NEWFLASH! Science Boiling In My Veins

Right now it's raining. Thundering in fact. I was driving home today, listening to the local sports radio station, when the DJ said right before a commercial break, something like, "Just so you know, there is a tornado warning for such and such counties (all of which were peripheral to the Twin Cities), so um, don't go outside if you live in these counties." Pretty sound advice. I get home and on the TV, as I predicted, was every single network affiliate running non-stop coverage about the weather. What the hell? Why does this storm only get a blurb on the radio, but it's freaking Pearl Harbor II on TV? Rhetorical question there, by the way.



My favorite quote occured when the weatherman was going on about some Little League kids out in the sticks who had to take cover in their dugout during the storm, and then added, "But this is nothing out of the ordinary. It's typical precautionary measures." Nothing out of the ordinary, but we'll talk about it for three hours anyway. Minnesotans pride themselves on being so hearty and how they live such a full life in spite of the weather. If this is the case, why is every drop of sunshine, rain, and snow accompanied by ten local newscasters? Sissies. In all fairness, this storm did have one tornado touch down, but this was two hours after I was watching TV.

What has affected me over the past 24 hours isn't so much the swing in climate, but the swing in my health (how's that for a transition?). Yesterday morning I woke up with a sore throat that was easily suppressed with a glass of grapefruit juice. But by noon I was aching and hot and cold at the same time. It had to be well over 80 degrees in my car all the way home, but it felt so good. I spent the evening wimpering and talking nonsense to Emily. I sent out two e-mails and made three phone calls and was completely wiped out. A child's fever in an adult's body is no fun. What was fun, was waking up completely healed this morning, depite needing a mallet-to-the-head last to get me to fall asleep. As of 6:30 a.m this morning, all flu symptoms were gone. I cooked the hell out of that flu in less than 18 hours.




Do I have superhuman powers here? Am I now a DC Superhero who belongs in the Hall of Justice? Maybe I could be Immune System Man! Well, maybe not. It looks like some jackass named Tim beat me to the punch a few months ago. Sneaky bastard. Maybe he can marry Immune System Woman. I can't tell how she looks from the outside, but she looks pretty good on the inside. And isn't what a person is like on the inside all that really counts? Geez, now that I think about it that way, this Immune System Woman is looking hotter and hotter. This weekend is my bachelor party and I've made a strict NO STRIPPERS rule. Thank God. Otherwise I'd probably be shouting "Show us your immune system!!" to the stripper, at which point (if she is clinically-minded and quite literal) she'd spit a loogie in my face. I'd just be getting what I asked for...

How to Boil a Frog

Or should I say how to boil a Freedom Amphibian?

As always, the latest article from The Consortium is definitely worth a read. It may preaching to the choir, for most people who read this blog. But it's extremely well-written and hopefully it will be one more dose of motivation to get us outraged enough to come together and make change. Towards the end there was a paragraph that summed it up best (but you really should read the entire article anyway):

If the American people don’t demand accountability for the lies that led to war, a new political paradigm may be created. Bush may conclude that he is free to make any life-or-death decision and then unleash his conservative allies to manipulate the facts and intimidate the opposition. By inaction, the American people may be sleepwalking down a path that takes them into a land controlled by lies, delusion and fear.

Two weekends ago I did a phone interview for moveon.org. They paired me with a complete stranger. We were given ten or so questions to ask each other and then reported our results to moveon. In the 90 minutes we were talking, this guy (who is far more left-leaning than I am) also summed things up well. He said if you want to boil a frog, you slowly turn up the heat, from room temperature to boiling and the frog won't feel the rising temperature. But if you drop him in boiling water from the start, he'll hop right out. Hopefully, you are brighter than I was two weeks ago and don't need this metaphor explained any further. I feel the heat rising in this country, as does everyone else in my social circles. What about the rest of the country. Will enough people feel the heat before it's too late?

