Blognation: You Can't Stop It; You Can Only Hope to Contain It

I have added two more blogs to the links section. The first is The Deets. The Deets is another one of those crazed south Minneapolitans who writes about Jucy Lucys and random shit. Kind of like this blog, only better. So no sports and more concise writing.

The Deets also has a technology blog , www.technologyevangelist.com . To me, it's like reading a foreign language, but there are a few tech savvy folks out there who frequent this blog who may enjoy it. But for me, cripes, I understand more of Matt the Hatt's French blog than I do reading Technology Evangelist.

The second blog added to the list is Pounding the Rock. On the surface, this is a San Antonio Spurs basketball blog, but it is still worth reading. It is very funny and well-written and I would say about a third of the content is non-basketball related. And even the basketball stuff is funny enough, it's worth reading if you are a non-Spurs, non-sports fan. And in the interest of full disclosure, it's where I found the Brent Barry commercial. To summarize, SPURS RULE!!!

Brent Barry HEB commercial

Yet another reason why the Spurs rule. Here you will see Spurs shooting guard in a commercial for HEB ground beef. HEB is a grocery store in Texas. I find this ad to be very funny.

Pancho's Life As A Dog

Winters in Minnesota are tough on Pancho. It's too freaking cold for me and my Texan sensibilities to do anything with him except take him for short walks and long runs. Gone are the days of summer, where I'd take Pancho to the dog park or down to the edge of the Mississippi River to run around.

To keep him active and entertained I have had to invent a few games for him. But much to his chagrin I have phased out the backyard games because he is tearing up our backyard with his strength, speed, and enthusiasm for running, jumping, and chasing things both real and imagined.

So we play Dog Football, Dog Boxing, Dog Wrestling, and Dog Soccer in the living room and a few other games. I took pictures of him playing one of them, which I named Buried Ball. I hide Pancho's plush ball under his dog bed and he flips the bed upside down to get to the ball.

This really should be a ten second process, but Pancho really overdoes the bed flipping process so the whole thing can take over minute. Or when I hold to bed down so he can't flip it over, he relentlessly tries to do it anyway. I have lasted five minutes participating in this, but got bored. Pancho however, had no intention to stop, even if he had to paw at that dog bed for another two hours, God love him.

All this for a nasty saliva and dirt crusted plush basketball that is coming apart at the seams. I tried getting pictures of him playing his other favorite indoor game, Ball In A Bag, but he moves to fast, and my camera too slow, for me to get any worthwhile photos.


The search is on...


The discovery is about to made...



VICTORIOUS!!!

Girl On A Box

Our local wine store, Haskell's has some pretty awesome sales to go with its pretty awesome wine selection. So a few weeks ago Emily stocked up on wine during one of their famous sales. As a result, she needed a box to bring home all the wine she bought.

That night as we were eating dinner, Emily was facing the kitchen and could see the box on the kitchen cart. Suddenly she started laughing. I felt pretty good about myself because, let me tell you, while Emily is not at all a serious person, she is a tough audience. Sometimes I'll make a joke and she'll just say, "That's funny," and not even crack a smile. I feel like there was a Seinfield based on this entire dynamic, but I digress.

So like I said, I was feeling good because FINALLY I made a joke that could make Emily burst out laughing, when I realized it wasn't me she was laughing at, but this drawing she had just realized was on the side of the box she bought home from Haskell's....



Those craaaaazy guys in the stock room at either Haskell's or some winery draw a nekkid stick lady, and that gets Emily to laugh. Yet somehow my jokes somehow don't cut it? Horseshit! That does it. I'm going back to drawing penises on napkins and writing "BUTTHEAD" on my plate with my tater tots. Seems like anything else just won't cut it for Emily anymore.

Anyway, this drawing reminds me of a song by the Blake Babies, called Girl In A Box. The song is as old as it is creepy. But for some reason the nekkid stick figure, though ON the box, and not IN it, is pretty close to what I picture the "girl in a box" looking like in the Blake Babies song.

