Today's illustrious band:

Three Mood Ring Circus

Brought to you by me and my busy weekend, with thanks to WhoSEZ.

WhoSEZ and I had a dinner date last Friday. On my way to meet her, I passed an interesting-looking store (Patina, in case you're wondering) and was reminded that hey, my dining companion had had a birthday a few weeks ago, and this would be a good place to pick up a quick gift. I went in and found several fun things, including a selection of mood rings.

Remember mood rings? The ones my friends and I owned as young 'uns in the 70s featured big domed ovals whose opalescent "gemstones" would change color according to the wearer's mood — or according to how warm our fingers made the substance inside the dome, depending on level of sophistication. Yeah, the "silver" band always caused a little color change on our fingers, too. Green as I recall. Post-millennial mood rings are much sleeker in design, but no less groovy, than their ancestors. Nowadays the mood matrix encircles the whole band. Mine is a lovely cobalt color this morning, which I believe means I'm in a warm and friendly mood.

It was a busy, busy weekend, including 2 dinners out with friends, 4 separate workouts and a learning experience involving a Rug Doctor and some very heavy furniture. Inspired by the gunk Neighbor Nadene and her cleaning machine picked up at my house a few weeks ago, and by Mother Media's impending state visit, I decided to shampoo the carpets at Sensational Acres this weekend. This meant moving most of the furniture to uncarpeted areas (i.e. the kitchen, transforming it from small to miniscule) and piling smaller items on top of the bed, dresser, couch and other immovables. Only THEN did I remember that I needed to put aluminum foil under the legs of the unmoved furniture so the wet carpet didn't cause the furniture finish to leech down and leave stains. So I had to lift all four corners of the big items, with the extra stuff piled on top, and maneuver the foil under the legs. And I still had to do the actual shampooing, which involved hauling lots and lots of water between Rug Doctor and tub. And then I needed to clean the tub so I could bathe in it so I could go out to eat again.

Remarkably, I could still move on Sunday morning. I took all that excess energy and worked out a couple more times, then moved all the furniture back out of the kitchen to its rightful places. And if you're wondering how gross the post-shampooing Rug Doctor water was . . . it was pretty darn gross. And if you're wondering how tired I am this morning, I'm pretty darn tired.

But enough about me. Let's talk about you. I'd like to share with y'all another of the gifts I picked up on Friday. It's a game, taught to me by WhoSEZ, to be played in five stages. It's very simple and will only take about 30 seconds each day, so be a sport and play along. Here's how it works: Each day this week I'll suggest a scenario. Thoughtfully consider or write down what it makes you think of. Keep your answers private until next Monday, when I'll deliver the whys and wherefores. If you've played a game like this before, please avoid talking strategy with people who haven't. Got it?


The Game: Day 1 instructions:
1. Imagine a desert landscape. Nothing but sky and sand.
2. Imagine a cube in this landscape. What does it look like? What's it made of? Where is it?

OK, you're done. More tomorrow.

Today's illustrious band:

Scriptophobia

Brought to you by www.phobialist.com.

Scriptophobia is not fear of lousy movie dialogue. It's the fear of writing in public, a type of social phobia (one I apparently don't have). The term refers both to the physical act of writing, such as on a blackboard — I guess that's whiteboard now — and to writing things other people will eventually read, such as for publication. Fear of being observed in the act of writing could make it difficult for a person to make a presentation at work or even to sign a credit card receipt with a cashier watching. Fear of having one's words read and judged, possibly negatively, by others . . . I can understand that one a little better. Fortunately for my job security, however, it hasn't become a crippling dread. Yet.

Today's illustrious band:

Nose Buds

Brought to you by Sister-san, who writes:

"Nose buds are the olfactory complement to taste buds; nose buds allow us to smell delicate rose buds, and so on. Apparently, she says, nose buds temporarily lose their sensitivity with prolonged exposure to permanent markers, leaving one incapable of smelling anything else for an agonizing hour or so. Trust me on this one; do not try at home."

Well, that stinks.

**********

The news on being on the news: Didn't happen. It was too rainy yesterday afternoon for the handyman to be fiddling around with electrical stuff (exterior lights on the garage were one of my high-priority projects), so his visit was canceled, and with it the news crew that was going to film him in action. We're all going to try again next Wednesday; the spot is set to air next Friday. We'll see how it goes. At least I managed a decent clean-up job in the 10 minutes between my arrival at home and my receipt of the cancellation message.

