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Monday, February 21, 2005

The Post about Internet Quizes Feb 21st

One of the great advantages to being part of the Blogsphere is a growing understanding of myself as a person. For instance, just the other day I learned that I am a "'you're so dumb' happy bunny", defined as "you are brutal in your words and enjoy putting others down."

No guidance counselor was ever so accurate.

This and similar insights come from an abundance of surveys and quizzes scattered throughout our little electronic world of make believe. If I so desired, I could learn what color I am (in the Crayola sense of the word), what Star Trek or Star Wars character I best resemble, what superhero best describes me (Spiderman, tho' the foolish test came up with Supergirl. A guy wears a dress one time . . .), and even if I should best be called Earth, Wind, or Fire (I'd insert a EW&F joke here, but I'm woefully ignorant of their music catalog).

That I've chosen to take any of these goes against my grain. Oh, I love when I'm drafted at the mall into taking a consumer survey, and I'm the only guy in America that enjoys telemarketing calls, but I hate quizzes. They smack of Cosmo, that bastion of anti-masculine culture, and I cannot cross the line.

[Side note: I have a friend who subscribes to Cosmo, claiming that as a single man it provides him incredible insights into the female brain. How an article entitled How to make him Scream in Bed is something he'd like to incorporate into his own repertoire brings up questions we don't ask.]

So what's the difference? One cannot feel like part of a community until you participate in the actions considered important by that group. Thus, the quizzes.

Plus, I was bored.

Never-the-less I gotta say some of them are spot on. One dandy labeled me 26% white trash, a level that "will not keep you from becoming a doctor . . but will keep you from a good haircut and fashion sense." Another determined I was 33% tortured artist, not enough to "drive your life into a dark abysmal hole where you are alone against the world." Good to know.

I was also determined to be 57% Evil Genius, a score I think derived from a question asking if I've ever scared someone away with a look and then laughed at them. (hey, that old lady deserved it). I ranked as a moderate internet addict (no knowledge of some alphabet soup programming stuff) and surpassingly, a low level geek (based, I believe, on the fact that I do engage in actual intercourse. With a female. A non-avitar female. )

Some were far off the mark. I placed at the 24% level for 'raver', despite never attending a rave in my life. And the one that ticked me off - I rank as a mere 40% grunge. Excuse me? Grunge was the one true love of my college years. I once spent $40 to buy an intentionally distressed flannel, which I wore every other day for five years. I know the family tree for every Seattle band of the early '90's, bought anything SubPop put out, and I continue even now to collect evidence that Courtney killed Kurt.

40% my ass.

But let us end on a positive note. On the Hotlanta Kink Test I earned 350 points, placing me as "definitely a kinky player". Shamefully, I'm quite proud of this score, although it's a sham. I didn't answer all the questions honestly.

If I had, I'm sure I would have qualified as "Super Freak! You da Bomb!"

Saturday, February 19, 2005

Re: Where have you gone?

Sorry I haven't posted lately.

I haven't grown sick of blogging, nor am I suffering from burnout, psoriasis, or anything stronger than a cold.

I've just been very busy in a mad effort to get the house ready for the baby  - hopefully  in time to allow a week of relative relaxation before the birth.

I'll try to get the site back on a normal schedule by Monday.

Thursday, February 10, 2005

Misc chatter

1. I was just checking my BlogExplosion stats and noticed that one person has actually dropped me from their Blogmark page. Ouch. I didn't think the book list was that boring.

2. BTW, the books in blue (in the post below) I whole-heartedly recommend. I tried to edit the post to tell you that (and correct some typos) but it keeps freezing on me.

3. To answer an email question, The DaVinci Code isn't on the list because I read it in '03 (the 30th of 79 books that year). Let us be clear on my opinion - the book sucks on a hundred different levels. It's success can only be explained away by reminding ourselves that at one point our society also raved about Vanilla Ice, Teletubbies, and above ground nuclear testing.

