Klowns in my Koffee

Daily Kup (My Life as a Gainfully Unemployed Person)
Our big project today was getting Attila the Son and Princess Potatohead ready for a week-long visit with Grandma and Grandma at their vacation timeshare in the Wisconsin Dells. As an explanation for non-Midwesterners, the Dells is a homegrown tourist area complete with duckboat rides, mini-golf, and tens of water parks each claiming to be the world's largest. There is a fudge shop about every fifteen feet. In short, it's great fun.

We're kind of worried that, with the kids gone, we'll actually have to talk with each other. This could be challenging but -- hey, who knows? -- it might even catch on.

Odd Little Beans
On the way to the rendezvous point with Grandma, there is an intriguing display. On the west side of Highway 52 just south of the small city of Coates sits a unique sculpture garden on the side yard of a trucking firm. I have passed this site for years and marveled at the strength of the images. At first, it looks like an explosion of rocks and hardware in a strange farmyard. The reward is in the closer examination.

The so-called legitimate journalism world is often dismissive of bloggers, even the ones like Matt Drudge who consistently scoop the news services. There's a justification for some of the animosity in the existence of the mommy-bloggers and, even worse, the cat-bloggers. These terms are invective heaped on the fire by trained journalists and there's just enough truth to be painful. I use the 'Next Blog' link in the nav bar to troll through twenty or so new blogs every day for inspiration and tips. It's an interesting game of chance and discovery.

Sometimes I fall into a grouping of blogs that is page after page of the same drooling infant taken from every angle including some best left alone. But, hey, use your free speech for whatever pleases you. The cat people are less forgivable. We have two cats and they are complete members of our weird little family. That being said, there's a woman in the blogosphere who writes her blog as her cat. This wouldn't be all that annoying except that she has hundreds of followers and is peddling the book version of her first few years of posts. Her posts read like this; "I climbed on the granite kitchen counters again even though Mommy yells at me. They feel so delightfully cool on my pads. Well, time for my nap." Some days, she lazes out and posts the same old picture of the cat. It's an elderly cat and may have even died in the RW ("real world") since she's been writing this blog for a few years. In cyberspace, he is immortal. (In space, no one can hear you purr?) In fact, he is going to have to live on or the woman's cash cow cat is at an end.

Despite this build-up, I'm mommy-blogging today. All my children have attended the same preschool and so this relationship has lasted more than twenty years and tens of thousands of dollars. Princess Potatohead will spend the last month before kindergarten at home and so we said a final, tearful good-bye to the school today. She may be ready for kindergarten, but T and I aren't.

Daily Kup (My Life as a Gainfully Unemployed Person)
I spent some time on this gorgeous day at the library researching material for the children's book that I am writing with my son. Between last night's meeting with a local published children's author for tips and advice and the results of today's research, it looks like we have potential.

I read a large number of children's books today. This is the sort of thing that could affect your mind if you did it every day.

The following is not an example of the type of book I am writing ... for children.

Klowns In My Koffee is delighted to feature a warm and humorous essay by frequent commenter and good friend, Corsair09. This work was previously published in his blog, Corsair's Place: Mundane Observations of the Stunningly Banal, and re-published with his permission.



Of Zeppelins and Physics
I find myself thinking about my Dad a lot these days. He died more than ten years ago, but I still feel his presence in my life. This could be due to the fact that my son now sleeps in the room on the family farm where he grew up. Or it could be due to my latent interest in motorcycles and other machinery. But mostly, I feel his watchful gaze on me when I do something really stupid.

You may remember I mentioned in an earlier blog that my father ran a scrap yard. This is a wonderful/terrible place for a kid to spend time. As I relate some of the things I did as a kid to my wife, she is ever more convinced that I should not have survived to adulthood. One such incident was the Zeppelin experiment.

“Steve” was a friend of mine and we shared some similar interests. One day, when we were about ten or eleven years old, we decided to re-enact the crash of the Hindenburg. After school, we went to the local dime store and purchased one of those SUPER-sized balloons that you used to be able to buy. These things were huge. When fully inflated, they were about six feet long and perhaps three feet in diameter. They cost a whole dollar and were worth every penny. We then took the monster balloon to “The Shop,” as my Dad’s junkyard was called, and after a careful look around for unwanted witnesses, began to inflate the balloon with propane from the cutting torch. After several minutes, the balloon began to take shape and was quite a sight to see. We were so excited by the success of this mission that we had not given much thought to the method of detonating our new blimp. After a brief discussion with my co-conspirator, we tied off the now massive balloon and I went to get one of my precious M-80s and a roll of duct tape.