Today's illustrious band:

When You're Hot, You're Hot

Brought to you by the Media Sensation herself.

Item 1: Service Saga update. My dear friend Keith from Southside Heating & AC dropped by yesterday to replace my central air unit's faulty blower motor. Cozy toastiness has been restored to Sensational Acres, just in time for fall. I spent several happy moments yesterday resetting the programmable thermostat, telling it when to warm the house up and when to let it stay cooler. I then spent several less happy moments in the wee hours of this morning kicking off some of the blankets I'd heaped on the bed earlier in the week. Small price to pay. Keith's bill wasn't, though.

Item 2: It's news to me. Remember a month or so ago when I called the Mr. Handyman service to send a guy to do some fixer-upping around the Acres? And they sent me George, the learning-impaired halitosis machine who aggravated a back injury after an hour on the job and only got one thing done? Disgusted with the service, I determined that I would look up my friend Shiatsu Mike, who also does handy-type stuff. But I never was able to get ahold of Mike, so I finally relented and called Mr. Handyman again to schedule another appointment. When I requested a non-George handyman, I was told that he's no longer with the company. My new guy is slated to visit this afternoon.

But then yesterday the Mr. Handyman office called me back with an unusual request. A local news crew (KSTP Channel 5) was interested in filming one of Mr. H's service people on the job, and would I mind if they filmed at my house? The big draw seemed to be the All-American white picket fence surrounding Sensational Acres, which is one of the items in need of repair and which would make a nice before/after shot. Bemused, I agreed to let the newsies attend. Why not? I doubt I'll appear on camera — hope not! — since the story is about Mr. Handyman, not me.

Nothing is chiseled in stone, of course; if a more interesting story breaks, or if a more attractive house needs maintenance, the Acres won't make the news at all. I have no idea when or even if the spot would actually air. But I'll keep you posted.

Item 3: Singing the blues. Part of the reason I didn't post a band name yesterday was that I was busy attending a bridal shower/send-off party for a departing friend, Miss Blueberry. She's soon to become Mrs. Blueberry; she's newly engaged, and she and her fiancé Kyle are moving back to Maine to plan their wedding closer to home and family. We'll miss her a lot around Media Headquarters, but she is much in demand. Despite having lured her here with the promise of editorial fame and fortune, we can't hope to detain her forever. What can I say? When you're hot, you're hot! Happy travels, Blueberry!

Today's illustrious band:

If Tribe, What?

Brought to you by the visa application men must complete to be granted entry to the U.S. According to the event's emcee, as part of increased Homeland Security efforts, male entrants to the country are now asked to answer questions regarding their ethnic/tribal origins, and also whether they've taken part in experiments or conflicts involving nuclear and other weapons. (Apparently female visa applicants get to skip that page.) Yep, if you consider the hurdy gurdy a weapon, then these guys might be dangerous.

Last night the Chicken Step Lady and I attended a concert, part of the annual Nordic Roots Festival, at the Cedar Cultural Center. The headline act was Hedningarna, about whom you've heard me enthuse before (see Hutenanny). This group is even more dynamic in person than on CD, especially if you happen to be sitting close enough to distinguish the individual strings on the fiddle. I chair-danced through the whole concert and didn't get home until after midnight.

The opening act, Wimme (pronounced "vee-may" or "vee-muh"), is the one I want to tell you about today. Wimme Saari is a modern yoik singer. Yoik is a traditional Sami chant that has similarities to Native American music in its transmission of knowledge and its reverence for the earth and the elements. The Sami (Lapps) are the indigenous people of northern Scandinavia and northwestern Russia.

So you'd think we were in for an hour or two of solemn, lore-preserving tradition. And occasionally we were; Wimme did yoik several animals a cappella in the middle of his set. (One yoiks the animal or the person or the land; one does not yoik about them. Near as I can tell from what little I've read, yoiking is a way of personifying, understanding and interpreting, rather than of objectively describing. and a yoik changes with the yoiker's mood.) My favorite was the reindeer. In the tone and cadence, I could clearly sense a reindeer coursing over a vast white landscape.

However, that was only part of the performance; most of it blended tradition and technology. Wimme was accompanied onstage by two men: a strings player who resembled soon-to-be-ex-governor Ventura in a shirt patterned with flying squirrels or something, and a rhythm section that consisted of one grinning tech/music geek with an electronic keyboard and a laptop computer. A sound mixer orchestrated from the back of the room. In a typical piece, the keyboardist would start up with a beat like the bossa nova setting from Grandma's old electric organ, overlaid with some grinding techno ambient sounds as well as electronic squirks and bleeps. The string man provided highlights and sometimes melody, plinking away on a ukulele, guitar, mandolin or banjo.

