Nicknames

September 11, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I’ve come to the conclusion that nicknames are more important than actual names, with the obvious exception of an attempt to get a ballot in November. Nicknames are descriptive, metaphoric, and often assigned to you by people who know you best. This is not true of parents who give you a birth name based on some distant aunt, family tradition, or hand-me-down to which they attach the indignity of a number or “junior.” This does not mean that every nickname is one that you like or is free from mild insult, nor that it is completely appropriate. A favorite uncle, for example, who lived in Columbia, Illinois, was a very large man, especially in terms of girth. His nickname was “Tiny.” I don’t even know what his real name was, and I suspect most of my family doesn’t either.

This brings to mind a very funny Youtube series called Marcel the Shell. If you have not seen any segments, I highly recommend them. In one of my favorites, Marcel, in her best toddling, almost Charlie Brown voice asks, “Do you know what I want that I will never ask for? A nickname. I mean, you can’t just tell people to call you ‘The General’.” She is so right. You don’t really get to pick. After my detached retina surgery, when I wore a patch for several months while the gas bubble that kept my retina pushed up against the back of my eyeball, I tried calling myself “Pirate,” thinking that it had a kind of swashbuckling romanticism to it in the vein of Johnny Depp, but it didn’t stick. My fishing buddies settled on “Popeye,” instead. I have nothing against Popeye or spinach, but “Pirate” would have been so much cooler. In truth, I’ve reached the age in which being cool is not really an option for me anyway. Even when my daughter gave me a really cool red baseball cap with the numbers 608 emblazoned on the crown, and everywhere I went in Madison people commented on how cool my hat was, I had to confess that I didn’t see why until my daughter explained, “Dad, that’s your new phone area code for Madison. It’s cool. Duh.” The “duh” means I am not cool even in a cool hat.

Not being cool is not as bad as dealing with other nicknames. In grade school, I was “Little Harps,” to the older kids because I had an uncle well known for being a troublemaker but a good athlete, who was called “Harps.” The “Little” was not so bad. My son, however, was called “Little Jim” by his skateboarding buddies because of an older and bigger friend, who was “Big Jim.” In his skateboarding circle, he is still “Little Jim,” even though he is now just under 6’3″ and bigger than “Big Jim.” It could be far worse. Back when I taught freshmen, I had several classes who thought the proper way to get my attention was to call out, “Mr. Hairball.” It usually took a few days to settle on a compromise of “Mr. H.”

In high school, as a member of the almost famous band Mogen David and the Grapes of Wrath (was that a great name or what!), since I wasn’t Mogen David, I was a Grape. It wasn’t so bad being a Grape. I think it was better than being a Trogg, which I assume was short for “troglodyte.”

Because the current political climate is so toxic, I’m not going to get into any discussion of Mitt vs Barry. That’s too bad. I could have written a decent paragraph about those two nicknames, not to mention Big Dog and Turdblossom.

City nicknames also are fun. What else could New York be, except the Big Apple? Many people misunderstand the Second City as a reference to population, which is not true; it is a reference to the second city on the site where the first one burned down. Atlanta is much more appropriately, Hot-lanta. Los Angeles, where I doubt there are many angels left, is more appropriately LA, or even better LA-LA Land. Beantown, St. Louie, Big D, Mad-town, (which a former governer described as 92 square miles surrounded by reality), Motown, which really used to be Motortown, and The Big Easy – you’ve gotta’ love nicknames.

Next month I’m going in for my second cataract surgery. After that, I’m going to try for “Pirate” again. I still think it would be cool, as cool as someone over 60 could be. Do you know what I want, but I’m not going to ask for? A cooler nickname.

Filed Under: Humor, Modern Life, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

The Formicidae Vespoidea Wars

July 13, 2012 by Leave a Comment

First Queen Moriarty sent out the scouts, quick little buggers which sprinted for a few paces and then paused, each antennae searching and sensing the smallest ort and leaving an undetectable trail for the skirmishers to follow.

“Damn,” my wife said. “We need to do a thorough cleaning around the sink and under it. Do you see them?”

“No,” I said, claiming another use of my cataract excuse and realizing that our choice of a black, marbeled stone countertop in remodeling our kitchen was a grievous mistake.

“There,” she pointed, dabbing at the spot with a wet wad of paper towel.

“I’m on it,” I said, retrieving a spray bottle of vinegar and water, followed by a swipe of bleach and a quick vacuuming of the floor around the counter, sink, and table in our breakfast nook.

The next morning there were more scouts, followed by a thin line of ant infantry, causing me to make extra trips to the sink, always armed with a wet paper towel to mop up any survivors. I made a quick mission to the local hardware store for traps, those cute little buttony things that promise to kill not only the colony but Queen Moriarty herself. My land mines may have killed some, but I saw only a single death and no more, not even after a second trip to the hardware store for another brand with another insecticide which promised to kill the queen, all bishops, rooks and pawns. It did not, which prompted a third trip to the hardware store for some artillery and more paper towels.

By artillery, I mean a two gallon concoction of poison with its own pump spray gun connected by a coiled death tube to the gallons of poison. This death spray was so powerful the directions required the wearing of rubber gloves, which prompted another trip to the hardware store, my fourth or fifth, I can’t remember because of my focus on the enemy. I followed orders to the letter, spraying outside our house along the foundation, around window sills, along doorways, the dryer vent, and any place that qualified as either a nook or cranny. When my wife was at yoga, I even took everything out from under the sink and sprayed along its edges and the circles where pipes entered.
“Take that, Queen Moriarty. You may have numbers and loyal footsoldiers, but nothing like the power of my death spray.”