Random List #1

Perhaps this is a sign that I need to revive my blog of Top Five/Top Ten lists, but I am adding a new feature (for lack of a better word) to this blog. Here is a list of what I think to be true about myself. All topics are off the top of my head. These lists don't belong on the hibernating Top Five/Ten Lists blog, beause it is a list of superlatives. Here we go...

Favorite Band I've Never Seen In Concert U2

Favorite Vice of Mine Coffee

Least-Favorite Vice Procrastination

Favorite Continent Australia

Favorite Obscure, Failed Movement US Metrification

Favorite Movie I've Never Seen City of God (that one is for you Kirk)

Favorite Spanish Word palomitas

Most Universally Agreed Upon Song that Sucks That I Kind of Like The Macarena

Most Univerally Appreciated Musician That I Do Not Like At All Dave Matthews

Favorite Guns N Roses Song Paradise City

Sightless Sorties for Sore Legs

There is a timeless quality to running in the dark.

For the past three weeks I have been getting up at 4:50 a.m. to meet a friend of mine for our daily run. It takes a few blocks for my body to wake up. The first three houses I pass, my body spends stretching the muscles to running length. The next 15 houses, my feet are working out the mild plantars fasciitis I now have that comes with having 35 year-old flat feet, and for about 20 more houses, my quads still have some sleep they need to work out.

My friend and I meet at scenic Minnehaha Falls because it is equidistant from our respective houses (six tenths of a mile away for both of us). As you can tell by the picture below, the falls are quite beautiful.



But it turns out at 5:10 a.m. (our meeting time), it doesn't matter. Minnehaha Falls might as well be Minnehaha Corn Syrup Refinery (but without the smell), because you can't see a damn thing. Sunrise is a good 70 minutes away. And so my friend and I run the exact same route every day, along West River Road on the Minneapolis side of the Mississippi River, before crossing over to East River Road in St. Paul.

It is truly a beautiful run, but it is also a course I have easily run 300 times in my lifetime (or at least portions of the course). So it's scenic and boring at the same time. But it turns out everything is dark and everything is the same. I reckon you put me on the wheel that hamsters run on, and if I was in a dark room, it would feel just the same as my 5 a.m. runs (only not as frigid).

In high school I worked at restuarant and got home after 10 p.m. every night in the summer. I'd end up going for my runs after 11 p.m. Each night I ran one of two courses and never got sick of it. If you add 50 degrees to the air temperature tomorrow morning, and take 15 pounds off my frame, I'll feel like I'm 17 years old again. When you run in the dark, fat or skinny, warm weather or cold weather, there is a universal feel to your run. It's just your legs, your friend, and the elements. You can be anywhere in the world, but the only thing in your universe is running.

I hate getting up at 4:50 every morning, but it takes less than 30 minutes for me to feel it was worth it. And now I am off to bed, as you can imagine I have an early wake-up call.

Christmas List

I went to our neighborhood gift store last week and was surprised to learn it is time to start shopping for Christmas. Then, yesterday, as I was carpooling to the Bad News Bears' final cross country meet of the season (I am pretty sure we finished in last place), we saw a truck full of Christmas trees being delivered to some vacant lot or Home Depot, I assume. Are you shitting me? What kind of fire hazard will those trees be by December 25th?

But I don't want to be a Grinch and crush your Christmas spirit less than two weeks after Hallloween. So rather than criticize these events, I will give you my Christmas wish list. But hurry; there are only 43 shopping days left.

All I want for Christmas is a silver and black (SPURS!!!!!!!!) SmartCar, like the hundreds that I found in Germany this summer (one of which I took a picture of, as you can see below).

Random Thought #982

I've never been called a chauvinist or a feminist. That being said, why isn't there a women's Tour de France? Is this the last sporting event that isn't co-ed? I mean, heck, we even have women's boxing.