Then Wimme's voice would slide in, sounding sometimes like a nasal techno-groan itself and sometimes like a regular (and very versatile) singing voice. He might hold a tone for a long stretch while the undertones milled about, or chant with hypnotic rhythm over very little background, or add a spoken voiceover to the instruments. Or he might, as he did in for an encore, approach the microphone with a fierce expression, then throw his head back and gargle. If you're yoiking an aquatic environment, I guess that's what you do.

Whatever Wimme did, it was riveting. A modest-sized man with a shaven head, dressed in leather boots and leggings and a linen-grey tunic trimmed in rich green embroidery, he often stood motionless at center stage with his hands clasped behind him. Occasionally he would gesture, but the focus was always on the sound, the voice.

To what tribe does he belong? To the tribe of all who have ever shyly warbled out their own interior songs, bouncing them off the shower tiles just for fun. It didn't matter that he spoke maybe a dozen words of English throughout his entire show. Words weren't what he came to communicate. He came to bring and to be music — serious, silly, gritty, smooth, quiet, insistent, and everything. I don't think he needs a visa for that.

Today's illustrious band:

Looking up Corn Pone

Brought to you by the Chicken Step Lady and her partner in crime, Fractal Matt.

Once upon a time CSL and FM needed to look up corn pone in the dictionary. Along the way, they stumbled across polyribonucleotides*, which are defined thus: "ribonucleotides that are not mononucleotides, but are instead polyribonucleotides." Thank you, Mr. Webster, for clearing that up!

For those word nerds (like me) who just have to know: My Webster's doesn't contain a definition for ribonucleotide. However, an appeal an online medical dictionary reveals that it's a nucleotide in which a purine or pyrimidine base is linked to a ribose molecule.

• nucleotides: Phosphate esters of nucleosides. The metabolic precursors of nucleic acids are monoesters with phosphate on carbon 5 of the pentose (known as 5' to distinguish sugar from base numbering). However, many other structures, such as adenosine 3'5' cyclic monophosphate (cAMP) and molecules with 2 or 3 phosphates are also called nucleotides.
  
• purine: a heterocyclic compound with a fused pyrimidine/imidazole ring. Planar and aromatic in character. The parent compound for the purine bases of nucleic acids
  
• pyrimidine: a family of 6-membered heterocyclic compounds occurring in nature in a wide variety of forms. They are planar and aromatic in character and include several nucleic acid constituents (cytosine, thymine, and uracil) and form the basic structure of the barbiturates. It is the parent compound of the pyrimidine bases of nucleic acid.
  
• ribose: a monosaccharide pentose of widespread occurrence in biological molecules, for example RNA.
  

Aren't you glad we asked? While I could have spent the rest of the day clicking on linked terms, I thought I'd let you-all follow up at your leisure. Have a great weekend!

* Reason "Polyribonucleotides" isn't today's band name: too long to fit on a CD label.

**********

Editor's note: Yesterday's band roster for Invasion of the Monster Women was one member short: I neglected to mention Scorpion Woman in the bios, as I do not possess an idol in her likeness. My sincere apologies for the oversight.

Today's illustrious band:

Invasion of the Monster Women

Brought to you by the Monster Women.

The Monster Women, as far as I can tell, exist only as a series of kitschy rubber figurines, salt-and-pepper shakers and lunchbox adornments. (I'm the proud owner of each of these items.) The toys look like they were designed to commemorate a 1950s sci-fi B movie — very cheap and cheesy-looking. The lunchbox bears scenes from the "movie," which would have been the kind with spaceships dangling from visible wires, and there's a little rubber dollie for each of the five characters. They are, in the order on which they sit atop my computer monitor:

• Cobra Woman, who has the torso of a buxom babe in a red tube top but the lower body of a serpent, and a hood-like headgear thingie shaped like a snake's head
  
• Lizard Woman, with the torso of a buxom babe in a pink halter top, the body of a lizard and red wing-like head appendages
  
• Spider Woman, with the torso of a buxom babe in a green bustier, the body of an arachnid (suitably hairy with dust) and hair that changes from blonde to black as it flows down her back; she wears a yellow necklace
  
• Centaur-pede Woman, with the torso of a buxom babe in a green sports bra, the body of a centipede and red stinger-horns on her head; she wears a red necklace
  
• my personal heroine Bat Woman (a grad-school friend used to refer to me as Batchick), the only upright Monster Woman, who has the body of a buxom babe in a pink strapless swimsuit with yellow belt, spreading black bat wings, enormous three-toed feet and a bat-head helmet; she wears a green thing at her throat, or maybe it's just bat flews
  

Not a bad attack squad for $.99 apiece. The salt and pepper shakers, gifts from Chicken Step Lady, are busts of Bat and Lizard. The rubber icons were gifts from Sister-san. The lunchbox I bought myself.