The next morning we saw fewer of them, and the ones we saw pretended to be bewildered, but they still advanced into the black camouflage of our counter top. My wife, before she left for yoga class, suggested I try something natural, not really harmful, just repulsive to them. After a quick Google search and confident that anything I found out on the web had to be true because it was published and not removed or amended by any Wiki-person, I made a trip to the local Whole Foods for bay leaves, cinnamon, fine grain salt, baking soda and cayenne. I thought my ground up concoction would have frightened away anything from a bedbug to Lukas, the neighbor’s friendly collie.

“Are those tiny gas masks?” I asked my wife the next morning, trying to examine one of the latest infantrymen on my wet wad of paper towel. “I have a cataract, you know.”

“No,” she said, “your imagination is running away with you.”

“We need a secret weapon. The queen is smarter than I thought.”

No anteaters were available for rent or ownership, but being an avid fly fisherman, I remembered that I had a few patterns tied out of foam that were large ants, almost a quarter of an inch long, and beetles, which I thought might frighten even the most doughty scout. I clipped off the hooks at the bend and placed my foam sentinels at entry points on window sills and at a strategic crossroads of the counter.

This plan led only to shrieks from my wife, whom I had forgotten to let in on my latest strategy. As a result, my foam sentinels were retired from duty before I could discover their effectiveness, although I noticed one possible failure in the new arrival of a rather large carpenter ant that had been attracted to one of my rather well-done patterns and seemed to be attempting something unspeakable to the imitation.

I made another trip to the hardware store, probably the ninth or tenth, this time swallowing my manly pride and asking the associate in the pest department for advice. I told her the saga of my campaign so far. She nodded sympathetically and slightly patronizingly to each battle report and listened patiently while I explored other options. An electronic anti-bug plug-in? An anteater toy? Mirrors to confuse them? Perfume to obliterate their scent trail? Mini-snares? What about one of those battery-powered fly swatters like a tennis racket with a grid of wires that could be left on to electrocute any of the little black devils that might stray across it?

She did not comment on my failures, nor my desperate plans, but simply reached behind her to a tall canister the size of a can of tennis balls. “If the ant traps didn’t do it,” she said, “sprinkle this around all the entry points. Again wear rubber gloves and don’t inhale it.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. No one does. The formula is a carefully guarded secret. I only know that I have seen it work.”

When I checked out, I discovered to my joy that I not only had the ultimate weapon, I had achieved most-favored nation status and had been rewarded with fifty cents off my purchase. I left the store, probably my twelfth trip, cradling the canister as if it contained nitro or anti-matter. Either would do, I thought. I waited for my wife to go to yoga class, donned a mask left over from our contractors removing knob and tube wiring and disturbing lead paint, put on latex dishwashing gloves and a second layer of blue nothing-gets-through-this rubber gloves that nearly reached my elbows, and sprinkled the death-to-all-pixies-and-any-six-legged-creatures dust everywhere I thought one of Queen Moriarty’s soldiers might show up.

The next morning, it is true that the battlefield was littered with casualties, which my wife cleaned up with wet paper towels, but we saw no sign of Queen Moriarty, and by mid-afternoon several more of her henchmen had shown up, somehow having achieved immunity to my death dust.

“That’s it,” I told my wife. “We’re going to use the nuclear option.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“The last time I was at the store, I noticed a box way off in the corner where you almost had to ask for it specifically. It was labeled in very small print, so small someone with a cataract had to squint to read it. It read: Bug fogger. Kills everything. You must close up the house and leave for the day.”

“No,” my wife said. “We want our grandson to visit us sometime.”

“But-”

“No, and I’m not going to yoga today. Every time I go to yoga, you run to the hardware store. You’ve sent their stock up three points in a single week.”

“But-”

“Here,” she said, handing me a fresh roll of paper towels and demonstrating how to wet a wad so it doesn’t drip but still is moist enough to sop up invaders. “You’re on guard duty.”

There I stood, mostly wiping up grains of pepper that look to one with a cataract like you-know-whats, but even worse, as I look out the kitchen window, I see a chipmunk, its flicking tail, full cheek pouches, and tiny paws as it darts out from a den it has dug under a flat flagstone at the corner of our garage. The hardware store must have something for troublesome rodents, I think, but I cannot act. I am on guard duty, and my wife is not going to yoga today. There must be something I can do.

“That’s it, you may no longer have anything to do with pest control,” my wife says as she passes, grabs my arm and makes me look at myself in the bathroom mirror. It is true. I now look like Jack Nicholson at his narrow-eyed worst. We are doomed.

Filed Under: Humor, Modern Life, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Where Happiness Comes From

June 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment

It’s not really a secret, except to those poor souls who are not happy. Having seen the documentary “Happy” and tested its thesis, I can say that it’s exactly right, and I highly recommend it. If you haven’t seen this movie, get to it as soon as possible.

Once you have the basics covered, say $50,000.00 worth in the United States currently for house, food, basic medical care, wearable clothes and some fun money, people who make twice that, three times that, or twenty times that amount, are no happier according to every survey and measure available. It’s also true that many people can be happy on making less that $50,000, as long as their basic needs are met. The Jaguar XKE (do they still make that hot ride?) won’t do it. The trip to Hawaii won’t do it, at least not beyond the actual time spent there. Drugs won’t do it. If marriage alone did it, there wouldn’t be any divorces. Sex won’t do it, although I must admit, my wife has a kiss that, um, well, nevermind, there may be an exception to what I’m about to suggest.