At this point in my narrative, I would like to take a moment and say a few words about explosives. The 1970’s were the last, great golden age for fireworks. In those halcyon days, if a kid had connections, he could amass enough firepower to blast a train tunnel through the Rockies. Today, the children of America are reduced to waving ineffectual sparklers and watching those black carbon “snakes” wiggle their way across driveways of suburbia. This is pitiful. Not to sound like a curmudgeon, but in my day, there was a certain Darwinian elegance about fireworks. A stupid kid would blow himself up, or at the very least lose some fingers early on in his experimentation with explosives, and that would be that. Future potential mates could then tell simply by looking that this kid would not make a good husband and father, because if they can’t get the mechanics of lighting a firecracker down, God help them when it comes time to run a lawn mower or fix a car.

OK. Got that off my chest. Anyway, there we were affixing the method of destruction to the flank of our makeshift Zeppelin. We had visions of the great beast rising majestically into the air and then bursting into flame high over our heads, just like in the old newsreel of the real Hindenburg. In fact, we began to worry about just how high the balloon might rise before exploding. We didn’t want the whole town to see our little experiment, for we felt sure that others just would not understand our particular brand of genius, and might attempt to stop our efforts to expand science. Therefore, we decided that the fuse of the M-80 should be shortened somewhat to reduce the risk of high altitude detonation.

All was ready. The balloon was filled to maximum capacity with propane. M-80 was attached and waiting. I struck a match and lit the fuse and told Steve to, “Let her go!” The great beast wallowed in the freshening breeze, and then…

…began to sink to our feet.

Up to that point, it had never occurred to us that unlike hydrogen, propane was heavier than air. We looked at each other. The same cold look of realization was etched on our young faces. We ran. We ran like no two kids have ever run before. We must have covered a good twenty feet when a loud “BANG-WHUMP” erupted behind us. I felt the wave of heat race up my back. Hairs on the nape of my neck curled. We threw ourselves into the tall grass of the ditch on the far side of the road and covered our heads, expecting a massive fireball to engulf us at any moment. For long seconds, I lay there thinking to myself that I really hadn’t had a bad life, if a bit short, and if I had to die, it was at least in the cause of science. After a time, we realized that we were not bound for the next world and looked over the edge of the ditch. No trace remained of our ill-fated airship. Not even a scorch mark remained to testify to its brief existence. Steve suddenly decided that he was probably needed at home for chores and left the scene as fast as his Schwinn would carry him.

I went to put the torch back in the shop and saw my Dad leaning against the door. He had been watching for some time, I think. Why he let us carry on with our experiment I have no idea. The look he gave me was one of amusement. “That was kinda dumb, don’t you think?” he said. “Yeah, I guess it was.” It was all I could say. He looked down at me. “Are you gonna do that again?” he asked. “No sir,” says I. A few moments pass. “Good,” he says. “Put the torch away and let’s get you home for dinner.”

He has been gone for ten years. I still feel his eyes on me when I do something stupid though. “That was dumb. You gonna do that again?” I seem to hear. And when I do, I smile and whisper to myself, “No sir.”

~~Corsair09

Daily Kup (My Freelance Life)
Today's temperature was described throughout the country at 6 PM by all the guys like Weatherman Chip in Channel 22's Big Backyard ("Your weather eye in the sky") using only three adjectives repeatedly:  sultry, torrid and sweltering.  These are terrific words and they are only used in this situation ... or in movie reviews of Angelina Jolie or the early Kathleen Turner.  I wish one of the weather chipmunks would look directly into the camera, rip off his striped JC Penney tie, and tell us what we know in our souls:  It's freakin' hot out there.

We don't have air conditioning.  That's a simplification, actually.  We have an air conditioning unit and it generates sufficient cold air to cool the house to a comfortable level.  Unfortunately, it dumps cold water on the basement floor at the rate of about a bucket every 15 minutes.  A few years ago, this relieved me of having to figure out what to do with a few thousand dollars' worth of college engineering textbooks.  I'd been holding onto their obsolete little carcasses until life gave me a little nudge  by having them float past me.  Also a nice rug and some clothes for a skinnier me.  "Don't get so attached," the river called to me as I tried to beat the life out of it with a mop.  Until I dig the channel for the swimming pool, I guess we are going to perspire on days like today.

In the early evening, I met some old Porkus friends for a drink.  One of our dwindling group is transferring to another Porkus branch closer to his ancestral home.  This is such a set-up for a line about 'out of the flying pan and into the fire' that even I can't go for the easy laugh.  The devil that sits on one of my shoulders -- really ,,, I'd have it removed except it would leave a scar -- was wringing its hands and screaming, "Run, friend, as far and as fast as you can!"  The angel on the other shoulder was sure that this would all work out really swell in the end.  [The angel is an imbecile who told me the same dog-eared nonsense during the last five soul-sucking years.  Bad baseless optimist.  Bad.  Bad.]