Today's illustrious band:

We're Different Inside

Brought to you by a sign in the window of a Boston Market restaurant, pointed out by Skeeter.

Different from what? Do I really want a restaurant to be "different" inside? I kind of like the system we have now, where I can go into a restaurant and order food that someone else has cooked and that someone else will bring to me, and where someone else will clean up after I've left.

Skeeter and I couldn't tell what was "different" about our local Boston Market. There was a selection of high-fat, sodium-laden foods for us to select from, order-fillers and a cashier, a get-it-yourself beverage station, and tables for us to sit at while eating our meals. No marching band, no herd of water-skiing elephants, no space aliens that I could see (although Sister-san can show you around the Space Aliens restaurant in her area). The food did not give us magical superpowers unless you count Irresistible Nap Attack — but that's no different from the nap attack I get from eating elsewhere. There was no Boston Market Time Warp that returned us to work before we'd left.

So if anyone knows what's "different" about Boston Market, let me know.

**********

Service saga update: The good news is, my buddy Keith from Southside Heating & Air Conditioning made it to my house yesterday and replaced the central air's faulty fan blower relay within the space of a lunch hour. The bad news is, once the relay was sending power to the blower, he noticed right away that the blower motor wasn't working. So now I need a new blower motor, too. And of course he didn't have the necessary parts on hand to make the swap, so he'll have to call me when they come in, blah blah blah. Hopefully he'll be able to assemble the doohickey in the shop and then just dash over to my place and jam it into place. That's the plan, anyway.

The original fix was estimated at $X. The new fix will cost about $2X. That brings me to a total of $3X, three times as much as I was expecting to spend. However, to replace the entire central air unit would cost a minimum of $6X, so suddenly $3X doesn't look so bad by comparison. And at least this stuff broke while the weather was still nice, so I'm not freezing to death or camping out in a hotel. Ah, the joys of homeownership.

Also, I had a cavity-free visit to the dentist this morning. Viva la floss!

Today's illustrious band:

With a Scissors

Brought to you by a Pioneer Press Bulletin Board contributor called The M & M & M Mom of West St. Paul, who writes:

"I cut hair for a living. I had an adorable 4-year-old girl in my barber chair; her name is Sophie. I put the tape on her; I turned the chair to the mirror and said: 'How would you like your hair cut today?'
"She thought for a minute and said: 'With a scissors.' "

Short 'n sweet.

Today's illustrious band:

Juvenile Dinnerware

Brought to you by an aisle marker at Target. The marker meant to indicate that bowls, plates and cups for kids were located in a certain aisle. But the first thing I thought was that the mature dinnerware was probably in the next aisle and the midlife crisis cutlery a couple rows down.

How do you know if you've picked up juvenile dinnerware by mistake? Juvenile dinnerware is poorly behaved, prone to throwing food and snickering anytime a "naughty" word comes up in mealtime conversation. Juvenile dinnerware rejects all green vegetables, depositing them directly in front of the dog. In fact, juvenile dinnerware would prefer that you dispense with new menu items altogether and stick to macaroni and cheese, hotdogs and baloney sandwiches on white bread, no crusts.

Wait — I just described myself.

Today's illustrious, if potentially unlucky, band:

Neighbor Nadene and the Cleaning Machine

Brought to you by my neighbor Nadene and her cleaning machine.

Pros

• suction power
  
• water-washed air
  
• ethylene glycol (I think Mother Media has a great-aunt by that name.)
  
• silvery hi-tech grooviness
  
• the gift of meat
  

Cons

• that funny smell
  
• the dirty truth
  
• parts is parts
  
• pyramids is pyramids
  
• the price of purity
  

Summary

The 1950s are alive and well in the southern suburbs of the Media Metropolis. On Wednesday night, a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesperson came to Sensational Acres to demonstrate the latest in carpet cleaning technology.