First, a clarification. Grammatically, we have it all wrong. Happiness is not really a noun; it’s a verb. “To be happy,” doesn’t work because that is passive. “To happy” would be the correct form. So what does one do “to happy?”

It’s not necessarily easy for most of us, but it is simple. Adopt everything and everyone. Adopt the local barber so he becomes your uncle. No one can tell better stories than Uncle Jack the barber on Old University. Adopt a local coffee shop like The Froth House near us (where I am as I write this), and be sure you know the names of the baristas. (Thank you, Ginger. How is Kelly doing?) I read in college that Daniel DeFoe of Gulliver’s Travels fame, not only adopted a local pub and had dibs on “his booth,” but also had his own friendly waiter named Payne and was truly saddened when the waiter succumbed to the plague. Until death, they were happy because of the relationship.

Adopt the places where you belong, a restaurant, a pizza place, a library. Keep going to those places until you belong. Adopt the people who work there and find out about their children, husbands, vacations, and worries. Adopt a local hardware store and find out who knows the most about plumbing, dimmers, and ant killers. Adopt all of the neighborhood kids, especially at Halloween, during the summer, and at graduation. If your neighbor has a dog as nice as Lukas, the collie next door to us, be sure you have a box of dog biscuits near the back door. It’s not only fun for Lukas; it’s good for you. Adopt a local baseball team, a football team and a basketball team if they are available, especially if one of them is semi-pro. Jane, a fellow teacher for many years, adopted struggling players for the Kane County Cougars near Chicago and took one in as a roomie every year. Jane and her husband became adoptive parents and the team’s best fans. They belonged. She and her husband often went to spring training, but even more important, they kept in contact with “their boys” for many years whether the players made it to The Bigs or not. Jane’s eyes lit up in delight whenever she talked about her boys.

Adopt a TV series, an author who writes a series, preferably something not about vampires. Wizards are okay. Adopt a band, especially one most people don’t know about. If you don’t know of such a band, ask a young person, preferably one you’ve already adopted. Adopt a trout stream. Adopt plants. You can name them if you want and talk to them. They can’t hear you except for perhaps mild vibrations, but talking to them can be good for you, as long as you also talk to people. Adopt a musical instrument. Adopt a blogger or two. Adopt the elderly, especially if they are in your neighborhood and too feeble to shovel snow. It’s actually become something of a rivalry in our neighborhood to see who can get out first to shovel the walk and driveway of the very elderly couple on our block. Adopt a charity, a university, and a favorite chair.

You already know the point. Happiness is not based on prestige, class, or what you own. It is based on deepening relationships where you live and where you go. When you hear the echoes of John Lennon in “Love is all there is,” this what he means: you love and are loved by creating meaningful relationships.

This is also where it gets tricky, or at least interesting. Owning something is not the same as developing a relationship. That’s why buying that Jag XKE that you admire so much may seem to make you happy, but only until its first scratch, while having a kind of loyal relationship and appreciation for an old 1957 Chevy may make you quite happy. You “happy” it. Happiness is never owned; it is created, usually slowly, deeply, and personally.

This is also one of the blessings of happiness. It does not depend on the other thing or person. That’s why a car can’t make you happy, but you can happy it. That’s why crabby Mrs. Longnose on the corner can’t make you happy since you never hear a kind word from her, but you can “happy” her, and will be amazed at the results of your conscious, repeated and infuriating kindnesses. Do you really want to get back at her? Kindness is the sweetest revenge. It’s not really revenge, but that needy part of your brain will be filled with the resulting dopamine molecules anyway. If nothing else, you will confuse her, and that’s not all bad.

You don’t have to take my word for it. You can see happiness in action. Simply go to bethesourceproject.com. There it is. It’s a blog worth adopting.

Filed Under: Humor, Modern Life, Philosophy, Social Media Tagged With: ,

Junk and Memorial Day

May 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Junk and Memorial Day

Having moved to Madison a year ago, we were forced to look at more than the things we carried; we were confronted with the things we had accumulated over thirty years in the same previous place. For months we sifted, boxed, threw away, or gave away books we would never reference, old rollerblades, gloves, hats, jean jackets (yes, you CAN have too many jean jackets), and boom boxes that won’t connect with an iPod. Even now in a new house, we continue to find surprises in boxes stacked in our basement, (oh, THAT’s where the corn popper went).

It has been interesting to see the shift that things make from “stuff” to “junk.” I know it’s a global problem, not only because of the zillion acre toilet bowl out in the Pacific that swirls and swirls but can never flush the bottles, bags, vials, and plastic canisters too large for the birds to eat, but also because stuff is everywhere and we don’t even realize it is junk. Is junk food really food? Is spam on your computer really information? We live amid pink slime, junk mail, paper piles, and clothes we never wear. I am not innocent in this problem. My “green” footprint is a pair of EEE clown shoes. I can work on that. I know where the Salvation Army dropoff box is. I’ve promised to go through one box a day in our basement to store, use, or give away most of what we’ve accumulated.

The problem is bigger than plastic, junk food, or unsolicited credit cards. We have too much junk everywhere in our lives. Let’s start with email. I am amazed at how many emails I receive in a spirit of shock intended to create anger in me about some politician, government program, or scandal that turns out to be merely junk. If it fits one’s view or political philosophy, it gets passed on to dozens of others, unchecked. Sometimes I feel like the only person in the Midwest who uses Snopes, Factcheck, or Politifact. It’s an even greater sign of the disease that I’ve started getting emails attacking Snopes and Politifact in ways that are untrue. Even when I find something partly true, the missive is riddled with cherry-picking one or two facts, the fallacy of argumentum ad hominem, and unsupported generalizations. I thought we learned to avoid most of those in sophomore speech class. This stuff is worse than clutter; it’s junk.