The Civil Rights Movement keeps coming to mind. Will it come to that? I wasn't alive back then, I'm as white as they get, and I come from a pretty sheltered background. So perhaps it's insulting to suggest whatever beefs I have about the Bush Regime are on the same page as slavery and the century of Jim Crow that followed. But what will it take for change to occur? I heard a story on my drive home from work today about the 50th Anniversary of the Baton Rouge Bus Boycott (and if you're like me, you probably never knew Baton Rouge inspired the Montgomery bus boycott). It's a pretty inspirational story. African-Americans who had cars gave free rides (to and from work) for those who didn't have cars during the boycott.

But what struck me was the quote from a boycotter who said, "When we started we didn't start to end segregation on buses. We just started to get seats." Of course their protest had a huge domino effect, even if that was not its initial ambition. So what is on our horizon? Is Election Day 2004 our only hope for change? Or can a more effective domino fall between now and then? It's time to look to our recent past for inspiration! How much hotter does it have to get?

Spurs rule!!!

Okay so the 1999 title will always be the sweetest, and this year's playoff run never had a true climax, like a Memorial Day Miracle to hang our memories on. But Tim Duncan's dominance will be hard to forget anytime soon. And so will David Robinson's last game as a Spur. However, the fact that he wins the title ON FATHER'S DAY for his last game of his career, makes you wonder if the fix is in.

Regardless, Spurs rule once again. I don't know if it's because I'm not 12 or because I don't live in San Antonio (or within 10 miles of anyone who cares about the NBA), but I feel pretty detached from the whole excitement. Malik Rose, Duncan, Parker, Robinson, and Kerr are all guys I really love to cheer for. But it's not the same as when I was a kid and adolescent. This is a good thing, since I don't throw stuff (like hammers and full cups of pop) at the TV anymore.

Obviously, my ability to supress the need to throw objects at the TV is a function of age. But my relative detachment from the title run? That's geography. I can't tell you how happy I am the Spurs won the title, but nearly not as happy as a bunch of San Antonio nuns. And my money says I wouldn't be as nutty as Rolando Garcia, and I wouldn't pray as much as the nuns. Even so, my emotional investment and subsequnt reaction would have been at the level of both the sisters and the esteemed Mr. Garcia. See for yourself and read Championship City (San Antonio Express-News), a story about the city's post-game celebration. Excerpts include:

"I'm going downtown, I'm going to get butt-naked," Rolando Garcia, 18, announced as he emerged from a house and headed for the Riverwalk."

And then later in the story...

At Our Lady of the Lake Convent, there was no fear when the Spurs trailed at the half.

"When we lose the first half, we win the second," said Sister Eileen Klein.

Klein, who wore her Spurs cap backwards, was one of about 17 Sisters of Divine Providence who gathered before the big screen TV for the championship game.

Then, when the Spurs took the lead for the first time in the fourth quarter Sister Alexandrine Gieniec said, "The Carmelites are praying, and Sister Boniface is on it from Heaven."

Sister Mary Boniface O'Neill, known as the Mother Teresa of San Antonio and founder of the Healy-Murphy Center, died in April.

As the Spurs rallied, Sister Jane Ann Slater got up and led cheers, chanting "D-A-V-I-D," and "S-P-U-R-S."

Sister Clair Osborn, whose bedroom looks a bit like a teenager's with a crush on the Spurs, said her dream is to have David Robinson stop by the convent to show off his championship ring.

At the game's close, Sister Clair said she was sure divine providence played a part in the game.

"I just know it was the prayers," she said. "I am happy for David. I wanted him to go out a winner."

Don't Mess With Texas

With all the backwards politics and Bushies, it's easy to forget that Texas has a few things going for it. Let me count the ways:

1. The Spurs. How about David Robinson stealing Kenyon Martin's pass last night and Steve Kerr lighting it up again in the fourth quarter? What a great way for these guys to end their respective careers. I'll miss being able to cheer for them next year. But with or without them, Spurs rule! And this series they've been ruling ugly, but we'll take it.

2. The Ardmore 53. It's not likely the Daughters of the Republic of Texas will turn the Ardmore Holiday Inn or Denny's into a shrine to freedom, like they did to the Alamo. Maybe I'm being to partisan here, but it was nice to see some Democrats stand up to the GOP.

3. The music. I used to be able to listen to KEEP up here in Minnesota, thanks to the internet. Ironically, the only way I could pick it up in San Antonio was on a clear night in a car or truck.