A few weeks ago, I found in my mailbox a coupon entitling me to 5 lbs of free hamburger patties, or 5 lbs of free brats, or a free 12-pack of Pepsi or Coke. All I had to do was call the number on the flyer. Intrigued, I called. There would, of course, be a catch of some kind, but I've been trying to improve the protein level in my diet, and 5 lbs of free burgers seemed like a good place to start.

The catch was this: The person who delivered my gift would also ask for my opinion on a stain-removing appliance she was demonstrating. Right away, I knew that "opinion" was code for "agreement to purchase." Still, I figured it wouldn't take me long to just say no and go slap a patty on the George Foreman grill. We scheduled a showing for 6:00 Wednesday.

Well, 6:00 and then 7:00 came and went, leaving me to wonder, Where's the beef? I had to settle for vegetarian nachos for dinner. Finally at 8:00 the cats grew very interested in the front door. There on the porch stood Nadene. My cozy living room quickly got smaller as she unloaded a purse, a duffel bag, a rectangular box the size of a small suitcase and a cubical box about a yard on each side. Let the demo begin! And it did, after a second trip to the car for the Power Nozzle box, about the size of a bass guitar case, and a third trip later for the shampooing unit.

I should have counted the number of times Nadene used the words "filth" and "homemakers" in her presentation. June Cleaver was obviously the target audience, and the spiel-writers assumed that June had at least an hour and a half to devote to hearing it. That's how long it took, and Nadene wasn't just faffing about. She was constantly reading to me from laminated pages in her three-ring binder, fishing shiny new attachments out of the big box (4.5 end attachments, 3 hose-tubes) and turning the uber-vac on and off as she put each through its paces.

The product is one nifty multi-tool, let me tell you. The central suction unit squats over a water-filled base of clear plastic, the same kind from which football helmets are made. FILTH is inhaled through the front end and trapped by the water, which obligingly turns a disgusting grey, and only water-washed air issues from the back end. If you attach the hose, horsehair brush, crevice tool or Power Nozzle, you can use the unit as a conventional, albeit genetically superior, vacuum cleaner. However, if you just set it naked in the middle of the room and turn it on, it will still suck up your FILTHY atmosphere, scrub it, and eject nothing but pure clean goodness.

If you want to disinfect the air, too, you squirt a shot of green ethylene glycol into the water tank. If you don't want your house to end up smelling like a dentist's office, you also squirt in a hefty shot of fragrance, choosing among gardenia, mulberry, violet, vanilla and others. I chose violet. It came out much too strong and left my living room smelling like a dentist's sachet pillow for what little remained of the evening.

Then the actual carpet-vacuuming demonstration began, and with it the horror of confronting the FILTH in my home!! Inserting a scrap of white cloth between hose and nozzle to act as a filter, Nadene attacked a one-foot-square section of my carpet. In seconds she had sucked up a hairball the size of a hedgehog, along with about a pound of dirt and sand. I was properly disgusted, but Nadene confided that she'd seen much worse even in houses without pets. A couple more variations on this maneuver would have been enough to sell me on the vac . . .

. . . until she flipped to the laminated price page. This thing costs more than $1667 by itself and over $2000 when you add the Power Nozzle — which is sold separately, even though (or perhaps because!) it's the attachment you'd use most. Well, OK, since Nadene and I were friends by that time, she called her supervisor (at 9:15 p.m.), who authorized her to lower the price to $1668, essentially giving me the Power Nozzle for free. What a value! AND, if I was willing to Act Now and give her my old vacuum cleaner as a trade-in, she was also empowered to throw in the shampooing unit — which I must say did a dandy job of taking a very old stain out of a chair cushion.

Oh, and did I mention the incentives? Had I been willing to write down the names of just 10 of my friends and relatives, making them eligible to enter a drawing for a $100 shopping spree at the mall of their choice, I could have entered my own name to win a $500 shopping spree. And Nadene would have gotten $500, too, if I won. I'm sure those names wouldn't have been used for nefarious advertising purposes or anything, but you can all thank me right now for not writing any down. A pound of pistachios will do.

Also, if I found the price of the product beyond my means and didn't want to enter into a $66/month financing agreement (no interest for 90 days!), I might be granted the Rare Opportunity to work off my purchase by becoming a Nadene myself. Me, entering the homes of perfect strangers to tout the virtues of a vacuum cleaner that doubles as an air freshener? That idea was about as appealing as the gruesome swill in the vac's water chamber.

