Mickey Hadick

Cabbage Rolls

2008-12-23T04:22:00.000-08:00

Cabbage rolls are an ethnic dish. Very ethnic. Just the name evokes numerous cliches, and even sounds funny because of the "k" sound (which, according to Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys, all funny words contain). To smell them is to know, immediately, what the word ethnic really means.

My mother used to make them, and we loved to eat them. A cabbage roll, if you're not familiar, is ground beef, ground pork, and rice mixed together, spiced up a bit, balled, and rolled inside a leaf of cabbage. Dozens of these are stacked up in a roaster, and then more cabbage and tomato juice is piled on top. These are cooked together, and the result is both an olfactory and culinary delight.

I've started making them myself. I'm shocked how easy it is to make a small batch--about 40 minutes of preparation, including the clean up. The crock pot has been going all night, and the house reeks.

Tomorrow I'll tell the story of how cabbage rolls damn near killed my father, and started a war.

Nintendo Wii For Sale

2008-12-19T20:43:00.000-08:00

I'm sure I'll have an interesting blog entry about this subject in the future, but, for now, just know that my son is trying to sell his Wii, and it may not go very well. I'd hoped to keep it in the family, but the forces of nature are not cooperating.

I have it gathered together, ready to pack and send. but the price better be right.

Poop, Poop, Vomit

2008-12-16T07:00:00.000-08:00

My neighbor made a mistake the other day, and I was happy to help the fix the problem. They went away on a Saturday morning with the intention of not returning until late Sunday. Their mistake was in forgetting about their dog, who was left alone in the house. When they called, I was happy to help.

I stopped by in the evening on Saturday night and again around midnight. In the morning, I returned. Each time the dog was thrilled to see me, wanted to play, but spent only a the minimal amount of time necessary to pee outside. Somehow, I thought the dog knew what he was doing.

I meant to return around 1 PM, but, feeling sick, had lain down for a moment and fell asleep. This almost made me late for my daughter's choir recital, so I did not have time to let Tucker, the dog, out until after the recital.

I returned around 4 PM, and discovered that the dog had pooped all over the front entranceway of the house. There was a massive pile right by the door, and then splatterings along the hall right into the kitchen. It took me half an hour to clean the mess, and it stunk to the high heavans while I did so.

Still, I felt good about the situation. I had mostly helped my neighbor, and hadn't stepped in the mess. I returned home disgusted, but somewhat satisfied.

My own two dogs were thrilled to see me. On my second step inside, however, the floor gave way. I looked down to discover that I had stepped in a pile of my dog's mess. A few inches from that was a pile of vomit, to go along with it. I'd like to think I could learn from my mistakes, but I think I was just snake-bit on this one.

Over-the-Counter Drugs and Good Health

2008-12-15T04:34:00.000-08:00

I spent this past weekend with a head cold, stuffed up sinuses, and sniffling and sneezing. What bothers me most about being sick is the lack of energy, and feeling tired, but not being able to sleep, but not being able to try because sometimes (most of the time) life goes on. I was at soccer games and music recitals, drove the kids to other appointments, and went visiting.

The "went visiting" part is probably the dumbest, because I've shared my germs with the world when, in that moment, I didn't need to do so.

The best part was the legitimate excuse to drink Dimetap elixr. It's the purple drink for children that is both anti-hystamine and decongestant. It works wonders for me, but makes me a little on the drowsy side. I love the taste. To me it's grape Kool Aid, and I believe it would be the perfect basis of a mixed drink, like the Flaming Moe.

However, I get very strange dreams when on it. I can't describe them, but suffice to say that I was overwhelmed with a creepy dread. It's funny that I'm surprised that pouring chemicals into my body might have an effect on my mind.

Back Online with Xmas Letters

2008-12-12T04:28:00.000-08:00

I am staging my return to blogging with a presentation of old Xmas letters. Back in 1996, we sent these short missives out with the Christmas cards, and I tried to be funny. Now, re-reading them, they are painfully moronic. My sign off messages are particularly sad. I think the author was an idiot.

Still, they were very popular with friends and family, and so I was encouraged to continue. I still write them, and will post them all for posterity sake. Perhaps some young family will read them some day and decide not to write any such Xmas letter of their own.

My style has changed over the years, and, once I have them all online, a careful reader may detect a particularly bad year. It was something of a bellwether for the writing.

Xmas Letters Part 1: The Idiot Years.

Cleaning House is not House Cleaning

2008-11-17T19:40:00.000-08:00

I just threw out a dozen sweaters, all of them too large for me. I recently lost weight, and I've had to change my wardrobe. Those sweaters were some of the last things to go.

I don't even wear sweaters that often but over the years I acquired them. Most of them were gifts from either my mother or my wife. The rest were purchases made by my wife for whatever reason. I probably didn't wear them for precisely the fact that I didn't buy them, and thus was not invested in them. Thirteen sweaters and I didn't buy a single one of them. What am I, a four year old?

So I've been cleaning house. It has accelerated since my weight loss, but had actually started a couple of years before, after my father died.

When he passed, and my mother left to go live with one of my brothers, my other brother and I cleaned out their home. Most of that was brutal, because there was so little left that was of significant value to be salvaged. We trashed great deal. I was shocked about how much miscellaneous stuff a closet can hold

After that ordeal, I was intent on not living with miscellaneous stuff any longer. I had many, many useless things in the basement, and I began a process of throwing away a bag of stuff every week. I did leave a few things that I intend on selling on eBay, but I haven't gotten around to that, either, and now I'm thinking I just need to trash that stuff too.