Get Plenty of Sleep, Eat Right, and Stay Hydrated

In the world of distance running, there is an old coach's wife's tale that the night before the before race day is the most important night, in terms of rest. I don't know if this applies to Election Day, but tonight is the night before the night before November 7. And I anticipate Election Day the same way I used to look forward to big races. So rest up tonight voters, so you are ready to vote your conscience on Tuesday.

So without further ado, here are the races I'm most interested in, along with how I'll vote (for the two readers who may live in the Twin Cities).

US Senate: Amy Klobuchar Democrat (DFL)
US House Rep 5th District: Tammy Lee Independence Party (IP)
Governor: Peter Hutchinson IP
Secretary of State Mark Ritchie DFL
Minneapolis Instant Runoff Voting YES
Minnesota Transportation amendment YES

I really hope everyone votes for Ritchie for Secretary of State. The incumbent, Mary Kiffmeyer is getting a little scarier by the year. And I mean scary in a "voter suppression" sort of way.

And please vote for Instant Runoff Voting if you are a Minneapolitan. If this voting method proves to work at the city level, who knows, maybe it will one day trickle up to the state level. And then in the future the whole "do I vote for Hatch or Hutchinson?" debate will be unnecessary.

Select-A-Candidate

Minnesota Public Radio's website has its Select A Candidate feature again. You answer questions about state and national issues, rate how important each issue is to you, and the website calculates how closely you scored to what the candidates said.

I checked on the Senate race, the Governor's race, my House of Representatives race, and the Attorney General's race. And for every race, the candidate my answers were to closest to was never a Democrat or a Republicans. Rather in each occasion I was closest alligned with the Independence Party candidate.

It is sad because these candidates speak their mind, mostly because they have nothing to lose, but also because they are beholden only to their own beliefs, not to special interests. And of course, they have no chance. But I have yet to vote a straight-party ticket in my 17 years of voting, and it doesn't look like I'll start this year.

I know I'll vote for the Democrat, Amy Klobachar for the US Senate, but I am still undecided on all the other races. I will say this: I do believe this state and country needs a rational and credible third party more than it needs a Democrat governor or legislator.

Click here to see the Select A Candidate website.

Separated At Birth

Magglio Ordonez has played for two baseball teams in the ten years I've lived in Minnesota: the Detroit Tigers and the Chicago White Sox. Both teams are in the Twins division, so I've seen a lot of Magglio Ordonez. And in a tribute to my proscrastination, I am writing this post with two outs in the ninth of what will likley be the last game of the World Series and this season. But for not just this season, but for the past several seasons I have always felt that Magglio Ordonez looks like AC Slater of Saved By the Bell fame.

Am I right?

As an aside, the actor who played AC Slater (Mario Lopez) was part of Dancing with the Stars this fall. Coincidentally, the World Series has been mocked this year because more people watched Dancing with the Stars than watched Game Two of the World Series. Maybe people saw AC Slater dancing and figured they were watching Magglio Ordonez and therefore he World Series.

A Texas Cracker in Queen Emily's (Food) Court

Emily is out-of-town, so I had to run my own errands this weekend. I am not very good at doing them. I did manage to mail a package to my sister and return a jacket I decided I didn't need.

But where I fail immensely is mall shopping. On Sunday I drove to Rosedale Mall, which is Emily's backyard (well not counting our real backyard).

I went to the Apple Store to get my iPod repaired, and found out you have to get a reservation before they'll even look at your hardware. Rookie error #1: Apple Stores may LOOK cool and sleek, but customer service-wise, they are just as clunky and you have to wait just as much as all the other not-so-cool looking repair shops.

The nice young man at the Apple Store with a nasty twentysomething goatee (yes I once had one too about ten years ago) and crazy piercings let me know the next opening for me would be in two hours. I informed that wouldn't work because I had the dog in the car. I thought about asking him, "You have pierced ears. You work at the Apple Store. You can probably tell me, young man, what is this myspace thing all about?" But I digress. This is all about rookie error #2: Don't take your dog to the mall with you, even if you think you have one errand to do in there.