But sadly, the FCC cut back on radio stations that could broadcast over the internet a few years back, and I am no longer able to get Texas Rebel Radio up here anymore. :(

But iTunes now has Gruene With Envy (GWE) as one its internet radio stations we can listen to, which I assume is coming out of Gruene, Texas. I am sure you can listen to GWE on a PC as well, but I don't know how (try their webpage). I've been listening to GWE for about half a week now, and I've heard a lot of Texas musicians: Steve Earle, Townes Van Zandt, Robert Earle Keene, Lyle Lovett, Bob Wills, Willie Nelson, and Dixie Chicks (which is the only top 40 band I've heard to date).


However, GWE is no Texas Rebel Radio. But beggars can't be choosers, so it will have to do. That said, I do have three main complaints. From biggest to smallest they are:
a) There is no DJ and the website doesn't have a "Now Playing" feature so sometimes, when I like a song I've never heard before and don't recognize the artist, I have no way of finding out who I am listening to. It's vey annoying.
b) They are prone to playing a few too many shit-kicker, dime-a-dozen rockabilly songs than I need to hear. Ditto for cheesy country ballads. But for the most part the playlist is solid.
c) GWE has some strange affinity towards covers. Right now I'm listening to Robert Earle Keene cover James McMurtry's "Levelland." It's acoustic and nowhere near as riveting as the original song. I've also heard someone do an acoustic cover (I have no idea who) Son Volt's "Windfall" and someone cover Willie ("Whiskey River"). It's very strange.

Anyway, the emphasis is certainly Texas artists, but they play other bands as well. I've heard Whiskeytown (speaking of Whiskey) and Tom Petty, for example. All in all, it's the best thing to happen to the internet since Emily's blog!!!

The Quarry Then and Now

Is there a Twin Cities equivalent to the Quarry Market? Take a look at the stores they have. It's nothing like the warehouse district.

The Quarry Market is more like Block E and Target in downtown Minneapolis, but even more suburbanesque.

Instead of forcing city people to the suburbs, The Quarry Market has forced the suburbs into the city. I have relatively little problem with the gentrification and/or renewel of warehouse districts and other dead zones in the city. That's capitalism at work and postive urbanization. But the quarry has been paved over, not renovated. And they didn't put in hip housing, theaters, and bars, like they have done in Minneapolis' warehouse districts. Instead there is a premium golf course and a Thomas Kinkade gallery to peruse in the Quarry market.

Thomas fucking Kinkade!!! I used to work with a lady who'd bitch about paying $7 to see action movies because they were run-of-the-mill and unrealistic, but had no problem forking hundreds (thousands?) of dollars for mass produced paintings of STRUCTURALLY IMPOSSIBLE houses. I guess irony wasn't taught in the Burnsville school district.

What is so surpising to me about San Antonio is, missions aside, the lost history. In the Twin Cities this kind of history would be preserved (even if it's not restored). There'd be books, documentaries, and museum exhibits about a site like the quarry and Cementville. But no one has done anything like Twin Cities: Then and Now and Lost Twin Cities in South Texas. Is there a Texan Larry Millet out there? San Antonio is twice as old as Minneapolis but where is the history, besides the Alamo and the missions? Who wants to unearth and bring to life the real stories of San Antonio (the ones I don't know)? Does someone out there want to compare the pictures of today's South Texas to the ones from 100, 50, and 25 years ago?

After reading Justin's comments, I did a web search on the quarry and Cementville. At first I thought this was the first time Google ever let me down. But then I realized, the problem was Google has nothing to find. The web has 1000 pages about how to blanche green beans, but I'll be damned if anyone's posted a site about Cementville. I did learn a Trinity University student made a documentary about the place (may be worth looking into) and a story about one Cementville resident (not to be confused with Cementville, IN). It looks like you could be a primary source, Justin.

Odds and ends...

A few bits and pieces.

1. I know the comment feature on this blog sucks. If you want to leave a long reply (which makes my day), you have to do so over several comments (like Matt did in the last blog). You get what you pay for. I have the free download from Backblog, which means they limit how long each comment can be. When I comment, I write everything out in MS Word and then cut and paste the text into the comment section. It can be infuriating to write a long comment out and then have nothing to show for it.