My daughter did a good thing this weekend in cleaning out her room. The one problem is that she piled the stuff she didn't want in the hallway, and it actually spread so far and wide that it blocked our doorway. So tonight I spent a few minutes putting all that stuff in a trash bag. My wife still wants to sort through it, but I'm all for trashing it.

More than once the past couple of years I have had the thought that what I need to do, that what would make me happy, is to throw away all the old stuff. I'm surrounded by clutter and chaos (still!) and it really bothers me.

At work I've been better about spending a little time each week cleaning off the piles of stuff and filing what is important and then trashing that which is not important.

At the moment I have no joy in this. I really want to look forward to when all the stuff (I don't want) is gone, and I can live an uncluttered life. In fact, at the moment, I'm just exhausted and falling asleep at the keyboard. With luck, I'll dream of that uncluttered life.

Throw-back Correspondence

2008-11-16T19:03:00.000-08:00

I had a nostalgic moment. I seem to have a lot of those, but this one was classic, or, rather, in the classical sense of nostalgia.

I play the accordion. I'm not very good at it, have only been playing for a little more than three years, and there's a lot to learn. I stopped taking lessons this year because it was just too traumatic to get to the lessons on time with the other demands on my time. I really thought I'd be better at studying on my own, and I have, but now I miss learning new things, other than the songs. So I began searching for books on how to play the accordion.

I've already bought most of the books on the subject, and there's quite a few at the beginner's end of the scale, a couple at the very highest end, but next to nothing in between. There are intermediate song books, but no explanation on how to play those songs.

I kept searching. Depending on the phrasing used, I'd get most of the same old stuff, or some links to what seemed to be very expensive DVD-based lessons of various styles. Today I stumbled on the right combination of search terms, and discovered a review of "Fingering the Accordion" by Robert L. Smith. I immediately ordered it.

Here's the interesting part: it seems to be self-published, and the only contact information was a name and address posted on the reviewer's web page. I did specific searches of the title and the author, thinking I could order it on Amazon.com, or eBay, or Half.com, or alibris.com, but there were no other traces of the book on the internet. Spooky, right?

I doubted the veracity only for an instant. I wrote out the check. addressed the envelope, and wrote a note by hand to explain my interest in the book. That was the cool part for me, writing a note and ordering something with a letter.

In fifth grade, our teacher (Mrs. Perkins) put us through some exercises in Social Studies wherein we would write letters to our Congressman, Senator, and the President to see what we would get back. It was a lot of fun, and, sure as hell, we got neatly typed letters in return on some serious weight stock.

I also was a big proponent of ordering dumb-ass things out of the back of comic books, or from cereal boxes. My greatest acquisition was probably a Quisp ray gun that actually shot a cloud of talcum powder, but looked really cool, or the Cap'n Crunch milkshake set, or maybe the Willie Wonka chocolate factory kit. Each of those involved the envelope, a small amount of money, and writing a letter to explain things, as my teacher taught me, to ensure it'd arrive safely, rather than relying on those tiny little order forms.

I got a real kick out of writing a letter, explaining what I wanted, and stuffing that into an envelope. In three days, the letter will arrive in California, and Mr. Smith will rip it open, see my check, and begin his order fulfillment process. Perhaps in ten days, I will have his book on accordion fingering techniques in my hands.

Because Mr. Smith does not have a web presence, it seemes doubtful that he is egomaniacal enough to constantly google himself. If he did, he might see this blog entry before my letter arrives, and so he might have my order prepared and just waiting for the check to arrive.

Morning Routine--Part 2 (Revised)

2008-11-14T03:39:00.000-08:00

In many ways, our kids have it easier than we did, but that also complicates other aspects of their lives. It's easier because we live in a house with two and a half bathrooms, so the fighting is over which hair appliance is plugged in, and who left the cap off of the teeth-whitening toothpaste. They are stressed out in the morning because they can't decide what to wear, and that's because they have so many choices. I had five shirts for school, and two pair of pants, and so it was very straightforward. My mother probably had one dress and one skirt and two shirts.

For breakfast, they might debate whether to have a bagel with cream cheese or sweetened cereal. They definitely fight over who gets to control the digital video recorder remote control.

All of the luxuries come with a price. We all get too little sleep, so the kids are up late, distracted during the evening by television, internet games, and cell-phone shenanigans. The cartoons they do watch are mind-abusing, heavy on ironic social commentary and adult-themed humor (why cartoons ever left the tried, true, and trusted format of physical violence is a mystery to me).

They also must remember to plug in their cell phone.

A very real problem they have to deal with is over-loaded backpacks. Every teacher demands that they have a binder for them, and so they must fit ten pounds of school stuff into a five pound backpack. All the binders can't fit in their locker, either, so there's a constant struggle to tote and find the right material.

The one bright spot is that the backpacks are so full, there's no room for alcohol, tobacco, or firearms. It's an insidiously brilliant approach to keeping the kids on the straight and narrow.

There has been some saber-rattling lately about the end of affluence, as future generations will not enjoy the same standard of living as we did. I believe the lifestyles will become increasingly casual regardless of the income available. It's not like people will revert to toting water from the village well to bathe themselves twice a year (whether they need it or not). Future generations may not be able to afford digital cable, broadband internet, and new car payments, so I think people will drive used cars, and leach off of their neighbors for wireless internet to find pirated television shows.

I'm not saying that it will be a better life. They may be doomed to struggle hopelessly to recreate this golden age of wastefulness in which we are living, and it may be impossible to achieve the level of unbalanced affluence that Americans now enjoy. But it won't be third-worldish, either. They will find love and ways to be happy. They may even take advantage of the nascent health movement, and actually lead simpler, healthier lives than we do today.