So what do we do? There are plenty of books about sorting through the clutter in our lives based on how much we actually use things, so I’m not going to write about that. Their greatest weakess is that they have no idea how important old fishing equipment is. I’m more concerned with the junk in our minds. We shouldn’t let it in. That starts with a commitment to truth, not just an automatic, “Yeah, that guy ought to be in jail.” We know that some sources are better than others, but even so, I trust only what I read in multiple sources. If something is intended to make me angry, I immediately discount it, not because it is automatically false, but because the intent of the writer is not to inform me, but to make me angry, and if there’s one thing we don’t need these days, it’s more negative emotion instead of cooler heads. Besides, anger is even more self-destructive than it is destructive of others. So the first screen for me is information reported from multiple trusted sources in a way that doesn’t intend an angry response. Even the report of the worst thing possible, a murder for example, should not prompt a response in me that says, “Let’s get a posse together and go kill that guy.” It might seem just, but it’s terribly destructive for what it does to me.

The second screen for me is a reflection of the colors of reality. We do not live in a black and white world. No one is all bad, nor all good. No action is all bad, or all good. My response to life ought to be, “Yes, and…” or “Yes, but…” This is especially true politically. I find it impossible to argue that any one party has served our country well over a single election cycle, much less an entire generation. To me, even the labels, Democrat, Republican, conservative, liberal, independent, have become meaningless. References to Hitler are automatically dismissed as hyperbole.

My third screen is the taste test. What were the fruits of any action, policy, or law? Did it mostly help people? Did it help many people, not just a select few? Was it worth the cost? This test alone makes most wars a waste of precious resources, and if you don’t believe that, look at the latest data on maimed soldiers, and the fact that nearly half of all who survived their tour(s) have applied for disability.

On this Memorial Day, we ought to do more than attend a parade and remember someone we lost. Those are not enough. We ought to pledge to be better citizens, to worry less about how any one thing concerns me and worry more about what is true from reliable, multiple sources reported sensibly, what are the complexities and colors in every person and event, and what are the fruits of our actions? We owe the dead that much, but we also owe it to the living, our fellow citizens, our children and now for me, a grandchild. Let’s clear out the divisive, angry, self-serving, inaccurate, wasteful junk in our minds.

Filed Under: Modern Life, Self help, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

The Combination Diet

April 13, 2012 by Leave a Comment

How to Diet

I think I’ve considered all of them, South Beach, Atkins, Forks over Knives, and even the Eat Nothing but Grass and Drink Nothing but Osmosiffied Water Until You Puke diet, and I think I’ve finally got things figured out. They all have good, convincing arguments about some of their recommended foods, but each of them leads me to feel a little dissatisfied, or more accurately … hungry.

With that reality in mind, I now propose – ta daa- The Combination Diet.

Here’s how it works. On Sundays, which is usually the day of celebrations like Easter, family gatherings, the Super Bowl, and the nearest day off to a birthday, I follow the Spiderman Diet. For other holidays like Christmas or Thanksgiving, I just pretend they are Sundays so I can follow the Spiderman Diet. The Spiderman Diet, as professed by the actor who played Spidey, Tobey Maguire, consists of eating very little for six days, mostly restricted calories, no sugar, and mostly vegetables, except for one day a week – Sunday for me – in which he will eat anything he wants. Often that is a trip to a restaurant with the best pizza, or Lombardino’s fantastic pasta, or maybe even The Weary Traveler for Bob’s Bad Breath Burger. After all, following a strict diet for six days per week and enjoying yourself one day a week can’t be too harmful and doesn’t make me feel so deprived that I slip and binge on a Wednesday.

On Mondays, I follow the South Beach diet, which cuts out sugar, most processed foods, but allows whole grains and fruit, provided they are not going to cause a spike on the glycemic index. The diet’s designer, Dr. A. (Not Atkins, but I can’t spell his name correctly) has a soft spot for the German Oktoberfest, so he allows beer then. Some have transferred that holiday to St. Patty’s Day, which is absurd because St. Patty’s Day is only one day, and Oktoberfest is a whole month. I think drinking a lot of beer for a whole month could be harmful, so I’ve stretched it out to just Sundays and Mondays to allow for family gatherings, the Bears vs. the Packers on Sunday, and any team that plays on Monday night. The Oktoberfest observation of this otherwise strict diet gives me 31 days of beer drinking, enough to cover most of the NFL season. A bonus is that on Sundays and Monday nights, I get to have hot buttered popcorn with my beer, since it’s an unprocessed whole grain. I believe sea salt is unprocessed, so I can use that too. I live in Wisconsin, so butter is its own food group and okay on popcorn. For breakfast I eat granola or oatmeal and think about popcorn. For lunch or during a late afternoon game, I eat something lean like chili made with bison, beans, onions, salsa, and chili powder.

