Or so I've heard

The man who sleeps with dirty laundry is odd.
The man who sleeps with clean laundry is odd with bleach.

Dear Santa

Here's a list of things I no longer need thanks to global warming:
*ice picks
*skates
*really thick sweaters
*hot chocolate
*skis


Here's a list of things I need more than ever because of global warming.
*Margarita glasses and tiny umbrellas
*suntan lotion
*lemonade
*sandals
*beach towels
*waders
*chiles

Please adjust your list accordingly. I have been mostly nice, with some naughty streaks mixed in this year.

Thank you and Merry Christmas.

Sincerely,
David

P.S. Are you concerned about global warming? Is it cutting into your real estate?

Jingle babes

Dashing through 55 degrees of pre-winter hinterland, the horses of a Lexus as black as the night was making spirits bright while I rested with pies and a pillow at my side. Arriving in the land of fighting blue hens, we pulled into another suburbia. From Virginia to Delaware all of suburbia looks the same. Yards are groomed, lights are up in force, and people are gathering for food and wine and either creme brulee or rainbow-colored fish depending on particular tastes.

This house was filled with reluctant singers, but host and honoray co-host had the chops big enough for all of us to follow. They were Jersey-sized entertainers in a Delaware package. The songs were a mix of Christmas and childhood fare. The thrill of a party with a sing-along is the window for socializing is reduced and the door for singing is flung wide open. When meeting strangers in that neighbor to the north, this combination suits some of us quite well. The night wore on and the singing more flamboyant greased by the rainbow-colored fish and the red and white wine. This was my first sing-along, but many regulars waltzed in and out of the house. Good King Wencelas was unable to make an appearance, but Hairbrush song was quite a crowd-pleaser.

The night wound down by 10:30 and the children were put to bed. There were hints that these sing-alongs used to go much longer. Also hints that Hairbrush song was a fairly new addition.

Babies change the world, laughing all the way...
What fun it is to ride and sing, in Delaware at night...

A magical tale of unrealized pancakes
inspired by Abba's comment

The tale has been told many times before. It’s as old as a fourth-grader by now.
Inside a rail-thin man, there lived a little boy. Behind his spotty beard, his
eyes glistened with the anticipation of late December snow. The rail-thin man
with the boy inside grabbed his bag and his plan to dispense good cheer. He
went by Tim 364 other days, but on this day he was known only as Santa Tim.
Santa Tim gathered up good cheer and set about dispensing it.

Good cheer comes in many shapes and sizes. For some folks good cheer pours from
translucent bottles and tingles when it goes down. Good cheer can be served hot
or cold. It can come powdered, in pieces or slices; good cheer has been known to
break the mold. Some people hear it and others can smell it. Some people hug it,
sing it, dab it, kiss it, and then some people forget to bring it. But good
cheer has mathematical powers. It can multiply and get all exponential. Even
divided up it has unlimited potential. Good cheer is as magical as it sounds,
the problem see, is that sometimes people forget just where to find it,
especially in unfamiliar places.

Santa Tim had no such problem. He knew just where to find it. Many places sell
it, but Santa Tim chose the dollar store or some such entity. With the
jolliness usually reserved for much plumper men, Santa Tim filled his sack with
goodies. Toothbrush holders, candle holders, imitation Pez dispensers, soap
dishes, romance novels with half-eaten covers, egg holders, and small pillows
with inappropriate sayings joined kitchen utensils as just a few of the
contents of Santa Tim’s big bag of good cheer. With red hat and white pom-pon
atop his head and bag slung over his shoulder, he and his elf John made the
rounds through the halls, dispensing cheap trinkets like they were frankincense
and myrrh. This dispensing brought great joy to many overgrown children
masquerading as adults. Squeals of delight, pats on the back, why it was almost
as if all the Who’s in Whoville danced in the bellies of the residents.

One boy in particular was overjoyed by his bounty of good cheer. He introduced
himself as David, but all the other children called him Dave. Dave was a lucky
one. Blessed with good looks and remarkable curly locks, he had Austin
Power-esque charm (women wanted him and men wanted to be him). Yet, he was very
humble and remains so to this day, despite his maniacal discourse on subsequent
days regarding kitchen utensils…

Santa Tim was nearing the bottom of his bag and so he offered Dave a choice.
Black plastic spatula or box of multi-colored toothpicks? There was guilt in
Santa Tim’s offer. His guilt had no place here. These were not the dregs of his
goody bag. Certainly not. Fate had brought these items to David. These items
were perfect expressions of all the goodness in Santa Tim’s heart. Dave
recognized it immediately, although he’d never be able to put it into words.
Exactly.