Think of it: in a world with less pressure to acquire useless goods, we might sit at home in the evening with our spouse and talk and laugh over a quiet meal of healthy food. We might turn in early, every day, to make love in a warm bed. And when we have children, we might raise them with a villager's attitude of providing for their needs, watching them grow, and imparting to them the values of love, cooperation, and respect.

In the morning, we would all awaken with the sun, rested and impatient for the new day to begin.

Morning Routine--Part 1

2008-11-13T03:57:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, we had a fairly rigid morning routine. The house was small, and my brothers and I slept in the (finished) attic. There was only a single bathroom, but in later years my father built a shower in the basement near the drain, but we were a bath-at-night family during the early years. In the morning we would dress, wait our turn at the toilet, and eat a bowl of cereal.

My mother would have been awake for at least on hour before we were up. A banker, she would dress nicely for work. She was usually not ready, though, when we got up. She would be part of the way there, but usually was wearing a house coat (a fancy robe) and had curlers in her hair.

Mom would put the cereal on the kitchen table and make us lunch. For cereal, we usually had a choice of Rice Krispies or Cheerios. Occasionally we were spoiled with Captain Crunch, Lucky Charms, Fruit Loops, or Coco Puffs. (During the Quake and Quisp years, we were a Quake house.) Come to think of it, we usually had Cap'n Crunch, and only were without sweetened cereals when my father went on a health rampage, declaring the extra sugar evil.

Mom made balogna sandwiches for lunch. Two slices of Wonder Bread, two slices of bologna, and two swipes of mustard. Occasionaly we were treated with some potato chips, but usually not. We got a quarter for milk, which could buy a few milks and some pretzel rods. I splurged for chocolate milks, feeling the extra penny was worth it.

We had about a half-mile walk to the elementary school, so we were out the door by 7:30 am. I know we watched cartoons in the morning, so we were probably up by 6:30 am most days, to give us that extra time to watch TV.

This brief remembrance may make it sound quiet and lovely, but I know it was tense and stressful most days. We lived in a small house, so there was very little room for book bags, musical instruments, and projects. Things were left on the stairs to our room, but things were also misplaced, covered up, and lost. There was yelling to keep us moving, and fighting over which lousy TV show to watch.

I was prone to anxiety attacks, and freaked out about little things, and sometimes my mother would drive me just to get me to shut up about being late.

Still, one memory sticks out. It was winter, and the furnace was slow to warm the house. So my mother had the gas stove going full blast, and left the door open to warm the kitchen. It was, to her, the equivalent of her own childhood, during the depression, during which they would not burn coal in the furnace because they couldn't afford it. She would get up in the mornings, sometimes with frost in her room, kept warm by the shared heat of her sisters, with whom she slept.

They would dress in the freezing cold, and then run to the kitchen to find the heat. Once there, her father would toast bread in the oven. Thus they would start their day.

In part two, I'll describe our current equivalents, and explain how this generation so is much weaker than mine, and how my generation was weaker than my parents'.

Threshold

2008-11-12T19:56:00.000-08:00

Shortly before leaving for college, I went to a party at my friend's house. It was an odd time because many of us were about to leave town and start new lives. There was an anxious energy about, at least for me there was.

The party was much like the others we'd had that summer, involving a few drinks, maybe watching television, and talking about girls. It went until quite late at night, and Eddie got very antsy and wanted to go for a walk. This was three in the morning. I went with him.

It was a calm night, and warmer than normal. We walked through residential streets and across our city park and past the municipal building where the police station was. We were probably the most dangerous things on the street, so there were no worries about that. We talked mostly about the girls we knew and liked (and which I was too shy to approach) and what college might offer us. I was very hopeful that the fresh beginning would bring me an interesting social life.

Eddie was prematurely nostalgic for the world he was about to leave. So much so that he wanted a souvenir from our home town. At around three-thirty in the morning, he decided that he really wanted a road sign to hang in his dormitory. We made our way back to the party, but with a renewed interest in the signs along the way. Eddie was basically shopping.

Back at the party, we announced our grand design to those still awake, borrowed some tools, and returned to the streets.

A street sign was the first choice, but it was mounted too high to reach. Nearby was a Stop sign; we could reach the nuts and bolts holding it in place, and realized that it was really a much better choice than the street sign.

The nuts proved very stubborn. In fact, we couldn't budge them one single bit. Perhaps it was the fact that it was past our bed time, or that we were somewhat inebriated, but struggle though we might, the sign was not coming free from its mounting.

Eddie was frustrated. He really liked the idea of the souvenir, and refused to surrender it. He thought perhaps we could pull the post from the ground, and we tried that, nearly soiling our pants with exertion.

Near desperation, Eddie began to rock the sign back and forth, hoping to loosen it where it was planted. He leaned against it, then pulled, back and forth, over and over again. Once more we tried to lift it from the ground, but the earth would not release its grip on it.

Eddie tried once again pushing and pulling. He was voicing his frustration at this point, and about to surrender, pulled back on the sign so that he was almost flat on the ground. He released his grip and the sign snapped forward like the lever of a catapult. Eddie also sprung up, so as not to fall backwards, and took a step forward.

The sign's forward movement was halted by the same forces that had frustrated us so many times already, and pushed it back with nearly the same energy it had on its flight forward. This time its movement was halted when the sign smashed into Eddie's face. Mind you, this all happened in less than a second, the pull, release, snap backward into Eddie's step forward, and then bang, smack in the forehead like something out of a Three Stooges movie.

Eddie was knocked flat to the ground into the street. Luckily, his skull had not been broken by either the sign or the pavement. He did, however, have the distinct imprint of a hex nut in his forehead, just above his nose.

Dazed, we returned to the party. We had failed on our quest, but learned a valuable lesson.