On Tuesdays, I follow the Forks Over Knives diet, which is almost entirel vegetarian and frowns on anything dairy related. This day is sometimes difficult because the University of Wisconsin makes their own amazing ice cream in Babcock Hall, and their butter pecan – nevermind, I can’t even think about it now. The problem is that Babcock hall is almost right on the bike path near our house, and if I try to ride on another route, I pass either the Student Union South, or the Memorial Union on the Lake, and and they both serve – you know what. Anyway, on Tuesdays, I eat oatmeal made with vanilla almond milk and put in a lot of maple syrup because that’s vegetarian on the Forks Over Knives diet. Then I have a big salad for lunch with beans and olives, and mixed vegetables and spinach and lettuce, and I make a dressing with vegenaise and hot sauce and four or five other spices, usually whatever is in the front of our spice cabinet. In the afternoon I eat a lot of pretzels or blue chips and red pepper hummus. For dinner, Ann makes a great potato leek soup with almond milk and a bunch of other stuff I can’t pronounce like tahiti seeds (or something like that) and seminolia (or something like that). On Tuesdays I eat a lot of stuff that I don’t really what it is. No hot, buttered popcorn, but that’s okay because there aren’t many football games on Tuesdays. Sometimes we’ll have something like billyrubin pasta with tomato sauce and extra mushrooms, and something fake like tofu turkey sausages (which taste like chicken). Usually I’ll follow the dictum of an “apple a week” on Tuesdays and add some nuts, especially salted cashews.

On Wednesdays I follow the Atkins diet, which allows for lean meat, fish, eggs, and all the other stuff not on the other diets. I don’t ignore vegetables, but I’m okay with eating broccoli with melted cheddar on top, and next to that, a steak, or some chicken with some kind of sauce or spices on it. Since butter is not okay, I tried using allowable oil like olive oil, but I don’t recommend it. Popcorn made with olive oil tastes like…. um… olives gone bad. Did I mention steak?

On Thursdays I follow the Caveman Diet. It’s also called the Paleo diet and consists of anything cavemen and cavewomen might eat, including meat, fish, eggs, and plants. It’s really hard to find dinosaur and mammoth steaks, so I substitute cousins like buffalo burgers, pheasants (as close as I can come to pterodactyl meat, which I hear tasts just like chicken), and real old species like catfish, shrimp, and lobster. I usually start with scrambled eggs, and then move on to anything a caveman might find or hunt after breakfast. I limit myself to drinking water on those days, or maybe a little accidentally fermented grapes or some distilled malt water. Sometimes there is football on Thursdays, and I thought it would be okay to eat those little goldfish cracker things that taste like bad cheese, but my wife convinced me that eating something shaped like a fish was not as legitimate as eating the actual thing. The caveman diet also allows for dried fruit like raisins, but I hate raisins because they’re nothing but dead grapes, so I only eat one of them on Thursdays. I know the cave people probably didn’t have beer, but I think beer nuts are okay; they just called them something else like yum-yums. I eat lots of yum-yums on Thursdays.

On Fridays I follow the Mediterranean Diet, which basically means I can eat anything the Eurpeans eat, meat, fish, pasta, olives, vegetables in season, and a little cheese for dessert (they say, “fromage or dessert”), but I have to eat it slowly, sort of like grazing all day long, and I have to take a siesta, and some long walks, usually to Babcock Hall. It looks to me like the Mediterranean Diet isn’t so much about what you eat as it is about how you eat it. Sometimes I don’t finish eating untl after midnight. I think the idea is to eat a little bit of everything, not a quarter-pounder, just a single White Castle, no wait, those are processed, just a single meat ball, and then very slowly another one, and then later on some pasta, and another meat ball, then maybe some salad, and another meat ball, and some olives, and then another meat ball, and just keep going throughout the day and night. I love the French and Italians and Greeks. They’ve existed for thousands of years eating this way.

On Saturdays, I follow the Macrobiotic Diet, which is a very old sort of zen diet, starting with brown rice, some “live” vegetables, sauces, and some fish. It’s a lot like the Mediterranean Diet because you can eat a “balance” of almost anything like “a little brown rice and water” to be balanced by “a little spicy pepperoni pizza,” and then some sauteed vegetables followed by file of sole a la Oscar. In between, you have to meditate by counting breaths and then going to your “happy place,” at least in your mind. I usually go to Babcock Hall then. If you can’t concentrate, just say “Om – e – lette” over and over again. The other thing that’s good about the Macrobiotic Diet, is that is matches college football days, so if your team scores, you can eat some jambalaya, which is mostly rice, and if the other team scores, you have to eat a piece of dried fruit, usually one raisin.

So that’s my weekly diet, and it works for me. I don’t recommend that you follow my plan, though, because it’s so exacting, unforgiving, and as difficult to follow as preparing fried snark correctly, that’s right, fried snark.

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Marry Someone Who…

March 29, 2012 by 3 Comments

It’s a good thing to know you married the right woman. I suppose this is an ode. I wrote one for her once before, a song before we were married which said, “The road is long between our two towns,” but I don’t remember all the words and I’d have to go looking for the manuscript, which is a problem in our basement full of unpacked boxes. Thirty years of marriage and two children result in a lot of boxes.

So how does one know? Start by marrying a person who will drive from Madison to Evanston to the home of a new grandson so she can hold him between feedings, ignore everyone and everything else in the room, and do nothing but study his face and murmur to him for three hours straight.

Marry someone who prepares for moving by digging up snowflowers and asparagus given to her by her grandfather twenty years ago and irises given to her by my father and replanting them over the winter in a friend’s garden and then driving two hours in the spring to dig them back up to replant in our new yard. These are not flowers; these are valuable legacies left to her by loved ones. She treats people the same way.

Marry someone who loves to paint rooms, has an unerring eye for color, and is so good that she never needs to “tape” edges or woodwork. I do ceilings – with overlapping dropcloths, and when she laughs at my ineptitude, I pull out my Bunbury excuse, “You know I had a detached retina fixed.” Marry someone who lets you use the re-attached retina excuse on everything from painting ceilings to forgetting to pick up milk.