Wednesday, February 9, 2005

The Substitute Post while I paint the Nursery Feb 9th

My wife and I are hard at work prepping the nursery for the arrival of Parker in early March?. To my shame, I haven't had time to scrabble together a post. In fact, I took an extra day off work - something I do maybe twice a year - just to finish the painting.

So, here's something I wrote about a month ago but considered too boring to post. Ain't that a great recommendation?

A long time ago I read Louis Lamour's posthumous autobiography, The Education of a Wandering Man. At the end of the book Lamour included a list of every book he read over the course of some of his 'yondering' days.

Although the lists were panned in reviews of the book, I resolved then and there to start taking stock of what books came across my plate. Beginning in 1994 and continuing to this day, I've done just that, jotting down the name and author of every book I've read.

Yeah, I know. It sounds lame to me too.

But I keep doing it. My shortest list was the year I met my wife, when I was too busy to care about heading off to the bookstore. My longest was sometime in the last three years, when I cleared eighty-some odd books.

I keep aiming for the century mark and falling short.

To rationalize my failure a bit, the list is very particular. Not only do I have to complete a book, I have to have read any and all forwards, footnotes, appendixes, and dedication pages. Maybe five books a year fail to make the list for failing to meet one or all of these criteria.

Lamer still, I know.

Anyhow, before I ramble myself into a straight-jacket, here's the list for 2004; and I warn ya, it's a weak one. I was mired in a few monster works of non-fiction for most of the summer that knocked me off pace. In addition I generally don't read other people's work when I'm stressing my own writing.

Floating Dragon by Peter Straub

Koko by Peter Straub

Mystery by Peter Straub

The Throat by Peter Straub

Julia by Peter Straub

Shadowland by Peter Straub

Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga by Stephen Davis

The Day the Music Died: The Last Tour of Buddy Holly, The B.B, and Ritchie Valens by Larry Lehmer

Big Bad Wolf by James Patterson

Bad Business by Robert B Parker

Shall We Tell the President? By Jeffrey Archer

A Marginal Jew Vol. 1 by Joseph P. Maier

If you Copuld See Me Now by Peter Straub

The Hellfire Club by Peter Straub

The Birth of the Messiah: A commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke by Raymond E Brown

Double Play by Robert B Parker

The Enemy by Lee Child

Tripwire by Lee Child

The Possession of Joel Delaney by Ramona Stewart

Hark by Ed McBain

LazyBones by Mark Billingham

Plan of Attack by Dale Brown

Absent Friends by SJ Rozan

Sharpe's Escape by Bernard Cornwell

The Bone Parade by Mark Nykanen

The Madman's tale John Katzenbach

Sudden Prey by John Sandford

Hawke's Harbor by SE Hinton

An Unpardonable Crime by Andrew Taylor ? ?

Scaredy Cat by Mark Billingham

Cold Blood by Theresa Monsour

The Music of the Spheres by Elizabeth Redfern

The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great by Stephen Pressfied

The Godfather Returns by Mark Winegardner

Melancholy Baby by Robert B. Parker

You'll notice I tend to binge on a single authour and then move on.

My favorites? Well, I'll tell you the worst of the bunch - Plan of Attack by Dale Brown and the oldie by Jeffrey Archer. My favorites are harder to sort out, but I must say that I was really drawn to the non-fiction biblical studies this year.

I swear, I get dorkier by the minute.

Sunday, February 6, 2005

For my Wife's Peace of Mind

Lisa is slightly disturbed by the personal nature of the two posts on mice.

Let me set the record straight: if we had a problem with rodents or pests, I would have gone insane years ago.

In nearly ten years of living together this is only the second mouse I've seen in our home (the first was one my cat killed and brought home as a 'trophy'), and we've never had a problem with other pests. The mice mentioned in the rest of the piece were at work or at other locales.

Also, I feel it neccessary to point out that while rodents are my achille's heel, it does not in any way reduce the fact that I am, to be fair, the studliest man in America.

 

Dan

Super Bowl Prediction

Not much of a surprise here, but I'm going with the Patriots.