Down the Rabbit Hole

2008-11-10T19:34:00.000-08:00

I believe I would be more productive without the internet. This is a bold statement because the internet means so much for so many people, but I have been using it lately to kill time around the house. I'm avoiding projects I want to accomplish by surfing through random web sites.

In truth, it's not the internet, it's me. Before the internet, I would get lost in books. I always had stacks of them or literary journals full of short stories, and I would grab them from piles somewhat randomly, and read. It was very hypertext-ish because of the randomness. In a sense, my reading habits were forward looking and prescient. You might even say I invented the internet.

One of my all-time favorite places is the Dawn Treader Bookshop in Ann Arbor. Many years ago, I would wander into that store on the way back from classes and purchase a few used books. I would do this frequently, and at a pace much exceeding my ability to read.

This bad habit continued after graduation with the Daedalus catalog of remainders. I quickly overwhelmed myself with lovely books, some which I still haven't read.

To top it off, I subscribed to both The New Yorker and The Paris Review. And I liked to watch TV. What was I thinking? Ironically, it was my obsession with computers that chipped away at my reading habit. Now it's reading on a computer that chips away at my computer habit.

Did I mention that I'm trying to learn how to play the accordion?

Science Project

2008-11-09T16:26:00.000-08:00

I'm helping my son with his science project. It is a classic: building a model of an atom. I don't recall exactly which element we're modeling, but we have a bunch of Styrofoam balls, poster board, and moxy. What we need is a plan.

My son is not big on projects. It is not the way he learns, and he hates the idea of them. For the most part I agree with him, but it's something that has to get done.

My son is big on talking, watching television, and arguing. He especially likes arguing about what's on television, especially when he can use the DVR to prove a point through the miracle of pause and slow-motion. These things don't help get a project done.

When I was in sixth grade, I went through much the same thing, but my project was the orbit of the moon around the earth. It's slightly elliptical, so I was stumped on how to draw an accurate ellipse. My father rescued me, but he went to a reference book on mathematics to find the formula, and then built a tool to draw it. I used a variation of that same tool to help my son with his project.

The trick is this: to draw a nice circle when you don't have a plate or a sauce pan lid that is the right size, stick a thumb tack in the middle of your poster board and tie some thread to that thumb tack. Tie a pencil around the other end at the desired radius (actually, I used scotch tape to secure the thread to the pencil). Swing that tethered pencil around the thumbtack, and watch the circle come together.

Projects like this take days and hours to complete. You'd think we were building an addition on our home. Materials get scattered in every room; tempers flare at the slightest provocation; every one suffers.

I understand the teacher's motivation, and it has definitely driven home a few points about atoms that we might not otherwise have remembered. I can still picture my project from sixth grade: it was a poster board spray painted black to evoke the night sky. The moon's orbit was plotted with silver paint that had been purchased for a model airplane. The moon and the earth were both tin foil crumpled into a ball and glued in place. I don't recall the particulars of the orbit, but I do remember being in the backyard with my father as he showed me how to spray paint, and then helped sketch the orbit.

I hope my own son recalls this project some day, and I hope it brings him solace and gratitude. There is also melancholy and a yearning for things past, but there is nothing to help those feelings. The good must be cherished with the bad, just as joy is given with pain.

Haunted House

2008-11-08T20:29:00.000-08:00

This afternoon, a clock I've had for twenty years fell off the wall and broke. Shattered glass was all over the carpet, and the wooden body of the clock snapped in half. There was no good reason for it to fall when it did. The hook and nail were still in the wall. It had somehow been bounced off, but there was no particular bump when it happened. I would have blamed the cat, who has leaped at the pendulum before, but the cat wasn't home at the moment (out visiting friends).

I guess I don't mind if the house is haunted and the ghost is going to play pranks to mess with me. What I worry about is that the ghost may be watching me when I do very private things in the bathroom that I'd rather not have any one see. What if it's the ghost of my grandmother? I really, really don't want her seeing what I do in the bathroom.

Of course, grandma was never a jokester, so the ghost is probably not her. My father wouldn't do that either; he'd get right in my face and tell me how I was screwing up.

What I regret about the clock is not seeing it fall. It's a smallish clock and the pendulum is non-functional (i.e., it just swung back and forth but didn't regulate any gear movements). It hit the curio cabinet below it and then fell face forward to the floor. Shattered glass was sent into a three-foot kill zone and the pendulum remained on top of the curio cabinet. It wasn't bad to clean up—I put the larger chunks in a cardboard box and then vacuumed. It gives me the opportunity to install our cuckoo clock where the old one used to hang. If the ghost also knocks down the cuckoo clock, the joke will be on them because it's already broken. Maybe looking at the broken clock (which is correct twice a day) will motivate me to fix it.

What I know for sure about this ghost is that the jokester owes me a new clock. But if they simply don't tell everyone what I do in the bathroom, then we'll call it even.

Whiskey is not Whisky

2008-11-08T07:05:00.000-08:00

I went to a Scotch tasting event in Ann Arbor yesterday. My friend is a connoisseur of wine and Scotch, and I was excited by his invitation. There is a world of flavors that I know nothing about, and I thought this would begin my journey.

My first lesson is that Scotch Whisky does not have an "e". Everything else, like Jack Daniels, is Whiskey.

Vendors set up tables along the walls and displayed various bottles. For our admission, we were given a sack full of twenty polished stones, and we profferred one polished stone for a taste. Some of the vendors were more generous than others, but whatever they gave was plenty—I could not drink all of my polished stones anyway.

The names of the various Scotch Whiskys were unpronounceable. My friend is a scotsman, and he rattled them off like a native. I tried to match his brogue at first, but gave up quickly. I would just point to the bottle hold out my glass, and offer a stone.