2. I can't believe I haven't talked about the Spurs yet! I guess the excitement isn't the same as in 1999. First because they hadn't ever won the title before in 1999. But also, the Memorial Day Miracle kind of made that entire playoff run magical. And this Nets/Spurs series has been PAINFUL to watch.

3. To the likes of "L-Dawg" and some other ladies who complain about the dull content and length of my blog: ya'll can kiss my hairy jackassalope!!! Here's a thought, L-Dawg: Why don't you actually do something with your blog, instead of cluttering up the internet and hogging a domain name? What if some poor little 8 year-old kid couldn't wait to start her own blog. It was her life's dream to start her own "Dudes With Perms" blog. But noooooo, some bloghog took the domain name and is doing nothing with it! You're a mean lady. Any of you San Antonio peeps know if Lyndsay is Spanish for "Selfish Child-Dream Stealer Beeeeeeaaaatch"?

Jackassalope Book Review

The inspiration for my bolg-before-last stems in part, from the fact that I was half-way through Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation by John Phillip Santos. This book is about three years old. I discovered when I was visting my family back in San Antonio. It was part of a big stack of books my mom was ready to get rid of. I also found, in surfing the web for this entry, that Places Left Unfinished was nominated for the 1999 National Book Award (non-fiction).

The book wasn't really grounded in one time or place, which I thought was fitting. No matter how much we want to appear or believe otherwise, are any of us as grounded as we want to be?

I kind of felt like a ghost drifting through this guy's family history. I really enjoyed it; but it definitely got in my head. It was disconcerting at times. There is this eerie distance between John Santos the author and John Santos the character. Every life event and memory was fodder for poetic prose and postulating, but there was never any room for emotions like sorrow and anger or any confusion. It just made it all so damn foggy and dreamlike. And I was absorbed through it all.

Santos writes a lot about being Mexican-American and what it has done to his famiy history. He also ties it into a shrinking Mexican culture. There is such a depressing contrast between his images of the 1960s San Antonio (and what it meant to be Mexican-American back then) and the San Antonio I grew up in or, even worse, the San Antonio I go to visit today. For me, The Quarry Market is the poster child for paving over the past.



But I grew up on the mighty whitey side of town, and can't even pretend to know what it's like to feel the whitewashing that may be going on throughout the rest of the city. So Places Left Unfinished gave me a perspective I could not have seen on my own.

But what did resonate with me was the search for the essence of people and life in the past. This guy is lamenting he can't retrieve the essence of his family from two generations ago, and I can't bring back two decades ago. Of course, what is richer, and more vital? What is more tragic of a loss? The pulse of a culture and heritage that seems to be slipping and McAmericanized, or my own personal memories of the stretch between Vandiver and Amesbury on the street I grew up on?

I hope everyone gives this book a read, especially those who have a feel for San Antonio. Even if your San Antonio, like mine, is limited to the North side, and the "sheltered enclaves of Olmos Park, whey they got their own police force so you can stay out way past dark" (another James McMurtry quote).

Speaking of quotes, I'll close with a quote I really liked from Places Left Unfinished. There are so many passages like this that have haunted me, even as I go on reading other books and magazines.

"Our vast galaxy is itself in perpetual motion, spiraling further outward into the chill vacuum that creation first exploded into. We have left our past--the journeys, marriages, and deaths along the way, all the bowls of menudo--scattered randomly across those vast arcs and loops, traced through millions of years, spun out across the void. This was our invisible momentum, always carrying us further from the source of our stirring."

Cornering the Political Ice Cream Market

File this one under: So Bizarre You Can't Make It Up. Perhaps it's fitting that I read this story as I was flying to that liberal hotbed of the Left Coast, San Francisco. It turns out there is a new ice cream company that is trying to counter Ben and Jerry's far left ice cream with some good old fashioned GOP ice cream. Their logic being, why should the Left monopolize the gourmet ice cream market?