Above and beyond the fact they play like a brutal, uncompromising machine, have the edge in experience, and shut down Indy in the playoffs (in what was probably the best game of the year), they just flat out have more attractive uniforms than the Eagles.

Pats 27 Eagles 17

Although the score was tighter than I expected, the Pats walked away with yet another title. Two observations:

Where was this vaunted coaching of Andy Reid? The Eagles time management was awful, as was their play calling in the closing minutes. Yikes.

When you look at McNabb's stats, you don't get this impression - but the man choked. Not only did he give up the ball at the worst possible times, he looked sick to his stomach when Philadelphia got the ball back with a chance to win it all.

JMHO

 

The Post about my Mouse Feb 5th

For those of you paying attention, yes, the chronology in this post and the one before it seems a little out of whack.

 In truth the previous post was written in November, but not posted becasue I feared it would jinx me. When it didn't matter anymore (see this post) I decided  to give it a whirl.

 

Curse the fates.

A mouse made the migration.

About a week ago I was helping the wife make dinner when I saw what, to my eyes, looked like chocolate sprinkles in the cupboard.

You will note that chocolate sprinkles, while never advertised as such by the manufacturer, bear a striking resemblance to mouse droppings.

My wife put me at ease, pointing out we did have sundae toppings on that very shelf and the kids probably spilled some.

Fine.

Now explain why a few days later a box of crackers was chewed to bits.

Here's where my wife lost me. Normally, to salvage my fragile sanity I can deny reality at will. Not so my wife, who is overly realistic to a fault.

So forgive me for doing a cartoon double-take at her response:

"Maybe the kids did it," she said.

Hey, my kids are beasts when it comes to snack food, and the youngest does have quite a set of choppers, but I doubt they would choose to chew through a box instead of just . . . opening it.

And how did she explain the equally violated box behind it?

"I think I remember yelling at Olivia for doing that," she said.

Yeah, uh-huh. Hey, who knows? If she believed that, maybe she does mean it when she tells me size doesn't matter.

Within a few minutes, the frightening truth came to light: by way of a crack between the cupboard and the wall, a mouse had been feasting on our rations.

[as this isn't Fear Factor I'll leave out what we found in the box of rice; nor will I mention that we'd made chinese food the night before]

I've already explained my fear of mice, so we'll gloss over the aftermath: the panic attack, the persistent and morbid belief that every gust of wind was a mouse crawling on my skin, and the fact that my wife had to all but slap me and tell me to be a man before I'd handle a bag of garbage that included the cracker boxes.

My only hope was that we'd catch the bugger soon. After my wife set the traps (what, you expected me to do it?) I spent an uneasy night tossing and turning.

Overnight the traps had been licked clean without catching a thing.

To say this heightened my anxiety is an understatement. That evening, I came up with a new plan - newly baited traps, each surrounded by a wall of glue traps.

If he figured a way around that, forgetaboutit - no way I was staying in the same house as something that'd escaped from Nimh. .

We got him.

He died heroically, as mice go - he'd gotten tangled in the glue traps, each paw stuck to a different trap, but pushed onward towards his destiny (in this case, the spring trap)

He stayed where he was for a few hours after I found him, until my wife woke up and arranged his funeral.

As for me, I am still recovering.

Despite the fact that I have cleaned the house top to bottom and found no trace of another beast, and that the traps we set out as a precaution remain untouched, I'm leery. Even with fresh groceries I still won't eat anything from the cupboard, and the kitchen gives me the creeps.

The upside to this? Our family has enjoyed more dinners out in the last week than in the whole of 2004.

Of course, by doing this we can no longer afford a mousetrap if we do get another visitor . . .

Friday, February 4, 2005

Civil War Shorthand

 I came across this on a websearch for 'shorthand' and thought it funny enough to share - although it may come across as an inside joke for history buffs.

 

 E-MAIL SHORTHAND THAT CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS WOULD LIKELY HAVE USED IN LETTERS HOME HAD THE TECHNOLOGY BEEN AVAILABLE TO THEM.