I have tried Scotch in the past, and didn't like it. This event did not change that, but I did appreciate many of them. I could almost imagine enjoying them. However, I probably won't.

The highlight of the evening was a toss-up between the two "Jack Daniels" girls and the handsome woman serving absinthe.

The Jack Daniels girls were young ladies in very high heels, very short skirts, and tight T-shirts emblazoned with the Jack label. They stood talking to each other the entire evening near the Jack Daniels vendor, and occasionally got themselves some food from the buffet. The event was dominated by men, and I'm sure these two were the highlight for many others. It was almost cruel, in fact, because the men there were mostly nerdy, clumsy looking middle-aged guys (like myself) that were more interested in getting their money's worth out of the booze and the buffet than making time with the young ladies. I think they could have been there naked and had no more, and no less, effect on the men. I may suggest that for next year.

Absinthe is a foul drink, notorious for destroying the liver and driving people insane. So I had some. If it was good enough for Hemingway, then it's good enough for me. It was incredibly like black licorice, and had no kick to it at all, until this morning. I woke up with a headache, but wasn't otherwise bothered with a hangover. I got up and moved around a bit, and realized I had to vomit. What came up was a green glob of bile that I can only think was that absinthe sitting in my stomach all night, waiting to annoy me.

Three Spit Takes

2008-11-06T17:02:00.000-08:00

There were two spit takes in my life in the past week that are worth relating as they reminded me of what I consider to be one of the better spit-take stories ever.

The first one happened in my cubicle. Someone stopped by to chat, and they happened to be eating something at the time. I was seated in my chair, and they stood over me telling a story while they chewed on some trail mix. While pronouncing a "t" sound (titillating would be nice, but, alas, it wasn't that word) a small crumb of chewed food was expelled from their mouth, and landed smack dab in the middle of my left eye glass lens. I was startled, but didn't draw attention to it lest I embarrass my visitor. I took the glasses off and rubbed my eyes; once they left me (the now forgotten story over) I cleaned my glasses.

The second was in a meeting and the person across from me was speaking. The late afternoon sun streamed in from the window behind their head, and I was able to see their spit expelled during the oratory. One droplet, reflecting the light, fell in a long arc from their lip to the middle of the conference table like a meteor streaking across the night sky. The unhygienic aspects of the spectacle aside, the sparkling droplet of spit was quite pretty. It made me smile.

The best spit-take story I heard happened in a training classroom for a computer system. One of the students, an older gentleman, called to the instructor and complained about the quality of the monitor. There were sparkles all across the cathode ray tube (CRT) that were bothering his ability to see the computer images. The instructor had never seen such a thing, and none of the other monitors exhibited such a bizarre effect.

As she struggled to diagnose the problem, the student sneezed. He failed to cover his mouth, and sneezed straight ahead, spitting all over his computer monitor. The screen lit up with dozens more sparkles, as the spit caught the light.

Lucky Charms

2008-11-05T04:09:00.000-08:00

I tore into a brand new box of Lucky Charms and ate them out of the box. I'm not going to apologize for this behavior, but neither am I proud of it. Those charms are not just lucky, but they are also magical. I think they could be called "Magical Charms." I'd still buy them, but instead of a leprechaun as the mascot and spokesman, you'd have to have a midget-wizard, or maybe an elf.

I find them magical because of the aftertaste that lingers on my tongue and in my throat. I enjoy the aftertaste more so than the actual taste. There is something about the chemicals they use to create the marshmallows that coats my throat, and prolongs the flavor and the release of sugar. I find it intoxicating and delightful.

They coat the cereal things with some bland frosting, but I don't even notice those. They are just in the way, but I wouldn't want to eat just a box of marshmallows—that wouldn't be right. In truth, there is a fine interplay between the two ingredients, cereal and chemically-created marshmallow, that makes it work. I wouldn't change a thing. I don't even mind that they keep creating new shapes to include, but at some point in the future they are going to run out of cute things and someone in their design department, feeling desperate and having a very bad day, will suggest that they make a poop-shaped charm. I believe that that idea should be rejected. I don't think Lucky the Leprechaun can add "brown dookie" to his brag list of charms inside the box and sell cereal.

When I was but a mere child, I was careful to separate the marshmallows in my bowl of Lucky Charms, and save them for last. They would begin to melt in the milk, and a sugary scum formed across the top, but oh how proud I was of myself to have upwards of two dozen marshmallow charms remaining in my bowl, clinging to each other because of what I would later learn was surface tension in the milk. I thought they were friends, having fun in a white, sweet pool, or survivors of a boating accident, desperate to live, thinking they've been rescued by the great big spoon from the sky, only to realize they were being devoured by their God.

Now I just eat them out of the box.

Vote For Me

2008-11-04T03:35:00.000-08:00

I will vote today, but I'm not going to tell you for whom I'll be voting. For the most part, I have no idea who is on the ballot, so I couldn't tell you much about the vote beyond the big ones, President and Congress. The names for the local election are all a blur, but I'll do my best.

The most memorable campaign speech I know of is from the Patty Duke show. It's the episode where both Patty and Cathy (her identical twin, for those of you under the age of forty) are running for class president. They wage a vicious campaign with Patty appealing to her friends and calling in old favors, and Cathy taking the moral high-road. There is a third opponent, some quiet wallflower whose entire speech consisted of "Vote For Me". The wallflower wins as Patty and Cathy knock each other out.