Considering for only a moment, Dave reached out and accepted the black spatula.
It was plastic. It was black. The nearest kitchen was at least two floors away
and locked half the time. Dave wouldn’t make pancakes for years, yet the
spatula was perfect. It was a bat, a racket, a sword, a missile. It was a baby
doll, a loyal pet, a back scratcher, a robotic arm.

Years later, the black spatula rests between the wall and the desk in David’s
home. It’s fallen from its makeshift paperclip hanger and Dave did not take
notice. For all its uses and all the joy it brought, the black spatula now
serves up reminders. Piping hot, fresh, reminders of good cheer.

Why used dessert forks would make a great gift

Come on, used dessert forks would make a primo gift. Let me list just a few of the reasons why:

- Used dessert forks are smaller than regular forks, therefore they are cuter. Used dessert forks are the Mini of the utensil world. The slightly smaller tines alone must be worth 250 cute points.

-Small not only equals cute, but it also means accessible. Dessert forks are great for pickle jars, and uh, dessert. So there's that.

-The batteries may not be included, but stick a dessert fork in an outlet and like grease lightning, "It's electrifying."

I know that so far I have only scraped the tip of the double chocolate cake surface of the advantages of the used dessert fork, and I really haven't focused on the "used" part of things. Fear not, for I saved the greatest argument for last.

-Two words: Leftover icing. Try to get that with Tickle me Elmo.

If you can read this, your Internet is too close

As I peeled the remains of an "I'd rather be playing Ultimate" bumper sticker off my bumper, I wondered if drivers with "Honk for Jesus" stickers went through a similar range of emotions when they picked and poked at the remains of their stickers. As the tiny sticker flakes stopped peeling off in my hand, I thought about the time in Columbus when I lived by my bumper sticker. I found a place where there was too much Ultimate or at least not enough else. I'd rather be playing Ultimate, it turns out, really only works when there's actually something else to be done.

As I scraped at the sticker with a screwdriver, I was reminded of how much Ultimate has meant to me. I get confused when my weekends are without it. Nearly all my friends who don't share some connection to Mizzou are Ultimate players. Ultimate is the reason I wake up Sunday afternoon and the reason I limp to work Monday morning. I run because I like it, but I run more because it will keep me in shape for chasing discs. There's something to this Ultimate thing.

Finally, as I turned to the razor blade and I scraped away the last of "playing," I worried that maybe I'd let Ultimate become too important. Bumper sticker removal and tears don't go together. With a flick of the blade, I erased Ultimate from Lucille. She shuddered as she remembered trips to Lawrence and through Slippery Rock. Discs pulled from her trunk in places as far apart as here and Hays. "Too important?" Lucille's freshly cleaned maroon body asked. Then quietly she directed me to her gold racing stripes. I saw in the stripes what she wanted me to see. Lucille is a fine car without those stripes, but that flair makes her special.

Honk for that.

The boys who say "Wii"

The Wii fairy paid a visit to me this evening. And I've got to say now, I'm all hopped up on Wii. It may not have been the most amazing video game performance of my life, but it was certainly one of the more active. I was particularly fond of boxing and tennis, particularly frustrated by golf and bowling, and alternately satisfied and dissatisfied by baseball. I cannot decide whether I need to buy this latest Nintendo, but if anyone asks why this system has such a ridiculous name, I surmise that it relates to the sound that everyone will make while playing. Wii!

Keep an eye on this Japanese contraption, it has the potential to be a cultural phenomenon not unlike iPod. You heard it here 242nd.

Mice. Men. Best laid plans and stuff

If I-70 is open, then it should be on.

