Ginger is a (fish) killer

Sad news to report: on my way to bed I checked on YaYa's fish and found him belly up. Either the experience earlier tonight was too much for Duke, or the tap water in the emergency dish we used (while I was cleaning the bowl) did the trick. He was such a sturdy, proud little thing too.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

Rest in peace little guy.

My wish list and an unusual Craiglist ad

Aside from my adventures with the Ginger yesterday, I spent a good part of the day trying to track down some misc. items we need around the house. Chief among these would be a good paying job, but I digress.

My wish list for the house:

1. a new dehumidifier for the basement. The motor runs fine on the old one, but it no longer draws water, even after I cleaned the coils and filter.

2. a portable dishwasher to replace the one that went kaput early this year (we almost had one free today via Craigslist, but it was scooped up before we got there). Our intention remains to hold off on buying one until we can have the kitchen remodelled and a built-in installed, but I'm being realistic here - washing dishes by hand SUCKS, and it'll be awhile before we have that kind of money again.

3. a new power drill. My current model doesn't have enough muscle, and it doesn't hold a charge long enough.

4. Intercoms - Hey, you try yelling for the kids when you're washing clothes in the basement and they're up on the second floor.

5. Patio chairs and umbrella

6. A new twin bed for Smiley. Lisa's hinting she'd like a race car bed for him, but I'm more traditional.

For myself, I'm also looking for any Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child novels on the cheap.

Things that exist and are in our possesion, but are MIA in the house:

1. Lisa's mother necklace

2. YaYa's professional 1st Communion Shots and CD

3. a copy of the interviews I did w/ Uncle Leo and Grandpa K.

4. My degree and transcript from UWM

5. Probably 10,000 other items I can't think of right now.

* * * *

If you have any of the items on the wish list for sale, or gathering mold in your basement, drop me a line. Otherwise I'll peruse rummage sales and Craigslist until we hit gold.

Oh, speaking of Craigslist, I thought this was a peach of an ad in the 'Free' section today (WARNING: MILD ADULT CONTENT)


Sybian Device (Milwaukee)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2009-08-02, 9:52AM CDT
Reply to: ______@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My ex-wife left behind this Sybian device and I have no need for it. I guess she spent over $1,000 on it so I hate to just throw it away. I put it out by the garbage in the alley in the 3400 block of N Dousman.

Please dont email me. I don't want people to know who I am. It's still out there.

* * * *



Now quite aside from the general ickiness of picking up and reusing toys from someone else's garbage, I thought this reeked of either a rude joke against the residents, or some kind of sick con. But the ad went unaltered by Craigslist all day, so no one flagged it as fraud.

My big question: if you care enough to spend a grand on the thing, why wouldn't you have taken it when you left?

Toddlers, well, sometimes they just plain suck

It is disturbing how acclimated I am to digging my hands in poo.

Ginger is in the beginning stages of potty-training and is justifiably fascinated by the toilet. When you are watching that means she will sit on it and *try* to go, and/or flush it and wave bye-bye.

If you take your eyes off her, she will dump everything in reach into the water. I have reached in and recovered necklaces, aquarium rocks, plain ol' rocks, toys, socks, toilet paper rolls, hair bands, and much, much more from the toilet. And yes, once or twice she did this, no one caught her, and then a kid 'did their business' and yelled for me to remove the items when the water was already . . . used.

Whatever. It's still got to be more sanitary than the grunge apparel I wore in college.

And - for those without kids or a meager one or two to worry about - I'm not about to 'lock' the toilet, or child-proof it, or any such thing. I'd rather auger out a toilet anyday than deal with one of the older kids wetting the floor because they couldn't get the lock off. And who are we kidding? At 3 a.m I'd be the one pi**ing on the floor.

What's worse is that she now removes her diaper at will. An hour ago, with YaYa and Smily out of the house visiting Grandma, I went up to clean Ginger's room and recover the latest round of 'missing' diapers. I found them alright, tucked behind the crib, alongside the dress-up box, etc. Nasty.

Anyhow, while I'm cleaning her room she waddles out and down the hall. Five minutes pass. That's it. Five minutes. I get set to go downstairs and just happen to see Ginger in YaYa's room.

Then I saw the fish bowl. Or what's was left of it.

She had dumped pencils, two NEW bottles of fish food, a necklace, a coloring book, and a bunch of junk into the bowl. It was so full of debris most of the water had been forced out onto the desk and floor, and there was no room for the fish to live -absolutely no chance it had survived.

And yet, in a tiny pocket of water in the corner, it calmly treaded water.

I yelled for LuLu, pretty dang sure she wouldn't answer. She'd been a pain in the keister in the half-hour before, and I was certain she'd interpret my cries as a continuation of my lectures. I was wrong. "What's wrong Daddy!?" she said, and quickly ran off to grab a temporary bowl.