Half the fun has been trying to come up with their next flavor. It turns out some people have already beaten us to the punch. See for yourself at Star Spangled Ice Cream's website. Are there any other flavors they haven't thought of? How about "I Spent Two Years in Camp X-Raisin Nut Butter (And All I Got Was This Stupid Orange T-Shirt)?" Or "N-R-aisin Nut Butter?" Is Raisin Nut Butter even an ice cream flavor or am I making that up too? How about Chocolate Supreme Court Gave Me the Presidency?" Or Strawberry the First Ammendment?" Have I forgotten any?



Oh yeah, one big advantage Ben and Jerry's has over Star Spangled Ice Cream: $76 for a gallon of ice cream--and that's our only option? Seventy-six freaking dollars??? Aren't Republcans supposed to have better business sense then a couple of burned out hippies from Vermont?

The Faded Smell of Memory

There's a line from a James McMurtry song that has always stuck in my head since I first processed it. I don't know the name of the song, but it's on "Where'd You Hide the Body." Anyway, he has a line in this song about waking up in a world where everything was "like the streets of a town where I lived when I was too young to drive." Everything is familiar, but nothing has a name. The story of my world is the opposite: the names and facts from my past remain, but the essence is gone.

I am always amazed by people who can relive and bring to life people and episodes from their past (both major and trivial). I am marrying one of those people, and we happen to live four blocks from where she grew up. So for her, the past and her childhood are as real as the streets we walk and drive on. Things are a bit foggier for me.

Odors, more than any other sense, are supposedly the best at rekindling memories and their associated emotion. If I remember my grad school neurology correctly, it's because the olfactory cortex and hippocampus are neighbors. So, in the past month, I got a wiff of a Port-A-Potty and suddenly had the nervous energy I got before running the 5k in a college track meet, some window cleaner at work made me feel like I was in an ex-girlfriend's bathroom, and the smell of fresh leaves on our deck had me re-living my first summer out of college.




The point to all of this: these remote memories are all no more than 11 years old. Where have I stored years 1 through 20 of my life?

I bring this up because I am going to San Francisco this weekend, where I lived for a summer with my dad (when I was somewhere between seven and nine years old). And I have fond, vague memories of the place. But I remember the facts well: going to my first baseball game ever (A's vs. Mariners), The Exploritorium, playing with a dog named Heather, and completing multi-day long games of Monopoly with my grandma. All very specific memories, no doubt, but their essence is gone. Remembering these facts are no different than remembering that John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln or that the Golgi bodies are organelles at the cellular level that prepare enzymes for secretion. They are just facts that I can recall that, as far as I can tell, have no real effect on me. I would like to think that I am more attached to my past than the facts that I remember from 9th grade biology.

I lost close family members and a very close friend since I moved to the Twin Cities. It scares me to think that one day my memories of them will fade away like my lost feelings for my first car, elementary school auditorium, and even my childhood kitchen. Who knows, maybe once I get to the Bay Area, see Fisherman's Wharf and go to the Exploritorium all these memories will come flooding back and suddenly I will be whole again.

Nothing new under the sun

Today Emily and I went for a Memorial Day bike ride with two friends of ours. We rode our bikes on county roads near Afton, MN, which is on the St. Croix river, and borders Wisconsin. I had my bike tuned up last year and, 12 months later, I have finally used it. As we rode out of Afton, I saw alternating "Liberate Iraq" and "NO WAR ON IRAQ" signs, as if I were biking through south Minneapolis (of course in South Minneapolis, the ratio is more 2:1 for Don't Attack vs. Liberate and it is more like 1:1 in Afton).


Anyway, as we were biking out of town there was a dead/dying tree in someone's front yard that had been painted red, white, and blue, at the base, with the upper two thirds of the tree painted to be the Statue of Liberty. One day, I'll get a nice digital camera and take a picture of things like this tree, just like Gabe Chavez does. But for now, you are stuck with my description. Regardless, it is safe to say a dead tree/Statue of Liberty isn't exactly what I would want in my front yard. However, it was a refreshing change from the cookie cutter McHomes that we drove past in Woodbury and Maplewood on I-94 on our way to Afton.