It was an interesting evening. Poor Nadene left empty-handed (except for the purse, duffel bag, rectangular box, cubical box, Power Nozzle box and shampooing unit). I, however, now have a small patch of really clean carpet and a partially cleansed chair cushion in my dental-violet-scented living room.

Oh yeah, and a box of burgers in the freezer.

**********

Service saga update: Keith just called. The part for my blower fan relay didn't make it onto this week's truck. But he hopes to lay hands on it early next week, and then we can schedule the actual repair. SIGH!

Today's illustrious band:

The Dark Side of Nice

Brought to you by Sarah Vowell, writer and frequent contributor to NPR's "This American Life," in her new book The Partly Cloudy Patriot. I'm a big fan of Ms. V, with whom I share an '80s childhood and a stint in the high school marching band, so I'll let this comment from a review in Salon.com speak for me:

"Her grim funniness makes reading her prose addictive, especially if you've never quite been able to cram yourself into the American dream. Recalling her own second-grade self in a piece about selling antique maps in San Francisco, she writes, 'I think the reason I wasn't cut out to be a good map seller or a good Californian had something to do with the fact that I dressed up as Wednesday Addams for Halloween that year. 'The Addams Family' and 'The Munsters' shows, where roses were grown for their thorns and pretty blondes were pitied as monsters, were on TV every afternoon after school when I was a little kid. Throw in three Pentecostal church services a week where they preached that the Antichrist would be a sunny, smooth, all-American charmer, and you have the makings of an insular worldview. Namely, a sneaking suspicion that there's always a dark side of nice.'"

If you get a chance, log on to the "This American Life" web site, www.thislife.org, and do a search for Sarah Vowell. Click on the programs that match your search and listen to her squeaky voice online. This super-cool use of technology is especially appropriate since Vowell considers herself a huge nerd and would undoubtedly think it's pretty rad herself.

**********

Service saga update: Keith the heating/air conditioning service rep actually did appear at my house last night, not just on time, but early! In person he seemed like a decent enough guy and told me a story about the tension at his house over his daughter's unauthorized purchase of a rottweiler puppy.

After a brief checkup, he diagnosed my central unit as having a blown fan relay — kudos to Señor Editor for figuring this out days ago without even seeing the thing. Keith did not, of course, have a replacement part on hand for my particular machine. He hopes to get ahold of the supplier early this morning, as the supplier only comes to town once a week, on Fridays, and that's tomorrow. Hopefully the part will arrive tomorrow and the replacement can get done in the next few days. It'll mean another lunch hour loitering around the house, but what the heck. I need to get this done before it gets cold around here. The nights are already a little sharper 'round the edges.

Today's illustrious band:

Rest Room World

Brought to you by the Rest Room World catalog. On this most solemn of days, allow me to bring you something this country needs more of: bathroom humor.

I'm not talking about poo-poo jokes here. I'm talking about a 68-page glossy catalog devoted entirely to the fixtures and supplies you need to make your public potty a clean and attractive haven. I'd never thought about it until Skeeter showed me the catalog he somehow received (he writes about gardening, not bathrooms; why did he get this?), but somebody has to sell the refills for the soap dispensers, and the dispensers themselves. Six pages' worth of dispensers, in fact. Six pages are also devoted to paper towels and their dispensers, but only five to toilet paper and TP dispensers. And if you've ever wondered where you can order your very own urinal cakes, just turn to page 27. The cherry-scented ones are made of "pure paradichlorobenzene." Thank goodness! Wouldn't want an impure urinal cake in there, would we?

On page 30 the Metered Deodorant Systems section starts. These devices have timers that release precisely calculated amounts of fragrance at regular intervals. One product line promises that "your staff and clientele will enjoy the wide selection of fragrances: pine, citrus, herbal spring, baby powder, pina colada, green apple, cherry, bayberry, country garden, orange blossom, spring flowers, native mango, pacific peach, voodoo berry (!), Dutch Apple, French Kiss (!!), Hawaiian Heat (?), Acapulco Splash (??) and pink grapefruit." I'm pretty curious to know what voodoo berry and Acapulco Splash smell like — but not curious enough to spend $93.75 for a case of product. However, the offering that interests me most is country garden. Aren't many gardens in the country fertilized with manure? So you'd be blasting precisely calculated squirts of eau de manure into your bathroom to . . . freshen it?