Here I sit, ten minutes later, the bowl clean and the fish restored, hoping the trauma wasn't enough to kill off YaYa's pet.

"If it dies," LuLu said, matter-of-factly, "YaYa's gonna kill us both."

"Yes, honey," I said. "I'm aware of that."


* * * *

One more compliment to LuLu. Yesterday she dutifully reported that the stand-up freezer in the basement had been left open and that it didn't seem to be working.

Before I'd left for work that morning I'd sent one of our friend Chris' kids down there to put something away, so it had been ajar for ten hours or so. The light *was* burnt out, some items were defrosted, and the unit (which was my Grandma's, and conservatively 30 years old) had been working overtime so long it wasn't running very well.

It's fine now, but if LuLu had kept quiet . . .oh man.

Later, she also came up to me and told me I'd left the van lights on. Score two saves for LuLu.

And today she recovered a pair of new sunglasses of mine that Ginger had walked away with yesterday.

She is, without question, our resident "Finder".

A Fire Sale at the MJS

What's up with the fire sale at the Journal Sentinel? First Tim Cuprisin said goodbye, then I hear the theater critic is gone, and now the book editor wrote her farewell address. What's the rationale behind all this - more than pure $ I mean?

A piece of slightly Kloss eyed genius

Growing up, a lot of kids look up to sports stars and musicians. While I certainly had my favorites (Paul Molitor, James Lofton) I also had a more peculiar idol: Milwaukee Journal writer Gerald Kloss.

Kloss wrote a column called Slightly Kloss Eyed for the Green Sheet, the afternoon paper's weekday comics and humor section. I had the pleasure of seeing him in person (although we weren't introduced) during a tour of the company in the mid '80's.

Anyhow, I came across this today and thought it was worth a repeat here. In January 1974 a city of Milwaukee standpipe, a vertical pipe meant to guide water to the upper floor of a building, leaked during a fire.

"The great standpipe scandal was upon us. The city desk couldn't have been happier.

So many standpipe stories ran in the next weeks that a couple of office wags put together a list assigning fake standpipe stories to everyone in the newsroom, from the sob sister to the music critic. . .

Gerald Kloss, the Green Sheet poet, strolled in that morning and stopped at the bulletin board where, mildly amused, he read the list of assignments. Then he came to his own: "Eighteen lines of iambic pentameter couplets on standpipes beginning `Ah, Chloe.' "

He turned on his heels and strode to his typewriter. In less than an hour, 18 lines of perfectly scanned, iambic pentameter couplets were on the bulletin board. They began:

Ah, Chloe, erst I saw you standing there

Upon that naked shore, pristine and bare,

I fondly mused, "There is, indeed, a verity

In this, your very perpendicularity!

Standpipe-straight, not veering from the vertical,

Nor leaning left nor right en mode absurdical!"

The rest of the staff, some of whom had difficulty writing prose, to say nothing of poetry, gathered at the bulletin board in humbled silence, much like the awe with which the crowd must have greeted events at Lourdes. One suspects that if Kloss talked in his sleep, it came mumbling out as rhymed couplets. He couldn't help it.

He was a genius."

Kinky Boots and Pong

I first laid eyes on this LOL British news piece courtesy of Matt on Facebook. In it a professional engineer designs and builds new uses for outdated technology, including the doo-dad in the title.

Enjoy!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8175612.stm

James Larsson likes to play '70s video game Pong with a fetish boot as a
controller and a whip to punish the loser.
It is just one of his novel ways
he makes use of old technology.
He has shown Ellie Gibson around his
workshop where he incorporates high voltage electricity, old video games and
even cats, into inventions reviving defunct technology.
These experiments
have been conducted by a professional engineer and should not be recreated.

Pretty Please

I will give you one, no TWO, scooby-snacks if you are willing to do my dishes before Lisa returns home with the kids. Ok . . three?? Anyone???

Just a bunch of praise for me . . you know, the usual

Over on Facebook I bit*ed and moaned about accepting a writing assignment from the Journal, one I think is going to land me more hate mail than a low paying freelance gig is worth. I did it anyway, partly because I said I would , but also because the editor sent out a mass email saying I was tackling the subject, making the hemming and hawing a moot point:) I have to admit it spawned a whole batch of emotions in me.

One, a tinge of regret at being rather mercenary. Not that I would ever write in complete opposition to my beliefs for the sake of a few bucks. I stayed 'true' and all that. But I didn't relish the idea of dealing with the crap upon publication, and I wouldn't have done it if I wasn't so broke. Plus, I'll be honest. I live and die by the immortal words of Tom McIntyre, Joey Mac's Dad: "Make sure they always know your name boy!" I wasn't about to turn down another byline.

I was also rather proud of myself. I took a gig no one else wanted, did it well, and had a final draft in with about 18 hours to spare before deadline. Plus, doing it while expecting flack - I don't know, I felt professional, you know?