That would be a frightening prospect for our Presidential election especially if Nader or Kucinich somehow snuck into office. (By the way, Dennis Kucinich's first wife—who was not nearly as hot as his current wife—was once my substitute English teacher in high school. How's that for a brush with greatness?) Luckily, the forefathers anticipated the "Vote For Me" possibility, and created the Electoral College. Well, I guess they were really worried about a regional demi-God who might win it all through crazy-ass popularity rather than some quiet girl lurking in the wings.

Don't forget to vote, but don't bother writing me in. I'd be a swell leader, but I'd be hell-bent on annexing Canada, and that's not good for the long-term stability of the globe. Then again, how stable is the globe anyway. Heck, we wobble on our axis, and the Republicans have pretty much nationalized the financial system to keep their own greedy bastard supporters from robbing us blind.

So what the heck: go ahead and write me in. I appreciate your support.

Dog Urine as a Repellant

2008-11-03T03:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, while working in the yard, I had an incident that demonstrates my own fault and folly with immaturity, and my relationship with my wife. She had done some pruning in one of her gardens, and loaded the refuse into a laundry basket. The laundry basket, overflowing with dead vegetation, was left at the side of the garage, presumably for someone other than herself to take it to our mulch pile in the backyard.

I could have been the person to do that, for I walked past that laundry basket everyday for a month making the exact route prescribed, from the garage to the backyard. It would have only taken a moment of thought to complete the transaction. But I have a fault in that I don't like cleaning up messes created by someone else. It's childish, I realize, but it's no sillier than other childish belief systems, such as the Unitarianism, Dewey Decimal, or Social Security.

I finally broke down yesterday and decided to take the laundry basket to the mulch pile. Of course, the laundry basket is a story in itself because it had fallen into disuse, I threw it away, and my wife retrieved it out of the trash. So I had plenty of resentment against this laundry basket before we even started.

On one of my many trips around the house while raking leaves, I bent over and grabbed the laundry basket. I noticed a foul, fetid odor. It reminded me of the mice nests whose stench I often find in our shed, so I held the basket away from me with some trepidation that a mouse (EEK!) might still be nested within. I felt something wet on my pants leg, and heard water pouring. At least I thought it was water, and in my mind imagined that basket sitting through rain storms and water gathering in the bottom. All that changed in an instant.

The foul, fetid stench gained strength. I looked at the water spilling from the basket in my hands, and noticed it was not clear like rain water, but tinged with yellow. The dogs had been urinating on the basket for weeks, and their pungent pee had been gathered there, and was now soaked into my pants and shoes.

When my anger subsided and the chore was done, I went inside the house. My daughter reeled at the smell. It turns out that massive amounts of dog urine is an effective family repellent.

The Copper Kettle--Dad's Van

2008-11-02T06:10:00.000-08:00

My father bought one brand new vehicle during my childhood. It was a 1976 Ford Econoline van burnt orange, and void of any accessories or options. It was bare metal inside, and came with the absolute minimum of two seats. His dream was to customize that van for a trip we took as a family to Yellowstone National Park. This was the age of customized vans. He was not attempting to put wall to wall shag carpeting and a water bed in the back so that he could score some serious tail (as far as I know); he was trying to make more of a recreational vehicle that would sleep a family of five.

My father was an engineer, designed things, and took the van customization very seriously. He spent weeks sketching out his ideas, to scale, on graph paper. His optimal design called for a bed across the back that could be expanded, two captians chairs in front, and a bench along one side that would convert to a mini-kitchen. There were storage cubbies everywhere. He also planned to install an AM/FM stereo with eight track tape deck and six speakers and a citizen's band radio.

Dad was also a bit paranoid--perhaps rightfully so given his upbringing--so the very first thing he installed was a kill switch disguised as a headphone jack. I suppose there were people that would steal an unfinished, oddly colored van. The next thing he did was have Sears install an after market cruise control. The switch was attached to the turn signal, as they are today, but this one stuck out like a sore thumb, and had wires hanging from it. It was novel and cool to me, though.

The deadline for the trip approached far too quickly, and the only customizations my father accomplished was the wooden frame for the bed, the captains chairs up front, and the new stereo. I think that is how much of life goes, with grand plans going wildly astray, and coming up short. But we took the trip, and rode in that van.

Mom and Dad sat up front, and my brothers and I either shared the bed in back, or sat on a lawn chair resting in the middle. I don't believe there was anything like a seat belt in that van. It was bare metal, unfinished lumber, and us. If there had been an accident, my brothers and I would have been thrown forward in free fall, waving our arms as we screamed in terror before splattering our brains on the dashboard. Those were the good old days for travel on our nation's highways.

During that first trip, we broke down in Omaha, Nebraska, and the transmission had to be repaired, and we all learned to hate Omaha. Our intention was to sleep in a tent in Yellowstone, but often, because of bear warnings, we had to pile into the van, and there we shivered in cold, uncomfortable, cramped quarters.

All of this is leading up to my very worst memory of that van. A few years later, I was riding with him in the van on a hot summer day. I was sixteen or seventeen at the time, and, for whatever reason, I didn't really want to be there with him, in that van, doing whatever we were doing. I was sitting on the cooler in back (we came to keep a Coleman cooler in the van for extra seating) when the van overheated and my Dad pulled it over.

He popped the hood and steam was escaping from the radiator cap. He decided to allow that pressure to escape, and he loosened the cap. It exploded in a burst of steam, scalding his face, eyes, hands, and arms. He backed away in pain, groaning and waving about anxiously.

I was bored by the whole episode, and I had already planted my ass in the lawn chair in the shade nearby to watch the proceedings. I could see he was in pain, but being a selfish, stupid teenager, I did nothing and hardly cared. Dad stood for a confused moment, not sure what he should do to help himself, and looked at me.

