder. Here if you can afford the tires and leisure time to find rocks to climb, that's the status right there. Oh well.
Oh... a vaguely diverting site.

Alone time!

I've very recently learned that Alone Time is pretty important to me. I guess i am more of an introvert than i thought.

So today when Houston woke up (and asked to go downstairs with Daddy, by the way) Karen told me "stay in bed, i'm gonna take the kids breakfast with Mom, and then go shopping and come home later so see ya tonight when you get home from work!"
Wow. A whole morning totally to myself! But i'm an extrovert! I like being around people! Doctor Myers and Mister Briggs say so! I guess i remember from the results of the test that i'm close to center in all of the areas, so really it's all good, alone or with people!
I didn't even get out of bed until 10:30 - i was READING MY BOOK!!! I listened to "annoying" dance music loud and chatted with Eric! I ate cereal and baked beans! I was by myself! I did whatever i wanted! And it was AWESOME.
Then at work somebody told me to call home which i did immediately, and Karen told me a bit about her day, and let Houston talk to me. And after talking for a second or two to my family, i realized how much i adore them and love being around them! So i'm passionatley happy to be with my loved ones, and passionalely love being by myself!
Well, if you wanna leave me alone again, honey, that'd be fantastic, but not too often!

A funny thing...

So, last Sunday, Karen was driving the little Aspire, and it suddenly got really loud. Well, from my glances under the car, it's the exhaust pipe which broke off from the catalytic converter. So the part that is still connected to the engine changes position with "torque" (the term hardly applies) from the engine. So when going backwards, the exhaust is pretty much sealed, but when going forward it's pretty loud. Except, all three times i've been driving home from work, there's this ONE bump on I196 which somehow makes the car as silent as it's ever been. By the time i drive through the residential neighborhood that contains our house, it's back to loud, so i feel very conspicuous. Usually i like being conspicuous, but not when i'm getting grimmed!

Uh... Grim V. common Detriot slang for giving someone a dirty look. Poss. from grimace.