This was the thinking, if we can be so bold as to call it that. MODOT said it was so, and we were off. Cruising down the highway in 22-degree weather that felt like 18, we did not roll down the windows or let icicles roil through our beards. Instead, we rode out of KC with the rising sun and set our course for C-town. On schedule, we arrived at the promised icy patches of Boonville and continued to avoid death. The goal of all driving is to avoid death, just as the goal of all insurance is to avoid paying. Like flood insurance in Arizona, we were successful. There were some nervous moments, like the time when I crushed the flowers my prom date had just pinned on my lapel; there were nervous moments on the road too, like the time a large truck forced me to drive over an icy patch shaped like an 8-bit Abe Lincoln, but we survived. My traveling partner napped through most of this, but he'?ll vouch for our survival if asked.

We arrived in Columbia at 10 AM for our cancelled 10 AM tournament because we had been told there would be hat tournament action. As I came cruising down the hill toward the field, I announced that the drive would probably not be plowed and I should probably seek alternative parking. Then seeing tire tracks on the drive, my optimism got the best of me. Left turn, fifty feet through the sixteen inches of snow and then I could go no more. Forward or backward it turned out. My co-pilot checked for Ultimate players and found none. I yellowed some snow and considered the best way to dig myself out and/or bury the bums not playing. After an hour of forward and backward progress, the rear end of my parent?s' car hung out into traffic. We were still stuck. Furiously digging beneath the car while trying to keep one eye on the road just to see what kind of vehicle skidding down the road might crush us, we worked. Taking another stab at an exit from our snowy parking spot halfway on the road, a car stopped to wave us out. They didn'?t seem to understand that we needed more than hand gestures to get free of the snow that bound us. Or maybe they did understand, because as soon as they opened their doors to come give us a push, the car freed itself from the spot, and we were off.

Finding 4 other hearty souls, all of whom had walked to the alternate fields, we engaged in 3 on 3 Ultimate. Ultimate of this variety haunts me on Stankowski field. Yes, there were many games and many nights where I played full robust games on the turf, but there were also many days and nights of disappointment when the field couldn'?t attract enough players to play. This was not quite one of those times. For the next three hours, we goofed around in the snow. We found that in 16 inches of snow, a person can dive, catch a disc, and then land face first in the snow and be completely covered. We took great joy in whitening our beards, and flopping to the whitened world below us. Joy times at least 50. Some of that was in the bounds of a game with scores, but most of that was just purely throw and catch. It was a goof for sure, but quite an enjoyable one.

And so, as our fingers got cold and our stomachs started to ache from so many landings, hunger set in and we made our way to BoocheÂ?s for burgers. I know now that I didn't consume nearly enough Booche's in college. I attempt to attone for this on every subsequent visit. I introduced two new souls to the burgers. One fell in love with the reuben sandwich too, but the one in Columbia, the one likely to tell her friends- she dug the burger. She also laughed at me for the way I savored them.

Savor I did. After traveling a thousand miles to goof off in the snow, nothing could have tasted better than that sweet delicious $2.50 cheeseburger.

The bad news of a cancelled tournament may have hit me with a shot of mint in the Detroit airport, but snowy Ultimate and burgers reminded me that mice and men don't always know what's best anyway.

24 goes wedding

The commercials have told me that all of TV-land will soon be a-buzzin' about a show called Big Day. On this show, we'll see a wedding day dissected into tiny, and undoubtedly laugh-track-worthy, bits. I expect charming arguments, family tension, and if we're really lucky a tears-of-joy ending. I can't wait. To change the channel. Before I do, I was struck by a little something in the premise of this show.

One day. One season.

Recall with me, if you would, a little show on another network called 24. That action-packed show puts us in the fray as our real American hero wrangles with terrorists in one crazy day of his own.

One day. Wedding. One Day. Terrorism.

I'm not watching either show, but I thought I'd allow others to draw the wedding/terrorism parallels with me. I'm fun like that.

Disappointment with a shot of mint

I didn't realize how excited I was until I stepped into the airport. I was going to Kansas City. There was a winter storm sweeping the midwest. There was Ultimate to be played and old friends to see.

I knew there was a chance that Ultimate would get cancelled, but I never believed it would happen. Ultimate players are too hardy and I was on a 4-day vacation. The flight to Detroit was filled with turbulence. I had to grab on to my seat to make sure I didn't fly out at one point. I stayed seated, survived a landing, and waited for my connection to KC.

Sippping my mint-laced-coffee-drink and eating gingerbread in the airport, the phone rang. My travel partner and I exchanged nervous glances. He answered and his face fell. "16 inches?" he asked. "The roads are closed?"