So for the rest of my bike ride, on this Memorial Day, I got to thinking, how many Vets, on a daily basis, see or experience something that makes them say, "I went to war, killed people, and my friends died for my country in (insert country I have never been to here). And my buddies died for this bullshit?!?!?!?!!" My guess is that it actually happens less than I expect. But I have to wonder, what would be most likely to prompt a heroic Vet to think such a thing? Would it be...

a) the cookie-cutter subdivisions of Woodbury

b) the Statue of Liberty tree

or c) Me and my three 20-30 something friends driving 30 miles to bike around some farm land, eat ice cream, and complain about how long it took for me to get my chicken tender sandwich, or talk about how much it sucks that I have to go into work today to get caught up on some report writing. All this on Memorial Day.

I am pretty sure answer might be c).


Safe to say, I am one of many spoiled generations. And if 9/11 wasn't enough to wake us up for more than a few months as to how good we have it, I don't know what will--other than all of us going through a half-decade or more of war. Maybe we need the casualties of war we honor today to be our own classmates, friends, and spouses before Memorial Day really means anything to us. And I don't know if I should feel that, just because I wrote this blog, I now adequately appreciate those who have died in war.


But I did see one other noteworthy scene during our Afton trip. An old man, easily in his late 70s, drove his riding lawn mower down Afton's main street and into the ice cream parlor parking lot. It was like watching the sequal to The Straight Story (great movie by the way). Then he hobbled his way into the parlor and came out with a cup of coffee. He had one of the most labored gaits I have ever seen. He sat on the porch by himself and drank his coffee. I assume he was going to ride his mower back home when he was done. If he's not a Vet himself, I'm sure a lot of guys who are would say, "Now there's an American worth fighting for."

My Own Private Office Space

Everyone probably has a moment from the movie Office Space he or she can identify with. For me, it has nothing to do with cubicle life, but sharing a name with a celebrity (like Michael Jordan or George Michael). Of course, in Office Space, it is Michael Bolton whom I identify with.

While Office Space's Michael Bolton has his name usurped by Michael Bolton and his achy-breaky heart, Mike Nawrocki of VeggieTales has stolen my name.

For those who don't know, Veggie Tales is a Christian-themed cartoon for kids, complete with singing cucumbers, BIG carrots and, I don't know what else, dancing Jicama I guess. All of this is just fine. No skin off my nose, except for the fact that about once a month someone will ask me if I am the creator of Veggie Tales.


My friend Zander and I thought I should come up with my own cartoon: a Veggie Tales knock off called Fruit Stories. A cartoon all about gay fruit, written by, that's right, Mike Nawrocki. The show stealer in every episode, of course, would be Dirty Banana. Zander's goal is to get a Cease and Desist letter from my namesake's lawyer. My goal, of course, is to make millions off of the concept of gay apples. I mean, is that any weirder than a Bible thumping yellow squash?

The Greatest Idea Ever...

Big carrots are out. They went out with the Lakers dynasty. Gabe's Big Carrot Revolution has had a sudden death. An old high school friend of mine, Matt the Hatt sent me to Pie in a Jar. The Jar-O-Pie Movement begins today! Gabe, it was fun while it lasted, but the Big Carrot Revolution just had its legs cut out from under it by Montana Tom and his grandma. Unless, Mr. Chavez, you can show me how to support our troops with big carrots.

My Baby Carrot Araby

One last thought about the whole baby carrot vs. big carrot debacle. For years I have always left it up to my imagination to figure out how baby carrots are made. That way I could still hold out hope that they were somehow cultivated by Smurfs and then shipped to the human-world.

Or more likely, maybe the process involves a cool domino-stlye conveyer belt and even robots!!! Think of something in between the UK Honda Accord ad (thanks for the link Zander!) and the mini donut machines they have at state and county fairs.

If we could only be so lucky. It turns out the process is as earthly as processing potatoes into French, I mean Freedom Fries. How disappointing. I guess that's yet another reason why big carrots rule over baby carrots. With big carrots, what you see is what you get, from the carrot cradle to the carrot grave. No room for disillusionment.

SPURS RULE!!

Go Spurs Go!!