But it was absolute fun in the real sense of the word to see the guys again.  At the end, there was something of that yellow glow as the scene faded and the narrator cut in all grown up to remind us that there will never be another time like that again when you and I and River Phoenix walked down the railroad tracks to see that dead body and came back older and wiser.  And that is truly a fitting end to the Porkus story.

Brewing Fresh Tomorrow
A new chapter for Klowns In My Koffee starts tomorrow.  Of the many, many things that I've learned in the last 122 days of listening and reflecting, one of the most striking is the enormous talent of the people with whom I am lucky enough to share this planet.  Going forward, I will attempt to bring these talented voices into our growing community by featuring their work whenever possible.

Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with Corsair09, a commenter whose wickedly funny and informative entries have added spice, sizzle and a scifi master's touch.  When you read those comments, don't you just want to meet the author?  Corsair09 has generously allowed me access to the original content he produced for his blog, now lapsed from active publishing.  Stop back tomorrow to read a superb essay on fathers, sons, fireworks and lasting lessons called "Of Zeppelins and Physics."  It's so good, you'll swear you can hear Richard Dreyfus as the narrator.

Last Drop

Daily Kup (Literally, this time)
The blessed people at Caribou Coffee sell a medium cup of their Coffee of the Day for $1 on Mondays. This makes Monday a wonderful day for those of us who are cheap, caffeine-deficient, and behind schedule on their projects.

I have two large projects looming: the siding repair/external painting of my house and a garage sale planned to remove ephemera while creating profit. Neither project is chunking along as planned and both need a ton of work, inspiration and luck. And a great big cup of coffee.

Beans and Hot Water
Yesterday, we found an archived voicemail that brought back memories of an unusual and unfortunately still open chapter in our family's checkered history. My husband thought that I had blogged this long ago. He doesn't read the blog regularly and harbors a suspicion that I follow him around to document any ineptitude on his part. Yes, that's my reason for being. Please don't tell.

Five-year-old Princess Potatohead (or Potatoehead to you, Dan Quayle) has thrown a panicked screaming fit each and every time that a faucet has been turned on for the last year. This is 20% of her life and is starting to feel like a significant portion of mine as well. There is only one person in the house who is now allowed to run the bath water. It is a sacred mantle that I wear with pride. Like a Japanese tea ceremony, there are elaborate nuances. The water pourer's eyes must never leave the incoming flow. If one attempts something silly like stepping out of the room for a moment, the Princess attaches herself to the doorframe like a psychotic spider monkey while yelling at the top of her lungs and barring all passage. Water must never go higher than the top of the knee of a child seated in the tub with outstretched legs.

How did this all start? Almost exactly one year ago, my husband decided to tighten the knob on a bathtub faucet that spun annoyingly with minimal purchase while the showerer crouched in frustration below, attempting to get the correct temperature through force of will. Later, he would explain that it was a simple enough task that it was unnecessary to turn off the water supply. Later than that, it would become clear that this was a convenient excuse. But I digress.

I was at work at the time of the great restaging of Genesis. Reconstruction and witness accounts imply that while chanting "Righty-Tighty, Lefty-Loosey," my husband may have nudged the valve outward one rotation too far. The valve retaliated by launching itself directly and forcefully into his face. The impact threw him backward in a tub made even more slippery by the gush of water coming out of the wall. One's natural inclination is to try to stem the flow by sticking a hand over it. This sent water spraying over every surface of the tiny bathroom, floor to ceiling.

My husband is a good man. But in a stressful situation, James Bond he is not. He was both shaken and stirred. A natural tenor, when upset his voice moves to a pitch heard by neighborhood dogs. He started screaming. The children started screaming. He started yelling at the children to stop screaming. Abandoning the Little Dutch Boy strategy, he made his sodden way to the basement to attempt to find the cut-off as water poured from and into the wall. There are all kinds of knobs in our utility room between the city water supply, water heater, the pump for our well, and an unused water conditioner. Some of them don't do anything unless they are turned in the correct order. There is a similar puzzle in Myst.

Sloshing back to the now soggy bathroom, my husband called me from his cell phone and left a message. And, oh, what a message. Someday, archaeologists will find it and wonder about the society that produced it. And then they will file it with the one left by a T Rex that said in dino-speak, "Sheesh, that asteroid is getting really REALLY close ..."