And so, we suddenly found ourselves on the way to KC without a tournament to play. It was hard to believe as we cruised through blue sky. Then as we neared Missouri, we noticed white below us. The state was covered in snow. At least to a point. As we got closer to the airport, we realized that we were flying just along the edge of the storm. Out to our left, the ground was covered in snow. Out to our right, the ground was covered in ground. It was odd. We were flying the line between snow and no snow. And snow was in the south. That line was also the line between disppointment and activities as planned. Somehow the visual representation made the cancellation sting just a little more.

There's a chance that if the roads open, we'll still see some Ultimate action. In the meantime, I'm left with the puzzling challenge of showing off KC.

The biggest test in 16 years

Age: 16
Goal: 70% and the freedom to wake up in the middle of the night and drive to McDonald's.

The parallel parking did not go as smoothly as hoped. Chalk it up to nerves. Stopped on a large hill, the instructor informed the young driver that those with manual transmissions deserved an extra level of scrutiny, not extra credit as he had hoped. Stopped at a stoplight, a wee bit too close to the car in front. Marked for various other infractions Returned to the DMV, nervously.

Grade: 70%. Passing is passing. Freedom in the eyes of the law. Restrictions in the eyes of the parental units.

"Well I'm not bragging babe, so don't put me down"

A pink learners permit folded and crumpled at the edges sits between 15-year old boy and his parent as they wait together at the bottom of the hill in suburbia. The boy sits on the left, his hands are tightly gripping the steering wheel. With his left foot jammed on the clutch and his right poised to dart between gas and brake, he nervously prepares another go. Slowly letting out the clutch, he slams his foot on the gas and the engine revs its disapproval. Startled, the boy pulls his feet off the pedals and the car lurches to a stop again. After the neck bouncing ceases, a discussion of feathering the clutch, of feeling for that point when the depressed pedal is ready to pounce and unleash a life of cruising for Big Macs and open road, occurs. The left foot raises slowly and the right foot does not jam on the gas, it depresses the pedal inversely of the right and the car rolls to life. It sounds simple enough, though the boy doesn't really know anyone else going through this ordeal. Automatic transmissions, the go-karts of the adult world are what his friends ride. The boy does not have that option. It's either manual in the little red Saturn or the mini-van. If he can just get this now, freedom awaits. Freedom to avoid steep hills, especially at the light on Troost where he imagines the cars lined up behind him and honking as he struggles to find that point on the clutch under pressure, but freedom all the same. This will not be the last day of practice, but the neck snapping, car lurching cannot go on forever.

The ups and downs of my existence

A little piece of the dream cracked today. You may have won the battle, Friend, but I'm resilient. I'm like silly-putty and I am a b*tch to get out of your hair.

That was the down, the up was Stranger than Fiction. It was everything I wanted my movie-going experience to be. I'm calling this the performance of Ferrell's career. Take that Ron Burgundy.

Is it just me or is this mock turtleneck getting awfully tight?

I'm letting my world shrink. Ultimate. Work. TV. Intergalatic planetary space travel. Repeat. There must be more...

Every so often I stumble across some details that I truly appreciate about people in the general sense, even though my stumblings are about a person in the specific sense. Today those details are:

1. A man who likes to read in the outdoors. He takes his books on a walk, finds a spot, and reads. Between paragraphs and deep thoughts, he picks up flowers or leaves or blades of grass and toys with them as he returns to his reading. Twirling, pulling, caressing the pieces of nature, he eventually grows tired of the words and the greenery and folds the latter into the former until eventually all of the books in his library have the pressed remains of outside.

2. A woman who recalls with pride that she was the tallest girl in middle school. Everyone around looks down and laughs at her 5-foot 3-inch frame. Height can be relative. Pride can too.

Fighting uselessness with futility

I felt useless all day long today. My brain then determined the best way to combat this feeling was to escape into the world of Tony Hawk Project 8, aka the gazillionth in a series of addictive video game skating games. Thanks, brain. Nothing makes me feel more useless than the never ending list of challenges with the three-tiered judging and the impossible trick combinations. Why, now I'm so useless that the garbage takes me out.

We're a very cute couple. And completely useless.