Or as some in my family say, GO SPUPS GO!! Well, Justin was kinda right. The Spurs did beat the pinche Lakers, but it sure was scary and not real reassuring. I liked (Spurs head coach) Greg Popovich's quote, "When we figure out how to stop someone in the fourth quarter, or score in the fourth quarter, we're going to be dangerous."

I don't know if I have the cojones to watch the game tomorrow night. How about all you other Spups fans out there... Will you be watching the game?

The Big Carrot Revolution Finds Its Legs

Emily just posted a blog that may lead to further tensions between the US and Canada. It seems some Canadian friend of hers is undermining the movement sprung by the big carrot visionary Gabe Chavez.

I'm proud to be an American, so I'm not about to trample on another North American's freedom of speech. But I will say this:The Cannuck is arguing that baby carrots are superior to big carrots due to a convenience factor. That is absurd and I already adressed this in Emily's blog.

But Emily does raise an interesting issue about the origin of baby carrots. If you are debating with a friend as to whether or not baby carrots are simply whittled down big carrots, or acutually carrots in their infant stage, it turns out, you are both right. And Emily, you may be wrong about the nutritional superiority of big carrots (the real issue may be peeled vs. unpeeled carrots).

I agree with Justin...

We're less than an hour away from game 5!!! And I agree the Spurs need to put the hurt on Los Pinche Lakers !!! GO SPURS!!!

By the way, what's up with my font's multi-personality disorder?

Throwing the Baby Carrots Out with the Dish Water

A couple weeks ago I went to the Powderhorn Park May Day Parade. And what I remember from that day wasn't the crazy bikes, but that my new friend Gabe was eating a carrot old-school style. And I mean Oooooold school. Forget that Baby Carrot Fad that defined the 90s or the 80s peel-your-carrots-first rage that swept the country. Gabe was eating an old-fashioned whole, unpeeled, but washed carrot. Retro cool.

Emily pointed out that this is probably the environmentally correct thing to do (less carrot waste). It also may be healthier as much of the nutrients are in the peel, she said. I'm not so sure about that last part, but she is getting a PhD. in publc health. So who am I to question? Even so, it looks like the jury is till out on the health issue of baby vs. whole carrots. For any of Emily's peers, maybe there's a lame dissertation idea for you. Or maybe I'm insulting you by assuming that the health benefits of whole and baby carrots even falls under the field of Epidemiology. Maybe I should quit while I'm ahead.

So today, for the first time in years, I ate a whole, unpeeled carrot at lunch, rather than my usual 12 baby carrots. It ruled! Whole carrots dominate big time over baby carrots. What the hell have I been thinking all these years??? Everyone needs to jump Gabe's Whole Carrot Bandwagon!!!!

Spurs vs. Lakers

Yesterday was another dark gloomy Mother's Day for Spurs' fans everywhere. Once again the Spurs lost to the mighty and mightily arrogant Lakers in their typical choke-like fashion. Over the years I have become used to these things. Save for Sean Elliott's Memorial Day Miracle. So maybe I'm whining a bit too much here; but you must realize, I have been a Spurs fan for as long as I can remember . Which means the Lakers have been a thorn in my side for as long as I can remember. Oh well. Off to bed. I need to tackle the world's speech problems tomorrow.

Much ablog about nothing

This like attempt #5 at starting my own personal blog. I start one up and then, eight hours later when I go to work on my blog, I have forgetten my password and/or username. So now I have like 78 active accounts at Blogger , so I'm sure they're getting sick of sendng me eight daily "Welcome to Blogger !" e-mails. Anyway, I hope to get this one up and running. In the meantime, there are some more evolved blogs out there to enjoy. In fact, it was Emily's , Rachel's , and Gabe's blogs that made me want to start my own.

And now I think I need to get going and head out to Minnetonka. My friend Mike got a one week demo game from Sony to test on his PS2. He gets them all the time, but this time he got Everquest, which as you may know, is infamous for creating Everquest addicts. I left Mike's at 2:30 a.m. and our conversation had regressed to Mike, with the PS2 in his lap occasionally looking up from his big screen TV, to say "Check me out Rocco!" or "Dude I just cast a spell on a snake!" Nice work Mike. Anyway, I better get out to his place and make sure his marriage is still intact.