Then there's the Bowl Cleaning section, complete with photos of people demonstrating various brushes and scrubbers. Can't you just hear the phone call home? "Daddy, I have good news and bad news. The good news is, my modeling career is finally taking off! I just got my first catalog job! The bad news? The catalog is Rest Room World. No, I'm not putting my manicure to good use showing off the paper towels. I'm in Bowl Cleaning." Who says modeling isn't glamorous?

You can pick your seat on page 40: commercial toilet seats. This explains one of the great mysteries of the restroom universe, actually, the mystery of why all public toilets look alike. There's only one seat shown in the catalog.

Then there's the mirror section: glass and stainless steel mirrors, photographed with vases of flowers in front of them. No problem. Bathrooms need mirrors. BUT! Down at the bottom of page 45 is the ceiling-mount dome mirror, the kind you'd put at a busy hallway intersection, so you can "achieve maximum visibility and safety — eliminates blind spots." HELLO? We're in the BATHROOM here!! We WANT a few blind spots in which to conduct Private Personal Business!

The photography in this catalog is really something else, too. On page 59 you see a very hip-looking young dad tending his child at a baby changing station. But on page 41, the woman at the toilet seat cover dispenser looks like she stepped right out of the Fashion Don't section of People from 1985: floral print dress with wide black belt, white peter pan collar and red neck bow, makeup applied with a putty knife, and super-tall, oversprayed bangs in front with a ponytail in back, clasped with a black hair bow that resembles a vampire bat. And the photo next to her is just as fun: a toilet littered and strewn about with fragments of tissue, clearly illustrating the need for Neat Seat covers ($59.75 for a case of 2500). Again, the call home: "Mom, I'm a photo stylist! No, not for Vogue . . . "

Following pages offer restroom signs in a variety of shapes and colors, cleaners and disinfectants, and "rest room specialties." (Note: Throughout the catalog, "rest room" always appears as two separate words, never as one word. I thought this was was a mistake at first — the text is a copyeditor's nightmare — until I checked Webster's, but the dictionary lists "rest room" as a public lavatory. Hmph! So this catalog counts as educational reading.) Among the occupation indicator locks, moist towelettes, waste hampers and long-sleeve neoprene gloves is No. R-6406, Catherine the Great Can. It's a stainless steel garbage receptacle with a funnel top. Cost: $825.45 for a 32-inch-tall CGC, $545.25 for a 20-incher. First of all, who names a garbage can after a historical figure? Second, who can get away with charging over $825 for one? The professionals at Rest Room World, I guess.

Well, I've wasted enough of your time. The RRW catalog is available in my office for personal viewing. Yes, today is a time for sober reflection on the events of last September. But it's also a day to laugh at the little sillinesses that make us glad to be here.

Tomorrow's band: Pure Paradichlorobenzene

Today's illustrious band:

The Persistence of Memory

Brought to you by surrealist painter Salvador Dali, whose famous 1931 painting of melting clocks bears this name, and the uber-wankers at Southside Heating and Air Conditioning.

WARNING!! Expression of displeasure ahead! If you don't want to read a gripe about bad customer service, read no further.

What does "Meet me there at noon" mean to you? Does it mean "Offer to show up around 1:30, maybe, but only after I call you at 12:30 to find out where the heck you are"? That's apparently what it means to the "service" personnel at Southside H&AC. I scheduled an appointment to have my fritzy central air unit doctored over my lunch hour today, festivities to commence at noon. By 12:30, however, no one had showed up.

When I called the office, I was connected with Keith, the guy who was supposed to make the service call. He mused that perhaps he could amble on over to my house in an hour or so, and that it would take an hour or more to do the work. I informed him that that would not work for me, as I needed to get back to the office. This was news to Keith, who said he had not been informed of the need for timeliness.

Should he have to be? He's in a service industry! How about providing the agreed-upon service at the agreed-upon time?

Sensing my irritation — perhaps my use of the phrase "this is unacceptable" helped him catch on — we arranged that he would "try" to reach my house at 5:00 tomorrow, and that due to today's snafu I would be charged regular rates, not overtime rates, which normally kick in at 4:30. I had to request this concession in a firm voice, as Keith offered no palliation for the inconvenience on his own.