The turning point

There's a moment in sports movies where momentum shifts, fortunes change, and underdogs begin their final push to shocking victory. Yesterday, I thought I was in that moment. Facing the perennial local league champs, my scrappy team was tied at 3 all. We were playing well, but it seemed like we didn't believe it could last. They were so tall, so fast, could jump so high, and throw so well. I broke deep, running toward the end zone with my defender on my heels. A big huck went up seemingly out of reach. I raced after it and then left my feet in pursuit of the soaring disc. Laying out, I stretched out my left hand because I needed every extra inch. The disc hit my hand and stuck and moments later I slammed into the ground. My hand gripped the disc and I raised it slightly above my head to signal that I had held on to make the score 4 to 3. For the first time in a long time, it felt like we could win. We seemed to match this team in skill. The other team was fighting for every point and we were fighting back.

Unfortunately, they struck back and took half 8-6. From there, we could never close the gap and they went on to win 14-11. I saw, and I hope my teammates saw that winning is possible. Perhaps we'll meet this team again in the championship game. Maybe that was the turning point and this is one of those really long sports movies with lots of false climaxes.

Voting on the run

I have a long-sleeve white T-shirt that says, "Runners. Yea, we're different."

I like that shirt. It says a lot about who I think I am. I ran to the polls yesterday. I stretched while I waited in line. I cast my vote that mattered a very very very little and then I ran out of there and on for another 3 miles. While I was running through the mist and past the lined up cars waiting to lurch through another traffic light, I started to think about my sixth favorite topic of late. (1. Ultimate 2. Hotdish 3. Offices 4. Hot drinks 5. black licorice) That's right, I was thinking about planned communities. What the world needs now is love sweet love, but also we need communities that allow and encourage people to walk places. Communities with sidewalks and public transportation instead of suburban sprawl would be very good for people that can no longer drive and people that don't exercise and pretty good for the rest of us. If walking to the store was part of the culture, if not always hopping in a car and spewing exhaust into the air wasn't part of our daily routine, if polling places, haircutteries, restaurants were near by, imagine how wonderful life could be in terms of exercise (and stress relief), air quality, and general neighborliness.

That's my life and I approve of this message.

Verrrry interesting

Emergency Preparedness Day at work coincides with the elections.

('Cause they want us to be ready for the outcome.)
(And the ensuing black out.)
(And panic.)
(Don't worry. We'll be trained.)
(And so will our newly elected officials)
(They will protect us)
(as usual?)

Move along. Nothing to see here.

Remember Halloween...that was wicked







A younger, smaller me once said, "Give me a box and I can be anything." So much wisdom and considerable thrift in someone without all of his permanent teeth. That quote was probably in the year of the aluminum-foil robot costume, or the spray-painted green dryer get-up. It may have been the year of the third-tallest hat in the world complete with King Kong action figure hanging from the radio tower, not a Halloween costume granted, but still an impressive box-making feat. I know it wasn't the year of the punk rock ghost or the regrettable decision to be a cross country runner when I was in fact a cross country runner. Of course, there were no boxes involved during the cross-dressing years.

Halloween is a challenge that I particularly enjoy. Unfortunately, when my creativity gets going it often outstrips my building abilities, even in the box construction area. There was an ent a few years ago that looked a bit like I tripped and fell into our recycle bin. Sometimes both my construction abilities and my creativity fail me at the same time. I'm wondering if that was the case last year, since I only recall wearing my cowboy shirt to work and no other costume.

In the year 2006, the story is very different from just a year ago. Saturday night I attended a party as a Frosted Mini-wheat. I make a fine breakfast cereal if I do say so myself. I don't have pictures that I feel like sharing, mostly because I think there need to be a few benefits related to seeing me in person. A Frosted Mini-wheat me just moved to the top of that list right past watching me raise my eyebrows at salacious stories. I am, however, willing to share my work costume. I would've been a Mini-wheat at work, but that get-up didn't allow sitting, so I racked my brain and finally settled on clever over construction. I know clever is in the eye of the beholder, but I taped two dimes to my chest and proudly asked my coworkers, "Do you like my costume?" They looked at me strangely while I pointed to my chest. "Does it help if I shift?" Every time, it did not. And then, fully anticipating the eye rolls I received, I announced, "I'm a Paradigm Shift."

I think some of my coworkers have stopped talking to me.