I said, "There's some ice in the cooler if you want it." But I didn't get up to help him, or ask about his injuries, or much of anything. As I said, I was a stupid, selfish teenager.

My son is fourteen now. I think I'm due to get a taste of my own medicine.

Fun With Razors

2008-11-01T05:08:00.000-07:00

I have never been a big fan of shaving, but I do like the feeling of smooth skin that results from it, so I take care to do it properly. But the act of shaving also exposes some of my fits and follies, and a secret affectation.

My mother told stories of how her father shaved, which was with a straight razor he sharpened with a strop. The shaving stories were always an off-shoot of a discipline story, in that he used the strop to beat the children when they were naughty. A strop, if you don't know it, is a huge leather belt used to sharpen a straight razor by repeatedly stroking it with the razor. It's also useful for beating the hell out of someone naughty, or so I'm told. I had this image of a cranky Eastern European guy, in his tank-top T-shirt, working that razor with his face lathered up. From early on, I fantasized about shaving that way.

I am something of a romantic about literary things, and, like so many people, I really fell in love with The Catcher in the Rye when I read it back in high school. That Salinger guy is a heckuva a writer. I mean I read quite a bit, and that guy is really goddam great writer. He knocked my socks off, if you know what I mean. He talks a little bit about shaving in that, but mostly it lead me to read Franny and Zooey, also by Salinger. In that book, there is a lengthy scene about shaving that I fell in love with. Lane spends, like, a lifetime in his bathroom, taking a bath, reading a letter, and shaving. He shaves three times, I swear to God he does, but it was how he shaved that killed me. He squeezed shaving cream out of a tube onto a brush, and then applied it to his face. That killed me. I swear to God, if you ever read about someone shaving with a tube, a brush, and an injection razor system, it'll goddam near kill you.

So I bought myself a shaving brush the first chance I got. I even bought a travel version so I could take it with me. For whatever reason, call it lack of faith or even plain old stupidity, I stopped using it. Biggest mistake of my life (well, one of the biggest). For the twenty years since, I have been thrashing about trying to find the combination of shaving cream and razor that gives me what I want. I was unhappy for a very long time, but now, I believe I'm happy at last.

My father used electric razors. I have tried those a few times, but never liked how it felt afterwards. There is a downy softness to my skin, and that never excited me. Applying lotion afterwards helped a little. Still, it wasn't right for me.

I whored around a bit with cheap Bic disposables. They were effective, but I cared so little for them that I stopped caring about the quality of the shave. It began to eat away at my soul.

When the Gillette Mach 2 razor came out, I was skeptical. I sneered at those who would spend more than a quarter on a razor. I used mine for upwards of two weeks, spending about nine dollars per year on razors, and two cans of Colgate cream. How big of an idiot was I to spend a grand total of $12 a year on my face?

The sneaky bastards sent me a complimentary Mach 2 razor in the mail. I tried it and loved it. It was like discovering the funniest TV show ever, but in syndication, which means you get to watch it everyday, over and over again.

I have upgraded the razors as they have introduced new models, and each time I have been amazed by how it really does feel better. After ten years, how can this love of mine keep surprising me? I don't know, but it makes me love it that much more.

The one problem is that the tightly set razors often get clocked with the whiskers and shaving cream. Not only does it look messy, but it degrades the shave. So I spend a lot of time rinsing. It annoys me, but, like loving a great woman, you have to take the bad with the good. I have tried many different creams. Noxema is the worst: it seems to bind like super-glue between the blades. Gillette is a little better, but builds up and won't rinse off. Colgate, the cheapest stuff on the shelf, is probably the best for not sticking to the razor, but I don't like the feel of it.

On a nostalgic whim, I bought a soap cake and brush kit. I immediately loved the result. It was fun as hell applying the shaving cream with the brush, and I can control the density of the foam by adjusting the water I use. It rinses clean from the razor, and I get the satisfaction of recapturing a small part of americana every morning. My smooth cheeks remind me of it in the morning, and in the evening I begin to look forward to my next shave when my stubble starts to come in.

Banana Redux

2008-10-25T06:16:00.000-07:00

I went shopping the other night at Kroger's. Ostensibly, it was just for a few things: Bananas, Bagels, and Milk. The banana display stand was almost empty. Just a few scattered bunches, many spotted brown, and with three or four bananas in each bunch. They were picked over.

I once was at a training class (for OnBase, the document management solution, of all things) and sat next to a guy from Costa Rica who worked for Chiqita in Cincinnati, Ohio. He explained that Americans prefer buying nearly green bananas, and only like to eat them when they are a golden-yellow color, and unblemished to boot. We are picky and lousy customers. Europeans, being smarter(?) know that the brown spotted bananas are ripe and flavorful.

I happen to like the brown ones, a lot, but the rest of the family likes them ala American, golden-yellow. To serve them when they are that color, you pretty much have to buy them green yellow, and hope for the best.

An interesting thing happened, though, at that banana display. There was one other woman looking over the meager selection, and we began to compete for the bananas. She took a bunch with three green and one yellow, so I grabbed a bunch. She took another, so I did too. There were only a few bunches remaining—brown spotted, the way I like them—and she dared to take one of those. So I took two bunches of brown spotted. These bananas, by the way, were huge, like they were straight out of a South East Asian porno movie. Eventually she backed down, and left the display, but we had nearly picked it clean.

I think I broke my own record for most bananas, and I've been eating four huge ones a day ever since. If it's possible to overdose on banana-supplied potassium, I'm on my way.

A Lick and a Promise

2008-10-23T17:45:00.000-07:00

One of my all time favorite phrases is "A Lick and a Promise", as in

I'm going to give the floor a lick and a promise.