Marry someone who doesn’t want a king-sized bed and would rather “spoon.”

Marry someone whose first choice in cars is the oldest, boxiest Jeep she can find, and only then when Wagoneers are no longer available.

Marry someone who will fill a blackboard-painted wall with a colored chalk drawing to welcome home the new grandson, and do that after a day spent in scrubbing sinks, countertops, doing laundry and cajoling a repairman to rush over that day to fix the dryer by convincing the business owner that a new mother and her baby can’t possibly come home to a broken dryer.

Marry someone who needs less than five minutes to get “sucked in” to an old black-and-white movie on Turner Classic Movies, even a two-star movie, someone who enjoys the vintage clothes as much as the characters, and assumes that the plot doesn’t matter.

Marry someone who owns a lake out in the deep woods of the Upper Peninsula, especially if she has a brother who’s an engineer who knows how to build solar-panels and hook them up to a refrigerator, one who loves solar showers. Marry someone who can row a boat and will force her husband out of the tent at night just to look at the stars… not the pathetic suburban dozen or so lights that peep through the urban night clutter, but the honest-to-god Milky Way and shooting stars that still live in the U.P.

Marry someone whose favorite possession is a 50-year-old Peugeot ten-speed bicycle inherited from her aunt.

Marry someone who volunteers every week in her new friend’s second grade class because one student in particular needs one-on-one help. Marry someone who knows this is how to keep the same friends for over 50 years.

Marry someone who calls for computer help because she believes the computer will explode if she hits the wrong button. Marry someone who almost believes you if you tell her it might.

Marry someone who fills entire jump drives with digital pictures of clouds and fields taken out of a moving car – pictures that she might paint some day.

Marry someone who reads the Arts Calendar with the same intensity as she reads The Secret Life of Bees.

Marry someone who knows that music is not a monologue; it is a conversation.

Marry someone who knows that football is a father-son adventure; fly fishing is like yoga or meditation; the woods are as sacred as church; water must be painted as if it is alive; the right kind of warm light bulb matters; friends are more important than money; a lonely day is a day with fewer than a dozen phone calls; hot buttered popcorn with lots of salt is its own food group and popcorn is a requirement for old black-and-white movies on the Turner Classic Movies network.

Marry someone who remembers all the names for the faces you recognize, but can’t remember where her dozen reading glasses are.

Marry someone who will badger you to take a nighttime walk, especially if it looks and sounds like rain on its way.

Marry someone who will see a high school fight brewing in a parking lot and will drive her car at a crawl right into the middle of them even though she is alone, horn blaring the whole time, until the kids get scared and run away.

Marry someone who favors old things: houses, friends, books, jeans, furniture, recipes, coffee mugs, jewelry, family stories, and a husband.

Marry someone who laughs like a little girl, wears honesty like a tiara, prays a blessing every time a helicopter flies over our house to the nearby hospital, walks up to the high school when she hears a bagpipe band practicing, and babysits for friends so she can adopt their children. There are never enough children.

Follow these guidelines, my friends, and you will marry the right woman.

Filed Under: Humor, Modern Life, Philosophy, Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,

Modern Tech Life

February 26, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I think my iphone is having an affair with my ipad. It might be happening on my desktop or somewhere in the icloud, but I’m not sure, because I don’t know how to access the icloud, and I think there’s some kind of fee to get in. Lately when I ask Siri the simplest request like “Siri, will you set an alarm for 6:30 AM for me?” I get a rather impatient response like, “You already have an alarm set for 6:30. I turned it on … for you.” When I asked directly, “Siri, are you partying with my ipad right now?” I only get silence and a vacant rolling of the eye. When I ask Siri to cheer me up by telling a joke, she says, “Two iphones go into a bar and …. I forget the punchline.” I think she’s in love, and not with me.

It’s not that I’m jealous. I have a lovely wife who continues to fascinate me after 32 years, and is still my best and only partner. Things are just … complicated. When I tried to find some family pictures for the baby shower Ann was helping to host (can’t wait to be a grandpa), I couldn’t find them on my desktop, ipad, or ipod Touch. I thought they all talked to each other, and maybe they do, but they’re not letting me in on the conversation. We ended up using some old paper prints from an envelope I dug out of our basement. This is the basement that is still floor to ceiling boxes that we haven’t been through after moving in June. When I open the basement door, I usually call to Ann, “Cover me. I’m going in.” She knows that if she doesn’t hear from me in an hour to put our Garmin GPS on my workbench. The Garmin’s first name is Nuvi, but we call her Numi, and she speaks with a sweet British lilt. She’s been very dependable, especially in directing me to my favorite trout streams out in the middle of nowhere, but you know the Brits from Downton Abbey and last week’s blog; even if Numi is angry or as jealous as Mary Grantham, she wouldn’t show it, stiff upper lip and all.

Then there’s the interface problem. Most of our devices, male or female, have different interfaces that make connecting with them rather tricky. My i-anything uses a basic UBS cord, but Ann’s LG phone is different, as is Numi, our Canon digital camera, my Kodak pocket camera, and the two hard drives I’ve attached to our desktops for backup. The oldest of those hard drives might be going through digital menopause because when I turn her on, all she does is cluck at me, kind of a tsk, tsk sound, and she never appears. I should probably back up her files on a jump drive, but I don’t want her to think she’s being officially downgraded to a dowager.