So I decided to go to Banana Republic and see what they had so I could put an order in with Emily, but all the clothes looked the same to me. Rookie Error #3: If you're a guy, don't go shopping without the input from a woman, otherwise you'll end up with a bunch of flannels and superdark Levis 501s.

So to hell with all of this, I thought, and decided to stick to what I know. I got a Blizzard at the DQ in Rosedale and checked out the boardgames at Games By James. I have been wanting to learn how to play Go for years now. And since now I was the one at the mall/Target, instead of Emily, I could finally buy the game.

Now I am learning tips on how to play from the internets. I am excited to play, but I'm not sure Emily will be. Are there any Go fans out there? The guy who sold me the game (another nice young man with a goatee and earrings who probably knows what this myspace thing is all about) said Muddy Paws, a coffee house in Uptown has Go night once a week. But that sounded way too intense for me.

The point to all this is I learned that I still suck at running errands, but I should do them anyway. Then I get to buy games and Blizzards. And I know Emily would appreciate if I did some of those errands myself. Blizzards, games, and a happy wife. See you at Rosedale.

Pancho the Wonder Dog

Footage shot by my brother-in-law (of followart.blogspot.com fame) in Wisconsin. We were there for a family weekend at Emily's family cabin. That is Pancho doing what he was put on this earth to do: retrieve things.

Rant #1723

What is the #1 problem facing baseball/track/cycling/football today?

I would say each sport looked the other way for about a decade as its athelets got dirtier and dirtier and dirtier with syringes and chemistry. There's plenty of blame to go around here. The athletes, the CEOs, and the commissioners all get a slice of Blame Pie. But so do fans like me who continue to follow these sports.

So was anyone else watching the World Series last night? If you didn't, the game began and the announcers spent about three innings discussing the notion that Detroit Tigers starting pitcher Kenny Rogers may have some illegal substance on his thumb. This is cheating of course. Pitchers doctoring balls is as old as the game itself. The real story is how passively the umpires investigated the issue.

And this goes back to baseball's habit of looking the other way rather than vigilantly make sure that its players are on the up and up and preserving the integrity of the game.

Click here for the rest of the story.

I have no idea if Kenny Rogers was cheating. It wouldn't surprise me either way. But this guy has the chance to polish off a very tarnished image, and so I was cheering for him. If the umpires had taken charge of the game and really inspected what Rogers had on his hand (instead of just asking him to wash it off--and destroy the evidence), there'd be no need to speculate. The story would be about his amazing post-season run, not whether or not he's a cheater.

The irony here (as pointed out in the article referenced above) is St. Louis' manager, Tony LaRussa, may have just been burned by a culture that looks the other way. But he spent a decade looking the other way in the Oakland A's clubhouse/steroid outlet mall. You sleep in the beds you make.

END RANT HERE

And the Hits Just Keep Coming and Coming

Those crazy teen-agers and twentysomethings have their myspace (I feel like an old fogie, but I still can't figure what the hell that whole myspace thing is about), and we thirtysomethings have blogs.

Two more blogs of note have been added to my generation's on-line canon.

The first comes from the shores of Lake Gicthe Gumee in Duluth, MN. One of the true highlights of Christmas for Emily and me is receiving the Christmas letter/update from our friends Jocelyn and her husband (I went to college with Husband), because Jocelyn's writing makes for a truly enteratining read. Now it's Christmas everyday she posts. Click here for a slice of Duluth life. As an aside, Duluth is on my shortlist of cities I'd live in besides the MPLS.

The second blog comes from Kirk, one of my friends from running. He is one of my teammates on the Bad News Bears cross country team I wrote about earlier. His blog is in its infancy, as he presently only blogs only after eating Jucy Lucies at Matt's. Anyway, click here to see his blog. Kirk is not only a very fast runner, but also a sarcastic jackass. Sound like anyone else's blog you are familiar with reading? The difference being Kirk is a faster runner than I am, but less obnoxious and sarcastic. As an aside, I went out with Kirk and some other guys last night at a local bar called The Cardinal. The Cardinal also has Jucy Lucies, but I find them to be very inferior to the greasy goodness that is a Matt's Jucy Lucy.