When I played the voicemail at work, I thought it was a joke. We'd get the occasional crank call and the only surprising element was that we didn't get more. Some of you former co-workers may have heard it before. I had a habit of playing the recording when situations were really, really bad because few jewels of nature capture the essence of disaster so well.

I should mention that he found the shut-off before I heard the message so all ended relatively well if not a bit watery.

Without further ado, here is the reason for my daughter's water trauma. Others more clever than I have described this audio as the sound of someone backing a car over Mrs. Doubtfire. Judge for yourselves.

The Great Flood: The Sequel

Every Sunday, this blog will describe our life-changing trip to Kazakhstan in 2005 to adopt our two youngest children. While some of our friends and family have seen a few of the pictures, we've never put it all together in an organized format. One of the reasons is that I hesitate to subject others to a 21st century version of the endless slideshow of vacation photos harking to some relative's visit and a lost evening of my childhood. Still, the story must be told before details are lost since this is my children's unique birthright. When we get to the end of the story, I'll edit the posts together into an extended and separate blog page and then have it printed by one of the blog-to-book(let) services for my kids. For people with less interest, these posts will be easy to identify and avoid. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Morning came with the bumps of luggage and slashes of staccato conversation in the hallways of the statuesque Hotel Kazakhstan. We were exhausted from round-the-clock travel and yet hunger and a general sense of being jangled kept us from sleeping later.

We stayed up too late on this perfect summer evening enjoying the temperature and the company. A gentle breeze stirred the curtains. Once again, the Doctor saved history and returned to his time machine to fight another day. Oh, to be Amy Pond ...

Conversation progressed to the iconic, fanciful items that we would like to possess. The order is debatable. Mouse over any item for an explanatory link.

12. A flux capacitor
11. Ruby slippers
10. The 'blinky thing' to erase memory
9. Ewoks
8. Excalibur7. A talking sponge
6. A chakram
5. Babel fish
4. Room of Requirement
3. A sonic screwdriver
2. The Holodeck1. A TARDIS

No discussion of what you want is complete without considering what you don't want:

12. Tribbles11. Vogon poetry
10. A nasty little brother named Edmund to conspire with the White Witch9. Flying monkeys
8. Daleks
7. Ice-96. Kryptonite5. Frank N. Furter's Sonic transducer
4. Orcs3. Riker playing the trombone
2. One Ring To Rule Them All1. Wesley Crusher

What famous science fiction or fantasy icons do you want in your personal collection?

Daily Kup ('Let's Call It A Weekend' edition)

Porkus Productions is proud to announce this summer biggest blockbluster:

M. Night Shyamalan's latest film continues the arc of his career progression from brilliant new writer/director to 'some Indian guy.' In an attempt to restore earlier glory, Shyamalan went one step beyond other struggling directors who plunder old sitcoms and children's cartoons to explore the ultimate alternative universe -- Porkus Computer Systems. CGI could not do it justice.

Synopsis

Four nations (and two religious cults) are tied by destiny. Who will end this brutal war that has devastated mankind? The Last Truthbender discovers that he is the sole remaining Abeytar who can master the four elements: Hot Air, Fertilizer, Firing People, and Watering Down Quality. Can he save this war torn world ... or merely his butt?

Starring some other Indian guy as a bald little boy with an arrow on his head.

Coming soon directly to the discount bin at Blockbuster.

Daily Kup (Mind in the 20's, body in the 50's, temperature in the high 80's)

Either the weeds are blooming or my head has decided to take on water on the starboard side. The sneezing has been so strong that my pedicure is starting to crack off. Now I have my precious, my darling, my generic off-brand Benadryl. I cradle the little bright pink pills in my hands and know that I must finish this post quickly in the twenty minutes left before I plummet face first into the keyboard and awake with a loose T embedded in my forehead.

Reheated

Daily Kup (Talk about life imitating (pseudo-)art...)

Every Sunday, this blog will describe our life-changing trip to Kazakhstan in 2005 to adopt our two youngest children. While some of our friends and family have seen a few of the pictures, we've never put it all together in an organized format. One of the reasons is that I hesitate to subject others to a 21st century version of the endless slideshow of vacation photos harking to some relative's visit and a lost evening of my childhood. Still, the story must be told before details are lost since this is my children's unique birthright. When we get to the end of the story, I'll edit the posts together into an extended and separate blog page and then have it printed by one of the blog-to-book(let) services for my kids. For people with less interest, these posts will be easy to identify and avoid. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The plane shook and shuddered. It felt as though someone were bowling and we were the pins. The plane muscled forward and then would be knocked suddenly to the right or left. The sun had set and left us in blackness, a cat toy on a spring being slapped by an unseen paw.