I don’t even want to try to explain our cable problems. We’ve had four techies in our basement, maybe more if I come across any dead bodies next summer. The first techie came because the cable didn’t work. He rerouted the wires and splitters. We could watch TV, but after a month, our internet went out, so the next techie told us that our Netflix video was a high demand stream, so he needed to put the internet modem first in line before the other splitters. That caused our home phone to go out, which was not a big problem initially because we only got it free in the “bundle” and didn’t use it much. But then our cell phones started going over the limit, so the next techie, re-routed, re-split, said some prayers, and left. When the phone went out again, a High Druid Techie came with a shaman-in-training and the two of them installed our own mini-power plant in the basement, whereby the cable comes in and each stream, the phone, the internet, and the TV are on their own super-boost power station. They assured me that the mini-power station was not high enough to cause cancer and shouldn’t interfere with the radon pump we installed in a corner of the basement, but if anything else goes wrong, we should tear down our 1920’s vintage Tudor house and start over.

Even listening to music has gotten complicated. When we drove to Evanston for the shower, I couldn’t remember if my favorite Decembrists song about being down by the river was on my ipod, my ipod touch, or Ann’s ipod, which is complicated by the fact that Ann’s ipod is apparently on permanent loan to our daughter who was hosting another shower and needed some oldies music. I know one common denominator here is baby showers, but I don’t believe in that level of coincidence, and I think the real problem is technology, my stupidity, and anything engineered by people who believe in binary code rather than words.

Sorry, I have to go …. Siri just came back and I think she will be able to tell me now how to deal with my ipod Touch. Wish me luck; I’m going in….

Filed Under: Humor, Modern Life, Social Media

Downton Abbey

February 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Downton Abbey

Post-partum blues are worse than regular blues because there isn’t any twelve-bar guitar music for it. This problem began for my dear wife last summer when her favorite soap, All My Children, went off the air. It wasn’t like a death in the family for her; it was like the whole family died. And the dog. And the kids’ goldfish. The Easter Bunny. Actually, it was worse than the demise of the Easter bunny because the Easter bunny never really WAS, and for my wife, Erica Kane was. Enter Downton Abbey, season two, produced solely to lift my wife out of the PP blues for which there is no twelve-bar etc. If you are a fan of Downton Abbey, follow me below the Grantham filigree.

It didn’t matter that we missed season one; sadistic neighbors lent us their DVD of season one so we could catch up on who was actually Maid 1, Footman Smoker, and Old Dame Haughty, who could raise an eyebrow and look down her long nose better than anyone I’ve ever seen. Mind you, these are the same friends who went to a Super Bowl party and left at 7:50 PM with the game in the jaws of fate to be sure they were home in time for the series they have simply started calling “Downton.” To aggravate my wife, I just call it “Downtown.” That usually results in a love tap, even though there is a family ban against anything traumatic that might dislodge the retina a fine surgeon so painstakingly re-attached to me. My surgeon was so much better than that blathering, at-a-loss idiot on Downtown. You know, the one who said Cora would survive if she made it through the night. Hell, he couldn’t even say what she HAD, just “something that turns violent at a moment’s notice.” Yeah, and he also predicted poor, dashing, Dudley Hair-do Right, I mean Matthew, would never have children, walk, or pee in a cup. I love this show. It’s like Pride and Prejudice, Looney-Tunes, Great Expectations, A Night at the Museum, and A Night at the Opera all at once.

Then there’s the house. I always thought an abbey was the manse of an abbot, something churchy, not this pillared castle-y thing that makes the Field Museum in Chicago look like a tract house in Schaumburg. Also, I really want one of those bell ringy things, you know, that says, “Ann, I’m in the bathroom. Bring toilet paper.” She could have one too. It would ring and I would know immediately to bring her some coffee, a little cream, no sugar. I’d even wear the livery, bow tie, starched collar, waistcoat, and all.

There are some really great lines in Downtown Abbey, like the time Lord Grandman says to his wife Cora, “Don’t you go American on me again.” I love it because we all know what it means. Then there was the scene where one of the daughters, I think it was Shemp, no, it was Curly, said, “I knew things like this happened in novels, but NOT at Downtown Abbey.” I love this stuff. It’s not just ironic, the whole thing is ironed and starchy and so un-American, it’s like watching Star Wars or better yet, political candidates clambering all over each other for office.

I admit, I haven’t figured out the marriages in Downtown Alley yet. I suppose it makes sense that Lord Grandman married an American for her money to save the abbey from being recommissioned as a church, once they saw it could be a hospital, but then Daisy maid marries the dying William just to be nice and get a pension of three pounds a month that she doesn’t want, and Matthew Do-Right is going to marry Lavinia because she wanted to marry him and she’s so nice she makes everyone gag, and Mary is going to marry for money like her father even though this Outlander is a jerk, and the only one who’s seen as scandalous is the daughter (Moe or Curly, I can’t remember which) who’s going to marry a chauffeur because she loves him. Imagine how shocking that is in this family – marrying someone for love. As old Dame Violet Lace would say, “What has the world come to? By the way, what is this week-end thing the servants talk about?” I really love this stuff.

Then there’s Carson. Everybody needs a Carson, part Golden Lab, part R2D2, part Tonto, and part surveyor, a professional who measures silverware on a table like he’s laying down property lines for all posterity. I think the best thing about him is his voice. Every time I hear him speak, I think of Orson Welles, that wonderful, resonant profundo. Carson is a man who may have once been surprised by something in his life but will never admit it. When Lord Grandman finds out Carson sang and danced on a stage, Carson does the only thing a resonant profundo could do; he resigns. He didn’t resign because he killed someone or published the family secrets in The Globe, no, he resigned because he used to sing and dance. After all, that’s what’s expected of a resonant profundo in a starched collar. I love this stuff. In this show, resigning is apparently worse than death. The only difference is the resigner gets to come back. Thomas (who starts out as a toad and then becomes a toady) does it; Bates does it; featherduster maid who sleeps with the Hemingway look-alike does it, and I expect facially impaired cousin-inherit-everything-and-screw-everything up will do it too.