This usage refers to quickly wiping up the floor, but having the intention of cleaning that same floor more thoroughly later on. But I am so turned on by that phrase that I want to drop to my hands and knees and scrub the floor myself, a stiff brush in one hand, up to my elbow in hot, sudsy, dirty water with my other hand.

One of my coworkers used the phrase today in a meeting, referring to some task that she was committed to doing, but not having adequate time to do it properly just at this moment. She said, "I'm going to give the requirements a lick and a promise." I bet you are.

The first time I heard the phrase was from the lips of my mother-in-law. I about shit when I heard it, stunned and disbelieving my ears. She is devoted to her religion, curses very infrequently, and was in her late seventies at the time. I understood that she was talking about the floor, but the phrase crashed into all sorts of other ideas in my head. My wife's mother? A lick and a promise?

At the time, I was so shocked that I told my father about it. He reported that his own mother used the phrase herself quite often. Apparently it offered my father very little in terms of titillation to hear his mother say it, and so he was slightly perplexed at my reaction. My grandmother? Gramma? A lick and a promise?

I suppose there are a number of phrases that sound dirty even though they really aren't, but none of them effect me like A lick and a promise? Consider:

Stump Grinder
Waxed Beans
Bone Dry
Weiner Schnitzel
Tongue Depressor
Ben & Jerry's
Screw Driver

All of these are used in the course of normal American English, and, if you really think about it, can probably have other connotations that are impolite. But those things never occur to me. Except for my favorite. I guess it's just one of those things.

Me and TV

2008-10-20T15:25:00.000-07:00

I have just added a new article: Me TV. It's a memoir-ish account of the television shows I watched in my youth, and is really a testament to the great wasteland that is my mind. If I had spent half the time I spent watching TV just walking around, I might have never had a weight problem.

One little tidbit I left out is that during some of the family TV time, my father and I would watch The Rockford Files, which is an hour-long show. He'd stop at Uncle Bill's on his way home (Uncle Bill's was a bottom-feeding discount store, back before there were stores such as "Big Lots") and pick up a half gallon of Whoppers, those delicious malted milk balls. We would plow through the entire carton during the show, after dinner. It seemed a little bit like dessert, but was not a great thing for me to do.

So I've had this weird relationship with food and television all of my life. I've loved both of them far too much, and for the wrong reasons, and without any conscious thought as to whether or not it helped me, made me stronger, smarter, or faster in any way. I just liked those things, enjoyed them, and squandered the better part of my life away because of it.

Granted, it wasn't as bad as alcoholism, or drug addiction, or gambling away all my possessions. Instead it was a slow decline into obesity, and time wasted that I could have been learning something, building a business, or improving the world. I wonder if I can do any of those good things now, ever.

That seems to be behind me now. I just don't have as much time to watch television anymore, in spite of how much I love it. About half the time that I do, I do so on a treadmill exercising as I go.

To be honest, though, I would like to just sit some time and plow through a carton of chocolate covered malt balls.

Announcing: Pandemic Joke

2008-10-01T03:43:00.000-07:00

I just added the first of many articles to my site: Pandemic Joke, which was delivered as a Toastmasters speech a couple of years ago. It was inspired by Monty Python's "Funniest Joke in the World" skit, which actually demonstrated the weaponization of a joke.

The first time I delivered it, it went over the time limit, and I had to redo it. This version has all the nasty bits still in it.

Also the first time I delivered it, someone actually snorted in her laughter at the moment when it talks about snorts, and so that was great fun.

Boat Stories - Part Four: Addendum

2008-09-15T19:33:00.000-07:00

One of the few times my father towed that big, 26' boat, we had a collision. We were taking the boat from his cottage in Port Clinton to the marina in Marblehead. At the time, he was having problems with the wiring harness and the supplemental brakes on the trailer weren't working. It would have taken a few days to get all that corrected, so he, being a former jet pilot, discounted the risks greatly, and decided to drag the boat to its new home.

Port Clinton is mostly a single strip of action that runs along the southern shoreline of Lake Erie between Toledo and Sandusky, but much closer to Sandusky. There is an older downtown region, but most of the action is along that main strip where motels, taverns, and restaurants attract a rowdy crowd in the summer -- the sort of folks that are getting warmed up before some fun on the lake, or even greater rowdiness on the islands.

In the town proper, there are tree lined streets, carefully laid out in straight lines and filled with small bungalows and ranch houses. The town regulars who stay there year round, and generally are an all-right bunch of people. My father decided to drive through the residential streets so as to avoid the nervous police on the strip, and thereby avoid possible questions of his street worthy trailer.

He had a little trouble stopping because of weight and the lack of braking assistance, so he cruised through the neighborhoods very slowly, approaching the stop signs cautiously, and looking carefully. If no one was coming, he would roll through the intersection and begin looking ahead for the next challenge.

At one such intersection, there were no cars approaching. My father did not notice a girl on a bicycle but even if he did, he may not have stopped for her. He rolled through the intersection.

I was in the passenger seat, and the girl was coming towards me. As we pulled out into her path, she looked with some concern at us, but seemed to calculate that we wouldn't collide. However, she had not seen the boat behind us, and as she approached, the boat on its trailer rolled in front of her.

I leaned out the window to watch, and heard her exclaim: "I have no brakes." Because she was next to the curb, she felt she had no where to turn, and instead she plowed into the boat, face first, and fell off of the bike and into the street.

I told my father of the situation, and he did finally bring the van to a halt. But he did not get entangled. The girl had picked herself up by the time my father approached her on foot. The moment she said she was fine, he returned to the driver's seat, and we resumed our slow-motion journey.

As we drove away, I watched as the girl picked up her bike, and tried to straighten the handlebars so that she might ride it again.