Daily Kup (Traveling Version)

Daily Kup (My Life as a Gainfully Unemployed Person)

Daily Kup (It's Not a Midlife Crisis If You Never Intend to Die)

My search for the weirdest job opportunity continues. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we may have a winner!
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Auditions - A Klingon Christmas Carol
Commedia Beauregard will hold auditions for "A Klingon Christmas Carol" on August 1 & 2 at the Black Bear Crossings in Saint Paul. For the fourth year, Commedia Beauregard will present this remarkable translation of the Dickens holiday classic in "tlhIngan Hol", the language of Klingons in the Star Trek universe. Over the last three years, the production has been featured heavily in the press both locally and nationally.

This show has become a holiday tradition in the Twin Cities, and is now going to be bigger and better than ever before. Four new scenes have been added, as well as four new characters.

Director Christopher O. Kidder is looking for 16 actors (10m, 6f). All Klingon-speaking parts are available (including Scrooge). You must be willing to learn to perform in the Klingon Language (don't worry, we have a system down for the show, you need not learn the entire language).

So here's the audition info:
* Dress for Movement
* Teresa Lhotka will be fight choreographer, and she will be present to take us through some exercises at the auditions.
* There will be readings from the script (in English), no monologues required.
* Water, lozenges, and napkins will be provided (Klingon can involve spitting).
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I'm strangely tempted by this one. I have the forehead for it (furrowed by years at Porkus) and can Qapla' with the best of them.

Daily Kup (How I Spent My Reality Vacation)
It was one of those crazy, active days where I did weird projects. I was hoping to hear about a short-term service job that I'd applied for but the deadline passed without a call. As Scarlett said, "Tomorrow is another day."

The garage now has switched overhead lighting, thanks to extra screws, a little ingenuity in putting three things together that weren't designed for it, and a willful disregard for the electrical code, though not for safety principles. Tomorrow, I may add another outlet for the fluorescent fixture over where the workbench will be.

Campfire Koffee
The enterprising Cub Scout was put to work today recreating one of his favorite summer experiences. Here is a corner of our backyard reborn as a family campground. T had a bit of a heavy hand with the old Roundup last month in our quest to remove the burdocks that grow seemingly overnight. The large bare patches really do remind me of Camp Trefoil in Harrisville, NY, where I spent a week of camping each year of two or three summers when I was in elementary school. I learned a lot of dirty words, an unusual explanation of sex and that lakes are cold early in the morning and slimy all the time. It was great fun and an opportunity to try out a different personality for a week. Kind of like now, really.


The terrible twosome wanted to sleep out there tonight. That lasted about a half-hour.

A Sip of Optimism
Got a few minutes to save the world? Check out this link for Create the Good. The site is sponsored by AARP but there are no age or membership restrictions. Enter your zip code and find volunteer activities for any level of commitment. A number of them, like helping out at the upcoming Wings of the North AirExpo, sound like a lot of fun in addition to being good for the community.

Day Kup (What I Did On My Reality Vacation)
I spent a few hours this morning in the office of my financial advisor. They have done a terrific job consolidating my 401K's. Unfortunately, there is an idiot transfer company holding a stock certificate of mine hostage. This is round three of the battle and they may be starting to weaken, thanks to the amiable and appropriately sharp-tongued woman at Edward Jones. I'm owed a call back from my original 401K company by Thursday so they can explain why they had their supplier put my stock in my broker's name and in a type of account that I can't do anything with without tax issues. That company truly invokes the 'klown' epithet. Talking with them is like a random response generator.

Me: "I need your help in resolving this problem and successfully rolling my stock over." Them: "Brussels sprouts." Me: (eyes dart in confusion, forehead furrows)

I've gotten better answers from a Magic 8 ball.

After that, Attila the Son and I journeyed to the mecca of Home Depot to gather a bounty of paint swatches. Overcoming inertia and T's interest in house exterior colors usually reserved for model railroad villages, we settled on Harvest Brown (which just edged out Koala Bear despite the cutesy name), trim color Painter's White (less blue than White white but not a cream), and accent color Morocco Red (a deep red with brown and orange undertones).

Catering to suspicions that I'm channeling my late grandmother, I baked a loaf of wheat bread. Then, remembering that I am me, I took the breadmaker all apart to figure out what was wrong with the drive belt.

Good to the Last Drop
Another surreal Craigslist ad:
Could you use a fake flat screen TV (about 48-50")? Use it to stage a house, in a theater production, as a practical joke. It comes in a metal frame and stands up by itself. It came with an entertainment center on accident. Please save it from the dumpster.