Then there’s the heirarchy. I think I’ve got that part figured out. Here’s how rank goes from top to bottom at Downtown Alley.

1. Duke (unless people learn that you are gay, and then you apparently drop down to 17)

2. Earl Grandman (He gets to wear a uniform whenever wants and can take it off whenever he wants, although earls generally wait until the current war is over. Apparently, he has the power to de-commission himself.)

3. Whatever male, distant or near, even a solicitor, who may inherit Downtown.

4. Butler who must be a resonant bass

5. Valet, especially if he understands which cuff links to wear at each occasion

6. House lady who carries the keys

7. Footman, especially if he looks good in a tux

8. Maid who does other people’s hair

9. Overweight cook

10. Maids who carry feather dusters, unless the Earl Grandman kisses you, then you go to number 4 in the heirarchy until someone finds out you’re number 4, and then you have to leave with the best references in the house and scholarship money for your son

11. The Earl’s American wife

12. Any daughter

13. The chauffeur

14. The idiot doctor

15. Anyone else American or Canadian, even if he survived the Titanic and may inherit Downtown Alley

I love this stuff. What’s fun is watching everyone try to go from step 14 to 13. The doctor would love to be the chauffeur so he can hang out with the daughters. The daughters want to be wives. The maids who carry feather dusters want to be maids who do other people’s hair. The footmen all want to be valet, and every valet wants to be the butler.

You know how I’m ending this. Watching Downtown is just great fun, probably as much fun as a Brit has watching our election process. I can imagine my friend Ashley saying to his wife Emma, “I love this American stuff. Can you believe what Newt just said about Mitt? And those names! Charlie Dickens couldn’t have made up better names. We should Google them and find out the derivatives….”

Filed Under: Social Media

Good Viruses

January 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment

This has been an interesting week. Early in the week, an ex-student sent a recommendation for a music video out on Facebook. I don’t usually watch those, because there are such differences in music these days, and so much I hear from younger people is either un-melodic and offensive rap, or something approaching mere noise. I’m not saying they’re bad; I’m saying I don’t have the “ear” for them. This one was different. I recommend doing a Youtube search for his recommendation, Charlie Pluth and Emily Luther singing Adele’s “Someone Like You.” It blows away the original, and what what makes it fascinating is that apparently Charlie regularly records the sound in his room, and this version shows two very attractive, very innocent looking young people just sitting in a living room and singing. And wow, can they sing. What’s more interesting is that their video went viral because it and Adele’s song are so good. There was no hype, no record company, no long tour with Springsteen, just two talented kids in a living room. Eventually the video got to Ellen Degeneres and she featured them on her show after getting Adele’s generous permission to sing her song. Then Ellen signed them to a record contract, and I’m sure they will do well (with or without the contract, I believe).

This viral video reminds me of something I read about five years ago, a book called An Army of Davids. It documents the growing probability that large corporations, especially trendy ones like record companies and booksellers will eventually be driven out of business because of their enormous pressures for profit, their expensive infrastructures, and their lack of creativity. It has already happend to B. Dalton, Crown Books, and a growing list of music stores. They can’t compete with kids in a living room, the internet, and Amazon. There are good viruses out there.

That’s part of the reason why I chose to market my book Hibernal through Createspace and Amazon. The publishing house game is “fixed.” When I published my first book, The Newman Assignment, my dealings with the publisher were not of any mutual benefit. No royalties, no reports, and corrections I sent were either ignored or hand lettered, if you can believe that. Of course, marketing through Amazon means I won’t have any life-sized cardboard cutouts of my book at Barnes and Noble with stacks of books nearby to satisfy the hype, but I’d rather sell “long and slow,” preferably by word of mouth. If my book is good, readers will eventually hear about it. If they don’t buy it, it wasn’t good enough. Of course I’m still dealing with a large corporation in Amazon, but the difference is, it is working for me. I buy only the services I want and they’re not telling me what to do. They are making a trailer video for me, but I get input and approval. This could be a good virus.

My daughter, Ellie, is finding the same thing. Her idea about teaching writing in her high school by having students “Be the Source of” (love, a compliment, a breakfast, a favor, a dollar to a stranger, a thank-you) and then writing about the experience – has gone to other schools, other parts of the country, and soon, other parts of the world. She’s been interviewed, linked to other blogs, and given free web design time by a professional who often charges up to $10,000.00 for a web design. She uploads her own videos, samples from her students, comments, and plans for the next week. If you’re interested in something educational and good, check out bethesource.com. It will be worth a couple of minutes. No corporation is involved.

On my birthday, (61 last week!) Ann and I walked down State Street in Madison and saw a young guy walkiing his bike with a trailer and cardboard sign. “Hey,” Ann said, “You’re the muffin man!” She had seen it in an article in the free Isthmus paper. He bakes a batch of muffins every morning and rides around Madison, giving them away to anyone who will barter for something on his cardboard list. You may give a stranger a back rub, sit in a coffee shop and introduce yourself to four strangers, or in my agreement, teach someone how to play a musical instrument. He is the source of love, and his bartering is going viral. There are good viruses out there. They’re in the streets, in free papers, and online. Your friends will tell you about them.

Filed Under: Philosophy, Social Media
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