Back Seat Drivers

Like most people, I don't appreciate back seat drivers. But in this case, when we're road tripping with Pancho, I don't mind so much.

A Two Week Old Distant Memory

Yesterday we had this form of precipitation I call "Iowa." Iowa is a mixture of snow and rain and it usually comes with a lot of wind. It's crappy weather and until recently, I only saw it when I lived in Iowa. But now it seems to happen about twice a year up here in one of our lower 48's northern-most states. Consider it an inconvenient truth.

Anyway, thanks to all the wind and precipitation, the trees are barren and the ground is soggy. The crisp fall days that I love about Minnesota have been lacking.

It was only two weeks ago that I went for a walk with the dog with the sole purpose of taking in fall. Here is a picture of the footpath that goes along the Mississippi River near our house. It is ancient history now.

(Cross) Country Mike

I joined a cross country team this fall. We're like the Bad News Bears. There's a lot of very serious runners in the Twin Cities. Our team does not have any of them. Most of these teams are sponsored by shoe stores. We shop at shoe stores. That's where the similarities end.

Emily went to watch our race last weekend. She said it was fun because she forgot how fun cross country races are to watch, compared to road races. Mostly because you get to see a lot more of the race. But this experience is so far removed from high school or college cross country. And in many ways, it's a lot better. No long bus rides. No overnight trips. No anxiety about how I'll do or the team will do. It's also awesome because it is so much better than running those freaking long-ass races that are 10 miles or longer.



In fact, at last Sunday's race, we didn't have to show up until 9 a.m. So I got to "sleep in" (all the way to 7 a.m.), get up leisurely and have a relaxing breakfast reading the paper. I don't know why I ever want to run a marathon again.

The Most Outdated Rant of All Time...

was actually the rant that never was.

Actually, the most outdated rant of all time is a kid at work with Asperger's a few years back who had a rant about Ghostbusters II . He saw it as a serious monster movie, not as a crappy sequel, so I got an earful about all the flaws with Ghostbusters II and stopped the kid short of contrasting it to Alien. I wish it was "the rant that never was" because I was there. I had to listen to it.

But here is "the rant that never was." It has to do with the Men In Black and Will Smith's single that went with the movie (cleverly titled, "Men In Black"). For some reason I woke up this morning with the song stuck in my head, and have always been annoyed by the lines...

Here come the Men in Black
Galaxy defenders
Here come the Men in Black
The one's that you'll remember

I was annoyed because a) "galaxy defenders" sounds awkward, and b) a huge premise of the movie was that you DON'T remember the Men in Black. They make a point of making you forget all about them. This lyric has annoyed my for the lasst, what, nine years.

So I thought I'd blog about it and get it off my chest. So I went to a lyric website just now to cut and paste the lyrics, and here's what I found....

Here come the men in black men in black
Galaxy defenders oho oho oho
Here come the men in black men in black
They won't let you remember

Oops. Well written Mr. Smith. Sorry I wasn't listening closely. Now that I know better, your song is freaking modern day Shakespeare.

Time Machine

We adopted our dog Pancho when he was somewhere between 12 and 18 months old (it turns out my guess was as good as the vet's). Emily often asks and wonders what Pancho was like as a puppy. She adds that she never could have gotten anything done since he would have been too cute to stay away from for five seconds.

Anyway, last Friday I took some pictures of the fall colors along the Mississippi River near our house. Pancho went with me. And for some reason, in this picture below he looks like a puppy. Photoshop could not have done a better job of making Pancho look like a puppy. I don't know how it happened, and I don't think I could duplicate this picture ever again. I guess the old saying is true: it's better to be lucky than good/smart.

Who needs Photoshop when I have a Delorian, the flux capicitor, and 1.21 gigowatts of electricity?