This is where I began to suspect that SH&AC's clocks had melted down and I had entered yet another area of the Customer Service Twighlight Zone. This incident recalls last month's home-improvement fiasco, wherein the hired handyman (A) could not find my house despite his map and real-time directions from his dispatcher on the cell phone, and arrived 1.5 hours late, (B) wilted my plants with his epic halitosis, (C) could not understand the work requests I made, even after I walked him to each project area and physically pointed out what needed to be done and (D) aggravated an injury 1/3 of the way through the job and had to leave.

In SH&AC, we have a service bureau that provides service apparently at its whim, untroubled by the appointment calendar. And they don't do so past 4:30 in the afternoon. Given the fact that most people work until at least 4:30 or 5:00 p.m. and arrive home even later, the overtime policy strikes me as holding customers over a barrel. I can't keep leaving work at 3:00 on the off chance that Keith might decide to drop by. Under normal circumstances I would either have to use vacation time to be home for the service call or pay the overtime rate.

I know I'm not the only person ever to find herself searching the street for the service van like it's a fickle lover, and I certainly won't be the last. But I've had customer service-type jobs in the past and was brought up to behave as if the customer, if not always right, should at least be allowed to think she is. Can anyone tell me when (A) this time-honored business policy was jettisoned and (B) I became a crotchety old curmudgeon?

Today's illustrious band:

Lose Your Cool

Brought to you by the high heat and humidity of this past weekend. My central air unit did indeed lose its cool on Saturday. This was a distressing development, as I had done my usual Saturday workout marathon: think a couple hours' worth of heavy-duty aerobic activity in a second-floor room with other sweating bodies, small windows and weak ceiling fans. I was, to put it mildly, ready for some climate-controlled relaxation. Imagine my displeasure, then, when I came home to a stuffy house with no chilled air circulating through the vents. The mechanism that cools the air seems to be working, but the one that blows it into the rooms is not.

I changed the furnace filter — and I urge the rest of you to go do the same right now, 'cuz they can get pretty gross — flipped some switches, consulted my friends from the home-improvement magazine and reset the circuitbreakers, but to no avail. A call to the repair guys suggests that my outdoor cooling unit may have iced up due to high humidity and low freon levels, and possibly the gross filter, so a service person is coming to bail me out over lunch tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes.

Aside from a sewer problem earlier in the year, which was solved by a helpful neighbor, this will be my first major home repair event since moving to Sensational Acres. How come this milestone isn't more exciting?

And speaking of Sensational Acres, I've just learned that Mom is coming next month to help me celebrate my 2nd anniversary in my humble abode. All you locals are invited over for tea and scones, and if you have suggestions about fun stuff to do around the Twin Cities in the fall, by all means send them on.

Today's illustrious band:

Mental Floss

Brought to you by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein, who said, "Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose — a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye."

Mental floss is anything that cleans out the crevices of your brain and lets thought flow freely again. Like dental floss, it's a health tool. It could be goal-setting, as it was for Shelley, or cooking or athletics or writing or singing or praying or gardening or fly fishing or mountain climbing or whatever. But you've got to have something. The important thing is to know which brand(s) of floss you like, stock up and use it regularly. Fall means back-to-school time, hunker-down time, pre-holiday-frenzy time, deadline time — not to mention time to remember the events of last September. Plenty of food for thought there that can get stuck in one's mental craw. So I'm preaching this subversive gospel: don't forget to floss.

**********
The results of my highly scientific survey are in!
I've tallied the votes on your favorite band names, and the audience is unanimous: everyone has his or her own preferences. No band got more than three votes, but 28 received at least one mention. Leading the league were Lutefisk Pudding and Homemade Teeth with 3 votes apiece, followed closely by The Brunching Shuttlecocks, Green Tomato Pie and Wowie Warm at two apiece. Other than a leaning toward food-based band names, I can detect no trends in the lists I received.

Thanks to the half-dozen people who responded; have the rest of you lost the ability to hit "reply" or something?

Today's illustrious band:

Meat Cookie

Brought to you by Labor Day and the grand American tradition of eating copious amounts of charred meat in someone's back yard. I did exactly that yesterday. There was a barbeque at Mr. F's house, where many people were seen walking around gnawing slices of brisket and pork loin like cookies.

It was a very pleasant afternoon, considerably enlivened by the arrival of our friend James. James is a well-traveled man who brings an international flair to everything he does. Yesterday he brought some Norwegian beer to the party. The brand name was Aass (properly pronounced "oss"), and it came in a bright red can. You can imagine the downward turn of the repartee: "Hey James, nice Aass!" "Can I grab that big red Aass?" Etc. Between that and another guest's puppy, we were mightily entertained.