By Rob Eccles

- - - -

w/o:roht
Without reward or hope thereof

ryahud;)
Remaining your affectionate husband until death

iop/loc
(With/by) Impulse of patriotism and love of country

iawap:)
I am well at present

s't
Shan't

iaotl:)
I am among the living

y:(
The Yanks

i-r
I reckon

frot:)
(In) fond remembrance of thee

s!
Shelling

iaptiy:(
I am pained to inform you

iwot
In want of tobacco

=|:(#
Old Abe

s-r
Snug as a bug in a rug

lisnbatwtya
Lest I should not be able to write to you again

bfo
(The) bitter fruit of orphanage

Gc&t
(In honor of/for love of) God, country, and thee

lt
Lieutenant; lead thither (situational)

bt2m
Been through the mill

sa2ht
Scarce as a hen's teeth

$;)
Greenbacks

~
Body lice

B!
Bully (to you)!

t't
T'weren't

i3ntisfotbfmc:(
If it is necessary that I should fall on the battlefield for my country

Thursday, February 3, 2005

Buddy Holly

Today, take a moment to listen to a Buddy Holly song and realize why it's called the day the music died.

 

The Post about my Neighbors' Mice Feb 3rd

My next door neighbors have mice.

This wouldn't be a problem if we lived in a nice new sub-division with half an acre of land between their house and ours. But this is the south side of Milwaukee. Our house isn't just a stone's throw away, it's a stones throw for a one armed child with tennis elbow.

It may also pose a slight problem because of my deep and unyielding fear of any rodent that doesn't have a theme park named after him.

For those of you who know me, this is old news. You may skip down the page without fear of retaliation. For those of you new to my world:

I am a 6'3", 300-pound man.

I have been charged by pit bulls while working for a land surveyor.

I have escaped harm at the hands of a group of drunk thugs by pure bravado.

I have, as a hotel manager, kicked out many people with bad mojo in their heart and good firearms at their side.

I have also pushed my wife off a chair and jumped atop it at the sight of a mouse.

I once, at the age of twenty-nine, considered calling my Dad to pick up a dead mouse I found on my property.

I had an on-duty police officer intervene the sole time I tried to kill a mouse, and had him reprimand me for asking him - seriously - to shoot it.

In short, I have a slight fear of mice.

So you can imagine my distress when my neighbor casually dropped her news in my lap. It's just one or two, she said. One or two? That, to me, is the difference between a panic attack and hospitalization.

I thought back to when I moved in. I asked the departing resident - smoothly, I thought - if there had ever been any, you know, mice or anything?

"Oh, we had a mousy here or there, but nothing for years now, "she said. A 'mousy'.

It took my wife a week to get me to stop sleeping in the car.

Logically, I know there is no guarantee that these monsters will visit my home. I can rationalize that my neighbor is a filthy, uncombed woman (which sadly, is untrue). I can conclude that my foundation is miraculously more secure than that of her house. I can hope that she terminates these creatures quickly and completely.

Yet these are just convenient lies. I have no doubt that my neighbor is a clean, meticulous housekeeper. I am sure her basement foundation is as tightly sealed as Don Corleone’s alibi. I know she will fail to punish these rodents as they deserve. Already I can see, in my mind's eye, the mice marching calmly from her house to mine.

So my mind fills with battle plans. Do I purchase traps now, with the idea of ending the threat before I even see it? Do I explore the idea of an exterminator? Or do I do what, frankly, seems like the only intelligent thing to do:

Pull up stakes and move immediately.

Yes, there's the possibility that some minor harm would result. Certainly the kids would miss their friends, our modest investment would be for naught, my wife would be incensed; insignificant riff raff, all. For me, it's worth it.

Or, I could bite the bullet and act like a man. I could put the worries out of mind, and when and if they materialize I could face my phobia and overcome it once and for all.

Uh, yeah.

See you in Toledo.