* * * *

Well, wasn't that a fine three paragraphs? My arm hurts from patting myself on the back so hard. I much prefer when others offer the praise, and so I'll bring this up:

In the wake of my piece on kids and the choices we've taken away from them, a local high school summer class was told to read the column and compose an individual email to me. Along with some intelligent questions and opinions, here's what they had to say.

* For one, your writing style is not only fresh and clean, but sarcastic and sassy.

* I agree with you on "injury-proofing" kids these days . . . Also, you look similar to Mr. Wilson, the sixth grade English teacher.

* I agree with you [about] the fact kids should be able to make their own decisions, because otherwise they will never end up learning. I like your to-the point style of writing which involves a sassy tone. It shows that something needs to be done about this ever growing problem.

I wrote each of them a letter addressing their concerns and thanking them - and their teacher - for the letters.

Praise for the wife, dirty slivers, and dead Congressmen

Lisa has spent all week volunteering at a Girl Scout day camp with our three oldest kids (Smiley is allowed to participate because of her presence). She returns each evening, we all have dinner, pack up some items for the next morning, and then 5/6th of this household retires to bed by 7 p.m. Obviously, I'm the little sliver of insomnia in the bunch.

Lisa will be taking the camera tomorrow so I hope to post some pictures of the camp soon . But I want to take this opportunity to say that Lisa often gets screwed here on the blog. She doesn't like to take a camera along ("You don't need pictures to remember something," she says) and she doesn't blog, so by default most of the memories here are my own.

Judging by the tales told over the dinner table tonight, those three kids are having the time of their life this week. They've also got a heap experiences over the last seven years that wouldn't have taken place without their Mom's efforts. So if this carnival ride of a life sometimes appears to have only one operator, think again.

* * * *
That sliver underneath my fingernail caused my finger to turn red and swell. Lisa told me to go to the doctor before I had to have it cut off, but I refused. "Worse comes to worse," I said. "I'll just look like a yakuza."

Then, two days ago it just spit out the splinter. Plop, one minute it's red and hurting, the next there's a dirty piece of wood in my palm and the pain is gone.

Cool. In like, a totally boy kinda way.

* * * * *
Some neat experiences of late:


* I met the wife and daughter of one of author Michael Connelly's research staff. He lives locally, but does a lot of legwork to flesh out the background for Connelly's novels. They said the author is a gem and a genuinely nice man, one who flies out his researchers for a party at the start of every NFL season. He also named a character in The Brass Verdict after their husband/father, but for the life of me the name escapes me right now.

* I ran into the editor-at-large for two national magazines (and yes, I asked: the magazines aren't hiring, they're cutting staff).

* Finally, I bumped into the daughter of former Congressman and local icon, the late Clement J. Zablocki. I told her how, just weeks before his death in 1983, I appeared on stage with her father.

I was (or so the press was told) the youngest Cub Scout in the District at that moment. Whether that was true or not, I leave to my diligent future biographers.

Anyhow, I was handed a hatchet and charged with cutting the ribbon to open some now forgotten Scouting event. I couldn't get the hatchet to cut through all the way, and so Clem came up, wrapped his hands around the handle, and together we got it done.



His daughter smiled when I told her the story. "That was my father," she said, a wistful look in her eyes. "He was a good man."

As she left I realized that the memory meant more to her than it did to me. To have someone relate a positive story about your father nearly three decades after he passes away . . . well, I'd imagine it doesn't happen often. I'm glad I overcame my original hesitation and approached her.

BTW - that scouting event was also host to my first television interview, one I never had a chance to see because it was broadcast on that fancy dancy new thing called Cable. :)

Double Star by Robert Heinlien

One of these days I need to check out some later Heinlein, circa the 1980's, just to see what it's like, because the old stuff is going to make me cry - and not tears of joy.

Double Star is the Hugo Award winning novel about a kidnapped politician of the far future who is temporarily replaced by a down and out actor. That's pretty much the plot right there.

It's not a bad read, and I enjoyed 70% of it while I read it, but Hugo Award winning??? Was every other writer on vacation that year or what?

Here's the deal. Forget the slightly dated sci-fi concepts, as that's unavoidable. I don't deduct points for that. However, I found the main character of the actor a pompous, unloveable twit that needed a good wallop between the eyes.

I also found Heinlein's treatment of women ghastly outdated and hypocritical. It's weird - the guy has women in positions of power or responsibiltiy, and then he has them act like Victorian women suffering from the vapors.

The secretary is in love with her boss (natch! How come that never happened to me?) Throughout the book sexism reigns. Oh nellie, don't you dare use improper language around a lady and please sir - ignore her s-s-s-stammer whenever she's upset. Why, can't you see her lips are quivering from the emotional toll of being an adult? It's not her fault she doesn't have a penis.

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.